NCC Council Calls For KHN To Resign, Then Drops The Mic.

At the Tuesday, January 9, 2018 meeting of New Castle County Council, a resolution calling for the resignation of the Council President passed by a slim 10-3 vote. The resolution, sponsored by Councilman George Smiley, called for the immediate resignation of Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle, if she did not complete the mandatory harassment training imposed by Council. The training was part of a stipulation resulting from negative findings against her in a harassment investigation dealing with how she treated her former aide. Hartley-Nagle and her protector and The Penguin doppelganger, Vince D’Anna, repeatedly tried to deflect the conversation by bringing up her aide’s past, her campaign opponents, and trying to malign other Council members by starting fake rumors about their past. Halfway through her eight minute diatribe Council members had enough and walked out after motioning to adjourn. She was, effectively, left to complain to an empty room.

Throughout the past year, Hartley-Nagle has continued to play the victim in her desperate attempt to obtain power she never had. Her only motivation has always been to enjoy the trappings of elected office and hold authority over whomever her perceived rivals were at the time. It took her a decade to reach this place and 13 months to lose it. It is brutally apparent that this person is ill qualified, uninformed, poorly educated on basic governing, and not suited for public office. Short of shouting “NO COLLUSION” during her mind-numbing work of Vince D’Anna scripted fiction; the similarities between her and Trump are staggering. In fact, she may be worse in that she cannot even figure out how to use email, much less Twitter.

During the verbal testimony to her incompetence, it was apparent that she had no hand in writing the words she tried to read. She mispronounced simple words like gibberish (jib-ber-ish), using a g-sound as in Grotesque, like her lack of understanding and inability to think for herself. She stumbled through the word plethora, somehow making it two words (ple-thora). Almost like clockwork, she blamed someone else for her issues in every other sentence. It was iambic pentameter of self preservation. I’m the victim, blame someone else, I’m the victim, blame someone else. It’s a familiar pattern played out by two different presidents with a startlingly similar lack of ability.

It is important to understand, as is sometimes lost in many media reports that try to giver her the “benefit of the doubt,” she is not a victim. She has not only done nothing of merit, she has not attempted anything of substance either. In fact, her first action as Council President was to halt approved union contracts because she was not part of the process. A process that took over five years and falls squarely under the purview of the Executive Branch and only requires the consent of Council as a purely procedural formality. This first glean of incompetence spurred the systematic removal of her duties and abilities as she evidenced further problems grasping fundamental governing and management abilities. From that point it became one belly-flop attempt at grasping power, and failing, after another. At every failed attempt she did what has become her brand, blame someone else. Her aide to the brunt of this at first. When blame turned to harassment, she lost her punching bag at a significant cost to the taxpayers in order to avert an even bigger loss should the situation persist. Her attention then turned to anyone and everyone she perceived as her persecutor. This culminated in last nights vote and walk-out.

Before the chorus of defenders of decorum start chiming in that it was “undignified, unfair, and rude” to deny her the opportunity to plead her case, stop. Listen to the audio from all the committee meetings, all the council meetings, and read the interviews she has given in the various outlets over the past year. Her “side” is a vapid series of statements that end with, “what about (insert someone else’s name here),” after a series of lies and contradictions. As for her statement that New Castle County Council has a history of subjecting its Council Presidents to abuse, there is one glaring omission. Never have they called for the immediate resignation of a Council President before in the form of written legislation that is on the record and will exist forever and always on the government record. It is a significant, if only ceremonial, step that will serve as a reminder that a super majority of the legislative body voted to no confidence on Karen Hartley-Nagle’s ability to do a job that involves reading from a script 90% of the time and not abusing the employees. It is as simple as that. 10 Council members had enough courage to vote on the record for something they felt was right and in the best interests of the citizens of New Castle County. This was not an easy task and one needs only to look at who the votes came from to see that it was genuine and not political theater. These were not typical alliances, quite the contrary. Ten, very different, often opposing members of NCC Council felt is was that important to their constituents that they put their names on a statement that will live forever. That has to mean something.