Shearin Embarrasses, Siegmund Still Confused
Saint Joseph’s own mayor Kenny Shearin was on FOX news yesterday defending St. Joseph’s use of stimulus money on a Brazilian Steakhouse and a Martini Bar.
Here is the link http://video.foxnews.com/#/12391042/money-well-spent/?category_id=c985e69916535a2170b2b18ab0ab7eb60401f9bb
True to form, Mayor Kenny is always a good source of entertainment. MCV-PAC generally prefers his comedic antics when it is not aired on national television making Saint Joseph the butt of national jokes. Kenny started by bashing the stimulus program and went on to say that the money was given to the selected establishments with the goal of bringing life into a dying downtown area. In one memorable moment, he asked FOX news anchor, Gretchen Carlson, what she was smoking. Are you kidding me Kenny? Why would you talk down to a news anchor when she is asking for an explanation of the use of our tax dollars? The American people have a right to be irate about the way their tax dollars are being spent on the so-called “shovel-ready” projects that Mr. Obama was touting back in February when he was marketing this scam of the century.
The citizens of Saint Joseph should be mad as hell too when the city believes that an appropriate use of stimulus dollars is on a martini bar and a restaurant while at the same time, our school district was forced to shut down two elementary schools due to lack of funding and the city is facing a multi-million dollar sewer problem.
In another twist of irony, local tea party organizers Maggie Siegmund and Virginia Weigum openly supported and campaigned for Mayor Kenny. Mayor Kenny is obviously a tax and SPEND liberal, and Siegmund and company are obviously confused about their political identity. How could a tea party organizer who claims to be against the stimulus campaign for a Mayor who openly advocated spending it on wasteful projects?
It seems to MCV-PAC that Siegmund’s political views are becoming clearer.
Weigum and Siegmund are both proud of our embarrassment of a mayor, and since their efforts to get him elected four years ago, they have enjoyed, and preferred taking sides in, the personal bickering between the mayor and city manager above real progress. Siegmund herself has benefited from many board appointments by the mayor and his cronies.
The sad thing about the abominable performance of our mayor is that despite reading from prepared comments, he still managed to denigrate St Joseph’s struggling downtown, proffered a hopeless outlook on St. Joseph ever becoming a high tech community, failed to justify hwy these two businesses should get such preferential treatment, and missed an opportunity to show a national audience the idiocy of a stimulus plan that would give taxpayer money to less-than-minimum-wage-paying restaurants rather than real, needed, infrastructure improvement such as the multimillion dollar unfunded sewer upgrade mandate, or new, energy-efficient schools. And then he insulted the anchor….way to go!
Yes, we sure have a “colorful” mayor. His antics are well known state-wide, and now (inter)nationally. Unfortunately red with embarrassment is not the type of color I would would be prefer the country to see. I wonder if St. Joe will ever get serious about electing a true leader and move beyond high school politics and popularity contests.