We have all had the experience of lying, or trying to do something which is beyond our capacity. 

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   Riverview Baptist Church from Franklin, Ohio (south of Dayton, Oh.)  in cooperation with Fresh Coat Cleveland spent a week providing their earnest and good spirited (the job site near E55th and Superior was a upbeat place to be) volunteer labor in Cleveland painting houses. 

Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America’s Older Industrial Cities CLEVELAND, OH—Bruce Katz, vice president and director of Metropolitan Policy at The Brookings Institution, will present Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America’s Older Industrial Cities, a comprehensive economic study of the 65 U.S. cities lagging behind their peers (scheduled for national release on May 20), at noon on Tuesday, May 29, 2007, at The City Club of Cleveland. He will be joined by Ohio Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, who will give a local response to the report.

 

The war against the crisis of lead poisoning is being fought in Northeast Ohio by activists and professionals in a wide range of fields and disciplines. That reality was beautifully demonstrated today when noted neurologist and gerontologist Peter Whitehouse, M.D., Ph.D., and his associate Danny George, M.Sc., presented a lecture on "environmental toxins and late-life dementia: a life span perspective", exploring connections between lead poisoning and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, and suggesting the need for an integrative ecological model, concluding "better take care of your neurons at age 2". The two presenters have co-authored a book titled "The Myth of Alzheimer's" that will be released later this year.

 

YES - this is a huge story... the State of Ohio is suing Sherwin Williams and other paint manufacturers over the public nuisance caused by lead paint they sold here over decades... the state is joining five Ohio cities in this battle for our citizens - this case could very well take over the battle for the cities - very exciting times for our down-trodden state.  It is exciting to see the new Ohio leadership in action, after so many years of poor performance by past administrations.

I received an informative email this afternoon from Richard McDougald Enty, Planning Team Leader, Programming & Planning Department, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, about some of their Transit Oriented Development initiatives and vision. It is very exciting to see this as an active subject for discussion and planning here. I am a strong supporter of Transit Oriented Development and consider it the core foundation on which we should rebuild the City of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs.  Here is the vision from RTA:

 

It is a great pleasure to have our original Drupal developer Derek Arnold back in the server seat for REALNEO and all tech things 7gen (shown here at my favorite wifi and human friendly coffee house in town, Talkies). Besides already cleaning up months of tech messes, less than two weeks back on track, Derek is now in Sunnyvale, California, as probably the only NEO representative at the Yahoo sponsored OSCMS (Open Source Content Management System) conference, the Drupal Performance and Scalability Seminar and the Drupal Hackfest - March 22-25, 2007. We've been touching base while he is there and it is clear he is learning lots of great insight, spreading NEO love in the open source world, and showing all that we are serious about making this a real open source domain (and I mean realneo and this region, in that).

       

ROLDO    has been talking sense to power for years in NEO.  Here he is,  with his indefatigable energy,  keeping at it here, on CoolCleveland with his views  on tax abatements.  Roldo, I hear you!

This was tucked away in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Business section today, straight out of Associated Press, without any local perspective - yawn, how boring is this subject. Well, over the next few months expect to see it is not so boring!

 

Thanks to Susan Miller for pointing out an important article in the 02/03/07 Plain Dealer regarding the war to eliminate lead poisoning in our region by 2010 - an outlandishly aggressive objective, as Cleveland ranks among the top five cities nationally for lead poisoning. In 2004, St. Luke's Foundation funded what has been the most important collaboration ever for the future of Northeast Ohio: the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council (GCLAC), aligning over 80 agencies and organizations at local, regional, state and federal levels toward the common objective of lead eradication in our region within the next three years. On February 1, 2007, St. Luke's brought together the leadership of many other foundations for the expressed purpose of convincing as many foundations as possible to join them in funding the next three years of GCLAC initiative. The article states the objective of raising $3 million from foundations to leverage for far greater support from government sources.

 About three weeks ago, I received the first "Letter to the Editor" in the history of REALNEO. Lots of people send me press releases and event info and tips on cool content, but never has someone sent an opinion editorial to be posted for them (probably because REALNEO is open for anyone to create an account and post content and comments themselves). The letter to the editor was titled "Lead Paint - You Are Idiots" and was received from someone named Kim Falk (he authorized publication of his name) and the email address was from Sherwin Williams. A little googling and I learned he is an employee there - a very enthusiastic and loyal one, to be sure... he was responsible for Sherwin-Williams donating paint to help in the repair of the Pentagon after 9/11. So I was not surprised to read he is protective of his company in defense of them being sued over lead. Still, I was intrigued by the language he uses in his editorial, published below.

What a great rebirth for Ohio. Sunday night, Ohio swore in our new Governor, Ted Strickland, and within 24 hours he vetoed the corporate and lobbyist planted, corrupt, anti-consumer, anti-American substitute bill 117, which was made to order for scam businesses to harm citizens. As Strickland states, " I will not allow this legislation in its current form, which drastically undermines current consumer protections, to go into effect during my administration." A Plain Dealer article on the veto reports " Strickland also said the curb on suits against manufacturers "prevents cities from being able to seek justice on behalf of their citizens."" "Our new Attorney General Marc Dann, who, like Strickland, is a Democrat, said he would "vigorously" defend the governor's veto." The PD article highlights the fact that the Republican lawmakers who were responsible for the corrupt SB117 are acting as lawyers and judges now, and that they plan to waste Ohio taxpayer money fighting our Governor... " State Sen. Tim Grendell, a Chester Township Republican who voted for the bill, also said the veto is void because the governor acted outside his authority. He said members of the legislature and trade groups were likely to sue over the veto." Go for it... concerned citizens are certain to defend Governor Strcikland, and those legislators who think they can keep acting corruptly under our new leadership will quickly be eliminated from office, as suggested in a previous article on SB117 by Plain Dealer columnist Sheryl Harris, which provides "a list of the Northeast Ohio legislators who voted to curtail your consumer rights". In the new Ohio, such corruption will not be tolerated. Read more about the veto below.

Source: Environmental Health Watch 

Thank you again, Ohio Republican legislature, for bringing a second city into litigation against Sherwin-Williams and the paint industry in a single day, December 27, 2006, as Canton has joined Cincinnati demanding that those who created the public nuisance of lead poisoning now clean up their mess, that has harmed 1,000s in these communities. From the Canton Repository: "In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Stark County Common Pleas Court, the city says the paint industry knew lead was toxic as early as 1900 but continued to add the metal to paint and even promoted the product as having health benefits. The city wants the companies to pay for the removal of lead paint and for public education about its dangers, as well as reimbursement for money the city has spent dealing with lead-related hazards."

 

If we have anything to thank Ohio Republican legislators for, and especially Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican,  it is that their cloak-of-night passage of Substitute Senate Bill 117, which seeks to outlaw cities suing polluters for public nuisances they cause, and legislate-away other consumer rights for Ohioans, has driven our state capital of Columbus and now huge Ohio city Cincinnati to storm their courthouses to sue Sherwin-Williams and other paint companies over the public nuisance of lead poisoning in their communities, which is a legal position proved valid in the courts of the State of Rhode Island. In Columbus, the Mayor has said it was the action of these Republicans that forced them to sue. Of course, Ohioans' greatest appreciation goes to Mayor Brewer, of East Cleveland, who was the man who brought such public nuisance lead litigation to Ohio to protect his residents, the most effected by lead poisoning in the state, and so he is protecting all citizens of Ohio.

One might think when the capital of our state sues one of the biggest companies in our state, Sherwin-Williams, which is based in the Plain Dealer's home town of Cleveland, and is defended by one of the world's most powerful law firms, also based in our hometown, seeking over $1 billion, that story would rank a few real column inches in the local paper... perhaps hit Section One, or Metro. Not in the Sherwin-Williams Plain Dealer...

Nothing like seeing a good old lynching by newspaper editor to make people "Believe in Cleveland" and Northeast Ohio. In an editorial today from the power-brokering "We" of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the "editors" make a move everyone in the know has expected from them since September 29th, 2006, when the City of East Cleveland sued "dear friend" of the Plain Dealer Sherwin Williams for making East Cleveland "perhaps Ohio's most troubled city" by creating a public nuisance and economic and health crisis by selling lead-based paint long after it was well known and proved to cause permanent physical harm to humans. In a strong retaliation against the mayor who brought lead litigation to the State of Ohio, Eric Brewer, the Plain Dealer is creating dubious scuttlebutt about a situation in which the editors acknowledge "We don't know where the truth lies." To the Plain Dealer editors, this is personal... from their editorial: "as we've stated repeatedly, we do know Brewer can be rash, reckless and extraordinarily vindictive." The logical observation is that one of the world's most powerful and troubled companies, Sherwin Williams, and one of the world's most vicious law firms, Jones Day, (which have sued East Cleveland for suing Sherwin Williams) have partnered with the region's most powerful media outlet, to which Sherwin Williams certainly pays $ millions for advertising, and they are all attacking the mayor of East Cleveland in as "rash, reckless and extraordinarily vindictive" ways as they may. Is it the duty of a newspaper to focus on facts, and allow due process, even when the publishers fear that bites the hands that feed them? No, the only purpose of a newspaper is to make the owners money. Read the opinion of the editors of the Plain Dealer here and imagine being the PD's next victim, if you ever hurt their feelings or threaten their bottom line:

I was very pleased to be joined by the new Director of Development for East Cleveland, Tim Goler, last Monday, November 13, 2006, at the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council (GCLAC) Steering Committee meeting. Tim has an undergraduate degree in early child development, and has taught kindergarten and 4th grade, and he has a master's degree in urban planning from Cleveland State University, and has been active in that field, nationwide, including working in environmentalism in NEO. So, he is an excellent addition to the team in East Cleveland, and to the war against lead poisoning in our region. Short story, he has assured me East Cleveland is not intimidated by Sherwin-Williams suing them for suing the paint industry over the public nuisance of lead poisoning in that community, nor efforts of State Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, who hopes to tweak previously passed legislation that would prevent cities or anybody else from using the state’s public nuisance law to sue the lead pigment manufacturers - Tim Goler is in step with East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer and their law department in pursuing due process and justice and they will drive an aggressive battle against lead poisoning in this region.

In an article that makes one wonder whether the mayor of Akron is perhape lead poisoned, the Cleveland Plain Dealer today gleefully reports " The City of Akron has dropped its lawsuit against Sherwin-Williams Co. (NYSE: SHW) and other former manufacturers of lead pigment, but it’s not saying exactly why"  and "Motley Rice partner Jack McConnell said it’s his understanding that (Akron Mayor) Plusquellic wanted the suit dismissed for the time being, but that when the outside lawyers working with the city wanted to meet with the mayor to discuss his intention he refused." I'll point out that in the term of this mayor it is safe to say more people in his domain have been lead poisoned than died in 9/11, and than the Americans who have died in Iraq, and if it is not the fault of Sherwin-Williams it is Mayor Plusquellic's fault, and he should be subject to litigation. He has been mayor for five terms and, as Wikipedia reports: "He is widely praised and criticized by both sides of the aisle--and some affiliated with neither Parties. In 2006, it was announced by an independent watchdog group that the city was 1.1 billion USD in debt, more per capita then any other city of its size in Ohio. The public school system has suffered due to a very strong tax abatement structure Plusquellic employed to bring new development to downtown Akron. Some complain that the City does not run like a municipal body but a business, complete with press releases and news conferences." More to follow on this shift of responsibility for lead poisoning to the Mayor of Akron.

Two weeks ago saw the second birthday of REALNEO. I started REALNEO in October, 2004, to provide “Regional Economic Action Links for North East Ohio” and implement for the region some exciting open source social networking technology. While the outcomes have not been entirely what I expected, and these years have in ways been rough, I've been thrilled to help drive and support some great developments in the community.

Ohio State Representative Mike Foley (D) will be holding a press conference tomorrow, Tuesday October 17 at 11:30 am at the gazebo at Lincoln Park (W. 14th and Starkweather), located in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland’s west side..  

 Thanks to Ed Morrison for forwarding to me an Akron Beacon Journal article about Akron filing a lawsuit against U.S. paint makers over lead hazards in their community. I don't believe the Cleveland Plain Dealer bothered to report on this important development, and the PD certainly didn't do as good a job of reporting on related litigation in East Cleveland and Toledo, a few weeks prior. Wonder why? As defendant Sherwin Williams' spokesman Bob Wells said, "Ohio is the last place we thought cities would bite their own'', and, in the case of mainstream local media, that line of reasoning holds true... they earn money from Sherwin Williams advertising and don't cover the lead issue in Northeast Ohio, even as 1,000s of children in Cuyahoga County are lead poisoned each year and so fail in life, trapping our core population in toxic poverty. With such a realization that our economy is held hostage by large corporate interests, it is time for the community to get serious about this issue... especially as Sherwin Williams and their attorneys act to intimidate our cities and deceive the people and the courts. Read on!

There were two important shows on WVIZ/PBS public television tonight. First, locally produced Ideas featured a segment on lead poisoning. Second,  "Bill Moyers on America: Is God Green?" explored  how "Millions of evangelical Christians in America have taken on care for the environment as a moral and Biblical obligation. They believe that as Christians it is their duty to take action against global warming, the loss of species and toxic chemicals in our air, food and water." So, we saw the greatest problem in our local society today... toxic contamination of at least 20% of people's land and lives in Cleveland... followed by the solution, being the 65% of Americans who believe in Christ coming together to battle such toxins. To care about any of these matters without caring about all is to live an incomplete and evil life as, apparently taken from the scriptures,  "those who destroy the Earth shall be destroyed by God!"

 

The Plain Dealer finally has their headline article in the battle to protect citizens against lead poisoning - Sherwin Williams is suing East Cleveland, Toledo and Columbus for them filing suit against Sherwin Williams over lead poisoning... this, rather than the impacts and history of lead poisoning, is what has made the headlines in the paper, featured on top of the business section (rather than the front page, where the news belongs). So, Sherwin Wlliams and their local attorneys Jones Day feel they can intimidate or perhaps bankrupt Ohio cities by attacking them over what has already been determined against Sherwin Wiliams and Jones Day in Rhode Island and is in court in 26 other states, all because  Sherwin Wiliams and Jones Day believe Ohio and our courts are so in the pockets of this rich and powerful local company and law firm they will endorse Blackmail.

I am Jack's total lack of enthusiasm. If rumors are true then this fall is supposed to be a big election. An election that signifies change. An election that tells the status quo that we're fed up with the lies and cover-ups. Fed up with scandals, bribery, and walking at whim over the Constitution. It's an election to be remembered if only the balance of power is somewhat restored and we come off the hard right axis and balance oh so precariously on the head of a culture of potential change. That's the way it's supposed to go anyways, that is before Black Friday came early...