To register for this meeting with Senator Brown in the Russell Senate Office Building, email Brooke Stoddard at brookecstoddard [at] cs [dot] com.

Committees and Subcommittees that Senator Brown serves on are:
Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry
Subcommittee on Energy, Science and Technology
Subcommittee on Nutrition & Food Assistance
Subcommittee on Production, Income Protection & Price Support
Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs
Subcommittee on Economic Policy
Subcommittee on Security & International Trade
Health, Education, Labor & Pensions
Subcommittee on Employment & Workplace Safety
Subcommittee on Retirement & Aging
Veterans' Affairs

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Photo of contractor Susan Clellen in front of Stewardship Center

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The Cuyahoga County Energy Task Force is scheduled to conduct a public meeting on Thursday, September 13, 2007 at the Offices of Thompson Hine LLP on the 39 Floor of the Key Building, Downtown Cleveland.   

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A few days ago I saw the fallout shelter sign above still hanging on the outside of an old brick apartment building on Lee near Euclid in Cleveland Heights.  Fallout Shelters were a massive US goverment hoax - the signs and the buildings were just placebos for public nervousness.
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Merck/Sanofi-Adventis Recombinant DNA loose at a Cuyahoga County Park Near you!

Heard Bobby tonight at 3C - heard him in the 60's too.  We need leadership like his today in Cleveland. 

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Mr. Seale addressed a crowd of several hundred at Cuyahoga Community College Saturday evening.   I remember well the Black Panther Party from the 1960’s.  Mr. Seale remembers it well too.   Mr. Seale's visit was sponsored by the Sara J. Harper Leadership Institute.  Retired Hon. J. Harper was at the podium to introduce the evening’s program. 

On Friday August 31, 2007, while Air Show jets stalled out conversations and blasted ear drums,  Susan Miller and I visited the “open house” at the Post designed Cleveland Trust Rotunda building which sits on the corner of Euclid and 9th next to the Marcel Breuer designed Cleveland Trust Tower in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.   Lee Trotter had announced this open house at the County Commissioners meeting the day before and the Dirty Dealer had carried the news a few days prior.   I wondered, why is the County doing this? 

 The Cleveland Port Authority wore no clothes on Thursday.   The King was completely naked – yet about half (including a rep of “first suburbs”) of the 19 adults who spoke to the 100 plus in attendance raved about the “BOLD PLAN”  

I consistently attempt to have a “positive” outlook about North East Ohio and Cleveland.  I consider the substance of my posts on Realneo and affirmatively select material which I believe is conducive to improving the region.  However, there can be a problem with this self steered Polly Anna  editorial policy .   Always looking at the bright side might be just perpetuating a lie – maybe always having a positive outlook is actually misleading people and leading others into the false belief that the region is doing ok, that the region is improving.  Maybe it would be more helpful if I used my blog to accelerate failure – get to the bottom of it, get it over with and start new…

The Cleveland Port Authority has a new boss and a new plan. 

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I just got the email below, from the head of a local arts not-for-profit to remain un-named, to protect the innocent: "Norm -- i just wanted to make sure you knew about the "sales pitch" we are about to get.". I read on to see that tax junkie CPAC - Community Partnership for Arts and Culture - is on the Cuyahoga County junk again, now hustling artists and arts organizations to tax themselves and patrons for the benefit of the dealers. Read on... anyone going to this who can cover for realneo?... Note: " RSVP’s are required!" Now, a little art, in honor of this event and the rush for the MedCon and taxation without sober representation, courtesy of Lou Reed:

I dont know just where Im going

But Im gonna try for the kingdom, if I can

cause it makes me feel like Im a man

When I put a spike into my vein

And Ill tell ya, things arent quite the same

When Im rushing on my run

And I feel just like jesus son

And I guess that I just dont know

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I spent the afternoon at the Burning River Fest on Whiskey Island.

Fools rush in -  if you are for a sales tax to build a con center and kennedy mart - you honestly believe that this will trickle down and improve the NEO economy - then you should READ the resolutions (sales tax, use tax) passed by Cuyahoga County Commissioners Hagan and Dimora.  Look at the second line of either resolution.  "money goes into general fund".   There is no language in the resoluions that says that either the sales or use tax is for a  con center and kennedy mart.  This tax will go on for 20 years sucking in about a million a week.  Where will Hagan and Dimora be in 2008 when their terms expire?  Promises, Promises.  Printed in the Plain Dealer.

And Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, who voted "against" the tax is in fact complicit.  If he was really against the tax but for a con center (with support from hotel bed taxes as he said) Mr. Jones would have raised in the public hearings the fact that the resolutions were for money going into the general fund, not into a con center account.  Omitting to exercise this ringing argument puts Mr. Jones in a catagory of strong doubt about being "against" the tax.

So, if you REALLY want a concenter and kenmart you would do well to sign a referendum petition right away to help putitontheballot.com this spring.  Then you can vote the present resolutions down, and insist that the Commissioners introduce and pass   new resolutions which spell out specifically in the resolutions what the sales tax will be used for. 

But then again, maybe you were born yesterday. 

The dynamic leader of Habitat for Humanity will discuss the REstore program (http://www.gchfh.org/Restore/index.htm) at their offices as well as how providing affordable, sustainable housing helps end a cycle of poverty. http://www.gchfh.org Many opportunities to contribute in this worthwhile, ongoing project in Greater Cleveland will reveal themselves through this lively discussion. And if we are lucky, we may just get Jeffrey to veer off topic a bit and talk about his other life as a performance poet.

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by Sean Fisher, Cincinnati, Ohio on 07.31.07
According to a recent report in Forbes, the amount of driving we do back and forth is killing us...literally. From breathing air polluted with diesel particulates and other nasty pollutants to fatalities occurred in private automobiles, Forbes suggests that many of us are placing health far behind priorities such as McMansions, big box shopping, and congested commutes. Forbes compiled statistics from the American Lung Association's air pollution monitoring, average U.S. traffic delays from the Texas Transportation Institute, and U.S. per-capital car fatalities from the U.S Department of Transportation to find out what U.S. cities were most dangerous to drive in. Their results? Surprise, surprise...Southern California ruled the list. Both Riverside, California and Los Angeles were in the top three, separated by only Atlanta, Georgia. So, what is deemed the answer for this rising health problem? Public transportation and carpooling.
Of course, increased use of public transportation and carpooling takes enough cars off the road to reduce bad-news air particulates. However, public transportation in particular can help you avoid much of the pollution we breath in on our commutes to and from work.
According to the Forbes article:
Ultra-fine particulate matter has been linked with premature death, cardiovascular disease and respiratory illness, according to the California Air Resources Board. Though it takes Americans an average of 25 minutes to drive to work, according to 2005 U.S. Census Bureau figures, the board estimates that over 50% of a person's daily exposure to ultra-fine particles can occur during a commute.

Following are images of the concepts which were received by Sally Levine and David Ellison for the reuse of the Marcel Breuer designed Ameritrust Tower in Cleveland Ohio.  I extend my appreciation to the designers for their generous dedication and creativity.  I will endeavor to number each of the entries  so that comments can be directed to  specific designs.  I will also  try to make legible the text which is important on many.  A submission from Italy was especially poignant in its text.   Designers, please feel free to log in and amplify your presentations.   This is very cool that so much volunteer creativity went into this event.   Here's my hoping that all the designers who contributed will reap a referred commission or two from their contributions....

It is official - "Cuyahoga County commissioners voted 2-1 today to raise the sales tax a quarter of a penny to help bring a Medical Mart to Cleveland." Perhaps you'd like time to think about this more, and the opportunity to vote with other citizens on how you are taxed.  Other citizens feel the same and have formed a committee to "Put It On The Ballot"- a grass-roots campaign to collect enough signatures to force the 1/4% sales tax increase to be placed on a ballot. This Friday, July 27, there will be an Excellence Roundtable at The Inner Circle where some of the people involved with this campaign will join a discussion on this issue, from all directions.

To learn more about the campaign, visit http://putitontheballot.com - you'll certainly read more about this initiative on this site and on REALNEO throughout the coming months. 7GEN (developer of REALNEO) is providing this Drupal site for this initiative, and I look forward to learning more about the campaign and all related issues.

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    There is a good opinion piece by County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones regarding the proposed county sales tax hike in today's PLAIN DEALER  

There are many points regarding the proposed medical mart that still don't make sense for me, so I want to post this quick note...

1) At some level, the proposal is an effort to shift some marketing infrastructure, and perhaps some inventory control, expenses of some private companies to the public sector. So what are the current costs for those activities by the affected private sector and why don't we start with that as an amount that the private sector should be required to start with in estimating ways of allocating burdens? Otherwise, this isn't a partnership, it's a bail-out.

7GEN is pleased to provide a Drupal virtual community for the historic Cleveland Club of Washington, D. C., and they have used the technology very well - visit their clean, effective site here. If you frequent D.C., or have friends or family there with a "keen interest in Cleveland", connect with club President Brooke Stoddard at their online presence here. Their next event is this private tour of the U.S. Capitol, July 11, 2007, which will be exceptional.

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