From the Intelligencer

Oversight of the elections process is more penetrating and relentless than ever before. A candidate using the public office he already holds for some nefarious plot to win election to another post would be spotted quickly — and would be more likely to find himself in court facing a judge than in the winner’s circle.

That’s why demands by some Ohio Democrats for Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to, in effect, step down from his post are ridiculous.

Blackwell, a Republican who is the state’s chief elections officer, is running for governor against U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio. Some Democrat leaders in Ohio have suggested that Blackwell should not supervise an election in which he is a candidate for governor. “The person who oversees the rules cannot in fundamental fairness also be the judge of the game,” commented Strickland’s running mate, Lee Fisher.

From WTOL.com

State Auditor Betty Montgomery says she feels very blessed. Her brush with a nerve disorder came and went quickly, sparing her the lingering effects of a disease that can hit more severely.

In the midst of her campaign for attorney general, Montgomery was stricken last month with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, whose symptoms include a tingling sensation in the limbs and paralysis.

In extreme cases, the disorder is life-threatening, though federal health experts say most patients recover from even the worst cases.

In this case, not my advice but that of candidate for state auditor Democrat Rep. Barbara Sykes.

From The Columbus Dispatch:

With more than four months still to go before the November election, a third Democratic Ohio House candidate has found himself in trouble with the law.

Vernon Sykes of Akron, a former state legislator trying to reclaim a seat he left because of term limits in 2000, was charged with drunken-driving early Sunday morning after he was stopped at a State Highway Patrol checkpoint.

Sykes admitted to drinking a couple glasses of wine at a political fundraiser, according to the Associated Press. He did an eye and walk test, before his wife, state Rep. Barbara Sykes, a Democratic candidate for state auditor, advised him not to submit to a breath test.

Since even Democrat Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick has refused the test and a Virginia judge has ruled them unconstitutional, I suppose that we should follow the leaders, lawyers and lawmakers who advise (some by their actions) the refusal of a breathalyzer test.

I also have constitutional questions and ask them here and here.

BizzyBlog blames the new Commercial Activities Tax:

Here’s one theory:

• Indiana eliminated its gross receipts tax on businesses a few years ago.
• Ohio just established and is the process of fully phasing in a Commercial Activities Tax (CAT), which is in essence a gross receipts tax.
• If it had located the new plant in Ohio, shipments from the Honda plant to dealers would be CAT-taxable sales. The tax would have to be paid whether the plant or the company were profitable.
• Indiana does have a corporate income tax (which Ohio is phasing out), but it would only have to be paid if the plant is making money.
• Honda is probably already unhappy that shipments of cars from its existing Ohio plants to dealers are CAT-taxable, and didn’t want to add any more to what they will have to pay in the coming years on Ohio shipments.

Advantage: Indiana.

Message to Bob Tax: You screwed up again, thanks!

Message to Ken Blackwell: Rechange your mind and eliminate this job killer.

From an email (I'm STILL laughing!)

From The Cleveland Plain Dealer (September 20, 1994):

"Gloria Steinem, who has devoted her life to advancing the cause of equal rights for women, commonly supports female candidates over male rivals in election campaigns. But not in the Ohio attorney general race.

Steinem was in Cleveland yesterday as the keynote speaker at a $65-per-person fund-raiser for Ohio Attorney General Lee Fisher, a Democrat, who is running for re-election against State Sen. Betty Montgomery, R-2 of Perrysburg.

About 400 people, almost all of them women, listened as Steinem praised Fisher's record on rights for women. The well-known feminist at one point referred to Fisher as an "honorary woman."..."

America is about to revisit one of the most turbulent decades in its history, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told a religious conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. "We're about to enter the '60s again," Dean said...

Later in his speech Tuesday, Dean appeared to backtrack. "I'm not asking to go back to the '60s; we made some mistakes in the '60s," he said. "If you look at how we did public housing, we essentially created ghettoes for poor people" instead of using today's method of mixed-income housing.

Another mistake Democrats made in the '60s, Dean acknowledged, was that "we did give things away for free, and that's a huge mistake because that does create a culture of dependence, and that's not good for anybody, either," he noted, a reference to the Great Society welfare programs created by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s.