Business news worth blogging:

• Taxing information: Forbes has a great graphic on worldwide taxes (surprising, at least to me, the link appears not to require registration). The US tax burden is among the lowest. France’s is the highest, and it’s one of the few countries that taxes wealth.And whose economy is growing faster?
• Not Big Brother, Big Mom and Dad: Further proof that any time you let someone collect data, someone will figure out how to use it to intrude:
  

  MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — As Garin Hughes picks through his school-lunch burrito and unidentifiable apple-pear dessert, he has a secret. Hidden underneath the eighth-grader’s right leg is a chocolate cookie in shrink-wrapped plastic. That’s for dessert.

  In the past, his parents had no clue when he bought a treat at school. Now, thanks to a new school-lunch monitoring system, they can check over the Internet and learn about that secret cookie.

  Health officials hope it will increase parents’ involvement in what their kids eat at school. It’s a concern because federal health data shows that up to 30% of U.S. children are either overweight or obese.

  ….Three school districts in the Atlanta area last week became the first in the country to offer the parental-monitoring option of an electronic lunch payment system called Mealpay.com, created by Horizon Software International of Loganville, Ga.

  For two years, the payment system, used by 1,000 school districts in 21 states, has allowed parents to electronically prepay for student lunches. Students type in their identification number before the cafeteria cashier rings up each day’s lunch bill. The bill then is deducted from the student’s account.

  The system was initially designed as a convenient way to make sure children bought lunch without worrying that lunch money would get lost, spent on other things or stolen.

  However, these days parents increasingly are interested in what their kids eat away from home. It was requests from concerned parents that prompted Horizon Software to develop the online meal-monitoring option.

  Under the system, parents can see all of a student’s lunch purchases. Even those paid in nickels and dimes — instead of the prepaid lunch account — are recorded in the system, said Tina Bennett, program director.

• Give The South (free) Credit (information): Effective yesterday, folks in the following states representing most of The South can get free credit reports: AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, OK, SC, TN, and TX.The contact info is:
  

  Online: www.annualcreditreport.com
  Phone: 877-322-8228
  Mail: Annual Credit Report Request Service
  P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281

  Credit reports are free. Credit scores are not.

  A March BizzyBlog post suggested that because of the possibility of online cryptographic hijacking, requesting your information by phone or snail mail would be safer.

In a sign that the local media is finally warming up to the 2nd District race beyond reading campaign press releases (HT: Ohio 2nd Blog), Cincinnati’s Channel 5 has reported on the impropriety and illegality of the McEwen campaign’s frequent reference to him as “congressman” (not “former congressman”).

For examples:

• See the TV report video at the Channel 5 link.
• Listen to the two radio ads and the single TV ad posted on the McEwen Campaign’s home page (about 1/3 of the way down, on the right).

I noted this a week ago, but chose to try to research the issue from an etiquette standpoint, and still lack an answer. Channel 5 went to Ohio election law and scooped BizzyBlog (grrr), but they didn’t give their readers a link to that law (they need a blogger on staff):

McEwen hasn’t been a congressman for 12 years, but some wonder if a person is once a congressman, is he always a congressman? News 5 wanted to know. According to officials at the Ohio Elections Commission, the law says no candidate:

“Shall knowingly and with intent to affect the outcome of a campaign … use the title of an office not currently held by a candidate in a manner that implies that the candidate does currently hold the office.”

While no one has filed a complaint, Burke said there are rules for a reason, Roy reported.

“It ought to be a level playing field. That’s what these rules are intended to establish. Giving the voters a chance to fairly evaluate each candidate,” Burke said.

Now why, in light of everything else that has occurred and has been revealed during the campaign so far, would anyone be surprised that Bob McEwen is playing deceptive games with his title?

“Burke” above is Tim Burke, Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman.

I guess no other Republican candidate wanted to go on the record about this because of The GOP’s 11th commandment (”Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”). Guys and gals–If you’re interested in your party’s long-term viability and the short-term results of this election, I suggest a 12th commandment: “Thou shalt suspend The 11th Commandment when your fellow Republican commits illegal acts in an attempt to gain electoral advantage.”

Previously, I have criticized Paul Weyrich’s endorsement of Bob McEwen here in detail and here for his (Weyrich’s) inconsistency on term limits.

There is a larger topic here, and that is the propriety of such endorsements in a race of this nature. There is a place for outsider endorsements in politics, but this race isn’t it, and I’ll explain why.

Outsider endorsements can pass the smell test in two situations:

• The first is if there are only a few candidates involved, and there is a clear philosophical divide between those few candidates. The outsider can claim that they know the person they are endorsing and that the endorsee’s positions on the issues are, in his/her opinion, more correct than that of the other candidates. A credible endorsement by an outsider who knows only one candidate cannot be made if there is a very large field, or if the few candidates’ political positions are very similar.
• Alternatively, the endorser could personally know all of the few candidates running and make their endorsement based on a combination of that knowledge and issue positions (though the next dinner party with those not endorsed would probably be a little chilly).

The outsider endorsements in this race can’t even pass the stench test, let alone either of the above smell tests.

Let’s take it on faith (pun intended) that the out-of-towners listed here (James Dobson, Jack Kemp, Paul Weyrich, Ed Meese, Tony Perkins, and Don Wildmon) all know Bob McEwen very well, think very highly of him, and believe he would make a good, perhaps even great, congressman.

That’s not enough. To conscientiously endorse McEwen in a given race, they have to satisfy themselves that he will be a better congressman than any of the other available alternatives. And they can’t.

For the endorsements of the above gentlemen to be credible in the GOP special election primary coming up on June 14th, the outsiders would need to somehow conclude that McEwen will be better than (in alpha order) Steve Austin, Tom Bemmes, Tom Brinkman, Pat Dewine, Peter Fossett, Eric Minamyer, Douglas Mink, Jeff Morgan, Jean Schmidt, and David Smith. The fact is that at least six of the other candidates have political positions and (where discernible) voting records close to McEwen’s, and on one or two issues a couple of these candidates are further to McEwen’s right, and perhaps more in agreement with the outside endorsers’ positions. To break the ties and near-ties, these gentlemen would therefore have to know each of these candidates personally. No reasonable 2nd District voter can possibly think that McEwen’s endorsers know the other candidates well enough to make an informed judgment about their fitness compared to Bob McEwen.

Since these outsiders are at least by inference endorsing McEwen in the special election on August 2, they need to satisfy themselves that McEwen will be better than every candidate on the Democrat side too. They can defend not endorsing a couple of candidates who don’t agree with them on life and other issues, but that still leaves the possibility that if they bothered to look, they might conclude that Paul Hackett, Charles Sanders, or Jeffrey Sinnard would be better congressmen than McEwen. It is simply not a principled position to automatically ignore all Democrats in the race.

You may say “Wait a minute. 2nd District voters have the same problems in a field so big.” Well, yes, and no. Yes, in that they may never have heard of some of the candidates. But no, because if you live here, follow news and politics, and haven’t heard of them, you can conclude that a candidate you haven’t heard of hasn’t done anything worth noting, even if their positions look good on paper. If you don’t live here, this logic won’t work; you will not have heard of many of the candidates simply because you haven’t been here. The unknown candidates also have a responsibility to figure out how to make themselves known to Second District voters between now and June 14th; that’s why we have campaigns. The unknowns, even if they do a good job of becoming visible, and viable, during the campaign, have no such opportunity to make themselves known to the outsiders, and frankly have no responsibility to do so.

In sum, Bob McEwen’s outsider endorsements have no credibility, and should be, indeed must be, totally, completely, and utterly disregarded.

No matter how well-intended the above gentlemen think they are, the fact is that by pretending to know that which they cannot possibly know, they are corrupting the electoral process in the Second District.

I would go further and contend that a candidate who knows full well the obvious handicaps of these outsider endorsements has no business accepting them in the first place. By wrapping himself around these outsiders, Bob McEwen has given Second District voters all the justification they will ever need to ignore him in the voting booth.
_________

UPDATE: Blogger WallerStreet notes:

To clarify things, I’m certainly not anti-McEwen, but I am strongly against electing candidates for superficial and flimsy reasons. To cast a ballot based on who McEwen’s friends are would definately (sic) fit into that category.

….I find it most interesting that Jana Widmeyer is calling Schmidt “the leader who epitomizes decency, honesty and integrity,” especially since she used to call Bob McEwen “boss.” (Aside from being a former aide to McEwen, Widmeyer also worked for Mike Dewine and now serves as the Chairman of the Ohio Right To Life PAC.)

Widmeyer’s non-endorsement is more interesting than her endorsement.

The Ohio 2nd blog reports that The Cincinnati Right to Life Political Action Committee (CRTL-PAC) has endorsed three candidates in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District Primary: Tom Brinkman, Bob McEwen, and Jean Schmidt.

I have looked at the candidates’ answers to the questions on the PAC’s survey. The following candidates answered “Yes” to all seven questions, which would clearly earn each of them a description (by CRTL-PAC’s definintion) as prolife:
- Steve Austin (R)
- Tom Bemmes (R)
- Brinkman (R)
- Pat DeWine (R)
- McEwen (R)
- Eric Minamyer (R)
- Doug Mink (R)
- Jeff Morgan (R)
- Charles W. Sanders (D)
- Schmidt (R)
- Jeff Sinnard (D)
- David Smith (R)

Some candidates supplemented their answers, but none of those listed above qualified their straight “yes” answers in any way.

CRTL-PAC has not explained why they endorsed some candidates and not others. CRTL-PAC owes the people of this district an explanation.

Perhaps there’s a difference in actual voting records. It could be that CRTL-PAC doesn’t believe a Democrat who says he is prolife, no matter how strongly. Maybe it’s all about personal pique. Possibly CRTL-PAC evaluated primary and/or special-election electability. Someone may have a grudge against anyone who didn’t support George W. Bush in the 2000 primaries (scroll about halfway down), or in the 2000 and 2004 general elections.

The point is, we don’t know. And until we see or hear an on-the-record explanation, these so-called “endorsements” aren’t worth the bandwidth they are using.

Since when does the prolife movement get to play favorites among candidates of demonstrably equal conviction without justfication?
____________

UPDATE, June 2, 2:30 PM: This Cincinnati Enquirer article contains the following (about 75% through the article):

Fifteen PAC members studied the surveys and voted on the endorsements, based on the responses and “their own personal knowledge” of the candidates.

Hmmm. That means they didn’t consider voting records? Electability? What “personal knowledge” factors were considered? Was DeWine excluded on “personal knowledge” of his divorce, etc.? This is altogether very unsatisfying. The fact remains that CRTL-PAC has NOT explained any of its reasoning on its own web site, and should. Even BizzyBlog can’t be expected to catch every word of every local article on the race.