ProgressOhio

Lost in the avalanche of grief and gossip over the death of pop idol Michael Jackson was House passage yesterday (219-212) of the omnibus energy and environmental bill by a narrow 7-vote margin.

And Licking County progressives should note - and take pride in the fact - that our congressman, Rep. Zack Space, D-Dover, voted YES on this important piece of legislation, despite opposition from farm, coal and energy lobbies so influential in his 18th District.

The Dispatch, which has fretted gleefully for months over Space's dilemma, noted in today's story on the vote that "the measure has provoked intense opposition from many Ohio officials."

Those of us who have supported Space in the past but worried about his blue-dog timidity in the face of the agriculture and gun lobbies should take heart with this show of backbone.

And kudos to the media panelists last night on WOSU-Radio's Columbus on the Record who noted Congressman Space's courage in voting for the bill.

Now, it should be recognized that the measure is not everything environmentalists wanted.  But it does set goals for reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide  and establishes a cap-and-trade incentive system for pollution reductions, a similar approach to that which helped curb acid rain emissions back in the 1980s.

Yes, it will likely increase electric rates, especially in Ohio, since most of the state's generation depends on coal.  Off-sets, however, are a new program to help low-income ratepayers absorb the rate increases and new government subsidies for wind and solar which could create new jobs and industries here.

If you credit Space with making the hard - but right - choice on this bill, you might $how your appreciation at www.zackspace.org

If newspapers want to survive, they need to provide information quickly and efficiently that readers are not likely to obtain easily from other media.

Today's Dispatch, for example, has a "good news" piece by syndicated columnist Tom Teepen about final Congressional action on the Omnibus Public Lands Management Bill of 2009 (H.R. 146).  He writes:

"Forget the bum economy for a minute. You just got richer. We all did. A lot richer.

 

After years of dawdling and fussing, both abetted by an indifferent-to-antagonistic Bush administration, the House and Senate finally have passed an omnibus wilderness bill that will protect more than 2 million acres from despoliation. President Barack Obama was pleased to sign it.

The bill brings the highest level of federal protection to sites in nine states, from California to Virginia. Key sections of several national parks and monuments receive heightened security. A number of historic sites benefit.

National forests will be preserved against development encroachments. The nation's system of designated "wild and scenic" rivers will be extended by a thousand miles -- a 50 percent increase.

Our national parks, forests, historic sites and monuments are the nation's endowment, our trust fund for the country's future. They amount to a patrimony of incalculable worth."

See the complete column at http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2009/04/01/teep01.ART_ART_04-01-09_A9_G6DDMGB.html?sid=101

But why, after reading Teepen's piece, should I have to spend another 15 minutes on the Internet tracking down the official name of the legislation, the bill number and how our Ohio representatives voted on the measure?

(FYI, all Ohio Republican representatives (including Pat Tiberi, Delaware) voted NO while all Ohio Democratic representatives (including Zack Space, Dover) voted YES.)

Instead, the timely reporting of how our representatives and senators in Washington vote is pretty hit-and-miss.  Even when the Dispatch's own Washington reporters write about legislative action, they often don't say how central Ohio congressmen voted, or only do so days later.

With congressional voting tallies now available virtually instantaneously through a number of Internet sites, why can't the newspaper help out its readers by automatically telling us not only about legislative action but about how our area congressmen voted?  Needless to say, most readers are not going to spend time doing their own research. 

The failure to track legislators' votes is even more problematic at the Ohio Statehouse.  But it's more understandable, since Statehouse voting is more difficult to track on a timely basis.

Ohio runs on coal so it's no wonder Ohio legislators are reluctant to give ground on the "black gold" which produces 84 percent of the state's electricity.

And there's some evidence from Barack Obama's Tuesday night news conference that the administration is paying attention to the heartland on this.

As the Dayton Daily news framed the issue, in an editorial published Tuesday morning before Obama's prime-time appearance:

"President Barack Obama has adopted a version of "cap and trade" that should worry Ohioans.

"Cap and trade" is the phrase Washington uses for a system for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and, thereby, combating global warming. The idea is to set a national limit on emissions, and to achieve it by allowing companies that can't get their emissions down enough to buy credits from other companies that aren't "spending" their allotted amount."

http://www.daytondailynews.com/o/content/oh/story/opinions/editorial/2009/03/24/ddn032409carbonxxmg.html

Tuesday night, Obama listed "cap and trade" controls on carbon dioxide emissions as one of his top priorities but said he realized the details have to be worked out in Congress because there are "regional differences" in terms of impact.

Any such plan, he added, has to protect consumers from huge increases in electricity costs.

Such talk must be a relief to Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democratic supporter of the administration and usually a firm environmentalist.  In this case, however, Brown has expressed misgivings about a cap-and-trade plan which drives up electric costs here and depresses the Ohio coal industry.

Post Script:  I can understand how the Washington press corps, worried about their own 401Ks, would focus almost exclusively on the economy last night -- never asking even one question about Iraq or Afghanistan. (Did we declare victory and bring all the troops home when I wasn't watching?)

But what I don't understand is why nobody asked about the dog.  The dog Obama promised during the campaign for his kids. 

Obama did address the "dog debate" during his 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, but remained pretty vague about just when this sixth member of the Obama family would arrive at the White House.

John McCain has accused Obama of "generational theft."  Was he right?

Please, Barack, get the dog so we can all move on.  If you don't, good luck getting the girls to help weed Michelle's new garden.

I hope the folks who think they can get all their news from TV caught Lou Dobbs' interview with Governor Strickland this evening on CNN.

Strickland was obviously nervous, but still upbeat about Ohio's prospects during this "Great Recession."

He would have been far less confident -- and much more nervous -- if he read (and believed) the digest headlines which ran along the bottom of the screen during the interview.  Two of those I caught read:

• "Ohio lost 3.3 million jobs in the last 6 months"
• "Ohio receiving $8.28 in stimulus money"

Those factoids seem incredible but, still, if it's on TV, it's got to be right!

Right?

But what I don't understand is how Ohio alone lost 3.3 million jobs in the last six months when President Obama, when in Columbus earlier this month, put the nationwide job loss at 4.4 million so far for the entire recession.  My recollection was Ohio's job loss last year was more like 250,000 jobs - bad enough.

And as for the $8.28?  Did CNN manage to drop a few billion dollars here?  And they criticize Obama!

Another highlight of the interview was Strickland's disclosure that he's talking with Spanish solar companies about building a huge wind farm out in the middle of Lake Erie.  That's a surprise, considering that for decades Ohio government has had in place a ban on drilling out in the lake.

But Strickland's a smart politician, and no doubt he's learned from the best: former Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes.

It was Rhodes, you may recall, who proposed building a multi-lane highway bridge across Lake Erie.  This was a project, much derided at the time, recently recalled at:

http://www.licopac.org/licking_county_issue_pac/2009/02/ohios-bridge-to-nowhere.html 

Amid the widespread carnage in the economy, the news of lay-offs at the Dispatch hardly causes a ripple.

http://blog.dispatch.com/blog-36/2009/03/it_wasnt_supposed_to_be_like_this.shtml

Except for those, of course, whose lives have been tied to the newspaper as a profession -- and an addiction.

The Dispatch was my first newspaper job out of the Army.  Hummingbird and I in February 1965 had dropped baby Diane off with her grandmother in Findlay and set out across the Midwest to look for work.  First stop was Columbus where we checked in at the former Christopher Inn on E. Broad St. 

By the time we checked out the next day, I had interviewed with the city editor, Gene Jordan, and been offered a beginning reporter's job at $110 a week (Jordan initially offered $90 but I held out for the big bucks!).

Thirty-seven years later, in February 2002, I checked out of the Dispatch as well.  It was a good run.  As time went on, I got better at my job and so did the Dispatch.  And despite riots and wars and recessions, I don't recall anybody ever getting laid off because of the economy.  The story around the newsroom - which I don't really know if it was true - was that even during the Great Depression, the newspaper protected its staff.

Despite the current gloom and doom clouding the future of print journalism, the Dispatch as an independent in a relatively healthy market still has a lot going for it.  These were not the newspaper's first layoffs, although they're the first impacting the editorial staff.  Ahead will be more cost-cutting, redesigns and lean years in terms of pay and benefits.  But hopefully the Big D will survive.

Everybody - including those who work there - gets off on criticizing their hometown newspaper.  But what would we do without them?  And that "we" includes the TV talking heads, the bloggers, the suburbans, the wires, all of whom depend on the print folks for actual information.

Who wants to live in a world where we save the banks, the brokers and hedge funds, but shut off our window on the world?

For a good look at what's happening with newspapers nationwide, check out this piece at the New Republic:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a4e2aafc-cc92-4e79-90d1-db3946a6d119&k=77891

The controversy last week over the disgusting, anti-Obama "chimp" cartoon in the New York Post pained me, but not only for the reason you might think.

As much as I like to see the right-wing media being called out for its wretched excesses, I regret that the Post has fallen so far over the last half-century.

(The Columbia Journalism Review said in 1980, according to Wikipedia, that "the Post is not longer merely a journalistic problem.  It is a social problem - a force for evil.")

The newspaper, founded in 1801, certainly has gone through a number of transitions over the last two centuries -- none more dramatic than after World War II when it ceased being Left Wing and began its long migration over to the Rupert Murdoch rag it is today.

"Under (Dorothy) Schiff's tenure (after 1939), the Post was devoted to liberalism, supporting trade unions and social welfare, and featured some of the most popular columnists of the time, such as Drew Pearson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Max Lerner, Murray Kempton, Pete Hamill and Eric Severeid, in addition to theatre critic Richard Watts Jr. and Broadway columnist Earl Wilson," recalls Wikepedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post

But the reason I care about this history is that both my grandfather and father were columnists at the Post during the 1930s and early 1940s.  My grandfather wrote a foreign affairs column and was one of the first journalists to begin warning in the early 1930s that Adolf Hitler was more than just a strutting buffoon. My father  helped out on grandfather's column and in the late 1930s launched  his own radio column at the newspaper.

In those days, the Post "appealed to people whose politics were Democratic-left, were likely to be Jewish, and were either members of the working class or intellectuals who sympathized with the proletariat and affected its style," writes Marilyn Nissenson in her 2007 history of Schiff, The Lady Upstairs. 

My grandfather, an ardent socialist and anti-fascist, would be horrified to see how the Post has evolved, although the transition began even before his death in 1942.

For sure, change is not always for the best.

-- David Lore

Traveling to Northwest Ohio this week, I still saw a few "McCain-Palin" and "Obama-Biden" yard signs, banners of campaigns now nearly four months behind us.  But those aren't the only political signs wintering over in somewhat permanent display.  In Licking County alone, I've seen:

• LET OUR TROOPS WIN
• I'M A BITTER GUN OWNER - AND I VOTE
• ODOT SUCKS (along Rt. 161 construction, of course)
• GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS
• SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
• NO MORE TAXES

Some of these protest signs literally disappeared beneath the January snow and ice storms and then remained standing during the wind storms that followed.  Nobody ever thinks of taking them down.

Will Obama's aggressive war on recession bring forth even more yard signs come spring?  Let me know what you see out there. (dlore@johnstown.net )

Our 12th District Congressman, Pat Tiberi, was partly right last night when he declared during a brief television interview that the Obama stimulus bill was "a missed opportunity."

Tiberi, a Delaware County Republican whose district includes part of Licking County, obviously likes the phrase, "missed opportunity."  He repeated it twice in the space of a 5-minute interview on Channel 4, and makes it his headline in an equally brief comment on the bill at his congressional web site:

TIBERI CALLS FINAL DEMOCRATIC STIMULUS BILL “MISSED OPPORTUNITY”
“Today’s vote represents a missed opportunity for those of us in Washington who wanted to prove to the American people we understood their call for change.  This bill is not stimulative; it’s loaded with Nancy Pelosi’s grab bag of big spending wishes.  It does very little to ease our housing crisis, the driving force of the economic downturn.  We can’t counter an economic downturn if the causes of it aren’t addressed.  What the Democratic Stimulus does include is unprecedented, record-breaking spending that saddles future generations with mountains of debt.  Americans deserve better.” (Feb. 13)

http://tiberi.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=111506

As I said, he got it partially right.  The near $800-billion economic stimulus package the president signed last week is an opportunity for Obama and more importantly for the nation, although nobody can yet be sure it will be successful.

And, yes, it was also a missed opportunity - for Tiberi and his fellow House Republicans, all of whom marched lock-step in opposition.

"Congressional Republicans have made a stand on the stimulus package, just as they did on the original bank bailout when they refused to accommodate a president of their own party, George W. Bush. These Republicans are as wrong as wrong can be, and history, I am sure, will mock them, but they were not elected by history, and they are impervious to mockery from the likes of me. They come from conservative districts, and they are voting as their people want them to. That's partisanship. It is also democracy." (Richard Cohen, Washington Post, 2/17/09)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601104.html?referrer=emailarticle

But, in fact, Tiberi's 12th District isn't the sort of solid-red conservative district Cohen is talking about here. Tiberi has been elected to Congress five times now because he's usually faced weak opponents and the district has been gerrymandered to make it reasonably safe for a moderate Republican.

Now, by joining the "Just Say No" Boehner gang, Tiberi jeopardizes his own moderate reputation

He's betting against the president - and worse yet, against the country - by playing Hoover to Obama's Roosevelt, even though the President and congressional Democrats agreed to include $288 billion in tax cuts in the package.  Unfortunately, tax cuts seemed to be the only element of the recovery plan Republicans showed any interest in.

According to the Obama administration (see www.recovery.gov ) the recovery package will produce (or preserve) 133,000 jobs in Ohio alone.  It also comes to the aid of state and local governments, the schools and the poor and unemployed while making major investments in energy, health care and the nation's crumbling infrastructure.

This is also a missed opportunity for Tiberi who, although in the minority, now has the experience and seniority to begin demonstrating for voters that he brings more to the table than another predictable "No" vote on behalf of the GOP.  Need he continue to be a Yes man to the caucus and the party after 8 years in congress?  At a time when the Republican Party is struggling to develop a new message, does Tiberi have nothing more to contribute than "ditto."

Maybe he'll surprise us as more elements of the administration's plan come before Congress for approval.  According to this Feb. 16 column by Bob Herbert in the New York Times, the President hasn't given up on his bi-partisan pledge - yet.

"He (Obama) said that the fact that he’d been rebuffed so far in his quest for bipartisanship would not stop him from reaching out for Republican support.

“Going forward,” he said, “each and every time we’ve got an initiative, I’m going to go to both Democrats and Republicans and I’m going to say, ‘Here’s my best argument for why we need to do this. I want to listen to your counterarguments. If you’ve got better ideas, present them. We will incorporate them into any plans that we make, and we are willing to compromise on certain issues that are important to one side or the other in order to get stuff done.’ ”

When I asked him if there was any reason to believe that the G.O.P. had made a good-faith effort at bipartisanship, given the fact that only three Republicans voted for the stimulus plan in the Senate and none in the House, he said he did not want to question the motives or sincerity of those who opposed the plan.

But he made a point of adding, “Now, I have to say that given that they were running the show for a pretty long time prior to me getting there, and that their theory was tested pretty thoroughly and it’s landed us in the situation where we’ve got over a trillion-dollars’ worth of debt and the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, I think I have a better argument in terms of economic thinking.”

He also made it clear that he won’t let his desire for bipartisanship undermine important initiatives. “I’m an eternal optimist,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’m a sap.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/opinion/17herbert.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

On Sunday a New York Times article reported on some of the more ambitious construction projects around the country being proposed as a way to soak up some of those hundreds of billions of dollars in Obama economic stimulus funds.

None listed are in Ohio but that's just because we don't have Jim Rhodes with us anymore.  Rhodes was our four-term Republican governor (1963-1971, 1975-1983) at a time when the word "trillion" was used only by astronomers. 

Still, Rhodes managed to sprinkle county airports and community colleges across most of Ohio's 88 counties. Nobody was ever as "shovel ready" when it came to promoting jobs as was our former governor.

One of Rhodes' more audacious proposals was for the construction of a bridge across Lake Erie, linking Ohio with Ontario.  The cost would have approached $1 billion, real money in those days. But it never got off the ground, mostly being laughed to death. 

Only Rhodes, it seemed, thought it feasible to take a mid-winter drive on a bridge spanning a lake notorious for its violent storms and historic toll of sunken ships. 

http://www.cleveland.com/stpats/index.ssf?/heritage/more/canada/canamisc.html

But maybe Rhodes was on to something -- just a few decades too early. 

Among the projects cited in the Times piece was a proposed six-lane bridge across the Detroit River to link the motor city with Canada. 

The multi-billion dollar Michigan project is needed because "Detroit is linked to Canada only by a tunnel and an 80-year-old privately owned bridge," explains the newspaper.

Somewhere Jim Rhodes is saying, "I told you so!"

After a week of monastic chanting by congressional Republicans for tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, it was refreshing to see Dispatch columnist Joe Hallett include this as one of his prescriptions for a healthy America:

• "If you want it, you have to pay for it.

Government services and programs cost money -- and they're not getting cheaper. If you want to continue getting them, be prepared to pay more. If you don't want to pay more, be prepared for the services and programs to be cut or ceased -- and then don't complain about it.

Punish politicians who tell you otherwise, because they're lying. You can't have more for less, you can't cut taxes and expand programs and not end up with the mess we're in now -- or the bill we've left to our children."

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2009/02/15/halcol15.ART_ART_02-15-09_G5_8NCTKG0.html?sid=101

One could only hope that we'll soon read similar sentiments on the Dispatch's editorial page, especially in view of today's stories in that newspaper about the price we pay for the lack of government oversight and regulation in terms of food safety and public health.

ITEM: "State inspectors are charged with keeping an eye on 1,424 food plants but didn't make it to almost 500 of them last year. The Ohio Department of Agriculture said its nine inspectors simply can't do any more.

The story is the same in many other states at a time when concerns about food safety are on the rise..................................

A Georgia inspector found two minor violations at Peanut Corp. of America's Blakely plant in October. When the FDA became suspicious of the plant and inspected it, the agency found roaches, mold, a leaking roof and openings in plant walls and doors that could let in rodents.

When state workers in Texas got around to inspecting another of the company's plants recently -- after it went four years with no checks -- they found traces of salmonella and dead rodents, excrement and bird feathers in a crawl space."

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/15/Foodinspect.ART_ART_02-15-09_A1_G6CTO29.html?sid=101

ITEM: "Public-health workers already stretched by an unprecedented number of crises in the past year -- hyper-contagious bugs, tainted peanut butter, a power-robbing windstorm -- are now looking at cuts that are bound to hurt.

 

"I think we're teetering," said Columbus Health Commissioner Dr. Teresa Long. "I'm very concerned about our ability today and, clearly, into the future, to provide adequate public-health protection."

The crisis extends to the county, the state and public-health agencies nationwide and has experts worried...............................

And when times are tough, services mandated by law and those things that best fight and monitor contagious diseases are what remain, said Debbie Coleman, assistant health commissioner.

Those services were in high demand last year.

In 2008, the city had 57 outbreaks, up from 29 the year before. In large part because of those outbreaks, the department handled 3,800 reports of communicable diseases, up from 2,183 the year before.

These included E. coli, shigella and salmonella outbreaks."

http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/02/15/copy/HEALTHDOLLARS.ART_ART_02-15-09_A1_G6CTP7M.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

Yes, we need to do more with less.

But when a political party espouses tax cuts as the solution for every problem -- and vilifies any candidate or politician who disagrees -- it's time to start looking more closely at what we lose when we starve the government of resources.  Things like clean food and disease prevention.

And to think we have a would-be gubernatorial candidate, Republican John Kasich, who claims we can revive Ohio by just repealing the state income tax.  If you support this idea, and don't think we need government watchdogs on the job, you're more anarchist than conservative in my book.

Even after 46 years of marriage, Valentine's Day fills me with "performance anxiety."

Will I be ready Valentine Morn with card, candy, a gentle kiss and -- hopefully -- something else not too boring?  Is a book considered boring?

(My best attempt to please Hummingbird was to honor her heritage by ordering up a pair of Cherokee Chief dogwoods to be planted outside her window.  Only problem was they couldn't go into the ground until the following October, and then one of them died.  Nothing says "I love you" like a dead tree.)

Should I cook for her today (my specialty is an original recipe I call "tuna goo") or should we fight the crowds in hopes of landing a table at a restaurant featuring harried waitresses, slow service and wilted salads?

(This is also a tricky decision since Hummingbird has a delicate stomach and anything that really tastes good gives her indigestion or worse for the rest of the day.  A 2 a.m. dash to the bathroom does not a great Valentine's memory make.)

And how far should the Valentine "circle-of-love" extend?  I used to be responsible for remembering just Hummingbird and my daughter, whom I'll call Lark.  But now Lark has a 5-year-old daughter who proudly announced over the phone this week that she was making PaPaw and Nami a homemade Valentine's card.  We were tickled, of course, until she then sternly demanded -- as only a kindergartner can -- "Are you making me one?"

(Technology has only compounded the problem now that friends and acquaintances who we've probably never even hugged choose to remember us on Feb. 14 with e-mail Valentine cards.  Do we open these greetings and hope they're not virus-filled Trojan horses from some Russian spammer?  If the card is legit, are we expected to reciprocate? And can you get away with sending a joke card to your Grandma or Aunt Mildred?)

I think all this is just too much pressure during a month when one's only concerns should be trillion-dollar bailouts, winter storms and the search for an available roofer.

If you agree, you'll enjoy this report from the Wall Street Journal on the anti-Valentine's Day movement.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123448965975880443.html?mod=article-outset-box

So can we rid ourselves of this guilt-driven holiday?

As Barack would say, YES WE CAN!

(Although he'd better say it quietly -- the White House is not big enough to afford our new president escape from an angry wife and two disappointed daughters.)

If you need convincing that Ohio schools (and politics) need an upgrade, check out page B8 (a classified ad page) in today's Dispatch for this curious little item:

"U.S. Rep Steve Austria said he supports a scaled down federal economic stimulus proposal, but the Beavercreek Republican told The Dispatch editorial board that the huge influx of money into the economy could have a negative effect.

"When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression," Austria said.  "He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a great Depression.  That's just history.

That's just history??

Does the congressman ever wonder why those 1930s shanty towns were called "Hoovervilles" rather than "Rooseveltvilles.?"

Has this guy ever cracked a history book or does he just rely on Rush Limbaugh for his facts? 

Somewhere, Austria's high school American history teacher must be shaking his head and wondering how he ever let this one graduate.  And to think, Austria gets to vote on the $820 billion Obama jobs and stimulus package.

Even in a three-paragraph brief, Dispatch political editor Darrel Rowland couldn't let this blooper go by unchallenged.

"Most historians date the beginning of the Great Depression at or shortly after the stock-market crash of 1929," Rowland noted.  "Roosevelt took office in 1933."

I'm looking forward to more of Austria's historical analysis.  Did you know that Roosevelt also started WWII by attacking the Japanese at Pearl Harbor?  Or that the British won the Revolutionary War and Lincoln was the one who introduced slavery to America?

Governor Strickland, please send lots of money to the Beavercreek schools and extend the school year down there to 12 months.  At least we should be happy that Rep. Austria went into politics rather than teaching.  What's one more out-of-touch Republican congressman?

I remember reading some years ago that George Washington, although a Virginian, often thought about moving back to the Ohio frontier because of his fond memories of working here as a surveyor in his youth.

Now, in the New York Times Book Review (Feb. 4), it's claimed that Charles Darwin also once thought of becoming a Buckeye.

"Darwin visited Tierra del Fuego, Tahiti and Tasmania, along with other exotic locales, but he never set foot in the United States," writes reviewer Christopher Benfey in his appraisal of two new Darwin histories.  "Around 1850, charmed by popular tales of lush countryside and the exciting adventures of the Underground Railroad, and still withholding from public view his explosive theory of evolution, he flirted briefly with the idea of moving his large family, with seven children under the age of 11 and another on the way, to Ohio.  The middle states, he wrote, are "what I fancy most."

A quick Google check does indeed turn up this Darwin letter containing that "what I fancy most" quote, although at least here Darwin doesn't specify Ohio as the middle state he had in mind.

http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-1362.html

But let's assume Benfey did more research on this than I care to contribute, and that "Beautiful Ohio" was in fact one of Darwin's dream destinations.  (It appears, however, that it was far from the only one.)

In any case, I don't want to destroy the delicious irony that Darwin, who in recent decades has stirred up so much debate in Ohio classrooms, once thought of moving here with his own brood.

Of course in the end, both Washington and Darwin stayed put and Ohio had to muddle along instead with its spawn of famous politicians, sports stars, movie actors and astronauts.

But still, it's nice to be the object of great mens' dreams.  So a big O-H-I-O to Darwin on the occasion of his 200th birthday (Feb. 12).

I wrote last week ("Snow Day Shocker") how thrilled I was that Gov. Strickland's State of the State message was chocked full of optimism and hope for the future of Ohio and it's public education system.  It was such a refreshing change from all the gloom and doom that corrodes our spirit these days.

"Ohio has been an economic power house for 200 years, and I believe Ohio's best days are yet to come," he said.

Naturally, Strickland was quickly branded as an optimist of the cockeyed variety.  Reporters competed with one another to be the first to declare the governor's education plan "dead on arrival," even before the details are to be spelled out by the governor in his budget message on Monday.  Republicans were only to happy to join in the head-shaking, criticizing Strickland for being short on details and ignoring the bankrupt state of Ohio (and American) finances.

And I wasn't immune in my post from doubting that much of Strickland's ambitious plan would ever be adopted. 

So was Strickland, in promoting far-reaching changes in Ohio schooling, guilty of an unrealistic "audacity of hope.?"

Actually, Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation, thinks the governor is right-on in espousing fundamental change at what appears to many to be the worst of times.  This, from Gregorian's interview with PBS' Bill Moyers show on Friday night:

BILL MOYERS: There are millions of families out there losing their homes to foreclosure. And you're asking them to be taxed more or to print more money to support higher education, which may prove too expensive for their kids when they get there?

VARTAN GREGORIAN:Maybe. Maybe. But as an immigrant I have a different view of America. I see America in perspective. As a historian, I see the depth of it as well. And there are great moments in American history. Since President Obama is fond of Abraham Lincoln, so I'll start with Abraham Lincoln. In the middle of the Civil War, worst tragedy that happened to America, Abraham Lincoln signed Morrill Act, established land grant universities. Imagine now any president doing that in the middle of all the calamities we have, Afghanistan, Iraq, economy, and Iran and the Middle East, somebody spending that much effort on - because he wanted to see the future of America.

In the middle of Civil War, Lincoln established a National Academy of Sciences, 1863, because he wanted to see the future of America. In the middle of Civil War he established a commission to study the merits of metric system for America. Because he wanted to see not one year, one to four year; he wanted to see 20, 30, 40 years. Second thing that happened in the middle of the war. World War II, '44, Japan is still fighting, Germany's still fighting, Roosevelt established Servicemen's Act, which later became GI Bill, to see what will happen if ten to eleven million soldiers return without jobs. Would it unleash a new major depression? What? Came up with this brilliant idea to give them opportunity to be educated.

BILL MOYERS: My brother went to college after coming out of the Navy on the GI Bill and so did millions of others.

VARTAN GREGORIAN:Millions of others. Brilliant. In the middle of the war, 1945, '46, Roosevelt established Vannevar Bush commission for future of science in America, which then Truman adopted. It said science should not be based in institutions like European and Soviet, you know, these institutes. It should be based in universities. Then we have, of course, Senator Pell who just died-

BILL MOYERS:Claiborne Pell from Rhode Island, who established the Pell Grants-

VARTAN GREGORIAN:Pell Grants. Greatest democratization of process of access to higher education in our country's history. So we made many strides in the middle of adversity.

For the complete interview, go to:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01302009/transcript3.html