By Roldo Bartimole
Will Frank Jackson save John Kasich’s political ass.
The tactical romance of Democratic Mayor Frank Jackson and Republican Gov. John Kasich over schools and teachers should have Ohio Democrats worried.
Jackson – for his own purposes – is helping rescue the self-wounded Kasich.
And he’s doing it on the very issue that Kasich dug himself into a big hole – the rights of public employees.
Any Democrat putting in with Kasich is double-crosser. All Labor takes a hit on this. It’s collaborating with the enemy. It’s like me going to work for Fox News.
“Mayor Jackson, the mayor of Cleveland – he’s a good guy trying to do a really big thing to give kids a future…so would you pray that people would have the courage to put kids first,” is the way the puckish Kasich put his love of Jackson. How touching. Kasich’s found a friend.
This was reported in a Brent Larkin column talking about Kasich’s plea for prayers, made in an Anglican church in Columbus, for Jackson’s attack on teachers. Larkin loved it.
Larkin wrote that given the state of Cleveland schools, “not trying something dramatic borders on criminal.”
How about Kasich using some of the excess state revenue or asking major Cleveland corporate leaders to pay their property taxes to help the schools. That, I guess, is too dramatic.
Kasich was talking, of course, about Jackson’s school plans and the need for the state legislature to give Jackson more power over schools and especially teachers. Ironically, the Cleveland school board – under Jackson’s control – has been silent. Missing in action.
“We disagree about some things,” said Jackson in return, “but he’s (Kasich) all in on this. He’s genuine about it.” Genuine is about the last word I’d used to describe Kasich.
Jackson’s giving sustenance to the enemy.
And with Ohio a crucial state in the Presidential race, it’s bad to see Jackson doing Republicans favors. With such a close election ahead no Democrat should give Kasich or any Republican even a smell of cooperation.
Maybe President Barack Obama should have a talk with his fellow Democrat in Cleveland. Fast. Here’s where he wins or loses Ohio. Maybe re-election.
Jackson – as with a lot of local Cleveland politicians – isn’t really a Democrat as in Democratic Party. He runs on his own.
Like a lot of Cleveland politicians he’s interested in himself. He doesn’t transcend the very pedestrian strain of Cleveland politics. What’s good for me is good for all. Not so.
Except for Prosecutor Bill Mason’s crowd there isn’t any cohesive political team or group here. The party is severely damaged by the corruption scandals.
The old 21st District team put together by the late Carl Stokes was allowed to wither away. It was really replaced by the selfish political needs of George Forbes and then Mike White. The hell with the people.
So Jackson follows thoughtlessly and tactlessly in that tradition. He has no wider vision and unfortunately he has no one around him that I can see to give him guidance in that direction.
So, Jackson’s linking with Kasich, tenuous as it might be, could swing Ohio to the Republicans.
That would be real tragedy.
* * *
PD Played FBI Episode Straight
The Plain Dealer deserves credit for its handling of the five alleged terrorists caught (if not provoked) by the FBI. At least so far.
The paper handled this episode responsibly. Some restraint.
It made the effort to put the attempt by five people to bomb a local bridge into proper perspective without hysterics.
Of course, it also published the usual bullshit of Kevin O’Brien. It was the one aspect to mar the otherwise responsible journalism.
The front page article by well-regarded James McCarthy specifically quotes Steven Dettlebach, U. S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, saying that the five suspects acted alone.
He quotes Dettlebach: “Let me be clear. The FBI and Department of Justice are not conducting an investigation of any specific group.”
That, in this context, has to mean the Occupy Cleveland movement. Not guilty.
But the infiltration and lead-on of the shaky five follows an old FBI pattern of spreading fear and discord among protesters.
The PD could have gone a step further – it still can – to find out whether it was necessary for the FBI to bring this incident to the extent it did and whether and to what extent the FBI and informants helped it along. How easy is it to push such an affair when dealing with hapless and likely susceptible individuals to entrapment. Not very hard.
Back to O’Brien. He writes the following day:
“Hence, the desperate attempt of Occupy Cleveland and its enablers (whoever they be, he doesn’t say) to distance themselves from bomb planners with whom the record shows they are all too well acquainted.”
Now, I understand O’Brien is a columnist and he has some broad discretion about what he writes.
However, he continues to be bombastic in a right-winged fashion. He’s an embarrassment to the PD. Especially in this instance.
I wonder what O’Brien will write about J. T. Ready. He’s described as “a gun-carrying, camouflage-clad extremist who preached violence to stop immigrants and drug smugglers…” in the New York Times story last week. This was after the Cleveland incident where no one was injured. Ready, however, was among five killed in a gun battle in Arizona. The leader of a neo-Nazi group called Ready “a patriot” and a “sincere and compassionate man.” Rather deadly. Among the dead were his girl friend, her daughter and her 15-month old granddaughter.
I’m awaiting O’Brien’s description and attack on this man and his deadly behavior.
But not too long. It’s not O’Brien’s kind of story. Wrong politics for rebuke.
The reporting by the Plain Dealer was balanced.
The Occupy people were given an opportunity to tell their side and define their association with the five now held for trial in the attempt to blow up the Ohio Route 82 bridge. It wasn’t overdramatized, as it has been in the past.
The one public official associated with the group, Councilman Brian Cummings, who acted as a go-between for the city, was quoted as was Greg Coleridge, of the American Friends Service Committee and other members in a balanced manner.
Descriptions of the individuals revealed past problems with the charged but didn’t try to portray them beyond their records.
The first-day Page One headline was not overly provocative, as it could have been. The headline size – “Five held in foiled plot to blast Ohio 82 bridge” – didn’t go overboard.
In all, the news portion of the episode was acceptable and reasonable.
Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]
5 Responses to “ROLDO: The Odd Couple – Jackson and Kasich”
snorky
Roldo , I am afraid that Kevin O’Brien is the highest paid and least capable troll on the plain dealer staff.
Either that or he is for certain the best comedy act that the plain dealer has had since Artemus Ward left town.
Roldo Bartimole
That’s a long time Snorky but I can’t argue against what you say.
It’s as if the PD says it’s okay to have Fox News on its editorial page
but there’s no MSNBC to balance it.
Really shameful.
snorky
” Shameful ” sounds about correct to me.
We could toss in clueless for good measure , though I am certain that the demographic [ geriatric ] that subscribes to the plain dealer would support the inclusion of O’Brien , and would not embrace a left ended bookend to the columnist ranks.
So , clueless like a fox , as we can assume the business office has been driving the editorial and wire content for sometime now.
Say the past fifty years at least?
It would be refreshing to even encounter some in depth reporting on the real issue of the plain dealers real time 2012 days ; the severe decline of the City , and the region , and the impoverished lives left in the wake of the foreclosure fueled bank bailouts , and how a city can attempt to rebuild itself with vices sold downtown and all the corporate welfare that fuels it as an answer to actual social concerns.
You tell me , is the plain dealer really the actual newspaper of record for these parts any longer?
A void really exiist now as never before , and the gang that forms the op/ed section is well , in some cases talented though not given a very long leash?
Roldo Bartimole
I don’t know if any newspaper is really one “of record.” Especially since you have to ask Whose record.
My years at the PD (few) and at other newspapers tells me that we get a very limited record that mostly reflects what people of power would like to read, with some exceptions.
Snorky, we should have a cup of coffee some day.
Roldo Bartimole
I meant to mention that this June it will be 30 years since the Press was murdered. It sometimes reflected the more common man’s history.