If a council member does not complete his or her four-year term, the four remaining council members may appoint someone to take his or her place. Then, at the next regularly scheduled village council election, the appointed person may run or not.
This is very unusual but it happened only 8 years ago when Annie Zusy (elected in 2008) died in June 2010 after less than two years in office. The council was entitled to appoint a new council member but decided for various reasons to wait until the general election that November, when the slate of anyone who wished to run for village council (and fulfilled all requirements) could be added to the (already jammed) ballot. That election was expected to attract more voters than the usual village council election because it included a representative to the House (Garrett was reelected to District 5 by almost 2 to 1) .
The village council spent the intervening months with four council members. In November 2010, Stephen Wellinghorst was elected to complete Annie’s term, which he began immediately. When Zusy’s four-year term ran out in mid-2012, Wellinghorst could have run for reelection, but to the surprise of many, he didn’t.
Reader asks what’s this manufactured crisis?
“If you’re going to shoot the king, don’t miss”
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Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote in The Prince (1505 in Italian, 1513 in English) what has been translated as “Never do an enemy a small injury.” If one is striking out at an opponent, one should make sure that the fatal blow is struck, successfully ending the confrontation. Machiavelli wrote that “the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”
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A well-known anecdote (cited in print since at least 1882) is that a young man wrote an essay criticizing Plato, and he sent the essay to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). Emerson returned the essay with the remark, “When you strike (at) a king you must kill him.” The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935), who frequently used the quote, wrote that this essayist was “a young friend of mine in his college days.” However, the saying appears much earlier in Emerson’s journal from September 1843: “Never strike a king unless you are sure you shall kill him.”
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The saying has been written in many forms, usually without the word “strike.” The beginning is often “If you shoot at the king” or “If you’re going to shoot the king” or “If you aim at the king.” The ending “you must kill him” is often replaced with “you better make sure he’s dead” or “don’t miss.”
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“When you strike (at) a king you must kill him” has been very popular with politicians and with lawyers. The saying has often been applied to a politician seeking to change the leadership in his or her political party. If the “king” is not “killed,” the party leaders will seek revenge.
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Wikiquote: Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-05-03 – 1527-06-21) was a Florentine political philosopher, historian, musician, poet, and romantic comedic playwright. Machiavelli was also a key figure in realist political theory, crucial to European statecraft during the Renaissance.
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The Prince (1513)
Original Italian title: Il Principe (written c. 1505)
Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.
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Ch. 3; Variant translation: Never do an enemy a small injury.
At least they are picking up the sign ‘s .
8:33, how much more revenge could be meted out than he has been doing for almost two years?
Nothing gets me going quite like a vaguely threatening Machiavelli quote.
Someone should post a hyper-intellectual screed on propaganda next.
Never stop pontificating armchair philosophers.
We’re waiting with baited breath.
Let’s find someone to beat Voigt next year….