Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Weber County Forum Wednesday Morning News Roundup

Several interesting Bits and Pieces stumbled upon by your blogmeister whilst Googling

In the interest of keeping the discussion going, even on another slow news day, here are a few interesting Bits and Pieces stumbled upon by your blogmeister whilst Googling:

1) For those Ogden residents who've been looking forward to repeating the good times in Ogden City's annual Winterfest celebration this year, the Standard-Examiner delivers some very bad news this morning:
In this age of global climate change, perhaps the city fathers will be scheduling a beach-themed winter carnival some time very soon.

2) For those readers who are eagerly following the Standard's Alan Hall guest commentary series, here's Mr. Hall's latest, reporting on the outcome of last week's Ogden business leadership pow-wow, wherein "20 community leaders met for the first time to discuss the greater Ogden-area economy":
Can we see by a show of hands, O Gentle Readers, how many of you are surprised that our Ogden City Big Government Interventionist "Leadership" is adopting a"central planning" tactic borrowed straight from Joe Stalin's old Soviet Union?

3) Excellent Letter to the Editor which just popped up on the S-E website, decrying the recent bone-headed U.S. Supreme Court decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) which ruled, in essence, "that corporations and unions were legally people and could spend unlimited funds on election advertisements."
The author, liberty-loving Salt Lake City resident Cameron Morgan, makes a pitch for those lumpencitizens who'd like to see this bone-headed SCOTUS decision overturned to "join "Move to Amend" in pushing for a Constitutional amendment that spells out, in no uncertain terms, that corporations are not people and that they can and should be regulated." Unfortunately, Mr. Morgan fails to supply the necessary "action link," which omission we now cure, for our WCF readers' convenience:
If you'd like to weigh in on this issue, be sure to click the "petition" link, either in the MTA website header, or via the "Sign the Petition" button.

That's it for now, WCF readers.

The floor's open for anybody who'd like to comment, or even blow off a little pent-up steam.

12 comments:

Bob Becker said...

In re: Winterfest cancelled:   Now if Ogden had just embraced instead running an annual "Mardi Gras In The Mountains" [doesn't depend on snow], no cancellation would have been necessary.   And MGITM is nicely suited to the coming warming in the the region. In warming weather, revelers have been known in other Mardi Gras cities to respond by reducing garmentage significantly, which simply adds to the revelry.  Sounds like a win/win situation to me....

Bob Becker said...

Can we see by a show of hands, O Gentle Readers, how many of you are surprised that our Ogden City Big Government Interventionist "Leadership"is adopting a"central planning" tactic borrowed straight from Joe Stalin's oldSoviet Union?
Good grief, get a grip.  I saw nothing in the article that resembled in any significant way Joe Stalin's endless "five year plans" that had the coercive authority of the state behind them.  A committee of business stakeholders and including representatives from the city and county governments, discussing ways to improve communication between government and business owners[which it now seems business leaders feel safe to admit have in Ogden city been damn poor in recent years], and trying to think ahead about ways to improve the economy of Ogden and the role government can play here in improving conditions for economic growth strikes me as nothing Ol' Joe would have been the least bit interested in. 

You don't like the committee, fine, but red baiting?   Good grief. It's 2012 not 1955.

Crjennings said...

I lived in a northern community that celebrated an International Winter Festival. It had nothing to do with snow sports and looked very much like a Mardi Gras. Various cultural groups focused on their foods and representative arts on different nights at the community center. There was a torchlight parade with everyone in their puffy snow clothes. It ran for a week and brought people to town every night. I was very impressed with how the town recognized all the people who came and settled in.

blackrulon said...

Perhaps the business leaders invited should demonstrate actual business success. That would of course rule out many of the people who Ogden city has dealt with in the past years.I see that extending the RDA has passed. Perghaps the department of CED should attempt to lure business to Ogden on its merits rather than pay them to come. We are robbing our children of a good education by extending tax increments another * years. Fire the Community and Economics Department and get people in there who can actually do their job.

rudizink said...

LOL, Bob! As we're almost even seven (count'em 7) years into the Weber County Forum Community Blog Project, your blogmeister still stands amazed that "some people" (we won't name names) still don't quite "get it," when we inject a little "irony" (or Gawd forbid -- "humor" into the discussion.

So whaddaya propose, Bob? shall we insert a little smiley face under each WCF article to clearly identify articles which are at least slightly tongue-in-cheek?

Howbout we plant a laugh-track within each of our WCF articles, when we're not being so serious as we "pretend," whilst all the while we're mainly trying to tickle our higher IQ readers' funny bone?

We stand by with abated breath, Bob, for your anticipated apologetic reply.

Another Good iIdea said...

Hay!  Now that you mention it, Bob, here's something that might be a good idea:

What about persuading our new mayor to proclaim a city-wide celebration Of Ogden City, say, during the hot summer months, like July, for instance?

We could call it something like: Ogden Street Festival

I have a few ideas about this. Maybe Mayor Caldwell could block off 25th street from Washington to Wall Avenue.

Maybe people from Ogden and outlying communities could come to Ogden for a little weekend fun.

Maybe Mike Caldwell will demonstrate that he's not just another Godfrey Clone.

Oh Yeah said...

Wow!  I'm totally amazed that nobody in Ogden has even contemplated such a brilliant idea in Ogden ever before!

Bikiniboy said...

"In this age of global climate change, perhaps the city fathers will be
scheduling a beach-themed winter carnival some time very soon."

Bring on the bikinis!

blackrulon said...

I can only hope the 5 year plan is more successful than the recently completed 12 year plan.

D_Dalton said...

I'm pretty ashamed that we lack the vision to hold a Winterfest without snow. The fact that we didn't fall back on a make-the-best-of-it contingency plan says something rather discouraging about our city.

Bob Becker said...

Oh, I don't know.  Most of the events of the fest required snow. We trucked it in last year from parking lots where it had been piled.  No plowed piled up snow to truck this year.  No snow, means no events, plus a prediction of rain for the weekend... sometimes you have to just cut your loses and recognize that something didn't work out. 

D_Dalton said...

Maybe I should have been more clear: 

I'm pretty ashamed that we lack the vision to hold a Winterfest without
snow (which was unavailable, despite our best and most creative efforts which, in the past, have included trucking in piled snow from parking lots). The fact that we didn't fall back on a make-the-best-of-it
contingency  plan (which in this case would necessarily include substituting other, more situationally  appropriate acctivities for the traditional, snow-dependent events) says something rather discouraging about our city (--specifically, that we are too short-sighted to have a backup plan in place or that were are unable to create on the fly but instead decided to cut our losses because it just wasn't working out).

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