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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2007 > October
October 2007
Gingrich Plan Wouldn’t Work
Last summer, Newt Gingrich offered a Republican strategy for 2008. I wrote a column patiently explaining why it wouldn’t work. Now columnist Jonah Goldberg nevertheless embraces the Gingrich plan. His column is in the post below this one. Mine is here:
“GOP Hopefuls Join in Bush-bashing” ran a typical headline after last week’s debate among Republican presidential candidates.
Newt Gingrich, who was not among the candidates, but might be eventually, seems to believe the current candidates aren’t doing enough to separate themselves from President George W. Bush.
He says, “I think unless a Republican who is nominated is committed to fundamental change in Washington, they will certainly lose the election.”
“Look, I think that he (Bush) means very, very well. I think he’s very, very sincere,” Gingrich said in one interview, setting an all-time record for faintness of praise and for patronizing.
“But I don’t think that he drives implementation and looks at the reality in which he’s trying to implement things. And I think that’s why you ended up with, ‘Brownie, you’re doing a great job,’ when it was obvious to the entire country at Katrina that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had collapsed and was not capable of doing any job at that point.”
The political strategy Gingrich is proposing raises the fun question:
How can a political party expect voters to give it the presidency again when it admits that it has been mishandling the presidency? What’s the message supposed to be?
“Never mind what we said about who should be president the last two times. This time we’ve got it right?”
Gingrich points to the recent French election. There, conservative (as opposed to socialist) Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded two-term conservative President Jacques Chirac, though Sarkozy is no big fan of Chirac. Besides not liking each other, they don’t agree on immigration, social welfare polices and relations with Washington.
But a closer-to-home, more likely comparison comes to mind: Ohio, 2006.
Gov. Bob Taft was the George W. Bush of Ohio. His poll ratings were actually worse, and no Republican candidate for governor embraced him. But only Ken Blackwell, among the Republicans, ran aggressively against him. If he made the point once, he made it 1,000 times: He represented a bigger change from Taft not only than the other Republicans, but than the Democrats.
He meant that his brand of principled, anti-tax conservatism and risk-taking leadership separated him from the more conventional, ideology-light politicians of Columbus.
Didn’t exactly work out for him, did it? His 24-percentage-point loss was a margin simply unheard of in major statewide races where there’s no incumbent and both parties are really taking a shot. The last non-incumbent to win as big as Ted Strickland was John Glenn.
True, Jim Petro - the more conventional Columbus type whom Blackwell beat in the primary - would have lost to Strickland, too. But by so much? Margin has to matter to Republicans thinking about 2008, because they worry that a landslide would damage them in Congress and in dealing with the next president.
France - where Chirac’s polls were mediocre, not abysmal - has a different political system. Major parties are formed and disappear. Minor parties figure in, with people who voted for them in early rounds having to decide where to go in the finals.
The American system is binomial, or whatever the word is. A party gets a chance. If it screws up royally by the standards of nonpartisan voters, it’s out. And if, during the campaign, its candidate trashes his own party’s record, that settles the question of whether it screwed up.
Over the last century, when a party has won a third presidency in a row, it’s been in the context of majority satisfaction with the outgoing president (Ronald Reagan).
That suggests that life will be difficult for any Republican candidate in 2008 if circumstances then are what they are now. But suppose the circumstances are marginal. Then the Republicans need to think real hard about whether the way to go is violently, dismissively away from Bush.
The reason there’s been talk about Gingrich running is that there’s no bona fide, hard-core conservative of presidential stature in the field. A look at Blackwell’s primary victory in 2006 gives fodder to the claim that the voters want a conservative. But Gingrich has to ask Republicans who look at Ohio, 2006, to stop looking after the primary and switch their attention to France, 2007. It’s asking a lot.
If you’re a Republican who wants to be president, and the public is down on your party’s president, and your conservative message sounds a lot like you’re saying you would be more Republican, you’re Ken Blackwell.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: National politics, Syndicated Columns
Hillary is the Republicans’ Dream
The following column by Jonah Goldberg is posted here because it is referred to in the post above this one. It also appears in today’s (10-24-07) Dayton Daily News:
The most interesting thing to come out of the umpteenth Republican debate Sunday is confirmation that the GOP is dying to run against Hillary Clinton. Like Don Rickles flaying a heckler, each candidate whacked at Clinton as if she were a pants-suited piñata. When they were done with their one-liners, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee deadpanned: “Look, I like to be funny. There’s nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president.”
No, but there’s something deeply advantageous about having her as an opponent. So far, the commentary about the Republican offensive against Hillary has focused mostly on how it reflects poorly on the GOP (those Clinton-hating wing nuts are at it again!). What’s not been fully grasped is how Hillary gives the GOP its best chance at being the party of change.
Newt Gingrich, for one, has been pointing this out for months, using the electoral triumph of Nicolas Sarkozy in France last spring as an example. A Cabinet minister for the unpopular Jacques Chirac, who’d served in office for a biblically long term of 12 years, Sarkozy ran against his own incumbent party’s complaisance as well as his Socialist opponent, Segolene Royal, arguing that she merely represented a return to a failed past and “more of the same.”
America — obviously — isn’t France, but Democrats may be misreading America nonetheless. It seems incandescently clear that voters want a change, and, up to now, change meant little more than Democratic victory and no more President Bush. But Democrats got a significant victory in 2006, when they took control of both houses of Congress. And now Congress is even less popular than Bush. In other words, the clamor for change in Washington is much bigger than Bush.
Besides, Bush is leaving no matter what. And unlike every other election since the 1920s, there’s no White House-approved candidate in the race. Any Republican will start with 40% to 45% of the vote in his pocket once he gets the nomination. The question that remains is whether the critical 5% to 10% of swing voters will think Hillary Clinton represents the sort of change they want.
What most independents and swing voters want is an end to the acrimony and bitterness in Washington — and a candidate they like. Whether that’s right or not is irrelevant. That’s what they want.
Which Democratic candidate would be most likely to give those voters what they want? Not Hillary, it’s safe to say.
Right now, during the primaries, she can get away with boasting about her tenure in the Clinton administration. Party activists are drunk with Clinton nostalgia. On the stump in Iowa, Bill Clinton responded to the claim that Hillary was “yesterday’s news” by saying, yeah, but “yesterday’s news was pretty good.”
In the general election, audiences will remember Whitewater, travelgate, illegal fundraising, bimbo eruptions and impeachment. If they don’t, you can be sure Republicans will remind them. Fair or not, the Republicans’ intense dislike of Hillary will underscore the idea that a vote for her is a vote for more of the same rancor.
Hence the irony of the Clinton candidacy. Liberal activists keep saying that they want a candidate who is pure, who speaks from the heart and refuses to “triangulate” on core principles the way Bill Clinton did. But Hillary Clinton is Clintonian in more than just name. On national security in particular, she has been alternating between reflexive anti-Bushism to bouts of outright hawkishness on Iran. Desperate to win, Democrats have been willing to overlook that — so far. But such shifting costs her credibility and passion.
It’s all deeply reminiscent of how John Kerry wound up as the nominee in 2004. Once Howard Dean, the conviction candidate, experienced the political equivalent of spontaneous human combustion, Democrats immediately cast about not for another principled politician but one they deemed electable. Bizarrely, they settled on the left-wing senator from Massachusetts who synthesized Ted Kennedy’s politics with Michael Dukakis’ charisma while bragging about his service in a war he built a career denouncing.
If Democrats could get out of their bubble, it might dawn on them that virtually all of their other candidates are better positioned to run as champions of change. Hillary Clinton has shrewdly tried to trim the differences between her and the competition by claiming that any of them would be better than George W. Bush. From a liberal perspective, that’s obviously true. But that perspective won’t necessarily dominate come next fall, particularly if conditions in Iraq continue to improve.
Is it really so obvious that, say, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney represent “change” less than the ultimate Clinton retread, complete with Bill as “first gentleman?” That’s how Democrats are betting right now, and they may be bitterly disappointed — again — when it comes time to collect.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: National politics, Syndicated Columns
Beware buyers of ‘ugly houses’
The skies are thickening with vultures winging their way to exploit the distressed housing market, as this Washington Post column and this New York Times news article explain.
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Notes on B’Creek, Trotwood Candidate Interviews
Every year is an election year in Ohio. This is not only because somebody always needs to pass some sort of levy. It’s because whoever made the rules decided that municipal elections should be held in odd-numbered years, so as not to have to compete for attention with state, federal and, I guess, county elections.
Some municipalities have elections in EVERY odd-numbered year, because council terms are staggered.
So we at the editorial page have been
going through our usual process of meeting with candidates for a lot of offices (though we can’t possibly do them all). We try to get all the candidates for any given office in at one time, so as to allow for the possibility of thrashing things out, should that be necessary.
After the meetings, and after we’ve done follow up research (like calling people we know who might know some candidates better than we do), we make our recommendations publicly.
How important are these recommendations? Typically not very, probably. But some readers say they appreciate having somebody look into, especially, some low-visibility races. And sometimes candidates used the recommendations in their ads.
The process is probably more important than the outcome, that is, the recommendation. Many candidates later tell us they found the interviews to be nerve wracking, perhaps the most difficult thing they had to go through in the entire campaign. We don’t consciously try to assure that. We’re not in the business of hazing. But sometimes we do manage to get a level or two below the surface, that is, beyond the sound bites. We benefit. The candidates learn. The real issues sometimes emerge.
Each meeting has its own dynamic. Some are deadly dull; some are interesting, at least to us junkies. Very few would be good television. There are likely to be long spells which any normal viewer would find pointless.
When we had the three candidates for mayor of Trotwood in, I was leading the questioning, because I was the one who would write the resulting piece. For a long time, it was like pulling teeth to get anybody to say anything other than that they wanted to serve and had experience.
But editorial page editor Ellen Belcher managed to get the teeth pulled when she said she wondered whether the true dynamic of the race was emerging. At that point, there were some sparks (noted in Friday’s editorial) about attendance at meetings, support for the city manager and about just who could be most effective in the pursuit of economic development, the dominant issue.
When that sort of thing happens, when the heat rises a little bit, we rest more assured that we have really heard what is on people’s minds. It’s not that we want people to “go negative.” It’s just that we want them to be real, and, after all, real life is not all positive. No lines were crossed as to civility. But everybody did seem to leave mad at everybody else.
Beavercreek presented a special problem: 11 people running for 4 seats. We had to hold two different meetings. Even at that, you don’t necessarily get the kind of feel for people that you do from smaller meetings. That’s were follow-up phone calls come in handy.
This is particularly true when most of the candidates seem qualified. (Sometimes, all we are really doing in these meetings is sorting out the people who are clearly capable from those who clearly aren’t).
This time the problem for us, really, was keeping everybody straight. With all the candidates being well-behaved, rational and reasonably articulate, all I can is that it’s a good thing that candidates these days come in two genders. Old as I am getting, I fairly seldom confuse men and women.
Keep in mind that the candidates typically don’t break down between Rs and Ds. If, under these circumstances, I had to choose from among 11 white guys, I would be useless.
Obviously, we on the editorial board come into these meetings with views of our own on some issues — or at least predispositions — and they effect our decisions. These view are public and are known to any candidates who care about them. We are big on regionalism; we are skeptical of the most virulently anti-tax people.
Mainly, though, in these odd-numbered years we are looking for certain qualifications, for a record of engagement, for a certain knowledgability, for a commitment to bringing people into governmental processes.
Suggestions and questions welcome.
Permalink | | Categories: Local politics
More on torture and ‘ticking bombs’
I think it is possible that some folks have been watching too much Jack Bauer and 24 reruns.
Ask the French how well torture worked out for them in Algeria.
I think the ‘ticking time bomb’ justification for torture is readily defused fantasy. A lot has been written on the subject, and you might want to get started with two items — Michael Kinsley writing in Slate (‘torture for dummies’) and this from the Virginia Law Review (‘Liberalism, torture and the ticking bomb’).
Something for everyone here. Check it out. Write back with what you think.
Civilized people don’t simulate drowning
Why? Because it gives our enemies comfort when they do the same thing to their people and prisoners. Because it tarnishes our national reputation as a society that respects human rights. Because no one has shown any convincing proof that it aids in the gathering of vital intelligence — in fact the weight of evidence is to the contrary.
Because it is torture.
Watch U.S. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey give this mealy mouthed answer to the question whether waterboarding of prisoners — i.e. simulated drowning — is prohibited.
It is, he said, “if it is torture.”
That’s like saying beating the snot out of a hand-cuffed detainee, or holding a lighted cigarette to his skin, is prohibited — if it is torture.
Or OJ Simpson committed murders — if he did it.
Weak, weak answer from someone who claims to be a champion of the rule of law.
Note: More on this topic here.
Don’t let lobbyists cut in line
I am not a big one for raising issues that really “burn me up.”
But this item, from old hometown paper (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) did just that. It concerns big shot lobbyists hiring place holders in lines outside public hearings — so they can swoop right in ahead of the people and get a front row seat.
What should the penalty be for that?
Backstage at the Wiesel event
This isn’t “A Matter of Opinion,” but since I’m the one who knows it, I’ll write it:
At the Dayton Literary Peace Prize dinner last Sunday at the Schuster, writer Elie Wiesel was the star attraction and was, accordingly, scheduled as the last speaker.
Who, after all, would want to follow him?
As things turned out, however, he went first, at least among the out-of-town guests who were receiving and giving the various awards.
It turns out that, at the last minute, he had gone to organizer Sharon Rab and said he really, really needed to go first. He had a certain plane to catch, and he had a 7 o-clock meeting the next morning.
Putting him before the other honorees would require tearing up the written program. It would require, for example, moving up federal Judge Walter Rice, who was to introduce Wiesel and who was indisposed. And it would require discombobulating M.C. Nick Clooney and asking him to stall while certain people got ready.
But Wiesel said he really, REALLY had to go first. So Rab accommodated. Wiesel spoke for a quick — but quite eloquent and memorable — 11 minutes (everybody was asked to keep it short), and left the building.
So if you’ve got the program, and you noticed it wasn’t followed, now you know why.
Permalink | | Categories: Non-Opinion
Mike Turner rescues ‘God’
Here’s a Dayton Daily News editorial from tomorrow’s (Wednesday’s) paper. Comments welcome:
Congratulations are in order to Al Gore and Mike Turner.
Former Vice President Gore has been recognized for his “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”
Congressman Turner, R-Centerville, has been recognized for “a great victory for American traditions, religious freedoms and freedom of expression.”
The Gore recognition comes from the Nobel Prize Committee. The Turner recognition comes from Rep. Turner’s office. It’s in a press release.
What Rep. Turner did was thwart the dreaded secular humanists. He got the authorities at the U.S. Capitol to reverse an inconsistently administered policy of keeping religious references off the certificates that are given to people who receive flags that have flown over the Capitol.
A little background: As Rep. Turner notes, “Every year approximately 100,000 constituent requests for flags flown over the U.S. Capitol are filled by members of (Congress).” The idea is to help the legislators get re-elected.
On his “great” victory, the congressman reports, “The importance of this decision needs to be put in perspective.” He says the Capitol has “many religious symbols and statements.”
“For example,” he says, “above the Speaker’s chair and in the Senate chamber our national motto ‘in God We Trust’ are inscribed.” And he notes a painting of the baptism of Pocahontas.
Elaborating on television, Rep. Turner said, “If (the authorities) were permitted to determine if the word ‘God’ is objectionable, then certainly it places all those at risk.”
Phew. He apparently arrived just in time.
Now the important question that arises is how the Nobel Prize Committee failed to take note of Rep. Turner’s accomplishment. Maybe next time.
After all, like Mr. Gore, Rep. Turner focused on a problem that was getting way too little attention (the whole religion-in-government thing). He pursued a relentless course of investigation and education. Working, for all anybody knows, way into the night, he came up with the strategy of sending various kinds of requests for certificates to Capitol authorities to see if they were really enforcing a consistent and defensible policy.
Acting Capitol Architect Stephen Ayers must never have imagined that the he would come up against a legislator who would do that.
But, as his constituents know, Rep. Turner is nothing if not methodical and relentless. When he’s certain that he’s right, look out.
Remarkable as this accomplishment is — and it seems to be the most widely noted one nationally in his five-year career in Washington — it is surely just the beginning. Have you ever noticed, when in Washington, that some people are not wearing American flags in their lapels? Let’s put Mike Turner on that one.
Al Gore might be saving the world for people, but Mike Turner is making it safe for God. Meanwhile, he is the one saving us from hell and damnation.
Good Lord.
Permalink | Comments (17) | Categories: Local politics
Wright brothers gave peace a chance
We know that the Nobel Prizes are not handed down from Mount Sinai, but are part of a decidedly human selection process.
The abomination of Henry Kissinger’s and Yasser Arafat’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize are proof positive of that.
Public controversy sometimes surrounds Nobel choices — most recently by a small and bitter but highly vocal group criticizing the Peace Prize award to Al Gore. But sometimes the unhappiness focuses on who has been overlooked.
Thomas Edison typically is identified among the worthies who didn’t make it. If Philip Roth (no relation) dies without receiving literature laurels he, too, would join the short list. (Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously).
But what of the Wright brothers?
Well, if two pieces correspondence can constitute a letter writing campaign, then Wilbur and Orville Wright’s entitlement to Nobel honors were the object of one — in the New York Times, in May 1909.
One H.J. Plough of Paterson, N.J. made the more detailed case in a letter to the editor dated, May 16, 1909. He wrote:
If the Nobel Prizes are given for great inventions, the Wright brothers should have one. Galileo, following established rules, set his lenses so as to produce the telescope. James Watt turned steam on alternate sides of the older piston to perfect the engine. Prof. Morse used only parts then well known in making his telegraph. So also did Bell with the telephone and Marconi with the wireless.
These are the world’s immortals. None of hem discovered a principle. But each of them so arranged parts well known before as to produce new results. The Wright brothers, against the demonstrations of scholasticism, proved certain theories to be facts.
Those who control the Nobel fund would do honor to themselves and to the founder of it the genius, the persistency, and the bravery of these men were linked with the Scientific Prize.
Nice, concise argument.
But a Harlan Moore of New York had a letter published in The Times on the same subject four days earlier that resonates today. He wrote:
In view of the remarkable achievements in aviation of the Wright brothers, may I not suggest the propriety of advocating an award to them of one of the Alfred Nobel Prizes? Their accomplishments come within the Department of Physics, and possibly also, without a special stretch of interpretation, within the Department of Peace…
Gore haters see no connection between peace and wakening the world to global warming. For me it requires no special stretch of interpretation.
How do you see it? And do you equate powered flight with peace?
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Youth violence: what would abolitionists do?
Helen Moss, who works at UD and is a former member of the opinion page’s community board of contributors, wrote me earlier this week with some thoughtful ideas on the many tragic incidents in the news involving children and tragedy, especially youth violence. She writes:
Each time a young person’s life is cut short whether by senseless violence, accident or natural causes, our entire community grieves. Another child’s life not fully lived with dreams and ambitions never to be realized. Listening to the news of yet another death this weekend I was reminded of Langston Hughes’ question, “What happens to a dream deferred?”
What becomes of all the plans, the hopes, the expectations of families and friends left to celebrate the lives and mourn the loss of these children? But more importantly, how can we use these tragic events to serve as a point of departure for meaningful dialogue about the importance of respect for and appreciation of a life well lived? How can we as a community come together and reinforce for young people the certainty that tomorrow is not promised, life is a precious gift, and that we all must live each moment of the day being the best we can be while acknowledging the value of others and their right to live in the same way? How can we stop the violence?
As a community we must begin to think outside the proverbial box when dealing with violence among our children. It is just not enough to place stuffed animals and balloons at the crime scene. While the power of prayer, especially corporate prayer, is a spiritual and positive response to the almost daily acts of violence, there has to be something more that can be done. It is not enough to ask why, we must also ask what are we supposed to do in this situation, with this set of circumstances?
As a community, maybe it’s time we examined our roles in this phenomenon of children killing children. Accidents happen each and every day. Diseases and horrible illnesses routinely claim young lives. Some call it divine providence or predestination. But how should we think about violence, about intentional death and destruction? Are these acts of viciousness predetermined or can we as human beings prevent some or all of these senseless killings?
The time has come for a paradigm shift in the methodologies used to address societal concerns, especially youth on youth violence. Instead of corporate-sponsored symposia with erudite intellectuals and arrogant philosophers we need a return to individual responsibility and activism. Early abolitionists didn’t convene a weekend conference to discuss the evil and dehumanizing aspects of slavery. A few dedicated souls took it upon themselves to create the Underground Railroad in order to save lives.
Today more than ever we need people who lead by example, who inspire others to take up the gauntlet, to do something and become part of the solution. Just think about what might happen if each adult took the time to interact with a young person they encounter in a positive, supportive manner. Consider the difference these encounters might make in a young person’s life. The expectation and the comfort in knowing that someone cares, someone is concerned about what happens in their life today. It’s not rocket science; it is simply caring about another human being and accepting responsibility for ourselves and others, responsibility for our community, our neighborhood, our world. It’s acknowledging that whether we like it or not we all play a role in helping to stop the violence if we choose to.
Certo is after Goldie, not Murry
On Wednesday, we interviewed Mike Murry and Pete Certo, who are running for Xenia Municipal Judge.
It was one of the more bizarre endorsement meetings we’ve ever had.
Certo said he hasn’t raised any money for his campaign and isn’t going to spend any of his own. He said he’s a “serious” candidate, but that he’s fine with Murry being elected.
That’s not how the conversation usually goes in these meetings — even in judicial races, which tend not to be testy.
Certo is only in the race, he said, because he wanted to make sure Xenia Municipal Judge Susan Goldie had opposition in this fall’s campaign.
The decision of whether to run as an independent had to be made the day before the May primary. Certo couldn’t be sure back then that Murry would defeat Goldie in the Republican primary, which he did — overwhelmingly.
Certo minced no words: Goldie, in his mind, needed to be dumped, and he was prepared to try if Murry failed. He said Goldie’s temperament and actions on the bench are unacceptable.
Murry, who has been Goldie’s personal lawyer twice (once when she was reprimanded by the Ohio Supreme Court), refuses to say a critical word about Goldie.
Certo’s law practice isn’t concentrated in Greene County, so he didn’t have to fret about getting on Goldie’s bad side. Murry didn’t have that worry either because he couldn’t ever appear before her because he had been her lawyer and that would create an appearance of a conflict.
In short, Murry was — and still is — the nice guy. Certo is plenty amiable, but he was the insurance policy in case another nice guy finished last.
Permalink | | Categories: 2008 endorsements
Krugman Revisited
Despite my efforts to lead Paul Krugman to a more wholesome form of liberalism (see the post under the category “Syndicated Columns” on August 15, 2007: “Krugman way over the top”), he continues to treat conservatives as simply evil.
Last Sunday, he quoted conservative magazine editor William Kristol as saying, “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea.”
“I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids,” Kristol continued.
AHA! Kristol ADMITS he’s heartless.
Please. All Kristol meant was that the people who are always screaming about heartless assaults on our children are people like Krugman, whom he has concluded are always wrong once one looks at the facts.
Krugman and Kristol hold each other’s contributions in.That has nothing to do with whether kids are being assaulted.
In the same column, in the same vein, Krugman revives the episode in which Rush Limbaugh ridiculed Parkinson’s patient Michael J. Fox.
Says Krugman, “Of course, minimizing and mocking the suffering of others is a natural strategy for political figures who advocate lower taxes on the rich and less help for the poor and unlucky.”
In truth, though, what animated Limbaugh to his egregious behavior was obviously his hatred of liberals, not his feelings about the ill. Surely Krugman should be able to empathize with that kind of political hatred.
One more, just for the record:
Wednesday, Krugman: “People claim to be shocked by the Bush administration’s authoritarianism, its disdain for the rule of law. But Reagan opposed the Voting Rights Act, and as late as 1980 he described it as ‘humiliating to the South.’”
The quote might be right, but what Reagan is remembered for in the history of the Voting Rights Act was his agreement with Ted Kennedy on a 1982 extension that actually strengthened it. (It held that acts — such as the drawing of new congressional districts — were to be considered discriminatory and illegal even if nobody could prove intent to discriminate, so long as that was the result.)
If this list doesn’t improve Krugman, hope dwindles.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Syndicated Columns
Will Strickland hammer lenders?
Gov. Ted Strickland has called a press conference for 3:30 p.m. today in his Cabinet Room to discuss with reporters his administrations’ response to the home mortgage foreclosure epidemic in Ohio.
I could not break away to Columbus but I sent the governor’s very capable press secretary, Keith Dailey, the following email:
Hi Keith -
Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the Governor’s press conference on the administrations’ response to the Ohio Foreclosure Prevention Task Force.
It at all possible, I would like to get as much information as can be made available on the issue of loan modifications and workouts.
I recall the governor and Commerce Department Director Kimberly Zurz saying earlier this year that they had been having meetings with top industry representatives. I have been keeping my ear close to the ground on this but I have not heard anything about progress on that front.
Ohio would not be alone in that regard. As the New York Times editorialized today:
The foreclosure crisis is rooted in reckless — and shamefully underregulated — mortgage lending. Many homeowners — mainly subprime borrowers with low incomes and poor credit — are now stuck in adjustable-rate loans that have become unaffordable as monthly payments have spiked upward. Their predicament is not entirely of their own making, and even if it were they would need to be bailed out because mass foreclosures would wreak unacceptable damage on the economic and social life of the nation.
The relief efforts so far have been too little, too late. In August, the White House established a program to allow an additional 80,000 borrowers to refinance their loans through the Federal Housing Administration — on top of 160,000 who were already eligible. That’s not enough. Foreclosure filings soared to nearly 244,000 in August alone.
Federal regulators and Treasury officials are urging mortgage lenders and mortgage servicers to do their utmost to modify loan terms for at-risk borrowers, but saying “please” hasn’t worked. To be effective, modifications must reduce a loan’s interest rate or balance or extend its term, or some combination of the three. Gretchen Morgenson reported recently in The Times that a survey of 16 top subprime servicers by Moody’s Investors Service found that in the first half of the year, modifications were made to an average of only 1 percent of loans on which monthly payments had increased.
What’s missing is executive leadership to bring together many players, including lenders, servicers, bankers and various investors.
Relief efforts in Ohio won’t amount to much without aggressive efforts to force loan modifications that keep people in their homes. I know the administration’s early attitude was that not much is served by the governor’s loudly and unsparingly taking the financial services industry to task at every public opportunity for creating a huge mess and doing little or nothing to clean it up.
Is the industry taking urgent steps to clean up the mess? If not, what does the governor intend to do about it?
These are the questions I would ask this afternoon. Can you help me with some answers.
Many thanks,
Eddie Roth Editorial Writer Dayton Daily News 1611 S. Main St. Dayton, OH 45409 (937) 225-2383
I will let you know what I hear back.
Postscript: Read Columbus Bureau Chief Bill Hershey’s story on what happened here. Our view on what happened appears in the Oct. 15 edition.
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Steer public money to reward good behavior
The financial services industry is so powerful in the halls of government that it has proven all but impassive to public opinion on such matters as predatory mortgage and payday lending. Yet billions upon billions of dollars in public money are parked in banking institutions, which vie for the profitable business. Might it be used as a stick and carrot to punish bad and reward good behavior?
Catholics Resolve It Right
It was good to see the Catholic high schools of the Cincinnati archdiocese approve charity money going to a group with ephemeral connections to Planned Parenthood. The act is a demonstration of the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.
The Catholic authorities could have taken the attitude that
the friend of my enemy is my enemy, and put the Komen foundation on some enemies list, just because some of its affiliates (outside Ohio) work with Planned Parenthood on breast cancer.
Instead, the Catholic schools focused on the fact that nobody was trying to do anything but fight breast cancer, and that the high school girls playing fundraising volleyball games toward that end needed to be encouraged in the ethic of seeking allies in such a good cause everywhere, not the ethic of us-against-them.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Catholic Schools
Clark State favor to Hobson looks bad
So Clark State Community College has named its new building after Rep. David Hobson, huh?
Bad form. He is an active politician, after all.
Unless he decides to retire, he’ll be on ballots again. For a tax-supported institution to be giving him this kind of boost č awarding him official icon status č is more useful to him than a campaign donation, which, of course, the school couldn’t give him.
Others have done similar things, of course. But the hazards have long been recognized.
When some people wanted to name a boulevard after John Glenn some years ago, they called it Col. Glenn Highway. That name makes clear, at least, that they aren’t honoring his performance as a senator.
Clark State is, of course, honoring Rep. Hobson’s performance as a congressman, most specifically his help in getting the money for the building č and generally fighting the fight for it -č that is named for him. (It’s across Col. Glenn Highway and the interstate from Wright State University.) The whole thing could hardly look more political.
Permalink | | Categories: Higher Ed, Local politics
The Lichtman Keys to the Presidency
I have a column in the DDN of Friday, Oct. 4 in which I say that anybody who wants to see a list of the factors that Allan Lichtman uses to predict the outcome of a presidential election can check here. So here it is.
The system has been used to correctly predict the outcome of every presidential election since 1984 (though there’s a dispute about 1992). And, applied retroactively, it accurately “predicts” the outcome of every presidential election since the Civil War, that is, in the history of the current two-party system, Ds vs. R.
There’s a book: http://www.campaignsdontcount.com
At any rate, if six or more of these statements are untrue, the incumbent party is predicted to lose the popular vote.
Key 1 (Party mandate): After the last midterm election, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm election.
Key 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.
Key 3 (Incumbency):The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.
Key 4 (Third party):There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
Key 5 (Short-term economy):The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Key 6 (Long-term economy): per-capita economic growth during the current presidential term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Key 7 (Policy change):The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
Key 8 (Social unrest):There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
Key 9 (Scandal):The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
Key 10 (Foreign/military failure):The incumbent administration has suffered no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Key 11 (Foreign/military success):The incumbent administration has achieved a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Key 12 (Incumbent charisma):The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Key 13 (Challenger charisma):The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Permalink | | Categories: National politics
Dayton School Board Election
DDN education writer Scott Elliott’s blog today has the background on politics of the November election involving seats on the Dayton school board. He talks about who the Democratic Party is behind and what difference it makes.
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Obama as New JFK
I had a piece in the paper last week about how Barack Obama is no John F. Kennedy in the way he campaigns against Hillary. Some people responded that this seemed a gratuitous attack on Obama, since nobody else is JFK either. Why single him out? Well, I did it for two reasons: One, I had high hopes for him. And, two, he sometimes does get likened to Kennedy. Today’s Washington Post site has a picture of him with legendary JFK speechwriter Ted Sorenson, and a headline about how Obama fosters the comparison: http://blog.washingtonpost.com /the-trail/?hpid=topnews
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: National politics
Is Web talk nasty, dumb stuff?
I was in Kansas City last week at the annual meeting of the National Conference of Editorial Writers. I moderated an online “bootcamp” and during the program the collected writers and editors had an animated discussion on the level of discourse in blog comments and online chats.
During the early months of this blog, I must say I think that readers have offered interesting and thoughtful comments — for which we thank you!
But that may not be what you see on other sites, or in other discussion groups on this site.
A terrific editorial page and “community conversation” editor from Wisconsin named Pete Wasson (a Miami U grad) posted a summary of the conversation in Kansas City and invited his readers to respond.
Below is what Pete wrote, and tell us what you think:
I’m at a conference for editorial page editors in Kansas City, and already on the first day we’ve spent hours grappling with the challenges presented by practicing journalism in the new media age.
This topic is enormous, but I’ll try to distill it here:
In an attempt to interact with readers, newspapers everywhere are using technology to connect people and ideas. This forum is a perfect example.
It has value. It allows people to challenge our reporting and demand answers of their elected representatives. Sometimes readers ask good questions that we incorporate into our news coverage. Other times they provide even more information that informs the topic at hand. And in all cases, forums allow people to participate in the free marketplace of ideas.
On the other hand, unfettered commentary by anonymous forum users doesn’t always move the conversation forward. As my friend Robyn Blumner (a syndicated columnist who runs in this newspaper most weeks) argues, newspapers always have been institutions that filtered out the coarse and uninformed opinions. Readers generally read smart, thoughtful and constructive criticism on our opinion pages.
Today, a lot of Robyn’s mail (and a fair amount of ours at the Daily Herald) is of the “Go back to Russia, you commie bit#^” variety. It doesn’t inform, it doesn’t engage your mind. It’s just thoughtless screaming and invective.
Visit some other threads here and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Anonymous forums only encourage that sort of comment, Robyn says, and they might even play a role in the national trend in which the chasm between people of differing ideas seems to be growing deeper.
So do we as newspaper editors and forum administrators filter out the chaff? Do we prohibit more actively than we have the sort of flaming, personal and uninformed posts that seem to comprise about 75 percent of what you read on our forum? DO we force the smart and thoughful readers to wade through the verbal cesspool to find other informed comment, and risk driving away reasonable readers and letter writers by exposing them to unprovoked and personal attacks?
Tough questions. We’ll be talking about them all week here in KC, and I hope readers will talk about them here on the forum while I’m gone.
I’ll even tell Robyn what you say, and bring up some of the more thoughtful responses at a session on Friday.
Still sulking after all these years
I was writing editorials for a living at the time of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings. I watched them for hours on end. I had a lot of trouble deciding whom to believe. Then Thomas said that he hadn’t watched Hill’s testimony, which he reiterates now. That seemed amazing to me, because if she were lying, you’d think he’d want to watch for possible places to catch her in her lies.
Then, as I recall the order of things, a book came out defending Thomas and denouncing Hill, only to be renounced by its author, a then-right-wing hack, as a fraud. Then a respectable book came out by two top journalists that made Hill look good and Thomas worse.
Now he denounces her as “mediocre,” despite having hired her twice. He attributes certain bad work-place characteristics to her that don’t seem to have hindered her climb from Oklahoma to Brandies and Wellesley.
Before the Hill testimony, I developed doubts about Thomas’ honesty because of his testimony on abortion. He repeatedly insisted that his views on Roe vs. Wade were unformed and that he had never even discussed the subject with anybody. The latter point seemed just bizarre. At any rate, I was certain he was the flaming right-winger he turned out to be, as conservative on abortion as anything else. Everybody else was certain, too.
So, all things considered, I guess I believe her.
But what’s really offensive about Thomas is not that he lied about her, if he lied. If you found yourself in his situation, you’d lie too. What’s offensive is his lifelong determination to portray himself as a victim, and particularly as a victim of racial discrimination.
He insists now, as he did then, that the political left had to get him because he was a black conservative, and the left had decided that a black man must have liberal views, and, further, that the liberals would attack him by using the racial stereotype of a black man out of sexual control.
This is such utter nonsense on so many levels.
First of all, ideological control of the court seemed to be at stake. The fight would have been the same if he were white.
Secondly, Anita Hill came forth. Does he really imagine that if a similar thing happened to a liberal nominee, the conservatives wouldn’t have pounced? Please.
Thirdly, the sexual charge happened to be the one that she made.
After being confirmed, Thomas made his mark on the court in two capacities: as a reliable right-wing vote — not conservative like, say, Kennedy, but right wing — and as the guy who never asks any questions of the lawyers appearing before the court.
His strange silence is difficult not to see as a symbol of his bristling anger. It makes him preposterous.
He needs to get over it. He got a lifelong job on the top court in the land at a very young age without exceptional qualifications. And yet he’s mad. He’s mad about, of all things, racial discrimination against him.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: National politics
