[Vision2020] City Council and the Pledge

[Phil Nisbet]

Chas

You are one of the best and the brightest here in town and I am indeed glad 
that I know you.

That said, you fail to understand that procedures are one of the things that 
are the basis for our system of law.  There are court tested ways to conduct 
a meeting and court tested manners for almost everything that a City Council 
is required to do.  They can not make just any call they wish without 
running up against the existing legal framework for council actions in place 
since Idaho law was first set to Statute Book.

Nowhere in anything I have written says that any person on the existing 
council should be required to say a pledge.  I asked only that the council 
members explain to the public the reasons they had for altering the format 
of their meetings.  Internal to that, I asked that the public have it 
explained who had made the call to change the meetings format, as in, was 
this a vote of the council or simply an accommodation granted without vote 
and who had made that accommodation.

I have not suggested that the council force any member or the public to say 
the Pledge.  I have not suggested that the council or any person attending 
their meetings take a loyalty oath.  But if the council decides to take such 
an oath or if they decide to sing Clementine before a meeting, I do think 
that the council has an obligation to explain to the citizens why the heck 
they are doing so.

I am totally unsure why you, a very intelligent guy, are so dead set against 
the council giving us a simple explanation.

By the way, you do have more than your average bit to say about things like 
the color of the toilet paper in governmental facilities.  You vote and you 
have the right to review budgets and even the right to request information 
like what color the sh-t paper at the Whitehouse is and how much it cost per 
roll.  The Whitehouse has to submit a budget to the Congress and that has to 
explain all its purchases, down to the last roll of butt wipe.  You could as 
a citizen ask that your member of Congress seek to drop the budgeted price 
and quality of President Bush's toilet paper rolls.  I doubted that there 
are many people that interested in that, but should enough people lobby for 
it, I am sure that Congress could indeed change the expenses and therefore 
the color of those rolls to thin white ones.

Phil Nisbet



>From: Chasuk <chasuk at gmail.com>
>To: Phil Nisbet <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com>
>CC: the_ivies3 at yahoo.com, vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] City Council and the Pledge
>Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 18:14:41 -0800
>
>On 1/22/06, Phil Nisbet <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > How many seconds of time does it take for council members to tell us why
> > they wish to alter the way meetings are conducted?
>
>I, for one, have no remote intererest in whether council members
>conduct their meetings according to the protocols outlined in Arturo
>Zwingli's "The Etiquette of Modern Meetings" or follow the principles
>recommended by our own Nick Gier in the course that he formerly taught
>at the UI (called "How to Conduct Efficient Meetings 101," I believe).
>
>If I am in the minority, then I propose that the following question be
>asked at the next election:
>
>"Do you subscribe to Zwinglian or Gierian meeting philosophy?"
>
>Can I have a consensus on this?  Can the committee who decides on
>which questions constitute relevant issues for our election candidates
>please get back to me ASAP?  This appears to be a matter of some
>urgency, judging by the amount of message traffic that it has
>generated.
>
>Thanks!

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