Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing
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In Parts One and Two, I discussed the support Kucinich has and the irrational fear also associated with electing Kucinich. Today, I want to focus on the secondary soundbite I have heard over the last few weeks about Kucinich. The Kucinich critics to have their work cut out for them because they need to go back THIRTY YEARS to find something to complain about. Their soundbite is “he drove Cleveland into bankruptcy.” This, it turns out, is a lie. It is a Halliburton straw man with a touch of Sopranos level intrigue.
Dennis Kucinich started out as the Mayor of Cleveland in 1977 – the youngest Mayor of a large city in America. The city was hip deep in trouble with it’s finances and crime. Not to mention, when Kucinich was sworn in, Cleveland was in one of its worst snow storms with winds of over 100 miles per hour – a sign of things to come.
He made good appointments and bad appointments for his administration and one of those, the Chief of Police, Richard Hongisto, proved to be real bad. The fiasco went so terribly wrong that a recall election was called and Kucinich won – maintaining control of the failing city.
One of his campaign promises was to not sell Cleveland’s public electricity utility, Cleveland Public Power to Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company – a corrupt company with a stack of federal violations of anti-trust laws held against it. When Kucinich got in office, the mafia figured out that this young Mayor was actually going to keep his word and NOT sell Cleveland Public Power to Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company so the mafia put a hit out for the murder of Kucinich. Yep, Dennis Kucinich was the target of mafioso assassins, but that was nothing compared to the EXTREME pressure of the city council and local banks had placed on Kucinich to sell the utility. In the end, Kucinich still said no.
How many times have we wished for that tenacity in our politicians when dealing with Halliburton?
The main city creditor, Cleveland Trust, ignored all of Kucinich’s debt restructuring plans and placed the city in default of payment. Here is the kicker – the bank’s board had seven members who were on the payroll of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company and they were also on that company’s board. The collusion was right out of the Cheney Play Book. The bank was a major shareholder in CEI and thus the sale of the city’s municipal light utility would have benefited the bank, not the citizens of Cleveland.
And again, Kucinich stood his ground. He put the decision to the people, vote to sell to CEI or vote for a .5% tax increase. Cleveland voted for higher taxes. Corporate interests lost and remarkably, the mafia recalled the assassin.
Cleveland never went into bankruptcy and the loan was paid and would have been paid if CEI and Cleveland Trust weren’t involved in a conspiracy to rob the citizens of Cleveland of almost a third of a billion dollars, in 1970’s money.
CEI was later acquired by FirstEnergy, the company was responsible for the 2003 blackout. Cleveland Public Power is still cranking out the watts to the city of Cleveland.
So that is the story, Kucinich is guilty of not bowing to Big Energy and ignored the deployment of assassins just to keep a campaign promise.
Here is my question, which of the “leading candidates” in this race; Clinton, Obama or Edwards would have withstood that kind of pressure?
Is it any wonder Ohio keeps sending Kucinich back to Congress? They know which side he is on.
