Bonus No. 1: Global Average Temperature Over Randall Munroe’s Lifetime…

Bonus No. 2: Q-Nuts “It’s the Delta Variant, Charlie Brown!”

Bonus No. 3: Mike really needs to read Oliver Burkeman’s new book—Four Thousand Weeks…

Bonus No. 4: Working from within any system to affect change has always be futile…

Bonus No. 5: Then Roy and Barbara moved to Florida…

Aren’t you just thrilled that the Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com, as they like to say, will look at St. Louis and Cincinnati to see what WE might do with the lakefront dream offered by Jimmy Haslam, a guy noted for running a company that cheated his truck driving customers.

The PD and Steve Litt ought to be looking at how a billionaire all of a sudden—despite a tough mayoral race is in progress—jumped his desires over what should be a community priority list of needs, not just wants.

But the PD & Litt will be leading the bandwagon of self-serving chislers.

Cleveland, unfortunately, is a town overstocked with wealthy foundations, too many do-gooder, precious booster organs—and not enough citizen activists.

Surely, not enough rabble-rousers.

It should be rather easy to find out Cleveland’s most crying needs. Where it’s priorities should and ought to be.

If you Google the city you get a hint pretty quickly. And is ain’t a plinth.

In 2019, more than 114,000 people lived in poverty in Cleveland, including 37,700 children and nearly 12,000 older adults. Cleveland remained dead last among large cities in child poverty, with 46.1 percent of children in the city living in poverty in 2019.

Cleveland’s poverty rate led the largest cities rate with 30.8 percent (2019). More than 6,500 adults in poverty worked “full-time for the full year.”

Litt, the PD’s go-to guy on such stories, has already called it a “visionary plan,” which sounds like an anointment. Editorially, it’s “exciting.” Please!

He has already written:

Dee (wife) and Jimmy Haslam and the administration of Mayor Frank Jackson unveiled their concept in May. It calls for extending the downtown Mall over lakefront rail lines and the Ohio Route 2 Shoreway to create a seamless connection between downtown and Lake Erie.

Another Jetport in the lake, People mover up Euclid Avenue.

There is no questioning of Haslam’s motives in spending his own money to have a study done for this desired project. He has his own plans in the back pocket.

The Cleveland Browns, owned by the Haslams (worth: $3 billion) sits on the lakefront. There has been no recitation of Haslam’s problems with the cheating of customers by the Pilot Flying J owner. Part of his record.

The PD need only go into its files and see a story by John Caniglia about Haslam’s dodge of charges in the case involving $56 million in fraud by top executives of his company. The statue of limitation, the story notes, ran out in the case of bilking of “unsophisticated” trucking companies of owed rebates.

His brother, Bill, was Republican Governor of Tennessee.

I can’t figure any reason why Cleveland would entrust its lakefront development, never mind if it should be on any current priority need, to Haslam. (See Forbes article headlined: FBI says recordings expose Jimmy Haslam’s ‘jacking the discount’ Fraud at Pilot Flying J.) It says “Jimmy Haslam allegedly knew of the deceptive ‘Jacking the Discount’ scheme.”

The media—and this includes TV news—help set the stage for how the needs of the Cleveland/Cuyahoga are met or not.

We see how easily it has been for billionaire team owners to get their needs attended to by the city and county governments. No problem.

Cavs owner Dan Gilbert got what he wanted for the arena, despite the desires of some 20.000 plus signatures that the issue be presented to the voters/taxpayers. Pressure cracked the Greater Cleveland Congregation, which helped collect those signatures. It cracked like a fresh egg. And today, Council President Kevin Kelley, a the leaders of the egg-cracking, has the nerve to run for mayor.

Now, Paul Dolan, third member of the Billionaire Sports Beggar Club, wants the city and county to chip in multi-millions of dollars for a $435-million spruce-up of the baseball stadium. You can bet that much of that will be dedicated to revenue-producing revenue, not fan accommodations. In other words, in his pocket.

Dee and Jimmy will be next in line. But AFTER the lakefront scheme, which you can place your bets will be dedicated to filling the lakefront with revenue producing business and residency. Or maybe long distance, this means a new football stadium – somewhere else.

These billionaires look far ahead.

But that doesn’t mean we have to give them what they want.

We need a people’s priority agenda.

And voters should be watching the candidates and how they speak about our billionaire welfare clients.

ALL CANDIDATES SHOULD BE ASKED WHERE ON THEIR LIST OF PRIORITY NEEDS DOES A PLINTH TO THE DOWNTOWN WATERFRONT RATE!

So, the response to deadly heatwaves fueled by our slavish devotion to the fossil fuels industry is to deliver (at best) filtered tap water in insanely small plastic bottles made from fossil fuels in big trucks fueled by fossil fuels. As I was telling a friend the other day, humanity is the alien invader transforming the planet and the rest of the lifeforms are at our mercy.

We are lemmings rushing over the cliff. We are committing species suicide and we’re taking the rest of the planet with us.

Bonus No. 1: Gary Larson would have understood the irony.

Bonus No. 2: Kevin Kelley is scared of Dennis Kucinich…

Bonus No. 3: Keep it in the ground…

Bonus No. 1: Judge For Yourself…

Bonus No. 2: Republican Obstruction Will End Itself…

Bonus No. 3: Housing Discrimination and Reparations…

Bonus No. 4: Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them…

Our Olympics of civic corruption continues.

The rich pigs are at the trough again.

We have to help Paul Dolan. He’s worth more than $4 billion and he draws an annual salary of $157,365 from MSG Networks, cable and TV system. He’s also a director of Cleveland’s Dix & Eaton public relations firm.

But he needs more. He’s one of our times despicable corporates who has so damaged this country that we may never be able to repair it.

Last time the stadium, according to a document I’ve been saving the construction cost was $180-million.

When Jacobs Field was built, the construction cost was $180 million, according to a Gateway document marked “Confidential.”

But they are BACK. For another costly deal for taxpayers. More than double.

And now they want $435 million. Or well more than double the cost.

But that’s okay because they tell us it will be an economic engine that will generate $3.22 billion. As if it goes directly into your pocket.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Oh, wait. They don’t tell you who that goes to.

It goes mostly to that guy I mention above. The billionaire.

Another bit of information that had never been public before was the note that the naming rights for Progressive Field with an annual price of $3.5 million a year.

Under the original deal, the Gateway Economic Development Corp. received the payment for naming rights. It didn’t go to the team.

But they wrestled it away.

The naming rights income started out low. It got to just under $1 million a year when a new deal was worked out.

Gateway was in terrible financial mess at the time.

Though all property taxes on the actual structure, which would be the main tax income from the development had been exempted.

But Mayor Michal White and County Commission Tim Hagan led the effort to excuse all property taxes except for land. It has saved to tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds by now, for the team owners.

Gateway was facing the embarrassment of having so little income from the two sports teams—Cavs and Indians—that it faced bankruptcy.

Brand new stadium and arena but no income.

The owners—Gateway for the city and county—of the two sport facilities couldn’t pay the property taxes on land that had been low valued, almost useless land.

The deal was that the owners would insure the Gateway operating budget, including the minor property taxes. In exchange, Gateway gave us the naming rights income.

Avoid a great public embarrassment.

My attempts to get that figure for naming rights were unsuccessful.

Now we see it has risen to more than $3 million a year for Progressive Field, or $45 million for this extension period.

Does it go to Gateway, as originally set? No, it goes into the usual pockets.

In the pockets of the Dolans.

Now to the other subterfuge.

“I’m pleased to say there will be no new taxes,” said County Executive Armond Budish.

No, no new taxes. Just added old taxes. Watch.

Then we are told that we’ll get “visitors,” who are seen apparently as “suckers.”

There will some 1.7 million at ball games, they say.

That will produce more than $300 million a year, they say.

It’s as if it will go into your, and your, an your pocket.

Well, I’m betting that most of it (more than the extra taxes) will go into
the pockets of one Paul Dolan and the Dolan family. Spell it BILLIONAIRE>

Billionaires today in this country are BEGGARS. Big time.

Gateway hasn’t held a corporate meeting since December 2020;

But it seems to run a reasonable operation. It’s had the same crew for years.

In 2008 Sports Illustrated recorded the stadium here as “best ballpark,” according to fans.

The facility “after the 2014 and 2015 seasons… were renovated in two phases, which upgraded and reconfigured areas of the park and reduced seating.

“As of 2021, the official seating capacity is listed at 35,041 people, though additional fans can be accommodated through standing room areas and temporary seating,” Gateway says.

It’s web site also notes that the team has won 10 Central Division titles and hosted playoff games 12 seasons, most recently in2020. The stadium has hosted league championship series in five season and advanced to the World Series three times at Progressive Field.

Not bad for a team whose ownership doesn’t like to spend bit bucks, only to get other to spend big bucks.

There doesn’t seem to be any life left in Cleveland so I don’t expect any major outcry or organized opposition to this robbery.

The last time there was a similar move, some 22,000 people signed petitions to force a vote on a public subsidy for another billionaire—a bigger billionaire—Dan Gilbert owner of the Cavs and net worth of $37.2—his worth goes up and down fairly dramatically.

This is only part of the story.

Sports owners have their hands in our pockets.

It isn’t going to stop.

The poor people (all of us) in this town have no more fight left.

It seems, with the listless showing of Cleveland voters in the 11th District election with a strong candidate, they can change our name to No Hope, a town beaten down. Without the leadership anywhere to prop it up to give a fight.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

Point Of Viəw

EDITORIAL NOTE: The following review of Dennis Kucinich’s recent book was originally published in the Columbus Free Press. I don’t know Hartman but he comes recommended by Roldo, so that good enough for me. Matt Taibbi, another journalist I respect, has been singing the praises of Dennis and his book.

I’m not convinced. In talking to Roldo this week about his latest piece—WHICH KUCINICH WILL THIS CAMPAIGN REVEAL?—I asked the question: Is there a real Dennis Kucinich?

I suppose the answer depends upon which way the wind blows, or, as a friend who knew Dennis in his Shirley MacLaine days might suggest, which way the crystal swings.

BY JOHN K. HARTMAN

Dennis Kucinich was a hero of mine.

His newly released book, The Division of Light and Power, is all about how he became a hero to me nearly five decades ago when he was first a Cleveland City Councilman and then, for one glorious but controversial term, was the mayor of Cleveland, then the largest and most powerful city in Ohio.

The book is well worth reading if you, like me, were old enough to be aware of Kucinich’s rise to power. If you are younger and want to learn about the era, the book will enlighten you as well.

I was living 60 miles to the south in my hometown of Ashland, Ohio. We got all of our TV and much or our radio from Cleveland, not to mention the Cleveland Plain Dealer, then the largest and most powerful newspaper in Ohio.

I came to admire Dennis Kucinich because he stood up for the forgotten people of Cleveland, Blacks and Whites, against the dominant forces of the city—its elected officials who largely pandered to the business community, and the Corporate Establishment, led by the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company that wanted to monopolize the sale of electricity to city residents.

Cleveland had its own public utility, Muny Light, that served a portion of the city in competition with CEI. The latter had to keeps its rates down to compete with Muny. CEI wanted to buy Muny in order to eliminate the competition, raise rates and make more money for its stockholders.

At age 23, the diminutive, mop-haired Democrat Kucinich ran for ward councilman in 1969, knocking on hundreds of doors. When the votes were counted, the incumbent tried some chicanery to cheat his way to victory, but the Kucinich forces blocked the effort and won by a handful of votes.

Kucinich took office committed to representing the people not the powerful. That did not go down well with the political establishment who were used to go along, get along types.

Muny suffered more than its share of power outages, partly because it could not tap into CEI’s power in a crisis situation. Kucinich saw that as an attempt by CEI to beat down Muny and force the city to sell.

Kucinich was as ambitious to move up the political ladder as he was to serve his constituents. He made a maverick bid for U.S. Congress, but fell short.

He managed to win the Cuyahoga County Clerk of Courts office and left City Council, but retained his interest in keeping Muny out of CEI’s grasp.

The city’s political leaders blew hot and cold over selling Muny. Its sale would be on and its sale would be off. CEI kept trying to make the deal.

As the 1970s wore on, a deal seemed imminent. From his Clerk’s position, Kucinich continued his vehement opposition.

The sale was on the verge of going through when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was persuaded to block it for the time being.

City Council voted to sell. Kucinich and others passed petitions to put the measure on the ballot in 1977, but it was ruled off.

Kucinich decided he had an issue on which to get elected mayor and gathered enough signatures to appear on the ballot. In a three-way primary, Kucinich and Democratic State Rep. Edward Feighan survived and Republican incumbent mayor Ralph Perk was eliminated.

With the help of the endorsement of the Plain Dealer, where Kucinich once worked as a copy boy, the so-called Boy Mayor, age 31, was elected to lead the city in 1977.

As mayor, Kucinich was no more of a go along, get along politician than he had been as Councilman. He fought the establishment and stood up for regular people and the needy just as before. He battled tenaciously to keep Muny out of CEI’s clutches.

This led to government by chaos. Kucinich’s strength was fighting for issues. He was a legislative type, not an administrative or executive type. Things got so disjointed that citizens passed petitions to recall him as mayor and got enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot. Yet he survived, winning a narrow victory.

Winning a second term in 1979 proved impossible. George Voinovich, a popular local politician who had served in the Ohio legislature, offered himself up as a genial go along, get along politician and sent the Boy Mayor packing. Voinovich, a Republican, made deals that endeared him to the Establishment and eventually became a two-term governor of Ohio. Much of Ohio’s current economic stagnation and Republican political corruption can be blamed on Voinovich, who quickly forgot his urban roots as governor.

Nonetheless, Muny was kept out of the hands of CEI under the Voinovich Administration and remains, nearly five decades after the takeover attempts began, a public utility, now known as Cleveland Public Power. CEI officially gave up its takeover attempt after two decades.

Kucinich takes and richly deserves credit for saving the people’s electric utility from the corporate clutches.

The book is deeply sourced with an extensive list of references and a detailed index. Kucinich’s writing chops are evident. The holder of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and communication from Case Western University brings eyewitness details to each chapter and spices them up with verbatim quotations and conversations that took place in the heat of his many battles.

On a personal level, he admits that his ardent pursuit of political power caused his first two marriages to end and were bad for his health. He recounts that the criminal element in Cleveland put out more than one hit on him.

In the early 1970s, I reached out to get acquainted with Kucinich and through the good auspices of his top adviser, union leader Bob Weissman, who had helped me in my unsuccessful campaign for state representative in 1970. I got to have lunch with Kucinich at his favorite Cleveland haunt, Tony’s Diner.

During his time as mayor, I persuaded him to speak to my journalism class at Bowling Green State University and attend a reception at our home afterward.

On a personal level, I will always be grateful to Dennis Kucinich for those kindnesses.

However, over time Kucinich became less of a hero to me as he became a gadfly for radical policies that could never be enacted. He became all talk and little action.

In the 1980s, Kucinich resurfaced as a state legislator and then a U.S. Congressman from northeast Ohio. His days in DC were ended in 2012 when the callous Republicans in Columbus placed him and U.S. Rep Marcy Kaptur of Toledo in the same district. Kaptur won the primary comfortably.

He dabbled in Presidential politics, but was never able to generate any traction. He stayed in the race long after he was a viable candidate to the consternation of many, including me, but he did win many fans to his progressive point-of-view around the country and in some very elite circles, including the entertainment business. He became a national media personality in the process. He often appeared on the Fox News Channel as a commentator. The right-wing hacks running Fox wanted to offer some semblance of balance by featuring a Democrat. Cynics would say that Kucinich was picked because he was far out of the mainstream of the Democratic Party and that his regular presence on Fox undermined the mainstream elements of the party.

Kucinich put his hat in the ring in the Democratic Party primary for governor in 2018, but finished a distant second to Richard Cordray, making a decent showing only in northeast Ohio.

Forty-four years after he won the Cleveland mayorship and 42 years after he lost it, Kucinich put his hat in his hometown’s ring again this year, entering the primary for his old job. At age 75, Kucinich remains an intellectual powerhouse and an indefatigable campaigner.

The smart money says he will make it through the crowded primary, but probably will not return to the mayor’s chair as a dynamic, younger, connected, contemporary candidate will win the general election. That is, unless a major game-changing issue arises. Kucinich thinks the issue is rising crime.

Kucinich is about as likely to win as the Cleveland Indians are to win the pennant. The Cleveland baseball team, to be renamed the Guardians next season, is asking for millions of city tax giveaways to keep from moving out of town when its lease expires in two years.

Roldo Bartimole, Cleveland’s muckraking journalist extraordinaire, has documented in his Point Of Viəw newsletter and Have Coffee Will Write the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tax money given away to the Indians, Browns and Cavaliers professional sports teams’ owners to keep them in town, mostly to pile up losses and frustrate fans.

The Boy Mayor once rode his opposition to selling Muny Light into capturing the mayor’s chair. Could fate bring Cleveland a Mature Mayor, one Dennis Kucinich, winning his old job by running on a platform of opposing massive tax giveaways to greedy baseball owners and their unimaginatively re-nicknamed team?

Kucinich served as a “Guardian” of Muny Light back in the day. Could Kucinich become the “Guardian” of the city’s treasury and deny the greedy owners of the soon-to-be Cleveland Guardians another gigantic helping of welfare for millionaires?

If so, Dennis Kucinich would be my hero again.

(John K. Hartman writes the Columbus Media Insider column for the Columbus Free Press. Send your comments to ColumbusMediaInsider@gmail.com. (Copyright, 2021, John K. Hartman, All Rights Reserved)

One of my early memories of Dennis Kucinich occurred in late March 1967.

I had written a piece—a full-page—centering on a little boy in a Hough tenement. I gave him the name Eddie Brown. Not his real name.

The photo showed the back of his head posed looking out a window. The photo was huge 9 by 12 inches. His view: a backyard was strewn with garbage.

This was the ’60s and the PD was learning it had a black community. And racial problems.

Dennis was a copy boy at the paper.

When I showed up to work the next day, he scurried after me. Excitedly telling me that the piece had attracted angry reaction. I wondered if he agreed. I also got envelopes with the story enclosed and angry racist remarks.

The next day’s story was about the landlord. He claimed the tenants loved him.

But a wrong move as we talked caused his jacket to open. And it revealed a holstered gun.

Not a sign of love.

Now Dennis, a former Mayor of Cleveland, is 74. He’s running again.

I guess the question is: Is this the same Dennis as 1979? Or is this a new Dennis 2021?

I’m not following the mayoral campaign. I’m too old. Don’t get around much anymore.

But I listen to “podcasts”—interviews—and watch press conferences and questioning of candidates.

I don’t think Dennis has changed much. He seems remarkably still Dennis.

And that could be a serious problem. Not necessarily for him.

Kucinich is one hell of a politician.

But he didn’t make a very good mayor the first time around.

I don’t believe, however, you can blame his youth. He was only 31.

Now past Social Security age, Kucinich has latched on to the crime issue as his roadmap to return to city hall.

That’s what he does: latches on and won’t let go.

He got a lot of flak over his city-wide mailing of the emblematic “CLEVELAND” signature sign, dripping red for blood. Destination Cleveland, a city promo unit, fired off a “cease/desist” letter.

That only gave the wily Older Dennis the opportunity to use the sign again. This time with a rainbow and no blood. Who could object?

I am still awaiting—especially if this race gets to look close—a more desperate Kucinich may get.

And he believes he has to play more strongly to the white voter.

He has to knock off Kevin Kelley.

Then it will be dangerous white/black general election.

I think it might be instructive to look at the guy who nationally won lots of attention from progressives of the 60s and 70s.

He was selling his brand of “urban populism.”

But he tended to slip under pressure of failure.

Read this September 1979 issue of Point Of Viəw. It reveals just how down Dennis might get.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

Willie Francis Sutton (left) and Wile E Paul Joseph Dolan (right)

Willie Sutton robbed banks, he said, “because that’s where the money is.”

The Dolan family will tap Cleveland and Cuyahoga County residents of tens of millions of renovation dollars “because that’s where the free money is now.”

And the Dolans won’t risk jail time.

For some reason sports teams can become welfare clients of the public with no questioning of why.

We the taxpayers built a stadium, equipped the stadium with all kinds of revenue-producing assets, and now the beneficiaries want a fix-up on the dole.

What private business has that ability to stick its hand in the pocket of the public and take what it wants? And no one suggests it is wrong.

The guardians of the public—the news media—look the other way as the robbery is in progress.

If you didn’t tell the truth in the past, you cannot tell the truth now.

And the Cleveland news media—guardians of the public—never told the truth about the cost of our major league sports teams.

It means is that the errors of the past will be repeated into the future.

The cost is tremendous.

But it’s Our Roman circuses to keep the general public’s mind on something not essential to their and their children’s benefit.

Cleveland media, civic and business leaders tell us, however, losing any team would be devastating economically to Cleveland.

Wish they’d tell that to Columbus—population now 898,000 to Cleveland’s continually shrinking at 363,000. Both have metro areas of just over 2 million.

Cleveland and Cuyahoga taxpayers pay the heavy cost of the three major league freeloaders.

And that’s why too, the election of a new mayor after years of “it is what it is” but not what it should be, will continue.

******************************************************************
NEWS FLASH: Who gets elected mayor in November doesn’t matter. The movie won’t change.
******************************************************************

I have kept track for years of what has been given to billionaire team owners and multi-millionaire ballplayers.

It should be embarrassing to our journalists of the present, as it should have been of those of the past, that these costs have never been highlighted by our news media guardians.

We have given much.

They ask for more. Always.

I wrote in March 1994 in the alternative paper Free Times the following:

Cuyahoga County taxpayers have built a plush, 900-seat, $5 million double-decker restaurant—the largest in downtown Cleveland—free for Dick Jacobs at the new stadium at Gateway.

It came in over-budget (but who cared) at $5,155,893.

I once asked Tom Chema, first leader of Gateway, whether he reported to the IRS all the free stuff given Dick Jacobs, then baseball team owner. “Absolutely not,”” said the straight-faced Chema.

The restaurant—Terrace Club—in the stadium was the largest downtown. More seating than the Metropolitan at the then Huntington building (400 seating), the then Top of the Town at Erieview (200) and Morton’s of Chicago 132 seating, all downtown.

We paid for its kitchenware at a cost of $1,054,320. Nice forks and knives.

Other costs:

—Rough carpentry work in kitchen: $80,000.

—Rough carpentry work in dining area: $70,000.

—Rough carpentry work in bar: $49,000.

You get the idea.

And maybe why we get little coverage of this kind of spending: $29,023 facilities to accommodate the working press with food.

Let’s see how generous we taxpayers have been. Restaurant costs:

—Kitchen tile: $48,000.

—Restaurant tile: $28,000.

—Stonework: for restaurant: $26,550.

—Stonework for the bar: $20,250.

—Carpeting at restaurant: $22,250.

—Carpeting at bar: $21,205.

—Lighting fixtures: $76,600.

Chairs at various costs:

—16 Bernhardts at $295 each – $4,720.

—Armless dining chairs: 135 at $165 each (plus fabric cost) total $8,640.

I don’t want to bore you. This went on several paragraphs with costs of fabric, various chairs and lamps—and then a circular stairway for the two levels at a cost of $35,799.

Glass for munchers to watch some of the game $111,010, bought from former Cleveland councilwoman Mary Zunt’s firm. All in the family.

Many don’t know that the late former Cleveland baseball team owner Dick Jacobs insisted on marble tables for the luxury loges, which bring in big bucks for the team owner.

The marble was quarried in Lucca, Italy.

There’s a story behind this costly request.

Indeed, Gateway was informed that the Lucca marble desired was not suitable, according to Freda, the Italian company.

Didn’t matter, Dick Jacobs wanted it.

“We are very sorry to hear about your continued trouble…” (but) it said,

“We had already advised that, for its specific physical characteristics, this marble presents some problems…”

The marble loge tables cost $2,500 each.

Not a great cost when you’re not paying.

Table replacement cost: $260,000 with Gateway paying half.

Then there was the $600,000 apartment in the old Gund Arena, now the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.

I reported in July 1995:

The Gund Brothers have built a $600,000 living quarters for themselves within the arena, and Gateway is trying to determine if the taxpayers paid for any of it.

I asked at the time, “Was the apartment complex funded from the $20 million of purchasing power the Gateway Economic Development Corp. gave to the Cavs?”

Yes, the Gunds were given management control over the building of their arena.

“That’s a good question,” (but one he couldn’t answer) said Craig Miller, chair of Gateway Corp. at the time and former city law director under Mayor Michael White.

I never found out the answer to the apartment at the Gund.

Gateway built Jacobs, now housing the Dolan family, an entire office building (not specified in the plans) at the then Jake. Plans called for some office space, not a separate building.

The building cost $7-million. The stuff—furnishings—we taxpayers stuffed in the building cost us $900,000.

We were always very generous.

Chema told me the reason a standing building was constructed was because an unsightly opening at the stadium had to be hidden.

Oh, Tom was very inventive.

Not to be outdone, the cost of outfitting office accommodations for the arena cost a bit above $1.4 million.

We wonder if small businesses might line up for a bit of this kind of help.

Needy not apply.

The owners, of course, got free loges along with their free offices. So why not add executive dining rooms. Of course. Done.

Executive offices need a conference table.

The conference table for Dick was, of course, special. Eighteen foot long, five foot wide. Boat-shaped. Inlaid strips of wood to represent a baseball. And, of course again, a metal inlaid buffoonish Chief Wahoo. Specified.

A check with woodworkers said the cost would be in the $10,000 range.

Nothing was too good for Dick Jacobs in that era. Ask George Forbes.

You might remember, thanks to Mayor Michael White and County Commissioner Tim Hagan, all Gateway property was tax exempt. No property taxes. And no $15 million a year for Cleveland schools as promised by those same politicians in the vote for Gateway taxes, all regressive.

Lies? NO. Promises not yet met.

And we worry about guns and crime. What about lawyers and politicians and quiet news media and criminal activity? Look the other way, why don’t cha.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

The game has started. And it’s off to the usual wrong way.

The issue of the Cleveland baseball team’s use of the baseball stadium we built for them has been percolating for months now.

It is finally surfacing in the typical distorted media way:

How can we keep the Cleveland Takers (Oh I’ve given them a new name) in town?

What do we have to do so they won’t leave us?

The question should be:

When the hell are the billionaire owners going to pay their own way?

The team is owned by the Dolans.

Latest figures show Paul Dolan at $4.6 billion.

Sounds like enough to pay his own way.

Dolan family worth: $5.5 billion.

Can’t the family afford what they own?

(And the same goes for the Cavs with owner Dan Gilbert at $51.9 billion and the Haslams, Browns owner, at $6 billion.)

They have no shame.

The community tragedy: No one in the news media—Plain Dealer or the major TV stations—is going to press the question about

WHO SHOULD PAY FOR THE DOLAN’S PRIVATE BUSINESS.

And one of the Dolans even wants to be our next U.S. Senator.

There must be some Greed Air out there in Gates Mills. Call the doctor.

I think it is time the news media for once in history compile what we’ve already given our sports billionaires.

The media won’t do it because they would fear being called socialist.

So instead they should be called Bought Out. Biased as they are.

The tragedy is that the taxes that float the billionaire owners all come from REGRESSIVE TAXES. Every one of them.

Yes, I have spent a lot of time and energy telling this story. Mostly because the entire news media won’t.

This is High End corruption.

BELOW are some facts compiled some years ago when I toted up the public cost of our sports teams and their billionaire owners. It does not include spending in recent years. Particularly missing is the $140-million bond issue when Cleveland mayoral candidate Kevin Kelley helped kick away some 22,000 voter signatures to put it on the ballot.

NO VOTING ALLOWED! PLEASE UNDERSTAND OUR SITUATION.

—JACOBS FIELD $180,000,000.
—GUND ARENA $157,000,000.
—GATEWAY SITE PREPARATION $41,000,000.
—LAND COST $21,000,000.

Source of above: Gateway document marked “Confidential.”

—GATEWAY GARAGES $42,000,000—city built with many free spaces for teams. The Gateway garages (one since sold to gambling interests) have been big money losers.

—GATEWAY WALKWAY $13,000,000—RTA built.

There is no total price but hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on new street work, costly granite curbing and signage for the new projects.

PUBLIC TAX FUNDS PAID FOR GATEWAY & OVER-RUNS ONLY AS OF 2013 FROM COUNTY DOCUMENT:

—$154 Million (County general fund payments for Gateway bonds as of 2015 with $70 million still owed.)
—$3.75 Million (County to reimburse State Loan for Gateway).
—$3.75 Million (City to reimburse State Loan for Gateway).
—$5.8 Million (City advance to Browns for Capital Improvements).
—$2.0 Million (Repay loan from Cleveland Foundation for Gateway).

1990s CITY COUNCIL VOTED TAXES FOR BROWNS STADIUM CONSTRUCTION IN ADDITION TO SIN TAXES WITH EXPECTED .

REVENUES. STILL BEING COLLECTED TO PAY CITY BONDS:

—DOWNTOWN PARKING 8% TAX – $213,000,000 expected revenue.
—ADMISSION TAX HIKE – $36,000,000 expected revenue.
—CAR RENTAL TAX – $18,000,000 expected revenue.
—SIN TAX (first 15 years) $240 million, all gone.
—SIN TAX—10 YEAR EXTEND $135,000,000, all gone.
—SIN TAX – 20 YEAR EXTEND, expected to raise some $240 million.
—RTA WATERFRONT LINE $69,000,000 and a big money loser.

AND

—GATEWAY WALKWAY $13,738,536.

1990s—BROWNS STADIUM—Other Financing:

—STATE OF OHIO CONTRIBUTION: $37,050,000.
—RTA CONTRIBUTION: $3,000,000.
—CITY WATER DIV. CONTRIBUTION: $2,000,000.
—N.E SEWER DIST. CONTRIBUTION: $2,246,760.
—FREE USE OF CITY LAND 30 YEARS—2012 LAND VALUE ALONE: $19,007,400.

AND THOUGH THEY PROMISED VOTERS THEY’D PAY PROPERTY TAXES

—AND EVEN GIVE CLEVELAND SCOOLS $15 MILLION ANNUALLY, THE POLITICIANS INSTEAD GOT ALL PROPERTY TAX ON THE FACILITIES EXEMPTED. SO…

—The $276-million Browns stadium would pay an annual tax of $9.6 million per year. The Cleveland schools lose $5.76 million of that amount each year.

—The $176-million Progressive field would pay taxes of $6.2 million a year and the Cleveland schools would lose $3.72 million of that annually.

—The $113 million Quicken Arena would pay taxes of $3.9 million a year and the Cleveland schools lose $2.4 million of that sum annually.

EVERY YEAR!

The CORRUPTION IS ONGOING.

We have even built the team owner a $7.9 million restaurant, the latest in downtown. How’s that for generosity?

History tells a story. But not everyone reads it the same. Not everyone gets the same message.

I’m going to do something that may tax a reader’s patience but, I believe, tells the story of the corruption of the private utility company and the desire to profit no matter what the cost.

There has been a history of corruption involving the utility industry.

In a current chapter of utility corruption, First Energy Corp., which includes the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., paid some $60 million to fund a political move to pass Ohio state legislation that would bail out its nuclear and coal plants. It would cost customers billions of dollars over time.

But in Cleveland the classic dirty battle for utility monopoly has been going on for most of the last century.

Former Cleveland Mayor Dennis Kucinich played a central role this classic battle to maintain a city-owned utility—the Municipal Light Co. (Muny Light).

He made that effort the main subject of his memoir he wrote this year.

I devoted some 30 issues of Point Of Viəw, a newsletter I published from 1968 through 2000 to the prime issue of Who Governs. The writing included coverage of two federal jury trials involving CEI and the city of Cleveland. It also included coverage of CEI’s corrupt activities before Kucinich became mayor and after he was mayor.

It is a history of corporate corruption on a grand scale.

It also is a look at the failure of the Cleveland newspapers—Plain Dealer and Press—and other news media to examine and report the attempted robbery of a city asset as it was happening. This news media failure ended when Plain Dealer reporters revolted. They forced the PD finally to publish the truth. And the truth shifted the balance in a vote of whether to keep or sell Muny to CEI. Citizens, armed with the truth about the conflict, voted to keep the city’s asset. I will try to present not a simple quick read but a history that can be kept and referred to if needed. I believe it is worth saving.

It is worthy lesson of civic history that lends itself as a study subject for students from high school to college.

Here first is a 12-page issue that covered the case against CEI including a ruling by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that caught CEI anti-competitive activity against Muny Light. It also examines the activity of Federal Judge Robert Krupansky, CEI law firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey, the dirty deals of Councilman Frank Gaul, and the city’s lawsuit against the private utility.

It was published Feb. 3, 1979.

This led to a federal anti-trust $150-million suit against CEI for its misdeeds.

You don’t often get the opportunity to hear corporate executives having to answer for their actions.

I remember asking Elmer Lindseth, a former chairman of CEI, as we both attended the trial, whether he ever thought he’d see the day the company was brought before the court of law to defend its actions.

Lindseth pause and I wondered if he wasn’t going to answer. But he then responded, “The times are different and things change.” He said it with a smile.

In Dennis Kucinich’s memoir The Division of Light and Power—largely devoted to his fight as mayor to keep the city’s municipal light plant—he attacks CEI for its corporate interlocks, charging the Cleveland corporate community with aiding CEI in its pursuit of the city’s asset.

As I read that portion of the book, I had forgotten the details but in looking back I realized I had written those details back in 1979.

In the issue I identified 88 corporations and corporate controlled bodies in an easy to read chart. It revealed numerous interconnections. The July 21, 1979 issue follows.

I reported Kucinich’s Muny victory with the March 3, 1979 issue.

I had used a quote that Kucinich repeated in his book. It is from Mayor Tom Johnson, the progressive mayor who established the city electric system.

I believe in municipal ownership of all public service monopolies because if you do not own them they will in time own you. They will rule your politics, corrupt you institutions and finally destroy your liberties. —TOM JOHNSON, MAYOR 1901-1903.

The battle had coursed through more than 100 years.

I made a list of losers who wanted to sell Muny Light: George Forbes, Michael White, Bob Hughes, Ed Feighan, Bob Sweeney, Basil Russo, and Tim Hagan.

Talk about the past.

Non-politicians on the list: Brock Weir, Claude Blair, Tom Vail, Virgil Dominic, Dorothy Fuldheim, Dave Hopcraft and Ned Whelan.

For the media, I noted, “a news media washout”—PD, Press, and TV 3, 5 & 8. All failed in their mostly negative coverage of the Muny Light issue.

Early on the city ran into a judge who appeared biased against its lawyers. I came back to show his prejudices time and again.

It started early when U.S. Federal Judge Robert Krupansky ruled that the city would not be allowed new discovery but would have to be satisfied with what it had been given by March 1976, a four-year lag. The ruling was made in 1980 by Judge Krupansky.

A month later Krupansky’s bias was revealed in a story that appeared in the Plain Dealer. Krupansky described how he saw the trial as it began by telling the reporter it would “be boring.” He later tried to get his description changed in a telephone call to the reporter. “He wanted to be quoted as saying the trial would be technical, not boring.” But it was too late. The story had been published.

Krupansky had tipped publicly his feeling for the city’s case.

CEI was represented by Squires, Sanders & Dempsey, of course. The lead lawyer was John Lansdale. He was sometimes known as Cactus Jack because of his prickly nature. Lansdale had a distinguished reputation. He had been chosen to head intelligence for the secretive Manhattan Project, where the atomic bomb was being developed.

His prickly demeanor was visible in his question of witnesses. Indeed, his anger with city lawyers hit a peak during a trial recess. He pushed Brad Norris, a city lawyer, as I reported, “in anger.”

Krupansky continued to cripple the city’s case with rulings against the city’s lawyers. They seemed unable to please the judge.

I noted his negative behavior suggested that he should remove himself from the trial.

No way would he do this as the fix seemed to be in.

CEI escaped a guilty ruling as one jury member held out.

Despite Krupansky’s actions the trial ended in a hung jury. One juror deprived the city of a victory. The woman foreman of the jury was clearly favorable to the city’s case.

Indeed, Lansdale seem to gloat that CEI was determined to destroy Muny Light.

He told the court in his opening statement, “Yes, we refused to wheel PASNY (cheap electricity from New York State)… because it would have given Muny cheaper power” than CEI could produce. “We did not wish to help Muny,” he said.

A second trial would be necessary if the city were to continue its battle.
Krupansky was even more negative with the city’s effort in the second trial in late 1981.

CEI made no pretense that it want Muny out of business.

As the trial continued, Judge Krupansky kept city lawyers Brad Norris and David Welner of Hahn, Loeser, Freedheim, Dean & Wellman, off balance. Often calling the lawyers to bench conferences that seemed to treat them as incompetent.

I called the conferences “brutal beatings.” Of course, the jury could not hear the content but couldn’t miss the nature of the judge often summoning the city’s lawyers to the bench.

Although Judge Krupansky had told reporters that he really didn’t want to hear this case and that he tried to give it to another judge, Krupansky reigned as the hearing judge six years into the troubling case. He never gave it up.

During the time when Kucinich was mayor Krupansky had city property tagged to be sold to pay CEI past debts, some $14-million. This was at the same time the city faced default of about the same total debt.

Kucinich managed to pay CEI the $14 million, thwarting any other action against the city that Krupansky might take.

As the trial ended in a hung jury, Mayor George Voinovich at first suggested the city didn’t have the financial ability to pursue a second trial. He tried to toss the ball to George Forbes, who had gotten free legal service from CEI’s lawyers, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey as defense in a carnival payoff case.(Forbes was exonerated.)

But apparently the strong feelings for little Muny Light were still intense in the Cleveland community and a second trial was pursued. My take at the time was reflected in a headline: Do it again.

In the second trial, now in 1981, Lansdale utilized objections that triggered bench conferences called by Krupansky. It seemed a tactic the two had practice.

It kept witnesses, along with city lawyers, off balance.

Lansdale and CEI had changed tactics in the second trial. He corrected mistakes of the first trial.

“We thought that Mr. Lansdale behavior made CEI look bad,” said the forewoman of the first jury. “Many times after we’d get to the jury room someone would remark that CEI’s defense seemed bumbled.”

He and CEI, the second trial revealed, had learned the lesson. Better witnesses were brought in and others were handled differently.

Krupansky helped by ruling out some crucial city testimony he had allowed heard in the first trial. Two discriminatory acts allowed hearings in the first trial were ruled out by Krupansky in the second trial.

Krupansky seemed to be helping Lansdale.

One case allowed in the first trial but not the second involved a lawsuit filed against the city to delay interconnection. The suit by a law firm was secretly financed by CEI.

Krupansky’s ruling allowed CEI to avoid revealing this secret deal revealed in the first trial.

After the trials, a Case-Western Reserve University law professor wrote a magazine article based on his talks with jurors in both trials.

Prof. Arthur Austin wrote that had a first jury needed to use an alternate juror, which he reported it nearly did, the city would have won its case in the first trial. In the second trial, he said, a similar situation would have ended the trial in another hung jury.

He described the first jury as a blue collar jury that viewed management “with hostility.” Jurors in the second trial, he said, had a “management perspective. It favored vigorous competition and approved corporate profit-seeking.”

I would note that the jury foremen—a woman in the first; a man in the second, were opposites in their demeanor during the trial. In the second trial, the jury foreman showed a distinct bias toward Judge Krupansky with facial signs of bias toward the city lawyers.
In the end, CEI avoided anti-trust penalty. It paid a bad publicity price.

It also lost its long desired hope of taking Muny Light and establishing a monopoly.
With all the powerful backing—high-priced legal support, media bias, powerful political allies—CEI never was able to win the prize.

And in the end, CEI was bought out by First Energy Corp. CEI no longer is based in Cleveland but in Akron, and CEI’s former headquarters building no longer exists for its headquarters.

Maybe there’s a lesson in all of this.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

Bonus No. 1: How “The People’s Mayor” Saved Public Power.

Bonus No. 2: At 245, America Is Old Enough to Be Honest About Its Founding.

It is my tradition to celebrate in remembrance of our two founding documents: our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Both documents, as originally written, were flawed. Our Constitution, still flawed, has improved over time thanks to the founders’ wisdom in ensuring that a system of amending would allow the document to improve with age.

Our Declaration of Independence, however, is fixed in time and remains very much a window on the year 1776.

My practice has also been to include each year the reading of our declaration by the staff of National Public Radio. This year is a little different. NPR offered this preamble to their reading:

Over the past 32 years, Morning Edition has broadcast a reading of the Declaration of Independence by NPR staff as a way of marking Independence Day.

But after last summer’s protests and our national reckoning on race, the words in the document land differently.

It famously declares “that all men are created equal” even though women, enslaved people and Indigenous Americans were not held as equal at the time.

What then follows is a long list of grievances and charges against King George III that outline the 13 North American British Colonies’ intentions to separate from Great Britain.

The list, originally written largely by Thomas Jefferson, was edited by the Continental Congress. Among the Congress’ changes: it deleted a reference to “Scotch & foreign mercenaries.” It turns out there were members of Congress who were of Scottish descent. To win support from Southerners, the Congress removed criticism of the African slave trade.

But a racist slur about Native Americans stayed in.

The passage charges that King George III “excited domestic insurrections” among the colonists by Native Americans, who the founding document called “merciless Indian Savages.”

Author David Treuer, who is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation, explains that this particular grievance refers to the idea that the British were, he says, ginning up discontent among Native people.

We can’t edit the document. It is what it is. But we can reflect and learn—opponents to learning history (like those in panic over Critical Race Theory) be damned—from our history.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

In reviewing the Kucinich memoir I said my writing during the late 1970s matched what he wrote.

But as I look back, I see he left a lot out.

How important the blind spots are may become relevant as he campaigns again for mayor against a new crew of young politician. None weren’t around for his first tour.

In April 1979 I wrote in https://havecoffeewillwrite.com/?p=80509, a bi-weekly publication I published for 32 years. Here was the headline:

WILL KUCINICH TRIP ON A PEBBLE?

I wrote that his administration “continues to have trouble with people who should not be enemies and who might even be allies.”

It relates some of the Kucinich dealings with neighborhood groups, strong at that time.

One incident involved the St. Clair-Superior Neighborhood Coalition.

It was important to know that the Gridna sisters—Betty, director of community development, and Tonia, top official in the Safety department—were Kucinich staunch favorites. They had deep family roots in the neighborhood.

The Gridna sisters were young to hold such high positions in the city administration

One meeting in particular stands out. It ended, I wrote, in an “ugly physical struggle.”

I was at the meeting.

It gave visibility to some of the nature of what the administration had been criticized about, even by supporters.

The late Bob Weissman, top advisor to Kucinich, at the meeting “insisted upon delivering a long lecture berating the group after they had reluctantly offered him a two-minute period for greetings.” He spoke because Mayor Kucinich was out of town.

While standing as an urban populist, Kucinich wanted to control neighborhood groups, which at the time were strong and independent.

The full article from early 1979 is here:

Several months later I wrote more and noted, “The pebble gets bigger.”

The issue included behavior contrary to his desire to be seen as a populist leader.

The incidents included a strange refusal to meet with—a “hide and seek” dodge to avoid meeting some 500, mostly elderly people, who came to city hall to protest.

And an incident where he had three young boys (one only 7-years old) arrested as vandals for playing in a restricted, empty pool.

I warned that there was only one way for Kucinich to lose he re-election—by “kicking it away.”

I guess the question could be—is the Dennis Kucinich 50 years after a changed and better man. And will he be different without sway of Bob Weissman, the man who got him elected.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

Can a movie be far away?

Dennis Kucinich’s memoir—The Division of Light And Power—has everything Hollywood desires for a blockbuster, especially in these times when Americans are looking for heroes.

It’s got vile corrupt corporate bigwigs, shifty crooked politicians, mobsters looking to knock off an uncooperative mayor, bought-and-paid for newspaper editors, and TV and radio personalities.

More skullduggery than a movie could handle.

AND one man against the System.

He may lose. But he doesn’t bow.

However, he’s not finished. He announced today he’s running again.

For mayor, of course.

Dennis Kucinich lived it all. Painfully, as the details tell.

I was around for most of the ride. I wrote about much of it and even parts that Dennis conveniently forgot.

For now, I’m going to give you a shorthand ride through his book by highlighting some old issues of the newsletter I wrote while Dennis was performing.

We touched many of the same bases.

And what I wrote matches the tale he tells, as far as it goes.

Dennis’s major corporate enemy by far was Brock Weir, chairman of the city’s most powerful bank then: Cleveland Trust.

Here’s a take on the rather bullying Brock Weir:

As you can tell with Weir’s confrontation with Jack Schulman, Kucinich’s young, bright law director, the enmity got very personal. And went deep.

This was no ordinary dispute. This was for real.

Weir, Dennis and George Forbes, council president, met, at the behest of a Kucinich business supporter, in a last ditch effort to end the spiral into default.

Dennis plays this meeting up in his book.

Here back when it was happening was my take, which doesn’t differ much, if at all, from his:

I had forgotten I had written the details so reading this issue I was surprised at how both this and Dennis’s version matched up.

Another aspect that I wrote fairly extensively about that matched the book version was his take on the news media, especially three reporters who stake their careers at the time. I had much more detail than he.

Three reporters are singled out for their courageous desire to tell the story of how corporate efforts were being made to take the city’s electric power asset, Muny Light, from the city. It was a demand by one bank in particular and others to relieve Kucinich and the city of financial default, the first since the Great Depression of the 20s.

Reporters lost their jobs. But piece by piece the story got out. At the Plain Dealer there was open revolt the forced the true story of CEI’s desperate acts to create a monopoly by acquiring by hook or crook Muny Light.

Eventually, material I had been reporting broke through at the PD, under reporter revolt. Voters, once they heard the truth, choose to save the system in a vote to sell or not.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

The splurge of new housing development at west side neighborhoods of Cleveland may have less to do with real estate developers or the economy than with a dead man.

Tremont, Ohio City, Detroit-Shoreway you owe this guy.

He had to stop the steamroller. It was called urban renewal.

Lucky for all of us, it stopped at the Cuyahoga River East. The east side of Cleveland paid the price.

The late Al Grisanti was responsible.

In 1966 Grisanti charged, according to the Plain Dealer, that urban renewal and highway projects could turn the near West Side into “another Hough.”

The early urban renewal pushed people out of the Central and other inner city areas, causing massive movements into Hough. Property owners, knowing the area was designated under renewal, failed to keep up property.

The efforts that promised by renewal promoters to produce replacement housing totally failed.

I have often used the quote from a banker who was also on the City’s Planning Commission—Tom Westropp.

He acknowledge the housing efforts were a disaster and then added:

I wish I could believe that all of this was accidental and brought about by the inefficiency of well-meaning people—but I just can’t. The truth, it seems to me, is that it was planned that way.

You can’t be more critical of the powers that propelled renewal—corporate and foundations—than Westropp’s assessment. It’s devastating.

Grisanti, a lawyer, died in 2002 at the age of 93. At the time it was claimed that he was the last of the legendary Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame football players to die. However, it was later reported that two other ex-players still lived.

Oddly, although all three were members of Rockne’s fame football team, none of them, including Grisanti, actually played in a Notre Dame game.

The famed Notre Dame team won 105 games, lost 12 and tied five during Rockne’s tenure. It was national champion five time.

Despite his protest efforts Grisanti couldn’t save the one home from demolition that set him on his crusade.

It was where his mother lived. In what became the Erieview downtown urban renewal district. The building was at the corner of E. 12th & St. Clair Ave.

The building Grisanti wanted to save is being demolished as the tall building rose during Erieview’s renewal.

Irony of ironies, that corner remained vacant into the 1990s and beyond.

It was the site that Dick Jacobs held and was supposed to construct a high-rise office building. He never did.

The massive Cleveland urban renewal project Erieview—actually the massive stalled project—took the home and Grisanti never forgave the city.

Indeed, he had been the downtown councilman, one of 33 members. He served from 1943 until January 19, 1954, according to City Archivist Charles Mocsiran. Grisanti did not seek re-election.

He took the city to court in the 60s. But lost.

The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the attempt by Grisanti to declare urban renewal unlawful. The Court ruled Grisanti’s plea was “want of a substantial federal constitutional question …” It was dismissed in November, 1962.

The decision ironically proved to validate urban renewal as legal throughout the nation.

Al took his case to the media. He wasn’t ready to give in. We never know where a protest really goes.

He glowed when the Reader’s Digest—a national publication—printed a piece that he promoted, attacking urban renewal.

It became part of a U. S. Senate hearing with Sen. Edward Muskie referring to the Digest’s article. It was “critical of an urban renewal project called Erieview in Cleveland, Ohio. The gist of its complaint is that the Urban Renewal Administration approved the demolition of a number of sound commercial buildings in this downtown project area.

“The article alleges that the city building inspectors had previously certified as sound most of the building’s which Cleveland officials later reclassified as substandard in order to make the project eligible for an urban renewal grant of $33 million.” It did note that the project was unanimously adopted by the city’s then 33 council members.

Grisanti was fighting a losing battle. And he knew it.

That reflected his slogan: “We got to organize the confusion.” This he did.

It really wasn’t that difficult.

Carl Stokes wrote in his “Promises of Power,” that “Cleveland had the largest urban-renewal program in the nation and had demonstrated the least progress.”

Indeed, Cleveland’s renewal program was being so badly operated that the feds cut all HUD funding in January, 1967.

Not likely to satisfy Grisanti but more likely to show the national Democrats desire to see Stokes elected.

Cleveland has never really recovered from its botched renewal plan that put 6,060 acres of the city under the renewal cloud.

The dreadful record – both downtown and on the east side, along with Grisanti’s haranguing—stalled any attempt to move on projects west of the river.

The West Side survived largely whole.

URBAN RENEWAL MEETING—City officials and others discuss Erieview. Law director and future mayor Ralph Locher is seated front left in photo. Grisanti is seated, looking forward, to right of table.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

Bonus No. 1: Dennis Kucinich on his new book, The Division of Light and Power.

If only Huey could be as successful as John Blutarsky…

Bonus No. 1: No, they certainly did not die for this…

The Cleveland corporate/legal/philanthropic establishment survived—not well—the terrible urban renewal mistakes it made and forced upon the city.

It survived the urban violence it so feared too.

Others paid the price.

But it still had another problem: Dennis Kucinich.

However, Kucinich made it easy for the Corporates to steamroller him quickly into the 1980s. It elected Republican George Voinovich.

There was nothing in the way now.

Well, maybe one thing that was beginning to grow. It could be a problem.

Neighborhood community activists. Demanding attention to neighborhood problems.

At the close of 1979, “the community organizing movement in Cleveland was an established, flourishing force in the city’s neighborhoods,” wrote Randy Cunningham, a long-time West Side activist. The book—Democratizing Cleveland: The Rise and Fall of Community Organizing in Cleveland, Ohio 1975-1985—is detail rich.

It tells the rise—then fall—of the movement.

A key event that allowed the corporate/foundation complex to choke back the activism of the period came in 1982.

“We hit the CEO’s country club… and funding died immediately. I mean it was the beginning of the end of organizing. The money just dried up,” one activist told CSU student Jordan Yin, now a professor at Alabama A&M, urban affairs.

Cunningham tells the Gates Mills Hunt Club Country Club episode in rich detail. The idea was to confront Alton Whitehouse of Standard Oil and ask for $1 billion. Whitehouse had also been a Squire-Sanders lawyer.

“Located in exclusive Gates Mills, the Hunt Club was one of the most prominent social institutions of Cleveland’s elite,” wrote Cunningham.

He sets the scene:

Those poor people just didn’t know what was going on. There they were sitting having lunch, totally decked out, with tablecloths and crystal. People were saying, ‘Excuse me, I’m thirsty. Do you mind if I drink out of your water glass?

Shouting between the two segments broke out.

“The hunt club had never before seen so many African-Americans… It was so clear who had it and who didn’t, when you went there,” one demonstrator was quoted saying.

The unplanned trip to Gates Mills included local and national neighborhood activist.

Cunningham writes:

What occurred when the 600 demonstrators (not all Clevelanders) landed at the Hunt Club was not just a political event. It was a collision of worlds that barely recognized each other’s existence, and that never came into contact… The veranda was full of well dressed diners while on the grounds, members in English riding outfits were rending their mounts, gathering for the afternoon’s equestrian events.

One activist said, “You do not embarrass the rich among their rich peers.”

One of the buses on the trip had TV cameras.

The result, seemingly all concluded, was the loss of funding from private sources, including Cleveland’s major foundations.

The corporate/legal-complex that took over city government in the late 1970s and destroyed neighborhood organizing soon after set the stage for an assault on local government.

They now owned the future.

They gangbanged public treasury for all kinds of heavy subsidies—tax abatements and the regressive taxes for three sports facilities that now totals over $1 billion easily, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame via local taxes and diverted property taxes.

It was a long list.

In the late 1970s Squire-Sanders lawyers wrote a tax abatement law that became state legislation.

Then, of course, Squire-Sanders represented National City Bank in its successful quest for a first tax abatement. It was on land at E.9th and Euclid Ave. The bank build a new office structure with 20-year abatement on a declining scale of 25 percent each five years.

It was the first abatement of an avalanche of similar deals, typically increasing to 20-year, 100 percent property tax-free deals.

When I asked the County to provide the total amount of tax abated land of deals more than $1 million each, in 2016, it reported abatements of $722,339,500.

The Squire-Sanders law obviously took off.

It was only the start of an avalanche of sweet corporate deals.

With Voinovich at the helm and the powerful City Council President George Forbes steering legislation through Council, there was little to stop the corporate agenda.

Cleveland became the nation’s most impoverished city. It became the city with the highest child poverty rate and high early birth deaths particularly in the black community. And it was losing population.

In the backrooms, more subsidies were being cooked up.

In the mid-70s a domed stadium was sought but a property tax got kicked aside by the voters. The Corporates had been acquiring land (to be used later as Gateway).It set the stage for the next stadium tax – not until Mayor Michael White was elected mayor.

County moderate income voters successfully choose a sales tax on cigarettes, liquor, beer and wine. City low income voters nixed the vote but by not enough to offset the suburban vote.

It set the stage for the biggest subsidy ever that ended with two sports facilities – a baseball stadium and basketball arena. The Gateway Economic Development Corp. became it’s manager as a quasi-public body.

But it left Browns owner Art Modell very unhappy and resulted in the loss of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore.

White worked the NFL to promise the return of a team with the Browns name and colors.

But that required a third stadium—First Energy stadium on the lakefront.

In all the cost became enormous.

White and County Commissioner Tim Hagan pushed the deal with promises never kept.

In a full-page ad just before the May the stadium promoters made significant promises.

The ad headlined boldly: WHO WINS WITH ISSUE 2?” It placed a sign, “WE ALL DO” above a photo of many children.

It promised:

• 25,000 good-paying jobs for the jobless
• Neighborhood housing for the homeless
• $15 million a year for school for our children
• Revenues for City And County clinics and hospital for the sick
• Energy assistance programs for the elderly

Despite the italicized ending the promises were obviously lies.

They didn’t end there. This was an all-out sham.

It went on: NO PROPERTY TAX • NO SALES TAX • NO INCOME TAX • NO TAX ABATEMENT.

Of course the only “no property tax” was for the sports facilities and team owners themselves. And the no “tax abatement” became full tax abatement as a state law to give ‘full tax exemption.’

For Cleveland schools, promised $15 million a year, the cost has been in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It would mean more than $300 million for the schools.

They got zilch.

This vote signaled a life-time of massive subsidies to three sports teams, all owned by billionaire families.

The Indians and Cavaliers have been playing since 1994. Between them they have escaped some $10 million a year in property taxes. That’s 27 years or $270 million in free property taxes. The Browns have been back 22 years, at close to $10 million property tax (2017 figure) that’s some $220 million.

The millions a year promised and the tens of million of property taxes not paid total some $790 million in lost revenue, most of it from Cleveland schools.

Soon you were talking money. Promised. But somehow disappeared.

Then there were the costs.

The first 10 years of the sin tax (by the way, a sales tax) cost $240 million.

But as you can see by this older chart there are so many other subsidies that it is difficult to tell how much we taxpayers are giving the billionaires.

And then along came billionaire Al Lerner who took the football team from Modell.

Of course, we had to build another stadium. I wrote that the city “barked” the football stadium, and they did.

I wrote how the Plain Dealer pandered to the desires of the wealthy class of Cleveland. They couldn’t bow lower.

Here are some of the taxes and gifts for the new tax exempt Browns stadium:

• EXTENDED SIN TAX: $110,682,300 (COLLECTED AS OF MARCH 2013)
• STATE OF OHIO: $37,050,000
• RTA CONTRIBUTION: $3,000,000
• CITY – WATER DIVISION: $2,000,000
• Northeast SEWER DISTRICT: $2,246,760
• TAX EXEMPT COST: $240,000,000 (About $8 million annual 30 years)
• FREE USE OF CITY LAND—2017 VALUE: $19,000,000.

The Established Corporates were not done.

And then they wanted the Rock Hall so Cleveland could ROCK.

But it took hard cash, not rocks.

ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME SUBSIDIES:

• $92,000,000, constructed on free city land.
• $8,500,000 for Inner Harbor by State of Ohio costs.
• Cost supported by TIF of properties at Tower City—ongoing.
• Supported by 1.5% Cuyahoga County Bed Tax—ongoing.
• Supported by 3% surcharge on city admissions tax—ongoing,
• $5,000,000 from Cuyahoga County.
• $8,000,000 from State of Ohio.

How the admission and bed taxes will contribute during the pandemic shortfalls might mean other sources have been tapped.

And don’t forget the biggest theft of public funding.

Finally, they wanted transport to these activities.

For Gateway, the city built two (money-losing) garages. RTA built a walkway from Terminal Tower at $13 million.

But they also wanted transport to the Browns field and Rock Hall. This one really hurt.

RTA was forced to totally finance the near useless Waterfront Line to connect to the Rock Hall from Tower City. RTA had to pay the full $69-million. Why? Because Dick Pogue (Jones-Day) and the boys couldn’t wait for the necessary federal environmental studies. IT WAS FULL SPEED AHEAD. It was only public transit money. And who uses public transit? Not the Dick Pogues of the world.

NOW COMES THE PLINTH

It truly never stops.

Here come the Browns-owning Haslams offering to play do-gooders, taking the rest of the lakefront property, if their plan works.

Mayor Mike White, desiring as did the NFL, a quick answer to the return of the Browns, simply chose to build—on city land—on the lakefront.

The biggest opponent of that placement: Eddie Rybka, former councilman.

Now Eddie Rybka, chief of regional development, seems to want to give the rest of the downtown waterfront to the Browns. Bad move, Eddie.

BUT here we go again.

Being played by the money men.

They’re talking about a couple of hundred million dollars. NO. NO. NO.

It will be at least a half billion and maybe lots more.

For what?

So Haslam and a few others can profit from a publicly-financed development that will open waterfront property to development—housing, retail, restaurants and whatever can be tax abated.

The money-go-round continues.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

It really doesn’t matter much who is elected mayor this year.

Man or woman.

The Cleveland political society is so profoundly conservative, straight-laced and staid that anyone truly creative politically wouldn’t be tolerated.

Wouldn’t be elected surely.

Watch who gets well-funded. That’s the corporate stooge.

Four more, eight more, twelve more, maybe sixteen more years.

Of treading on the treadmill.

Hey, we’ll get the ALL-STAR GAME in 2032!

Cleveland people settle for so little. Why give them more?

It seemed some journalists were trying to assess what is Mayor Frank Jackson’s legacy. He has no legacy. Why bother creating one.

“It is what it is.”

That’s Jackson’s dictum.

What does it mean?

No chance of change.

Stuck.

Sixteen years of stuck.

Who ordained this STUCK.

The people for whom the status quo, the way things go, favors.

If they could, they’d have Jackson forever.

Mayor Jackson was a good Cleveland councilman.

Nothing fancy. No real creative ideas.

Never troublesome to those who run things.

Those who can’t tolerate troublesomeness.

If they could mass produce a Mayor Jackson, we’d have him forever.

And quite frankly, I don’t see any possibility of real change.

I hope someone can surprise me.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

LAKEFRONT FOR SALE—OR GIVE-AWAY

I recently wrote how the Cleveland Development Foundation, a private corporate entity, planned the city’s urban renewal program. In other words, a private group pushed the city of Cleveland into a massive demo program. The city, however, never had the resource or talent to make it work.

Now we are being presented with a football team ownership deciding what should be done with the city’s downtown lakefront.

Steve Litt in the Plain Dealer wrote a piece headlined Cleveland Browns’ vision for the lakefront could benefit from public input.

Good luck with that Steve.

How about a headline that says:

Why is a private individual making decision about what to do with the entire Cleveland lakefront? Who appointed Jimmy Haslam the new Cleveland planning director?

Remember that Haslam’s company was accused of cheating truckers, his customers at the Pilot Flying J.

The Ringer, a sports & culture website, noted at the trial:

Up until this week, Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam had avoided being significantly entangled in a fraud lawsuit against his truck-stop company, Pilot Flying J. Haslam, who bought the Browns in 2012, has denied knowledge in the alleged scheme?—?which plaintiffs/prosecutors say involved defrauding customers out of promised rebates?—?and has not been charged with a crime. But his position might have worsened Tuesday, when a recording played before a jury indicated that he might have been aware of the alleged effort.

Mayor Michael White insisted on the football stadium being placed on the lakefront and built essentially by city mandated taxes.

White also ensured that the Browns owner would not have to pay property taxes on First Energy stadium. Haslam also keeps the naming rights income.

Last time I check (2017) the stadium was worth $276-million. Taxes (on 35 percent of that figure) would be $9.6 million annually. And the land value: $19-million. The land taxes, not exempted, total annual $675,990. Who pays? The city of Cleveland.

Now, the deal already moving along suggests that most of the lakefront would be turned over to the likes of the Haslams. He’s worth $3 billion now!

Nothing in poor Cleveland like helping the filthy rich.

KEEPING TABS ON SPENDING

The Plain Dealer and boss Chris Quinn tell us that they will “be tracking…every…single…dollar of the cash that Cleveland will get from the American Rescue Plan.

I’ll have to see it before I believe it Chris.

Editorially on Sunday the PD warned that “Jackson should not lock in how the $512M windfall will be spent.”

The last line suggests how pathetic this warning is:

Jackson has a significant legacy already. He should continue to be a good steward…” ending by calling Jackson wise. Where did they notice that?

I’ll suggest a warning, not only to Jackson but the City Council.
Here’s how they acted with another city slush fund:

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.

Point Of Viəw

This is a peculiar way to begin a column about Cleveland Ohio.

But it’s most appropriate, I believe.

I’m tired of writing this story. However, it is a most important one. One universally neglected.

The entire news media here avoids it as if it were poison. A purposeful avoidance.

Why must truth be smiled upon as if it were not so, someone has written.

Sometimes it seems that if you believe the opposite of what the media are telling you, then you would be more correct. Strange but not far from the truth.

I start by using a blurb from the back of a recent book about how we (some of us)—as a society—created inequality that is destroying America.

It’s a book everyone should read. Every journalist certainly should.

John Heilmann, an American journalist and a sharp political analyst, writes the blurb for the book: Kurt Anderson’s Evil Geniuses—The Unmaking of America. It reads:

Back when the idea of President Reagan still seemed a stretch and President Trump was barely a joke, some serious, smart, committed people with vast appetites and little shame—right-wing intellectuals and billionaires, CEOs and Washington hustlers—launched a long war to create a paradigm shift and rewrite our social contract to their benefit. Anderson’s dazzling, mind-bending, must-read chronicle of that fifty-year crusade explains how it happened, why it succeeded, and, unsettlingly, what that victory means: America is now theirs.

Just as there were Evil Geniuses—really manipulators of economic forces—on the national level, there were such forces or evil geniuses here. They distorted the local economy to benefit certain interests. Interest of wealth and power.

Now can we identify them as Kurt Anderson did in his revealing book?

The locally induced inequalities simply add to the severe national disparities, weighing heavily upon especially lower income people.

The acts producing inequality range from elites successfully pushing events or sometimes blocking measures that might address inequality.

Cleveland post-world war II can be seen in eras.

The disturbing 1960s really started in the 50s with the pursuit of a massive urban renewal program. It was the business and civic elites attempt to restore Cleveland’s past—a wealthy, vibrant city. It was a massive failure. A federal official told me in the 1960s that “Cleveland is our Vietnam. We’d like to get out but we don’t know how.”

The urban program moved masses of people out of inner city black neighborhoods into mainly the Hough area. A banker who served on the city planning commission then, summed up the result:

For some, the urban renewal program worked out well indeed. Hospitals and educational institutions have been constructed and enlarged. So have commercial and industrial interests and many service organizations, all with the help of urban renewal dollars. With respect to housing, however, the urban renewal program has been a disaster.

I wish I could believe that all of this was accidental and brought about by the inefficiency of well-meaning people – but I just can’t. The truth, it seems to me, is that it was planned that way.

Indeed, it was.

As a Plain Dealer reporter in the 1960s, I and Don Sabath, the paper’s urban renewal reporter, interviewed Upshur Evans of the Cleveland Development Foundation. We had to argue to get what he told us into the story in the paper.

As with many created entities during this period the CDF was financed by foundations, including money from the Leonard C. Hanna Fund.

Evans, a retired Standard Oil executive, told us that his CDF had given $50,000 to the city’s Plan Commission to produce a new downtown city plan.

However, he told us that privately plans were being produced for the Erieview urban renewal program under the CDF’s direction.

Its plan would make the city’s planning obsolete and irrelevant.

A testament to who rules—private interests.

Carl Stokes outlined in his Promises of Power book how he tried to force development under the Erieview urban renewal plan by pressuring one of the developers who sat on urban renewal land, undeveloped for years.

James C. Davis, a name you’ll hear about, warned Stokes he should not pressure the developer—John Galbreath of Columbus—to develop the land he held under the Erieview urban renewal project. Stokes writes that Davis “suggested that it wouldn’t be wise to move against Galbreath…”

Here was an unelected elite telling the elected mayor what he cannot do.

Davis played a significant role in Cleveland’s governance, as we shall see.

One of the most significant moves by establishment elites came in the late 1970s, not revealed for some time after. But then actually bragged about by business/civic leaders.

It was outlined in a Fortune magazine article in March 1989.

It reveals the collusion of business leaders to dethrone a mayor. A coup, if you will, by elites.

Corporate leaders “organized the troops and devised a strategy, setting in motion a benign conspiracy of executives and entrepreneurs that still operates.”

The article—story of a coup d’état—clearly had the full cooperation of Cleveland business and legal elites.

“The impressive feat of organizing that cabal and persuading Cleveland’s most senior businessmen to take charge of the grittiest aspects of civic life was the real key to the town’s turnaround,” the article continued. An overthrow of a government!

However, it really wasn’t that unique for Cleveland business/legal leaders. Not to anyone who has paid attention to the civic life of this old industrial town. John Gunther, who wrote sociopolitical “insider” books, wrote, “Cleveland is probably the most civic-minded city in the country.”

Cleveland historically has had a close-knit business community. In the 1960s, Rep. Wright Patman described “the major Cleveland banks extensive use of stockholder links” as more pervasive than any other city examined by the congressional committee, according to The Cleveland Papers. The Papers, an exam of Cleveland’s tightly control business establishment, available now likely only at local libraries.

Patman’s conclusion is reflected in the words of one corporate member’s feeling: “Of course we’re all on the banks. Everyone I’ve mentioned is on a bank. We all know each other. We all belong to the Union Club. We all call each other. We have no hesitation to call each other for help.”

Cleveland companies at a time when mergers and takeovers were prominent were known to rescue possible takeovers by countering others offers from outside Cleveland. “You can beat our Browns and our Indians, but it’s tough to beat our Union Club,” went one business leader.

Corporate/legal forces had good practice in the 1960s as wrenching racial problem, the rise of civil rights protests and corporate-promoted urban renewal demands forced elites to take open roles, rather than behind the scenes operators. The Businessmen’s Interracial Committee on Community Affairs and the Inner City Action Committee were commanded by top legal/corporate leaders. And foundation funded.

Jack Reavis, a Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue managing partner and BICCA head at the time, warned, “Tempers and tensions were very high indeed. I thought it quite possible that Cleveland would be the first of the northern cities where savage violence might break out.” Indeed, it did both in Hough in 1966 and Glenville in 1968. Reavis, though his partner Seth Taft ran as a Republican in the 1967 mayoral election, backed Carl Stokes, the Democrat, who became the first black mayor of a major American city.

The two mechanisms—BICCA and ICAC—were not totally successful; despite Reavis concluding that “The Negroes on this committee have behaved magnificently.” The problem was that Reavis was dealing with Blacks who weren’t suffering the severe problems of the ghetto. (Can you imagine talking like that about their behavior?)

Indeed, as one part of the business establishment was seeking to placate those suffering urban blight, another segment was pushing urban renewal, a major cause of disruption of low income Blacks.

James C. Davis of Squires, Sanders and Dempsey wrote: “I am a third generation Republican… I am reasonably hardheaded.”

His speech to the Cleveland Bar Association blamed “white ethnics” for the city’s problems.

He gave no fault to his class of people. His attack at the meeting was followed by a pamphlet of the speech distributed widely.

Let us rather give our attention to the political soil from which they grow. Let us direct our attention to the solution of Cleveland’s white problem. It will not be easy—it will not be quick, but, unless our efforts be unrelenting, unless they be carried forward with the full force of both our hearts and our minds and unless we succeed—it must necessarily follow that the opportunities for the profitable practice of law in Cleveland will soon be materially foreshortened.The speech was printed in pamphlet form and distributed widely.

In the same bar journal issue carrying his speech, 16 lawyer-members were honored. All were white. All with photographs.

Davis apparently didn’t notice that white problem.

Davis became the head of the Cleveland Development Foundation, the Greater Cleveland Growth Association (later Cleveland Tomorrow, now Greater Cleveland Partnership.) The names change but the policies don’t.

At one point in the 1970s the aim was to relieve Cleveland of its transit system, converting to a regional system via RTA. Davis was intimately involved.

The city gave up its system for nothing except some $10 million for parking lots it owned.

There was, however, a fight over what RTA would charge riders. Some politicians tried to protect in particular elder citizens. Eventually, reduced costs were won, mostly through efforts by then councilman Dennis Kucinich.

Davis scoffed at older riders at one meeting: “They don’t even know what they’re cheering about,” the Squire-Sanders lawyer said at a public hearing.

Davis, of course, knew what he was talking about when he pushed another transportation plan: A jetport in the lake. Estimated cost: $1 BILLION in 1975 dollars.

What he didn’t say was that it would require hefty bond issues. Or that Squire-Sanders, where he was managing partner, was the principal bond counsel in the state of Ohio.

It was the way business was—and is—done.

We’ve had over the last four or five decades unconditional surrender to the desires of the business/civic elite.

Indeed, it is shameful that the transfer of some power from white domination here to blacks political leadership has had little major effect on the outcome of life for low income people.

Indeed, as I have documented time after time, most of the added taxation locally has been via very regressive sale tax type increases. On consumer items.

And there is no city income tax. But there is a payroll tax. And it starts with the first dollar you earn on a weekly paycheck. No deductions.

Since the 1960s we’ve had more than three decades of city hall control by Black mayors.

Black or white mayors—it didn’t matter. Progress was what the top non-elected leadership wanted.

They have been the most productive years for the top establishment rules.

What have they produced? Just about anything the Establishment has desired.

We’ll take a look in a second part to how the Cleveland Establishment, for lack of a better designation, rode the city’s elected leaders where they wanted them to go.

The result: A reign of subsidies, all backed by regressive taxes, that gave us the city of wealth and the city of poverty we have today.

James Aronson, a New York journalist and a founder of the National Guardian, called Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw, “perhaps the sharpest critique of the media—and the city it serves—being published anywhere,” in his 1972 book, Deadline for the Media. In 1991, Roldo was awarded the Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage by the Shafeek Nader Trust.