City’s use of candidate Hunt as spokesman questioned 

On July 29 and/or 30, a story broke focusing on the problem of people urinating in the city parking decks. 

The story was carried on WLOS (television) and in the Asheville Citizen-Times and perhaps other media.

What I don’t understand is why Vice Mayor (Marc) Hunt was the city spokesperson on WLOS and was quoted in the Citizen-Times on this issue.

This is election time and Vice Mayor Hunt is a candidate. Since name recognition is a key factor in an election, when the city management and media give Vice Mayor Hunt opportunities to be quoted as spokesman for the city, this does not create a level playing field for the other candidates. 

Further, the city has a director of communication and public engagement, Dawa Hitch.....why does the city need to pay for that job if Vice Mayor Hunt is the spokesperson for the city?  

My experience has been that when the city manager and mayor want to pass the buck, they refer your questions about city operations to the director of communication and public engagement.

If other candidates have opinions about this, I hope they will speak up.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer responded as follows:  

“Ken — the comments were made during a City Council meeting.”

Conservative candidates for council miss a chance

Asheville’s conservative City Council candidates missed a major opportunity which Reagan and perhaps even Palin would not have missed; and that is the supply side cause of Asheville’s outrageous rents. 

Instead (at an Aug.19 forum), Williams, Miall and Michalove blamed high rents on taxes while Mumpower avoided the issue, but spent his time well on the watchdog role. 

The conservatives aren’t completely wrong about taxes being passed through to rents, and this is often unknown to tenants, but it is at most 10 percent of the cause.

The main culprit are regulations like unit density limits, residential height limits, setbacks, single-family zoning and parking requirements — and Reagan knew the solution; deregulate.

The Asheville housing market is a rare example of where supply-side conservatives are completely right and where a free market would help poor tenants immensely, at the expense of liberal elite homeowners who now even include Simerly, but Asheville’s conservative candidates are failing to drive home the point because, with the possible exception of Williams, they don’t represent poor tenants either. 

Also, it’s easy to point to conservative Biltmore Forest to show that conservatives don’t normally put free markets before class interests, since you don’t see high-rise condo developers working there, either.  Williams has no excuse except perhaps that her business isn’t homebuilding.

Michalove stressed the Art Museum scandal, thus carrying out Mumpower’s watchdog role better than Mumpower.  Though the best hope for tenants by far is Payne.

Reader touts new theory that treats mental illness

There’s a revolutionary new theory of the cause of mental illness.

The theory is that mental health results from inner cooperation between the brain’s two cerebral hemispheres: the right brain and the left brain.

But in some people, there develops inner conflict between the two hemispheres, with the right brain and left brain each attempting to dominate and control or suppress the other hemisphere.

And according to this new revolutionary theory, this inner conflict between the two competing hemospheres is the root cause of mental illness.

And in addition to medication and traditional therapies, the mentally ill need a psychiatrist or psychologist who is specially trained in playing peacemaker between the warring hemispheres ... someone who can get the warring hemispheres to agree to a peace treat and pledge of cooperation.

The corrolary to this revolutionary new theory is that the mentally ill cannot be fully helped until the inner war between the right brain and the left brain is ended.

You can read all about it in the library books, “Of Two Minds” by Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Fredric Schiffer, M.D.; and “New Brain, New World” by Erik Huffmann.

My hope is that this will lead to an improvement in the treatment of mental health and peace between our two brains.