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Why must Ohioans pay for Medicaid for millionaires?

Editorials

A recent review of Ohio’s Medicaid enrollment by state Auditor Keith Faber’s office found plenty of people enrolled who should not be receiving benefits — and it is not perhaps the group of people some low-aiming politicians hope you would expect. According to a report by The Center Square, the audit found 3% of Buckeye State residents receiving Medicaid benefits have more resources than allowed. In fact, “several” of those people are millionaires. Further, Faber’s office reported more than 3,000 people receiving state Medicaid benefits are dead. Ohio spends approximately ...

Beware the charm of our rising chatbots

Guest columnists

Leave it to a comedian with a national TV platform to express what troubles a lot of us, even if we hesitate to talk about it — for fear of being ridiculed as backward-looking worry warts. "When the people who are making AI are scared of AI, it's time to shut the whole thing down until we can figure out what the hell is going on," Bill Maher declared on his HBO program, "Real Time With Bill Maher," back in April. He was responding to various speculations, in many cases erroneously attributed to leaders of the frontier artificial intelligence labs, assigning percentage likelihoods of ...

What’s next for Ohio's school voucher program?

Editorials

Thursday’s ruling by the Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals that the state’s EdChoice voucher program is unconstitutional will no doubt ruffle some feathers in Columbus. Good. Judge David Leland, who wrote the opinion for the three-judge panel, says the program violates the state constitution because it funds a separate school system, according to a report by The Blade, in Toledo. That violates the mandate for a SINGULAR public education system. It was the panel’s opinion that the voucher program also lacks meaningful state oversight, is unavailable to many rural Ohioans ...

Guilfoyle never mastered the art of the shakedown

Guest columnists

About three weeks before Republicans expect an electoral beating, Donald Trump had to get rid of Kimberly Guilfoyle, his ambassador to Greece. He simply had to. Trump's money-grabbing corruption was wearing thin even on devoted fans, but the president knew how to wrap his mob-like patter in foggy euphemisms and double meanings. Guilfoyle was not good at it. Not at all. The mob rarely threatens reluctant targets outright. It says things like: "Nice place you've got here. Shame if something happened to it." Or "Do me a favor," as in Trump's 2019 call seeking dirt on Joe Biden from ...

Letters to the editor

Letters to the Editor

Embrace AI’s good qualities but with several conditions DEAR EDITOR: Indictment, a useful word in the age of Trump, might have escaped my vocabulary if not for the low-end AI spell check function. Waiting to “discover,” as 47 “discovered” groceries or the “b” in dumb, would have taken longer than his baseless, punitive lawsuits. AI is noisy and dirty and sucks up water and electricity and a lot of open space. Its speed can help find cures for disease, improve travel and general safety, speed crime investigation, provide more accurate meteorological data and maybe even ...

Beginning of the end or end of beginning?

Editorials

I’m allowing myself to believe that sane people may be in charge of Congress starting next Jan. 20. I know, I know: Polls have gotten our hopes up before only to have them dashed on the rocky shores of political reality. But this time it does seem as if congressional Republicans will finally get their comeuppance for their blind loyalty to Trump. The sense of relief in the land is palpable. We may soon witness the beginning of the end of this daymare — unless Trump goes full-throttled dictator and prevents votes for Democrats in the Senate and House from being ...