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By LOU WILIN STAFF WRITER Findlay City Council president candidate Tom Ross said Friday he would change things at city hall: making people feel welcome there. His opponent for the Republican nomination on May 2, R. Ronald Monday, said Ross lacks the required experience.

Monday

Ross

A person who wants to be the president of council should have some prior experience as a council representative to fully understand the job, Monday said. Ross ran for the 4th Ward seat on council in 2013, losing to Tom Klein in the Republican primary election. While neither candidate directly attacked his opponent at the Hancock County Republican Partys First Friday luncheon, each outlined some themes which are likely to recur over the coming weeks. Monday portrayed himself as a knowledgeable 50-year veteran of city government. He spent over 30 years as an employee, retiring as a division commander and lieutenant for the Police Department. Monday has spent the past 19 years as a councilman, and is now chairman of councils Appropriations Committee. Ross touts himself as an outsider who is more sympathetic to citizens. He said that in conversations with over 500 Republicans so far, one theme has emerged. Most folks I talk to dont feel that the administration and council are doing everything possible to welcome their involvement in the legislative process, he said. Ive come up with a few ways to address this issue and I intend to represent our party and our community as a result of my conversations on the campaign trail, Ross said. One of Ross proposals is to stream council meetings through Facebook Live, Twitter Live and/or YouTube. This allows you the ability to not only watch councils meetings, but also participate and interact with your friends and neighbors on platforms you are already using on a daily basis, Ross said on his Facebook page. Fridays candidate forum was not a debate in the sense that it did not allow rebuttals or exchanges between candidates. Ross said a council president should have leadership skills and experience. Ross, a Realtor for American Realty Partners and a property manager, said he has both leadership skills and experience, having been elected president of the Heartland Board of Realtors. That board has over 200 members. Honestly folks, whether its a 200-member board or a 10-member (city) council, its really all about effective leadership and loyalty to the legislative process thats effective, Ross said. Monday said that as council president he would conduct meetings in an impartial manner and would be a liaison between the administration and council. The president should not enter the office with an agenda or attempt to change things that are the responsibility of the elected council members, Monday said. The current council president, Republican Jim Slough, is running for Findlays 4th Ward seat on council. Fourth Ward incumbent Tom Klein is not seeking re-election. Slough, who is unopposed in seeking the 4th Ward seat, said he gets asked a lot why he is running for what might be considered a demotion. He said his answer is simple. I see a disturbing pattern that is quite concerning to me. Over the past six months weve had two homicides, two home invasions, 35 drug overdoses and eight deaths associated with that, Slough said. I find the trend to be unacceptable for this county. Slough proposes forming a team of city, Hancock County and community representatives to fight those problems and keep citizens safe. Third Ward council candidate Dina Ostrander, a Republican, also wants to improve citizen safety by reducing the citys drug problem. She also vowed to work for Blanchard River flood reduction. Ostrander and her husband, Chris, co-chaired United Way of Hancock Countys 2016 campaign. She also is a former board member for Findlay Family YMCA. Ostrander said that as a councilwoman, she would work to bring government and the private and nonprofit sectors together to improve the community. Her opponent for the GOP nomination for the 3rd Ward seat, Michael Tanner, did not attend the forum because of a schedule conflict. Monday is the current 3rd Ward councilman. Other Republican candidates for city posts will be unopposed in the May primary. Wilin: 419-427-8413 Send an E-mail to Lou Wilin

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Republican council candidates spar at forum - The Courier

An anti-EU demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament in November 2016. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

The law is clear. Its everything else in this dark and murky business that is not. Three months on from the first appearance by Cambridge Analytica in the Observer, the questions show no sign of going away. Instead, they have become more urgent, more serious, with ever more far-reaching consequences.

Cambridge Analytica, its parent company SCL, and its relationship to the Leave campaign raise questions that cannot be ignored questions that are vital to the integrity of our democracy and what it means to be a citizen in the digital age. Was the referendum free, fair and legally fought? Were voters covertly manipulated without their consent? And, crucially, what role exactly does Robert Mercer Donald Trumps biggest donor and close associate of Steve Bannon have in all this?

Did a US billionaire play a covert but vital role in the biggest political decision Britain has made in its postwar history?

In December, Cambridge Analytica wrote to the Observer to deny it had worked for the Leave campaign. It said: It is a US company based in the US. It hasnt worked in British politics. This is the starting point for everything that followed. Because evidence upon evidence has mounted suggesting this is simply not true. We know this from words spoken by Cambridge Analyticas chief executive, filings to the Electoral Commission, statements on Leave.EUs website, appearances by Cambridge Analytica employees at Leave.EU events. Even as Cambridge Analytica continues to deny it, Arron Banks the co-founder of Leave.EU tweeted last week: We made no secret of working with Cambridge.

Hes right. It is no secret. But to not report a donation of a service that is made at any point in the campaign and relied upon later is against the law. To accept a donation from a non-UK citizen or company is against the law though a donation from a UK subsidiary would be legal. If illegal, the issue would go beyond the Electoral Commission. If proven, this is a criminal offence that carries a fine or up to six months in prison, Gavin Millar QC, an expert in electoral law, told the Observer.

Will the police investigate?

The law is also clear on how political parties can use your data, Millar says. Its just like somebody knocking on your door and canvassing you the old-fashioned way, he says. They have to explain who are they are, and if you dont want to speak to them, you can shut the door. This is how it works online too. The Information Commissioners Office has launched a major investigation, but questions remain about what data Cambridge Analytica and Leave.EU have, as well as the bigger question of whether Facebook should be selling your data to political parties without your explicit consent.

Last week, the plot thickened still further. Until now, the attention has been on Leave.EU, but in November, it was reported that Vote Leave the official campaign group for Leave, led by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson had made payments to two groups of campaigners totalling 725,000. By law, campaigns can do this if there is no collaboration between them. However, both groups spent the money on social media advertising. Both used AggregateIQ, a small Canadian data analytics company.

AggregateIQ had already done 3.6m of work for Vote Leave. On Thursday last week, Cambridge Analyticas parent company, SCL, removed a listing for SCL Canada from its site. The phone number belongs to Zack Massingham, the director of AggregateIQ. A spokesman for SCL said it was an outdated listing of a former contractor who had done no work for Vote Leave.

What is Robert Mercers interest in all this?

The Observer revealed that the billionaire hedge-fund owner, and a money man behind Donald Trump, was a key figure operating behind the scenes in Brexit. Andy Wigmore of Leave.EU told us that Mercer is a personal friend of Nigel Farage and that it was he who made the introduction between Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica. He said: They were happy to help. Because Nigel is a good friend of the Mercers. And Mercer introduced them to us.

Increasingly, it seems Brexit may have been the warm-up for the Trump campaign. And if we were the laboratory rats in an experiment run by a foreign billionaire, what role did we play? How was our data used? And what exactly does Robert Mercer and his close associate, Steve Bannon want from us?

Is this our future?

Is it the case that our elections will increasingly be decided by the whims of billionaires, operating in the shadows, behind the scenes, using their fortunes to decide our fate?

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Cambridge Analytica affair raises questions vital to our democracy - The Guardian

The American people support more federal spending on infrastructure such as roads, buildings and waterways 75 percent are in favor, according to a year-old Gallup poll. And so President Donald Trumps call for a 10-year, $1 trillion national rebuilding plan was one of the few parts of his address to Congress on Tuesday that might have been the same if Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders had won.

Depending on the details, many Democrats will support a Trump-backed infrastructure bill, in the name of boosting short-term job creation and long-term economic productivity.

Theres just one catch: Many of the same people who tell pollsters they want to unleash the bulldozers will sing a different tune when those machines approach their communities. And Americas responsive, democratic political system, with its decentralized institutions and multiple veto points, will heed the cry of NIMBY not in my back yard.

Two consecutive California governors dreamed of a high-speed rail system like Japans. Nearly a decade after voters approved the California bond issue, the project has barely started. Residents of Silicon Valley in the north and the San Joaquin Valley in Californias central agricultural region filed lawsuits. Property owners along the route have refused to sell land. San Fernando, a small city in Los Angeles County, balks at being sliced in two by the tracks.

To be sure, Californias high-speed rail is new infrastructure and, as such, inherently more disruptive. Maybe Americans will be less wary of merely upgrading existing installations.

Well, a $120 billion federal plan to improve the ancient but vital Northeast Corridor rail line, thus slicing Amtrak travel times between New York and Boston, faces resistance from the 7,500 denizens of Old Lyme, Connecticut. It would mean tunneling under their downtown.

Its fashionable and, to some extent, merited to denounce NIMBYism. We dont want a few selfish holdouts to block manifestly urgent and beneficial projects. On the other hand, its hard to prove the necessity and utility of any given bridge or highway. A just-completed $1.6 billion expansion of Los Angeles 405 freeway accomplished next to nothing in terms of its stated goal reducing traffic congestion according to the New York Times. Anybody else notice that Trump hasnt identified a specific new road or hospital that the nation absolutely, undeniably must have?

Yes, the jewel of American infrastructure the interstate highway system knit this great land together. In the process, it tore through many an old downtown or established neighborhood (often inhabited by relatively powerless minority groups). In fact, backlash against the interstates is one reason that we have environmental-impact statements today, and the pesky delays that come with them.

Few recall that history now, but it puts into perspective a lot of todays simplistic thinking about infrastructure. The United States failure to enact a massive program to repair our crumbling infrastructure reflects not stupidity, or weak national will, but a genuine, inescapable collective-action problem. Infrastructures benefits are diffuse, long term and, to some degree, speculative; its costs are focused, immediate and palpable.

Approaches to this conundrum vary around the world. In China, a one-party state shoves whole villages aside to make way for dams and airports. As that extreme example demonstrates, there is always a tension between grand schemes of national rebuilding and, well, democracy.

By all means, the United States should try to mitigate NIMBYism. But we should also reflect on the real reasons its so difficult to take billions in infrastructure money, and throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks, as Trump adviser Stephen Bannon has recommended.

Under our system, the government has to consult with the people before irreversibly damming our rivers or excavating our towns. This can be maddening as heck, but also, when you think about it, one of the things that makes America great.

Charles Lane is an editorial writer for the Washington Post.

Published March 5, 2017, midnight in: bridges, California, infrastructure, NIMBYism, rail, roads

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Charles Lane: Democracy a roadblock to rebuilding - The Spokesman-Review

Terrorism has succeeded in feeding fear and anger into Americans, not only harming the Arab worlds transition into democracy, but also shaking the core principles of the American democracy, which was once a leading model of freedom and inclusivity to the rest of the world.

The uprising of multiple countries in the Arab world against dictatorship in 2011 has awed the world. These Muslim majority countries, as they are usually referred to by the U.S. government and foreign affairs agencies, have struck people with their passion for freedom, their will for survival and their thirst for democracy. Following an era of dictatorship and misportrayal, these Muslims have proved to the world that they are as equally human and wanting of democracy as Americans.

Syria is the fourth country to have been inspired by the rebellions success in Tunisia, the first Arab country to stand against dictatorship, and to start its own demonstrations. Fearless of oppression and unwilling to give in to violence and hatred, Syrians marched to the streets with their voices, signs and their countrys flowers. While trying to welcome a new era of democracy, they were instead welcomed by their governments most hideous forms of brutality and coercion. In efforts to stop the uprisings, women were raped, men were tortured and children were killed. According to Amnesty International, nearly 4 million Syrians are now displaced as refugees and thousands are nowhere to be found. Refusing to give up on reaching democracy, the people of Syria watched members of their families and friends disappear one after the other while their homes were being torn apart. Yet, they did not give up and continued to march down the streets demanding freedom, equality and prosperity: the traits with which they saw that their Muslim and Arab identities could flourish.

Following their usual mission for spreading peace and democracy across the world, the government of the United States of America has come to the rescue of Syria as conflicts escalated. The destructively resistant violence used by dictators to suppress the movements of their people alarmed international forces to interfere and stop the conflict. However, the massacre of Libyas president in 2012 by NATO and the inability to reach a compromise in Syria among the rebels and the government have led to nothing but the increase of instability. Institutions were destroyed, anarchy reigned and the war between dictators and civilians remained. Peoples hopes for democracy shattered as did their hopes for the prosperity of their country, which went in flames as conflicts arose. This war, however, is not the first barrier to democracy that Syrians have faced as Arab Muslims.

Al Qaeda represented the first struggle for Muslims in reaching democracy. After the terrifying events in 2001 in the U.S., Muslims across the globe were discriminated. The identification of this terrorist group with Islam fed into peoples fears and made them unleash their stereotypes and misconceptions, associating all Muslims with terrorism. This categorization has been the first cultural and ideological division of the U.S. and countries with Muslim majority populations. Therefore, ideals like democracy, freedom and equality, being culturally tied to the U.S. (as it has long exported them to the Arab world), became regarded as evil. Holding such values meant, in the Arab world, pertaining to a discriminatory culture where Muslims are feared and treated as inferior. Therefore, movements for democracy in the beginning of the 21st century in the Arab world were mainly led by an elite driven by postcolonial ideals and incapable of attracting ordinary civilians who, at that time, boycotted the values of a nation that dehumanized them.

After such separation, it took the Arab world almost 10 years to digest this cultural animosity and dissociate democracy from imperialism and islamophobia. Tunisia, the first country to rebel against dictatorship, set the example for the rest of the Arab world, starting what became known in the U.S. as The Arab Spring. However, this spring, followed by the instability that the U.S. and other nations interference in the Arab world contributed to increasing gave rise to ISIS: the second biggest obstacle to democracy.

ISIS not only brought back the American rhetoric of islamophobia as it has also associated itself with Islam, but has hindered the dreams of Arab Muslims of reaching democracy. What many people tend to forget when talking about ISIS is that Muslims were the number one victims of this terrorist group. The people who join ISIS are mostly Arab radicalized youth and most people who died because of ISIS attacks are Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan Arab Muslims. Therefore, the fight of Muslims to reach democracy was transformed by ISIS into a fight for mere survival. Once again, the path for Muslims to freedom was blocked. However, when it comes to democracy, ISIS was able to affect Arabs and Americans alike (with the exception of Tunisia which continues to appear as the only free country in the Arab world).

In 2016, the U.S. electoral college elected president Donald Trump to office. Trumps election rhetoric, filled with racism, sexism, islamophobia and xenophobia enabled him to successfully reach office. His appeal to Americans fear of terrorism and Muslims was a good enough reason for Trump supporters to choose him over Hillary Clinton.

In his first week of holding office, Trump indeed proved his attachment to his election decisions as he issued an executive order banning nationals of Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran and Somalia from entering the U.S. Instantly, hundreds of people with legal visas were detained at airports, thousands of refugees were derived from reuniting with their families and over 160 million people were stripped away from their rights to free travel. Among these people are university students unable to continue their education, wives unable to see their husbands, mothers unable to reunite with their kids and most importantly refugees unable to escape a war that the U.S. contributed to escalating.

The day of the order, thousands of Americans rose to protest, responding to this inhumane and undemocratic decision. However, besides this orders contribution to decaying the American democracy, not a lot has changed so far. The U.S., once looking down at the Arab worlds political climate by showing off its democracy and its protection of freedoms, suddenly lost its glory. The unconsciously fearful drive of certain Americans has oriented the country towards a path where it lost the values it was founded upon. In one day, millions of Muslims were labeled and treated as terrorists because of their nationality and religion: a discriminatory process no different from the one that labeled black people as inferior because of the color of their skin. Decades after the civil war, the American democratic institutions, the founding fathers constitution and the free people of America stood helpless in front of practices thought to have long been abandoned. The fear and anger of many Americans was capable of bringing back oppression. And, when oppression appears, democracy disappears.

Fear is the enemy of democracy. If Tunisians, Syrians, Libyans feared the future, they would not have made it this far in their journeys of emancipation, despite the hurdles that come in the way. Anger is the enemy of democracy. If Tunisians focused on their anger towards dictatorship, they would not have been able to reach freedom. Instead, they protested peacefully, using their love for emancipation, not their hate for oppression.

The anger and fear of Americans has, for so long, harmed the American democracy as well as the Arab Muslims transitions into democracy. What is interesting about the recent election in the U.S. is not the rise of a racist to power as much as it is the impact that this event had in waking people up. Sadly, not even the Syrian war was capable of attracting this much world attention to the issue of protecting world democracy and human rights as Trumps executive orders.

Finally, the current comparison of the American and Tunisian democracies proves that democracy is neither culturally inherent as many Americans think it is, nor is it incompatible with the Arab Muslim world. Democracy can be applied through a variety of models and not a single one of them needs to be idealized or exported. Democracy is a process that should not be taken for granted and needs to be sustained, protected and, most importantly, continually sought.

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No hate, no fear: This is what democracy looks like - DU Clarion

One winter morning when I was 7 or 8 years old, walking to school, swinging my Robin Hood lunch box by my side, I saw a bunch of kids playing King of the Mountain on a huge snow pile. I ran over to join the game.

It was the usual teams, Arctic Cat versus Ski Doo. I started up the hill, climbing on hands and knees, until I was just about to the top. A kid I recognized looked down at me. What team? he challenged. Ski Doo, I said. Arctic Cat! he shouted, and kicked me in the shoulder, sending me head over heels down the hill, my lunch box bouncing along behind. After a couple more unsuccessful attempts to gain the peak, a bell rang, and we all dusted off and headed inside to our classrooms.

When I sat down for lunch that day, I noticed milk leaking from the corner of the lunchbox. I opened it up and saw that my glass-lined Robin Hood thermos, a gift from my grandma, had broken, and everything inside was soaked in milk. I had nothing to eat, and I felt sick at the thought of telling Grandma what happened.

But then all the kids at the table, even the ones who had been kicking me down the mountain a few hours before, began handing me portions of their lunches: half of a peanut butter sandwich, a hardboiled egg, a slice of pickle, a chocolate chip cookie. It was the best lunch I ever had.

I learned something that day about the nature of politics, that sometimes the price of playing the game is declaring loyalty to one side or the other. But as soon as we do that, we lose sight of our shared humanity. We are at our best when we sit down with one another and address common concerns without first taking sides.

Thats not easy to do. There are some people who see every issue in terms of opposition.

A few years ago I was attending a town hall meeting in western Wisconsin. The topic of discussion was political issues affecting rural communities. The evening started out well, with genuine, thoughtful conversation about challenges faced by small farms, families and businesses. Suddenly a group of people came through the door and attempted to take over the meeting. They were loud, rude and passionate. They had only one thing on their minds: the pro-life agenda.

One of the organizers of the event tried to point out that the purpose of the town hall was to discuss rural economic policies, conservation issues and agriculture. But the leader of the protesters was undeterred: There is no other issue she insisted; either you are pro-life or you are anti-life.

It is hard to stand in the center, because those on the extremes see it as refusing to take a position, as being wishy-washy, indecisive, even cowardly. They accuse anyone who doesnt agree with them of enabling the enemy. They see politics as a matter of defeating the opponent rather than as an effort to find solutions to common problems.

The political centrist believes in ethical persuasion as the primary means of achieving lasting societal health and stability. That means being completely committed to truth-telling, fairness and transparency in negotiating. For the centrist, political strategies like voter suppression, gerrymandering, backdoor dealing and closed meetings are anathema. Such tactics may be intended to achieve some particular good result, but they always come at the cost of the common good.

What does centrist political speech sound like? It is civil and employs respectful forms of address. It is mindful of the dignity of all people. It is honest, neither hiding the truth nor manipulating the evidence. It is passionate but never angry or spiteful. It is often cheerful, and capable of being serious without being solemn. It is impersonal, not adversarial, always focused on the common good. It is questioning, expressing a desire to deepen understanding. It is more reflective than reactive, determined but not stubborn.

What does extremist speech sound like? Its takes the form of either shouts or whispers, domineering among its opponents and conspiratorial among its fellows. When opposed, it becomes by turns hostile or defensive. It frequently employs personal attacks to discredit the other side and distract from the issue at hand. It sets up false dilemmas, insisting on only two options the good and the bad without considering other possibilities. It is incapable of humor in any form other than ridicule. It does not have to ask questions because it already has all the answers.

I try to be a political centrist, because that is the only place where ethical persuasion functions. On the two extremes there is no reasonableness, only reaction. There is no place on the extremes for calm reflection, for gathering information, for thinking things through, for honest debate. There is only kicking. On the extremes, words are not used to persuade, they are only used to declare sides, to determine who should be kicked.

It is important at all times, but especially now, for centrists to speak up, if only to keep the extremists in their place, to let them know that even though they may be loud, and arrogant, and full of bluster, they are not kings of the mountain.

In our country, in our communities, democracy is still king as long as enough people continue to believe in it and use their voices to defend it.

Richard Kyte is the director of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University. He also is a member of the Tribunes editorial board.

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Richard Kyte: Despite turmoil, democracy is still king - La Crosse Tribune