Ohio

A grisly late 2007 quadruple-murder case in the Cincinnati suburb of Sharonville has apparently been solved with the arrest of Santiago Moreno.

Moreno apparently brutally stabbed his four other apartment mates with near-surgical precision.

It is horrible that these men died. It is great news that the monster who did it has apparently been caught.

What is hard to understand is why after nearly 1-1/2 years, it's finally okay to use a certain "I-word" to describe the victims' immigration status that was almost never used when the original stories broke:

On April 14, The Toledo Blade, apparently having temporarily misplaced the comma key, reported that "Longtime Lucas County Sheriff James Telb and a top commander and two former deputies were indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on charges related to the 2004 death of an inmate at the jail" (HT to Maggie Thurber in an e-mail).

The Blade, which likes to brag about the over 1,000 articles (I'm not kidding) it carried about Republican Tom Noe's coin-dealing losses and related matters several years ago, nearly all of which reminded readers of Noe's GOP affiliation, "somehow" forgot to tell readers that Sheriff Telb is a Democrat (scroll down to list of "Uncontested Races" at link").

The Blade's blind spot on Sheriff Telb's party has been on display frequently since then. Telb's party affiliation is nowhere to be found in these other Blade reports:

An important story appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer on Tuesday. Here's how it began (Warren County is adjacent to and northeast of Cincinnati's Hamilton County):

County: no more food stamps for rich

Warren County’s poor (population) does not include someone with $80,000 in the bank, a paid-off $311,000 home and a Mercedes, members of the Warren County Board of Commissioners said Tuesday.

And if they have to fight the state and federal government over it, they will.

Recently the commissioners learned that this person, with the before-mentioned property, qualified for $500 a month in food stamps after she lost her job.

The Enquirer never told us why the County suddenly became motivated to do what it did.

Here's why (and how typical it is that the Enquirer either doesn't know this, or refused to give credit where due).

Someone who is "a source in the business" e-mailed State of Ohio Blogger Alliance founder Matt Hurley of Weapons of Mass Discussion. Matt put up a memorable post on March 13 containing the text of that e-mail:

You've got to hand it to Jim Provance of the Toledo Blade. He managed only to identify the party of a Republican in a story that is primarily about a Democratic administration's failure to produce timely financial statements.

Democratic Governor Ted Strickland, his administration, and his appointed Democrats in Ohio's Office of Budget and Management are not going to have the state's records in auditable condition until after the General Assembly passes the budget for the NEXT biennium beginning July 1 of this year. This is a situation that Republican State Auditor Mary Taylor yesterday called "unprecedented."

So "naturally," Provance identified Taylor's twice party in his report covering the situation, and failed to specifically name the party of any other statewide official -- or Strickland himself. Oh we can infer it, but inferences don't show up in search engine results. The words "Democrat" or "Democratic" are nowhere to be found.

Here are the key excerpts from the story (link corrected from original when posted):

So where did the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Sabrina Eaton go for opinions on what Michelle Malkin earlier today called "the massive mortgage entitlement campaign launched by President Barack Obama"?

Why, they went to "housing experts," of course.

But the people she quoted aren't builders, realtors, mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, or economists. Nor, based on the area's results, are they experts in helping individuals and families make smart housing decisions, or in helping communities build property values.

No-no-no. The people Eaton consulted as "housing experts" were an "organizing project executive director," the head of the "Columbus-based Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio," and a county treasurer. Not surprisingly, these alleged "experts" liked Obama's plan, but conditioned their praise with the requisite "there should be more" caveats  -- both in terms of money and coercion.

Here is some of Eaton's Wednesday report (bolds are mine, and reinforce points above):

It's on. 22 months remain.

The first suckerpunch of "Ohio Media v. Any and All Viable Republican or Conservative Politicians" comes from Joe "Hack" Hallett and Jonathan Riskind of the Columbus Dispatch ("Wall Street ties might hamstring GOP hopeful Kasich"). The recipient is former congressman and current Fox weekend show host John Kasich, who is frequently mentioned as a possible GOP challenger to Buckeye State Governor T-Shirt Ted Strickland.

It takes the pair 14 paragraphs to tell us that there's no story here -- that is, unless they want to accuse Kasich's spokesperson of lying:

The Cincinnati Enquirer's coverage (photo is from that coverage) of a local press conference and demonstration relating to the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Israel and Gaza has been atrocious. I suspect that the Enquirer is not unique in its egregious journalistic failures.

The two stories involved, both by Rebecca Goodman, are (original Cincinnati reference HT to Atlas Shrugs):

-- Dec. 31 -- "Area groups call for an end to Gaza conflict"
-- Jan. 1 -- "Ecumenical group calls for end to fighting in Gaza Strip"

Any more, you can almost work up a checklist on stories such as these, and expect to be able to check off the majority of, if not all, of the items on the list. The checklist follows the jump:

Two situations over the weekend illustrate that the Associated Press's habitual failure to identify the political party of Democrats in trouble is more than likely a conscious decision. This is despite the AP Stylebook's guidance (as of 2000, the latest free edition I can find; a PDF is here) that a reporter should "include party affiliation if readers need it for understanding or are likely to be curious about what it is."

In both of the instances I will cite, local papers decided that party affiliation was important enough to include. But AP reporters decided that they weren't, even though out-of-state readers are less likely to know the party affiliation of the politician(s) involved.

The situations involve ousted and disgraced former Attorney General Marc Dann in Ohio, and Chaka Fattah, a Philadelphia congressman. Both men are Democrats.

The Columbus Dispatch has done some impressive work exposing the unauthorized and arguably illegal database diving done by State of Ohio employees into the records of Joe the Plumber in October. The rest of Ohio's and the nation's media have been virtually asleep.

In a previous post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that Vanessa Niekamp, the state employee who blew the lid off the underhanded undertaking, was virtually unknown, while many other past government whistleblowers have been treated as media heroes.

A story in the Dispatch this morning that should be read in full (HT Michelle Malkin) about Ms. Niekamp's testimony before the Ohio House's Government and Elections Committee reveals just how imperiled she was.

While carrying out a personal order from a superior who was trying to cover his tracks, she was reminded that she was an "unclassified" employee. In plain English, she was threatened with her job if she didn't do what she was told (bolds are mine):

Here we go again.

It has been 19 months since Mona Charen and yours truly obliterated the legitimacy of the basic premise of the "Food Stamp Challenges" that began popping in various parts of the USA last year. The false premise is that the USDA's calculated benefit for recipients is all they have to buy food.

It has been over a year since Colorado couple Ari and Jennifer Armstrong proved they could live even on the artificially low "Challenge" amount (which at the time was $21 per person per week).

Nonetheless, Maggie Thurber at Thurber's Thoughts tells us that the bogus "Challenge" is back in Ohio's Lucas County, home of Toledo.

Maggie notes that this time the "Challengers" are throwing in a new wrinkle (second bold is mine):

It's very doubtful that the name "Vanessa Niekamp" rings a bell with very many readers here. That's because the media elites like some whistleblowers, and not others.

In other circumstances, someone like Ms. Niekamp would be a heroine. In the current circumstances, she's barely a footnote. In my opinion, it's because she was involved in exposing shenanigans conducted on behalf of the then-presidential candidate the media loves and adores that threatened to derail his march to victory.

If it weren't for Vanessa Niekamp, the public might not have learned of the duplicitous and likely extra-legal dives into State of Ohio databases by state employees determined to dig up dirt on Joe the Plumber. A subsequent investigation by the Ohio Inspector General (OIG; PDF is accessible at the first item at this link) determined that Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley and state employees at other agencies had engaged in "improper" records checks "without any legitimate business purpose."

WBNS-TV in Columbus followed up with Niekamp after the OIG released its report:

On Thursday’s Countdown show on MSNBC, New York Times columnist Frank Rich charged that it looks "morally bad" and "idiotic" that Republicans have not elected a black candidate to federal office in six years. The Republican party also seemed to remind Rich of South Africa’s racist Apartheid policy of the past: "The fact is, this isn`t South Africa 25 years ago, this is a major political party that is essentially all white. And the hierarchy of it is definitely white. There hasn`t been a new black Republican elected to federal office, I think, in six years. And so, what does that tell us about the party? And how does that look to voters? I think it looks like it`s the party of the last century. It looks bad. Not only is it morally bad, but politically. I think it`s idiotic because it`s against the whole demographics of this country and where they’re going."

Well, last week we discovered that saying Obama is a socialist is racist code. For quite a while we've been told that saying his middle name is racist. Saying he pals around with terrorists is racist. Not voting for him is racist. Wanna know what else is racist? Dressing as Obama for Halloween.... but only if you're a white kid. So says the Columbus Dispatch (Ohio), anyway.

This'll break the hearts of little Obamatons and their sycophantic parents all across the nation for this Halloween season, sadly enough. But, if you don't want to be considered a low-down, four-flushing racist, you little Obamites better not do it. Just say nO, kids. The Dispatch's Kathy Lynn Gray has saved the day, though. She's warned us ahead of time that Dressing like The One is racist as all get out.

On Thursday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC’s Megyn Kelly filled in viewers on the current voter fraud controversy in Ohio involving ACORN, and Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s refusal to comply with a federal court ruling in spite of clear evidence of fraudulent voter registrations. Kelly: "She's required by federal law to have her state database linked up to the DMV, and to the Social Security Administration, so that she's got two ways of checking people's registration to make sure they're legit. ... And she's required to keep a list of the discrepancies. She has done neither. She admitted she has turned off the link between the state database and the DMV. ... She admits all this stuff. The state of Ohio is embarrassed because the federal government now has to come in and order the state to run a clean election."

Kelly also noted the potential impact of voter fraud given Ohio’s history of close presidential elections: "George Bush won Ohio by less than 200,000 votes, both in 2000 and 2004. She's admitting, admitting that 200,000 out of the 660,000 new voters are potentially problematic. And she won't let people verify whether, in fact, there is a problem."

Below is a complete transcript of Thursday’s "Kelly File" segment from FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor:

It may not have been "huge" when CNBC's Joe Kernen said it but the dude has been on practically every news station by now.

Kernen told chief Washington correspondent John Harwood that the "Joe the plumber" story "would be huge" and even a "bombshell," in any other election year. Kernen said voters "don't care" because they are buying into Sen. Obama's assertion that the Bush tax policies have led to the financial crisis.

"Obviously not everyone out there knows how to connect the dots between the [financial crisis] and tax policy. For some reason the Bush tax policies are being cited by Obama as the reason that we're in this position right now, again and again and again," said "Squawk Box" co-host Kernen Oct. 16.

But Kernen didn't stop there:

This is a favorite meme of the left. In fact, apart from Ace's parody of the same, I've never seen a "lifelong Democrat" claim to be, for the first time ever (!) voting Republican in an election. Probably because it's lame and fools no one.

It certainly won't keep them from trying. Over and over and over again.

The latest example is  "lifelong Republican," Tony Dean. Courtesy the Buckeye Firearms Association,

A "lifelong Republican" that is "switching parties to head a Sportsmen for Obama group"? This is an interesting claim, given that Dean was mentioned by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader in 2003 as a possible Democratic candidate for Congress who endorsed Democrat Senator Tim Johnson for reelection just a year earlier.

Sometimes the qualities that make a strong candidate in one pool make them a weak candidate in another pool.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would hurt Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain as a running mate because of "vulnerability" stemming from his successful businesses and support for free trade, according to a reporter for The Washington Post.

"On the whole subject of trade deals and free trade agreements is that a vulnerability, a potential vulnerability on the side of Mitt Romney?" Andrea Mitchell asked Post reporter Chris Cillizza on the August 28 broadcast of "MSNBC Live".

"It absolutely is," said Cillizza, who writes "The Fix" blog at WashingtonPost.com. "And that's a calculation I think the McCain campaign has to make. Yes, Mitt Romney has great business bona fides. Built a business, he used that line many times in the primary: ‘I know why jobs come and I know why they go.'"

"The other side of that, however, is he worked for a company called Bingham Capital that occasionally engaged in leverage buyouts, that means shipping jobs overseas. That's not the kind of thing that's going to go over well in these rust belt states where McCain needs to perform well, most notably Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania," Cillizza said.

Here's another armed-citizen story that the liberal media tends to ignore from our friends at the Cam & Company show on NRANews.com. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that deli operator Anis Cherradi fended off two young robbers with a gun he keeps under the counter.

Cherradi was alone in his Beech Avenue store at 7:42 p.m. Tuesday when two robbers walked in. They appeared to be 18-22 years old. He said he'd never seen them before.

One pointed a revolver at him, walked around the counter and demanded money. The gunman tried to force the married father of three small children into a headlock, shoving the gun against his head. "Get down!" the robber ordered.

As Cherradi went to the floor, he said he reached for a gun he keeps under the counter, a loaded 9mm Smith & Wesson.

If there is a previous record for "Highest Level of Saturation Press Coverage with No Political Party Affiliation Named" (HT to e-mailer Jason), the Cleveland press corps almost broke it.

In looking over three publications' stories about today's massive and far-ranging police actions in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, I found only one reference to the Democratic Party affiliation of those involved. Cleveland's sole daily newspaper put up a half-dozen related blog entries and failed to name anyone's party in any of them.

First, though, from the always-reliable (in shielding troubled Dems' party affiliations) Associated Press, writer Joe Milicia named no party in eight paragraphs:

Press coverage of Barack Obama's Social Security proposal in Columbus, Ohio last week made many of the usual mistakes any time there's a story about the government's "third rail" program. But in this case it missed what would be a historic de-linkage of payments made into the system from benefits paid out.

First, here are the key paragraphs from the Cincinnati Enquirer's coverage of Obama's speech (bolds are mine):

Sen. Barack Obama promised senior citizens Friday that as president, he would protect Social Security benefits and provide universal health care.

To extend the life of Social Security, Obama proposed applying a payroll tax to annual incomes above $250,000, affecting the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans. The Democrat also proposed eliminating income tax for any retiree making less than $50,000.

..... Obama said it is unfair for middle-class earners to pay the Social Security tax "on every dime they make," while millionaires and billionaires pay it on only "a very small percentage of their income."

Also see the compare-and-contrast example in the final paragraph.

A city councilman in Lorain, Ohio, a city of about 75,000 west of Cleveland, was arrested during a prostitution sting on Friday.

Of the six stories I found covering the event (the Google News search is for May 22-26), only one referred to the political party of councilman Dennis Flores, who is a Democrat (scroll down to "Second Ward Council;" HT to an e-mailer).

The Cleveland Plain Dealer set the tone for ignoring Flores's party ID, with a Saturday Breaking Metro Blog entry and Sunday story, which presumably made the print edition. Each story notes that Flores "serves as captain of his block watch."

While two others who gave the story attention without providing a party identification for Flores could perhaps be excused because they only gave it five or six paragraphs (specifically, Cleveland's WEWS and WKYC.com), writer Scott Allyn at the Morning Journal, whose main office is in Lorain, clearly had to go out of his way to avoid naming Flores's party. In the process, he also failed to identify the party affiliation of the mayor and two other city council members:

Why does it seem that, when a Democratic politician's career is on the line, Old Media reporters find a way to make it look like it's only Republicans who want to push him or her out the door?

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who for a while was seen as the Buckeye State's version of New York's now-disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer, is fighting for his political life.

In a Friday press conference statement (a JPG transcript of statement, opening in a separate window, is here), Dann admitted to an extramarital affair with an unidentified employee and announced that he was discharging three of his closest advisers over formal complaints of sexual harassment. Storm clouds potentially loom over the fallout from this, plus other events and incidents too numerous to detail here, occurring on Dann's watch.

Dann declared Friday that he has no plans to resign.

By mid-Saturday, two of Ohio's major newspapers, and many of its smaller ones, had issued editorial calls for Dann's resignation. It was clear that many others would follow on Sunday -- and they did. Ohio's left-leaning blogs are also mostly in the Dann-must-go camp.

Yet here's how the Associated Press's John McCarthy played the Dann story in his Saturday mid-afternoon report:

Old Media business reporters have a definitionally-incorrect habit of labeling single industries or economic sectors as being "in recession," when the term, as defined here, can only describe national economies or the world economy. Two examples of this are New York Times reporter David Leonhardt's description of manufacturing as being in recession in February 2007 (laughably incorrect, in any event), and the Times's employment of the term "housing recession" 25 times since October 2006, as seen in this Times search (with the phrase in quotes).

But if I wanted to be consistent with this routine form of journalistic malpractice, I would characterize the newspaper business -- at least in terms of the top 25 in the industry's food chain -- not as being in recession, but instead as going through a deep, dark, painful, protracted depression.

Ohio's Old Media needs a collective medical intervention to battle Chronic Reporting Amnesia (CRA).

Ohio's Democratic Attorney General, who has been no stranger to controversy since his election in November 2006, is in major hot water over the conduct of two employees on his staff:

An attorney representing two women whose sexual harassment allegations have triggered a widening scandal at Attorney General Marc Dann’s office says his clients have abundant evidence of their claims.

It has to be tough advocating an ideology that requires seeking out things that are bad in American society.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman found one very heartbreaking story Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton had been using on the campaign and used it in the lede of his April 11 column.

Unfortunately for Krugman it wasn't quite accurate. Even worse, his own paper was one of the first media outlets to debunk the story.

"Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic," Krugman wrote. "Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn't see her again unless she paid $100 per visit - which she didn't have. Eventually, she sought care at a hospital 30 miles away. By then, however, it was too late. Both she and the baby died."

Here we go again.

A March 22 Columbus Dispatch report by Catherine Candisky on increased Food Stamp usage in Ohio repeats the tired "$1 per meal for food" canard:

"Food stamps provide only about $1 per person, per meal. Who in the world is buying groceries with that?" asked Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Bank.

On average, food stamps are now providing less than two weeks of groceries.

"There's the presumption that folks have the cash to make up the rest. Well, they don't" .....

Sigh. As noted time, and time, and time, and time again, the benefits (called "Maximum Allotments" by the government) for families with no other resources are higher (graphic link is to related page at the USDA web site):

You're all aware, I'm sure, of the several attacks against our fighting men and women perpetrated by city governments of late. The Berkeley City Council, who intended to try and kick Marine recruiting offices out of the city, and Toledo, where Mayor Finkbeiner refused to allow the Marines to exit a bus in his city when they arrived to start planned upon exercises, are all over the news. It is also well known that in Toledo, Ohio and Berkeley, California protesters for and against the Marines have been deployed to face each other and the news media have been there to chronicle it all. But, one paper has taken it upon itself to try and excuse the very people who put these ignorant politicians into office who caused these rows in the first place.

The Toledo Free Press published a recent article titled "Controversy over Marines rejection impacts city's development efforts", the main thrust of which is that people shouldn't blame the businesses of either Toledo or Berkeley for the actions of their politicians. But, after seeing all the whining about lost revenue by the business community in both cities and after seeing them plead with people not to blame them for what their politicians do, it left me wondering why shouldn't we hold voters accountable for what their politicians do?

On Saturday, Toledo-area blogger Maggie Thurber, yours truly (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog), and many others dealt with the now-national story of how Glass City Mayor Carty Finkbeiner had turned away Marine Corps Reservists who had been given prior clearance to conduct weekend urban warfare exercises in the city.

The Toledo Blade's Sunday and Monday coverage of the story clearly showed sympathy towards the still-unrepentant mayor, while taking a "what's the big deal?" attitude towards those who don't appreciate what he did.

Sunday's report by JC Reindl started its defense in its headlines ("Finkbeiner taking flak over Marines; Mayor defends his decision to cancel urban war games"; bolds are mine throughout), and continued into its text:

Is the Glass City becoming the Berkeley of the Midwest?

In today's Toledo Blade (HT Maggie Thurber; bolds are mine):

VACATE THE PREMISES
Mayor to Marines: Leave downtown
He says urban exercises scare people

A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave.

Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.

"The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people," said Brian Schwartz, the mayor's spokesman.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer apparently decided to do something wtih a story it was dragged into kicking and screaming last fall -- one that it seemed at the time to be wishing would go away.

Saturday, David Briggs, the paper's religion reporter, did something with a near non-story relating to previous events that he and his paper failed to do twice when it counted: He followed up, reporting on the difficulties a Cleveland mosque is experiencing in finding a new imam.

That contrasts starkly with how Briggs and the PD handled the story of the guy who was on the verge of becoming that mosque's imam last fall.