Archive for the ‘local stuff’ Category

Speaking of elections in Fitchburg

Posted: September 22, 2009 by datechguy in local stuff
Tags: ,

Our Mayor Lisa Wong is a very bright young woman, if you meet her you can’t help but like her.

Her visit to our house when she was going door to door was memorable because of something funny. As we were talking to candidate Wong at the front door, my youngest kept trying to pull me away , Dad, Dad come here, I kept telling him it could wait. When she finally left I said what was so important? He led me to the back porch where all over the carpet lay the shattered glass of the pinball machine that broke as he was preparing to put it back on. (Good think it was tempered glass).

Wong came into a mess as as her first term ends it’s still a mess but I so far i like what she is trying to do and truly believe she is doing her best for us.

I also believe she has been marked by the democratic party for higher things, I’m torn by this since on the local level democrats then to remain, well normal but as they get higher up the political ladder the crazyness index goes up Real fast, but if you are going to have people on the other side they should be good people and that is Mayor Wong.

Running against her is. Fuzzy.

That is Michael “Fuzzy” Voisine. Everybody knows him as Fuzzy. Everybody knows Fuzzy. He worked at Espresso Pizza practically forever, before opening Premier Subs down the street. Don’t laugh Espresso has been a Fitchburg Fixture for 45 years, when everything else on main street ran away they stayed even after a devastating fire. There is nobody in the town that hasn’t tried it and it is the single best Italian sauce and pizza in town.

He is an average man who has worked hard all his life, he has both managed and owned a small business in town and done all the things necessary to make things work.

Right now I’m leaning toward the incumbent but it isn’t a clear cut choice for me. The Mayor is a highly educated person who has a lot of theory behind her and is a very hard worker, but Fuzzy has the actual practical experience in real life that is vital on the local level.

Or to put it another way. The education the mayor has Fuzzy (or anyone) can get with hard work. The practical knowledge and decades of real world Experience that Fuzzy has is a lot harder to come by.

It will be interesting around here.

My city is a small city of 35,000, as you might know, we have a gang problem (we have become a drug hub over the last couple of decades just as we were a trade and manufacturing hub in the 19th century) and the violence that comes with it problem, our budget is in trouble, it’s so bad that to save money streetlights are turned off at night all over the place. And we pay I believe the 3rd highest electric rates in the entire country (Thanks Unitil!) It is a mess.

So naturally we should do whatever we can to avoid spending money when it isn’t necessary.

Which brings us to today’s primary election…..

In Fitchburg we have 6 ward counselors and 5 “at large” counselors. Under the rules of the town if more than 10 people run for the “at large” seats a primary has to be held to bring the total back down to 10 before the general election.

We have 11 people running.

On the plus side it’s nice to see so many people interested in getting involved to turn things around, and it will be the first vote ever that my son casts. That is a right of passage into the rights and responsibilities of American democracy and republican government (and by “republican I of course mean the system of government not the party). UPDATE Both he and I thought he registered at the DMV but he’s not on the list, so he will go to city hall and have to wait for the general election in November.

On the other hand we are going to the expense of a city wide primary election to shave ONE STUPID NAME off the ballot when we can’t even afford to keep our streetlights on.

Can’t anybody play this game? What would Rush Limbaugh Honorary Lizzardoid say? Now that the kid can vote I hope he votes for smarter people than we have.

You know I been thinking and thinking and I can’t think of a think I feel like saying about anything else right now, but some other people have interesting things to say today.

VDH has some great comparisons between past the present concerning President Obama:

Once upon a time, Candidate Obama also assured skeptical voters that he would show us how to transcend race. He was no Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, who used skin color and white guilt for careerist purposes. The Reverend Wright, “typical white person,” Michelle Obama’s “downright mean country,” and the Pennsylvania “clingers” remark were mere aberrations of the exhausting campaign, hyped by the shameless right wing.

But soon the people got the attorney general of the United States calling them racial cowards and dismissing voter-intimidation suits against club-wielding Black Panthers who had swarmed voting booths. Cambridge police were relegated to Neanderthal profilers who stereotyped the innocent, such as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Environment czar Van Jones warned of white conspiracies to pollute the ghetto and bragged that blacks, unlike whites, did not go on public-school shooting sprees. The nation’s most powerful politicians, like House Ways and Means chairman Charlie Rangel and New York governor David Paterson, for some strange reason, were suddenly victims of racial bias, which alone explained their travails. All this was not supposed to happen in the age of Obama.

Jay Nordlinger expands:

They say that “hate” is rearing its head, and that President Obama and the Democrats are the victims of it. Let me make a couple of predictions: I predict that the chairman of the Republican National Committee will never say, “I hate the Democrats and everything they stand for. This [politics, basically] is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”

Howard Dean said that about the GOP: “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. . . .”

I predict that an editor of a conservative magazine will never write a piece called “The Case for Obama Hatred,” beginning, “I hate President Barack Obama.”

A New Republic editor did this, about Bush.

Byron York continues to show why his loss is painful for National Review:

The first words of the Times’ story on Jones’ resignation were, “In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration’s conservative critics. …” One news anchor suggested Jones was “the Republican right’s first scalp.” Other coverage called the Jones affair a victory for Glenn Beck, Fox News, right-wing blogs, and even Sarah Palin, who played no role in the matter.

If you throw in Rush Limbaugh, you have all the bogey-people of the conservative world. To some on the left, including some journalists, denying them a victory was a top priority, no matter what Van Jones had said and done.

There was a day, not too long ago, when the Times and other influential news organizations could kill a story — could deny the bad guys a win — simply by ignoring it. Sometimes they still try. But it just won’t work anymore.

Just one Minute highlighted a Firedog post that rolled my eyes:

Now he’s been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 — that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11. Well, that and calling Republicans “assholes.” I’m pretty sure that if you search through the histories of every single liberal leader at the CAF dinner that night, they have publicly said that and worse.

Jane in case you haven’t figured it out those facts are BAD things.

Speaking of Bad things:

And since the blogosphere is ranting and raving about Truthers right now, and how horrible and evil they are (a position with which I agree), let’s take a little look at who’s behind the Cincinnati Tea Party, shall we?

One of the main organizers, and a featured speaker, is Jason Rink…

…Lovely! A highly placed Ron Paulian, and an associate of racist paleocon Lew Rockwell!

And Rink is also … you guessed it … a Truther.

I’ve attended a tea party and agree with their goals but this type of thing is very bad and has to be nailed at once. If they become Ron Paul rallies this is a very bad thing and overrides the legit message.

and finally via Glenn an Ann Althouse commentator has the best take on it all:

“Ha, this will play out exactly as I thought it might. My son adores Obama – entirely from things he’s heard at school. By the end of this, he’s going to think of the dude as just one more boring windbag.”

Those guys are doing better than me.

Oh and there will be larger police presence at my kids school today due to the murders in town.

…concerning the shootings yesterday. It appears one of the kids was in the junior class at the high school and since my youngest is a sophomore we are on the robo call list.

We were informed that there would be grief counseling etc available at the school tomorrow.

Personally I think rather than grief counseling we should have moral compass counseling, staying away from drugs counseling, avoiding gangs counseling, and not being at parties till 4:30 a.m. when you’re a teenager counseling and most importantly “this could be you if you don’t wise up” counseling instead.

Maybe if even some of those ideas are driven home we wont need the grief counseling next time.

I guess that would be too religious rightish for some.

If I had the money to send him St. Bernards I’d do it like a shot.