…or the Romney daughters-in-law, who have got to get very tired of Willard’s heads-I-win-tails-you-lose “competitive spirit”. NYMag tells us about Steve Showers:
When we last spoke to Steven Showers — the 60-year-old white Republican who erected a large neon sign in his front yard last summer to communicate his belief that Mitt Romney (and all Mormons) are racist — he had just been released from county jail after three weeks for refusing to turn off the sign, which violated various local ordinances, according to a jury. While Showers was incarcerated, the sign had been unplugged, and Showers was back at home, wrestling with whether to turn it back on even though doing so would violate his parole and could land him another eighteen months in jail. Such is his conviction that Romney’s nomination remains a blight on the Republican Party and that his sign is protected by the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
Today, Showers turned the sign back on…
From the earlier post:
… To be clear, Showers is well aware that the election is over and that Romney lost. But he’s also convinced, despite conventional wisdom, that Romney hasn’t given up his White House dreams. “Mitt Romney isn’t gone; he’s going to come back,” Showers says. “This guy wants to get a Mormon in the White House. You think he’s gone? No way.”
But this (frankly delusional) fear of a future Romney presidency isn’t really what has Showers digging in his heels against the courts and his neighbors. To him, the dispute comes down to a basic question of constitutional rights. Showers believes that he’s being targeted not because of the lights, but for promoting an unwelcome message in a Republican-leaning area. His neighbors across the street had Romney signs — normal small ones — in their front yard during the campaign season…
The pictures at the link are… (wait for it)… illuminating. Maybe living under the iron fist of a Ventura County HOA just drove the poor man past his limits?
Jewish Steel
I dig his monk get-up.
YellowJournalism
HOA’s and condo boards are the off-off-off-Broadway of fascist dictatorships.
WereBear
I understand a true R likes that kind of thing.
kc
I didn’t see anything about an HOA in that article.
demz taters
This is the kind of thing HOAs were formed to prevent.
MikeJ
Has he tried put up a non illuminated sign?
NotMax
Sign of the times.
Citizen Alan
It goes without saying, of course, but I invite everyone to imagine what a national scandal and Constitutional crisis it would be if somebody actually went to jail over an anti-Obama sign.
WereBear
The guy might be nuts, but it’s a good kind.
furlyfly
“…60-year-old white Republican…”
Is there any other kind? Give or take 10 years.
TheMightyTrowel
There are students playing really awful really loud music right outside my office. I have sent security to shut them down. You kids! Get off my lawn! (shakes slipper)
Alison
Okay, I just legit laughed my face off at Colbert playing “Cherry Pie” over the video of the bear rubbing up against the tree trunk…
Spaghetti Lee
How bizarre are HOAs, just, in general? People voluntarily submitting to rules about what they can’t and must do with their own property, to maintain an illusion of manufactured normalcy that doesn’t matter to anyone but (some) of the people who live there? I mean, it’s not like tourists are going to come to your unincorporated gated community and gossip about who painted their mailbox the wrong color.
Anyway, I’ve been in a cranky mood all summer and I’m ready to cheer for just about anyone who wants to do something out of the ordinary and fuck shit up (peacefully), even if they’re 60-year-old Republicans from Simi Valley. Fight on, dude!
NotMax
@TheMightyTrowel
Grumpnado?
TheMightyTrowel
@NotMax: They just sang a 15 min emotive prog rock thing about paying too much for bad coffee.
BillinGlendaleCA
OMG, that’s the town I grew up in.
Spaghetti Lee
@WereBear:
Having read the article, nuts hardly covers it. But if everyone was prim and proper and well-mannered and only did what people expected, well, the world would be a damn boring place. We need weirdos just as much as we need cops and doctors and teachers if we want to have a society worth living in.
Spaghetti Lee
@TheMightyTrowel:
Neal Morse is outside your office?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Spaghetti Lee: Newberry Park, Simi’s the low rent part of the county.
NotMax
@TheMightyTrowel
If it’s bad coffee, any payment is too much.
Palate cleanser: the “cheery, cheery bean” of Java Jive.
WereBear
I see them as modern Republicans/Xantians in a nutshell. They started out to prevent people from painting their house DayGlo colors, and kept devolving to allowing one color. Period.
It’s because they can’t make judgement calls based on weighing the evidence and making decisions. They don’t have concepts in their head; the kind of thing that makes liberals go: “The only thing different is the color of their skin which varies according to sun exposure in anyone! I’m not going to make value judgements about their character or their souls over something superficial and meaningless.”
Instead, authoritarians have Realms; “If the minister says painting my house DayGlo Pink is an abomination against God, I’ll have to burn it down.”
Thinking, as we understand it, just doesn’t exist for them. They may not be outright stupid, but their brains don’t work, so it’s a meaningless distinction.
NotMax
@WereBear
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
fuckwit
First of all, there’s no HOA here. These are city ordinances.
Secondly, they carry FUCKING JAIL TIME??? Really? Violate a zoning ordinance and go to jail?
YIKES.
Thirdly, if this isn’t a First Amendment case then I don’t know what is. Yeah, most municipalities have regulations about political signs, how big they can be, where they can be on a property, when they can be put up and when they need to be removed. But I just can’t imagine someone going to jail for violating those. That seems very…. unconstitutional, really. I’m sure this stuff has been tested in court again and again, though, and I’d love to know what the SCOTUS has had to say about it.
Finally, the dude is clearly nuts, but whatever. What an odd story.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Spaghetti Lee: There’s an X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully go under cover in a planned community (as Rob and Laura Petrie) that has a ridiculous HOA full of bizarre restrictions, it’s pretty funny.
Spaghetti Lee
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Interesting. I remember a book called Tangerine by Edward Bloor which is about a family moving into in gated community in Florida and how bizarre the local politics and social codes can get. It’s mainly written for teens, and the basic plot is about the nearly blind teenage son trying to make the soccer team, but I bet if I read it again I’d pick up a lot of ‘fuck suburbia’ subtext. And the creepy kind, not the funny kind.
Spaghetti Lee
And on the law and order angle, I imagine the cops in suburbia get kind of bored, but is there really no better use of the legal system than to throw guys like this in jail? Jeez, he’s non-violent, he didn’t steal from anyone, he’s not cooking meth. Is there some pressing reason they can’t just fine him or better yet leave him alone?
BillinGlendaleCA
@fuckwit: It really doesn’t surprise me that they’d find a way to jail him. Violating a zoning ordinance won’t get you jail time, but refusing to comply after you’ve been asked could. They’d find something, creating a nuisance or something like that. The City of 1000 Oaks is hardcore about zoning. Also I bet the neighbors complained.
Laser Haas
If Steve Showers knew all the evidence we had against Mitt Romney, for his organized criminal acts; he’d change his sign to Romney the Racketeer.
And he be 100% Spot On Correct!
Amir Khalid
@Spaghetti Lee:
I remember an episode of The X-Files that was about a creepy HOA. The HOA president kept a Tibetan mud monster to punish residents who broke the sacred Contracts, Covenants and Regulations.
Amir Khalid
Huh? Why is my comment #28 attributed to “undefined”?
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: After hearing you guys talk about it, I have got to hunt that one down.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
It’s Arcadia from season 6. Mulder and Scully go undercover as newly-weds named Petrie, after the couple on The Dick van Dyke Show. You get to watch them play house!
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: Thanks!
When the episodes showed their origins from the creator’s fondness for Kolchak, the Night Stalker, I loved it.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
Also, watch for the made-in-Malaysia sticker on one of Mulder’s CCR-violating lawn ornaments.
Crissa
Why is it okay to have big placards and not neon? It’s not like it’s particularly bright, either. What exactly is the rule here that’s being violated?
Narcissus
@Crissa: Pissing off the local Poobah
Another Halocene Human
@fuckwit:
Yeahbut, it’s a 14′ sign by the road. I could see a lit sign in his window, but a road sign? Most cities have ordnances on that kind of crap. I’m not for Columbia, MD style Soviet sign planning but moooooooost people except for the people that sell and install 300′ freeway signs generally think having rules and permits for these kinds of things are a good thing.
However, that leads to the next issue, which is that in most places if you put up an unlawful structure, the municipal authorities will tear it down and send you the bill.
Florida. Florida. The system is designed to make every poor person a felon sooner or later. They send people to jail like it’s nothing. Jails are full of people who were late paying a traffic ticket, who got behind on child support, who can’t bail off on some bullshit charges of being a shitkicker in a dive and the cop called on scene had to take it out on somebody. Stuff carries heavy fines, can’t pay, you’re going to jail. Then they shop you out to either do min. wage jobs and return to jail each night OR to do road cleanup and other tasks for no pay at all. Yup, big crew, hardly any security… mix in a majority of guys who are no threat and in there for being poor with a few violent shitheads who have no business being lightly supervised ever, with a kicker of denying even more good paying jobs to the community.
Florida is still on the plantation. Never forget that.
Another Halocene Human
@Narcissus: Not donating early, often, and with sufficient enthusiasm to the poobah’s campaign last year.
Another Halocene Human
@Amir Khalid: Season/Episode number? That sounds cool.
Not to give anything away, but your description reminds me of a scene in Hot Fuzz, which by the way imo is one of the funniest movies ever made.
WereBear
Hey, now, they’ve advanced to the point where po’ whites are just as likely to get chain-ganged.
Yes, it’s official. It’s a crime to be poor.
WereBear
@Another Halocene Human: It’s the Living Statue again!
Another Halocene Human
@WereBear: Yeah, not so sure about that “just as likely” part. Like, of course, definitely happens, but also, too, when you talk about felons in prison (who do road maintenance of way as well, oh hell yeah), there’s a certain preponderance of dusky hues, if you know what I mean.
There is definitely a different standard of evidence and a different scale and scope of punishments for white and black defendants in criminal trials around here, take that to 11 if it’s black perp white victim.
I’ve seen cops roll up on Blacks looking for fucking trouble, I’m sure it happens to whites in some areas, after all we’ve all heard the stories about corrupt sheriff so-and-so, hell, people will even brag that they’ve got some sort of hold on this sheriff or other so they won’t write him a ticket or arrest him, but I can tell you in this mixed area there’s a definite bias that I can see just by looking around.
But yeah, structurally speaking the poor here are fucked and they don’t care who you are.
WereBear
Well, I was, as always, overestimating racial progress in the South. (rueful ironic grin)
I recently re-read the best book ever on Bonnie & Clyde: Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde and was perhaps influenced by the excellent descriptions of life in the Houston white ghetto therein.
Laser Haas
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know why – my name is Laser Haas and one of the reasons that Pitten’s didn’t make it. I see my name – don’t know how you see it as “undefined”…
Our eToys/Romney etc story has been in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, cover of Rolling Stone and more
politicususa.com/meet-man-battling-romney-bains-bankruptcy-fraud-12-years.html
Meet the Man Battling Romney for 12 Years
Amir Khalid
@Another Halocene Human:
Arcadia‘s production code is 6ABX13, but in broadcast order it’s the 15th episode of 22 in season 6.
WereBear
@Laser Haas: Shared on Facebook. Thank you for sticking to your principles!
Amir Khalid
@Laser Haas:
My comment apparently got bumped from #28 to #29.
ETA: Mysterious and powerful are the ways of FYWP.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Halocene Human: The sign was in Newbury Park, CA; about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
There probably was a complaint by a neighbor. According to court records he was cited for 4 misdemeanor violations of county building code. Parts of Newbury Park are in the City of 1000 Oaks, parts are non-incorporated(Ventura County). His residence is in the unincorporated portion of Newbury Park. The violations of county code seem to be the electrical hookup, location(setbacks, etc), illumination, and a prohibited sign. He represented himself and had a jury trial.
DarrenG
I live in Ventura County, and this crank’s soap opera has been going on for a while now. The post above is absolutely correct — he’s in violation of several county ordinances and has been cited, fined, and taken to court several times over it. The recent jail time was basically a contempt of court charge from repeatedly refusing to correct the violations by removing or altering the sign. Outside of Simi Valley our courts and judges are generally not nuts.
It’s amusing as hell to see our fairly boring county making national news and my favorite blogs, though.
BillinGlendaleCA
@DarrenG: I grew up in 1000 Oaks, I know Newbury Park well*. My guess is that this guy lives off of Wendy Drive.
ETA: *The older parts, I’ve not been back to the Conejo Valley in over 20 years.
mai naem
@Spaghetti Lee: Not only that but you pay for the privilege. I don’t know who came up with the concept of HOA – I am assuming the condo-ization of stuff in the eighties popularized them. It’s yet one more thing where poorer people pay more proportionally. I know a woman who was paying $150/mo HOA dues for a cheap condo and I know somebody else who lives in a 400K house where the HOA is $50/mo. The covered stuff on both is essentially the same. No community facilities in the condo complex.
DarrenG
@BillInGlendaleCA: Correct. He’s not far off Wendy in one of the older tracts. (For California values of ‘older’ as in LA Story.)
aimai
HOA’s make a certain kind of sense when you are talking about buying a house in an area that is not incorporated or has no real history or structure as a town or city and therefore no good zoning laws. It is the only thing standing between the home owner and the neighbor deciding to put his car up on blocks in the driveway, or opening a sewage treatment plant next door. They are a horrifically bad idea, of course, because they create pockets of home owners who are not fully vested in the political realm around them. They are attractive to developers because they can sell the houses with a fake assurance that what you buy is the same thing that you will own/resell in twenty or thirty years.
I’ve alway lived in a town with pre-existing zoning laws. When you buy a house here you can take a look at the current situation w/r/t streets, parking, retail, industry and pretty much know what you can control and what you can’t for the forseeable future. If you have objections to the building and permitting of stuff you take your concerns directly to the city and you need to get together with your neighbors to do that. But it doesn’t usually pit neighbor against neighbor because your interests are generally more aligned than antagonistic.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Hard to see how the city ordinances and HOA against signs like that aren’t constitutional, because you know the advertisers would have tried that “freedom of speech” angle a long time ago.
And it sounds like Summers your typical Republican, as in he’s an asshole. They aren’t objecting to him having a huge sign in his front yard. They are objecting to him having it lit up.
But Mittens really sees himself as the second coming of Richard Nixon and up to do it again in 2016? I noticed he hasn’t moved on like Gore, Kerry and McCain did after their loses. It does fit the Marqis de Mittens massive sense of entitlement if he really is going to try.
Pablo
@furlyfly: Yes, a 66 year old Democrat.
Lee Rudolph
@Amir Khalid: As of 8:31 Eastern time, it’s not; it’s attributed to “Laser Haas”.
Lee Rudolph (just in case this becomes misattributed)
ellie
@Amir Khalid: That was a great episode! Says Rob AKA Mulder, “It was wonderful. We just spooned up and fell asleep like little baby cats. Isn’t that right honey bunch?”
Amir Khalid
@ellie:
Scully: “That’s right, poopyhead.”
dmbeaster
I live not far from this nut, although I am humored by the story. It is clearly a non-HOA community — developed before those became the fad.
Note that the issue is not the sign per se, but the neon lighting which apparently violates the ordinance. He re-offends only if he turns the sign back on. The area is not that wingnuttty, Ventura County as a whole leans Democratic, and Newberry Park/Thousand Oaks areas have slightly greater Democratic registration than Republicans.
HOAs self-select for the control freaks, since normal people dont want to bother with the mundane issues of regulation.
dmbeaster
@Crissa:
Neon signage went through a fad over 50 years ago, and then a backlash as people got tired of the garish lighting that was typical for its uses then. I suspect that the Ventura County ordinance about this probably reflects that attitude, and is itself now a
vestige.
tybee
@WereBear:
i used to live down the street from a descendant of Frank Hamer.