Seven Dwarfs Cave to Religious Charlatans

To my mind, a religious charlatan is some preacher who'll selectively quote and twist the Bible to fit his own small-minded ends. Seven Black members of Cleveland City Council caved to the pressure of such kooks by voting against the creation a domestic partner registry Monday night. Since the Bible also calls for stoning (Leviticus 24:16), perhaps that's what voters will do to these cowards if they ever run citywide. The Bible also approves slavery (Leviticus 25:44), which just might explain why these mental midgets voted they way they did. Note to the seven Council members: Free your minds... and your asses will follow.

Martin Sweeney: Going for Broke

When Ward 1 Councilman Joe Jones was unfairly run out of office in 2005 for a minor technical violation (he failed to list a $5,000 loan that he fully repaid on a state-mandated financial disclosure statement — an oversight that usually results in only a reprimand for elected officials … I’ll leave it to you to come up with your own conclusion as to why Jones was treated more harshly … but I’ll give you a hint: think skin pigmentation) a reasoned method was used to replace him on Council.

Frank Jackson, who was president of City Council at the time, wisely named an interim person to fill the seat until a special election could be held. That way the voters could fairly decide who they wanted to represent them. Normally, the outgoing councilmember gets to select the person to replace them, Council votes that person in, and then the new person runs in the special election from incumbency … of course with the aid of the $300,000 political war chest controlled by the Council president.

That’s what happened in Ward 7 (my home ward). When Fannie Lewis died Council President Martin Sweeney had the temerity, the unmitigated gall, to come into our ward and tell us that placing Stephanie Howse into the seat (according to him, this was per Fannie’s deathbed wishes, which some folks — myself included — said was a bald-faced lie) would not give her a leg up in the special primary election.

This incident proved to be the one time in the annals of local politics where a politician set out to lie … and actually did not. Stay with me here: Sweeney was flat-out lying (as Zack Reed’s momma once said to me about a relative of hers, “That boy will lie just to keep in practice”) when he told Ward 7 residents that the incumbent would have no advantage in the upcoming race to fill the seat permanently. That kind of sheer disrespect, that kind of telling us to our faces that he thinks we all have oatmeal for brains, that kind of pissing on us and telling us that it’s actually raining, has been a hallmark of his tenure as Council president. However, when the residents of Ward 7, in spite of Sweeney pouring thousands of dollars into the race, selected TJ Dow over Howse, it meant that Sweeney was not lying after all: We proved that the incumbent — in spite of greater financial resources — can be beat; we were able to make a fair race out of it after all. In gratitude for causing our community to come together in common cause (something that might have taken years otherwise), we’re actually thinking of building a statue of Sweeney right on the corner of 79th and Hough — but of course his pants will be on fire.

Now it seems as if Sweeney will get the opportunity to try for another local political first: He gets a shot at a reverse “Daily Double.” For the uninitiated, “Daily Double” is a horseracing term for correctly picking the first-place finishers in the first two races of the day. So, a “reverse Daily Double” is, obviously, picking the losers in two straight races.

Sweeney has already lost one race in Ward 7, and by all appearances he’s about to lose again in Ward 1, where the candidate he put in and is backing, Terrell Pruitt, is struggling against attorney Tonya Jones. Pruitt, from afar, seems like a decent enough fellow; his only problem is that he’s hitched his wagon to a falling star (Sweeney) and the voters know it. Like the voters in Ward 7, the voters in Ward 1 would have preferred to make up their own minds.

Now Sweeney is getting set to go into Ward 2 and attempt to put his handpicked person in the seat recently vacated by Bobby White, who resigned under the cloud of a federal indictment earlier this week. You can bet that he is going to try to install someone who looks out for his own personal interests, not those of the citizens of Ward 2. The residents there should not let that happen. They should not let a failing politician make a decision for them that will impact their neighborhood until the next election.

Sweeney has proven twice that he cares little for what residents want … he’s going to treat their wards like plantations — as if he owns them — but only if they allow him to get away with it. However, it’s a new day in America, and there is about to be a new sheriff in the town of Washington. It’s time for the residents of Ward 2 tap into this new spirit and take a stand: For themselves, for their community, and for the collective future of their children.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com
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