Venting to my friends...the rest of you can ignore this...
Jun 15, 2013 4:18:48 GMT -5
Post by wyattcox on Jun 15, 2013 4:18:48 GMT -5
Most of you here have not a clue as to who I am. Most of you could care less. I understand. But I need to vent something and it's pretty important to me.
I started out last April in the midst of what I though would be a nasty divorce that turned even more nasty than I ever thought possible by jumping into the middle of the OOWF with no real character defined and no idea where exactly I was going. Within weeks I had fully developed a set of characters that all but two had real life equvalents and were annoying twits in the world of the OOWF. Along the way I had a whole lot of fun and was enjoying venting through the characters as my real life world crashed around me, then healed. More on that later.
I had to take a sudden sabbatical from the OOWF to help do something I had never really done, and that was to take up a cause to root out three Good Old Boys from local office. They protected a city supervisor involved in a car crash who “forgot” to take his mandatory drug test, they protected the supervisor's superior who tried to cover up the whole deal, and then threatened to sue the city over their holding a disciplinary hearing in public (which the Attorney General's office later said was NOT improper but he never apologized) and publicly threatening violence against a stitting councilman...IN A PUBLIC MEETING!
The sitting council also raised Sewer/Water/Landfill rates by over 75%, then gave back half when they found they couldn't fund city government with that money, overcharged on the bills for two months, apologized for the overcharges but voted to keep what they had already collected, and engaged in a level of corruption, good old boy protection, and malfeasance that would have made Tammany Hall and Mayor Daley blush! From 1980 to 2010 White Pine County's population grew from 8167 to 10030, but the city of Ely population dropped from 4882 to 4255. People moved to more rural unincorporated areas of the county and businesses shuttered and moved out of town rather than bear more of the tax burden imposed by the City.
I walked away from the OOWF and almost every other activity, not just to campaign for city office, but to expose publicly the corruption and malfeasance in office.
While I lost in the primaries, the focus on the incumbents was serious enough that the unheard of happened. All the incumbents were defeated in the general election, and the hand picked successor to one incumbent LOST.
It proves that if you believe in trying to make a difference, you can make that difference.
All's well again in my world. Oh, and I'm flying to the Philippines in September to get married to my NOT a mail order bride, but a quality woman who, along with the OOWF crew, pulled me out of one of the deepest depressions I've ever experienced. Her ongoing support and caring kept me going. If a woman 7500 miles away never gave up on me, why should I?
Life is good. Thanks to the love of my life, and a few strange weird ducks that I'm proud to call my friends.
Thanks for reading. You can go back to your own problems now.
I started out last April in the midst of what I though would be a nasty divorce that turned even more nasty than I ever thought possible by jumping into the middle of the OOWF with no real character defined and no idea where exactly I was going. Within weeks I had fully developed a set of characters that all but two had real life equvalents and were annoying twits in the world of the OOWF. Along the way I had a whole lot of fun and was enjoying venting through the characters as my real life world crashed around me, then healed. More on that later.
I had to take a sudden sabbatical from the OOWF to help do something I had never really done, and that was to take up a cause to root out three Good Old Boys from local office. They protected a city supervisor involved in a car crash who “forgot” to take his mandatory drug test, they protected the supervisor's superior who tried to cover up the whole deal, and then threatened to sue the city over their holding a disciplinary hearing in public (which the Attorney General's office later said was NOT improper but he never apologized) and publicly threatening violence against a stitting councilman...IN A PUBLIC MEETING!
The sitting council also raised Sewer/Water/Landfill rates by over 75%, then gave back half when they found they couldn't fund city government with that money, overcharged on the bills for two months, apologized for the overcharges but voted to keep what they had already collected, and engaged in a level of corruption, good old boy protection, and malfeasance that would have made Tammany Hall and Mayor Daley blush! From 1980 to 2010 White Pine County's population grew from 8167 to 10030, but the city of Ely population dropped from 4882 to 4255. People moved to more rural unincorporated areas of the county and businesses shuttered and moved out of town rather than bear more of the tax burden imposed by the City.
I walked away from the OOWF and almost every other activity, not just to campaign for city office, but to expose publicly the corruption and malfeasance in office.
While I lost in the primaries, the focus on the incumbents was serious enough that the unheard of happened. All the incumbents were defeated in the general election, and the hand picked successor to one incumbent LOST.
It proves that if you believe in trying to make a difference, you can make that difference.
All's well again in my world. Oh, and I'm flying to the Philippines in September to get married to my NOT a mail order bride, but a quality woman who, along with the OOWF crew, pulled me out of one of the deepest depressions I've ever experienced. Her ongoing support and caring kept me going. If a woman 7500 miles away never gave up on me, why should I?
Life is good. Thanks to the love of my life, and a few strange weird ducks that I'm proud to call my friends.
Thanks for reading. You can go back to your own problems now.
