The Asheville City Council as Roman Circus

**update** A Financial Report delivered at the Asheville City Council retreat is at the end.

The Asheville City Council had it's annual retreat yesterday, and here are some thought about it from Leslee Kulba:

One of council’s five goals is job creation. The first two great providers of jobs listed by Mayor Terry Bellamy were recent recipients of corporate welfare. Workforce development was one of Bellamy’s priorities. We appear but one step from accepting as a proper role of government the determination of the highest and best use for human resources. The free market has, no doubt, failed, and the seven members on city council have the knowledge and power to employ people better than capitalists trying to provide goods and services the community demands. We do, after all, have czars. It is aggravating that three people who do not know the Supreme Law of the Land can get elected and start enacting socialist policies, and everybody else is supposed to be polite and uphold decorum by keeping their mouth shut. One feels like a schizophrenic terrorist to even suggest something about cause and effect. Socialism’s track record for failure is inadmissible evidence.

Newly-elected Cecil Bothwell never ceased to shock. He said he hoped by 2020, Asheville could be recognized for having prepared for the end of the oil industry, having made their city livable with adequate transit beforehand. He had just read in the Washington Post that gas would soon go over $3.00/gallon, and $3.50/gallon is the tipping point for getting people to use transit in droves. Bothwell mentioned about three times the threat of global warming. It is occurring much faster than anticipated, and the polar ice caps will be decimated by 2015. Bothwell expected Asheville’s plentiful water resources would be a boon in the context of global water shortages. Lastly, Bothwell stated he had become a supporter of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and wanted to lobby the legislative delegation for statewide legalization of drugs.

Gordon Smith praised locals helping locals as healthcare costs skyrocketed. He praised the Grove Park Inn for deciding to provide domestic partner benefits and hoped the city would follow suit. Smith also wanted to enact legislation against violence perpetrated against cyclists. He said almost every cyclist he knows has had a bottle thrown at him. Special legislation of this type insinuates it is OK to throw bottles at gays, geeks, or people of color as long as they’re not on bikes.

[snip]

The mayor mentioned in addition that the legislators had let up on the Sullivan Acts. The city is now allowed to use water revenues for parks and greenways. This brought to mind a past conversation with former representative Charles Thomas, who said the Sullivan Acts were needed because Asheville had a history of irresponsible spending. His worst fears seemed to be coming to life.

City Manager Gary Jackson prepared a white paper in response to “the Locke Foundation.” On break, he clarified the comment pertained only to the “By the Numbers” report. The white paper contained no new information. After conferring with city staff, more will be posted here.

The Lioness of Asheville, Leslee Kulba nails it. Read the rest at her blog, Wild West. All emphasis in the quoted excerpt from her blog are mine.

Commentary

I think that Asheville is getting EXACTLY what it deserves. Especially since the "conservative" candidates who ran in the last election took the fool's road and pledged to not raise more than $3,000 for their election campaigns.

My hope is that some serious conservatives will run in 2011 and stop the bleeding. I do not think it likely, but am willing to be pleasantly surprised.

Here is the Financial Report, titled "Asheville 2010: A Financial Crossroads"

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Asheville 2009 Municipal Election Results and Commentary

Yesterday was an off year Municipal Election across most of the country, and here are the results of a few of the races I tracked in Buncombe County.


All data for this post was culled from the North Carolina State Board of Elections website.


Here are the details of the races available as of 5.57 am this morning:






Asheville Mayor


78.75 %  9,543  Incumbent Terry Bellamy 
20.06%   2,431  Robert Edwards


City Council (Top 3 Are Seated)


19.24%   6,567  Esther Mannheimer
18.46%   6,301  Gordon Smith 
17.28%   5,899  Cecil Bothwell
_________________________
13.91%   4,749  Incumbent Carl Mumpower
13.53%   4,620  Write-In (most are probably for Incumbent Robin Cape)
10.18%   3,476  J. Neal Jackson
07.40%   2,525  Ryan Croft


There is no data on the state website that breaks down voter turnout by municipality, just an overall figure for all of them, so take that in mind when you look at the following figures...


17,199 ballots were cast out of 88,229 registered voters for a turnout of 19.49%. 


According to latest statistics available on the Buncombe County website, there are (as of 10-15-09) there are 64,235 registered voters in Asheville. 32,993 are Democrats, 19,127 are Unaffiliated, and 12,012 are Republican. 


Commentary


During this election cycle, the "conservative" candidates took a pledge not to raise more than $3,000 in their campaign. In fact, Carl Mumpower did not actively seek re-election by organizing a campaign effort. He attended what forums he was invited to and sent missives via email stating his positions. As far as I can tell, the other conservatives took their lead from him.


That is no way to serve the people, or to protect their interests.


I hope that, in the future, conservative candidates will run for office in Asheville with the concept firmly implanted in their skulls that they must organize a campaign that raises money, gets their message out, and gets people excited enough to volunteer for the campaign and build a real network that can feed the campaign money, more volunteers, and an effective Get out the Vote effort for early voting and on election day. 


If they want to see how to effectively do that, they can look no further than the campaigns of the three people who will be sitting in the Asheville City Council Chambers soon. I was particularly impressed with the organization that Gordon Smith and his campaign created.


I would like to thank Carl Mumpower for his years of service to Asheville during his time on the Asheville City Council. I hope he gets that rest he has been wanting.






Interesting Facts:


Gordon Smith had about 300 donors to his campaign, and Cecil Bothwell had about 550 donors and about 750 volunteers according to a video report on the WLOS website.

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My Muslim President Obama by Asma Gull Hasan

Why members of the Islamic faith see him as one of the flock.

I know President Obama is not Muslim, but I am tempted nevertheless to think that he is, as are most Muslims I know. In a very unscientific oral poll, ranging from family members to Muslim acquaintances, many of us feel, just as African-Americans did for the non-black but culturally leaning African-American President Bill Clinton, that we have our first American Muslim president in Barack Hussein Obama.
I know it's odd to say this. At first, I thought I was the only Muslim engaging in this folly, and I am reluctant to express it lest right-wing zealots try to use "Muslim" as a smear and cite my theory as proof of an Islamic traitor in the White House or some such nonsense. But, since Election Day, I have been part of more and more conversations with Muslims in which it was either offhandedly agreed that Obama is Muslim or enthusiastically blurted out. In commenting on our new president, "I have to support my fellow Muslim brother," would slip out of my mouth before I had a chance to think twice.
"Well, I know he's not really Muslim," I would quickly add. But if the person I was talking to was Muslim, they would say, "yes he is." They would cite his open nature and habit of reaching out to critics, reminiscent of the Prophet Muhammad's own approach, and also Obama's middle name, Hussein. Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama isnot Muslim.
Of the few Muslims I polled who said that Obama is not Muslim, even they conceded that he had ties to Islam. These realists said that, although not an avowed and practicing Muslim, Obama's exposure to Islam at a young age (both through his father and his stint in Indonesia) has given him a Muslim sensibility. In my book, that makes you a Muslim--maybe not a card-carrying one, but part of the flock for sure. One realist Muslim ventured that Obama worships at a Unitarian Church because it represents the middle ground between Christianity and Islam, incorporating the religious beliefs of the two faiths Obama feels connected to. Unitarianism could be Obama's way of still being a Muslim.

Source: Forbes
Hat Tip: Echo910 (via email)

Commentary

Imagine that.

I remember a long drawn out discussion I had on a progressive group blog about these very things, where I brought up many of the same arguments that this writer does, and was not believed by the hooligans there, and was even called various versions of a hater for doing it. I wonder if they will say the very same thing about a Muslim who has now said the very same things.

You'll also note that many of the comments are addressed to someone called "TP" or "Pig" or "Thunder Pig". That is me. My comments have been removed "webscrubbed" if you will, because either they are very cogent, or may be a result of my banning from commenting at the group blog recently. I draw your attention to the very strident nature of the "progressive" reaction to my commentary and analysis...which are now gone down the Orwellian Memory Hole because that is who lefties are, destroyers of whatever they disagree with.

Just as Pahroah decreed the name Moses is to be stricken from history, so do the lefties order even the record of the opposition to be stricken from history. But you can still see echoes of my presence because some of the commenters have quoted portions of my commentary. 

I think that Gordon Smith [photo] (future Asheville City Council candidate) has just run into the same problem faced by Josef Stalin, sometimes when you airbrush people from history...an empty spot remains, as in the photo below where an enemy of Stalin's is removed from the photo:

 This photo is in the public domain.

This is just one more example of what I call "Stalinist Tactics of the Left" [examples from Malkin], and a reminder that altering webpages, removing blogs and removing videos from youtube only works if there exists no other copies of them made by forward-looking individuals. Johnny Rockslide will live again, if only in political commercials. A Bene Gesserit punishment banquet can be a long feast indeed. Hors d'oeuvres, anyone? 

So, back to the Obama "will be seen as a Muslim" claim: this woman gives anecdotal evidence to back up my claims, which, when forecast by me...were evidence (to lying lefties, at any rate) of me trying to spread hate. So, is this woman trying to spread hate? Am I by reporting upon it? Or the lefties who try to distort my words or intentions by their attempts at misdirection?

I expect to be vindicated in several other statements I have made about an Obama Presidency in the next four to eight years.

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