Heather Graham stars as the Public Option in this funny ad, showing how she'll force the lazy, bloated private insurance companies to get back in the game and compete. After all, competition is as American as apple pie. ...
H/T Mati Senerchia
Photo: Judge Ray Pianka and his personal bailiff Miriam Ortiz-Rush at a celebration held by ESOP (Empowering and Strengthening Ohio's People),which advocates for homeowners in or on the verge of foreclosure.
I first heard about the Cleveland Municipal Housing Court back in 1992, when the current judge, Ray Pianka, was a Cleveland City Councilman and my husband, now a magistrate in Housing Court, was a Housing Court Prosecutor for the Cleveland Law Department.
The court in those days was much smaller, and the problems more plebian than they are today. His caseload consisted mainly of landlord-tenant disputes, evictions, people who let their grass grow too long or whose garages were collapsing, and "collectors," those puzzling folk who hoard so much stuff their homes become a hazard. Likewise, there were the "cat people," people who had so many cats --30, 40 -- that their homes became giant litter boxes, to their neighbors' dismay.
Once he prosecuted a guy who was keeping a pig in his yard -- and large livestock are forbidden by city codes.
"Why, sir, do you keep a pig?" my husband asked the defendant.Oh, but that was during the reign of Mayor Michael R. White, when Cleveland's neighborhoods were more stable, its housing stock more valuable, and restoration of old houses at its height.
"Something to do," the urban pig farmer replied, shrugging.
Judge Raymond Pianka is at the center of the area's mortgage crisis as presiding judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court's Housing Division. He has made the job into a nationally prominent position, whether he's ordering Wells Fargo to stop selling foreclosed homes or fining companies $1,000 a day when they fail to appear in his court on charges of neglecting their properties.Today's PD offers video of Plain Dealer reporter Sandra Livingston talking with Michael McIntyre about Pianka's actions and the housing crisis. You can watch it here.
Cardsofchange is a place where the glass is always half-full. A destination where all the bad news of the day takes a back seat to stories of individual success.The recently downsized (RIFfed, laid off, terminated) are invited to
Our mission is to collect as many business cards and stories of positive change of people who have recently been laid off and connect them with new opportunities from potential employers, business partners and people who make the effort to look on the bright side of life.
Take your old business card and scratch out your old contact info. Then write in your new email address along with 1 positive change that happened in your life as a result of being downsized. Take a landscape photo and upload it here.The collection of cards is just beginning, but there are quite a few creative entries. Some of my favorites:
Read more...
"Outside an orbit of about 40 miles from Tower City, no one seriously considers Cleveland+ to be a regional brand. People in Akron and Yongstown joke about it, though."
Cleveland+ is an entirely new way to look at Northeast Ohio — as one
united region leveraging all of our strengths.
I'm still angry about Team NEO's ignorance of the economic challenges facing Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities. Team NEO is reinforcing the same dysfunctional geography that birthed the obvious gap between Pittsburgh and Cleveland in President Obama's proposed high speed rail initiative. Framing Pittsburgh as competition ultimately hurts other Northeast Ohio communities, particularly Youngstown.Morrison agrees and offers as proof the ever-widening gap in per capita income between Cleveland and Pittsburgh over the last decade. He concludes:
Surprisingly, at least to me, Pittsburgh leadership seems to appreciate Youngstown's plight better than Cleveland does.
"Insularity and arrogance impose costs. These costs rise as regional and global economies become more inter-connected.
The legacy of this generation of Cleveland’s business leadership is already being written, and the picture is not pretty."
The brilliant folks at Mint.com were looking at the map and tables at ProPublica and started wondering "exactly what percentage of each state’s unemployment problem would be hypothetically solved by the total stimulus package."
They came up with this map. (Click on images to go to the full-size version on Mint.com's website.)
They do warn it is difficult to peg down the actual unemployment rates, referring reader to a previous posting, the recent Visual Guide to Unemployment. It's entertaining as well as informative, particularly if you fall into the category of underemployed or discouraged workers.
According to the graph, Ohio stands to recoup 31% of its lost jobs. If, that is, the laid off auto workers and waitresses and lawyers and journalists can be retrained to lay blacktop.
aka The Economic Meltdown Song from Rhett & Link.
Or watch it on YouTube,
(Hattip to Sales Machine.)
What were people looking at online last month? It's not sexy, but it's true: political and economic news.
As always, search engines topped the list (Google, Yahoo, etc.), but in September 2008 the economy and politics drove internet traffic to news and wiki sites, according to the comScore Media Metrix monthly analysis of US consumer activity at online properties.
As the election draws closer, visits to BarackObama.com and JohnMcCain.com have surged. BarackObama.com, one of the fastest-gaining properties of the month, led the category with 5.4 million visitors (up 37% versus August).
JohnMcCain.com ranked behind BarackObama.com, with only 3 million visitors, but that number indicates a 109% increase from August. The left-leaning HuffingtonPost.com, which has covered the election intensively in the past few weeks, was also among the the top-gaining sites, with 4.5 million visitors (up 38% over August).
As several major banks crumbled in September and Congress raced to pass a $700 billion bailout plan to stabilize the financial markets, visits to business/finance - news/research and online trading sites soared, says the Comcast report.
Yahoo Finance led the category with nearly 20 million visitors, a 30% jump from August. Several other sites experienced particularly strong growth, including Russian financial site RBC.RU (up 155% to 1.2 million visitors), FoxBusiness.com (up 127% to 1.2 million visitors), and Google Finance (up 67% to 1.4 million visitors).Technorati tags:
Thus sayeth the New York Times:
I could resist the temptation to blog about today's Plain Dealer story about Cleveland distinguishing itself as the 2nd poorest major city in the nation.
But what I couldn't resist was the chance to w00t this comment by PD online reader LilGittup, who suggests that the newspaper industry itself might play a role in the ongoing deprecation of Cleveland's economy.
"Does the PD take any credit for inflating our poverty numbers? Keep downsizing and outsourcing, you're really helping the city. In addition to all of the layoffs, the PD went ahead and raised their price by 50%. Great job, great reporting. Well worth it."LilGittup isn't just being snarky -- locally, the number of lost media jobs is climbing:
"The online Cleveland Leader blogger/writer Roldo Bartimole said his sources expect a cut of 35 pages a week from the PD's news pages and 20 percent reduction of its workforce. Two weeks ago, Sun Newspapers eliminated its circulation department and its route carriers and the 22 editions are now being delivered by PD route drivers.
The Sun editions are being inserted inside the PD on Thursdays to subscribers who also get the PD. The PD is the Cleveland area's only daily newspaper.
In April, eight of Ohio's largest newspapers, including the PD, The Columbus Dispatch, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Toledo Blade, formed a state-wide partnership, calling themselves the Ohio Newspaper Organization, according to the PD's Ted Diadun.
The papers have been sharing stories and bylines in print and online on their Web sites.
Thursday's alleged cuts follow a 2006 cut of 17 percent of the PD workforce through voluntary buyouts.That buyout was to employees 50 or older with at least 20 years of service and included 2-1/2 years' worth of pay and health-care benefits." Source: WKYC.Things are tough all over.
Another perspective on the possible relocation of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland:
Cleveland Jewish History webkeeper Arnie Berger takes a look at where, historically, the Federation has been located vis-a-vis the city's Jewish population.
(Read the Cleveland Jewish History pages about the Federation in their entirety here.)
It's worth remembering that even in 1965, when Federation moved into its present location on Euclid Ave., most Jews no longer lived the city proper, and few if any Jewish children were in the Cleveland School System. Their website History page says of their decision to be located in downtown Cleveland:Since Federation was founded it has made nine decisions about its location. We describe its choices on these pages, noting where the Jewish community and its major institutions were located at the time.
The organization is now considering relocating. An active discussion is underway, asking if the new home should be in downtown Cleveland, or in a suburban location close to the center of the Jewish population."
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan wrote 70 years ago "The past has a vote, not a veto." We believe that if these history pages tell of the past, specifically the history of where Federation has done its work over the years and how the current facility came to be, they may help inform the discussion.
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