I’ve got a great idea for the medical mart and the convention center.  Why don’t those who profit from it pay for it?

How original and novel is that?

Tower City, the Forest City kingdom, wants it.  So why don’t they donate its Higbee property to a nonprofit for the mart?

Tower City also covets the Convention Center.  So it should donate the land it wants us to build the center upon to a nonprofit to construct and operate a Convention Center.

Why don’t all the downtown hotels, restaurants and other businesses start a fund to finance the facilities that they say will so greatly enhance their businesses?

Can’t anybody here be a capitalist anymore?

Hey, why then doesn’t the Cleveland Clinic also pitch in to finance it?  It should help the Clinic’s doctors in their profitable businesses.

Why is it never the people who benefit who pay?

And who better than the Cleveland Foundation, the Mandell Foundation (the many of them), the Sam & Maria Miller Foundation and flock of other Cleveland foundations, loaded with dough that should step up with their multi-millions of dollars?  These foundations – their money made off Cleveland workers for years and years, and now avoiding taxes – have hundreds of millions of dollars.  Why not spend it for something worthwhile – a medical mart, a convention center?

Why aren’t the foundation assets resulting from the past work of thousands of Clevelanders used now to finance today’s needs?

Poof.

Then there would be no need for any taxes, no need for extra bond issues by Cuyahoga County.  No necessity for the city to indebt itself more for the Ratner family.

Wow!  Why didn’t our movers and shakers, our planners and economic development wizards think of that?

They didn’t because greed blinds them from looking instead to our supposedly hotshot entrepreneurs for the financing of their own businesses.

They’d rather it be done with public, not private money.  They prefer socialism for capitalists when it comes right down to it.

It would leave them to gobble the profits. Simple, no?

It looks as if the politicians and business leaders have won another battle.  The score now is 148 (leaders) to 0 (people).  On the other hand, maybe it is 1,480 to 0, or possibly 14,800 to 0.  I am not sure of the actual score.  I am sure, however, about the zero.

The Cleveland City Planning Commission voted 5-2 against saving the Marcel Breuer building and essentially voted for Cuyahoga County to spend some $35 million or maybe nearly twice as much with bond fund interest, by knocking the historic building down and building another inferior public building (such as the Justice Center).

However, we can take some pride in the Planning Commission’s chairman Tony Coyne.

Tony is eloquent.  He can be eloquent for saving a building on one week.  Then just as eloquent on destroying the same building the next week.

Eloquence is a great asset for a politician.  So is being able to talk out of each side of the mouth.  Tony now excels at both, I think.

The Plain Dealer once again proved itself unable to oppose the powers that be, editorially pressing the politicians to destroy the building.

One editorial line particularly caught my attention... “But in the end, the arguments for the building’s demise are simply too numerous for even its most ardent defenders to counter rationally.”

One guesses then that the Pee Dee believes its esteemed architect critic is irrational.

That line was a direct slap at the newspaper’s architectural critic Steve Litt, as well as the numerous architects who spoke and wrote in favor of preservation.  Litt tried valiantly to attract the community’s attention to the impending loss.

One wonders whether the Cleveland Restoration Society took an early summer vacation.  It took no vigorous stance, apparently eyeing, not the destruction of a historic structure, but where its next buck in funding from Cleveland’s powerful foundations will come.

It’s the story of Cleveland’s diminishing stature.  Never a decision that lacks some favor and booty for the city’s declining Establishment...  always ready to pick the bones of what once was a great city.

NFL has Brown's Bernie Parrish on its Trail

“Whenever I was getting that horrible shot (Novocain) I would imagine Art Modell counting the crowd, smiling and laughing while he and the Governor sipped pre-game martinis high up in the Stadium Club, where players aren’t invited.”

That’s a quote from Bernie Parrish’s book “They Call It a Game.”

Bernie Parrish was a member of the 1964 championship Cleveland Browns team.

After football, he became a successful businessman.

There’s plenty in the book on the Cleveland Browns and Modell and the press.  He exposes the nature of Modell’s ownership in the Browns.  I’ll share one juicy tidbit on Modell from the book...

“Babe Triscaro, a powerful Teamster leader in Cleveland who has received a good deal of publicity as being part of the local underworld, told me that $1,900 was paid for a police file on an investigation of Arthur B. Modell’s background and possible connection with old-time Mafia figures. When Babe received the file he delivered it to Arthur Modell at his office in Tower B of Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Babe said while he was there Arthur received a telephone call. He hung up the phone, excused himself and went down to a pay telephone. When he returned, he thanked Babe and said he had just received word from the FBI warning him that Fuzzy Lakis was to be arrested at a party that he and Modell were to attend. Apparently he took the advice – Fuzzy was arrested on schedule in January of 1966, and Arthur was nowhere around.”

Parrish named the police officer from whose desk the Modell police file was stolen.

(Maybe you don’t have to wonder why the late Al Lerner, Modell’s successor as Browns owner, hired former FBI agent and Secret Service director Lew Merletti for security.  I got to talk to Lerner, who benefited greatly by the city’s construction of Browns Stadium for him at some $350 million. As I questioned Lerner, Merletti edged up on me.  I asked Lerner if he needed a bodyguard and he took great exception to being asked.)

And on the press, Parrish wrote...

“Thomas Vail, Cleveland Plain Dealer editor-publisher, and Bernard Ridder, Jr., part owner of the Minnesota Vikings and vice president of the St. Paul Pioneer Press & Dispatch, are two guests in a continuing parade of VIPs that Art Modell has entertained in the Cleveland Wigwam Club at Municipal Stadium during his pre-game and half-time socials.  Facts like this are not lost on a sportswriter who stays on the scene for long periods of time while players come and go.  Wounding an owner or management cannot only cut off sources of information, it can cause other sports owners to be suspicious about the offending writer, who must also cover baseball, basketball and other sports.  Deliberately coloring a story a few shades more appealing to the Establishment has become accepted procedure.”

Things have not changed much.

The 1959 book can be found on line or at bookstores used, and everyone who is interested in the Cleveland history should have a copy.

The book comes with a Time magazine description on the cover.  Parrish’s book “…indicts the pro football establishment for its greed, manipulation and possible crooked dealings.”

Parrish is not the kind of guy you would want on your trail.

However, at 71 and with health problems, Parrish is on the trail of the NFL because of its treatment of retired players, especially those with severe health problems.  He and others have the ear of the U. S. Congress, which has held hearings on the problems the NFL doesn’t want exposed.

We know that lives are ruined as players continue to play with concussions only to find later in life that the injuries have cut years from their lives. They also are often left with injuries that destroy the function of their brains.

The Toronto Star reported recently...

“Aging NFL retirees told the U. S. Congress yesterday that playing professional football left them with broken bodies, brain damage and empty bank accounts.  Lawmakers said they might get involved if a better pension and disability system isn’t created.

“Former players told a sympathetic House judiciary subcommittee tales of multiple surgeries, dementia and homelessness, all while trying to fight through the red tape of the National Football League and the NFL Players Association’s disability system.”

The story described a couple of situations...

“Curt Marsh, an Oakland Raider from 1981-87, described a leg amputation, more than 30 surgeries and multiple doctor visits before he was approved for disability payments.  Brent Boyd, a Minnesota Viking from 1980-86, talked about his bouts with homelessness as a single dad and brain damage he blames on multiple concussions from his football days.

“The late Mike Webster, the hall-of-fame Pittsburgh Steelers center who suffered from mental illness that was widely attributed to head injuries, died homeless in 2002, his lawyer told the committee.”

So, when the players asked Parrish, known to be a no-nonsense guy to come to their aid, he could not refuse.

Hell, don’t they know that billionaire owners like the Lerner family have to watch their pennies.