The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) is about to placed in a “conservatorship” by the Bush Administration, according to breaking stories in the New York Times and other online media. The Times says conservatorship is also planned for the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), the other big government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) created to provide [...]

Rudy Giulani, last night in St.Paul: “He worked as a community organizer. (Laughter.) What? (Laughs.)” Hm. Check out the New York Daily News, 3/15/98: The Nehemiah Plan was launched in the early 1980s when civic reformer I.D. Robbins proposed in a Daily News article that low-cost, single-family houses be built for low and middle-income city residents [...]

PD demands data-free Council reduction in 2009. When that train wreck arrives — and it will, if Cleveland voters follow the PD’s marching orders –  don’t forget who made it happen. (No, it wasn’t the Charter Review Commission. We voted 7-6 not to recommend implementation of the reduction plan next year.) P.S. For the record, I called editorial [...]

Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland, Matt Silverstein and I will explain it all.

928 new civil foreclosures were filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in August, according to NEOCANDO.  This is a the lowest monthly total since the beginning of 2007 and a significant dropoff from last August, when new filings spiked above 1,400. But the county’s total new foreclosures for the first eight months of 2008 still [...]

928 new civil foreclosures were filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in August, according to NEOCANDO.  This is a the lowest monthly total since the beginning of 2007 and a significant dropoff from last August, when new filings spiked above 1,400. But the county’s total new foreclosures for the first eight months of 2008 still [...]

If Sarah Palin gets elected Vice-President, does that mean I can join a political party that agitates for Ohioans to consider secession from the United States without fear of being prosecuted for sedition, or even being considered unpatriotic? Just wondering. (For extra credit:  Did the Northwest Ordinance  give Ohio settlers — or Shawnees, for that matter — [...]

Thanks to City Council staff, here’s a complete pdf copy of the Charter revision ordinances passed by Council at its special meeting today. As reported, there are six ordinances, each containing one ballot question. But most of those ballot questions contain more than one significant revision to the Charter.  I count at least twenty-nine proposed substantive [...]

Henry Gomez writes that City Council President Sweeney gave him his list of Charter revision issues for the November ballot on Friday.  Apparently the proposals to change the Civil Service status of top Fire Department officials and create separate airport safety forces had already been dropped. But Gomez confirms that Council will vote today on whether [...]

Cleveland City Council leadership (i.e. President Martin Sweeney) is circulating a list of eight of the Charter Review Commission’s 116 recommendations to be considered by Council Tuesday for inclusion on the November ballot. The list includes tying the size of City Council to 25,000-person wards, as of next year’s election. It also includes: Shortening the period between final [...]

John Strok points out that this deserves some repeating (from Crain’s): Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones has scheduled two public forums to discuss the proposed convention center and medical merchandise mart complex. The first forum will be 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2, at the Cleveland Heights Community Center. The second is scheduled [...]

So, in case you’re one of the five other people who’re still wondering what happened to that ferry, the London (Ont) Free Press ran a five-part series in May about Port Stanley’s ownership and dredging problems. Like I wrote the other day, having seen the place close up I doubt that it’s a wonderful idea to [...]

I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere in the last two days including here, and somebody should: Stephanie Tubbs Jones is being remembered today mostly as an East Side figure, a black community representative.  But Congresswoman Jones held elected countywide office for fifteen years before “going home” politically in 1998 to fill Louis Stokes’ Congressional seat.  Following [...]

I’m back. On Wednesday we left the Point Pelee area (now forever to be known in our family as The Mosquito Coast) and headed 250 miles north to Tobermory, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.  Half of our trip was on Highway 21, known as the Bluewater Highway because [...]

Got an hour to kill with the wifi in a Williams coffeehouse in London, ON while the battery’s charging, so… After two days hanging around Point Pelee and Leamington, the Tomato Capital of Ontario, we got up this morning and drove east on Highway 3 along the Erie coast to London. Highlights of the day so [...]