Citizen Ed Hauser, Victorious In The Battle Of Whiskey Island - "Ask Not What Your Planet Can Do For You..."

It has been a year since Northeast Ohio lost our selfless civic activist "Citizen" Ed Hauser, silencing the great voice in the community saying that "The Process is Broken".

November 14, 2009 - the one-year anniversary of Ed's death - a group of family and friends came together on the beautiful Whiskey Island Ed saved, before a late Autumn setting sun, to toast a glorious man, and mourn a most cursed and horrible year in Northeast Ohio without Ed.

What does the dawn hold for this long-suffering region, in the second year without Citizen Hauser?

It is an amazing feeling heating your home with wood. You are able to survive in the harshest of weather, with nothing but mother nature on your side, and no gas bills... and, you may cook and heat water while you heat your environment.

Quite clever, really... invented by cavewomen, I believe.

– All infant formulas, whether ready-to-feed,
concentrated or organic, contain fluoride at levels which can discolor
developing teeth, reports the October 2009 Journal of the American
Dental Association (JADA) (1).

With timing that could not be better for political candidates who actually care about the environment and real sustainability for NEO and the world... the greatest demonstration of the unsustainable harm of our current leadership of Mayor Jackson and all or most Cleveland City Council members (did any oppose), and of our other Powers That Be, will be showcased here, tomorrow, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports "AMP Inc. on Monday holds its annual membership meeting in Cleveland". AMP is planning a poorly conceived $3+ billion coal burning powerplant in Southern Ohio, at astounding ecological expense, that is largely the fault of Cleveland politicians committing to buy the unsustainable, dirty power to be generated there, for 50 years!

I have noticed, in the reader comments at Cleveland.com to their coverage about the great "Crisis at FirstEnergy" Lightbulb rip-off scheme, that many people in Northeast Ohio don't quite grasp this is an example of extreme monopoly corporate corruption of government - big, bad corporation using corrupt lawyers, lobbyists and politicians to steal $ millions from hard working citizens. That is not the work of Tree Huggers. Yet, the tone of Plain Dealer readers is to shoot the environmentalists, and Obama.

I realize there are many people of NEO who will blame even the worse corporate corruption, like this, on the most innocent people, like environmentalists, and have wondered why.

Meet the Public Utilities Commissioners of Ohio - five "public servants" of the State of Ohio who have approved an electricity demand side management program that is so unfair and costly to residents of Northeast Ohio, and so advantageous to a select group of public utility companies, as to raise absolute doubt about the integrity, competency and honesty of those setting energy policy and regulations for our state. Of course, energy policy for Ohio determines our levels of pollution, which are high. These dubious people are:

In coverage of truly depressing news in our region, the Cleveland Plan Dealer today reports "Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port authority passes on grant for Dike 14 preservation". The Plan Dealer reports:

"It is more prudent to allow for the Dike 14 planning to mature along the time frames anticipated for the lakefront projects as a whole," wrote port attorney Joel Pentz in a letter to a group of environmental agencies working to rescue and preserve the area as a wildlife refuge.

Pentz is absolutely correct. The Port Authority is working with these same environmental groups to plan the relocation and development of facilities so disruptive to the local environment and Lake Erie that it would be entirely foolish to spend a penny on any environmental initiatives within miles of the planned port relocation - especially along the lakefront. If we are seriously allowing over 1/2 billion dollars to be spent reconfiguring our lakefront for container traffic, do not spend a penny on anything not container port related around there until done - for the next 30 years or so.

At around 5 PM, on September 23, 2009, WKYC Channel 3 news reported "shocking and disturbing photos, allegedly of incumbent Mayor Eric Brewer, are being circulated in the community, The Investigator Tom Meyer has learned." Photographs that appear to be East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer in woman's clothes, some that are pornographic, have apparently been circulating in East Cleveland for over a year - reportedly many years - and been broadly published by the mainstream media since the 23rd.

On the 24th, I was called by one of the mayor's confidants and told to watch out for retaliation. It seems that Mayor Brewer told the confidant he thinks I distributed the pictures of the mayor. I am not the only person being targeted by such paranoid delusions.

The Real News - Paul Jay speaks to Jessy Tolkan at the Tides Foundations' Momentum conference in San Francisco. They speak about Tolkan's coalition on climate change fighting Obama to establish a moratorium on all coal mining.

Severe Particulate Matter 2.5 Hourly Reading in Cleveland at 8:00 AM on 09/23/09 - see current here

There is clear evidence the leadership of Northeast Ohio has failed to create an environment encouraging world-class monitoring, analysis, research, notification and controls of pollution created in our region of Ohio, and the consequences on residents and society. As a result, the people of this region have suffered significant health consequences, including early death, and impaired learning ability, crippling our schools and workforce, and society and the regional economy have suffered greatly. As much of our pollution is exported beyond our region, our failure to be world-class addressing pollution here causes harm world-wide.

It recently came to my attention that one of the most serious sources of pollution in Cuyahoga County is literally in my back yard. Less than two kilometers upwind from my home are the coal and natural gas fired external boilers at the power plant shown above, at University Hospitals, operated by Medical Center Company (MMCo), polluting the surrounding neighborhoods since the 1930s.

For the 30+ years of my life spent in Northeast Ohio, in childhood and as an adult, University Circle has been at the center of my universe. What Place is at the Center of Your Universe?

Thanks to REALNEO's lmcshane for pointing out one of the most interesting developments in the American "sustainability movement" ever - what appears to be Chicago's real news source, The Chicago Reader, broke the news, September 4, 2009, that "The Green Mayor's Green Policy Maker Leaves for Vancouver". This is the story of former Cleveland and Chicago area sustainability guru Sadhu Johnston, now set to become the deputy city manager of Vancouver.

After reading the story in today's Cleveland.com, "Owner of razed Cleveland warehouse still fighting city, Precision Environmental over lost vehicles", about a second Frank Giglio in Cleveland - this one on the East Side - named Michael Ayers, who had his property condemned, stolen and destroyed under the direction of the Cleveland Building and Housing Department...

As Jeff Buster reported on REALNEO, this summer there was some severe weather activity in the Shaker Heights area, where he and my parents live, that took down a huge number of huge trees.

In both areas of Cleveland's West Side where I've lived, I knew there were chickens and roosters nearby (some I saw, and some I heard), but I haven't come across any fowl life on the East Side of Cleveland, or in East Cleveland. I wonder if there are any other chickens in my part of town? There certainly were chckens on every property back when this was farmland, 100+ years ago.

Anne Trubek for Good Magazine - Civic leaders and artists are coming up with some interesting ideas, and often the line between the two groups is blurred. The perfectly-named Unreal Estate Agency in Detroit is aimed at showcasing “new types of urban practices (architecturally, artistically, institutionally, everyday life, etc) that came into existence, creating a new value system in Detroit,” including helping people purchase and rehab a home for under $5,000.