The Daily Dann, 5/9/08

1. I’m not so crazy after all re: changing the law to fit the situation:

Speaker of the House Jon Husted, along with Ohio Senate President Bill Harris said they will craft a law that will put the attorney general’s office under the microscope of the state inspector general.

The inspector general’s office holds state workers accountable, but can only investigate the governor and state agencies. Husted and Harris said they plan to amend that power.

The same article also says that Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann continues to insist that “…he has a chore in front of him to regain the trust of the state’s politicians and voters.” If he’d paid attention to the chores related to trust in the first place…

As for resignation requests from around the state and various constituencies, “…Dann made his point one last time: “(I intend to stay) until the end of my term.”

2. Staten Island Live takes the psychology stance in, “The politics of risk taking and leading a double life.” When I wrote about Spitzer, I mentioned the risk-taking element. But this article definitely hits the highlights for why people pursue what Dann pursued:

“Politicians aren’t like the rest of us,” Farley said. “Most Americans do not have these kinds of double lives.”

Politics attracts people with a thrill-seeking personality type, who are more likely to drink, smoke and have affairs that endanger their careers. They may even thrive on the danger of exposure: “They know it’s going to be very difficult to keep it secret, given the media scrutiny, and they still do it,” Farley said.

And, from the same playbook I’ve been writing, the concept of compartmentalizing:

“It’s the exception for a very strong powerful man to be monogamous across the many years of the marriage,” Vaughan said. “They don’t think, ‘Am I willing to take the risk of losing my position, of losing my family?’ … Men compartmentalize. They will legitimately say it had nothing to do with their wife and their love for them.”

3. More from Pho on impeachment scenarios. Highly recommended.

4. Governor Ted Strickland cautions that there’ll be no impeachment if there isn’t an impeachable offense. Well, yeah.

5. This page supposedly will refresh daily with pdfs of Marc Dann’s schedule. I looked at this past week’s schedule - pretty damn full of pressure if you ask me. He was in Cleveland most of the day today.

6. Two new problems arose today: questions related to no documentation for a trip he made last year and a former secretary for the AG’s former general services director Anthony Gutierrez has been fired allegedly for erasing documents of Gutierrez’s.

7. And another former AG staffer, Ric Alli, who lost his job just a couple of months into it 2007 says that Dann’s office runs by a double standard.

8. Psychohorsey does a nice job here outlining why a some good work does not compensate for alleged pervasive, chronic problems that seem to be taking shape in the AG’s office.

9. As a reminder, here’s a link to the EEO statement for the AG’s office. Does anyone else remember when Dann was just into the AG’s office in 1/07, and made a big deal about adding protections for gender identity and sexual orientation to the employment discriminations that would be prohibited? And then what happens - hostile workplace environment.

Do not misread what I’m saying: all these protections should be in the law. But what a mockery of that law we’re seeing: the protection is in there, but if the people who are in charge of enforcing that law, of making sure that there’s an environment that shows respect for the protections and the protected classes, don’t do any of that, having the law really doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, does it?

10. I think I read somewhere today that this Marc Dann Resign website is from the Ohio Republican Party - but do not quote me on that - I’m not sure.

What is the EEO timeline? No one has written about that lately…

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:33 pm May 9th, 2008 in Social Issues, Gender, Marc Dann, Civil Rights, Scandal, Ohio, Women, Government, Politics

Comments

8 Responses to “The Daily Dann, 5/9/08”

1 oengus on May 10th, 2008 12:44 am

I would like to see as either a State Constitutional amendment or revision to the ORC to include the right to recall of State elected officials. We as the citizens should have the right to remove politicians that we unanimously disapprove of through petition and a replace them with recall elections.

Having one political body policing another is prone to corruption.
2 Marwood on May 10th, 2008 9:04 am

A recall is possible, but requires over 600,000 signatures. See http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/NEWS01/805060341/1056/COL02.

So it’s a pretty high hurdle.
3 Joe Ritchey on May 10th, 2008 10:49 am

“Having one political body policing another is prone to corruption.” Yes enabling the morals police to be succesful in witch hunts.
4 Oengus on May 10th, 2008 10:14 pm

Who should we believe, I have seen print that is not accurate before, paper never refuses ink.
Q.: Could an Ohio governor be removed through a recall election?
A.: No. Neither the Ohio constitution nor the Ohio Revised Code (ORC), Ohio’s collection of written laws, provide for recall elections for statewide offices. For this reason, Ohio voters cannot use recall to remove a governor.
http://www.ohiobar.org/pub/lycu/index.asp?articleid=331
From the Ohio Bar Association.
Is the enquirer incorrect; a political recall in Ohio is limited to municipal corporations.

http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/705.92

If there was the possibility then it would take as many signatures as the law defined, currently it is 15% of the registered voters. Which means we would have to do more than talk about getting rid of a politician?

I would sign a petition to have Marc Dann recalled; with the amount of coverage this has received, it should not be difficult to get signatures.
5 Marwood on May 11th, 2008 6:46 am

I stand corrected. (I trust that the OSBA would get this point right.) Shoulda done my own research. Much appreciated. Well, then, a constitutional amendment would be appropriate.
6 Jill Miller Zimon on May 11th, 2008 8:08 pm

I don’t have a problem with recalls being difficult, likewise, I don’t have a problem with impeachment also being rare.

What concerns me enormously is the gap between what we criminalize in the law and what is wrong and but not illegal. Being able to say techinicall that Dann has done nothing that’s impeachable means almost, almost but not quite nothing to me because we can see the devastation that his behavior is causing.

I’m going to stop myself there. lol
7 Marwood on May 11th, 2008 8:56 pm

I agree. The AG is supposed to be far above the “illegal” threshold, and above even the “appearance of impropriety” threshold, to which judges are subject. I don’t think there’s much dispute that there has been the appearance of impropriety at the AG’s office. He has no credibility, and that means a lot.
8 Jill Miller Zimon on May 11th, 2008 10:42 pm

Marwood, I agree - and I DO understand about not wanting to make the threshold so low that people can’t err. But there is just no way that this isn’t beyond “err.”