Something For the Home-bound to Ponder on a Saturday Night

Three items in recent Emerald City news

Although it's a slow visitor-traffic mid-weekend, the red-meat news just keeps on flowing. Thus there are three items we feel compelled to throw out for discussion this evening:

The first is this morning's Standard-Examiner story, in which Scott Schwebke reports the scheduling of a candidate debate, in which mayoral candidates Van Hooser and Godfrey are calendered to lock horns at WSU on October 12, 2007. What make this is re-meat story, however, is Mr. Schwebke's odd reporting of this event. Rather than merely telling the folks that the two candidates had agreed to a firm date, time, venue and format for an event that is actually happening, Mr. Schwebke found it somehow appropriate to lead his article by reporting on a venue that fizzled, i.e., a proposed venue in the Boss Godfrey den of lions, Godfreyite Dave Hardman's Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce.

Failed debate venues are common in politics. The ones that are never agreed upon nor scheduled far outnumber the ones that actually "come off." Why Ace Reporter Schwebke saw fit to publicise one of the events that didn't work out we do not know; but we do have our suspicions. Scott Schwebke's story was plainly designed to by the Standard-Examiner to provide Boss Godfrey favorable ink we think, and to embarrass the challenger Van Hooser.

As to the question of scheduling additional future debate venues, we're going to offer a suggestion to Susie and her campaign crew:

The political upside to scheduling further face-to-face "debates" between a challenger with significant momentum is slight, when compared with the downside of giving the "troubled" political loser any more time on the public stage than he deserves, especially in an environment where our so-called "home town newspaper" is plainly in Boss Godfrey's corner.

Another item worthy of discussion this evening is a tepid press release issued by the City Council yesterday, an item that was mentioned tangentially during the comments in the lower article, but didn't spark much reader discussion. Despite the report in Thursday's Scott Schwebke story, which cheerfully (but incorrectly) reported that the city council is participating in the discussion regarding the $247 thousand secret gondola study fund -- that's plainly not the truth, judging from the above-linked City council press release.

We've spoken with four of the seven council members, including council leaders Garcia and Wicks. The story we're getting from these nicy-nice folks is that mayor-council relations are now at an all time low, although that mood certainly isn'r reflected in the press report. Every member of the council now reportedly believes (privately of course) that Boss Godfrey maneuvered deceptively behind their backs in reaching a unilateral agreement with the UTA. The council as a body believes they've been entirely cut out, in violation of Godfrey's worthless promises to work "co-operatively." We've also had a private conversation with the UTA's Mick Crandall, who also told us some very revealing things.

Except for the above, we're going to keep mum about all we've found out for now. This is Scott Schwebke's story, and for now we're going to stand back, out of professional courtesy, and let him dig in and report the truth. Failing that, we'll go ahead and report the sordid details, in the event that his editors hold him back.

Regardless of where Ace Reporter Schwebke takes this, however, this is a story we'll keep hammering until November. It's all here in one package, gentle readers. If there's one single story within the past four years that neatly encapsulates everthing wrong with Boss Godfrey, this is it. Within this single story we find the deception, cronyism, dishonorable conduct, lies, arrogance, disregard for his City Council co-equal government branch, and everything else that disqualifies Boss Godfrey from further "service" at the helm of our Ogden City government.

Last but not least we're going to highlight this morning's letter to the editor, from State Representative Neil Hansen. Gracious and gentlemanly in his unsuccessful mayoral campaign, he's magnanimous and gracious in his defeat. Neil Hansen is truly a "class act," and remains a tremendous local resource in our State Legislature. We thank Neil Hansen for his participation in our municipal primary campaign, and hope that he and Ms. Van Hooser will soon be joining together and pooling their resources. We're a hair's breadth from showing Boss Godfrey the stage door exit in November, and hope to hear soon that political warhorses Van Hooser and Hansen will pulling in tandem, as we move toward the upcoming general election.

Time to go watch our Utah Utes, and find out whether last week's UCLA blowout was a fluke!