Nearly lost in the rush of the holiday season was a raucous collision between the Lee County Commission's corrupt conduct and sound economic philosophy that would act to balance it out in a perfect world. Just days before Christmas, a local civic organization held its monthly meeting in Lee County where the guest speaker was retired Auburn University Economics Instructor and legendary Libertarian Party political candidate John Sophocleus of Beauregard to address local economic conditions.
According to Sophocleus, local economics has been affected by the malpractice and malfeasance of the Lee County Commission and their poorly conceived and incompetently executed curbside pickup boondoggle. It became crystal clear in the immediate aftermath of Sophocleus' remarks that he was right over the target. Sophocleus touched a few raw nerves as he smoked out the Lee County Commission, standing in stark contrast to the warm reception and comradery shown to Sophocleus by the vast majority of those in attendance with whom his message resonated deeply.
If you are not completely sure of what the context of Sophocleus' remarks entailed, you can get a refresher on these hot topics by clicking on some of the links below to related Examiner articles published over the last several months;
Adding fuel to the raging inferno, there was a video livestream broadcast online which acted as a lightning strike to spread Sophocleus transmission like wildfire. Due to concerns of potential liability for third parties who were not privy in advance to the incendiary nature of Sophocleus' communication, the recorded livestream was deleted shortly afterward. Folks, the revolution was indeed televised however if you did not catch it live then there is simply no way to view it now.
Fortunately for you, dear reader, the Examiner was in the room to capture audio excerpts of the speech which have been transcribed for your reading pleasure as follows;
Reflecting on his mailbox being destroyed by a government approved garbage truck barreling past his residence, Sophocleus opined
"No mailbox is safe. They have taken out my mailbox. A mailbox that has lived there for forty years without any problem. It got taken out by the monopolists. Of course, the mailbox they replaced it with was inferior. Nowhere near as stout a post or as big a box."
"All these things that when greed guides you, you don't put enough thought into how would you do this rationally. Once again, all that matters to them is being able to transfer wealth to their crony monopolists."
Asked by an audience member what he would do to fix the situation, Sophocleus responded
"The first thing that you have to do is get the sheriff to submit a plan to reopen our dumpsters like we had and make them enforceable. We spent sixty-thousand dollars to put cameras on these private trucks but they wouldn't spend the money to put them on dumpsters to protect wrongful dumping coming in. There were folks clearly coming from other places to put into our county dumpsters because the commission wasn't doing their job."
"If you want to invite me back I will talk about other instances where they are not doing their job whether it is oversight with the EAMC or what the probate division is doing with executing wills. There are folks who will come up before the commission who will talk about the problem with what the probate judge is doing, he says 'you can't talk about that' and gets a sheriff's deputy to drag the person off. So much for your first amendment. You can go before them and talk about your sheriff, you can talk about your tax assessor, you can talk about the highway department but if you talk about the probate judge you get thrown off. So much for consistency."
"That's my answer, is to return the dumpsters but you have to stop the wrongful dumping. I don't think it would be that difficult but nobody has asked the sheriff."
Another questioner asked
"Are they collecting any money for the bills that they are sending out? I guess, some people are paying and others are not?
"Correct, I assume. There is twenty-one thousand mailings that are going out. Last we could get a report, seventy-nine hundred have either never paid or stopped paying."
Clarifying his initial query, the questioner asked
"Is it based strictly on who owns the property? If you are renting a house, does it come to the renter or does it come to the property owners?"
Sophocleus responded
"I thought I had talked too long, so you tell me to stop. It is a beautiful question. One of the folks that will probably be the lead plaintiff on the last part of the class action lives in Georgia. They won't send the bill to where he gets his tax bill because then it changes from mail fraud to wire fraud. They send his tax bill to that address but they tuck the bills for his two rental properties in the box here. I think there are some folks in this room that can attest, they are getting bills for a can they don't have on a property that has no structure on it. It has not been very well done."
Asked for a comparison to the highly analogous sanitation situation that recently transpired in nearby Troup County where their county commission opted to keep dumpsters operational, Sophocleus answered
"What we have are more doubling down political thieves here in Lee County. There has been some discussion of once a quarter opening the green boxes for folks to show how they would announce and know that you can go those dates. Our most corrupt commissioner now since the one that was replaced says 'We need to enforce that whoever is showing has been paying their voluntary amount.' They are willing to enforce that there but they weren't willing to address the problem to enforce wrongful dumping. I have volunteered that the minute you reopen the green boxes I will happily start repaying my amount because I love the convenience for it."
"Some of you know where I live it is quite a walk to take the can up. My seventy-two year old bride, bless her heart, I don't get up early enough. She is toting the can down the driveway. For us, we just loved the convenience of when the green boxes were open. Now that you have taken away that convenience and you're destroying my roads and my mailboxes, I would prefer you not show us that low road."
Readers of this website have responded with emphatic gratitude for the sorely needed coverage of the exact same pressing economic and constitutional issues facing Lee County that were addressed in the presentation Mr. Sophocleus gave in December. Let us not forget small business owners such as Willie Philpot as well as two other operators of private solid waste services in Lee County whose livelihoods were lost in the aftermath of being banned from conducting business by the LCC with the establishment of their government mandated monopoly benefitting the ACCA approved vendor Arrow Disposal. Once again folks, feel free to familiarize yourself with the in-depth reporting by the Examiner on these topics by clicking on one of the links below.
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