Letter: 'Tis the season to afflict the comfortable
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 12/12/06
'Tis the season to afflict the comfortable
Editor: Wouldn't the unreformed Charles Dickens character Ebenezer Scrooge ("A Christmas Carol") be good company for local "characters" who:
1. Excoriate and insult the homeless, instead of working to provide housing and employment? "Are there no workhouses, no jails?" Christianity or "no room at the inn" meanness and insensitivity?
2. "Take paradise and put up a (ugly, massive, four-story, under used) parking lot" where Fred Francis' last will gave us ball fields?
3. Frame unjust laws, eject St. George Street artists, circumvent a federal court order to prevent future bridge Rainbow flags?
4. Try to rip-off the charter and home of the American Legion?
5. Bulldoze Cooksey's Campground, the Fleeman tract, and other natural beauty for land-raping and profiteering (as if we needed more unsold ugly housing and strip malls)?
6. Deny firemen promised pay raises (for more taxes), then claim firemen already got their raises?
7. Refuse to discuss a living wage law (after a Canadian billionaire took away tourism workers' hours, wages and benefits), saying "we have no oar in that water?"
8. Charge exorbitant rent to local small businesses, making them waste money on improvements, then ejecting them in favor of more ugly T-shirt shops?
9. Sue in the name of uninformed out-of-state "clients" asking to evict tenants buying a house, to punish them for criticizing a Realtor?
10. Mock concerned citizens who speak in public meetings to punish them for questioning errant officials?
11. Attack citizens reporting illegalities to federal and state authorities to chill free speech rights?
12. Dump 30 million pounds from the old dump into the Old City Reservoir (recommended fine over $46,000 for "serious" violations, "lack of good faith")?
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