CARD Trumped
Hilarious Arbor Update thread about the latest NIMBY effort to stop development, this time on the site of an abandoned (but no doubt historic) strip mall. The group, Citizens Advocating Responsible Development, is represented in the thread by local activist David Cahill, who comes up short when challenged by Leopold Brothers owner Todd Leopold to provide some numbers in support of his case that taxes on the project won’t meet the city bond payments. He does, however, boast the support of “a meeting of influential Democratic women called the ‘Lunch Bunch.’” That David Cahill, what a CARD.
We can’t do it justice; read the whole thing.
I keep saying- all of you people need to move to Philadelphia- we know what a city is and we desperately need planners and folks who know what they’re doing.
posted by rjwhite on June 29th, 2006 at 9:45 pmCahill - Taking sophistry to a level even Gorgias and the rest of the Ancient Greeks wouldn’t have dared go. The unitentional comedy in that thread is beyond measure. I’m not particularly fond of AA, but only here can I get such quality entertainment–and for free!
posted by Tim on June 30th, 2006 at 12:46 amFight! Fight! Fight!
If the Secret City Team has secret supervillain alter-egos, I do hope they hold their Super-Secret Meetings in the proper comic-villain attire.
posted by Jen on June 30th, 2006 at 1:38 amHey RJ, is Philly hiring? I’ve got a interview in NYC next week, but Philly’s always seemed much cheaper… yet still urban. And with rail transit.
posted by Brandon on June 30th, 2006 at 2:49 amOn the other hand, unlike here, government in Pennsylvania is (1) very backward and not interested in new ideas, (2) very focused on racial/ethnic strife and one-upmanship, and (3) thoroughly corrupt from top to bottom.
Pennsylvania is an economic backwater partly because it takes a fortune in bribes to open a new business. You got a fortune to spend?
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on June 30th, 2006 at 11:40 amNo argument, Larry, from a PA native. However, how exactly is Michigan different on any of (1)-(3)?
Philly is a lot cheaper than New York and a wonderful city.
posted by Nick on June 30th, 2006 at 11:56 amaaio should mention her own comedy contribution to the thread there, comment 72,
“Hey, I want to know more about this shadowy ‘Lunch Bunch.’ Someone needs to do a Goodspeed-style expose like he did with Michigamua, posting names as they surface.
—ann arbor is overrated Jun 30, 11:18 AM #”
I might pay good money to see aaio on the same improv comedy stage as Mayor Hieftje…
posted by David Boyle on June 30th, 2006 at 12:38 pmOr “his” own comedy contribution, could have gotten that wrong. Who knows who aaio really is…
posted by David Boyle on June 30th, 2006 at 12:40 pmOh, that was no comedy. Who are these influential Democrats holding secret meetings? The intrigue!
posted by ann arbor is overrated on June 30th, 2006 at 1:11 pmO.k., not comedy but still funny. “Shadowy ‘Lunch Bunch’” sounds like the “Scooby Gang” or something…
posted by David Boyle on June 30th, 2006 at 2:05 pmNick: Michigan is neither as corrupt nor as hostile to innovation as Pennsylvania.
Back in law school, I worked as research assistant to a professor, a street-smart old lawyer who had worked in large cities all over the country. At the time, there were a bunch of stories in the News and Free Press about police officers getting paid off with bottles of booze. “Detroit’s a funny town,” he would say. “The kind of thing that makes a huge scandal here wouldn’t cause a ripple in Philadelphia or Miami.”
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on June 30th, 2006 at 3:55 pmI find David Cahill a little smug sometimes, and I wish he’d spend more time engaging the discussion and less posting his missives about his latest shocking discoveries.
But Todd’s getting a little carried away here–this isn’t a conspiracy to withhold information, it’s just laziness, of the entirely sensible kind that keeps all of us from spending our life blogging. It’s not like any of us are spending time tracking down statistics, even when they’d support our own arguments.
I mean, if you want to start footnoting all your posts with supporting evidence, great, I’ll be cheering for you. Then we’d all be Murph, and no doubt the world would be a better place.
posted by Bruce Fields on June 30th, 2006 at 6:19 pm“But Todd’s getting a little carried away here–this isn’t a conspiracy to withhold information, it’s just laziness, of the entirely sensible kind that keeps all of us from spending our life blogging.”
I think that you may missed the whole point as well as the humor in the thread.
The problem wasn’t that he didn’t have the right number, or the correct footnote. The problem was that Dave and CARD didn’t have the numbers at all, not even fake or poorly contrived numbers, and after a simple googling, we found that this has nothing to do with footnotes or numbers at all……..it has to do with them concocting a fake petition that’s based on nothing.
The woman who started CARD spelled out as much in the City Council meeting when she said Broadway Village was a huge and overly dense project in the middle of her neighborhood. Their motives were spelled out even more clearly in their own press release when they explained this loophole of a law that allows them to have another cut at the project if they can raise signatures to challenge the bonds. They don’t care about the bonds. What they care about is quashing Broadway Village. And yet they play the role of the concerned “accidental activists” who are looking out for Ann Arbor’s wallet.
In other words there’s no “conspiracy to withhold information”, as you put it. The comedy came when it was revealed that they didn’t have any numbers at all…..made up, or otherwise. It’s not laziness. It’s blatant deception, and it’s pretty damn funny to watch, if you ask me.
I’ve been flooded with emails from people who thought the thread was just as funny as I did.
posted by todd on June 30th, 2006 at 7:09 pmHey, if no numbers are good enough for the Lunch Bunch, they should be good enough for everyone else.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on June 30th, 2006 at 7:13 pmThe thread took a while to plow through, but it was as funny as advertised.
It really says a lot about long-time Ann Arbor people that they’ll petition to keep an abandoned eyesore site that’s leaching chemicals into the river from being developed just to spare themselves from having to worry about parking and traffic near their houses. Won’t it be great when the entire town looks like the corner of Broadway and Maiden in about 10 years?
posted by Nick on June 30th, 2006 at 7:28 pmNick has it right, if the wrong side wins the battle that is going on right now. For years and years it was almost impossible to get even a very fine development to happen because the nimbys ruled. Now it is a toss up for the first time in decades. Even as the city population shrinks the nimbys continue to beat the drum against anyone new moving here. They could care less about affordable housing, the lack of new housing increases the nimbys property values, it allows them to raise the tarriffs they collect on their rental houses.
posted by Dustin on June 30th, 2006 at 11:00 pmBruce - uh…thanks?
posted by Murph on July 1st, 2006 at 9:58 am“The problem was that Dave and CARD didn’t have the numbers at all, not even fake or poorly contrived numbers, and after a simple googling, we found that this has nothing to do with footnotes or numbers at all…….”
The googling was unnecessary–David Cahill has been totally clear all along that his basic motivation is that he’s opposed to big buildings in his neighborhood. So have those other people (even if they aren’t arbor update posters).
It’s a silly ad hominem–even if their motivation is wrong (I agree that it is) and even if they’ve hidden that motivation (which they haven’t), that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t turn out to be right about the bonds. (I agree that they’re probably working with insufficient evidence, but I haven’t had time to really look into it either.)
“What’s your evidence?” is perfectly reasonable question, but I think we should leave the random pot shots for Blaine….
posted by Bruce Fields on July 1st, 2006 at 11:22 amWell, I guess I was fooled then, Bruce. If you’ll look at the start of the thread, I thought that Dave was trying to do the right thing. His constant FOIAing and other conspiracy theory rants are perfectly suited to keeping the city in line, and I was gullible enough to be appreciative of Dave’s work.
It wasn’t until I found out that he didn’t have the numbers that I realized he was just up to his old tricks…..which, again, would be fine, except they are taking a circulating a dishonest petition around Ann Arbor. I don’t really like that very much, and I’m probably not alone in that regard. The people who are signing this petition don’t know anything about their real motivations. If someone came up to me and said that they city was issuing bonds that weren’t going to ever be paid off, I’d probably sign the thing after reading it.
I think that that’s dishonest, and I don’t think that this is/was common knowledge for Ann Arborites……someone had to call “bullshit”.
If I took things too far, well, I’m sorry…….the fact that the dumbest guy on the board (me) discovered the ruse with precious little effort struck my funny bone in the right place.
posted by todd on July 1st, 2006 at 12:24 pmUm… If you want to critisize insults that occured on Arbor Update, do it there! However, Silly ad homenims and random potshots are the life blood of AAIO and I will do my best to help out.
Please, Bruce, aside from getting sense of humor, take the clue rocket to planet Clue. I suppose that Bush was just working with “insufficient evidence” in the lead up to the war, too? Hitler had no idea about the final solution and the friends of the greenway have no idea what their property is worth, right?
Cahill is an asshole. He knows he’s being dishonest about the bond issue and when he was called on it he had no valid response. He’s a lair. He’s a chump. He wouldn’t know good urban planning if it came up and laid a giant turd on his front lawn and then wiped its ass with CARD petition.
Oh, and if the Lunch Bunch really exists and if they really signed that petition then they are a bunch of ignorant whores.
posted by KBlow on July 1st, 2006 at 2:57 pmnice shot, sir!
posted by peter honeyman on July 1st, 2006 at 7:00 pmRe: KBlow — Well, Godwin’s Law has thus been invoked. Hitler’s now in the house. But soon he’ll be heading out to take a look at the greenway, I guess.
There must be a corollary to Godwin’s Law somewhere which postulates that any discussion which dwells in part on criticism (whether appropriate or out-to-lunch) of individual women will eventually lead to the invocation of the term “whore” if the thread ambles on long enough. When this happens in personal conversations, it leaves no choice but to come to the defense of the criticized, whether that be Britney Spears or Margaret Thatcher or whomever.
The Arbor Update thread in question includes a determined, durable match of local tomato tossing, and it’s disappointing to see this entertaining post-game analysis get spoiled — even temporarily — by these sorts of things. I think we should all instead take the higher road and strive not give ad hominem a bad name; even the practice of gratuitous slander needs to have standards.
Since Hitler has now come up in discussion, I’d like to mention that whenever any of you say “The Deuce,” an image of Mussolini still pops immediately to mind — not the late Hank ‘The Grandson’ Ford, nor the two founding Anns of days of yore.
So, now, Tell Me More About Those Bonds! Enquiring Minds Want To Know!
posted by hale on July 1st, 2006 at 8:40 pm“bunch of ignorant whores” is usually a bad way to describe women, by the way. Stereotyping, etc.
(Now if you called Bush/Cheney/Libby/etc. a “bunch of ignorant whores”, that might be more original…)
posted by David Boyle on July 1st, 2006 at 10:13 pmActually, “Ann Arbor is a whore” is one of the worst Ohio State insults against us, innit?
posted by David Boyle on July 1st, 2006 at 10:27 pmAnn Arbor is a whore is a rallying cry up in East Lansing. I don’t know about Ohio, but if there’s one thing Spartans and Wolverines can agree on, it’s that who really cares what Ohio State thinks.
posted by HNG on July 4th, 2006 at 1:34 amOhio State thinks?
Self-appointed PC Police and Speech Correction Officers are so Ann Arbor. Lighten up, Francis.
posted by Dave on July 5th, 2006 at 4:48 pm