Suppose you’re an honest and diligent elected or appointed official in northern Idaho.

Or maybe you’re a planning commissioner or a city councilman in Coeur d’Alene.  Or maybe you’re a newly-elected county clerk with a competent and honest chief deputy.  Or maybe you’re a trustee in the local school district or community college.  Or maybe you’re a city councilman in Athol.

Or maybe you’re among the many honest citizens who have seen and experienced dishonesty, deception, and signs of criminal exploitation among a distressing number of elected and appointed officials so you have turned to your local or county or state government and tried to report what you have observed.

If you’re one of the people among the aforementioned groups who want responsive, honest government, you all have one thing in common:  You’ve very likely been told in one way or another to sit down, shut up, and don’t ask questions.  “It’s not your responsibility.”  Except you know it is.

Stand-up comedian and humorist Jeff Foxworthy does a routine entitled “You Might Be a Redneck If…”  OpenCdA would like to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy’s signature intro and apply it here with our apologies to him.  There’s nothing even remotely funny about our version.

You Are in Kootenai County, Idaho, if …

Within the last four years a Kootenai County Chief Deputy Clerk and Auditing Supervisor, a Coeur d’Alene Finance Department employee, a former Kootenai County Finance Director, and an Athol City Clerk have all been convicted of embezzling money from their respective employing jurisdictions.  In each instance they had been committing the crimes for years under the noses of their supervisors.   Here’s your red flag.

You were an appointed planning commissioner in Coeur d’Alene, and you were summarily fired by a mayor and council for asking too many incisive questions about the secretive financial operations of a local urban renewal agency. And you’ve been maligned by local and regional “news” media whose economic interests are better served by controllable and manipulable public officials than by honest and diligent ones like you.  Here’s your red flag.

You were a county clerk with the statutory duty of ensuring the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of reporting of the county’s financial records, but you were stonewalled and denied access to financial records by other elected county officials.   And you’ve been maligned by local and regional “news” media whose economic interests are better served by controllable and manipulable public officials than by honest and diligent ones like you.  Here’s your red flag.

You were a trustee in a local community college with documentary evidence supporting your concerns about the legality of complex financial schemes involving the college’s component units, but you were shut down by other trustees with a variety of reasons for hoping the public would not see what you saw and comprehend its gravity.   And  the local and regional “news” media who are supposed to be the communities’ watchdogs?  Their economic interests are better served by controllable and manipulable public officials, and they want you gone.  Here’s your red flag.

You were a new Athol city councilman who sought to fulfill your statutory duty by scrutinizing the city’s financial records, and you were told it’s not your responsibility by one of the people subsequently charged with stealing from the city.  Here’s your red flag.

You’re one of the conscientious and honest private citizens who believe in our representative system of government and our system of criminal justice.  You’ve sought the lawful remedies of those systems to correct the financial predation you’ve uncovered, only to be ignored or rebuffed by some elected officials.  You’ve even been subjected to threats of economic retaliation for daring to risk exposing the community’s predators who profit from it.  Here’s your red flag.

You’re an honest and competent state senator or representative trying to faithfully represent those honest and conscientious private citizens and you find yourself at odds with the community’s predators as well as with local and regional “news” media,  whose economic interests are better served by controllable and manipulable public officials than by honest and diligent ones like you.  Here’s your red flag.

How many red flags does it take before the honest citizens in Kootenai County say we’ve had enough of the go along to get along practices of this county’s criminal justice system and a complicit skewsmedia which seems intent on empowering the predators and demonizing the victims and discouraging cooperating witnesses?

How many?