Pho's Akron Pages

Blogging again, just not here

2011-03-14T18:20:00.000-04:00

Hi to everyone who still hasn't purged me from their RSS feed or otherwise checks in here occasionally. Yes it's still up and mmmaybe I'll blog here again sometime. There is, after all, a mayor's race afoot.

In the meantime, I have started a new project. I have a blog built around my Akron Legal News column and shares its name -- Cases and Controversies. I'm hoping to also post original content as time permits. In the meantime, if you haven't been able to read my column in print, check it out.

Stop me if you've heard this before, but Michele Bachmann is nuts.

2010-08-13T08:15:00.004-04:00

Earlier this week the House of Pho got a robocall from Rep. Michele Bachmann. Somehow we are on some right wing list, even though neither of us have done anything remotely right wing within memory.

So admittedly my attempt to get back into blogging this summer hasn’t gone well. (In related but better news, my house painting is nearly done.) I’ve been looking for something to get me excited about the blog again and if Michele Bachmann robocalling can’t do it, I should just quit. Hell, if Bachmann bringing the crazy to my personal answering machine can’t get me excited, I should check my pulse.

As Bachmannalia goes, this is fair to middlin’. To the good, it turns a basic policy disagreement into a vast conspiracy – a circle of money no less. To the bad, no one is accused of being a Communist or a U.N. spy or even un-American.

But the real crazy here is the call itself. It violates every rule of campaign communications, runs like mad for a full two minutes and ends up no where. I’ll try to get this hosted somewhere because there is no substitute for actually hearing her drone on interminably. In the meantime, here is a transcript, with some notations.

Hi I’m Michele Bachmann and I’m sorry that I missed you.¹ As you might know Speaker Pelosi has taken the unprecedented² step of calling all 435 House members back to Washington DC today for the purpose of spending $26 billion that we don’t have.³ The members were out on a six week hiatus, they’ve scattered to the four corners of the Earth⁴, and I think the reason Speaker Pelosi is bringing us all in today is because her members are in political trouble and she knows they’ll need the financial support of the public employees unions. ⁵

This $26 billion represents a circle that works like this. Take $26 billion out of the productive private sector⁶, deposit it in the U.S. Treasury. Then Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat majority will vote to send this money from the Treasury⁷ and to politicians all across the country⁸. Then state and local politicians will give this money to employees of the public employees unions. The public employees unions will skim their share off the top of the workers check first in the form of union dues.⁹ Part of the dues will be funneled into the union’s political action committee which in turn will be spent on political TV, radio, internet and print ads as well as union boots on the ground.¹⁰

Tonight we’re calling one million households.¹¹ We’re telling them what the Speaker of the House is doing and we’re asking the people’s opinion on this cash for Democrat reelection program.¹² Please come to my website MicheleBachmann.com¹³ for more information at MicheleBachmann.com.¹⁴

Speaker Pelosi has targeted me for defeat this fall¹⁵, so please go to my website MicheleBachmann.com¹⁶ and please do all you can to help.

This is paid for by Bachmann for Congress. My campaign can be reached at XXX-XXX-XXXX.¹⁷

¹I know this it pro forma, but it kind of creeped me out. Like if we had been home, Michele would have wanted to chat. Or ask if I harbor anti-American beliefs.

²Stopping here would have been good. Stopping here I would have respected. George Will is fond of saying “X is a good idea but we cannot afford all good ideas.” It's a damned persuasive argument. But Michele Bachman is dispositionally incapable of stopping at a good, persuasive argument.

³Unusual but not unprecedented, even over the recent past.

⁴Seriously, I’m supposed to feel sorry for legislators who are called upon to legislate?

⁵Here comes the wacky. Congress isn't sending aid to the states because laying off thousands of teachers and cops would be a bad thing. No, it's all a big conspiracy.

⁶Again, do you really want to go there? The private sector is currently producing what exactly?

⁷No idea why this business about into and out of the Treasury is in here. Unless she thought that a robocall of 1:40 just wouldn't do.

⁸Last I checked, the Tea Party believes more than anything else in the wisdom of state and local governments. They believe everything went wrong when the Federal Government grew more powerful to the detriment of the states. Hell, the baggers even want to repeal the 17th Amendment and go back to states appointing Senators. But when state officials think that it might be nice to have enough money to fulfill basic state functions, they are no longer the noble defenders of liberty, they are (make a face when you say it) politicians.

⁹Mind you this never ever happens when the private sector gets Federal money. For instance White Hat surely has never spent a dime of state money on behalf of the legislators who guarantee it a healthy slice of the education pie.

¹⁰When corporations support Republicans, the Bachmanns of the world insist that it's not because they expect legislative favors, it's because those are candidates who support free market principles. That same logic could apply here. The public employee unions support politicians who don't make it a campaign plank to screw them over. But no, in Bachmann's world Republicans are noble defenders of the rich and powerful, but liberals are liberals only because they are corrupt and evil.

¹¹This blows my mind. I can't imagine one million robo calls on this issue being cost effective, especially since all but the most rabid Bachmanniacs have hung up on this thing by now. But when you raise crazy money, you can do crazy things with it, apparently.

¹²So at this point I'm expecting a big finish. I'm expecting some sort of call back option or online poll or something, but I get. . .

¹³Really, that's it? Go to my website is it? This is all about getting hits on the website? And by the way that website doesn't mention any of this. Admittedly I got to it a day late, but still that's not an unexpected response time.

¹⁴Syntactically flawed repetition of the website sic which, along with her increasingly agitated tone and the runon length, makes me wonder if she had a script or was making one million extemporaneous robocalls.

¹⁵DCCC apparently has her opponent Tarryl Clark on their “Red to Blue” list, but I doubt they intend to do anything more than make her spend money on her own race. She's in an R+7 district, raises incredible jack and it's not our year. And while Bachmann raises lots of money for her side, she does pretty well by our side as well. In any event, it's a stretch to say Pelosi has "targeted" Bachmann -- certainly she hasn't in the way that Bachmann has targeted Pelosi.

¹⁶Note that Bachmann's name is spelled idiosyncratically – one “l” in the first name and two “n's” in the last. Anyone who knows this probably doesn't need a robocall from her. And neither “MichelleBachman.com” nor “MicheleBachman.com” refer you to her actual website. Didn't most web pros learn this stuff like ten years ago?

¹⁷The phone number is on the website as well, but no one who reads this blog would do anything wholesome with it and phone pranks can get quickly out of hand. I will be no party to that.

DeWine: Vote For Me Because Cordray Hasn't Fixed Betty Montgomery's Crime Lab

2010-06-16T10:47:00.004-04:00

Apparently Mike DeWine is going to make an issue of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI), known colloquially as the state crime lab. Here he is talking to the Vindy:

OK, first off you have to admire DeWine's instinct for the capillaries. These days when a Republican admits that his opponent faces problems he inherited it's so refreshing you almost want to vote for him.

Almost.

What DeWine doesn't mention is that the crime lab has never lived up to the hype given it by Betty Montgomery. She oversaw the expansion of BCI and touted it as an accomplishment when she ran for reelection. But it has labored under severe case backlogs forever. When I was in the Summit Prosecutor's Office in the early '00s we had to wait weeks for drug test results and months for DNA in any but emergency cases. I had left the Stark County Prosecutor's Office where they have a county lab and few delays.

So what would DeWine do to actually fix the problem?

“I can’t tell you exactly what the problem is, but I know what the results are, and the results are the crime lab needs to be run more efficiently.”Excellent. He doesn't know what the problem is, but he's sure he has a solution to it. Mike is tha man. Well let me offer a possibility.

At one point we had a tour of the Richfield lab. It was vacuous. Desolate. Sepulcrous. In a word, empty. There was a staff of criminalists there but also many many empty work stations.

In other words, they built out a crime lab system, but didn't fund actually staffing it.

In this economic climate, you are unlikely to hear either candidate say that what we need to do is spend more money. But the fact is, a serologist can only process so many polymerase chain reactions at a time. There comes a point at which you need more serologists.

I look forward to DeWine continuing the "I can fix the problem without knowing the cause" strategy. For one thing, Cordray says he has made the labs more efficient, and hopefully he has the numbers to back it up. For another, it has always irked me that Montgomery ran on being the crime lab AG when in fact it was a job half done. Any opportunity to correct the record is welcome.

So Apparently There Was Another Elephant War and Apparently It Is Over

2010-06-16T07:23:00.003-04:00

The ABJ carries the story today of local GOP Chair Alex Arshinkoff being unanimously reelected. The story suggests that there was another New Summit County Republicans attempt to win enough central committee seats to vote him out, but the effort stalled in February.

It is difficult at this remove to see exactly what the point is. In the first Elephant War, Arshinkoff's opponents could point to a few bad cycles, but the Republicans pretty much cleaned up in 2009, winning two Akron Muni judgeships over appointed incumbents and the Barberton Muni clerkship. Summit is a Democratic county, so winning positions like this has always been the measuring stick for the party's success.

The once well-populated New Summit Republicans website has devolved into a political blog that is A) a mess to navigate and B) exceedingly nasty even by the adjusted metric for evaluating right wing political blogs. With regard to Arshinkoff himself, the only substantive attack is the rehashed charge that he keeps losing, notwithstanding his recent successes. Aside from that, it's all fat jokes and gay slurs. Classy.

Bottom line, Arshinkoff knows how to win in unfriendly territory and how to rake in piles of cash. As long as both things are true, he is an effective party chair. As a Democrat, I'd be happy to see him replaced but it's not happening any time soon.

* * *

So it's time for another of my pathetic comeback attempts. Once again something happened that took me out of the game -- computer issues this time -- and once again the loss of momentum made it ridiculously difficult to get back in. The other stuff on my plate has been mostly cleared away, so hopefully more blogging from here out.

The Right Wing Attempts to Make Ohio's Constitution Unconstitutional

2010-06-02T10:49:00.003-04:00

The Tea Party-backed effort to put an issue on the ballot "nullifying" the health care reform's individual mandate is in the news because its supporters aren't getting enough signatures. The even wackier "Ohio Sovereignty Amendment" is not in the news, presumably because it is doing even worse.

If they passed, neither of these amendments to the Ohio Constitution would actually accomplish much, other than pulling the state into Federal litigation that it would lose.

The health care amendment states that no Ohioan can be required to purchase health insurance. The Sovereignty Amendment goes farther, purportedly restricting the Federal Government's jurisdiction in Ohio and therefore its ability to enforce any number of laws.

But the states can't do that. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution includes the "Supremacy Clause" which states:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Sounds pretty definitive, doesn't it. If state law contradicts Federal law, Federal law wins. Every time.

It is odd that the news coverage of these amendments does not mention this problem. It isn't a big deal at this point, given that they are no where close to getting either amendment on the ballot, but even when the amendments first made news, the supremacy problem has generally received scant attention. If either amendment unexpectedly grows legs, it would be a good thing for the media to start paying attention to the fact that neither actually accomplishes what the proponents claim.

The supporters of both amendments answer that they can nullify Federal laws when the national government has overstepped its authority. The short answer to this is that it's still the Supreme Court that has the final say over whether the Federal government has exceeded its jurisdiction, not the states.

Take this as my first post in a promised series regarding the Sovereignty Amendment. The longer answer to the jurisdiction question will be upcoming.

Now Posting at Cleveland Examiner

2010-05-28T17:04:00.004-04:00

The Examiner web platforms let people sign up to write on specific topics for (mostly) exposure and (a little) cash. I signed up to be the Cleveland Church and State Examiner. The spot was open and it's one of my strongest interests. And rather than bore all of you and the Akron Legal News audience with church/state all the time, I have a new platform for that stuff.

(

So here's the deal. Pay, such as it is, is based on traffic (the site carries ads, especially of the smoking hot news reader telling you about Acai berry sort.) I will be posting links to my Examiner pieces here, plus my other social media stuff. It would be a big help if you would surf over and check them out. It's a great way to feed a starving blogger and (hopefully) be entertained and informed as well.

So far I have this piece looking at how Elena Kagan might view church/state controversies as a Supreme Court justice, this take on the Parma sex education controversy and, just up, a law wonkish piece on what we are talking about when we talk about Establishment Clause -- and other legal terms.

UPDATE: Links are fixed now.

Closing Tabs and Random Ten

2010-05-28T07:48:00.003-04:00

This has not been a stellar blogging week as I've been working on a couple of projects. Actually that sounds more impressive than it should -- mostly I've been painting my porch.

I have been trying to keep up with stuff but haven't had much time to write. But here's what's clogging my browser today.

I've been remiss in failing to acknowledge Tim Russo's post at Plunderbund welcoming me back a couple of weeks ago. Tim and I have had our differences and probably will continue to do so, but his post was very kind.

I've been glued to the Rand Paul story. Ezra Klein (unsurprisingly) does the best job of explaining the enduring importance of his objection to an otherwise entrenched piece of legislation. BTW Rand's poll numbers are tanking.

Most of the faculty at my alma mater -- including some fairly outspoken conservatives -- signed a letter against the Virginia Attorney General's fishing expedition against a climate change scientist.

A double WTF from the Dispatch yesterday. Yes I was also puzzled by Jennifer Brunner's criptic email to supporters last week. But why was it news a week later?

An EdWeek blogger offers some vague and unsatisfying thoughts about the advantages of for-profit companies in education. Here's a question: If for-profit education can work, why doesn't it work in the one area where no government funds are involved -- high end private schools. When someone successfully establishes a for profit to compete with the likes of Old Trail and Western Reserve, I'll start to believe.

Happy to see California -- the other education superpower -- taking steps against the new Texas Christian Right Curriculum.

Interesting piece in The Straight Dope of all places about how some middle class neighborhoods in Chicago have rescued neighborhood schools.

Two pieces that attempt to sort out the hash Facebook has made out of its privacy settings.

Save the Internet has the breakdown of who in the Ohio Delegation signed the pernicious letter to the FCC against net neutrality.

Finally, Justice Scalia for one would be happy to have a new justice who had not been a judge -- well as happy as Scalia ever is.

Now here it is, your Moment of Ten:

"I Know," Dionne Faris
"Opinion," Nirvana
"The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness," The Feelies
"Discovering Japan," Graham Parker
"Po' Boy," Bob Dylan
"You Belong to my Heart," Old 97s
"Every Morning," Keb Mo
"Dippermouth Blues," King Oliver and the Creole Jazz Band
"Again," Alice in Chains
"Rocker," Miles Davis

Third Party Pro-Strickland Ads Coming

2010-05-25T10:02:00.003-04:00

Swing State Project reports:

A group backed by the DGA and the American Federation of Teachers called "Building a Stronger Ohio" is going up with a $300K ad buy on behalf of Ted Strickland . . . Nathan Gonzales reports that this new group has $1.7 million in funding (so far), so more and bigger buys are probably on the way.Rothenberg has more, with a rehash of the ad story so far: Strickland's first negative ad on Kasich and the RGA response.

Given the involvement of AFT and the money involved, it will be interesting if we see any White Hat talk in future ads.

Frankly, I Think Constituent Communications Are a Good Thing

2010-05-19T20:52:00.002-04:00

So apparently there is a Gannett report lurking somewhere behind a paywall about the use of franking by members of Congress, and as a result, we've a spate of stories about the constituent communications of local members. The Dispatch goes pretty hard after Mary Jo Kilroy for placing seventh among all Representatives and first in the Ohio delegation in money spent. Other stories look at the delegation more generally.

And all these stories lead with the amount of money spent. I think we all agree that we want to know what our representatives are doing and we all think representatives listening to their constituents is a good thing. But *gasp* it all costs money.

And that's the tone of these stories. The lede and opening grafs are all about "They're spending your money! They're spending your money!" and framing the discussion like of course these are nothing but extended campaign ads. Of course none of this is substantive or useful or good. Then they get quotes from the various members who have been set up to sound like this guy:

Here's a thought. We should encourage our representatives to communicate more with their constituents, not less. And if challengers don't like the inequity of members having the franking privilege, I'm right there with them too.

It's yet another argument for public campaign financing.

Policy Matters Ohio Report on Another Charter School Management Company

2010-05-19T20:26:00.003-04:00

John Higgens at the ABJ digs into a timely Policy Matters Ohio report on Imagine Schools, a Virginia-based education management organization (EMO) that has set up an run charter schools in Ohio, including one in Akron near the old Rolling Acres Mall. Complaints from the operating boards of the schools sound very much like those of the White Hat schools currently suing their EMO.

From the executive summary of the report:

Bakke told Imagine managers and school leaders that Imagine-managed schools are “our schools” because the taxpayer money flowing to the schools is “our money.”

resigned in frustrati

Higgens piece relates the report about Imagine to the situation with White Hat:

Best of all is White Hat's response:'''This is not the place to argue about the politics of charter schools,' according to White Hat's statement. 'That is properly left to the legislature.' Probably true that a legislative solution would be best, but if one is proposed you can bet on a phalanx of White Hat lobbyists working to kill it.

Personally I don't think everyone involved with charter schools is out to make a buck. Some good people work for charters and occasionally good people even start them. But it's increasingly clear that the current model in many states including Ohio is allowing some EMO operators to bilk the schools and by extension the taxpayers.

Charters Sue White Hat

2010-05-18T22:14:00.003-04:00

Another story I'm working on is the lawsuit launched by ten White Hat charters against the company. John Higgins at the ABJ does an excellent job of laying out the issues.

This arises from a law that mysteriously passed during the '06 lame duck session that essentially gives contract protection to education management organizations (EMOs) the for-profit corporations that are contracted to run many charter schools, and in some cases (such as White Hat) appear for all practical purposes to be one and the same as the charter school.

For example the White Hat website doesn't portray the company as a management company, but gives the impression that the company owns Hope Academies and Life Skills. On the website, those schools are called "ventures" of White Hat, as opposed to, say, clients.

As Plunderbund points out, White Hat founder David Brennan has been a leading contributor to Republican candidates, including the current top of the slate. The press release accompanying the lawsuit accuses White Hat of leveraging that political capital to get the sweetheart protection law.

This is actually the second time charters have sued to have the law overturned. So one thing I'm digging into is what happened the first time.

The EMO protection law is terrible for everyone involved -- for taxpayers, for students in charter schools, charter school advocates. Hopefully this lawsuit will finally shame the legislature into getting rid of it.

Signature Gathering Beginning for Sovereignty Amendment

2010-05-18T21:31:00.002-04:00

Word comes that supporters of a "Sovereignty Amendment" to the Ohio Constitution is beginning.

The Ohio Sovereignty Amendment is part of a broader national state sovereignty movement which seeks to introduce bills, resolutions and constitutional amendments purporting to assert state rights against the Federal government.

As of now, the Ohio effort looks doomed. From the looks of the website of the sponsor, the People's Constitution Coalition of Ohio (PCCOH) it does not look like they have the financial backing necessary to pay for signature gatherers which is indispensable. Someone will roll in here and say that they have committed grassroots support and they can gather the signatures with an all volunteer effort. They can't. As they say, the target is around 700,000 to get the 400 some odd valid signatures needed. Many have tried to do that all volunteer. And have failed.

The PCCOH promises to continue work even if they don't get the amendment on the ballot this go round. If they are able to maintain the grassroots energy they, and their arguments, will be around for some time.

We will explore the Amendment and the arguments underlying it in coming posts. Here's the overview. First, most of the amendment would be unconstitutional. The amendment seeks to have Ohio dictate to the Federal government the limits on the latter's power. It will shock you to learn that states can't actually do that.

The Sovereignits (that will do until something thinks of something shorter) would reply that the only reason people would think their amendment is unconstitutional is that the Federal government has so overstepped its historical limits as to make it look unconstitutional.

Which gets us to the second major point: nearly everything they say is wrong. Not just wrong because I disagree, but demonstrably, objectively wrong. And not merely a little off, but in most cases what they say is the perfect opposite of the truth. They deal in countertruth, in antitruth, in things true only in Bizzaro.

So why bother writing a few posts about a fringe of a fringe organization with delusional ideas and no chance of success? A couple of reasons. First off, it will be fun.

Second, while it is easy to write off the Soveriegnites as ignorant rubes, they actually have developed a fairly detailed theory of governance and that theory gets at some of the most basic debates about government and power. Taking on the sovereignty amendment means taking on basic assumptions made by the likes of the Tea Parties and other anti-government activists. Which isn't a bad thing to spend time doing.

Finally, while their ideas are wrong, it would be dangerous to let them gain currency. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the last time ideas like these were broadly accepted, Ft. Sumter was attacked. Not to say that's where we are headed, but let's also not just sit back and let folks like this run the debate.

What's Good for GM Is Bad for Jim Renacci

2010-05-17T21:52:00.002-04:00

For Jim Renacci's rant against the GM bailout to make sense, he needs the bailout to fail. If the bailout, and the subsequent bankruptcy, restructuring, layoffs, elimination of models, and yes, terminating dealer franchises works, then it sounds like he's just whining about his personal ox getting gored.

What's more, he's running on his experience as a businessman. He says experience creating jobs with the businesses he has run and can translate that experience into better economic policies. Apply that to the presser about the closing and the argument seems to be -- indeed must be -- that if he had been in Congress GM would neither need to go bankrupt nor would it need to close dealerships. And for the second to work, he needs to show that closing dealerships has prevented GM from bouncing back.

He could arguably say that the point of the bailout shouldn't only be GM's survival, but the health of the economy as a whole, including all the franchisees. That would be an interesting argument, but also a progressive Democratic one. It's essentially an argument that a company should think about the social costs of it's downsizing strategy, much like when progressives point to studies showing that mass layoffs can hurt a company's long term health.

Such an argument is not consistent with the free market, laissez faire, CEO knows best philosophy of governance that undergirds all of his campaign rhetoric. He can make that argument, but he would have to switch parties first.

Meanwhile, if his fit over losing his dealership is only about him losing a dealership, his whole argument about austerity and personal responsibility. If he can't personally take the medicine he prescribes for the economy, surely he can't provide the leadership we need in trying times.

So, if the bailout succeeds, he was wrong about GMs restructuring. And if he's wrong about GMs restructuring it undermines the entire argument for his candidacy. Got it? Great. Now check this out:

* * *

What does all this mean? It means the bankruptcy did what was intended. It shrunk GM to a manageable size and made it an automaker more likely to survive in a market crowded with keen Asian, European and domestic competitors. GM needed to shed brands, models, dealerships, white- and blue-collar employees, production capacity and debt to be viable and help save U.S.-based manufacturing. Liddell expects GM to remain profitable, although it's too early to predict an overall profit for 2010. If GM can pull that off, an IPO that "buys out" a portion of the government's "investment" (large enough to reduce our ownership to a minority position, I hope) should happen by early next year.

Would you buy a used free market ideology from this man?

Jim Renacci Loses Dealership; Incoherently Politicizes It

2010-05-15T23:05:00.003-04:00

Republican Congressional Candidate Jim Renacci has announced that his GM dealership in Wadsworth will close. OK, not so much "announced" as "turned into a bizarre, internally contradictory campaign talking point." His press release, reproduced here on ANN, asserts the following:

* * *

Wow. We have so much wrongness here it's like on of those "How many mistakes can you find in this picture" puzzles.

Take just the opening graf in which he claims the dealership is a casualty of GM's deal with the government. I think he's overstating the extent to which the government dictated dealer closures as a condition of the bailout. It's more like the bailout enabled closures that the company wanted to make. When the closures were announced, it was GM brass insisting that they needed to trim their overextended dealer network to cut costs and right size the company. It's car companies that are now fighting state efforts to pass dealer protection laws.

But more fundamentally than that, if GM hadn't made the "deal with Uncle Sam" Renacci would have lost his franchise anyway because there wouldn't be a GM any more. The choice wasn't between a bailout and running the company a different way, it was between a bailout and no more GM. Most of the time when Republicans criticize the bailout they are at least honest enough to acknowledge that GM would have gone bust, they just dispute the administration's assessment that it would have wrecked the economy.

The coherent criticisms of the bailouts have either maintained that free market principles are so important that the risk of big firms folding is worth it, or argued that the bailouts were too kind to the companies -- that they didn't put austerity conditions on the bailed out firms. Renacci seems to have found a third way -- the government should cut spending everywhere except that it should provide unconditional bailouts where they would benefit him personally.

Finally Renacci's little snit goes against his whole campaign theme. In his latest KNR ads he avers that when times are tough, you have to tighten your belt. Well, if GM is going to tighten its belt, it needs to shed some tonnage. Belt tightening isn't as much fun to talk about when you are the fat that gets trimmed, eh Jim?

Credit where it's due, at least he didn't revive the debunked conspiracy theory about only Republican dealerships getting axed.

In case you thought Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22 was too broad brush, no. He's alive and well and running for Congress in the Ohio 16th.

Nickie Antonio Now Running Unopposed; Poised to Become Ohio's First Gay Legislator

2010-05-14T20:58:00.004-04:00

Word comes tonight that the challenger of Ohio House candidate Nickie Antonio has dropped out of the race, making her virtually assured of becoming Ohio's first openly gay or Lesbian representative. H/t to Equality Ohio for the email notice

Jeremy Caldwell had been running against Ms. Antonio as an independent. He hasn't posted a reason for dropping out on his MySpace blog, though the fact that his web presence was a MySpace group with 15 friends may have something to do with it.

Since talking about her sexuality caused a stir on the blogosphere recently, let me say this. Like Jack Shafer, I dream of a day when a person's sexuality will not be an issue. Since today it is with a significant portion of the electorate, when a candidate is able to succeed despite the bias of that part of the electorate, it is a thing to be celebrated. The only way we get to the end point of sexuality being irrelevant is to pay attention to successes of LGBT people today.

The Ultimate Elena Kagan Resource Site

2010-05-14T16:14:00.003-04:00

I've been trying to compile links to the best sites for Kaganalia. Happily the folks at the Library of Congress have done (most of) the work for me: http://www.loc.gov/law/find/kagan.php (Hattip: Akron Law Cafe.) You'll find there a complete bibliography, links to important papers that are online and a collection of blog and news links.

The one addition I would make is the Jurisprudence department on Slate.com. Slate has some of the best Supreme Court reporters going, especially Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon. The whole staff has been posting insightful analyses from a variety of angles.

Also, if you are unfamiliar with the blawg (that's blogs about the law) world, note that the two academic blogs most closely covering the nomination are Balkinization, which is generally center/left and Volokh Conspiracy which is generally libertarian/right. Each is a group blog and on each a number of posters have contributed strong articles, mostly about her academic work.

Ohio 16th Check-In

2010-05-14T12:56:00.003-04:00

This week Republican Congressional nominee Jim Renacci's most credible primary opponent endorsed him. Which is sufficient excuse to check in on the race.

Renacci is running in the Sixteenth District against freshman incumbent (and something of a blogosphere darling) John Boccieri.

Here's hoping they make as a campaign issue the proper pronunciation of double c's in Italian.

With his erstwhile challenger Matt Miller formally endorsing him, Renacci is consolidating his party support in the district. While ongoing strife with Miller was unlikely, a cleavage between the southern part of the district and the Stark County center of gravity.

In addition to the Miller, the same article notes that he is lining up the traditional Stark County Republican brokers, notably the Timkens and Representative emeritus Ralph Regula.

Renacci has been running hard since the start of the year. He's been tapped by the national party as one of its top tier Congressional candidates, and has been raising money by the barrowful.

He's also been spending it by the barrowful. He has been running ads on WKNR since January. First, a life story, then ads telling Boccieri not to vote for health care reform, then ads slamming him for his vote in favor. All this happened before the primary. Advertising on KNR is a profligate use of campaign money as coverage is spotty in Stark and Wayne. Currently the campaign continues the onslaught with ads decrying government spending.

Renacci has an interesting resume -- entrepreneur and small town mayor. Sadly, he's not running a very interesting campaign. Instead of proposing innovative center/right solutions, he's reading straight from the RNC playbook, claiming Boccieri is a Nancy Pelosi lackey and pretending that Pelosi and Obama are entirely responsible for the economic mess. On health care for instance, he advances only the two Republican non-solutions -- interstate competition and tort reform.

Yawn.

While it makes for a predictable campaign, it isn't a stupid strategy. The election will be more than anything else a reflection of the public mood on the economy. Republicans are rooting for the numbers to remain bad and hitching their wagons to grim economic forecasts. And history says

It's tired to say Stark County is a bellwether, but once again it is. This will be a knock down drag out race spending armored car loads of campaign cash. In the end it will come down to how voters in the Sixteenth feel about the economy.

Early Thoughts on Elena Kagan

2010-05-12T23:12:00.002-04:00

A couple of friends asked me what I think of Obama's pick for Supreme Court. I've been reading this and that, but by no means have I made a comprehensive review of all things Kagan. In no particular order, here's my initial set of reactions.

On Average, She's About on Par with Stevens. Justice Stevens is being touted as a great progressive hero. In fact he is a pragmatist and a moderate who looks liberal only due to what passes for the center on the current court. He is responsible for some strong liberal decisions -- his dissent in Bowers v. Hardwick became the law when the Court struck down sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. On the other hand, he also took some less-than-progressive positions, such as his dissent in the Texas flag-burning case. Kagan looks about the same, though probably with a different issue mix.
In any Event, She's Certainly Left of Kennedy. This is all matters a whole lot less, given that Justice Kennedy is the swing vote. It's unlikely a liberal position will get Kennedy's vote, but not Kagan's.
She Was Nominated for Her Intangibles. Intangibles were the "it" topic during this year's NFL draft -- that bundles of leadership qualities that don't fit on a stat sheet. By all reports, Ms. Kagan's big strength is her intangibles. She's the Tim Tebow of high-flying legal talent. Justice Stevens was known as the last great compromiser on the Court, able to occasionally bring a conservative or two over to an otherwise liberal side. My guess is that Obama wanted someone to fill that role on the Court and Kagan had the best mix of professional qualifications, youth and consensus building chops.
At Some Point, the President's Selection Should Be Respected. The grumbling on the Left is that Obama should have picked a through-and-through orthodox liberal. I've never been terribly comfortable with trying to defeat a nominee simply on the basis of ideology -- I'm more interested in legal method. In any event, mobilizing against a nominee because she may be liberal but not liberal enough embraces a rigid orthodoxy that we should let the Right keep to themselves.
The Experience Thing. She's not the next Harriet Myers as Mitch McConnell's office is apparently hinting. Her experience is more analogous to -- though more extensive than -- that of William Rehnquist. And setting ideology aside, Rehnquist was a good Justice and a great Chief Justice at a time the Court needed strong leadership to recover from the damage Warren Burger wreaked.
Enemy of My Enemy. Anyone attacked by Jeff Sessions is worth a serious look.

As time goes on and more information sees daylight, I may get more specific. For now, you know where I'm coming from

Closing Tabs

2010-05-07T23:36:00.002-04:00

Not much success in Day 2 of the Comeback. Too much end of semester grading. Too much writing work. Meantime, here's what I read on breaks but never had time to write up.

The NRA Says Terrorists Have 2nd Amendment Rights Too. The kings of Gunnitistan are opposing attempts to flag people on the terrorism watch list to keep them from buying guns. The NRAites have always been the ultimate absolutists, but this is a lot even for them.
Marc Dann, Convict. Former Attorney General Marc Dann plead guilty today to ethics violations, a sad coda to his hubris-riddled career. He's been fined and sentenced to community service. Which will be something new for him.
Palin Flogging the Christian Nation Trope. The demi-Governor says the plan at the founding of the nation was to "create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandents, it’s quite simple." Yes, simple is one word for it.
NYT on Charters Schools. The paper of record runs an extensive look at the latest studies -- including one from privatization-happy Hoover Institution -- showing that most charters do no better than the schools they replace, some do work, etc. Worse for charter honks, the ones that succeed are the ones that have lots of philanthropic support. Hmm. Education costs money. Whoda thunk? H/t Scene Mag.
Some Big Words that mean Conservatives Are Close-Minded. I'm fascinated by the chatter about epistemic closure on the right. These tabs may stay open a bit longer; I may need to blog this yet.

Still lots of grading to do tomorrow, but things will clear up soon.

Buckeye State Tubes RNSC

2010-05-06T23:03:00.003-04:00

Buckeye State Blog proprietor David Potts successfully petitioned YouTube to pull the Republican Senate Campaign Committee's ad against Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher. The ad lifted footage from a video interview BSB posted at the start or primary season, pulling a couple of quotes about Fisher's job at the Department of Development. Congrats to David for getting the attention of Politico and for the general awesomeness of the play.

This story is fun -- because damn -- but it's also important. Interviews like that at BSB and the interviews Jeff Coryell used to do at Ohio Daily offer an important service. A candidate relating to a nonprofessional citizen journalist tends to be different -- more relaxed, informal, unscripted. We will get less of that if candidates fear it will be plundered for an unflattering moment taken out of context. Way back when Meet the Bloggers was happening, this was an ongoing concern. We had Emily's List (well, their consultants, anyway) lift some photos of Capri Cafaro for attack mailers and Zack Space's opponent using quotes from his MTB interview in radio ads.

How far citizen journalists can push this remains to be seen. The decision to pull the ad based on the intellectual property objection is YouTube's. The ad remains (as of tonight) in the NRSC front page and is probably on their anti-Fisher attack site which I have no desire to visit. If challenged in court, they can claim fair use which works some time, but would take serious lawyering to beat. Some newspapers assert their copyright over editorial endorsements such that you have to run the entire piece, but newspapers have phalanxes of lawyers to assert those rights.

The great hope is that the embarrassment of being publicly outed for copyright infringement and especially getting dinked by YouTube will deter this kind of nonsense to some degree.

Finally, an irony worth noting. This is the interview that essentially tore Buckeye State apart when it happened. Tonight it has gotten the blog national notice.

Back Again

2010-05-06T11:59:00.005-04:00

So the previously announced Spring cleaning took longer than planned and I wondered if blogging could ever fit into my schedule again. I still wonder, but people keep asking after the Pages. A couple of highlights: I got name checked by Ed Esposito at a Press Club event earlier this year, and the college friend who first glossed me "Pho" dropped the url in our alumni mag this month. So here's to one last push to get this thing going again.

There should be no shortage of material. Not only will races for statewides and Senate be tight, but locally the Ohio 16th (Boccieri vs. Renacci) will be a battle royal. And in the 13th Betty Sutton has an interesting challenger in Tom Ganley, though it remains to be seen whether he will actually do any campaigning.

And of course there are the usual topics around here: what the Supreme Court is doing to our Constitution, whether public education in Ohio can be saved, the latest net neutrality debate and various and sundry policy issues and occasional nods to culture and food.

Should be fun.

The first new substantive post appears immediately below.

Primarily a Bad Sign

2010-05-06T11:22:00.006-04:00

We can start with yesterday's AP piece trying to divine broader meaning from voter participation in Tuesday's primary. Here's the nub:

I'll mostly go along with that, especially since the participation rate parallels the polling data showing that Dems are demoralized and Repubs are energized. But it's worth noting a few factors that may exaggerate Tuesday's numbers:

The Roll-off Difference. Studies show that Democratic voters are more likely to roll-off, that is vote only the top of the ticket as opposed to filling out the entire ballot. This is, for example, why Republicans continued to win judicial races even in the big Dem cycles. Setting aside arguments about what this says about the respective parties, its certainly possible that Dems are less likely than Republicans to vote in all the uncontested races.
New Ballots. The new optical scan ballots make it more of a pain in the butt to vote. Filling in an oval is that much more tedious and annoying than punching a button or tapping a screen. Not that anyone would not vote in a real race, but when there is a real (if minimal) cost to doing something that matters not at all, fewer people will do it. This may have heightened the roll-off effect.
The Tea Party. While the Senate campaign was big for the true political junkies on the left, the Republicans had a near civil war over the Auditor's race in which the Tea Partiers had there guy against the establishment Party pick. This arguably injected an energy into turnout on the Republican side of the ballot.
Things Change. This an events-driven election cycle. The prime mover in this election is not big ideas about the role and size of government, it's that people want something/anything to happen so they start hurting. It's unlikely the economy -- and in particular the employment numbers -- will pick up appreciably, but if they do, the picture changes.

Make no mistake, things are not good for Democrats this cycle. But it is still good to see the entire picture.

UPDATE: Apparently the GOP's "voter enthusiasm" advantage is dampening. h/t Progress Ohio's Twitter feed.

Spring Cleaning

2010-03-17T23:33:00.002-04:00

Wow, it's dusty in here. Dead links and old, old posts. I'm taking advantage of Spring Break to get stuff cleaned up around the house, and I'll do the same here. I've needed time to get a head of steam on blogging if I'm ever going to get back to it. And I keep being told that I should get back to it.

So I'll clean up a bit around here and try to add something shiny and new.

Post-Triptophan Randomness

2009-12-01T09:00:00.003-05:00

OK, as usual to get back into blogging mode, I need something easy, something trivial, something . . . random.

Ran across this from xkcd in my Reader:

Which also frequently depicts the Random Ten experience for me. Take, for example, the current list:

Raconteurs, “Old Enough”
3D, “Listen to the Radio”
Sixpence None the Richer, “Breathe Your Name”
AC DC, “Hell’s Bells”
Beck, “Peaches and Cream”
Social Distortion, “Cold Feelings”
The Jam, “Precious”
Five for Fighting, “Maybe I”
Dwight Yoakum, “Throughout All Time”
Alison Krauss and Union Station, “I’m Gone”

OK, yea, so I kinda like Sixpence None the Richer. I know I'm not supposed to. No doubt some of you are tuning up: they are bland MOR adult-pop that straddles the mainstream and Contemporary Christian markets. What's your deal Pho? Personally Leigh Nash's voice appeals and they come up with crazy good pop hooks.

Probably I wouldn't pay for it, but their weird crossover "Breathe Your Name" was a free promo download. It's exactly the sort of Christian pop song South Park sent up -- it sounds like a deeply romantic uptempo ballad until you dig into the lyrics.

Anyway. I've never liked it better than as a lead-in to "Hell's Bells."

Some thoughts on stuff:

I missed blogging on the lead up, but much thanks and kudos to both Akron City Council and Summit County Council for their votes for ordinances banning sexual orientation discrimination.

The big news today of course is the President's speech outlining the revised strategy for the Afghanistan war. I part ways with many of my compatriots on the left on this one -- and increasingly with Americans generally. Failure in Afghanistan would be devastating. I'm happy the President is willing to continue to pursue a successful resolution, notwithstanding the popular sentiment. More later.

In tomorrow's Legal News column I take on Stupak-Pitts. Again, more to follow.

I have an early start tomorrow, so that will have to do for tonight.

In Which a Tone Deaf Rock Fan Takes in the Worlds Best Orchestra

2009-11-21T09:58:00.003-05:00

The offer came in this week -- get comp tickets to a Cleveland Orchestra performance and "blog about the experience." When our schedule cleared up for Friday night, I accepted the offer and took Kid Z along. I assume the offer came to me because I participated in a similar outreach by Opera Cleveland last summer, which in turn happened as a result of knowing that organizations communications director through her blog. These things can happen when you blog.

Despite being mostly a rock fan, I've seen quite a bit of the Cleveland Orchestra. In fact before we became parents Prof. W and I had a Severance Hall subscription. Not to say I can tell you why the orchestra is generally acknowledges as among the three or four best in the world. I just know they are and that they sound great.

Let's think a bit about Cleveland being home to one of the best orchestras in the world. Face it, one reason we are collectively gripping about the possibility of LeBron James leaving town is what it says about Northeast Ohio. He grew up here following the team and has been embraced as a hometown hero, and the team will be able to match whatever another team will pay him. And yet he might leave. If he does we are left with yet another bit of evidence that this is just not a place where people of excellence wish to live.

We're concerned that if he leave, the team will suck; we're really scared that if he leaves, it means we suck.

But we do have our pockets of excellence, and few if any are more excellent that the orchestra. It seems almost impossible that lowly, perennial joke-butt Cleveland could have anything, much less a highbrow cultural institution that ranks so highly.

Of course once you go you are reminded where you are. We have a world class cultural institution, a jewel of a venue in Severance, and perfectly abysmal parking. So the first part of the experience was getting there just in time, which meant that everything was parked up and we would be late.

Very Cleveland.

So we followed winding roads to, I think, Parma, laid in provisions for the trek back to Severance and set out. As a result we got there midway through the first movement of Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B Minor. Watching from the wings was nonetheless impressive. Again I know tiny bits about string playing (mostly from watching my kids take lessons) but soloist Alisa Weilerstein gets truly impressive sounds out of her instrument.

Once that piece was over, we were seated. The Orchestra apparently likes bloggers as they gave us seats on the floor three or four rows back. Viewing and listening from this distance is a whole new experience. First off you see things. Like everyone dresses in all black, but up close you see that some men wear tuxedo pants, some where regular dress slacks and one of the first violins wore ratty black cargoes. Who knew?

But more than that, the sound is stunning. Premium seats at the orchestra won't set you back much more than nosebleed seats at an aging rocker's Retirement Villa Tour at Quicken. But instead of muddy sound and dubiously tuned instruments you can hear what precision playing sounds like. I still listen to mostly rock and jazz at home, but increasingly classical is what I want to see live.

From that vantage we listened to Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra." You know the first section better as:

The piece starts with basses rumbling so low they set up vibrations in your diaphram before you hear them. And of course the piece has far more to it than the now-cliche opening.

After the orchestra's performance internationally renouned percussionist Jamey Haddad set up shop in the lobby with a band of his students from Cleveland Institute of Music and Oberlin Conservatory, playing polyrhythmic jazz pieces deep into the night. The real treat of that portion was Ms. Wallerstein sitting in.

Like everyone else, the orchestra is hurting economically. And as noted, it is a can't miss gig. They never show up half in the bag and play half a set. And they won't turn free agent at the end of the season. Check them out. And if you can get away tonight, they are playing the Dvořák, which you really want to see.

Linkage:

The orchestra has a blog with tons of pics from last night. The PeeDee's review of the concert is up.

(Image from the Cleveland Orchestra)

Hubbard High School and Why We Have a First Amendment

2009-11-19T09:59:00.004-05:00

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
-Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

The Vindy (h/t ABJ) reports today about an Ohio high school student who was disciplined for not standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance:

“I’m an atheist, and I believe the pledge isn’t something toward our nation,” she said. “It’s more like a religious oath, and I believe that if I stand I’m still participating in it.”

Westover said she had been written up and sent to the principal’s office multiple times for her refusal over the course of the past few weeks. The ACLU sent a letter requesting the school to stop requiring students to say the pledge.

In fact the question of compelling students to recite the Pledge was resolved back in 1943 in the Barnette case cited up top. The school is listening to the ACLU and in fact have discovered that school policy says students aren't required to recite.

All of which points up why civil libertarians work so hard to hold a strict line on attempts to introduce anything religious into schools. The pro-school prayer folks wonder ingenuously what could possibly wrong with a voluntary teacher-led prayer. This is what could -- and almost certainly would -- go wrong. Here is a school violating not only a decades-old Supreme Court precedent, but their own school policy. But we are supposed to trust that teacher-lead school prayer would never coerce non- or different believers.

Conservative Christians who pen thumb suckers about being oppressed. In fact they are angry that they can't use the mechanisms of the state to evangelize. That's not oppression. The plaintiffs in the Barnette case were Jehovah's Witnesses. Their children were expelled from school and their homes picketed. In other communities Witnesses were assaulted for their beliefs. That's oppression.

What Roxanne Westover experienced is hardly comparable to some of the outrages Americans past have experienced, but she did suffer real consequences just for believing something different than the majority. Happily we have a First Amendment to protect Roxanne -- and the rest of us.

Today in the Akron Legal News -- Low Power FM

2009-11-18T22:00:00.002-05:00

What with the health care death match moving into the Senate and ongoing dramas over the budget, it's easy to miss the small bills floating around Congress. For today's column I flag one such bill, HR 1147, the Local Community Radio Act. The LCRA expands the authority of the FCC to issue licenses to non-profit low-power FM radio stations.

These 10-100 watt stations essentially cover a neighborhood -- imagine a radio station for Highland Square. Um, one not run by the Highland Square Neighborhood Association, preferably. In one article about low power FM the range of a rural station is described as having a 20 mile radius -- city clutter would cut that down.

Both commercial broadcasters and NPR have been lobbying against the proposed new rules for fear that the signals form low power stations would interfere with there signals. Given the current state of corporate radio, that sounds like an advantage. But in fact the FCC commissioned a study that indicates that the expanding LPFM will not interfere with extant radio stations.

Despite the technical reassurances and despite bipartisan co-sponsorship versions of the LCRA have failed in two Congresses so far. The House version is supposed to be heading for a floor vote in the next month or so.

Blogging is a big deal because a diversity of people were able to gain wide exposure with essentially no entry costs. LPFM isn't that good, but the entry costs are a fraction of starting up a traditional radio station. The effect of blogging on traditional news gathering has been undeniable. The effect of LPFM on commercial radio is likely to be slower and more subtle, but then commercial radio can't go anywhere but up.

LINKAGE:

I heard about the issue from getting on Free Press's email list. Here's their take on it. Free Press also lobbies for net neutrality.

One of the lead players in the lobbying effort is the Prometheus Radio Project. Here is a HuffPo piece from a Prometheus spokes person.

A map I reference showing LPFM stations in the U.S. is here.

The FCC is pretty much pro-low power. Here for example is a fact sheet from the agency answering a bunch of the objections. And this page contains links to a number of publications the FCC has put out as the controversy has worn on.

The essence of the Act is to allow third adjacent channel stations -- that is stations that are three channels away from an extant station. Here's a more detailed explanation of that.

If you are interested in following the progress of the bill, check out the Open Congress page.

On Akron's New Transparency (By Request)

2009-11-16T22:14:00.002-05:00

Jill asks about the back story of this ABJ story last week. The city of Akron is posting regular daily updates of income tax receipts. I have some things to say about a few comments from the interweb now that I'm back on top of things. Might as well start with a friendly one.

This is happening because of a) the fiscal crisis every city is experiencing b) the deep distrust of the Mayor on the part of the public safety unions and c) the highly vocal anti-Plusquellic minority.

It goes like this. Because tax receipts are way down, the city has to make deep cuts. Ultimately those cuts include laying off a number of firefighters. No one is happy about this. We who live in the city really want to have confidence that our houses won't burn down. But a deficit is a deficit.

As unhappy as the residents are, the firefighters are extremely unhappy, and they accuse the administration of not doing everything they can to prevent the layoffs. The antipathy between the Mayor and union leadership cannot be exaggerated. They actually believe he would endanger residents in order to screw over the union.

The debate has taken on a surreal turn as the Mayor's various antagonists have claimed that the administration isn't forthcoming about the city's finances. This echoes the debate throughout the recall effort. Every time the Mayor would answer a charge about city finances, his critics would move the goal posts again.

Jill ventures into the dark place of madness and despair that is the Trollhio.com comments section. Needless to say the denizens are unimpressed. Jill is right about the limited capacity of regular folks to objectively interpret information like that being posted. What the posting does offer is the Mayor's critics the opportunity to find someone who does have the chops and have at it.

Not that they will. It's far more enjoyable to just sit back and bitch. Hell, a certain Akron attorney has practically made a career of it.

Public Option Annie

2009-11-11T21:16:00.002-05:00

Work of a guerrilla musical theater group that infiltrated a national conference of the health insurance trade group AHIP. Thanks to the friend who passed this along. Enjoy.

Apologies for any Ohio bloggers who may have hit this first. I have, as noted, been out of the loop.

Tom Ganley in Akron

2009-11-11T15:28:00.003-05:00

Tom Ganley spoke before the Akron Press Club in early October and, yes, I'm just getting to it now. It's been a trying semester. Sue me.

Anyway, with Ganley running the first ad in what looks like a media-heavy campaign and the ODP increasingly working to pump up the NY23-ness of the Republican primary, it's worth revisiting that appearance. In a separate post I'll offer my views on what threat, if any, he is in the race.

The first thing we learned about Tom Ganley is that he's sufficiently interested in the race to spend money recklessly. He hired a crew to assemble a stage for his presentation -- raised platform, blue drapery background, teleprompters, all for an audience of maybe forty.

The second thing we learned was that Ganley fancies himself a populist. A thin line exists between conservative populism and ugly xenophobic nativism, but it doesn't matter how thin because Ganley vaults himself well into nativist territory.

For much of his 15 minutes or so of prepared remarks Ganley hit on traditional economic conservative themes -- lower spending, lower taxes, smaller government. But he hit on some odd themes as well, particularly decrying the loss of manufacturing jobs in Ohio. Since most of those jobs have gone overseas and pro-business conservatives don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.

Ganley's one specific policy proposal is a job creation tax credit, given for recalling laid off workers, creating new jobs or repatriating jobs that have gone overseas. Hmm. There it is again.

The other strong theme in his brief stump speech is that Tom Ganley is a businessman. That he is a successful businessman cannot be denied. He started with a Rambler dealership when he was twenty something and has built that into the highest volume dealership group in the state. Recalling the Rambler my parents had when I was wee, parlaying that dealership into anything better than Chapter 11 is a significant accomplishment.

But Ganley oversells the business angle. Why does everyone who runs for Congress as a successful business person think he/she is the first to do so? In Ganley's mind, no one in Washington understands business and everyone who understands business can understand government. He says that when he is elected he will bring eight or so Senators together and teach them all there is to know about running a business. Then charge those eight Senators with teaching their colleagues. And that will fix things in Washington.

No really, he said all this. Like a freshman Senator will be in a position to "teach" senior Senators anything. It's so darn cute you just want to hug him. It might be worth sending him to Washington just to see the inevitable hazing.

If you haven't been to a Press Club event, the usual drill is a half hour or so speeh, followed by Q&A from the audience. Among other things we're trying to fill the one hour slot we have for cable rebroadcasts. Ganley's people knew this, but nonetheless he gave his fifteen minute stump and looked increasingly uncomfortable as the questioned dragged on. He derides "professional politicians," but the sooner he learns there is an actual skill set to appearing before and adapting to a crowd, the fewer days like this he will have.

It was in the Q&A that we really get that populist, er, nativist streak in Ganley's thought. When pressed to differentiate himself with Portman specifically on trade, he made overtly protectionist noises. He said as a threshold matter that he would not have voted for a trade deal with China, and that he does not believe in negotiating trade deals generally. He also had favorable things to say about recent measures to protect the domestic tire industry.

But of all his positions, none got him more animated that illegal immigration. To his credit, he would "come down hard" on the executives on companies that hire illegals. But he also made ugly noises about the "millions who don't belong here." He's clearly not in favor of any reform that would involve a path to citizenship. And when asked a tricky question -- what should we do upon finding an undocumented family with a child sick with H1N1 -- he said indignantly that if they are illegal, deport 'em.

So while populism generally aims at channeling grassroots energy at challenging the power of establishment institutions, Ganley seems more interested in channeling it at alien others. Depending on where he goes with it, this could devolve into a nasty, shower-necessitating campaign. And that bit about deporting a sick kid for one will make a nice sound bite against him.

Grumpy Abe has been attending and writing up the Senate events as well. You can read his take on Ganley here.

Scientific Evidence that the Republican Base Is Crazy

2009-11-10T21:26:00.002-05:00

Some weeks ago I argued that the vituperative criticism of Obama from the right was not, as some suggested, driven by racism but was the result of the right wing being nuts. Not nuts in the sense that they disagree with me, but nuts in that they increasingly subscribe to paranoid fantasies untethered to the real world as anyone else perceives it.

During my long illness I got an email from Democracy Corps, the polling firm co-owned by James Carville, linking to a report that reaches the same conclusion based on at least semi-scientific investigation. They ran focus groups of older white non-college educated conservative Republicans in Georgia, asking about Obama, health care, the economy and other basic issues. And as a control they ran similar focus groups with independents with similar demographics in suburban Cleveland. This second group they identify as the most conservative swing voter bloc.

The first finding they emphasize is that the participants persuaded them that race is not the basis for their nearly universal loathing of Obama. You can question this study based on the bias of the investigators, but this is a hard conclusion to dispute. After all, the easy and advantageous (for Dems) conclusion would be that anti-Obama conservatives are just a bunch of unreconstructed bigots. That they find the opposite certainly is a credible finding and gives extra credence to the project generally.

The more significant finding is that the ultraconservative Republicans live in a different world from the rest of us -- even from the conservative independents from Cleveland:

The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America, according to focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps. These base Republican voters dislike Barack Obama to be sure – which is not very surprising as base Democrats had few positive things to say about George Bush – but these voters identify themselves as part of a ‘mocked’ minority with a set of shared beliefs and knowledge, and commitment to oppose Obama that sets them apart from the majority in the country. They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a ‘secret agenda’ to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism. While these voters are disdainful of a Republican Party they view to have failed in its mission, they overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country’s founding principles and are committed to seeing the president fail.From there the specifics get positively surreal. Obama is controlled by some real power -- most likely George Soros. They want to kill Glenn Beck. Their ultimate goal is the end of civil liberties.

My personal favorite -- because it's so counterfactual -- that Obama started the road to socialism by bailing out the banks. Yes Obama is so diabolical that he orchestrated the bank bailout before he even took office!. Scary.

As I said in my previous post, it's a manifestly bad thing that some twenty percent of the electorate is bonkers. Additionally, I think its incumbent on us non-crazy, reality-based folk to continually point this out.

The media coverage of the ravings from the right repeatedly falls into the false equivalency trap -- let's find someone nutty on the left for balance. (The occasional blogger will fall into this as well.) But the nutty left doesn't affect the course of the Democratic party. Hell, we're lucky if they vote.

The hardcore right described in the report comprise the grassroots foot soldiers of the Republican party. They are the ones who do things like run party moderate out of elections -- and the party. As such, the crazies in the Republican party have real influence on one of the only two real parties in our democracy.

Twenty Years Ago

2009-11-09T21:18:00.002-05:00

In 1984 I was on a study abroad program in Yugoslavia. One night we met up with some German students and sampled a great deal of the local malt beverage and got talking about politics. I (clumsily) brought up the idea of reunification and they shrugged it off. A pipe dream, they said. Maybe in our lifetimes, but there's no sign of even a glimmer of possibility.

Five years later, and twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall came down, and the dominoes fell in reverse. Having visited Czechoslovakia, I confidently predicted to my friends that whatever happened elsewhere in the Warsaw Pact, Czechoslovakia would remain stubbornly communist. Then the Velvet Revolution happened. (I related this story to an international law prof who told me he said the same thing. Took a little of the sting out.)

Today I teach young men and women who have never lived in a world with a Communist bloc. Perhaps one reason political adversaries are so careless with charges of communism is that it's been so long since we've seen the real thing.

A dance club we frequented back in Yugoslavia played David Bowie's "Heroes" pretty much every night. It is to this day one of my favorite pop culture indictments of Soviet totalitarianism. The song is about lovers trysting by the Berlin Wall, but Bowies singing transcends the specific narrative to capture the universal yearning for freedom.

ODP Talking Junk about the Republican Senate Primary

2009-11-09T19:58:00.003-05:00

The tasteful graphic above is from the Ohio Democratic Party website today. The link leads to a release riffing on an ABC News story about the Republican Senate Campaign Committee assuming a neutral posture in contested primaries in 2010. The presser notes:

The original story in fact does not mention the Ohio race. And as of now the race isn't much of a contest with Ganley stuck in single digits. ODP may be rooting for a fight on the Republican side, but are unlikely to get one.

Still and all it's fun to see the party trying to stir up trouble. And with this I declare this week Senate Campaign Week here at the Pages. Which is to say, I am hoping to finally write up my impressions of the three candidates who have thus far appeared at the Akron Press Club (Ganley, Portman and Brunner) and prognosticate a bit about the race.

Randomosity: Resurfacing Edition

2009-11-06T13:57:00.003-05:00

So, kids, you know how the public health folks are saying that you can get reinfected with H1N1. Well, they speak the truth. Happily the second time through has been shorter. And BTW I took the kids in for Akron's free immunizations yesterday. A well run operation and the kids have shown no ill effects.

Of course I could be part of the Obama-led conspiracy to overclaim the pandemic. You never know.

A few things I've been watching in between naps:

The courts considering the Rifqa Bary case have done what I consider the right thing. She is back in Ohio in CSB custody and living in foster care. Needless to say, the nutters watching the case are not pleased. In fact they have scheduled a rally in Columbus for next Saturday. If you want to see the minds behind Atlas Shrugs and Jihad Watch live on on day passes, there you are.

Buckeye State has been going through some interesting changes. I've had more than my share of disagreements with various proprietors of the blog (though not much with current head BSer David Potts), but I can't imagine the Ohio lefty sphere without it. I'm glad David is carrying on and ask that you continue to patronize his bloggage.

There are a lot of navel-gazing pieces like this about Whatever Shall the Republican Party Do? around -- have been since 06, really. And most of them follow the WMD logic that the thing that got Republicans into trouble is that they stopped being defined exclusively by orthodox conservatism. As a Democrat I should be happy to see such stuff, but as someone who believes first and foremost in political pluralism, I'm not. If Republicans define themselves solely in terms of conservative dogma they will remain a regional minority party. As such they will not provide much of a check on the inevitable excesses of liberalism. That's not good for anyone.

Oh, and they will be that much more destructive when they do take power.

I thought Akron had the gayest election ever last Tuesday, what with an out Lesbian city council person and an out gay muni judge elected. But apparently we were just part of a broader trend. Though the vote in Maine didn't go as well as hoped, it's pretty amazing that sexual identity was essentially a non-issue for so many candidates.

While I was out the crew at CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) dropped an email about their state-by-state database of government corruption. Here's Ohio's page.

I enjoyed the spectacle of Minority Leader John Boener (R-Darque Zone) claiming he was reading the preamble of the Constitution when in fact he was reading from the Declaration of Independence. OK, yea people make mistakes. But. 1) He hasn't sworn and oath to uphold the Declaration. 2) He has freely accused Obama of subverting the Constitution despite his apparntly limited familiarity with the document. And 3) If he HAD read the the preamble of the Constitution in the course of criticizing the health care bill, he likely would have choked on the part about promoting the general welfare.

OK, a few tabs closed. Now here's your moment of ten:

Alison Krauss and Union Station, "Bright Sunny South"
Dwight Yoakum, "Please Please Baby"
Bjork, "It Is Oh So Quiet"
The Beatles, "Lovely Rita"
Cibo Matto, "White Pepper Ice Cream"
Gorillaz, "Double Bass"
Matthew Sweet, "Winona"
Horace Silver, "Nica's Dream"
U2, "Desire"
Lucinda Williams, "Words"

Today in the Akron Legal News -- 2010, It's On

2009-11-04T21:01:00.000-05:00

Today's Akron Legal News column hooks on the Wednesday after Election Day being, for us politics junkies, the official beginning of the 2010 election cycle. From that I take on a personal bugbear.

Based on what we're hearing from Republican candidates, the narrative is likely to be 1) Strickland has dithered on the economy, hence the lousy economy, and 2) the Republican's positive, innovative, not-just-hatin' proposal is to update Ohio's antiquated business tax system. Rob Portman, for one, was talking up these themes (with a dose of Obama criticism of course) when he visited the Press Club last week. He said that Ohio's tax system was designed for a traditional heavy manufacturing economy with little competition from elsewhere.

So this is what really pisses me off. That was a compelling argument six years ago, and in response Ohio revamped the system. This under a Republican administration and with Republicans in charge of both houses of the legislature. And now Republicans pretend it never happened. Drives me right out of my tree every time I hear it.

So if I have one wish for the coming election season, it is that Republicans who continue to mine this trope get called on it. Specifically I'd like to see a reporter, at least once in a while, ask why we should Candidate R's tax reform to solve all of Ohio's economic challenges when the last reform was sold the same way. And needless to say, economic utopia has not arrived in Ohio.

Of course advocates for tax reform could argue that it worked. For example, Ohio keeps going up in the Site Selection ratings. But that would obviate the rationale for a new reform. But if you argue that the old reform didn't work, your back to square one. What's a tax cutter to do? Apparently pretend that the past reform didn't happen.

Linkage.

Here's the pdf Fact Sheet on what's left of the corporate franchise tax from Ohio Dept of Taxation. Another pdf from Ohio Tax, this one showing how the old taxes are being phased out (09 is the last tax year for both the business personal property tax and corporate franchise.)

Brunner in Town Tomorrow

2009-11-04T17:01:00.003-05:00

Secretary of State and U.S. Senate candidate Jennifer Brunner will make her case to Akron tomorrow, with a series of events. Tomorrow morning she is appearing on the Ray Horner Show on WAKR at 8:30.

Then at 11:45 she appears at the Akron Press Club. I am scheduled to introduce her because the usual guy is out of town. Spaces are still available. Check the website for the reservations email.

Immediately after, at 1:30, she meets with Students for Brunner at the University of Akron Student Union, 303 Carroll Street.

I'll try to get some thoughts up, though I still have stuff from the Ganley and Portman events in the queue.

Election Day Tomorrow

2009-11-02T22:02:00.002-05:00

Yes it's mid-term, but that means you will be in and out quickly. So first and foremost, VOTE!

Since this blog is based on the increasingly tenuous assumption that people care about my opinions, a few thoughts/recommendation about the ballot.

Of course I will be voting for Sandra Kurt for City Council Ward 8 tomorrow. I'm not wild about a one-party monopoly on Council. But Sandra is such a good candidate I'll happily ~~pull the lever~~ fill in the oval for her.

For School Board I'm having trouble getting excited about any candidates other than Jason Haas and Lisa Mansfield. There are some OK people in the race, but none have distinguished themselves. I may vote only for Jason and Lisa just to strengthen those votes.

For Akron Muni I will be voting straight Dem ticket which I don't usually do in judicial races. Steve Fallis is a family friend and a smart guy. Jerry Larson is well thought of and has run an impressive campaign. I've expressed my doubts about Orlando Williams in the past, but have expressed far graver doubts about Katarina Cook. On second thought I don't really have any doubts -- she's just not judge material.

As for the issues. I'm voting down the three Ohio issues. I've covered 2 and 3 already. Not good ideas in their own right with bonus idea badness adding political flotsam to the Constitution.

As for Issue 1, I'm annoyed. If the thing is so rightfully popular, why don't we vote in a tax to pay for it now as opposed to adding to the debt load.

Closer to home we have Issue 4 which would convert the Engineer's office to an appointed position. I don't know about you, but I have no idea who should be the County Engineer. As such, I always feel a bit guilty about voting for the office. The issue has generated ungodly levels of handwringing in the name of democracy. Well, Summit County has appointed a medical examiner for years and democracy has survived.

On a blog/personal level, it appears that my health issues have abated, so hopefully this marks something close to a full-time return to blogging.

Today (Thursday) in the Akron Legal News

2009-10-22T13:54:00.003-04:00

For the handful of folks who read both this blog and my column in Akron Legal News, an announcement: This week's column appears in today's paper, not the usual Wednesday. There were some absences at the paper due to, yes, the flu again and things got moved around as a result. "Cases and Controversies" will return to its usual Wednesday spot in two weeks.

This week's column takes on Issue 2. Issue 2 would set up an Ohio Livestock Standards Board, has been endorsed by pretty much everyone who matters on either side of the aisle and for the most part 2 has slipped under the radar. It's not the worst idea ever, but it's not a good idea. The board is set up in a way that goofs around with the usual constitutional system of separation of powers for no good reason.

What's more, the particular not-good reason at work here is fear of direct democracy. The backers of Issue 2 explicitly say that they have put it together because of the possibility that animal rights activists (of the relatively sane Humane Society variety, not the PETA crazies) might introduce a ballot issue establishing a few minimum standards for livestock care. Reflect on that. Voters might have to opportunity to consider livestock standards, so we need amend the constitution to establish a new bureaucracy.

Further reading:

Here is the official Issue 2 website. You can also find lots of pro talk at Ohio Farm Bureau. The anti- forces have styled themselves Ohioans Against Constitutional Takeover. The particular potential ballot issue that has given people the fantods is California Proposition 2. Here's some background from Wiki and thumb-sucking reaction from a Wisconsin ag paper. And here, for grins, is a piece in The Hill by Ohio's own Jean Schmidt about the issue.

Mostly Non-Viral Return Post

2009-10-21T22:04:00.002-04:00

As you may have noted from my Twitter feed, I've been battling the flu for nigh on two weeks now. Don't know if it was swine or regular, but it certainly felt like the usual My head is finally clear enough for me to think about writing for public consumption again.

While I was sick I kept myself going in part by visualizing the anti-vaccine right wing yappers getting this thing. Because anyone engaging in that level of irresponsible asshattery deserves to suffer at least as much as I did. Of course I didn't pry the time out of my schedule to get the flu shot myself, but I won't parade that misstep as some great poltical statement.

To get things moving again, a quick random ten:

Yo La Tengo, "You Can Have It All"
Clint Black, "Muddy Water"
Elvis Costello, "Jump Up"
Duke Ellington, "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
The Decemberists, "The Sporting Life"
Billie Holiday, "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man"
Traveling Wilburys, "Dirty World"
Mountain Goats, "Lion's Teeth"
Akron/Family, "Creatures"
Mates of State, "My Only Offer"

McDonald v. Chicago; Another Attempt to Explain 2nd Amendment Incorporation

2009-10-06T22:22:00.003-04:00

Yesterday was the First Monday in October, meaning that the season has begun for Supreme Court watchers. One of the more interesting cases to watch will be McDonald v. Chicago -- another go-round for the new improved Second Amendment.

Recall that in Heller v. DC, the Supreme Court found for the first time in constitutional history that the Second Amendment includes a personal right to have weapons and that an outright ban on handguns violates that right. But the District of Columbia is Federal territory. We still don't know if this freshly invigorated right applies to the states.

I've referenced this before when Sotomayor was getting NRA hateburgers thrown her way by a certain failed gubernatorial candidate, and again referencing my Akron Legal News column about nunchucks. The feedback was my drive by treatment of the issue left some of my non-lawyer readers confused. But that they really liked seeing Bruce Lee play ping pong with nunchucks.

So here again is an attempt to explain the background of the case. I'll have more specific thoughts on the case and some of the strange bedfellowships it has inspired.

In the beginning, there was the Bill of Rights. And it was good. But it was only good against the Federal Government. Recall that the first words in the First Amendment are "Congress shall make no law." The Constitution wasn't about creating rights, it was about creating a newly powerful national government after the disaster that was the Articles of Confederation. Not everyone was comfortable with a national government with real power. The original purpose of the Bill of Rights was to secure individual rights against this new government.

Not to say that states could do whatever they wanted. Each state had a constitution with some version of the freedoms in the Bill of Rights. But for the first several decades of the nation, states were not under Federal Constitutional constraints.

That changed after the Civil War. In light of all that had just happened, the Northern states thought that just maybe states had a wee bit too much freedom under the Constitution. And so the Restoration Amendments were passed -- the 13th, 14th and 15th. The purpose of these amendments was to codify certain results of the war (the 13th abolished slavery; the 15th guarnateed voting rights to freed slaves), and more generally to guarantee freedoms against state intrusion.

Nestled in the 14th amendment is the Due Process clause, which says that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Starting in the early 20th Century, the Supreme Court began reading the clause as incorporating Bill of Rights guarantees against the states. What does due process mean? Look to the process guarantees in the Bill. What "liberty" cannot be denied? Look to the substantive rights in the first ten amendments.

The Court rejected calls to simply incorporate the whole Bill in one fell swoop. Instead it adopted an approach called selective incorporation. Selective incorporation says that only fundamental rights are incorporated. Fundamental rights are those that are "essential" for "ordered liberty" or are rights out of which all other rights flow. Not a rigorous standard, to be sure.

For a number of reasons to be saved for later posts, I (along with most anyone paying attention) expect the Supremes to incorporate the Second Amendment in McDonald. But how they go about it will be interesting, and will have implications for future decisions about the metes and bounds of the right to bear arms.

In the meantime, you can read up on McDonald on SCOTUSwiki and Wikipedia if you wish.

Charter Schools and Unlikely Ally for Strickland

2009-10-03T10:05:00.002-04:00

Interesting post last week on Flypaper, the blog of the Fordham Foundation, a free-market oriented, pro-charters think tank with roots in Dayton. They propose some logrolling regarding Gov. Strickland's proposal to freeze the tax cut for a year. As FP correctly notes, a ten percent cut in ed. funding would devastate Ohio charters.

The proposal is to get charter backing for the tax plan in exchange for passing/signing a Husted bill poking holes in the current charter moratorium. FB says it would allow sponsors of "high-performing" charter schools to set up new schools.

To the extent this is a real trial balloon it's something worth considering. Recall that the charter industry ran attack ads against certain legislators deemed unfriendly during the budget battle. Having the charter industry as an ally, however temporary, would be a help at a time when friends are hard to come by.

I'd be all for a little legislative logrolling, but the Husted bill has serious flaws. First off, in addition to allowing new brick-and-mortar charters the bill would also lift the lid on more e-schools. Just because. Of course the fact that eschools make tons of money despite poor performance might have something to do with it.

As for the brick-and-mortar provisions, they need to be tightened up. The current language would set the threshold at having schools in continuous improvement. That's hardly high performing. And a sponsor can open new schools for each schoolin continuious improvement, regardless of the shape of its overall portfolio. 100 school in Academic Watch and 2 in continuous improvement? No problem, open two more. Much better would be to allow only those sponsors with a generally clean bill to open new schools.

But the thought by Fordham is a nice one. The post as a whole has predictable snark coming from a Republican-leaning outfit -- it's not a tax hike if taxes don't go up and saying the fiscal crisis is Strickland's fault is laughable. But all that said, Strickland will need all the help he can get to make this work. If the charter honks are willing to reach across the aisle, it's at least worth a listen.

Strickland's Big Blink

2009-09-30T22:56:00.002-04:00

Governor Ted Strickland announced today that he will seek to postpone the last installment of personal income tax cuts to plug the budget gap now that the video slots idea is in danger. Modern has a liveblog of the press conference and some reax. Some thoughts.

Republicans immediately fell upon the governor like hyeanas on a rancid zebra carcass, calling this a tax increase. Leaving the tax rate where it is does not constitute an increase. They will continue to say it's an increase because it's what they do, and every time they do it will kill brain cells in every sentient being within earshot. But please try to remember that no matter how loud they scream that 2+2=5, it's not an increase.

This is the probably least worst of a number bad choices -- including the video slots. The State, local governments and schools are already cut to the bone. Cutting more would fall on schools and could do long term irreparable harm. Plus more cuts means more unemployment -- another term for a government job is a job.

Of the possible tax changes, it certainly is the best. Strickland is right that raising the CAT would renege on the agreement hammered out with the business community during the tax reform debate that brought us to this point.

And a sales tax increase would be doubly bad. For one thing, sales taxes disproportionately affect working and lower class people. For another, state income taxes are more easily deducted against Federal income taxes. That means that funding through income taxes keeps more money in the state -- for every dollar the state takes in, Ohioans pay some fraction like 70-80 cents. The Feds absorb the rest in lower tax revenue. One legacy of the Taft years is that we bumped the sales tax up a half penny, then dropped the income tax. We increased relative taxes on those least able to pay them and sent more Ohio money to Washington. Brilliant.

Anyway, I have issues with how Strickland has handled the spending side of the budget crisis (about which more anon), but he's right that something needed done on the revenue side. It took a while, but he has made the right choice.

In re Rifqa

2009-09-29T11:01:00.002-04:00

Later this month judges in Ohio and Florida will step into the culture war skirmish that is the Rifqa Bary case. If you haven't heard about the case, the facts outline as follows. A teenage girl of immigrant parents gets involved with things the parents aren't wild about. The parents find out, harsh words are exchanged and the child thinks she's been threatened.

So far this is a case I saw more than once in my days as a prosecutor. I've seen cases where I sympathized with the parents (child acting sexually precocious, running with a criminal element) and with the child (child dating someone of a different race.) The Bary case worked its way into a national story of sorts because in this case Rifqa's means of pissing off her parents was converting from Islam to Christianity.

One of the few facts in the case which everyone agrees on is that Rifqa got interested in Christianity by meeting Christians at school and online, converted and kept it hidden from her parents. She claims that when her father found out, he picked up a laptop, threatened to hit her with it and threatened to kill her. She left home and somehow got a bus to Florida where she was sheltered by a Christian pastor and his wife.

So far a difficult but still less than Earth-shattering case. Enter the right wing blogosphere. Righty bloggers have elevated the case to no less than a referendum on America's willingness to stand up to the apocolyptic threat that Islam poses. They say.

The conservative attorneys on Rifqa's side argue that Rifqa's life is in danger if she is returned to her parents and to the Muslim community in suburban Columbus. They base the claim on the alleged threat from her father and the alleged ties of the mosque they attend to radical Islamists. They also note the thread of Islamic thought calling for death to apostates, and the threat of honor killings.

The stance of the right wing bloggers (and the more nutty elements of the right-wing media that have picked up the story) is remarkably -- but not surprisingly -- anti-family. If the term pro-family means something other than code for anti-gay, it presumably means that policies favoring keeping families intact are better than those that don't. But the pro-Rifqa side of the debate has argued consistently that she should be kept in Florida, well away from her parents.

To be sure, one does not need to be a right wing Islamaphobe to have concerns about the case. Regardless of whether killing apostates is a core belief of Islam, it certainly is true that a fair number of Muslims believe it. Similarly, honor killings are a real phenomenon. (Though I must ask here whether they are a real phenomenon in Sri Lanka where the family originates. My understanding is that honor killings are more a matter of custom among Arabic tribes than a feature of Islam. The custom extend to Sri Lanka -- I just don't know.) And frankly the apologists on the left go too far in pretending such threats do not exist.

But the rightysphere allows for no grey in this story. The parents are Muslim and have attended a mosque in which people have spoken who associate with people who associate with people in the Muslim Brotherhood, so case closed. The parents claim, in the first instance, that they aren't all that devout and only attend the mosque infrequently. While we can question the extent to which a threat assessment should take into account the associations of a parent's place of worship, we really should be concerned if the parents are the equivalent of C&E Muslims.

Voices in the right in this debate are -- OK I've said it once, so let's not mince words -- are mostly whack jobs. For example, one of the lead bloggers on the story is Pamela Gellar from Atlas Shrugs. Check out this piece she did on Obama's speech before the NAACP, contrasted with the actual speech. You can't argue with a piece like that. Either her perception of reality is hopelessly skewed or mine is. I prefer to assume my own sanity.

The customary procedure for a case like this is to put the child in foster care and begin a series of supervised visitations to a) try to reunify the family and b) continue to assess the threat to the child. The best first step would be transferring the case (and Rifqa) to Ohio. Hopefully the judges will put the holy war nonsense aside and do what's best for this girl and her family.

Tom Ganley Leads Off APC Senate Candidate Programs

2009-09-28T22:19:00.002-04:00

The Akron Press Club will host all four major candidates for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat this fall. This Thursday, Oct. 1st auto dealer and candidate Tom Ganley will speak. Details and reservation info here.

OK, some may argue about whether Ganley is a major candidate. But hey, Bay Buchanan has endorsed him. So now he has that going for him. Which is nice.

The rest of the fall schedule goes as follows:

Oct. 29, Ambassador Rob Portman
Nov. 5, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner
Dec. 8, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher

RIP William Safire

2009-09-27T22:29:00.002-04:00

Former Nixon speechwriter and op-ed columnist William Safire died of pancreatic cancer at 79. As the obits are noting, Safire was the first conservative columnist employed by the New York Times (Reasonable Right holdout David Brooks now holds what could be called the William Safire chair.)

After last week's rant about the craziness of the modern Right, it's worth remembering how Safire went about his business. Early in the Clinton years, Safire wrote a column complimenting the administrations dialogue on race. During the fallout of the Bush warrantless wiretapping revelations while much of the conservative commentariat condemned the Times for publishing them, Safire condemned the wiretapping. His column was personal -- he had been wiretapped while in the Nixon White House.

Safire both cast the mold of conservative commentators and deviated from it whenever moved to. In today's conservative movement, such deviation from orthodoxy wouldn't be tolerated. But Safire's willingness to deviate from the party line made him more credible to those of us who didn't share his views. Safire, along with contemporaries like Jack Kilpatrick and (before he sold his soul) George Will challenged me. Sometimes I had to think about why I believed differently. Sometimes I was persuaded to change my views.

In contrast, today's conservative "commentary" is easily dismissed cant. The conservatives are right that it does no service to the country when only half the political spectrum is represented in the media. It's a similarly bad thing that half the spectrum has no credibility outside of its core believers.

Randomosity

2009-09-25T20:32:00.002-04:00

I'm trying to blog daily but it's Friday night and I'm tired. So I'll let the MP3s do the talking tonight.

New Pornographers, "All for Swinging You Around"
Charles Mingus, "Open Letter to Duke"
Yo La Tengo, "The Story of Jazz"
Elvis Costello, "Less than Zero"
Shelby Lynn, "Life Is Hard"
Bela Fleck, "Blue Mountain Hop"
Jimmy Cliff, "The Harder They Come"
Bright Eyes, "Poison Oak"
Modest Mouse, "Bukowski"
Lucinda Williams, "Concrete and Barbed Wire"

See you tomorrow. Hopefully.

Not Racist So Much As. . .

2009-09-24T21:34:00.002-04:00

Professional Chatterers and bloggers have been going on for a couple of weeks now about whether attacks on President Obama are motivated by race. Pretty much every news¹ story about opposition to Obama includes the question now, though the answer varies. Obama in a show of sportsmanship says it's not about race. Liberals are unmollified. Etc.

I submit that the venom directed at Obama is related to race in the same way that the full political contact directed at Hillary Clinton in the primary and the derision of Sarah Palin in the general are related to sexism. Which is to say that, all other things being equal, a whole lot of that negativity would have been directed against its subjects regardless of group identification, BUT that the passions involved allow various unpretty isms to come to the surface as well.

If, for example, Bill Clinton had an accomplished, RFK-type brother who ran as the establishment favorite against Obama, the Obama faithful would have pushed back. Hard. If John McCain had picked a half-term governor from a small western state who exhibited a Palinesqe difficulty with putting together a diagrammable sentence, that running mate would have been fodder for lefty bloggers and late night comics. In both cases the pushback/sport occaisionally crossed the line into sexist ugliness, but it wasn't initially caused by sexism.

That sound you hear is your False Moral Equivalency alarm going off, and rightly so. I don't mean to suggest that the opposition to Obama is the same as that of opposition to Sec. Clinton and it certainly is nothing like the criticism of Palin.². The flaying of Obama by the right wing is far more venomous, delusional and histrionic than anything that happened in the campaign. My point, rather, is that a white President as liberal as Obama who made the same policy choices as Obama would face a nearly identically venomous, delusional and histrionic flaying. Obama's race didn't drive the far right crazy. They have been that crazy for a while and Obama just walked into it.

A couple of weeks ago during the usual All Things Considered Friday tete-a-tete between David Brooks and E.J. Dionne, Brooks implored Dionne to distinguish between "the responsible right and the Death Panel Right." Sadly, Dionne let him get away with it, failing point out that the Death Panel Right has all but entirely subsumed the right wing in American politics. Serial nut job Glennnn Beccckk hosts the highest-rated show on Fox. Conservative talk radio and conservative media are overrun with birthers, deathers and adherents to every other wack job paranoia. As far as I can tell, the Responsible Right currently consists of Brooks, Joe Scarborough and a nice kid in my Judicial Process class.

I can't claim to have predicted all of this, but none of it has surprised me. Recall that long before he was impeached, conservative mainstays were pushing the most outrageous fictions about Bill Clinton. In the age of Limbaugh, it's not enough to win and argument; a political foe must be destroyed utterly. The Limbaugh construct is that Liberals are not merely wrong, they are corrupt, disloyal, conniving, and evil. They want to take your guns, tax you into poverty, convert your son to Islam and send your daughter's rapist to midnight basketball.

That rising strain of right wing thought took over entirely during the Bush Administrations. Writers and talkers like Michael Savage and Ann Coulter trafficked in such bile with nary of rebuke from anyone on the increasingly marginalized Responsible Right. While many factors account for the re-emergence of a Democratic majority -- scandals, fatigue and the sheer incompetence of George W. Bush among them -- the fact that so many self-proclaimed standard bearers for the political right are patently wet-hen, March-hare, batshit crazy.

While the bulk of the electorate has turned away from it all, decades-long loyal consumers have been primed to lose their minds if ever a Democrat won the Presidency again. In a way it's a little silly to imagine racism as a dominant factor in all of this. The Limbaugh Nation has been eating double helpings of CrazyFlakes for breakfast every day for decades now, and we're brought up short that they seem a tad unbalanced? Really? And think it's because of race? Really?

Raising race as a prime motivator offers an implied false sense of hope; if only we can get past this race thing, we will smooth out some of these harsh divisions. In fact, what we are seeing is the inevitable result of a generation of conservatives brought up on the belief that politics is a death sport and political power is their divine right. It's bad for the country, and it's not going away any time soon.

¹I'm not including Fox here; an unnecessary clarification unless you are one of those misbegotten souls who mistakes things on Fox for "news." In which case you may have wandered into the wrong blog by mistake.

²I expect this view would be shared by all but the most rabid Palinistas. If this describes you, please see note 1 infra.

2010 and the Budget

2009-09-23T11:22:00.002-04:00

Yesterday's papers reported two stories that lay out much of the discussion for next year's gubernatorial election. In the first, social service advocates and providers and union officials are expressing dissatisfaction with the Strickland administration (from the Dispatch).

Some of the Democratic governor's staunchest supporters, particularly leaders of social-service agencies, said their view of Strickland has been altered by the two-year, $50.5 billion budget he signed into law July 17. They concede that their enthusiasm for his re-election has waned.Which is a worry in the sense that these folks may not go all out in the next election. It's unlikely any of these core constituencies will defect to Kasich. And he's not exactly throwing open the flaps of a big tent:

This is less a play for those constituencies than reassuring the Republican base. Translation: You can vote for me and maybe not be completely shut out of the process, but remember that I'll answer to my actual business/social conservative/small government ideologue constituencies first and foremost.

And what does that base want? That brings us to the second story. House Republicans spent yesterday rolling out their version of an economic development package (from the PD).

We have heard this before. In 2005 the General Assembly overhauled the tax code, scrapping the business personal property tax, replacing the mess of a business franchise tax with a dubious but undeniably simpler Commercial Activities Tax and setting down a schedule of personal income tax cuts. And they said that this would solve all of Ohio's economic problems. And would pay for itself with all the growth it would generate.

Kasich's vague mention of "reforms" on the spending side offers help if you ignore the vagueness. It's true that Strickland has disappointingly wasted the budget crisis. He could have used it as an impetus to push through some much needed reforms and didn't. But those battles are tough on either side, and it's unlikely the Republicans would be willing or able to institute reforms now that they didn't accomplish during their decade plus of hegemony.

And this is the dilemma facing Kasich. The dissatisfaction directed at the Governor is real. But the only policies his party would allow would only deepen that dissatisfaction.

Deeper Meaning in Akron Primary Results: Ward 8

2009-09-09T22:45:00.005-04:00

Ward 8

First off, since posting last night I've been confronted with evidence that my assessment of Sandra Kurt's volunteer corps was off. I was out of town over the weekend and apparently they made themselves known with canvassing and live calling. Hers was the only campaign we got a live call from. She also had plenty of money and hit the mail hard as Redhorse notes in comments to my last post. On the other hand, I could have papered a room with the mailers from Bolden and Padilla as well. In the end, an appealing message plus lots of shoe leather worked.

And the result was an overwhelming victory. In a five-way race (OK, one candidate managed 37 votes, but still) she garnered almost half the total votes.

In a way Sandra's victory is a victory for identity politics. In the post-racial age of Obama, we're supposedly beyond voting based on group identification. But Sandra wasn't afraid to say that she is part of constituency that is very important in Akron politics but long neglected on Council.

I'm talking, of course, about engineers. Sandra's victory is a victory for Engineering-Americans everywhere.

OK seriously. Her identification of her profession with her problem-solving approach was a nice bit of messaging. It also had the happy effect of making her candidacy about her being a good candidate, not about prospectively being the first openly gay member of Council. This could be the way identity plays in politics. Identity motivates a base and members of the community rightly take pride in milestones. But the candidacy itself is judged on merits, not trail-blazing. Identity is more of a sidebar than the story.

Not to say this will be a seamless transition. For example, the picture accompanying the Ohio.com story is captioned "Sandra Kurt (right) laughs with volunteer Tina Jarosch (left) and campaign manager Shelley McConnell as they celebrate Kurt's victory" Well, OK Tina certainly volunteered, but she is also Sandra's spouse -- at least in eyes of the State of Iowa. Did the ABJ just miss that? Hard to imagine the paper not learning the spouse of a straight candidate to avoid a similar mistake. Did they take into account the fact that the State of Ohio doesn't recognize the marriage? And if so, is that a proper stance for the paper to take?

I don't mean to say that ABJ is bad, bad, bad. Just acknowledging that the media will have a learning curve when covering officials who are not only out, but also either married or civilly united.

Meanwhile, there were other candidates in the field. I hope we haven't heard the last of Bruce Bolden and Will Padilla. Both are good guys with solid credentials and a real desire for public service. Unfortunately, there was room for only one at the top.

I also hope that Raymond House will take from his experience some knowledge or real-world governance. His time on Council was pretty much a rumor to those of us living in the ward. If he had reached out to constituents early and maintained contact during the campaign, he likely would have gotten the nomination -- he certainly wouldn't have finished third out of five. It's hard for academics to appreciate the importance of retail politics. Hopefully Cox has learned it, if too late.

Linkage: WKSU story here. ANN, including interview w/Sandra here. Official canvass at BoE here.

Rambling Thoughts on Primary Night

2009-09-08T19:43:00.002-04:00

Here in Akron we have primaries going for City Council races. While flocks of candidates crowd the ballot, the election actually made only moderate noise, at least in my ward. Raymond Cox sent out a couple of mailers -- and that's pretty much it. A commenter some time ago went off on what a great asset he is to Council. In terms of knowledge, sure. In terms of any kind of constituent contact whatsoever, not so much. Three other candidates burned plenty of shoe leather canvassing. There have been no Ray Cox sightings, at least not by reliable witnesses.

Incumbency certainly means something, but the race I think comes down to Sandra Kurt vs. Bruce Bolden vs. Will Padilla. All three have great qualifications and any one would be a fine representative for the ward. (For that matter, Cox isn't bad, it's just that he doesn't do much and he certainly won't let us know if he does.) I expected a bigger canvassing push from Sandra. She did plenty of work, but I expected more volunteers. Padilla and Bolden did the same. I have no idea how this will turn out.

Unlike Ward 8, the At Large race results will Mean Something. This race, more than the recall, will measure the continuing viability of the Mayor's brand. The lopsided recall result was certainly in part a vote against recalling a mayor absent malfeasance. With three candidates running on a pro-Mayor slate and two competing slates promising to be less Plusquellic-friendly, this race is much more of a test. The administration took some grief when they announced budget shortfalls just after the recall election. Tonight will tell just how badly the Mayor's stock has slipped as a result.

The real surprise this cycle has been the pretty much stillborn campaign of Kelly Mendenhall -- no signs, no mailers, no voter contact I've heard of). Recall that Joe Finley spoke out against the recall, so his slate isn't necessarily alligned with the recall folks (though Citizens for Akron would have you believe differently.) Kelly Mendenhall therefore is the only candidate running under the Team Mulligan banner. Her lackluster campaign suggests that she attracted as much donor interest as the recall did.

Turnout is reported to be light, which isn't a surprise. Things were very quiet at my polling place which houses four precincts.

AkronNewsNow will be the best place for up-to-date results, though I'm disappointed they aren't streaming video tonight.

What Kind of Democracy, Indeed?

2009-09-02T23:13:00.002-04:00

Some time ago, in response to my post endorsing Sandra Kurt for City Council, a commenter posted:

What kind of a Democracy is it that allows 15 Democrat PC's win the endorsement of the entire Democratic Party?Wayne in Akron revisted the point with a link to an Eric Mansfield post.

Not for want of trying, I'm having a tough time getting lathered about this. And I think it's not just because a friend of mine has benefited from the process.

The question presented is what sort of criteria the party should have for endorsing a candidate. It shouldn't be a big surprise that at least one criterion is service to the party. As an organization the party wants people who will be loyal soldiers. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's like saying "OMG, the Dem House Caucus endorsed all the incumbents!!"

I'm no stranger to criticizing the local party and it's leadership. But in a way I think the fact that Precinct Chairs have gotten endorsements is a potentially more democratic result, given that the Chairs themselves are elected unless no one runs in which case they are appointed. SCPD caused a stir some years back by running in as many PC races as they could. The party establishment wasn't exactly thrilled when a bunch of them won. They didn't take over, but it did highlight at least one way regular folks could demand change within the party.

And by the way it was her involvement in that sort of grassroots insurgency that brough Sandra Kurt to the attention of the party leadership. To their credit they embraced her, her energy and the important constituency she represents. Given some of the other, very fine candidates in Ward 8, Sandra certainly wasn't the "safest" choice, PC or not.

At any rate, in response to the question posed, what kind of democracy is it? A representative one. If you don't like what elected representatives do, you vote them out. But it's rarely a direct democracy. Happily, it's only an endorsement. What really matters is who gets the votes next week.

Tomorrow in the Akron Legal News

2009-08-25T22:52:00.003-04:00

First off, insert the usual self-recriminations and apologies about not posting here. Suffice it to say that my estimate of the time it would take to get back up to speed after vacation, then get myself and the kids ready for school to begin this week for the lot of us was uproariously low.

And in all of that syllabus-revising, class-preparing, orientation-attending chaos I wrote this week's column. I took on the Obama=Hitler trope that has infested our politics. Actually I dialed back to the first round of comparisons during the election. I'm not going to link to any of the idiots that made those arguments, but here is a convenient list.

Back in the day, the nuttier of the wingnuts wrote laughable thumbsuckers about how Obama may be the next Hitler because his supporters like him so much. And he writes books. And stuff. My slant on this is that one of the many many many ways in which the argument is dead flat busted wrong is that it assumes that Hitler looked perfectly alright until he took power. This is, I believe a fairly widespread misconception across the land. The perception seems to be that Hitler was this charismatic guy that people liked because of the charisma and they supported him without really knowing what he was about.

In fact, Hitler's public record made pretty clear that he was that guy all along. He made clear all along that he was an anti-Semite with expansionist plans and dictatorial ambitions. To really draw a parallel, you would have to find a chapter in Audacity of Hope where Obama argues for monoxide for septigenarians.

It irks me in the first instance because people who believe stuff that's demonstrably untrue always irk me. It's why, for example, that I can never walk away from the fight when Troothers show up at the party.

But beyond that, there are real consequences to all this nonsence. If we do allow totalitarianism to take hold in this country, it's far more likely to be in response to some real or perceived threat from an identifiable group. But if someone try to just gently suggest that sweeping generalizations against the Muslim world are not just unseemly but represent the potential first step down a very ugly road, the rightysphere erupts in recrimination about how un-American he/she is.

This is a tricky argument, btw. I'm not arguing either that radical Islam poses no threat or that we shouldn't address that threat. And I'm certainly not arguing that any frank talk about terrorism is analogous to Hitlerism. But if one is realistic about how Hitler used fear of the Other to rise to power, it's clear that we have to be careful about striking a narrow balance.

Anyway, for those with ready access to the News, that's what you'll find tomorrow. And for those of you who don't, feel free to let them know how much you'd like to be able to access my column online and would certainly surf by every other Wednesday to do so it and that by the way you are the type of person who tends to pay outsized attention to internet ads and frequently click though them just in case the sponsors of the fine journalism you are enjoying for free happen to have a good/service that you may want to purchase..

Can't hurt is what I'm thinking.

City Council Website Updates

2009-08-18T23:41:00.003-04:00

While I was out a number of campaign websites went live. OK Kelli Crawford's has been up awhile, but I'm just getting around to updating the sidebar. Anyway, the sidebar is up to date with respect to the campaigns that have contacted me, plus some candidates I have run across. I'm including Facebook groups for those candidates for whom such a group is the only web presence.

I have to say that the project has been made more difficult by the surprising number of candidates who share names with people just that much more famous that Akron politicians.

Search for Joe Finley and the results are swamped by coverage of an NHL hopeful from the University of North Dakota. Ward 8 candidate Bruce Bolden (who still doesn't have a web presence, apparently) shares a name with an Australian basketball player. Search for John Conti and you get lots of hits for John Conti Coffee.

Happily Kelli Crawford is holding her own against Australian kid show performer and mens mag model (!?) Kellie Crawford. And happily I found Mike Williams before needing to Google him.

I'll keep picking at this, but needless to say, if you are working on a campaign with a website, the best way to make sure the site is on the roll is to drop me an email. (Thanks, e.g. to the DiLauro campaign who hit me today.)

I would note that I haven't heard from any Republican candidates and have only found one so far. I'd especially like to see/hear from any R's making a run to break the current hegemony on Council.

Vacation's Over

2009-08-18T22:42:00.002-04:00

I didn't have that week of good blogging before heading out of town for two weeks, but we did have a fine vacation. We revisted Chincoteague Island again after going elsewhere last summer.

As is custom, I've brought something for you all. Here's the Chincoteague drawbridge at dusk:

And I shot this lovely couple on the beach:

I have much to catch up on, and so forward.

Today in the Akron Legal News -- Nunchucks!

2009-07-29T08:31:00.003-04:00

Today's column in the Legal News takes on the nunchuck colloquy during the Sotomayor hearings. If you missed it, the Second Circuit case regarding Second Amendment incorporation considered a New York State ban on nunchucks.

OK, once more in English. The Bill of Rights as written limits only the power of the national government (thus the "Congress shall make no law" language opening the First Amendment.) That changed after the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. The 14th, which among other things says that no state can deny life, liberty or property without due process of law, is read as incorporating fundamental rights against the states.

Which is to say, the Due Process Clause doesn't incorporate all of the Bill of Rights. After a certain amount of judicial back and forth (which is virtually impossible to teach coherently to undergrads, thanks very much) the Court worked up a fundamental rights test to determine whether a given right is incorporated. Fundamental rights are those from which all other rights flow, and/or those essential to the concept of ordered liberty. Yes, that's not the most definitive test in the history of American jurisprudence, but it's what we've got.

The newly discovered individual Second Amendment right has yet to be incorporated. Heller v. DC overturned a District of Columbia law which is functionally a Federal law given the special status of the District.

So, back to nunchucks. The 1970s saw a martial arts craze during which nunchucks acquired an inflated reputation as some kind of super weapon. Nunchucks can indeed be effective in hand-to-hand combat, but only in the hands of someone well-schooled in their use. In the column I draw on my own martial arts experience which has taught me little other than how easy it is to ding yourself in the face as you try to learn how to control these things.

Anyway, during the 70s martial arts fad, apparently some gansta types started rocking nunchucks and the New York Assembly responded by banning. The sponsor of the legislation said that they serve no purpose other than to maim or kill. Obviously he never saw this:

Anyway, the New York law was challenged in Maloney v. Cuomo and the Second Circuit held that Heller doesn't apply. In doing so, the court followed a Supreme Court precedent saying that the Second Amendment doesn't apply against the States. My guess is that the precedent will be overturned when an incorporation case comes before the Court, but the Second Circuit's position was that until it is, the precedent controls.

Wingers and Gunnutistanis on the Judiciary Committee tried to make the case that Sotomayor is anti-gun. Which she may or may not be, but in following precedent she was the opposite of the activist judge the Republicans made her out to be.

My point in writing up the nunchucks case is that a) the New York law is foolish and misbegotten and bases on false assumptions about the overwhelming power of nunchucks, but b) the way Heller pegs the Second Amendment right to weapons traditionally used for self-defense makes it hard to argue that the law violates the Second Amendment. We'll see what the Court does, but ruling against the state in Maloney would be an expansion of Heller that could make the right far broader and more unwieldy than Scalia seemed to be bargaining for.

So if you have a chance to pick up the Legal News, that's what you get today. I'll continue to lobby for some online reproduction and continue to occasionally post summaries here.

A Limited Return Engagement

2009-07-28T23:30:00.002-04:00

This week is the week before our annual family summer vacation. Generally I have access to The Internets during vacation, but utilize it sparingly. We're in one of those unplanned and unannounced periods of blog silence which I'm ending now so as not to extend it to further absurd dimensions. As usual I don't have much explanation except that if I get out of the blogging groove for a few days it's hard to get back in. And it's really easy to get out of that groove in the kid-intensive summer months.

So I'm back for the time being. Of course I don't have much to talk about tonight. But starting tomorrow I'll get something substantive down.

Akron Candidates Roll Is Up

2009-07-03T09:26:00.002-04:00

As promised I've added a list of candidates with websites at left (third list down.) After my last post about the races I've been contacted by Will Padilla who is running in the crowded Ward 8 primary (site of the House of Pho) and Lisa Mansfield who is running for school board.

Will Padilla has a nice site up and a fine looking resume. It will be hard to make headway in such a crowded field, but he will be someone to watch in the future.

Lisa Mansfield also has a Friends of group on Facebook and is twittering -- you can find those links on the website/blog which is a work in progress.

As the season wears on and sites go live I'll add to the list. I check every once in a while but someone who wants to be added should drop a line to be sure.

R.I.P Judge Linda Kersker

2009-07-03T08:55:00.002-04:00

Linda Kersker passed away last evening in Cleveland Clinic after falling ill at a judicial fundraiser Tuesday night.

I had gotten to know Linda when she was on the School Board and I was doing the public education advocacy thing. She could have given my little group of community advocates a cold shoulder -- after all she was a School Board member and a big firm partner. But she welcomed us to the cause, offering help and encouragement as we did what we could.

She was all energy, flying in every direction. If you got her going on one of her passions, she would start talking a mile a minute, pausing only to congratulate a passing friend on a great (though unsuccessful) campaign.

She lent her passion and intelligence to the Akron School Board for 16 years at no small professional cost -- her firm could not take cases involving APS during that time. Her community service continued this past spring when Gov. Strickland appointed her to one of the vacant seats on the Municipal Court. Sadly she was able to enjoy the new chapter only briefly.

Thoughts and prayers to her friends and family.

Why the Marburger Plan to Save Newspapers Won't Actually Save Newspapers

2009-07-02T08:54:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we looked over the so-called Marburger proposal to allow newspapers (and presumably other content providers) to sue news aggregators for unjust enrichment. Since that post I've seen a couple others talking about monopoly of information, so I say again -- the Marburger plan would only protect reporter work product, not the information itself. If a reporter can obtain the same information independently, the cause of action should fail. (Accent on should -- the Marburgers do not entertain the possibility that the cause of action will drift and morph beyond what they envision, but that's another post.)

Before we get started on the problems with the proposal, a couple of caveats. First off, what I know about the newspaper business is what I read. Same with some internet use patterns. The difference between what lies below and what the Marburgers have done is that I have paid attention to things they haven't. Again I restate my central objection -- the Marburgers prove propositions with thought experiments that should be tested with data.

Finally a couple of links that got left off of yesterday's post. First off, Editor and Publisher covers the proposal, but with no critical comment. New media guy Marc Cantor weighs in with ideas about what the newspapers themselves can do to maintain an audience. (h/t Brewed Fresh.) A piece from the UK looks at the Marburger plan in the context of the far more draconian proposal from Judge Richard Posner to give papers intellectual property rights over their links. And if you really wanna get geeky wit it, here's a Coase Theorem treatment of the Posner idea. There has also been more dogpiling on Connie Schultz from various blogs. You can look through the links in yesterday's post and extrapolate if you really want to see more of that sort of thing.

Now on to the show.

Marburger Cures the Wrong Disease.

My biggest objection to Marburger (for want of another name, this is what we'll call it) is that it assumes that the gravest threat to newspapers is losing readers. While papers have lost readers steadily throughout the Twentieth Century due to competing media (radio was killing off papers long before the internets) the precipitous drop in revenues has happened on the advertising side.

Advertisers have been migrating steadily to online sources that have nothing to do with newspapers. This is particularly true of classified advertising which has traditionally been an indespensible revenue stream for newspapers -- up to 70% of profits. Craigslist has done the most damage, but Monster, Cars.com and for that matter Ebay have all taken away business that newspapers once dominated. As a result, classified revenues have dropped by half since 2000. Analysts like Lauren Rich Fine (that's the source of the 70% figure) have been warning for years that newspapers cannot survive ad revenue losses of this magnitude.

Online classified services offer advantages that newspapers cannot match. If you are paying for a newspaper classified, you are subsidizing that news gathering operation whose expense the Marburgers so persuasively described. Your cost is based on total circulation, despite the fact that only a tiny percentage of those readers are likely to have any interest in your ad. With online classifieds, on the other hand, every pair of eyes that wanders into the site is at least in the market for something along the lines of what you want to advertise. No one goes onto Cars.com to read about Michael Jackson's kids. They go to buy a car.

(By the way I have a theory that computer-based advertizing is a general danger to both content providers and content consumers. Advertizing is generally really inefficient. Again only a tiny percentage of whoever sees an ad has an interest in the subject of the ad. As computerization allows greater targeting, advertizing becomes more efficient. The more efficient it is, the less businesses have to buy it.)

Marburger does nothing about the loss of classified advertising. By their admission, they are talking about marginal increases in traffic. But traffic doesn't matter if it doesn't attract advertizing.

Curing the Wrong Disease, Part 2 -- Problems in Monitizing Websites.

The Marburgers would no doubt object that online ad pricing is dictated by traffic, which is true. But its not like newspaper website advertising was profitable, then the profits started to erode due to unfair competition from aggregators.

The fact is that it's really difficult to sell enough advertising to support web-based journalism. There isn't as much real estate on a web page (versus print where, among other things, you have facing pages that don't have an analog online). And people can block ads. And web advertising is still working to overcome a past rife with charlatans (remember the commercial about the poor sap who shot the duck in the banner ad?)

And of course news organizations are competing with sites that allow better targeting (see above.)

Over time, changes in technology may make monitizing online content easier (the rise in video allows commercials that you can't fwd past) or harder (written content on mobile web allows pretty much no space for ads). But between the loss of advertizing to other providers and the basic difficulty of paying for journalism with online ads, the newspapers are facing an inevitable decline that tinkering with intellectual property will not fix.

That said, the free rider effect that the Marburgers identify is the sort of thing that lawyers should seek a remedy for. Whether the Marburgers have correctly identified that effect and whether their proposal would provide an adequate remedy is another question.

Jeff Fusco Is Canvassing

2009-07-01T23:05:00.002-04:00

Count City Council at-large candidate (and Citizens for Akron Treasurer) Jeff Fusco among those getting a jump on the very very crowded field for Council this year. I didn't see him in my neighborhood but got a flier stuck in my door. Fusco is one of three at-large candidates, along with Terry Albanese and Jim Shealey, whom Mayor Plusquellic is endorsing in the race.

I've been scrying the internets for council campaign sites. Fusco is one of the few I've found. I'll start a roll at left for them. Fusco is simply using Blogger as a platform for his site, but is keeping the blog updated (ahem, Sandra Kurt). Bare bones to be sure -- he didn't even spring for a non-blogspot url. But it still puts him well ahead of the pack in terms of web presence.

At large incumbent Jim Shealey has a personal webpage up -- one that got him some criticism when he linked to it on his Council page. It's not exactly a campaign website but not exactly not either.

I have three or four projects in mind for the blog this summer. Sifting through the Council candidates is one of them. If you know a candidate -- or are a candidate -- feel free to touch base.

The Marburger Proposal to "Save Newspapers" Round up and Initial Thoughts

2009-06-30T12:54:00.007-04:00

Connie Schultz began what is rapidly becoming a national conversation about the economic future of newspapers with her Sunday column about a proposal by the brothers Marburger. Daniel is an economist at Arkansas State University, David is a partner at Baker Hostetler who represents newspapers, including the PD.

You can find a pdf of the proposal on the "blog" version of the column.

The default blogger reaction has been to hate on this mercilessly. Of course any time Connie Schultz ventures anywhere near blog world, Tim Russo's melon explodes, so the Marburger plan has taken over #JamesRenner among Russo Trending Topics. But other negative reaction has been nearly as intemperate from Jeff Jarvis, Anastasia at ODB, Mediactive, you get the idea. Some reaction has been a bit more measured and some has been borderline positive, but overall, it hasn't gone well.

I also have problems with the proposal, but since the haters have had their vein-bulging, spit-flying fun, I will try to break things down a little more soberly. Not as much fun, I know, but the proposal raises real issues that merit serious discussion. And let's face it, I'm generally the wet blanket at the hater party.

So. Let's start with what the proposal is. And isn't.

Aggregation Aggravation.

The Marburger proposal takes aim at news aggregators, in particular those they call "parasitic aggregators." The Marburgers begin with the assumption that some news aggregators summarize and rewrite reporting from online newspaper sites, and by doing so skim some would-be visitors to the site that did the actual reporting to put that information online. Whether this actually happens is highly questionable, but let's leave it for now. I know you want to stop and yell and scream about strawman scenarios, but seriously, let's lay this out before we pick it apart.

The problem is that copyright protection traditionally protects expression, not information. So while it would violate copyright to simply reproduce news stories verbatim, it does not violate copyright to write up the information into a new story.

So assuming aggregators are actually taking eyes away from newspaper site, they are doing so using the work product of newspaper reporters. The Marbugers spend a large chunk of their 51 pages making the case that because doing journalism is labor intensive and expensive and aggregating is relatively cheap, that aggregators work at a comparative advantage that will eventually drive newspapers under.

While the argument that aggregators are cheaper to run than news sites is well-established, the authors also claim that the loss of traffic to aggregators is a big reason newspapers cannot monitize their website traffic. This part of the argument they extrapolate from their talk of aggregators. It is entirely data-free. Indeed, to preview one blanket criticism of the paper, the authors engage largely in thought experiments to establish propositions that should be testable by examining actual data.

The Unjust Enrichment Solution.

In the early days of the teletype (1918) the AP successfully sued to prevent a competitor from rewriting its stories and selling them to newspapers. The case went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and according to the Marburgers (I haven't researched it directly yet) won under a theory of unjust enrichment pursuant to what was then called Federal common law. The Court has since declared that there is in fact no Federal common law and that instead, a Federal court not deciding a case under a Federal statute has to choose some state's common law under which to decide. Bear that in mind when we talk about problems with the proposal, a post or two down the line.

Unjust enrichment is a well-established common law doctrine. Basically it means you can't profit from someone else's work. In law school we mostly study it under contract law. If two parties do not agree to a contract but one mistakenly starts doing work, the party that profits from that work can't refuse to pay because the contract wasn't finalized.

After the AP case, the particular strain of unjust enrichment enshrined there was referred to as the "hot news" doctrine. Importantly, the doctrine limited the use of information contained in a "hot" news story, but did not prevent enterprising reporters tipped off by a story from going out and doing their own reporting on it.

Problem is copyright law is a federal statute and federal laws generally preempt state laws. During a 1980s rewrite of copyright laws, Congress explicitly stated that state law remedies for copyright violation are preempted; copyright is the exclusive remedy for violations.

The Marburger proposal reverses that decision. Copyright law would be rewritten to allow state law claims for unjust enrichment. The individual states would then thrash out what constitutes unjust enrichment, what the remedies are and so forth. While commentators have called it an expansion or tightening of copyright, it isn't. It is more of copyright-plus regime, where the plus is the "hot news" unjust enrichment doctrine.

The Marburger proposal is neither benign toward First Amendment freedoms, nor the total squelching of those freedoms some critics have claimed. It is not the information land grab some have predicted, but it does expand rights to control of information under very limited circumstances. In sum, the proposal will benefit newspapers and put some burdens on other content providers, though the extent of those burdens would have to be hashed out in court.

Given the problems/burdens attendent in the proposal, my biggest problem with it is that it will not work. We'll take that up in the next post.

City Council: Finley's Slate

2009-06-30T10:04:00.003-04:00

Last Thursday the latest salvo in the battle for the soul of Akron began as Joe Finley announced his slate for City Council. Finley is styling his slate "Democrats for Reform," though as the ABJ points out, he hasn't been specific about what needs reform and what these guys plan to do about it.

Here's the Finley slate:

Ward 2: Bruce Kilby (incumbent)Ward 3: Jan David (vs. Marco Summerville - good luck with that)
Ward 5: Willis Smith (v. Kenneth Jones)
Ward 6: Wayne Kartler (open seat -- Terry Albanese is vacating to run at-large)
Ward 7: Dave Reymann (v. Tina Merlitti)
Ward 10: Jay Moore (v. Kelli Crawford)
At-large: Joe Finley

Say this for Finley -- he's not shy about going after hard targets. On the other hand, he does seem to trying to distance himself from Team Mullligan. From the ABJ post-recall story:

Hmm. Yes he came out against the recall. But according to the ABJ the bulk of the Democrats for Reform worked on the recall. And Joe himself joined all three pro-recall Facebook groups. I certainly understand Finley not wanting to be associated with the toxic asset that Mendenhall has become, but he probably should have thought of that sooner.

As of now, the Finley slate has no web presence, so it's pretty much impossible to know what exactly they are proposing aside from being unfriendly to the Mayor. During the Mayoral primary, Finley seemed to have no position other than the opposite of whatever Plusquellic said, and he famously doesn't have much of a record as a Councilman. His main claim to fame at this point is having come closer than expected to winning the micro-turnout primary in 2007 (then getting horsewhipped in his run at Russ Pry for County Executive). If he wants to be something more than a drag on his slate-mates, he needs to come up with some specific policy goals.

And for God's sake, can he run without bashing the city he wants to serve? Nothing irked me more during that primary than his constant poormouthing of Akron and its prospects. The same thing happened in the recall election. Akron is challenged by economic forces not under anyone's control, but it's better postioned for the Twenty-First Century economy than any other city in the region. Candidates who fail to acknowledge this fact do themselves and the people whose votes they court a disservice.

J. Ken Blackwell Acting as One of NRA's Hatchen Men on Sotomayor

2009-06-29T14:15:00.003-04:00

The Brady Campaign blog reports that the NRA and other gun lobby organizations are pursuing a "two-faced" strategy in opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. While the NRA proper is quietly expressing "concern" about her nomination, certain NRA-affiliated individuals are bringing out the long knives. Among them is spectacularly unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate J. Ken Blackwell.

And, as Brady Blog notes, Blackwell is not being exactly forthright about his affiliation:

elected NRA Board member

I'll follow this up with a post unpacking Blackwell's argument. For now, just marvel at Ken being Ken.

Recall Roundup

2009-06-24T11:31:00.002-04:00

Briefcase Radical called it before the polls closed, but like everyone else, he low-balled the final tally. Fem Dem has a brief post-election post up.

Ohio dot com has full coverage. Some, but not all, of the anti-Plusquellic comment trolls are out. The loudest appear to be keeping their heads down today. BTW, Ohio.com's breaking story about the election posted around 9:20 last night after they called it. I suppose being a source for real-time updates isn't going to make or break ABJ but it's worth noting that ANN owns them on this score as of now.

For their part, ANN has audio of the Mayor's victory speech, audio and video of his remarks to reporters and some snippets from Mendenhall.

Cleveland Magazine's politics blog saw it ultimately as a contest between Chrissie Hynde and Miss Tia. This sort of thing will happen when you let a lifestyle magazine carry a politics blog.

As noted in comments in the last post, CAN lost in every ward, in every precinct. Think about that. The recall effort couldn't even win a ward in Ellet, which to this day resents having been annexed into Akron two generations ago. You can find that official canvas here.

Whither Akron?

2009-06-24T11:29:00.002-04:00

So now it's time to ponder what all this means. Contrary to what the recall supporters say, the only messages they sent is that there aren't very many of them and they don't learn very quickly. The conventional wisdom was that the actual election result would be about ten percent worse for the mayor than the actual sympathies of the population, given the motivation gap. Given the final tally, it probably isn't that high, but when you start with a 3:1 split it doesn't have to be. Fact is, the people who think the administration is bad enough to be run out midterm constitute a fairly thin group.

That said, we need to have a sensible loyal opposition in this city. Akron has been proactive in bringing and retaining business. That means it has funded improvements, granted tax breaks, cofunded ventures and otherwise spent a great deal of tax money. While I won't pretend to believe that it's all lily-white, it's damned impressive to see the combination of robust spending on business development and political hegemony hasn't bread a patently, undeniably corrupt administration. Nonetheless, with temptations abounding, it would be good to see some division of government to provide checks and balances.

Unfortunately we don't have a sensible loyal opposition. A sensible loyal opposition doesn't bray about restaurant receipts, it doesn't pretend that the city's difficulties are unique to the region, and it doesn't mutter about corruption then resentfully skulk away when people expect, y'know, proof for gawd sake.

Most of all, (pace Akron Watch and the CANCANners) sensible loyal opposition doesn't count all of the spending and none of the benefit. The SLO of which we dream would seriously analyze the benefits of the various projects, acknowledge the ones that work and decry those that don't. By refusing to acknowledge anything positive about either Plusquellic or Akron (Mendenhall's "good heart" comment being a classic damning with faint praise) the pro-recall/anti-Plusquellic forces have painted themselves as untrustworthy hacks.

Going forward it will be interesting to see if they can come up with an actual coherent platform. And no, "The Mayor should play nice with others" isn't such a platform. They will certainly say spend more money on neighborhoods, the problems being a) Akron already spends money on neighborhoods and b) if the city ignores business develepment there won't be any money to spend. When confronted with those problems, expect Mendenbot candidates to do the political equivalent of "Na na na I can't hear you."

So. The city will not be rendered leaderless as a result of this folly. But the recall election hardly puts to rest the challenges the city faces. The Mayor's Office continues to confront those challenges, but will anyone we can trust confront the Mayor's Office?

Following the Recall Results

2009-06-23T20:22:00.006-04:00

The best online place to be is Akron News Now which has a live feed from the newsroom. It's kind of cool -- you can see anchor Lindsay McCoy gathering info from online and from the BoE and relaying it to on-air talent. A bit of behind-the-scenes.

One thing we learn from Lindsay is that the online BoE updates are more current than what the reporters at the BoE can get from staff there (having done voter protection duty at BoE, it's not surprising. At this time of night, the main BoE office is essentially vacant as everyone is in back processing the ballots.) As such, you can keep an eye on the BoE page by loading it and refreshing it every couple of minutes.

As of now (around 8:30) the Board shows 48% reporting, the results are 76.85 against the recall to 23.15 for. The trend line has been slightly toward narrowing that enormous gap. At around 8 the first 12 percent of precints showed an 80/20 split.

UPDATE 8:36 56% in, still 3-1 advantage for Plusquellic. ANN is calling it against the recall. Fascinating to see how manifestly unscientific the "call" decision is. Also, ANN is Twittering the results under hashtag #akronrecall

UPDATE 10:20 It's official -- Change Akron Now got boatraced. 74%-26%. Akron News Now signed off their live feed, but the recall page now features an interview with Mendenhall in which he confirms that his group will try to field candidates in all the city council races and that his wife Kelly is running for council at large. He also whines that he didn't have any money to run the campaign. Of course if people agreed with the recall they would give money, but . . .

Some recall results fun facts:

The received wisdom was that pro-recall voters would certainly vote and that the election would be close if turnout was low. Well turnout was low -- 21% -- and the recall still got crushed. That means either the pro-recall folks weren't significantly more motivated than anyone else (possible) or that there just aren't that many of them (more likely.)

At a total vote of 7325, Team Mulligan didn't even double up the 3800 some-odd valid petition signatures. That is, if everyone who signed the petition voted and brought a friend to vote, they would have exceeded the total actually garnered by 275 votes.

At 20895 the anti-recall vote is 30% higher than the 15895 he got in the uncontested general election in 2007.

Last Thoughts on Recall Election Day

2009-06-23T13:52:00.002-04:00

Mostly, if you haven't already, GO VOTE. The general impression, bolstered by anecdotal evidence and what the anti-recall camp has said about their internal polling, is that a clear majority are against the recall but that the pro-recall voters are ~~fanatical~~ highly motivated. It would really be a shame if the will of the majority were defeated by the zealotry of the minority. Yes it's a beautiful day and all, but GO VOTE. You won't be in their long.

A few other points.

I was voter number 46 in my Ward 8 precinct. The flow was pretty steady this morning at my polling location which includes two other precincts. That is consistent with the report from Summit BoE that Ward 8 is heaviest, and that Ward 8 voters led in absentee voting. In that last story, Mendenhall acknowledges that Ward 8 is more Plusquellic territory
It's a shame that the recall has cast a shadow on the rare bits of good news Akron has heard in the current climate. For example, the rollout of the downtown wifi zone has been scheduled for June since at least last Fall. But because that prescheduled date happens in proximity of the recall it's dismissed as a political stunt.
That said, the Mayor skipping the the rollout was the political equivalent of Darryl Strawberry acknowledging the Fenway crowd. Hizzoner needs to ignore the bleacher creatures.
The Team Mulligan campaign has been able to pull off little other than volunteer canvassing. No mailers, no bilboards, no yard signs. But over the weekend someone tried to go online-linkage with FixAkron.com signs. The website is more of the same. (E.g. Akron is losing population (as is every city other than Columbus and Cincy). One interesting aspect -- hanging problems with the Akron Building and Health Departments on the Mayor. But remember how Mendenhall tried to pump up Joe Finley's campaign by claiming that the mayor had a tirade at the Building Dept? And that we found out later that he went off because they were offering lousy service to property developers? And that in fact that same building dept was put on probation by the state? Same stuff as we've seen this entire campaign.
Count me among those who grew weary of the anti-recall mailers that demonized Warner Mendenhall. I'm assuming that with a quarter million to play with that stuff was focus-group tested and all, but after the third mailed reminder of Mendenhall's tax delinquency, I was done.
Having said that, look for a reprise this fall. Mendenhall's "band of radicals" (according to the mailers) will have candidates going in a lot of city council races this fall and I'm guessing their linkage to Mendenhall will be a frequent talking point in the campaigns.
One interesting feature of this election has been the total radio silence from the local Republican Party. It may be that the Republicans prefer the devil they know. It may be that the rank and file was insufficiently interested in a recall to make it worth putting the party behind the effort. Still, given the past practice of A²cutting deals across the aisle, it's worth keeping in mind going forward that he never put a dog in this fight.

BTW, if you missed the tweet, my absence the last few days was due to technical difficulties. As of now, those difficulties appear resolved.

Now GO VOTE.

I've Got No Job, But I'm an Opera Fan*

2009-06-17T13:33:00.004-04:00

This evening I will be a guest blogger/Twitterer at Opera Cleveland's rehearsal for their performance of "Falstaff." Their publicity manager -- and Opera Chicken blogger -- is a blogging veteran whom I got to know back when we were trying the GABB thing. (And BTW, all respect for anyone who can secure a paid gig that includes blogging.)

The idea is to let some social media types see behind the scenes and blogg/tweet the experience. Yes, it's more than a little off-topic, but I'm looking forward to it. I will certainly do some real-time tweeting under hashtag #operacleveland. The blogging may be live but more likely will be a retrospective once we get home.

Now I have a pile of stuff to do to justify this little excursion. See you then.

*Long inside story about the title. Years ago NPR did a story about the group rock Chumawumba -- remember "Tubthumping" with it's "I get knocked down, but I get up again" refrain? A listener mailed in a thanks for the profile and in particular in clarifying that refrain. "It sounded to me like "I've got no job, but I'm an opera fan." While that description meets a number of my friends, it didn't seem sufficiently universal to form the basis of an international pop hit. " That exchange has stuck with me. In fact, as I've been working all this out, the song has been going through my head, with the alternate lyric.
On the other hand, it's not entirely accurate. But "I don't have a full-time job, and while I appreciate opera, I don't actually seek it out generally," but it didn't have the ring, so . . .

Tomorrow in Akron Legal News

2009-06-16T23:29:00.002-04:00

My column for tomorrow will answer the question so many of you have been asking (OK, it was one Facebook Friend responding to a Tweet, work with me): what do I think about last week's case about residency requirements for city workers?

The case, Lima v. Ohio, upholds a state law passed a couple of years ago that bans residency requirements. Both Lima and Akron sued to challenge the law under the Ohio Constitution. And lost.

My focus in the article is about the implications of the case for home rule in Ohio. Under the home rule provision in the Constitution, municipalities are afforded some protection against state laws that exist only to limit municipal power (there are other aspects to home rule, but that is the one that generates the most -- and most interesting -- litigation).

At first blush the case looks like it should be an easy one for the cities. But the anti-residency requirement law was passed under a section of the Constitution that grants the General Assembly broad authority to regulate employment for the benefit of workers, and says specifically that no other constitutional provisions can supersede it. The Court broadened the reading of that section, but as precedent it only applies to employment cases, not to other aspects of home rule. It certainly isn't a ruling friendly to home rule, but it's also not a dire as the urban papers made it out to be.

I quote three editorials singing dirges to lament the death of home rule. If you are keeping score at home, 's the PD, here's the LMJ and here's the Blade.

As for what I think of the residency requirements themselves, I think Akron should have gotten rid of ours some time ago. I think we lose more in damage to morale than gain in keeping the employees here. In a time when Ohio cities are shrinking, I understand the impulse, but the best way to keep people in the city is to make the city an attractive place to live.

All that said, I thought the legislature overstepped its bounds banning the practice. It's not the worst insult to home rule of late (that would go to a state law forbidding cities from banning assault weapons.) But whatever the bounds of home rule, local autonomy should be respected.

Fisher Campaign Mining Hillary's Email List. Brunner . . . Responds?

2009-06-16T23:04:00.003-04:00

Got an email today titled "Why Lee Fisher Is Right for Ohio." I've gotten some other Fisher communiques, so nothing unusual there. Upon opening I read, after the opening grafs:

We are contacting you as an Ohio resident and a member of Hillary Clinton's online community. If you do not wish to receive email messages from Lee Fisher's campaign,

please click here to unsubscribe

The opening is artfully managed:

Back during the presidential campaign, Lee worked hard to help Hillary win the Ohio primary and helped Barack Obama win in November, just as he's worked hard for Ohioans in the state legislature, as Attorney General, Director of Economic Development, and Lieutenant Governor.None of this is a surprise. Fisher (well, Strickland and Fisher went along) did indeed come out early for Hillary; Fisher's campaign manager Geri Prado (the putative author of the email), is a Hillary campaign vet; and of course Bill is actively campaigning for Fisher. Whatever else you can say about the Clinton's, they know how to repay favors. Whatever else you can say about Fisher, he knows how to bank favors and call them in at the right time.

What's funny about all this is the fundraising email I got from Brunner just ahead of the Prado/Fisher solicitation. The opening is a not-at-all veiled reference to the Clintons:

Last Tuesday, voters in Virginia defeated the well-funded "establishment" candidate for the Democratic nomination by a huge margin - 50% to 26% in a three-way race - sending State Senator Creigh Deeds to face the Republican in November. Deeds won resoundingly because, as the Washington Post noted, his "message and momentum" swept him to a big victory.Who was that well-funded "establishment" candidate? Uber-Clintonista Terry McCauliff. Don't know if Brunner got wind of Fisher using the Hillary list or if it's just a coincidence they went out so close together. In any event, Brunner is calling out to Clintons without calling them by name.

This is still a race between two people I have a hard time caring one way or the other about, but at least it's entertaining.

Norka Notes

2009-06-16T08:57:00.002-04:00

A semi-regular round up of news and ephemera about our hometown.

TV on the Internet

AkronNewsNow has started a short Akron News video segment on the website (h/t Eric Mansfield who enthuses about the effort). Today's effort includes one substantive news story (Summit BoE staying open late for early recall voting) one feature (on Temo's Candy) and a sports story about the Aeroes. Given that local TV too often is little more than a parade of burning homes, it's not bad. Ohio.com's video capability has pretty much gone by the wayside since they did a great job with the airdock fire, so it's good someone is picking up the ball.

Changes at CVNP

John Debo, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park Superintendent, is stepping aside after 21 years to head a nonprofit that raises funds to support the park. He presided over the transition from National Recreation Area to National Park, has kept thing together through funding cuts and floods, and maintained what have to be tricky relations with the many many political entities that border the park. Cuyahoga Valley is one of the treasures of the region. Here's hoping we get another able Superintendent to continue the good work.

Goodyear Job Cuts -- It Could Be Plus Mal

Goodyear announced this week it got union approval for 120 job buyouts. Worse news: "The vote clears the way for a possible move of rubber-making production from Akron to Buffalo, N.Y., within two years." But we may be getting let off easy -- Amiens, France is losing 820 jobs.

Another Week, Another National Award

Akron -- where things suck so bad we have to recall the Mayor, you know -- has won another national award. This one is the City Livability Award from the US Conference of Mayors, awarded for the innovative plan to rebuild Akron Public Schools as Community Learning Centers.

DowntownAkron.com Tries Blogging

The Downtown Akron Partnership, the business consortium working to improve and promote downtown business, now has two blogs up. One is the DowntownAkron blog, and the other is about the GO -- for Get out of the Office -- intiative which encourages, well you can figure it out. So far one post each over the past week, but surf by and offer encouragement.

Chryssie Hynde Pretending Again

The Telegraph offers a rare interview with Akron native and entrepreneur Chrissie Hynde as she readies a new Pretenders release and a best of collection. Not much specific about Akron, aside from acknowledging Vegiterranean.

ESPN: Akron Football Is "Soft"

Penn State will host Akron, and for it's effort is being awarded with the title of second-softest non-conference schedule by ESPN columnist Bruce Feldman. According to Feldman, "Akron also is an OK opponent, but is still coming off a 5-7 season." Something to hold onto for the maiden season of InfoCision Stadium.

Mendenhall Grasping at Straws Again

2009-06-15T11:43:00.002-04:00

Team Mulligan leader Warner Mendenhall's comment to last week's post about the recall warrants special attention. Quoth he:

That bit about retirement liabilities didn't sound right. While that's a broadly germane topic, what with Chrysler and GM sinking under legacy costs, local governments in Ohio generally aren't saddled with such costs for retired workers. Local governments are responsible for some contribution into a statewide retirement fund (e.g. the Public Employees Retirement System [PERS], Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund [OPFPF]; State Teachers Retirement System [STRS]). Once an employee retires, the liability for benefits and health care shifts to whichever fund the employee participates in.

Entertaining the possibility that Mendenhall knows something I don't, I contacted the city and confirmed the above. The city does not have an imminent legacy cost liability.

And so it goes with Team Mulligan. Aside from the conceded fact that the Mayor can be a piece of work, they've been consistently wrong in their critcisms of the city government.

Random Thoughts on a Friday

2009-06-12T08:09:00.003-04:00

Y'know what I really can't stand? When people use the word "literally" to mean "really." They apparently feel the need for an emphatic adverb but don't want to sound like middle schoolers so they misuse a perfectly innocent word. Yesterday on NPR coverage of the Cash for Clunker's bill I heard one interviewee observe that a similar program is "literally going gangbusters in Germany."

I thought, "Really? Cash for Clunkers is actually busting gangs?"

It metaphorically drives me up a wall.

Part of getting back to blogging has been getting back into reading blogs. On Obsidian Wings I found this takedown of the tendency of too much of the conservative punditocracy to paint Teh Left with one broad brush. Required reading.

On the other hand this Volokh post on Sotomayor's "wise Latina" speech. Though I disagree with some of the conclusions, it's a sensible, balanced reading of what Judge Sotomayor said and what it means.

In case you haven't noticed, Akron is rapidly becoming a university town. It's always funny to read the trolls on Ohio.com opine as to how that's a Bad Thing.

I meant this week to blog extensively about the recall and the Sotomayor nomination. I did not mean to write a zillion (OK, four) posts about gay issues, one way or the other, but I have. Happily I have the perfect musical coda for Unintentional Gay Week at Pho's Akron Pages:

h/t Lives and Times

Now here it is, your Moment of Ten.

Old Crow Medicine Show, "I Hear Them All"
Death Cab for Cutie, "Summer Skin"
Little Walter, "Blues With a Feeling"
John Coltrane, "Giant Steps"
Toots and the Maytals, "Louie, Louie"
Barenaked Ladies, "Home"
Dexter Gordon, "Stairway to the Stars"
Low, "California"
Robin, "Little Black Dress"
Bright Eyes, "Nothing Gets Crossed Out"

Lee Fisher's Gay Marriage Flip Sends Me to the Wayback Machine.

2009-06-11T22:26:00.003-04:00

I've been asked offline who I'm supporting in the Senate primary. Frankly the contest is between two people about whom I have a hard time caring one way or another. I'll get to why Jennifer Brunner gives me the blahs at a later date. As to Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher's, look no further than his sort-of maybe flip-flop on gay marriage. I've seen this movie before and know how it ends.

In 1994 I was a volunteer in the Summit County office of the Tom Sawyer/Joel Hyatt/Lee Fisher combined campaign. I was a drone, but nonetheless we heard things, and of course we were paying attention to the race. Fisher was defending his Attorney General seat against Betty Montgomery in a bad year for Democrats -- between Clinton backlash (the less virulent pre-Lewinsky strain, but still), the House check-kiting scandal, and Republicans who generally felt energized and optimistic, everyone was running scared.

Montgomery's main attack on Fisher was that she was a career prosecutor and he wasn't. "Lee Fisher has never even tried a criminal case" she cawed in her commercials. A few weeks out from the election the Fisher campaign trotted out a counter-attack -- that Montgomery's office pled down a child sex case. Having litigated more than my share of such cases I can tell you that every responsible office has plead down child sex cases. They are hard to win and traumatic on the victim. If you can plead down to get 9 years out of a possible 25 and spare the victim having to testify, that's the smart play.

Montgomery's office was able to document why the case was pled down, the papers generally went against Fisher, the campaign backed down and his lead in the polls slipped. Then he did it. Again. We couldn't believe it. The exact same scenario all over again. And again his lead dwindled.

What it looked like was a politician with poor political instincts overreacting to campaign events and unable to say no to his staff. And that's what this looks like as well. In the party primary, Brunner is tacking left, having declared her support for marriage equality long before that looked like a winning issue. Despite being on a ticket that won Ohio with a yes on partnerships/no on marriage position, and despite watching Obama carry Ohio with an identical campaign platform, he is overrunning the volley from Brunner and saying "me too."

And while I agree with the (apparent) policy change, let's be real -- this isn't even good politics in the long run. Fisher's one good argument on this point is that his position is far less of a liability in the general election in a state that overwhelmingly voted for one of the most restrictive anti-equality amendments in the country a mere five years ago. He's not just pandering, he's pandering a hole in his foot.

Lee Fisher isn't the only candidate in the field who has run a statewide campaign before. But he is the only one who has lost one. Stuff like this right here is why.

Early Pho Endorsement: Sandra Kurt for City Council

2009-06-11T08:33:00.002-04:00

My friend Sandra Kurt is running for City Council in Ward 8. I've known Sandra for a few years now, having met her at Summit County Progressive Dems. Professionally, she's an engineer but off hours she's a tireless advocate for causes she feels passionately about, particularly domestic violence prevention and LGBT issues.

The Ward 8 seat is the one vacated by Bob Keith. Sandra was in the mix for the appointment to replace him, but that appointment ultimately went to Raymond Cox. While Dr. Cox has great academic credentials, I want a fighter on Council.

Infinite Summer: Because at 1079 Pages, It's Still a Good Beach Read.

2009-06-10T08:17:00.004-04:00

As longtime readers know, I'm a big David Foster Wallace guy. So I was thrilled to hear about Infinite Summer, an online challenge/discussion forum dedicated to reading, discussing and celebrating Wallace's sprawling, daunting and ground breaking Infinite Jest over the summer. The "official" reading period is June 21-Sept 22. The "Guides" of the effort have calculated this working out to 75 pages a week.¹

I'll be rereading along with the effort -- in fact I've gotten an early start. I'd love to blog the whole thing, but that seems unlikely given my summer schedule. But I will no doubt have something more to say.

If you are tempted, but not sure, consider the following both a pitch and caveat. The book for the most part is eminently readable, but the book as a whole is challenging. The narrative is written in a nonlinear, sometimes seemingly random timeline. To confuse things further, the years in the near future world Wallace imagines are not designated by numbers, but by corporate sponsors², increasing the degree of difficulty in following the action. That said, the individual "chapters"³ by and large are easy to read.

Second point, understand that the story is not the major point here. Wallace is exploring ideas without explicitly laying out what those ideas are. We're not supposed to include spoilers, but let me just say this: You know how in Pulp Fiction you never find out what's actually in the briefcase? There's a lot of that sort of thing in Infinite Jest. Wallace drops plentiful clues to explain the McGuffins, but speculating about what happened ultimately is beside the point.

If the above has enticed and/or failed to dissuade you, a few tips to get you started:

Consider buying the book. Yes, libraries have copies, but trust me, this is a book you will want to go back to. It's also one of the few novels in which I've written margin notes.
Use two book marks -- one for the text and one for the endnotes. A fair amount of action/explanation/McGuffin-clue-giving happens in the endnotes. I used a sticky note in the endnote section that I moved with each note read.
Have a dictionary handy. Wallace drops a lot of fifty cent words in some sections.⁴
Consider doing a little reading ahead of time. Various sources have their recommendations for DFW gateway readings. Mine are the story "Octet" from the collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and the essay "Joseph Frank's Dostoyevsky" from the collection Consider the Lobster. You will find embedded therein almost Jerry Maguire-style mission statements that will help understand what Wallace may be up to. If you really want to go geeky about it, consider some of the theses posted on The Howling Fantods.

All that said, I hope at least some of my readers take up the challenge. You will be rewarded.

¹Though the final 94 pages of that 1079 is endnotes which you really need to read in conjunction with the text -- no really, you need to -- making it difficult to calculate exactly how much you are reading.^a

²The bulk of the action occurring in the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.

³The book isn't divided into chapters per se, but is more of a collection of vignettes and epistles, most of which are designated only by a date, but some of which have some sort of heading not a few of which (i.e. the headings, not the dates) are comically long. Said vignettes/epistles range from a paragraph to a score of pages or more.

⁴Particularly those concerning central character Hal Incandeza who is described as a "lexical prodigy."

Casino Effort Calls and Raises

2009-06-10T07:12:00.003-04:00

Following up on posts from last week, the would-be casino operators who were subject to an injunction last week have moved to have the whole thing vacated. Their theory -- that Mahoning County Common Pleas doesn't have jurisdiction over a statewide petition effort makes little sense. Where violation of a state law is alleged, you are going to start at the county level somewhere -- there is no statewide court with original jurisdiction. Without seeing the actual motion, it's hard to opine further.

Having said that, this description of the argument in the Dispatch's Daily Briefing blog is pretty funny. Granted this is a reporter putting the position into non-legalese, but it's pretty funny:

In today's legal filings, the Ohio Jobs and Growth Committee asks Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge James Evans to dismiss the party's lawsuit and lift the restraining order against lying. The committee's lawyers say the Mahoning County court has no jurisdiction over a statewide signature-gathering process and that the Democratic Party is playing politics.Objecting to an injunction against lying? Accusing a political party of playing politics? Yep, sounds like a gambling initiative.

Ohiosphere Alum now Blogging for Brunner Campaign

2009-06-09T08:26:00.002-04:00

A quick and hearty congrats to my friend Jeff Coryell, late of Ohio 2006 and Ohio Daily, and now house blogger for the Brunner campaign. Personally I'm still not sold on her as the candidate, but if she keeps showing this level of taste and judgment, she'll win me over eventually.

One quick note about the blog. One issue on which Brunner is able to put daylight between herself and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher is gay rights. No coincidence that the two most recent posts highlight the issue -- one announces Brunner's upcoming participation in the Dayton Pride parade and another her support for the workplace discrimination bill now before the General Assembly. Time will tell whether tacking left on this issue will work over the long haul, but it will be interesting to watch.

Law Dork pwns Time Magazine

2009-06-09T07:57:00.002-04:00

Yesterday the Supreme Court decided against hearing on appeal a challenge to the military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy. So first off, a pox on every headline writer who announced that the Court "upheld" the policy. One of the first things you learn in law school is that the Court declining to hear an appeal (denying certiorari in lawyerspeak) is not the same as upholding the result below. Often the Court just doesn't feel the case isn't the best for deciding the issue.

Chris Geidner blogging at Law Dork explained this and more, including what he calls the "odd background posture" of the case:

opposing

Chris goes on to note that Pietrangelo then tried to have the SLDN brief in opposition struck from the record. Reading between the lines, Pietrangelo comes off as a bit of a loose cannon.

For a little broader context, consider the dissent among gay activists over the high profile suit challenging California's Prop 8 gay marriage ban. Again, just reading this from afar it appears that gay activists are seeing greater chances of success (and of minimizing backlash) by securing legislative victories as opposed to court challenges.

Enter Time Magazine. They've posted a story headlined "Dismay Over Obama's Turnabout on 'Don't Ask Don't Tell.' Who is dismayed? Well, the entire story consists of Pietrangelo hurling invective at Obama. Not one recognized leader of the gay community is quoted. If Chris Geidner, a blogger in flyover country (though granted an extremely well-read and well-connected one) understands the backstory of the case, why can't Time at least offer a little balancing perspective before winding Pietrangelo up and watching him go?

But no worries. This post will soon hit my Twitter feed. And that will change everything.

Bankrupt: The Fundamental Incoherence of the Recall Argument.

2009-06-08T22:41:00.003-04:00

The nature of the recall campaign allows each discontented resident to project his particular gripe onto the Mayor. Job losses? Mayor's fault. Money spent retaining or wooing employers? Mayor's fault. Crime? Or "out of control" police? Check and check.

As a result trying to take on the recall argument is no easy task. And it's made harder by the slipperiness of Recaller-in-Chief Warner Mendenhall. The Beacon Journal has been braving the fray and reporting on the major arguments raised by the Warneristas. Two weeks ago the paper examined the Mayor's travel expenses (Yielding Warner's precious "The business of the city is not business" quote). Yesterday the lede was an analysis of the argument that the city's debt load is excessive (the city is "broke" they like to say.) None of this will matter to the hard core of the recall movement, but at least they do not vent their folly in a vacuum.

The bottom line of the ABJ story is that Akron's debt is not out of line with that of similarly situated Midwestern cities. The story could have been better -- I would like to have seen opinions of experts who are more generally hawkish on debt that the CSU prof they rely on. But overall it's a good read.

The major lesson of the article is that not all debt is the same. Much of the $760 million that Team Mulligan goes on about is special obligation debt -- that is, debt incurred with a funding stream already in place to pay for it. The best example of this is the school rebuilding project for which the city has taken out $200 million in debt to be paid for by a voter-approved income tax.
Confronted with evidence that the debt is not crushing the city, Mendenhall shift the subject. The problem, says he, isn't the debt. No, that's not what he's saying at all. It's what we've spent it on:

''When you have strong neighborhoods and good housing, this supports the tax base and the schools,'' Mendenhall said. ''The neighborhoods have clearly suffered.''

First and foremost, if that's the argument, it surely is not a recall argument. I might listen to an argument for recalling a Mayor who has recklessly spent a city into bankruptcy. But this amounts to different policy priorities, which is not an appropriate reason for upending an election result.

Second, the city has spent money on neighborhoods. When I first moved to 'Akron in the early 90s we lived in a neighborhood a little dicier than the one we're in now, one in the midst of a city-sponsored street-level upgrade. The city fixed sidewalks, driveway aprons and sewer lines and provided grants to homeowners to bring their houses up to code. This was going on all over the city in "transition neighborhoods" -- basically those that could go either way. Neighborhood level work has limitations in that people will only allow the city to do so much on their private property, but the city does have a history of doing that sort of work.

And of course the AMHA has been revamping housing projects and trying to create mixed-income subsidized housing developments, first in Cascade Village and in now in Edgewood. Not the city per se, but certainly the city has been at that table.

Moreover, the school/community learning center building project is all about neighborhoods. Good schools grow good neighborhoods. A shiny new building isn't the end of school reform, but at least anecdotally the new schools have seen improvements in student and parent morale which can't hurt.

Ultimately a lot of how people feel about the recall comes down to how they feel about Akron. Team Mulligan has been poormouthing the city from the start. I see a city no longer reeling from losing it's one-time manufacturing base and reinventing itself as a tech center. Doing so requires investment, and not just from the private sector. Akron may have debt, but we also have a more discernable future than most of the metro areas in Northeast Ohio.

Recall Catch-Up

2009-06-08T09:50:00.002-04:00

With the recall election 15 days away, that will be a focus of this blog in the near term. A few developments from last week deserve attention.

This week Akron FOP will vote on what stance, if any, to take on the recall. The fact that there is a debate at all is good news for the Mayor. His conflicts with APD and the rank and file's distrust of him is legendary. Personally I think it's a good thing that the two most powerful agents of executive power -- the police and the executive himself -- are not on the same page.
The funniest event was recall face guy Warner Mendenhall declaring that he won't run for Mayor if the recall is successful. The anti-recall messaging has in part focused on him, his tax delinquency, his general nuttiness. Clearly he felt the need to allay fears that a vote against Plusquellec is a vote for him.
More nuttiness from Team Mulligan. They have petitioned Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to remove Wayne Jones from the Board of Elections. According to the Beacon Journal article, the letter to Brunner criticized Jones for being "overly partisan in his efforts against the recall." Not, mind you, in his work on the Board, but in his political work outside the Board. *sigh* For those of you still in touch with reality, Ohio's election administration system is built on a theory of bipartisanship, not nonpartisanship. Wayne Jones, Chair of the Democratic Party is, wait for it, partisan. Not exactly a news flash.
The ABJ lede yesterday was an analysis of the city's debt burden. Thoughts on that later.

Casino Petition Update: Circulators Enjoined from Lying

2009-06-05T13:53:00.003-04:00

Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge James Evans handed the anti-casino crew a partial victory today. The judge found enough evidence of shenanigans (excuse the legalese) to intervene, but stopped well short of enjoining the petition drive.

It is therefore Ordered that Defendant Ohio Jobs and Growth Committee and all persons who act in concert or participation with Defendant Ohio Jobs and Growth Committee are enjoined from misrepresenting the contents, purpose or effect of the initiative petition proposing an Amendment to the Ohio Constitution to authorize a single casino with each of the cities of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo.
What does it mean? Basically that if circulators are caught dealing from the bottom again the judge can levy fines and possibly a harsher injunction.

Some unsolicited strategic advice based on the discussion in the comments to the last post. If the plaintiffs do find evidence of further misrepresentation, they should do discovery to establish how the circulators are paid. If they are paid per circulator, you can make a case for enjoining the practice (which is generally a pesitilent practice, infesting the political practice with this sort of low-level fraud.)

Friday Randomness

2009-06-05T11:21:00.002-04:00

The kids are off school for the summer. This means that if I sleep in with them (as happened today) most serious blogging will have to wait until the evening.

The sting of the Caveliers' early exit from the NBA playoffs is a lot sharper as we watch our vanquishers unable to play with the Lakers. Safe to say that if Dan Gilbert is serious about bringing a championship to town, he's going to be doing some serious shopping this summer.

Apparently Chip Bok is "under fire" for another tasteless insensitive cartoon. If you don't mind be tasteless and insensitive, there's really no excuse for also being stubbornly unfunny.

I like Obama's speech. But for sheer entertainment value I prefer the handwringing in the conservasphere about how acknowledging that other countries a) exist and b) have a point of view is one step away from AONEWORLDSOCIALSISTISLAMICSTATE!!!!!!

Now here it is, your moment of ten:

Parliament, “Up for the Downstroke”
Modest Mouse, “The View”
A Tribe Called Quest, “Check the Rhyme”
Radiohead, “Wolf at the Door”
John Coltrane, “Syeeda’s Song Flute”
The Ramones, “Somebody Put Something in my Drink”
Wilco, “Hoodoo Voodoo”
Bjork, “Headphones”
Brooks and Dunn, “I’m No Good”
Elvis Costello, “Lipstick Vogue”

Casino Petitioners Caught Loading the Dice

2009-06-04T23:26:00.005-04:00

Got a presser today calling out the Ohio Jobs and Growth Committee (i.e. the hundred somethingth attempt to legalize casino gambling in Ohio) Folks working against the issue (yes, including some adjacent-state casino interests) caught some petition circulators erm bluffing a little with the facts. And caught it on video and posted it.

The Mahoning County Dem Party has filed for a temporary restraining order to stop the Committee from circulating petitions.

The video gives a good picture of how this sort of thing happens -- including the celebrated case of ACORN. The guys in the video don't look like they've read the same briefing book about which lies to say. They look like guys who are paid by the signature and say anything to get voters to sign on the line that is dotted.

As someone opposed to legalized casino gambling I enjoy seeing a little mud splashed on those who insist on inflicting this issue on us every election cycle. As someone interested in how campaigns use online tools, this is an interesting case study (about 500 views so far. Meh.)

But mostly it's the lawyer in me that will be watching this with fascination. While the evidence doesn't support a vast conspiracy to lie to potential signatories, it does point to bad training and bad quality control. So what will the judge do about that? I've been told that the judge will decide the case shortly. Wait and see.

UPDATES. The judge in the case issued a temporary restraining order on June 5. The pro-casino group moved the court to vacate the order and dismiss the action on June 9.

Oh Dear Blog, I Have Neglected You So

2009-06-03T16:05:00.004-04:00

It's time for a return. I haven't regained the fire in the belly to start blogging, but clearly it's time to fish or cut bait. Either this is going to work or I need to officially shut the Pages down.

To that end I've started updating the sidebars. Mostly this is about purging the blogs that have gone dark or at least have been quiet for several months. A few developments in the blogosphere during the period of my absence should get a mention. First, and most happily, Law Dork is back after his sojourn into the public sector. Ohio Daily and Buckeye State have each seen some changes in personnel. Closer to home a blog inexplicably called I Tire Akron sprung up, then went quiet (it's marginally more explicable in pictograph).

Some folks have emailed from time to time to alert me about new blogs they had started. I'll try to dig up those emails and check our those blogs, but if you are one of those people, this would be a good time to send a reminder.

OK, that'll do for a restart. Substance beginning tomorrow.

Jim Rome Show Smack-Off Results

2009-05-08T14:52:00.003-04:00

For the past three years I've posted the results of the Jim Rome Show Smack-Off. Given my anemic posting rate lately it would be wise to just let it go this year. But in really bugs some people I don't like very much which is a perfectly good reason for doing pretty much anything. Here goes the countdown to the King of Smack:

This marks the first time a rookie caller won the event. I didn't care for Brad's call, but at least Jeff in Richmond can't boast about having the shortest time in the jungle prior to winning.

Today in Akron Legal News

2009-05-06T09:36:00.004-04:00

In today's column I consider the recall effort. For the most part I discuss the merits of Change Akron Now's arguments only to say that they mostly come down to policy disagreements, which generally aren't considered the stuff of a recall campaign. Mostly the column considers whether Akron should consider raising the threshold for getting a recall on the ballot. Surveying the recall laws in major cities in Ohio reveals that Akron has arguably the lowest threshold. This is from the column:

Cleveland uses 20% of the total vote in the last municipal election.
Parma uses 25% of the total vote in the preceding municipal election, as does Toledo, whose mayor is also fighting a recall effort.
Dayton bases its threshold on the number of registered voters in the city. A recall effort needs 25% to reach the ballot.
Columbus also sets the threshold as a percentage of registered voters, requiring 15%. As an additional barrier, Columbus does not allow petitions to be circulated; they are posted in firehouses and the city clerk’s office so that interested citizens must go to the petition to sign.
Youngstown doesn’t peg the threshold to any variable, instead having set the threshold at a constant 5000 registered voters, which currently amounts to about six percent of the total population.
Neither Canton nor Cincinnati currently allows for a recall, though the local NAACP in Cincinnati is currently spearheading a drive to add recall provisions there.

(BTW, if you want to follow the Toledo recall story, my friend Lisa Renee's local blog Glass City Jungle is a good place to start.)

From there I make arguments in favor of a higher bar. Irate comment coming from Mendenhall in 3, 2, 1. . .

Coughlin v. Renner and NY Times v. Sullivan

2009-04-23T22:53:00.003-04:00

While the blogosphere has been tittering about whether State Sen. Kevin Coughlin dallied with a staffer, some of us have been wondering why an alleged libel suit threat could possibly have spiked the story.

If you are late to the story, Scene Magazine reporter James Renner was fired last week for his reaction to news that his editor and publisher were burying a story alleging that Coughlin was having an affair with an identified former staffer. Renner sent the story to Tim Russo who published it. Professor Idontlink at Pol. Sci. 216 has also picked up the story and followed up with more detail from Renner

According to Renner's story posted on BI, Scene decided to kill the story after getting letters from Sen. Coughlin's attorney threatening a libel suit if the story went to press. The posted story also details Renner's reporting which includes interviewing multiple and an entertaining attempt to secure comment from Coughin's alleged paramour.

Based on the facts as presented by Renner, Scene's action is inexplicable. Coughlin is a public figure. As such any libel action he brings would have to meet the high constitutional standard set by the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan. The Court held that:

The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made [280] with "actual malice"--that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.Recall that Renner says he has the roommate of alleged Coughlin squeeze on tape verifying the affair, plus other witnesses, put squeeze's patently evasive response to an interview request. Put it together and Coughlin has a nearly impossible task of proving that Renner was reckless.

And the Sullivan standard assumes that allegations in a story are false and therefore defamatory. If the allegations are true, Scene also wins. The Sullivan actual malice requirement offers news organizations a way to avoid the long, expensive business of proving truth. Which in a way is a pity as (from what I've heard) the defense would be able to put together a long and impressive witness list.

Scene management knows (or at least should know) all of the above. Their abject surrender to Coughlin is puzzling.

Akron Press Club: The State of Ohio's Newspapers Panel

2009-04-22T23:19:00.002-04:00

The next program at the Akron Press Club will be a panel discussion featuring the Editors of three major Ohio newspapers. While they will discuss the state of the news business generally, one item high on the agenda will be the Ohio News Organization, a collaboration through which major papers buy stories from one another.

The panelists will be Bruce Winges from the Akron Beacon Journal, Susan Goldberg from the Plain Dealer and Jeff Gauer from the Canton Repository.

I had a hand in putting this one together and am pretty excited about it. Info and contact for reservations here.

Tomorrow in Akron Legal News (Shameless Plugs, Pt. 1)

2009-04-21T23:23:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned previously my latest writing venture, a biweekly column in the Akron Legal News. Tomorrow will be my fifth column since all this started. Since they haven't run me out yet, this seems solid enough to start blogging about without jinxing it. So I'll start posting a preview with a few links, perhaps a nut graf or two and maybe even a few snippets from the cutting room floor. Unfortunately you have to get the dead tree version of the Legal News to actually read the thing as my columns aren't being posted on the website yet.

So this week I was inspired by the 50th anniversary of Strunk and White's Elements of Style and some of the inevitable anti-Elements backlash from the descriptivist camp as a hook. While the descriptivist may have some points about some of the grammar "rules" contained in Elements, I'm concerned that the general reaction against prescriptive grammar has provided some of the impetus to stop teaching grammar in K-12 schools, to the detriment of students and those of us who have to read there writing attempts in college.

Nut graf:

Conjugating verbs, learning parts of speech and diagramming sentences seem rote and pointless, especially to succeeding generations of more digitized students. But that kind of grammar instruction gives us a language to speak about language. We can teach good, clear, readable writing more easily when students understand how the parts of language work together and have a vocabulary for discussing those parts.Some linkage. The anti-Elements rant that serves as my hook is here. The ABA Journal online post that gave me the idea and a passible claim that it is germane to a legal publication is here. The author, Geoffey Pullum is one of the lead bloggers in Language Log which a linguistics-blog-fan friend says is the biggie in the field. I'm frankly a bit leery about having used the Pullum piece as hook, even though I don't directly take it on because a) Pullum is very good and knows far more about usage than I could ever hope to and b) a survey of his posts reveals that he can be markedly unpleasant to anyone who disagrees with him.

Anyway, if you happen to get the Legal News or otherwise come across it tomorrow, give it a look.

Random Weekend: Low Posting Zone Edition

2009-04-05T14:07:00.003-04:00

This week is APS spring break, so Prof. W has taken Kids Z and T out of town. While the cats are away the mice will work his butt off on projects that wouldn't fly if the kids were around. Not to say I won't post, but I have about a dozen priorities head.

Now here it is, your moment of ten:

REM – “I Believe”
Nicholas Payton – “Concentric Circles”
Stan Getz – “Four Brothers”
Solomon Burke – “Get Out of My Life Woman”
Michael Frante and Spearhead “Light Up Your Lighter”
The Cramps – “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns”
Eels – “Flower”
Shriekback – “Lined Up”
Ramones – “I Don’t Care”
Dire Straights – “Telegraph Road”

Major college flashback time. The Shriekback song was our background track for a college radio show. Ramones, REM and Dire Straights were all favs, though for different reasons and different times of the day.

'Scuse me. I think I have a paper due.

Norka Notes

2009-04-01T22:51:00.002-04:00

Bringing it back -- an occasional round up of things Akron.

First Energy Biomass Conversion -- The Akron-based energy company announced today that it will convert a Cleveland coal-burning plant to burn biomass -- basically farm waste. The conversion moves the plant into the (sort of) renewable and (sort of) carbon-neutral column.

Akron Film Festival Begins Tomorrow. Yes, we have one, and a pretty avant-garde fest at that. This year hosted at the Akron Art Museum. Films scheduled through Sunday. Yes, the festival is facebooking, not they are not tweeting.

Pizza Robber Shot. Preliminary indications suggest this could get ugly. It looks like a legitimate case of self-defense, but the dead robbers friends are making ugly noises around the neighborhood. Further thoughts from Eric Mansfield.

Why They're Called the Aeros. Goodyear is celebrating 100 years of work in aviation.

Dan Auerbach Solo Roundup. Half of Akron's Black Keys released his first solo album last month. A random sample of coverage of the recording from NPR, LA Times (I do believe that's the tressel over Memorial Parkway he's posing on), video on Rolling Stone, and because it involves The Black Keys, Australia. Also, Auerbach got raves for his South By Southwest set. By the way, it's really weird for me personally reading and writing about Auerbach. That recording studio he built in a house in Akron? It was my mom's house.

Brett Hartman Gets Stay of Execution

2009-03-31T22:53:00.002-04:00

From a joint statement by Attorney General Cordray and Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh:

We are in the process of reviewing the decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. A stay has been temporarily granted by the Sixth Circuit and will remain in effect until the U.S. Supreme Court issues its opinion in District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne. Based upon today's order, the execution of Brett Hartman will not go forward on Tuesday, April 7.The SCOTUSWiki page for the Osborne case is here. The issue is whether a defendant has a due process right to examine the state's evidence using updated technology post-conviction. There's a secondary issue the Court may reach which is -- sit down for this -- whether a person has a due process right to have a conviction overturned based on being actually innocent without any allegation of trial error. I'll try to come back to that one in a later post, but yes it is as jacked up as it sounds.

Hartman has been arguing for the right to retest evidence from the scene. On appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court he argued for limited testing basically to rule out an inconsistency between his story and the physical evidence. The claimed right to retest as described by the paper is more extensive -- basically retesting everything even though he pretty much admitted that he was in the victim's apartment so that physical evidence putting him there isn't a big surprise. The Supreme Court opinion, by the way, is available on this Brett Hartman Is Innocent site. As the opinion demonstrates, the evidence against him is actually quite overwhelming.

I don't know where the Supreme Court will come out on Osborne, so it's dicey to say when Hartman's planned execution will get back on track. By coincidence, this makes two consecutive Summit County defendants who got a stay pending a Supreme Court decision. The first, Richard Wade Cooey, has subsequently been put to death.

Why the Y Bridge?

2009-03-30T23:46:00.002-04:00

Since Team Recall has put the decision to spend stimulus money on fencing around the Y Bridge, it's worth contemplating the decision to go with that particular project. First off, Grumpy Abe does some well taken grumping about the ABJ's coverage last Friday (toward the bottom of his post.) But regardless of whether the paper laid a sufficient foundation for "some call it wasteful" then, it's certainly the case that people are doing so now.

The comments in Ohio dot com track the usual criticisms of suicide fencing on bridges -- that it's not worth the money, that people would just find another way to do the deed. (Of course, this being the ohiodotcom comments section, they go way beyond that to the "just let them kill themselves" "why are we coddling these losers" and "Mayor Don's just doing this to keep his job." Vernon Dursley thinks these people need to find their souls. But then no one accused Plusquellec of driving anyone to jump off the bridge so probably we should just thank God for tender mercies.)

I'm all for rigorous cost-benefit analysis of public safety measures which the discussion of the Y Bridge is lacking. That is to say, can we spend $ 1.6 million where it would prevent more than (at most) one or two deaths a year. But contrary to the gripes of the comment trolls, there is evidence to suggest that fencing highly visible suicide bridges does prevent suicide. Studies (summarized here) indicate that fencing does stop suicides on bridges, without leading to increased suicides on other sites or by other means. Other studies indicate that would-be suicides who are "rescued" rarely continue to attempt.

Then there is the copycat effect. Suicide researchers worry that high-profile suicides that get reported in the media prompt rashes of other attempts. Someone doing the big splat off the Y Bridge will inevitably get media attention that they wouldn't by downing a pile of pills or monoxiding their garage.

Finally, preventing public suicide from a place like a well-travelled bridge also prevents untold psychological trauma on potential witnesses -- either of the leap above or the crater below.

Again, this is not to say that preventing suicides on the Y Bridge is the best use of the money. And running under all of this are questions about how the project fits with the stimulus program. It may well be that fencing the bridge is a particularly "shovel-ready" project.

Regardless, the evidence indicates that fencing the bridge will indeed save lives. We shouldn't pretend it's a trivial waste just because it fits with someone's favored political narrative.

2009-03-30T23:38:00.002-04:00

For my three or four readers who are also Whedonverse fans, sad news. Angel fan favorite Andy Hallett who starred as Lorne, The Little Demon Who Cried Apocalypse, has died at 33. Details on Eonline. (H/t Whedonesque) For those of you who understand, a tribute:

Yes, I believe I would choose that shade of green.

Push Polling for the Akron Mayor Recall: Field Report and Call for Comments

2009-03-29T23:20:00.003-04:00

Commenter Eric announced that he got what sounded like a push poll call supporting the mayor recall campaign to which Warner Mendenhall is so generously donating his time. I got the call today which, along with some research on the internets, raises questions.

The call is entirely robo. Caller ID says it is "Voter Alerts," originating from area code 402 (eastern Nebraska, including Omaha). The call starts with a doth-protest intro claiming it is a poll like those seen on CNN and ABC News. Never heard anything like it. You are prompted to press one if you want to take the poll.

Next comes a standard poll question: "If the recall vote were held tomorrow, would you vote to recall the mayor?" One for "no," two for "yes." I pressed one.

Next you get what appears to be a rotating series of push-poll slams. Eric says he got one blaming the Mayor for the city's economic problems and claiming the recall election will cost only a dollar per citizen. A commenter on Ohio dot com says the call blamed gang activity on the Mayor.

Mine was approximately as follows: "If you heard that tax money will be spent installing fencing on the Y bridge while high-priority projects go untouched, would that change your vote?" Um, no. And it doesn't change my opinion of the recall effort so much as deepen my pre-existing contempt.

Once again I pick 1 over 2. The call concludes by cheerily assuring me that I've participated in an "independent poll." Whatever else it is, it's not a poll. The "poll" offers one follow up question pushing in one direction with many variables and dubious accuracy. No pollster worth a mention on CNN would construct a question that shoddy.

I wish I had kept a note on the robo-call service Team Recall used for Warner's robo-calls announcing the organizing meetings. It was something generically like "Voter Alerts." The name itself defies effective Googling, though I did find a complaint on a Do Not Call message board suggesting that some dirty trickster nuisance calls aimed against the Obama campaign bore the same name (scroll to the bottom of the page).

At some point we will get expense reports from the recall campaign and can check if they have directly paid for the push poll. In the meantime, it's clear that someone acting in the the name of cleaning up the city is engaging in some grungy tactics.

UPDATES: First off, I originally intended to make a call for reports from readers, which a couple regular readers have been kind enough to supply already. It looks like the economy and the number of "active gang members" were the two in circulation prior to the Y Bridge fencing announcement that hit the papers Friday.

One commenter says that he's received more than one of these. If we needed proof that Team Recall is push polling, we need no more than multiple "poll" calls to the same number.

Also David from Buckeye State asks aloud if anyone has audio. Good question. If they try to hit me again I'll work it. The best bet if you see Voter Alerts on the Caller ID is to let the machine pick up, then answer. If you get such a thing in a digital file, I'd like to hear it too.

Weekend Randomness

2009-03-27T19:20:00.002-04:00

So how it's been going down is like this. I get enough school and writing work out of the way to back to the blog, put up a couple posts of varying quality and things start to hum. Then (this winter anyway) I get sick. For whatever reason, I just don't have it in me to blog sick.

So now it's get-back-in-the-game time. So here it is, your moment of ten:

John Coltrane – “Naima”
Modest Mouse – “The World at Large”
Pixies – “UMass”
New Pornographers – “All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth”
Pat Metheny – “Distance”
Gillian Welch – “My First Lover”
Lucinda Williams – “Jackson”
Ramones – “Blitzkrieg Bop”
Elvis Costello – “Alison”
David Ball – “Blowin’ Smoke”

Between Lucinda's love-weary voice and the mournful dobro accompaniment and lying-to-myself lyric, "Jackson" is one of the most wonderfully tragically sad songs ever recorded. Check it out.

Anti-Recall Site Launches.

2009-03-10T16:00:00.002-04:00

Citizens for Akron, the official political committee countering ~~Warner Mendenhall's recall effort~~ err the entirely spontaneous grassroots recall effort that Warner Mendenhall is selflessly donating his time to launched their website today. They are still building it as it launches, so if you get a "site offline" message, just hit refresh.

From an online tech perspective, they are doing this thing mostly right. The site launch was announced via Facebook message. On launch the site includes a support form that allows users to sign up for emails or texts. There's also the now de riguer feature that allows people to create "accounts" though at this point it's unclear what one would do with an account. (Though to their credit, they haven't tagged it "MyCitizensforAkron.")

And of course lots of info. At this point the site content is tilted toward what a cool guy Plusquellec is and arguments that a recall at this stage is a dumb idea. The tough choice for the organizers will be whether to counter the accusations leveled by the recall folks. The site promises itself to be a work in progress and so will be worth watching.

Warner Mendenhall Grasps at Straws

2009-03-09T23:36:00.002-04:00

Akron News Now has begun what they promise will be a continuing series on the back-and-forth between Warner Mendenhall and, apparently, anyone who works for the city of Akron but doesn't carry a union card. The first report concerns an email statement Mendenhall sent out about his lawsuit against the city's speed zone cameras:

* * *

Mendenhall's allegation, in an email sent to the media, that it was a "waste of thousands of dollars worth of attorney time" is raised because he says that the session could not possibly be productive if city council - the client - wasn't present to consider any offers that might be made.This is all curious to me because I've been on a Sixth Circuit mediation call without my client and my opposing counsel -- in general even more of a self righteous hysteric than Mendenhall -- didn't say boo about it.

Let's break all this down, one issue at a time. First off, the Sixth Circuit's mediation rule:

The court may direct the attorneys - and, when appropriate, the parties - to participate in one or more conferences to address any matter that may aid in disposing of the proceedings, including simplifying the issues and discussing settlement. A judge or other person designated by the court may preside over the conference, which may be conducted in person or by telephone. Before a settlement conference, the attorneys must consult with their clients and obtain as much authority as feasible to settle the case. The court may, as a result of the conference, enter an order controlling the course of the proceeding or implementing any settlement agreement.So, presence isn't required unless specifically ordered by the court. The attorneys do need to know what settlement authority they have. Mendenhall claims in the audio interview linked on ANN that the city attorneys didn't do that, citing as evidence that they didn't tell Council about the conference call.

That as may be, but attorneys serving public boards don't tell clients about every step in litigation, just the ones they need to know about. In a lawsuit that is purely about the legality of city actions (which is to say, not about money damages) the chances of a settlement are remote and the attorney and the clien board generally understand that their posture is not to settle but to get a legal opinion from the court and go forward from there.

Which brings up the second issue: The settlement that Mendenhall is talking about appears to be entirely hypothetical. Throughout the interview he never mentions making a settlement offer. It seems unlikely that, having gone through the trial court proceedings, the parties could suddenly come up with some consent decree that would make the litigation go away. The litigation exists to get a court opinion.

Finally, there's the matter of "thousands of dollars worth of attorney time" he alleges were wasted. Thousands of dollars? Not on the city side. I'm confident that city attorneys aren't pulling down that kind of coin. As for Mendenhall, if he spent more than an hour total on this call, he's a fool. The call takes maybe fifteen minutes and that's if the attorneys are particularly chatty. Prep is no more than a review of the file. And I'm quite confident that an hour of Mr. Mendenhall's time won't result in a four figure bill.

Once again, Warner Mendenhall could be an effective critic of the administration. Instead he stamps his feet and carries on about every little thing, making even his decent points look silly.

Disclosure One: The city attorney quoted in the story is a family friend, and Warner Mendenhall . . . isn't.

Disclosure Two: I agree that speed cameras need to comport with basic requirements of due process. That said, last Thursday some idiot flew past my daughter's school during pick up at what had to be forty, minimum. So I'm OK with the city finding innovative ways to enforce speed zones around schools.

Pho's Akron Pages: Insufficiently Subversive

2009-03-07T20:09:00.002-05:00

A friend returned from a business trip to China with a gift: a screen shot my blogger from inside the PRC:
He says that my blog is entirely accessible on the state-sponsored internet there. Kinda cool to think of people (OK, a white guy I've known twenty years) reading the blog in China. On the other hand it means that my blog hasn't done anything to alert the Chinese censors, much less piss them off.

Need to work on that.