Updating blog roll

February 5, 2014 — buckeyerino

It has been a long time since I last checked the links on my blogroll.  I have made changes.  Deletions from the blogroll were based on links that stopped working, links that redirected to a totally unrelated page, blogs that were blank, blogs that were password protected, or blogs that hadn’t added content in years.

If you own a website that was deleted and you would like it reinstated, you should probably include an explanation of why I found what I found when I clicked on your link.  If for example, your link was dead because you changed your URL, then I’d be happy to revisit my decision to delete.

After those deletions, I am looking to add to the blogroll.  I will be on the lookout for blogs that are Ohio-based and/or politics-based.  North central Ohio, like the counties along the Lake Erie shoreline between Cleveland and Toledo and a little further inland, is what I consider my home territory, for I have resided in Erie, Seneca, and Lorain counties (Franklin County, too, but plenty of blogs cover Columbus).  Huron, Sandusky, and Ottawa counties are of interest, too.  If you would like your blog added to my blogroll, give me a holler (my profile with email appears on the About page). As you know, I identify myself politically as being right-of-center (even though there are those who disbelieve my self-assessment).

On another note, I was stunned to see that WordPress had begun to place ads on my site.  I paid WordPress extra money just to keep my blog advertisement-free.  If you see ads crop up on Buckeye RINO, I’d appreciate it if you would let me know so that I can investigate.

For social networking, I have been using just Twitter, as I find it least annoying among social networking sites.  I once had Facebook and a few others, but I hated them, so I pulled the plug on them.  However, if readers have a social networking site that they want to recommend, let me know, and if you really think I should return to Facebook, I will entertain your arguments (but make them good, since I’ll be difficult to persuade).

Posted in Announcements, Political Blogosphere. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

DJW: I’m not That Other (Paper) Dan Williamson

April 28, 2008 — buckeyerino

There is an alternative weekly paper in Columbus, called The Other Paper, who has a managing editor named Dan Williamson. He sometimes writes articles that include political figures and political issues.

I’m also known as Dan Williamson. My first media exposure in a political vein occurred when I was a Republican candidate running for state representative against incumbent Democrat Joe Koziura, of Lorain, in Ohio’s 56th House District in 2002. I listed my name on the ballot as Daniel Jack Williamson for two reasons, one reason being that my dad, Jack Williamson of rural Bellevue in Seneca County, was a candidate in the Republican primary for an open seat in the 58th House District, which neighbors the 56th, and I thought where media coverage about those two state rep races overlaps, my middle name on the ballot might somehow improve his name recognition. I wrote letters to the editors of newspapers, and I posted comments at an online community forum at LorainCounty.com, but that was just about the greatest extent of my writing contributions to the media at that time. I ran again for state rep in 2004 (an image of my 2004 campaign literature here–you’ll have to scroll to see the whole image). My political writing had not expanded beyond what it had been during the 2002 campaign.

In early 2005, not long after losing (again) the election in November 2004, I went to South Korea to teach English for a year (image), so I wasn’t even posting online comments at Lorain County.com during that time. In early 2006, I was back to posting online, but my comments, critical of Sherrod Brown before Paul Hackett withdrew from the Democrat primary for the U.S. Senate seat, kept getting deleted by the website, and after that, my comments went to moderation, and it would be about 24 hours before my comment would actually appear. By then, the conversation thread had lengthened quite a bit, so my comments weren’t likely to be read when they did appear. That’s when I started looking to other blogs to comment. In 2007, I began contributing entries to blogs.

In the early 1990’s, I was living in Columbus. The Other Paper had emerged on the Columbus print media scene. Dan Williamson became a known byline. Most of my friends and co-workers called me Dan. I didn’t realize that some of them were confusing me with the journalist until the secretary of my boss at National City Bank (where I worked from September 1993 through May 1995 as a teller) gave me a compliment about my writing. LOL! I quickly corrected her and said that it wasn’t me. Until I moved out of Columbus at the very start of January 2000, I’d had a number of people approaching me similarly, and these were people who knew me quite well, some of whom I saw nearly every day!

So, the second reason I chose to include my middle name on the ballot? Because I already knew that people had been confusing me with the journalist for years, and that if I received media coverage as a candidate, I hoped that including my middle name would spare media observers the confusion. I continued using that middle name when I made my first foray into blogging for much the same reason.

But I suppose that once I start generating political commentary, and, in a sense, entering the arena that the journalist was already in, I suppose it was inevitable that the confusion would arise anyway. And so I guess writing this blog entry to set the record straight was inevitable.

Posted in Politics in the MSM. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Resignation from the 58th House District seat

April 28, 2008 — buckeyerino

During the past week, I was startled to hear of the resignation of Matthew Barrett, the 58th District state representative that I voted for in 2006.

I ran for state representative, myself, in a neighboring district (the 56th), in the opposing political party, back in 2004, when I first met Barrett, who is a lawyer by profession. More than once, we were present at the same venues on the campaign trail. On occasion, I would be his foil for the points he’d make at debates, since his own opponent from his own district wouldn’t debate him. Though I had differences of political opinion with Barrett, he seemed like a straight-shooter, a family man, a person of integrity and intelligence, so I respected him. Neither Barrett nor I won election in 2004.

Between 2004 and 2006, I changed my residence from Oberlin, in Lorain County, to rural Bellevue, in Seneca County. When election time rolled around in November 2004, I was living in the same district as Barrett, and Barrett was a candidate again. Barrett’s a Democrat and I’m a Republican. The Republican nominee that was opposing Barrett was not someone that I supported. I decided to cross over and vote for Barrett that November, and Barrett won in a district that was more Republican than Democrat.

Barrett seemed to vote the right way (in my opinion) on many of the issues that came before the state legislature once he took office. He certainly seemed approachable and available to constituents. He even agreed to make a presentation to a high school class about some of the workings of state government, but what happened in that high school class was his undoing.

Last fall, in Norwalk, Ohio, State Representative Matt Barrett was making a presentation to a high school class. He had intended to illustrate his lecture with slides that had been prepared for him using PowerPoint on his laptop computer. The PowerPoint presentation was saved to a flash drive. However, when the first images appeared on the projection screen, they had nothing to do with state government. The first image was of a topless woman. An embarrassed Barrett shut off the PowerPoint presentation. It made news right away, but Barrett pleaded for the media to not pursue the matter further, as it was supposed that a teenage son of Barrett’s may have been the one who downloaded the images to a flash drive that overwrote the PowerPoint presentation that had previously been there. The premise for asking the media to let coverage of the event subside was that this was a parenting problem best handled within the family. The police, however, did carry out an investigation.

Several months have passed, and Barrett’s resignation is occurring now because the police investigation does not arrive at the same conclusion that was first arrived at. Apparently, a teenage son was used as a scapegoat. Barrett’s story wasn’t entirely truthful.

The Democrat Party members of the Ohio House of Representatives will choose a Democrat residing in the district to replace Matt Barrett. However, there will be elections this coming November. Barrett had won a Republican district. Is there anyone the Democrats can choose as a replacement who can hold that seat for the Democrats after the elections are over? I doubt that very much. Not only is it a Republican district, but the Republican nominee, Terry Boose has to feel like he’s been handed a gift. The Boose name is a respected name in Huron County (the county where half of the voters of the district live). The Boose family name has been familiar to me since my childhood when I lived in Berlin Heights, a village in Erie County that’s not far from the Norwalk area.

What should Barrett have done last fall when this event occurred? If he had told the truth, he still might have faced resignation, but the Democrats would have named a replacement much sooner, certainly before the current campaign season began, and his political party would have stood a better chance at holding on to the seat beyond the upcoming elections. Also, it is uncertain at this point whether the state bar association will consider seeking any disciplinary actions against Barrett for not telling the truth. If he had told the truth, he wouldn’t have put his employment as a lawyer at risk (he might have an out if he told the truth to the police, but we don’t know yet if that’s the case). Also, if he had told the truth, the media stories would have flourished for a short season, but then come to an end, and the embarrassment would have gone away sooner. Since the truth wasn’t told, this became a media story AGAIN, months later, not allowing the embarrassment to go away shortly after the first incident. Covering up only added another problem onto the one that already existed.

Though I’m Republican, I’m sad to see Barrett go down like this. After all, I voted for him.

Posted in State Politics. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »