ProgressOhio

STRICKLAND NOT AN IDIOT

The Statehouse was a hardsoft fantasy stage this week, like a limestone Brigadoon --- beautiful on the outside and full of angry conflict on the inside. While the lavender rhododendrons bloomed peacefully in the Statehouse flowerbeds, a minor skirmish between the Bad Republicans and Team Strickland broke out in the House.

In the House Finance Committee, the GOP members needlessly badgered Strickland's budget director, Pari Sabety, over her evasive answers to the question as to whether the Governor's school funding budget was "constitutional". Of course she was evasive --- what the hell else was she supposed to say?  That some of her member tormenters asking the stupid question are hypocrites, who they themselves are guilty guilty guilty of negligence on public education and should be drummed out of office?

Things got hot hammy ("You're out of order!" "No, YOU'RE out of order!) when the Democratic members came to Sabety's defense --- good for Strahorn of Dayton and Skindell of Lakewood. It was excellent theatre and by playing their parts, they stuck up for Strickland as well.  It bodes wishing well for the coming budget rounds, as the Democrats dodged the cheesy roadside bomb.

19TH CENTURY PROGRESS

Meanwhile on the Senate side of the building, the Republicans took up pressing issues from a hundred and ten years ago.  The Senators rushed a bill (SB 41) to ban certain words from the Ohio Revised Code, including "idiot", "imbecile", and "drunkard" --- the conservatives seemed a little defensive in their haste.

The Senators also heard testimony on a bill to allow the commercial sale of raw milk (can you say "listeria"?).  Governor Strickland bravely weighed in on this issue, too, and he's opposed.  But he hasn't been heared from yet on the so-called Community Defense Act which was before the Sexy Senate Committee on State and Local Government, and Veterans' Affairs for a second hearing.

The bill to stage a statewide initiative would regulate the adult entertainment industry, including hours of operation and stripper behavior distances (don't ask). Is this the biggest issue our troubled state is facing? The Republicans fell over each other in support of the bill even though it is batshit superfluous. Oy.

ALPHONSO WAS THE BEST

Fomer Governor Bob Taft unveiled his official gubenatorial portrait in the Statehouse rotunda this week and it was like shooting fish in a barrel. The portrait is nice, and the reporters and guests at the unveiling were nice, but most everybody made fun of Taft behind his back. Taft is the omega of the most important political dynastry in Ohio history --- and in US history, it rivals the Bushes and the Kennedys. 

It started with Alphonso Taft, anti-slavery lawyer, President Grant's Attorney General, and fixer of the disputed 1876 presidential election for Hayes and the Republicans (Yes, the Democrats got srcrewed then, too). Since then, all the Taft boys were told three things --- you are going to Yale, you are going into politics, and you must marry up. 

This crude practice of marrying up is called "hypergamy" and it has produced one President and Chief Justice, a couple of US Senators, and one very relieved ex-Governor.  The idea remnant from the Gilded Age is to renew a family's genetic wealth by finding and marrying a strong woman and avoid a strain of (insert words here banned by Ohio General Assembly in the spring of 2007).  More later.