Batchelder: Sadly,the speaker has spoken

No matter how you spin them, these have not been the best of times for Ohio House  Speaker William Batchelder, although you would not know it by the grinning warrior's self-approval rating.  As you may have read, the veteran Repubican pol has taken it upon himself to stonewall  Gov. Kasich's (also a  Republican) proposal to expand medicaid  under Obamacare.

On Sunday, to continue a narrative that has taken hold  since Kasich announced his  budget, the Plain Dealer's two op-ed  political columnists lathered Batchelder's untidy obstruction to the boss in the governor's office.

Wrote Brent Larkin:  "Once again , House Speaker Bill Batchelder played Team Kasich for fools.  In terms of parceling out blame for what happened, Batchelder deserves a ton of it."

Under the headline "Hypocrisy drives House Republicans' opposition to expansion", columnist Thomas Suddes noted that 88 of the 99 House members have taxpayer supported medical insurance, but  "won't let the poor have it, too".
He added:  "Whether Batchelder , who could get Ronald Reagan on the phone, remains 100 pct. in Kasich's corner, is slyly bucking him via proxies, or , as Batchelder can, is out-scheming Machiavelli to vex 'wingers, are open questions."

The wingers, of course, are Tea Party-incarcerated House Republicans who will be up for reelection in 2014.  We suggest Hannibal Lecter is a better model of The Speaker.

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.

Boehner's obtuse view of Ohio's stimulus

RIGHT OR WRONG, John Boehner, the House Republicans' darkly loquacious mouthpiece, should qualify for a citation for partisan crabbiness. Most recently, he unloaded on President Obama's stimulus plans in Ohio, complaining on Fox News that it has been essentially a bust. He said he saw no evidence of anything - anything - happening on the upside . But when he was taken to task by critics for being unaware of such projects already under way in the state, he retreated to Plan B: He said, well, the process has been "absurdly slow." Right. By now the five-month-old plan should have put a chicken in every pot and stocked Lake Erie with gourmet lobsters. And added a domed stadium for every town with more than 25,000 sports fans.

Boehner should have quit carping when he was behind. As Joan Mazzolini pointed out in the Plain Dealer, the Ohio Department of Transportation has approved about $84 million in road and bridge projects with stimulus money , which is also at the heart of new programs to rescue indigent mothers and children from Medicaid cuts. To reverse an old saying, what Boehner doesn't know about his home state is hurting his image. At least what's left of it.