Bonus No. 1: In 1974, Sean Connery was Zed.

Bonus No. 1: Glenn Greenwald RESPONDS: Why I Left The Intercept Over Censorship.

Last week, in his tease for the Sacha Baron Cohen film Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Stephen Colbert promised The clip. Sadly, that didn’t happen, but no matter how many takedowns Amazon may demand, the clip is online and will never go away.

Bonus No. 1: Trump tower of terror.

Bonus No. 2: WASP [Karenesque] Mom Tries To Vote

There’s a certain rot in our community that needs exposure of a wider extent than I can give it.

It needs the reporters of the Plain Dealer. They should demand that they be allowed to REPORT about what is important. Not press releases submitted by promoters.

That goes for television news, too. There’s entirely too much fluff that gets offered us as NEWS. It ain’t. It’s promo time and again.

So I’m offering as a primer or push something I wrote in 2009 that details the substance totally lacking in what purports to be News we Need.

It has the kind of detail that takes a bit of work but reveals the truth that’s so often missing from reporting.

Take a Look Back to 22 July 2009: HOW MUCH DOES CLEVELAND LOSE TO ABATEMENTS?

Civic corruption comes in many forms.

We have been hearing a lot about corruption these days. However, the focus is very narrow. Unnecessarily so.

The Plain Dealer simply ignores the corruption that makes today’s hyper County sleaze activity look minor league. Even little league. We”re going to talk about multi-million dollar corruption. Nothing petty. And all legal.

The fact is that the PD actually promotes this BIG kind of corruption. It’s their kind of corruption. They push for it editorially. Always have; always will.

I”ll show you how it works.

We”re talking about tax abatements. You will read about a number of cases in which huge amounts of money have been given to very special people. Very special Rich people.

Most of the abatements are for 20 years or are tax exempted properties, meaning they will never ever pay any taxes. These cases represent large abated properties. They are only a small number of abatements given since 1977 when the program began in Ohio.

Yet over the years they will cost HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of lost tax dollars.

The lost revenue ordinarily would go to four levels of government. Presently, property tax revenue is shared by the following entities with the percentage of the total in parenthesis: Cleveland schools (55.13 percent rounded), Cuyahoga County (21.24 percent), City of Cleveland (15.68 percent) and Cleveland libraries (7.96 percent).

Rather than guard the public’s resources, slated for the common good, city and county officials—typically backed by the Plain Dealer’s editorials and lack of critical coverage—cater to the self-interests of Cleveland’s Establishment. Their actions have and are shameful.

I requested information from Joann Jackson of the County Auditor’s office about how much abatements cost us. I limited the search to a few big properties.

Here’s what I found in examining certain property tax revenue for the last two years:

BROWNS STADIUM

The amount paid to Cuyahoga County this year and last year for property taxes on the Browns Stadium: ZERO.

Browns Stadium should have paid property taxes of $8,081,230 this year and $7,973,804 last year on the physical structure alone. That’s $16,055,034 over the two most recent years. Total value of the Browns stadium, including land, is slightly more than $300 million (Market value with taxes on 35 percent of that figure.)

That is a gift of $16 million in ONLY the last two years to the billionaire Lerner family, owners and users of the Browns. (This property will NEVER pay a penny in taxes on the structure as it has been tax exempted by state law, passed under pressure of local politicians – mainly Commissioner Tim Hagan and former Mayor Michael White – and the Plain Dealer.)

I reported recently that the city also has paid $102.8 million on stadium bonds, owes $160.3 million more in payments due and has to come up with $44.55 million in capital improvements now and in future years. The State of Ohio chipped in $37 million more; RTA $3 million; City Water Dept. $2 million; Northeast Sewer District $2.24 million; and the city’s water pollution control division another $500,000. Lerner’s annual rent: $250,000 with no increase over 30 years. How hard is it to become a multi-millionaire?

Having given so much, why burden the Lerner family with having to pay property taxes. Shameful to ask that. The city, by the way, also pays the property taxes due on the land beneath the stadium. This year that bill was $452,724.

QUICKEN ARENA

The amount paid to Cuyahoga County in property taxes this year and last year for Quicken Arena: ZERO.

Quicken (formerly Gund) Arena should have paid property taxes of $3,816,609 this year and $3,765,873 last year. That’s $7,582,482 over the two most recent years. Total value of the Quicken Arena, including land, is slightly more than $50 million.

This is a gift of some $7.5 million to the billionaire Dan Gilbert, Cavs owner. (This property also will NEVER pay taxes on the structure because of the actions of Hagan and White in passing legislation to EXEMPT forever all new stadia and arenas in Ohio.)

Citizens of Cuyahoga County built the arena for some $157 million but Gilbert controls it. Having given him the arena, why should we even suggest that he pay property taxes. Let’s not get greedy, citizens.

PROGRESSIVE FIELD & GATEWAY GARAGE

The amount paid to Cuyahoga County in property taxes this year and last year for Progressive Field: ZERO.

Progressive Field (formerly Jacobs Field) should have paid property taxes of $4,882,764 this year and $4,817,856 last year. That’s $9,700,620 over the two most recent years. Total value of the baseball stadium, including land, is slightly more than $69 million. (This property will NEVER pay taxes on the structure because state legislation pushed by Hagan, White and the Plain Dealer was passed to EXEMPT all new sports facilities in Ohio FOREVER.)

The amount paid to Cuyahoga County in property taxes this year and last year for the Gateway Garage: ZERO.

The Gateway Garage, built by the City of Cleveland for the new sports facilities should have paid taxes of $652,963 this year and $644,283 last year. That’s near $1.3 million. The value of the garage is $10.5 million.

This is a gift of some $11 million to the billionaire Dolan family, owners of the Cleveland Indians.

Cuyahoga County citizens paid most of the some $180 million for the stadium but the Dolan family controls it. Why bother to ask them to pay property taxes? It might be seen as pushy.

We also note that the citizens of Cleveland alone built two parking facilities, one tax abated, at a cost of more than $40 million.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

KEY CENTER, MARRIOT HOTEL & GARAGE

The amount of property taxes paid to Cuyahoga County on Key Center, Cleveland’s tallest office building: ZERO

Key Center, built by multi-millionaire Dick Jacobs, should have paid $5,399,922.84 this year and $5,328,139 last year. That’s more than $10.7 million. Total value of the 57-story Key Center building, including land, is $72.4 million. (This property, in addition to $10-million, zero interest loan, was given a 20-year tax abatement, 100 percent tax abatement by Mayor George Voinovich and Council President George Forbes.)

This was a gift given by Voinovich and Forbes in 1988. Jacobs was yet to get a stadium built for him. The new stadium gave him an advantage to sell it to the Dolans for a pricey $320 million.

Oh, there’s more that Dick got.

The Marriott Hotel, attached to Key Center, should have paid $1,123,027 last year and $1,208,098 the previous year. That’s slightly more than $2.3 million. Total value of the 25-story Marriott Hotel, including land, is $15,594,500. (This property, in addition to another $7.9-million, zero interest loan, was provided a 20-year, 100 percent tax abatement by Voinovich and Forbes.)

As if that were not enough, Voinovich and Forbes gave Jacobs the ability to build a parking garage beneath the city’s Mall A, which is located in front of the Marriott Hotel. It’s called Memorial Park Garage.

Memorial Park Garage should have paid property taxes of $230,835 this year and $227,767 in property taxes last year. That’s some $457,000. Total value of the parking garage under Mall A is $5.2 million. (Voinovich and Forbes cancelled a contract with a top bidder to deliver the parking garage contract to Jacobs for 65 years. Jacobs hired Forbes” favorite parking lot operator for the facility; Voinovich’s old law firm, Calfee & Halter, made $443,000 (paid by Jacobs) representing the city in the law suit resulting from the city’s action to give the deal to Jacobs. Jacobs offered to increase parking places from 600 to 1,200 but it was cut to 900 in the final plan. Revenue payments also were reduced down under the Jacobs plan.)

Forbes and Voinovich didn”t stop there. They were even more eager to fill Jacobs’s pockets.

The two – Voinovich and Forbes – offered the same sweet deal as Key Center to Jacobs for the west side of Public Square. It was to be another office building and hotel. You may notice that the west side of Public Square – which in 1989 had working office buildings that Jacobs then knocked down – remains a parking lot. Has been a parking lot since the early 1990s.

Further, other downtown buildings, damaged as tenants moved to Key Center, sought and got tax reductions. Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, for example, moved into Key Center from the Huntington Building. The law firm wrote the state legislation for tax abatement in the 1970s. (As an example, Jacobs’s E. 9th corner, left vacant for years. He was rescued, however, by the County Commissioners, who bought the complex of buildings for new County offices. It remains vacant, of course.)

The absurdity of these abatements hasn’t penetrated the minds of politicians or editors, however.

WYNDHAM HOTEL

The amount paid in property taxes on the luxury Wyndham Hotel for this year and last year: ZERO.

The Wyndham Hotel, built public subsidy upon public subsidy, should have paid property taxes of $339,500 this year and $334,987 last year. That’s some $674,000 over the two most recent years. Total value for tax purposes of the 200-plus luxury hotel at Playhouse Square is $4.7 million, including land. That’s very low.-

The luxury Wyndham was soaked with government subsidies in addition to the tax abatement, including a $5.5 million zero interest loan; a low interest state loan of $4 million; a tax incremental financing deal worth several million dollars over 20 years; the city helped purchase part of the land for $2 million then invest $1.5 million to improve the site and sold it to Playhouse Square Foundation for less than $1 million. The subsidies came to some $136,000 per room. “Credit” this rotten deal to Mayor White and then Council President Jay Westbrook.

RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL

The amount paid in property taxes this year and last year for the luxury Ritz-Carlton: ZERO.

The Ritz-Carlton, a luxury hotel at Tower City, should have paid a total of $1,718,020 for this year and the last year on four parcels tax abated for Sam Miller interests. The market value of the properties is $31.1 million.

This amounts to a generous gift of $1.7 million to the multi-millionaire Miller. The hotel piggybacked on the Marriott for an abatement. The city also gave a $7.9 million, zero interest loan for the 207-room hotel built into Tower City. Why not help a multi-millionaire if you can?

That covers only 9 tax abatement projects in the city of Cleveland. There are many, many more. Admittedly, these are among the largest.

In any case, the total cost of these abatements for ONLY TWO YEARS totals some $48 million in lost tax revenue. Two years remember. Tax revenue sliced away from Cuyahoga County’s tax collections. Taxes that you—if you are a property tax payer in Cuyahoga County (or even a renter for that matter)—have to make up.

You won”t see this on the front page of the Plain Dealer. They avoid such information as if it were the plague. Indeed, the paper and its editors will fight to keep the public from being informed about this issue. In future, I”ll try to show how they have done this and flesh out the issue of abatements.

There someday will be more buildings built in downtown Cleveland. The issue of tax abatement will arise again. So I hope you will print out this information and keep it handy.

Of course, developers today are getting tax abatements on new housing development, especially in downtown Cleveland. It helps to offer a tax abatement to buyers. You can get a better price if you tell a prospect that they will be saving thousands of dollars by not paying taxes.

The wealthy love NOT PAYING TAXES. It’s a major ingredient of wealth. Believe it.

Bonus No. 1: Yeah, like that’s going to work…

Bonus No. 2: Yet another time Bill Watterson was prescient.

Bonus No. 3: Election 2020: What Happens Next?

As a journalist I don’t give a shit who gives me information or what possible nefarious reasons they might have for dropping the information on my desk. I only care if the information is true. In my 2020 world, the need to publish now, now, now bests the need to be accurate and truthful. Validating information literally take weeks or months. What’s a journalist to do?

Ask the question: is the story true? Get the story fucking right!

Matt Taibbi (and Glenn Greenwald) are two journalists who have the Hunter Biden story right and yesterday, in With the Hunter Biden Expose, Suppression is a Bigger Scandal Than The Actual Story—Taibbi hit back hard at corporate media. In the non-subscriber excerpt for the story, Taibbi ledes:

The incredible decision by Twitter and Facebook to block access to a New York Post story about a cache of emails reportedly belonging to Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter, with Twitter going so far as to lock the 200 year-old newspaper out of its own account for over a week, continues to be a major underreported scandal.

The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Imagine the reaction if that same set of facts involved the New York Times and any of its multitudinous unverifiable “exposes” from the last half-decade: from the similarly-leaked “black ledger” story implicating Paul Manafort, to its later-debunked “repeated contacts with Russian intelligence” story, to its mountain of articles about the far more dubious Steele dossier.

[snip]

The flow of information in the United States has become so politicized—bottlenecked by an increasingly brazen union of corporate press and tech platforms—that it’s become impossible for American audiences to see news about certain topics absent thickets of propagandistic contextualizing. Try to look up anything about Burisma, Joe Biden, or Hunter Biden in English, however, and you’re likely to be shown a pile of “fact-checks” and explainers ahead of the raw information

The good news is that our nation is so divided that a revelation that Hunter Biden’s hell-spawned nanny raised him on a regular diet of virgin’s blood wouldn’t change the election. The bad new is that story wouldn’t even rate a spot on Stephen Colbert’s Meanwhile or Trevor Noah’s Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That segments.

Viola Smith, pioneering swing and big band drummer, dies aged 107.

Bonus No. 1: Viola Smith: America’s Original Hep Girl on Tom Tom TV.

Bonus No. 2: And still, much, much more Viola Smith.

Yes, I’m going on the record here. President Kamala Devi Harris will face a primary challenge in 2023-2024 and New York Governor Andrew Mark Cuomo will be leading the pack.

Bonus No.1: Ohio… helped elect Trump. But he betrayed us again and again.

Bonus No. 2: The People’s Party Debate with McGowan, Knight, Wangeshi and Brana.

Bonus No. 3: He’s also a lewdatual podiatist and a persnicuous lube-sopper.

Bonus No. 4: The True Story Of Donald Trump.

Previously…

Bonus No. 1: When a Country Reeling from Crisis Turns to an Aging Father Figure.

Back in the early days of Have Coffee Will Write, the military junta of Myanmar banned my blog for the crime of calling their country Burma. Fair enough, the name Burma was associated with the colonial occupation of Myanmar by the British—including Eric Blair, aka George Orwell—and I made the change to the offending post. (Please see the first link above.)

The banning, however, had a Streisand Effect and over the next 13 years I went on to write more than 1,100 blog posts (mostly under the headline: Good Morning Myanmar) about that country.

Cuyahoga County now seems poised to repeat that experience because a public employee, whose salary depends upon tax dollars, doesn’t like getting emails from Roldo Bartimole.

Back in June I got an email from Cuyahoga County informing me that a “user reported your email as spam and I couldn’t find a way to unsubscribe them from your list.”

That user (a Cuyahoga County public employee) wasn’t subscribed, but was on a list that Roldo maintains to publicize his posts here. Roldo handled the matter himself and we thought the controversy was done and dusted.

Silly me.

Yesterday I got this email:

I just got another report of spam from [name redacted, jh]@cuyahogacounty.us

I can’t remove her from your list but I can block your list from the county. [Emphasis mine, JH]

What should I do? In the last week you have sent the county 28 emails. Do all of them want your email?

So, Cuyahoga County is trying to emulate the military Junta of Myanmar?

I forwarded the email to Roldo, along with my own reply in which I asked:

I do have to wonder, if [redacted, JH] is a public employee of Cuyahoga County and thus a public servant whose salary is derived from taxes as her email address ([redacted]@cuyahogacounty.us) suggests, how could any communication from Roldo, a tax-paying resident of Cuyahoga County, possibly be considered spam?

Like Roldo, I see this as a free-speech issue.

We’ll see how this plays out.

Bonus No. 1: “Cleveland Reporter”… Ohio News Sites [From] Republican Propaganda…

Bonus No. 2: Joy Reid: The Pandemic Has Magnified Trump’s Worst Qualities…

Bonus No. 3: Joy Reid: Sprint Through The Tape!

Bonus No. 4: Mano Singham: Film review: The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020).

From 19 October 1995. The Bomb is Trudeau’s icon for House Speaker Newton Leroy Gingrich.

Bonus No. 1: For more years…

Bonus NO. 2: Larry Kudlow, Trump Admin Official CAUGHT In New Corruption Exposés.

In recent days I have upgraded my opinion of Facebook and Twitter from evil time sucks to existential threats to our free speech rights as guaranteed by the first amendment of our constitution. I arrived at this conclusion after reading recent pieces by two journalists that I respect: Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.

The first piece—Facebook and Twitter Cross a Line Far More Dangerous Than What They Censor—from Greenwald on Thursday, 15 October, begins:

The New York Post is one of the country’s oldest and largest newspapers. Founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, only three U.S. newspapers are more widely circulated. Ever since it was purchased in 1976 by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, it has been known—like most Murdoch-owned papers—for right-wing tabloid sensationalism, albeit one that has some real reporters and editors and is capable of reliable journalism.

On Wednesday morning, the paper published on its cover what it heralded as a “blockbuster” scoop: “smoking gun” evidence, in its words, in the form of emails purportedly showing that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, traded on his father’s position by securing favors from the then-vice president to benefit the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which paid the supremely unqualified Hunter $50,000 each month to sit on its Board. While the Biden campaign denies that any such meetings or favors ever occurred, neither the campaign nor Hunter, at least as of now, has denied the authenticity of the emails.

The Post’s hyping of the story as some cataclysmic bombshell was overblown. While these emails, if authenticated, provide some new details and corroboration, the broad outlines of this story have long been known: Hunter was paid a very large monthly sum by Burisma at the same time that his father was quite active in using the force of the U.S. Government to influence Ukraine’s internal affairs.

Greenwald continues:

But the Post, for all its longevity, power and influence, ran smack into two entities far more powerful than it: Facebook and Twitter. Almost immediately upon publication, pro-Biden journalists created a climate of extreme hostility and suppression toward the Post story, making clear that any journalist even mentioning it would be roundly attacked. For the crime of simply noting the story on Twitter (while pointing out its flaws), New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman was instantly vilified to the point where her name, along with the phrase “MAGA Haberman,” were trending on Twitter.

(That Haberman is a crypto-Trump supporter is preposterous for so many reasons, including the fact that she is responsible for countless front-page Times stories that reflect negatively on the president; moreover, the 2016 Clinton campaign considered Haberman one of their most favorable reporters).

The two Silicon Valley giants saw that hostile climate and reacted. Just two hours after the story was online, Facebook intervened. The company dispatched a life-long Democratic Party operative who now works for Facebook—Andy Stone, previously a communications operative for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among other D.C. Democratic jobs—to announce that Facebook was “reducing [the article’s] distribution on our platform”: in other words, tinkering with its own algorithms to suppress the ability of users to discuss or share the news article. [Emphasis mine, JH]

Yesterday, 17 Ocetober, Taibbi ledes, in—Facebook and Twitter’s Intervention Highlights Dangerous New Double Standard—with:

On Wednesday, the New York Post released what they claimed was “smoking gun” evidence of corruption involving Hunter Biden, troubled son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

The “blockbuster” had a controversial provenance. A computer repair shop in Delaware reportedly came to possess a laptop belonging to the younger Biden. According to the Post, it contained a treasure trove of Republican oppo, including videos of the younger Biden smoking crack and having sex, and emails from a Ukrainian businessman pleading with Hunter to use connections to help the corrupt energy firm Burisma escape a shakedown.

Later, the Burisma exec appeared to thank the younger Biden for an introduction to his father. The Post strongly suggested that these emails, in conjunction with the well-known tale of Joe Biden demanding the ouster of then-General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin, represented a misuse of influence.

Soon after the story was published, we were hit with a stunner: two major tech platforms, Twitter and Facebook, took third-world style steps to limit the distribution of the story. Facebook announced that it was slowing the article’s spread on its news feed via a tweet from Andy Stone, a Facebook employee whose previous jobs included handling communications for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and for Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer:

Andy Stone @andymstone—While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.

Twitter’s response was more extreme. It allowed the story to reach No. 3 on its list of Trending topics before blocking it as “potentially unsafe,” preventing anyone, even the author of the piece, from sharing it. It then took the extraordinary step of locking the account of the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McInany, explaining in a series of tweets that the story had been halted for several reasons, including on the grounds that the materials had been hacked.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey seemed torn about his company’s decision:

jack @jack—Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.

Twitter Safety @TwitterSafety—We want to provide much needed clarity around the actions we’ve taken with respect to two NY Post articles that were first Tweeted this morning.

A day later, facing intense public pressure and threats of Senate inquiry, the company relented and said it would change its policy. Twitter’s legal chief, the New York Times said, was worried that the firm “could end up blocking content from journalists,” implying that it hadn’t already done just that. The company said it would henceforth allow similar content to be shared, affixed to a label about the source of the information.

The intervention by the two platforms resulted in a predictable Streisand effect, in which an effort to censor results instead in increased attention. Conservatives lost their minds; Ted Cruz described the platforms’ actions as “actively interfering in an election”; The Hill called it a “Declaration of War”; Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn used the word “despicable”:

Sen. Marsha Blackburn @MarshaBlackburn—Despicable behavior from Twitter locking @kayleighmcenany’s account. This is the real election interference.

The near-universal reaction among mainstream press outlets, meanwhile, was to denounce the Post story as dangerous, and probably foreign, misinformation.

Taibbi goes on to deconstruct the Bidden-Burisma story and in his concluding paragraphs writes:

On April 23rd, 2014, [Deven] Archer [pal to Hunter and the college roommate of Christopher Heinz, stepson to John Kerry] gave a boastful interview to the Russian-language newspaper Kapital, explaining that Burisma “reminds me of Exxon at its founding.” The interview included the following exchange:

Kapital: In the American media, you’re sometimes described as a person in the circle of the current US Secretary of State John Kerry, and Vice President Joseph Biden.

Archer: Journalists really do think that (smiles). I know those officials.

Essentially, a mob enterprise gearing up to defend itself against international lawsuits and seizure orders hired as decorative cover an ex-president of Poland, the son of a sitting U.S. Vice President, and a close family friend and business partner of the son of the American Secretary of State—not exactly subtle, and far beyond nepotism.

The Burisma board deals were a protection scheme, funded with stolen money and designed to scare off commercial rivals and would-be regulators alike. Archer and Hunter Biden, even if they never did a minute of work for Burisma, were being paid to provide a criminal enterprise with the appearance of American protection. Similarly, if Joe Biden never actually intervened on behalf of Burisma, Hunter’s presence on Burisma’s board made it possible for anyone to argue that he was.

As I learned talking with Ukrainian sources this week (more on that upcoming), the truth around the Biden/Burisma story is hard to divine. There are indications that a few investigations of Burisma were at least technically alive during Shokin’s tenure, although some there vehemently dispute this.

Even in the most generous interpretation of what happened, however, Hunter Biden’s alliance with Burisma was a serious form of institutional corruption, and this is true even if odious figures like Rudy Giuliani want us to know it. Facebook and Twitter exercising a selective block on stories about the matter make it look worse. Either we put a lid on “salacious and unverified” reports or we don’t, but we can’t just do it sometimes, and always in the same direction.

Now they’re part of an all-out assault on any information detrimental to Biden’s electoral chances, and the last thing that anyone seems to care about is whether or not these tales involving Hunter Biden and Burisma are true, or important.

They’re absolutely important, and the ongoing effort to suppress this story—which began some time ago—is itself an element of corruption.

This episode already demonstrates deep-seated institutional corruption via the extraordinary demonstration of the powers of America’s new censorship Death Star — a story in the public interest was not only physically blocked by tech oligopolies, but denounced as foreign subversion by a remarkably cohesive confederation of mainstream press outlets.

Both pieces by Greenwald and Taibbi bear reading in detail. The Republicans and President Donald John Trump are a disaster. The Democrats and Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden may be a cataclysm.

Bonus No. 1: ‘Visionary success’: Jonathan Alter makes the case for Jimmy Carter.

Bonus No. 2: How Big Tech Companies Censor Anti-Establishment Speech.

Voting by mail, at least here in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, works just fine, thank you very much. I’ve cast every ballot here since 2006 when the “no-excuse” rule took effect. I’ve never had a problem and while 2020 did give me pause and I was prepared to drive downtown, but when my ballot arrived last Friday, I was encouraged to continue my normal practice.

Everything worked just fine. I downloaded and mailed my ballot request in mid-August. I was notified that my application has been approved and processed on 25 August and told that the ballots were to be mailed on Tuesday, 6 October. My ballot arrived on Friday, 9 October and I returned the completed ballot to the North Royalton post office the following morning. While standing in line when the post office opened at 9 a.m. I noted that everyone in the line—a dozen or so people—was also holding their ballot envelope.

I recieved confirmation that my ballot had been accepted for counting this morning. My civic duty now complete, I can ignore the noise.

Do people trust the Plain Dealer—or even any of the television news shows—to tell them the truth?

There’s an old ditty I’ve used before:

Why will people never say the things all people know?

Why must truth be smiled upon as if it were not so.

We don’t get the unvarnished truth from the Plain Dealer.

Are they afraid of telling people the truth?

I believe so.

I get upset with the Plain Dealer because with a name as that it should be able to deliver some unvarnished truth. Plainly. But forcefully.

And it is not.

For a major city newspaper to not even have a political reporter is hard to believe. The PD doesn’t have a political reporter as such.

It says something about the culture that’s being created there. It isn’t a culture of aggressiveness and going after tough targets.

And I believe it is tougher to report with the limitations put on reporters by the coronavirus. It’s harder to meet the people necessary for good coverage.

With a mayoral election year coming up the Plain Dealer has no full-time political reporter. (Brent Larkin writes a column with a politically historic memory but he is part-time (writes every two weeks) not daily reporting. Tom Suddes writes about the state legislature weekly but he also is no longer a working reporter.)

Indeed, the paper has only a single full-time columnist—Leila Atassi. One full-time columnist is woefully too few for a major newspaper. Shameful.

The editorial page has had to turn to one of its citizen editorial members—Eric Foster—to write columns. He is not on staff. He is a lawyer and black. Diversity is another gaping hole in the paper’s staffing.

Another failure, the editorial pages attempts to balance liberal and conservative voices. It doesn’t want to disturb either “side.” Probably does both. This balancing act is foolish. Rather irritating for a city with a strong Democratic base. We get right-wing editorial content from Washington Post writers as Hugh Hewitt and Marc Thiessen. Never a Dana Milbank, strongly anti-Trump.

This timidity resulted in no endorsement in the Presidential contest four years ago. Did this help Trump? At least this year the paper endorsed Joe Biden. Hardly a difficult choice.

This weak coverage extends into the news pages, too.

It’s a wonder there aren’t more cancellation of the PD with its skimpy coverage.

The answer I got trying to find out why this was so was unsatisfying.

The paper was attempting to get “balance” of views politically. I was told that it was difficult to get conservative voices that oppose, for example, President Donald Trump.

I see many conservatives speaking out against Trump. They’re easy to find.

The problem with the PD, however, is that it fails to clearly examine what is going on here and report it without trying to be balanced. Or to irritate.

A paper should irritate. How else to tell the truth.

Indeed, the paper continues, as it has for decades, to be straight forward in its coverage of the community and its events. It is especially careful not to step on the wrong toes. The ones the so need a stomping.

It prefers to play it safe by avoiding strong coverage of who gets what. The failure allows the balance of power to remain in the hands of the same people who have demanded results that favor them and not the community as a whole.

The Plain Dealer lost a number of its best reporters in the past year. However, there are some reporters who show talent that would suggest they have voices that would make the newspaper better.

Evan Macdonald, Cory Shaffer, Seth Richardson, John Caniglia, Andrew Tobias and others show talent that the community needs. They and others should be given voices to speak to the community on the city’s many dire issues.

Let them go, Chris Quinn!

When I launched Have Coffee Will Write back in 2004 one of the first categories I created was Are you revolted enough yet…? Over the years, I have categorized 17 percent of the posts here under that question intended to suggest that Americans might become revolted enough to well, revolt. Are we there yet?

Are enough Americans revolted enough to don whatever the 21st century equivalent of the Phrygian cap may be and to set the tumbrels rolling? I don’t think so, but we’re getting closer Ted Rall this morning in After The Donald, The Deluge? asks his own form of the question and offers an unexpected answer:

Even though it’s only a few weeks away, I am hesitant to call the election. Biden has a huge lead in the polls but Trump has an ace in the hole: an unprecedented volume of mail-in ballots due to the COVID pandemic, which will run predominantly Democratic and provide attractive targets for Republican attorneys to drag out state vote counts past the December 14th electoral college certification deadline, which would trigger the obscure 12th Amendment scenario in which 50 states each get one vote for president in the next House of Representatives, in which case Trump wins even if Biden wins the popular vote by a lot.

But let’s assume Biden prevails. Let’s say it’s a blue wave election and the Democrats expand their majority in the House and take control of the Senate. What happens next? Revolution, maybe.

Revolution would certainly be likelier under Biden than under Trump.

One of history’s least-discussed ironies is a counterintuitive pattern: it is not the vicious tyrants who are overthrown by angry mobs, but well-meaning liberal reformers who promise to fix a broken system and fall short of expectations.

We have only, Rall writes, to examine the short tenure of the eighth, and final General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (1985-1991)—see how this could play out.

Bonus No 1: Barrett cites ‘Ginsburg rule’ that Ginsburg didn’t follow.

Bonus No. 2: I Hate You Leftists, Please Don’t Leave Us.

Bonus No. 3: New Poll Is DEATH KNELL For Talking Point About Trump’s Base.

No one is shocked. Walter Mosley wrote: The act of writing is a kind of guerrilla warfare; there is no vacation, no leave, no relief. In actuality there is very little chance of victory. Politics feels that way now. We’re all really tired. Yet, there are those like Ruben Bolling and Ted Rall and our own Roldo Bartimole, who keep going, who keep fighting. How can I do less?

There was a vice presidential debate last evening. Did you watch? I didn’t. I didn’t miss a thing. No one did. You know that a political event is meaningless when this is the takeaway moment.

In person voting in Ohio began on Tuesday and, no surprise here, the lines in our urban centers were long. Tuesday also marked the beginning of the mailing of absentee ballots. (I hope to receive mine by Saturday and drive the completed ballot to the drop-off box at the Board of Elections on Sunday morning.)

So, this is where we are. This is how Mosley ended his essay back in 2001:

I am, I fear, like that homeless man, likely to be defeated by my fondest dreams.

But then the next day comes, and the words are waiting. I pick up where I left off, in the cool and shifting mists of morning.

And, so too, must we all.

Bonus No. 1: This is how we ought to be teaching math…

Bonus No. 2: After the QAnon Ban, Who’s Next?

A thus far unknown group is opposing a property tax levy for Cleveland schools.

Crain’s Cleveland’s Stan Bullard and Michelle Jarboe report a “mysterious mailing, sent by an organization cloaked in anonymity,” tells potential city voters that “Cleveland can’t afford Issue 68.”

They want to kill the school tax hike.

The tax issue 68 asks voters to approve renewal of a 15-mill and add a new 5 mills. It would raise as much as $98 million over 10 years.

This sets up a dramatic test for the Cleveland schools.

Cleveland schools have too often been neglected by business leaders. They have demanded schemes to avoid paying full property taxes. Both on real estate development and other business desires. Sports facilities, in particular.

Political leaders have bowed to commercial interests for a long time.

Here’s who you can blame:

Mayors George Voinovich, Michael White, and Frank Jackson, Council President George Forbes, County Commissioners Tim Hagan, Mary Boyle and Jim Petro. They all supported major tax gifts to wealthy interests.

And their string-pullers: the late Dick Jacobs, the late Sam Miller, the Ratner gang, Dick Pogue and many others who don’t care a bit about Cleveland students, who are mostly black.

They want what they want. And tax abatements flow out of city hall.
And they usually got their way.

It is hardly remembered that the Teacher’s Union in 1997 collected 33,000 signatures to put a measure on the ballot to limit the big tax abatements of that period.

Cleveland citizens care. But they get trampled by powerful business interests.

The Teachers union had foot soldiers and some money.

Mayor White and business leaders were apoplectic. They fought it and won.

The disregard for the condition of the Cleveland schools goes back to the 1960s. Federal judge Frank Battisti laid the Cleveland schools bare with his decision.

Mayor White and County Commissioner Hagan showed how little they cared about the Cleveland schools in 1990 when they pushed the sin taxes for Gateway.

They promised in a full page ad to seek no tax abatement. After it passed the two went to Columbus and successfully petitioned for a full tax exemption, denying the schools their share. Further, the sin tax ad promised $15 million EXTRA for the Cleveland schools each year. They never paid ONE CENT.

It was all a hoax. City residents turned the measure down. County voters did the opposite.

Indeed, the Gunds, when they controlled the arena, built a $600,000 apartment for themselves, presumable property tax free housing. No one else reported it.

The Cleveland schools have been the stepchild of many Cleveland administrations, as it is with the Jackson crew.

I keep wondering if anyone notices whether the Cleveland School Board, which is appointed by Mayor Frank Jackson, actually exists.

Does anyone cover its meetings, even if virtual?

The powers that be allowed the school board to be made up mostly of people who gave it a bad name. Purposely. So they could turn it over to Mayor White and now succeeding mayors.

Maybe it’s time to turn it back to the citizens of Cleveland. A bit of home rule.

They are their school children.

Bonus No. 1: FULL Last Week Tonight with John Oliver for 10/04/20.

Bonus No. 2: Trump Might Not Leave Voluntarily.

Bonus No. 3: The Lincoln Project: Our Fight.