Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Send them the Bill!

On today's noon news on Channel 4, they just had a story about a man with such an outrageous holiday display that caused such traffic disruptions, the city council suggested charging him $200/day for the added police service.

I know Windom residents should be sent the bill for their current waste of power as well as their late October celebration that uses almost an entire shift of the OPD.

I say send them the bill? What do you think?

6 comments:

PTT said...

I am a bit ignorant of the Windom Wonderland display as I try to stay away from gaudy over-done kitsch-mas displays.

Especially something as wasteful and anti-Christian as was on display on Windom in previous years.

Nothing says peace on Earth like lighting-up your yard with a bunch of Chinese made lead-based bric-a-brack and sucking down a few gigawatts from the electric grid for your own personal agrandizement.

Bill Dauterive would be proud.

Personally I skip displaying carbon based chloroforms (i.e...crap) in my front yard so that I can live vicariously through a manger scene and do things that serve those less fortunate than I.

But that is just me.

Some celebrate Jesus' birthday by producing a monument to Ready Kilowatt in their front yard. But when it comes to Jesus' birthday, I let Jesus take the lead and I haven't found anything in the Bible that resembles whatever they call that glowing yard sale on Windom.

Any expenditures incurred by the City so that the Windom Wonderkid can have his sinfully glutenous X-Mas display should be billed directly to those responsible.

I would go so far as to say you need a permit in order to disrupt someone's neighborhood as the self-serving servant of God on Windom Ave does. In no way does his self-absorbed display meet the Housing Code, so a variance would be necessary.

PTT said...

You all are beautiful, a slice of life's rich pageant.

If you read my post, I never said Dan didn't have the right to construct the Emerald Boreust. If people want to pay Dan for his creativity and craftsmanship that is there choice, but "priceless"?

Never said anything about King Coal or chastised any coal company for "ruining the planet", Fido. Not sure where you got that idea but I try to read the lines before reading between the lines. Please feel free to point-out any negative comment about coal in my posts.

I've personally done more to provide clean compliance coal to the world energy markets than you could reasonably imagine. Nowhere do you find me denying my use of coal-fired energy.

Thanks for the critique.

PTT said...

"Any expenditures incurred by the City so that the Windom Wonderkid can have his sinfully glutenous X-Mas display should be billed directly to those responsible."

I understand I am in the minority on gaudy x-mas displays. Christian based materialism is the prevailing wisdom.

My belief in God has little to do with the everlasting smiles created in the memories of the Wisdom Wiseman. I find that Christmas celebrations that have an element of humility to be as mesmerizing to children as the creativity and craftsmanship of Windom.

If people who love it like to visit Windom, bully for them.

Never stated that X-mas lights harm the environment.

In your birthday example, people eventually get to eat the birthday cake.

I chose to be more humble in my celebration of X-mas and devote my efforts to making peoples lives materially better.

What would Jesus do? It is his birthday, sort of. Alms for the poor or accounts receivable for Ameren?

All I have to say to my fellow Overlanders is to have a nice Christmas, enjoy your lights, Francis of Assisi would be proud.

Overland Muckraker said...

My two cents:

City Hall has a history of turning down certain citizen and organization requests with the excuse of the manpower involved, specifically involving the police department.

The requests do not seem to be handled equitably (see parade from last election). This again, like the Wild Acres Gym rental, could be helped by incorporating a written policy.

When you consider how far Windom resident, Jay "The Felon" Fetsch is up everyone at City Hall's ass, the fact that the costs incurred are ignored is not surprising.

Personally, I think the Windom thing is a bit excessive and a lot trashy. But, then tastes are just that--a matter of personal taste.

PTT said...

King Coal is a term as old as nursery rhymes, as in "old king coal is a merry old soul", yet also popularized to describe the Appalachian coal fields by Upton Sinclair.

Robert Kennedy, Jr. is a fine man and I support his work, but he is in no way a practicing environmental lawyer. Especially in mountaintop removal issues, RFK, Jr. was no where near the court-house.

Although banks may own equity in one of the several stock market, 99.9% of their capital is invested in individual stocks that are publicly listed on a stock exchange.

The nation's largest shareholder?

The California Teacher's Pension Fund is known as CALSTRS. As of their last reporting, CALSTRS manages roughly $600 million and has positions in approximately 25 issues, none of which are involved in minerals and mining such as coal. In fact their largest seven investments are in foreign firms such as Vodafone. Among their total investments, CALSTRS owns only two US companies, HGG and HORT. CALSTRS is a actively managed fund and as such does not invest in other mutual funds.

CALSTRS is a nice little "me too" pension fund but doesn't even appear on the radar screen among institutional investors. Right in their backyard is one of the largest institutional investors known as CALPERS, California Public Employees Retirement System. CALPERS manages approximately $66 billion withing 4,290 publicly listed stocks.

Or you could go down the coast to LA and find Capital Research and Management Company which manages $980 billion in equity assets.

How can we all provide compliance coal to world markets? First, raise two hundred million in cash. Second, call me.

I could not agree more with you Fido, high energy prices and the external costs of pollution are driven purely by the demand for energy.

Tom said...

Went to a nice little party this weekend and heard about the Mayor's future plans for Economic Development and what it includes.

Sounds like coming to our quaint neighborhood in a strip mall, near a day care and right by a tavern will be a one of a kind for Overland. Our first and our very own GUN STORE.

The beauty of it is the Councilmen from that Ward (1) don't even know about it but Chuckie and Mikey do!

Merry Christmas and Bang Bang