Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Bob Harding was a pest and a moron and I'm glad he's left the area.

Good for Residents of Pickeringt

Bob was indeed a pest if you consider the fact that he ''ate'' at the City Council and Manager to show the community how they were misleading the residents of Pickerington. Of course, if someone was benefitting from Pickerington residents not knowing how they were being led down the Primrose Path of Debt and destruction, one would think he was a pest.

He provided the means for a lot of people to know the truth via the PATA newletter.

Rita, you are only partly right

Bob was probably in his heart sincere and meant no one harm, but in the newsletter and in his appearances at various public meetings and hearings he was unduly personal and never hesitated to imply that people who had legitimate disagreements with him and PATA over policy were somehow evil, criminal, or on the take.

Reviewing these pages I have counted at least four people who have pretty decent baes to sue him and PATA for libel, mostly but not exclusively on posts made by Bob. That was the moronic and pestilential part -- why cut into the intellectual effectiveness of your arguments by getting nasty and opening your group up to avoidable lawsuits?

Now that he no longer runs PATA, I would like the anti-growth groups to show a little more restraint in this area. A lot of good, moral people happen to make their living in the building, construction, and real estate industries, or as politicians or public servants. There is no need in pursuing your ends to destroy people's privacy and reputation.

Just for instance, why do we have the recent post about Joyce Bushman getting atraffic ticket -- what does that have to do with growth issues? Do the PATA people want others to start looking into their personal lives too? It is a bad game and more than one side can play it. Now that your crowd has gotten into power it is time for those in that crowd who've engaged in a politics of slander to display a lot more maturity.

Forget Hell!!

Dear Anonymous

You claim Rita is half right about what?? You say that Harding had slandered good upstanding Pickerington citizens. Mr. you must have been living under a rock for years or something because those former leaders in power taught us the game.

You addressed your comments to Rita Ricketts who has taken grief from these people that you admire so highly. I heard Randy Hughes just ripe her and her family of all places at the Pickerington City Council. They regularly blamed the ?“money grubbing Ricketts family?”. If anyone should sue it should be the Ricketts.

You act like Joyce Bushman was such an innocent victim here. She should be in jail. She had City employees investigating Bob Harding and PATA members and she has even employed the Pickerington Police Department to use the LEADS system to look up dirt on Citizens of this city. Please remember that the Mayor had LEADS privileges in the Mayor?’s office.

Lou Postage would regularly call and berate people in Pickerington that he knew for signing referendum petitions and anyone else that dared to speak out against his buddies in power. If you want to look into slander please look at what Mark Uher said many times to many people. Then look at Debbie Carlier and her making public private medical information of a school board member. How about the medical information of the mayor.

PATA and this web site was the only way those in this community could speak out with out the retaliation of those in power like Lou Postage and Randy Hughes and their athletic booster allies.

This smash mouth politics wasn?’t started by PATA people. It was started a long time before PATA was even thought about. Please also remember people like Linda Wilson who was run out of town because she dared to question the builders. How about Pat Stover on the school board? These same athletic boosters gathered at the High School to ripe her up one side and down the other because she dared to asked questions. She resigned and left town. Then there is Gail Oakes and Bruce Rigelman who have endured years of public abuse.

The same goes for those community members that have served on the Pickerington City Council. Those people had completely dropped out of public service now because of the public harassment.

In fact Mark Uher wrote a letter to the township trustees and alerted the County Sheriff to be on the lookout for black hooded gang members like Bob Harding ripping campaign signs out of the ground and harassing his good folks. He even claimed his poor friend Henry was so scared that he wet his pants. I can just see Bob running up to anyone and threatening them let alone pulling a sign out of the ground without falling himself.

Unfortunately those of us in PATA had to get into the trenches and fight them hand to hand to defeat them. We didn?’t start the Pickerington politics because it existed prior to us ever being here. As for feeling sorry for Joyce Bushman I have no feelings of remorse that some one would publish her driving record. She spent $4.5 million to redo that downtown and ignored the rest of the city. She deserves to have a wreck.