What Is Wrong With Fort Worth?????

I tell you, it is now almost a decade old project trying to figure out why it is so different here, in Fort Worth, and Texas, than where I came from, that being the ultra fertile Skagit Valley of Washington state and the relatively small town of Mount Vernon. A town with a population of less than 30 thousand, where the population turns out when there is an election. A town that was picked, by a legit picking entity, as the Best Small Town in America, while Fort Worth went into an embarrassing ecstasy of celebration when an obscure Washington, D.C. lobbying group put Fort Worth on a silly list of what they claimed to be America's Most Livable Communities.

I tell you, I am just feeling a bit sorry for Fort Worth and the embarrassment that was Saturday's election. How can only 6% of you manage to vote? Do you not have any inkling of how badly your city is run? Apparently not.

I agree with FW Weekly, someone needs to go all Pancho Villa on Fort Worth and get this town to wake up. I'm thinking Don Young is just the man to kick some sense into this town. I come to that conclusion due to the email I just got from Don Young.

I'll copy it below..........

Dear Clyde & All-

The clarion call is still sounding, it just needs to blown louder because 94% of the people are still sleeping. After today, all this talk of resignation, disappointment and blame is counterproductive. Everyone gave it their best shot - good - but some ass still needs kicking. The "game" is not over, it's just waiting for some new players and a new strategy.

There is always Non-Violent Direct Action, that is, Civil Disobedience, something that hasn't been tried much in FW. Does that sound radical? Compared to Moncrief's actions and the gas drilling cartel's deeds, I think not. Even Al Gore is amazed that people are not exercising their right to clean air more directly. Here's what he told the New York Times last year:

“We are now treating the Earth’s atmosphere as an open sewer,” he said, ...."

"I can’t understand why there aren’t rings of young people blocking bulldozers,” Mr. Gore said, “and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.”

If we believe in Dr. Aremendariz' study and all the others that prove the ill effects of natural gas production, delivery and generation, how can we not act in a more direct way? If voting doesn't do the job there are other methods of getting smog peddlers like Moncrief & Co. to pay attention.

If we believe they are guilty of environmental crimes that are hurting our children and us, how can we not do something more, something new. But that takes a certain kind of commitment that is lacking in Dirty Ol' Town - one that Moncrief keeps betting won't happen and, so far, he keeps winning.

I believe there is a direct connection between that lack of commitment, that un-willingness to act outside the norm, and the situation we find ourselves in today, the day after the election.

DY