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, August 26, 2005

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Newsmaker 1: Fred Nance, chairman, Defense Industry Alliance. Cleveland got the good news Thursday afternoon. The Base Realignment and Closing commission recommended overturning the Pentagon’s plan to close the Cleveland DFAS center and eliminate more than a thousand jobs in the downtown federal building. Instead, the government will keep the facility open and add up to 400 more jobs. Officials hailed the announcement as a sign that the city’s slide is about to turn around.

Newsmaker 2: Grady Burrows, vice-chair, Cleveland Board of Education. Another shocker this week for the Cleveland schools. Just three weeks after CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett submitted her resignation, the head of the Cleveland school board, Margaret Hopkins, announced she’s stepping down to take a teaching job at the University of Toledo. We’ll talk with the vice-chair about what happens next.

Roundtable panelists: Harry Boomer, 19 Action News; Deborah Burstion-Donbraye, GOP political consultant; Karen Schaefer, ideastream.

Cleveland Casinos: New studies out this week are good news and bad news for backers of casino gambling in Ohio. One says gamblers would spend four billion dollars-a-year and pump up tax revenues. The flip side is the other study: the presence of casinos would create thousands more problem gamblers who would create costly problems.

Pat Robertson: Televangelist Pat Robertson has the solution to any diplomatic problems the U.S. might have with Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez. He says the U.S. should have him assassinated. Venezuela called this pronouncement a “terrorist statement.” The White House called it “inappropriate,” and pointed to an executive order signed in the Ford administration forbidding political assassinations by agents of the U.S. government.

English Only, Please: The city council of Norton, near Akron, narrowly approves a resolution stating that English is the official language of the city of eleven thousand. Those who voted with the majority say they’re trying to make a positive statement, not to disrespect anyone.

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