Charters: A White Hat brass ring from Supreme Court

You had to figure that a man of David Brennan's mighty political influence would come out on top  in the latest  Ohio Supreme Court decision that permits him to  keep all of the stuff in closed charter schools.  Yes, the court said in a split decision, even if you and I paid for it.

The Akron businessman, d.b.a. White Hat Management,  runs a charter school empire that has received nearly a billion dollars in Ohio tax dollars for his comfort and safekeeping. With his reputation as the  biggest Ohio Republican political donor - for many years! - it has drained the oxygen from Gov. Kasich, the legislature and now the  GOP-controlled Ohio Supreme Court  to resist his advances.

Did I just mention Kasich, who told us that  charter schools need more transparency  while supporting  more state money for them?  He's been so enamored of these schools  that he once suggested that the charters are so successful(!)  that we ought to convert to charter universities.   On that score, don't get me started.

At the heart of the Supreme Court action is  a suit by 10 disaffected Hope Academies and Life Skills Centers that objected to White Hat's claim on all publicly funded school assets when these schools left White Hat's embrace.

No deal, White Hat said.  Our contract shows we can keep everything even if we didn't pay for  it, which leads me to ask:  Who in hell  kept watch for taxpayers over the contract when it was written?  The court, led by Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican fixture to the core from Akron who is among Brennan's recipients, decided  that Brennan can keep everything.

Plunderbund reported that GOP Justices Sharon Kennedy and Judith French,  asserted that "the school boards literally turned all money and responsibilities over to White Hat as an independent contractor with no expectation of transparency in how the business would be conducted."  Not even an inventory that  could have turned up a teacher's  iPhone absently left behind.

Justice William O'Neill, the lone Democrat on the bench,  dissented, saying that we were witnessing a "fraudulent conversion of public funds into personal profit". Right.  But good luck on making that idea stick against the White Hat behemoth.

Another object lesson on how soaring dollar-signed political business is carried out in Ohio these days?

Strickland-Portman poll: Early, yes. But...

Plunderbund is reporting that a new Quinnipiac Ohio poll gives former Democratic
Gov. Ted Strickland a comfortable 48-39 percent lead over  Republican Sen. Rob Portman in the 2016 race.  Remembering that early polls can be as fickle as April weather, it is still  interesting that Portman, once the rising GOP star and budget advisor to George W. Bush, is bringing up the rear. Among independents, Strickland leads 50-32!

Although the Cincinnatian spent a lot of time in 2012 tagging along with Mitt Romney in casual togs in the so-called Swing State, he didn't get the nod for veep -  but as these things go, he did draw the attention of  the Columbus Dispatch as  potential (along with Gov. Kasich) presidential  material.

Trouble is, the several newspapers enamored of Portman's blurry self-described "common sense conservatism"  weren't able to project him beyond his current job.   My hunch is that with the exception of the party apparatchiks looking to fill a seat on the dais,  few folks in northern Ohio can pick him out of a crowd.

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.

Understanding Ohio politics, Plain Dealer style

Today's recommended reading:

John Michael Spinelli's  piece  on Plunderbund on how the Plain Dealer has set the table with its own political utensils  not only for the November election but also for 2016 and even 2018.  He reports that PD political writer Henry Gomez has based his crystal ball on hs best five (unidentified) Democratic sources.  Yummy stuff for  guys like Gov. Kasich, the PD's  choice since it endorsed him four years ago.

With Sen. LaRose, three's not an anti-vote crowd

Last August, State Sen. Frank LaRose of  Copley Twp., announced that he was planting seeds to introduce politicians to civility.  A Republican, he would join with former State Rep. Ted Celeste, a Democrat,  to pursue the noble bipartisan goal.  Considering the infusion of the Tea Party into the GOP's veins and thought processes, LaRose could be commended for what would require the hand of a brilliant alchemist.

I can't say preciesely whether he has inched forward. (My guess:  Not much.)   But a report in Plunderbund suggests that he is still hanging out with his family of lawmakers who keep looking for ways to shrink the vote because, well, they see that as the path to the reemergence of more victories in state and federal elections.

 (Or as Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, an early  LaRose enthusiast, used to say,  bad weather would help his side because it encourages  some of the folks who supported the other side to stay home. Such logic, after all, could be a greater benefit than poll taxes.)

Back to LaRose:  the Plunderbund article noted that committee hearings will begin Tuesday on three Republican anti-voting bills.  One, by State Sen. Bill Coley, a hard-right freshman senator  from hard-right Liberty (!) Township in hard-right Butler County, that would offer  a crash landing for absentee balloting.  Coley would prevent  the Secretary of State from mailing absentee ballots in primary and special elections.  Absentee ballots mailed for general elections?  Only if the Republican-controlled General Assembly approved the funds!  Wanna bet?

A second Republican bill to be heard arrives from State Sen. Joe Uecker,  another winger who represents several counties down along the Ohio River.  He's looking for ways to reduce the number of voting machines. As Plunderbund notes, if Coley's bill to restrict absentee voters passes , more machines would be needed.

And now, I regret to say, Sen. LaRose joins in the hunt by  offering a bill to slice six more days from the early voting track.

Sorry to be so uncivil, senator, but this is partisan madness and I've already seen the game film too many times.

Plain Dealer Heads into Part-time Home Delivery

(Also posted on Plunderbund)

Not since LeBron James packed up his wallet and left town has anything bestirred  the Plain Dealer's readers more than the paper's official announcement that it would implode to a three-day-a-week delivery system this summer.   The angry letters to the editor and telephone calls to the downtown  offices were not unexpected as rumors circulated for weeks that the PD would suffer the same fate as other papers owned by Advance Publications that were abbreviated. "The readers are really upset about it," says Harlan Spector,the guild president and 22-year veteran of the paper's news staff. "They feel betrayed."

Although Spector has had the nearest view of the paper's plans as the union's representative, he admits there's not much more that he knows beyond what the paper's front office has reported.  "There are a lot of unanswered questions."

The readers' responses in letters have run the gamut from  disbelief  ("crappy, shortsighted, narrow-minded fat-out wrong'' ) to the old chestnut that liberalism  was the  culprit for the paper's decline. (The "endless, slavish drumbeat for Democratic ideas might just be the problem".)

Sorry to disengage anybody from that stale curse.  The PD has long been in league with the city's powerful conservative establishment that heads out to the eastern suburbs each evening after office hours.  But there's far more to the story. Try, for example the  crushing  blow of the social media that is draining the life blood from what we once took for granted as newsprint journalism.

Investor-conscious Wall Street owners of the corporate media have also eagerly sought ways to eliminate unions from their bottom lines.  In Cleveland,  the paper has negotiated the removal of 60 full-time company drivers and re-hired some of them on a part-time basis - a not-uncommon sleight-of-jobs by other big employers to erase  health-care and other benefits.

Finally, there have been strategic decisions that turned out to be false gods.  The Beacon  Journal, for example, once tried a full-court circulation press on Canton, only  to absorb  a lot of red ink before it called off a failed venture.

In Syracuse, where Advance Publications, converted the Post-Standard to a three-day delivery cycle,  the outcome has been pathetic.  Columbia Journalism Review reported this week that  the paper  is printing  no more than 12,000 newsstand  copies on the non-delivery days - less than a sixth of its daily circulation on the former home-delivery days.  At that, the newsstand   buyers are getting no more than a 16-page skeleton.

The PD and BJ were once such rivals that one seldom saw the other's name in the  local print.  That, too, has changed as the papers across the state now ride piggyback with each other's stories ,complete with bylines and attribution . It was interesting,  then,  to see a series  of ads in the BJ now promising seven-day home delivery. Just one more sign of the desperation rattling the papers these days.

Ryan Chittum, the writer of the CJR report, was hardly impressed with the Plain Dealer's message to its readers  that the paper was "Adapting to better serve our community".

"Saying the changes are to "'better serve our community' is insulting  to readers and the 53  journalists the paper is about to fire," Chittum wrote.

Actually, it had been 58,but five have already pulled out on their own.

The PD's guild contract  doesn't expire until 2019,  but as one reporter sighed: "By then there will be nobody left anyway".

Defeat is in the air.  And that's not news anymore.






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The big White Hat bulging with taxpayers' money

For the past 15 years Akron mega-businessman David Brennan  has been been passing the hat - the  familiar white one big enough to bleed the state education treasury of enormous sums.   It began in 1998 when Brennan, as savvy an entrepreneur as you'll find on Planet Romney - founded White Hat management to establish a series of charter schools in Ohio and elsewhere.

According to Plunderbund, the flow from the state treasury to White Hat's account has reached nearly $1 billion and is continuing with a friend like alleged budget hawk Gov. Kasich and a Republican legislature.  Such success was not based on results and the offhand chance that his presence as a big GOP contributor would be ignored.  And if the pols didn't already know, he told them so. It didn't fail.

The cozy enterprise ran into problems three years ago when the governing boards of 10 charter schools sued White Hat to learn what happened to 96 pct. of the money that the for-profit company received.  And as you might suspect, White Hat stonewalled that since it is a private company its ledgers are not open to public scrutiny.  The suits have passed through court after court, finally landing in the 10th District Court of Appeals in Columbus, which supported the charter boards' claims.  Kasich just went through the same challenge - and lost - to Jobs/Ohio.

But as the Beacon Journal editorially noted, the charter schools' case could  now head to the Ohio Supreme Court, with a 6-1 Republican majority. That, said the BJ, means White Hat "could evade transparency for a long while yet."  Did I tell you that Brennan was a savvy entrepreneur?

For now, may I ask about the costs of the long legal battle which, I'm sure, are  coming from White Hat's taxpayers' gifts?

Did I tell you that Brennan was a savvy entrepreneur? 

The governor's food for political thought

Privately run prisons, as the New Yorker  recently described the TV series "Girls," has become a "trending topic".  That's because Gov. Kasich, determined not become privatized himself  when the voters head out to the polls in 2014, has found still another way  to downsize the government he manages with swagger each day.  He wants to turn over food services at  Ohio's prisons to the non-elected  entrepreneurial class  that swells with each new opportunity for its investments.  He says it will save the state maybe $16 million a year.

Like so many of  his "bold'"  initiatives, once the headlines fade into yesterday, you have to pay more attention to second opinions.  Privately run prison services   have a history of failure that equal the inmates they're supposed to contain.

Cost savings for taxpayers? As Paul Krugman has pointed out,  a study by the U.S. Department of Justice has concluded that such savings in other states "have simply not materialized.''

"So let's see," Krugman wrote, "Privatized prisons save money by employing fewer guards and other workers, and by paying them badly.  And then we get horror stories  about how these prisons are run.   What a surprise!"

Reviewing earlier  consequences, Plunderbund reported an audit by former Republican State Auditor Jim Petro  of privatized food service at the Noble Correctional Institution in Caldwell, Oh.    The audit showed Aramark, the company involved,   "failed multiple sanitary inspections and was unable to provide   acceptable portion sizes as agreed upon in the contract. What's more, Plunderbund said the audit revealed that "Aramark ended up billing the state for millions of meals it never actually served resulting in $2 million in overpayment being made to the company."

Never mind, the Kasich people contend,  we're looking at $16 million in savings even though a transfer to private hands would eliminate 456 state jobs.  Oh, it says here, the private operators would hire some of these people.

And now we come to the real bottom line.  Kasich, who has no use for unions, would eliminate that many jobs covered by Civil Service.  Christopher Mabe, president of the Ohio Civil Service  Employes Association, is already preparing for a brawl. "This is unfair, unsafe and hurts us all and we will not stand for it," he told the Columbus Dispatch.

From the standpoint of purely practical politics, after being drubbed in his fight against public employe  unions with Senate Bill 5, is Kasich really prepared to provoke labor again in an election year?

PUCO chief: greenies a red plot

 


Gov.  Kasich appointee Todd Snitchler, chairman of the Ohio Public Utilities Commission,  has no use for the disciples of climate change.  Indeed, he has tweeted that  people who support renewable energy represent "?? 'green'  religion" that is "taking over from Christian religion."

(I'll pause for a moment to allow sane readers a break to catch their breath.)

Snitchler's hostility to "greeniacs"  was revealed by Columbus Dispatch reporter Darrel Rowland,  who combed more than 1,000 comments from Snitchler's Twitter account.  It  bore his  enemies list  and a mention or two of Pravda, which left no doubt that the whole green scenario is a Communist plot.  Who knew?

His tweets revealed him to be in tune with the works of Ayn Rand, Matt Drudge and Fox News whenever  he's in need of  material or a platform for his nutty views. The Christian thing may be of his own choosing.

As Plunderbund asked:  "Should we be surprised that Kasich is appointing climate change deniers to a position that requires him to determine whether proposed major wind or solar facilities are in the public interest"?  Plunderbund notes that the governor has already appointed two anti-abortionist activists to the state medical board  and an anti-public school tea partier to the Board of Education.

Snitchler found his way down to Columbus from Uniontown, whence  he was launched into the Ohio House of Representatives.  A University of Akron Law school graduate, he will as PUCO chairman have a strong influence on energy issues in the state.  Most recently, the commission  turned down a solar-energy project in Southeastern Ohio that would have created 600 jobs, ignoring PUCO's own staff advisories.

Commission member Lynn Slaby of Akron, told me  that Snitchler was "smart" and "conservative."  But he said he wasn't aware of co-Republican Snitchler's apocalyptic tweets.  Oh, Slaby says the project still could be revived with a different set of conditions. But for further details on a possible revision, as in history, alert me to Snitchler's next visit to Fox News.

P.S.  Does Snitchler fashion all of those tweets on company time?   Well?   

Husted: Romney by acclimation in Ohio?

Plunderbund and Ohio Public Radio have noted something  that seems to have fallen through the cracks of the  mainstream print media.  Not satisfied with the  notoriety he's already earned with his nationally reported efforts to restrict the Ohio vote  on Election Day, Secretary of State Jon Husted is now suggesting  that he would like to see a major change in the state's winner-take all electoral votes: dice them up according to congressional district results.  

His rationale - which is too kind a word -   is that Ohio draws too much attention as a swing state and would be less critical to the national outcome if each of  its congressional districts were awarded delegates based on their  votes.  Spoken  like a true Republican in the wake of Tuesday's results.

If Husted really wanted to dim the quadrennial glare on his state, maybe he should just  go about his business in a a less partisan way without being   mentioned in the national press so  often as  an elections officer  who by hook or crook tried to "swing" the state to Mitt Romney. Don't count on it.

(Note: Plunderbund has posted my column on Josh Mandel's plans for his political future which, as you are probably aware by now, could change by the day.)

Christie: High praise for Obama's efforts in critical times

While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was praising President Obama's intense engagement  in  the post-Sandy devastation of Christie's state,  Mitt was doing photo-ops in Ohio on a day when he said he wouldn't be campaigning at all.  Christie emphatically described Obama's  quick action  to expedite FEMA's assistance as ''outstanding" and said he didn't care  if such  praise violated party loyalties in the presidential race.

Meantime, Romney was more circumspect about  FEMA, the agency that he has long dismissed as a drag on the federal budget,  having once said that critical disaster work could best be handled by the private sector!   He didn't say  how that would be fail-safe but it is a clue to his secret plan to end the deficit.   Does that make you feel more secure these days if your town is hit by another disaster with him in the Oval Office?

On Tuesday,  trapped by his past feeble notions, he ignored  all questions from reporters on  whether he  now felt that FEMA was necessary for the nation's domestic emergencies.  It was just Mitt being Mitt when he faces an unpleasant situation that can't be solved by metrics and IPOs.

Having watched this guy since the start of the primaries, I've concluded that his campaign is much like the Seinfeld series:  It's a campaign about nothing.

That being the case, the narrative must find a way to gain traction with lies.  Not that he nor his supporting cast worry much  that it all reflects on Romney's incurable waffling and dishonesty.   Indeed, any challenge to his plot devices is merely cause to repeat them.  When top Chrysler executives criticized his fictional  Jeeps-to-China  TV ads,  the trash talk continued to turn up on TV and radio, especially in the Toledo area where the auto industry has heavy impact  on the economy.

* * * * *

Poor John McCain.  He grows more erratic by the hour.  There he was in Ohio with Josh Mandel at his side - ya know, the old soldier and his young aide-de-camp -  asserting on TV that Obama was  "unqualified" to be America's commander-in-chief.  The only thing I  can figure is that McCain  is bored and needs to hug up to Romney for a possible appointment to Team Romney if Mitt lands  in the White House. I think he might be holding a pair of sixes against a full house.

* * * * *

The Columbus Dispatch today endorsed Sherrod Brown over Josh - the second conservative Republican paper forced to concede  the wide gulf that separates the two candidates.The other paper: The Cincinnati Enquirer.

* * * * *

My column on the Romney campaign's lies about Obama and the auto industry is posted on Plunderbund.

A word from Grumpy

Now that the dust is starting to clear, I want to mention that my column ranging from the firing of Manny Acta to rumblings about the Plain Dealer's future is now posted on Plunderbund.

A satisfied media accepts the Husted Hustle

They had me going for a moment. The vigilant Ohio urban newspapers, I mean. When Secretary of State Jon Husted delivered his mandate that all voting hours should be uniform, who besides cynical pests like me  could challenge the political correctness of the Husted Hustle?

The Plain Dealer's editorial follow-up to his ruling concluded  that the decree was, um,  "acceptable".  After all, it said, "What Husted has ordered may not completely satisfy anyone, but  it at least  treats everyone equally." Of course.

That's after it opined that it would have been "preferable " if Husted had "included a week end or two" for early voters."  Shucks, he didn't.  And isn't that at the  heart of the problem?

Not fully dismayed, the PD's closing argument meekly ended: "Imperfect though it may be,  this solution will suffice."  Imperfect?

Down in Columbus, the Dispatch's editorial declared: "Vote for fairness".  The paper didn't waste time in sharing its satisfied view, beginning the editorial with...

"Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has struck a fair compromise by standardizing  early-voting hours throughout the state." Whoopee! Compromise!  Who could complain?

Meantime, the Beacon Journal conceded that the ruling "has not pleased everyone and even recalled that in 2008 the early voting proceeded "smoothly."  However, it  said Husted has "leveled the field for early voting hours."

What the editorial writers  didn't level about was the ugly  source of this year's election scandal.   None of the papers bothered to mention  that the Republicans had set out early to suppress minority voters.  African-Americans,  in particular.  And they slyly confiscated a  system that worked four years ago and found an "acceptable" way to fix it to increase their party's chances against President Obama.    'Tis a fact that was buried in much of the latest round of editorial page coverage, where outrage was replaced with studious defenses of a political plot that can't be remedied by uniform voting hours.

But wait!

Over the week end Plunderbund, ThinkProgress and other sources reported more evidence that the GOP mission all along was to shrink the black vote.

That word came not from those awful libs  but from  Doug Preisse, the Franklin County Republican chairman and member of the board of elections.    In an email to the Dispatch, he conceded:

"I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban - read African-American - voter turnout machine.  Let's be fair and reasonable."

Lets.

This is the same perp who, according to the Dispatch, said claims of unfairness were "bullshit. Quote me."

In fairness,  I will.

Grumpy Abe matches up with Plunderbund

A  personal note:  As of today I will be writing occasional pieces for the liberal Plunderbund blog in Columbus.  If you are unfamiliar with Plunderbund you should treat yourself to its content - which ain't that friendly to Governor Kasich and Statehouse Republicans.  Simply Google Plunderbund.com.  Meantime, I will continue to  offer Grumpy Abe to friends and alligators.

Mandel: Does money-raising trump all else?

IT'S GOOD TO note that Josh Mandel is taking a break from his ubiquitous fund-raising to speak at that Akron Press Cub luncheon on March 1. Mandel, the rookie Ohio Treasurer who has decided he would rather be a U.S. Senator, had put off an earlier Press Club invitation with word that he was "too busy".

(Full disclosure: Although I had long been active as a Club officer and chaired the luncheon programs for too many years, I am no more than a garden variety member today with no official duties - NONE! For that, I and maybe a few of the members today are quite satisfied.)

Now, back to our state treasurer pro tem, and probably longer. So far as I can tell, his greatest strength is raising campaign money, wherever it might raise its ugly head.

To this point, the Associated Press recently noted that one of Mandel's responsibilities as treasurer is to preside as chairman over the Ohio Board of Deposit, the group that decides where to deposit state money. Hold it right there.

The AP reported that Mandel has yet to attend a single meeting, earning him the claim to be the first treasurer in Ohio history to ignore his role on the board. Moreover, he missed the last meeting because he was fund-raising in Washington. Obviously we can't count him to be a multi-tasker.

Well, to take a little of the edge off his absence, he has boasted of high credit ratings for certain state portfolios. But as the Columbus prime blogger, Plunderbund, notes, the porfolios have always enjoyed such glowing ratings.

It does appear that Republican Mandel, who is challenging Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Democrat, will have loads to talk about at the Press Club. Do you think there's a chance that somebody will raise a question or two?

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.

Dispatch SB5 editorial: Playing show but don't tell

The games that some newspaper editorial writers play:

From a questioning report first published by Columbus blogger Plunderbund and circulated in northeastern Ohio by Cleveland Scene, comes word that a Columbus Dispatch editorial on

Sunday shamefully scooped the paper's own excellent staff of political reporters. Here's the summary:

The editorial asserted that two unidentified persons "affiliated" with supporters of the anti-union SB5, including Gov. Kasich., had offered a compromise to unions six weeks ago but, alas,"labor backed away." Heavy back-channel stuff that placed the blame on mulish unions. That was news to even the paper's reporters. And here's the rub:

It turns out that the self-appointed arbiters of the dispute were not anybody from Kasich's office . One was identified as Mike Curtin, former COO of the Dispatch Printing Co., now retired, who continues to speak for the paper. This shabby initiative by an ex-corporate officer without portfolio, not only embarrasses the Dispatch but also undeservedly burdens the reporting staff with the notion that it doesn't know what the hell is going on in somebody's back channel.

By the way, the same editorial board endorsed Kasich over Ted Strickland. .