listening to Jimmy; remembering Wendell

Commissioner ejects reporters from meeting, lambastes newspaper - Cleveland Metro News – The Latest Breaking News, Photos and Stories from The Plain Dealer -- These younger reporters really get it. Note here that they make it easy to do business with them, easy to get the information, listen to it, share it, promote it, archive it. I love having the option to download an MP3 called "commish."

You can get a fairly good idea, from the recording, what kind of talent Jimmy has brought to the table the past 30 years; it's one good reason we're in the condition we are today. There's not a whole lot going on here, when you get it all up in the full light of day. Lots of wind, not much substance. (But he does drop a lot of clues...)

Nobody took Wendell Robinson seriously enough, the last election cycle, when we had the option to strengthen the county commissioner triad by replacing DiMora. It would have certainly improved the public dialogue while it simultaneously weakened the Democratic Party's jobs programs. Now, with the vivacious Debbie of Bay Village trying to oust the magisterial Peter Lawson Jones, we don't have the same upgrade opportunities for our community conversations, at the commissioner level.

Basically there's no conversation under the current setup--it's all one-sided, and in public, it's a loud mouth's rant that makes WTAM's Mike Trivisono look classy and refined.

my solution: I'm just not going to play when it comes to paying the sales tax

Convention Center sales tax would end in 20 years - Cleveland Metro News – The Latest Breaking News, Photos and Stories from The Plain Dealer -- be sure to click through to look at the picture (respectfully called large_mart, not lard_mart) of the commissioners--perhaps the PD won't mind if we post it here as well. Tell me, are these happy campers?

Today, I took delivery from UPS of $112.22 worth of office supplies. They were exactly what I wanted, not what OfficeMaxx or Staples had on hand for me. I paid no county sales tax. I was ecstatic. I am doing my part to control my office's own little destiny and keep money out of the hands of the nefarious JimmyTimmy combo at the same time.

Just for spite and to put these jokers on notice, I'll go buy some fall clothes down in Wooster--Wayne County--next month. Perhaps we can even take a clothes-buying trip to Philadelpia, where there is no sales tax on shoes or clothes. Then we'll think where we should go buy the next car. Should I get my computers and peripherals on line? Of course. What other big buys can I shift out of Cuyahoga County?

Eventually, the only people who will be paying the Cuyahoga County tax will be those who have no internet access and those who can't leave the county to make their big buys. These boys are killing commerce to take care of short-term, self-declared solutions, bending us over and calling it a kindness. Let's face it, when we elected them, we put our money into the wrong hands. They're not trustworthy. They have no common sense. They do not respect numbers. They're withholding information. They're treating us as though we're stupid. Why are we putting up with this?

Of course, when the overall sales county-wide fall off and sales tax revenue heads towards the basement, they can always pick another popular target to tax, like smokers, and do it in the name of the arts, or the children. Maybe we can call it Issue 18-squared.

Consider, too, that if all the big-ticket sales leave the county, the only viable retail will be the Dollar Stores. Remember this the next time you hear JimmyTimmy mouth off about the benefits of their sales tax increase. Remember next time you go to the polls. The money's in the wrong hands. Fix it. Fix it good.

innumeracy running rampant in PD editorial

Push ahead on county building - cleveland.com -- Once again, the PLAIN DEALER, from its bully pulpit as the self-appointed arbiter of community values around here, comes down square on the side of innumeracy, spending sprees, bond issues, and cultural vacuity.

The cultural part is that they don't appreciate what tearing down a Breuer will do to our regional reputation across the country and internationally, especially if they're intending to replace it with "a Madison." Is that better or worse than "a Dicky" or "a Fleischman"? I guess the jury's going to be out on that one for a while. However, I don't think that demolishing a Breuer will enhance our collective reputations. But, the mark of a strong, self-sufficient, healthy mentality is that it doesn't take what others think overly much into account when formulating plans and actions. Let's assume the regional mentality is healthy, and let's move on to the numbers.

Numbers are bandied about freely in this dialogue, and they're broad-stroke numbers that are seldom correlated to anything else, or each other. Everyone here has been remiss in doing the due diligence required when it comes to net cost to the public--back then, now, and later. Restoration and rehabilitation will make for more jobs, but you don't hear that from our unions--there are way more man-hours in the re-do. Where is the comparison? Why don't they talk about the benefit for local labor?

Where is the side-by-side for acquisition cost, tax credits, demolition costs, abatement costs, and so forth? I've been to the hearings. It's not there. It's all just speculation. There is still no concrete plan for the new building. This whole thing reeks.

If you buy a building for $22M and then demolish it, what is left? The value of the land? The value of the other building? What is the difference between wasting an asset through demolition (let's face it, you just don't "deconstruct" anything from the raw-concrete "brutalist" school) and giving it away to another entity, an entity that could use the tax credits in a mixed-use-development (MUD) format? When you add up the cost of acquiring the asset, abating the asbestos, tearing it down, and building new at a time when construction costs are escalating and all that's available is non-Cleveland steel, doesn't it make more economic sense to give it away for nothing or sell it for a nominal sum to a developer experienced with MUDs who can use or sell the tax credits to lower the net cost, give the county an economic benefit in lease abatement equal to or greater than what their original cost of the acquisition was, and manage the property properly when we finally get around to reducing the size of county government, or when we go regional and all the smart management decides they want to be in Akron? (am I just kidding?)

Anyway, there's been no creative work done with the numbers, because the current two go-go boys on the county commission, Jimmy and Timmy, have no concern for what this will cost us, our kids, or our grandkids. (Heck, our kids, half our immediate family, have already left for Tennessee and Georgia, with our encouragement.) The go-go boys have no trouble with the concept of enslavement of the population to bond payments. They have no trouble with the concept of subsidizing the Kennedy family on our backs. They have no idea of the magnitude of the debt they create. All they do is talk about "too big" and "ugly" and "unadaptable" and "obsolete."

My mom used to say something about those who live in glass houses.

Gloria Ferris on the Breuer Tower: nailing down the dialogue

Gloria Ferris begins to nail the smarmy dynamics of the Breuer Tower deal and throws some light on self-serving motives, and our recourse. What's important here is that she touches on the perilous tactical position in which the City Planning Commission finds itself.

these are the same people who bring you SB117

Wait a minute! Where'd my phone card time go? - cleveland.com -- Let's start putting two and two together for a change, around here. Here's a story of how AT&T cheats customers on their calling-card phone minutes, perfectly legally, using "the fine print." This is one of the ways they help transfer wealth out of our hands and into theirs, where they can then use it in a lobbying and advertising effort to get SB117 passed, ostensibly in the interests of increased competition which would benefit us, the consumers.

Basically, all we should know about AT&T is that they're not trustworthy, and on that basis, out of hand, we should have our legislators bounce SB117 right out of the legislative process. Make no mistake, these two issues are related; they speak to the character of a corporation that has a history of exploitation of the public and quibbling over legalisms.

Get ready to defend yourselves, if your legislators down in Columbus don't. Here's part of the PD article; the bold emphasis is mine:

AT&T sells a card good for 500 minutes of long-distance calling. But if you use it to call from Mayfield Heights to Cincinnati, your minutes will be used up three times faster than you'd expect.

The reason's in the very fine print on the back of the card.

"Minute value applies to state-to-state calls only. . . . For calls that begin and end in the same state, minutes are deducted at these rates . . ." What follows is a long list that says in-state calls are charged at the regular 60-second minute in a handful of places, including the U.S. Virgin Islands, but it's 3-for-1 in most states, including Ohio; 5-for-1 in many others, including Pennsylvania; and a blazing 8-for-1 in Missouri, New Mexico and North and South Dakota.

This time manipulation is beyond government regulation. State agencies have no jurisdiction over long-distance carriers. And the Federal Communications Commission doesn't regulate long-distance rates. AT&T says it's the FCC's fault. In June 2006, an agency ruling required AT&T to pay state access fees for in-state calls. It decided to pass those fees along by speeding up the clock.

A spokesman for the Ohio Consumers' Counsel said AT&T is the only company it knows is compressing time. But there are other kinds of hidden fees, and the Counsel's office offers fact sheets; call 1-877-742-5622 or check online at www.pickocc.org.

Sam Miller addresses county-ism

Video on Demand wkyc.com -- In the Mike Roberts MTB interview on March 29th, he suggested we talk with Sam Miller, and now, here comes Sam airing a few proposals with Tom Beres. Mike also recommended we talk to the Mark Rosentraub, and Miller mentions Rosentraub as somebody who should do a study. Perhaps we should take Roberts' advice.

they take care of the money, all right

The Columbus Dispatch - Local/State, KeyBank failed to pay state $170,000: Panel wants interest paid back, questions data-entry contract -- Our friend Anthony Fossaceca over at Blue Ohioan brought this to my attention. It's all coming around fairly quickly. Excerpts:

A Cleveland-based bank shortchanged Ohio taxpayers at least $170,000 last year. The same bank is getting $626,000 a year for work the state can do itself. By fixing both problems, Treasurer Richard Cordray says the state could save more than $1 million. ...Cordray said that when he took a closer look at the state’s "checkbook" — the main depository handled under contract by Cleveland-based Key-Bank — he found at least $170,000 in interest credit that the state should have received last year but didn’t. ...In many cases, the amount to be credited was more than the charges, but the state rarely, if ever, got the full credit, Cordray said. ... The treasurer’s office will look at previous years because KeyBank has had the contract for 14 years. Cordray also said he expects to cancel another Key-Bank deal, a data-entry reporting contract that costs $626,000 annually. ... Cordray said his staff can do the work in-house. The state already has negotiated with KeyBank to avoid $113,000 of that cost this year, he added.

When we go over to BankRate.com and look up KeyBank's financial statement, we notice that the non-interest-bearing deposits are around 21-22% of all deposits in 2005 and 2006. I wonder how they accounted for this state money? The big question, after Cordray gets done: Will the Key financial statement change drastically this year? What was the gist of that book by that treasury guy about Truth?

like a tumor

Clinic, city consider new Euclid Ave. traffic plan--Like a tumor, the Cleveland Clinic just continues to spread and to grow, now wanting to take out a chunk of Euclid Avenue itself. It's already been the urban renewal shill to take down a whole neighborhood, and now it wants to become a "campus" and sprawl across and overlay the existing grid of streets. ("A Clinic spokeswoman would not comment on specifics, but said the hospital wants to calm not only traffic but also the patients, employees and other pedestrians who now face an unfriendly swath of cars and concrete. "--how ghastly!)

I view this as the height of arrogance and a clear signal that they just have too much money. It's time for a redistribution. We want our money back.

The Clinic already has its own bus system (RTA's not good enough for its employees) to shuttle Clinic commuters who opt to drive to work from remote parking to their jobsite.

It already has constructed enclosed walkways from building to building (like those things we had for the kids' hamster habitat) so that Clinic commuters need never set foot on a Cleveland city street, yet alone be breathed upon by a native Clevelander, one of those quaint figures down on the sidewalk.

It's figurehead has the hyper-preppie name of Toby.

It just has too much money, and not enough sense not to press it's luck. It's grown fat on us, and now it wants to take yet more. Let's start saying "no" to any more incursions from the Clinic into our public spaces and our public purse, and let's start taking back our money, and our heritage. We've had our pockets picked long enough.

regulatory price creeps piling onto the new technologies

I spent some time today on my Vonage account, waiting online for my SoftPhone to be removed from our business account--no complaints, but we just didn't use it much once Skype caught our attention.

What really caught my eye as I clicked through the invoices of the past year and a half was the steady creep of charges ancillary to the basic bill of $49.99; I assume most of them are caused by government, regulation, and lobbyists. Enlighten me, any of you, if I'm being unfair. But even more to the point, lighten my load. Here are the details of the 482% creep:

Sep 18, 2005:

• FET Tax $1.50
• Regulatory Recovery Fee $1.50
• Total added charges: $3.00

Jan 18, 2007:

• Regulatory Recovery Fee $2.97
• Emergency 911 Cost Recovery $2.97
• Sales Tax $4.95
• Federal Universal Service Fee $3.56
• Total added charges: $14.45

government racketeers

Illinois Is Putting Lottery on Block for Quick Payoff - New York Times--This is the second time the government has sold out the citizens--the first time is when they installed the legalized numbers racket in the first place. Now, they want to sell the racket they've supposedly legitimized, and they want to sell it to private investors.

First, they claim they can't get by without running a racket, then, they claim they need to sell it just to get by.

We need to cut them all loose. Notice in the article how they use the politically correct term "gaming," trying to put lipstick on the pig.

The state of Illinois yesterday took the first steps in selling its state lottery system, hoping to attract as much as $10 billion from investors who, in return, would own a monopoly that could turn out to be the biggest jackpot yet.
The sale, which may occur as early as the spring, would not be the first privatization of public property — both Chicago and Indiana have recently earned billions of dollars by signing long-term leases with private companies to run toll roads. But the proposed lottery sale is almost certain be one of the largest privatizations of a state-run program, and it raises concerns that states, some of them critically short of cash, are selling valuable assets that could otherwise provide consistent streams of revenue.

Under the proposed sale, Illinois would receive a multibillion-dollar one-time payment, and the lottery’s new owners would receive all revenue and profit for 75 years.

Indiana is also considering selling its lottery, and bids are due later this month. That sale is expected to raise more than $1 billion upfront and annual payments of $200 million. Midway Airport in Chicago, toll roads in Pennsylvania and the New Jersey Turnpike are all potentially on the block.