To the editor:

In his almost wistful yet defensive letter in these pages last week, Mr. Katz asked why people would just lie.  I wonder how many letters, phone calls, and emails directed to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC have posed that very question during the past couple of years.

Opposing views, based on assumptions born out of prior experience, can sometimes be incorrect.  Are they lies?  Expressed political views often lack subtlety.  Sound bites, talking points, heated rhetoric, simplifications, and quacks-like-a-duck assertions, while maddening, often childish, and usually partisan, are, alas, part of the political landscape.  Calling people liars may be a stratagem, but a better one is stating clearly one’s positions and creating a cohesive series of actions that lend credence to one’s assertions.

Scheduling a presentation of a large, let alone a controversial, development proposal with scant notice at a late-summer town council meeting is not in my opinion good governance.  Doing so may be perfectly legal.  Yet doing so displays none of the rectitude so important to the idea that major decisions affecting Tiverton should result from transparent processes based on robust debate and genuine fairness to all interested parties.

Will Newman

Tiverton