Despite Brad Stipes’ virtual one-person campaign to make good use of funding available to the town to improve/add sidewalks, the damage was done. Once again, the “let’s wait and see” attitude resulted in a last minute rush to get something processed. Read the rest of this entry »
Wow…all that wonderful stuff in the Vision 2020…all those great projects happening in some areas of town…All Town Council’s visions (see: ThinkChristiansburg.com). Then, on the other handthere are issues like: Read the rest of this entry »
Money speaks! Campaign ads, political party positions, financial help, health care debate, and even local and state elections can be greatly distorted by the rhetoric that money can buy!
Determining what it says and who it says it to is a fine art for those who want to know what their money is really saying.
The loudest voices are usually related to small numbers of people/groups who have a lot of money backing them. Simply turn on the TV and watch the ads that are available. Most of these are not truly informational because they are slanted to vocalize one side of an issue or the other. This is the ploy used by candidates, elected officials, political parties, and special interest groups. Their goal is spread the word…their word to every ear that they can. They trust that people will accept what is said because of who they have doing the talking or by some logo or name affiliated with their ’cause’. They trust that people will trust them to give the truth. Well, they do give the truth, but as my mother always said “There are 3 sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the ‘truth’.”
You see, truth is not that easy to identify. What is ‘truth’ to one person can be an absolute lie to another. I personally use some specific subsets of truth when I am looking at a situation. First, I look at ‘reactive truth’. This is where something is going on that has a direct effect on me right now and I have an immediate ‘gut’ reaction to it. In essence, it is emotion driven. Second, there is ‘relative truth’ which is where I calm down a bit and look at what has been said and process that information based on what I have found through life experiences such as listening to others, reading, experiencing, etc. This tends to be more of a cognitive assessment of the truth. Then, lastly, there is a synthesis truth where I look at my emotional reactions and compare them to the data (facts) in an effort to determine whether my reactions are, indeed, based upon facts or whether someone has simply tried to use fear as a tool to shift my thinking and values. All too often, I find that there has been a fairly blatant attempt by someone to do exactly that, frighten me in order to get me to climb onto their ‘bandwagon’.
Examples of how people’s emotions and fear have been used to distort reality in order to serve the needs of the few are rampant throughout the Health Care Debate. They are also freely flowing in the negative campaign ads that we have seen devolve into ‘mud-slinging’ circuses during recent campaigns.
The problem is that these types of tactics work now and will continue to work so long as people make the assumption that those people in power (whether governmental, financial, or other based) are going to look out for the interest of the people. In order to find that out, people need to care enough about what is happening to be willing to look and think for themselves. Whenever you see an ad that automatically makes you think something negative about someone or something simply stop for a few minutes and ask yourself who will benefit if you let yourself respond to the fear or anger that the ad creates. You may well be surprised at what you begin to see. In particular, dig a bit to see whose money is covering the costs of those ads. That, alone, can be very insightful!
As many of you know, I keep a running lists of questions that people have contacted me about. One of the most common one’s I hear is “How can the Town of Christiansburg get sued so much and then even the Town Council Members cannot find out what the settlement price was?”
That is a very good question and one that has been answered quite well by the Virginia Coalition for Open Government on a Blog article by Megan Rhyne “Secret lawsuit settlement amounts“. This same blog article was edited and appeared on the May 31, 2009 edition of the Roanoke Times “The public doesn’t know the price it paid“.
What does this mean for citizens? Ultimately, it means that your tax money is used to pay for the insurance that pays settlements in legal cases. Will you know how much or to whom the amount goes to? Not very likley. Will you receive a report of the affect these lawsuits will have on the insurance premiums in the future? What will be the long term financial affect to the taxpayer? There have been multiple instances where law suits have been applied against the Town of Christiansburg. These are almost always settled and with that settlement the records are sealed meaning that you, the taxpayer, have no access to that information.
Now, legal records do not seal themselves. Only a Judge can order the sealing of such records and the Judge has to be asked to do so. That means either the individual/group suing the Town or the Town’s representative MUST ask that those records be sealed.
In other jurisdictions, the facts are known by the elected officials. Christiansburg, however, seems to handle this a bit differently. Only the Town Manager is allowed to know. Town Council Members that were asked advised that they did not know and had been told they could not be given that information.
Some have suggested that it is the Town Attorney that is adding the factor of ‘silence’ to the equation. However, an attorney can advise a client, but it is ultimately the client (in Christiansburg’s case the Town Manager) who prompts the attorney to make a request to the Judge to seal the records. Somehow or other, the wording must be getting included in those orders that either none or only some of the Town Council members are being informed.
Our government has a responsibility to manage the town’s money. We as citizens have the right to see how well they perform that function. As the article referenced above notes, there are certainly some things within a law suit that should be kept confidential, but the amount of settlement hardly seems to be one of them. And, if Town Council members are kept out of the ‘knowledge loop’, how can they be expected to evaluate the situation and make sure it doesn’t happen again. In the recent past, one Town Council member responded to an issue by simply saying…”so sue us”. That’s easy to say when it is not your money or reputation that is one the line but rather the town’s. Just how many law suits have been filed against the Town of Christiansburg in the last 20 years. How many of those cases were settled and an order to seal the records issued by the Court? No. I don’t have the full answer to those questions. Yet:)
If you think taxpayers and Town Council members should be aware of the amount of settlements paid and how it can, will, or has affected insurance rates, please take the time to contact you Delegates and State Senators and let them know. You can find contact information at the Virginia General Assembly homepage.
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