Our weekly roundup of interesting happenings, minor happenings, stuff you missed, stuff we missed, and assorted fun.
- Bravo, Brett Owlson.
- Financial disclosures for candidates running for Sen. Rob Portman's seat show the Republican batch are all just like us — super, uber, stinkin' rich.
Here's the Dispatch on what Bernie Moreno's showed:
Bernie Moreno has a place in the Bahamas worth between $5 million and $25 million. He also has a yacht worth between $500,000 and $1 million, condos in Washington, D.C. and New York and houses in Columbus and Florida, according to Moreno's financial disclosure statement.
On top of that, his auto dealership, M Motors Group, Inc. is worth between $5 million and $25 million. He also holds between $100,000 and $250,000 in bitcoin. Moreno has mortgages and business loans that add up to between $13.5 million and $66 million. An $805,000 Paycheck Protection Plan loan to Moreno's auto dealership in Miami was forgiven in July.
- Changes, bird's eye view style.
Downtown Cleveland saw a lot of changes between 1951-1988. Watch the warehouse district and what today is gateway hollow out, the lakefront form, and I-90 carve through downtown. pic.twitter.com/QRsajyWc6M
— Dan Miller (@dm107_) August 17, 2021
- The long-awaited diversion center that will hopefully keep more people out of the Cuyahoga County jail and instead in a center focused on mental health, drug addiction services has been open for three months now and already faces one big roadblock, according to Cleveland.com's reporting this week.
Cleveland City Prosecutor Aqueelah Jordan is also seeking to add extra barriers to the process, according to letters obtained by cleveland.com and interviews with those involved in the center. Jordan wants to add a provision to the city’s policy that would require an officer to contact her office before bringing someone to the diversion center.- Also from Cleveland.com, a clear-eyed look at the weaponization of CRT in suburban school board meetings.
“That’s not the way it works with all of the other diversion centers we’ve looked at across the country,” said ADAMHS Board CEO Scott Osieki, whose agency oversees the diversion center. “That defeats the whole purpose of the diversion center. We hope they can work through the issue, because we need the city of Cleveland to be participating.”
Of the 43 people brought to the center as of Aug. 13, only seven have been taken there by Cleveland police. By contrast, about 80 percent of county jail inmates are brought in by Cleveland police.
- A headline and story for our times: "Bath man accused of laundering $311 million in bitcoins through ‘Google of the dark net,’" from the Akron Beacon Journal.
- Digit Widget:
0 — Times the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point will run the rest of the season after a piece from the ride hit a woman in the head last week, causing severe injuries, according to eye witness accounts. The theme park, local officials and state investigators are conducting a review of the incident but have released few details, including her condition.
$67.5 million — Total of cleanup work over the last three decades on the Ashtabula River, which this week was removed from the EPA's list of most-polluted Great Lakes waterways.
19 — New murals being installed in MidTown next week as part of the Cleveland Walls! festival.
2 — City Council seats that will be lost, according to the city charter, after Cleveland's population fell below 375,000 in the latest Census. The 372,624 residents is the fewest since the 1800s.
- What's Scene dining editor Doug Trattner eating this week?
- Vintage photo of the week:
Buring down the shantyville in Kingsbury Run on August 18, 1938 was mandated by then safety director Elliot Ness in an effort to rid the area of potential torso murder victims.
— John Skrtic (@SkrticX) August 18, 2021
Source: @Cleve_Memory pic.twitter.com/Qp6iJOK292
- New local music of the week: Catfish Walkin', "Uplifting," Featuring Layzie Bone
