Politics of Atlanta’s Mayoral race….

(Last Halloween)

 

By now we have 13 bozos who have registered to run in this November race.  And race is the key word here. Except for maybe 4, the rest are black and these folk are well established in the Black corridor of power that has run Atlanta for 45 years.

There is a howl and a cry to push ‘affordable housing’ and of course, none of these candidates live in areas where they have to consider this issue.  Mary Norwood (white) lives in a neighborhood with million dollar (plus) mansions.  She has never had the issues of having project folk, welfare mothers who throw their diapers in the street, nor has she had Section 8 people breaking into her house or garages, properties.  Yet she has been beating the drum for affordable housing in our neighborhoods, certainly not HER neighborhood.  She said to me back in 2009 (her first run at mayor) that she would take these abandoned houses and put ‘good’ people in them.  Yeah, right.  Atlanta has been the center of mortgage fraud for decades and our zip code was ground zero for this.  We, the home owners, residents of SWAtl are sick of this mentality. We have lived with this issue for 40 plus years with no relief.  A month ago across the street, a huge limb fell on the front porch of that house and the slumlord, from New Orleans, has done nothing to remove the tree.  Neighbors did drag it backwards so the woman renter could get in her front door. Repeated calls to the dept. of the city that oversees this have been ignored.  For a month.

Cesar Mitchell (black) is well supported by $$$$ mostly from outside Atlanta and Georgia. The Cascade Corridor is full of black mansions and they are beating the drums for Mitchell.   He looks like the one who possibly will win this race.  Why? Well, Atlanta is a majority black city and the thought of a white mayor just curdles in the stomachs of many  blacks.  They have been fed by the usual black mouthpieces that this would be a return to dogs and fire hoses.  Yep, that was part of the shameful campaign run by Shirley Franklin, Andrew Young, to put their man, John Eaves in office.  Incredible stuff, but ignorant people believe this crap.  And Atlanta has a lot of ignorant folk.

I have lived for 45 years in this neighborhood, along with my black neighbors, and this area has always been the dumping grounds for slumlords, ‘investors’, and the city.  Tear down a project and shuffle these folk into our southwest neighborhoods where we live with the criminal elements and the crime these elements bring.  We are over it.  Now? there is another ‘push’ to keep blacks from selling their houses under the guise of keeping ‘the original inhabitants in Atlanta, especially around the Beltline”. (I can see and hear the bulldozers directly behind my property trashing 38 trees and digging up the soil for the Beltline track.  You can google the Beltline if you are interested.)  Original inhabitants?  Rather tunnel vision I think.  The original inhabitants were whites, from 1854 in this neighborhood, walking by lantern light to a church that has disappeared.  When I moved here and bought my house in 1973, it was old white widows and older white poodles.  I should have seen the writing on the wall.  They died off, poodles and all.

Last Tuesday, due to power outages from Irma, we had looters.  These opportunist black bastards came through our neighborhood first breaking into cars.  Police were called, but by the time they showed up….they had disappeared.  Later that night they came back and tried to break into houses, rattling the front doors.  Someone tried to break in my car at 8am, the alarm went off and I saw this young man run up a side street.

Affordable housing is fine. But we don’t need more welfare folk whose grown sons are hanging off the porches and watching for the possibilities of  break ins and thievery. They swarm the area when the lights go out and look for opportunities.  Not one damn preacher, minister says a god damn word about the level of crime in the surrounding area.  And most don’t live in the neighborhood.

The power was off only two days.  What would have happened if it was longer?  My neighbors all are armed, with a shotgun at the door.  And these are my black neighbors. My new white neighbors haven’t caught on yet.  And they have been repeatedly victimized.  Black criminals are betting that the new young whites are too stupid to do this.  Or too…liberal?

Now there is an open call to blacks in Atlanta not to sell their houses to whites.  Especially around the Beltline.   This is from the present mayor (Kasim Reed) and other candidates who are running.  Of course they don’t see this as racism.   But so it goes here.  Backward ass city.  And run by opportunists.

Whatever.  I have been in Atlanta since 1969.  Nothing has really changed.  Atlanta wants to be called an International City but it’s a bog.  And these candidates are running nothing new, just attacking each other, though they have served on the same councils and are buds.  But it’s political gnashing time so I guess this is ‘acceptable’ behavior.

The corruption from City Hall equals or rivals the corruption of Bill Campbell, a mayor a few years ago who went to prison for a term for all sorts of criminal behavior.  Now we hear that millions of dollars have been either embezzled or paid out in ‘no bid’ contracts to ‘friends’ of some bureaucrats in City Hall.  Even MARTA, the only transit line that circles Atlanta has been hit with corruption by CEOs. The FBI is not closing the cases on City Hall because there will be more heads rolling. There is even a new issue of corruption at the Atlanta Airport on bids and cronyism. Good.  Heads should roll off the necks of these arrogant boobs.  They are just lining their pockets with taxpayers money and they pass the baton from hand to greedy hand.  Nothing really changes.

(this is a recent pix of our house, built back in 1880’s and one that we have been restoring for 40 years.  Not finished by a mile, either.  The Beltline is directly behind our property.)

So, whomever becomes mayor will have to be closely watched.  Obviously the temptations for corruption and lining your own pockets is almost unavoidable.  Even the Chief Procurement Officer of Kasim Reed’s as been indicted for taking bribes of over 33,000.00 clams.  How shameful.  But also, how natural in the current climate of Atlanta.

May the best woman or man win, but that might be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nihilism, Smart Asses, Bullies and Sociopathic Behavior- And Brown Shirts thrown in for good measure.

Over the past year…. some things have changed.  I’ve watched these people insult, break apart, reform and still the basis for their ‘alliance’ is as rotten as ever. The good thing is this:  some of these people realized that their behavior online was seriously being criticized by more sane members of the community, and some of them have left.  However, these things come about because some people are just…well, they are insecure and followers of anything that seems ‘powerful’.  What they don’t realize is the power they are seeing in many of these individuals is seated deeply in a personality disorder: usually a pathology or extreme narcissism  For a while, this looks powerful and weak people want to exist in the shadow of power. Perhaps this is just the worse part of human nature?  But there is hope, because more and more people here in these communities have expressed their resolve to stay away from these sorts. In no way are they leaders. They are actually parasites. They are a major part of a bigger problem.  Atlanta has enough issues without this fermenting and spreading around.

Perhaps the worse offenders will move to the scrub pines of Florida.

–

Nihilism’s Corpse 

Nihilism is a deep-sea fish.

When it, in the form of language surfaces in the sea, it is already lifeless.  I detest its corpse like a dirty rag.  I hate it. 

—Nagase Kiyoko 

 (Nagase Kiyoko was a wonderful Japanese woman poet who died in 1995.  She is considered the “Grandmother” of women poets in Japan.  Many of us, not especially poets, but women who have regard for a woman who writes with such passion and sensibility, love her and her work.  I stumbled upon this poem in the dark and it exactly fit  this article.  Thank you, Grandmother Nagase)

–

I know calling any group today ‘Nazi’ is startling.  What happened here is a bit of the behavior of the development of the Brown Shirts in Germany in 1920’s and 30’s, of course  on a much more provincial scale.  These were the ‘lumpen’, in German, the broken, the bottom feeders of German society.  I use the term broken thinking of people who are not facing their own demons, but inflicting them on the population in general. Certainly an area like Atlanta has plenty of problems, but when the so-called intellectual class (or so they would seem to themselves) holds on to their own issues without examining them closely, we have ‘broken’ ideology leading. Or better, Nihilism which doesn’t go anywhere.

Recently I joined a local website, something called Capitol View Smart Asses.  I joined because I thought perhaps these folk would be active in the community, perhaps they had some energy. We face a lot of issues here; drugs, corruption, etc.  The usual for an urban area.

You know the old saying: “We have met the enemy and it is us?”

Things didn’t go well.  I had a meeting with a local woman about the corruption of our council representative.  That was informative, but when I gave a woman (neighbor) a sum up of our meeting, this woman immediately texted another woman in CVSA (unknown to me) with some interesting fabrications.  I didn’t realize that this woman was so mentally unbalanced.  I should have. Others have now told me she is extremely bi-polar.

What sort of group called itself “Smart Asses”?  A lot of people have asked this.  It’s made up of two connecting neighborhoods: the memebers of this site are  are middle class, middle aged and white.  Mostly.  They consider themselves the intellectual elite of the area.  But in actually, they are nothing but bullies and worse.  The original woman I met with about the council rep. tucked her tail and ran.  She said that “the n’hood had broken her.”  Apparently not so much because she was there on the website.  Some people have the moral integrity of dental floss.

What I experienced was mob mentality.  Only two of these ‘girls’ (can’t call them women because they haven’t the mental maturity of women) knew me, and frankly? I broke with them over a year ago. And these two ‘women’ were either drug dealers or heavy drug users. (anyone who breaks with this behavior is gossiped and marginalized by these two and the rest of the Smart Asses.  And since this area, these neighborhoods, have a huge drug problem, they are nothing but hypocrites and they are in no way a part of the solution to this problem. That they are white and consider themselves ‘leaders’ here is a serious part of the problem.  White privilege raises it’s ugly head again.) The rest?  Didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat.  Nor I them. But that didn’t stop their pack mentality. Of course there were some ‘leaders’ in this bully brigade, but they were the usual shit stirrers. And those I knew. They hadn’t improved.

It was educational, this wolf pack mentality of bullies.  And what was even more interesting was these women had lost their ability immediately to think independently.  They couldn’t. They were under the power of two women who had every reason to stir the mud.  Perhaps they were being fed lies, but they were too stupid to consider anything except what they wanted to hear.

Like the girls in high school, they exhibited a viciousness.  Something you would expect from some teens, but not from educated women.  As I said: they lost their ability to think for themselves.  Lynch mob mentality.  Many consider themselves (and the men in this group) as the ‘leaders’ of the community. This is especially frightening.

Over the last few years I have seen some of these same women fight, insult each other, break up and then reform. Thus it is with people who have their own emotional (and other) issues.  And it will continue to happen over and over.  They will not change short of a meteor hitting them on the head from outer space.  They don’t see what they are or do.  This is human behavior of the troublesome kind.  Many of us outgrow it.  These  folk haven’t.

Too late my friends and neighbors told me that this group was “stupid”, “mean”, “pointless”.  Yes, it was stupid and mean, but no, it was not pointless.  It was in a fundamental sense, they were stroking their own egos, but the point of it was to elevate themselves above everyone else in the community. In a way, it was funny or really sad, the snarliness of the people posting there. Any group that calls themselves Smart Asses has contempt for everyone else.  But they don’t amount to a hill of beans in the real world.  After only a few days on that website, it was clear that the leading philosophy was Nihilism.  And Nihilism only leads over the cliff.  That’s if you can get anyone to follow.

It is the philosophy of nothingness.

(And what does naming a group “Smart Ass” really mean?  Are they drawing attention to the hope that they are ‘smart’ or are they admitting that they are just ‘asses’?)

Internet trolls.  The internet is full of people who are bullies and they make their nests within these online groups. A few readings of CVSA showed clearly that these fools were nothing progressive, were not about anything that remotely relate to the broader community. They ‘wanted’ their own group to feel ‘superior’ to another group.  People who had left or refused to join saw what was going on and summed up they didn’t want to be part of this ‘bitchin’ group’.  It was going nowhere.

Later I was contacted by a person who read that site.  She was a psychologist. She read what happened and wanted to talk. What did I think?

We talked. What could I say? These people were corrupt, egotistical bullies, with their own demons of various kinds. That they were NOT teens was frightening. That some of them were parents was even more so.  Strong Narcissistic tendencies or behaviors in that group, both in the men and women, but that is to be expected from anyone calling themselves a ‘smart ass.’

She said she saw a lot of ‘sociopathic behavior’ on this site, and of course where there is this behavior, there are usually sociopaths.  I agree.  These people are just embarrassing, but more so, they are…collectively as a mob and individually, dangerous.  My neighbors checked them out and called them spoiled, little brats. They are bullies who probably will be raising bullies for the future.

Nothing changes until people throw off their hypocrisy and their own corruption. Then? Perhaps things will advance.  But this area has hit a brick wall because the personal corruption of people like these Not-So-Smart Asses. They hold this corruption close to their hearts.  It is their right.  Perhaps this is just human behavior, but certainly is not the best of it.  And, this area deserves the corruption these same people were complaining about with the council rep. Corruption stacked upon corruption.  What a bright future this area has. No wonder people have dropped out of activities here. It looks hopeless, and it is until something breaks.

(Note:  over the past year since I wrote this post, people have expressed their disgust with this group.  Those people who have done so have either become friends or were.  They knew a lot more about these folk than I did. And it is good to see that they can think independently and avoid these toxic people.  Our neighborhoods that are polluted with drugs, crime, corruption certainly don’t need these hypocrites.  Perhaps they will move to Florida.)

And about that pack mentality?  These groups of bullies?

Brown noses lead to Brown Shirts over time.  Hardly a progressive ideology for this area.  In fact, self serving and destructive for any area.  I think of these people as pre-runners of the Taliban. Weak, malleable people who in no way could be considered leaders of anything.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2014

Lunacy Black Market ….Could have been on Dill Ave. SW..except for the usual opportunism.

</strong>I wrote this piece a little more than a year ago. The usual crap has not happened, or it did, but the slum lords, served by the usual city politicians and their enforcers are still trying to put up a Rave or ‘youth’ nightclub in that location with the same outcome: chaos, violence and more chaos with out of work and hopeless youth.

Chef Luna has flown the coop, but I think he wasn’t really serious about the location, and in fact it seems he changes his plans/restaurants/ideas with the seasons. He wanted to whine to us, and he did (but the food was still delicious!) but he wouldn’t stand his ground, either.

So be it. A new idea has come about, probably much better and more in keeping with the desires of the new people here who have been working to clean up this dump of communities: A coffee house on Metropolitian and Dill..somewhere on this strip because it will be a collecting place for people to come in the mornings, bring their strollers and childern, have different pastries and coffee and just relax like any decent people who are fed up with having to go miles in all directions to sit and think over coffee/tea. A meeting ground for residents in the area to plan for more progress.

Very recently, one of the ‘mouths’ here told me that ‘black people weren’t shaped to clean up garbage around them.” Honestly. This from an apologist and a local historian who must have rocks in her head. I questioned her about this ‘shaped’ comment. Well, apparently because their parents threw diapers and trash in the street, and their grandparents did the same…they never learned NOT to do the same. What Bullshit. What expectations of people who live around you and what a fine set of excuses to let them off from the usual necessities of living in civilization. This person was white. but I heard the same damn thing from a black community politician who wanted the community to run a program to ‘teach’ black folk how to put garbage in a garbage can. This woman also wanted to contract to some company who made very pretty garbage cans at $500.00 a pop. I smell something corrupt here. LOL!

In case readers are wondering the race of these investors who want to put in this new coffee shop…well, they are black. And they are folk who haven’t had to have their hands directed by others to open the lid, put the garbage in, close the lid.

Of course, people who get offended are the first to yell “class warfare’ when taxpaying citizens get disgusted with conditions and with the ususal bullshit of the local councilpeople…and they, being black, also call these same people ‘racists’, but so what?

These same finger shakers have sat on any progressive progress for this area for decades. And they forget that class warfare comes with all colors.

Bring it on.

PS: NOTHING CAME OF THIS COFFEE SHOP ON DILL AND METROPOLITIAN (USED TO BE STEWART AVE…BUT THE LOCAL BLACK POLITICIANS CHANGED THE NAME TO METROPOLITIAN….BECAUSE THE CRIME STATS FALL OFF WITH A NAME CHANGE…HAH1 WITH NO PROGRESS OR INVESTMENT, THE CRIME STATS ARE BAD AGAIN) WHAT TO DO? KEEP SPENDING YOUR MONEY IN OTHER NEIGHBORHOODS, LIKE EAST POINT, COLLEGE PARK, EAST ATLANTA, ETC. BECAUSE AT LEAST THERE THE RESIDENTS HAVE DONE SOME GOOD WORK. HERE? PEOPLE WHINE, BUT THE LOCAL COUNCIL WOMAN IS BACKWARD, CORRUPT AND SHE’S NOT GOING TO PUSH ANYTHING THAT WILL IMPROVE THE NEIGHBORHOOD. HER IDEA AND THE CITY OF ATLANTA’S IS TO KEEP THIS HISTORICAL AREA AS OPEN TO THE RIFFRAFF (SECTION 8 AND SLUMLORDS) AS POSSIBLE. IT’S A POWER BASE ISSUE.THAT IS WHERE SHE GETS HER VOTES TO CONTINUE TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. THIS COUNCIL WOMAN LEAD THE BACKWARD CHURCH MEMBERS TO DESTROY THE PIERE ROTI MURAL THIS FALL AND IT IS ALL WE CAN EXPECT FROM HER. 4-8-13
Lady Nyo, October 25, 2012

Tonight husband and I went to Chef Paul Luna’s new restaurant in downtown Atlanta…something very different, good and so intimate.

Lunacy is located at 231 Mitchell SW, down in an older part of downtown Atlanta.  First time we have been there, and we were pleasantly surprised.  It’s more a tapas restaurant, with high ceilings, wonderful antique kimonos high on the walls, local artwork, some impressive, with a lovely and unusual decor.  Nothing of this restaurant said ‘the usual..out of the box.’

We had sauted shrimp, curried garbanzo beans,  fried sweet potatoes,  balsamic and mint pork ribs, roasted mushrooms in a red sauce…and all for under $20.00.  Amazing for anything downtown.  Amazing food for any where in Atlanta.

Chef Paul is from the Domin. Repubic, but spent time in Japan, Spain and other places where he honed his culinary skills. Each dish came out individually, barely enough to share, but there is a method in this slow-madness.  Having each dish served with a wait time of about 15 minutes between orders means you REALLY get to taste the savory spices and the dish.  Nothing is served on a large plate, all jumbled together.  A new dining experience, and one that was very pleasurable.  With each plate we tried to guess the spices and the sauces: the garbanzo beans were a delight, and the closest we could get were garlic (though very light, nothing overwhelming) a mild curry and something of basil and tomato.  Delicate but very satisfying.  The shrimp was perfect, and the four pieces of thin bread was perfect for the buttered and a bit spicy sauce.

But the best thing of the night was Chef Paul.  After mutual introductions he sat down at our small table and talked turkey.  Back in January of this year, there was a large meeting in our SW Atlanta neighborhood where Chef Paul had proposed opening a restaurant/produce section, etc. in a large building on Dill Avenue.  Unfortunately certain slumlords who were in the plans were nothing but greedy opportunists, and this wonderful plan went out the door.

The main slumlord wanted $750,000.00 for a store that wasn’t worth $200,000.  There was just about no plumbing, the electrical had to be completely redone, the walls, the floor needed to be done over, the roof leaked for years and the renovations would have been easily another $300,000.00.  At least.  This local slumlord knew all of this, but just thought he could make a fast buck.  The bastard hasn’t paid taxes on this building and is in default here.  I won’t call his name, but hopefully people here will turn a deaf ear to this moron.  Everyone knows who he is, and hopefully people will get wise in the future. He hasn’t done anything for this neighborhood except buy up property and let it go to decay.

All this information I either knew from the past tenants or talking to other local residents in the know.  And living in this area for 40 years has given me an overview of the whole situation.  Being a contractors wife also helps with the apprasial and estimates of the restoration. 

After dinner, we went to visit a local homeowner on Dill who is very involved in restoring his lovely Arts and Craft home there, and he said that this same slumlord (we noticed the painted panels over the windows…) is going to put in a ‘rap scene’.  Great…just what this area needs..more very chancey venues.  We have found when these things are in place, they are havens for criminal elements to deal drugs and there are always shootings and mayhem.  Not something for a neighorhood who is trying to attract good businesses to the area.  The at-risk youth here need something else, not another mob venue.  This always happens because things really get out of control.

Citizens, taxpayers of this area need some tar and feathers…..for the various slumlords and their schemes.

This is the usual for this area:  The corruption of politics and the city of Atlanta, PLUS the opportunism of certain local politicians, has left this area  blighted for the last 30 years.  Nothing can get off the ground with the combined toxicity of the local bigmouths and the slumlords that sit on all the progressive plans thrown out by different citizen groups.  Personally, many of us think that this area is used in such a way by these politicians and the city because it is a dumping ground for welfare, drugs, whores, renters and all sorts of flyby night institutions.  Unlicensed personal care and some rehab facilities make this area on Dill a blight.  Keeping this area in a blighted condition suits the work of the usual entitlement politicians.  Perhaps this is hard to explain to folk who don’t have such social behavior, but it’s been a long descent here in this large and now-poor area. 

 (Years ago, when I first came here and bought the Ragsdale House, an 1880’s historical house, it was a quiet little burg, with stores, a theater, hair salons, meeting places and no drugs and whores.  How it’s changed.  There was no crime to speak of back then, just old ladies with blue hair and white poodles. It was a sweet neighborhood with decent people. Now? the riffraff have taken over…oops…that’s mostly slumlords and their tenants, the drug dealers and their families.  There are still decent people here, and new ‘urban pioneers’, paying taxes, trying to keep their houses, but there is  real blight.  Not helped by the local police, either.  They have a blind eye to the usual sores. They do little to help.)

This Dill Avenue would have had Chef Paul’s Lunacy Black Market IF it hadn’t been for the selfish and greedy behavior of particular slumlords (who don’t live in the ‘hood) and some local politicians looking to make their mark and getting something from this issue.

Bah!  It’s the same ol’ same ol’ here in SW Atlanta…and people have to go farther north or east of this area to find a decent restaurant.  That’s if you don’t want McDonalds/Wendys/Popeyes Chicken and the usual out of the box with no thought to anything except fast food.

So, though we thought Chef Paul’s Lunacy a great eating spot, unusual and enjoyable, it was with a bit of sadness because we could have had this establishment here on our turf. 

We are contacting those people who will be able to ‘think outside the box’ for Dill.  People should be outraged that we lost this wonderful deal…..and when people start to think what they really have lost here…perhaps they will get mad enough to do something next time.  We have too many people here with better expectations than what we have been served. 

We deserve better and damn it…we will get better.

Lunacy Black Market, Wednesday-Sunday: 11am to 10pm…Sunday I think has earlier brunch hours….231 Mitchell Street, SW, Atlanta, Phone: 404-736-6164.  Street parking and on weekends, free parking on street.  Yahoo!

Chef Paul is on Facebook.  Contact him for information and to give your opinion on what is needed in SW Atlanta.  An intelligent and energetic fellow…with great vision for Atlanta.

Lady Nyo