our mayor may not be in prison like detroit's but he is still too obsessed with his conjugal visits!!

Man, if Michigan is scoring on KC, that is a sad state of affairs. Never has suck been so solely concentrated in a single place as it is in the state of Michigan. Cars, sports (especially those lowly bastard weasels…errr wolverines), unemployment, Mikey Moore…not a single good thing ANYWHERE!

In fact, I have been trying for years to find a single reason as to why they shouldn’t be thrown from the Union and no one has been able to give a plausible reason.

For those who choose to support the Mayor and his wife at City Hall, let's be clear on the facts. Gloria is not at City Hall "on her own time and own dime" as one of the commenters said. The city is having to defend the mayor and itself against this discrimination lawsuit. She is currently on OUR DIME!!! Taxpayer money is being used to deal with a lawsuit caused by her actions.

And this idea that they are just victims is ridiculous -- like there is some massive conspiracy against the mayor and his wife. We are in the middle of an economic crisis in the city, crime is on the rise, our neighborhoods are falling down. Who's got the time to conspire?

One last thought...this summer, every employee at City Hall had to go through diversity and sexual discrimination training. What person working at City Hall didn't bother to attend -- Gloria Squitiro. The only person at city hall being sued for discrimination didn't have to go, because she's just a volunteer. The irony...

I voted for Funkhouser and gave money to his campaign and I wish I could have both back. If they wanted to serve as a team, they should have campaigned as a team. I voted for "him", not "them". The mayor's office is not his to do what he wants with it, it belongs to the people of this city and he is embarrassing all of us over and over and over again (I'm still angry about the Frances Semler crap). Mayor, I think you've got weeks, not months, to resolve this in a professional manner and realize that nepotism is nepotism and, that as the perpetrator of the nepotism, you aren't going to see it as a problem because it's not a problem for you - it's a problem for those around you and those who elected you.

Oh, here we freaking go! Seriously, you KCMO people are the biggest whacktards I know. You get all high and mighty over this silly mayor’s wife non-issue while your city has epitomized the word “failure” for oh so many moons.

You will gripe to high heaven over this soap opera and your school system still sucks, your city still sends raw sewage to the river, and your gang violence is ridiculous. Don’t fucking to pretend to care about this now. Just sit back, make fun of it, and continue to watch yourself swirl in the shit hole that you are.

Trevor,
You are right, we have a serious set of problems, but that doesn't change the fact that this issue is getting in the way of solving them. You may not know this, but the city government doesn't run our school district or our police department, so those are different issues that we also care about and work on and need to do more about. This mayoral issue is not our main issue, but just one of many that we care about. We can attend to more than one issue at a time. But, at least we have the cultural center for all you suburbanites and the city is a fun, vibrant place to live. If you don't live here and you don't like KC, then just stay away and shut up - simple as that. Oh, three more words.....anger management dude.

why you dragging me into this?

Response, let’s just assume for a minute that the mayor’s wife is just a minor issue standing betwixt you and a well educated, safe, shit-free-river City, even if the mayor’s wife is only a minute old compared to the years of these other issues.

Since you do not run your own schools or police programs, is it then ok to ignore public safety and education and focus so much on the mayor’s wife?

Is that why you allow your own City run wastewater treatment plant to dump raw sewage into the river?

Maybe I am missing something here, but if my home city faced such problems, wouldn’t that make it ok to be a little angry at the situation?

Now, excuse me, I am off to enjoy a vibrant dose of culture…what do you suggest? Dodging bullets? Swimming or fishing? Maybe I can talk to one of your enlightened young minds busy studying for the GED once they graduate high school?

If I complained that there was a broken street light on my street not getting fixed, would it mean that I'm ignoring the schools, crime and sewage issues? Can I do nothing other than spend 100% of my time on those issues that you've selected? You're argument contains the fallacy that addressing one issue at any given moment is ignoring all others. That's very simple-minded and incorrect.

I notice that you don't mention where you live - a glass house possibly?

If you are looking for a dose of culture here in KC, I would recommend the Nelson or Kemper art galleries, a Lyric Opera performance, one of many UMKC fine arts performances, some event at the Sprint Center, maybe a drink and a meal at the Power and Light District, a First Friday's showing in the Crossroads, the WWI museum at the Liberty Memorial, the IMAX at the Zoo, Christmas shopping on the Plaza, an expo at Bartle Hall, a pub crawl in Westport, organic farmers market shopping in Brookside, a stroll through Loose Park or any other of the great amenities KC has that your community likely doesn't.

Trevor must be downstream drinkin that shit water and it got into his brain!!!

ha, mike, classic! and good work Response! I love him but I don't think ol trevor is used to people arguing back with intelligence!!!

Oh a wise guy, eh? Well, Response, your specious attempt may fool some of these folks, but won’t fly with yours truly.

Surely the normal person is capable of focusing upon more than one issue. Yet, I hypothesize that KCMOites are not normal. This hypothesis is based on the extreme lack of coverage on the gang violence and the complete lack of coverage on the schools and river shitting. Yet, Squit-Funk is headline news every single day, and so likely would be your streetlight if it were indeed broken. The elephants keep on piling up in the room, accepted as old hat to the masses such as yourself, and perhaps rightly so when considering how long the elephants have been there.

Alas, I am glad for your ability to expound upon the cultural beauty that makes up your fine city, whilst “dealing” with the other issues. Perhaps it is even best if you maintain your blinders and do not look around or to the future, for high crime, lack of education, pollution, and a let-them-eat-cake mentality has a REALLY poor track record. But, I am sure it will work for you. Perhaps the KCMO plan of ignoring these elephants until they die of old age will bear fruit?

Hey Trev - I recommend that you stay out of the city, buy a gun and cling to your religion!

Even though I've lived in KC my whole life and never seen a shooting of any kind and never had anyone I know shot (because I'm not in a gang and I don't hang out in the early hours of the morning), I'm sure you're right in being fearful of getting shot.

And although kids that go to KC schools who have parents who care and help them with their homework and attend parent-teacher conferences do quite well, I'm sure yours would fall victim and never learn.

As for me, I'll just keep my blinders on, step in the elephant poop, try to enjoy my life, take care of my kids and help others as much as I can while you find ways to make yourself feel better about your life by finding faults in whole societies that others don't seem to see or understand because they are "whacktards" and you are brilliant. You are truly better. I hope you have some more advice for us, we need it so bad. Please tell us more about ourselves.

If it affects your community, i'm sorry about the sewage in the water. Something should really be done about that.

So, let me get this straight, you conclude from what I am saying that I am merely trying to say I am better than you? Or perhaps your main point is that because you never saw a murder and go to parent teacher conferences that the crime rate and unaccredited schools are ok? Or is it that KCMO has more “culture” and therefore these other problems are somehow being dealt with?

You guys pay about the same tax rate as JoCo, yet you have horrendously larger problems and tend to focus on flavor-of-the-week politics, and I am the only one that sees a problem with this?

Well, boy-howdy, maybe the Chiefs will be better next year, the mayor’s wife will be kept from City Hall, and Phill Kline will retire! That will make it all good, YEEEE HAWWWW!

Trevor aka Gloria Squitiro

So Trevor, let me get this straight, you don't understand how JoCo, created by monied white flight to the suburbs, can be what it is only because other counties in the metro are what they are? You guys are a glorified bedroom community w/strip malls. And you want to compare it to KCMO? If KCMO wasn't there, you would have all the same crap we have - poor neighborhoods, ugly industrial areas, run down business areas.....and your problems would be just like ours in KCMO right now.

Show me a city the size of KCMO that doesn't have the same problems we have? Careful here...not a city that doesn't have maybe just ONE of the problems, but rather a city that has none of the problems we have.

If one is at all interested in sociology, urban studies or local history, one could conclude that you and your JoCo neighbors are actually the cause of KCMO's problems - but I'm not saying I blame you. You didn't mean to do it and it was really the generation before you that got it going. It's just that you fit neatly into the pattern that was laid out for people like you. If you moved out of KCMO, then you saw a problem and rather than solve it, you left, in which case you have no standing to even say anything you've said. If you never lived here, then you want to allow your arbitrary boundaries to give you an "out" from having any responsibility for the problems in the city in which you live. The fact that you are in a different county and, fortunately for you, a different state, doesn't change the fact that the KC metro area is one societal organism. If you don't want to claim any responsibility for that and live in your bubble, then go ahead and do so, but shut the hell up about it.