Little did we know that we were positioned like San Diego to Tijuana.
We soon learned that when walking the dog after dark, it was safest to stay within the city limits. The city provides street lights in residential neighborhoods. The township does not. The city requires that sidewalks remain level and orders homeowners to repair uneven pavement. The township may do the same, but they don't do it often. Walking outside the city after dark is a dangerous matter.
We also learned that when walking the dog in the daytime in the township, there's no telling whether a street will have sidewalks or not. Township government seems to leave things up in the air as to whether folks should be able to walk down the street safely.
But there's more. Today's Cincinnati Enquirer, in tune with this problem, features a story on the dismal state of parks in the outlying counties of the metro area versus the excellent city and county parks in the central metropolis. It seems that many residents of the outer suburbs regularly travel to the central city to enjoy the outdoor amenities built and maintained by city residents' taxes.
These factors have driven us to a difficult but necessary conclusion: it is time to seal Cincinnati's borders against all the suburban freeloaders who pay no taxes to maintain the excellent services of which they avail themselves. We are tired of people from Green Township walking on our precious lighted sidewalks to which they contribute nothing. We are tired of people from West Chester and Mason using our beautiful parks, paid for with our blood, sweat, tears and property taxes.
But this morning, we had a shocking and bitter experience that showed that the need for a safe Cincinnati border is not just important, it is urgent.
Why? Suburbanites are scofflaws!
This morning, hoping to redress a bit of the economic imbalance of our life on the border, we took our morning run to a township park with a walking/running/biking trail (township residents drive along a street without sidewalks, park their SUVs in the parking lot, and then for exercise walk in circles on said trail, then drive home). Having risked life and limb to run along unsidewalked streets to the park, we entered the track, dutifully noting the markings that order foot traffic to move clockwise on the outside lane of the path.
As we jogged at our comfortable middle-aged pace, we observed dozens of suburban criminals, Golden Retrievers and Boston Terriers in tow, moving opposite the designated flow of foot traffic. They were going counterclockwise, and freely crossing the solid yellow line whether they had the need to pass slower traffic or not. Humph!
Our city cannot afford to remain open to these illegal aliens any longer. Not only are they parasites on our civic services, their flagrant disregard for the law infect our urban life with the virus of antinomian chaos.
So we urge our City Council to do the following, immediately:
- Protect our borders with a wall. Start by building one between the yellow lines of Vogel Avenue.
- Demand documentation from every person walking on city sidewalks or using a city or county park. Violators should be herded into paddy wagons and deported to the townships, suburbs and exurbs from which they came.
- Allow no amnesty or "earned citizenship." Suburban residents must no longer be allowed merely to pay a couple of dollars for a county parks sticker. They need to return to their home counties and apply through the Cincinnati embassy there.
- Also, "Cincinnatian" needs to become the official language of Cincinnati. People who don't say "Please" when they want something repeated or who pronounce the word "viaduct" in any way other than "vydock" must be denied citizenship until they master the native tongue. As a former immigrant who learned this distinct language after many years, I insist that others show respect for the city whose services they want to use by learning its language.
8 comments:
I wonder if any of the state or county taxes these bumpkins pay find their way back to Cincinnati to help fund the parks (roads, etc.) of which you speak?
Out here where I live, no one worries much about visitors from other places. The problem comes when some of those visitors try to remain here indefinitely, without legal permission (in front of others who have been waiting decades for permission), fly under the radar (without paying taxes), and put an undo strain on public resources (such as emergency health care and public schooling). Even so, we tend to have compassion on most of these folks, given their desperate situations. The biggest concern many of us have is with our elected representatives, who are either unable or unwilling to come up with a rational and effective solution to a very real problem.
I believe I live in the random township and near the same park of which you speak. I have seen the flagrant disregard for the laws of the track over the past few years. But this weekend my wife and I took our daughter to the park for the first time and I was at a loss. Does her stroller warrent us to now use the wheeled side of the track? Or do we continue on the foot path risking the possibility that our mighty Graco might injure someone? Please offer your wisdom.
Many of us who live in the hinterlands of Green Township (albeit less than 1/2 mile from SWNID) pay quite a healthy share of city taxes due to employment within the city limits. We work there but don't live there consequently WE are taxed for YOUR benefit. As an aside, the street lights do provide better light in which to aim the gunfire.
I believe a petition to Mr. Mallory is in order to immediately begin construction of twelve-foot walls armed with barbed wire, watchdogs, surveillance cameras, and armed city police officers. If the mayor will not act, then it is time for a grassroots campaign. We must gain signatures and donations to begin the private construction of walls to keep out these freeloaders. I propose a caravan tour around city limits, Cincinnatians Unite! By foot, stroller, bike, Vespa, or any other vehicle that take will take advantage of our smooth and graded city sidewalks. We also demand that any national anthem sung at any public even of our fair city must not be sung in true Cincinnatian fashion, with no traces of suburbia in its dialect.
Parodizing paranoia—this is classic entertainment!
National Review Online's Victor Davis Hanson provides informed analysis of the issues surrounding the immigration debate that segues nicely into a discussion of Cincinnati's suburbian freeloaders, just in time for Memorial Day. We commend the article to gentle readers, and offer a couple of teaser quotations:
***But just when one thinks that illegal immigration is an efficient win-win way of providing excellent workers to needy businesses, there are also daily warnings that there is something terribly wrong with a system predicated on a cynical violation of the law.
Three days ago, as I watched the daily early-morning caravan go by, I heard a horrendous explosion. Not far from my home, one of these vans had crossed the white line down the middle of the road and hit a pickup truck head-on. Perhaps the van had blown a bald tire. Perhaps the driver was intoxicated. Or perhaps he had no experience driving an overloaded minivan at high speed in the dark of early morning.
We will probably never know — since the driver ran away from the carnage of the accident. That often happens when an illegal alien who survives an accident has no insurance or driver's license. But he did leave in his wake his three dead passengers. Eight more people were injured. Both cars were totaled. Traffic was rerouted around the wreckage for hours.
Ambulances, fire trucks and patrol cars lined the nearby intersection. That accident alone must have imparted untold suffering for dozens of family members, as well as cost the state thousands of dollars.
Such mayhem is no longer an uncommon occurrence here. I have had four cars slam into our roadside property, with the drivers running off, leaving behind damaged vines and trees, and wrecked cars with phony licenses and no record of insurance. I have been broadsided by an undocumented driver, who ran a stop sign and then tried to run from our collision.
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See the full article entitled:
The New World of Immigration
at
http://www.victorhanson.com
To JB: I just hope that whatever immigration "solution" comes out of the conference committee has respect for the economic law that will make it impossible to seal a border against a hungry, ambitious population that lacks opportunity.
To Matt: Probably a different park (I'm at Blue Rock), but the same situation. I believe your stroller still qualifies you for the foot-traffic lane, as you aren't buzzing the baby around at the speed of a cyclist or skater (I hope).
To Raymond: you may pay city income taxes, but not property taxes, under which we on the east side of Vogel groan.
To anonymous: we seldom disagree with Mr. Hanson, and we don't here. We just urge that everyone consider what we noted above with JB: the laws we legislate must take into account the economic laws that will exist before and after the legislation.
To Fiona: thanks again for disagreeing in the predictable way. You've got the budgeting completely wrong: CPS, like nearly every school system in the country, is funded predominantly by local property taxes, state and federal money providing only a small portion of the larger budget. Urban districts tend to receive more of that money, but that's because of their larger percentage of students who qualify them for need-based aid (like Title IX). You'll want to read the next post, the production of which you hastened.
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