All Roads Lead to Cornithaca – Page 35

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Pride cometh before the fool” Bumper Sticker

Pride is one of the best handles that users can grab a hold of to lead you around by the nose. Pride, even more than respect needs to be earned by your actions. The price of your Pride was to support and promote government social policies of race and gender bias.

You can’t compartmentalize bigotry: like PCBs; the smallest part can pollute the biggest body. That’s why every revered figure of human worth and equality was unalterably opposed to any discriminatory policy for any reason.

Your Pride is being used as another tool to destroy anything that may oppose their rise to power: and to bring another area of human belief and activity under their control. When you are no longer needed; and booted out into the cold; don’t cry that you were betrayed — for it was your pride that has betrayed us all.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Rabid Lemmings: The Musical – I’ve Got A Sheriff”

I’ve Got A Sheriff

(To the tune of I Shot The Sheriff by Bob Marley and the Wailers)

I’ve got a sheriff, but I could not spot a deputy
I’ve got a sheriff, but I could not spot a deputy

All around my rural town
They’re driving up and down
They say they want to bring in the guilty
But there’s no sign of a deputy
There’s no help from the deputies
But I say

I’ve got a sheriff, but I must rely on self-defense
I’ve got a sheriff, but he never helps no matter the offense

The County always hated us
For what I don’t know
Every time that they do us down
They say, “If you don’t like it; why don’t you go”
They say, “If you don’t like it; why don’t you go”
I say

I’ve got a sheriff, but I had to buy a chain-link fence
I’ve got a sheriff, but I must rely on my own defense

Money came my way one day
And I started out of town
All of a sudden I see the Tax Assessor
Aiming to do me down
So I shot, I shot him down
I say

I shot the tax man, and I finally see a deputy
I shot the tax man, and I finally saw a deputy

Reflexes got the better of me
And maybe that’s as it should be
Every day those fuckers go to the well
But one day the bottom will drop out
Yes, one day the bottom will drop out
But I say

I shot the tax man, now they’re suiting up the deputies
I shot the tax man, now they’re shooting up what’s left of me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A seventh song for “Rabid Lemmings: The Musical” – I say “God Damn the Tax Assessor Man.”

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “You can’t make an omelet” Bumper Sticker

With entitlement; how you get something is always subordinated to your need for it.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Opportunity” Bumper Sticker

Short term thinking; long term denial.

There is a disconnection between actions and consequences that is frightening.

“Opportunity” used to mean that you could get a job and prove what you could do; now it means starting at management level with great pay and benefits, and no experience.

I can do business at the touch of a button — and spend hours fixing the fuck-ups. And then I’m asked to fill out a customer satisfaction survey.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Lots of Not” Poem

I first began to notice cell phones in the videotape rental stores; people would read out loud from an empty tape case, wait a moment, then their eyes would glaze and they would wander off. The same behavior started popping up in grocery stores; like a kind of wandering question and answer game show. People sitting alone in restaurants would feel compelled to describe what they were eating, and every detail of the table décor, to avid listeners who may themselves be sitting in other restaurants and describing their own dining experience.

The culmination, if you can call it that, took place in a doctor’s waiting room — where a middle aged woman took a cell phone out of her purse and screamed a long repetitive conversation to a deaf relative.

Over the years; I have been engulfed in the frisson of vocal public dramas, and have more than once overheard parts of conversations that made me wish I could have overheard more — but I have never heard an interesting cell phone conversation.

Where are we going with this? That’s the question in the poem, isn’t it?

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Responsibility” Bumper Sticker

Words like “justice” and “equitable” are very subjective in meaning; and can be used to support actions that “equal” and “ethical” would never condone; but words that can directly manipulate others have taken over the spotlight in our dog and pony show.

“Using” is probably the most important concept behind social rhetoric today — because using always puts the user in control and at the center of any action. Therefore “old school” concepts that are “loaded” with connotations and are historically tied to our views of ourselves and our humanity are a perfect tool for using; by threatening damage to someone’s self-image.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Leading by example” Bumper Sticker

Today’s leaders don’t lead by giving; they lead by taking. And they don’t lead by forgiving: they lead by hating. You can’t walk in the opposite direction from the great social leaders of the past; without your actions doing the same. All you can do is put on a mask of pretense, and lash out at anyone who tries to remove it.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – Undercover Party – “Are they coming?”

A game with a storied the past — and a story for the future. Does it work for survival? Does it work for the survivors?

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Revised Constitution Bumper Sticker”

After many emails to County authorities with no acknowledgement of my question: “what requirements the residents of other local roads fulfilled to get approval for their “4 Ton” weight limit for non-local traffic”; I received the following response:

“Residents don’t decide where signs are placed. Petitions hold no merit. Roads are posted for other reasons.”

This is an excellent example of Black Box Bureaucracy: even when Tompkins County authorities are willing to respond; there is nothing to get ahold of — not only is there no meaningful public participation in the decision making process; there is no disclosure of why these decisions are made, or even who is making them.

What are the “other reasons” behind their decision that roads in some areas have a 4-Ton limit, and rural roads like Lansingville Road get a 20-Ton limit? Is it that we’re not golfing partners? Or because we didn’t make a big campaign contribution? Or maybe it’s just that we’re rural and have no place in their “vision” of a future society.

The role of Tompkins County government in the continued thru-cutting of large industrial trucks on rural roads will be fully documented and exposed in “Tompkins County and Tammany Hall.”

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – Cornithaca Road Signs – “Discredit the Witness”

There is a certain animal cunning in the survival tactics that authorities employ to protect their acts of corruption and misconduct from exposure; but they follow predictable pathways, and leave recognizable tracks.

One of their most common tactics is exemplified the progression in these signs. The first two steps: “Discredit the Witness” and “Discredit the Facts”; need no explanation. The third step; “Discredit the Context,” is the deliberate attempt to minimize and trivialize the incident or issue; they will claim that it’s been exaggerated to obtain money, or notoriety, that it’s a political attack, and more recently; to use scams like TDML to convince the public that everything is now under control, and there is no need to investigate or take further action.

If inquiries persist; authorities pull together to create an inescapable maze of “in-house” adjudications: by conducting investigations that ignore all pertinent material, handing the issue back to the group accused of the misconduct for a self-investigation, or falling back on the legality of a permit or a regulation that has been formulated for just this sort of eventuality — thereby effectively “caulking” all the cracks.

“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” may be able to document and expose corruption — but that doesn’t mean anything will be done about it.