Arch-enemies vie for Kasich's ear(s)

GOV. KASICH'S IMMINENT appointment of Jim Petro as the new chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents will set up an interesting clash between two political enemies - Petro and Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff. How could that be, you may fairly ask, when both guys handsomely raised money for Kasich in the past election? First, a little history:

The chancellor is a cabinet member who is in the best position to influence the governor on higher educational policy - the biggest gorilla in the room on a matter dear to the heart of state universities: funding. The board was created by the legislature in 1963 at the urging of the late Gov. Rhodes, who was never enthralled by the heavy lifting of details.

The governor, a college dropout himself, wanted to unburden himself of the ebb and flow of higher-education problems and the jostling of educators who would take up his time with things that weren't high on his list of priorities if they extended beyond bricks and mortar. Former Gov. Strickland increased the chancellor's policy-making influence by adding him to his cabinet.

With Petro - former state auditor, former attorney general and unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor - in a sensitive campus role, Kasich will reward two veteran politicians whose paths could angrily cross inasmuch as Arshinkoff has just been handed the job of University of Akron lobbyist by a Columbus lobbying firm. Trust me: Coincidence had nothing to do with it.

About the Petro-Arshinkoff chasm: The Summit chairman had asked then- State Auditor Petro to send his people up to Akron to examine the books of then-County Auditor Jim MCarthy, a Democrat who was in a race with Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart, a Republican, for Summit County executive. (Bear with me: I know it can be confusing. But this was in 2000. )

A bad report on McCarthy, of course, would be a windfall for Robart, Arshinkoff's beneficiary in all of this. It didn't happen. Instead, Petro's auditors gave McCarthy a clean report. Arshinkoff was so outraged that there was nothing to be gained from the audit that he promptly excised Petro from the list of candidates to endorse in the 2006 Republican primary, with his usual rip-and-roar attacks on Petro, adding that he would prefer a Democrat over the attorney general. (I told you this could get complicated!) But being a good party soldier, he said he would endorse Republican Betty Montgomery for governor, and if ill-health forced her out of the race, he would step up to the plate with Ken Blackwell. Bad move. Bad, bad move.

Blackwell was demolished by Democrat Strickland. Oh, did I remember to mention that six years earlier, McCarthy also won in a landslide over Robart?

Forgot to report: Petro had raised money for Kasich as a lawyer in Columbus with Roetzel and Andress, the Akron firm that long served as Arshinkoff's pinata around town. For the rest of the story, you might want pick up a copy of War and Peace.

Back to drinking beer in Wisconsin?

THE THREAT OF poisoned public water supplies has often appeared on any list of potential terrorist attacks on the U.S. But may we now add the Wisconsin Republicans' assault on sanity to their list of mindless initiatives? How about this one, for starters: GOP legislators in both Wisconsin Houses have introduced bills that would repeal a law requiring municipalities to disinfect water supplies because - you already know, I'm sure - it's too expensive. .

If you need a few more details on the lurking danger, in 1993 infected water in Milwaukee was blamed on 104 deaths and 400,000 illnesses. and as ThinkProgress points out, the EPA today attributes 13 pct. of acute gastro-intestinal illnesses to dirty water in U.S. cities that don't disinfect their water supplies.

But as the royalists up there in Badgerland would say: Let them drink Old Milwaukee!

What half of the public doesn't know

IS THERE ANYTHING we can say to the fellow down the street who hasn't been paying any attention to the chaotic state of his world - and ours? I don't even know his name, but I know he's out there, as well as his wife, too. And I have a 50-50 chance of being right about this. That much is clear in the latest poll by Kaiser Health about an epic issue that has a life of its own for half of America: Health care reform.

According to the Kaiser Health survey, only 52 pct. of Americans know that there is still a health-care law on the books. On the other hand 22 pct. believe the Republican House of Representatives repealed the law and 26 pct. aren't sure what's going on and are too preoccupied with the important things in their lives to find out.

Short of some sort of cosmic force control, there seems to be no solution to such indifference. Facts are often hard to come by, but I do know that there's a guy down street who doesn't give a damn.

Pick up the phone, Guv. Guess who's on the other end

COLUMNIST GEORGE WILL has been on an odyssey to herald the new generation of conservative governors that could pass a screen test as, say, a presidential candidate. And he is doing it with extraordinary grammar. I know of no other national pundit who would dare begin a column, as he did today, with the word "Hitherto". But that's George Will for you, ramping up the language to charm those who have no clue about the points that he's trying to make. He's lately added Govs. John Kasich and Scott Walker to his honor roll, going so far as to compare Walker to Ronald Reagan. It's a common Republican desparture point in elevating a current prospect to the Reagan legend.

There are instant benefits for guys like Kasich and Walker. As a national columnist,

Will's often inscrutable insights reach readers - at least those who still find their way to an Op-ed page - from coast to coast. With the columnist's endorsement, they might close ranks on a consensus for the next fellow in the White House. He praises Walker for being "serene in the center of this storm" as the governor sits for an interview beneath a portrait of Ronald Reagan. And later he declares being impressed by Walker's "calm comportment" in this crises.

Will's in-and-out visits to crises spots satisfy his pedantic yearnings to create a medieval America in which only the fittest survive. He's attracted to the modern version of Republican governors these days much as hungry sperm whales use echo location to find their fish.

As for Walker's crisis in attempting to dislocate public employe unions, he attempts to create the silly argument that everything in Wisconsin would be fine if those out-of-state union hacks weren't crossing borders to create havoc. As I've previously noted, his own out- of- state sponsors are the billionaire Koch brothers, whose money has been turning up quite often in political campagns. The Koch front group, Americans for Prosperity, has just bought $342,000 worth of TV and radio ads in Wisconsin asking people to "stand with Walker", while bashing unions and President Obama.

But even Walker's crusade, marked by the religious fervency of a man who is a son of a Baptist minister, can run off the highway in times like these.. A New York blogger, BuffaloBeast, tricked him into a 20-minute phone conversation in which the blogger pretended he was David Koch. During the conversation, Walker openly described his plans to crush the union.

To the credit of George Will's brief but studied assessment of the governor, Walker was serene throughout the phone call.

A Fox in an unreal chicken coop

What' wrong with this picture? In reporting a new USA Today/Gallup poll that showed 61 pct. of Americans supporting collective bargaining and 33 pct. opposing it, the Fox News alchemists managed to mislead the viewer into believing the opposite. It simply labeled the results "Take it Away: favor or oppose"? In Fox's sneaky way of reporting it, 61 pct. of Americans favor taking away collective bargaining. Planet Fox has reached the point where realities are meaningless in it's reach for deceptions for an audience that has no problem with being deceived.

Wisconsin: Union invaders meet the Koch invasion

WATCHING WISCONSIN GOV. Scott Walker complain about out-of-state union officials who are invading Madison to foment the protests was a teachable moment for me. It was then that I learned the distance that this zealous crusader would travel to destroy the back-channel facts in the case. I mean, these unionists were not illegal aliens or anything like that. And if labor sent a thousand out-of-staters, they would still be no match for two out-of-state brothers who influence Walker's every movement: Charles and David Koch, the billionaires (35 times over!) who own Koch Industries.

The Kochs own a lot of stuff, in addition to the pols who are expected to protect it. A shopping list of their possessions are oil refineries, 4,000 miles of pipeline and countless other things from Dixie cups to paper towels. They have an anti-union gorilla-like presence in Wisconsin in the energy field. One study by a research institute at the University of Massachusetts listed Koch Industries as one of the nation's top 10 polluters. These fellows have supported Walker with campaign cash passed through a number of fund-raising channels, including an outfit patriotically called Americans for Prosperity. Among their goals is the elimination of environmental regulations and unions, and only concede no more than minimal services for the needy, reports the New Yorker Magazine.

Any wonder that with a pot-of-gold behind him, the governor is fully confident that he can stare down the protests? Whatever else they might be telling you about Wisconsin's budget deficit, nearly half of which arrived with the governor's pet tax cuts soon after he was seated in January, you can shove it. This is all about union-busting and that will make the brothers Koch quite happy.

Speaking of brothers, what's Sarah Palin talking about when she asks her "fellow union brothers and sisters" to oppose union bosses and fight instead for the "right causes in our great country." Somehow, I can't connect the dots between this multi-millionaire wannabe Big Sister and commoners like union brothers and sisters.

Scott Walker separates protesters from taxpayers

AND A THANK YOU from the heart to the Tea Party's latest shiny new floor sample, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. He enlightened me on who pays taxes and who doesn't. That revelation came from him in the the midst of the troubles in Madison, when he declared that he would not let the protesters "drown out" the taxpayers. Until he made that distinction between the good guys and bad guys, I had wrongly assumed that union members pay taxes, too.

The problem with polls naming best presidents

THE HEADLINE on the POLITICO home page declared:

Americans rate Reagan best president

It then told us of a new Gallup poll that reported 19 pct. of those surveyed - 19 pct. - listed Dutch as their favorite. Lincoln came in second with 14 pct. And my hunch is that a majority of Americans couldn't name many presidents before Reagan of maybe even the first George Bush.

So what's the point?

The Arshinkoff/Kasich axis pays off in grand style

IT WAS A no-brainer, really. I refer to the arrival of Alex Arshinkoff's inheritance of a $120,000 (annual) job as a lobbyist for the University of Akron. The eruptive Summit County Republican chairman doubtless deserved nothing less rewarding after spending nearly a year with his tail wagging behind then-candidate John Kasich. He was hired to focus on UA by a Columbus lobbying firm that was already in the University's lobbying mix, thus satisfying his long ambition to be a somebody on the state political scene. Meanwhile, the public be damned!

So here's to your health and newly acquired wealth, Alex!

But why was there such crouching in a defensive mode to make the deal sound like the ties between between Kasich and Arshinkoff were hardly more than a brief encounter at the office water cooler? The ecstatic chairman insisted that it would be a straight player deal with no shifty add-ons. Telling the Beacon Journal that he expects no favors from the Guv, he added: "I expect to be able to make my case for my client. If they agree, fine. If they don't, fine. That's the way the system is." Oh?

Some of the people around town have a different view of the system. Former Republican State Sen. Kevin Coughlin of Cuyahoga Falls and some other Republicans were hardly impressed by the transaction. "He knows nothing about policy," Coughlin, a longtime adversary of Arshinkoff, said on the phone. "He can't open any doors that a hundred others can't open in Columbus. It's like throwing money down the toilet."

UA board member, Jane Bond, a Democratic appointee, is outraged. She said she had no idea that Arshinkoff was part of the deal when Sean Dunn, head of the Columbus lobbying firm that hired Arshinkoff, presented his plan to the Board. "I first knew of the connection to Alex when I read about it in the paper. His name never came up, because if it had, I would have voted against it. The whole thing is a perversion. This is going to damage us with every constituency in town."

The Beacon Journal's editorial settled on the term, "Influence peddler," in expressing its displeasure over the cozy deal. Could the influence have been assured by the $150,000 that the Arshinkoff Summit GOP Party gave to Kasich during the campaign - a hefty contribution that led all other counties by a mile?

What's going on here? Why the protests over a hiring that would have never drawn such attention if it was anybody but this county chairman?

Arshinkoff's emotional outbursts over the years have been well documented in the media so this isn't the place to revisit the landscape. Rather, the most fitting description of his political journey - often as a self-described victim - that led him to the winner's circle, such as it is, can be compared with what Mitch Miller once said of Frank Sinatra: "Frank had to do his suffering in public, so everyone could see it."

Arshinkoff once described politics to me in the simplest terms: "Politics is all about money." And who better than Alex is around to prove it?

Kasich: The police officer was a what?

OUR NEW huff-and-puff governor, John Kasich, again finds himself in deep do do for his reckless abuse of the English language. A YouTube video has caught him in a Jan. 21 speech to state workers from the Environmental Protection Agency in which he referred to a police officer as an "idiot". Not once, but three times! According to Kasich, the officer ticketed him for passing an emergency vehicle."He's an idiot," Kasich told his audience of the traffic stop that occurred more than three years ago. "We just can't act that way and what people resent are people who are in government who don't treat the client with respect." Client? Huh?

Kasich was still a Lehman Brothers employe at the time of his arrest and doubtless was in his bullish Wall Street mode.

Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said the governor would apologize for his unfortunate choice of words. It appears that Nichols is going to be kept quite busy sweeping up after a governor who has earned a reputation for shouting fire even when the theater is empty.