Today's ever-vigilant press with Maureen Dowd thrown in

BROKEN NEWS!!!!!

Maureen Dowd,  she of the "liberal"  media, has become the New York Times' Op-ed version of Michele Bachmann.  Forever full of herself, she's been obsessing  against President Obama, most recently likening him to a "sad sack".  She's even gone so far as to say that Hillary might have to run in 2016 to "restore honor" in the White House.   Wow!   It all leads me to speculate on whether she might not have been included on the A-list of a White House dinner.

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A long piece in the Plain Dealer about the life and times of  crusading Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine quoted his soaring reason for wanting to hold office.   "I ran for attorney general not just to hold office, " he asserted. "I ran for attorney general because I wanted to do things."  Noble. Still shouldn't the story also have included  at least one word that among the biggest things that  he's wanted to do was to slap down Obamacare  and company insurance coverage of contraceptives as the lawyer for all Ohioans?  Even women.

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There they go again:  The Beacon Journal ran another op-ed piece by Richard Vedder, the conservative  Ohio University  economics professor emeritus who is being paid $150,000 a year to write his slants by an outfit named Donors Trust.  It is sort of a laundering operation that channels huge amounts of contributions to ideologically compatible "liberty-minded" charities.   Fine. But shouldn't the reader be told that? Vedder did disclose in his most recent column that a Forbes magazine ranking of college president salaries that he used for resource material was compiled by his own think tank.
I've long believed that if you want a strong college degree,  become a conservative economist.  There's money in it.

Boehner may need a Plan B on scandals

I can't imagine the kind of weekend the anti-Obama goon squad must have spent  bouncing around in the afterlife of the Republican Party. For days, the national media -  print and talking heads - have been sounding off about the president's approaching end of days in the wake of a scandalized administration. The only question, House Speaker John Boehner scowled, was who would "got to jail".  I'm not sure which scandal's smoking gun would merit time in the pokey. Still, jail is jail and Boehner has yet to give us a  clue to whether he would dispense with  trials.

Maybe I'm being too harsh with Boehner,  a forever grim-faced guy who claims to be obsessed with Benghazi. But in his search for political gold, he needs to know that 40 pct. of his shrunken Republican base can't even tell you where Benghazi is.  It wouldn't surprise me if that same percentage applied to his unruly House caucus.

More trouble arrived for the speaker in the polls showing that Obama hasn't lost a point in his public approval rating, which is around 53 pct.  That's about 52 points higher than the public's  attitude toward Congress these days.

Assuming there's a Plan B if those scandals fizzle short of satisfying the goons talking impeachment these days, what is left in the arsenal of hate for a black man who has twice denied his opponents the cigar on election night?

I will share with you a leak from a taxi driver on Capitol Hill who overheard a  high-level conversation about Plan B.

Here are some of the replacement scandals - Boehner squawking points, really - being discussed to deny the president a night's sleep:

A revival of the Chicago Black Sox scandal: Chicago.  Get it?

A Christmas card turned up in Obama's private collection from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

An Al Capone mood ring passed down to Obama.  Chicago. Get it?

A Saul Alinsky organzation manual warmly inscribed to Obama.

Finally a report that former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley gave Obama a box seat ticket to a White Sox game.   (Sox lost that one, too.)

Meantime, may I add the mini-scandal of Boehner handing out tobacco company money (bribes) to his colleagues on the House floor just before a key vote affecting the tobacco industry?  It's a start!

Ohio lawmakers escape the official state artifact title

Just read that Gov. Kasich signed legislation naming a 2,000-year-old stone tobacco pipe as the official state artifact. (It turned up in an Indian burial ground  near Chillicothe.)   That should offer some relief to the rustics in the  General Assembly who feared they might be so designated instead.

Darrell Issa: Catching up with Louie Gohmert

We get a little spooked when we hear a congressman who is  the Republicans' leading investigator  engtangle himself in the the English language. We could have forgiven my immigrant grandmother for imprecise references to little things like verbs and nouns.  But when Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman and Inspector Clouseau of the House Oversight Committee does it, you have to wonder whether America has moved one step closer to Orwell's Newspeak.

Issa,  a forever showboating right-wing nuisance, has yet to produce anything of substance from his feral probes.  Back in February 2012 , you may remember,  he barred Sandra Fluke from appearing on his all-male panel on contraception, supposing she lacked "expertise". That raised the bar to declaring that condoms and such are only a guy thing.

Now, back in the fetid trenches of Benghazi, Issa insisted  that "an act of terror is different from terrorist actions".

Huh?  Right.   For this profound insight into international terrorism and American unpreparedness  (read: Obama/Clinton deriliction) we have  hauled out the cherished Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy  (GALL)  Award for the congressman.

That will put him still a tad behind  on this day to the Louie Gohmert Award.  But with Issa, you can be certain there will  be more opportunities for him to even the score.

Arshinkoff vs. Coughlin. Back at the O.K. Corral.

Despite their  mutual hostility, Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff and former state Sen. Kevin Coughlin do have one thing in common: each has long had the will, but neither has found the way.  For the chairman, he has aspired to recognition as a powerful player at the state and national level of the GOP while presiding over  a local party that has been reduced to the margins of politics.  For Coughlin, young, very conservative and fully aggressive,   he has aspired to  a higher political calling - governor?  - and finds himself in  a brouhaha that is no more than routine in the Arshinkoff universe.

You are reminded of how Coughlin, who as a senator favored term limits, was TR'd out of his own senate seat in 2010,  and is now trying to find his way back onto the playing field  by running for clerk of courts in Stow. His itinerary to the November election will be as a non-partisan candidate.  You'd think there was nothing terribly evil  here to turn it into a blood sport between the GOP Arshinkoff wing and EE (Everybody else).

But wait, dear reader.  Even though  the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the non-partisan candidacy of a Republican judge in 2007, the fact that Coughlin was trying it out for size in November's election was enough to drop the issue in the lap of Board of Elections.  I won't bother you with the murky details, because they could change by the hour.  Suffice it to say that Arshinkoff sits on the board, where the sea is seldom calm,  and insists  the clerk of courts is a partisan job.

Not that Coughlin is alone in this battle of wits.  Stow Municipal Judge Kim Hoover,  a Republican, has filed for re-election as a non-partisan.    The judge, no friend of Arshinkoff's, is not taking the chairman's complaints seriously.  

"After all of Alex's blathering about this," Hoover says, "it will come down to how much value he will put into the question.  How much is it worth to him?   I'm guessing it will then go away."

Oy.  Arshinkoff vs. Coughlin.  Awesome.

Is there anything good on the TV tonight?



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Prof. Richard Vedder's conservative cash cow

We've long known that retired (!) Ohio University economics  professor Richard Vedder has shaped his conservative sermons for  a perfect fit in the corporate world.  His op-ed  tax columns have been widely quoted or published in the media (including the Beacon Journal) as  authoritative.  And his testimony before legislative committees has been catnip for Republican pols. Vedder recently testified on Gov. Kasich's budget before a committee in Columbus, providing the ear candy for conservatives in need of fresh rhetoric.

What we didn't know until this day, folks, is that Vedder is also on the payroll of an   outfit innocently called Donors Trust that vows to to build a "legacy of liberty".  As evidence of that freedom, Donors Trust serves as a pass-through for large contributions from like-minded  "liberty-minded charities"  who are guaranteed anonymity.  The trust then shovels the money into various other like-minded organizations.. In more vulgar language, some would call it a laundering operation. You don't need an advanced college degree in economics to connect the dots.

But about Vedder: A study by the Associated Press revealed that for his sympathetic labors, Vedder, who left the campus as a regular  in 2001. is paid $150,000 annually by Donor Trusts to preach its Gospel.

And it doesn't take much deeper digging to learn that Donors Trust is a pass-through that channels huge donations to non-profit groups who  can remain secret recipients.

But wait.  If you roll back the tape,  you'll find vestiges of the Koch Brothers and the    Libertarian Cato Institute founded nearly 40 years ago by the  brothers.


The  Trust also has spread around nearly $91 million to groups dissing climate change as a liberal plot.  The brothers would agree  as the money flows.

Meantime, thank you, Associated Press.  At least  we now know the liberty-loving players and their confederates.

In Ohio,Tea Partiers say they are ready to strike

Mid-week wash:

Interesting, don't you think?,  how a politician's self-serving decision  can come back to haunt him three years later. In 2010, Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff bucked the State GOP by endorsing Tea Party favorite and then-State Rep. Seth Morgan in the Republican primary for Ohio auditor.

The news broke something like this:

Arshinkoff: Morgan is a certified public accountant and has a fresh face and bold ideas. (Read: It was really a bowing concession to the Tea Party much like the ones that other Republicans are handing out these days.)

Morgan: "Alex is a longstanding, respected leader with the Republican establishment...and to gain his endorsement is truly  exciting for this campaign."

Short-term excitement, that is.  Morgan lost to the state party's choice, David Yost.

But his right-wing credentials were impeccable enough for the uber-rich Koch
brothers to take him on as the policy director of Americans for Prosperity, the outfit founded by the Kochs.

Joe Hallett of the Columbus Dispatch lately quoted Morgan as saying the Tea Partiers  now have several options to form a new party, create an "insurrection" within the GOP and "everything in between."

Connect the dots:  Arshinkoff, long an Establishment Republican, now finds the  party facing a serious threat from a guy that he endorsed more for personal political reasons than the  relative merits of the two primary candidates.

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Speaking of the Tea Party, how about this notion  from former State Republican Chairman Kevin DeWine when he spoke to the Akron Press Club in  April 2010:  The Republican Party and the Tea Party have much in common and he (DeWine) would welcome them into the party. At the time  Grumpy Abe  wrote: "It may be more accurate to wonder whether the Tea Partiers would ever welcome Republicans into their ranks"  The answer is clear enough.

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Now that former South  Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has won a special election for a  congressional seat,  can we forever erase the idea of a superior moral compass in the hearts of southern Republicans?

How I saved $299 after losing $69 (!) in the tech world

A CAUTIONARY TALE:

A couple of weeks ago,  my aged printer that had served a series of computers for more  than a decade finally quit.  The end came with a strange death rattle with paper twisting in shredded agony. I'm not good at these sorts of things and after several blind salvaging efforts, finally gave up.  Sad, really. Unless you're worth  at least a C-minus in understanding how to fix things that don''t work, you will be sympathetic.

But help was on its way with a never-used Hewlett Packard printer-scanner that had  sat in my closet for  more than a year.  It was a gift from Apple when I bought a new  desktop Mac. But I set it aside for the day when my old printer died.

Not so fast, with the celebration.  The new printer began erratically, and quit.  The Apple people advised me to call HP's tech support team, which is usually a dreaded adventure into terra incognita.  Finally, at the other end of the line somewhere possibly  in the Indian Ocean, the HP advisor concluded that the Mac and the printer were not capable of working with each other.  I would need a new app (one of the few tech words that I've been able to add with  confidence  in the past year or two).

Desperate to get on with my work, I agreed to pay $69 to the HP agent for his remote installation of the ''missing" app.

But that was hardly the solution because the printer contiued to be contrary.  Back to the HP tech team.  A woman continued to reassure me in her native impacted English that she would would remedy my problem. She continued to repeat, "Don't worry. I will make you happy.  I will fix it.  Don't worry.   I will make you happy."

That went on for an unbearably long time as she led me through several steps, including reinstalling the new app.  It was then that I felt the quicksand under my desk starting to give way.

The bad news:  "Somebody from France," she said, " had invaded my computer and is preventing the Mac and printer from talking to each other.'  I tried to convince her that Mac computers have firewalls all of over the place to stymie hackers. She wasn't convinced and finally tried to administer the coup de grace to my wallet.

For $299, she would be able to guarantee me clear sailing for three years. (It would be the only way, she said, that she could resolve the problem.")

I hung up with a burst of unkind words.  I had already given away $69 on the first call, and fool me twice?

I mentioned this to our son Rick, who is quite advanced in these things.  He managed to learn that an HP tech team isn't always an HP tech team. Rather, it is an independent interloper that is in business for itself and manages to pocket the money, even without HP's knowledge  (or concern!).

You'd think that HP would look after its own public image by ridding itself of any hint of a ripoff along the way.  Obviously, it doesn't.

That's my story, and as we used to say in the business, I stand by it.  Keep it in mind if, Heaven forbid, you are dealing with a faraway "tech team" that promises to make you happy.

P.S.  Apparently some folks did not receive the good news in the last paragraph.  I returned to the Apple store at Summit Mall and a young staffer was puzzled that I had received such invented advice  She wrote down 3 steps that would work..  I tried them in a matter of less than two minutes and my printer has been working fine ever since with no additional charge - nor wear and tear  on my patience.

Another end run for another juvenile court judge

Talk about the elephant in the China shop! The Summit County Republican Party, in peril of being swallowed whole by the Tea Party, is staging a desperate political charade to create a second juvenile court judge.  Not that many people aside from the promoters like the idea.  It's provisioned in the proposed Republican budget down in Columbus, which makes it newsworthy even though it's not likely to be seaworthy.

It is sponsored by State Rep. Anthony DeVitis, a Republican of Green; and co-sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Slaby, a Republican of Copley Township.  They say the juvenile court system in the county  is overworked and causing long delays.  A second judge alongside Linda Tucci Teodosio, an elected Democrat, would expedite matters, which is one way at looking at justice. And, if as County Executive Russ Pry (Democrat)  and  others point out,  the county budget  is already so tight that it can't afford to have another mouth to feed  in the courts, the Republican sponsors insist the  problem could be resolved by laying off some magistrates who, quite likely, are Democrats.

In a bi-partisan vote, the Akron Bar Association unanimously passed a resolution opposing the packing of the courts.  County council voted 9-2 against it, too, with the council's two  Republicans, of course,  supporting it.

Cautiously taking the safer  ground, another area Republican,  Sen. Frank LaRose, predictably told the Beacon Journal that he will withhold judgment until he gets more information.(A tactical response on Page 7  of the survival kit on expressing the need for more information.)     And uncharacteristically, GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who doubtless was in the thick of the process, withheld comment from  the BJ.

It has been widely known for years and years and years that Arshinkoff has tested the soft spots in the judicial system to appoint his people to offices.  It's his M.O.

Otherwise, the weather the past few days has been delightful.

New tuition rates to be tied to student voters?

As you are well aware,  Republicans believe that only Republicans and maybe the few remaining 90-year-old Reagan Democrats should be permitted to vote.  That is particularly true in Ohio, where the GOP class has shown restricted voting  to be their most promising rite of passage to public office. Sort of like an entitlement they earned simply by being Republicans.  And it magically eliminates the less productive exercise of expanding the party's base, which has shown no signs of working.

During the last presidential campaign, Secretary of State Jon Husted led an assault on those profiled as Obama voters.

Next came an inventive plan  to shorten the period for amassing signatures for a referendum.

Now, we learn, there is a provision in the Republican House budget  down in Columbus that would offer out-of-state college students with a  30-day residence in the state  the same tuition as in-state students if they decided to vote.  To achieve this wacky windfall,  the student would have to produce a utility bill or letter from the university confirming legal status.

That drew immediate fire from the Inter-University Council that estimated schools  would lose up to $15,500 for each qualifying student.  It's not an appealing thought to the folks who run the universities.  Besides, out-of state students who are denied  the ID's from their schools  could sue.

How do the medieval rustics in modern dress come up with these ideas?

Well, House Speaker Bill Batchelder  framed the idea in terms of good government.  He told the Columbus Dispatch there was a risk that  out-of-state students may not be up to speed on ballot issues.

When Buckeye lawmakers, of all people,  start talking about being up to speed on anything at all,  isn't it adding more darkness to the Statehouse tunnel?