"I don't have to discuss certain matters if I don't want to."

said the public servant in response to a legitimate question about the public interests; a question about public servants "double dipping". link.

"Bullshit", writes the blogger.

Public servants have an inescapable obligation to acknowledge legitimate questions by responding to them candidly, forthrightly, honestly, rather immediately, and in person
(subject of course to common sense, and a legitimate alternative response).

If that obligation is not written into the law, it should be.

Because we have no choice but to "trust" public servants with the control over power and resources that are fundamentally our own, we have the right to insist that they are accountable to a higher standard of conduct than the law; the law on its face, unequal to the task of protecting the public trust and treasure.

What higher standard of conduct than the law,
does not include "telling the truth"?

If the law does not require public servants to tell the truth
about the public interests and about their public service,
and clearly it does not, then the law needs to be changed,
as the first step in anything called ethical reform.

Any candidate for any elected office should have a plan to end the culture of corruption and incompetence. Any viable plan includes, telling the truth.




So far, former Senator Richard Romero is the only candidate in any race for any office, who has promised to tell the truth. link

So far, he is the only candidate who can claim to have earned the public trust.





You pick a side, when you don't pick a side. If you don't pick the side of candidates who will promise to tell the truth, you have picked the side of candidates who will not promise to tell the truth.



Candidates like the former
Founding Father of Character Counts!, Mayor Marty Chavez.

How, you might be asking,
does one become a former
Founding Father?

He does it by renouncing in
his heart, the standards of
conduct of his Found Child.

He does it be becoming a dead beat Founding Father.




photos Mark Bralley