The Theory of Negativity

[XLFD]

The Charge is Negativity

It's been about three weeks since my shadow has darkened the Ludington City Hall's hallways, and I've been fairly quiet over city matters the last couple of weeks due to a lingering cold and devoting some quantity time to the family.  So I must register at least an iota of surprise when looking over the January 2, 2015 edition of the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews). 

I briefly glanced at the COLDNews affirmation of the New Year's Eve Ball Drop's success, as it has for the last five years since its inception.  I didn't attend it myself, but the reports I heard were that it was rather poorly attended and rather similar to the five previous Ludington ball drops.  The ball dropped, the fireworks went off, people mostly went either back to their cars or their bars or got picked up by dial-a-ride, courtesy of the local DDA.  It still boggles my mind how this event can bring in $25,000 to the city's coffers. 

I then decided to glance into an article about Mayor Ryan Cox written by Patsi Klevorn and read how his first year has went so swimmingly.  I couldn't help but look at this paragraph near the end, and snicker:  "Cox has no shortage of things to do.  He is a teacher, a reserve Ludington police officer and, as mayor, his schedule is full of meetings."

Whereas Ms. Klevorn seems to think that the mayor serving as a reserve police sergeant is a virtue, it actually directly violates Michigan state law of serving on incompatible offices as I have discussed voluminously last year to no effect, because the city attorney claimed two things that turned out to be false in an opinion of his 'refuting' my claim.  But what the law and common sense says means absolutely nothing in this town if it contradicts those in power and their mouthpieces.

However, right under the bold subheading "Challenges" I read the following:  "Each city council meeting has been beginning with negative public comments from a local resident about city officials, at times including Cox specifically."  

Having attended all of the council meetings (but one) this year, I could not figure out who and what she was referring to since I am the only one who regularly comments at these city council meetings and I always critique public policy.  Eliminating myself as her culprit, however, there would be no other candidate, so I have to presume her "nattering neighbor of negativity" reference was to me.  This is typical doublespeak used by officials and media elitists who want to marginalize the message of dissenting citizens.  They use it regularly here, and they use it in Manistee too for their citizens looking for accountability and transparency.

Manistee and Negativitee

Over the last couple of years, citizens in Manistee have been awakened and energized into action as regards their city leaders.  Initially, the torch was taken up there by Linda Bladzik in March of 2012 in her website named ManisteeSpeaks.  Like the Ludington Torch, they have had their share of Manistee area residents (and beyond) commenting critically on the situation in Manistee, and similarly, they have had their share of anonymous posters who claim the reasoned criticism is negativity. 

But recently, the concerned citizens have gravitated to another site on Facebook called Real Manistee.  The operator of Real Manistee does not pull a lot of punches and have done their research on topics concerning their fair city, such as this meme concerning their city manager getting an early raise that was never granted to him, and other neglected infrastructure problems that have been overlooked because of money used for other pet projects.

But having such opinions about how your city is being run into the ground by the so-called 'public servants' who are running the show is not a task you can perform without the 'public servants' and their crony friends blowing back.  Other Facebook sites countering the Real Manistee and Manistee Speaks websites not with counter arguments, but mostly ridicule and personal attacks on the various members of the two citizen watchdog sites.  We at the Ludington Torch have had similar ad hominem attacks launched at us and launched counter-Torch websites like Eye on Ludington. 

The counter-websites made by city hall loyalists had/have little to offer other than the belittling of the watchdog sites; even when the public records were available and clearly showed malfeasance, they accepted the benevolence and innocence of the public bodies as a given.  But one thing they consistently would declare is that the watchdog sites were negative, that the (valid) criticisms showed the utter negativity of the posters. 

Real Manistee knew what was real from what was fake, and knew their message was not negative, but very needed critiques of what they seen as bad policy.  They were smart enough to turn the tables on their own critics from the City of Manistee who were okay with how the city was ruled, and rightly assigned the city's message as negative:

The Theory of Negativity in a Half-empty Nutshell

Many of the fair city of Ludington's power structure have labeled me as negative, either in my city council speeches or my threads here on the Ludington Torch. I admit I have been often critical of the City of Ludington's policies, but reasoned criticism is a bit different than negativity.  In fact, criticism of public officials or policy when they are in the wrong is a citizen's duty. 

I can swear that I am a positive optimist most of the time (when the Lions make the playoffs is an exception).Thus I offer up this "Theory of Negativity" to show that neither I, many of you, or the contributors to the Manistee watchdog sites are negative, rather it is often the other side who is:

                         "Attitudes are multiplicative."

This definition needs clarification, since I've simplified it as best I could into an easy to remember truism.  A simple statement is pretty easy to evaluate as positive and negative, such as "I love Ludington" or "Stearn's Park is awesome" are positive, and "Ludington sucks" and "the city manager is crooked" are negative.  All four statements are really too simple to actually mean anything substantive.  So let's look at slightly more complex statements:

1) "I love Ludington, because Stearn's Park is awesome."

2) "I love Ludington, because the city manager is crooked."

3) "Ludington sucks, because Stearn's Park is awesome."

4) "Ludington sucks, because the city manager is crooked."

Two positive thoughts together in the first sentence give us a positive compound sentence.  But in the second and third sentence, we mix a positive and negative statement, and we get two negative overall thoughts, where the speakers like crooked leadership and hates Stearn's Park just because it's awesome, respectively.

However, an interesting thing happens when the two 'negative' thoughts combine and the speaker actualizes that Ludington has not reached its full potential  because the city leadership does not follow the law and civilized ethical conduct.  Whereas the second and third statements show a negativity and a dissociation from reality, the fourth is meaningful and positive-- suggesting the city would not suck if the city manager was ethical.

So if you remember back in fifth grade or thereabouts when you were multiplying integers, you may remember that if you multiply two numbers regardless of the signs and make the final result positive if both numbers were positive or negative, the final result is negative if the two numbers had different signs.  Compound statements work much the same way.

Ball Drop

So let's review this theory with some of the earlier statements made just in this thread.  I critiqued the ball drop, but I made no simple statement to that effect.  The city claims on its budget that they spend $23,000 on NYE supplies and bring in up to $26,000 in revenues just for that one night.  Effectively they are pulling a significant profit by selling light-up glasses and the champagne that goes inside it at a mark up.  I find it hard to believe, and have yet to see them show why we now get well over $20,000 for the ball drop when the first couple ball drops shown no revenue at all from the event.  

From further research, the profits from that first ball drop were shown to go to city officials who supplied goods and services to the event:  DDA member Les Johnson, now a city councilor, sold hundreds of dollars of wine and spirits, Building Authority President Budde Reed supplied over a thousand dollars worth of beer, DDA member Amanda Grubich, recipient of 420 S. James Street at a severe discount, sold hundreds of dollars of the commemorative glasses to the city, while DDA member Nick Tykoski, now a city councilor, decorated those glasses and added banners for the event for hundreds of dollars of public funds.  Sales of the above products were made, but no revenue came in from the ball drop.  The vendors were paid with public funds, however.

So one has to wonder if the ball drop is so successful to bring in profits and projected profit in the future, why isn't the city divesting public funds from the event and allowing private interests to run the enterprise, like the jaycees, chamber of commerce, or the CVB?  Could it be that the accounting is off?  It sure was the first couple of years. 

The provable accounting irregularities in the first year, and the lack of justification for $26,000 of revenue coming from just one cold wintry night since, has me reluctant to label the ball drop as an unmitigated success, but rather a way for the city to waste your money at both extremes of the year.  A double negative.  If a private group without any public funding ran the event and made it work while at least breaking even, I would be behind it in an instant. 

Those public officials who made a profit in the first year of the ball drop at the expense of the taxpayer are truly the negative ones in this instance.  They used public money to buy goods from fellow officials, then sold those at a markup and kept the money (a negative for the public), and then got out and proclaimed the event a major success (a positive). 

Cox's Dual Nature

In a public body, there are safeguards to prevent one person holding two jobs so that one job is subservient to the other or if some breach of duty of one of the jobs occurs when performing the other.  But that's what we have in Ludington.  Mayor Cox has direct civil power over Police Chief Barnett who has direct power over Reserve Sergeant Cox.  The arrangement not only makes it difficult for these two to interact meaningfully with each other, but erodes citizen confidence that their elected chief executive has their interests at heart when a problem with the police comes up, or whether he will invoke the blue shield and protect his fellow officers even when they acted inappropriately.  Beyond being against the incompatible offices act, it is confusing and leads to a variety of conflicts of interests and duties. 

Thus it is positive to publicly take a stand against it.  A negative public policy needs a negative public response for a positive result.  Defending such a law violation either tacitly or directly, comes off as negativity, unless you show somehow that the law is unjust.  But the law is common sense, a lot can go wrong by having others as both your subordinates and superiors at the same time, or by breaching the duties of one of your offices to perform the duties of another office. 

When I brought this to the attention of all concerned about a year ago, I was pilloried by the police and fire chiefs with what can only be called negative reviews (as seen in this video of Chief Barnett) where he says without qualification: 

"My concern is, with Mr. Rotta, is the random use of the ability to say whatever he wants about whomever he chooses whenever he chooses to do it."

"And to create a forum to routinely bludgeon people."

" I'm supposed to protect and serve people, but I look around here on this council, I look around in the audience, I look in the mirror and I see people that have been bludgeoned by this constitutionally-protected speech, and it just doesn't seem right to me."

"I would say to you that I reject your notion that you just indiscriminately bash these people, and beat out of them the volunteer spirit."

" I would like to apologize, apologize on Mr. Rotta's behalf to those men and women who have served as volunteer police officers and reserve police officers, as volunteer firefighters..."

"You should be ashamed of yourself"

"You should be ashamed of yourself" (again)

"Shame on you Mr. Rotta"

"Shame on you."

"I would suggest for you, Mr. Rotta, if you want to be part of the solution you better act appropriately."

What I see is not only negativity towards one individual repeatedly, but wrong assertions, mischaracterizations, attempted public humiliation, and a thinly veiled threat.  Of course this official gaslighting me was applauded by the city officials, their lapdog media, and some folks that aren't paying attention.  At their philosophical base, I am a negative entity, and so they believe speaking negatively of me is a positive trait.  But they have a hard time portraying me as negative by referring to my actual positions and words, which are positive in nature.

Conclusion

In the larger scheme of things, the naming of citizens with the negativity label is used by those in power in Ludington and Manistee to quell dissent and diffuse the message of the public policy critic.  It is not unlike the typical progressive/liberal tactic of calling someone a bigot, racist, homophobe, etc. when the target does not have those qualities, but opposes the progressive solution.  Ridiculing and assigning negativity to others is the typical tactic used by a party which has no adequate defense against the truth.

[Willy]

You hit the nail on the head with this article. The same tactic used by liberals everywhere is used on you in good old ludville by the established progressives. I especially like the link you established between mathematics and negative / positive statements. Of course we here at the Torch can see very clearly what is going on because we are able to compare the truths stated here with the lies told at City Hall and LDN. Terrific analysis.

[XLFD]

Thanks, Willy, and you raise a good point about comparing what you read here with what the Ludington leaders and COLDNews tell you.  We provide as much information as possible, being limited only by the information that the city fails to provide us. 

But whenever we report on city council meetings, the LT will provide you not only with analysis of what went on, but with a video of the meeting as well, just in case you want to see for yourself, and usually will include the councilor's packet too and any other supporting information.  You'll see a much different story coming from the COLDNews, incomplete and with their own pro-COL bias that totally deflect or ridicule the points being made by Ludington citizens.