TAKE MY BLOG, PLEASE: Sorry the posting's been sparse lately. It's been a week full of other things to think about. And in the morning we're hittin the highway for Merlefest, where I expect to be alienated from the means of blog production for a few more days.

But hey, look, there's a "comments" link down there! Why don't you try doing some work for a change? Here's a topic to get you started:

What's going to be the biggest issue in the 2005 Cleveland Mayor's race that nobody's talking about... yet?
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NEW YORK CITY LOOKS INTO AFFORDABLE BROADBAND FOR ALL

New from MuniWireless:

New York City Council Member Gale Brewer has introduced legislation that would create a nine-member task force charged with ensuring that every city resident, small business, and non-profit has affordable broadband access.

There's 2004 polling data showing that fewer than 40% of Cleveland homes have Internet service of any kind, and only about one in ten has a DSL or cable-modem connection.

In Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Houston, and now New York, city governments and their nonprofit partners have begun to confront the Internet gaps holding back their citizens and economies. When will Cleveland get around to it?
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LA TIMES ON OHIO PERS AS A "MODEL" FOR SOCIAL SECURITY

In an article yesterday by Peter G. Gosselin and Edwin Chen:

KIRTLAND, Ohio — President Bush came to Ohio on Friday to highlight a state retirement savings system that he said showed that Americans would be better off handling their own old-age investments through personal accounts than relying on traditional Social Security.

But that state's version of personal accounts has attracted few takers among the people eligible — Ohio's 750,000 public employees. And records show that the most widely chosen version of the state-offered accounts has racked up a five-year earning record of 1.86%, about the same return that the president says Social Security produces.

"Boy, does he have a hard sell ahead of him in using Ohio as his example," said Keith Brainard, research director of the National Assn. of State Retirement Directors, which represents virtually all of the nation's public employee pension plans.

Thanks again, HS.
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OHIO TALIBAN UPDATE: Fifteen members of the Ohio House of Representatives have found time in their demanding schedules to introduce House Bill 184, "A bill to amend section 3314.03 and to enact section 3313.801 of the Revised Code to require school districts and community schools that receive donated copies of the mottoes of the United States of America or the State of Ohio to display the mottoes in school buildings."

Here's the proposed new state law:

Sec. 3313.801. If a reasonably sized copy of the official motto of the United States of America "In God We Trust" or the official motto of Ohio "With God, All Things Are Possible" is donated to any school district, or if money is donated to the district specifically for the purpose of purchasing such material, the board of education of the school district shall accept the donation and display the motto in an appropriate manner in a classroom, auditorium, or cafeteria of a school building in the district.

As introduced, the bill does not cover donations of reasonably sized copies of the Great Seal of the United States (adopted 168 years before the U.S. Motto) or pictures of the Ohio state bird (the cardinal), tree (buckeye), or flower (carnation), all of which predate the General Assembly's adoption of the state motto in 1959. Nor does the bill require schools to accept and display framed copies of the Bill of Rights. But perhaps we'll see some additions in committee.

(Want to stay up to date on the many interesting things our legislature is doing? Here you go.)
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"OUT OF CONTROL": A very important post from MaryBeth Matthews.
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BAMBOOZLEPALOOZA PLAYS LAKE COUNTY: President Bush's "Social Security reform" road show, affectionately nicknamed "Bamboozlepalooza" by Josh Marshall, rolls into Lakeland Community College in Kirtland tomorrow at 1:50. As with earlier stops on the 60-day tour, this "educational" event on public property is open by invitation only, i.e. only to ticketed Bush supporters bearing friendly questions. All others will be kept far away.

Why Kirtland? That's easy. Congressman Steve LaTourette, who once endorsed private accounts, has been vewy, vewy quiet about the whole issue lately. (Here's the "Steve's Issues" page on his website -- notice what isn't there.). Both of Ohio's Republican Senators recently broke ranks with the party to vote against the Bush budget, and Mike Dewine -- up for re-election in 2006 -- has expressed enough doubts about the Bush Social Security plan to earn a place in Marshall's "Conscience Caucus".

So the President's got some slippage problems in our neighborhood. Will tomorrow's stage-managed "round table" help? Bamboozlepalooza's results in many other places have been disappointing, to put it mildly (see a day-by-day summary from the Congressional Democrats here). Will LaTourette, Voinovich or Dewine even be there to greet their leader? We'll find out tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you want to know what kind of welcome the opponents of Social Security privatization are planning, give a call to John Gallo at the Cleveland AFL-CIO, who staffs the local Coalition to Protect Social Security (no website yet, but it's in the works). Or check out Hypothetically Speaking's post about Americans United to Protect Social Security.

If you want to attend Bamboozlepalooza Kirtland and ask your President a question, I'm not sure what to tell you. I guess you could call your county Republican Party office and ask if any tickets are available. Um, yeah, that might work.

UPDATE: (from Hypothetically Speaking)

Privatization rally in Cleveland Friday

The Ohio branch of Americans United to Protect Social Security says it will be holding a rally Friday, April 15 at 10 AM. Speaking at the rally will be Massachusettts Congressman Rich Neal (MA-2). The rally is to be at Voinovich Park, located directly behind theRock and Roll Hall of Fame at E. 9th Street and the Lakefront, Cleveland, OH.

Questions? Call Tom Powell-Bullock 440-554-7203.

MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT

A Congressional conference committee will decide in the next couple of days whether to kill the Community Development Block Grant program, the major source of funds for neighborhood housing and commercial development in Cleveland and other cities throughout Ohio.

Cleveland's stake in this decision is almost $30 million a year.

The House of Representatives has voted to kill the program outright, as proposed by the Bush Administration. The Senate voted 68 to 31 to preserve it, over the strenuous objections of the Republican leadership. A conference committee is meeting this week to resolve this and other disagreements between the two houses and produce a "compromise" budget, which will then go back to the House and Senate for up-or-down votes.

Here's an excellent summary of this week's legislative situation from BushBudget.org.

Both Voinovich and Dewine were among the 24 GOP Senators who joined with Democrats to preserve CDBG. More impressively, Ohio's Senators then joined with just two other Republicans and all the Senate Democrats to vote against the full budget resolution, which passed by a vote of just 51 to 49.

Voinovich has been especially vocal in support of CDBG. This is great, but now comes the moment of truth. Ohio's Senators need to use every ounce of "juice" they have, publicly and privately, to get their leadership and the Senate's conferees to respect the clear majority mandate of their colleagues and keep full CDBG funding in the final conference committee budget.

Let Voinovich and Dewine know you appreciate their support for CDBG and expect them to keep it up! E-mail is probably not the best way to communicate about this issue. A telegram to the Senator's D.C. office is the best way to get somebody's attention, but a fax or phone call is good, too.

Senator Michael Dewine
140 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3503
Phone: 202-224-2315
Fax: 202-224-6519

Senator George Voinovich
317 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3504
Phone: 202-224-3353
TollFree: 800-205-OHIO (OH only)
Fax: 202-228-1382

JOHN KROLL SCORES AGAIN! Did you ever think you'd see the word "exploitation" on the PD business page?

If your appetite for unexpected papal economic thought has been whetted, I strongly recommend this from MaxSpeak and this from Nathan Newman. Or you can just read Laborem Exercens.
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DEPARTMENT OF COUNTER-INTUITIVE STATISTICS: Yesterday Don Iannone linked to this chart in the March edition of Site Selection. It's a state-by-state comparison of new corporate facility locations and expansions from 2002 through 2004. Guess which state ranked...

-- fourth in location of new manufacturing facilities (256 projects)
-- first in manufacturing facility expansions (714 projects), and
-- fifth in location of other new corporate facilities ("offices, headquarters, distribution centers, research and development facilities, speculative offices, speculative industrial buildings, mixed-use facilities and hotels" -- 879 projects)?

Why, yes, it's Ohio... the same state that lost 60,000 jobs over those same three years (December 2001 to December 2004) while the nation was adding nearly 1.7 million.

So contrary to what we keep hearing about our "unfriendly business climate", Ohio actually seems to have been very attractive to corporate decision-makers compared to other states. Gee, they can't be all that worried about our tax system, can they?

Yet we remain at the bottom of the heap in net job creation. Very mysterious.
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TRIOZZI, TOO: Okay, so now it turns out that Robert Triozzi has a campaign website, too... even more "under development" than Draper's, but here it is. And there's a Triozzi Meetup group (two, actually). Thanks, John.

I'm officially encouraged. Now my question is when either of these sites will have some specifics about what the candidate will do if he gets elected.
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JIM DRAPER DOES HAVE A WEBSITE: Via a comment from Mike on this post, my question "Where's his website?" is answered for mayoral candidate Jim Draper: He's got one and here it is. The posting date is March 24, the same day Jim announced.

I still can't make it show up on Google, and this might be the site's first link. But it's out there and it's got contact info, press links and at least the beginning of program information. So... good for candidate Draper. And thanks, Mike.
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DEPARTMENT OF CHECKING THINGS OUT: Wired News has this piece on an Australian inventor and a California startup that are trying to commercialize a high-altitude wind power technology. "High altitude" means waaay up there -- three miles or more -- and the technology involves turbines mounted on tethered rotorcraft. The inventor has patented and successfully prototyped his design (see picture below) at low altitudes. But he and the company (Sky Windpower, headed by a guy named David Shepard, who made his original pile in the '50s as an inventor of Optical Character Recognition scanners) have been unable to raise $3 million to stage high altitude tests.


I heard about this outfit by accident a couple of years ago and exchanged emails with Shepard, who wondered if I knew anyone around here with money. (Ha ha.) It struck me then, and still does, as an idea that ought to interest Cleveland techbiz promoters. Cleveland, after all, is in a very high-cost power market, is at a very high-potential latitude (41.5 degrees north) according to Dr. Caldeira's charts, has a big lake over which you could fly these things, and has great local expertise in power technologies and aerospace at NASA Glenn -- soon to be seriously underutilitized.

It just seems like something that should be checked out by somebody in Northeast Ohio with an appropriate knowledge of engineering.

At the time I asked Holly Harlan of Entrepreneurs for Sustainability if she had any ideas, but she drew a blank. Then last September I had a conversation about it with Bill Spratley of Green Energy Ohio, and sent him Sky Windpower's link. I haven't heard anything more from Bill.

Since the story is now in Wired -- and Sky Windpower is apparently still looking for investors -- let me give it another try. This might be a great opportunity for the region to get a piece of a breakthrough technology. Or, of course, it might be totally bogus. But shouldn't somebody from NEO with appropriate expertise and connections take a look at this possibility, while it's still parked on the ground floor?

Who might that be?

If it's you, please leave a comment or email me and I'll send you everything I've got on the subject.
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PHILADELPHIA RELEASES BUSINESS PLAN FOR CITYWIDE WIRELESS SYSTEM

Mayor John Street held the press conference yesterday. You can download the full business plan here.

As expected, the system will be run by a nonprofit corporation and designed and built by private vendors. But the big news is open, competitive ISP access to the infrastructure. From the press release:

The Committee’s report made the following key recommendations:

Create a nonprofit corporation to manage the deployment of the wireless network - The Committee recommended a non-profit corporation be established to oversee the implementation of the proposal. The non-profit will receive its start-up funding from foundation grants, bank loans and other non-city sources. Within four years, the non-profit is projected to be debt free and generating positive cash flow.

Have private companies design, deploy and manage the network - Through a request for proposal (RFP) process, the non-profit will outsource the design, deployment and management of a citywide wireless network.

Provide network access to private service providers at low wholesale prices - The non-profit will make access to the wireless network available to private Service Providers (SPs), institutions and other nonprofits at low wholesale prices. Individuals and businesses will be able to purchase broadband access from these parties at what had been dial-up prices. There are currently at least 430 dial-up Internet service providers who operate in Philadelphia. SP’s will be responsible for marketing the service, billing subscribers and providing customer service and technical support.

P.S. MuniWireless has an interview with Philadelphia tech czar Dianah Neff about the plan.
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CAMPAIGNING LIKE IT'S 1995: Frank Jackson had a campaign kickoff rally yesterday. The Plain Dealer says he "outlined the general themes of his campaign: improving the schools, fostering economic development and job creation, reforming City Hall and increasing public safety."

I'm in favor of all these "themes", of course. As is the current mayor. As are Jim Draper and Robert Triozzi... and, I assume, Anthony Brown.

The question for the next six months is what they plan to do about any of these "themes" that's different from what's already being done. And why they're better able to get it done than the other candidates. And why it will make a big enough difference in our lives that voters should care.

If this city should have learned anything at all in the past twenty years, it's that high-sounding phraseology about schools, jobs and safety -- or entrepreneurship, or neighborhoods, or poverty, or [insert theme here] -- is, in itself, worthless. Dude, we know what the problems are. How exactly do you propose to solve them?

Twenty or even ten years ago, it was normal for citizens to wait for answers to these questions until the campaign mail started arriving, or we could get to a candidate's night. Candidates would spend the first few months of their campaigns looking for money and endorsements, building name recognition, and quietly testing specific issues and messages for later use.

But this is not ten years ago. It's 2005, and we have something called the World Wide Web. When a candidate says he's going to do something about an issue we care about, we don't say to ourselves: "That sounds good, I'll have to check him out some time." We say: "Where's his website?"

Frank Jackson first announced his candidacy in January. Where's his website?

Jim Draper announced two weeks ago. Where's his website?

Judge Triozzi announced at the beginning of this week. Where's his website?

Mayor Campbell doesn't have a campaign site either. But she does have a lot of specific issue and program stuff linked from the main page of www.city.cleveland.oh.us -- full texts of her last two State of the City speeches, for example, not to mention a lot of press releases. Indeed, the city website is pretty much the Mayor's personal homepage. Most mayors do the same thing... look at Philadelphia or Chicago. This doesn't make the practice right, of course -- but right or wrong, it means you can find reasonably current information about Campbell's positions and proposals on line.

Jackson, to his credit, hasn't treated the City Council website as his personal property. In its own way it's a better site than the Mayor's, if you're looking for easy access to useful information -- like how to reach your Councilman, who's on what committee, or what happened at the last Council meeting. But it isn't going to help a voter to figure out what Frank Jackson would do if he becomes mayor.

You may think it's a little early in the campaign season to expect the candidates to have Web presences, especially in Cleveland, where so many voters are on the wrong side of the digital divide. I suspect this is how the candidates and their managers see it.

If so, they're wrong. The rules have changed. There's recent survey data showing that nearly half of Cleveland adults are regular Internet users, and the percentages are much higher for those who are better educated and/or better off (i.e. likely voters). At least in part, this City election is going to be fought under the new Internet-driven rules: immediacy, transparency, interactivity, decentralized initiative. A campaign that launches without the capacity to put its press releases on line, or a public email address, doesn't demonstrate much aptitude for this new environment.

IMHO, there's a strong case to be made for the following proposition: In 2005, a person who can't demonstrate an excellent personal command of basic Internet applications is not qualified to be the mayor of a major city. It's just part of the job description for a 21st century leader.

The campaign is a job readiness test. And the exam is now in progress.
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SCHEDULING A SCHOOL LEVY: Mayor Campbell says she and her school board plan to put a school levy on the ballot in October or November, i.e. on the city's primary or general election day. Campbell's main rival for mayor, Council President Frank Jackson, has attacked her for waiting too long; he wants an August levy vote.

At last night's school board meeting, several City Council Members (Zack Reed, Joe Cimperman, Kevin Conwell) and others including Rev. C. J. Matthews of the Cleveland SCLC chapter called on the board to hold the vote during the summer and said they're ready to campaign for it. Schools CEO Byrd-Bennett responded that she'd take it up with the mayor on Friday.

From a cynical electoral point of view, it's obvious why Jackson wants the levy out of the way early. If it's on the November or even the October ballot, he can't attack Campbell on schools issues without appearing to undermine the levy, while all the sunny campaign messages about the schools can only benefit the incumbent mayor. But an August vote would at least neutralize the issue -- and a second levy defeat, which is highly likely, would give Jackson a big stick to beat Campbell with among minority voters, parents and corporate donors.

Is Frank Jackson calculating this cynically? Is the Mayor? How about the Councilmen and ministers at the School Board last night (who looked to me like a pretty pro-Jackson bunch)? Yes, yes, and I don't know but it wouldn't startle me.

Okay, but what about those who really just want to get a levy passed? Isn't this so urgent that we should get it on the ballot as soon as possible? And wouldn't Campbell's best possible move be to challenge everyone -- Jackson, Triozzi, Draper, all the Councilmen -- to put City Hall politics aside for four months and join in a united campaign to save the schools?

Yes, this would make perfect sense... if the Mayor thought she had any chance of winning such a vote. Conventional analysis says, however, that a levy's chances of passage in August are slim to none. Two important reasons:

• Low turnout. School taxes generally do better in high-turnout elections, which include more African-American and Hispanic voters, more low-income voters generally, a higher proportion of tenants, etc. There will be this kind of turnout in November, and a smaller version of it in October. But a special vote in August will be tiny, drawing only the likeliest of likely voters (i.e. older, homeowning, middle-class non-parents). Of course, if the school forces could mount a really successful turnout drive among low-income parents, they could turn this logic inside out (small general turnout + big parent turnout = win for parents). But that's a huge "if", especially considering that...


• In the summer, schools are closed and teachers are on vacation. A big get-out-the-vote campaign for a levy, especially in a low-visibility single-issue election, takes a massive hands-on volunteer effort. The absolute worst time to attempt this is July and early August, when the schools' day-to-day connection with families is broken, and teachers are scattered to their vacations and summer jobs. Again, this conventional logic could be inverted; hundreds of teachers could agree to devote their vacations to full-time campaigning, and the maintenance unions could agree to keep the schools open for the campaign at no cost. (Hey, how about a free summer program for kids sponsored by the levy campaign? Boy, that would get parents' attention!) But this would entail an unprecedented level of innovation, collaboration, and personal commitment -- not something the Mayor has any reason to rely on, especially this year.
  

So while there's a way to win in August, it's a long shot. And if it loses, that's it... there's no way to try again in November. The Mayor's plan of holding off until the city elections appears, from this outsider's vantage point, to be a lot more prudent.

But having said that, if I were Campbell or Byrd-Bennett, I'd still be taking a hard look at August scenarios. And I'd be asking some hard questions, as suggested above: Is Frank Jackson actually willing to suspend mayor's-race hostilities for four months, and unite behind a levy campaign? Could we get five hundred or more CFT members to volunteer their summers to campaign door-to-door? Could we get a full-bore campaign effort from other unions, and the funds we need from the business community? Can we find some trusted campaign management -- with no axe to grind in the mayor's race -- to put this all together in a few weeks?

If all these questions turn out to have positive answers, an August levy effort might be worth a shot. Otherwise, it's just smoke and mirrors... mayoral politics by other means.
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