Memories of Santorum - the local video

The Summit County Republican Party  may have discredited itself as a proud corridor of political power (i.e., money and influence)  for the  home stretch to the November election. You only need to review the video of the party's Lincoln Day dinner in February that's been posted on the locals' home page.  In it, falsely absorbed by their  own worth in national politics, the  brass  revealed  a fawning embrace of its marquee speaker, then- GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Chairman Alex Arshinkoff allowed that Rick could be the "next Ronald Reagan" after applauding the candidate's "great speech".

 A meaningless straw vote of the dinner guests (the biggest in Ohio, the hometowners boasted)  gave the former Pennsylvania senator 74 pct. of votes.  In return, Santorum, who told his audience that he had been an underdog in an earlier political life,  praised the Summiteers as his kind of "grassroots party". Everybody apparently went home happy that they had a winner.

Oh?

Now what?  Will Mitt Romney finally show up in downtown Akron?  Or at least in Cuyahoga Falls, where Mayor Don Robert, a Tea Party welcomer, sat on the dais that night?   Will Mitt remember that Santorum has shrieked  that Mitt would be the "worst candidate" that the Republicans could nominate?   Will the Akron Zips win more than one football game this year?

A Sunday Tea Party Uprising in the Falls

I WENT TO my first Tea Party rally Sunday at the Cuyahoga Falls River Square pavilion.

Tea Party? I did.

April 15. Tax Day. Even tried to blend in as a regular guy by wearing a faded sweatshirt and jeans. Like the ordinary taxpayer that I am. With this crowd, I figured it couldn't hurt .

Listened to strident speakers. Strolled around, peeking at the literature in booth after booth for more than 90 minutes, but finally gave up when the speakers started to repeat themselves to the several hundred Tea Partiers who showed up from at least four counties with the latest right-wing T-shirt fashions, signs, bumper stickers, petitions and flags. (One shirt had a target on it and warned that if you could see it, you were "within range.")

I believe most of the angry groups in America where represented by at least one T-shirt to embrace the rally's theme of "Rescue America". The John Birch Society, National Rifle Association. pro-lifers and anti-taxers, constitutionalists, freedom defenders, EPA haters - I may have missed a few, but you get the idea.

A huge inflated eagle facing Broad Street told me the sponsors weren't shy about spreading patriotic thoughts. Nor was the Republican mayor of the host city, Don Robart, who welcomed the throng by declaring his pride in seeing so many Tea Party supporters seated in the sun-splashed amphitheater.

Unable to contain his joyous moment for his town, he declared that the "Tea Party is the social, fiscal and moral conscience of America." (Got that, New York to California? A little over the top, don't you think?)) The mayor then settled down and spent the remainder of his time there working the crowd.

But it was an African-American preacher, Theodore Wilson II, who commanded the stage with a long assault on everything-Obama-administration to a 99.9 pct. white audience. He even went after the critics of the Republican-driven Voter ID movement. And we know that would deny votes to certain people that the GOP would prefer to stay home, don't we? I did catch him saying nice things about the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is not sure that Obama is an American.

But why focus on this one of several inconsistencies in what turned out to be about a gathering heavily shaped by religion, from abortion to same-sex marriage, and condemnation of the government. (I wonder if Wilson got a glimpse of the bumper sticker that referred to Obama as the "big African ass"?)

There were a number of pols slated to speak later, including State Treasurer Josh Mandel and State Sen. Frank LaRose - but I doubt that they could have added anything fresh to the narrative.

As I left the scene, it occurred to me that I hadn't heard Mitt Romney's name mentioned even once. I went to the Summit County Republican Party booth to inquire about it to the chairman, Alex Arshinkoff. But nobody seemed to know where he was.

On the way out, I was approached a couple of times with puffy bios of Mandel that mentioned his time in the military. It reminded me that this whole event was being hosted by a mayor who opposes a minor change in the city's Natatorium's fees for a wounded Iraqi veteran who happens to be a partner in a sex -sex marriage. Do you think you could talk some patriotic sense into him, Josh?

On the other hand, as a Tea Partier yourself, maybe you agree with him.

The Tea Party will be back in the Falls to clutter the debate

TODAY'S NOTICE is to alert you about another political revival in Cuyahoga Falls on April 15. Not by coincidence, it has been scheduled by Tea Partyers on the Christian Sabbath to ululate about the burden of government and taxes - the precise deadline for you and me to have paid up our share of America's overhead. I should tell you right off that I'm not enthralled by taxes, either. But being a reasonably good citizen, I know of no other way to pay for a lot of things that we would not want to do without. Nor do the Teabaggers, for that matter. So they take the cheapest way out by wailing about the overhead while driving to rallies on roads that we all, of necessity, must pay for, or by calling the cops on the slightest fear of the mysterious light on the next block. Emergency health care, even for someone who might pass out at one of these events? Don't get me started.

For this group, the Falls is becoming the preferred Garden of Eden for indignant right-wingers, like Myrtle Beach is for Ohio golfers. There have been previous Tea Party congregations there, and not an election passes that people like Rick Santorum doesn't show up on the Riverfront Mall to preach his final sermon before losing the Republican primary the next day. One of the reasons, I suspect is that Don Robert, Summit county Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff's favorite mayor, presides over the city's political and spiritual agenda much of the time, completing the exercise with Arshinkoff, who serves as the tail wagging the tail.

For this year's tax day, the Republican headliners will be Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who slipped into the U.S. Senate race with a warehouse full of money before the big guys in Columbus could find somebody more likely to win; State Sen. Frank LaRose, who cast the deciding vote (after indicating that he wouldn't) to pass Senate Bill 5, which restricted collective bargaining and was destroyed in a referendum; and U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, one of four congressmen who has a piece of Summit County following shameful GOP redistricting.

All would probably tell you that they are not really Tea Partyers, but this is an election year, so the safe thing to do is to attend these events to whip up the crowd by endorsing what Tea Partyers stand for. My ancestors had a clever way of innocently fending off such criticism. "Shou baddi aamel" - What am I supposed to do?"

A couple of things that don't make a helluva lot of sense to me: These anti-government blowhards are all on the government payroll with perks that you wouldn't believe. They also will be appearing on the Riverfront mall at the Pavilion, a convenient stage that was enabled by Federal tax money. (They didn't tell you that?)

Still more hypocritical is the fact that LaRose and Mandel are Iraqi vets who will be appearing to make hay in a town where the mayor would be expected to veto any move by City Council to give a same-sex marriage couple family rates at the Natatorium. Robart's position is even more repugnant in the fact that one of the spouses is a wounded Iraqi veteran. I doubt there will be a single word about this on April 15.

The issue isn't dead. Councilwoman Diana Colavecchio, a Democrat, says the six Democrats on council shares her belief that there should be equitable rates for all Natatorium members, but faced with a a threat of a veto she would fail to reach the 8-vote threshold to override Robart since the five Republican council members are siding with the mayor. One even expressed fear that otherwise he was afraid it would trouble some people, biblically.

On April 12, the matter goes back to the parks board with a possible opening. Both Colavecchio and board chairman Tim Gorbach, a Democrat, say they have dicovered a contradiction between two of the operations that the Board oversees- the Natatorium and Water Works Park. The latter has nothing in its rules denying a discount to same-sex couples but the Natatorium does. "It will take some time," says Gorbach, a Democrat who supports the couple's request, "but we'll have to find a way to reconcile the two to grant the discount."

That's the kind of leadership by him and Colavecchio lacking at City Hall, where religion and politics collide to enfeeble the idea of equality..

Bad days for GOP in Indiana and Cuyahoga Falls

WHAT A COINCIDENCE! While Republicans in Ohio and other states are eagerly trying to rig voting laws to crush un-rampant "voter fraud", they really didn't need Charlie White, Indiana's secretary of state, to mess up the Republican brand of honesty and decency. On the other hand, he does prove that fraudulent votes are a living issue, at least at the highest levels of state government.

White, you may have heard, has just been convicted on six felonies: three for voter fraud, two for perjury and one for theft. And wouldn't you know that when he campaigned for secretary of state in 2010 he described "election integrity" as a major issue and reassured the voters thusly: "Charlie will protect and defend Indiana's Voter ID to ensure our elections are fair and protect the most basic and precious right and responsibility of our our democracy - voting."

That noble claim has since been removed from his website.

Back in Ohio, where fraud has been determined to be virtually non-existent, the GOP lawmakers are continuing their fraudulent quest to deny many voters, as Charlie White once described it, their "most basic and precious right." (Voters that the GOP has profiled as Democrats.) They are said to be hopeful of offering a revised restrictive law before...yep...the November presidential election. The Plain Dealer has quoted our own Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, as saying he wants the current voting law - a newer version that was downright political porn - to be repealed to avoid "voter confusion".

Sorry, Jon, but nobody seems to be more confused about voting rights than the lawmakers on your side.

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The way things are going at City Hall in Cuyahoga Falls, Mayor Don Robart may yet have to concede we are living in 2012. His unyielding denial to a request by a same-sex marriage couple seeking family rates at the Natatorium is now in its next phase with the city's law director saying a rate adjustment could be possible. The mayor first declared that nothing could be done because state law prohibits it. It soon became known that it is, in fact, being exercised at other places in Ohio.

Now Robart is resorting to his look into the distant past, telling the Beacon Journal as he groped for an explanation (beyond his probable cultural bias) that rates have been in place for more than 40 years, so why change them now? If so, what other rates- utilities, taxes, etc. - haven't been changed during the same period? ? But Robart continues to resist, saying if same-sex couples are granted family rates it could lead to "massive abuse" by unmarried heterosexual couples. To borrow a term from Robert's GOP county chairman, that,of course, would "be a scandal of Biblical proportions."

To make the mayor's stance even flimsier, the couple applying for the family rate - Coty and Shane May, who were married in Washington, D.C., involves a wounded Iraqi veteran who would use the pool as part of his rehab. That, you must admit, is about as tsk-tsk as the you can get about the mayor.

Think of it: A GI who nearly lost his life in Iraq and moves about with a cane now finds his appeal resisted by a mayor who has nothing more to support his position than he simply doesn't like the idea. Cash it in, mayor. You're not holding the winning cards.

On labor art, local tax options and the UA Board of trustees

FOR NO EXTRA charge, people, we are pleased to show you another excellent example of how the Tea Partiers are making a mockery of democracy in America. Here, we give you Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a TPer himself, who has ordered the removal of an historic 11-panel mural from the state's Department of Labor because he believes - are you ready for such nonsense in the land of the free? - it is too pro-labor and doesn't reflect a balance with business and industry. The Republican governor has also called for name changes for conference rooms for the same preposterous reasons. So the depiction of Rosie the Riveter will be gone, as well as others who contributed sweat and muscle to industry. Next, across the land with these LePage types in charge, will come removal of WPA art in theaters and other public places. The awesome Diego Rivera mural in the Detroit Instititute of Arts that commands a visitor's attention will probably remain. Tea Partiers have better things to take up their time than anything as trivial as a dying American city like Detroit.

More from Gov. Kasich on the new royalist regimes that have moved into state governments: He has now placed himself in charge of tax policies of local governments, telling the Columbus Dispatch increases in taxes at the municipal level is "not an option" to make up for abundant losses in state revenue in his proposed budget. He says the beleaguered locals can get by on savings from having to deal with public worker unions. He can't prove that, but when you are royalty, you don't have to. His ally, Mayor Don Robart of Cuyahoga Falls, has already placed his seal of approval on Kasich's plan. He told the Beacon Journal with vague certainty that "I'd like to think it's going to balance out." You can tack that one up on your refrigerator.

Finally, Alex Arshinkoff wasn't dumped by the University of Akron Board of Trustees as the newly-hired UA lobbyist. I'm told Trustee Jane Bond raised the issue in executive session but "nothing happened." Why am I not surprised?

Arshinkoff, Robart gang up on Coughlin

AS ANYBODY who has given no more than cursory attention to this blog could safely assume, outgoing State Sen. Kevin Coughlin, a conservative Republican, and I were seldom on the same page politically. Still, in the years that I've known him, I always found him to be accessible. articulate and willing to go the mat to defend his positions. So it was of particular interest to see a couple of longtime Republican opponents gang up on him in the Beacon Journal's front-page report on his exodus from the Ohio Senate.

The comment that shot from the page was issued by Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart, whose room and board at City Hall have gotten convenient long-term shelter from county GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff. "He [Coughlin] is a very vindictive person He tried to hurt us...", the mayor opined.

Given the fact that his partner Arshinkoff has a long history of vindictiveness that was once aimed at one of Robart's top cabinet members, I do think that the mayor could have found a more plausible account of his displeasure with Coughlin. Alex has spent most of his career spreading ugly rumors about his opponents, even taking on a major Akron law firm - Roetzel and Andress - as being nothing more than a Democratic cell. The same is true of his whispering campaign against Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic. Or his harsh treatment of some of the workers at the Summit County Board of Elections. Don't' get me started.

And please, let's hear of no more boasts by the chairman that he led the county to sweeping victories in November, a Republican day in which Donald Duck could have been elected across the state.

Alas. In some cases, he was.

State Road project: Who was talking to whom?

IF THERE WAS a common denominator in the derailment of plans for the old State Road Shopping Center in Cuyahoga Falls, it would be fair to say it was a lack of clear communication among the players. Interviews with several City Council members and the school board president insisted that Mayor Robart was in the driver's seat from the beginning, and not until recently did details of the tax sharing on the site emerge. And when they did, it was enough for Falls school district president Therese Dunphy to head up a 3-2 majority on the board to oppose the project. It was a setback that the outraged mayor and his staff never anticipated as its plan for a $60 million restoration of the huge site moved smoothly along over the flattened old buildings that were razed to be replaced by ---what?

According to Dunphy, the schools normal 60 pct. share of the property taxes became a moving part. "We had figured on 25 pct or 3o pct. for this project, but in February were told by Sue Truby (Falls development director) that actually we would only get 60 pct. of 25 pct., or 15 pct." She said that after Supt. Ed Holland talked to city officials, he advised the school board that the city's best offer would be 22 pct.

As is his wont these days, Robert assailed Dunphy because she lives in Silver Lake, which is part of the Falls school district, telling the Beacon Journal that Silver Lake school board members "had very little skin in the game". Cool, whatever that choice of words is supposed to mean in this instance.

Council members told me there weren't many meetings between City Hall and the Council on the ongoing project that led Council to authorize borrowing $10 million to buy the site in 2008 - a bill that will have to be paid whether the project goes forward or not.

Diana Colavecchio, the City Council president, concedes that the details about the project were not crystal clear, and that communications between Robart's people and Council could have been much better. But Council approved it as a measure of something that the city had to do. Others, she said, shared that view.

OK, already. What's next? Colavecchio says the matter will again be taken up at the April 26 Council meeting and she is asking city officials and school board members to attend to have a fair discussion of how the project can be salvaged.

I don't find anybody who is totally against the suburban renewal. but there remains a question about how an "upscale" grocery store will attract enough other retailers to fill that vacant land mass at Portage Trail and State Road. For this kind of an investment, assumptions and upbeat assurances aren't nearly enough. Particularly in these troubled economic times, right? There have already been too many assumptions to risk many more.

Believe it: Somebody got a stimulus job!

SO MY CONSERVATIVE friends are sitting there at lunch and insisting that the economic stimulus program - I will take this slowly in hopes of getting it right - "has not created a single job." That's the line that John Boehner and others have passed down from Mt. Olympus to be repeated without challenge - or thought, for that matter. It's probably tucked down on line No. 3 or 4 on the ways that President Obama will be defeated in 2012.

Well, with all due respect to these friends who will not take "no" for an answer, I'd say, "Nice try for your side, but you have nothing to back you up".

That's where we are today in America's great debate on the economy. One friend even argues that a laid-off worker who is called back and returned to the payroll doesn't count. Oh? I' ll leave that to the family of the reemployed worker to figure out. A job is a job is a job. I have also been advised that money should be going to infrastructure rather than hiring a few cops or firefighters or teachers. Or adding to entitlements.

A few tidbits: In Akron alone, about $20 million of the Federal money from the stimulus will be spent on roads and bridges and such. By last fall 17,000 jobs had been created in Ohio. It is far from boom times, but there have been some improvements.

Infrastructure and energy? A friend who drove from Columbus to Denver said she was impressed by the number of wind turbines that had sprung up along the route. Since then, the New York Times reported that the "American wind power industry grew at a blistering pace in 2009, adding 39 pct. more capacity. The American Wind Energy Assn. noted in its annual report that the growth of wind power was "helped by the federal stimulus package that passed a year ago, which extended tax credit and provided other investment incentives for the industry. It's only a guess, but might I assume that one or two more jobs were added?

It doesn't take much time or effort to find this information, folks. For whatever it's worth. The mess left by the last guy in the Oval Office is far from cleaned up. But there are signs here and there that you can't ignore, that we may have pulled back a little from the brink. On the other hand, if we had played the Republican card and benignly neglected the illness, what might we have expected? Well, what?

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Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart's tantrum that government workers shouldn't be represented by unions will hardly make life easier for him. One doesn't have to support nor deny the validity of such unions to know that they are here to stay, so you might as well try to make the most of it instead of calling for their abolition. Problem-solving comes with the mayor's territory. Can you imagine the howl from City Hall if the unions called for the abolition of the mayor's office? See what I mean? Back into the sandbox, mayor.

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a fellow named Daniel Stout was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives recently to replace a guy who resigned after it was disclosed that he had an affair with a lobbyist. Stout, a family values Republican, is the same pol who earlier admitted to having an extra-marital affair with his first wife's mother-in-law. Some Georgia peaches are obviously sweeter than others. So much for mother-in-law jokes!

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Recommended reading: Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times that delivers the goods on the off-the-page right-wing movement that is a raggedly loose confederation of anti-government Tea Partiers, white supremacists, armed militia and the resurgent John Birch Society. Anarchy is in the wind.

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Finally, I happened to see a TV commercial promoting something called "Meaningful Beauty." Am I suffering from generational lag or what? Is there something about beauty that I don't understand and wouldn't regard as meaningful?

Falls riverfront project: impressive & tax worthy

WE READ with interest the big spread in Sunday's Beacon Journal about the impressive riverfront project in Cuyahoga Falls that will be an important amenity in the city's quality of life. For this, Mayor Don Robert should take a deserved bow. But before his head strikes his shoes, I believe he should host another Tea Party at the riverfront pavilion to remind his anti-tax friends that the handsome project is costing $1.8 million, with $640, 000 coming from the state, i.e., your taxes and mine. Without taxes there would be no riverfront showpiece in the Falls, no reason for the mayor to take a bow and no reason for the anti-tax crowd to rant. Trouble is, too many politicians won't admit how taxes - and only taxes - often make them look good.