[Reverie] Capri Comes Full Circle

posted Nov. 5, 2014

It was a hard-fought campaign, but Capri Cafaro is your Representative in the 13th District. Ironically, she succeeds Betty Sutton who beat her out for the nomination eight years ago in a bitter contest. Unlike that contest, this year when Betty stepped down to become Pres. Bayh’s Dep. Sec. of Labor, the open seat didn’t prompt a mad scramble among Democrats. Everyone knew Capri would be the nominee.

As the founding member of the Hate Capri blog brigade back then, it falls to me to recount how we got here. Back then I had no use for Capri at all, but some friends thought she at least had potential – most notably Jill (BTW, congrats on the Bestseller List).

I would have bet the farm that when she lost the primary in ’06, she would be on the next plane back to NYC, only to resurface two years later in a tempting Congressional district. The first step in her road back to political credibility was staying in Lorain Co. and setting up shop there as a nonprofit consultant. By all accounts she did real good there and helped me with the School Funding Reform Amendment in ’07.

Let’s stop and think about that. Kid Z is now in her Senior year at Firestone in the Visual Arts program. Kid T is tearing it up at the Math/Sci middle school at Inventure Place. As I was reading my ancient Cafaro posts to prepare this one, I was reminded that the same election Cafaro lost, Akron lost a levy by less than a point. Back then, we didn’t even know if APS would survive. I barely remember life before growing mills and enforceable state funding levels.

Anyway, Capri’s stay in Lorain seemed to soften her in a good way. Whether it was living with regular old Midwesterners or being truly independent from her Dad, she became far more likeable. I was actually one of the last holdouts. Mostly it was Scott Bakalar who brought me around. And check it out, Scott and Michelle’s latest disc is #27 on Amazon.

Two years making contacts in Lorain Co. made Capri a credible candidate to take on a freshman Republican in Ohio’s House 58. That was a hell of a fight in a Stone Republican district. She benefited from Gov. Strickland’s gaudy poll numbers and brilliantly showed how her opponent was helping obstruct his most popular policies – rural broadband and universally available pre-K. The NRA endorsement didn’t hurt any in that district.

She had some luck getting in, but her success as a legislator was all her. She cemented her rehabbed rep as a strong independent leader by taking the point on redistricting reform. When her erstwhile union allies objected, she gently reminded them that she had the resources to get by without them, thank you very much, and oh by the way did they really want her to fight for coal gas plants in Lorain? They fell in line and the rest was a done deal.

Now some of you are still pissed that the D’s didn’t get the chance to fully stick it to the R’s in the 2010 redistricting. I still maintain that if the D’s were able to gerrymander a 60/40 advantage in Columbus, they soon would become as indolent and corrupt as the Republicans were when Ted took over. Trust me, it’s better this way.

From there, Capri was able to work on what lit her fire – Senior care, health care, help for displaced workers. In short, she became a shoe-in for the 13th. Of course, if she hadn’t worked so hard on redistricting reform, she’d have had a much easier time of it, but she used that to her advantage in the General.

I was able to sit down with her last week. We laughed about that ’06 race, about the barbs we hurled at each other. Hard to say which of us hated the other more. I told her I was proud to know her. I told her she wasn’t just a better legislator, she was a better person. And I told her I always knew she’d look better as a brunette.

Best of luck in Washington, Capri. Don’t forget where you came from and where you have been.

Meanwhile, Prof. W. is looking forward to retirement and we are still unpacking from our summer in Chincoteague. Hard to put myself back in that 2006 election, before George started syndicating MTB all over the place, before he sold during Internet Bubble 2, making all of us shareholders obscenely grateful. Who’d have thought back then it would end up like this?

Capri Cafaro Wants to Make You This Fabulous Offer!!!

The first of what threatens to be a series of Capri Cafaro infomercials aired this morning. I DVR'd it, watched it and, surprise, was underwhelmed.

While my feelings about Cafaro are well documented, my feelings about infomercials have not yet made a blog post. I just don’t get them. I don’t understand how producing a thirty minute segment and buying time for it makes economic sense. I don’t know why anyone watches.

As an insomniac, I’m presumably part of the target audience for these things, yet I’ve not sat through more than maybe five minutes of one. And that was just to try and figure out Don LaPre’s scam.

I really don’t understand how anyone can tolerate the artifice of the enterprise. An infomercial generally isn’t merely a half-hour documentary about the virtues of a product. It is instead a faux program, often in the Donahue/Oprah audience input mold, about whatever it is.

Cafaro’s infomercial fits the profile. While it is framed with the McCain/Feingold “I endorsed this message” disclaimer (or is it claimer), the majority of airtime is devoted to Cafaro speaking before a suspiciously compliant audience at a town hall meeting a UAW Local 200. All that's missing is an announcer cutting in with the obligatory infomercial buzzphrases.

Over the next thirty minutes you will learn . . .

The script has Cafaro answering questions like (and this is a quote) “Are you in favor of raising the minimum wage to put real money back into working people’s hands?” While the questions are painfully scripted, the answers are not. Cafaro is responding more or less extemporaneously – something she is not particularly good at.

Indeed, the most fascinating thing about the spot is how uninspiring she is as a speaker. She is choppy and verbally peripatetic. You can see the fingerprints of image consultants on every clever aside and self-deprecating remark. After all the anonymice posting about how good she is on the stump, I expected to see that here. Not so.

The audience for this thing is hilarious. The producers actually edit in audience shots, all of which show people wearing unmistakable I’ve-been-at-this-taping-for-five-hours-now expressions. But every time Cafaro answers a question, they burst into applause.

. . . About this revolutionary new product.

The centerpiece of this townish hallish info-thing is Cafaro’s SAW proposal – Save American Workers. The centerpiece of that is offering tax incentives to Americans buying American-made goods to make them price-competitive. To do that, Cafaro acknowledges we would have to back out of every trade treaty of the past fifteen years. She seems to think our trading partners would understand.

Meanwhile, I’m more than a little dubious about the efficacy of the proposal. Consider for a moment her audience – members of the UAW. American car manufacturers are getting shellacked by the Japanese. Have you car shopped lately? The Japanese makes are almost uniformly more expensive than American-made comparables. People buy them because they are better engineered, not because they are cheaper.

Meanwhile, the thought of people saving their receipts for more-expensive American-made household goods to take advantage of the tax rebate loses me. Unless the tax incentives make American goods significantly cheaper, the simple convenience factor will still make foreign-made goods significantly more attractive. And we haven’t even mentioned the Wal-Mart effect.

Listen to these testimonials!

Early on there’s a break in the action for endorsements. First off, some guy in a UAW T-shirt. Next, one Richard Romero, probably better known in Lorain. Google results suggest he’s a Steelworkers guy.

Later Cafaro fields a question from DeAndre in Akron. DeAndre? Hmmmm.

The most unintentionally funny moment in the entire spot is when she says that, thanks to her family’s fortune, she will be beholden to no one. Yeah, and she’s proposing giving manufacturing-segment labor unions the biggest, wettest, sloppiest kiss in the history of political panders just because she thinks it’s a good idea.

And if you act now . . .

All of this is about the primary. Cafaro is putting her faith in the received wisdom that the 13th is a lock for whoever wins the Democratic primary. She’d better be right. She is setting herself up to be portrayed as a creature of labor unions, probably the least popular Democratic interest group after trial lawyers. And her economically naïve proposal will give plenty of ammunition to whichever the Republican faces her in November. And that’s without even mentioning immunity deals or Central Park South prior addresses.

Available only through this TV offer!

An air-war expenditure so extravagant is curious. It leaves me wondering if she is putting any of her storied jack into building a grassroots organization of if she is simply counting on the unions to deliver. She may win the primary simply by playing the name-recognition game with oxygen-sucking media buys, but she will need boots on the ground in November.

But wait, there’s more!

At the end she promises another “town hall” next Sunday morning. Stay tuned.

Jim Petro and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.

Apologies and hat tip to Judith Viorst.

I might have tried too hard to get campaign contributions or something from a lawyer and now there's pay to play allegetions on my campaign and all I did was what Betty did but that doesn't help me because I already said what a good AG Betty was and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

My party did a poll and I agreed to it except that I didn't agree to the results and it showed that I was the guy who could outrace Ted, except that it didn't, and the pollster asked nice questions about Ken before asking people if they like Ken or me better and they said "Ken." People said I was whining about the poll, but I wasn't, I was just explaining that it was really really really really really really unfair.

I think I'll run for Governor of Australia.

I picked Joy to run with me because a gun group likes her but they said that Joy is their best friend and Ken is their next-best friend and Ted might be their third-best friend and they endorsed Ken, so all that happened when I picked Joy was that everyone remembered how Phil left my campaign and that she had been mean to Terry.

I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

I could tell because we turned in our money reports and they showed I was ahead of Ken but people only talked about how Ken is raising money faster and that Ted has more money than either of us. My fundraising consultant said we'll do better next quarter.

Next quarter, I said, I'll be running in Australia.

The newspapers talked to Marc about his plan to fix special counsel spending and talked to Tim about his plan to fix special counsel spending and talked to Subodh about why he thought their plans were silly, and they quoted everyone about what I had done wrong. "I'm having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week," I said, but nobody quoted me.

The left wing blogs made fun of me for pay to play.
I hate the left wing blogs.

The right wing blogs made fun of me for complaining about the poll.
I hate the right wing blogs.

The party wants me to drop out, the moderates think I'm a wingnut and the wingnuts think I'm a pandering RINO. My ex-friend Tom Noe is still out their somewhere and people want to know why I didn't investigation the Bureau of Workers Comp. Ken's friends are saying mean things about me to Bob.

It's been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

My campaign manager says some weeks are like that.

Even in Australia.

Those Crazy Kids and their Blogs

The NEO 'sphere is buzzing about a pair of overtly anti-blog editorials recently appearing in the PD. Dick Feagler and Ted Diadiun each have pieces that conflate Wikipedia with the blogosphere. The Feagler piece in particular has been subject of much, much, much, much blogging. I can't add a lot, except to say that the Feagler piece really has to be read to be believed. Feagler has been running the same "Old Fogey out of touch and proud of it" schtick for at least 30 years now. Still, his piece is far more ignorant, far more condescending, far more wrong that you'd think possible. If you've just read the blog critiques, you still Have No Idea.

All this comes on the heels of the PeeDee's well-documented squeamishness about the URL "faggotyassfaggot.com" (now that would be a Feagler column worth reading) and a self-appointed blog expert showing up on Diane Rehm last week. So we seem to be in a new "Blogs vs. MSM" cycle.

I'm not a die-hard MSM basher nor a blog triumphalist. Bloggers frankly need the MSM both to provide the first draft and offer a door to push against. The MSM should embrace the blogosphere as an extended conversation about their product. Both are battling for attention from a world that just doesn't read much any more; both can bring people back into civic engagement.

Here in Akron, the attitude of the local paper is not one of contempt but of co-optation. The Beacon website is lousy with new blogs. In addition to Libertarian cartoonist Chip Bok's blog, we have blogs by sports writers, the movie reviewer and the TV critic. The latest addition is Steve Hoffman 's politics blog Road to Bexley. I've held off on commenting on it to give Steve some time to get aclimated to the form. Now it's time.

Road to Bexley is basically a collection of web-only Hoffman columns. What you get is his take on information from either media outlets or campaign websites. He does not in any way engage the blogosphere. Thus far I haven't seen a single link to either a national or Ohio blog. He hasn't even acknowledged MSM-linked blogs like The Fix at the Washinton Post or Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly. Nor did he acknowledge recently getting love from HypoSpeak. The internet outside Ohio.com and its cousins seems not to exist.

He also doesn't do much reporting. That is to say, he doesn't report on calls with campaigns, inside dirt from sources or background from his experience in the business. All in all, Hoffman's blog, like the BJ blogs before it, are geared toward middle-class, middle-aged, middlebrow users of the website.

All of this makes me feel like the BJ is saying "don't pay attention to that crazy blogosphere. If you want to be hip to this blogging culture, just stay here within the cozy confines of safe, stable paper you've always known."

Which is a pity. As I said, blogs can help re-engage people into civic life -- to the benefit of both blogs and mainstream media outlets. But Hoffman's project won't grow legs in the blogosphere as long as he pretends the blogosphere doesn't exist.

Now it may sound like I'm whining about The Akron Pages getting no respect. I'm not. I'm not talking about this blog. I know my place in the world and own it.

But the Ohio blog world includes well-connected operators like Tim Russo, Michael Meckler and Hypothetically Speaking; experts sharing insights borne of years of experience like Bill Callahan and Mary Beth Matthews; and writers of craft and vision like Jeff Hess and John Ettorre. Mainstream outlets ignore blogs like these to their peril.

In Hoffman's case, he has missed all the information on Meet the Bloggers. He missed yesterday's discussion about Sherrod Brown's internal poll (a story either broken by bloggers or planted with bloggers, depending on your level of cynicism.) The information appearing in blogs is neither insubstantial nor unreliable. But so far Hoffman won't go there.

Steve, if run across this, come on over to Brewed Fresh Daily and have a cup. You will be a better blogger and newspaper man for it.

Talk Talk

Yesterday I spent the day at the Voices and Choices Townhall meeting. The BJ fronts a story that covers most of the factual background and accurately describes the day's events and the atmosphere in the JAR (you read that right; we were serenaded by rappers). If you've seen the front page photo, that's me, 23rd from the left.

Civic disengagement troubles me. After trying in vain to recruit volunteers to help with the levy campaign on election day, after working for a dismal turnout at a school board candidates night, after a number of disappointments and frustrations, this day gave me hope. Seeing the floor of the JAR crammed with regular folk who were spending the last nice Saturday of the season (no really, that was it) talking about how to make our corner of the world a better place.

Not that I have great hope for the enterprise itself. The focus of the effort is promoting economic growth. I share with my conservative friends a deep scepticism about grand schemes to encourage economic activity. They too often turn into boondoggles for taxpayers and bonanzas for select corporations. See also, Steelyard Commons.

The participants did an admirable job of identifying challenges facing NEO. I was particularly glad to see that education topped the list in each of the problem areas we were instructed to discuss. (A sidebar to the BJ story listing the challenges and solutions doesn't appear online.)

Of course, finding solutions is another matter. One problem was that, because the meeting had a regional focus, the solutions had to have a regional focus. But most of the problems are city problems, or at best county problems. The regional structures people are casting about for just don't exist.

What's more, the region is so diverse that its hard to imagine much getting accomplished region-wide. Northeast Ohio, as defined in the conference, stretches from Lorain County, south to Ashland, west to Columbiana (inexplicably picking up Carroll and omitting Tuscarawas along the way), then up to Ashtabula. When talk turns to topics like consolidation of school districts and taxing entities, the discussion has left this planet. Summit County couldn't agree on a sales tax to build new schools because everyone was suspicious Akron would take more than its share. Who really expects Carrolton to throw it's lot in with East Cleveland?

A second problem with finding solutions is that the easy ones have already been agreed on and implemented. The problems that remain are the subject of rancorous debate. To take the subject of education as an example, no one questions its importance. But we are unable to reach anything like a consensus as to how to improve the school system. In fact, if consensus means, say 80%, I don't think we have a consensus in this state that there should be a public school system.

For another example, these were two actual challenges about education that made the consolidated list flashed on the big screen (these are paraphrased):

-Teaching to the test instead of encouraging creativity.
-Need regional standards and requirements that students meet them.

Good luck sorting that out.

Which leads me to a third problem -- people just don't know what they are talking about. When discussion turned to "unfair, cumbersome business taxes" I wanted to jump on a table and scream. We have an entirely new business tax structure in this state. In the last budget cycle the Corporate Franchise Tax was burned down and the shiny new Corporate Activities Tax erected in its place. We have no idea how it will work, but here it is. Yet townhall participants were fundamentally without clue and the participant materials we had made no mention of the change.

Finally, there is that whole problem of "encouraging economic growth." We live in an area that grew because of its place along shipping routes for raw materials. From that happenstance, a manufacturing base grew, then moved elsewhere. No one can know what the next industry will be or what series of happy accidents will determine where physically it will grow. How, then, does Voices seek to steer our economic future? I only hope it's not more of the Milo-Minderbinderism like that in Issue 1.

House Odds

The casino gambling report sponsored by CG Partnership has sent a couple of ripples through the blogosphere. In addition to my post, Joe at RubberBuzz chimed in with the standard "money is leaving the state now" argument. He personalizes it by discussing his recent trip to Wheeling to lose money.

In addition, Bill Callahan cited my post (thanks for the love) and generated a bit of discussion including another money-leaving-the-state take. And a reader emailed me with cites to the local business/nonlocal chain stats I had been groping for in my first gambling post.

My main objection to legalized casino gambling is more economic than moral. The only argument for casino gambling that makes economic sense is the money-already-leaving-the-state argument. But even a cursory look at the numbers from the CG study knock the feet out from under it.

Let's do a little rough math based on the numbers from the CG study. We are going to set aside the restaurant and hotel revenues because of concerns about tradeoffs. We are just looking at the "revenues" that constitute gambling losses.

I'm going to make an assumption about how much of the gambling loss money will stay in the state. To be fair, let's assume that the casinos are owned by a mix of homegrown corporations and out-of-staters. Since the percentages for local vs out-of-state business are 45 vs 15, lets be generous and split the difference. We will assume that 30% of money lost in casinos will recirculate in the state as opposed to being immediately repatriated out of state.

Recall the numbers from the study:

$2.975 billion in gambling loss revenues from Ohioans, including $925 million currently going out of state. That breaks down to:

$2.050 billion in new gambling losses
$ 925 million in recaptured gambling losses

Plus we get another billion from out-of-state suckers.

I contend that the total money that recirculates in the state from gambling losses must be more than the money that leaves the state as a result of the new gambling losses for this to make economic sense. Otherwise it's a net loss, even before you figure in tradeoffs, more problem gamblers, regional impacts and so forth.

The 70% of the recaptured money and out-of-state money that flows out of the state can be ignored since we would not see that anyway. The 30% that recirculates from recaptured and out-of-stater money is free money. For our purposes, I'm granting that we wouldn't see any of that money without legalized casino gambling.

So let's see how this all totals up.

The money that stays in the state is:
$601.5 million from new gambling losses
$277.5 million from recaptured gambling losses
$300 million from gambling losses by out-of-staters

Total = $1.178 billion recirculating

The total leaving the state due to new gambling losses is $1.4 billion -- 70% of $2 billion. That is a net loss of $222 million dollars.

Look, I'm not an economist. These are calculations done literally on the back of an envelope. Maybe I'm missing something, but when I saw the figures for revenue from new gambling losses, this started to look like an even worse bet than I thought.

One lesson I learned from watching to much poker on TV is that a good bet is one in which the odds are in your favor, not one you win. Every game of chance at a casino is a bad bet. You are playing at house odds -- the house will win a greater percentage of the time than you will. Rest assured that prospective casino owners know all the numbers, including the numbers I've crunched above.