Emmy Award-winning Feagler & Friends is a lively, weekly half-hour television discussion of local and national issues impacting lives in Northeast Ohio. Hosted by award-winning journalist and former Plain Dealer columnist, Dick Feagler, Feagler & Friends explores the various issues behind today's news. With a changing ensemble of "friends" ranging from journalists to community and political leaders, Feagler & Friends takes on issues from many different perspectives. Always entertaining and never boring, Feagler & Friends is the program for people "in the know" in Northeast Ohio.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Topics: Economy, Politics, Other
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Roundtable: Elizabeth Sullivan, foreign affairs writer, The Plain Dealer; Bill Livingston, sports columnist, The Plain Dealer; Erick Trickey, senior editor, Cleveland Magazine.

Stimulus: Congressional conferees have agreed on a $789-billion stimulus package which provides money for tax relief, help for stressed state budgets, and some dollars for infrastructure projects. But the scaled-down package apparently will provide less money for state governments than Ohio’s Strickland administration was counting on when it wrote the new state budget. Governor Strickland says state agencies might be in for more severe cutbacks than expected.

Medical Mart: Cuyahoga County leaders met with the public today to explain the thinking behind a plan to build the new convention center and attached Medical Mart on Cleveland’s downtown Mall B. Officials of the Merchandise Mart, the company that will run the facilities, helped lay out the plan to an audience at the downtown library and to an earlier meeting with Cleveland City Council.

Say it Ain’t So, A-Rod: One of major league baseball’s best players admitted this week that he’s used performance-enhancing drugs. New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez told an ESPN interviewer the drug use occurred when he played for the Texas Rangers 2001-03. Rodriguez is not subject to penalties because the drugs were not banned at the time by MLB, but he says both his public image and chances for Hall of Fame induction have taken a hit.

Fertility Doctor: As national debate rages over a single mother of six who gave birth to octuplets, it came to light this week that a Cleveland-trained doctor runs the fertility clinic where Nadya Suleman conceived through in-vitro fertilization. Michael Kamrava operates the West Coast IVF Clinic. Kamrava is a graduate of the Case Western Reserve University medical school and served his residency at a Cleveland hospital.

Newsmaker: Prof. Michael Scharf, director, Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at CWRU. More than 30 years after the fall of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, five men who helped kill as many as two million Cambodians are about to be tried for crimes against humanity. Scharf, who helped train judges and prosecutors of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal, will explain who’s in the dock, what it means to the Cambodian people and why it took three decades to hold someone responsible.

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