Fund For Our Econ Future

LONG ROAD TO THE SCRAP MARKET IN CLEVELAND, 0HIO

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sun, 12/23/2007 - 13:28.

 

 I stopped and spoke with these two fellows to check on the current prices paid for scrap steel- a nickel a pound or $100.00 per ton. 

They were happy to converse, but weren't keen on being photographed up close. 

Each of their shopping baskets had, I would estimate, between 100lbs and 200lbs of rusty cast iron and steel - a 1 inch diameter steel rod about 3 feet long, a piece of angle iron, what looked like a plate that goes under the rail road rail and through which the RR spikes are hammered, etc.   These fellows had been gleaning the fields around the TriC area and were headed on Saturday to the scrap yard at E55th and 490.   

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FREE STAMP - CLEVELAND, OHIO

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Thu, 12/20/2007 - 21:41.

Homeless home under Free Stamp in Cleveland

10.18.11 Occupy Cleveland needs a permit for Willard Park and for Public Square.   Downtown Cleveland Alliance needs access for Xmas decor. Right.

Christmas in Cleveland will be hard for many.

But some have shelter, colored with red, white, and green.

The FREE STAMP is a negative, as is much of Cleveland.

PUTITONTHEBALLOT - CUYAHOGA COUNTY - WHERE'S YOUR SALES TAX MONEY NOW?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Thu, 12/13/2007 - 16:41.


Cuyahoga County, Ohio, has been collecting a quarter percent more sales and use tax for almost 3 months now - since October 1, 2007.   Projected by Commissioners Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora at about one million per week, that extrapolates to about 11 million in the County coffers from the added sales tax.

I accompanied Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed, (center with clip board above) a number of times as he collected signatures in order to allow a County wide referendum vote to determine if the voters would support such a tax.

CLEVELAND'S GROWTH INDUSTRY - HOME REMOVAL

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sat, 09/22/2007 - 13:30.
Tim Ferris wrote recently that his home on the West Side had appreciated about 2% per year over the 25 years he's been in it. 

IF U REALLY WANT CON CENTER KENNEDY MART - PUTITONTHEBALLOT.COM

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Thu, 08/02/2007 - 12:18.

Fools rush in -  if you are for a sales tax to build a con center and kennedy mart - you honestly believe that this will trickle down and improve the NEO economy - then you should READ the resolutions (sales tax, use tax) passed by Cuyahoga County Commissioners Hagan and Dimora.  Look at the second line of either resolution.  "money goes into general fund".   There is no language in the resoluions that says that either the sales or use tax is for a  con center and kennedy mart.  This tax will go on for 20 years sucking in about a million a week.  Where will Hagan and Dimora be in 2008 when their terms expire?  Promises, Promises.  Printed in the Plain Dealer.

And Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, who voted "against" the tax is in fact complicit.  If he was really against the tax but for a con center (with support from hotel bed taxes as he said) Mr. Jones would have raised in the public hearings the fact that the resolutions were for money going into the general fund, not into a con center account.  Omitting to exercise this ringing argument puts Mr. Jones in a catagory of strong doubt about being "against" the tax.

So, if you REALLY want a concenter and kenmart you would do well to sign a referendum petition right away to help putitontheballot.com this spring.  Then you can vote the present resolutions down, and insist that the Commissioners introduce and pass   new resolutions which spell out specifically in the resolutions what the sales tax will be used for. 

But then again, maybe you were born yesterday. 


Design Values 2: The New Face of Product Design Opening at Future

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 05/30/2007 - 00:58.
06/01/2007 - 18:00
06/01/2007 - 21:00
Etc/GMT-4

Future screenshot

Ever wondered how a designer conceives a product? What the process involves? Top CIA graduates innovating products for corporations such as Chrysler, Hyundai, Hasbro and Kyocera will open the vault, displaying sketches, concept drawings, renderings and actual consumer products at the second-annual Design Values alumni exhibition at CIA’s FUTURE Center for Design and Technology Transfer, June 1—August 3, 2007.

Location

Future Center at the Cleveland Institute of Art
11610 Euclid Avenue First floor of the Joseph McCullough Center
Cleveland, OH
United States

Challenging NEO to become world center for $ multi-billion micro wind industry

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 04/30/2007 - 20:06.

 

I recently posted on realneo about a report I saw on CNN profiling Lucien Gambarota, an inventor in Hong Kong who has developed and begun manufacturing micro wind turbines - see http://realneo.org/Micro-Wind-Turbines. He is also working on technologies to capture energy from waves, and hybrids of wind and wave.

ECOSSystem - Extending Community Open Source System

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 04/25/2007 - 17:20.

While not currently a powerhouse in Free Open Source Software (FOSS), Northeast Ohio is positioned to begin excelling with FOSS in some very strategic ways that may add great value to the regional economy. 

Because of FOSS, we may now bridge the digital divide more quickly and completely here than has any other large urban center in America, we may soon have the highest percentage of workforce properly educated for the new economy, and we may lead the world in some fields of application development and technology innovation with global, open standards, all if the region now embraces FOSS..

TOD update from Richard McDougald Enty, Planning Team Leader, Programming & Planning Department, GCRTA

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 03/28/2007 - 17:02.

I received an informative email this afternoon from Richard McDougald Enty, Planning Team Leader, Programming & Planning Department, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, about some of their Transit Oriented Development initiatives and vision. It is very exciting to see this as an active subject for discussion and planning here. I am a strong supporter of Transit Oriented Development and consider it the core foundation on which we should rebuild the City of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs.  Here is the vision from RTA:

Organic Juice Sails Ahead ;-)

Submitted by Zebra Mussel on Tue, 03/20/2007 - 18:53.

A snippet from Palm Beach Post on organic juice sales.   Though I consume it in tandem with organic milk, organic juice availability just has not kept pace.   Looks like they finally are waking up in the Orange belt.  Tropica (worlds largest juice guru) only got into the game this Feb.   See how behind the ball the big boys can be.   Looks like it wont be much longer now.  I wonder what is next? 

BUFFALO HAS WIND TURBINES NOW - CLEVELAND MAY STUDY WATER WIND

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 02/28/2007 - 16:59.
Look here to read the Buffalo News and their Feb 21, 2007 article on the 8 Clipper turbines which are going into the defunct Bethlehem Steel slag dump in Lackawanna, just west of downtown Buffalo.  The blades are made in Brazil,

Massillon joins with other cities in lead paint case

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 02/22/2007 - 17:14.

This was tucked away in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Business section today, straight out of Associated Press, without any local perspective - yawn, how boring is this subject. Well, over the next few months expect to see it is not so boring!

St. Luke's wants help in fight to rid homes of lead poisoning

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 02/03/2007 - 18:20.

 

Thanks to Susan Miller for pointing out an important article in the 02/03/07 Plain Dealer regarding the war to eliminate lead poisoning in our region by 2010 - an outlandishly aggressive objective, as Cleveland ranks among the top five cities nationally for lead poisoning. In 2004, St. Luke's Foundation funded what has been the most important collaboration ever for the future of Northeast Ohio: the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council (GCLAC), aligning over 80 agencies and organizations at local, regional, state and federal levels toward the common objective of lead eradication in our region within the next three years. On February 1, 2007, St. Luke's brought together the leadership of many other foundations for the expressed purpose of convincing as many foundations as possible to join them in funding the next three years of GCLAC initiative. The article states the objective of raising $3 million from foundations to leverage for far greater support from government sources.

WiFi Mesh in a box: first step toward universal wireless broadband access in East Cleveland

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 01/23/2007 - 16:14.

 

Thanks to an anonymous donor, East Cleveland has received some excellent equipment to start setting up a pilot proof of concept wireless broadband mesh network in some part of the city - location to be determined. The donated equipment is from a similar proof of concept deployment in Washington, D.C., and includes several commercial wifi antennas and routers and cabling to set up a small multipoint demonstration network, running the open source CUWiNWare mesh application and wifiDOG contained portal application, all routing to the city of East Cleveland's open source Drupal community portal, at http://eastcleveland.org. All this, combined with other digital divide bridge programs there, makes East Cleveland approaches to information technology some of the most interesting in America.

Moving Forward with a Plan to Improve Cleveland’s Innerbelt!

Submitted by Ed Hauser on Mon, 01/22/2007 - 03:50.
02/01/2007 - 16:30
Etc/GMT-6

Your opinions and feedback are important! Attend this Public Open House to Learn About the Next Steps for the Cleveland Innerbelt Plan. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) invites you to attend a Public Open House to review the Recommended Preferred Alternative. ODOT officials and their consultants will be available to answer questions.

Location

Greek Orthodox Church of Annunciation
2187 West 14th Street Tremont area
Cleveland, OH
United States

Cleveland Innerbelt Bridge - Ohio's 2 Billion Dollar Boondoggle

Submitted by Ed Hauser on Sun, 01/21/2007 - 17:58.

Ohio Department of Transportation - Cleveland Innerbelt Project Presentation

Cleveland City Planning Commission Meeting - January 19, 2007

Prepared as a Public Service by: Ed Hauser

11125 Lake Avenue #402 - Cleveland, Ohio 44102

Ohio's Citizens and Taxpayers Deserve a Valid Engineering and Economic Impact Study

In November 2005, ODOT stated that its "Preferred Alternative" was the Northern Bridge Alignment. However, ODOT never publicly stated the true cost of this alternative by failing to include the cost to replace the existing Innerbelt Bridge with a new eastbound bridge in 21 years. As a public service, I have done the arithmetic for them. The cost to replace the existing bridge in 21 years was about $1.5 billion, with a total cost of $2 billion for ODOT's "Preferred Alternative." These are the most accurate and only calculations until ODOT's engineers submit their calculations.

Public Comments to Cleveland City Council Public Hearing Regarding ODOT's Cleveland Innerbelt Project

Submitted by Ed Hauser on Sun, 01/21/2007 - 17:54.

Re: Formal request to get your answer to the questions of : WILL CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL DEMAND THAT ODOT CONDUCT A VALID ENGINEERING STUDY AND ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY TO COMPARE THE COSTS, FEASIBILITY, AND TRAFFIC INTERRUPTIONS FOR THE NORTHERN AND ORIGINAL SOUTHERN BRIDGE ALIGNMENT ALTERNATIVES?

 

The Embryo Question: Biotechnology and the Status of Nascent Human Life"

Submitted by Evelyn Kiefer on Thu, 01/18/2007 - 10:00.
01/24/2007 - 16:00
01/24/2007 - 17:00
Etc/GMT-6

Attend this lecture, the Distinguished Law and Technology Lecture, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in person or through WEBCAST LIVE. Robert P. George, Princeton University, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University is a memeber of the President's Council on Bioethics. He previously served as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and as a Judicial Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. Professor George is author of Making Men Moral: civil Liberties and Public Morality (1993) and In Defense of Natural Law (1999). His most recent books are The Meaning of Marriage, edited with Jean Berthke Elshtain and The Clash of Orthodoxies. Professor George's articles and review essays have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Review of Politics, the Review of Metaphysics, and the American Journal of Juriprudence. He has received numerous awards, including the 2005 Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on several boards of directors.In addition, he is of council to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee.

Location

Moot Court Room (A59), CASE School of Law
11075 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH
United States

Study: Open-source software can boost EU economy

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 01/17/2007 - 12:27.

Thanks to Ed Morrison for sending over a link to an interesting analysis of the value of FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) for European businesses and society. From the article: "European companies are saving a lot of money on software investment and development, due to the existence and emergence of open-source software, a Commission-funded study finds." An especially interesting observation is that "The bigger a company is, the more likely it is to use FLOSS." I wonder how NEO stacks up in the FLOSS world - use of FLOSS in business and government... training of FLOSS programmers and administrators... marketing and purchasing of FLOSS solutions in the region... number of FLOSS professionals and firms deploying FLOSS solutions? Read more about this movement in Europe below...

Economic forecast through 2008... 2010... 2016

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 01/14/2007 - 20:33.

Three articles in the Sunday, January 14, 2007, Cleveland Plain Dealer really caught my attention. 1. "Power shifts, and a fast-track bill is derailed"; 2. "Gloomy forecast" and 3. "Lost confidence in Bush? So has he"  - especially the last one, where Elizabeth Auster writes, about President Bush, that "he now seems shaken by the prospect that his vision of a free and stable Iraq may be fading along with his power to achieve much else." Because of this, despite "Gloomy forecast", I expect most important aspects of the Cleveland, Northeast Ohio, Ohio, US and global economy to improve dramatically over the next 2, 4 and 10 years. In fact, I can't think of an area where there won't be significant improvements. Think of the growth I expect like when an economy is freed from a dictatorship and people are allowed to be free and thrive - markets open up - that is America, now that Bush has been replaced by democracy.

Give former Governor Taft credit for signing Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit into Law

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 01/10/2007 - 04:18.

At the recent Green Affordable Housing discussion held at Cleveland Institute of Art, in association with their Home House Exhibit, Cleveland Planning Director Bob Brown stated that Cleveland needs to see more older properties renovated - we have many great old buildings, they add character and quality to our community, and that is the most environmentally sound strategy. Typically, much more energy is conserved by saving an old building than may be saved by building a new building, even if very energy efficient, because the energy required for creating and constructing all the material of a new building is the greatest factor in overall environmental impact, even when factored over a very long time period. So it is very good news for Cleveland and the environment that, just before leaving office for good, Governor Talf signed Sub HB 149 into law, providing critical tax incentives for the redevelopment of historic buildings in older cities and towns. A priority for NEO economic development strategy should including identifying important properties the community would like to see saved and move them on track to take advantage of these tax benefits - make sure as many of the 100 annual statewide projects are NEO project as is possible.

OHIO NEEDS TO SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE ITS ABILITY TO ATTRACT AND RETAIN IMMIGRANT TALENT

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 01/06/2007 - 16:05.

Cleveland attorney Richard  Herman sent me an outstanding analysis (posted below) of a Duke University study released on January 4, 2007, which is attached to this posting and "concludes that foreign-born entrepreneurs were founders of over 25% of the technology and engineering companies started from 1995 to 2005," and surfaces that "Only 14% of Ohio's tech companies were founded by immigrants, well below the national average." "The study further found that Indians have founded more engineering and technology companies in the U .S. in the past decade than immigrants from U.K, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.  26% of all immigrant-founded companies have Indian founders." "Similarly, the study found that Ohio was successful in attracting only 1% of the Indian tech entrepreneurs and only 5% of the UK tech entrepreneurs." Richard offers three excellent suggestions for addressing this problem, and you should read those and his entire Economic Development Advisory and the attached report below.