A new “The Fine Print”
(R) is for “Reactionary”, (D) is for “Dumb”
July 29th, 2022Never Underestimate the Catholics
June 30th, 2022A new “The Fine Print”
No, I Did Not Request An Absentee Ballot Application
April 26th, 2022Yesterday, I received mail from “The Center for Voter Information” which contained: (1) an already filled-out absentee ballot application; (2) a postage paid envelope with my name and address on it (the return address) addressed to the city clerk of Racine. So, I did some digging…
Turns out these guys have gotten in trouble in other states for doing this and causing confusion for voters, as these are NOT official forms, and have been found to be full of errors. The organization, while claiming to be non-partisan, is not, as its sister organizations lobby on behalf of Democratic candidates and issues. Now, suddenly, the GOP bitchiness makes just a little more sense. Do I think the election was stolen? Hell no. Do I think there is some nonsense going on? Yes.
There are numerous reasons why this particular piece of mail bothers me. First, is this really an organization that supports Democrats, or it is an organization that is trying to destroy the Democrats be sending out fake absentee ballot applications? We don’t know. Second, I never asked for this. If I want an absentee ballot, I will do ask for it myself; who the hell are you to make such a presumption? Only one time have I voted absentee, and that was when I voted early in 2020 and 2021 during a pandemic. Every other time I have voted in my 38 years of voting I have voted in person at the polling place on election day. Just because I am a Democrat does not mean I agree with the absentee ballot issue; in fact, I happen to agree with the GOP on this one, that absentee voting should only be used in limited cases. Finally, and most importantly, it is rather creepy and stalker-ish to collect my personal information, fill in some paperwork on my behalf, and then send it to me, complete with a customized envelope with my name and address on it. Talk about invasion of privacy. Yes, anyone can get voter information, but have a little discretion and tact on how you use that information.
I am shredding my mail from “The Center for Voter Information”. If you receive some, I suggest you do the same. Shame on them, and shame on any group that encourages this.
The final Lakeview Park submittals (site plan)
April 19th, 2022
Mental Health is not “All in your head”
April 18th, 2022A new “The Fine Print”
I lost, but I am encouraged
April 11th, 2022The election is over, and out of 337 votes, I received 109, my opponent 226, and there were two people who chose neither of us and wrote in a candidate. Basically, it was a 2/3 to 1/3 split. Yes, that sounds terrible on the face of it, except:
1) I have only lived in Racine proper since 2020, and in Racine County since 2019. My opponent was born and raised here, has never lived outside of Wisconsin, and has only lived outside of Racine for four years. Quite a difference in name recognition, as I was a complete and total nobody. Not terribly bad for a nobody.
2) I handed out 100 flyers, and had five yard signs in yards that were not my own. Between the flyers and the signs, that is 105. Deducting the four votes from my household, that is 105. In other words, I put 105 advertisements out there, and got 105 votes, which is phenomenal! I got the voter rolls, and only targeted those who actually voted in the November 2020 election. (Some excellent advice from the local GOP.)
3) Being a sign guy, I have done studies on colors and visibility. My signs were smaller than the typical sign (the size of a no parking sign), but the colors meant that they could be spotted at least a block or two away.
I already have my eye on a larger prize…Human Garden Gnome, are you listening?
The View From A Citizen Columnist
March 27th, 2022I have already gone into some detail about what is going on here in Racine, why I am running for council, and some of my views. Instead of writing a bunch of different position papers on how I see things, I think I will let my own words written between 2013-2017 speak for me, as I could not have said it better myself in the present than what I said in the time period. During my time in Michigan, I had the opportunity to be a “community columnist”, a common person with no political or familiar ties giving an outsider point-of-view. It took me a few days, and extensive searching on my e-mail and removable drives, to find the collection of 33 columns I wrote during that period. The first three were demo columns that I submitted for publication that were never published, but I feel that as part of the total body of work, they must be included, as I have included unpublished works in the earlier “The Fine Print” indexes; the remaining 30 were actually published in the Port Huron (MI) Times Herald. The 30 are not true “The Fine Print” columns, as I did not have any control as to the titles and the length; thus, I have “titled” them with a parenthetical on what they are about. Nonetheless, I covered a wide variety of issues in those 30 “Community Columnist” writings, with the vast majority having some local point-of-reference.
The reason why I am using these particular pieces to express my current views as a common resident of Racine, Wisconsin, is the issues discussed also pertain to Racine, such as a dead downtown, the local power “clique”, dislike of outsiders, cronyism, and bad road issues, to name a few. It is interesting that while Port Huron and most of Michigan outside of Wayne County and Detroit are run by Republicans, Racine is run by Democrats, and the issues are the same. This should be very alarming to both parties, as they are much more alike at the local level than they are different; greed and ego doesn’t care about party affiliation. Also, I was working on a dissertation while I was in Michigan, and I think these pieces are some of the best of the hundreds of pieces I have written since the beginning as I was focused on writing at the time.
One final comment. I received mostly negative feedback about what I wrote. One of the final pieces, about the Imperial Refinery across the river in Canada, was accompanied by a scathing and mocking video I posted on my You Tube channel (the only video I have ever had more that a thousand views for), received a very hostile reception, as the local population who made the original video and sent it to a local television station and caused an international incident were not at all pleased with being called out about their dis-ingenuousness and took to online harassment. My opinion is that if what I write gets you upset and you think it is something personal, then perhaps you should not be doing what you are doing. Just saying. I stand by what I write.
Anyway, here is the link to Index 5. Enjoy. Or don’t. That is your right.
A brief Racine factline (and why I decided to run for council)
March 24th, 2022So why did I decide to run for city council? Here is a factline to share:
- Jan, 2021, my wife and I decided that we would reopen the shop that we had in Oklahoma a decade ago. We enjoyed it, and are now in a position that we can give it enough time to grow and develop. In other words, it is not our only source of income. Living in Racine, we thought it would be cool to locate in Racine and support our hometown. (Big mistake.) We started looking at properties to rent, and discovered that even though there is an overabundance of vacant storefronts in Racine, most are not available for rent. Very slim pickings. We were advised to contact both Downtown Racine Corporation and Racine County Economic Development Corporation, and were told that unless we had $10000, we were not eligible for business grants. Of course, that is asinine, because if I have $10000, I don’t really need the help. So we crossed downtown off of the list.
- In February 2021, I found out an artist friend of mine had been displaying his work in Uptown, a long-neglected business district just a few blocks away from downtown, and asked if he knew of space in that area. Through him, I got the contact information of one of the owners and we found a space to lease. It was around this time, after we signed a lease, that we found out that one of the businesses that had been in Uptown for years was closing, and that another business that had been lured to the district was not at all happy about some of the misrepresentations given by the city about the vibrancy of district (there is none). Once we had a lease, we then obtained our tax numbers and applied for two permits from the city: a C.O. ($250) and a 2nd Hand Retailers Permit ($500), which, it turns out, is only a Racine thing and that we did not really need at all.
- In June 2021, City Hall finally opens, and after three months of no one answering the phone, we go in person to pick up our permits. Meanwhile, we have been paying rent on a place we can’t open. We get one of the permits, the C.O., which had a typographical error, so it was useless. When we ask for a corrected one, we get the damn eyeroll and heavy sigh, because actually doing things right is such a damn bother. We did not get the 2nd Hand Retailers Permit (the one we really didn’t need), because no one bothered to place it on the Council agenda for approval (because, for some reason, the Council has to approve these things), and then we were blamed for not telling them to place it on an agenda that we did not know it had to be on.
- July, 2021, we finally get to go before the council, at which we are told, by one of the members, that she wouldn’t approve the permit that we really didn’t need unless we registered with the police because we were going to sell stolen items, and this way it could be tracked if we did. So, here we are, thousands of dollars later, still not being able to open our business, being treated like a criminal. My first inclination was to flip this lady the finger and walk away, but being on the hook for a lease and having already invested several thousand dollars, I controlled my impulse and agreed to the humiliation. Yea! We can open! Not so fast! That was only the committee, and it would have to go to full council in a fortnight, and then it would be another week to get all the signatures. Three more weeks of no revenue. We finally opened at the end of July, five months after we started the process.
- In September 2021, we get a letter from the city saying that our permit would expire at the end of the year, and we would have to renew at the new rate of $750. Even though the city said this was an annual permit, they never said a word that it would expire at the end of the calendar year, and not the anniversary date of obtaining it, you know, like everything else like a drivers license, car tags, and the state tax permit fee. No proration, either. It is at this time that we discovered that if we classified our shop as “antiques” instead of “used collectibles” that we didn’t have to have the permit at all. It was at this time that I had serious thoughts about moving at the end of the year.
- In October 2021 my son came home from shooting hoops at the neighborhood park and asked me why the city was going to sell the park. This was the first time I had heard about it. Sure enough, we found out that the council had met in secret and voted 15-0 to explore allowing a private developer to use the park. This was the same time that the owner of the disgruntled business had approached the city about helping him relocate (although I did not make the connection until the past several weeks).
- In November 2021 I attended a hastily planned public meeting about the park sponsored by the mother-son aldermanic duo on our council. The mother is the same person who in July hesitated to approve the permit we did not have to have unless we registered with the police. The park in question had been in her ward, but due to population loss in the city, the aldermanic boundary line was moved and she no longer represented the park, which she conveniently failed to mention. She scheduled this meeting for the evening before Thanksgiving, and started out by handing out homemade cookies, then rambling on for 30 minutes about how great she is (she is a “Do-Gooder”). When taking questions, she conveniently skipped over those who were not happy (myself included). Yes, I did lose my patience and had a bit of an edge to my voice, but come on, now, quit wasting people’s time. (I had to promise to be nice.) She never one admitted that meeting in secret was a bad thing, excused her vote by saying she did not know what she was voting on, and ended up blaming the audience for her vote because we never reached out to her to tell her to vote “No”. Which begs the question- if we don’t know you are even meeting to have a vote on a topic how can we tell you to vote “no”? This was the exact same malarkey that the city staff had given us about the business permit that we did not need not being on the agenda.
- Early December, 2021, there was a second public meeting, and by this time I had already gone to City Hall to file for office. Enough is enough. Same malarkey. One question was along the lines of “If you didn’t know what you were voting on, why not vote ‘NO’”, and the answer was that there was no point, because the vote would be 14-1, and she wanted to be on the winning side. Come on, we all know that is nonsense. Your son votes how you votes, so it would be 13-2, and your job is to represent your electors, even if you are going to lose. There should rarely be unanimous votes with a body that large unless you are a rubber-stamp body. I then proceeded to walk the district in December collecting signatures to get on the ballot.
- It was about this time that a “Save Lakeview Park” group appeared on Facebook. I had my suspicions early on that this was a setup. For starters, why would you want the input of the members of the council who just voted to allow the private sector to repurpose the park? That doesn’t seem quite right. Then, the admin decided that all information for an upcoming Zoom meeting had to flow through her; she would be the “voice” of the people, except no one really asked. Then there was the podcast on a no longer active site (the podcaster died of COVID) in which no one else was ever mentioned; it was all about her. Hmmm. The kicker was a surprise announcement she would run for council, with the eager and enthusiastic support of council members. Why would you want the support of people who voted in secret to repurpose the park if you want to save it? It made no sense. As it turned out, her candidacy failed, but through a loophole in the election law, the council was actually able to get a candidate, one who actually signed my nominating petition, to run against me.
- Since January, the “Save the park” people have shown a complete disinterest in actually saving the park. I have 22 engineering students, as part of a class assignment, designing improvements to the park, under the condition that no uses can change. I actually set up a meeting in the park to discuss this, but there was a complete and total lack of interest. Less than five people showed up. What I find sad is that the same people displaying signs saying “Save the park” are also displaying signs for my opponent, the candidate of the existing council who want to repurpose it. You choose who you choose, but don’t say you want to save a park and not really want to save it.
- In March, I accidentally put together who, exactly, the city wants to give the park to, due to an artists’ rendition. There are two reasons that the council is eager to repurpose the park. First, since it has always been a park, it has never been contaminated, and is the only place that is shovel ready. Second, the city cannot raise taxes without new development under state law. Have new development, raise taxes, and the easiest way to do that is develop something that is not contaminated, although it actually might be, because the building that is on the site right now that caught fire is probably full of asbestos, which was a common building material when it was built. What makes this more nasty is that the proposed use is a privately run black cultural museum, so let’s pretend we are all about diversity when in reality we are giving them a site that more than likely has issues. Nice. There is a reason that the city cannot demolish the building for $1 million, and I strongly suspect it has to do with asbestos and other nasty things inside the building that will have to be mitigated. The reason that I have this suspicion is that I have seen this done before, when I worked for Tulsa. The Tulsa City Hall had lots of issues, especially chemical and biological contaminants. The city wasted no time for selling the building to a private developer and buying a new, clean building down the street. This is the ultimate insult to the black population of Racine, to be given a building that is contaminated for a black cultural center.
The Insane Hero Worship of the Elitists
March 24th, 2022I come from humble working class roots. One grandfather was a carpenter; the other worked on the assembly line at Pontiac Motors. My father was the first in his family to get a college degree, and spent thirty years working as a mechanical engineer in the defense industry as a low level manager. In other words, we are just commoners; no connections here. My grandfathers and my father worked to provide for their families. Just common people.
In the neighborhood I grew up, we were definitely on the lower end of the economic strata. I attended a parochial school, like my mother (the daughter of the auto worker) did, and in that school we had families that owned factories, professional football teams, jewelry stores, etc.; I admit, I grew up around wealth. My parents, a housewife and a low-level mechanical engineer, sacrificed to send all five of their children to private Catholic high schools, chosen not because they were private schools, but because they provided rigorous academics and the best opportunity to succeed in life. If our house had been 100 yards to the south, we would have attended public schools, as a mere 100 yards was the difference between being in one of the worst school districts to being in one of the best. My sisters went to an all female high school run by the Sisters of Loretto, and my brother and I attended an all male high school run by the Jesuits. I have good memories of my high school years, as we had quite a diverse cast of characters who were there for one reason – to get the best education possible. This cast grew up to be a famous Hollywood director, politicians, firefighters, doctors, lawyers, accountants, stockbrokers, plumbers, priests, engineers, etc.
I want to bring this up lest I be accused of being a hypocrite for criticizing the private school “elite”; I think this would be the appropriate time to also mention that each and every one of us who went to my high school had to take a grueling multi-hour test to get admitted. The Jesuits were more concerned with taking the best of the best than with taking the wealthiest of the wealthiest. Back then, when we took tests, we were assigned some random number for testing to avoid bias from the graders. (When I was in engineering school, the same principle was used; I was a mere number, and that was okay, because I always knew that my tests were graded fairly and equitable, and that none of the other students got an advantage because of who they were.) Typically, when you think of private high schools, you think of fancy schools in the wealthy white part of town. My high school was pretty much a dump. When my brother (who is three years older) started, they didn’t even have a football field. By the time I started, they finally had a small football field, no air conditioning, and the neighborhood was so rough we had students getting mugged. Parking was practically non-existent, and the neighborhood was not safe to park a car in, so public transit was heavily used.
Let me backtrack a bit about my parents before I proceed forward. My mother went to a Catholic school in Pontiac. She lived in the poor part of town, and given that the family had no car (ironic, given that he worked for GM on the assembly line), and they really didn’t have school buses, the closest school was the Catholic one. In 1930s America, there was a great deal of anti-Papism, so Catholics tended to flock together in their own schools to avoid harassment. My father went to public schools, served in the military, and thanks to the GI Bill, attended the only local college that offered engineering, which was a private one. He could not afford to go to the public university 90 miles away, and had no good way to get there. Me, after high school, I attended the public university 90 miles away. For my Masters, I attended another public university. For law school, I attended a private university and racked up a ton of student loan debt that I am still paying off twenty years later. For the doctorate, another public university.
Here, in Racine, we have a group of elitists who run the show. These are people who are second, third, or beyond generation of wealth and privilege; in other words, they have nothing in common with 99% of the people who live here. It goes without saying that they are white and send their kids to private schools, even though, academically, the public schools are not that bad. It is a status symbol, and they let you know it. These are the “do-gooders” – people who take up “causes” so they can brag about how they take up “causes”. These are the same people who love to insult TFG, the Koch Brothers, and others from the other side, but behave in the exact same narcissistic fashion. The Do-Gooders and the Trumpers are one in the same.
What I don’t understand is the insane hero worship of these people from both sides. Remember – the Do-Gooders and the Trumpers behave the same; they act self-righteous and pretend to care about people that they look down upon. I have been seeing hard core MAGA come to the defense of the Do-Gooders, and the Do-Gooders welcome the support, while at the same time proclaiming to be against everything the MAGA crowd stands for. You cannot have it both ways – you cannot say you support a position and then ally with people who take the exact opposite position. Except for the damn hero worship.
These are not “good people”. These are not people who “care about the country”, “care about the community”, etc. These are wealthy people who never had to struggle for anything, who always had access to the family name and fortune, who only care about plastering their name everywhere and profiting off it. Good people do good things for other people anonymously. Like the Jesuits. Like the Loretto nuns. Good people are willing to risk it all to help, are willing to stand up for injustice, even when it can be detrimental to them. Good people don’t do sneaky and shady things and then try to justify it. A wealthy person giving a few dollars here and there but still being wealthy at the end of the day is not a hero. If they really want to be a hero, give it all away like Francis; put your money where your mouth is.
This insane hero worship of these elitists is toxic, and is destroying our country. And both sides keep electing them, and then whine and complain about how bad things have gotten. No shit, Sherlock. Me? I will continue to write my blog and column that no one reads. Why? At least I am willing, publicly and in writing, memorialized for all to see, to take a stand, to call out the bullshit and the lies. If you think I am a prick for doing so, so be it; you cannot expose the truth without pissing people off. The truth is this – this country has regressed. Significantly. The treatment of KBJ by certain Senators has been repugnant. We even have Senators saying that states should be allowed to ban interracial marriage and birth control if they want. And the Do-Gooders, what are they doing? Well, they are doing absolutely nothing, saying absolutely nothing, because they are nice people, and nice people don’t say anything bad about other people, no matter how morally repugnant their behavior is. Got to be liked, and got to make sure the money keeps rolling in.
“Do-Gooders” – Disrespectful, Distasteful, Disingenuous
March 23rd, 2022Here in Racine, Wisconsin, we are infested with “Do-Gooders”; in fact, our local kleptocracy is “Do-Gooder” Central. I have known many “Do-Gooders” over the years, and I have a strong dislike of each and every one. How do you determine who is a “do-gooder”? Simple – it is a person who loves to brag about their “service” to others. You know who I mean -
“I helped serve meals to the homeless”
“I worked at a shelter for battered women”
“I served as a GAL”
“I built mission churches in Uganda”
“I helped a poor Ecuadoran village build a well”
Yada yada yada. It is always about them, and their greatness.
“Look at me!!! I am a wonderful human being!!! Look at what I did for these poor pathetic souls!!”
You know, the “White Man’s Burden” kind of crap. Quite patronizing and disrespectful.
“These people are too incompetent to help themselves, which is why I had to help them! I am great!”
So damn distasteful, using someone else to market yourself.
When they talk about how they empathize, how they are trying to improve their community and the lives of those around them – lies. Totally disingenuous. What these people don’t mention, is that they are the privileged – white and wealthy. They also don’t mention how they really don’t have to sacrifice. These are the people who claim to be concerned about the environment but still have the personal watercraft and SUVs. These are people who talk about homelessness and always have a swanky house to go home to. These are people who always have access to opportunities and privileges that 99% of us don’t have, through family connections, status, wealth, etc. These are the Pharisees.
Here is my challenge to the “do-gooders” – be like Francis. Give up your wealth. Give up your status and connections. If you want to really know what it is like to be poor or homeless, become poor and homeless. (Since these are white people, they really cannot ever know what it is like to be non-white, but I will take just becoming poor.) Give your house to the poor. Sell your car and take the bus or walk. Purge yourself of your boats and personal watercraft. Move to another place where no one knows who you are or who your family is. Work a crap job with no insurance and stress about your health and how you will pay for a medical visit. Give up the levers of power to those of us outside of your little clique.
I know that our local cabal of “do-gooder” kleptocrats will never take up my challenge to be like Francis, and will come up with every flim-flam and bullshit excuse why they can’t. They just can’t give up that nice white wealthy privilege. That is what makes them so despicable and deplorable.
