I began to follow Baratunde Rafiq Thurston after listening to one of his How To Citizen podcasts last August. (I was fascinated to discover this morning that I actually first heard of Baratunde way back in 2012! and forgot about him.) I think that the very populist Democracy Means People Power, Literally was my first.

This morning he has a few words for the flighty senator from Texas. In A BRIEF STATEMENT Baratunde writes:

Texas Senator Ted Cruz was born in Canada. This week he fled to Mexico. But he’s spent most of the past four years living inside his own ass, making a mockery of the U.S. principle of divided government, rule of law, and basic human decency. It’s fitting that a cowardly human who defended and praised the bully who slandered and insulted both his wife and his father would scramble over the border wall to escape the country he only pretends to serve.

He took a break from his busy summer schedule pre-planning to undermine our democratic elections to tweet insults at the people of California during their suffering. He also voted against Hurricane Sandy relief for the people of New York and New Jersey during their suffering. But he is not alone. Let us save some disdain for those without the name Ted Cruz.

Mitch McConnell — oh he of the partial, self-serving variety of pseudo patriotism who says Donald Trump is responsible for insurrection but not enough to be held accountable for it — just last year stood against COVID relief by referring to the once-in-a-century-pandemic rescue package as a “Blue State Bailout.” It’s blue states that have been bailing out Kentucky for his entire time in the Senate, but don’t let facts get in the way of a good opportunity to weaken our democracy.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I have no patience for these so-called leaders or much of this Republican Party. They have stood against the people in the pandemic, during fires, and in the ice. Too many of them sided with violent insurrectionists and failed to hold their chief inciter accountable. As far as I’m concerned, they can all go to Mexico, if that nation will even have them, and return when they’ve decided to actually support the United States of America.

But, but but… ‘Merica!

Bonus No. 1: From what I have heard, it’s known as “to read!”

Bonus No. 2: How Rush Limbaugh Paved The Way For Trump.

Bonus No. 3: Mainstream media fawns over a toxic bigot who poisoned our politics.

Bonus No. 4: My favorite Cruz-Family Moment.

Bonus No. 5: What Donald John Trump is endlessly looping in Mar-a-Lago.

Bonus No. 6: And finally, one for Roldo—The Heart of Cleveland.

The most vital lesson I have learned from reading the first four years of Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw—I’m still reading—is that time and time again, across more than 60 years, Roldo has told us what would happen if we allowed elites to run roughshod over Cleveland and he’s invariably been right. We keep believing that elected officials will make a difference.

The truth is that they’re in on the scam. We are the only force for change. Seven years ago, back on 29 March 2014, Roldo Bartimole wrote:

Can we see into the future?

Sure we can.

When County Executive Ed FitzGerald indebted Cuyahoga County residents to build a $270 million, 600-room hotel, a reasonable person would tell you that he put taxpayers in a perilous position.

I said it then. I believe it now.

The hotel, to be constructed where the Cuyahoga County administration building once stood indebts taxpayers with financing a hotel. It also required the County to move its offices.

The heavy financing comes at a time when the County pols are asking voters to authorize another $290 million for sports stadiums, for expensive riverfront and lakefront subsidies and a costly Public Square revamping.

Do they believe everyone’s pockets are overflowing with excess money?

Do they understand that much of Cleveland suffers from a poverty of income and spirit?

Yesterday, in Cuyahoga County, in “Worst Case Scenario,” Bails Out Downtown Hilton Once Again with $15 Million, Sam Allard wrote:

In accordance with the “worst case scenario” projections of budget analysts, Cuyahoga County will bail out the Hilton downtown Cleveland hotel with an infusion of nearly $15 million.

This payment—which has been approved by county council, and which officials have hastened to underscore is contractually obligated—will cover mostly debt service and taxes that the hotel chain claims it cannot afford due to low occupancy rates.

After a $7.9 million bailout last year, the total amount contributed by county taxpayers to the hotel is nearly $22 million, more than double the county’s total contributions toward Covid rental relief and small business grants.

What a disgrace.

It does not matter who is mayor or county executive. It only matters that the elites of Cleveland—from Marcus Alonzo Hanna forward—hold power and wealth in their greedy little hands and continue to fuck the people of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County for their own amusement and continued riches.

Who don’t mean shit. What matters.

Bonus No. 1: The Press is godless. We don’t have any bibles. Oh, that’s right…

Bonus No. 2: The solution dear Pig, is, always is, leave nowhere and be now here.

Bonus No.3: It’s all fun and games until 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14.

The pace of the 2021 Mayor election has started to quicken early.

But the spotlight thus far is on the wrong subject.

It shouldn’t be on the potential candidates, many as there are.

This will be—or should be—a change election.

It should not necessarily be WHO but WHAT.

We have had in Cleveland nearly two decades of political drift.

It’s a city that can’t afford any more.

Two decades of paying little attention to the many or their dire needs.

But, more important, too much attention to the needs of the high income population and its desires.

It’s not help the needy. But support our civic takers.

What do I mean?

If you read or listen to the news carefully you will get the message that Cleveland’s vitality is its downtown.

And if you ask where public funds flow, it would be the same answer: downtown.

It is the massive financing of the three major league sports teams via taxes that, unfortunately, are taken regressively from the many. But they go to the few: the multi-millionaire and billionaire owners and the multi-millionaire players.

Hardly fair. The need for economic justice is dire. But missing.

Similarly true Is the subsidy flow to downtown developers, Playhouse Square, hotel construction, supported to some extent by property tax forgiving and numerous special fund—city, county and state and federal.

This is all SOLD to the public by a fawning news media. They consider all these “advances” as proper and positive. And do so without weighing the cost and who pays it.

There is little or no questioning of priorities.

So we need a community debate on such matters.

We are not likely to get it from any single candidate.

It needs to be forced onto the Public Agenda.

How does this happen?

Only by the interests of citizens not running for mayor or backing a specific candidate. They must participate.

It’s a very tough road.

Especially since the record is that the public (voters) are not interested or have been turn off by their experience.

What they do or want doesn’t seem to matter.

How do you turn this around?

You have to offer hope. You do that by establishing a test.

Much of what has been done—financing sports, tax abatements, opening Chagrin Highlands to development—can’t be undone at this point.

There’s one new gimmick that needs to go.

Every candidate should be asked whether he or she supports the 30-year, atop a 30-year TIF. It’s a form of tax abatement.

[Tax Increment Financing is far from a new subject for Roldo. JH]

City Council recently bestowed the extension for development on the East Bank of the Cuyahoga. The development has been ongoing for some time by the Wolstein Group.

It’s a familiar story.

A 30-year TIF atop a 30-year TIF suggests that all the Council members who voted the subsidy won’t be here when it concludes. Sixty years of tax break in all. Only two Council members gave it a thumbs down —Jenny Spencer, relatively new, and Brian Kazy.

The Flats project already has other incentives and comes when interest rates are historically low.

Further, do we need more restaurants? Financed with public funds?

The other factor that doesn’t seem ever to be examined: How will subsidized business here effect other ongoing businesses already impacted by the general economy and especially by the pandemic.

It would be advisable that mayoral candidates be asked to pledge not to use the 30-year TIF extension, voted by the Republican state legislature.

Why are Democrats in economically damaged cities playing the card handed to them by Republican Corporate (and Corrupt) state legislators?

A reader forwarded the above image–mouse over for the enlargement—to me and suggested that I focus on the return address:

Joseph G.Tegreene
1228 Euclid Avenue #816
Cleveland Ohio 44115

Tegreene, the treasurer of the Reëlect Mayor Kucinich Committee, is a long-time friend and supporter of Dennis John Kucinich. He served as Financial Director during Kucinich’s single term as the 53rd mayor of Cleveland.

Roldo Bartimole mentioned Tegreene in his Point Of Viəw no less than 21 times—including three Scrooge Awards¹—beginning with: Volume 10, Number 15; Volume 10, Number 20; Volume 11, Number 4; Volume 11, Number 8; Volume 11, Number 10; Volume 11, Number 11; Volume 11, Number 19; Volume 11, Number 23; Volume 12, Number 19; Volume 14, Number 13; Volume 14, Number 14; Volume 14, Number 16; Volume 15, Number 11; Volume 16, Number 1; Volume 16, Number 11; Volume 16, Number 22; Volume 17, Number 8; Volume 17, Number 14; Volume 17, Number 20; Volume 19, Number 2; and, finally? Volume 28, Number 4.

Roldo mentioned Kucinich, of course, many more times—192 by my count—in POV beginning in Volume 2, Number 3 published on 22 June 1970.

Kucinich’s public career began with his election to Cleveland City Council from the 12th Ward in 1970. He last won an election—to the U.S. House of Representatives—in 2010. He ran twice, and lost, for the Democratic Party nomination to president in 2004 and 2008 while serving in Congress. He lost his reëlection bid to the House in 2012 and a run for Governor of Ohio in 2018.

I expect that his opponents will make more of what Kucinich did between his terms in public office than his elected accomplishments. I don’t have great expectations for his chances to be finally reëlected mayor of Cleveland in 2021.

[Update at 1700 on 17 February: Roldo has weighed in on the mayoral race.]

1. Tegreene recieved three Scrooge Awards: A pawnbroker. (1978); A telescope to watch city hall from his office in the Board of Education building. (1982) and Ambition stripes he can wear on his sleeves (1983)

Early in the most recent Pandemic, a friend commented that the virus came out of nowhere. When I told her that scientists have been warning us about the coming pandemics for decades, she asked why did you ever hear anything about it. I told her that she didn’t hear about it because it was not in the interest of the One Percent to do so.

We are literally setting up greed to kill us all. Humanity is acting like a virus that threatens all life on our planet—Global Warming is the biggest threat—and Nature, acting in self defense, is doing everything possible to stop us. This is the case that John Oliver makes in his first show for 2021. He could have talked about the current pandemic, but he chose to talk about the next one.

I’m a frequent caller to WCPN’s Sound of Ideas, and in a recent show on our pandemic, I asked the panel what were we doing about the next pandemic? They jumped on the question, recognizing that they had a narrow window to convince the population that the question was not if there would be another pandemic, but rather how much time did we have before we took another, quite possibly far more deadlier—as is the pattern—hit from Mother Nature.

There is a military proverb that suggests generals are always preparing to fight the previous war—think The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell—and scientists are warning us that the people who profited from this pandemic are not all that interested in preventing, or at least reducing the effect of, the monster on the horizon.

While the One Percent may escape on Elon Musk’s rockets, the rest of us face a different outcome is not quite so cushy.

We are so fucked.

Bonus No. 1: For now: Full Last Week Tonight With John Oliver 2/14/21

Businesses have long practiced what has been known as astroturfing—setting up fake organizations to provide cover for practices the public, or government, might not approve of—Roldo Bartimole, no stranger to the practice, devotes his top story in the final month of 1971 to a particularly egregious case of the practice here in Cleveland.

In his 6 December 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 11), Roldo, writing in Citizen League Another Dead Institution; Has As Much Bite As Toothless Chihuahua, ledes:

Of all the institutions claiming to be working for the good of the total community one of the most pretentious is the Citizen’s League. It claims “75 years of doing good.” And one ask, “For whom?”

The Citizens League is portrayed by the media as a non-partisan organization interested in making the government more responsible to citizens. The newspapers in particular give the League’s endorsements [of candidates for political office, JH] with more than adequate space and headlines. The two newspapers actually vie as to which will get first release on the endorsements.

Actually, the Citizens League is rather a useless organization as far as most citizens are concerned. It’s time the truth was told about it and time the League was dumped on the heap of tired institutions no longer able to respond to modern needs. And it’s more difficult to fool people into thinking it even desires to.

Not that the League has ever been responsive to the needs of ordinary people.

I particularly like the “interested in making the government more responsible to citizens” line. The citizens represented by the League are members of Roldo’s “elites” or what I have come to refer to—with a nod to Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders, of course—as the 1 Percent. The 99 percent can shut up and do what they are told as far as the League would be concerned.

The League’s $54,000-budge is modest—covering the salaries of three employees and operational costs—but, Roldo, following the money, continues:

There’s no money for the vast research the League claims. However, it has a partner in all this, the Government Research Institute… Most of its money comes from Establishment sources, not the least of which are the foundations. For example, The Cleveland Development Foundation last year gave GRI $15,000 to ensure “adequate local government services and equal tax policies in support of the physical and economic development of the Greater Cleveland area.” The Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. gave GRI $2,500 last year.

There seems to be little reason to question where GRI’s allegiance is. It’s a business front group, just as the League is.
…
A city commissioner who has had dealings with GRI says of it:

The conservative business sponsors can depend upon it to produce just what they want to hear… It’s a way to channel research dollars that come up with the answers the donor wants.

…
The Citizens League, rather than a government watchdog concerned about citizens, is more concerned with ensuring lower taxes for industry. The League also is biased toward Republicans and pet politicians.

Have you ever heard of the Citizens League pressuring city government to get tough on polluters, on consumer fraud or to increase health services to meet the needs of the poor?

More on this below under the headline: If You’ve Got The Stomach, Here’s Chance To Earn $60,000 A Year, Meet ‘Best People.’ Roldo continues:

The Cleveland Press, showing how ludicrous the pretense that the Citizens League is neutral, ran a front page article on [Seth] Taft’s endorsement [for county commissioner by the League] with a large headline. The article didn’t note that Taft had been president of the Citizens League and had always been closely allied to it. Indeed, he still serves as a board member of GRI and is rather typical of its membership.

The League shies from making endorsements for mayor of Cleveland and its major endorsements are of Cleveland councilmen and judges [Where the best puppets can be bought at bargain prices. JH] It’s impact on the former is nil because of its suburban orientation and it has little consistency for suburban-wide contests.

The League, though, is very proud of its endorsements and the process by which a candidate is selected for the honor of getting the League’s blessing.

One of the questions I’d like to ask Roldo here would be to what degree did the League’s endorsements match those made by the Plain Dealer and the Press? Roldo, quoting the League, continues:

The purpose of the Candidates Committee of the Citizens League is to make a fair and objective appraisal [Emphasis mine, JH] of candidates for public office.

But the League isn’t even honest about its selection of candidates.

A letter from one of its Candidate Committee members to the League in 1969 suggests that the League doesn’t live up to the image it and media try to relay to the community.

I was deeply troubled by the Board’s action in giving Mr. Sweeney a ‘well-qualified’ rating. In the Committee’s evaluation of the candidates, we discussed the possibility of giving the ‘should be defeated’ (Very few candidates are given this rating and it would have merited much media notice, [RB]) rating to Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Nagy. [League director]Mr. [Estal] Sparlin explained the circumstances under which this rating was normally given, so neither man received this rating. (Gerald Sweeney and William Nagy were both elected to the board??? and have served poorly. [RB])

It’s interesting that the sacred Committee would consider giving two candidates the worst possible rating yet the final decision of the board of the Citizens League gives one of them the highest rating. It certainly suggests that more than the Committee process is at work.

…
One has to be a bit naive to take the League’s endorsements seriously , notwithstanding the newspaper’s attempt to foist them on the public.

The League isn’t above advising a candidate as to how he or she might get its endorsement either. Dennis Kucinich says he was told when he first ran in 1967 that he could expect the League’s endorsement if he’d be less brash and keep a low profile before the announcements. He did and the League did.

Americans have received a vital lesson in recent years of the potential damage that arises when managed messaging is allowed to supplant honest reporting, particularly when the false narratives are fed to lazy journalists whose editors tell them to rewrite press releases from friendly sources. Roldo continues:

GRI’s “research” work is also questionable.

As an example, the Commission was first asked to formulate a crash program for raising about $500,000 in revenue [for the City of Cleveland] to meet a short-term financial crisis. The chairman of the special committee to find a revenue source for the $500,000 was former Union Commerce president Harry Burmester and the committee included such ‘neutrals’ as Richard Baker, managing partner of Ernst & Ernst, and Tom Patton, then chairman of Republic Steel.

The ‘solution’ the Committee came up with, with the aid of GRI, was to reduce the charges by the municipal light plant for street lighting and other services to the city agencies, thus reducing payments from the general fund. To make up for the loss, the municipal light plant would increase charges to its other customers.

Not only wouldn’t this method cost the corporations anything but it would make Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. look good by raising city electricity rates. CEI, of course, is a contributor to GRI via its foundation. But, that’s the nature of GRI. It’s paid and bought by corporate sources and does the bidding of corporate interests.

This is such a perfect example of the flat out evil of the 1 Percent. Cleveland needs $500,000 [$3,229,407.41 in 2020. JH] Rather than increase taxes by that amount, the League’s research arm, proposes shifting the money from the city to the city’s residents—or at least those residents who are customers of the publicly owned Cleveland Municipal Light And Power—and give the privately owned CEI a feather for having lower electrical prices and higher profits for having dodge a tax increase. Caligula would have loved it.

Roldo wraps up his examination of the League and GRI with an example of another city on a lake. He writes:

In Chicago, some business people have come up with a more attractive idea, in its words, “a unique combination of watchdogs, research center, law firm and ombudsman.” It’s called Businessmen for the Public Interest [A riff on Nader?] and actually says something about being interested in “relief of the poor and distressed; lessening neighborhood tensions; defense of human and civil rights; and improvement of the environment.

BPI openly opposed Chicago’s jetport in the lake scheme; [A scheme Cleveland elites tried and failed to make happen, see below. JH] took on Commonwealth Edison for air pollution with newspaper ads calling the electricity company’s anti-pollution claims “Hogwash.” It joined other groups in petitioning for a special prosecutor to investigate the police murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. BPI investigators uncovered a deal by the chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority to sell land to a developer who happened to be his partner.

This information comes from BPI propaganda and may be jazzed up but the issues mentioned are not one that would ever concern the Citizens League despite its glowing words about “doing good.”

Finally in this issue, Roldo, writing in Distortion By Race, takes another look at how crime is reported. He ledes:

The [1970] figures from the Cleveland Police Department on arrests of persons under 18 years of age suggest a pattern of discrimination.

Totals show, for breaking and entering, 305 ‘white’ arrests and 481 ‘Negro’ arrests and for theft, 257 ‘white’ arrests and 817 ‘Negro’ arrests.

However, on lesser charges the balance between black and white are the opposite. Vandalism arrests, for example, are 141 whites and 88 blacks.

What is possible, of course, is that what may be ‘breaking and entering’ for a black may merely be ‘vandalism’ for a white. The individual police office makes the decision on what the charge is to be.

Similarly, aggravated assault shows 70 black arrests and 20 white. But disorderly conduct shows 88 white and 58 black arrests while curfew and loitering shows 223 white and only 163 back arrests.

If one could add ‘income’ to the breakdown of race it would probably show that the lower the income of the white arrested the more serious the crime, not as committed, but as charged.

Like the brigands revealed to be all noblemen who have gone wrong in The Pirates of Penzance, all those white boys were just engaging in youthful hijinks, and would soon settle down to being proper citizens if only given a break.

In his 20 December 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 12), Roldo ends the year, as is his holiday tradition, with Point Of Viəw‘s SCROOGE AWARDS. Roldo writes:

It’s time for the third annual Scrooge Awards freely given by the POINT OF VIEW and without any desire for reciprocation. The gifts go to deserving individuals and institutions deserving of the honors rendered them in this season of manufactured ‘Good Will.’

Roldo begins with a trio of mutual awards.

To Don Robertson: Alan Douglas.
To Alan Douglas: Don Robertson.
To Dorothy Fuldheim: Don Roberson and Alan Douglas.

To Tom Vail: The Joe Eszterhas Loyalty Doll, it bites the hand that feeds it.

To Ted Princiotto: The Tom Vail Doll: it kicks the one that winds it up.

A full sleigh of gifts to newly elected Cleveland Mayor Ralph Perk:

10 Federal programs, 9 black churches, 8 ethnic leaders, 7 Carl Stokes to run against, 6 crucifixes, 5 Lawrence Welk records, 4 Lawrence Hall suits (irregulars), 3 different city budges, 2 holy bibles and a Bob Weisman in a pear tree.

To Carl Stokes: Best Fiction of the Year Award for “The Stokes Years.”

To Richard Harmody, Dennis Kucinich and John Cimperman: Three-way tie for a gallon of Archie Bunker mouthwash.

To the Salvation Army: Soup for its kettles. And,

To Point Of Viəw: A fact, any fact, and 32 subscriptions to put it over the 100 mark.

Finally, as promised above, Roldo takes a swipe at Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis in: If You’ve Got The Stomach, Here’s Chance To Earn $60,000 A Year, Meet ‘Best People,’ Roldo ledes:

You might not think that Cleveland’s biggest law firm thinks of itself as a sort of family. But it does.

When Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis has an interest in a law student as a prospective addition to its family, not only do JDCR lawyers join the effort to make him or her (very unlikely) feel at home but JDCR wives to too. JDCR wives are expected to be perfect hostesses and take the prospect’s wife on a tour of the proper Cleveland spots, typically the posher eastern suburbs, with lunch at the Red Fox Inn in Gates Mills.

The process is not all sweetness and bliss, however. The wives, and their husbands of course, have a duty to ensure the prospects are the right sort of people and understand that the firm’s partners have standards. Roldo continues:

But JDCR, with all its hospitality, has some hang-ups. The prospect is told, despite the outline of the glories of JDCR lawyers solving social ills, that any anti-pollution efforts are not tolerated. In no uncertain terms,” one prospect says. JDCR is the pollution firm in Cleveland, having sought to wreck the city’s anti-pollution law as representative of industrial polluters.

Some JDCR lawyers have learned the hard way. Grant Thompson took an interest in community affairs and was elected vice chairman of the local Sierra Club. Thompson no longer works for JDCR. Eased out. He’s now with the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington. Don Large had the same problem at JDCR. His participation in the Sierra Club was not appreciated. He’s now teaching environmental law at the University of Wisconsin.

Prospects for the JDCR ‘family’ are told that they must avoid ‘controversial’ issues. And when a firm represents Republic Steel in Cleveland, joining the Sierra Club is controversial.

Finally, this paragraph caught my attention in Roldo’s final story for the year. After quoting extensively from JDCR’s own literature, he writes:

Some factors, of course, aren’t mentioned in JDCR’s resume. That’s why we referred to its prospects as males. We could generalize and say that JDCR is a white, male, Protestant outfit. JDCR has two women [Out of 57 partners and 45 associates in 1971. JH], one a partner who has been with the firm for some 15 years, the second joined last summer. “Our black lawyer” says a spokesman, “Has been with us about a year and a half.”

Sadly, such tokenism is still very much with us.

See here for a bibliography of books and other materials mentioned in this series.

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Bonus No. 1:‘He’s a symbol of resistance’: the true story of ‘Black Messiah’ Fred Hampton.

To steal the line from Silvio Dante imitating Michael Corleon: Just when I thought I was done, he pulls me back in. I last wrote about Jame Bupkis Renacci back on 10 March 2018. He wasn’t running for reëlection, choosing, instead to first take a shot at Governor Richard Michael DeWine and then shift to Senator Sherrod Campbell Brown. He lost, of course.

Now Renacci is getting attention by sucking up to single-term president Donald John Trump. Ohio Governor Richard Michael DeWine appears to be the likely target. Daniel Strauss, writing in Donald Trump takes up a post-presidency hobby: revenge for The Guardian, give Renacci some ink:

Trump and his allies, though, have shown no interest in ceding control. The question, explained former congressman Jim Renacci of Ohio, is whether Trump needs to continue to be the leader of the Republican party or one of the leaders of the political movement within it that’s identified closely with Trump.

“I don’t think he needs to be the leader, I think he just needs to continue to make the movement go forward,” Renacci said, adding: “I think there are still people fed up with the country and the direction and I think they’re getting more fed up now that President Biden is signing executive orders and unwinding things that people really felt were good for the country.”

Renacci compared it to whether Trump would be a member of a set of Republican all-star leaders or the Republican all-star leader; one of the Beatles or the Beatle.

Gawd, I really don’t want to do this.

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

Previously…

Bonus No. 1: Ah, the tragic lessons of youth….

Bonus No. 2: If Presidents Reacted to Crises the way Biden Is to the economic crash.

Bonus No. 3: Well, there is that…

SPOILER ALERT! SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH TO AVOID SPOILERS! OK. To steal the line from Ta-Nehisi Coates: We were four years in power and Cleveland was about to elect its first white mayor. Mayor Carl Burton Stokes’ pick for successor and the only Black man in a three-way race, Arnold Pinkney, was running as an Independent. What could go wrong?

In his 8 November 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 9), Roldo Bartimole, with the headline, Cops, Prosecutor Corrigan Play Games Again with Another Attempt to Get Harllel X Jones, ledes:

The Cleveland Police and County Prosecutor John T. Corrigan continue to subvert justice through the County Grand Jury and any other means available.

It’s been nearly a month since Corrigan’s Grand Jury jailed Harllel X Jones on a secret indictment charging him with first degree murder. Since that time Corrigan and the police have been trying their best to keep their “evidence” secret.

It was a typical Cleveland intelligence squad job. Though the police say they were working on the case for several months—the murder took place more than a year ago—they still apparently failed to realize one of those indicted was a juvenile. Age seems to be a rather easy fact to check even for the intelligence unit.

But the mistake made it necessary for the prosecutor’s office to bring the teenager, Bashid (Victor Harvey), before Juvenile Court. Apparently, the prosecutor and police felt it too risky since they would have to produce some of their ‘evidence’ at the hearing. Instead, the charges were dropped.

But that by no means meant the youth was free. For Assistant County Prosecutor William Coyne, who prosecuted the James Raplin-Rabbi David Hill trial last year, and a couple of cops, hustled Bashid to Judge Frank Gorman’s court for another round of Corrigan justice.

There Gorman quickly gave the prosecutor the right to further hold the youth as a material witness on a $50,000 bond. Two cops testified that Bashid should be held under protective custody. Nobody was there to say anything on behalf of the defendant.

So he’s still in the grimy hands of Corrigan and friends.

When I read stories like this I wonder, why didn’t Cleveland burn the way Detroit in 1967 Los Angeles in 1992? Roldo continues:

It’s more than interesting to note that during the time Harllel X has been held on a secret indictment, Corrigan has dismissed charges of first degree murder against 14 Hell’s Angels in the five-death stabbing rampage here earlier this year. The 14 now are charged with only manslaughter, Corrigan, the law-n-order man, also having dropped first degree riot charges. Corrigan has a clear record of pursuing racist justice. He’d do well in rural Mississippi politics.

In my category of Roldo Fan Mail, he writes:

I’m accused of “intellectual dishonesty” by Cleveland councilman Tony Stringer, who is upset about an item we ran a while back.

The item dealt with the city paying $128.52 for a dinner meeting held at the Sheraton-Cleveland.

First, Stringer feels that the item intimated that the Council’s Safety Committee does this often. I’ll leave it up to the reader. I wrote:

When City Council’s Safety Committee has a meeting with members of the Safety Department, a good time is had by all. Or it would seem that way by the look of the bill the city pays. The taxpayers picked up the tab of $128.52 for the meeting held usually at the Sheraton-Cleveland Hotel.

The word “usually” does indicate at least more than once.

Stringer says he remembers only one such dinner and says that he thought the tab was picked up by a private source. [And that makes it OK? JH] Another source in the Safety Dept. agrees with Stringer and further says that such functions were usually privately financed. Finance Director Phil Dearborn also complained bitterly at the time that the city could not have paid such a bill. I gave Dearborn two dates I had recorded in my notes I made from the city bills. He has said nothing since.

Stringer’s other complaints was that I named the members of the present Safety Committee when at the time the make-up of the committee was different. I’ll take the rap for sloppy reporting in not checking to make sure the members of the committee hadn’t changed.

In another of my own categories, Charity begins at home—but only if the recipients are deserving and of your kind of people—Roldo writes in Wrapping The Flag Around Salvation Army:

Though the Defense Dept. budget is up around $75 billion the Cleveland Salvation Army apparently feels it has to supplement the Armed Forces by subsidizing GIs around the world with gifts of toiletries, chewing gum and candy.

In what has to be a prime example of misplaced priorities and shameful publicity seeking, the Salvation Army sends $15 packages to servicemen and women overseas, including copies of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Cleveland Press and the SA magazine, War Cry.

The cost: about $65,000. [$415,375.68 in 2020 dollars. JH]

With the cuts in the budgets of welfare families this month there will be children going without enough to eat with the SA sends candy to GIs thousands of miles away.
…
Meanwhile, there are problems in Cleveland that are not being met and the $65,000 could go toward solving them.

For instance, for about $5,000 a year the Outpost, which is about to go out of business could be kept open in East Cleveland as a meeting place for young people.

Since I served in a peace-time Navy, I never saw any packages from the Salvation Army, although I did greatly appreciate the services provided by the USO at various airports that I passed through. Years later I would belong to a couple airline clubs but found their services far inferior to those of the USO.

[Roldo only tangentially mentions the outcome of the November mayoral election in Cleveland—I imagine because everyone in Cleveland would already know who won—twice. First: …Jim Carney who won the backing of so many liberal whites and enticed himself quite a few black votes in the recent election… and second: …as Ralph Perk takes over as mayor of Cleveland.. There was no mention of how the only Black in the race, Independent Arnold Pinkney, might have fared. Maybe in December?]

In his 22 November 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 10), Roldo, In Cleveland Bar Association Has Master Plan To Coöperate With Police In Mass Arrests ledes:

Arbitrary power has seldom or never been introduced into a country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step lest the people should see its approach. The barriers and fences of the people’s liberty must be plucked up one by one…

That paraphrase—from the 1792 Trial of Thomas Paine—could have been an epigraph for Naomi Klein’s 2007 Shock Doctrine or, indeed a warning over the passage of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act in 2001. Or a top-of-fold story in the present.

Power’s desire to level the playing field by removing all barriers to its exercise is a constant. In, Cleveland Bar Association Has Master Plan To Coöperate With Police In Mass Arrests, Roldo ledes with the full quote begun above and pegs the words to Cleveland and the office of County Prosecutor John T. Corrigan.

What I found particularly disturbing is yet another example of the step-by-step process of the militarization of civilian police which has give us images like this and this. Roldo writes:

A number of Cleveland policemen have been trained at the Army’s Military School at Fort Gordon, Ga. [Not to be confused with the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas, JH] The Civil Disturbance Orientation Course is described as a “basic vocabulary and a unified common sense of planning for all types of forces likely to be involved in restoring law and order in a civil disturbance situation, and to delineate the respective roles of municipal, state and federal agencies during such a situation.”

Police on the Homefront describes the Fort Gordon ‘school:

A unique feature of the training facilities at Fr. Gordon is a Hollywood-type mock-up of a typical community known appropriately as Riotsville, USA, in which the major exercise of the riot-control course, a simulated confrontation between militant civil rights demonstrators and National Guardsmen, takes place. Both the rioters and the Guardsmen are enacted by the Army’s 503rd Military Police Battalion, one of the units that defended the Pentagon during the October, 1967 anti-war demonstrations. Homer Bigart of the N.Y. Times describes the exercise as follows:’Baby,’ a firebrand militant portrayed by a 22-year old Negro sergeant name Bob Franklin, harangues a crowd, charging police brutality. The crowd waves signs denouncing the Vietnam War. One sign reads, “We shall overcome.’ Bricks and rocks made of rubber, but hefty enough to be realistic, are thrown at the ‘Mayor’ when he tries to placate the mob.

But here comes the National Guard. Using tear gas, bayonets, an armored personnel carrier and classic anti-riot tactics, the troops prevail. ‘Baby’ is seized and taken off in the armored car, a prisoner.

Roldo continues:

While the police are being easily brainwashed into believing those demonstrating against the war and for liberty are the enemy… the Cleveland Bar Association shows the legal profession here will go right along with the mass arrest concept.

But in its typical double-think mentality the Bar Association will accept this form of oppression by devising a program that will give it the image of ‘protecting’ those arrested.

The Cleveland Bar Association puts itself in the position of not opposing illegal arrests but wanting to make it a little better for one who happens to find him or herself on the inside of a cage.

The Cleveland Bar has a master plan of coöperation outlined in its Civil Disorders Project Booklet. While it may7 seem advisable to have lawyers present during the processing of the arrested, as the plan outlines, the element of coöperation with the police and the courts suggests rather strongly that the Bar endorses, certainly condones, the mass arrest policy. In Washington in May, thousands were arrested illegally, merely because it was convenient for the government to have people off the streets and not demonstrating.

There simply can’t be a legal mass arrest approach during a ‘civil disorder,’ particularly when the situation becomes a ‘civil disorder’ at the convenience of the government and the police.

The mass arrest plan can be used for example, to end just about any demonstration, anti-war or labor dispute, rather quickly simply by arresting all. Since many people think of the Bar Association as a ‘neutral’ party, its coöperation in the arrest procedure, particularly when the public is informed as it is by the mass media, will give the impression that the mass arrests are necessary and sanctioned by the Bar. The latter may not be true.

I just had to go looking to see if any newspaper or webmedia source had tabulated the number of protesters arrested in 2020. I cannot find a comprehensive number.

See here for a bibliography of books and other materials mentioned in this series.

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

I have lost count of the number of times I have repeated the words: The stock market is just a casino for the really, really rich. I learned this lesson back in 1978 while on shore patrol in Hong Kong. Bored out of my skull I bought a book that a local told me was really popular: James Clavell’s Tai Pan, set in 19th century incarnation of the city.

That book led me to Clavell’s other books, but Tai Pan also began my education in finance and stock markets. There’s an old line: if you want to get rich, don’t rob a bank, own a bank. But Clavell taught me a corollary: if you want to be really rich, own a stock market.

Anybody can own a casino, but there are only a limited number of stock exchanges and just as is the case with a casino, the house always wins. Events over the past few days show that players in the market, perhaps lulled into complacency by the government bailouts in 2008 and 2020, can be had.

One voice on Wall Street bullshit that I have come to trust is that of Matt Taibbi. In Suck it, Wall Street, he ledes:

In the fall of 2008, America’s wealthiest companies were in a pickle. Short-selling hedge funds, smelling blood as the global economy cratered, loaded up with bets against finance stocks, pouring downward pressure on teetering, hyper-leveraged firms like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The free-market purists at the banks begged the government to stop the music, and when the S.E.C. complied with a ban on financial short sales, conventional wisdom let out a cheer.

“This will absolutely make a difference,” economist Peter Cardillo told CNN.

Until an army of gamers decoded the rules and began to play, and the the difference went poof.

The other voice in independent journalism that I’ve come to trust is that of Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald is not a Wall Street expert, but he’s smart enough to know the right questions to ask and then how to translate the answers for the rest of us dummies. Last night I watched the video at the top of this post and immediately sent copies to a few dozen friends. If you know nothing about selling short and GameStop;, the video is the place to start.

Taibbi cut his teeth on this shit back in 2008-2009 for Rolling Stone His insights are epic here are three from his piece yesterday. In addressing all the pearl clutching on Wall Street, he writes:

The only thing “dangerous” about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter. That bit about investigating this as a “pump and dump scheme” to push prices away from their “fundamental value” is particularly hilarious. What does the Washington Post think the entire stock market is, in the bailout age?

America’s banks just had maybe their best year ever, raking in $125 billion in underwriting fees at a time when the rest of the country is dealing with record unemployment, thanks entirely to massive Federal Reserve intervention that turned a crash into a boom. Who thinks the “fundamental value” of most stocks would be this high, absent the Fed’s Atlas-like support in the last year?

I love the way Taibbi reduces the story to these two paragraphs.

Furthermore, everybody “understands” what happened with GameStop. Unlike some other Wall Street stories, this one isn’t complicated. The entire tale, in a nutshell, goes like this. One group of gamblers announced, “Fuck you!” Another group announced back: “No, fuck YOU!”

That’s it. Or, as one market analyst put it to me this morning, “A bunch of guys made a bet, got killed, then doubled and tripled down and got killed even more.”

Yeah, the story really is that simple. And why are the billionaire suits crying for government protection from themselves, don’t they believe in free-market capitalism? That’s just a tag line. They didn’t really mean it. Taibbi explains:

Unlike betting on a stock to go up (i.e. betting “long”), where you can only lose as much as you invest, the losses in shorting can be infinite. This adds a potential extra layer of Schadenfreude to the plight of the happy hedge fund pirate who might have borrowed gazillions of GameStop shares at five or ten hoping to tank the firm, only to go in pucker mode as Internet hordes drive the cost of the trade to ten, twenty, fifty times their original investment.

Short-sellers bet by borrowing shares from so-called prime brokers (Goldman, Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are among the biggest), selling them, and waiting for the price to drop, at which point they buy them back on the open market at the lower price and return them. The commonly understood rub is that prime brokers don’t always really procure those original borrowed shares, and often give out more “locates” than they should, putting more shares in circulation than actually exist (as in this case). GameStop is exposing this systematic plundering of firms using phantom shares and locates, by groups of actors who now have the gall to complain that they’re the victims of a “get rich quick” scheme.

President Joseph Robinette Biden and his Treasury Secretary Janet Louise Yellen are not prepared for this. Nobody in Congress is prepared for this. To COVID-19 and the 601 insurrection we can add GameStop. The United States has hit a trifecta!

Bonus No. 1: Glenn Greenwald makes Tucker Carlson cheer.

Bonus No. 2: Nearly 1 In 5 Defendants In Capitol Riot Cases Served In The Military.

One of the lessons I learned from my undergraduate studies as a History major was the value of primary sources. The ability to read, see or hear contemporary accounts of events takes you places that reports even once removed can never get you. This is, for me, the most important aspect of Readin’ Roldo. And, I have an added bonus.

I can call Roldo Bartimole on the phone, drop him an email or, once we get back to actually socializing in public again, have coffee or lunch and gain the insights he has to what he wrote 50 years ago. For me, this is like being able to talk to Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt in their retirements.

This really popped out for me in his late 1971 editions of Point Of Viəw because I have hindsight that allows me to better understand what he’s writing.

In his 11 October 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 7), Roldo begins with the headline: Media See Blacks As They Would Like Them But Vote Win Disappoints Opinion-Makers. He writes:

The media have never been able to bring themselves to admit that black politicians—and not only Mayor Carl Stokes—have produced a very potent political organization, without a doubt the most effective here. That’s one major reason for the bad call by the media of the Democratic primary.

Possibly more importantly, both white politicians and political analysts continually underestimate the strong survival skills (and the necessity of it) of blacks.

Some politicians and political analysts are better today than they were in 1971, but not enough as evinced by reporting on and reactions to the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer. Roldo continues:

There’s no doubt that Carl Stokes can be credited with getting out the vote but he couldn’t do it without organization and prior conditioning that has convinced blacks here that the vote is a useful weapon for survival. Without these two factors a Stokes telephone blitz would have been ineffective. To overestimate the telephone calls and underestimate the organization and conditioning of the black community merely represents the media’s desire to continue to report events only on the basis of personality.

A third factor, mentioned by the media but still underestimated, is the black media, particularly the Call & Post, a potent political weapon used to its full advantage. And, often neglected, the continued use of the black churches to get the political message to black people.

The Cleveland Press folded while I was still in journalism school. But I could have, but have never, read a copy of the Call & Post. I should fix that. Roldo continues:

The poor showing of white voters stems from the poor organization of the Cuyahoga County White Democrats and because whites obviously don’t have the stimulus of a need to survive as do blacks. White Democrats have consistently attempted to make racism the stimulus for whites but it obviously is not strong enough for the required number of voters they need.

Citing data by Cleveland Press reporter Tony Tucci, Roldo notes that while turnout for Whites was greater than that for Blacks in the primary, Tucci’s numbers made no distinction between Republicans and Democrats. A closer look at the numbers, Roldo writes, shows:

That the Republicans turned out at a 70 percent rate in a dull, meaningless primary.

And that:

Democrats turned out fewer whites than Tucci’s figures indicate. Black Democrats appear to have turned out to vote at a higher rate than whites even though there was no black candidate, which is the significant fact.

Roldo also noted that the Plain Dealer, enamored with the latest computer equipment, did not cover itself in glory:

The poor coverage by the PD was so embarrassing that two days after the election some reality began slipping into the news columns and even into the editorial pages. (The day after the election political writer Bob Burdock was still using “supposedly” to describe Stokes backing of [Black Independent candidate] Arnold Pinkney in an effort to continue rumors that Stokes will dump Pinkney for [white Democratic candidate Jim] Carney.

On Thursday for the first time the PD belatedly acknowledged that the 21st District Caucus did indeed possess some power. Bob McGruder was even allowed to analyze the Caucus’ power, using quotes to indicate that this election wasn’t the first in which that power has been exhibited.

This is a good example of one of the questions I want to put to Roldo: Louis Stokes was elected to Congress representing the 21st District in 1968, but I don’t know that Carl’s brother has been mentioned—I could be wrong, here—in any of the issues of Point Of Viəw I’ve read so far. Was he overshadowed, at least for a short time by Mayor Stokes? Roldo continues:

What does it all mean?

It means that Stokes has harnessed the black vote power to a degree that possibly no other politician in the nation has been able to with any bloc vote. When you can transfer 95 percent of a bloc vote to an almost unknown (Carney hasn’t been on the public side of politics for some time) that shows an ability to sway large numbers of people.

It means that Stokes also has the ability to lift the political consciousness of his constituency. But it is clear that he has done this only to one plateau, traditional politics.

He will not venture from this level.

He will not, for example, lead a boycott of downtown stores by the black community for more jobs, though such a move would probably produce more jobs than the expensive federal programs. He would not lead a campaign to veto the automatic pay raises the police get by law [Cleveland police were guaranteed by city ordinance salaries 3 percent higher than those in any other Ohio municipality. JH] though the situation enables the police to flaunt any administrations since they don’t have to go to the mayor for pay increases. He certainly would not lead a movement to free political prisoners.

The black movement of the past few years has produced benefits to black people in Cleveland. The benefits have accrued to the few, not the many. And such benefits will never reach the mass through traditional political means which is what the present movement is about.

I am reminded here of the speech, in Cleveland, by Malcolm X: The Ballot or The Bullet. That speech was delivered in 1964 and Malcolm would be assassinated the following year. I would like to know if either Stokes attended the speech in Cleveland and what they might have thought about it.

Under my category of horn tooting, in An Answer to Briggs’ Accomplishments, Roldo writes:

As we mentioned in a previous issue, Superintendent of Schools Paul Briggs in a letter to Jack Reavis, head of Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis, outlined accomplishments of his regime.

The United Front for Political Action in Education examined Briggs’ claim and one could say that they found he may have exaggerated a bit and didn’t tell the whole truth.

Roldo lists a number of the claims and their refutation, but the first one caught my attention the most. Briggs claimed that in 1964 there were no school libraries in Cleveland’s elementary schools, but that seven years later there were 138 such libraries and that in 1970 they had a combined circulation of 3.5 million books.

In response, the United Front commented:

These were established with federal Title II money. The quality of staffing (heavily volunteer) and collections so poor that Case Western Reserve School of Library Science will not place student librarians in them for training.

I have to say that I find the school’s logic faulty. The student librarians might very well have raised the quality of the libraries involved and, like student doctors and nurses working in poor rural communities, have given their students the opportunity to learn far more than they might have in a more “acceptable” environment.

In his 25 October 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 8), Roldo, in Some Thoughts On Mayoral Year 1971… And Cleveland’s Next Mayor? ledes:

With nine days left of the 1971 mayoral campaign the title seems still up for grabs. But without access to a bona fide poll or a crystal ball, independent Arnold Pinkney seems to be the likely winner over Democrat James Carney and Republican Ralph Perk.

Pinkney has been, in the conventional sense, an able campaigner and has made no damaging mistakes as of this writing, Oct. 24. there’s no reason to believe he will not win a near unanimous black vote. A telephone blitz with 30 telephones and tape recorders is ready. [Emphasis mine. Oh, how the technology has changed. JH] On the final weekend Rep. Herman Badillo, New York Democrat, singer Aretha Franklin and civil rights activist [and Dr. Martin Luther King lieutenant] Rev. Jesse Jackson will be priming the vote for him.

If Pinkney intended to go high, his opponents, Roldo observed, were ready to dive in the mud. He writes that some “expect Carney may revert to racist code words in the final week to rally white voters to him.” And that, “Meanwhile, Perk hasn’t been bashful and he uses racist signals liberally as he seeks white Democratic votes in a city with only some 40,000 Republicans of more than 300,000 voters.”

If Democrats outnumbered Republicans nearly seven-to-one in Cleveland, there had to be one monster lump of white democrats secretly pulling the Republican lever in the voting booth. Roldo continues:

There likely will be a final week maneuver by blacks to arouse and solidify black voters. Next Tuesday black councilmen are scheduled to hold a press conference to warn Cleveland cops to keep out of black polling booths. They will warn the cops that if police repeat the tactic of attempting to intimidate black voters as they did in 1969 (police already plan to do the same) black councilmen will move to revoke the ordinance which gives Cleveland cops a 3 percent higher salary than any other [Ohio] city pays.

Then Roldo takes a deep breath:

In any case, out on the limb, let’s discuss Pinkney as the next mayor.

Roldo backs his prediction with plenty of facts and cogent observations, but he really surprised me with this bit about the Plain Dealer. He writes:

The Plain Dealer endorsement of Pinkney was packed with adjectives and descriptions that made Pinkney seem the antithesis of Stokes. According to the PD, Pinkney practices “diplomacy” and has not sought “election on a negative basis,” but has presented “well-reasoned , constructive alternatives.” He has demonstrated “none of the racism which has so divided our city,” says the PD, adding that Pinkney’s record is one of “cooperation, compromise and statesmanship.” Further, he has demonstrated “ability to overcome hostilities and work for the common good” and “he is not a confrontation politician.”

What the PD editorial says is that Cleveland’s problems mainly evolve from the personality problems of Carl Stokes, not from unsolved problems.

Roldo concludes:

We’ve concentrated on Pinkney because we think he’ll be our next mayor and because so little has been written about him.

It’s a shame actually that Carney doesn’t win. He has played the liberal and has attracted young liberal supporters. The inconsistency of his positions and performance would be clear and easy to document. If he wins, we’ll know what we have. His personal greed is visible around the city.

If it’s Perk, the city will probably be getting a personality to fit its real image. He’s a man who says he’s for the “little man,” but hasn’t a damn accomplishment to back it up.

Roldo had yet another run in with Cleveland’s broadcast censors, this time with WKYC-Radio who offered him a one-minute broadcast editorial responding to the station’s endorsement of United Torch. Roldo agreed, recorded the spot, and then the suits in New York said: No. This time Roldo went to the Federal Communications Commission. Twice. In The Censors, Again, he writes:

The second complaint to the FCC says:This is the second denial by a major broadcasting outlet in Cleveland, though, as I wrote you yesterday, Oct. 21, I was specifically requested by WKYC-Radio to respond to the station’s editorial comments on United Torch.

Since one station has requested the United Torch editorial be responded to [both WKYC-Radio and WKYC-TV were involved, JH] seems to indicate that there is a controversy.

Further, I have tentative approval from Fred Griffith of Channel 5, WEWS-TV, to respond to that station’s editorials on United Torch. I also have a specific date to appear on the program Newsroom at WKBF-TV on Nov. 1. I also have an appearance on this matter scheduled at WZAK-FM Radio.

So there seems to be some understanding among broadcasters that there is a controversial matter here. However, I am concerned now that there is a developing agreement that no controversy will be permitted, rather than there being no controversy.

Frankly, I’m getting tired of such nonsense. It’s getting boring.

Not me, and, I hope, not our readers.

See here for a bibliography of books and other materials mentioned in this series.

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

While not anywheres as near a big deal as 601, I do want to note an anomaly here at Have Coffee Will Write. Every once in a while a post takes on a life of its own and long after its fellows have been forgotten they continue to draw attention. Way back on 5 December 2017, I posted TAKE A KNEE BY KWAME ALEXANDER…. I had heard Alexander read his poem on, I think, an NPR program, but an online search hasn’t turned anything up.

Listening to him read his work again—twice—I still shiver from his words and intonation. The man is everything a poet might aspire to be.

If you came to HCWW looking for Alexander’s poem, please leave me a note in the comments on who or what lit the signal fire that brought you here.

Bonus No. 1: Son Volt Angel Of The Blues.

Bonus No. 2: When Buster was in charge.

[Update @ 0430 on 11 February 2021: Thanks to reader Paul Hanson we now have a PDF of Joe Eszterhas’ The Selling Of The My Lai Massacre. See Bonus No. 1 below. Cheers, Paul.]

The events of 16 March 1968 would rock America and send shock waves to rattle the City of Cleveland more than three years later when a Plain Dealer golden boy reporter saw big dollar signs—and maybe an award or two—but got neither and ended up on the street looking for a career change. Roldo Bartimole was there to pull the story together.

In his 13 September 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 5), Roldo jumps off with the headline—PD Fires Joe Eszterhas For Criticizing His Boss, Silencing Free Speech Again—and ledes:

The Frightened Men at the Plain Dealer have struck again.

This time it was a favorite of theirs who fell. Joe Eszterhas was fired last Friday because he wrote an article for Evergreen that said nasty things about the Plain Dealer and its editor-publisher Tom Vail.
…
In part, Eszterhas wrote:

Tom Vail, [the Plain Dealer‘s] editor is a peripatetic, periscope guy. Newsweek once said he looked like F. Scott Fitzgerald more than a publisher. His use of ‘terrific’ has gained national attention. He endorsed Richard Nixon, albeit reluctantly, and enthusiastically endorsed the Nixon kitchen: “The food is super and under President Nixon we are back to the best French wines.”

Many of Vail’s columns try painfully to impress the reader of the publisher’s importance by relating Vail’s visits with great men, usually the current president. He attempts to give the impression that he is a confidant, but only achieves in embarrassing the reader who realizes he is reading, as are a half-million others, the ego problems of a juvenile.

So, what was all this about? My Lai.

The [Evergreen] article dealt with the selling of the My Lai Massacre photographs taken by Ron Haeberle and first published in the PD. The article revealed the grisly details of the attempt by Eszterhas and Haeberle to extract as much money as possible from any news organization willing to outbid a pack of jackals for the photographs.

Eszterhas criticized the PD for printing the massacre photos not because it would reveal to the public the horror and meaning of the Vietnam War or this mass-killing, but rather because the publication by the PD “…could very well mean the Pulitzer Prize, maybe even the coveted mention in Time’s press section.” It got neither.

He also made it clear that the PD editors took a Pontius Pilate posture on printing the photos. The line was: “We are not saying this happened. We’re only saying someone says it happened.” [This is a weasel statement worthy of Fox News. JH]

It was apparent that the little, frightened men couldn’t take the truth. What hurt them more was they were clawed by one of their own “tigers.”

[In describing the internal process that led to Eszterhas’ firing, Roldo gives us the first appearance of a figure who will later become a major target of his scorn: Alex Macheski. PD reporters, and Roldo, will adopt the nickname “The Snake” for Macheski whom he describes here as “a promotion man who oversees the PD image. [Promotion, like advertising people, are essentially devoted to barking: Pay attention to what I claim, not what I do or am. JH]

Roldo continues:

The issue here is a clear and constant one: suppression of the right of free speech and expression by those who yell most about it but practice it least. Does the reporter have the right to express himself freely or do the Plain Dealer have the right to silence him? The answer should be clear to anyone calling himself a reporter.

But there is more to it. The silencing of Eszterhas is not simply the censoring of one reporter’s views and voice. It is a sure form of intimidation that applies to every PD reporter and editor. And its ramifications go much further. It is an unacceptable guarantee to those in the community who have opposing views from that of the publisher of the city’s principal newspaper. It says that those views will not be tolerated. [Always remember the Golden Rule. JH]

Gagging has become policy at the PD.

Did Eszterhas, like Icarus, fly too high? Roldo continues:

The PD will have a difficult time upholding a firing based solely on management’s desire to silence criticism. But it’s expected that the PD will find other reasons to tack on to the actual cause for dismissal. (Even if it has grounds, that isn’t the issue.) It will be rather difficult (and probably the reason for the face-saving offer to Eszterhas that he apologize) for the PD to be very convincing about other infractions since Eszterhas says that he was offered a $50 a week pay increase [$320 in 2020. JH] just before the Nixon freeze was made.

Further, Eszterhas was recently given a column (The Observer) by city editor [Mike] Roberts. This is not the kind of reward one gets for compiling a bad record. Roberts and Eszterhas, who are good friends and co-authored a book on the Kent State murders by the guard, planned to go slow on issues until thy could ease into more controversial matters in The Observer without arousing flack from higher-ups. They didn’t get very far. An interview about Point Of Viəw was ditched because it was felt that they were tempting a crackdown from above.
…
[Roberts] was kept out of the Eszterhas decision but pleaded after for a change in the decision, reportedly telling his bosses that the effect of firing would prove more embarrassing than the article.

Robert’s acquiescence in the end assures a continuation of the policy of the PD’s Frightened Men to trim the staff to a handful of bland, morally numb reporters and some young reporters who will use the paper as a pre-kindergarten stop to less uptight news organizations.

Roldo follows this piece with a deep dive into the Evergreen article. He ledes:

The account in the October issue of Evergreen of the selling of the My Lai photographs is a grisly one in which no one comes out looking well.

Eszterhas writes that:

The way the executives finally figured it, the story could very well mean the Pulitzer Prize, maybe even a coveted mention in Time’s press section. And ever since Esquire gave the Plain Dealer its journalistic dubious achievement award in 1965, the frustrated upper echelon was looking for Time or the Pulitzer to wash the blood away.”

Roldo wraps up his coverage of Eszterhas and the Plain Dealer in a back-page editorial under the head: “Saying Something About All of Us” in which he concludes:

In any case, as one PD reporter put it, “It’s the best thing Eszterhas has ever written.” Of that there is no doubt.

Finally, in his continued exposure of the lack of professional journalism at the Plain Dealer, Roldo, in A Case in Point, writes:

Last Thursday the Cleveland Press ran a page one article about 13 markets cited for selling meat unfit for human consumption.

The names of all 13 stores, some of them chains which advertise in the newspapers, were printed.

Three days later the Plain Dealer published an article on the same charges but with some major differences. The PD didn’t mention any of the outlets charged and buried the article on the bottom of B-12.

[Roldo will have more to say on the story below. JH]

In his 27 September 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 6), Roldo, in Businessmen’s Interracial Committee Rates As One of Cleveland’s Most Racist Agencies, ledes:

One of the most racist of Cleveland organizations is the Businessmen’s Interracial Committee on Community Affairs, a committee of the Cleveland Foundations, formed to resolve racial tensions and issues.

BICCA is a well-financed business front organization that enables corporate leaders to coöpt the black community’s middle class and neighborhood leadership.

It was formed in 1964 to deal with the major racial crisis affecting the schools. Jack Reavis, managing partner of Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis, was its first chairman. He resigned recently and we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Reavis explained why the BICCA formed:

Tempers and tensions were very high indeed. I thought it quite possible that Cleveland would be the first of the Northern cities where savage violence might break out. [Not just violence, but savage violence, committed one can only infer, by savages. JH]

Reavis later said that “The Negroes on this committee behaved magnificently.” One can almost see him petting them on the head.

With such a mentality in the leadership how can the BICCA be other than a racist institution?

Roldo continues:

“We didn’t speak the same language,” E.W. Sloan, the retired president of Oglebay Norton and a BICCA member, told Barbara Ehrenreich, who was doing some power structure research here. [I would later become familiar with Ehrenreich for her book Nickel and Dimed and her undercover work at Walmart. JH]

“The blacks would take off on these long speeches. First one of them would speak for half an hour… then another would feel he had to say something and HE would get up for half an hour…”

Sloan continues: “Half the time I couldn’t understand their pronunciation. You see they finally had an audience. It took a lot of forbearance.”

Now this pig is supposedly working for interracial harmony. He’s an example of Cleveland’s corporate leadership—the liberal branch.

[I would note here the first appearance in Point Of Viəw of another name that will play large in Roldo’s life, garnering him an iconic photo that would be reproduced over and over and over: George Forbes. JH]

Roldo, writing of a pivotal BICCA meeting, concludes:

At a June 3rd meeting with members of the three sub-committees of the BICCA, Reavis said that it should meet as the executive committee. He then submitted his resignation and made a motion that [H. Stuart] Harrison [president of Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co.] be chosen to succeed him as chairman.

Of the seven people there, including Reavis and Harrison, the vote was unanimous. Reavis was then voted the honorary chairman on a motion from Ellsworth Harpole, a black who has recently joined Jim Carney’s campaign for mayor.
…
Three days later the BICCA with 53 members present at the Mid-Day club, dutifully ratified Reavis’ wishes.

Reavis then told the group that he had waited until this time because the person he wanted to be chairman hadn’t been available until now. I mention this in case one does not believe the elites plan their moves.

The minutes of the meeting go on after the ‘election’ of Harrison:

Following a few remarks of acceptance, Mr. Harrison pointed out that the executive committee had never formally been constituted, and asked that this be done.”

So the executive committee that never was but that elected a chairman of its parent group had to be created. The farce was almost completed.

Now that the executive committee had been given legal existence, Harrison suggested that it should meet every two months.

The full committee, it was said, would now only have to meet twice a year.

Of course they would. The members of the elite executive committee wouldn’t want the whole committee to be too inconvenienced, now, would they?

As promised above, Roldo follows up his earlier piece on consumer reporting, with Editor Feels Consumer Reporting Would Help Credibility, but would hurt Press’ Profits, with:

[A Cleveland Press editor Hil] Black attended the city editors seminar of the American Press Institute at Columbia University and wrote a seven-page report on what he had learned.

He reports that a “fervent young assistant administrator from Consumer’s Union” spoke of consumer reporting and that “from the point of view of fertility of news… the abundance of the harvest would be fantastic in consumer reporting.

Black adds: “And at the same time our credibility… would soar.”

Thus, Black realizes the news value, the reservoir of stories undone and even that the Press’ credibility would improve if the newspaper did something about consumer problems.

However, Black has a reservation.

“But how do you get around possible economic repercussions for the paper? The fervent young man had only one answer, that ‘public response and public backing of such reporting would provide.’ But he never said what it would provide.

Black’s false equivalency here is shameful. Black continues in his report:

We were told that the new, aware young reader seriously doubts our credibility and the lack of consumer reporting only adds to it and therefore criticizes us as follows:

Most papers do only event-oriented consumer reporting and no investigative digging. We go with a wire story and hesitate to localize a national consumer problem. We don’t name brand names or names of stores and businesses. That it’s all just a cop-out policy, giving in to pressure even when we know of a definite wrong.”

[I wonder how Black (or Vail) would handle this story? JH]

Roldo completes the issue by once more going into the breach that is deWindt’s Smokescreen Commission. In DeWindt Commission Overspent by 100 percent, he ledes:

This year’s United Way Torch drive is really burning up the money.

E. Mandel deWindt, who as we predicted was elected president of the new Greater Cleveland United which was created by his Commission on Health and Social Services, has written Dolph Norton of the Cleveland Foundation for money for the Commission.

The letter reveals that deWindt has already spent $130,000 or double his original budget. The money, of course, has gone to high priced administrators put on the payroll by deWindt. DeWindt has found that he can make a quick and public image for himself by using charity money. Of course, this also helps his corporation, Eaton Corp.

Having spent $130,000, deWindt asked Dolph for another $68,000 in the letter. Why this is needed, other than to keep people on the payroll for propaganda purposes (kick-off programs, dinners, and visual aids are mentioned as uses for the $68,000), is difficult to explain since United Appeal itself will spend more than $1 million for promotion, not to mention the millions of dollars in free media publicity the campaign will get.

Elites are so good at spending other people’s money, regardless of from where it comes.

See here for a bibliography of books and other materials mentioned in this series.

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Bonus No. 1: The Selling Of The My Lai Massacre by Joe Eszterhas.