TV8 - This is What Passes As News Today

by Roldo Bartimole

This is what passes as news at Ch. 8, Fox’s WJW-TV these days.

This was sent by a young woman living in Minneapolis to her parents here. This was not supposed to be comedy but maybe main stream TV news is picking up on Jon Stewart without even knowing it. Giving us laughs about the nonsense of the news even as the news!

Try it. Things can’t get much more ridiculous:

Watch TV news video

How Cheap Can You Get? Pretty Damned Cheap

Rich people HATE to pay taxes. They pinch pennies. The squeeze real hard.

If you don’t believe me, this information will convince you. Or nothing will.

Here are some of the richest people in Cleveland worried about paying taxes on $17 more of what they consider an unfair tax valuation of their property. Unbelievable. But so believable if you know them.

Now remember, this isn’t $17 more in taxes. It’s the property tax on $17. In other words, it’s pennies.

A “complaint against the valuation of real property” by the Tower City gang has requested of the County Board of Revision. The filing by a law firm for Tower City wants a decrease in the value of a parcel of vacant land at Tower City of $17.00.

Yes, that’s $17, not $17 million or $17 hundred or $17 thousand. Just $17 dollars.

Sam Miller and the Ratner family – owners of Tower City - want the reduction of the taxes on “commercial vacant land” now valued at $64 market value. The tax would be on 35 percent of that or a “current taxable value of $40,” the request reads.

They say that the County is valuing their property at too high a rate!

Tower City properties are split into numerous parcels on a number of levels because of where the Terminal Tower was built.

The complaint was made on March 21, 2009. No ruling has been issued.

“The requested change in value is justified for the following reasons: Recent sale(s) of comparable properties. Physical, economic, functional depreciation or obsolescence. Economic valuation based on gross or net income.” That’s what is claimed.

However, a portion of the document, according to a County official, that must be completed was left blank.

You can find the property’s records by going to the Cuyahoga County Auditor’s listings of property. The parcel number is 040-28-008. The search page can be found here: http://auditor.cuyahogacounty.us/repi/default.asp

Don’t allow anyone to tell you that little things don’t matter. They do. Some people know that and play the game to the hilt.

Sam & the Ratners. Our 2009 “Cheapskates of Cuyahoga County”.

Don’t tell them that the County’s in financial trouble. It ain’t their problem. It’s yours.

Dr. Spock and National Health Care

I’ve been stirring memories as I look through memorabilia as I near 50 years of news reporting. I came across two long interviews with Dr. Benjamin Spock from 1967.

Much of it dealt with his anti-war activity. I asked him naturally about the opposition he encountered over his anti-Vietnam positions. But I also asked him, “Did you take much abuse over your Medicare stand?”

I don’t remember the nature of his position but his response reveals even today the bitterness in the fight for health care reform.

His answer:

“Yes, I think that I angered my colleagues and friends at the medical center (University Hospitals) more about that than I did about peace. I think that they think of peace views as rather crazy. But medical, I think a lot of conservative doctors felt (it) was a direct threat to them, going to impair the whole, if not, destroy the whole basis of private practice.”

We have come some way since then but still have a long way to go.

It’s amazing how much you forget of the past. At least I do. The interviews covered 20 single-spaced pages of typewritten questions and mostly answer from Spock. He had the patience and kindness to sit through these long conversations.

Another aspect that caught my attention in scanning the pages was his bitter feelings toward President Lyndon B. Johnson. It might not seem strange since Johnson did escalate the Vietnam War. However, there was a more personal reason for Spock. He had backed Johnson’s candidacy.

“I felt betrayed and outraged when Johnson suddenly escalated in February 1965. It was a wrong policy to start with and then to help and elect a President whose campaigned on the basis that he is not going to escalate and then turns around and does escalate seems to me was outrageous,” said Spock.

I can still hear the passion in his voice.

Raised in a staunch Republican family, Spock became someone who thought for himself and was ready to pay the consequences.

A person to be emulated. Where are such citizens today?

O'Brien- Torture Okay if Called "Rough Method"

I didn’t really know until today that the Pee Dee endorsed torture.

Then today I read PD Deputy Editorial Page Editor Kevin O’Brien, the paper’s right wing bomb thrower.

“Water flowed,” he said, “up some deserving noses.”

How cavalier.

“Yes, our guys did this. They did it to our enemies. They did it to protect us. And they did it knowing full well that when word of their rough methods got out, they would be demonized.”

“Rough methods,” huh? Afraid to call it what it is, Kevin?

Be a plain spoken right-winger. Be honest at least. Call it "torture." But to “enemies,” so it’s alright.

Why the Pee Dee has such a rabid right-winger tossing us right-wing propaganda I don’t know because this is not exactly even Southern Ohio, never mind the Deep South where this stuff sells well these days.

He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.

 (:divend:)