"Cleveland, it seems, is populated not by outspoken visionaries, but by many who suffer in silence, fearing ostracism..."

Scene writer Michael Roberts provides the world a great service with his August 25, 2010, summary overview of the corruption and evil that has defined the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, Cleveland city hall, the Cuyahoga county commissioners, and "failed leaders in almost every quarter of the community", including at the Cleveland Plain Dealer [1] and the Cleveland Foundation, throughout the 21st Century - anyone interested in real NEO must READ "Port in a Storm - How years of bungling and self-interest robbed Cleveland of its future [2]".

If you have ever doubted the most extreme claims of the failure, incompetency and corruption of our Mayor, County commissioners, and their appointees and co-conspirators in crimes, as expressed throughout the decade by Citizen Hauser and so many other honest real Northeast Ohio visionaries, on realNEO and elsewhere in the free-speech world...  read Roberts' excellent article on the Port in a Storm and realize the following observations are direct reflections on all leaders and citizens of the region, and we are pathetic:

"The real tale of the waterfront is one of conflict, greed, wasted public money, and sheer incompetence on the part of the port board, city hall, and the county commissioners."

It is such a sensitive situation that many sources with ties to it have requested anonymity for this story. Cleveland, it seems, is populated not by outspoken visionaries, but by many who suffer in silence, fearing ostracism or political and civic retribution.

In a way, it is a sad tale of a city adrift with failed leaders in almost every quarter of the community, people who have squandered the dream of a world-class waterfront and a better place to live.

Without Jackson's thoughtless indulgence, the fiasco would not have flowered. The Greater Cleveland Partnership stubbornly supported the plan and in doing so demonstrated its lack of business acumen; the venerable Cleveland Foundation funded a portion of the effort, displaying its lack of common sense.

Roberts' observations validate and exactly correlate to my observations of failure among our leadership highlighted in "The results of poor leadership, poor management and poor strategies are measured in real econometrics, every day [3]" where I write:

To proceed developing a healthy, open new economy here, we must analyze, document and eliminate the root causes of economic development failure, starting with the command and control system.

At the very top, the Command and Control strategy of this region is defined through Master Planning by some leadership at the Cleveland Foundation and other foundations, driven by Ronn Richards, Brad Whitehead and many other foundation staff and consultants, empowered by their Fund for our Economic Future and its sprawling affiliate initiatives, influencing many non-profits and their leadership, the Plain Dealer and other media interests present here, Mayor Jackson and many of his appointees and department directors, many Cleveland City Council members, many in their CDCs and their staff and leadership, academics and staff at our universities, many suburban mayors, Governor Strickland, many Northeast Ohio representatives in Columbus and Washington, D.C., and an astounding number of their best friends and family, to benefit many dominant business leaders and major real estate developers with local interests here, who have a dominant control over the top of the pyramid, being the leadership of our many foundations (all hereinafter “They/Them/Their”).

That list may seem like everyone in government, industry and community development in the region, but the problem is largely a few power brokers at the top of the pyramid, and their paid lieutenants – the other 1,000s of people carrying out their plan are mostly paid employees in tough times, misdirected by a few hundred “community leaders”, some good but misguided... others corrupt, all who are in pursuit of the $ billions controlled directly by the foundation leaders.

They use Their $ billions to control many $ billions more of public funding, and They attempt to control more daily, and all parties involved are responsible for how that money is allocated and spent.

Roberts points out some of the econometrics of the failure of our leadership regarding the Port Authority, which include MANY $ millions wasted on university, consultant and government planning that has proved worthless from day-one. More significant are the opportunity costs of the time and money wasted on poor community planning throughout this century, and that we are left today with the same pathetic, incompetent, and corrupt leadership that created the port disaster, including the same lingering, listless Mayor of Cleveland, Frank Jackson. And our planning is still IN THEIR HANDS!

The poor outcomes of poor leadership here harm far more than the global competitiveness of our port and maritime and related industries. As I point out in "The results of poor leadership, poor management and poor strategies are measured in real econometrics, every day [3]," leadership incompetency and corruption here harms the health of citizens:

Knowing leadership here does not want to be measured [4], I explored the depths of harm caused by lack of good performance measurement and so management in our community [5], and was shocked to find the greatest impact is catastrophic harm to our environment and so public health [6], which has been an alarming realization. Through the local, regional and state government incapacitation of Federally mandated pollution monitoring capabilities and processes, the leadership of this region and state have allowed point source polluters to do as they please, meaning pollute more than may be safe, meaning harm the health of citizens. It is like our local leadership thinks public health is negotiable and of nearly no value whatsoever [7].

Realizing that the incompetency and/or corruption of our leadership is in fact causing harm to the public health, including my family, I have escalated my concerns about the failure of our leadership here to protect public health to the attention of the Federal EPA, Sierra Club and the White House [8].

I certainly encourage the Federal government at all levels to the White House to read the important article in Scene this week on corruption at the Cleveland-Cuyahoga Port Authority and to realize similar damning conditions shall be found in all branches of government here, as citizens demand accountability from our "leadership" for the harm they have caused citizens here throughout this century, which shall burden us for years into our future.

I hope this is the first in a series of related articles by Michael Roberts on the real Crises in Cuyahoga County - for once a real local journalist in Northeast Ohio seems willing and able to tell the world the truth about the hell we live in here - thank you Scene and Roberts!