Another Duck-Up

WIRY Radio personality Ducky Drake has created another dust-up – or should I say duck-up? – with his last commentary in which he targeted once again the Plattsburgh Public Library.

Ducky was going on about the proposed 2010 budget for PPL. He claimed that library employees thought their department was more important than the police and fire departments. A clever way of twisting the argument. The library has requested, not demanded, an increase in its budget after being nailed with a $100,000 cut years ago. It is only asking for what it thinks is a fair share.

A typical verbal trick, re-phrasing the issue. Ducky, when did you stop beating your wife?

Ad hominem attacks are so easy, coming in handy when you don't have many facts on your side. Some of the library staff are insulted by Ducky's characterization. Ducky, please name three self-serving egocentric library employees. (Hell, just name three employees.)

I'm a regular library patron. From my personal dealings with the staff, I haven't noticed any greedy and haughty employees. So I take it, Duck-o, that you have dealt with PPL staff and have been put off by their blanket egoism, the way they look down their noses at you? You've been to the library lately, haven't you, to see how it's been getting by with less? Or do you just sit inside your WIRY bubble and bloviate without doing any research or fact-checking before loudly quacking?

Speaking of fact-checking, let's take a look at this asstounding statement by Ducky:

“Did you know the library, unlike any other department, controls all the money that they receive in their budget? While all other departments have to account for their budget money to the [city Common] Council and how they're going to spend it, the library can do whatever they want with the money. They could give it all for employee raises, they could give their employees paid vacations, they can hand out bonuses. They can do whatever they want with their budget money. And that is just Wrong, with a capital Wrong.”

Wrong-o, Duck-o. (That's a capital Wrong-o .) Despite your claim that there are no checks and balances, PPL expenditures are reviewed by three key entities:

*New York State Library
*Richard Marks, City Chamberlain
*PPL Board of Directors

Thirteen people sit on the PPL Board of Directors, all appointed by the mayor and city councilors. They approve all expenditures. It ain't feasible that all thirteen would say, “Sure, you can hand out bonuses to your staff. You can do anything you want with money. We don't care.”

Ducky, you would know about the oversight with the library's expenditures if you spent five minutes with Stan Ransom, PPL Director. Then again, if you did, you wouldn't have anything to quack about.

Your commentaries on WIRY radio run under the program title of “Is It Just Me?”

Yes, Ducky, it is just you. Only you. All alone with your quackery.