To steal the line from the Washington Post: Democracy dies on the dark screen. This may be the moment Naomi Klein—author of The Shock Doctrine—gets to say: I told you so. The 6th of January was not another 911. Instead, 6 January was our Reichstag Fire and the senile President Joseph Robinette Biden is our President Paul von Hindenburg.

Some 20,000 National Guard troops remain on the streets of our capital and government blessed private monopolies are shutting down voices of dissent with little or no oversight. As we should have learned from the various Middle Eastern and European revolutions in this century, threatened government first move to silence both broadcast and social media so people don’t know what the fuck is going on. Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are rightfully pissed. Taibbi first.

Writing in Meet the Censored: Status Coup—Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. The latest target: live content, Taibbi ledes:

On January 6th, Jon Farina, photographer and videographer for Jordan Chariton’s Status Coup outlet, captured horrifying images. At the Capitol, a pro-Trump mob tried to burst into the building, and a police officer who attempted to intercede was caught in a door. He cried out in pain, but the crowd was indifferent, chanting, “Heave, ho!” as they tried to break in. Farina, in the middle of the physical mayhem as photojournalists often are, caught the scene up close while 30,000 people watched the live feed.

Farina’s footage rocketed around the world, and major press outlets celebrated his work as an example of hard-hitting reporting. CNN did a laudatory story about the freelance photojournalist, with Pamela Brown asking Farina to “bring us inside the mayhem.” Other outlets like USA Today quoted his recollections of that day, and the likes of Steven Colbert on CBS, as well as ABC News, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and others used it as fodder for outraged coverage of the riot.

For a week or so, Status Coup was feted for service on the front lines of responsible journalism. Nearly two weeks later, on January 18th, another Farina live stream was shut down by YouTube, [Emphasis mine, JH] thanks to policies that will make it very difficult for non-corporate media going forward to do live reporting. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that if the incident from the 18th happened earlier, we may never have gotten the Capitol pictures.

Greenwald, writing in Reflecting the Authoritarian Climate, Washington Will Remain Militarized Until At Least March, comes at the events from a slightly different angle. He ledes:

Washington, DC has been continuously militarized beginning the week leading up to Joe Biden’s inauguration, when 20,000 National Guard troops were deployed onto the streets of the nation’s capital. The original justification was that this show of massive force was necessary to secure the inauguration in light of the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

But with the inauguration over and done, those troops remain and are not going anywhere any time soon. Working with federal law enforcement agencies, the National Guard Bureau announced on Monday that between 5,000 and 7,000 troops will remain in Washington until at least mid-March.

The two words at least should give every American pause. Greenwald continues:

The rationale for this extraordinary, sustained domestic military presence has shifted several times, typically from anonymous U.S. law enforcement officials. The original justification—the need to secure the inaugural festivities—is obviously no longer operative.

So the new claim became that the impeachment trial of former President Trump that will take place in the Senate in February necessitated military reinforcements. On Sunday, Politico quoted “four people familiar with the matter” to claim that “Trump’s upcoming Senate impeachment trial poses a security concern that federal law enforcement officials told lawmakers last week requires as many as 5,000 National Guard troops to remain in Washington through mid-March.”

The next day, AP, citing “a U.S. official,” said the ongoing troop deployment was needed due to “ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol.” But the anonymous official acknowledged that “the threats that law enforcement agents are tracking vary in specificity and credibility.” Even National Guard troops complained that they “have so far been given no official justifications, threat reports or any explanation for the extended mission — nor have they seen any violence thus far.”

It is hard to overstate what an extreme state of affairs it is to have a sustained military presence in American streets. Prior deployments have been rare, and usually were approved for a limited period and/or in order to quell a very specific, ongoing uprising — to ensure the peaceful segregation of public schools in the South, to respond to the unrest in Detroit and Chicago in the 1960s, or to quell the 1991 Los Angeles riots that erupted after the Rodney King trial.

Deploying National Guard or military troops for domestic law enforcement purposes is so dangerous that laws in place from the country’s founding strictly limit its use. It is meant only as a last resort, when concrete, specific threats are so overwhelming that they cannot be quelled by regular law enforcement absent military reinforcements.

When our screens go dark, we are left in the darkness without a candle.

Bonus No. 1: We’ll Call It ‘Up Yours’ Economics.

Bonus No. 2: Conversation With Cartoonist Keith Knight On His Upcoming Hulu Series.

Bonus No. 3: Via Mano: Q-Nuts “It’s The Great Storm, Charlie Brown”

Reaching at least as far back as the 1960s, Clevelanders have wrestled with the actions of their police. Judge Ronald Adrine knows his history and introduced the first of 10 community panels on the current Consent Decree with the U.S. Department of Justice with a brief lesson on The Little Hoover Commission.

Adrine—whose father, according to Roldo Bartimole, had been close to Mayor Carl Burton Stokes—then walked the participants on the panel, and those observing, along a more than 50-years-long path of misconduct and intended reform. His purpose, I have to believe, was to underscore that we’ve been here before. That we’ve done this before, and that unless fundamental change is imposed on Cleveland’s Police Department, we will be back here again in the not too distant future.

In his 16 August 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 3), Roldo makes it clear that yes, Cleveland’s police have much to answer for, but they do not act in a vacuum. Under the headline Media, Elites Censored Report Critical Of Police And Coddling Still Continues he ledes:

The Cleveland Police Department continues to be a serious community problem. The media continues to cluck the police line on all issues.

[And what has changed, if anything, in nearly 50 years? JH]

The avalanche of pro-police articles over the layoff of less than 200 cops indicates the real law-n-order desires of the media. Reporters continue to play up stories of the policemen who have been laid-off though other layoffs, particularly to the health and safety of the community, are more of a threat to the to the health and safety of the community.

And the police continue to act in the old racist manner without let-up.
…
The latest Blue Line, a police publication, has its front page dominated by a photograph which displays the overt racist mentality of the department. The photograph shows an attack in progress with a black man pulling a white woman from her auto. Her skirt is up high enough to give one a mental picture of what’s supposed to happen. But there is a police officer (also black) with his arm on the criminal’s shoulder. The headline below this simulated action suggests that the only way to stop black rape or our white women is to re-hire laid-off policemen.

The Cleveland Police are cry babies but cry babies with a purpose. They are after power. As much as they can get.

And therein lies the problem. Police should have only those powers permitted by elected officials who—in the same way our President controls our military—must have the ultimate responsibility for any and all police actions. But there is a cult of police adoration here in America. In my own community, North Royalton, residents in the last election soundly defeated a change that would have given our mayor control of the police. That was not an aberration. Roldo continues:

The Little Hoover Commission spent $26,000 [$166,150.27 in 2020. JH] to hire consultants to tell the city what was wrong with the Cleveland Police. When the Commission in November 1966, presented the more than 100-page report on the police to the public, it was minus a full chapter of some 15 pages.
…
The [censored, JH] chapter says a lot about the condition of the Cleveland Police and why it was necessary for any administration to begin to interfere with the private operations of this public agency.

How could an administration downgrade a police department in light of these facts from the censored chapter:

Between 1964 and 1966 there were six groups of recruits appointed to the Cleveland Police Department. In not one of the six was the average or median I.Q. score more than 110, which was the score for the minimum score for appointment to the department. [Emphasis in the original. JH] In other words, half of those appointed to the force in the two years prior to Stokes didn’t even reach the minimum as far as intelligence was concerned.

The censored chapter also says that in five of the six groups, the lowest score was 90 or below (The lowest score for an appointee was 85).

[In education, an IQ of 85 is considered the minimum necessary for a student to be considered of normal intelligence. JH]

The consultants said plainly that “it is clearly disadvantageous to the service and the community to select persons other than those who have better than ordinary potential for training, development and performance.”

Then, once a recruit makes it into the police department, more fun ensues when it comes time to move up the ladder. Roldo continues:

There have been cries from the police about promotional exams also. And no wonder.

From 1951 through 1962, the censored chapter says, promotional exams for lieutenant, for captain, for deputy inspector and for inspector resulted in NO failures. Each time 100 percent passed. For sergeant there were failures but only in one of the five years examined did the percentage of passing go below 90 percent.

What the censored chapter has to say about police leadership suggests strongly that there should have been more failures.

For example:

“The management process of directing (within the department) is but little exercised by many commanders and effective field supervision is virtually non-existent.

“Some of the commanding officers interviewed could not fully define their own responsibilities, let along those of subordinate elements or personnel.”

Why shouldn’t an administration attempt to bring people into line when the commanders of that department “little exercise” their management duties and have “non-existent” field supervision?

No wonder the police have been crying about outside interference for the past four years. Outside interference to them is anything to do with normal supervision of a city department. They mean to keep the department their private kingdom.

Can you imagine commanding officers not even knowing their own responsibilities?
The poor organization, says the report, “is further confused by informal arrangements, power centers and unusual lines of communication…”

Today, most Americans have heard of the FBI crime statistics that track the rise and fall of a variety of crimes, but what is too often missed in these numbers is that the data is reported by local police. And that is an opportunity to cook the books. Roldo continues:

There may also be an explanation for the increase in crime after Stokes took over. Back in 1966, the consultants indicated that police were not reporting crime correctly.

The result is that literally thousands of complaints are not formally recorded and many received are not properly classified.

In contrast to the failure to report, Safety Dept. officials during the Stokes administration complain that the police were reporting incidents as major crimes when they were not.

The police were spinning the crime statistics to suit their own agenda. Roldo continues:

The consultants back in 1966 say in their censored chapter:

It must be observed that if reporting were complete and accurate there would again be a drastic increase in reported Part 1 (most serious) crimes…

Will 2021 bring changes that 1971 couldn’t?

In his 30 August 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 4), Roldo steps off with two media stories, both focusing on the Plain Dealer. In the first, with the headline—Plain Dealer Uses Charity Fund to Promote Itself, Sports Events; Little Goes to Poor, he ledes:

The Cleveland Plain Dealer brazenly uses its Plain Dealer Charities, Inc. to finance self-promotion schemes of its own and others.

In all but one case the fund has been used to promote sports events which are given a glut of publicity in the PD sports pages and on the front page at times.

Rather than helping the poor and suffering, as is suggested in its articles, an examination of the charity’s income tax return shows the PD is more interested in promoting sports than the poor.

Funds from the PD charity have gone to purchase Ford Mustangs, portable televisions and radios and trophies, among other prizes.

The misuse of the word “charities” in its name is almost criminal.

This is the kind of behavior I would have accepted as normal in the specialty magazine field, but no one at my journalism school mentioned that daily newspapers were this shameless. Roldo continues:

A good example of how the “charity” funds melt away before they get to the advertised “poor” is revealed in an accounting of the major PD charity money-maker, the annual Thanksgiving Day football game of two high school teams. The game is vigorously promoted by the PD as “The Plain Dealer Title Game.”

Income from the game to the PD Charities totaled $33,892 in 1968.

From the way the PD advertises the game one would believe that the $33,892 goes to charity.

But you would, of course be wrong. Roldo goes on to detail the “deductions for expenses” from the gross take. They include:

—$16,795 to the two teams.
—$3,631 for stadium rental.
—$1,975 for clerical salaries.
—$1,667 for game and team expenses.
—$1,367 for prizes.
—$1,365 for tickets and program printing.
—$465 for promotion and publicity. And,
—$27 for miscellaneous.

So, the remaining $7,600 went to charity. Nope.

PD Charities charged $7,314 for management expenses.

You do the math. Roldo continues:

The fact that all but one of the “charity” promotions involve the sports pages of the PD indicates clearly that rather than raising funds for the needy, self-promotion is the prime motive.

Here are a few of the charity events included:

—The PD Billiard Tourney.
—PD Golf.
—PD Bowling.
—The PD Day At The Races.
—A PD Ski Fair.
—A PD Junior Golf Tourney. And,
—A PD Tennis School.

In his second stab at the Plain Dealer, Roldo reprints, in full, a memo from newly promoted PD city editor Mike Roberts to his reporters. As I’ve mentioned before, I briefly freelanced for Roberts when he was editor of Cleveland Magazine and the contents of the memo do not surprise me at all. You should read the whole memo, but this was the single paragraph that made me smile:

Some of these people do not bother to read the newspaper, not just this paper but any newspaper. There is barely a handful of people who take pride in their work. Many are too lazy to make the extra telephone call, too unconcerned to research the material, and in general, do not show enough interest to do more than a minimal job.

Ouch!

I have to wonder, was the Plain Dealer ever more than fish wrap?

Finally, in DeWindt Committee Fraud Completed, Roldo—maybe?—wraps his coverage of the Smokescreen Commission. He writes:

The Commission on Health and Social Services, headed by E. Mandel deWindt, chairman of Eaton Corp., has finished with its fraud, naming 75 persons to the new board of trustees of the Greater Cleveland United, alias, the United Appeal.

About the only change we see is they’ve exchanged the red feather for a red torch symbol.

To prove immediately that it will be the same old game, all the decisions for the campaign have been made, though the new board of trustees members have yet to be advised of their trusteeship. Or we should say some of the members haven’t been notified, the non-corporate connected members.

Yet the goal has been set; the president of the board of trustees (Guess who? E. Mandel deWindt) has been chosen; and the officers of the campaign have been set.

The “poor” named to the committee have been given a marvelous new opportunity to be involved in decision making; They now have the right to ratify the decisions of elites.

Representatives of the poor who accept seats will only become part of the fraud.

Or, just possibly, could choose to become anonymous sources for intrepid journalists, eh Roldo?

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Ever ready to allow his detractors—and they were legion among Cleveland’s elite (and their minions)— to speak, Roldo Bartimole printed, in full, their complaints and then fired a few broadsides in return. This was the case in his response to a letter from Victor Gelb which allowed Roldo another jab in his continued criticism of the Smokescreen Commission.

In his 1 July 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 1), Roldo gives Gelb the first shot.

You’ve got a lot to learn about “hatchet jobs!” I’m sure that Del deWindt couldn’t care less about your comments in your most recent issue, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance to add my thoughts on the subject.

In brief, it’s a bad call. You’ve got blinders on, you couldn’t see both sides of an idea if your life or circulation depended upon it. There will be many persons who will not agree with the findings of the Commission on Health and Social Services but there will be damn few who won’t give its chairman “A” for integrity and dedication to coming up with a meaningful format for the future of the community’s health and social service needs. I can’t say the same for your intentions. Why don’t you stick to the facts and leave out the innuendos and inaccuracies, i.e. “last year after the Commission was named it to serve as a task force to raise $4 million for unmet, inner-city needs. You know that this was inaccurately reported in the press, and that at no time was the Commission to assume this task. Now, Roldo, I’ll join with those who say the report is an imperfect document, but at least it’s an honest, conscientious attempt to attack the problems and set some goals. That’s more than can be said about your critique. —Victor Gelb

Roldo responds to Gelb—whom he introduces as “a moderate businessman” and “in-law of deWindt” who served as “an advisory member of the Commission”—in Wanting It Both Ways—All Ways, Postscript: Smokescreen Commission. He writes:

Gelb praises deWindt’s leadership: “…there will be damn few who won’t give its chairman ‘A’ for integrity and dedication [in] coming up with a meaningful format for the future of the community’s health and social service needs.”

Gelb has an overactive imagination. His statement doesn’t stand even slight probing.

It’s time we stopped making humanitarians of people who are doing their piggish duty and being well paid to do it. DeWindt can be described as either a hypocrite or a fool for his role as Commission head.
…
At the Commission press conference I asked deWindt about one of his recommendations that speaks of pressuring the Ohio State legislature to give more money for public assistance, Medicaid and day care, all programs vital to poor people: Did he or his corporation belong to any groups lobbying for exactly the opposite in Columbus?

DeWindt looked pained, as if his integrity was being questioned and he answered by relating the personal letters he had written to various state officials in support of the programs. But that’s not what I asked, so more specifically I inquired whether his corporation belonged to the Ohio Manufacturers Association. It does.

Well, deWindt should know that the OMA led the lobbying that resulted in severe cuts to the Gilligan budget, gutting all those fine things deWindt says he’s sincerely for. The cuts in public assistance alone dwarf all the money deWindt’s new United Appeal could raise, not that it would go to welfare clients.

This is a vital point and one that gets lost in all the feel-good publicity that corporations doing serious damage to the health of both the planet and the people living here spew. As a percentage of profits, the cost of public relations to any corporation is less than a drop in anyone’s buckets. For instance, Americans have been constantly reminded that a carbon extraction corporation sponsored a favorite public television series but news is suppressed of how that same corporation actively lied about its responsibilities for the destruction of large swaths of Gulf coastline and the continued overheating of our atmosphere. The first does not, cannot, justify the second.

Roldo hammers away at deWindt’s association to business organizations responsible for making his puny efforts meaningless. He writes:

So you see, Vic, it’s difficult for me to envision the deWindts of our society as humanitarians. And it’s rather silly that you and others with this sincere, moderate, on-the-side-of-the-poor stance should try to portray them as such.

DeWindt can say anything he wants about helping poor people but the machinery of his corporations grind them up and he’s a direct beneficiary of the profits. He knows which side he’s on.

Roldo addresses Gelb’s specific criticisms then returns to the larger picture. He writes:

The Commission’s task was and is to revive the United Appeal. Success will enable the elites to proclaim their responsibility to the community has been fulfilled.

With the proper media slant, such success helps mislead people into thinking the business community plays a leading role in community problem solving.

In addition to a positive image, this deflects attention from the business community as a major source of society’s problems. Along with the failure of the media to adequately outline the manipulation of state legislatures, for example, by business interests to their advantage, we have the perpetuation of a major distortion of the role of elites.

Thus the reason for the two-faced activity of such business leaders as deWindt posing as humanitarians while their lobbyists scuttle anything they can that might help ordinary human beings.

In the previous post, I noted the sham table scraps being offered via the Commission’s Urban Fund. There must have been many other howls at the time. Roldo writes:

The only victory claim the moderates, led by Dick Peters, could make was the Commission dropped the Urban Fund, an obviously racist, anti-poor stratagem to fund “controversial” programs without defiling regular UA accounts and donors.

A careful reading of the report shows that the concept remains in the call for a “gap drive,” via an extra gift. The “gap” money is to meet extra needs, again implying the needs of the inner city should be met by an extra gift. Why shouldn’t they be met by the first dollars collected since they are priority needs?

Roldo knows the answer to his question, but those who might have answers have no, or are sufficiently protected from any, shame.

Terry Sheridan returns to Point Of Viəw with a story of a rock ‘n’ roll radio raising charity funds to train local police on special operations and tactics targeted in the War on Drugs. Sheridan ledes:

Radio station WGAR in April aired a 60-hour marathon, “Life is Real,” an unflagging pitch for funds to be used in something called The Narcotics and Drug Education Program. Listeners pledged $75,000, inspiring City Council to tout WGAR as “Cleveland’s station with a conscience.”

So, how did the generous donations get spent? Sheridan knows.

But, what the ‘now generation’ and the willing contributors don’t know is that the donations are being used as seed money to provide free on-the-job training for cops who covet jobs as narcotic detectives skilled in undercover work.

“We don’t want this publicized [Oops! JH] to the point that sounds like we are going to flood the streets with narcotic agents,” cautions Burt C. Haddad, 59-year old director of NDEP, which began four years ago as a part-time American Legion enterprise.

“But,” adds Haddad, chuckling, “There will be lots of field trips.” Haddad, a former federal narcotic agent and Army vet who served with the Criminal Investigative Division, is co-chairman of Ohio’s law and order committee of American Legion.

The field trips will include ‘surveillance’ among the ‘now generation,’ stressing “a policeman’s right in such things as search and seizure [Think proto stop-and-frisk, JH],” says Haddad, a stocky, broad-shouldered accountant. “We will arrange setups for them. After all, a policeman doesn’t want to blow the cover of his informant, we’ll send a Shaker Heights policeman into another suburb, where he won’t be recognized.”

Haddad is a former consultant to the House Un-American Activities Committee and a current consultant to the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association. In 1952 he served as a national director, special activities division (ethnic groups), [Now there’s a euphemism, JH] of the Republican National Committee.

Who could ask for more stellar credentials? And NDEP isn’t just for police! Sheridan continues:

To help keep junkies off assembly lines, industry reps are offered a five day course.

Haddad’s goals are clearly defined in sustained soliloquies. Take Kent,” he says, “There’s no question but that it was caused by kids turning on. [So, Burt, the invasion of Cambodia was no big deal? JH] You bring enough kids together and one of them says, “let’s turn on’ [Said no kid ever, JH] and the next thing you have is arson, venereal disease, and they are anti-everything. It’s not the homes. These are God-fearing homes. You want to be part of society than you got to conform. Hell, some of these kids are just filthy. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

In his 26 July 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 4, number 2), Roldo finishes the month with an eight-page omnibus issue that ranges far and wide, beginning with: Elites Can’t Remember Fund Commitment To Cleveland Now, Nix housing Program. Roldo ledes:

Tom Patton, chairman of Republic Steel, was there. So was Jack Reavis, boss-man at Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis. And so were John Sherwin, chairman of Pickands-Mather; George Dively, chairman, and Richard Tullis president, of Harris-Intertype; and Jim Davis, of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey, who makes a speech every four years attacking white or black racism whichever is in vogue.

Indeed, some 20 of the top city elitists attended a meeting at the Cleveland Growth Association to approve another city housing cure.

“It was a disaster,” says an observer.

The housing package would have cost some $3.5 million over three years. The money was to come from the more than $4 million housing fund committed by industry to Mayor Stokes’ old Cleveland Now. In other words, it was to ask for no new money from elitists.

Not only did the elites unanimously turn down the proposal, but they denied that a commitment had ever been made to Cleveland Now for housing.
…
…because I love to say, ‘I told you so,’ in the first Point Of Viəw three years ago: “At best, Cleveland Now effectively conceals the need for profound changes in the society and radical tax revisions. Cleveland Now beautifully perpetuates the myth that problems are being solved—with business in the fore… It’s like buying a new suit for a corpse.”

Next up Roldo gets back to Mayoral candidate and a name that would return like a bad burrito. In Press, WEWS-TV Treat Jim Carney Well, But Then They’re Business Associates, he writes:

When Jim Carney announced his mayoral candidacy on Friday someone asked him about the possibilities of conflict of interest between varied business associates and the position he seeks. Carney brushed aside the question as if there would be no such possibility.

[As would Donald John Trump nearly 50 years later. JH]

In Community Decision-Making?, Roldo ledes with a quote from Plain Dealer publisher Tom Vail:

“Cleveland today,” says Tom Vail, “no longer possesses a power elite, that legendary handful of people, elected or self-appointed, who makes things happen.

Roldo disagrees:

Well, earlier this year the Education Committee of the Greater Cleveland Growth Board approved a recommendation of its advisory finance subcommittee to back Democrat Gov. John Gilligan’s state corporate and personal income tax because of its benefits for education.

The recommendation then started its way through the purposely cumbersome, red-taped road through the Community Development Division Council and the powerful Taxation Committee, both giving approval.

It appeared that since the resolution had made its way through the bureaucracy that the full Growth Association Board would approve the resolution and go on record in favor of a corporate and personal income tax to meet school needs.

At the meeting, Tom Patton, chairman of Republic Steel, got up and vetoed passage of the recommendation. Seconding the veto: Tom Vail.

What’s that about ‘no handful of people?’

In the category of style over substance, Roldo writes in Peoples’ Park/Cleveland Style:

“Where’s the Peoples’ Park?” asked one of the volunteers.

The answer could have been, “In Dolph Norton’s office, of course.”

Peoples’ Park/Cleveland Style is this year’s low budget, cool-out operation brought to you by the Cleveland Foundation manipulators.

There is no People’s Park, naturally, and the program certainly isn’t for the People.

[The proof is in the pudding, or in this case Roldo’s Point Of Viəw, JH]

Roldo took on his first intern—Bob Mann—a student who chose to work on Point Of Viəw as his senior project. I’ve often wondered why more students (particularly undergraduate journalism students) didn’t choose this route. I had my own intern—Della, a communications student at John Carroll working part time as a barista at Phoenix coffee—while I was putting together the Waste News project for Crain’s. Mann, in Short-Weighting at Ch. 61, ledes:

“Super Power,” blames Ch. 61.

It’s more like Super Noise.

While Kaiser Broadcasting’s WKBF (Ch. 61) boasts that it his tripled its signal power, it has continued to downgrade its service to the community and made promises to the FCC that the trend will continue.

Foreshadowing the death of broadcast news in the coming cable/internet incursion, Mann continues.

Art Hook, general manager, claimed that the station was losing some $400,000 on its news program production and said that [suspending its heavily promoted 10 o’clock news broadcast and setting its staff adrift] was justified because “This move was one of survival so we can really serve in the long run.”

Cleveland’s still waiting for the long run to begin.

Mann details a few of the numbers—only 2-1/2 hours of public affairs programming a week, combined with 3 hours and 51 minutes of “other” forms of community service broadcasting per week—which put WKBF 50 percent below any competitors in public service broadcasts. He concludes:

Ch. 61 seems an appropriate target for a community group which wants to bring Cleveland a real community television station.

I have to wonder how Mann did in his journalism career.

Newspapers, like radio and television stations, are business enterprises selling the eyes and ears of their audiences to advertisers. Sometimes that can be more than a little uncomfortable. Roldo, in Honoring War Dead at Press & PD, ledes:

“We don’t want to solicit. It’s a tough thing. We do it because of the tremendous amount of people who want it.”

A Plain Dealer spokesman was explaining the ghoulish practice of both Cleveland newspapers of calling those who have lost members of the family and asking them to take “In Memoriam” notices on Memorial Day, the day set aside to honor the memory of the war dead. Apparently, it’s a productive little promotion for an extra holiday profit.

A file is kept of the dead and when business is slow ad takers solicit by telephone for spiritual ads that cost up to $20 according to the ad taker at the PD.

An ad taker for the Cleveland Press, which ran a 20-page supplement this year to pick up on the war dead business, says they also solicit the ads.
…
The supplement informed readers that the war in Southeast Asia claimed the lives of 548 men from the Cleveland area and they have left 108 widows and 74 children.

The proper response, it would seem to me, would be for the paper to publish a comprehensive list for all Cleveland area war dead dating as far back as it can research. That’s what a community news organization does. That’s how Nightline did it in 2004. They don’t run their own version of the bible grift from Paper Moon.

Shameless magazines—I worked for a few—aren’t above whoring editorial to advertisers, but the equivalent of “I don’t swallow” in the publishing business is you don’t sell the cover. When it comes to the Plain Dealer‘s “above the fold front page” it not only swallows, but gulps. Roldo, writing under Garbage Gulper at PD, ledes:

“I think it behooves everybody in the newspaper business to be particularly alert these days to people who would use us for their own purposes,” Bill Ware, executive editor of the Plain Dealer, sternly warns editors.

On 17 June, the PD gave 11 inches, three columns wide of precious top-of-the-page space to a color cartoon and a short article boosting a “Garbage Gulper,” a painted garbage truck and announcing a bigger spread inside.

I’ll leave you to read Roldo’s details, but the short version is the whole “drop to you knees, Plain Dealer” disgrace was compliments of the advertising agency: William Silverman & Co. Roldo continues:

A copywriter for Silverman admits that he wrote [“Twas the night before cleanup,” a poem that accompanied the cartoon] for Mobile Oil. If you haven’t noticed Mobile has an expensive ad campaign for Hefty plastic garbage bags with Jonathan Winters as the garbage man.

This is the kind of subtle free publicity that’s worth 10 times the couple of thousand dollars Mobile could pay for the same ad space.

Roldo concludes:

It not only behooves everyone in the newspaper business to be alert to manipulation but more so for those who read the garbage so produced.

In the “First Appearance” category of my Readin’ Roldo series, I note that in the next story, Roldo uses United Way for the first time in writing about the now-superseded United Appeal. That sure is some pretty lipstick for a pig. In Up-Dating deWindt Commission, Roldo writes:

The nominating committee of the initial board for the new United Way (old United Appeal) will be made up of 14 [manipulators]: the presidents (or their designees) of the United Appeal, Cleveland Plan, Community Fund, Catholic Charities, Jewish Community Federation, E.M. deWindt (who shall be chairman), and six-“civic leaders” from labor, economically disadvantaged and minority communities. Guess who selects the non-elite members? DeWindt.

Lending further credence to Star Chamber accusations, Roldo cites a document produced by an Implementation Committee chaired by Edward Sloan, and concludes:

A ‘memorandum of understanding’ produced by the committee says that in “any conflict” between the memorandum and the provision of appendices to it, the appendices shall prevail.”

Since there is an appendix for each of the major organizations [agencies that are part of United Way, JH] and each is secret the document seems to be rather meaningless unless one were trying to deceive.

But who would ever accuse these fine men of that.

Roldo wraps up the issue with pieces on Rep. Jim Stanton, a Democrat who can’t get enough of President Richard Milhous Nixon; County Chairman Joe Bartunke, who Roldo describes as “a cynical pragmatic politician whose code could be summed up in two words, power and patronage; Case-Western Reserve University, where the search is on for a new president and trustees bemoan the school’s poverty; Cleveland Superintendent of Schools Paul Briggs, who can’t get himself enough Jack Reavis; and finally the publication of Police on the Homefront by the National Action/Research on the Military-Industrial complex. Sadly, the book is long out-of-print, but if you have a Cuyahoga County library card—and if you don’t, get one—the book is available via OhioLink.

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Bonus No. 1: Oh, right. Anyway I rewrote the code , it’s OK now.

Bonus No. 2: The Border is Open Again!

Bonus No. 3: Darn thing’s like crack.

Bonus No. 4: By the Time You Get $15, It’s Not Worth $15.

Bonus No. 5: Biden’s Presidency Has Already Failed.

Roldo Bartimole wrapped up the third volume of his bi-weekly Point Of Viəw with an entire issue devoted to what Cleveland elites named Commission on Health and Social Services and Roldo more aptly described as the Smokescreen Commission for all the blinding smoke the powerful wanted to blow in the eyes of the powerless.

In his 14 June 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 24), Roldo, under the headline DeWindt’s Smokescreen Report Is a Dud, Pushes Conservative Line on All Issues, ledes:

Chairman of the Board E. Mandel deWindt is a typical American Industrialist.

As head of the more than $1 billion Eaton Corp. (formerly Eaton, Yale and Towne), he is a proponent of a “global strategy” for his corporation. He is a strong backer of the “multi-national concept” of an international corporation. And he says that by 1975, one-third of the sales of Eaton will come from foreign operations—from Liberia to Australia and from Venezuela to Spain.

It is for corporations such as far-flung Eaton and their grasping for profits that we as a nation are fighting in Vietnam and supporting right-wing dictators around the world.

For as it is part of his corporate “global strategy” to expand, it is inevitable that his government’s policy will be to follow and protect his interests and holdings.

And at home it is no different.

When deWindt rode into Hough one night recently to a public meeting of the Commission on Health and Social Services which he heads, he went by chauffeured (a black chauffeur, as blacks there well-noted) limousine.

It was a natural form of transportation for a man who usually is driven, not to a meeting in Hough, but to a private club.

It’s natural, too, for a man whose weekly salary is more than most Hough families earn in a year of hard work. DeWindt’s salary is $190,000 a year or $3,673 a week.

In the heady days of Occupy Wall Street, observers notice a change in the conveyance choices for New York’s financial elites. The too-obvious—think French aristocracy in gilded coaches—limousines, even with the tinted windows didn’t feel safe. Instead, the primary choice became a fleet of customized Mercedes vans disguised to look like delivery trucks. Better that, I expect the logic ran, than a tumbrel. Roldo continues:

So it is fitting that next week at a $3.75-each breakfast for some 300 ‘community leaders,’ deWindt will present the 8-1/2-month-in-the-making, $60,000 final report of the Smokescreen Commission.

And the air is thicker than ever.

Essentially, the Smokescreen Commission has done what was expected:

—Dodged the tough issues.
—Protected the big-money grabbers (agencies) with off the top minimums.
—Failed completely to ensure meaningful participation by poverty representation on any          decision-making board.
—Further divided the haves from the have-nots by setting a “special fund” for blacks and the         poor, thus allowing “safe,” do-nothing agencies continued maximum funding for minimum           problem solving.
—Strengthened power agencies by ensuring them representatives on the new decision-making       board of trustees. And, Roldo writes:

Most importantly, the Commission leaves decisions now to a special ‘implementation committees’ whose members are unnamed. [More on these below. JH]

While the report, Roldo writes, claims a central focus must be: On people and their needs, and only secondarily on those agencies or organizations, providing services to meet those needs, the claim is false. Roldo continues:

While the Commission was writing its high-sounding words, the YMCA, one of the big fund-takers, quickly and quietly moved to close down the University Circle YMCA at E. 105th near Euclid.

The YMCA wants to serve the area, it says, with “a new and more meaningful approach. To be more meaningful the YMCA top city board wants to take the University Circle building with its swimming pool, indoor track, handball court, club rooms, etc., and exchange it for a “mobile service” to be provided by buses, which will make it a bit tough on swimmers. Expectedly, the YMCA in the Circle will be sold to another destructive community institution, the University Circle Development [Despoilment, JH] Foundation, for $20,000. The building will then be demolished by UCDF and the land added to its “land bank.”

Thus we see the continued retreat from the parts of the city most needing recreation facilities by the very agencies helped by the Commission’s recommendations.

Looking at Cleveland today, particularly at the relationship between University Circle and Hough, I would say the move was less of a retreat and more of a Jacksonian Trail of Tears leading to a smaller reservation. Roldo continues:

Last year after the Smokescreen Commission was named it was to serve as a task force to raise $4 million for unmet, inner-city needs. Obviously, it never even made the attempt to collect the extra $4 million.

Inner city organizations should demand a flat $8 million off the top of the new $26 million to make up for last year’s unmet needs and those of this year.

The plan was for a more nefarious—see nos. 9 and 10 below—action. Roldo continues:

The [Smokescreen Commission’s] recommendation, which may be slightly re-worded in the final rewriting by the public relations men at the Eaton Corp. facilities in Erieview Tower where a half of one floor of the corporation has been used to produce the following.

Roldo then goes on to report the 19 points of a draft version included in the Smokescreen report. Three points—numbers 5, 9 and 10—caught my attention.

5) …the creation of a new community organization which will encompass the community-wide fund raising, allocating and planning related to allocating, budgeting and provision of central services for its constituent agencies. The new community organization will thus blend [Appropriate and control, JH] functions now performed by the United Appeal, Community Fund, Cleveland Plan and Welfare Federation. The commission is creating a special implantation group [See above, JH] to develop the precise details for operation of the NCO.

Hence, the NCO is the critical body controlled by an unnamed “special implementation group” (see above) and led by a Board of Trustees initially handpicked by deWindt and dominated by, as Roldo puts it, the same old do-nothing agencies. Roldo continues:

9) Increasing numbers of supplemental campaigns for participating agencies and the mounting dollars raised by such efforts can minimize the impact of a federated fund-raising approach. The prompt elimination of all supplemental campaigns in the community-at-large and outside of the agency constituency is recommended. Such elimination appears to be impractical for 1972, but it is urged that the new organization accomplish this prior to the calendar year 1973…

This is a power grab and must have been received like a turd in the baptismal font. The NCO wants to be able to say to any agency sucking at its teat that you’ll take what we give you and love. There will be no tolerance of Dickensian pleas for some more. The NCO wants to control every volunteered penny and receive full credit for being so magnanimous. JH]

10) …the Commission recognizes that the concept of a special fund has received sharp criticism in some quarters. The Commission nevertheless recommends the creation of an Urban Fund as a vehicle to achieve the immediate and dramatic increase in support for the acute needs within poverty areas (to be incorporated in the 1971 drive as a “second line” on the regular pledge card).

[See Roldo’s $8 million recommendation above. This is the ghettoizing of money to the inner-city, essentially telling the Blacks in Cleveland that they’ll get whatever table scraps might be left.]

Roldo concludes: So, there we have the new United Appeal apparatus—8-1/2-half months and $60,000 later.

And it’s still the same old game.

But, I would add, improved profits for the donor corporations and a serious reduction in guilt from doing so fucking little.

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Plain Dealer executive editor Chris Quinn on Sunday came to the rescue of one of his columnist. Yeah, that one.

You might have guessed it was Ted Diadiun.

The headline says that Quinn’s defense is “about opening minds.” Defending the guy with the closed mind.

It apparently hasn’t opened Quinn’s mind either. Because Quinn notes that he is proud to publish Diadiun’s ideas “though I don’t agree with some of what he writes.”

Diadiun, of course, has one of the most closed minds you can find.

It’s right-wing shuttered.

But defending Diadiun allows Quinn really to defend himself.

Because Quinn and Diadiun have done equally well in ignoring the truth about former president Donald Trump. A disastrously bad decision. His defense is really a diversion of his decision-making.

Quinn doesn’t like being accused of doing what he did.

For four years now they have either supported Trump, as Diadiun did, or have neglected to inform of Trump’s devastatingly bad presidency. And what it means to all citizens.

Diadiun recognized how bad he looked supporting Trump as he did right up to the end. Then he turned on Trump after the Jan. 6th assault of the Capitol.

But the essence of that violent Jan. 6th invasion of the U.S. legislature came because for nearly two months Trump and his fellow bandits worked tirelessly to misinform the public on who won the November 3 election.

They allowed the Big Lie to fester.

Diadiun and the Plain Dealer editorial pages fail to challenge the Trump criminal lies about the election.

They allowed Trump to portray himself as the betrayed election winner.

That was the cause that provided the impetus to the historic and deadly attack on the U.S. government, spurred on by Trump and his supporters.

I have noticed that the Quinn editorial pages tend (despite his claim of being liberal) to go to right-wing national columnists.

The editorial pages seem to use people like Hugh Hewett, a right-wing radio guy, who is a Washington Post columnist. He gets space the PD.

The Plain Dealer, of course, has jettisoned the left-wing New York Times so you don’t see any of those nasty columnists in your morning newspaper.

You also miss other Post columnist that might bring political reality to the PD editorial pages.

Similarly, a columnist like the irreverent Dana Milbank—who hasn’t allowed Trump to lie as he’s so accustomed—apparently doesn’t merit PD use. Nor does a veteran columnist as E.J. Dionne. Or even conservative George Will, no Trump fan, get much space in the PD.

What’s so significant about Quinn’s going out of his way to defend Diadiun are some disturbing facts.

The most significant is the number 400,000 and fast rising—and the disastrous rollout of the nation’s vaccine program—factors that should have been pounded away at for any newspaper worth its distribution.

The failure to call attention to these significant problems costs more American lives.

It really has been four years of death-dealing neglect that Quinn is trying to escape.

Diadiun, who after all the disgrace of Trump’s rule, broke with him finally. I guess he had realized that he was far out on the plank but didn’t want to jump.

Early in my journalism career, the two writers I admired most were Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe. Thompson for Hell’s Angels, which I read the summer between, I think, 7th and 8th grades—the last pages still haunt me—and Wolf for The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test which I read in 9th grade. (This was also the first book I ever gave my dad to read.)

Reading Roldo Bartimole’s Point Of Viəw for 3 May 1971 made me think of Wolfe and his seminal Mau Mauing The Flak Catchers which begins:

Going downtown to mau-mau the bureaucrats got to be the routine practice in San Francisco. The poverty program encouraged you to go in for mau-mauing. They wouldn’t have known what to do without it. The bureaucrats at City Hall and in the Office of Economic Opportunity talked “ghetto” all the time, but they didn’t known any more about what was going on in the Western Addition, Hunters Point, Potrero Hill, the Mission, Chinatown, or south of Market Street than they did about Zanzibar. They didn’t know where to look. They didn’t even know who to ask. So what could they do? Well … they used the Ethnic Catering Service … right … They sat back and waited for you to come rolling in with your certified angry militants, your guaranteed frustrated ghetto youth, looking like a bunch of wild men. Then you had your test confrontation. If you were outrageous enough, if you could shake up the bureaucrats so bad that their eyes froze into iceballs and their mouths twisted up into smiles of sheer physical panic, into shit-eating grins, so to speak–then they knew you were the real goods. They knew you were the right studs to give the poverty grants and community organizing jobs to. Otherwise they wouldn’t know.

I cannot but wonder if, but seriously doubt that, the editor-in-chief of the Cleveland Press had ever heard of Wolfe or had any idea what flak catching was really like.

In his 3 May 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 21), Roldo sets the scene under the headline, Press’ Boardman Serves Food, Facts But His Guests Don’t Swallow Either and ledes:

Tom Boardman last week hosted a fancy luncheon for eight blacks. But none of them were eating that day. They weren’t swallowing Boardman’s food and they weren’t swallowing his line either.

Boardman ushered the eight from the Coalition to Fight the Discriminatory Practices of the Cleveland Press into a private dining room at the Press.

When the food was served, each of the visitors pushed his serving into the center of the table.

Did Boardman serve too much Jim Crow? Roldo continues:

The Press needs some not-so-gentle nudging from the outside because it’s clear that inside decision-makers aren’t sensitive to the problem. A good example of unwillingness to deal with the problem is the make-up of the apprenticeship program. Only one minority member is included among the 22 present apprenticeships. The last time the Press reported only one in 26 were in the program. Obviously, the Press has a policy of tokenism.

The eight Blacks not interested in eating crow of any sort had an agenda. Roldo continues:

The recommendations of the group are as follows:

—Hiring of a black editor (Press says it’s looking).
—Creation of a minority review board.
—Creation of a minority apprenticeship program in conjunction with the Black Studies Dept. of local colleges (Press has turned this down).
—Immediate hiring and upgrading of a substantial number of minority employees (Press refuses, says it’s satisfied).
—Deposit 50 percent of all the newspaper’s negotiable assets in a black bank (Press says it will ‘investigate’).

I have to wonder who many, if any, of these recommendations the Presshad implemented by the time it folded a dozen years later. Maybe Cleveland just wasn’t big enough for two racist papers. Roldo moves on to more shenanigans from the Cleveland School Board’s superintendent. Beneath the heading Briggs Out-Maneuvers His Board—Again, Roldo ledes:

Why did Paul Briggs—the man who holds a tighter grip on public information than J. Edgar Hoover—suddenly, after five years of saying ‘No!!’ to all requests for reading test scores, finally release, in his own distorted manner, the reading scores of some grades?

A good bet is that the superintendent of Cleveland schools was outmaneuvering members of his own Board of Education.

Other Ohio superintendents can be more reasonable and forthcoming than Briggs. Roldo continues:

Ironically, this week I walked into the administrative offices of the Columbus Board of Education, told an administrator I was a reporter from Cleveland and that I would like a copy of the Columbus School Profile, a huge, lengthy document.

In two minutes I was given more information about the Columbus schools than all reporters in Cleveland—and even the Cleveland Board of Education Members—have been able to get from the Briggs administration in five years.

The Columbus Profile includes the reading scores for grades six and eight of every elementary and junior high school in the Columbus system. The reading scores are broken into three categories and there is data to compare each school with the city average and the same school in the previous year. Thus one can determine, unlike in Cleveland, whether there is improvement or not.

Roldo concludes:

Briggs has been conveniently dodging many issues but we get the feeling that a whole lot of people are catching on to him at the same time.

It’s about time.

Returning to his focus on the Plain Dealer, Roldo satirically pastes the headline, Courage Department on his next piece. He ledes:

Tom Vail speaks (via a memo to his editor) on the Great Issues of our society today:

“I hope in our handling of environmental problems we will be very careful to know that we have hard scientific data to go on and that we give all sides every opportunity to state their case. Environment is a very important issue of the day and as it is a new field it is extremely difficult to nail down what is wrong and why.”

[So, what happened to get Vail’s panties in a bunch? JH] Roldo explains:

The memo was written after the Sunday magazine ran a full-page picture of the Ford Motor Co. plant here showing it belching smoke into the air. (Very unscientific photograph).

On the page were the following words of Henry Ford II:

“I cannot emphasize too strongly my own personal concern and that of the Ford Motor Co. with removing automobile-related pollutants as a threat to environmental quality.”

A Ford official called Vail and told him the photo essay was a “no no.” Thus Vail passed the message along to his editors. At least at the PD you know how you stand and who your boss is: the advertisers.

Returning to the Commission on Health and Social Services, Roldo hammers away at further knavery under the head, Still Playing Games. He ledes:

The first ‘public hearing’ of the Commission on Health and Social Services was about what one could expect. The most appropriate word would be “boring.” [Intentionally so, I’m sure. The fewer reasons that citizens had to pay attention the better the Commission’s future might look. Why? JH]

Roldo explains:

Commission elites are caught in a bind. They face their head-hard corporate brothers who don’t want to fund such organizations as Welfare Rights. They also face on the other side the poor who are becoming less content to see their money go to the Boy Scouts.

Meanwhile, the Plain Dealer is working on plans for an attack on the Welfare Rights Organization funding under the guise of an ‘investigation’ by John Depke, who has been writing the Commission propaganda for the PD.

The Plain Dealer has never, NEVER, done an expose on the countless phony agencies which have been in operation for years, living off United Appeal funds. Now, all of a sudden, just as with the Hough Area Development Corp., the Plain Dealer is getting interested in how welfare dollars are spent by an agency.

Of course the target agency is the only one ever funded through the Welfare Federation that is controlled by poor people.

[Under the category of First Appearance of Famous Cleveland Politicians in Point Of Viəw, I note that Roldo quips:]

New Interest: GOP State Rep and mayoral hopeful George Voinovich has asked representatives of the West Side Hunger Committee if they would give him a tour of West Side poverty areas so that he might talk with some poor people.

Did you ever think of talking to the poor in your district, George? Or aren’t they the right color?

And finally, under my heading of You’ve got to keep the little women happy, Roldo writes:

HMMM WKYC-TV editorially criticized the Welfare Federation for cutting off funds to the Cleveland Mental Health Association though Channel 3 has editorially spanked the Federation for NOT ridding itself of do-nothing agencies. Reason: Mrs. Doug Adair [I can’t tell for sure which of his three wives this would have been, but I suspect it was weather girl, and wife No. 2, Mona Scott. JH]is a board member of the mental health group. Meanwhile, criticism of the costly school garden program is banned at the Plain Dealer. Reason: Mrs. Herman Vail [Mary Louise, née Gleason], Tom’s mom, is a great friend of the Cleveland Garden Club, a cooperator in the school garden clubs.

Making May a Blue-Moon Month with three issues—a single and a double—Roldo combined the 17 and 31 May issues into one eight-pager. In the Point Of Viəw (volume 3, numbers 22 &23 ), Roldo stays in Columbus takes a deep, deep dive into the family that owns Cow Town. Roldo ledes:“Come to Columbus and Discover America,” that’s what they tell us.

If that’s true, America is in a world of hurt. Roldo offers up a few tidbits.

Columbus. The northern part of Mississippi. At least that’s the feel of it.

Columbus. American flags seem to outnumber street signs.

Columbus. Where young girls wear Agnew t-shirts downtown.

Columbus. A city which voted overwhelmingly Nixon.

Columbus. Where the higher your education is, the more likely you are to leave. If you’re black and educated you cut out more than if you’re white and educated.

Columbus. Where the major major television station tells the FCC of the community’s most pressing problem: “…preservation of what the small town folks like to label as their ‘good way of life’.”

Columbus. Where the mayor says:

We’re out of the stone age and about to Woodrow Wilson. No, that’s not right either. We’re about Warren G. Harding. Our philosophy is “Let’s see how it works somewhere else before we try it here.”

And unlike Cleveland, which might be said to be a plutocracy, run by a 1 percent; Columbus is a plutocracy run by one family: the descendants of 19th-century patriarch Robert Wolfe. Roldo explains:

Forty years ago Norman Thomas wrote of the Wolfes:

In general the Wolfe interest dominate Columbus business, and until very lately have had tremendous political power in the city and at the State Capital no matter which part was in control.

This is the true nature of wealth and the power the wealthy wield. Roldo continues:

About 20 years later John Gunther wrote of the Wolfe power:

As I heard it put in Columbus, there was nothing sinister in any of this. But that a single family should have set the tone and pace of an entire capital city, almost without opposition or qualification, for more than a generation wasn’t quite what you call pure democracy either.

About 10 years ago Bill Jorgenson, who some will remember with Channel 5 here for some time, presented an allegory of the Jackal Family and was run out of Columbus in a week. Jorgenson worked for a station not owned by the Wolfes but he learned their power extended a distance.

The Wolfes are now in their third generation of elites.

Roldo first looks at how the Wolfes guide healthcare in Columbus through their influence on hospitals. He writes:

It’s said in Columbus that without the co-operation of the Wolfes nothing moves. “Which will the Dispatch go?” is a question meant to indicate whether some venture will be backed by the Wolfes and thus be successful or whether it will not get the backing and probably fail. Only one bond issue—for slum clearance—pushed by the Wolfe’s didn’t pass. And it did the second time.

When first approached for backing for hospital expansion and new construction, the late Edgar T. Wolfe, Sr., wasn’t convinced of the necessity.

This was a bad sign.

Columbus elites had to win the backing of the Wolfes who control the media in Columbus.

Not until they gave Wolfe “concrete figures” [Laying out how the family would profit, JH] did his position change. From opposition to hospital expansion, Wolfe became a devoted proponent. Wolfe said:

Our community must have the program. From this moment on, I will be available for this program 24 hours a day. I will not rest until it is completed.

Roldo goes on carefully following the money and how Wolfe-controlled banks, and Wolfe-controlled media directly benefited from the tens of millions of dollars in bond money marshaled to expand hospitals in Columbus and the surrounding county. Roldo continues:

Columnist Jack Anderson once wrote of the Wolfe power:

Their banks and investment connections give the Wolfes almost a life and death grip on the economy of central Ohio. They can decide who gets credit and who doesn’t, which determines in turn, what business can exist and which cannot.

The secret to real wealth is using other people’s money. The truly rich never risk their own cash. Roldo continues:

Of course, government financing of private hospitals fits right into the myth that the Wolfes and other elites perpetuate in every city. [Take a look at the family names on Cleveland’s hospitals the next time you’re in for a checkup. JH] The entire push for hospital construction takes place in the context that the “good, rich people” are doing their community duty magnanimously for the less fortunate.

Despite the high-pressure campaign in Columbus for hospitals and the impression in the Wolfe-dominated media that hospital financing comes from the largesse of the rich, consider this:

Of the latest $35.5 million for hospital expansion and construction only about $5 million was private money.

The $30 million comes from Franklin County bonds and Hill-Burton federal funds, thus from you and me, the taxpayers.

Then it goes to private hospitals which don’t pay taxes but which can then deprive the most needy of health care. As the late Edgar T. Wolfe said:

We (the self anointed) felt it would be untenable for industry and individual contributors to be relieved of all responsibility to the community, other than through comparatively minor contributions through taxes, and still enjoy the benefits of private charitable, non-profit operations of our hospitals.

Private? With $30 of the $35 million directly from taxes? What the elder Wolfe was really saying was that by the investment of a few bucks the elites could keep control of the millions of by-product profits from hospitals, and more importantly, continue private medical services for those who can afford it. And let the rest shift for themselves.

Then Roldo drops this little fact: The general chairman of the Columbus Hospital Expansion Campaign for the $5 million was none other than Richard M. Wolfe. His vice-chairman: John W. Wolfe

Roldo continues, detailing how the Wolfe-family claws extend—helped in no small way by its association to former [And future. JH] governor James Allen Rhodes—out of Columbus, out of Franklin County and dig into no less than 19 central-Ohio Counties. That’s nearly a quarter of our States counties.

But the real power, hinted at throughout Roldo’s piece, lies in the family’s dominance in media. Roldo continues:But more than any other Wolfe power is the death-tight vice the Wolfes apply on the media of Columbus.

Through the media the Wolfes keep a mental control over the Columbus community. Most Columbus residents are still bracing for the communist invasion. It’s a fear kept current and real by the Wolfes.The [Columbus] Dispatch is said to reflect the Wolfe’s aspirations for Columbus. This paper is less interesting for tedious recitation of right-wing gunk than swashbuckle reporting,” wrote Jim Ridgeway in the New Republic a couple of years ago.

Ridgeway related that when the “Ohio State University faculty members voted against sending the football team to the Rose Bowl because it interfered with classes, the Dispatch published their names, addresses, salaries and telephone numbers on the front page. The offending professors spent the evening answering the telephone.” [Today, such doxing, might leave them dead. Roldo, in a more responsible manner—no addresses or phone numbers—does list the members of the Wolfe family and their position in Columbus business and society. JH]

Finally, Roldo expands on the media influence exerted by the Wolfes in the absorption of their rival newspaper, the Columbus Citizen-Journal—by the family’s Dispatch. I have to wonder if Roldo, and Point Of Viəw readers in 1971, understood how the Columbus model would play out in Cleveland only a decade later. Roldo concludes his excursion in Columbus with:If control of both newspapers wasn’t enough, the Wolfes own the only FM radio station in Columbus and one AM station.

As we said before, the highest viewed television station—WBNS-TV, a CBS affiliate—is also Wolfe-owned.

As part of its FCC report the station made a survey of “community leaders” who were picked by the station.

Even then in rating community problems the “community leaders” ranked the news media the second-highest problem with a 28 rating. Transportation (mass) was first with 39.

In response the Wolfe station says that there is “need for the mass media to be more creative and innovative and courageous in presenting the area needs to the public.”

Fat chance in Wolfeland.

Or, for that matter, Cleveland.

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

As a journalist I always have to remember that—as Ta-Nehisi Coates said so well—our job is not to provide hope nor to provide positive messages. I mention this because a lot of Roldo Bartimole’s readers, at least those who write him letters, take him to task for being so negative. Journalists must afflict the comfortable and by doing so, comfort the afflicted.

In his 5 April 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 19), Roldo, writing in LETTERS AND ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW (OR IS IT?) ledes:

Some time ago we asked readers for some feedback. All the letters are being printed herein except for the short notes. The rest of the issue is another’s viewpoint of the Plain Dealer by Terry Sheridan, formerly of the PD, now doing freelance writing.

Sheridan begins:

Now comes the rites of Spring—the hustling after journalism awards. This tragicomedy began in the pit of winter with busy promotion people snuffling about, scraping together the reportorial lees of the year—anything that can be passed off as prize-winning efforts. The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, entered 25 contests. God knows where they find them.

But Tom Vail, dashing editor and publisher of the PD, covets the big one—the Pulitzer. Stumbling along to his own drummer, Vail figures this can be done two ways: The PD does investigative reporting his way and the PD prints an awful lot of pictures of Vail.

Splenetic paranoiacs insist on seeing Vail as a devious Calvinist—a man dedicated to the proposition that the Establishment’s hand belongs in the working man’s pocket. This is as unfair as it is untrue; it is a common mistake made by those who confuse dullardism with deviousness. The main problem with Vail is that it is virtually impossible to open up his mind and sneak in a new idea.

Sheridan goes on to describe a number of Pulitzer-worthy stories that Vail squelched because either advertisers or his Hunting Valley neighbors complained. He writes:

The PD‘s penchant for sweeping unpleasant facts under an editorial carpet is a disservice to taxpayers in Ohio, the world’s largest producer of hothouse tomatoes but a parsimonious state when it comes to aid to school children, the impoverished and the mentally ill.

A sampling of just three of Sheridan’s examples include:

An undercover report of Ohio’s mental health system was suppressed after Martin Janis, director of mental hygiene and correction in Ohio, promised “to make immediate improvements.”

A series on fast-sell, high-risk credit retailers who bilk the poor was cut short when the scheme was revealed to be backed by reputable Cleveland banks.

Reporting on the Glenville Shoot-Out was dropped when reporters found that police, who claimed an ambush, might be wrong.

Sheridan’s concludes:

It’s easier to dream of prizes, dancing like sugar plum fairies in a publisher’s mind while, sorry to say, there are radical types in our town who march to a different drummer and plot mischief to a Baptist tune:

The Lord gave Noah the rainbow sign: No more water; the fire next time.

Sheridan also sent a letter to Roldo to be included in the issue. He wrote:

As a renegade journalist, a poor man’s Tom Paine, you bought the ticket and you take the ride. You have been on it about three years now. You bushwhacked the political pony express—the guys who change faith like fast horses. You sniped at editors, the intellectual basket cases and called fellow journalists, those who give failure a bad name, moral cripples.

Roldo, baby, you are OK. Not too bright, but you got balls.

Don’t let the Yahoos get you.

On the back page of this Point Of Viəw, Roldo followed up on Mayor Stokes’ letter to the Smokescreen Commission. He writes:

“To be effective, there must be consumer representation at all levels of decision-making, from planning to actual funding,” wrote Stokes in his letter.

But a week ago Mayor Stokes named a Manpower Planning and Development Task Force. The members, says the Mayor, are people “with knowledge, experience and expertise in this area” who are to “reduce hard-core unemployment…” and take on other tasks to aid the unemployed.

The Mayor named no one who could fit the description of one who suffers any of the problems supposed to be solved, except, that is, with one possibility. Dick Peters, former Cleveland Now aide, who is unemployed, leisurely to be sure.

The Mayor’s excuse: consumers are to be represented at the second stage. The Mayor did “change” the committee at its first meeting to involve consumers.

Can’t let the moralistic, demagogic, irrational, bigoted and futile speak too soon.

In his 19 April 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 20), Roldo, in CARL’S COP-OUT—THINKING OF ONE’S SELF, ledes:

“My goals have been to demonstrate that the democratic processes are viable, that government can be responsive to human needs and that the problems which make up the urban crisis, while difficult, can indeed be solved.”

Carl Stokes so wrote of his goals and aspirations in Who’s Who in America a year ago.

This weekend when he announced that he would not seek re-election Stokes said: “I want now to expand my efforts beyond the Cleveland area to assist others, particularly locked-in minority groups, to better understand their role in politics and government.”

For some reason Carl Stokes wants to transplant as a model his lack of success in Cleveland.

By his own description of goals, quoted above, he has failed.

The last three-and-a-half years certainly give more proof than not that the democratic process is not viable, that government is unresponsive to the most basic of human needs, that the urban crisis, rather than being solvable, can be used to the political benefit of racists and reactionaries.

And, I mighty add, change is nearly impossible for any politician who is elected as the first anything. Just ask former president Barack Hussein Obama. May those who would follow Stokes would have better luck after he knocked down the wall, but we’ll have to wait and see what Roldo will have to say on that topic. He continues:

Stokes, in the end, gives in to the bigots and the reactionaries. We sympathize with the Mayor for the abuse he has had to take.

But he left too soon. It was just at a time when events were pushing him into a position of having to run as a Black Mayor. Maybe that’s why he left. It would have been tough on both him and the community.

Instead he has chosen to peddle an old liberal line when he must see it doesn’t work anymore. Or he has become a victim of his own charisma and the sycophants he draws in visits around the nation.
…
Stokes says he wants to share his experience of how the American political system can work. He seems more equipped now to do the opposite, how it doesn’t work.

But Stokes has no viable ideas to sell, or for that matter, to give away. He can peddle charm and mimic the ideas of other liberal mimics. His idea of a People’s Lobby sounds all too Ford Foundationish in its propaganda about re-ordering priorities, reforming the system and the like, exemplified by the comment that “there is nothing fundamentally wrong with America’s cities that money won’t cure….”

If that’s what he has learned in the past four years, he has been miseducated.

Roldo concludes:

Stokes was much better than average in PR, as his handling of his exit shows.

If there is one big regret that Carl Stokes has left it is that he let the community off the hook in the end. The lines were being drawn. He could have had his win this election with the Black community. His victory would have been in losing on principles and forcing the community to see itself.

[I imagine that this is a bit of what has kept Roldo going all this time. JH]

But we expect too much of leaders. In the end we help them to be leaders or martyrs.

But there is a lesson in Stokes not wanting to run again and that is that the “locked-in minority groups” will have to build a movement, not depend upon charismatic individuals.

This was the message of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, but that message was squelched by the elites, the professionals, who (think they) know better. But as Thomas Frank writes:

The demand for economic democracy is how you build a mass movement of ordinary people. And a mass movement of ordinary people, in turn, is how you achieve economic democracy. Which is to say that the answer both to Trumpist fraud and to liberal elitism must come from us—from the democratic public itself. p. 247

All movements must, necessarily, grow from the soil up.

Next, Roldo brings Terry Sheridan back to reprise his appearance in Point Of Viəw with Kent State University—A Year Later Sheridan ledes:

To the temperate delight of some and the outraged indignity of others, perverse notoriety persists at Kent State University, a dull and mediocre place that spent a lifetime ducking reality until fate and history found a home there on 4 May 1970.

With forsythias in bloom, it appears to be a pretty routine place, as campuses go. At a downtown movie house the military is alternately mocked and glorified in Academy Award winners “M*A*S*H” and Patton. The new grass on blanket hill cushions supine bodies of couples romancing between classes. But there is a difference. A diligent photographer works hard to focus his camera. He wants the bullet hole in the metal structure in his picture of the lovers on Blanket Hill grass, a few yards away outside Taylor Hall.

Sheridan does his best to not look back too much, but to write about what has happened since and what may be coming. He writes:

So, where are we as the media moves to do its anniversary stories

—Four students were killed, perhaps murdered.

—None of the Guardsmen was indicted.

—The government announced that it was not interested in pursuing the case against Guardsmen.

—The Portage County Grand Jury prosecutors were not interested in hearing testimony from National Guard Capt. Raymond Srp of Troop G, who had information that Guardsmen, according to a Justice Dept. summary, “were not in danger and that it was not a shooting situation.”

—Twenty-five were indicted, including Dr. Thomas Lough, KSU sociologist and a known “dissenter.”

In preparing charges against Lough and the others, the grand jury loftily noted that its finding were established “beyond any doubt” and finally go around to what was really bothering them:

We receive the impression that there are some persons connected with the university who believe and openly advocate that one has a duty rather than a right to dissent from traditionally accepted behavior and institutions of government.”

[I might have reminded the members of the Grand Jury of this: I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Wise words from our third president, Thomas Jefferson. JH]

So Lough is charged with inciting to riot. According to testimony in federal court it was done after the shooting.

Sheridan concludes with a quotation of his own:

In 1943 [Supreme Court of The United State Associate]Justice [Robert Houghwout] Jackson wrote: Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating the dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard….

On the topic of supporting buying your local politician, Roldo suggest:

COUNCIL CAPERS: When City Council’s Safety has a meeting with members of the Safety Department, [Police and Fire, JH] a good time is had by all.

Or at least it would seem that way by the look of the bill the city pays.

The taxpayers picked up a tab of $128.52 [In 2020 dollars that would be $821.29 JH] for the meeting, held usually at the Sheraton-Hilton Hotel.

The bill includes some of the following items:

—12 steaks at $60.
—A bottle of Cutty Sark for $14.75.
—A bottle of Grand Dad for $15.50. And,
—A bottle of gin for $14.

And,

INTEREST CONFLICT: In the coming Mondays you may notice the City Council meetings end earlier than usual.

The reason is not because Councilmembers are getting less talkative.

It does have something to do with Spring and the fact that all Councilmembers get four free tickets to every Cleveland Indian game courtesy of the Cleveland Indians management and Vern Stouffer.

Of course, Cleveland City Council has to pass on legislation from time to time that affects the Indians.

But one wouldn’t expect the 324 tickets Councilmembers get a year to have any influence upon them when it comes to legislation.

I love that they were able to order bottles of booze for the table. Were there cigars afterward do you suppose?

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Of late I’ve been reading, and annotating, my copy of Thomas Frank’s The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism. I see a lot of Roldo in Frank’s book, particularly in Roldo Bartimole’s trope emphasizing the importance of bottom-up versus top-down politics. At his core Roldo is a populist fighting against the anti-populists that Frank describes.

To the anti-populists—make no mistake about this, of both wings of the Pro-War Pro-Business party, Republicans and Democrats—the people are incapable of Funderstanding the depth of the problems faced by our nation. Only the experts can find a way through. Frank describes the situation this way:

When reform came from the bottom up, in other words, it was moralistic, demagogic, irrational, bigoted and futile. When reform was made by practical business-minded professionals—meaning lobbyists and experts who were comfortable in the company of lobbyists and experts from other groups—prosperity was the result. p.157-8

In his 8 March 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 17), Roldo nails one of the key tools of the anti-populists in SMOKESCREEN COMMISSION TRIES TO POLISH US, MANAGES ONLY TO TARNISH ITSELF. He ledes:

The mask is slipping fast—even among those who are supposed to pretend belief.

The Commission on Health and Social Service, between known and described as the Smokescreen Commission, was created by elites who are trying desperately to save the United Appeal hoax by giving it a new image and a new name. It hasn’t been very convincing.

A $60,000 Cleveland foundation-funded cosmetic job, the Smokescreen Commission now finds that IT needs a cosmetologist. [Emphasis, unless otherwise noted, is in original. JH]

Mayor Carl Stokes last week fired off a letter to “Deal Del”—Smokescreen chairman E. Mandell deWindt, board chairman of Eaton, Yale & Towne. (deWindt owns some $450,000 in stock in Eaton-Yale and Diamond Shamrock of which he is a director, but he’s interested in poor people.)

The letter strongly criticizes the first phony report of the Smokescreen Commission.

“…I find it lacking in several important respects,” wrote the Mayor.

The first report—The Task Force on Needs—was written primarily by Welfare Federation functionaries who have the most to lose if even moderate changes are made in the present system. The report is a couple of hundred pages of soft pap. It could be called, “Preserving the Status Quo.”

Mayor Stokes writes to deWindt:

The task force report does not contain any clear delineation of priorities among the various needs which are discussed. Nor is there any mechanism suggested for determining those priorities. This would seem to justify the continued existence of many programs which answer SOME of the needs of the community, but not necessarily the GREATEST needs.

Justifying the continued existence of programs not meeting crucial needs is part of the reason for the Commission’s existence, Mayor.

Stokes goes on: “If we are to allocate scarce financial resources to provide services for those whose needs are greatest, priorities must be set and followed in allocations of funds and resources.

The function of the Smokescreen Commission at present is to keep the 100-member advisory committee… turning out hundreds of pages of subcommittee reports and attending dozens of subcommittee meetings to bring forth garbage.

This is an example of the bureaucrat’s: If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, bury them in bullshit. Roldo continues:

Mayor Stokes recognized the hypocrisy:

A second point that was mentioned, but never clearly stated, is that of community participation. To be effective, there must be consumer representation at all levels of decision-making, from planning to actual funding. The poor and the disadvantaged must help decide whether programs are meeting their needs or not and must have some participation in the review and funding of those programs.

But the Smokescreen Commission obviously doesn’t take itself seriously. Despite the talk of participation, the Smokescreen Commission won’t let the public near its true deliberations, which are private. The few active members who are running the affair are frightened that they will have to open themselves to public hearings. It would be embarrassing.

Those-who-know-better can have those “moralistic, demagogic, irrational, bigoted and futile” views of the people getting in the way. Roldo continues:

Indeed, a meeting of the Smokescreen Commission, at which the public hearing idea was to be pushed, was for some reason cancelled. But following the cancellation, five of the 27 elite members [and two staffers, JH] privately met and decided—despite the sentiment among the community people and the words about the necessity for participation flowing from subcommittees—to rule out any public hearings. There will be no public input in this private game.

So, who got to be in the real meeting? The five at the private hearing, Roldo tells us were: deWindt; E.W. Sloan, a United Appeal sycophant and retired president of Oglebay Norton; Jim Carney, Democratic string-puller and downtown land manipulator; Bill Gin, a Welfare Federation protector and lawyer with Thompson, Hine & Flory; and Morton Mandel, another United Appeal devotee and president of Premier Industrial Corp. [The staffers were Bill Silverman and Dick Stoddart, JH]

Roldo writes that an addendum to a Needs Task Force report—written at the urging of two aides to Mayor Stokes—went missing at the next Smokescreen Commission meeting. Roldo, of course, obtained a copy. He writes:

In any case, here are the high points of [Needs subcommittee chair Victor] Gelb’s additions which go a bit further than the needs report:

There was unanimity among the committee that there needs to be a complete and thorough examination of the priorities on which voluntary and public dollars are spent; …voluntary dollars must be given to those agencies serving individuals with the greatest need, which, in most cases, would mean the inner-city poor; no program should be continued ‘just because’ it exists…; there should be more consumer participation in planning services and programming for agencies…; the report stated and the request was made that we further emphasize… that youth play a more important and integral role in determining the type and structure of programs that will be affecting them.

No wonder the addendum was tossed.

[Gelb is the first figure written about by Roldo that I have actually met. As an editor on the business magazine Aftermarket Business in the late ‘80s I would have several opportunities to speak with Gelb in his capacity as a manufacturer’s representative in the Automotive Aftermarket and as an officer for the Automotive Parts and Accessories Association. JH ]

As an example of commission members attitudes, Roldo cites the reaction of George Willis, a member of the Health committee and executive vice president of Lincoln Electric:

I have some trouble with the concept in its totality that Health is a right.’ [Presumably, Willis would have also had a problem with FDR’s Second Bill of Rights. JH] This is probably because the backlash of our general populace, through their disinterest in supporting the Welfare Rights Organization, and through their reluctance to permit tax increases, underscores the basic American thesis that the government cannot and should not, do everything—that it is through private initiative that virtually all things are deserved or earned and done most efficiently.

Roldo continues:

But just how vicious this kind of pretense problem-solving becomes can be realized by a combination of actions. For as the Smokescreen elites are presenting the community with a Health Task Force report some of the same people are quietly making just the opposite decision at University Hospitals. Unfortunately, although the words of the Health Report are meaningless, the actions of elites at University Hospital are not. University Hospitals and other private hospitals are sharply cutting back outpatient services thus rejecting the poor who need health care the most.

This shows clearly how the fraud works. [Emphasis mine, JH] The Smokescreen Commission gave the appearance of a forward step but beneath the smoke there is a running retreat from the problems of the poor. It’s a camouflage job.

Throwing, and blowing, smoke is how elites advance under cover of obfuscation.

In his 22 March 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 18), Roldo tackles, for the first time, Cleveland’s hospitals. Writing in MONEYED BOSSES OF UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS TO SLASH BUDGET, PUSH ASIDE THE POOR, he ledes:

University Hospitals likes to brag that it is the place “where science and mercy meet,” but one could quickly add, “AND WHERE MONEY TRIUMPHS.”

In January, University Hospitals quietly cut 15 percent of its outpatient- clinic budget, slicing staff in nursing, social services and housekeeping sections and transferring some administrative people.

Hospital outpatient officials are NOW in the process of planning for more severe cutbacks of 33-1/3 percent—to take place 1 July in the outpatient service. [The two cuts are cumulative, adding up to a 48-1/3 percent budget cut. JH]

Much has been written—and discussed locally as it was yesterday on WCPN’s Sound Of Ideas—about how the present COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affects minority populations. Roldo was on the story 50 years ago. He continues:

The cutbacks in outpatient service will hit, as might be expected, the lowest income people the hardest. And because of its location, blacks will be hit most.
…
A University Hospital publication in February headlined the issue under the following: Unpaid Indigent Care Causes Dollar Crisis for Hospitals. Beneath it is a black silhouette photograph of a long line of clinic patients, supposed to fill the image of indigents waiting in line to be processed.

The photo, of course, was a subtle reminder that the poor come in droves.

“Something must be done to meet the needs of the ever increasing number of indigent [Why avoid “poor” so much. JH] patients. The losses we are sustaining make it impossible for the hospital to meet these needs,” Stanly Ferguson is quoted as saying in the Archway article.

No talk about the high cost of doctor’s care or the cost of exotic machinery used by the hospital, nor the high profits of the drug industry, nor the profits of the hospital supply companies (now growing at a rate of more than 20 percent a year), especially since the entire cost can be passed on to the consumer.

No, the publicity onslaught is reserved for only the poor.

Roldo continues:

Thus, the crisis. Or is it a crisis?

The present deficit could be absorbed easily and completely without any cutbacks in service through the endowments University Hospitals already has.

The trustees have told hospital administrators that they have to cutback the outpatient service until the deficit comes within the $1.2 million income available from present endowments. If you use a moderate 6 percent income, that suggests $20 million in endowments. Endowments at University Hospitals, however, are said to be in the range of $50 million but most of the money is limited to prescribed uses by elites—and they don’t prescribe their funds for the poor.
…
Further, it’s questionable whether the deficit, as stated by University Hospitals, is real or imaginary.

Bernie Sanders could have used this in his Medicare-For-All funding argument. The funds are there—as Roldo and Bernie tell us—we just need to speak honestly about where the money goes. Roldo continues:

Whether this is true or not there is a need for a complete audit of the books if any further cuts are to be made in the vital outpatient service of the hospital.

University Hospital staff has asked for a meeting with the trustees. If the trustees are adamant in their desire to cut outpatient services to the community because of costs, a private audit of the hospital books shouldn’t be threatening.

Finally, one wonders if the clinic is credited with ‘income’ since its patients are being used in the educational process of future private doctors who are learning while they treat the clinic patients.

This is the first time we’ve done anything with hospitals and we find, as we have in every other aspect of this community’s life, that the decisions are being made by an incestuous few ‘civic leaders.’ It wasn’t surprising.

[You know, Frank’s practical business-minded professionals. JH]

Who are these civic leaders? Well, Roldo names names and then writes:

One should get the idea that it’s the same bunch running the hospitals as with every other part of the community where special benefits can be had under the guise of civic betterment.

University Hospitals advertises itself as a voluntary hospital operated as a non-profit organization and that “all income is used to operate the hospital.”

But it’s clear that the hospital trustees want the income used for only certain functions and certain people.

The squeeze to push the poor out of the private hospitals of Cleveland is on. It’s appropriate that it’s being led by University Hospitals. That’s where medical students learn to be doctors and prepare to treat those who have the money to pay.

Roldo’s, along with Frank’s and my own, solution is for the People to make the elites pay.

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Bonus No. 1: Trump’s Finale from Impeachment to Conviction.

Any one with a phone has had the experience of the annoying telemarketer. Yeah, I know, that’s redundant. All telemarketers, by definition, are annoying. In the last few years telemarketers have added a potent weapon to their arsenal: the spoofer. The electronic device allows them to put any phone number they want on your caller identification.

The spoofer, however, has been benign. Annoying all get out, but still, other than some elevated blood pressure, no one was in danger. Until now. From my home town newspaper, The Marietta Times, this morning 21 January 2021 on page A4.

Faked 911 call under investigation

A faked 911 call is still under investigation by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.

Washington County resident John Karas received several telemarketer calls Monday and “told one to go to hell or something,” said Sheriff Larry Mincks.

It wasn’t long before the Marietta Police Department 911 got a call from Karas’ number. The caller said he just killed his wife. The 911 dispatcher kept the caller on the line while the sheriff’s office handled the call.

After taking a handcuffed Karas out of the house at gunpoint, they realized Karas’ wife was uninjured.

The investigation will be difficult because the caller spoofed Karas’ number, deliberately masking their number with his.

“This was a telemarketer who had called Mr. Karas and Mr. Karas said he wasn’t interested,” Mincks said. “This was a retaliation, I think. I think wherever they were calling from, they didn’t have anything else to do.”

Shit just got real.

Roldo’s business elites (my 1 percent) are all about running government like a business and ensuring that the wrong people don’t get to suck at the public teat—that’s a perquisite for the right kind of people. Roldo goes back to public housing to detail how pushing out those not like them means more money for the insiders.

In his 8 February 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 15), Roldo, in NEGLIGENCE OF OHIO BELL’S FRED ECKLEY NETS FAILURE FOR STOKES HOUSING PROGRAM, ledes:

The Community Housing Corp., founded and fed by Cleveland Now and over-stocked with downtown elites, despite its name, has badly bungled its job of producing low income housing for Cleveland’s poor.

An accounting of the failures has been made by consultants for the Plan of Action for Tomorrow’s Housing committee [Created in September 1966 by the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation. JH]. The critical report was made for the eyes of insiders only and was not to be shared with the community, a typical method of elites doing public business privately. The document is marked “Confidential—For Discussion Purposes Only.”

[President of Ohio Bell and chairman of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association Fred] Eckley, who donates his time, gets socked for by charges of negligence, lack of any “real concern and incompetent management.”

The consultants say: “The chairman did not really take his role with CHC seriously. Whatever the reasons are, the facts appear to sustain the contention that the leadership of the chairman and board was lax.”

Clearly, Eckley put into his chairmanship what he thought it was worth. Roldo continues:

Mayor Stokes at the outset said CHC would produce 4,600 units of new and rehabilitated housing in 1969. As of 30 September 1970, the report shows only 254 units of housing created with the help of CHC. However, even in those cases other groups claim major credit for producing the same housing.
…
Before going further it might be well to give a quick assessment of the major CHC programs, as seen by the consultants after study:

Roldo goes on to hit a few of the high points of the massive failure the PATH report attributed to Eckley and his committee:

SHAKER HOUSE MOVING PROJECT—$250,000 loss;
LOANS AND GRANTS—$45,400 loss;
LANDBANKING—Lacks any overall strategy;
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE—No systematic program; and
PROJECT REHAB—In serious jeopardy and might be dropped.

So, what did the consultants find to be the CHC’s stumbling blocks? Roldo continues:

The interview of several members of the executive committee left the consultants with the question: How could it be possible that the executive committee or chairman failed to initiate action to clarify CHC’s predicament given the facts that its members including the chairman, were men of position in business, finance and government.

Roldo responded: Dear Consultants: Ever think they just didn’t give much of a damn?

The report says of the business elites on the board, they “merely let things go along until the issues were virtually out of hand.” The board, it says, “exercised very little leadership over the CHC’s operations.”

Roldo asks: Who are these board members? You can read his list of who’s who among Cleveland’s business elites in the issue.

What comes next would be hilarious if it were not so Cleveland. Roldo writes:

[The CHC staff] has a peculiar attitude toward community groups which want part of the action. Community groups are looked upon as greedy, undeserving seekers of the fast buck.

The staff describes the community groups as “malcontents chiefly because some of their representatives want to get their hands on money. Because of this the CHC staff claim that they have to be cautious in dealing with these groups.

Of course, the business elites on Eckley’s committee were every bit as interested in fast bucks as the horrible community groups.

Because the CHC has history tied directly to Mayor Stokes, Roldo provided a separate section under the head BACKGROUND to provide perspective. He writes:

The CHC was established in February, 1969, with funds collected by Mayor Stokes’ Cleveland Now program, [1.1] a program under control of the Greater Cleveland Growth Association and the Cleveland foundation gangs.

The CHC was to be a replacement for another hoax, the Cleveland Development Foundation, [1.21] another private mechanism that was supposed to be a business-backed, non-profit organization to benefit low income people needing housing. It spent most of its time aiding business schemers.

Somehow I think that, at least when it comes to Roldo, those last two words might be a tad bit redundant.

In his 22 February 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 16), Roldo goes after the Plain Dealer again, but also touches on a topic I know a little bit about: nuclear power. In, PD’S Princiotto Attacks Own Reporter To Protect CEI’s Nuclear Power Project, Roldo ledes:

Tom Vail wants a Pulitzer bad but he doesn’t want to step on sensitive toes. He has informed his executive editor William Ware that the Plain Dealer‘s efforts should be focused on stories “most likely to win” a Pulitzer Prize, the Oscar of journalism. He even advised Ware to “exercise political pressure” to get one.

But it’s unlikely that any newspaper need worry about it because every time Vail gets a reporter who confronts sacred cows, the reporter gets undercut by Vail or his editors. You don’t get Pulitzers writing puff pieces about people who run department stores.

The latest casualty is Bill McCann who covers the pollution beat. Ted Princiotto, managing editor and the man who runs the PD in his bully fashion, has been sabotaging his reporter.

Princiotto gets upset about McCann’s objectivity in his coverage of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating company’s push to build its Besse-Davis nuclear power plant whether it is safe or not. Princiotto wants the PD to treat CEI more kindly. He has always been awed by power people.

Back when Dan Moulthrop was hosting WCPN’s Sound of Ideas I called into a discussion of local nuclear power to offer my two bits. I served for four years on board the Navy’s first nuclear powered frigate and lived and worked within feet of both reactors. One man ruled the Navy’s nuclear power force and, because he was a fanatic about safety, I never had a qualm during those four years.

I don’t, however, trust the civilian nuclear power industry for a second because when push comes to shove, safety takes a back seat to profits, and I said so to the panel. One of the representatives scoffed asking, “What? You want the Government to run nuclear power?” With someone like Admiral Hyman Rickover in charge? Any sane (non-businessman) would.

Journalism isn’t all bad at the PD. Under the head Some Praise for PD Reporters, Roldo writes:

The PD deserves credit for running Tom Andrzejewski’s column of 20 February which is a clear statement of the extent of racism and its uses against a black mayor by Cleveland’s political degenerates.

Matters aren’t so generative at Cleveland schools either. Roldo, in Rotary Quality Makes Paul Briggs Big Hit With Businessmen. But Something Stinks, ledes:

Superintendent of Schools Paul Briggs runs the Cleveland schools like a corporation—a private corporation.

Information about the schools is released by public relations techniques. Briggs annually makes his ‘community’ report to his bosses at the Greater Cleveland Growth Association. This year the report was a slick movie presentation. He even must realize his verbal report, nearly the same for the past four years, was getting a bit stale.

The theme of the movie: Promises Made, Promises Kept.

[Now we know from where former President Donald John Trump might have found one of his refrains. JH]

Roldo, however, ain’t having it.

Six years ago, Briggs’ movie said, children didn’t come to school because they were “too hungry.

Yet, less than one-third of Cleveland schools have lunch programs and only 7.9 percent of the children in poverty areas get school lunches, according to a recent study quoted by the newsletter of the Public Information Center of Washington, D.C.

And while Briggs was flapping his mouth about feeding children meager cold breakfasts, he wasn’t saying a word about the continual failure to provide hot lunches.

Though the Cleveland schools got $400,000 for equipment to provide school lunches in 17 schools, only six were operational two years after the program was to start.

With his usual aplomb, Roldo lays out a few of the relevant figures that Briggs doesn’t mention in his movie.

—$120,000 to fund an eight-week program for 1,500 educationally deprived children gets spent on 600 children, only 200 of whom fit the targeted population.

—$100,000 returned to the state for equipment delivered after a program had ended.

—$79,482 was expended for equipment needed for programs after the programs had ended.

Finally, Roldo takes a moment to pen a note to a reader who took exception to his reporting on Cleveland’s public housing crisis. In Can’t Agree, he writes:

Lawrence Evert, executive director of the Businessmen’s Interracial Committee, took offense that we condemned all business elites for running away from the public housing fight.

So, Roldo sent a letter:

Thanks for your note.

I would say, however, that the passage you marked from the report seems to be a point in my favor.

In the article I said that the business elite have run for cover and the passage you indicate is a statement made on 14 July 1970. A lot has happened between that date and 11 January 1971, the date of the Point Of Viəw
article.

Where has the BIC been?

In any case, we both know the statements in annual reports, not backed by muscle, aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. That seems to be the case with your statement.

I would suggest to you that if the BIC were seriously interested in the issue of public housing that your chairman, Jack Reavis of Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis, donate the use of his law firm in the service of public housing tenants and use its vast legal expertise to pursue an attack on the ills of public housing locally and nationally.

In other words, let the resources of Jones, Day, Cockley and Reavis be used to aid public housing tenants in the manner it has been used for Jones & Laughlin to subvert the pollution law of the city of Cleveland.

Until such time, I will have to consider the BIC a phony front group for the very business elites who profit from the system that they have rigged and in which public housing tenants and most other people are the victims.

We’ll have to wait until the next installment to discover if Evert came back for more.

Bonus No. 1: But Donny drained the swamp with $2 million pardons!
See here for a bibliography of books and other materials mentioned in this series.

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Happy 1971! This was the year that the microprocessor was invented, starting what we would come to call the Digital Age. Journalism explodes with the publication of The Pentagon Papers and Disney World opens. Republic of China (Taiwan) is booted from the United Nations and The People’s Republic of China begins shipping cheap plastic crap to the U.S.

And Roldo Bartimole swings back into the saddle with his 18 January 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 13), Under the headline, BACK TO 1940 POLICIES IN PUBLIC HOUSING, Roldo ledes:

Three years ago when Carl Stokes was first elected mayor he promised to get rid of Police Chief Richard Wagner and public housing boss Ernie Bohn. He dumped both.

With the police department Wagner’s departure has meant little. But in public housing, under a new director, there has been progress in providing new housing and other changes.

Last week Ernie Bohn—long bitter about his removal—walked back into his old office. Not as a public official but as a private unofficial advisor.

The firing of Irv Kreigsfeld and the reappearance of Bohn—though the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority board promoted engineer Robert Fitzgerald to the directorship—means a return to Bohn’s 1940 policies.

Bohn can be remembered for segregated housing (predominantly white projects and only 1 percent black; three others were nearly totally black) and for a strict adherence to the unwritten rule to not build against the wishes of councilmen who object to public housing in their ward, despite the fact the practice was and is against city law.

Bohn can be remembered also for a cocktail party deal with a Case Western Reserve University official to house ineligible students (some from well-off Shaker Heights families) in public housing while eligible low income families were placed on a waiting list and living in slum housing. As might be expected, Bohn is on the CWRU faculty now.

Briefly, the firing of Kreigsfeld has promoted a rent strike by tenants, a walkout of workers, particularly blacks who felt they had equal opportunities for the first time under Kreigsfeld; and permanent walkouts by several officials attracted by Kreigsfeld’s reforms. Although the acts support the fired director, the protesters recognize too that public housing has been returned to the Neanderthals.

The firing climaxes a nearly three-year attempt to make public housing more available with new and faster methods of producing housing; to locate housing in less crowded conditions; and to give tenants some forms of representation.

Roldo gets very specific about what actions the people most affected—those living in public housing could take. He writes:

The tenants should counter-attack against the City Council, County Commission and the CMHA board for violating the law. City Council in 1949 adopted an ordinance (2139-49) prohibiting segregation in the “selection of tenants, the CONSTRUCTION, the maintenance and operation of public housing.”
…
Underlying the entire issue is the battle between the predominantly White Catholic Democratic Party and the predominantly Black District 21 Caucus [over] who will derive the economic benefits of public construction and jobs.

Public housing tenants and low income families requiring housing become pawns.

However, neutrality puts one on the side of the racists.

Yet it’s unlikely that the presently planned protests will do much to reverse the CMHA policy.

The rent strikes will be broken by the court; evictions and harassment will take care of leaders within the projects; maintenance men walkouts and heating facility destruction hurt tenants more than anyone else; and fed-up officials who leave satisfy the bigots who don’t want progress anyway.

Public housing should be made an issue that can attract a movement coalition aimed at racists, especially those in the Democratic Party.

But the present targets seem wrong. Fighting the CMHA board is to battle the lower echelon stooges.

The protesters had to go after the people writing the checks, not to them, but to those fronting the operation. Roldo continues:

Public housing is as bad as it is and as limited as it is because it’s subsidized, thus undesirable to real estate interests, from slum landlords and to bankers.

Thus the proper place for protest would seem not to be at the CMHA offices or meetings but downtown Cleveland where those who benefit from the crisis of poor people make their profits.

Further, it’s clear that almost every frontline figure fighting public housing is a Catholic politician. Therefore a proper place for protests is St. John’s Cathedral at Superior and E. 9th to call attention to the church hierarchy’s unwillingness to deal with its bigots.

From there protests could be shifted to Cleveland Trust or other downtown banks until downtown becomes a place for non-protesters to avoid.

In other words, a return to the tactics of the 1960s but a shift of the action site to downtown private targets.

Roldo concludes: “Maybe it’s time to take an issue out of the hands of the politicians.”

When the politicians are just the puppets, you have to go to the puppet masters.

In his 25 January 1971 issue of Point Of Viəw (volume 3, number 14), Roldo, in A SAMPLE OF IGNORANCE, ledes:

Case-Western Reserve University students got a sample of elite ignorance in an informal talk with some trustees of the Cleveland university.

Many students were apparently expecting leaders, not social deviants.

Marvin Bower, chairman of the board of trustees, was the best show.

Here’s an exchange between Bower and students who wanted to know why students couldn’t be trustees.

Bower: We don’t think so (that students should be trustees) because we feel that the board of trustees ought to be representative of the university as a whole but not have representatives on the board who are trying to represent constituencies, but, in principle, the board ought to represent the whole university, not simply constituencies. (Bower, of course, fills the requirements as a New York management consultant. He is a former member of the law firm of Jones, Day Cockley and Reavis.)
…
Says Bower, “Allowing students into the board meeting would inhibit Free discussion by the trustees in the interest of the university.”

This was typical of Bower’s ‘mind your own business’ language.

He didn’t mean FREE discussion, but private discussion.

In another exchange, a student asked Bower if he wouldn’t use the 36 percent of CWRU’s $80 million in endowments that are in common stocks to lobby against pollution and for auto safety.

Bower finally gave a straight answer. “No.” Adding, “because we have stock for investment to produce the greatest return for the university.” And how does one define ‘return?’ Why in dollars of course.

This one apparently shocked some students.

“I’m not saying we should sell certain stock. I’m saying you should lobby for social improvements at stockholder’s meetings.

“Never Considered It,” says Bower, “Why should we?”

At the end of the meeting, Roldo got an unexpected bonus:

Another fun elite was on hand. Fred C. Crawford, former chairman of TRW, Inc., and an honorary trustee of CWRU. He was as obnoxious as one might expect.

I asked him why he had told racial jokes aimed at Mayor Stokes and blacks.

Crawford claimed that my information came erroneously from “SOME GUY WHO OPERATES OUT OF HIS BASEMENT,” It was, he said, an example of the sad state of journalism.

To prove how wrong I was (though I told him my name he didn’t know that I was the basement enemy) he repeated his joke about the white General and a black underling. The joke didn’t even require any racial tint. He wouldn’t repeat the joke until a tape recorder on the scene was turned off.

[When I started blogging back in 2004, part of me wanted to model Have Coffee Will Write on Point Of Viəw because I thought of Roldo as the Proto-Blogger. Crawford’s quote just seals the deal. JH]

Roldo returns to censorship and the Plain Dealer in C’mon Bill Treon Roldo writes:

The Plain Dealer is censoring itself again. Or should we say that the Plain Dealer advertising department is censoring the editorial department again.

This time a completed series of articles showing that Cleveland drug chains are fleecing the public has been withheld from the public. The stories were written by former consumer reporter Doug Bloomfield who has left the PD temporarily.

When the series was completed the editorial department, in an unusual move for a newspaper, sent the whole series to the advertising department to be read by William Lostoski, advertising manager.

This rather damages the claim that advertisers don’t have any control over the editorial material going into the Plain Dealer.
…
Asked what he thought of the articles and what decision he gave the editors, Lostoski responded as a seasoned politician, “I have no comment.”

Consumer reporting—after a brief series of well-done jobs of consumer reporting—is quickly retreating to safe little stories that will hurt no one and help no one.

Tom Vail [Who lives in Hunting Valley and doesn’t want to lower his standing among the neighbors, JH] has signaled the retreat with a memo that calls for more self-censorship of both consumer reporting pollution [stories].

[As an undergraduate journalism student at Ohio University, one of my professors whom I greatly esteemed, once told me that while the wall between editorial and advertising in magazines (I was in the magazine sequence) was porous, in newspapers the same wall was “high, thick and well defended.” So much for that lesson. JH]

Finally, Roldo asks of Arnold Pinkney, president of the Cleveland School Board:

What Are You Hiding? Pinkney, one of the forces behind the 21st District Congressional Caucus’ fight with the County White Democratic Party which is called undemocratic—has a weird sense of what democracy means when it comes close to home.

Pinkney has adopted (by himself) new rules on how people might be allowed to speak at a meeting of the board of education. They might be entitled “How to Frustrate Community Groups” or “Silencing the Public.”

The rules are not only undemocratic but insulting and stupid.

Pinkney, who is an aide to Mayor Stokes, says:

The petitioner (one who merely wants to speak at a board meeting) will first inform me, in writing, what his specific concerns or those of his group are. I will then refer the matter to the appropriate committee and instruct its chairman to grant the petitioner an early hearing and prompt notification of the schedule time and date.

If the matter is not resolved to the satisfaction of the petitioner at the committee hearing, he may advise me indicating the unresolved points, and stating his reason for disagreement (sounds like either a third or fourth grade teacher). At that time, I will entertain a request for an appeal to the board at one of its regular meetings.

You must be kidding. Who the hell made you dictator, Pinkney?

I’ve never known a politician at any level who liked answering questions on the fly. The British, because, well, they’re British, take the exercise to the heights of theatre with Question Time.

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

Bonus No. 1: This morning in the oval office…
Point Of Viəw