Can anyone can claim that Cleveland is a Comeback City now?

Cleveland business leaders once claimed it was. They, indeed, had engineer it as such, so why not believe them?

Let me start, simply because you have to start somewhere, with the mid-to-late 1970s. That seems a logical point.

This was before Comeback City. More likely it was Decline and Fall city.
Cleveland was a beaten city, fractured by racism and poverty. It was still shocked by rioting and anger. It was deadened by a devastatingly careless urban renewal program and a heavy population decline.

The city was frightened and depressed.

One of its leading legal majordomos at the time feared: “I though it quite possible that Cleveland would be the first of the northern cities where savage violence might break out.” He told the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

He was correct.

Some change was in the air. Cleveland elected the first black mayor of a major U.S. city, as some hoped. It didn’t stop the inevitable. Another major riot did occur and the ’60s proved shocking to elites especially.

Cleveland then returned to caretaker city leadership with the election of Ralph Perk, a Republican, backed by Democrat Dennis Kucinich.

But decline continued.

In the late ’70s something changed. There were signs.

A state tax abatement law opened for National City Bank. The bank with a 20-year abatement started to build a new headquarter building at E. 9th & Euclid Ave. It had long been in the planning.

Thought began about what to do with the aging sports stadium which served the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Indians. The Cleveland Cavaliers played out of town.

Politically, the scene became alive.

The 1977 mayoral election produced change. Mayor Perk finished third and out in the primary. It left Democrats Kucinich, who six years prior backed Perk, and a state legislator Edward Feighan. Kucinich won in a close contest.

Kucinich, 31 years young, ushered in an urban populism, tainted with a strange strain of dictatorial rule—a take-no-prisoner style of governing. It made enemies faster than friends.

This bullying stance allowed business leaders to step into the political fray.

They backed conservative and mild-mannered George Voinovich, a Republican who had backed Dennis two years before.

It also set the stage for the Cleveland we see and are today.

A city not concerned as much about its citizens as about its infrastructure—private and public.

A city of serious inequality and imbalance.

With the adaptable Voinovich as Mayor and the dominating Council President George Forbes, the corporate agenda began to form. The elite went on a binge and got what it wanted.

If the first sign was the 20-year abatement for a financially successful bank, the second was the beginning of stirrings for a new sports facilities.

It started with County Commissioner Vince Campanella, a Republican. His idea called for a domed stadium on land occupied by an old food market that primarily served low-income people.

Campanella claimed it would produce 3,000 high-paying construction jobs.
But Building Trades Council head Chuck Pinzone told me, no, some 250 jobs.

Campanella’s major mistake, however, was the tax he wanted to levy—a property tax. It was voted down easily.

But his loss was the corporate community’s gain. They had bigger ideas in mind.

And here is where the game got rough.

First, it became clear that the corporate community was going to have a major say in how Cleveland developed.

It was revealed in a 1989 article in Fortune magazine that clearly stated that business/civic leaders had taken a role in ridding Cleveland of Kucinich and replacing him with Voinovich. And they had plans to go further. They blatantly acknowledged that they had performed a “coup” of city government.

Now we began to see the outline of what that “coup” meant.

Most disturbingly, government—city, county and state – provided the slush fund for what the cabal desired. They choose abatements, grants – and most disturbingly—massive regressive taxes that fall mainly on ordinary people.

If you look at Cleveland today and the disturbing climate of violence, poverty and despair you would be looking at the results of this undemocratic plan.

It is the local essence of the Inequality we see in the nation.

How else do you explain the success and the matching despair.

The problem won’t be solved by 100 more homicide detectives. Or 1,000 more.. as some mayoral candidate believe.

Where is my evidence?

Let’s start with the late Dick Jacobs.

Jacobs was in the parade of UDAGs (a federal program based on poverty but enjoyed by wealthy developers). Jacobs got two at $20-million UDAGs at the best interest rate you can get (zero) and not payable for 20 years. The second UDAG wasn’t realized because the market for another skyscraper and hotel wasn’t there. He was also awarded similar deals on land beneath Mall A for a parking facility with a 20-year full tax abatement and UDAG money.

He also got a deal for Chagrin Highlands, a prize of city-owned virgin land, aided by Gov. Voinovich with a perfectly placed 270-exit/entrance to the developable land. Only because of a lawsuit did Jacobs involvement become known.

He also got what became Jacobs Stadium after Gateway was built with public funds. It allowed him to sell the team for $320-million for a $175 million profit. It is now worth almost four times that at $1.15 billion to the Dolan family, which bought the team from Jacobs.

Thank you Cleveland/County taxpayers and especially city school kids who give up tens of millions in property taxes. Promoters had promised an extra $15 million a year to Cleveland schools. They got nothing.

The late Sam Miller and Ratner family of Forest City Enterprises joined the subsidy parade and got $29.8 million in several Tower City UDAGs along with a $34.5 million tax abatement for his Ritz Hotel.

Credit card billionaire the late Al Lerner, worth more than $4 billion, helped jettison Art Modell and the Browns out of Cleveland to Baltimore. Then he grabbed the name (Cleveland Browns) and returned to a new Browns stadium with the help of Mayor Michael White, an obedient servant of the coup-makers.

White and City Council, without a vote of citizens, employed new regressive taxes.

BROWNS STADIUM COSTS FOR HERE: 8 percent on parking for $213 million; city admission tax $36 million; car rental tax $18 million and an extended sin tax worth some $110-million.

The state of Ohio and other public agencies chipped in another $45 million.

Anything for the cause.

Gateway and the football stadium, financed by sin taxes and free property taxes, have now cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars, helping billionaires like the Dolan family (Indians now) Haslam (owners of Browns now) and certainly Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cavs.

Gilbert’s ownership really tells the story I’m presenting. All by himself.

His 2020 net worth is $4.3 BILLION!

It makes him the 15th richest man in America.

Yet, in Cleveland he’s a beggar and gets his arena facility for his Cavalier team and all its revenue provided to him.

Recently, Gilbert’s arena got a new infusion of public money despite the collection of some 20,000 signatures demanding a public vote. The citizens and their supporters were dissed by city officials. They simply rejected the legitimate filing.

This blow to citizen involvement highlights the inequality now pervasive in Cleveland’s civic life.

Cleveland’s poor are left in the wake, paying the bills. Dime after dime.

The agenda of the coup-makers of the 1980s shows all over Cleveland.

The $92-million Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nearby the $325 million Browns stadium and the $70-million RTA funded money-losing Waterfront Line, built quickly at elites demand. RTA paid the line’s full cost because it had to avoid a time-consuming environmental study.

The coup forces wanted it NOW.

Ride up Euclid Avenue and note what’s happened.

An RTA Euclid Corridor cost $120 million in public funds and may have cut ride time by minutes but downtown got new sidewalks.

From the millions spent on “renewing” Public Square to the chandelier at Playhouse Square, tens of millions of public dollars have flowed. To help Playhouse Square’s real estate business we’ve awarded some $24 million in abatements, loans and outright doles.

(A full documentation of many of these subsidies and more can be found here)

The Flats developments are subsidy soaked. You’ll find original data in the link above. Copy and save it all.

I asked the question Did Success Kill Cleveland? It depends upon which Cleveland you are talking about.

The Cleveland of the big law firms—Jones-Day, Squire-Sanders, Baker-Hostetler—have done well. The foundations have played their role, too, as have other private entities—the Greater Cleveland Partnership, of course.

Yes, they have succeeded, likely beyond their dreams given the Cleveland of the 1960-70.
They had the power and they used it. Successfully for themselves. Unsuccessfully for the entire community.

There is no counter-balance. Political leaders are shamefully absent. The news media, starting with the Plain Dealer, is absent without leave. AWOL. Blindfolded.

So there is no countervailing power. What’s then to stop them?

Yes, the pandemic has hurt. But that was really beyond anyone’s control.

Turmoil of the 60s has been replaced by a tranquility. If you don’t count the murders and crimes bedeviling some residents. If you simply ignore the bad housing. If the hunger doesn’t bother you, then you live in Comeback Cleveland. Enjoy.

Bonus No. 1: Portnoy was Donald John Trump Jr.’s childhood role model…

Bonus No. 2: The Bi- Uni-Partisanship of the Pro-Business Pro-War Party.

Bonus No. 3: When Science-Man goes up against God-Man, you know who wins…

Bonus No. 4: Mano Singham taught me about the PWPBP.

Bonus No. 5: Obama’s Book Sucks: A Reading.

Bonus No. 6: Ryan Grim is much (sort of) kinder…

Yesteday Senator Bernie Sanders, writing in How do we avoid future authoritarians? Winning back the working class is key for The Guardian, enumerated 11 positions that a Harris-Biden White House needs in order to have any chance of a second term. Bernie echoed the question that Florence Reece asked back in 1931: Which Side Are You On?

To win, according to Bernie, the Democrats must break away from the centrist Pro-Business Pro-War Party and adopt policies for:

—Expanding unions,
—Expanding healthcare,
—Lowering the cost of prescription drugs,
—Instituting paid family and medical leave,
—Establishing universal pre-K for every three- and four-year-old in America,
—Expanding social security,
—Reforming and making our immigration system fair and humane,
—Creating millions of good paying jobs by:
         —combating climate change and
         —rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure,
—Helping working famlies by:
         —Making public colleges and universities tuition-free,
         —Eliminating student debt.

Ted Rall, as anyone would expect, is not gentle about his expectations for the Harris-Biden team. Rall, writing in Hey, Joe! These Are Our Demands, nails his theses to the door. He ledes:

Progressives and other leftists promise/threaten to pressure/take to the streets to make demands of Joe Biden if/when he falls short of our expectations. We on the left don’t want to be one of those bad bosses who tell you your work isn’t good enough but never say what they expect from you in the first place, so you’re reduced to fumbling around in the dark.

Because there isn’t a political party or other formation that can credibly speak for a broad base of the American left, and because the left is divided between work-from-inside AOC-Bernie types and street-level activists, no one has defined a clear metric to judge the Biden Administration’s personnel, policy and legislative actions. As we saw under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, vague demands foment the unaccountability that allows Democrats to wiggle away and take us for granted.

We need a clear set of demands.

Here are Rall’s bullet points:

—Planet Comes First. No other issue matters if the earth and the people on it are dead or the climate crisis has prompted the collapse of human civilization.

—Immediate Relief for COVID’s Economic Victims. No one should suffer economic ruin due to government-ordered lockdowns to stop the coronavirus pandemic.

—Fully Socialized Medicine. We tried for-profit medicine. It failed even before COVID.

—Fully Socialized Higher Education. The college and university model no longer works. It doesn’t make sense to require young men and women to take on staggering student loan debt that entry-level salaries will never allow them to repay, much less settle down and buy a house.

—Restart the Police. It is painfully obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense that American policing is an engine of oppression rather than protection.

—Empty the Prisons. Many inmates represent no threat whatsoever to society. Prison causes deep-seated psychological problems for the prisoners themselves, their friends and families, and society in general.

—End the Wars. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and international law are clear: the only legitimate casus belli is in self-defense, either to an armed attack or the clear and imminent danger of such an attack, such as an army massing along another nation’s border.

Progressives gave up any leverage that we might have had when we acquiesced to the lame “Stop Trump” strategy put forth by the left wing (aka Democratic Party) of the Pro-Business Pro-War Party. The Harris-Biden administration is sending clear signals to Americans that, despite the weak protestations to the contrary, this will be a Clinton 3.0 administration with an icing of Obama 2.0 slathered on. The goal now has to be somehow turning the Congress into the tail that wags the dog.

I’m not hopeful, but better to get torpedoed at sea than rust at the pier.

Bonus No. 1: FERGUSON, CLEVELAND, NEW YORK: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON…?

Bonus No. 2: Hey, Hey, My, My…

The primary reasons why I did not vote for William Jefferson Clinton in 1996, Barack Husein Obama in 2012, Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016 or Joseph Robinette Biden in 2020 is that I understood that they would only provide cover for the corporatist bullshit of our single party: The Pro-Business Pro-War party disguised as the Republican and Democratic parties.

I originally included this discussion as a bonus to my first post this morning, but after watching I knew that the discussion deserves to stand by itself. I didn’t hear anything from either Glenn Greenwald or Jimmy Dore that I disagree with. So maybe I’m in an echo chamber here, but given my long admiration for the Socialism of Eugene Victor Debs, I don’t think so.

Bonus No. 1: Marx’s General: Friedrich Engels’ Revolutionary Life by Tristram Hunt.

Bonus No. 2: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Talks to Glenn Greenwald.

Bonus No. 3: The People, No: A Brief History Of Anti-Populism by Thomas Frank.

I really like Larry Wilmore’s style and when his first post The Daily Show, gig, The Nightly Show, was canceled, I was seriously bummed. Since then he’s taken to podcasting and, on NBC’s streaming launch Peacock, an 11-episode election series titled simply Wilmore. In the penultimate show he interviews New York Times‘ Kara Swisher and MSNBC‘s Joy Reid.

There are too many articles—there’s even a book—examining the cult of Trump to pick just one. I will, however, say this: Just as you can’t reason someone away from believing in Jesus or Mohamed or Joseph Smith or Marshall Applewhite or Keith Allen Raniere, you can’t reason a Trump follower out of their core beliefs in what’s wrong with America and why Trump is the solution to all those problems.

Bonus No. 1: THIS is one of my favorite Larry Wilmore moments.

Bonus No. 2: Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore talk Black-on-Black crime.

Bonus No. 3: The Weirdest People in the World review—a theory-of-everything study.

The blue wave wasn’t even a dribble and the cabinet picks for the Harris-Biden administration range from anemic to tragic. The margin in the House is narrower, the Senate, (at best) may be a tie and we find ourselves facing a new administration that not even President-Deëlect Donald John Trump could sell as a winner. We’ve been better.

In the most recent episode of The Intercept’s podcast Deconstructed Ryan Grim talks with Dave Dayan, Robert Hockett and Demond Drummer about how the incoming administration could, if it finds the political will—gawd knows there’s little in the form of a mandate to work with—out-Trump Trump.

Dayan, writing in a suite of articles under the banner The Day One Agenda: Now More Than Ever for The American Prospect, laid out much of what he and Grim discuss.

In the second half of the podcast, Grim talks with Hockett and Rummer about their memo: Building Back Better Without The Senate. They focus on the Federal Reserve and how solid actions there don’t require approval from the Senate. Their summary begins:

Joe Biden won the Presidential election with a mandate to restore America’s promise and Build Back Better from our current crises. And while the Democrats have maintained a majority in the House, it is not yet clear whether Democrats will control the Senate. While the Biden administration will have more tools available if it is able to work productively with Congress, New Consensus shows in its new memo that Biden can achieve most of his “Build Back Better” agenda even without a cooperative Senate in order to keep the promises he made to the American people. In the same way that Presidents Bush and Obama collaborated with the Federal Reserve to lend out between $7 trillion and $29 trillion to banks during the 2008 financial recession, Biden could work with the current Federal Reserve to make trillions in low-interest loans directly to productive businesses and projects. In order to keep this money from being used simply on speculative trading or stock buybacks, the plan suggests creating a National Development Council that would be tasked with defining what these productive investments are by turning Biden’s Build Back Better plan into an executable national economic development strategy. And to ensure that these investments are based on real needs in local economies, the plan recommends returning the Federal Reserve to its initial mission of developing the American economy by empowering regional Federal Reserve Banks to invest in their local economies.

I confess that I am not optimistic that a Harris-Biden administration will take any real actions. Instead, the center-left of the Pro-Business Pro-War Party (aka Democrats) will continue to do what is best for their handlers and damn the people.

Bonus No. 1: What, Exactly, Isn’t an American Value?

Bonus No. 2: Biden Doesn’t Need Senators: Boost the Economy, Tackle Climate Change.

Bonus No. 3: Dear Joe Biden: are you kidding me?

Bonus No. 4: Trump bids for final hack at environmental protections.

Bonus No. 5: The Bosses of the Senate.

Yes, President Donald John Trump lost his lost his shuffle for reëlection but no one should make the mistake of thinking for a moment that the center-left wing of the Pro-Business Pro-War Party (aka Democrats) won. They didn’t. They didn’t because once again they turned there backs on what was once the core of their party: working people.

Working people, the Americans who simply want to work, raise their families and see a brighter future for their children, got the strapless boot. The Democratic Party threw all that under the bus in 1992 when it embraced the abomination of neoliberalism and elected William Jefferson Clinton to the presidency. President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden is just the latest (and perhaps weakest) manifestation of neoliberalism. We only have to look to the short list of consensus picks for his cabinet to understand that.

Ted Rall, writing in Why Democrats Lost and Will Keep Losing Elections, lays out the argument for why the next four years are not going to good:

Why, Democrats have been asking, do so many poor white people vote for a Republican Party that doesn’t care about or do anything for them? The most common reply is: Democrats are snobby coastal elites who talk down to them. Classic example, courtesy of Obama: “They [voters in the Rust Belt] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Democrats know their arrogance pisses off the working-class whites they need to win national elections. Yet they persist.

Every day sees some op-ed Ivy-educated columnist opining that voting for Trump means you’re a Klansman and another DNC-fed talking head pontificating about the masklessness at the president’s rallies with the bloated tone of a Roman tribune announcing stunning news that no one had ever heard before.

Now the Democrats are at it again, setting the stage for yet another surprise loss. Because, yes, they just lost again. When you expect a “blue wave,” when you’re running against a president who lost hundreds of thousands of citizens and tens of millions of jobs the year of the election, when you expected to pick up tons of seats in the House and take back the Senate, and none of that happens and you just barely win the presidency in a squeaker, you basically got your ass kicked.

Humility is in order. But it’s not on the menu.

Yes, Trump lost, but America didn’t win.

Bonus No. 1: For All His Endless Lies, Trump Has Exposed Some Important Truths.

Bonus No. 2: Colbert’s latest edition of The Road From The White House.

Bonus No. 3: Maybe Journaling Was A Bad Idea. No, you’re just doing it wrong.

Bonus No. 4: How did Trump manage to boost his support among rural Americans?

Bonus No. 5: Trump and Giuliani are the Republican Party.

The comedy shows that have made we laugh so hard I thought I would die were, with one exception, British. I can rewatch the likes of The Office, Father Ted, Fawlty Towers and Blackadder again and again. The one America exception is Night Court with a brilliant cast led by Harry Anderson as Judge Harry Stone.

Of those shows, the absolute gems feature Bob Wheeler (seven episodes), his Wife June (six episodes) and their daughter, little Carol Anne (two episodes) played by Brent Jay Spiner, Annie O’Donnell and Keri Houlihan. Their first appearance—Wheels of Justice: Part 1, above—aired on 5 December 1985. You can laugh with the rest of their appearances–including their very best, Her Honor: Part 1,—below. Sorry, the quality does vary.

Wheels of Justice: Part 2, aired 12 December 1985;
Hurricane: Part 1, aired 1 May 1986;*
Hurricane: Part 2, aired 8 May 1986;
Her Honor: Part 1, aired 29 April 1987
Her Honor: Part 2.1, aired 6 May 1987;
Her Honor: Part 2.2, aired 6 May 1987; and finally,
Her Honor: Part 3, aired 17 September 1987

*Family on TV Sitcom No Longer From W.Va.

Sadly, Anderson died on 16 April 2018 after a bout of influenza, and subsequently suffered several strokes. Anderson died in his sleep on 16 April 2018 . He was 65.

Bonus No. 1: How Brent Spiner became Bob Wheeler on Night Court.

Bonus No. 2: This is what happens when you just can’t stop the presses.

Bonus No. 3: What You NEED To Know…Michigan, Georgia, And The… Trump Lawsuits.

From a news’ perspective, there’s nothing new here, but my takeaway is that I no longer have to argue with anyone about how actors or sports stars just need to shut up and act or dribble because Jon Voight has officially put that protest in a box. Does Voight have the First Amendment right to say what he said? Of course he does.

And I could reply to his objectionable speech with more speech, but I’ll let others with much larger platforms do that for now.

Bonus No. 1: Jon Voight: What does Angelina Jolie think of her father’s political views?

Bonus No. 2: …mused every Reagan Republican last Wednesday morning…

Bonus No. 3: Samuel L Jackson slams… Voight’s equation of… election with… Civil War.

Bonus No. 4: And now, this…

Bonus No. 1: Larry Wilmore: Gen Z is politically active with Yara Shahidi.

To be a major American city Cleveland must have the qualities of a big time place. We’ve spent much more than a billion tax dollars to try to show that we can shine with other big cities.

Among those standards would definitely be a quality major American newspaper. One that speaks truth to power.

Sir Winston Churchill commented on the name of our newspaper as “the best name for a newspaper in the world.”

But it takes more than a name to be the best or among the best.

Newspapers today are under great pressure. Great financial pressure.

But that doesn’t mean the newspaper has to be timid, be tiresome, be unworthy.

Joe Bialek recently sent out two paragraphs from a recent editorial in the PD decrying the low voter turnout in the recent election:

Clevelanders feel alienated from governance and barred from the table where decisions are made, while the city’s and region’s elected and civic leaders are doing too little to bring them into the circle, to engage them in change and hope.

But apathy isn’t a constant state of being. It’s a result of elected
officials’ failures over many years to make voters feel that their voices
matter. It’s cultivated by neglect, a lack of engagement and lack of energy
and willingness to do the work needed to stir, at the block and neighborhood
levels, a sense of possibility — and that top folks care and are paying
attention.

Those words are true.

But what the editorial didn’t say was what responsibility the newspaper has in the dismal showing of citizens.

It avoided, as it usually does, looking at itself.

The Plain Dealer is a main source of information to voters. It is day in and day out a community educator.

It has been failing its job.

Why this soul killing apathy?

Part of the reason is that the city’s newspaper doesn’t take a stand in favor of those who have the greatest need here.

When have you read an editorial that tore into any part of the dominate forces of this city? When have you ever read an editorial that severely disagreed with the same old dominate forces and their needs? Are they never wrong?

How could the signatures of 20,000 Cleveland residents (voters?) be simply ignored by city officials and have the Plain Dealer not erupt in support for the citizens? Did voters who signed those petitions say, “Oh, the hell with it” on Nov. 3? Could you blame them?

There are many such soul-killing of citizen action.

And now when the nation has voted a president out of office but he decides to play games, threatening—for the first time in our history—to stay on, does the Plain Dealer editorial team cry out with an editorial that says:

DONALD TRUMP CONCEDE! GET OUT!

Hell, no. Afraid of offending.

Back in 1974 in a similar crisis, the Plain Dealer editorial didn’t hide, as the paper itself recalled:

Aug. 6, 1974 —the lead editorial thundered:

President Richard M. Nixon should resign from office now.

The President’s shocking admission yesterday that he deliberately withheld information and misled Congress and the nation about the Watergate coverup now makes his removal from office a certainty.

To spare the nation the agony of the impeachment process and himself the humiliation of conviction, President Nixon should begin discussions for the orderly transition of power to Vice President Gerald R. Ford.

It is disheartening to advocate this course of action, but The Plain Dealer believes that, in the best interests of the United States, President Nixon should step down.

Are not Trump’s anti-democratic ravings not as bad or worse?

The unwillingness of the Plain Dealer NOW to declare, as a major American city newspaper should, that Donald Trump should exit after the American people clearly asked him to leave, shows the paper to be lacking in the courage it takes to be a major newspaper.

The PD ignores its responsibility to editorially give readers the truth of this disgusting act by Trump and Republican party members.

Trying to not offend is bad editorial policy. Cowardly.

Chris Quinn, everyone seems to know, calls the shots not only in the news pages but on the editorial pages. He’s the Boss.

He needs to stop the balancing act he’s been playing rather than expressing an editorial position of this major American city and stop trying to not alienate conservative readers.

The PD editorial pages aim at not offending. What a ridiculous policy.

It’s time to tell the brutal truth and quit the cowardly balancing act and unwillingness to step on elite toes.

Bonus No. 1: Is America about to look like The West Wing or The Handmaid’s Tale?

Bonus No. 2: Thomas Frank—What’s the Matter with America?

Bonus No. 3: Isabel Wilkerson on Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.

Bonus No. 4: Fake Populism & Silicon Valley Fantasies with Thomas Frank.

Bonus No. 5: Joe Biden Will Be a President for All Americans.

Bonus No. 6: But read this before you sing the Hallelujah Chorus.

Back in 1984, I moved from rural Washington County, Ohio, to Cleveland Heights and over the next 30 years I lived and voted in three different precincts there. When I moved to North Royalton, Ohio, in a semi-rural corner of Cuyahoga County, I joked that I had moved to the anti-Cleveland Heights. The results of the 3 November election are illustrative.

Vince Grzegorek, writing in How Did Your Precinct in Cuyahoga County Vote in the Presidential Election? This Map Will Tell You for Scene, provides a tool that allows voters to see just whom their neighbors picked in this election. As you can clearly see in the illustration above, the split in my precinct went 58/41 for President Donald John Trump. I checked the last precinct where I voted in Cleveland Heights and the percentages there went 70/29 for now President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden. In both precincts, minor party candidates received 1 percent of the vote.

For me the coming transition is not all that important because I don’t have great expectations for the Biden presidency. The next four years will be less disastrous, less chaotic, even less embarrassing than the previous four, but they won’t be good years for 99 percent of Americans. We have a lot of work to do. We have a coalition to build similar to one built when Abolitionists, Free-Soilers and progressive Whigs created when they gathered outside of Jackson, Michigan on 6 July 1854. That coalition created the Republican Party that would six years later see President Abraham Lincoln become President of the United States

I don’t know how yet, but I know that we have to figure this out. Our political duopoly cannot be allowed to continue the domination of American politics.

Bonus No. 1: One Day On A Desert Island.

Bonus No. 2: Trump Tees Up a New Type of Coup: In Plain Sight.

Bonus No. 3: The Dean of Reconstruction Historians on The Second Founding.

Bonus No. 4: Shedding your daily Productivity Debt.

Bonus No. 1: You Can’t Be Disappointed If You Don’t Have Expectations.

Bonus No. 2: Reparations are necessary to bridge the racial wealth gap.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

In Flanders Fields by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, Canadian Army (1872-1918)

When I was 15 or so, my dad handed me a stack of Dell paperbacks by Kurt Vonnegut. Years later, as I began collecting Vonnegut’s later works, I returned the favor and shared those books with him. Of late I’ve been reëading those paperbacks and the other day I finished his debut novel, published in 1952, Player Piano.

Sixty-eight years later, that book has a lot to say to Americans in 2020. Here’s my take on one of the core messages of Vonnegut’s book: the election of Donald John Trump in 2016 by men and women who believed in his message, and nearly reëlected him in 2020, was akin to a slave revolt. Beginning on page 266 of my copy, Vonnegut wrote:

[Doctor Edmund L. Harrison] attempted to rise, failed once, made it the next time. “And now, goodbye.”

“Where are you going?” said Doctor Roseberry. “Stick around, stick around.”

“Where? First to shut off that part of the Ithaca works for which I am responsible, and then to an island, perhaps, a cabin in the north woods, a shack in the Everglades.”

“And do what?” said Buck, baffled.

“Do?” said Harrison. “Do? That’s just it, my boy. All of the doors have been closed. There’s nothing to do but to find a womb suitable for an adult, and crawl into it. One without machines would suit me particularly.”

“What have you got against machines?” said Buck.

“They’re slaves.”

“Well, what the heck,” said Buck. “I mean, they aren’t people. They don’t suffer. They don’t mind working.”

“No. But they compete with people.”

“That’s a pretty good thing, isn’t it—considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?”

“Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave,” said Harrison thickly, and he left.

Like the wreckers of Industrial England and the Saboteurs of France, those replaced by machines, those, in Vonnegut’s mind, enslaved by machines, rose up and voted for Trump. Yeah, he screwed them over, but if he were alive today, I think Vonnegut would have pointed to much the same conclusion.

Bonus No. 1: Perennial LOSER John Kasich Trashes Progressives In Advice For Dems.

Bonus No. 2: Back in 2014—How retired Justice Stevens would change the constitution.

Bonus No. 3: Zaid Jilani: How Wokeness Distorted The Polls.

I am, in the vein of Benjamin Franklin, a pessimist. In 2015 I predicted the rise of fantasy over fiction that made Donald John Trump our president and I was not disappointed. Four years later I called four more years for President Trump and I pleasantly pleased to be wrong. On Sunday I went back out on my limb and wrote:

That the Democrats could still win both senate seats in Georgia in the January runoff after flipping the state for Biden is beyond fantasy. This is Georgia folks and not even Stacey Yvonne Abrams has the mojo to pull of such a hat trick.

Nothing would make me happier than to be, once again, proven wrong. Watching Stephen Colbert’s interview with Abrams does give me hope and maybe, just maybe, on January 5th Senate Majority Leader Addison Mitchell McConnell will once again become the minority leader and the Now South will rise.

Abrams told Colbert that: We don’t elect saviors, we elect workers. She is one hell of a worker and I ordered her newest book—Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America—in anticipation of becoming a better worker myself.

Bonus No. 1: Both Parties Lost the Election. Now the Real Trouble Begins.

Bonus No. 2: Matt Christman’s Cushvlogs; a review.