Caterina Maria Speaks Out

To me the real problem is that Joe was harassed outside the Zoo, or even inside the Zoo, by City officials and police. Tell me again why he is not supposed to set foot there? For taking pictures?

Something about these posts by cracker-barrel lawyers makes me think of communist Russia or Nazi Germany. Some frantic justification of bullying by the government going on here. We have a fascist government here in Salisbury. It operates without consent of the citizenry in every sphere: zoning, public works, budget and police and fire protection. The Mayor makes unilateral concessions to every rich crony of her husband and his business partners who bumble into the GOB. Public squawking over this is scornfully brushed aside in her mouth-organ, the Daily Times.

Documents are hidden from the public, the Mayor lies about the audit, and the Council makes its buddies rich over the protests of people who bother to get off their behinds and speak out. Crime skyrockets, so that Salisbury is the most criminal city in ALL of Maryland, per capita, including Baltimore. Is there any admission of this by the City government? Hell, no. Just like in Nazi Germany.

All this under the watchful eye of a Mayor who is a notorious control freak. You have a Zoo where one its employees tears her back apart on the job and she is fired the next day, unethically and illegally. The City handily loses the workmen's comp case, because it behaved like a Soviet GULAG, and there is still the rule of law elsewhere, at the fed and state level. The Zoo Director behaves like a drunken frat-boy, publically urinating for the 'delight' of his female employees. If the police saw Joe do that he'd be locked up instantly. Is that justice?

Joe, married to the injured employee who was dumped by the Mayor's command, starts to document other City Zoo misdeeds. Among them, the mysteriously high animal mortality at the same Zoo that tried to throw his wife away like a used tissue. Then he's told to stay out of the Zoo, and Rapp, the Zoo Director, claims that in an altercation, Joe shouted obscenities and shoved him. There is no real case, because Rapp is lying, and it's on videotape, so it's essentially dismissed (stet). Any apologies from the Mayor or Rapp over the illegal firing of the injured employee? Any explanation of animal mortality, or even account of it? Any explanation of why the case against Joe went stet? No. This City doesn't account for anything to anyone but the Mayor. The taxpayers who question this and demand justice here are treated with contempt and are slandered in the City-controlled press and at the Council meetings, by these criminals on the public dole.

So Joe IS from Delmar. That means that he is somewhat out of the reach of Her Majesty's tentacles, and maybe that explains why he alone has the cojones to go around with his camera to photograph the incompetent and illegal operation of a totalitarian city. And you spontaneous lawyers are quickly taking up for the same City government that is robbing you blind and allowing you to be exposed to the depredations of rapists and murderers.

It would take another court case to sort this out, but in the meantime you're ready to throw Joe to the dogs. This is how most people act when the government goes totalitarian. To make themselves feel better about sitting on their cowardly duffs, they shoot down someone who tries to air the corruption in the place.

Joe may not be diplomatic and may be overly assertive with his camera at times, but where he comes from this is called exercising your civil rights. He's a New Yorker and those people don't take crap from the likes of a Barrie Tilghman. On the Shore, where politeness often means looking the other way while your buddies get rich overloading the infrastructure, his behavior is shocking. But I for one am glad he has the nerve to do what he has done, and I'll leave it to a judge in to figure out when he's stepping over the line. I wouldn't trust anyone in employed by this city to do it.