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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In my category of Roldo Fan Mail, he writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Police on the Homefront describes the Fort Gordon ‘school:

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

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

Roldo continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that:

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

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

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

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

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

What does it all mean?

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

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

He will not venture from this level.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In response, the United Front commented:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then Roldo takes a deep breath:

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

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

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

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

Roldo concludes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

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

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

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

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

Bonus No. 2: When Buster was in charge.

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

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

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

The Frightened Men at the Plain Dealer have struck again.

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

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

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

So, what was all this about? My Lai.

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

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

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

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

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

Roldo continues:

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

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

Gagging has become policy at the PD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eszterhas writes that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reavis explained why the BICCA formed:

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

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

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

Roldo continues:

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

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

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

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

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

Roldo, writing of a pivotal BICCA meeting, concludes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, Black has a reservation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previously while Readin’ Roldo…

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

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…