Cuyahoga County -- The Big Tax Shock is Coming!

The below post from the Cleveland Leader is written by Roldo Bartimole. Roldo was a long time writer for Free Times magazine

Roldo may be left of Tea Party thinking -- but be it Republicans or Democrats, Roldo has always been an outspoken critic of the corporate cronyism and sweetheart deals given to the same corporate interests and non-profits that have been continually fleecing the residents of Cuyahoga County for many years. 

That being said -- when it comes to knowledge on the inside players, relationships and back room dealing in Cuyahoga County, by far, if Roldo writes it - you can be sure it is accurate.

While Cuyahoga County residents blindly supported a County Reform, we see the same business groups & non-profits that pushed the County Reform, are still fleecing the residents. But now, instead of it being through the County Commissioners - it is now through Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald and Cuyahoga County Council....

From The Cleveland Leader --

Our sleepy news media and non-existent citizen action will soon be costing residents of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County very Big Bucks. In the hundreds of millions. Almost all from our dispirited hard-pressed people.

As the Plain Dealer, WKYC, WEWS, WJW and WOIO feed us more sports, weather and crime, our real community decisions go unattended - bombs ready to explode. Our reformed County government quietly has set explosives of tax revenue no one wants to notice.

TRY THESE THREE MOVES THAT SHOULD MAKE ALL NERVOUS:

- We have now built a huge convention center with no guarantee that it will do anything but cost us tax revenue. Expect a big money loser despite the propaganda.

- We have built and must operate a medical mart (I don't care what new name it's given) that will cost us money to operate with no guarantee of paying its bills.

- Most disturbing, County Executive Ed Fitzgerald (who will be long gone) and his County Council have indebted County residents to build at taxpayer expense the largest hotel (600-650 rooms) in Cleveland at a public cost of $270,330,000. If only. The County will own this hotel and I guarantee it will LOSE MONEY. Year after year.

The city also has committed $8 million so far. The hotel will keep another $7,680,000 in our 8 percent sales tax for itself. And there will be more tax gifts. You can bet on it.

Of course, all this takes place with NO public vote.

The public? Screw them. Indeed. There has been little discussion. Why discuss what's already decided behind closed doors?

And who did the study for this hotel? Something called PFK Consulting. Who did PFK work for?

Positively Cleveland (PC). The convention bureau promoters. Who provides millions of dollars a year to Positively Cleveland? Cuyahoga County. Via bed taxes.

It's a totally fixed game.

The County provided this so-called non-profit PC $6,285,952 in 2011. It does similarly every year. Meanwhile, its private members, who benefit from the hefty tax gift, only contributed $532,206, or about 8 percent of PC's budget.

Positively Cleveland paid its 2011 boss Dennis Roche $359,692, latest IRS figure. Not too shabby, huh? Five others are paid more than $100,000 a year. David Gilbert is now the president and CEO.

To build the hotel, the County had to move its main offices and knock the building down at Lakeside & Ontario, an especially prime real estate spot.

At the same time, the County destructs its old offices, it give the land to the hotel project AND has to rent new space for a new County Headquarter until it gets new offices. New offices will be built on property the County once owned and lost millions of dollars purchasing from Dick Jacobs. Favor just never stop.

Such deals are made in heaven. For developers. Taxpayers pick up the costs.

The County will then rent from the new developer at $6.7 million a year, or $67 million for a 10 year period. No telling how much it will cost for this move or how much other space the County will require to rent or buy.

These are decisions no one really knows real the true costs will be over time.

We do know the public - you - will pay.

Another great scam is in the waiting. Before sticking the knife in, however, our public officials will wait until next year. Even they know they're asking voters for too much this year.

Our new, presumably honest County leaders will be ready to extend the sin tax another $200 million for at least 20 more years for our needy sports chiselers. I'll bet the Dolans, Haslams and Gilberts are privately upset they have to stand in line until next year.

Taxes are very easy to level. Especially when they are leveled on someone else.

That's you, in case you haven't picked up the gist of this.

We have already (as I've been telling year after year) now collected $240 million for the first sin tax for our sports entrepreneurs since 1990. We added another $110,424,933 (as of Sept. 30) for the second term of sin taxes for Browns Stadium.

The next bite will be for 20 years or some $220 million (likely much more as sales-taxed prices rise).

For a grand total of at least $570 million. Not counting free property taxes, free team parking privileges and other gifts along the way.

Is there anything left of the private sector in Cleveland? Do any big shots pay any of the freight? Ever? They only raise seat prices and cling to low wages for workers.

The party hardly stops there. We seem to be flush with give-away cash. Amid poverty and joblessness, too.

We will still be paying the medical mart/convention center one-quarter percent sales tax (thanks Tim Hagan) until 2028. Fifteen more years. Unless they extend, surely a well-worn habit. As of the end of this September it has cost Cuyahoga County taxpayers $242,148,943. See how a quarter-percent can add up. It is costing consumers more than the $40 million a year now.

And as prices of goods keep inflating, it's likely to flirt with the $1 billion mark.

Where do you think these dribs and drabs of hundreds of millions of dollars - with no end in sight - come from?

YOU! By the nickel and dime.

You know it comes most regressively from the least of us. You know the Romney 47 percent. The takers, he said.

Mitt told us just how these people think and operate:

“There are 47 percent of the people … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. … These are people who pay no income tax. … and so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Personal responsibility? What a joke.

The 47 percent may not pay much or any income taxes since they have no or little income. But they pay all those sales taxes on all the products they need for themselves and their children.

And as Republican policies keep crushing the poor, Democrats essentially sit back and wring their hands. And give more subsidies to the wealthy.

Cuyahoga County politicians - the Ed Fitzgeralds and the Ellen Connollys and the rest of the County Council - are willing to look the other way.

NO BETTER THAN MITT ROMNEY.

These issues are grinding people down. This is a good part of the reason we have so many desperate people doing so many desperate acts.

Parts of the town remind me a book I just read, "The Last Man in Russia," which describes the disintegration of so much of the former Soviet Union where desperation led to dire population loss, heavy drunkenness and early deaths. The recent data on infant deaths in some areas of Cleveland have fallen below that of many Third World countries, to say nothing of the devastating conditions women in many parts of the city endure.

But we collected another $119,124,658 as of Sept. 30 (since February 2007) for arts and culture.

There is no special tax for needy infants.

Why are we not getting news of what is happening to people suffering in the economic vise? We certainly aren't at a loss for publicity (news?) about new beers or restaurants? Is that now the duty of journalists? To keep us alert to new beers?

Where is the fairness? Where are those leaders who speak for these needs?

Our priorities are sharply out of whack.

Aren't there enough people here who are tired of these top business and political leaders riding high? Are there reporters willing not to look the other way, willing not to give us ball scores and the weather reports instead of the brutal truth of everyday life here?

It's time to say, "NO!" to some of these politicians and their string-pullers at our foundations, at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, and on our top institutional boards. They are the problem, not the solution.

Obama's problems have not slowed down his agenda; he's speeding it up!

From Ernest Istook --

WASHINGTON, November 25, 2013 — Scandals and embarrassments don’t slow down President Obama like they would other politicians. Instead, Obama is speeding-up his effort to re-shape America to match his vision.

His collapsing support in national polls has shortened the time that Obama has to act. Just as a football team uses a hurry-up offense when time is short, Obama goes with bold and high-risk efforts. Unlike a football team, Obama gets the rules changed to help him win.

Democratic Senators have given Obama the power to behave even more dictatorially than he has already. Changing the Senate rules was crucial to approving Obama’s appointments for key positions:

• to make rules and regulations through the executive branch, by-passing Congress

• to have those rules and regulations upheld by Obama appointees in the courts 

• to control key positions even after Obama leaves office (like Janet Yellen to run the Federal Reserve and lifetime federal judges)

• to protect Obama’s veil of secrecy from threats, such as by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who said he would block nominees until witnesses were made available on the Benghazi terrorist attack

The Senate rules change is not the only sign of Obama’s hurry-up offense, however:

• The White House readily took the heat for its blatant political move of extending an Obamacare deadline so people won’t get more premium “sticker shock” until just after next year’s elections. As Congressman Steve Stockman, R-Texas, tweeted, “Just a few weeks ago even suggesting moving Obamacare deadlines was ‘arson’ and ‘terrorism.’ Now it’s White House policy.” 

• Last week Obama couldn’t spare three hours to go to Gettysburg for the national commemoration of Lincoln’s great speech. “Too busy” making sure the Obamacare website got fixed. This week the President is off for a three-day fund-raising trip on the West Coast. 

• Obama has also been reaching out and encouraging activists to engage in demonstrations for his pro-amnesty immigration reform as well as for Obamacare.

So far, the Senate rule change is the most dramatic act that allows Obama to press his agenda while he can, at the same time embedding his people in key positions to influence America’s course long after his term.

That’s why Obama personally lobbied Senators to change filibuster rules. The White House won’t confirm who were the final three Senators that Obama won over, nor what may have been offered to them. The change was made to benefit Obama, not the Democrat majority in the Senate. Obama needed the endless talk of changing the rules to result in action before his window of opportunity slammed shut. Now his nominees need only 50 votes (since Vice-President Joe Biden can break any ties) for approval, not 60. The 45 Republican Senators can be disregarded.

The impact is bigger than the power to appoint. All the talk about impact on future presidents and on the culture of the Senate is elitist chatter to a community organizer like Obama. It’s now that counts, to create a widening ripple effect that becomes harder for Obama’s successor to reverse. The Democratic senators gave Obama the tool for bypassing the entire Congress on a host of matters. Obama can have federal agencies issue edicts and expect his newly-appointed judges to uphold them. Only a narrowly-divided Supreme Court could block those, the same court that did not block Obamacare.

The Senate did not change the 60-vote standard for Supreme Court nominees — yet. But nothing could stop Democrats from helping Obama by lowering that to a 50-vote margin if a vacancy occurred.

Obama now expects to get his three nominees (Robert Wilkins, Cornelia Pillard, and Patricia Ann Millet) approved immediately for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has jurisdiction over most appeals involving federal rules and regulations. That gives Obama appointees control of that all-important court, whose rulings can be reversed only by the Supreme Court. It’s his protection for the aggressive regulatory agenda that is on its way from Obama’s executive branch.

Obama appointees will saturate America with stringent new environmental restrictions, requirements to make bad loans to the “under-privileged,” dictates to hire people regardless of criminal records, gender identity rules on schools and businesses, more social engineering, and plenty more that is being overshadowed for now by the attention given to the Obamacare mess.

Undoing the damage done by Obama’s fast-tracked appointees may be as tricky as undoing Obamacare. Once millions of pre-existing individual policies have been cancelled, and soon millions more of pre-existing group policies are cancelled, how can they be brought back? Once millions of people rely on Obamacare subsidies and expanded Medicaid, how can it be taken away?

The public realization of Obama’s deceptions is only an opportunity; not a reversal. As Winston Churchill once explained, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. “

We should not be fooled by efforts to create an image of a president who is chastened and humbled by the blunders of Obamacare. Some conservatives are celebrating as though Obama’s agenda is toast. They should know better. The tenacity of Obama and his loyalists is immense.

Obama’s loyal bureaucrats are hard at work. He is organizing his community for his next wave: rallying activists, urging the left to launch protests, and hoping to catch everyone else off-guard. The rest of us would like to relax during the holidays. It would be a bad mistake to expect that Obama’s people will.

Ohio Moves One Step Closer to True Healthcare Freedom

In utilizing provisions set forth in the U.S. Constitution (Article I Section 10), Ohio took another step closer to shedding the federal chains of Obamacare.

Giving Sponsor testimony in the OH House State & Local Government Committee on HB 227, the Health Care Compact, Rep. Wes Retherford & Rep. Terry Boose did an excellent job explaining the fiscal & legislative benefits and freedoms that will be gained by passing the HCC and becoming a member state.  

To read Rep. Retherford's testimony - click here / to read Rep. Boose's testimony - click here.

Already passed in eight states and introduced in nine more, including Ohio, the Health Care Compact, when approved by Congress, will allow the member states to completely remove themselves from the train wreck of Obamacare.

Legislatively, the HCC will allow member states to draft and pass healthcare related legislation task specific to the needs of their state....

Enters Ohio into the Health Care Compact, which, with the permission of the United States Congress, allows Ohio, as a member state, to suspend the operation of all federal laws, rules, regulations, and orders regarding health care that are inconsistent with Ohio laws adopted pursuant to the Compact.

The bill enacts and ratifies the Health Care Compact which, with the permission of the United States Congress, allows Ohio, as a member state, to regulate health care within the state (particularly, insurance), and to enter into the Compact with any other state that has legally joined in the Compact. From OLSC Bill Analysis

Financially, the HCC will bring our state dollars back to the state free of federal strings that will allow them to be spent in a manner that best suits the healthcare needs of Ohio residents....

Member states get an amount of money from the federal government each year to pay for health care. The funding is mandatory spending, and not subject to annual appropriations.

Each state’s funding is based on the federal funds spent in their state on health care in 2010. Each state will confirm their funding before joining this Compact. This funding level will be adjusted annually for changes in population and inflation.

As you can see, had the HCC been in effect, there would have been no need for Governor Kasich to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. 

The same funds that come with Obamcare strings attached under Governor Kasich's current Medicaid expansion would have already been allotted back to our state, as a member state of the HCC -- with NO Obamacare strings attached. 

While D.C. dawdles we need to start moving in a way that Constitutionally empowers the states to address the ever growing health care problems in a manner that best suits their state - as a member state, the Health Care Compact will allow Ohio to do exactly that.  

Please contact the below members of the OH House State & Local Government Committee and encourage them to support the HCC and putting Ohio residents back in control of the decision making process regarding our healthcare.

State & Local Government Committee

GOP Members

Rep. Terry Blair (R)  Chairman

Phone: (614) 466-6504 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Marlene Anielski (R) Vice-Chair

Phone: (614) 644-6041 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Richard Adams (R) Co-Sponsor

Phone: (614) 466-8114 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Terry Boose (R) Sponsor

Phone: (614) 466-9628 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Tim Brown (R)

Phone: (614) 466-8104 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Tony Burkley (R)

Phone: (614) 644-5091

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Rex Damschroder (R)

Phone: (614) 466-1374 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Cheryl Grossman (R)

Phone: (614) 466-9690 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Bob Hackett (R)

Phone: (614) 466-1470 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Brian Hill (R)

Phone: (614) 644-6014 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Ron Maag (R) Co-Sponsor

Phone: (614) 644-6023 

Contact: Click Here

Rep. Ron Young (R) Co-Sponsor

Phone: (614) 644-6074 

Contact: Click Here

The End of the Filibuster and the Death of the Senate

Photo credit: Mother Jones

The End of the Filibuster and the Death of the Senate

Say what you like about Newt Gingrich, he is a savvy observer of DC politics. His recent email message is titled, ominously, "The Death of the Senate." It’s difficult to argue with his assessment, despite its pessimism [note: no link, since it arrived in an email]:

No one should be confused about what happened yesterday.

The Obama Democrats killed the United States Senate as a deliberative body 226 years after the Founding Fathers created it.

The use of a simple majority to change the Senate rules and eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominees and other appointments--a device that made getting 60 votes a practical necessity--was a decisive first step toward reducing the Senate to a body that operates by simple majority.

The Democrats have tried to argue that they killed the filibuster only for a handful of presidential nominees. But in fact they’ve killed a tradition that had survived more than two centuries. There will be no principle to stand on to block controversial appointments or legislation in the future.

This is a big deal, and it will change the culture of the Senate profoundly. And the Obama Democrats understood exactly what they were doing.

In 2005 as a senator, Barack Obama himself said that “everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock will only get worse.”

The same year Senator Joe Biden said, “We should make no mistake. This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab by the majority party… We have been through these periods before in American history but never, to the best of my knowledge, has any party been so bold as to fundamentally attempt to change the structure of this body.”

He called it “the single most important vote” he had cast during his three decades in the Senate.

He said “I pray God when the Democrats take back control, we don't make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”

Senator Harry Reid himself praised the filibuster at the time, lauding it as “far from a procedural gimmick.” It is, he said, “part of the fabric of this institution we call the Senate.”

That is what Senator Reid and the other Obama Democrats destroyed yesterday, fully aware of the permanent damage they were causing in order to achieve fleeting political goals.

That trade of long-term stability for short-term gain is exactly the opposite of the wisdom the framers of the Constitution intended for the Senate (a big part of the reason the body exists in the first place). The Founders were worried that the House, with its frequent election cycles and small Congressional districts, would be shortsighted, easily impassioned, and unaccountable for the ultimate consequences of their decisions.

The Senate was supposed to guard against this danger, as a “temperate and respectable body of citizens...to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind,” as Madison put it in Federalist 63. It would do so by making decisions for the long term, he thought--“well-chosen and well-connected measures, which have a gradual and perhaps unobserved operation.”

Until yesterday, the filibuster was one such device--an important protection which for centuries had been inviolable.

Harry Reid and the Obama Democrats’ reckless decision to kill it will change the Senate forever.

Obamacare and a “systematically deceitful” President

"The Scheme Behind the Obamacare Fraud"

Andrew McCarthy’s legal analysis of the fraud taking place – before our very eyes – is at National Review Online.  Here are a few extracts, but read the whole thing and be ready for family conversations while eating turkey:

Fraud can be so brazen it takes people’s breath away. But for a prosecutor tasked with proving a swindle — or what federal law describes as a “scheme to defraud” — the crucial thing is not so much the fraud. It is the scheme. . . . President Obama repeatedly and emphatically vowed, “If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan, period.” . . .  Obama’s promises were systematically deceitful. The president’s audacity is bracing, and not just because he lies so casually while looking us in the eye. Obama also insults our intelligence. . . . To be so bold is to say, in effect, “The public is too ignorant and disengaged to catch me, and the press is too deep in my pocket to raise alarms.” . . . The point of showing that Obama is carrying out a massive scheme to defraud — one that certainly would be prosecuted if committed in the private sector — is not to agitate for a prosecution that is never going to happen. It is to demonstrate that there is logic to the lies. There is an objective that the fraud aims to achieve. The scheme is the framework within which the myriad deceptions are peddled. Once you understand the scheme, once you can put the lies in a rational context, you understand why fraud was the president’s only option — and why “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” barely scratches the surface of Obamacare’s deceit. In 2003, when he was an ambitious Illinois state senator from a hyper-statist district, Obama declared: I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health-care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. . . . Everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately.  That is the Obamacare scheme. It is a Fabian plan to move an unwilling nation, rooted in free enterprise, into Washington-controlled, fully socialized medicine. As its tentacles spread over time, the scheme (a) pushes all Americans into government markets (a metastasizing blend of Medicare, Medicaid, and “exchanges” run by state and federal agencies); (b) dictates the content of the “private” insurance product; (c) sets the price; (d) micromanages the patient access, business practices, and fees of doctors; and (e) rations medical care. Concurrently, the scheme purposely sows a financing crisis into the system, designed to explode after Leviathan has so enveloped health care, and so decimated the private medical sector, that a British- or Canadian-style “free” system — formerly unthinkable for the United States — becomes the inexorable solution. Once you grasp that this is the scheme, the imperative to lull the public with lies makes sense. Like all swindles, Obamacare cannot work if its targeted victims figure out the endgame before it is a fait accompli. . . . You couldn’t keep your plan because Obamacare mandates made it impossible for private insurers to offer it. . . . If your doctor is not part of the network offered on the plans in your exchange, you will lose your doctor. To keep costs down, exchanges will limit their provider networks. Top doctors and hospitals are already being cut out. Moreover, the onerous regulations, reporting requirements, and constant threat of fee-slashing are beginning to drive doctors out of the profession. Then there is the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Stanley Kurtz described the IPAB in all its frightening detail in a 2011 National Review cover story: “An unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic entity with nearly limitless power over federal Medicare spending, [it] will have the power to effectively ration health care through price controls.” . . . That’s the scheme. Or maybe you still believe that if you like your private medical system, you can keep your private medical system, period.

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Common Core "standards" mean indoctrination

Common Core is not about education. It's about indoctrination. It's about fanning the flames of racial tension and class warfare. It's about pushing the progressive agenda. The Illinois Review (via Gateway Pundit) reports:

DUPO, IL - Fourth graders in Dupo Illinois are reading a biography of Barack Obama that's raising eyebrows among St. Clair County parents. . . .

The book - brought to the attention this week of those on the "Moms Against Duncan - MAD" Facebook page, goes on to say white Americans were hesitant to vote for a black president, and that Obama pushed the race issue to bring the nation together. 

"But some people said Americans weren't ready for that much change. Sure Barack was a nice fellow, they said. But white voters would never vote for a black president. Other angry voices were raised. Barack's former pastor called the country a failure. God would damn the United States for mistreating its black citizens, he said."

And here's the image of the book.

You can look at preview pages here. Can you imagine your 9 or 10-year old having to read this in school?

Here's the page for Ohioans Against Common Core, with legislative updates / legislator phone numbers here.

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Common Core hearings report

From Marianne, Co-coordinator for Ohio Tea Party Patriots:

Columbus. Yesterday's hearing for the repeal of Common Core went in to the morning hours.  Although proponent testimony was cut short, and Marianne was not able to provide my testimony regarding the intimidation tactics being used by the state, she was able to have a one-on-one conversation with Rep. John Becker, to address some questions he had during the testimony.

Accompanying her were three other ladies, one of whom was a teacher. She was able to give him first hand accounts of just how terrible Common Core Standards are.

The first testimony of the evening was given by Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow at the American Principles Project.  Her testimony was regarding the data collection involved with the implementation of Common Core, which is very scary.  Click Here to Watch

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