The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 14

OPINION Tomorrow: Georgie Anne Geyer: Castro reacts to Clinton's new Cuba policy. James J. Kilpatrick on the writer's art. A14 Friday, October 13, 1995 The Cincinnati Enquirer The Cincinnati enquirer EDITORIAL BOARD: HARRY M. HIPPLE President and Publisher LAWRENCE K.

BEAUPRE Editor, Vice President PETER W. BRONSON Associate Editor LINDA CAGNETTI Deputy editor JIM BORGMAN Editorial cartoonist TONY LANG Editorial writer RAY COOKL1S Editorial writer A Gannett Newspaper Making big plans DCI effort could be the start of an overdue regional strategy for the Boomocrats ter for Economic Education directed DCI's economic studies. Eight of the 10 attributes they found common to successful downtown redevelopments feature some form of partnering. Example: Another good argument for a strategic master plan is Fort Washington expressway, rutting downtown off from its waterfront. In 1948, urban planner Ladislas Segoe of Cincinnati urged the city to build its chief east-west connector on the northern edge of Over-the-Rhine.

Business interests overruled him and dug Fort Washington Way's "Third Street Distributor" instead. Now there's talk of removing or covering Fort Washington Way at the same time stadiums could be built that will still require a way to disperse traffic. Solution: We need a unified plan for both. DCI researchers rightly slam Cincinnati's "ad hoc" planning. So do political leaders such as Mayor Rox-anne Quails.

She's certain Northern Kentucky will build an airport light rail line that could dead-end in Covington, if Cincinnati can't get its act together to extend it north. "Northern Kentucky has a plan," Quails said. "They know what they've done since 1941. They're light years ahead of Southwest Ohio." Solution: DCI's effort to start a regional, strategic plan is a good start. A plan alone can't build regional teamwork and revitalize our historic city center.

But as the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. Lights out The decision by Sen. Sam Nunn, not to seek reelection next year is another stunning blow to the Democratic Party and additional proof that if the party leadership doesn't abandon its liberal political and social agenda it may soon be relegated to permanent minority status. While many have spoken of the "likelihood" of Sen. Nunn's reelection, polls show him favored by just 36 percent of registered voters.

The figures testifying to the growing weakness of Democrats and their party are astounding. According to the Republican National Committee, 39 congressional Democrats have either resigned or retired since the election of President Clinton. Another five, including two U.S. senators, have become Republicans. Not just D.C.

That this is not an inside-the-Beltway phenomenon is indicated by the number of state legislative bodies 52 now controlled by Republicans. Democrats have lost 20 of these legislative bodies since Clinton became president. Every congressional Southern Democrat up for reelection has chosen to retire. Nationally, eight of 15 Democratic senators whose terms are expiring have said they won't run again. That's the largest number of senators from a single party in this century who have chosen to throw in the towel and not run again.

What should concern Democrats is the reasons given by many of the retirees and some of the hidden ones behind the stated reasons. When Maine State Rep. June Meres announced her decision at the end of last month to quit the Democratic Party and become a Republican (making Maine the 21st state legislative body to change from Democrat to Republican since Clinton's election), she said, "Opinions contrary to those of party leaders are not well-received at the Democratic caucuses. While technically I was free to express ideas of Portland, Baltimore and other comeback cities didn't happen by happy chance. They made strategic plans rooted in their downtowns.

Now Downtown Cincinnati Inc. CEO Dave Phillips is cranking out 100-page economic studies to hatch a similar plan here. That's good news. We don't need another plan that sits on a shelf collecting dust. We need a strategic agenda to tackle regional issues and preserve a healthy center for a healthy region that can compete against any in the world.

Cincinnati doesn't have that kind of plan. It ought to. Research has found that suburbs and downtowns rise and fall together. As downtowns decay, so do suburbs; revitalized downtowns can't make comebacks without regional partnerships. Example: DCI warned last spring that local manufacturers can't find qualified workers to fill 10,000 entry-level jobs.

That's everybody's problem. Companies that hired anyway and lowered their standards suffered a 126 percent turnover. Companies that raised their pay rates deterred tight-budget employers from moving in. And 10,000 lost jobs quickly can add up to 25,000 lost, if whole companies move out for better trained labor elsewhere. Solution: DCI is organizing a jobs program called Cincinnati Works to train and match workers to jobs.

"You've got to intervene," Phillips said. "You've got to get people ready to work." The University of Cincinnati's Cen The good news Economic studies by DCI lay out the good with the bad: Greater Cincinnati population from 1980 to 1990 increased 5.1 percent. City population declined 5.5 percent. More than half of downtown residents live in poverty, compared to 11 percent region-wide. Downtown residents' median household income in 1990 was $15,640, compared to $33,873 region-wide.

Average household income in Blue AshKenwood, East-gate, FlorenceAirport and Tri-County was $56,820. Downtown unemployment is three time higher than the region's. 640,000 square feet of downtown retail space closed between Reagan, who observed that he hadn't so much left the Democratic Party as the party had left him. Meanwhile, national Democratic leaders remain where many have been since the 1960s: favoring higher taxes and more spending, promoting narrow interests instead of the general welfare and treating any attempt to put big government on a diet by cutting outmoded programs or wasteful spending as a direct assault on the poor, the elderly and the handicapped. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt and company continue to chant the tired mantra that Republicans want to reduce taxes and cut spending to give breaks to "the rich" and penalize "working people," and that the Republican Party is dominated, in Vice President Al Gore's words, by "extremists." Liberals in disguise No wonder President Clinton's handlers are repositioning him as a centrist, even a conservative.

No wonder that Mrs. Clinton is mostly kept under wraps. This strategy might work, were it not for sufficient videotape of the president promoting a leftist agenda from abortion on demand, to gays in the military, tax increases and more that reveals him for what he is. If the Democratic Party is to be revived, it must get rid of the Pat Schroe-ders, Barney Franks, Dick Gephardts, David Boniors and the Clintons. Otherwise, it will be indelibly identified with the far left, which can only benefit Republicans as more and more disenchanted Democrats leave the party.

Will the last Democrat to depart please turn out the lights? Cat Thomas is a syndicated columnist. Readers may write to him co Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053. Make that 1 million CAL THOMAS Sounds like another great party-switcher, Ronald Reagan, who observed that he hadn't so much left the Democratic Party as the party had left him. importance to me and my constituents, it was like talking to the wind.

Nobody listened. I need a forum that allows frank discussions of issues important to my district." No future Meres said that the values held by Republicans are more closely aligned with her own and those of her family. "I have not been very comfortable with the agenda that is being pursued by the legislative Democrats," she said. "I don't believe the average citizens outside Augusta would be." When he switched from Democrat to Republican last May, Alabama State Rep. Steve Flowers said, "I do not believe there is any room, or any future, for a conservative in the Democratic Party." In Georgia, the revolution has reached the Public Service Commission, whose chairman, Bob Durden, announced his switch to the GOP, also in May.

"I want to stress that I have not changed," said Durden. "It is the Democratic Party that has changed. Big government is not the solution to our problems. In fact, big government is the problem." Sounds like another great party-switcher. Ronald At his worst, Farrakhan is a Jew-baiting lunatic prone to weaving tales about his visits to spaceships to talk to a dead man.

I don 't know which one will show up Monday, so I've made other plans. leaders who automatically conclude that when someone mentions "crime" they are really saying "black." He needn't worry. Statistics show whites commit their fair share of mayhem. So let's look at some of those statistics. Uniform Crime Reports issued by the FBI for 1993 show that blacks led the way in murder and robbery arrests.

But whites led in arrests for forcible rape, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, car theft and arson. So under the "three strikes and out" provision of the crime bill, there will be some white folks going to jail. Most white Americans will be glad to see them there. But this isn't just about statistics. As a black man who has been stuck up by black men I'm all for three strikes and out.

I've been stuck up, my son's been stuck up. I have other relatives and friends who've been stuck up. If "three strikes and out" gets those who murder, rape and rob off the streets for good, I'm all for it. Chavis can't see that. I charge him with showing more sympathy for black criminals than their victims.

I charge and convict him of making at least two jackass statements. The first was about the crime bill. The second was the lulu in which he charged, without the slightest and bad news 1980 and 1990. Retail sales dropped 60 percent, or $150 million, since 1984. Declining office rental rates will cut school property-tax revenue by $10 million a year.

Yet Cincinnati has built the new Performing Arts Center. Procter Gamble and other corporations have started a $100 million equity investment fund. Night life sprang to life on upper Main, and new downtown residents moved to Garfield and Betts-Longworth. DCI's "white papers" are loaded with comparative data on benchmark cities such as Baltimore, Portland, Cleveland and Indianapolis, and are open to all at DCI headquarters: 744-4444. you icei ueuer aireaayr Weekend TOjSf enydcypc; Affii rad REl ot, pooctet, tat z.

Does your boss remind you of a blood-sucking assassin bug, or maybe a proboscis monkey? How about a hissing cockroach, or maybe a regal lion? Ever wanted to tell him (or her) so? (Of course, we've never minus one evidence, that "certain law enforcement personnel" might try to prevent bus convoys carrying marchers from reaching Washington. I find him guilty and sentence him to spend hours locked in a room listening to recordings of his own lamentable drivel. The man who called the Million Man March, Nation of Islam "leader" Louis Farrakhan, claims he visits on a regular basis a "mother ship" hovering somewhere in the skies and talks to the presumed-dead-for-20-years Elijah Muhammad. I've had my ups and downs with Far-rakhan's leadership over the years. When he's at his best, he's giving speeches like the one in which, according to a wire story, he told a group of black college students that African-Americans need more self-discipline and had best study math and science or remain at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

Farrakhan went on to say that "the ghetto has become a giant crib for immature children to play with themselves so others can go on to rule the world." That is Farrakhan at his best a black leader telling his people the cold, harsh realities of life they might not want to hear. At his worst he's a Jew-baiting lunatic prone to weaving tales about his visits to spaceships to talk to a dead man. I don't know which one will show up Monday, so I've made other plans. Meanwhile, a million black men are supposed to gather in Washington on Monday to seek atonement and forgiveness. They should start by asking God to forgive them for letting jackasses and lunatics lead the way.

Kane is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service. BY GREGORY KANE (c) 1995, The Baltimore Sun To answer the folks who have asked me if I will attend the Million Man March on Monday: Hell no. The reason? I don't follow jackasses and lunatics. The national director of the Million Man March is Benjamin Chavis, the former head of the NAACP.

He is the jackass of this tale. The lunatic here would be one Louis Farrakhan, who called for the march. But more on him later. Chavis, holding forth on Rep. Kweisi Mfume's, talk show The Bottom Line a few weeks back, railed against the "three strikes and you're out" provision of the recently passed anti-crime bill.

"The crime bill itself was actually a crime against the black community," Chavis preached. "Three strikes and you're out is not going to work for black people in America." It was a jackass statement. Which "black people" is Chavis talking about? In America, there are black people. And then there are black people. Most of us are honest, law-abiding and hard-working.

A tiny minority make life a living hell for the rest of us and those unfortunate whites who stumble into their paths by committing murder, assault, rob-beries and rapes. A glance at any police blotter should let the good Rewum Chavis know who is being victimized by crime and who the perpetrators are. The crimes committed against us are primarily committed by us. So which of these black people will object to "three strikes and you're The tiny minority committing violent crimes, of course. The rest of us their victims will be all the safer if they are locked away for good.

Chavis is of a breed of skittish black thought such things, but we'd passionately defend pur freedom to fantasize.) The Cincinnati Zoo is offering an honorable way to indulge yourself. For only $5, you can name your boss as an animal at the zoo, in honor of Bosses' Day on Monday. Boss will receive a certificate signed by no one but the zoo, which is grateful for the donation. The adopt-a-boss promotion was such a hit last year that zoos around the world copied it. Ex-bosses were high on the list and only a few soreheads complained.

Pick one of the zoo's choices (mentioned above) or for $8, name your own animal. This year's honorees include: pretentious pompous poodle, big-eyed braggadocios puffer fish; a panda and a golden eagle. One donor dubbed her boss a seahorse because the male births and cares for the babies. Worms are popular, too. Today's your last chance to do it in time for Boss Day delivery.

By 2 p.m., call 559-7716 or fax your boss' name and address, the animal choice and your credit card number to (513) 559-7790. Don't 11. 1 .1. -1.