Posts Tagged Public Schools
Overlooking the Obvious with Brent Larkin
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media on February 21, 2010
February 21, 2010… How pathetic can you get? Brent Larkin, Sunday, uses quotes from four City Council members to tell us that Cleveland is in serious, serious trouble.
And as a center piece of the argument he uses the city’s $350 million mistake on the lake – Browns Stadium – to highlight somehow Cleveland’s problems.
As Mike Polensek points out it has no roof. Does he think with a roof it would be filled with activity? The city now has the right to use the stadium it pays for NINE times a year. Do you see it being used? No way.
Cleveland – with Brent Larkin, who actually wanted to be PD sports editor – and The Plain Dealer, paid close attention to sports in the last two decades. To the neglect of so much. Even now the sports pages are the largest section of the paper. And typically with fewer ads than other sections.
Dumbing down the dumb is tradition at the newspaper. It excels at it.
Anything the sports moguls wanted they got and get. Didn’t mean anything that some of what they got came from the Cleveland schools. Didn’t mean anything that other needs were pushed aside.
What was important to our leaders for decades was that the entertainment via sports, rock and roll and other venues got what they wanted. They got the money. We paid the price.
We still pay.
Brent has been the go-to guy in politics and civic life at the PD. He favored every one of these moves. Without reservation. With no discrimination as to value. Expressing no reservations with how it was done. No restraint on cost. Just do it!
Now he shouldn’t complain about results, or get others to do it for him.
Cleveland is what it is not because of the form of government – a city mayor and city legislative body.
These people don’t make the big decisions. They simply ratify what the business, corporate and foundation communities want.
Rarely does the public get involved. Usually the people are simply frozen out. But sometimes a tax is just too much for them. As with County Commissioner Vince Campanella’s desire to build a domed stadium with a property tax. That was the 1980s agenda. It got clobbered near two to one by voters. That ruined Campanella, a Republican, and his desire to be governor. But the game wasn’t over for the corporate leadership. Oh, no.
The usual suckers – voters – weren’t buying a property tax. That didn’t stop the Cleveland business establishment. Find another tax they’ll swallow. It took years – with Cleveland Tomorrow shifting its sights from the Cleveland economy to building sports facilities – to bring forth Gateway. Whoop-de-do.
A sales tax on booze and cigarettes. Hell, the little people pay that. Better than a property tax in the end.
We saved our sports teams. We lost our city.
Was that a great deal or what? Suburbanites get to drive into Cleveland, park at a tax subsidized garage, walk into a tax subsidized sports stadium or arena. But don’t get to drink the water.
Changing the form of government is meaningless unless you change the character of our civic and corporate culture.
And no one is even talking about doing that.
Doing What We Don’t Need, Not Doing What We Need
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Politicians on November 1, 2009
November, 1, 2009… Stampede, stampede , stampede.
That’s The Plain Dealer’s editorial push on Issues 3 & 6, as it was on Gateway, as it was on Browns Stadium, as it was on the Medical Mart and as it is on the monopoly casino.
What do they have in common?
Build – Build – Build.
That is the Pee Dee’s desire – concrete. That’s the Establishment’s desire – concrete.
Why? Profits. A semblance of Progress.
Do you notice great improvement? Do you notice Progress?
They build what we don’t need and they deprive us of what we do need.
They build, over and over, and tell us this is what we need to make Cleveland and Northeast Ohio better. This is Progress.
But what’s the major problem in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio?
Education. Of all ages. That’s what we need.
Taking care of people. That’s what we need.
But over and over again it’s build something for the multi-millionaires and even billionaires.
Forget about the poor. Forget about the needs of ordinary people.
Build, build, build. Build and it will come. It never comes.
More retail outlets even though we have much too much retail.
Subsidize office space. Even though we have too much office space.
Expand, expand, expand, they tell us.
Even though expansion simply leads to too much unneeded growth.
We must GROW, they say. Even though we have too much of almost everything. They still want to expand.
Take care of the human problems we have, we should say.
That will come later, they say. Later never comes.
So vote NO on Issue 3, vote NO on issue 5, vote NO on issue 6.
Vote YES only on Cuyahoga Community College’s levy. But start looking closely at the operations at CCC.
We keep doing what THEY want. Yet we keep sinking deeper and deeper.
Let’s be intuitive. Let’s do the opposite of what leaders tell us to do this time. Let’s think for ourselves. About what we really need and what we really don’t need.
Let’s give them the shaft this time. They surely deserve it.