Town of Rochester Councilman Alex Miller

Always on a discrimination-free behavior, ever defending the freedom of speech, a 24/7 stickler for the town code rules on applications' review... One wonders where our beloved Councilman Alex Miller finds the time for so many positive bursts...

Arrogance, your name is Alex Miller

At the short-lived Rochester Town Board meeting on February 1, 2007 Councilman Alex Miller offered a disturbing spectacle of explosive arrogance, exaggerating his own importance in an overbearing manner. He also went beyond the pail, accusing the people locked inside the meeting hall of not calming down the people locked outside.

Arrogance clouds Miller's thinking, and shortens the distance between his foot and his mouth.

At the now infamous "interview" cum "accusations" (pun not intended), Alex assured Manuela Mihailescu that when he types his name in Yahoo! Search, no porn site is popping up. His statement begs the question: how the hell does he know that?

Bear with me...

Let's type "Alex Miller" in the Yahoo! Search...
Wow! We got 27,300,000 returns.

Assuming that Alex is a regular Speedy Gonzales, and he can explore three returns every minute, he needs 9,100,000 minutes to see them all.

Divide by 60... that's 151,666 hours...

Still with me? Divide by 24... that's 6,319 days...

Now divide by 365... that's 17 years!

Alex Miller, you cannot be serious! Nobody can work for 17 years without going to bathroom... It has to take you more than 17 years of hard work before you earn the right to sing "I type my name in Yahoo!, and no porn site is popping up."

As reported by Daily Freeman (02/02/07)

Town Meeting a privilege, not a right?

"Public comment is a privilege, not a right. We have an agenda we need to follow today." Well I think that says it all. We, who live and work in the Town of Rochester don't have the right to be heard at a Town Meeting. Does anyone remember Nikita Kruschev banging his shoe at the UN, yelling 'we will bury you.' He didn't want to hear anything either. Guess we don't have a Billl of Rights or a working Constitution for the people by the people any more, unless we agree with the current Town Board. Well the rich get fat off the working stiff. We work to pay taxes while they vote to give raises to themselves. Forget about voting, run for public office and make a fortune. When was the last time anyone around here got a 16% raise in pay?

Ed Duffy — Ellenville, NY

Privilege vs. right

I disagree with Mr. Miller's statement that speaking in a town meeting is a privilege, and not a right. These people live in the town, elect the board, pay the taxes. As such, they not only have the right to speak their mind, but they also have the responsbility. It's the Board's responsibility to hear the opinions of their electorate. If the townspeople have something to say, make room in that sacred agenda and let them say it. That's what you chose when you ran for office in an American town. We've had quite enough silencing of opposition on the Federal level, do we really need it in Rochester too?

Sharon Brown — Saugerties, NY

Public comment period
FreeRepublic.com

Town of Rochester is not the same as City of Rochester. This rural township is in the Hudson Valley, as opposed to the city on Lake Ontario. Evidently, New York City liberal Democrats have tried to take over the town, and have gotten 4 out of the 5 board seats (article is wrong, saying only 3), and are turning the quiet community upside down with their dirty tricks.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:23:07 PM PST by Gondring

So I guess only libs have first ammendment rights. And as for porn peddlers, those are usually libs in the San Fernando Valley pushing that crap on our kids.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:26:00 PM PST by rbosque

"Public comment is a privilege, not a right." Sums up the Democrats nicely, from Hillary Rotten down to the local hacks.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:26:54 PM PST by Dr.Deth

Councilman Ronald Santosky, a Republican, motioned that the meeting be moved to a larger venue, but nobody on the board seconded the motion, so no vote was taken. In other words, not a single one of the Dems would agree to move to a larger venue so everyone could attend the town meeting. Really "democratic," eh?
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:29:00 PM PST by Gondring

Nice to see OUR people making something happen for a change.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:29:02 PM PST by California Patriot

Doc, you forgot somethin just as important: "We have an agenda we need to follow today." I love how they spew their agenda.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:34:06 PM PST by catroina54

"This is a Town Board, it is not a political rally," he said. "Public comment is a privilege, not a right. We have an agenda we need to follow today." Sometimes these elitist scumbags slip up and let us know how they really feel. I guess the First Amendment is just an inconvenient privilege. No wonder they despise the one than comes next.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:36:53 PM PST by AlaskaErik

Isn't it a shame that our Repubs elected to Federal office cannot get a similar backbone!?
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:40:14 PM PST by TheBattman

I find the following most telling: Accord resident Don Dunn thought the display on Thursday was more about politics than moral outrage. And he blamed Republicans, saying they're upset that they hold only two of the five seats on the Town Board. "If (Mihailescu) has a case, all she had to do was get a lawyer and sue someone," he said. Here I've been being told that it was the rich Republicans suing everyone out of their rights, and it turns out to be a DIM idea to clog the courts with frivolous and inane lawsuits. Imagine that.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:41:18 PM PST by Don W

Mihailescu claims that, during an interview with the board last week, she was accused of being associated with a pornographic Web site. The Dems usually favor that line of work. And even if the accusation were true, what has that got to do with her knowledge of history?
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:41:20 PM PST by JennysCool

At the small town level... a lot of people are civic wannabe's... they would really like to do something for their local town but have very little leadership or common sense. I grew up down in rural Alabama... and the local mayor was the barber in town. He had unique skills to quieten any serious chatter in town hall and kept the peace for many years.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:46:22 PM PST by pepsionice

"...The privilege of the people...peaceably to assemble for the redress of grievances, shall be allowed at the whim of democrat hacks." Is that the one?
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:56:19 PM PST by hinckley buzzard

I've led similar crowds to town meetings and I loved reading this story. They react with this arrogance but they crumble when the public persists. I don't know how it is in Rochester, but in many places town meetings often take place with NO ONE in attendance. When the angry public shows up, they are rattled. When they can get away with it they treat the public like criminals who have broken into the place. I've seen this treatment of the public by both political parties. Very few officials have the character to behave as "servants" of the people. They will criticize you for not being at all their meetings and they will resent you if you start attending their meetings. And as someone once told me, politics is ALL about the money. It's not political principles they are guarding.
Posted on 02/02/2007 9:56:59 PM PST by Williams

The guy who has run the highway department for decades put in a budget that had no increase over last year's... and for the first time ever, his budget was refused. Was it too much? Nope...the Dems insisted that he spend MORE than he had asked for, insisting he raise the budget. Perhaps that would cover for the fact that they gave themselves raises of 40%.
Posted on 02/02/2007 10:01:06 PM PST by Gondring

I think the traditional way of handling this situation with public officials is tarring and feathering.
Posted on 02/02/2007 10:06:41 PM PST by Paleo Conservative

Councilman Alex Miller: "Public comment is a privilege, not a right. We have an agenda we need to follow today." This guy could stand more than a phone call or two, but I doubt he'll ever be dis-imbued of whatever learnin' produced his remark.
20 posted on 02/02/2007 10:15:24 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew

Yes. Aside from Iraq, the biggest single liability for us in the '06 election was a lack of guts and aggressiveness on the part of our "leaders." Of course, there was some lack of principle too, which is bad, but that's really a separate issue which I think has been talked to death.
Posted on 02/02/2007 10:30:43 PM PST by California Patriot

Councilman Alex Miller, a Democrat, told the crowd to remain orderly and warned that he would motion for the meeting to be adjourned if they did not. "This is a Town Board, it is not a political rally," he said. "Public comment is a privilege, not a right. We have an agenda we need to follow today." Later, it will probably turn out that Alex Miller is the porno nut.
Posted on 02/03/2007 2:16:53 AM PST by HAL9000

"Public comment is a privilege, not a right. We have an agenda we need to follow today." And: "If (Mihailescu) has a case, all she had to do was get a lawyer and sue someone." I don't know which statement best reflects the dem party's core beliefs, but 'privilege versus rights' and 'we have an agenda' sound incredibly contemporary.
Posted on 02/03/2007 2:40:50 AM PST by norton

"If (Mihailescu) has a case, all she had to do was get a lawyer and sue someone," he said. A lawyer I know says "You get all the justice you can afford." If you can't afford it you don't get any justice.
Posted on 02/03/2007 3:01:55 AM PST by Razz Barry

Democrats are crooks. Check your state open meetings law. You can bet these rats will be illegally meeting to discuss public business. Hire someone to follow the rats around. In my state, citizens can file suits against public officials who violate open meeting laws. There's even a provision to throw them in jail for repeated offenses. It's a great law useful for harassing these rat politicians.
Posted on 02/03/2007 5:30:32 AM PST by sergeantdave

Actually, the reporter gets it wrong. "Frances Gray," counted as "Republican," is actually Francis Gray, a liberal Democrat. There are 4 Democrats and 1 Republican. It used to be unheard of to have a Democrat win.
Posted on 02/03/2007 9:06:56 AM PST by Gondring

It's good to see more Republicans being outraged and gathering together to shine the light on these outrageous Democrat silencing tactics. I'd venture to guess that the Democrats don't want any Republicans on the Preservation Board because they wouldn't be able to present a unified front in favor of violating property rights. One would hope a Republican, hearing the kind of discussion that goes on in those kinds of meetings off the record, would take a stand for individual rights over group rights...
Posted on 02/03/2007 5:53:17 AM PST by Kay Ludlow

They get power and it goes to their head! Local government can be so Imperialistic.
Posted on 02/03/2007 10:18:21 AM PST by Kay Ludlow