Our local candidate campaign fora have for too long (since before I was in St. Augustine) been dominated by card-playing bores. Various aspiring fora are forcing people to hand in cards, which are then read (or not read) at-will by the "moderators." Too often, they omit the tough questions (as the League of Women Voters invariably does). They remind me of what the fictional president in "The West Wing" called the "boring tight-ass society." They're control freaks. They want the world to dance to their elevator music.
Cross-examination is the greatest engine ever devised for learning the truth. If you let politicians answer questions read by moderators from cards, they'll not answer the questions, preferring to stick to their talking points. Since the person who wrote the question is unknown, we don't know what motivated the questioner, or whether they have a proverbial ax to grind (or proverbial dirty laundry). Since the person who asked the question doesn't even get to read it (even from a dumb 'ole card), the candidates feel free to ignore the question, knowing there can be no followup.
The card procedure is similar to a little-used device in the Rules of Civil Procedure -- depositions on written questions. Unless the deponent is in a distant city and there is no question as to the answer, few lawyers or parties would ever want to take a deposition on written questions.
When reporters get to question the President of the United States, when citizens get to question Presidential candidates, but St. Johns County residents can't even stand up on their own two feet and ask their own questions in their own words of the candidates, there's something wrong.
Kudos to St. Paul's A.M.E. Church for letting people ask their own questions. Pray for the League of Women Voters and other organizations where control freaks dominate the right of citizens to speak out and ask questions.
Our Founding Fathers in Philadelphia did not communicate to one another on cards.
Neither should we in St. Johns County and St. Augustine, Florida.
Our putative "leaders" are horribly insecure and afraid. They're afraid to let us ask questions. They won't answer them in City Commission meetings. They don't answer them on the campaign trail. They're afraid of the truth. (Ask ERROL JONES, who falsely promised he would hold town meetings in 2002 but does not do so -- see below).
Speaking of control freakery, it's even worse with campaign signs, Republicans are stealing Democratic signs, particularly Obama signs. (Still waiting to hear back from Robert T. Smith, Chair of the St. Augustine Republican Club -- what did he know and when did he know it?).
It's especially silly in the City of St. Augustine Beach, where under the longtime legal advice of the malfeasant GEOFFREY DOBSON, they've had an ordinance prohibiting political signs until three weeks before the election. This is the same incompetent lawyer who almost cost taxpayers $2 million in purchase of a Bell Jet Ranger luxury jet helicopter that we don't need for mosquito control. Thanks to the five of xix Mosquito Control Commission candidates who answered St. Augustine Record Editor Peter Ellis' question Tuesday night -- do we need a helicopter -- in the negative. Only TIM CHIU raised his hand to say we needed to purchase a helicopter. But GEOFFREY DOBSON brazenly said purchasing a luxury helicopter was "sole source" procurement when it was not (and the helicopter was unadorned with any way of spraying skeeters and made about as much sense as using a Ferrari as a snowplow).
If the public got to ask questions (and demand answers), the devious developers represented by the likes of GEORGE McCLURE would not have gotten their way, winning approval to build some 80,000 houses in St. Johns County, a national disgrace that requires FBI and other federal criminal investigations.
As to the anonymice on Plazabum who copy items from my blog, and then feebly attempt to answer them on their site, I appreciate that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But their Plazabum site is not open to dissenters, and it's pointless to act as if your posting my opinions there and trying to answer them constitutes dialogue. THe Plazabum hacks demanded I be kicked off the St. Augustine Record Talk of the Town website for disagreeing with them -- they have no more respect for free speech and democracy than the Tennessee Supreme Court or the U.S. Department of Labor.
In fact, they rather remind me of the Exxon Chief Economist who spoke to my International Business and Oil class at Georgetown. I questioned him for 20 minutes about Big Oil and its monopoly power, slowdancing with OPEC. He then proceeded to answer my questions later -- at an invitation-only dinner with students in the International Business Diplomacy Program. I wasn't there and didn't have the ability to ask followup questions (or hear his answers).
As to the LWV refusing to allow people to ask their own questions, unfiltered, and as to Plazabum cretins excluding dissenting views, mocking them, and using barnyard epithets, brandishing racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of bigotry, just remember the immortal words of William F. Buckley, Jr. (of someone who would not debate him): "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"
Of course, Plazabum would rather engage in infantile, intoxicated, self-indulgent rants against the homeless, with the effect of reducing the attractivness of St. Augustine as a tourist destination. Anyone researching this beautiful town on the Internet would be discouraged from visiting by Plazabum's bipolar bigotry
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