The Clarion Call

In a continuing effort to bring you tomorrow’s news today, I am publishing below my commentary that will appear in this week’s LC News. (If it doesn’t make it in, you will have an exclusive!)

Consensus is possible on Lowe’s, but not simple

In last week’s issue of the paper there were three letters and a commentary published in support of the proposed Lowe’s. These proponents mainly made the now-familiar arguments for shopping convenience, jobs and increased tax revenue. It would be easy to have people on the Smart Growth side write back, challenge these points and counter with the issues of traffic, sprawl and damaged community character, but what good would it do?
At this point just about everybody is dug in with their own point of view and has stopped listening to the other side. In fact, I’m sure that a lot of people will look to see who wrote this commentary and stop reading when they see my name, because they think they know what I will say.

Over the past six months of campaigning for town supervisor I spent many hours discussing the Lowe’s issue with hundreds of people on all sides of the issue. I guess I’ve heard just about every possible argument both pro and con.

Many voters simply wanted to know if I was for Lowe’s or against it. To those, I tried to explain that it was not that simple. This is not a black and white issue, it contains many shades of gray. To those who think it is simple, I offer the words of H. L. Mencken, “For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.”

After listening to all these views, I tried to fashion a “compromise” solution that would allow the Lowe’s to go forward, but would address the concerns about traffic, precedent and future sprawl. For my efforts I was criticized from both sides. The anti-Big Box true believers accused me of selling out the cause, while I was unable to convince the pro-Lowe’s majority that I had truly changed my spots.

Your astute columnist Bill Cook opined that it was this “waffle” that cost me support in the election. While there may be some truth in that, I note that the sign of a good compromise is that it makes both sides unhappy. Judging from my last place finish, it seems like I might have been on to something!

I attribute a great part of the acrimony that has characterized this debate to failed leadership on the town’s part. Instead of making this an open process from the beginning and welcoming opinions on all sides, there has been a concerted effort to divide and conquer by controlling public input and knowledge of the issues. The pretense of hearing public comment on all issues in this complex matter in one 5-hour hearing scheduled right before the election is indicative of this cynical
attitude.

Even so, I noted that when people got a chance to hear opposing views, both at the public hearing and at the town meeting the week before, that some of the hard edges fell off the arguments. This is because the people of Geneseo are generally fair-minded if given the chance to discuss an issue openly.
It is in the direction of more openness and more discussion that we must go if this issue is ever going to be resolved in a satisfactory manner. I believe a consensus can be found, but only after people on both sides begin to listen to the concerns of those on the other. Unfortunately, the bullying approach of the town and the developer for the past two years supplemented by the recent employment of an expensive PR campaign are hardly conducive to this process.

Important decisions should not be made under the pressure of such tactics. I urge the newly elected town board to reject Newman’s PDD application, so that the process can be started over and done right from the beginning, starting with a new master plan. This is the only way that the divisive damage done by the improper handling of this issue can begin to heal.

To those who think this is just another attempt to kill the project, I assure you that it is the quickest way to have it built. To go forward on the bad foundation laid by the current process is to invite protracted litigation in which only the lawyers will get rich. Haven’t we, as a community, learned anything from the refusal to compromise on the Team Cheer lease and the rental housing law?

Because this is the quickest way to resolve this, there is really no down side to the community by starting over. The record provides more than ample “rational basis” for the town to reject the PDD application. A decision to rezone to a PDD is a discretionary act on the part of the board and no applicant or landowner has any right to demand it.

Any threatened lawsuit over such a decision is merely posturing by the developer for the purpose of intimidating our officials and our community. It would be a huge mistake to give in to such tactics.

This column is being written two days past deadline on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 22. The date explains the delay. For those not old enough to remember, today is the 44th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I’m running late because I’ve spent the last three days getting bleary-eyed reading JFK conspiracy web sites–It happens every November!

Perhaps because I am old enough to remember (I was 12 on that fateful day), I’ve always had a fascination with what has been called the Crime of the Century. The killing of a young President was bad enough, but what came next has forever sown the seeds of doubt about what really happened. Like millions of others, I witnessed the murder of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby live on national television.

Even a cursory look at Ruby’s background throws much doubt on the cover story that he was a Kennedy-loving patriot out to avenge the murder of his hero. Ruby may have been a patriot, but it’s hard to sell that as the primary motivation for someone who was the owner of a sleazy Dallas strip club and had traveled to Havana at the invitation of mob friends at least once.

Once you go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories it can be tough to get back to the surface. And once you realize how many enemies Kennedy had in 1963 Texas, it’s a wonder that more people weren’t hit in the crossfire in Dealey Plaza that day.

A short list of people who wanted JFK dead would include Cuban exiles who were upset over Kennedy’s failure to supply promised air support for the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion; their CIA controllers who were fired for launching the raid in the first place; the Mafia who were double-crossed and prosecuted by AG Bobby Kennedy after helping elect his brother (and also wanted to get back into Cuba); the Military-Industrial complex who were angry at Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam; LBJ who was about to be dumped as a running mate because of persistent financial scandals that were under investigation; Oil men mad at JFK’s proposal to cut the oil depletion allowance which would have cost them millions, bigots angry at Kennedy’s support for civil rights legislation, and possibly even Jackie for all of her husband’s philandering!

No wonder that analysis of photos taken on Elm Street that day allegedly show a rogue’s gallery of every spook and black ops agent ever known. In addition to those caught on film, it was also reported that most of the future Watergate burglars and future Presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush were in town that day.

Of course, seeing is believing, and for many years the gold standard of what really happened during those much disputed seconds in Dallas was the Zapruder film. Just when the Warrenistas had seemed close to finally proving that Oswald really was the lone gunman, however, along comes some very serious questions about the authenticity of that film. Could it have been doctored by cover-up artists seeking to hide the truth? I don’t know, but the evidence is disturbing.Try googling it.

Regardless of all that, it seem increasingly likely to me that Oswald told the truth when he said “I didn’t kill anybody, I’m just a patsy.” I tend to believe the reports that he was a paid FBI informer who was “sheep-dipped” in New Orleans to make it appear that he was anti-Castro.

His main job was informing on renegade Cubans who Kennedy had ordered the FBI to shut down after the Bay of Pigs, but he may have been allowed to infiltrate the assassination plot, by those wanting to compromise that agency. How better to control an investigation than by framing an active FBI contact?

One of the more disturbing elements to me personally that my recent reading (and viewing) has uncovered is the allegation of George Bush 41’s involvement in the plot. This stems from a memo that J. Edgar Hoover drafted about the assassination in which he describes briefing “George Bush of the CIA.” Bush has always denied that he was involved in the CIA before being named Director in 1975, but isn’t that standard operating procedure?

I find it hard to believe that the genial man we hosted in our home when he spoke at the Wadsworth lecture in 1999, could be the mastermind of the Crime of the Century and involved in many other nasty things as well, but those were different times. After Russian missiles were discovered in Cuba in 1962, it’s understandable why many felt it was in the national interest to eliminate Fidel Castro.

Studying the Kennedy assasination is a great way to learn about politics and the history of our country. Suffice is to say there are many dark truths which are generally not taught in our grade schools. For those who like their trails less cold, I recommend you read up on the deaths of Vince Foster and Ron Brown during the Clinton years.

If nothing else, the battle for truth over these cases, JFK, Watergate, Flight 800, 9/11 and many more controversies should teach us not to always trust our own eyes or believe the conventional wisdom.