32 Years of Roldo’s Point of View now online

You can’t tell Cleveland’s story of the last five decades without a word from Roldo Bartimole.

He’s the city’s original alternative journalist, icon-smasher, press critic and radical muckraker. Whether you think the white-haired, reedy-voiced reporter is Cleveland’s conscience or the town crank, he’s a necessary corrective to 45 years of boosterism and power-elite conventional wisdom.

“I don’t have a lot of heroes. Roldo Bartimole is one,” Esquire writer and Cleveland native Scott Raab tweeted last month, when his hero turned 80.

Now, Roldo's life's work has been liberated from library shelves. The Cleveland Memory website has recently scanned and posted the entire 32-year print run of Roldo's Cleveland politics newsletter, Point of View.

The generation of Clevelanders who know Roldo through his Cool Cleveland columns can read him as he takes on his great nemeses of the '70s, ’80s and ’90s: George Forbes and George Voinovich, The Plain Dealer and Alex Machaskee, Forest City and Dick Jacobs, sports team owners and their sweetheart deals.

My quick dig in Cleveland Memory's Roldo archive turned up gems:

• “Buying Peace the Private Way,” June 26, 1968 – Roldo breaks the news that businessmen paid black militants $40,000 in summer 1967 to help prevent a repeat of the Hough riots.

• “Resign Now,” April 26, 1980 – One of Roldo’s many screeds against George Forbes.

• “Sohio Forbes/Shoves,” April 4, 1981 – The story behind the legendary photo (above) of Forbes physically throwing Roldo out of a meeting of city councilmen at the Bond Court Hotel.

• “On to the 90s: White, Westbrook break old guard,” Nov. 25, 1989 – Roldo captures the moment when new political characters stepped up to replace Forbes and Voinovich: Mike White, Jay Westbrook, Jim Rokakis, Pat O’Malley, Mike Polensek, Jeff Johnson.

• “Saying Goodbye,” December 2000 – In Point of View’s last issue, Roldo looks back on 32 years of combat against Cleveland’s political and economic powers. 

I’ve blogged about Roldo before – here’s a post about how downtown looks through his eyes, and one about his emergence as a critic of Mayor Frank Jackson. I’ve just posted two articles about him from Cleveland Magazine’s archives:

• “Knight Errant,” May 1972 – In which Roldo describes his journalistic vows of poverty and comes close to calling himself a socialist and anarchist.
       (shortlink: j.mp/Roldo-KnightErrant)

• “Last of the Great Muckrakers,” September 2000 – Michael D. Roberts’ profile of Roldo, which explores his single-minded devotion to his work and reveals the origin of his unusual first name (“the hero of… a cheap Italian novel”).
       (shortlink: j.mp/Roldo-Muckraker)

(photo by Timothy Culek, Cleveland Press, from clevelandmemory.org)

Taxmageddon looms, but Voinovich sees a way out

Now that the election’s over, the country’s political conversation is changing fast. President Obama and Congress have less than two months to confront the budget crisis known as the fiscal cliff or, better yet, Taxmageddon. What will happen?

Former Sen. George Voinovich thinks it’s time for Obama and the Republicans to bargain: Medicare and Medicaid cuts in exchange for tax hikes on the wealthy.

“We’re trying to warn people about the cliff,” says Voinovich, the Ohio co-chair for Fix the Debt, a centrist group trying to lay the groundwork for compromise.

The Bush-era income tax cuts expire Dec. 31. So does the payroll tax holiday that boosted our paychecks two years ago. Big across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic spending are set to kick in Jan. 1. That double shock to the economy would probably plunge us into a new recession.

Confronting the cliff means confronting the parties’ 20-year disagreement on taxing the wealthy. Obama wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire for households making more than $250,000 a year. Republicans don’t. But Voinovich, a moderate Republican, thinks his party ought to strike a deal.

“[We have] to lay out the contours of reform of Medicare and Medicaid,” argues Voinovich. “Then we need tax reform, pro-growth, which would broaden the base, lower the rates, and raise revenues and reduce the deficit.”

But just when he starts sounding like Mitt Romney, Voinovich draws a distinction.

“That was one of the problems with Romney,” he says. “Romney said [tax reform would] be revenue-neutral. But most of us who’ve been around know that if you’re going to make cuts in spending, you also have to raise revenue. So those people in the higher bracket end up paying more money!

“Almost everyone I know that’s in that category says, ‘George, I’ll pay more taxes if you can guarantee me we’re going to get this ship back on an even keel.’ ”

During the campaign, Voinovich recorded a radio ad for Romney, in which he accused Obama of having a “deeply partisan vision” that kept him from working with Congress. But “neither party has clean hands,” he says now. Perhaps thinking of this Plain Dealer cartoon about his radio spot, Voinovich mentions Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

“I think McConnell made it clear he wanted to defeat the president,” he says. “He has not been as cooperative as he should be.”

Obama and House Speaker John Boehner came close last year to the sort of “grand bargain” Voinovich supports. Voinovich thinks Boehner will ultimately stand up to the tea party wing of his caucus to avoid the fiscal cliff, even at the risk of losing his job as speaker.

“I really believe John Boehner would have given up his leadership to do the right thing,” Voinovich says. “I think [he] will do the right thing. I think John knows how bad things are.”

Voinovich thinks confronting the fiscal cliff may mean limiting popular tax deductions for home mortgages, charitable giving and health insurance. It’s an austere vision.

But he believes momentum is building for a compromise. “There’s a deep feeling that people in Washington have got to get their act together and get something done,” he says. “With the right effort, I think we can.”

Voinovich on debt talks: House Republicans 'would rather lose than win'

When the debt ceiling talks in Washington collapsed this weekend, I thought of George Voinovich. I interviewed the former senator June 2 for the current issue of Inside Business, and I asked him about the fiscal future of the country.

"Bleak," he said. "They'll fiddle-faddle around."

Voinovich sketched out a mostly prescient preview of the debt ceiling talks. House Speaker John Boehner "has a problem, because he has a bunch of newer members who really are not dry behind the ears, and many of them, because of their positions, would rather lose than win," Voinovich said. "He’s got to try to keep that group together.

"So I think that the House will increase the debt limit temporarily." (Even that hasn't happened so far. Democrats reject a temporary fix.) "They will then say they’re going to have a 'conversation' about dealing with the debt. The conversation will go nowhere because they will not agree to new taxes.

"The fact is you cannot get the job done without increasing taxes."

That quote there highlights the difference between Voinovich and most Republicans in Washington today. Many House conservatives have refused to raise the debt ceiling without severe spending cuts, but they refuse to raise any taxes to deal with the debt. Voinovich is a different kind of conservative. He's a deficit hawk. Confronting the debt is his top priority, and he'd be willing to raise taxes as well as cut spending to do it.

Freed from life in Washington, Voinovich sounds as frustrated with his fellow Republicans in the nation’s capital as he is with the Democrats. In my interview with him, he explains why he often calls President Obama a socialist. But he also blasts fellow Republicans in Washington for not listening to regular people and putting partisan battles ahead of the good of the country.

To read Voinovich's thoughts in the July-August Inside Business, click here.

Voinovich's two legacies, in Washington and Cleveland

George Voinovich hasn’t changed much in 31 years. That’s clear from a moment in his recent Washington Post interview when he recalled his 10 years at Cleveland City Hall.

“When I was the mayor, shooting for those All American City Awards each year was a real motivator,” he said. “And it never would have happened without the private sector and urban pioneers helping us rebuild a city where Cleveland used to be.”

He’s echoing a line from his 1979 run for mayor: “I want to build a great city where Cleveland used to be.” It’s a line I quote in “The Great Divide,” my piece on Voinovich in Cleveland Magazine’s December issue.

My story describes how Voinovich realigned Cleveland politics as mayor by introducing the phrase “public-private partnership” into our vocabulary. In the 30 years since, our biggest arguments haven’t been between conservatives and liberals. They’ve been about whether you see Cleveland the way Voinovich did, especially whether you’re for or against big public-private projects downtown, from Gateway to the Rock Hall to the Medical Mart. The Post interview picks up on Voinovich’s ideology, asking him how he’ll be involved in public-private partnerships after he retires from the Senate Jan. 2.

In Washington, Voinovich will be remembered for his role as a deficit hawk and his moderate politics. He showed both streaks in this month’s climactic lame-duck session, blasting the Obama-Republican tax-cut compromise for running up more debt on one hand, and on the other, voting to allow gays to serve openly in the military and supporting the New Start arms control treaty.

At home in Cleveland, he’ll be remembered for his philosophy of partnership. Last week, when county executive-elect Ed FitzGerald created a task force of business executives to aid the transition to a new county government, his announcement explicitly referred to Voinovich’s 1980 task force that helped the city climb out of default. And the county charter calls for FitzGerald to sit down with representatives of labor, nonprofits and business to develop a new economic strategy for the region. Voinovich may be retiring, but his philosophy is written right into our new government.

New PD editorial page editor

Last week I wrote about the Plain Dealer editorial page moving from center-right to center-left during the Bush years. Well, it's going to keep moving left.

Brent Larkin, the editorial page editor, is retiring in May after 17 years on the job. Elizabeth Sullivan, the paper's foreign-affairs columnist, will take over the page.

Sullivan wrote a lot of critical columns about the Bush Administration and the Iraq war. While the editorials under Larkin reflected a sort of sad disappointment toward Bush, Sullivan was angry. A recent piece of hers about Dick Cheney is a good example. (Not that there wasn't a lot to write about -- 25 U.S. senators recently said this about Donald Rumsfeld, another frequent target of hers.)

These archives of Sullivan's recent print columns and online columns include lots of pieces with a more moderate take, including a nice story on George Voinovich. But overall, I think her appointment means the editorial page will become more reliably liberal.

Palin in Lakewood

Sarah Palin spoke this morning at the Lakewood Park bandshell, promising lower taxes and energy independence if she and John McCain are elected.

"Only John McCain has the experience, wisdom, and courage to get this economy back on track," Palin said. McCain will have a "pro-private sector, pro-business agenda" and will confront the $10 trillion federal debt with a spending freeze in all categories except defense and veterans' and seniors' benefits, she said.

The vice-presidential candidate also promised tax relief for "every American and every business" under a McCain Administration. She promised to lower income taxes, double the deduction for families and cut the capital gains tax.

As she and McCain have for weeks, Palin tried to cast doubt on Barack Obama's often-repeated pledge to cut taxes for people making less than $250,000 a year. Obama would reverse earlier tax cuts for those making more than that. "Now is the worst possible time to even think about raising taxes on you and your small business," Palin told the crowd. She claimed Obama's $250,000 figure was shifting lower, and that an Obama spokesperson recently said only people under $120,000 would get the cut. (She was likely referrring to a recent quote from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Here's a summary of Republican talking points on this question.) Many audience members behind her were wearing oval stickers with the name "Joe" on them, a reference to "Joe the Plumber," the suburban Toledo man who challenged Obama on his tax plan.

Palin promised to make the country energy-independent through increased domestic production of oil, natural gas, and coal. She said Obama plans to bankrupt the coal industry, citing a January interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that has gotten new attention in recent days. In the quote, Obama suggests that his proposal to limit greenhouse emissions would make new coal plants economically infeasible unless they use new clean-coal technology.

"We have the domestic solutions right here," Palin said. "We'll drill, baby, drill, and mine, baby, mine!"

The Alaska governor also pledged more federal support for education of special-needs children, while hinting at her ticket's opposition to abortion. She and McCain, she said, share a "vision of America where every innocent life counts and every child is cherished."

Warning against putting Democrats in control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, Palin attacked U.S. Rep. Barney Frank's recent call for a 25 percent cut in defense spending. "This is a time of multiple conflicts and obvious danger, still, to the homeland," Palin said. "Do they think the terrorists have changed their minds?"

Palin ended the rally with praise for McCain and swipes at Obama's eloquence. McCain, she said, "inspires us not just with words, but with heroic and trustworthy deeds."

The opening act at the rally was Shauna Carter (not sure I have the spelling right), a country singer from central Ohio, who sang heartfelt ballads accompanied by a guitar player.

U.S. Sen. George Voinovich introduced Palin and her husband, Todd. "She has energized our base like nothing I have ever seen!" Voinovich said. He said he'd talked to "lots of Democrats who say Obama is too far to the left and with no executive experience, and [they ask,] how [is] a person who was a state senator and hasn't completed his first term in the U.S. Senate qualified to be president? ... It's not a question of whether Sarah has the experience to be vice-president of the United States, it's whether Obama has the experience to be president of the United States."