For the past few days a desultory discussion has taken place elsewhere in the local blogosphere. To distill it down to the base weirdness, an anonymous troglodyte masquerading as multiple anonymous troglodytes (well, you can’t really know, can you?) wants to know the location of the minutes kept by the recently disbanded redistricting committee.
I wasn’t part of the committee, but I’m tempted to answer that the soggy minutes had to be carted off to the landfill after five council persons took advantage of the most recent meeting to publicly urinate on the proffered results of the committee’s work, and by extension, to soil the very concept of equal representation.
The thing that continues to strike me as telling amid the accusations and recriminations of Luddite Nation is its refusal to apply the same standards of accountability to the abortive redistricting plan that was hurriedly rushed through the council’s docket in 2007, only to be swatted down like a blood-engorged horse fly in high summer heat by a Federal judge.
I’ve always called the council’s flaccidly abortive compliance effort the Schmidt Plan, primarily because it had the fingerprints of the Coup d’Geriatrique all over it, not to mention worn Formica fragments that even a forensics novice could readily link to the ex-councilman’s/woman’s kitchen table.
A handful of the council’s lesser lights duly conspired to submit the Schmidt Plan as a solution, and you can bet your sweet bippy that it was incalculably more “gerrymandered” than the plan offered by the redistricting committee, and yet our anonymous friends aren’t scandalized at all by such wholesale chicanery, preferring instead to slime the committee and to wholeheartedly endorse the work of oblivious officials whose very presence on the council may have stemmed from earlier refusals to redistrict and the electoral inequalities stemming from them.
It’s a highly selective interpretation, indeed, but then again, they’re anonymous, aren't they?
Can I see the minutes from the Schmidt kitchen cabal, please?
As has been noted previously, had anyone taken the opportunity to attend one or all of the "LEGALLY POSTED" open to the "PUBLIC" sessions of the committees' proceedings, they would have this information first hand wouldn't they.
ReplyDeleteOh!, but then it would not be anonymous hearsay & conjecture and God knows we couildn't possibly shed the light of day on true events and back it up with our names now could we??
I tried to answer questions on a DEAD ordinance. I'm finished writing and talking about a proposed ordinance that was rejected by the Council. It was within their prerogative to do so and I am okay with that. It is now up to them to do their Constitutional duty and redistrict, posthaste.
ReplyDeleteIf this community ever truly sees justice, those on the council who are doing their best to ensure that we never have equitable, legal elections will do time in jail.
ReplyDeleteMost communities in the world treat those who repeatedly break the law to create personal advantage at the expense of others as criminals. I see no reason why New Albany should be any different in that regard.