...A few months ago, the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch announced in a newspaper trade magazine that it had entered into a relationship with a company in India to produce the local ads that it publishes. The Dispatch faxes advertising copy to the Indian firm each evening and the Indians e-mail finished ads back by morning. The Dispatch said it was able to lay off 90 ad design staffers as a result.
I'm sure this involved a considerable savings, but I can't see the overall good of it. The Columbus newspaper's ad sales are predicated on a healthy local retail market. It's hard to see how throwing 90 Columbus residents out of work improves the local market....
Isn't that a real kick in the pants? The local newspaper has cut local jobs, reduced the taxes they paid to state and local government, and improved their profit by sending work overseas. Why didn't we hear about it? How can they claim be be a "local" newspaper? Perhaps the newspaper should be renamed to The Columbus-India Dispatch.
*Meanwhile, up in Cuyahoga County, Franklin County resident and head of the Ohio Republican Party, Robert Bennett, has still refused to resign his appointed post on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
*Oh, no! Not more election fraud in Ohio!!!! Yes. Columbus Free Press:
...Meanwhile, another GOP county election official is also under intensifying fire. Lisa Schwartze, executive director of the Hocking County BOE, has been charged with allowing an unmonitored manipulation of electronic memory drives before the 2004 recount could be completed. A memo purportedly written by Schwartze also directs poll workers to recount a precinct chosen deliberately by Schwartze, rather than at random, as the law demands. Two Cuyahoga County poll workers have been convicted of felonies for similar behavior, and have each been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Schwartze's offenses, however, may not stop there. According to sworn affidavits from Sherole Eaton, former Hocking County DOE assistant director, Schwartze publicly bragged of having held Republican Party fundraisers in her executive director's office, a clear illegality. Schwartze may also have organized the fundraisers while being paid by the county to do her allegedly non-partisan job as executive director.
Schwartze may also have supervised the shredding of voter registration rolls leading up to the 2004 election. Eaton's under-oath testimony strongly indicates this destruction of vital public records may also have been illegal.
Like Bennett, Schwartze has long been a high-profile associate of Blackwell's, and apparently played a key role in delivering Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush in 2004. Whether she did so illegally remains to be seen.
But the fire Jennifer Brunner has set in Cleveland now seems very likely to spread to the rest of Ohio's 88 counties. Hocking's Schwartze is almost certain to join Bob Bennett among those feeling the heat.
It may take awhile to clean out the Republican corruption in Ohio, but Jennifer Brunner is doing a great job to protect the integrity of our votes.