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I don't initiate Hangouts, but will attend if invited.
My readers who recognize right away the connection between #nerdland and MHP already know what I'm commencing to write about, and they might as well know right now I'm not happy about that one bit--she was the main reason I'd tune in to MSNBC on Saturdays. I've said it before on this blog and I'll say it again: JOB ONE of the people on camera is to draw an audience, and the only reason MSNBC did a 180 with MHP in South Carolina was because they got several earfuls from HER audience, and she had a loyal one.
For my readers who still don't know that I'm talking about Melissa Harris Perry (MHP), well, now you know--the queen of #nerdland. When MSNBC mistreated her, they dissed their audience and now they're going to have to do without hers. Rewind to what I said about Viacom's stock dropping as they lost the audiences of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert...and Colbert's audience numbers for CBS' Late Show bear this out. He took the Colbert Nation with him. I just hope CBS is more realistic about audience expectations for Colbert than it was with Robin Williams--CBS was provably out of line there.
And now we have MSNBC stepping in it, realizing too late that the people in front of the camera aren't there for their own benefit--they're there for the audience, and it's the audience that is boss of you, MSNBC.
It's the audience that keeps your lights on, furnishes your paychecks, sets the rates your advertisers think are worth paying for, and pays your stock holders. #DUH
As Governor Mary Fallin has pointed out to the press recently, Oklahoma is a very conservative state that won't cotton to a socialist...and she was speaking to MSNBC, of all things, which is an eyebrow raiser in its own right. And she said this as Bernie Sanders appeared in Tulsa (a known blue pocket in deep red Oklahoma), as he drove an enormous turn-out. As liberal as Tulsa looks, it's nonetheless an essential part of Oklahoma's economic scenario, given its location near interstate traffic AND its proximity to a port with access to Mississippi River barge traffic--both of which are advantageous in the flow of commerce on a large, historic scale.
Here's the bigger kicker, though--Oklahoma appears to be polling in favor of Trump in Oklahoma on the GOP side, and he's not only a celebrity creature of NBC but has good things to say about Planned Parenthood, getting away with pandering to the anti-abortion crowd in the same breath. You'd think that evangelical support would go towards the Huckabee candidacy, never pandering to anti-abortionists while being completely against Planned Parenthood regardless of anything else it does--but it hasn't.
Then again, the governor doesn't come out dead set against gays like a lot of Oklahomans do, and Oklahoma cast approval of Wesley Clark for POTUS when nobody else in the country did.
Oklahoma defies the typical labels carried by both major parties, despite efforts of state party leaders to demand otherwise. Both of them. Thus this recent decision by Democrats to include Independents in their primaries was a wise strategic move regarding Oklahoma, but it also signals a break in the inter-Party agreements to maintain lopsided ballot access to the exclusion of all other parties and to the exclusion of Independents. The rise of the Tea Party and the GOP pandering to the same simply exhibited how weak it actually was, given the stated position of the Tea Party that the GOP wasn't conservative enough and that Dubya was to be despised...evidence of which was Jeb's failure to rise in the current GOP.
And yet Oklahoma saw fit to name a state highway after Dubya. Liberal move, Oklahoma.
Oklahoma is clearly shifting liberal. No bigger posterboy for that is Enid City government. Case closed.
Feb. 26 Friday UPDATE, Endorsement Polka Edition:As I type this, I'm listening to Ted Cruz's wax loquacious about Chris Christie's endorsement of Donald Trump--and I'm amazed at just how leftist Ted Cruz has turned, lambasting "corporate welfare", completely against job creators hiring illegal immigrants while in the same breath say he's not only in favor of job creation but championing what unions have been championing: workplace safety and higher wages, though I've recalled him saying things along the lines of being against a minimum wage somewhere in the past. Those things are what Democrats favor and say they're fighting for, all the way down to the concept behind why Ralph Nader saw to it that there's an OSHA department in federal government. Adding wow on top of wow is Rush Limbaugh's endorsement of this Republican leftist. Who'd-a thunk it. The Koch bros. on the other hand are getting behind Rubio, bottled-water-guzzling warts and all. Truth of the matter is that Rubio is as close to mainstream as the Republican establishment can get, as if it didn't get the message the Tea Party sent 'em the first time: Republican voters don't like the Republican Party establishment, and there's been no greater blazing sign in that regard by the failure of all previous established Republican leaders getting brutally kicked to the curb, and even by evangelicals who think Trump's a better deal than Huckabee. The big question du jour is "who can stop Trump?" Well, the people who have been voting for him prefers that this question not get an answer, not even from leftist Ted Cruz. Yeah--I'm popping big buckets of popcorn for this year's primaries. Bernie vs Hillary? Who are they?
Mini-UPDATE up top:Noticed a certain pattern of blog entry hits just now and it's looking like somebody discovered the "easter egg" I left at the public library. Hehehehehehe. Hello there. :D
March 8 mini-UPDATE, John Oliver Edition: Oliver ripped on "special districts" in this vid but managed to cover a number of items that sound Enid-familiar. Worth a watch for everything he covered:
An entirely chance encounter while shopping on Saturday put a huge smile on my face, for it was a City employee, who shall remain nameless, offering me kudos for becoming such a regular at the City Commission meetings, and that I should keep it up. I responded with thanks, pointing out that all I was doing was just "riding herd". This employee wasn't the first to do so, I must point out, though; I encountered the first one while attending the various Christmas musical performances during the Christmas season, a person who additionally quipped that I'm probably famous now after appearing so much on the City's cable access channel (which covers the City Commission meetings). Had to remind this person that nobody's really famous until they start getting dogged by the National Enquirer.
Nonetheless, in some respects all that herd-riding has paid off in terms of street improvements now being realized in front of the Emerson school, and although it's been months later since I brought up Enid Transit as a tourism revenue source, mentioning that there had darn well better be a city that tourist riders WANT to look at, improvements (albeit limited), have been realized since I brought that up.
And so it has been with my bringing up the matter of the poor retail revenue from the downtown area year after year after year, a situation that Main Street Enid hasn't improved upon year after year after year after...you get the idea...because the City Manager's office initiated (among related things) addressing some principle about parking space being conducive to customer spending downtown. That's where they went catty-wonkers from reality by a study that didn't cover the entire actual downtown commerce area, and took pains to avoid looking at the downtown area where the City owned the most real estate, like in the southeast sector of downtown where the Convention Center looms to overshadow the baseball park, and where Cafe Garcia operates by the City's benevolent Big Brother graces.
The Assistant City Manager made this skewed presentation to a Study Session some time ago, included a map that was engineered to obscure the fact that the study was inadequate...a map I took color-coded liberty with but STILL doesn't show the whole story as yet--but I'm still working on that, and a video to post on YouTube utilizing drive-arounds to compare to the map and the presentation.
So yeah--I know a lot of you have about given up on checking back here for a new post without luck (until now), but this is the reason I haven't made a new entry yet. The project isn't finished yet, and I've got quite a ways to go on it before I can consider it finished. Here's a bit of a preview of the City SNAFU in question (keep in mind that the original was NOT color coded, nor was it ever analyzed by TYPE, as I did with the City map, below:
While I was working on my presentation and analysis, Saturday rendered another development, one that we of Enid have seen, at this point, too many times already:
So you see, in raising the downtown revenue shortcomings even with Main Street Enid blowing wads of cash to throw lavish parties downtown, I've got a serious somebody (somebodies in times past) to back me up on that--SO--by all means, watch this space for further developments on this.
You see, whether I win or lose an election doesn't make as much difference to me as actually making a difference, period--and it's clear that I have made a difference to some people. What I won't do is blow a lot of time where I make no difference to anybody.
Don't get me wrong, though--I don't let contrary people stop me from trying to make a difference. I go in where a difference is needed and, as in the case of the City Commission, I can ride herd on a herd that has other ideas. What I'm talking about is something quite aside from that, though. There comes a point where something is akin to beating one's head against an immovable wall, so the strategy to move the wall doesn't work and a different approach is called for. In all the decades I've roamed this planet, I've been called a lot of things, and a lot of 'em weren't complimentary...but..."masochist" wasn't one of 'em.
Sunday mini-UPDATE: While doing some more work on the graphics portion of the aforementioned video, it occurred to me that I made mention of the risks of hotel over-building both to the Commission (I called it the building of things to accommodate the people who think Enid's a lovely place to visit but they wouldn't want to live here) last year, and via City system email to the City Manager in particular, going into further detail in writing about how that mirrored Albuquerque's dilemma.
Rewind to the first Punched Out Judy I produced, where there was a study session segment devoted to how "man camps" worked in terms of what sorts of accommodations for oil field workers might be arrived at and whereupon I made comment about how the dickens could affairs of Bismarck ND had anything to do with the City of Enid? Well, this downtown hotel quandary is part and parcel of overbuilding hotel accommodations for people who love to visit Enid but wouldn't want to live here. But where does Albuquerque fit in?
As poster boy for what happens when hotel accommodations are overbuilt: Albuquerque's problem is the hotel/motel sector scrambling to keep rooms full and resorting to accommodate traffickers and pimps because that's where the demand for hotel/motel rooms is after the influx of respectable people drop off, and the result of that is climbing law enforcement costs--THAT's what. And that's part and parcel of the message being sent by yet another hotel developer whose bread & butter comes from people who love to visit Enid for the future trollops, but still wouldn't want to live here.
It's an environment which people who do live here want to raise their kids around, as evidenced by the wads of cash they throw at building school buildings while hiring illiterate idiot administrators expected to be the judge of literate teachers they hire when they're not hiring "communications specialists", fine arts "experts" and twirling coaches. There aren't any jobs in Enid in the areas that our schools train the kids in....UNLESS....they already know ahead of time that overbuilding hotel/motel spaces will make Enid the porn film producing capital of the world. For that, Enid kids will be already highly qualified.
The article starts out comparing Medford to Enid on the front page, and inside, mentions in passing "The only other two area county seats..." so if you see this map as 3 county seats beating Garfield County's seat (Enid), it's not bloody likely for the reader reading this article before the morning coffee has kicked in. Fair enough they point out that this is the 5th straight month of sales decline in Enid, but when you look at Enid as being the state's commerce crossroads that it is, with state, interstate, and Port 33 connections, you have to wonder why the people driving through hang onto their money until they get out of Enid to spend it.
Perhaps it's the case that no trucker in his right mind would even consider spending hard earned cash in a city where there are bridges that eat trucks. Just sayin'. One of those prosperous counties abuts Garfield County's northern border; one abuts its southern border, and the third is next door to the west of the county on Garfield's southern border. TWO counties, next door to each other, to Garfield County's south. Garfield didn't lose as much as the two counties to the west of it, but it also shows that north-south sales traffic is more robust than the east-west traffic...so...yeah, City of Enid--you shouldn't be surprised that truckers come from Texas and as far as trucking entities go, you're already on the Texas shit list.
Next question: what damn good is Main Street Enid in terms of boosting retail sales downtown? Answer: absolutely NO damn good whatsoever. It just makes Enid look like Oklahoma's party capital for blowing wads of capital to the four winds.
Sadie Hawkins Day Education Edition UPDATE, up top:
Since posting the post below about the sorry state of local education on the whole and the Enid Public Schools bond-raiding corruption streak which produces entertainment-skilled kids for entertainment export to the two U.S. coasts, THIS just came down the pike from the Wall Street Journal in terms of kids learning skills that design and make things. In terms of creativity, creating good, safe roads, bridges and buildings just doesn't count because it's not entertaining enough for Enid, so screw science. And now Enid Public Schools join other public school systems across Oklahoma because of the proposed voucher arrangement that allows public money to follow students even when they choose to go to private school, charter school, or home school.
I fully understand the argument against the measure from a teacher's point of view, and sympathize with that, believe me. But administrators have turned public education into such a corrupt bond-raiding racket for crony enrichment that my position is that we've gotta start somewhere to break that cycle of corruption. Sure, private schools have been turned into rackets, too, but we gotta start breaking the cycle somewhere. Public school corruption is a great place to begin.
From the Wall Street Journal article
The bond issue "overwhelmingly" passed, so the misrepresentations made by Floyd and propagated by the newspaper convinced Enid's liberal voters to turn out. Get used to it, conservatives: the passage of this bond means that the voter base of Enid is as liberal as its throw-money-at-every-problem City Commission is. The victories in Iowa and New Hampshire by Donald Trump further illustrates that the conservative argument and position isn't persuasive. Conservatives are just going to have to suck it up both locally and nationally. No, I will NOT delete this post. Just because the voting public got successfully snookered doesn't change what the facts are. Fact remains that the Enid News & Eagle has a complete disregard for the facts including contradicting its earlier reporting on the state of the school system in its previous articles.
The paper formally endorsed passage of the bond issue in its op ed today, which explains why it previously published false statements made by Darrell Floyd in not one but two consecutive articles about the bond, AND why it failed to inform the public that Google will be seeing to each pupil getting a tablet AND other facilities to foster computer science.
Nearly $100 million was spent on renovations to all our schools as of the 2010 bond issue when keeping the Vance Air Force Base was at stake during the Bush era Base Realignment And Closing program (BRAC). Vance is still here, Vance is already happy with the upgrades and renovations, people, and THEY were the ones concerned about future growth, reported by the same Enid News & Eagle as having been figured into the amount that bond asked for--and got.
I put it to you, Enid--if, after already spending $100 million on renovations already done, with enough "savings" to give a project no voter voted to approve in the form of the Enid High's University Center, what makes you think that Google's unreported contribution to education technology isn't going to result in massive "savings" to be raided for future vanity projects nobody gets to vote on too? What was spent on the University Center was diverted from the projects voted on, and we still have deficient schools, the paper claims (compare today's paper with the already cited paper printed in 2014), then we can't trust these people with getting more money.
With Oklahoma seriously contemplating a sales tax hike to fund education needs and Gov. Fallin's State of the State address, the EPS bond tax will just be redundant, levying a burden that will render any future City of Enid project bond issues an automatic NO vote regardless of its merits, so this EPS bond issue is very much the City of Enid's business.
