Thanks to my great friend Jane Gaffin for that awesome line... "Oak Park Garden Nazis." What else do you call the bureaucratic buffoon who threatens to send someone to prison for three months for the heinous crime of growing a vegetable garden on her own property?
Julie Bass is a homeowner in Oak Park, Michigan. Her front yard was torn up by city workers when they were doing work on the city's sewer system. When the city's work was finished, Julie Bass figured that was as good a time as any for a change. Instead of replanting her front lawn, she decided to plant a vegetable garden instead.
That's when the Oak Park Garden Nazi descended upon her with all the rage and fury only a bureaucrat can summon against a poor, unsuspecting citizen.
Kevin Rulkowski, aka The Oak Park Garden Nazi, despises anyone doing what they please on their own property. His asinine belief is that you must first get his permission before doing anything on your own private property.
Rulkowski is nothing if not the epitome of bureaucratic arrogance run amok.
Filthy bureaucrats like Rulkowski have a single, overriding principle that guides their every action:
THE RULES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PEOPLE
Period.
It doesn't matter that the rules are as asinine as the bureaucrats who made them. No, of course not. The RULES are all-important, all-powerful, all-knowing... you know... like the pompous asses that passed them in the first place. Pompous asses like Kevin Rulkowski.
Somewhere along the line, and I don't know if it was The Oak Park Garden Nazi himself or some other moronic member of the bureaucracy, someone decided "there oughta be a law"... so they created one.
The Oak Park city ordinance reads:
"All unpaved portions of the site shall be planted with grass, shrubbery or other suitable live plant material."
"If you look in Webster's dictionary, suitable means common. And you can look all throughout the entire city and you'll never find a vegetable garden that consumes the entire front yard."
Well, I don't know what Webster's Dictionary says that he quoted "common" from, but Mac's Dictionary [Jane owns a Mac laptop] defines "suitable" as:
right or appropriate for a particular person, purpose, or situation;
acceptable, satisfactory, fitting;
informal: right up someone's alley...
which pretty much fits Mrs. Bass's purposes for growing organic vegetables in her front yard in neat raised boxes overflowing with beautiful green vines and foliage that serve an additional, underlying, nutritional purpose not met by flower greenery, except maybe fireweed whose leaves can be used as greens to accent stews...but I doubt that fireweed is "common" in Michigan.
As you can see by the image below, Julie Bass's front yard is hardly an eyesore. I wish she lived down the block from me so I could stop and munch on some vegetables with her as we discuss what to do about garden nazis in general, and Kevin Rulkowski in particular.
Mike Adams, aka the Health Ranger, said this on NaturalNews.com:
Well what could be more suitable to a family with a yard than teaching children how to grow some of their own food right at home?
That's suitable! It's the most suitable (and natural) thing in the world, in fact. What's weird is to grow nothing but grass and then spray your lawn with toxic chemicals to kill all the weeds, and then mow the lawn every week burning up fossil fuels and polluting the air just to keep your lawn manicured. That's bizarre (and terrible for city air quality, by the way).
I sure can't disagree with Mike on that. The roar of lawnmowers every weekend is pretty insane, not to mention annoying.
Which brings me back to mindless bureaucrats like Kevin Rulkowski... annoying... in case you missed the awesomeness of my segue!
Why is it the bureaucrats despise everything not under the complete control of their annoying little thumbs?
Kevin Rulkowski's entry to the national stage is a result of his own stupidity. By attempting to enforce a moronic statute on Julie Bass, he has exposed himself to the world for ridicule, such as I'm doing right now.
This petty moron actually threatened to send Julie Bass to jail for 93 days if she did not immediately remove her vegetable garden, which is what caused Julie's story to go viral on the internet.
Having the light of the world stage and its resultant uproar on him caused the petty little tyrant wannabe to actually back down.
Isn't the free sharing of information great! If it wasn't for the internet, most people would have never heard of the Oak Park Garden Nazi, and Julie Bass would be sitting in prison right this minute.
From Julie Bass's blog, OakParkHatesVeggies:
"Our attorney went into court this morning to file a motion. While he was there, someone told him the charge against the garden was dropped. Wow. Nobody called us. Nobody called our lawyer. This has got to be the strangest case of dropping charges I have ever heard of. so, they wouldn't let him file his motion, and when they showed him the paperwork, it was signed by another judge, from another place, who we have never even heard of. Weird weird weird."
It's not all good news, however.
Yes, they dropped charges against Julie that would have sent her to jail for 93 days, but there's a catch. You see, by daring to stand up for herself; by refusing to submit to a mindless bureaucrat's whim, Julie Bass has been charged with two misdemeanor crimes that, as coincidence would have it, have nothing to do with her garden.
Now she's liable for 180 days in jail because of the petty tyrants' insatiable need to be "in the right."
Quoting from another entry on her blog:
"On a dumber note, the city has decided to reinstate the case about our dog licenses. When they came over and saw we didn't move the garden after their warning, they added a 'no license' charge for our 2 dogs. We went within the week to pay for licenses and even paid late fees, and when we came to court the prosecutor asked to see the documentation that it had been taken care of.
So, he wrote a few notes, it seemed like everything was taken care of, and when I was in front of the judge nothing was mentioned at all about the dogs. In fact, nothing has been mentioned since then about the dog licenses, with the exception of a few blog readers who noticed the dog charges on the ticket and asked me about it.
We thought the city just wanted the dogs to be vaccinated against rabies. Our vaccines for the dogs are now and have always been, current and up-to-date. We didn't protest. We didn't complain. We paid and we were done.
or so we thought…
So, the city still wants us to appear in court on the 26th of July. This time it will be for the dog licenses, which we have already taken care of. The dog charges are each a misdemeanor. So now we are up to misdemeanor x 2.
If you want more information about what's going on in Oak Park, then I highly recommend you visit Julie Bass's blog: OakParkHatesVeggies.
The petty tyrants and mindless bureaucrats despise the light being shone on their dirty deeds. They prefer hiding in the shadows like cockroaches, where their stupid rules can reign supreme.
Don't let them.
NaturalNews.com has done a great job on this case so far, including adding contact information for the Oak Park Garden Nazi on their website.
By all means, please send an email to him and to Oak Park City Manager Rick Fox, since it is Fox that needs to get his minion back in line.
Don't forget the Oak Park Mayor Gerald E. Naftaly, either. He needs to hear an earful about the stupidity of his employees as well.
From NaturalNews.com...
Complain loudly to Kevin Rulkowski, the condescending bully city planner in the news video who is harassing Julie Bass over her garden and threatening her with punitive action for daring to question his "authority":
Phone: 248-691-7450
Email: krulkowski@ci.oak-park.mi.usBe sure to CC the City Manager Rick Fox who needs to be kept in the loop on this so he can see how his entire city is now becoming famous all across the 'net for having the world's most moronic city planner who hates vegetable gardens:
Phone: 248-691-7406
Email: rfox@ci.oak-park.mi.usIf you wish, you may also cc the Mayor of Oak Park, Gerald E. Naftaly:
Email: gnaftaly@att.net
“Oak Park Garden Nazi” is a smashingly good article to further expose evil, underhanded, deceitful bureaucratic shenanigans that cannot withstand the scrutiny of daylight.
As the late eminent Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) said, “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.”
As Christopher aptly pointed out, there is always someone somewhere who eagerly proclaims “there oughta be a law“… and the bureaucrats and politicians are always happy to oblige by creating yet another stupid statute that will further the masters’ command-and-control agenda and serve to reduce the lowly residents to their knees as slaves.
In my not-so-humble opinion, Oak Park “oughta pass a law” banning noisy, fuel-guzzling lawnmowers out of existence. To comply with the city’s lawn coiffure standards, homeowners would have to harken back to the healthy days of the Dark Ages cutting grass with a muscle-powered push mower.
No, on second thought, ban ALL lawn mowers, push and powered. Make the residents get down on hands and knees and cut their grass to city length standards with a pair of scissors and finishing trimmers. That’ll teach the slaves a lesson.
The picture I see is vivid.
After the homeowners waste precious time and breath spluttering and complaining to City Hall’s deaf ears about this insanity, the residents will, out of frustration, opt to yank up their expensive lawns and install something more “suitable” to care for. They will no doubt favor flowers and vegetables that provide lots of color and foliage and pretty leaves and vines, like green peppers, sweet potatoes (my two favorites)–even a few Burley tobacco plants.
This is exactly what the bureau-rats and politicians want in order to feed their egos and coffers. The call to action requires unleashing the Nazi Lawn Inspectors on the criminal homeowners who, of course, will be handed tickets and citations to show their pretty faces to a bench-warmer in a court of law.
Do I sound absurd? Well, I’m not.
These type moronic laws, fines and punishments are filtering down into cities and towns of all sizes from the gluttonous, sorry-ass, despot dictators who sit in lofty positions ruling the United Nations.
Their whims and mandates flow down through some 2,000 non-government organizations (NGOs) around the world that are paid big bucks to guarantee the shit keeps flowing downhill onto your head.
Programs are called everything from innocuous-sounding “Green Club” to “Environmental this-or-that” to”Species at Risk” to “Saving the Planet” to “Smart Growth” to “Sustainability” to “Community Planning” to “Municipal Funding”…under whatever banner it is billed, the money from your tax dollars–the biggest contributors are the United States and Canada–is redistributed from the United Nations back into your community à la Agenda 21 to stymie your freedoms and lifestyle.
I suggested a ban on lawnmowers of every description in Oak Park, Michigan, because it is one way that would help satisfy money-grubbing, brainwashed, bureaucratic greed and people-control by spreading attention among the city residents and garner a lot more funds from fines and put scores in jail and get the message across “to behave or you’re next” rather than focusing solely on Julie Bass, who, as one person, is only worth a limited amount in fines and incarceration time.
Or are the Oak Park powers “who think they be” planning on harassing Julie from henceforth? Not unless they plan on coming under the scrutiny and answering to the whole Internet social-networking community.