Plunderbund threatened with suit by Plain Dealer

Plunderbund  reports that the Plain Dealer/Northeast Ohio Media Group has threatened to sue the blog for publishing a short clip of a 40-minute video that the  paper had shown online - and then removed.

The flap involved the PD 's editorial board's  group interview of Gov. Kasich, Democratic candidate Ed FitzGerald  and Green Party candidate Anita Rios.

Plunderbund reported a letter from Chris Quinn, vice president of content of the Northeast Ohio Media Group, demanding the removal of the clip from the blog, accusing it of " illegal use" that "entitles us to statutory damages,  which can be quite steep".  In other words, criminal copyright infringement.

I saw a few stray (?) clips that found their way to  Cleveland TV telling me that Kasich was not taking the interview with aplomb.  With FitzGerald trying to say something, the governor turned his head  away and laughed.

(His dodge-em campaign  mode recalls the TV commercial in which a car makes crazy   turns while a squib warns the viewer that it is  a " professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt".)

Plunderbund said the governor "slumped in his chair, refused to acknowledge the other candidates and ignored repeated attempts by the PD staff to answer even basic questions about his policies and programs."

That insufferable imperious attitude  convinced me that  he should satisfy his ego  and run for president, as he did once before.  Unshielded by the friendly Ohio media, he would find a much different reaction (and distraction) from a national media that would soon become impatient with his bullying style  and short temper.

So guv, as you have said, this is halftime in the governor's office so go for the big one in
Washington.  That would be painful to watch.  But we're getting used to painful politics in Ohio.

Kasich/DeWine clash: Back to the Middle Ages

NOW THAT THERE is no post-season bowl hysteria to whip up the Buckeye football fans in Columbus, Republicans have generously - and uncommonly - offered their own blood sport to fill in the void. It's the clash of GOP Titans, namely Gov. Kasich & Co., and Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. There is a strong medieval flavor to it, as when popes and kings duked it out over who was in charge of the masses.

Clearly, the unlikely power play that violates Republican tradition of never publicly slamming a member of your own party (while blistering each other sotto voce) is an open sore nowadays. A well- connected state Republican conceded on the phone with me the other day: "It's serious. It won't go away soon." Is it ego? I asked. "Exactly," he said, suggesting there were a number of moving parts. It's understandable only if you bring yourself to concede that with Kasich, the top tier of the pecking order is occupied by lobbyists, cronies and old friends.

That's the short version of the party's in-house hostilities that are worrying some of the faithful's bystanders. It will bleed into a busy political year with a presidential election at stake. Indeed, as the Columbus Dispatch's Joe Hallett keenly reported a few days ago, the State GOP's second-in-command has scorched the Kasich forces for splitting the party by openly trying to unseat DeWine. "It's almost become: we have met the enemy, and it is us," said Kay Ayres, state GOP vice chairwoman. Her message to the governor: Lay off this nonsense.

Nice try, but it won't be enough to satisfy the Kasich machine that is driven by lobbyists who are doing quite well with Kasich's aid, thank you. The governor has been joined by his buddy and torpedo, House Speaker Bill Batchelder to wield the axe. Batchelder has accused DeWine of working against the governor's best interests.

Meantime, no less than Kasich claque Alex Arshinkoff, the Summit County GOP chairman, took a strong stand for Batchelder's credentials in the Plain Dealer, offering a brief character sketch of Batchelder. Declaring Batchelder to be a great party leader ( by the way, Arshinkoff never fails to describe his political pals as great) said: "I've never known him to lie." But I digress.

The Columbus political blog Plunderbund offered some insight into the quarrel: "Kasich came into power with a plan: privatize everything in the state and enrich as many of his friends as possible in the process."

That point is hardly debatable. There have been numerous reports the past year of Kasich handing off lucrative contracts through well connected lobbyists to the sort of recipients who would be expected to reciprocate. That's how the governor has done business and continues to do so. On the other hand, DeWine is said to believe that too often state policy is being carried out by the governor's friends.

Lobbyists? Friends? Cronies? Here's one example cited by Plunderbund. Don Thibaut, who was Kasich's chief-0f-staff for two decades when Kasich was in Congress, now operates a lobbying firm, Credo Company with a boast on his "About Us" page "highlighting his very personal and long-term relationship with John Kasich. " So should we be surprised that when the state sold off a prison to a private buyer, the contract went to a Thibaut client?

God knows how much of this is going on. Yet wasn't it John Kasich, upon entering the governor's office, who warned lobbyists that he would not put up with them in the bright new era of progressive governing? Sure he did. And like Batchelder, he never lies.

Kasich: Read no evil, see no evil

IT'S A LITTLE EARLY to be Ho-Ho-Ho-ing, I know, but it's the only way I know how to respond to the latest utterance from Gov. Kasich. I refer to his comments in a Columbus speech in which, with straight face, he declared that he never reads newspapers. That's a politician's standard cover-up when things are not going well - no curiosity at all to know how he's doing in the media. The other cover-up for the pols is that they will tell you they never look at the polls. Particularly when they don't favor you. To repeat: Ho-Ho-Ho.

In his rejection of the media, our governor, with straight face, informed us: "You should know that I don't read newspapers in the State of Ohio" because one doesn't need to be "aggravated by what I read in newspapers." This is spoken in a town where the daily newspaper, the Dispatch, helped him get elected by endorsing him, thus aggravating to this day a whole lot of other folks who have a dismal view of him.

He also complained that he doesn't find newspapers to be "uplifting". Uplifting?

Here's one former newspaperman who will tell you that I never once heard that word applied to a newspaper's mission, which is to be "informative". However, sadly I do find that to be less so today. So go ahead, governor, read the papers. You might help somebody in the newsroom save his or her job.

Kasich & Co.: overreach, and then some

THE MORNING AFTER...

The unconditional surrender of Kasich & Co. to the voters on Tuesday was a textbook example of crushed political arrogance. The mismanaged Republican-led assault on public worker unions was DOA at the polls, but its demise has been widely anticipated from the day the opponents of Senate Bill 5 filed more than a million signatures calling for a referendum to repeal it. Even with the support of the state's two biggest newspapers - the Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, which lamely tried to provide cover for the law - the ill-conceived legislation was destined to land in a pauper's grave with the clearly shaken governor offering a brief TV benediction.

Good! Since his arrival in the governor's office in January , Kasich has shown little patience for rational conversation with his critics as well as the public at large. Stripping public workers of their bargaining rights has been one of his planned fail-safe initiatives in attempting to convince the corporate world that status quo is not a term you would ever find in his dictionary. Yet there he was, no more than your average chastened pol, in the gloom of painful defeat telling us that the voters have spoken and he will now need time to reflect on its meaning. It's not likely his funeral oration will remotely approach Pericles' in content and vision.

Taking a longer-lasting hit was his triumphant exhuberance in gruff political engineering in the coming months. That also will be true of the Republican lawmakers, consumed by their own self-importance, who have left sound logic at the backstage door. Many will be on the ballot in 2112. At the same time, some current øbservers have noted that Kasich had operated on the weird notion that his anti-union handiwork would be so widely applauded that he could end up on the national ticket. Fat chance of that.

Meantime, the demolished Kasich power play has energized a once-musty Democratic labor base that is expected to have long memories. Sometimes it helps if you can depend on your opponents to lend you a hand. The unionists should be among the first to send the governor a thank-you card.

The ex-astronaut vs. the ex-Wall Streeter

HAVE YOU SEEN the TV repeal-SB 5 (No, Issue 2) by John Glenn? Quite effective, for a former senator to appear in soft voice at the age of 90 to appeal to Ohioans for reason. So the only question left in this instance for Tuesday's election:

Are you going to believe a former astronaut war hero with a Boy Scout's honor, or are you going to believe our governor, Jøhn Kasich, who spent his recent years promoting Wall Street for a company that went bankrupt?

Incidental news from the Republican front

IF GOV. KASICH IS INTENT on creating more jobs in Ohio, he may have to plow ahead without help from Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman. MSNBC is reporting that when Portman joined all other Senate Republicans in killing President Obama's jobs bill, it cost Ohio 40,700 new jobs. Once again, Obama can expect to receive no support from the Republicans on any substantive proposal to help the economy.

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I noticed that former State Sen. Kevin Coughlin of Cuyahoga Falls has officially withdrawn from the Republican race for the U.S. Senate in 2012. No surprise. Very few people were aware that he was ever in the race.

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You have to admire Mitt Romney's balletic manner in pirouetting from one side of an issue to the other. After declaring he fully supported Kasich on Senate Bill 5 (" I fully stand with John Kasich"), Romney arrived in Ohio to declare to reporters that he doesn't get involved in state ballot issues. But within a matter of hours, he asserted that he is "110 pct. in Kasich's corner on Issue 2, the repeal referendum that is enjoying a 25 pct. margin over the law's supporters in the latest polls. He said he was "sorry if I caused confusion." At least you can say this about Mitt: Most politicians staring at those poll numbers would prefer to say something nice about the Cleveland Browns instead and leave SB 5 to its fate. There is a fine line between courage and stupidity.

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WHEN A TV INTERVIEWER REMINDED RICK PERRY THAT HIS FLAT TAX PLAN WOULD BE A BIG BOOST FOR THE WEALTHIEST ONE PERCENT IN AMERICA, HE SAID HE DIDN'T "CARE ABOUT THAT." IMPRESSED BY HIS SENSITIVITY TO ROYALTY, FOX NEWS IS GIVING PERRY AN ENTIRE HOUR TO HIMSELF SUNDAY.

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Among the no-shows for the Akron mayoral debate this week was Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff. History tells us that when the boss doesn't show up to give at least moral support to the Republican candidate, you can bet that he's decided that the outcome has been settled in favor of Mayor Plusquellic.

Why didn't I become a paid lobbyist?

MY FATHER WANTED me to be a doctor. He had his reasons. Two of his brothers were physicians. Furthermore, he believed my grandmother would add me to the list of M.D.'s in the family by paying for my tuition. It was a formidable incentive for him to guide me to medical school someday. When I turned down that presumed benefit, he thought it would also work with Grandma if we told her I would study to become a lawyer. I finally persuaded the few members of my family who even cared about my future that I wanted to be a writer of some sort.

It was a tough call. My mother even mentioned to my high school English teacher that I hoped to work for a newspaper someday. "Is that good?" she asked, quite puzzled about my direction in life. He took a non-committal wait-and-see attitude to avoid offending anyone.

Now, I think I was wrong. Instead of newspaper work, I should have decided to become a lobbyist. In these lean times, lobbying is a well-paid growth industry in which you can even put your movie popcorn on your expense account. These insiders are everywhere at the national and state levels.

I was again reminded of this a few days ago when I read that the pols on the "supercommittee" that will look for budget cuts in defense and health care once employed nearly 100 aides who now work as lobbyists for General Electric and other defense contractors as well as the health-care industry. The high rollers cover themselves well to make sure that nobody takes a bite from their apples.

While reading Reckless Endangerment, New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson's and financial analyst Joshua Rosner's inside look at Wall Street, the home mortgage industry and all of the culprits that brought down the economy, it was scary to learn how all the moving parts enriched so many people at the top and destroyed so many others at the bottom. The book's subtitle is, How outsized ambition, greed and corruption led to economic Armageddon, and upon reading the authors' argument, you might conclude that the title was the kindest thing you could say about the book's targets.

Among the evil-doers are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two private but government sponsored companies that manipulated a gold rush of home mortgages from banks to fashion a pyramid of treasure before they tumbled. But this piece was about lobbyists. So we must turn to James Johnson, Fannie Mae's chief executive in the the 90s, an influential super power in the mortgage business with both political parties who stacked the deck against the competition. As the authors tell us, Johnson personally realized $100 million in the 9 years that he enjoyed the lofty position. He was so adept at the game with Fannie Mae's "army of lobbyists" that he even paid lobbyists not to lobby against it. (My emphasis.)

In Ohio, the arrival of John Kasich brought in new crew of registered lobbyists - 375, the Plain Dealer recently reported. The paper added that today's roster has about 1,500 members, including Summit County Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff, whose close ties to the governor has paid off handsomely for him.

Of course I'm jealous and wonder why I never thought of cashing in on this rich employment market much earlier in life instead of being content to play the piano in night clubs and at weddings while writing awful essays. Who knows? As Brando lamented in On the Waterfront, "I could have been somebody" when I walked into the governor's office before heading to the watering hole to buy everybody a drink. Who knows? Rats! Too late, now!

Is the Ohio right-to-work debacle only old news?

MORE THAN a half century ago, the anti-union establishment in Ohio (do I have to name it?) decided it was time to end closed union shops by adding a right-to-work amendment to the state constitution. With an arrogant dismissal of organized labor's bread-and-butter proprietary claim to guard its membership rolls, the pro-right-to-work team propelled the issue to the November ballot.

The result was - or should have been - a defining moment in labor relations in Ohio. The proposed amendment was swamped by more than a million votes (63-37) in what was described by the Plain Dealer at the time as the widest margin of defeat that any ballot issue had ever suffered in Ohio.

The consequences were even more severe for leading Republican officeholders. Among the losers on the November ballot were the governor, Bill O'Neill, who actively supported the amendment; and presumed unbeatable conservative icon, Sen. John Bricker, who opposed it as political suicide. That, too, describes the late Ray Bliss, then-Ohio Republican chairman who saw it as a death warrant for the GOP ticket. (Such political wisdom is absent today in the governor's office as well as at the county level, where the party is managed by alleged Bliss disciple Alex Arshinkoff, a Kasich soldier to the core.)

The defeat of right-to-work was one of the GOP's darkest days in Ohio's political history.

That was 1958. I was a young reporter for the Columbus Citizen and as the results came in there were worried glances among the paper's top editors, and then shock over the overwhelming size of the issue's defeat. Within a day or so, Jack Keller, the managing editor, sent a memo to the city desk calling for greater coverage of the city's unions, from hard news to features. It was a damage-control concession that the paper had been less than attentive to the voice of labor. Other than occasional reports that union membership has shrunk, the media remain indifferent to the workaday world of a unionist on the national TV news panels and the local business pages. (Have I overlooked evidence to prove me in error?)

Well, here we are in 2011 and if the polls are wildly correct, Kasich & Co. - even with enormous resources ready to be tapped from anti-union treasuries from across the land (think, the Koch

brothers) - can expect to lose a rousing battle. The governor is counting on his two favorite newspapers, the Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, to orchestrate the narrative in the coming months in which we will be frequently reminded that it's hurtful to the state to go forward with the Senate Bill 5 repeal campaign after the governor offered a compromise. Lost in the dire warnings is the simple truth that it was the Kasich union-busting culture that created the whole mess in the first place. Whatever else it might have been, it was bad politics. What could he and his legislative buddies have been thinking?

Really, folks - would a brash and self-centered cowboy like the governor be talking about a compromise if he expected the repeal to be a loser in November? It's possible, of course, that he never really expected the leaders of the public-union repeal to the public at large. Or so it might be argued. But, as expected, it's the repeal advocates who are now being accused of playing politics. Please.

A long time ago, a savvy Ray Bliss had it right and his warnings went unheeded. Is there nobody in the governor's office today who comes close to having it right?

Kasich's poll numbers continue to slide

IN CASE YOU ARE keeping score, here is the latest poll on Gov. Kasich's public approval rating:

According to the Quinnipiac University Poll, only 35 pct. of Ohioans' approve of Kasich's performance, 50 pct. disapprove. That indicates a drop from the pollster's numbers of two months ago, 49-38. (Notice that 15 pct. in the new poll either don't know who the governor is, or don't care!)

What does this mean? We report, you decide.

Benevolent governor and lawmakers on a roll

SPECIAL PERKS - often carefully disguised as phantom earmarks - have never had it so good as the ones that have taken over the Republican political class in Columbus.

First, there were the notorious Brennan amendments in the Ohio House version of the state budget that handed over autonomous control of charter schools to the company that would most profit by them.

Then we learn that Gov. Kasich's sweetheart deal on casinos was a goody bag for the big casino owners that will be less profitable for the state than that of his predecessor, Ted Strickland. (Not that anyone in the Kasich fold will concede as much.)

It never stops. Today we see in the Plain Dealer that a couple of Republican lawmakers from Springfield slipped in an amendment to the state transportation bill that would limit the auctions of state construction equipment to one company - based in Springfield, of course. All of Ohio's other auctioneers are outraged. But what can you do? Kasich has already signed it into law.

But maybe we're being too churlish toward the governor. He did say he didn't know the auction stuff was in the bill that bears his signature. The way things have started out in his administration leads me to wonder whether his team wouldn't get the first pick in any sports draft.

Latest poll: Kasich would lose by 25 pts!

THE LATEST poll numbers indicate that buyer's remorse has locked on Gov. Kasich. The survey by national pollster PPP (Public Policy Polling) are so dismal for the governor that it would require a turnaround Federal bailout to rescue his effectiveness as the state's chief executive, bombastic sheriff and scowler. Life, I'm sure, was so much simpler for him in the shadows of his Wall Street days.

Now for the numbers: The pollster said that if Kasich were to run against former Gov. Ted Strickland, he would lose by 25 points - 59 pct. to 34 pct.. Of course, he won't be running against anybody but himself for another three and a half years so all of us will be forced to share the burden of having him around to witness his behavior. But Kasich's instant meltdown could have serious effects on other Republicans in the state who choose politics as a means to make a living.

Faced with a rising tide of dissent among Independents and Democrats (and even those disenchanted Republicans who are suffering in silence these days), Kasich is unlikely to change course and refine his blustery style. May I remind you that he's the guy who called a cop an idiot and threatened to run the bus over anybody who disagreed with him?

I will now await any charge from a Republican who believes that I've just wrongly thrown Kasich under the bus. C'mon, you helped put him in office. Shouldn't you now circle the wagons?

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Kasich bullies lobbyists except when they are pals

THE DAY AFTER John Kasich was elected governor last November, he warned a luncheon audience of Statehouse lobbyists that their day-and-night jobs were about to change. Assuming a divine right of governors, Kasich combatively told all within listening distance that he, not they, would determine what was best for Ohio so they might as well get the message about the new sheriff in Columbus town.

As reported by the Columbus Dispatch at the time,, Kasich asserted in blunt terms that amounted to an ultimatum:

"Please leave the cynicism and the political maneuvering at the door. Because we need you on the bus, and if you're not on the bus, we will run you over with the bus. And I'm not kidding. " He then declared: "And if you think you're going to stop us, you're crazy. You will not stop us. We will beat you. And that's not arrogance."

That was a lot of Kasich's patented hubris to be passing around only hours after he had been declared the winner by a thin plurality. That alone offered a strong clue to what we could all expect from him in the months that followed. Humility and grace are not among his strong points. Maybe I should add intellectual honesty.

If you've read this far , I think you probably know where this is going:

Today, the Dispatch's Joe Hallett reported that three of Kasich's inner-circle advisers are now quite active as lobbyists and enjoying more than average success in their line of work. Wrote Hallett:

Gov. John Kasich's best friend [Donald G. Thibaut] has set up a lobbying shop, signing up a dozen blue-chip companies. His overnight success as a first-time lobbyist is turning heads on Capitol Square - and testing the credibility of Kasich's oft-made promise that friends will get no special treatment. Neither Kasich nor Thibaut see any problem but others wonder whether the governor's close ties to Thibaut and two other lobbyists who are members of Kasich's inner circle of advisers might open the governor to charges of hypocrisy."

But wait. Kasich said he and Thibaut never talk about his good friend's clients when they are together.

So much for that hypocrisy.