Pay Your Damn Bill

DeKalb's CEO recently reported that half, fifty percent, of residential water customers have bills in arrears. Some say that a crackdown on past due balances is somehow unreasonable. It isn't clear who these people are, what planet they live on, or how they've substituted emotions for character. Maybe they are the same [kind of] folks who think students, allegedly smart enough to get into college should have their debt erased because, well, they were actually pretty stupid. Somehow they think if you don't pay your water bill this month, well, it would be just wrong if you ever had to pay it. 

These people are breathing our air.

RTC

Return To Campus. RTC. And it is deja vu all over again. At least we can hope.

The University System of Georgia has mandated that all employees return to their workplace...to campus. And we're hearing the same complaints we heard when the CDC made their decision to return to the office. Traffic. Parking. Space. Rinse-Repeat. Maybe they'll get the same solution to all these complaints that resolved the CDC issues.

Hasty Retreat

Sandy Springs recently passed a "buffer zone" law seriously restricting in-your-face canvassing, proselytizing, and just general interaction in public. Yes, you would still be allowed to preach from the pulpit. In church. This passed with only two dissenting votes. 

More recently, Sandy Springs rescinded that ordinance by a unanimous vote, with the city attorney's legal opinion also doing a 180. It's enough to make your head spin. 

You gotta wonder why folks running the newish faux cities do the silly things they do.  

Where's Cancel-Culture When You Need It?

Remember those days? When you could say something seemingly harmless, certainly with no ill intent whatsoever, but someone, perhaps because they live in a world of their own, becomes offended? Try as you might, no apology is sufficient. None will ever be acceptable and the offended clearly prefers to wallow in victimhood. If the offended has an entourage you will be summarily excommunicated from your world. Your life is over. Gone. Disappeared. You might even say "86-ed."

Those days are over.

Apparently some former D.C. hotshot posted something offensive, intentionally so, but it was interpreted as a threat. A serious threat. On life and limb. Directed towards someone who, not that long ago, has suffered attacks on their life. Bullet whizzing past the head kind of serious. This hotshot wasn't just flashing an OK sign (which would have lots of folks up in arms), he made a threatening post targeting someone who might have reason to be a bit sensitive about these things. 

My how times have changed.

In the good old days, this hotshot would have been immediately canceled. Vilified in the media, social and legacy. Shunned by all right-thinking folk with an ounce of moral integrity. Today we can expect this hotshot to be immediately forgiven. It was just a misunderstanding of a term, a slang term, whose meaning is malleable and has been transformed at a rate this hotshot cannot fathom. He didn't know it would have that meaning, that his intent would be misunderstood, and after all it is his intent that is paramount, not the interpretation of the bloke he targeted. Right? Right. We can expect the hotshot to be defended, if not glorified, while his target will be vilified. 

We've come full circle.

Forced Retirement

Air traffic controllers face mandatory retirement at age 56, though congress has allowed an extension to age 61. But, and there always is a but, many air traffic controllers can retire at age 50. Yep. Sweet deal, right? 

It gets worse. Many air traffic controllers are working with equipment that is older than they are. That's right, much of the air traffic control systems are north of 50 years old, some over 60. You cannot even buy replacements or spare parts for this stuff. Maybe we should have retired some of that equipment. 

Greedy Grab

Council recently approved funding for a maintenance facility at Brook Run, a proposal presented by city bureaucrats. And this facility sports five offices, potentially expanding this herd of bureaucrats. 

The odious part? They are raiding the stormwater reserve to fund this. If you remember during the city referendum sales pitch stormwater was a big, very big, issue, with city proponents pointing out the county's negligence of this infrastructure. We were told the city would take this over and manage our stormwater system responsibly. Is stealing money from the stormwater reserves what this city's bureaucrats consider "responsible?" Do we really need more of them?

Sit Down Old Man

The Blue Bag Rag recently reported on a dialogue between former councilman and mayor, Dennis Shortal and a representative of TSW, hired by city bureaucrats to do their job regarding zoning code rewrites. Shortal gave a history lesson as it seems that the history behind this city has either been forgotten or is simply being ignored. Smart money is on the latter. He was met with a rebuke: "much has changed since 2020, and Dunwoody's zoning is outdated with leftovers from its time as part of unincorporated DeKalb County."

Wow. So much bullshit in so few words.

Turns out that Dunwoody is over fifteen years old, not five. What else does this hired gun not know? Well, that would include "not everything in pre-existing zoning is bad just because it is the same as DeKalb County," but you can be sure this shill was told to use that justification, Or how about this: zoning codes do not come with a five year expiration date, but maybe TSW will be back around in 4-5 years to rake in more money on the next re-write. Have you got that Dark Side Of The Moon ear-worm yet?

Shortal was spot-on, but neglected an important fact. No matter what folks were sold on fifteen years ago, when that referendum passed they handed the keys to the kingdom over to unelected bureaucrats. And these bureaucrats operate in their own best interest and the interest of developers. And that's why we're getting a zoning rewrite and you can rest assured it will benefit lots of folks, but not the citizens OF Dunwoody. 

Trickle-Down Economy

Economy, as in "take care of your needs and watch out for your greeds." Unsure whether the federal cash cow is going to deliver any milk, the City of Atlanta is looking at some serious belt tightening. Well, not serious, as at least one member of council has suggested there are some weighty salaries that are not needed. 

How can this possibly be? How did we come to a situation where we're handing out hundreds of thousands in burdened costs to unnecessary employees? Surely our leaders are prudent care-takers of the public purse. And if you believe that, Elon Musk has some swampland on Mars he'd like to sell you.  

This fiscal prudence seems to be a direct consequence of the feds turning off the previously free-flowing tap delivering beaucoup bucks to urbanity insanity across the USA. What is interesting about the proposed budget for the next fiscal year is the lack of a revenue line item for "Federal Largess." 

Clearly the feds were funding a significant portion of previous years' income, so what, were they simply not reporting this on the budget? Or did they remove it from the upcoming budget because they expect it to be zero? Even so, they should list this as a source of revenue even if is drier than the Sinai. But what if it didn't show up on any budget? Was this federal money obfuscated? Was it a slush fund, perhaps used to fund six figure salaries for unnecessary employees? Were these friends and family? 

More importantly is this trickle-down, fed-driven "economy" we're seeing in Dunwoody, though woefully inadequate, merely a smaller version of what we see in Atlanta? It begs the question: how many unnecessary bureaucrats with excessive salaries do we have on the payroll? How will we ever know?

When Is That?

The AJC recently reported that some federal workers have been notified that they will be laid off on June 31.

Forget Juneteenth

Anyone bat an eye at that? Does this mean they are NOT being laid off? After all, there is no 31st of June. Not this year, not any year. But this raises questions regarding the AJC. The obligatory [sic] does not follow the date as one would expect if the error were in the original quote. Of course that would require that the AJC reporter actually caught the error. If we run down that rabbit hole we should also consider that the original was not in error and the mistake was introduced by the reporter. Either way, you gotta wonder if the Department of Education has really been doing anything to improve education in America.