A few days ago I was talking to someone about the election. This person is well educated, reads the PD and Sun News, watches TV news and is a very active senior citizen. This person works full time and uses the internet well.

There's something about tech entrepreneurs talking to superstar tech entrepreneurs that is, as Sarah Palin might say, "so gosh,darn excitin'." While I could have done without people getting so braggy about Columbus and a booming tech industry, but I was excited to meet some tech superstars, who hit the road on behalf of Barack Obamma's presidential campaign at an event called 2.Ohio.

Location

How bad a shape are Cleveland and this area?

As bad as it can get.

Dinosaurs like Lou Stokes – for whom more buildings, roads and gutters are named than Tom Johnson – and Arnold Pinkney – who helped elect a mayor 40 years ago – are deciding who the next Congressman (woman) from the 11th district will be.

Who gave them the right? Not me, not you.

Have the news media dropped the “Cone of Silence” story too quickly? Was candidate John McCain cheating?

Here is a good account of the alternative newspaper sale from John Ettorre on Working with Words. It helps fill out the details of the story:

Here is Bill Moyers this weekend at the FreePress Convention in Minneapolis.

No one can say it better, no one can say it with as much knowledge, no one can say it more inspirationally.

Give yourself 40 minutes to hear about telling the truth to power and where the news media are  today and our responsibility for its future.

Some people just must have too much money.

Fred Nance of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey hasn’t submitted a bill yet to Cuyahoga County for his work on the $900 million deal for a medical mart and convention center. He’s the county’s lawyer on these matters.

A few thoughts on our morning newspaper as it struggles for relevance.

You have to give credit to Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg. She does have moxie that has often been missing in our morning newspaper.

The circumstances certainly were different but in 1967 Carl Stokes also had a black minister problem.

It wasn’t as explosive as presidential candidate Barack Obama’s differences with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, it was fraught with the tension of an unwanted attachment during a hotly contested and historic political campaign.

Bill Clinton said he (we) killed “Welfare as we know it,” or at least as some did think they knew it.

Welfare, as we don’t recognize it – meaning not for poor people – continues and thrives. Skimming the news in the Plain Dealer yesterday so reveals. The PD doesn’t call it welfare, however. Rather, the new welfare represents commitments to, I guess, what some would call progress.

The article in the Plain Dealer this a.m. on plans to "fix" the "messy" intersection at Van Aken and Chagrin roads gives my tummy some growls.

No one doubts that the intersection could have been devised better at some point.

Some praise the public effort to keep Eaton Corp., a Fortune 500 company, in Cleveland’s downtown. They are even willing to pay a price to see it happen.

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority will help to keep the company in Cleveland, we are told, by selling land to the Wolstein/Flats project and by helping to “finance $150 million of the Eaton project,” according to a Plain Dealer editorial praising the deal.

Possibilities for Medical Mart Mischief

What do you think MMPI will do with nearly $1 billion to spend on the Medical Mart and Convention Center?

If the past has anything to do with the future, you might be very surprised at how enterprising the Chicago developer Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. can be.

The Plain Dealer is reporting tonight on its Cleveland.com site http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2008/04/enlarge_image_pdfmost_of_a.html tonight  that a deal is in the making to further subsidize the Wolstein project in the Flats, already in line for tons of public money.

You can blame past, present (and future) state representatives for the cutbacks in city budgets. They refuse to go where the money is to find needed tax revenue.
If state law were fair at all, it would allow local communities to tax all sources of income fairly, not primarily the worker’s weekly paycheck.
Ohio doesn’t allow local governments to go after tax revenue where it is. That is to tax people who have the money. Neither do I see local politicians getting exercised by the inequality.
Often low income wage earners who don’t have to pay a penny in federal taxes still have to shell out money they need for their families to pay local income, or payroll, taxes.

Such taxes are unfair, since there are no deductions, as there are with federal taxes, and doubly unfair when you work in a different community than you live. You get taxed, usually with some rebate, in both communities.

A couple of years ago when Forest City was selling its site for a new convention center to Cuyahoga County's Facilities Commission (since disbanded), Al Ratner casually mentioned that I would have lots of fun if I were tracking all the money Forest City got in subsidies around the nation.

The Nation magazine chose Cleveland as the city to illustrate the cost of the War in Iraq to one troubled city. The two-page spread in the March 31 issue shows what could have been bought to meet public needs with $479.2 million, Cleveland’s share of the war cost.

The County has pulled another Gateway. Only better - for the operators.

It looks as if the medical mart and convention center will cost County taxpayers – and this is if there are no snafus - $1 billion.

The Cuyahoga County Commissioners have given me a  great idea.

Let's privatize the Commission by hiring one person who actually  knows what he or she is doing and do away with electing our three Stooges for Private Businesses of Any Kind, aka, Tim Hagan, Jimmy Dimora & Peter Lawson Jones.

If you owned a $40,500.000.00 parking structure,  would these images concern you?  (by the way, if you live in Cuyahoga County, you DO OWN IT)

Just as a reminder to relate to the cost of the medical mart and  the new convention center construction, bonding and payments, don't forget that the County already spends heavily with tax fund for the convention business.

I attended the KennedyConCenter meeting this morning - held before the scheduled meeting of the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners.  

 One of the few organizations in   Cleveland that seems to have truly meritorious objectives is The Cleveland Council on World Affairs.     

Sometimes the intersection of politics and policy is comfortable, sometimes uncomfortable, and sometimes you have to "connect the dots." One very uncomfortable "dot connecting" involves President Bill Clinton, philanthropic fundraising, the uranium industry and Clinton's private activity that ran contrary to US foreign policy and reinforced a country, Kazakhstan, with an antipathy to human rights and open media. Maybe it's just a former President cynically cashing in. Maybe it's more, as Clinton's income was pledged as part of the collateral for the loans to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Who can know? It's not like they tell us anything.