What happens when Lima buys into a trend that is rough on cars, drives up the cost of food and requires massive government subsidies to make it possible? Why, Lima gets a Derry Award (named by Lima Councilclown Derry Glenn after Lima Councilclown Derry Glenn for the sake of Lima Councilclown Derry Glenn). Imagine that! Lima helped promote the federal boondoggle, and the federal government rewards Lima for doing so. What are the odds?

Ah, yes, Lima’s product still can be used for food. One wouldn’t expect Lima Mayor David Berger to address the subsidy part, however, not when there’s more federal money coming for being such a good little follower city. This appears to be Berger’s first Derry Award. Way to go!

From The Lima News:

City earns award for ethanol plant help

LIMA - The city’s assistance for a new ethanol plant has earned it a federal award.

The Economic Development Administration honored the city as the 2008 award winner in excellence in enhancing regional competitiveness.

A $2.3 million EDA grant funded most of the cost of utilities the city installed for Greater Ohio Ethanol off of Hanthorn Road, which opened this year.

The city applied for the award and received it for “sound, research-based, market driven economic development in helping to grow the local economy,” according to an EDA news release.

Award winners exemplify the importance of building regional strategies needed for American communities to succeed in a global marketplace and create higher skill, higher wage jobs, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Sandy K. Baruah said.

The $100 million created more than 300 construction jobs and now employs about 40 people.

A formal presentation of the award will take place later this summer.

“That will be a great opportunity to promote the community and the investment made by Greater Ohio Ethanol,” Mayor David Berger said.

The food vs. fuel debate surrounding the cost of corn is growing louder, Berger said, emphasizing that the GO Ethanol plant is using different technology to bring relief to that question.

The new plant, still in startup mode, will use technology that provides a byproduct that can be consumed, unlike most ethanol plants.

“They’re proving the opportunity the plant represents,” Berger said.

“We speak good Uh-mer-uh-can. “ 

The Columbus Dispatch took an editorial position that cannot sit well with the English-only Republican crowd in the Ohio House; the crackdown-on-anyone-Latino mentality of Allen County Sheriff Dan Beck; or the fervent distrust of anyone foreign Beck’s and the Republicans’ mental equivalent, Lima Councilclown Derry Glenn, has expressed. Act like new people are people? Dan, Derry and Matt would not like that.

This is Uh-mer-uh-ca, after all! People need to speak good Uh-mer-uh-can!

Columbus obviously needs one of these uh-mer-uh-can heoroes to force everything to be in idiot’s English so they (meaning the elected) can understand it.

COLUMBUS’ GROWING immigrant population is reflected in the many “taco trucks” and other mobile food vendors popping up around the city. These sometimes spark culture clashes, but city officials are approaching the situation in a constructive way: Instead of slamming the small-scale entrepreneurs for every violation of health, commerce or zoning codes, the relevant city departments are joining to give operators a chance to learn how to do it by the rules.

Pamphlets in English, Spanish, Somali and, perhaps eventually, Chinese, will spell out the rules business owners need to follow.

Operators who violate health standards or locate their stands where they don’t have permission after the rules are explained should face penalties. But helping newcomers, most of whom have no desire to break the law, is good for them and the community.

Some people find the food wagons unsightly. But those humble businesses might mature into enterprises that will add color to the cultural landscape.

As a reader service (the letter is below), let’s help define a word: xenophobia. “Fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything foreign or strange.”

Perhaps some visual learning aids are in order:

1. Allen County Sheriff Dan Beck, who decided to make up numbers about illegal immigrants in Allen County to make sure everyone was plenty afeared.

2. Lima City Councilclown Derry Glenn who objects to the way “A-rabs” and foreigners” run their businesses in Lima, Councilclown Glenn being such an expert on such things.

 3. The Ohio Republican Party, particularly those in the House who have decided that, two centuries of being a state and never having had to worry about such, they now need to tell local governments they may only keep records in English.

The letter seeking clarification:

I noticed in reading the Lima News on Tuesday about Fahim Eddir addressing Lima City Council and, on Wednesday in Mike Lackey’s column about the same appearance, the word xenophobia is used. I had no idea what it meant. Is it something good or bad?
I compliment Mr. Eddir on his vocabulary, but can somebody give me a synonym or a hint of what xenophobia is?
I have a four-year college degree and, in about 50 years of reading and listening, I never have heard or seen the word. I have heard that newspapers write for a seventh- or eighth-grade reading level. Has the word xenophobia ever been used in a spelling bee contest?
My dictionary says xenophobia is “the unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of what is foreign or strange.”
I find it hard to read The Lima News holding the newspaper in one hand and a dictionary in the other.

Lima City Councilclown Derry has taken exception to being called Archie Bunker following Glenn’s ignorant rant against “foreign people.” Glenn wants gas stations and convenience stores not to display pipes and other potential drug paraphernalia where children can see it.

Councilclown Glenn apparently used a radio appearance last weekend to criticize my colleague Thomas J. Lucente Jr. for the pictures Lucente made of Councilclown Glenn as Archie, including this nice family portrait. You know what? I’m willing to work with Glenn here. You don’t like Archie Bunker? How about what the character called his son-in-law on the show?

Meathead it is, Councilclown Glenn.

Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Howard Metzenbaum used a mobile office, as his staff called it, during a 1977 stop in Lima. Metzenbaum is remembered as a man who was always willing to fight for his beliefs.

His legacy in Lima?  He apparently inspired at least current members of City Council — Derry Glenn and Ray Magnus, or Curley and Moe, per Thomas J. Lucente Jr.’s fun with Photoshop — to drive around town with their names on placards that they have on their cars. Maybe they should upgrade to an RV.

Click the highlighted text to see a larger version of the below picture from The Lima News: Metzenbaum inspired Lima “leaders”

Lima 1st Ward City Councilman, who is in the same service club as I, said loud enough for me to hear Monday — two tables away — that The Lima News story and editorial about his not getting a building permit for his bar’s smoking deck made him an extra $1,000 over the weekend. He didn’t thank me.

Funny, because when I talked to him about his failure to tell anyone his bar sold almost $1.5 million in gambling tip books as he was voting against letting Lima residents decide on casino negotiations, he said the smoking ban was in Ohio was hurting business. Since the story Heather Rutz did about Magnus not following state law and the editorial my page ran about his being an embarrassment to the city are driving business, you’d think he’d thank me rather than talking loud enough for me to hear from two tables over.

Should I ever run for public office in Lima, please, oh, please, someone convince my opponent he should falsely accuse me of some tight association with Mayor David Berger.

We probably saw again last week how popular Berger is in the city, and how ill advised it is to run against him with only a negative, anti-Lima message — even if it does play well outside the city. First Ward Councilman Ray Magnus, running to unseat Council President John Nixon, made his campaign as much about Berger as it was about Nixon. Magnus only took about 35 percent of the vote. (more…)

So Allen County Sheriff Dan Beck is back to illegal immigration.

Did something take the sheriff’s mind off the societal ills of gambling he was campaigning against not so long ago? Has the subject become a bit too uncomfortable now that we know Lima City Councilman Ray Magnus pulled in almost $1.5 million in gambling in just a year? Not so long ago, Beck was “protecting” the community by keeping out gambling. Turns out, there’s already a lot of it here. (more…)

Those who opposed a casino coming to Lima on religious grounds found the unlikeliest of allies in Lima City Councilman Ray Magnus.

It’s really no surprise that Magnus opposed a casino, at least now that someone has looked into the amount of gambling his bar does. What is surprising: The people who implied hell awaits those who gamble signed on with a man responsible for more than $1.45 million worth of gambling in only 12 months. (more…)

The impact casinos have had in Detroit, while welcome news there, will be more of the obvious to proponents of bringing a casino to Lima. The numbers should be educational for those who worked to stop the development — and frightening to those who opposed it from public office. (more…)