The 12th Amendment to our Constitution is poised—especially in light of our president’s continued refusal to commit to the peaceful transfer of power after the election—to become the single-most read portion of our founding document. That I read about this in an essay from a cartoonist and not a front-page story on The Guardian is disturbing.

The 12th amendment, proposed in 1803 and ratified in 1804, is a direct reaction to the election of 1800 and put in place before the 1804 election to: weaknesses in the earlier electoral system which were responsible for the controversial Presidential Election of 1800. The 12th replaces Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the constitution which detailed the process of electing our president and vice president of the United States. The amendment reads:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;-The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;-The person having the greatest Number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President-The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

While the amendment makes no mention of timing, Congress has, by law, set a specific timetable that, in these extraordinary times, may be nearly impossible to meet, forcing the House of Representatives to select the president and the senate to select the vice president. And here’s the kicker: Democrats don’t have the voted in either chamber to make a difference.

Ted Rall, in Mail-in Balloting, the 12th Amendment and Impending Doom writes:

More than 80 million Americans are expected to cast mail-in ballots this fall, representing a 16-fold increase over 2016.

This is probably going to cause a constitutional crisis of epic proportions.

The problem isn’t the possibility of fraud that Donald Trump has been going on about. Cases of possible double voting or voting on behalf of dead people Daley-machine-style are statistically insignificant, amounting to at most 0.0025% of mail-in votes.

The real issue is that the ballots may not be counted on time, triggering the insanity of the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The date to remember is December 14th, when the delegations of the Electoral College meet in their respective states. That’s a hard deadline. Each delegation can only certify their state’s vote counts if they are 100% complete—machine votes cast in person at polling places on election day, early votes, absentee ballots, write-ins and, this year, COVID-19 mail-in ballots. If the state fails to certify on time, its electoral college votes aren’t counted.

Within each state, there is a canvassing/certification deadline for county officials to submit their results. Most are in late November. California, with a December 11th deadline, cuts it close and usually files its national certification last.

State election officials are doing their best to meet the challenge. They are hiring additional staff, buying new tabulation machines and installing drop boxes. Even assuming that they will be able to hire the additional personnel they need in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the practical impediments to meeting the December 14th deadline are daunting. Mail-in ballots are manually opened and signatures must be visually compared, sometimes several times, to Board of Election records.

Then there are technicalities. For example, 16 states require mail-in ballots to be submitted with an extra “privacy envelope.” In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, 6.4% of absentee ballots submitted in a 2019 election were rejected because voters neglected to insert their ballot inside the privacy envelope inside the mailing envelope—a significant margin that could change the outcome on a national level. Both parties are gearing up for legal challenges about issues like this across the nation.

“Every absentee or mailed ballot, even if dropped off directly at the designated county drop box or polling center, most likely will not get counted on Election Day, and it can easily be challenged and delayed and even rejected on a technicality,” Jed Shugerman writes at Time. “Every mailed or absentee ballot, in an envelope with signatures, is its own hanging chad, its own built-in legal delay.”

If enough states are embroiled in vote-counting controversies to prevent either President Trump or former Vice President Biden from achieving the 270 electoral votes required to declare them president-elect on December 14th, the obscure 12th Amendment kicks in.
Used only once—in 1825 to elect John Quincy Adams—the 12th Amendment triggers a bizarre “House of Cards” series of remedies guaranteed to eliminate any remaining belief that the Framers wrote a perfect document designed to withstand the test of time, or that the United States is a democracy.

After the new 117th Congress convenes on January 3rd, the House of Representatives would vote to elect the president and the Senate would elect the vice president. “Each state delegation gets one vote, and 26 votes are required to win [out of 50 states]?,” reports the Associated Press. “In the Senate…each senator gets a vote, with 51 votes [out of 100 seats] required to win.”

Even if Democrats enjoy another “blue wave” election that allows them to pick up congressional seats, they will not capture 26 state delegations in the House of Representatives. Trump would win. If Democrats have taken back the Senate, they could select a vice president to replace Mike Pence.

It wouldn’t matter if a newspaper recount were to determine later on that Biden should have won both a popular and electoral vote landslide. Trump would remain in the White House.

The Democratic Party and its allies in the media have been pushing mail-in balloting, but voters who want to see Joe Biden elected and are willing to brave the health risks should consider showing up for early in-person voting. In-person ballots are far less susceptible to rejection over technical issues like security envelopes, they are counted immediately and they thus meet the December 14th deadline for certification.

As my readers are aware, I do not support either Trump or Biden and will be voting third party, probably for the Greens, this fall. But I don’t support disenfranchisement either. I want everyone’s will to be expressed.

No matter what happens, no matter who wins, American politics are about to become extremely dangerous. Democracy fails when the losing side refuses to accept the legitimacy of the winning side. That will certainly be the case this year.

Thanks to the serial incompetency of the Democratic National Committee, President Donald John Trump is poised to win four more years in the White House.

Previously: CLEVELAND “SOLVED” ITS PROBLEMS BY AVOIDING… —PART ONE.

Cleveland survived the tough and tragic 1960s as violence subsided. But the city hardly returned to “good times’” Rather it faced problems of significant population decline, job losses and a return to caretaker and corrupt governing at City Hall.

Ralph Perk, with the support of a young councilman, became the 52nd mayor. The councilman was Dennis Kucinich, who awaited his time to depose Perk. It marked the comeback of white ethnic control of City Hall and to Republican hands.

Former Mayor Carl Stokes tried to maintain some control by trying to elect one of his top aides, Arnold Pinkney. His attempt failed.

The 1970s were to prove unkind to Cleveland.

Between 1960 and 1980, the city lost more than 300,000 in population. An incredible number for a city that had 750,000 inhabitants when I came here in 1965. Poverty was rising to 40 percent and job losses, a report noted, cost 62,000 factory jobs.

No wonder a popular car bumper began to adorn autos: “Cleveland—You Gotta Be Tough.” It signaled the depressed nature of the times.

Perk was essentially an old fashioned, keep-taxes-low politician. He had come to politics by default. His father had run a business selling ice and to keep peace with politicians one son was assigned to the Democratic Party and the other, Ralph, the Republican Party.

This caretaker mayoral time was plagued with revenue needs. However, Perk shared power with the Democratic council president. George Forbes, indeed, often seemed to be the go-to guy. Early in the ’80s, Forbes got his council to gag itself by eliminating a period at meeting for members to speak out on any subject they desired. They gagged themselves. Forbes’ power was magnified.

Business leaders relaxed as the new pair ruled. Violent protests declined. City hall had a taint of organized crime but that didn’t seem to bother the establishment.

Perk, faced with financial problems, began a selloff of city assets. Parks were turned over to the State of Ohio for $32 million, money Perk quickly spent.

The city sewer system was regionalized; the city’s transit system, valued at $70 million, became a stand-alone agency with payoff to the city. The city’s port facilities also shifted to a stand-alone authority.

Still burdened by lack of finances, Perk began spending bond money on general city needs. It was clear he still needed money to make up his shortfall.

It appeared he was ready to unload one more city asset: the municipal electric system, known as Muny Light. In addition, Perk—to satisfy business desires and update downtown—got behind a new tax abatement program.

These moves did not bother council president Forbes. He was close to the business community and its desires.

However, the combination of the possible sale of Muny Light and tax abatement of property taxes for downtown development gave Kucinich twin issues to pursue his desire to be mayor. The first abatements were given National City Bank for its new, long-desired headquarters at E. 9th and Euclid. Another went to Standard Oil of Ohio (later BP) for a site behind Tower City. It later moved the site and lost the abatement.

Kucinich, who left council to serve as city clerk of courts, must have watched with joy. Perk, he felt, was digging himself into a hole and Dennis could bury him. He was ready for a 1977 rise to power.

At the time, however, a third candidate took stage. Edward Feighan, a state representative. The non-party primary surprisingly ended with Perk being odd man out. This left Kucinich and Feighan, both Democrats, in the general election. Kucinich prevailed.

Kucinich, who at 31 became the youngest mayor of a major American city, received national attention, pushing his progressive ideas. “You may have noticed that I didn’t touch on any of the great debates over social issues. The basis of genuine reform is economic reform,” he explained his view to a national audience.

Cleveland entered one of its most explosive two-year mayoral terms in its history. Kucinich was under constant pressure, having to endure at least two crucial elections before running for re-elections in 1979. He survived a brutal recall election and a bitter fight to maintain Muny Light as a city asset. He won both but lost to Republican George Voinovich in 1979.

NOW, the corporate community had the city hall it wanted—Voinovich as mayor and Forbes as council president. Voinovich had proclaimed, “I like Fat Cats.”

Indeed, as the business leaders had formed mechanisms to guide their way during the 1960s, they used other methods to rid themselves of Kucinich and get the political leaders they desired.

Perk had been misspending bond money but Cleveland banks had consistently rolled over the city’s short-term borrowing. The issue was clouded by the desire of the electric company to take over Muny Light. U.S. Judge Robert Krupansky had allowed city properties to be red tagged for debt payment, forcing Kucinich to pay some $15 million to CEI, the private company. The mayor now faced a bank payment of some $14.5 million and couldn’t pay. The Cleveland Trust bank refused to rollover the debt and the city went into historic default on Dec. 15, 1978. Kucinich claimed the banks offered to roll the debt if he promised to sell Muny Light to CEI.

Kucinich did allow a city vote on whether to keep Muny Light. In a bitter battle, city voters elected to keep the asset.

This was a classic battle of government vs private interests. CEI had been pursuing a policy of squeezing Muny by refusing the “wheel”—that is transport its power to the city in certain circumstances. CEI surrounded Muny Light territory and could and did block the city from other energy sources. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission noted in November that CEI was still “pursuing anti-competitive and deceptive” acts against the city’s system. It charged CEI was “acting like a spoiled child.” Kucinich pushed a $325-million anti-trust suit against CEI. For a detailed exam:

It took two federal jury trials, one a hung jury and the other against the city, to end the suit. It rolled over into the Voinovich era. Voinovich, concerned of Kucinich’s still powerful pull, pursued the anti-trust case. Judge Krupansky, who had backed CEI’s claims in red tagging city property, showed clear bias against the city during the two trials.

Just how badly the Cleveland corporate establishment wanted to rid itself of Kucinich was revealed in a Fortune Magazine article a decade later. The corporate leaders didn’t hide behind civic mechanisms or committees as in the 1960s. But they hid their actions.

The article was entitled: “How Business Bosses Saved a Sick City.” Some of the claims were rather blunt. Jack Reavis was not on the scene anymore, but Jones-Day remained in the driver’s seat. Dick Pogue, Jones-Day managing partner, played the role now.

“In a sense Kucinich was the best thing that ever happened because he became a unifying element. People looked at him and said, ‘Enough is enough here. Let’s get together and change things.”

It was war. The story continued: ”E. Mandel deWindt, the now retired CEO of Eaton Corp., and the unofficial dean of businessmen, organized the troops and devised a strategy, setting in motion a benign conspiracy of executives and entrepreneurs that still operates. The impressive feat of organizing that cabal and persuading Cleveland’s most senior businessmen to take charge of the grittiest aspects of civic life was key to the town’s turnabout.” It was, in essence, a coup.

Finally, the corporate bosses had the city leadership team it long desired.

Though Voinovich was cautious. He moved slowly at first. It seemed he still feared the shadow of Kucinich. He played it very cautiously for a time. He continued to city’s suit against CEI and supported Muny Light. He, however, change the name of the city’s system to Cleveland Public Power.

The corporate coup wasn’t wasted.

Voinovich and Forbes cooperated in massive government subsidizing. Not for the city’s heavily poor population. It was the corporate community rewarding itself.

Cleveland qualified for a federal loan program for urban action grants (UDAG). It earned the right because of Cleveland’s high poverty rate. The money, however, went to developers. Under Voinovich developer Dick Jacobs received two $20 million UDAGs at zero interest. In addition, Voinovich, with Forbes’ help, bestowed 20-year, full 100% tax abatements for two major bank buildings and two hotels. The value: $250,000,000. One set of buildings was constructed. The other never made it but presently will house the heavily subsidized Sherwin-Williams new headquarters.

Further UDAGs flowed out of city hall. Tower City, four properties, got $23.9 million and the Ritz Carleton, $7.9 million, plus tax abatement worth $35.5 million. Up Euclid Ave. the restoration of the Halle building drew $28 million in UDAG and other loans. The Galleria got a $3.5 million UDAG.

Playhouse Square joined the UDAG parade with $6.3 million for a number of spots. In addition, the Square’s real estate interests got various loans and grants for the Wyndham hotel: $8 million in block grant funds and a state loan; a $3.1 million TIF grant and an $13 million tax abatement. Across the way, the Renaissance Building received a $7.7 million property tax abatement.

Nothing was built or renewed without these generous outlays.

One more project was high on the corporate list. They wanted a rock ‘n roll connection to add to the downtown revival. In short, the city worked to lure the New York Rock Hall interests to Cleveland. Successfully. What did it cost – a bundle. The Rock & Roll Hall and Museum, located on city land on Lake Erie rose in cost to some $90 million, all locally financed with further abatement at Tower City and a dedicated increased city admissions tax.

But that wasn’t all. The powers that be forced the Regional Transit System to build a rapid train expressly from Tower City to the Rock museum’s doorstep. It was a Dick Pogue special. Since he wanted it quickly, RTA didn’t apply for federal matching funds because it would have cause delays. The 2.2 mile run cost some $70-million, all local funds. It has been a major revenue loser ever since.

For a comprehensive list of how generous Cleveland has been to developers, please see
ROLDO RIGHTS ON BOX SCORES FOR DOWNTOWN… However, these deals were eclipsed by a real estate scheme with payoffs to both Voinovich and Forbes.

Almost a century before, Tom Johnson, the famed Cleveland Progressive Mayor, had foresight to buy control of a huge amount of real estate outside the city. Stokes had wanted to use the real estate to build a “new city,” a housing development that would be integrated. In a deposition Forbes was asked about low income housing for this area. “No,” he said, “Because I had concluded that we had reached a stage where that would never happen…” Sometimes, power has its limits. But it didn’t seem Forbes expended much for low income needs.

Voinovich, Forbes and other interests had other plans. The property – labeled “without doubt one of the finest pieces of real estate between New York City and Chicago” – was to be used to lure a corporation that had left the area back here. However, a lawsuit, later dropped, helped reveal the truth. The development, known as Chagrin Highlands, ended up in the hands of the late Dick Jacobs, a favorite of Forbes. Voinovich’s old law firm, Calfee-Halter, also had a connection. The area, in suburbs outside Cleveland, now houses a number of Cleveland entities, including Eaton Corp., lured from downtown, and an offshoot of University Hospitals.

For the decades 1980 through 1990s the Corporates had their way with cooperative mayors – Voinovich, through to 1990 and Michael White from there to 2002. White in a historic 1989 election defeated Forbes. The two had survived a hotly contested primary. It was the first time two Black candidate faced each other.

White campaigned in a manner that suggested deep concern for Cleveland’s poor and needy community. He lived for a time with a public housing family, and rode the public transportation system. It proved to be fake concern. He criticized a “two-tier” economy. The city’s agenda tilted more to downtown.

White, along with Cuyahoga County Commissioners, pushed a tax for sports facilities that was to outdo all other revival efforts. Promises were made; promises were not kept.

A series of sin taxes was proposed for construction of a major league baseball stadium and basketball arena. City residents rejected and county supported the measure. Hundreds of millions of dollars were proposed to pay bonds for the facilities. All regressive taxes. Among many other promises, White assured voters there would be no tax abatement. Then he went to Columbus to successfully urge full property tax exemption for the two facilities and for another stadium for the Cleveland Browns, constructed with Cleveland funds alone. More millions in subsidies.

The sports facilities continue to drain city resources. Now abatements have become expected, though are mostly a different form, saving schools revenue loss. The 15 and 20 year duration has now jumped to a possible 60 years.

When Sherwin-Williams, a major paint company located in Cleveland, decided it need new headquarters it chose one of the old UDAG spots also given tax abatement. The company is expected to receive some $100 million from the city plus other subsidies from Cuyahoga County and the State of Ohio.

Inequality is baked into city policies. The party continues.

Senate Majority Leader Addison Mitchel McConnell is doing a happy dance in his office right now and all of us who have pissed and moaned about the real threat that President Donald John Trump posed to The Supreme Court of the United States have no one to blame but ourselves. Distracted by our phones and social media we didn’t flip the senate in 2018.

Now we’ll pay the price. Over at Pervert Justice, Crip Dyke, in Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead, and we’re the ones going to hell writes:

This is how I will remember RBG: from the beginning of her career on SCOTUS she was fighting a rear guard action against the regressives who were unwilling to admit that precedents or principles existed, that certain issues had been decided, that certain values held constitutional significance.

Marcus Ranum left this comment on the post:

Wish she had resigned in 2014 at the perfectly reasonable age of 81. She gambled and we lost.

I think all progressives gambled and we rolled snake-eyes.

My reply to Marcus was this:

The better timing might have been on 20 January 2009.

That was when President Barack Hussein Obama had the most political capital to work with.

Every day past his inauguration greatly depleted that capital. By 2014 the best he might have done was a weak centrist nominee like Merrick Garland.

If Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (as well as every progressive on the bench) had resigned on the first day of the Obama presidency we might have gotten Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor by June; Elena Kagan by August and a third nominee the following year.

All of that is, of course, woulda, shoulda, coulda. As Crip Dyke says, this is the hell we’re now forced to deal with. The best strategy at this point is to put every kind of voter pressure we can think of on a few, key, senators—think Susan Collins,Lisa Murkowski and maybe one or two others—to deny Senate majority leader Addison Mitchell McConnell the votes to confirm any candidate before 20 January.

I must confess that my suggestion may very well be worthless, however, because I continue to believe that when the dust clears in November, Joseph Robinette Biden will not be the next president of the United States.

Welcome to hell, indeed,

We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Now what?

There probably aren’t too many readers today who will remember the name H. Chapman “Chappie” Rose. But he once revealed the national power of Cleveland and its elites.

Post-World War II, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, now President, summoned George Humphrey of Hanna Mining, a Cleveland powerhouse, to be Secretary of Treasury. Humphrey brought along Chappie Rose of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue to actually do the work at Treasury.

Cleveland, the city, may have been in decline, and failing as an urban center, but its standing as a major corporate and legal center remained. Cleveland was third on the number of Fortune 500 firms, behind only New York City and Los Angeles.

What I am trying to do here is give a picture, as I have seen it, of periods of Cleveland’s history from post-World War II, through the tragic 1960s and into the 1980s and beyond. City leaders played and play a significant role in shaping and sometimes misshaping the city and its people.

“Cleveland was born great,” someone said of its geographic position.

“At Cleveland iron ore met coal to become steel and rode off by railroad to build America’s skyscrapers, railroads and bridges,” another said.

That geographic position enable Cleveland to be a powerhouse for the industrial revolution. Iron ore and coal were golden with the ability to become steel for skyscrapers, bridges and railroads. By the early 20th Century Cleveland could boast the economic power of John D. Rockefeller, the Mathers, Wades, Hannas, Severances and Boltons.

But all things wear out. Cleveland showed that wear post World War II.

After the war Cleveland’s civic and business leaders looked for ways to retain position. One major way they chose was the federal program of urban renewal.

Cleveland still did have wealth. The Cleveland Foundation and many other caches of money left by rich families—the Hannas in particular.

John Gunther, an author of some note, wrote “sociopolitical” books including Inside USA. He wrote, “Cleveland is probably the most civic-minded cities in the country.”

All that left-over wealth of the 19th and 20th centuries meant a certain power.

The city’s past wealth has been institutionalized in foundation and other mechanisms in efforts to guide the city on routes acceptable to top leaders.

Leading the way, of course, is the Cleveland Foundation, worth presently more than $1.3 billion. And it is hardly the only elite slush fund. The Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation was formed with Leonard Hanna funding in the 1960s. It allowed the Cleveland Foundation to avoid involvement in city (race) problems. In 1967, however, the two foundation were joined.

The Cleveland Development Foundation was created in the 1950s by some 80 Cleveland corporations and a $5 million gift from the Hanna Fund. Old wealth kept working.

CDF’s stated purpose was to “eliminate and prevent slums and blight.” A former chairman, however, revealed its real purpose. Its real goal, he said, was to ensure more land would be available for industrial and commercial use. They may have overplayed their hand because publicity made it seem its goal was to cure city ills. As a result one CDF trustee fretted that the foundation was perceived as an “ambivalent Santa Claus” among Blacks.

It worked under the radar.

In the late 1950s CDF gave $50,000 to the City Planning Department to produce a master plan of downtown. Meanwhile, CDF was pushing the urban renewal Erieview Plan, which made the city’s planning obsolete. Erieview did badly.

When I was at the Plain Dealer, I interviewed, along with Don Sabath, Upshur Evans, a former boss of Standard Oil, and he told the story of the $50,000 gift to the city. A double-deal that the PD editor found hard to believe. But it was true since both of us heard the same story.

CDF started with the Garden Valley housing project, built on a former slag heap of Republic Steel and occupied by Blacks.

But the major effort was urban renewal. Erieview, the downtown project, lingered for decades unfulfilled. The east side projects in the Central area caused mass movement of Blacks into Hough. A federal official told me that:

“Cleveland was our Vietnam,” they’d like to get out but didn’t know how.

The urban renewal debacle—it was believed that Cleveland had more land under renewal than any other city in the country—led to difficulties that remain today: poverty and housing problems.

I quote myself from a 25-year review I wrote in 1992:

The city government didn’t have the resources to execute or manage vast urban renewal projects pushed upon it by the CDF corporate leaders. The plan forced displacement of thousands of primarily black and poor residents of the inner city and caused the beginning of a migration of white residents out of the city. Tom Westropp, a banker who also sat on the city’s planning commission, gave a blunt assessment, “For some the urban renewal program has worked very well, indeed. Hospitals and educational institutions have been constructed and enlarged. So have commercial and industrial interests and many service organizations, all with the help of urban renewal dollars. With respect to housing, however, the URBAN RENEWAL PROGRAM HAS BEEN A DISASTER. I wish I could believe that all this was accidental and brought about by the inefficiency of well-meaning people—but I just can’t. The truth, it seems to me is that it was planned that way. (emphasis mine)

Into this Cleveland period, strong institutional powers took a visible role in city affairs.

However, the explosive combination of physical movement of black population, fleeing of whites, a confused and conflicted city hall, with the rise of black political power and the emergency of black nationalist demands tossed Cleveland during the early 1960s. It was primed for violence.

Business, civic and legal leaders didn’t know how to handle the turmoil. But they were forced to take a visible role where in the past they could count on others to do their bidding as they remained in the background. Jack Reavis, managing partner of Jones-Day, indeed, said at this time, “I’ve always wanted to stay in the background.” He no longer could.

Hough had riots in 1966 and four Blacks were killed, 50 people injured.

In 1966 Reavis told the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, “Tempers and tensions were very high indeed. I thought it quite possible that Cleveland would be the first of northern cities where savage violence might break out.”

Reavis sought to avoid what he saw coming. He formed the Businessmen’s Interracial Committee on Community Affairs. For a time it was successful in calming things, enough for Reavis to claim “The Negroes on this committee have behaved magnificently.” But the Hough riots and continued eruptions during 1966 demanded more.

Another business group formed to deal with problems. It was the Inner-City Action Committee, chaired by Ralph Besse, former chairman of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. and a former Squire Sanders Dempsey attorney. Reavis was also a member.

Both these organizations were funded with Cleveland Foundation money and some staffing.

Besse’s committee not only wanted to deal with the growing city problems but with city hall itself. Besse may have had other aims. He tried to force the city to hire one of its executives to head the urban renewal effort. When Mayor Ralph Locher rejected the offer the Plain Dealer, with blazing headlines, made it seem the city had rejected business help to solve its problems. It was a blow to Locher.

(Besse later helped fund an under-the-table program, paying black militants to keep peace during the summer of the election between Carl Stokes and Seth Taft. Taft was another Jones-Day lawyer. He moved into the city to be the Republican candidate for mayor. Stokes, who ran as an independent and lost by a narrow margin in 1965, won the Democratic primary to be its candidate in 1967.)

While Seth Taft, grandson of a president, was a Jones-Day partner, Stokes, also a lawyer, was the great grandson of a slave in this history-making city election. Reavis was backing Stokes for mayor so Jones-Day had a leg up on both candidates for the next Cleveland mayor.

Reavis was a $1,000 booster club backer of Stokes, his partner’s opponent. Business interests also backed former Lakewood mayor Frank Celeste to cut into Locher’s vote. Maybe Stokes’ vote, too. Celeste got only some 3,500 votes. Stokes got 110,000 and Locher 92,000. Stokes won the Democratic primary.

The Besse payments were made each week to Black nationalist at the Call & Post newspaper. Neither the Press nor the Plain Dealer reported these deals.

It was always interesting to note that the newspapers clearly allowed the extra private entities to operate as they choose. Reavis claimed he had secured “a pledge from the editors of the newspaper that they would give us no publicity except as we asked for it.”

The elites had other ways to push events their way.

With the Locher administration unable to manage these events, the private sector also launched the Little Hoover Commission. This was another foundation-funded, private effort looking at city hall and its problems. This commission received $100,000 from the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation. It was supposed to examine the needs of the city. The commission was headed by Carter Kissell, another Jones-Day lawyer. Plans were kept very tidy. Another stratagem to broadcast and promote the problems of the Locher administration.

It gave it the feel of a non-partisan effort to look at the city’s problems. A business-friendly public relations firm handled the reports on various city problems so that the newspapers could then do the damage with proper headlines.

It’s all so well done. The public, however, doesn’t see the making of the sausage, nor who the chefs are.

These pro-elite mechanisms, funded with non-profit funds from past wealth HAD NO COUNTERVAILING POWER unless you consider the rioters who time to time erupted in the street. What a powerful system!

Yet, Cleveland had to endure its period of violent conflict. The Hough riot of 1966, accompanied by nights of flare-up of street violence.

In 1968 there was a change. Carl Stokes walked the streets the night of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Many U.S. cities erupted in violence. However, Stokes walked the street and kept Cleveland peaceful. He was rewarded by the establishment coming together and promising to finance his Cleveland Now! program, a menu of anti-poverty efforts, more cosmetic than real.

All those efforts were blown away when black nationalists and police had a shootout in Glenville later that summer. It was revealed payments of the Cleveland Now! program were used by the nationalist to buy rifles. The payments followed the same as those made by Besse’s group a year before. Those payments were made at the Call & Post.

Stokes felt betrayed by the business establishment. “He felt the corporate leaders had deserted him and Cleveland and that they simply didn’t want conflict,” an aide said. Stokes’ press secretary put it more bluntly, quoting Stokes saying, “I’m not going to be their house nigger.”

Stokes served two terms. Disgusted with events here, he left Cleveland for New York City to be a TV anchorman. He returned to support Dennis Kucinich in his losing campaign against George Voinovich.

While electing a black mayor served to open up city hall jobs and contract to some blacks, Stokes’ two two-year terms were a short interlude of black power.

The period of black leadership quickly changed. Back to white ethnic political control.

Thereafter, Ralph Perk, Kucinich and Voinovich returned Cleveland to white mayoral control. It wasn’t exactly like the old days, however, because City Council became the domain of George Forbes. He ruled with an iron fist. He held power through the Voinovich term of office.

Forbes, however, served the same political interests of certain business interests.

Here is a Look Back at the Stokes era:

The city agenda did a sharp shift as we’ll see in Part 2.

Joseph Robinette Biden is, at best, a very poor bogeyman, but he’s all that Republican party has to work with so the party’s policymakers are making do with what they have. Building on more than a century of Red Baiting, President Donald John Trump’s sycophants on the Republican National Committee are unceasingly repeating the only message they have:

The message that Biden is totally controlled by the extreme left, socialist wing of the Democrat party. That quote is not from the RNC, however. It comes from this morning’s Letters To The Editor section of one of the newspapers I read each morning: The North Royalton Post On page E5, Barry Barker, of Brunswick, Ohio (a few minutes down the road from my home in North Royalton) begins:

Why I won’t vote for Joe Biden? Very simple. No one will be voting for Joe Biden! Since he is totally controlled by the extreme left, socialist wing of the Democrat party, any vote for Joe Biden will be a vote for the extreme left, socialist wing of the Democrat party. Is that really who you want in control of this country?

Mr. Barker has no idea what a Socialist is, of course, but he knows what the RNC is telling him and that is that the Democrats Socialists are coming for his guns, his wife, his children and his job.

That is, after all, what Bogeymen do.

Bonus No. 1: The existential threat of Herd Immunity Mentality.

Bonus No. 2: Vonnegut and Labor.

On 8 December 2004, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) slipped Section 111 of Title I, Division J, of the Fiscal Year 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 108-447) and a new national holiday into our collective consciousness: Constitution Day. Our Constitution is the single most important document in Human History; read it all.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Please keep reading…

I never leave home without my pocket-sized copy of our Constitution: Robert Byrd and the Constitution.; A Day Set Aside for the Constitution.

Bonus No. 1: Eric Foner—Who is Permitted to Vote?: Lessons from the Reconstruction.

[Update @ 0430 on 18 September: More Incredible Scenes From Triumph’s Focus Group With Real Trump Voters.]

So, there are several options here. Maybe these people are all actors hired to portray supporters of President Donald John Trump. That’s the scenario that makes the most sense to me. I suppose that there is a slim possibility that they did pull people of the street and used deceptive methods to get them to sign consent forms that they didn’t read.

That could be what went on and maybe—maybe, I’m not JD-impaired, but I do know enough to be dangerous—the lawyers can bill some really great hours fending off the lawsuits, but I’m thinking that within 24 hours the phones are going to start ringing and the rage machine will leap into full roar

I think, however, that that plan would require some genius deciding that the skit didn’t need to be vetted by the CBS legal department. In that case the genius is looking for a new job. This isn’t the same as Jordon Klepper interviewing Trump supporters at rallies.

Bonus No. 1: A Progressive Prosecutor Faces Off With Portland’s Aggressive Police.

Bonus No. 2: Checkout Colbert’s Better Know A Ballot…

Bonus No. 3: …Whistleblower Reports High Number of Hysterectomies at ICE … Facility.

Bonus No. 4: First Elect Obama, Then Move Left!

[Update at 00916 on 1 September: People’s Party Convention HIGHLIGHTS…]

Ted Rall has repeatedly made his rejection of our current political duopoly obvious (most recently in The Only Wasted Vote Is a Vote Not for a Third Party) and now there is yet another third-party choice: The People’s Party will hold its virtual convention tomorrow with Dr. Cornell West, Nina Turner and former governor Jessie Ventura on the bill.

I first learned of the even earlier this week when Krystal Ball interviewed West on The Rising. This morning, David Smith, writing in ‘DemExit’: virtual convention aims to create US leftwing alternative for The Guardian, ledes:

Joe Biden’s acceptance speech at the virtual Democratic national convention made one reference to “middle class” and one to “working families”. It never mentioned the word “poverty.”

Although Democrats put on a formidable show of unity, there are still refuseniks on the left who see little distinction between Biden and Donald Trump or the parties they lead. Some will gather at 4pm on Sunday for a virtual convention of their own.

I am—along with Rall and hundreds of thousands of others—one of those refuseniks on the left who see little distinction between Biden and Donald Trump or the parties they lead. We won’t have a choice of a People’s Party ticket this year but, Smith continues:

More than 12,000 people have signed up to attend the People’s Convention, streamed live on social media and featuring the Hollywood actors and activists Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon as well as two of the more quixotic Democratic primary candidates, Mike Gravel and Marianne Williamson. They will vote on forming a new political party “free of corporate money and influence” to run candidates in the congressional midterms in 2022 and for president in 2024.

Sometimes the choice is between tilting at the windmill or submission.

Bonus No. 1: A comment to good to pass up…

How f…k’n hypocritical can you get!

I’m talking about the three major sports franchise in Cleveland, all owned by very wealth, rich families.

They are joining in, they say, to cry, Justice!

Give me a break.

The hypocrite lineup includes Cavs’ general manager Koby Altman, Browns’ GM Andrew Berry and Cleveland baseball team’s operations president Chris Antonetti.

“The group hopes to ‘develop a sustainable and direct strategy to address social injustice facing the city of Cleveland and all Northeastern Ohio communities,” Crain’s Cleveland Business reported of their news release.

They fantasize.

How would they know it if it hit them in the face.

Just ask them one question:

How much do you guys pay in property taxes to support the heavily-black Cleveland school system?

I’ll tell you the answer: NOTHING.

This year, last year, going back to the early 1990s and going forward well into the 2020s.

They are carpetbaggers.

In addition, of course, they sit back and enjoy the fruits of taxpayer subsidies
in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, hundreds of millions!

They are the Grabbers that pollute this city.

It doesn’t take many words to indict and convict.

Here are the property taxes on each of the sports teams. What they SHOULD pay. What they DON’T pay.

They take it from the school children of Cleveland.

You’d think someone would complain.

The figures and you can in your head summarize how much this has amounted to over the last 30 years or so.

I have reported this before. I have given the parcel numbers so reporters at the PD, Crain’s Business, any or all the TV reporters could provide this information to the public. If anyone has I’m unaware of it.

Below are the values on each of the facilities provided Dan Gilbert and the Cavs, the Haslam family and the Dolans.

Before they lecture anyone about social injustice, let them look in their backyard as they steal from each and every school child in Cleveland.

Look to yourself as our Evil Grabbers.

Below are the values for each of the teams going back in years and they have PAID NO TAX ON EVEN A DIME OF IT—HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS—AND NOT COUNTING THE MILLIONS IN SUBSIDIES.

LECTURE YOURSELF, GRABBERS.

Citizens are just rolled over by these elite GRABBERS as seen in the LOOK BACK to 1992 with establishment double-crossers refusing to heed public sentiment against the sports subsidy giveaways. Can’t believe their day isn’t coming, too.

Below, you get the idea of how much money these very wealthy grabbers have avoided:

Progressive Field: VALUE WITH TAXES NOT PAID
Tax year: 2019—Total Value: $216,415,000
Tax year: 2018—Total Value: $216,415,000
Tax year: 2017—Total Value: $217,237,500
Tax year: 2016—Total Value: $217,237,500
Tax year: 2015—Total Value: $205,487,500
Tax year: 2014—Total Value: $205,487,500
Tax year: 2013—Total Value: $205,487,500
Tax year: 2012—Total Value: $205,487,500
Tax year: 2011—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2010—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2009—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2008—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2007—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2006—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2005—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2004—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2003—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2002—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2001—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 2000—Total Value: $197,782,800
Tax year: 1999—Total Value: $197,965,900
Tax year: 1998—Total Value: $197,965,900
Tax year: 1997—Total Value: $197,965,900
Tax year: 1996—Total Value: $193,928,000

CAV’S ARENA: VALUE WITH NO TAXES PAID
Tax year: 2019—Total Value: $100,383,900
Tax year: 2018—Total Value: $100,383,900
Tax year: 2017—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2016—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2015—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2014—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2013—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2012—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2011—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2010—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2009—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2008—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2007—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2006—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2005—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2004—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2003—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2002—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2001—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2000—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 1999—Total Value: $132,043,700
Tax year: 1998—Total Value: $132,043,700
Tax year: 1997—Total Value: $132,043,700
Tax year: 1996—Total Value: $68,900,000

FIRST ENERGY STADIUM: VALUE WITH NO TAXES PAID
Tax year: 2019—Total Value: $100,383,900
Tax year: 2018—Total Value: $100,383,900
Tax year: 2017—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2016—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2015—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2014—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2013—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2012—Total Value: $125,202,000
Tax year: 2011—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2010—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2009—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2008—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2007—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2006—Total Value: $143,721,500
Tax year: 2005—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2004—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2003—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2002—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2001—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 2000—Total Value: $144,200,000
Tax year: 1999—Total Value: $132,043,700
Tax year: 1998—Total Value: $132,043,700
Tax year: 1997—Total Value: $132,043,700
Tax year: 1996—Total Value: $68,900,000

Point Of Viəw Volume 0, Number 00: HEAD.

OLD LINK DESIGN—

Everyone is outraged at the Ohio legislators sliming government to allow the electric companies to pad a price on every customer’s bill to support their nuclear plants.

Will anyone look into how legislation was passed that raise a tax abating program for 30 year of gift-giving to developer to 60 years!

Who greased this legislation?

Crain’s Cleveland Business reporter Michelle Jarboe reported this new gift-giving to Scott Wolstein.

It’s for the East Bank Flats project.

Not exactly lacking in government gifts.

The new deal will add 30 years of a TIF form of tax abatement to the ALREADY 30 years given Wolstein.

To someone covering the Ohio statehouse: How did this gift basket float out of the statehouse? What law firm engineered it? Who from Northeast Ohio voted for it? And why?

While people are being evicted from their homes, Ohio politicians are filling the pockets of wealth developers.

Sixty years!

Why not go all the way, as they did with Progressive Field, First Energy Field, Rocket Arena? They don’t pay any taxes.

The poor sucker who owns a house, or the renter who pays rent can afford to pay more for the multi-millionaires and billionaires can slide by.

Developers can do as they please. And we can pay the tab.

This is only the newest gift to Wolstein.

Here is the original list offered for the East Bank development back when it started:

• $11,000,000 CLEVELAND-CUYAHOGA PORT AUTHORITY LOANS.

• $6,000,000 CITY OF CLEVELAND CORE CITY LOANS.

• $3,400,000 CLEVELAND PUBLIC POWER IN FREE SERVICES.

• $740,000 CLEVELAND WATER DIVISION INFRASTRUCTURE WORK.

• $1,000,000 CITY OF CLEVELAND GENERAL OBLIGATION BONDS.

• $11,140,000 TAX INCREMENTAL FINANCING (a shift of property taxes from county, schools, city and county accounts to project improvement).

• $1,000,000 CUYAHOGA COUNTY SUBSIDY—UNSPECIFIED.

• $3,000,000 STATE OF OHIO GRANT—ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDY.

• $1,000,000 CUYAHOGA COUNTY—ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDY.

• $8,540,000 CITY OF CLEVELAND PARKING REVENUE BONDS.

• $9,000,000 NORTHEAST OHIO REGIONAL SEWER DISTRICT TAX-EXEMPT BONDS FOR INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS.

• $4,550,000 FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION.

• $1,400,000 U.S. DEPT.OF COMMERCE VIA CITY OF CLEVELAND.

• $100 PERCENT TAX ABATEMENT, 15-YEARS ON ALL RENTAL AND CONDO UNITS, INCLUDING ANY IMPROVEMENTS. NO COST ESTIMATE GIVEN.

• NEW TRANSIT STATION FOR WATERFRONT LINE TO SERVE PROJECT “AT NO COST OR EXPENSE TO PROJECT.” NO COST-FIGURE GIVEN.

So exactly how subsidy-soaked this deal is now is anyone’s guess.

But shouldn’t City Council know the full details Shouldn’t the area councilman Kerry McCormack know just how filled the gift bag to Wolstein has become?

Isn’t it time someone looked into the grab bag of subsidies to wealthy developers and sports owners and said, when is enough enough?

OR DO WE JUST ALLOW BOUGHT-GOVERNMENT TO REMAIN BOUGHT?

LOOKING BACK to when tax abatement was just a baby in 1977. The second one would have gone to Standard Oil of Ohio, despite the fact that the company was soak in oil revenue from its North Slope refineries. It didn’t get the abatement, not because the usually generous city council didn’t vote for it but because the company changed the location from behind Tower City to Public Square. By that time it became touchy for ultra-wealthy SOHIO to ask for a tax break.

I actually google-image searched Anyone But Trump Or Biden 2020 yesterday hoping to find someone making yard signs with that message. I found zip, but I remain hopeful. I still think that blowing up both wings of the Pro-War Pro-Business party by voting for Trump in November is a viable strategy, but I understand that that may be too radical for some.

I understand the We’ve-Got-To-Stop-Trump argument, but I think Democratic party leadership is delusional in thinking that the a career politician with serious ties to mass incarceration here and mass death globally, running with a Black woman whose record as a prosecutor isn’t a whole lot better, is going to convince enough voters—particularly Black voters—to tip the scales. Kamala Devi Harris isn’t Barack Hussein Obama or even Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama. So, if you’re in the Anyone-But-Trump-Or-Biden camp, Ted Rall has some suggestions.

Rall, writing in Never Trump, Never Biden: the Progressive Case for Voting Third Party or Boycotting the Election, ledes:

Republicans will vote for Trump no matter what. Democrats will vote for Biden no matter what. This column is for progressives weighing the pros and cons of succumbing to the two-party trap, and voting for Biden.

Unless you’ve been sucking through a ventilator in a COVID-19 ward for the last few months, you know the argument in favor of swallowing your disappointment that neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren are the Democratic nominee, resisting the temptation to punish the DNC for rigging the primaries, and forgetting Joe Biden’s right-wing voting record and Kamala Harris’ penchant for locking up innocent people of color and throwing away the key: Trump is a monster, his second term will bring fascism to America, Biden will be more amenable to pressure from the left than Trump.

Except for the part about Trump being a terrible human being, the call to sell out is all based on nonsense. [Emphasis mine, JH]

Read that last sentence again. Except for the part about Trump being a terrible human being, the call to sell out is all based on nonsense.

And then you should read the rest of Rall’s cogent, on target and real-word arguments. Please. But I’ll leave you with his conclusion:

In high school civics class they told you that a single vote can make a difference. They lied. Not in a national election. Not at the state level of a national election. In the closest battleground state of 2016, New Hampshire, Clinton beat Trump by 2,701 votes. Sure, if you and thousands of other folks vote the same way, outcomes can change. But you have no control over other people. You have one vote. That’s all. Even if you live in Ohio, you personally can’t change anything. So live free.

On the other hand, withholding your vote from the Democratic Party can have a positive impact. Several million primary voters cast ballots for Bernie Sanders in 2016 but stayed home in the general election. Primary voters are fanatics—only 12 percent turnout compared to about 55 percent in the general election—so when they don’t show up it’s a boycott, not apathy. After Hillary lost, party insiders concluded they would have to move left in order to motivate progressive base voters. Many contenders in the 2020 Democratic primaries espoused elements of Bernie Sanders’ platform. Without the 2016 progressive boycott, that never would have happened.

If you are trying to send a message with your vote, voting for a third party is likelier to register with analysts than staying home on election day.

Voting for Biden sends only one message: you approve of him and his politics. Why, after getting the milk for free, would he pay attention to any of the cow’s complaints?

Here are some—in alphabetical order—options:

America First Party
Communist Party USA
Constitution Party
Green Party of the United States
Libertarian Party.
Marijuana Party
Modern Whig Party
Pirate Party
Reform Party
Workers World Party

DISCLAIMER: This is a raw list. I do not endorse, nor have I studied all of these parties—although I have voted Green three times, in ’96, ’12 and ’16—so everyone is obligated to dive deep into any third party they think they might want to support. But Rall is right, a third-party vote is a protest vote that the Democratic Party National Committee will notice. Our next president will be either Trump or Biden (my money is on Trump) but Progressives will never affect any change if we continue to allow ourselves to be taken for granted.

One of the reasons that I opted for the Magazine Journalism track at Ohio University back in 1980 was that I didn’t want to get swept up in the daily panics of newspaper or broadcast journalism. I still got a taste of what we called meatball journalism, but generally I had weeks, sometimes months, to work on a story and, to the best of my ability, get it right.

I do subscribe to and read three daily newspapers—The Guardian, The North Royalton Post and The Marietta Times—and I listen to WCPN (my local public radio station) when I’m in the car or doing chores around the house, but I can’t remember the last time (mostly because I tossed my TV on the tree lawn back in 1992) I watched a television news program.

Magazines, and the journalist who write them, are my major source of information about the world. One such journalist that I’ve come to trust is Matt Taibbi. So much so, that I threw a few dollars his way when he went independent. What he does best is cut through the panic that has become our daily fare. Taibbi, writing in The Press Cries Wolf, concludes:

Is this unprecedented corruption, something a little worse than normal, or just the usual undisguised? If press outlets never dial back excesses, we may miss it when we’re actually supposed to panic.

You should invest a few minutes in the entire piece—the focus in on the most recent panic surrounding the post office—and understand how Taibbi gets from his lede:

Suddenly, the Postal Service is the biggest story in America. Donald Trump’s latest “assault on our democracy” jockeyed for the lead theme on the first night of the virtual Democratic National Convention. Multiple speakers used the phrase “defund the post office” to describe efforts by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy—the latest in a long line of Trump acolytes occupying the Oil Can Harry role in news coverage—to pull a seeming postal slowdown.

…to the conclusion above. (Here’s a hint: Take note of the irony in the first word.)

Douglas Adams understood.

Also read: Stop Panicking About the Post Office by Nick Harper.

And now, this…

In 1967 Dennis Kucinich was running for Cleveland City Council.

I was working on a story of young politicians for the Wall Street Journal.

I had known Dennis as a copy boy at the Plain Dealer and in a similar role at the Journal building in Cleveland.

I never did the story. However, I did accompany Dennis on candidate house-to-house walks.

As we were leaving a house on the near West Side, Dennis said to me, “If I win this I could go all the way,” or words to that effect.

Dennis was 20 years old, a few month short of even being able to vote at that time.

I stopped, knowing what he meant, President of the United States, but asked him what he meant.

He quickly retreated. He figured he had gone too far. Never mind, he said.

Dennis lost that election only to win two years later and become a councilman.

Now, a few months short of 74 years old, Dennis is running again. Or so he isn’t saying anything to refute talk of his interest in the mayoral race of 2021.

He was born to run.

The big question is, however, does he have any chance of winning and of operating a government. A government he had much trouble with in the late 1970s.

He was a one-term, two-year mayor. He squeezed into those two years, among other problems, a voter recall, a financial default, a tax hike vote and a vote on Muny Light. There were no slow days.

He was not re-elected. However, he did become a U.S. Congressman from 1997-2013. He also served in the Ohio Senate in 1995.

Now it is time to look back at his City Hall days.

It was two years of intense politicking.

Never, I thought, had two people—Dennis and Bob Weissman, his advisor—worked so hard to achieve something. Then, do so many wrongs to lose it.

Chief among the missteps was the luring of Richard Hongisto, a lefty from San Francisco, to Cleveland as police chief. Dennis fired Hongisto on live TV.

Hongisto, like Gen. Benjamin Davis, I think had ideas of becoming mayor himself.

Like Davis, Hongisto became a media favorite. How much he cultivated this himself, I don’t know. However, I do know that one night early in the fight with Kucinich, Hongisto called me, asked if he could come to see me. It was a Monday evening after a Council meeting. I said yes. He showed up with his wife and a bottle of wine. I’m sure he thought I had sway with the Kucinich people. I had none.

However, the Hongisto fight revealed very clearly how the Kucinich administration worked.

In this LOOKING BACK, I share a double issue that describes the drama of Dennis firing Hongisto:

I remember walking on the second floor of city hall a few days later and meeting Sandy Kucinich, then Dennis’ wife. I thought, okay, now I’m in for it. No, she was pleasant as could be. I took this to mean she recognized Weissman’s hold on her husband. She didn’t like it either.

Weissman, one could say, got Dennis into the mayor’s chair as his main advisor. But once there, he was a problem. Weissman wanted to rule with an iron fist.

Now so many years later, Dennis could be mayor without Weissman. That alone would be interesting.

I credit Weissman with electing four straight mayors. He got Dennis to back Ralph Perk, helping him win. Then he and Kucinich dumped Perk. Weissman ruined Kucinich with his dictatorial rule. This produced George Voinovich.

Finally, I’m convinced he helped Michael White get elected over George Forbes. There’s no obvious evidence of that. However, White, an establishment creature, named Weissman to the County Port Authority when he took office. Cleveland business leadership would be incensed if Weissman got on that board, through which many deals go. He never served because Council rejected White’s choice. Likely, White figured this would be the result.

Kucinich offered the hope of a new urban populism. He received national attention as he tried to reverse much of the corporate domination Cleveland suffered.

While I often supported Kucinich’s political thrust I found the administrations approach often racist and opportunistic.

The Plain Dealer’s coverage of Kucinich was mostly negative and often below the belt. The PD reflected the view of Cleveland’s establishment, which opposed Kucinich on many levels.

Below are six issues of Point Of Viəw that further detail events at city hall during 1978-79. I hope they reflect the intensity of those days when Cleveland was in constant turmoil. Kucinich drew the attention of the nation during this period.

I remember the night of default. The Council chambers were jammed with people, including reporters from around the nation. There was no attempt to keep people from inside the area occupied by council members and administration officials. I thought it was possible, with tension so high, that anyone could have had access to either Kucinich or his rival Council President George Forbes.

Nothing happened other than time ran out and the city became, as I remember it, the first government entity to default on bank loans since the Great Depression.

One oddity that was striking was the default amount, some $14 million. Ironically, Kucinich had paid just about that amount to CEI on orders of Judge Robert Krupansky that year. What often got forgotten was that the banks had customarily merely rolled the loans to the next year made during the Perk administration. The banks did not for Kucinich.

Here are a number of issues in sequence that reflect those times. All issues of Point Of Viəw are available at CSU’s memory site.

The following issues portray the times of recall and default (By hitting the arrow you will get the four-page issue totally):

Kucinich needs to reach out: Point Of Viəw Volume 10, Number 20.

Toppling a Mayor: Point Of Viəw Volume 11, Number 4.

Forbes, Council Record of Obstruction: Point Of Viəw Volume 11, Number 10.

Kucinich Shrinking from Moral Leadership: Point Of Viəw Volume 12, Number 3.

Race Becomes Major Kucinich Weapon: Point Of Viəw Volume12, Number 4.

Racism Fails: Point Of Viəw Volume 12, Number 8.

To everyone who argues that we have to defeat Donald Trump, my response is this: If Trump is reëlected he will burn down the Republican Party and, more importantly, the protests will increase and we can have hope for real change. If Trump is not reëlected our country will revert to 2009, but with a vice president who can do what Biden couldn’t: make America worse.

Previously: TEN 13 REASONS WE WON’T BE VOTING FOR BIDEN…

In If Biden Wins, Ted Rall writes:

1. He might get to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg. If so, he’ll pick a conservative corporatist.   After all, he has to placate the Republicans in the Senate.

2. Kids will remain in cages at the border. Releasing them would piss off the right-wingers   who run ICE and BCE. As a Democrat, he won’t want to appear weak on immigration,   opening his party to attacks in the 2022 midterms.

3. No change on healthcare. Biden already said that.

4. No student loan forgiveness. He already said that.

5. No Green New Deal. He already said that.

6. War with Venezuela? Entirely possible. He said that.

8. His Homeland Security goons will beat the shit out of Black Lives Matter and other    protesters. Obama’s did it to Occupy.

9. His NSA spooks will keep spying on our email and texts. The dude was behind the Patriot    Act.

And…

10. He will not appoint a single progressive to his cabinet. Obama didn’t either.

Aside from the occasional old white man gaffe, Biden will be polite and affable.

For my money, No. 8 is the most damning and we can expect Harris to lead the charge.

Bonus No. 1: COMING SOON TO THE STREETS OF CLEVELAND…! I

Bonus No. 2: COMING SOON TO THE STREETS OF CLEVELAND…! II

Bonus No. 3: COMING SOON TO THE STREETS OF CLEVELAND…! III

Godfrey writes:

We’ve been hearing for a while that this race is too far gone for us to win, that there was never a point to begin with. But this week we’ve learned that Gonzalez is already running ads, sending mailers, and beginning robocalls disguised as surveys. We’re told by our consultants who have been doing this much longer than we have that this is not normal. No republican in a safe district would be so nervous so early. That means we’re doing something right, and we need to keep doing it, and doing it bigger and better.

Aaron isn’t doing something right, he doing everything right for the right reason. If you’re lucky enough to get a few dollars to help keep yourself and your family together during this pandemic, send a buck or two Aaron’s way so that our nation doesn’t suffer more than it has to. I have before and I will continue to do so until we win this electdion.

Sometimes when you look back you can see the future.

It’s time for Cleveland to have a good house-cleaning—of its politics, of its private sector and of its culture.

I’ve long watched Cleveland’s private sector dominate its public sector. To the detriment of Cleveland and its residents, especially lower-income people.

It’s been a gimme culture for the wealthy and privileged.

The time for change presents itself. Actually, long overdue.

Change is in the air throughout the nation.

From the protests over police brutality toward Black Americans to the disgust with riches flowing up to the top as the bottom festers. Questions are being asked. Discontent can be tasted.

People are fed up with the WAY THINGS ARE.

A big change year is awaiting. But it won’t happen automatically.

2021 is a mayoral election year.

Everyone with any sense knows the city’s management has been lackluster at best.

Mayor Frank “It is what it is” Jackson has lounged his way through another four-year term.
It can’t be allowed to go on.

Yet, who sees real leadership on the horizon? Some feel many will vie for mayor in 2021.

But that doesn’t say much.

Is there a spark somewhere?

The Rev. Jawanza Karriem Colvin recently took after the city’s leadership. It was a spark mostly unseen.

“In a scathing denunciation of Cleveland’s political leadership, both black and white, the Rev. Colvin, senior pastor of the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, lambasted City Council’s passage of a resolution declaring racism to be a public crisis as a well-meaning but empty public relations reaction to the twin public crises facing our community and the nation,” wrote Richard T. Andrews in his the Real Deal Press, where you can read what you can’t elsewhere. He was quoting Rev. Colvin from a broadcast.

Colvin said, “I don’t know whether to be disappointed or disgusted. These are the people we are looking to lead change… Legislators are not doing their basic duties and the mayor is silent.”

“Colvin bemoaned the prevailing culture of the city’s political establishment and its impact on both Cleveland’s performance and standing,” Andrews wrote. He noted Council’s lack of integrity, its insincerity and hypocrisy.

Colvin had personal experience with the corruption of City Council when he and Rev. Richard Gibson went to Council with some 20,000 signature in 2017 to place a measure to the voters contesting subsidy of some $140 million for the Cavalier’s arena. Council President Kevin
Kelly rejected the citizens signatures. They were snubbed and rejected. 20,000 citizen signature!

It was the Cleveland way and a good lesson for Rev. Colvin and Rev. Gibson.

It was blunt force and a clear message: Screw you citizens. Take that Pastors!

We are going to do what we want to do. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Well, will see.

It was a perfect lesson in who governs Cleveland. Not the elected. They just follow orders from the power people who wanted more welfare for Dan Gilbert, a billionaire.

For a lesson in how things work in Cleveland, I LOOK BACK to the full press by Cleveland’s civic-legal leaders to bring the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to the city.

No cost, no pressure was too corrupt. We had to have it. I spent considerable time on how the private forces commanded public funding of their trinket.

The two LOOK BACK items tell how insiders maneuvered for advantages and how Council, which loaded the Rock Hall with subsidies, took advantage with a special party at the Rock Hall.

You can see in the piece marked “Rock Insiders” how former Mayor Michael White kept close watch on the project with the help, of course, of his economic development director Joe Marinucci. It was always rewarding, not to ask for specific information but to see the entire file for a project. Information that might have been held back was simply passed on with the filed.

That was the bit of advice Abbie Hoffman once gave to an audience of students at Ohio University. I was in the crowd—front row center—because Hoffman had been (and continues to be) one of my personal heroes. He died before the Internet and Twitter and Facebook took off as the primary tool of the conspiracy theorist.

I can only guess how he might have responded to the likes of the likes of Alex Jones, but I think he would been more surprised by Alice, the friend described by Debra Winter’s Meet the white, middle-class Pinterest moms who believe Plandemic for The Guardian. She writes:

Although we live in different states, my friend, I will call her Alice, and I have kept in touch. Our yearly catch ups centered on the simple things from recipes or fitness routines. We led completely different lives. I was nomadic, living on three continents, while she was married and raising three kids in suburbia. After her daughter experienced learning delays that coincided with an early childhood vaccine she became interested in the side-effects of vaccines – which now referred to as the anti-vaxx movement. At the time, I took it as a friend trying to find answers for her daughter’s sudden loss of cognitive skills. “It’s like she’s going backwards,” Alice once told me. Only recently, when the pandemic hit, after she sent various conspiracy theory links, was it evident that she was deeply immersed in the conspiracy world.

“From Rockefeller to Gates, it’s all related,” Alice told me. “This has been in the works for a long time, and it’s all part of a new world order of control and surveillance.” She attends Zoom meetings with doctors who explain the “misuse of ventilators in NYC hospitals” and how “wearing a mask will kill you”. She felt privy to a labyrinth of interconnected world-altering plots. My questioning the credibility of these sources was taken as a sure sign that I had been brainwashed by the mainstream media.

I was about to toss Alice’s conspiracy-conversion into the mental compartment of “That’s really weird” when I noticed rampant conspiracy postings on an old work colleague’s Facebook page. Incessant shares combined with cryptic messages: “The “planned” Covid virus…”, “Anthony Fauci is conspiring with Bill Gates for forced vaccinations” and, of course, “STOP the toxic 5G Towers…”

She was an organic food guru, with a masters’ degree who used to be an Obama supporter – but now supports Trump based on his anti-vaccine history.

I don’t know if these people are crazy, ignorant or just plain scared shitless.

I do know, however, that they are dangerous to the rest of us.

I visibly wince every time some journalist or pundit asserts that President Donald John Trump doesn’t have the power to follow through on some manufactured distraction. Only those who are clueless as to our own history would dismiss presidential crazy that way. We only need to look to the actions of our 2nd, 7th and 16th presidents to see how this all works.

President George Washington’s successor, President,John Adams, finagled the Alien and Sedition acts and president No. 16, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, not because the had any constitutional power to do so, but because those who had the constitutional power to stop them did nothing.

But even when presidents have been formally challenged, our Constitution hasn’t always fared well. The best example of this came in the 1832 case—Worcester v. Georgia—before the Supreme Court of The United States. When President Andrew Jackson was displeased with the court’s ruling he infamously declared:

John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.

Ted Rall gets this.

Rall, in Delay the Election? Presidents Often Do Things They Can’t Do, ledes:

The stock response to President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the general election might be delayed because voting during a pandemic would involve a record number of mail-in ballots, a format he argues is unreliable and susceptible to fraud, is that he doesn’t have that power.

NBC News is typical: “The president has no power to delay an election.” [Emphasis is mine.]

What the president understands, and most mainstream commentators fail to accept, is that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission. That goes double when the powers in question are limited by a document that lies in tatters, repeatedly ignored.

That’s true. Rall is absolutely correct. Only making Trump a one-term president can put an end to our dark political times.

And now, Bonus No. 1:

Bonus No. 2: County to Tap Q Deal Reserves to Reimburse Indians…

Plus a reminder: WILL, CAN THE CITY AND COUNTY PAY THEIR BILLS?

Bonus No. 3: Ted Cruz’s Hearing on Anarchist Protest Violence Was a Total Farce.