With Bryan Williams, you can go home again

Should anybody be surprised that Bryan Williams has found his way back to the Summit County Board of Elections? All that remains for him to add $18,000 per annum to his lifestyle is the pro forma appointment to the board by Secretary of State Jon Husted.    Nice work if you can get it.  And Williams usually does.  He owes Republican county chairman Alex Arshinkoff, the bell cow of the county party for decades, big time.

You may recall that Williams resigned from the State Board of Education in December after the media started printing the nasty word that he was multitasking as a lobbyist for the non-union Associated Builders and Contractors of Ohio.  That group has a private charter school and there was more than a little notice that he was  aggressively  trying to persuade the board to support the school with your tax money and mine. That, after all, is what lobbyists  do.

There was some heartfelt disappointment about  Williams' departure from the state board.  
The panel's president.  Debe Terhar, a certified Tea Party member, sent her regrets and told him she would keep in touch.

His return to  the Summit board on March 1 will be a reunion  with his old stable where he once served as the board's director via the  good graces of Arshinkoff . Williams also  ran against Mayor Plusquellic  in 2003, losing mightily.  He highlighted his campaign by accusing the Democratic mayor of  corruption (another Arshinkoff theme).  He hissed   declaring that his opponent had generously given a tax break to a friendly company  that filed for  bankrupcy.

There was a problem.  The charge was not only untrue, the company, Qualilty Mold,  was quite healthy and doing business.  Under fire for an egregious error,   Williams ultimately withdrew the charge from his website and apologized.

Now Williams and Arshinkoff will be united again, working in tandem on the board in the interest of the people, or at least some them.   That will more than please the chairman who returned to the board himself under Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted after the previous secretary, Democrat  Jennifer Brunner,   ousted him for being so damn disruptive.

He's back?  $18,000 per annum?    No, we're not surprised.

Terhar's Tea Party Links Overlooked in Media

The media reports I've seen  have overlooked an essential asterisk to Bebe Terhar's denial that she intended her reference to Adolf Hitler to point to President Obama in  her Facebook rant against gun control.  As you probably know by now Ohio Democratic Party leaders have called on Gov. Kasich to fire the president of the Ohio Board of Education.

In the wake of a Columbus Dispatch news story regarding her Facebook post, Terhar denied  that she was comparing Obama to Hitler. Still , as I mentioned in an earlier post, Terhar  has boasted of membership in  several Tea Party groups in southwestern Ohio.  Attacks on Obama with swastikas on placards have been common at Tea Party gatherings.  Could that be where she got the ugly idea that she now dismisses?

The Ninja execution at the state board of education!

GOV. JOHN KASICH'S Ninjas have struck again, this time at public education in a way that should shock every Ohio citizen. Here's how the Columbus Dispatch story began today:

"Empowered by a new presence on the state school board, backers of Gov. John Kasich today forced out Ohio's state superintendent of education."

It wasn't clear why the execution of Deborah Delisle was ruthlessly decreed by Kasich, whose state of mind since the election suggests he is a reckless and self-indulgent disciple of slash-and-burn politics. But we might have a strong clue. After some Kasich-ordered tinkering with the board's membership, she was driven out on a 10-9 vote. That followed an earlier ouster of board president Robin C. Hovis, a Republican, also on a 10-9 vote. And here's the telling clue: Hovis' successor is Debe Terhar, described by the Dispatch as a "Cincinnati Tea Party conservative" who founded one of those every ever-incubating non-profit groups that claim an interest in American history and the Constitution. Terhar has been on the state board two months.

Clearly, folks, you can translate this as a payoff to the Tea Party by a governor who strongly courted its support during the campaign. If not, let him deny it.

At the top, public education in this state is now in the hands of Palinesque Tea Partiers who influenced Kasich's attacks on teachers in his earlier bout with the Ohio Education Association, in public union bargaining and now on the state board of education. His new budget has lifted the lid on charter schools (which cost taxpayers $1.4 billion over the past two years), and doubled voucher programs.

May we next expect a Texas-like assault on textbooks to satisfy Terhar's deep interest in the Constitution and the Revolution?

Ohio's voters and non-voters have created a helluva mess that will become a scandalous chapter in Ohio's modern history.