Hypocrisy remains the only growth sector in Cleveland.

Can you imagine the downtown gang now is pressing for a ban on panhandling!

When panhandling for handouts for themselves, they seem very adept and eager.  They certainly won’t legislate against panhandling for government handouts for their businesses.

So, the poor and near poor can’t beg downtown.  It’s untidy.  The rich – developers and real estate interests – please line-up over there.  We’ll feed you with millions of dollars of goodies in a moment.

The Downtown Cleveland Alliance (DCA) – the newest of the downtown gang’s front groups – wants to stop you from giving a quarter or a buck to a panhandler, whether needy or working the streets for some sustenance.

The DCA recently helped another group of panhandlers – downtown real estate interests – make their pleas for state subsidies.

“I think all of these projects are very well positioned,” said Joe Marinucci, formerly of the Downtown Cleveland Partnership and now boss of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.  Since he helped put the list together, I guess he can offer an objective opinion.  Or not.

The building owners are applying for historic tax credits from the state. Among them are familiar locations.  Terminal Tower of Forest City Enterprises, back in line and the Higbee building, also owned by Forest City.

It’s so laughable.

Marinucci as economic development director for the city gave away fists full of tens of thousands of dollars to one developer after another.

He’s been rewarded with a number of high-paying private jobs since.

He was the economic guy at Playhouse Square Foundation, which thrives on public handouts.

Now his latest is the Downtown Alliance.  That’s a slight change from the Downtown Partnership, which he headed for a measly $204,000 a year,

Of course, all these high-sounding names have a simply basis...  keep the public money flowing to the right private interests.

They don’t call it panhandling.  They call it public-private partnerships.

I call it organized crime, since that’s one of the favorites in Mayor Frank Jackson’s vocabulary these days.

They use foundation funding to create these little fiefdoms of self-interest to set a community agenda that favors wealthy interests.

Ordinary panhandlers need not apply.

For example, Marinucci’s Downtown Partnership got gifts of $25,000, $10,000 and $7,500 from the Gund Foundation.  It got gifts of $48,512 (for Public Square so let’s keep panhandlers and homeless out), $5,000, another $5,000, $36,000 and $6,000 from the Cleveland Foundation.  (All these figures of nonprofits – meaning tax dodgers – are from 2005 tax returns, the latest available.)

In his new operation, Marinucci got $208,750 from Gund for the Downtown Alliance.

These foundations are part of the apparatus that works to wheedle money from government for private interests.  Their bosses are well-paid for the effort.  Ronald Richard, president of the Cleveland Foundation, gets an annual $305,000 salary and a $63,118 contribution to his pension.  One guesses he won’t be panhandling when he retires.

Dave Abbott gets a $236,808 salary and $54,284 pension contribution from the Gund Foundation.  No panhandling in his future either.

The slogan given for the attack on panhandlers by Downtown Alliance is “Don’t Give Where it Can’t Help.”  I’d suggest another panhandler catchphrase...  “Don’t Give to Those Who Can Help Themselves.”

That could get us right into the Medical Mart Trojan horse these same folks are pushing as a means to get an unnecessary new convention center.

What has been astounding about the campaign has been the effort against citizens who are trying to get petitions signed to put the increased sales tax up for a public vote.  Cuyahoga County Commissioners Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora passed an increase.  (I have to apologize to Peter Lawson Jones. I predicted he’d cave but he voted against the tax.)

The downtown gang loves to operate in the dark.  Check their blood pressure rising when a small citizen action attempted to take advantage of crowds of citizens at events downtown to gain petition signers.

Sponsors of downtown events harassed people seeking petition signers, forcing them to leave areas where people congregated.  A plane hired by those who favor the medical mart flew over Jacobs Field with a sign urging people NOT to sign the petition.  In other words, do not allow democracy to work.

It’s laughable how blatant but clumsy these efforts are.

What is clear again is that the Ratner/Miller juggernaut at Forest City Enterprises has all the politicians and the news media by the nose.  (Sam Miller pictured)

One wonders if Cleveland and Cuyahoga County will ever stop trying to make Forest City’s retailing mistake at Tower City work at public cost.

Let’s look a bit.

Tower City has been a welfare case from the beginning.  One story goes that Ruth Miller, Sam’s first wife and a Ratner, wanted Tower City to be a gem offered to the city.  So she stocked it will upscale shopping that wasn’t going to endure.  Tower City, as the terminus of RTA’s rapid, delivers tens of thousands of people to the retail outlet.  Upscale people don’t typically take public transportation.  Gucci’s has left the building.  The food court does okay at lunch.

However, Sam and the Ratners buy politicians with political contributions and trinkets.  Here’s an off-the-head list of gifts to them by public agencies...

-  RTA spent tens of millions to spruce up its station at Tower City.  (Oddly, Forest City was its construction manager, then sued RTA for $25 million more and got a $10 million settlement, and significant rent guarantees.  That’s gratitude for you.)

-  RTA built the money-losing Waterfront Line for some $69 million using Tower City as its connection, delivering tens of thousands to and from ballgames and the Rock and Roll Museum.

-  RTA also built, at about $13 million or so, a walkway to Gateway through Tower City, again routing hundreds of thousands of people via the Ratner retail properties.

-  The Federal government built its new $175 million courthouse on Ratner land behind Tower City (also conveniently connected by an inside walkway) with the help of then Congressman Lou Stokes.  When Stokes retired, he took a seat as a paid Forest City board member.

-  Tower City and the Terminal Tower which rises above the shopping area has received property tax value reduction in the hundreds of millions of dollar on the properties thus depriving Cleveland school children in particular of revenue. Further, taxes from a number of its parcels go, not the normal governmental bodies (mostly Cleveland schools) but to finance bonds for the $93-million Rock and Roll Museum and Hall of Fame.

-  These property tax reductions came after Mayor George Voinovich and Council President George Forbes gave Forest City some $80 million in UDAG money for various developments at Tower City.

-  The Ratner-owned Ritz Carlton, also attached to Tower City, received a 20-year, 100% tax abatement in addition to a UDAG no-interest (as in zero) loan, which isn’t payable until 2016.

-  The politicians tried to give the Ratners a no-bid right to a casino but that was rejected by voters.

-  The downtown gang has pushed a revamping of Public Square, at Tower City’s doorstep at a cost of some $40 million.  The downtown promoters want a “hipper” Public Square, which really means get rid of panhandlers and the homeless.

-  RTA is spending some $200 million in a beautification project along Euclid Ave.  from Tower City to University Circle, using desperately scarce transit money to subsidize retail (after Tower City helped destroy retail along Euclid with it’s the Avenue, within Tower City.)

All that is not enough for the avaricious Tower City needs.

Now they want a medical mart at the old Higbee’s (do not believe the PD propaganda about numerous sites being considered for the medical mart) to further bolster the Forest City failure.

Even that’s not enough.  They want a half-billion dollar convention center on Forest City land, attached to Tower City.

Will nothing satisfy these people?

Right.  Everything must be directed to what Sam Miller and Al Ratner desire.

Best they leave Cleveland, and resources be put to better uses than to correct the original mistake made at Tower City and save Sam Miller’s bacon.  Get rid of the REAL panhandlers at Public Square.

Does Nancy Lesic now edit the Plain Dealer?

It seems that way when you look at the coverage of the medical mart/convention center issue.

The Pee Dee coverage seems to follow the editorial thrust of “If the proponents want it, the proponents get it.”

Oppositional voices are rather quiet in its pages.  Certainly, enterprise reporting doesn’t reflect that maybe Cuyahoga County cannot afford another new major project.  Or that the medical mart concept really is simply a maneuver to get a convention center.  Or that the cost/return of this deal stinks for the public.

One hardly can read any real oppositional voices in the Pee Dee.

In a major front-page piece on June 27, headlined...

“How the city of Cleveland hopes to turn this space (picture of an empty floor in the empty old Higbee’s building) into a Medical Mart (in red in PD) and $331 million per year.”

That’s a PR agency’s dream. You can’t buy that kind of exposure for clients.

The more than 100 inches of front-page space is occupied by the type of headline and short blurbs that now dominate PD front pages.  The article is on an inside page.  The front pages read more like advertising copy.

In a full-page display, there is one cautionary sentence...

“Taxpayers haven’t widely supported calls for a new convention center,” that sentence says.

Not exactly incisive disapproval.

The only other references that could be considered skeptical of the effort are 42 paragraphs into the article by Sarah Hollander.  It quotes someone who “wondered” – also not exactly a powerful word where words are very important and signify value – “if Cleveland could compete with New York, Chicago and other cities that have established themselves as popular spots for medical meetings.”

It then acknowledges that Cleveland lacks certain appeals – beaches, gambling and great weather – that might attract medical conventioneers.

No attention is given to any possibility that the costs would outdo benefits.  Hell, who cares...  the public will pay most of the cost in this typical public/private partnership.

The Pee Dee’s coverage has been atrociously poor.  Hollander and Joan Mazzolini practice highly suspect Press Release Journalism.  If there is a news release of some kind, there will be a story, even if they have to follow PR people to Chicago for a hyped visit to Chicago.  Otherwise, enterprise reporting is AWOL or pumped up with promises of an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars to Cleveland...

“New visitors. New money. New jobs. New image,” typical of the PD headline promises.

The editorializing isn’t merely on the editorial page.  The reporters seem to be following their bosses’ wishes.  And the line editors seem to have forgotten how to cover an issue since they willingly accept and publish the PR coverage.

Enterprise coverage rather has appeared primarily in Cleveland blogs where opinions and comments reveal there are aspects to the deal that are not even touched upon by the so-called mainstream media.  (To get an idea of the blog debate, go to brewedfreshdaily.com and scan some of the discussion along with comments.)  Chas Rich on the PD blog, ironically, viewed the medical mart with some skepticism.  Anastasia Pantsios in the Free Times also finds critically unanswered questions about the medical mart issue.

The MM (Pee Dee) is more a Lesic and Camper Communications appendage than an independent newspaper.

Lesic & Camper, as might be expected, lists among its “current and recent clients” the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Convention Facilities Authority, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Gateway, Cleveland Tomorrow and its replacement the Greater Cleveland Partnership – a downtown smorgasbord of self-interests.

All together now, “Let’s screw the taxpaying public!”

By the way, the new publisher Terry Egger (pictured above) and the new editor Susan Goldberg (pictured) are proving a newspaper can get duller and less informative.

They seem to relish the inconsequential.