Lee: Open Up Government Participation On Boards And Commissions

From John Marshall Lee:

On November 3, 2020, 145 million votes were cast for the two major presidential contenders. We are nearly three months past this date with President Joseph Biden inaugurated almost two weeks ago. Despite posting a plurality of 7 million votes over his challenger, an attack on the Capitol by homegrown disbelievers, and more than 60 legal challenges in courts with judges of all political persuasions, no evidence or proof for their allegations has been presented to the judicial system, our check and balance on pure opinion or false accusations.

Open your eyes to a local focus where perhaps 180 slots  can be filled by Bridgeport residents who are registered voters willing to serve the public. If they are selected by the Mayor and approved by City Council to set terms, “serving the public” as volunteers. The City website provides info on mission and purpose, numbers of members, requirements, and limitations for many of the groups but not some who have been more recently commissioned. When I last reviewed the site, I counted almost 72 vacant positions and about the same number of members who were reported as active but whose terms had expired. A legal failsafe that seems to ameliorate this understaffing is a clause  declaring “that once appointed, members serve until a successor is appointed and qualified.”

Currently it appears that only 13 members of the citizenry are serving unexpired terms as of 2021. Has Mayor Ganim appointed one or more of his political appointees to remedy this abject failure to fulfill one of his Charter duties? Yes. Then why are some of the groups not meeting the ‘balance of party appointees’ requirement? Where are meeting agenda and reporting of minutes provided in timely and consistent fashion? Where can the public find documents and info on the origin and reasons for forming each group? Where is the detail on the Ethics Commission specifically? (I have called the posted number and left messages with full name and number three times in recent months. No response.) Why is there serious reason to assert that recent Mayors have allowed Fair Housing and Fair Rent groups to die on the ‘civic battlefield’ when housing of all types generates much upset and many disputes in Bridgeport? With the FBI continuing on duty, is the Ethics Commission fading into darkness as Rent and Housing have in the past, “in plain sight”? Isn’t that a group where the fairness and equity of the City administration using  City funds to defend criminal expenses can be discussed?

Is it time for Mayor Ganim to open his mind and his mouth to explain the roles of both political appointees and his instructions to them? And then to share with taxpayers and voters his degree of satisfaction with their results? Is it just one more barrier to citizen learning and wishing participation in government process? Another step to autocratic governance? It may likely appear as woefully incomplete in which case perhaps he is content with the lack of results? Perhaps keeping such a multi-year project as it is, with fewer than 10% of all such potential appointees serving in a current term his goal? Time will tell.

Jon Marshall Lee

203-259-9642

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13 comments

  1. In my opinion JML, you might need to check the balance of false accusations. One cannot challenge those homegrown disbelievers who attack Capitol Hill without striking a balance with those who cause mayhem and destruction in the name of justice all summer long, leading up to November’s presidential election?

    However, you may have touched on the rational reasoning, not the mayhem behavior, but the reasoning to voice their disbelief in face of Democracy. You asked why is there failed in committee appointees and failure to fulfill charter duties. The answer is simple, corruption.

    Surely the Port passed elections have been riddled with fraudulent claims over the years, and some had voiced their discontent and even made court challenges. However, I would not label Gen Now, homegrown disbelievers for voicing their opinion and court challenges. After all, that’s Democracy.

    But maybe it is not just corruption in finding people to donate their time of civil duties. I recently read about a proposed bill by a Democrat who wants to fine people $20 for not doing their civil duties of just voting. I can only assume with the constant low turnout in the Port’s elections and other black and minority communities. That $20 tax is on poor blacks and minorities to get them to the voting booth. Democrats now seem too punishing blacks for not voting for Democratic Party.

    In the world of Malcolm X since the Fox is more friendly than the wolf to lamb. The Fox ends up with more lamb on their plate. JS

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjS0ZVa8oyI

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    1. P.S

      Just play JML 🙂

      I think I get your premise though, with regards to Trump’s (R) homegrown disbelievers and correlation to a corrupted Ganim administration. Joe an undercover Republican. To be fair to Republicans, It was the party of Lincoln who fought the Democrat Party in the Civil War and the Party of MLK.

      Like your label Homegrown disbelievers the wolf is like the fox, just dressing up as a lamb. So you really don’t know who you are voting for in this Democracy. P.S I think that $20 motivation is for those not liberal educated folks. I did tell you I was shut down and escorted out of NCC for a presentation on the existence of God and why it’s wrong to burn the American Flag, right. 🤣

      Every Vote counts, some twice. 😂

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uApzV0s5Jlo

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  2. JML, it’s funny how some don’t understand American history, Martin Luther King Sr. and his son Martin Luther King Jr. were like most blacks were Republicans until the States’ Rights Democratic Party (usually called the Dixiecrats) was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States, active primarily in the South. It arose due to a Southern regional split in opposition to the Democratic Party. After President Harry S. Truman, a member of the Democratic Party, ordered integration of the military in 1948 and other actions to address civil rights of African Americans, many Southern conservative white politicians who objected to this course organized themselves as a breakaway faction. The Dixiecrats were determined to protect Southern states’ rights to maintain racial segregation.

    Supporters assumed control of the state Democratic parties in part or in full in several Southern states. The Party opposed racial integration and wanted to retain Jim Crow laws and white supremacy in the face of possible federal intervention. Its members were referred to as “Dixiecrats”, a portmanteau of “Dixie”, referring to the Southern United States, and “Democrat”.

    Despite the Dixiecrat’s success in several states, Truman was narrowly re-elected. After the 1948 election, its leaders generally returned to the Democratic Party.[2] The Dixiecrats presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond became a Republican in 1964.

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    1. JML, here’s another reason for not replying back to certain people for their false analogies. Here’s one of them, “One cannot challenge those homegrown disbelievers who attack Capitol Hill without striking a balance with those who cause mayhem and destruction in the name of justice all summer long, leading up to November’s presidential election?” They want to compare a insurrection of a national election for President and the riot at U.S. Captial where 5 people were killed including a police officer to protest against police abuse.

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    2. Conrade, shot-lived? It was 100 years the D’s run the South after the Civil War, minus the short-lived reconstruction period when Southern Historical Black Collage they built, that Trump gave long-term funding too,

      As Malcolm X said, the lamb knows the wolf, but the fox comes with a smile and ends up with more lamb on his plate. It seems Thurmond was a wolf, but what say you about his Democrat Senate colleague Byrd, who also was for Jim Crow, a founder and Grand Wizard of a KKK chapter, as well as. the longest-serving Senator in American History. Are you saying Racist R’s in MLK voted for him for 51 years as a Democrat? I guess the political reality is nothing more than what is being fed.

      P.S I cried when I saw this🤣

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HobBRqQmKlw

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  3. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson had a complicated relationship with issues of race. Born and raised in the South in the early part of the 20th century, Johnson grew up immersed in the prejudices of that time and place, then carried them with him into his nascent political career.

    For two decades in Congress he was a reliable member of the Southern bloc, helping to stonewall civil rights legislation.

    U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson said it best, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

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    1. That LBJ quote is disparaging to whites. Did he hate them too?
      Food for thought, JFK, after being elected was claimed to stonewall the Civil Rights Act, after (R) MLK convinced Republican blacks in the south to vote for him when his brother intervene on his behalf. LBJ has been claimed to be the second president, only to Lincoln to champion for racial equality. However, he was only able to sign the Civil Rights Act after Kennedy was assassinated.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIWd3T1xjec

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    1. This tread took a turn. 🙂

      Comrade, watch out with that of food thought, Cops are being placed in an untenable situation these days. I would like to know why she was being arrested, seems to be missing. However, her behavior was difficult, and I am sure a social worker would have handled it better. Granted I can’t understand why they felt the need to spry her. It seems all they had to do was push her in the car.

      I think you mean this is a reason we need better training, procedures, and quality officers, and you don’t get that by defunding. Does anyone truly believe if the Port defunded the police and reduced it force by half the Port will be a better and safer place?

      Sure you want all arrest to go smoothly like this but they don’t

      P.S Joel, how would you label the white dude, “informant” and the black dude, “innocent” I guess the real “snitch” would be the cop for bringing them to the judge. 😂

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqtwU2rZn4o

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  4. It is said that the various lawsuits challenging the Presidential election don’t show enough evidence of fraud to change the outcome (although there are questions that various courts may not have allowed introduction of all available evidence), but the area that I see clear legal error is the SOTUS rejection of the Texas lawsuit challenging the results of five swing states for adopting no-excuse mail-in ballot practices which exceeded their state constitutions. For that claim, Texas had a clear position of standing to say that such practices disenfranchised their voters.

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