Roldo Bartimole

Gee, you think the Plain Dealer editorial board would like to be able to take back its endorsement of John Kasich as Governor.

Shouldn’t Gov. Kasich have given one of his white-only cabinet posts to Kevin O’Brien of the PD? He'd fit so nicely.

We now have as Governor at a very dangerous economic time for Ohio - not only a light-weight thinker – but one who wants to make drastic changes with very little examination of what he is doing. He’s playing a conservative but he’s acting radical. Thoughtlessly so.

For those who want a dose of reality about what’s going on in Columbus I suggest they put on their "favorites" list a site called Plunderbund. It’s giving a blow-by-blow account of the Columbus disaster.

The site can be accessed at http://www.plunderbund.com/

Sincerely,

Roldo Bartimole

While I’m no longer writing regularly I am still thinking and reacting - even if mostly only to myself - about the events around me and our community. Urrgh!

So let me tell you a little about my thoughts at the end of this year and for 2011.

I hardly know the City of Cleveland has a mayor and a city council. It’s sort of disappeared from the scene. It’s still there isn’t it? I hope so.

Maybe that’s because most of the Plain Dealer’s attention has been devoted of late to the new Cuyahoga County chief executive and its common council, neither of which has assumed office yet. Hopefully, they won’t wreck it before it does. Making a good try, that’s for sure.

The Pee Dee apparently would like the new body to meet at its editorial conferences. That would qualify as transparency. Maybe the PD could donate offices to the county in its building where editorial staff is shrinking fast.

Many of our loyal readers have been wondering where Roldo Bartimole, the man who has been covering the goings-on of Cleveland in one form or another for nearly 40 years now, has gone. A regular contributor at The Cleveland Leader, his last post was in late July. As friends and fans of the Hall of Fame journalist, we felt obligated to respect his privacy during his time away. Now, Roldo has given us the go-ahead to fill you in on what's going on.

Roldo writes:

I've had a long-time heart problem and recently had some problems and at the same time my pacemaker's battery required replacement. So I had a pacemaker/defibrillator replaced and a procedure called an ablation done at University Hospitals that will hopefully correct some heart fluctuations I'd been experiencing. Before the surgery and procedure I decided that it might be time to stop writing. I had been doing more writing than I had expected when I started posting material and likely the only way to make this transition at this time was to stop. At this point I've been writing a long piece on my experience of 50 years of reporting and intend to work on that project.

Time to get a couple things off the chest again.

Gerry McFaul. You have to give Mark Puente credit for bringing down the former Cuyahoga County Sheriff by following up on tips.

McFaul angered some of the wrong people on his staff and they began to talk.

Often this happens but the follow-up by the news media isn’t as powerful as Puente’s has been. I don’t discount the fact that the Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg allowed the expose campaign to continue. Editors often kill or dilute important public information. (I will say that the PD needs this kind of story these days to attract newspaper readers. It might just be that the financial troubles of local newspaper might give them a previously absent backbone.)

It’s very important that reporters be allowed to pursue where there is smoke and find if there’s fire there, too. Puente did that doggedly.

However, what’s disturbing – and Puente rightly revealed this in today’s story about McFaul getting softer treatment because of his health (You have to wonder if he wasn’t doing a bit of play-acting) – is that McFaul has been a crude character for a long time and reporters and editors knew this.

Is Republican Sen. George Voinovich’s middle name Hypocrite?

It should be.

Constituents receive a scare e-mail message from Senator that starts with line in bright red: “Currently, the U. S. Debt is estimated at
And then the answer goes green and says this month: $13,274,281,889,041.”

That’s a lot of money.

Then the parsimonious – or so he claims - Sen. Voinovich gives us another red line:
“Your share of today’s public debt is: (back to green) $42,350.”

That’s a lot of money, especially if you have children.

Voinovich can scare the hell out of you.

Well, the Senator then paints himself as a man with “management experience as Mayor of Cleveland and Governor of Ohio,” as well as telling us his personal mantra to “work harder and smarter and do more with less.”

I wonder what he was thinking then when he voted for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars WITHOUT PAYING FOR THEM. Without putting a penny aside.

The cost – rising by the millions daily – is at $734.7 billion. The George Bush war, backed by Sen. Voinovich, had nothing about paying for the war. It wasn’t in the budget.

George, where are your principles?

I never met Harvey Pekar. However, I mourn his passing. I never met George Steinbrenner either though I can't say the same for him.

I do remember a telephone conversation with Pekar. He wanted me to write about something, as I remember it, which was out of the range of my local newsletter, Point of View. Harvey wasn’t please, I remember, and he showed it.

Harvey was Cleveland personified. So was Steinbrenner. If different ways naturally.

Steinbrenner was a man on the make in the 1960s. He started one of those young executive groups called Group 66. Its aim supposedly was to help the city. Mostly, they’re made up of strivers who want to grab some power. As these types do they try to ingratiate themselves with the media as you’ll see below.

In June 1973 I wrote about a poll that the Plain Dealer played big on Page one as a “Democratic poll.” It turned out the Steinbrenner, supposedly a Democrat, secretly paid for the poll. The poll said that Mayor Ralph Perk was unbeatable. Steinbrenner had built a relationship with Richard Nixon to get the U. S. Justice Department off his back at his shipping company. A Democratic bigwig said at the time that the leaked poll “looks like some of the methods used by the Committee to Re-Elect the President,” Nixon’s fated campaign group.

The cash kitty for MMPI has gone over the $100 million mark as of the end of June. MMPI will build and control the County Medical Mart and Convention Center.

The increased sales tax has now brought Cuyahoga County $100,869,497.79 in tax revenue. Almost all is committed to MMPI. The $100 million comes via a quarter percent increase in the general sales tax in Cuyahoga County. It was voted, of course, without consultation or vote of the residents. The County began collections January 2008.

Presently, the Plain Dealer, Steve Litt and MMPI are seeking to extend the tax – my reading of the PD stories on the Group Plan panel – to expand or extend the tax originally voted by the County Commission for development of the Medical Mart, a private business, and the Convention Center, under MMPI of Chicago.

The drum beating has begun. The panel is to advise on future development associated with the Med Mart. So a tax proposal will be following.

Will the lame duck County Commission do the dirty deed? Or will our new REFORM government show who runs the reform?

Cuyahoga County voters also have to worry about added taxes for parking garages to serve the convention complex and not far behind big subsidies for a new “Convention Center Sized” hotel. What spend $1 billion for a convention complex and leave it without a major hotel? That’s what the cry will be.

It has always been rare for the Plain Dealer to criticize Sen. George Voinovich. However, a PD editorial recently did chastise him obliquely for clinging to the Republican refusal to extend unemployment benefits. The legislators went home on vacation. They left hanging some 2 million jobless people desperate for help.

The PD noted editorially that the House of Representatives had passed an acceptable bill.

The Senate refused. The usual filibuster block. The editorial said, “Instead, the Senate once again landed in an ideological bog, with enough Republicans - including Ohio’s George Voinovich – insisting on using unspent money from last year’s stimulus bill to pay for the unemployment benefits to prevent a final vote.

Hardly more than a slap at the wrist.

Voinovich, however, always touchy about any criticism, responded with a letter to the editor published in yesterday’s PD. It explained that he would have voted for the Democratic measure if the Democrats would only use unspent stimulus money for the unemployment funding. It was a matter of priorities apparently.

So the millions were left hanging.
Now Voinovich considers himself a fierce deficit hawk.

That’s his basic reason to keep a couple of million out-of-work people and their families without the needed resources to live. It’s a let them eat cake attitude.

I’ve been away for a while and not motivated for a while longer. It’s a “What Does It Matter” state of mind.

Mayor Frank Jackson is still peddling his LEDs 10-year deal. This time with a competitive bid (giggle). Everyone with even some cursory reading knows it’s the kind of deal you don’t’ sign for 10 years. Too much change coming too fast. Too much advancement to be expected to make long-distance decisions. Only fools and deal-makers take the road Jackson urges. Seems only Councilman Brian Cummins is showing some real conscientiousness as his colleague generally slough off their legal duties. How do we reward this guy?

I read in the International Herald Tribune while away and I think it said enough for any reasonable person to give great pause on Jackson’s desires to move ahead with his LED program. But move he will and an obliging, subservient and cowardly City Council will bend as it always does in such situations.

The piece made clear that you don’t jump into LEDs deals. Why Jackson wants to so badly move is worrisome. We need more honesty than we are getting from the mayor and his administration.

Now didn’t we deserve what the King gave us? I mean business is business. When will we ever learn? LeBron James is a product. The product goes to the highest bidder by the “free” marketplace.

We (our community) have spent the last 25 years of time, money, resources and energy to try to make ourselves feel good by buying special experiences via sports. We’ve got kicked in the ass over and over again.

We made the gambles with regressive taxes. We’ve allowed the rich to get richer and to get the ride free. Made the ordinary guy pay.

LeBron simply rode the same gravy train.

Dick Jacobs and George and Gordon Gund walked away with piles – and I mean piles of money – tens of millions of dollars each. Dan Gilbert and Larry Dolan - when their time comes to sell - will do okay, too. The franchises are worth more today than when they bought at inflated prices. (Though the Cavs’ worth might have deflated some last night.)

Don’t cry for Gilbert.

Meanwhile our community has eroded. Sunk deeper and deeper into decline. We’ve hurt our young most. That gives us a true measure of ourselves.

Don’t cry for LeBron or Cavs fans. Cry for all those kids who are getting no education, being treated abusively and learning to give it right back to us.
Today should be a sobering day for Cleveland. But it won’t be.