I rather suspect that some of the Republican business leaders whom Dimora suspects prevailed on GCP to fund the signature-gathering process rather than let the initiative die for lack of citizen participation. I imagine the pollsters will be quite busy come Labor Day determining whether the referendum has a chance of winning . Once it has determined which way the wind is blowing, GCP will decide how best to end up on the winning side.

Except for that, I agree with your reading of recent history. I remember in late 1993, when Art Modell, having envied the success the Jacobs and Gund boys had with Gateway, asked Mayor White for a similar deal to help build a new stadium for the Browns. The Mayor had other ideas, left Modell twisting in the wind, and forced the crisis which resulted in the Browns leaving town, the new stadium debacle, and a whole new era in civic larceny was born.

The players then were the players now.

When I worked with Ray Pierce on the 2001 Mayor’s race, no one wanted to hear that she had no executive leadership portfolio. Raymond ruled out a convention center; Jane didn’t. The SHE didn’t deliver.

Commissioner Hagan will be just fine. He’ll retire from public life and take up a couple board positions…perhaps with his Chicago pals. He’s helped make the deal. Whether it works or craters, it ain’t gonna be on his watch.

It’s ironic that the GCP is now pushing for political reform in the County. These are the business “leaders” that have distorted our politics and destroyed the careers of more than one politician.

I do not have nearly the experience or insight that you have shared, but here’s how I see it:

Although I was not around CLE in the 1990’s, I understand that Mike White was, at one time, a politician with a future. Sam Miller’s destructive influences on White were, by the time I arrived in CLE in early 2002, well known.

Many mark the Browns Stadium deal as the turning point…when White turned to the dark side. White converted the project, as well as the airport, into a bag operation. While I was at REI, more than one African American activist pointed to Miller’s continuous coaching of White as part of the problem.

Miller and Dabreko (who’s destructive powers were yet to be fully realized) next turned on Tim McCormack for crossing Forest City on the convention center deal, as you note. McCormack bit the dust.

Then comes along Jane Campbell, and the business leaders turned on her and pushed her over the edge when she did not deliver a convention center to Tower City.

(Jane started in a ditch. When she arrived in office, virtually all the files from the mayor’s office were gone. In many ways, Jane was over her head as mayor, but the business community, led by Miller and Daberko, bumped her off the plank.)

Now Dimora.

True enough, Dimora grew up in a political environment in which the business community looked the other way as politicos steered contracts and employment. As long as political leaders were willing to deliver public funds to the real estate interests through questionable deals (Ameritrust, Juvenile Justice Center, and others) who cared?

The interesting play in all this has been Hagan’s turn on Sam and Albert. Hagan stole Forest City’s deal. He was smart enough to realize that the only way to beat one real estate developer was to line up one on his side. Hagan also put the convention center where it should be — on the mall.

There’s only one problem with Hagan’s plan. Convention centers lose money, and no one has even come close to estimating how much the operating deficit will cost the taxpayers (at a time when the county’s financial condition is deteriorating by the month). His estimate of 50 medical shows a year is Disneyland.

But as you have pointed out, this project is not about rational analysis. It’s all about power. We saw that last week when Hagan assembled a group of Cleveland leaders to show off his big project.

Hagan cleverly jammed the convention center up Forest City’s nose by seducing Dimora. Now, I suspect, Hagan’s also one of those folks watching as Dimora twists in the wind. And not returning Jimmy’s calls.

Dimora must feel quite alone right now, but he joins a long list of politicians who have seen their careers trashed by the political chaos that the GCP, by its cynical machinations, has created.

It can be painful to feel one’s political power slipping away. All the people who relied on your influence to get what they wanted…people who “owe you”…are now keeping their distance. Because, after all, friendship is one thing, but business is something else.

Worse yet, the oligarchs who promised they’d take care of you as long as you played ball with them are telling you there’s nothing they can do to help you…if they’re returning your calls at all.

(No doubt there are times late at night when he thinks that if only he’d given Forest City their convention center, he’d at least have a few friends. He neglected to learn from his former colleague Tim McCormack’s experience: cross Forest City and they’ll find a way to punish you).

To heighten his anguish, he can look back over his 15 years as a Commissioner and SWEAR that he hasn’t changed his behavior at all. He’s been doing what he’s always done…and now his colleagues, friends and enablers have turned on him. Of course he feels like a victim.

Jimmy Dimora didn’t invent corruption in Cuyahoga County. But he came to power as The Cleveland Kleprocrats, with Mike White as their front guy, and The Men Behind The Curtain (still lurking after 15 years) as his enablers, had refined “pay to play” into a business strategy.

The unapologetic brazenness of their larceny, without even a veneer of discretion, together with the zeal they displayed in assassinating anyone who wouldn’t play along, has created the banana republic culture in which Dimora and his colleagues have grown up and grown (you should pardon the expression) fat.

There is still the possibility that Dimora won’t be indicted, and if he is, that he could be acquitted. Since he was a newbie Commissioner, the ethic (?) in Cleveland and County politics has been to rely upon the principle in state law that anything which is not explicitly prohibited by law is deemed to be legal…a distinction which does not accommodate the difference between doing what’s not illegal and doing what’s right.

Some of his underlings may have gotten sloppy, and his own long history of unaccountable power may have caused him to stop being careful, but my guess is that the indictments, should they come, will focus on a series of petty, venal, penny-ante instances of routine corruption. Most of the BIG theft, the most egregious fleecing of the taxpayers, has been done perfectly legally.

We may yet again be reminded that mere incompetence and disgraceful behavior are not technically illegal.
And, of course, that right and wrong don’t really matter; what matters is how good your lawyer is. Perhaps that’s the “vindication” which Commissioner Dimora looks forward to…

Nice ring.

By most objective standards of measurement, our organizations and institutions are failing. Yet they remain largely in the hands of the same group of oligarchs who have run and governed them for the past 15 years.

Despite their increasingly obvious incompetence, and the role they’ve played in enabling the current culture of corruption, these same leaders continue bumping and stumbling along, largely unaccountable for the results of their machinations.

Which can only lead to the conclusion that our institutional leaders are doing what their overseers want them to do, and that the community’s decline is irrelevant compared to the gains being achieved by the beneficiaries of the status quo.

It is too much to expect that the federal investigation into county corruption will accomplish much. If the previous investigation into the kleptocracy which was the White Administration is any indicator, a few lower-level guys will take the fall, together with a few contractors who were dumb enough to get caught on a wire.

The big players, the real corruptors, will skate. Because as has been the case for centuries, the biggest crooks have the best lawyers…

The point of my post was to make a few points which you have ignored.

1. Business is business. The Tribune got taken down by an idiot who lost his shirt. He claimed he’d get the Tribune profitable and he never mentioned HOW.

2. I tried to set forth in my strategy an approach which leveraged and built on the credibility and history of the Plain Dealer. By seeing itself as a brand more than just a newspaper - it might have a chance of surviving.

3. But it won’t survive as “just” a newspaper. I hope you realize that and that I’m not saying anything new. So here’s teh question: “do you want the Plain Dealer to die or is it about saving newspapers?”

4. Cause the former is a possibility while the later is a lost cause.

5. Now maybe my strategy is the wrong strategy - but sitting around griping about the high costs of quality professional investigative journalism and yearning for the days of the 4th estate - I’m afraid to say - is a waste of time.

IMHO

The PD and many other newspapers have an unfortunate habit of running a story once, and then letting it drop if nobody notices. I don’t want their copyright protection be used to let a story die. (LA Times used to do amazing long term stories until a short=sighted investment banker bought them and gutted them.)

Some of the internet stars (eg TalkingPointsMemo.com) have a business model that follows up on great local stories that died. An important source for TPM is frustrated local reporters whose stories didn’t click but who think there is more story or a broader story there. The politicization of the US Attorneys at the justice department was one such story. It wasn’t a big story in any one area (”Our local USAG was fired for no reason. This feels weird.”) but someone (TPM) put all the pieces together.

I want to help local papers survive. but I would not support any change in copyright laws that would allow a local publisher who didn’t want to spend additional resources to follow up on a story to kill it because they have the copyright on the initial story but make the business decision not to follow up at the local level.

- offers for technical training
- account executive, part-time market research, and receptionist positions
- CTO, CIO and VP listings that are really just trolling for resumes - there is no specific position accompanying the post
- Approx. 150 of the 404 results are a month old (or older)
- many of the posts are from consulting companies - which means the position may not really exist (resume trolling is a common practice)

Of the 1,000 Information Technology jobs MAYBE 200 are real. Put Software Development in quotes and it drops to 267…

There are technical positions available but “clearly we’ve got a lot of opportunity” is not accurate. I think the software/Internet job postings on Craigslist provide a more realistic picture.

A quick search on the Ohio Means Jobs site (www.ohimeansjobs.com), yields 1000 openings using the phrase “information technology” and 853 jobs using “software development”. Clearly, we’ve got a lot of opportunity for IT professionals to start and advance their career in this region.

The foundations have been pumping a ton of money into this organization. But it’s hard to figure out what it is doing.

Here’s the NorTech “strategy” report: http://snurl.com/kqydp (Hard to figure what this is all about)

Here’s the NorTech “action plan” for 2006: http://snurl.com/kqz03 (a lot of “actions” but, it appears, little delivery.)

Then, there’s the NEO Tech Jobs idea that apparently didn’t work: http://www.neotechjobs.com/
(even though it’s still listed on the NorTech site). Launched in 2007, the site now directs to a Ohio jobs site.

You can get some background on this NEO Tech Job initiative here:
http://www.neotechjobs.com/partners.html
and here:
http://www.neotechjobs.com/about.html

About the same time NorTech released a report on the IT workforce in the region.
http://snurl.com/kr1gy

That report concluded, in part: “The system of higher education is not producing enough graduates to keep pace with employer demand for professional workers.”

More recently. NorTech released an optimistic report on the region’s high tech economy: http://snurl.com/kr27p