Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 06/26/2010 - 16:53.
In my neighborhood this year, I have seen many private INDIVIDUAL investors fixing up private properties, making my community better, and I have watched landbanked government owned properties blighted and demolished, which has been worst for all. In fact, the local government has done great harm here... latest East Cleveland leadership fuckup was demolishing our historic Rozelle School. Our government "leaders" should have control over as little real estate as possible - they are incompetent.
As local leaders are not competent to plan redevelopment of my community, I prefer to see property in the hands of the free market and citizens rather than government. As such, I am glad to see reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today that "HUD ends deal allowing Cleveland to buy distressed foreclosed homes", as it has been clear to me (and realNEO readers in general, I believe) this program was an abuse by government of free markets and private property rights, without forethought of public interests.
Considering the widespread local government abuse of private property and citizen rights here, like with the Frank Giglio case, it is safe to say the last people on Earth who should control real estate in Northeast Ohio are local government officials.
Photo/map of Tremont Bike Connectivity Plan received from (ODOT) Mark Carpenter this morning. Anyone wishing to have a copy of this document, please let me know and I will gladly forward a copy.
I received this diagram from (ODOT) Mark Carpenter this morning. I'm not sure that you can make out the details. Anyone wishing to have a copy of this map e-mailed, let me know and I'll be glad to forward.
Submitted by Quest-News-Serv... on Fri, 06/25/2010 - 03:40.
"Only in Tremont would you get a turnout like this and that says a lot about this neighborhood," he said. But Commander Sulzer also told the crowd never to turn and run from an assailant as Chiplis did when shot in the back.
Submitted by Quest-News-Serv... on Fri, 06/25/2010 - 03:13.
People make their way back to the Hoyt Building at East Seventh Street and St. Clair Avenue in downtown Cleveland after an earthquake rattled buildings Wednesday. A powerful Canadian earthquake hundreds of miles away shook Ohio, with the sound of plaster cracking and buildings in Cincinnati gently swaying.
Second District Commander Sulzer played a lead role in organizing this event. Last year's program was outstanding and featured voices from the Mega Church on Scranton Rd.
This handy dandy card was mailed out to residents in Tremont.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 06/24/2010 - 02:52.
Before the Deepwater Era of today, there was the Sustainabilly Era of the past decade, when environmentalism was as easy as drinking the right beer, and green-washing was punctuated by mega-conglomerate mind-control spam promoting a clean, sexy, prosperous life for all, by all simply being beautiful energy-bimbos with ecomagination.
In the Sustainabilly Era, there was a global competition of dirty energy companies seeking to seem clean and beautiful... and to make their dirty energy offerings seem clean and beautiful. Industrial powerhouses like BP and GE barraged the world with sexy portrayals of their most "Sustainable" vision for the future - our world "Beyond Petroleum" of their "Ecomagination".
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 06/24/2010 - 00:25.
Growing up before cable TV and the Internet brought global media to Cleveland, my earliest exposure to foreign TV programming was watching Britain's 1969-74 comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus, which repeated for years at off-hours on local television, and fascinated me for its absurdity. I certainly considered those who came up with that programming and provided a home market for it equally absurd, and I have always had concerns about the sanity of British leadership and the citizens raised in that culture, as a result.
My worst fears about the Flying Circus effect have been validated since the British Petroleum Deepwater Disaster has brought crisis and shame to America and Britain, and is currently destroying our global environment... BP leadership has been Dickensian in its blackness... Pythonesque in dimwittedness... BP has done little more than throw bricks at the crisis, and offers only spam as food for thought.
Submitted by Quest-News-Serv... on Wed, 06/23/2010 - 23:24.
TORONTO (AP) – A rare earthquake, measuring magnitude-5.5, struck at the Ontario-Quebec border region of Canada on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 06/23/2010 - 22:56.
Derek Gee / Buffalo News
Just as Cleveland has our Mittal Cleveland Works steel plant poisoning area citizens, Erie, Pennsylvania, has Erie Coke poisoning the people of that community, and nearby New York. The difference between the situation in Cleveland and Erie, apparent from the following article in the Buffalo News, is that the people polluted by Erie Coke are being protected by their area environmentalists and government leaders in Pennsylvania who are trying to Keep Erie’s Environment Protected - KEEP.
In the case of Erie Coke, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection signed a consent degree with the owner, J. D. Crane, on June 17, 2010, legally binding the company to comply with laws and regulations, pay a $6 million fine, and agree to pay an estimated $15 million for a schedule of improvements at their "antiquated facility aimed at halting the release of dangerous toxins into the atmosphere
It should not have taken the trail of Dan Burns to conclude that the oversight at the Cleveland school district is insufficient. The major gap in the plans of the District is the lack of any objective and transparent review of the ways in which the management and governance of the District impact on schools, teaching, and community engagement.
Without these the case for what is spun as a transformation plan is weak. Anyone who has attended Board and other District meetings, read the documents, and tried to learn how the District makes decisions, has experienced warning sign after warning sign that the District isn’t yet ready to transform itself. We are in the midst of a more expensive and ambitious version of what we have seen before.
Years of governance and management dysfunction are poorly accounted for and decision makers have little grasp of their own contributions to the extreme disengagement of the District from the families and neighborhoods served.
If one looks at other problemed institutions in Cleveland you will find the similar patters, myths, silences, and flaws. This is certainly true in the case of the governance change made a little over ten years ago creating the Cleveland Municipal School District, a one of a kind District in the state of Ohio. We seldom examine how we govern ourselves in the sense of establishing the structures of our failed instituions. That is a mistake. When we do examine the origin of the structures we can see that scope of many of our instituional problems rest in people and actions very distant from the institutioanl performance at any given point in time.
May 23, 2010 Pelikan Response to the PD Guest Column
Given the quantity of information on corruption that we in Cleveland have been exposed to over the last two years, one would wonder if there is still more to be said on the topic. Many are drained, not even able to come to closure on what has been exposed, wanting a break from the corruption in the city story. Two items in Peter Raskinds’ column on the Port Authority suggest that some rocks have yet to be unturned in our civic renewal campaign. We need particularly to be aware of two reform myths at work in Cleveland and in the state.
"Only in Tremont would you get a turnout like this and that says a lot about this neighborhood," he said. But Commander Sulzer also told the crowd never to turn and run from an assailant as Chiplis did when shot in the back.
People make their way back to the Hoyt Building at East Seventh Street and St. Clair Avenue in downtown Cleveland after an earthquake rattled buildings Wednesday. A powerful Canadian earthquake hundreds of miles away shook Ohio, with the sound of plaster cracking and buildings in Cincinnati gently swaying. 
Supreme Court 'honest services' ruling unlikely to affect county corruption case
Detectives are investigating a possible kidnapping and rape reported to have occurred at a Tremont bar Sunday morning.
