We don’t pay attention to the past. So we repeat it. To our disgrace and heavy cost.

The latest Quicken Arena deal—$282 million in all—repeats the mistake of feeding the beast. Further, it opened a new source of tax revenue, ignoring the voted sin tax receipts. As of the end of March, the sin tax has produced $3,742,748.30 this year.

But finally, in this mayoral election year, there is push-back. Real resentment to this latest money grab.

And a political climate of despair fed by crime, unemployment and the usual array of social problems among so many here.

But there is push-back. Six, then five, Councilmen balked at new taxation after more than 27 years of the same old same of seeking more public revenue for private desires.

Citizen groups—the Greater Cleveland Congregation, the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, AFSCME Ohio Council 8, and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 268—will have to collect more than 6,000 valid signatures to overcome what their representatives in Cleveland City Council and Cuyahoga County Council voted to give billionaire Dan Gilbert, a mortgage lender, a casino czar and a greedy pro sports owner.

This money snatch has been going on since 1990. Cleveland corporate and legal leaders have been pushing for extremely heavy public subsidies for wealthy sports owners. They make matters worse by exempting property taxes 100 percent in the hundreds of millions of dollars. First, they promised schools tens of millions of dollars annually yet it turned out they have been stealing tax revenue mainly from the Cleveland schools. See also below extra public costs since 1992 and going to 2023 for old bonds. The new take begins Continue Reading »

That really should be Q for queue and not Q for Quicken because the fight here is about people lining up to get ahead of Cleveland voters to suck the cash out of the city. We may have reached a turning point in Cleveland politics.

Richard Andrews writes in Coalition forms to put Q Deal on the Ballot:

A newly formed coalition has come together to challenge the $282 million deal to expand Quicken Loans Arena by putting it before Cleveland voters.

Announcement of the coalition came less than 36 hours after Cleveland City Council approved the deal Monday night in council chambers packed with supporters and opponents of the controversial legislation.

The coalition, comprised of Greater Cleveland Congregations, Service Employees International Union Local 1199, Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, AFSCME Ohio Council 8, and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 268, will need to collect 6,000 valid signatures from registered Cleveland voters within the next 30 days to bring the Q deal before Cleveland voters through the referendum process permitted by the city’s charter.

Given the membership bases of these groups, and their organizing skills and experience, collecting the necessary signatures could probably done in a matter of days. It is likely, however, that the coalition will take longer, possibly to make a show of strength by submitted considerably more than the charter requires

The nearly 6,000 signatures needed must be collected in the next 29 days. There is a very likely chance that the Cleveland City Council, Mayor Frank Jackson’s office and private parties shouldering their way forward to the public trough (with the political support of the Cuyahoga County Council will mount a legal challenge to stop the referendum. There is also speculation that those who want the money to flow to them will travel to Columbus to seek some kind of legislative remedy to the the opposition in much the same way they did to stop the passage of a $15 minimum wage in Cleveland last year.

Opposition to turncoat Brian Cummins—Cleveland City Council representative for the city’s 14th ward—has already begun. Cummins, who up until the very last moment had expressed opposition to the Q Heist, flipped the afternoon of the vote. His phone reportedly lit up during the vote with text messages from angry voters.

Sam Allard, writing in What Led to Councilman Brian Cummins’ Last-Minute Flip-Flop on the Q Deal? for the Cleveland Scene, reports that Cummins opted to save his job and not his constituents:

…political pragmatism played a far greater role in [Cummins] decision-making than these new alleged benefits (to which no specific dollar values were attached, as Mike Polensek noted last night). Cummins said he hated that he was forced to make this difficult decision, but ultimately, preserving his relationship with council leadership and the mayor’s administration was a more beneficial approach for his ward.

“I had to think hard and long about this,” Cummins said, “but if I’m trying to garner funds from the mayor’s administration, competing with 16 other wards, things like this matter. And that’s just a non-debatable fact.”

Cummins was frustrated. He said he maintains his objections to the deal on ethical grounds and reiterated that his leadership role on council was not explicitly threatened. But as a former Green party member who was ostracized for years, Cummins said he’s had to work harder than most to rehabilitate relationships with council Democrats. It’s been an “uphill battle.”

“I’m not a lone wolf, but it’s hard to always feel like you’re leading the opposition,” Cummins said. “It’s a challenge, and quite frankly, it’s tiring.”

[If you’re tired, Brian, step down and let someone with energy—like Jasmin Santana—do the job. JH]

In the past week, Cummins said he spent more time gauging his constituency and said many of the people he works closely with in Ward 14 recognize that in order to accomplish the development goals that they have for the ward, political relationships are essential.

“As an elected leader, if you’re gonna run for office,” Cummins said, “you have to play the political game in a good way, to try to get more for the people you represent. This was a really difficult decision, but I was putting my ward first.”

Cummins acknowledged the anti-democratic manner in which the legislation passed through legislative bodies at the county and the city, and said that it was extremely difficult to change the ordinance by the time it arrived on city council desks. (As in prior controversial political issues, the debate often hinged on tactics when it should have hinged on fundamentals). But without strong executive leadership from the Mayor and the County Executive, a small caucus of city council opponents could do very little to effect change.

“But if it’s this difficult to influence current structures of government,” Cummins said, “it’s a sign that they need to be changed.”

Going along to get along is not the way change happens.

Not this ET, this ET.

Energy Transfer Partners (and its newest acquisition, Sunoco Logistics have a track record worth of a Cleveland sports franchise, with far more devastating consequences than bruised egos.

From Earthworks:

Today, a diverse coalition of communities represented by more than two dozen organizations across the country launched a coordinated effort to challenge Energy Transfer Partners’ operations with an open letter to ETP that outlines their grievances and demands. The coalition has launched StopETP as an online hub for the campaign.

Energy Transfer Partners, which on Wednesday is expected to vote to merge with Sunoco Logistics, is the national oil and gas infrastructure company behind controversial projects including the Dakota Access Pipeline, Bayou Bridge Pipeline, and numerous others. Just this week, Energy Transfer Partners spilled more than 2 million gallons of mechanical fluids into Ohio wetlands as it constructs the Rover pipeline.

This is the benevolent capitalism that President Donald John Trump wishes to unleash on all Americans. This is how our president thinks he will make America Great Again.

The North Royalton Post poll, of course, is self-selected and non-scientific, but I was still surprised that when I made this screen capture yesterday, nearly 75 percent of those choosing to respond, either felt that President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office had been harmful to America or suffered from a lack of focus and disorganization. Here in the southwestern corner of Cuyahoga County that is significant.

We know what unregulated capitalism looks like. We only have to read the works of Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair to see, in horrifying detail, the depths capitalists will go in the add a penny or two to their wealth. People’s lives are destroyed, people die for those pennies, yet, because we somehow believe that if we save a few pennies on a purchase, that makes unregulated capitalism, Supercapitalism, OK. It is not OK.

Ralph Nader, in Trump’s Hundred Days of Rage and Rapacity, writes:

The Lawless-loving corporatists have worked overtime to besmirch the word “regulation” (or law and order for corporations) and edify the word “deregulation,” to help bring about their dream state of dismantled or weakened regulation.

Here is one little-mentioned ongoing disaster of non-regulation costing our country. The patsy FAA, for decades after the hijacking of planes to Castro’s Cuba, refused to require the airlines to install toughened cockpit doors and stronger locks to prevent entry by terrorists bent on making the aircraft a destructive weapon. Why? Because the airlines objected to the mere $3000 cost per aircraft and, by its very nature, the FAA acquiesced.

Then came 9/11, followed by “mad dog” George W. Bush (and Dick Cheney, his handler) launching an all-out attack on Afghanistan, rather than leading a multilateral force to apprehend the backers of the attackers. Later, Bush’s criminal war devastated the country and people of Iraq. Iraq is still convulsing violently today.

All for not regulating the airlines to protect their cockpits and pilots. Sure, the hijackers could still have hijacked the planes, but they could not have piloted them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Government regulations have led to life-saving motor vehicle standards. They have required safer pharmaceuticals, improved the safety of mines Continue Reading »

Steve Holecko, political director for the Cuyahoga County Political Caucus writes:

And the clock starts ticking today. Mayor Jackson signed the legislation yesterday. That means we have 30 days from today to gather around 6000 valid signatures of registered City of Cleveland voters. If we are successful the issue goes on the ballot and the citizens of Cleveland will get to decide whether or not $88 million of taxpayer money should be used for the Q renovations. To sign the petition you must be a registered voter in the City of Cleveland. However to circulate a petition you do not have to be a Cleveland resident. We’ll start our petition drive partnering with our friends from the Greater Cleveland Congregations mainly gathering signatures from hot spot locations on the east side. Please click here to sign up for shift now!

Richard Andrews, in The Q deal: “It Ain’t Over ’til the Fat Lady Sings” for The Real Deal, writes:

Proponents of the Q expansion deal may have been high-fiving themselves over the goal they scored last night by flipping Ward 14 councilman Brian Cummins but we think that’s just the end of the first quarter. Cummins’ about-face, which could not possibly have been about the trinkets and beads the Cavs offered [largely, refurbishing two or three dozen basketball courts at city recreation centers and high schools—does that mean varnish and buff?] and their cheerleaders raved about. The last minute maneuvering done to secure what may turn out to be a pivotal 12th vote in favor of the deal largely showed how weak County Executive Armond Budish and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson have been in representing the public interest. Seldom have last-minute cosmetics been such obvious lipstick on this pig of a deal.

The people celebrating their victory should spend a few minutes watching these…

Well, the dirty deed was done.

They always had the votes. Eleven of 17 votes were there.

But they wanted one more. Why? To rush the job.

You see quick and dirty works better for muggers.

It took a bit of trickery as usual. In a last minute maneuver city hall leadership and the Cavs’ owner Dan Gilbert offered little gifts to seemingly make a Yes vote more palatable. See what we got for you! Aren’t you happy? It’s a Komoroski special. Such cheap gimmickry.

Did they really believe they were being generous? Did they think anyone with any sense would know this was masquerading as charity?

They would shift some donation money to Habitat for Humanity, which if it had integrity would refuse this “bribe.” The Cavs would refurbish (whatever that means) 20 gym floors in Cleveland schools (at the same time it is exempted millions in property taxes that would go mostly to the Cleveland schools) and do some zigzag on admission taxes, which should never go to them in the first place.

A simple shell game works. With the help of a compliant news media (Scene excepted.)

The deal is that they had to borrow money now and pay for it later. It costs more that way. But who is paying?

The city money to pay for this Gilbert expansion won’t begin to be paid Continue Reading »

The question, for me, is this: will John Richard Kasich face Michael Richard Pence or a future version of President Gerald Rudolph Ford in the 2020 primaries?

From Steve Holecko, political director for the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus:

Yesterday Afternoon…

This is Honestly the Best the Cavs Could Come Up With? describes a feeble attempt by Cleveland City Council and the Cavs to sweeten the deal and pretend to the public that a Community Benefits Agreement had been negotiated and the concerns of the grassroots uprising against this Corporate Welfare scam had been addressed. Highlights of the fake deal include:

1) The portion of the Q admission tax that goes to the city’s general fund will never fall below the portion that goes to the debt service on the renovation. This in effect means that only $88 million and not one cent more will be stolen from the general fund;

2) The Cavs will donate 100 percent of revenue from it’s playoff watch parties to Habitat for Humanity with the goal of rehabbing 100 new homes over the next three years. This money was already earmarked for charity and this is only a clarification of which charity gets the money and;

3) The Cavs will refurbish every basketball court at the city’s rec centers. Nothing is in writing on if this means new courts or simply buffing the old ones to make them shiny and attractive. Social Advocates ID Benefits they want for community describes what could have and should have been in a Community Benefits Agreement that actually addressed real needs, not a cosmetic drop in the bucket fake deal. Continue Reading »

I know that this has become, perhaps, an annoying reminder that I repeat and repeat, but I don’t think I state this fact often enough: corporations have one, and only one, function, they must, by law, always, always, always, maximize shareholder value. Nothing must be allowed to hinder the reaching of that goal. Absolutely nothing.

Theodore Decker, writing in Ohio pipeline project’s early messes don’t inspire confidence for The Columbus Dispatch, provides the perfect example of how fecking evil a corporation can be in the pursuit of the one goal:

Corporate attorneys argued this year in U.S. District Court that Rover had to make haste. The company needed permission to cut trees along the pipeline’s path ASAP because endangered bats would soon awaken from their winter slumber and begin roosting in trees. Rover had to finish its tree-cutting before April 1, or the project would be forced to endure a costly delay until the bats left the trees and returned to hibernation in the fall.

Hemorrhaging a few million gallons of muck into some wetlands is one thing. Hemorrhaging money is quite another.

When wildlife threatens your project, destroy the habitat as quickly and as thoroughly as you can and the wildlife ceases to be an issue. This is the kind of project that Jim Bupkis* Renacci applauds in his district.

*After extensive searches, I have been unable to determine what Renacci’s middle initial stands for. Until I can find a reliable reference to Renacci full name, Bupkis will do.

Previously…

Our own Nina Turner speaks at timemark 16:00.

The Utopian dreaming I do now had to do with encouraging cheerfulness and bravery by the formation of good gangs. —to Mark Vonnegut on 29 August 1972, p. 183 Kurt Vonnegut: Letters.

There are a lot of good gangs out there like the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus and Our Revolution and dreams only seem utopian until you listen to and follow the advice of one of my personal heroes, Admiral Hyman Rickover who said: Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.

Courageous impatience is our super power.

There is a motivational speaker trope—popularized by then Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy (and driven home by Lisa Simpson)—that repeats the inaccurate translation of the Chinese word for crisis as a combination of danger and opportunity. Naomi Klein, in her interview with author Kim Philipps-Fein, compares Philipps-Fein’s new book Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics to her own The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and discusses how the former shines a bright light on how a young Donald Trump wielded fear to build his real estate wealth.

Klein, writing in “Fear City” Explores How Donald Trump Exploited the New York Debt Crisis to Boost His Own Fortune for The Intercept, begins:

When I published “The Shock Doctrine” a decade ago, a few people told me that it was missing a key chapter in the evolution of the tactic I was reporting on. That tactic involved using periods of crisis to impose a radical pro-corporate agenda. They said that in the United States that story doesn’t start with Reagan in the 1980s, as I had told it, but rather in New York City in the mid-1970s. That’s when the city’s very near brush with all-out bankruptcy was used to dramatically remake the metropolis. Massive and brutal austerity, sweetheart deals for the rich, privatizations. In classic Shock Doctrine style, under cover of crisis, New York changed from being a place with some of the most generous public services in the country, engaged in some cutting-edge attempts at racial and economic integration, to the temple of nonstop commerce and gentrification that we all know and still love today.

New York’s debt crisis is an incredibly important and little understood chapter in the evolution of what Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz calls market fundamentalism, a process the Trump administration is in the process of rapidly accelerating, which is why I was so happy to receive Kim Phillips-Fein’s remarkable new book, “Fear City.” In it, she meticulously documents how the remaking of New York City in the ’70s was a prelude to what would become a global ideological tidal wave, one that has left the world brutally divided between the 1 percent and the rest. She helps us to understand many of the forces that Trump exploited to win the White House, from economic insecurity to crumbling public infrastructure to fearmongering about black crime, all amid previously unimaginable private wealth.

So, where did President Trump’s fascination with the power of fear arise from:

>KPF: Well, he’s really emerging out of the shadow of his father, who was a developer and landlord in the outer boroughs. He’s emerging out of a milieu of a kind of embittered lower middle class white ethnic population in the city’s outer boroughs. Not that Trump himself was lower middle class. He wasn’t. But those were the people who lived in his father’s buildings, and those were the people who I think really shaped his worldview.

And they’re also the people who really blame—this is obviously not universally true of the city’s white working class at this time — African-Americans and Latinos, especially Puerto Ricans, for bringing the city to the edge of bankruptcy; a sense that they were the people who were using the public services, and that they were the ones who kind of pushed things too far and brought it into the fiscal crisis.

NK: And that, by the way, is incredibly important in terms of understanding the intersection of racism, of racial politics, creating the justification for a tax on the public’s fear, which I think we’re seeing more and more of. That’s really key in this period.

Klein continues, looking at perhaps the first lesson Trump learned:

NK: So how does Trump take advantage of the city’s desperation in this period? Tell me about the Commodore Hotel.

KPF: Well, so Trump is very ambitious, and he wants very much to break out of the outer boroughs and come into Manhattan and make it big there. A lot of people have observed this about Trump at this moment, but I think he views Manhattan as this aspirational space, and he is eager to transcend his Brooklyn-Queens past and get into what he sees as the big-time. And his idea is to redevelop the Commodore Hotel. So the Commodore Hotel was a previously very fancy hotel from the early 20th century. I think it opens in 1919 at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. And it’s owned by the Penn Central Railroad. And the hotel kind of falls into disrepair and near collapse after Penn Central itself goes bankrupt in 1970. Its management has stopped paying property taxes and is very eager to unload the property. Trump sees this as an opportunity at the same time as the city government sees it as a potential disaster. The city is terrified that if the Commodore Hotel goes into collapse, the blight of Times Square will spread east and to the area around Grand Central Terminal. And so, the plan that they hatch is that Trump can purchase the Commodore Hotel.

What he actually wants to do is buy it and sell it to a state agency, the Urban Development Corporation, which has its own interesting story. And then the UDC will lease it back to Trump, working with the Hyatt organization. And I think it’s also important to remember, it’s not Trump acting alone. He’s actually working with this hotel chain.

NK: And this is before he has started splashing his name in gold on the fronts of buildings. But this is his first Manhattan jewel.

KPF: This is his first big Manhattan deal. They’ll lease it back to Trump and Hyatt. And this arrangement where they’re not actually owning the property will enable them to pay property taxes that are lower than the normal rate for many years to come. The New York Times reported that as of 2016, this tax arrangement with the Hyatt had cost New York City about $360 million in uncollected taxes in the years since the development.

This strategy will be very familiar to those who have followed Roldo Bartimole over the years here in Cleveland; a strategy that opened floodgates in New York, Cleveland and around the globe. Fear sells:

KPF: this is not just a one-time thing for the city. The city government views this as a model for the future, and as a signal to the broader business community that there has been a change in the city government’s relationship to business. It’s not just Trump acting alone. There actually is a context in which this kind of development is promoted and a sort of enabling community that allows it to happen.

NK: So it sets the stage for the Helmsleys, and for a whole change in the city.

KPF: It sets the stage for the city’s new receptiveness to certain kinds of luxury developments, to using different kinds of tax breaks to stimulate the development of properties that are really dedicated to the very rich. And more generally, I think, the various different kinds of corporate subsidies that went to Disney around Times Square.

Philipps-Fein closes with this thought:

[T]he last thing I would say is that the atmosphere of fear is incredibly important for understanding what happens in New York at this moment — that there’s this deep level of fear about bankruptcy, fear of the future. And it’s that kind of fear that really makes possible the cutbacks of the time, and also the sense that, you know, the city needs a savior in the first place. And I think that I’ve thought about that a lot over the past month and since November — the way that fear can make things that seem politically impossible suddenly feel as though they’re the only alternative. And so I think that is one of the things that we need to fight at this moment, and to find ways to resist that sense of overwhelming fear and chaos, and to find forms of solidarity that can counter it.

Because it really is that context that makes it possible to wreak havoc, and the kinds of cuts that happened in New York in the ’70s, and the kind of broader reshaping of our country that we see taking place now.

We are not living in a crisitunity.

Strictly speaking eminent domain involves paying what the buyer (and possibly the courts) consider the fair market value for the land taken, but if you really don’t want this kind of scar bifurcating your farmland, well tough shit.

The oil, or in this case, natural gas, must flow!

Lou Whitmire, reporting in Pipeline altering countryside for the Mansfield News Journal, writes:

Judy Handmaker says she has cried over the Rover natural gas pipeline cutting through her family’s almost 80 acres of farmland on Ohio 545.

Handmaker, 73, of Louisville, Ky., said her ancestors including Samuel Osbun, who served in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, settled in Richland County after the war, having owned farmland stretching from Richland Shale Road to Franklin-Church Road.

“They came to Ohio because the land is good and rich,” she said.

Handmaker said she and her sister, Beth Houston Statzer of Virginia, are very distressed about what has happened to their family farm because of the pipeline.

“We fought it. We hired an attorney to speak for us. I can’t begin to tell you how much our family is linked to the area,” said Handmaker.

Their property is located next to Dayspring, the county home.

“Our farm has been butchered. We are just heartsick. Our mother (Edith Reid Houston) died in November 2015 at the age of 100 and she was heartbroken,” she said. Handmaker grew up here and lived on the farm at Epworth until 1965. “My mother’s parents came to Mansfield during the Depression in 1931 from West Virginia. We won’t give up the farm. It will go to our children,” she said.

Handmaker said she and her sister won’t be able to rent the land to a local farmer this year for crops since the pipeline cut through it. Next year she said the farmer will be able to plant, providing the land is not flooded.

This is Ohio farmland and just this month the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency cited the company building the Rover Pipeline—Energy Transfer Partners (also responsible for the Dakota Access Pipeline)—for spilling millions of gallons of drilling sludge into protected wetlands.

The Rover Pipeline will traverse the congressional district—Ohio’s 16th, represented by Jim Bupkis* Renacci—that I live in. Because the United States has become a net exporter of carbon fuels in recent years, we are putting our farmlands and watersheds, many of which feed into Lake Erie, at risk so that a few billionaires can grow richer literally fueling the economies of China and others buying our exports.

If this is how we make America great again, I have to wonder what the nation was like in this imaginary halcyon era.

*After extensive searches, I have been unable to determine what Renacci’s middle initial stands for. Until I can find a reliable reference to Renacci full name, Bupkis will do.

Previously…