Friday, September 21, 2007

Angleton's chief demagogue, Dennis Bonnen, steps into affordable housing hubbub

Sophisticated news media consumers know they have to look for the code words to know what's really going on.

While the words "poor" or "low income" did not appear once in this story in the local paper, the words "affordable housing" were prominently featured.

An "affordable housing" project has elicited much criticism in the county seat of Angleton.

The plan is to build an "affordable housing" project over by a middle school near the intersection of Hwy 288 and Hwy 35, but State Rep. Dennis Bonnen is leading the charge against it, chastizing the builder for "dividing the community."

Bonnen is siding with the powers-that-be, per usual, after looking at all the political angles. Grasshopper has learned well. When emotions need fanning, go to the demagogue card and blow hard.

Some of the folks quoted in the above-referenced story said they're opposed to the project cause teachers at the school wouldn't feel safe to stay after-hours at the school, and because traffic's too heavy there already.

The traffic argument is a lie. We've been down that stretch of road plenty of times. Furthermore, if that one-horse town can stand anything, it's more traffic (as well as some more people buying stuff and paying sales taxes, etc.)

So far as teachers not feeling safe to stay after school cause affordable housing might be located next door, put a cop over there if there's a problem.

But why are you assuming there'll be a problem. Cause some less-than-wealthy "outsiders" might be moving to town?

Some Angleton residents piped up to say the town does indeed need more affordable housing.

But the nub of the matter had to come from the project builder himself:

“Fear of the unknown is the worst kind of fear" ...


It took a guy from Cleveland, Ohio, (an outsider!) to boil it all down.

1 comment:

PDiddie said...

Those damned poor people.