If You Elect a Journalist to City Council is he Still a Journalist?
If you ask anyone who watched this week's Council session the answer can't be anything but "YES". Ward 3 Councillor Halberstadt gave viewers a birds eye view of how it is done.
In Orwellian fashion, our elected officials tried to pass a motion pertaining to the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel Property negotiations. Councillor Halberstadt proceeded to dog the Mayor, Solicitor, Administration and Council about one singular detail or rather one non-detail according to Council et al. As it were, Council was voting to erase a couple of questions posed by Councillors Halberstadt and Mara from the record. Unprecedented! Relevant and important questions which the Councillors had asked in the past and subsequently reminded everyone about again last night. Both Councillors requested and never received access to the "Price-Waterhouse Evaluation Study of 2006". Very understandable and very fair considering that the asking price for the Detroit half of the tunnel has just spiked by an additional $25 million.
Lets repeat. The Mayor, Council and Administration attempted to erase the Councillors questions from the record. Thats the Orwellian part and in case you need to brush up on "1984", here is the Wikipedia definition of Orwellian:
"The adjective Orwellian describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past, including the "unperson" — a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments."
Councillor Halberstadt's own words were: "I won't let it drop". He would not be the "uncouncillor". Very calmly and with the skill set of a journalist he kept posing questions and kept everyone off balance until his objective was also met. If his questions and concerns were not going to be in the official public record he made sure that they were recorded on camera and in the process made the rest of the Chamber look foolish and deceptive. He deceived the deceiver. The Mayor and Solicitor rattled off one clarification after another, the Clerk spewed some sort of doublespeak to the effect that the items were not really officially off the record because they were also on another record and Councillors Gignac and Valentinis chirped their usual "make nice" raw raw from their safe perch on the fence. The truth must be dangerous if Council and Administration are resorting to such tactics. The Mayor and Council have a choice. The truth will come out in bits and pieces as it usually does or they can just be transparent and get it over with. For now, One Councillor is on record. How does that old addage go? You can take the Journalist out of journalism but you can't take the journalist out of the Councillor?????
Chris Shnurr has an excellent summation here (watch the Councillor in action):
The exalted Blogmeisters observations are here:
Craig Pearson of the Windsor Star sums it up here:
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