Unbelievable!!

Well, well, well, if the days don't surprise you! I still do not believe my ears.
Around 3 today I went over to get my mail, and there is ole' Chucknuts outside the Jiggershop putt-puttin'. I still have to pinch myself, because its what I am about to write next is the stuff that lawyers, prosecuters, and investigators dream of--its when a "perp" splays himself for you. And this is how a Chucknut splaying evolves:

He is alone in his putt-puttin' and spies an opportunity to speak with the person that he perceives as his fiercest enemy. He calls me over and then acknowledges everything that I have been revealing about his conduct.

He admits that, for decades now, he has been fervently pushing a modernly refined method of political corruption: he calls it "expense-generation".

In short, he relies on his two best buds, the solicitor and public works director, to come up with any-which-way they can to create, for the public, an impression that this teeny-tiny municipality needs the staff, labor costs, fleet of earth moving equipment and vehicles, etc. of a municipality 8 times our actual size.

In addition, they used the unique situation here, where the homeowners association perfectly overlaps the municipality, to mix and muddle the money trail so badly that no layman is ever able to detect that there is so much redundancy and double-dipping that it would make your head spin.

He then admits that this "governing" strategy has allowed is other friends to collect State Pension Funds when they really weren't eligible, to collect over $20,000 a year in overtime--again, when there really was no overtime necessary to provide the municipality with services, and to bloat their timesheets to the point where we taxpayers pay almost $200,000 a year more than we needed to to get good public services.

He then apologized for denigrating me and my family and trying to harass us out of town.

He further promised that from now on, he would be on his best behavior--not his best christian behavior, but his best neighborly behavior, that he would cull the Borough down to two full time staff--which is a 30% more staff that other municipalities our size average, and would get rid of his "expense-generator" conduct.

He then admitted that this winter has been hard on him and that he would like to let some one else be the politicial spotlight. He feels that he has done all he can to get his "stuck in this fuckin' town" son on his feet and ready for taking care of himself, and that that is the only reason why he let all his other friends walk all over us Borough taxpayers--to set up an "estate" for his only offspring to inherit. (And then, in a rather humble way, he confided in me that he was never so proud of his boy as when he finally cut off the rat-tail that he sported for so many years.)

We then agreed that abandoning his "expense-generating" ways would effectively cut our budget by at least half without ever impacting delivery of services to the public, and that there are several people here that have the integrity and capacity to step up to the plate and work to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the residents of mount gretna borough proper.

Wow!

Cheatemore and Chucknut's modus operandi stolen by the State!

I have been reading news stories about PA's botched Tax Amnesty Program and have come across some similarities with Kilgore and Chucky's modus operandi. Apparently, these tax amnesty letters are just simply stating that "you owe a debt to us" and don't include any information whatsoever about this alleged debt--not even an amount or a time frame. And, just like Cheatemore and Chucknut's strategy, rather than using proof, they use threats of penalties, etc, to extort more money from the little taxpayer. Certain Mt. Gretnan's may feel wealthy enough to play their game with them, but its really unethical, corrupt, and belligerent behavior--not to mention very unpatriotic, and not all Mt. Gretnan's actually are wealthy enough to participate in a corrupt political community.

Here, with this Amnesty stuff, some people have developed some interesting ways to deal with these mysterious notices. Below is a copy of one response that I thought many of you would find interesting:


April 27, 2010

PA Dept Of Revenue
Office of Tax Amnesty
POBox 281101
Harrisburg, PA 1712801101

Dear Sir or Madam:
I recently received your letter of “Notice of PA Tax Amnesty Program” and have made several attempts to contact you via the information suggested in that letter. Through no fault of my own, I was not able to reach your office using either of these two methods. Thus this letter serves as the only accessible route to making contact and obtaining information necessary to resolve the issue created in your letter.

In order to determine the fairness and accuracy of the debt alleged in your letter, please timely send me information establishing the basis of the original "debt" amount; relevant dates; copies of all correspondence sent to me regarding this alleged debt. This letter serves as timely notice to you that I am indeed availing myself of this opportunity to participate, and that, however, the details of my participation will necessarily depend on the amount that you prove that I owe. Please also note that your office’s failure to timely provide access to my information should in no way prevent me from participating in the program, should your response fairly and accurately prove that I do indeed owe a tax debt to PA.

A copy of your letter to me is enclosed, as it provides all the necessary personal information with which to identify this issue.

I think that I would also send it return receipt requested--and add a little blurb about how incompetent and cheating PA public officials have grown that they can just "say" that you owe a debt and never prove that it really exists.

Other people have printed out all their "error notices" when trying to register, and have sent copies to their representatives. I guess this is to remind them that their incompetence is showing, again.

Still, I revel in the fact that I am not a lone voice crying out against all this insanity. I am sure that there are others asking why Kilgore never showed us the results of his little investigation of our tax returns? Uhmmm, I wonder, what did he do with all that access to our personal and financial information. Obviously, he didn't find anything to use to help us out of this whole EIT scam that he organized upon us. It is quite possible then that he really only used the EIT issue as a pretext to gain access to our tax filings so that he could have even more leverage to use against us to keep us in step and line with Cheatemore and Chucknut's organizational objectives to rip us off to the fullest extent possible.

A former EIT employee once told me that they found out that a very high-earning Mt. Gretnan had no EIT tax files on record, suggesting that Kilgore's investigation is going to be very tricky for him because he is not going to want to reveal that that particular Mt. Gretnan may not have paid their EIT. What's up with that, Keithy? Who are you protecting? Have you counseled the Borough to file a claim for that person's EIT owed us? Why not?

If getting a screwin' is good public sevice

Then Cheatin' Chucky, Stealmore Kilgore, and Know-more Care are experts and delivery of public service.

I know some long-time residents think that we pay three times as much for our public services than we should because that's what it takes to deliver them well. But, you are being duped. There is no other characterization for what these three have developed over the last four decades. And, well frankly, its time that especially our oler residents stepped out of denial about this. Why? Well, because its going to hurt you the most. It HAS already hurt you the most.

For those of you who are retired, you are on a fixed income that they have managed to figure out how to squeeze out of you a thousand ways to Sunday. I mean, come on, we absolutely do not need five full-time staff, much less six.

What we need is our neighbors to step up to the plate. We need John Feather to stop smiling that baby face and pretend that he is innocent in all this. For example, last year when the Chautauqua renegotiated a biased and exceptionally unfavorable--unfavorable to us Chautauqua shareholders-- Jiggershop lease with Chuck Allwein, borough council president and Jiggershop owner, Baby-face Johnny told us it was ok for the chautauqua lawyer (who is also the Borough lawyer) to forget about his duty of loyalty to US and to personally represent Cheatin' Chucky in those negotiations. WTF people--that is NOT good public service--its an ethical violation and a conflict of interest. And, Baby-face Johnny knows that.

And

What is the Chaut. Board thinking!?

Borough financial records indicate that the Chautauqua is routinely used for paying the following Borough bills. Don't forget that Chautauqua records suggest to US, the lowly shareholders, that it has its own separate bills for many of these "line items.":
1. AT&T
2. Code Enforcement
3. Comcast
4. State Pensions
5. Workman’s Compensation
6. Met Ed
7. Heating Oil
8. Life Insurance
9. Verizon
10. Verizon Wireless
11. Blue Cross
12. Executive Answering Service
13. Lebanon Mobile Phone
14. Propane
15. Public Risk Management Insurance
16. Business Insurance
17. Disability Insurance
18. Radio Maintenance
19. Electric Maintenance
20. Stauffers (of Kissel Hill)
21. Staples
22. Traffic Control (aka-- the maniacal chain-smoking parking lot attendants)
23. Sysco
24. JH Brubaker
25. Zeager Brothers
26. Bashore’s Restaurant Equipment
27. Sporting Valley Turf Farm
28. United Rentals
29. Stephenson Equipment

In addition to these charges, the Borough also sends Chautauqua shareholders twice-monthly bills for Labor Services, for Art Show labor, and the Chautauqua also outright “contributes” a substantial amount every year (usually around $18,000, which is more than the Chautuaqua tells the IRS that it spends on summer programs). Historically, the yearly total sucked from shareholders is over $200,000.

All this, in addition to taking our property taxes, earned income taxes, water and sewer fees, and pass-through funds like state and county taxes or fees (like the liquid fuels surcharges on the gas we buy and state income tax).

Oh don't get me wrong--the Council isn't to get all the blame in this. Its time to ask the Chautauqua Board what in the hell they were thinking--this is clearly not about efficient delivery of services to us. Its about squeezing us for all we are worth.

Its about figuring out all the redundant ways in which they can extract money from us to pay for the same set of services provided to the same set of people BY the same set of people.

Why don't all these numbers show up in the Borough's proposed budget that they let us see every year? and why won't the Chautauqua tell the IRS where all this money is really going? Heck, why don't they tell us where it is really going?