Col. Umbus (Ret.) returns to the Ohio legislature

Back when  I was the editor of a small liberal magazine in Columbus, I created a character named Col. Umbus (Ret.)...(Got it?) The Colonel was a bumbling,   blustering bovine guy who could have been the early model for Louie Gohmert and all folks similarly situated on the fringe of American politics.

The colonel, flushed and fulminating, turned up in the midst of the civil rights revolution and deadly concern on the right that the U.S. was on the verge of a Red-inspired takeover. Either that or the supposed threat from  some soft-headed liberal professors at Ohio State U. You may have read about it  in the history books.

I had occasional conversations with ol'  Umbus as he ranted about liberals, government, communists, evil and whatever else was  in the news  that spoke of the death of decency, patriotism and the American way. I seldom found him to be happy.

My angel for the bi-weekly magazine (The Commentator) was Murray Lincoln, the progressive founder of Nationwide Insurance who regularly grew impatient  with the Dispatch's conservative meanderings and delivered  the cash through the company's broadcasting holdings to offer a fresh voice to the Capitol City.

Once the magazine was in print on a biweekly basis Lincoln never again mentioned it to me. I could only assume that he was satisfied after we won several awards, thanks to a colleague, Dave Hess, including a national  honor for our civil rights reporting.

It was pure David and Goliath combat. The Dispatch people were aghast that anybody would  be so brash to challenge it with so little. At one point, it even pointed out to its readers that I had given a dinner talk to the ACLU, which the paper said had endorsed the entry of Red China to the United Nations.  It solved nothing for me to mention that the Vatican had supported it, too.

I think a lot of Col.Umbus (Ret) today as the Ohio legislature parades one idiotic idea after another to advance its foolish idealogical mission in the public arena.  Here, in this  right-wing mass of fringe-a-lings, we have Speaker Bill Batchelder declaring his opposition to expanding Medicaid contained in Obamacare.  Once again a person of Batchelder's great wealth is coming down hard (read: inhumanely) on poor folks who don't have health insurance.

The guy says he doesn't have enough information for the plan (and doubtless never will have because that's how they dodge the game!).  It will continue to be tough on people who can't otherwise afford the monthly premiums for medical coverage.  That's not a condition any legislator would agree to personally live with.  Even the nomads of northern Afghanistan  find the lack of medical atttention a severe hardship.

Over the years as a political reporter I talked to Batchelder many times and found his disarming  good humor and widely spaced laugh a rare attribute of many ashen conservatives that I had covered.  Man, did he snooker me.  Col. Umbus (Ret.) would have been happy to contribute to his campaign.

As for The Commentator, shortly after Lincoln died, the less adventurous brass  on the seventh floor shut down the four-year-old magazine and I was out of work.

The Dispatch endorses Kasich for reelection!

The Columbus Dispatch, the bellwether of conservative chatter in Upper Arlington and other spiffy  Republican enclaves, sent a Happy New Year greeting  to Gov. Kasich on Sunday that could easily pass for an endorsement for  the guv's reelection campaign of 2014.

You might ask, "What's the hurry?" Well, in the Dispatch's case, it's never too early to safely  ferry home its politician of choice in a major editorial -  long before anybody even knows the name of his eventual Democratic opponent.

Actually the paper's  enthusiasm for Kasich,  the fellow it endorsed the last time, covered so many positives that we can only conclude that it would take the Wright Brothers to invent any new ones that would rise to greater heights.   Rather than wade through a series of exclamatory compliments in the Dispatch's stargazing passages, you  can quickly get the point in the opening paragraph:

"For Ohio and the governor, 2012 has been a transformative year.  John Kasich sped through his second year with his trademark zeal for getting done the big and difficult things, hardly skipping a beat after  his 2011  reforms stabilized the state."

Also,

"The man who once balanced the federal budget, line by line, took a scalpel to the Buckeye spending plan and erased the deficit without raising taxes.  He launched reforms of Medicaid, prisons and job-killing red tape."

It goes on with goose-bumping accolades for Kasich's  education reforms and initiatives for roadbuilding, job growth and balanced budget.

On that last point it was never mentioned the teeniest that part of the balancing act was the  convenience of stripping the school budget by more than $1 billion and, reports  Plunderbund, cutting 50 pct. of the local government fund in his 2013 budget. Public school cuts in teaching staffs, and local school tax levies,  have become commonplace.

Finally, the greatest excision from the governor's  fanfare for his jobs record is acknowledgement of any credit to a growing  national economy and the Obama administration's revival of the auto industry that saved  saved thousands of jobs in Ohio.

The Dispatch did concede  that none of the governor's good deeds rank as highly as the fact that his "most critical accomplishment...rests in the hearts of the many Ohioans who again have hope"  that happier days are here again.

Is it gross to mention that the Dispatch also endorsed George W. Bush and Mitt Romney?