(Not) Waiting For Superman

I think I should tie each of my blog titles to some song.  The last posting about Dave Carey not seeking re-election could have featured Paranoid by Black Sabbath.  I'd have to go with the Flaming Lips Waiting for Superman, something a bit more innocuous, for the news that Gary Superman has decided to make it a menage a cinq for the borough mayor job.

I don't think anyone is surprised by Gary's announcement and each candidate offers the voters something quite different.

First to announce was Dale Bagley. Dale is sane, which is a not a claim all of the candidates can make.  One of the most worrisome things about Dale was that he ran Joe Miller's Kenai Peninsula campaign.  Joe has been one of the sleaziest, dishonest, self-serving, full-of-crap office-seekers since Jerry Ward.  That someone would back Miller despite all the BS, is beyond belief.  Oh, wait a minute, most all of the voters from the peninsula voted for Miller.

Then you have Debie Brown.  Anyone who has heard her testify at a meeting knows three things: she can't ever get to the point or be clear; she has a whacked sense of what is important; and she cannot make the claim that she is sane.

Ron Long is the sole progressive of the lot, a guy that makes decisions by learning as much as he can about an issue and then applying some logical thought to the process.  But so far, he is running a lack-luster race and doesn't really seem to have direction.  He's not that well-known in the central or south peninsula and that could be problematic.

Fred Sturman, along with Ms Brown, a fixture at borough assembly meetings, has one thing to say- times are tough and we have to cut everything.  Fred wants us to live without schools, roads, police, firefighters, EMTs, garbage dumps, hospitals, and any sort of regulation. Good luck with that.

And now Gary Superman is in the mix. Gary transformed a bit when he was on the assembly and actually seem to come around and understand the purpose of the borough government.  One thing I want to know is what he did to get the ACT people to dislike him so much? As far as I'm concerned, being on the ACT hit list is a good thing!

Carey's Notion - Blame it on the Aristocrats

It's old news by a day, but I am sure most of you are aware that Carey has decided not to seek a second term as borough mayor.  It's been a rough first term for Dave: hiring inexperienced and unqualified people and giving them huge pay raises; having his chief of staff getting caught in a questionable business deal with the borough; getting blasted by the out-going emergency manager for the Mayor's inept running the borough; flip-flopping on most major decisions; palling around with terrorists (Schaeffer Cox and the North Road Militia) and the open-carry crowd; and having students tell him that cutting funding to KPC wasn't a good idea.

So, Dave has bowed out of the race.  It's a tough job and certainly one where it is impossible please everyone.  But rather than bow out with grace, honor and self-respect, Carey, in his official statement that you can read here, chose to take a paranoid approach and assign blame to various bogeymen for his failings. 

First, and in typical Carey fashion, he wraps himself in the American flag as if he has sole ownership and understanding of what it means.  The implication is, of course, that if you disagree with Dave, you are not patriotic.  When he had the fire hydrants painted red, white and blue as Mayor of SOLdotna, I wondered if it was still OK for dogs to pee on them? I guess this will be the last Progress Day parade where Dave carries a 49-star flag and lectures us all about it.

Dave is also proud of getting 64% of the vote when he was elected borough mayor, but of course there are lies, damn lies and statistics.  The voter turnout was dismally low when he ran, so another way of looking at it is that about 66% of the eligible voters didn't vote for him. 

Using some Carey-logic, he concludes that it would be unethical and would give him an unfair advantage to seek re-election while currently serving as mayor because he was elected to serve everyone. As mayor, he might make a decision these next few months that could make people happy, so that would go against his vow to God.

Huh?!? 

It is my understanding that as a politician, if you can make good decisions most of the time, that becomes a reason to seek re-election.  Then you can stand on your record of accomplishments and an opponent would have to have a darn good reason to run against you.

Right now, four people are in the race because they think they could do a better job.

Then Dave blasts the 'aristocrats' on the previous borough assembly.  Aristocrats?  Like Gary Superman, a North Road bar owner?  Pete Sprague, a retired mailman?, Ron Long, a small-business owner from Seward?, Paul Fisher, a half-asleep assembly member?  Or maybe Millie Martin, the grandmother from the south peninsula?  None of these folks meet any definition of aristocrat, but they do all have one thing in common, they (maybe with one exception, sorry PF), are a heck of a lot smarter than Dave.  And they, with one exception (sorry again, PF) had the audacity to challenge Dave when Carey would make a bone-head move. In other words, most of them (yep, let's leave PF out of this one too) did their job.  Most all would try hard to follow Robert's Rules of Order when conducting assembly meetings, something Gary K, the current assembly president, should experiment with.

Carey goes on to tout the mantra that defines a simplistic political solution to problems that we have here in Alaska and the US - the government spends too much. All right, already.  But what to cut?  If you don't think some service is necessary, someone else does. So, when Dave proposed cutting funding to KPC, despite a voter mandate to provide that funding, students, faculty and other concerned citizens protested, just like that Paul Revere guy shooting off bells and warning the redcoats.

How did Dave respond?  He hired a lawyer to intimidate those young punks that were intimidating him.  And then Dave gives the lawyer a plug in his statement.  Isn't THAT unethical?

Dave directs his final paranoid delusion towards Gary Turner, the head of KPC.  The assembly has an ordinance to consider that would prohibit politicians from being on the payroll of an organization that receives borough funding. That sort of makes sense - you don't want conflict-of-interest issues to come up.  It's all about ethics, of course. It could appear that some quid pro quo was in effect by steering money to some entity while that entity paid you.  What's funny here is that Dave was trying to cut funding for KPC and at the same time, wanting to stay on that gravy train.  It just came back to bite him in the ass.

But don't expect Dave to really understand ethics or ethical behavior.  Maybe a few years in the seminary is just what the dude needs.