Akron police: Five arrested for 30 robberies in Summit and Portage counties

AKRON -- Four Akron men and a Columbus man are now behind bars in connection with a string of robberies in Summit and Portage counties.

Akron police say the arrests were made in connection with 30 robberies that started in Feb. 1, 2007 and ended April 30, 2008.

Arrested were:

* Richard A. Delaney, 20, of Akron
* Timmie D. Hubbard, 20, of Akron
* Desmond A. Billingsley, 19, of Akron
* Jeremie J. Jones, 20, of Akron
* Jason R. Smoot, 21, of Columbus

Police say the majority of the robberies happened at fast food restaurants such as Arby's, Dairy Queen, KFC Little Caesars, Subway, Wendy's, Taco Bell and McDonalds. Also hit were an Alltell store, Foot Action and Foot Locker as well as Marathon and Speedway stations.

The suspects have all be convicted or pled to various robbery charges related to the crime spree. Police say the suspects were linked to the robberies mostly in part by information given by witnesses.

Departments involved in the investigation were the Barberton Police Department, Brimfield Township Police Department, Copley Township Police Department, Cuyahoga Falls Police Department, Fairlawn Police Department, Cuyahoga Falls Police Department, Fairlawn police Department, Kent Police Department, Norton Police Department, Portage County Sheriff's Department, Springfield Township Police Department and Summit County Sheriff's Department.

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Directorate Of Technical Education Maharashtra

Three higher education boards reluctantly approved budget cuts Thursday that will lead to faculty furloughs, reduced class offerings and higher tuition and fees.

The moves were taken to implement their portions of a $109 million reduction in higher education funding for the second half of this school year. Board members said that what makes it worse is that they are looking at a cut three times that size in June when a new state budget is adopted.

Cuts approved by the executive committees of the boards that oversee the University of Louisiana System, Community and Technical College and Southern University systems account for about $58 million of the total.

The LSU System, which has not yet approved its reduction plan, is to cut $50.5 million from its campuses, hospitals, research facilities and law and agriculture programs.

UL is set to cut $7.3 million, while South Louisiana Community College would have to reduce its budget by more than half a million and LTC Region 4, which includes Lafayette's campus, would make about $1 million in cuts.

"This is a problem that has short-term gain but long-term pain," said ULS Board Member Andre Coudrain after approving $33.5 million in cuts to ULS campuses. "We've got to rethink the way state government acts toward higher education."

Higher education has to absorb more than one-third of a $341 million statewide budget cut brought on by falling revenues. State colleges and health care are the two largest budget items that do not have constitutional protection against cuts.

Layoffs likely

ULS President Randy Moffett said 70 percent of college funding is personnel, so layoffs are probable.

Besides the cuts, all colleges and universities will have to absorb the $10 million cost of tuition that would have been funded by the state for high school students who are co-enrolled and for low-income students who receive a new assistance called GO Grants and the cost of merit raises for civil service employees. The state underfunded the programs.

During the ULS executive committee meeting, campus presidents spelled out the steps they are taking. Most said there are reducing adjunct faculty, increasing teaching loads on full-time faculty, cutting of spending on equipment, library purchases and new construction, freezing travel, eliminating unfilled positions and rescheduling classes that would have been taught by adjunct faculty.

UL president Joe Savoie said UL will also consider eliminating Friday classes to shut down the university and save on utility costs. The university already shuts down at noon on Fridays. Staff would work longer hours Mondays through Thursdays to keep 40-hour work weeks.

Tough choices

Savoie said he hopes Gov. Bobby Jindal looks at other ways to reduce spending than cutting so much from university budgets.

"I'm hopeful he will exercise some prudence and spread it around more," he said. "We got a direction to cut 7.8 percent but that's not an official directive and there are ways to spread it around."

He also is looking at outside activities of the university, like federal economic development arms that require UL funding - $350,000 for the federal Manufacturing Extension Program of Louisiana and $385,000 for the Louisiana Technical Assistance Center - as possible sources of savings.

"If I have to make a decision between the history department and MEPOL, I'm going with the history department," he said at the meeting. "If I have to decide between the English department and PTAC, I'm going with the English department."

The governor's preliminary higher education plan asks for the Louisiana Community and Technical College System to slash $14.18 million from its seven community colleges, two technical community colleges and eight technical college regions.

But at the meeting Thursday, LCTCS President Joe May said he had only identified $8.14 million that could be cut from the schools without reducing programs and classes. An official order from the governor is expected in January. Before that time May will try to negotiate the final reduction.

"We don't want to hurt our ability to help the needs of workforce development," he said.

Reductions in stages

May outlined how the LCTCS would be impacted by both the $8.14 million reduction and an additional $6 million, which would equal the probable $14.18 million cut. The board passed a resolution authorizing campus presidents to implement the first plan. The additional cuts will be implemented if ordered by the governor.

South Louisiana Community College will reduce its budget by $306,528, or 4 percent, in the first round of cuts. It will limit institutional support and plant operations and curtail new program development. LTC Region 4, which includes Lafayette's campus, will reduce its budget by $570,531 and limit support costs.

If the executive order requests $14.18 million in cuts for the system, SLCC will reduce its budget by 7 percent and cut $533,149. LTC Region 4 would increase its cuts to $1.08 million.

Neither SLCC Chancellor Jan Brobst nor LTC Region 4 Director Phyllis Dupuis returned calls late Thursday afternoon.

The LCTCS board also discussed what will be eliminated next fiscal year when the state will have to overcome a shortfall that is projected to equal between $1 billion and $2 billion. At that point the whole system would reduce its budget by almost 10 percent.

First Vice Chair Vincent St. Blanc III said he has been unable to sleep for the past two nights and wonders where people who lose their jobs will go to be trained in a new field.

"These are people that are staying in my community, paying my taxes," he said. "Boy, this is a hard pill to swallow."

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A Dangerous Imbalance For The GOP

Congressional Republicans risk creating a vicious cycle that will keep them in the minority.

Congressional Republicans' resounding vote against the auto bailout this month captured a dynamic that could drive much of the party's response to Barack Obama and compound the threat to the GOP in the Northeast, the Midwest, and other regions where it is already retreating.

In both the House and the Senate, the auto vote underscored a regional imbalance that could define, and constrain, the party's agenda through the Obama presidency. In both chambers, the GOP caucus is increasingly dominated by members from the country's most conservative regions. And, as the vote to block federal assistance to the beleaguered auto companies demonstrated, those members are likely to steer the party on an ideologically aggressive course in 2009 that makes it tougher for Republicans to recover in swing or Democratic-leaning states where they have lately lost ground. "That's going to be a serious problem for the Republicans," says Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California (San Diego) who studies Congress.

It's telling that so many Republicans from reliably conservative places were willing to attach the party to a policy that could economically devastate Rust Belt states.

The auto vote precisely illustrated the dynamic. Federal intervention to keep General Motors and Chrysler out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy drew respectable support from Northeast and Midwest Republicans. In the Senate, six GOP senators from those areas favored federal help and three opposed it. In the House, Northeast and Midwest Republicans divided fairly closely, with 26 backing the loans and 38 opposing them.

But Republicans from more-conservative (and virtually union-free) regions overwhelmingly said no. The Senate's Southern Republicans voted 16-2 against the bailout; Republicans from the Mountain West and Plains voted 12-2 against it. Southern House Republicans voted 76-3 against the assistance -- and each supporter had a General Motors plant in or near his district. Those decisive votes stamped the congressional GOP as the principal obstacle to the aid.

President Bush could still protect congressional Republicans from the potential consequences of that position with his decision Friday to resuscitate the auto companies with funds from the financial bailout package. But it's telling that so many Republicans from reliably conservative places were willing to attach the party to a policy that could economically devastate Rust Belt states where the GOP is already declining.

That gamble shows how the party's loss of regional and ideological equilibrium can reinforce itself. Because Republicans from swing and Democratic-leaning states now constitute such a distinct minority in the party caucus, they lack the numbers to prevent it from adopting positions unpopular with their voters. The caucus majority can impose a direction that solidifies the party where it is already strong but further endangers the minority.

This isn't the first time a party has fallen into this debilitating cycle. The classic example came after 1854 when Congress approved the Kansas-Nebraska Act, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise that had limited slavery's spread in the territories. Until then, congressional Democrats were divided closely between Northern and Southern members. But the backlash against the Kansas-Nebraska Act destabilized that balance by provoking severe losses for Northern Democrats; as Southerners gained the advantage in the Democratic caucus, they repeatedly identified the party with pro-slavery policies that further undercut Northern Democrats already struggling against the emerging Republican Party. As the late David M. Potter recounted in his magisterial history of the 1850s, The Impending Crisis, the House's Northern Democrats didn't entirely recover until the New Deal.

The reverse essentially happened to Southern Democrats from the 1960s through the 1990s, when the party's deepening Northern tilt associated it with civil rights and other liberal measures that hastened the Republican advance across Dixie. Congressional Democrats have recently re-established greater balance between members from liberal and centrist areas. Now, Republican legislators in the most competitive states face the risk of being defined by an agenda that reflects only the priorities of bedrock conservative places. November's election results increased that danger by eliminating even more congressional Republicans who represented moderate regions. After those losses, the northern Mountain West and the South, both staunchly conservative, will supply nearly half of House Republicans next year -- and fully three-fifths of Senate Republicans. "They will be the face of the party," Jacobson says. That's ominous for more-centrist Republicans.

In congressional caucuses so skewed toward the right, it's not clear who will have an instinct for what might rebuild the GOP in Connecticut or California. Judging by how many Republicans were willing to risk the chaos of an auto-industry collapse, the early answer may be: no one who's in control.

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Song Lyrics of Sharp Dressed Man

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Dressed Man song Lyrics

Song : Sharp Dressed Man
Album : Eliminator
Writer : Hill, Joe Michael, Gibbons, William, Beard, Frank
Label : Warner Bros./Lone Wolf
Genre : Big Hits Of The '80s, 1980s Rock, Classic Rock, Hard Rock, Southern Rock
Lyrics For "Sharp Dressed Man"

Clean shirt, new shoes
and I don't know where I am goin' to.
Silk suit, black tie,
I don't need a reason why.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
cause every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Gold watch, diamond ring,
I ain't missin' not a single thing.
cuff-links, stick pin
when I step out I'm gonna do you in.
They come a runnin' just as fast as they can
cause every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Top coat, Top hat,
And I don't worry cause my wallets fat.
Black shades, white gloves,
lookin' sharp, lookin' for love.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
cause every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.
Watch Sharp Dressed Man Lyrics

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