The 0.25% Disrupts Council Meeting

I attended the Whatcom County Council meeting last night, at which the Occupy Bellingham Borg had a little tantrum. Immediately following a couple of public hearings, and the public forum section of the meeting, the lead conformist stood up and yelled, "Mic Check!", and then proceeded to read his little manifesto, as the other conformists dutifully bleated out each line in response. Most of the council, to their credit, simply left the chambers after the gavel failed to restore order. After their little charade, the 0.25% left the council chambers.

I never heard what the 0.25% were complaining about. I was distracted by my own thoughts of, "What a bunch of narcissistic losers!", but a remark by councilman Weimer later indicated that they were upset about the idea that the council were considering moving the public forum to the end of the council meetings. As it turns out, the council were considering nothing of the sort. They simply wanted to add a rule that would allow them to switch the order of the public hearings and public forum depending on how many people were waiting to speak. This was an attempt to allow some staff to go home earlier, and to make the hearings more convenient for the citizen speakers. But the 0.25% will never know, because they didn't bother to stay for the council's discussion on the topic. Ironically, the 0.25% had the opportunity to line up to express their concerns about the proposed council rule changes in the open forum, but they chose anarchy instead.

Note: The Occupy Bellingham Borg refer to themselves as "The 99%", but my calculations based on the turnout (about 200) at various stunts around Bellingham (a city of population ca. 80,000) yields 0.25%. Using their arithmetic, The Bellingham Tea Party would be "The 725%". Ludicrous, isn't it?