Mark Kruzan: A “Convenient” and Hypocritical Civil Libertarian

Mayor Kruzan, an arrogant pork and patronage politico whose “political career is steeped in the unvarnished graft and corruption that permeates Indiana state government,” is a “convenient” and hypocritical civil libertarian who specializes in speech-chilling tactics against his critics.
http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2007/02/11/8154

His recent, high-minded anti-censorship remarks regarding the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign belie a shrewd career politician, who for his own political safety and longevity—i.e., promoting his public image in a so-called progressive college town where it’s easy and smart, if not de rigueur, to denounce THIS type of impersonal censorship—distances himself from one of the best things about Bloomington, i.e. Bloomington Transit (BT), while flagrantly violating the civil rights of individuals and organizations in Bloomington who have had the temerity to criticize him publicly.

Indeed, Kruzan, who since taking office in 2004 has quieted many potential dissenters through time-honored and strategic disbursements of municipal monies, resources, and favors to scores of needy nonprofits on whose grateful boards these otherwise opinionated folks sit, has the distinction of having aggressively silenced his most vocal critics—in plain sight in a community where there are probably more constitutional law scholars per capita than in any other city in the country— in a bold move on February 14, 2005, better known as the “Valentine’s Day First Amendment Massacre.”

In an bizarre twist of irony, the local, “progressive” alternative paper, which gleefully described the mayor’s arguably unlawful conduct on this day of infamy as a “regrooving lesson in civic tact,” has chronicled for posterity Kruzan’s full-throttled retaliation against the president of a nonprofit business advocacy organization…and against the organization itself, the board of which the mayor used, through intimidation, as his proxy.

[For the unbelievers who don't think that fact trumps fiction every time, just take a gander at the Bloomington Alternative piece...with its Alice in Wonderland title and expressions of undiluted pleasure in the blatant deprivation of an individual's—and an organization’s—free speech rights through the mayor’s machinations: "Out to the Woodshed" - http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com/node/7712 ]

The nonprofit president’s BIG MISTAKE? He simply had the guts to speak truth to power and criticize the mayor in an article which served as the local newspaper’s faint-hearted attempt to provide a critique of Kruzan’s disastrously incompetent first year in office.
(“Kruzan’s first year gets mixed evaluation” http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2005/02/14/news.0214-HT-A1_PJR4…)

After sending the nonprofit’s board a threatening email, “objecting to” its president’s legitimate and protected speech and ominously reciting the several ways that the organization might jeopardize government-bestowed resources and collaboration, Kruzan mobilized his 24/7 SWAT team of operatives in an effort to get his critic fired and/or punished. (NOTE: This email is available to all citizens through a public records request.)

Long story, short: the critic, nearing retirement and pressured by his threatened but spineless board to write a letter of apology and retraction/explanation that was published over a week later in the same paper, was “merely” humiliated and clearly “dissuaded”—along with the advocacy organization and the rest of the business community—from exercising his/their 1st Amendment rights at any time in the future.

And the local newspaper’s response (which struts the inviolability of its First Amendment rights at ITS convenience); did it run with this story for the first big headline of the year: “Mayor Kruzan violates free speech rights of community leader!”? Maybe a cautionary editorial on the sacred right of citizens—and the paper’s recruited sources— to criticize their elected officials without fear of retaliation? No, nada, not a peep. Just the “graciousness”—which it extends to nearly all of its readers—of publishing the apology letter of the victim.
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2005/02/23/digitalcity.letters….

The INABC is on the right side, and BT will be too after its new attorneys can work out an agreement with ACLU of Indiana. The BT board is most likely simply in lawsuit shock–and the mayor’s trumped up theatrics haven’t helped.

The INABC would be naive to think that in the Bloomington community, the BT’s response was primarily “anti-atheist.” On the contrary, BT is most likely “anti-hate” and fearful that “giving in” will affect or end its much-needed advertising revenue-stream. Why? Because a concession on its ham-handed policy would arguably open up advertising to other forms of protected speech, including “hate speech.”

Bloomington has the dubious distinction of having been targeted by both the Phelps family from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka and a local knock-off of vitriolic anti-gay hatemongers who, in addition to other haters, might likely be next in line to use BT busses as a canvas for their toxic messages.

And no question about it: BT would disallow advertising altogether—and the Bloomington community would likely demand it do so—before BT would permit the advertising of poisonous hate speech on city busses.

Justice will prevail in the INABC case–but the outcome will have everything to do with BT’s being educated by its counsel and ACLU-Indiana and nothing to do with a buffoon of a mayor who has nothing to offer a great transit company but a history of hypocrisy.

P.S.

For anyone reading this comment and wondering just how Kruzan’s conduct differs from former Gov. Blagojevich’s similarly tawdry behavior (where Blago is recorded threatening the Chicago Tribune that it’ll have to fire editorial staff critical of the governor if the paper ever wants to obtain badly needed government financing on a Wrigley Field deal), the answer might be: Kruzan actually SUCCEEDED in getting his critic silenced, punished…and nearly fired by the critic’s employer, a beneficiary of taxpayer dollars.

The consequences of this eerily similar behavior by two imperious public officials could not be more starkly different: Blagojevich is charged with a Title 18, Sec 666, bribery and corruption felony by federal DA Patrick Fitzgerald; Mark Kruzan gets a “thumbs-up” in an article in Bloomington’s alternative newspaper, acquiescence from the mainstream, independent, and campus media, and, to all appearances, nearly total obeisance and/or indifference from a complacent and complicit public–as well as from the silenced victims of the “Valentine’s Day First Amendment Massacre”–for the last four years.

But all is not sunny for Bloomington’s Teflon mayor: Although the time period for filing a 1st Amendment complaint has expired, the statute of limitations for a Sec 666 violation is 5 years. There’s plenty of time for an independent investigation by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana…and it’s long overdue.

And a nice touch of poetic justice should an investigation ensue? The services of the City’s legal department, which has been mightily overworked due to the mayor and his minions’ extraordinarily poor judgment and arrogant behavior during the last 5-plus years, would be strictly OFF-LIMITS to Kruzan, now and in the future, on this issue.

I can assure you that we do not censor any comments unless they are obviously spam. Otherwise we approve every single comment, as is evident from the many negative comments we receive (but nonetheless post) from religious folks. I do not know why your earlier comment was cut off, but it was likely due to something like malformed HTML, a bug in Wordpress, or you may have just not pasted the whole comment.

While I encourage everyone to keep comments constructive and respectful, you are certainly welcome to say anything you like here.

Mark Kruzan was elected mayor of Bloomington in Nov, 2003 and took office on Jan 1, 2004.

Also, my point is the hypocrisy here. I’m ok if busses won’t run ads for established churches too.

All my best to you. What a great country!

Lack of belief does not constitute a belief in itself. I can believe that gravity doesn’t exist. Therefore accepting that gravity exists is not a matter of belief (because it can be proved to exist). The onus is on the believer to show that gravity does not exist. Same way with god or whatever supernatural mumbo jumbo. Atheists refuse to believe until adequate evidence in support of a belief is presented. For another take on this see Russell’s teapot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot