Metropolitan Government and Why The NJ Is Wrong About It
The editorial page of the NJ features a piece from John Sweeney that attempts to advocate for Metropolitan Government for Wilmington and New Castle County. He also takes the opportunity to blame the public sector unions and Democrats for why it won’t work here. Let’s take this apart abit so we can see how Delaware’s newspaper of record is failing its readers again.
Metropolitan Government is shorthand for the merger of Wilmington and New Castle County as a way to get some additional efficiency from these two governments. The first I heard of it was when the city had its financial crisis back in 2003/2004. Metropolitan Government was proposed at that time as a way to save the city — merge it with the County, reduce the duplication of services, expand the interests of both entities and make it easier to market a region rather than standalone units. There were probably more reasons for this, but the idea was pretty firmly rejected by both City and County people. I went to alot of debates and political events that year and I saw no residents who spoke *for* Metropolitan Government.
Stepping back abit more, the idea of merging municipal governments is something that Jon Corzine tried to promote in NJ, with little success. Governors in NY, Maine, Iowa and other states have been working on promoting government consolidations (sometimes municipalities, sometimes school districts) with limited success. In spite of providing ways to streamline a consolidation process and even providing some incentives to cover some of the costs, municipal and school district mergers are a very tough sell everywhere. Longtime readers here will note that discussions of consolidating Delaware’s school districts have people coming out of the woodwork to defend one thing.
Home Rule. Home Rule is the biggest obstacle to implementing municipal consolidations everywhere. If you follow NJ at all, you know that there is a new incorporated area approximately every 1.5 square miles or so. All of them have their own governments, providing their own services and having almost 500 different police departments, administrations, and other city overhead is probably the biggest reason why New Jersians have such a massive tax burden. While they all want that tax burden to be reduced, they aren’t especially interested in giving up their own governments and services. And it is a tough sell. Princeton Borough and Princeton Township merged last year after trying for more than a decade. These two municipalities aren’t even that different from each other. But they did work at small consolidations along the way — parking, library, volunteer fire department, among others — making it easier finally for the residents of both areas to vote to merge. Other NJ municipalites are thinking of their own mergers, but the business of Home Rule — the ability to fund and control your own services — is pretty powerful. The cities of Cherry Hill and Merchantville have been exploring a consolidation and much of the pushback has been coming from Cherry Hill residents who see schools in the area close to Merchantville being overwhelmed.
There’s also identity — people strongly identify with the places they live. And sometimes negatively — as in identifying with NOT living in Wilmington (or, for some of us, NOT living in the suburbs). It is hard to ask people who see themselves are a vital part of one community to change that identification.
The NJ piece identifies unions and Democrats as ground zero of the opposition to Metropolitan Government here — completely bypassing the issues of Home Rule and Identity that have been the majority experience in many other places. The places pushing for municipal or school district consolidations are Blue States, Red State and Purple states — and every last one of them finds that is it awfully hard to convince voters to give up the governments they rely on. Even people who preach smaller government will embrace the government that is closest to them, and point fingers at all of the other people who need to give up their government. Certainly public sector unions have something to lose in consolidations — some jobs will be lost as departments merge. But one of the real challenges of a consolidated government is consolidating those unions. For instance, the WPD and NCCPD pay scales are quite different (NCCPD pays more) — which pay scale gets adopted? The odds are good that while some jobs will be lost, the jobs that are left will have higher pay, because the county typically pays more than the city.
How do you deal with the city’s wage tax? How do you deal with the rules that effectively limit the city’s ability to grow on its own? How would a consolidation effect the other incorporated areas in the County? These and alot more questions have to be dealt with successfully in order to craft a narrative that will show residents of both areas that this is a good thing. But the NJ wants to ditch the complexity of the real and perceived problems with a City County consolidation, in favor of a simple blaming of unions and Democratic politicians. Add to that the ironic twist that they do all of this by complaining of a lack of leadership for this issue.
Getting to Metropolitan Government is a massive task (and I’m neither pro or con the idea at this point) and it is a bigger one than unions or Democratic politicians. I’d bet that if you were to hold a referendum on this in November, this idea would go down in ignominious defeat — because neither community wants this. Leadership would indeed conceptualize this task in a way that tells City and County communities why this should be compelling to them. A newspaper genuinely interested in the betterment of both communities would be calling for leadership to navigate this complexity, rather than lazily pointing fingers at the least of the challenges for this.
Tags: City of Wilmington, Metropolitan Government, New Castle County
Thank you for putting this up. Of course Democrats share in some of the blame. Reason one? There are no republicans in New Castle County or in Wilmington, so of course, you have to blame the Democrats. The Republicans have marginalized themselves into a failed group of individuals, who are more concerned with preserving their cult and outdated rituals, than with achieving political power. Out west, they call such organizations, Odd Fellows, and build halls for them.
Second, unions are the greatest thing that has ever happened to mankind. If it weren’t for unions, we’d now be serfs. Or lords. Obviously Sweeney (thinks he’s lord) will blame the unions. Sky is gray: unions. Dollar blew out of my pocket: unions. For unions are his arch enemy. Unions are the only thing keeping the serfs from not being serfs. If it weren’t for unions, he could be riding a horse and jousting, instead of writing editorials for a damn paper…
No wonder he’s so mad all the time.
Sadly, Sweeney has been in Wilmington for long enough to know much better.
Cass has done much more to put this issue into perspective than the News Journal’s editorial page editor.
Interestingly, Sweeney’s column closes with a request that candidates explain their positions on what is now (and is quite likely to remain) a non-issue in this year’s campaigns.
He had an opportunity to elevate the discussion — and failed.
The mug shot that runs with his column online is too small for most readers to see in detail, but check it out the next time you see something by Sweeney in the dead tree edition. In the picture, it sure looks like he is asleep.
Abolish useless municipal governments that have proven incapable of governing themselves? Hey, I’m all for it. Wipe out Wilmington, the most dysfunctional city in the state. But add to it Camden (defrauded by town manager), Kenton (defrauded by town clerk), Milton (can’t get it’s shit together, constantly fighting), Ocean View (see Milton) and Laurel (almost broke, ex-town manager a druggie). None of those municipalities have proven they’re up to the job. Don’t just pick on the big city!
More to your point, Cass, I see no good reason against consolidation other than local pride, which is a ridiculous reason to keep an incompetent city government in place. The tax and services issues you bring up are distractions that would be handled in debate and discussion, not roadblocks. Wilmington is a dead city. There is very little to reccomend it to anyone. Should we watch its death throes or do something to save the people and infrastructure?
“Wilmington is a dead city. There is very little to reccomend it to anyone. Should we watch its death throes or do something to save the people and infrastructure?”
With all due respect, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Wilmington has serious problems, but it’s nowhere near as dysfunctional as other I-95 corridor cities like Camden and Chester, in large part because its schools are separate from its government.
The only reason ever really given for municipal government is that it fixes the problem of Wilmington’s narrow tax base. Almost any other solution to that problem would involve less upheaval than municipal government.
As a downstater, I see Wilmington as a pit. You go from swank office buildings to filthy slums in a few blocks. Even Market Street, site of the famed and incredibly overhyped renaissance, looks like a trash dump with a few glittering jewels stuck on top. I’ll grant you I’ve never lived there, but I have visited a lot and have many friends who live there. Successive administrations of both black and white mayors have all failed miserably in making it a place people want to go. That’s the long term incompetence I’m talking about. Poverty is not going to be fixed without larger support, and I don’t see that Wilmington engenders confidence for such an investment. Crime is always a problem in places with dense populations, yet the current administration has been dismissive of solution suggestions. The one thing that’s been clear is that the WPD can’t handle it on its own. As long as troopers are helping out, the question looms why keep the WPD? That’s my thinking in a nutshell.
Actually, Wilmington Mayor Harry Haskell (1969-1973) first proposed Metro Government combining New Castle County and the City of Wilmington.
While unsuccessful in that initiative, for many of the same objections valid today, he did institute the Wilmington income tax in his attempt to diversify and expand the tax base.
Point of reference, he was elected primarily in response to ending the National Guard occupation of Wilmington.
“Successive administrations of both black and white mayors have all failed miserably in making it a place people want to go. That’s the long term incompetence I’m talking about.”
And that’s why I think you fail to understand the nature of the problem. Why would someone want to go to Wilmington when Philadelphia is 25-minute drive away? There’s nothing Wilmington can offer than PHiladelphia doesn’t have, and generally for less money.
So … If it’s a dangerous place to walk, if there’s nothing or very little there to attract visitors, if it has no tax base, if the politicians are corrupt and incompetent, if there’s no local power over education … Why does anyone think it’s good to prop the city up instead of putting it out of its misery?
I was in Wilmington last night to pick up family arriving by train. We went early and went to dinner at a nice place on the riverfront. Had a nice time. Train was late, but the folks arrive ok and we made it out of the city without being assaulted. All in all a nice experience. Maybe it’s not the norm but there are things Wilmington has to offer. People have to care about their city and take responsibility for it. They have to be personally invested in their neighborhood and the city. “Filthy slums” usually exist where the neighborhood no longer cares.
I always crack up about the “dangerous place to walk” meme. Yeah, you might want to avoid 9th and Bennett after dark, but Wilmington has far less resident-on-tourist crime than most places do. Only a place as provincial as Delaware would consider Wilmington some sort of crime pit. Remove the dope dealer-on-dope dealer violence and it’s safer than Newark (Del, not NJ).
“Why does anyone think it’s good to prop the city up instead of putting it out of its misery?”
Because as far as the outside world is concerned, Wilmington IS Delaware.
And we really want our state represented by weekly homicides, rampant poverty, a mayor whose idea of cooperation is telling people to shut up, a riverfront that has one or two bright spots but otherwise looks like a bomb just dropped with acres of empty parking, a tiny overpriced zoo, and Tatiana Copeland’s name in lights? Let’s be honest: It has a train station, and that’s about it.
Laugh at crime concerns all you want, but they are real. Gangsta-on-tourist crime isn’t all there is. People need to be able to live there without worrying about getting shot, and perceptions do matter.
Even turning the place over to Tom Gordon or Paul Clark would get better results than what Wilmington has managed to do for itself over the years.
Would you prefer the state be represented by your county full of peckerwoods? Move to fucking Alabama, asswipe.
Do us all a favor and stay down there in the sticks. Visit civilization when you grow a set.
I live and work in the city and love both. My home is in what is generally consedered a good neighborhood and my work is in what is generally considered a bad area, but I walk around both areas and have never had a problem. I can walk to stores and restaurants as well as parks. I have lived in the county in the past, and I find the conveniences in the city to be worth the change. My house and car were broken into when I lived in the county, but never in Wilmington.I suspect if you compared county and city crime rates per capita you would not find a significant difference.
SW illustrates the problem of Identifying with Place that can be so hard overcome when asking municipalities to consolidate. Frankly, I think that Sussex is West Virginia with a way over-rated beach. They have plenty of crime problems, and unlike Wilmington, their crime issues are not largely limited to the criminal element. Not to mention that they spend a good deal of state money on the futility of beach replenishment — to make sure that the few people who live on the beach get to maintain their property values.
Wilmington is still the economic capital of the state. Between the banks, the corporate work and the courts, the locus of much of what funds the state happens here. And yet, this is the place that is legally restricted from managing its own growth. Wilmington needs to do well for the rest of the state to do well.
If SW hadn’t just rushed to contribute his completely brain dead view of the city he might not have missed the fact that this consolidation business is being tried all over the US and it isn’t a rousing success. For a number of reasons that I cited. But apparently I provided an opportunity for one of the Lower Slower to showcase his skills in the latter part of that description.
Geezer,
Ah, such lovely language. Keeping it civil, are we?
Please go back and read my comment at 9:35. I endorsed abolishing several Kent and Sussex municipalities that have proven their inability to shoot straight. I don’t think incompetent government anywhere should be rewarded by permitting corruption to continue.
Cassandra,
“Wilmington is still the economic capital of the state. … Wilmington needs to do well for the rest of the state to do well.”
Funny, if Wilmington were erased from the map tomorrow, my neighbors and friends would go on working just fine. Not a beat would be skipped. Wilmington contains just 11 percent of the businesses in Delaware, 9 percent of the jobs and 8 percent of the population. If the courts and state offices left tomorrow and decamped to Dover, the corporate office buildings would be abandoned in a week. How is it the economic capital of the state again?
“Not to mention that they spend a good deal of state money on the futility of beach replenishment — to make sure that the few people who live on the beach get to maintain their property values.”
I’m no defender of beach replenishment. But I have witnessed that a hell of a lot of you northerners enjoy coming down to our beaches and clogging our roads during the summer. And I also observe, by the by, that there’s a good deal of state money being spent to prop up your incompetent police force and prosecute your druggies and prostitutes and politicians, not to mention artificially propping up the employment rate with all the state jobs.
As for crime, Delaware had 48 homicides in 2010, the last year for which I could find consistent statistics. More than half – 27 – occurred within the borders of your fair city. Who’s got the crime problem?
Wilmington will die within the next 20 years. It will become a shell, home only to those people poor enough to be trapped in their slum apartments, only rarely venturing out to dodge the bullets. The next mayor will be unable to do anything to stop the slide, while more and more people will keep coming south of the canal.
Most people want to be able to walk to the store without stepping over broken beer bottles, empty syringes and the bodies of men half dead. They want to be able to breathe fresh air, not inhale the smog from I-95. They want to go visit a nice restaurant, not have to dodge drunken sots weaving home from the Trolley Square pubs. They want to visit Brandywine Park without having teenage thugs topple over a port-a-potty and cripple them. They want to vote for politicians who don’t run “nonprofits” that are self-serving money machines, who don’t tell civic leaders to shut up or are convicted killers.
Tens of thousands of Delawareans have already fled. They’re going to continue leaving until there’s nothing left but blood and drugs and dirt and hunger and poverty of the left-behinds. Wilmington’s children deserve a real future, not the self-righteous defensiveness and blindness that you have put on.
Oh my… someone has issues.
Wilmington is still home to much of the corporate activity in this country. It is still the county seat for NCCo. And it is still home to more banks than Sussex County. I;d be interested in your stats by revenue rather than by number of businesses. Because the deal is that if Wilmington goes down then your and your friends cleaning up chicken bedding will be part of Pennsylvania again.
I live in Wilmington. And I don’t step over broken beer bottles or empty syringes or whatever else you are fantasizing over. There are great restaurants here, and this is a budding music center. The downtown area (Market St) is increasing in population and there are waiting lists for some of the buildings. I walk everywhere here and have not been bothered. You are the people with the home invasion issues and in many cases your drug violence and activity rivals Wilmington.
Lots of out of towners go to your over-rated beaches too. Lots of out of staters live at your over-rated beaches. That ought to mean that you ought to fund your own police department instead of one subsidized by the rest of us.
So just be happy that you are down there in West Virginia with a beach. And you are in no position to lecture anybody on self-defensiveness when your entire schtick here depends on making up the state of Wilmington from some silly TV show. Because you certainly aren’t speaking from anywhere near experience of the place.
Just wait and see 20 years from now. All of you will be living in suburban NCCo. And dearie, there’s no subsidizing of our police force here. We pay for our extra cops, unlike you and your freeloading mayor.
You can have your pit of a city. And you can keep crying about how unfair it is that Wilmingtonians don’t control their own schools, and putting us down for being chicken farming hicks, and being in denial about how a generation of young men is being killed at the rate of one every other week, and feeling proud that you live in a cesspool of asphalt and slimy snake-oil preachers. Let’s cut the state off at the canal, and we’ll see who does better in a decade or so. Will it be the city whose leaders are so incompetent that they aren’t trusted to run their own schools? I doubt it.
Let’s cut the state off at the canal
Deal.
Economics isn’t your strong suit. Stereotyping is.
Stereotyping? What stereotyping? You have a giant homicide problem – a tenth of the population of the state but more than half the murders! – that your police and mayor are unable to solve. Your politicians are exemplified by James “Shut Up” Baker, Norm Oliver and Al Plant, paragons of virtue all. You have a convicted killer running for mayor. You have the highest poverty rate in the state. You haven’t been able to make the Riverfront work despite years of trying. You have a tiny few-block space of downtown that you’re hanging hopes on for revitalization, thanks not to small business people but thanks only to the grace of a Pennsylvania music venue and some rich Du Pont family members. Geezer admits that there’s nothing there to attract visitors. I have walked the streets and seen the trash and the druggies and the drunks. What stereotypes?
Give me 20 good things about Wilmington. Please. I beg of you. If I am wrong, show me the light! Bless me with your superior wisdom! No, seriously. Why should Wilmington continue as a city? What positive things does it bring to the table?
@cassandra–
SW is clueless when it comes to matters above the ditch. S/he only knows what is written in TNJ or delawareonline.com.
I live in 19808, work in 19801. In any given week, I spend most of my waking hours in 19801 (That’s downtown/WCC Wilmo to you downstate cluckers).
I find it amusing when some half-wit from Sussex proclaims the dangers of Wilmington. That would be akin to ME, a life-long NCC resident, proclaiming the dangers of Georgetown, Seaford, or some other downstate shithole. According to TNJ/delawareonline, there are lots of home invasions in Sussex! Stay away or you’ll be killed!
I just returned from a very nice event on Washington St. in WCC. Mike Castle was there, as were several other prominent politicians, including the idiotic lame-duck mayor of Wilmington. I didn’t see Bill Montgomery there, which surprised me. I thought he was permanently attached to the current mayor’s ass, but perhaps he’s trying to distance himself from Mr. Shut Up, We’re Building a Hotel at your Expense Whether You Like it or Not.
SW has not one clue about what S/he speaks. Don’t feed the troll.
Roland, don’t make me beat your ass again.
I find it endlessly fascinating when assholes from Wilmington think we’re all half-wit chicken-farming gap-toothed bumpkins who drive pickups and are homophobic racists. Yeah, stereotype much yourself?
I’ll spot you the beaches. Give me 19 good things about Sussex or shut the fuck up.
Beat my ass? In your dreams, half-wit!
Come up to 8th & Washington tomorrow. You can hang out w/ me & Joe Connor. Joe isn’t my friend, but he works across the street from me. We can give you a primer on how to survive as a white boy in Wilmo.
Too frightened to make the trek? I’ll be in Dewey Sat. night if you’d like to meet there. Dewey is much whiter than WCC, and there are plenty of rent-a-cops to protect you. Lots of pick up trucks too.
SW, did you miss the part where I said I live in 19808? Google it, half-wit. It’s well outside the city limits.
This is becoming a slug-fest! I agree about Wilmington, it has two faces, really nice, and two blocks away, really bad. I don’t hear of too many white boys walking down a “really bad” part and getting “capped”. The drug dealers are fighting for their ground with other thugs and subsequently thining the heard. It works for me. FYI, New Castle has their fair share of murders and bad areas that could compare to 8th and Bennett.
oh, and @ Sussexwatcher, in 20 years we’ll be speaking manderine as China will own us!
I love Sussex, but every black Sussex parent I know wants their kids to get out of the place if they have the chance.
In an attempt to return to the subject of the original opinion, MetroForm (term attributed to disgraced NCC Executive Mel Slawick) is not a workable concept in New Castle County for a number of reasons beyond those noted thus far. Here are several for your consideration (and enlightenment):
1) While everyone always cites police protection when talking MetroForm, they seem to “forget” about the rest of Public Safety. The City of Wilmington (CoW) provides full-time, career (paid) firefighters to protect lives and property. This 200+/- person department has an annual budget of about $20 Million. The rest of the county is protected by 21 volunteer fire companies, for fire/rescue and EMS, all of which have a small number of paid personnel, primarily to staff ambulances with EMTs.
County government provides about $4 Million annually to assist these 21 fire companies, but would be obligated to shoulder the entire burden if the volunteer companies ever disbanded. Estimated annual cost for that: $60+ Million.
Under MetroForm, county residents outside the CoW are not going to accept volunteer service while CoW residents have 24/7 paid service and everyone is supporting a single government.
Here’s one example: the Christiana Fire Company protects 100,000+/- residents (CoW has 72,000 residents) and responds to more than 3,000 fire/rescue calls and 7,500 EMS calls annually (busiest in the state)…all without a true municipality located in their protection district. The fire company has a below average response from residents to its annual fund drive (worse from businesses) and relies chiefly on government grants and subsidies to meet its multi-million dollar budget.
Just for reference, the average fire engine (a pumper) costs about $350,000. An ambulance runs about $150,000. This compares to about $25,000 for a police patrol car.
2) Residential trash/recycling service is provided by the CoW, while the majority of county residents pay private haulers for these services. Some other municipalities do offer trash/recycling services.
3) While the CoW has “home rule,” NCC does not, a challenge for county government even now, when it comes to trying to enact revenue measures and having the General Assembly throw up road blocks all along the way.
4) Other municipalities within New Castle County, such as Newark, Middletown, Elsmere, Newport, Delaware City, and a number of smaller towns, have working local governments and would have to be factored into the MetroForm plan. All of the listed municipalities provide police protection and other services, some provide utilities, all levy taxes. What happens to them?
5) Areas below the C&D Canal that are more rural in nature also have to be factored into the MetroForm plan.
Taking these factors into consideration, MetroForm is, and should remain, nothing more than a term coined by a forgettable former politician from decades ago.
I don’t know or care who any of you are. But this ranting about who is better or worse is basically all bullshit. I lived roughly my first 30 years in Wilmington and its burbs. I then lived about 25 in Southeastern Sussex (Bethany area). I have been back in the north for 3 plus years. Both areas are unique and both have the opportunity for a great quality of life. Both have troublesome crime issues in certain communities. Both have their share of RWNJ’s. I do work with the homeless and addicted in the city and until last week lived 2 blocks from my work. My circumstances improved and I decided to move to a Security high Rise, The one I chose is in Northern Brandywine Hundred. My first choice were the buildings about 15 blocks from my office along DE and PA Aves. They were out of my price range. Wilmington is a vibrant urban environment that shares the problems of all northeast cities. Sussex is a diverse and beautiful place that shares some of the problems of the Red States to the south and west, neither is perfect but I have enjoyed living in both areas
Thank you, WilmingTom. There is no doubt that any type of consolidated government would not only be complex, but probably expensive. Even in NJ, Christie is trying to provide some funds to municipalities who will do the work so that they don’t have to shoulder all of the costs.
I’m trying to find out of there are any local grassroots groups trying to advocate for this, or if this is something that is a balloon gets floated every 4 years just to see how fast it gets shot down.
“I don’t think incompetent government anywhere should be rewarded by permitting corruption to continue.”
If you can’t see the difference between disbanding Kenton and disbanding Wilmington, you’re beyond anyone’s help, and beneath serious consideration.
“I’m trying to find out of there are any local grassroots groups trying to advocate for this, or if this is something that is a balloon gets floated every 4 years just to see how fast it gets shot down.”
It’s something that gets brought out whenever a News Journal columnist can’t think of a better topic for a column, a reliable evergreen for a rainy day.
So the arguments for keeping a corrupt crime-ridden city intact boil down to (a) there are some good parts, (b) it’s not as bad as outsiders think, and (c) it’s too big to fail.
I’m still waiting on that list of things that make Wilmington a good place to live. Seriously.
My Sussex list, in no particular order, as requested by Roland the Twit:
1. Small communities.
2. Stores and shops you can (a) walk to and (b) want to patronize.
3. Clear skies and fresh air.
4. The lack of an inferiority complex (Sussex residents don’t dream about being part of Maryland like Wilmington residents dream about being part of Philadelphia).
5. Farms, chickens, cows and corn.
6. Fishing and paddling on the Nanticoke River.
7. A homegrown, agriculture-based economic center that isn’t overly dependent upon the whims of out-of-state corporate CEOs and banks.
8. George Howard Bunting.
9. Politically engaged citizens who turn out and vote instead of whining about why politicians don’t pay attention to them.
10. Eleven active local media outlets.
11. Private schools not dependent upon the Catholic Church.
12. Never occupied by the National Guard.
13. A shortage of pretentious restaurants.
14. Joe Biden doesn’t hang around.
15. More rainbow flags than the rest of Delaware combined.
16. Back country roads.
17. The freedom for kids to roam and range during the summer.
18. We know how to ride horses and shoot guns.
19. A beer company that your hipsters would fucking kill to have next door.
20. We can have scrambled eggs for breakfast and roast chicken for dinner by just going out to the back yard.
I will grant you that we have negatives, including developers who want to rape the land, evangelical wingnuts, Charlie West, a shortage of high-speed Internet and Grotto Pizza. But I think those are small things in comparison.
That entire post is based on the inferiority complex that you so gamely think we won’t notice.
West Virginia with a beach, indeed.
And with that, we are in this thread talking about Metropolitan Government. Not managing the self-esteem needs of ground zero of Delaware’s teajadis. We are back on topic or we are moderated.
“So the arguments for keeping a corrupt crime-ridden city intact boil down to…”
They boil down to the fact that you don’t know a fucking thing about Wilmington except the usual pants-wetting provincial bullshit. Peckerwood County is at least as corrupt as Wilmington, except the corrupt politicians are white, so the rednecks don’t complain about it so much.
You like living in the country? Swell. You’re not the king of the world, or of Delaware, and nobody is beholden to explain to an obtuse asshole why he is an obtuse asshole for failing to understand the problems of urban areas.
Metropolitan Government is a fantastic idea.
Is Geezer going to get moderated? Of course not, he’s one of the golden children.
As one who has traded insults with Geezer on numerous occasions, what has he done that would cause anyboy to moderate him? Pretty much the only moderating sins here are “outing” somebody, outright racist behavior, and perennially trying to hijack threads. He doesn’t care if you call him a Peckerwood back, and if your skin is so thin you’re calling for a referee, perhaps you want to mix it up somewhere else.
Hell, I’ve even been called a Republican.
Ouch.
To be fair, Libertarians are just Republicans that want legalization, aren’t they?
🙂
I should apologize for that, Steve. It’s cranky old man syndrome.
LG, don’t look now, but jason left something funny and handrolled in your cigarettes
Wow, SW. Your reading comprehension skills need some work!
I was going to type a vicious reply, but Geezer beat me to it and he probably did a better job than I would have done.
My invitation is still open. I’ll be at 8th & Washington during the day on Sat. & Sun. I’ll be happy to show you around. It’s really not as scary as you think it is.