Jimmy DiMora in Context

I'll assume you haven't been in a coma the last few days and are aware of the massive raid on offices and homes in Cuyahoga County, and the public corruption investigation of Cuy. Co. Commissioner and Dem Party Chair Jimmy DiMora, among others.

Right now many shoes must drop before we know the nature of the wrongdoing and the extent of the corruption. In the meantime, this month's Governing magazine (via their blog) has an interesting article on federal investigation and prosecution of state and local corruption. After a set piece about ongoing prosecutions in Alabama, we get to the thesis:

There's no disputing that the feds are going after a lot of state and local officeholders these days. Since 2002, both the number of public corruption cases and the number of FBI agents devoted to such cases has increased by more than 50 percent. But is it because there's been a sudden spike of mischief in office? Or is it more an epidemic of prosecutorial zeal and ambition? Those are not easy questions to answer. But they're increasingly important to ask.

The article goes on to describe the possible partisan dimensions of the spike in prosecutions, some of the squishy Federal laws used and, most importantly, how states reform laws after a prosecution reveals corruption. Worth a read.

Akron Says No to Brennan

ABJ reports that City Council has turned down Brennan's "offer" that the city take a million dollar loss on a loan he wrangled for his downtown hotel. City Council's position drop dead position is that they have to get the principle back.

Let's review. Brennan is a conservative Republican on the tiny government genus. He not only spreads lots of campaign cash to R candidates, he was a prominent sponsor of the ill-begotten TABOR proposal.

And at the same time, his basic business model is to work the government to either pay the whole freight on his business ventures (White Hat, etc.) or as in this case, to subsidize and assume the risk. Mr. Freemarket owes much of his impressive wealth to his talent for drawing from the public trough.

Meanwhile, rich or not, he's happy to let his hometown eat the loss if he decides to send the hotel business into bankruptcy. Of course, the bankruptcy option is part of business. Just like lobbying.

Dann Catch-Up Notes

A few stray bits I missed in the flood after the Dann break. (Sorry about that.)

The ABJ has run not one but two editorials telling lawmakers to essentially to cool their jets, and a third suggesting that he may be able to pull it out of the fire. Interestingly, Monday, the day he released the email saying that he was working hard for the people of Ohio, Marc Dann was driving up I-71 (with his sleeves rolled up, of course) to meet with the Beacon ed board. Hardly the people's business, but given the tone of the ABJ ed page this week, Dann certainly took care of his own business.

This bit from the articles following the Monday letter confirmed a point:

Strickland, one of seven Democratic leaders to sign a letter requesting resignation, said he talked twice to Dann on the telephone Sunday and each time implored him to step down.

I had mentioned that calling Dann out publicly would just make him dig in. I'm happy that Strickland did the smart thing and back-channelled him first. If nothing else, Ted is a damn fine political strategist.

Or maybe he was just waiting for advice from PolSci 216.

I had also missed the story about why Leo Jennings asked Deborah Urban to lie until I saw it recounted in the TPM piece on the scandal. There was a lot of, er, love in that office. And the most incriminating texts are from Urban rebuffing Gutierrez's advances. Is there a woman in the Greater Columbus area under the age 70 that Gutierrez didn't lech at?

Finally Blue Bexley has two posts up making the point I've been waiting for. Bottom line, this is not an Affair-with-a-younger-staffer scandal. This is a Hiring-friends-who-are-completely-unqualified-and-doing-nothing-as-they-act-a-ass scandal.

Dann Defiant. Leading Dems Letter Posted

AkronNewsNow has the letter from Strickland et al. posted. Here's the passage on impeachment:

We also want to make you aware that if you do not choose to resign, Democratic members of the Ohio House of Representatives will immediately introduce a resolution seeking your impeachment

ONN is reporting at this minute that Dann sent a letter out in response saying he will continue as AG. That letter begins by assuring the statewide electeds who signed that they will continue to receive high-quality legal representation. (I'm not sure Dann is reading their concerns accurately.) The balance reads more like an open letter to employees of the AGs office to keep at it.

Marc's Mess: Leo Jennings On Leave.

AG Marc Dann put his Communications Director (and longtime FoM) Leo Jennings on paid administrative leave resulting from the Marc's Mess sexual harassment scandal. Why Jennings? The PD reports this intriguing snippet:

On Monday, Jennings was placed on leave as a result "of new information received over the weekend related to the ongoing investigation," according a statement from Dann's office. Deputy communications director Ted Hart would not comment further.

So this gets us up to two staffers who are being paid to not do anything as a result of these allegations. It does suggest a heightened level of cluefulness on Dann's part. Up until now it looked like the Gang of Three would fight together or die together. Now Dann looks more willing to throw people overboard if they did wrong. On the other hand, it looks like Dann is gearing for the long political fight that Dems have dreaded.

The comments section is now open for rampant speculation about what Jennings may have done wrong to earn this trip (his second, by my count) to the doghouse.

Great God Almighty Marc Dann, Clean up Your Act

Nonsense like this has got to stop. For an awful lot of us who voted for him, ending corruption wasn't a neat political theme because it fit the temper of the times. It was something we actually wanted to see happen. Not that Dann looked like the perfect candidate, but we hoped that riding a reform wave would wash away some of his sins.

Not really. Now we are all about loopholes and working up to limits and controlling legal authority.

And by the way, why is a state negotiating a contingency fee contract anyway? Contingency fees make sense for individuals who cannot afford hourly fees. If lawsuit is worth pursuing, the state should pay for attorney time and the citizens should enjoy full recovery if the suit is successful. When the contingency fees from the tobacco litigation hit the papers, everyone looked bad. But I don't suppose a guy who failed to learn from pay-to-play scandals can be expected to learn from that.

This is why the bloggers preferred Subodh.

Kevin Coughlin's Fetal Positioning

What with him taking on Alex Arshinkoff and all, it's easy to lose track of why Kevin Coughlin is generally so dislikable. If you need a refresher, check out one of his recent legislative opuses, Senate Bill 175, the Grieving Parents Act. The bill has been kicking around for a few months now, but gets it's first committee hearings next week.

The act rewrites some Ohio definitions, so that death of a "product of human conception" prior to twenty weeks is now "fetal death." (Technically, prior to twenty weeks, it's not called a fetus, it's called an embryo, but why worry about medical jargon when there are political points to score.) The act then allows parents to request a death certificate and burial of the dearly beloved product of human conception.

To the untrained eye, this looks like it might possibly have something to do with abortion. For those of us following abortion politics, that's entirely what it is about.

Let's get you up to speed.

The essential debate in abortion politics is when life begins. Few on the pro-choice side would endorse purely elective abortion for a fetus that they think is a human life, and few on the pro-life side would proscribe aborting something clearly not alive -- a D&C for a blighted ovum, for example. Problem is, like whether the man goes around William James's squirrel, the question turns on how people define terms. That part of the argument is essentially unresolvable as a matter of pure reasoning.

One tactic of abortion opponents is to invoke arguments of moral reasoning. "People only deny humanity of something when they wish to deprive it of humanity." That sort of thing. Such arguments have their strengths, particularly a certain moral resonance.

But one weakness in the abstract moral arguments for treating fetuses as human is the totally real, very non-abstract fact that people regard unviable fetuses as different from children fully gestated and born. One example is how parents grieve miscarriages. This I can speak of from experience. Not only have we gone through a miscarriage, I know many families who have. My wife and I were sad for a while and then we moved on. And understand, my wife's miscarriage has had enduring implications. While I wouldn't trade Kid T for any alternative fate, fact is my wife's miscarriage is the reason we have only one biological child.

The experience of others who have been through the same thing is similar. After a period of sadness, life gets better and the incident eventually fades into the backdrop of memory. I also have friends who have lost children. That's something different. That is true grieving, the kind that never truly leaves a person. Friends have said things like "not a day goes my I don't think about -----"

So it's different. Enormously different. Firing a bullet from a gun versus dropping one on the ground different. And when an abortion opponent is trying to make the appeal to moral reason that a fetus is the same as a human life, the difference is inconvenient.

Which, it seems, is the point of the Grieving Parents Act. It is government-generated propaganda aimed at making something sad take on tragic dimensions, thus muddying these waters. The Act says to parents, "not only is it OK to grieve, it's really not natural to do otherwise. Let's have a generation of people burying miscarried embryos and see if we can't make everyone truly deeply sad about miscarriages. Then maybe you all will appreciate fetal life."

Like so much that is pestilent in the state Republican agenda, this is part of a nationwide trend. A number of states have enacted the laws and more are considering. They offer an platform to trumpet the fetus=life message decorated with concern-for-parents bunting. And in states with Democratic governors, they offer a serious veto dilemma.

And it's vintage Coughlin. It's symbolic, politically calculated and media-friendly legislation that does nothing to make the lives of real Ohioans better. It's this year's pink license plates. It's exactly the kind of bill Coughlin has been pushing his whole career. And this is one criticism team A² dare not make.

Skill, Secrecy and the Games Gamblers Play

Today’s Dispatch runs a lengthy, info-packed story giving background to the ongoing “skill games” controversy.

Briefly, gambling industry is trying to skirt the laws of the states that don’t allow casino gambling by making games that allow payouts based in the “skill” of the players. One company took Ohio to court arguing that their games aren’t gambling devices

Attorney General Marc Dann reached a settlement agreement under which a pre-selected consultant will evaluate whether or not a given machine’s operation is “51% skill.” The consultant’s word is final.

To throw a little more political drama into the mix, the righty blogs have been on Dann for making the decision after taking campaign contributions from skill machine manufacturers.

Then late last week papers started requesting the consultant’s reports under the public records laws. The one skill game maker that has submitted machines for evaluation moved to block disclosure of the reports. The company argued that the report includes information that is proprietary and that would enable people to break the machine. Dann has suggested that if the reports are not released, the settlement is off:

Attorney General Marc Dann might call off a deal to legalize wagering machines in Ohio if their manufacturers succeed in their bid to keep reports on the machines' operations private, a Dann spokesman said yesterday.

This plugs into something I was wondering about “skill games” – how do the makers and operators stay in business without house odds?

The basic business model of a casino is set up games whose odds favor the house. There will be losses but statistically speaking, over the long haul the house will come out ahead. If a skill game truly has a skill component, presumably that means that a good player can consistently win. And if someone consistently wins, that person can make tons of money at the expense of the game parlor.

But this from today’s Dispatch story caught my eye:

Last year, then-Attorney General Jim Petro issued a ruling opposite Dann's. Petro concluded that the games' outcome is "largely by chance rather than a player's skill," making them illegal.
He hasn't changed his mind as an attorney in private practice.
Petro said the machines are manufactured so that players, no matter how skilled, can't win every time. A governor controls the number of times the machine can have a winner, he said.[emphasis added]

I’m wondering about that bolded part. If Petro’s reference to a “governor” is another way of saying that the skill is impossible, it’s one thing. But if the machines include a true governor – a component that keeps track of payouts then makes further payouts impossible, that’s, well, cheating.

Meanwhile, the reports have to be public. They just do. How these machines work is a matter of public import. If someone can end run around state law then hide information about how they did it behind a veil of trade secret, they will set a precedent that will spill all over state regulation, particularly where environmental regs are concerned.