The real problem with the high spending from a special fund by Cleveland CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett wasn’t totally about what she extravagantly spent. More important was where she got the dough. Although distasteful, the fancy dinners and trips to London and Hawaii were peanuts in comparison with the cost incurred by Cleveland schoolchildren by Byrd Bennett’s co-opting by Cleveland’s Corporate Club. She’s being pampered (fed money to entertain herself and others) by the Cleveland Foundation, Gund Foundation and Cleveland Tomorrow (so discredited that it recently changed its name to Greater Cleveland Partnership). They give her dough to do this fancy stuff so that it wouldn’t come from public funds, thus likely not be revealed in a school system now run essentially as a private club for its hierarchy, including its mayoral-named school board.
Byrd Bennett, the $300,000 wonder, complains she wasn't cavorting on the taxpayers' dime. Actually, worse - the money she’s taking came from those who siphon off gobs of taxpayer’s money – particularly from Cleveland schools - every chance they get to pocket it. Tax abatements, exemptions and reductions on property taxes are their game. The spending became public because of statements in a document of State Auditor Betty Montgomery. Pumped up TV news outlets had their own orgy with the revelations that startled Byrd Bennett, not accustomed to being treated as a mere mortal. What does this funding by private sources mean? It means that she becomes indebted to their leaders. Who are their leaders? The people who run the town and the people hired to do their bidding. This control of the public agenda by these experts in manipulation and subtle propaganda is old stuff, though. Walter Lippmann, in one of his treatise on public decision making, divided decision making into two segments: the “responsible men” – the Corporates - who make the decisions – and the “bewildered herd” - the rest of us who have to live with the verdicts of our betters.
So, when you think of the 600 or so teachers and 300 others ready to be laid off, when you think of the school children who won’t have proper text books, and when you think of the kids who won’t have sports and extra curricular activities, think Cleveland Foundation, Gund Foundation and Cleveland Tomorrow. Why? Because the schools should have asked for a levy last year. Why didn’t they? Because the people who run the town, i.e., the people of the institutions mentioned above, intent upon getting Cleveland and Cuyahoga County to buy them a new Convention Center.
Everything else on this ill city’s community agenda be damned. In the end, nothing happened except the schools falling more in debt – now reportedly at $100 million. Nice going, Joe Roman. And guess what? The person who should have been most vigorously saying, “Hey, the kids should come first. We need a levy. That’s the priority." That person – Barbara Byrd Bennett - was silent. Do we wonder why? Because she’s indebted to the powers that be and they care very little about the schoolchildren of Cleveland in the total scheme of things. She became part of the Corporate Club. The enticements are captivating. We already know that because these same people and institutions helped tax exempt (that means never pay any taxes) Jacobs Field, Gund (not the foundation, the family) Arena, Browns stadium, tax abate and tax increment finance numerous other projects, all to the detriment of the Cleveland schools.
Now Mayor Jane Campbell comes up with the idea of adding to the income tax, which is really a payroll tax; a tax that is highly regressive and weighing heavily upon working people. People who often don’t even earn enough to pay federal tax have to pay city income tax, and it hurts. And who does this strategy save – our disastrous Republican Gov. Bob Taft and the GOP’s depraved state legislature. The Republicans thumb-nose the toothless Ohio Supreme Court on the proper funding of the state’s schools to the detriment of all of us.
If Cleveland passes an added “income” tax for the schools, it’s likely to lose some business and it’s likely that suburban communities also will increase their “income” taxes for schools to match Cleveland at some point, too. The school income tax could also add to resistance and bad feelings toward any Regionalization plan by suburban citizens who feel they pay for their schools and shouldn’t have to pay for Cleveland’s school, too. What’s needed is real tax reform that will ensure schools and state universities proper resources on the basis of fair taxation. That means those who have to pay a fair share and those who don’t have to aren’t unduly burdened, as they are now and would be more so under Campbell’s solution.
I also find it amusing that the Plain Dealer, in this case and so often, goes to spinner David Abbott (or oily Sam Miller) for comment. In this case, the sycophantic Abbott, new head of the Gund Foundation, told the PD that Byrd Bennett’s foundation-funded amusement kitty would be more appropriate than public money, which he called “inappropriate.” What the foundations fund (and some of it is good) they control. They should not have their tentacles into public officials. Abbott has become a favorite go-to guy for the “right” answers to community solutions, according to the Plain Dealer. The paper runs to him for comment and then pawns it off as community opinion. You’d think that Abbott and Miller were the only people in town these days with valid views on Cleveland’s problems. Actually, Publisher Alex Machaskee and Editor Doug Clifton are too lazy to monitor his own paper and doesn’t want public discussion. Instead, the PD remains the propaganda tool of the powerful. Brent Larkin recently spanked Mayor Campbell again and proved that the PD suffers amnesia convenient to its changing desires. Larkin pushed possible mayoral candidates, as do the PD editorials and columns, even resurrecting former Mayor Michael White. No doubt, the newspaper has destroyed its archives about White’s last couple of years when it found him politically rancid. However, Larkin says we might like a return of the White of his previous six years. That’s when White carried water for Sam Miller and the rest of the Corporate Gang, and when the PD found his behavior, though he was the same rat he was in his final years, acceptable and admirable.
FINAL SHOT – Will somebody inform me if he or she can prove that something Sen. George Voinovich did, as county official, as mayor, as governor or in the Senate, helped ordinary people. I would really like to know. What I see particularly in the last 20 or so years is a former 12-year mayor whose city is in the most derelict shape, an Ohio that as an 8-year Governor now threatens Mississippi in its ruin, and a nation that swirls in debt and war. Once again, however, the Pee Dee sees only a humble, effective public servant in Voinovich, who seems to worry most about Serbians, not Clevelanders, and certainly not the men and women fighting and dying in his President’s blundering in Iraq.
Voinovich gave out 20-year loans to his friends when he was Mayor of Cleveland. Not much of that money has yet been paid back to the city. He charged the kind of interest rate we all would like on our home mortgages: Zero. Not a cent. Moreover, he gave too many of these same friends tax abatements for 20 years and at 100 percent. And I wish Democrat Eric Fingerhut good luck in his campaign against Voinovich. However, he must know he’s not just running against the corporate darling and well-financed Voinovich, but the Plain Dealer, the monopoly paper in the largest populated area of the state. It’s hard, even if you try to read that inconsistent rag, to know there’s a U.S. Senate race in Ohio; they're too busy on special sections (for advertisers)that's even worse than the tripe broadcasted on TV news.
by Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole Roldo@Adelphia.net
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