Posts Tagged MSM
Cuyahoga County Shadow Government Decides for Us
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, Politicians on March 23, 2010
March 23, 2010… Why should the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) – a cabal of corporate Cleveland – be allowed a non-profit, tax-exempt status when it is merely another corrupter of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County governments? Why should taxpayers pick up the cost for these obnoxious corporate lobbyists?
GCP is an obvious business-dominated front group that poses as a charitable, do-good organization. GCP is allowed to use tax-free dollars to lobby for the interests of Corporate Cleveland. It has the blessing of the Internal Revenue Service. Too bad.
This is not a charity. It is a corporate lobbying business. It is a detriment to the good health of the community.
Why? Because it sets priorities that favor corporate interests while playing the role of a community benefactor.
In its document claims to the IRS, GCP says in part, “The Greater Cleveland Partnership is positioned to speak with ‘one voice’ on behalf of its 17,000 members to promote the private sector’s priorities locally, and in Columbus and Washington D. C… The GCP successfully focused the business community’s resources on advancing governmental policies and actions that are favorable to economic development and long-term economic vitality…” It also takes credit for “expediting work on the Opportunity Corridor.”
This again is not a charity. It is a lobby dedicated to shifting the tax cost of government from wealth to the non-wealthy. It is anti-community. It’s a Republican outfit.
GCP also is given a privileged position by the news media. The media, particularly The Plain Dealer, portrays it as a non-partisan, do-good institution. It’s doing good alright. For its corporate friends. But not for you.
Have you ever read a critical word about GCP in the Plain Dealer? The gods forbid it. It receives favorable, though biased, coverage. Never has been different. Never will be.
What is really upsetting is that your and my tax dollars have been aiding GCP – not only by tax-free “charity” claims – but directly. You contribute directly to GCP’s corporate efforts. You didn’t know?
The City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, for example, in three years gave GCP nearly a quarter million tax dollars. Your money.
Cuyahoga County tells me that it gave $40,000 in 2008 and 2009 and will give $40,000 again this year. A tax give-away.
The City of Cleveland tells me that it gave $40,000 in 2008 and 2009 and will give another $40,000 this year. A tax give-away.
That’s $240,000 of tax money to a corporate club that engineers public agenda for self interests.
I suspect that there are other local governments that also contribute to GCP and its efforts to dominate the public agenda.
These tributes to our corporate Caesars have been going on much longer than three years.
So we are enriching those who help make the laws that take from the ordinary citizens and leave businesses alone. What a deal.
GCP represents a more corruptive influence than any two-bit politician getting his or her house enhanced in exchange for favors. The public rightly gets upset with political corruption but the GCP kind of corrupting of public officials and public activity goes without even criticism. Indeed, in the media it gets praise!
This is acceptable public corruption.
GCP – usually in conjunction with foundations – sets the agenda for our public sector. It drives what happens in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Certainly more than any politician or political party. Not a good situation.
But you see no attention from any news outlet. Off limits. Sacrosanct. No criticism allowed.
The GCP even puts together the list for capital projects that goes to the state for funding? And you thought you elected mayors and council members to do that? You should expect that these public dollars go to subsidize what corporate leaders want. See Opportunity Corridor, which is really a costly in-opportunity that doesn’t meet the greater needs of people to move around. Hundreds of millions of dollars for an unnecessary road at the same time transit-dependent people are ignored and overcharged. GCP leads the way with Opportunity Corridor.
GCP pushed the medical mart/convention center that will cost Cuyahoga County taxpayers $1 billion before it’s over.
They provide seed money for almost everything that shifts costs to ordinary taxpayers and away from corporations.
GCP no longer has to tell the IRS or the public where it gets its money. It once had to list donors. You don’t see the Plain Dealer crying for transparency here. Even though these business leaders set more expensive priorities than the politicians.
To give you an idea of how much money flows into this corporate puppet I have to go back to 1990 and a listing I compiled for my newsletter, Point of View. It is information now hidden by GCP.
Here is what GCP’s predecessor – Cleveland Tomorrow – listed as its donors. I called CT and GCP – Cleveland’s Shadow Government.
The Cleveland Tomorrow IRS report listed the following “contributions” – they were the first payments of three for some of these contributors:
Ameritrust (gone) – $501,000.
Bearings, Inc. – $167,000.
BP America (gone) – $2,338,000.
Calfee-Halter – $83,500.
Cleveland-Cliffs -$167,000.
Cleveland Foundation – $167,000.
Eaton Corp. Trust Fund – $2,000,000.
Figgie International (gone) $334,000.
First Bank Corp. – $250,000.
Forest City Enterprises – $334,000.
David Jacobs – $83,500.
Dick Jacobs – $83,000.
Jones, Day – $250,000.
Lubrizol – $334,000.
National City Bank (gone) – $501,000.
Nestles (owned Stouffer’s) – $1,002,000.
Ohio Bell Telephone – $1,000,000.
Parker-Hannifin – $666,000.
Society Corp. (now Key Bank) -$501,000.
Squire-Sanders – $83,500.
Standard Products – $107,000.
TRW, Inc. (gone) – $1,000,000.
Of course, you may remember that about this time the establishment here was gearing up to build a stadium and arena – at mostly your cost, of course. Of course.
Indeed, Cleveland Tomorrow helped buy the land upon which Progressive Field and Quicken Arena now sit. The land cost more than $20 million and was added to the cost of Gateway.
Even the Cleveland Press and the PD were listed in older documents as tithing with contributions to these outfits. The PD is likely still contributing financial, as well as propaganda-wise.
GCP has a budget of some $8 or $9 million a year.
Its payroll has some hefty salaries that make its employees much better paid than ordinary citizens.
GCP boss Joe Roman earns a salary of $353,880 plus a bonus of $28,169, plus deferred compensation of $57,143, plus non-taxable benefits of $12,049 for a total of $451,241 (All these figures are 2008, the latest available).
I’ll just give the totals for the following GCP executives:
Yvette Ittu – $216,233.
John Luteran – $214,653.
Deb Janik – $190,457.
Daniel Berry – $186,633 & $79,986 from a related organization.
Carol Caruso -$222,066.
Stephen Millard – $30,322 & $272,899 from a related organization.
Paul Federico – $183,629.
Claire Walker – $80,612 & $80,612 from a related organization.
Nice pay if you can get it. Few can.
Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, of course, does well with professional services in 2008 of $197,795. Squire-Sanders, needless to say, has been a major corrupter of government, particularly the city of Cleveland, from its activities in trying to kill Muny Light to its work at Gateway, the Browns Stadium and the Medical Mart, all major Cleveland Tomorrow and Greater Cleveland Partnership – really one and the same – efforts with taxpayer dollars.
So GCP is our Shadow Government. We don’t vote for them. But they make more important decisions than any elected officer. And they do it without public scrutiny. Indeed, with the cooperation of your daily newspaper.
It’s a hell of a way to run our public sector.
DeMarino Slams Old Bosses on Fox 8 I-Team Deceptions
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media, People on March 15, 2010
March 15, 2010… You might wonder why Mark DeMarino gives a damn about Fox News’ WJW-TV, Channel 8, his former employer. But he does. He can’t shake the idea that journalism is supposed to be about something meaningful.
In this day of cost cutbacks – some possibly necessary, many seemingly simply to cut costs – newspaper and broadcast outlets would be the target of a typical I-Team investigation. About not delivering what is promised. Bait and switch.
That’s what prompted DeMarino to fire off a blistering email to news director Sonya Thompson and other station managers.
It’s a message that shouts, “I’m through with journalism because that’s not what it is anymore.”
DeMarino – an award winning reporter/researcher who left Ch. 8 about this time last year – charged the station management with deception by tagging ordinary stories with the I-Team brand. It’s a brand he helped make valuable.
DeMarino said in an email to me that he was upset because the station “was pulling a fast one with its viewers. It has never told viewers that it’s eliminated its investigative unit, yet, station management wants to benefit from the I-Team brand by calling these general assignment type stories “I-Team” stories when, in fact, they are not.”
He cited in conversation one recent example of misuse of an I-Team report. The report last week had Lorrie Taylor trying to make an investigative piece about Yazeed Essa’s empty jail cell. (He was convicted last week of murdering his wife Rosemarie.) The item is entitled “I-Team exclusive – Inside Essa’s Jail Cell.” It’s hard to make a relevant investigation of showing a cushioned jail cell bed though Taylor made the best of the assignment.
DeMarino told Thompson, “Any news operation must be an honest broker of information, sad to say your continued labeling of general assignment stories, by either Bill Sheil or Lorrie Taylor, as I-Team is deceptive, misleading and a disservice to your viewers and sponsors.”
He notes in an email to me that money wouldn’t be a problem if management would “take a critical look at some of the huge salaries paid their anchors and the number of newsroom managers.” If television stations did examine these high salaries, “there is money to fund a legitimate I-Team unit,” wrote DeMarino.
DeMarino was a newsman for some 33 years in radio and television, most of it in Cleveland. In disgust, he took a buyout at Ch. 8 last year after working at the station for 16 years. He has served as investigative reporter for Carl Monday and Tom Merriman in addition to Sheil and Taylor.
“The city’s news business lost another dedicated newsman whose long and distinguished service – back to the 1970s – went more or less generally unobserved,” I wrote a year ago when he departed Ch. 8.
DeMarino was researcher and behind-the-scenes reporter for the I-Team, putting together the investigative guts of reports that were hosted by a team of on-air persons.
DeMarino’s passion for his job still comes through in his message to the station management.
“It’s bait and switch,” he writes of the use of the I-Team brand on regular stories. The regular news pieces are given the I-Team branding to suggest that the reports are the result of investigative reporting.
The former I-Team researcher finds this reprehensible.
“It’s a knockoff Coach purse,” DeMarino writes, borrowing the term from an investigation the team did on scam artists selling knockoffs of the brand named pocketbooks.
“The stories are threadbare, faded, and thrown together in a rush. Either invest in people and resources to resurrect the I-Team, or leave it alone,” he wrote to Thompson.
“What you are doing is cheap, lazy and cowardly,” wrote DeMarino, leaving nothing of his feelings to the imagination.
Thompson did not respond to an email request for her comment. Oddly, Ch. 8’s website doesn’t have a telephone number and in the yellow pages under television stations, Fox 8 isn’t listed, though other TV stations are.
One has to note with a bit of irony, however, that if you call the I-Team’s telephone number (432-4228) who answers? Mark DeMarino’s voice still responds, “This is the Fox 8 I-Team. Leave your name and your number… we’ll try to get right back to you.”
DeMarino shared in numerous awards, including the coveted Alfred I. DuPont/Columbia Journalism Award for broadcast excellence in 2006. It is comparable to the Pulitzer Awards in print journalism.
The DuPont award resulted from an investigation and expose of the Cleveland school system. DeMarino, in an undercover role, filmed school bus drivers sitting idly, using school buses to pick up girl friends and on personal shopping tours. It was estimated the probe resulted in some $4 million in savings for the schools.
The school bus expose also won a prestigious Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) national award “for exposing millions of dollars in waste, gross mismanagement and cover-up in the Cleveland Municipal School District.” It was a multi-part investigation that had undercover film of some 200 bus drivers at the bus station that did little more than play pool while on the payroll. At the same time, teachers were laid off by the school system.
A competitor, Tom Beres of WKYC-TV, Channel 3, said of DeMarino upon his leaving Ch. 8, “His connections, insight and institutional memory and historical background will be missed.” Beres said DeMarino was “grossly underappreciated,” a statement I couldn’t agree with more.
Too bad. But what can you expect these days from local news.