In This Corner - Robert Slager |
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Learning to pity the hate bloggers
Spending the better part of two weeks in the warmth of family and friends can do wonders for the soul. It helps to bring balance into a person’s life. Too often we get drawn into our own little worlds of work and all the pressure and stress that comes with that. Having a little time off can help put things into perspective.
It’s a pity the political partisans in Wareham cannot realize that. For them, the obsession with winning April’s town election kept them clued to their hate site on New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. On a night when most people reflect on all that was good the past 12 months, all these people could do was continue their hateful rhetoric as one year passed into the next.
I didn’t read their site on New Year’s Eve. I spent the night mostly buried under a mountain of streamers courtesy of my 9-year-old twin daughters. Occasionally I would respond to the click of a new e-mail from the nearby computer. All the e-mails I received that night were born of warmth and caring, of people wishing me and my family a Happy New Year. And I sent the same message to them as well.
I checked the hate site yesterday. I consider it a part of my job to assimilate all information from Wareham regardless of the forum. What stuck me was a profound sense of sadness for the people who had nothing in their lives on New Year’s Eve but bitterness and spite. They spoke about how the authorities should take my children away from me. They unleashed their usual homophobic rants, this time toward a private citizen whose only apparent crime was to fight for her rights as a taxpayer and homeowner in Wareham. These kinds of comments usually anger me. But this time anger was replaced by pity. I can’t comprehend spending New Year’s Eve on a computer trying to tear down other people. The only comments posted on the Observer site were to wish other residents of Wareham a safe and happy New Year.
It really put things into a crystal clear perspective for me. It reminded me of the difference between people who care for others and those who only care about themselves.
What also struck me was utter lack of perspective held by the haters on that site. The first thing I noticed was all swastikas displayed on that site, as if volunteer town officials could in any way, shape or form be equated with Nazis. But what hit me equally hard was the utter lack of logic and factual accuracy contained within their arguments.
Let’s take their long-standing claim about legal fees. They’ve made claims that the computer audit has cost the town $250,000. That simply isn’t true. The audit to date has cost the town $30,000. If the town gets the disks back and has them analyzed by the digital forensic firm it initially hired it will cost an additional $30,000. That’s $60,000 in a budget of $60 million. That’s 0.01 percent of the town budget. At best the overall cost to taxpayers in Wareham would be a few dollars each. The bloggers are flipping out that the town asked taxpayers to spend a few dollars to audit the town’s computer system. A few dollars per taxpayer would be the total cost of weeding out potential corruption within town government.
A blogger named Jeb asked a very interesting question on the hate site the other day. He wondered why the hate bloggers aren’t demanding that the DA return the computer disks to the town. He reasoned that the best way to blow the selectmen and the Observer out of the water would be to get the disks back and prove the allegations of corruption were unfounded and amounted to a witch hunt. It was an excellent question, one that was met by stone-cold silence by the hate bloggers.
Instead the bloggers continued to expressed anger that the town settled a lawsuit with former town accountant Robert Bliss for a reported $30,000. The same math equation still applies. The town asked taxpayers to contribute a few dollars each to get rid of a town accountant who signed off on a $35,000 payoff to former town administrator Michael Hartman without the knowledge of the majority of the Board of Selectmen. State law clearly lays out the procedure for payroll warrants. A majority of selectmen need to sign them. That didn’t happen with Bliss. He took a hand-scribbled note from Hartman and authorized a $35,000 payout. Where is the blogger outrage over that? Where is the blogger outrage over the fact that Bliss couldn’t see a $1.9 deficit coming down the pike last year until layoffs and work furloughs were needed in order to set the tax rate? Where is the blogger outrage over the fact that the Health Care Trust Fund fiasco was allegedly caused because Bliss misclassified the funds during the accounting process? The town had to pay nearly $25,000 to an outside auditor to clean up that mess.
The bloggers are claiming that Bliss should have been retained rather than have the town spend $30,000 to settle with him. That baffles me. From this perspective this guy wasn’t doing his job so he was fired. He claimed his civil rights were violated (yeah, right). Instead of engaging in even more costly litigation (and no doubt under pressure from the town’s insurance company to avoid the cost of a trial), Bliss was paid $30,000 to drop his ridiculous lawsuit. That, unfortunately, is the way things work in real life. Anyone can sue anyone for just about any reason. That doesn’t mean the lawsuit has merit. Most of the plaintiffs in cases like this are simply angling for a settlement. They’re called nuisance lawsuits because that’s what they are – a nuisance. And many are settled out of court because of the time and money that would be necessary to fight them.
Most of the legal fees in Wareham stem from land use issues. Developers try to steam-roll town zoning bylaws, the town stops them, and then the developers sue. Then there are ridiculous lawsuits such as the one regarding the renaming of a street in Swifts Beach. The town’ emergency responders wanted to rename one of the streets because it sounded similar to another street in the neighborhood. The Planning Board approved changing the name of the street. But because the wife of selectman Bruce Sauvageau suggested the new name for the street a host of local partisans filed a lawsuit against the town. These people didn’t live anywhere near Swifts Beach. But they saw it as a way to score political points in their endless battle with Bruce Sauvageau. Where is the blogger outrage over that?
What’s really sad about all this is that the two biggest sources of legal fees – the Swifts Beach fiasco and the library litigation – weren’t the fault of the current administration. Only Sauvageau was on the board when the town was sued for giving Barbara Deighton Haupt less than what her property was worth when the town took it by eminent domain in 2002. Sauvageau recused himself of voting on the issue because he lives in Swifts Beach. The partisans repeatedly tried to throw him under the bus for this fiasco, but public documents showed he played almost no role in any of it. The bloggers always forget that the former board of library trustees sued the town first when they were asked to reapply for their positions. The former trustees are now trying to spin that, claiming they tried to settle with the town. What they aren’t telling you is their settlement proposal was basically to keep the status quo. State law clearly showed the former trustees weren’t properly appointed. What was the town supposed to do? Knowingly violate state law by allowing the illegal appointing process to continue?
The current town government has made some mistakes. The appointments of John McAuliffe and John Sanguinet as town administrators will not earn any gold stars. The jury is out on new TA Mark Andews, especially with the baggage he brings to the job. Individual members of the Board of Selectmen have sometimes fallen short in the tact department. But many positive things have occurred over the past year. Much of the deadwood in town government has been jettisoned. The culture of corruption that existed in Wareham for so long has been ripped to pieces. The I’ll-Wash-Your-Back-If-You-Wash-Mine mentality has been disrupted because people are finally concerned of the consequences of such actions. The Police Department is humming like a well-oiled machine under the direction of Interim Police Chief Rick Stanley. The courage and dedication of the men and women in blue has been on full display in the department’s war against drug dealing in Wareham and Onset. It should be a source of tremendous pride for all hard-working residents in town.
But the bloggers can't even admit that. They can't give Stanley any credit because that would put the people who hired him in a positive light. They can't say anything positive about anything that has happened over the past year because that would undermine their political goals. So all they can do is be negative. All they can do is try to tear everything down, all in the name of their self-described campaign to make Wareham a better place, to take it back from the people who support the current administration and all the positive things that have been accomplished over the past few years.
What became apparent to me the past few days is the widening gap between the people who really want positive change in Wareham and the hate bloggers who can’t see past their own bitterness and anger. They’ve resorted to homophobic slurs now. They’re accusing their political enemies of being alcoholics and criminals. They’re suggesting my daughters be taken away from me and my wife because I’ve had the audacity to look into things they want hidden from the light of day.
These people used to make me angry. Now they have my pity. This obsession has become their entire lives now. They couldn’t even let it go on New Year’s Eve.
There is nothing to celebrate about that. It's just sad.
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In This Corner - Robert Slager - 15 opinions posted | 