The Cleveland Scene this week offers some antidote to the noxious coverage of the Pee Dee on Cuyahoga County reform. Issue 6 ain’t the joy ride into the sunset that the paper would like us to believe.

Issue 6 may be a sunset on real reform.

The Scene’s cover really tells it all: A photo of a menacing hand gun pointed at you. The title: “Give Us Your County and No One Gets Hurt – The story behind the Issue 6 power grab.” Couldn’t say it better.

The article by Damian Guevara (I’m becoming a fan) gives us, if not more facts than the Pee Dee has produced, a better slant on the power issues so crucial to the essence of the new County government Issue 6 would bring to us. You can find it here.

Veteran reporter Anastasia Pantsios writes a piece that debunks the idea the Pee Dee has tried to sell that Issue 6 offers essentially the same kind of reform that Summit County adopted. The title tells it: “Issue 6’s Bait & Switch – Summit County: different process, different result.” Her piece can be found here:

“Today, Atlantic City, in the eyes of one gambling executive, Tim Wilmott, is in a ‘death spiral,’” that’s the tone of a Sunday New York Times piece on the financial troubles of the city’s casinos.

“Rows of slot machines stand eerily empty,” says the story while hotel rooms are empty. Many casinos have experienced double digit revenue drops, the report said.

The article is far from a hatchet job. However, it does have a cautionary message to Cleveland and other Ohio cities where casinos would go if Issue 3 is passed.

Cleveland will be rolling the dice next Tuesday when voters go into the booths to cast a vote that would give a billionaire a monopoly board contract for a Cleveland casino.

“The economic slowdown has shown that the gambling industry is not quite as recession-proof as was so long believed,” it said of Atlantic City.

And you might like to remember as you go into that booth the promise of Atlantic City’s gambling sales people:

“Billed as a ‘great experiment’ in urban redevelopment, legalized gambling was pitched to voters as an effort to reverse Atlantic City’s long decline…”

Sound familiar?

Damian Guevara in the Scene last week had a take on the Issue 3 that has been neglected by most, including me, but touches on a damaging game among Cleveland developers. They vie among themselves for advantage no matter what the cost to community.

It has cost us plenty over the years.

Guevara points out that Forest City Enterprises would be a winner if the measure passes. And that its rival, Jeff Jacobs, wants to stop it, making him the winner.

The battle between the two families – Jacobs & Ratner – has been going on in Cleveland for years. Neither cares much about the damage they cause the city.

“The question for Greater Clevelanders,” writes, Guevara, a former Plain Dealer reporter, “Do you trust wealthy pro-casino interests – in this case, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert – to deliver on the latest promise of blue-collar and hospitality jobs, multi-million-dollar tax payments and yet another facelift of downtown Cleveland?”

I’d say no.

He calls the manipulation of the constitution inherent in a “yes” vote for Issue 3, a “deal-breaker” for many.

But the beneficiaries are clear, he notices.

Newspapers across the country take another smack from readers. They are buying fewer and fewer newspapers, including the Plain Dealer.

Six month circulation figures for newspapers showed steep declines. The Plain Dealer’s daily circulation was down 11.2 percent and Sunday circulation dropped 4.9 percent.

The report was published in Editor & Publisher magazine. The figures come from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

E&P said that newspapers are unable to “shake the dramatic declines in circulation.”

The PD’s daily circulation is 271,180 as of Sept. 2009 and Sunday circulation was 390,636 in the same six month period.

That’s still a lot of newspaper readers.

The PD daily circulation for the period ending March 31 this year was 291,730. The drop was nearly 20,000 a day for the six month period.

Former Congressman Dennis Eckart has joined the party. He’s backing Issue 3. That makes it almost unanimous – every shyster in town is backing a monopoly casino for a billionaire.

What a wonderful town this is.

Eckart, a former Greater Cleveland Growth Association (now Greater Cleveland Partnership) top boss, played a liberal politician for years. It’s has been a money-maker as Eckart has become a corporate shill here.

WKYC-TV allows this lobbyist free air access many Sunday mornings on Tom Beres’s Between the Lines. A lobbyist as a political commentator. Do you go any lower?

WKYC reports that Eckart will fill-in for billionaire mortgage man and Cavalier owner Dan Gilbert He is supposedly ill. Gilbert will be one of the owners of a monopoly casino, if voters approve Issue 3, a constitutional change on Election Day.

Eckart will argue for Gilbert’s casino deal in a debate at Kent State University. He is a trustee at KSU.

Once a Golden Boy liberal politician, Eckart has bounced around after leaving Congress. He has been with law firms Baker & Hostetler and the now bankrupt Arter & Hadden. He served in Congress from 1981 to 1993, leaving to pursue business interests as the Republicans took ownership of the U. S. Congress.

East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer eviscerates Issue 6 promoters and their promoter, the Pee Dee, our morning voice from Corporate Headquarters.

Hard to disagree. Read it yourself:

Statement from Mayor Eric J. Brewer regarding Issue 6

October 25, 2009 - City of East Cleveland

“The hell with the Plain Dealer’s opinion. Vote NO on Issue 6.”

Bill Mason has presided over the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office since 1998 and it's been the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI investigating all the corruption that's taken place in county since he's held office. Mason didn't prosecute Emmanuel Onunwor, he counted him as a friend. He didn't prosecute Nate Gray, he counted him as a political donor. I'm still waiting for him to return the donation to the businessman who was investigated and prosecuted by the FBI and U.S. Attorney for money laundering.

Martin Zanotti manages Parma Heights, but his 2007 audit shows he overspent his budget by nearly $1 million without Council authorization, and authorized 59 percent of his purchase orders to be pushed through without the finance director's signature. He's on his way out the door because he's a poor public manager, but the Plain Dealer thinks he's a genius.

I’d have to agree with Elizabeth Sullivan’s Sunday column saying newspaper should take the responsibility of endorsing candidates and issues. I don’t agree, however, that they do it because they “care.” That’s giving them a little too much credit.

I think unfortunately that the closed way they make their endorsements are a disservice to the public.

The Pee Dee and other papers are always calling for “openness” from others. However, the decisions of the Pee Dee editorials provide no “openness.” They are closed about it. Kept mysterious as electing a pope.

We don’t know who wrote them. We don’t know if there was a vote, as we understand there is on certain matters. We don’t know if it was a 5-4 vote or a 6-0 vote. The score would make a big difference in how a reader would interpret the endorsement.

We don’t know, for example, whether Editor Susan Goldberg put any pressure for an Issue 3 editorial supporting the casino gambling issue here. My suspicion is she did. The fact that we don’t know the vote creates mistrust. The Pee Dee can’t afford any more mistrust.

We don’t know if Kevin O’Brien wrote a particular editorial. We could judge by the strong hints of immaturity in the writing. His columns, for example, are more jokes than considered conservatism. He is a disservice to real conservatives.

I’ve been going over a lot of personal history as I pass my 50th year of some of kind of reporting. What became clear to me is that I became disenchanted with newspapers very early in that time. My distrust came quickly.

Newspapers – or as some call them now, MSM (mainstream media) – long ago destroyed much of their credibility. They became voices of the establishment. They reflect conventional corporate ideas and values. They fail miserably to support of the needs of the poor, the poorly educated, and the unfairly treated.

They have upside down coverage of the most powerful, favoring the influential almost automatically. So-called objectivity substitutes for truth-telling. The scales were rigged, it was clear to me early on.

Newspapers cannot survive if they continue to represent those interests and values.

The New York Times last week said that it had more revenue from subscribers than advertisers. That’s really how it should be.

Well, thank you Pee Dee for the free publicity. Just what independent downtown restaurants needed – two new publicly-subsidized restaurants in the Quicken Arena to draw business away from other restaurants.

The Pee Dee Tuesday in a prominently displayed Metro front page applauded the opening of two new restaurants by the “Iron Chef” (Michael Symon).

The Pee Dee devoted four columns, eight inches deep with a nice headline: “Symon opens 2 restaurants at the Q,” accompanied by an attractive photo of the business and one of Symon.

“The superstars won’t all be on the court this season at The Q,” sings the Pee Dee. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. My, oh my, what a wonderful day! Plenty of sunshine headed their way.

Now we’ll have a celebrity chef on our subsidy list, too. What can be better in these dark days when so many can’t even find a job?

We – the public – paid dearly for the restaurant facilities at the Quicken Arena and now Dan Gilbert gets the benefit. So when he gets a monopoly casino, he can have more restaurants that compete with the independent downtown restaurant business.

Yes, let’s give it all to the billionaire. Doesn’t it make you feel good?

The Pee Dee has become totally shameless in its promotion of Issue 6 and County “reform.” Totally shameless. News has become propaganda. Again.

The front-page story Monday said that voting for Issue 6 would be “costly to 4 elected Cuyahoga officials.” It’s the top story of the day.

Yeah, let’s get ‘em!

The Issue 6 campaign should have to list the Pee Dee for in-kind contributions. It’s that bad.

The Pee Dee story starts by telling us that four elected officials – Commissioners Peter Lawson Jones, Tim Hagan, Treasurer Jim Rokakis and Recorder Lillian Greene – will lose their jobs if Issue 6 passes. All four oppose Issue 6, of course.

They will lose $700,000 in pay. Jones and Hagan nearly each $185,000, says the Pee Dee, and Rokakis $190,000 (two-and-a-half years) and Greene two-years, $149,000. That’s the way the Pee Dee figures it.

What the Pee Dee doesn’t figure at all, however, is what the cost will be under the new system.

Issue 6 also calls for a County Executive who will have to be paid. Likely he or she will have to get something in the range of $200,000. Maybe more.

Dan Gilbert, Cavs owner and seeker of a monopoly casino here, laughed off a question about a felony gambling charge against him at the City Club debate here today. He described it as a minor infraction by an 18-year old.

USA Today in 2005, however, described it as an $114,000 betting scheme on football and basketball games by Gilbert and others. He was a student at Michigan State University at the time. The charges, according to USA Today, were “conspiring to violate state gambling laws.” A spokesperson for the Cavs said at the times that shortly after, the charges were “completely dismissed.”

The paper said that Gilbert was given a fine, a three-year probation and community service. After this was completed, the felony charge was erased.

Yes, he was young. Yes, he had gambling charges against him.

Not a very good combination for someone as owner of an NBA team or a casino.