Tuscarora Township Board Battles To Control Our Minds

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Potter Stewart, reluctant to try to define pornography, famously said, “Perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.” The subject of propaganda is much more easily defined: Propaganda is information, ideas or rumors deliberately spread widely to influence opinions. As reported by the Washington Post in September, government propaganda at the Federal level is unfettered with $760 million dollars spent to hire private advertising firms. No Congressional Committee oversees this flood of biased government information. State and local governments spend unknown amounts of taxpayer funds that must surely exceed billions of dollars annually promoting their agendas.

Regular followers of the op-ed pages probably read House Representative Lee Chatfield’s apology and careful explanation of why he voted for what he thought was the lesser evil in the recent road funding bills. Those articulate efforts at damage control are propaganda and are in stark contrast to Tuscarora Township Supervisor Mike Ridley’s bogus rant meant to garner sympathy. Ridley’s rant, almost two weeks after my letter was published in another paper, was critical of the use of this quote; “The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another.”

Hitler penned that in his early autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Mein Kampf was used as propaganda to gain sympathy for his evil ends and the control of an entire country. The quote is not hate filled. The man who wrote it was. It addresses how propagandists see the masses as pawns to be played.

Supervisor Ridley wrote that my use of that quote bordered on hate speech. The quote is one often used by organizations, Jewish and secular, that are dedicated to assuring that we never forget the loss of millions of innocent lives that occurred in the Holocaust. Supervisor Ridley’s diatribe using the invective words “hate-filled,” “motivated by an agenda for revenge,” and “disgusting” was his attempt at propaganda masquerading as emotional outrage to gain unwarranted sympathy and manipulate people.

He and the Tuscarora board have supposedly suffered terribly as victims of free speech from what he calls the opposition press. Is Supervisor Ridley that rarest of animals, a thin-skinned politician? To paraphrase Shakespeare; “methinks thou dost protest too much.”

I have never voted for or against any Tuscarora board member in any election. I am not in the controversial sewer district. I only moved to Indian River and Tuscarora Township in 2013. I did attend one annual Tuscarora board meeting prior to the move, and it was very clear the board did not have majority support at that meeting or at the following two annual meetings.

The Tuscarora board exhibits their adversarial our way or the highway behavior at every public meeting. Where is their rank and file majority support at the annual meetings? A few board cronies invariably stand and voice support or instead direct insults to the majority of attendees. The only right that cannot be ignored at the annual township meeting is the right to approve or vote down a raise for the board members. I voted with the majority at the last two annual meetings opposing any raise for these poor examples of representative government.

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Supervisor Ridley claims the Tuscarora board, who coined the term “our board,” has suffered Congressional inquiries, criminal complaints, civil suits, depositions and a recall election in 2014. None of that would occur in a small town with elected officials that truly represent their electorate. No one seeks the police, the courts, or a recall unless they have exhausted all other options. “Our board” is again ignoring ethics and laws to push the Eagles Nest Road special assessment district,SAD, through. Eagles Nest mirrors some of the injustices and inequities exercised in the sewer district. Five of 15 property owners on Eagles Nest Road voted for paving. “Our board,” then acting in dictatorial fashion, adds 119 parcels that are not on Eagles Nest Road to the SAD and saddles those property owners with 80 percent of the paving cost.

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I know government propaganda and waste when I see it. I will not be coerced into silence and allow Tuscarora politics as usual. Vote them in; let them appoint their cronies to do as they please. Keep your mouth shut, pay your taxes, and repeat in four years. That is truly “beyond the pale”.