A man of many blog comments

Some of you may have wondered about that a name that pops up frequently on this blog's comments - David Hess. The reason that it does has a long history. We are both ex-newspapermen with combined experience and liberalism that adds up to about one century. And although I would argue that I was a much better poker player than Dave, I can't say the same about our relative talents as journalists He was always at the top of his or anybody else's game.

We met in the early 1960s when I was a reporter for the Columbus Citizen-Journal and he was working through his master's studies on Latin America at OSU while trying to earn a modest living as a PR man at Nationwide Insurance. When I became the editor of a new liberal magazine at Nationwide ordered by the company's progressive owner, Murray Lincoln, Dave joined the tiny staff as the Statehouse reporter whose reporting became a major nuisance to then Gov. James Rhodes. As the editor of his column, I might add that Rhodes got off easy if you saw some of the original copy of Dave's work. In editing out certain of Dave's preferred references to Rhodes, "Machiavellian," 'insane", "sniveling", (occasionally in the same sentence!) - I had to remind Dave that we could land in jail. Dave's response, which left little room for argument, was "Dammit! It's true."

It was profoundly true, too, that the only reason that we continued to work together happily was our gritty coal-cindered roots in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia. (You get a glimpse of his sardonic impatience with today's Republicans that is evident in his blog comments.)

After Lincoln's death in 1967, the magazine was abolished by Lincoln's' successors, pure insurance people who preferred a more amicable relationship with Rbodes and his insurance department.

Dave and I were hired by the Beacon Journal's Ben Maidenberg, one of the state's most conservative executive editors, who enjoyed arguing vigorously with staffers who disagreed with him. As newcomers on the staff, we worked closely as an investigative team before the paper sent him to the Knight Newspapers Bureau in Washington, where he covered Capitol Hill close-up for many years, including the back channel antics of an Ohio congressman, John Kasich.

During that tine, Dave was so respected by the Washington media that he was elected president of the National Press Club, no small honor. From there he moved to the National Journal and from there to retirement in Springfield, Va. Without encouragement, he now has hooked on to the blog with no pay. Along with being his close friend, I'm also happy that he shares his incisive comments on Washington's bizarre political life. Conservative Republicans aren't happy with him, but he's a helluva lot more forthright about the system than they are.

As I noted, he is adding his brief comments voluntarily . You can be sure of that. If he didn't want to do it, he wouldn't. Hrrrumphhh....

Meet John Kasich: 4 hours a month OSU lecturer

THERE WAS A letter to the editor in Sunday's Beacon Journal in which Bryan C. Williams, the executive vice chairman of the Summit County Republican Party executive committee, questioned whether Gov. Strickland, a Democrat, was fit to serve in the office. Among other things, he accused the guv of being a "hypocrite" and insisted that John Kasich would "do much better" if elected in November.

Well, I normally would ignore such official inbred partisanship from either side except this was a special case.

If Williams had fast forwarded to the BJ's Community Page, he might have had second thoughts - no, he probably wouldn't have! - when he played the hypocrite card.

There, plain enough, was a long piece recovered from the Dayton Daily News , that told of Kasich's particular ATM-style income that cost Ohio State University thousands and thousands of dollars with very little effort on his part other than to maybe buy a bigger wallet.

You need only to read the first two paragraphs by the paper's bureau chief, Laura A Bischoff , to find the real hypocrite in the room:

"As a candidate for governor, Republican John Kasich has called on colleges and universities to cut costs and force professors to teach more courses.

"Yet for seven years, Kasich served as a "presidential fellow" at his alma mater, Ohio State University, in a role that paid him the equivalent of $4,000 per campus visit." (OSU also paid Kasich's political friend $2,000 a visit as the candidate's aide.}

So for seven years, from the winter of 2002 to May 2,009, he picked up an easy $50,000 a year in hard-earned taxpayer money (a favorite term of the the tax cutters like Kasich) while his buddy got $20,000 - no questions asked by the university about what it was that Kaisch might be doing on its campus. Clue: He was a guest lecturer on several topics including finance and psychology while "serving as a panelist at banquets and forums." The Dayton News also noted that he once gave an ethics lecture to dental students.

Even Kasich admitted that he only worked on the campus four hours a month which, for all we know, might have included an appearance as Alfred Einstein.

But hold it right there. Richard Stoddard, President Gordon Gee's special assistant, defended the payments to Kasich, saying "we have a lot of positive feedback." Pro forma.

I should say. Kasich is a wonder. Always has been - even in the days when he chaired the House Budget Committee on Capitol Hill and quietly worked up a plan that would hit the poor the hardest. David Hess, the Knight-Ridder reporter on the Hill at the time, managed to get a copy of it before it had become public knowledge and wrote a national story revealing its contents that appeared in many papers, including the Beacon Journal. Hess recalls that Kasich never talked to him after that.

But such additions to the Kasich profile - from Congress to Lehman Brothers to an honored spot on Fox News to OSU - begin to create a candidate who never knows that what goes around can come around. It would help if he would stop insisting on cutting back the cost of education as one who contributed to the red ink. You can fool some of the people some of the time........

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