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.