UA has its very own Dr. Pangloss

When University of Akron President Scott Scarborough announced his plan in July to  trim the school's debt while  cutting 213 jobs, he wanted the cast-aside people that he was not a mean-spirited man.  He said the cuts were "painful"  but he did want to   thank   the severed victims while promising them counseling "to show them the respect and courtesy they deserve." Cool.

He also explained the mid-summer move to the Beacon Journal by saying that he wanted to put the "painful"   upheaval  behind the school before the fall semester. Cool, again.

As shown  in other wobbly steps taken by Scarborough, it revealed his knack for miscalculation in the  moves that have so troubled the campus ever since. Like burning post-shingles itch, they're not going away. (Trust me on this one!)

Nothing that occurred in July and later was "put behind".

 Two scheduled campus protests are on the calendar - the first at the UA Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday, from 9 to noon, in the Student Union.  The Akron Chapter of the American Association of University Professors reported  that a "coalition of groups representing students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the community"  will be face to face with the dormant trustees who have  been conspicuously silent  (except on occasion by the chairman) throughout the nightmare.  Isn't it fair to ask whether UA really needs a board?

The second protest, courtesy of the Akron AAUP,  will attend Scarborough's State of the University address  on Oct 20 in, of all places, E.J. Thomas Hall, the site of  Team Scarborough's wrecking crew. (Time: 1:30)

For this one, I can only imagine that Scarborough's recitation of the goodness of his administration will be inspired by Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, who found good in everything, no matter what.

Anybody for a career opportunity?

WANTED: Servile but reasonably presentable  person to serve as presumptive House Speaker.  Excellent pay, extraordinary medical benefits, personal chauffeur,  free for golf and private interpersonal romps on holidays and weekends.   Experience with gavels preferred.  Need not have congressional experience nor college degree.    Will be expected to travel to Tea Party conventions and other impure Republican  venues. Knowledge of money an absolute priority.  Bibles available upon request.  Must be able to recite Pledge of Allegiance  without prompting.  Working  knowledge of governmental and Planned  Parenthood shutdowns desirable.  Other life skills, including typing  and a preference for bourbon over Scotch, not required. In all Fox News appearances must scorn  Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, gays, welfare queens, illegal immigrants and  Barack Obama. Must be able to identify  Kenya on map.   Applications available through House Freedom Caucus. Supply limited.

One pylon is worth a million words

For those of  us who may long for a few moments enjoying the simple pleasures of life, there are always some things that won't go away, like campus  shootings, Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie.  As President Obama prepared to visit Oregon in a tinder-sensitive environment, Chris Christie had already accused him of "obscene" comments  about guns.  But the embattled New Jersey governor and presidential candidate to nowhere won't take sanity for an answer, as this pointed depiction shows.

Round and round the GOP goes

They appear to be human life forms.  The men wear dark suits, white shirts and ties; the women, fashionably correct apparel.   But if you linger at the sight, it turns out these are illusions.  They are bloody anarchists, hard right Republicans who don't like anybody, or anything,  that doesn't  entirely agree with their  passionate  goals of shutting down an evil government that pays their wages of sin.

The TV scenes reporting Kevin McCarthy's withdrawal as the possible successor as speaker revealed a virtual Republican Party on a clanking merry-go-round with headless horsemen. These are dangerous creatures.  Even more so, however, because they are morons isolated from reality.

As the party shatters, the calliope is deafening.

Would be Mary Taylor could be governor

Gov. Kasich's two-year active political campaign emerging from recycled presidential ambition is apparently having little useful effect in impressing a national audience.  He is hardly an asterisk in the national polls.  Maybe it's something about his curb appeal.

It's largely a media-driven campaign with the national pundits making scant  effort to scratch below the surface of the boastful blue-collar kid whose father, we are forever told,  was a mailman.

Questions arise.  Is he a RINO?  A born-again, will he run out of Biblical references  before he runs out of money.  Did he really  balance a federal budget that was zillions  in the red when he was in Congress?  Is he,  as he told folks in New Hampshire, "not at war with organized labor"? .  This is from the same fellow who collaborated with fallen presidential candidate Scott Walker to restrict public unions.  His Ohio gambit perished at the ballot box by a million votes.

And will he find a way to escape the  charter school scandal in Ohio that he helped create with his disgraced cronies and increased funding? The epic mess is being reported across the land.

Still,  in all of those days when  Ohio State's football team isn't on the field,   will he manage to convince the voter next door that he is really a compassionate Mr. Goodwrench, prayers and all.

It's an environment in which Ohio political writers are reaching for a "what if"  tale of a politcal legacy leading to his princess-in-waiting, Lt.. Gov. Mary Taylor.  I mean, one published report began so speculatively  with, "It's a minor change.  But it could be the first tangible move in what could be a crowded Republican race for governor in 2018. (Italics added)

Two "could be's"  in a single sentence  is  enough evidence of desperate  analysis of "stuff" happening.  We move on with the media speculation:

If Kasich is elected president, or could be not, Taylor has given strong notice that she will not only succeed him to fill out his term, but she also is set on running for the full-term job. She says she's "giving the idea serious serious consideration". But you know how that goes.

Next: That  would be true if Kasich is given a big job in a new Republican administration.

Taylor  says she's a great big Kasich fan and, "I think what's happening here in Ohio can be directly  attributed to him and his leadership.

Obviously she didn't have the charter school stuff in mind at the moment.

Fiorina, once namely Sneed

As some of you may already know, I've long been a student of the Italian language.  Its melodic beauty (except at times in some visits to Sicily)  is seductive.    There are quarter-notes and trilled "r's"  rollng out of every expression.  "You must make it sound musical," an Italian  language teacher often corrected me in his class..

My  savoring of rhythmic Italian syllables  may have had its roots in my dreams as a young man of being a professional musician.

So you can imagine my distress when  I discovered that Carly Fiorina's birth name was
Cara Carleton Sneed,  entirely without the flowery essence of Fiorina.  She  now engages you with the name of her second husband.

Fiorina had a natural glow that was quite preferable to, say, Trump (hurrumph!)  or Bush (evocative of Tush!).

I know something about names.  Mine  gave everyone problems.  There was even  disagreement, and contention,  in my family on how to pronounce it, with my grandmother making it sound French.

Politicians can't afford to extend such impurities.  The late  Akron Sen. Oliver Ocasek's name was tossed about with hard and soft "a's" while his Irish friends could never understand why there wasn't an apostrophe between the "o" and "c".  He couldn't have cared less.  An expansive speaker and tireless worker on education issues, Ollie would be in the thick of assailing the charter school scandal today - with or without the apostrophe.



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Text here, text there - soon an odd Q&A

The University of Akron's leadership team has previewed and withdrawn so many options in its rebranding exercises that even stillborn ideas gravitate to front-page media coverage these days.

Take, for example, the Beacon Journal report on the a bizarre tightly controlled student government forum with President Scott Scarborough  in the Gardner Theatre.  Students were required to text  their questions to a  couple of student leaders who were seated aside Scarborough.  The questions were then forwarded to the boss. That doesn't  even happen at the White House press conferences!

The topic that quickly gained traction was a mere mention by Scarborough that  UA was looking at establishing a K-12 school,  like, say, the University of Chicago's.  But it got no farther.  Scarborough said later the UA College of Education  is  merely exploring the idea  but it  might never happen.

Still, Tuesday's BJ reader saw a commanding Page One headline that said:    UA considers own K-12 school.  

And we're sure that's how Scarborough, a man of action,  would like us to remember another exciting foray by his regime.

About the Chicago plan, which has been operating for nearly two decades.  It's called the  UChicago Charter School and is one of the four integrated units in the Urban Education Institute.  It serves 1900 students as a "pre-K-12th pathway to college"  .

I asked about the cost in a call to the school and was told it was "funded like public schools".

Are you listening David Brennan?

Please.  No more of this talk. Certainly not when charter is part of the conversation.  It could get quite expensive for UA, which already is claiming poverty.  And based on Scarborough's remarks, it's a bridge to nowhere for UA. I would text him about this but I don't know how to do it.  I've never fully caught up with the digital age.

How to destroy a hamburger

Holy Wimpy! Do you see what awful things are  happening to hamburgers these days?

The TV ads hype the  primal sandwich doused with whatever and a mile-high topping of French fries, bacon, avocados, cheese, pasta,  sweet onions, tomatoes and chips.  It is sometimes fitted with seedy grains, veggies, quinoa and I don't know what else.

I grew up with a steady Sunday diet  of raw kibbee,   ground meat patties that my mother proudly served with olive oil and onions. It was a prized entree that some queesy witnesses warned would lead to death from tapeworms by age 25.  Still,  I can't stomach the commercial trickery that buries the pretentious burgers of today.

So I must live with my memory of lunches at Ray's  modest grill in La Porte, Ind.  I worked there in my first   newspaper job.  Ray's hamburgers were pressed on a sizzling (greasy?) grill that formed a crispy coat on both sides.  For that exquisite treat plus a large soda and Ray's boysenberry pie, the tab was less than a dollar, which is all I had in my  pocket anyway. And I could fully savor  the meat  with every bite.

Charters: Shouldn't Angelic Kasich look homeward?

When Gov. Kasich finally settles down in  Ohio from his adopted residence in New Hampshire  - political decency will require it, folks - he will be forced to face an unspeakable charter school scandal with Team Kasich's fingerprints all over it.

The latest ugly chapter was well recorded  by reporter Doug Livingston in today's Beacon Journal. It was prompted by a  $71 million U.S. Department of Education grant to the failed Ohio charter school system. But it now appears the reviews of such national grants were submitted by the very same  school choice hucksters who have a reputation of eliminating poor  scores from the charter test grades to raise the average of their performances.

We're speaking, of course, of David Hansen, the charter-friendly operative at the Ohio Board of Education who resigned after being outed as the guy who wielded the eraser.
Not only that.  Hansen's wife is Beth Hansen, Kasich's former chief of staff who is now his presidential campaign manager.

As Livingston reported,  both Hansens met with Kasich and others  to advance their plans to  entirely convert the Youngstown public schools into a charter system,  a delicate subject in a hot political season.  Beth Hansen told the Plain Dealer that she would rather not discuss it. Nor might  Kasich, a reverential supporter of charters.

For a long time, it hasn't been a secret that the entire charter system is well protected  by the state's two top managers, David Brennan's White Hat Management and Bill Lager's Altair Learning based in Columbus.

Together,  they have been enriched with $1 billion in taxpayer money.  That arrives via their control over their "investments" in Republican  politicians  who form the pro-charter chorus in the legislature without much prodding.    Brennan, well known for his Koch-like financial contributions to sustaining his GOP causes,  once even wrote to lawmakers to remind them of his purse.

Other recipients include Columbus Republican Congressman Pat Tiberi, and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman , both of whom also endorsed the federal  grant to the Ohio system.  As usual,  Portman toyed with semantics.  His spokesperson told the Beacon Journal that the senator didn't really endorse the grant  application but  merely asked that it be "considered".  Go figure.

So Hooray for Congressman Tim, Ryan, the Youngstown  Democrat, for raising hell about the grant system's careless approval of porous applications, saying he was suspicious of what came down at the federal level.  .

But Kasich campaign spokesman Rob Nichols circled the wagons  around the Hansens, contending he could explain everything about the Youngstown meeting.  "They [Hansens]  try to leave work at the office," he said.  "So it would be unlikely that it came up."

For that nugget  of wisdom,  I cannot resist recognizing Nichols for the coveted  Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award.  (GALL).

Wordsmith McCarthy's untrustable dictionary

It was not a good week for words in the political arena.   Let me show you:

Kevin McCarthy, a minor league prospect to succeed Speaker John Boehner, described Hillary Clinton as "untrustable".   Even if you grant the  guy from California some rein as a wordsmith,  it may not guarantee him that he will be promoted. Indeed, some of his colleagues in the House prefer to call him a pleasant "hack".

Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson, a soft- voiced hard rightest,  warned New Hampshire voters that America is heading toward Nazi control in the highest places. "If you go back and look at the  history of the world, tyranny and despotism and how it starts,it has a lot to do with control of thought and control of speech," he said.  But he controlled  his own thoughts when he only implied that President Obama was  the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. "I'm not going to go into that," he said. "I think that example is pretty clear."

Jeb! Bush disappointed those who believed he had a chance to be the only sane candidate in the GOP field  because of his dynastic genes, skipped a definitive response on gun control in the wake of the Oregon massacre  by saying, '"We're in difficult times in our country ... Stuff happens".   Jeb!  is new at the presidential campaign game and needs a lot more work on bumper sticker neologisms.

John Kasich, soldiering on and on for an American Miracle  despite his two pct. approval rating in the national polls, mixed his own brand of hard-shell conservatism  with cautious pragmatism as a gun-rights advocate by dodging the issue of gun control:  "Stripping law-abiding citizens of their guns, I just don't know.  I don't believe it would get the job done.  I just don't."  As a Plunderbund writer reported, guv, "Never mind that nobody serious on this issue is suggesting we strip law-abiding citizens of their guns."    Time for Kasich to get back, in his prosaic words,  to "leading America back to prosperity".

Finally, can't ignore the wisdom of Plain Dealer columnist  Kevin O'Brien, a guardian of the Chicken Coop Fringe, who believes the GOP needs to pursue its destiny with a kick -ass conservative to succeed Boehner,  who got too little "rope"  in  defining the GOP's  pit bull playbook.

O'Brien's soaring  recommendations included devout conservative  Rep. Jim Jordan,  the Ohio farm resident who now leads the untrustable GOP's Freedom Caucus - another neologism that connects a pair of mutually exclusive words on Capitol Hill,where dictionaries  are seldom found open..  .