Part One
For over a decade, Hamilton County and the City of Cincinnati have experimented with a mechanism provided by the Ohio Law called Port Authority to lead economic development. Through successive reorganizations, the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority has gained responsibilities in several areas including cleanup and redevelopment of brown fields and river front development. But not until 2008 did the two governments give the port the full authority authorized under the law. That includes activities that "enhance, foster, aid, provide or promote transportation, economic development, recreation, education, governmental operations, culture or research."
In addition to the legal expansion of the authority, last year, both the city and the county took actions to provide greater funding resources for the port. And in mid-December, the board of the port hired a new president. Laura Brunner is a certified public accountant by background who has worked for private real estate development firms and started her CIR with Cassie Turley and most recently with Alan R. Incorporated. She spoke with Dan Hurley about the port.
Part Two
Political campaigns are a torrent of words. To understand what lies behind those words, you cannot just look at the political or economic facts. You have to look at the communication strategies, employed by the candidates.
From a historian's perspective, the way that political candidates communicate their messages, their platforms and most importantly themselves, has evoked in revolutionary ways over the last 230 years. Thomas Jefferson, one of the most brilliant and effective American writers, would be lost in a modern political debate. And the gangley, homely, Abraham Lincoln wouldn't last as a viable candidate for one television debate in 2012, no matter what he said.
A group of University of Cincinnati students and their professor traveled to New Hampshire, the first week of January to study the communication styles and strategies of the candidates in the race for the Republican nomination.
I am joined now by Cady Short-Thompson, a professor of Communication and Dean of the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash campus. And Katie Nemeth, a graduate student of communications at the University of Cincinnati.
