Off message, but on purpose

     We'll be hearing a lot of flap for awhile about how the Carroll County Commissioners have been cited for violating the state open meetings law, but don't expect it to change the way they do business.
     In any case, people -- and the news media -- should be more incensed at the lack of smarts the commissioners show when they do enact something, in secret or otherwise.
     They cut the tax rate when revenues were projected to drop anyway, which was more showing off than anything else. If they knew how much less they'd have to run essential services, they were foolish. If they didn't know, their ignorance is alarming. Maybe it just didn't matter, so long as they had a tax cut to brag about for the next election campaign, which seems to have already begun.
     I worry about this perpetual campaign mode that elected officials seem to be in at every level in this country. They take actions that they have to know are detrimental in the long run just so they look good in the short term. That's not good for the public, short or long term.
     We see through it, and the loss of faith in holders of public office is pandemic.
     Apparently, we can't have leadership and politics at the same time, and we have politics all the time, now.
     The embarrassment of the Republican presidential primary campaign will be hard to get over. The rest of the world  thinks we're crazy.
     At least the juggernaut is shaking the really bad choices loose.
     It seems, four years after the Palin debacle, like Republicans are trying to find even worse choices. Bachmann, or Palin II, was too wiggy even for Iowans, which should tell us something. By the time pizza chain Cain departed the picture, we had figured out that we'd be better off with the guy who delivers pizza in his 1998 Honda. At least he's trying.  Huntsman tried to be civil, so no one noticed him, nor had any idea what he saw as the issues.
     In truth, does anyone know the issues, other than Defeat Democrats, particularly Obama? Shouldn't Republicans spend more time on explaining policy ideas and less trashing each other, or is the seduction of the spotlighted brawl too much to give up?
     And can't the news media be grown up enough to lay off the non-issue gaffs and out-of-context remarks and report more substance?
     Ron Paul has been the most civil, and the most consistent in where he thinks America should go. Unfortunately, he wants to go in reverse, which is not an option for most of us. He had good ideas for 1780, but not the 21st Century.
     Newt Gingrich talks a good plan for the 1990s, but can anyone believe him? Just because he's abrasive does not mean he's candid.
     Rick Santorum is solidly entrenched in the 1950s. His best moments are when he's trying to pull the spotlight off the Romney/Gingrich street fight to talk issues, but his issues are as narrow as a one-way alley in a town that needs a bypass.
     Mitt Romney is a moderate Republican, which I learned when I ran for public office means he is a RINO to a noisy faction of the party. That means "Republican In Name Only," and is the second dirtiest word in the GOP vocabulary, next to "Liberal."  Even Democrat is more polite.
     The only other words in the GOP vocabulary are, "No", usually followed by "taxes." That's about it. Simple, but hard to use for getting directions to the next corner, let alone across the country or around the world.
     Back to the locals: When Rothschild first appeared on the scene a couple of years ago, he complained that the county commissioners at the time had acted surreptitiously, even subversively, to steal people's property rights with a little-advertised master plan and zoning proposal.
     He said he didn't know there was a master plan revision on the public agenda, and why hadn't he been invited to chip in.
     I thought it was just another case of a citizen who awoke in the third act of the play and wanted the rest of the audience to accommodate him by starting the show all over again. He was either clueless about local processes, or he was a surrogate for the forces who had been pushing back at the previous commissioners from the beginning of their term.
     Rothschild gained traction by accusing the county of acting without public participation. He was wrong, but as they say in the public information business, it had legs.
     What an irony that now, it is he and his colleagues who are officially, purposefully negligent in engaging the public in the workings of their local government.