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July 2008
Dann campaign spends cash on lawyers, consultants
In his last few weeks as attorney general and even after he resigned under pressure, Democrat Marc Dann spent more than $120,000 out of his campaign fund on lawyers, political consultants and new Apple computers, according to the latest campaign finance report filed this week.
Dann used the campaign fund to pay $13,680 to an Austin, TX-based political consultant hired in April to strike back at Dann’s critics. Dann for Ohio paid $3,100 to The Campaign Group, political consultants in Philadelphia.
The day he resigned, May 14, the campaign shelled out $50,000 in legal fees to M&R Land Co., which is an aviation company owned by Dann’s friend Mike Harshman, who is a pilot and an attorney. Two days later, Dann for Ohio paid a $10,000 retainer to Neal & Harwell, a civil and criminal defense law firm in Nashville.
Dann said via e-mail that the expenditures are allowed under Ohio law. “All expenditures were made after prior consultation with the campaign attorney. Each firm has provided significant services to the campaign and met all contractual obligations to the campaign,” Dann said in the e-mail.
According to his mid-year campaign finance report, Dann spent $233,567 out of the account since Jan. 1 — $120,325 of that since May 1.
The Secretary of State is still auditing Dann for Ohio’s 2007 campaign finance report. On May 2, Dann admitted to an affair with a junior staffer, said he wasn’t prepared to be attorney general, and acknowledged that his behavior may have sent the wrong message about how his managers could treat subordinates. He fired two friends he had hired into top slots and two others resigned. Dann resigned May 14.
His administration is now the subject of investigations by the state inspector general, state auditor, highway patrol, Ohio Ethics Commission and others.
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Eye On Ohio: McCain ‘Celeb’ ad
By Howard Wilkinson
Cincinnati Enquirer
The ad: “Celeb,” 30 seconds.
Producer: The McCain campaign.
Where to see it: Airing on Ohio TV stations and in other battleground states. View it at DaytonDailyNews.com/eyeonohio.
Script: Announcer: “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world. But is he ready to lead? With gas prices soaring, Barack Obama says no to offshore drilling. And he says he’ll raise taxes on electricity. Higher taxes. More foreign oil. That’s the real Obama.” McCain: “I’m John McCain, and I approve this message.”
Video: As the announcer calls Obama the “biggest celebrity in the world,” a series of images flash by of enthusiastic Obama supporters at his appearance in Berlin, which drew a crowd of about 200,000. Interspersed among the Berlin shots are two quick frames that show celebrities who are famous for being famous, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
This is followed by long shots of the throngs that greeted Obama in Berlin and of the Democratic candidate, waving to the Berliners. The scene suddenly shifts to a still photograph of Obama, with a series of graphic messages: “Higher taxes,” “More foreign oil” and, the kicker, “That’s the real Obama.”
Analysis: While the ad makes points that the McCain campaign has raised before about Obama and his energy policies, the energy issue is almost an afterthought to the central point — the suggestion that Obama is more interested in adoring crowds than in being the kind of leader the nation can trust.
By emphasizing Obama’s “celebrity status,” the McCain campaign is trying to cash in on recent media coverage suggesting the Democratic candidate and his campaign operation have been presumptuous and arrogant, acting as if the election is already over.
This ad hits Obama again for his opposition to lifting the moratorium on oil drilling off U.S. coastlines, which Obama has said, accurately, “won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years.” Even McCain, who supports offshore drilling, has said that it would produce no immediate relief from high gas prices.
The McCain ad’s claim that Obama says “he’ll raise taxes on electricity” is based on an interview Obama gave to a San Antonio newspaper in February in which he said “what we ought to tax is a dirty energy like coal, and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.”
According to the Obama campaign, what Obama was referring to was his proposal for a cap-and-trade mechanism that would set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions, allowing entities to buy and sell rights to emit. If that is the case, McCain is criticizing Obama for a proposal that he, too, supports.
Howard Wilkinson is a reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer. E-mail: hwilkinson@enquirer.com.
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McCain and Obama neck and neck in Ohio
Two crucial swing states in the presidential election — Ohio and Florida — are now too close to call, according to a poll released Thursday, July 11, by Quinnipiac University.
Among likely voters in Ohio, Democrat Barack Obama has 46 percent of the vote to Republican John McCain’s 44 percent. Obama held a 6-point lead over McCain in a June 18 poll in Ohio.
In Florida, Obama has 46 percent to McCain’s 44 percent. Obama had held a 4-point lead last time.
In Pennsylvania, another swing state, Obama leads McCain 49 percent to 42 percent, but that’s down from a 12-point lead the Democrat held last time.
Pennsylvania and Ohio voters say energy policy is more important than the candidate’s position on the war in Iraq while Floridians are evenly split over which is more important.
By wide margins in all three states, voters support the idea of allowing offshore drilling for oil — something McCain supports but Obama opposes.
The poll was conducted July 23 to 29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent in Florida and Ohio and 2.7 percent in Pennsylvania.
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Dayton leaders praise Bush for signing homeowners act
Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin and city leaders issued a statement Wednesday in response to President Bush signing the Hope for Homeowners Act of 2008, which promises mortgage relief to hundreds of thousands of homeowners across the country.
“On behalf of the entire Dayton Commission, we are very happy that President Bush today signed long-overdue legislation to provide relief to homeowners who have become victims of the mortgage crisis in America,” McLin said in the statement.
“Studies have shown Ohio to be among the hardest-hit by the mortgage crisis. Dayton and the surrounding region have certainly not been immune to the affects of predatory lending practices and the related impact to the housing industry at large.
“This new federal legislation will provide much-needed assistance in the form of aid for homeowners, a permanent housing fund, and neighborhood grants. These measures will certainly provide welcome relief for the residents of our community.”
McLin also encourages anyone who has been affected by the mortgage crisis to contact the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center at 223-6035 for more information on how they can take advantage of the new federal legislation.
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Lauterbach to testify Thursday
Mary Lauterbach, the mother of Maria Lauterbach, will testify before a House subcommittee Thursday, July 31, to talk about her daughter’s experience in the military leading up to her murder in December.
Mary Lauterbach will testify before the National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Thursday morning. She said she wants to talk about her daughter’s experiences after she accused a colleague of sexual assault last year.
Lauterbach, a 20-year-old Vandalia native, was discovered Jan. 11, buried beneath the fire pit in fellow Marine Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean’s backyard near Camp Lejeune. Lauterbach, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her death, had accused Laurean of raping her in April 2007. Laurean has been charged with Lauterbach’s murder.
Turner and a colleague, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., earlier this week introduced a bill listing issues regarding rape in the military that they would like to see the Department of Defense investigate. The bill is expected to be a first step to further action on how to better address sexual assault in the military.
Turner, a member of the subcommittee, credited a visit to Capitol Hill by Mary Lauterbach earlier this year with spurring Harman’s interest in the bill. Harman, also, is scheduled to testify before the subcommittee on Thursday.
Among the ideas Mary Lauterbach would like to push: making it easier for victims of sexual assault to transfer to another base. In the aftermath of her allegations, Maria Lauterbach often expressed a desire to transfer to another base. “Maria would be alive today if that option were available,” Mary Lauterbach said.
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First trailer for Oliver Stone’s ‘W.’ released
First it was J.F.K and then Nixon, now director Oliver Stone is turning to President George W. Bush. The first movie trailer for Stone’s controversial movie “W.”, about the life of President Bush, was released earlier this week. The movie will open in U.S. and Ohio theaters in October, just in time for Election Day.
Josh Brolin portrays President Bush, James Cromwell is President George H.W. Bush and Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush.
There is no question the movie will be controversial. Let us know what you think of the trailer and if you plan to see the movie when it hits Dayton-area theaters later this year.
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Dann wants public records
When Democrat Marc Dann started his career as a state official, he often used the Open Records laws to pry information from the hands of opponents. Then as attorney general, he delivered records to the media that sometimes damned his administration.
Now out of office, Dann is once again using the Open Records law.
Dann sent a records request to the Attorney General’s office asking for his personal schedules, e-mails and expense records that have been given to others through records requests. He also wants the names and contact information of anyone who asked for public records about him. And he’s looking for copies of talking points and speeches he delivered, news stories about him or the office accomplishments, and drafts of the office annual report that was being prepared before May 15.
Ted Hart, spokesman for Attorney General Nancy Hardin Rogers, said it’s a lot of records.
“It’ll take a little bit of time (to fulfill the records request) but it’s not as large as some of the ones we’ve received,” Hart said. The office already gave Dann the news stories and a spreadsheet of all the records requests, he said.
Dann and former members of his administration are the subject of investigations by the Ohio Ethics Commission, state Inspector General, Ohio Highway Patrol, state Auditor, and others.
Dann resigned in May after admitting he had an affair with his scheduler, that he was ill-prepared to be attorney general, and that his behavior may have sent a message to his friends about how they could treat colleagues in the office.
Dann said in a recent e-mail to the Dayton Daily News that he is spending time with his family and working to rebuild his law office.
He said he has not been notified of any disciplinary investigation of him by the Ohio Supreme Court or the local bar association. Such investigations - conducted when there are complaints of ethics or professional standards violations - are confidential until probable cause is found.
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Forbes faces discipline
Former Cleveland City Councilman George Forbes will defend his law license before a disciplinary panel of the Ohio Supreme Court later this month.
The disciplinary panel rejected a proposed public reprimand for Forbes and opted instead to hold a public hearing on Aug. 14.
Forbes was convicted in Franklin County Municipal Court on six misdemeanor charges in July 2007 that he violated state ethics laws. Forbes, a Democrat who served 26 years on the Cleveland City Council and 10 years on the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation Oversight Commission, took fancy meals, charter flights, limo rides and other gifts from businesses seeking a slice of the BWC’s enormous investment portfolio.
Forbes was one of 20 people criminally charged in an investment and ethics scandal that broke in April 2005. Eventually, the scandal tainted Republicans running for statewide offices, setting up a Democratic comeback in 2006.
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DHL hearings receive key support
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Ranking Member John Mica, R-Fla., today sent a letter expressing support for hearings on the proposed deal between UPS and DHL, said Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville.
Mica’s letter was addressed to Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., and was a response to a letter from Turner and the rest of the Ohio delegation requesting hearings.
Turner said the letter will bolster the likelihood of hearings.
“Ranking Member Mica’s support for hearings is a critical step,” Turner said. “This deal, if it is allowed to be completed, would have consequences beyond it’s devastating impact on our local, state, and national economy. It would also remove a major element of the North American shipping market. This is why congressional hearings into this issue are so important.”
Mica’s home state of Florida is the home of ASTAR, an air cargo company that has nearly 1,000 employees in the Wilmington hub.
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Ohio Roundtable says No, No, No!
The Ohio Roundtable, a conservative policy group based in suburban Cleveland, is coming out against three issues likely to make the November ballot. They don’t like mandatory paid sick leave, casino gambling or predatory lending.
Roundtable President David Zanotti said Tuesday, July 29, that the mandatory paid sick leave issue backed by labor unions is a “job killer for Ohio.” If it passes, Ohio would be the only state to have a law requiring employers with 25 or more workers to give seven paid sick days a year.
The Roundtable, which led the successful opposition to three previous casino gambling proposals, will also oppose the latest constitutional amendment to bring casinos to Ohio, Zanotti said. Voters may be asked to approve a single casino in Clinton County — near where 8,000 DHL workers are facing job losses. “It’s always a bad idea to cut a deal with a casino when you’re desperate,” Zanotti said.
And, Zanotti said the Roundtable will oppose a measure backed by the payday lending industry to repeal part of a comprehensive law designed to curb short term loans offered at annual interest rates of 391 percent.
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McCain, Obama send out dueling statements on DHL
If the proposed deal permitting DHL to hire UPS to handle its U.S. air cargo lift - a decision that could cost the Wilmington region some 8,000 jobs - weren’t yet a campaign issue, it officially became one Tuesday, July 29.
That’s when Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, sent out dueling press releases on the proposal within hours.
McCain will go to Wilmington in early August for a campaign trip to DHL. As for Obama, he recently met with the mayor of Wilmington and DHL employees to discuss the issue.
Tuesday, McCain’s camp sent out a statement backing the congressional delegation’s efforts to save the jobs in Wilmington. He also said he supports their efforts to have the transaction reviewed “by several federal and state agencies” for any violations of law.
Obama, meanwhile, sent out a letter to the Director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council asking for a careful examination of the proposal.
Both the statement and the letter are after the jump….
First, this from McCain 2008 Senior Policy Adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin issued the following statement:
“John McCain supports the efforts of the Ohio congressional delegation to resolve and render assistance to the workers and families affected by the potential cessation of operation at the Wilmington Air Park. For years, the workers and families of Wilmington have relied upon the jobs and services at the Park, and its prospective closure could pose a devastating blow to lives of thousands of hard-working Americans, and to the economy of Ohio.
“John McCain recognizes that this challenge must have a dual-track approach. First, the Ohio delegation has requested this transaction be reviewed by several federal and state agencies for any potential violations of applicable law. John McCain supports this request and believes these inquiries should proceed with the highest appropriate standards of review.
“Second, as the transaction is reviewed, John McCain believes that state and federal worker and community assistance efforts should be mustered in preparation for the potential job loss of thousands of working Americans. As the state prepares its request for national emergency grant funding for immediate assistance, he also believes that planning must proceed to ensure effective coordination so that all state and federal worker assistance — including income, health, child care, food, housing, transportation, and training assistance — is easily accessible for all affected workers.”
Here’s Obama’s letter, in full:
Dear Mr. Zinsmeister:
During my recent travels, I visited with the mayor of Wilmington, Ohio and workers who would be affected by a proposed DHL-UPS agreement for services that would lead to the closing of the DHL facility in Wilmington.
I write to you in my capacity as a U.S. Senator because I believe that the Administration must act now on two fronts: first, the Department of Justice should examine the transaction to ensure that it is not in violation of antitrust laws and second, if it is not, then the government must work to ensure that these workers and this community are not left without assistance in finding new work for its people and new use for the existing infrastructure.? I am pleased that you and Assistant Secretary of Commerce Sandy Baruah have been tasked with coordinating the government response to the situation and wish to offer any assistance I or my staff can provide.
As a matter of antitrust law, the proposed consolidation of DHL’s domestic airlift operations under a competitor, UPS, raises concern.? At the very least, the DOJ should examine whether having two competitors in a fairly concentrated market act as partners would have anti-competitive effects.
If the deal proceeds, Governor Strickland and Senator Brown have both told me that the DHL facility in Wilmington would likely cease operating.? That would eliminate at least 8,000 jobs in Ohio and impact an estimated 41 counties.? That level of concentrated job loss strongly weighs in favor of the government assisting them through the difficult time that will follow.
I understand that you are working with the Department of Labor and the Department of Commerce to coordinate a rapid response to what could be a crisis for the communities involved. As a Senator on the committee of jurisdiction over the Department of Labor, I would appreciate additional detail on your efforts and how responding to this situation could serve as a model for other communities where concentrated job loss is occurring due to plants moving overseas or increasingly consolidating markets.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
United States Senator
Cc: Sandy Baruah, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development
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President Bush headed for Cleveland
President Bush may not be on the ballot this year but he’s still coming to Ohio, which was almost his second home during the 2004 campaign.
On Tuesday, July 29, Bush is scheduled to tour Lincoln Electric Holdings, a welding company, in Cleveland and talk about energy and the economy.
After that, he’s to participate in a Congressional Trust 2008 fundraiser in Gates Mills, a Cleveland suburb.
Meanwhile, Democrats plan to use the visit to try to link Bush and his low approval ratings with Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Supporters of Barack Obama, McCain’s Democratic opponent for president, plan more than 30 phone banks and canvasses over the next two days aimed at showing that Ohio working families can’t afford any more “failed policies of George Bush and John McCain,” a Democratic press release said
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Ohio bus trip “urgent matter” for Obama?
Is a bus trip through Ohio “the urgent matter at hand” for Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign?
That’s what the New York Times reported on Sunday, July 27, as Obama returned from his overseas trip and began to campaign again among the people whose votes really count in the presidential race.
Isaac Baker, Obama’s Ohio spokesman, said that there will be Ohio bus trips but Baker wouldn’t say specifically when they would be.
“I can tell you on the record we plan to make several bus trips through Ohio and continue to campaign here (in Ohio) in the very near future,” said Baker
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McCain expected to campaign in Wilmington
Republican John McCain is expected to campaign in Wilmington and possibly in the Dayton area at the beginning of August.
At the Wilmington visit, McCain is expected to discuss the potential loss of 8,200 jobs because of DHL’s plans to turn its air-freight operation in Wilmington over to UPS’ hub in Louisville, a Republican official close to the McCain campaign said on Saturday, July 26.
McCain campaign officials have been in touch with those in Wilmington who would be affected by the potential job loss, the official, who declined to be named, said.
McCain was in Ohio on Thursday, July 24, to speak in Columbus at a presidential town hall meeting on cancer at the LIVESTRONG Summit, sponsored by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
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Brunner orders backup paper ballots for November election
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner wants voters in counties that use electronic touch screen voting machines to have the option of using paper ballots in November.
In a directive to county boards of elections on Friday, July 25, Brunner said all counties with the touch screen machines should provide backup paper ballots equal to 25 percent of the precinct turnout in the 2004 general election. Costs will be reimbursed by the federal government, Brunner (pictured) wrote.
Dayton-area counties affected include: Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Darke and Butler.
Poll workers won’t be required to ask voters if they want paper ballots but Brunner’s office will provide four posters to be displayed at each polling location, telling them paper ballots are available.
Backup paper ballots were vital in the March presidential primary, said Brunner.
“Perhaps most importantly, backup paper ballots will provide poll workers with a ‘safety valve’ in an election where we anticipate historic voter turnout of 80 percent,” she said.
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Brown, Voinovich, White House in agreement on DHL
Sens. George Voinovich and Sherrod Brown met Thursday, July 24, with the man assigned by the Bush administration to be the point person on DHL’s proposal to consolidate air operations with UPS, a proposal that could cost the Wilmington area more than 8,000 jobs.
The senators met in Brown’s office with Sandy K. Baruah, assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, after asking White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to put someone in charge of the issue.
Brown, D-Ohio, said Baruah said the goal will be to coordinate actions to fight back to preserve the more than 8,000 jobs at risk and “if that doesn’t work, to make sure (the administration) has a full-time person on the ground to help the region move forward in case jobs are lost in that facility.”
“This is 8,000 jobs,” Brown said. “(Baruah) made it analogous to a base closing in terms of economic impact.”
Baruah is familiar with the region - Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, brought him to Wilmington over the July 4 recess, not long after the DHL proposal was announced to alert him of its seriousness.
Brown said should the jobs leave, the administration has promised it will send someone to the region to help find new jobs to replace those lost - the first time the Bush administration has done so. Still, with six months left in the Bush administration, it’s unclear if the proposal would come to fruition while the administration is still in office.
Still, Brown said he’s optimistic that the state and federal governments can keep the consolidation from happening. Both the state congressional delegation and state leaders have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether the DHL proposal violates U.S. antritrust laws by reducing competition in the express package delivery market.
“We do need to prepare on the ‘what if,’” Brown said. “But the emphasis is on keeping jobs and I’m still optimistic that we can.”
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McCain goes German - in Columbus
While Democrat Barack Obama was traveling and speaking in Germany, Republican John McCain decided to go German himself - but in Columbus.
McCain had lunch in German Village on Thursday, July 24, at Schmidt’s Sausage House with five small business owners including two from the Dayton area - Rick James of Rick James Chevrolet in Piqua and Dan Young of Young’s Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs, according to a pool report.
In remarks to pool reporters, McCain continued his criticism of Obama’s position on Iraq and the surge.
“It is very clear that Sen. Obama took the very far left position,”McCain said. “It is very clear that Sen. Obama does not understand what’s at stake here, what was at stake in Iraq, and his refusal to acknowledge that the surge has succeeded is again a graphic demonstration of his lack of understanding of national security issues.”
Later on Thursday, McCain was to attend a fundraiser and then a town hall meeting on cancer at Ohio State University at the LIVESTRONGSUMMIT, sponsored by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
Meanwhile, Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, in a conference call, said the “vast majority of Ohioans” that he talks to believe the American “entry into Iraq was misguided….from the very start.”
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Cordray strikes back
Just a day after it started, the race for Ohio attorney general is heating up.
On Thursday, July 24, Democrat Richard Cordray sent a letter to his supporters that didn’t exactly have nice things to say about Cordray’s Republican opponent, Mike Crites, a former U.S. attorney for southern Ohio.
In declaring his candidacy on Wednesday, July 23, Crites referred to himself as a “prosecutor” and to Cordray as a “career politician.”
In his letter Cordray said that since leaving his job as U.S. attorney in 1993, Crites “has been sitting on the sidelines of public service.”
“His contributions to the quality of life, personal safety and economic well-being of Ohioans has been marginal at best, through sporadic part-time service, mostly as a village solicitor,” Cordray, now state treasurer, wrote.
Crites, in a prepared statement, said Cordray “has sadly sunk to the level of most career politicians” and that his rhetoric “sounds a lot like Cordray’s close ally, Marc Dann.” Democrat Dann, of course, resigned in May as attorney general in a sexual harassment scandal, setting up the battle between Cordray and Crites.
Here’s Cordray’s letter:
July 24, 2008
Dear Friend,
The race for Ohio Attorney General is now off and running with my opponent’s declaration for office yesterday. And since it’s up and running, I’d like to ask you for your endorsement.
As we are all used to seeing in political campaigns, my opponent made a number of claims about his record — and mine — that I would like to clarify for you.
A common political tactic is to compare and contrast experience. My opponent used that technique, with the curious twist of employing time travel. He spoke at length about his years of service as a political appointee, which ended more than fifteen years ago.
The most recent installment of my opponent’s history will show that, since entering private practice in 1993, he has been sitting on the sidelines of public service. His contribution to the quality of life, personal safety, and economic well-being of Ohioans has been marginal at best, through sporadic part-time service, mostly as a village solicitor.
Let me acquaint you with a more modern comparison of the relative preparation and qualifications of my opponent and myself:
Today I am writing you from Canton, Ohio, where I joined local leaders in my grassroots drive to get widespread public support for ending unfair credit card practices. On talk radio, the phone lines lit up with callers eager to share their stories.
My opponent has been nowhere in that fight.
Since being elected Ohio Treasurer in 2006, I testified and fought for credit freeze legislation, payday lending reform, foreclosure prevention, and to save taxpayer dollars by the millions.
My opponent has been nowhere on any of those issues.
In 2001, I was hired by the Justice Department under a Republican administration to argue successfully in the United States Supreme Courton behalf of America’s top foreign policy officials, including former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and former NSC head Tony Lake.
In that same year, my opponent was defending an embezzler who stole $10,000 from the Treasury and downplaying the theft from Ohio taxpayers as a “one-time thing.”
In 1997, I was representing Ohio bar associations and legal aid groups to defend the constitutionality of funding for legal services for the poor in the United States Supreme Court. This was a six year fight, and we were successful.
In that same year, my opponent was responding to an audit of the school district where he was President of the school board, which cited school officials for misuse of a credit card to run up improper charges.
In 1993, I persuaded the Attorney General to create a new job of State Solicitor, representing Ohioans in the toughest cases in the U.S. and Ohio Supreme Courts and working to keep convicted criminals behind bars.
In that same year, my opponent was leaving government service to go out and make money.
I regard public service as an opportunity for leadership and the rare chance to stand up for Ohioans and their families. What we need from our public officials is someone to be strongly and effectively on our side. I have done that throughout my time in public life, and I am glad to be running on my record this year.
So off we go. And I deeply appreciate your friendship, your voice, and your support on the road ahead.
Richard Cordray Candidate for Attorney General
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Brown versus corroding bridges
Yet another U.S. senator from Ohio is getting riled up about the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Wednesday, July 23, introduced two bills aimed at preventing and addressing bridge corrosion. The bills aren’t expected to go too far this year -Â it being an election year and all - but Brown said he has high hopes they’ll be a priority in a new presidential administration.
The first bill would require any proposal to the Department of Transportation for bridge construction, modification, or renovation to include a corrosion mitigation and prevention plan.
The second would provide tax credits for corrosion prevention measures including engineering design, materials and application and installation of corrosion prevention and mitigation technology.
Browns’ been interested in the issue since he was in the U.S. House. A study conducted by the Federal Highway Administration in 2001 found that corrosion costs $276 billion per year, including $8.3 billion in costs due to bridge corrosion.
In 2007 dollars, this translates into $442 billion in total corrosion costs and $13.3 billion in bridge corrosion costs. This means annual costs for Ohio of about $15 billion in corrosion costs and $500 million in bridge corrosion costs for 2007.
Private industry has estimated that one-third of corrosion costs could be saved by applying existing corrosion control technology. The utilization of this technology is estimated to cost less than 10 percent of the costs to replace critical infrastructure.
“The money the government will save is much greater than the money it will spend on this,” Brown said.
Last year, the U.S. Senate passed a bill by Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, to establish a commission to examine deteriorating roads, bridges, drinking water systems, dams and other public works. That bill passed in the aftermath of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minnesota, but ultimately stalled in the House.
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Blackwell joins Obama bashers
Ken Blackwell’s joined the efforts to take some steam out of Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign sails.
Republican Blackwell’s is one of the conservative voices featured on a new TV ad from Citizens United, an independent conservative group. The ad started running on Fox News on Monday, July 21, and continues through the end of this week at a cost of $250,000. The ad is a preview of a film that Citizens United is producing on Obama - “Hype The Obama Effect.”
“It is only when you begin to peel back the layers that you begin to see the disturbing pattern,” Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state and unsuccessful candidate for governor, says in the ad.
The Obama campaign had no comment on the ad. Take a look-
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Rasmussen: McCain leads in Ohio
A telephone poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports released Tuesday, July 22, shows presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCainholding a 6 point lead over presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in Ohio.
The poll, taken July 21, shows McCain with 46 percent of the vote, compared to 40 percent for Obama. Rasmussen gave McCain a statistically insignificant one-point lead in previous months.
When “leaners” are included in the totals, McCain leads Obama 52 percent to 42 percent.
The poll also found that McCain receives support from 88 percent of Republicans, while Obama receives support from 74 percent of Democrats in the state.
The economy remains the top issue for 49 percent of voters polled, while national security is the top priority for 24 percent. Obama gets an edge for Ohioans ost concerned with the economy, while McCain leads among those who most prioritize national security.
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McCain’s people fire back at Strickland
And, as promised, here’s a reaction from the McCain camp to Strickland’s bashing of their last campaign ad:
“It’s disappointing that Ohio’s governor is more intent on embracing Barack Obama’s do-nothing, out-of-touch energy policy than he is in helping hardworking families struggling at the pump. John McCain is offering solutions to this crisis that include short-term and long-term relief, including an investment in energy resources that will help create jobs here in Ohio.” - Paul Lindsay, McCain spokesman
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Strickland peeved about McCain ad
Here’s Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland on Sen. John McCain’s newest campaign ad, “Pump,” which you can see by scrolling down on this blog:
“John McCain’s latest ad is disingenuous and disappointing. The truth is that in his 26 years in Washington, Sen. McCain has consistently opposed investments in ethanol and a range of alternative energy technologies that have the potential to create thousands of jobs across Ohio.
“But despite his own longtime opposition to renewable energy projects that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil, Sen. McCain is trying to blame Senator Obama for high gas prices.
“Sen. Obama has a plan to invest $150 billion in clean and renewable energy that would create 5 million new jobs. It’s a serious plan that will secure our energy independence and move our economy forward. Meanwhile, Senator McCain seems only to be offering discredited attacks. Ohioans deserve better.”
We’ve asked McCain’s campaign for their response to this criticism, and will post it accordingly….
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Ohio GOP picks former Pete Rose prosecutor for AG race
Ohio Republicans have picked D. Michael Crites, a former U.S. attorney for southern Ohio who prosecuted Pete Rose on tax evasion charges, to run for Ohio attorney general in November, a key Republican close to the GOP candidate search said on Tuesday, July 22.
A formal announcement is expected on Wednesday, July 23, said the Republican, who declined to be named.
Crites, now an attorney in private practice in Columbus, will face Democratic state Treasurer Richard Cordray in the AG’s race in November. The winner will serve out the unexpired term of Democrat Marc Dann who resigned in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal.
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Eye on Ohio: John McCain ‘Pump’ ad
By Jessica Wehrman
Dayton Daily News
The ad: “Pump,” 30 seconds.
Producer: The McCain campaign.
Where to see it: Airing in key states, such as Ohio, and on national cable. View it at DaytonDailyNews.com/eyeonohio.
Script: Female announcer: Gas prices — $4, $5, no end in sight, because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America. No to independence from foreign oil. Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?
Chant: Obama, Obama!
Announcer: One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets. Don’t hope for more energy. Vote for it. McCain.
John McCain: I’m John McCain, and I approve this message.
Video: The ad starts with images of a lone gas pump, then flashes between the image of the pump and the pump’s price skyrocketing. It then superimposes a picture of a grinning Barack Obama at the pump as its price soars. Then the ad cuts to shots of McCain talking to crowds.
Analysis: The political battle on how to solve the energy crisis has intensifed the debate about whether to increase domestic oil production. Obama opposes lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling; McCain supports lifting it.
McCain supported the moratorium during his 2000 presidential campaign, but changed course in mid-June. He still opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
According to Bob Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the high price of oil is spurred by a number of factors, among them booming economies in India and China and geopolitical problems in oil-producing countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela. He said that while there’s no one “silver bullet” to bring prices down, an increase in supply could help. But ending the moratorium would not produce new oil for at least five to seven years. And other factors — speculators, OPEC, geopolitical forces — might still impact prices.
Similarly, a report by the Energy Information Administration released last year projected that drilling in the Pacific, Atlantic or eastern Gulf regions “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.”
That report indicated that because oil prices are determined on the international market, impact on prices “is expected to be insignificant.” That agency falls under the jurisdiction of President George W. Bush, who himself called for lifting the moratorium last week.
Obama and McCain have decried America’s dependence on foreign oil; the two differ on where to go from there. Besides more drilling, McCain supports expanded use of nuclear energy and investing in alternative energy. Obama would invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, as well as double fuel-efficiency standards within 18 years.
One particular line in the ad is laughable: When the announcer asks, “Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?” the crowd chants Obama’s name. McCain on July 7 delivered a speech in which he said the nation’s dependence on foreign oil was “30 years in the making.”
Jessica Wehrman is the Washington correspondent for the Dayton Daily News.
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Obama leads McCain in new Ohio poll
Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain 48-40 percent in Ohio in a new Public Policy Polling poll.
The poll also shows incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. George Voinovich could be vulnerable to challenge in a 2010 re-election bid.
The poll was released Monday, July 21. Obama led 50-39 percent in PPP’s June poll. The poll is based in Raleigh, N.C.
McCain leads Obama 46-42 percent among white voters but Obama’s 91-6 lead among black voters puts him ahead overall.
“Right now Obama is in a pretty good position in Ohio,” Dean Debnam, PPP president, said in a press release. “His standing with black voters is not surprising, but he is also doing unusually well with white voters in the state.
“Whether he can sustain that level of support or not will probably determine if he can take this state.”
In hypothetical 2010 U.S. Senate matchups, Democratic Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner led Voinovich, 42-38 percent. Voinovich led Democratic Columbus Mayor Mike Coleman, 39-37 percent.
The poll was taken from Thursday, July 17, to Sunday, July 20, with 1,058 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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McCain to speak at Lance Armstrong event
Republican John McCain, a cancer survivor, will be back in Ohio to talk about his plans for dealing with the disease.
McCain is set to appear at a Presidential Town Hall on Cancer at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 24, at the Ohio State University as part of the LIVESTRONG Summit, sponsored by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
Cycling champion Armstrong (pictured), seven-time winner of the Tour de France and a cancer survivor, will moderate the event.
The Web site for the summit said Democrat Barack Obama, now on an overseas trip, declined an invitation to attend the summit.
McCain also is expected to attend a fundraiser for his presidential campaign, hosted by Les Wexner, founder of The Limited.
For more information on the LIVESTRONG Summit click here.
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Vets hit the campaign trail for McCain, Obama
While Democrat Barack Obama continues his overseas trip in an effort to boost his foreign policy credentials, veterans backing him and his Republican opponent John McCain are holding dueling press conferences.
Veterans and veterans’ family members backing Obama will hold a press conference in Dayton at 1 p.m. on Monday, July 21, at Memorial Hall, 125 E. First St. At noon in Columbus on Monday, veterans supporting Obama also will hold a press conference
Ohio Veterans for McCain will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. on Monday on Veterans’ Plaza outside the Statehouse in Columbus. The press conference is part of a national effort by veterans supporting McCain.
The press conferences for Obama will counter a McCain campaign ad that attacks Obama’s position on Iraq, said Isaac Baker, Obama campaign spokesman.
Among those participating in the Columbus McCain press conference will be Ohio Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, a retired major in the Marines who served in Vietnam, and Retired Air Force Col. Tom Moe, who was a prisoner-of-war with McCain in North Vietnam.
Also scheduled to participate is state Rep. Josh Mandel, R-Lyndhurst, who served in Iraq with the Marines.
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Voters, arm yourselves!
Project Vote Smart is offering Ohio voters a free 2008 Voter’s Self-Defense Manual, paid for with funding from the Ford and Carnegie foundations.
“The 100-page Voter’s Self-Defense Manual is the first, best step to smart voting,” said Adelaide Elm, founding board member of Vote Smart. “The Voter’s Self-Defense System our interns and volunteers are creating enables each voter to strip away the campaign hype, spin and negative attacks to expose what the candidates may do for us - or to us - if elected.”
The manuals will have a sampling of information form the Vote Smart databases, covering more than 40,000 incumbents and candidates running for office this year. They include background and contact information, information on key votes and interest group ratings, campaign contributions, public statements and what the group calls a “political courage test.”
Manuals are available by request at www.votesmart.org or by calling the Voter Research Hotline at 1-888-VOTESMART.
Project Vote Smart is a national, non-profit, non-partisan research and information gateway.
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Eye on Ohio: ‘Simple Question’ ad
By Lynn Hulsey
Dayton Daily News
The ad: “Simple Question,” 30 seconds.
Producer: Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Where to see it: It began airing Wednesday, Aug. 16, in Ohio, five other states and Washington D.C.
Script: (female announcer): “Ever use birth control? Then you’ll want to hear this.” (A black screen shows the words: John McCain Interview July 10, 2008, and then shows McCain being interviewed by reporters.) Interviewer: “… it’s unfair health insurance companies cover Viagra, but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?” McCain: (pause) “I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer. …” Announcer: “Planned Parenthood Action Fund is responsible for the content of this advertising because women deserve quality affordable health care.”
Video: McCain is being interviewed in Ohio aboard his “Straight Talk Express.” When he is asked this question, he hesitates, rubs his chin, looks away and finally speaks. Throughout, he appears uncomfortable.
Analysis: The reporter’s question was prompted by earlier comments by McCain’s national co-chairwoman Carly Fiorina, who said women are frustrated that some health-insurance plans cover the male impotency drug Viagra but not contraceptives. The Planned Parenthood advertisement is an excerpt from a slightly longer exchange in which McCain first says he doesn’t want to talk about the issue, and then says he cannot remember how he voted on the question of mandating insurance coverage for birth control.
McCain twice voted no on those mandates, which have not been approved. McCain said he was aware of Fiorina’s remarks, and he said he’d get back to the reporter with an answer.
The insurance coverage issue is likely to be seen by some women as one of fairness, and McCain’s stumbling may offend them. While it’s not unusual for candidates to lack encyclopedic knowledge of their prior votes, the issue is a hot-button one, and McCain’s chairwoman had broached the subject.
On Thursday, July 17, Blair Latoff, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, defended McCain’s support of “choice, innovation and competition” in health care.
But that, of course, doesn’t answer the question.
Lynn Hulsey is a reporter at the Dayton Daily News. E-mail: lhulsey@daytondailynews.com.
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Sick Day opponents call proposal “job-killer”
“Jobs” is a magic word these days in Ohio and opponents of a proposed ballot issue on sick days intend to use it to fight the proposal.
The opponents have announced formation of Ohioans to Protect Jobs and Fair benefits to battle the proposal that would require employers to let all employees earn seven paid sick days a year.
John C. Mahaney, Jr., treasurer of the group, on Thursday, July 17, called the proposal a “job-killer” in the eyes of businesses across the country at a time Ohio badly needs jobs.
Dale Butland, spokesman for the “Ohioans for Healthy Families” campaign backing the issue, said that it was “ironic” that Mahaney and his business allies say they can’t afford the sick days but plan to raise millions of dollars to run a campaign to keep “average people” from having the same benefits that the business leaders do.
Mahaney is president of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants.The opposition group is made up of individual employers, trade associations and business organizations.
Supporters of the proposal have until Aug. 6 to turn in petitions with 120,863 signatures to Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to get the issue on the ballot.
Butland said they’ve already gathered “around 200,000.”
“We’re going to have more than we need,” he said.
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Obama campaign plans women-to-women events
Women voters flocked to Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries but now it’s Barack Obama’s turn to try to win their support.
To honor the 160th anniversary of the conference on women’s rights in Seneca Falls, N.Y., Obama’s Ohio presidential campaign plans a weekend full of grassroots, women-to-women events.
Altogether, more than 60 events are planned across the state on Saturday, July 19, and Sunday, July 20, including in the Dayton area. They’ll include phone banks, house parties, neighborhood canvasses and voter registration drives.
To find out more, click here
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McCain campaign hammers Obama on Iraq
Just as Democrat Barack Obama prepares for a trip to Iraq, the John McCain campaign unleashed nearly eight minute video on YouTube that documents Obama’s shifting positions on the war.
While Obama’s short tenure in the U.S. Senate makes it more difficult to mine for inconsistent votes and stances, the McCain researchers have scoured video archives to produce “The Obama Iraq Documentary: Whatever the Politics Demand.”
The Obama campaign responded with its own attack on McCain’s Iraq policies.
“All John McCain has ever looked for in Iraq are reasons to stay there indefinitely. He has stubbornly championed a strategy of fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq regardless of the shifting facts offered to justify it, regardless of the levels of violence and political progress in the country, and regardless of the gathering strength of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And now, as he advocates a policy of staying in Iraq indefinitely, it is clear that he is going to continue to adhere to George Bush’s ideological agenda even as every other critical national security challenge is neglected, and our troops continue to fight tour after tour of duty and our taxpayers spend $10 billion a month in Iraq,” said Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan.
See the video:
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Voters oppose same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage again is in the news during a presidential election and a new national poll shows that American voters oppose it, 55-36 percent.
However, the Quinnipiac University poll, released Thursday, July 17, also finds that voters don’t want government to get involved in banning the practice.
By a 56-38 percent margin, voters oppose amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. More narrowly, voters across the nation by a 49-45 percent margin oppose their states banning same sex marriage.
There’s a huge partisan divide on the issue.
In the poll, Democrats support same-sex marriage, 47-43 percent while Republicans are against it, 80-14 percent and independents oppose it 49-43 percent.
Same-sex was a big issue in Ohio in the 2004 election when a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage was approved. A strong turnout among voters backing the amendment was credited with helping Republican President Bush defeat Democrat John Kerry in Ohio.
This year efforts are underway to put a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage on the ballot in California after a court ruling gave the OK for gay couples to marry.
The poll also tests voter opinions on other issues such as abortion, gun control and the death penalty.
The poll was conducted July 8 to Sunday, July 13, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
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Obama picks Iowa native as Ohio Rural Vote Director
Sen. Barack Obama Wednesday, July 16, named Doug O’Brien the campaign’s Ohio Rural Vote Director.
O’Brien was most recently Assistant Director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture. In that job, he oversaw the department’s biofuels, bioproducts, and renewable energy policy efforts. He also chaired the Ohio Agriculture to Chemicals, Polymers, and Advanced Materials Task Force, a body created by the state legislature and Governor Ted Strickland.
O’Brien was raised on a farm in Iowa and has dedicated his career to agriculture. O’Brien previously served as senior advisor to Iowa Governor Chet Culver on renewable energy issues.
He is former counsel for the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee and worked as a Legal Specialist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the Clinton Administration.
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Republicans touting off-shore drilling, untapped oil reserves as they bash Democrats on oil prices
House Minority Leader John Boehner has made it abundantly clear that he thinks Democratic inaction on oil prices is a winner of a political issue in a year when Republicans are in need of a boost. He’s touting a Republican “all of the above” plan that includes drilling for oil on U.S. land and off U.S. shores -Â Â something Democrats are opposed to. And this weekend, he, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, and a handful of other House Republicans will head to Colorado and Alaska to highlight untapped oil reserves.
“We are not going to let this issue go,” he told reporters Wednesday, July 16.
Meanwhile, check out Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, talking on this Senate Republican video about the “little gizmo” in his car that measures gas mileage.
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FOP backs incumbents for Ohio Supreme Court
The Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio is throwing its support to Republicans Maureen O’Connor and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton in the Ohio Supreme Court race. O’Connor and Stratton are incumbents.
O’Connor faces a challenge from Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Joseph D. Russo while Statton will go against Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Peter Sikora.
The Fraternal Order of Police is the largest Police Organization in the State with over 26,000 full time professional law enforcement members.
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McCain addresses NAACP in Cincinnati
The complete prepared text of Sen. John McCain as he addressed the NAACP in Cincinnati:
Thank you. Julian Bond, Dennis Courtland Hayes, Roslyn Brock — I appreciate your kind invitation, and this warm welcome to the NAACP. This is your second invitation to me during my presidential campaign, and I hope you’ll excuse me for passing on the opportunity at your convention last year. As you might recall, I was a bit distracted at the time dealing with what reporters uncharitably described as an implosion in my campaign. But I’m very glad you invited me again.
Let me begin with a few words about my opponent. Don’t tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways. He has inspired a great many Americans, some of whom had wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them. His success should make Americans, all Americans, proud. Of course, I would prefer his success not continue quite as long as he hopes. But it makes me proud to know the country I’ve loved and served all my life is still a work in progress, and always improving. Senator Obama talks about making history, and he’s made quite a bit of it already. And the way was prepared by this venerable organization and others like it. A few years before the NAACP was founded, President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be the presidential nominee of his party. Whatever the outcome in November, Senator Obama has achieved a great thing — for himself and for his country — and I thank him for it.
As our country has changed these past few decades, so have many of your debates within the NAACP, and within other civil-rights organizations. In the days of separate lunch counters, bullhorns, and fire hoses, the mission was hard and dangerous, but it was easily defined. The advancement of African Americans meant equal protection under law, in a country where the law had simply codified injustice. That cause required the enormous courage and commitment of generations, and a determination to hold this nation to its own creed.
You know better than I do how different the challenges are today for those who champion the cause of equal opportunity in America. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? Equal employment opportunity is set firmly down in law. But with jobs becoming scarcer — and 400,000 Americans thrown out of work just this year — that can amount to an equal share of diminished opportunity. For years, business ownership by African Americans has been growing rapidly. This is all to the good, but that hopeful trend is threatened in a struggling economy — with the cost of energy, health care, and just about everything else rising sharply.
As in other challenges African Americans have met and overcome, these problems require clarity of purpose. They require the solidarity of groups like the NAACP. And, at times, they also require a willingness to break from conventional thinking. Nowhere are the limitations of conventional thinking any more apparent than in education policy. Education reform has long been a priority of the NAACP, and for good reason. For all the best efforts of teachers and administrators, the worst problems of our public school system are often found in black communities. Black and Latino students are among the most likely to drop out of high school. African Americans are also among the least likely to go on to college.
After decades of hearing the same big promises from the public education establishment, and seeing the same poor results, it is surely time to shake off old ways and to demand new reforms. That isn’t just my opinion; it is the conviction of parents in poor neighborhoods across this nation who want better lives for their children. In Washington, D.C., the Opportunity Scholarship program serves more than 1,900 boys and girls from families with an average income of 23,000 dollars a year. And more than 7,000 more families have applied for that program. What they all have in common is the desire to get their kids into a better school.
Democrats in Congress, including my opponent, oppose the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. In remarks to the American Federation of Teachers last weekend, Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as, “tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.” All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?
Over the years, Americans have heard a lot of “tired rhetoric” about education. We’ve heard it in the endless excuses of people who seem more concerned about their own position than about our children. We’ve heard it from politicians who accept the status quo rather than stand up for real change in our public schools. Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent, and diplomas that open doors of opportunity. When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children. Some parents may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private school. Many will choose a charter school. No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.
We should also offer more choices to those who wish to become teachers. Many thousands of highly qualified men and women have great knowledge, wisdom, and experience to offer public school students. But a monopoly on teacher certification prevents them from getting that chance. You can be a Nobel Laureate and not qualify to teach in most public schools today. They don’t have all the proper credits in educational “theory” or “methodology” — all they have is learning and the desire and ability to share it. If we’re putting the interests of students first, then those qualifications should be enough.
If I am elected president, school choice for all who want it, an expansion of Opportunity Scholarships, and alternative certification for teachers will all be part of a serious agenda of education reform. I will target funding to recruit teachers who graduate in the top 25 percent of their class, or who participate in an alternative teacher recruitment program such as Teach for America, the American Board for Teacher Excellence, and the New Teacher Project.
We will pay bonuses to teachers who take on the challenge of working in our most troubled schools — because we need their fine minds and good hearts to help turn those schools around. We will award bonuses as well to our highest-achieving teachers. And no longer will we measure teacher achievement by conformity to process. We will measure it by the success of their students.
Moreover, the funds for these bonuses will not be controlled by faraway officials — in Washington, in a state capital, or even in a district office. Under my reforms, we will entrust both the funds and the responsibilities where they belong in the office of the school principal. One reason that charter schools are so successful, and so sought-after by parents, is that principals have spending discretion. And I intend to give that same discretion to public school principals. No longer will money be spent in service to rigid and often meaningless formulas. Relying on the good judgment and first-hand knowledge of school principals, education money will be spent in service to public school students.
We can also help more children and young adults to study outside of school by expanding support for virtual learning. So I propose to direct 500 million dollars in current federal funds to build new virtual schools, and to support the development of online courses for students. Through competitive grants, we will allocate another 250 million dollars to support state programs expanding online education opportunities, including the creation of new public virtual charter schools. States can use these funds to build virtual math and science academies to help expand the availability of Advanced Placement math, science, and computer science courses, online tutoring, and foreign language courses.
Under my reforms, moreover, parents will exercise freedom of choice in obtaining extra help for children who are falling behind. As it is, federal aid to parents for tutoring for their children has to go through another bureaucracy. They can’t purchase the tutoring directly, without having to deal with the same education establishment that failed their children in the first place. These needless restrictions will be removed, under my reforms. If a student needs extra help, parents will be able to sign them up to get it, with direct public support.
Over the years, the NAACP has brought enormous good into the life of our country — in part by broadening the reach of economic opportunity. There was a time when economists took little if any notice at all of the poverty of black communities. Even in times of general economic growth, many lived in a perpetual recession, and the jobs available didn’t promise much upward mobility. Our country still has a lot of progress to make on this score. But with 1.2 million businesses today owned and operated by African Americans, more and more are no longer just spectators on the prosperity of our country. They are stakeholders. As much as anyone else, they count on their government to help create the conditions of economic growth — and, as president, I intend to do.
Senator Obama and I have fundamental differences on economic policy. But when he describes my plan, I’m not sure his heart is always in it — so let me have a go at it myself. I believe that in a troubled economy, when folks are struggling to afford the necessities of life, higher taxes are the last thing we need. The economy isn’t hurting because workers and businesses are under-taxed. Raising taxes eliminates jobs, hurts small businesses, and delays economic recovery.
Under my plan, we will preserve the current low rates as they are, so businesses large and small can hire more people. We will double the personal exemption from $3,500 to $7,000 for every dependent, in every family in America. We will offer every individual and family a large tax credit to buy their health care, so that their health insurance is theirs to keep even when they move or change jobs. And we will lower the business tax rate, so American companies open new plants and create more jobs in this country, instead of going overseas to flee the second-highest tax rate in the world.
My opponent and I have honest differences as well about the growth of government. And it may be that many of you share his view. But even allowing for disagreement, surely there is common ground in the principle that government cannot go on forever spending recklessly and incurring debt. Government has grown by 60 percent in the last eight years, because the Congress and this administration have failed to meet their responsibilities. And next year, total federal expenditures are predicted to reach over three trillion dollars. That is an awful lot for us to be spending when this nation is already more than nine trillion dollars in debt — or more than thirty thousand dollars in debt for every citizen. That’s a debt our government plans to leave for your children and mine to bear. And that is a failure not only of financial foresight, but of moral obligation.
There will come a day when the road reaches a dead-end. And it won’t be today’s politicians who suffer the consequences. It will be American workers and their children who are left with worthless promises and trillion-dollar debts. We cannot let that happen. As President, I’ll work with every member of Congress — Republican, Democrat, and Independent — who shares my commitment to reforming government and controlling spending. I’ll order a top-to-bottom review of every federal program, department, and agency. We’re going to demand accountability. We’re going to make sure failed programs are not rewarded … and that discretionary spending is going where it belongs — to essential priorities like job training, the security of our citizens, and the care of our veterans.
To get our economy running at full strength again, we must also get a handle on the cost of energy. Under my plan, we will produce more of America’s own energy. We will build at least 45 nuclear plants that will create over 700,000 good jobs to construct and operate them. We will develop clean coal technology — which alone will create tens of thousands of jobs in some of America’s most hard-pressed areas. We will accelerate the development of wind and solar power and other renewable technologies, and we will help automakers design and sell cars that don’t depend on gasoline. Production of hybrid, flex-fuel, and electric cars will bring America closer to energy independence. And it will bring jobs to auto plants, parts manufacturers, and the communities that support them.
Our country is passing through a very tough time. But Americans have been through worse, and beaten longer odds. The men and women of the NAACP know more than most about facing long odds, and overcoming adversity. Many of you are veterans of the great civil rights struggles of a generation and more ago. Like my friend John Lewis, some of you have seen enough years to have known Martin Luther King, Jr., and even marched at his side or not far behind in Birmingham, Montgomery, or elsewhere. For all of this, like Dr. King, you were called agitators, trouble-makers, malcontents, and disturbers of the peace. These are often the terms applied to men and women of conscience who will not endure cruelty, nor abide injustice.
Perhaps with more charity than was always deserved, it was Dr. King who often reminded us that there was moral badness, and there was moral blindness, and they were not the same. It was this spirit that turned hatred into forgiveness, anger into conviction, and a bitter life into a great one. He loved and honored his country even when the feeling was unreturned, and counseled others to do the same. He gave his countrymen the benefit of the doubt — believing, as he wrote, that “returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”
I remember first learning what had happened in Memphis on the fourth of April, 1968, feeling just as everyone else did back home, only perhaps even more uncertain and alarmed for my country in the darkness that was then enclosed around me and my fellow captives. In our circumstances at the time, good news from America was hard to come by. But the bad news was a different matter, and each new report of violence, rioting, and other tribulations in America was delivered without delay. The enemy had correctly calculated that the news of Dr. King’s death would deeply wound morale, and leave us worried and afraid for our country. Doubtless it boosted our captors’ morale, confirming their belief that America was a lost cause, and that the future belonged to them.
Yet how differently it all turned out. And if they had been the more reflective kind, our enemies would have understood that the cause of Dr. King was bigger than any one man, and could not be stopped by force of violence. Struggle is rewarded in God’s own time. Wrongs are set right and evil is overcome. We know this to be true because it is the story of your cause, and the story of our country.
As much as any other group in America, the NAACP has been at the center of that great and honorable cause. I’m here today as an admirer and a fellow American, an association that means more to me than any other. I am a candidate for president who seeks your vote and hopes to earn it. But whether or not I win your support, I need your goodwill and counsel. And should I succeed, I’ll need it all the more. I have always believed in this country, in a good America, a great America. But I have always known we can build a better America, where no place or person is left without hope or opportunity by the sins of injustice or indifference. It would be among the great privileges of my life to work with you in that cause. Thank you all very much.
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2nd District fundraising at a glance
Rep. Jean Schmidt once again will face Democrat Victoria Wells Wulsin in the November race for Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes all or parts of Hamilton, Warren, Clermont, Brown, Adams, Scioto and Pike counties.
Here’s the race at a glance:
Jean Schmidt
Political Party: Republican
Running for: Incumbent running for re-election in 2nd Congressional District
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $301,462
Spent during that period: $85,104.32
Raised to date: $858,081.34
Cash on hand: $393,028.05
Debts: none
Interesting contributions: Schmidt received money from Richard Farmer, chairman of the board of Cintas, as well as 10 members of the Lindner family. She also received $2,000 from Friends of John Boehner, as well as political action committee money from General Electric, the Turkish American Heritage PAC, and the American Bakers Association PAC.
Interesting expenditures: Routine stuff: candy for parades, food, gas and transportation for campaign workers and pay for an Alexandria, Va.-based political fundraiser.
Victoria Wulsin
Political Party: Democrat
Running for: challenging Rep. Jean Schmidt in 2nd Congressional District
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $309,212.74
Spent during that period: $144,287.55
Raised to date: $1,088,581.78
Cash on hand: $378,084.60
Debts: none
Interesting contributions: Wulsin’s contributor list is heavy on doctors, and there’s a reason: Wulsin herself is an epidemiologist.
Interesting expenditures: Spent most of his money on consulting with Bentley Davis of Cincinnati; spent $954.74 on “Labels, tee-shirts and printing costs.” Also spent $1,970.25 on brochure printing costs.
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McCain to NAACP: “School choice for all who want it”
Republican John McCain is coming to the NAACP convention in Cincinnati with a promise to offer “school choice for all who want it” if he’s elected president.
“After decades of hearing the same big promises from the public education establishment, and seeing the same poor results, it is surely time to shake off old ways and to demand new reforms,” McCain said in excerpts from the prepared text of the speech he was to deliver on Wednesday, July 16. “That isn’t just my opinion; it is the conviction of parents in poor neighborhoods across this nation who want better lives for their children.”
McCain’s appearance follows by two days the speech by his Democratic rival Barack Obama to the same group. Obama, the first major party black candidate for president, got a rousing reception.
McCain said that breaking with “conventional thinking” on education was especially important for blacks and other minorities.
“Nowhere are the limitations of conventional thinking any more apparent than in education policy. Education reform has long been a priority of the NAACP, and for good reason,” McCain said, ” For all the best efforts of teachers and administrators, the worst problems of our public school system are often found in black communities. Black and Latino students are among the most likely to drop out of high school. African Americans are also among the least likely to go on to college.”
McCain also asked the group to excuse him from passing up last year’s convention, held at a time his presidential campaign was faltering.
“As you might recall, I was a bit distracted at the time dealing with what reporters uncharitably described as an implosion in my campaign. But I’m very glad you invited me again,” he said.
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7th District candidate fundraising at a glance
Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, currently held by U.S. Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield, is one of three open seats this November. Hobson is retiring. The seat includes all or parts of Clark, Greene, Fayette, Ross, Pickaway, Franklin, Fairfield and Perry counties.
State Sen. Steve Austria, a Republican, will face Sharen Neuhardt, a Yellow Springs attorney and Democrat, for the seat.
Here’s a look at the race by the numbers:
Steve Austria
Political Party: Republican
Running for:7th Congressional District, to be vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. David Hobson
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $341,970.40
Spent during that period: $30,085.25
Raised to date: $818,747.62
Cash on hand: $361,244.38 Debts: none Interesting contributions: Austria garnered contributions from the CEO and CFO of the Greentree Group, a Beavercreek consulting firm, Robert Hutcheson, a judge with the Greene County Juvenile Court and employes of LexisNexis, QBase, Woolpert and the Turner Foundation, as well as a handful of political action committees including groups representing American Hospital Association and American Gas Association. He also received $250 from Republican Chris Widener, who hopes to take Austria’s Ohio Senate seat in November.
Interesting expenditures: Austria’s campaign spent $1,000 on rent for what was Hobson’s campaign headquarters; Hobson was quick to endorse Austria after he decided to retire last year. He also hired Hobson’s old pollster, Alexandria, Va.-based Tarrance Group, for $2,900 in the last quarter, and paid for an Alexandria, Va.-based fundraising consultant.
Sharen Neuhardt
Political Party: Democrat
Running for: 7th Congressional District, to be vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. David Hobson.
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $190,125.78
Spent during that period: $131,272.19
Raised to date: $363,117.10
Cash on hand: $108,408.38
Debts: none
Interesting contributions: Neuhardt, a Yellow Springs attorney, tapped a network of Ohio attorneys as key donors, as well as Springfield City Commissioner Karen Duncan and Dayton City Commissioner Matt Joseph. She’s also given herself $5,206 in in-kind contributions.
Interesting expenditures: Spent money on payroll, taxes, office supplies and campaign lunches.
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Third District fundraising at a glance
Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, will face Democrat Jane Mitakides of Centerville in the November race for Ohio’s 3rd Congressional District, a swath of Ohio that includes all or parts of Highland, Clinton, Warren and Montgomery counties.
Here’s how the candidates’ campaign coffers are shaking out so far:
Jane Mitakides
Political Party: Democrat
Running for: 3rd Congressional District, currently held by Rep. Mike Turner
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $156,964.11
Spent during that period: $127,333.54
Raised to date: $271,216.64
Cash on hand: $130,566.49
Debts: $50,000
Interesting contributions: Mitakides received a contribution from former Darke County Democratic Chair Enid Goubeaux, a superdelegate, as well as Liz Bernard, a Canfield, Ohio attorney who was among former Sen. John Edwards’ Ohio rainmakers. She also received $500 from Mat Heck of the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s office, and the Greek PAC. She’s loaned her campaign $50,000, but her reports indicate she contributed $65,137.54 to her campaign between April 1 and June 30.
Interesting expenditures: The vast majority of Mitakides’ expenditures were reimbursements to Mitakides for travel expenses, office supplies, postage and other incidentals.
Mike Turner
Political Party: Republican
Running for: incumbent running for re-election in 3rd Congressional District
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $176,250
Spent during that period: $66,487.49
Raised to date: $975,508.86
Cash on hand: $596,171
Debts: $6,995.93
Interesting contributions: Turner received from individuals as well as political action committees that included the UPS PAC, DP&L Employees Fund for Responsible Citizenship, the NCR PAC, Meadwestvaco and the NRA Political Victory Fund. He also received $250 this quarter from Michael Gessel, a vice-president with the Dayton Development Coalition, $500 from Chris Kershner and $1,000 from Phil Parker, both of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, and Louis Luedtke, the president and CEO of the National Composite Center.
Interesting expenditures: Turner held receptions at the Capitol HIll Club and at Dorothy Lane Market, but many of his expenditures were strictly business: payroll, office supplies and rent were among his biggest expenditures. He also gave $10,000 to the Ohio Republican Party.
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Fourth District fundraising at a glance
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, will face AK Steel employee Mike Carroll of Mansfield in the November race for Ohio’s 4th congressional district, which includes all or parts of Hancock, Wyandot, Allen, Hardin, Marion, Morrow, Auglaize, Shelby, Logan and Champaign counties.
Here’s the race, by the numbers, at a glance:
Jim Jordan
Political Party:Republican
Running for:incumbent running for re-election in 4th Congressional District
Raised between April 1 and June 30:$77,118.91
Spent during that period:$75,824.16
Raised to date:$623,050.91
Cash on hand:$433,838.14
Debts: none
Interesting contributions: Donors hailed largely from his district: He raised money from donors in Sidney, Fort Loramie, St. Mary’s and Bellefontaine. But that money was supplemented by political action committees representing First Energy, Procter & Gamble, Realtors, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and the Snack Food Association, among others.
Interesting expenditures: Jordan, whose district is the most Republican in Ohio, gave heavily to fellow congressional candidates. Among them: Steve Austria, a Beavercreek Republican who hopes to replace retiring Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield, in the fall. Jordan gave Austria’s campaign $1,000.
Mike Carroll Political Party: Democrat
Running for: challenging U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan for 4th Congressional District
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $5,051
Spent during that period: $920.69
Raised to date: $5051
Cash on hand: $2,298.13
Debts: none
Interesting contributions: Carroll, who works at AK Steel, received donations from the AK Steel Corp. Political Action Committee, as well as the Communication Workers of America and the Machinists Nonpartisan Political League, among others. He also gave himself $1,400.
Interesting expenditures: He’s spent money on pens, bumper stickers, a GPS for his campaign and a video camera for his campaign.
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Eighth District fundraising at a glance
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester, represents all or parts of Mercer, Darke, Miami, Montgomery, Preble and Butler counties. He’s running for re-election in November and is being challenged by Nick von Stein, a Hamilton native and master’s student at Miami University.
Here’s their current fundraising at a glance:
Nick von Stein
Political Party: Democrat Running for: 8th Congressional District, currently held by Rep. John Boehner Raised between April 1 and June 30: $3,279.01 Spent during that period: $8,502.65 Raised to date: $12,630 Cash on hand: $6,848.11 Debts: none
Interesting contributions: von Stein raised $850 from three southwest Ohio donors as well as $24.01 from Act Blue.
Interesting expenditures: Spent most of his money on consulting with Bentley Davis of Cincinnati; spent $954.74 on “Labels, tee-shirts and printing costs.” Also spent $1,970.25 on brochure printing costs.
John Boehner
Political Party: Republican
Running for: incumbent in 8th Congressional District
Raised between April 1 and June 30: $992,526.18
Spent during that period: $-768,997.09
Raised to date: $3,316,133.46
Cash on hand: $2,263,643.60
Debts: none
Interesting contributions: Donors include some of southwest Ohio’s financial heavy hitters, including 10 members of the Lindner family. Political Action Committees representing Cargill, Coal, Occidental Petroleum, the National Turkey Federation also gave to Boehner. And, as a result of the legal ruling in Boehner’s longstanding battle with Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., so did McDermott’s Legal Expense Trust - to the tune of $1.15 million so far this campaign. That “offset” was the reason Boehner’s campaign reported negative expenditures in this quarter.
Interesting expenditures: Boehner appears to have had fundraisers at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse in Washington, D.C., Brown’s Run Country Club in Middletown and Cantina Marina in Washington, D.C. He also apparently chartered air planes at least twice with Empower Aviation in Hamilton. And he spent $3,600 on Friends of John Boehner shirts. And he gave $4,000 on April 15 to U.S. Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y.. On May 1, Fossella was pulled over for drunk driving. Fossella later decided not to run for re-election following revelations that he fathered a child outside his marriage.
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McDermott shows Boehner the money
Tucked deep within House Minority Leader John Boehner’s mammoth Federal Elections Commission filing is this “receipt”: Boehner received $1.09 million this quarter, $1.15 million total from Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., part of a legal ruling against McDermott earlier this year.
That’s why Boehner’s report shows that he spent $-768,997.09 this quarter. He marks McDermott’s money as an “offset” to what otherwise would’ve been $324,506.92 spent this year.
That “offset” is the result of the final ruling stemming from a lawsuit that originated in 1996, after a Florida couple recorded a call on Boehner’s cell phone that was picked up by a radio scanner. The call, between House Republican leaders, dealt with an ethics case against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The couple sent the tapes to McDermott, who leaked them to two newspapers.
Boehner sued and a federal court found McDermott had no right to release the calls. In December, the U.S. Supreme Court opted not to take up the case.
A U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia issued the order on Tuesday, April 1.
In all, Boehner has raised $3.3 million this campaign cycle, including $992,526.18 between April 1 and June 30. He has $2.26 million in the bank.
His opponent, Democrat Nick von Stein, raised $3,279.01 between April 1 and June 30 and has raised $12,630 so far this campaign. He has $6,848.11 in the bank.
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Ohio Right to Life PAC endorses McCain
The Ohio Right to Life Society PAC has endorsed Republican John McCain for president.
While the endorsement, released on Tuesday, July 15, wasn’t unexpected, it appeared to be a sign that social conservatives, an important part of the Republican base, are lining up behind McCain, despite some past reservations.
Mike Gonidakis, Ohio Right to Life executive director, was part of a small group of social conservatives who met privately with McCain in Cincinnati last month.
“The glaring difference between Sen. McCain’s strong pro-life record versus Sen. (Barack) Obama’s support for abortion on demand should serve as a wakeup call to everyone who believes in our mission,” Gonidakis said in a press release.
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Support for McCain, Obama shows gender, racial divide
Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain by 9 points - 50-41 percent - in a new national poll that shows a racial and gender divide in the race for president.
On a week when both Obama and McCain are speaking to the national NAACP convention in Cincinnati, the Quinnipiac University poll, released Tuesday, July 15, shows black voters supporting Obama 94-1 percent, while McCain leads 49-42 percent among white voters.
Among women, Obama leads 55-36 percent while McCain has a 47-44 percent percent edge among men.
Obama and McCain each got 44 percent from independent voters.
The poll, taken Tuesday, July 8, through Sunday, July 13, with 1,725 likely voters nationwide has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
Click here to see the full poll results.
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Obama remarks in Cincinnati
The following is the prepared remarks of Barack Obama at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati, Monday, July 14:
“It is always humbling to speak before the NAACP. It is a powerful reminder of the debt we all owe to those who marched for us and fought for us and stood up on our behalf; of the sacrifices that were made for us by those we never knew; and of the giants whose shoulders I stand on here today.
“They are the men and women we read about in history books and hear about in church; whose lives we honor with schools, and boulevards, and federal holidays that bear their names. But what I want to remind you tonight - on Youth Night - is that these giants, these icons of America’s past, were not much older than many of you when they took up freedom’s cause and made their mark on history.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was but a 26-year old pastor when he led a bus boycott in Montgomery that mobilized a movement. John Lewis was but a 25-year old activist when he faced down Billy clubs on the bridge in Selma and helped arouse the conscience of our nation. Diane Nash was even younger when she helped found SNCC and led Freedom Rides down south. And your chairman Julian Bond was but a 25-year old state legislator when he put his own shoulder to the wheel of history.
It is because of them; and all those whose names never made it into the history books - those men and women, young and old, black, brown and white, clear-eyed and straight-backed, who refused to settle for the world as it is; who had the courage to remake the world as it should be - that I stand before you tonight as the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America.
And if I have the privilege of serving as your next President, I will stand up for you the same way that earlier generations of Americans stood up for me - by fighting to ensure that every single one of us has the chance to make it if we try. That means removing the barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding that still exist in America. It means fighting to eliminate discrimination from every corner of our country. It means changing hearts, and changing minds, and making sure that every American is treated equally under the law.
But social justice is not enough. As Dr. King once said, “the inseparable twin of racial justice is economic justice.” That’s why Dr. King went to Memphis in his final days to stand with striking sanitation workers. That’s why the march that Roy Wilkins helped lead forty five years ago this summer wasn’t just named the March on Washington, and it wasn’t just named the March on Washington for Freedom; it was named the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
What Dr. King and Roy Wilkins understood is that it matters little if you have the right to sit at the front of the bus if you can’t afford the bus fare; it matters little if you have the right to sit at the lunch counter if you can’t afford the lunch. What they understood is that so long as Americans are denied the decent wages, and good benefits, and fair treatment they deserve, the dream for which so many gave so much will remain out of reach; that to live up to our founding promise of equality for all, we have to make sure that opportunity is open to all Americans.
That is what I’ve been fighting to do throughout my over 20 years in public service. That’s why I’ve fought in the Senate to end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and give those tax breaks to companies that create good jobs here in America. That’s why I brought Democrats and Republicans together in Illinois to put $100 million in tax cuts into the pockets of hardworking families, to expand health care to 150,000 children and parents, and to end the outrage of black women making just 62 cents for every dollar that many of their male coworkers make.
And that’s why I moved to Chicago after college. As some of you know, I turned down more lucrative jobs because I was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and I wanted to do my part in the ongoing battle for opportunity in this country. So I went to work for a group of churches to help turn around neighborhoods that were devastated when the local steel plants closed. And I reached out to community leaders - black, brown, and white - and together, we gave job training to the jobless, set up afterschool programs to help keep kids off the streets, and block by block, we helped turn those neighborhoods around.
So I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where social justice is being served and economic justice is being served; an America where we all have an equal chance to make it if we try. That’s the America I believe in. That’s the America you’ve been fighting for over the past 99 years. And that’s the America we have to keep marching towards today.
Our work is not over.
When so many of our nation’s schools are failing, especially those in our poorest rural and urban communities, denying millions of young Americans the chance to fulfill their potential and live out their dreams, we have more work to do.
When CEOs are making more in ten minutes than the average worker earns in a year, and millions of families lose their homes due to unscrupulous lending, checked neither by a sense of corporate ethics or a vigilant government; when the dream of entering the middle class and staying there is fading for young people in our community, we have more work to do.
When any human being is denied a life of dignity and respect, no matter whether they live in Anacostia or Appalachia or a village in Africa; when people are trapped in extreme poverty we know how to curb or suffering from diseases we know how to prevent; when they’re going without the medicines that they so desperately need - we have more work to do.
That’s what this election is all about. It’s about the responsibilities we all share for the future we hold in common. It’s about each and every one of us doing our part to build that more perfect union.
It’s about the responsibilities that corporate America has - responsibilities that start with ending a culture on Wall Street that says what’s good for me is good enough; that puts their bottom line ahead of what’s right for America. Because what we’ve learned in such a dramatic way in recent months is that pain in our economy trickles up; that Wall Street can’t thrive so long as Main Street is struggling; and that America is better off when the well-being of American business and the American people are aligned. Our CEOs have to recognize that they have a responsibility not just to grow their profit margins, but to be fair to their workers, and honest to their shareholders and to help strengthen our economy as a whole. That’s how we’ll ensure that economic justice is being served. And that’s what this election is about.
It’s about the responsibilities that Washington has - responsibilities that start with restoring fairness to our economy by making sure that the playing field isn’t tilted to benefit the special interests at the expense of ordinary Americans; and that we’re rewarding not just wealth, but the work and workers who create it. That’s why I’ll offer a middle class tax cut so we can lift up hardworking families, and give relief to struggling homeowners so we can end our housing crisis, and provide training to young people to work the green jobs of the future, and invest in our infrastructure so we can create millions of new jobs.
And that’s why I’ll end the outrage of one in five African Americans going without the health care they deserve. We’ll guarantee health care for anyone who needs it, make it affordable for anyone who wants it, and ensure that the quality of your health care does not depend on the color of your skin. And we’re not going to do it 20 years from now or 10 years from now, we’re going to do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States of America.
And here’s what else we’ll do - we’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. Now, I understand that Senator McCain is going to be coming here in a couple of days and talking about education, and I’m glad to hear it. But the fact is, what he’s offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. Well, I believe we need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform.
That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new quality teachers to our communities - and to pay them more and give them more support. And we’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom.
But it doesn’t end there. We have to fight for all those young men standing on street corners with little hope for the future besides ending up in jail. We have to break the cycle of poverty and violence that’s gripping too many neighborhoods in this country.
That’s why I’ll expand the Earned Income Tax Credit - because it’s one of the most successful anti-poverty measures we have. That’s why I’ll end the Bush policy of taking cops off the streets at the moment they’re needed most - because we need to give local law enforcement the support they need. That’s why we’ll provide job training for ex-offenders - because we need to make sure they don’t return to a life of crime. And that’s why I’ll build on the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York and launch an all-hands-on-deck effort to end poverty in this country - because that’s how we’ll put the dream that Dr. King and Roy Wilkins fought for within reach for the next generation of children.
And if people tell you that we cannot afford to invest in education or health care or fighting poverty, you just remind them that we are spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. And if we can spend that much money in Iraq, we can spend some of that money right here in Cincinnati, Ohio and in big cities and small towns in every corner of this country.
So yes, we have to demand more responsibility from Washington. And yes we have to demand more responsibility from Wall Street. But we also have to demand more from ourselves. Now, I know some say I’ve been too tough on folks about this responsibility stuff. But I’m not going to stop talking about it. Because I believe that in the end, it doesn’t matter how much money we invest in our communities, or how many 10-point plans we propose, or how many government programs we launch - none of it will make any difference if we don’t seize more responsibility in our own lives.
That’s how we’ll truly honor those who came before us. Because I know that Thurgood Marshall did not argue Brown versus Board of Education so that some of us could stop doing our jobs as parents. And I know that nine little children did not walk through a schoolhouse door in Little Rock so that we could stand by and let our children drop out of school and turn to gangs for the support they are not getting elsewhere. That’s not the freedom they fought so hard to achieve. That’s not the America they gave so much to build. That’s not the dream they had for our children.
That’s why if we’re serious about reclaiming that dream, we have to do more in our own lives, our own families, and our own communities. That starts with providing the guidance our children need, turning off the TV, and putting away the video games; attending those parent-teacher conferences, helping our children with their homework, and setting a good example. It starts with teaching our daughters to never allow images on television to tell them what they are worth; and teaching our sons to treat women with respect, and to realize that responsibility does not end at conception; that what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one. It starts by being good neighbors and good citizens who are willing to volunteer in our communities - and to help our synagogues and churches and community centers feed the hungry and care for the elderly. We all have to do our part to lift up this country.
That’s where change begins. And that, after all, is the true genius of America - not that America is, but that America will be; not that we are perfect, but that we can make ourselves more perfect; that brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand, people who love this country can change it. And that’s our most enduring responsibility - the responsibility to future generations. We have to change this country for them. We have to leave them a planet that’s cleaner, a nation that’s safer, and a world that’s more equal and more just.
So I’m grateful to you for all you’ve done for this campaign, but we’ve got work to do and we cannot rest. And I know that if you put your shoulders to the wheel of history and take up the cause of perfecting our union just as earlier generations of Americans did before you; if you take up the fight for opportunity and equality and prosperity for all; if you march with me and fight with me, and get your friends registered to vote, and if you stand with me this fall - then not only will we help close the responsibility deficit in this country, and not only will we help achieve social justice and economic justice for all, but I will come back here next year on the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, and I will stand before you as the President of the United States of America. And at that moment, you and I will truly know that a new day has come in this country we love. Thank you.
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Obama NAACP speech “a dream come true”
Nobody has to hype the historical historic significance of Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on Monday, July 14, in Cincinnati at the 99th convention of the NAACP.
Obama, the first black presidential candidate form a major party, is set to address the nation’s oldest civil rights organization at 8 p.m.
“It’s a dream come true,” said state Rep. Tyrone Yates, D-Cincinnati, chairman of the host committee for the convention.
Yates, 54, said many middle-aged and older convention goers never imagined they would live to see a candidacy like Obama’s.
The mood at the convention, Yates said, is “virtually emotionally incalculable.”
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Reactions to Bush’s offshore drilling announcement
President George W. Bush announced today that he will lift an executive ban on offshore drilling that’s been in place since 1990.
That means little unless Congress also lifts its moratorium on the practice. Still, local lawmakers, particularly Republicans in favor of offshore drilling, were quick to weigh in:
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio:
“Today’s action by President Bush is an important step forward, but it must be matched by Congress lifting its moratorium as soon as possible. Ohio families are being hit hard by sky-high gasoline and diesel prices and we cannot afford to wait any longer to tap the resources we have available here at home.
“That’s why I fought to prevent a 53-cent gas tax hike that had been included in the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. And it is why I proposed a new Manhattan Project that will put us on a path toward energy independence. In addition to increasing our domestic energy supply by exploring the Outer Continental Shelf and ANWR, we must use tar sands and oil shale and we must expand our refining capacity. We need to find more and use less.
“Unfortunately, environmental groups have convinced some of my colleagues to block anything that would increase supply and bring down prices at the pump. I’ve been voting for increased domestic exploration for a decade. If we had started exploring ANWR 10 years ago when President Clinton vetoed it, and coupled it with a comprehensive energy plan, we wouldn’t be in this predicament today. But now the chickens have come home to roost. We can afford to wait no longer.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester:
“As American families and small businesses face record prices at the pump, they are counting on their leaders in Congress to work together on reforms to help reduce fuel costs.
“Republicans stand ready to work with the Democratic Majority to bring an end to this outdated ban so we can reduce our nation’s costly dependence on foreign sources of energy, empower states and localities to make decisions regarding energy exploration, and create thousands of good-paying jobs here at home.
“Lifting the ban is a key part of the House Republicans’ ‘all of the above’ energy plan to lower fuel costs. Enacting this plan, which would increase production of American energy, improve energy efficiency and conservation, and encourage investment in groundbreaking research in advanced alternative and renewable energy technologies, will signal to the rest of the world that America will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to bring down fuel costs.
UPDATE: Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is not pleased:
“With two oil men in the White House and an energy policy that could have been written by Exxon, it’s hardly surprising that the president would try to pitch the American people on more drilling.
“Our nation’s energy crisis is a direct result of a failed tax policy, failed foreign policy, and a head-in-the-sand attitude toward alternative energy. The notion that we can drill our way out of this mess is a crock and cop-out. There’s no there, there.”
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Brown makes a delivery to DHL
Sen. Sherrod Brown Monday dropped off some 9,000 petitions protesting a DHL proposal to contract its domestic air operations to UPS to the DHL Director of Hub Operations in Wilmington.
Brown, D-Ohio, made the delivery weeks after members of the “Save Our Jobs” coalition attempted to deliver the petitions to the Wilmington facility. Workers reported that the petitions were refused and eventually left with a security guard.
After hearing of the thwarted petition delivery, Brown wrote Mike Schmitt, DHL Director of Hub Operations, July 3.
“Regardless of whether the dismissive treatment to which these individuals were subjected stemmed from a misunderstanding or was intentional, it must be rectified immediately,” Brown wrote. “I would like to personally deliver the petitions to you and discuss your company’s future role in Wilmington.”
Brown was accompanied Monday by Wilmington Mayor David Raizk, Clinton County Commissioner Randy Riley and employees of DHL, ABX and ASTAR Air Cargo.
Should DHL-parent company Deutsche Post World Net finalize its deal with UPS, some 8,000 jobs in the region are at risk.
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Large screen to show Obama’s speech in downtown Cincy on Monday
Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign - realizing that everyone who wants to see him on Monday in Cincinnati can’t get into the NAACP convention - is holding a public party in downtown Cincinnati during his speech just blocks away.
Obama is set to address the convention at around 8 p.m. on Monday night, and his remarks will be aired on a giant screen at Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati on West Fifth Street and Vine Street. Get more details here.
Republican John McCain will address the convention on Wednesday.
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Eye on Ohio: AFL-CIO ‘Not Now’ ad
The ad: “Not Now,” a 30-second television commercial.
Producer: AFL-CIO’s new Union Veterans Council.
Where to see it: It’s running in Youngstown, Toledo, Dayton, Lima and Wheeling.
Script: Jim Wasser, Vietnam veteran: “Every vet respects John McCain’s war record. It’s his record in the Senate that I have a problem with. He wants us to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq — just like Bush. That’s money we could use to build schools and roads and create needed jobs here at home. He even took sides with Bush against increasing health care benefits for veterans. People should let John McCain know his agenda is not what we need. Not now.”
Video: The color video mixes portraits of Wasser and McCain with scenes of troops lined up to board a transport plane and in desert combat. A school bus fades into farmland and a factory scene. Then, the viewer sees what looks like a carefully posed, legless veteran on a hospital bench.
Analysis: This is the first of several ads that will be coming from labor groups dumping on McCain. In this spot, the favored opponent, Barack Obama, is not mentioned.
The spot was unveiled at a union press conference Thursday, July 10, in Dayton in the voter-rich Miami Valley. It’s probably no coincidence that Obama made a campaign stop in Dayton on Friday.
In the commercial, Wasser is dressed in a military-looking shirt with epaulets and delivers a carefully worded swipe at McCain’s image as a Vietnam hero and former prisoner of war. It’s also intended to imply McCain’s “agenda” is to keep troops in Iraq.
It fails to explain that McCain voted against boosting benefits to veterans partly because his “agenda” requires that kind of spending increase to include a plan to pay for it.
Wasser, an electrician and union member, offers a likeable, grandfatherly image.
He comes close to the same message that got retired Gen. Wesley Clark in some hot water recently: Being wounded in combat or held hostage is not requisite to becoming president.
The clip ends with a graphic that says it was sponsored by the men and women of the AFL-CIO and urges the viewer to go to a union-sponsored Web site that attacks McCain.
V. David Sartin is a reporter for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. Contact him at dsartin@plaind.com.
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Obama releases new radio ad
Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign launched a response today to John McCain and the Republican National Committee’s latest radio ad. The new spot is running on radio stations in Dayton and northern Virginia where the RNC aired its ad last week.
You can hear Obama’s ad here
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Obama’s remarks as prepared
“I’ve often said that the decisions we make in this election and in the next few years will set the course for the next generation. That is true of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s true of our economy. And it is especially true of our energy policy.
“The urgency of this challenge is clear to anyone who’s tried to fill up their tank with gas that’s now over $4 a gallon. It’s clear to the legions of scientists who believe that we are nearing a point of no return when it comes to our global climate crisis. And with each passing day, it is clear that our addiction to fossil fuels is one of the most serious threats to our national security in the 21st century.
“For the last eight years, this Administration has narrowly defined security as fighting an open-ended war in Iraq. But in the interconnected world of this new century, new threats come from stateless terrorists, loose nuclear weapons, the spread of pandemic disease, an inability to compete with rising powers in the global economy, the threat of global climate change and our dependence on foreign oil. I’ll be talking about these threats next week and in the weeks to come, and today I’d like to begin with those related to energy.
“We now know that the carbon emissions released by countries across the globe are warming our planet, which leads to devastating weather patterns, terrible storms, drought, and famine. In fact, studies show that by 2050, famine could displace more than 250 million people worldwide. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. That is a threat to our security.
“An even more immediate and direct security threat comes from our dependence on foreign oil. The price of a barrel of oil is now one of the most dangerous weapons in the world. Tyrants from Caracas to Tehran use it to prop up their regimes, intimidate the international community, and hold us hostage to a market that is subject to their whims. If Iran decided to shut down the petroleum-rich Strait of Hormuz tomorrow, they believe oil would skyrocket to $300-a-barrel in minutes, a price that one speculator predicted would result in $12-a-gallon gas. $12 a gallon.
“The nearly $700 million a day we send to unstable or hostile nations also funds both sides of the war on terror, paying for everything from the madrassas that plant the seeds of terror in young minds to the bombs that go off in Baghdad and Kabul. Our oil addiction even presents a target for Osama bin Laden, who has told al Qaeda, ‘focus your operations on oil, since this will cause [the Americans] to die off on their own.’
“If we stay on our current course, the rapid growth of nations like China and India will rise about one-third by 2030. In that same year, Middle Eastern regimes will be sitting on 83% of our global oil reserves. Imagine that - the very source of energy that fuels nearly all of our transportation, controlled almost entirely by some of the world’s most unstable and undemocratic governments.
“This is not the future I want for America. We are not a country that places our fate in the hands of dictators and tyrants - we are a nation that controls our own destiny. That’s who we are. That’s who we’ve always been. It’s what led us to wage a revolution that brought down an Empire. It’s why we built an Arsenal of Democracy to defeat Fascism, and stopped the spread of Communism with the power of our ideals. And it’s why we must end the tyranny of oil in our time.
“This is a debate we’ve been having in this campaign, but it’s also an issue we’ve been talking about for decades. We have heard promises about energy independence from every single U.S. President since Richard Nixon. We’ve heard talk about curbing our use of fossil fuels in nearly every State of the Union address since the oil embargo 1973. Back then we imported about a third of our oil. Today we import over half.
“Now, a few days ago, Senator McCain said, ‘Our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been thirty years in the making, and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long-term about the future of the country.’
“I couldn’t agree more. The only problem is that out of those thirty years, Senator McCain was in Washington for twenty-six of them. And in that time he has achieved little to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He’s voted against raising our fuel mileage standards and joined George Bush in opposing legislation twice in the last year that included tax credits for more efficient cars. He’s voted against alternative sources of energy. Against clean biofuels. Against solar power. Against wind power. Against an energy bill that represented the largest investment in renewable sources of energy in the history of this country.
“So when he talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, understand that Senator McCain has been a part of that failure. When he proposes policies that give $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies but only pennies a day to Americans struggling with high gas prices, understand that that’s not part of the solution in Washington, that’s part of the problem in Washington. When he offers a plan that doesn’t make any real investment in alternative sources of energy, that represents a failure to think long-term about our nation’s future. That’s what we’ve had in this country for too many years, and that’s why we need change in November.
“I won’t pretend this change will be easy or that it will come without significant cost or some measure of sacrifice from the American people. Achieving energy independence is one of the greatest challenges we’ve ever faced, and it will be the great project of our generation. But I’ve seen that progress is possible.
“When I arrived in the U.S. Senate, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to pass a law that will give more Americans the chance to fill up their cars with clean biofuels. I also passed a law that will fuel the research needed to develop a car that could get up to 500 miles to the gallon. And I reached across the aisle to come up with a plan to raise the mileage standards in our cars for the first time in thirty years - a plan that won support from Democrats and Republicans who had never supported raising fuel standards before.
“Today, with oil and gas prices this high, we hear a lot of plans and proposals coming out of Washington since politicians are finally paying attention. The problem is, they’re reacting instead of acting. They’re searching for easy answers to get them through the next election instead of serious, long-term solutions that will offer real relief and real security for America.
“I understand the politics. In a country desperate for action, ideas like a gas tax holiday or expanded oil drilling in the waters off our coasts are popular. And I’ll say this - if there were real evidence that these steps would actually provide real, immediate relief at the pump and advance the long-term goal of energy independence, of course I’d be open to them. But so far there isn’t.
“As good as they sound, the history of gas tax holidays is that the prices go up to fill in the gap, and the big winners end up being the retailers and oil companies - not the American people. That’s what happened when we had a gas tax holiday in Illinois that I supported, and that’s why we ended up repealing it. It didn’t work. And it would also drain the federal highway fund of billions of dollars and cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
“When it comes to offshore drilling, even Senator McCain has acknowledged that it won’t provide short-term relief. In fact, if we started drilling today, we wouldn’t see a drop of oil for seven years, and even then it would have little if any impact on prices.
Meanwhile, the oil companies currently have the rights to drill on 68 million acres of land and offshore areas that they haven’t touched. I believe that before we give the oil companies any more land, it’s time we tell them to start drilling on the land they already have or turn it over to someone who will, because we need that oil. We should also invest in the technology that can help us recover more oil from existing fields. And we should also look to our substantial natural gas reserves to tap a source of energy that’s already powering buses and cars here and around the world.
In the long-term, however, we have to remember that these domestic resources are finite. Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling, America still has only 3% of the world’s oil reserves. Senator McCain may believe otherwise, but that is not a real solution to our energy crisis.
What we need are real ideas to give hardworking Americans relief from high gas prices, and serious, long-term investments to permanently reduce our dependence on foreign oil. That’s exactly what my plan does.
To provide immediate relief, I’ve proposed a second, $50 billion stimulus package that would send energy rebate checks to every American. I’ve asked Senator McCain to join me in passing such a plan, and I extend that invitation again today. I’ve also proposed a $1,000 middle-class tax cut that will go to 95% of all workers and their families. And I’ll crack down on oil speculators who may be artificially driving up the price of oil. But to truly reduce our long-term dependence on foreign oil, my plan will fast-track $150 billion of investment in a clean energy fund to help create the fuel-efficient cars and alternative sources of energy that will secure this nation and jumpstart a green economy. It’s a plan that will reduce our oil consumption 10 million barrels per day by 2030, which is more than all the oil we’re expected to import from OPEC nations in that same year.
First, we’ll double our fuel mileage standards over the next two decades utilizing much of the technology we have on the shelf today - a step that will save this country half a trillion gallons of gasoline, the equivalent of cutting the price of a gallon of gas in half. And I will provide tax credits and loan guarantees for our automakers to help them make this transition.
Second, we’ll launch a Venture Capital Fund that will provide $50 billion over five years to get the most promising clean energy technologies out of the lab and into the marketplace. A principal focus of this fund will be continuing the work I began in the Senate and investing in plug-in hybrid batteries that will allow cars to get up to 500 miles per gallon. I’m glad that Senator McCain now understands the importance of this battery technology, but it will take a lot more than a cash prize to achieve this goal. It will take a serious investment.
Third, to create a market for alternative sources of energy like solar, wind, , I’ll require that 25% of our electricity comes renewable sources by 2025, and that we produce two billion gallons of advanced cellulosic biofuels by 2013. We’ll also invest in finding cleaner ways to use coal, our nation’s most abundant energy source, and safer ways to use nuclear power and store nuclear waste.
Fourth, we’ll use our clean energy fund to invest over $1 billion a year to re-tool and modernize our factories and build the advanced technology cars, trucks and SUVs of the future - so that the jobs and industries of the future are created right here in the United States of America.
Finally, one of the fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to conserve energy and use less oil is to make America more energy efficient and more competitive with the world. That’s why, when I’m President, I will call on businesses, government, and the American people to make America 50% more energy efficient by 2030.
When all is said and done, my plan to invest $150 billion in alternative energy will create entire new industries, thousands of new businesses, and up to five million new, green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced. And we pay for all of it by taking away tax breaks for oil companies and putting a price on carbon pollution - a step that will also reduce our carbon emissions 80% by 2050.
Most importantly, this plan will ensure that we control the energy we use with resources and technology that are available today. The steps I just spoke about are not far-off, pie-in-the-sky solutions, they are now. Today, there are waiting lists for fuel-efficient cars. There’s an old steel mill in Pennsylvania that has become the home of a new wind turbine factory. I’ve seen a small business in Nevada powered entirely by solar power. Across the planet, countries like Germany and the United Kingdom have already implemented clean energy polices that are reducing their carbon emissions right now, and leaders like Tony Blair and Angela Merkel have done a great job of raising the visibility of climate change within the G8. Now it’s our turn to lead - to show that this future is possible for America.
In the last century, during the days that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American people were asked, almost overnight, to transform a peacetime economy that was still climbing out from the depths of depression into an Arsenal of Democracy that could wage war across three continents.
Many doubted whether this could be achieved in time, or even at all. President Franklin Roosevelt’s own advisors told him that his goals for wartime production were unrealistic and impossible to meet. But the President simply waved them off, saying, believe me, “the production people can do it if they really try.”
The challenge we face from our energy dependence is great. Meeting it will take time, and it will not be easy. But if we’re willing to work at it, and invest in it, and sacrifice for it; if we’re willing to summon the same spirit of optimism and possibility that has defined this country’s greatest progress, then I believe that we too will be able to do it if we really try. And I look forward to trying with you. Thank you.
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Anti-Obama ad hits Dayton radio waves
While Democrat Barack Obama is in Dayton on Friday, July 11, radio listeners will hear a 30-second political ad that paints him as a double-talking politician who wants to raise taxes on the little guy.
The Republican National Committee is trotting out an ad already used in Virginia that claims Obama voted to raise income taxes on people earning as little as $32,000 a year.
FactCheck.Org, a non-partisan public policy research center at the University of Pennsylvania, debunked the ad, saying it is wrong.
“The resolution Obama voted for would not have increased taxes on any single taxpayer making less than $41,500 per year in total income, or any couple making less than $83,000. The $32,000 figure is approximately the taxable income of a single person making $41,500 per year, after all deductions and exclusions,” FactCheck says. “Obama’s vote (for a non-binding budget bill) does not change the fact that his own tax plan would provide a tax cut of $502 for a non-married taxpayer earning $35,000.”
Republican John McCain said in Portsmouth on Wednesday, July 9, “If you believe you should pay more taxes, I am the wrong candidate for you. Sen. Obama is your man.”
McCain favors cutting corporate taxes and estate taxes and extending the Bush tax cuts.
But Obama favors tax cuts for low to moderate income families and extending the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year. The Democrat would raise the maximum rate on capital gains taxes.
The radio ad will run in the Dayton market only on Friday, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Blair Latoff said.
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Boehner, Jordan going to Alaska to talk gas prices
It’s not quite the Rolling Stones “Steel Wheels” tour, but House Minority Leader John Boehner Thursday, July 10, announced that he and a handful of his House Republican colleagues are going on the “American Energy Tour.”
Specifically, the group, which will also include Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana and Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green, will go to Colorado and Alaska next week to “highlight meaningful solutions to help reduce gas prices and break America’s dependence on foreign sources of energy.” Ten House Republicans are on the tour.
First, they’ll check out the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado Friday, July 18, followed by a visit to Alaska’s remote North Slope on Sunday, July 20. Basically, the group will emphasize regions of the country where Republicans think additional drilling would help bring down the price of oil.
No word on the tour’s opening act.
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Eye on Ohio: “Love” ad for John McCain
By Martin Gottlieb
Dayton Daily News
The ad: “Love,” a 60-second television commercial.
Producer: John McCain campaign.
Where to see it: It started running Tuesday, July 8, in Ohio and other battleground states.
Script: (Male announcer) “It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change. The ‘Summer Of Love.’ Half a world away, another kind of love — of country. John McCain: Shot down. Bayoneted. Tortured. Offered early release, he said, ‘No.’ He’d sworn an oath. Home, he turned to public service. His philosophy: before party, polls and self … America. A maverick, John McCain tackled campaign reform, military reform, spending reform. He took on presidents, partisans and popular opinion. He believes our world is dangerous, our economy in shambles. John McCain doesn’t always tell us what we ‘hope’ to hear. Beautiful words cannot make our lives better. But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t ‘hope’ for a better life. Vote for one. McCain.” McCain: “I’m John McCain and I approve this message.”
Video: Opens with scenes of San Francisco in the 1960s, then goes to a plane in flight, presumably in Vietnam, then pictures of young John McCain in uniform and gear and in a hospital bed, interspersed with other Vietnam images. Then come pictures of McCain’s political career, featuring the likes of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and even Ohio’s John Glenn. (And is that Cleveland-area Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich in the back?) McCain giving speeches, meeting voters, looking pensive. Saluting. Smiling.
Analysis: Even back in 2000, when McCain was running for the Republican presidential nomination, his supporters often said that, whatever problems he might have in Republican primaries, he would be a stronger candidate in November than George W. Bush. What they had in mind was the pitch made here: He has a heroic military record and an independent political record that is presumably attractive to independent voters.
During the Republican primaries of 2008, McCain went out of his way to downplay the whole “maverick” thing, promoting the contrary image of himself as a “foot soldier in the Reagan revolution,” a phrase he uttered again and again. Just how much he turned his back on his old ways is an issue in the general election. Barack Obama has said “the wheels have come off the ‘Straight-talk Express,’” the name of McCain’s 2000 campaign bus.
McCain certainly has taken an independent posture on campaign finance reform over the years, pushing for new regulations against all manner of Republican opposition. As for “spending reform,” that’s apparently a reference to his work against “earmarks” and “pork-barrel spending” (generally seen as amounting to about 1 percent of the federal budget). “Military reform” is a vague term sometimes associated with the effort to reduce the number of stateside military bases, which he has supported.
NIn declaring “our economy is in shambles,” McCain is trying to distance himself from the president. But he has recently embraced the core of the administration’s economic policies, the Bush tax cuts. His references to “hope” are swipes at Obama, who has associated himself with the word. McCain is also saying that just because Obama gives better speeches doesn’t mean he’d be a better president.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the DDN. Phone: 225-2288; e-mail mgottlieb@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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Obama in Dayton Friday
Sen. Barack Obama will make a campaign swing through Dayton on Friday, July 11, his campaign announced today.
Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, will visit Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton for a town hall meeting on energy security.
Obama visited Zanesville earlier this month, and visited Columbus in June.
Stivers School for the Arts is located at 1313 East 5th St. Doors open for the event at 10 a.m. While the event is free and open to the public, tickets are required.
Tickets will be distributed on a first come, first serve basis, with two tickets available per person. To get two tickets, each person must turn in two names along with contact information.
Tickets will be available at the following locations at the following times:
Montgomery County Democratic Party 131 S. Wilkinson St. Dayton, OH 45449 Thursday, July 10, 4pm-8pm Contact: 937-223-3729
Butler County Democratic Party 633 High Street, Suite 105 Hamilton, OH 45011 Thursday, July 10, 4pm-8pm Contact: 513-371-4756
Miami County Democratic Party 14 North Walnut St Troy, OH Thursday, July 10, 4pm-8pm Contact: 937-552-2626
Neuhardt for Congress Headquarters 43 South Fountain Springfield, OH 45502 Thursday, July 10, 4pm-8pm Contact: 513-371-4756 (Butler County office, fielding calls for the Neuhardt for Congress location)
Obama will be back in Ohio next week. He is scheduled to speak at the NAACP National Convention in Cincinnati on Monday. He’s also scheduled to hold a fundraiser at The Millenium Hotel in Cincinnati Monday.
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Eye On Ohio: Obama ‘New Energy’ ad
By Gregory Korte
Cincinnati Enquirer
The ad: “New Energy,” 30 seconds.
Producer: The Obama campaign.
Where to see it: It was released Tuesday, July 8, in four Midwestern battleground states, including Ohio. View it at DaytonDailyNews.com/eyeonohio.
Script: (Announcer): “On gas prices, John McCain’s part of the problem. McCain and Bush support a drilling plan that won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years. McCain will give more tax breaks to big oil. He’s voted with Bush 95 percent of the time. Barack Obama will make energy independence an urgent priority. Raise mileage standards. Fast track technology for alternative fuels. A thousand-dollar tax cut to help families as we break the grip of foreign oil. A real plan and new energy.” (Obama): “I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.”
Video: The ad starts with a gas sign at $4.14 a gallon, followed by 10 seconds of video and photos showing McCain arm-in-arm with President George W. Bush. (They’re so cozy that, at one point, Bush appears to kiss McCain on the head.)
Halfway into the ad, the tone of the music changes and Obama appears, giving a speech and talking to voters. Video of a wheel in motion, a hydrogen-cell electric engine and a sandy foreign desert illustrate Obama’s energy plan.
Analysis: This ad is almost a direct, point-by-point rebuttal to two Republican National Committee ads portraying Obama as a predictable liberal opposed to offshore drilling, nuclear power and lower gas taxes. (One commercial, ironically, praised McCain for bucking his own party — the party producing the ads — on climate change.) And while it focuses squarely on issues, it’s also Obama’s first negative ad of the season.
It’s fair to say that McCain’s energy plan addresses the supply side — developing new sources of energy — more so than Obama’s, which focuses more on technologies that could reduce the demand. Indeed, even the RNC ads conceded that it’s hard for McCain to outdo Obama on conservation.
McCain does oppose the “windfall profits” tax on oil companies, which he said would hurt their exploration and research efforts. And Obama’s claim that the McCain energy plan “won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years” is accurate as it pertains to offshore drilling. That’s because of a shortage of deep-sea drilling ships, experts say.
Neither plan would have an immediate impact on gas prices — except for McCain’s proposed “gas tax holiday,” which would temporarily save 18.4 cents a gallon in the summer. In the ad, Obama counters with a $1,000 “middle-class tax cut.” But that has nothing to do with gas prices, except that middle-class families are paying more for gas.
There’s a third character in this drama: President Bush. He’s mentioned as often as either candidate; the subtext of the ad is clearly an attempt to tie McCain to the soon-to-be-former president. And as far as it goes, that’s a fair shot: McCain’s “95 percent” voting record comes from a highly respected Congressional Quarterly voting study.
Gregory Korte is a staff writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer. Contact him at gkorte@enquirer.com.
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McCain remarks - as prepared - for town hall meeting in Portsmouth
“Before I take your questions, I want to begin by talking about the issue in this campaign that Americans worry the most about - the American economy.
All of us know what is happening to the economy. It is slowing. More than 400,000 people have lost their jobs since December, and the rate of new job creation has fallen sharply. Americans are worried about the security of their current job, and they’re worried that they, their kids and their neighbors may not find good jobs and new opportunities in the future. To make matters worse, gas is over $4 a gallon and the price of oil has almost doubled in the last year. The cost of everything from energy to food is rising.
I have a plan to grow this economy, create more and better jobs, and get America moving again. I have a plan to reform government, achieve energy security, and ensure that healthcare is available and affordable for all. I believe the role of government is to unleash the creativity, ingenuity and hard work of the American people, and make it easier to create jobs.
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Marc Dann’s house for sale
The Youngstown Vindicator is reporting that former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has put his house up for sale.
Dann, who resigned May 14 as attorney general after a sexual harassment scandal involving high-level staffers in his office, is asking $295,000 for the five-bedroom house that has two full bathrooms, two half-bathrooms, a wet bar and an in-ground pool.
The Liberty Twp. property was also equipped with a security system that Dann paid for with campaign funds after reportedly receiving threats against himself and his children. On May 30, the Ohio secretary of State asked for Dann to reimburse his campaign committee for the fair market value of the upgrades. Dann had originally paid more than $33,000 for the security system.
The house is being listed by Coldwell Bankers.
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Obama to attend fundraiser in Cincinnati on Monday
Prior to speaking at the NAACP National Convention in Cincinnati, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will take some time to raise some funds from Queen City supporters.
Tickets are available for the fundraiser which will be at downtown Cincinnati’s Millennium Hotel starting at 5 p.m. on Monday. Tickets start at $1,000. Get more info here.
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Defense Secretary reopens tanker contract
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday, July 9, announced that he will reopen a lucrative $35 billion refueling tanker contract, following a Government Accountability Office report that criticized the bidding process.
That 69-page report recommended that the Air Force reopen its bidding process. Gates, speaking Wednesday, said he hopes to have the new contract awarded by the end of this year.
‘The contract cannot be awarded at present because of significant issues pointed out by the Government Accountability Office,” Gates said.
Gates also said the new process will be overseen by the Department of Defense, rather than the Air Force, which oversaw the previous bidding process.
Gates said he wanted “the industry, the Congress and the American people” to have confidence in the integrity of the acquisition process. The end product, he said, “will result in the best tanker for the Air Force at the best price for the American taxpayer.”
In its June report, the GAO concluded that the Air Force failed to follow its own standards in evaluating the contract bids from Boeing Co. and the rival bid from Northrop Grumman Corp. and its European partner, the parent of French aircraft manufacturer Airbus.
The Air Force had awarded the contract to Northrop Grumman - a decision which caused grumbling from lawmakers including Rep. David Hobson, R-Springfield, a Defense Appropriations Committee member who equated the decision to outsourcing U.S. military aircraft.
The tankers, needed to replace an aging fleet, are used to allow Air Force aircraft to stay aloft and get where they are needed as quickly as possible.
When a contractor is finally selected, the program will be managed from the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The Air Force had decided years ago to lease the tanker aircraft from Boeing, but that plan collapsed as a senior Air Force acquisition official and a high-level Boeing executive were convicted of illegal activities in connection with the deal. They were sent to prison in 2005 and 2006, respectively.
(John Nolan contributed to this report.)
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Eye On Ohio: RNC ‘Balance’ ad
By Jack Torry
Columbus Dispatch
The ad: “Balance,” a 30-second television commercial.
Producer: The Republican National Committee.
Where to see it: It started running Sunday, July 6, on broadcast television in Ohio and other key states. You can view it at DaytonDailyNews.com/eyeonohio.
Script: (Female announcer) “Record gas prices. A climate in crisis. John McCain says solve it now with a balanced plan: Alternative energy, conservation, suspending the gas tax and more production here at home. He’s pushing his own party to face climate change. But Barack Obama? For conservation, but he just says no to lower gas taxes, no to nuclear, no to more production. No new solutions. Barack Obama: Just the party line. The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.
Video: Opens with scenes of rising gasoline prices and cars racing down a freeway before dissolving into a photo of McCain facing a rich green forest. Then quick shots of windmills, solar panels, a nuclear power plant and an offshore oil rig. The viewer sees a photo of Barack Obama and, poof, gone is the green forest.
Finally, the commercial flashes Obama’s name and asserts that he voted with Senate Democrats 97 percent of the time.
Analysis: The commercial could be the first time the Republican National Committee launched an attack against its own party, providing a vivid display of how even Republicans realize their party is unpopular. The ad does so by reminding voters that McCain favors a major bill to curb global warming, a position opposed by Sen. George V. Voinovich of Ohio and many other GOP lawmakers.
But the producers use that as a way to make their point that Obama lacks any new ideas.
The commercial accurately points out that McCain favors temporarily lifting the federal gasoline tax, which Obama opposes.
Almost every reputable economist says lifting the gas tax would save motorists nickels and dimes and not produce one new gallon of gasoline.
The commercial also accurately points out that McCain favors drilling off the coasts of California and Florida, while Obama does not. But many economists are not convinced that oil exploration off the coasts would dramatically reduce gasoline prices any time soon. Oil prices have risen because demand has outpaced production worldwide.
The commercial does not mention that McCain once opposed offshore exploration.
And it is probably no accident that the commercial is being aired in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin rather than Florida and California.
Contact Jack Torry of the Columbus Dispatch Washington Bureau at jtorry@dispatch.com.
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Presidential candidates a-go go in Ohio this week
Both John McCain and Barack Obama are going to be in Ohio this week, and lest you miss them this week, no worries, they’ll be back again Monday.
McCain will be at a town-hall meeting Wednesday, July 9, in Portsmouth. He’ll be at Portsmouth High School’s gymnasium, 1225 Gallia Street. Doors open at 1 p.m.
Obama will be in Ohio Friday, but the campaign has yet to release details of where he’ll be. We’ll let you know when we get them.
Both candidates will be at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati next week.
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Local Dems protest McCain trade policies
As Republican presidential candidate John McCain wraps up a trip to Colombia and Mexico, labor leaders and Democrats in Dayton and two other Ohio cities plan press conferences on Thursday, July 3, to protest McCain’s support for NAFTA and other trade agreements.
The Dayton “Gone to Mexico” - as in jobs gone to Mexico - event is set for 11 a.m. at the main entrance off the former Delphi brake plant, located off of Wagner Ford Road, a press release said.
Those scheduled to attend include: local AFL-CIO leader Wes Wells; state Rep. Fred Strahorn of Dayton, Dayton City Commissioner Nan Whaley and Jane Mitakides, Democratic candidate for the U.S. House in the Third District.
The other events are set for Lima and Niles, near Youngstown.
The events will emphasize “pain and suffering” caused by loss of jobs as a result of NAFTA and other trade policies.
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McCain heads for Strickland’s turf
Republican presidential candidate John McCain is headed back to Ohio and this time he’ll be in Ted Strickland country.
McCain will hold a town hall meeting on Wednesday, July 9, in Portsmouth in southern Ohio near Democratic Gov. Strickland’s former home in Duck Run, McCain’s campaign announced on Wednesday, July 2.
Doors open at 1 p.m. in the Portsmouth High School gym, the campaign said.
McCain was in Ohio last week for town hall meetings in Cincinnati and Lordstown and two fundraisers. Democrat Barack Obama campaigned on Tuesday, July 1, in Zanesville.
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Eye on Ohio: “Dignity” ad for Barack Obama
THE AD: “Dignity,” a 30-second television ad that started Monday, June 30.
PRODUCER: The Obama campaign.
SCRIPT: Barack Obama: “I’m Barack Obama, and I approved this message.”
Announcer: “He worked his way through college and Harvard Law. Turned down big money offers and helped lift neighborhoods stung by job loss. Fought for workers’ rights. He passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by 80 percent. Passed tax cuts for workers; health care for kids. As president, he’ll end tax breaks for companies that export jobs, reward those that create jobs in America. And never forget the dignity that comes from work.”
VIDEO: The ad starts with color video of the candidate, smiling and surrounded by a festive crowd. It moves between a black-and-white slide show reminiscent of news clippings and a series of short, color film clips. The spot ends with Obama in factory scenes, surrounded by working-class folks.
ANALYSIS: After targeting a core base in the primaries, Obama is shifting focus to more centrist ideas, trying to shed notions that he’s a liberal and aim at more conservative messages: Work. Welfare reform. Tax cuts.
Obama worked his way through college. Indeed, it’s unique to be a candidate for the White House after paying off student loans for higher education.
But, he’s taking too much personal credit by saying he “passed laws.” News accounts give him credit for sponsoring measures in the Illinois legislature that moved people from welfare to work. But those reforms only came about because former President Bill Clinton and Congress ordered welfare reforms. And some experts say the 80 percent drop in the welfare rolls came partly from administrative changes brought on by the Illinois governor, also a champion of welfare reform.
Similarly, Obama won’t end tax breaks or reward job creation unless Congress approves the changes.
Because of these exaggerations, this spot has a whiff of doubt. Insiders say a more expensive 60-second spot is coming to Ohio this week.
Contact V. David Sartin at dsartin@plaind.com.
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Ohio’s first lady coming to town to raise money for Mitakides
Frances Strickland (in photo), Ohio’s first lady, is coming to the Dayton area to raise money for Jane Mitakides.
Mitakides is running for the 3rd congressional seat against Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Turner. The fundraiser is Monday, July 7 at 5:30 p.m. at a private home in Oakwood. Tickets are $250, $500 and $1,000
Get more information at www.jane08.com
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Obama proposes partnership with faith-based groups
Democrat Barack Obama says that as president he’ll establish a Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to promote “bottom-up” help for the needy.
Obama made the proposal in remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday, July 1, in Zanesville where he’s to campaign for president at the East Side Community Ministry, which provides food, clothing and other assistance for those in need.
Obama said the partnerships would honor the separation of church and state.
“…if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them - or against the people you hire - on the basis of religion,” he said in the prepared remarks.
Obama said Republican President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives “never fulfilled its promise.”
“Support for social services to the poor and the need have been consistently underfunded,” he said.
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Turner, Ohio lawmakers want hearings on DHL/UPS deal
Ohio’s U.S. House delegation has sent letters to two congressional committees urging hearings on a proposal to consolidate DHL’s North American shipping operations into UPS, a decision that would cost the Wilmington region some 8,000 jobs.
The delegation, led by Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, sent letters to the chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure asking for each committee to hold hearings on the proposed deal.
The letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Ranking Member Lamar Smith asks the committee to investigate the deal to see if it violates federal antitrust law. It was signed by every member of the Ohio House delegation except Rep. Betty Sutton, D-Copley Twp., who declined because she is a member of that committee.
The letter to Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar and Ranking Member John Mica urges their committee to examine the impact the deal would have on the North American shipping market and implications on American consumers. It’s signed by the entire Ohio House delegation.
