quantify this

Greater Cleveland Partnership - Partner Network -- Ed Morrison's post yesterday on BFD about Dublin, Ireland, has me thinking. Does Dublin have a beautiful network structure like this? (Click on the link, go to the GCP Network Chart, and interact with it for a while.) When assets and other things go in one end of this beast, to feed it, what then comes out, and where, and how? How do you quantify what's going on here? Who ever tells us about results, beyond the creation of a new link, a new preference, an new entity, a new appendage in the sprawling COSE/GCP network? What gets spent, and what results happen, in what time frames? How do you measure any of this? Or, do you just give up, sit back, and feel good, trusting that we and our community are in good hands?

NEO steps up, stands up, on foreclosure abuses

Foreclosures Hit a Snag for Lenders - New York Times -- Peter N. DeWolfe (of Grimm FT, LLC--sure beats the old "anonymous" tags) over at RealNEO got this into my consciousness early this morning.

This is huge news, now that Boyko has entered the fray. We stand to make history here in Northeast Ohio, first with Jim Rokakis standing up, now with Chris Boyko jamming the cogs of the machine. The tide is turning. We can all benefit. Stay closely attuned, pay attention. Reporters from NYC, Washington, Great Britain, and France have been covering this way better than our local PD.

The eye of the foreclosure maelstrom may in fact be right here--we host many of the causes, and many of the solutions. Because we host so many of the causative factors--the perps--we may get no press coverage that is critical of them. Think about it. Connect the dots. Use the Cleveland+ technique, as in things like Latourette+DC lobbyist wife+GCP+Clinic+PD advertising = Blogging Jeff and Blogging Jill on the street, or Bruce Akers+Keybank+GCP+local Republican party = the current sad state of affairs.

Having fun yet? I am. It's not so much a blame game as it is a realistic assessment of linkages, and cause and effect, the stuff Valdis Krebs charts. You can use big charts, or, for mini-drills, just use the Cleveland+ technique, a sort of shorthand to insight and understanding. I like the campaign more and more. It was inspired, perhaps even more than the perps realized.

doing the math for halloween

We had a fairly light turnout of kids here in Cleveland, near the zoo, this past Wednesday evening. We bought $38 worth of candy for the trick-or-treaters this year and gave it out at 3 pieces per kid; we still wound up with about 1/3rd of it left over. Doing the math, at 12 bags times 18 pieces per bag divided by 3 pieces per kid, times 66%, it seems we served about 46 kids and had enough candy left over for at least two days of gut-wrenching dietary supplement, including Reese's peanut butter cups, Kit-Kat, Baby Ruth, Milky Way, Butterfinger, and Snickers

Our daughter in Knoxville reports a scant 4 trick-or-treaters; the Savannah contingent, that gave out ramen last year, about 30; our UPS lady Joanne from Berea reports 17, and further notes that they were too meek, or not as raucous as they ought to be. Our kids were more polite than ever. Some asked if it was OK to pick what they really wanted, even if it was three of one kind. Others picked three and made a point of showing us they had adhered to the limit.

If we get $25 worth next year, that should do it. Then, as a contingency plan on the back end, if we run out, we can give away dollars, and shut down by 8:00 PM, before the word spreads.

mo' money, mo' money, mo' money...a public service announcement

New Expanded Homestead Exemption - Cuyahoga County Auditor -- Here's the link to Frank Russo's site, where people over 65 can go to qualify for the Homestead Exemption. This past July 2nd, the income restrictions were lifted from the exemption requirements at the state level, and now all propertyowners over 65, or disabled, can qualify for the savings on the first $25,000 of valuation, which the site says amounts to around $400 apiece. The link here says that the eligible households are "expected to grow from 220,000 to an estimated 750,000." I wonder if that's in this county alone? I wonder whether, if you multiply $400 times the remainder of 750,000-220,000 and get a result of $212,000,000 per year, whether this is an accurate depiction of a shortfall, and for whom?

Whatever the numeric interpretation, make sure you take care of those you know who might qualify. Here's the paperwork. Here's where to find a permanent parcel number. Please, try to make sure everybody maximizes this opportunity right now, because all paperwork must be in not later than October 1st.

In a separate and totally unrelated incident, two of three Cuyahoga County Commissioners, Hagan and DiMora, crowed over the fact that they had vanquished the initiative to put the issue of the sales-tax increase on the ballot and would be raising that tax by 1/4%, by a vote among three instead of 460,000, this coming October 1st.

The increase intends to garner nearly $1,000,000 per week for the next 20 years, for a total of just under a billion dollars. The resolution says it will go to the general fund. Nothing more. You may not have heard much about this from the mainstream media these past few weeks, but that's the way the resolution read, and continues to read. (We came to you as friends, to warn you...)

In another story a few Saturdays ago, Mike O' Malley spoke of the $1 billion decrease in property tax valuation in this county, which, by rough math, came to $16,000,000 per year.

And yet again, Jill Miller Zimon pointed us to the Center for Community Solutions comment that sales tax revenues, as of last April, had decreased for 25 consecutive months. I really have no idea of how much that is, and I would like to know.

And finally, in another unrelated story, we the marketing group hung out the first two of a plethora of +banners. As the story goes on to say, "The banners include one of the campaign's slogans--'We've got it all. Together.'--along with the campaign Web site--www.clevelandplus.com."

We've got it all. Together....We've got it, altogether....We've got it all together....

Do tell.

Are we having fun, yet?

the airplane and the ironing board: a fable

Gloria's asked me to frame a fable for you, something along the lines of David and Goliath, or the movie It's a Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart trumps the evil rich banker Mr. Potter, or perhaps even the story of the grasshopper and the ant, or the tortoise and the hare. It's about the airplane, and the ironing board.

The airplane buzzed regally above the town. It gazed upon the teeming masses below, at the ballpark and the fairgrounds, and knew they could not resist its sleek beauty, its shiny expensive wings, its irresistible message flouted by a trendy tail banner that told the people all it thought they ought to know, about the medicalmart. They didn't need to lift a finger; the airplane and the golden beings who hired it would take care of everything for them. Everything. From the cradle to the grave. And all they had to do was trust them, and forego the vote.

Down below, the little ironing board with the four petitions spread across it's single wing just pressed on; it let the people walk up to it, and touch it, and in a way it looked people in the eye and told them all they needed to know to make an intelligent decision for themselves. It spoke to the homely values of self-sufficiency and independence. It let people read the fine print, about the general fund, before they signed. It told them how difficult it was to get 46,000 good signatures in order to force a vote, and how easy it was not to vote, how easy it was to surrender and to sacrifice their birthright, for the promise of the shiny plane way up in the sky.

The moral of this story is most people look straight ahead when pressed, and have more sense than to be walking around gawking up at the clouds, especially when there might be pigeons present.

being aware is half the battle: two weeks, and counting

In the matter of putting the issue on the ballot so we can vote on our being sales-taxed in Cuyahoga County, as of today there are two weeks worth of days left before circulators need to get their ballots back in to their sources on August 22nd. There are currently enough petitions being circulated to bring in 126,000 signatures. Roughly one-third of that amount is needed to get the issue onto the ballot for March. Remember, the commissioners did forego the opportunity to put this on the ballot for our vote in November; this delay is squarely their choice. They think the people of Cuyahoga County will not be able to muster the signatures, yet in fact the Ohio counties of Hamilton, Lorain, and Ashtabula already have successfully risen up in the face of such arrogance.

Being aware of time available is critical in the successful accomplishment of any task or, when you're at war, any mission. The fourteen-day countdown looks like this:

9 Thursday
10 Friday
11 Saturday
12 Sunday
13
14
15
16
17 Friday
18 Saturday
19 Sunday
20
21
22 Wednesday

We're going to be at the Cuyahoga County Fair at the Berea fairgrounds this weekend. One of our supporters has paid for a booth. Check out PutItOnTheBallot.com for other places you can go to sign a petition, if you haven't already.

Talk to your neighbors; there are some really interesting dynamics at play here. This issue is uniting and galvanizing the community as nothing has before. This is some really, really good stuff, something we can all agree on. As one of our vets, a union guy, pointed out, we went to war 230 years ago over stuff like this. The people, our neighbors, are telling us what to do. They're giving us our lines. They're framing the issue for us. This is getting to be sort of fun.

PLJ articulates the points, for us, and for the other two

Medical Mart is a great idea, but the sales tax is the wrong way to pay for it - cleveland.com -- Jeff Buster over at RealNEO alerted me to this intelligent opinion-piece by Peter Lawson Jones. He certainly is the articulate one of the county-commissioner trio, and rational, too. The way he's phrasing it is a good way to begin the community dialogue. He's a uniter, not a divider. He's leading. Here's an excerpt:

Some assert that immediately raising the sales tax is the only viable Medical Mart/Convention Center funding option because "time is of the essence" and my proposal is too complex. I am not urging procrastination. Every element of my plan could be finalized by November. Is there reason to believe that, if the financing package were not in place until then, the potential developer's professed ardor for locating the complex here would lessen?

And what is so intricate about a funding package that includes reasonable private-sector support and public resources that are both available to the county and eminently equitable?

Like so many civic leaders and citizens, I sing the praises of the proposed Medical Mart/Convention Center. The crafting of a plan that most fairly finances it need not be sacrificed in our efforts to realize the project's promise. The proposed sales tax increase must be our last, not first, resort.

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.

the "skyline impact" and the economics of the Breuer Tower

Meet the Bloggers » Cuy Co Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones and Sustainability Director Joyce Burke-Jones re: Breuer Tower -- I see that our May 23rd session at Webtego about Breuer Brouhaha is posted, and I wanted to acknowledge all the fine community discussion this misstep by Jimmy DiMora and Tim Hagan has engendered.

Yesterday, I got my first glimpse of Thomas Mulready's podcast with PLJ (Peter Lawson Jones), and it's worth spending 20 minutes to see an interview done with tough questions done right; because he is a good friend to Peter and to the community, Thomas stayed on task with the issues, especially the gonzo economics, and stood in the place of many of us who are wondering why something so financially counterintuitive is going forward at all. Two of the three county commissioners are draining our collective community power by wasting our time and our energy, as well as our money. Listen to how the proposal process was compromised and manipulated from the get-go, with the consulting firms being told to address only new construction, not adaptive reuse.

George over at BFD took a unique tack on the Breuer session and broke it down into five snippets, for quick consumption. George is making it easy to do business with Meet.The.Bloggers.

Susan rallies the troops over at RealNEO. She advises us to be there early to sign in and also talks about room 501. I guess we'll just have to sort that out when we get there. Norm in the comments invites us over for lunch afterward.

Gloria over at Save Our Land reminds us to show up tomorrow for the planning commission meeting, Friday, June 1st, at 9 AM, room 514, City Hall, even though I don't see it as a topic on the draft CPC agenda. Let's hope they all pay attention to detail tomorrow and show up on time, or show up at all. Cimperman, I have observed personally, has a habit of staying away when the chips are down.

Marc over at GCBL reminds us as well, gives sage advice and agglomeration, and publishes a letter from Daryl Davis while he shows links to YouTube. The Cuyahoga County Planning Commission reports on the arrival of Davis Brody Bond, the out-of-town experts, to present their analysis at the CPC confab tomorrow. There's a lot of energy swirling around this issue--embodied energy, embedded energy, whatever you want to call it, but it's stirred up a storm.

If you can, be there. Take the time to listen to the entire MTB session, especially the comments I brought in from Bob Gaede about "the skyline impact." This is something that had hitherto been absent from the Breuer community dialogue. Also, hear architect David Ellison on Breuer and LEED standards. There's a ton of great material in the full session.

in case you missed it: rock fest dies because the 501(c)(3) crowd gets no overtime

Plain Dealer Entertainment & Pop Culture: CMJ/Rock Hall Music Fest cancelled after two-year run -- You know, it was ridiculous enough to institutionalize rock and roll in the first place by establishing a nonprofit museum to be the custodian of it. By the time you can identify it, categorize it, and put it into a museum, it's about moribund and a mere curiosity anyway, the shadow of its former self. However, all the woosies who watched rock's evolution safely from the sidelines drew salaries to highjack and display other peoples' life-work product. They got "nice clean jobs." Security. Three squares a day. Healthcare benefits, retirement plans, the chance to move outside the city. All the things, in short, that rock is not about. Now they want overtime.

As we see in this PD article, the woosies can't get overtime to continue to run the music fest, so they're bailing after a scant two years. Usually, it takes three years to ramp up an event anyway, and they're running from it to avoid being committed down the road. They also won't show the numbers. Should we wonder why?

Here's the whole thing from the PD. I think I'm getting nauseous, reading at the end of the article the fact that it wasn't about rock and roll, it wasn't about the collaboration with the clubs and the kids, it wasn't about the good of the city or the inflow of additional revenue to the region, and new NEO visitors, it was about the welfare of the omnipresent "us" of the nonprofit entity, the monster that takes on a life of its own in the nonprofit sector and devours everything, leaving little for the execution of the original mission. Emphasis and reformatting are mine.

What do we pay the rock-acolyte woosies for, anyway? Whatever it is, I think it's high time for a pay cut.

CMJ/Rock Hall Music Fest cancelled after two-year run

Posted by John Soeder April 06, 2007 10:08AM
Categories: Music
John SoederPlain Dealer Pop Music Critic

Organizers have pulled the plug on the CMJ/Rock Hall Music Fest, after a two-year run. "Overall, we felt good about the program, but . . . the resources it took for us to produce it were larger than we could bear," said Todd Mesek, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's vice president of marketing and communications.

Mesek declined to reveal the cost of mounting the festival, which was partly underwritten by sponsors.

The event put a strain on Rock Hall staffers, too.

"On top of their day jobs here, they had to run the festival," Mesek said. "They weren't getting paid extra."

The inaugural Music Fest, held over three days and four nights in June 2005 at the Rock Hall and other Cleveland venues, featured performances by 100 acts, including the Pixies and Grandmaster Flash. The festivities drew 17,800 people. DJ Peretz (aka Perry Ferrell of Jane's Addiction) and Matisyahu were among the 100-plus acts in town for the 2006 festival, which expanded to five days and nights last June. Attendance increased 7 percent, to 19,100.

Music Fest had an annual economic impact of $3 million, with half of the attendees each year coming from outside Northeast Ohio, Mesek said.
The festival was a joint venture between the Rock Hall and the CMJ (College Media Journal) Network, whose long-running CMJ Music Marathon in New York City lures upwards of 100,000 fans every fall to check out 1,000 bands.

"Although we're disappointed that [Music Fest] will not be happening in 2007, we're very proud of its success and accomplishments in '05-'06 and honored to have partnered with the Rock Hall as well as the incredible members of Cleveland's live music community," CMJ founder Bobby Haber said in an e-mail.

Clubs put up their own money to book acts during the festival.

"A small group of people had to struggle to pull it together," said Cindy Barber, co-owner of the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern, one of Music Fest's partner venues.
"We couldn't get big-name bands, because we didn't have the money to pay them," Barber said. "The only extra stuff we got was some improved marketing."
All the same, she is disappointed to see Music Fest go."It was a great idea," Barber said. "There just wasn't enough funding to pull it off."

In the past, Rock Hall and CMJ officials said they hoped to grow the festival over a period of several years.

"At the end of the day, to build it would've required taking more resources from other museum projects," Mesek said.

Instead, the Rock Hall plans to beef up free events at the museum, including community festivals and the Summer in the City concert series, Mesek said.

"We also plan to develop new programs with local clubs, because we feel promoting live music in the city helps all of us, including the Rock Hall," Mesek said.

Music Fest "was an experiment," Mesek said. "We wanted to make it happen for the good of the city. . . . Now we're trying to find a model that works for the city and for us."

The 100 Smartest Companies of 2007

The 100 Smartest Companies of 2007 -- there's an interesting methodology used in the valuations here, and it's along the lines of what we've been trying to get our heads around with this new "knowledge economy" of the Third Wave. Basically, it goes Market Value/Market Capitalization minus Financial Value/Shareholder Equity equals Knowledge Value, and this Knowledge Value, divided by the number of Employees, equals the Knowledge Value per Employee. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, realistic or whacked--what's interesting is that we're starting to talk about it.

The only name I notice here that has local ties is that of Developers Diversified Realty, at number 73/100.

You have a click-through on the eWeek article that requires registration with eWeek before you get the link to the Baseline rankings. If you have trouble, let me know and we'll see if we can do a work-around.

connecting the dots, doing simple math, just noticing, just wondering

Taxing balance Abatement reviewed: From the SunNEWS on March 15th, with my emphasis added. The SunNEWS quote is italicized:

"Cleveland's existing citywide residential property tax abatement law was renewed in 1999 and is set to expire June 15. A separate abatement law for downtown won't expire until 2010. Cleveland began offering residential tax abatement, at 100 percent for seven years, for new downtown construction in 1987.
In the decade prior, new housing construction in Cleveland was almost non-existent. In some years, fewer than 20 homes were built. After 1987, the pace quickened. It accelerated in 1991 when the use of tax abatement was expanded citywide, offering a 100 percent abatement over 15 years. The abatement applies only to structures, not land.
Since then, 11,259 residential units were built, according to a 2007 study by Cleveland State University's College of Urban Affairs. The study also showed 60 percent of people buying tax-abated housing are coming from outside Cleveland. "

The forecast for 2007 is that Cleveland will have between 10,000 and 12,000 vacant or abandoned properties, which can be accounted for nearly directly by the 11,259 tax-abated new properties. The overall Cleveland population is less now than what it was in 1991. Where is the benefit? Where exactly is the gain? What is the loss?

Nobody's doing the simple math. Nobody's talking straight talk.

New York Times wheels in its big financial gun

Crisis Looms in Market for Mortgages - New York Times -- here, the NYT has wheeled in its big gun, financial-press hit-woman Gretchen Morgenson, to level the mortgage market, perhaps to drive a panic, certainly to bang a gong and sell the news. The excerpt below is the tip of the three-page iceberg:

The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.

Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.

Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.

Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market.

a new tax, because universal coverage isn't free

Insurers slice rates on health premiums - The Boston Globe--Interesting story in the Boston GLOBE about Deval Patrick tuning up Mitt Romney's mandatory health coverage. There is no magic here; there are no miracles. From the pricing I see in the article, this is pretty much a market rate, and it feels a bit on the high side. I see no subsidy or benefit of volume pricing. I wonder if this is more of a welfare plan designed to support the Massachusetts health industry than it is universal coverage to spread risk fairly and bring about an improvement in public health.

Also, I would like to know from the journalist (Jeffrey Krasner can be reached at krasner@globe.com) the cost of opting out, in dollars, for the same hypothetical people for whom they quote the premiums. That would be balanced reporting. These paid writers need to start earning their keep and not leaving it up to the public dialogues of the blogosphere to extract the facts and frame the issues as they should be framed.

We need to start talking about truly catastrophic insurance coverage to cover the big bills, cash-only fee-for-service care with uniform price schedules for most other procedures, and public-health-clinics for maintenance and wellness programs. If we want to have a health tax, then instead of putting it off soley on the people, we can also put it off on anybody who sells things that make us fat or sick or crippled--vendors of soft drinks, stores that sell cheap plastic shoes, smoking supplies (again), fast-food emporiums, publicly traded corporations who load foodstuffs up with preservatives to prolong shelf life or stretch things out with high fructose corn syrup to maximize profits, dealers who sell raggedy used cars--in short, anybody who now profits from selling a product whose health benefits to the buyers have been reduced to increase the bottom line.

Key in distress, and here comes Cleveland to the rescue

For banks, it pays off to reinvest in the city--As you saw a few days ago, Richard Cordray began taking KeyBank to task for putting its interests ahead of those of the rest of us. Well, lo and behold, here comes Key's champion to the rescue, taking money out of the other banks and shifting it over to KeyBank.

Cleveland stripped millions of dollars in deposits from National City and Charter One banks on Tuesday, citing the lenders for not doing enough to help city residents and businesses.

I wonder how those "city-assigned" rankings were determined. From the article, it appears that a few other people are wondering that, too. I wish Sharon Dumas, the finance director for the city, were more forthcoming with details. For instance, I think bank ratings and overall financials would play a huge part in the selection of a place for our community deposits, but I don't see that mentioned anywhere. One of the criteria, having a lot of branches in the city, might be a sign of bad management and too much overhead, for instance, and I haven't noticed the rates at KeyBank on consumer loans being any more competitive than those anywhere else. Did they identify and then count in the check-cashing storefronts with relationships to KeyCorp, and assess a penalty for parasitic activity?

Also, where is the mention of foreclosure rates and amounts here? I know Key has moved aggressively to cover its own assets in our neighborhood. Is there a foreclosure offset or penalty calculated in?

Is there any talk of what interest rate the banks will pay the city? Are our government employees here, Sharon Dumas and Ken Silliman, acting in the best interest of their fellow citizens if they don't try to maximize earnings? I know of common opportunities where plain old deposit money earns between 4.5% and 5%, yet all I see here is the use of some vague "profit" estimate, where each bank makes 3.5 cents profit per hundred dollars of deposits. First of all, what does this mean? Why are we talking about what the bank makes? Shouldn't we be talking about what the city makes? Quickly, $111,000,000 times the average of say, 4.75% is $5,272,500.

The biggest banks, like those who hold Cleveland's money, made about 3.5 cents profit on every $100 of deposits in 2006, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates them.

Is there talk anywhere else of the deposit insurance, the FDIC coverage, available per account? Again, I know of a common opportunity where the FDIC coverage is $1,200,000 per registration, but has anybody looked into that, in these times when banks earnings are down and they're straining under a heavy load? Is this a time when we should be consolidating our city money in one place, or is it a time when we should be spreading it out more?

Are we doing the right things with our city money, for the right reasons, for the right people?

Oops--almost forgot. Do you think one of the litmus tests could be how many bank executives you find in the city after the sun goes down?

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?

an explanation of tax cuts

Here's something I got from cousin Tom down in Zanesville--

Sometimes politicians, journalists and others exclaim; "It's just a tax cut for the rich!" and it is just accepted to be fact, without questioning it. But what does that really mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, the following might help.

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day,ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the
arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men en; the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:

The first four men (the poorest) would still pay nothing. The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now pays $5 instead of $7 (28% savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings "I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too.
It's unfair that he got ten times more than I!" "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, PhD*
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia

*Complete vitae available online. Contrary to Internet folklore, Dr. Kamerschen is NOT the author of "Tax Cuts: A Simple Lesson in Economics." Additionally, he does NOT know who wrote it.

alternative investments and a moral imperative

For Yale’s Money Man, a Higher Calling - New York Times -- Here's a good read about a guy who revolutionized portfolio management in general by looking beyond the traditional mix of stocks and bonds, making Yale's endowment the standard against which all others are measured. The article also gives you a glimpse of the philosophy behind Yale, and an idea of why so many Yale graduates focus on quality of life issues and wind up in positions of public service. Around here, a cataloguing of Yalies who serve includes the Morrison brothers, Ed and Hunter; David Pogue; Sherrod Brown; and Oliver "Pudge" Henkel. On a national level, we have Garry Trudeau and Sir John Templeton, William F. Buckley and Bill Clinton, George Pataki, and the current president and his most recent competitor. It seems to be an interesting school, and Mr. Swenson has made it possible for everybody who qualifies to receive an education there. It's a long article, but take time to read the whole thing. Here's the section on the move to alternative investments:

Yale has every reason to want him to stay. After joining the university’s investment office when he was just 31, Mr. Swensen moved Yale’s portfolio away from a strict menu of stocks and bonds, favoring instead more diverse instruments like hedge funds, commodities like oil and timber, and private company investments.

That strategy revolutionized endowment investing, and other schools have followed suit. Mr. Swensen’s track record and his growing cachet have helped Yale attract donors who believe that their gifts to the university will be well deployed. Although his two books, “Pioneering Portfolio Management” and the more recent “Unconventional Success,” have helped raise his profile as an investment guru, he remains ambivalent about promoting himself. He notes that there are thousands of university professors who have also forgone more lucrative careers to put their skills to work in the academic world.

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.

Tim Ryan and some "loud umbrage"

OPENERS: Ryan creates stir on House floor--from the PD political blog, here's some more good stuff from Tim Ryan (MTB 08/19/2006), who has a take on things that aligns fairly closely with what I consider proper and in the best interests of all of us.

Insomniacs seeking some ZZZs watching last night's House debate over
Iraq were in for a jolt when Niles Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan got hold of the mike
at around 11:40 PM.

A Republican, identified by Ryan staffers as Indiana's Steve Buyer, took loud umbrage at several points when Ryan attacked Republicans for calling his party's distaste for the war "unpatriotic." Buyer was gavelled down several times as he attempted to object to Ryan statements such as these:

"We never called the other side unpatriotic ... We've called you incompetent. We said you're incapable. And we've said you're derelict of your oversight responsiblity. But never, Mr. Speaker, have we called anyone in this House unpatriotic." When Ryan was asked whether he'd yield the floor to a parliamentary inquiry from Buyer, he snapped "I don't yield" with belligerence reminiscent of his congressional predecessor and former mentor, Jim
Traficant.

"We've heard a lot over the last couple of days about the American
Revolution, and the Civil War and World War II," Ryan concluded. "Well, Mr. Speaker, our president today is not Washington, he is not Lincoln, and he is not Roosevelt. And so I think our Republican colleagues should take the advice of the Secretary of Defense. And that's: You go to war with the president you have, you don't go to war with the president you wish you had."

To view video of his speech, click here.