Note: This post was carried to the top for the rest of Friday in the name of ruthless, profit-seeking, free-enterprise capitalism.

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Blogads has at last placed an ad (you can also click here to go the vendor’s site; UPDATE — Oh, and a belated thanks to Blogads!) in one of their allotted spaces.

Obviously, the more clicks BizzyBlog advertisers get, the more likely they and others will be to place future ads.

So ….. if a Valentine’s basket is on the agenda for your dearest and you want to avoid braving the elements and the mall madness to get one, click on the link. Note that they say to allow 2-5 business days for standard delivery. Depending where you are in the continental US, some of you should go there and order quickly to stay standard, while others will need to get there ASAP before the delivery fees get more non-standard.

SPECIAL UPDATE, 2PM: Oh, you won’t believe this (yeah, you will). The Strickland campaign site was taken down within an hour after this original post (home page is here so readers can verify). Coincidence?

Dearest Team Ted: The Turnaround Ohio docs readers of this post need to review so they can see for themselves what your guy promised vs. what your guy is delivering are here (Turnaround Ohio) and here (Learning for Life). They are, of course, preserved for fair use and discussion purposes only. Enjoy.

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This has to rank as one of the biggest Emily Litella “never minds” in state government history — in any state.

Ohioans who actually believed during the 2006 gubernatorial campaign that Ted Strickland might be proactively involved in solving the “school funding problem” have to be astounded at the governor’s latest statement on the subject.

Simply breathtaking (both the Gov’s position and the Dispatch’s cover-the-Gov’s-butt headline; HT RAB):

School-funding fix need not be rushed, Strickland contends

Although committed to fixing what he sees as an unconstitutional school-funding system in Ohio, Gov. Ted Strickland said yesterday that it’s unreasonable to expect him to do it in his first budget, due next month.

In an interview, Strickland responded to suggestions made this week by House Speaker Jon A. Husted that the new governor would include his fix for school funding in the upcoming two-year budget.

“I think it may be a little disingenuous for anyone, including the speaker, to assume that less than a month after I assumed this office that I’m going to have a solution to this problem when it has plagued Ohio for more than 10 years,” Strickland said.

Holy moly. It’s as if Team Strickland didn’t devote a single brain wave to the issue of school funding during the entire gubernatorial campaign, the two-month post-victory period, or even the governor’s first few weeks in office.

With all due respect (rapidly approaching “very little”) what in the world ever happened to “Turnaround Ohio?”

Specifically (from the campaign web site; original was taken down within one hour of the appearance of this post; backup doc is here for fair use and discussion purposes if needed in the future now that it’s needed):

Turnaround Ohio: the Strickland/Fisher plan to create and keep jobs in Ohio by investing in Ohio’s strengths, such as energy production and entrepreneurship, while bringing us the jobs of the future by making sure that we have the most educated workforce possible.

In light of what the Governor has just said, why shouldn’t we think that Turnaround Ohio was a campaign slogan and not a thought-out “plan” that he intended to act on?

Here is info from the campaign’s “Learning for Life page” (original was taken down within one hour of the appearance of this post; backup doc is here):

To turnaround Ohio and give all Ohioans and their families an opportunity to better themselves, we must sharply increase the percentage of Ohioans who go on to complete college, certification or other training and make sure that high-quality jobs are awaiting them when they do so. We must change our entire attitude about the importance of lifelong learning. Ohioans must be able to access a fluid, continuous learning system – one that provides a seamless progression from early childhood through higher education and on, with each step in the progression equal in value. We must set high goals, raise aspirations and expectations and open the doors for every Ohioan to the learning environments that will challenge and prepare our next generation.

….. but not in this two-year budget? Haven’t those claiming inadequate funding for all these years been telling us that these wonderful things can’t be done until the alleged “funding problem” is fixed?

Here is coverage of one of my personal pet peeves, because it is a program with so much potential to save parents of college kids a ton of money:

6. Give high school students an opportunity to get a jump on college and other forms of postsecondary education. The final two years of high school are an important intersection between P-12 education and either postsecondary education or the world of work. Yet, for too many of our students – both those who are achieving at high levels and those who are struggling to find the relevance of going to school – these years are filled with detours and barriers that make the transition from high school to the rest of life a challenging if not debilitating experience.

I guess, among many other items, that can wait too. It would appear now that candidate Strickland, who campaigned on a goal of “Doubling Participation in (already existing) Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEOP, where high-school juniors and seniors attend college courses for college credit) is Governor Strickland, we won’t see anything done to expand PSEOP for two more academic years.

And get this …..

Turnaround Ohio specifically said what the new governor would do about school funding (didn’t Ted think anyone would scroll down that far after the election? Better question: Why didn’t Dispatch reporter Mark Niquette do this and hold the Governor’s feet to the fire?):

Ensure stable, secure funding for education.

For many years, Ohio has experienced an education funding crisis, both in K-12 education and in continued decline of state support for post-secondary education. A Strickland/Fisher Administration will bring all parties together to craft a new method of funding schools that is consistent with the demands of the Ohio Constitution. That’s what law-abiding governors and law-abiding states do. They accept their moral, ethical and public responsibility to do so to prepare our children for prosperous, successful lives in an ever-changing world.

It would appear that Governor Strickland is not exactly living up to candidate Strickland’s standards.

After going through “principles” of funding, Strickland/Fisher even got specific:

Funding for 1st Year: (note: NOT the third year — Ed.)

Below is the total we plan to invest in these proposals. We believe we can provide the $247.75 million in GRF (General Revenue — Ed.) funds from cost savings garnered from efficiencies gained elsewhere in state government, such as Medicaid. The additional $108 million we invest in the Knowledge Bank for low-income families can come from TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — Ed).
Investment in Knowledge Bank (for first year only—in subsequent years the cost decreases): $236 million from GRF and $108 million from TANF
Investment in Local College Access initiatives: $4.25 million
Investment in Cost of Early College High Schools: $1.5 million
Investment in Post Secondary Enrollment Options: $5 million
Investments in incentives to higher institutions to train teachers for hard-to-staff subjects and schools: $1 million

Total GRF: $247.75 million
Total TANF: $108 million

Geez, I didn’t even get to talk about what the “Knowledge Bank accounts” built into the funding “plan” above are. But based on Ted Strickland’s “never mind,” exactly why should anyone care?

Now it looks like the tax-and-spend addicts discussed at this post are the only ones with a plan. Maybe that’s what Governor Strickland REALLY wants.

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UPDATE, Feb. 11: Thespis Journal wonders why the Ohio Education Association has thus far been speechless. Good question — they had all of Friday to react. I’m afraid the answer is that they have endorsed the wallet-emptying, economy-killing School Funding Constitutional Amendment, so in their opinion anything Ted says is irrelevant.

In fact, there’s a February 8 update at OEA’s web site that is enough to make one “question the timing” of Governor Strickland’s abdication (the Dispatch link above is dated Feb. 8, which I believe means the Feb. 9 print edition):

A consortium of 12 statewide education groups dedicated to better education and fairer taxes for Ohioans today thanked the state Ballot Board for its ruling to keep intact Getting It Right for Ohio’s Future, a proposed constitutional amendment to implement a new school funding model. The amendment will now be returned to Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann for certification. Click here for full story or click here http://www.rightforohio.org for Right for Ohio’s website.

Just a hunch — I personally think that the Governor is in reality okey-dokey with the ballot initiative, and will come out in support of it once it gets the required signatures (and it probably will). Like I just said: “Maybe that’s what Governor Strickland REALLY wants.”

What else is one to think about this….. or this?

Actually, Lindgren was just warming up over at Volokh (HT NixGuy in an e-mail), focusing only on 1967-1972 in his Thursday morning post.

The quote in my post’s title is directly from this Jerry Lembcke article in September of 2003. Note that “all” is implied, and that Lembcke attaches no qualifiers such as “upon returning from Vietnam.”

Lembcke also wrote this in April of 2005:

I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.

Jim Lindgren’s bottom line:

Contrary to Lembcke’s claims, I quite easily found many accounts published in the 1967-1972 period claiming spitting on servicemen.

Did he ever. Go there.

I’ll focus on just one of those published accounts referred to by Lindgren, because I speculated on the following a few days ago at this prior post:

I suspect that Lembcke’s search would not have included op-ed columnists. It would be interesting to see if Cal Thomas, Pat Buchanan, Bill Buckley, James Reston, Jack Anderson, or some of the other leading pundits at the time ever came across a soldier who had been spat on. There were also many more local op-ed columnists at the time who were likely outside the scope of Lembcke’s search.

I named those gentlemen because they were among the syndicated columnists used by my hometown newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, at the time, and I had a vague memory that at least one of them had reported on a spitting incident as an eyewitness. Proving that the Alzheimer’s hasn’t totally set in yet, it turns out that The New York Times’ James Reston did just that, as Lindgren notes (here’s a ProQuest database URL for those who have library card access):

Among the journalists who gave first-hand accounts of spitting on soldiers was James Reston, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Spitting was one of the actions tame enough for Reston to describe in his New York Times front page story covering the October 21-22, 1967 Washington anti-war demonstrations: “It is difficult to report publicly the ugly and vulgar provocation of many of the militants. They spat on some of the soldiers in the front line at the Pentagon and goaded them with the most vicious personal slander. Many of the signs carried by a small number of militants . . . are too obscene to print.”

For the skeptics, here’s a pic of the actual newspaper copy of part of Lindgren’s quote:

Here’s Lindgren’s pile-on:

Indeed, one might say that people at the time were almost obsessed with spitting: in just a day of searching, I found dozens of stories about spitting on flags, spitting on police, spitting on the military, and spitting on protesters. Responsible anti-war activists, such as Allard Lowenstein implored students who opposed the war to stop all the spitting (May 14, 1969 WAPO).

Lindgren promises that there will be “….. More Blockbuster Revelations to Come on Some of Jerry Lembcke’s Other Arguments (in a few days).”

Lembcke, at his September 2003 article’s last paragraph, not only repeats the bogus claim made earlier in the article, but also gives away the dark underbelly of his agenda (bold is mine):

The truth is that nobody spat on Vietnam veterans and nobody is spitting on the soldiers today. Attempts to silence opponents of the war with those figments of hostility are dishonest and should, themselves, be banished from our discourse.

God help us if people like Jerry Lembcke ever get any real power.

Meanwhile back at Holy Cross, I would hope that current students, their parents (shelling out $32,280 per year for tuition alone), as well as the rest of the college community in Worcester, Massachusetts, are at least a little interested in maintaining that Jesuit institution’s reputation for academic integrity. If so, they should consider “banishing” an historical revisionist and inveterate liar (or, conceivably, the worst professorial historical researcher on earth) from their faculty. I would think that some prospective students and THEIR parents might be watching.

I would also hope that the Greater Cincinnati-area dupes (here and here) who got taken in by Lembcke recognize the inescapable corner they’ve been painted into. They need to get their “I was wrong; I am sorry” statements out, and in a big hurry. Nobody can say I didn’t warn them.

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UPDATE: Also note how Lembcke has become more strident over the years. At the 1999 Holy Cross Magazine article I cited at a previous post, he was a bit more low key:

My search for evidence turned up a couple of claims which, if interpreted generously, could have been construed to suggest that veterans or servicemen in uniform may have been spat on. But I also found research done by other scholars that showed quite convincingly that acts of hostility against veterans by protesters were almost nonexistent.

And while I’m at it, this Lembcke claim at that same article about the relationship between the antiwar movement and Nam vets is laughable, and pitiful: “The historical record shows that there was widespread solidarity between the anti-war movement and veterans.” Oh puh-leeze — Only those vets who came back and stridently opposed the war were embraced by the antiwar movement; the rest were generally reviled.

UPDATE 2: For entertainment, check out how some of the holdouts are moving the goalposts in the comments at Lindgren’s Volokh post. Now that there have been shown to be plenty of contemporaneous media eyewitness accounts (with possibly more to come in Lindgren’s next post or posts), only police reports and court cases will suffice — never mind that a liberal Pulitzer winner like James Reston (or, perhaps, Times reporters who relayed the incidents to him) saw spitting take place, or that it had become so common that antiwar movement leaders felt compelled to speak out against doing it. Denial is a river that flows through the heart of leftist orthodoxy.

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Previous Posts:

• Feb. 6 — More Vietnam-Era Spitting Stories (from Library Database Research Jerry Lembcke Has Chosen to Ignore)
• Feb. 5 — ‘Spittle-ize THIS’ Update: Jerry Lembcke’s ‘Search for Evidence’ Appears Not to Have Gone Very Far (copied Post)
• Feb. 4 — ‘Spittle-ize THIS’ Update: Jerry Lembcke’s ‘Search for Evidence’ Appears Not to Have Gone Very Far (Original Post)
• Feb. 4 — A Lot of People Need to Start Walking The ‘No Spitting on Viet Vets’ Claim Back, and Quickly

Maria Bartiromo of CNBC’s lead sentence in her February 12 Biz Weak column (may require paid subscription):

With the U.S. economy growing at a 3.5% rate in the fourth quarter of 2006 and a stock market that keeps steaming ahead, the battered Bush Administration has at least one glowing success amid the gloom.

From Business First of Louisville:

American Commercial Lines to hire 400 workers, raise wages
1:17 PM EST Wednesday, February 7, 2007
American Commercial Lines Inc. plans to increase wages for hourly production and maintenance employees and hire about 400 workers this year.

The company plans to raise wages for employees at its Jeffersonville, Ind., manufacturing facility by an average of 11 percent this year, according to a news release.

ACL said it has presented the new wage plan to the union that represents its workers, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 89, as part of a bargaining proposal. The company is in negotiations with the union for a new labor agreement. The current agreement expires April 1.

ACL said implementation of the new wage plan will occur when the new agreement is ratified.

The problem is that homes that have been on the market for a while and are pulled off for a short time can often be dressed up as new listings by less-than-ethical real estate agents.

Does the potential buyer have the right to know that previous efforts failed, and what price didn’t work? I think so.

Anyway, here’s a proposed solution from February 12 Biz Weak letter writer Charles McCannon of Darlington, MD that looks promising (sixth letter from the top if you need to scroll; may require paid subscription) — which is why it wouldn’t surprise me if the real-estate industry ran away from it full-speed:

Repeatedly listing an overpriced house as “newly listed” is not illegal. However, it is unethical. …..

Real estate agents need to start policing themselves or run the risk of being regulated. Perhaps part of the titling system should involve a unique, permanent Multiple Listing Service number that is assigned to a particular house and is used every time it is bought, sold, or listed. That way, brokers would have one less way to dupe honest, trusting home buyers.

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Related Posts:
- Feb. 27, 2006 — Realtor Racket Update: Banks Want In, and I Say “Let ‘em In”
- Aug. 12, 2005 — End the Realtor Racket

HR 25 has been introduced. More on the Fair Tax is here.

Here are the bill’s co-sponsors:

Ohio is not represented.

From London, what an incredible “break” John Battley got:

(Jan. 27) A MOTORCYCLIST who was badly injured by a falling tree in last week’s storms has no memory of the accident.

John Battley, 62, was struck when a 70ft poplar tree was uprooted last Thursday as winds of up to 60mph caused chaos in Marlow its surrounding villages.

Fire fighters said he was lucky to survive.

The self-employed motorcycle courier had just delivered a package to Holmes and Marchant graphics in Station Road at around 1pm.

He was sitting astride his bike in the car park at the rear of the building when the tree fell hitting is head and trapping underneath branches.

Jon Franklin, crew manager of High Wycombe fire station, said: “We were on our way back from attending another incident in Marlow when we got the call.

“He was lying on the ground with the bike on top of him. He had serious head injuries and we really didn’t think he was going to make it.”

The air ambulance was unable to take off in the strong winds. Approximately an hour later he was taken to Wexham hospital where he remained until Saturday.

His stepson Jason Cox, 34, said John, has no recollection of the accident since losing consciousness before undergoing an emergency operation.

He said: “John’s a very strong man. It’s a miracle he survived and he is making a miraculous recovery.

“When he went into hospital he had serious head injuries, but they took him into theatre to clean him up and they couldn’t find anything wrong.

“He was awake just after the accident, but not when they took him to the intensive care unit. After theatre they put him into a coma to recover.

“He’d just delivered a package to Holmes and Marchant. He doesn’t remember anything after that.”

Some witnesses believe John, pictured, who is from Harlow, Essex, was sitting on his bike eating lunch when the accident happened. He was not wearing a crash helmet at the time.

Jason added: “The doctors said it could have been even more dangerous if he was wearing his helmet because the weight it could have done damage to his neck.”