February 26, 2008

The Town Crier

The Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, so help me

GOD.

Journalistic Policy:

The Truth: Facts only.

The whole Truth: Not one side of the issue

Nothing but the Truth: Reality, not opinions

Election Time

As election day draws near, things become desperate. Distortion, half-truths and even lies abound. That is why campaign ads are such an unreliable means of getting facts. It is easy to say, “charges were dropped against a murderer” when the murderer is already serving a 55 year sentence. Campaign ads do not have to state the whole truth. Most people do not know the difference between “file charges” and “writ of mandamus”. The latter is a request for a ruling from a higher court. A Judge should know the difference and not confuse the two in a campaign ad. We have letters to the Editor from people who claim to speak for the lawyers, law enforcement, the people, and Republican party, all written in a suspiciously similar style. Again, I do not believe in coincidences.

Why the excessive attacks on the incumbent District Attorney? When District Attorney Cindy Stormer took over the office, she did not join the Courthouse Gang. A person of influence, position, power, money cannot come into her office and get a “Sweetheart Deal” as was done in the past. The gang is desperate to get rid of her, or any candidate that threatens the county fiefdom of the Lords and Ladies.

We, the people of Cooke County, have an issue that transcends this election. The situation is that a group of long time elected officials have become entrenched in office through years of using their offices of present and past, to the point where they control local law enforcement, news media, lawyers, not just their offices which they use as their own.

The first avenue is to remove the officials from office by election. This year’s election has shown that this is difficult because of the power these officials hold through lots of money, past favors, threats, intimidation, deceptive campaigning (above), and out right criminal acts. A candidate for County Commissioner, Wayne Dodson has been set up and falsely accused, a crime itself, of assault, which took three, maybe four attempts. Opposition candidates and those that support them have to live in an atmosphere of fear. This is not an acceptable situation in the United States of America.

This is not about the election, but corruption. Corruption is identical to cancer. Both start out small but will grow, and usually not detected until it gets large. Even then, corruption does not stop, but spreads to others as it grows. Eventually, corruption escalates to a level where it exceeds the bounds of law and destroys the corrupt. Our most recent and infamous example was President Richard Nixon in “Watergate.” History showed, after the fact, that his first campaign involve character assassination. His corruption grew and spread until all around him went to jail.

When crimes are committed and ethics are violated during election campaign, we have reached that point of destruction. Our Courthouse needs more than a renovation, it needs a house cleaning. This campaign will go on past election day.

Cindy Stormer, Martin Peterson and Wayne Dodson are helping to strengthen the beachhead along with a couple of other elected officials already in place. We, the People, need them. They need us in the form of votes. Begin by forwarding this.

Fred L. Rosenbaum

flrosenbaum@suddenlink.net

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