Matt writes another zinger

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Sioux Falls, circa 1948 or 2008?

I’m beginning to enjoy Argus columnist Matt Okerlund’s column. This week he writes about apathy and ignorance, I think?

Anyway, keep yourself informed in these contentious times. Knowledge is free.

Quit trading secrets. If we learn nothing else from the eight long years of the Bush presidency, it ought to be that some people believe being elected entitles them to do whatever their hearts desire, and that if they don’t want to tell the electorate what they’re up to, they don’t have to tell them.

Neither is true.

And he slaps the SF Secret District around a bit.

When a school board names a school, the public has a right to know all the other names the board considered.

And this lines made me laugh;

If transparency and public scrutiny make you uncomfortable, join the Masons.

No shit!

Life is no Norman Rockwell painting.

THANK GAWD!

Sit down and be quiet; NOT!

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I would like to thank the Argus Leader for printing this letter:

I’m asking all registered voters in Sioux Falls to join me in signing an initiated petition to decrease the city sales tax in 2010. The timing couldn’t be better. There will be a new mayor taking office in 2010 and the possibility of up to four new councilors. This will be the perfect opportunity for citizens to hand them a policy of fiscal restraint and responsibility.

The past six years our city has spent beyond its means. Our city debt is approaching $300 million, we are $80 million behind on road maintenance, and 2009’s budget is a record $412 million. This whopper includes a multitude of capital improvement plan expenditures that are merely handouts to special interest campaign contributors and consultants and unnecessary park and building beautification projects, not road maintenance and infrastructure improvements as city officials would like you to believe.

Our sales tax revenue has doubled during the past decade, so why are we in such a hole? I’ve asked this question several times at council meetings and only have received the runaround from our leaders.

A responsible and representational city government would have granted its citizens with either a tax cut or maintained our current infrastructure while paying down our debt. Instead, four of the councilors and the mayor handed us a maximum tax increase while continuing to borrow more. They claim the extra revenue will be spent on new roads, but there is nothing legally binding them to that promise. Just look at the spending habits of the past six years.

The current City Hall is going to try to dissuade you from voting for this tax decrease. But don’t let their myths about choking growth and progress fool you. With all the consultants and surveys our city has paid for during the past six years, there hasn’t been a single one that has shown lower taxes stunt growth or higher taxes spur growth.

City officials say local business drives our economy. With this I agree. But this only happens when citizens are spending more of their own money on goods and services instead of on higher taxes.

The taxpayers are unknowingly paying for a lame-duck mayor’s legacy. Sign the petition and let the citizens – not a lame-duck mayor and council – decide how our tax dollars should be spent.

Give me some of that old time liberal sickness

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“The darkness of liberal sickness is rising. One cannot ignore, however, that it is precisely this sickness that inevitably will strengthen the conservative delegation.”

BahahahahahahBawha! Boy those neocons will say anything for a good f’ing laugh. Well, if liberalism is a sickness, conservatism under GW Bush has been a terminal cancer. The conservatives don’t get it. Obama won this election because he campaigned to EVERYONE. This country does have a large percentage of conservative bible-bumping witch doctors, but it is hardly the majority. Most Americans are moderate couch potatoes. Period.

Apparently this jackass has a crystal ball;

Barack Obama has won the White House with nothing more than one promise after another, hollow as they might be, unattainable without question and irresponsible. Obama has made many promises to many people that a person with any common sense concludes that his promises cannot be obtained.

Though I will partially agree with Lance that a lot of campaign promises can never be kept I do think Obama wants to put as much on the table as possible and see what happens. It’s called trying different things to see what works, unlike idiot boy wonder – stay the course – GW Bush.

Liberals are only tolerant to those with like minds.

Really? Moderates and independents who voted for Obama didn’t seem to think so. I think you are talking about neo-con bigotry. Liberals believe in unity not predjudice.

I cannot compromise my intellectual integrity.

Oh, but you already have by continuing to believe the neo-conservative myth that most voting Americans are just like you. Keep the dream alive man, we could use Obama for 8 years.