Ballot Proposition Versus Ballot Proposition

Last year Les Jamieson's group, despite a valiant effort, came up about 70% short of their goal of 100,000 signatures for a NYC ballot initiative. Not to worry, Les was confident that the signatures already gathered could be augmented with more in 2009, and thus the initiative would be on the ballot in that year.

The latest update on that is the thrilling news that they were at 30,000 signatures on January 28. Say what? I thought that was how many they had as of last August when they gave up on 2008!

But it gets better. Carl Person, an attorney in New York, has started up his own ballot initiative for a 9-11 Troof commission. (And no, I don't understand the significance of the "Re-al Investigation" bit on that website either).

Person's commission has some advantages over Jamieson's. For starters, he's not deluded enough to think the commission can be funded from private individuals; he thinks that NYC can afford to fund at least part of it out of projected surpluses in the city's budget. No kidding, Person found an article from 2006 that projected surpluses in the NYC budget in the coming years and wants to tap that. Also, Person plans to sue a lot of people and thus generate income for the commission.

Commissioners? Person plans to name a selection panel of three people who have published a book, film, magazine article or website about 9-11. Carl, baby, I'm ready!

And I didn't have to search long for evidence that Carl is every bit the fruitcake that Les is; on his home page he has videos of two interviews with Harold Channer and one with Paula Gloria.