It's all politics when you play the politics game.

Well, Mayor McCheese, back with 40% of the vote, gets my fair city of residence on Fark again.

/ Got to move.

...and I'm just going to throw this in here for anyone who can't be bothered to read that article:

Mayor Ryan is an attorney. A former public defender, no less. He's missed four court dates, two of which he claims are because they mailed the summons to an old address in Buffalo which he apparently never bothered to update after carpetbagging his way into Binghamton.

I and the majority of city resident would be extremely satisfied if the judge jailed this crapwizard for contempt.

LadyBinky: Gonna put that on your van?

No, there's already a van like that, so then it wouldn't be any fun for either of us anymore.

freewill: ...and I'm just going to throw this in here for anyone who can't be bothered to read that article:

Mayor Ryan is an attorney. A former public defender, no less. He's missed four court dates, two of which he claims are because they mailed the summons to an old address in Buffalo which he apparently never bothered to update after carpetbagging his way into Binghamton.

I and the majority of city resident would be extremely satisfied if the judge jailed this crapwizard for contempt.

It's not uncommon for people to miss court dates because of important necessities. I'd say being the mayor of a city qualifies for that.

This is one of those cases where I wouldn't want to take a side one way or the other unless I lived there. Absent knowledge of local politics, it's more or less equally plausible that a corrupt police force is sticking it to a mayor who crossed them or that a corrupt mayor thinks he's above the law or that both sides are corrupt and this is just a turf war.

freewill seems to have an opinion and seems to be local, so I personally will defer to him until someone else steps to say they live there too and he's full of it.

Skunkarific: Corrupt courts mail tickets to wrong addresses intentionally all the time. I wouldn't put up with it either. And yes, mayoral duties DO supersede bullshiat tickets. And yes, it's probably politically motivated....Either you're a hazard or not, If you're a hazard, lets do something like an arrest, like a drunk driving situation. Even a mayor knows tickets are bullshiat.

While I get what you're saying, you may not realize that Mayor Ryan is a little, ah, different. If you read the article, you'll see that in this instance, he finally hired an attorney on Thursday, then on Friday claimed that his attorney was on vacation and used this as his latest excuse for why he could not proceed. He's just deliberately evading the hearing which he has been demanding for the last 15 months.

Years before this, while teaching law, he actually decided to flee a stop for running a red light while telling a Vestal officer "you don't have the authority to stop me!", then led him on a chase before running into his house while apparently warning that officer that he was a "karate expert". (According to a writeup in a paper at the school where he taught, he later claimed that he had been "frustrated" because the police were supposedly repeatedly accusing him of being someone else, and that's why he fled.)

Even before his first election, there used to be some nutty guy who followed politicians with a camera here, and he had an amusing video of a heavily intoxicated candidate Ryan leaving a campaign event in his car, preparing to drive drunk, then, when confronted, warning this guy (again) that he's a "karate expert". It culminated in Ryan calling the police on himself, the officer taking him aside and explaining something to him in private, and Ryan walking away up the street without his car. The popular interpretation is that the officer had to explain to him that he was, in fact, too drunk, and would fail the test if he took it.

If it's not one wacky thing, it's another. Last month, the city council unanimously revoked his authority to put things on the side of city hall because he was using it to put up privately funded political issue signage, and he's been in the news creating public disturbances by demanding free entry to charity fundraisers, then going ape when he's refused.

I say this to paint a fuller picture of the guy for you. Whatever he is, he's not some moral crusader against "bullshiat tickets", regardless of the virtue of that position.

ArkAngel: It's not uncommon for people to miss court dates because of important necessities. I'd say being the mayor of a city qualifies for that.

Going to court is an important necessity.

thosejaunes: from Binghamton area; getting kick

Although I don't particularly follow local politics and don't reside in Binghamton proper, friends of mine who pay attention consider him to have been a good mayor, in stark contrast to the one prior, who was widely considered to be a corrupt wheeler-dealer (involved in some scandal I can't remember the details of).

I do respect your differing opinion, and I don't want it to be about partisan issues. By "carpetbagging", I was referring to the popular criticism that he purchased property in the city for the express purpose of grabbing an open political opportunity in a city in which he did not live. In retrospect, I was overly irritable when I checked Fark earlier and shouldn't have used that particular word. It *was* unfair of me.

That said, it seems pretty obvious here that Ryan is doing this on purpose. He has a recurring problem with traffic laws, appears to be deliberately wasting the court's time, and is lamely trying to accuse public officials in another town of being in on some sort of conspiracy against him. Even your post seems to assume (by acknowledging that cops may have nothing else to do there) that he was, in fact, speeding. Given that we both seem to accept that premise and that we both seem to agree that the JC cops would nail anybody on that (rather than just the mayor), what principle could he possibly be standing up for? He hasn't exactly articulated one.

If he thinks he didn't do it, fine, but that means actually getting a court date and arguing it. He seems to have time to find new and inventive ways to drag this out, so he certainly had time to deal with this in the conventional way. He didn't feel the need to hire an attorney for his last four appearances, so why hire one who happens to be on vacation now, except to deliberately antagonize the court?

He may well be a nice enough guy in private life, but without putting too fine a point on it, I do not believe that it is plausible that all of these other people are at the root of his problems when the only common factor in all of these incidents is Matt himself. The guy is apparently a powerful drama magnet.

craxyd: Dunno about where you live but don't most law enforcement agencies have a tendency to get dollar signs in their eyes & issue tickets when anyone (other than a fellow cop of course) is driving 16MPH over the posted speed limit?

ftfy. On an east coast interstate, going less than 75 is frequently suicidal.

LittleBlondeJug: craxyd: thosejaunes: Binghamton cops usually have better things to do than pull you over for a 46 in a 30. Johnson City cops (and cops in the other surrounding towns) on the other hand do not, and will take any opportunity to fark with your shait because they have very little else to do or worry about.


Dunno about where you live but don't most law enforcement agencies have a tendency to get upset & issue tickets when anyone (other than a fellow cop of course) is driving 16MPH over the posted speed limit?

I think that if the person that they pull over is the mayor, they generally would not issue a ticket.

/also if he is a karate expert

Weren't you in jail for 6 months for DUI or some shiat?

LittleBlondeJug: I don't want to derail this thread into a personal discussion - so you've got mail.

Gotcha. [taken off thread]

HarryPottersStuntDouble: Oh, and who brings a lawyer to argue a speeding ticket?

According to all the lawyers who sent me shiat in the mail, everybody.

/I could understand bringing a lawyer if the points would put you over the limit and you'd get suspended.

HarryPottersStuntDouble: You know what? How about you just pay the stupid ticket. You've used up your "fairness" points for the year.

It sort of warms my heart to see how many of us from the area there actually are on Fark. Way down in the cockles, or least, my general cockle region.