Rock Band 'Foreigner' Wants Clark Montessori Choir to Back-Up Cincinnati Concert: Kids Get Called to Perform On Group's Biggest Hit

F Stands or Foreigner, Not Flunking 

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The show is Saturday night at the Taft downtown.  British-American Foreigner has sold about 70 million albums since it started making music in 1976.  And the band's hits are legion -- Juke Box Hero, Head Games, Dirty White Boy and Feels Like the First Time are among
a handful of its tunes that have become classic rock standards.  The biggest hit of all -- and the only Foreigner single to reach No. 1 -- is I Want to Know What Love Is, a gospel flavored anthem that's been covered by everyone from Wynona Judd to Mariah Carey and even The Chipmunks.  Now Clark Montessori's 18-member high school choir gets to sing along with the band that made it.  Definitely another high note for the East Side campus.

Caitie Linger, a music teacher at the Cincinnati public school, said representatives of the rock band called quite out of the blue recently to inquire if the choir would perform backup onstage at the Feb. 25 show in Cincinnati.  Recalls  Linger, who directs the choir:  "This was completely unexpected.  We have no connections with them.  They said they learned about us from the Internet.  They Googled us."  Clark is located in the Hyde Park neighborhood and has about 650 students in grades 7-12.  It is also the nation's first public Montessori High School.  Two years ago, President Obama selected the school as a finalist in his race to the top and sent Education Secretary Arne Duncan to speak at the 2010 graduation ceremonies.  There are big footprints on Google.

Sheet Music for Big Hit

While Foreigner has faded a bit over the years -- the shows no longer fill mega-arenas and many original members are on the sidelines -- the kids are still pumped.  And they've been learning about music from the classic rock era.  The choir members are going to sell Foreigner CD's inside the Taft before they take the stage -- the band said all money raised by the CD sales will go to charity.  That kind of public service ties in with Montessori schooling.  And the choir won't come dressed in a glam rock look, it will be in t-shirts and black pants.  Foreigner said there could not be any "grunge" onstage.  Clark backs up the big finale, and yes, the kids have become fans.

Originally in the 1980s, I Want to Know What Love Is was backed up by the New Jersey Mass Choir.  So Clark is filling some pretty big robes on the Saturday night gig.  If you want to learn about Foreigner, you can read about the band's history by clicking here on Wikipedia.  Foreigner's official website is here.  And if you can't quite remember the tune and words to I Want to Know What Love Is, then watch the two-minute youTube clip below from the BBC's Last Choir Standing (it's not Foreigner but a British gospel choir called Revelation):

Cincinnati Hires Human Resources Chief From Scandal-Tainted Michigan County: Controversial $200,000 Payment In Detroit

Wayne County Mired In Scandal

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- City Manager Milton Dohoney said today he was "pleased to announce" the appointment of a Wayne County, Mich., official who will become Cincinnati's human resources director next month.  Dohoney's press release did not mention that Georgetta Kelly is joining his staff after exiting Detroit with newspaper headlines questioning her activities in county government.  The Free Press has reported Kelly signed off on a $200,000 severance payout to another county worker who voluntarily quit.  Apparently, there is a scandal unfolding about paying money to people who leave for other jobs or retire.   The flap that embroiled Kelly involves the CEO of Detroit Metro Airport.  Meanwhile, other union workers have been asked for wage concessions.  You can read about Cincinnati's new human resources directors entanglement  in the Detroit scandal by clicking here to see a Detroit Free Press story published Feb. 20 (yesterday).

Cincinnati Cooks Up $984,000 Aid Package for Upscale Soul Food Restaurant: Loan and Grant Enticing Mahogany's to City's Riverfront

Mahogany's Gets City Incentive Package

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The paperwork seeking approval of a $684,000 small business development grant, plus a $300,000 loan to buy fixtures, furniture and other equipment, has been filed with City Council.  Mahogany's Cafe & Grill now operates a single restaurant in Hamilton.  It is venturing into The Banks development downtown along the Ohio River with the nearly $1 million in public business expansion subsidies.  Officials say the money should help create new jobs.  And it also should put some pretty tasty dishes before diners by summer's end.  The restaurant's principals, Elizabeth and Trent Rogers, have agreed to personally guarantee the deal should anything go sour.

$300,000 City Loan

$684,000 City Grant

City documents say the incentive package should encourage other businesses to come to The Banks.  The documents describe the City Council action as an emergency measure:  "The reason for the emergency is the immediate need for the City enter into the Grant Agreement so the (restaurant owners) can commence designing and constructing leasehold improvements for the restaurant in order to keep construction and the opening of the restaurant on schedule . . ."  Mahogany's is supposed to occupy a 3,250-foot site on the north side of Freedom Way.

'Job Saver' Romney Visits Cincinnati Corp. Closing Maine Plant: Cut Slams Small Town Despite State's $6 Million Business Tax Break

The Lobster Claw in Saco, Maine

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The Cincinnati biomedical company Republican Mitt Romney visited  -- and where he touted himself as a job saver -- actually is in the process of closing a manufacturing plant in Maine.  The work is being transferred to Memphis, Tenn., as a cost-cutting move by Meridian Bioscience, which is taking a $2.2 million write down but hasn't disclosed how many jobs are being eliminated.  Romney was clueless that Meridian is trying to sell its soon-to-be vacant operation in Saco, Maine, a small coastal community about 12 miles from Portland, the state's largest city.  Standing on a loading dock at Meridian's headquarters in Cincinnati, Romney said:  "Some people, mostly in Washington, tend to think it's government that makes America work.  Those guys are wrong."

Meridian has received tax incentives from Maine, including a $6 million business equipment tax refund in FY 10.  Yet it is packing up and abandoning a small New England community that needs every paycheck available.  City Administrator Richard Michaud said he was not aware that Meridian was leaving Saco, but that the move will hurt.  Michaud told The Daily Bellwether:  "There's a whole array of small plants in our business park.  Meridian is not one of the major employers here, but losing any employer is not a good thing in the timeset we are in."

Payday Lender Stocks Shoot Up On Word Of Mexican Billionaire's Acquisition: Will Suitors Come Wooing Cincy's Check 'n Go Chain?

Big Money Courting the Payday Lenders

By James McNair

Daily Bellwether Contributor
CINCINNATI (TDB) -- With a Mexican billionaire agreeing to pay $655 million for a local payday lending operation's biggest competitor, one has to wonder if the folks at Kenwood-based Check ‘n Go are pondering a massive payday of their own.

Yesterday, it was announced that Advance America Cash Advance Centers Inc., the big dog in the world of payday lending, agreed to be bought by Grupo Elektra, a Mexico City retailer/banker controlled by billionaire Ricardo Salinas.  Forbes says Salinas is worth about $8.2 billion.  Advance America, based in Spartanburg, S.C., is publicly owned.  It stock was waffling along at the $8 mark before Wall Street learned about the buyout.  By the close ot trading yesterday, it shot up 33 percent to $10.44 a share and was the biggest gainer in the U.S. stock market. And the shares of other payday lenders also got a lift -- Cash America, DFC Global, EZ Corp., First Cash Financial and QC Holdings were all juiced yesterday.

Obama's Cincinnati Reelection Headquarters Opening Feb. 21st: Birthers Begin Bombing City With Slanderous Citizenship e-Mail

Obama Headquarters Opens Feb. 21st

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- As the 2012 campaign season hits full stride, President Obama's reelection headquarters for Cincinnati and Hamilton County open next week,  There will be free parking, food and drink during the two-hour party at 2718 Woodburn Ave.  Obama is rising in the polls and Democrats are getting pumped about another four years in the White House.

Meanwhile, some Republicans (or conservatives) who can't seem to grasp reality have started circulating another Internet slander about the President's birth certificate.  It landed in Cincinnati-area e-mail boxes around 7:52 a.m. today -- and falsely claims that Obama is using the identity of a French immigrant. Perhaps not coincidentally, the latest installment of the smear appeared at about the time that Obama's local campaign is publicly launching its Cincinnati area efforts.  Sadly, some of the President's opponents are clinging to distortions and unreality -- they are like Holocaust deniers.  Or drunks on horses, they climb up one side and tumble off the other.   This is the money line in the anti-Obama diatribe:

Let's all get this information out to everybody on our mailing lists. If the
voters of this great nation can succeed in bringing this lying, deceitful,
cheating, corrupt, impostor to justice it will be the
biggest and best news in decades for our country and the world.

Flight to Freedom Video Game Scores Rave Reviews On the 'Net: Slave Escape Adventure Bypasses Cincinnati Freedom Center

New York's WNET-TV Created Hit Video Game

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- A free interactive video game about running away to freedom in Ohio during the slave era before the Civil War is getting glowing reviews on the Internet.  It was produced by a public TV station in New York with money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Nobody in Cincinnati seems to have had much to to do with the project, which should deeply embarrass the city that is home to the National  Underground Railroad Freedom Center.   The adventure game has been out for less than a month and there already have been hundreds of thousands of downloads.  That success signals just how hopelessly marginalized an operation the Freedom Center has become.  It was supposed to be the nation's prime source of education about the Underground Railroad, but New York is getting the raves; Cincinnati is on the sidelines.

In Flight to Freedom gamers take on the persona of Lucy King, a fictional 14-year-old girl who is a slave in Kentucky.  The year is 1848.  Players plan her escape and travel into Ohio on the Underground Railroad.