The Beauty of Democracy

National politics are so much easier to understand.

As noted, I live 27°44′34″N 97°24′7″W. And last weekend was Election Day for mayor and city council. For the last three years, no matter how large or small, when "political campaign" is in a sentence, "change" is automatically installed. This election period was no different. I don't want to call it sour grapes, but none of my agents for change won any seats or positions available. So, naturally, skepticism has already set in and the new administration does not get sworn in until next month. But skepticism is uncomfortably floating toward fear...and I have my reasons.

We now rejoin the link party, already in progress

Okay, let's be fair and say the last two years with The Chief, the Beach Boys, Nelda, Bill and the rest of the council (some that have trouble with attendance than others, and you know who you are) have been, to be gentle, a little rough. The plus side is they pushed one huge bond in 2008 while working out 2004 bond money and road projects. On top of that, they apparently saved the gulf beaches from themselves. This group made if possible to "keep your beach" and freely drive on the waterfront, curtailing any and all beach resort and real estate development. Yeah, it's local government, it's not glamorous stuff like budgeting for humanitarian aid, but infrastructure has to be kept up somehow. However, all of these 1-run victories in the preseason never made up for the major league losses with Memorial Coliseum debate and constant balking. Not to mention their final swan song--the swan apparently shot in midflight--the smoking ordinance-wait-non-ordinance (more on that garbage on a future post).

Sitting on the public hot potato known at the MC, this motivated enough "change agents" to mobilize and push for their name as the "right" representative. It's pretty bad when a building, deteriorating at every cold front and tropical weather event, takes more precedence than population shift (as opposed to boom), a consistent lack of high-tech and bio-medical careers and a hesitance from young professionals to either stay or be active in community building. No, a building that hosted Metallica 25 years ago is going to be the sticking point for local politicians. Yes, I know all the candidates spoke of these continuing issues, it was just the MC stealing all the soundbites.

Last Saturday, 16% of Corpus Christians mobilized and selected a local real estate mogul, two title company executives, one former title company owner, and a banker. Two of the council winners are re-treads (ergo, they were previously responsible for the state we are in now). The fear jumps out when you have four of the nine in some version of real estate with one ingrained with real estate business. There's your majority. And there's your "change agents". Sure, you throw out the pro-growth messages and policy speeches while campaigning. But why does this new group give me this nauseous feeling that the pro-growth will just line their wallets with their day jobs as opposed to giving everyone in the city the same opportunity?

By the way, you can stop patting your back about 16%...of the registered voters, not the whole population.

There are only going to be two things this administration does within it's life span to make me...appeased. If not, the moment I get the chance, I am so out of here like parachute pants. First thing's first, blow up the Memorial Coliseum. Quit playing prospectors. Quit outsmarting yourselves. The majority of the newbies are IN real estate. Everyone knows by now the ideas, pipe dreams and consultants are all on fumes. Just blow it up already. It's prime land. Someone with a great idea to draw people in will come (until Las Brisas scares everyone away). Just resist the temptation of rebranding. It wasn't that cool when it was the primary venue anyway. Move on. Second, fire Angel Escobar. You heard me. The city engineer should have never been in the hunt in the first place. The one city employee that escapes the city-wide water boil notice debacle, and the dude is running the whole effing city? And with two very solid and experienced candidates for the job, the council runs this bait and switch, literally? The clear message would be, "okay, this last council and mayor was a bunch of clueless brother-in-laws that their actions will not continue." Now, the Las Brisas issue is another hornet's nest that sounds like the silver bullet to all our job and economic woes. It's not. Train Wreck will take care of this one for me. Besides, it's they can't have a hearing on it in Austin, a single piece of rebar won't move until the arguments are finished. So, just do those two things, and it will build some confidence (at least with me). Now, this doesn't have to be done at swear-in. There is no real time table for that. Just do it. Those two big moves will remove the sarcastic quotation marks from "change agents".

So, we wait until the fear subsides or gets excellerated to anger. Mayor-Elect Adame was playing with the MC ideas after his win on KIII-TV 3 (of course, if Channel 3 had a webmaster worth a damn, I would point you to this discussion, but I will paraphrase) , departing from the current HappyFunLandHappyTime proposal to creating an "olympic" swim center to [surprise] creating a smaller venue for the hockey team...the hockey team Councilman-Elect Brent Chesney is currently a minority owner. And we wait, and see if Mr. Adame is sounding like this former city employee four years from now.

Enough about politics. Lessons Learned...my three things:
1) Getting sick takes practice...practice to get better and how to take care of yourself in an abbreviated state. If you don't get sick, there's no need to practice. I never get sick. And we are talking about practice.
2) Uninterrupted, the second generation iPod Shuffle (2GB) can roll on full battery life for ten straight hours on shuffle mode. Spring cleaning tested that variable.
3) I hate it when The Lovely is in a place that is cooler than where I am currently at. We spent ANOTHER weekend separated. This time around, she came back refreshed and I arrived appreciating my teammate and drinking buddy.

Okay, one last pop-shot and I will call it an entry: the smoking ban (referenced above) is about the most gutless move I have seen in a while. Corpus is not special. The rest of the major metropolitan areas in the state have pulled this trigger. Yet, the council wants to talk about it more? As I mentioned about Train Wreck, we may not need the pandering...the state may just make the decision for us. C'mon Corpus. Parachute pants! Talk later.