Job Search/What Might Have Been

PART ONE

Hey kids, I just read Foghorn Sullivan's latest vomit-on -the -page in the Local, about riding his scooter to the U.N. if it had been built in Andorra, a bet on par with his wife being able to ride his Presidency to any job involving interaction with Humans.

I would have sold my mother to Hamas to see Walter trying to putt-putt his two hundred and eighty five pounds of horseshit up Bells Mills Road. Hey Walter, dream big, if you can repeal Newtons' Laws, maybe you can get Kristina out of the house.

We must all be thankful for the U.N. opting for the East Side. For if Walter had ever brought the Beast with him to hear the General Assembly, she might have replicated what the board let her spew at the meeting last week. And we'd now be living in a post-World War III landscape of styrofoam and cockroaches, which means Kristina would still be alive.

I also loved his congratulating Chestnut Grill/Snowden Bitch Greg Welsh's failure at getting a Civil War Museum built locally, another safe bet. Its' patrons would have fit the Demographic of the Regular Hill Shopper perfectly, both groups having been dead for twenty five years.

Is Greg sliding you some free Made-in-Omaha Mozzerella sticks for free, at least? Maybe he could hire Kristina as a Maitre D'esse for his Applebees'-on -the -Avenue. It would be like when Rickles worked the lounge at the Sahara, only with less charm, and more hair.

I like helping the Handicapped as much as the next guy (unless the next guy lives in the Hill), but Pete's place in Heaven is already assured for having put up with Asshole Brigade for so long. He doesn't have to lobby further by letting Walters' seepage use up valuable wood pulp.

PART TWO

I have found another reason that Walter was so simpatico with settling the Rob Remus non-lawsuit. It seems Walter is experienced in collecting money from his neighbors in this manner. He sued the Venetian Club and collected a generous five figure settlement. I'll get the exact dollar amount and the details soon.

Walter, that was your last chance-a new life with your winnings, the flat, tropical terrain of the Gulf Coast or Sunny Scottsdale for your Scooter, and an escape from the relentless shrieking.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

The settlement would have been your condo down payment. And then the Social security would have kicked in. You could have chased a few ambulances. Down there, there's one going by every few seconds. Old folks would have hired you off your voice and physical stature alone. Your expertise wouldn't even have mattered. You could have fooled everyone.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

In those climes, you could have started over. Your Manner and that Voice would have made you an Exotique-Sexy Widows, Jewesses, Southern Belles, would have fallen under the spell of your melifluous tones. Spring Training Games, Early Bird Specials, the Moonlight. Easy Pickins', my Friend

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

Now you're stuck in the Stenton Cell Block with someone so embarrassing that the people who put you on the Throne want the ground to open up and swallow her every time she pries herself out of the chair to speak.

Even Tolis Vardakis, one of the most reliable tools of the CHCA Power Freak Coalition, called "Point of Order" at her, and he's on her side. It was the first time the Ex-Puppet ever did that to an Ally.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been gone.

My Guess is that someone has already spoken to you about Her. But it won't help. She's Unstoppable. I guess the folks who wrote about my antics in the Local will be Publicly Silent on this matter.

You had your Chance, Walter. It's too late for you now. But I can help. You can take it out on me. I enjoy it.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

A Yom Kippur Statement and Prayer

As spokesman for the Chosen People, I hereby disavow any affiliation, any shared values, any mutual heritage, any common blood or DNA, with the shrieking lump of anthropomorphic tissue known as Kristina Sullivan.

The reason for this statement is threefold. The first is obvious. Any linkage between the aforementioned Creature brings shame on all of us.

Globally, each time the Thing speaks, the Earths' rotation is altered slightly by so many bodies, all over the Planet, spinning in so many graves, that the counter-gyroscopic effect cannot be mitigated for hours. This can only exacerbate the Climate Change Crisis.

More personally, by this statement I hope to guarantee that, if Political winds change, and the Cattle Cars return for us, there is no chance that I would ever have to experience the horror of sharing life in a Concentration Camp with the aforementioned Beast. That would make my stay unendurable.

Please God, let those who wish harm on us not witness her, for if they do, it shall surely bring us misery and pain. Amen.

Jewstradamus Nails Another One

The repeated dull thump. The unremitting pain, that could be stopped, if only the attempt were made to confront the offense. If only those who might do so, would do so. But the compact of silence is so strongly inbred that breaking it would deny the strength of the tradition that made us what we are.

We discuss the issues of the world in the abstract, and so many of us come down on the side of justice, of the common good. But when confronted with it in our lives, under circumstances that we could address and rectify, we fall silent. This inaction explains everything; multiplied by millions, it creates the world we lament, but that we create, by the inaction of our own lives.
We speak out against the evil on pages, in newspapers, but when we have the opportunity to look into its' eyes and say "no", we shrink.

"What can we do?" We hear it every day. A letter to the President? A shout from the rooftop? "I'm only one person."

Some buy a Prius to combat global warming. Some contribute to the ACLU to support the first Amendment.

But the triumph of greed, of arrogance, of disregard for human rights and human life must be met every time you see it, only then do we have a chance.

That is why I do what I do. It might just be one twig in the wheel of evils' progress, but what if were a branch? What if you helped? What would you lose? And what would you gain?
If you knew that the Government was trying to tell your Newspaper what to write, and who it could print, what would you think? If Cheyney had hung around the Washington Post, instead of the CIA, and exerted his influence there, what would you think? More importantly, what would you do?

What could you do? You couldn't do much, after all, you're here, and they're there. But what if you could walk in on your way home from shopping and, without confronting security or even taking an elevator, give support?

What if you could stroll into the Senate and confront someone who was doing wrong, and stop them? What if you had the right to?

What if you knew where the person who sells land for strip mining lived? What if you knew where that man went on the third Thursday of every month? What if you knew where he would be , what he owned, and what he was trying to use his money for?

What if you could tell him what you think of him to his face?

On September first, on these pages, I wrote that those "reasonable" people who voted for Rob Remus' payment for a threatened lawsuit against the Local had not thought their actions out. They had told me they did it to put the past behind them. I told them that it would only make things worse.

Those same people were on the losing side of a CHCA board vote to put Rob on the CHCA Budget and Finnance Committee, that oversees the Local's budget. The reasonable people spoke out against his appointment, stating the obvious, that anyone who had tried to obtain money from the Local under such circumstances would not be a proper steward for its' future finances.
These people were naive, and were played by the board. Their sense of fair play was a detriment in confrontations with those who do not share their values. They have been taught in the abstract by others who have no experience with the types of people they now confront.

I told them that they blew it when they gave Rob the money. Their "reasonableness," their desire to make a new beginning for the board was interpreted as nothing more or less than weakness, and as license by those who wish to do what we have now all seen them do.

It took three weeks to prove my theory. Their "new beginning" will bring about the end.
The only time that they were stopped is when thirty people in the audience refused to let them fire the editor of the Local. They never tried that again. Their tactics have changed, and I have predicted each one. Starve the Local, and deprive them of any staff that might write anything they don't want you to know about. Then all that would be left to print is what they are fed by those who have created a newspaper of, by, and for the CHCA board and businesses that now control the board.

A partnership of Richard Snowden, small time Hill businesses, and the leftover old, lonely board members have done this.

But they were helped by those who, while telling me they thought Rob Remus and Dina Hitchcock were psychopaths, voted to give him money.

What kind of people give money to psychopaths? And what kind of people confront wrong when they see it when they share a room with it? And what kind of people do nothing?

The Howling

"Shoot me if I ever go to another CHCA meeting!" I told my wife. This was last Thursday, after the opening of the Fall/Winter Board Follies for 2009--10, held, strangely, at St. Paul's instead of in the Library.

I hadn't gone for awhile, but I'd heard Hitchcock and her goons were tightening the noose on the Local further by nominating Mark Keintz and Rob Remus to the Budget and Finance Committee. These guys made up the Ad Hoc Committee (along with Hitchcock) from last year, that pushed for Jimmy Pack's firing; pushed for Pete Mazzaccaro's firing; cut Sonia Leounes's ad sales commissions in half, and after Keintz had abruptly resigned as Treasurer, installed David Mansfield to replace him.

Mansfield, a fiscal conservative who swept in with the Positively Chestnut Hill gang last Spring, is a partner to out-of-his-depth associate publisher Larry Hochberger, in radically altering fiscal mechanics at the CHCA. They've decided to cut $200,000 out of the Local's budget, and to facilitate the bleeding, got Keintzy to shove off. Now they've brought him back by appointing him to Budget and Finance, along with Remus, whom they've similarly rewarded for being a good soldier by paying him $3500 for not suing them last winter -- though his attorney hadn't moved to do so! And, I guess, for hanging in through all the sturm und drang.

Anyway, when I got to the Library, where most meetings happen, it was dark. A bunch of people were milling around, slapping at mosquitos and cursing in the moist weather.

"Didja see [Walter] Sullivan?" demanded one guy I didn't recognize. "He forgot to notify the Library Manager that we were coming, so she locked up and went home!"

"Yeah", said his friend. "So then Foghorn wanted to hold the meeting right there on the steps!"

"Thinking all the time!" said the first guy.

Finally somebody said he had a key to St. Paul's, so we hump over there. And the Board began its usual obfuscations. Hours of sliding around on zoning matters left over from the 8/27 meeting, followed by stalling on former President Ron Recko's questions on why Mansfield, Hochberger and Hitchcock seemed so set on forcing the Local to pay rent for its office space, and repay a loan from the Trustees the Local incurred in 2006, during Recko's presidency, for a three-month printing bill that was in arrears.

"How was it that Jean Hemphill 'forgave' $180,000 for Maxine Dornemann [during her administration, 2005-6] , but nothing can be done for the paper during these tough times?" Recko wondered.

At which point a weird howling began from one side of St. Paul's . It was Christine Sullivan, Walter's wife, who despite the humidity, seemed strangely furry and werewolfian: "OOooohhh!" she howled, dragging it out and pointing a long finger at Recko. "I haven't forgotten yoouuuh! We'll get to youuuh !! But FIRST I wanna know what's going on with Mr. Hochberger, here! It's put-up or shut-up time for yoouuhh, buddy! What happened to all your grand pllaaanns and proomisses?? OoohWOOooh!"

Recko tried to get things back on track, but was overwhelmed by Mrs. Sullivan's Whhoooing! He bolted for the door. Former president Tolis Vardakis, who'd been trying to interrupt Recko's line of questioning on debt relief, yelling "Point of order!", now turned to Mrs. Sullivan, but was howled down, too. "RRrrWhooor!!" she snarled, adding some pointed sharps to her flats, that sounded really dangerous. People started rushing the exits . . . I'd seen the battles over Lombardi, Sturdivant and Mishak, I remember the Walsh surgery unpleasantness, the 2008 election thefts . . . but this lycanthropy seemed beyond the pale . . . I headed for my Chevy, too.

"Never again!" I told my long-suffering wife, after I'd locked the door.

"At least next time, go armed," she said dryly.

-- Charlie Partana

overheard on the ave...

from one of the charming volunteers at the bird in hand:

i see someone approved strapping garbage to lamp posts along the avenue.

gotta love those ladies. i didn't know what she was talking about until i went and looked. i wouldn't call it garbage as much as i would call it flammable.

An Error Occured...

Note to Jeremiade.

Hit the wrong key when saving comments and two of yours were deleted. Sorry.

High Anxiety

Open Note to Walter Sullivan

Since I've been banned from corresponding with the Local in any form, I'm replying here, on home turf, to your current opinion piece in that paper.

We haven't yet reached the point in the U.S. where strongly-held opinions need to be phrased like legal torts to prevent their being described as raising the question of "malice".

In the instance you cite, I was characterizing a much rougher description, reported and alleged to me, which I took care not to repeat literally, precisely because I wanted to avoid malice, and slander.

When we reach that point where journalists all have to write like lawyers, I expect you'll call a special session of the Exec Committee, & break out the whiskey and firecrackers.

Until then, I'm sticking with the First Amendment.

John Lombardi

High Anxiety

Notes on Shtick
by John Lombardi


Since Fast Eddie Feldman has seen fit to advise Jim Foster and myself on how to write our columns, I figured I'd return the favor, a little belatedly. That's because he's begun operating like a northern snakehead now, filing practically all the posts on the blog, answering most of the comments too, circling back on his own instructions about avoiding national politics and pop culture and so on, instead of sticking to the crucial backstage news of CHCA goofiness that he finally admits the Local isn't providing . . .

For you non-fishermen out there, snakeheads are awful fish from Southeast Asia that somehow got into Florida waterways and ate all the other fish out of their streams, then wriggled into more streams -- crossing land to do it, and sometimes dying in the attempt! -- just because they were frenzy-eaters, like running blues. Hogs, really, "chozzers" I'm told it's pronounced in Yiddish, though FEF may correct me as a mere goy who has no business using Jewish idiom . . .

In all candor I should report that I paid for Eddie's roundtrip air-ticket from Berkeley last winter, when I thought there was still a chance to fight the Exec Committee's slow strangulation of the Local. The remnants of the old Lawrence Walsh/Ron Recko gang were all worked up about the Jimmy Pack firing and the move to get rid of the Local's "Editor" -- even though I kept writing that he'd copped out shortly after heroically criticizing the Spring 2008 election. I thought Ed might juice him up again if he was around, yelling and sweating in the old Jerry Rubin/Ira Einhorn (pre-murder conviction) mode. It didn't work out that way.

There was a strong movement involving the most conservative folks in the CHCA, the CHBA, and, it developed as the winter slogged into pre-election spring, a concerted effort by Richard Snowden to unify the "pro-business", anti-journalism crowd -- who'd felt since my day (in 2000-1), that any sort of imaginative reporting should be shunned the way the sparrow shuns the hawk -- "negative" writing, all that blood, barking dogs, yechhh . . .

The provincialism of Chestnut Hill still amazes me sometimes. The sheer old-fashioned pettiness, love of gossip, religiosity -- though nearly all the old ladies whom I called "the Lloydettes" are gone now: Marie Jones, Helen Moak, Nancy Hubby and Mary Anna Ross (Cowper I believe she was called, in the end?) . . . blaming the ills of the Hill on rabble like me, Fast Eddie, Recko -- ethnics coming in and trying to change the old White Mischief colonial traditions of pointlessly long board meetings, Local Management meetings (as they were then called), and all the other uncoordinated groups treading on each others' toes, changing regimes annually, so that no courses of action were sustainable -- dense numbers of dysfunctional suburbanites with unhappy home lives barking at each other for three and four hours at a shot, then heading for Campbell's to slosh some beer and bourbon over the whole mess and keep on trucking . . .

Market forces are what undid the Hill, people. The Germantown Avenue Bridge repair, which lasted for years, changing Montgomery County shopping patterns by interrupting old commuter habits of visiting the "Village" between the Top of the Hill and the flower market near the Mt. Airy line, for cheese, hardware, shoe repair, antiques, fine prints, dry cleaning, haircuts, Caruso's, lovely, 19th century strolls . . . Given the Malling of America & Philly taxes, real estate rental along the Avenue grew too steep for realistic profit-making, and psuedo-businessmen like Snowden, Sanjiv Jain and Rob Remus screwed things up further, leaving empty storefronts (for tax writeoffs) that are beginning to resemble the Yosemite Gold Rush ghost-towns of the Sierra Nevada. And there is racial liebesraum--pushing from Germantown proper and the North Philly ghetto, too, which some Hillers are too hypocritical to talk about . . .

But what saddens me is the journalistic waste. The Hill and surrounding communities are full of smart readers with taste and vision who aren't members of, say, Carolyn Hausserman's former cast-iron committees, or the CHCA at all. No one's addressing them. They're not listening to foolishness like the Local's happy reports about how swell everything is; or Fast Eddie's baroque shtick on Snowden's "master plan" to force everyone else out of the picture so that he can build condos in the Hill parking lots, or start soft coal strip-mining operations in Pastorius Park.

The Hill's ideal readers know that Snowden, for one, is no real threat. He's just a rich dilletante. What corporation would employ a guy who buys buildings as tax writeoffs on a permanent basis? What's the profit margin there, bro? But Ed knits & purls this conspiracy stuff -- adapted from Lloyd Wells's old obsessions, by the way -- like a vaudeville trouper. His themes are Snowden -- about whom he hopes to write a book, without, apparently, doing any real research (if he'd just read the old Inky series on S's Germantown misadventures before he even got to the Hill, FEF would realize how futile a project that is, saleswise) ; race -- though he always leaves crime out; and character assassination -- he was recently sadistic on Len Lear and Walter Sullivan, just because he thinks they're vulnerable. And smarmy sex -- to prove, I guess, what a naughty boy he is: here's what he had to say about Rob Remus in "Curiouser & Curiouser" in this space, August 30:

"So Rob, who once told a gay man that he wanted to insert a body part into his body [sic], now offers, then denies, access to his children to me for some reason. He dangled his kids in front of me for a reason I can't even imagine."

Sure you can, FEF. It's just sick shtick.

Live on Tape This Weekend...

This unabashed promo brought to you by Waylaid Pilgrim on behalf of Rev. Chris.

It's Beatles Night this Saturday. The Reverend will be performing solo from 6 to 9 PM with the band joining him afterwards.

The show takes place at the Tavern on the Hill, 8636 Germantown Avenue, at the very top of Chestnut Hill.

And don't forget to tip the staff.

Run for the Cause

by Coach Ed
It's the weekend, so I'll get off Richie and his board for a while. (All right -you in the back-stop giggling) And talk a little sports-and politics-and race-My Spicy Triple Delight.

Since everyone has been talking about the Vickster (and I have given him Dina Hitchcock's phone number), I won't. Instead I will compare two figures and their shared problem, Donovan McNabb and Barack Obama.

They share some obvious common attributes; they're black, they're smart, they've been successful, and they have had the hopes of many piled on top of them.

But how they respond to their mix of attributes, both natural and acquired, and how Philadelphia and America responds to their response is the subject for this fine, soft, September day.

Responding to stereotypes is not ignoring them, it's acknowledging them. It's giving them credence. And that's what both of them have done, to their own, and our, detriment.

In the case if Donovan, it boiled down to the word, "athlete". Many of us would love to have that word used to describe us, even once. Alas, I never get to be called that, outside of my bed. But to many, it's just a euphemism, describing a "natural" talent, rather than expertise gained through work.

To many, it's a way to criticize someones' intellect by by praising their physique.

To many it's just another way of saying that they sure can run fast and jump high, and sing and dance.

Donovan knows this, and it had always eaten at him. If I were a racist, I would say that his guilt about this issue makes him seem not only white, but jewish.

So Donovan wants to prove he's not this stereotype of a talented but uncerebral black athlete, and has resisted using a part of his game that, while feeding into that stereotype, would improve his chances, and his teams chances for success.

Donovan doesn't like to run. I must acknowledge an unsolved mystery here. Perhaps Andy Reid is the one who does not allow this. His pass-first offense may indicate a general reluctance in this area. But all the other trickery that I have seen in this offense, including Vick's addition, seems to preclude this possibility.

And all that has been said on this subject, without it actually being said, leads me to the conclusion that Donovan thinks that running brands him as the kind of "natural', "gifted" player that is just means something else, the word we all know.

Vicks' addition may be the validation of the thesis, that now, Andy has someone who doesn't mind the label.

And over Donovan's shoulder has always been the specter of Randall Cunningham. If some of us don't remember, Donovan does. A better athlete than Donovan ever was, but a worse quarterback. But while the most racist fans probably always blamed Randall's "athleticism" for zero Super Bowl appearances, it was another non-athletic aspect of his game that hampered him, and his team.

Randall was Goofy. And Lazy. In preparation and during the game, he didn't take the time to see the situation clearly and react properly. And often he just plain didn't follow the plays called, even before they broke down. Making his runs necessary. And Vick was the same way.

As I write about a man being lazy who is also black, I think about what that sounds like, and I pause. That pause is a guilty reaction to the racist stereotype that I know exists. Some may be angered by the "lazy" remark. Some may anger over my guilty pause. Both sides of the story are created by the original dynamic.

But since every attribute and every color of person can intersect, that guilt must be overcome by the logic of that knowledge.

Randall was lazy and nutty, Donovan is neither. Both are black. Only two kinds of people draw any other lines between those attributes. Racists and people afraid of the stereotypes drawn by racists.
Fear of stereotyping exhibited by a guy who isn't afraid of Brian Urlacher just makes me more facinated by the human psyche than ever. And by the power of cultural indoctrination and the responses to it. Donovans intellectual fear is proof that he is thinking a little too much.

The ironic part has always been the way intellect and athleticism could have co-existed in the Eagles offense. If a running play would have been called for Donovan in the first quarter of every game, then the threat of it would have been as effective as it being repeated. That would have been the cerebral way of using athleticism to the teams advantage. That it was never utilized that way makes me think the dumb guy is the one with the headset.

Fear of what certain people might think or say has similarly paralyzed our chief executive. So locked into being reasonable, bi-partisan, and non-threatening, he has ceded the field to those with no such baggage.

Fear of being labeled radical has never been a right wing one. They've been that way, in or out of power. And to head off any possibility of balanced political epithet response (BPER), the right has cleverly begun to call the left both communist AND fascist, leaving us with nothing left to call them.

The response doesn't have to be emotional, it can be factual. Since 1968, Ku Klux Klan members, when they vote, vote Republican. Since 1968,The Aryan Nation, when they vote, vote Republican. Red State hate crimes are ten times the number of Blue States.

But when the right brings guns to public meetings, they just call out John Wayne's name, and all is forgiven. The last left wing group to bring guns to a public meeting were the Black Panthers. Who were the same color as the president. And so, just like Donovan, in order to give no one any reason to think he has anything in common with THOSE black men, the President tries to be more reasonable than any republican has ever thought of being.

It's a very noble pursuit. The only problem is, it has never worked, and it won't work now. They call him every name they can think of, except that one they really want to use. If he fought back, hard and dirty, could it get any worse? Could he get any less votes then they give him now? He has nothing to gain from this style, except their contempt and our collective failure.

Munich and Chamberlain"s appeasement has been used more than Larry Craig's ass. Why don't the dems ever think of the analogy in getting domestic policy passed? The last dem that used his balls outside of an interns' mouth was LBJ, and all we got was medicare and the voting rights act. If he would have put them in dry dock overseas, he would be as deified by dems as that orange haired alzheimer tool of orange county is now.

But Barry is afraid of the stereotype. Even as his tiny enforcer, Rahm-son-of-terrorist, lets Israel be as ballsy as they want to be (I guess the palestinians can't get into any town meetings), he tells the "radicals" of his own party to calm down.

So Barry, stay in the pocket and don't run, be reasonable, but know that it doesn't work when the other side doesn't play by the same rules. And just like Donovan, who has lost a step, it's probably too late. It will just seem vindictive if you start now. No super bowl and no health care. Because two black men were afraid of what the whites would think of them. The freudian tail end of racism coming back to destroy those who thought they had overcome.

Do You Read the Local?

Do you read the Local? I do, on line, so it's free. Do you read the quotes from prominent Hillers that are printed in the Local? I do. Here are some.

Concerning variances sought by Richard Snowden's Bowman Properties:
Board member Dina Hitchcock commended Richard Snowden for sticking with his plans for the property "This is a far cry from 2004 when near neighbors of the property wanted to oppose development of that property at any cost." Dina, not a near neighbor, nor a resident of Chestnut Hill or Philadelphia, but of Malvern Pa., should read the Local's reporting of the process, in the August 12 and 26 2004 issues.

Turns out that she's full of shit. Read it yourself. The neighbors were quoted as supporting the project, but had concerns about parking during construction and wanted to know about the tenants and construction duration. L&I had already refused some aspects, and even the rubber stamp DRC had questions.

Katie Worrel reported it all. "Any Cost" was not a metaphor used. Richie withdrew, quoted then as saying he was "waiting for the phone to ring" from the neighbors. And Richie would not agree to a time limit, as proposed by the DRC, not the neighbors. Look it up, Dog Lady, I did.

Richie waited, and now no one asks him anything, cause he owns them.

Dina also doesn't mention when she fought Richie, tooth and nail, over his purchase of the 8431 property. I remember when she and her pal Carol (Smith College and Lithium-Great Together) Cope told ME to not worry about a vote on the subject at a board meeting. They brought up items for discussion that no one had ever thought about before, in order to postpone the sale indefinitely. It was the ONLY time we ever worked together. Convict and CHCA trustee Chip Butler overode their anti-Snowden plans with a Christmas recess property transfer - and who knows what other kind of transfer - against board orders.

After the meeting where Dina thwarted Richie's plans, she told me that Richie was a"sick puppy" and gloated whilst tippling at the bar with Carol.

Now Dina sits next to Richie at the board meetings and defends him in print.

Dina saw what Stewy Graham and others did, a new order coming, but while Stwey and his followers left the board, Dina just couldn't. It's her Life. So she buried the hatchet and now eats Snowden Shit. The price of the unbridled power one can retain as an ex-executive committee member of a community organization in a community she doesn't live in. Huh?

I smell a fat contribution to Dina's Pit Bull Rescue from a certain realty company. If not well, who's the sick puppy now? You mean you didn't do it for the other sick puppies?

Now to Richie's quotes. Get ready for the comedy, kids.

The Local reports, "He did not elaborate on his reasons on halting the project (back in 2004) "Instead , he said the "investment climate was not suitable for the project back then."
Here's where it gets wondrous. If you shake your head in response to that statement, remembering a booming economy and real estate market in 2004, and a depressed one now, I forgive you. That makes Richie's statement sound illogical. But actually, it makes it super logical, and fucked up evil, all at the same time.

Richie is in full control of the board and his projects now BECAUSE of the economy. It's what got the business association and all the bottom feeder merchants to swallow whatever he asked them to swallow, and take the board. You have to be a coal mine leaser to get projects going now, and that's just what Richie is.

It's more wondrous. Richie waited for Hill businesses to be weak enough financially, and the board weak enough organizationally, for him to take over. He didn't have to wait for any moral weakness. That one was always there. But Richie and his family have always preyed on the weak.

Some of them couldn't take it, but Richie thrives on it. His knowledge of Dina's past attitude towards him doesn't anger him, her turnaround is his victory. He waited, and won. He may comfort himself with a metaphor concerning the length of time it takes for coal to become coal, but probably NOT one about how long it takes for a glacier to melt.

But my favorite line from this week's Local is one that will go right next to the Pulitzer prize winner's "Snowden Should Die".

It's Richie saying,"I lose sleep thinking, What if we get it wrong?"

Richie, if you haven't lost sleep over leasing land your ancestors tricked farmers out of for strip mining, destroying their lungs, leaving rubble to contaminate their watershed, and spewing black filth into the blue sky, I think you'll be able to leave the Seconal in the medicine cabinet over the Gravers Lane thing.

Crime Pays - You Read It Here First

by J. Edgar Feldman

I have been told the Local will report this, but maybe not. They certainly won't give the background I have already given you.

Rob Remus, coattail candidate from Sanjiv Jain's membership buy in the '08 election, has been paid off by the Chestnut Hill Community Association after threatening suit for some things that were printed about him in the Local, regarding an argument he had. I guess Robs' feelings were hurt.

Big bald burly Rob, who threatens women, and men whom he thinks, because of his attitude towards gay men, can't kick the shit out of him, who just offered me his children over the phone, and then thought better of it, just got paid off for being a thug.

Luckily for Rob, this time he picked an adversary with even smaller ones than his. Yes, the CHCA, in his debt for the bullying he has done to employees of the Local, now has given him $3500.00 of CHCA members' money to pay off his debts, or to get his children some therapy.

The suit was never brought, it was just threatened TO be brought. I could have saved you all the money by telling you that Rob has neither the cash or the balls to have actually brought the suit.
But while some of those who voted for the payoff did it for reasons of expediency, it was really a fee for services rendered.

Some folks just want the past to be buried, to make another unpleasant year go away.

Sound familiar? It should. I called it the "Let's Move On Tabernacle Choir." They've been singing the same tune for six years now.

Here's how it works. Someone on the board gets caught with their hand in your cookie jar. The Local, through letters, opinion pieces or reportage, would tell you about it. I would confront them about it at meeting. They would never deny it. They would say "Let's Move ON." "Let's not Dwell on the Past," followed by "You're Out Of Order." Election rigging, hush money payoffs, trustees dragged off to prison without any questions about their tenure watching your money.

I finally figured out that the only way I could get anyone punished is if I could rig up a Time Machine and get them BEFORE they committed the crime, then they couldn't say the "Past was Past" 'cause it wouldn't be the past yet. I'm still workin' on it.

I used to tell you in the Local. Now I tell you here.

No one ever threatened me with libel. But they would threaten the Local, and the Local would have to take it. The CHCA owns the Local, you see, and it wouldn't do for their financial circle jerk to be reported in their own newspaper. What's the point of owning a Paper if it tells people the dirty truth about you. It doesn't make sense!

After being dragged through endless evaluations of his work, threatened with being fired, bullied by punks like Rob, and John (Flight Risk) Capoferri before him, all brought on by vengeance-seekers in retaliation for their exposure, Pete the editor got tired of the fights. I can't blame him. It's all about the groceries. I know what it's like.

That's why you see my work here now. Our circulation is growing, and I get mail on my website nationwide for more details.

Here's some. To the reasonable folks who just want to end the unpleasantness, I have two communiques.

Legal expediency insults the law if administered unequally. You have not settled the Jimmy Pack claim. Jimmy Pack was a Local employee, who got into an argument with Rob, where, as reported by Jimmy, Rob threatened him, with the added flourish of anti-gay hate speech. It was reported in the Local by, among others, a man who is a reporter by trade, who got it from Jimmy, the victim.

Jimmy lost his job over this. Jimmy has brought a claim. The CHCA is fighting it. Rob just threatened to bring a claim. And now Rob has gotten paid. That's expediency or fair play or whatever you want to call it to the CHCA board.

To the reasonable, expedient ones, who thought this would put the past behind you, you have only succeeded in ripping off the scab. Unless you settled with Jimmy simultaneously, you have, in that famous court of public opinion, taken sides in these matter. And the Defendant's attorney in the Pack suit will note this.

You have sided with Rob, who has a history of contentiousness and bullying, all documented, against an openly gay man in a case that has an element of anti-gay hate speech.

Does litigation expediency ever account for publicity - or public opinion - or the story being juicy enough to be picked up by the wider press? Shouldn't that factor into your Realpolitik interpretation of the incident and its resolution?

The Irony here is in the amount of closeted gay men who have and do hold posts on the board and in the CHCA. Their silence is the most troubling of all to me. It is easy for me to interpret the bullshit marketed by the board and accepted by an uninterested neighborhood as the latter's Karma. But individuals whose fear deprives them of the voice that has been given them through struggle and sacrifice just saddens me. I would here ask for someone to send in the the gay version of Uncle Tom, but I won't hold my breath.

My second message to those who voted for the Remus payoff with good intentions is this, and I'll put in a way in which I have heard so many other preface their endless remarks in board meetings.

Ahem! I have been in the Hill for long enough to know - Harrumph! - that while your heart may be pure, the majority is using your "reasonableness" as a tool for their greed and their pathological vengeance. They got you to agree to pay off their stooge. He was Sanjiv's stooge before that-and to screw Jimmy further. They have always worked this way, only the helpers change.

And here's the capper. The money paid to Rob, who threatened a Local employee, will be taken out of the Local. The whole affair has already been blamed on "lax" mangement by Pete and he'll take another hit for the actions of his enemies. That's how it will work. Which weakens the Local even more. So while Jimmy just gets threatened with an anal assault, the Local actually gets to experience one.

Those who thought this to be the expedient play did not think this through.