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.

Thank you, thank you. No. Really!

I understand from early reports on CBC Radio One this morning that City Councillor Dog (Sic. Hah.) Thompson held a raucous little public meeting about the coyote problem in Greeley last night. Seems my brethren in the 'burbs may have eaten three smallish dogs and spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) among many not-so-rural-savvy residents out there. Although many other predatory suspects are just as usual. Good luck with that project, Dog, it's a sure-fire vote-getter.

And thank you, thank you, for the unsolicited accolades, everybody! Only (semi) legendary coyote modesty prevents me from taking a well-deserved bow. Oh, and maybe the fact that I'm four-legged...

Image: Lifted by the ever-reliable FoxNews (Hah again) from a throwaway tab in the Chicago 'burbs...

e-positioning for eco-sitioning *

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

- from Head Coyote Bob Dylan

In the spirit of year-end, it's time to consider the sins of the very recent past: A sheaf of history's political masters have defined leadership, in so many words, as the act of sensing what people already believe, then scrabbling to their head to take credit. Strange, then, that some current lint-brains claiming to be 'world leaders' do not grasp the axiom: You can't lead from behind.

I've heard some claim our current PM is a smart man. Yet he seems dedicated to trying to rule yesterday's country and economy in yesterday's world, having not grasped the fact that they no longer really exist. Yes, the CDN$ rides high on energy futures just now. But it's a fire sale, isn't it? The wrong kind of fire, at that. Obstinately self-blinkered to the fact of global warming, the PM stands against a rising tide, balanced on feet of oil shale - which is just another kind of clay.

Instead of harnessing the currents, winds and tides - physical, political and metaphorical - he's parked his throne to try to stop them. King Canute couldn't stop the sea from rising a thousand years ago, and I see no sign that the universe has since caved on any of the more immutable laws of physics.

Granted, the Rt. Hon. Mr. H. and his overpartisan hench-thingies are not the first politicians to misunderestimate** their actual grasp on the levers of political power. But as Kevin Conrad of Papua New Guinea pointed out in Bali last month, when you don't lead, you're in the way. Maybe you stall because your life, your daddy's or all of your friends' are dedicated to making a buck or million from fossil fuels. Maybe you're just a dogmatic hack. I can think of two or three North American heads of state who fit this bill. They, like the fuels they favour, are fossils. At Bali, they accomplished not the much-hyped and hoped-for climatic compromise, but a craven rearguard stall. They agreed to maybe do something. But later. Much later. Triple gin and tonics all 'round.

Too bad. Canada is a country poised with space and potential for large-scale wind, solar and tidal power development, and a portfolio of nice little pilot projects that could power a shift to a new-energy economy. Old and new tidal generators in the Bay of Fundy barely begin to tap the potential of the world's highest tides. Another proposal for an updated underwater turbine project on the west coast is just as promising. Wind blows across this country, with power for the asking if you can manage to avoid sullying Anne Murray's million-dollar view. Solar panels are finally becoming light, cheap and robust enough to use as twenty-first century shingles. Unfortunately states and provinces are the actors, while the feds stand idly, jeer into their sleeves and loudly pretend to be doing good things. (Hellooo, John Baird! Again!)

These things are the future because they must be. What stands in the way? A guy heading a government full of guys, and toadying to another guy in another government south of here, who doesn't get it either. All are vested in governing the past only, ignoring a globally-warming sea rising toward Tuvalu and points north. They'd best start swimming with the current, in all senses of that word. If they can't or won't, they'd better get the hell out of the way. Here comes the rest of the world, ahead of them already, and all wired up with the Internet to take action against their shortcomings. And I think it's getting pissed. Given the night, I know I am. Ta!

* Yet another in coyote's tiresome series of eco-rants. Collect them all and trade them with your friends! (Hey. I'll stop when this government starts to get it...)

** Sic. And hah.

Ecstasy

I am ecstatic (or maybe just seasonally sugar-shocked) to report that some extremely discerning example of Artificial Intelligence (or maybe just inelegance) appears to be taking our Mumumelon® product line seriously...

Onward and, uh, upward!

A franchise opportunity for Coyote