After the opening night letdown on Friday night, a Division III school looks like the perfect opponent to get the Cleveland State Vikings back on track this season. Gary Waters' men will host Wilmington College tomorrow at 11:30 am and hope to attract the downtown lunch crowd. The game will be a tune up of sorts for a busy week that will see the Vikings host Florida A&M and Sam Houston State as part of the Cancun Challenge later this week. Things don't get easier from there as the Vikings head south to Mexico to play in the challenge against Kentucky on Tuesday and then either Stanford or Virginia the next day.

Click here for the game notes on the contest against Wilmington tomorrow.

Click here for the stats so far on the young season for the Vikings.

Wilmington (16-10 in 2008-09) at Cleveland State (0-1)
Date: Monday, November 16, 2009
Time: 11:30 a.m. EST
Site: Goodman Arena (8,500), Wolstein Center, Cleveland, Ohio
Radio: WHKW 1220 AM (Cleveland), WHKZ, 1440 AM (Warren) (Al Pawlowski)
Series: First Meeting
Promo: Business Man's Special

See what I mean? Mayor Frank Jackson wants to charge $9.25 a month, or $111 a year for garbage pickup. Hitting the little guy because he’s afraid of tapping those who paid his campaign bills.

This is GARBAGE, Mayor Jackson! The same will go a weak-kneed City Council if it, as is likely, go along with it.

Is there a council member who has any regard for the people of Cleveland?

Jackson is trying to play a game by saying that he’s following a report of experts that are as bad as he is. See Henry Gomez’s story about Jackson’s tax your garbage GARBAGE: http://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/index.ssf/2009/11/cleveland_mayor_frank_jackson_7.html

I wrote the other day how politicians don’t go to the well off or the rich for tax increase, they go to the little guy. Regressive tax upon regressive tax. This is a tax! I outlined tax after tax that slams the little guy while the wealthy enjoy low taxes. Please take a look :http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/11962

Mayor Jackson has made a mistake that I hope wakes up some people in Cleveland. People should be angry. Damned angry.

Mayor Jackson, you can’t even pick up the garbage with the high, unjust taxes paid in Cleveland. This is a new low.

WHKW, 1220 AM The Word in Cleveland will once again serve as the flagship station of the Viking Basketball Radio Network for the 2009-10 season as part of an agreement between Cleveland State and Salem Communications. The announcement was made on Friday by CSU Director of Athletics Lee Reed.

In addition, the Vikings will get additional exposure under the agreement as WHKZ, 1440 AM The Word in Warren will also broadcast the games.

"The Cleveland State athletic department is happy to continue our partnership with Salem Communications and have WHKW and WHKZ serve as our primary broadcast outlets this year for Viking basketball," Reed said. "This partnership ensures that Viking fans have a high quality, regular radio destination for CSU Basketball."

Salem Communications General Manager Mark Jaycox noted, "We are excited to be teaming up again with such a great institution and we look forward to another great season of Viking basketball on board The Word 1220 AM."

Under the agreement, every game during the 2009-10 season will be aired live on both stations and streamed live on the internet via whkwradio.com. The broadcasts will include a 30-minute pre-game show.

The economy is down and money is tight for a lot of families, and Cleveland State University understands the hardships that students are facing. In light of this, CSU has announced a new $3,000 scholarship available to incoming freshman that's renewable up to $12,000 over four years.

The new scholarship, called the Freshman Scholars Program is awarded to new full-time freshmen entering beginning in Fall 2010 with a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA and an ACT score of 23 or a combined SAT score of 1060. The last day to apply for the Freshman Scholars Program is February 1, 2010, and incoming freshman can apply online at www.engagecsu.com.

The $3,000 scholarship is renewable by maintaining a 3.0 cumulative GPA for full-time students. CSU tuition is about $8,000 per year, and this scholarship can reduce annual tuition by 36%.

Clevelanders over the years have taken over the Yankees, the Knicks, the Nets, the Rangers, Madison Square Garden. If sports, why not the book industry. Well, not quite that ambitious but Bill Gunlocke who gave Cleveland the alternative paper The Edition, has started a blog and wonders if New York City is really a Book City.

Bill, who also ran a book store in The Arcade when was The Arcade, questions whether it’s true that N. Y. C. is the Book City. Maybe it’s Cleveland, he wonders.

Anyway, Bill has always had the ability to bring maybe a quirky, but wise and different view. It is what he brought to Cleveland with The Edition and I wish he was still here and not in New York.

His love of school kids comes through. It’s a passion that keeps him looking for a new way to inspire and provoke.

Take a look at his first blog entry here. You won’t be disappointed:

http://acityreader.blogspot.com/

Ohio State University President Dr. E. Gordon Gee picked up a nice honor from Time Magazine today who named him the best college president in the nation and ran a lengthy piece on him. The entire piece can be read by clicking to Time Magazine's Website.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland was quick to congratulate Gee releasing a press release that read:

“I am so proud that Dr. Gee received this significant distinction for his incredible leadership and the national prominence he brings to the university and our state,” Strickland said. “Dr. Gee understands that for Ohio to succeed we must have the most educated, innovative workforce in the country, and that institutions of higher education and the business community partnering together are an important part of our plan to create jobs and lasting economic growth.”

I haven’t read the 300 page plus consulting report on management and efficiency of Cleveland government and I probably won’t. I'll leave it to others.I know it won’t touch the one revenue source that Cleveland should tap if it had any concern for its citizens. It is out of the question. Won’t happen.

The so-called city income tax – the city’s largest revenue source by far - is really a payroll tax. It’s a tax on your wage income. It’s a regressive tax that takes from the first dollar someone earns. It’s a tax that hits people so poor that they don’t pay federal income taxes but must pay this tax. The feds at least tax somewhat progressively though the rich still get away with tax robbery.

If we really wanted a fair tax the so-called city income tax would be progressive. In other words, the guy who makes $150 a week would pay far less proportionally than the guy who makes $150 or $500 a day, or more.

It’s an obvious source of more revenue for cities. But it’s ignored. Why? Because wealthy people decide who gets taxed and by how much.

It’s legal theft calculatedly devised by professional hired thugs. Sometimes called lawyers or legislators.

Favorite Spread o/u Underdog

DIVISION I
Ignatius 4 35 Glenville
Solon 3 ½ 35 Mayfield
Canton McKinley 1 ½ 44 GlenOak
Massillon 6 ½ 38 Twinsburg
Hilliard Davidson 11 34 Pickerington Central
Dublin Coffman 6 40 Westerville South
Middletown 7 ½ 54 Cin. Anderson
Cin. St. Xavier 3 33 Cin. Elder

DIVISION II
Ashland 5½ 45 Warren Howland
Lake Catholic 9 37 Canfield
Tol. St. Francis Pick 43 Avon Lake
Tol. Central Catholic Pick 53 Maple Hts.
Logan 14½ Col. Brookhaven
Marion-Franklin 11 Olentangy Orange
Cin. Winton Woods 21 NC Tecumseh
Cin. Turpin 1 39 Trotwood-Madison

DIVISION III
Poland Seminary 4 32 Akron Hoban
Youngstown Mooney 25½ Hubbard
Col. Watterson 18 Napoleon
Col. DeSales 22 ½ Tipp City Tippecanoe

One summer afternoon, in must have been in 1956 or ’57, as my father was totaling up the money from the day shift waitress in the tavern he owned on Scovill Avenue, he saw my eyes grow wide at the stack of bills he was counting. Growing up, I must have seen him perform this tallying ritual many times before — the difference that time being, I was entering puberty and with a growing interest in the opposite sex, I needed to dress better … thus my growing interest in money. There was this cool pair of Stetson shoes that I wanted to be the first in my school to own. “Son,” he simply said, “those folks down in Washington print way too much of this stuff for a sucker not to have a pile of it.” That was all of the economic advice he ever gave me … and it proved to be all I ever needed.

Were there failures or absence of institutional and community structure that helped make the mass murderer of Imperial Avenue get away with the killings so easily? Yes, there were.

People ask the question, why didn’t someone notice what was happening? How did this happen right under the noses of the police and the community? Where’s the “community?” What’s the matter with people?

Cleveland neighborhoods have been deprived of many things but likely most destructive has been the purposeful neglect and sometime suppression of community activism over a long period of time here. It has worked its destructive way.

You can’t have an aware, alive community that’s a repressed community.

Cleveland in the 1970s enjoyed strong community activism. There were many problems. But there was some fight in people! Neighborhoods formed their own power bases and community development corporations (CDCs) received federal and foundation funding for neighborhood improvement. People were feeling their power.

But there were flaws that eventually led to failure. It didn’t have to be.

Cleveland is a town with heavy upper institutional power. Lots of wealth. It rules. Not timidly at times.