I have trolls in high places
Public records requests are really so much fun. I don’t know why more people do not make a hobby out of them!
Though generally lacking in chutzpah, swiftness, or creativity, public officials never seem to run out of ways to cleverly restate one of their key concerns with the world: “How dare these peasants question my authority with inconvenient facts!”
Getting to see those many variations is one of the underrated joys of a public records request.
Here is an actual email from an actual elected official, sent to me in response to an actual public records request that I submitted.
I just had to ask for all of the emails about me. It really is some fun reading, especially the ones written by elected officials who have watched too many episodes of West Wing and who think their public email accounts are confidential simply because they add that word “CONFIDENTIAL,” to the subject line. Perhaps you are beginning to see why I started Project Accountability and how much fun it is gearing up to be.
My favorite new troll (mentioned in yesterday’s email) has reappeared in the public records requests.
In this email, my troll a.k.a. the former Teachers Union President is writing to the current School Board President to form an alliance against someone who he seems to consider the baddest of hombres — lil’ ole me.
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SUBJECT: Re: CONFIDENTIAL: Grading related to mask wearing
FROM: Timothy Gearhart
TO: Christopher Arend
DATE: 18/02/2022 15:58
Chris, have you had a chance to research this dude? He’s a paid troublemaker who writes books and gives lectures. Beware! (I’m behind you on this issues)
Tim
Timothy J. Gearhart
PRJUSD Trustee
*******
What, by the way, was this man’s actual complaint with me?
The subject line reveals that.
If you have an ounce of sense in you, you won’t like what you are about to hear.
Several public officeholders were frustrated with me because I caught a handful of teachers behaving dishonorably by assigning lower grades to brave high school students who dared to stand up to them by not wearing the face mask.
As shocking as that may sound, that is in fact what happened.
The students got their grades marked down for it — as much as 10% it looks like. They were not graded for their academic prowess, but for disobediently wearing masks. And the school board, to this day, has not fully addressed the issue of the “Masks for grades scandal” publicly.
Can you imagine what kind of a no-goodnik you have to be as a high school teacher to pick on a kid for something so petty as not wearing a mask correctly? And to then go so far as to vindictively take it out on his grades and affect his chances of getting into college? Those are more like stories I hear from old days of communist Czechoslovakia. Something told me that no-goodniks like these teachers needed to be outed. Someone had to stand up for those brave maskless high schoolers.
Right?
Well, it just so happens those brave maskless high schoolers and I crossed each other’s paths one day, and since then, I have had their back.
And in my true, over-the-top fashion (which some people who have come to know and love me refer to as “Classic Stevo Overkill”), I didn’t just mention it to a board member or two before dropping the issue, no, I took it further. I actually sent out press releases to perhaps 30 or 40 media sources about what had taken place.
I, then, made phone calls and did interviews.
I also authored three opinion pieces in local newspapers.
I called for the teachers to be fired.
And I called for the complacent board members involved to resign.
Oh yeah . . . And I posted the dodgy teachers’ salaries online too.
Yes, I posted their salaries online and included that in the press release as well.
The mask-nazi teachers basically made three times as much as the hard working parents whose kids they were grading based on their masking disobedience.
Here, look, I’ll do it again:
Mask-nazi Spanish teacher Jennifer Fuller, in the most recent year on record (2019), made total pay and benefits of $118,595.77.
Deborah McPherson made total pay and benefits of $102,698.80.
Angela Logan, a teacher of history and economics, made total pay and benefits of $87,018.80.
Geoffrey Land, the Critical Race Theory and Ethnic Studies teacher made total pay and benefits of $115,368.99.
Joshua Gwiazda, the pottery teacher, made total pay and benefits of $101,958.41.
Alexander Engel, not as enviable of a numerical figure, a teacher of Social Science and Physical Education, made total pay and benefits of $10,028.41.
Those first five are some nice salaries for that area, and you would think teachers being paid such generous salaries would not act like ingrates to the public that pay those salaries.
And I am not doxxing them, either. It is already information that is in the public record. It is just part of the public record that the bought-and-paid-for media so often ignores — the massive salaries and benefits paid to people who work for your government and who have total contempt for you, for your family, and for the way you live your life.
Also, I did a few other things that made it really hard for the school board to ignore the issue, but I will leave that off the record.
Again, that is gently called Classic Stevo Overkill by some who know me. It took me many years to accept that part of myself. I just tend to go a little further than what others would say is needed. It is how am. I like to be complete in my endeavors. Once I came to accept that part of myself as a feature rather than a flaw, things got a lot easier.
You probably have a few of those in your life. In the blink of an eye, you could probably make your life a lot easier if you would just stop calling some of your unique facets “flaws,” and started accepting them as “features” — an intentional piece of the design, a deliberate part of the plan. Isn't that a refreshing idea to think of your so-called flaw as something that could have been placed in you deliberately!
And I might also ask, “What are you waiting for?” What’s taking you so long to start accepting your features for what they are?
I know Classic Stevo Overkill can be a lot of fun for others if they are in the right mood, and not as much fun in the wrong mood. And if you mean to be my enemy, oh boy, do you have something coming, for not only do I have that feature, but I grew up in the world of Chicagoland politics, which Sean Connery, so aptly described in the film The Untouchables as “the Chicago Way” — an exhausting battle of one-upsmanship. This is one reason, I think so many people in Chicago are so uncommonly polite to each other. They recognize that brutal political battles there get so very ugly if you can not resolve differences politely.
And as for my troll . . . What a whiner this teachers’ union twerp is.
It is going to be fun to help chase him out of office.
Truthfully, though, I like every word he wrote in his “Confidential,” letter I obtained.
I am happy that someone in this cold world sees me for who I am: “a paid trouble maker who writes books and gives lectures. Beware!”
I should probably send the guy a thank you note.
Instead, I will just post a link to my brand new supporter page.
The best thing to do when a troll badmouths you, is to raise money for expanding those same virtuous efforts that got under the skin of the no-goodniks to begin with.
Tap here to support more of that impactful work.
Allan Stevo