Brown Act/Democracy Goes Down

It took about three minutes.  That is the amount of time a newly elected Tea Party member,  who has just been sworn in to the Redding City Council, took to break the Brown Act.  Three minutes!

There is a majority of Tea Party Patriots  now on the Redding, California City Council.  They have schemed and worked to get 3 out of the 5 positions so now they can exert their radical agenda on our fair city.

For the record, Redding  California has a City Manager Form of City Government.  Already, one of the radical  Teaparty Members, has tried to change the city into a "Charter" City.

"Charter" cities are normally for cities over a million, but what the heck, it was a way for the Tea Party to get power fast over the city.  It didn't work, but took months of staff time and energy, while the City Council was cutting police and fire positions.

Now, the present Vice-Mayor, who conveniently took an all-expense paid trip on a developer's expense account, then was shocked when he was caught, has been appointed over the traditional nominee.

Piously, the Tea Party members say they never talked about this before the meeting.  They would NEVER break the Brown Act, that forbids "meetings before meetings" to 'arrange things'.  Of course, that is exactly what they did.

Within three minutes of being sworn in, a motion was made to appoint a Tea Party collaborator Vice Mayor, and  was passed 3 to 2 with no discussion.  The woman council member was passed over, acutally run over, so the Tea Party could get its way.  This was not the last time this will happen.

But, they didn't arrange it before hand right?   If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.  This was a fix plain and simple.

Ironically, the Tea Party is an anti-democratic  organization in the classical political science definition.  And like all anti-democratic  organizations, open meetings are a natural enemy.

To attain their ends, they use  any means necessary.  They hide behind the Constitution and Law, as "patriots" but resort to stunts like we just saw, all the time.  They are anti-Democracy!

 It is more "convenient" to cut corners, and talk about issues before meetings, rig votes, and the hell with the Brown Act.  The ends of lower taxes and smaller government justify the ends of destroying good government and democracy.

The mark of any anti-democratic movement, is that expediency is always favored over  democratic decision making.  Democracy takes too much time, when there are ideological aims to be met.  The Tea Party seeks to gut city government, cut pensions, end unions, rip into social services, and privatize everything, while lining its pockets with the ultimate corruption that evolves.  That's right, in every anti-democracy  movement, a huge underlying motive is good old fashioned corruption.

Mark this:   The Tea Party majority in Redding will attack the city government at every turn.  They will fire the City Manager, the City Attorney, and many in the city government.  They will seek to privatize all that they can.  They will conspire with developers and will corrupt the present building permit process completely.  They will destroy impartial and fair city government, under the guise of "economies" and will reduce what once was a successful city government to a shadow of what it once was.

And their first step we just saw, running right over the Brown Act to further push their radical agenda.

And who will stop them?  Will you?   Or will we all "go along" as democracy dies in Redding, California.