Al Pettit gave a presentation Wednesday night warning that Coos County was on the “verge of bankruptcy” and the worst thing any county can do is “file bankruptcy” because “there are long term implications to any county filing bankruptcy in terms of borrowing money, in terms of interest rates…” and “we should avoid it at all costs.” According to the State, bankruptcy and the corresponding damage to the county’s credit rating and borrowing capacity is not an option.
Oregon, unlike many states, has no provision to allow its local governments to take advantage of municipal bankruptcy under Chapter 9 of the Internal Revenue Code and has no provision for state supervision or temporary takeovers of local governments that experience fiscal distress or insolvency.
Blatant ignorance of this nature is just another example of why the committee’s perceptions are untrustworthy.
Someone warned a gathering of the Americans for Prosperity group last night that before long, if this runaway train isn’t stopped, we will have a new czar running the county. It will be curious to see how the commissioners decide what authority and responsibility the commissioners will agree to relinquish to the new czar and if one refuses to pass off any portion of their job, if the other two can vote to force it. The two appointed commissioners do not appear to be interested in taking responsibility at all, preferring to pass off these chores to appointed citizen committees and now a hired manager, however, the elected commissioner may feel he has an obligation to the voters to continue his term as is and a new czar could create quite a tempest in an already troubled courthouse.
What’s a meme? I think we were called that a while ago. The only time I ever heard that, it was from a bully kid running home as fast as he could, calling meme meme. I knew he was calling his gramma to save his but from a beatdown. The blood of texans has limited my vocabulary and sometimes I need help understanding others.
Truthfully I hate to pick on Pettit all the time but he just makes it so darned easy. I mean a report that admits that the inclusion of facts would render the results meaningless, The Daily Show writers couldn’t come up with stuff like that (actually they can and do) but about 16 minutes into the structure meeting Al tells the audience that their summary of the employee interviews is gospel and that basically his “perception is the reality”. Well, of course it is but to whom? “You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.” – Douglas Adams
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein
I’ll bet my bottom dollar, THIS is why LIttle Al and Big Jonnie won’t tell/show/release the materials they are using as their guidelines to dismantle representative government in Coos County.
How bout it “boys”, you want to step up and show us your propaganda? Or continue to hide like the mental midgets you are, and not disclose who’s telling your sorry arses what to do ?
Unbelievable ignorance displayed for all the world to see.
If just ONE of you cowards would step up and be a man and tell those of us who support this county where you are getting your guidance, you could save everybody a lot of time and aggravation.
So Al? You gonna submit your materials to the public or not?
That’s not possible in Coos County, didn’t you cast your vote for our last two county commissioners. I must have been in a coma at that time, because I never received my ballot. Did you?
For Al and his Koch Sucking friends who are trying to take over this county, just so we all know who you really are Al, this one is for those just learning who’s altar YOU worship at, well here it is. Too bad Al isn’t man enough to tell us himself, but alas:
Published on Friday, December 9, 2011 by The Nation
Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Savage Assault on Democracy
by John Nichols
Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch finally got their way in 2011. After decades of funding the American Legislative Exchange Council, the collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators, the project began finally to yield the intended result.
For the first time in decades, the United States saw a steady dismantling of the laws, regulations, programs and practices put in place to make real the promise of American democracy.
Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch finally got their way in 2011. After decades of funding the American Legislative Exchange Council, the collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators, the project began finally to yield the intended result. For the first time in decades, the United States saw a steady dismantling of the laws, regulations, programs and practices put in place to make real the promise of American democracy. That is why, on Saturday, civil rights groups and their allies will rally outside the New York headquarters of the Koch Brothers to begin a march for the renewal of voting rights in America.
For the Koch Brothers and their kind, less democracy is better. They fund campaigns, with millions of dollars in checks that have helped elect the likes of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich. And ALEC has made it clear, through its ambitious “Public Safety and Elections Task Force,” that while it wants to dismantle any barriers corporate cash and billionaire bucks influencing elections, it wants very much to erect barriers to the primary tool that Americans who are not CEOs have to influence the politics and the government of the nation: voting.
That crude calculus, usually cloaked in bureaucracy and back-room dealmaking, came into full view in 2011.
Across the country, and to a greater extent than at any time since the last days of southern resistance to desegregation, voting rights were being systematically diminished rather than expanded.
ALEC has been organizing and promoting the assault, encouraging its legislative minions to enact rigid Voter ID laws and related attacks on voting rights in more than three dozen in states.
With their requirements that the millions of Americans who lack drivers licenses and other forms of official paperwork go out and purchase identification cards in order to cast ballots, the Voter ID push put in place new variations on an old evil: the poll tax.
“We are in the midst of the greatest coordinated legislative attack on voting rights since the dawn of Jim Crow,” says NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. “Voter ID laws are nothing but reincarnated poll taxes and literacy tests, and ex-felon voting bans serve the same purpose today as when they were created in the wake of the 15th Amendment guaranteeing ex-slaves the vote—suppressing voting numbers among people of color.”
Voter ID laws represent only the beginning of the assault on voter rights. In states across the country in 2011, conservative governors and legislators who had swept to power in the 2010 election moved to restrict access to the polls in other ways. They ended election-day registration programs in state such as Maine, ending a practice that had allowed new voters to come to the polls, fill out a simple form and cast a ballot. They restricted early-voting in states such as Ohio, making it dramatically harder for citizens to cast ballots in the run-up to an election. They scrapped weekend-voting in Ohio, where working men and women had been able to cast ballots on their days off. They placed new restrictions on voting by students at colleges and technical schools, even going so far in Wisconsin as to move the primary election date to when most students were on summer break. They reduced the number of polling places in some states, making it harder for voters who lack transportation to get to the polls. And after they established the Voter ID requirements in Wisconsin, and said that citizens had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get the proper paperwork, they tried to reduce the number of DMV offices.
“For nearly a century, there were Jim Crow laws in place that discouraged people of color from voting, explains Wade Henderson, the president and CEO of The Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights. “Today, there are different laws, but the objective is the same—to prevent millions from exercising their right to vote.”
No one who is serious about voting and elections misses the point of the project.
The point is not just to make it harder to vote. The point is to make it harder for citizens to elect legislators, governors, members of Congress and presidents who will regulate and tax multinational corporations such as Koch Industries, while at the same time establishing programs that meet the needs of the great mass of Americans. “Now, just as before, they are seeking to block us from voting in order to make it easier to come after our other rights,” says Mike Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers. “Everything we care about is at stake, from the right to a quality education to the right to a fair wage.”
It is with all of this in mind that the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund and allied civil rights and civil liberties organizations, churches and unions have endorsed the “Stand for Freedom” voting rights campaign, which will launch with a march Saturday from the offices of the Koch Brothers to the United Nations. At the United Nations, the groups will mark Human Rights Day by calling for an end to assaults on voting rights in the United States.
The choice of the Koch Brothers office as a starting point is not symbolic. It is practical. For decades, the Koch Brothers and their foundation have funded ALEC and other groups that are now driving the attack on voting rights in states across the country.
The people are pushing back. In November, Mainers voted by an overwhelming margin to restore election-day registration. In other states, voting rights has become a central political issue. And, now, that issue is being raised at the headquarters of the Koch Brothers — and the United Nations.
“From the beginning of our nation’s founding, Americans have understood that voting was fundamental to their pursuit of freedom and equal opportunity,” says Lillian Rodríguez López, President of the Hispanic Federation. “Any attempt to undermine the right to vote, especially when that effort is directed at historically marginalized groups, must be treated as an attack on the very ideals that created our country: democracy and equality. And that is why we stand up for freedom and continue to fight for the right to vote for all Americans.”
© 2011 The Nation
The crowd that thinks all government is bloated is attempting a hostile takeover….
Why is Al ashamed to tell us what “materials” they are passing around at their meetings?
The video is up! http://coosmediacenter.pegcentral.com/player.php?video=a0ae76a52a6dec9f14e0756ac65ada92
Al must have missed that post weeks back that explained the dissolution of a county – try as I might to keep everyone up to date he is always so far behind…
Do you know if the video is online yet?
You are right, Mary. To be absolutely accurate in the vernacular, neither Curry County, the press – nor I – should be using the term “bankruptcy”. Instead, we should use the word “dissolution.” Those silly folks in Curry County – as well as some members of the press – continue to erroneously use the word “bankruptcy” when discussing their plight.
“A plan to build a world-class golf resort on state parks land in Curry County – and possibly save the county from bankruptcy – is dead.” – The Oregonion
“County’s bankruptcy would topple the state. Elected officials meet to discuss county’s financial future.” – Curry County Reporter
I’m so glad you made this distinction. I’ll share this information with the Curry County folks next week when I meet with them and I’m certain they’ll be greatly relieved to learn that they cannot go bankrupt – only dissolved.
Thank you for your attention to detail. This has been tremendously helpful.
You go, girl!
It’s an amazing thing to watch, isn’t it guys? Right under our noses, these “wanna be somebodies” are attempting to hijack the entire county and privitize it.
Hey Al, will your new corporatist leader privitize our fire depts too? And then you numbnuts can stand and watch our houses burn to the ground because the leader hadn’t taken our six-pence for fire protection, on top of our taxes?
I’m calling for higher taxes on every damn business in this county. I’ll tell you why, they all hide under the blanket named “small business”. The ONLY way to get these corporations paying, is to tax them, wipe out the freebies, this damn county has to raise their income and I don’t care how many tea bagging idiots raise hell. They’re raising it anyway.
Al, why don’t you try growing a pair and tell We The People privitiZIing is exactly what you want here, and to drown government? Honesty really IS the best policy Al, afterr Stufflebutt I would have thought you’d learned that.
Wouldn’t that have just been a whole lot more truthful? People who slime around behind closed doors do it for a reason, they know it won’t hold up in the sunshine. Well get your damn Okleys’ on Al, the light is staying on.
Your personal litter box is being changed.
That old saying Mary. Smile things could be worse. And we smiled and sure enough things got worse. Thanks for keeping us updated.