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Show Political machine To the Editor: The more I ruminate upon the trend of public affairs, the more inevitable becomes my conclusion that political affairs af-fairs of our public bodies are manipulated by a political machine. I realize that it is flirting with heresy and speaking the unspeakable to intimate that deliberative decisions made by those who manage affairs are arrived at with something less than the public interest in-terest involved. And when one distills this tendency to its ultimate implications and applies truth and candor to the situation, situa-tion, no other definition will depict what transpires in our governmental bodies. And when one peels off the flimsy cloak of hypocracy that viels the behavior of some of our public officials this fact becomes nakedly apparent. And focus on this situation at least disabuses one of any notion that the actions ac-tions and deliberations of our County Commission, School Board, Ashley Water & Sewer District, or City Councils are taken with any other thought than dire cupidity or naked avarice as the instigating in-stigating factory behind such actions. And some of the abuses of public trust merit a public airing, but the interlocking interlock-ing interests have manipulated the situation situa-tion until full disclosure is never forthcoming. for-thcoming. Decisions that are required to be made in open sessions are constantly resolved in executive sessions behind closed doors. Minutes of meetings are systematically edited and entered weeks after the meetings are held. Indeed these records reveal more of fiction than factual fac-tual reality of which they are supposed to disclose. Law enforcement officers offer of-fer little more than a flimsy gesture or pretense toward observing the procedural pro-cedural laws that they are required to observe. And beneath the budget, open and greedy raids are made upon the public purse without even a tinge of apology or pretense to cover the greedy motivation that inspires such cupidity. And these abuses cry for disclosure and correction. But in the face of these abuses our local media stands mute and silent, feigning blindness to bold and awkward abuses of the public weal. The situation shrieks for a rebirth of "muckraking" and investigatory journalism. jour-nalism. But the local establishment has so indoctrinated the citizenry of this community com-munity with the idea that there is something remiss and gravely wrong about speaking forthrightedly against wrong and avarice that they have made the citizens timid least any complaint against these abuses of power will cause them to be caricatured as "troublemakers", "trouble-makers", "radicals" and the like. Perhaps it ought to be noted that "radical abuses" require "radical corrections." cor-rections." And to awaken the docile local polity to these abuses will require a lot more noise to convence them that there is lightning behind the claps of thunder that loom forth from certain dissenting interests in this community ALVIN G. NASH Attorney at Law |