Now that we have $4 a gallon gasoline upon us maybe we should look at what could have been if only…

If only our Regional Transit System had concentrated on being a system that had as its main aim the transit dependent, not to mention our environmental needs.

Some people just must have too much money.

Fred Nance of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey hasn’t submitted a bill yet to Cuyahoga County for his work on the $900 million deal for a medical mart and convention center. He’s the county’s lawyer on these matters.

I walked into the City Council hearing room in mid-2001, to find one-time Mayor Michael White’s nemesis Pat O’Malley sitting with a number of suits in a nearly empty room. O’Malley was the County Recorder at the time.

Having known O’Malley as a once progressive/aggressive Council member and foe of Mayor Michael White, it made for an amusing sight for me. I asked him pointedly what he was doing sitting there with a team of suits. I suspected nothing good.

It’s time to come out from hiding, Sherrod.

Sen. Sherrod Brown doesn’t want to make a choice in the Democratic primary race.

But it’s time for him to show some courage. Bite the bullet and give us your choice for the Democratic nominee.

A few thoughts on our morning newspaper as it struggles for relevance.

You have to give credit to Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg. She does have moxie that has often been missing in our morning newspaper.

He’s our Jackie Robinson. Do we afford to not take the chance?

Barack Obama is tough in just the way Jackie Robinson had to be tough in 1947.

He has to operate in a non-threatening way and that may make him seem weak. He has had to ignore some attacks upon him without responding in kind. Robinson, a strong competitor, had to turn the “other cheek” to insults and attacks.

The circumstances certainly were different but in 1967 Carl Stokes also had a black minister problem.

It wasn’t as explosive as presidential candidate Barack Obama’s differences with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, it was fraught with the tension of an unwanted attachment during a hotly contested and historic political campaign.

Bill Clinton said he (we) killed “Welfare as we know it,” or at least as some did think they knew it.

Welfare, as we don’t recognize it – meaning not for poor people – continues and thrives. Skimming the news in the Plain Dealer yesterday so reveals. The PD doesn’t call it welfare, however. Rather, the new welfare represents commitments to, I guess, what some would call progress.

Cigarette smokers should be burned up.

The following figures tell why smokers should be fuming. Cuyahoga County smokers have been taxed for the following reasons and amounts since 1990:

The article in the Plain Dealer this a.m. on plans to "fix" the "messy" intersection at Van Aken and Chagrin roads gives my tummy some growls.

No one doubts that the intersection could have been devised better at some point.

Some praise the public effort to keep Eaton Corp., a Fortune 500 company, in Cleveland’s downtown. They are even willing to pay a price to see it happen.

The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority will help to keep the company in Cleveland, we are told, by selling land to the Wolstein/Flats project and by helping to “finance $150 million of the Eaton project,” according to a Plain Dealer editorial praising the deal.

Possibilities for Medical Mart Mischief

What do you think MMPI will do with nearly $1 billion to spend on the Medical Mart and Convention Center?

If the past has anything to do with the future, you might be very surprised at how enterprising the Chicago developer Merchandise Mart Properties Inc. can be.

The Plain Dealer is reporting tonight on its Cleveland.com site http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2008/04/enlarge_image_pdfmost_of_a.html tonight  that a deal is in the making to further subsidize the Wolstein project in the Flats, already in line for tons of public money.

You can blame past, present (and future) state representatives for the cutbacks in city budgets. They refuse to go where the money is to find needed tax revenue.
If state law were fair at all, it would allow local communities to tax all sources of income fairly, not primarily the worker’s weekly paycheck.
Ohio doesn’t allow local governments to go after tax revenue where it is. That is to tax people who have the money. Neither do I see local politicians getting exercised by the inequality.
Often low income wage earners who don’t have to pay a penny in federal taxes still have to shell out money they need for their families to pay local income, or payroll, taxes.

Such taxes are unfair, since there are no deductions, as there are with federal taxes, and doubly unfair when you work in a different community than you live. You get taxed, usually with some rebate, in both communities.

There are big bucks in the Charity Industry. It doesn't receive the attention it deserves.

To prove how profitable the Charity Industry can be you need to look at Bill Clinton's income tax return, recently revealed.

A couple of years ago when Forest City was selling its site for a new convention center to Cuyahoga County's Facilities Commission (since disbanded), Al Ratner casually mentioned that I would have lots of fun if I were tracking all the money Forest City got in subsidies around the nation.

I thought I'd share this reflection from someone who worked Carl Stokes' first campaigns for Mayor of Cleveland. He had some of the same feelings I have had about similarities between Stokes and Presidential candidate Barack Obama.