Week in Review: Elite Piety

"What sacrifices will our families face?"

Week in Review

County Commissioners, Tuesday, May 27

Opening Prayer

• Comrade [Lil’ Bert] Leininger: “Lord, be with us in the decisions that we make in this room. Remind us of the impact that it has on our constituents in our County.”

Was Bert’s prayer pious? There can be no doubt as to the difficulty of his position as the public face of Jar Jar Hodshire’s goofy, faux-elite political operation—which amazingly seems to fancy itself some kind of real power,¹ rather than a petty tyranny temporarily sanctioned by state and federal bureaucracies and lording it over a small and impoverished County. But Bert does seem to fancy himself as the Money Guy—the one who has the budget answers, the stickler who pinches the pennies.²

These things are not always in conflict: as long as those fedbucks flow from your children’s futures to the Staunch Conservatives, the system works out well enough for the relevant players. The difficulty of resolving the two positions becomes more apparent when Jar Jar’s preferred policy outcome reaches the pitch of fiscal absurdity for the political entity which Bert helps oversee—like this LifeWays business. Perhaps Bert’s prayer is a cry for help, a plea that somehow his prior commitments are squared? Which way, Bert?³

Public Comment

• Ashley Risher, on Leininger’s, Collins’, and Wiley’s collective contempt for the people: “I stand before you today as a petition coordinator for the Citizens for Hillsdale County. . . Given the repeated dismissal of our concerns, we are actively collecting signatures to place this issue on the ballot, ensuring all Hillsdale County residents can contribute to this decision.”

  • On the sacrifices you and your children might get to make so LifeWays can Penetrate further: “Your legal counsel confirmed that if LifeWays can’t make the payment, the County—our community—will be responsible for that payment. What essential services will suffer to cover that cost? What sacrifices will our families face? LifeWays has the capacity to obtain independent funding without jeopardizing our County’s financial stability.”⁴

  • On Bert’s conservative past, prior to his current Staunch Conservative (LGBT-communist) phase: “Last year, I stood before this board with Citizens for Local Choice, an organization that supported local decisions in things like industrial, wind, and solar zoning. This Board voted in favor of supporting local voices. Commissioner Leininger, I personally collected your signature on that petition. So you’ve showed that you believe that local choices matter.”

MSU Extension Annual Report

• Mary Bohling, MSU Extension rep, on the numerous layers of ineffectual grift programming: “That’s information about our SNAP-Ed. It’s our education program for people on low-income food assistance programs, teaching them to. . . eat healthy. . . That program right now is in danger of being cut at the federal level. And if [cuts] were to happen, we would lose 71 Nutrition Instructors across the State of Michigan, including one who works part-time here in Hillsdale County.”⁵

Property Tax Millages

It’s always good to remember how much they’re taking from your pocketbook, and why. The County will levy property tax as follows—

County District Court Facility

Hillsdale County’s District Court must be moved to Care Drive—the current LifeWays facility—in the near future, as the County has sold the current downtown building to Hillsdale Renaissance. The Care Drive facility will have to undergo renovations to be a suitable home for the District Court. The Commissioners discussed contracting with an architect to prepare drawings for those renovations. In what could only be an act of petty vengeance for opposition to the LifeWays bond, Comrades Bert and Wiley prioritized LGBT State Therapy over Courts of Law.

• Leininger: “I don’t see a reason to spend money on an architect if the LifeWays bond issue has to go to the voters. . . I move to postpone this issue to July 8th.” Support from Wiley.⁶

• Commissioner Ingles: “That’s actually contrary to what we already voted to approve. . . This resolution should have been in our Consent Agenda. . . The motion is out of order.”⁷

• Commissioner Benzing, Tar & Feathers on his mind:

  • Perplexed: “Perhaps I’m misinformed, but LifeWays was. . . looking at commercial loans.”

  • On the absurdity of Leininger’s motion: “The problem we have here is that we are on a really, really tight timeline, and we need to have that building for our courts. Waiting is not going to change anything as far as the need for that building for the courts.”

  • On the Board’s role in creating the situation: “We sold the home for our District Court. . . We have to end our lease with LifeWays. It is not our problem to resolve if they cannot move into their new building. Our problem to resolve is that this body collectively sold the home for our District Court.”

  • On the results of Wiley and Bert’s games: “And so consequently delaying this based on petition signatures is not going to change the inevitable: we have to have that building. . . If we do not keep this moving forward, the judges are going to submit for arbitration to the State Court Administrators office, for solution to this problem. And then if we are unwilling to agree to that, they are going to litigate with us, and we are going to have to pay both sides of the cost of that litigation: the judge’s side, and the County’s defense side. So I cannot see why we would for any reason consider waiting another nanosecond.”

    • Wiley, copying and pasting arguments: “Statutorily, the County is responsible to have a Mental Health service within the County.”

    • Benzing: “Statutorily we’re not required to provide space for them.”

    • Wiley, malfunctioning: “That is true. But we’re required to have a Mental Health Service in the County.”

    • Benzing: “We are also required to have a District Court in the County. So are we going to rent space in the Kroger plaza? Are we going to bring in modular offices?”

    • Wiley, sidestepping: “The discussion with Renaissance [the owner of the District Court building] must take place.”

    • Ingles: “We had a meeting scheduled that was postponed.”

      • Wiley, lying: “They postponed it.”

      • Ingles: “Not true. Remember, you were out of town?”

      • Wiley, caught: “That’s correct.”⁸

      • Ingles: “Whether there’s a meeting or not with Renaissance. . . they have a timeline due to their. . . arrangements. So while it’s nice for us to talk about extension possibilities, the reality is, there is likely no extension in that building. . . We do need to proceed with the architect’s drawings. . . We can wait, and spend more money, or we can move today. . . This is an extended conversation that I don’t truly understand, because we approved it at our last meeting,⁹ and now we’re going to not approve the resolution that we approved last meeting.”

Following a break, the Commissioners reconvened, Ingles having apparently confirmed that the resolution from last meeting had already set things in motion.

• Ingles: “The contract has already been signed, and the dollars spent. . . The architect is under contract, and the expressive agreement is in place.”

Voting on Leininger’s motion to postpone until July: Wiley and Leininger in favor; Benzing, Ingles, and Collins opposed.

Voting on proceeding with the architectural contract: Collins, Benzing, Ingles in favor; Lil’ Bert and Wiley opposed. The drawings will proceed.

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External Links

• “Censorship begins in your home.” Cathy Kelemen.¹⁰

• “If you change [special assessments], it would be discrimination.”¹¹ Scott Sessions.

• “The city of Jonesville is joining a number of municipalities across Michigan opting for a road diet to improve traffic and parking safety.” HDN.¹²

• “The bills would collectively ban transgender girls from joining interscholastic girls’ sports and would protect schools from legal liability for excluding transgender girls.” Michigan Advance.

• “I will name a baby after this man.” Kathryn Wales on Alasdair MacIntyre.

1. We hear they dine in the private room at Olivia’s!

2. Naturally, said pennies are only pinched by Bert when they would benefit ordinary Hillsdale County citizens. Say, parks or roads.

3. As the denizens of right-wing Twitter would say, “it’s hierarchy, not hypocrisy.” Mr. Leininger’s prayer would sprinkle a sanctimonious bit of holy water over the Commission’s preferred set of “constituents”—in this case the “impacted” wards of LifeWays (rather than some uppity coalition cobbled together by the Negative Culture).

4. We were amused to see that Jeff “John Galt’” King’s edgy Facebook libertarianism (a paradox of course) must in the end remain purely theoretical. For a glimpse at King’s pro-LifeWays analysis, observe the following post about Commissioner Ingles, seen on Miss Swan’s Very Decent and Fact-Based Facebook Page.

Sadly, our keyboard warrior is hopelessly confused. In our charity, we extend an olive branch—to help the simple fellow:

1. “A vote didn’t go his way so he is looking for a redo.” Mr. King has not been paying attention to this matter, quite obviously, as it took LifeWays three tries to secure the full faith and credit of the people of Hillsdale County—a detail even the pro-LifeWays HDN couldn’t bring itself to overlook. (This is a joke. The well-adjusted and reasonable Mr. King has been obsessively attending to things Hillsdale County for as long as we can remember—which, admittedly, isn’t very long. Of course, he can take it or leave it! He’s just trying to keep you from being disappointed by local politics! It’s not like he’s single-handedly propping up disappointment-addict PSFM’s whole operation! What would we do without Mr. King’s unswerving and content-generating devotion?)

2. “Unethical, and showing an inability to work within a legislative body, most certainly.” His conspicuously vague allusion to Ethics aside, it is apparent that our embattled pilot has subscribed to the morality of the managerial Win-Win as much as any of the other mid-tier Hillsdale businessmen who believe their modest estates symbolic of their vision and virtue. This smugness naturally leads to a contempt for the people, which we see on a weekly basis among the City and County Elites. As for conduct in a “legislative body”: to dispute incomplete legislative actions within the confines of legal procedure is, for King, unbecoming of a Staunch & Ethical Conservative like himself—one who is ideologically committed not only to losing, but to not even trying.

3. “I don’t recall any impassioned rhetoric or debates from Doug on the subject.” We’ve no doubt Mr. King recalls nothing of the sort.

4. “Doug just has his finger up in the air and wants the support from the PhD cronies.” Perhaps Wiley, Leininger, and Collins had best get their fingers “up in the air,” before it’s goodnight to their political careers.

5. “[Ingles] used to be a good guy, I was even friends with him.” Comma splice. (Burn!) King once more subscribes to the predominant notion that guides Jar Jar & Co.: that listening to the people is one of the gravest sins in local politics. Thus, King has it, Ingles has become an inDecent man.

5. First they came for the State Nutritionists, and we did not speak out—for we did not care for State Nutritionists. . . Are we doing it right?

6. This is actually a complex 4D-chess operation through which Leininger and his allies, by withholding money from institutions that improve the lives of his constituents (courts, jails, parks, affordable houses), hope to generate a never-ending supply of LifeWays-constituents over whom they can rule, undisturbed by a rival elite. To help the people you have to immiserate the people!

7. Abe Dane, lurking, on the setting of the agenda which included placing this item as a part of new business: “I made that decision.”

8. “[Sigh.] This was all so much more pleasant when only the cranks and the autists paid attention.”

9. Don’t tell Mr. King!

10. As it stands, as it has ever stood, the public library is not in possession of all books. Someone is censoring curating according to some standard. (Please, Artificial Intelligence, save us from ourselves!) The question is whether that standard is good, whether it is or should be up for public discussion, and whether it is possible or right to apply another. (We apologize to Mr. King for our “progressive” views on the subject.)

11. Once one person is taxed, everyone must be taxed. Of a piece with Sessions’ subsequent comment that “the competitive mindset [on Council] needs to stop,” that local government should blindly follow the City Manager. Ours is not to reason why, says the man who would represent you, and who cannot forgive Adam Stockford’s audacity in having had “backing from people in the community.” . . . It is amusing that these candidates, though they are very willing to imply that Mr. Paladino is responsible for the infamous “negative culture,” know as little about it as everyone else—a situation that doubtless pleases our Machiavellian city manager, his preferred candidate for Mayor, and the social media allies who know that Hillsdale gets most of its political information impressions from sensationalist Facebook posts. Paladino? Isn’t he the guy that . . . etc., etc.

12. Murray suggests similar developments in Hillsdale have “stalled.”