Cuyahoga County has paid MMPI another $1,240,799 in addition to the monthly fees of $333,333.33, according to figures from the County Auditor’s department. (Update below).

I find the way MMPI bills Cuyahoga County for its monthly “fee” an example of bad management taken to extreme. The billings tell the County nothing of what MMPI does for its healthy fee.

I talked with MMPI’s Mark Falanga after a three hour Council briefing to ask a simple question. Did MMPI expect to build a private medical mart on public land at no cost?

I guess I’m just stupid. I don’t get it. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wants to tax garbage to raise $13 million a year. Then he wants to tax non-profits to raise $5 million a year.

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.

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.

I haven’t read the 300 page plus consulting report on management and efficiency of Cleveland government and I probably won’t. I 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.

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.

The reason we don’t know why the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority dumped its chief executive Adam Wasserman is because the real leader of the board – John Carney – believes it’s none of your business.

Ran into an old friend this morning at University Hospital where we older people are likely to meet. Boy was she angry. At Dennis Kucinich, a favorite of hers.

Could the pathetic condition of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party give us a Republican for the first County executive? Is the Pee Dee already pushing a Republican, the out-of-county son of Cleveland Indians’ owner Larry Dolan for the top spot?

As if the Cleveland police don’t have enough on their hands. Now they have another missing person: Mayor Frank Jackson.

It didn’t even take a day for the Pee Dee to setup the next pillage and plunder of Cleveland.

Cleveland Browns fans may be angry with Randy Lerner and the Cleveland Browns football team but that didn’t stop them from contributing $10.9 million to help him this year.

Roger Stone, a Republican PR hit man, took quite a shot at Pee Dee editor Susan Goldberg, on the Issue 3 coverage: “PD Editor Pimps for Casino Gambling.”

The biggest story this day after the election isn’t approval of County government reform or approval of a monopoly casino for a billionaire.

I have removed a recent posting on a Dan Gilbert blog. I mistook a blog by another Dan Gilbert. I apologize for the error.

Stampede, stampede, stampede.

A former Michigan state trooper tells a different story of Dan Gilbert’s arrest on operation of gambling business than the Cavs owner has been peddling to the news media. Gilbert has made it seem a minor episode, best forgotten.

Wonder if the Pee Dee will headline this story: Four billionaires have “loaned” $240,000 to the former disgrace Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. One of them our casino king: Dan Gilbert.

The Cleveland Scene this week offers some antidote to the noxious coverage of the Pee Dee on Cuyahoga County reform. Issue 6 ain’t the joy ride into the sunset that the paper would like us to believe.

“Today, Atlantic City, in the eyes of one gambling executive, Tim Wilmott, is in a ‘death spiral,’” that’s the tone of a Sunday New York Times piece on the financial troubles of the city’s casinos.

Damian Guevara in the Scene last week had a take on the Issue 3 that has been neglected by most, including me, but touches on a damaging game among Cleveland developers. They vie among themselves for advantage no matter what the cost to community.

Newspapers across the country take another smack from readers. They are buying fewer and fewer newspapers, including the Plain Dealer.

Former Congressman Dennis Eckart has joined the party. He’s backing Issue 3. That makes it almost unanimous – every shyster in town is backing a monopoly casino for a billionaire.