RANT: Excuse me while I remove the “Kick Me” sign from my back.

Oh boy, did I light a forest fire with my rant last week. Contrary to expectations, I am loving the public discourse, diatribe, dialogue, discussion, what have you, that it has generated.

However, some of the comments seem to have taken what are essentially a couple of hundred of my words and, from that, written an (erroneous) picture of who I am, all of my views, my mental health, my economic status, my convictions, my life habits, my politics and my ethics. So I feel there are some things that need to be stated — or reiterated — for the record. Or, at least, for my public record. I’ll try to keep each point short and simple (and, hopefully, sweet) to avoid further confusion:

1. I think East Greenwich is a great town with great schools due to great teachers, a great government due to great elected officials and all around a great quality of life.
2. Our Town Council, whatever their political affiliation, are a committed, hardworking, thoughtful group of people doing an essential and often thankless task and putting in a lot more hours than they probably end up spending with their families. I have nothing but huzzahs for them.
3. Am I biased? Yes of course I am – but like most people, I am biased towards my own opinions. And I am not ashamed of them since I write about them in a public forum  – UNDER MY REAL NAME (unlike some others).
4. Not that it really is anyone’s business, but I am not an ironclad Democrat or Republican. Some of you might be snorting with derision that I might ever be the latter, but hold onto your hats because I have been known to vote across the board. I think there are times when the conservatives speak sense, times when the liberals speak sense, and other times when everything in between speaks sense. Politics do not follow the Mom rule (Rule #1: Mom is always right; Rule #2: When mom is wrong, see Rule #1). I kinda find hard to believe that any philosophical thought or belief system is going to be 100 percent on the mark all of the time or that every program that they propose is going to be the best one simply because they are the source.
5. I don’t want to tax anyone simply because they are rich. Actually, I am not even convinced that taxation is the best way to feed organizations like our excellent schools, police force, trash disposal and so on. I’m not sure what is, but right now, this is the system we currently have so we need to either vote for people who propose a different way of supporting these things (yes, it does always seem to go back to voting) or else figure out a way to work within the arrangement we do have to make it as economically accountable and sustainable as possible.
6. I have nothing against the name Willard. Some of my best friends are named Willard.
7. Truth told, I don’t really care how much Romney paid in taxes because I don’t think this really has anything to do with what kind of leader he might be. It also does not seem to be a black and white reveal since diverse media outlets were able to draw different conclusions from the numbers and I am not sure there was ever a consensus regarding what they meant.

One last thing — shouldn’t it be possible to state and even fight for one’s opinion and not get down and dirty? Isn’t the freedom to express our beliefs and opinions one of the principles our country, and our state in particular, were founded on and indeed thrives on? Whatever happened to holding a civil discussion about the pros and cons of an issue without fear of personal attack or harassment? Just my opinion.

RAVE: I am all over the Planning Department website. It is informative, thought-provoking, visual, entertaining and frankly the very opposite of what comes to mind when I think about what goes on in this section of government. After reading it, you want to invite these guys over your house or, at the very least, a block party. Check it out.

*Disclaimer: Love and Loathe are powerful words. Lisa Sussman would like to state for the record the she mainly feels mostly happy (though not the jump-for-joy ecstatic kind of happy, more the gee, life is pretty good kind of contentment) about living in East Greenwich. Also, no animals or politicians were harmed in the writing of this column. Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others. Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.