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Prenez garde pour le renard encore on O.K .Back To Work
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Watching for the fox is a political imperative. It's second nature to me now. Like breathing out and brea5thing in. But thank you for the reminder.
Along the thread of the cautionary tale I started yesterday:after I watched the aftermath of the Presidential election, which affirmed my faith in the system and after David Letterman's show, a memory popped unbidden into my head.
Long before the SLAPP suit, a critical comment from "New Man In Town " was posted on the Aurora Citizen Blog.
The word "criminal "appeared and caused quite the kerfuffle.
The Chief Administrative Officer sent a comment to the Blog demanding removal with a deadline. A second demand followed with the same implied threat
Deadline's were the boss's M.O.
Deadline's were the boss's M.O.
I sent a comment myself that the CAO had not been directed by Council to engage on the issue therefore the demand had no official status.
The town solicitor was directed to correspond with Google or whoever was the search engine at the time and demand release of the identity of "New Man In Town".
Of course it was an exercise in futility
Council was informed by the Mayor, the two senior staff members had been unable to attend to their own duties for almost two weeks, so pre-occupied were they in hunting down the identity of "New Man In Town" and pursuing removal of the comment.
Of course it was an exercise in futility
Council was informed by the Mayor, the two senior staff members had been unable to attend to their own duties for almost two weeks, so pre-occupied were they in hunting down the identity of "New Man In Town" and pursuing removal of the comment.
The comment was eventually removed but predictably. there was no success in discovering the identity of the author.
I remember, asking, in jest; what then? "Is the town going to sue
a resident if you do find out who he is?"
The town had already paid for several bundles of legal services to hunt down and identify illegal conduct against a couple of the former Mayor's perceived enemies; a former Mayor being one and a former CAO .the second.
The town had already paid for several bundles of legal services to hunt down and identify illegal conduct against a couple of the former Mayor's perceived enemies; a former Mayor being one and a former CAO .the second.
With expense for as many as three lawyers and without success, I might add.
The police had been called to the town hall .
Without Council being formally informed, we understood the huge expanse of windows in the Mayor's office were replaced with bulletproof , non-see-through glass AND .it was said, removal of shrubbery that might provide opportunity for lurking by skulking knavery.
Under town policies, senior staff have authority to spend up to $50,000,without obtaining Council approval.
On another occasion , after I had asked for total expenditures by the Mayor on legal services, the information was withheld; following passage of a resolution moved and seconded by former Councillors MacEachern and Wilson.
Being asked, the Treasurer responded the resolution was acceptable to work within for his purposes.
There was more than an element of surrealism in the situation.
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21 comments:
I always wondered what she was frightened of. There was a reference to an elephant but that was on her own Web site and we simply do not have any available elephants. Looking back on all that fuss over the bloggers, a simple request probably would have gotten an offensive comment removed. It was Morris use of heavy artillery that alarmed residents. You don't need a canon to swat a mosquito.
Gail Collins in the NY Times is funny. Nov.7 She points out that Romney lost the state in which he was born, the state in which he was governor, & the 3 states in which he owns homes. Zowey!
PERSECUTORY DELUSIONS are a delusional condition in which the affected person believes they are being persecuted. Specifically, they have been defined as containing two central elements:[1]
1.The individual thinks that harm is occurring, or is going to occur.
2.The individual thinks that the persecutor has the intention to cause harm.
According to the DSM-IV-TR, persecutory delusions are the most common form of delusions in schizophrenia, where the person believes "he or she is being tormented, followed, tricked, spied on, or ridiculed."[2] In the DSM-IV-TR, persecutory delusions are the main feature of the persecutory type of delusional disorder. When the focus is to remedy some injustice by legal action, they are sometimes called "QUERULOUS PARANOIA".[3]
A QUERULENT (from the Latin querulus - "complaining") is a person who obsessively feels wronged, particularly about minor causes of action. In particular the term is used for those who repeatedly petition authorities or pursue legal actions based on manifestly unfounded grounds. These applications include in particular complaints about petty offenses.
Querulant behavior is to be distinguished from either the obsessive pursuit of justice regarding major injustices, or the proportionate, reasonable, pursuit of justice regarding minor grievances. According to Mullen and Lester, the life of the querulant individual becomes consumed by their personal pursuit of justice in relation to minor grievances.[1]
In psychiatry, the terms QUERULOUS PARANOIA (Kraepelin, 1904)[2][1] and litigious paranoia[3] have been used to describe a paranoid condition which manifested itself in querulant behavior. The terms had until recently largely disappeared from the psychiatric literature, largely because they fell out of fashion after being misused to stigmatise the behavior of people seeking the resolution of valid grievances.[4] In the DSM-IV-TR, "querulous paranoia" is a subtype of the persecutory type of delusional disorder.[5] It also appears in ICD-10, under its Latin name Paranoia querulans, in section F22.8, "Other persistent delusional disorders".[6]
What did Morris think was going to crash through those 2 locked doors that kept people away from her office? Boy, was Flo Murray ever angry at her!
To 11:37 AM today
Thanks for this.
I think we may have a ringer.
One question:
Are these conditions contagious? They seem to have spread to a small band of people who hover round the queen bee.
The is truly strange. We have lived in Aurora for years. The only threats I have heard came from Morris herself and her group of bullies. Most residents never even raise their voices, let alone a fist. The only screamers I can recall were Morris, Evalina and Sher [ not even a resident.]
"Without Council being formally informed, we understood the huge expanse of windows in the Mayor's office were replaced with bulletproof , non-see-through glass AND .it was said, shrubbery that might provide opportunity for lurking by skulking knavery was removed from the scene."
How much did that cost ! Bullet proof glass... are you kidding me !!! That's incredible. I bet that cost a small fortune.
I have to ask, when was the last time anyone on council even came close to resembling Presidents Lincoln or Kennedy, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. ? Did someone at the town hall think that the members of the FLQ were released from jail or something ? LOL. Wow.
This story becomes more fantastic every time a new piece of the puzzle gets revealed. Maybe the CBC or Rogers Cable should consider doing a mini-series.
This could be the funniest thing that I have ever heard.
Come to think of it, Aurora Council should pay for a mayoral armored car and motorcade. We do live in the wild west (aka Northern York Region) after all.
When the Former & her Wrecking Crew moved into the Town Hall, ' protective sheeting ' should have been placed around independent councillors and staff who tried to do their jobs. They all took a pounding.
Man....I wish this would just all go away. But each & every lawsuit gets stalled, dragged-out and appealed. I guess settlement never crosses their minds. Even the law journals are having trouble figuring out what some of these lawyers are/are not doing. Me, I haven't a bloody clue/
You might be interested to know that Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight Blog, predicted 50 out of 50 states in the US election.
Maybe you could get in touch with him in the summer of 2014 after all those seeking elected office have filed their papers and he could try and work similar magic here.
It sure would be nice knowing a few weeks in advance the outcome so that one could screw around with the potentially loose screws who no doubt will be running.
Apparently there is a story in one of the Georgina papers about Aurora. Haven't seen it & given the # of possible topics, have no idea what it covers.
Seems like 11:37 has far to much insight to be just a mere observer of the hip, upscale and well educated former rulers behavior, could it be that a once loyal subject has flown the coop ???
6:15 PM
Justice Brown and Master Hawkins were quite specific about what had been done wrong in the SLAPP lawsuit from the very first day. It is all available to the public in the court records.
Having lived through the past six years of Aurora politics, a period bereft of leadership, just unbridled ignorance and threat, and having observed the American electoral process for the past two years, not much different from Aurora, only on a grander scale, and having watched the resignation of our premier and reading in today's paper that hedge funds made a profit of $149 million from the cancelled power plant scheme, one must ask, "Is that all there is?"
Can we not expect more? Do we not have a right to more?
If we treat others as we would have them treat us. If we can distinguish between right and wrong and do what is right. If we can speak the truth instead of telling lies.
What would our world be like?
I think it would be far better than it is.
Do we have the courage?
Perhaps if Morris had taken the time to step back from the "blog" situation in order to gain a little insight from the comments, the mood and the tone, all of this litigious stuff could have been avoided. Ah, but that wasnever her style. She was never a listener or a thinker. She was a talking bulldozer, That alone was enough to carry her down the litigious path; but when you have a flock of sheep councillors baaing at you in agreement with your every whim, we, the residents of Aurora did not stand a chance of this issue playing out rationally and with dignity. That was never her MO.
The glass in the Mayor’s office was not likely replaced. A shatterproof and reflective 3M film was likely put over the windows. Still not cheap, but I doubt bulletproof.
My bet is that this brainwave cost the town thousands and not the tens of thousands that bullet proof glass would likely cost.
I'm just wondering when the last time was that town hall was under physical attack by the modern day equivalent of peasants with pitchforks ? Was this expense really necessary ? I doubt it. It certainly demonstrates a mindset though.
The good news is that most people seem to be back to their regular level of indifference with the ways of council and I've read that the doors to the mayor's office were unlocked the day after the last election. How refreshing.
I believe Mr O'Melia referred to it as ' protective sheeting ', if that helps determine the costs.
7:28 AM
The councillors egged her on. and there were others who were not on Council. All had benefited from that term and were supportive of anything she chose to do. I do not believe for one moment that she personally collected the comments used in her case. Others prowled the blogs looking for actionable material and trying to identify the bloggers. One little old guy was particularly nosey and intrusive.
Something is a little fishy here. She needed bulletproof glass in her office because she was under threat... yet during the campaign she was seen on street corners around town waving at traffic where she was an easy target for any nutball to take a pot shot at her if one had so chosen. Something just doesn't add up: either she DID fear for her life and made a case for taxpayers to shell out for her protection or she did NOT fear for her life and was comfortable enough tostand on street corners.
Once again the taxpayers were had by mayor without merit and it doesn't matter to me whether the cost for "protective screening" was great or small,. It should not have come out of my pocket.
We are forgetting one major ingredient in the legal wrangling. Money. A great deal of money. If all the tales about fear of bodily harm, protection of staff and need to identify nasty bloggers had been true, the SLAPP lawsuit could have been cancelled after the election. Or after the town cut her funding. Or after Judge Brown ruled against her. But she just kept on flogging that clearly dead horse calling it a Town Initiative. But the town was not to receive that pot of money. Morris & her supporters would have been the recipients. There was no agreement with the town. She refused at least twice.
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