Showing posts with label Akron University. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Akron University. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Warner: Questions but no answers

IF IT ISN'T one thing, it's something else with Warner Mendenhall, the Robespierre  of  the recall uprising against Mayor Plusquellic.  As a lawyer, he's doing some things in a lawyerly fashion to get his message to his perceived jury.   Today's news  from the front (i.e.,  the Beacon Journal)  for example,  reported that Mendenhall  questioned in an e-mail whether the city's new schools are safe, then he asks:
"Were electrical inspections done by phone on our new school buildings? This isn't safe.  An honest man objects then gets fired.  Was Plusquellic involved?"
Well, Warner, was Plusquellic involved or wasn't he?   Was he the person on  the phone doing the inspections?  You really don't tell us.  It's an old rhetorical trick:  raise the question without answering it.  

The point here is that simply by asking a question before his jury, this lawyer served his case by creating doubt about the person on trial.    And who fired the guy in your e-mail? The mayor? From what I understand, it was his  employer, J.W. Didado Electric.  All of this happened a couple of years ago, and even though the complaint against the building inspector was  sent to the state, no action was taken on it by the Ohio Board of Building Standards. A board spokesman said, "There was nothing of substance to warrant any action."

Warner, why are trying to assert your "leadership" while treating the rest of us as dummies?  Will there be more of this nonsense as the campaign barges on?   I'm afraid so.  And when it does, I'm sure  it will be challenged. Good Lord.  What a way to waste the summer months!  

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 MAYBE MY BRAIN is a bit soggy from all of the rain hereabouts, but I don't follow the logic  of hiring a thoroughbred Republican lobbyist for $142,000  as an associate vice president of "strategy and finance" at the budget-challenged University of Akron. The recipient of the newly-created position is Scott Borgemenke, and, says the Beacon Journal, his job will be to develop "innovative  solutions to challenges."  In other words, a lobbyist.  And one who was the designated hitter as the top strategist for the Ohio Republican Party.

The irony in this should be clear enough.  Borgemenke, a former race track executive,  is a first team figure in a political party that, as we all should know by now, has been damning the stimulus and government spending - big socialist  dollars.  And I presume such dollars are what the university is looking for from the new guy on the campus.  Or in Columbus.    And maybe even from the hated Democrats.