Brent Larkin

If Donald Trump is re-elected, it will confirm that Americans are not "better than this," as his campaign is characterized by chaos, cruelty and racism, reflecting a moral failure in the country’s political and social values, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Among officeholders elected statewide, only Gov. Mike DeWine and Sen. Sherrod Brown have acted like responsible leaders, and nonprofits in the city have singled them both out for their help, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Yes, President Joe Biden is an old man who acts even older. But he’s also a sane and decent man. That so many millions of voters don’t seem to care about that may prove the undoing of us all, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Donald Trump twice won Ohio by eight percentage points, outcomes that speak volumes about the state’s voters. Another lopsided Trump win in Ohio on Nov. 5 might just result in an Ohio Supreme Court that’s an even bigger threat to the state’s future than its loathsome legislature, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

If Moreno didn’t want Ohioans to know his life story, he should have stuck to buying bitcoin and selling cars. Now he’s put millions of decent and clear-thinking Ohioans in jeopardy of being represented in the U.S. Senate by two stooges for Donald Trump, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

For 25 years, the Browns’ loyal fan base has stuck with this franchise, at times when no one would have blamed them for walking away. Now, Browns ownership has the audacity to demand even more of them. It’s insulting. It’s wrong. It’s a ripoff. Just say no, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Business as usual in Cleveland would be to toss the Browns enough bones to extend their lakefront lease another 30 years. Reaching that outcome won’t require much leadership. Nor will it take any act of meaningful commitment to Cleveland by Jimmy and Dee Haslam. If the Browns stay put, I’ll be back with some more columns on this issue when the lease expires in 2058, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

The Browns have less leverage in any discussion of a domed stadium than they think. They’ve often seemed tone-deaf to public sentiment, and their good-will savings account is empty. If they think the taxpayers will gladly dig deep for a new stadium, they’re wrong, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

The mean-spirited Cleveland school politics that lay behind gifted Cleveland school superintendent Frederick Holliday’s 1985 suicide eventually disappeared. Fixing a school system ravaged by nearly seven decades of poverty will take a lot longer, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Of course, governments and elected officials at all levels have accomplishments to brag about. And Gov. Mike DeWine has more to his account than the legislature or Supreme Court. But the rot of wrongdoing is pervasive. Far too often, Ohio has a state government that has abused its trust in ways corrupt, unethical, dishonest, illegal, disingenuous, incompetent and misleading, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Ohio Republicans may want a second Donald Trump sycophant in the U.S. Senate. The millions of thoughtful Ohioans who view Trump as an unhinged schemer who cares about neither the truth nor the people who support him, deserve better, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

With more than 11,000 students, Youngstown State University might be the economically challenged Mahoning Valley’s most important asset. That the YSU board of trustees would make such an irresponsible choice for university president as Bill Johnson, a 2020 election denier without a modicum of needed background - and that Gov. Mike DeWine would support that decision - represents an epic betrayal of the valley, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Despite his involvement in killing a multimillion-dollar Cleveland wind-power demonstration project, DeWine has never expressed any regret for his administration’s role in working so very hard to kill the Icebreaker project, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

The most equitable way to fund a portion of all stadium and arena renovations going forward would be to levy a specific fee on tickets. This type of user fee would be far less regressive than the current model. But fairness never enters the equation on these matters, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Jordan is bad for the country, bad for Ohio. With luck, those considering Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House will keep that in mind, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

In the last of Stephan Hawking’s books, “Brief Answers to the Big Questions,” the brilliant physicist and cosmologist wrote,“We spend a great deal of time studying history which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity.” Holding Donald Trump accountable for his unhinged actions on Jan. 6 may be our last chance to wise up, writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

There was nothing complicated about what Ohio’s Republican rulers hoped to accomplish with State Issue 1. But on Tuesday voters annihilated a GOP effort to dramatically curtail their right to participate in the democratic process.

No betrayal of the public trust comes close to matching the willingness of so many elected officials to employ lies and phony excuses as justification for doing nothing while children are slaughtered on their watch. J.D. Vance actually seems worse than most, willing to use dead children as a political weapon in his arsenal of extremist rhetoric., writes Brent Larkin in his column today.

Absent an endorsement from Donald Trump, J.D. Vance had no chance of winning the Republican primary for Rob Portman’s U.S. Senate seat in Ohio. But as the debate in Youngstown showed, Vance is smarter and more disciplined than Trump, capable of fooling voters into believing he’s a normal guy with normal conservative beliefs. He’s neither.

This list, compiled with the help of local historians and edited by then-editorial writer Joe Frolik, was published in The Plain Dealer on Jan. 28, 2007. Through their civic, business and cultural efforts, these individuals and families helped set the city’s course. The first 25 (actually 26, including a tie) are ranked in order, the next 25 are listed alphabetically. In his regular Plain Dealer/cleveland.com column today, Brent Larkin provides a brief update of the original list.