“Forget that health care is a right, not a privilege“
“Your blog is widely read and respected”
As I mentioned here, Lance Gilliam (a Partner at the Waterman-Steele Group, a real estate and PR firm in Houston and internationally) who is the head of the Houston Housing Authority contacted me about my post on an impending use of eminent domain in Houston’s Fifth Ward that would also “take out” a couple of churches. My original interest was that lesbian Houston Mayor Annise Parker was so upset with pastors rising up against her HERO ordinance (“yes, we will let men into the ladies bathrooms; stop complaining!) that she issued subpoenas against them demanding their sermons, all correspondence and communications, and the like if they discussed any aspect of homosexuality. In essense, Government was all too willing to censor the Free Expression of religion, contra the First Amendment. She lost the court suit and now it has to go to the ballot. His message was that Parker’s actions are not connected to his even if churches are involved.
So with that as a background, in steps Lance Gilliam. During our conversation he tried to make equivalence between he and it on politics to a degree. I’ve given him the chance to write a rebuttal and invited him to be on GrokTALK! – thus far I have not heard back. So, I decided to do a bit of looking around – are we the same? Here’s some snippets (one is above)
for a bit on info – I’ll dig into them in more detail later on
One on the use of eminent domain:
…Although he danced around it for a few seconds, HHA board chair Lance Gilliam eventually settled on an answer. “Yes, we would most likely choose to use that power. … It’s our intention to acquire the site.”
…Then came talk of eminent domain. “Such a threat, and it was indeed a threat, would effectively stifle any competitive bidding by private parties,” says Kirk Waldron, who lives nearby.
The grudging acknowledgement from HHA that, if need be, it would effectively take the property under its powers of eminent domain floored members of the nearby Forest West Community Improvement Association. Many had come out to Monday’s meeting to urge Metro not to sell the property to HHA, raising concerns about additional traffic, the possible burden on existing HISD schools in the area, and the impact on property values and crime. At the very least, they said, Metro should put the property on the market in case another developer is willing to pay more than HHA (a selling price hasn’t yet been disclosed).
With a lot of folks complaining about this and other tactics, Lance’s behavior is starting to catch attention:
My guess is Gilliam can only handle so much vitriol before he pops off an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle (which hasn’t even covered this issue). When folks write him nasty emails and leave irreverent voice mails, he’s going to respond with vigor.
I did not leave such a vmail nor was our conversation that kind of “animated” – heck, I don’t even live there! But it is clear from reading a bunch of articles AND a bunch of the comments at them (and one article has an exceedingly erudite and reasoned comment section that was far from “vitriolic”). But it is also clear (to paraphrase Obama’s favorite phrase) that he continuously dismisses them.
But here was one observation that added a strongly worded (and uncomfortable one to the Powerful):
Mayor Parker, by now I believe that you are completely aware of the situation regarding Metro’s sale of the Pinemont Park and Ride to the Houston Housing Authority and their intention to build a 300 unit low income apartment complex. What you may not be aware of is the ongoing effort to paint anyone who is not behind this project a racist, classless individual that refuses to give “poor people a chance” according to Lance Gilliam’s article in a recent Houston Chronicle column. I believe that this is a very interesting public relations ploy to paint the residents of Forest West and the surrounding communities this way, and it seems to have been successful so far for them. I do not believe that Lance Gilliam or anyone else at HHA particularly cares if we are racists or not. I believe what they care about is using the Hurricane Ike funds before they run out.
Ah, Alinsky’s Rule #12 (“…cut off sympathy”) in conjunction with Rules #9, #10. How better to win arguments than to call an entire class of people that oppose you as “racist”. Simply because they disagree on a political issue of housing?
All in all, I guess we are seeing how the reality of how one of those “public / private” partnerships we’re supposed to love in this age of Crony Capitalism, or it is bipartisanship, or it it “working across the aisle” actually behaves when it becomes too big and bullishy? Remember, I’ve given Lance his chance to rebut – but time windows close and he gave me this window of research opportunity to research HIM instead of my main issue of religious liberty over that of a militant gay agenda bound and determined to erase any vestige of differences between the sexes and lifestyles (with organized Christian orthodoxy seen, not as a public good but as a stumbling block). Or is it just the Progressive “We, the wealthy and well connect, know better than you what is best for you – and that’s what we’re gonna do”?
And this is seemingly highlighting such relationship (private / public) – touted as a public good, I see this as dangerous as it multiplies and grows. The worst part of it to this limited government proponent that wishes to see government operating in its fundamental (and supposed limited) fashion is that it serves those that wish to continue the erasure of what used to be that cleanly delineated line – this is Government and this is Civil Society and that each has specific responsibilities for different areas in our lives. Civil Society was originally to be that large space in which most of our interactions as individuals was to happen – it was seen to be the buffer between government and the individual. The Founders knew that if it was erased, there would be little to be done to keep the individual safe from an encroaching Government. And yet, during the Progressive onslaught, we have seen the outcrowding and assimilation / capturing of formerly independent civil institutions to the point of almost erasure. And what individual, bereft of such a buffer, can stand up to a Leviathan government with almost unimaginable resources?
A large, well funded and politically connected organization, unelected and unaccountable, is the Houston Housing Authority picture I get from the Houston media – one that has no problem is deciding what is best for all over any kind of local control and opinion. For such an organization, it does seem that the macro trumps the micro – and yet, wasn’t that what our founding philosophy built upon, the individual over the collective, the local over the further away? That major decisions were to be made by the elected and accountable and not by “faceless” bureaucrats (and no, Lance Gilliam is, by his own actions, far from being that faceless desk sitter as it does seem he is out there in the public square, I will give him that).
For me as a true believer of our representative form of governance, however, this ain’t it. This is yet another example of the incremental Socialist / Progressive end goal – the Administrative State. Whether or not Lance Gilliam realizes or not – or is actually embracing that mantle as seen through the lens of this middle aged engineer who is neither wealthy or politically connected, it does seems to be acting in such a manner. And there is certainly one REALLY important question that gets asked over and over again in what I read that remains unanswered by Lance Gilliam – and it undermines all that he has to say. And I’ll go over that in another post. But in closing this one out…
Many politicos, Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, here in NH ARE probably are connected by their dislike of this site because we bring Big Flashlights to bear on anyone (yes, sometimes we hate them all). Whaddya know – we might be hated by Yankee AND Southerner politicians and officials alike!
Heh! I’m still willing to post his piece if he decides to write such – and have him on GrokTALK! if he would still like. Time will tell, but that will give me more time to surf. Now, Houston is not NH but on our old radio show, we used to say that what the politics were doing in our little hamlet was the same as the politics going on in YOUR town or city – it’s just that we could knock on the door of the guys involved. Human nature is the same all over
