You have to laugh so you don’t cry.

I haven’t studied the report at all but the announcement in the morning paper quoting Dave Abbott, Joe Roman and Sam “Give Me More” Miller on big spending in Cuyahoga County is really amusing. Laughable. Absurd.

Abbott was county administrator and a government protégé of Tax’n Tim Hagan. He’s talking about wasteful spending? Abbott was mum - quiet as a mouse - as an original Gateway board member as that organization spent Cuyahoga County deeply into debt. Nothing bothered him enough to speak out. He works for the Gund Foundation. Its money, of course, is based on tax evasion by the wealth Gund family that feasted so on Gateway and we taxpayers.

Roman as head of Cleveland Tomorrow and the Greater Cleveland Project (GCP) supports with the help of that corporate lobbyist agent every self-interest known to man or woman here. He’s a city hall frequenter for free money for corporate interest. Can we know who funds the GCP, another non-profit operating on tax evaded money? Will the Plain Dealer, so intent on public information, ask for the list of its donors? Well, I know the PD has been a generous donor itself in the past, though the IRS no longer requires such disclosure.

And Sam Miller. That’s belly-laugh time. He and his corporate family have been first in line for as many years as I can remember in sopping up government subsidies. His partner, Al Ratner, bragged to me about how much he gets in subsidies all around the country. Sam’s a millionaire many times over. He once called me to admonish me that I had listed his financial holdings too low and advised me that his holdings had made him much richer than I wrote.

These guys are rich in more ways than one.

I love that these guys are urging economic restraint. Abbott pulls in $307,000 in salary, benefits and expenses. Besides that you can be sure as a foundation executive he lives the very good life and as one who gives out money he is treated with the best of respect.

Joe Roman pulls in $426,271 annual salary and benefits. That’s good pay for pontificating.

These figures are a couple of years old, by the way.

Am I supposed to listen to anything they say that doesn’t talk about their complicity in the prolfigate spending hereabouts?

My God, do they think everyone is stupid? Do they believe there’s a sucker born every minute and they can “take” them on a ride over a bridge they’ll get them to pay for eight or nine times?

They are the ones that connive, scheme and wheedle public funds for their benefit and THEY talk about reform.

Yes, reform. But let’s start with them and their expensive agenda.

The Plain Dealer served – once again – as the ad agency for the same old people who have been screwing up this town for decades. Fewer pages but not less Page One propaganda.