Bill Starr's break with reality - coming to an Assembly in-box near you!

Bill Starr sent an open letter to members of the Anchorage Assembly. Somehow, one ended up in "unfriendly territory."

From a post by Winkie on Precinct 1080 - KUDO's Forum:

The following letter was e-mailed to me yesterday. Fyi: I am not an Assembly member. I don't know why it was sent to me.

An Open Letter to my Fellow Assembly Members
From the desk of William Starr, Member

Dear fellow Assembly Member:

As many of you know, recent events have suddenly illustrated and called into question numerous aspects of our day to day work practices, procedures, campaign efforts, union and constituent interface and Executive branch communicatyions to name a few. This evolving age of transparent government policy...

Ahem - as Winkie pointed out on her Precinct 1080 post - "transparent government policy" is an evolving thing? Like it's supposed to be something new?

Back to the letter:

...and lingering reminder of recent influence peddling cases further calls Us to address our inherited systems of government to ensure the public and public processes are better served through our contributions.

This past week my member actions and work style have been very much debated by the public in the press and other forums.

Work style? You mean intimidation, vote-peddling, foul language...that kind of "work style?"

This letter is intended to accomplish several things. One purpose, to be clear, is to ulitlize this medium to get my side of the issues out for open discussion. If you feel this is a misuse of our body and only other avenues available to me should be used I apologize, but these issues, in my opinion warrant our discussions and opportunity to learn as events unfold against me and others. I'll need to use my personal assembly experiences to highlight these aspects being currently debated in the public arena's.

Translation: "I want to give you excuses mixed with smoke-and-mirrors and paint myself as a hard-working victim in a form of communication (Assembly e-mail) where I can't or won't be held accountable."

Whoops - guess that didn't work.

A second primary purpose of elevating this discussion...

Oh...you mean "elevate this discussion" above us lowly members of the public? You know...we're your constituents...the ones you are representing?

...is that as elected leaders we may very well be faced with changes in our work habits, traditional and non-traditional commmunications and procedures as a result. Some of our public, private, and personal work aspects need immediate change. This can be a good thing and one action item we need to be very proactive on to ensure public trust, protect personal rights and encourage others to follow in our path.

Personal rights...as in the right to keep information from the Public? Changes in communications...you mean that from now on, you are going to inspect every one's cell phones to make sure they are "off" before you start your "discussions"?

Honestly, this is a really long letter and commenting on all of it involved more energy than I can muster. I skipped a bunch of it and encourage you to click the link above and read it on Precinct 1080.

However, I had to comment on the last paragraph:

Each of us as elected members of this legislative body of government have our own work styles, methods, ethical standards and various levels of moral and religious groundings. How we blend these into the peoples work is challenging as you all know. How we are judged by these efforts and motivations needs to be respectful of the complexity of the tasks at hand and individual rights.

So, what he's saying is that each member of the Assembly (not each person on the planet, you see, this only goes for elected officials) has THEIR OWN set of ethics and standards and that the rest of us don't have the right to judge them based on ACCEPTED SOCIETAL CODES OF BEHAVIOR. We must only hold them accountable based on their PERSONAL MORALS AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS - NOT OUR OWN.

That is the BIGGEST bunch of ARROGANT CRAP I've heard in a long time!!!!!!

It gets better...

You, my fellow Assembly Members, have the opportunity and responsibility to judge my actions with the unique perspective of being part of the process. We also have the ultimate responsibility to evaluate our processes, formal and informal, and reinforce those that work and change those that work and change the ones that don't. I, for one, won't be shouted down nor intimated as I engage in this and all the tasks expected of me. Call that arrogance if you like, but it is truly the pride and responsibility I feel given this opportunity to serve our community.

"We the people" don't understand him properly because we're not on the Assembly...boo hoo...Yes, he's the poor victim here...all he's doing is trying to be our "champion" and we just don't understand what he has to suffer through for that to happen.

You know what's truly scary about all of this? Bill Starr wrote this arrogant treatise of personal entitlement and grandiose line of bull after only ONE TERM on the Assembly. I mean, after all, even though it's time for Ted to go, at LEAST he developed his corrupt nature and sense of entitlement after MANY YEARS in the Senate.

This letter only reinforces my belief that Mr. Starr needs to go. It's also proof positive, as if we needed more proof, that the ONLY SOLUTION for these problems is to pass Clean Elections and eventually make them 100% publicly financed.