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julianpenrod
Joined: 07 Mar 2002
Posts: 303
Location: west caldwell, new jersey, united states |
the need for a complete overhaul of government
 Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:49 am
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Julian Penrod
4 Fairfield Avenue
West Caldwell, New Jersey 07006
(973) 220-1601
julianpenrod@comcast.net
February 20, 2005
Letters to the Editor
Dear sirs:
As foul as it is to engage in the malignant and low, it can be just as reprehensible to be aware of them, and not acknowledge it.
The evident pandering to development, by government, in New Jersey has been so ceaseless and remorseless that it no longer comes as a surprise to hear of a county executive indicted for accepting bribes, in exchange for adulterating zoning laws to benefit a developer crony; or to hear a town council opine that the "economic prosperity" supposedly promised by the addition of a new strip mall to a township far outweighs the rights of the residents to quality of life! And, when a developer casts an eye at a piece of property, even owned by a private citizen, it has come to be all but a foregone conclusion that that individual will have their land seized, by "eminent domain", and it will be given to the developer, to profit off of obscenely!
It's become so that private ownership of land in New Jersey seems nothing more than an unacknowledged private bank account for developers, to be plundered and looted at will, with the criminal conspiracy of local government!
Woodlands are decimated to erect cramped, high density townhouse developments on miniscule parcels of land! Venerable old trees are removed from curbside in residential areas, and local government denies any knowledge of what's gong on! Local governments claim that handing private individuals’ land to developers, so the developers can profit by building townhouse communities, will “decrease ratables”, yet the influx of children into schools, and the increased demand for public utilities only serves to increase ratables, each and every time! Public facilities like, say, Grover Cleveland Park, in West Caldwell, seem to feature in country executives' plans to loot the coffers, as convenient drains for taxpayer dollars on gratuitous and unnecessary "improvements"! The township of Roseland appeared to have acted to pervert the ethic of "Green Acres", by requisitioning money to purchase property for unnecessary playing fields, purely for the purpose of ruining quality of life for nearby Livingston residents, to force them to sell their land cheaply to corrupt developers! A half million gallon oil spill in the Delaware River, in December 2004, seems to have been engineered to ruin plans by state government to protect an island there from development! And, in the midst of all this, government consistently orders the public to believe that the people voted for yet more money to be put aside for “acquisition of undeveloped land”, and summarily increases property taxes yet again!
In light of all this, it surprised no one that a developer approached the town council of Montclair, to acquire permission to destroy the beautiful and fine old Marlboro Inn, to replace it with yet more insipid, uninspired, cookie-cutter townhouses. Nor was it unexpected that the town council granted the developer's whims, over the earnest pleas, by the people who pay their salaries, not to allow this desecration to their community!
Residents made up petitions to prevent the destruction! They appealed to lawmakers to take a stand! They arranged to have the area declared an “historical site”, and filed suit to prevent the introduction of new building! They approached numerous other sources, to try to arrange alternate offers for the property! And still they failed!
The entire filthy matter can be used as a textbook case of a “foregone conclusion”!
But, then, that only displays what seems a fundamental tenet of government everywhere!
"The only purpose of government is to help the already rich get even richer, by funneling taxpayer dollars to them in phony 'public works projects', and by giving them carte blanche to do anything they want!” The only time government will retrench, apparently, is if the level of their criminal conspiracy against the welfare of the public becomes too filthy and stinking to hide under a rug!
And, now, word comes that Montclair’s evidently criminally corrupt and complicit town council has voted itself a 40% pay hike!
It stands as, evidently, a point without question, that the entirety of government in New Jersey, indeed, the country, is nothing more than one vast criminal enterprise! A gang of unprincipled individuals, literally using threats of force - the apparent hoods called “police” - to force people to pay “protection”, money that will not be used for the public’s benefit, but only as extortion, to keep the thugs in power from hurting them! The portion of this money, then, that isn’t funneled directly into a corporate crony pocket seems to find its way into purchasing whores and heroin for the politicos, themselves! Acknowledging this is a part of dealing with the problem, but it is only a part!
There is another aspect that must, at some point, enter!
And that is actually taking action to end it!
Toward that end, while describing the extent of apparent wholesale criminality in governance can continue, immense amounts of effort must be devoted now to actually eradicating the culture of corruption from government, and seeing to it that it never takes root again!
In fact, in an evident personal acknowledgement of their involvement in criminality, government has taken pains to define as de facto illegal various actions to remove crooked politicos from power, such as insurrection and even refusing to pay taxes. It is not the threat to the welfare of society that seems to motivate these kinds of actions being defined “illegal” - politicians seem to have no problem working against citizens’ quality of life on a regular basis! - rather, it appears only an admission on their own part that they know they are going to inevitably act unethically and corruptly, so they make sure that any attempt to remove them from office, by those they will have worked to rape, will be considered automatically wrong!
To be sure, though, anything destructive of life or property can be argued to cause more harm than good, so working to improve the system from within can be considered preferable to simply overthrowing it, no matter how innately corrupt it may have become! Sometimes, the improvement that is desired can be achieved simply by making sure criminals don’t get into positions of power! And it can be said that there is a degree of reasonableness to having the public contribute to the working of government around them. In fact, though, the amendment to the Constitution authorizing federal income tax seems not to have been ratified by all states, but it seems the overwhelming greed of politicians would make it difficult indeed to find one of them who would stand up for someone who refused to pay their taxes. But, in the end, paying an allotment toward the running of the infrastructure, and other universally available - that is, not “privatized”! - services, can serve a purpose for society!
But, among other things, there must be a reliable process at hand to make sure that the money goes toward protecting the citizens’ welfare, and, especially, for stopping a project cold, if it can be shown not to!
There must be a truly reliable system of oversight in place, constantly, to monitor all political actions! Politicians must literally feel like there is always someone looking over their shoulders, in every public decision! There must never again be allowed “closed-door meetings”, on anything! There must be deep public involvement in every contract and public works project! Every dollar spent must be accounted for, and extensive proof must be made immediately and easily available that it is spent on trustworthy contractors, with demonstrably quality materials, for provably needy purposes! And, the second that that is not available, the project must be shut down immediately, and the politico or politicos associated with it must be made personally financially responsible to undo what was done, and to reimburse the coffers for what was spent!
And those who find it impossible to function this way will automatically be defining themselves as inherently criminal and corrupt!
No one who makes more than, say, $50,000 a year should be eligible for a position in government! There should be no “career politicians”! No politician should serve for more than two years, and recall should be made easier to arrange!
And the judicial branch should be taken under extreme examination! With the acknowledgement of evident wholesale criminality in the executive and legislative branches of government, politicians have depended on the judicial branch to facilitate their crimes! To make this possible, there has been a devoted campaign mounted toward convincing the public that the judiciary are fundamentally and inherently incapable of acting unscrupulously! The public are all but ordered to trust the judicial branch with absolutely everything! And a result of this has been Superior Court Judge Reginald Stanton, who, when called upon to overrule a zoning board’s decision to permit high density building on Hamburg Mountain insisted that he “couldn’t possibly hope to question the sense of the zoning board”, yet, when another board ordered that the Bayley-Ellard Campus not be converted to a townhouse community, he unequivocally ordered that they “return to the drawing board” and “compromise” with the developer - meaning that they should give the developer everything that he wanted! Another result of the present evidently tainted system is the judge who made no move whatsoever to protect the rights of Montclair residents to a venerable neighborhood.
And the power of the public to chart the course of government themselves must be enhanced. The power of petition should be increased, and the process made simpler! Plebiscite and mandate by the people should also be made easier to arrange, and given unlimited power over government operation!
Basically, anything that can allow the public to get in the way of government machinations!
That would be only a portion of the modifications that would prohibit criminal misuse of government by politicians. It’s necessary, though, to have a means of getting to that point, and that means making use of what appears to mean the most to politicos, namely, money!
Among the simplest methods is for people to simply cut back drastically on all form of spending, or, in any other way, funneling money into the pockets of politicians, through their business holdings. Or the holdings they transferred into family members’ names - such as New Jersey Governor pro-temp, Richard Codey did! - in order to give an appearance of propriety in what seems, essentially, to be an aggressively venal and crooked endeavor! People should make their cars last longer by taking better care of them; they should forego eating in restaurants, even fast food restaurants; they should not take out credit cards; they should grow their own food; they should pay everything cash; they should make their homes last longer by taking care of them; they should forego the garbage that’s called “sports” and “popular entertainment”; they should make their own clothes.
To more surely achieve the alteration of political process, though, a system should be arranged preventing politicians from raping the public. The primary means of that profiting is through taxes, so a process should be set up whereby tax money should be put into an escrow account, to be withdrawn for public projects and politicians’ salaries. It can be withdrawn for a project only if the public approves, and a politician should be denied salary, if they did not approve a project that would benefit the people!
Meanwhile, the public should also flood the media with letters to the editor, airing their indignation at political criminality, and they should deluge government with letters alerting them that they know the crimes they are guilty of!
Most importantly, though, the people have to involve themselves deeply in politics, so that, whenever corruption becomes apparent, they can acknowledge it and denounce it!
Julian Penrod |
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one_son_of_helaman
Joined: 16 Feb 2005
Posts: 99
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Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:25 am
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ditto  i agree to some of that
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There is no box w/out walls to look beyond!!! |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
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Sun Feb 27, 2005 5:08 pm
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one_son_of_helaman/Whitemajikman calls for complete anarchy, and would want private companies owning the air he breathes.
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Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood! |
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