Where is Houdini when you need him??
As the pressure builds and the court date for Electric Company
scandalites approaches, I’ve been amusing myself by imagining our
elected employees…most particularly the
These two men seem to have sleight of hand down pat. I have seen
them pull entire elections out of their otherwise empty black top hats.
(In magic as in western movies, the good guys always wear white.) I’ve
watched in utter astonishment as they bend and break the law of the land
by sheer force of cunning. Lately,
they have even managed to make an entire felony charge against Charles
“Two Meter” Hale disappear into thin air while, with clever
application of much smoke and many mirrors, they have effectively
shifted the focus from their own crimes which include turning electric
current-cy into campaign victories, to impugning the moral authority of
one quiet man whose only crime seems to have been seeking the truth.
With what trick will they astound us next?? Wait
for Wednesday. In case you missed the last six chapters, let me bring you up to date.
On Wednesday in Oh.
That’s not what the docket will say. The docket and the City Judge, who, by the way, is appointed and who
serves at the will of the aldermen including – yeah, you guessed it
– Cloyd and Alonzo, will allege Bowen accepted an electric meter
stolen from the city. It matters not that the Mayor who attended the
same meeting wherein Charles Hale’s meter was relegated to the care of
the city’s CEO – the mayor himself - states that the meter was given
into his custody by a member of the electric department staff and NOT
Bowen. It matters not that Bowen never had his hands on the meter. What
matters is that Garth, in a fit of petulance at a subsequent meeting of
the Board of Aldermen, demanded the arrest of both Pastor Bowen and that
other shifty businessguy and secret meeting attendee, Jeff Doty. In
typical Garthan form, he did this at the top of his lungs - loudly
enough that members of the gallery locked outside the executive session
could clearly hear his rant.) Chief
Henry Randle got half the job done. Bowen was arrested on the very evening that Electric Department head
Adrian Garth was charged with felony extortion – otherwise known as
coercing customers to trade sex for utility services. (The media has
lately made a really big deal about Aberdeen’s Electric Give-Away
Lotto, but they always fail to mention that if one is not paying for
electric service, neither is one paying for water or sanitation
services, all of which could represent a tidy sum.) The bad guys thought
it served their purpose to undermine Bowen’s credibility AND take some
of the sting and spotlight away from Garth’s incarceration. I’m
delighted to report it did not. Bowen’s arrest, as it works out, only served to galvanize the
taxpayers who now stand united against these abuses. But, I’m getting
ahead of myself again. As far as I can tell, the purpose of the insidious secret meeting in
which Bowen was joined by Michael Brownlee, investigator for the State
Auditor’s office, and several others, was to establish that Charles
Hale had been in possession of and happily using a second electric meter
fraudulently enabling him to avoid being charged for his own kilowatt
consumption. The object of this particular meeting was to bring a criminal to
justice. But, you see, Charles Hale knows far too much. The other
problem – if you happen to be Cloyd or Alonzo – is that if and when
Hale gets cuffed and stuffed he will drop a few “F bombs” of his
own. Beginning with FRAUD and ending with the FRAMING of young Brandon
Scott for embezzlement, (another case wherein the Aberdeen Police
Department arrested an alleged crook whose hands had never been on the
object in question – in this case a deposit bag which was actually in
the hands of Hale himself from beginning to end of the entire
bank-deposit-gone-wrong adventure.) Hale can bring down the house by the
simple act of telling the truth. Perhaps
that’s why Police Chief Randle brought the Hale investigation to a
screeching halt shortly after the Mayor requested charges be brought
against the meter reader. So,
Hale slithers through the cracks because he has powerful friends. Hale isn’t likely to
volunteer any information on his own, much less turn himself in and,
unless/until he is arrested and charged, the illusions will continue.
Wednesday won’t change much. Sadly, the deck is stacked and, shuffle
though we may, Aberdeenians will probably leave the courtroom Wednesday
wondering aloud, “How’d they DO that, anyway?” Let
me ‘splain in advance just how this trick works. When you own the police department AND the Judge, justice for other
folks vanishes without a trace. To make matters worse, if you happen to
be well positioned with the NAACP, an organization of some import in the
diverse world of State politics, you are in the unique position of
wielding a good bit of potential weight in elections to come. (Another
day we’ll chat more about the NAACP. For now though, and based upon
the award recently bestowed upon former Obama Green Jobs Czar and
self-avowed communist Van Jones by that organization, I’ve come to
understand that NAACP probably means “National Association for the
Advancement of Communist Punks.”) Despite years of pleading, we in Meanwhile, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,
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