Does Jimmy Dimora Deserve His Rights?
Plus: Strickland, A Magical Hundred-Grand and Getting Out of the Convention Biz

Does Jimmy Dimora deserve the privilege of being considered innocent until proven guilty? I don't think the Plain Dealer believes so. I can't argue with there being news coverage of the county corruption issues. However, I think the Plain Dealer has been using the mess for a circulation boost.

Big black headlines almost daily. Lots of space that give the impression of a crusade. Large photographs of public officials. It all has the quality of a campaign. However, editors don't run for office.

Yet, they are running these days -- for their lives -- and the temptation to play a juicy story big to attract and keep readers and subscribers has to be enticing. Newspapers are troubled by declining interest and declining revenues. Anything that can change that formula presents opportunities.

Fat Jimmy Dimora makes quite a target. And the PD has been using him as a piñata on the front page almost daily.

Yesterday Dimora struck back. What he had to say doesn’t absolve him of anything yet. However, it did strike a feeling in me of, hey, maybe this guy isn’t as guilty as he’s been painted.

As he said himself, “I’m not an angel, but I’m not a crook.”

Well, it may take a court to prove the latter.

Until that time, the guy is innocent under our laws.

Someone said that Dimora was being Sam “Shepparded” by the PD. That refers to the way Sam Sheppard’s guilt in the murder of his wife was railroaded by the Cleveland news media, especially the defunct Cleveland Press. The truth in the Sheppard case, whatever it was, got mangled.

I don’t think what the PD has done is the same. However, the headlines have the same smell.

It’s not a good direction for a newspaper. It’s not good for a newspaper in the long run. It can damage credibility.

I watched the video the PD put on its site of the press conference. It ran 2:59 minutes. The press conference, according to someone who timed it, ran about 33 minutes. I went to Ch. 8, WJW, to view its video. It was 12:11 seconds. It gave a better feel for what Dimora had to say.

I got a more comprehensive view of Dimora’s press conference from the television station than I did from the newspaper.

I asked the PD about its abbreviated video.

Managing editor Debra Simmons responded to the e-mail I sent Editor Susan Goldberg, who is out of town, saying “We quickly posted a short excerpt of the press conference last night. There’s more to come. We will put the full press conference on line this afternoon.”

As of 1:25, Tuesday, as this is being written, the 2:59 minute version is still up. There are more than 100 responses, most seem clearly against Dimora and with the typical mocking tone: “Boss Feed,” “Needs a psychiatrist,” “It’s a blimp.”

(In checking back at 1:45 the original video was gone and there was no replacement in its place of a longer version at that time.)

(Checking in the evening, Cleveland.com had what I believe is the entire Dimora press conference in two segements.)

Since Dimora has been dominating the front page of the PD with stories pointing to his dishonesty, I thought it would have been fair for the PD to give him his full shot. The paper did play the press conference on the front page. And it did have – likely for the first time – a respectful photo of the man. It’s easy to ridicule with huge photos, especially of an admittedly overweight man.

You can convict people more easily on the front page than you can in a courtroom.

I did get a response from Goldberg on another question I asked. I asked her in an e-mail about Dimora’s criticism of her and Brent Larkin’s lunch with Republican boss Bob Bennett and whether she had had similar sit-downs with Democratic leaders.

Here’s her response: “The criticism of me having lunch with a Republican official is beyond ridiculous. I have had lunches, breakfasts and coffees (and multiple foodless meetings) with dozens and dozens of people from across the political spectrum. I consider it part of my job. Without looking at my calendar or getting into specifics, I would guess I’ve had more meetings with Democrats than Republicans, if only because there are more elected Democratic officials than Republicans around here.”

Dimora wants us to believe that there was a conspiracy hatched out of the President George Bush administration via Karl Rove to get Democratic Party leaders before the 2008 election.

That’s something I don’t have too much trouble considering.

Can We Get Out of the Convention Business?

The latest figures show that the Cuyahoga County Commissioners quarter percent increase of the sales tax has produced $61,853,863 for the Medical Mart and Convention Center. Oh boy.

Is it too late to get out of the boondoggle? We’d still have the dough. Think of what other good it might do for our community. That’s $61.8 million sitting around.

The word continues to be that the convention business isn’t a successful place for the investments of communities. Just as we’re adding to the problem.

An article in Next American Cities, a national publication seeking solutions to improve U.S. cities, gives a balanced but “thumbs down” assessment of the rush to build new convention centers.

“At any given moment, the average American convention center is buzzing with accountants, motivational speakers, comic book collectors and other hordes of professional and enthusiasts – adding up to 12,000 events a year. As the demand for space in which to buy, sell, make deals and exchange information has boomed, formerly modest meeting halls have ballooned into space that could swallow a typical Wal-Mart whole,” writes Josh Stephens. The article is entitled “Unconventional Thinking – Why Cities Shouldn’t Buy into the Convention Center Economy.”

But here comes the rub. He goes on to write: “Since 1993 American cities have invested more than $23 billion in ever-larger boxes that now number more than 320, and since 2000 the country’s total convention space has increased by 25 percent to nearly 90 million square feet, which collectively eclipses the commercial space in all but two of America’s largest central business district.

Too much space for too little use. So why do we add to it?

“The story of convention centers is that, for all cities do to distinguish themselves, the convention industry treats cities not as places but rather as spaces – fungible, interchangeable and characterless. Even though convention centers are marketed with Platonic conception of cities (palm trees, skyscrapers, longhorns, slot machines), the convention economic is one of placelessness.

Yes, any old box will do. So why come to Cleveland? For medical products?

He writes: “Convention center do not respond to market signals quiet so rationally. With fixed footprints, they generally cannot downsize, and as wholly-owned subsidiaries of urban America, they cannot outsource. Their chief solution, then, is to expand. A 420,000-square-foot expansion of Houston’s George R. Brown Center was projected to yield nearly 600,000 room-nights in 2005, but a 2006 audit found that it was generating roughly 220,000 annual room-nights. In 2003, Washington, DC completed an $850-million expansion, as of 2007 annual convention-related hotel bookings were roughly 25 percent below projections, and the convention center’s 2007 loss was estimated at $22-million. In cities from Los Angeles to Boston to Baltimore, the story is much the same. The current economic crisis is, of course, bound to make matters worse.”

Yes, promises of gold are easy. Finding the gold, not so much.

Can we stop our train wreck? No, they’re speeding it up.

For the full story, click here.

Here's $100,000 But This Isn't Approval... Huh?

I have a hard time understanding how the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) can give $100,000 to get something on the ballot but can’t it support what it wants on the ballot.

Would you give $100,000 to something you hated?

GCP announced it would donate $100,000 to help put the reform issue that would significantly change Cuyahoga County government on the ballot.

Isn’t this just the kind of leadership we’ve been getting from our corporate leaders?

However, Joe Roman, GCP’s $445,000 a year president (2007 figure), says GCP isn’t endorsing the measure to be put to the voters. Not yet anyway. A $100,000 check doesn’t say you are for it? What does it take? A $1 million? $2 million?

The County reform measure has been lagging in financial support. Until the GCP contribution only $20,000 had been donated, according to the Plain Dealer.

The reform wants to create a single county executive instead of the three County Commissioners – not too resistant to that move – but it would create in its place an 11 member council-type legislative body, which seems too cumbersome, bureaucratic and an invitation to more patronage and cost.

The GCP backing - with money if not its official endorsement – suggests that the reform is generally a corporate move to elect some Republicans from more wealthy districts that would be created. The three commissioners are all Democrats, though Republicans have been elected county-wide.

So it’s reform with a hook. On that’s hard to swallow.

Three Sales Taxes Hit Cuyahoga Taxpayers for $162.9 Million So Far

The tax burden in Cuyahoga County keeps mounting, recession or depression notwithstanding.

I mentioned recently that the City of Cleveland paid an annual $452,724 in property taxes for the Browns Stadium. County figures show that taxpayers also contributed $54,218,411 more in taxes to help the billionaire Lerner family. All regressive taxes, naturally.

The latest figures on the sin tax – originally assessed in 1990 for Gateway – show the $54-million now collected for Browns stadium. That’s in addition to the more than $220-million collected for Gateway.

Voters when they thought they might lose the Browns (horrors!) extended the sin tax to help pay for a new football stadium.

In June, Cuyahoga County taxpayers added $1.27 million to the kitty. Since August, 2005, the sin tax has produced $54.2 million, all distributed to pay for the football stadium.

Thus far $12.6-million has come from smokers, $19.3-million from alcohol drinkers, $17.7-million from beer drinkers and $4.3-million from wine drinkers.

Smokers have also contributed $46.8 million to the Arts & Culture kitty of Cuyahoga County.

I mentioned earlier that the increased quarter-percent sales tax for the Medical Mart & Convention Center cost county taxpayers $61.8 million so far. This tax started in January 2008.

So, the depressed County taxpayers have paid for these three ventures: Some $162.9-million.

Keep giving ‘til it hurts. Oh, it already does?

Gov Strickland - A Deep Disappointment and Maybe Even a One-Term Governor

Governor Disappointment should get off his ass and start working for the people who put him in the State House.

Gov. Ted Strickland apparently feels that if he proposes a tax that everyone with even a half mind knows is necessary for Ohio he’ll get voted out of office.

That isn’t the worse thing in the world.

That’s the only reason I can come up with to explain his reluctance to stop all the nonsense in Columbus – from cutting libraries, to say nothing of people’s dire needs - to proposing slots. My God man, don’t you have any real values?

Even losing office would be a cheap price to pay for getting Ohio moving. And it’s more likely that people will recognize political courage when they see it and reward it.

I quote from Zach Schiller’s fine piece in the Plain Dealer:

“Four years ago, the Ohio General Assembly approved the biggest overhaul of Ohio’ tax system in a generation. The income tax and business taxes were slashed in overall tax cuts worth more than $2 billion a year. The idea was to spur investment and jobs. (Me: Ha). As legislators meet in Columbus to decide how to balance the state budget, it’s a good time to ask: Has reform worked?

Just look at the unemployment figures for Ohio and you know IT HAS NOT!

“Ohio should reverse course and increase taxes, based on ability to pay,” writes Schiller, research director of Policy Matters Ohio, a think tank. Schiller is a friend. Schiller’s full piece can be found here.

How tired are we getting with timid Democrats unable to show some spine when people are suffering and hurting so badly?

I see Democrats giving away financial resources to the same companies that are sending jobs overseas. Bending over backward for every developer who pops a head up.

You have to blame Ohioans too for not demanding that both Democrats and Republicans start representing their interests and not those whose only passion is life is not paying taxes. A pox on them.

But raise a tax on those with riches? Can’t do that. Well, why not?

Even Bob Taft showed more spine than this guy.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldoATroadrunner.com
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