It seems like we are now firing on all cylinders. Peoples from many different organizations are rallying around this effort to have the city of Springfield audited.
Why you may ask would people want to have the city entity audited?
It seems the leaders of the city have made numerous promises in the past, by delaying pay raises or trading pay raises for other like minded services. These promises are now due and the city doesn't have the money to pay for these promises.
City Utilities which operates the local water treatment plant has had three pumps fail in the recent weeks that has put the water suppply system in jeopardy. The failure of these pumps can be narrowed down to be overworked equipment or lack of proper maintenance.
Both of these scenarios could've been avoided by having a spare pump or replacement parts on hand in case of an emergency.
I own a water treatment company in town and I have spare parts and equipment in case I have a customer which has a unit that fails to work. To my way of thinking this makes sense and hopefully this would also make sense to CU. Apparently not!!!!!!
And you wonder why we want to have the city audit. Where is this almost $213 million dollars going?
The cost of this audit is going to cost every man, woman, and child living in Springfield a grand total of $.53, to not have this audit done is costing over $24,000 an hour.
The city leaders will have you believing that the city is audited by KPMG every single year and everything is just fine. What the city doesn't tell you is that this so called "audit" is only balancing the checkbook. The city supplies the numbers and the receipts so therefore the books should balance.
The state will actually start asking the city leaders WHY this money is being spend in certain areas.
I ponder to think WHY the city leaders are so opposed to this audit? They say it is a waste of $$$$$$$$$$, but anytime the bureaucracy of government is questioned the better the people are.
These very same people that don't want the books opened for all to see would tell us that we should be open to the city leaders after all the only people that scoff at these ideas are people that are hiding something.
Sorry city leaders you can't play both sides of the court at the same time.
Only you can change politics by VOTING
"I choose to think for myself, therefore I vote Libertarian.
Tom Martz
Candidate for 139th
Friday, April 14, 2006
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
What is a conspiracy
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=conspiracy
con·spir·a·cy Audio pronunciation of "conspiracy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kn-sp�r-s)
n. pl. con·spir·a·cies
1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2. A group of conspirators.
3. Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design: a conspiracy of wind and tide that devastated coastal areas.
First we have to define it before we can discuss it. You might ask WHAT does a conspiracy have to do with a campaign? I thought the same thing the other day while listening to our local talk radio show and local host.
It seems like our local host believes that anyone that doesn't BUY the "official" government story about 9-11 is a conspiracy minded liberal. Now I know our mystery host means well in his terminology since he is striving to become the next Sean Hannity, but really do we have to paint such a broad brush over everyone.
Our government being involved in cover-ups isn't really anything new and therefore when people question governments "official" story it should be expected. Questioning our government doesn't make a person a conspiracy nut or a liberal, however it will make a personknowledgeabledgable of how the system works.
One only need to read the following article to see how easy it is for government officials to cover-up information. I'm sure the people that swore the government was covering something up in this article was also known as a conspiracy nut.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment The U.S. government's 40-year experiment on black men with syphilis
by Borgna Brunner
"The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens... clearly racist." —President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997
For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.
The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”
Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals
The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to ensure their cooperation. The sharecroppers' grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical care—almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before—these unsophisticated and trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as “the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history.”
The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed to whites—the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis, whereas blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage. How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain.
Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that “nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States.”
When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972, news anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that “used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.”
A Heavy Price in the Name of Bad Science
To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.”
The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed.
By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How had these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science?
To persuade the community to support the experiment, one of the original doctors admitted it “was necessary to carry on this study under the guise of a demonstration and provide treatment.” At first, the men were prescribed the syphilis remedies of the day—bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury— but in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement.
These token doses of medicine were good public relations and did not interfere with the true aims of the study. Eventually, all syphilis treatment was replaced with “pink medicine”—aspirin.
To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.” The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed.
As a doctor explained, “If the colored population becomes aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every darky will leave Macon County...” Even the Surgeon General of the United States participated in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them certificates of appreciation after 25 years in the study.
Following Doctors' Orders
It takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the white government officials who ran the experiment, but what can one make of the numerous African Americans who collaborated with them? The experiment's name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by Booker T. Washington. Its affiliated hospital lent the PHS its medical facilities for the study, and other predominantly black institutions as well as local black doctors also participated. A black nurse, Eunice Rivers, was a central figure in the experiment for most of its forty years.
The promise of recognition by a prestigious government agency may have obscured the troubling aspects of the study for some. A Tuskegee doctor, for example, praised “the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as well as the added standing it will give the hospital.” Nurse Rivers explained her role as one of passive obedience: “we were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribed; we followed the doctor's instructions!”
It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she sincerely cared about their well-being, but her unquestioning submission to authority eclipsed her moral judgment. Even after the experiment was exposed to public scrutiny, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.
One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receiving treatment. When several nationwide campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating. Even when penicillin—the first real cure for syphilis—was discovered in the 1940s, the Tuskegee men were deliberately denied the medication.
During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS exempt them. Pleased at their success, the PHS representative announced: “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.” The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public health law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that “informed consent” was needed for experiments involving human beings.
Blowing the Whistle
The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the experiments performed by Nazi doctors on Jewish victims during World War II. Yet the PHS offered the same defense offered at the Nuremberg trials — they were just carrying out orders.
The story finally broke in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Her source was Peter Buxtun, a former PHS venereal disease interviewer and one of the few whistle blowers over the years. The PHS, however, remained unrepentant, claiming the men had been “volunteers” and “were always happy to see the doctors,” and an Alabama state health officer who had been involved claimed “somebody is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Under the glare of publicity, the government ended their experiment, and for the first time provided the men with effective medical treatment for syphilis. Fred Gray, a lawyer who had previously defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, filed a class action suit that provided a $10 million out-of-court settlement for the men and their families. Gray, however, named only whites and white organizations as defendants in the suit, portraying Tuskegee as a black and white case when it was in fact more complex than that—black doctors and institutions had been involved from beginning to end.
The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the appalling experiments performed by Nazi doctors on their Jewish victims during World War II. Yet in addition to the medical and racist parallels, the PHS offered the same morally bankrupt defense offered at the Nuremberg trials: they claimed they were just carrying out orders, mere cogs in the wheel of the PHS bureaucracy, exempt from personal responsibility.
The study's other justification—for the greater good of science—is equally spurious. Scientific protocol had been shoddy from the start. Since the men had in fact received some medication for syphilis in the beginning of the study, however inadequate, it thereby corrupted the outcome of a study of “untreated syphilis.”
You see Mr talk radio show host a person that questions government at all levels will never fall prey to swallowing the "official" story hook, line, and sinker. If questioning my government on the events of 9-11 make me a liberal then I guess I'll wear that label proudly. Unlike others I have viewed some aspects of the 9-11 footage that others choose to ignore because it doesn't fit into the agenda from which they speak. I will continue to keep my eyes open and not allow my mind to close, after all the mind is like a parachute it only works when open.
"I choose to think for myself, therefore I vote Libertarian"
remember only you can change the face of politics VOTE.
tom martz
HoR District 139 candidate
con·spir·a·cy Audio pronunciation of "conspiracy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kn-sp�r-s)
n. pl. con·spir·a·cies
1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2. A group of conspirators.
3. Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design: a conspiracy of wind and tide that devastated coastal areas.
First we have to define it before we can discuss it. You might ask WHAT does a conspiracy have to do with a campaign? I thought the same thing the other day while listening to our local talk radio show and local host.
It seems like our local host believes that anyone that doesn't BUY the "official" government story about 9-11 is a conspiracy minded liberal. Now I know our mystery host means well in his terminology since he is striving to become the next Sean Hannity, but really do we have to paint such a broad brush over everyone.
Our government being involved in cover-ups isn't really anything new and therefore when people question governments "official" story it should be expected. Questioning our government doesn't make a person a conspiracy nut or a liberal, however it will make a personknowledgeabledgable of how the system works.
One only need to read the following article to see how easy it is for government officials to cover-up information. I'm sure the people that swore the government was covering something up in this article was also known as a conspiracy nut.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment The U.S. government's 40-year experiment on black men with syphilis
by Borgna Brunner
"The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens... clearly racist." —President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997
For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.
The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”
Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals
The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to ensure their cooperation. The sharecroppers' grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical care—almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before—these unsophisticated and trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as “the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history.”
The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed to whites—the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis, whereas blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage. How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain.
Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that “nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States.”
When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972, news anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that “used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.”
A Heavy Price in the Name of Bad Science
To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.”
The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed.
By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How had these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science?
To persuade the community to support the experiment, one of the original doctors admitted it “was necessary to carry on this study under the guise of a demonstration and provide treatment.” At first, the men were prescribed the syphilis remedies of the day—bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury— but in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement.
These token doses of medicine were good public relations and did not interfere with the true aims of the study. Eventually, all syphilis treatment was replaced with “pink medicine”—aspirin.
To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.” The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed.
As a doctor explained, “If the colored population becomes aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every darky will leave Macon County...” Even the Surgeon General of the United States participated in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them certificates of appreciation after 25 years in the study.
Following Doctors' Orders
It takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the white government officials who ran the experiment, but what can one make of the numerous African Americans who collaborated with them? The experiment's name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by Booker T. Washington. Its affiliated hospital lent the PHS its medical facilities for the study, and other predominantly black institutions as well as local black doctors also participated. A black nurse, Eunice Rivers, was a central figure in the experiment for most of its forty years.
The promise of recognition by a prestigious government agency may have obscured the troubling aspects of the study for some. A Tuskegee doctor, for example, praised “the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as well as the added standing it will give the hospital.” Nurse Rivers explained her role as one of passive obedience: “we were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribed; we followed the doctor's instructions!”
It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she sincerely cared about their well-being, but her unquestioning submission to authority eclipsed her moral judgment. Even after the experiment was exposed to public scrutiny, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.
One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receiving treatment. When several nationwide campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating. Even when penicillin—the first real cure for syphilis—was discovered in the 1940s, the Tuskegee men were deliberately denied the medication.
During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS exempt them. Pleased at their success, the PHS representative announced: “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.” The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public health law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that “informed consent” was needed for experiments involving human beings.
Blowing the Whistle
The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the experiments performed by Nazi doctors on Jewish victims during World War II. Yet the PHS offered the same defense offered at the Nuremberg trials — they were just carrying out orders.
The story finally broke in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Her source was Peter Buxtun, a former PHS venereal disease interviewer and one of the few whistle blowers over the years. The PHS, however, remained unrepentant, claiming the men had been “volunteers” and “were always happy to see the doctors,” and an Alabama state health officer who had been involved claimed “somebody is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Under the glare of publicity, the government ended their experiment, and for the first time provided the men with effective medical treatment for syphilis. Fred Gray, a lawyer who had previously defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, filed a class action suit that provided a $10 million out-of-court settlement for the men and their families. Gray, however, named only whites and white organizations as defendants in the suit, portraying Tuskegee as a black and white case when it was in fact more complex than that—black doctors and institutions had been involved from beginning to end.
The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the appalling experiments performed by Nazi doctors on their Jewish victims during World War II. Yet in addition to the medical and racist parallels, the PHS offered the same morally bankrupt defense offered at the Nuremberg trials: they claimed they were just carrying out orders, mere cogs in the wheel of the PHS bureaucracy, exempt from personal responsibility.
The study's other justification—for the greater good of science—is equally spurious. Scientific protocol had been shoddy from the start. Since the men had in fact received some medication for syphilis in the beginning of the study, however inadequate, it thereby corrupted the outcome of a study of “untreated syphilis.”
You see Mr talk radio show host a person that questions government at all levels will never fall prey to swallowing the "official" story hook, line, and sinker. If questioning my government on the events of 9-11 make me a liberal then I guess I'll wear that label proudly. Unlike others I have viewed some aspects of the 9-11 footage that others choose to ignore because it doesn't fit into the agenda from which they speak. I will continue to keep my eyes open and not allow my mind to close, after all the mind is like a parachute it only works when open.
"I choose to think for myself, therefore I vote Libertarian"
remember only you can change the face of politics VOTE.
tom martz
HoR District 139 candidate
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
it's for the children
to set the stage it was quite a quiet election and not a lot of hoopla over any of the ballot measures.
The voters have approved a 96.5 MILLION DOLLAR bond measure for repairs to be made to the schools and air conditioning. The benefactors of this measure were so quiet leading up to this election that you wouldn't have even know there was a tax increase measure on the ballot. Yes, I call it a tax increase; because, when the payments come due we will be hit with a tax increase to pay for it. I watched it happen year after year in California.
The voters would get talked into a ballot measure for a bond issue, after all it isn't a tax increase, to support pet projects then when the bill came due a tax increase was implemented to cover the cost. It took a few years but the populace started to figure this bait and switch out and told the politicians NO MORE TAXES. The politicians figured out how to get around this as well. They would ONLY apply this new levy to newly built homes in the area. The masses jumped at the chance to pass a tax increase on unsuspecting home buyers, to the point that large developers were asking for back room deals so the newly instituted tax wouldn't effect thier development.
The voters of John Q Hammondsville were snuckered by the silence and passed a measure that they believed was for the benefit of the children that wouldn't come back and hit them in the pocketbook. I long for the day when the electorate takes the job of these votes more seriously and actually researches how this is going to effect not only them, but the neighbors and the children that aren't quite tax paying age yet.
Almost by a two to one margin this went through. in a few years when the people complain about paying higher taxes NO ONE will remember this "bond measure" and what actually happened to the money.
If you are happy with the status quo, vote for your republican and democrat candidates. If you want CHANGE
VOTE4TOM Martz
next post will contain my views on the so-called conspiracy theories and those that disagree with the "official" government story.
If you would like to help my campaign donations can be mailed to
334 East Kearney Street #135
Springfield, MO 65803
The voters have approved a 96.5 MILLION DOLLAR bond measure for repairs to be made to the schools and air conditioning. The benefactors of this measure were so quiet leading up to this election that you wouldn't have even know there was a tax increase measure on the ballot. Yes, I call it a tax increase; because, when the payments come due we will be hit with a tax increase to pay for it. I watched it happen year after year in California.
The voters would get talked into a ballot measure for a bond issue, after all it isn't a tax increase, to support pet projects then when the bill came due a tax increase was implemented to cover the cost. It took a few years but the populace started to figure this bait and switch out and told the politicians NO MORE TAXES. The politicians figured out how to get around this as well. They would ONLY apply this new levy to newly built homes in the area. The masses jumped at the chance to pass a tax increase on unsuspecting home buyers, to the point that large developers were asking for back room deals so the newly instituted tax wouldn't effect thier development.
The voters of John Q Hammondsville were snuckered by the silence and passed a measure that they believed was for the benefit of the children that wouldn't come back and hit them in the pocketbook. I long for the day when the electorate takes the job of these votes more seriously and actually researches how this is going to effect not only them, but the neighbors and the children that aren't quite tax paying age yet.
Almost by a two to one margin this went through. in a few years when the people complain about paying higher taxes NO ONE will remember this "bond measure" and what actually happened to the money.
If you are happy with the status quo, vote for your republican and democrat candidates. If you want CHANGE
VOTE4TOM Martz
next post will contain my views on the so-called conspiracy theories and those that disagree with the "official" government story.
If you would like to help my campaign donations can be mailed to
334 East Kearney Street #135
Springfield, MO 65803
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