{"id":2141,"date":"2011-04-22T13:21:43","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T17:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/equal-opportunity-criticizer-john-s-quarterman.html"},"modified":"2011-04-22T13:21:43","modified_gmt":"2011-04-22T17:21:43","slug":"equal-opportunity-criticizer-john-s-quarterman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/equal-opportunity-criticizer-john-s-quarterman.html","title":{"rendered":"Equal opportunity criticizer &mdash;John S. Quarterman"},"content":{"rendered":"Leigh Touchton\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/public-criticism-leigh-touchton.html\">\nremarked:<\/a>\n<blockquote>\n&#8230;apparently Yost thinks your criticism of people not staying is something\nhe can use to good effect to nullify the need to publicly address\ncitizen complaints.\n<\/blockquote>\nWell, good luck to him: it doesn&#8217;t seem to be working that way.\n<p>\nI think I&#8217;m an equal opportunity criticizer.\nRemember\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/what-will-you-do-john-s-quarterman-vcc-7-april-2011.html\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i3.ytimg.com\/vi\/ZQzoVXq3DhY\/default.jpg\"><\/a>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/what-will-you-do-john-s-quarterman-vcc-7-april-2011.html\">\nI pointed out that the council is not a law enforcement body<\/a>\nand gave a recent example of that.\nAnd I pointed out that the mayor of little old Gretna\nput out a proclamation saying no biomass\nand the great city of Valdosta could go ahead and do that\ninstead of waiting for somebody else to make the decision for them.\nAnd yes,\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/04\/city-managers-report-and-council-comments-vcc-7-april-2011.html\">\nI criticized the protesters for not staying.<\/a>\nI&#8217;m not surprised various people choose to ignore part of what I said\nand pick up on other parts; life&#8217;s like that.\n<p>\nI understand that some people don&#8217;t like to take a strong position\nin public.\nClearly not everybody has to be an advocate for or against any given topic.\n<p>\nHowever, my opinion is that anybody who runs for elected office should be willing\nto say in public what their opinion is.\nSure, sometimes it&#8217;s good to say &#8220;I&#8217;m thinking about it&#8221; or &#8220;I&#8217;m studying it&#8221;\nor even better &#8220;I&#8217;d like to know more about X&#8221;:\nthat could promote a dialog.\nEven &#8220;I&#8217;m working on it behind the scenes&#8221; would be a useful public statement.\nBut elected officials refusing to take any position is ridiculous,\nand I see nothing wrong with laughing out loud at the ridiculous.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leigh Touchton remarked: &#8230;apparently Yost thinks your criticism of people not staying is something he can use to good effect to nullify the need to publicly address citizen complaints. Well, good luck to him: it doesn&#8217;t seem to be working that way. I think I&#8217;m an equal opportunity criticizer. Remember I pointed out that the [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,120,48,20,21,22,3,54,4689,4596],"tags":[344,8721,4020,4690,290,8700],"class_list":["post-2141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-code-enforcement","category-law","category-planning","category-politics","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vcc-7-april-2011","category-vcc-21-april-2011","tag-deidra-white","tag-elections","tag-leigh-touchton","tag-public-office","tag-robert-yost","tag-transparency"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-yx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}