Fighting Untruth and Distortion

How to lead a local election campaign and get done all the other little things one must do!
by Charlie Leck

The city election, here in my town, is now two weeks away. I’m trying to lead this campaign for one of the candidates and help, as much as I can, another person who deserves to be elected.

Two city council seats are up for grabs. This whole thing has become very personal with me. I believe deeply that our adversaries do not deserve to be elected. More emphatically, I believe the two opponents would be dangerous in office.

What turns out to be so difficult to counter is the distortions of the truth that the opponents use to gather support. It isn’t just a matter of counter attacking and trying to get the truth out to voters who’ve already become convinced to vote against us, but it is the boiling anger that these untruths and factual distortions cause to rise up inside me.

I never dreamed a little campaign for 600 or 700 votes could be so time consuming and wear so on my nerves and energy. I lay awake at night trying to dream up some way of communicating to the entire village that the opposition is using disgusting scare tactics to garner votes.

They especially like to hearken back to an Open Spaces Study that was conducted here in town by a volunteer committee. It was a worthy task. It just didn’t turn out well because so many people didn’t understand what it was. It was meant to be a tool to provoke discussion about how we could set aside large sections of land in our town and protect those spaces from future development. Unfortunately, the plan included a map that showed one possible example of what might be done. Public trails were drawn into the map, showing my property and many neighbors’ property being crossed and cut up by these hiking and biking paths.

Now, the opponents in this campaign refer to this study as an attempt to grab land away from residents without either permission or compensation. Those who are now saying this know it is darn-well not true. There was never any idea of taking land from people, with or without payment. The idea was presented by some eager and enthusiastic residents of the community in order to look at one possible way our community could look in the future.

The two candidates I support had nothing to do with the plan. They were never in a position to vote on the plan because no vote was ever taken. The Planning Commission in the community shelves the whole idea as too ambitious and expensive. The plan was never presented to any official body for a vote. Yet, the entire community was riled up by this idea of a “land grab.”

Nevertheless, ouropponents in this campaign have taken this unsuccessful study and they are trying to attach it to the candidates I support. They do this knowing it is entirely untrue. No land in the community – mine or anyone else’s – was ever under threat from eminent domain. It is an absolute lie to now insinuate that it was.

I can think of nothing worse for a community than to elect to office a couple of out and out liars. And that is exactly what these guys are.

And, they are worse! Both are selfish, paranoid and warped individuals. One – the incumbent – can be seen on video tape, in council meetings – making the most outlandish and ridiculous statements that leave the audience both aghast and tittering at his foolishness.

The other has a history of lying to the city about development plans on his property and doing things to the land that were flat-out unlawful. He has no concern for the community at large, for his geographic neighbors or for the health and vitality of the land on which he lives. His behavior has shown him to be an ultimately selfish person.

Just this morning, a friend sent along a copy of a letter he is submitting to the local newspaper about these candidates who I so disfavor.

Dear Sirs:

On November 3rd, Independence will fill two open Council positions, choosing from four candidates.

Brad Spencer and Lynn Betts have proven themselves to be dedicated public servants. They were willing to appear at a candidates' forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters and submit their positions to public scrutiny.

By contrast, the other two candidates refused to appear, resulting in the forum's cancellation.

Lance Gyllenblad has proven himself unworthy to hold representative office, as evidenced by his outbursts in City Council meetings, fueled by conspiracy theories and captured on video for all to see on the City's web site. Chris Stephans has a history of flouting City ordinances and resorting to litigation against the City when held to account. The example he has "set" has cost Independence taxpayers thousands of dollars in enforcement costs. His candidacy is a mockery of representative government, save for anarchists.

Voters should remember that the election of local officials has more impact on their day to day lives than any other choice at the polls. I urge everyone to vote on November 3rd and to support candidates with demonstrated experience in promoting the public good who are not afraid to be judged on the merits.

Vote for Spencer and Betts.

Sincerely,

Here are five claims the opposition is making among voters that are absolutely false. Here also is the truth about those claims:

1. West Hennepin Public Safety (WHPS) has part time employees receiving full time enefits. FALSE. 10 full time authorized, 9 full time officers employed (1 is deployed to Iraq so actually 8 working) 2 admin full time staff/ NO PART TIME OFFICERS.
Benefits are prorated if would have PT. When we did have a part time officer, no benefits were paid and their hours capped at 1040 per year.

2. The cost comparison vs. Sheriff number quoted at $3.75/month savings (May 12, 2009 City Council meeting minutes) was for a home of about $500K value, Brad Spencer used “less than $50/year for an average 500,000 home in Independence” in my letter. Opposition saying the number is bogus. Here are the numbers, and we'll send them to anyone who wants to argue them. Chief McCoy calculated that number.

3. We are paying more than our fair share of the WHPS cost (versus what Maple Plain pays). Interesting argument that has never before been an issue to our knowledge. The formula is pretty standard, calculating call history, size of patrol area, number of homes, etc.. We would argue the split look s pretty fair to us but should the objector have a specific rational for their argument we'll look into it.

4. Lynn Betts is in favor of seizing property from private owners without (or even with) compensation for trails, open spaces preservation, protection or preservation of hardwoods, etc. FALSE. Lynn has never voted in favor of any property acquisition via eminent domain or similar. Much of the “proof” is from maps created as talking/discussion points during the Parks, Trails, Open Space plan that was scrapped several years ago. Also, that poorly labeled DRAFT plan was being created by consultants working with the Parks Commission which Lynn was not on at the time.

5. Consistently hearing about (and in one of “their” candidate statements from The Eagle) a huge pile of debt coming due in the next couple of years that will blow the budget away. FALSE. We could provide the actual debt outstanding and maturity dates as soon as we get them from the budget notes. The city issues serial maturity debt so it comes due in smaller amounts spread fairly equally over several years like most prudent cities do. There are no unusually large principal payments due in any upcoming year.

How am I expected to sleep at night for the next two weeks when the opposition is roaming around town telling whoppers like that? How shall I sleep in the future should these nare-do-wells get elected? How I love my town! How I hate to see selfish people take advantage of it.

And, it is so difficult to get to the other things I ought to be doing, though this morning I decided to take the time to get some short ribs browned and on the stove to cook for several hours. Perhaps a decent dinner tonight.

Top Secret NYC Information Revealed

Each commuter train that leaves NYC for the wider metro area secretly, but purposefully, leaves one-minute late!
by Charlie Leck

The idea is to help “the harried commuter” the NY Times says.

I ask: Where will it end?

Now that that same commuter knows that his train leaves one minute late he has been given another minute. Now the same train will need to leave two minutes late (the second minute will be a secret, of course).

My dentist already uses the same principle with me. If I make a 10:00 A.M. appointment, he figures me for 10:05. Since he does that, I figure I’m okay up until 10:10. After a while, he’ll make a 10:00 appointment for me and figure me for 10:10. That gives me until 10:15.

When I make an appointment with the electrician to come to my home to do some repairs for me, I make it for 15 minutes before I really want him there – 7:45 for an 8 o’clock appointment. He knows all this and figures he’s good to arrive up until 8:15.

So, now what happens when that NYC train pulls out 50 seconds after its scheduled departure time. Does the guy running down the platform, waving his arms and screaming obscenities have any right to complain that his train left before it was supposed to?

Again: Imagine where it will all lead – movie theaters, dinner reservations, voting place closings and Friday night kickoffs at the local high school.

In golf tournaments we have a cherished rule about tee times. If you’re not on the tee at your given time, you are disqualified. In team match play, if you show up within five minutes of that time and have a qualifying excuse (like, your wife had your first child on her way to drop you of at the course), you can join your group, begin play on the next tee. After five minutes, it’s just too bad that you couldn’t have managed your kid’s delivery more quickly because you are out of the event. When we say 5 minutes at these events, we don’t mean 6 minutes. We work by an atomic clock that is absolutely official. Now, however, with what appears to be a NY Times endorsement of the policy, we’ll likely stick a one minute buffer in all these times.

Much to my wife’s consternation, I follow this general principle when it comes to the gas levels on my car. When it “dings” and tells me I am dangerously low on fuel, I figure I have another 50 miles to go. The car manufacturer would certainly have built something like that in wouldn't he?

Of course, if the crew on my cross-country Delta Airlines flight followed the same practice I would be outraged.

I have a friend who follows this general policy when it comes to drinking and driving. He establishes the number of drinks he may have before driving, but always regards that number loosely and gives himself some flexibility. At that point, his friends begin arguing with him about taking his keys, but they have a one minute limitation on such arguments before giving up – and they often reduce that minute to about half as much because they feel harried and must catch the last commuter train to get home themselves, not realizing, of course, that they actually had another full minute to argue with said friend about driving after drinking. It’s all part of the same principle as we’re talking about in NY.

“Our schedule is firm – sort of!”

“We mean what we say – sort of!”

“I wouldn’t ever put you on – well, hardly ever anyway, then, don't you know? You betcha!”

The Minnesota Education Gap

This gap must be closed or eliminated!
by Charlie Leck

Here’s the enigma
The puzzling problem was framed this morning by an editorial in our local paper, The StarTribune,

“In Minnesota, the learning gap is substantial. Known for educational excellence, the state has one of the highest overall high school graduation rates in the nation – and simultaneously the highest dropout rates for some lower-income students of color."

There’s a significant social problem that needs solving. Minnesota is a state filled with bright, creative, kind and generous people. If any one state in the nation could tackle this problem and solve it, Minnesota is that state.

Let the challenge go forth – ring-a-ding-ding – and let it be highly rewarded. Minnesota, solve this problem!

Thinkers and Dreamers
You must present the answer to the state legislature. Show them how it can be done. Make it so clear that it would be political suicide not to pass a bill implementing your ideas.

Your reward
You will be rewarded with instant and eternal fame within the great state of Minnesota and, likely, throughout the nation.

Too important a problem to be left to educators
We need advertising geniuses, artists, business executives, engineers, librarians, factory workers, farmers, biologists, medical doctors, chemists and sports personalities all thinking about ways to close the gap to as close to zero as possible.

No problem too big to solve
Those who boast that there is no problem too big to solve, here’s your challenge.

An idea already brewing
And while you’re at it, read the entirety of the editorial in this morning’s paper and you will see there is an interesting idea already brewing.

Rush Limbaugh (Part VI)

[click here to visit the Pabst Photo Blog]

Rush is a Vogon and that explains everything!
by Charlie Leck

A fellow down the street was chatting with my wife on the telephone the other day and happened to wonder why she never listened to Rush Limbaugh. Darling struggled for the correct words to describe her low opinion of the ultimate radio idiot, but such a portrayal is not something that dances lightly off the tip of a lady’s tongue. It takes considerable dalliance with a formidable vocabulary to stammer forth the right, but not too profane, adjectives. Finally, in frustration, she could only ask why in the heck this seemingly clever neighbor ever listened to that enormous blowhard. Why?

I’ve struggled here in the past to try to describe Limbaugh; and each time I’ve walked away with, at minimum, a serious limp. Now that the preeminent professional sports organization in the world has rejected him as a possible owner of a National Football League team, it might be time to revisit the subject and to try a final time to describe the big Rush.

So something draws me back to The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy by Douglas Adams for some assistance. I go specifically to The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and I flip through the pages until I come to the author’s description of Captain Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, who was designated by the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council to destroy “the so-called planet Earth.”

Adams tells us that Captain Vogon Jeltz had “a monumentally vile body.” This is some place to begin; however, primarily, one needs to remember always that Jeltz is a Vogon.

“It has been said that Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea in not above the clouds, and this was certainly true in his [Jeltz’s] case. When he heard the words integrity or moral rectitude he reached for his dictionary, and when he heard the chink of ready money in large quantities he reached for the rule book and threw it away.”

The description of the Vogon people so perfectly fits the character of Rush Limbaugh that I am tempted to celebrate my achievement of finally devising an apt depiction of the talking, babbling baboon.

“…the average Vogon will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never been born – or (if you are a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never been born…. The average Vogon probably wouldn’t even think once. They are simple-minded, thick-willed, slug-brained creatures, and thinking is not really something they are cut out for. Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver. The fairest thing you can say about them, then, is that they know what they like, and what they like generally involves hurting people and, whenever possible, getting very angry.”

A Vogon
Yes, that’s it. Rush Limbaugh is a Vogon. He has no sense of the aesthetic. Possibility, hope and optimism are not part of his way of life. Rampant destruction of the possible is primary in the Vogon’s thought pattern. And, the resultant destruction they visit upon people and institutions must, in the manner of the Vogon, be as ugly and disharmonious as possible.

It is not only Limbaugh who has come from Vogon to visit us here on the planet Earth; his fellow Vogonians, James Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, arrived here aboard the very same spacecraft.
It is the Vogon’s total sense of pessimism, hopelessness and negativity that attracts followers in huge numbers; for, you see, it is far easier to think in the black and white, simplistic and absolute forms of the negative than in the dazzling, blazing and colorful structures of the positive. It is easier to destroy the planet Earth than to establish it as a galactic wonder of the Universe.

I KNOW WHAT'S IMPORTANT

Even though it seems I dwell on the insignificant, I know what's really important underneath!
by Charlie Leck

World Hunger! Peace in Afghanistan! Better relations with Iran! Universal Health Care in the United States! High speed rail transportation all across the land! I dwell, indeed, on all of these things and they are dreams that I wish I could see come true before I move on out among the stars.

Yet, all these issues lose their importance and vitalness when placed against the things that really matter in an old grandpa's life -- that is, his family.

Let me remind those I love that, although I seem consumed by issues too big for one man's brain, I care most for those who are of me. It is the children of my life -- meaning my own wife, daughters, step-children and grandchildren -- that matter so ultimately to me. Everything else is nothing when I measure it against the abundance of love I feel for family.

And today, when I think of that sweet little thing becoming a six year old, I need to remind her of this love I have inside me -- and I need to remind all of those in our family circle.

Happy Birthday, sweet one! I will love you forever and forever!

I’m Pleased You are Worried

The house, including my office is torn apart and I can’t get to my blogging machine! But here’s some important reading I recommend!
by Charlie Leck

I’m terribly pleased so many of you have contacted me about why there are such gaps between my blogs during this last week. Thanks for your concern and, frankly, I’m glad you’ve missed me.

Our house, including my office, is in shambles these days as the interior is all freshened up by hardwood flooring refinishers and now by painters who are repainting the entire interior. I’ve never had to live in such dust – a really, really fine, invasive dust. The poor painters have to clean it all off the walls before they can paint, of course.

I’ve lost my wireless connection here on my computer because there are drop cloths covering every opening and also over the top of our main computer where the wireless router is housed. So, it may be hours before I can even get this little notice posted. If you’re reading this, I’m back on-line.

Look for me to get back to my regular 6 days each week schedule starting on Friday morning. There certainly is plenty to write about.

In the meantime, here’s the most important bit of reading I can send you to… OF HEALTH CARE, WAR, COSTS & CONSEQUENCES. It’s by David Morris. Please read it.

A lot of big shots (like Mayor Ryback) are telling me the public option is still an option.

I Shut ‘Er Down

Within five pages I closed up the book, set it aside and counted it a wasted 25 bucks!
by Charlie Leck

As I sipped on my first cup of coffee in the quiet of a weekend morning, I began reading a novel by a successful writer. It was published by Simon and Schuster. In the prologue, within the first five written pages, I came upon the following sentence.

“Brown’s wild, windblown hair and gray wiry beard, speckled with specks of blood, framed a expression that was both cold and haunting.” [sic]

No typos in the above, replicated sentence. That is exactly as it was printed on the page of the novel.

“Do I want to continue reading this?” That’s the question I quietly asked myself. What happened to the Simon & Schuster editor? Why weren’t these lapses and errors caught? What’s going on here? I paid $24 for this book and I expect more.

The gentleman’s beard was speckled with specks of blood! Amazing! It was “speckled with specks.” What else? Would it be speckled with long, smooth, curvaceous stripes of blood? If it is speckled, we expect that there would be specks.

The editor should have made the following change: “…speckled with blood…” Now that is plain and simple and accurate and readable.

Then we learn that the gentleman’s hair and beard framed “a” expression… Ooops! An editor slipped up again. How about his hair and beard framing “an” expression…?

It’s discouraging! Should I go on? What’s your opinion? I set the book aside and went to the shelves to find something else more worthy of my time. Too bad! Harold Coyle is supposed to be an awfully good writer. Simon and Schuster is a top-notch publishing house.

Yup! I just decided to look away. Too bad!