Submitted by Roldo on Sun, 07/06/2008 - 13:24.
Sometimes you have to wonder whether Plain Dealer editors read their newspaper. Now at times I can’t blame them for that, however, it might come in handy at times, too.
Sunday, the PD again helped Tim Hagan and his two buddy Cuyahoga County commissioners sound the “we’re out of money again” cry and offer as a solution another buyout. Just as the one Hagan took (retired & ran and re-elected) and now is back on the job pulling down a full salary.
What is disturbing, however, is that the Plain Dealer ran two massive articles, dressed up with numerous photographs of politically-connected hires in the County Recorder and Auditor’s. The message: A lot of jobs for no good reason. Unless you need campaign workers.
Duh, so where can we find some fat to cut?
The Plain Dealer story Sunday didn’t even mention this overpopulation of cushy and sometimes very well paying jobs that reporter Joe Wagner certainly worked hard to compile. And I’m sure he missed some, too.
“We don’t print money here,” said Hagan, according to the PD.
Really! Well, you certainly act is if you do.
Where do they propose to cut? Answer: Social service agencies. Yes, agencies that serve people.
Ah, let them eat cake.
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Map Roldo's Brain
The question, of course, is whether enough people are tired of costly, patronage-driven sinecures, the incivility of leadership rants, the back room deals of “fixers”, incomprehensible and unaccountable “strategies”, and the propensity of our leadership to think that somehow, somewhere there’s got to be a consultant with some answers.
Ed Morrison posits at BFD. I am tired.
Power Broker
I noticed that my idealistic, brother-in-law, whose life parallels Robert Moses' life, was reading the Power Broker by Robert Caro, so now, I am reading it, too. Unbelieveable parallels--New York Tammany Hall politics at the turn-of-the- twentieth century and Cleveland at the turn-of-the-twenty-first century. Ironically, Robert Moses once stood in line for a municipal job in Cleveland. He was turned down.
If you want to supplement
If you want to supplement your reading of Caro's great book, I'd suggest
"The Assassination of New York" by Robert Fitch. You'll see parallels to Cleveland again.
How does this sound from the jacket:
"In this indictment of those who have wrecked New York, Robert Fitch points an angry finger at the financial and real estate elites. There goals have been simple and monolithic: to increase the value of the land they own by extruding low-rent workers and factories, replacing them with high-rent professionals and office buildings."
This is no Richard Florida fantasy on cities.