In Turkey, a peaceful protest against a plan to turn a public park into a shopping mall has morphed into mass demonstrations that now threaten to topple the government. In Old Orchard, citizens of the town effectively toppled their government this week by voting to replace six of the seven members of the town council following a dispute sparked by the council’s decision to fire the town manager last March.

A protest occupation of Congress Square Park would be warranted, and so would the removal of any councilors who vote this summer to sell it. That said, the credible threat of a successful recall vote could be enough to convince councilors on the wrong side of this issue to preserve and improve Congress Square instead, making divisive protest and recall efforts unnecessary.

I do not suggest a recall vote lightly. In fact, I cannot recall ever supporting a local recall effort before. The Portland City Council has made plenty of decisions over the past 15 years that I’ve disagreed with, but the sale of Congress Square would be an exceptionally egregious betrayal of the public’s trust.

What makes this different than, say, a vote to approve a crummy budget or pass a boneheaded ordinance?

The city budget is rewritten and approved every year, so short-sighted funding decisions can usually be revisited and remedied before any real, permanent damage is done to our public infrastructure and quality of life.

An obnoxious ordinance can be repealed through a “people’s veto” process. If a petition to repeal the law is signed by at least 1,500 registered voters and meets various other administrative standards, the council must either take the law off the books or put the matter before Portland voters in a citywide referendum.

The sale of Congress Square is not a budgetary decision and would not, in any practical sense, be reversible. If the hotel developers are allowed to purchase most of the park and build an event center upon it for their exclusive use, the space will effectively be lost to the public for generations.

The sale would not involve an ordinance, either. The park’s supporters could try to introduce a measure protecting this public space, but if a majority of the council supports the sale, the same majority would simply block the measure.

The biggest difference is this: One of the fundamental responsibilities of the city council is to maintain and protect our public property. If a councilor allows one of our parks to deteriorate, fails to act upon a plan to improve it (a plan created by a task force the council itself formed and funded), and then — in the face of clear evidence that a majority of those concerned favor the park’s preservation — sells our park to a private developer, that councilor is not fit to represent the people of Portland.

I explained my arguments against selling the square in a column published last month, so I won’t repeat them here. Now it’s time to name names.

The councilors who voted to begin negotiations for a sale are Nick Mavodones, Ed Suslovic and John Coyne. Councilor Kevin Donoghue was the only committee member to vote in opposition.

As Donoghue rightly pointed out, the question is not whether the developer’s proposal is superior to the park as it exists today — a space made inhospitable by years of neglect by the city itself and by disruptive renovation work at the adjacent hotel undertaken by the developer who wants to buy the park. It’s whether the proposal is better than what the park could be if the city did its job and followed through on the improvement plan it initiated years ago but subsequently ignored.

The city charter stipulates that a councilor with less than a year left in his or her term cannot be recalled, so Suslovic’s comeuppance may have to wait until November, assuming he votes in favor of the sale and runs again. Mavodones and Coyne, however, could have their public-service careers end early and in disgrace if they abdicate their responsibility and sell our park.

It may soon be time to throw all the bums out — the ones causing problems in Congress Square and the ones in City Hall whose neglect of this park exacerbated these problems in the first place.

On Monday, the Department of Defense announced plans to spend more than $6 billion to add nine more destroyers to a naval fleet that already includes more than 60 destroyers. Five of the new warships will be built in Mississippi, and four will be built at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works shipyard here in Maine.

The announcement is a terrifying reminder that while we put our children to bed at night comforted by the notion our nation is at peace, the Pentagon is preparing for nothing short of World War III.

Who is the enemy this time? That’s a very good and very important question that politicians and reporters are loathe to even ask, much less attempt to answer, but I’ll give it a try. The enemy is certainly not the Islamic extremists we’re fighting in the ongoing Global War on Terror. Destroyers are not effective weapons against suicide bombers or cyber-attacks.

Iran? North Korea? I’m not an expert on the military capabilities of those countries, but one doesn’t have to be a defense analyst to say with confidence that the United States is not nine destroyers short of being safe from the threat those nations pose.

The only credible threat that could justify the construction of nine more destroyers must come from a country that also has significant naval power. And assuming we’re not preparing to fight the Japanese, the Brits or the French, that leaves the country with the second-largest navy, Russia, and the country with the third-largest, China. Granted, the size of our navy dwarfs that of both those nations combined, but if we stopped building new warships today, they could conceivably catch up by 2030 or so.

As the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, our leaders are shifting focus not toward peace but toward the Pacific, where we are now being told we must maintain a strong military presence to keep the Chinese in check.

How about a reality check, instead?

In this era of unprecedented world peace, prosperity, communication and cooperation, it’s almost inconceivable that the leaders of China or Russia would consider it to be in their nation’s best interest to start an unprovoked war with the United States. But it’s even harder to imagine that conflict playing out as a clash of conventional forces, with battleships trading fire a la Old Ironsides. World War III would be a nuclear war, and it would be both catastrophic and short. Within hours of a Chinese missile attack on Los Angeles, I have no doubt that Beijing would be reduced to a swirling cloud of radioactive ash. Game over, with civilization not far behind.

The U.S. is way beyond bankrupt. Our federal government is something like $16 trillion in the hole, and our states and cities are struggling to pay teachers, fix bridges and provide other basic services. Yet we greet news of BIW’s $2.4 billion taxpayer-funded contract as though it were manna from heaven, rather than paving stones for the road to hell.

I don’t begrudge the fact that thousands of BIW workers and subcontractors have some job security for a few more years thanks to this contract. I object to the fact that this contract is worse than unnecessary — it’s unethical. This spending is fueling a new global arms race that heightens international tensions and makes war more likely, not less.

The press releases put out by our congressional delegation don’t name the enemy these destroyers are intended to destroy. Instead, both Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said we need to “fight” with our fellow Americans to spend more money, so BIW can build a fifth destroyer. Independent Sen. Angus King’s release said essentially the same thing, minus the fighting words.

Reporters covering the contract for both the BDN and the Portland Press Herald apparently did not deem it appropriate to get a quote from even one peace activist or critic of Pentagon spending. This blind military boosterism is morally deplorable.

I’m scared all right, but not by Russia or China, whose citizens value peace as much as we do. I’m afraid that our country is led by politicians of every political stripe who pay lip service to peace while spending fortunes we can’t afford for war. And I’m angry that warmongers like Pingree, Collins and King are aided and abetted by a spineless media that frames the issue to make those who object to this absurdity seem like the crazy ones. Shame on all of you.

For example, in 2007, the council tied itself into knots debating a resolution calling for the investigation and eventual impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. That resolution failed by a vote of 4-2, with two councilors absent and a third, Cheryl Leeman, the lone Republican on the council, having left the chamber in protest prior to the vote.

Bush and Cheney had apparently been unswayed by a resolution the council passed in 2003 opposing the invasion of Iraq. That one passed, 8-1, with Leeman opposed. The council’s 2010 resolution opposing additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan also seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Last year, the council shifted its focus from United States foreign policy to federal campaign finance law, passing a resolution, 6-2, that called for a constitutional amendment limiting corporate spending on elections. Councilor John Coyne joined Leeman in a futile effort to block that futile resolution.

And last week, the council weighed in on an international issue with global implications: The possibility that tar sands oil in Canada might someday be pumped through a pipeline in the vicinity of our city. After hours of public testimony and debate, the council voted 7-2 to express its “concern” about that possibility.

Portland Mayor Mike Brennan was reportedly furious that the toothless resolution was watered down from one expressing opposition to tar sands oil to one that merely conveyed a sense of worry — as if the symbolic opposition of a municipal government with zero jurisdiction or authority in this hypothetical matter could have any influence whatsoever in its potential outcome.

“If we’re not opposed to tar sands, we should be opposed to the process” of extracting the oil, Brennan was quoted as saying at that meeting.

Actually, Mr. Mayor, you and the councilors should not be using the mandate or the money we’ve given you to run this city to weigh in on the pros and cons of energy extraction methods being employed in other parts of the planet. I’m sure you have strong feelings about coal mining in West Virginia and uranium mining on Navajo land, too, but we’ve got more pressing local issues that demand your attention.

How about using some tar sands to fill the potholes around town? If you’re concerned about global warming, perhaps the city shouldn’t be burning fossil fuels to blow leaves around the parks every fall or to drive fire engines to the supermarket and to the scenes of medical emergencies where there is no fire.

Leeman has usually been the lone voice of reason when these sorts of resolutions have come before the council in the past. “I’m not elected to Congress. I’m elected to the City Council to deal with city issues,” she said during the campaign finance debate last year. Leeman’s former day job, in which she relayed constituents’ concerns to Sen. Olympia Snowe, undoubtedly informed her position on such matters: If you want to influence federal policy, contact the lawmakers who make federal policy.

During the tar sands debate, Leeman’s opposition was based more on the fact she didn’t know all the facts, and that’s part of the problem, too. Councilors and city staff on the public payroll spent untold hours and dollars researching every facet of tar sands oil extraction, transportation and combustion in an effort to craft a resolution destined to have no practical effect on reality. That’s money and time not spent on the real issues directly affecting the city.

Furthermore, the Portland City Council does not speak for the citizens of Portland on national and international issues. If the mayor and councilors want to claim they represent our views on foreign policy matters, they should campaign on those issues and see where it gets them. (“Re-elect Mike Brennan: Justice for the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka at last!”)

These resolutions rarely originate from the councilors themselves. They’re usually pushed by special interest groups and adopted by small-time politicians with their eyes on higher office.

In that spirit, I have a resolution for the council to adopt: a binding resolution by which the council resolves to reject all future resolutions pertaining to matters beyond their immediate purview. Any takers?

So began an e-mail I got last week from Rep. Diane Russell, the Democrat who represents me and my Munjoy Hill neighbors in the Maine Legislature.

Russell was quoting a line from “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” likening herself to Jimmy Stewart’s character in that classic film — an honest but politically naïve everyman who’s appointed to fill a vacant Senate seat and then nearly crushed by the forces of corruption in Congress.

The comparison is, to say the least, a bit of a stretch. Russell is not going to Washington to join 99 other United States senators. She’s one of 7,382 state lawmakers in the country, and plans to spend her time in D.C. lobbying two of the 435 members of the House of Representatives (Democrats Tammy Duckworth, of Illinois, and David Loebsack, of Iowa) and “hopefully a member of the White House,” she wrote. (I can see it now: “Well, ma’am, I’m just an assistant rose gardener, but I’ll be sure to pass your ideas along to the president if I see him sometime in the next three years. Now please get off the lawn before the Secret Service shoots you.”)

What’s on Russell’s agenda? Nothing less than making Congress “work” and tackling “the great issues facing this country — from the decaying middle class to the drone wars,” she wrote.

What’s her position on the economy and drone warfare? Russell’s e-mail doesn’t say (and she did not return my e-mail or phone message seeking comment), but it did ask me to help pay for her travel, meals and lodging. “[A]s an underpaid state rep in Maine, I cannot afford this trip on my own,” she wrote. Then, in italics: “And I refuse to use taxpayer dollars to fund this trip!”

So apparently only tax dodgers and others working off the books should click the link to donate to her political action committee, Working Families PAC, which accepts credit card payments in amounts between $5 and infinity.

Russell’s first fundraising e-mail said her goal was $2,500, but having reached that amount this week, it was upped to $3,500. Then, while I was writing this column Wednesday morning, the total reached $3,467 and the goal was upped again, to $4,000. By the time she’s ready to pack her bags, she may be able to buy a jet.

“It’ll cover a cheap hotel or a ride on the metro,” Russell wrote in this week’s e-mail appeal, or “even allow me to stay even longer and meet with more of our elected leaders in Congress — and even the White House.” (“Ma’am, I told you, I’m just a gardener. The only drones I worry about are bees.”) “Whatever funds are left,” she added, “I’ll use to continue building our budding movement for change.”

I expect these sorts of e-mails from Nigerian princes and tearful friends who’ve lost their wallet while traveling overseas. I do not expect or appreciate such pitches from my representative in the Maine Legislature.

First off, Russell was elected to work on state issues, and last time I checked, there were a whole bunch of ’em that need her attention.

Second, I fail to see how meeting with two obscure members of her own political party will enable Russell to fix Congress, the economy and our foreign policy — especially since I have no idea what ingenious proposals she’ll be presenting to them on my behalf.

Third, am I supposed to feel sorry that Russell’s state rep salary isn’t enough to pay for lobbying trips to D.C.? She says she doesn’t want more “taxpayer dollars” to fight the good fight. Instead, she wants dollars from anonymous contributors to her new PAC. This is the same person who’s going to Washington to reform our political system?

“Friend — Come hell or high water, I’m going to Washington next month.” So began this week’s e-mail from Russell. Then the italics again: “and I will crash the gates to send a powerful message that Congress isn’t getting the job done for millions of people!”

“Crash the gates to send a powerful message”? Is Russell planning a lobbying trip or a terrorist attack?

What’s especially frustrating for this constituent is that I tend to agree with Russell’s liberal political views, but I abhor the empty sloganeering and sleazy PAC fundraising she’s now engaged in to pay for this fool’s errand.

In Russell’s case, the fictional Senator Smith’s famous quote presents a false choice. It’s possible to be dead right and crazy.

The response so far has been mixed. A security guard at the public library told me he’s tried to help the man pictured on the cover holding a sign seeking work, but the guy is more interested in beer than employment. A woman I ran into at a punk rock show said her husband, a musician, never gave panhandlers money before but began doing so after reading the story.

Then, last week, I got a call from a teacher at Deering High School. She said her students read the story and were inspired to write letters to the people Bruns profiled. She asked if I could help deliver them, and I agreed. The teacher said I was welcome to read the letters, and, though they are not meant for publication, I could share the students’ sentiments with our readers, provided the underage authors were not identified.

According to our esteemed governor and education commissioner, Deering is one of the worst high schools in the state. (The Department of Education’s new grading system gave Deering a D.) The teacher who contacted me leads a class comprised of the most troubled students in this school that’s supposedly on the verge of failure — young people with learning and behavioral challenges that require special attention. One would not necessarily expect at-risk youth to be a source of charity and goodwill, but their letters blow that preconception away.

There was not a single unkind word in any of the 13 letters the students wrote. To the contrary, every letter contained words of encouragement and sympathy, many offered advice, and most came with a dollar bill attached.

Two letters were addressed to Steven, a 28-year-old from Massachusetts. “Steven, I ain’t gonna lie to you, we are all adults,” one teen wrote. “You must know that nothing gonna happen without pain, sweating, effort and patience. If you respect yourself … I am pretty sure you will find a job that could let you integrate yourself in society.”

Several students were inspired to write to Dana, a 50-year-old from Chicago, because he told Bruns we wants to be a writer. “You should take all the money you get and save it so you can buy paper, books, and pencils,” a student wrote. “[S]ummer is the best time to do all of that. There’s barely any rain in the summer and it’s always sunny and warm so you really don’t have to go anywhere [to write].”

“It’s not too late to be a writer,” wrote another student. “[A]nything is possible if you set your mind and heart to it.” This student knows what it’s like to lose a home. “My mom and I have been kicked out of our house with no where to go so we had to move in with family but not together. She went one place I went another …. As a 16 year old I know the struggles it is for you on a daily [basis] … You have a dream, pursue it and try to make it come true. I believe in you!”

Galen, the man pictured on the cover, also got several letters. “Personally, I hate seeing people on the streets. I couldn’t imagine being one of them,” a female student wrote. “I agree with you that most of the jobs nowadays are for younger people. I’m 18 and I’ve had 4 jobs and get new ones like it’s nothing. You really just have to take the bull by the horns and go into every place you see … Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems and life can always get better.”

After numerous drive-bys to the panhandling hot spots in town, I finally found one of Bruns’ subjects: Galen. I handed him an envelope with his letters and dollars and told him where they came from. Galen looked surprised and grateful. He smiled and thanked me. Then the light turned green, and I drove away.

I’ll admit that during the past year or so this proposal has been debated, I’ve been inclined to support it. Then I recently took the time to really think about it, and the more I considered this idea, the worse it seemed.

Let’s start with the first premise: The park is a “failed” space. To the extent this is true, the blame lies squarely with many of the same city officials now entertaining the idea of selling it. The city’s failure to properly maintain and police this public park is not a valid reason to privatize it. Rather, it’s a wake-up call for municipal officials and cops to do the job we’ve entrusted and paid them to do: Make our public parks pleasant and safe.

To City Hall’s credit, a task force was formed three years ago to study the square and come up with ideas to improve it. The group recommended using a $50,000 grant to hire a landscape architect, but that effort was put on the back burner when the hotel’s redevelopers — Ohio-based RockBridge Capital and Connecticut-based New Castle Hotels & Resorts — expressed interest in buying the park.

The developers’ first two proposals were rejected by a city committee last summer, but RockBridge and New Castle pledged to go back to the drawing board and submit an amended plan, effectively delaying the city’s redesign effort another nine months. The proposal they unveiled last month further reduces the size of the event center but still takes up most of the square, leaving little more than a widened stretch of sidewalk for public use.

The argument that the event center will bring new visitors, dollars and jobs to town is also weak. There are two excellent places to hold events and conventions of similar size downtown: the Holiday Inn By the Bay on Spring Street and the magnificent Masonic Temple on Congress Street. A third facility for the same types of gatherings will be part of the massive Forefront at Thompson’s Point project expected to break ground next month, and there are other comparable spaces elsewhere on the peninsula.

An event center at the newly renamed Westin Portland Harborview would compete with all those other facilities for the same dollars. Events and conventions booked at the Westin are not a net gain for the city if a similar space nearby is empty as a result. And besides, there will be eight meeting rooms and ballrooms inside the hotel itself, including a space larger than the event center being proposed for Congress Square.

In their latest proposal, the developers wrote that the center “would add likely 25 more permanent jobs” to Portland. If the center were fully booked every day of the year, I might believe it could support more than two dozen full-time jobs, in addition to the hotel’s other event staff. In reality, we could expect a handful of part-time, low-paid workers to keep the Sterno pots under the buffet trays lit and sweep the floor.

The alternative public spaces suggested to replace Congress Square are all inferior, impractical or both. One is a wider stretch of sidewalk on Spring Street expected to be created after the Civic Center is renovated (way too small). Another is the little parking lot at the corner of Spring and High streets (also too small; plus, it would screw the owners of two bars across the street whose patrons use those spaces). The third is the top level of the Spring Street parking garage (no comment).

Ironically, the development of the newly refurbished luxury hotel will do more than anything else to improve the adjacent square by increasing foot traffic and visibility. Beyond that, the solution is pretty simple: add more benches, plantings and some tables, police the place and program more arts events there. Selling this public park should not be an option.

Portland is a very hip city, but most of our fellow Americans don’t realize it. Seasonal tourists are also often caught unprepared for Maine weather. So how about, “Portland: Cooler Than You Think — Bring a Jacket.”

The first thing most visitors now encounter driving into town are panhandlers in the traffic medians. The savvy marketer would pay these people to double as Walmart-style greeters, shaggy ambassadors to the Forest City. I like: “Portland: A Friend on Every Corner.”

Construction is also a common sight this time of year. Sure, it’s a hassle, but it’s also a sign of progress, of a city that’s evolving, of a place with plenty of good-paying government jobs. What about, “Portland: Road Work Ahead”?

Portland may very likely become one of the few American cities where marijuana is legal. We’d be foolish not to capitalize on that. I’d go with either “Green Grass and High Tides” or “Get Cobblestoned!”

Portland may also be one of the first American cities submerged by rising seas caused by global warming. I like, “Portland: Atlantis of the Future.”

Here’s a nifty slogan that both furthers the fiction there are lighthouses in the city while promoting all the new hotels we’ll have in the next couple years: “Portland: We’ll Leave the Headlight On.”

Mayor Mike Brennan promises the new slogan will “put Portland on the map.” That’s a start. Visitors are often bedeviled by our downtown, riddled as it is with confusing intersections, wacky one-ways and streets that change their name for no apparent reason. That said, getting lost is part of the adventure. Mr. Mayor, I submit to you, “Portland, Maine: A Hot Mess for Your GPS.”

Many cities look to their past to come up with a snappy slogan. We could tip our hat to history, promote our safety, and turn our overtime-bloated fire department from a fiscal liability into marketing gold with, “Portland, Maine: Inferno Free Since 1866.” There’s also our most famous poet (“Portland: A Wadsworth of Fun!”) and all the names the natives gave to this land (“Machigonne Wild!” “Aucocisco A-Go-Go,” “Falmouth Neck is for Neckers!”).

Portland’s food scene is nationally recognized for its excellence, so I say we milk that cow some more (“Portland: Toothpick of the Pine Tree State”). Our restaurants were some of the first in the country to cater to the celiac disease crowd (“Portland: Gluten Free Since 2003,” or, more dramatically, “Gluten Free or Die”). Gotta give the lobster industry some love: “The Capital of Crustacean Nation.” And craft beer can always use a boost: “Land of 1,000 Lagers,” “No Crap on Tap,” “Microbrew for Me and You,” etc.

Unfortunately, our nutty governor is also giving us a national reputation. Based on the election results, this city rightly can, and should, distance itself from his shenanigans: “Portland: We Didn’t Vote for That Clown.” (Note: New marketing campaign may or may not be necessary after November 2014.)

Westbrook has been trying to mooch off our creative economy with the patently false slogan, “Artists Live Here.” I suggest Portland take a more truthful approach: “Artists Starve Here.” (Note: Starvation is not considered a negative in arts advertising but rather a reference to rock-bottom prices.)

Portland is not New York, or Los Angeles, or Paris — thank God. Let’s celebrate that by adopting the moniker, “The Land That Fashion Forgot.” I also like “Portland: Two Years Behind Every Trend.” Or how about “The City of Plaid Shoulders.” Or simply, “Sweatpants in Public OK.”

There are practical slogans to consider: “Portland: Like Us on Facebook,” or “Portland: Don’t Feed the Goddamn Gulls!”

But I think the marketing experts are correct when they say we really need to differentiate ourselves from that “other Portland” — you know, the one everyone outside Maine talks about like it’s the only freakin’ Portland on the planet? It’s infuriating! Yeah, we’re smaller, but so what? Our city was founded before theirs was and, according to the Internet, they copied our name because they couldn’t think up their own.

That’s it, last one: “Portland, Maine: More Original Than Oregon.”

I make an exception, however, when the rhetorical bombs are being lobbed by an elected official.

On April 22, Holly Seeliger, who was elected last fall to serve on the Portland Board of Public Education, published a post on her personal blog accusing me of sexism. My alleged offense: pointing out that she is a burlesque performer whose act is a heck of a lot like stripping.

Again, facts are facts. You can watch Seeliger, who performs as Holly D’anger, take her clothes off while dancing and hula-hooping in public in numerous YouTube videos. She is not, technically, stripping — in one video, her nipples are covered with tassels; in another, with fake leaves — but even if she was I wouldn’t care, and that’s not the point.

The point is that I have never said Seeliger is inferior to men because she performs as D’anger. Furthermore, I have never asserted that she is unfit to oversee the education of children for that reason. It’s the baseless accusations and yawning gaps of logic in her blog post that now give me doubts about her fitness to serve on the school board.

Seeliger says I have written “several articles” about her. In fact, the number of news articles I’ve written about her is zero. Her name appears in two opinion columns I’ve written for this newspaper, and she is referred to obliquely in a third — last week’s column about “The worst of Portland,” in which I jokingly note that burlesque is so common around here these days that a performer holds public office.

In the column I wrote last July, “Burlesque candidate strips away stigma in Portland school board race,” I lauded Seeliger for being upfront about her burlesque alter ego and noted her community involvement, educational experience and policy priorities — hardly an example of what she calls “one-dimensional objectification.” It’s true that I also noted her act could be offensive to some voters, but I included her response to those people and never counted myself among them.

Last October, Seeliger was mentioned again, briefly, in a column about a drag queen who was then running for City Council in the same district. And again, far from being critical or belittling, I applauded the fact that people with risqué alter egos have the courage to run for public office.

Seeliger takes offense that I compare burlesque to stripping in all three columns, but again, watch the videos and see for yourself. Seeliger writes that she wants to “clarify to readers that there is a difference between burlesque and the profession of stripping” but never does so. Instead, she goes on to say that she has “friends who are or have been strippers,” but why that matters is a mystery.

“Perhaps Busby is afraid that a ‘stripping’ hobby will be so distracting that I will lack the brain capacity to serve on the School Board!” she writes. I’ll let that exclamation speak for itself. She continues: “It is a fact that female politicians and those in the public eye are commonly scrutinized, made hollow, and objectified by the media.” Maybe so, but not by me, and I challenge Seeliger to either prove otherwise or publicly apologize.

Seeliger says I’m “condescending to the burlesque scene.” To the contrary, I have actively promoted the scene for years, having included burlesque performances in the Highlights section of The Bollard more than a dozen times since 2009.

“Although I believe that it is my First Amendment right to do so, I will consider stopping burlesque if it is too offensive to my constituents,” Seeliger writes in the concluding paragraph of her post. The day after she published this, Seeliger and the rest of the school board approved a budget that would cut 55 education positions and still raise property taxes. I’m pretty sure most of her constituents are more concerned about Seeliger stripping teachers of their jobs than stripping on stage. I strongly suggest she get her priorities straight lest those constituents vote her bare behind out of office.

But that’s all right. “Best of” lists can be informative. They’re great conversation/argument starters. They can even be fun — so I’ve heard.

I’ve never found them fun. But then again, I used to be one of the schmoes who had to read and count the votes — actual newsprint ballots, scrawled on by people in bars with bad handwriting made even less legible by alcohol. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I worked at Casco Bay Weekly, the editorial staff would hole up in the conference room with a couple six packs and spend hours passing thousands of ballots around the table, each counter taking a section, making chicken scratches on a tally sheet, like animals.

And if you think that’s inhumane, try coming up with something new to write about the video store and the coffee shop and Stephen King and everything else that wins every single year. That’s torture, and the same can be said of the experience of reading said copy, which is why no one really does. In fact, precious few people who haven’t won themselves can recall who won what even a week after the results are made public. They need to be reminded. That’s what the plaques are for, I guess.

The Bollard doesn’t do a “best of” contest. Most polls are conducted online these days — no more ballot-counting sessions — but I still don’t want to write those murderous blurbs. Besides, I think it’s more constructive to point out the worst things in town, in hopes the attention will prompt improvement. So here’s my short list of the worst Portland has to offer:

Worst Beer Name: Fuggles IPA. Rule number one when naming a beer: Don’t use a word that’s emasculating to pronounce when ordering in front of your drinking buddies. Shipyard seems to have finally recognized this, ditching Fuggles for the new Monkey Fist IPA — a marginal improvement, at best.

Worst Band Name: The Trickle Down. These guys are actually a pretty tight funk group, but their name — which calls to mind either failed Republican economic policy or the unfortunate urinary condition men of a certain age experience — is funky in the wrong sense of the word.

Most Tiresome Fad: Zombies/Burlesque (tie). They’re playing kickball. They’re on a pub crawl. They’re serving on the Portland school board. Seems like everywhere you look, somebody’s pretending they either want to eat your flesh or flash you the best parts of their own. Enough already! Give the werewolves and the real strippers a turn.

Most Narcissistic Publication (on Earth): Maine Magazine. The photogenic staff of this fluffy glossy seem to have one strict editorial standard: Their smiling faces must appear in every issue no fewer than three times. Enough already! Give the ugly people a turn.

Worst Intersection: Deering Avenue/Brighton Avenue/Falmouth Street. Portland has several strong contenders for this award, including past winners Woodford’s Corner, Morrill’s Corner, and the end of the old Veterans Memorial Bridge, but this six-armed monster in front of USM’s School of Law is this year’s champ. It often feels like you could study for and pass the bar in the time it takes to get through this intersection. The city is considering replacing it with a roundabout. I’ve never been so excited about a public works project in my life.

Worst Stretch of Road: West Commercial Street. Speaking of public works, will somebody please slap a fresh layer of tar on this bad boy? There are smoother roads in downtown Mogadishu. This section of Commercial Street bears a lot of heavy truck traffic, and, with the reopening of the International Marine Terminal, the potholes aren’t getting any shallower.

Dumbest Local Law: Anti-cruising Ordinance. Supposedly still in effect, according to signs on Portland’s Eastern Promenade, this ordinance, which bans drivers from circling the area more than twice within two hours, originally targeted one tiny segment of the population: horny gay men. Then a little thing called the Internet got popular, making this obnoxious anti-love law even more antiquated and obsolete. Time to either take it off the books or amend it to apply exclusively to ice cream trucks.

It requires a different figurative body part to be a street artist, to decide that the best way to get your work before the public is to literally put it in front of people by setting up a table on a busy downtown sidewalk. But as Portland officials reconsider the rules regulating street art, and as street artists become increasingly defensive, self-righteous and dismissive in response, these artists begin to resemble a third body part located in that general area, and my admiration turns to animosity.

City Hall has been wrestling with this issue for more than a decade. In 2005, the City Council attempted to clarify the rules by allowing musicians, performers and visual artists to make and sell their work on sidewalks as long as they left at least 4 feet unobstructed for pedestrians and people in wheelchairs.

This compromise worked well until about two years ago when the proliferation of artists selling their wares in the Old Port — especially on the stretch of sidewalk in front of the Maine State Pier, where cruise-ship passengers disembark — prompted complaints from shop owners and other citizens. City staff determined that some street vendors were stretching the definition of art to the breaking point by selling goods they did not make by hand.

So last year, councilors waded back into the murky issues of what art is and how the right of free speech meshes with the rights of business owners. As is typical of city government, a task force was formed that promptly tied itself into knots debating dumb ideas like a free, but mandatory, street-art registry, and buffer zones between retail businesses and artists’ tables. Complex maps were drawn. Petition signatures were gathered and submitted by both sides. The local chapter of the ACLU threatened legal action, again.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric and anger ramped up. Last month, my friend Nancy Lawrence — proprietor of Portmanteau, an artisan clothing and accessory shop on Wharf Street — gathered the signatures of fellow Old Port shopkeepers on a petition in support of the task force’s recommendations. The manager at Company C, a home furnishings business on Commercial Street, kicked Lawrence out of her shop, claiming that “by soliciting [signatures] in her store I was just like the street vendors,” Lawrence wrote on Facebook. “[S]he asked me to leave just as she asks the vendors to leave when they set up in front of the business. Of course if the task force recommendations fail, she will no longer have the right to ask the vendors to leave.”

In mid-February, the Portland Press Herald published an editorial slamming the idea of a street-artist registry, claiming such a system would “tell the world that Portland is not a place that values free expression.” The most popular comment beneath the editorial online was the one in which a poster named Caroline Evans asserted that shop owners who resent the competition street artists generate “have only themselves to blame.”

“A nasty, miserable crank who gets all bent out of shape over nothing is going to have problems dealing with customers,” Evans wrote. She goes on to suggest that bankers and wholesalers should stop doing business with shops whose owners speak out because they are “probably doomed businesses run by incompetents.”

Evans is, of course, dead wrong. Street artists who display and sell their work in front of retail businesses absolutely do constitute unfair competition. They pay no rent and compete for the same customers while blocking shop windows and often making it a hassle to navigate the sidewalk and enter stores. As I’ve noted before, the 4-foot rule routinely becomes meaningless as soon as someone stops in front of an artist’s table to gawk at their wares.

I’m all for art, but I fail to see why street artists should be exempt from the rules governing the sale of everything else. If you want to use public property to conduct your private business, get a permit to do so, just like the organizers of the annual arts festivals on our sidewalks and in our parks are required to do.

Common sense and courtesy can go a long way toward making this a non-issue again. Demonizing shopkeepers who have legitimate concerns — many of whom, by the way, sell the work of local artists in their stores — is a big step in the wrong direction.