Comments on City Hall Cracking Down on Council Members' Blogs

Dear Mr. Conlin,

Pull your head out of your ass. More information is good. Fuck off.

Sincerely,

Seattle Resident

While Conlin's at it, maybe he can bar candidates from accepting donations at any time other than when it's an election year for them? Except that would also be unconstitutional...

New memo from Richard Conlin:

It is very important for the citizens of Seattle to view Richard Conlin as the most popular council member.

To this end, any attempt by any other council member to create, maintain, or inform a constituency is contrary to the mission of the city council and is not allowed.

Blogs are fucking stupid

one more body on the foundation of barack HUSSEINS empire funny how clinton supporters keep dying and they say hillary had a body count but it doesn't compare to what barry has been up to no one in the media will ask questions because their still firmly in his camp because their sexist hillary is the only one who can beat mccain in november delegates you still have time to avoid the end of the democratic party because we will overcome and beat hussein no matter how many of us he kills do you think he had rezko do it I think he did or one of his muslim buddies at crazy wrights chruch did you know he killed hos commanding officer in vietnam go read no quarter for the scoop but no one in the sexist media will report on it we wont let barry steal the nomination from our girl it is time for a woman a woman who will put this country right because men have made a mess of it all thats what i support hillary and i cant stand to see misgynistic men attack her for being a woman stupid man world slick barry is going to send the party into ruin in my day we didnt let his type get that far no matter how mayn of us they killed eighteen million votes cant be wrong we wont let the media and the racist dnc and howard dean and the liberals steal this nomination from our girl

Limiting Councilmember communications is completely insane. Nick Licata has sent out mass emails for years. And before that, Margaret Pageler mailed out her "Pageler's Pages," which kept supporters informed. Why on earth would Councilmembers be permitted to communicate to supporters and constituents only via official City channels??

I'm not sure that there is a Constitutional way for Conlin to achieve this anyway. Could we focus on actual city issues, Mr. Conlin, e.g. sidewalks, public safety, etc.?

Prohibition on cross-linking is standard, e.g. for members of Congress ... but even that's problematic, since properly identify links are the best way to disambiguate office vs campaign sites.

Limitation of personal sites? Very touchy. Restriction on campaign sites after election? It's always (or almost always) fundraising season.

We'll wait to see how Councilmember Burgess explains that Council Prez Conlin is "the good guy" here - otherwise, we'd really hate to see any clamping down on what has been just barely a tiny step in the direction of open communication through blogging ... On the other side of the local governmental fence, not only is County Executive Ron Sims blogging, with a very personal aspect to the writings we've seen so far, he's even using Twitter, and we would personally love to see city councilmembers head in that direction too, rather than trying to get all "official." (Our favorite government blogging moment of the entire year so far was what Sally Clark wrote while she was "acting mayor" - even though her blog unfortunately is stuck on a city platform without comments or even permalinks.)
http://www.seattle.gov/council/clark/blog/

Conlin is way over reaching. I thought the whole idea of a legislative council was to promote and discuss ideas. It really is not his place to determine how his collegeagues relate to their constituents.
Having said that I would have two qualifiers. Private efforts should be reported like any other campaign expediture.
No city information should be released via private blogs that has not been publicly announced by the city.

Perhaps a 20 cent per post Blog Tax would change people's habits and cut down on wasteful blogging?

The Stranger would have no objection to the concept, I'm sure.

This sounds like another case of a common disease among Pacific Northwest elected officials: must-be-unified-and-on-the-same-team syndrome. It expresses itself as a compulsive need to smother any councilmember who dares talk independently with the public without going through official channels. I've seen it in many other cities around here too.

Imagine if this idea had come from the Mayor?

dumb. totally unenforceable.

Conky "Greenie" Conlin is a Stalinst at heart - bring in the police state to check your garbage - censor elected officials from the President of the Council so at to do what?

Control freak to the max.

He is running for The Mayor. What a boon to Nickels, Conlin is scary.

Much of what council folk might communicate is NOT at all City business, ie. campaigns, constituent questions of a general nature, personal questions and friendly stuff, pumping events, maybe jokes or satire or short stories and travel, etc.

Get a clue Conky.

And it is not even the business of the city to play Big Brother Monitor - leave that the the NSA and CIA - be sure Conlin will monitor if he does not get his way

AND WHERE THE FUCK IS TOM CARR TO TELL HIM IT IS NOT CONSTITUTIONAL - ANOTHER BIG STUPID FLAKE IN CITY GOVT.

Dan, find a candidate to run against inept Mr. Carr.

Bring in the ACLU - many important issues here.

First free speech under some bizarre constipated Conlin theory and then yours and mine under the next weird theory.

Undermining net posts, how very Chinese, such timing.

Remember Burgess is a law and order cop freak and as the newbie well armed with PR skills, is sucking up to all his colleagues at this point.

He opposes nothing, building favors in the mutual nut scratching favor box which is the symbol of this pathetic council

You are concerned - post to the ACLU

Mid all the chaos of this council, this takes the cake

Let's organize the priority project for them - can't do it for their own sake

@11: It's hereinafter called a Blog FEE, not a Blog Tax. You don't _have_ to pay it!

@15: Tom Carr is really busy checking that the eight uses of "tax" aren't mixed up with the 42 instances of "fee" in the new "Bag Czar" legislation.

And meanwhile, Burgess is telling his blogreaders that they should discount opinions other than his:

"Remember to read comments posted here in opposition to the voluntary green bag fees, especially when they use nearly identical language, as likely coming from an orchestrated campaign led by the chemical and plastics industry."

Maybe they don't phrase it that way in the dot-gov world.

@6: Loved your reference to "Pageler's Pages."

Liberal city my ass. Seattle is run by a bunch of closeted sociocultural conservatives.

The rest of the Council ought to tell Conlin to scrap this - and the ACLU should sue the bejeezus out of him if they don't.

Conlin once referred to himself as a "communitarian", which isn't quite a socialist, but it's close (as I understand it, you get all of the intrusive paternalism without the economic controls and/or social safety net).