It would be great to see the figures - those "rightful taxes", what we've lost. I bet it is a whopping number - a patch bigger than what is needed to cover shortfalls. Let's include in that the opportunity amount an estimate for what PILOTS paid by local large nonprofits (like CCF and UH) would add, too. Oh, I forgot, folks who are in need of medical services are funding all that growth at CCF and UH via "facilities costs" even though the buildings sport the names Miller and Ratner, et al in the guise of generosity.

Today, Connie Schultz decries how aggregators "steal" the hard work of REAL reporters like Mark Puente.  Yes--Mark is doing the leg work, but don't cry foul Connie, when the PD does much of the same surface grazing for information and only looks in one direction for the "real" story.

There are two corrupt schemes going on in Cuyahoga County--the largest scheme involves a complex network of cronyism, contracts and kickbacks for club members, but it is the unreported story, the second shadow scheme, that is more complex and more sinister.  It is the real estate game played using public dollars in the form of HUD funding and CDCs all cleverly camouflaged and packaged as the noblesse oblige serving the "poor" for the greater good of all.  The PD has a problem reporting or even acknowledging this scheme, because it involves their own club members, including some nominal "democrats" and  "republicans."

Connie, we ALL know something is rotten here in the state of Denmark.  The question is not which part of the body.  It's the whole body, including the head.  So, stop pretending that the PD is applying an across the board fair method of researching and presenting the news.  The PD is still operating under some country club pretense of a society made up of first and second class citizens, with a "WASP" majority, and "WASP-wannabes," still firmly calling the shots and deciding who is part of the "country club."

Connie, it's time to acknowledge that the only distinction separating human beings from one another is the quality of being dead or alive.  And, right now--the balance is not in favor of the living.  To move forward and to survive, we are all going to have to "come together," literally and figuratively,  and "Get on the sustainability bus."

Start looking harder PD folks, while you still have a job that puts food on the table and a roof over your head.  Stop worrying about folks stealing your "news."  We have a lot of fixing to do here in NEO and we should not concern ourselves with who gets credit for actually doing the job at hand.

Quite a statement McShane and well put.

Part of the reason that newspapers are in trouble is as Connie Schultz says. People are using their original work and often adding to it.

But long before the bloggers and aggregators, newspapers were selling out the public wholesale. I don't say people stopped buying newspapers because of that. They didn't.

However, when something else came along it was easy for the public to lose interest.

Ben Bagdikian, 89, long considered one of our top media critics, wrote about the concentration of news media by fewer and fewer corporate owners. He wrote in "the Media Monopoly" that objectivity - often the major criteria of the news media - gives the stage to authorities.

"In fact, American news, under that doctrine (of objectivity) has become increasingly conservative, not truly neutral, and too often devoid of meaning."

He also wrote that "The initial possessor of news and ideas has political power - the power to disclose or conceal, to announce some parts and not others, to hold back until opportunistic moments, to  predetermine the interpretation of what is revealed."

They are losing some of that power.

Does that strike one as  true and revealing in kind of coverage we are getting from the Plain Dealer. The paper is doing a good job in many instances of uncovering some malfeasance and of reporting what official probes are revealing.

But there's little coverage of the sweet deals that have been made for decades here among the city's leading developers, lawyers, business and civic leaders. These deals undermine people's trust just as the illegalities being reported.

Forty-one years ago I left conventional journalism because I knew I couldn't tell the truth as I saw it in that venue.

Nothing I can see has changed my feeling since.

Dear Roldo--thanks, but please don't spare your scrutiny to the folks with big money and big power...the small time operators merely replace the big time operators around here, Roldo.  You should know that better than any one :) 
 

To Jeff: Nothing is ever finished. We need people to keep pushing for progress because without that we'd have regression.

I always say that if it were not for people trying to make improvements we'd still have young children working in factories or on the farm as indentured slaves. Maybe we still do but its not pervasive. And that's because someone has struggled against it.

We do make some progress. Not enough, I'll agree.

To McShane: Petty crimes are still petty. It's not the same as those who steal wholesale and usually corrupt the small fry. Not that I'm for petty crimes.

Someone else said it:

"The law locks up both man and woman who steals the goose from off the common.

But lets the greater felon loose.

Who steals the common from the goose."

And I'd add from all of us.

  I will have to disagree Roldo...when the PD attempted to address the colossal waste of tax dollars* in the Cuyahoga County administration, it was shot down, by the same folks...and although none of us ultimately "own" anything in life, stealing what little someone has managed to acquire in a lifetime and using tax payer dollars to do it does amount to a hypocrisy and crime worth reporting in my book. 

*Alright, I will agree with Dimora's assessment that party politics is at play here--as the PD did not use Summit County in their comparison. But the PD's coverage is shifting to a more bi-partisan expose, as today shows they are not sparing Republican Sinagra, and also with Gabriel Baird and Joe Wagner's recent B&H stories, the PD is starting to make the connection to fires, demolitions, CDCs and the Cuyahoga County Land Bank....

http://realneo.us/content/vacant-property-solutions#comment-12011

(FTR, Scene magazine...I think Dimora's eye color is brown, but I could be wrong...your illustration shows blue eyes...subtle, but an effective way to affect readers perceptions).

Highway robbery is not the same as car jacking…the media sells advertising for one and then sells sensations over the other. If you injected the media with truth serum they would be running articles about how 90% of the advertisers want to rip you off for as much as they can. That many of the adds are sold related to products or services that earn over 100% profit and bought by those that earn in the top ten percentile in income.

The truth is subjective, there is no such thing as objective truth.

The PD is all over the place, they are overly sensationalizing to sell papers. Then also using it to soften the status quo and to leverage a covert political change.

The alternative needs to be more comprehensive and less political and definitely not sensationalized.

A more compressive design and with a clear set of functional objectives. You cannot establish regionalism by force, it has to be done with great thoughtfulness.

To define districts that would seek to facilitate the consolidation of existing municipal government and services within. The State congressional districts will not do that, they are political and not functional. They do not represent any potential for a combined tax, school, police and fire districts.

Having defined districts that could eventually through careful analysis seek consolidation for greater economy of scale. Each district a subset of a single regional system.

The historic township boundaries work best for that, each district could operate with better economies. Merging services and public works, but all operating on one common process driven system.

This is about using Operations Management methodologies, methods of achieving efficiency. It is about bring all the knowledge into a more modern highly functional and adaptable format.

Separating the functional first, then seek eventually consolidation and standardized judicial systems, district courts would be combined municipal courts.

The biggest component and the real priority is comprehensive changes that can achieve global recognition. Doing something glorious and intelligent by design.

Master planning, Master budgeting, it is about regulating and monitoring the free market. Not haphazardly intelligently with defined expectations and greater responsiveness to failures and successes, in reality.

  After listening to the Opportunity Corridor hogwash spewed by Deb Janik and Steven Litt on WCPN yesterday, I needed a good laugh real bad--thank you James Renner.  I really miss you:
 

http://www.blackheartcleveland.com/2009/09/17/sam-miller-caught-on-camera-discussing-medmart/