Mike Smith, fix my warning lights!

According to the papers, Mike Smith was now managing an auto shop, earning about $250 a week and living up over the garage. An innocent juror or newspaper reader like me would probably think that this new career of his reflected credit on him. Bank executive starts life over again managing a garage. Puts past behind him, goes straight. Shows contrition for his sins, gets back to his working class roots. The story, however, was a cover story that his prosecutors bought into or developed. Mike Smith's big borrowers were running a witness protection program. Read part 6 of The Heritage Bank Story

No nap for the weary: The Override Vote

I guess everyone is tired of the pictures of the beaver lodge, so here goes nothing. Being the old gaffer that I am, I can take an hour nap every now and then, well almost every afternoon, if the truth be known. This afternoon after I dared sudden death by cleaning the gutters, I went up to bed, finished my crossword puzzle, cranked up the kitchen timer I keep by the bed, and settled down, cleared my mind, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, I thought about Mary Clare Higgins and the override. And the more I thought about the override the angrier I got, and that was it for nap-time. I got up.

Tonight I am going out to the garage and fashion a very unelegant “NO” sign for my lawn. This is how I feel, and it's really too bad that a Mayor who rubs me the wrong way would make me vote against a very modest override that would keep teachers and other public servants working. But that’s how it is. I am terminally fed up with the corner office at 210 Main Street. I’m putting up the “NO” sign, but I could vote “yes” when I go in the booth on June 16. Kids shouldn’t sit in these huge classes that the “Yes” people say are coming. But I don’t trust our Mayor, and I don’t like the manipulative way that these cuts are being made. Wheels are turning, specific constituencies are being turned out. I’m not a happy camper.

It’s how the city does things around here. People aren’t respected. Things are bulldozed through. A city council who caves in to everything she wants. Pick an issue, and more often than not you will find committees weakened by mayoral appointees who go along, things done by fiat behind closed doors by a Mayor who is a master at getting her way, from destroying history on Hospital Hill to ignoring Meadowbrook once she’s saved it. The dump? Full speed ahead for a brick wall. When city councilors from the west threaten a “no” vote, bring in a lawyer to muzzle them. Drive us into the poor house with legal costs. Pay people off to go away when you have to. Ambulance? We’ve had a very effective private ambulance service staffed by very experienced people, and now, without any public hearings, we are replacing it with a city-run service staffed mainly by new hires. Tree preservation? A lot of good work went into the new package of tree measures, and now we have an ineffective committee that says yes to every barbarity. Conservation and wetlands? The now famous 10 foot rule. I could go on, but I won’t. But maybe I will. Next post on Kirbyontheloose: the case of the missing report on the fire department.