ROLDO: Prove Your Passion Mr. Jackson, Mr. Kasich

By Roldo Bartimole

Okay, Mayor Frank when are you going to ask for a cut of that $1 billion Randy Lerner and family are getting for the Browns? Are you really serious about helping the children of Cleveland?

Here’s an idea from one of my readers: Charge the 7.75 percent sales tax on the $1,000,000,000 (that’s $1 billion) purchase of the Cleveland Browns in Cuyahoga County.

Mayor Frank Jackson there could be $77,500,000 for your children of Cleveland. Quite a tidy sum.

You can lower or drop the November levy. No tax for your mostly impoverished residents. Sound good? Sounds excellent to me.

You have such a good relationship with Gov. John Kasich, who, as you, is vitally interested in the welfare of Cleveland children. The two of you can agree to use the entire sales tax for the Cleveland schools. A dandy idea.

After all, who has subsidized the Browns franchise owner more than the school children of Cleveland? Who will subsidize the new owner more than those same children?

I’ve pointed out numerous times that the deal worked out by Browns executive as the city’s negotiator, Fred Nance, helped free the Browns from almost all cost of the stadium. Before that, Nance with Mayor Michael White helped free the Browns of all property taxes. So helpful these people.

The old and the new franchises have an essentially a free place to do business thanks to the city and county taxpayers. And the children of Cleveland. Plus, of course, their teachers.

Now is the time to share.

Mayor Jackson, you have subsidized the Browns enough.

First, the billionaire Lerner family; now the billionaire Jimmy Haslam III, new owner. Time for give-backs. Randy Lerner doubled the price Al Lerner paid for the team. While losing, losing and losing.

If billionaires can toss around an extra billion dollars for a football team certainly they can afford a few million dollars for the children of Cleveland.

You pay sales tax when you buy toilet paper. But you don’t pay sales tax when you buy a sports team? Why not?

Randy Lerner should be able to take a sales tax payment out of his back pocket. Easy pickings.

And the new owner could also help. Presently he’s being treated as a mini god by our love-lavishing media. Never a bad word. On Ch. 3 he IS God.

Let’s stop the charade that there is no money for the Cleveland schools. There’s plenty of money. It’s just in the wrong pockets. Hoarded by the wrong people.

Time for a little common sense.

Old man Al Lerner once told me to my face that he didn’t take any tax abatements. He knew, of course, that his stadium was fully tax EXEMPTED. Better than tax abatement because it never ends as tax abatements do.

So, c’mon Jackson and Kasich. Let’s get real. Let’s tax those who have.

Deliver the $77.5 million.

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Romney-Ryan For the Working Man

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan — two guys from wealthy families who have never had to toil for a living — will tell working stiffs what’s good for them.

And what might that be?

Tax breaks on wealth to provide incentives to the rich; less social security and Medicare as motivations to spur workers. We need more of this. That’s their message.

Oh, and by the way, Social Security to Wall Street, too. Invest in failure.

Close tax loopholes. What does that mean, R & R? There goes your mortgage tax deduction. Cut government spending the R & R way — end food stamps to deal with obesity.

The Republicans also seem to forget that the Boston Tea Party was against a foreign power. The Republican Tea Party is against its own people.

And working stiffs are supposed to believe this shit.

Only the brainwashed, Romney.

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Romney-Ryan, A PD Winner?

I think so.

“Into a presidential campaign that has been short of substance and long on personal attacks, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has injected an element around which worthwhile debate might begin to coalesce.

“The element’s name is Paul Ryan,” says a Plain Dealer editorial.

The headline says: “Choosing Ryan sharpens Romney.”

Get ready to end your subscriptions. The PD is on its way to a Romney endorsement.

Believe it. As I do.

 

 

Roldo Bartimole has been reporting since 1959. He came to Cleveland in 1965 to report for the Plain Dealer where he worked twice in the 1960s, left for the Wall Street Journal in 1967. He started publishing his newsletter Point of View in 1968 and ended it in 2000.

In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]

 

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