While you are reading this no earlier than 5:00 Am on November 6, 2017, the day before the 2017 Greensboro City Council election, I first posted this on October 19, 2017 at around 11:00 Am and set it to autopost as George and I often do. Yes, I've made several edits since setting the autopost but none after it goes live. Win, lose, or draw, no more will I be posting here at EzGreensboro.
By now you already know how my campaign was received and covered by the local media. It was blackballed. I contacted local media hoping to get the word out but... Well, now you know, our local media is bought and paid for by the same people who buy and sell our local politicians. And nothing is bought and sold more than the east side of town.
Win, lose, or draw, my candidacy reflects the revolution that is going on in Greensboro today. At a time when the rest of the nation is growing, Greensboro's poverty is at all time highs. The City's programs to solve homeliness are no more than incentives to slum lords. Economic development is a catch phrase designed to disguised give-a ways to cronies. And the City of Greensboro will explode in the next 4 years if the kinds of changes I've suggested aren't quickly implemented by someone.
This isn't a decision that I was rash in making. To the best of my memory I last submitted a public information request to the City of Greensboro in January of 2017. This can be checked on the City website. For these many months I've been simply allowing the information to trickle in while making no real efforts to gather new stories. As regular readers know, City Council provides no shortage of scandal and if I wished this effort could keep me quite busy the rest of my days.
After 5 years the citizens of Greensboro now know what the local media chose to keep secret and which media outlets were complicit in the scams. It was never something I enjoyed, desired to do, or got any satisfaction from. The constant cry to keep up the good fight from people who were themselves too lazy to actually stand behind me always sickened me. It's one thing to say you support someone, it's another thing entirely to actually do so.
My passions are motorcycles, building things, growing and creative writing. I'm not the greatest in the world at any of those things but I manage to entertain and fulfill myself in doing so. I've authored and taken to print 4 very obscure books I'm sure most of you have never heard of, and share poetry, short stories, novels, and thoughts at Wackemall.com. I'm happiest when I'm being creative-- when I'm building things. I plant vegetables and fruit in my front yard and look the other way when people "steal" them. After all, the garden out back provides more than we can use.
Odds are slim that I will be elected Mayor of Greensboro tomorrow but I ran because I like building things and I saw the need to build a better Greensboro.
Such was the reason that I started this blog in 2012 when then Mayor Robbie Perkins surprised the entire city with the announcement that instead of investing in our communities as had been promised to us by City Council in 2008, the City of Greensboro would be spending Millions of your tax dollars to build a downtown performing arts center that most of Greensboro's working classes would never be able to afford to visit.
I've noticed very definitive trends in the 5 years that I've written this blog that have told me a great deal about the people of Greensboro. For example, while I've written almost as many posts outlining ideas that could help our city prosper, I'm only known as a muckraker and gadfly. If I write a post telling people how we could make things better my site tracking shows me only a few dozen people at best will read it. But if I write a post pointing out the latest dirt on someone of prominence locally I can count on thousands of page views. Greensboro is filled with very sick and vengeful people and those sick and vengeful people love to hide behind smartphones and computer screens. It's hardly a wonder businesses don't want to come here.
You love me when I attack the other side and hate me when I tell the dark truths about your side. Your definition of honesty is sadly lacking. And despite whatever religion you might believe in, no real god is going to grant you automatic forgiveness for a lifetime of contributing to the suffering of others simply because you say you believe. You can't have it both ways. Nothing in life or death is ever that easy. Yes, your good book does say, "Who so ever believeth in him shall have life ever lasting" but true believers cannot continue living lives that contribute to the suffering of others. True believers can only change so that no longer do they contribute to the suffering of others.
Your religions simply don't allow the contradictions even though you think they do.
And without a doubt the favorite activity of all is to shoot the messenger even before they learn the truth. It's hardly a wonder so few men and women of integrity enter into politics.
The question I'm always asked is: what will it take to get rid of the crooked politicians? One only needs look to history to see what has worked in the past. Every successful overthrow in the history of this world has required at the least, the threat of violence, if not actual violence itself. Despite popular belief it wasn't Gandhi who pushed the British out of India-- Gandhi was never able to keep the peace in India, Gandhi was the Saint of the Status Quo. BBC Radio was putting the truth of British atrocities into every home in the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth was in economic ruin from World War II and facing a labor strike by the British Armed Forces. Britain could not fight another war in 1947. Had Churchill fought India he would have had to carry a worn out Enfield rifle himself.
And Dr Martin Luther King's peaceful revolution only happened because President Johnson and FBI director J Edgar Hoover were terrified that younger, more militant radicals were about to push Dr King out of his position as leader of America's civil rights leader, and feared the violence that would come when others replaced Dr King. At least King, unlike Gandhi, was a good man who cared about the people. Gandhi was a fake.
So to answer the question as to what will it take to get rid of the crooked politicians? You won't as long as you remain scared to oust them the old fashioned way. Torches and pitchforks come to mind. After all, in Greensboro, your elected leaders don't fear you. As a matter of fact: According to the 2017 Chapman University List of American Fears, the thing Americans fear most, with 74% of Americans being afraid, is corrupt government officials.
Yes, this will be my last post but what is posted shall remain... Greensboro's legacy. Write-in Billy Jones for Mayor if you support peaceful revolution.
