To Recall Or Not To Recall

To Recall Or Not To Recall

To be clear, I’m not burning black candles on the effort to recall Her Imperiousness LaToya. Lord knows she’s a highly qualified dolt. I mean, just think about it for a moment. She fused all two of her brain cells in a failed effort to be recruited to The Squad – an anti-Semitic, anti-American rogue element within the United States Congress. (From what I understand, she couldn’t pass their aptitude test, which is pretty darn sad.) No, all I wish to do is encourage petition signers to guard against what former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan described as “irrational exuberance.” That is to say, there seems to exist not only an irrational exuberance that the recall will succeed but perhaps worse, that in succeeding, it will provide some sort of absolute panacea. What I mean is that there’s so much more contributing to NOLA’s downfall than just its brashest dismantler. LaToya is but one atom in a complex virus molecule that is killing America’s most culturally diverse as well as culturally balanced city. And from a broad perspective, playing whack-a-mole with the elective and appointive cretins who are wantonly destroying America’s big cities will likely result in nothing more than a failed war of attrition. I think there’s a more effective solution, and I’ll cover that presently.

But first let’s talk about recalls in our great state of Louisiana. I did a little research, and the stats are none too encouraging. Over the last 40 years, there have been eighteen mayoral recalls throughout the state, and only ten of them have been successful. That’s fewer than three successful mayoral recalls per decade in a state of 307 official municipalities. And not a single one of those occurred in one of the state’s metropolitan cities. The largest municipality to successfully recall its mayor was the City of Minden in 1989 – population at the time being 13,500 – while the smallest was the Village of Creola in 2010 – population at the time being 200. The last city in the past 40 years to recall its mayor was Port Allen in 2013. All told, these ten municipalities are vastly different than New Orleans when it comes to population but also in terms of either demographics, culture, economy, or all of the above. The bottom line is that the records kept by the Louisiana Secretary of State’s Office, which go back to 1966, show no mayoral recall election ever even held in a municipality with a population greater than roughly 15,000.

Well, those are the raw statistics. However, to add a little more realism, let’s remember a few other things. First, as population increases, a recall effort will become progressively and then disproportionately more difficult. For example, in a town of 1500 someone’s feisty grandmother might just be able to collect enough names on a petition all by her lonesome and in a single weekend to boot. However, scale that up to a metropolis of approximately 400,000 residents and 150 square miles of land area, and the task becomes a little more daunting – even for a regiment of feisty grandmas. Let’s face it, at that level it becomes a campaign; and such campaigns typically require funding akin to what originally was required to elect the recall target. That’s why a big city recall effort eventually succumbs to its given theoretical exhaustion point. In other words, the most “exuberant” jump on the bandwagon early on, contributing to what appears to be great advances on the battlefield. Then the effort stalls, gasping for signatures that never come. And just where does that leave us?

Look, to set the record straight, I don’t just support efforts to wipe the windshield free of bugs, I stick my neck out – way out – to help such worthy causes cross no man’s land. Case in point: the effort by Jefferson Parish residents to recall Sir Sext-a-Lot, avid pursuer of Catholic school students. Sure, I knew the odds were against the effort. That’s why I sought a way to boost those odds. That’s why I published articles factually detailing how the Jefferson Parish School System had very necessarily banned him from setting foot on public school campuses but that the New Orleans Catholic Archdiocese was still allowing him free and fluid access to Catholic school students. And just what did this get me? Well, it got my children threatened with expulsion unless I took down the articles. Yeah, great solution – ruin children’s lives by cutting them off from their friends and academic and athletic successes, all because you don’t like their father. Makes perfect sense, right? Very Catholic.

All right, getting back to the subject at hand, let’s take a look at its incongruity. Hey, it started out over sour grapes. It was brought by two of LaToya’s political opponents and not by those who’ve been her true victims. So let’s just say that it’s lacking the sort of inertia an effort of its kind should have. And I’ll gladly provide a couple of observations in support of that.

——- IT’S LEADERLESS ——-

Yes, leaderless would be the best way to describe it. For even if the whole thing had started out as a pure grassroots campaign, the big names with big influence who should have stepped up two seconds later to put their names behind it have been insultingly silent.

Silence Do-Nothing #1: STEPHANIE THE AMAZING NO-SPINO RINO.

Sweet Steph’s legislative district has been hit hard by LaToya’s wrath, real hard. So you’d think she would have made a point of being one of the very first people to sign the petition in addition to being really vocal about it. But then, she’s entirely too busy being an impassioned conduit for wokeness to provide proper representation for the voters of District 94. Please don’t forget, folks, that this is the “Republican” who had no qualms about robbing your daughters of their hard-earned athletic trophies and scholarships when she voted against HB542 in the 2021 regular legislative session along with Democrats and another RINO. Straight up, if you can’t attract sharks once a month, then you don’t belong on the girls’ swim team. But try explaining that to a wokeness ambassador.

And then in the 2022 regular session she made a grab for some RINO lagniappe by voting against HB837, which would have protected our precious angels from being sexualized in the classroom. Again, she voted arm in arm with Democrats and RINO’s. Who does something like that? What kind of sick people set up our children to be groomed and used as a commodity?

Well, given the rather peculiar game of hopscotch she’s been playing, it wouldn’t be surprising if the next square she landed on were marked SUPPORT OF PEDIATRIC GENITAL MUTILATION SURGERY.

Silence Do-Nothing #2: THE ARCHBISHOP.

This is the man who penned “Our Family Prayer” and ordered all pastors to include it in the Mass. In it we pray to God to “to help us in the battle of today against violence, murder, and racism.” Well, if he really wants to end the racism of LaToya Cantrell’s failed policies that are causing such high rates of black-on-black violence and murder, then why doesn’t he speak up? Oh, you’ve been led to believe that Catholic clergy cannot comment on political matters? Bonk, wrong answer! To sum up, the 1954 Johnson Amendment (which is basically never enforced) prohibits them from participating as an official paid member or volunteer connected with a specific candidate’s political campaign, whether on the street or from the pulpit. Canon law states the same but also that they cannot run for political office. However, what both the Johnson Amendment and Canon Law do allow is for Catholic clergy to endorse political candidates as long as they’re doing it as individuals and not on behalf of the Church or while discharging their official duties. So why the silence?

What’s more, what’s going on in New Orleans is more of a human rights issue than a political one. Or let’s at least agree that it’s an intersection of politics and human rights. And human rights are one thing that Catholic Clergy are duty-bound to speak up on. So why the silence?

Additionally, if you stop to think about it, the aforementioned mandatory prayer certainly implies a humanitarian crisis in the City of New Orleans and perhaps even gives off a slight aroma of political flavor. So why the silence?

And on top of everything else, this isn’t even a political race with candidates. It’s a recall petition. There’s nothing in national law or Canon law prohibiting the archbishop from making a simple, short comment on whether or not he’s signing a petition in order to help bring an end to a humanitarian crisis. So why the silence?

Wait, hang on, did I leave out that the archbishop is a registered Democrat? Ooh, maybe I should have mentioned that at the beginning. I suppose it would have explained a lot. For instance, it would explain first and foremost why the archbishop refuses to commit the “infamita” of having his name on a petition against an elected Democrat. It would also explain why the John Bel Edwards-LaToya Cantrell-Archbishop of New Orleans triumvirate seems to have better continuity than Doc Brown’s flux capacitor. Come morals or scruples or rain or shine, fellow Dems toe the party line.

Yep, it would explain a whole lot. It certainly would explain why the sheer Marxist asininity of Common Core was forced down the throats of Catholic school children here in the Archdiocese of New Orleans yet not in the Diocese of Baton Rouge.

And it especially would explain why the marching orders to unnecessarily mask and harm our angels went from Edwards to Cantrell to the archbishop and were followed to the letter. This is the Church’s other child abuse scandal, the one the news media won’t discuss because it was complicit in making it happen.

Do you have any idea what these political masking protocols have done to children? The precious angels have suffered physically from dermatological maladies and the constant re-breathing of their own carbon dioxide-rich exhalation; and they’ve suffered emotionally from confusion and anxiety to disillusionment and depression over unnecessarily being blocked from participation in school sports, clubs, and social events – all in the name of something that has less potential to affect them than the flu or common cold. However, most of all they have suffered from the sudden and acute uncertainty of what the future held, as the adults in the Catholic school system who ran their world would not tell these children who simply were “…yearning to breathe free” when the day would come that they could take off the masks. Will they ever recover from the overall bizarreness of having a mask forced over their faces? We can pray; we can only pray.

An archbishop who put his flock first would have made a public statement delineating the uselessness of cloth and paper masks in stopping a virus molecule that’s 250 nanometers in size, the lack of a threat that COVID poses to children, and the complete nonexistence of legal authority to force the wearing of any sorts of bodily accessories, be it masks, warning labels, Stars of David, cowbells, firearms, condoms, cheap wigs, &c.

And such a caring archbishop would further have stated that if authorities wished to abuse Catholic school children, then they would have send the police and National Guard to arrest him along with every pastor, principal, administrator, and teacher at every local Catholic school. Of course, none of that would actually have happened because when you stand your ground, bullies back down. In contrast, though, when you serve Caesar (a political party), you must demonstrate political loyalty above all else.

Now, let’s for just a minute revisit the revelation of the archbishop’s political affiliation. So did I hack into the WOPR at NORAD to learn that? Of course not. It’s in the public domain for all to see. Anyone can go to www.voterrecords.com to discover the political affiliation of clergy, their children’s teachers, their doctor, &c.; and I encourage them to do so. You can learn a lot about people that way. And while you’re at it, you might want to check out their political donations on www.opensecrets.org as well. Oh, but there’s more. For my Louisiana peeps, don’t forget to stop by the Louisiana Ethics Administration Program’s Campaign Finance Portal at www.ethics.la.gov to get the scoop on who’s raining Benjamins on local candidates.

So, does it really matter that a Catholic archbishop has aligned himself with the political party responsible for chopping up over 50 million babies and which urges the continuation of this slaughter of the innocents? Uh, do I really have to answer that? Let’s just say that it matters only inasmuch as it’s a hard slap across the faces of the faithful. In the Roman Catholic Church, abortion is known as one of the five “non-negotiables” and cannot be supported by Catholics in any way, shape, or form; and that includes by membership in a political party that serves as its highly vocal advocate. That’s right, despite the rhetoric from Catholics-In-Name-Only, you cannot take an a la carte approach by simply saying that you don’t agree with your chosen party’s pro-abortion plank. You can slice it, dice it, toss it, sprinkle it with sophistry, add a dash of red herring, throw in a few pinches of logical fallacy, and then pour a cup of non sequitur all over it, but you’ll still be wrong. And by the way, notice how the archbishop’s prayer doesn’t call for an end to abortion? Seems like he shoulda slipped that one in there somewhere. I suppose the real question at this point is whether he would even answer the question of whether “murder” and abortion are synonymous. He’d certainly be risking the ire of his party.

Yet let’s not overlook something that’s kinda important here. Catholic clergy don’t have to belong to a political party to begin with. In fact, in this day and age when information in the public domain is so readily accessible that it might as well be on a billboard, one might even find it a bit suspicious that an archbishop would choose to be a registered Democrat. It’s almost as if he wants the world to know. It’s almost as if he wants party officials to know that he’s there for them. That said, take a wild guess what you would find if you looked up my confessor. Think he’s a Republican just because I am? Nope. My confessor had the good grace to want to be seen as a shepherd for his entire flock. He has no political affiliation. Hey, who knows, maybe he’s got some crazy notion that a man of the cloth shouldn’t try to serve God and a political party.

Well, back to the topic of the good archbishop’s silence. Sometimes when those in power remain noticeably unengaged, it’s due to vulnerability. Remember that story I told earlier about how they threatened to destroy my children’s lives because I dared talk about their protection of Sir Sext-A-Lot? They applied the same threat to another article I had written at the time. This article chronicled the archdiocese’ pattern of racism in the way that it chooses the recipient of the annual Regina Matrum award for most outstanding Catholic mother of the year. In it I pointed out that despite New Orleans having the highest percentage of black Catholic mothers of any Catholic archdiocese in the nation, they’ve still only chosen black Catholic mothers three times in the award’s entire history. And it was awarded this past May for the 76th time! Now, any archbishop has ample authority to put an end to this sort of insultingly abysmal record, but has he used it? No. In fact, since they silenced me four years ago, they still haven’t chosen a black Catholic mother for the award. And they’ve never chosen an Hispanic or Asian Catholic mother even though there are plenty in the community who are deserving. But isn’t that what Democrats do? They keep everyone else on the defensive by calling them racists while they continue being the real racists themselves. Perhaps that prayer should be a little more specific about where the racism is really going on because if there’s one thing that could have buoyed the spirits of our black Catholic brothers and sisters over the years, it would have been recognition. Unfortunately, the refusal to recognize others’ contributions is an age-old way of keeping them down. Know this, a war on statuary and street signs has distracted us from the living, breathing racism that sustains certain local traditions of division. And our time would be far better spent finding and holding accountable the people who work so diligently to deny these black Catholic mothers the proper level of inclusivity they are due.

So maybe the archbishop’s silence stems from his vulnerability relative to the skeletons in his closet. For not only is there racism but also the shocking revelations contained in the following article https://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/rod-dreher/ by Rod Dreher. So to finally answer the question of WHY THE SILENCE, LaToya might just decide to start throwing stones through the glass walls of her own house and right into his. To wit, do not seek to recall, lest ye be recalled. And when a leader can no longer effectively serve the community, it’s time to step down.

Silence Do-Nothing #3: GAYLE THE GOLD DIGGER.

Ole Gayle seems to have a rare species of bats in the ole belfry. She not only suffers delusions of beer bottle labels being racist but appears also to have a thing for the owner of a sexual assault rap sheet by the name of Jacob Blake. Weird.

However, that’s not all she has. She also has a superfluity of this great stuff known as influence. But does she use it to promote anything other than wokeness and ticket sales for her sports teams? Hang on, give me a second to think about that last one. I know there’s something. Wait…wait…got it! She uses it to help the archbishop cover up the known and yet-to-be-known sex abuse scandals within the New Orleans Archdiocese. At least that’s how a lot of people described it when it became public that she had put her football team’s powerful PR apparatus on loan to the archdiocese for the purpose of performing the old THESE ARE NOT THE PEDOS YOU’RE LOOKING FOR JEDI MIND TRICK. Hey, maybe next time she and the archbishop are seen in each other’s company – which seems to be quite often – they’ll actually be discussing how nice it would be for them to lead by example and sign the petition. But maybe they like the humanitarian crisis just the way it is. Maybe they’ve found a way to tack into the wind and make it work for them. Scary.

Silence Do-Nothing #4: BIG EVERYTHING OWNERS
Is there some phenomenon whereby big profits cause tiny cajones? Unless I’m mistaken, none of the owners or key figures at any of the big businesses or big law firms up and down Poydras Street are signing the petition. And the same goes for the big restaurateurs around the city. Together with the previously mentioned Silence Do-Nothings, they could be providing essential leadership for this recall effort that could make the difference in whether it succeeds. There’s an expression to describe their level of inaction: COWARDICE IN THE FACE OF THE ENEMY.

——- IT’S DANGEROUS——-

That’s right, dangerous. And why? Well, because of the aforementioned incongruity – or upside-down cake – whichever you prefer. Let’s just say that when the bringers of such a petition only seek to grind an axe, and when the influential are too cowardly to block for John and Jane Q. Public as they scramble to run the ball down the field, things can get a bit sporty. For instance, no one knows what you do in the voting booth, but they sure as heck will know whether your name appeared on a recall petition. And if you think for one second that LaToya Cantrell does not possess the deviousness and wherewithal to dox all petition signers, you might wanna check your gullibility score. That’s because she’ll definitely drown that beignet in powdered sugar when she channels Maxine Waters in entreating radical organizations, “If you see anybody from that [recall petition] in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them.”

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Look, the bottom line is that the petition signers have more guts in their two signing fingers and thumb than the Silence Do-Nothings could ever buy on margin. I pray that they succeed, if for no other reason than to show the Silence Do-Nothings that no one needs them after all.

All right, I promised earlier that I’d explain my more effective solution. I mean no offense, but let’s just say that it’s a cure for myopia because recall elections will never provide the extinction level event required for all those nasty, corrupt, extremist little atoms who make up that complex virus molecule I talked about at the beginning of the article.

So the concept I’ve developed is called SPEC – Special Polling for Economies Critical and can be found at https://vorpal-pen.com/bringing-our-cities-back-into-spec/ (my blog site). It calls for statewide elections for the key office holders (e.g., mayor, city council, district attorney, police chief, &c.) of whichever city is a state’s chief economic driver – that is, its most critical economy. Plainly put, liberals have had over five decades worth of their turn to prove that their policies are better yet haven’t even proven them marginally effective. It’s time to remove their grip and turn things around, and that can be achieved quite constitutionally through SPEC. In a state such as ours where Republicans control the legislature, the state constitution can be amended to make this a reality. And one wonderful spin-off effect will be that it will act as a litmus test to separate the wheat from the RINO’s.

More specifically, only residents of this one city per state will be qualified to run in these races – as should be the case. Interestingly, though, one might postulate that it has the potential to create a “contraflow” effect in which we’ll see patriotic, altruistic conservatives moving from adjacent municipalities in order to get elected and fix things.

In conclusion, if we want to save New Orleans along with all of America’s big cities, it is crucial that we keep in perspective the inherent limitations of attempting to use recall elections to achieve this moral imperative. The broader, more sweeping approach that I’ve advanced in SPEC can save many of America’s big cities. But to answer the overarching question posed by this article’s title, of course you should go sign the petition. And while you’re at it, try to boost its odds by publicly questioning the harmful silence of the influential in this matter. When will the news media stick microphones in THEIR faces? They owe you an explanation of why they would not support the removal of a mayor who exhibits the multiple personalities of dithering dummkopf, criminal genius, and hardcore leftist.
GOOD LUCK!

P.S. Please pray that my son is not punished for the perceived sins of the father. There are wickedly vengeful people in our world who will make every effort to punish those who speak the truth. And their minions are willing and zealous.