Bits and Pieces from this morning's Standard-Examiner
The Standard-Examiner editorial page is festooned with a precious array of election related material this morning, so we'll highlight the five items we believe to be particularly worthy of discussion:
First, we were greeted by this morning's lead editorial, bearing a headline that we rightly took to be quite ominous: "Recommendations are coming." The article goes on tediously for three-quarters of a page, laying out various criteria, justications, rationales and caveats, explaining (in what we thought to be a mealy-mouthed manner) why the Std-Ex will be endorsing municipal election candidates this year. Frankly we don't understand the reason for all the editorial "hemming and hawing." If Lee Carter and his Std-Ex newspaper are going to breach 35 years' tradition, and suddenly "recommend" candidates, we believe they should just come out and do it.
One particular element of this article did however particularly catch our eye: The series of candidate interviews upon which the Std-Ex's recommendations will be partly founded have been captured on video tape, and will be posted on the newspaper's website. We congratulate the Std-Ex for this creative approach, and look forward to our home town newspaper's next foray into the multimedia world of cyber space.
Next in order is a pro-Van Hooser letter from former Ogden City Councilwoman Adele Smith, who now resides in Idyllwilde, California. Even from a distance Ms. Smith seems to have managed to keep on top of the Emerald City political situation, although we did wonder about her reference to candidate Van Hooser's planning commission experience.
We were more than slightly amused by Warren Bowman's letter, in which he confidently asserts that candidate Van Hooser's crime figures are incorrect. Enterprising soul that Mr. Bowman seems to be, he even includes a link to the state's website. If any of our readers know Mr. Bowman, we would appreciate their transmitting to him this revealing link.
Blake Garner grouses this morning, claiming that candidate Van Hooser became a mite touchy, when he called and apparently gave Ms. Van Hooser the "third degree." Mr. Garner's reported experience certainly differs from ours. The last time we called Ms. Van Hooser on the phone, she answered the phone herself, and was very generous with her time, responding to our questions more than adequately.
And finally there is this Godfrey rah-rah letter from poor old Steve Prisbrey. Our readers will recall that Mr. Prisbrey made an unsuccessful run at a city council seat during the 2005 municipal election, under the pro-Godfrey banner. Hoping for a 2006 appointment to the Emerald City planning commission, Mr. Prisbrey was more than a little disappointed when Boss Godfrey appointed Godfreyite Dustin Chapman instead. Of course we all remember how that worked out, don't we? In the intervening period we've had the opportunity to communicate numerous times with Mr. Prisbrey, whose affection for Boss Godfrey definitely runs hot and cold. Judging from today's letter, Prisbrey appears to be back on the Godfrey bandwagon again however -- for the time being at least. Perhaps there's another "appointment" in the offing.
That's it for today, gentle readers; short and sweet.
Don't let the cat get your tongues.
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11 comments:
We watched the debate again. The mayor is lying and glib. Someone said..."boy, that mayor sure is a good debater!"
Well, no, not really. He's just slick and glib and can lie without blinking or blushing.
When Susie told the audience how the Council is in the dark and has had to hire its own attorneys to get neeed information, numb nuts actually said that he's never been told that the Council didn't receive information from his administration!
Susie needs to stop giving lame answeres tho. She really had the opportunity to go into detail and knock the socks off Godfrey, but stopped too soon. Her remarks that she wouldn't be running if he'd said earlier that he wouldn't sell our park, etc, was embarrassing! I cringed every time she said something that sounds like she'd like him to remain mayor.
Susie...practice your speaking and debate skills with someone who can guide you!
Say what needs to be said...don't give an inch to Godfrey...call him out on his lying, cronyism, giving away our prime properties to his buddies..without those properties being advertised to the public. Keep harping away that we need more cops on the streets. Explain what RDA is so people understand you...and that Godfrey is the head of the RDA! Stop answering him, and get your points across.
Don't apologize.
You made some good points, but you also conceded too much to the mouth.
your friend
Mayor Matthew Godfrey brags about all the companies he has brought to Ogden, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I suggest that candidate van Hooser ask him to please explain why the Swanson Family Foundation moved out of Ogden and abandoned their building on Harrison to the Red Cross.
Today's SE has a front page story about the Arab interpreter and his family that have been brought back to Utah by a member of the Ogden Police force with the assistance of the Swanson Family Foundation that has provided the refugees a house and employment for the father.
It was a great loss to Ogden for the Foundation to move out of town.
Why doesn't someone ask the Mayor what happened?
A Foundation that does the constructive things for our area that the Swanson Foundation continues to do impresses me much more than a few ski equipment and clothing companies that Godfrey got to move here by giving them tax incentives.
And don't forget that the house is in Farr West.
It is interesting that the Standard has established as their main criteria for judging the candidates their stand and history on open government.
How they gonna reconcile that when they endorse Godfrey? He is the sneakiest, most secretive and behind closed door politician in Ogden's history! Yet, you just know that he is going to be their choice in the Ogden race.
Oz:
You wrote: It is interesting that the Standard has established as their main criteria for judging the candidates their stand and history on open government. That's one area the SE has, as a newspaper, been openly critical of the Godfrey administration for some time. It's an issue on which, I would think, Ms. Van Hooser's position favoring open government as a matter of principle might appeal to the SE very much. I hope she stressed that in her interview with the editors.
Curmudgeon
Yes, I hope she brought that up to. I think there is a good chance she might have considering what I have heard her say in the brief exposure I have had to her.
However, I don't think anything she said to them will make any difference. In your heart of hearts you know that regardless of how fair and balanced you try to paint the Standard, they are on Godfrey's side and they are going to endorse him. I'm not sure that will make too much difference however because I don't think there are a lot of folks in Ogden that look up to, or are influenced by the paper.
There seems to be no sense of what honesty means.
Why can't the paper simply say, "After 35 years, we've never seen a mayor we like as much as Matt Godfrey, so we've decided to break with tradition and issue an endorsement for him and his city council candidates."
Instead, they have this charade, that everyone knows is a charade, where they try to appear objective.
If they were honest, it would carry more weight.
The way they are doing it, we will have the opinions of a very tiny group of dishonest, self-absorbed men.
Had they done it straightforwardly, we would have the opinions of a tiny group of honest men.
That would have carried more weight.
BTW, I see Godfrey lawyer Ben Lomond is off the clock today. You people had a late night. After my last post I had other matters to attend to. I went and applied my time and talent to watching some TV.
One other thing -
Isn't it interesting that Robert and Adele Smith, after having lived in California for seven years, still follow the goings on in Ogden, and have even made a donation to VanHooser.
Then there are the people who say Ogden was rotten before Godfrey, and that he alone has restored our "pride".
It seems obvious that people have loved Ogden long before Godfrey came along, and it is that affection that causes them to oppose him as he tries to destroy all we hold dear.
It's all just the opposite of what the Godfreyites are saying.
The Astonishing Disappearing Gondola, Part II
Moments ago, I wandered over to the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce home page to make my weekly visit, to click on the Gondola icon, and be whisked again to the Chamber's page endorsing sale of the Mt. Ogden Parklands for a real estate development to raise part of the money for Mayor Godfrey to build his flatland gondola from downtown to WSU --- the same proposal the mayor, wallowing in scary election polling results, has himself abandoned and announced to have been not feasible in the first place. In fact, the Mayor now thinks the plan he once touted as something as important to Ogden's future as the joining of the railroads at Promontory Summit was to its past is such an awful idea, that he pledged to set the city's lawyers to finding a way to legally prevent him from going back on his promise not to sell the parklands. [Note to me: must remember that the Mayor's new event as important to Ogden's future as the joining of the rails is the arrival of ski and outdoors industries in Ogden. I wonder what it will be the morning after the election?]
So, over to the Ogden-Weber Chamber homepage I went. But the gondola link had disappeared! Gone! Kaput! Nowhere to be seen! Nary a trace! Sacre bleu! What could have happened?
Did the Gondola Grinch that magically removed any mention of gondolas from the Mayor's recent self-congratulatory speech at Amer Sports' big opening bash strike again? Did Gondola Grinch hackers penetrate the Chamber's website and remove the gondola link in the dark of night?
Or perhaps there's a simpler explanation. Perhaps Mr. Hardman, Chamber President and CEO, finally returned the Mayor's phone calls and was instructed that this gondola thing is polling very badly for Hizzonah, and will the Chamber for god's sake take the damn gondola link down now!
I know which one I'm betting happened.
Rudi:
You wrote: The series of candidate interviews upon which the Std-Ex's recommendations will be partly founded have been captured on video tape, and will be posted on the newspaper's website. We congratulate the Std-Ex for this creative approach....
Sorry, but we disagree again. Taping the interviews is a bad idea. Traditionally, ed board interviews of candidates have been off the record, which means they can be, and often have been, very frank discussions... far franker than the editors are likely to get from candidates who know every word they speak will be up for public view shortly. The editors would get far more information, far freer discussion, and a far better idea about the candidates in a closed door off the record conversation than they will with the cameras running.
Resuming endorsements after a nearly four decade lapse is a good idea [though why the SE is being so delicate about their making recommendations instead of endorsements I can't figure out. Seems like six of one, half dozen of the other to me]. The bad idea was the nearly four decade lapse. I presume the SE will do as many other papers do, and provide space for a reply by those candidates it does not endorse. Providing one candidate in each race with an editorial endorsement so close to election day that the un-endorsed have no chance to reply seems unfair... and contradicts, seems to me, the Standard Examiner's own oft-expressed rule about not printing letters endorsing candidates within a week of the polls opening. Why it should be unacceptable to run a letter saying "Vote for Senator Foghorn because he's kind to small dogs and children and loves his mother, and his opponent isn't and doesn't" within a week of the election, but perfectly acceptable to run an editorial saying the same closer than a week to election day escapes me. Seems the same standard should apply to both cases.
Be that as it may, papers ought to take stands on elections. They ought to interview all the candidates in so far as they can, and they ought to conduct the interviews off the record. The SE gets kudos for picking up the tradition of endorsements dropped so long ago, but a Bronx cheer for trying to turn the interviews into on-line video copy.
Curmudgeon
I usually agree with your take on things. However, in the case of the news paper endorsing candidates I have to take exception.
How fair is it for the newspaper, any paper, putting themselves in the position of king maker? Especially in a one paper town, and especially one that has an apparent bias to begin with. Yea, I know Ed Allen and the rest of the Godfeyite empire don't agree with me on just which direction the paper's bias lies, but one thing we all do agree on is that the paper is in fact biased one way or the other.
I think the paper could do best by the public if they just reported all the news, and all the candidate's positions fairly and completely and just let their readers make up their minds on which candidates best represent their views.
I think it awfully arrogant of the Standard to pretend to be the arbiter of what is good for the cities in their readership area.
Fortunately the Standard doesn't have much credibility anyway, so I doubt if their endorsement, or recommendation or whatever the hell they are going to call it, makes much difference anyway.
I will put up a hundred bucks and give ten to one odds that the Standard endorses the Integrity challenged Godfrey in the Ogden race. Their rationale will be something lame like we shouldn't change horses in the middle of the stream, yak, yak, yak.
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