Cleveland, Ohio, medical mart may have to fend off another competitor based in Nashville, Tennessee: Central Planning tries to outrun the Capitalists

This whole medmart drill is getting to be delicious. I added the “Ohio” to the headline to make sure we didn’t get confused with Cleveland, Tennessee, or any of the other US cities called “Cleveland” which, as we shrink and they grow, we rapidly approach in size and mission-criticality. The drill thus far: First, our local lightweights introduce their friends as the major players and beneficiaries, and tell us we should be grateful that they’d even deign to look in our direction; then, they confiscate public dollars for their friends and for the local medical community by imposing a tax increase without putting it to a vote; then, they bog down as everybody sees the dollars in motion and tries to pile onto the FREE STUFF wagon.

That 1991 Oldenburg FREE Stamp down by the city hall takes on new levels of meaning for me every day. It is indeed a work of art, and I am beginning to become aware.

Entrepreneurs with capitalist leanings in New York and Nashville eventually notice the feeding frenzy around the central planning pork barrel and decide to fund what’s basically a good idea quickly and privately, thus doing an end-around on a particularly vulgar fray and display of greed. The Nashville people decide to use CNL for financing; Kennedy’s partner Vornado still has not stepped up and offered financing, being content to extort the local tax base until the game ends, one way or the other. Why hasn’t Kennedy offered to execute in a capitalistic way? Perhaps because he knows he’s frolicking on the North Coast of the Welfare-Queen State, with the lightweights?

I’d say it’s time to give the unvoted tax increase to the RTA for free public transit to match our free public education, add the kicker of beginning the MedicalMarijuanaMerchandiseMart (4M?) right now, on a street corner, out of a suitcase, and get private financing for the mart to hold the rest of the medical merchandising displays, just like the big boys.

If you want to be the first on your block, you gotta hustle.

And let’s get over these self-esteem issues. We are intrinsically wealthy in Cleveland, Ohio. We have a built heritage that is beyond compare, despite efforts of the Jackson administration and the banksters to demolish it. Our basic infrastructure is pretty darned good, too. We have a natural heritage that includes fresh water, a temperate climate, varied terrain, lots of wind, and the vestiges of forests of trees. Let’s not buy into the idea that we’re pathetic or needy, because we’re not; we’ve got everything we need right here, right now.

This city is not so ugly it has to tie a porkchop around its neck to get the dogs to play with it. Welcome to Cleveland, Chris. Now either put up some capital, or go home.

Cleveland medical mart may have to fend off another competitor based in Nashville, Tennessee - Metro - cleveland.com

eaters speak: commodity farmers are welfare queens

Weed It and Reap - New York Times -- The politics of food are becoming more apparent, thank goodness, as we begin to question how subsidies affect the public health and ask why we pay so much to enable being porky and diabetic. This op-ed piece provides a very useful perspective on what we subsidize, and how it costs us in so many other ways as well. Our MTB talk with Phil Nabors of The Mustard Seed Market touched on this last fall, and we've talked with Maurice Small and Niki Gilotta since, about what it takes to be healthy and sensible about food.

The op-ed contributor, Michael Pollan, is a very good writer who skewers with wit and garnishes with wisdom. As the NYT briefly points out, Michael Pollan, a contributing writer at The Times Magazine and a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and the forthcoming “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” Here are some samples, but read the whole piece:

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico. . . .

. . . . But as important as these programs are, they are just programs — mere fleas on the elephant in the room. The name of that elephant is the commodity title, the all-important subsidy section of the bill. It dictates the rules of the entire food system. As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged.

The explanation for this is straightforward. We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket. We would not need all these conservation programs if the commodity title, by paying farmers by the bushel, didn’t encourage them to maximize production with agrochemicals and plant their farms with just one crop fence row to fence row.

And the government would not need to pay feedlots to clean up the water or upgrade their manure pits if subsidized grain didn’t make rearing animals on feedlots more economical than keeping them on farms. Why does the farm bill pay feedlots to install waste treatment systems rather than simply pay ranchers to keep their animals on grass, where the soil would be only too happy to treat their waste at no cost?

However many worthwhile programs get tacked onto the farm bill to buy off its critics, they won’t bring meaningful reform to the American food system until the subsidies are addressed — until the underlying rules of the food game are rewritten. This is a conversation that the Old Guard on the agriculture committees simply does not want to have, at least not with us.

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.