So apparently everyone else in Green Bay has to wait for new guidelines to be developed for displays on public property, but City Council President Chad Fredette gets to leave his crappy nativity scene up in the meantime. That was the decision reached on a 6-6 vote at last night's city council meeting, with mayor Jim Schmitt casting the tie-breaking vote in support.
No, no, no... no establishing religion here. No favoritism here. Letting the City Council President's nativity scene hang over City Hall while forcing every individual with another belief to remain silent is obviously the fairest way to handle a matter that desperately needs clarification.
The right decision here was clear, and painfully obvious - take down all the displays until some kind of constitutional policy can be drawn up. Or, let everyone put up whatever they want. When it comes to speech like this, government generally has precious few options. Either you let everyone speak, or you let nobody speak.
But the constitutional answer is never "let the Christians speak and let everyone else suck it."
Alas, the right decision was nowhere to be found in a room filled with people looking score political points. I'm not even sure the Christians are speaking here so much as a council president who is willing to use Christianity as a political weapon.
In a situation that calls for leadership, Green Bay got to witness first hand the pussification of its idiot-in-chief, Jim Schmitt. What Schmitt delivered last night was followership, plain and simple.
The lack of political courage here was mind-boggling. The amount of total partisan jackassery was astonishing. And I say "was" because I couldn't figure it out. And then I saw this picture and everything became crystal clear.
Yeah, someone should ask the former Montgomery staffers what they think of the guy in the back. Or the people who worked on the Grothman campaign. If this were The Wizard of Oz, these three guys would be leading candidates for the Scarecrow.
At least Green Bay has something to be known for now other than the Packers. It's the home of a bunch of buffoons who will trample your rights to free speech while protecting their own right to put a bunch of shitty plastic toys on the roof of your City Hall.
You stay classy, Green Bay.
No, no, no... no establishing religion here. No favoritism here. Letting the City Council President's nativity scene hang over City Hall while forcing every individual with another belief to remain silent is obviously the fairest way to handle a matter that desperately needs clarification.
The right decision here was clear, and painfully obvious - take down all the displays until some kind of constitutional policy can be drawn up. Or, let everyone put up whatever they want. When it comes to speech like this, government generally has precious few options. Either you let everyone speak, or you let nobody speak.
But the constitutional answer is never "let the Christians speak and let everyone else suck it."
Alas, the right decision was nowhere to be found in a room filled with people looking score political points. I'm not even sure the Christians are speaking here so much as a council president who is willing to use Christianity as a political weapon.
In a situation that calls for leadership, Green Bay got to witness first hand the pussification of its idiot-in-chief, Jim Schmitt. What Schmitt delivered last night was followership, plain and simple.
The lack of political courage here was mind-boggling. The amount of total partisan jackassery was astonishing. And I say "was" because I couldn't figure it out. And then I saw this picture and everything became crystal clear.
Yeah, someone should ask the former Montgomery staffers what they think of the guy in the back. Or the people who worked on the Grothman campaign. If this were The Wizard of Oz, these three guys would be leading candidates for the Scarecrow.
At least Green Bay has something to be known for now other than the Packers. It's the home of a bunch of buffoons who will trample your rights to free speech while protecting their own right to put a bunch of shitty plastic toys on the roof of your City Hall.
You stay classy, Green Bay.
6 comments:
This post got me so pissed that I just have to add my two cents about Green Bay, since I grew up there.
This nativity dustup, with its various preening Elmer Gantrys, points to a larger problem. It vividly demonstrates the small minded leadership that has kept Green Bay from becoming a vibrant, fun place to live.
Look at Guy Zima, who’s nothing more than a Wisconsin version of Mr. Haney from that show Green Acres. He only gets re-elected because he shovels his constituents’ driveways in the winter and rails against the minorities that are replacing his base of constituents on the near west side who haven’t died or made the white flight move to Suamico. If it wasn’t for things like him getting picked up for shoplifting or spitting in Nancy Nusbaum’s face at a downtown bar you’d never know he existed.
Look at Pat Evans, a formerly genuinely likeable guy who has degenerated into one of the most vile, Tancredo-like characters imaginable. Business people shuddered when he tried to run for county executive. All they could see is prospective employees they’re trying to lure to Green Bay Googling for information about the city and coming up with stories about Evans burning a Mexican flag and organizing vigilante immigration raids into area businesses.
Look recently at the city’s response to the need to rebuild Military Avenue. City Council members said that the main priority for the project should be to build it to lure as many big box stores as possible. No talk of developing a unique, lively area of the city people might want to visit to do things other than buy a shower curtain from Bed, Bath and Beyond.
You can even go back to the establishment of UW-Green Bay, which was supposed to be built on the east side of the city at the mouth of the Fox River, but was scuttled by city politicians because they saw the protests at UW-Madison in the 1960’s and wanted no dirty hippies in their town. Imagine how vibrant Green Bay would be today with thousands of students studying, living and working downtown.
It’s a city with a political class largely unwilling or unable to see past next week. And it’s been that way for 50 years.
Green Bay sucks, it’s the reason I left it as soon as I got an education, never returned and never will. It’s largely run by people who still wish it was 1950 and see no place in their little village for the growing number of minorities who are settling there. It’ll be interesting to see how their Eisenhower-era mindset deals with the harsh reality of 21st century demographics.
Well, briv, we have at least two things in common. We both grew up in Green Bay - and we'd both never move back.
In my case, I grew up in the suburbs, many of which are still flourishing. Many of which flourished to begin with because of all the bass-ackward planning decisions that Green Bay made in the first place.
Paul Jadin did a nice job of trying to clean up Broadway. I largely think Jadin was an okay mayor in that regard. But the guy was dealt a total shithole to begin with.
There are so many run-down and dying residential areas in Green Bay, it's sad, really. Increasingly, the people who are living there are those who do so because prices are affordable. And increasingly, the city council is trying to flip them the bird and tell them that people of their color are not welcome in town.
But frankly, if they're not living there, what are we going to do with the thousands of run down, poorly maintained homes that are located all over the near west and near east sides? No businesses want to locate downtown.
The atrocious location of UWGB provides zero economic catalyst to the downtown area. Hell, it's faster for those who actually live on campus (what, all 40 of them?) to hop on 43 to 172 and spend their time and money in Ashwaubenon. Hell, 75% of why Ashwaubenon exists in its present form is because of Green Bay's terrible planning decisions.
Ashwaubenon has slightly better infrastructure, but is there any reason that Oneida Street south of Lombardi couldn't have been Military Ave between Lombardi and Velp? All it would've taken was some foresight.
For years, Green Bay's leaders decided they'd rather have a big, smelly industrial harbor instead of an area that could actually generate new growth, both commercial and residential. Gee, it never occurred to them that people might want to spend their time or their money on a riverfront? Oh no, let's park a bunch of 100-foot tall coal heaps next to the Mason Street bridge. That's sexy. And can we make a whole island out of toxic dredgings just offshore?
Sadly, Green Bay has always been a city ruled by petty, parochial overlords who have no interest in doing anything other than preserving their fiefdoms. It's funny that you mention the Zima stuff. It'd be unfortunate if readers thought that this local government lunacy was new in Green Bay. It's not. It's been happening for decades.
And frankly, it's no better at the state level. Green Bay - and all of Brown County, for that matter - continues to send people to the state Legislature who are totally useless.
Green Bay's problem is that is has such low expectations of itself that anytime it eats its dinner without spilling all over its shirt, it's considered a major victory.
And now, Green Bay is totally boxed in. It's got Howard and Hobart to its west, Ashwaubenon, Allouez, and Bellevue to its south. All it can do is annex into Humboldt and Scott. Otherwise, they have to play the hand they're dealt. And right now, they're getting their lunch eaten by the suburbs. Green Bay's a shithole, but the suburbs are awfully nice. I don't think there's a shortage of applications for building permits in Howard or Suamico or DePere.
And the tragedy is that Green Bay did this to itself. Green Bay never lacked opportunity. It lacked leadership. Sad to see that still hasn't changed.
I couldn't agree more about the waterfront.
When we lived on the east coast, my wife and I came home to Green Bay for about a week to get married because that’s where our families were. As a supposed added inducement to pick their facility for the reception, the KI Center promised prospective clients a top floor room at the Regency Suites with a wall full of windows and a fabulous view. You see where this is going, right?
The view?: Tower Drive, the abandoned Larson’s vegetable company, a gravel lot where the Licht warehouse once stood until someone torched it and about eleventy gazillion smokestacks from the paper companies.
The choices Green Bay has made with regard to its waterfront have been horrendous. When you think of what a showcase the Bay and Fox River could have been instead of just a toilet for the paper companies you want to take to cutting yourself to block out the psychic pain.
What’s even more frustrating is that, unless I’ve missed something, no one in any position of real power seems to want to do anything to start remedying all of the filth that clutters the Fox’s banks. It’s not like a cat, where if you leave it alone it’ll clean itself.
Every other city on earth seems to manage to utilize their urban rivers for recreation and industry. Instead Green Bay-ens get a muddy river full of chemicals and shirtless drunks wearing Packer Zubazs and multiple gold chains pissing into the river from their 19 foot Bayliner in front of a nearly perpetually empty Neville Public Museum.
Hey, I go to that museum! But, you're both right. I always thought there was something in the water here that made people so ass-backwards in Green Bay especially since Appleton is so progressive. After coming from Wausau which I thought was finally coming out of the dark ages, we move here and slip right back.
Even this whole "build a new high school" fiasco just shows how far people will go to segregate themselves from their not-so-white neighbors along the river. If a house comes up for sale under $150,000 in Lawrence, Howard or Suamico it's sold in a week to someone just wanting to get out of the GB school district.
As far as this whole mess with the nativity scene, I just couldn't believe it when the council didn't overwhelming decide to get that thing down from there. After 19 years here I'm still amazed at the idiots who live here.
I, too, have been to that museum, on numerous occasions. After all, Green Bay only has three places to take kids on field trips: the Neville, the railroad museum, and Heritage Hill. And I swear that I was made to go to each of the three every year during elementary school.
That'd be fine, except for the fact that at two of those places, almost nothing ever changes. The only highlight was going to Heritage Hill and scoring the cornbread with apple butter, and then buying the lemon drops at the general store.
This is kind of therapeutic. I'm glad to know I'm not the only person who goes back to Green Bay and sees nothing but blown opportunities and untapped potential.
fyi . . . this is the kind of thing that can happen, unfortunately, when we have the kind of religious intolerance Fradette, Schmitt & company are showing.
Christians beating Jewish students. The person who aided the Jewish students was a Muslim man.
who's showing compassion and decency here?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/12/subway.attack/
A Muslim man jumped to the aid of three Jewish subway riders after they were attacked by a group of young people who objected to one of the Jews saying "Happy Hanukkah," a spokeswoman for the three said Wednesday.
Friday's altercation on the Q train began when somebody yelled out "Merry Christmas," to which rider Walter Adler responded, "Happy Hanukkah," said Toba Hellerstein.
"Almost immediately, you see the look in this guy's face like I've called his mother something," Adler told CNN affiliate WABC.
Two women who were with a group of 10 rowdy people then began to verbally assault Adler's companions with anti-Semitic language, Hellerstein said.
One member of the group allegedly yelled, "Oh, Hanukkah. That's the day that the Jews killed Jesus," she said.
When Adler tried to intercede, a male member of the group punched him, she said.
Another passenger, Hassan Askari -- a Muslim student from Bangladesh -- came to Adler's aid, and the group began physically and verbally assaulting him, Hellerstein said. . .
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