You may have noticed in the Plain Dealer this morning that the City of Cleveland will refinance $65 million in bonds for Browns Stadium. You also likely noticed that the interest rate will be going up. Taxpayers get ready.

Because of the poor fiscal state of the city, Moody’s rating service lowered the rating it gives the city. That means that the city will be paying more interest on all its borrowings. It has borrowed heavily to build the Browns Stadium for its nine or ten games a year. But worry not; Randy Lerner will not have to pay a penny more. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County taxpayers, via the sin tax, will pay.

You may not have noticed that Forbes magazine ranked the people richest in the world. Listed down the line were three recognizable names – all Lerners, all worth $1 billion. That includes Randy, owner of the Browns.

Randy Lerner won’t be paying any of the interest on the $65 million in bonds. The taxpayers of Cleveland will pay that. A gift to the Lerner family. They surely need it in these tough times.

I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Cheap. Just send along a big check. We’ll tell you how helpful it was some time in the future.

Mayor Frank Jackson and City Council are ready to give $1.1 million to Nehst Studios to help finance three movies the company expects to make in just over a year, according to a piece by Jay Miller of Crain’s Cleveland Business. It’s a loan that will allow Nehst to arrange $11 million in financing.

(PLEASE, CITY OFFICIALS, SAVE THIS $1.1 MILLION AND SEND SOMEONE OVER TO THE CASINO WHEN IT’S BUILT. BET IT ON SOMETHING. MAKES BETTER BUSINESS SENSE.)

I wonder who at City Hall has the expertise to invest more than a million bucks on some Hollywood (made in Cleveland) movies. Oh, hell, details, details.

The film, Miller writes, will also benefit from $7 million in Ohio tax credits.

Hey, let’s find some more goodies for these guys. I’m sure that Cuyahoga County will chip in with some Arts and Culture money.

Miller doesn’t cite a source of the city funds. They were voted out of the Council’s economic development committee. I suspect it comes from UDAG repayments. These are subsidies given, usually at no interest and for up to 20 years before they are repaid, by the city via federal funds. When repaid they go back to the city.

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich is being singled out to change his vote on President Barack Obama’s health reform measure. President Obama himself pitched to Kucinich, telling him a form of single-payer option – Kucinich’s desire – is in the reform bill.

Kucinich was a no vote on the measure that passed the House. He has been pressing for an ideal single-payer measure.

Kucinich has the reputation of being a politician with strong beliefs. He has also been a rather selfish politician who thinks of his standing when making his decisions.

His intransigence not only endangers health reform – weakened as it is – but damages the Obama administration and possibly Democrats in general for the coming election.

The delayed health reform battle has set back President Obama’s ability to deal with the jobs and other issues. Republicans have denied Obama a single vote in the U. S. Senate in an attempt to fatally damage his presidency.

Rep. Bernie Sanders told the Huffington Post that he had talked to Kucinich, albeit “a while back,” about his provision that gives states the ability to provide a single-payer option using federal funds to do so.

The Plain Dealer reported Sunday about the troubled downtown commercial properties. Empty and emptying buildings. It's a shame.

“Turmoil in commercial real estate,” says the article by Michelle Jarboe here: http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2010/03/commercial_real_estates_challe.html

Yet the Plain Dealer – with business and political leaders - has been pushing for more and more subsidies to build new. That’s just one of the major reasons there are so many empty buildings. We are helping to create excess.

You can’t build new when you can’t even keep the old relevant.

At the same time retail and commercial properties go into foreclosure Cleveland political leaders are using hefty subsidies to produce more retail and commercial. Why?

You can’t have everything you want. Isn’t that what we teach children?

Why then isn’t that good advice for developers.

As business declines downtown the answer we seem to get is to open new property for development. As buildings are emptying, we are providing very heavy – in the multi-tens of millions of dollars – to the Wolstein project on the East Bank of the Flats.

The Port Authority wants to open land on the lakefront to the same kind of development. Now there’s a push to get rid of Burke Lakefront Airport and open it for development.

The quarter percent sales tax for the medical mart has now cost County taxpayers $87 million. MMPI, Tim Hagan and his Kennedy friends thank you all. Keep it coming, says Tim.

This is to fulfill the agenda of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. The corrupters of our civic life mentioned in my post below. The takers in our community life.

Since January 2008 through February 2010 County taxpayers have paid via the County Commissioners voted sales tax increase $87,131,339.38 for the med mart & convention center project.

That’s $87 million in slightly over two years. How it rolls in!

That is $87 million that could not be spent on food, gasoline, restaurants, toys, theater tickets or even cigarettes. In other words, this is $87 million worth of anti-stimulus money for Cuyahoga County businesses. It’s all take, no give.

That wasn’t the end of our contributions, however.

We have also contributed $63 million for the Browns. Is it in any way worth it? That’s more income really for Randy Lerner and family. Stimulus for the billionaires. And, of course, for the putrid football team.

We’ve been paying sales “sin” taxes on alcohol and cigarette products for the Browns Stadium (used maybe 9 or 10 times a year) since August 2005. It simply picked up from Gateway’s taxes. But you did vote for it.

The Cleveland Corporate Corrupters had a big meeting yesterday. They’re already deciding how to spend tens of millions of dollars we don’t have.

It’s an act of piracy seldom defined by the mass media. The media simply play it as “that’s the way things are done” apparently.

No other voices need be raised. The PD, our major source of information, doesn’t have the imagination to even prompt dissent or an alternative view. It’s not in the mass media’s DNA.

One of the greatest needs in Cleveland is a new Public Square, according to these masters of the county’s universe. These people set our civic agenda for their selfish private needs. Never expect less.

The headline in the Plain Dealer says, “Business leaders see $100 million in new income.” So let’s grab it guys,” should have been the subtitle.

These plutocrats already have it spent. On things THEY decide WE need.

These same people – corporate leaders – have been setting the agenda in Cleveland forever. I’m familiar with what they have done since the mid 1960s. It’s always been shameful. And selfish. And largely mistaken. Just look at where we are.

Finally, someone talks some sense about the duties of new Cuyahoga County Commissioners under the County reform – candidate Clark Broida. The task of the county government is services, not economic development, he says.

How about that, someone interested in the real tasks of government.

Here’s what Broida said to Henry Gomez of the Plain Dealer:

“Almost everyone says economic development. It drives me nuts. I just don’t think it’s the County’s overall role to create jobs – it’s to provide services. Our job is to provide an environment where the people have a better opportunity to achieve.”

Problem is that you have some greedy people looking out for their and their friends’ interests with the County taxes in mind.

Here’s Gomez’s piece.

Broida is right on the money as I see it. Government should be about doing its tasks and private business should provide for itself.

However, the Cuyahoga County transition team says otherwise. The transition team talks about cutting county expenditures 15 percent. That would “save” some $50 million to be used, the team urges, for economic development. That’s every year! That’s a honey pot that the sharpies could not resist.

The departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers was a blow to the people of Brooklyn, N.Y. but the arrival of a Ratner might be more devastating to Brooklyn citizens.

Here’s why:

Judge Grants New York State Right to Steal Homes By Eminent Domain for Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards Boondoggle

Outstanding Legal Issues Still Plague Atlantic Yards

Brooklyn, New York—A Brooklyn Supreme Court judge today, in an 80-page ruling, granted the Empire State Development Corporation's petition to take title ownership of the private properties—homes and businesses—in the footprint of developer Bruce Ratner's $5 billion Atlantic Yards boondoggle. The project consists of a proposed $1 billion money-losing arena and purportedly 15 skyscrapers though there are no renderings or models of anything other than the arena.

The property owners and tenants fighting for their rights will be considering all of their legal options in light of today's ruling.

All you need is one crazy Republican to shut down the government these days. And they do it.

Sen. Jim Bunning is doing the job, denying the unemployed compensation in a Republican induced deep recession. And now he has caused payments to doctors for Medicare payments to be cut drastically.

Happy Days are Gone Again, sing the Republicans.

Isn’t this just what we needed to put us into a Depression.

Think of the irony of it. The Gund Foundation is giving the Cleveland schools $2.5 million of dollars, according to a Page one story today in the Plain Dealer. Isn’t it ironic - or at amusing - or a dime on a dollar - that the Gund family took MANY millions FROM the city’s schools.

The Gunds were big property tax evaders.

Yes, it is a good move for the Gund Foundation to give $2.5 million with a promise of more. We should applaud for it. But let’s not get teary eyed.

It is so much as how the world works.

The rich get richer and they bequeath tax-free pennies from those they took.

The Gunds - George and Gordon - of course, once owned the Cleveland Cavaliers. Our sales (sin) taxes built the arena for them. They took us for plenty of dough.

They also benefited from an arena free of property taxes – millions of dollars each year. Most of it, ironically, from the schools. Cleveland schools that is. A peak at how millions are lost:

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/11689

The Gunds bought the Cavs from Ted Stepien before the 1983-83 season for some $20 million. The brothers sold the team for $375 million in 2005. Nice profit. After, of course, we provided them with a new arena. And parking. And a couple of free loges. Nice deal if you can get it. And if you have the dough you can.