The Observation Deck

Will the Three Arches Foundation, who pledged to make Lakewood the healthiest city in America, step up and support our city during this pandemic crisis?

They have control of a significant amount of money from the hospital foundation, money that was from our city owned hospital.

What do they plan to do to help keep us safe?

Will they help pay for testing?

Provide delivery of food and supplies for those at high risk sheltering at home?

So much they could do with all that money.

Bridget Conant wrote:Will the Three Arches Foundation, who pledged to make Lakewood the healthiest city in America, step up and support our city during this pandemic crisis?

They have control of a significant amount of money from the hospital foundation, money that was from our city owned hospital.

What do they plan to do to help keep us safe?

Will they help pay for testing?

Provide delivery of food and supplies for those at high risk sheltering at home?

So much they could do with all that money.

I cannot believe the silence out of the two foundations Lakewoodites underwrote and claimed it was to make us healthier.

It just underlines, they never cared about Lakewood, Lakewood's Health, all they wanted was the keys to our money!

Those people are just beyond terrible.

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LAKEWOODITES

Together we lost $248 million dollars in a deal that set up Three Arches, and Healthy Lakewood.

Both received over $75 million in combined funds from Lakewood, Ohio.

3 months into our largest health crisis in Lakewood's history, not a peep out of them.

We are really getting screwed in this deal.

Crickets....

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I keep thinking about how many beds we are going to need for this epidemic and how critical this situation will become. We now have a hole where our hospital stood

And then I think of Brian Essi’s prophetic statement.


THEY WILL HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS

So this is what passes for stewardship a century after the 1918 Spanish flu sparked the expansion of Lakewood Hospital.

The future of health care changing and all that, they say.

Seems *almost* as if some other agenda was at work there. I’m sure the current silence is just a coincidence. I’m waiting for this:

“Look at all the social distancing you could do in that hole we built for you there “

Terry Tekushan wrote:So this is what passes for stewardship a century after the 1918 Spanish flu sparked the expansion of Lakewood Hospital.

The future of health care changing and all that, they say.

Seems *almost* as if some other agenda was at work there. I’m sure the current silence is just a coincidence. I’m waiting for this:

“Look at all the social distancing you could do in that hole we built for you there “

Terry

Looking back it is easy to see it for what it really was. A transfer of wealth from LHA to a small group of Summer supporters to manage as they see fit behind closed doors. Just as we said from Day on back in 2014.

The city was played. They traded our healthy future, a working solvent hospital, for the promise of strip malls and restaurants.

To many of us it was insane now, today it appears to be deadly.

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Every politician In Lakewood and Cuyahoga County, as well as those who were covertly directing the demise of the hospital are guilty of throwing their fellow citizens under the bus for their own enrichment.

They have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS.

In fact, perhaps it’s time to create a list of the people who sold you and me out?

Mike Summers

Ed FitzGerald

Mary Louise Madigan

Sam O’Leary

David Anderson

Cindy Marx

Ryan Nowlin

John Litten

Jay Foran

Jennifer Pae

Jay Carson

Toby Cosgrove

Every member of the Lakewood School Board

Every attorney for the Cleveland Clinic

Every enthusiastic member of Build Lakewood



I’m just getting started. Feel free to add those you know who lied and worked actively to strip this community of its hospital and millions of healthcare dollars.

You all have BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.

Bridget Conant wrote:Every politician In Lakewood and Cuyahoga County, as well as those who were covertly directing the demise of the hospital are guilty of throwing their fellow citizens under the bus for their own enrichment.

They have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS.

In fact, perhaps it’s time to create a list of the people who sold you and me out?

Mike Summers

Ed FitzGerald

Mary Louise Madigan

Sam O’Leary

David Anderson

Cindy Marx

Ryan Nowlin

John Litten

Jay Foran

Jennifer Pae

Jay Carson

Toby Cosgrove

Every member of the Lakewood School Board

Every attorney for the Cleveland Clinic

Every enthusiastic member of Build Lakewood



I’m just getting started. Feel free to add those you know who lied and worked actively to strip this community of its hospital and millions of healthcare dollars.

You all have BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.

I'm wondering, if any of them, have a WTF moment as in, "What have I done?"

Yes, Jim. I made my remark tongue in cheek. I’ve been following this saga over these last few years and it absolutely failed the sniff test from the beginning.

The web of deceit doesn’t reveal itself in advance unfortunately and there’s that tendency for decent people to attribute to stupidity what the more suspicious among us attribute to malice. [ HANLON’S RAZOR:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. ] That’s assuming they’re paying attention at all. They’re sure the city government is at least as competent as it’s been in the past.
And one could be forgiven for assuming an honest act of stupidity will be corrected soon enough. Of course it wasn’t. The meter clearly started pointing towards malice. If you were paying attention.

And then borderline minions trotted out Occam’s Razor and figured the simplest explanation is preferable. Like, The Hospital is Outdated, or The Future of Healthcare is Changing (as if viruses read that memo). Programmed talking points. Unfortunately occam’s razor tends to be the hobgoblin of simpletons who only realize the truth only after someone’s stolen their lunch money … over and over.

The only thing that gave me pause was that it just didn’t seem as though the perpetrators of this crime were smart enough to both pull off what it was starting to look like, and also escape scot-free.

Unless they had help.

It’s hard to tell from down here among mere mortals who the puppet masters are but when you see the grotesque figures with patchy countenances and fake smiles, along with the spring-loaded glad-hand, ya really gotta look for the strings.

The L.O. consortium laid it all out, yet the establishment press went with the lame narrative. Worse yet (and most disturbing to me) were the minion trolls carrying their water- loudly and tirelessly. This kind of operator is incomprehensible in that it’s not greed (which the perpetrators clearly have) but pure malice in the service to power. They’re kiss-up / kick-down menaces and I recall there were several that once frequented these forums. The arguments weren’t substantive but instead displays of petulance.

Well it wasn’t stupidity that crafted this. A complex tangled web was required to come to this point. I suppose in this national milieu of the Big Swindle (in light of the origins of 2008/9 meltdown which our leaders had deemed crimeless, or austerity measures meted out across the EU) it seems quite feasible that some form of coaching occurred along the line at critical junctures. Since a cottage industry has formed around the neoliberal goal of stripping the “commons” and privatizing it I presume there are think tanks and non governmental organizations whose function it is to assist craven local politicians in doing just that. The sweet deals for friends and supporters are the reward.

I see there’s a list of the usual suspects here and that’s a good start. Unfortunately the individual players and their unique interpretation of the term “stewardship“ gives me little hope that an epiphany will occur.

As a recent past national leader once said, “I sleep fine at night.”

Yes there will be blood on their hands; and yet they will sleep fine at night. No need to change course.

From a generation apart--- accurately stated

Bridget-

Don't forget Tom Bullock. He was OUTRAGED by Michael Skindell and members of Save Lakewood Hospital.

dl meckes wrote:Bridget-

Don't forget Tom Bullock. He was OUTRAGED by Michael Skindell and members of Save Lakewood Hospital.

Let's Be Serious About This.

During this entire time, Councilperson Bullock was a member of the Lakewood Hospital Association and had personal, private, and public knowledge as early as 2013 that Lakewood Hospital was slated for closure.

He had a public duty to disclose this to his constituents. He failed us! His political career has ended. The honorable thing for him to do would be to resign.

I also received the same treatment from him that he gave Mike Skindell when I questioned him about the loss/destruction of essential civic infrastructure.

Twenty minutes of finger-jabbing and being shouted down at the top of his voice.

Mark Kindt wrote:Let's Be Serious About This.

During this entire time, Councilperson Bullock was a member of the Lakewood Hospital Association and had personal, private, and public knowledge as early as 2013 that Lakewood Hospital was slated for closure.

He had a public duty to disclose this to his constituents. He failed us! His political career has ended. The honorable thing for him to do would be to resign.

I also received the same treatment from him that he gave Mike Skindell when I questioned him about the loss/destruction of essential civic infrastructure.

Twenty minutes of finger-jabbing and being shouted down at the top of his voice.

I heard about him going ballistic on you Mark, shortly after it happened. I believe that happened in an eating establishment on Detroit Ave.

I personally witnessed his verbal assault on Mike Skindell, and it was downright ugly. Councilperson Bullock enters the red zone (dog term) when angry and loses sight of his boundaries.

When I was active with Save Lakewood Hospital, my primary concern was the economic health of the city. For a variety of reasons, I rarely used Lakewood Hospital and I didn't see that changing, so when it was over my primary concern became seeking justice of some kind for the city.

Now all that has changed.

I can see where the existence of Lakewood Hospital could mean life or death for me and my family despite our best efforts to stay safe.

Now I am really pissed off. Now I am in the red zone.

To appropriate the phrase used often here, if something happens to me because of this pandemic, MY BLOOD WILL BE ON YOUR HANDS.

Scatter my ashes in the hole in the ground at Belle and Detroit.