Uncle Albert's Cafe and Ǽ-Theory Bistro

Hello again all. Things are good here. Preparing for the holidays, having fun with this cold crappy weather, watching the newspaper here winning a judgement in court demanding every public employee's name and how much they make and what they make in overtime for the year of 2007. Unfortunately that includes me, but fortunately, I'm working on finding a good attorney that feels like sueing whoever I can name in a suit. :-) Next few months are gonna be interesting.

Here in Virginia, DC area, that is published in the paper every year. Anyone making above $50,000.00 a year is listed, base pay only though, unless OT is above a certain percentage. I forget the percentage but I think they can publish any amount of OT, they just limit what they publish. They can publish all names, even those making below 50 grand, but the list is too long!! I have worked for a local Government my whole career so I am used to seeing my name in the paper every year. Now they do NOT get to see my deductions or anything like that, just my base pay and OT. I am paid by the taxpayers, so if they want to see, let them is my feeling. If the roles were reversed and I wanted to see, could I? I think I should be able to, Government is for the people and by the people, it should also be transparent, whenever possible, IMHO. Right now I am below the 50 grand cutoff, but before I retired, I was on the list! I am part time now and have only been doing this job for 3 years, my name should never make the cutoff now, I should retire first. My wifes name will be on the list though, she will retire in 2 1/2 years and then we will both move shortly thereafter to a less hectic, more relaxed kind of place, like the beach!!

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With enough information, one could put 2 and 2 together and figure out where you live, go from there, commit crimes, such as breaking into your house and what not. Thats one of the problems I see happening. Now, with police officers, the police chief, the sheriff, high ranking officials, with some time and effort, one could very easily find where they live. They have a personal vendeta, it could turn ugly real quick.

We shall see what happens tho. And, its good to see you posting again Mikey!

It's an ugly world for sure. For the Register of Medical Practitioners here in the State of Victoria it was a slim margin that defeated a bill that would have required the home address of a doctor to be publicly accessible from that register. And few of us were in any contractual relationship with the state. Despite doubtful alleged benefits of that scenario, the matter finally turned upon a declaration/realisation/threat of liability to flow toward the legislators personally for the possible consequences. The clever argument was that if their actions in parliament was unconstitutional ( ie. the bill was ) AND that they were informed of that in advance ( because we just told you that ) AND they went ahead despite that THUS your house and mortgage sport! You see being an elected member only entitles one to behave within the parameters of that role ...... there is no bland disclaimer available - or at least there was a large bunch ( ~ 20K ) of well educated, well funded, well motivated and patient litigants quite prepared to test that!

Another approach was to refuse to divulge such information and see you in court for a class action, and yes that 'go ahead ..... make my day' would actually occur, no bluff, as it was certainly worth our while to do that. [ One other proposed tack was to publish GPS co-ordinates of all legislators homes, their families, their personal assets, registration numbers, descriptions etc. However, they'd got the point by then! ]

You do actually need to go for both the groin, as well as the throat, on these issues! :-)

Cheers, Mike.