The local police are parking this truck with the No On Two sign in the back all over town. This picture is from Thursday evening, when it was parked at a spot on the courthouse square. I heard yesterday that the mayor told them they were “not allowed” to park it in front of the courthouse, but that’s not true. As long as they move it once every 24 hours and do that on their own time, there’s no ordinance forbidding a giant political sign in the back of a legally parked pick-up truck. Maybe he’ll write one.
I was pleased to hear that the mayor objects to the mobile truck-sign, because I think it’s a great idea and I dislike my mayor. We have history. Some time ago, I worked at a tiny post office about 30 miles from where he and I now live and work. During the period I was there, my now-mayor worked in that same town. This post office was too small to offer city delivery, so the now–mayor would walk down and get his business mail every day. He was always short with us, and he complained a lot.
The post office was red brick, and it had a built-in planter box out front, also red brick, between the building and the sidewalk. The planter ran most of the length of the (tiny) building, and ended at the entrance, which was a handicapped ramp. The postmaster, Ruth, was not a gardener and she had always left the planter bare. Part of my job was to maintain the front area, and sweep or shovel and salt the ramp. I’m a good gardener, so I eventually asked Ruth if I could put flowers in the planter.
I planted the box with bulbs and then annuals, for a succession of bloom. I like bright colors, I mix reds, and the box just baked in full afternoon sun, so this planter got so colorful it bordered on eccentric. I received a lot of compliments from people who aren’t serious gardeners, don’t read garden books and don’t know any better than to like, say, low splashes of bright orangey-yellow backed with something much bigger and gaudier in red. The praise only encouraged me to move the Overton window. Toward the end of my time there I was planting things like groupings of 4 foot tall orange Mexican sunflowers that practically looked the postal patrons right in the eye as they went up the handicapped ramp. I got along well with the postmistress, Ruth, and I really think I could have planted rows of Indian corn out there and she wouldn’t have objected. It wasn’t a big job, this garden. It took maybe ten minutes a day, spring and summer, and twenty dollars a year in bulbs and seed to keep the sidewalk garden looking like a box of crayons.
This was a a grim little town with a dying downtown. The post office flowers were the only bright spot in the whole miserable, run-down landscape. The one and only objection I ever heard over several years was from the man who is now the mayor in the larger city where I live. I was out dead-heading the gone-by tulips one day, and he said “my tax dollars at work” as he went up the ramp, with a nasty edge to his voice. I’ve never really forgiven him for that.
I saw the cops had the truck with the sign in the back parked this morning in the Wal-Mart parking lot when I went by there, which made me smile.
debg
Kay, I love your reports on the Ohio situation and it’s fantastic that your side seems to be winning. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for y’all.
kay
@debg:
I was thinking of it in political terms, the mayor and the police, because they’re all (mostly) Republicans, but it’s just as likely management v labor, actually. I don’t know how they see it.
karen marie
Tax dollars are only well spent when the result is dead people, preferably brown.
P.S. Thank you for planting those flowers, Kay. It was the one beautiful thing for a lot of people, I’m sure.
r€nato
betcha dollars-to-donuts that this now-mayor listens to a lot of AM hate radio.
I love my stepdad but sadly he listens to that crap too, and he can be depended on to pop off with comments like that one, on a regular basis, over really trivial things. As if government employees get a really intense orgasm from figuring out new ways to waste taxpayer dollars.
Churchlady
What a great thing you did! That man, now mayor, is typical of the “just so I gots mine” Reagan legitimated, and the damn fool did not even realize you were one of the ‘thousand points of light’ of Bush I. And what IF you put 10 minutes a day and $20 a year into the flowers? So freaking what? I know Ohio – been a Rust Bucket resident for decades – and salute anyone who meets its slow destruction with care and fortitude. Where was this idiot when the laws were being changed to encourage steel plants and other job producers to go out of business? Why wasn’t he griping about his tax dollars flooding their coffers as they got tax free CASH back for ripping the livelihoods right out of so many Ohio and other states’ towns? Oh – it went to CAPITAL, that’s right. So begrudge the imaginary $20 he thought he was paying but not the billions we all have paid to encourage companies to close – and leave nothing but empty planter boxes nationwide. What an idiot. Keep on truckin’!
dr. bloor
I wonder if they’re also “not allowed” to park the truck in front of Mr. Mayor’s house?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good lord, if that isn’t the modern Republican voice. Such petty obsessions with nothing, but he probably cheered every multi-million dollar rocket he saw explode on Fox during “Shock and Awe”. Krugman makes a similar point today on Solyndra, why they’re working so hard to pimp that story– they make it sound like it’s that wastefraudandabuse that is the real source of the deficit!
PIGL
The words “joyless shitpail” come to mind. Or “Republican”. But I repeat myself.
SectarianSofa
Great post. Flowers at the PO is what it’s about sometimes. Unless you’re that guy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Meanwhile, there was a report in today’s paper that fraudulent nonsense involving “Defense” contractors totaled around 1 TRILLION dollars.
TRILLION.
They’re whining about Solyndra, which is damn pocket change compared to the deserting coward/Dark Lord malassministration sanctioned looting of the treasury in the name of “Defense”.
But I forget, we’re at least nominally pissing away all that treasure to kill those disgusting brown (and often mooslim) people. That’s perfectly OK!
vheidi
Kay, you are fantastic- thanks for this.
Off to give a few old but warm coats to Occupy Wall Street- maybe I should bring flowers, too?
soonergrunt
@r€nato: You have to call them on it, whenever you hear it.
You need to ask them which government employees are doing that. Is it the mail delivery person? Is it the cop? The Firefighter? The Parks crew? The street maintainers?
That last one is always good during snowstorms.
I’ve found that when I call people out for saying stupid shit, and I tell them that they just said the dumbest damn thing I’ve heard in a week, they tend to get very sheepish.
Since going to work at VA, I’ve seen far more waste, fraud, and abuse by beneficiaries (who are constantly bitching about VA employees) than I’ve ever seen by government employees. Contractors are about the only people worse than that for waste, fraud, and abuse. And I say that as somebody who is a VA beneficiary, a VA employee, and former Defense services contractor.
I worked one contract where I did GS-11 level work (60k+benefits~80K), got paid 55K out of which my benefits were taken, and my company charged the USGovernment $160K/year.
eemom
I wonder if someone that mean spirited and petty isn’t as miserable himself as he makes everyone else. Hard to see how it could be otherwise.
hitchhiker
It’s the little things. It’s some guy making a rude throwaway comment with no thought whatsoever how it lands or who it lands on.
I quit my job last week . . . a very good job in some ways, which I’ve been doing for six years. Downsizing, kids done with college, all that — but I’m good at this work and would have kept doing it indefinitely if not for my utter asshole libertarian boss.
I could live with his low-rent snarking about Democrats, about Obama, about bureaucrats, about taxes. I could shrug off the knowledge that he got his start in a federally funded project, that he went to public schools, and that his only education is a couple of years at a community college. I could ignore his deeply held faith in his own abilities, which, objectively speaking, are not much to shout about.
What I just can’t stand is the way he talks about unions. My dad was a union member (IBEW) and that simple fact is why my family was not reduced to complete poverty. My boss reserves his deepest scorn for unions and tosses off remarks about them that are just as casually stupid as the one your mayor dropped about some damn flowers. Casual stupidity coupled with too much power is the worst.
Woodrowfan
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned that since the PO is supposed to be self-supporting, that it wasn’t even tax dollars that bought the flowers!
BruceFromOhio
How in the hell did we ever let these people be in charge of *any* Gaia-damned thing?
Vote NO on Issue 2.
Mr Stagger Lee
I pray that SB-5 goes down by such a big margin that Karl Rove comes out looking like he was b-slapped by the boogie man. I want John Kasich look like John Hurt in a prison movie. I want the Kochs to throw a stamp down temper tantrum.
Maude
@efgoldman:
Look south to NJ. Christie is here. Hope others like him don’t go north.
@Villago Delenda Est:
How could we ever forget the pallets of cash that went poof in Iraq. That just infuriates me no end. And Bremmer taking off like a scorched rabbit the second his time was done. And I haven’t even touched upon the incompetence.
Oh, but Issa wants to hold hearings on Fast and Furious.
A.J
Lemmee guess. The Mayor’s a Rethuglican. Amirite?
mistermix
Holding grudges is one of life’s little underrated pleasures, it’s maligned unfairly by the psychological community and TV talk show hosts, and I’m glad to see that you’ve got a tight grip on this one.
Bill Arnold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I keep thinking back to the stories (which are as far as I know true) of cargo planes full of palettes of $100 bills flown to Iraq, unloaded and then passed out to nobody knows who.
This was approximately $10 Billion, which is small change relative to the total cost of the Iraq war, and who knows, maybe it did more good than the rest of the money spent. But regardless; it is for example 20 times as much money as the Solyndra loan that has become a permanent part of the wingnut narrative.
Edit: I see Villago Delenda Est also covered this, from a slightly different angle.
David Fud
Modern-day Scrooges, these Republicans. You don’t even have to ask what his affiliation is to know, with that sort of ugly, unnecessary comment thrown around.
Just a little charity or compassion goes a long way. Amazing that they can’t find just a little iota of it once in a while. Their hearts really are shriveled up – it is too bad they can’t have a real life visit from spirits past, present, and future so they could work on their withered compassion. They might need it where they are going to end up.
Mino
@Maude: Is Bremmer still in the US? Or in a country that doesn’t extradite for malfeasance?
a.j.
Kay i love your posts!!
You are just one of my favorite reads of the whole day, and I read a lot. (Must feed mah liberal rage appetite, nom nom nom nom)
Keep up the great work and thank you for your clear, inspiring prose.
Maude
@Mino:
Probably living in the lap of luxury somewhere here in the US.
Maude
@kay:
As far as the truck in front of the courthouse, never mind those facts. The mayor don’t like it and he’s boss.
Rotten little …
Violet
My goodness, what a miserable sod that now-mayor must be. Who goes out of their way to piss all over a gardener brightening up a public space? What a mean spirited jerk.
Thanks for the reports from Ohio, Kay. Good stuff!
Roger Moore
@Maude: @Bill Arnold:
It’s worth pointing out that the money on pallets that went missing in Iraq wasn’t actually our money. It was money we had taken out of the oil for food program because we didn’t want Saddam to have it. Once Saddam was gone, we sent it back to help out with reconstruction. We didn’t do a good enough job of looking after it, but it technically wasn’t our money to control in the first place.
Mino
@Mr Stagger Lee: This and then some.
I hope the entire rust belt puts such a hurt on Republicans for the damage these governors have done to the public weal in their respective states that the party eats itself.
Maude
@Roger Moore:
That adds theft from others to the list.
gogol's wife
@mistermix:
Yes, I too found that charming. I know exactly how Kay feels. I’ll hold onto grudges like that for decades!
Linnaeus
@BruceFromOhio:
Because, sadly, many voters want people like this guy to be in charge of things.
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
Oh, and oops. Thanks for correcting this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bill Arnold: This story came up a few months, or weeks?, back, and I wondered if it was the same palettes from 2006 or thereabouts. It was. I remembered because Al Franken used to talk about it on his radio show, and when he was at one of those Beltway Media Nerdproms, he mentioned it to Susan Page and her husband, another DC correspondent for I forget which major outlet. They refused to believe him, his being a loud-mouthed comedian (so decreed by David Broder) and all, so he went and got Norm Ornstein, who confirmed it for them.
Linnaeus
@Mino:
I’d love to see that, but it’s going to be harder than it may seem, even with these teabagger governors. The urban cores of the Rust Belt are still reliably Democratic, but they’ve been shrinking for years and the suburban and rural folk love the GOP.
Mino
@Linnaeus: I could be wrong but I think a lot of the 50% or so that don’t usually vote in any elections are paying attention now. If not, you’ve got to think the death wish is strong in this country.
Yutsano
OT: Why I love Dawgs Occupy edition.
Judas Escargot
@Maude:
Agreed: The mean-strain is strong up here, too.
The (former) HMO CEO who tried to evict Gov. Deval Patrick last year basically ran on just how many state jobs he was going to eliminate, and not much else.
Quicksand
Did he report your sunflowers to the INS and have them deported?
opal
I’m a big fan of this post.
Good work Kay.
JWL
Are you sure you’re not confusing the mayor with the Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine? He didn’t like flowers either.
Mino
@Yutsano: Great news. That’s gonna give palpitations to a few people.
Linnaeus
@Mino:
That’s a good point. There is, potentially, a significant number of voters who could be convinced to support more liberal or progressive candidates, but who simply aren’t voting. I’m just a bit cynical as of late. The only people “back home” in the Rust Belt with whom I talk politics are in my immediate family; I’ve tried with my old friends and their families, and there’s just no reasoning with them. One person in particular has gone full-bore teabagger and couldn’t believe that “someone smart like you”, i.e., me, could support someone like Barack Obama. I explained as best I could, but it fell on deaf ears.
soonergrunt
@Linnaeus: to which you have to reply the same “I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that one of the smartest, most fair-minded people I’ve ever known would throw his lot in with the teabaggers.”
Mino
@Linnaeus: I don’t even expect that they support liberals. I think they’ll be voting NO to all the shit that’s been going on.
anthrosciguy
Did you offer to give him back the 20 cents of his taxes that went into it?
Linnaeus
@soonergrunt:
Yeah, that would have been a good reply. The person I’m talking about is the mother of a good friend of mine, and we were having this conversation during a gathering in her home, so I decided to be a polite guest and broke off the conversation gently.
Lysana
@JWL: If that mayor saves his sweet nothings for a flying glove, we’ll know what really happened to him.
maya
What with the holidays coming fast upon us I thought, if your town does seasonal theater productions, your mayor would make the perfect Ebenezer Scrooge – up until Stave Two. Then you’d have to put in the understudy.
wmd
“Tax dollars at work” to make the town more attractive? That sounds good to me. Then again I support city parks, including city rose gardens and arboretums.
I’ve also been known to comment that the system works on receipt of a parking ticket.
WereBear (itouch)
I try to remember that people like that are more miserable, all by their shriveled-soul selves, than I would have the heart to make them.
soonergrunt
@Linnaeus: But at some point they have to be made to face the facts about the people with whom they associate. Some people can be gotten to. Some can’t. I can certainly understand not wanting to attack somebody in their own home.
I don’t want politics to ruin friendships, but the other day I had to call out a friend since high school. I had to finally tell him that if he didn’t want good and decent people to associate him with ignorance, bigotry, and racism, that he needed to stop hanging out with bigoted ignorant racists, and that I didn’t fight three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan against hateful bigoted antidemocratic extremists to come home to support the hateful bigoted antidemocratic extremists.
kay
Anthrosiguy, it was a long time ago so it’s not clear, but I don’t think any of it was coming from the PO .
Ruth would reimburse me right away for the seed or bulbs or bedding plants.
I think she was probably taking it out of her purse.
And the postal service isn’t taxpayer supported anyway.
He’s nicer to me now, because I’m a potential voter, in some alternate universe, where I vote for jerks, which I don’t.
General Stuck
Cool story Kay, and very well written.
I get mad at folks, but don’t usually hold that anger for too long into grudge territory. But once it gets to dealing with people I can’t trust for basic decency, then we aren’t going to be friends anytime soon.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Kay, thanks as always for the posts and for your hard work. I just drove through a very conservative suburb and saw lots of “no on issue 2” signs, some with firefighters union logos, some without. So I am cautiously optimistic.
SiubhanDuinne
I think it’s nice that the ads on this thread are all for organic garden seeds :-)
lawguy
Might I as what city that is?
WaterGirl
@dr. bloor: I love that idea!
metricpenny
It’s a sad day when voting “No” on a proposition related to Police & Fire makes for a good sign.
Kay, you’re an inspiration. Thanks for sharing the good.
Y’all keep on truckin’!
kay
And, efgoldman, I get that there’s problems with state worker pensions, but there’s no reason to just kick the shit out of these people.
Kasich could have sat down with them and treated them with some respect, instead of running them over with his stupid bus.
Yutsano
@kay:
We can run him over with his stupid bus though, amirite?
rikyrah
thanks for the Ohio updates
smelter rat
Beautifully told story. Some grudges are worth holding.
dr. bloor
@efgoldman:
Yeah, and she’s carefully avoiding taking on the police and firefighters in her plan. Teachers and other muni employees, however, are looking at a freeze on COLAs for the next fifteen years.
Linnaeus
@soonergrunt:
I agree, and I am getting to the point where I’m ready to give that another try.
Southern Beale
Fuckety-fuck, petty-assed, sphincter-faced haters! I have zero tolerance for people who see something beautiful and want to stomp on it just for the sheer joy of being mean.
Tennessee used to have a gorgeous display every spring inside the median along our interstates: bright red poppies and purple wildflowers, sometimes gold ones too. Incredible, gorgeous display along the interstate. Really beautiful. And, it was all in honor of our veterans, hence the bright red poppies, which bloomed around Memorial Day. I think there was federal money for this project but the state had to kick in some, I think it was less than $1 million a year. Most of that went toward a controlled burn every other year to allow the wildflower seeds to germinate. Well wouldn’t you know the asshole Republicans in our legislature just couldn’t stand this waste of government money. Even when some charitable group offered to step up and pay the difference OH NO we can’t have something nice in our state, can’t have something beautiful. Because WE’RE REPUBLICANS GODDAMIT AND WE SEE SOMETHING PRETTY WE MUST KILL IT.
What a fucking atrocious bunch of people. A real blight on the buttocks of humanity.
So of course they killed the wildflower program from our budget. And oh the irony, it actually ended up costing MORE to remove all of the “in honor of our veterans” signs along the interstate than it would to keep the program going.
Some of the flowers still come back in places, little patches, but without the controlled burns we don’t get the brilliant displays we once did.
Fucking assholes. I hope they all DIAF.
dww44
Thanks, Kay, for the uplifting story and thanks for planting those flowers. If more people planted “flowers” in public spaces during tough economic times, those times would both be more bearable and as likely as not a good bit shorter.
Dee Loralei
@Southern Beale: I loved those poppies! I miss them still. I think Don Sunquist started them, but am not sure. I’ve actually thought about buying a 5 pound bag of them and just strewing a handful here and there. But yea, the Rep legislation killed it
Gilles de Rais
Mayor’s pushing his luck. If he fucks with the cops, he could end up with them doing a 2am drug raid on his house. Heck, might end up getting his dogs shot.
Just sayin’.
cleter
@Roger Moore: True, but there was also about $12 billion in cash from the US treasury that was unaccounted for during Bremer’s tenure. The CPA mismanaged a bunch of US AND Iraqi dollars.
Fluffy
OH NO we can’t have something nice in our state, can’t have something beautiful. Because WE’RE REPUBLICANS GODDAMIT AND WE SEE SOMETHING PRETTY WE MUST KILL IT.
Ladybird Johnson was initially responsible for roadside wildflower plantings in Texas. I believe she was instrumental in the effort to get these programs up and running in other states as well.
So, yes — destroying a simple, inexpensive and lovely program may have been driven by its association with Democrats and the respectable roots of environmentalism. If all vestiges of decent government are removed, their “anti-government” screeds get more believable.
Chet
To wingers like Kay’s now-mayor, nice things like flowers (and houses, and healthcare, and clothes, and food, and water, and air) are for company CEOs and other Masters of the Universe, and their heirs. Not for the peons who work at places like post offices.
Given their druthers, they’d have the rest of us living in caves, wearing old burlap sacks, eating bugs and twigs, and smearing our own poo on the walls to relieve our boredom.