READ THIS BOOK!

I just learned that the Cleveland Memory Project has Burt Griffin's 1981 Cities Within A City posted as an e-book. From the introduction:

The central idea of this book is that, for a large, decaying, century-old core city within a metropolitan population of a million and a half, a centralized governmental authority is inherently unable to render efficient and effective service. For such a central city, smaller units of government are more efficient, more responsive,and more democratic. That idea arose out of personal experiences from 1966 to 1975 when I was a Legal Aid Society lawyer representing community organizations in Cleveland’s inner city neighborhoods. As I have listened to the proponents of regional government, I have been unimpressed that regionalization would deal with the realities of life or public administration in the City of Cleveland as I observed them during those years.

This is the definitive book about the relationship between municipal government and neighborhoods in Cleveland. Read it!

"STEELYARD SECRETS" FROM POLICY MATTERS

A major investigative report on Steelyard Commons' financing hits the street today, just in time for the development's groundbreaking ceremony. The author, Policy Matters research director Zach Schiller, has spent more than two months poring through documents and interviewing people at the Port Authority, the Northeast Ohio Development Fund, etc. This summary is from the download page:

Investors in Steelyard Commons, the Cleveland shopping center project, are receiving tax subsidies worth $12.48 million over seven years. These federal tax credits were funneled through a private, for-profit corporation controlled by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, a public entity whose board is appointed by the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. The Port Authority was instrumental in the company’s success in winning the credits and received significant revenue for its part in the transaction that used them. Yet these subsidies were granted by a publicly controlled entity in virtual secrecy, with little or no opportunity for public scrutiny or debate. This September 2005 report raises probing questions about this project. The full details of the Port Authority’s involvement with the tax credits and the Steelyard Commons project should be made public, the report concludes, and future credits should require public approval by the Port Authority board.

Sound familiar? It should, if you're a regular reader of this blog. But Policy Matters has the details -- twenty-two pages worth. You can download both the full report and the executive summary as pdf files here.

A LIVING WAGE FOR CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL: Gloria Ferris, who wants to be my City Council representative, explains why she wants the job.

No, no, that was a joke! Gloria's post is, as she says, a revealing "non-judgmental" description of a City Council member's compensation package. And she's right, it's pretty good... though adding the $45,000 cost of a Councilman's aide to the list of "compensation" items seems kind of outside the lines. $100,000 in pay, fringes and expenses for the Council Member him/herself is enough to make the point.

Right Angle Blog takes this as an argument to reduce the size of City Council. There's some back and forth on this in comments at BFD.

To me, it's an argument for examining the size of the pay package, not the size of Council. "Are Council Members overpaid?" is one question. "Are Council Members underworked?" is quite another.

The idea that Council's size, staffing, etc. is primarily a financial issue is a distraction from a far more interesting question: If you were going to design a system of political leadership for Cleveland citizens that truly valued access, accountability and grassroots empowerment, what would that system look like?

Geoff Beckman and I argued about this a few months ago, here and here.

MEET THE BLOGGERS EPISODE 7: JANE CAMPBELL

George, Tim and I interviewed Cleveland Mayor and re-election candidate Jane Campbell last evening. The resulting hour-long podcast (in three parts) is posted at Brewed Fresh Daily.

Mayor Campbell said her administration played no role in getting $32 million in Federal tax credit financing into the Steelyard Commons package. She stood by the claim that SYC will produce 1,800 jobs. She said she will support unions' right to organize store employees at SYC, and that the Towpath Trail passing through the development will be a public right-of-way "like a street" not under the SYC owners' control. That was all in the first ten minutes.

George found a wi-fi connection and blogged his way through the whole interview, so there's a complete topical outline here.

Tim closed by asking for a commitment from the Mayor, if she makes it through the primary, to do a Meet The Bloggers debate with her opponent in the general. He didn't get it.

MEET THE BLOGGERS EPISODE 6: MICHAEL NELSON

George, Tim and I interviewed Cleveland mayoral candidate Michael Nelson this afternoon. The resulting hour-long podcast (in three parts) is posted at Brewed Fresh Daily.

Nelson, an attorney, former teacher and community activist who hasn't run for office before, is one of the candidates who are lumped into "other" in the polls. He isn't going to make it into the general -- this time, anyway. But he's smart, he's been around Cleveland politics for twenty years, and he's a voice you should hear.

I say this knowing full well that when he announced I called him a "Wal-Mart candidate".

In the interview Nelson discussed his Steelyard Commons support (in a way that doesn't square exactly with the newspaper account quoted in the last link) and his belief that the city -- the Black community, in particular -- should still have an elected School Board. He also talked about the spread of HIV among African-American women, which makes him the first candidate we've interviewed to mention a public health issue. Lots of other topics, too. Check it out.

FREE SPEECH ON THE TOWPATH? The Brooklyn Sun Journal reported Thursday that "Tax Increment Financing" legislation, which steers Steelyard Commons property tax revenue to help pay for extension of the Towpath Trail from Harvard Avenue to Settlers Landing, is about to be passed by Cleveland City Council.

Ward 13 Councilman Joe Cimperman, who took most of the heat for Council's abortive effort last Spring to block a Wal-Mart supercenter in SYC, is quoted in the Sun Journal article as an avid supporter of the TIF plan.

Here's a question I put to Council President Frank Jackson in his Meet The Bloggers interview, intend to ask Mayor Campbell on Tuesday, and think should be asked of Cimperman and other Council Members:

Are you willing to amend the TIF ordinance to require, in exchange for the City's tax support, that the assisted part of the Towpath Trail -- including the mile-long stretch through Steelyard Commons -- be maintained as a free speech zone with no limits on public access or association... no bar, for example, to a union organizer walking down the Trail to meet with store employees on their lunch break?

Jackson sidestepped the question. I think I'll send it to the Mayor in advance so she can think about it.

BIG LIE ABOUT SYC PUBLIC FUNDING CONTINUES: The same Sun Journal article, by reporter Tom Corrigan, says:

As Schneider declined to accept public funding for the project, [Campbell chief of staff Chris] Ronayne said any dollars generated will go toward completing Cleveland's portion of the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail...

But Steelyard Commons developer Mitch Schneider has not "declined to accept public funding". Not hardly. As Corrigan himself reported back in June, the $120 million Steelyard project is getting over $30 million in Federal New Market Tax Credits financing, arranged by the Port Authority through a private corporation that the Port Authority Board controls. The cash value of this subsidy to Steelyard's owners -- i.e. the amount of cash return to investors that will come from the Federal budget rather than the project's cash flow -- may be as much as $8 million over seven years, according to a source familiar with the deal.

It has now been exactly 36 weeks (252 days) since the Plain Dealer last mentioned this rather important fact about the Steelyard Commons/Walmart deal (except for Olivera Perkins' brief, vague description of a discussion at a No Cleveland Walmart meeting in July). Has the Sun News decided to flush it down the memory hole, too?

I'm sure you're all familiar with the concept of "lies of omission"...

SHOW US THE MONEY: What are the dates on those campaign finance reports?

Yesterday's Plain Dealer says that Jim Draper has reported raising only $44,000 for his mayoral campaign. But here's political reporter Mark Naymik on July 7 (no longer on line):

Mayoral tidbits: Former Cleveland Safety Director and mayoral candidate James Draper, a Democrat, raised campaign money like President Bush last week, collecting about $100,000 at his first major fund-raiser.

The Republican feel was no coincidence. The event’s hosts included businessmen Ed Crawford and Malachi Mixon, who last year helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Bush’s campaign.

“We were working to get George Bush elected. One year later we are working to get Draper elected,” Crawford said at the event at the City Club of Cleveland.

Mixon predicted that Draper’s campaign will have about $250,000 by the end of this week, giving the candidate a chance to make a noise in the nonpartisan mayoral race.

I know there was a later story about unnamed business donors "defecting" from Draper to Republican David Lynch. But did they ask for their checks back?

Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do.

Other comments on the PD story at Right Angle Blog (with a handy graph), democracy guy and BFD.

PATMON TO CHANNEL 3: WHERE'S MY NAME? I got an email from Andy Juniewicz of the Patmon for Mayor campaign with a letter to Channel 3 attached. The letter asks a very good question: Why wasn't Bill Patmon's name included in the choices offered to voters in the station's mayoral preference poll released yesterday?

Here's the question that SurveyUSA, WKYC's pollster, asked their sample of voters:

On October 4th, Cleveland will have a Primary for Mayor. If the Primary for Mayor of Cleveland were today, and you were standing in the voting booth right now, who would you vote for? Jane Campbell? James Draper? Frank Jackson? David Lynch? Robert Triozzi? Or some other candidate?

That's five named choices. But voters will see eight candidates on the ballot on October 4. Among the eight are four who have ever won an election in the city: Campbell, Jackson, Triozzi.. and Patmon, who served four terms as Glenville's City Councilman. David Lynch, who's lived in Cleveland for less than a year, has absolutely no electoral track record here.

So why was Lynch on the list of "serious" choices offered by the poll, but not Patmon?

From Patmon's letter to WKYC General Manager Brooke Spectorsky and Managing Editor Dick Russ (not yet posted on his campaign website, though I'm sure it will be soon):

1.) By the very nature and substance of the question(s) you asked of “likely registered voters” in this most recent poll, you consciously and deliberately misrepresented to those voters who their choices actually are. In effect, you misled and misinformed those whom you surveyed.

2.) Well publicized polls can and do affect voters’ perceptions and attitudes, and, as such, can affect the outcome of an election. I have every expectation that your poll results will be reported widely on your own broadcast station, on the various cable television systems that also carry your station, and on your station’s own Internet web site. That same information will also be available to every person who chooses to access it on the Internet. The potential audience that will be impacted by your actions cannot, at this time, be reasonably calculated or estimated.

3.) It remains to be seen whether the inherent bias and flaws in your methodology will be given adequate and appropriate weight when the results of the poll are publicly reported beginning this evening.

The answer to the last question is no. WKYC's reporting on the poll last night did not mention the omission of Patmon or his complaint about it, which was sent to the station's managers yesterday afternoon.

HURRICANE RITA BLOG AT THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE

And... different hurricane, different city, same shit rolling downhill.

WILL WE HAVE TO SHOW A COLLEGE TRANSCRIPT TO VOTE?

There's something strange about the new Channel 3 poll on the Cleveland Mayor's race. It's not in the headline results; there's nothing self-evidently strange about Jackson 30%, Campbell 23%, Draper 15%. Debatable, yes, but not strange.

But if you look at the "crosstabs" that break these results out by age, ethnicity, ideology, etc., the strangeness appears. The 456 "likely voters" in the sample are a strikingly well-educated bunch of Clevelanders.

In the 2000 Census, only 35% of Cleveland residents age 18 and over had ever gone to college, and only 15% had degrees of any kind. Fully two-thirds of the city's voting-age adults said they'd never been inside a college classroom.

In the Channel 3 sample, however, college graduates are 32% of the "likely voters", and people with some college bring the postsecondary share of the sample to 59%. People who've gone to graduate school are 15% of the sample -- almost five time their share of the adult population!

Is it possible that this reflects the actual turnout a week from Tuesday? I suppose, but it's not very likely. The college-educated share of Cleveland's population has probably gone up slightly in the five years since the Census, and it's generally accepted that better-educated people are more likely to vote.

But this is a big skewing of the sample compared to the city's actual demographics -- a full 25% shift of the assumed likely voter base toward college-educated people, in a non-college-educated town.

At the very least it calls for some explanation by SurveyUSA, the pollsters.

Update: democracy guy sees some additional problems with the poll.

IS THIS ALL THERE IS? The mayoral primary is twelve days away. The field of eight will turn into a field of two, most likely Jackson vs. Campbell or Jackson vs. Draper. Jackson vs. somebody, anyway. And then we'll have another month to figure out which of the two would be a better Mayor.

I've now personally sat and talked with five of the eight in Meet The Bloggers interviews. They're all smart, engaging people. They all have websites and position papers, which I've read, and issue raps, which I've heard. Likewise for the incumbent Mayor, who now plans to Meet the Bloggers next Tuesday.

I haven't actually decided who to vote for yet, but I have come to a conclusion. I've concluded that we in Cleveland have ringside seats for the slow, sloppy death of the Democratic Party.

Think about it: Here are seven Democrats and one just-barely-Republican running for the highest office in the biggest, most Democratic city of the biggest, most Democratic county in Ohio. The city in question is, we all agree, in terrible trouble: poverty-ridden, shrinking, undereducated, losing industry and commerce, physically shabby, fraught with outright crime, public disorder and general weirdness. For a couple of minutes there we were The Poorest City In The Country. But we're still a big city with a diverse economy, an important hub of African-American politics, a center of the arts, medicine and banking, a Sports Town -- surrounded by a region that's generally still pretty healthy, still slowly adding jobs, still one of the nation's biggest metropolitan markets, and still pretty Democratic as well.

Do Democrats, as a party, have any real ideas for rebuilding troubled cities, empowering neighborhoods, protecting consumers and public health, getting everybody educated, encouraging 21st-century enterprises without reverting to 19th-century labor relations? If so, Cleveland, Ohio would seem to be just about the best place in the country for the party to roll them out.

So what are the candidates talking to us about? Casinos. A convention center. Downtown housing. Merging EMS and Fire. Reducing Council. The residency requirement. Speeder-catching cameras. Fighting poverty with Walmart jobs. Who should hire the new schools boss. Lots of platitudes about "world-class" this and "business-friendly" that and "regional" yadayada. Occasionally a few words about technology or alternative energy, but that's for the geeks and suits.

I'm sorry, people. I'm not singling anybody out here -- I'm a Democrat who's just as responsible for this as anyone else -- but am I the only one who thinks this is pathetic? Is this all there is?

The last great Democratic urban strategy was the Community Reinvestment Act, passed nearly thirty years ago in a charge led by Senator William Proxmire, who channeled the ideas of thousands of neighborhood organizers and leaders of the great anti-redlining campaigns of the mid-'70s. The CRA (and its companion, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) brilliantly leveraged the existing structure of bank regulation to create negotiating power for neighborhoods and cities vis-a-vis the banking and thrift industries. At virtually no cost to any public treasury, the CRA changed the culture of urban banking, made community lending and inner-city branch management a desirable career path, and forced bank executives to learn that inner cities are a profitable market. It has moved literally billions of dollars into neighborhoods that were written off as "unbankable" in the '60s and '70s. The whole familiar structure of neighborhood development in Cleveland and similar cities -- the ubiquitous CDCs, the new home clusters, the commercial strips, the rehab loan programs -- is a child of the CRA.

Where's the next CRA? What's the Democrats' next big Urban Idea? Casinos? Joint municipal salt purchasing? Wal-Mart?

I don't know either, but here's a clue: Like the CRA, it's going to come from the bottom of the food chain, not the top. Like the CRA, its going to be about something vitally important to ordinary people's lives. And like the CRA, it's going to be about power -- about city people's ability to be effective players, rather than pawns, in our communities' futures.

In other words, it won't be like anything under discussion in this year's mayor's race in Democratic Cleveland.

Maybe next time.

"MAYOR CAMPBELL MEETS THE BLOGGERS" RESCHEDULED: The Campbell campaign called this morning, very embarrassed, to say they needed to reschedule our Meet The Bloggers interview again. After a few hours of phone back-and-forth, it's now set for next Tuesday evening. Look for the results to be posted Wednesday... just in time for your last-minute pre-primary cramming.

My partners in this enterprise, Tim and George, are more upset about these delays than I am. I'm happy to get the interview firmly scheduled. The fact that it's so late in the election cycle is unfortunate, but (imho) mostly for the Mayor. The MTB format gives the candidates a unique forum to explain their views of controversial issues at length, in a conversational style. I think this is a platform Mayor Campbell could use right now, sooner rather than later.

But it is what it is. Michael Nelson on Monday, Jane Campbell on Tuesday, voting in twelve days. Stay tuned.

THE COMING OF THE CANDIDATE CHARTS: Well, we're starting Primary Countdown Week Minus 2, when sort-of-likely voters begin to realize there's an election coming. The PD celebrated by having Brent Larkin explain the editorial board's endorsement process (though strangely, he leaves out the step where the publisher comes in and tells them who to endorse) and printing their first Candidate Chart (not on line). (Update... commenter Brian found it here. Thanks, Brian!)

You know the Candidate Chart. At the top are the candidates' smiling faces. Below each smiling face is a series of quotations or characterizations of positions on issues the PD deems important. This morning's Chart has eight smiling faces and ten issue questions, the first eight of which allow for only "yes" or "no" as an answer.

So we learn that four of the eight candidates (Triozzi, Draper, Patmon and Brown) do not "support a Wal-Mart 'supercenter' at Steelyard Commons or any other location in Cleveland", three (Campbell, Lynch and Nelson) do, and Jackson wouldn't answer yes or no. Similarly, four candidates (Draper, Lynch, Patmon, Brown) apparently oppose "any form of taxes, from bed tax to restaurant to sin tax to sales tax -- to help pay for a new convention center", while Campbell, Jackson, Triozzi and Nelson apparently "support raising... any form of taxes" for this purpose.

What do these questions and answers mean? Probably not much. At best they give voters a clue to the candidates' basic sympathies, or at least the sympathies they want to seem to have. In their Meet The Bloggers interviews, Triozzi, Draper and Patmon were all highly critical of the Steelyard Commons Wal-Mart deal, but none of them was willing to say that he'd do anything as Mayor to try to unravel it. And Lynch went on at length about building a big convention center and getting cities throughout the region to help pay for it, presumably with some kind of tax money -- while Jackson and Triozzi were considerably less enthusiastic. All of them would probably say their actual positions are distorted by the yes-or-no format, and they'd probably be right.

Nonetheless, the PD's first Candidate Chart is not a bad first effort. It covers a pretty good set of topics, and it will give all the candidates some 'splainin' to do at forums in the coming two weeks.

What else is going to get featured in future PD Candidate Charts? The schools and economic development, of course. Regionalism? Technology? Probably. But how about corruption? How about neighborhood social breakdown? How about home foreclosures? How about public health threats like spreading HIV and rampant childhood asthma? (Candidate Lynch told Meet The Bloggers that he'd eliminate the City's Public Health Department.) How about high home energy costs including the City's own Public Power rates?

We can only wait and see what the PD thinks is important. Meanwhile, if you want to know what the candidates actually say about Wal-Mart, the convention center issue, casinos, Council reduction, residency requirements, etc. when they have time to say it, start listening to those Meet The Bloggers interviews. Only two weeks left!

THE MAYOR WILL MEET THE BLOGGERS: The PD's business page tech writer, Henry Gomez, has a nice nod to Meet The Bloggers in "Tech Ink" this morning.

I haven't talked to George about it but I assume Henry spoke to him earlier in the week, so the part about MTB and Mayor Campbell is a little dated. We now know that the Mayor is scheduled to Meet The Bloggers this Thursday morning.

FORUM TOMORROW... POOR PEOPLE TO ASK MAYORAL CANDIDATES ABOUT POVERTY

An email from Alan Forman:

Six of the 8 candidates have committed to participate in a mayoral candidates forum like no other this Saturday (see attached flyer [pdf]). The focus will be on hardcore daily survival issues faced by many in one of the most impoverished cities in the nation. High profile issues like lakefront development, convention center and biotech industry will not be on the table this time, important as they also are to the general economy.

Come if you can Bring a friend or neighbor. Ask questions. Hear what candidates propose to do about basic issues such as affordable utility rates, housing, medical care, public schools, etc. See who will address most creatively and convincingly the growing daily problems of the majority of Clevelanders. And vote accordingly!

DON'T WORRY, FOLKS, WE'LL TAKE CARE OF THIS: Yesterday Ohio Senators Voinovich and Dewine joined 52 other Republican Senators in a party-line vote to kill legislation to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate what went so horribly wrong with Hurricane Katrina.

AMERICAblog suggests calling them to ask why.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

DeWine, Mike- (R - OH)
140 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-2315
Web Form: www.dewine.senate.gov

Voinovich, George- (R - OH)
524 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-3353
Web Form: www.voinovich.senate.gov/contact/index.htm

BUZZFLASHED: We run a quiet little local blog here, with a couple hundred visitors on a very busy day. But yesterday's post on FEMA's inaccessible website and phone lines got picked up by Buzzflash. The result: about 2,300 page views and 2,000 unique visitors in the last 24 hours. Whew! I'm tired.

Seriously, that's one post I'm very grateful to have out there. Hope the story gets picked up elsewhere.

CLOSING UP THE CLEVELAND KATRINA COMPUTER CENTER: We closed up the computer center at the Cleveland Convention Center at 1 pm today, having helped about a hundred Louisiana visitors with online FEMA applications, searches for missing family members, and other Internet tasks. Despite the huge obstacles created by FEMA's website and phone lines, a lot of these folks made some progress and we got lots of satisfaction from the work.

Kevin Cronin, one of the center's staunchest volunteers, blogs about the issues raised by the experience at RealNEO. I'm looking forward to more thoughts from Jeff Hess, who also put in very long hours. Other than the many City officials involved (and let me say here that the whole Convention Center operation was a class act on the Campbell Administration's part), the key partners in this effort with Digital Vision were Computers Assisting People and BDPA Cleveland, with major hardware support from Thompson Hine, MWH TAG, and SBC. Daniella and Steve also came by to help, and Jeff, George and Tim helped blog for volunteers.

Thanks, everyone!

CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON WAL-MART BUSINESS PRACTICES THIS MONDAY AT CSU LAW SCHOOL

Members of Congress led by Rep. Sherrod Brown will hold a field hearing at Cleveland State this Monday on "the consequences of the Wal-Mart business model for American workers, small businesses and communities".

The time and place:

Monday, September 19, 2005
10 to 11:30 a.m.
CSU Cleveland Marshall Law School
1801 Euclid Ave. (corner of 18th and Euclid)
Room 201/202

Here's the hearing web page on Rep. Brown's website. It doesn't tell you a lot at this point. But it provides a form to submit questions for the witnesses, whoever they are.

(Thanks to Rick Fromberg at Walmart Watch for the heads-up.)

THE BLUE SCREEN OF FEMA: Last week we learned that the the Federal Emergency Management Agency can't manage an emergency. Yesterday we learned that they can't manage a database, either.

About a hundred folks who'd made it to Cleveland under their own power, without benefit of airlift, came to the Convention Center to get signed up for various kinds of help. Most of them came through the computer center to use FEMA's on-line registration page or search for friends and family at sites like Yahoo's "Family Messages".


Jeff Hess of havecoffeewillwrite and Chris Nance of Rep. Stephanie
Tubbs-Jones' office talk with an evacuee
The major story of the day was FEMA's total incompetence at taking registrations.

You may find this difficult to believe, but FEMA doesn't accept paper applications. You have to get through on the phone or through the agency's website. So of course there are hundreds of thousands of Katrina evacuees, in desperate need of housing vouchers and other help, trying to do just that.

So of course they can't.

All day yesterday, the FEMA 800 line was disconnecting most callers. All day, our volunteers were walking evacuees through two, or three, or seven screens of the online application, only to get some bizarre error message that meant "We're too busy, go away." Dozens of homeless, broke people had to hang around the Convention Center literally all day, trying repeatedly to get that crucial FEMA registration number so they could get on with their lives.

They were unbelievably patient, which I guess is something you learn to be after a week of waiting for anything good to happen. And the couple of FEMA staffers working in the CC tried very hard to be helpful... but they had no way to solve the problem.

You can say the servers were overwhelmed. But why? Why isn't there enough server capacity to handle a load that has been absolutely predictable (actually inevitable) since last week? Why aren't there mirror sites? Is there something stopping FEMA from asking IBM or Google, or a dozen other companies, for emergency server capacity? What's the freaking problem?

The question answers itself, of course. The freaking problem is the same one that kept food, buses and adequate safety forces out of New Orleans for three days last week. The people running this show don't know what they're doing and apparently don't care.

At least this iteration of the freaking problem isn't life-threatening. But after all the crap the citizens of Louisiana have endured in the last week, it's incredible that the Feds can't figure out a way to spare them this.

THEY'RE TRYIN' TO WASH US AWAY: I spent another day working on the Internet access center for Katrina refugees who are expected, once again, to arrive at the Cleveland Convention Center tomorrow. (BFD just reprinted my email plea for weekend volunteers in its entirety, so I don't have to. Thanks, George.)

So I didn't actually see the Plain Dealer's Thursday spread on "Rebuilding New Orleans" until a half hour ago. Oh my God, there are still bodies in the water down there and Steven Litt thinks it's time to start talking architecture? Under a headline that says "Designing a Newer Orleans: from tragedy, opportunity"?

Yessir, massa. My tragedy, your opportunity. Guess I better just get on that plane to Cleveland.

Coincidentally, I caught Randy Newman doing "Louisiana 1927" on one of the TV fundraising shows a couple of hours earlier, and it was still playing in my head when I saw the PD.

What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through clear down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has done
To this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Some things do not change, do they?

MEET THE BLOGGERS EPISODE 5: DAVID LYNCH

George, Tim and I interviewed former Euclid mayor and current Cleveland mayoral candidate David Lynch this morning. The resulting hour-long podcast (in three parts) is posted at Brewed Fresh Daily.

George has notes, Tim has some comments. I say listen to the files, but watch for the part where he says the City's Health Department should be eliminated and EMS should be folded into the Fire Department.

WE'RE CLEVELAND AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP: Sorry about my absence for the last couple of days. I spent most of yesterday at the Convention Center working on creating a computer center for the 400 or so New Orleans folks who were supposed to arrive today from Texas. When someone first told me that they weren't coming, I was at Computers Assisting People headquarters, starting to load PCs and monitors into my pickup. After we got the request from the Mayor's office to go ahead with the plan because this might just be a delay, I spent last evening in the CC with Dan McMillan of CAP and a bunch of SBC guys, setting up the first of forty workstations for evacuees who may or may not arrive.

I'm not complaining; there are a lot of Clevelanders (including, I should say, Mayor Campbell) in the same position. We want to be ready to give real support to whoever comes. At the same time, I can easily understand why a NO resident sitting in the Astrodome, or some other shelter in Texas or Baton Rouge, would be reluctant to get on that plane... just as I understand why some people still in flooded NO neighborhoods are reluctant to get into the rescue boats.

Ronald Reagan famously said: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" At this point, the ten most terrifying words to a NO refugee must be "I'm from FEMA and I have a plan for you." Especially when that plan involves a one-way ticket to one of the few U.S. cities that's poorer than where I came from, a thousand miles from home, where I know nobody, have none of the "social equity" I've spent a lifetime building in my own community, have no better economic prospects, and can expect to be colder in just a few months than I've ever been in my life.

Especially when I'm poor and Black and have every reason to believe that some people are already thinking about how to rebuild a "great new New Orleans" that doesn't include me.

County Commissioner Lawson-Jones was quoted the other day saying that we hope the NO refugees who come here will stay. Good intentions, but a very bad message. Our message to the people in the Astrodome -- and I mean this literally, I think Mayor Campbell and other community leaders should find a way to say this and get it heard -- should be: "Come to Cleveland because we're not them. We're on your side. We don't have a lot to offer, but we'll share what we do have, and we'll do everything in our power to help you get back to your own home."

COMPUTER ACCESS FOR KATRINA REFUGEES, CONTINUED: Will Reed of Technology For All has been blogging daily about the effort to connect New Orleans refugees in Houston with the Internet. As of this morning they've got ninety computers operating on a wireless network in the Astrodome computer center, with more coming on line there and in other Houston shelters. Over a thousand of the stadium's temporary residents used the center yesterday to sign into the online database/message service for survivors.

If you helped, thanks! This is just the beginning... TFA expects to be providing computer access and training for the 100,000+ evacuees in Houston for months if not years. You can kick in a few dollars, if you're so inclined, at their website.

I'll be out of blogging range until Monday. Sure hope things look less grim by then.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

UNIMAGINABLE: I'm writing at 8 am Friday morning. Here's the Plain Dealer's front page. New Orleans was flooded Tuesday morning, three full days ago. As far as I can tell from the news, the convention center, the hospitals, hotels -- not to mention the streets -- are still full of people with little or no food or water. The National Guard has still not arrived in massive numbers, though three hundred Guardsmen are said by the Governor to be coming with guns "locked and loaded". Many streets are controlled by armed gangs. Houston's Astrodome is already full of bussed-in refugees from the Superdome, but the Superdome is still full, too. People not in "shelters" have been wading in filthy, toxic water for three days. They're screaming for help. For the most part, help has not shown up... three days later.

Watching the coverage last night, my 23-year-old daughter said this was the weirdest thing she could remember seeing in her life. Yes, exactly.

In some ways New Orleans is (or was) very much like Cleveland: roughly the same size, slightly higher income and education numbers but still near the bottom, majority African-American. These are people like us.

So it might be worth trying to imagine our city, blown apart by a Category 5 storm, then inundated by three or four feet of Lake Erie water. Imagine that no stores have been open and no phones, bank machines, lights, TVs, buses have worked for three days. Imagine a hundred thousand of our poorest neighbors stuck in their damaged, unlit homes or wandering the flooded streets of Central, Hough, Kinsman, Broadway, Ohio City -- the infirm elderly, single mothers with little kids, unemployed families, not to mention withdrawing addicts and criminals with guns. Imagine that 25,000 people are stuck in Jacobs Field and Gund Arena, surrounded by floodwater and with little to eat or drink and no communication. Imagine that another 20,000 people are stuck in the Convention Center with absolutely no resources, with dead bodies shoved into corners, human waste everywhere, literally starving. Imagine Metrohealth and St. Vincent's full of hundreds of sick and dying patients, no power, almost no food, evacuation happening only as fast as other cities' hospital helicopters can manage. Imagine we have thousands of dead already and no idea who they are. Imagine that you can easily get shot dead -- by a gang or a policeman -- if you venture out to a store to take some food, or water, or shoes, or batteries, or something else you desperately need but can't buy because no one's there to sell it to you.

Imagine that we've been living (or dying) like this in Cleveland, Ohio, for three full days and help has not arrived.

What country are we in, again?

Maybe things will be better in New Orleans by this time tomorrow. Maybe by Monday this will all seem (to the rest of us) like a bad dream we once had. Maybe a week from now we'll be back to worrying about Coingate and Paris Hilton. (Incidentally, did you know that the U.S. Senate is taking up repeal of the inheritance tax next week? Can't lose sight of priorities.)

But please, let's try not to forget what we saw -- and the way we felt -- today.

Yes, call the Red Cross and give them money. But then call Senators Voinovich and Dewine and ask them why the hell the Federal government run by their party has allowed this unimaginable, deadly, disgraceful mess to continue for three days in "the greatest country in the world."

COMPUTER ACCESS FOR KATRINA REFUGEES

Technology for All is a very respected community computer and networking program in Houston. Houston, as you know, is the destination for a huge number of low-income hurricane refugees being evacuated from New Orleans. A few hours ago I got this email from TFA director Will Reed, who some of you met when he was in Cleveland for the CTCNet conference in June:

Technology For All (TFA) is working with its community and corporate partners to set up a Community Technology Center (CTC) at Houston's Astrodome, which will soon be home for 25,000 evacuees from the New Orleans Superdome. We are pleased to have the opportunity to help in this way and have made an initial commitment to install a 40 station CTC. We expect we will need to expand that, but want to move quickly with what we can do and then assess the additional need. TFA also anticipates working with public leaders and officials to assist in the deployment of a Wireless Mesh Network in the Astrodome. Those details are under discussion. Pam Gardner (Pam.Gardner@techforall.org 713.454.6415) on our staff is coordinating volunteer efforts to set up the CTC and then provide programming assistance. TFA will need additional computers (Pentium 4 or faster), software, volunteers, $'s and organizational capacity to pull this off. Thanks in advance for your assistance. As more details are worked out we will pass them along.

Will

I'm posting this in the hope that readers -- from northeast Ohio or wherever you are -- can find a way to help with this effort. To start with, TFA has a credit card donation page on its website -- if you haven't maxed out, and are looking for a way to help flood victims get reconnected to the world, please consider sending them something. (I suggest writing something in the comment box like "For the Astrodome computer center -- good luck from Cleveland", just to let them know they've got friends up here.)

Also, if you have colleagues, co-workers, a branch office, etc. in Texas or nearby (i.e. near enough to help with a hardware donation or some volunteer time), please pass this along to them.

Think about being one of 25,000 bereft people stuck in a stadium for days or weeks with nothing to do and no Internet access. Really, don't you think you'd want someone to do this for you? Let's see if the northeast Ohio blogosphere can help TFA get it done!

Update 1: Here's more from the Miami Herald (free registration required).

Update 2: This morning's situation in Houston, and expanded plans for getting computer access for flood refugees, at Technology For All's blog.

MEET THE BLOGGERS EPISODE 4: FRANK JACKSON

George, Tim and I interviewed City Council President and Cleveland mayoral candidate Frank Jackson on Thursday. The resulting hour-long podcast (in three parts) is posted at Brewed Fresh Daily.

This is a very interesting interview. Jackson gives long, detailed responses to questions about the history of the Steelyard Commons project, casino gambling ("a poison pill, not a silver bullet"), a new convention center (like a loaf of bread), neighborhood restoration, why the school levy failed, and more.

Please give it a listen.