Roldo Bartimole writes:

I find the way MMPI bills Cuyahoga County for its monthly “fee” an example of bad management taken to extreme. The billings tell the County nothing of what MMPI does for its healthy fee.

Here”s what the entire “invoice” from MMPI says as a description of what it did for $333,333.33 – or a penny shy of $1 million every three months:

“Const. Mgmt/Developer fee – $333,333.33. Total due $333,333.33.”

That”s it. Pretty much a blank sheet of paper. Continue Reading »

Roldo Bartimole writes:

I talked with MMPI”s Mark Falanga after a three-hour Council briefing to ask a simple question. Did MMPI expect to build a private medical mart on public land at no cost?

MMPI”s Falanga told Council that among a number of possibilities examined, MMPI wanted to build its Medical Mart on the Mall area between City Hall and the County Courthouse overlooking Lake Erie. Well, who wouldn”t, especially for nothing.

Falanga kept saying that the County was paying the City of Cleveland $20 million, as if that answered my question. The $20 million was for convention center and public auditorium. The latter Falanga has tossed out as useless or worse.

The site originally expected to house MMPI”s Medical Mart was on private land that had to be purchased. MMPI failed to make a deal.

I asked Falanga that since MMPI was rejecting the purchase of private land at St. Clair and Ontario was he now proposing to build it on private government land, the Mall, at no cost. He told Council members that the owners wanted $24 million, a budget breaker, for the St. Clair site.

But he wouldn”t answer my question. He kept dodging it by referring to the $20 million deal between the county and city.

A cost for the city land hardly got mentioned by city officials.

Not until late in the three-hour meeting did a Council member address the question of payment for the site Falanga proposed for the Medical Mart. Zach Reed asked Falanga, “Are you going to pay for Mall D?” That”s what Falanga called the site where he wants to build. I”ve never heard of Mall D. It”s really Mall C and the overhang down toward the railroad tracks.

He told Reed that it was included, apparently referring to the $20 million price tag agreed to by the city and county. Reed, unfortunately, dropped it there.

Since he was expecting to pay $17 million – an estimate set by the Greater Cleveland Partnership – for the Ontario/St. Clair site, what was he going to pay for the city”s land, I continued to ask.
Falanga did the fandango.

Here he was bald-facedly expecting me to believe that he shouldn”t have to pay for a site overlooking the lake because he couldn”t – or wouldn”t – deal for a site overlooking St. Clair and the side of the Marriott hotel.

Falanga – who one Councilman credited with a good poker face – gave me the poker face. He said that the County was paying the city $20 million for the convention center, indicating that that covered the price where his business was going to go.

Apparently, that”s what MMPI has wiggled itself into and seems to be making progress convincing City Council and the Frank Jackson administration.

MMPI told Council that it couldn”t deal with land owners at St. Clair and Ontario. They were asking too high a price. These properties were needed to build the medical mart as part of the deal for a new convention center. Falanga said that the price of $17 million was too much.

Two representatives of the owners at the meeting said after that MMPI had not negotiated with the owners. One said MMPI had made two telephone calls to his client. Another said MMPI offered $800,000 to one parcel owner and the owner countered with $6-million. But there was no dickering. No counter offer. They just walked away.

Council members were worried about the future use of Public Hall. Three, unfortunately, pressed County Administrator Jim McCafferty to press the County Commissioners to extend the sale tax increase voted to fund this project.

Council members Brian Cummins, Mike Polensek and Matt Zone asked that the quarter percent sale tax increase be extended five more years beyond the 20 years the Commissioners voted. That would bring in more than $100 million. McCafferty said that the Commissioners had extended themselves as far as they would on the sales tax.

The idea that Cleveland would allow a private business to build a Medical Mart on public land at no cost and violate the Group Plan for government buildings going back to the start of the last Century attest to how corrupting and indifferent our governing bodies have become.

It”s likely unthinkable that any city administration would even consider allowing a private business to occupy that Mall space.

This is what Harper”s Weekly said of the Cleveland plan back in 1904:

“Probably no city in the country, outside the capital, has undertaken the systematic development of public architecture and parkage (parks) on so splendid a scale as has the city of Cleveland…. (The creation of the Group Plan Commission is) the most significant forward step in the matter of municipal art taken in America.

It is comparable to the designs of Napoleon III, who remade Paris… or to the prescience of Jefferson, who called to the aid of the new government a distinguished architect in the laying out of the national capital on its present scale…

Here is a city among the most radical in its democratic tendencies of any in the country courageously authorizing the expenditure of from ten to fifteen million in the development of an idea. It suggests a new conception of the municipality.”

And we”d ruin that for a so-called medical mart.

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

PATIENTS WELL ENOUGH TO SHOP…? Jonathan has been all over the Swine Flu and Walmart employees, but this afternoon I came across an interesting story up in Senator Olympia Snowe”s state of Maine where Walmart is opening in-store health clinics. Keep reading…

WAIT…! AREN”T THEY WALMART SHOPPERS…? The principle danger of renting is that the land owner rightly gets to decide, within zoning laws, what is the most profitable use of their land. Case in point: the residents of the Sunshine Village mobile home park are getting the boot to make room for a Walmart. Keep reading…

LIKE A SCENE FROM HITCHCOCK”S THE BIRDS… I know what it is like to have a creepy crowd of shoppers hovering over your shoulder on Christmas eve. I know how they smell blood in the water when they see you walking toward a stack of toys with the price gun in your hand.
Keep reading…

THERE IS A POETIC JUSTICE IN THIS… First, as the flu season approached there was concern that Walmart shoppers would be at risk for the H1N1 flu virus. Now, with winter nearly here and only the ultra rich enjoying the jobless recovery, Walmart shoppers may face another reality: the homeless.
Keep reading…

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. — Will Rogers

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

On the other hand, there”s a special treat for the reader when the writer does try for verisimilitude. When I can read a book and believe (in the sense of that voluntary suspension of disbelief essential for success of fiction) that I”m reading real letters or a real diary, my enjoyment is greatly enhanced. p. 182

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 3,281 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 35,634.

Previously…

In a ranking of the truly evil and despicable, Myanmar and it’s ruling State Peace and Development Council, aka, its military dictators, only gets a bronze medal, loosing out to champion Somalia, No. 1, and Afghanistan, No. 2, for the title of World’s Most Corrupt Nation as determined by Transparency International.

From the Associated Press:

Afghanistan and Iraq, countries that receive billions of dollars a year in international support, are among the world’s most corrupt nations, a watchdog group said in a report released Tuesday.

Lawless Somalia remained the world’s most corrupt country, followed by Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan and Iraq, Transparency International said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

Singapore, Denmark and New Zealand were the most principled countries around the globe, it said.

“The results demonstrate that countries which are perceived as the most corrupt are also those plagued by long-standing conflicts, which have torn their governance infrastructure,” the report said.

The ranking measures perceived levels of public sector corruption in 180 countries and draws on surveys of businesses and experts.

“Stemming corruption requires strong oversight by parliaments, a well performing judiciary … anti-corruption agencies, vigorous law enforcement … as well as space for independent media and a vibrant society,” Transparency chairwoman Huguette Labelle said in a statement.

The generals can’t even get being corrupt right.

Jimi Izrael is back for more at Cuyahoga Community College. If you’re local, thinking that you can write better than us lame bloggers, check it out.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

I guess I”m just stupid. I don”t get it. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wants to tax garbage to raise $13 million a year. Then he wants to tax non-profits to raise $5 million a year.

But residents already pay taxes to have their garbage picked up. Non-profits don”t pay any taxes. Seems to be a contradiction right there. Don”t you go after those that don”t pay taxes rather than those that do?

But there”s more.

Most Cleveland residents are not doing that well. Many of them you would call low Continue Reading »

1000: Port Authority, Wasserman & the WLST Way-Back Machine

0948: Quotes reflecting on rogues, celebrity and presidential substance

0928: Pam Geller Hates Muslims, Fears Cookies: The Movie

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. — Ronald Reagan (1986)

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

A frame as a literary device is a way of setting a story-either a short story or a novel-within a fictional superstructure of one sort or another. In its simplest form, such a story might consist of two men running into each other in a bar, say, and… having a friendly drink together, and one says something and the other is reminded of a story. Which he… tells at considerable length. When the story”s finished they have one last drink and go their separate ways. See how this works? The actual core of the story is whatever the [man] relates to the other, and the reader”s in the position of a person on the next barstool, eavesdropping on their conversation. That barroom sequence encloses and sets off the true story just as a picture frame surrounds a canvas. p. 176

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 3,276 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 32,353.

Previously…

The political postmortem of this past weekend’s meetings of President Barack Hussein Obama with leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in particularl with Myanmar’s Senior General Thein Sein, boils down to nothing much happened, which misses the point that the meetings occurred at all.

From Bloomberg:

Obama, on his inaugural trip to Asia as president, yesterday became the first U.S. leader to meet the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. His predecessor, George W. Bush, scrapped a meeting with the bloc two years ago after Myanmar”s junta crushed the biggest anti-government protests since 1988.

“That the meeting took place at all” was “very significant” given U.S. concerns over Myanmar, said Singapore”s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, whose country hosted the gathering after the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Obama said he reaffirmed at the meeting that Myanmar should release detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi along with other political prisoners. Myanmar expressed appreciation for Obama”s decision to engage and said little else, Malaysia”s Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters yesterday.

“We expected a bit more, but it was not forthcoming,” Najib said. “We hope this problem of national reconciliation and principles of democracy as a system to be adopted in Myanmar will become a reality sooner than later.”

Critics might have only been satisfied if President Obama has performed the political equivalent of pitching a no-hitter while fielding an unassisted triple play and driving in three home runs.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. — P.J. O’Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

In dialogue passages, you can cut down the distance even more by eliminating everything but the dialogue itself. Whatever else you include calls the reader”s attention t the fact that he”s not really overhearing a conversation but reading something that somebody wrote. Some of the distance is eliminated when you use said instead of substitute verbs, when you use pronouns instead of names and when you cut out modifiers. “Jennings ruminated archly” is a more distancing phrase than “he said.” When you drop the he saids and she saids as well, slipping one in now and then only when it would otherwise become hard to keep straight who”s speaking, you make the conversation that much more intimate and bring the reader that much closer into it. p. 173

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 2,184 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 29,077.

Previously…