To do what I do, I have to consume a lot of out-and-out media-created stupidity that passes as information and media-managed information that pretends to be news and just when I think I have found the bottom of how dumb either they are or think we are someone one says something that proves to me there is no bottom. For example, I was trying to slice a grapefruit when I read this and nearly lost an arm.

“I would describe it as modestly good news for the next City Council and the next mayor, but the city still faces at least a $500 million operating budget shortfall in the next year and at least an equivalent amount in anticipated pension payment shortfalls,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a non-partisan budget watchdog group.

Now I don’t care what you think about Laurence Msall. I personally think, given his political inclinations, that he should be checked for a reflection and the capacity to enter holy ground, but that’s another post for another day. To call the Civic Federation a “non-partisan budget watchdog group” would be like calling the Pope an ecumenical Wiccan-friendly, Muslim cleric. This is the Civic Federation the guys who after the fantastic financial outcomes of the Skyway Deal and the Parking Meter Lease Deal came out with a “study” to privatize everything!

Let me explain this again for people who are not paying attention. There are two sorts of power in the world; organized people and organized money. One, organized people, is loud, messy and difficult, like democracy should be. It takes an agreement of values and a deep level of trust and relationship to utilize that kind of power. The other, organized money is like the dark side of the force. Quicker, easier more seductive but ultimately it is a tool for the few to impose their will on the many. Laurence Msall and the plutocracy he is part of and works for are a collection of greedy prick-rat-bastards who will not be happy until the entire 19th and 20th century of labor reforms and worker’s rights have been eliminated. If you’ve read Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind and get real scared because they think a stable middle class is a bad, bad thing.

The Civic Federation wants the complete privatization of the public square, which is just one of a set of widely discredited neo-liberal ideas on par with feeding a Great white shark bare handed. These kinds of theories have been concentrating wealth in the hands of the few and destroying emergence of an unruly middle class while crushing the dreams of the poor in third world countries everywhere since 1945. So stop calling the Civic Federation non-partisan. They are class warriors with a capital “C” and they mean to do anyone not in the top 1% a whole lot of harm.