MIDDLEBORO VOTES FOR CHANGE - Allin Frawley & Ben Quelle are elected to the Board of Selectmen

Last August, I wrote a piece about how the Town of Middleboro, MA had some pretty poor leadership in our local Selectmen...the post is here.

http://usnavyjeep.blogspot.com/2010/08/all-politics-is-localthat-goes-double.html


Well the Voters decided that " politics as usual" was NOT what they wanted....Selectmen Marsha Brunelle and Muriel "Mimi" Duphily were shown the door as newcomers Allin Frawley and Ben Quelle handily defeated them in town elections Saturday by a margin of 3 to 1 - That's a real arse kicking in local elections where people get to know you well.

For too long, the " That's the way it's always been" crowd have been in charge and now we will have some new leadership. Marsha & Mimi were the poster children for the old way of doing business in town. I spoke with both Allin & Ben and they are committed to change....they understand that Towns like Middleboro have to be run like a business not like the Taxpayer is an unending source of $$$ for waste and entitlements for town employees.

In the Navy, a job well done is signified by the term, BRAVO ZULU or BZ... BRAVO ZULU to Allin & Ben for running good campaigns. You have done well.

Now the real tough work begins....Taking on the town employees who are dedicated to taking as much as possible from the taxpayers and getting rid of the "entitlement mentality" that is too much part of public sector employment. While not all are of that mind, too many have seen the town government as their private piggy bank...Change is needed and long overdue.

Tip O'Neill said " All Politics is local "....never more true than here in Middleboro, MA.

Public Pension Hygiene Act - Making the Pols come clean on how deep the $$$$$ hole is in regards to unfunded public pensions

The State Governments have not been 100% honest with the taxpayers, and that has allowed them to dig a very, very deep hole that they will look for the Feds to fill in for them. This hole is $3.5 TRILLION Dollars deep.... That "hole" is the pensions promised to all the State Hacks who have retired early, double dipped, and set themselves up for a nice comfy retirement (backed by the Unions) even while the taxpayers have seen their retirements dry up like a puddle on a hot July afternoon.

While I don't want to see anyone deprived of their pensions, I don't see the equity in insulating Public Sector retirees from losses while we ignored millions of private sector employees who had the rug pulled out from under them. Just because you worked for the Town or the State shouldn't set you up for some "Divine Right" that the average Joe wouldn't have.....after all, the "average Joe" has been footing the bill all along.


Public Pension Hygiene Act
The first reform step is exposing the true size of the funding hole
Opinion - Wall Street Journal - 01/22/11

We're so accustomed to misnamed legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act (card check) that it's hard to believe that a welcome proposal called the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act describes what it actually purports to do. To wit, prohibit public pension bailouts by the federal government and expose the $3.5 trillion of unfunded public pension liabilities that local and state governments have obscured.

Most state and local governments currently use their own estimated rate of return on their investments to discount their liabilities. By projecting unrealistically high rates of return, states minimize their unfunded liabilities, at least on paper. Lower unfunded liabilities in turn allow them to reduce how much they and public employees must contribute to their pension funds. Inflated investment assumptions are one reason that public pension funds are unfunded to the tune of $3.5 trillion.

Public pensions typically assume an 8% annual return on average, but over the past five years state pension funds with more than $5 billion in assets have earned only 4.5%. Taxpayers must make up the difference between what the funds earn and what they need to pay retirees. For Californians that is roughly $5 billion this year.

Local taxpayers are already seeing their services whacked and taxes raised to fill these pension holes. University of California students will have to pony up 8% more next year for tuition to offset an expected $500 million in state budget cuts. Illinois residents will soon pay 67% more in income taxes, but taxpayers won't feel the full brunt for another decade when the funds begin running out of money. When Chicago's pension fund goes dry around 2019, over half of the city's revenue will be dedicated to pensions.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many private employers obscured their liabilities the way governments are doing today, though they didn't have a public backstop. Many funds went broke. In 1974 Congress established minimum funding requirements and penalized companies that underfunded pensions. The law also required companies to report and discount their liabilities using a more conservative rate of return.

These changes exploded liabilities and prompted many companies to switch from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s. While a majority of private workers now have defined-contribution plans, defined-benefit plans remain the norm in government.

Enter the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act, which is sponsored by House Republicans Devin Nunes and Darrell Issa of California and Wisconsin's Paul Ryan. Their bill would encourage governments to switch to defined-contribution plans by revealing the true magnitude of their unfunded liabilities. States and municipalities would have to report their liabilities to the U.S. Treasury using their own rosy investment forecasts as well as a more realistic Treasury bond rate (to be determined by a formula).

This data would make clear how much taxpayers potentially owe and increase pressure on lawmakers to fix their plans. For instance, Illinois estimated in 2009 that it had a roughly $85 billion unfunded liability. Using a Treasury discount rate, that unfunded liability balloons to $167 billion.

Out of respect for state sovereignty, the federal government shouldn't and can't tell local governments how to run or fund their pensions. But the bill doesn't do so and it also doesn't force states to fund their plans using a lower discount rate. States don't even have to comply with the law, though they would forego their ability to sell federally subsidized, tax-exempt bonds if they don't.

The bill may not persuade states like Illinois and California to revamp their pensions, but it will reveal how broken they are—and that's a start

BRILLIANT - Maryland father uses robocall to get revenge on clueless school officials

AWESOME !!! - JUST BRILLIANT !!!

This guy is my Hero !!!! He used technology to drive the point home to a bunch of idiots who act like they can do whatever they want to the citizens and that people have to sit back and take it.....Too often, School Administrators and those in local government think they have all the answers and that the citizens must do what they say, regardless of what the citizens think...arrogant bureaucrats.

This is an example of the arrogance that has been the hallmark of local school systems of the last 10-15 years....insolent and full of themselves.......Kudos to you sir !! You have my admiration and I would like to buy this guy a beer!!


Maryland. father uses robocall to get revenge on school officials
By Donna St. GeorgeWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 14, 2011; 12:00 AM

Perhaps the idea of revenge came from his sleep deprivation.

Awakened at 4:33 a.m. Wednesday by a ringing phone, Aaron Titus jumped out of bed in a panic. Maybe something terrible had happened, he thought. Even if nothing was wrong, his heart raced with other considerations: His five children, ages 5 and under, including his week-old daughter, were mercifully still asleep, and he wanted to keep it that way.

In a blurry rush, Titus answered the phone halfway into the second ring, listening in disbelief to an automated caller tell him what he already knew: It was a snow day. School would open two hours late. In other words, he and his family could sleep.

But now he couldn't.

"I thought, 'C'mon, people. Really?" he recalls.

Sometime later in the day, the 31-year-old father from Fort Washington, a lawyer who knows a thing or two about technology, made a decision that might well bring amused satisfaction to like-minded parents everywhere.

Titus arranged for an automated message of his own.

He found a robocall company online, taped a message and listed every phone number he could find for nine school board members (sparing the student member), Superintendent William R. Hite and General Counsel Roger C. Thomas.

At 4:30 a.m. Thursday, phones began ringing with 29 seconds of automated, mocking objection:

"This is a Prince George's County School District parent, calling to thank you for the robocall yesterday at 4:30 in the morning. I decided to return the favor. While I know the school district wanted to ensure I drop my child off two hours late on a snow day, I already knew that before I went to bed. I hope this call demonstrates why a 4:30 a.m. call does more to annoy than to inform.''
It ended: "Quit robocalling parents at 4:30 in the morning or at least allow us to opt out of these intrusive calls."

Titus says the automated calling service reported back that, of the 19 phone numbers he supplied for school officials, "eight live people picked up" when the predawn call was made.

In Upper Marlboro, school board member Donna Hathaway Beck was among those rousted from bed.

Beck says she had fallen asleep about 3 a.m. after poring over the school system's proposed 2012 budget and contemplating a multimillion-dollar shortfall. At 4:30 a.m., her phone rang with a caller ID that made reference to the board of education.
She thought: "Oh, this is not good. Something's happened." Then she listened to the message, and "immediately I knew, it's a prank," she said.

Only hours later did she realize that the message came from a parent with a grievance about a snow-day robocall. She had not been aware of the 4:30 a.m. announcement a day earlier. "I wholeheartedly agree that calls at that hour of the morning are a bad idea," she said.

Still, Beck says the caller ID misrepresentation is a problem. "To me, it's false advertising. It should have said, 'Prince George's County Angry Dad.' ''

Titus says he in fact labeled his call "Prince George's County Parent" and does not know why the caller ID would refer to the school board.

Robocalls are a widely accepted fact of family life for those with children in school - an efficient way for school districts to spread the word about emergency closings and for schools to announce everything from state testing days to back-to-school night.

In Prince George's, the early-morning robocall went out to all households in the 127,000-student district because "the wrong time was put in," said spokesman Darrell Pressley. The delay had already been announced on the system's Web site and by e-mail - just after 11 p.m. Tuesday.

Usually such calls are placed "in the 6 o'clock hour, and sometimes the 5 o'clock hour," Pressley said - with a concern for safety and a recognition that not all families have easy online access. This robocall was pegged for the 4 o'clock hour. It was a rolling series of calls that took about 75 minutes to complete, he said.
"It's the first time - and the last time," he said of the timing.

Pressley said most schools start in the 7 o'clock hour, with school-based child-care opening earlier in some cases.

Unaware of any glitch - and already annoyed that other calls were placed during hours he considered overly early - Titus says he was thinking of the golden rule when he landed on the concept of automated retaliation: School officials would wish to be treated as they had treated him.

"I thought I would share the pain," said Titus, whose eldest is in kindergarten at Indian Queen Elementary School, where classes start at 8:15 a.m. Having a newborn in the house, sleep is less predictable these days, he said, but the family's older children often sleep until 7 a.m. or so.

Policies on robocalls vary across the region. Montgomery County does not use robocalls for countywide snow-day announcements. In Fairfax County, robocalls are used, in addition to e-mail and Web postings, but only in daylight hours, not late at night or early in the morning.

School board member Edward Burroughs III said he had not personally gotten one of Titus's robocall rebukes, but considered it "very clever."

"I definitely appreciate his creativity," he said.

On a more serious note, Burroughs said that "I think, in the future, if we know the night before, we need to make the call the night before." Ten o'clock or so may seem late, he said, "but 4:30 in the morning?"

The robocall, he concluded, made a point. "It's certainly something that I welcome all parents to do - communicate with us, by any means necessary," he said.
Staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this report.

All Politics is local.....That Goes Double for Middleboro, MA - TIME FOR MARSHA TO GO.....

The Great Tip O'Neill, who was a legend in local politics in Massachusetts was famous for saying, " All politics is local." - no truer statement could ever be made about this issue or how Politics is viewed by those who live in Massachusetts.

My hometown of Middleboro, MA is no exception. We have had our share of donnybrooks and struggles over how the town is run, who runs the town and what the Town should/should not allow. Google " Casino" and Middleboro will pop right up. Not the first time it has happened in town, nor will it be the last time.

There is not only a local, but also a national dissatisfaction with the incumbents in office due to the way things have been done and the less than stellar results of Government on Local, State & Federal level. The Taxpayers are fed up and have had enough. Those who are in the position of being " Public Servants" have instead placed themselves as the "Lords of the Manor" and are using their positions of being politically connected to alter how things should be.

Example number one this week is Marsha Brunelle, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen. She has instituted a new set of rules for weekly Selectmen Meetings that effectively stifles all public dissent from occurring. The new rules are so restrictive that it would be near impossible for a town citizen to appear to speak unless they have full approval from the Board.

This is not only counter to what the purpose of the Selectmen's Weekly Meeting is for, it is against the long standing tradition of being able to show up, listen to the deliberations of the board and contribute in a respectful manner to the discussion.

Marsha Brunelle has had a series of ethics issues, mainly due to her inability to proper handle the responsiblity of her position, and being married to the Director of IT for the town, Roger Brunelle, another person who has had a long standing history of ethical issues. The two of them act like they can do whatever they please and there is no one who can hold them accountable.

Marsha wants to cut off all dissenting opinions which is further evidence that she should not be in the position of deciding town matters as her use of the "rules" to limit challenge to her position is a sign of her lack of ethical behavior. No person should see themselves as above reproach. All of those who work in public service should be willing to have all their actions subject to review and comment from the public. If you are unwilling to do so, then STEP DOWN.

There is no gray area in this issue - it is purely black & white. You should allow the public to contribute in an open and traditional manner as you were elected to manage the town's affair as a representative of the people's will. If you put in place restrictive rules stifling dissent, you have become a dictictorial Hypocrite who is unworthy of the position.

Enclosed is a copy of the editorial from this week's Middleboro Gazette.....Time to go MARSHA....take your less than ethical bag of troubles with you, and retire with your HACK husband to somewhere you won't deprive others of their right to challenge town leadership. You'll be living off the taxpayers for the rest of your life, not caring who has to pay the bill.

The disgusting abuses of the municipal pay & retirement system is rife in our town and others across the country. The self-serving people who were trusted with the public well-being have instead turned the rules around to satisfy their own needs. It is a total betrayal of the public's trust and a perversion of what was established as a way of providing a retirement.

Alllowing Muncipal Governments to get out of control and become unresponsive to the avergae citizen is something we and our children will regret for the rest of our lives.




A spirited discussion may be shaping up here
August 12, 2010 11:07 AM
Jane Lopes - Middleboro Gazette

I had a dream last night that was more like a premonition. I dreamed that I saw Vic Sylvia, Paul Stiga and Larry Carver marching on Town Hall.

Well, it might have been a dream but there's no doubt in my mind that if it's possible for people who have passed on to make a return appearance, this trio will be at the next selectmen's meeting.

Vic, Paul and Larry no doubt have better things to do now, but surely they glanced down Monday night as they heard the selectmen talking about a proposal drafted by Chairman Marsha Brunelle that would, as one onlooker put it, severely restrict if not stifle the public's ability to participate in meetings of the Board of Selectmen.

After a majority of the selectmen twice rejected a proposal that they adopt Robert's Rules of Order as their guidelines for conducting meetings, the board received a letter from former selectman Adam Bond suggesting that they need some sort of rules to run meetings by, and offering guidelines adopted by other communities as examples. Ms. Brunelle instead came up with a six-page document that goes well beyond providing a structure for the board's weekly meetings. In terms of the meetings themselves, the document — which was not voted upon Monday night — Ms. Brunelle is calling for "all matters to be placed on the agenda" to be submitted by noon on Wednesday prior to a Monday night meeting. And that goes for anything that a resident might want to bring up during the "public comment period" that Ms. Brunelle reluctantly retained when she took over again as chairman from former selectman Pat Rogers earlier this year.

"If a resident desires to make an inquiry or comment during the public comment portion of the meeting, notice to do so must be given to the Board's secretary by the deadline stated above (Wednesday noon). This allows time for appropriate research if required," the proposed rule reads.

Resident Allin Frawley, who regularly takes advantage of the "public comment period" opportunity, read this paragraph and rightly envisioned, well, a muzzle. After the meeting, Ms. Brunelle allowed that she is aiming to limit what she views as obstructive chatter from the audience. And the alleged obstructionists are not limited to the audience, since the proposal to require board members to get on the agenda in order to speak is also designed to limit discussion — say, like the proposals to adopt Robert's Rules, which came up under "Other." "Other," an agenda item designed for board members to raise issues, is to be as circumscribed as the "public comment period."

Mr. Frawley's consternation would surely be echoed by the aforementioned Vic, Paul and Larry were they available for comment Monday night. Because Allin Frawley and the others who regulary participate in selectmen's meetings come from a long and honorable tradition in Middleboro, one that has been fiercely defended by Vic, Paul, Larry and others like them over the years. Two of the three men, Vic and Larry, served as selectmen at different times, but for most of their public lives they, like Paul Stiga, made their contributions from the audience in the selectmen's room at Town Hall on Monday nights.

The chairman of the board suggests that other government bodies do not provide for the public input that Middleboro residents enjoy. Well, Ms. Brunelle, we live in Middleboro, and in Middleboro we speak our piece. As chairman you have the right to cut off someone who is disrespectful, who has long since made his or her point, who is holding forth on the subject of apples while the board's discussion involved oranges. It's up to the chairman to ensure that meetings run effectively and adjourn in a timely manner unless there's pressing business that dictates otherwise. But the tradition in Middleboro is that the selectmen's meetings on Monday night are the place where people can get their questions answered and make their opinions known, albeit certainly within reason.

There was little comment Monday night about the proposed guidelines, and it was indicated that there will be discussion at the next meeting. Since Ms. Brunelle seems to have already adopted her own recommendations, given the lack of input allowed from the floor Monday night, the discussion may be limited to the board members themselves. The proposed guidelines are available on the town web site with the Aug. 9 selectmen's agenda items for those who want to read for themselves.

So far the Town Hall has been investigated for paranormal activity and spirit beings with limited results — mostly a ghostly voice or mysterious light source here or there. The investigators might want to stop by for the next selectmen's meeting. I'd be surprised if some folks weren't there in spirit. Certainly someone needs to be present to object to the those physically present in the audience being seen, but not heard.

“The New Deal is demographically obsolete. You can’t fund the dream of the 1960s on the economy of 2010.”

This was an issue that I brought to the attention of many people when I was on the Town of Middleboro Personnel Board.....Not that anyone in local government gave a damn because they knew they were " in" the system, and had no worries about getting benefits for life.... The HACKS always took care of themselves first with an " I got mine" attitude and "don't give a damn who it hurts" outlook on anyone else.....

We are unable to sustain the amount of funds promised to people 20-30 years ago.....The choice that we will need to make is do we devote a majority of our funds to providing a very comfortable retirement for the privileged few who are "in" the system OR do we ensure that our governments is sustained to serve the need of the majority of our citizens ??? And there in lies the rub......
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Battle Looms Over Huge Costs of Public Pensions
By RON LIEBER
Published: August 6, 2010 - NY TIMES

There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions.
Who should pay for the trillion-dollar pension gap?

The haves are retirees who were once state or municipal workers. Their seemingly guaranteed and ever-escalating monthly pension benefits are breaking budgets nationwide.

The have-nots are taxpayers who don’t have generous pensions. Their

401(k)s or individual retirement accounts have taken a real beating in recent years and are not guaranteed. And soon, many of those people will be paying higher taxes or getting fewer state services as their states put more money aside to cover those pension checks.

At stake is at least $1 trillion. That’s trillion, with a “t,” as in titanic and terrifying.

The figure comes from

a study by the Pew Center on the States that came out in February. Pew estimated a $1 trillion gap as of fiscal 2008 between what states had promised workers in the way of retiree pension, health care and other benefits and the money they currently had to pay for it all. And some economists say that Pew is too conservative and the problem is two or three times as large.

So a question of extraordinary financial, political, legal and moral complexity emerges, something that every one of us will be taking into town meetings and voting booths for years to come: Given how wrong past pension projections were, who should pay to fill the 13-figure financing gap?
Consider what’s going on in Colorado — and what is likely to unfold in other states and municipalities around the country.

Earlier this year, in an act of rare political courage, a bipartisan coalition of state legislators passed a

pension overhaul bill. Among other things, the bill reduced the raise that people who are already retired get in their pension checks each year.

This sort of thing just isn’t done. States have asked current workers to contribute more, tweaked the formula for future hires or banned them from the pension plan altogether. But this was apparently the first time that state legislators had forced current retirees to share the pain.

Sharing the burden seems to be the obvious solution so we don’t continue to kick the problem into the future. “We have to take this on, if there is any way of bringing fiscal sanity to our children,” said former Gov. Richard Lamm of Colorado, a Democrat. “The New Deal is demographically obsolete. You can’t fund the dream of the 1960s on the economy of 2010.”

But in Colorado, some retirees and those eligible to retire still want to live that dream. So they sued the state to keep all of the annual cost-of-living increases they thought they would be getting in perpetuity.

The state’s case turns, in part, on whether it is an “actuarial necessity” for the Legislature to make a change. To Meredith Williams, executive director of the Public Employees’ Retirement Association, the state’s pension fund, the answer is pretty simple. “If something didn’t change, we would have run out of money in the foreseeable future,” he said. “So no one would have been paid anything.”

Meanwhile,

Gary R. Justus, a former teacher who is one of the lead plaintiffs in the case against the state, asks taxpayers in Colorado and elsewhere to consider an ethical question: Why is the state so quick to break its promises?

After all, he and others like him served their neighbors dutifully for decades. And along the way, state employees made big decisions (and built lifelong financial plans) based on retiring with a full pension that was promised to them in a contract that they say has the force of the state and federal constitutions standing behind it. To them it is deferred compensation, and taking it away is akin to not paying a contractor for paving state highways.

And actuarial necessity or not, Mr. Justus said he didn’t believe he should be responsible for past pension underfunding and the foolish risks that pension managers made with his money long after he retired in 2003.

The changes the Legislature made don’t seem like much: there’s currently a 2 percent cap in retirees’ cost-of-living adjustment for their pension checks instead of the 3.5 percent raise that many of them received before.

But

Stephen Pincus, a lawyer for the retirees who have filed suit, estimates that the change will cost pensioners with 30 years of service an average of $165,000 each over the next 20 years.
Mr. Justus, 62, who taught math for 29 years in the Denver public schools, says he thinks it could cost him half a million dollars if he lives another 30 years. He also notes that just about all state workers in Colorado do not (and cannot) pay into Social Security, so the pension is all retirees have to live on unless they have other savings.

No one disputes these figures. Instead, they apologize. “All I can say is that I am sorry,” said Brandon Shaffer, a Democrat, the president of the Colorado State Senate, who helped lead the bipartisan coalition that pushed through the changes. (He also had to break the news to his mom, a retired teacher.) “I am tremendously sympathetic. But as a steward of the public trust, this is what we had to do to preserve the

retirement fund.”

Taxpayers, whose payments are also helping to restock Colorado’s pension fund, may not be as sympathetic, though. The average retiree in the fund stopped working at the sprightly age of 58 and deposits a check for $2,883 each month. Many of them also got a 3.5 percent annual raise, no matter what inflation was, until the rules changed this year.

Private sector retirees who want their own monthly $2,883 check for life, complete with inflation adjustments, would need an immediate fixed annuity if they don’t have a pension. A 58-year-old male shopping for one from an A-rated

insurance company would have to hand over a minimum of $860,000, according to Craig Hemke of Buyapension.com. A woman would need at least $928,000, because of her longer life expectancy.

Who among aspiring retirees has a nest egg that size, let alone people with the same moderate earning history as many state employees? And who wants to pay to top off someone else’s pile of money via increased income taxes or a radical decline in state services?

If you find the argument of Colorado’s retirees wanting, let your local legislator know that you don’t want to be responsible for every last dollar necessary to cover pension guarantees gone horribly awry. After all, many government employee unions will be taking contrary positions and doing so rather loudly.

If you work for a state or local government, start saving money outside of the pension plan if you haven’t already, because that plan may not last for as long as you need it.

And if you’re a government retiree or getting close to the end of your career? Consider what it means to be a citizen in a community. And what it means to be civil instead of litigious, coming to the table and making a compromise before politicians shove it down your throat and you feel compelled to challenge them to a courthouse brawl.

“We have to do what unions call givebacks,” said Mr. Lamm, the former Colorado governor. “That’s the only way to sanity. Any other alternative, therein lies dragons.”

State & Local Government HACKS facing deep cuts....long overdue

State & Local governments have been rife with "HACKS", i.e. public servants who are dead-wood but once they get in a job there, are all but guaranteed employment & benefits for life, all on the taxpayer's dime....They are the same as "Welfare Queens" only they are on the dole because once they are employed, it is virtually impossible for them to be fired....short of committing a crime. The cost to the tax-payers for this ineffective model of employment is high and has been welded in place by the unions. The cost that these HACKS will bring for their "life-time everything" is a major reason why we are in such dire financial straits in our towns, cities and states...

Well it seems as even the HACKS are becoming victims of the new economy....the WAPO reports that the cuts are coming and they are reaching even those who thought that because they worked for the town and/or state, they were set for life......guess again, fat-arse public servant....

From the WAPO;

" Local governments across the country are facing an intensifying fiscal crisis that is forcing them to make deep cuts in personnel and services just as more hard-pressed residents are seeking their help, according to a report released Tuesday.

These cities and counties -- which have cut jobs significantly since the start of the downturn -- could slash as many as 500,000 more jobs over the current and coming fiscal years. The cuts would affect schools, public safety, libraries, trash collection and social services, according to survey released jointly by the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties and U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Combined with the fiscal stress confronting state governments -- which face a combined budget deficit of $89 billion this year -- the crisis faced by counties and cities hampers the struggling economic recovery, analysts have said. "

It seems that the people are finally on par with Howard Beale from the 1976 movie "Network" and finally making "real change" to those who have been taking a ride-for-life on the taxpayer's dime for too long....To quote Mr. Beale and his famous words of outrage:

Howard Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

[shouting] 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

Time to clean house, end life-time rides for the HACKS and bring back sanity to our State & Local Government.