We Want The Funk!

This just gets better and better, folks. After searching the petitioner’s names on casenet, I have to wonder who these people are to level criticism against Funkhouser. I mean, I know it isn’t racial or anything, so I’m kind of stumped.

Saundra Ross has been sued multiple times by several landlords over the years. She’s also been sued by Noble Finance Corporation for breach of contract. Defaulting on a loan, maybe? Sounds like Ms. Ross may have gotten screwed by one of those subprime deals. I can understand your frustration, sister, but don’t take your aggression and hatred of white people out on the mayor.

Dwight Ross is quite the offender, it seems. It looks like he’s breached more contracts than Sprint customers, with everyone from Ford Motor Credit to Commerce Bank coming after him for their money–not to mention a handful of landlord complaints and the same Noble Finance Corporation suit against him as Saundra.

Moniece Lovelace has been evicted from more slums than your mom, and was sued by KCMO in 2004 for not paying her taxes. Gotta pay up if you wanna play the game, girlfriend!

JoAnn Mitchell has three pages of stuff up there. I can’t tell if our friend JoAnn used to live in St. Louis, or if there’s a seriously troublemaking different JoAnn Mitchell who lived in St. Louis but got sued by Commerce Bank of Kansas City…and is apparently a total money hound, having sued the Bi-State Development Agency in St. Louis for an undisclosed sum in a personal injury suit, which was later dropped. There are also the several evictions much like we’ve seen in everyone else’s files.

Joycetta Silvers is pretty clean, unfortunately.

The first thing that stands out to me after looking at these cases is, both of the Rosses and Ms. Mitchell have sued someone for money because of a “personal injury”. Makes you wonder how much someone like Glorioso would have to pay them to sacrifice themselves on the altar of democracy, doesn’t it?

Lastly, here are some super fun happy time addresses from the PDF on the city’s web site. Note to city staffers: learn to use Acrobat.

Saundra Ross
10318 E. 39th Terr
Kansas City, MO 64133

Dwight Ross
10309 E. 39th Terr
Kansas City, MO 64133

Joycetta Silvers
3345 Forest
Kansas City, MO 64109

Moniece Lovelace
6801 Blue Pkwy
Kansas City, MO 64129

JoAnn Mitchell
6801 Blue Pkwy
Kansas City, MO 64129

INTERESTING FACTOID: Dwight and Saundra live on the same street, but not at the same address. They’re being sued by the same financial services company. The plot sickens.

Here is the affidavit filed by Saundra Ross, Dwight Ross, Moniece Lovelace, and JoAnn Mitchell. Their number one reason? Cauthen. Cauthen who lied on his resume. Cauthen who spends public money on personal vacations. Surely these residents of the third district aren’t just looking out for Cauthen because he’s black? Surely there is no racial component at all. Only white people are racists. Just ask the filers of the affidavit, who refer to the Minutemen in this affidavit as a White Supremacist Hate Group.

I have no love for the Minutemen, but that goes a bit far. Don’t file affidavits full of bullshit hyperbole.

The affidavit also mentions Gloria (naturally) and accuses Funkhouser of being a tacit racist for refusing to “meet with African Americans’ [sic] to discuss anything, despite a letter requesting his presence to discuss issues”.

Note to people writing letters to request the mayor’s presence: proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar is a good idea. I have to wonder what such a letter might look like, given how embarrassing this affidavit is. Perhaps when the mayor got these (supposed) letters, he decided his primary goal was fixing KC’s public schools rather than building retail on the east side?

Another gem, the affidavit names Brooks as Funkhouser’s replacement. Definitely not racially motivated. And I bet all the filers are white, too!

Like most bad ideas conjured up in the heads of dimwits, the recall effort begun by Saundra Ross already appears to be dead in the water. I still haven’t seen a copy of the affidavit, but according to Prime Buzz, this legal document contains factual errors, egregious misspellings, and worse, was three of the five people who filed it may not even be registered voters.

Eat it, asswipes!

The only thing I’m surprised about is that Steve Glorioso can’t find more competent robots to do his bidding.

I had thought the recall idiots were done, but they’re not. Oh no, they were just getting started. Glorioso and his band of not-merry men have managed to release enough MEDIA ALERT hit pieces that they started getting taken seriously. Well played, gentlemen.

So, one Saundra Ross has filed an affidavit and started the petition process to recall Funkhouser, because, apparently in her world, having your wife work for you for free is nepotism, and something called “breach of public trust.” Never mind that nepotism requires compensation for your work, and disregard that there are a large number of people who don’t feel “breached” (even if Funk’s anus can’t say the same thing).

As much as I would like to encourage people to go out and willfully put bogus signatures on the petitions, that would be Wrong. Instead, I’m more interested in determining whether Ms. Ross’s false accusations might be construed as perjury. Lying about nepotism and claiming a “breach of public trust” without very specific instances (if there are any on the affidavit, they haven’t yet been mentioned in the news bites I’ve seen) is pretty serious stuff.

As far as the recall goes, though, bring it on, bitches.

According to a story on NPR, the US DEA is essentially citing increased cocaine prices as evidence that we’re winning the drug war. Uhh, yeah.

While their efforts to stymie imports from Mexico and South America might have been a bit more successful in 2007 than in the years immediately preceding, I’m not sure that means we’re winning the Drug War. Increased price means increased profits, and the profit potential in coke dealing is precisely what draws people to that…profession. So the net result seems likely to be: less coke, more coke dealers. And that sounds like a recipe for violence.

I don’t really like light rail as a transportation solution in Kansas City. I like rail transit, though. I love the MTA trains in New York, the CTA trains in Chicago, even MARTA in Atlanta is pretty good. While they’re all heavy rail rather than light rail, they manage to get people where they need to go. For the most part, anyway. Fine. But they all came online no later than 1971, and my has America changed since Nixon lived in the White House.

It’s surprising to me that so many people in KC are upset about the repeal of the Chastain plan, perhaps the most boneheaded and infeasible transportation initiative ever approved by voters in North America, but I’m even more surprised that people aren’t demanding something better. A light rail line through the central core of KCMO would serve a tiny minority of folks on a regular basis, but the phenomenal expenses would be incurred by everyone.

Wisely, Mayor Funkhouser realizes this and is pushing for a regional alternative that would be far more useful for the average metro citizen, with costs to be spread out among the 2 million of us who live here. Not that such a thing is particularly likely, but at least it’s the right idea, so go ahead and try it. But a lot of the voting public doesn’t agree, demanding KCMO “go it alone” with a “starter line” that would primarily serve tourists, conventioners, and those living within a few blocks of Main or Grand, ignoring that most of the people who would pay for it live east of Charlotte and north of the river.

It’s even more stunning to me that in the 21st Century, people still insist on building transportation systems that aren’t fundamentally different than what their great-great grandparents would have used. This type of transit made a lot of sense during the industrial revolution up through World War II, but is it really the best we can do today, with our current level of technology? If it is, I think it’s safe to say we’ve not been throwing enough resources at the problems of urban transportation in the last 50+ years.

Aside from those demanding light rail, there is almost as large of a contingent who are opposed to it. “It will never work,” they say. “Americans love their cars!”

Huh!?

Americans, at least the ones that I know, do not universally love their cars. In fact, they almost universally despise them. Driving around the city is a necessary evil more than a pleasure for most people I talk to about it, including those who live in places served by the MAX and other KCATA routes (they don’t run often enough or late enough) and those who live deep in suburbia where buses dare not tread. The general consensus seems to be that nobody wants to make car payments, insurance payments, pay attention to maintenance, owe yearly personal property taxes, mess with inspections and tags, and on top of that risk their life every time they want to go to or from work, or pick up a hamburger or a pair of pants.

So it’s clear to me that we need to provide people with an alternative, but it’s not clear that light rail, especially the plan being most loudly advocated for by the citizen’s task force, is the right choice.

Every year around this time I get grumpy. I assume partly it is the obnoxious gridlock traffic surrounding every place one might wish to purchase anything, the cumulative effects of almost two months of Christmas music, and the irritating displays of brightly-lit plastic baby Jesuses sleeping oh-so-peacefully in fake mangers. But as I get older I find myself irritated more and more by something else entirely: parents lying to their children.

I don’t have kids, but I’m at an age where virtually all my friends do, ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers. And the one thing they all have in common is that they willfully and knowingly propagated that stupid fantasy story for their own selfish pleasure. Why do parents find such delight in tricking their kinds into believing foolish tales about fat guys who tool around in magical sleighs pulled by anthropomorphic flying reindeer, distributing either gifts or lumps of carbon to all the children of the world, depending on how well they behave? As a behavior modification tool, the Santa myth fails miserably. I’ve yet to encounter a parent who actually withheld any presents from their children who actively misbehaved during the year, let alone rewarding their all-too-frequent tantrums with a stocking full of soot.

The world seems so magical when you’re young, I imagine my friends saying, we just wanted to add to that magic and wonder. To which I reply, eat it. There is plenty of magic and wonder to be found in this massive, ever-expanding universe without making shit up–that goes for religion, too, but that’s a different subject entirely. If you want to fill a kid with awe and wonder, explain to him that his body is composed entirely of matter that came rocketing out of an exploding star some billions of years ago. Or sit him on your knee and open up a nature book and point out that monkeys are built an awful lot like people. Or send him to the HubbleSite gallery and let him gaze upon distant galaxies and nebulae. Explain that the light emitted from the Eagle Nebula that Hubble picked up left the nebula 7,000 years ago. Or break out the big guns, Hubble’s unprecedented Ultra Deep Field image, and casually mention that you’re more or less looking back in time thirteen billion years, and that each of those specks of light is an entire galaxy containing untold millions of stars. Then go outside, take a tiny piece of paper 1mm square, hold it at arm’s length, and proudly proclaim that all those galaxies are contained within a chunk of sky about that big.

How’s that for wonder?

Unsurprisingly, the anti-Funk jackoffs are sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending like there’s no ongoing attempt at compromise. No, there must be winners and losers, they say, probably because they’re losers themselves and insist on bringing others down to their level. Most notably, the cave-dwelling neanderthal who goes by Tony gurgled out the usual flow of bullshit from deep within his greasy guts, with his typical exhortations of what “everyone knows”:

Mayor Funky was publicly embarrassed by a nearly historic display of disapproval for his lack of judgment. A public smackdown by nearly every person of color in Kansas City confirmed the perception that the Funky Administration has continually moved to marginalize minorities in Kansas City - By way of incompetence or design. It just didn’t look good, there’s no arguing otherwise (so shut up).

No, Mayor Funky was publicly embarrassed by a nearly historic display of people standing firmly behind an incompetent douchebag against their own interests. And in any event, it wasn’t his lack of judgment. He sought legal counsel. Maybe he needs a new lawyer. Further, you can hardly expect anyone to predict what the boneheads on the council are going to do, and they are just as guilty for escalating the situation.

And where the fuck does this idiot get off saying Funk has moved to marginalize minorities!? These poor babies are so marginalized that they keep having their opinions heard in the media and in Funkhouser’s face directly. How can you claim to be marginalized when you wield the kind of political power that could soon force the mayor to compromise with the council, after the council potentially violated the city charter? How can anyone who is being marginalized simultaneously engage in a “public smackdown”? You can’t be simultaneously marginalized and powerful.

Sorry, there’s plenty of arguing otherwise. The fact is, it doesn’t matter what this mayor does. If he reaches out to minorities, some people will say it’s a pathetic token gesture and he’s a racist. If he doesn’t, some people will say he’s ignoring them and he’s a racist. So, I think, probably the best thing is to ignore the race-baiters.

Course, I wouldn’t tell them to shut up.

Yeah, so the Hitler mustache thing is lame, but I think it’s funny. I don’t actually know whether Rowland hates freedom, but he obviously doesn’t want business and property owners to have any choice about whether to allow their customers to smoke. Jim Rowland: eat a dick.

Personally, I think smoking is gross, and it’s obviously not healthy. But I am apparently one of the few brave souls that realize I have a choice about which businesses I patronize, and sometimes I just don’t mind it, myself. Other times, especially if I’m sick, I stay away. The argument that such an ordinance is necessary because poor, oppressed nonsmokers are forced to breathe in admittedly unhealthy, cancer-inducing smog is horse shit. Obviously there is sufficient market demand for far more smokeless bars and restaurants than currently exist–going by smoking statistics, something like 20-25% of bars and restaurants should allow smoking, while 75-80% should not. And at this point, market forces have not (yet) corrected this imbalance.

OK, fair enough, but the market is evening itself out. Business owners are hearing the cries of the “oppressed”, and smokeless establishments are opening up all the time, all over the city. Will there ever be enough to satisfy demand? That, I don’t know. But I do know that a legislative ban on an activity that a healthy (or chronically unhealthy, OMGROFL) percentage of the market wishes to engage in is far more oppressive and anti-freedom than telling whiney nonsmokers to go somewhere else if they don’t like it.

If there has to be legislation, at most let there be legislation that forces market equity rather than market domination. Create a smoking license, much like a liquor license, to be bequeathed upon business owners by Regulated Industries, renewable yearly, and declare that the number of establishments which will be granted (or renewed) a smoking license in any given year shall be tied to the percentage of the population who smokes. Problem solved.

Leave it to KCTV to come up with the most ridiculous possible headline for the ongoing “sexually explicit email” scandal at City Hall. According to the very bored headline writers at the station, there isn’t an investigation. There’s no scandal. There’s no inquiry. No, LaTrisha Underhill is being probed. That’s right, folks. Probed. You just can’t make this stuff up…unless you’re a giggly intern writing headlines for the worst local news station in America.

And yet, somehow this horndog KC employee feels she was singled out and treated unfairly. Talk to the hand, girlfriend. You don’t beg to lick on a man’s taint using taxpayer-purchased government resources, and then get to whine about the unfair treatment you’ve received.