blogging

Council gets a promise, what Chamber will do if voters pass vacancy tax, so much for democracy 

I just finished a quick edit of the Chamber of Commerce / Keep Community First part of public comments at June 18 city council meeting about the vacancy tax, for Deconstructing Public Comments, a long post that is going up here at CofA Blog next week, probably in several parts.

I do not agree with anything the Chamber of Commerce and  Keep Community First say.

They come across to me as strong-armed well-groomed power hustlers, the same four or five persons maybe seven have been running just about everything in South Lake Tahoe for decades.

Now they show up as a force of three opening public comments June 18 by telling the Council what they think of the vacancy tax, their plans to fight it and file lawsuits if it passes. Ranting and railing about Constitutional rights that I don't think have anything to do with a vacancy tax but I still have to look deeper into that. 

I wish the multiple property owners and these paid shills who protect them would realize how they look to the rest of us, or at least those in an economic and work force mentality like me. At a time when we are struggling, these people who own multiple properties are kicking and screaming like spoiled adult-brats, many writing in from their globe trotting vacations, hollering idiocy like "taxation without representation" in a faux patriotic verve, determined to keep from paying needed money to the city where one of their properties sits empty. 

Yes, I think the local chamber of commerce as Duane Wallace represents it are paid shills. The CofC is not a nonprofit; I know people think chambers of commerce represent them but that hasn’t been true for more than 50 years since the time of associate justice of the Supreme Court . Lewis Powell: From Wikipedia:  

"1971 around the time of Lewis Powell, the U.S. Chamber became right wing and representative of an elite number of larger and larger businesses

Since a 1971 internal memo by Lewis Powell advocating a more active role in cases before the United States Supreme Court, the Chamber has found increasing success in litigation. Under the Burger and Rehnquist Courts, the Chamber was on the prevailing side 43% and 56% of the time, respectively, but under the Roberts Court, the Chamber's success rate rose to 68% as of June 21, 2012.^[32]   In the 2010 campaign cycle, the Chamber spent $32 million, 93 percent of which was to help Republican candidates."

Since 1971 the Chambers have not represented anyone but the moneyed class.  However, the powers that be managed to keep that information from most Americans who probably still believe the chamber is a nonprofit working for them. 

A chamber of commerce is a lobbying organization that works for its paid membership. Chambers of commerce are, to me, like organized crime. You pay them for protection, they get you deals that help your business.

The rest of us get nothing, but obstruction of everything we try from the grass roots to do to improve the overall economic health of a community, not just the people who can pay for Chamber of Commerce protection.

And does the Chamber really help small businesses in South Lake? Does Duane Wallace showing up to cajole and holler and claim the very Constitution is under attack with this small property tax really do local businesses any good? He postures, intimidates, throws his weight around- I mean this guy is scary-huge-  ejects “lawyer” words, as if- claims we are all having our rights violated, whines pants breaks a sweat, and closes with "The tax just scares me to death so please keep that in mind okay."

Which kinda sounds like a threat. 

Duane Wallace does not speak for me, I'm not paying his organization.

So as I went through the transcript from early in the second hour of the public comments section of last week’s city council meeting, all I could find were ways I disagree with Wallace and his gang.

They strong arm, threaten, promise lawsuit after lawsuit, have a high financed ad campaign ready to go, and hate the bureaucracy a VT tax will create that would actually employ people, instead of even letting the tax have a chance, and they offer no alternative, just obstruction. 

How is that helping the community? 

I think they are ushering in a new Gilded Age, and that will not end up good for most of us.

-

Kay Ebeling

*

I felt a tinge of fear after writing and posting the above, but only for a few seconds.  I've had more powerful and dangerous people than the Chamber of Commerce angry at me for what I wrote before.

This blog started in 2007 when I was part of the national then international movement of “survivors” of pedophile priest crimes. We started to find each other in the nineties when the internet first came out, amazingly we’d all been told by different parishes that ours was the only case ever.

Then by 2008 we knew there were more than a hundred thousand victims with credible accusations of child rape by a Catholic priest coming forward, and guess what, the archdioceses across USA were beating down any release of information about the crimes, even our Survivors Network turned out to be a sham, reporting back to the bishops.

So it was Kismet, God’s will, angelic intervention. Because the writers strike had gone on for months making my job go dark, I got a big unemployment check and I used it to buy my first laptop. Then used it to go to the Courthouse. 

Because while 660 lawsuits against the Archdiocese for allowing child rape by priests were going through Superior Court in L.A., our “news media” didn't want to be bothered to cover them, not when the Phil Spector murder trial was up the street.

So I started blogging.

CofA Blog starts

at CofA Blog 2007

then CofA Blog 2008

and CofA Blog 2009
and CofA Blog 2010
and CofA Blog 2011

I still write a bit about our survivors' experience today at City of Angels 12 http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com

It was miraculous for me, because honestly being a pedophile priest victim, my life had been a shambles held together by chaos, losing one job after another, running away from city to city. 

Suddenly I had credibility.  I was writing a story about crimes that would have remained secret if I had not published my blogs about them. Honest.

I did that blog as long as I could get away with it.

Then the council of Catholic bishops came after me.

So I don't know why wimpy little comments from in-cels putting me down on Facebook diminish me. I've been up against much more fierce and frightening adversaries than the Chamber of Commerce / Keep Community First.

***

Oh my god I just realized: Keep Community First is a takeoff on Keep America First. They Are MAGAs inflicting their Trump induced mania on the rest of us. 

Vote For The Vacancy tax just to keep these right wing mongrels who call us Communists from slurping up anymore power in South Lake Tahoe!!! 

***

Until about a week ago I was really down. Right after Covid my job disappeared  because AI does it better, which is okay because I'm old and get Social Security. But after about six months of not working, I stopped enjoying all that free time. In the past few weeks I've been more energized and positive than I've been in several years.  Once again blogging helped me. Doing this blog makes me enthusiastic to get up and write out my next idea, and I think also blogging keeps me from being a dotty old lady sitting in the yard or staring at a screen all day with a brain that's stopped working.

So if you don't like my blog, then why are you reading it?