NEWS ROUND-UP -- TUESDAY MORNING 10 JAN

by Michael Monks 
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DEAR TEA PARTY & SEN. DAMON THAYER: YOU LOST, PLANNING STAYS

Get over it, please. Stop being sore, petty losers. Your attempt to allow lower quality homes and roads by citing "less government" and "yee-haw" failed when your effort to eliminate the NKY Area Planning Commission proved to have fraudulent names. You did not get "snubbed by the political and legal machine" -- you and the NKY Homebuilders hired a firm that paid workers by the signature and they cheated. And you lost. 

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Here's what Senator Damon Thayer has to say about it today, repeating praise he received from the NKY Tea Party:

Thank you, Northern Kentucky Tea Party, for your post about SB 62. 

The post from the Tea Party:

To the 26,000 (give or take) voters that signed the petition to get the NKAPC tax on the ballot but got snubbed by the political and legal machine in Kenton County, we do have a Senator that is listening. Senator Damon Thayer who represents a very small portion of Kenton County sponsored S.B. 62 that reduces the number of signatures required to get the NKAPC issue on the ballot.

We need you to call the legislative hotline 1-800-372-7181 and voice your support for this bill to all the legislators in Northern Kentucky. Thank you Senator Thayer. Stay tuned to this issue as it will be interesting to see what the legislators that represent the taxpayers of Kenton County do and say about this bill. The NKAPC with its $5 million dollar budget is mobilizing its forces to Axe this bill.

Two things are sad about this: the first is that the NKY Tea Party is no undeniably disconnected from reality and the second is that a state senator representing parts of Kenton County and South Covington has decided to champion their cause. Shame.
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SEE ALSO: Sen. Thayer's bill would require fewer signatures to be gathered to place the NKAPC on the ballot. If you can't win, change the rules! For that story, click the link.
Bill Would Make it Easier to Dissolve NKAPC 
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STATE HOUSE REDISTRICTING MAPS MAY BE UNVEILED WEDNESDAY
But the Democrats that control the chamber have yet to reveal any maps to the Republicans or the media. Last week, we were led to believe that state legislative redistricting could be delayed till 2013, but now:

House leaders haven’t given up on approving a new map of the 100 state House districts by the end of the week. Lawmakers had wanted to dispatch with the politically-charged and controversial redistricting maps early to put it behind them — and so candidates for state House, Senate, judicial and congressional districts would know the boundaries of the districts long before the Jan. 31 filing deadline.
But the map-making in the state House stalled late last week. Many lawmakers — including all of the Republicans who are in the minority — complained that they hadn’t yet seen the maps.

Lots of video interviews of the key players at the link.
cn|2/Ryan Alessi  
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MORE: 84 WHAS 
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BENEFIT TONIGHT FOR MAINSTRASSE SERVER FIGHTING BONE CANCER
Please come down and support this effort! Karen Johnson is an important character in the cast of the Mainstrasse Village.
REPOST FROM MONDAY:

Karen Johnson is the good-natured, hard-working server you should be lucky to get each time you eat at Chez Nora. She's managed to keep her positive personality in spite of a battle with bone cancer that doctors now say has spread to her brain. But not only is Karen still working at Chez full time, she's also got three part-time jobs. Her bosses at the restaurant have decided that it's time to give her a break!

My goal with this benefit is to raise enough money so that Karen can give herself a little time off! Please come and help, there will be a suggested $3 donation at the door! We will have live music By The Turkeys and Jim Connerly and friends! We may also have a few special guest appearances!We will have hourly raffles, split the pot and silent auctions! There will also be free food and drink specials. The entire sum of the sales from the special drink menu will be donated directly to Karen!

The benefit is TONIGHT (Tuesday) beginning at 5:00PM. Check out the Facebook event for more info by clicking here. 

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CINCINNATIANS CHEER BARRY LARKIN'S INDUCTION TO HALL OF FAME

Nice piece by Joe Webb on the star shortstop that thrilled Reds fans for years.

Local 12 

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AWKWARD

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SOUTHGATE HOUSE CLOSURE MOVES BLUES FEST TO OVER-THE-RHINE

Winter Blues Fest was supposed to be on this side of the river, but OTR is not far! It's also well worth a visit.

FOX 19 

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RICK PITINO WAS SOMEBODY EVEN BEFORE HE ARRIVED IN KENTUCKY

It's easy to forget, but before he coached the Knicks (before coming to UK), Pitino took Providence to the NCAA Final Four. Providence! Same as he did for Kentucky and Louisville. His 1987 squad will be honored tonight:

“I have always coached every time out, no matter how much time is left in the game, feeling we could come back, no matter what the level was, or the score was, all because of that Providence College basketball team. Because they set the standard, not only for comebacks, but they set the standard for just making me believe that anything is possible,” Pitino said today. Providence captured its Final Four birth in Louisville’s Freedom Hall.

WFPL  
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COLLEGE COULD COST A NEWBORN CHILD OVER $400,000
Not that a newborn should be in college -- that figure is for when the newborn grows up and is college-age:

New moms and dads with visions of Ivy League degrees dancing in their heads should be prepared to face a bill of $422,320 in today’s dollars if Junior heads off to one the country’s priciest colleges as a member of the class of 2034.
If college costs keep rising as they have for the last three decades, the inflation-adjusted price of four years of tuition alone will more than double at private colleges and nearly triple at public universities by the time a baby born this year is ready to enroll, an analysis by The Daily shows.

Guess it's good to know that our legislators in Frankfort are busy with an effort to eliminate planning, or playing hide-n-seek with maps that I fear they drew with crayons.
Think Progress  
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HOUSING MARKET IN CINCINNATI IMPROVES
I feel like there's mixed reports on this every week, but I prefer the good:

Cincinnati was one of 40 housing markets added to the National Association of Home Builders /First American Improving Markets Index.
There are now 76 markets on the index, up from 41 in December. The index identifies metropolitan areas that have shown improvement in housing permits, employment and house prices for at lease six consecutive months following the low point in these categories.

Business Courier  
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CALL YOUR MOM -- IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!
Mothers -- is there anything they can't do?

When girls stressed by a test talked with their moms, stress hormones dropped and comfort hormones rose. When they used IM, nothing happened. By the study’s neurophysiological measures, IM was barely different than not communicating at all.
“IM isn’t really a substitute for in-person or over-the-phone interaction in terms of the hormones released,” said anthropologist Leslie Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin, lead author of the new study. “People still need to interact the way we evolved to interact.” In earlier work, Seltzer’s team showed that both phone conversations with mom and face-to-face talks triggered similar hormonal responses: A drop in cortisol, which is generally linked to stress, and a rise in oxytocin, which is linked to pleasure.

Wired 

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