Come Home, Dennis Kucinich

It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. It's much mispronounced. Though easy to say "Coo-sin-itch."

We must talk about long shots.

Dennis can't seem to give up hope.

He has the right message for the nation. Maybe not for the Democratic Party at this time.

However, he's the wrong messenger for both.

The Iraqi war will be an issue no matter who runs for President. It's a given.

Aren't we all looking for a strong anti-war message? Can it come from someone who so many cannot take seriously? I don't think so.

His rhetorical onslaught simply may be distracting. We need some consensus. Dennis, always provocative, offers a dissonance.

Too easy to dismiss. Too easy to poke fun at.

He's a fighter though.

Yet his quick and quixotic entry into the 2008 Presidential race says that he has not thought this one through.

We also don't need another Cleveland joke. Neither does he.

It seems that's how most of the national news media assesses another Dennis run.

I may be wrong but I believe he's going to look silly - not courageous - chasing around after much better situated candidates. He's made for late night comic fodder, not that that has ever deterred him.

Maybe he still has the lingering high from the adulation given him by the national Left that doesn't really know him but admires him from afar.

There's much to like about Dennis. He's scrappy. Smart. Who doesn't love scrappy in this political world of mostly poll and consultant guided candidates? And we have a grim smart shortage.

I have observed Kucinich for a long time. He was "copy boy" when I was at The Plain Dealer'. He was "copy boy" when I was at the Cleveland office of The Wall Street Journal.

His presidential ambition isn't new to me. I first heard his craving to be the President almost 40 years ago when pursuing a story of young pols for the Journal. That makes it an obsession, I think.

His record as a legislator is much better than that of an administrator. As a young Cleveland mayor, he's been unfairly pigeonholed "boy mayor" forever among local reporters.

He's not a boy anymore.

Maybe he needs to show that he's a grown-up by being one of the best Congress reps we can have. The need is certainly there.

There are important issues that can be addressed in the Congress rather than pursuing another catch-the-brass-ring fantasy. This second run for the Democratic Presidential endorsement represents fancy.

Come home, Dennis. Deprived and depressed Northeast Ohio needs you.

WHEN DO WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT OUR HOME GROWN INSURGENCY?

There's a lot of talk of the insurgency in Iraq.

Don't we have, and haven't we had, an insurgency here, too?

Going back to Republican strategist Lee Atwater, mentor of Karl Rove, there has been an insurgency of the right wing of the Republican Party against America. Divide, divide, and divide and destroy our public sector is the plan.

It's a war against the government. The essence clearly stated in Grover Norquist's declaration that "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Norquist is a leader of the conservative (read: rightwing) movement and business and political ally of lobbyist, now jailbird Jack Abramoff, also part of this insurgency.

All this talk of non-partisanship now is just a bunch of bullshit.

"Can't we all get along?" Hell, no.

What Americans need to do is get rid of the treachery of "anything goes" to win political power. "Take no prisoners" has been the line of attack of the Republicans for decades now.

It started, I guess, with the Southern Strategy of the Republicans to deflect the civil rights movement.

I quote Atwater as he was quoted in a column by New York Times writer Bob Herbert:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say nigger -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting abstract now (that) you're talking about cutting taxes and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is (that) blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me, because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than, 'Nigger, nigger.'"

Any means, any time.

This Republican wedge issue strategy -- an insurgency against America's ideals -- went on to give the same treatment to gays, to women, particularly over abortion, to workers' rights, to welfare clients, only the poor ones, not the subsidized rich, to stain opponents, as in swift boating, a term now in our nation's vocabulary.

This is a plan for fear. You spread fear. Keep people at each other's throats. The same tactic used by the insurgents in Iraq. You don't have to kill as the Iraqi insurgency does.

In fact, killing would "backfire" - as Atwater's theme suggested, and Republicans know. The tactic here is just to kill truth, honest debate, and rational thought.

The American Insurgency rests upon a divide-and-conquer approach.

Americans are beginning to see and to sense this damaging insurgency on the part of the right wing. It is damaging to them, not just the scapegoats used by the perpetrators.

Voters in the recent election revealed they recognize something is badly out of sync. One hopes now that we are taking things into our own hands.

America has been damaged seriously at home but also abroad by this nut-wing revolt. Past time to turn it around.

TOLEDO BLADE LINKS NOE TO VOINOVICH

Haven't seen this story about Tom Noe's payment to a close associate of Sen. George Voinovich in The Plain Dealer.

The article appeared last week in The Toledo Blade.

It reports that $50,000 was paid to Laura Panichi, wife of Vincent Panichi, long-time personal and campaign accountant and friend of Voinovich. As usual, Voinovich had no comment.

The Toledo Blade story follows:

By BENJAMIN ALEXANDER-BLOCH
BLADE STAFF WRITER

Tom Noe gave about $50,000 to the wife of U.S. Sen. George Voinovich's longtime friend, personal accountant, and campaign treasurer, according to records from his criminal trial.

An 1998, when Mr. Voinovich was governor, Noe received the first $25 million to invest in rare coins from the state.

That same year, Laura and Vincent Panichi began donating to Mr. Voinovich's Senate campaign. They gave $12,000 to his campaigns through 2005, according to Federal Election Commission records.

"From their side of it, these payments from Noe were all legitimate, legal and proper," Donald C. Brey, Mr. Panichi's Columbus attorney, said yesterday.

Noe's personal and business records were released last week as part of the evidence in his trial for stealing millions the state invested in a $50 million rare-coin investment he created and managed for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

The trial ended with Noe's conviction on 29 counts and an 18-year prison sentence.

The court exhibits reveal that on Aug. 16, 2001, Noe wrote a $32,000 check to Ms. Panichi from Vintage Coins & Collectibles, his former coin shop in Monclova Township.

Prosecutors proved at trial that Noe laundered $1.3 million of the state's money through Vintage.

The evidence also shows from June, 2003, to December, 2004, a Naples, Fla., corporation - DLII, Inc. - received at least 7 $2,500 checks from the Vintage Coin account, each signed by Tim LaPointe, a former vice president of Vintage Coins and Collectibles who has recently pleaded guilty to three counts of tampering with records.

Ms. Panichi is listed as the officer and director of DLII, which was incorporated in 1993, according to the Florida Department of State. Victor Pascucci, Jr., the president of a Cleveland real estate company, is listed as the corporation's only registered agent.

Neither the Panichis nor Mr. Pascucci returned numerous calls for comment yesterday.

Mr. Brey, Mr. Panichi's lawyer, would not comment about DLII or what services Noe or Vintage received for the $17,500 he paid the company.

The lawyer said the Panichis "have fully explained these checks from Noe to the folks that are doing the investigations, but Vincent doesn't want to say anything to the press that might interfere in the investigation of other folks.

"Eventually the investigations are going to be done, and everything will become clear," he said.

John Weglian, chief of the Lucas County Prosecutor's Office's special units division, said the task force didn't look into these specific checks because it already had enough to convict Noe.

"We were aware of the existence of these checks, but we did not investigate them," he said. "What am I supposed to do, investigate every check I find?"

Chris Paulitz, Mr. Voinovich's press secretary, said the senator is not aware of the specific details of the exchange between Noe and Ms. Panichi and therefore could not comment on whether their relationship was ethical or appropriate. He said the senator had never heard of the corporation DLII.

Mr. Paulitz said Mr. Voinovich "didn't know about anything going on with Noe until he started reading about it in The Blade.

"There's no way a governor, if he's really doing his job, can know what's going on inside a bureaucracy like the BWC," he continued. "Can you expect a governor to know what some third or fourth-ranking guy was doing?"

In testimony from his 1993 divorce proceedings, Noe identified two politically connected clients who helped him along the way: Paul Mifsud and Vincent Panichi.

Mr. Mifsud was chief of staff for then-Gov. Voinovich. Noe said Mr. Panichi and Mr. Mifsud showed him around northeast Ohio and introduced him to other party chairmen who "control a lot of money."

Noe said of Mr. Panichi, who was then-Governor Voinovich's campaign treasurer: "He's gotten me a number of clients."

Mr. Voinovich's staff also helped pass a bill to add investment coins and bullion to the list of items exempt from Ohio's sales tax.

Senator Voinovich has avoided the fallout from the Noe scandal despite the accusations and convictions of some of his closest political allies in Columbus.

In 1998, the final year of Mr. Voinovich's tenure as governor, the bureau made a pact to invest with Noe, a Toledo-area Republican campaign contributor.

By then, Mr. Voinovich already had appointed Mr. Noe to the Bowling Green State University Board of Trustees and the Ohio Board of Regents.

On the eve of Mr. Voinovich's 1998 election to his first term in the Senate, Mr. Voinovich was accused of conspiring with his late brother, Paul, to launder campaign money in 1994. Paul Voinovich died in 2002.

The Ohio Elections Commission dismissed the complaints about eight months after the election. The investigation called into question the conduct of Mr. Panichi and Mr. Voinovich's brother, who owned The V Companies.

Mr. Panichi told the grand jury that then-Governor Voinovich approved a plan by his brother to launder $60,000 in campaign money.

Contact Benjamin Alexander-Bloch
at: babloch@theblade.com
or 419-724-6050.

From Cool Cleveland Contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATadelphia.net (:divend:)