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, July 27, 2007

Topics: Education, Politics, Other
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Newsmaker: Cleveland City Councilman Michael D. Polensek. The veteran Cleveland politician became international news when he wrote a letter to a Cleveland teen calling him a “crack-dealing piece of trash” and “dumber than mud.” The teen’s mother is threatening a lawsuit, but public reaction to the letter has overwhelmingly favored Polensek’s tough stance against what’s seen as a growing culture of disrespect. Polensek, who’s served the eastside Ward 11 for a quarter-century, has written similar letters in the past.

Roundtable: Mark Naymik, politics reporter, The Plain Dealer; Jill Miller Zimon, freelance journalist, blogger; Greg Saber, reporter, WTAM 1100.

Polensek’s Letter: The roundtable will continue discussion of Polensek’s letter and the public reaction to it.

Sales Tax: The Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners is expected to approve a quarter-cent increase in the county’s sales tax to pay for construction of a new downtown Cleveland convention center. That, in turn, is expected to lead to development of a Medical Mart which is supposed to provide a steady stream of visitors to the new convention center. Opponents have objected to an additional burden in a county which already has the state’s highest sales tax and to the fact that it’s being imposed without a popular vote.

New Direction for Cleveland Schools: Cleveland school officials formally announced this week the opening of five single-sex schools; two for girls, two for boys. In addition, the Ginn Academy will serve as a school for at-risk boys. Glenville High School’s successful football coach, Ted Ginn, Sr., will direct the school. CEO Eugene Sanders also announced a new dress code requiring all students to wear conservative clothes in solid colors with collared shirts. Sanders also guaranteed that Cleveland third-graders three years from now will have reading skills on a par with third-graders around the state.

A Different Debate: It was mostly the same look: a line of Democratic candidates, each at his or her own podium, answering questions about issues of the day. But this time, the questions all came from ordinary people via the popular Internet video site YouTube. The debate itself elicited little new from the candidates, but it demonstrated the growing populist power of the Internet. It might also have demonstrated growing political interest in the 18-to-34 age group, more than 400,000 of whom watched the debate on CNN.

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