Interesting. GEORGE MCCLURE has mocked and trounced conservationists again and again and again. His clients (like ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBARD) have hired MCCLURE to make mincemeat of wetlands, even destroying a 3000-4000 year old Indian village in the name of profits (that may never come) for a dumb ole minimart and condos on Red Houe Bluff.
Now GEORGE MCCLURE has formed an organization to push for a one cent sales tax to buy land for conservation. Wonderful. Instead of supporting a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway and seeking federal funds, GEORGE MCCLURE wants to empower his cronies in the Courthouse to buy his clients' land now that the real estate boom has bust.
In effect, they demand a bailout at the expense of those who can least afford it -- working people. Sales taxes are the most regressive tax you can have. Why would you want to increase the suffering of working people when we're in a global economic recission/depression?
Maybe GEORGE MCCLURE's rich poals could pay more taxes on their stocks and bonds to pay for conservation land. But under fircely mean former Florida GOVERNOR JOHN EDWARD BUSH, the tax on intangible properties like stocks and bonds was abolished -- BUSH called it an "evil tax." Evil is ss evil does.
The Treasurer of St. Johns Forever is none other than ROGER VAN GHENT, a lugubrious goober who masquerades as a Democrat, who received money from the DAVIS FAMILY (sponsors of the misbegotten NOCATEE development on the WINN-DIXIE owners' D-DOT RANCH). ROGER VAN GHENT is a sell-out, and he is not a real Democrat. VAN GHENT is also one of the deluded demagogues supporting an ill-conceived St. Johns County Charter -- like GEORGE W. BUSH, ROGER VAN GHENT is all hat and no cattle.
Last year, I served on a committee with ROGER VAN GHENT and he is a cognitive miser -- a nasty, snarly chauvinistic know-it-all who knows very little.
So the sales tax has three strikes against it -- no support for a National Park, a bailout for developers paid for by those who can least afford it, and advanced by the Snidely Whiplash of developer lawyers, GEORGE MCCLURE, and his pal ROGER VAN GHENT, who has taken money and other things of value from the DAVIS FAMILY.
Former Citibank Executive VAN GHENT got contributions from DAVIS family enterprises for his run for County COmmissioner. He's also getting a park named after him. As the Matt Damon character said to the corporate lawyer-whore in "The Rainmaker," "do you ever remember when you first sold out?"
ROGER VAN GHENT is the Treasurer of St. Johns Forever, working hand-in-hand with GEORGE McCLURE -- that's pure poetry in motion.
This FERAL GOAT bears remarkable resemblance to ROGER VAN GHENT -- ROGER VAN GHENT can E-mail me a photograph of himself to EASlavin@aol.com
Former County Commissioner SARAH BAILEY wants County to buy her land, using county money that would be raised with a one cent sales tax. That's ROGER VAN GHENT between Commissioners Tom Manuel and Cindy Stevenson -- doesn't VAN GHENT resemble the goat?
Developer MARK MIDDLEBROOK, The Middlebrook Company, Jacksonville, Florida
JOHN HENRY HANKINGSON, JR., Former EPA Region 4 Administrator, 1993-2001, Senior Consultant with MACTEC Group
Now, after the Charter and the one cent sales tax are defeated (again, as in 1998 and 2008), let's work together for a St. Augustine National HIstorical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway.
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