There is NO DOUBT opponents of Rec MJ lie thru their e’ffing teeth. Which is odd, because there is a lot of factual negative data on MJ use they could use. For instance, the crafters of this amendment should have made the legal age 25 and older due to brain development, but the opponents are too dumb to figure it out. Either way, I often find zoom interviews interesting and what some people think is a good backdrop. I guess if I was holed up with my other white dude buddy in a Super 8 with what appears to be only one double bed, and I was representing an organization called ‘Protecting Kids’ I would have told DNK we can do this interview over the phone and I will email you a headshot. Let’s just say refuting your lies in a Super 8 isn’t a good look. Do you keep all the campaign donations in a shoebox under the bed? Well at least they aren’t blowing money on hotel rooms with 2 beds! (sometimes if you butter up the night clerk they will give you a rollaway for free!)
Augustana has wiped the event from their yearly schedule, but I did ascertain this promotional piece;
What I am hearing is that she abruptly cancelled the meeting and the reasons given are varied rumors, so I won’t list them, but FIRST I am curious if the event WAS cancelled and if so, WHY and by WHO?
These clowns were hosting the event, so it was a good possibility they may have canceled it due to student protests. But Johnson is known for her thin skin and paranoia around ‘liberals trying to get her.’ I’m guessing someone from the student body council told them to go to Heck (though if I was a student I totally would have allowed it and showed up to watch the comedy show and challenge the fools during Q & A. The best way to solve our political discourse in this country is to talk to each other, share our views and correct and critique each other. Things won’t improve if we stay in our own bullpens. That is my biggest complaint about young libs, they constantly preach to the choir. Expand your horizons. I worked on several political campaigns and majority of them were Republicans because I believed in their policy ideas. I heard a quote from Tim Johnson today (RIP) “Neither party has an advantage on good ideas or bad ideas.”)
UPDATE: I started to think about this yesterday. If the owner of this lot had a half a brain he would LEASE the land to a developer and rake in the Federal Subsidies. This is a great lot for either business or housing because it sits in an OPPORTUNITY ZONE. When I found out that I am in the same zone, I researched what I could do with my property, but unfortunately I am in the middle of the block and zoned residential so it would be hard for me to use the zone, but the MX Liquor lot would be perfect for a project in this zone. Some peeps just don’t get it.
Many people have expressed to me today that I should be delighted that the city is finally cleaning up this mess. I am. I want to thank several councilors former and present who helped get this ball moving.
As you know I complained about this property over 10 years ago where I was reassured by then code enforcement manager, Matt Tobias, that they were moving ‘thru’ the courts on this property.
So if you do the math, that complaint would have originated well before 2017. According to Forum’s article this all started in 2017. So what happened to all the complaints and violations prior to 2017? Obviously thrown in the trash.
I have been researching different code enforcement cases and I have been finding an interesting trend. When management or officers leave code enforcement (especially management) past violations or cases they are working on disappear. The MX liquor property has been in disrepair for almost 20 years, so what happened to all the violations prior to 2017?
I know that the city hasn’t done anything until now because the owner of the property has skirted code enforcement for years! I think he still thinks all the properties were going to be saved. Even though the owner was noticed on September 30 he waited until the dump trucks showed up this morning to move his antique tractor collection from the building in which he moved to the backyard of one of his house properties (that will eventually get torn down to). This tells me the owner of the property has figured out how to skirt the city’s code enforcement office for years basically because they are incompetent and never thought they would show up this morning.
The good news is I won’t have to look at this property ever again and that Councilors Barranco and Sigette are actively working on making code enforcement better and more timely.
I also found it interesting that the city’s public works team is doing the demo. Obviously the property owner will have to pay for demo either directly or thru a lien on the property when it is sold but why is the city handling this and not a private contractor?
I was enjoying a beer with a friend the other day at a local watering hole and we overheard people talking about the presidential election, and my friend says to me, “I don’t have time for people who are still undecided.” I said, “Heck, I voted 2 weeks ago.”
Speaking of early voting, I have been doing it for around 15 years because I got tired of musical precincts and trying to figure out what polling place to go to. I vote in every election so the polling places change depending on the government entity. It is super annoying and something that needs to be fixed because I think it has contributed to low voter turnouts. Either way I had the (mis)fortune of getting our auditor to help me with my ballot envelope. If you early vote, you know the drill. You show up, you show them your ID (and your face 🙂 and sign the envelope. In 15 years NO ONE working the polls has questioned my ID or my signature, then walks in Ms. Conspiracy Theory herself. She looks at my ID and me, that should be enough, right? Not good enough for Leah, she says to me, “Your signature doesn’t match your driver’s license.” First off, Leah knows who I am, why would I FAKE my own signature, I’M STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!!!!! Secondly I informed her that the DMV encourages you to sign your name spelling it out legibly, but I told her, that is not how I really sign my name (though I sign the first letter of my name the same all the time). Now, I get it, if this was a mail in ballot, and they had to verify my signature by viewing my DL image that would be a problem, but I WAS STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER! If Leah got her drawers in a bind over this, I have a feeling election night in Minnehaha County is going to be a nightmare. Is it November 6th yet?
Maybe I was the setup? I spoke at the informational meeting* today during public input. Since there was nothing on the agenda except more executive sessions I chose to speak about item #4 on the agenda, which was PUBLIC COMMENT. I basically informed them that council meeting rules don’t supersede the US Constitution’s 1st Amendment and they need to stop cutting people off. I directed my comments at the entire council, not just chair Soehl. I told them they need to STOP the chair if they are wrongfully cutting people off. I think the council needs a crash course in the 1st Amendment and Public Input, and would even be willing to give my taxdollars to school them. They don’t seem to understand who controls the government, it’s not them, it’s us.
Well the mayor must be off at a jumping jacks convention because Curtis decided to chair the next regular meeting (FF: 41:00) and he got another earful about how they fail to listen to constituents and when they have no discussion on unanimous votes it tells the public you are making decisions before the meeting in private conversations (heck, the school board has been doing that for decades!)
Though some of the people who spoke tonight have shady pasts (that was an interesting google search 🙁 they made valuable points about our 1st Amendment rights and how ineffective and thin skinned our current council is, and the longer termed members are the worst of the lot!
This council better buck up fast and take control of the public’s meetings, because it is turning into a real circus and the dancing bears are the council.
*The meeting hasn’t posted yet because they were having ‘technical’ issues. These same issues pop up every couple of weeks for the past decade or more. You would think the city IT department would have figured this out already?! I am pretty damn sure they are censoring certain things and that is why it happens so often. I mean, someone can’t f’up that much unless it is on purpose.
One of the public inputers, Bruce Head told us he is suing the city over civil rights. Here is a link to the filing.