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Paying the fine is tacitly accepting the authority's ultimatum, the ultimatum expressed so eloquently by MTS above. Those fines are disproportionately onerous on poor people. The cameras are only in Cleveland, so poor people also get a disproportionate share of the tickets. The fact that they are largely on commuter routes moderates this tendency a bit, but if your whole life takes place in the burbs you have no cameras to worry about.

I'm all for that in principle, but they will put you through collections if you don't pay up. The legal/financial system is all-encompassing. The Man doesn't like to be ignored, any more than those nice men in suits who came to collect the fire insurance payment.

It's also possible that some dinosaur species lived longer than we think. Loch ness monster and some brontosaurus-type thing reported in Africa come to mind. Obviously these are fringe beliefs, but if true they would allow cavemen to have seen a dinosaur, without backing up creationism or making the earth 5000 years old.

My sentiments exactly.

There's always a contract. Unfortunately, camera revenues at least indirectly help the local prosecutors offices so any challenge to the commission per ticket provision would have to come from higher authority.

There's a big difference between the inspection stickers you see everywhere and these that have a politician's picture on them. Why doesn't every inspection department include a portrait on their stickers? Because it costs a lot more money than a text-only sticker! Next time you get gas, look at the greyscale in those things. It's intricate enough to slow down the printing process and increase the reject percentage by quite a bit, not to mention additional art time. I used to set pricing at a printing company, so I'm not making all this up. I have no problem with the name of the responsible party appearing on the sticker. That is pretty much universal. It serves a purpose (whose office do I call), and as basic text it adds zero to the stickers' cost. The picture is very different. It's rare if not unique in the inspection-sticker universe, its purpose is essentially political, and it jacks up the sticker cost.

On the one hand, across-the-board penalties are more fair than selective enforcement. On the other hand, granting legal authority to a machine over humans is troubling on many levels. Also troubling is that the manufacturer gets commission on tickets-- meaning that even though they're not technically allowed to, they have an incentive to off-calibrate and give people tickets they don't derseve.

It's the contrast between the two that reveals eachothers' intricacies. I suppose you're right. My gut reaction to the designs is still ugh, but looking at the current western face of the building something does need to go there.

Both of these designs are wack. If anything, the vinyl banner idea works because it covers up the ugliness. You know what looks nice? The building they're adding onto. Why must the addition clash so badly with it? Both designs seem to ignore the existing building.

"Speaking of which, wealthy people I know are in fact taking their investments out of stocks and US dollars and putting them in Swiss Franks, gold in Swiss vaults, and buying land. There is a bit of a silent rush to get wealth somewhere safe before Obama gets into office." Gold and foreign currency have been good ideas for years, because our economy was pretty clearly about to crash. I'm not sure what that has to do with Obama. If people bought gold before Bush's second term, they'd have been better off. I think the economy will get worse before it gets better, meaning these wealth-preservation investments are still good, just not as good as they were in the early Bush years.

I don't know that these get reported to insurance the same way. I don't believe they go on your driving record at all. They're no-points offenses, almost an invoice instead of a ticket. If you don't pay and they ding your credit, that would probably impact insurance rates. The fact that one can be charged simply for owning the car has been used to challenge these laws in the past, unsuccessfully I think. If I remember correctly, the only challenge that has worked is when they violate their own law by not having warning signs or providing 30-day notice. Some of the cameras in Cleveland are mobile cameras in unmarked cop cars (frequently at 32nd and Detroit) with no advance signage. Advance signage is not required for mobile cameras, but plainly marked vehicles are required. I'm not sure black and white with no light bar or emblems constitutes "plainly marked" under the ordinance. From the actual Cleveland ordinance: "The Director of Public Safety shall cause the general public to be notified by means of a press release issued at least thirty days before any given camera is made fully-operational and is used to issue tickets to offenders. Before a given camera issues actual tickets, there shall be a period of at least two weeks, which may run concurrently with the 30-day public-notice period, during which only “warning” notices shall be issued. At each site of a red light or fixed speed camera, the Director of Public Service shall cause signs to be posted to apprise ordinarily observant motorists that they are approaching an area where an automated camera is monitoring for red light or speed violators. Mobile speed units shall be plainly marked vehicles."

I'm not overly fond of dress codes, which may be a minority position. I think they invite unfair application because you're already separating people into desirable and undesirable. Such distinctions rarely solve more problems than they cause.

How does security ever have an legitimate interest in someone's hat? Did he think there was a gun under there? Does he think there's a gun under all hats? If they're not giving you a coat-check ticket, you have a right to wonder if you're getting your stuff back, and wonder why they want your stuff in the first place. Unless he was hitting someone with his hat, security was in the wrong from the beginning.

Welcome to Cleveland, make sure you insult unions and blacks right away! Great business plan... That story makes me not wanna go back there either. I've already had some minor problems with them. Twice they've tried to charge me cover at the door, once when I'd already been there for hours and just went to the entryway to use the MAC. Both times the door person demanded money, I raised a stink, and then some manager type came in to magnanimously let me in "free." Makes me wonder how many people get suckered into paying. It doesn't take much protest before they drop the charge, so why ask for it in the first place? In my world, you don't charge cover unless you have a band. You also never tell your paying customers what they can and can't wear, unelss what they're wearing is blatantly offensive to other customers. Telling people they have to take off their hat in some hick style BBQ place is beyond crazy. Get em out, put something else there. Keep the patio fireplace though.

Not exactly. I've also advocated for more lower-end housing downtown. Those dependent on public housing should have as much choice within the county as others do. They shouldn't all be shoehorned into downtown, Ohio City and the near east. That concentration hurts the people and the areas involved. Take that Bohn tower on E13th, move it somewhere near Parmatown or Great Northern. Downtown shouldn't have any more or less CMHA than any other commercial area in the county. To equalize the situation, yes there would be some initial movement outward.

That sounds good. I can't see Beachwood getting behind it, but they ought to.

I wish. It's all conjecture at this point. I have theories, others have other theories. My prediction is that economic trends will improve as inequality is addressed. My prediction may be garbage. The people on the "housing downturn" thread here were pretty accurate in predicting what was about to happen. They were a lot more accurate than the heads of some major banks had been, who were paid millions to be right.

Not agrarian feudalism obviously, but a parallel situation where access to land and capital is determined much more by birth than by accomplishment. The unprecedented debt burdens facing many who acquire the education levels necessary to participate meaningfully in this economy force them to defer or forgo previously commonplace activities like: - buying property early in life (thereby having time to build significant equity), or - starting a business in mid-life (one family can open a main street shop, but not a big box), or - educating the next generation (this bubble won't pop for another 10-20 years, but just you wait... our parents didn't have to pay educational costs on two generations simultaneously, like many of us will) While educational costs may be the biggest impediment to social mobility, other factors also contribute to the worsening situation of most Americans. A housing boom without a wage boom means owning property becomes less likely for more people. It's a simple equation. Wages and salalries, for the educated and everyone else, must keep pace with property values or housing will crash-- guaranteed, every time. Skills and education have costs, and "will" is not currency. The currency now available in exchange for raw will and effort is a pittance compared to what it was in the industrial economy we've given up on. That formerly broad access to captial was what allowed average people in the last genration to translate their talents into businesses and holdings, and in many cases to pay for their childrens' education. Not so many get to do that now. When educational costs factor in, with usurious interest for some people and no cost for others, the future order of things comes into focus. We all wanted an education based economy, welcome to the economy based on education costs.

I wish I could agree with that. The people who made all the bad calls leading into this mess still have millions, while many who played by the rules are screwed. I know some disagree with this assessment, but I don't think the modern "service" economy model is capable of working. It is fundamentally flawed in its low valuation of human beings. If land and fuel cost that much more than the revenue labor can generate, manual or otherwise, feudalism will result. The growth of the cost of intellectual capital-- education-- continues to outpace growth in its returns. Either those ratios turn around or we won't have an economy. Instead we'll have people born with a right to land and services, and people born with an ultimatum of serve or die. That's feudalism folks. Look what's been happening since the real estate crash... those with the cash to do so are purchasing multiple tracts at bargain prices, while others are too paralyzed by destitution to take advantage. Ownership of land is consolidating. As per CincyDad's prognosis, if you're OK now, you're gonna be OK. If you're not OK now, expect that to continue. Social mobility grinds to a halt.

You don't have to. If mileage is to be taxed at all, it seems reasonable for a state to tax all mileage on cars registered there, whereever that mileage takes place. This arrangement would be most helpful for states that include non-core sections of large metro areas, like New Jersey or Indiana. Cars registered in those states may do a large portion of their driving elsewhere. Not so true for Ohio, but it may still be advantageous due to lower administrative expenses. The measuring system is reliable and it already exists.

We could just have annual inspections when tags are renewed. No honor system, no burden on police. Building a file on the movments of every individual is not just an invasion of privacy but a major one. I trust people to honestly fill out insurance forms much more than I trust people to not misuse that kind of data.

My "Randall Park Estates" is something we could do with the blue line extension. I don't think it would work without the rail service. Extending the blue line there would be a major boost to any redevelopment there. It seems like such a logical end point for the line. As for why we might relocate projects outside city limits, it's addition by subtraction. The projects ringing downtown are the wrong use for that real estate and they hold the city back. If we're going to have residential where the river meets the lake, it might as well impress visitors and generate tax revenue. The "C" in CMHA doesn't stand for Cleveland. I think growth for downtown and adjacent neighborhoods has been, and will be, moderated by the presence of so much concentrated poverty. Spread it out, or at least scatter the concentrations a bit more. Randall Park-- with a blue line extension-- is one such opportunity.

Randall Park seems like one of our best opportunities for TOD. The area is down but not out, it isn't ravaged like E79th. It already has substantial traffic. Having not seen this mall conversion concept, I would lean toward leveling it and putting up residential hi-rises. Removing the entire mall complex would alleviate some of the retail glut in that area and give the remaining plazas more of a chance. As one option, I wouldn't mind seeing a major CMHA development get moved to the mall site from the downtown area. Take down Lakeview and Riverview, quantum leap for Ohio City, piss off Beachwood and Solon. Smiles all around. It would be an improvement for many of the CMHA residents too, as they would have increased access to semi-modern retail.

I've been gradually more impressed with Jackson. I really liked the neighborhood-by-neighborhood strategy report he put out early in his term. He does need to speak up more, like he did here.

Desiring some measure of privacy as to your comings and goings is not irrational or paranoid. Not everyone is thrilled at how ubiquitous GPS has become, and not everyone in that group wears a tinfoil hat. That said, I'm fully supportive of a mileage tax. It could be measured in other ways. Truck drivers were paid by the mile long before satellites watched our every move. I'm not sure how to do congestion pricing without either surveillance or tollbooths, neither of which is all that neighborly.