Other Things That Larry Did Not Do This Past Week1

People are making a big fuss over the mayor wanting to erase a recording. But let's all remember, he did not actually erase it. No harm, no foul, right? And there are a lot of other bad things he did not do this week, for example, he did not:

1. Taser or threaten to taser somebody's son [* *]
   
2. Unleash emus on an unsuspecting village in Eastern Ontario [*]
   
3. Induce miscarriages as an art project after artificially inseminating himself [* *]
   
4. Give a young wife that he's never slept with 30 days to move out of her apartment. [*]
5. [there is no fifth thing]
   
6. Consistently arrive late for practices and reportedly party in nightclubs and thus lose the season for the Senators [*]
7. Kill a baby seal
   
8. Protest the hunting of baby seals [*]
   
9. Create huge fund-raising debt by appearing nude in a calendar that sold poorly [*]
10. Tow away a repossessed car with a sleeping child inside [*]
11. Cut a henchman's brake cables to distract a superhero while he commits another crime

While we're on the topic of erasing things, in the old days, we used to carry big magnets to erase audio and videotape. Magnets might not work on the new chips they use, but what about a taser?



¹ As far as we know.

12 other Mayors with problems

Ontario

• Carleton Place Mayor Paul Dulmage has had a private charge issued against him dismissed after a businessman said the mayor threatened to hunt him down like a dog.

USA

• Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is hanging on for his political life after the revelation that, among 14,000 text messages between him and his chief of staff Christine Beatty, there was evidence of an extramarital affair between the pair -- evidence that contradicts his sworn statements in a whistleblower case brought by former police officers that ended in $9 million in damages against the city.
• Former Leighton, Alabama, Mayor Robert Ricks was sentenced to 12 months probation following his September conviction on federal extortion charges.
• The mayor of Berryville, Arkansas, Timothy Ray McKinney, was arrested and booked into the Carroll County Jail early Sunday morning; charged with speeding, driving while intoxicated, and possession of a controlled substance. He was released on bond early Sunday afternoon.
• Alice, Texas Mayor Grace Saenz-Lopez resigned because of a custody dispute over a Shih Tzu named Puddles. Saenz-Lopez insists she didn't steal her neighbor's pooch.
• Arlington, Oregon mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist who once stripped to her underwear and posed on a fire truck has been stripped of her office.
  
• Bath, New Jersey Mayor David D. Mosey was charged with recklessly endangering another person, reckless driving, careless driving and other motor vehicle violations after it was reported he repeatedly crashed into another vehicle that drifted into his lane while the Mayor was on his way to take a stress test.
• Police arrested the Mayor of Samson, Alabama, Clay Mchugh King, Friday after he allegedly confronted and stabbed a 44-year-old man he found with his wife.

Spain

• Juan Millán, the Socialist Mayor of the small Málaga village of La Viñuela, faces a possible 18 months in prison in connection with three building licences, in a case where he is charged with perversion of the course of justice and also faces a 17 month ban from public office.
• The former Mayor of the Málaga village of Cómpeta, the ex Partido Popular Mayor, Leovigildo López, has been banned from any public office position for the next seven years, in a sentence from criminal court No. 1 in the provincial capital which has found him guilty of planning crimes.

Republic of Kalmykia

• Kalmykia's prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Rady Burulov, the mayor of the republic's capital, Elista, on allegations that his administration overpaid for goods purchased from a company owned by his parents.

United Kingdom

• The mayor of Pembroke, Wales, Keith McNiffe is to appear in court accused of fraudulently claiming thousands of pounds in disability benefits while refereeing at football matches in west Wales.

Previously: Mayors with Swagger

Mayors with Swagger

A few crime stories have been wrapped up this week, for example, Dog Thompson caught his pesky varmint and Canada Post caught the pesky kids who ruined Christmas. But we still have this business of a mayor with criminal charges. Everyone acts like it's a big deal. Sure criminal mayors are rare around here, but south of the border it's practically expected. Here's a small sampling:

Mayor Lino Donato of Poteet, Texas said he would remain in office despite his inability to set foot in city hall. That building is less than 1,000 feet from a youth recreation center and therefore off-limits to Donato, who was adjudicated a sex offender in October. [2007-11-09]

Mayor Charles Dougherty Jr. of Gate City, Virginia was convicted of 16 counts of election fraud in relation to the May 4, 2004 municipal election, mainly for submitting absentee ballots for voters who were not too sick to vote in person. [2006-7-26]

Mayor Myles Spires Jr. of Forest Heights was indicted in February 2007 and forced to step down from his mayoral position shortly after. He was guilty of felony theft and misappropriating public money for stealing $2,500 of the taxpayers’ money from town coffers for a family trip to Jamaica, six months after assuming the mayor’s office, by submitting a false reimbursement request to the town for private investigative services. [2007-10-4]

Mayor Frank Melton of Jackson, Mississippi pleaded guilty to misdemeanor weapons charges after carrying a handgun on church and school property. He was fined $1,500 and put on a year's probation. He was also asked to resign from Mayors Against Illegal Guns. [2006-11-22]

Mayor Joseph P. Ganim of Bridgeport, Connecticut was convicted of racketeering, extortion, bribery and mail fraud, among other felonies, for his role in a six-year scheme to shake down city contractors for more than $500,000 in cash, meals, clothing, wine and home renovations. The government's lead lawyer in the case mocked Mr. Ganim for claiming, during testimony in his defense, that all 52 prosecution witnesses were lying about his involvement in corruption, and that his was the lone truthful voice. [2003-3-20]

Mayor Bill Campbell of Atlanta, Georgia was cleared of charges that he lined his pockets with payoffs from a contractor but he was convicted of intentionally failing to report more than $160,000 in income on three tax returns. Prosecutors said the money was illegally obtained. Campbell said it was gambling winnings. [2006-06-13]

Mayor, Richard “Dick” Summy of Wilton, Iowa was found guilty of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana. The verdict surprised him because while he accepted responsibility for distributing the high-grade marijuana, he claimed to be innocent of conspiring to grow it. [2007-08-31]

Mayor David Spellman of Black Hawk, Colorado, was sworn in as mayor a week after pleading guilty to two charges for pistol-whipping his wife with a handgun (and firing three shots that missed her). Along with the voters, his wife also appears to have forgiven him as the couple reconciled before the election. [2006-7-11]

Mayor Spencer Schlosnagle of Friendsville, Maryland was returned to office in 1994 though he had been convicted a week before of indecent exposure and had four other such charges pending. In 2004, he was found guilty of speeding and fleeing and eluding arrest, but acquitted of second-degree assault. He remains mayor.

The mathematics of Larryness

Hi, class! I'm Prof. Coyote. My image consultant tells me this mortarboard crampin' my ears makes me look erudite. These charts 'n graphs, too. I was gonna round it all off with some really thick rose-coloured glasses I found in the waste can behind City Hall, too, but an odd little bald dude yelling, "Preciousssss!" came running up and snatched 'em away from me at the last second. Hope ya appreciate the effort.

I see from our last pop quiz that some of you are baffled as to what the hell informs the mental processes of certain mayors. Today's lecture may enlighten you regarding hiz, uh, honor's, public relations strategy last week, during which first the Ontario Provincial Police charged him, and then his famed "zero means zero" tax-increase promise became, oh, FIVE PER CENT. Whether anything similar could enlighten the mental processes of Mayor Lex to hisself is a whole 'nother kettle of kryptonite. I digress, in an absent-minded professor kinda way. Okay, movin' on...

Taxes: After nailing down that long-expected tax increase, Lex declared it was at least as good as zero because the rose-coloured glasses are off, he's learned lessons, become a better person. Exactly how is unclear, not for the first time - nor likely the last. (Council said four-point-nine, but we statistical coyotes always round up wild guesses, 'specially ones based on imaginary fat cashflow from provinces that have already said they ain't payin'.) All it cost the citizens of Ottawa for a new, self-improved Larry was a few hundred thousand bucks. Bargoon! We should be grateful. And as the bar graph below shows, on Planet Larry we so are!
Criminal Code Charges: Stay or go? Hizzoner says he believes with every fibre of his being that he's innocent and eventually can prove it in court. Well then. It must be so, because he's proven himself so astute-like already. But then he promised to consult with citizens as to whether he should stay on while dealing with this (strictly personal) matter, blah, blah, blah. After spending a nanosecond polling family, good friends and close supporters, he announced he'd stay. Those people form a statistically-significant proportion of the city's population, do they not?

Well, really, lately, any politician who utters the ol' 'public consultation' gag in this city is telegraphing in technicolor that it's all about pretend. But geez. Does the guy not have the decency or attention span to properly pretend to pretend? Meantime, more exacting polls place 'go' and 'stay' in a statistical dead heat. Even with all of hizzoner's family, friends and supporters bulking up that latter category. Not quite a clear endorsement, but hey: the pie chart down there proves that family, friends and supporters are any well-grounded politician's most important constituents, outweighing all others. That's what democracy is all about.

Swagger: Ooh! Remember when he promised to make Ottawa 'a city with swagger?' Like it's a good thing? Never understood that myself, though other lecturers at Irregular University gave it a shot. Despite Marlen Cowpland's wardrobe, Ottawa remains pretty much a gray-flannel, button-down kinda place. Okay, possibly it actually dresses more eclectically than that these days, but it's still discretely self-effacing. Yet my Oxford Big Word Thingy, Canine Edition, defines 'swagger' as 'behaving with an air of superiority, in a blustering, insolent or defiant manner; now esp to walk or carry oneself as if among inferiors, with an obtrusively superior or insolent air...' I don't get it. That's not an image anyone 'cept maybe some kinda outta-touch narcissist would want. Uh, oh, wait...!
Now class: remember all of this. It's on the final exam, possibly in three years. But maybe sooner.

This just in...

Hey, is that camera thingy on? It is? Oh... Uhh...

Hello! And welcome back to ESI-TV's FuckWitLess News©. I'm your new Anchordog, coyote. Got the job because news anchors are mostly hair and teeth, and us coyotes are, with absolutely no hint of false modesty, all over that hair and teeth thing...

Finally, today's editorial: Our close competitors over at CBC reported that His Civic Baldness, Lex "Larry" Luthor, announced on national radio (Shelagh Rogers, no less...) that Ottawa will deal with the homeless panhandler problem by setting up meters in the Byward Market. Small-scale philanthropic sorts can stuff their change into these, instead of giving it directly to, you know, those pesky homeless. That only encourages 'em. Instead, the city will use money so collected to generously bestow shelter and other basic services upon, you know, those pesky homeless.

There are a few pigeons in the ointment, though. One is that Lex didn't discuss this grand plan with council before presenting it as a fait accompli. Those pesky, you know, councillors, may yet have a thing or six to say about this. Another is that the putative meter plan is a selective tax on the well-meaning stupid. Since it interposes a new bureaucracy between donors and donees, much of the meter money likely will have to go to pay, uh, suits, many of whom already have homes.

Panhandlers -- and, yes, Ottawa has a lot of 'em -- may discomfit more sensitive souls like, uh, Hizzoner. But they have, within bounds, a right to do what they're doing. Just as sensitive souls have a right to refuse them money.

"The homeless" are not a monolithic bloc that can be herded in a single direction. Unless maybe you herd cats. They are individuals. Each has reasons for panhandling that, to him or her, are valid. Many refuse to sleep in shelters, which they regard as unsafe, sometimes with cause. Some aren't going to buy into any city programs. Why would they, when the mayor has a well-documented hate-on for 'em?

Mr. Less Government seems to be back onto his weirdly obsessive attempt to run the city as something other than a civic democracy. He may have bitten off more than he can chew... again. And checks with cities that already ply this scam -- er, scheme -- Denver and Winnipeg spring to mind -- suggest that it doesn't work. Larry's research for many of his hairless-brained schemes seems to consist of a quick Google to see if anybody else is doin' 'em. He apparently skips deeper reading that would confirm whether they actually work.

Maybe, rather than trying to sneak a crummy, ill-conceived little voluntary fee and its accompanying bureaucratic paraphernalia through the back door, Hizzoner might try to negotiate, you know, a council consensus, to have the city levy honest taxes and then use 'em to deliver honest social services. Like it should be.

FuckWitLess News may return the next time Hizzoner says something dumb. I'm guessin' we don't have long to wait. 'Zero Means Zero' ain't anywhere near done with, yet. Thank you. BuhBye!

Fade to black aaaand.... cut! Cue makeup with the Dustbuster! The damn dog is shedding all over the newsdesk...!

Civic politics 101

...It utterly baffled Larry that, even long after dumping his two old business partners and then getting himself elected mayor, he was still regarded as something of a loose cannon in local political circles...

Ottawa's New Light Rail Plan...

Before Lex lost his bet:


After Lex lost his bet:

Keep on Struttin'

Mayor Lex Luthor thinks Ottawa needs to become more swagger worthy. Seems we don’t have enough pride about our town and we need to express it via some kind of new strut. In fact, our mayor is so confident about its impact he thinks citizens may even add a gratuity payment on our tax bill once the swagger takes hold.

I think Lex is on to something. Seeing that the ESIs are now promoting contests, I suggest we put out the call for a new Ottawa swagger.

So get out your video cams and send us a demonstration of what you think Ottawa’s new swagger should be. My nomination is a perennial Ottawa favourite called the bureaucratic two-step: one step forward, two steps backward. Get your ideas to us pronto. We’ll need to rehearse it in time for the Senators Stanley Cup victory parade.

For inspiration in designing a swagger you may want to consult this web-based utility