With local municipal governments beginning their new year and school boards recently beginning theirs it is time again to think about the responsibilities of local, elected officials.

            There is enough distrust, confusion, ignorance, and lack of service to constituents going on in Washington, D.C. and Harrisburg that we need local officials to sooth some of the pain, albeit at the local level.

            But hey, you have to start somewhere.

            Can anybody, anywhere, serving the citizens of the United States please stop the tall tales, embellishments, and outright lies being hurled at the people?  Maybe if one person, at a very high level, puts a cap on the lies the others will too.

            If not, perhaps there's a chance that good government at the local level will run uphill to the state and federal levels.  Not much of a chance, but a chance nonetheless.

            As more and more accounts are exposed from social media we continue to learn how corrupt some people are at the federal level.  Information that, perhaps, some officials are sorry they posted or wish was suspended.

`           Heck, even the Facebook account of this newspaper was suspended this week.  They gave us several possible reasons for the suspensions – none of which we did.  As it turns out, if someone decides to file a complaint on your account you're automatically suspended until the Facebook sleuths have time to check it out.  It takes days not hours for the high-tech know-it-alls to bring up your account and review it.

            We publish the same thing every week – the headlines of main stories and a link to our newspaper's website. No photos, no stories, no opinions.  On occasion we will publish "Code Blue" weather alerts issued by Montgomery County or traffic alerts issued by PennDOT.

            Feel free to look us up at townandcountry.newspaper on Facebook.  Our suspension is over and we never delete anything we posted.

            By the way, all we got was a "complaint unfounded" from the social media host.  But, if one complaint can shut down our social media site (for no reason, as the host found out), why and how can so many others remain untouched?  Shouldn't the host apply the same rules to all social media accounts?

            You can still find informative and meaningful posts on social media.  If you don't want to talk to your friends and relatives, simply post messages back and forth.  You can even enjoy the conversations between others that you may or may not have any business poking your nose into.

            Then compare us to other hateful, racist, boring, and, yes, even meaningless items you'll find on social media.  But one complaint is all it took to have the Town and Country suspended – mistakenly.  Only minutes to suspend – but days to reinstate.

            And, many of these posters call themselves social media influencers.  If you are influenced by some of these people or groups, good for you.  The very popular ones make a lot of money from their power over you.

            So Happy New Year.  May all of our local, elected officials do the work of the people, for the people, and in front of the people.  We know prices are rising for government but remember that they're also rising for the people you serve. 

            Think of them with every stroke of the pen you make and every vote you take.