You Must See This Show!
We recorded a new episode of our program tonight. It went great! We had 4 volunteers who worked cameras and lighting. There was also someone in back helping the "Powers that be" (our director) make sure that everything ran smoothly.
We also decided to incorporate a new feature into the program. It will be called "3 minutes around the blog" and will deal with posts taken from this blog. This week I dealt with Schwarz's comments concerning the separation of Church and State, the comments made by the Pope, and the Op-Ed piece I wrote for the Olivet Echo. To top it all off, I am standing behind a pulpit! It is the "gloves off" portion of the show and tonight the gloves certainly came off! Bible-thumping, fist-pounding, liberal-bashing commentary. Bob even joined in on the action when he called for City Manager Wayne Wiley's resignation!
Our director surprised us by placing titles at the bottom of the screen throughout the show. At one point, he placed the words "Evening Emperor" at the bottom of the screen while I was speaking! Residents of Battle Creek should be able to connect the dots between his calling me the "Evening Emperor" and a local DJ who goes by the title, "Morning Mayor." He also had phrases such as "softball" for sections of the show where he thought we were going easy on someone and "hardball" for those sections where we were taking an issue head-on.
We cannot thank the crew enough for helping make this the best, and most controversial, show yet! You all did a great job and we want you to know that we are grateful for all the hard work you put into making our show the success that it is.
Watch this program on Tuesday (9-26) at 6:30pm. It plays again on Wednesday (9-27) at 8:30 in the morning.
posted by Paleocrat at Saturday, September 23, 2006
4 Comments:
Hello fellas. ShrekZilla here again. It has been a while since I have last seen your show but I was actually able to watch the entire show.
Again, as I have told you gents before I thank the both of you for being as active as possible in your local government and I feel that you provide a very informitive service to the those people in this town whom actually care about what is going on around them.
One point you touched on was that of the local garbage situation. As consolidation is often a good idea I dont think this would be the answer. How often would have the garbage picked up? I just dont think that you can make everyone happy with this idea. Those one or two people whom live closest to the "dumpster" with definately have issues. Especially in the summer when it doesnt take long for things to get a little ripe. Where would these "dumpsters" be placed? Might end up having to spend a good chunk od chamge the city doesnt have to safe and secure facilities for these containers. Coming formerly from the field of construction and demo-services I know the importance of making these dumpsters secure. There is a large population of people in this town who have the full time job of scrapping. This entails a crew of one to four people, usually riding around in some kind of old truck with a rusty trailer hooked up, riding around the city looking people's personal refuse and any commercial containers which might hold any "valuable" metals or materials. This is there job and they have no problem diving right into a dumpster looking for their treasure. Who would be resposible for these people being serously injured during their daily routine of getting in and out of these containers?
I think that the solution could be some amount of competing between other refuse companies. Regardless of what you might here, there are other companies than Waste Managment. Several actually. I think that if the bid was ever opened to these other companies we the public and the city would be the winners. Either we would get new, cheaper service or we would retain Waste Managment at a lower rate. This would force WM to lower their rates to compete. Kinda the same idea as the whole cable situation being played out up in Lansing.
I will just make a brief comment about the whole religion in government thing. I have no problem with people practicing any and all forms of worship. I am probably an athiest or agnostic. I just dont know. I have been down serveral paths in my life and have seen alot of things. These situations and experiences have made me into the man that I am today. I have done this for myself and I would like to take the credit for it. Not giving some glory to someone whom has never reallyt been there when I have needed him the most. I have had to many family members die of various reasons all with my praying and waiting for something to happen. For me, there are just to many outs for any kind of orgainzed religion. If I pray and my prayers are answered then God has blessed me with his grace and granted me what I have wanted most. If I pray for something to happen and what I want does not come to pass, andsay my mother dies, then it was "God's will" that she die. How is that fair to me? It tells me that there is no right and tehre is no wrong. EVERYTHING is apparently arbitrary and whatever happens is going to happen whether I "pray" for it or not. Maybe I am just a wicked person and deserve for my prayers to be "ignored". I want believe that there is something and someone waiting for us, but at this juncture in my life I really do find it hard believe. This ties in to my comment by say that is I dont really believe in anything, then why should I be subjected to my elected offcials making decisions purely on the basis of their religious convictions? I would rather not have my right taken away for the sake of what truly is "moral minority". I said in my last post some time ago that I think the population of this city is not as conservative as it votes. It is just that the other 90% of this city is to apathetic to do anything more than just think about going to the polls and letting their voice be heard. It is just another sad state of our society filled with sycaphants panhandelers who dont care how they get something just as long as they get.
Well "Porkbelly" (just kidding) and "Evening Emporer", I think that I have wasted enough of your time. I would like to thank your for th opportunity to voince my feelings on this wonderful forum. I hope to hear from you guys soon. Thank you.
ShrekZilla
Justin Strunk
7:46 PM
Shrekzilla,
The point of the "trash" piece was to show that the Commissioners had no interest in considering viable alternatives. Whether it be consolidation, changing pick-up from 7 to 10 days, or competing refuse pick-up agencies (this is most appealing to me), the idea is that the Commissioners would at least consider alternatives. Unfortunately, the issue of more efficient and cost effective means was not on the Commissioners agenda.
As for the religion portion of the program, the issue was with Schwarz's ahistorical understanding of Separation of Church and State. To claim that his ahistorical notion was something our nation was founded upon is nonsense. That is all I was meaning to get at with that portion of the show.
Now, on a personal note, I do not believe that anyone can skirt the issue of religion when dealing with public policy. The reason being that law and government involves questions such as:
What/who is man?
What are we here for?
What are rights?
Are they granted or are they inalienable?
What is the State?
What is the proper function of the state?
How do we distinguish between what is simply immoral and what is criminal?
On what basis do we make this distinction?
What authority does the State invoke for wielding the sword of civil sanctions?
What are just punishments for crimes?
etc. etc. etc.
These are all inherently religious. We cannot avoid this fact. Even pluralism, secularism, or humanism has a religious worldview by which to answer these questions. Most of them assign God to one realm (the reservation) while man plays God in the civil realm. Vox Populi (voice of the people) becomes Vox Deus (voice of God).
Let me say that while I do not believe in Schwarz’s mythological notion of Separation of Church and State, I maintain that there is in fact a separation. The issue, for me anyways, is one of institutional jurisdiction. The Church does not run the State any more than the State runs the Church. BUT, and this is a huge BUT, both of them are under the authority of God and his Word.
This was the opinion of the colonial fathers as well as the federal fathers and this was what I was getting at on the program.
11:18 PM
I caught the last 15 minutes of your show and I am very impressed of the content. There are many other people who have the very same opinions.
You have created a show that is different from the 'norm' of happy-back-slapping of government spending.
While I only can hope you'll get positive feedback, you'll get the negative as well. When I was doing my political thing I had got quite a bit of negative feedback, but I took that all in stride in knowing that a change of opinion is always something to be challenged.
I will be looking for the next episode, and maybe if you can let me know soon enough I can get a chance to help out.
8:37 PM
Thank you so much for your comments. It was also very good to speak with you on the phone. As I said, if you are available on a day when we are recording you are very welcome to come down to the station and help out with the show. The more the merrier.
Negative response? Nah, not yet anyways. It will happen sooner or later though. I have considered creating a hate-mail account so that the disgruntled viewers can lash out at us. haha Any idea what we should name the hate-mail account?
12:26 AM
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