POLITICS & ELECTIONS

National, Ohio and local political news, blogs & election results

GEORGETOWN, S.C. -- Tiny wooden cabins line the dirt road once known as Slave Street as it winds its way through Friendfield Plantation.

More than 200 slaves lived in the white-washed shacks in the early 1800s, and some of their descendants remained here for more than a century after the Civil War. The last tenants abandoned the hovels about three decades ago, and even they would have struggled to imagine a distant daughter of the plantation one day calling the White House home.

Their documented passage begins with Jim Robinson, Obama's great-great-grandfather, who was born around 1850 and lived as a slave, at least until the Civil War, on the sprawling rice plantation. Records show he remained on the estate after the war, working as sharecropper and living in the old slave quarters with his wife, Louiser, and their children. He could neither read nor write, according to the 1880 census.

Robinson would be the last illiterate branch of Michelle Obama's family tree.

Continue reading "The improbable journey of Michelle Obama's family from Carolina slavery to the White House" »

ATLANTA -- A double digit win in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoff could make Saxby Chambliss a star in a Republican party hungry for fresh leadership.

Just weeks ago, he was battling for political survival after neither he nor his Democratic opponent got more than 50 percent of the vote in the general election, forcing Tuesday's runoff, which Chambliss won handily.

Now, with his party searching for new leaders and a new identity, he could gain a prominent national profile, political experts said.

Chambliss, 65, will return for a second term in Washington, this time as a self-proclaimed firewall against President-elect Barack Obama and his Democratic agenda.

His win -- which denied Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority -- was a rare bit of good news for Republicans, reeling this year after ceding more seats in Congress and losing the White House. He beat Democrat Jim Martin 57 percent to 43 percent.

Continue reading "Georgia's victorious Sen. Saxby Chambliss looks for bigger role in Republican leadership" »

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama signaled a clear desire Wednesday to use a significant portion of $700 billion in financial bailout funds to stanch foreclosures by helping struggling homeowners with their mortgages.

"The deteriorating assets in the financial markets are rooted in the deterioration of people being able to pay their mortgages and stay in their homes," he said.

Obama's stance represents a policy clash with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has resisted proposals to use the rescue fund to help guarantee reworked mortgages.

In a sharper confrontation with the Bush administration, House Republicans on Wednesday warned Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that without greater accountability Congress will be in no mood to release to the Treasury the second half of the $700 billion.

"The government has burned through nearly $350 billion of (bailout) funds and is pledging trillions of dollars more through other programs, yet little is understood about how these investments are contributing to the nation's economic recovery," 12 House Republicans, led by Minority Leader John Boehner, wrote to Paulson and Bernanke.

Continue reading "Obama says bailout must help homeowners, too" »

COLUMBUS -- Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said proposed aid from the federal government won't be enough to solve all of Ohio's budget needs or remove its financial challenges.

But Strickland said the federal government still has an obligation to help states like Ohio as they struggle with unprecedented tough times.

Strickland said today he's confident the federal government will provide dollars to the states though he's not sure what kind of funding they will get.

One of his top priorities, he said, is money in so-called block grants that will give the state the flexibility to use it where needed.

Strickland and other governors met with President-elect Barack Obama in Philadelphia Tuesday.

WASHINGTON -- Facing the prospect that Washington will put the nation's broken health-care system on the operating table next year, the health insurance industry today unveiled its own prescription for reform.

America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group whose members insure more than 200 million Americans, said it wants to achieve universal health insurance coverage, reduce the growth of health-care costs by 30 percent, and guarantee coverage for pre-existing medical conditions as long as individual coverage is mandated

"Reform needs to be comprehensive and it needs to happen now," said the industry group's CEO, Karen Ignagni, adding that meetings the group conducted this summer in Ohio and other states helped it formulate its plans.

Continue reading "Health insurers offer their own reform plan: universal coverage, guarantee for pre-existing conditions" »

Ohio and 48 other states have flunked the college affordability test, according to a report released today.

Only California got a passing grade -- a "C" -- from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Its report, "Measuring Up 2008: The National Report Card on Higher Education," rates states in five key areas: college preparation, college participation, college affordability, college completion, and benefits to the state.

Two years ago, the last time the biennial report was released, the independent, California-based group handed out 43 "F"s for affordability. The measurement reflects how much of the average family's income it costs to go to college.

The report says that since the late 1990s, the share of family income needed to pay for attending four-year, public colleges in the Buckeye State has climbed from 28 percent to 39 percent.

Not surprisingly, Ohio higher-education officials questioned the failing grade.

The figures include the costs to attend private colleges, said Michael Chaney, a spokesman for the Ohio Board of Regents. A more accurate -- and more favorable to Ohio -- study came from the College Board in October, he said.

The College Board study found Ohio public colleges and universities with low growth in prices compared to other states, mostly because of two years of tuition freezes.

Continue reading "Ohio, 48 other states flunk national college affordability test" »

WASHINGTON -- Documents released Tuesday from Richard M. Nixon's White House years shed new light on just how much the government struggled with growing public unrest over the protracted war in Vietnam.

The National Archives opened nearly 200 hours of White House tape recordings and 90,000 pages of documents.

A newly declassified memo to Nixon from his secretary of defense at the time reflects just how much the administration felt and discussed public pressure -- even as it weighed U.S. geopolitical strategy -- in anguished internal debate over war policy.

The seven-page document cautions the president against a proposal from military brass to conduct a high-intensity air and naval campaign against North Vietnam.

Then-Defense Secretary Melvin Laird said such a plan would involve the United States in "expanded costs and risks with no clear resultant military or political benefits."

With peace talks "seemingly stalled in Paris, with combat activity levels reduced in South Vietnam, but with seemingly rising levels of discontent in the United States, we should review the overall situation and determine the best course of action," the defense secretary writes the president on Oct. 8, 1969.

"The sum total of the considerations ... casts grave doubt on the validity and efficacy" of the proposal from the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, the memo concludes.

At the time, the Nixon administration was secretly conducting a massive bombing of Cambodia to destroy sanctuaries for enemy troops.

Continue reading "Memo dramatizes White House dilemma over Vietnam" »

WASHINGTON -- Blame National City Bank's final chapter on the regulators. Or credit the regulators, who may have saved billions of taxpayer dollars.

Either way, a new report to Congress suggests strongly that federal banking examiners -- and not the Treasury Department -- played the dominant role in turning down the 163-year-old Cleveland bank when it sought bailout money in October.

This goes to the heart of a question that has troubled members of Congress in trying to pinpoint blame for decisions made in Washington that may have hastened National City's demise.

Continue reading "GAO report suggests regulators played biggest role in National City's demise" »

COLUMBUS -- Marion Gardner is surrounded. Buildings on every side of her Mount Pleasant neighborhood home have been abandoned as the housing market has soured, leaving her on an island on her block of East 113th Street in Cleveland.

"They keep bailing people out that live in million-dollar homes, and I'm running for my life," Gardner said. "My neighborhood is a cemetery. Who can you call when they start breaking out windows across the street or stealing the steps next door?"

Hoping to snap state lawmakers into action, Gardner was part of a busload of Cleveland-area residents who descended on the Statehouse Tuesday to push for legislation they hope will keep the vandals, squatters and absentee land speculators at bay. They packed a Senate hearing room as local officials -- including Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis and Cleveland City Councilman Anthony Brancatelli -- testified for the bill before the Senate's State and Local Government Committee.

Modeled after a program in Michigan, the legislation would allow Cuyahoga County officials to set up a land bank to buy distressed properties or receive foreclosed properties donated by banks. Homes beyond salvaging would get a date with the wrecking ball while others would be rehabbed, with the sales proceeds plowed back into the program.

Jump-starting the land bank would be about $8 million to $9 million in delinquent tax collection penalties that supporters think could be enough to back $50 million in bonds per year, said State Sen. Tom Patton, Republican of Strongsville, who is sponsoring the legislation.

Continue reading "NE Ohioans add support for land bank bill" »

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See a slide show of images from throughout the nation. Click "show captions" button for photo information. For a selection of images from around the world go to cleveland.com/world.

COLUMBUS -- The Ohio Controlling Board on Monday pulled a $6.4 million order it approved just two weeks ago for the purchase of a controversial drunken-driving testing machine.

The board unanimously agreed to reconsider releasing funds to purchase 700 breath-testing machines from a Kentucky company after The Plain Dealer reported that the accuracy of the Intoxilyzer 8000 is being challenged in courts in several states.

The board also expressed concerns about how CMI Inc. of Owensboro, Ky., was picked for the non-competitive contract and ties the company might have to an Ohio Department of Health official who oversaw the selection process that began with 17 companies but ended with just one bidder.

"I'm not pointing fingers at anybody, but I think the process somehow got tangled and we need to get more answers," said board member Sen. John Carey, a Jackson County Republican, who asked that a final decision be delayed at least two more weeks.

The board took the unusual step of allowing more than an hour of testimony from the Ohio Department of Public Safety and the health department -- two agencies defending the out-of-state contract -- before unanimously agreeing to take up the issue again on Dec. 15.

Continue reading "State reverses $6.4 million purchase order for controversial drunken-driving testing machine" »