Appeals court overrules Adams again

OOPS!

Once again  the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has pitched out a ruling by Federal Judge John Adams of Akron.  In this instance, the case involved the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad Co in a dispute with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET.)  Adams  had granted an injunction to the Railroad.  But the appellate court disagreed with that decision, declaring:

"The District Court erred as a matter of law by characterizing the dispute between the parties as minor and by granting injunctive relief in favor of the Railroad.  While it appears that the Railroad's violation of the status quo might well have justified injunctive relief  in BLET's favor,  BLET did not file a counterclaim seeking injunctive relief.  Accordingly we VACATE  the injunction in favor of the railroad and REMAND the case with an instruction for the district court to dismiss the Railroad's complaint."

In the past few years the appeals court  has vacated Adams' decision involving a public defender case, and in another matter, removed Adams from a  Federal Disabilities Act case.  "On too many occasions,"  the Akron Beacon Journal  edtorialized, "Judge Adams has failed to measure up."

Veeps don't interest me, Kasich says

Re-posted from Plunderbund


On no uncertain terms, Gov Kasich says he has no interest in being a vice president.  At least that's what he told Gloria Borger on CNN.  It shouldn't surprise anybody.  I've never seen him as a guy taking orders from anybody  else if you leave God out of the picture.

To confirm his ascendancy, he says he doesn't even know what vice presidents do.  So he's determined to be an all-or-nothing guy to the White House in the expanding Republican universe of rising and collapsing stars.

And if he must return home unheralded from his intensive itinerary of glad-handing and promotional budget balancing act, so be it.  Meantime, the suspense will grow as he awaits word from  God. "The most important thing is, what the Lord wants me to do with my life," he said on Face the Nation.

Kasich has always conducted his life from the top of Kilimanjaro  without peers.  But  as  Hemingway wrote, they found the long-frozen carcass of a leopard near the summit and to this day nobody can  figure out what it was doing way up there in  the first place.

Ted Cruz just named his campaign manager!

With Fiorina, who needs expertise?

Get out your brackets: time to write in Carly Fiorina, with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker donning their gym togs.

But first, Carly (nee Cara Sneed).  Sitting on millions in  her treasury, she's been restlessly trying to be  relevant ever since she was deposed as CEO of Hewlett-Packard  in 2005.  Her corporate  rap sheet?   HP 's stock fell to half of its value as she led a move to merge with rival Compaq.

A Republican, she later lost to  Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010.

That has given her five more years to consider her stage career and the word from California is that she is running for president.  Of late she has been going around damning environmentalists  for her state's drought, describing it as "man-made " by obstructive liberals  who opposed a waterline into the state.  (The more thoughtful Romans succeeded with viaducts!)

Funny, but I recently read a piece in National Geographic about the drought in which some experts predicted that it could last more than 200 years, long after the current collection of environmentalists leave the scene (as well as Carly herself or her money, whichever comes  first).

B. Lynn Ingram, a paleontologist from the University of California at Berkeley,   based his scary forecast on studies of tree rings and microorganisms in ocean sediment to build his case.  I don't know  much more about the science than that.  Interestingly, not once did the National Geographic experts lay the blame on environmental hoodlums. But political jabberers  like Fiorina normally don't' turn to expertise to support their empty shop talk.

Are there chaotic risks in informing the public?

I once worked with a radio newsman and editorial writer who returned to our office from one of his broadcasts with a puzzled expression.  "What's the problem, Dick?" I asked.

 "I think I just incited chaos in my commentary by calling for everyone to become active in public affairs.   If that happened, there would be no way we'd ever get anything done," he said.

More than a half-century ago the   columnist-philosopher Walter Lippmann  wrote his similar concerns about public activism:

"The one effect of inviting everybody to judge every public   question is to confuse everybody about everything.  It is not in fact possible for all the people to know about all  things, and the pretense that they can and that they do is a bad illusion."

There's a downside to that,  too.  In our alleged  communications age, political candidates, toothpaste advertisers and over-the-counter health fixits (for constipation?) can still exploit public ignorance to advance their goals.  And those videos that seem to expose every police shooting these days still don't deliver active scenes of so many other  critical issues that might get no more than a line or two in the hometown paper or  before the sports and weather at eleven.

A stronger media effort to inform the public is worth the risks of chaos.  

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Paul Tipps, a Democratic power in in his time

The passing of Paul Tipps closes the book on a generation of Ohio Democratic leaders  who unapologetically took their messages to the streets, the board rooms and assembly lines as he managed  a party in nearly  full control of the state's highest offices. And that included all but one of the Supreme Court justices!

As the Democratic chairman from 1975 to 1983, Tipps wore a teasing smile and pleasant  demeanor  to disguise the gritty  side of surviving the disarray  so common to Democrats who were otherwise alive and well.

The party's first-team roster included Atty Gen. Billy Joe Brown, who would have preferred being governor, but was barred from fund-raising  by the Mahoning County
Democratic chairman; House Speaker Vernal Riffe, a powerful political and legislative operative who also wanted to be governor;  Richard Celeste, who eventually became  governor and hoped to be president;  often feuding Democratic  lode stars  Sens. Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn,  who later patched up their rivalries;  and a bed sheet list of fussing union  leaders and some distrustful Cleveland egos. You needed no reminder that hyperkinetic political activists were on the scene every hour.

Even before he became chairman, Tipps  encountered opposition from Glenn's point man, Steve Kovacik,  who,  with the former astronaut's blessing,  sought to elect state Sen.  Nelson Lancione to the job. At the time, I wrote a column critical of Glenn for spending his political capital as a freshman  on such a losing course.  While I was frying eggs in my kitchen, Glenn called to scold me for being "premature" in assessing the fallout.   Tipps won handily - evidence of his solid political skills in the party's field commanding county chairmen on the executive committee. (On the night of the lopsided vote, Lancione was nowhere to be seen.  It was rumored that he was enjoying the better climate of Florida )

For a political reporter, it was a lively time. With a half-dozen or so Democrats running for president,  the chairman tried - and lost - to discourage the candidates from carving up the Ohio delegation to the 1976 convention.  Even the favorite son ticket he had set up for himself and party VIPs failed to go anywhere.  Lacking his own official voice, he sat aside of the Ohio delegation as a mere spectator.   It was one of the few times that I saw him on the outside of internal party business.

 Remember, too,  that it was not the heyday of cable TV, digital shoptalk or the pressure of conservative preachers and their moral agendas.  In that respect, the work was less complicated .  Politics was simply politics  as usual  as handed down over the centuries.    Tipps had an innate sense of the workings from his "undergraduate" work as Montgomery County Democratic chairman.  C.J. McLin, an African American state rep from Dayton, was his  perfect guide through urban racial unrest.

 Tipps was ready to move on.  To the despair of his critics, he was a tireless lobbyist,  no small benefit for a state  chairman.  He was a  tough survivor , and not easily discouraged , a genuine success story with all of those Democrats sitting in high office in Columbus. (Despite  their early differences, Tipps and Glenn became friends. Glenn remarked  this week that Ohio had "no better friend than Tipps.")

Even his lobbyist  work was shared with Republican Neil Clark.  That was  a non-starter  for politics at Tipps' level.  But that merger blew up in a nasty feud. On the other hand, he was never apart from Riffe in their joint assembly of can-do power and influence.

For every feud, one could point to Tipps' genuine successes.   Upon hearing of his death, it quickly occurred to me that the Democrats  once had more than one  prospect for every job.

 Did I say Democrats?




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A campus sign that wasn't spellbound

Talk about a name change for Akron U., as I did yesterday:  I've now been made aware that the idea could be infectious in other places on the campus. A Grumpy Abe reader tells me that an electronic sign at E. J. Thomas Hall alerted the public that Neil deGrasse Tyson will be  the featured speaker there on May 6. However, it referred to the astrophysicist as  "Neil Tyson Degrassi"!

When my source called somebody  at the U to correct it, the name that turned up the next day was OK.  But then the following morning, it appeared again as "Neil Tyson  Degrassi'.

That's hardly the way to promote a famous guest scientist.  The source  also wondered about  something  else:

"What concerns me,"  he said, " is that out of the 5,000 people that pass that sign every day, I'm the only one to notice or complain."

Although I had recommended Harvard West University for the school's new name,  I may have to reconsider using the Ivy League academic giant's name in vain.

On Akron U. name change, Strickland and Ben Carson

We've been told that the name change idea at the University of Akron is "still under discussion."  Not that it is at the same priority level as seeking more ways to cut the budget, staff and departments.  (Um..."disinvestment" they disguise it in the polite upper reaches of the administration).

May I come in?  Since Rubber Ducks has already been claimed by the Akron Aeros, I would suggest THE Harvard West U. as the Zippies new name.  With the added prestige, the school could immediately double its tuition instead of the annual incremental  increases to pay the many bills.  And it could convert its new football stadium into a giant receptacle  for a lake for a serious Harvard-style inquiry to convert Lake Anna into a bottomless source of fresh water for  California.

Even better, the scholarly research  might develop a way to ship freshwater icebergs to California - a concept  that has been on people's minds for a long, long time.  In the 1970s, for example, Mohammad al-Faisal, nephew of the king and a promoter of towed icebergs,  went so far as to have a two-ton berg shipped from the Arctic to Iowa for a conference on how to do it. But the cost made it prohibitive for Amazon to make it available to collectors.

* * * * *

For all of the naysayers among some Democratic gurus, Republican oracles  and the ever vigilant Cleveland media who are dissing Ted Strickland's age in his  bid for the U.S.Senate, here's a tidbit you might want to consider:  At 73, Strickland is of  the same age as Iconic Ronald Reagan when the latter was sworn in for a second term.  Haven't read anything since then  that Dutch was too old when he sought to return to the Oval Office.  Almost forgot:  Jim Rhodes, another Republican icon and media star, celebrated his 72nd birthday during his fourth term.

* * * * *

In my tireless  quest to recognize the many rising Republican stars, I discovered one in the report of Dr. Ben Carson's featured talk to the Cuyahoga County Lincoln Day (!) Dinner Saturday night.  The Plain Dealer reported that  top tier Republicans, normally white guys before they head south for winter vacations in the sun, are  "happy to have a black rising star on their side," as the PD described him. That's one.

Meet the new John Kasich, Mr. Goodwrench

Did you happen to see NBC's Chuck Todd  interview of Gov Kasich on  Meet the Press on Sunday.  If not, you can witness it on-line.

Has Kasich undergone a personality change as he gears up a team for a presidential candidacy?  Yep.  Full of rubbery smiles, collegial good natured talk, and cheerfully  boasting that he has more experience than anybody else in the GOP's expanding field.  In case Todd didn't catch that part of it, the governor repeated it authoritatively as though he were warning all of the others to pack up and leave.

Not quite an official announcement of his own yearning options that are still on the table,  he said, a handy cliche.    But....''I can a see the future," he assured doubters, even though prospective voters have yet to see him in the national polls.

 Oh,  will he make  his faithful trust in the Lord one of his enduring  conceits, as in forever explaining to impatient reporters that he's waiting for God to tell him what to do?
 As Plunderbund noted, he once told the New York Times that God advised him to run for governor.

Those references, not only by Kasich but other presidential wannabes have a way of cheapening one's reliance on personal faith for guidance to the pick of  the litter.
We prefer Aaron Rodgers mature response when the Green Bay Packers star quarterback qas asked whether God had played a role in the Packers' victory.

"I don't think God cares who wins a game," he replied.

Will this turtle lay an egg, too?

As most people probably know,  turtles - among the slowest moving creatures -   lay eggs. Even slower, however, is the GOP Senate boss  who has now stalled a vote on Loretta Lynch for attorney general for more than 5 months because of a sex trafficking bill held back by anti-abortion politics.

But while the Senate turtle is having his say to prove that Republicans clearly  know  how to govern,  he could wind up  laying his own egg by inciting  the wrath of his opponents.

But his stone-walling has been shared so far by Ohio Sen.Rob Portman, who will only say he's still "weighing whether to vote on the bill." Five months, Rob!  Five months!.

Between McConnell and Portman,  I would have to think about it a long time before giving either one the edge for procrastination.  Portman already is being targeted by women's and minority groups. ( By the way, that's the turtle below.)

We liked this item from Daily Kos:

Some of the people banned

Fargo, North Dakota, coffee shop owner Joe Curry does not appreciate the 56 North Dakota legislators who voted against a bill that would have protected LGBT people from discrimination. Curry put up a sign:

"Ban effective immediately. The listed Men & Women are now banned from entering this establishment.* This is based solely on age, gender, race, beliefs, color, religion & disability."

That asterisk points to this statement:

"Unless accompanied by a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer, Intersex or Asexual person."

Curry's coffee shop is the Red Raven Espresso Parlor. His intention is not to discriminate as he pointed out.

With GOP, Some things never change

Old Lukovich cartoon, but still current:

When our congressman is the silent type

Once upon a time, our hometown newspaper would tell us how  a local congressman voted or commented on  a hot issue that was generating so many columns and headlines.   But, alas, that important nexus between a newspaper and us has been abandoned in the decline of what used to be tossed toward our front door each morning.

The latest example for me was when I realized that I had seen nothing reported about my Republican  congressman regarding the Iran nuclear framework that was causing so much commotion. I decided to call his office.   I'm talking about Rep. Jim Renacci, folks, who doesn't seem too unhappy about his absence in newsprint, particularly on controversial matters.  This time he simply chose to  go undercover.

 "I would like to know what the congressman's position is on the Iran nuclear deal," I said to a voice at the other end of the call.

Pause.

Then another voice, this one in Renacci's Washington office , responded. "May I help you?"

I repeated my question.

Pause, a longer one this time.

Finally, "The congressman will have no statement."

But even that evasive answer might have been reported in the daily paper for anyone hoping to be an informed citizen.   Trouble is, the Beacon Journal has no Washington Bureau, once professionally managed by Dave Hess or Bill Hershey.  It has closed it's Columbus Bureau, too, which as the paper's then Metropolitan editor, I had  the convenience of working with our  able reporters.

Bottom line: Reporting on the area's state lawmakers  is so scarce that we won't see their names in print until they appear on the ballot again. And with Congress, it's  even worse now that the Republicans have chopped Summit County into four  districts.  

Do you think that democracy is  supposed to work that way?

Mitch McConnell's war at home and abroad

Sen. Mitch McConnell,who is still trying to add some meaning to his life,  says he will devote much of his energy to fighting the environmentalists' "war on coal".  Desperate politicians will grope for anything to upgrade their empty legacy for the historians.  But if you are following Mitch these days, such truculence at home and Iran will only  add more toxic pollution to the air we breathe.

Ready to ring out the old in 2016?

Bill Maher gave us this profund comment Friday night: To anyone complaining about  an old Bush and old Clinton contest, , "Has anyone seen the NEW ones like Cruz?"

Zeus-like Cheney in his parallel universe

Re-posted from Plunderbund


It's so  appropriate that in the week  that Economist magazine carried a glowing obituary of  leading fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett, one of America's leading fantasists,
Dick Cheney,  went on another rant.  It may be rude to link fantasies  here.  Pratchett, after all, wrote books that sold in the millions (in 37 languages), a series featuring oddly named characters and events brought together in his literary conception of Discworld.   A man of humor, Pratchett even brushed off talk that he had found God.  Unlikely, he said,  because he couldn't even find his keys.

On the other hand, Cheney, a pulseless  surviving elder of the Bush era, moves in his own fantasy world on Fox News, hurling thunderbolts at President Obama.  His latest brain fart  accused Obama  of working to  "take America down".  Golly. Sounds a lot like treason to me.

In his words:  "If you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama's doing."

But we do find humorous  his assertion that Obama was leaving a "terrible  burden" for the next president. Like his buddy George W. Bush's recession and the ongoing mess that Obama faced when he entered office and they're still trying to clean up in Iraq?

When you're living in the Fox parallel universe, those questions  don't come up from the host, nor will they ever, pulse or no pulse. .


















firecracker

Birds of a feather (in this case hawks)

Everyone under the hawks' cloud these days should have this Newsweek cover from Feb.9, 2004 to post in each room of you house.  I would add one more with Tom Cotton,  the creepy senator who wants to bomb Iran six or seven  days to end  any question of that country's hostiities.  (below: AP photo from Salon)

Iran deal: Worst - or best - of times?

The most insightful and concise view of the Iran nuclear framework deal appeared in the recent piece by Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman.  Of the pushback by Republicans with help from some soft-shoe Democrats, Chapman wrote:

"The critics are haunted by two nightmare scenarios.  The first is that Obama has made a bad deal with Iran.  The second is that he made a good one."

Hedrick Smith: Income disparity our major problem

Scientific American magazine once quoted George Carlin as  joking that "the reason they  call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."

And why not?  In terms of economic inequality, the same article noted that the United States is now "the most unequal of all Western nations".   The Carnegies, Goulds, Astors and Vanderbilts, among other plutocrats  from the gilded 1800s,  may be  gone, except for the history pages, but today's wealth is in such imbalance that President Obama has described the income gap as the "defining challenge of our time.:"

Hedrick Smith thinks so, too.  The Pultizer Prize-winning journalist-author sharply brought  that message  to the Press Club-Bliss Institute luncheon as well as a Bliss student class and Cleveland City Club.

If you doubt its validity, Smith will remind you that one percent  of Americans own five times that of the other 99 pct. Or, as Scientific American noted, the "Walton Family, for example,  has more wealth than 42 percent of American families combined."

The  problem , as he sees it , of which I agree, lies in the inattentiveness of the media to make a big deal of it.  Twenty-four hour news cycles serve us blips of fragmented information while newspapers remain wedded to soft feel-good features as the Akron Beacon Journal's sweeping  stop-the-presses  front-page pieces on cupcakes  - or as Bill Maher once twitted, TV newscasts that end with a warm tale about a "blind, black bus driver". Feeling better about life in general?

Sorry, Rick .  The paper didn't report your talk at Quaker Station.

Is the dark playbook that drives so much money to the GOP's preferred candidates hopeless?

Could be. As Smith, the author of the must-read  Who Stole the American Dream? , laments that nothing can change until Americans have shown more in demanding that change with a hefty grassroots response that has effected other changes in our society.  Until then, if ever, we remain victims of a 'broken political system" in  the grip of Wall Street.

"We don't have an active citizenry," Smith said. "We can't sit back and say it's terrible." Meantime, he complained that the media "continues to do a superficial job."

Smith also didn't have much hope  that politicians will  correct the evils of gerrymandering. Safe districts are "how they get elected," he said.

There once was a guiding spirit in my profession that newspapers should "afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted."  I think of that when I recall the cupcakes story.

So, yes, the mountain is high to restore the American Dream.  But it does help to know that a guy like Hedrick Smith, a journalistic giant, hasn't  given up.

The brutal bio of Tom Cotton - Kristol's guy.

Reposted from Plunderbund


The New York Times Sunday magazine  added to  freshman Sen. Tom Cotton's scrapbook rise to celebrity with a full-page interview and tall photo  of the young Arkansas Republican who fatuously wrote the letter to Iranians warning them of a bad outcome for the deal supported by the U.S.

The vital statistics of the man included his NBA dream team (which, alas, did not include LeBron James!)  and his non-answer as to whether he is dreaming about more trivial matters as a vice presidential candidate on the GOP national ticket in 2016.  He cryptically answered: "I am focussed on the work that the people of Arkansas sent me to do."

As Seinfeld's Kramer would blurt:  "Oh, Mama!"

All of the commotion about the guy sent me back into the files to learn  how he ended up in the Senate in the first  place from the Razorback State.

Think: William Kristol,  the big-time neocon who merged Sarah Palin onto John McCain's ticket in 2008.  Think of the same neocon whose New York Times op-ed columns were eliminated after the editors finally lost patience with his many factual errors.  Think of the same neocon who seeks relevancy as editor of the  right-wing Weekly Standard as well as the smarmy guest on TV shows. And think of the warrior neocon who was a major figure in calling for the Bush invasion of Iraq and who now supports a re-invasion of  that hapless country.

Now, think of the neocon as a board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel with considerable  sway among other donor allies.  Kristol sent upward of $800,000 to his newly bought and paid for  Tom Cotton, another acquired alter ego (who happens to be a Methodist).

As I learned in so many years in the newspaper world, names make news.    So when you see Cotton's name, you need to know more about what the political world is now talking about, the man who wanted to imprison NY Times editor Bill Keller and two reporters over something the Times printed.

As a congressman in 2013 Cotton also proved he can be damned cruel.   He wanted  to insert an amendment in an Iran sanctions bill (amendment later withdrawn) that would have severely punished anyone who violated the sanctions.  He even levied that on their families  as a "corruption of blood" that automatically included "parents, children,  aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids."

The guy is driven - but do you really want to be a passenger?

Strickland-Portman poll: Early, yes. But...

Plunderbund is reporting that a new Quinnipiac Ohio poll gives former Democratic
Gov. Ted Strickland a comfortable 48-39 percent lead over  Republican Sen. Rob Portman in the 2016 race.  Remembering that early polls can be as fickle as April weather, it is still  interesting that Portman, once the rising GOP star and budget advisor to George W. Bush, is bringing up the rear. Among independents, Strickland leads 50-32!

Although the Cincinnatian spent a lot of time in 2012 tagging along with Mitt Romney in casual togs in the so-called Swing State, he didn't get the nod for veep -  but as these things go, he did draw the attention of  the Columbus Dispatch as  potential (along with Gov. Kasich) presidential  material.

Trouble is, the several newspapers enamored of Portman's blurry self-described "common sense conservatism"  weren't able to project him beyond his current job.   My hunch is that with the exception of the party apparatchiks looking to fill a seat on the dais,  few folks in northern Ohio can pick him out of a crowd.

Bibi says the Iran framework is a "bad deal'.  It takes one to know one, Bibi!

Sometimes, family values can be positive

As one who has  occasionally  complained about the intrusion of "family values" into right-wing  narratives, let me be among the first to recognize two examples of their positive influence in the political arena. When Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he decided to step back from signing  his  state's anti-LGBT "religious freedom" law,  he credited his son with changing dad's mind. And when another conservative Republican, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman,  broke free from his party's mold and supported same-sex marriage, it was simply because he had a gay son. Way to go, family values - no matter how you got there!  

For Tom Cotton, it's location, location, location

Sen. Tom  Cotton of Arkansas, the GOP-tagged rising star and young pop pol who wrote that awful letter to Iran, is back.  In a snooty patriotic sermon  to gays, he said that if they lived in Iran they would be hanged.

"In Iran they hang  you for the crime of being gay. They're currently imprisoning an American preacher for spreading the gospel  of Jesus Christ in Iran," he lectured.

He's also lucky he's not living in Iran because if he had written  a foreign policy letter to American leaders without clearing it with  the front office, he would have vanished, no questions asked.

Note to Pence: The economy trumps all

When Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson wisely refused to sign the state's new "religious freedom" law and returned it to the legislature for repairs, you had to wonder why Mike Pence, Indiana's rattled governor,   didn't do   it sooner before some business and sports world giants  broke down his door as he sputtered for  conflicting answers.

In Hutchinson's case, it was Wal-Mart, the state's biggest employer, along with Little
Rock's Regional  Chamber of Commerce, and Convention and Visitors Bureau that jerked the deal from his desk after he first said he would sign it.

In both states, as well as others that might be trolling, the issue was the same:

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

What Pence painfully learned  in the age of hyper-communications is that he could be instantly rocketed   from his safe chair back home in Indiana to a broken national figure  who admitted that he had fumbled his interview by ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

He was completely unprepared - a governor, for Heaven's sake! -  for his political calamity. Now, despite his own protest that he meant no harm to LGBT's, he was betrayed by his 2000 congressional campaign website, by these damning words:

"Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexual's [sic] as a 'discrete and insular minority' entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and minorities.'"

Some things never change.