In Suarez case, two Ohio GOP politicians are an uneasy crowd

 A funny thing happened to Treasurer Josh Mandel and U.S. Rep.Jim Renacci  on their way to November's elections.  The two Ohio Republicans find themselves mired in a messy case involving  indicted  Canton businessman  Benjamin Suarez,  who will stand trial in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, beginning Monday, on money laundering charges.

The basic scheme, as revealed by Suarez's convicted treasurer Michael Giorgio, who blabbed in a a plea deal,  turned on having a couple of dozen company employees  drop  in $5,000 each to fill the political pot,  with assurances from Suarez that their "gifts" would be reimbursed.  Nothing very imaginative, really.

Although Mandel and Renacci have not been charged and claim they eventually returned the money to the employes, they have been subpoenaed to appear as key figures in the case.  Moreover, it can't help either candidate to have their dealings with Suarez  taking up so much inglorious space in the media.

 Each received $100,000  from Suarez to intervene in a California civil suit against Suarez  Corp. Industries (SCI) that accused the company of violating  consumer protection laws.

Mandel is up against a tough Democratic opponent, state Rep. Connie Pillich.  Among other things, she's a former Air Force captain who served during Desert Storm  which, for this campaign, could put a dent in Mandel's conceits about his own military service that turned up so often  during his loss to Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, in 2012.

The paper trail in the Suarez case tells us Mandel came on strong for Suarez, threatening to sue the state of Calilfornia and urging Renacci to support new federal law that would soften  damages  awarded in deceptive advertising. (Suarez's company operated on a global scale as a marketer.)

Renacci appeared safe enough in a bizarrely drawn  house district created as his own plantation.  His Democratic opponent  is Pete Crossland, former state lawmaker, county councilman and  political science professor who threw his body into the race when nobody else dared challenge Renacci.

When we saw him  week or so ago,  he was smiling.




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The Republican massacre of Summit County districts

  As you might have suspected, Summit County's two Republican congressmen voted against the debt ceiling increase while the county's two Democrats supported  the clean bill offered by House Speaker John Boehner.  The nays were Rep. Jim Renacci and Rep. David Joyce;  the yeas, Rep. Tim Ryan and Rep. Marcia Fudge.

About Joyce:  Wasn't he the guy who succeeded Steve LaTourette and billed as a moderate in the mode of his predecessor?   We're still waiting, folks.  Renacci, meanwhile, has been a perfect fit for the Tea Party.

Since the congressional districts were mercilessly gerrymandered by  Republicans,  Summit County's bizarre carving have left us  with four congressmen who don't have homes in the  county.  (For comparison's  sake, Gaul had only three parts.)   Religious scholars might  call it penance for the sin for long harboring  the late John Seiberling back when the liberal Democrat  represented the entire county.

Today, Renacci calls Wadsworth home; Fudge,  Warrensville Hgts; Joyce,  Russell Townshp in Geauga County, and Ryan, Howland ( near Warren).

On the map, the four new districts are virtually indescribable, appearing as though they fell off a truck.    Look for yourself.

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Sen.  Rob Portman can't be feeling too chipper these days.   The latest Public Policy Poll revealed the Ohio Republican  is taking a heavy shelling from voters for his vote against extending unemployment  insurance.  The PPP figures say 51 pct. of the Buckeye voters are now less likely to vote for him; only 27 pct. more likely.

According to the pollster, Portman, a passive sort of pol, is "pretty undefined with voters right now.  36 pct. have no opinion one way or the other, with only 28 pct. approving of him to 35 pct. who disapprove.   He doesnt have the kind of politlcal capital stored up that lets you vote against something  more than 60 pct. of your constituents support."


As I've mentioned before, one of Portman's favorite responses  when the other side doesn't agree with his position is that he's disappointed.  In the wake of the PPP poll, he has a lot to be disappointed about.

UPDATE: Portman voted NO on cutting off debate to raise debt limit, defying Senate minority leader McConnell; Ohio's Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown voted yea. Measure passed handily.  If it had failed, it could have led to another government shutdown. Way to go, Rob!

Sifting through the debris of political madness

Day One - No shutdown...

Dial down the hysteria.  For now. Hundreds of thousands of government workers back on the their  jobs.  Shutdown costs of $24 billion.   America's prestige as a can-do country damaged.  Rush Limbaugh, foaming at the brain, describing a bi-partisan  agreement as an insufferable GOP concession, calling it the worst political disaster in American history.

Closer to home, U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, who didn't get the memo on the rising floodwaters sinking the GOP,  voted no with 144 other Republicans. The wealthy freshman congressman,  who leap-frogged to Capitol Hill from  a gerrymandered district custom-designed for him, thus confirmed his allegiance to the hard right that has caused mayhem in the Republican Party...

Insurrection among self-styled "freedom loving" anarchists was openly embraced  at the recent anti-Obama gathering at the D.C.war memorial.  Larry Klayman, a lawyer and ultra right-wing blogger who heads an outfit called Judicial Watch, is recruiting  a mob to  rise against the president on Nov. 19. Klayman accused Obama of "kneeling before Al-Qaida"  to the delight of the protesters,  whose speakers included Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin.  "Mr.President," he demanded, "get up off your knees and come out with hands up."  Klayman widened the goalposts  with multi-choice epithets aimed at Obama,to wit:  "Muslim, socialist,  anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-white,  pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical gay and lesbian agenda."  (You'd think that Presidents Cruz or Palin would quietly urge him to save some of the bile  for their campaigns against Hillary.)

One of the biggest GOP mistakes (as well as that of  some liberal Democrats) was assuming that Obama would cave at some point.  Instead, he tapped the mood in some quarters of solidly standing his ground.  It would have been a disaster for him to give up his health-care reforms in the face of a bunch of unruly Obama haters who ended up shattering the Republican Party. Obamacare was ruled constitutional by the highest court in the land and, regardless of what your dissenting neighbor might think, it's the law.  And as I recall, he was elected twice .  Do you think this theater of the absurd could have been played out with  a white Republican in the Oval Office?

Finally, I was reminded of Albert Einstein's observation as the Republican resistance movement to Obamacare drove the nation to despair until the last moment:  "Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds."

Seems about right these days.

On Party of Lincoln dinners and yada yada yada...

Every year, the Summit County Party of Lincoln sets  aside a special fund-raising dinner to honor its icon's birthday. Though quite belatedly, this year's Party of Lincoln event, otherwise known as a Lincoln Day dinner on  Saturday is no different.  As County Party of Lincoln Chairman Alex Arshinkoff declared in the invitation (posted on the Party of Lincoln's web site as "Republican headquarters"), this year's event is a "not-to-be-missed opportunity to celebrate our Republican heritage." Indeed.  He expects that to be accomplished through his two Party of Lincoln guests,  Reps. David Joyce and Jim Renacci.

One of the Party of Lincoln's' heritage dinner highlights is what the chairman has boasted over the years as a watershed poll of Republican Presidential  candidate support. Last year the crowd went overboard for the hapless Rick Santorum, who just happened to be the celebrity speaker for the evening. So there!

Having no presidential candidate that survived the November election, the Party of Lincoln settled on Joyce and Renacci, both of whom find gun control quite distasteful. Which leads me to offer a reasonable alternative to a presidential survey:

How do Alex and all of his guests think Abe Lincoln, felled by a bullet,  would have voted on the background check?  C'mon. Be honest. If possible. 

From today's news heap, Kasich pleads ignorance

Today's latest news, Hot off the Mess:

Leave it to our governor to produce another Kasich Kerfuffle in response to a question following his speech to the Cleveland City Club on Wednesday.  It occurred when a woman in the audience asked him whether he agreed with fellow-Republican Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike Dewine's fellowship with some other Republican AG's in a lawsuit involving employers and contraceptives insurance.

Dewine has never let anybody forget since the day he ran for the office that he wants to slay the Obamacare dragon and has channeled it with religious fervor into an assault on the legality of whether employers should include contraceptives in their employes' insurance coverage.

It's been in all  of the papers.  The governor, however, batted away the issue by saying he had not heard of the Dewine gambit and ducked the question.  Besides, as the governor has boasted, he never reads newspapers because sometimes they leave him unhappy.

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Is it just me,  or do you find it a bit odd that two obstinate anti-gun control congressmen will be the featured guests at a dinner celebrating an  historic Republican icon?

Yep, that's a reference, folks,  to the annual Summit County Republican Lincoln Day dinner. L-I-N-C-O-L-N.  The anointed guests are Ohio Reps. Jim Renacci and  Dave Joyce,   sworn opponents of restrictions on guns.

Is this Lincolnian crowd, who will be dining quite well the night of the repast, April 27, aware of how Lincoln's life was abruptly ended?   Was it from the gun of John Wilkes Boothe, the Confederacy sympathizer?

Oh, to be fair, maybe they missed the movie.

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We close with  this bit of gloomy insight into the American Century:

According to the respected Public Policy Polling (PPP), 20 pct. of registered Republicans believe President Obama is the Antichrist. ( 6 pct. of Democrats agree!)  37 pct. of Republicans believe global warming is a hoax; 7 pct. says the moon landing was a hoax.

In my poll of today's Plain Dealer op-ed page, one right-wing columnist (Kevin O'Brien), wrote that the Connecticut gun-control law was"ridiculously restrictive"  because nothing could have prevented the Newtown massacre.    He also threw in the notion  that "teaching children is a side job for public schools".

On the other hand, the Beacon Journal reported that charter schools - the answer by the governor  and his ilk to creating an enlightened nation - can expect a dismal report card from the Ohio Department of Education's new grading standards next year.   Get this: 89 pct. of tax-supported charter schools will get an"F" for their graduation rate; public schools, 7 pct. would receive an "F".  Who knew?  








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Are schools ready for the Armies of the Right?

Let me see if I follow this:

Wayne LaPierre, the near-million-dollar a year megaphone for the NRA, first says schools should be armed against crazy gunmen.Then the NRA puts up another million for a task force headed by former Arkansas Republican congressman Asa Hutchinson to recommend ways to  confront the monstrous problem. Then Hutchinson appears at the National Press Club to declare,  "Eureka, we think we've found the answer!"

The envelope, please.  And the winner is...the NRA, which sponsored the study in the first place.  As Hutchinson went on to assert,  every school should have gun toters on the staff - the modern version, I assume,  of the well-regulated militia. But couldn't the NRA have saved its million  instead of purchasing an echo of its original idea?

When Hutchinson turned up on Lawrence O'Donnell's show Tuesday night, he dodged a number of questions embedded in the larger gun issues: less lethal weapons and magazines, mass killings beyond America's classrooms,  background checks et al.

He repeatedly reminded O'Donnell that his mission as the NRA's rising star was limited to school safety.  When O'Donnell asked him how much he was paid to produce an overlay on the NRA's position, Hutchinson snipped: "It's none of your business."

Nor, it's beginning to seem more likely every day, is the business of blood control that a great majority of Americans want.

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Speaking of the Armies of the Right, Summit County Republicans will be able to greet two of Ohio's staunch opponents of gun control at  the party's Lincoln (!)  Day dinner on April 27 in Quaker Square: Reps. Jim Renacci and Dave Joyce, neither of whom have yet qualified as rising stars in the increasingly crowded firmament.

Renacci, in particular, has been singled out as a leading recipient of NRA money, and both guys arrive in County Chairman's Alex Arshinkoff's circle with the authorized version of the Party of No:  Whether it be Obamacare, gun control, abortion rights, gay marriage or a lot of other right-wing guff, you can guess the drill.

As for Arshinkoff, the message in the party invitation was customarily over-the-top with his well-recorded hyperbole - even for the political world.  His two honored guests, he promised,  would help lead Obamacare into the "dustbin of history", guarantee that America would again "Stand tall" in the world and join in other fights on Capitol hill, including sending Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to the shadows of the unemployed. (The "stand tall" thing is worrisome.  Is he referring to a new invasion of Iraq?)


There was a time when Hillary Clinton, not Nancy Pelosi, was the Dragon Lady at these affairs.  Now she is leading all Republicans in the 2016 presidential sweeps.  Does that speak of a revival of Jane Fonda in these GOP klatches. And , by the way, whatever happened to Jane?

For Renacci, NRA check is in the mail

Thanks to the Sun News, the Cleveland weekly, we recently got a glimpse of Ohio Rep. Jim Renacci in action at a Town Hall meeting in Fairview Park.  The dominant topic was guns, largely because a  group of pickets showed up to protest his standardized Republican opposition to gun control.

As you know, the multimillionaire  businessman (reported by Roll Call to be $35.8 million!)  is comfortably operating out of the  new Ohio 16th congressional district created just for him in northern Ohio.

Still, Renacci, now in his second term,  is taking no chances  by slipping out of the right-wing mask  on this issue, even to the point of advising his listeners that guns don't kill people,  only the mentally ill do.   " I believe that when it comes to guns, the biggest issue is the mental health issue," the paper reported his comments to his restless audience.

Safe enough for the easily persuaded.  But it's right out of Wayne LaPierre's playbook.    The problem with it is,  nobody - particularly tight-fisted Republicans -  can tell us how, when, where and to whom does the country direct its attention?  (When the late Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes was advised of complaints about the state's shabby mental health system, he shrugged,  "Those people [patients} don't vote anyway."

No one can deny that the mentally ill need all of the attention that society can offer.  But it will  require a lot more money than the budget balancers would be willing to spend over endless time.  So when guys like Renacci try to divert attention from guns by addressing mental health, he should be asked:  Where do you go from here?  Specifics are never clearly offered and it becomes a talking points abstraction. On the other hand, simply limiting  the size of magazine rounds alone would be helpful.

Renacci,the former mayor of Wadsworth,  built his wealth with investments in nursing homes,  motorcycles and minor league baseball.  He  describes himself as a "common-sense congressman," and denies that that he  serving at the pleasure of the NRA - a group with which he was tied for first place nationally for  campaign support.  Renacci's cut of the pie was a mere $9.9 million, but when you have your very own safe district thanks to redistricting, you don't need much more,

"You keep saying that I'm listening to the NRA," Renacci protested to the Town Hall group, "but I've got to keep telling  you, the NRA has never come to my office and said anything.  I am a proponent of the Second Amendment.

Can we then assume that the check was in the mail?

Can county GOP April Lincoln Day dinner bring May flowers?

If you need further evidence that Republican politicians are running behind the times, you might check the date on this announcement by the Summit County Republican Party for its annual ...um...Lincoln Day Dinner.  Yep, it says April 27.  The last time I looked, that  would make it two and half months after - Lincoln's birthday!  Nor did the notice promise to compensate for the delay by staging an Independence Day event in May.

This year's  celebrated Republican speakers will be Ohio Reps. Dave Joyce and Jim Renacci, both of whom just voted for Paul Ryan's mystical budget, a dead-end document whose theme and slight variations have included the repeal of ObamaCare - a stunt that has been defeated more than 30 times.  Obviously, for the GOP, it's the thought that continues to count.    

Cornstalker-style Ohio political culture

The Ohio Republican congressional delegation continued to reveal itself on Tuesday as a committed right-wing hit squad  in its near unanimous opposition to the  emergency funds for  Hurricane Sandy's devastation.  The only Republican supporting the relief package was Michael Turner of Dayton.  Speaker John Boehner didn't vote.

That's enough to tell you that Republican David Joyce, the successor to Steve LaTourette,  joined the gang despite earlier hugs that he would be a moderate like Lake County's LaTourette? ( Does anybody recall that LaTourette retired with a condemnation of the partisanship in  politics today?)  Rep. Jim Renacci, who defeated Democrat Betty Sutton in a monstrously  redesigned district that favored him, cast a no vote.  Renacci is occasionally described  in national reports as a "moderate" but you wouldn't know that from the regularity with which he cavorts with his  party's most conservative diehards.

'Twould be refreshing to boast that the Buckeye State had entered the 21st. Century by twice supporting President Obama's election;  but with Gov.Kasich hanging out with the gun  enthusiasts and pro-lifers, and the cornstalkers running the  General Assembly, it would premature to rate the state's  political culture as anything more than clucky.

How Renacci links Newtown and 9/11

We shouldn't let the year end without recalling the voice of Rep. Jim Renacci, Wadsworth, Oh., Republican, who found a way to join gun control, which he opposes, with  9/11.  Although the logic leaps, it at least shows you the evasive ways  of the pro-gun politicians who object to  the calls for even modest controls following the Newtown tragedy while pretending to be responsibly thoughtful about the issue.

In a statement reported by the Beacon Journal, Renacci argued that although 9/11 was carried out by religious extremists, there was no outcry to "erase our First Amendment right to free exercise of religion".  Funny that no one thought about it that way at the time.

You can see where this is going.

The same Constitutional standard, he says, should be applied to the Second Amendment. In other words, don't tinker with  the right to bear arms.  Rather, he opines,  the nation's collective  mental health should be the No. 1 priority because the massacres of  9/11 and Newtown's kids were carried out  by "madmen,  not by our Founding Fathers  or our Constitution."

The comparison was invidious, but we're getting used to such high-minded obscurities by the Renaccis  on Capitol Hill.

Sutton-Pelosi vs. Renacci- Boehner?

Sooner or later it figures  that Nancy Pelosi would make it to the Ohio ballot.   That's what Republican congressman Jim Renacci wants to happen.  Not he's any great admirer of the Democratic minority leader.  Quite the contrary.  He wants you to believe that by voting for his Democratic opponent in the new 16th congressional district you will not be voting for Rep. Betty Sutton but for Pelosi

Or as Renacci's new $1.1 million GOP Super PAC ad puts it, Sutton doesn't work for Ohio; she works for Pelosi.

Pelosi's political enemies have been putting a hit on her ever since she rose to prominance in the House of Representatives.  I was never sure whether it was because she was a woman or a Californian. Years ago,  a  guy at a friend's patio party couldn't stop rattling on about "that witch" - my way of cleaning it up. Some white guys have a way about stating their case against women.

Renacci, of course, is a garden variety  conservative Republican who seldom disagrees with his boss, House Speaker John Boehner.  And as the ad snorts, Sutton supports Obamacare, while making the easily refuted claim that the President is robbing Medicare of $700 billion or something like that, to support Obamacare.

That's what you get for $1.1 million these days?   Please.  

The "ultimate cheap shot'' against Betty Sutton

THE NATIONAL Republican Congressional Committee (soon to be replaced by  the National
Tea Party Congressional Committee) believes Ohio Rep. Betty Sutton is a closet supporter of the gang that wanted to blow up  that bridge near Cleveland.  It officially challenged her credentials as a law-abiding citizen because she didn't immediately condemn  the plan.  The Columbus Dispatch called the committee's lunacy the "ultimate cheap shot".  It made us regress to Sutton's last congressional campaign during which the Medina County Republican chairman thought it would be best if she simply returned to the kitchen.  But you will doubtless be drenched with more of this palaver in her showdown with Republican Rep. Jim Renacci - both of whom were snugly deposited in the newly-created 16th District,  whose weird boundaries were created by the controlling Republicans to replicate a Salvador Dali painting.

While we're at it, we might mention another Democratic woman, Elizabeth Warren, who is challenging  Republican U.S. Sen.  Scott Brown in Massachusetts.  Her opponents are wondering about how she might have exploited the fact that she is 1/32 Cherokee to advance her career as a minority.  And so the birthers are up and at 'em in the Bay State, insisting that  she doesn't look like a native American.  Here's how they put it:  She couldn't have a drop of Indian blood because she is "blonde, rich, and most of all, a Harvard law professor."

No matter whichever came first, I presume.

Boehner stations troops in Canton area's remap

CONSIDERING THE current decline in property values, what would an entire congressional district be worth these days? $25 million? $509 million ? $2 million? Not even close. For John Boehner's real estate reappraisal team, try a skimpy $210,000. That's what the Timken Company has donated to Republican Rep. Jim Renacci, of the 16th Congressional District (Canton area).

According to media reports, Boehner's aides played a leading role to redraw the district from the earlier proposed map in order to include the Timken Company in the new boundaries. The Plain Dealer reported:

"Tom Whatman, executive director for Team Boehner, the Republican speaker's political team, was making key recommendations on how to configure Ohio's new congressional districts out of public view". His mission, of course, was to create the friendliest possible map for Republicans such as Renacci.

Emails recovered by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, which include the League of Women Voters and a coalition of progressive groups , revealed that the political mapmakers met secretly in a Columbus Hotel to lay out the new maps. The emails contradicted Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder's assurance that the entire process was transparent. And, as we have been told, Batchelder never lies. (But the people who swear to that do lie.)

The smoking gun for this back-room deal came from a Whatman email, in which he thanks the locals for agreeing to the last-minute change in the district's boundaries that now has Timken back in Renacci's district. "Very important to someone very important to us all," he says.

Nothing could be more transparent than those words.

Renacci, former Wadsworth mayor and adminstrator of a group of nursing homes, faces Democratic Rep. Betty Sutton in the new district. A wealthy (millions) conservative, he has become a corporate darling as an enemy of government regulations. With the big investors and the new district map on Renacci's side, Sutton, who has experienced trench warfare in the past, will face another tough race. But I have a feeling that he will, too.

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GOP downgrades jobless for a definition of rape

LET'S SEE. We are about three weeks into the new Congress and, true to their word, the Republicans in the House are diligently upholding the public trust by...what? New programs to create jobs? Naw. If you've heard of any, let me know. Instead, they have taken it upon themselves to rewrite the meaning of rape. Well, a least that was their idea until a heavy wave of criticism from women's groups forced those pregnancy-proof white guys to back off and...what? Not sure. But the new batch of eager Tea Party-burnished GOP freshmen have two years to figure it out before the next election.

We shouldn't be expecting more from the them in their year of religious and political captivity.

Health care reform exuberance is also in play. For example, there was a report in the Plain Dealer's PolitiFact of how our new Republican congressman from the Canton area, Jim Renacci, responded at a public forum when he was questioned by a concerned citizen about his support of repealing the health care reform law.

No problem for him, Renacci said. It was a campaign pledge that he intended to uphold. He also said there was no way that Congress would keep its hands off the cost of Medicare, which he predicted would be reduced by a half-trillion dollars! What he didn't say was that blockbuster would be spread over the next 10 years. PolitiFact corrected him in the story.

As for rape and abortion , issues that a former conservative icon Ronald Reagan , as well as the Bushes, gave no more than lip service, have now taken center stage for the new conservative class. Abortion was at the heart of many who opposed ObamaCare on grounds that it was unconstitutional (without really knowing why). The debate, aided and abetted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and and other conservative Christians, is likely to consume a lot of Congress's time this year and maybe for the next 50 years. Meantime, they haven't gotten to a mess of other things that should move to the front of the bus. Wall Street corruption, gun control, insurance, pharmaceuticals, public employe unions, the environment and immigration.

Well,it's true you can't do everything. Unfortunately, the jobs this crowd has created are upgrades for their own employment.

Ganley campaign insists on brakes for clunkers

THE PLAIN DEALER'S Sabrina Eaton of the paper's Washington Bureau has opened a Pandora's box with today's piece on the business workings of Republican congressional candidates Tom Ganley and Jim Rinacci. While Ganley, the giant auto dealer who is on the ballot in the 13th District, has made his opposition to government programs a staple of his campaign, Eaton noted that his dealership took advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program with the sale of 934 cars worth $20.6 million. Here, the narrative gets a little sticky for Ganley because after the GOP primary, which he is quite likely to win, he will be running against U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, the Democratic congresswoman credited with setting up the clunkers program.

Likewise, Rinacci, a conservative whose many business enterprises include a Chevrolet dealership, sold only 40 cars worth $754.167, Eaton reported. In this context with Ganley, Rinacci's sales could have qualified for a flea market.

It is interesting to hear the negative spin that Ganley's campaign chairman put on the trade-in program.

"The program," Jeff Longstreth told Eaton, "was, at its basic level, an unnecessary intrusion of government into the private business sector," adding that it merely helped car buyers and not the dealers. "It was unnecessary federal spending that is indicative of the current administration's policy of spend, spend, spend."

But as Sutton's campaign manager Julie Sweet replied: "If he is now saying it's a bad program, he's trying to sell you something, and it's not a car."

I doubt that you will see many clunker traders lining up at the dealers' counters to return their ill-gotten machines as their patriotic duty. I also doubt that Sutton will take Ganley at his doleful word on the program by returning her Distinguished Service Award from the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association for her work on the clunkers program.