As a result, we're in a place where the billion-dollar bank gets a half-million-dollar payday, the downtown revitalization plan spends $10 million for a net gain of exactly one apartment building, the city refuses to fix a bridge and thus encourages schoolchildren to walk across a frozen river, the poor get threats that their no-judgments gym will be taken away from them, taxes still go up, and lawyers get paid.
It's the Plattsburgh circle of life right now, and it feels like an infinite loop. But the stripping of the city's best assets, including its recreation assets, for no perceptible reason other than the mayor's insatiable need to pad his resume, deserves to be noted for future people in charge, if nothing else.
So I'm noting it.
I ran across something that helps explain both why I blogged about this stuff in the first place, and why I haven't for a long time. Here's the kicker:
If your local media has no place for people who voice contempt for your city’s police chief, say, or your state’s attorney general, or the publisher of your city’s largest newspaper, all of those people will feel more comfortable in abusing their power. They will grind you down, and in the process, they’ll tell you to be civil about it.
