Murdoch in London: Not having a very good day

THESE HAVE NOT BEEN the best of times for world media colossus Rupert Murdoch. The hacking scandal in London has forced him to regroup with one less newspaper - the scoop-driven tabloid that had been the biggest English-language newspaper in the world. You don't get that way without juicy peekaboos of the rich and the famous. And you don't get shut down by owner Murdoch unless he is in the greatest damage control mode in media history. Few, if any, outside the Murdoch empire are inclined to weep.

The ugly slop that Murdoch's News Corp. is trying to ooze out of specifically centers on the company's News of the World, whose sneaky intrusions reached as high as the country's beloved royalty to various other victims along the way. It now embraces private investigators, politicians, the prime minister , bribed police and anyone else that the paper found useful in titillating its readers. It has been going on for a decade, which shows you the depths of tolerance and benign neglect that some public officials exercised in the paper's behalf.

But it wasn't until the scandal sheet hacked the voicemail of a girl before she was found dead that people started to take the paper's unlawful tactics seriously enough for officials to respond.

Team Murdoch, which presides over Fox News in America, reacted to the perilous news about its gossipy ways to set up funds for potentially explosive law suits that would get quite monstrously costly.(By the way, Media Matters is reporting that the gang at Fox News has largely ignored the nasty cause celebre. Are you surprised? Wouldn't think so.)

Murdoch, his son James and his top editor, Rebekah Brooks have now been asked to appear before Parliament to to explain the paper's bad habits.

The scandal couldn't have come at a worse time for Murdoch as he is deeply engaged in a multibillion dollar takeover of BSkyB, Britain's largest pay TV provider. (Murdock never thinks small.) There is growing disaffection for the deal by Parliament as well as for Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been described as a close friend of the Murdochs. It was Cameron, after all, who hired f0rmer Murdoch editor Andy Coulson, as Cameron's press spokesman. A few days ago Coulson was arrested and charged with, um, "inappropriate' payoffs to some police who were in on the deal.

More damage control: Cameron now stands with those who oppose the Murdoch TV takeover. Makes sense to me, in a survival sort of way

UPDATE: MURDOCH HAS WITHDRAWN HIS $12 BILLION BID TO TAKE OVER BSKYB. You bet I am swept with schadenfreude.

Republican theocracy rising again in Iowa

THE QUESTION WE face, Dear Friends, in the next half-year is not whether the nation will survive the Zombie-like creatures that inhabit the political Right (Wrong?) and close down state governments, but whether we can survive the rampant madness of the Republican presidential candidates heading into the Inquisitorial Iowa caucuses. The Christian Crusaders, on the march for a theocracy, have now elevated homosexuality and same-sex marriage to first place in their dire predictions of how we are all going straight to hell. And when we flinch upon hearing of Morals Police in other countries whose religious insistence leads to unthinkable abuses, let us turn to fanatics like Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum for our wackos.

Having been a political writer and editor for many years, I concede that such reporting would be better satisfied today solely by religious writers prepared to sort the nonsense from the nonsense. We have now reached the point where Santorum, the modern version of Savanarola in a business suit, has gone to public confession to tell us about his wonderful relationship with his wife, if not yet the Iowa Republicans.

Here's what he owned up to:

"I pledged personal fidelity to my wife when I was married to her. And pledged the same, that I would not involve myself in any other relationship with anybody else who is married. So that's a pledge I've taken and I take every single day when I - as a married person and feel very comfortable making that public statement."

Good for you, Rick. But why should anybody but the saints and sinners who will be evaluated in Iowa care, particularly those souls who spend most of their time trying to make ends meet or looking for a job?

Did I mention that Santorum's confession was part of his attack on same-sex marriage in a pledge circulated by an Iowa outfit called the Family Leader. Among the things the Santorum/Bachmann agreed to , if president, were bans on "all forms of pornogrphy and prostitution, infanticide, abortion, and other types of coercion stolen innocence."

Oh, in an article posted by Raw Story, they also promised to appoint conservative judges.

That, of course, would guarantee that the circle would be unbroken.

13 million? Soon we will be talking about big money

13 million...Dollars that is.

Remember that number and paste it on your refrigerator.

13 million.

Add the figure to your song in the shower.

13 million.

Stick it in the beginning, middle and end of your evening vespers.

13 million.

Repeat it to the clerk at the checkout counter.

13 million.

Write it on a blank greeting card to your Republican state senator.

13 million.

Enter it on your Facebook page.

13 million.

Post it on the door of the headquarters of your Republican county chairman.

13 million!!!!

That's the quaint payoff by Team Kasich to a New York consultant to close the deal in cash-poor Ohio on those casinos in Ohio - a deal, which the slickest of governors described as a "win for all involved". However, I would caution you that it was a deal that seems to have involved no sweat equity. Although the figure has been reported in the press many times, it was Brent Larkin's column in today's Plain Dealer that again reminded us of its folly . It was the sort of work, Larkin wrote, "that a bright , well prepared fifth grader could have performed as a homework assignment."

13 million.

Once you move beyond Kasich's boasts about the brutal budget-balancing slashes in the state budget, there's an entirely different universe out there. In Ohio it's known as megacronyism in which no expense is spared to serve the opportunists who show up at the governor's door each day.

Even the casino deal enriched the four casino owners at the state's expense as they were given more than they were prepared to argue for. That, too, brought puffy huzzahs from Kasich. It's how they add two and two to get five on Wall Street, where the governor spent too many impressionable years.

In early Rome, tradition called for honoring military heroes with something called The Triuimph, in which the honorees often in bejeweled robes and fancy headresses were paraded through the streets for two days to the cheers of the citizenry. A few more boastful triumphs by Kasich and the hour will be upon us to watch him paraded through downtown Columbus to the cheers of his personal melange of beneficiaries.

And when one of his friends steps forward to propose a marble statue on the statehouse grounds, there will soon be a statue.

In his own gruff way, Kasich is nothing if he can't boast of phony triumphs - this from the fellow who is trying to convert a small plurality in last November's elections to victory by acclimation.

13 million.

I can't explain it; maybe your Republican county chairman, who is reaping the rewards of being an enabler in Team Kasich, can.

But be sure to mention...

13 million.

P.S I neglected to mention that you can be a charter member of my 13 Million Club. Unlike the schemes of the money-changers in Columbus, this transaction won't cost you a dime.

OSU's goal line stand backfired

PLANET SCARLET AND GRAY is becoming mostly gray these days as the collegiate sports world is sparing few acts of reprisal against the Ohio State Buckeyes. The reaction to the scandalous goal line stand offered by OSU's big shots to escape further punishment for their sins records another ugly chapter in the modern excesses of intercollegiate athletics. For the almighty Buckeye gridiron powerhouse in Columbus, it is now simply the case of the bigger you are, the harder you fall.

The epic began modestly enough by today's porous standards. Some first teamers, including the team's ballyhooed quarterback, were outed for selling off some of their collectibles to a tattoo parlor owner in returned for tattoos. What followed was a frantic goal line stand by the team's iconic freshly-groomed coach, Jim Tressel - a prayerful Mr. Clean - who had been respectfully esteemed as a Michigan beater as well as the way his teams clobbered a lot of other opponents.

It's a messy departure from the standard press box image that has led to player suspensions, reports of Tressel's use of ineligible players and a lot of seesawing by OSU President G. Gordon Gee, who couldn't quite find the proper words to make the issue go away. To make matters worse, OSU agreed to convert the $3.5 million coach's resignation into a normal retirement and drop Gee's avowed plan for a $250,000 fine while setting up a $50,000-plus retirement "bonus" for the besieged coach - the last month of his base pay. .

The current fallout will leave lengthy scars. Last season's winning season, including its Sugar Bowl victory, will be purged from the record books. There there will be other penalties when the NCAA issues its verdict in August. But that may be a good thing. It would be a healthy improvement, not only for Big Daddy OSU, which dominates all of Ohio's collegiate sports, but for other schools where sports have taken over the campus brand, by hook or crook.

That's probably wishing too much. But it's a thought that a few schools may try to live by to avoid the disgrace that attends Scarlet and Gray. How easy it would have been for the OSU front office to escape the worst consequences if Gee, Tressel and their enablers would have honestly taken charge of the situation at the outset instead of trying to run out the clock. After all, real pros don't panic.

Orrin Hatch: The wealthy are being unfairly abused

IF YOU'VE ever been t0 Utah, you would agree that it offers the visitor some dazzling sights like the other-worldly Bryce Canyon. But, alas, it continues to offer us a 77-year-old stiff-collared Republican senator named Orrin Hatch who carefully chooses his words with tweezers. He's also a conservative's conservative who never met a billionaire that he didn't like (Nor a TV camera, but that's another story). His latest foray into the twilight zone of taxes asserts that the upper 1 percent of wealthy taxpayers are getting screwed by paying 38 pct. of the total federal income tax. On the other hand, he believes that the poor ought to pay more to help us balance the budget. In his view, expressed on the Senate floor, the poor and middle class get a generous benefit from Social Security while ''the top 1 percent of the so-called wealthy pay 38 pct of the income tax."

So-called???? Until now, I and a lot of other folks had figured millionaires and billionaires to be unequivocally wealthy without wondering why anybody would decide to qualify it.

Correct me, but the reason the high rollers pay a larger volume of the total is that they make more money than people standing in line for employment today. But it's easy to dismiss the fellow for standing up for his crowd. He's been wrong before. None other than Justice Clarence Thomas has noted that it was Hatch who was responsible for his appointment to the bench.

Mike Williams: a 40-point mayoral campaign!

MICHAEL WILLIAMS' 40-point litany aimed at Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic doesn't quite match Martin Luther's 95 theses. But 40? It has to be some kind of record for a mayoral contest. And when you reach that far for an opening salvo against your opponent it suggests that you're hoping that at least a couple of them will stick as the race moves on through the heat of summer to the Sept. 13 Democratic primary.

Still, for all of the ground it covered, the Big 40 offered no surprises. Williams built his case on what the mayor's is opponents have been saying for years while taking a swipe at Plusquellic's well-known differences with the leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police. But Williams already seems assured of getting those leaders' support without emphasizing that as mayor you will be kinder to cops. It didn't work as a wedge issue against Plusquellic in the failed recall campaign against him.

In 2011, with much of world struggling to survive dismal economic numbers, there is really only one issue in a campaign within the boundaries, in this instance, of Akron, Oh. It is the troubling employment numbers. But here again, the city 's challenge is the same as in every city in America. Rhetoric won't solve the problem. So I was particularly interested to find Williams again fussing over Plusquellic's well- recorded and reported travels beyond Akron. (I'm sure the mayor will have much to say about the benefits of seeking new investors from abroad - even, for Heaven's sake, Finland! - when you are competing with every other city in the country to lure jobs to your hometown.)

Williams suggests that a mayor's inescapable noble obligation is to have a strong presence in the "neighborhoods" - whatever that's supposed to mean. But neighborhoods don't produce many jobs. Luring fresh money from outside of the community does produce the jobs that benefit the citizenry in all of the neighborhoods. All of which means: No mayor can dedicate his or her career to being a stay-at-home. Not in 2011, nor forevermore.

Now, about the other 39 points, I may save them for a rainy day.

test.

Independence Day: Religion, parades, politics

Independence Day weekend notes:

We read that the high priestess of the Tea Party was fully occupied with her business at hand: Speaking from her space station high above the usual political crowd, Michele Bachmann soared into the pages of the Biblical Chronicles as she urged the worshippers at two evangelical churches in Iowa to get right with the Lord . According to the Des Moines Register, Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate, drove home her message with her scriptural route to salvation for America. She assured her audience that "if we do as Chronicles tells us, if we humble ourselves, and pray and confess our sins, and turn away from our wicked ways, and ask an almighty God to come and protect us and fight the battle for us, we know from his word, his promise is sure. He will come. He will heal our land. And we will have a new day."

Tall order, even for God.

Meanwhile, we also have read that Michele's husband, Marcus, who refers to himself as her "strategist', operates a Christian counseling service in Minnesota largely directed at making homesexuals "ungay". Indeed, he believes that gays are ...well here's exactly how he has put it:

'We have to understand: barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined.''

The quadrennial tent revivals in Iowa, otherwise known as the Republican caucuses, can't come soon enough.

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We spent some time as spectators Monday at the annual Fairlawn Fourth of July Parade. It is an annual Tootsie Roll shower and horn honking blast, the latter exercise as a means to liven up the pageant. I'm a sucker for Sousa marches but this parade has only one marching band in a mile of firetrucks, classic cars, politicians, martial arts and landscaping promoters. Well, the kids got pocketfuls of candy and loved it.

One surprising entry was Michael Williams, Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic's chief adversary in the Democratic primary. It isn't every day that a candidate in one city tries win favor in one of the suburbs. Meantime, Plusquellic was at Lock 3's big Fourth of July rib festival to introduce the Akron Symphony Orchestra performance and later the fireworks. It's where I should have been to hear the missing Sousa marches.

* ********

Less surprising in the series of weekend events was the unanimous nomination of Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff to the Board of Elections - a seat he had held before he was unceremoniously thrown out by former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. When he is reappointed by Jon Husted, Brunner's Republican successor - not IF - he will succeed Brian Daley, Arshinkoff's early choice to keep the seat warm until the boss was able to return with the changing of the guard in Columbus. But as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. After his nomination on Saturday, Arshinkoff was full of humility to return to doing "the people's work," as he described it, and spent the rest of the time slamming board member Wayne Jones, the county Democratic chairman. Here we go!

Ohio lawmaker: the Photo ID of Viagra man

OK, FOLKS, what we have here is still one more apologetic penitent who was arrested back in April while he was on a toot in Indiana. In his other life he is State Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, a Cincinnati area Republican who is a sponsor of the Photo ID bill that, it says here, would be a firewall against voter fraud in Ohio. But on the night of his arrest by an Indiana state trooper, according to a report by Talking Points Memo, the family values-conscious pol (wife, three kids, Zorba's "whole catastrophe") was charged with drunk driving after failing three field sobriety tests.

There's more. The cops noted that he had a 26-year-old woman in the car and it wasn't because her car broke down and she needed a ride. She reportedly had emerged from a nearby strip club. He had Viagra in the car and , a later test revealed, in his system.

Remorseful, Mecklenborg did what these guys always do on cue.. He apologized and said he had caused "great hurt" to his family as well as his loyal constituents. But maybe we should forgive him. With or without Viagra, he is merely intent, in his oddly noble way, on protecting the public interest from the handful of slippery folks who try to vote twice in an election.

However, if he succeeds in that mission, , do you think the above photo will show up on his own ID card?

Minnesota: a state in a state of chaos

JUST ANOTHER day of political infamy.

This one shut down the government in Minnesota as Republicans again drew a line in the concrete separating reality and taxes. But what are the anti-taxers to do when it is their only ideological weapon to prove their worth as pathetic single-passion political leaders?

Meantime:

Every summer camper in a state park was forced to pack up and leave as the parks closed.

All highway construction projects were abruptly shut down, laying off a lot of people and suspending their wages.

Twenty thousand state workers were laid off.

The state's hotline for senior citizens, which assisted 30,00 people last year, was turned off.

There was dislocation and instability throughout the state.

The Republican-controlled legislature rejected Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton's proposal to raise taxes on the state's top one percent of the wealthy. The St. Paul Pioneer Press noted that it would have only affected Minnesota's 7,700 millionaires. They won't be expected to miss a single meal during this chaos.

And unsurprisingly, the presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, the former governor, showed up to stand tall with his GOP brethren in this hour of political depravity as the lights were turned off on social services that were created for humane reasons.

The Republicans are flashing sharp swords in their anti-tax romp. Eventually they may be forced to fall on them.

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Kasich's boast of "new day" arrives with an asterisk

ON SOME DAYS, the newspaper headlines offer the best insight into Gov. Kasich's hoopla over his no-new-taxes state budget and the realities of trying, say, to get a college education in Ohio. At the top of the Plain Dealer 's front page, the headline declared:

Kasich signs $112 billion budget, marking a 'new way and a new day'

Settle down, guv. It's not a new day for everyone. Here's what the front page of the Beacon Journal told us on the same day:

KSU to increase fall tuition 3.5%

The story cited "declining" revenue from the state as a reason for the increase. That has been the old way of paying the bills.

As rising tuition at state schools has steadily increased, I have frequently asked, without getting a reasonable answer, why a tuition increase isn't a new tax on students. To broaden that question, with drastic cuts in state assistance to school districts and local government ($2 billion) in the Kasich budget, we will doubtless find local leaders across the state seeking new revenue (taxes!) to pay for the services that people not only need, but want.

When you boast of "a new way and a new day", guv, what am I missing in the translation?