Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 05:00.
The new science about lead's effect on the brain may force policymakers to re-examine some social issues through a new prism. For example, if lead can cause aggressive behavior, learning disabilities and hyperactivity, might it not also be a contributing factor in poor educational performance among low-income blacks, who suffer the most lead poisoning? - Newsweek, 1991
Where Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eugene Sanders, and CMSD overall, have been completely ineffective, and so failed, is in their Strange Ignorance of The Role of Lead Poisoning in Failing Schools. Sanders is not alone in responsibility for this tragedy, as leadership of Northeast Ohio in general has been so incompetent as to make Cleveland the lead poisoning capital of America and the developed world.
Perhaps our politicians even hired Sanders with the specific direction to ignore the realities of lead poisoning here, as "there exists a body of medical research which demonstrates that politicians themselves are responsible for a conveyor-belt of tragedy that produces precisely those symptoms attributed to "failing schools.""
The good news for the future of Cleveland and education and students here is Eugene Sanders has announced he shall resign, as of February 01, 2011, meaning we may now select a CEO who may lift CMSD students off the "conveyor-belt of tragedy" caused by lead poisoning that literally guarantees the direct hardship of around 30% of CMSD students, guaranteeing the failure of CMSD and Cleveland.... greatly harming the economic competitiveness and sustainability of the state of Ohio.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 12/11/2010 - 14:24.
Did You Pay Homage and Taxes To One Of The Most Heinous Humans Ever To Walk The Earth, Today? Did You Turn on Microsoft today! If you use Microsoft, you turned on the Bill Gates fortune and all the harm that causes the world, today and forever hereafter. If you use a computer running any Microsoft products, you must know how your Microsoft addiction and dollars work for the world today, via perversely enriched micro-psychopath Bill Gates... from AlterNet's "5 Awards For the World's Most Heinous Climate Villains":
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet
Misdeeds: Pretend to be friends while engaged in a vicious competition to see who ends up with the most expensive coffin. Flew together to inspect the Alberta Tar Sands and ponder investments, looking to add to Buffet's $34 billion Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal-hauling railroad purchase and the Gates Foundation Nigerian oil portfolio. Gates is dumping cash into geo-engineering as a way to "hack" the climate, instead of getting off oil and coal. The duo insist that the government should be responsible for clean energy development, but that we need to tax our citizens to pay for it. They can't be bothered, since they're too busy banking on sure things like fossil fuels.
Corporate Teat: They're the tits, not the pups. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway, much of it tax sheltered by the Gates Foundation.
First of all, from comments, CRA is a confusing issue and even liberal community development advocates associate CRA with urban development ills - projecting frustrations with local political corruption and planning failure upon all Federal urban renewal efforts, lumping in CRA (and organizations like NCRC). In fact, these citizens do not understand where CRA fits in and are misplacing their anger - missing an opportunity to support what may help.
Those responsible for educating citizens about CRA and credit issues - the councilpeople and CDCs - are the ones causing the harm and frustration for working class citizens, who feel under-served and under-represented - and they are under-educated about Federal efforts to improve their lives, and the availability of basic help.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 04:00.
I never miss a chance to see the work of - and celebrate - Cleveland-based artist Julian Stanczak... a father of Op Art and one of the great artists of all time. So, during a tour of downtown Cincinnati (VERY NICE) last week, I was thrilled to unexpectedly be walked right past Stanczak's landmark 2008 work "Additional", on the Fifth Third bank and parking complex at Fountain Square. My host in Cincinnati seemed pleasantly surprised I was familiar with a work of public art in his Queen City, as I proudly exclaimed "Wow, there's the Stanczak mural... he's from Cleveland" and ran off to take pictures to share with realNEO.
If the art-superstar status of Julian Stanczak was ever to be challenged - for his life-work or his late-career accomplishments, as he remains productive in his 80s - Julian's most recent and important mural-scale public art masterpiece enforces his position at the top of the "art world" forever.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 04:15.
I recently met with Marcia West, Regional Organizer for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), in Washington, DC, to explore how economically distressed communities should respond to the foreclosure and housing crises in America, to expand credit access for working-class residents - to learn what leaders of Northeast Ohio may do to improve access to loans for housing and community development for us common folk. The short answer is "Expand the Community Reinvestment Act to Bring Billions of Dollars in Safe and Sound Investments to America's Neighborhoods" - go to Expand CRA to learn more and contact your representatives... SPREAD THE WORD!
CRA encourages banks to respond to a variety of needs in low- and moderate-income communities, including the financing of affordable rental housing, sustainable homeownership, small business creation, and economic development projects.
Joshua Gunter/ The Plain DealerSteve Dettlebach, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Ohio.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When federal prosecutors began to work with the Greater Cleveland Partnership on ways to encourage ethical business practices in the wake of local corruption scandals, they heard a stunning story.
During a trip abroad to recruit business, partnership representatives were told by a Dutch company that Cleveland wasn't a place they were interested in coming to because they believed it to be corrupt.
November 30, 2010 -- The National Research Council, at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has launched a study to strengthen the scientific basis for incorporating sustainability concepts into EPA’s decision-making. “Today I am formally requesting President Cicerone and the National Academies convene a committee of experts to provide to the U.S. EPA an operational framework for sustainability that applies across all of the agency’s programs, policies, and actions,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at an event held at the National Academy of Sciences’ Koshland Science Museum. NAS President Ralph Cicerone and Bernard Goldstein, chair of the committee that will conduct the study, made remarks as well.
Wow! November 30th was an amazing day for the EPA. Not only are we in the midst of commemorating four decades of accomplishments in protecting the health and the environment, but Administrator Jackson also made a landmark speech at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Science on the future of the EPA. That future is sustainability. The Administrator laid out her vision to a packed house of luminaries from across the spectrum, from academia to industry, to environmental groups.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 12/01/2010 - 11:25.
2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement
"Well-conceived, effectively implemented environmental protection is good for economic growth… A clean, green, healthy community is a better place to buy a home and raise a family; it’s more competitive in the race to attract new businesses; and it has the foundations it needs for prosperity." – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, March 8, 2010
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 11/30/2010 - 20:29.
More valuable than all the steel we mill, Cleveland has forged from our blighted, industrial, rustbelted, toxified, sprawling fruited-plains some of the most innovative, transformational music ever heard on Earth, since long before we gave birth to Rock and Roll.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 11/30/2010 - 06:13.
TheLoop21.com's senior financial/political reporter and blogger Devona Walker observes on her blog, "This is a classic Depression for Black America, and few appear to be paying attention. Just look at the numbers." She goes on to point out, for Ohioans:
In several states, Michigan and Ohio for example, African-American unemployment is expected to exceed 20% in 2010
Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas, Colorado, Mississippi, and New Jersey — the unemployment rate for Blacks was at least 2.5 times higher than that of whites
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 11/28/2010 - 14:44.
12/04/2010 - 13:00
12/04/2010 - 15:00
Etc/GMT-4
Cleveland NORML will be meeting at Sidetracks Cafe on December 4th from 1 to 6pm! We welcome members and non-members alike! Join us in our fight to reform marijuana laws in Ohio and advocate for safe, compassionate access to marijuana for all patients.
DENVER, CO – Over 300,000 square feet of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver this December 17-19 will be consumed by KushCon II, the largest star-studded Cannabis Lifestyle convention ever to take place.
The event, sponsored by Kush Magazine and dailybuds.com, is open to the public, family-friendly and cannabis free. The event will feature over 450 vendor booths running the gamut of the marijuana industry – from a daily concert series to ski jumping demonstrations to dispensaries to gift items that are sure to complete any “Kushmas” list.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 14:31.
The New York Times published more disturbing news for citizens living in states that have political leadership too incompetent, corrupt and/or ignorant to legalize marijuana and other cannabis industries, like HEMP... living in a nation ruled at the federal level by political leadership too incompetent, corrupt and/or ignorant to legalize marijuana and other cannabis industries, like HEMP..."It is being called the green rush. With more states moving to legalize medical marijuana, the business of growing and dispensing it is booming, even as much of the rest of the economy struggles."
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 00:37.
I missed an important and telling article in the New York Times, September 29, 2010, about Cleveland home-town billionaire Peter B. Lewis, Chairman of Progressive Insurance - Many Big Donors to Democrats Cut Support - which analyzes why "Democratic donors like George Soros, the bête noire of the right, and his fellow billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-oriented groups in the 2004 election, appear to be holding back so far"... showing many of the world's most powerful people think, feel and act the same way I do about our failed leadership in America and their failure to address the failure of their racist, unethical, immoral "War On Drugs".
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 11/21/2010 - 23:59.
In 2007 there were 1,143,358 Lawyers in the United States, which had a population of 303 million people, representing 265 people per lawyer in America. That would indicate that the 16 counties of Northeast Ohio (Ashland, Ashtabula, Carroll, Columbiana, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Mahoning, Medina, Portage, Richland, Stark, Summit, Trumbull and Wayne counties), with a population of 4.5 million people, have approximately 17,000 lawyers.
Thus, Northeast Ohio's 17,000 lawyers should be providing at least 850,000 hours of pro bono work to this community... let's round that up to 1 million hours.
I was pleased to see posted on East Cleveland's core home-town social network, Shaw High Online, an excellent opinion editorial - Matters Of Opinion: Vol 7 Decriminalize Marijuana - by Zakee A Rashid. The tagline reads: "Why are we spending 10 billion dollars a year to stop people from smoking weed?"
Rashid goes on to reference a wide range of facts about the economics and injustice of the prosecution of citizens for marijuana that all Americans must take into account. In Ohio, recent polls indicate 73% of voters support legalization of medical marijuana "MMJ", showing opposition to legalizing MMJ (now legal in 15 states, including McCain's Arizona) is a losing political ticket. Making President Obama a major loser... especially as the harm caused by unjust marijuana prosecution in America predominantly harms African Americans, who rallied to elect Obama president.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 11/19/2010 - 04:46.
Hemp Industries Association (HIA) President Steve Levine - speaking to membership at the 2010 Annual HIA Convention, November 08, 2010, in San Francisco - discusses his expectation that California will pass and enact into law a Hemp Farm Bill in 2011 - "Definitely in 2012 it (hemp) will be grown in California" - "there is talk there may be some hemp grown in 2011". Steve indicates developments are positive for a 2011 version of Ron Paul's Federal Hemp Farm Bill to pass congress and become Federal law in 2011, making it legal to farm hemp nationwide in 2012 - "as hempsters, we did not lose one of our sponsors for the bill - all 25 were re-elected". This is one of the most important economic development forecasts for America of the 21st Century, to-date.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 11/19/2010 - 03:15.
Google Analytics Traffic Data for realNEO.us for October 19 - November 18, 2010 (31 days)
Based on Google Analytics of realneo.us traffic, we are now at a level that exceeds 500,000 unique visitors and 1,000,000 page visits per year, and both metrics have been growing steadily for as long as we have tracked our web traffic metrics... so expect realNEO.us to exceed 1 million hits per year forever hereafter. By how much we exceed these metrics, with what growth rate for the future, is up to our members and community who create the content here that now attracts over 1,000,000 reads a year.
To optimize value in these critical sectors, I have recommended Cuyahoga County convene and sponsor overarching Greater Cleveland Food and Information Advisory Councils, like and associated with the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council, and county leaders should take active roles leading the councils and in planning these multi-billion-dollar sectors of our economy and society... we must not entrust the leadership, innovation, financial engineering and decision-making control to under-engaged government and over-engaged foundations, academe, industry and non-profits.
Planning these sectors should not happen behind closed doors in any ways at all, as has been the case in the past.
Crain's is reporting on "Economist Michael Shuman, who is part of the local and national consulting team that has conducted the Northeast Ohio Local Food Assessment, presented the study's findings Tuesday, Nov. 16, to a sold-out meeting at the City Club of Cleveland." Apparently, a bunch of Foundation-paid consultants have finished planning local foods behind closed doors.
Submitted by Norm Roulet on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 15:04.
DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - Dozens gathered at the courthouse steps in downtown Dayton on Saturday, to push for laws to legalize medical marijuana.
There was an important public health and social justice activist gathering in Ohio, this past weekend - groups supportive of legalizing medical marijuana in Ohio gathered at Courthouse Square, located at the corner of Third and Main Streets in the heart of downtown Dayton in support of H.B. 478, Ohio’s Medical Compassion Act that will allow for the medicinal use of cannabis.
