That’s violating the Sherman Act?

An independent specialty coffeehouse owner filed a proposed class action lawsuit today against Starbucks Corporation (NYSE:SBUX), claiming the company, from its monopoly position in the specialty coffee market, engages in a range of anti-competitive activities aimed at eliminating competition.

Filed in U.S. District Court, the suit alleges that Starbucks has exploited its monopoly power in the specialty coffee retail market to stifle competition through a series of predatory practices including exclusive lease agreements, “cluster bombing” of stores and competitor buy-outs…

It’s All About Coffee

Wendell makes a great point:

Instead of telling us what they’ll do to make our state and our country better, they spend the majority of their air time telling us why the other guy does not deserve the job. Can you imagine a job interview with that kind of a dynamic?

I think Sherrod did an excellent job in his Meet.The.Bloggers* interview focusing on what needs to be done with few attacks on his opponent. We’ve give Mike DeWine the same opportunity, but he doesn’t want to take us up on our invitation.

wenBLOG » Why Should You Hire These Guys?

This morning, Peter Chakerian told me in a chat:

“you can only be cutting edge for so long. and if you don’t adapt or migrate, you pull a “Chi Chi’s,” sell your salsa and die…”

I’ve been waiting for someone to blog this since Ryan’s office emailed bloggers about it. Props to Terra for a great post:

This is the last week of sessions for the do-nothing Congress, and I have a suggestion for one thing they could do:

Consider Congressman Tim Ryan’s Abortion Reduction Legislation. Ryan, a pro-life Democrat, has joined with Rosa DeLauro, a pro-choice Democrat, to write a bill that would provide unwanted-pregancy reduction programs, and also provide resources, education, and support for women who might otherwise have an abortion.

House Resolution 6067 focuses on prevention through sex education, afterschool programs, teen pregnancy prevention incentive grants, restore and expand family planning and Medicaid health care programs to low income mothers who would otherwise not be able to afford the hospital bills associated with giving birth, and others.

The Chief Source: Make abortion unnecessary, not illegal

An email:

Hi G:  I know you and many of the BFD faithful share
an interest in making NEO more diverse. To do so, we need for those who are here
to succeed, as their success is our success as it encourages outsiders to find their way to the North Coast. So I’masking that you please share the following on BFD:

MotivAsians, an Asian American professional association focused on the vitality of Greater Cleveland,  is doing its part to give Asian-Americans the insight they need to succeed. They are bringing Jane Hyun, author of Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, to Cleveland to discuss strategies for Asian Americans to be effective in the multi-cultural workplace and for companies to realize the full potential of their Asian American employees.

Ms. Hyun will share her sage counsel with all Clevelanders on Thursday, October 5, 2006 from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m in the CWRU Auditorium on the 9th floor of Key Tower.

More info: link

From an email regarding elections in Cuyahoga County:

“We have people on the ballot who are unqualified and have no business running for office,” said Bruce Hennes. “judge4yourself.com is the best place for information about judicial elections,” added Hennes.

If you’re interested in participating in this interview, please RSVP by 5PM on 9/27 (tomorrow) by signing up thru Upcoming.org. I still need to figure out how I’m going to do this (Conference call, Skype, etc.):

An interview with Frank Warren of PostSecret.

(PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.)

If you’re interested in participating in this phone interview, please RSVP so we can plan on if the location is suitable, and get the proper connections in place.

Perhaps it’ll take place at my house…

Upcoming.org: Telephone interview with Frank Warren of PostSecret at Tower Press Bldg - Suite 105 (Thursday, September 28, 2006)

A new post from Henry Gomez:

A link escapes me, but several years ago, while covering retail for Crain’s, I stumbled across a grim report on urban retail in Cleveland. Neighborhood Progress Inc., a close ally of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, basically rendered Tower City a dying retail hub. What made the report even more interesting was that the Ratner family was a sponsor.

Perhaps the Ratners were setting up their case for casinos, but Kenny and Morrison suggest an alternative: Using the endangered shopping mall for something other than a slots parlor…

You’ll have to click thru for the questions he raises.

cleveland.com: Weblogs

What other fish farms are in Northeast Ohio?

Harvest time in Ohio—the squash, the corn, the apples, the shrimp.

Yes, shrimp. In fact, it is shrimp harvest time at Calala’s Water Haven in New London, Ohio and because of that students at Case Western Reserve University dining halls will dine on locally-raised shrimp tonight…

Let them eat shrimp | GreenCityBlueLake

Don’t think it’s only the GOP that’s advising people not to do Meet.The.Blogger* interviews either:

In a seemingly non-related aside, Sue Morano’s Republican opponent Martha Wise had first expressed interest in sitting down with MTB and then her staff phoned me to let me know that Ms. Wise’s schedule would not permit an hour to be spent with Meet the Bloggers.As a blogger and fan of politics, this struck me as rather odd. For candidates, Meet the Bloggers* is a no-brainer. Several sources have informed me that the decision was based on pressure from the GOP and campaign advisors - that it would not be in Ms. Wise’s best interests to meet with those cavalier blogger people. Her loss.

Sue Morano MTB* at word of mouth

Chris Butler’s story of seeing a flying wing:

The Thirties had seen the first generation of American industrial designers; until the Thirties, all pencil sharpeners had looked like pencil sharpeners your basic Victorian mechanism, perhaps with a curlicue of decorative trim. After the advent of the designers, some pencil sharpeners looked as though they’d been put together in wind tunnels. For the most part, the change was only skin-deep; under the streamlined chrome shell, you’d find the same Victorian mechanism. Which made a certain kind of sense, because the most successful American designers had been recruited from the ranks of Broadway theater designers. It was all a stage set, a series of elaborate props for playing at living in the future…

Listening to Man in the Razor Suit while I’m rereading it.

William Gibson. The Gernsback Continuum

Received an email re:

Earth Day Coalition proudly presents its 9th Annual Fall Benefit Instrumental Evening for the Earth this Thursday, November 9, 2006, 6:00pm - 9:30pm at Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral. The evening includes a delicious gourmet reception catered by Mustard Seed Market, and a unique silent auction in the green building of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral. The highlight of the evening is a breathtaking, candle-lit concert with Daniel McKelway and Lembi Veskimets joined by renowned pianist Hyunsoon Whang and friends from the world-famous Cleveland Orchestra in performances of Mozart’s Piano Quartet and Quintet for Piano and Winds. Proceeds benefit the year round environmental education and leadership programs of Earth Day Coalition. Tickets are $50 per person, seating is limited. For more information call (216) 281-6468 or visit www.earthdaycoalition.org.

McK’s been bugging me to watch the copy I received. I’m trying to hold off until we get together for a blogger movie night:

Tonight I dined with a friend who is moving to Las Vegas this weekend. My roommate—she defects for Portland in two weeks. And so it goes for Northeast Ohio.

Ever so timely, then, that last night I should watch Cleveland: Confronting Decline in an American City, which I mentioned would be showing on Sept. 28 at 8 pm on WVIZ. (Defector roommate was sent a review copy, natch.)

Does anyone under the age of 45 know that Cleveland wasn’t always a joke? In the 1930s, it was a “thriving industrial mecca” and the fifth largest city in nation. But faster than you can say “Turn blue, knif,” the ominous music begins.*

After WW2, the exodus out of Cleveland began. And it hasn’t stopped…

I saw the first few minutes of it Monday, when Thomas should me that he was in it. His complaint is similar to Lisa’s, that there wasn’t much confrontation–”there’s an awful lot of exposition about the decline itself.”

a lover’s quarrel with the world: making sense of cleveland

Girl is writing like she talks:

Guess those GOPpers weren’t interested in all the slots they could’ve filled. Having a city’s mayor sell out to gambling as a way to fund education kind of puts a big L on your city’s forehead. Or a D - as in desperate beyond all desperation.

Writes Like She Talks: Cleveland loses as Minneapolis-St Paul gets GOP convention

Not sure if she realizes it, but this article is informing MTB and a little situation we'’ve got:

The most recent headline-grabbing copyright battle involved The Da Vinci Code. Did Dan Brown recycle elements of a 1982 nonfiction book for his bestselling novel? The authors of the earlier book sued Brown’s publisher, Random House U.K., in a London court in the spring of 2006 in an effort to prove that Brown lifted protected elements of their book, what they called “the architecture” of a speculative conspiracy theory about the life of Jesus. In the coverage of the trial, some reporters — even in publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The San Diego Union-Tribune — used the word “plagiarism” as if it were a legal concept or cause of action. It isn’t. Copyright infringement and plagiarism are different acts with some potential overlap. One may infringe upon a copyright without plagiarizing and one may plagiarize — use ideas without attribution — without breaking the law. Plagiarism is an ethical concept. Copyright is a legal one…

CJR September/October 2006 - Copyright Jungle

From Shannon Okey:

http://www.myspace.com/declareyourself

no time to blog this myself (about to leave for book tour — eep!) but thought it might be an interesting post for BFD or MTB — esp in light of Strickland’s MySpace usage…

Now that Cleveland’s city leaders failed in bringing the RNC Convention to town, maybe they’ll use the new “creation of partnerships across political and regional lines for future projects” Mayor Jackson speaks of to focus on real solutions to our problems vs. one hit wonders. Ooops, my bad. That would require them to be true leaders in every sense of the word. Now they can focus 100% on reviving Cleveland’s economy with gambling, every poor-can’t-get-an-education-population-bleeding metro’s quick fix to economic woes.

Cleveland had hoped to use the megaconvention as a springboard toward economic growth and an improved national reputation. Even without the win, the effort will have lasting benefits, Mayor Frank Jackson said.

It boosted the area’s confidence in its ability to host large conventions and led to the creation of partnerships across political and regional lines for future projects, he said.

“We have a victory, and that victory is we came together as a community . . . to do what was right for the region,” he said.

How about coming together as a community to solve our poverty problem? And check out this quote from Ohio Learn and Earn’s favorite friend Joe Roman, head of the GCP.

Partnership President Joe Roman said the effort should help change minds about Cleveland’s reputation as a city paralyzed by a fear of failure.

“We’re in the ballgame,” Roman said. “We lost with this, but the desire to compete is solid.”

WRONG (but you’ve got to love the empty sports cliches, eh?)! The city is paralyzed by a lack of leadership, not a fear of failure. In addition, the only explanation I can come up with for the GCP backing Ohio Earn and Learn vs. a legitimate Economic Development plan is they themselves have a severe case of “fear of failure” made worse by a lack of leadership.

PD/Cleveland.com - GOP: Cleveland? Nah

• More turn to net for politics news
  (tags: meetthebloggers)
• Ban on Underweight Models
  From The Drop
  (tags: wellness)
• Greenpeace Wants a Green Apple
  From WorldChanging.org
  (tags: tech sustainability)
• THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY - PART 2
  From Chris Butler. It was probably “throw the plate, trick the kid”
  (tags: neoblogs)
• Use the debt snowball calculator to pay off debts
  From LifeHacker.com
  (tags: money)
• Republican National Convention: Please Pay In Full
  Tim invoices the RNC for their trip to town
  (tags: hilarious)
• Vindy.com - Groups oppose Earn and Learn proposal
  Check out the Rod Parsley quote.
  (tags: ohiolearnandearn)

MindMaps are a tool for thinking. Instead of arranging your ideas in a sequence — as a list of words — you draw them in an arboreal fashion, radiating out from one starting notion. Mindmaps use pictures instead of words, radial branches instead of linear lists, starfish instead of ladders, and associations instead of priorities — and as a result you think different. The visual trees you generate as you mindmap mirror the dendritic nature of our brain, and seem to flow more organically and (after practice) with less effort than the rigid discipline of making 1,2,3 textual notes.

Cool Tool: The MindMap Book

Just posted the audio for our interview with Frank Warren, the man behind the PostSecret project. It’s a short interview, but packed with interesting stuff including his soon-to-be released book that contains postcards on topics teens and young adults face as well as the HOWTO of getting Frank and a PostSecret exhibition here in Cleveland. As an aside, we also talked about copyright and being a good steward of the artifacts others entrust you with.

Meet the Bloggers » PostSecret’s Frank Warren

A Must Read for Anybody In Technology. Will NEO lead or follow this trend? From the Forbes cover story last week called The New Barbarians. “Coleman is one of dozens of new barbarians plotting the Cheap Revolution, the wholesale shift by corporate customers and techmakers to cheap chips and open-source (often free) software such as Linux. They are embracing simplicity, unlocking prodigious new power and cutting tech costs by up to 90%, threatening the Silicon Valley plutocracy: the proprietary gear, “closed” software, redundant backup systems and fat profit margins of incumbents like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, EMC and other blue-chip nameplates.”

Can the GCP’s COSE Compete With Home Depot? Also from last week’s Forbes: Home Remedy - “Can’t get health insurance? Try shopping at Home Depot. To keep customers coming back, retailers try everything from store-issued credit cards to loyalty cards that get punched with every purchase. Now the Home Depot is going one better. It’s treating its most faithful shoppers–plumbers, electricians, small-home builders and contractors–almost like employees. These customers can now have their businesses’ payroll, credit-card processing and personnel paperwork done through Home Depot. They can get their mobile phones and shipping services through Home Depot. Most notably, they can sign up for health insurance through Home Depot.”

Having Been One Myself I’m Not Sure How You Can Be Upbeat When You’re Worried About Access to Capital? From Crain’s Cleveland The quest for capital - “Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs are generally upbeat about the region, but they continue to worry about access to capital, according to a new survey….One big negative was in the area of getting the money they need to make their businesses successful.”

WOW! We’re Really Cranking Out The Tech Buzzwords - From an email from the Tech Czar: “‘Techonomic Talk: Voices of the Future.’ This event will focus a panel discussion on economic growth of the technology industry in Northeast Ohio. The event will be October 5th from 6pm-8pm in the lobby of the Halle Building.”

I Guess They’ll Need These New Buzzwords to Fill NEO’s New Tech Magazine - Yes, this too from a Tech Czar email I received this week. “Paradigm aims to shift perceptions of the tech field, make it accessible and relevant to both techies and Clevelanders who don’t know much about tech.”

A Smart Blog for Serious Entrepreneurs - Startup-Review.com. Check it out, you’ll see what I mean.

On Leadership, Change Agents, More on “Murderers”, Seeds and Manure, What’s Holding Us Back and Being Critical Without Being Condescending - RRR 3.0’s Cathy Panzica video interview with the man in the hat on CoolCleveland. See if you can figure out what’s missing?

An opinion from one of our neighbors:

It is all so short-sighted economically, for an obvious reason. The gambling industry’s winnings, its sole source of taxes, are the public’s losings, and disproportionately that part of the public which can’t afford it. It’s no tragedy when upper-income people go to Vegas or Atlantic City and throw it away. They won’t go hungry and if this is their fun, who is to argue?

But gambling all over the country, gambling in everybody’s backyard, changes the cast of characters. It brings the poor in, only a bus ride from downtown with a few dollars in quarters that inevitably won’t go to more necessary spending. This is a social crime. And a blow to all other business, not to mention an invitation to gambling interests to dominate local politics.

How wrong. Remember the rationale for state lotteries decades ago? To put the “numbers racket” out of business. But numbers writers never increased their public by advertising. And they never had the poor lining up at food markets to spend dollars, not pennies. Public policy, you’d think, would aim at helping the poor become less poor. Not now.

I emphasize neighbor because in our rush to regionalism (fueled by the Fund for our Future), the focus is on Northeast Ohio. It completely disregards the rest of the state and our neighboring states too. Collaboration is collaboration. If you really are trying to be collaborative, it doesn’t matter if the other person is in the next city, county, state, or country.

Gambling explosion hits poor the hardest - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

From this week’s PostSecret, GOP.

Don’t forget to listen to our interview with Frank Warren.

On Soni Pitts’ blog;

Coturnix, an Serbian Jewish blogger who lived through the decent of Yugoslavia from peace-loving, prosperous European cultural model to Milosevician hell-hole of ethnic cleansing has this to say about the recent legislative hummer Congress just gave King George II.

Many of my friends and neighbors have not experienced, like I did inYugoslavia of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the gradualtransformation from a nice, sweet, proseprous, freedom-loving countryinto a bunch of thugs duking it out over land and religion. Tito wasdead for ten years. Prime Minister was Ante Markovic. Thousands ofsmall businesses were starting up every week. Small people were gettingrich. There was ebullience in the air.

Then, in a manner eerily reminiscent of BuchCo, thugs likeMilosevic, Tudjman and Izetbegovic hijacked the government and starteda civil war, ending with a break up of one big strong country into sixsmall, economically weak and dependent units.

The Divinely Guided Boot of Upward Inspiration

Not looking good:

So here’s something not one of you ever thought you’d hear me say, but I just decided: I’m definitely voting for DeWine in November.

Why? Mostly because I believe Mike DeWine has the courage of his own convictions — right or wrong, agree with him or not, I at least think he has some principles. Sherrod Brown, however, apparently frightened that the GOP might paint him as a weak-kneed soft-on-terror liberal in the upcoming election, voted in favor of the detainee-and-torture bill mentioned below.

Voting for a bad, bad piece of legislation just so you can improve your chances of getting elected is pretty much my definition of the worst kind of politician, no matter what their individual politics are…

::: dahlbergcentral.com ::: that makes real sense

Networking at the gun range:

Aztek’s Kevin Latchford is a long-time member of the Beaver Creek Club in Amherst so the event was held in the clubhouse on their 500+ acre spread. After the presentation the attendees were taken out to use the extensive shooting facilities at the club. (That’s Aztek’s Stacie Baske in the photo)

Dan Hanson’s Blog

I finally got around to watching Cleveland: Confronting Decline in an American City. I thought it was packed with info and is probably a good place to start a conversation. He’s what Bradley thinks:

This one-hour documentary puts much focus on the periodic decline of the center city, the recent plague of widespread no-growth sprawl, inclinations of much of the population towards urbanism (manifest in new “urban” lifestyle centers), the decline of the area’s first suburbs that resident and retail populations have left behind, and the implementation of counter-measures (such as residential and industrial land banks, brownfield cleanup, land conservancies and economic restructuring) that have become national examples.

The film describes center-city decline directly affected by migratory land-use patterns, in which infrastructure is left derelict, socio-economic classes are left behind and tax burdens become overwhelming with the demands of new infrastructures, schools and services in new urbanized areas. It is my hope that this documentary delivers the choice of “smart-growth” urbanism to the living rooms of suburbanites who have already considered a certain “moral responsibility” when purchasing a hybrid Honda, giving to Harvest-for-Hunger, recycling their soda bottles, voting, yoga-ing, eating their vegetables…. but still live in an Avon cul-de-sac, unaware of the opportunity to make a choice on where they live that will benefit a large part of the region’s population as well as create a healthier life for themselves…

Your thoughts?

The Design Rag: Making Sense of Cleveland

Is from Roxanne:

AllBusiness.com, one of my all time favorite business websites hits the nail on the head again. Smart outsourcing can equal major savings and increased revenue for small businesses. Don’t be the last to know about it. Read the article here. Then attend the Completely Virtual SOHO Conference on December 5 - 7th

Think You’re SOHO Smart? Blog » The Benefits of Outsourcing for Small Businesses