OPINION
Obama
tests the
bounds
of lameduckery
Record-Courier
Tuesday
August 19, 2014
Page A4
EDITORIAL BOARD
Los Angeles Times (MCT)
DAVID E. DIX, Publisher
ROGER J. Di PAOLO, Editor
HEATHER CONDLEY RAINONE,
Managing Editor
CHAD MURPHY, News Editor
Serving Portage County since 1830
‘Livin’ the Plenty going on at Kent State
dream’
all part of
the Portage
ALONG THE
CountyWAY
Randolph
Fair
Today marks the opening of the 156th
Portage County-Randolph Fair ,and our
advice to readers is to take it all in and
enjoy it.
Thanks to steady and astute leadership, the fair each year seems bigger and
better than ever. Tonight and Wednesday evening, the ever-popular Demolition Derby is staged as
the major grandstand
event. Thursday evening the grandstand
features Extreme Bullriding and Barrel Racing, plus a concert by the Southbound
Band. Friday, when senior citizens and
veterans can attend free of charge, the
annual ERA Western Style Tractor and
Semi Truck Pulls occur.
Saturday is “Family Day” and more
Tractor and Truck Pulls. Sunday, the final day, the Rough Truck Competition
occurs at 3:30 in the afternoon.
As one tours the fairgrounds, a person
can see Junior Fair animals and open class
exhibitors that include cows, pigs, rabbits,
alpacas and competitive displays of woodworking, quilting, photography, painting,
and various vegetables. The skills of 4-H
members are on display and some of the
creations of the seamstresses and clothing designers are very impressive.
There’s chainsaw carving. There’s livestock auctioning. Area merchants exhibit
their wares. Politicians engage in meeting
and greeting. Besides all this free entertainment, there are the traditional carnival type rides, games, and dishes to eat.
All this, and the entry fee is only $5, with
children ages 6 to 11 entering for $1 and
children under the age of 6 getting in free
of charge. Grandstand events require an
additional charge of $5 to $8.
Bargains are rare these days, but the
Portage County-Randolph Fair continues to be one.
Having just purchased 76 adjacent
acres, the fairgrounds are expanding, a
recognition that fairgrounds have evolved
into near year-round entertainment centers.
Point yourself and your family toward
Randolph this week to see the 156th edition of the fair. There is something for everybody during the week, and each person
who attends will find an event or exhibit that appeals to one’s special interest.
This year’s theme is “Livin’ the Dream,”
perhaps a recognition to the bountiful
lives we Americans continue to enjoy.
Spend an afternoon or evening at the
Randolph Fairgrounds this week and you
will see numerous aspects of Americana
that collectively make living the dream
possible.
OUR VIEW
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With a new president, new trustees and
of course new students, Kent State University is poised to start an exciting new
chapter this year.
Not everything makes the headlines, but
that doesn’t mean KSU isn’t constantly
taking strides toward distinguishing itself.
A civil rights exhibit created by KSU
journalism and communications professors has won a national Award of Merit
from the American Association for State
and Local History.
The exhibit by Professor Ann Schierhorn and lecturer David LaBelle, both of
the Kent State School of Journalism and
Mass Communications, is called “They
Led the Way.”
It chronicles the stories of eight students who desegregated the public schools
in Tallahassee, Fla., in the 1960s. It premiered in September 2013 at the John G.
Riley Center/Museum of African American History and Culture in Tallahassee,
and a duplicate exhibit was shown January through March at The KSU School of
Journalism and Mass Communications.
Though it was the only Florida exhibit
to win an American Association for State
and Local History merit award, it is one of
two award winners associated with Kent
State. The other was an award for the May
4 Visitors Center exhibits.
The association will present the award
honoring Schierhorn, LaBelle and Riley
Museum Director Althemese Barnes on
Sept. 19 at its annual meeting in St. Paul,
Minn.
***
Kent State’s Wick Poetry Center is celebrating its 30th year on campus, and it
recently relocated from Satterfield Hall to
the renovated May Prentice House on the
Lester A. Lefton Esplanade.
But that’s not the biggest news.
The center just received a $33,472 grant
from the Howard Atwood Family Fund of
Akron Community Foundation to conduct outreach with Akron Public Schools.
The grant project, titled “Encouraging
New Voices,” is designed to increase literacy among students in grades three to 12.
From October 2014 to October 2015,
Wick Center members will hold writing
residencies in Akron schools, focusing on
creative writing and the Common Core.
Students will explore individuality and
community while improving reading skills.
Students will also participate in writing
workshops and field trips to the Wick Poetry Center, where they will learn in a stateof-the-art community classroom and will
visit the Poetry Park and the
Kent campus.
Officials say the
project will include about
10 to 15 Akron
teachers and
Dan Pompili
approximately
210 students.
This winter,
artists will start working with students in
the classroom, and next summer, the Wick
Center will host a workshop for teachers
featuring innovative methods of teaching
through creative writing exercises.
***
In February, The KSU Hotel and Conference Center was opened for virtual tours
through Google Maps, and now the university has ensured that prospective students
and guests can tour Kent State University without ever stepping foot on campus,
thanks to the new “Street View for University Campuses” feature on Google Maps.
Kent is the first university in Northeastern Ohio to add its campus to the
program.
A crew from Google Maps visited the
Kent campus for two days and took more
than 4,600 photos of areas on campus, including those that are not accessible by vehicle, to create a walking view on Google
Street View.
Officials said the crew walked the entire campus, as well as driving it in a specialized car designed to take 360-degree
photos. Both the walking and street views
feature campus walkways and streets,
stretching from Dix Stadium to the beginning of the Lefton Esplanade.
Kent also is the first university to take a
creative spin on the feature, when a contest was suggested even before the Google
crew arrived on the campus.
Certain points in the tour feature hidden
objects, and the contest rewards viewers
who find the items with gifts and prizes.
To view the Kent State campus on
Google Maps Street View, visit www.
google.com/maps/views/view/streetview/
university-campuses/kent-state-university.
Indictment only Texas politics
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
WASHINGTON — Being
a governor seems to be risky
business these days.
Take the former chief executive of Virginia, for instance. Robert McDonnell
and his former Redskins
cheerleader wife are in the
midst of a mildly sensational
Dan K.
trial over charges they sold Thomasson
their influence for $165,000
worth of favors from a wealthy (well somewhat) businessman.
And of course there is Illinois which
seems to have a penchant for ending the
political careers of the state’s top elected
officials by sending them to the slammer.
But there’s nothing like Texas when
it comes to treating what most consider
the normal business of politics as a major crime, especially when the prosecutor
is of the opposite party persuasion. That
appears to be what happened to Gov. Rick
Perry who is facing charges that vetoing
funds of the Austin County prosecutor’s
office constitutes a felony that could send
him away for more than 100 years if he were
convicted, which seems highly unlikely.
For the record, I’m not a huge fan of the
three-term Republican governor whose
ambitions are once again pointed toward
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But having covered local, state and national politics for
QUOTE
OF THE
DAY
nearly 60 years, I do know a roust when I
see one, even when the person or party trying to pull it off expresses wide-eyed innocence over such allegations.
The “who us?” disclaimers by the Democrat-controlled prosecutor’s office in Austin — a place that is no stranger to such
shenanigans — on the very face of them are
an insult to the intelligence of the lowest IQ
on the University of Texas football team.
To quickly refresh your memory (it
shouldn’t take long since the event just
happened) a grand jury indicted Perry on
criminal allegations that he misused his
office by vetoing the budget Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg
uses to investigate corruption. She had
been arrested for drunk driving and made
more than a little spectacle of herself in the
police station. She refused to quit and Perry exercised the veto of state funds. His reason seems plausible. She isn’t responsible
enough to administer the money.
To understand this mess one needs only
to realize that the DA’s office in Austin,
the state capitol, is a minority Democratic Party island in a conservative Republican sea that covers most of the state. The
office also is the scene of past similar escapades none of which have been successful. Former U.S. House Republican leader
Tom DeLay was indicted and convicted by
then prosecutor Ronnie Earl on charges of
misusing campaign funds. The conviction
was overturned.
Well done is quickly done.”
Caesar Augustus, Roman emperor
There are
two words
every president, including
Barack
Obama,
hates to
hear: “lame
Doyle
duck.”
McManus
He’s in
year six of his eight-year
run. His biggest accomplishments are all in the
past; his remaining proposals are stymied by
Congress. His popularity
is mired near 40 percent,
and voters tell pollsters
they see him as a leader “who can’t get things
done.”
No wonder he’s a little sensitive. The president has spent much of
the year fending off lameduckery, insisting that
he’s still hard at work, still
bent on getting things
done. “Let’s pass some
bills,” he called out, mockplaintively, to Congress
last month. “It’s lonely,
me just doing stuff.”
He announced that
2014 would be a Year
of Action — the White
House uses capital letters — whether Congress
joined in or not.
He hired John Podesta
as his counselor, the wily
strategist who helped Bill
Clinton end his presidency on a high note.
And he issued a progress report listing his top
achievements for the year
so far, including some that
seemed, well, a bit lame: a
White House Science Fair,
an Energy Datapalooza
and an order “directing
the timely completion of
the International Trade
Data System.” (The report didn’t make much
of a splash.)
But at least one part of
the president’s strategy is
working, at least when it
comes to riling up his Republican opponents: the
expansive use of executive orders.
On that count, to his
critics, Obama is a lame
duck on a rampage.
Obama hasn’t issued
more executive orders
than earlier presidents
— in fact, he’s issued fewer. But he’s been unusually blunt in saying that
he’ll use executive orders
to pursue his aims whenever Congress fails to act,
which a divided Congress
frequently does.
When Congress
wouldn’t raise the federal minimum wage,
Obama used an executive order to raise it for
federal contractors. When
Congress wouldn’t pass
legislation on climate
change, Obama ordered
the Environmental Protection Agency to impose
emission limits on power plants.
And with Congress
failing again and again
to pass an immigration
reform law, aides say
Obama plans to issue
an order later this year
to give more immigrants
without papers temporary permits to stay in
the country — and even,
potentially, permission
to work.
One likely action, aides
say, is a decision to expand the program that
currently gives permits
to so-called Dreamers —
immigrants who came
to the United States as
children — by extending similar treatment to
the Dreamers’ immediate families and undocumented parents of U.S.
citizens. This program —
technically, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — was itself created
by an Obama executive
order in 2012.