Comments on the St. Augustine and St. Johns County Office Pool 2007 include assertions that it is "brilliant" (aw, shucks) and too long (I plead nolo contendere) and not as tough on Governor Charles Crist as it is on local malefactors of great wealth and their minions (a fair criticism).
Time will tell.
Meanwhile, for a good time, read the hagiongraphy emitted from national nad local newspapers and TV about the late President Gerald R. Ford.
We're grateful that former President Ford condemned Bush's war in Iraq posthumously and that he stood up for human rights, appointing John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court. Yet hearing his sycophantic 1973 Watergate tape kissing President Nixon's butt the day after Nixon accepted the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman reminds us that Ford was a "team player," who pardoned Nixon, a criminal scoundrel.
The comparisons are obvious. President Gerald R. Ford made Reagan look intellectual, Bush I look scholarly and Bush II look honest by comparison. Ford's Republican Party was a "big tent," compared to today's national Republican party, full of hate for diversity.
President Ford had the perspicacity to debate Jimmy Carter and to hold frequent press conferences, both as President and Vice President.
By comparison, some local public officials in St. Augustine, Florida avoid debate and won't even answer questions (like the questions we've been seeking answers to since February 24 on the Nation's Oldest City dumping 20,000 cubic yards of contaminants in the Old City Reservoir.
It's one thing to be conservative (or liberal): it's another thing to take the point of view that "l'etat c'est moi." Our local oligarchs have much to learn from history, including the lessons of Watergate.
St. Augustine politics still hews to the Spanish colonial past in a City that brags on being founded by murderous colonists in 1565, the same year that Ivan the Terrible founded the KGB's forerunner.
St. Augustine will learn and grow in the New Year, as local progressives persist in uncovering misdeeds by misanthropes.
What do you reckon?
No comments:
Post a Comment