THIS IS AN EASY QUESTION TO ANSWER

There is a list of 80 "public servants" who have multiplied their net worth while serving as Congress Members during the same time period when most of us were losing wealth rapidly; watching our homes plummet in value; reading about corporate malfeasance carried out with impunity; paying much higher income and property taxes; and watching municipal, State, and Federal government share of the pie rise exponentially!    Sickening isn't it?  You think any of these clowns were:

1.      "well and faithfully discharge(ing) the duties of the office..." to which elected?
2.      Supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,         foreign and domestic?
3.      Bearing true faith and allegiance to that same Constitution?
4.      Looking out for constituents?

        Or anything else in the oath of office they took upon assuming their Congressional offices in Washington DC to represent us?

Or do you think they are just:

5.      Getting very, very, wealthy at the taxpayer's expense by selling their souls and influence to the highest bidder and/or making a killing in the markets by triggering economic crisis after crisis which--to the people triggering them--create fabulous wealth opportunities that "We the People" will never see?

JUST A NOTE FROM THE FIRST LADY

Dear American Taxpayer

For only the second time in my adult life, I am not ashamed of my country.  I want to thank the hard working American people for paying $242 thousand dollars for my vacation in
Spain.

My daughter Sasha, several long-time family friends, my personal staff and various guests had a wonderful time. 

Honestly, you just haven't lived until you have stayed in a
$2,500.00 per night private 3-story villa at a 5-Star luxury
hotel.

Thank you also for the use of Air Force Two and the 70 Secret Service personnel who tagged along to be sure we
were safe and cared for at all times.  By the way, if you
happen to be visiting the Costa del Sol, I highly recommend the Buenaventura Plaza restaurant in Marbella; great lobster with rice and oysters!  I'm ashamed to admit the lobsters we ate in Martha's Vineyard were not quite as tasty, but what can you do if you're not in Europe, you have to just grin and bear it?

HOW BAD CAN IT GET

The cat fight up in DC, supposedly  to save our nation from utter ruin, may never be over and I can't believe either party is ready to accept cuts in spending to the tune of trillions.  A few billion cut is   against their nature. A buck here a buck there is how they usually trim an expenditure of mere millions. I just  caught a glimpse of my 6 week hospital stay, $184,000. If they actually make cuts in Medicare, say 20%, either the hospital would get less or I would pay more. We undoubtedly face less entitlements or  nothing changes. Trouble is, no matter what is decided, any negative will not apply to our  honored politicians.

ANOTHER POSSIBLE HIT TO YOUR WALLET

The flood maps  have changed because of better mapping technology and historical data, as well as topography changes because of development, storms and other factors. This sudden move could cost several hundred Suffolk residents several hundred dollars. Bitching won’t change beuracratic action but collective action might  and most have never seen highwater or proof it could happen.  Annual cost for this maybe could go as high as $16oo.    And it could involve the service of surveyor.                              
 “If you suspect that the map is wrong call Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

GUEST WRITER AC SAID MORE

President Obama and senior members of his staff met with eight religious leaders at the White House Wednesday to discuss protecting programs for the poor and vulnerable in deficit reduction and debt ceiling negotiations.I guess that Obama and liberals have no clue as to separation of chuch and state is about, but it makes very little difference when they are in power.Let's get this straight folks.Pastors who work for tax-exempt corporations are invoking the name of Jesus for political causes? Obama uses religion (non muslim) when its good for obtaining votes. He uses his Muslim roots when it benefits him and other Muslims.
 
By invoking Christian religious beliefs found in the Bible, do you think that Jesus would approve of this? Many of these so called religious foundations and churches.,many of these churches are on the dole themselves.The  so called and titled "Reverend" Jeremiah Wright run multi-million-dollar operations taking money from Head Start and other federal programs.
Can anybody provide to me the addresses of the churches that Rev Al and the good Rev Jesse claim to lead. Exacty where are their chuches at?
Churches are supposed to collect alms for the poor — not demand them from taxpayers.
 
As a liberal, shouldn’t Obama kick them out under the liberal interpretation of separation of church and state?
 
How come many veteran cemetaries can't use God in their services? How can chapels that are there are closed to famlies who's family member is being buried there and they want to use the chapel for prayer?  If a cheerleader can not say a prayer before a football game or a student wants to say a prayer at his or her's graduation, why are these lobbyists allowed to invoke Jesus at the White House?
 
It's funny Bob, I don’t recall Jesus ever being a stooge for the Roman government.There is NOTHING in the Gospels where Jesus advocates coercively taking money from anyone for any reason.
Come to think of it Invoking Jesus Christ while proclaiming support for the Muslim faith, does this not violate the tenets of Islam??? Obama might be the first US President to have a Fatwa issued against him if he continues dealing from the bottom of the deck like this.

A RIGGED PENCIL LINE ON A MAP DID HIM IN

Forgive me Leroy. Bennett, it's the first good laugh since I finished 6 weeks in the hospital. I have to laugh when I picture you waking up to the fact that you now live in Mr. Brown's borough. how fast can you move to  suitable quarters in your Nansemond Borough? Or can you find a way to circumvent the law, most  politicians can. You are now representing but 12,000, you may have lost supporters.. Will your wife be able to control future elections with so many new voters to convince.  And how long before  those forced to leave you will it take for them to adopt a new Borough chief.

 This tsunami of population changes also sweeps aside  two School Board members, Hinton and Diane Foster. Do you have any  idea how they will remedy this?

HELP, THE DEER ATE EVERYTHING

Those spring time feed stores tempt us terribly and we wind up lookng foolish after also buying fertilizer, watering hoses, nozzles, and poisons. Before that we raked up the leaves and tilled the soil anticipating wheelborrows of vegetables we could give our smarter neighbors. Weeks later it looks like a practice field for light artillery, the green stuff is gone. We've seen electric fence, plastic fence, tied up dogs, radio with men talkng fence. None work. With so much time, labor and expense invested, we toss it out for the readers of IS. Try being serious, how does
one keep the things away? *-

GONE BUT NOT FOGOTTEN

Unless it was during my seven week hospital and nursing home experience I can't imagine how I missed the surrender of the Cultural Center Director. It was not unexpected given low attendence at shows they could afford to book. It may have been the economic conditions but those folks that instigated the SCCA seemed to be in support full time. What's next for Suffolk's Palace depends on the attitude of Board members who must decide to shoot lower and find shows that appeal to more folks, or or make it a center for all people. Offer space to organizations that have no place to meet or opereate. And add some folks to the board who have less solphisticated ideas of what constitutes culture. It is a Public facility using everyone's money. Millions over time with little success. Big changes overdue.

FINALLY THEY CAUGHT UP TO "IS"

Two fine local newspapers finally got the messagee that Andy Damiani is the greatest contributer to what success Suffolk has enjoyed. He has never stopped believing in Suffok's eventual triumph over last place on the list of original nearby jursisdictions. And he backed his ideas with cash on the barrelhead gathering realestate as it became available, always willing to take risk to prevent Suffolk from looking empty, always prodding Council and City Staff for changes in codes or laws he felt impeded progress. He spent hours preparing his RoundTable talk show. To this day, he is 93, he walks Main and Washington looking for opportunities to improve his city. Not bad for a man who came to town with a Washette. Now he owns a good part of the buildings. Mr. Suffolk now needs a cane but that's not a sign he is giving up. And if he did who would grab the reins?

TWO THIRDS OF FAMILY ARRESTED

Nineteen snakes, some bearded dragons, two pit bulls, feeder mice, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Hey, why don’t you leave the kid, his toys, and his dad alone. They have accepted the risks, they enjoy their pets. My goodness, a 28 year old dad and a 7 year old boy. The food they must buy for the snakes is an economic boom for the purveyor of live mice and rats. The police report did not list the “other animals” so we don’t know what they eat. As for the pit bulls, dad and and son may NOT know the risks but the odds favor them being the victims of those two heads full of teeth. And we can assume there is a mom and moms always know best. The strangest part of these arrests is that the boy’s father is charged with cruelty to children. A mouse did bite the boy. It is interesting to know that Animal Control said that ownnership of the animals is legal.

FROM AN OPINION PIECE SENT TO THE SNH

Is it the opinion of City Council that there is no need to manage the managers? What incentives do they have to act in an economically sound way, with an eye toward saving money not wasting it? The water quality report could have been done on an 8-by-11 sheet of white paper and posted on the city website, saving the city a lot of money. If 1 percent of our citizens actually read the report and understand it, I will be amazed, so sending this egotistical piece of garbage to folks implies that we have more money than we know what to do with and that when it runs out then we’ll simply grab more from the dumb citizens.

Can council really justify giving these two people a bonus? For what? I believe their job performance should be reviewed immediately and the results published on the city website for we, their real employers, to be able to measure council’s ability to manage our city. I also would like to know why we need both a mayor and a city manager. That is another example of a redundancy that we can ill afford in this city. If we cannot do a better job of managing our money and having capable managers, then when it is time to evaluate the job performance of City Council, its members should not be surprised by the outcome of that job review. The citizens of Suffolk have reached the end of their rope.
William Millan
Suffolk

COMING TO SUFFOLK ???

If you are over-due with taxes they are looking for you via two ordinary cars with special scanners that can read city your license plate and compare it with their list of “deadbeats.” If a red flag pops up you can expect a heavy boot on your wheels AND A DEMAND for taxes due plus 20 percent. You will also pay a fee for the boot. This new tax will be for those living in any of the nearby jurisdictions. If you live any in any of them you will pay but they find it parked in Suffolk, you will pay. Will this strong method of collecting come to Suffolk? “It’s just a very efficient way to collect delinquent taxes,” Suffolk city treasurer said. “They’re having great success with it.” Vehicles whose owners don’t pay up by the end of the day get towed, and the owner gets slapped with towing and storage fees, as well. If they never produce the money, their vehicle gets sold at auction.

RETRACTION

Bob,

I've attached a PDF of our May 26, 2011, Opinion page. I believe it includes the letter you say in the post below that we "refused to publish."

I must say that I'm disappointed, both in Andy and in Inside Suffolk. I had addressed this issue with Andy already; he had brought the letter along with some other info that he'd already written a separate letter about (and which we'd run). I saw what we'd already published, did not see the new letter in the packet and then put everything aside, knowing that I'd see him again to talk to him about the issue. Indeed, he visited my office a few weeks later (assumedly after showing the letter to you) and asked why I'd chosen not to publish his letter. When I explained the situation to him, he showed me the NEW letter hidden amongst the old information, and I published it the following day.

I'm disappointed in Andy for telling others that I'd "refused" to publish his letter before finding out from me what was happening.

I'm disappointed in Inside Suffolk for not giving me a chance to respond to a two-month-old allegation, and one that turned out not to be true. You have indicated to me that you want Inside Suffolk to be taken seriously by the Suffolk News-Herald, by the city of Suffolk and by others. This is not the way to accomplish that goal. A serious and responsible journalist would at least have made the call to confirm what he'd heard from Andy.

Considering the loaded word, "refused," which you used in your post, I believe a retraction, if not an apology, is in order.

Res

ANDY WAS RIGHT AGAIN.

Two months ago Mr. Suffolk, Andy  Damaini showed me a letter written by him to the public but the SNH refused to print it for some mysterious reason. many years ago Andy had tried to get Council to buy an idea that would have resulted in a fat pile of money accumulated in the city treasury. Andy knew way back then that garbage pickup would not be free forever. He wanted to charge each citizen  a resonable amount then to take the pain  out  of what was to come.  Exactly what an awakened city hall is doing now by charging us $17 a month. If they had listened to Andy then, INSTEAD of huffing and puffing now over what they consider a brilliant stroke of genius, we may already have had the money. Unless, of course they had not spent it on something as silly as a million for the tourist bureau housing.  Andy's turned down letter was  merely an embarrassing jab in the City's ribs. Andy may need a cane to walk, but not to think.

HONEY, I' M HOME

Between the powers that be, the surgeons at Norfolk General, and my struggling to survive in a beat up body of 86 we fought a battle for life and won. I was never fond of hospitals but Sentara Norfolk General did pleasantly keep me going for six weeks. And at my strongest I could not think straight enough to find InsideSuffolk.com  to explain my absence. I will write the whole story and post it in “Bob’s Corner.” That will take a few days. It is an interesting account of how an early life injury can result in a person’s death 79 years later. But for now it is physical therapy and back to Posting subjects that will, hopefully, earn your comments. Bless you for your patience.

Today's Hour of Power

High Flight

by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space...
...put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

May God bless all the members of our space program!

STS 135 - Shuttle Atlantis

Nongovernmental International Conference on Climate Change

My son and I just returned from the Heartland Institute's 6th International Conference on Climate Change in DC. Very enlightening! Approximately 350 of the world's top climate scientists, oceanographers, atmospheric physicists, geologists, numerical modelers, --the whole gamut of folks with the qualifications and experience to recognize this entire Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) scam for what it is! It's instructive that so many of the PhD's were in emeritus status but these are the only scientists not subject to political and economic retaliation for violating the tenants of this environmental religion--because little of what the Climatists are involved in today can seriously be considered science!

Nobody present denies that there is periodic global warming--and that this is related to natural cycles that have always been at play, still are, and always will be. The divisive issue is what portion of it, if any, is caused by man? And if the zealots weren't so disparate to leap from their implausible hypothesis to the court of public opinion via an equally ignorant media, we'd have had real answers well over a decade ago. But the environmental zealots chose to skip the testing, sharing their models (along with the associated assumptions, sensitivity analyses, and data bases) with others to permit them to run the same experiments and perhaps replicate their efforts, and to declare victory and impose top down solutions! So much cleaner than following the Scientific Method we all learned in grade school which somehow no longer matters in this post-scientific world of academic and political elites!! But if the zealots are so fearful that their science won't stand up to scrutiny that they can't risk premature exposure, this already speaks volumes.

And as more facts have been uncovered, we learned that their science is on shakier ground every day. Examples: we've known since slightly after Climategate that the CRU Temperature database was "lost". So why haven't all UN IPCC results and recommendations derived from them been rejected as unverifiable? The same applies to the 1991 PhD thesis Temperature database upon which the entire New Zealand conclusions of AGW are based. Scientists are taking NZ politicians to court to have those recommendations thrown out for the same reasons. Based on what? The basis no longer exists--and the AGW scientists are the ones that some how "misplaced" the data when all the FOIA requests started flooding in, the same scenario as in East Anglia's CRU. And since the data from the majority of US temperature stations have been so compromised by heat island impacts of encroaching development, virtually nothing can be used without applying "corrections" over which nobody seems to have any control.

So how can so many elected officials smugly tell us that they support placing massive penalties on productive capacity, smothering industry in regulations and red tape, adding billions of additional taxes on gas, and crippling our economy? But the same fools throw over a hundred billion a year in research to prove AGW (but not to study it!) and on alternative energy sources that aren't ready for the market and will continue to require huge and growing subsidies for as far as the eye can see without showing any signs of being ready to compete with fossil fuels that we can produce safely and at a fraction of the cost now?

Most at the ICCC6 accept that there could be some small percentage of the overall warming that might be related to human activities but until governments stop pursuing a desired result and start pursuing the real truth, we're not going to learn how much. But since CO2 is their main driver, and is a mere trace gas in the atmosphere accounting for only 0.039% of it--97% of which is produced naturally (volcanoes, oceans, decaying biomass), man-caused global warming will undoubtedly be small enough not to justify the commitment of trillions in funds and altering entire industries and economies. But that IS the goal of the AGW zealots made up mostly of academics, government bureaucrats, and fellow leftists riding Mann-made global warming to bigger government, more regulation, destroying industries and capitalism, and casting a pox on the third world by the way! They fear that the developing economies in India, Africa, and the middle-east simply can't be permitted to acquire running water or electricity least we all be damned! How humane and generous to feel that their theory is so important that they are willing to bet the fate of billions of fellow human beings on this planet on it! To far too many of these fools, the worst cancer on the face of the planet is man! Simply pathetic!