I really want to hate Jim Rowland.

I want to slam him in this column. Call him an arrogant jerk. A hypocrite. A sellout.

I’ve got the ammo.

I remember when I was running around City Hall as a reporter for The Pitch and he told me that he was opposed to sales tax on principle, because it’s regressive and it disproportionately impacts the poor. “Morally opposed?” I asked. He nodded.

Then, a couple years later, he was working for the Jackson County Sports Authority and he was out stumping for a sales tax increase to pay for improvements at Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums.

Yep. Money from the poor to enrich the rich.

Hypocrite.

In the workout world, you don’t get much more posh than heart-rate monitors. They are the darling of the running world and the obsession of many fitness enthusiasts. I could never justify spending $100-plus on a watch that measures my intensity level (something that I feel like I can do a pretty good judging myself after years of working out—cocky, I know). However, about a year ago, just for kicks, I bought a $40 heart-rate watch Target. And I got what I paid for. To get the watch to work, you had to press your thumb on a button while working out—and wait for your heart rate to pop up on the screen about 10 seconds later. Not easy to do while running or teaching group exercise, I’ll tell ya that.

The cheap watch never worked properly and would routinely report that I had “No HR.” Pretty sure I wasn’t dead though, as I could feel my heart rate rise in utter annoyance. Eventually my husband broke it altogether. He’s one of those people who mysteriously kill all things electronic—watches, computers, rear-view mirrors. Okay so that last one isn’t electronic, but you get my point. The boy breaks things accidentally. It’s in his genetic makeup, and sometimes he’s just too strong for his own good.

I got it all wrong.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column in which I said the “Stop the Nonsense at City Hall!” campaign is a good thing. I argued that it was one of those rare occasions when the goals of a rich and powerful special interest group align with the public’s.

Well, not so fast there, Joe!

Here’s the real story.

The leaders of this particular special interest group — the Heavy Constructors, better known as “the Heavies” — are Ed DeSoignie and Bridget Williams, two longtime political insiders who were super tight with former City Manager Wayne Cauthen.

It has been reported elsewhere, that “Ed and the Heavies made LOTS of money from Wayne's largesse. Ed was so upset the day Wayne was shown the door, he was at the City Council meeting threatening council members.”

One of the most haunting things I learned when I was working on my book about the Central High debate squad was that seventh grade is when kids start falling off the deep end.

Each of the debaters I interviewed said that was the make-it-or-break-it year for them. That’s when they saw many of their friends choose to dabble in crime or start using drugs or get one another pregnant.

Marcus Leach, one of the book’s main subjects, told me it was the move from elementary school to junior high that sparked the free fall. It was scary, he said. In grade school, he had the same teacher for almost all of his classes, all day long, so it was more of a nurturing environment. In junior high, he had to switch back and forth between classes. He described it as a place where the primary goal was discipline and order, not learning.

This is what I wrote about the switch to junior high for another subject of the book, Ebony Rose, who recently graduated from the University of Louisville with a degree in education:

Jane Fonda is an icon. Besides winning an Oscar and a couple Golden Globes, this mega star is credited with starting the aerobics fitness craze in the 80s with her cleverly titled Jane Fonda’s Workout Book and following workout VHS tape Jane Fonda’s Workout. Her workout VHS is said, according to our official sources (aka Wikipedia), to have sold more than 17 million copies, making it the most popular home video EVER. Dang. Her tapes were so hot at the time that she’s even credited with actually getting people to buy VCRs, which at the time were new fangled-contraptions, just to do her workouts.

Up until a few weeks ago, I’d never spent any time with Jane outside of the movie Working Nine to Five with Dolly Parton. I knew she was a bit of a political firecracker, one heck of an actress and someone who made the leotard mainstream, but that was about it.

They were once mortal enemies. In fact, they still are. But now, thanks to the corroding forces of political power, they’re virtually indistinguishable from one another.

I’m talking about Kansas City’s hapless Mayor Mark Funkhouser and political sleaze monger Steve Glorioso.

But first, the good news — good news that ironically brings the Funkhouser/Glorioso likeness into stark relief.

Last week, one of the most powerful players on the local scene — the Heavy Constructors, better known as the Heavies — announced a public relations campaign aimed at forcing the Mayor and City Council to spend more money on the stuff that matters most in a city: curbs, sidewalks, roads, sewer lines. You know, the stuff even the staunchest libertarian counts on governments to pay for.