Steve Berman and the Gilbert Idea Police

Trouble is brewing in Gilbert, Arizona.

Gilbert is the self-proclaimed “family friendly” town that forced the cheerleading teacher to resign and shamed Victoria's Secret into replacing the shocking posters of girls in their underwear.

The town, which was formerly known as the Hay Capital of the World, has rapidly expanded in the last decade from cow town to quintessential embodiment of what the Republican Party has become. It is apropos that one of the big civic events of the year is Pony Express Days. Just like the Pony Express never was anywhere near Gilbert, the bedroom community models itself after an idyllic Red State Disneyland that has never existed.

Although they are both Republican bastions, the town of Gilbert is nothing like Orange County. Though it is jam packed with rich bastards, the Southern California community tends to embrace the type of frontier libertarian conservatism advocated by Arizona's legendary senator, the late Barry Goldwater. Gilbert is more comfortable with fellows like Mitt Romney.

When you embrace a “conservative” philosophy of big spending, family values on steroids, high taxation, subsidies and breaks to business, law and order, and suppression of nonconforming thought, you end up having leaders like –well, George Bush, or in Gilbert it would be Hiz Honor Steve Berman, the mayor.

No one cared when the Mayor and his council gave away millions and millions of dollars of tax breaks to attract favored businesses, and spent millions of dollars in giving away free city annexation. But now all those chickens have come home to roost, in a $58 million dollar deficit.

Then there is the state of the art Little League stadium, which is much more luxurious than Boston's Fenway. The original cost of this Pee Wee Field of Dreams was an obscene $22.7 million, but it escalated into a $40 million white elephant.

While a lot of the townsfolk are concerned there may have been some legal irregularities in the bidding process, that is not the real issue. Eleven and twelve year olds do not need a major league stadium,and certainly not one funded on the backs of taxpayers. More than the example of Barry Bonds, it is stuff like this that gives precious little superstars the idea they might need to juice up.

When I first heard about the stadium I wondered why this guy and his council still had their jobs. And it wasn't too long before some of the citizens of Gilbert finally woke up and began wondering the same thing.

A recall petition drive was started.

But those citizens who placed signs in their yard promoting the recall have been forced to take them down, because they are not considered “ political.”

In the New Right Orwellian World of Gilbert, political signs are permitted, but advocating the recall of the mayor is not considered " political."

They say it is “ideological.”

Signs which promote ideas are verboten in Gilbert.

In this weird corner of America the First Amendment has been suspended, ideas prohibited, and thinking discouraged. You only have the right to express your views and ideas, once they pertain to an issue that has been certified ballot worthy.

Even if the citizens of Gilbert don't want to remove Steve Berman on account of his incompetence, wanton fiscal irresponsibility, favoritism, and embarrassment to the town-- this alone is more than enough.