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Hometown Corruption
Mendham:
SILVER BRIGADE:
Hometown Corruption
     By Admin on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 6:51 am: |
Public corruption starts right in our own hometowns
Corruption and New Jersey have gone together for far too long.
Rather than rehash the obvious, I want to take the discussion to where it all starts. So I pulled out my trusty well worn dictionary.
Interestingly, "corrupt" is defined in very abject language - "morally degenerate and perverted: depraved." Sounds ominous huh? No wonder we normally find it associated with a photo of the dastardly crooked politicians either entering or leaving a NJ court house. I like things that are that simple.
Now for "corruption". It is defined as: "impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle.
So how widespread is it within our state and how does it contribute to so many of our fundamental problems?
Let's look at municipal government and the public school system. Every age-appropriate child deserves a good education, right? But take a closer look at the reality.
New Jersey has 611 school districts and 567 municipalities. That's 1178 fiefdoms, and by taking on all the pseudo-classical trappings of home rule, we're really inviting problems where none need exist.
Who supports this archaic concept and why would anyone want to, since it smacks in the face of common sense and basic economics?
Well, for starters, the system so powerful that it virtually destroys those who would dare raise against it. Look at the past month's election results. In Morris County, virtually every school board candidate who ran on a reform platform was defeated. Who got in? The candidates supported by the local PTAs, and, in many cases, the local teachers' unions.
Why should this be a problem? Let me cite a personal example.
A year or so ago, I and a few other Randolph residents fed up with the manner in which our local officials spent our precious tax dollars formed a local grass-roots property tax organization -- Sanely Tax Our Properties, or STOP,-- to take on the role of informing the local community the facts about the pending school construction referendum and other budget proposals.
As a result, both a $40 million referendum and subsequent $65 million budget were soundly defeated.
Consequently we were scored by our fellow citizens in the community and the press for "destroying the very fiber of the community." Teachers and the local school board were demanding that our constitutional rights be revoked and that we be run out of "their town" on prickly rails.
Our upstanding community leaders and neighbors were willing to sacrifice our constitutional rights to achieve their goals under the feigned "it's for the kids" mantra, no matter how egregious or faulty. The same individuals, one supposes, surreptitiously led a counter charge that included more than 120 "Vote No" signs stolen or destroyed, as well as nasty anonymous calls and illegal campaign activities.
Corruption is subtly flourishing in our leafy suburbs and upscale societies. In this year's Randolph election, three candidates ran unopposed, yet we saw campaign and "Vote Yes" signs in our community parks and on public and school properties.
New Jersey law says candidates and special interest groups can't plant campaign signs on public property, and every candidate signs documents to that effect. But shamefully, in a community with one of the highest per capita rates of lawyers and income in the country, it's the norm.
Community apathy is simply a cancer that leads to the corruption we're seeing, and ultimately to the corrupt results we've become so used to seeing on the evening news.
So we have come up with the breeding ground for those dastardly corrupt politicians, and it's not Trenton or Newark; it's right here in my, and your, hometown.
We have found the enemy and he/she is us (at least some of us).
Jerry Cantrell
(Mr. Cantrell is the President of STOP, and the Silver Brigade. This article appeared in the Sunday, May 22, 2005 edition of the Daily Record, a Gannett Satellite Network Inc. company.) |
| By Chief CrazyTalk on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 10:05 am: |
"The Enemy Is Us"
I've been pondering this reality for a few years now. It presents a difficult problem, kind of like having a baby that will not let go of the bathwater. I think the good news is the baby's attachment to the "corrupt" water is just an ignorant childish infatuation and there is hope it will grow out of it given the right nurturing. Currently, the world is being parented by big media and the simplistic fairy tales it babbles as truth. This parent obviously has no principles (beyond everything is for selling ) and therefore has no real concept of discipline. In big media's world there is no truth to serve and all that matters is the audience and finding the "truth" they want (will pay) to hear. In essence the child has bought the indulgent parents it wants, rather than the principled parents it needs.
By nature we are forever children because by nature we are selfish and self-indulgent. Even when we "think" we're being generous, it is more likely than not we are selfishly taking a self motivated ego trip. In practical fact, crude nature is the original corruption, we love without logic by the dictates of subjective conditioning and celebrate that simple bigotry as some sort of perfect beautiful enlightenment. Practicing the cliche of quoting a Clint Eastwood movie "Deserve... has nothing to do with it" and that simple truth is perhaps the most horrific natural "fact of life", and fact of our corrupt psychology, that we must strive to overcome.
When we are not busy scheming for our next impermanent "fix" to the problem of our ever recurring selfish want. We sometimes do find time to step out of ourselves and liberate our intelligence to ponder the "maze" we are most of the time to busy cheese chasing to notice. The fruit of that "bigger picture" pondering for humanity has been acquiring some understanding of, and even some devotion to, the concept of fairness and justice. Through thousands of years of blood and pain we have written Commandments, Golden rules, and Constitutions to protect ourselves, from the evil that is ourselves. In principal these rules to live by have achieved a kind of perfection as truth. Unfortunately, without practical, common, or required devotion --even a perfect principle becomes a useless invention.
It seems a bazaar imbecility that we seem to have an unyielding devotion to fair horseraces, baseball games etc. Yet in real life we gun down spear throwing Indians, use the excuse of "popularity" (power) to justify all manner of personal intrusions--including picking a neighbors pocket to indulge greed rather than need. Even in the battle of ideas, there really is no fair fight, you either say what people want to hear (or what the Googlie media can sell) or you say it, in logically undeserved defeat, to the wind. |
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