Democrats Here Front for Wealthy Interests

By Roldo Bartimole

The defeat of the monopoly gambling issue suggests strongly that people now give a look at the County Commission because it’s a governmental body out of touch with its job and its constituents.

To borrow from Keith Olbermann, the Cuyahoga County Commissioners – Jimmy, Timmy and Petey - are the WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD!

Dimora, Hagan and Lawson Jones tried to pull a fast one on voters by backing – along with a number of other politicians, including Mayor Frank Jackson and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones – a monopoly gambling gift to two of our WORST families – the Jacobses and the Miller/Ratners.

They tried to sell this piece of garbage by calling it an education measure. They went along with the business community (Greater Cleveland Partnership, i. e., Cleveland Tomorrow) to try in sucker the public.

The late John Kenneth Galbraith with my additions once said that “the deepest instinct of the affluent, whether in America, Germany or Argentina (or Cleveland), is to believe that what’s good for them is what’s good for the country (city).”

We might have expected the Plain Dealer to back these business deals (even as the paper tried to defeat a minimum wage increase). However, we shouldn’t expect Democrats to join with the affluent to sucker the public.

How low can you go?

We can say with strong certification that you know who can buy the votes of Dimora, Hagan, Jones, Jackson and Tubbs-Jones.

What a bunch of losers.

The Miller/Ratner and the Jacobses, the city’s wealthiest and greediest families always in the subsidy line, maintain strong political connections to elicit the kind of loyalty from our home Democrats.

Between the two families they have gotten hundreds of millions of dollars in public largess, from Gateway, the E. 93rd jail, the tax abatements and - zero interest loans at Halle’s, Tower City, Key Center, the Marriott hotel, the Ritz hotel - Chagrin Highlands, and who can remember all the rest. It might take a week and more than any reader would want to read to list the gifts given local Democrats to these two families.

Let’s be brief, these pols have loaded these guys with gold and they were willing to endow them with monopoly profits from slots and casinos, too.

You can compare being held up in the street to the style these politicians front for these “families” over and over again.

No one has gotten more from politicians in the last 30 to 40 years than these two scavenging families who depend upon politicians to do their dirty work.

Just as it was time to throw out the Republican bums in the state and the country, it’s time we did the same with the brand of Democrats who run Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.

They need a good thrashing.

City Council President Marty Sweeney now wants to head off a reduction of City Council by introducing his own Council cut. It would be, however, merely a salami slice of four of the 21 seats.

We can do better, particularly as the population of the city continues to decline.

There has always been the feeling – and I’ve expressed it also – that a large Council has some merit. Occasionally, as the argument goes, you’ll get one or two members who will express some progressive positions and stop the incessant kowtowing to special interests.

It’s now hard to identify a single Council member one might call anything like anti-establishment and a countervailing power against the corporate establishment.

The County, of course, was quickly in line to buy Dick Jacobs’s white elephant buildings on East 9th and Euclid. Buildings empty for years and without buyers. Just as generous with him as its members were with Gateway. (And would be for the Ratners with a new convention center if they can find a way to tax for it.)

Have a white elephant you can’t get rid of Dick?

Well, let’s call Jim, Tim and Pete. They’ve got easy access to money. How about $22 million? Sold.

Now the County wants to spend more than $100 million to tear most of the structures down and build themselves fancy digs.

Note to architects: Make sure they all have corner offices high enough to see the city, as it crumbles around them.

Isn’t it time, too, to take the politics out of redundant offices – Treasurer, Auditor, Recorder, and Engineer. These offices should be mere departments of a central bureaucracy, not the personal fiefdoms of elected politicians – all Democrats, of course.

Wouldn’t it be better to hire professionals to run these operations? Then not only might you get better operations more cheaply, but you wouldn’t have to have the I-Teams checking out who has hired each other’s sons, daughters, cousins, uncles, aunts and the friends.

Time for a sweeping out at the old County office building and we may find we don’t need a new building in a depleted downtown after all.

Jackson Doesn’t Sound Credible

The Plain Dealer, for some reason, has taken Mayor Frank Jackson’s lame excuse that he was running for office so he didn’t see that stinking deal the newspaper uncovered in the sale of land to the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA).

The stink is so bad that anyone with half a brain has to believe that corruption still hangs heavily about Cleveland City Hall.

Nate Gray may be in jail but the buddy system appears on the loose.

The PD summarized its expose in an editorial as follows:

“The trouble began last year when (George) Phillips (CMHA director) agreed to pay $150,000 per acre for the former brownfield so the agency he heads can build its new headquarters complex there. The price is far above CMHA’s own initial appraisal of $46,000 per acre.”

Some $4.7 million in government funds were spent on the land to prepare it for job-producing business. The land sits in what has been labeled as the “Forgotten Triangle.” Apparently, not too forgotten to be used in a foul deal. The land is at E. 80th and Kinsman, long depleted.

So, our leaders again offer another new public headquarters building at an outrageous price.

Poverty abounds but so does money for fancy offices for those not worthy the trust of office.

“I can say if I were paying attention, and if I were there, and I was not in an election, it would not have passed,” Jackson told the PD.

If you believe those words, I’ve got some bridges to sell you.

Jackson has always been close to CMHA. His ward has been the home to many CMHA projects. It’s hard to believe that Jackson was out of the loop. It’s not his style and not his reputation.

It will take an official investigation, as the PD has called for, to get to the bottom of this smelly deal but it’s important that it be done now, not six years from now after tens of millions of public dollars are lost or squandered.

We need some testimony under oath.

We can’t depend upon County Prosecutor Bill Mason. He is too tied up with the reigning political sect that controls what happens hereabouts.

It’s time for the feds to get involved again before this corruption spreads.

The PD also has been holding back on making a connection in this deal with the old Nate Gray corruption. Apparently, there’s fear at the PD that by publicly doing so it would open up the issue of the PD’s previous use of leaked grand jury documents.�

It’s time the PD tell the full story before this kind of corruptive activity takes full root in a new administration.

Smokers – Head For The County Border

Cigarette smokers were hit almost as hard as President Bush was in this election.

It’s almost as if smokers have become a caste to discriminate against. Maybe it’s time for smokers to get together and form a political action committee that can speak to politicians in the only way they understand, by opposing them for re-election with money and people power.

They are told don’t smoke! However, do smoke and pay more money in taxes we need.

The victory of Issue 18 helps some arts organizations. We’ll have to see how much.

For Cuyahoga County smokers, however, the cost isn’t going to be insignificant with the added regressive tax, which weighs most heavily upon people with low or average income.

With the Arts and Gateway taxes, the added cost to County purchasers of cigarettes means if you buy in Cuyahoga County you pay 34.5 cents more than across county lines. In addition, you will have to pay the sales tax on the cigarette tax.

If you pay 34.5 cents more a pack and add the regular 7.5 percent Cuyahoga County sales tax and the cost increases by 2.58 cents, or 3 cents more rounded up, for a total of a 37.5 cents a package. A 10-pack carton will cost $3.75 more with the new taxes.

At a cost of an extra $3.75 a carton, a three-carton smoker a month will pay $11.25 extra a month; a four-carton smoker would pay an extra $15.00.

If they took a trip across county lines for those purchases, they could save those dollars and likely a little more since the sales tax itself in Cuyahoga is a bit higher than other counties.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATadelphia.net (:divend:)