Sunday, March 8, 2009

POLITICAL PIED PIPERS OF IRB

Follow the Leader Not the Facts

The town of Hamelin, Germany suffered from a rat infestation in 1284. A man who billed himself as a rat-catcher whistled a tune and successfully lured the rats to follow him into the river, where they all drowned. Indian Rocks Beach has an entire collection of Pied Pipers…political leaders who have so much clout that they could probably encourage those who amble along behind them to lay down on the centerline of Gulf Blvd. at rush hour.

Running for city commissioner in IRB, if you’re not supported by the political Pied Pipers who run this town can be a trying experience. Most of their “followers” rarely attend commission meetings but choose to operate instead well behind the scenes. These faceless folks don’t deal in facts—because they don’t know the facts. They only know the facts as filtered through the eyes of others who have set themselves up as the “town experts” and positioned anyone else who doesn’t agree with them as stupid and misinformed. These folks have been very successful at rounding up candidates they can “buddy up together” to form a quasi “ticket”—people who think exactly as they do. Whether safety in numbers will give way to guilt by association on Tuesday is anyone's guess.

How many good people don’t run for office in IRB for fear that this group will publicly trash them? These "leaders" stood by and watched as a former mayor was falsely accused of sexual harassment and then thought it perfectly okay for the commission not to investigate where the ugly rumor originated. Pied Pipers protect their own, I guess.

Phil Wrobel, not to be confused with the Phil who is running for the commission, would have been a great representative for our residents. But after the group Wrobel put his heart and soul into, the IRB Homeowners Association, was tagged as a group of drunks that migrate from bar to bar, why would he belly up for more of the same? Don House, within days of announcing his run for office, received a warning letter from a Tampa law firm taking issue with his nomenclature when referring to the USF Study. I wonder if others guilty of the same alleged faux pas were issued notices, too?

Win, lose or draw, we need to applaud the efforts of anyone who has the cohunes to take these folks on and run for a seat on our city commission--standing on his/her own two feet. Listen closely. You can almost hear the whistling as all the little lemmings fall obediently into step in route to the Kool-aid stand?

Nancy Obarski
Beach Trail/IRB

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Indian Liars Beach, Special thanks to Ralph and ED *.

Anonymous said...

You can thank LYO for misrepresenting the IRB HOA events and of course his source of information Jose (past) and Wollin (current).

Anonymous said...

Sad but true.

Anonymous said...

There is also a LYO info source that is a city employee.