This terrible article makes a caricature of Vienna and the Austrian people and its author should be ashamed of herself. Despite all the beauty and majesty of this city, she adheres to Godwin’s law by effectively saying Vienna is heading back to olden times of the Reich because people aren’t sure what to think about […]
Erie consultant breaks the bad news: ‘The city is broke’
By Yaël Ossowski | September 25, 2015 | Watchdog.org The city of Erie is in desperate times, and a consultant hired to map a positive future isn’t optimistic. “The plan I am trying to write is a plan to get the city out of the hole it is in,” Charles Buki told Watchdog.org. An urban […]
Erie’s 10-year ‘comprehensive plan’ consultants cost over $100,000
By Yaël Ossowski | September 18, 2015 | Watchdog.org Hoping to leap into the future, Erie will spend over $100,000 to pay consultants to draw up a 10-year comprehensive plan to revitalize the city and “bring it into the future.” The total amount of $137,880, approved preliminarily by the city council in February, will be […]
Now is the time to uphold the Schengen agreement
By Yaël Ossowski | September 15, 2015 | CapX The current refugee crisis represents a moment of great stress for the European project. A plethora of voices are calling for change, but now is not the time to forsake the freedom of movement enshrined in the Schengen agreement. In the last few months, the surge […]
‘Vicious political campaigning’ backfired on MO unions
By Yaël Ossowski / September 15, 2015 / Watchdog.org They say it takes extraordinary circumstances to get ordinary people into politics. For Mary Hill, a registered nurse, that extraordinary moment came when union activists began pressuring workers at her hospital to unionize. She was ready to join the union, she tells Watchdog.org, but began to […]
Onetime supporter says ethics board devolved into ‘lapdog, not a watchdog’
By Yaël Ossowski | September 10th, 2015 | Watchdog.org The effort to reform politics in the city of Tallahassee in the form of an appointed board was not only undermined by mistakes but also devolved into a disappointment and failure of democracy, say principal supporters of the plan. “The people of Tallahassee are disgruntled, both […]
National ethics group broke state laws to acquire signatures
By Yaël Ossowski | September 1, 2015 | Watchdog.org Wherever it campaigns for political ethics reform, the activist group Represent.us seems plagued by legal and ethical challenges of its own. Earlier this week, Watchdog.org reported that the Represent.us-backed ethics board in Tallahassee, Fla. was slammed – by its own former supporters – for conflicts of […]
We Helped Cause the Refugee Crisis In Europe. Now We Need To Help Fix It
By Yaël Ossowski | IJ Review Though it’s been knocking on the doors of the European continent for some time, the Syrian refugee crisis is at last making headway in western media around the world. The image of the body of a three-year-old Syrian boy washed ashore in Bordum, Turkey after an unsuccessful sea voyage […]