RMN FLAIMING IDIOT AWARD V

It is time for the fifth RMN Flaming Idiot Award.  This is an award given to individuals who have distinguished themselves with behavior that demonstrates an IQ with a decimal point in the front.  The type of individual who might have a family tree that doesn’t fork and only possess one set of DNA.  As we all know these people are everywhere and especially in positions of power.
           
            The fifth RMN Flaming Idiot Award goes to Kevin Rulkowski who is the Planning and Technology Director of Oak Park, MI.  A local resident planted a vegetable garden instead of grass after her front lawn had been torn up by the replacement of a sewer line.  Did the bumbling bureaucrats of this Michigan municipality praise their resident for raising their own food and being more independent?  Did they want to use this fierce self-reliant individual as an example of how to turn a lawn into a freedom garden?  No, these dim-witted governmental goons are actually seeking legal action to end the vegetable gardening of their tax-paying citizen.  She may now face 93 days in jail.  Let’s hope the tomatoes in this garden ripen in time to be thrown at the people who govern this place.

            When the sewer work was done on her front lawn it was nothing more than a mound of brown dirt.  Julie Bass decided to fix her lawn by placing grass there and also put five large planter boxes.  She is growing such things as fresh basil, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes and more.  Ms. Bass never assumed she was doing anything wrong.  The intention wasn’t to upset anyone and since it didn’t seem to bother anyone else’s property, she felt the vegetable garden wouldn’t be a problem.
            As with all good things the government doesn’t like individuals with individual thoughts and free thinking ideas.  Just because she owns the house and pays property taxes I suppose they feel that’s not good enough to have a vegetable garden.  I bet they feel if you let one resident have a vegetable garden then you’ll have one who will want to grow redwood trees and then the next thing you know somebody wants to start planting bamboo and have a tropical theme in their yard and before you know it somebody wants to start a rain forest.  This could cause endangered species to move in and then there goes the neighborhood.
            The city sent out a code enforcement official who warned Julie Bass that she had to move the vegetable garden from the front of her house because no vegetables were allowed in the front yard.  Ms. Bass felt she had done nothing wrong.  It must have upset the governmental officials terribly to find out she can read.  Ms. Bass felt she was in the right according to the city code.  Still these pieces of governmental dead wood gave her a ticket and charged her with a misdemeanor.  Huh?  Someone actually got paid to drive to a residents house and give them a ticket for a vegetable garden?  Was this the one big time during this person’s career when they actually got to write someone a ticket?  I bet they were also upset because it probably took time away from playing their favorite video games at the office. 
            The city code states that all unpaved portions of a site shall be planted with grass or ground cover or shrubbery or other suitable live plant material.  As far as Julie Bass is concerned tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are suitable live plant material.  If she had planted marijuana or opium poppy plants they may have a case for unsuitable plants, but who, outside of the Oak Park, MI’s government doesn’t find vegetable suitable?
            Dan Rulkowski appears to be an individual who you may have to wear sunglasses around him least you be blinded by his brilliance.  (Mr. Rulkowski if you’re reading this the previous sentence is sarcasm and if you don’t believe me you can look it up in the dictionary).  This individual who lives off of taxpayer money made the bold statement that if you look up what suitable is in Webster’s dictionary, it will say common.  He also said if you look around in any other community to a front yard what’s common is a nice grass yard with beautiful trees and bushes and flowers.  Really?
            Unfortunately for Mr. Rulkowski most of us can read and also know how use a dictionary.  I do have those skills and looked up the word suitable in the dictionary.  It states the definition of suitable is “Right or appropriate for a particular person, purpose, or situation.”  Such as it suitable for the government to punish someone for growing a vegetable garden on property they own?  I would like to point out that the word “common” is no a part of the definition.  I’m sure if more people didn’t know how to read the government’s job would be so much easier.
            It’s not easy being an individual when government wants you to conform.  As Americans we value our freedom and know there are those in government who are willing to take it away.  I hope a judge hears this case who has enough common sense to realize real criminals are individuals who rape, rob, murder and hurt people.  They don’t plant vegetable gardens. 

UPDATE – The Oak Park City authorities have temporarily dropped the case against Julie Bass.  Unfortunately they seem to be obsessed with putting her into jail for 93 days.  Now they say she owns an unlicensed dog.  Her dogs are fully licensed as the city is just trying to reinstate an earlier charge that Julie Bass has complied with.  This is proof a stanch flaming idiot has no boundaries.
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