The Swami can testify that no fights are as nasty as family fights and no politics are as knife-filled as small town politics. Welcome to Antioch, where everyone at the town council hires their own lawyer and members are escorted out of the chambers under police guard. Is this the same democracy we’re trying to implant in Iraq? Read on, gentle inquiring minds …
The Swami has been to Antioch dozens of times and has found it a wonderful small village filled with interesting shops and kind citizens.
This observation, of course, does not apply to the town council and the mayor, all of whom seem to assault one another regularly with an intensity usually devoted to lion prides attacking wildebeasts.
The mayor doesn’t like trustee Bob Caulfield.
And Caulfield apparently thinks Mayor Dorothy Larson is a bozo.
At least that's what they say on the record.
Or maybe it’s one of those boy-girl sexual tension things.
On the surface, the argument seems to be about the council majority not trusting the advice it gets from the town’s legal counsel; so they want their own.
Wait just a doggone minute, says heroner. Hiring your own attorney is illegal and I’ll veto that resolution. Which she does.
So Caulfield tries to override the mayor’s veto by simply talking louder and longer. He seems to be very gifted at that. He eventually succeeds and gets his we-need-our-own-lawyer rule passed.
But then the mayor pulls out the heavy artillery: Buddy, you’ve just violated Robert’s Rules of Order. (Gasp! And double Gasp!)
Based on the latest evidence, Swami predicts no one will leaving town for a weekend getaway because somebody else might use the absence to call a sudden council meeting and declare themselves Dictator for Life.
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