'Palace' furnished on taxpayer dime

To the editor: After reading your Jan. 15 article "Seat of power gets a new life," I would like to share some of my thoughts with you.

While the average person in this country is struggling to make ends meet, our government officials (at all levels) are on a spending spree. This is just one more example that the concept of "public service" and what it means, has been replaced with "now that I have the power I can feather my nest and do whatever I want with the taxpayers' money."

Imagine if you will, the size and grandeur of a million-dollar home, then add 29 more. At around 5,000 square feet per home that would total 150,000 square feet. Now add to the $30 million another $1 million for furnishings and you have a grand palace for the nobles to reside.

I would be interested to know now many people are residing in this expensive structure so I could divide 31 million by this number in order to get a cost per person.

If fiscal responsibility was required by law, I'm sure that at least two-thirds of our government officials would be serving jail time for willfully and knowingly breaking this law. The note on Arlene Mulder's desk that read, "Your office furniture is going to a school in Waukegan" should have read "You have been sentenced to six months in jail for breaking the law of fiscal responsibility, please report at once to the county jail."

Another article you might consider publishing could be about the real inflation this country is experiencing, and how our government has contrived and manipulated data, in order to show that it is two to three times lower that it actually is.

John Konopka

Deer Park