The last time there was a 'perceived' closed meeting in this town with public officials people protested with "What the Kluck!" signs. I guess if it's for Virginia Manor that makes it different.
What about the upcoming conference call with the commissioners and Tufts University about non-lethal approaches? Is that/was that public? If not, the commissioners will never tell us what was said on the call. Oh, great. More secrets.
This is the reply one gets from our $102,000 per year PIO manager who also receives $12,000 per year in health insurance benefits and is also entitled to a taxpayer funded cell phone to use for her personal phone calls and picture taking.
One word replies from "mtlebanon.org" email addresses to citizens who pay for said email address and server existence is pure arrogance and is indeed a reminder of the underlying toxicity which needs to be eradicated from this turfed town.
Jason--- well said. Have you been in touch with your commissioner about the Tufts conference call?(Please see 8:38.) I don't know which ward you reside in. I do know that the non-violent, non-toxic residents of Mt. Lebo need to be represented on that call. I can't say it enough. Please contact your commissioner. Thanks.
8:38, if the commissioners are present and this conference call is not part of an executive session, then wouldn't the conference call be open to the public? I'm wondering myself on this.
10:42 PM, I have not heard anything about a conference call.
Jason, I agree. If you lived in Virginia Manor, you probably would get more than a one word answer. Do you suppose they go by how much you pay in taxes? Being that you got nailed as a newcomer, I would think you would get a "multi worded" response.
Some residents at the veterans memorial service tonight got ignored with no word responses. I guess they don't pay enough in taxes to deserve a response. Elaine
When is the conference call and where? Why is there so much concern about having a resident on the call? Are they going to have this call during a discussion session? With whom from Tufts is the call -- Rutberg, Kirkpatrick, Turner?
Every time I attempt to write Tufts, I write Turfed. #mtlebanonproblems
Finally, someone from Lebo appropriately prioritizing. This blog's author and her 24 sycophants have consumed far too much of my government's time. The pledge campaign has effectively demonstrated the shallow depth of support for this blog's efforts in our community. It's about time that an adult in my government put their foot down and said no to the childish, gotcha-seeking requests. It's time for this community to put the acrimony behind us, and that means ignoring the cadre of 25 never-happies. It's time to move on.
It wouldn't have mattered what Ms. Morgans replied to you, you would have crucified her anyway. You excoriate her every chance you get. I don't blame her for her short response.
I happen to know for a fact that at least a couple of the people who signed the pledge are highly respected by various members of the commission. I also know that not everybody who is unhappy with the way things are going in this town signed the pledge, for a variety of reasons. Tell you what 10:02 troll - you publish you name, and I'll do the same.
Unfortunately, no one from Lebo is appropriately prioritizing. The Lebo garden ladies and their sycophants have consumed far too much of my government's time. Their campaign has effectively demonstrated the shallow depth of support for the garden ladies's efforts in our community. It's about time an adult in my government put their foot down and said no to the special interest, disingenuous requests for their narrow personal interests. It's time for this community to put the acrimony behind us, and that means ignoring the cadre of never-happies. It's time to move one.
10:02 am I signed the pledge and I am fine -- I don't need any deer killed. I can take care of my yard and drive safely in this community without the government exterminating the deer yearly. I think you are mixed up.
10:02, while I can't disagree that "this blog's author and her 24 sycophants" don't seem to represent a huge segment of the community... yet, the blog does seem to be stirring up talk and in some cases action.
The deer cull is just one example. Several commissioners and certainly the hired killer recognized that they had no hope of quieting the uproar over that stupid plan to capture deer in corrals and shooting them. If they try it again, I'm betting the outrage will be even more intense.
While it is a good debate over how much influence this blog has with our elected officials and more important - the public, you can not say people are ignoring it.
One question for you 10:02, why did you say "my government?" A curious choice of words, I think.
I was always told by my parents and my teachers, that it is "OUR government." that includes sycophants and bloggers that may be disgruntled.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. — Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
My opinion, we've been bamboozled and finally captured in Mt. Lebanon.
10:02: please specify who is prioritizing what in Lebo, as you wrote in the first sentence of your comment. I don't understand and would appreciate your assistance.
Speaking of being bamboozled, one of the biggest bamboozles is about to be foisted on an unsuspecting public. From Rep. Dan Miller:
"Dear Friends, This final event in our spring “Conversations that Matter” series will focus on the impact that state and federal mandates have had on our local schools. We have all heard countless stories of how our children’s curriculums are different and more rigorous, the pressure and challenge of performing on standardized tests, tests required for graduation, and the increasing pressure on teachers and administrators to ensure student performance. Where did these regulations come from, what benefit do they provide, and where are the areas for improvement in our policies? Join us for this engaging discussion!
We are very thankful to be joined at our roundtable by:
Dr. Ron Davis, Assistant Superintendent of Mt. Lebanon School District Mary Birks, liaison to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association Aaron Skrbin, Associate Principle at South Fayette High School Mike Crossey, President of PSEA Nancy Potter, attorney with the Education Law Center
If you are unable to attend but still want to contribute to the conversation, we invite you to share your thoughts or questions for our panelists by email – just click reply or send us an email atRepMiller@pahouse.net!"
Do you see anyone on that panel that in the end isn't going to try and convince you that the answer is more money?
How come there is no one on the panel like John Gatto (New York state's Teacher of the Year in 1990)
Here are some excerpts from his acceptance speech, a link to the full speech follows.
"Why Schools Don't Educate"
"We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world's narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn't buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor." (continued...)
(...cont.) "Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent - nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets."
"Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn't cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command center made up of "experts", a central elite of social engineers. It hasn't worked. It won't work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. The Russian attempt to create Plato's republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn't work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology - drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach."
"We've got to give kids independent time right away because that is the key to self-knowledge, and we must re-involve them with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than more abstraction. This is an emergency, it requires drastic action to correct - our children are dying like flies in schooling, good schooling or bad schooling, it's all the same. Irrelevant.
What else does a restructured school system need? It needs to stop being a parasite on the working community. Of all the pages in the human ledger, only our tortured entry has warehoused children and asked nothing of them in service to the general good. For a while I think we need to make community service a required part of schooling. Besides the experience in acting unselfishly that will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life."
A sycophant is an "insincere flattered." 10:02--you blamed 24 (?) people for insincerely flattering your government. What are you talking about? You can't expect anyone to take you seriously when you make absolutely no sense. Your comment is blabber.
Dear Turfed at 11:08: The Municipal Underground does not know if Dr. Rutberg from Tufts will be on the call with the Commissioners. What we do know is that the Humane Society is facilitating the call between the Lebo Commissioners and a representative from Tufts and another institution, both of which will be educating the Commissioners on non-lethal and non-violent methods.
Why wouldn't those interested in this non-lethal method want to be included, or at least have a representative included in the call?
It makes no sense to me to prefer to live in the dark.
I remember one or two board members suggesting we teach the test to the kids. See what happened? We dropped from 2nd to 5th place based on the tests we taught.
I think our kids would be better off in a private school if the parents can afford the tuition. I'll bet nobody on the board ever brought that up because the union was too busy buying votes for the heavy support of Millionaire Wolf.
At the very least it is an example of being bamboozled as per 12:43's comment. If the private Virginia Manor meeting has anything to do with a cooperative effort between the district and muni to build an indoor sports facility it could be right on target.
I signed the pledge to coexist because it promotes harmony in our often mean-spirited community. Further, I didn't sign it because I wanted your government (on Pluto?) to make me happy. First, that is not the government's job. Second, my happiness is not the point.
It is the government's job to protect its citizens' health and welfare. My point is that I cannot continue to live in a municipality where the government ignores critical safety requirements and, instead, shoots lethal weapons in Mt. Lebanon with its high population density.
I expect your government and my government officials--Bendel, Brumfield, Silverman, Fraasch, Vuono, Miller and Smith----- to sign the pledge to rebuild Mt. Lebanon into a community of peace and non-violence. Anything less from them will speak volumes about their stand on community violence.
PS I signed the on-line pledge because of convenience. I understand that copies are circulating elsewhere, also.
2:36/5:35, if you didn't follow 10:02's comment perhaps you didn't receive a Mt Lebanon education.
"This blog's author and her 24 sycophants have consumed far too much of my government's time."
A sycophant is a person who praises powerful people in order to gain their approval (24 of whom have cast their lots with this blog's author). Not sure how you could misunderstand the comment.
Gee 10:02, if Elaine and her 24 sycophants are living examples of Michelle Obama's advice to college students, do we view you as a Republican, an obstructionist or a racist?
"Michelle Obama Tells College Grads: Seek Out the Most Polarized Places & ‘Shape the Revolutions’"
Wow! 7:57, get a grip! I received a Mt. Lebanon education; a four-year college degree; half a masters in two departments at Pitt; and a law degree at Duquesne, and I still needed a dictionary and time to decode what the heck 10:02 thought he/she was communicating. The only ones about whom I could consider applying the definition: "parasite; flatterer, esp. of princes and great men" would be the five garden biddies who have spent the past TEN years whining to each and every sitting Commissioner about their sad gardens and the need to rid the community of the allegedly-offending wildlife. I won't even waste your time explaining the grammatical problem with subject/object disagreement in 10:02's communication: I simply concluded that this was written by someone lacking good written communication skills and let it go at that. Of far more interest to me was the two-time use of the statement, "my government/government's." Clearly, 10:02 is one of the "entitled" in our non-democratic community, and clearly, 7:57, you are a member of this individual's cohort. It is that sense of entitlement that so inflames and incenses, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised at all to see it demonstrated in this venue. There are apparently folks who genuinely believe that they should be free to dictate to the Commission and control the community; most regrettably, there have been and continue to be Commissioners willing to be complicit with them. This is not the Mt. Lebanon that I grew up in and I am not O.K. with surrendering it to those who care not a whit about my safety and well-being. I'm not "moving on"; I'm fighting back!
The only way to get anything done is to go up the ladder and let the "higher ups" know what is going on...no one who is paying taxes should ever have to entertain an answer like that. We are the customers...I'm all about treating others with respect though, even as a customer, but there is no excuse for this unprofessionalism. That would not fly in corporate America -suppose that is why folks like this land in the jobs they do.
"It's about time that an adult in my government put their foot down..."
I presume this is the subject/object disagreement you referenced. I agree that there is some contention on this matter, but this use of "their" is widely accepted as a gender neutral alternative.
As to a sense of entitlement, you are absolutely right. We are entitled to an effective government that doesn't get bogged down by a tiny and discourteous minority. This is a government that was elected by a majority. It is my government and it is your government, of the people, by the people, for the people. The 25 who have signed the pledge are well within their rights to petition their government; and the representatives thereof are well within their rights to tell them to pound sand. Don't like it? Throw 'em out of office November 3rd. Until then, I would bet that the commission will continue to treat the 25 pledgees as personae non gratae (hot damn!: subject/object agreement).
"Until then, I would bet that the commission will continue to treat the 25 pledgees as personae non gratae." Why is that, exactly, 4:02? Casting our lot with the blog's author? You must be pretty well connected to make such an assertion, an assertion which is vaguely threatening. As a citizen with a voice in my community, a citizen opposed to gunfire in my backyard and violence in any form, I don't see how anyone could NOT get on board with promoting a little harmony in our dysfunctional little hamlet, regardless of the circulator of the pledge. Sycophant? Hardly. Furthermore, Susan Morgans has behaved more like a petulant child than an adult putting her foot down.
32 comments:
The last time there was a 'perceived' closed meeting in this town with public officials people protested with "What the Kluck!" signs.
I guess if it's for Virginia Manor that makes it different.
What about the upcoming conference call with the commissioners and Tufts University about non-lethal approaches? Is that/was that public? If not, the commissioners will never tell us what was said on the call. Oh, great. More secrets.
This is the reply one gets from our $102,000 per year PIO manager who also receives $12,000 per year in health insurance benefits and is also entitled to a taxpayer funded cell phone to use for her personal phone calls and picture taking.
Nick M.
One word replies from "mtlebanon.org" email addresses to citizens who pay for said email address and server existence is pure arrogance and is indeed a reminder of the underlying toxicity which needs to be eradicated from this turfed town.
- Jason M.
Jason--- well said. Have you been in touch with your commissioner about the Tufts conference call?(Please see 8:38.) I don't know which ward you reside in. I do know that the non-violent, non-toxic residents of Mt. Lebo need to be represented on that call. I can't say it enough. Please contact your commissioner. Thanks.
8:38, if the commissioners are present and this conference call is not part of an executive session, then wouldn't the conference call be open to the public? I'm wondering myself on this.
Nick M.
10:42 PM, I have not heard anything about a conference call.
Jason, I agree. If you lived in Virginia Manor, you probably would get more than a one word answer. Do you suppose they go by how much you pay in taxes? Being that you got nailed as a newcomer, I would think you would get a "multi worded" response.
Some residents at the veterans memorial service tonight got ignored with no word responses. I guess they don't pay enough in taxes to deserve a response.
Elaine
When is the conference call and where? Why is there so much concern about having a resident on the call? Are they going to have this call during a discussion session? With whom from Tufts is the call -- Rutberg, Kirkpatrick, Turner?
Every time I attempt to write Tufts, I write Turfed. #mtlebanonproblems
Finally, someone from Lebo appropriately prioritizing. This blog's author and her 24 sycophants have consumed far too much of my government's time. The pledge campaign has effectively demonstrated the shallow depth of support for this blog's efforts in our community. It's about time that an adult in my government put their foot down and said no to the childish, gotcha-seeking requests. It's time for this community to put the acrimony behind us, and that means ignoring the cadre of 25 never-happies. It's time to move on.
It wouldn't have mattered what Ms. Morgans replied to you, you would have crucified her anyway. You excoriate her every chance you get. I don't blame her for her short response.
I happen to know for a fact that at least a couple of the people who signed the pledge are highly respected by various members of the commission. I also know that not everybody who is unhappy with the way things are going in this town signed the pledge, for a variety of reasons. Tell you what 10:02 troll - you publish you name, and I'll do the same.
Unfortunately, no one from Lebo is appropriately prioritizing. The Lebo garden ladies and their sycophants have consumed far too much of my government's time. Their campaign has effectively demonstrated the shallow depth of support for the garden ladies's efforts in our community. It's about time an adult in my government put their foot down and said no to the special interest, disingenuous requests for their narrow personal interests. It's time for this community to put the acrimony behind us, and that means ignoring the cadre of never-happies. It's time to move one.
10:02 am I signed the pledge and I am fine -- I don't need any deer killed. I can take care of my yard and drive safely in this community without the government exterminating the deer yearly. I think you are mixed up.
Kind of like what you are doing to me, 11:31 AM. You excoriate me every chance you get. Go back and read the email. I didn't write the email.
Elaine
10:02, while I can't disagree that "this blog's author and her 24 sycophants" don't seem to represent a huge segment of the community... yet, the blog does seem to be stirring up talk and in some cases action.
The deer cull is just one example. Several commissioners and certainly the hired killer recognized that they had no hope of quieting the uproar over that stupid plan to capture deer in corrals and shooting them. If they try it again, I'm betting the outrage will be even more intense.
While it is a good debate over how much influence this blog has with our elected officials and more important - the public, you can not say people are ignoring it.
One question for you 10:02, why did you say "my government?" A curious choice of words, I think.
I was always told by my parents and my teachers, that it is "OUR government." that includes sycophants and bloggers that may be disgruntled.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
My opinion, we've been bamboozled and finally captured in Mt. Lebanon.
10:02: please specify who is prioritizing what in Lebo, as you wrote in the first sentence of your comment. I don't understand and would appreciate your assistance.
Off topic...................... maybe!
Speaking of being bamboozled, one of the biggest bamboozles is about to be foisted on an unsuspecting public. From Rep. Dan Miller:
"Dear Friends,
This final event in our spring “Conversations that Matter” series will focus on the impact that state and federal mandates have had on our local schools. We have all heard countless stories of how our children’s curriculums are different and more rigorous, the pressure and challenge of performing on standardized tests, tests required for graduation, and the increasing pressure on teachers and administrators to ensure student performance. Where did these regulations come from, what benefit do they provide, and where are the areas for improvement in our policies? Join us for this engaging discussion!
We are very thankful to be joined at our roundtable by:
Dr. Ron Davis, Assistant Superintendent of Mt. Lebanon School District
Mary Birks, liaison to the Pennsylvania School Boards Association
Aaron Skrbin, Associate Principle at South Fayette High School
Mike Crossey, President of PSEA
Nancy Potter, attorney with the Education Law Center
If you are unable to attend but still want to contribute to the conversation, we invite you to share your thoughts or questions for our panelists by email – just click reply or send us an email atRepMiller@pahouse.net!"
Do you see anyone on that panel that in the end isn't going to try and convince you that the answer is more money?
How come there is no one on the panel like John Gatto (New York state's Teacher of the Year in 1990)
Here are some excerpts from his acceptance speech, a link to the full speech follows.
"Why Schools Don't Educate"
"We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world's narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn't buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor."
(continued...)
(...cont.)
"Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent - nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name "community" hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets."
"Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn't cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command center made up of "experts", a central elite of social engineers. It hasn't worked. It won't work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. The Russian attempt to create Plato's republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn't work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology - drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach."
"We've got to give kids independent time right away because that is the key to self-knowledge, and we must re-involve them with the real world as fast as possible so that the independent time can be spent on something other than more abstraction. This is an emergency, it requires drastic action to correct - our children are dying like flies in schooling, good schooling or bad schooling, it's all the same. Irrelevant.
What else does a restructured school system need? It needs to stop being a parasite on the working community. Of all the pages in the human ledger, only our tortured entry has warehoused children and asked nothing of them in service to the general good. For a while I think we need to make community service a required part of schooling. Besides the experience in acting unselfishly that will teach, it is the quickest way to give young children real responsibility in the mainstream of life."
1:52/1:54 PM, yes, it is off topic, but then you are going to come back and tell me that it really isn't.
Elaine
A sycophant is an "insincere flattered." 10:02--you blamed 24 (?) people for insincerely flattering your government. What are you talking about? You can't expect anyone to take you seriously when you make absolutely no sense. Your comment is blabber.
Dear Turfed at 11:08: The Municipal Underground does not know if Dr. Rutberg from Tufts will be on the call with the Commissioners. What we do know is that the Humane Society is facilitating the call between the Lebo Commissioners and a representative from Tufts and another institution, both of which will be educating the Commissioners on non-lethal and non-violent methods.
Why wouldn't those interested in this non-lethal method want to be included, or at least have a representative included in the call?
It makes no sense to me to prefer to live in the dark.
I remember one or two board members suggesting we teach the test to the kids. See what happened? We dropped from 2nd to 5th place based on the tests we taught.
I think our kids would be better off in a private school if the parents can afford the tuition. I'll bet nobody on the board ever brought that up because the union was too busy buying votes for the heavy support of Millionaire Wolf.
At the very least it is an example of being bamboozled as per 12:43's comment.
If the private Virginia Manor meeting has anything to do with a cooperative effort between the district and muni to build an indoor sports facility it could be right on target.
I signed the pledge to coexist because it promotes harmony in our often mean-spirited community. Further, I didn't sign it because I wanted your government (on Pluto?) to make me happy. First, that is not the government's job. Second, my happiness is not the point.
It is the government's job to protect its citizens' health and welfare. My point is that I cannot continue to live in a municipality where the government ignores critical safety requirements and, instead, shoots lethal weapons in Mt. Lebanon with its high population density.
I expect your government and my government officials--Bendel, Brumfield, Silverman, Fraasch, Vuono, Miller and Smith----- to sign the pledge to rebuild Mt. Lebanon into a community of peace and non-violence. Anything less from them will speak volumes about their stand on community violence.
PS I signed the on-line pledge because of convenience. I understand that copies are circulating elsewhere, also.
This is 2:36. I meant to write "insincere flattery" as the definition of sycophant.
2:36/5:35, if you didn't follow 10:02's comment perhaps you didn't receive a Mt Lebanon education.
"This blog's author and her 24 sycophants have consumed far too much of my government's time."
A sycophant is a person who praises powerful people in order to gain their approval (24 of whom have cast their lots with this blog's author). Not sure how you could misunderstand the comment.
Gee 10:02, if Elaine and her 24 sycophants are living examples of Michelle Obama's advice to college students, do we view you as a Republican, an obstructionist or a racist?
"Michelle Obama Tells College Grads: Seek Out the Most Polarized Places & ‘Shape the Revolutions’"
http://www.ijreview.com/2015/05/330069-michelle-obama-tells-college-grads-seek-out-contentious-polarized-places-shape-the-revolutions/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morning_newsletter
Wow! 7:57, get a grip! I received a Mt. Lebanon education; a four-year college degree; half a masters in two departments at Pitt; and a law degree at Duquesne, and I still needed a dictionary and time to decode what the heck 10:02 thought he/she was communicating. The only ones about whom I could consider applying the definition: "parasite; flatterer, esp. of princes and great men" would be the five garden biddies who have spent the past TEN years whining to each and every sitting Commissioner about their sad gardens and the need to rid the community of the allegedly-offending wildlife. I won't even waste your time explaining the grammatical problem with subject/object disagreement in 10:02's communication: I simply concluded that this was written by someone lacking good written communication skills and let it go at that. Of far more interest to me was the two-time use of the statement, "my government/government's." Clearly, 10:02 is one of the "entitled" in our non-democratic community, and clearly, 7:57, you are a member of this individual's cohort. It is that sense of entitlement that so inflames and incenses, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised at all to see it demonstrated in this venue. There are apparently folks who genuinely believe that they should be free to dictate to the Commission and control the community; most regrettably, there have been and continue to be Commissioners willing to be complicit with them. This is not the Mt. Lebanon that I grew up in and I am not O.K. with surrendering it to those who care not a whit about my safety and well-being. I'm not "moving on"; I'm fighting back!
The only way to get anything done is to go up the ladder and let the "higher ups" know what is going on...no one who is paying taxes should ever have to entertain an answer like that. We are the customers...I'm all about treating others with respect though, even as a customer, but there is no excuse for this unprofessionalism. That would not fly in corporate America -suppose that is why folks like this land in the jobs they do.
Ms. Sollenberger, Esq.,
"It's about time that an adult in my government put their foot down..."
I presume this is the subject/object disagreement you referenced. I agree that there is some contention on this matter, but this use of "their" is widely accepted as a gender neutral alternative.
As to a sense of entitlement, you are absolutely right. We are entitled to an effective government that doesn't get bogged down by a tiny and discourteous minority. This is a government that was elected by a majority. It is my government and it is your government, of the people, by the people, for the people. The 25 who have signed the pledge are well within their rights to petition their government; and the representatives thereof are well within their rights to tell them to pound sand. Don't like it? Throw 'em out of office November 3rd. Until then, I would bet that the commission will continue to treat the 25 pledgees as personae non gratae (hot damn!: subject/object agreement).
"Until then, I would bet that the commission will continue to treat the 25 pledgees as personae non gratae." Why is that, exactly, 4:02? Casting our lot with the blog's author? You must be pretty well connected to make such an assertion, an assertion which is vaguely threatening. As a citizen with a voice in my community, a citizen opposed to gunfire in my backyard and violence in any form, I don't see how anyone could NOT get on board with promoting a little harmony in our dysfunctional little hamlet, regardless of the circulator of the pledge. Sycophant? Hardly. Furthermore, Susan Morgans has behaved more like a petulant child than an adult putting her foot down.
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