BuckeyeBlog

State. Rep. Ted Celeste has a good idea: don’t send deadbeat dads to prison. Send them to community corrections instead.

It’d be easy enough to lump this in with traditional Democrat opposition to punishing criminals, and of course establishing any program or option creates an incentive to expand it unjustifiably, allowing people to squeeze into it who ought not. But the courts are experimenting with fixing themselves–and that’s certainly needed–by establishing drug courts and mental health courts. Deadbeat dads–sure, it’s parents, but it’s dads–seems likely to be not the run of the mill criminal problem.

Of course, this is closing the door after the horse is gone. The real problem is the sloppy legal system by which these dads’ criminal acts accumulated. Most of these guys are marginal workers who entered poorly defined relationships and, no surprise, ended up divorced, through their own dysfunction and that of their wives. It doesn’t solve the problem by establishing mythical child support figures that bear no real relation to the payor’s productive capacity, and then calling the guy a criminal when the obvious, predictable  result happens. If the financial arrangement were reversed between the parents, there wouldn’t be much real difference in care of the children, and the only change would be the other parent would be the criminal.

So, this is an area that needs work, and Celeste’s idea would help. But the real fix is further up the pipeline. Take a look at organizations such as judgepedia.org, which are working to bring accountability to the judiciary, too.

A solid piece from Julie Carr Smyth on the bumble-squared fiasco that erupted at the top levels of Ohio government earlier this year, when Attorney General Marc Dann bumbled his office administration and Ohio officials at all levels bumbled their response to it.

The problem, as Smyth’s piece develops, is that now the standard of government is “we’ll run around in a panic of self-interest whenever the press or anything else drives us to it.”

Seasoned observers may say it has always been so, but nonetheless, a government that is not based on law is beyond troublesome. It’s dangerous. Split, 5-4 and 4-3 decisions of high courts are a tremendous part of the problem, and so are incidents like the Dann scenario, where everyone concluded he should be hanged, they just were not quite sure for what, or when or, as far as the law goes, why. (more…)

The Blade is unhappy that there are “those who just don’t care about the long-held concept of fiduciary responsibility in the business sector .”

Yikes. It’s a bit hard to tell what the Blade is after there, but it’s a good guess that what they’re really referring to is, you know, decency, which is a bit different than fiduciary duty.

Somebody made a ton of money, had friends, etc. Was it outrageous? No doubt. But the issue is, if there really was a breach of fiduciary duty, then the failure is as much or more in the courts as anywhere else, so take the complaint to the courts if that’s the problem.

If there wasn’t a breach of fiduciary duty, then the complaint should land with the relevant shareholders, as in, what the dickens is the matter with you people, paying this bozo that much?

But neither of those paths will be followed. Instead, someday there will simply be more regulation. Until it stops moving, then there will be subsidy.

Memo to the UAW: When you’re negotiating with a judge, you might want to dispatch action teams to protect her tires.

The First Amendment can always breathe a little sigh of relief when campaign finance laws are overruled. Cheers to a Franklin County judge for stepping up.

It’s the second time he’s done it. What’s interesting there is that the first time he did it on the grounds that the procedure of enacting the bill was messy. This time, he chose the “single subject” rule, a concept that a bill should be simple, enacting one thing at a time.

It’d be nicer all around if he could get to the substance and reject the thing on basic, substantive grounds.

And while it’d be nice to have a substantive law of “single subject” legislation, right now it’s closer to a tool that allows judges to overturn things they don’t like and to ignore if it would overturn things they do like.

An injustice was set right yesterday. Seems some bullies had used their muscle to pick on someone for doing their job. We should form a government to prevent such things from happening.