My Little Margie

Here’s an idea: Why don’t a half dozen of you try to make it down to the County Commissioner’s meeting this Wednesday and watch how the sausage is made. Not pretty at all but very interesting. I ran into the perennial candidate Michael Callis (R – Eaton) the other day who sees nothing wrong with the Sheriff’s new clothes, the trips that my little Margie takes or the lack of oversight in general on County finances. Yeah, I want Mike in Congress keeping an eye out for me. When did the Republican’s “conservatism” stop meaning fiscal prudence?
The reason we have a Commission is so that we can say some one is in charge, otherwise we would have departments making up their own budget that would be handed to them to spend any way they want which opens up the possibility of abuse. One of the biggest problems in government is not keeping track of the revenue streaming out.
A story in the news this week says the pentagon has lost track of 158 billion* in military contracts because the budgets have grown so fast that the infrastructure to keep track of them has not kept pace with the exponential growth/waste of tax payers dollars. You just know there is another infrastructure out there that is keeping pace with that kind of opportunity and they are siphoning it off to projects that never get built but get overbilled for cost over-runs. It’s kind of a whacky world where greed is the driving force. And so it is in the County.
When My Little Margie thinks it is her due to spend every cent in her travel budget and then some, and says to me out loud so other people in the hallway we were walking could hear: “It’s in his budget. He can spend it any way he wants,” speaking of Carr’s fancy pants, you have to believe that she has lost the plot. She no longer gets the idea of what the government role is. She’s not there to mind your tax dollars and see that the institutions run smoothly, she’s there to bilk the system. And you really need to look out now that the Commissioners won’t be getting a $500 raise that they had put in for. That was money that she felt was owed to her and you can bet she is going to find someway to make it up.
When I was down t’ Ossipee the last couple of times I noticed that the taxpayers must have decided that the Commissioners should have a coffee buffet in the meeting room. This is provided by the head of the kitchen at the nursing home. It probably takes him at least an hour to set up and half that to break it down. He probably makes $60K a year which is $30 an hour so it is safe to assume with the coffee and muffins it is costing you $50 every Wednesday so that the Commissioners don’t have to stop on the way in and grab their own cuppa. In ten weeks that would pay for Marge’s raise. Ten more weeks for Sorenson’s and ten for Olkkola.
But, them thieving bastids, the press and public, made so bold as to help themselves and there weren’t enough muffins left for the Comish’. Margie, who taunts the attendees with her inaudible murmurings and whispers her comments when she is conducting public business now belts out, “What happened to all the muffins?”
So come on down, It starts early and if you’re not there by exactly 8:15 the punctilious Chair will commence public comment without you and you’d be missing the fun part. You can help yourself to a coffee and muffin, if you hurry, and if you dare.
*$158 BILLION is almost the total amount that the $1200 per agent orange victim got (see Moving Wall above) for a one time payment to settle their suit in the ‘80s. Bush can only run the Iraq War for three more days on that kind of money and, y’ know, that’s not a bad idea. Then we can use the next three days worth to start funding the real cost of the war, broken bodies and dreams of the men and women who will never recover from the insanity.

Yes, Virginia, we used to have real Memorial Days

Remembering Why We Have Memorial Day

I remember being with my son on a school vacay down in DC where he was born eight years earlier. I wanted to show him all the sights that I was so taken with when I lived down there for a half dozen years.

I decided to start at the top so we rode up the 555 feet and 5 inches of the Washington Monument from which you can see just about anything worth seeing in the whole of the District of Colombia. I had seen most of it, shepherding visitors to all the most sought after sites when they came. But I had not seen “The Wall.” It lived up to every description I had heard of it since the 24 year old Asian American, Maya Lin, had won a contest to design it while she was still studying architecture at Yale.

It gave me the chills. It gives all veterans the chills as well as anyone who has any connection with that hateful war. Looking at it from that height I began to wonder what old army buddies names might be on it. How would I find them? I took some solace that my brother’s name would not be there. He only lost an eye.

We walked down the million or so steps to the base of the monument. I couldn’t get my mind off the meaningfulness of “The Wall.” As we approached, I felt that my legs were getting rubbery and I knew it wasn’t from all those stairs. About half way across I started to slow down as I felt an awkward moisture blurring my vision. I knew in a trice what was happening. It happens to everyone I know that has been there but more intensely for any GI and most especially for the men and women who were in Vietnam and knew somebody whose name is one of the 58,000 plus on those 148 panels.

I was an airborne medic in Germany when the hideous Gulf of Tonkin scandal broke and propelled us toward a full commitment in Southeast Asia in 1965. By 1966 I said goodbye to spit-shine and white-wall haircuts forever. I vowed never to do another push up or wear khaki or OD. The news of Nam came in steady drips. Some one I knew in school had died. A guy from our medic unit down in Ft. Sam had been brutally executed. A friend of mine, still in college, was trying tearfully to cope with his best friend’s death that happened only a few months after he got his lieutenancy.

I joined other Vets down in DC in the late sixties in the hopeless effort to get Tricky Dick to come to his Quaker senses and end the senselessness. Then as now I ask what those people died for. Name one thing that was accomplished that we can say even one of those lives was worth. People went to war for their country because of a sense of duty, sure, but many went against their wishes because it was the law. Both types ended up on “The Wall.”

My brother came back convinced that he had not lost his eye in vain and resented the hell out of my anti war attitude. My younger brother became a conscientious objector. My father rolled over in his grave. It was a time of division in this country whose likes have not even been hinted at since. A time when long hair could get you beat up, where hippies and straights were like the Jets and Sharks.

At UNH I hung out mostly with ex-service types. We never talked about the military to anyone else. It was a disgrace. People called anyone in uniform “baby killer” and used to give soldiers in uniform the finger sometimes when they were hitch hiking home on leave. Brother against brother, Father against son, citizen against country. It was awful.

And then it stopped. GIs came home one by one. No parade as had happened when our fathers came home. No pat on the back or attaboys. They slunk home and walked in the door to the only people who gave a crap about them. They came back haunted with nightmares of Nam that would never go away. They learned to live with the specter of “Nam Vet,” code for whacko or even dangerous.

But the Vets pulled together and formed groups and counseling centers and lobbied Congress. Insult to injury came when agent orange was recognized as an agent of cancer and genetic defects. In 1984 most affected veterans received a one time payment of $1200 for their pains. Most are not expected to live past 65. Thanks for your service guys. Dow and Monsanto still thrive.

When the first Gulf War broke out there was an outpouring of support for the troops and even the war itself. The country pulled together and it began to dawn on all how shabby we had treated our Viet Vets. People openly expressed their regret and promised to make it up. Soon, the cry was, “What about our guys who came back from Nam?” Things got better and, better late then never.

It was a treat to watch the volunteers putting The Moving Wall up on Thursday morning. Old guys (my age) hanging around in remnants of uniforms of all descriptions with T shirts that said Army or Marines. Dave Dube of Lazy Susan’s restaurant down on the Eff/Oss line has been working for veterans for years. On Thursday morning the ex-Marine took another hit for the cause. While riding in a cherry ’55 Chevy convertible to lead an antique car procession down to Constitution Park not far from his restaurant, he and two buddies were rear ended. The car was totaled and Dave and two others were ambulanced to Huggins. When I found him at the Moving Wall, he had 15 stitches in his head and some in his back and neck but he was right there with the others admiring the handiwork of Mike Gaudette’s crew who were putting the finishing touches on the project. It was heart warming to see a dozen or more Kingswood High Schoolers polishing the 148 panels and it was eerily reminiscent of the real deal down in DC.

The Moving Wall will be here through the end of Memorial Day with taps and a final ceremony at 6 p.m. It is a beautifully done replica that has constantly been touring the country since the mid eighties. Dave couldn’t believe his luck when they told him he could have it for Memorial Day. Going to see it is a great way to be counted for the ones we so counted on back then. Just go up, or down, Route 16 and then East on Route 25 for a couple of miles.

Pink slip for Pigge

Sent to The Sun today:

To the Editor,

By three o’clock last Friday—the same day my hot note about the county commissioners appeared in the Sun—I was told that Salmon Press (publishers of The Mountain Ear) no longer needed my services. Of course the people who wanted me gone didn’t do the deed in person; they left it up to one of my oldest friends in the Valley who already had the unenviable task of being my editor.

There are no hard feelings. Politics and punditry go together like cops and robbers. One without the other is unthinkable. Merriam-Webster likens pundits to “authoritative critics” and while pundits are usually from the press, not all reporters are, or want to be one.

Insightful journalism is not “he said, she said.” It’s about reading up on the subject and in between the lines, getting to the bottom of the truth and exposing wrong doers and lie tellers. It is also being willing to get your nose bloodied when someone else’s nose gets out of joint. That’s what makes a good journalist.

If a public official thinks that reading the news is below him or her, then don’t bother, but approximately one third of the entire County (your employers) reads the Sun every day. And I bet that they care that Commissioner Webster gets junkets to Hawaii while they can’t afford gas to get to work. I bet they are interested to know if the Chief of Police is stealing from D.A.R.E. And I bet they want to know what other people in their community think.

So, if you are interested in what’s really going on and you’d like to read some news and opinion that even the Sun might not print, come to my new blog, “The Smoking Jacket.” We’ll torment, and comment on, the pols and the press and whatever else makes news in the Valley of the Crammed. Go to: http://piggesblog.blogspot.com/ to get started.

It’ll be wicked fun.

Peter Case
Tamworth

This blog is so new that I'll need some help getting the word out. Pretend it's like one of those chain dealies, only nothing will happen to you if you don't send the http on. But it would be damned nice of you.

The Letter

Here's the letter to the editor sent to the Sun that caused the stir and presumably led to my termination at the Mountain Ear:

Open letter to two Commissioners:

Dear Marge and Dave,

I left today’s meeting disgusted that elected officials of a certain age could have lived so long without understanding that anyone who chooses to work for the public needs to have oversight by their employers.

You work for us. You are paid by us. The only way we will know if you are doing your job is if we attend the meetings or listen to what others who have been to the meetings have to say.

You both look at the media as the enemy who get you in trouble. How you know this when you supposedly “don’t read the papers” is another stretch for any observer to swallow.

Today when I announced that my paper has asked me to back off complaining about the nincompoopery (my word) that goes on at your meetings, you both said “good” in loud and approving tones. Then Dave asked what paper I worked for? Duh! You don’t read it but you automatically assume that everything I write is bad.

If Nate and I didn’t write what we did about the public’s right to know, you’d still be having your meetings in private as often as you can. Ignorant of the law, or just plain un-lawful, you feel it is best that the public not know how their business is being conducted.

But one could conjecture that you are afraid that if the public does know how you do business they won’t approve. What else can we think? That’s why we have to have an RSA that assures the public’s right to know.

Marge said that she “never reads that paper. I hate it.” Five or ten minutes later she borrowed my copy and found the exact paragraph that she hated and read it allowed in the meeting to make her point about some Nate article. She repeatedly cautioned, “Not that I give much credence to what they say.” Doh!

Last week, Dave pointedly asked Dennis Robinson, DOC (runs the jail) if he shouldn’t use more than 15 minutes to interview prospective employees. Dennis explained, to my satisfaction, the other paper’s satisfaction and to any one else there why he thought “15 minutes is enough”. This week, without consultation (that would be illegal) Dave pressed him again. The DOC gave more detailed reasons, including recalling that Dave had sat in on one of the “15 minute interviews” of this type in the past.

I would have thought that was the end of it. But no. Now Commissioner Olkkola, who did not volunteer, has been assigned to monitor the next set of interviews. Sounds like you don’t trust the Director who has been doing this kind of work for 36 years. What is it in your interviewing background that makes you think you know more than he does?

I bet most people would rather you spend your time worrying about the credit card fiasco, the needless $800 in finance charges because of lax attention to detail, the total lack of follow through on the purchase order system in which only two of the 100 examined had a (required) signature, and of course, travelgate. It’s important to note that the public wouldn’t even know about this stuff if the Commission could still go into non-public at the drop of a hat.

Peter Case
Tamworth on Swift

PS: I would have sent this to the Commissioners instead of the Sun, but when I asked Dave for his email, he responded: “I don’t want any of your junk.”