Saturday, September 04, 2010
Another purely "negative" report on Thursday's Bridges Unauthority meeting.
The unelected, extra-governmental Bridges Authority held a meeting on Thursday, September 2.
The nine a.m. meeting paused after 20 minutes so that traditional local media could get derive the meat of their stories from Greater Louisville Inc. head Joe Reagan's bullet points. Public speaking time came two hours later, when the room had largely emptied of media. In most significant ways, the meeting was a venue for "equal time" only in the narrow sense of the Nurnberg Rallies.
Ed Glasscock (right) gives Louisville mayoral candidate Hal Heiner's campaign manager Joe Burgan (left) an earful about proper respect for Bridges Authority: Spotted At The Bridges Debacle Meeting.
The chief architect of Goebbelsian bridges disinformation was spotted -- Courier-Journal's David Hawpe, glad-handing to the last.
Our own Jeff "Bluegill" Gillenwater's comments were insightful, as usual. He counseled the Bridges Authority to provide "facts" in their proper context. Reagan and the others yawned; many had already left the room.
One of Reagan's bullet points was his assertion that the Bridges Authority has a "moral obligation" to address the safety element of area transport as corrected by the scope of the Bridges Project. Moral? Then how come the Kye's bar wasn't open for business? And why just light beer on tap, even if it were open? Tlak about immoral.
Reagan frames his involvement as a "moral obligation" with safety a primary motivator while simultaneously cheerleading the expenditure of billions of dollars for what is well understood to be one of the least safe transportation options we have.
ReplyDeleteAnd that cheerleading has been done the past few months while concurrently claiming that it's beyond the purview of the authority and its members to have any influence on what gets built or doesn't (except, of course, when they're mugging for the media or explaining during meetings that marketing the bridges project to the public is probably the most important thing could be doing).
While feigning moral authority for the cameras is an ugly business, turning a blind eye to the hypocrisy as if doing so is in the public interest might be worse.
Clerely.
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