People intimidated by government must be funny to Stan Schaeffer

It hap­pened at an April 9, 2007 Collinsville, Illi­nois City Coun­cil meet­ing. Mayor, Stan Scha­ef­fer, was tak­ing input from “res­i­dents”. This is the part of the meet­ing where the City enter­tains com­ments and con­cerns from those in the com­mu­nity. I had spo­ken a num­ber of times in the past, mainly chal­leng­ing the City’s author­ity to imple­ment a busi­ness license ordi­nance and other things. At this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing I was in pos­ses­sion of a cam­paign flyer paid for by “The Com­mit­tee to Elect Stan Scha­ef­fer”. This flyer is sim­i­lar to pos­si­bly thou­sands that were direct-mailed to poten­tial voters.

The pur­pose of my hav­ing this flyer was the con­spic­u­ous dis­play of Mr. Schaeffer’s City office phone num­ber and his City pro­vided cell phone. These ser­vices are paid through tax dol­lars, which makes them the prop­erty of the Cit­i­zens. Mr. Scha­ef­fer was adver­tis­ing tax payer funded resources in his bid for re-election, thereby using the money of those who may have been aggrieved or in oppo­si­tion to Mr. Schaeffer’s bid for re-election. I spoke not only for myself, but for other Cit­i­zens who express their dis­plea­sure with the City’s progress, or lack thereof, but who are afraid of reprisal from the City, Mr. Scha­ef­fer and other assem­bled coun­cilper­sons included.

In my address, I made ref­er­ence to my speak­ing in agency for those appre­hen­sive voices. I did not say that these per­sons are afraid of Mr. Scha­ef­fer directly or per­son­ally, but intim­i­dated by the poten­tial abuse of the City’s resources, i.e., police, code enforcement,…etc, as can be illus­trated his­tor­i­cally and anec­do­tally. Peo­ple have made it known to me their per­sonal expe­ri­ences that, taken in the con­text of a Cit­i­zen speak­ing out about gov­ern­ment abuse or waste, there was a cor­re­spond­ing neg­a­tive con­se­quence timed con­spic­u­ously close to the dis­sent of the Citizen.

When I addressed the Coun­cil I made it clear that this fac­tion of the pop­u­la­tion was also being rep­re­sented in my address. Mr. Scha­ef­fer is seen to clearly snicker and cover his mouth upon my men­tion of those who fear ret­ri­bu­tion for their dis­sent. I became very angry upon see­ing this dis­re­spect­ful act by Mr. Scha­ef­fer, but man­aged to main­tain my com­po­sure and com­plete my address. Mr. Scha­ef­fer also attempted to limit my address to the arbi­trary limit of 4 min­utes, as set by ordi­nance, and I refused to relin­quish the floor until after I had fin­ished my thought. A minor dis­play of pro­fes­sional petu­lance ensued and the mat­ter defused after a short while.

In my address I used the word “cabal” in ref­er­enc­ing the Mayor and his campaign-supporting con­stituency. He makes a point to define the word for the assem­blage and the future view­ing pub­lic, I pre­sume because hav­ing pos­si­bly been edu­cated in a Collinsville Pub­lic School they may not pos­sess the lex­i­cal apti­tude to under­stand a poly­syl­labic word like “cabal”. I chose that word very care­fully because I believe that Mr. Schaeffer’s bid for re-election is just that, a cabal. The peo­ple are the author­ity, and gov­ern­ment is the reac­tion to our action of form­ing a gov­ern­ment for the secu­rity of our rights and prop­erty. Mr. Scha­ef­fer and his cabal of spe­cial inter­ests, devel­op­ers, and priv­i­leged sta­tus are, through attempt­ing to keep Mr. Scha­ef­fer in office, con­spir­ing to sub­vert the People’s will and reduce them to peon­age by hav­ing their prop­erty taxed, con­fis­cated, or devel­oped against their will. Yes, Mr. Schaeffer…it is a cabal.

I may update this later, but I wanted to get the video out for those who wish to wit­ness a cal­lous dis­play for the jus­ti­fied, albeit unnec­es­sary, appre­hen­sion of other Cit­i­zens to pub­licly con­front what they believe to be oppres­sive, unre­spon­sive gov­ern­ment. More to come…..