Our new County Executive Ed Mangano's press secretary was the managing editor of the Long Island Press. 

Eden Laikin, a reporter who covered the Town of Hempstead for Newsday, is now his director of intergovernmental research.

Mangano's wife is the publisher of the Bethpage Tribune. 

I wonder if it is ethical for a county executive to start off an administration with an apparatus in place that could possibly shape our news to fit his agenda? 

We rebuke Silvio Berlusconi, the second-longest serving prime minister of Italy, for owning the major media outlets in his country.  Such practices are dangerous.  News becomes propaganda and it is shaped to keep politicians in office.  Now, one could say that couldn't happen here.  But apparently, the print room of the Town of Hempstead did not even wait until the new administration took office before starting its spin machine.

At first glance, last week's Murray-gram seemed no different from mailings that we Merokeans have become accustomed to.  In character with the old GOP machine, the town acted as Mangano's mouthpiece and blasted the county tax assessor's office.   

But what I found hypocritical was that the town was actually suggesting that the county would help people grieve their assessment.  This so-called "public service announcement" paid for with taxpayer dollars to the Town of Hempstead is actually directing you to call a Nassau County agency.  This coming from the same branch of government that less than a year ago, blamed the Nassau County executive and Nassau County legislature for our high taxes. 

And now, we get a combination Murray-gram and Donald Clavin "opinion" piece that implies that it is not the legislators' faults that we have high assessments? This opinion piece mailed out with taxpayers' dollars is also a blatant defamation of character of the Nassau County assessor, who is a private individual and not an elected official.  And so, the spin continues…

Funny, now that the Republicans control the county executive, legislature and the Town of Hempstead, I thought that the town's mailings that relentlessly criticized the county would cease.  I thought that maybe now they could save some of our tax dollars for things like fixing the roads that we in Merrick have been complaining about for decades.  But I guess I was being naïve. 

It could not be coincidental that Mangano is surrounding himself with press people.  It could not be coincidental that the last mailing sent out by the Town of Hempstead ties the town to the County. 

This is apparently just the beginning of what will be "Big Government" -- just the beginning of what will be nothing more than a giant "Propaganda Machine" to keep the public ignorant.  Our news will be dummied down to "Thank you Ed Mangano for this" and "Thank you Kate Murray for that."

And they will pat each other on the back and tell each other what a great job they're doing.  And we will see their smiling faces on everything.  And they will hope that the people don't notice that they are giving themselves raises and raising our taxes.  I love Merrick, but I don't know if I can afford to live here if the county raises our taxes at as high a rate as the town has been doing for years. 

We all know that it's the school taxes that are killing us.  We all know that the problem lies with Albany.  And now we lost the only county executive in the history of Nassau County that led a tax reform movement in the state that would actually change the way they tax us in the suburbs.  Have Long Islanders' cut off their nose to spite their face?

The future will tell.  We may have lost our nose, but let's make sure that we keep our eyes wide open.