The Rape of Community by Business
While Republican politicians, many civic leaders and the news media are zeroing in on the “greed” of public employees, the big theft of public dollars is quietly being done by our major corporations.
It’s just business being business-like. Or a robbery in progress.
School teachers, firefighters, police and other public workers are fair game. Overly wealthy business people, well, we’ll leave them alone. Just look the other way.
The robbery of public funds is taking place right before our eyes. Yet there is no outcry. You hear not a whimper of opposition from politicians, civic leaders or the news media.
We’ve been trained to let it all go by. There is no countervailing power to corporate greed. Certainly not in our obedient news media. Kowtowers all.
And while the Plain Dealer centers attention on the Board of Revision (rightly to some extent), other government bodies are giving away tons of public dollars. A good deal of it from the very public institutions in dire trouble – public schools.
A good example is the rapacious American Greetings Corp. The company has played government off against each other to get major subsidies. Gimme more.
Where will they move? Where they get the best deal – and the ability to help themselves at Crocker Park where they have a financial interest. Isn’t that corporate responsibility as defined by corporate guys?
One subsidy is particularly destructive. Tax Incremental Financing. It uses property taxes to fund American Greetings escape from Brooklyn, which has help nurture them for more than half a century, into a more exclusive neighborhood in Westlake.
So much for loyalty. So much for past favors. Fifty years or more may be a long time, but so long it’s been good to know you.
The tax incremental financing is only a small part of the largess bestowed upon the wealthy owners of the card company. (By the way, I’ll be checking my card purchases to see they’re not American Greetings.)
The Plain Dealer last week outlined all the generosity our politicians have given to American Greetings.
It’s astounding.
Atop a 75 percent property tax diversion for 30 years, according to the Plain Dealer, American Greetings also gets a 15-year tax credit on its income taxes. The PD says that on $155 million annual payroll, “that credit would be worth about $775,000 a year – or $11.6 million over the full 15 years.” Or maybe until they ask for more.
Don’t rest now. The state offers an additional $93.5 million package of subsidies over the same 15 years.
When it comes to corporate welfare, the sky’s the limit. This one beats them all.
Maybe you missed the PD editorial blasting this massive gift of public funds to a private business. You did miss the spanking?
No, you didn’t. It didn’t happen. And don’t expect it ever to be seen or read.
Nor did I hear of any politician making hay of this massive gift-giving by government. Where’s the against-all-welfare Tea Party? Nor did I notice any labor leader outrage.
The silence is deafening.
The PD actually encourages such corporate blackmail.
The coverage is so unbalanced that it must be purposely done or they’ve brainwashed themselves.
And nobody even tries to assess the loss to community of constantly subsidizing new building and leaving the old to fester and die. What a community loss.
“Let’s face it – when a major employer even hints that it might be thinking about moving – especially to another state – it’s in the driver’s seat,” a PD editorial said when Gov. John Kasich signed the deal for millions of subsidies to American Greetings. Isn’t that a plea to accept blackmail?
“Credit Kasich for correctly reading the need for a decisive move,” the PD wrote.
How about some forthright talk about the blackmail and hostage-taking by corporations which take tens of millions of dollars from the public. That’s from each of us. We pay more when they pay less.
Shouldn’t these blackmailers at least get an editorial slap on the wrist?
Instead, they get encouragement from the PD editorial board.
The PD has been totting up lots of misdeeds in government.
However, it apparently hasn’t the energy to tote up how much in public funds – via tax abatement and tax incremental financing – the schools, cities, counties and library systems lose to corporate greed.
It’s not nice to tell the emperors they have no clothes.
Property taxes from the Terminal Tower projects are still going to help pay off the debt on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The hall has been there since the mid-1990s. That’s just one of many such sweet deals that divert tax money to private interests.
The neglect of this kind of civic corruption by the news media can be called the hypocrisy of conventional journalism. Reporters and editors see plenty of dishonesty in the public sector but are totally blind to the private graft.
Private wealth automatically gets the blind eye.
Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.
He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]
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6 Responses to “ROLDO: The Rape of Community by Business”
Fred
It’s about time the media starts giving this very situaiton much more attention, especially since most people cannot see their communities raped by business for themselves. Did anyone else notice that gasoline was $4 per gallon when Obama was elected, and then went down to $2.50. That is, until the Republicans regained control and the prices immediately shot up again? And did anyone else notice the super-rich business execs that got mega millions in bonuses for increasing profits by outsourcing our skilled middle-class jobs under the pretense of taking advantage of emerging markets where skilled professional labor was 10-40% of the US, and then it was here in the US where we lost millions of jobs (includes Eaton, Goodrich, GE, and many more companies operating locally)… all during the Bush years, may I add. Oh yeah, let’s not let our colleges off the hook here, because they trained our offshore competitors in science, engineering, technologies, and business. This was well underway in the late 1970’s. Those students went home and built their own excellent colleges and have a fierce sense of competition. Why, oh why, do so many of us have such short memories? Time for the media to tell the whole truth.
C J Paparosa
liked the article infomative but what is the solution?
Richard
No solution.
The Feds KNOW exactly what’s going on here. They KNOWN it for a LONG time. It involves some of the most prominent legal and corporate firms in the area being facilitated by the political structure, major “news” organizations and former and current politicians.
You will NEVER see that “perp walk”. Too many of them are lawyers. They know the difference between immoral, unethical and illegal. They know what’s best for the common folk. Amusement and a occasional sacrificial lamb.
Indians are winning and we’re burning a couple witch’s. All is well.
Roldo Bartimole
Richard has it about right.
We arrested the clowns, or we’ll burn the wiches, as he says,
but nobody’s going to much touch the legal criminals. No one
will pay for the immense damage done.
Richard
The rich man does the dancing. The poor man pays the band.
How many of us are dancing?
Roldo Bartimole
Will Fitzgerald take another white elephant
(Already has the Ameritrust Complex on Euclid Ave.)? This time the
old American Greetings HQ, allowing American Greetings
to take a likely heavy tax deduction and further escape property taxes on the complelx. The deal has the County
purchasing the complex and turning it over to a non-profit
Film Commission.
Wonder if the Weiss family wants a permanent plaque
at the building as Dick Jacobs demanded and got from
Tim Hagan.
Check the PD story today that makes it seem a good deal
on Page One today, May 27th.