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, January 18, 2008

Topics: Politics, Other
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Newsmakers: Anne Goodman, executive director, Cleveland Foodbank; Julie Chase-Morefield, executive director, Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio. These are lean times for food banks in northeast Ohio and across the country. They’re caught in a squeeze between rising demand and dwindling resources. Both the rise in demand and the drop in donations to food banks can be traced to well-publicized problems with the economy. We’ll talk with leaders of two local food banks on how they’re coping with the challenge.

Roundtable: Brian Tucker, publisher and editorial director, Crain’s Cleveland Business; April McClellan-Copeland, reporter, The Plain Dealer; Greg Saber, WTAM 1100.

County to Sell Tower: Cuyahoga County this week received a $35-million dollar bid for the purchase of the former Ameritrust Building on East Ninth Street near Euclid. The lone bidder, K&D Group of Willoughby, wants to fill the building with offices, stores, hotel rooms and apartments. The county acquired the building in 2005 intending to demolish it and put up a new county administration building, but the plan was later shelved.

City Takes on the Banks: The city of Cleveland has filed suit against 21 investment banking firms, accusing them of helping to precipitate the city’s foreclosure crisis. The city filed the suit against such giants as Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. City officials say the firms pushed high-interest loans in a market with stagnant housing prices, knowing that economic conditions elevated the risk of those loans. Cleveland officials hope to recover some of the tax money lost to declining land values brought on by the high foreclosure rate.

It’s the Economy, Stupid: Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney focused on voters’ economic concerns to win this week’s Michigan primary. The win served notice that those same concerns will be on the minds of voters elsewhere on the campaign trail. Several polls have shown that economic worries have supplanted the Iraq war as the top concern of American voters. The unease is fueled by rising oil prices, falling stock values and talk of possible recession.

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