Week in Review
Library Board Meeting, April 13
The Library Board held a meeting last Thursday, wherein all present were subjected to a punishing PowerPoint presentation before getting to the much juicer “reconsideration request” agenda item. In question again is the the disturbing book, Answers in the Pages. Director Jessica Spangler told the board that she did not wish to curate books, thereby shifting responsibility to the board, which will make the final decision in the coming months. Despite the relatively uneventful meeting, a number of noteworthy comments were made:
One member of the public, Jack McClain, railed against board trustee Stephanie Myers for her gall: she sits on a city board without owning property in the city! A travesty, he said. He also reminded the room that our very own City Manager Dave Mackie does not live in Hillsdale. But how many managerial sorts would if they owned Lake Michigan beach-front acreages?
Spangler stated that she wished to avoid making any decision regarding the book in question, lest she be called a “groomer” or a “pedophile.” Of course, in her reasoning she implicitly admitted that, if she was not afraid of name-calling, she would choose to keep the book in its current place in the collection. Instead Spangler will likely remain in the good graces of both sides, even if she does hold secretive pre-meeting strategy sessions with the other women of the board.
Political activist and local psychotherapist Ted Jansen1 has been engaging in “lawfare,” as he attempts to get library board members Paladino and Allen bogged down in bureaucracy (with the help of Dave Mackie, we might add). Jansen, who let us know of his aims on several occasions, recently filed a “Freedom of Information Act” request, supported by Mackie, to see all email correspondence from certain board members relating to the library. One wonders what might be uncovered if, say, the emails of a certain Karen Hill, Stephanie Myers, Jansen, or, even Mr. David Mackie himself, were requested by a concerned citizen. . . Perhaps the city lawyers would begin taking their jobs a little more seriously.
We noticed that the public bulletin board in the library entryway, like the book collection, has not been curated at all. The board, available for all to see, contains an advertisement for Hillsdale’s very own Fether Studios.
City Council Meeting, April 17
Items of note:
“Consideration of Amendment to Chapter 24, Article II, Sec. 24-37, Alcoholic Beverages” (see pages 50-2 for the full text):
Councilman Paladino questioned the viability of the “social district,” which enjoys broad council support. A social district would allow people to carry opened alcoholic beverages outside of bars within certain boundaries downtown. Paladino argued that there would be a great deal of arbitrariness in the determination of the district’s boundaries, and that enforcement would be difficult. The tee-totaling city attorney, though he gave no clear advice, emphasized the difference between alcohol purchased at a bar for on-site inebriation—an on-premises licence—and alcohol purchased at a place with an off-premises license, such as a grocery or liquor store. Entities with on-premises licenses are not permitted under state law to allow outside alcoholic beverages in, or to allow their own beverages off-premise without being confined within a state-certified safety vessel. In any case, the council will review a “social district maintenance plan” at the May 1 meeting.
Mayor Stockford expressed his support for public tobacco smoking, which the council passed an ordinance against circa 2014. Others on the council nodded in agreement.
The sprawling city court system needs new facilities in order to continue expanding its customizable rehabilitative services.
Set Public Hearing for No Camping Ordinance (see pages 81-4 of the above link for the full text):
The Council will now review the no-camping ordinance at the May 15 council meeting.
Per Councilman Stuchell, Prosecutor Neil Brady says he will prosecute violators of the ordinance if it is passed. Stuchell pushed the council toward an ordinance “with teeth,” to be enacted as soon as possible given the approach of peak public park camping season.
Councilman Socha appeared a bit uneasy while presenting the proposal.
The City has “upgraded” its video system, so meetings can be consumed on YouTube from the comfort of your couch.
Upcoming Events
Tonight, April 20, 6:00 PM: Economic Development Meeting regarding the aforementioned social district.
May 1: City Council will determine the fate of the fifth library board seat.
May 15: City Council will take up the no-camping ordinance proposal.
May 20: Pub & Grub Beginning of Summer Street Party.
A Letter from a Concerned North Adams Citizen
regarding the upcoming recall of two patrio. . . uh. . . election deniers. . . Township Supervisor, Mark Nichols, and Township Clerk, Stephanie Scott:
As the May 2nd special election to recall Mark Nichols and Stephanie Scott approaches, I think it is important to realize who it is exactly that is attacking our Adams township of less than 3000 people—a township that nobody in the news cared about until some of us had the courage to ask questions about what is happening to our state and our county.
The London-based “news” outlet Reuters is a good example of the type of people that are backing the recallers. Their article on the attempt to investigate the Dominion voting system starts fast, labeling Stephanie a promoter of “false conspiracy theories” who has publicly embraced “baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged against former U.S. President Donald Trump.”2
Suzy Roberts—who is running against Scott—told Bridge Michigan that we need to “make lying wrong again.” Someone should ask Suzy where all the lies are really coming from.
But okay, let’s even go ahead and say the claims were baseless and stick to the Dominion story. Reuters points out that there have been 18 national incidents of public officials accused of “breaching or attempting to breach election systems.” Twelve of them happen to have been in Michigan – that’s 75%. Now why would that be? Are Michigan Republicans just that much more of “right wing conspiracy theorists,” as the foreigners from Reuters claim? Or was there something fishy going on in our state, and some people had the courage to notice and not take it lying down?
Reuters is likewise quick to ridicule Benjamin Cotton, the individual brought in by Stephanie to investigate our Dominion machines (and whose analysis stated that there WERE irregularities in our voting rolls!) as another conspiracy theorist. What Reuters doesn’t mention is that Cotton is a 21-year Army veteran who worked in US Army, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) specializing in sensitive site and digital device exploitation, Computer Network Attack (CNA), and Computer Network Defense (CND). Cotton was a technical visionary and pioneer in Cyber Security and Computer Forensics for the US Government. The company that he is CEO and founder of, Cytech Services, is a major computer forensics firm.
So who is on the side of Suzy? Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, one of the most hysterical politicians in the country, who cut her teeth working for the Southern Poverty Law Center. And also the similarly-crazed Lisa Brown, Democrat clerk of Oakland County near Detroit who got her five minutes of fame by being blocked from speaking in the Michigan House after grossly ending a statement about her religious right to have an abortion by saying: "Mr. Speaker, I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but no means no." Our expert journalists also appeal to the “Bipartisan Policy Center,” reminding us just how dangerous “insider threat” types like Stephanie Scott really are. Oddly, though, the BPC was founded by Tom Daschle, an 20-plus-year Democrat politician who served as U.S. Senate Majority Leader for the Democrats from 2001-2003.
Radicals like Jocelyn Benson, Lisa Brown, Tom Daschle, and perhaps most disturbingly, Suzy Roberts, want to tell us that we are the crazy ones for noticing irregularities. Stephanie Scott and Mark Nichols had the courage to stand up and say that something is amiss, and the least we need to do is honestly investigate.
I want my country back, or at least a county of it, and I’m willing to make a few nerds in Detroit, Lansing, Washington, or at Reuters mad about it. They can call me a conspiracy theorist all they want, I want some real investigations and some real answers.
And I sure as hell won’t be voting to recall Stephanie and Mark on May 2nd.
External Links
At RealClearEducation, Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, assistant provost of K–12 education at Hillsdale College, responds to certain comments made in the New Yorker by Dr. Robert Jackson, Executive Director of the Great Hearts Institute, in which the latter argues that the BCSI “potentially positions classical education as a partisan project,” and insists that Great Hearts, in contrast, does not wish “to throw students into a kind of partisan affair as a result of their education.” We have the highest respect for Dr. Jackson and for Great Hearts, and we have no desire to involve ourselves in the controversy over The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum, but we find ourselves as surprised as Dr. O’Toole to hear the first range-finding shots preparatory to the forthcoming and necessary battle over “mere classical”3 sound in the pages of the inevitably partisan New Yorker. Perhaps Great Hearts’ experience in Nashville, Tennessee has taught it to tack toward the center, but we may wonder whether it has taken the right lesson.
Speaking of Nashville, it has been interesting to read sane political commentary on the triumph of the “Theater Kids” in the aftermath of the TN legislature’s decision to expel Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, a decision effectively revoked by the unanimous workings of Nashville’s Metropolitan Council and the Shelby County Commission. The editors of The American Mind, for example, express a sort of Realpolitik admiration for the Left’s ability, via its stranglehold on the media, “to turn the massacre of Christian children by a transgender woman into a Civil Rights LARP.” Comparing Pearson to Bud Light’s new pitchperson, Dylan Mulvaney, Simon Evans warns his readers not to “underestimate our capacity to wilfully overlook the naked artifice of a shtick that fits our Weltanschauung.” In a Poulosian vein, he continues: “It’s as if our culture is developing anterograde amnesia – the inability to form new memories. This rare condition, explored brilliantly in Christopher Nolan’s first full-budget movie, Memento, appears to be the only mode in which we can survive in the modern world with our beliefs and loyalties intact.” See Jude Russo, Peachy Keenan (who also asks us to consider the plight of the citizens of Franklin, TN), and Rich Lowry.
Leor Sapir of the Manhattan Institute provides this useful thread on the legal and administrative groundwork that brought “gender radicalism” into the mainstream.
The very Jansen who has been locked in a years-long mulch battle with the city.
“Baseless”? Anyone with eyes and ears saw 4+ years of Donald Trump attacked day in and day out for the lie about being a Russian agent, being impeached for a bogus story about Ukraine, being impeached a second time out of pure spite, the decorated war veteran General Michael Flynn arrested weeks into the Trump administration on nonsense perjury charges (which essentially amount to entrapment), all in addition to nonstop mockery from Hollywood, sports, late night TV shows and every single news outlet and Big Tech media platform. Oh yeah, and then there was the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into election initiatives by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in areas that ended up turning out over 90% of their vote total for Joe Biden.
See the response of the CLT’s Jeremy Tate in The American Conservative to Matthew Freeman’s expression of concern that “classical” is going woke. Apparently, the language of “critical thinking” is inescapable.