Okay, you poor losers in Cleveland get on your knees to Christopher Kennedy. Beg Chris to come.

She's Not Talking

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"BY A CONTINUOUS PROCESS OF INFLATION, GOVERMENTS CAN CONFISCATE SECRETLY AND UNOBSERVED, AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE WEALTH OF THEIR CITIZENS. THE PROCESS ENGAGES ALL THE HIDDEN FORCES OF ECONOMIC LAW ON THE SIDE OF DESTRUCTION, AND DOES IT IN SUCH A MANNER WHICH NOT ONE IN A MILLION IS ABLE TO DIAGNOSE." JOHN MAYNORD KEYES, ECONOMIST CENTRAL BANK OF ENGLAND

"SOCIETY SETS UP THE CRIMES AND THE CITIZENS COMMIT THE CRIMES."-CHINESE PROVERB

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In search of a Medical Mart mathmatical formula…
…and more details!

See full post at Brewed Fresh Daily here.

more wood in the stove

One sign that Clevehoga is frozen - all year long - is the vacant Coast Guard Station. 

A spectacular location, a spectacular building.  

But no ideas for re-use, and no effort to stabilize the deterioration.

You may not be familiar with Charles Chestnutt, but he was a Cleveland writer who first broke the color line with his popular novel, House Behind the Cedars.  

At Realneo we have celebrated the legislative passing of the Hauser Amendment. 

So you may think that investing in a medical mart is something Cleveland just has to do. That’s what they said about so many things that I’m not going to list here but you know the money that’s been expended on downtown this and that over the last 20 years in Cleveland. Cleveland wasn’t alone. Other cities did the same. Now here’s a study of the same kind of “investments” made in St. Louis and how much it has helped that city. How many jobs, how much economic activity did it produce? Who actually benefited from the public give-away of our money?

During the first anti-trust trial between the city of Cleveland and the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. (CEI), I walked up to the company’s former chairman Elmer Lindseth. He had been attending the trial as a spectator. I asked the 78-year old retired executive if he ever had expected to see the day that the corporate leaders of CEI would ever be brought into a court of law by the city. He hesitated to answer. I asked him if maybe he didn’t want to respond. He smiled and said, “The times are different and things change.” Things do change.

Last week I attended the World Ag Expo held in Tulare, California.   I make it a point to attend exhibitions which challenge my legacy mind.   Although I grew up on a farm,  much has changed with the advent of Cesar Chavez and digital equipment engineering and GIS farming.

So I thought it would be an eye opener to visit the Ag Expo with my brother to learn more about modern agricultural equipment.

Ed was as furious as I can ever remember seeing him, as he shouted "the process is broken".

Ed was so right.

With the looting of billions, no trillions of dollars from the U. S. Treasury for incompetent bankers, automakers and others the elite are turning to the only reservoir of more trillions to steal. Who better than William Greider to sound the alarm, as he does so well in The Nation this week.

As I’m writing these days about the underhanded suppression of Cleveland’s electric system by the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., it appears that some of the same shameful acts are now pursued on the part of the city’s electric system against public reaction to the building of a coal powered facility. Bill Callahan in his blog, Callahan’s Cleveland Diary (http://www.callahansclevelanddiary.com/?p=772)tells us about it. The issue also is detailed here also in the Ohio Citizen Action report (http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/coal/saxbe/saxbe.html).

Prima donna Tim Hagan cries the Plain Dealer is “cynical.” Tim, the PD has been propping you up for 30 years. You an arrogant, lazy excuse for a leader. You’ve been given the best press a big mouth with little record has ever been given. You don’t know how lucky you have been. With Brent Larkin leaving the Plain Dealer editorial boss position some reporter might start telling the truth about a guy who talks and talks but does little. “They’re cynical about everything we are trying to do here,” Hagan moaned about the news media and PD.

Steve Litt provides a good look at the mall site as the proper one for a medical mart and convention center in today’s Plain Dealer. http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2009/01/chosen_medical_mart_site_... It’s a good argument for where the project should be. However, it doesn’t address really – as no one has - whether we need this project or whether it is worth the price it will cost.

Time to say goodbye. Time to say goodbye to the poisonous politics of greed. Time to say goodbye to our bought-out politics. Time to say goodbye to people as Sam Miller and his type of cynical use of our politics. Forest City Enterprises executives now call for “an open process” when the decision on the Medical Mart and convention center don’t go its way. What a sick laugh. Just the audacity of the behind-the-scenes manipulators asking for the light of public sunshine is shocking. Forest City’s Sam Miller and Al Ratner have run the string out.

It’s an untidy and greedy free for all. Grab while you can. If you can. So why shouldn’t Scott Wolstein – whose grandiose Flats development has hit a frigid stall despite huge promised public subsidies – enter the messed up deal on the medical mart and convention center issue. Confusion may be the mark of bad planning, poor communications and lack of leadership and, quite frankly, an economy in a seemingly permanent dump. However, chaos seems to suit our so-called Leadership.