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THE CONE OF SILENCE
The television show called Get Smart introduced America to the Cone of Silence, a device humorously used to display what it’s like to keep secrets and silence in a social world of intense communications and electronic devices, not to mention the craving need to know in a world where so much more is revealed but much less is becoming truly known. Today, the cone of silence represents the same thing, but in the form of closed meetings held by local representatives in small towns.
The open meetings laws and ordinances in Wisconsin allow for plenty of closed meetings. It’s like calling life insurance death insurance or estate taxes death taxes. For reasons applied by the legislature through the years, things like personnel matters, real estate, litigation, and more have been tacked on to the supposed good reasons for the ‘cone of silence’ to be lowered. The need for closed meetings is mostly non-existent from the media’s perspective, as, over time, it’s been discovered that the meetings have one key group that the representatives want to keep in the dark, and that’s the public they supposedly serve.
The ‘battle’ over getting Channel 25 back is mostly one of secrets without the cone being lowered. Years go by. The electronics price for getting the thing going, after spending about a hundred grand already, becomes another hundred grand, and Spectrum can’t get to Lake Geneva to do the connection for another six months. At what point is the sheep-like public supposed to stand up and say ‘hogwash!’ and change the leadership?
In a complete open-air response to this by Spectrum, why isn’t the city filing suit against that giant, and apparently uncaring, company? A nice three million would be about right for denying the public the ability to know, and for the descent of goodwill visited upon the leadership that may be totally without fault?
How about filing suit against the cell phone companies that have nine cell receivers and transmitters all turned off so that Lake Geneva residents and visitors must get inadequate service from towers in Elkhorn, Hebron, and Harvard, being the closest? How about ten thousand a month to each tower or transmitter turned off a month, or get your ugly equipment out of the city? Oh, by the way, those towers are turned off to save the company’s electricity charges. It’s done across rural America as the companies have to provide adequate service as THEY define it.
The communities can tax them as much as they want, though. Lake Geneva won’t. At least there’s no cone of silence. Just a cone of cowardice. America appears frightened of national government and giant corporations. Maybe going back to see the first Star Wars movie and assuming the role of the rebels instead of the Imperium might be a good exercise for everyone in the USA.
The cone is lowered consistently above meetings on Hillmoor on meetings regarding the selection of personnel to fill these six-figure positions in city government. It’s like almost all organs of government across the nation have forgotten who’s paying for all just about everything. The city administrator sat at the head of the selection committee to select a new city administrator, just like Dick Cheney sat as chairman of the committee to select a VP for Bush. Like that, one former Hitler Youth Pope sat as chairman to select candidates to be the next Pope. All three of these men ruled out all candidates and then were ‘forced’ to take the jobs themselves. All done in silence as the waves came in and receded in this vast sea of deception, we all attempt to stay afloat.
