26 January 2012
24 January 2012
GREAT AND GREATEST VS. GREATNESS…
1310 by Jeff HessOur January Socrates Café invested ninety minutes exploring: Is greatness a matter of abnormal brain structure and chemistry? Attempting to understand greatness through example we listed famous leaders, scientists, poets, politicians, athletes and physicians in turn and found nearly all wanting. All were great or the greatest like Muhammad Ali or a world-class matchbook collector but, we decided, that was not greatness. What was the essential marker of greatness? Sleep provided my answer: transcendence, greatness must transcend a culture’s perception of the possible. The domesticator of fire, Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Dickens possessed greatness, Queen Elizabeth I and Pablo Picasso, both great persons, did not.
Was their greatness, however, necessarily the result of brain abnormality? We danced around the concept, suggesting will power, stick-to-itiveness and single-mindedness in turn, but these were all manifestations of a pre-existing state made clear for me in Exuberance by Kay Jamison and her focus on mania.
Mania, though not generally considered an illness like its dark twin depression, is not our normal condition. The malady’s rareness, and what those possessed of it may accomplish, make it desirable, but mania, in of itself, is insufficient for greatness. The accomplishment must arise from the unthought, must transcend, and that cannot be willed. Our desire to will, however, may drive our quest for consciousness altering practices and chemicals both natural and engineered. We want to believe that greatness is within our grasp if we but dedicate ourselves to that attainment.
Greatness is the ultimate progressive value because greatness has always been the only value that moves humanity forward; and on the greatest scale, what else has ever truly mattered?
24 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON THE PERCS OF BILLIONAIRES…
1246 by Jeff HessI don’t get around much these days. But I have had recent occasion to ride by Progressive Field at night. I saw it all brightly lit up.
I didn’t think the Indians were in town. I don’t even believe Spring Training has started yet. Has it?
Then I remembered. Oh, yeah.
The Indians run a winter-time extravaganza on the baseball field. They even put up a full hockey rink on the baseball infield. 150 tons of snow, they say. Must be good for second base.
Progressive Field is turned into a winter profit place with everything from snow tubing, ice skating, even a snow maze in the outfield. And it was the site this year for the Ohio State/University of Michigan hockey game.
Of course, they say they don’t make a dime. Do you believe them? Neither do I. The winter charges ranged from $10 to $25 a person and $100 a family. Food and drinks extra, of course. At fancy digs built by taxpayer bucks.
Larry Dolan and family can use the stadium we paid for – ANY WAY THEY WANT. The Dolans are billionaires.
Isn’t that the privilege of wealth? Doesn’t our system work Continue Reading »
22 January 2012
21 January 2012
ESCAPING THE STINKY CLOWN SUIT OF RUBBER…
1044 by Jeff Hess19 January 2012
CATHERINE GRACE: TO NITE…
1244 by Jeff Hess
17 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON SERFING AMERICA…
1423 by Jeff HessYou know folks, the 2012 Republicans are out to destroy working/middle class people and, of course, America with it. Everything goes to the top!
They cry, “Exceptionalism,” to describe America. Yet they push the nation toward mediocrity or worse. They don’t value freedom. They value the aristocracy of wealth.
They’d love to change Social Security to a private program open to Wall Street interests. Medicare? Do away with it, they say.
They want to stop the government. Or slow it as much as possible. Obstinate Obstruction is their political game. It has the Democrats Continue Reading »
17 January 2012
16 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR….
1421 by Jeff HessThe Plain Dealer web site posted a front page from April 27 1967 for Martin Luther King, Jr. day. It resurrected an article written by me as a Plain Dealer reporter.
I don’t remember all the circumstances of the day’s coverage. I do remember covering Dr. King several times. I also remember seeing a young, slim Rev. Jesse Jackson during those days. Dr. King brought his Southern Christian Leadership program to Cleveland to help elect Carl Stokes Mayor of Cleveland.
The article was a major front page piece headlined: “Dr. King’s Plea: “Shun Violence.” He had spoken to some 8,000 Cleveland students.
Personally, his birthday isn’t the most memorable date for me. The March on Washington in 1963 means more to me. That was the occasion of Continue Reading »
15 January 2012
WHY (AND HOW) I WRITE EVERDAY…
0556 by Jeff HessAdapted from Walter Mosley’s For Authors, Fragile Ideas Need Loving Every Day:
The dream of the writer, of any artist, is a fickle and amorphous thing. One evening I’m remembering a homeless man, dressed in clothes that smelled like cheese rinds, whom I once stood next to on a street corner in New York. My memory becomes a reverie, and in this daydream I ask him where he’s from. With a thick accent he tells me that he was born in Hungary, that he was a freedom fighter, but that now, here in America, his freedom has deteriorated into the poverty of the streets. I write down a few sentences in my journal and sigh. This exhalation is not exhaustion but anticipation at the prospect of a wonderful tale exposing a notion that I still only partly understand.
A day goes by. Another passes. At the end of the next week I find myself in the same chair, at the same hour when I wrote about the homeless man previously. I open the journal to see what I’d written. I remember everything perfectly, but the life has somehow drained out of it. The words have no art to them; I no longer remember the smell. The idea seems weak, it has dissipated, like smoke. This is the first important lesson that the writer must learn. Writing a novel is gathering smoke. It’s an excursion into the ether of ideas. There’s no time to waste. I must work with that idea as well as I can, jotting down notes and dialogue. The first day the dream I gathered will linger, but it won’t last long. The next day I have to return to tend to my flimsy vapors. I have to brush them, reshape them, breathe into them and gather more.
I have to begin each day with my work because creation, like life, is always slipping away from me. I must write every day.
15 January 2012
WHY IS JEFFREY VERSCHLEISER NOT IN PRISON…?
0514 by Jeff HessAt one point during these deals, [Jeffrey] Verschleiser reamed out his immediate subordinate, co-head of mortgage finance Baron Silverstein, over the “problem” of the due diligence department taking too much time to do its work. Silverstein responded by issuing the following tirade to John Mongelluzzo, Bear’s VP for Due Diligence, demanding that he not get in the way of Bear’s insane goal of funding 500 mortgages a day:
I refuse to receive more emails from [Verchleiser] (or anyone else) questioning why we’re not funding loans every day. I’m holding each of you responsible for making sure we fund at least 500 each and every day… I was not happy when I saw the funding numbers and I knew NY would NOT BE HAPPY… I expect to see 500+ every day. I will do whatever is necessary to make sure you’re successful in meeting this objective.
Whenever any right-wing loon, or Bloombergite, tries to tell you the mortgage crisis was caused by the government forcing the poor banks to lend to broke black people, please direct them to this passage. The banks not only wanted to give out these loans, they wanted to give them out at the speed of light. They wanted to crank them out so fast that their own auditors literally couldn’t read the writing on the loan applications. This was greed, not policy. Anybody who says anything else is high on something.
Anyway, given that much of Verschleiser’s questionable behavior is in writing, his case sure seems court-ready. But for whatever reason, he has not been indicted.
One can almost understand a regulator not wanting to take on the whole circular securitization scheme — Bear lends money to corrupt mortgage firm, mortgage firm makes bad loans, Bear packages bad loans and sells to investors, then takes the proceeds and creates more bad loans — because it is so complex and difficult to prove.
But in this case there are simple issues of fraud and theft thatcould be taken on without having to prosecute broader crimes related to securitization. But prosecutors, apparently, just blew those off. In the current environment, regulators even miss the layups.
14 January 2012
14 January 2012
I CAN’T THINK OF A MORE STUPID QUESTION…
1136 by Jeff HessI’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
And people wonder why newspapers are dying…
12 January 2012
THE NDAA SCARES THE FUCK OUT OF ME…
0856 by Jeff Hess11 January 2012
YES, FECKIN’ MOTHER OF GAWD, YES…!
0950 by Jeff HessFrom Superconductor:
Tuesday night’s New York Philharmonic performance of the Mahler Ninth was stopped dead by an unusual instrument–the iPhone.
An iPhone (using the marimba ring-tone) went off repeatedly in the fourth movement of Mahler’s final completed symphony. According to an eyewitness, the offending phone owner was in the front rows of Avery Fisher Hall when his phone went off, just 13 bars before the last page of the score. In other words, in the final moments of a 25-minute movement, that ends a 90-minute symphony.
“Mr. Gilbert was visibly annoyed by the persistent ring-tone, so much that he quietly cut the orchestra,” the concert-goer reports. She related how the orchestra’s music director turned on the podium towards the offender. The pause lasted a good “three or four minutes. It might have been two. It seemed long.”
Mr. Gilbert asked the man, sitting in front of the concert-master: “Are you finished?” The man didn’t respond.
“Fine, we’ll wait,” Mr. Gilbert said.
The Avery Fisher Hall audience, ripped in an untimely fashion from Mahler’s complicated sound-world, reacted with “seething rage.” Someone shouted “Thousand dollar fine.”
This was followed by cries of ‘Get out!’ and ‘Kick him out!.’
Personally? I think the crowd should have made the ass hat eat the phone backwards.
10 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS: THIS IS NOT ABOUT DIMORA…!
1002 by Jeff HessWhat has been written in the past often has relevance to the present and future.
I was struck (infuriated) recently by an article on the business pages of the New York Times. It revealed that the State of New Jersey was providing the developers of a luxury hotel/casino in Atlantic City with some $260 million in tax breaks.
It prompted me to seek out the foreclosure problem in New Jersey. People really in need. The number of foreclosures from 2009 projected through 2012: 235,881. That’s a lot of families. A lot of pain.
I wonder how they feel about Republican Gov. Chris Christy’s generosity to casino hotel developers. (It seems Republican politicians are against the dole unless it goes to wealthy interests.) What is surprising is that no one ever has to prove these generous subsidies ever really work.
Equally disturbing, the Times today reveals that “Mr. Ratner… would haul in $726 million in special public benefits” from development in NYC. Indeed, Mr. Ratner (Bruce) is related to our Forest City Ratners. The article points out he is “Developer No. 1″ and “Developer No. 2″ in two corruption cases in the city, though he isn’t charged in either. The article notes that Bruce Ratner “walked between the legal raindrops.”
Development and Corruption seem uniquely tied Continue Reading »
8 January 2012
OCCUPY FELTY & LEMBRIGHT…
1428 by Jeff HessMore email fun with foreclosure law firms!!!!
Pursuant to the Occupy Cleveland General Assembly expression of support and eviction defense of Cindy Moore in Canal Fulton – Felty & Lembright is the law firm representing Huntington Bank, which seeks to seize Cindy’s home.
Conveniently, Felty & Lembright is located at 1500 W. 3rd St., Suite 400, a short stroll from Occupy Cleveland’s tent on Public Square, across from the Ritz Carlton. Also conveniently, they list every attorney and staff email address on their website.
http://www.feltyandlembright.com/our-office.html
1500 West 3rd Street
Suite 400
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
216.588.1500eomalley@feltyandlembright.com
dgauntner@feltyandlembright.com
asoni@feltyandlembright.com
clichtman@feltyandlembright.com
jkaplow@feltyandlembright.com
ascarlato@feltyandlembright.com
mlembright@feltyandlembright.com
kfelty@feltyandlembright.com
madzema@feltyandlembright.com
ldetmayer@feltyandlembright.com
jhorrocks@feltyandlembright.com
shiggins@feltyandlembright.com
knovick@feltyandlembright.com
aknapper@feltyandlembright.com
jwalters@feltyandlembright.comSo here’s an email I just sent to every address at Felty & Lembright, which all us Facebooker’s can do simply with a cut and paste! Get creative!
Dear Felty & Lembright,
Happy New Year from Occupy Cleveland! We understand your law firm is representing the bank attempting to throw Cindy Moore out of her home on January 13, who is currently suffering from late stage cancer. We’d like to invite you to visit us on Public Square so you can meet the people who intend to stop this eviction. Expect us.
Yours,
Occupy Cleveland – with Robin Johnny Adelmann and 9 others.
Felty & Lembright
Committed to Providing Outstanding Legal Representation
www.feltyandlembright.com
6 January 2012
6 January 2012
IN GLORIOUS PRAISE OF HOT SAUCE…
0819 by Jeff Hess0819: Against Pepper
In the Hanlon family mystery gift exchange I scored the perfect gift: a five pack of hot sauces guaranteed to make my year spicy.
