Whether Report

Since not much is happening around here this time of year, I guess I can fall back on the weather. Global warming has not affected Michigan as much as it has other places. It's actually a little milder in the summer these years, and the winters don't bring as much snow.

We can blame the annual polar vortex for that. Instead of getting wet weather from the Southwest pushed in our direction, turning rain into snow, we get cold, intrusive air from a thousand miles north of us, nesting over the Great Lakes. It makes Siberia seem like summer in Siam.

It snows once in awhile. And because it's so cold, day and night, that snow sits around for months, getting dirtier all the time. It's as bleak as a moonscape here. The only warmth comes from the prevailing Westerly winds bringing Chicago's emissions right into the funnel of the Kalamazoo River Valley.

The pandemic took a bad situation and made it worse. Even the animals have moved out of the woods and into town. It's not uncommon to hit deer on roadways where they were never seen before. Illicit urban hunting has become a thing, the most brazen form of poaching... So, yes, the economy in Michigan is so bad now that people are killing and eating the animals.

Naturally, property crime has increased. Someone just cut the catalytic converter out from under my Ford a couple of weeks ago. Muggings are sure to rise, purse snatchings, break-ins, stuff like that.

Most people don't even bother to call the police, because they're pretty sure the same thing will happen as did the time before: Nothing. What can the police do? Even if they were to prosecute every crime that happens around here, the courts don't seem to be able to make sense of much of anything.

So if you're Walter White, you're doing great; otherwise, you're just another victim of our woeful economy, a collateral casualty resulting from the dull, vapid mediocrity of our hapless local officials.

We have a governor who would love to do all sorts of nice things for the people, as any good Governor would want to do, but an opposition party in the legislature that would just as soon tie her hands behind her back, some more literally than figuratively.

It's hopeless.

Wayfarers be warned: For the vast majority of the United States, Michigan is North of you. Let that be your compass - just don't go North -  because once you get up here, the sun disappears and the needle just spins around and around and around...

pH 1.3o.21

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Quacks Like a Duck

I just sent the following to one of the local reporters who is looking into the unfortunate case against my sister, Charlie's Mom. And it's not the only thing I've sent.

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Hello. Please see attached, a long-ago-sent email from then-Corporations Counsel Thom Canny (I think he works in Probate now) having to do with my sister's case. In his letter to my sister's lawyer, at the end, you can see that Kalamazoo County tried to violate my free speech rights. They sought to make the changing of Charlie's Cause of Death contingent upon my legal silence.

After we rejected that offer (or attempted extortion, whatever you want to call it), Redmond sued me, with the plaintiff receiving a fax from the Medical Examiner [Redmond lied about having received it under oath - pH]. This resulted in one blog post being removed by Judge Lipsey's ex parte Order, several others modified out of fear of further claims, and a chilling effect - exactly the County's intent.

It was in that endeavor that Martha Redmond committed perjury. So I am not stretching it by saying that the Medical Examiner is directly involved in this horrible lawsuit against my family, which would prefer to grieve in peace.

I hope this makes sense, although I doubt it. It doesn't make sense to me sometimes. But it's a big part of the story. Why did Joyce deJong send that fax to Martha Redmond? And what other communications did they have? Unanswered questions.

When I filed a FOIA request with Kalamazoo County for all communications between Joyce and Redmond Funeral Homes, the reply I got was that no such communications existed. But obviously one did, with both sender's and receiver's information stamped on the document! So, Joyce, too, lied in this case, about the same thing.

Combined with the Canny letter, it's pretty clear that my civil rights were violated by the County where the First Amendment is concerned, and Judge Lipsey (who oversaw both my sister's cases somehow) was going to sweep it all under the rug.

Have a good day. Sorry to take up so much of your time with this.

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pH 1.25.21

Disrespect for the Dead

 Just in case you're behind on your annual quota of nightmares, here is a supplemental one fresh from America's Nightmare Garden, Kalamazoo County.

Check that... It's Defendant Kalamazoo County this time. The crowd with the pitchforks and torches is heading for the Admin building again, over basic larceny by conversion, looks like.

The outgoing County Treasurer, Mary Balkema, could probably care less. She got thumped like a tub in last month's historic election, and will soon be filling out job applications, one might suppose. But it's her shop that made headlines this week, sort of.

I'll link you to the article, which tells the horror story better than I'll be able to, but the gist of the grist is simply this: If you die here, and owed delinquent taxes on your property, we'll seize that property and sell it.

Yeah. Now imagine your foreclosed home sells at auction for, say, $79,500... But the outstanding tax debt was only $14,500. That means the deceased citizen's heirs would have $65,000 coming their way, seem right? Yep, seems right.

And that is right as of only very recently. Kalamazoo County used to simply keep the funds. Screw the people. But we didn't change our stripes; the Michigan Supreme Court had to change our stripes for us last July after a lawsuit was filed. Which is usually how things have to be done here.

However, the state Supreme Court didn't tell counties WHEN they had to pay back the money, and so Kalamazoo doesn't do it at all, which is how we got sued. From the horse's front end:

"They're kind of punting it to the Legislature for them to make a legislative fix," says Balkema, who knows a thing or two about the subject, having been kicked out of public office by the voters just weeks ago.

Balkema has also mercilessly foreclosed on people's homes, for as little as $2,000 in tax delinquency. Much of that money was funneled to her favorite contractor, or given to the charity run by the mother of County Commissioner Stephanie Moore. This culminated in an investigation by the Michigan State Police, at the behest of former Corporations Counsel Beth White, who was summarily fired.

(White turned around and filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, and the county reached a settlement with her, shelling out $300,000. This is all old news here, okay? Old news. Like so many other cases in Kalamazoo that will turn your stomach.)

So I am glad to see Visser Law suing our County. I hope we lose big and are forced to pay. In fact, I may even start a petition drive to raise our taxes in Kalamazoo County across the board, in order to make whole those victims of the cruel, sausage-fingered idiots who run this asylum.

Now, what was the other item I was looking - oh, yeah... That's right.

When considering the goings-on in a dirty little shire like ours, it should come as no surprise that Michigan schools have fallen quite short on the number of pupils they expected to have, by about 53,000 kids.

Local media estimates our share to be a 5% decrease in the student body, with 690 "lost" learners. This, despite The Kalamazoo Promise, a program that provides college tuition for those who can survive the Kalamazoo Public School system. (Having run that gauntlet myself, I can tell you, there are easier ways to pay for college.)

A five-point drop, though, that's pretty startling. Imagine if this was way back when Titus Bronson was in charge. Imagine the little one-room schoolhouse with 20 children in it... And then imagine, one day, one of them just doesn't show up anymore.

Call him Charlie. And don't expect this place to care.

pH 12.18.2o

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