Republican Council Members Are Exploiting Tragedy

A Cincinnati police officer was on his way to work recently and was very seriously injured in a car accident on Columbia Parkway on the East side of the City. This is a terrible tragedy and I believe everyone wishes him a speedy recovery.  Four members of Cincinnati City Council hold a press conference, along the side of the road, calling for a study of that road.  They don't say how they would pay for such a study or pay for improvements to the road.  They don't say why this incident is more important than other car or pedestrian or bicycle accidents that happen during their terms on different roads in throughout the city.

The fact that they held the press conference along the side of the road, likely caused enough commotion that they are lucky they did not cause another accident during the presser.

This accident happened to occur to a Police Officer.  That means it will get media attention and get the attention of the type of voter that listens to the FOP (police union) when it makes endorsements for city council. This grandstanding event is designed not to improve road safety, but to increase the voter tallies for Ghiz, Murrary, Lippert, and Bortz (the Charterite of the group).  That's explotation, but that is politics and these members are playing politics like conjoined quadruplets.

A functioning mainstream media needs to rip them a new on this issue the same way Kevin Osborne did on the Oakley Skyline faux controversy.  Since we live in a culture where criticism of any perceived to be helping a police officer injured, we will not get much.  The WLWT article linked about had some hints of reporting when they asked ODOT.  Now they need to just dig further and find out how dangerous this road is considered as opposed to other roads.  I've driven on it and I have driven on Glenway and Queensgate on the West side.  Couldn't they be holding the same press conference over there?

UPDATE: It appears the mainstream media, the Enquirer specifically, did rip them a new one, and handed it to them.  It is too bad that more people will watch the TV news clip and not read the article.

UDATE #2: You might ask three of the four (Ghiz, Lippert, Murray) if they oppose COAST's anti-rail issue.  That issue would make it impossible to have any passenger rail transportation until well into the next decade. Rail transportation along Riverside/Eastern Avenues would help reduce traffic on Columbia parkway thus taking away at least one factor that increases accidents.