DeWine:a few fake cops will do for anti-Pepper flier

What have we here? Another DeWine Comedy?

Plunderbund is reporting a good cop/bad cop scam in Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine's staged response to his Democratic opponent's endorsement by the Fraternal Order of Police.  But there's a problem:  The "good" cops appearing in a DeWine flier are fakes.

The piece is a paste-up mess.   First, in a hasty attempt to discredit the FOP endorsement of David Pepper,  it pictured uniformed cops, ostensibly subliminally supporting DeWine,  and accused Pepper of firing "85+ FOP members"  as a Hamilton County Commissioner.

But as Plunderbund discovered, the "cops" in the campaign flier were actors drawn from    an online stock photo company batch  and not  from the real  cops in the FOP!

As for the "firing" thing, Plunderbund reported that as a commissioner in 2007, Pepper tried to soften the blow of state budgetary cuts by supporting a small tax increase to cover the effects on security forces.  But it noted  DeWine's son Pat actively opposed the tax,  forcing layoffs.

I would think the flier  would at least merit a tsk or two from those editorial writers who cling to the notion that DeWine is a Goody Two-Shoes.

The ABJ: Then, now, and later?

The muted  buzz from the third floor of the Beacon Journal is that the absentee Canadian owner could move it to smaller quarters within  a year - or sooner if it can find a buyer for the proudly towered edifice.

"It's like a  mausoleum," a reporter told  me a few days ago, confirming melancholy reports that have drifted out from others of the emptiness of the place that boasts high up on its front page of being "Informing. Engaging. Essential."

Mausoleum is not an exaggeration.   My source ruefully noted that the third floor is now the home of the news operation, advertising and circulation.  The second floor and mezzanine are vacant.  The first floor has only a guard station and a modest public service counter.  The paper is printed out of town.

The new building rose on the site of the razed Music Hall at 44. E. Exchange St. in the summer of 1930 to accommodate the Times-Press .  In 1938, the owner, Scripps-Howard,  sold it  to John S. Knight's publishing company  and there the building  has remained in powerful hands ever since.

When I arrived at the paper from Columbus in 1967 I was swept up by the lively environment of a  big noisy staff, the endless clattering of teletype  machines (news never stops) and the imposing figure of Jack Knight who often circulated in the news room from his corner office.

I had showed up at my desk with my right hand heavily bandaged from a serious cut suffered in a temper tantrum when  I slammed my fist against a jammed garage door.

Knight stopped short in his rounds, walked over to my desk and said:" I'm Jack Knight  What happened to your hand."

When I told him, he replied:  "Better be more csreful the next time," and walked away.

My years at the paper were more than rewarding.  Neither Knight nor  Ben Maidenburg, the feisty conservative editor who hired me after a contentious sit-down lunch, interfered with my political reporting (Ben merely sulked) , even though we came from different points on the political dial.  Working for these bosses, there was always the respectful sense of belonging to a professional operation.

But as the years passed, new store-trained editors arrived from distant sites  with strange ideas of newspaper vibrancy. Much of it came down to tinkered changes,which are now reflected in many mainstream papers .  No longer was it  the workplace of Knight's personal  family but rather an office  where you showed up at your desk, did the best that you could under the circumstances and prepared to move on.

The internal cohesion and driven competitiveness with other papers  broke apart with hiring freezes,  scrimping and catch-as-catch-can reporting.  Good people left, too many to the Plain Dealer - an exodus to the paper up the road that would have been treason in earlier times.   All that will be left of the soaring Knight legacy will vanish when they turn out the lights at 44 E. Exchange and move on, too.

Re-posted from Plunderbund

Lighter Side: Boehner’s Secret Plan To Silence His Critics

on July 26, 2014 by Abe

By the light of the silvery moon, John Boehner is said to have secretly hatched a plan to deflect growing criticism that his lawsuit against President Obama was costing taxpayers millions of dollars. The Republican Speaker, who presides over a GOP House caucus that has no moving parts, reportedly will cut the pay of court stenos and bailiffs 50 pct. and will pay the janitors nothing. Party insiders say he will announce his bold plan in his keynote speech at an event honoring Ayn Rand at the Koch Brothers’ tax-free private estate on one of their French Alps.

From Alex, a pledge to tutor Bryan Williams

 Summit County Republicans must be feeling  a lot more secure about the vitality of their party now that their chairman, Alex Arshinkoff, has assured them that he will personally tutor  the new kid on the block who will be presiding over the party's  executive committee.

Well, not exactly a new kid is Bryan Williams,  who seems to have never   been  more than a phone call away from one political job after another.  But it sure sounded that way when Arshinkoff, no more than 12 years Williams' senior, told the Beacon Journal he fully expected his protege to  "do fine" in the new committee position, to which he was elected last week.  Unanimously, of  course.

"I'll work with Bryan for four to six years," Arshinkoff breezily told the paper.  "Let him learn the ropes.  He'll be good chairman."  (Four to six years? He's not going to med school,  folks. )

The time frame for Williams' OJT  was fertile in telling us something about Arshinkoff's own future as the party chair, which he has tenaciously held for 36 years while seeming   like so many more. Six more years with the title would place him at age 65, a time to retire.  Maybe.

Meantime, Williams, with the boss's powerful blessing, is a fellow who can't lose these days. You may recall he caused quite a stir when he resigned from the State Board of Education after the ABJ revealed in December 2013  a conflict of interest in which he was also wearing the lobbyist's hat of a client group that,  among other things,  ran a vocational charter school.  He also sits on the Summit County Board of Elections.  Republicans tell me that he  is the heir-apparent to the party's chairmanship when Alex retires in the next millennium.

Plenty of time for Williams to learn the ropes, don't you think?

By the way, what exactly do executive committee chairmen do?

David Brennan’s Law Firm Makes Millions From DeWine Contract, Circumvents Campaign Finance Limits by Joseph on July 25, 2014 · 1 Comment

This is part of story by Joseph on Plunderbund  You can read the rest on Plunderbund...

David Brennan’s Law Firm Makes Millions From DeWine Contract, Circumvents Campaign Finance Limits

by Joseph on July 25, 2014 · 1 Comment

Yesterday we wrote about the BWC settlement and how David Brennan’s law firm, Brennan, Manna & Diamond, had been paid over $4.5 Million so far to handle the case.   The unbid contract was awarded to Brennan by Mike DeWine, who went to controlling board multiple times to get approval for  the 11 payments ranging from $65,000 to $700,000 over a three year period.

And if we’ve learned anything from the ever-growing pay to play scandalinvolving AG’s office, law firms don’t get huge unbid contracts from DeWine unless they are huge campaign donors.   Brennan, Manna & Diamond are no exception.   In Ohio, lawyers and firms seeking work from the state can’t donate more than $1,000 to a candidate.  To circumvent these limits, lawyers instead donate money to ORP or to the Summit County Republican Part where long-time DeWine friend Alex Arshinkoff, the party’s chairman, funnels the cash right back to DeWine’s campaign.

Campaign finance reports show that 17 lawyers from Brennan’s firm have given a total of $149,500 to the Ohio Republican Party’s State Candidate and Execute Committee Funds, and to the Summit County Republican Party’s State Candidate Fund since 2010.    The Summit County GOP, under Arshinkoff, has moved over $400,000 to DeWine’s campaign in that same time period.    The Ohio Republican Party has been doing the exact same thing.

The average yearly donation from lawyers at Brennan’s firm is about $4,700, well over the $1,000 limit for campaigns, with large donors like Anthony S. Manna giving up to $12,000 in a single year.

With DeWine, geographic handouts are critical

When the late Chuck Noll, the iconic coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers,  was once asked   why he called for an onside kick  that had failed in the team's loss, he crisply replied that winning football games do not depend on geography.

Ah, but Atty. General Mike DeWine,whose trained seals are in a defensive mode these days, do think geography is quite important in awarding debt collection work to companies with little or no experience in return for generous campaign contributions.

The AG's spokesman, Dan Tierney, put it in a way that only a few people could understand  by saying the winners of the lucrative debt collection business were picked on the basis of  "skills and geographic diversity," the Associated Press reported.

That odd explanation  described how DeWine's office chose Hudson businessman Pete  Spitalieri even though his newly formed company had no experience in such  work. The  only geographic relevance we could see in this mutated pay-to-play episode was Spitalieri's proximity to Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who opened doors to DeWine's office to close the deal.  

And we thought elephants could tolerate heat...

When President Truman asserted that "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" he could have been thinking of politicians like the current brand of Republicans.  We spotted this timely cartoon in National Memo that makes the point:

Ray Kapper, remarkable at 78

 Ray Kapper will have a birthday tomorrow.  No. 78.  You wonder how this remarkable guy will spend the special day.

Sitting across from him at lunch the other day, I had to ask myself how he has survived a couple of heart surgeries, a ripped ankle and doubtless  more common  infirmities to arrive in enthusiastic  condition to talk about,  among other things,  his work with First Tee, the youth development program with an injection of golf.

When I asked him later about this title, he paused on the phone and responded with a trickle of humor: "Godfather ...I like to stay behind the scene."  Or something like that.

Ray is an old-school politician who would be the first to admit that he doesn't have a firm grip on the English language.  More like a Damon Runyon character.  But he's been damned successful with an elegant watch and Cadillac because whatever he tries in life, it's with a full burst of vitality. He has what a lot of politicians don't have: a firm grip on whatever endeavor he's engaged in.

Democrat, city councilman, unsuccessful mayoral candidate (which left a bruise on his soul), Akron service director.  The latter title, more than one witness will tell you, added up to him being the best service director the city has ever known..

A lasting memory from my reporting days:  I walked into his office at City Hall after a heavy overnight snow storm. He had been up all night  and was now on the phone to one of his guys with unmistakable commands.

"I want those streets cleared as quickly as possible," he demanded.  "People have to get  to work this morning.  Got that?"

Don't get me wrong.  Ray and I have had our differences, none of them lasting.  But I never questioned his commitment to a better city.

The reason for the lunch?  A couple of months ago I had met him at a political event.  Hadn't seen him for awhile.  "We have to go to lunch," he said. '"I'll call you."

You hear that kind of casual promise quite often from a lot of people you never hear from again.

Weeks passed.  One evening our phone rang.  It was Ray.  He said he had not forgotten that we would share lunch.  He felt a  little guilty about waiting so long to call.  But he had made a promise that he didn't want to break.  That's Ray.

I, of course, accepted the invitation.  Like the old days. Besides, who, after all,  would dare  turn down a Godfather?

For the 78th time, Ray, Happy Birthday.
.



.

With Team DeWine, experience hardly matters

Didn't get into the Arshinkoff/Spitalieri/DeWine Bermuda Triangle in preceding post, saving the best for last. In assessing the Ohio attorney  general's magical powers of choosing the ablest private  firms for his collections agency,  legal experience can be trumped by political contributions.

As the Dayton Daily News reported, a veteran debt collections agency that had worked  with five previous attorneys general was bypassed in the awarding of lucrative work to a company that was formed only two days before DeWine set out to take care of his contributors. He chose, instead, CELCO, bossed by Pete Spitalieri, the Hudson guy who was channeled into DeWine's  world by Summit County Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who has long enjoyed Spitalieri's generous contributions to Team Arshinkoff ($23,000).

That ain't the end of this, Folks.  The  Daily News reported that  CELCO's  proposal to win the job  "acknowledged the company had no experience handling collections accounts.''

Got that? Unqualified.

Although DeWine has engaged in mental jujitsu to dodge the issue, one of his spokesman said the winning firm was determined by "points" assigned to each supplicant.   With Arshinkoff doubtless adding them up on his special pocket calculator.

Dayton Daily News: Arshinkoff a pay-to-play DeWine figure

The Dayton Daily News investigative  report on Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine's  elaborate campaign fund-raising scheme widened the narrative of the AG's  money machine by mentioning Summit County Republican chairman and lobbyist  Alex Arshinkoff as one of the varsity enablers. Who knew?

Still, it shouldn't surprise anyone.  Arshinkoff has long - and I mean long - prided himself in his ability to  lay piles of campaign money at the doorstep of this GOP pol or that one. The rule of politics Alex once breezily said, "is all about money."  He so impressed DeWine  that he once served as  the AG's  liaison  in northern Ohio .

Did I say lobbyist?  How about $10,000 a month  representing the University of Akron to Gov. Kasich?

In her telling report, the paper's prize winning investigative reporter Laura A. Bischoff
wrote that DeWine, despite his denials, has been  "actively  involved" in the lucrative debt-collection process in which special counsel appointees could pocket princely sums from their work with hundreds of thousands of dollars returned to his political coffers.

She wrote:  "A review  of his calendar shows  he has met routinely  with debt collection attorneys, vendors and their lobbyists, many of them with close ties to DeWine's political  operation."

How close?  Bischoff disclosed  this untidy plot device in which DeWine emailed top aides  on Feb. 20, 2011:

 "Please call Debbie Walsh in Alex arishnikoff (sic) office.  He wants to bring in Pete spiteleri (sic) ...The issue is collections.  So figure out who needs to be in the meeting."

Spitalieri is is a well-connected Hudson businessman, Republican contributor  and Arshinkoff's close friend.  They didn't plan to play ring-around-the-rosie at the meeting.

"In his first 16 months in office," Bischoff wrote,"DeWine met four time with Arshinkoff and Spitalieri  in his office, lunched with the two men at Spitalieri's property in Hudson and held a conference call with them, according to DeWine' work calendar.  DeWine said he doesn't recall meeting that many times with Spitalieri..."

Bischoff told me there was no point in calling Arshinkoff.  "He hasn't returned  any of my calls in more than 10 years,"  she said.

In a campaign year, this story will grow.   But in the event that the Beacon Journal editorial writers might possibly read it, will  they hesitate in damning DeWine's opponent, Democrat David Pepper, for raising pay-to play questions?

DeWine ministry: Faithful to the AG's mission!

Re-posted from Plunderbund (Updated) 



When I think of Mike DeWine, I think of God-given goodness.

(Bear with me, folks.)

When I think of Mike DeWine, the over-achieving Republican attorney general of Ohio, I think of random acts of kindness, of rainbows, of the morning dew glistening in the break of day, of the yellow brick road of Oz, of....

At least , that's what Mike DeWine wants me to think. But he's been around long enough for me to have second thoughts, that his political career invokes something much less warmly engaging than his current public mythiness despite friendly editorial embraces from  Ohio's  mainstream media that levitate him. (See update below)

A few days ago, for example, the papers reported another DeWine foray into the private lives of same-sex married couples.  He wants to disrupt their bonds, challenging (with a 41-page brief) the  ruling by a federal judge that Ohio's law banning such marriages is unconstitutional.

So much, then, for random acts of kindness.

For DeWine, his further quest for  Biblical  correctness was hardly terra incognita.  His insistence on installing his own ministry in the AG's office has been widely reported.  He has joined a group of like-minded attorneys general in challenging employer-covered contraceptive insurance  under the Affordable Care Act.  Not a day passes that Mike isn't  out in the middle of the trench warfare that has been consistent with his pledge since he ran for the office to rid satanic  Obamacare  from the vanishing soul of America.

Consistent?

So consistently wrong  has his political intuition  been that he blindsided Mitt Romney by flip-flopping his endorsement of Mitt to his theocratic pew mate and perennial presidential candidate, Rick Santorum. (Some power couple!)  DeWine's  betrayal of Romney was obviously driven by his erring conclusion that Santorum would win the Ohio primary.  He didn't. No sharing the winner's circle  for DeWine, who was thought to have dreams of a promotion  to U.S. attorney general.

So much for rainbows.

You should also note that DeWine's ministerial life  includes a stint of teaching  a government course at Cedarville University, an evangelical Baptist  school in southwestern Ohio that, among other things, allows only women to teach Bible classes to  female students,  as Biblically inspired. It also has had a number of skirmishes with faculty over faith-based issues.   .

 You have to put some of his odd behavior in the context of his landslide defeat by a liberal  Democratic congressman, Sherrod Brown, who evicted Mike from the U.S. Senate with nearly 56 pct. of the vote in 2006. The AG must still feel the pain.

Meanwhile, DeWine  is now being accused by his Democratic opponent this year,  David Pepper, of  pay-to-play tactics by awarding lucrative state legal business to law firms that just happen to channel money into his campaign  treasury.

DeWine's apologists insist that there's no connection.  But the practice is and has been quite common by AGs over the years, so why deny it?.

So much for the yellow brick road.

So much for goodness.

So much for  the wholesome commitment to public service by our attorney general.


UPDATE:  In Dr.Phil tones, the Beacon Journal on Sunday editorially offered DeWine some feathery-friendly advice to "help himself from further questioning"  about his management of campaign contributions from law firms that are awarded business by his office.  The paper displayed some concern that a lingering issue  - of which the AG says he knows nothing - could be an "important opportunity" for him to "show the leadership" that he has so often displayed on other issues. (Leadership?  Vigorous opposition to same-sex marriages?  Demonic opposition from Day One to Obamacare?  Both of these occupy much of his time these days.)

The BJ editorial page has often had a soft spot for DeWine and just recently bedeviled DeWine's Democratic opponent, David Pepper, for complaining about the AG's backlog of rape kit tests.

The paper recommended a better paper trail on special counsel work for the AG, a sort of how-to on preserving his otherwise goodly career.  No further questioning here.

Rumor: Issa may Subpoena Derek Jeter next

Re-posted from Plunderbund 


Rep. Darrell Issa, America's grim subpoena king, apparently has decided that his pool of political targets is shrinking beyond recovery. He is said to be despairing, one insider said, because Darrell "loves to question famous people".  Indeed, there are now  whispers in the his ranks that Issa, an unrequited  madman really, may turn to sports for his next batch of subpoenas.

 Topping the list is Derek Jeter.  Issa reportedly wants to  question the Yankee star about the legitimacy of the infield fly rule, which the congressman considers just one more burdensome  regulation.  Jeter shrugged off the report, saying the rule is clearly  nonpartisan.  He also said he's never heard of Issa, who is in the Subpoena Hall of Fame for issuing a record 96 subpoenas since becoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in 2011.

Louie calls for battleships on the Rio Grande

Comparing the "invasion" of children  across the Texas border to D-Day, Rep Louie Gohmert  says we should use whatever force necessary to turn the kids back.     The Texas Republican, whose long record of linguistic rub-a-dubs would rank him over Yogi Berra, even suggests that we use "troops and warships".  Fortunately, Louie has never heard of tactical nukes. But he's still evolving.  Besides,wasn't our side the invader on D-Day?

Anybody want to answer this?

Who can explain to me how Republican social conservatives abusively assail abortion on one hand while demanding that thousands of youngsters who cross the border at risk to their lives should be sent back?   Anybody?

The third good thing to occur in Cleveland

If, as the saying goes, good things come in threes,  watch for one more good thing to happen in Cleveland. There's the Republican National Convention.  And in case you missed it,  LeBron James is returning.

The third? My hunch is that Johnny Manziel Football will tell the Plain  Dealer that he will spend the next four weekends reading poetry to Cub Scouts. (You heard it here first!)

ObamaScare to be featured at GOP convention

In August 2013, I blogged on Grumpy Abe and Plunderbund that the 2016
Republican National Convention would be in Disney World.   The rationale seemed obvious:  The Republicans wanted a comfort zone for the many clowns in their party.

But as we learned the past week, my predictions are hardly foolproof. Soon after the party announced that it was going to Cleveland instead, I called a source at the RNC headquarters in Washington, known only  by his  code name of Whirlybird, and asked why the party would turn down such a friendly place as Tampa.

"Obama." he said, emphatically.   "Cleveland is overrun by Democrats.  If anything should happen to get negative headlines during the convention, Boehner will have the mike, the stage and the audience to blame it all on the president.  We're prepared to call it ObamaScare in the rise of Art Modell,  Dennis Kucinich and even Asian carp.  After careful deliberation, we couldn't think of a better place than Cleveland  for demonstrating to the world why Democrat Obama should be impeached."

GOP convention in Cleveland? Credit Democrat FitzGerald

Re-Posted from Plunderbund 



Days in Northern Ohio have become much livelier in the heat of summer.  The past week or so, for example, has produced three tornadic events:  A real tornado in Medina County, LeBron James' epic decision to return to the Cavaliers,  and, of course, the Republican eruptive choice of Cleveland for its 2016 national convention.

So far, the GOP hasn't found a way to blame the tornado nor LeBron's flight from Florida - a key battleground state - on President Obama.   But Marco Rubio is doubtless still working on it  in James' case, including it in a new immigration reform package that will ship him back to Miami in cuffs.

The most interesting  response, however, is how the mainstream media  virtually ignored Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic candidate for governor, in the symbiotic local effort to  lure all of those Republicans to the oft-maligned city on the lake.  The hometown paper, with one major exception, handed out huzzahs for the efforts by the convention bureau, Cleveland companies and the Cleveland 2016 RNC Host Committee, headed by Terry Egger, the PD's former publisher.

The Beacon Journal, on the other hand, delivered to its readers a puffy Page One story from the Washington Post that "affirmed the influence of Sen. Rob. Portman"  in the GOP's decision  under the headline "GOP's choice of Cleveland reflects power of Portman".   The Republican senator, the article said, "pushed for months for the city as the site". Hint:  Portman was again elevated as a potential presidential candidate.  For now, it couldn't hurt. Or could it?

(About presidential politics: The Columbus Dispatch, which appears to be torn between advancing Gov. Kasich or Portman as the paper's choice for the Oval Office, focussed on Kasich, satisfied  that the convention would be a perfect national stage to dramatize  the "revitalization and fiscal turnaround that Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich has managed to pull off in a few short years...")

And as for Kasich himself, he had nothing to say at all to the Dispatch's  Joe Vardon who asked about FitzGerald's role.   Said the governor:  "That's a question - I'm not in the middle of that kind of question.  I have no answer to that right now."

That non-rsponse measures well against one of George W. Bush's when a reporter asked a question about a nominee:  " I would have to ask the questions...I haven't had a chance to ask the questioners the question they've been questioning."

And where was FitzGerald in the planning and rollout of the convention site?  It wasn't until veteran writer  Brent Larkin, who retired as the PD's editorial director five years ago, stepped up.

Summing up his column in the subhead over his commentary:  "Credit FitzGerald with leadership, vision in landing 2016 GOP convention."

Larkin noted that FitzGerald, with Positively Cleveland CEO Dave Gilbert as early as two years ago engaged in  planning for a convention proposal.  Wrote Larkin:

"And Republicans may  not like it, but FitzGerald, a Democrat,  deserves far more credit than any other elected official for the city landing  the GOP presidential nominating convention.  Anyone who tries to suggest  a public official other than FitzGerald is the father of this process is simply not telling the  truth."

Well, now.  Larkin's incisive observation certfainly bumps up against the PD's own editorial page think tank that recently devoted a full page to questioning  FitzGerald's  ''leadership".

Having worked  in the field with Larkin for years, I'll take his word for it.

A Republican's universal approach to global warming

The goofy level of global warming criticism  has found a new, and still more bizarre,   rationale in the deductive logic of a Kentucky state senator.    Republican Majority Whip Brandon Smith  says the myth of climate change caused by humans can be refuted by the fact that the planet Mars has no coal mines.

Sharing his perceived wisdom at a hearing on proposed EPA restrictions on the release of greenhouse gases by coal mines, Smith said environmentalists are sniffing down the wrong shaft in search of polluters. In his words:

"I think that in academia, we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly  as it is here.  Nobody will dispute  that.  Yet there are no coal mines on Mars, there's no factories on Mars that I'm aware of.  So I think what we're looking at is something much greater than what we're going to do."

His spacey  research is overwhelming.

Did LeBron James slam dunk GOP convention into Cleveland?

Lost in the thunderous celebration in Cleveland upon learning that the Republican National  convention is coming to the city in 2016, there have been unconfirmed reports that LeBron James sealed  the deal.  The NBA superstar from Akron was rumored to have finally relented by agreeing not to wear his Barack Obama T-shirt  when he gives the keynote speech to the gathered Republicans if they agreed to give his agent an extra 50  pct. commission for negotiating the deal.   As James once said when the president asked him to help promote the Affordable Care Act:   ''Cool".

Here comes People's Republic of America

For those of you who may have been distracted by the Independence Day weekend celebrating freedom in America,  we want to report that the free-wheeling conservatives on the U.S.Supreme Court took matters into their own  hands last week by piously  creating the People's Republic of America.

As Mitt Romney once insisted, "corporations are people",   it came as no surprise that this court affirmed that notion over  individuals with names like Joe or Mike or Gloria or whatever identified you as a person. In the evolving language of the court, people is in, person is out.  Hobby Lobby is in as a newly-recognized people; Dick Cheney is out.  Besides, many wags are now referring to him as a tag line, a zombie-like creature  that is neither people nor person.

A number of magnetized religious -based institutions who are horrified that the  Affordable Care Act is an opportunity for workers to receive insurance coverage  for contraception  have now joined the legal fight to become validated in rejecting the "immorality of the pill". Even elite academic and athletic enterprises like Notre Dame, which was once banned from  the Sugar Bowl because it had a  black football player, sees nothing amiss in banning contraceptives from its army of fans.    If you've seen the polls on the Catholic majority's rejection of their church's bonds, we can only say, good luck on that.

Are we approaching the day when Time Magazine will name the Golden Dome  in South Bend or others similarly situated, as the People of the Year? Nothing personal there, of course.

Nancy and I sat on the grass witnessing the weekend July 4th parade in Fairlawn and if anyone needed further proof of the diversity of America - persons, that is -  that passed in front of us in the parade or among the witnesses, there were white folks, African-Americans, Middle Easterners who spoke my parents' language, Latinos, Asians and women in their native Indian saris.

We would have referred to the crowd as the melting pot of America.  But now that a company can  be a people, where will  we rank the persons at this holiday gathering?.  Funny , but do you find any conflict between the notion of personhood on one hand and the denial to  us as individuals of what the court explicitly favors as  people? Peoplehood?

C'mon man. Seinfeld show couldn't have been that bad!

It wasn't that pleasant for me to read in TV Guide that the NBC viewer survey of a Seinfeld pilot a quarter century ago scorned the show in its infancy.  What's that?  By whom?

Well, for starters, the network's stop banana in the entertainment  division, Brandon Tartikoff.  "Too New York, too Jewish,'  complained Tartikoff, himself a Jew. And the awful results of  telephone survey of 400 households were described as a "dagger to the heart" to what would become one of the most successful sitcoms in TV history. Hooray for that,  even if some later critics snipped that the so-called "show about nothing" featured a  bunch of socially worthless  people totally unaware of a world beyond.

The network's  research department,TV Guide reported, quoted an NBC  executive  who described the pilot as "weak weak".

"None of the supports were particularly liked,  and viewers felt that Jerry needed a better backup ensemble," the Guide noted.   George (Jason Alexander) was dismissed as a loser and whining "wimp". (That he was for 25 years.  So?  It's a sitcom!)   Kessler (Michael Richards) later renamed Kramer, had "low scores".  And Jerry, known by some of the viewers as a standup comedian who opened the pilot, drew complaints that his routine was interrupted by the show. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine) didn't show up until the second episode.

Well, how horribly inattentive can  viewers be when they rain on a series pilot? Besides, it would be put up against CBS' Jake and the Fatman,  a cop show.   Remember?

Whatever happened to Jake anyway?  On the other hand, my friend Howard and I often drift off in conversation to reciting lines from the show that, by the way, you can still see regularly as a popular rerun.

PD in full-blown tantrum against FitzGerald

Re-posted from Plunderbund



The Plain Dealer rolled out a preachy unwelcome mat the other day  for Democratic gubernatorial  candidate  Ed FitzGerald that bloated the whole front page of the paper's Forum section. Part tutorial, part public defender and part temper tantrum,  the PD accused FitzGerald of dithering in failing to act promptly to  withdraw his nomination of Jeannet Wright, the acting county treasurer,  to treasurer.

It also accused the candidate, the former Cuyahoga County executive, of a feathery, dismissive  response to the PD's disclosure that she had  income from her rental properties.  The full-page gasp was assembled under the headline "Fanning the flames of a fiasco". It was  impossible to underestimate the gravity of the issue, folks.

The paper asserted that FitzGerald's "'unwillingness to take responsibility for failures by dealing with them speedily and openly"  was nothing less than a "serious defect in leadership" .  (He waited four days to act after Wright's landlordism was reported by the Plain Dealer.   And waited another day before talking to the PD's august editorial board about the issue -  a serious affront with a life of its own).

How serious is all of this? Far be it for me to judge.   So I'll take it from the editorial  that Wright's conduct "could result  in minor-misdemeanor charges that  carry a maximum $150 fine or 30  hours of community service."

As far as dithering is concerned,  I recall that the PD itself was angrily attacked by critics in 2010 who wondered how it ignored a years-long public corruption scandal that sent former county auditor  Russo and ex-county commissioner Jimmy Dimora off to prison, along with a bunch of other confederates.

The issue of the PD's vigilance got so icky that Ted Diadiun, the designated reader's representative and indigenous company man, finally lamented in print  after the FBI outed the scandal:

"No stories were spiked, and no reporters  said they were dissuaded  from following up leads.  It is true that reporters don't have subpoena power, but what kept the paper from getting to the story ahead of the FBI was sins of journalistic omission - the failure to follow up leads, to cultivate sources and mobilize resources, to report aggressively on matters of keen public interest rather than accepting business as usual.  In some respects, that is even more disturbing than the false charges that the newspaper was in bed with people it covers."

So much for the lack of leadership  by the public watchdog.

As a longtime political journalist in these parts, I concede curiosity as to why the PD chose this moment in a gubernatorial campaign to trash FitzGerald, who is challenging Gov. John Kasich, who  the paper is likely to endorse. Read into it what you will, but one thought is worth considering:  Is this the start of taking down FitzGerald in a county rich in Democratic votes that could provide the edge in a tight race?

Just a thought.  Besides, I don't have subpoena power.

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