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7/3/2006
Mendham:
Town Stuff:
The Next Council Meeting:
7/3/2006
     By . . . on Thursday, June 29, 2006 - 11:47 pm: |
Comments/Questions to be submitted for reading during the "public comment" portion of the July 3rd meeting of the Mendham Borough town council.
Regarding the personal comments the Mayor directed at me at the last meeting. I have posted on the website "in Mendham dot com" a more complete response to the Mayor's remarks. I will briefly state for this record that I do not appreciate the Mayor's critique of my life, or implication that I am guilty of some unethical, or inappropriate conduct. The evidence record demonstrates, that UNLIKE THIS TOWN'S GOVERNMENT, I have never committed any act of harassment or deception, and have never been unwilling to negotiate a fair compromise on issues of dispute. I was forced to bring my questions to this public forum because government officials would not provide answers in private correspondence. As the evidence demonstrates, even in this public forum, few answers provided by the "council" could be reasonably perceived as anything other than evasive, incomplete, and insincere. This town government believes it has a right to keep the substance of the information, it applies to the making of public policy, a secret from the public. I not only reject that general philosophy, I claim that the Constitution of the United States, federal laws, and state laws, have been bent and broken by this town government in pursuit of the exclusive control it wishes to exercise over public policy. The privilege of being of public-service, has been perverted by these government officials into a perceived right to be the public's master. For over six years I have ethically fought that perversion, and, with pride, I will continue to do so until government is the public servant our forefathers envisioned. Celebrate our Independence Day tomorrow ...but please respect the value of defending the "we the people" principles that give us the power, and the cause, To Celebrate.
Questions:
1) Neither the Township or the Borough governments have provided any publicly accessible information that would indicate that the censorship policies, that are part of the inter-local agreement regarding the production of Channel 25, will be modified to comply with federal law. I claim quite explicitly, that the current policies of the Township do--egregiously--violate federal law (United States Code 47 section 531). I believe this explicit warning, should be fairly considered by a potential future jury in deciding appropriate punishment for what I certainly consider your willful violation of the law. Just to complete the record for that jury, I ask again, for you to publicly account for your rejection of this explicit warning, and to explain your understanding of the relevant federal law and the First Amendment Rights it intends to protect?
2) How many town employees are provided with a "free" for their personal-use-vehicle, and does the town pay for complete accident insurance, and all maintenance? |
| By 78... . on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 9:51 am: |
| Can you ask one more question? Will the Borough Council consider itself Dickless when Kraft leaves? Or will Stanton be filling in? |
| By 2....... . . on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 12:34 pm: |
| The council currently only has a dick, in name only... Stanton might fart like a man, but otherwise you couldn't make a five year-old boy out of these Pollyanna wimpies. |
| By 06. 78... on Saturday, July 01, 2006 - 10:51 pm: |
| Ask why the borough "Water Reclamation Facility" cannot hold a new employee for more then 6 months. People wake up the job is not that hard, Do you think that the powers that be the self appointed super intendent and the red headed wonder boy are the reason why people quit. I work there and I think they are power tripping assholes. |
| By 06. 2....... on Monday, July 03, 2006 - 5:12 pm: |
Tonight, a few hours previous to our national celebration of our constitution, YOUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT will officially AND willfully begin breaking federal law intended to protect one of America's most sacred of constitutional rights... The First Amendment. The irony of this timing is just too perfect, and it demonstrates that our national constitutional crisis has become dire. When you consider the contempt for constitutional principle, and arrogance, that would enable these evildoers, to commit this treason, on this day of the calendar year you should be able to feel the pain of our forefathers as they rollover in their graves. Where is the rumored Free Press I have heard about? How did we get to this ugly place in American History? More importantly how do we escape 1984 now that we've given away our last right-- too freely speak-- to these fascist, control freaks, of "Big Brother" public-service.
Here are some of the relevant provisions from the "agreement" your government will pass by resolution. In pure 1984 doublespeak, the council referred to the "public, education, and government" [PEG] access channel as "the station". and they have voided the agreement of the word "access" altogether-- proving, that they know what the word means, and that they are simply, and quite illegally, trying to uninvent it. I wish I could be more eloquent in describing just how disgusting this all is, but words fail me.... I am likewise incapable of describing the depth of my disappointment that something like this could happen in a relatively intelligent American community.
quote:
WHEREAS, the Borough and the Township desire to jointly operate a television
station for local programming known as Mendham TV-25 (hereinafter "the Station."); and
WHEREAS, the mission of the Station is to provide a forum for the municipalities
to inform, educate and entertain the Mendham community at-large.
NOW, THEREFORE, IN CONSIDERATION OF the mutual covenants and
agreements herein contained, the parties hereto, for themselves, their successors and assigns, hereby agree as follows:
1.
The Station shall be known as Mendham TV-25 and shall be located at
the Old Ralston Firehouse on Route 510 in Mendham Township.
3. A governing board shall be established composed of six (6) persons; three of whom shall be representatives from the Borough, consisting of the Borough Administrator, a member of the Borough Council and a citizen of the Borough, both appointed by the Borough Council and three of whom shall be representatives from the Township consisting of the Township Administrator, a member of the Township Committee and a citizen of the Township, both appointed by the Township Committee. The governing board shall have the power to appoint one or more members of the public, from either or both municipalities, to serve in an advisory capacity.
4.
The governing board shall establish by-laws for the operation of the Station which shall be approved by the governing bodies of both municipalities. The governing body shall be responsible for the day-to-day operating activities of the Station.
5.
In keeping with the mission of the Station as set forth above, programming will highlight the achievements and activities of local community groups, student and educational programs, local government information, programming and activities and general interest programming created by and of interest to the residents of the community.
6.
Each municipality shall be entitled to equal programming in accordance
with a schedule to be developed by the governing board.
.
9.
The Station shall not broadcast material deemed inappropriate to its mission as stated herein. Specifically prohibited are productions containing violent or sexually explicit material, obscene language, political messages, or programming that is commercial in nature for profit making enterprises. The policies established for "on-air" content shall be enforced by the governing board.
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| By 06. 32... on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 9:28 am: |
| Specifically prohibited are productions containing violent or sexually explicit material, obscene language, political messages,...well, I guess they won't be putting any meeting minutes on the air. |
| By 06. 06. 2....... on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - 3:43 pm: |
Sex, violence, obscenity... and politics? As an alien life form--presumably accidently deposed to this backward shit hole--my instincts tell me you loony humans don't have a clue. It's kind of a harsh realization that we have endured centuries of hard cultural evolution to remain in place where people are still so afraid of images and words.... and presumably a fair fight on the battleground of ideas. These little oppression cheats by the moralizing, control freak, Godites demonstrate that their professed faith, is just a desperate dependency.
Anyway... I've been doing lots of research on the case law regarding PEG access television. The Federal courts have basically been all over the place on the subject-- indicating that the Supreme Court should really do some decisive interpreting of the law and Constitution. There is a case in Ohio, on federal appeal, that might be a good vehicle for that, but the trend is for cases to be settled out-of-court before they get to the Supreme Court. The good news, from my point of view, is that the settlements usually mean victory for those fighting the oppression of free-speech....the bad news is, a right you have to fight years to actually use, aint worth much. A case I will probably use in my argument involves a Texas federal court decision where a judge stopped a town from renewing a franchise agreement eliminating fair public access and converting to complete government controll (similar to language used in this town's agreement) The court was quite emphatic in pointing out that a government's intention in imposing any limitations on access can't be to suppress protected speech. Clearly that's all this government intends to do.
A locally relevant analogy I thought of, to illustrate the pure fascism of your government, is to think about how "we the people" would react, if we were taxed for a library, for example, and it wasn't a public library, but instead a government controlled library where only books meeting the approval of the secret committee's private politics and bigotries would be allowed on the shelves. It really is that simple, that unAmerican, and that ugly. |
| By 06. 2....... on Saturday, July 08, 2006 - 10:48 am: |
From the blog news:
quote:My public-comment questions: The council and mayor chose not to provide any reply, to the questions I submitted. An injury added to this insult was the fact that the mayor read the comments and questions with an expedience that no doubt diminished comprehensiability. This discrimination, based on the mere fact of our substantial ideological disagreements, seems to me to feel like it should be pretty damn illegal. Government officials can't disseminate information completely at their personal discretion. Legally (constitutionally) I think the burden is going to be on them to demonstrate good cause for this blatantly unequal, and obviously petty treatment.-- especially considering an ADA request for fair accommodation.
Three weeks ago the mayor said "they would continue to answer my questions" (even though the answers were seldom really answers). Apparently, something has occurred to change their strategy and they now see no need to even provide the pretense of equal treatment. The nature of conflict to escalate is clearly a crude force we have not yet become civilized enough to effectively counterbalance. I would contend that if we had an honest justice system, that worked, this dispute would have ended years ago with an appropriate deterring sanction against the Borough Government for breaking contracts and violating "sunshine" laws. Unfortunately, when there are no Marcus of Queensbury rules to prevent low blows, knives, and sledgehammers, things are likely to get bloody ugly.
As the David in this Goliath conflict I don't have any weapons of tyranny and oppression to sling at my adversary. In my corner, I do have a few people with bags on their head, who do muster the effort of an occasional supportive "hang in there kid", but frankly that lost its effectiveness as a painkiller a long time ago. The fact that I'm beginning to realize that the truth isn't much of a weapon, unless it's hardened by media exposure (public access), has me feeling pretty exhausted, defeated, and doomed. If there were enough people watching, I know I could win this fight, because Goliath would then be too embarrassed not to fight fair... But with "practically" no one watching the only thing I can hope to accomplish is to leave an irrelevant, but interesting, stain on the canvas. Part of me wishes I could just say "no-mas" and go back to the shitty life I had before this shit started, but the rest of me knows that there is no going back, and that there really is no future, worth going back to, until the menacing Goliath, and his dark age shadow, is taken down.
I have created another web site (that gooogle will probably never actually put on the practically accessible Internet) UnAccess.com. In pondering the word "access" I realized it really defines the core of my philosophy. Real, practical, efficient, "straight-line" access to information/production can fix what's wrong with most of our social and economic infrastructure. "Knowledge is power"--the power to define best solutions and the right choices-- and we are frankly squandering it in preposterous proportions. The inefficiencies corrupting everything (especially the internet and government) are contrivances of the Goliath (big business, big media, big [two party/ no choice] government) and making the truth UnAcess-ible is his most powerful weapon. |
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