Cabarrus Cheap Seats

18 responses so far ↓

• 1 Thierry Wernaers // Feb 19, 2008 at 11:59 pm

  John Stanley is the Secretary of the Cabarrus County Democratic Party. Wendell Fant is an Iraqi war veteran.
  More candidates to come

  Who’s Larry Pittman?

• 2 Aaron // Feb 20, 2008 at 7:13 am

  Anyone know why it costs 600 bucks to run for ROD?

  Maybe you gotta be bonded or something?

• 3 Justin Thibault // Feb 20, 2008 at 8:17 am

  Thierry - Thanks

  Aaron - That’s a good question. The Board of Commissioners sets that rate - I wonder what their thinking was.

• 4 Mark Smith // Feb 20, 2008 at 11:23 am

  Usually, the filing fee is 1% of the pay. So, since ROD is a $62K per year job, the fee is $622. The same rule applies to the other positions (BOC, House Rep, etc).

  School board may be an exception… I don’t know for certain.

• 5 Justin Thibault // Feb 20, 2008 at 12:45 pm

  Mark - Are you sure you’re willing to put up with all of that hassle for $11k and change?

• 6 Mark Smith // Feb 20, 2008 at 2:53 pm

  Justin:

  No one (or at least no one with a sound mind) becomes a county commissioner for the money.

  One runs for office because one cares about the state of the county and the community. One runs because one wants to make things better. One runs to serve the people.

• 7 Steve Smith // Feb 20, 2008 at 5:52 pm

  The only people that I know so far are the incumbents. I plan to support all of them.

• 8 Justin Thibault // Feb 21, 2008 at 8:06 am

  Mark - According to Aaron, you have a golden opportunity as a Commissioner to be on the take - so, it’s hard for some folks to believe what you say about caring “about the state of the community”

• 9 MarkMartin // Feb 21, 2008 at 10:24 am

  Justin - you are right, both in your response here and in Left on 49. The majority of people who have never served as a public servant have no idea what it takes to get the job done. And yet, they confidently make public comments on topics they truly know very little about. For what reason? To feel better about themselves? To hurt innocent people? What do they gain?

• 10 Justin Thibault // Feb 21, 2008 at 10:37 am

  Mark - I was probably a little more brutal with Aaron on the “intellectual laziness” front than I would be with others; because he has shown more potential as a blogger than most commenters that I’ve seen. I normally wouldn’t have been so bold in baiting a response (especially on someone else’s blog); but I wanted to drive home a point: if you’re gonna challenge someone’s character - you better come packing with facts.

  I guess I picked up that sensitivity in the past year; because I’ve noticed that salacious, unfounded rumors are more quickly embraced than truth based on verifiable facts.

  John McCain is getting a lesson in that today.

  In the nearly 3 years of blogging, I’ve been presented with rumors about plenty of people I can’t stand…some that have come to fruition. While it would probably have gotten me a lot more attention (and traffic) if I were to redistribute them - I sleep better sticking to solid facts.

• 11 Aaron // Feb 21, 2008 at 12:19 pm

  Sorry fella’s but again, at least we all learned something from one of the more sleep deprived comments of mine.

  More to the point: Here’s another question I pose: Sure, We all know that the idea of money changing hands is remote. As Justin has pointed out on said comments the idea seems like something only a person wearing the afore mentioned tinfoil hat would buy into.

  I personally don’t care either way what someone says about anyone else including myself. I’ve seen enough holy men in hand cuffs and personally been called things so vile that they’d make the devil blush. Call me thick skinned, calous or just plain cynical but I didn’t expect this much fallout from an off the cuff remark made on 2 hours sleep.

  But at what point do we consider a quid pro quo situation to exist.

  Sure, the most blatant examples are the Jim Blacks of the world. Justin is also right in saying that it’s easy to cast dispertions without facts and to be “intellectually lazy” (Phrase Copyright: 2008. Justin Thibault-DBA CabarrusCheapSeats.com) and just equate everyone in the political spectrum as a hack who’s on the take.

  But being a former public servant myself I have seen and heard the things that folks would equate to the “gray area” of this issue.

  If the manufacturers rep takes a government purchaser out to lunch and a round of golf and suddenly the whole state is switching from one vehicle make to another, does this mean nothing? You can be certain that no money changed hands but everyone does have their price. Is a lavish round of golf and a 100 dollar dinner just good salesmanship or is it something more.

  It happens daily in my office. But that’s private sector. The perks are nice but all we talk about on the golf course is the bottom line.

  The point is: Everyone has to decide where to draw the line. When an entire police department thumbs it’s nose at a better piece of equipment to stay brand loyal to a more expensive, less reliable piece of equipment one has to wonder how much that purchasing agent enjoys those annual golf outings.

  On a personal level, I just didn’t accept the offer to work at that department. Since I didn’t live in that county, I didn’t have a dog in that fight. But things like that stay with you and the sad truth is that folks base future performance expectations on past experience.

• 12 Thierry Wernaers // Feb 21, 2008 at 2:10 pm

  With all this going back and forth between Aaron and Justin, I still haven’t gotten a response to the original question I posed in my blog post.
  “Can someone explain to me how you are encouraging residents to recycle by having them pay more for the service and ask them to invest more time and effort at the same time?”

• 13 Justin Thibault // Feb 21, 2008 at 2:13 pm

  Theirry - You’re not encouraging it from a fiscal perspective. The idea that the County Commission seemed to have was that if people had recycling bins - they’d be more likely to recycle than if they didn’t.

• 14 Justin Thibault // Feb 21, 2008 at 2:19 pm

  Aaron - Nobody knows how much sleep you got when you wrote a comment. When I wrote my comment to you - I was 14 hours offset.

  You bring up a good point about the quid pro quo situations - they’re tricky. The rules were I work are so Byzantine that I turn most everything down. However, let’s talk about this. If the electorate assumes that everyone is on the take - it actually makes it harder for those who aren’t. But, if they are “naively” given the benefit of the doubt and innocent until proven otherwise when it does happen: there’s more political fallout.

  Nobody’s saying that palms don’t get greased. It’s just that you need to be careful when you start suggesting that everyone has their hand in the pie.

• 15 Bob Carruth // Feb 21, 2008 at 11:08 pm

  If I am on the take, can somebody tell me why my bank account looks so bad?

• 16 Thierry Wernaers // Feb 21, 2008 at 11:13 pm

  Bob:

  Because you took the money out of your account and put it in some off shore investments on the Bahama’s?
  I’m just kidding of course, don’t sue me. Please.

• 17 Aaron // Feb 22, 2008 at 10:47 am

  Thierry- Reynolds Recycling on Hwy49 will take anything metal you’ve got and prices are higher than they’ve ever been. That’s all the encouragement a person should need. For the lazy folks, they can pay the increase and toss it into a bin for pick up. Justin is right. You have to pick up recylcables in a seperate specialized vehicle. The money to pay for that truck, the driver, the fuel and the insurance has to come from somewhere- hence the increased fee.

  Justin and Bob:
  Well I’m in the brutally fiscal conservative side of the debate in saying that “work sessions” “planning sessions” “fact finding and educational” trips and all the other nonsense that most elected officials do at taxpayer expense are completely unneccesary. I don’t know if Cabarrus County goes to or hosts these things on the taxpayers dime but most larger governments do it all the time.

  The swanky resorts and retreats with catered dinners are all innocent enough but If my company can host 24 meetings a year via web cast and save an average of 6 million in travel expenses and still increase profits 3% per quarter then I’m guessing a city council or commision can do the same.

  Back in my public servant days I used to get steamed when the upper echelon went to Vegas every year to the Law Enforcement Trade Shows. That being said: I’m not the one to ask about anything in the quid pro quo area.

  Like I said, the palm greasing happens all the time in the private sector. But anyone in the private sector knows that the easiest way to get fired is for your boss to find out that you went with the more expensive product or service because of that lunch you and the sales rep went to. The bottom line is the motivator.

  In government, we put a lot of faith in folks to do the right thing because it’s the right thing. But it is other peoples money after all… The incentives not to be loose with it aren’t as tight. The criminal elements are clear but there’s a large amount of gray areas where a person can operate within the laws but still not in the best interest of the people. You don’t have to be taking cash payouts in Mens Rooms to be screwing the electorate.

  We do have to strike a balance between the skepticism and the blind trust. It is a tricky balance to achieve. But in my opinion: the blind trust is what created the Jim Blacks of this world. Sure, in the end, they get what they’ve got coming to them but how much money was lost, how many bad decisions were made on the behalf of us the electorate while Black and his cronies were lining their pockets? That’s money we all paid in that is gone forever.

  All the checks and balances wont prevent every occurence. But everyone; both in and out of politics need to be on the same sheet of music. Right now, I find myself singing the same song less and less.

• 18 Sam // Mar 1, 2008 at 11:59 am

  There used to be a Wendell Fant that worked in my office in Charlotte. I wonder if this is the same guy. I mean, how many Wendell Fants can there be?