The Observation Deck

Today's Cleveland.com editorial provided some interesting insight into their upcoming plans for the NEO.

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2019/ ... orial.html

As we all know, our county already have very high taxes, horrible infant mortality rates, an ongoing jail crisis, immense poverty, struggling schools, and rampant corruption and crime.
As usual, the editorial board called for the magical elixir of "regionalism" to cure all our ills. As Bill Call has pointed out many times, this is nothing new.
However, a couple of new ideas were pushed in this piece.

First, they mention the tearing down and replacing (not renovating) Hopkins Airport. This would presumably happen somewhere south of Cleveland in order to serve a more "regional" clientele.
This idea, however unlikely, would be terrible for Lakewood. One of our city's strengths is our accessiblity to the airport (without being so close that planes are always overhead).

Later, the editorial says "And, in the not-distant future, we’ll need to talk about replacing or heavily renovating our sports facilities, to keep our treasured sports teams from being enticed to move elsewhere."
As we already know, hundreds of millions of dollars are already being shoveled to the billionaire sports owners...but that's not enough for the PD.
They are laying the groundwork for a new Browns Stadium (the team's current lease expires after 2028). Based on recent projects in Atlanta and Minnesota, the price tag for the new stadium will be at least $1.5 billion.

The people pushing these bad ideas are the same political establishment that gave us Budish, Frank Jackson, Ed FitzGerald, and Mike Summers.
They have a slate of "rubber stamp" Machine candidates running in Lakewood this November....
I hope Lakewood voters send a message by voting for Meghan George, Laura Rodriguez-Carbone, Brad Presutto, and Jeff Wise.

No discussion about regionalization can ignore the regionalization of Lakewood Hospital. Our profitable City owned Hospital had $140 million in annual revenue and nearly $90 million in cash and investments and provided 1,500 high paying medical jobs. Our regional leaders hatched a plan to move the Hospital and its related jobs to Lorain County, transfer its cash and investments to private foundations and donate the land to a local developer. Who loses and who gains when the Regional Authority dictates development decisions?

Bill Call wrote:No discussion about regionalization can ignore the regionalization of Lakewood Hospital. Our profitable City owned Hospital had $140 million in annual revenue and nearly $90 million in cash and investments and provided 1,500 high paying medical jobs. Our regional leaders hatched a plan to move the Hospital and its related jobs to Lorain County, transfer its cash and investments to private foundations and donate the land to a local developer. Who loses and who gains when the Regional Authority dictates development decisions?

This photo has the "NEW" $6million + front entrance to Lakewood Hospital paid for by LHF, being torn down. This represents LHF spending $6 million on the hospital in an effort to underline the hospital is not closing. Of course this was done 4 years after City Hall, LHA and LHF started their plan to gut the hospital and keep the funds. I mean spending $6 million to get your hands on $50 million makes sense to them, it was never their money.

So, is the Library next? Prime space, a growing private fund to keep it going. Is this the next step in the slow regionalization of West Cleveland, errrrrrr Lakewood. Followed by the schools? Same people involved with both that handle the sell off of Lakewood Hospital.

Hmmmmmmmmmm

.

These people who promote these ideas are adept at spending taxpayers’ money, never their own.

A declining population and ever more people in poverty but they want to give more money (yours), to
billionaire sports team owners.

Build a new airport when Hopkins isn’t even a hub anymore? Never gonna happen.

No wonder people leave this area.

A couple other thoughts:

*Does anyone else remember FitzGerald's scheme to move County prisoners to Lakewood? Thank God that didn't happen....just imagine the amount of horrible press we'd be getting right now.

*The timing of this editorial is not coincidence. "The Powers That Be" know that there is a lot of excitement for the Browns this year. They are hoping that a good season will translate into public support for stadium funding. It was a much harder sell when the team was going 0-16.

Bill Call wrote:No discussion about regionalization can ignore the regionalization of Lakewood Hospital. Our profitable City owned Hospital had $140 million in annual revenue and nearly $90 million in cash and investments and provided 1,500 high paying medical jobs. Our regional leaders hatched a plan to move the Hospital and its related jobs to Lorain County, transfer its cash and investments to private foundations and donate the land to a local developer. Who loses and who gains when the Regional Authority dictates development decisions?

This is why November's election is so important.
The hospital issue exposed O'Leary as a weakling who will buckle to corporate pressure.
That's the type of "leaders" that the oligarchs want to groom for higher office.
O'Leary (or Bullock, Litten, etc) is the type they want leading the county/region in the future. Someone who will take orders, not ask questions, and play along. (just like Budish and Jackson are doing now).

It's time for some serious change.

The PD strikes again.....

this time an op-ed titled "The next Cleveland mayor must have both vision and a willingness to embrace regional challenges"

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2019/ ... arkin.html

Not surprisingly, the piece was written by Brent Larkin.

Lakewoodites remember that Larkin authored a 2016 hit piece that labeled hospital supporters as "Unloveable losers". He referred to hospital supporters as "shortsighted Lakewood residents who live in the past".

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2016/ ... short.html

History has shown that Larkin was completely wrong on the Lakewood issue.....but that doesn't stop him and his PD cohorts from telling us how to vote. I'm sure they will enthusiastically endorse the "Team Summers" slate this fall.

History has shown that Larkin was completely wrong on the Lakewood issue.....but that doesn't stop him and his PD cohorts from telling us how to vote. I'm sure they will enthusiastically endorse the "Team Summers" slate this fall

The corrupt Cuyahoga Dem government has been aided and abetted for years by the Plain Dealer, who looked the other way and gave the players plenty of back-up by developing a cozy relationship with dirty politicians and offering “opinion” pieces supporting the goals they espoused.

The only way to break this cycle of corruption and machine politics is to NOT VOTE FOR DEM MACHINE SUPPORTED CANDIDATES.

That means O’’Leary and the Dem “endorsed” candidates. These are people who pledge to fall in line and vote as they are told.

Time to elect independent thinkers.

Bridget Conant wrote:Time to elect independent thinkers.

I would be happy if we could just elect thinkers for a start.

Baby steps, that would be a welcomed change in the county, and in Lakewood.

.

nearly ever city or county does the same song and dance with the professional sports teams stadiums and arenas.
that means it must be what most voters want.

ryan costa wrote:nearly ever city or county does the same song and dance with the professional sports teams stadiums and arenas.
that means it must be what most voters want.

Is it what voters want?

When you have the politicians and the news media telling you that unless you vote to increase taxes and pay for upgrades and renovations, the sports teams will leave, and the city will lose BILLIONS in dollars, what does the average person think? They assume everyone else knows more than they do and likely believe the lie that the loss of the team costs the city money. So they vote yes because they don’t want the team to leave and they are afraid the alternative will end up costing them more.

Another example of how politicians lie to help out their rich buddies.