All posts in the topic I'm being sued. Is this a proper place to talk about it?

For the last year, the town I'm in and a bunch of town officials are being
sued, and a large part of the reason is because of people expressing their
opinions on my public mailing list. I'd be happy to tell you more about
it, but I wanted to make sure I'm not in the wrong plave before starting
something that's not appropriate for this list.
    

--
Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have  .0.
happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0
Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000
individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net

On Saturday, Jan 24th 2009 at 17:12 -0000, quoth Steven Clift:

=>Why not? Even though you are not part of E-Democracy.Org you are part of
=>the family of people hosting similar local community discussions.
=>
=>Please share. We can learn from and hopefully help you.

Ok, but don't say I didn't warn you ;-)

Here in the sleepy little town of Framingham, Massachusetts, the biggest
social service agency (SSA) in the town, sued the town and 13 of its town
officials. I'm one of them. This all started in Nov '07. The officials
were sued both in their official and in their individual capacities. The
suit is available at

http://smog.org/

This town is massively overrun with SSAs and their associated programs. A
few raw numbers: Based on population size, by proportion, we should expect
to see about 45 programs, 7 agencies and 3 Level 3 sex offenders. Instead
we have ~250, 48, and 28, respectively. SMOC is the biggest of the big
three in this town and they are a $60M/year operation. They are the ones
suing us in Federal Court. (Have you ever heard that old expression,
"Don't make a Federal case out of it."?) The suit is totally ridiculous.

Also, a big part of the problem is that SMOC is structured in such a way
that they bring people into the town from outside the region. Their
clientele is largely based on violent criminals and drug addicts. And,
their system is designed with what they call the "Continuum of Care",
which keeps their clientele in their programs (and by implication in
Framingham) till they die (or until they get better?).

The charges include:
* Conspiracy to create an atmosphere of discrimination against the
handicapped.
* Libel.
* Violation of the Fair Housing laws.

etc...

All news articles since it started are available at

http://frambors.syslang.net/smoc/articles/

So why am I bothering you poor people with this nonsense? I'm one of the
people being sued and part of the reason they're going after me is because
of the mailing list I run in this town. The list is open to the public,
but there is a strong sentiment against the agencies that has been expressed
by people, and this includes myself. SMOC would love to shut this list
down, the same way that they are demanding that the whole town be placed
into receivership.

There's a lot here and I could go on for many hours, but the gist of
things as I suspect is relevant to this group is here. And BTW, they're
not doing very well. They never expected that we'd actually try to defend
ourselves, and because the town's liability policy kicked in, they're
being forced to spend about $1 for every $.15 that we spend.

Let me know if you have any questions.
    

--
Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have  .0.
happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0
Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000
individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net