CLEVELAND, OH – The statue of the late Cleveland Mayor Tom Johnson seated at the edge of Public Square in my feature photo overlooks the land and all its tax-dollar depleted emptiness.
Governor Richard Michael DeWine led reckless elected officials like Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and the Kevin Kelly-led Cleveland city council to create this budget-draining lunacy when ex-Ohio health director Amy Stearns-Acton lied the state into a panic; and they unconstitutionally shut down the city’s economy during the common cold and flu season of 2020. Some of these political idiots are still wearing masks.
Cleveland downtown is dead. It’s not returning as a “destination Cleveland” location because of the mask and social distancing shit. Dewine and his ex-quack director of health, so-called Dr. Amy Stearns-Acton, panicked everyone into being afraid to breathe and cough around each other.
$300 million was stolen from Cleveland taxpayers to renovate the Cavaliers arena for Lebron James by vote-suppressing Commie anarchist Kelly, the council’s president, for nothing. James split. The arena’s empty and dead.
I have walked every area of downtown where the spaces are public and open during my Guardian Angel safety patrol days from 1981 – 1983. I have NEVER seen downtown Cleveland so empty of people except during the scare in 2001 when a foreign nation’s agents flew airplanes into the World Trade Center’s twin towers and killed over 3000 men and women.
I recently walked from 9th and Superior to Public Square and up Euclid Avenue to 9th Street and walked across to Prospect back to Public Square and nobody was on the sidewalks. This was between 11 p.m. and midnight.
All the Community Development Block Grant money stolen from the majority east side poor neighborhoods for downtown is wasted. The closed businesses are not returning to a city whose mayor, council and county executive killed it by recklessly failing to read and obey the state’s 26 pandemic mitigating laws that did not include words like masks and social distancing.
Downtown will be even more empty going forward as every unit of government relying on tax dollars from the businesses and workers Dewine, Jackson, Armond Budish and Kelly recklessly drove into financial ruin results in massive government worker layoffs. Cleveland’s got to cut it’s budget by at least 30 percent. Maybe 40 percent. The same with the county, RTA and the state.
All these six figure political “best mind” dummies didn’t think they were killing their pensions with this “economy closing” lunacy. I’ll campaign against any tax increase … aggressively. Fuck you bastards!
Blaine Griffin couldn’t recite the first three words of the U.S. Constitution after being administered oaths of office three times to uphold it. “We the people …” Asking him to add the other 6 words before the comma was too much. “…of the United States of America.” He got his moratorium on dollars stores. Now the city has no stores.
Griffin and many of the city’s elected “leaders” wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for politics as they have no or less-than-skilled job skills like most of the city’s elected “leaders.”
Mike Polensek pumped gas. Joe Jones worked in a mail room before wanting to join the “millionaire’s club” in politics sent him to prison. Kevin Kelly was a Jesuit volunteer.
Jeff Johnson’s an attorney in license only. There’s no U.S. Supreme Court case he’s argued like the late U.S. Representative and attorney Louis Stokes did with his Terry v. Ohio case. No government job and Jeff’s ass is broke. He’s lucky his wife’s got money and Mona Scott hired him. Pension. Highest three years. That’s his sole reason for being in government and he did not return to his home in Glenville. Dude lied and stole two years of wages from Cleveland. Highest three years. Straight up lying azzed thief.
Armond Budish is an attorney who handled retirement shit for old people. It’s a big jump in thinking for folk like this to manage and legislate for 5000 to 7000 workers . Frank Jackson’s a Max Hayes graduate and a career city worker who employees elected to represent them; not us.
During the 1980’s I organized Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angel chapters in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown Ohio with over 300 safety patrol volunteers to make the 250,000 people living and tworking downtown and those in the other cities feel safer. We were there to assist in times of trouble. Prior to that I worked the night shift at the Justice Center for the Cleveland Press daily newspaper as a police beat reporter.
Downtown up until the late Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich’s push to make it a “destination location” that returned the Cavaliers to Cleveland instead of Richfield, Coliseum near Akron was a place for workers and nearby residents to shop. It was big retail mall that included street vendors on sidewalks until small business-killing Voinovich and council drove them out. Eastern European “selectivism.”
The big stores didn’t like all the American Negro merchants with vendors licenses selling items on public sidewalks in front of their stores. These “selective-azzed fools” didn’t realize they were attracting extra customers when the Communist-thinking politicians on city council modified the vendors license ordinance to exclude them. Now all downtown is good for his sidewalk merchants.
Clevelanders in part were glad to see the Cavaliers leave the city for Richfield. We didn’t want all the “extra” people in the city; and we wanted our neighborhoods, and not downtown, invested in to ensure the city’s economic stability was spread out over all of it instead of just favored sections.
Nearly $300 million in taxpayer money was stolen from Clevelanders to renovate the Quicken Loans Arena when anarchist Cleveland council President Kevin Kelly obstructed petition drive that resulted in a deal being cut with Shaker Heights resident Rev. Jawonza Colvin of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church to withdraw it.
22,000 city voters found their vote suppressed so their money could be stolen and wasted to renovate the Quicken Loans Arena for the Cavaliers basketball team Lebron James left for Los Angeles. It’s empty. So is everything else in downtown Cleveland at night and that includes the streets and sidewalks around Jack’s Casino and the $50 million renovated Public Square.
I read where the idiots on Cleveland’s planning commission voted to let a developer turn the old Hippodrome site that’s now a parking lot into a 300 unit apartment building. Heinen’s the supermarket closed a block away.
There’s no grocery store left to feed current downtown Cleveland residents as Heinen’s is “termporarily” closed.
Downtown Cleveland as it exists today is for skateboarders and the few remaining night time workers. You can find more people in an east side gas station parking lot than downtown Cleveland.
Bar Louie’s is closed. The Warehouse district is wiped out. The foreign students housing was built for using money earmarked for the city’s neighborhoods won’t be returning.
President Donald Trump’s administration through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security won’t let the 1.1 million foreign students taking that many college educational opportunities away from natural born Americans study remotely. They’ll either return to the U.S. or lose their visas. Since DeWine and Stearns-Acton has the world convinced Ohioans are some nasty-azzed virus spreaders, foreigners now don’t want to be around this nation’s natural born citizens.
Since the coronavirus the majority of cars downtown at night belong to workers who’ve chosen not to “mask ride” on now empty buses. With so few businesses open at night even the parking lots that once made money off them and visitors are empty.
The entire economic engine that contributed to the city of Cleveland’s $2.5 billion “full” budget is wiped out; and possibly will never return. Cleveland looks like it’s done as a city as the “best minds” leading it are the ones who killed it. As the city’s now dead economy is an example of their “best thinking,” there’s no hope for even better leadership coming from a community whose curve-graded politicians still act as if a score of 50 is an “A.”
ALL PHOTOS TAKEN BY ERIC JONATHAN BREWER AND THE IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHTED AND OWNED BY ERIC JONATHAN BREWER.
