Political civility: Hardly concern for Kasich's guy

No one has taken on a more challenging mission in Columbus than State Sen. Frank LaRose of Copley, a Republican,  and former State  Rep. Ted Celeste of Cleveland, a Democrat . In their laudable bi-partisan effort to restore a hint of sanity to politics, they are pursuing a goal of creating more civility  in political discourse.  Good luck on that.

They have scheduled an off-the-record meeting on Sept. 17 at the Statehouse of dozens of lawmakers to work out a plan to advance  their goal. My guess is that it would be easier to squeeze the juice back into a lemon.

Until then, they could have a sitdown with Gov. Kasich's top spokespserson, Rob Nichols, who resorted to a sneaky form  of Red-baiting in his attack on Democratic Rep. Debbie Phillips, of Albany.

Phillips had written to Kasich and Scott Nally, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, demanding  an official explanation of why  the director of the EPA's surface-water division was forced to resign.

George Elmaraghy had informed his staff that his resignation was prompted  by  "considerable pressure" on the Ksaich administration from coal companies.  The coal industry has been among  Kasich's biggest political donors.  The Columbus Dispatch reported that King Coal has given $1 million to Kasich and some friendly lawmakers.

But we digress:  Asked about Phillips , Nichols snapped in an email to a reporter:

"You'd be hard-pressed to find a job creator that she hasn't opposed, vilified or protested at some point.  If she had her way, we'd all be living on a collective farm cooking  organic quinoa over a dung fire.  So, I think we'll take her views in context."

By the way:  Not being a quinoa kind of guy, I had to look it up.  Glad to know the people around the governor are so clued in these days. .

Another end run for another juvenile court judge

Talk about the elephant in the China shop! The Summit County Republican Party, in peril of being swallowed whole by the Tea Party, is staging a desperate political charade to create a second juvenile court judge.  Not that many people aside from the promoters like the idea.  It's provisioned in the proposed Republican budget down in Columbus, which makes it newsworthy even though it's not likely to be seaworthy.

It is sponsored by State Rep. Anthony DeVitis, a Republican of Green; and co-sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Slaby, a Republican of Copley Township.  They say the juvenile court system in the county  is overworked and causing long delays.  A second judge alongside Linda Tucci Teodosio, an elected Democrat, would expedite matters, which is one way at looking at justice. And, if as County Executive Russ Pry (Democrat)  and  others point out,  the county budget  is already so tight that it can't afford to have another mouth to feed  in the courts, the Republican sponsors insist the  problem could be resolved by laying off some magistrates who, quite likely, are Democrats.

In a bi-partisan vote, the Akron Bar Association unanimously passed a resolution opposing the packing of the courts.  County council voted 9-2 against it, too, with the council's two  Republicans, of course,  supporting it.

Cautiously taking the safer  ground, another area Republican,  Sen. Frank LaRose, predictably told the Beacon Journal that he will withhold judgment until he gets more information.(A tactical response on Page 7  of the survival kit on expressing the need for more information.)     And uncharacteristically, GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who doubtless was in the thick of the process, withheld comment from  the BJ.

It has been widely known for years and years and years that Arshinkoff has tested the soft spots in the judicial system to appoint his people to offices.  It's his M.O.

Otherwise, the weather the past few days has been delightful.

A Sunday Tea Party Uprising in the Falls

I WENT TO my first Tea Party rally Sunday at the Cuyahoga Falls River Square pavilion.

Tea Party? I did.

April 15. Tax Day. Even tried to blend in as a regular guy by wearing a faded sweatshirt and jeans. Like the ordinary taxpayer that I am. With this crowd, I figured it couldn't hurt .

Listened to strident speakers. Strolled around, peeking at the literature in booth after booth for more than 90 minutes, but finally gave up when the speakers started to repeat themselves to the several hundred Tea Partiers who showed up from at least four counties with the latest right-wing T-shirt fashions, signs, bumper stickers, petitions and flags. (One shirt had a target on it and warned that if you could see it, you were "within range.")

I believe most of the angry groups in America where represented by at least one T-shirt to embrace the rally's theme of "Rescue America". The John Birch Society, National Rifle Association. pro-lifers and anti-taxers, constitutionalists, freedom defenders, EPA haters - I may have missed a few, but you get the idea.

A huge inflated eagle facing Broad Street told me the sponsors weren't shy about spreading patriotic thoughts. Nor was the Republican mayor of the host city, Don Robart, who welcomed the throng by declaring his pride in seeing so many Tea Party supporters seated in the sun-splashed amphitheater.

Unable to contain his joyous moment for his town, he declared that the "Tea Party is the social, fiscal and moral conscience of America." (Got that, New York to California? A little over the top, don't you think?)) The mayor then settled down and spent the remainder of his time there working the crowd.

But it was an African-American preacher, Theodore Wilson II, who commanded the stage with a long assault on everything-Obama-administration to a 99.9 pct. white audience. He even went after the critics of the Republican-driven Voter ID movement. And we know that would deny votes to certain people that the GOP would prefer to stay home, don't we? I did catch him saying nice things about the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is not sure that Obama is an American.

But why focus on this one of several inconsistencies in what turned out to be about a gathering heavily shaped by religion, from abortion to same-sex marriage, and condemnation of the government. (I wonder if Wilson got a glimpse of the bumper sticker that referred to Obama as the "big African ass"?)

There were a number of pols slated to speak later, including State Treasurer Josh Mandel and State Sen. Frank LaRose - but I doubt that they could have added anything fresh to the narrative.

As I left the scene, it occurred to me that I hadn't heard Mitt Romney's name mentioned even once. I went to the Summit County Republican Party booth to inquire about it to the chairman, Alex Arshinkoff. But nobody seemed to know where he was.

On the way out, I was approached a couple of times with puffy bios of Mandel that mentioned his time in the military. It reminded me that this whole event was being hosted by a mayor who opposes a minor change in the city's Natatorium's fees for a wounded Iraqi veteran who happens to be a partner in a sex -sex marriage. Do you think you could talk some patriotic sense into him, Josh?

On the other hand, as a Tea Partier yourself, maybe you agree with him.

Is that Millard knocking on the door?

WEEKEND ORTS:

Just as the pundits were trying to convince America that the Republican presidential campaign was a two-man race, the latest alert from Planet Gingrich is that it is now a three-man race with Mitt Romney and a third from Texas whose name will come to me any moment now. (It should be noted that not long ago it was a 9- or 10-candidate race. There are so many moving parts these days!). It is worrisome to think of a time in history when the Republic had to put up with three guys like Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. So is there any joy wondering whether one of the current serial debaters will eventually be nominated?

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Pat Boone keeps coming back like a Lucky Strike Extra, right seniors? We've gotten a couple of his robocalls about the new health care reform law that he claims will strip seniors of the "coverage they deserve". That's a new one on me. He urged us to call Sen. Sherrod Brown to register our complaints about the law that Brown strongly supports. Boone is a conservative political activist for an outfit called 60 Plus, which claims to be non-partisan. Actually, it is supported by the pharmaceutical industry, which will target Brown - who just happens to be running for reelection next year. So Boone, who also does walk-in bathtub commercials, will be busier than usual next year trying to convince seniors that President Obama wants them to die in their tracks.

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I found it odd that State Sen. Frank LaRose's high-sounding Veteran's Day op-ed paean in the Beacon Journal to Iraqi veterans didn't contain a word about their shabby treatment when they returned to find they were without jobs, houses and other basic amenities due the troops. LaRose continues to place himself above the political fray, but in the end you have to remind yourself that he is a garden variety Republican and that's how he votes down in the legislature.

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It never ends: Michele Bachmann insisted the U.S. would be a lot better off if we emulated Communist China's economic system. One of her talking points: China doesn't give food stamps. Right. And China doesn't permit a lot of stupid talk by anybody who wants to dislodge its leader.

Kasich: I won't privatize Lake Erie, folks

IT WAS GOOD to see Gov. Kasich veto the Lake Erie water drainage bill passed by both Republican chambers of the Ohio legislature. Given his past track record, one would have expected him to include on his wish list the privatizing of Lake Erie. But he finally accepted the strong objections of two previous GOP governors, George Voinovich and Robert Taft, as well as many others, to rebuff the initiative by the legislative cornstock brigade and its melange of strict party enablers - including Akron 's Republican senator, Frank LaRose, a co-sponsor of the bill - who now dominate the agenda of lawmakers.

The sale of Ohio's Republican House of Representatives

IF YOU'VE EVER wondered what it would take to buy the Ohio Republican House of Representatives, there's a pretty strong clue in Sunday's Beacon Journal. In a thorough outing of David Brennan, the GOP's landlord in the Buckeye State, the paper reported that over the past two decades he has given more than $4 million to Republican candidates and PACs hereabouts, a sizable share going to where it would do him the most good as contributor-in-chief . That could only meant Brennan's lucrative charter school company, White Hat Management .

A Columbus Dispatch report included in the BJ"s coverage noted that Brennan's agents (who were greeted with open arms by GOP lawmakers) slipped in to the proposed state budget a couple of amendments that would enormously accommodate Brennan's sweeping plans to further enrich his charter company despite the fact that he has already found a loyal and willing enabler in Gov. Kasich. Keep in mind, too, that Brennan's operation has already received more than $230 million in taxpayer money for his charter schools in Ohio.

The budget is now in the state senate, which will settle on its version this week. It will be interesting to see how Akron's freshman Republican senator Frank LaRose responds to the outrages of Brennan's maneuvers in the House. After the awkward way he went about supporting Senate Bill 5, the union- busting dagger, LaRose can't really afford much more hot water.

When is right thing not the right thing?

MICHAEL DOUGLAS, the Beacon Journal's editorial page editor, treated the reader to a symmetrical essay in his Sunday column about Summit County's newest state senator.

Symmetry? He began in the opening line by telling us that Frank LaRose "did the right thing." He closed with the line that the senator "did the right thing". But in between, the reasoning lost traction and distanced itself from Hemingway's literary classic, For Whom the Bell Tolls, that profoundly began and ended with Robert Jordan lying on the floor of a "pine-scented" forest.

Douglas generously credits LaRose with tempering some restrictions on collective bargaining while offering public union workers the right to negotiate wages - a fig leaf, as it's been called - although workers, in return, would give up their right to strike. The last time that I'm aware of that happening was back in the late 1980s when the Guild foolishly agreed not to strike during negotiations with the Beacon Journal.

Contract negotations extended three years beyond its expiration while salaries for guildsmen were frozen. By the way, the Guild also agreed not to make pay increases retroactive!

In the current fray, unions consider collective bargaining - the only generic issue here - with the same sanctity as big-time executives do with stock options and other perks. Secondly, and maybe even more importantly, the issue could lead the way for right-to-work legislation.

For now, LaRose's mistake that is costing him so much loss of credibility is that he had convinced so many that he was a friend of collective bargaining while he worked to restrict it. Had he sold himself as a garden variety anti-union lawmaker from the beginning there would have been less at issue here. But he set the stage for it with his repeated pro public union collective-bargaining assurances. Yes, there were other Republicans with whom he sided in the 17-16 decision. But his vote was critical to both sides. Had he voted against it, he would not now have to be spending so much time explaining his back-channel efforts to soften the blow to unions. Now he is being held accountable. There is a right way to do a right thing.

LaRose doublethink: "Collective bargaining is essential"

STATE SEN. FRANK LAROSE, the first-term Akron area Republican, says he is being unfairly criticized for his game-changing vote to kill collective bargaining. Indeed, he was sort of for collective bargaining by public employe unions before he was against it. His explanation is hardly clear, which is a good reason for the whacking he's taking from people who will be hurt by the bill if it is also passed by the Ohio House.

LaRose issued a formal statement (which I read on a conservative blog) as a non-mea culpa. I will share with you, in part:

"This bill helps restore balance to the public employee collective bargaining process, while also protecting the rights of our state's hardworking public service employees."

Question, senator: How can you restore balance to a collective bargaining process that won't exist for public union workers once the measure becomes law? And do you really suppose that by adding "hardworking" to the public workers you will salve their feelings? I hope you can see where this is going.

And here's another thought from the young Tea Party-influenced senator :

"My vote was not, and never will be, motivated by political considerations or outside pressure. Anyone who says otherwise does not know me or understand my unwavering commitment to serving the citizens of our community. I am duty bound to do what's best for Ohio, even when it may be unpopular. We must work together to bring prosperity back to the Buckeye State."

Well, Gov Kasich, who is in love with the union-busting bill, wasn't taking any chances. He visited the Senate Republican caucus the night before the vote and you can be sure that it wasn't a casual social drop-in.

While we're at it, senator: You say the bill was improved because strikers wouldn't be put in jail. Fine, although there's doubtless not a soul among your critics who doesn't believe the last-minute amendments actually made it much worse.

Sorry, but I've saved the best for last:

"I opposed the initial version of the bill based on fundamental objections with a few of its provisions. By standing steadfast on what I believed to be fair, I was able to work with my colleagues to protect the essential right of employes to collectively bargain."

You may not have heard, senator, but there will be no essential right of public employes to collectively bargain. Orwell had something to say about such logic. He called it doublethink.

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