This is the business we have chosen.

I've been ascribing that line to the Godfather movie. I'm not quite sure it's in it...but the spirit of the line permeates the movie.
It means: Don't complain when things get tough. You coulda been a baker or insurance salesman or ice cream truck driver instead of working for Don Corleone.
It's the same in politics. You should know the risks; you should know the rewards; you should accept them both with equanimity before you take the job.

Like at Brookhaven Town Hall.
Life "inside" Town Hall has become crass and brutal. It's no place for a gentleman, or for a lady. It's hardly the place for a self-respecting thug. But thugs there are aplenty.
There's little dignity. There's no respect for talent, hard work, dedication, competance, or public spirit.
Party loyalty is the coin of the realm.
One lives or dies by the letter after one's name. You are either a "D" or "R." (You could be a "C," but that's the same as being an "R.")

Take the late, departed Joe Asaro. Good party guy. A stalwart "R." Seventeen years working for the Town and working for the party (until 2006 it was the same thing).
Then he got promoted.

The Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety -- 20 years a command cop in NYC, an attorney, plenty of experience, etc. -- gets canned 'cause he ain't an "R" and "because we (the "R's") can, we will."
His replacement? A 17-year town veteran. Clawed his way up to "senior" messenger driver. He takes envelopes from building to building. Deposits to the bank. Trucks stuff around town.
Then, fortune smiles, the Party pays off, and he goes from Driver to Deputy Commissioner of Public Safety (he's become his boss's boss's boss's boss.)

Now he's no longer responsible for envelopes, he's responsible for near one-half million lives in an emergency. He's going to be the #2 guy organizing the Town's repsonse to a hurricane, or terrorist bomb, or some other disaster. (The only thing he's got on his resume as previous experience organizing something: he organized the Easter Egg hunt in Shirley and a Christmas Holiday parade in Mastic. He's got no public safety experience, no fire experience, no management experience, no financial experience, no personnel experience, no communications experience, no experience whatsoever....except drives envelopes from building to building. He knows where the buildings are, I guess.)

How could that be, you ask? Sheer thuggery. Pure brute power. A 4 - 3 voted on the Town Council (3 Republicans and 1 Conservative versus 3 Democrats.)
No concern for the well-being of a half-million people, only concern for paying off the party.
Cosa Nostra. "Our thing."

But wait...what's this. He fudged his time sheets? Nooooo! He wasn't where he was supposed to be? An investigation?

Nope. He called in sick the day he was supposed to be examined for the breach.

And resigned.

Now he's back driving the envelopes from building to building, deposits to the bank, and papers to the outlying offices.

Will there be any mea culpa's from the Republicans?

Wadda you think?

Stay tuned.