It's a new day and a new era. We're taking America back from the turkeys who turned their backs on our Founders' principles, destroying our laws and institutions with the politics of greed.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Thanks to the Floridians and 52.5% of Americans Who Elected Barack Obama President
It's a new day and a new era. We're taking America back from the turkeys who turned their backs on our Founders' principles, destroying our laws and institutions with the politics of greed.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Guest Column: Giving thanks for people who speak out
Guest Column: Giving thanks for people who speak out
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/25/07
At Thanksgiving, I give thanks for:
1. St. Augustine's civil rights "foot soldiers," who changed history. They deserve a prominent museum.
2. Our American Founding Fathers and those who work for democracy and transparency everywhere.
3. Nature and those who work to protect it everywhere be especially thankful whenever Congress enacts a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway Act, including electric trolley-cars.
4. People of faith for speaking out for global environmental protection and against war and poverty.
5. Veterans for defending our liberties.
6. Flagler College for recognizing student rights (Club Unity and Gargoyle newspaper).
7. St. Johns County Commissioners, better listeners than St. Augustine City Commissioners (whose antics rightly earn Folio Weekly "brickbats" and improved St. Augustine Record coverage).
8. Anastasia Mosquito Control District commissioners for canceling its $1.8 million luxury jet helicopter and ending risks to people, pets, butterflies, frogs and other "non-target organisms" from spraying organophosphates. Thanks to three AMCD Commissioners (Emily Hummel, Barbara Bosanko, Linda Wampler) for changing their minds and two others (Jeanne Moeller and John Sundeman) for persisting in speaking their truths. Courage.
9. The Burrell, Mills, Ponce and other local families for standing up to land speculators like Robert Michael Graubard. Expose "developers" (a/k/a land-raping, tree-killing, wetland-destroying speculators, whom County Commission Chairman Ben Rich calls "worse than any carpetbagger").
10. FBI for investigating/prosecuting political corruption, including convicting two Miami PBS&J engineering chief executive officers for illegal campaign contributions/bribery/embezzlement. Follow the money.
11. Congress and investigative reporters for uncovering corruption. Be thankful whenever the House Judiciary Committee finally begins impeachment hearings.
12. Our city of St. Augustine for admitting wrongdoing in its illegally:
a. polluting Lincolnville for decades with illegal dumps;
b. moving illegal dumps' contaminants into our Old City Reservoir 2005-2006. No thanks to Florida Department of Environmental Protection (a/k/a "Don't Expect Protection") for allowing our city to move 20,000 cubic yards of contaminants back to Lincolnville. Environmental racism? No thanks to St. Augustine City Manager William Harriss, who blamed former subordinates, recently yelling "I've done nothing wrong." Be thankful when sworn witnesses testify about environmental crimes.
13. John and Elizabeth Edwards, for running a clean lobbyist-free presidential campaign and exposing Ann Coulter's bigotry.
14. Al Gore for winning Nobel Peace Prize and Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth." Florida proudly voted for Gore in 2000, with recounts wrongfully ordered halted.
15. My parents, family, teachers, professors, friends and mentors for teaching me to question large organizations and how they mistreat people. Always ask, "why" (and "why not?"). Uncovering uncaring governments' massive, secretive pollution in Oak Ridge, Tenn., mercury (1983) and St. Augustine Old City Reservoir confirmed my mother's wisdom: "Trust your mother, but cut the cards." "The truth will set you free."
16. Congressional Democrats for raising the minimum wage (first time in nine years), while voting to protect whistleblowers and our environment.
17. Progressives, activists, performers, whistleblowers, artists, scientists, reporters/writers and truth-tellers. They've enriched our lives.
18. People willing to work for new leadership in Washington. Our U.S. Rep. John Mica voted against whistleblowers and against raising federal minimum wages. In 2004, 72 percent of Floridians voted to raise our minimum wage. Mica sought to halt investigations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Mica defends Big Oil company price-gouging and offshore oil drilling demands. Enough.
Be thankful we get to overthrow our governments every two years. We need new leaders, including a "humble" president who "restores honor and dignity to the White House" (as Bush falsely promised). Too many politicians are arrogant, waste money and won't admit mistakes.
As Mosquito Control Commissioner Jeanne Moeller says, "there are more people like us than there are people like them."
Thank you for working to improve our future.
Robert Kennedy said, "it is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a [person] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, [s]he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Ed Slavin is a Georgetown University School of Foreign Service graduate, journalist, advocate/activist who first proposed a St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Highway on Nov. 13, 2006.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/112507/opinions_033.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/25/07
At Thanksgiving, I give thanks for:
1. St. Augustine's civil rights "foot soldiers," who changed history. They deserve a prominent museum.
2. Our American Founding Fathers and those who work for democracy and transparency everywhere.
3. Nature and those who work to protect it everywhere be especially thankful whenever Congress enacts a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway Act, including electric trolley-cars.
4. People of faith for speaking out for global environmental protection and against war and poverty.
5. Veterans for defending our liberties.
6. Flagler College for recognizing student rights (Club Unity and Gargoyle newspaper).
7. St. Johns County Commissioners, better listeners than St. Augustine City Commissioners (whose antics rightly earn Folio Weekly "brickbats" and improved St. Augustine Record coverage).
8. Anastasia Mosquito Control District commissioners for canceling its $1.8 million luxury jet helicopter and ending risks to people, pets, butterflies, frogs and other "non-target organisms" from spraying organophosphates. Thanks to three AMCD Commissioners (Emily Hummel, Barbara Bosanko, Linda Wampler) for changing their minds and two others (Jeanne Moeller and John Sundeman) for persisting in speaking their truths. Courage.
9. The Burrell, Mills, Ponce and other local families for standing up to land speculators like Robert Michael Graubard. Expose "developers" (a/k/a land-raping, tree-killing, wetland-destroying speculators, whom County Commission Chairman Ben Rich calls "worse than any carpetbagger").
10. FBI for investigating/prosecuting political corruption, including convicting two Miami PBS&J engineering chief executive officers for illegal campaign contributions/bribery/embezzlement. Follow the money.
11. Congress and investigative reporters for uncovering corruption. Be thankful whenever the House Judiciary Committee finally begins impeachment hearings.
12. Our city of St. Augustine for admitting wrongdoing in its illegally:
a. polluting Lincolnville for decades with illegal dumps;
b. moving illegal dumps' contaminants into our Old City Reservoir 2005-2006. No thanks to Florida Department of Environmental Protection (a/k/a "Don't Expect Protection") for allowing our city to move 20,000 cubic yards of contaminants back to Lincolnville. Environmental racism? No thanks to St. Augustine City Manager William Harriss, who blamed former subordinates, recently yelling "I've done nothing wrong." Be thankful when sworn witnesses testify about environmental crimes.
13. John and Elizabeth Edwards, for running a clean lobbyist-free presidential campaign and exposing Ann Coulter's bigotry.
14. Al Gore for winning Nobel Peace Prize and Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth." Florida proudly voted for Gore in 2000, with recounts wrongfully ordered halted.
15. My parents, family, teachers, professors, friends and mentors for teaching me to question large organizations and how they mistreat people. Always ask, "why" (and "why not?"). Uncovering uncaring governments' massive, secretive pollution in Oak Ridge, Tenn., mercury (1983) and St. Augustine Old City Reservoir confirmed my mother's wisdom: "Trust your mother, but cut the cards." "The truth will set you free."
16. Congressional Democrats for raising the minimum wage (first time in nine years), while voting to protect whistleblowers and our environment.
17. Progressives, activists, performers, whistleblowers, artists, scientists, reporters/writers and truth-tellers. They've enriched our lives.
18. People willing to work for new leadership in Washington. Our U.S. Rep. John Mica voted against whistleblowers and against raising federal minimum wages. In 2004, 72 percent of Floridians voted to raise our minimum wage. Mica sought to halt investigations of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Mica defends Big Oil company price-gouging and offshore oil drilling demands. Enough.
Be thankful we get to overthrow our governments every two years. We need new leaders, including a "humble" president who "restores honor and dignity to the White House" (as Bush falsely promised). Too many politicians are arrogant, waste money and won't admit mistakes.
As Mosquito Control Commissioner Jeanne Moeller says, "there are more people like us than there are people like them."
Thank you for working to improve our future.
Robert Kennedy said, "it is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a [person] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, [s]he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Ed Slavin is a Georgetown University School of Foreign Service graduate, journalist, advocate/activist who first proposed a St. Augustine National Historical Park, Seashore and Scenic Coastal Highway on Nov. 13, 2006.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/112507/opinions_033.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Former Clay Public Works director gets probation, no retirement benefits in illegal duping and grand theft case
Former Clay Public Works director gets probation, no retirement benefits in scandal
Posted: Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 11:26 am
By BETH REESE CRAVEY and DANA TREEN
The Times-Union
Former Public Works Director Arthur Ivey pleaded no contest this morning to grand theft and was sentenced to five years of probation in a plea agreement.
In a brief court hearing Wednesday, Ivey also waived his right to receive retirement benefits from his Clay County government service.
Ivey declined comment.
Prosecutor Stephen Siegel said he was “satisfied” with the outcome of the case, which stemmed from a 2005 illegal dumping scandal that engulfed the Public Works Department and Clay County government as a whole. Ivey and former County Manager Bob Wilson resigned under pressure, former Christy Fitzgerald was indicted on related charges and was acquitted.
“Arthur Ivey became the face of what was wrong in Clay County,” he said. “This county is so much better off.”
Retired Circuit Judge Richard O. Watson imposed the sentence, which was not part of the plea agreement. Watson could have sentenced Ivey to as much as five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Ivey, 53, was indicted in 2006 on theft and other charges stemming from a 2005 illegal dumping scandal. He resigned the public works post in April 2005, a month after state Department of Environmental Protection investigators found illegally dumped materials at several county operated dump sites.
Ivey faced four counts of official misconduct, four counts of grand theft, four counts of littering, two counts of violating state Department of Environmental Protection rules and six counts of petty
theft.
In a 19-month criminal investigation of county government, state and federal investigators raided two county supply pits and found evidence of illegal waste including timber and electronics. Illegal
materials were found dumped at five other sites, all of which Ivey controlled as director of public works.
Among the most egregious cases of illegal dumping was the placing of creosote-sprayed timbers from the dilapidated Shands Pier into Knowles Pit.
The first count of Ivey’s indictment addressed that dumping. A county audit at the same time questioned Fitzgerald on a variety of matters, including questions about county employees in Ivey’s department working at her property on and off duty. The work included sandbagging around her home during the hurricanes of 2004.
She was indicted on five counts of theft and one count of official misconduct and was acquitted in three trials. She was reinstated to the commission seat she had been forced to leave following the indictment. Her term was up in November.
Posted: Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 11:26 am
By BETH REESE CRAVEY and DANA TREEN
The Times-Union
Former Public Works Director Arthur Ivey pleaded no contest this morning to grand theft and was sentenced to five years of probation in a plea agreement.
In a brief court hearing Wednesday, Ivey also waived his right to receive retirement benefits from his Clay County government service.
Ivey declined comment.
Prosecutor Stephen Siegel said he was “satisfied” with the outcome of the case, which stemmed from a 2005 illegal dumping scandal that engulfed the Public Works Department and Clay County government as a whole. Ivey and former County Manager Bob Wilson resigned under pressure, former Christy Fitzgerald was indicted on related charges and was acquitted.
“Arthur Ivey became the face of what was wrong in Clay County,” he said. “This county is so much better off.”
Retired Circuit Judge Richard O. Watson imposed the sentence, which was not part of the plea agreement. Watson could have sentenced Ivey to as much as five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Ivey, 53, was indicted in 2006 on theft and other charges stemming from a 2005 illegal dumping scandal. He resigned the public works post in April 2005, a month after state Department of Environmental Protection investigators found illegally dumped materials at several county operated dump sites.
Ivey faced four counts of official misconduct, four counts of grand theft, four counts of littering, two counts of violating state Department of Environmental Protection rules and six counts of petty
theft.
In a 19-month criminal investigation of county government, state and federal investigators raided two county supply pits and found evidence of illegal waste including timber and electronics. Illegal
materials were found dumped at five other sites, all of which Ivey controlled as director of public works.
Among the most egregious cases of illegal dumping was the placing of creosote-sprayed timbers from the dilapidated Shands Pier into Knowles Pit.
The first count of Ivey’s indictment addressed that dumping. A county audit at the same time questioned Fitzgerald on a variety of matters, including questions about county employees in Ivey’s department working at her property on and off duty. The work included sandbagging around her home during the hurricanes of 2004.
She was indicted on five counts of theft and one count of official misconduct and was acquitted in three trials. She was reinstated to the commission seat she had been forced to leave following the indictment. Her term was up in November.
NY TIMES Op-Ed Column: Did French Lutheran Huegenots Have First Thanksgiving,Here in Northeast Florida, in 1564, Beating Spanish Here By One Year?
November 26, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
A French Connection
By KENNETH C. DAVIS
TO commemorate the arrival of the first pilgrims to America’s shores, a June date would be far more appropriate, accompanied perhaps by coq au vin and a nice Bordeaux. After all, the first European arrivals seeking religious freedom in the “New World” were French. And they beat their English counterparts by 50 years. That French settlers bested the Mayflower Pilgrims may surprise Americans raised on our foundational myth, but the record is clear.
Long before the Pilgrims sailed in 1620, another group of dissident Christians sought a haven in which to worship freely. These French Calvinists, or Huguenots, hoped to escape the sectarian fighting between Catholics and Protestants that had bloodied France since 1560.
Landing in balmy Florida in June of 1564, at what a French explorer had earlier named the River of May (now the St. Johns River near Jacksonville), the French émigrés promptly held a service of “thanksgiving.” Carrying the seeds of a new colony, they also brought cannons to fortify the small, wooden enclosure they named Fort Caroline, in honor of their king, Charles IX.
In short order, these French pilgrims built houses, a mill and bakery, and apparently even managed to press some grapes into a few casks of wine. At first, relationships with the local Timucuans were friendly, and some of the French settlers took native wives and soon acquired the habit of smoking a certain local “herb.” Food, wine, women — and tobacco by the sea, no less. A veritable Gallic paradise.
Except, that is, to the Spanish, who had other visions for the New World. In 1565, King Philip II of Spain issued orders to “hang and burn the Lutherans” (then a Spanish catchall term for Protestants) and dispatched Adm. Pedro Menéndez to wipe out these French heretics who had taken up residence on land claimed by the Spanish — and who also had an annoying habit of attacking Spanish treasure ships as they sailed by.
Leading this holy war with a crusader’s fervor, Menéndez established St. Augustine and ordered what local boosters claim is the first parish Mass celebrated in the future United States. Then he engineered a murderous assault on Fort Caroline, in which most of the French settlers were massacred. Menéndez had many of the survivors strung up under a sign that read, “I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to heretics.” A few weeks later, he ordered the execution of more than 300 French shipwreck survivors at a site just south of St. Augustine, now marked by an inconspicuous national monument called Fort Matanzas, from the Spanish word for “slaughters.”
With this, America’s first pilgrims disappeared from the pages of history. Casualties of Europe’s murderous religious wars, they fell victim to Anglophile historians who erased their existence as readily as they demoted the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine to second-class status behind the later English colonies in Jamestown and Plymouth.
But the truth cannot be so easily buried. Although overlooked, a brutal first chapter had been written in the most untidy history of a “Christian nation.” And the sectarian violence and hatred that ended with the deaths of a few hundred Huguenots in 1565 would be replayed often in early America, the supposed haven for religious dissent, which in fact tolerated next to none.
Starting with those massacred French pilgrims, the saga of the nation’s birth and growth is often a bloodstained one, filled with religious animosities. In Boston, for instance, the Puritan fathers banned Catholic priests and executed several Quakers between 1659 and 1661. Cotton Mather, the famed Puritan cleric, led the war cries against New England’s Abenaki “savages” who had learned their prayers from the French Jesuits. The colony of Georgia was established in 1732 as a buffer between the Protestant English colonies and the Spanish missions of Florida; its original charter banned Catholics. The bitter rivalry between Catholic France and Protestant England carried on for most of a century, giving rise to anti-Catholic laws, while a mistrust of Canada’s French Catholics helped fire many patriots’ passion for independence. As late as 1844, Philadelphia’s anti-Catholic “Bible Riots” took the lives of more than a dozen people.
The list goes on. Our history is littered with bleak tableaus that show what happens when righteous certitude is mixed with fearful ignorance. Which is why this Thanksgiving, as we express gratitude for America’s bounty and promise, we would do well to reflect on all our histories, including a forgotten French one that began on Florida’s shores so many years ago.
Kenneth C. Davis is the author of “America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation.”
Op-Ed Contributor
A French Connection
By KENNETH C. DAVIS
TO commemorate the arrival of the first pilgrims to America’s shores, a June date would be far more appropriate, accompanied perhaps by coq au vin and a nice Bordeaux. After all, the first European arrivals seeking religious freedom in the “New World” were French. And they beat their English counterparts by 50 years. That French settlers bested the Mayflower Pilgrims may surprise Americans raised on our foundational myth, but the record is clear.
Long before the Pilgrims sailed in 1620, another group of dissident Christians sought a haven in which to worship freely. These French Calvinists, or Huguenots, hoped to escape the sectarian fighting between Catholics and Protestants that had bloodied France since 1560.
Landing in balmy Florida in June of 1564, at what a French explorer had earlier named the River of May (now the St. Johns River near Jacksonville), the French émigrés promptly held a service of “thanksgiving.” Carrying the seeds of a new colony, they also brought cannons to fortify the small, wooden enclosure they named Fort Caroline, in honor of their king, Charles IX.
In short order, these French pilgrims built houses, a mill and bakery, and apparently even managed to press some grapes into a few casks of wine. At first, relationships with the local Timucuans were friendly, and some of the French settlers took native wives and soon acquired the habit of smoking a certain local “herb.” Food, wine, women — and tobacco by the sea, no less. A veritable Gallic paradise.
Except, that is, to the Spanish, who had other visions for the New World. In 1565, King Philip II of Spain issued orders to “hang and burn the Lutherans” (then a Spanish catchall term for Protestants) and dispatched Adm. Pedro Menéndez to wipe out these French heretics who had taken up residence on land claimed by the Spanish — and who also had an annoying habit of attacking Spanish treasure ships as they sailed by.
Leading this holy war with a crusader’s fervor, Menéndez established St. Augustine and ordered what local boosters claim is the first parish Mass celebrated in the future United States. Then he engineered a murderous assault on Fort Caroline, in which most of the French settlers were massacred. Menéndez had many of the survivors strung up under a sign that read, “I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to heretics.” A few weeks later, he ordered the execution of more than 300 French shipwreck survivors at a site just south of St. Augustine, now marked by an inconspicuous national monument called Fort Matanzas, from the Spanish word for “slaughters.”
With this, America’s first pilgrims disappeared from the pages of history. Casualties of Europe’s murderous religious wars, they fell victim to Anglophile historians who erased their existence as readily as they demoted the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine to second-class status behind the later English colonies in Jamestown and Plymouth.
But the truth cannot be so easily buried. Although overlooked, a brutal first chapter had been written in the most untidy history of a “Christian nation.” And the sectarian violence and hatred that ended with the deaths of a few hundred Huguenots in 1565 would be replayed often in early America, the supposed haven for religious dissent, which in fact tolerated next to none.
Starting with those massacred French pilgrims, the saga of the nation’s birth and growth is often a bloodstained one, filled with religious animosities. In Boston, for instance, the Puritan fathers banned Catholic priests and executed several Quakers between 1659 and 1661. Cotton Mather, the famed Puritan cleric, led the war cries against New England’s Abenaki “savages” who had learned their prayers from the French Jesuits. The colony of Georgia was established in 1732 as a buffer between the Protestant English colonies and the Spanish missions of Florida; its original charter banned Catholics. The bitter rivalry between Catholic France and Protestant England carried on for most of a century, giving rise to anti-Catholic laws, while a mistrust of Canada’s French Catholics helped fire many patriots’ passion for independence. As late as 1844, Philadelphia’s anti-Catholic “Bible Riots” took the lives of more than a dozen people.
The list goes on. Our history is littered with bleak tableaus that show what happens when righteous certitude is mixed with fearful ignorance. Which is why this Thanksgiving, as we express gratitude for America’s bounty and promise, we would do well to reflect on all our histories, including a forgotten French one that began on Florida’s shores so many years ago.
Kenneth C. Davis is the author of “America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation.”
Thanksgiving Legacy Belongs to Hispanic Americans (St.Augustine Had First Thanksgiving in 1565)
Thanksgiving Legacy Belongs to Hispanic Americans (St.Augustine Had First Thanksgiving in 1565)
Susan Parker
Special to The Record
Publication Date: 11/19/06
It's that time of year when we in St. Augustine remind the rest of the nation that the first community thanksgiving took place here in 1565. Michael Gannon, professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida and former St. Augustine resident, has told this story many times.
Let's just say that there are those in the Northeast who have been less than enthusiastic about this piece of information. Several years ago, some member of the Massachusetts media dubbed Prof. Gannon "the Grinch who stole Thanksgiving."
St. Augustine's thanksgiving took place the same day that the arriving colonists from Spain stepped ashore here. When St. Augustine's founders held a Mass of thanksgiving on Sept. 8, 1565, it was not, however, the first time in today's U.S. for that sort of act. For more than 40 years Spanish adventurers and settlers had landed in Florida in the southeast. These earlier adventurers surely conducted a thanksgiving ritual in gratitude for surviving sea voyages. French settlers in Florida would have done the same in the early 1560s.
The event in early September in 1565 in St. Augustine was the first documented time that the Indians participated in the thanksgiving activities. Gonzalo Solis de Meras wrote that Pedro Menendez, leader of the St. Augustine colonists, "had the Indians fed and dined himself." This was an eyewitness account as Solis de Meras himself was present at the thanksgiving meal. Four hundred years later in The Cross in the Sand, Prof. Gannon put this event in perspective:"It was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanent settlement in the land." That community included Europeans, Africans, and Indians.
From this short account by Solis de Meras, it appears that the Spanish provided the food. The Spaniards' supplies had been brought with them from Spain. Among the foodstuffs loaded onto the ships were more than 150 barrels of wine, 170 hundredweight barrels of tuna, several tons of bacon, fat pork, and ham. Olive oil, flour, white biscuit, plain biscuit, garbanzos, lentils and other beans, and 500 pounds of almonds also crossed the ocean with St. Augustine's settlers.
The food had been divided among the ships of Menendez' fleet before sailing from Spain. Some of the food was consumed during the trans-Atlantic voyage.
Some of it was lost when two of the fleet's vessels either sank or were captured. But Menendez decided that cutting into the supplies for the colonists in order to establish good relations with the Indians was worth any shortfall.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/111906/news_4221837.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Guest Column: Appoint charter commission
Guest Column: Appoint charter commission
ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 10/14/07
Is a proposed St. Johns County "starter charter" (a/k/a "stealth" or "vanilla Charter"), a "Trojan Horse?" Do look this "gift horse" in the mouth.
Why not the best? Let's appoint a proper Florida County Charter Commission (with no legislators or commissioners), with 11-15 members Ñ independent, diverse, without fear or favor of politicians or special interests. There's a crisis of confidence.
People reasonably expect that any county charter must achieve real reform, or else it's not worth passing.
We need checks and balances. Let's work together to transform county government as we know it Ñ expecting democracy, protecting liberty, curbing eminent domain, and declaring war on waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance.
Let's elect our county attorney. Let's have an inspector general, an ombudsman, police review board, creating true "checks and balances" and "separation of powers."
Don't settle for empty rhetoric.
The draft county charter is written in legalese. Read it for yourself.
From this day forward, any charter drafts (and other government documents) need to be written in plain English.
A fair charter must guarantee one-person, one-vote, restore seven single-member commission districts and establish nonpartisan elections for all county offices.
This Trojan Horse charter is more loony lemon loophole than law, exempting from campaign finance reform, nondiscrimination and other charter provisions the sheriff, clerk of courts, tax collector, property appraiser and supervisor of elections. No person is above the law. Those seeking exemptions must justify them. Any deals must be disclosed. No deal is above discussion.
The proposed charter concentrates power in a few hands Ñ five commissioners and five constitutional officers Ñ every single one of whom today is a registered Republican.
If the proposed charter is not substantially re-written Ñ if it doesn't accomplish real reform Ñ St. Johns Countians, please reject/defeat it. Be prepared to walk away. Other counties (and our own) have rejected charters in the past.
The draft ensconces power in partisan-elected commissioners and in five charter-free constitutional officers. Some want a "starter charter" so "we" can propose a stronger charter later. That's like used car dealers saying, "buy this beauty sitting on four concrete blocks and we'll fix it later."
Passing a defective charter is not pragmatism. Who is "we?" There is no principled reason for a "leap of faith" off a cliff.
The draft charter is like the Emperor's New Clothes.
"We" need unselfish decisions on the charter (rejecting term limits and establishing nonpartisan elections in the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives).
U.S. Rep. John Mica helped several counties develop charters before becoming a congressman. Charters can sometimes hurt small town and rural life and further diminish minority rights.
We don't need yet another debacle (like Tallahassee's election legislation denying Floridians our National Convention votes). We need open, honest public debate, without intimidation.
We don't need commissioners yelling at citizens expressing their opinions about the charter.
We need whistleblower protections and a county-wide human rights ordinance and a guarantee of county employee rights to collective bargaining.
We must embrace and creatively implement limited government.
We must strengthen transparency, public access and government accountability. We don't need big bills for receiving documents we've already paid for, or threats of arrest for attempting to learn about the people's business.
We need open records law fee waivers as under the Freedom of Information Act and punishment for officials obstructing records requests.
We must enact true campaign finance "reform," conflict of interest disclosure and post-employment restrictions, with disclosure of all investors in limited liability companies (LLCs), including foreign real estate speculators contributing to campaigns and seeking zoning favors.
Reject phony "reform" (reducing maximum contributions from $500 to $250, making it tougher for people-powered candidates to raise money from more people in order to campaign against candidates funded by dozens of LLCs at the same speculators' addresses).
Our American founders warned us to protect people from government. Always be vigilant.
We should adopt a thoughtful progressive, liberty-respecting charter we all will be proud of; reject anything less.
St. Johns Countians neither desire nor require any half-baked, half-hearted attempts at passing any Ôole charter just to be passing one.
No "vanilla" or "stealth" charter, please.
Ed Slavin is a frequent public speaker before local governments and a frequent letter writer to The Record.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/101407/opinions_gcol05.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 10/14/07
Is a proposed St. Johns County "starter charter" (a/k/a "stealth" or "vanilla Charter"), a "Trojan Horse?" Do look this "gift horse" in the mouth.
Why not the best? Let's appoint a proper Florida County Charter Commission (with no legislators or commissioners), with 11-15 members Ñ independent, diverse, without fear or favor of politicians or special interests. There's a crisis of confidence.
People reasonably expect that any county charter must achieve real reform, or else it's not worth passing.
We need checks and balances. Let's work together to transform county government as we know it Ñ expecting democracy, protecting liberty, curbing eminent domain, and declaring war on waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance.
Let's elect our county attorney. Let's have an inspector general, an ombudsman, police review board, creating true "checks and balances" and "separation of powers."
Don't settle for empty rhetoric.
The draft county charter is written in legalese. Read it for yourself.
From this day forward, any charter drafts (and other government documents) need to be written in plain English.
A fair charter must guarantee one-person, one-vote, restore seven single-member commission districts and establish nonpartisan elections for all county offices.
This Trojan Horse charter is more loony lemon loophole than law, exempting from campaign finance reform, nondiscrimination and other charter provisions the sheriff, clerk of courts, tax collector, property appraiser and supervisor of elections. No person is above the law. Those seeking exemptions must justify them. Any deals must be disclosed. No deal is above discussion.
The proposed charter concentrates power in a few hands Ñ five commissioners and five constitutional officers Ñ every single one of whom today is a registered Republican.
If the proposed charter is not substantially re-written Ñ if it doesn't accomplish real reform Ñ St. Johns Countians, please reject/defeat it. Be prepared to walk away. Other counties (and our own) have rejected charters in the past.
The draft ensconces power in partisan-elected commissioners and in five charter-free constitutional officers. Some want a "starter charter" so "we" can propose a stronger charter later. That's like used car dealers saying, "buy this beauty sitting on four concrete blocks and we'll fix it later."
Passing a defective charter is not pragmatism. Who is "we?" There is no principled reason for a "leap of faith" off a cliff.
The draft charter is like the Emperor's New Clothes.
"We" need unselfish decisions on the charter (rejecting term limits and establishing nonpartisan elections in the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives).
U.S. Rep. John Mica helped several counties develop charters before becoming a congressman. Charters can sometimes hurt small town and rural life and further diminish minority rights.
We don't need yet another debacle (like Tallahassee's election legislation denying Floridians our National Convention votes). We need open, honest public debate, without intimidation.
We don't need commissioners yelling at citizens expressing their opinions about the charter.
We need whistleblower protections and a county-wide human rights ordinance and a guarantee of county employee rights to collective bargaining.
We must embrace and creatively implement limited government.
We must strengthen transparency, public access and government accountability. We don't need big bills for receiving documents we've already paid for, or threats of arrest for attempting to learn about the people's business.
We need open records law fee waivers as under the Freedom of Information Act and punishment for officials obstructing records requests.
We must enact true campaign finance "reform," conflict of interest disclosure and post-employment restrictions, with disclosure of all investors in limited liability companies (LLCs), including foreign real estate speculators contributing to campaigns and seeking zoning favors.
Reject phony "reform" (reducing maximum contributions from $500 to $250, making it tougher for people-powered candidates to raise money from more people in order to campaign against candidates funded by dozens of LLCs at the same speculators' addresses).
Our American founders warned us to protect people from government. Always be vigilant.
We should adopt a thoughtful progressive, liberty-respecting charter we all will be proud of; reject anything less.
St. Johns Countians neither desire nor require any half-baked, half-hearted attempts at passing any Ôole charter just to be passing one.
No "vanilla" or "stealth" charter, please.
Ed Slavin is a frequent public speaker before local governments and a frequent letter writer to The Record.
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© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Resist bigotry, hatred
Letter: Resist bigotry, hatred
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/11/04
Editor: On Nov. 2, 72 percent of Floridians voted to raise the minimum wage by $1. Justice triumphed in the workplace, expressing our moral values.
Hatred and bigotry are the opposite of moral values. Jesus never condemned Gay and Lesbian people. True moral values condemn and seek to end and extirpate all forms of invidious discrimination. True Christians are known for love, not hatred.
Thirteen states, the District of Columbia and over 124 cities and counties now prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, including a growing number of Florida counties. The American Bar Association endorsed such laws in 1990.
St. Augustine and St. Johns County must enact and enforce local human rights ordinances banning all invidious discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, sex, race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, personal appearance, income and other irrelevant factors. Human rights must be protected and not neglected.
The St. Augustine City Commission twice refused to allow Gay Pride flags to be flown at the Bridge of Lions for one day a year, while frequently flying others' flags (including profit-making organizations). The implied message to gay and lesbian people was expressed by one Record letter-writer -- we'll take your money but we still hate you.
Bigotry is uneconomic and does not attract tourists, new employers or good jobs.
Four decades ago, African-Americans were arrested, beaten and jailed in St. Augustine, simply for insisting on their civil and constitutional rights to equality. Jesus never taught bigotry or hatred. Neither should anyone else.
Organized bigots are neither "Christian" nor "conservative," but high-tech Pharisees. Do forgive them, but please stand up to them. We are all God's children.
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© The St. Augustine Record
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/11/04
Editor: On Nov. 2, 72 percent of Floridians voted to raise the minimum wage by $1. Justice triumphed in the workplace, expressing our moral values.
Hatred and bigotry are the opposite of moral values. Jesus never condemned Gay and Lesbian people. True moral values condemn and seek to end and extirpate all forms of invidious discrimination. True Christians are known for love, not hatred.
Thirteen states, the District of Columbia and over 124 cities and counties now prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, including a growing number of Florida counties. The American Bar Association endorsed such laws in 1990.
St. Augustine and St. Johns County must enact and enforce local human rights ordinances banning all invidious discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, sex, race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, personal appearance, income and other irrelevant factors. Human rights must be protected and not neglected.
The St. Augustine City Commission twice refused to allow Gay Pride flags to be flown at the Bridge of Lions for one day a year, while frequently flying others' flags (including profit-making organizations). The implied message to gay and lesbian people was expressed by one Record letter-writer -- we'll take your money but we still hate you.
Bigotry is uneconomic and does not attract tourists, new employers or good jobs.
Four decades ago, African-Americans were arrested, beaten and jailed in St. Augustine, simply for insisting on their civil and constitutional rights to equality. Jesus never taught bigotry or hatred. Neither should anyone else.
Organized bigots are neither "Christian" nor "conservative," but high-tech Pharisees. Do forgive them, but please stand up to them. We are all God's children.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/111104/opi_kr006376.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Guest Column: Public can fight St. Augustine 'City Hall'
Guest Column: Public can fight St. Augustine 'City Hall'
Publication Date: 02/02/08
Folio Weekly termed me an "environmental hero" on illegal dumping. I merely did my job as a citizen.
Since February 2006, I have endeavored to learn about City Manager William B. Harriss and the illegal dumping. Questions were stymied by city ommissioners interrupting me with ridicule, rodomontade, and non sequiturs. Whenever a community or constituency goes to the City Commission to express their concerns, they're treated disdainfully, often leaving disillusioned, hurt.
Commissioners' hubris is nearly fatal to democracy and our environment - including forgiving a $15,000 tree-killing fine and approving the shipping back of solid waste to Lincolnville - without allowing any public comment, violating specific promises in each case.
Violations of free speech rights are indefensible and must be ended.
America was founded by visionaries who cherished free speech: Robert F. Kennedy said that if our Constitution were written in St. Paul's style, it would say: "But the most important of these is speech."
Free speech is everywhere under attack - locally, nationally and globally. Embittered, controlling, manipulative organizational oligarchs hate dissent and retaliate, yielding to immoral, infernal lusts to "reach out, reach out and crush someone."
From Harriss to President George Walker Bush to Russia's Vladimir Putin, "they know not that they know not that they know not."
Apparently not even oligarchs' own family members are safe from "gag orders" and efforts to chill/punish dissent. Mayor Joseph Leroy Boles, Jr. allegedly told his mother Maurine (a member of our city's history advisory board) to stop commenting on public issues (after I quoted her in The Record last year as supporting the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Highway). Joseph Boles opposes "federalizing" history and park functions (neglected by our city and state).
"How low can City Hall go?" Threatening citizens with arrest, violating free speech rights, refusing to answer budget hearing questions (or televise budget hearings); attacking artists and entertainers (St. George Street and Slave Market Square a/k/a Plaza de la Constitucion); discouraging meeting attendance (removing 60 seats from the Alcazar Room); reducing your available time for public comments outside scheduled agenda items (from 8 minutes to 3 minutes per meeting); insulting persons asking questions; threatening to seek attorney fees against Dr. Dwight Hines for filing his successful Open Records lawsuit, with Boles demanding to make him "pay the piper" (our city wrongfully withheld more than 45 pounds of public records it claimed did not exist).
Where are the "sanctions"/prosecutions for City Hall's criminal, anti-social, anti-environmental, anti-worker acts?
Our St. Augustine government embarrasses us all: illegal dumping in the Old City Reservoir (risking the health of untrained employees); wasteful spending ($22 million "White Elephant Parking Garage"); and suppressing free speech. It detracts from the beauty, history and image of our town.
Michael Dukakis said, "the fish rots from the head." City managers/staff are often surly, during commission meetings actually laughing and talking on cell phones when citizens and commissioners are speaking. Where are their manners?
Our city manager and city attorney sit with their backs to the public, never shown on-camera on cable-TV, speaking without being identified by name. Employees live in fear of retaliation if they speak the truth about Harriss and his reign of ruin.
Meanwhile, our county officials are more protective and vigilant to protect free speech rights, expanding public comment rights and clarifying First Amendment rights on county property (Amphitheater/Farmer's Market, Fairground and World Golf Village Convention Center).
Virtually all-white, all-male City Hall officialdom is isolated and an anachronism.
Every time St. Augustine City Commissioners violate First Amendment rights, a part of the soul of our city dies. Our Nation's Oldest City and its history and beauty are worth saving. We need greater transparency and accountability. See Clean Up City of St. Augustine, www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com for pollution and other scandals and solutions.
Get involved. Run for office. Support reformers. Vote. Write. Speak out.
We need a "clean sweep" - "a new broom sweeps clean." Why not display a broom in your car/pickup/lawn/porch? Prove wrong those naysayers who complain, "you can't fight City Hall."
Ask questions. Demand answers. This is advanced citizenship. Smile. It's 2008.
Ed Slavin is former legal counsel for constitutional rights with Government Accountability Project; worked for three U.S. senators (Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart and Jim Sasser); clerked for Chief Judge Nahum Litt of the U.S. Department of Labor; and wrote a biography of President Jimmy Carter for young readers (forward by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/020208/opinions_txt01_060-111.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Publication Date: 02/02/08
Folio Weekly termed me an "environmental hero" on illegal dumping. I merely did my job as a citizen.
Since February 2006, I have endeavored to learn about City Manager William B. Harriss and the illegal dumping. Questions were stymied by city ommissioners interrupting me with ridicule, rodomontade, and non sequiturs. Whenever a community or constituency goes to the City Commission to express their concerns, they're treated disdainfully, often leaving disillusioned, hurt.
Commissioners' hubris is nearly fatal to democracy and our environment - including forgiving a $15,000 tree-killing fine and approving the shipping back of solid waste to Lincolnville - without allowing any public comment, violating specific promises in each case.
Violations of free speech rights are indefensible and must be ended.
America was founded by visionaries who cherished free speech: Robert F. Kennedy said that if our Constitution were written in St. Paul's style, it would say: "But the most important of these is speech."
Free speech is everywhere under attack - locally, nationally and globally. Embittered, controlling, manipulative organizational oligarchs hate dissent and retaliate, yielding to immoral, infernal lusts to "reach out, reach out and crush someone."
From Harriss to President George Walker Bush to Russia's Vladimir Putin, "they know not that they know not that they know not."
Apparently not even oligarchs' own family members are safe from "gag orders" and efforts to chill/punish dissent. Mayor Joseph Leroy Boles, Jr. allegedly told his mother Maurine (a member of our city's history advisory board) to stop commenting on public issues (after I quoted her in The Record last year as supporting the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Highway). Joseph Boles opposes "federalizing" history and park functions (neglected by our city and state).
"How low can City Hall go?" Threatening citizens with arrest, violating free speech rights, refusing to answer budget hearing questions (or televise budget hearings); attacking artists and entertainers (St. George Street and Slave Market Square a/k/a Plaza de la Constitucion); discouraging meeting attendance (removing 60 seats from the Alcazar Room); reducing your available time for public comments outside scheduled agenda items (from 8 minutes to 3 minutes per meeting); insulting persons asking questions; threatening to seek attorney fees against Dr. Dwight Hines for filing his successful Open Records lawsuit, with Boles demanding to make him "pay the piper" (our city wrongfully withheld more than 45 pounds of public records it claimed did not exist).
Where are the "sanctions"/prosecutions for City Hall's criminal, anti-social, anti-environmental, anti-worker acts?
Our St. Augustine government embarrasses us all: illegal dumping in the Old City Reservoir (risking the health of untrained employees); wasteful spending ($22 million "White Elephant Parking Garage"); and suppressing free speech. It detracts from the beauty, history and image of our town.
Michael Dukakis said, "the fish rots from the head." City managers/staff are often surly, during commission meetings actually laughing and talking on cell phones when citizens and commissioners are speaking. Where are their manners?
Our city manager and city attorney sit with their backs to the public, never shown on-camera on cable-TV, speaking without being identified by name. Employees live in fear of retaliation if they speak the truth about Harriss and his reign of ruin.
Meanwhile, our county officials are more protective and vigilant to protect free speech rights, expanding public comment rights and clarifying First Amendment rights on county property (Amphitheater/Farmer's Market, Fairground and World Golf Village Convention Center).
Virtually all-white, all-male City Hall officialdom is isolated and an anachronism.
Every time St. Augustine City Commissioners violate First Amendment rights, a part of the soul of our city dies. Our Nation's Oldest City and its history and beauty are worth saving. We need greater transparency and accountability. See Clean Up City of St. Augustine, www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com for pollution and other scandals and solutions.
Get involved. Run for office. Support reformers. Vote. Write. Speak out.
We need a "clean sweep" - "a new broom sweeps clean." Why not display a broom in your car/pickup/lawn/porch? Prove wrong those naysayers who complain, "you can't fight City Hall."
Ask questions. Demand answers. This is advanced citizenship. Smile. It's 2008.
Ed Slavin is former legal counsel for constitutional rights with Government Accountability Project; worked for three U.S. senators (Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart and Jim Sasser); clerked for Chief Judge Nahum Litt of the U.S. Department of Labor; and wrote a biography of President Jimmy Carter for young readers (forward by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/020208/opinions_txt01_060-111.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Guest Column: Public can fight St. Augustine 'City Hall'
Guest Column: Public can fight St. Augustine 'City Hall'
Publication Date: 02/02/08
Folio Weekly termed me an "environmental hero" on illegal dumping. I merely did my job as a citizen.
Since February 2006, I have endeavored to learn about City Manager William B. Harriss and the illegal dumping. Questions were stymied by city ommissioners interrupting me with ridicule, rodomontade, and non sequiturs. Whenever a community or constituency goes to the City Commission to express their concerns, they're treated disdainfully, often leaving disillusioned, hurt.
Commissioners' hubris is nearly fatal to democracy and our environment - including forgiving a $15,000 tree-killing fine and approving the shipping back of solid waste to Lincolnville - without allowing any public comment, violating specific promises in each case.
Violations of free speech rights are indefensible and must be ended.
America was founded by visionaries who cherished free speech: Robert F. Kennedy said that if our Constitution were written in St. Paul's style, it would say: "But the most important of these is speech."
Free speech is everywhere under attack - locally, nationally and globally. Embittered, controlling, manipulative organizational oligarchs hate dissent and retaliate, yielding to immoral, infernal lusts to "reach out, reach out and crush someone."
From Harriss to President George Walker Bush to Russia's Vladimir Putin, "they know not that they know not that they know not."
Apparently not even oligarchs' own family members are safe from "gag orders" and efforts to chill/punish dissent. Mayor Joseph Leroy Boles, Jr. allegedly told his mother Maurine (a member of our city's history advisory board) to stop commenting on public issues (after I quoted her in The Record last year as supporting the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Highway). Joseph Boles opposes "federalizing" history and park functions (neglected by our city and state).
"How low can City Hall go?" Threatening citizens with arrest, violating free speech rights, refusing to answer budget hearing questions (or televise budget hearings); attacking artists and entertainers (St. George Street and Slave Market Square a/k/a Plaza de la Constitucion); discouraging meeting attendance (removing 60 seats from the Alcazar Room); reducing your available time for public comments outside scheduled agenda items (from 8 minutes to 3 minutes per meeting); insulting persons asking questions; threatening to seek attorney fees against Dr. Dwight Hines for filing his successful Open Records lawsuit, with Boles demanding to make him "pay the piper" (our city wrongfully withheld more than 45 pounds of public records it claimed did not exist).
Where are the "sanctions"/prosecutions for City Hall's criminal, anti-social, anti-environmental, anti-worker acts?
Our St. Augustine government embarrasses us all: illegal dumping in the Old City Reservoir (risking the health of untrained employees); wasteful spending ($22 million "White Elephant Parking Garage"); and suppressing free speech. It detracts from the beauty, history and image of our town.
Michael Dukakis said, "the fish rots from the head." City managers/staff are often surly, during commission meetings actually laughing and talking on cell phones when citizens and commissioners are speaking. Where are their manners?
Our city manager and city attorney sit with their backs to the public, never shown on-camera on cable-TV, speaking without being identified by name. Employees live in fear of retaliation if they speak the truth about Harriss and his reign of ruin.
Meanwhile, our county officials are more protective and vigilant to protect free speech rights, expanding public comment rights and clarifying First Amendment rights on county property (Amphitheater/Farmer's Market, Fairground and World Golf Village Convention Center).
Virtually all-white, all-male City Hall officialdom is isolated and an anachronism.
Every time St. Augustine City Commissioners violate First Amendment rights, a part of the soul of our city dies. Our Nation's Oldest City and its history and beauty are worth saving. We need greater transparency and accountability. See Clean Up City of St. Augustine, www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com for pollution and other scandals and solutions.
Get involved. Run for office. Support reformers. Vote. Write. Speak out.
We need a "clean sweep" - "a new broom sweeps clean." Why not display a broom in your car/pickup/lawn/porch? Prove wrong those naysayers who complain, "you can't fight City Hall."
Ask questions. Demand answers. This is advanced citizenship. Smile. It's 2008.
Ed Slavin is former legal counsel for constitutional rights with Government Accountability Project; worked for three U.S. senators (Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart and Jim Sasser); clerked for Chief Judge Nahum Litt of the U.S. Department of Labor; and wrote a biography of President Jimmy Carter for young readers (forward by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/020208/opinions_txt01_060-111.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Publication Date: 02/02/08
Folio Weekly termed me an "environmental hero" on illegal dumping. I merely did my job as a citizen.
Since February 2006, I have endeavored to learn about City Manager William B. Harriss and the illegal dumping. Questions were stymied by city ommissioners interrupting me with ridicule, rodomontade, and non sequiturs. Whenever a community or constituency goes to the City Commission to express their concerns, they're treated disdainfully, often leaving disillusioned, hurt.
Commissioners' hubris is nearly fatal to democracy and our environment - including forgiving a $15,000 tree-killing fine and approving the shipping back of solid waste to Lincolnville - without allowing any public comment, violating specific promises in each case.
Violations of free speech rights are indefensible and must be ended.
America was founded by visionaries who cherished free speech: Robert F. Kennedy said that if our Constitution were written in St. Paul's style, it would say: "But the most important of these is speech."
Free speech is everywhere under attack - locally, nationally and globally. Embittered, controlling, manipulative organizational oligarchs hate dissent and retaliate, yielding to immoral, infernal lusts to "reach out, reach out and crush someone."
From Harriss to President George Walker Bush to Russia's Vladimir Putin, "they know not that they know not that they know not."
Apparently not even oligarchs' own family members are safe from "gag orders" and efforts to chill/punish dissent. Mayor Joseph Leroy Boles, Jr. allegedly told his mother Maurine (a member of our city's history advisory board) to stop commenting on public issues (after I quoted her in The Record last year as supporting the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Highway). Joseph Boles opposes "federalizing" history and park functions (neglected by our city and state).
"How low can City Hall go?" Threatening citizens with arrest, violating free speech rights, refusing to answer budget hearing questions (or televise budget hearings); attacking artists and entertainers (St. George Street and Slave Market Square a/k/a Plaza de la Constitucion); discouraging meeting attendance (removing 60 seats from the Alcazar Room); reducing your available time for public comments outside scheduled agenda items (from 8 minutes to 3 minutes per meeting); insulting persons asking questions; threatening to seek attorney fees against Dr. Dwight Hines for filing his successful Open Records lawsuit, with Boles demanding to make him "pay the piper" (our city wrongfully withheld more than 45 pounds of public records it claimed did not exist).
Where are the "sanctions"/prosecutions for City Hall's criminal, anti-social, anti-environmental, anti-worker acts?
Our St. Augustine government embarrasses us all: illegal dumping in the Old City Reservoir (risking the health of untrained employees); wasteful spending ($22 million "White Elephant Parking Garage"); and suppressing free speech. It detracts from the beauty, history and image of our town.
Michael Dukakis said, "the fish rots from the head." City managers/staff are often surly, during commission meetings actually laughing and talking on cell phones when citizens and commissioners are speaking. Where are their manners?
Our city manager and city attorney sit with their backs to the public, never shown on-camera on cable-TV, speaking without being identified by name. Employees live in fear of retaliation if they speak the truth about Harriss and his reign of ruin.
Meanwhile, our county officials are more protective and vigilant to protect free speech rights, expanding public comment rights and clarifying First Amendment rights on county property (Amphitheater/Farmer's Market, Fairground and World Golf Village Convention Center).
Virtually all-white, all-male City Hall officialdom is isolated and an anachronism.
Every time St. Augustine City Commissioners violate First Amendment rights, a part of the soul of our city dies. Our Nation's Oldest City and its history and beauty are worth saving. We need greater transparency and accountability. See Clean Up City of St. Augustine, www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com for pollution and other scandals and solutions.
Get involved. Run for office. Support reformers. Vote. Write. Speak out.
We need a "clean sweep" - "a new broom sweeps clean." Why not display a broom in your car/pickup/lawn/porch? Prove wrong those naysayers who complain, "you can't fight City Hall."
Ask questions. Demand answers. This is advanced citizenship. Smile. It's 2008.
Ed Slavin is former legal counsel for constitutional rights with Government Accountability Project; worked for three U.S. senators (Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart and Jim Sasser); clerked for Chief Judge Nahum Litt of the U.S. Department of Labor; and wrote a biography of President Jimmy Carter for young readers (forward by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/020208/opinions_txt01_060-111.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Thanking the Robin Nadeaus of the World
Letter: Thanking the Robin Nadeaus of the World
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 02/16/04
Editor: As Ross Perot warned 12 years ago, that "giant sucking sound" we hear is that of American jobs being sucked out of our economy. Even computer and accounting jobs are being shipped offshore. More jobs were lost under George W. "Shrub" Bush than under any president since Herbert Hoover.
Our American jobs, democracy, civil rights and environment are being destroyed.
Millions of jobs are being exported to fatten greedy corporations. The informed American people see right through them.
Enough.
Thank you, Ms. Robin Nadeau, for your perceptive letter quoting Lincoln on "the money power."
Faster than a speeding tree killer's dump truck, with cliches by the carload, an unhappy Mr. Stewart R. Canfield wrote Feb. 3, condemning "the Robin Nadeaus of the world" for disagreeing with him, praising Bush for protecting "the strong," smirkily adding "Bush won."
Unfairly demanding unearned respect for President G.W. Bush, Mr. Canfield has written disrespectful letters full of swagger, accusing FDR of "Marxism," complaining of "Bush-bashing," stating that some of America's "enemies" are "walking the halls of Congress," and complaining about "bellyaching of NAACP and the Democrats" about the 2000 election.
Mr. Canfield's uninformed, irascible views are mostly intolerant and uncivil. Lincoln was no "woman." Mr. Canfield is no gentleman.
As Christians, let's forgive his Philistinism but expose his errors.
Our Constitution, in its majesty, protects Mr. Canfield's free speech rights -- rights that he disrespects whenever exercised by better-informed people who disagree with him.
As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Thank God for "the Robin Nadeaus of the world who care more for working people than war profiteers.
The 2000 election was stolen, with Justice Scalia's 37-year-old son Eugene Scalia named as Department of Labor solicitor (thankfully the Senate never confirmed the antiworker corporate lawyer, and he quit in a huff last year).
The 2000 presidential election was decided by a partisan 5-4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court, which erred when it voted to halt the Florida recounts.
Nationwide, Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 votes. Bush would have lost the Electoral College but for flummery, chicanery and bullying, including imported Republican thugs from Washington, D.C., Congressional offices who terrorized voting officials in South Florida.
Surly sloganeers attack talk of equal legal rights as "class warfare."
Those who steal from the poor to give to the rich are the real "class warfare" warriors -- "Robin Hoods in reverse." Their money talks. This dangerous control of our government by the "money power" is indefensible and must be ended at once.
Snooty Bush is oblivious to our troops, veterans and their families.
They are merely "photo op" objects to him, the military instruments of his failed policies. Of 537 federally elected officials, only one has a son or daughter soldiering in Iraq. My late father perceptively called George W. Bush a "phony." (My father was a World War II paratrooper, for whom the 82nd Airborne Assn Southern New Jersey Chapter is named.)
Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater and other honest Republicans would vote Democratic today, just as Vermont Sen. James Jeffords left the Republican Party in 2001 over its control by arrogant CEOs.
Vote principles over party. It is time for Bush/Cheney and company to pack and ride off into the sunset, without a pardon.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/021604/opi_2107712.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 02/16/04
Editor: As Ross Perot warned 12 years ago, that "giant sucking sound" we hear is that of American jobs being sucked out of our economy. Even computer and accounting jobs are being shipped offshore. More jobs were lost under George W. "Shrub" Bush than under any president since Herbert Hoover.
Our American jobs, democracy, civil rights and environment are being destroyed.
Millions of jobs are being exported to fatten greedy corporations. The informed American people see right through them.
Enough.
Thank you, Ms. Robin Nadeau, for your perceptive letter quoting Lincoln on "the money power."
Faster than a speeding tree killer's dump truck, with cliches by the carload, an unhappy Mr. Stewart R. Canfield wrote Feb. 3, condemning "the Robin Nadeaus of the world" for disagreeing with him, praising Bush for protecting "the strong," smirkily adding "Bush won."
Unfairly demanding unearned respect for President G.W. Bush, Mr. Canfield has written disrespectful letters full of swagger, accusing FDR of "Marxism," complaining of "Bush-bashing," stating that some of America's "enemies" are "walking the halls of Congress," and complaining about "bellyaching of NAACP and the Democrats" about the 2000 election.
Mr. Canfield's uninformed, irascible views are mostly intolerant and uncivil. Lincoln was no "woman." Mr. Canfield is no gentleman.
As Christians, let's forgive his Philistinism but expose his errors.
Our Constitution, in its majesty, protects Mr. Canfield's free speech rights -- rights that he disrespects whenever exercised by better-informed people who disagree with him.
As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Thank God for "the Robin Nadeaus of the world who care more for working people than war profiteers.
The 2000 election was stolen, with Justice Scalia's 37-year-old son Eugene Scalia named as Department of Labor solicitor (thankfully the Senate never confirmed the antiworker corporate lawyer, and he quit in a huff last year).
The 2000 presidential election was decided by a partisan 5-4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court, which erred when it voted to halt the Florida recounts.
Nationwide, Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 votes. Bush would have lost the Electoral College but for flummery, chicanery and bullying, including imported Republican thugs from Washington, D.C., Congressional offices who terrorized voting officials in South Florida.
Surly sloganeers attack talk of equal legal rights as "class warfare."
Those who steal from the poor to give to the rich are the real "class warfare" warriors -- "Robin Hoods in reverse." Their money talks. This dangerous control of our government by the "money power" is indefensible and must be ended at once.
Snooty Bush is oblivious to our troops, veterans and their families.
They are merely "photo op" objects to him, the military instruments of his failed policies. Of 537 federally elected officials, only one has a son or daughter soldiering in Iraq. My late father perceptively called George W. Bush a "phony." (My father was a World War II paratrooper, for whom the 82nd Airborne Assn Southern New Jersey Chapter is named.)
Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater and other honest Republicans would vote Democratic today, just as Vermont Sen. James Jeffords left the Republican Party in 2001 over its control by arrogant CEOs.
Vote principles over party. It is time for Bush/Cheney and company to pack and ride off into the sunset, without a pardon.
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© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Democracy worked at Riberia landfill meeting
Letter: Democracy worked at Riberia landfill meeting
Peg McIntire -- Member of People for Peace & Justice
Director of Grandparents for Peace -- St. Augustine
Publication Date: 01/18/08
Editor: The spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was alive and well at the recent meeting to protest a landfill on Riberia Street. Ed Slavin termed it "environmental racism."
St. Paul's A.M.E. Church was "standing room only."
The issue has been covered in the press at previous meetings and on several occasions. But I found this last meeting more intense and more constructive.
At least a dozen concerned St. Augustine citizens, not only the residents of Lincolnville, spoke intelligently and passionately, demanding that the city of St. Augustine "do the right thing"... cancel the planned project (presently at a standstill). It was exciting to see democracy at work. It was inspiring to close the evening singing "We Shall Overcome."
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© The St. Augustine Record
Peg McIntire -- Member of People for Peace & Justice
Director of Grandparents for Peace -- St. Augustine
Publication Date: 01/18/08
Editor: The spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was alive and well at the recent meeting to protest a landfill on Riberia Street. Ed Slavin termed it "environmental racism."
St. Paul's A.M.E. Church was "standing room only."
The issue has been covered in the press at previous meetings and on several occasions. But I found this last meeting more intense and more constructive.
At least a dozen concerned St. Augustine citizens, not only the residents of Lincolnville, spoke intelligently and passionately, demanding that the city of St. Augustine "do the right thing"... cancel the planned project (presently at a standstill). It was exciting to see democracy at work. It was inspiring to close the evening singing "We Shall Overcome."
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/011808/opinions_029.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: City needs greater protection of resources
Letter: City needs greater protection of resources
Judith Seraphin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 02/11/07
Editor: Let's adopt a moratorium on development of our local St. Augustine area and the history, wetlands, forests, seashores and wildlife, at least until our 110th Congress holds hearings about preservation.
The alternative is developers who propose to develop housing on arsenic-contaminated lands, sewage-polluted lands and pesticide-contaminated lands that is undisclosed to buyers. The alternative to what should be a National Seashore, is daily turned into a "national sacrifice area" for developers, who systematically destroy all the reasons so many of us chose to move here in the first place.
The "alternative" is rubberstamping the short-sighted plans of those who are euchred to sell their generations-old birthright to foreign developers, destroying our region's nature for short-term profits, while refusing to disclose the owners of the sell-out organizations.
Let's follow the examples of my native Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, and of the Cape Cod National Seashore, and our nation's other national parks and national seashores.
Let's just say "no" to the secretive, other-directed, undisclosed, environmentally-insensitive (and foreign-funded) developers and investors who have no respect for our history, culture, wildlife and experience.
What's good enough for Boston, Philadelphia, New Bedford, Cape Cod, Washington, D.C., Guam, San Francisco and other national parklands is good enough for St. Augustine, Florida. Working with city, county and state elected representatives, the people of St. Augustine and St. Johns County must work to preserve our local/regional history and wildlife habitats inviolate, forever. I strongly support Ed Slavin's proposal for a "St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore," now.
Who among us could possibly disagree?
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http://staugustine.com/stories/021107/opinions_439181b.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Judith Seraphin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 02/11/07
Editor: Let's adopt a moratorium on development of our local St. Augustine area and the history, wetlands, forests, seashores and wildlife, at least until our 110th Congress holds hearings about preservation.
The alternative is developers who propose to develop housing on arsenic-contaminated lands, sewage-polluted lands and pesticide-contaminated lands that is undisclosed to buyers. The alternative to what should be a National Seashore, is daily turned into a "national sacrifice area" for developers, who systematically destroy all the reasons so many of us chose to move here in the first place.
The "alternative" is rubberstamping the short-sighted plans of those who are euchred to sell their generations-old birthright to foreign developers, destroying our region's nature for short-term profits, while refusing to disclose the owners of the sell-out organizations.
Let's follow the examples of my native Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, and of the Cape Cod National Seashore, and our nation's other national parks and national seashores.
Let's just say "no" to the secretive, other-directed, undisclosed, environmentally-insensitive (and foreign-funded) developers and investors who have no respect for our history, culture, wildlife and experience.
What's good enough for Boston, Philadelphia, New Bedford, Cape Cod, Washington, D.C., Guam, San Francisco and other national parklands is good enough for St. Augustine, Florida. Working with city, county and state elected representatives, the people of St. Augustine and St. Johns County must work to preserve our local/regional history and wildlife habitats inviolate, forever. I strongly support Ed Slavin's proposal for a "St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore," now.
Who among us could possibly disagree?
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/021107/opinions_439181b.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Guest Column: Press must get tough on city leaders
Guest Column: Press must get tough on city leaders
DAVID BRIAN WALLACE
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 01/14/07
We sincerely appreciate improvements in the St. Augustine Record and hope it continues to improve. Increased news coverage is deserved of lawbreaking by city of St. Augustine officials.
St. Augustine city government's lawbreaking continued three days before Christmas. City Commission broke the Sunshine law (again) by voting Dec. 22 to ban venders from the Plaza de la Constitucion and to hire Ron Brown as permanent city attorney. The special meeting notice said it was solely to enact tax breaks for low-income elderly. St. Augustine city officials cared not for public rights to notice and an opportunity to speak.
City commissioners violated the Sunshine law on Oct. 13 when they hired Ron Brown as temporary city attorney, with no advance notice. City officials must be investigated by grand jurors.
Why do city officials always have to be picking on someone, and holding illegal meetings? Are disgruntled city officials only happy when they are making someone else unhappy? Do they think their "gotcha" government wins friends?
Our city government created the homelessness problem. Remember the buskers, artists, entertainers and musicians along St. George Street? Though buskers were popular with tourists, our misguided City Manager, William B. Harriss, and Commission (Commissioner Susan Burk dissenting), banned buskers from St. George Street. The city promised they could use the public market in the Plaza. Now panhandlers have replaced St. George Street buskers. Venders are being kicked out of the Plaza.
Homelessness is a predictable result of governments neglecting responsibilities and corporations' shipping our jobs overseas ñ Lou Dobbs' "Race to the Bottom."
We need investigative reporting, not government and corporate apologists.
Too often, press and politicians forget they work for the people.
Legislating against buskers, musicians, artists, entertainers, the homeless and venders will not make anyone happier or wealthier.
"Blaming the victims" of poverty is a wretched excuse for public policy or journalism.
The Record must continue to improve its coverage during 2007, shining the searchlight of investigative reporting, empowered by Florida's Sunshine law, on corrupt, dysfunctional local organizations.
St. Augustine city officials must be held accountable by the people, prosecutors, the courts and Gov. Charlie Crist (who has created an office of Government Openness, which sounds promising). Let's persist in exposing wrongdoing and demanding that public meetings and records be open and understood, eliminating wasteful spending.
Like good diplomats, we must not take "no" for an answer. City of St. Augustine pollution, Sunshine and open records violations must be remedied/stopped. Dumping the contents of St. Augustine's old city dump into the Old City Reservoir was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg in local governments' involvement in environmental crimes. We must investigate and prosecute environmental crimes (including bald eagle nest-tree cutters, clear-cutters, polluters and wetland-destroyers).
Let's solve environmental and historic preservation problems creatively, graciously.
Let's ask Congress and the president to enact a "St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore" for everyone. I agree with Ed Slavin's idea, first shared at the Nov. 13, 2006, City Commission meeting. There's no principled reason for St. Augustine not to share federal park dollars spent liberally elsewhere. St. Augustine deserves an actual "National Park" (not just the Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas, both "National Monuments").
The National Park Service (NPS) is America's most trusted, favorite federal agency, with long experience/expertise.
Let's combine historic city streets, the Anastasia State Park and Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (formerly Guana River State Park), Red House Bluff, and other local history/nature into one world-class tourist destination, administered by NPS, inspired by Cape Cod, New Bedford and Philadelphia national parks/seashores. Let's preserve history/nature and culture, earning more national and international tourists' time (not just daytrips from nearby neighbors).
We're blessed with an opportunity of a lifetime: voters' righteous revulsion against wholesale history/nature destruction (and current real estate market). Let's unite our diverse community, working to preserve what makes St. Augustine and St. Johns County great, unique, enjoyable. Future generations will thank us and praise our leaders' vision. St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore:
Let's get it done. It's up to us.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/011407/opinions_4311095.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
DAVID BRIAN WALLACE
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 01/14/07
We sincerely appreciate improvements in the St. Augustine Record and hope it continues to improve. Increased news coverage is deserved of lawbreaking by city of St. Augustine officials.
St. Augustine city government's lawbreaking continued three days before Christmas. City Commission broke the Sunshine law (again) by voting Dec. 22 to ban venders from the Plaza de la Constitucion and to hire Ron Brown as permanent city attorney. The special meeting notice said it was solely to enact tax breaks for low-income elderly. St. Augustine city officials cared not for public rights to notice and an opportunity to speak.
City commissioners violated the Sunshine law on Oct. 13 when they hired Ron Brown as temporary city attorney, with no advance notice. City officials must be investigated by grand jurors.
Why do city officials always have to be picking on someone, and holding illegal meetings? Are disgruntled city officials only happy when they are making someone else unhappy? Do they think their "gotcha" government wins friends?
Our city government created the homelessness problem. Remember the buskers, artists, entertainers and musicians along St. George Street? Though buskers were popular with tourists, our misguided City Manager, William B. Harriss, and Commission (Commissioner Susan Burk dissenting), banned buskers from St. George Street. The city promised they could use the public market in the Plaza. Now panhandlers have replaced St. George Street buskers. Venders are being kicked out of the Plaza.
Homelessness is a predictable result of governments neglecting responsibilities and corporations' shipping our jobs overseas ñ Lou Dobbs' "Race to the Bottom."
We need investigative reporting, not government and corporate apologists.
Too often, press and politicians forget they work for the people.
Legislating against buskers, musicians, artists, entertainers, the homeless and venders will not make anyone happier or wealthier.
"Blaming the victims" of poverty is a wretched excuse for public policy or journalism.
The Record must continue to improve its coverage during 2007, shining the searchlight of investigative reporting, empowered by Florida's Sunshine law, on corrupt, dysfunctional local organizations.
St. Augustine city officials must be held accountable by the people, prosecutors, the courts and Gov. Charlie Crist (who has created an office of Government Openness, which sounds promising). Let's persist in exposing wrongdoing and demanding that public meetings and records be open and understood, eliminating wasteful spending.
Like good diplomats, we must not take "no" for an answer. City of St. Augustine pollution, Sunshine and open records violations must be remedied/stopped. Dumping the contents of St. Augustine's old city dump into the Old City Reservoir was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg in local governments' involvement in environmental crimes. We must investigate and prosecute environmental crimes (including bald eagle nest-tree cutters, clear-cutters, polluters and wetland-destroyers).
Let's solve environmental and historic preservation problems creatively, graciously.
Let's ask Congress and the president to enact a "St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore" for everyone. I agree with Ed Slavin's idea, first shared at the Nov. 13, 2006, City Commission meeting. There's no principled reason for St. Augustine not to share federal park dollars spent liberally elsewhere. St. Augustine deserves an actual "National Park" (not just the Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas, both "National Monuments").
The National Park Service (NPS) is America's most trusted, favorite federal agency, with long experience/expertise.
Let's combine historic city streets, the Anastasia State Park and Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (formerly Guana River State Park), Red House Bluff, and other local history/nature into one world-class tourist destination, administered by NPS, inspired by Cape Cod, New Bedford and Philadelphia national parks/seashores. Let's preserve history/nature and culture, earning more national and international tourists' time (not just daytrips from nearby neighbors).
We're blessed with an opportunity of a lifetime: voters' righteous revulsion against wholesale history/nature destruction (and current real estate market). Let's unite our diverse community, working to preserve what makes St. Augustine and St. Johns County great, unique, enjoyable. Future generations will thank us and praise our leaders' vision. St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore:
Let's get it done. It's up to us.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/011407/opinions_4311095.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Right-wing lies
Letter: Right-wing lies
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 01/26/05
Editor: Lies are destructive to the soul of a democracy. As Bill Moyers documented (PBS Now, Dec. 17), today's collection of right-wing opinionated liars are typified by Fox News (its bias wrought by Nixon's ad man is exposed in the movie "Outfoxed").
Lies are as dangerous to democracy as chocolate to a dog. Bush lied to get re-elected. He's appointed a new Cabinet to replace his first string prevaricators.
Bush's new Acting OSHA Administrator is Jonathan Snare, a Texan who sued to silence a website linking ENRON and Republicans - he'll be "protecting" worker free speech and safety rights now. Believe that?
Moral values? Bush nominated for Attorney General one Alberto Gonzalez, who engineered Iraqi prisoner torture. America's World War II German prisoners of war were treated humanely because America did not want our own prisoners to be treated inhumanely. The Geneva Convention was written and signed with that logic.
After U.S. torture was exposed, is it any wonder that insurgents turned to kidnappings, beheadings and murders? During the recent election campaign, I and hundreds of thousands of Floridians received a computer-generated telephone message from the peripatetic Kerik, identifying himself as a "former NY police commissioner," questioning Sen. John Kerry's patriotism, strength and resolve, saying he could not be trusted to protect our national security from terrorists.
I received Kerik's automated recorded phone call on Oct. 29 (four days before we voted), placed on behalf of the "Bush-Cheney '04" campaign, showing a fictitious caller ID of 1-111-111-1111. That is a phony phone number. This was massive deception, violating federal telecommunications law.
"Lame duck" Bush now faces his legacy: huge deficits, rising interest rates, sagging credibility, environmental depredations, corporate greed, uncaught Osama, exploding Iraq, increasing poverty, proliferating billionaires, a shrinking middle-class, overcrowded schools and warring right-wing supporters.
We shall overcome.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/012605/opi_kr006501.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 01/26/05
Editor: Lies are destructive to the soul of a democracy. As Bill Moyers documented (PBS Now, Dec. 17), today's collection of right-wing opinionated liars are typified by Fox News (its bias wrought by Nixon's ad man is exposed in the movie "Outfoxed").
Lies are as dangerous to democracy as chocolate to a dog. Bush lied to get re-elected. He's appointed a new Cabinet to replace his first string prevaricators.
Bush's new Acting OSHA Administrator is Jonathan Snare, a Texan who sued to silence a website linking ENRON and Republicans - he'll be "protecting" worker free speech and safety rights now. Believe that?
Moral values? Bush nominated for Attorney General one Alberto Gonzalez, who engineered Iraqi prisoner torture. America's World War II German prisoners of war were treated humanely because America did not want our own prisoners to be treated inhumanely. The Geneva Convention was written and signed with that logic.
After U.S. torture was exposed, is it any wonder that insurgents turned to kidnappings, beheadings and murders? During the recent election campaign, I and hundreds of thousands of Floridians received a computer-generated telephone message from the peripatetic Kerik, identifying himself as a "former NY police commissioner," questioning Sen. John Kerry's patriotism, strength and resolve, saying he could not be trusted to protect our national security from terrorists.
I received Kerik's automated recorded phone call on Oct. 29 (four days before we voted), placed on behalf of the "Bush-Cheney '04" campaign, showing a fictitious caller ID of 1-111-111-1111. That is a phony phone number. This was massive deception, violating federal telecommunications law.
"Lame duck" Bush now faces his legacy: huge deficits, rising interest rates, sagging credibility, environmental depredations, corporate greed, uncaught Osama, exploding Iraq, increasing poverty, proliferating billionaires, a shrinking middle-class, overcrowded schools and warring right-wing supporters.
We shall overcome.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/012605/opi_kr006501.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Nocatee plan threatens safe hurricane evacuations
Letter: Nocatee plan threatens safe hurricane evacuations
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 02/10/01
Over 6000 residents of Galveston Island, Texas, lost their lives in the 1900 hurricane. Weather radar now provides advance warnings, allowing island/coastal residents to evacuate. Let's not thwart hurricane emergency planning, putting lives at risk.
Who wants to realign State Road 210? The Davis Family (Winn-Dixie founders) and PARC Group, developers of proposed Nocatee, a ''new town'' (in reality a two-county city with 15,000 homes, over 38,000 people, and millions of square feet of commercial space). They could easily block evacuation routes for Ponte Vedra, Palm Valley and other communities. Their notion of building Nocatee hurricane ''safe-rooms'' close to sea level is, at best, facetious. Safe rooms (useful in tornadoes) would not change the fact that Nocatee's ill-advised location endangers evacuation of coastal communities, residents of which are at risk and may need to evacuate to Interstate 95 in hurricanes.
Long Island Electric Company wasted $6 billion on its Shoreham, N.Y., nuclear power plant without an effective evacuation plan. Effective evacuation of Long Island is impossible due to the isolated nature of islands (bottlenecks getting to the mainland) and population growth. Shoreham was scrapped and ratepayers were forced to pay higher rates due to one company's reckless excuse for ''planning.'' Tens of millions of dollars were spent on evacuation plan litigation. Counties won their fight to protect citizens and property against LILCO's poor planning. Will PARC Group leave St. Johns County holding the bag for Nocatee?
Hurricane Floyd wrought the largest peacetime evacuation in American history. Even with four lanes, if State Road 210 is realigned through Nocatee's ''Town Center,'' Nocatee could cause a Galveston-style hurricane disaster. Nocatee should be rejected due to its badly located built-up ''Town Center'' area, which would impede evacuation in the event of a hurricane, threatening a public nuisance. If people are someday stranded in the middle of a hurricane because of heedless greed, we will rue the day if one family had its way.
The truth must be heard: The Record should fully inform us about costs, benefits and conflicts of interest.
Nocatee should be shelved as a reckless, bad plan -- second rate, shoddy and irrational -- as shown by thwarting effective evacuation of Ponte Vedra and other island communities, whose residents may be required to ''drive to I-95 to stay alive.'' We can't afford the risk to lives and property, landscape and wildlife, bears and wetlands. You might wish to tell your local Winn-Dixie managers what you think of the proposed city of Nocatee. Ask them to share your thoughts with the Davises.
Nocatee's economics may no longer be attractive in a recession and after Congress enacts President Bush's proposed income tax cuts and estate tax repeal. The Davises might wish to consider donating some of their beautiful family land for a park (including Nocatee and the D-Dot Ranch), instead of threatening evacuation and overdevelopment nightmares for generations to come.
Click here to return to story:
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© The St. Augustine Record
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 02/10/01
Over 6000 residents of Galveston Island, Texas, lost their lives in the 1900 hurricane. Weather radar now provides advance warnings, allowing island/coastal residents to evacuate. Let's not thwart hurricane emergency planning, putting lives at risk.
Who wants to realign State Road 210? The Davis Family (Winn-Dixie founders) and PARC Group, developers of proposed Nocatee, a ''new town'' (in reality a two-county city with 15,000 homes, over 38,000 people, and millions of square feet of commercial space). They could easily block evacuation routes for Ponte Vedra, Palm Valley and other communities. Their notion of building Nocatee hurricane ''safe-rooms'' close to sea level is, at best, facetious. Safe rooms (useful in tornadoes) would not change the fact that Nocatee's ill-advised location endangers evacuation of coastal communities, residents of which are at risk and may need to evacuate to Interstate 95 in hurricanes.
Long Island Electric Company wasted $6 billion on its Shoreham, N.Y., nuclear power plant without an effective evacuation plan. Effective evacuation of Long Island is impossible due to the isolated nature of islands (bottlenecks getting to the mainland) and population growth. Shoreham was scrapped and ratepayers were forced to pay higher rates due to one company's reckless excuse for ''planning.'' Tens of millions of dollars were spent on evacuation plan litigation. Counties won their fight to protect citizens and property against LILCO's poor planning. Will PARC Group leave St. Johns County holding the bag for Nocatee?
Hurricane Floyd wrought the largest peacetime evacuation in American history. Even with four lanes, if State Road 210 is realigned through Nocatee's ''Town Center,'' Nocatee could cause a Galveston-style hurricane disaster. Nocatee should be rejected due to its badly located built-up ''Town Center'' area, which would impede evacuation in the event of a hurricane, threatening a public nuisance. If people are someday stranded in the middle of a hurricane because of heedless greed, we will rue the day if one family had its way.
The truth must be heard: The Record should fully inform us about costs, benefits and conflicts of interest.
Nocatee should be shelved as a reckless, bad plan -- second rate, shoddy and irrational -- as shown by thwarting effective evacuation of Ponte Vedra and other island communities, whose residents may be required to ''drive to I-95 to stay alive.'' We can't afford the risk to lives and property, landscape and wildlife, bears and wetlands. You might wish to tell your local Winn-Dixie managers what you think of the proposed city of Nocatee. Ask them to share your thoughts with the Davises.
Nocatee's economics may no longer be attractive in a recession and after Congress enacts President Bush's proposed income tax cuts and estate tax repeal. The Davises might wish to consider donating some of their beautiful family land for a park (including Nocatee and the D-Dot Ranch), instead of threatening evacuation and overdevelopment nightmares for generations to come.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/021001/opi_0210010022.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: The beautiful views you may save may be your own
Letter: The beautiful views you may save may be your own
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 03/18/01
Local forests are under siege, destroyed before our eyes. Why was a beautiful spot once covered by woods (the northwest corner of state roads 312 and A1A) denuded by bulldozers, destroyed to erect yet another you-store-it business -- tacky and unshielded by trees, which landowners unwisely wiped out? Why did the county, leasing Anastasia state park lands, destroy five to 10 acres of trees and wildlife habitat for no good reason, without fine, firing, penalty or lease cancellation? Why did ''nonprofit'' Flagler Hospital destroy its beautiful trees for yet another parking lot? Do some businesses have a libido for the ugly? When will the orgy of tree killing and billboards stop? Who thinks it attracts tourists? Who is made happy by it? Who profits from wanton destruction of natural beauty and pleasures?
Where else are artists, musicians and entertainers hounded by police and banned from a pedestrian-only street, their free speech rights repeatedly censored on government orders, backed with arrests and the awesome power of the state? Communist China? Cuba? Horse-drawn carriages slow down automobile traffic on St. Augustine's major streets, with no complaint from self-aggrandizing burghers who ban artists from no-auto St. George Street.
Lincoln took ''public opinion baths,'' listening to Americans. Why are local citizens limited to three-minute statements, while loquacious developers' (and censors') time is effectively unlimited? Elsewhere, citizens speak and question freely. Here, citizens are too often rudely cut off. Why?
Why did County Commission's Nocatee weekday hearings commence at 1:30 p.m.? Why are most government meetings during workdays, preventing most from attending? Elsewhere, meetings are at night to make it easier for citizens to participate.
First, commissioners approved the unwanted new Nocatee city. Then, to ''protect'' the public, St. Johns County Commission passed an unwanted ''leash law'' to keep any dog anywhere from running around without a leash -- even on the beach at midnight in winter. Local ''hassle you'' governments too often let forest-killing developers have their way, while other citizens are pestered. This may violate equal protection.
Commissioners voted to leash the wrong citizens. There is a problem here with unfettered developers, not dogs. In approving Nocatee, the commission accepted assurances about the Davis family's goodness, refusing to ''look a (supposed) gift horse in the mouth.'' A Jacksonville weekly newspaper (''Folio Weekly'') has reported without contradiction that the Davis family's Dee-Dot Ranch sold land to the state of Florida, which turns out to be contaminated with illegally dumped toxic waste from dry cleaners, laboratories, metal and plastic manufacturing -- petrochemical poisons, solvents and heavy metals. If three unwise commissioners had not rushed to approve Nocatee Feb. 23, the results of investigations of toxic dumping on Davis family land might have been discussed.
Let's ''leash'' tree-killing developers -- let's ''curb'' and ''collar'' their power to destroy and uglify St. Augustine and St. Johns County and our natural heritage. Register and vote. The beautiful views (and cherished freedoms) you save may be your own.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/031801/opi_0318010009.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 03/18/01
Local forests are under siege, destroyed before our eyes. Why was a beautiful spot once covered by woods (the northwest corner of state roads 312 and A1A) denuded by bulldozers, destroyed to erect yet another you-store-it business -- tacky and unshielded by trees, which landowners unwisely wiped out? Why did the county, leasing Anastasia state park lands, destroy five to 10 acres of trees and wildlife habitat for no good reason, without fine, firing, penalty or lease cancellation? Why did ''nonprofit'' Flagler Hospital destroy its beautiful trees for yet another parking lot? Do some businesses have a libido for the ugly? When will the orgy of tree killing and billboards stop? Who thinks it attracts tourists? Who is made happy by it? Who profits from wanton destruction of natural beauty and pleasures?
Where else are artists, musicians and entertainers hounded by police and banned from a pedestrian-only street, their free speech rights repeatedly censored on government orders, backed with arrests and the awesome power of the state? Communist China? Cuba? Horse-drawn carriages slow down automobile traffic on St. Augustine's major streets, with no complaint from self-aggrandizing burghers who ban artists from no-auto St. George Street.
Lincoln took ''public opinion baths,'' listening to Americans. Why are local citizens limited to three-minute statements, while loquacious developers' (and censors') time is effectively unlimited? Elsewhere, citizens speak and question freely. Here, citizens are too often rudely cut off. Why?
Why did County Commission's Nocatee weekday hearings commence at 1:30 p.m.? Why are most government meetings during workdays, preventing most from attending? Elsewhere, meetings are at night to make it easier for citizens to participate.
First, commissioners approved the unwanted new Nocatee city. Then, to ''protect'' the public, St. Johns County Commission passed an unwanted ''leash law'' to keep any dog anywhere from running around without a leash -- even on the beach at midnight in winter. Local ''hassle you'' governments too often let forest-killing developers have their way, while other citizens are pestered. This may violate equal protection.
Commissioners voted to leash the wrong citizens. There is a problem here with unfettered developers, not dogs. In approving Nocatee, the commission accepted assurances about the Davis family's goodness, refusing to ''look a (supposed) gift horse in the mouth.'' A Jacksonville weekly newspaper (''Folio Weekly'') has reported without contradiction that the Davis family's Dee-Dot Ranch sold land to the state of Florida, which turns out to be contaminated with illegally dumped toxic waste from dry cleaners, laboratories, metal and plastic manufacturing -- petrochemical poisons, solvents and heavy metals. If three unwise commissioners had not rushed to approve Nocatee Feb. 23, the results of investigations of toxic dumping on Davis family land might have been discussed.
Let's ''leash'' tree-killing developers -- let's ''curb'' and ''collar'' their power to destroy and uglify St. Augustine and St. Johns County and our natural heritage. Register and vote. The beautiful views (and cherished freedoms) you save may be your own.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/031801/opi_0318010009.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Secrecy and discrimination threatens democracy
Secrecy and discrimination threatens democracy
By Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 05/19/04
Secrecy and authoritarianism threaten to end our democracy.
Thank you for "Sunshine Sunday." Let's extend the Sunshine law and defeat proposed loopholes. The St. Augustine Record reported Feb. 7 that Broward County Administrator Roger Desjarlais threatened a volunteer, used the Internet to track down his cellular telephone number and called at night, stating, "I can make your life very difficult," over a routine Sunshine law request for records from his office. (His official Web site brags he has an annual $2.5 billion budget and more than 7,000 employees.) "One volunteer was almost arrested," the report found. This lawbreaking was documented by 30 Florida newspapers. Gov. Jeb Bush's office and other government offices statewide illegally demanded that citizens identify themselves to obtain records, an outrage, creating bureaucratic delays (even claiming they thought information requesters might be "terrorists" from whom "children" must be "protected").
St. Johns County's sheriff said at his "roast" that he enjoyed being sheriff because people were afraid to criticize him. St. Augustine's police chief, a "lifelong Republican," seeks to replace him, with one party primary expected to select the next sheriff.
Bush and Cheney? Only a CEO could love them as they sacrifice the environment and public health to benefit contributors. Oil prices skyrocket with two oilmen as our unelected president and VP. Enough secretive dictatorships. I object to unfriendly, uninformed, unprogressive, unenlightened, ukases of authoritarian governments that are guilty of:
1. Management failures globally, locally leading to a crisis in confidence due to two separate events when one African-American was crippled following a fight with the Police Department and another African-American died following an incident with sheriff's deputies ...
2. Secretiveness, including lobbyist efforts to make constitutional amendments tougher to pass, seeking to thwart the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment.
3. Seemingly selective, discriminatory city annexations of new areas to snag more property taxes while failing to annex part of African-American West Augustine, thereby denying equal city services.
4. Overdeveloping -- "willful, heedless destruction of natural beauty and pleasures," as Robert Kennedy would call it. Is there anywhere in Florida that effectively regulates development, zoning and planning (an area that an influential Department of Justice Law Enforcement Assistance Administration study found is rife with corruption throughout the country)?
5. Ejecting entertainers and artists from St. George Street, destroying its unique character as the street uglifies, with too few plants and too much trash. When will our new mayor and commission kindly keep their promise to return the "busker" entertainers to St. George Street?
6. Land grabbing rip-offs (e.g., walled-off St. George Street park, community encroaching Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, and airport and county ceding of Ponte Vedra Beach access parking right of way).
7. Attacking diversity while proposing, inflicting and enforcing unequal laws.
8. Maladroit election procedures if not actual financial corruption -- including the U.S. Supreme Court halting the Florida recounts, resulting in Florida not counting 20,000 mostly African-American votes in Jacksonville -- and gerrymandering electoral districts by a combination of single-member districts requiring countywide elections. Computer voting without paper records is being inflicted in several counties, with Florida officials opposing election "monitors" because they might alarm voters.
9. Governments dominated by one political party, promoting 1-8.
I object. Have you registered to vote?
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/051904/opi_2245778.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
By Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 05/19/04
Secrecy and authoritarianism threaten to end our democracy.
Thank you for "Sunshine Sunday." Let's extend the Sunshine law and defeat proposed loopholes. The St. Augustine Record reported Feb. 7 that Broward County Administrator Roger Desjarlais threatened a volunteer, used the Internet to track down his cellular telephone number and called at night, stating, "I can make your life very difficult," over a routine Sunshine law request for records from his office. (His official Web site brags he has an annual $2.5 billion budget and more than 7,000 employees.) "One volunteer was almost arrested," the report found. This lawbreaking was documented by 30 Florida newspapers. Gov. Jeb Bush's office and other government offices statewide illegally demanded that citizens identify themselves to obtain records, an outrage, creating bureaucratic delays (even claiming they thought information requesters might be "terrorists" from whom "children" must be "protected").
St. Johns County's sheriff said at his "roast" that he enjoyed being sheriff because people were afraid to criticize him. St. Augustine's police chief, a "lifelong Republican," seeks to replace him, with one party primary expected to select the next sheriff.
Bush and Cheney? Only a CEO could love them as they sacrifice the environment and public health to benefit contributors. Oil prices skyrocket with two oilmen as our unelected president and VP. Enough secretive dictatorships. I object to unfriendly, uninformed, unprogressive, unenlightened, ukases of authoritarian governments that are guilty of:
1. Management failures globally, locally leading to a crisis in confidence due to two separate events when one African-American was crippled following a fight with the Police Department and another African-American died following an incident with sheriff's deputies ...
2. Secretiveness, including lobbyist efforts to make constitutional amendments tougher to pass, seeking to thwart the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment.
3. Seemingly selective, discriminatory city annexations of new areas to snag more property taxes while failing to annex part of African-American West Augustine, thereby denying equal city services.
4. Overdeveloping -- "willful, heedless destruction of natural beauty and pleasures," as Robert Kennedy would call it. Is there anywhere in Florida that effectively regulates development, zoning and planning (an area that an influential Department of Justice Law Enforcement Assistance Administration study found is rife with corruption throughout the country)?
5. Ejecting entertainers and artists from St. George Street, destroying its unique character as the street uglifies, with too few plants and too much trash. When will our new mayor and commission kindly keep their promise to return the "busker" entertainers to St. George Street?
6. Land grabbing rip-offs (e.g., walled-off St. George Street park, community encroaching Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, and airport and county ceding of Ponte Vedra Beach access parking right of way).
7. Attacking diversity while proposing, inflicting and enforcing unequal laws.
8. Maladroit election procedures if not actual financial corruption -- including the U.S. Supreme Court halting the Florida recounts, resulting in Florida not counting 20,000 mostly African-American votes in Jacksonville -- and gerrymandering electoral districts by a combination of single-member districts requiring countywide elections. Computer voting without paper records is being inflicted in several counties, with Florida officials opposing election "monitors" because they might alarm voters.
9. Governments dominated by one political party, promoting 1-8.
I object. Have you registered to vote?
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/051904/opi_2245778.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Malpractice deform
Letter: Malpractice deform
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 06/11/03
Editor: "Dr. Machado" (no first name), Flagler Hospital medical staff president, attacked Ms. Norma Sherry (June 3) for stating the truth: A medical malpractice victim's "pain and suffering" is worth more than $250,000.
Dr. Machado needs to learn some manners. His ukase in response to her is sexist, patronizing and authoritarian. "Dr. Machado" goes too far when he threatens "this lady" with "no neurosurgeon" in the event of "accident," no OB-GYN.
Insurance and medical lobbyists are terrorizing us, demanding bad legislation to "protect" the entire "medical industry" from reasonable jury verdicts. When did "sawbones" become "jawbones," demanding we all surrender our legal rights as a condition of medical treatment?
Doctors who "contract, combine and conspire" to walk off in protest of our Legislature refusing to adopt their $250,000 cap may violate antitrust laws. Unless they are someone's employee, doctors are not "strikers," but boycotting business owners. The Supreme Court held in 1990 that lawyers' boycotting D.C. court-appointed criminal cases violated antitrust laws, was illegal, meant to raise legal fees, and was not protected activity or a labor strike. Doctors walking off the job could face prosecution. At best, it is unkind, uncivil and unwise for physicians to threaten patients (and our legislators) with walk-offs if they don't get their way. This is extortion, not debate. "Investigate" that.
Some would ignore the injustice of inflicting on juries an unconstitutional $250,000 "cap" on the amount they may award as compensatory damages is apparent -- that sum is all that many victim families could ever seek (e.g., if the dead malpractice victim was young, old or without much income-earning ability, the basis of "economic" damages). Loss of our loved ones is not suitable for a corporation-inspired "cap" of $250,000 (weekend "walking around money" for some CEOs).
The federal government has immunized the insurance cartel from antitrust laws for six decades under the McCarran-Ferguson Act.
Congress must enact Sen. Patrick Leahy's Medical Malpractice Insurance Antitrust Act of 2003. As Senator Leahy stated in February, "In the deafening debate about medical malpractice, I believe this legislation is a clear and calm statement about fixing one significant part of the system that is broken -- skyrocketing insurance premiums for medical malpractice." The act would end the loophole for medical malpractice insurance industry "price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations." "Only professional baseball has enjoyed an antitrust exemption comparable to that created for the insurance industry by the McCarran-Ferguson Act."
Insurance companies lost billions on Wall Street. Simply because they have clout and made poor investments, insurance companies must not be permitted to abolish malpractice civil justice for selfish ends. The Florida Legislature must reject "tort deform" quackery (malpractice "deform") and embrace real "reform" -- tough regulation of malpractice insurance rates and investments.
"Physician, heal thyself." Luke 4:23. "First, do no harm." (Hippocratic Oath). Support Leahy's act. Oppose "cramdown" medical malpractice deformities -- industrial-strength, lobbyist-distributed delusions of "reform."
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/061103/opi_kr004662.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 06/11/03
Editor: "Dr. Machado" (no first name), Flagler Hospital medical staff president, attacked Ms. Norma Sherry (June 3) for stating the truth: A medical malpractice victim's "pain and suffering" is worth more than $250,000.
Dr. Machado needs to learn some manners. His ukase in response to her is sexist, patronizing and authoritarian. "Dr. Machado" goes too far when he threatens "this lady" with "no neurosurgeon" in the event of "accident," no OB-GYN.
Insurance and medical lobbyists are terrorizing us, demanding bad legislation to "protect" the entire "medical industry" from reasonable jury verdicts. When did "sawbones" become "jawbones," demanding we all surrender our legal rights as a condition of medical treatment?
Doctors who "contract, combine and conspire" to walk off in protest of our Legislature refusing to adopt their $250,000 cap may violate antitrust laws. Unless they are someone's employee, doctors are not "strikers," but boycotting business owners. The Supreme Court held in 1990 that lawyers' boycotting D.C. court-appointed criminal cases violated antitrust laws, was illegal, meant to raise legal fees, and was not protected activity or a labor strike. Doctors walking off the job could face prosecution. At best, it is unkind, uncivil and unwise for physicians to threaten patients (and our legislators) with walk-offs if they don't get their way. This is extortion, not debate. "Investigate" that.
Some would ignore the injustice of inflicting on juries an unconstitutional $250,000 "cap" on the amount they may award as compensatory damages is apparent -- that sum is all that many victim families could ever seek (e.g., if the dead malpractice victim was young, old or without much income-earning ability, the basis of "economic" damages). Loss of our loved ones is not suitable for a corporation-inspired "cap" of $250,000 (weekend "walking around money" for some CEOs).
The federal government has immunized the insurance cartel from antitrust laws for six decades under the McCarran-Ferguson Act.
Congress must enact Sen. Patrick Leahy's Medical Malpractice Insurance Antitrust Act of 2003. As Senator Leahy stated in February, "In the deafening debate about medical malpractice, I believe this legislation is a clear and calm statement about fixing one significant part of the system that is broken -- skyrocketing insurance premiums for medical malpractice." The act would end the loophole for medical malpractice insurance industry "price fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations." "Only professional baseball has enjoyed an antitrust exemption comparable to that created for the insurance industry by the McCarran-Ferguson Act."
Insurance companies lost billions on Wall Street. Simply because they have clout and made poor investments, insurance companies must not be permitted to abolish malpractice civil justice for selfish ends. The Florida Legislature must reject "tort deform" quackery (malpractice "deform") and embrace real "reform" -- tough regulation of malpractice insurance rates and investments.
"Physician, heal thyself." Luke 4:23. "First, do no harm." (Hippocratic Oath). Support Leahy's act. Oppose "cramdown" medical malpractice deformities -- industrial-strength, lobbyist-distributed delusions of "reform."
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/061103/opi_kr004662.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: City still riding roughshod on rights
Letter: City still riding roughshod on rights
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 07/08/05
Editor: Hold controversial City Manager Bill Harriss accountable for:
1. $8,188.65 wasted on 12-person NYC junket (The Record reported faxes achieved even higher bond ratings) - Commissioners violated Florida's Sunshine Law?
2. Stalling/sabotaging a neighborhood's "speed hump" application, stealthily raising longtime speed limit from 15 to 20 m.p.h.
3. Dividing our city, attacking First Amendment rights (artists/entertainers; thrice unconstitutionally rejecting Gay Rainbow flag flying).
Justice prevailed in Federal Court. Reporter Charles Gordon ("Jacksonville Free-Press") proudly called it "democracy in action" - "the system worked" - regarding bigots, "that's their problem." Paul Folger (CBS 47) satirized the city's inconsistent "history" requirements. Mary Moewe ("Jax Biz-Journal") said most thought the "colors are very pretty."
49 Rainbow Flags proved we can "fight City Hall." Rainbow Flags were a stunning, beautiful constitutional/community victory - honoring 10,000 years of Gays in St. Augustine history - one murdered in 1566 on Governor Menendez' orders. See "Now It Can Be Told," June "Collective Press" (CP) monthly. Over 10 percent of city residents attended Gay Pride Day.
Who's afraid of Rainbow Flags? "Dividers, not uniters" like David Duke, who sold his KKK mailing-list for $82,500 in 1996 to anti-Gay "Family Research Council." Former City Commissioner Bill Lennon candidly told CP of terrorist group KKK's threats to him on Bridge of Lions flags. We pity Commissioners Crichlow, Gardner and Jones for twice surrendering to KKK threats. They lack independence. Thanks to Commissioners Boles and Burke for supporting equality and First Amendment values.
Crichlow has testified for his paying architectural clients before HARB as "expert witness." (Commissioners hear HARB appeals). Crichlow got his own "speed hump" without delays. Banning non-government flag-flying, angry Crichlow complained June 13, "I'm tired of all this rights stuff," earlier tactlessly comparing Gays to dogs/birds. ("FOLIO Weekly" 5/31).
Time to retire "tired" politicians? Let's investigate - activating, educating and registering voters - elect community-minded reformers in 2006.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070805/opi_kr007223.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Edward A. Slavin Jr.
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 07/08/05
Editor: Hold controversial City Manager Bill Harriss accountable for:
1. $8,188.65 wasted on 12-person NYC junket (The Record reported faxes achieved even higher bond ratings) - Commissioners violated Florida's Sunshine Law?
2. Stalling/sabotaging a neighborhood's "speed hump" application, stealthily raising longtime speed limit from 15 to 20 m.p.h.
3. Dividing our city, attacking First Amendment rights (artists/entertainers; thrice unconstitutionally rejecting Gay Rainbow flag flying).
Justice prevailed in Federal Court. Reporter Charles Gordon ("Jacksonville Free-Press") proudly called it "democracy in action" - "the system worked" - regarding bigots, "that's their problem." Paul Folger (CBS 47) satirized the city's inconsistent "history" requirements. Mary Moewe ("Jax Biz-Journal") said most thought the "colors are very pretty."
49 Rainbow Flags proved we can "fight City Hall." Rainbow Flags were a stunning, beautiful constitutional/community victory - honoring 10,000 years of Gays in St. Augustine history - one murdered in 1566 on Governor Menendez' orders. See "Now It Can Be Told," June "Collective Press" (CP) monthly. Over 10 percent of city residents attended Gay Pride Day.
Who's afraid of Rainbow Flags? "Dividers, not uniters" like David Duke, who sold his KKK mailing-list for $82,500 in 1996 to anti-Gay "Family Research Council." Former City Commissioner Bill Lennon candidly told CP of terrorist group KKK's threats to him on Bridge of Lions flags. We pity Commissioners Crichlow, Gardner and Jones for twice surrendering to KKK threats. They lack independence. Thanks to Commissioners Boles and Burke for supporting equality and First Amendment values.
Crichlow has testified for his paying architectural clients before HARB as "expert witness." (Commissioners hear HARB appeals). Crichlow got his own "speed hump" without delays. Banning non-government flag-flying, angry Crichlow complained June 13, "I'm tired of all this rights stuff," earlier tactlessly comparing Gays to dogs/birds. ("FOLIO Weekly" 5/31).
Time to retire "tired" politicians? Let's investigate - activating, educating and registering voters - elect community-minded reformers in 2006.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070805/opi_kr007223.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Worker safety is still an important concern
Letter: Worker safety is still an important concern
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 10/09/06
Editor: As Saint Augustine wrote, "an unjust law is no law at all." unjust laws and unjust stewards in our governments are causing preventable deaths (not just in Iraq), while wasting your money on junkets and flubdubs. Callous governments kill.
Gov. Jeb Bush abolished Florida's worker safety division in 2000, abrogating all of its rules and closing its doors. Now city, county and state government employees (including first responders) are unprotected. They can "hang from roofs from a string," says a federal OSHA inspector.
For millennia, roof fall deaths have been prevented with lifelines/barriers.
On September 8th, a county employee died, falling through an FCTI skylight. No Florida laws protected him.
On August 28, roofers were working at the Visitor Information Center (VIC), unadorned by harnesses, hardhats or other safety gear ñ clambering quickly around the VIC's pitched, plywood-covered roof, at risk of falling, 14 feet to a debris field, while risking nail gun deaths to workers in harm's way below. Videographer J.D. Pleasant e-mailed photos to OSHA, which is investigating city contractors. Several years ago, the Public Works Department promised to protect employees, who were unprotected roofing the Lighthouse Restaurant (now a community center).
Our city government actually annexed and platted homes on an arsenic-contaminated golf course without proper testing/remediation first. Geologist Dr. Alfred Hirsch told commissioners on Oct. 13, 2003 their actions were unprecedented. Uncaring city commissioners claimed arsenic was not the city's concern.
Last year, Mayor George Gardner and Commissioner Donald Crichlow told Folio Weekly our city has "no oar in the water" when Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison slashed tour train and Ripley's Believe it or Not! Museum employees' pay/benefits. They refused to call Mr. Pattison (whom I got on the telephone in 30 seconds).
In 2006, FDEP found city managers violated environmental laws, even refusing training to workers before putting them in harm's way, sorting through 20,000 cubic yards of old landfill waste, high in arsenic and other toxic contaminants ñ a cubic yard for every Lightner Museum treasure. Will our city's official-dumpers be indicted, as in Clay County?
Federal officials kill workers by neglecting safety, even on the roof of the U.S. Department of Labor. On July 19, 1989, a roofer driving an ATV died in a 47-foot fall from DOL's roof in Washington, D.C., overlooking the Capitol ñ nearly killing Alan C. McMillan, OSHA's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor (now head of the National Safety Council). It took hours for investigators to arrive ñ OSHA had exiled Washington construction inspectors to Baltimore. OSHA managers could see reckless roofing practices on DOL's roof for weeks before the fatality.
It's wrong for governments to shred rights to safe, nonretaliatory workplaces.
As in 1776, Americans today confront brazen-faced authoritarians, symbolized by the Tennessee state environmental manager who told "his" employees, "You're the state's for 7 1/2 hours per day and if I tell you to jump off the roof, you jump off the roof."
Nobody should be expected to die or surrender human rights for a thoughtless, reckless employer. Nobody should be taxed to support waste and mismanagement.
Our city's bloated budget is now $50 million, with a 22 percent general fund increase. Our City's underutilized $22 million parking garage is too big (like one in Spokane, which was misled by the same organization our city consulted, leading to Spokane's out-of-court-settlements). St. Augustine commissioners ignored warnings from financial expert Peter Romano on the parking garage, with only Commissioner Donald Crichlow curtly responding by e-mail ("That's not happening here").
Governments are captive to special interests, unconcerned for people. Locally, "reformers" reformed nothing, betraying supporters.
On Sept. 11, 2006, Mayor Gardner fondly remembered "developers" were once called "city fathers," saying we must "cooperate."
In response to public questions since my June 25 Record column, "St. Augustine: We can make it much better," our mayor and vice mayor admit, "There's no dialogue here." The city won't answer questions on unsafe practices, illegal dumping, junkets, Sunshine and First Amendment violations. See www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com Vote to put people first, treasuring the lives of living, breathing people, protecting them from preventable deaths, venerating the culture of life. As County Commissioners Karen Stern and Bruce Maguire learned on Sept. 5, we're disgusted with developer-coddling. We support honest government and reject what CNN's Lou Dobbs calls "the race to the bottom."
I support Lincolnville's Peter Romano for St. Augustine mayor/commissioner, Justice Department retiree Ken Bryan for county commissioner and Rep. Jim Davis for governor. On Nov. 7, let's celebrate independence and restore competence, compassion and decency, from St. Augustine to Tallahassee to Washington.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/100906/opinions_4114920.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 10/09/06
Editor: As Saint Augustine wrote, "an unjust law is no law at all." unjust laws and unjust stewards in our governments are causing preventable deaths (not just in Iraq), while wasting your money on junkets and flubdubs. Callous governments kill.
Gov. Jeb Bush abolished Florida's worker safety division in 2000, abrogating all of its rules and closing its doors. Now city, county and state government employees (including first responders) are unprotected. They can "hang from roofs from a string," says a federal OSHA inspector.
For millennia, roof fall deaths have been prevented with lifelines/barriers.
On September 8th, a county employee died, falling through an FCTI skylight. No Florida laws protected him.
On August 28, roofers were working at the Visitor Information Center (VIC), unadorned by harnesses, hardhats or other safety gear ñ clambering quickly around the VIC's pitched, plywood-covered roof, at risk of falling, 14 feet to a debris field, while risking nail gun deaths to workers in harm's way below. Videographer J.D. Pleasant e-mailed photos to OSHA, which is investigating city contractors. Several years ago, the Public Works Department promised to protect employees, who were unprotected roofing the Lighthouse Restaurant (now a community center).
Our city government actually annexed and platted homes on an arsenic-contaminated golf course without proper testing/remediation first. Geologist Dr. Alfred Hirsch told commissioners on Oct. 13, 2003 their actions were unprecedented. Uncaring city commissioners claimed arsenic was not the city's concern.
Last year, Mayor George Gardner and Commissioner Donald Crichlow told Folio Weekly our city has "no oar in the water" when Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison slashed tour train and Ripley's Believe it or Not! Museum employees' pay/benefits. They refused to call Mr. Pattison (whom I got on the telephone in 30 seconds).
In 2006, FDEP found city managers violated environmental laws, even refusing training to workers before putting them in harm's way, sorting through 20,000 cubic yards of old landfill waste, high in arsenic and other toxic contaminants ñ a cubic yard for every Lightner Museum treasure. Will our city's official-dumpers be indicted, as in Clay County?
Federal officials kill workers by neglecting safety, even on the roof of the U.S. Department of Labor. On July 19, 1989, a roofer driving an ATV died in a 47-foot fall from DOL's roof in Washington, D.C., overlooking the Capitol ñ nearly killing Alan C. McMillan, OSHA's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor (now head of the National Safety Council). It took hours for investigators to arrive ñ OSHA had exiled Washington construction inspectors to Baltimore. OSHA managers could see reckless roofing practices on DOL's roof for weeks before the fatality.
It's wrong for governments to shred rights to safe, nonretaliatory workplaces.
As in 1776, Americans today confront brazen-faced authoritarians, symbolized by the Tennessee state environmental manager who told "his" employees, "You're the state's for 7 1/2 hours per day and if I tell you to jump off the roof, you jump off the roof."
Nobody should be expected to die or surrender human rights for a thoughtless, reckless employer. Nobody should be taxed to support waste and mismanagement.
Our city's bloated budget is now $50 million, with a 22 percent general fund increase. Our City's underutilized $22 million parking garage is too big (like one in Spokane, which was misled by the same organization our city consulted, leading to Spokane's out-of-court-settlements). St. Augustine commissioners ignored warnings from financial expert Peter Romano on the parking garage, with only Commissioner Donald Crichlow curtly responding by e-mail ("That's not happening here").
Governments are captive to special interests, unconcerned for people. Locally, "reformers" reformed nothing, betraying supporters.
On Sept. 11, 2006, Mayor Gardner fondly remembered "developers" were once called "city fathers," saying we must "cooperate."
In response to public questions since my June 25 Record column, "St. Augustine: We can make it much better," our mayor and vice mayor admit, "There's no dialogue here." The city won't answer questions on unsafe practices, illegal dumping, junkets, Sunshine and First Amendment violations. See www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com Vote to put people first, treasuring the lives of living, breathing people, protecting them from preventable deaths, venerating the culture of life. As County Commissioners Karen Stern and Bruce Maguire learned on Sept. 5, we're disgusted with developer-coddling. We support honest government and reject what CNN's Lou Dobbs calls "the race to the bottom."
I support Lincolnville's Peter Romano for St. Augustine mayor/commissioner, Justice Department retiree Ken Bryan for county commissioner and Rep. Jim Davis for governor. On Nov. 7, let's celebrate independence and restore competence, compassion and decency, from St. Augustine to Tallahassee to Washington.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/100906/opinions_4114920.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: Create National Park to showcase our history
Letter: Create National Park to showcase our history
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/16/06
Editor: Why waste millions constructing a new Castillo Visitor Center? Let's learn from urban national parks, including the New Bedford (Mass.) Whaling Historical Park, (13 city blocks, 32 acres), with its cost-saving National Park Service visitor center in a restored building.
Let's ask Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to propose a "St. Augustine National Historical Park," showcasing all of St. Augustine's history -- Castillo, city gates, historic streets, Slave Market Square, Government House, bayfront/seawall/harbor, Spanish Quarter Village, Anastasia State Park, Fort Mose, Ponce de Leon Golf Course, Red House Bluff, Magnolia Street, Salt Run and other archaeological/natural treasures.
Let's protect forever an "emerald necklace of parks." Let NPS preserve and interpret history, including Native American and African-American history.
Let us be decisive, bold and creative.
Let's tax tourists more to fund preservation. Let's win grants and restore our city's 1928 trolley-car system, solving traffic congestion.
Architect Daniel Burnham said, "Make no little plans for they do not inspire" followers.
At Thanksgiving, be thankful for Democratic victories restoring sanity.
Let's ask Congress to expose/halt Florida government chicanery, e.g., defective election systems; political gerrymandering/corruption; environmental racism; wetland-destruction; tree-killing/clear-cutting; St. Augustine's willful dumping of our old city dump into Old City Reservoir; dumping by JEA, Clay County and Venice, which intentionally dumped semi-treated sewage, pleading guilty to three federal felonies.
As the Record reported, St. Johns River Water Management District specifically ordered our city managers not to dump in and there were no Army Corps permits to excavate the old dump.
Claims of "inadvertence" by city officials are misleading. We need vigorous Congressional investigations and enforcement of environmental criminal laws against executive/managerial wrongdoers, from nuclear weapons plants to oil tankers to city hall. Congress must preserve history and investigate what Mayor George Gardner candidly admits is City Hall's "rampant corruption."
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/111606/opinions_4208261b.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/16/06
Editor: Why waste millions constructing a new Castillo Visitor Center? Let's learn from urban national parks, including the New Bedford (Mass.) Whaling Historical Park, (13 city blocks, 32 acres), with its cost-saving National Park Service visitor center in a restored building.
Let's ask Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to propose a "St. Augustine National Historical Park," showcasing all of St. Augustine's history -- Castillo, city gates, historic streets, Slave Market Square, Government House, bayfront/seawall/harbor, Spanish Quarter Village, Anastasia State Park, Fort Mose, Ponce de Leon Golf Course, Red House Bluff, Magnolia Street, Salt Run and other archaeological/natural treasures.
Let's protect forever an "emerald necklace of parks." Let NPS preserve and interpret history, including Native American and African-American history.
Let us be decisive, bold and creative.
Let's tax tourists more to fund preservation. Let's win grants and restore our city's 1928 trolley-car system, solving traffic congestion.
Architect Daniel Burnham said, "Make no little plans for they do not inspire" followers.
At Thanksgiving, be thankful for Democratic victories restoring sanity.
Let's ask Congress to expose/halt Florida government chicanery, e.g., defective election systems; political gerrymandering/corruption; environmental racism; wetland-destruction; tree-killing/clear-cutting; St. Augustine's willful dumping of our old city dump into Old City Reservoir; dumping by JEA, Clay County and Venice, which intentionally dumped semi-treated sewage, pleading guilty to three federal felonies.
As the Record reported, St. Johns River Water Management District specifically ordered our city managers not to dump in and there were no Army Corps permits to excavate the old dump.
Claims of "inadvertence" by city officials are misleading. We need vigorous Congressional investigations and enforcement of environmental criminal laws against executive/managerial wrongdoers, from nuclear weapons plants to oil tankers to city hall. Congress must preserve history and investigate what Mayor George Gardner candidly admits is City Hall's "rampant corruption."
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/111606/opinions_4208261b.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Guest Column: St. Augustine should have a national historical park
Guest Column: St. Augustine should have a national historical park
ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 03/26/07
Real estate speculators (some foreign-funded) continue to destroy our local wildlife, habitat, nature and history. Roads are clogged. Noise abounds. Our way of life is being destroyed. Unfeeling, uncaring Philistines are turning St. Johns County into an uglier, unreasonable facsimile of South Florida. Unjust county government stewards allowed an asphalt plant near homes. Another plant reportedly emits 50 tons/year of volatile organic compounds into residents' and workers' lungs and brains.
Speculators are even trying to build homes on top of unremediated septic tanks/fields, while vacationing boaters pollute our Bay front with untreated sewage (the only boat-pumpout-station is at Conch House Marina). Our Bay front (which lacks a harbormaster) had an oil spill Jan. 15. Developers demand to build docks over city-owned State Road 312 area marshes for boat-owners' pleasure. Enough.
Let's invite environmental tourism by preserving an "emerald necklace of parks," including the city-owned marsh.
Ask Congress to hold hearings to map our "St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore" (SANHPNS), using 1928-style trolleycars to save gasoline, uniting the Castillo and Fort Matanzas National Monuments, "slave market park," downtown streets, Government House, Red House Bluff indigenous village (next to historical society), marshes, forests, National Cemetery, GTM NERR, Anastasia State Park, Fort Mose and other city, county, state and St. Johns River Water Management District lands.
Let's cancel future shock/schlock/sprawl/ugliness/skyscrapers and eliminate temptations to abuse/neglect/misuse state parks and historic buildings for golf courses and rote, rube commercialism.
In December, State Sen. Jim King suggested Florida donate "deed and title" of state buildings to our city. I suggested that we deed them to the National Park Service (NPS), with St. George Street visitor center in restored buildings, saving millions (as in the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park).
St. Augustine needs a national civil rights and indigenous history museum, celebrating local residents and national leaders, whose courage helped win passage of 1964's Civil Rights Act. Why not put the museum in the old Woolworth's building, restored to its former glory, with wood floors, lunch-counter and exhibits on the civil rights struggles that changed history (well- documented in Jeremy Dean's documentary, "Dare Not Walk Alone"), with "footsoldiers monument" across the street ?
Why not (finally) implement the 2003 National Trust for Historic Preservation and Flagler College study on how to protect our history? Let's tax tourists more to fund historic preservation, as in Charleston/elsewhere.
Let's preserve/protect the quality of our lives and visitors' experience (and property values) by preserving forever what speculators haven't destroyed (yet).
Let's adopt a three-year moratorium on growth, while we work to adopt truly comprehensive plans worthy of the name.
Colonial National Historical Park (NHP), Philadelphia's Independence NHP and NHPs in Boston, New Bedford, Valley Forge, San Francisco and Saratoga.
There's a Martin Luther King historical site in Atlanta, NHPs for "Rosie the Riveter" (California) and the "War in the Pacific" (Guam), and new parks slated for ten Japanese internment camps.
Florida hosts Everglades, Dry Tortugas and Biscayne National Parks and Canaveral National Seashore. Let's add St. Augustine to the list.
From sea to shining sea, America's coastal areas enjoy national parks. Where's ours?
Let's make parts of State Road A1A a National Parkway and hiking/biking trail, like the Colonial National Historical Parkway and the Baltimore Washington, George Washington, Rock Creek and John D. Rockefeller (Wyoming) Parkways and the Appalachian Trial and C&O Canal.
Let's add St. Augustine to the list of our nation's most beloved national parks, joining Zion, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and the Great Smoky Mountains.
Florida's 500th and St. Augustine's 450th anniversaries are only six and eight years away (2013 and 2015). Enacting a national park and seashore will forever preserve the treasures that we love. It will halt the sprawl we hate, increase tourism and reduce local taxes, paying speculators to stop.
Mayor Joe Boles' mother graciously thanked me for speaking out on these issues after the Jan. 22 City Commission meeting -- issues that Mrs. Boles has been outspoken about for "30 years." Let's honor/heed Mrs. Boles' wisdom -- and those who proposed a national park before World War II. Let's save St. Augustine and our environment forever.
Ed Slavin lives in St. Augustine.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/032607/opinions_4479465.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 03/26/07
Real estate speculators (some foreign-funded) continue to destroy our local wildlife, habitat, nature and history. Roads are clogged. Noise abounds. Our way of life is being destroyed. Unfeeling, uncaring Philistines are turning St. Johns County into an uglier, unreasonable facsimile of South Florida. Unjust county government stewards allowed an asphalt plant near homes. Another plant reportedly emits 50 tons/year of volatile organic compounds into residents' and workers' lungs and brains.
Speculators are even trying to build homes on top of unremediated septic tanks/fields, while vacationing boaters pollute our Bay front with untreated sewage (the only boat-pumpout-station is at Conch House Marina). Our Bay front (which lacks a harbormaster) had an oil spill Jan. 15. Developers demand to build docks over city-owned State Road 312 area marshes for boat-owners' pleasure. Enough.
Let's invite environmental tourism by preserving an "emerald necklace of parks," including the city-owned marsh.
Ask Congress to hold hearings to map our "St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore" (SANHPNS), using 1928-style trolleycars to save gasoline, uniting the Castillo and Fort Matanzas National Monuments, "slave market park," downtown streets, Government House, Red House Bluff indigenous village (next to historical society), marshes, forests, National Cemetery, GTM NERR, Anastasia State Park, Fort Mose and other city, county, state and St. Johns River Water Management District lands.
Let's cancel future shock/schlock/sprawl/ugliness/skyscrapers and eliminate temptations to abuse/neglect/misuse state parks and historic buildings for golf courses and rote, rube commercialism.
In December, State Sen. Jim King suggested Florida donate "deed and title" of state buildings to our city. I suggested that we deed them to the National Park Service (NPS), with St. George Street visitor center in restored buildings, saving millions (as in the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park).
St. Augustine needs a national civil rights and indigenous history museum, celebrating local residents and national leaders, whose courage helped win passage of 1964's Civil Rights Act. Why not put the museum in the old Woolworth's building, restored to its former glory, with wood floors, lunch-counter and exhibits on the civil rights struggles that changed history (well- documented in Jeremy Dean's documentary, "Dare Not Walk Alone"), with "footsoldiers monument" across the street ?
Why not (finally) implement the 2003 National Trust for Historic Preservation and Flagler College study on how to protect our history? Let's tax tourists more to fund historic preservation, as in Charleston/elsewhere.
Let's preserve/protect the quality of our lives and visitors' experience (and property values) by preserving forever what speculators haven't destroyed (yet).
Let's adopt a three-year moratorium on growth, while we work to adopt truly comprehensive plans worthy of the name.
Colonial National Historical Park (NHP), Philadelphia's Independence NHP and NHPs in Boston, New Bedford, Valley Forge, San Francisco and Saratoga.
There's a Martin Luther King historical site in Atlanta, NHPs for "Rosie the Riveter" (California) and the "War in the Pacific" (Guam), and new parks slated for ten Japanese internment camps.
Florida hosts Everglades, Dry Tortugas and Biscayne National Parks and Canaveral National Seashore. Let's add St. Augustine to the list.
From sea to shining sea, America's coastal areas enjoy national parks. Where's ours?
Let's make parts of State Road A1A a National Parkway and hiking/biking trail, like the Colonial National Historical Parkway and the Baltimore Washington, George Washington, Rock Creek and John D. Rockefeller (Wyoming) Parkways and the Appalachian Trial and C&O Canal.
Let's add St. Augustine to the list of our nation's most beloved national parks, joining Zion, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and the Great Smoky Mountains.
Florida's 500th and St. Augustine's 450th anniversaries are only six and eight years away (2013 and 2015). Enacting a national park and seashore will forever preserve the treasures that we love. It will halt the sprawl we hate, increase tourism and reduce local taxes, paying speculators to stop.
Mayor Joe Boles' mother graciously thanked me for speaking out on these issues after the Jan. 22 City Commission meeting -- issues that Mrs. Boles has been outspoken about for "30 years." Let's honor/heed Mrs. Boles' wisdom -- and those who proposed a national park before World War II. Let's save St. Augustine and our environment forever.
Ed Slavin lives in St. Augustine.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/032607/opinions_4479465.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Guest Column: Government reform requires public's help
Guest Column: Government reform requires public's help
ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/09/07
"Politicians are like diapers -- they need frequent changing, and for the same reasons." -- Ronald Reagan
It's been 1 1/2 years since St. Augustine officials were caught red-handed, illegally dumping city dump contents -- including arsenic, sewage and bedsprings into Old City Reservoir. Our city officials haven't testified or answered our questions yet. Cleanup will be costly. Prosecute lawbreakers.
Restore Florida government workers' rights to occupational safety, erased in 2000.
Seventh District U.S. Rep. John Mica votes against whistleblowers and for offshore oil drilling, favoring big oil companies. Americans paid Mica's way to Tibet but Mica's indifferent to St. Johns County.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney are likewise cynical, uncandid -- investigate impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Zealously guard free speech: Repression's stalking Americans -- intimidation and retaliation for criticizing officials and corporate oligarchs. Dissenters are hounded, persecuted and blacklisted. Enough.
Government officials lack humility, refusing to correct mistakes -- huffy, angry and evasive. Citizens' seats have been removed from St. Augustine City Commission chambers while we're silenced in workshop meetings. Stop.
Florida's 442-year old tradition of autocratic government officials includes, in recent times, land-raping speculators represented by lawyers also representing governments -- threatening/intimidating citizens for exposing wetland-killing, tree-killing and crimes against nature.
Don't be bullied, even when they abuse police powers violating Sunshine laws. Always speak out. See 11/19/06 editorial & 3/13/05 Margo Pope column re: local citizen activists speaking out at meetings.
Speaking of retaliation, why do some satraps demand county takeover of Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County?
Democracy's breaking through, after 58 years. We elected AMCD Commissioners Jeanne Moeller and John Sundeman to stop squandering money on a $1.8 million jet helicopter unsuitable for mosquito control. It's our money. The ill-advised proposed county takeover of AMCD is only a diversionary tactic and attempt to suppress criticism of mismanagement. Support Moeller and Sundeman and 25 proposed AMCD reforms. Cut government waste everywhere.
We deserve answers/solutions/budget cuts, not more power concentrated in fewer hands, as under a badly-drafted county charter, which voters must examine carefully. Why support a defective charter in hopes of amending it several years later? Get it right now.
Why did St. Augustine abolish our "First Amendment forum" for local groups' flag-flying displays on our Bridge of Lions and bayfront? Why were seven bayfront flagpoles removed in 2005? Crabby, controlling, officials chill and punish free speech, whether by African-Americans, veterans, artists, entertainers or gays/lesbians. When our bridge is restored, our city's flag-flying forum must be restored with it -- whether honoring our troops, history, organizations or diversity.
Too many local "leaders" evade accountability -- serving foreign real estate speculators and themselves, but not local residents.
Preposterous projects must be halted, like speculators' destruction of a 3000-4000- year-old Indian village north of St. Augustine High School, which must become part of a national park, attracting "heritage tourists," empowering our recovering economy. Ask Congress to please support the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Highway. (3/26/07 guest column).
Our Constitution's "an invitation to struggle," scholar Edwin Corwin wrote. "Dissension" exposes corruption/chicanery and informs citizens. Dissent's a good thing.
As Robert F. Kennedy said, "it is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from."
America's founders loathed evil dictatorships/monarchies. We need more dissent, more investigative reporting/truth-telling, and more "checks and balances," not "blank checks" for flubdubs like fancy helicopters more suited to Donald Trump than skeeter-killing.
Our founders fought tyranny, writing our First Amendment. "Use it or lose it."
Journalists: kindly cover public meetings "gavel to gavel." Hold officials accountable, without fear or favor.
We need "transparency," with meetings, proposals, grants and contracts on government Web sites. Accept no excuses (like "not enough money") from wily wastrels who junket to Spain, Germany, Colombia and New York City.
America and our Nation's Oldest City are both worth saving. Democracy's on the march. Bossism's retreating. Defeat mediocrity. Expose corruption. It's our town, our time. Don't take "no" for an answer. Elect zealous, hardworking "just stewards." Save our liberties, our culture and our planet.
Help is on the way. Let freedom ring.
Ed Slavin is a frequent letter writer and speaker at local government meetings.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/090907/opinions_008.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/09/07
"Politicians are like diapers -- they need frequent changing, and for the same reasons." -- Ronald Reagan
It's been 1 1/2 years since St. Augustine officials were caught red-handed, illegally dumping city dump contents -- including arsenic, sewage and bedsprings into Old City Reservoir. Our city officials haven't testified or answered our questions yet. Cleanup will be costly. Prosecute lawbreakers.
Restore Florida government workers' rights to occupational safety, erased in 2000.
Seventh District U.S. Rep. John Mica votes against whistleblowers and for offshore oil drilling, favoring big oil companies. Americans paid Mica's way to Tibet but Mica's indifferent to St. Johns County.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney are likewise cynical, uncandid -- investigate impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Zealously guard free speech: Repression's stalking Americans -- intimidation and retaliation for criticizing officials and corporate oligarchs. Dissenters are hounded, persecuted and blacklisted. Enough.
Government officials lack humility, refusing to correct mistakes -- huffy, angry and evasive. Citizens' seats have been removed from St. Augustine City Commission chambers while we're silenced in workshop meetings. Stop.
Florida's 442-year old tradition of autocratic government officials includes, in recent times, land-raping speculators represented by lawyers also representing governments -- threatening/intimidating citizens for exposing wetland-killing, tree-killing and crimes against nature.
Don't be bullied, even when they abuse police powers violating Sunshine laws. Always speak out. See 11/19/06 editorial & 3/13/05 Margo Pope column re: local citizen activists speaking out at meetings.
Speaking of retaliation, why do some satraps demand county takeover of Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County?
Democracy's breaking through, after 58 years. We elected AMCD Commissioners Jeanne Moeller and John Sundeman to stop squandering money on a $1.8 million jet helicopter unsuitable for mosquito control. It's our money. The ill-advised proposed county takeover of AMCD is only a diversionary tactic and attempt to suppress criticism of mismanagement. Support Moeller and Sundeman and 25 proposed AMCD reforms. Cut government waste everywhere.
We deserve answers/solutions/budget cuts, not more power concentrated in fewer hands, as under a badly-drafted county charter, which voters must examine carefully. Why support a defective charter in hopes of amending it several years later? Get it right now.
Why did St. Augustine abolish our "First Amendment forum" for local groups' flag-flying displays on our Bridge of Lions and bayfront? Why were seven bayfront flagpoles removed in 2005? Crabby, controlling, officials chill and punish free speech, whether by African-Americans, veterans, artists, entertainers or gays/lesbians. When our bridge is restored, our city's flag-flying forum must be restored with it -- whether honoring our troops, history, organizations or diversity.
Too many local "leaders" evade accountability -- serving foreign real estate speculators and themselves, but not local residents.
Preposterous projects must be halted, like speculators' destruction of a 3000-4000- year-old Indian village north of St. Augustine High School, which must become part of a national park, attracting "heritage tourists," empowering our recovering economy. Ask Congress to please support the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Highway. (3/26/07 guest column).
Our Constitution's "an invitation to struggle," scholar Edwin Corwin wrote. "Dissension" exposes corruption/chicanery and informs citizens. Dissent's a good thing.
As Robert F. Kennedy said, "it is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from."
America's founders loathed evil dictatorships/monarchies. We need more dissent, more investigative reporting/truth-telling, and more "checks and balances," not "blank checks" for flubdubs like fancy helicopters more suited to Donald Trump than skeeter-killing.
Our founders fought tyranny, writing our First Amendment. "Use it or lose it."
Journalists: kindly cover public meetings "gavel to gavel." Hold officials accountable, without fear or favor.
We need "transparency," with meetings, proposals, grants and contracts on government Web sites. Accept no excuses (like "not enough money") from wily wastrels who junket to Spain, Germany, Colombia and New York City.
America and our Nation's Oldest City are both worth saving. Democracy's on the march. Bossism's retreating. Defeat mediocrity. Expose corruption. It's our town, our time. Don't take "no" for an answer. Elect zealous, hardworking "just stewards." Save our liberties, our culture and our planet.
Help is on the way. Let freedom ring.
Ed Slavin is a frequent letter writer and speaker at local government meetings.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/090907/opinions_008.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
US REP JOHN MICA ADMITS HE'S A RIGHT-WINGER, SAYS HE LOOKS FORWARD TO WORKING WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA
St. Petersburg Times online Florida Political Buzz blog, 11/26:
Mica's stoked about Obama
U.S. Rep. John Mica says he's excited about working with president-elect Barack Obama. What's got him so up? "The neat thing about the new administration is they have been committed, at least in their public declarations to date, to new infrastructure," Mica told a group of Hillsborough County leaders yesterday during a briefing on federal funding for mass transit. "I'm a right-wing conservative fiscal Republican," said Mica, a leader of the House transportation committee. "But I am adamant about public transportation." Mica says investment in infrastructure will help create jobs, something he says George Bush didn't understand. "I spent eight years arguing with the administration about simple things," he said. Read more about it here.
Mica also used the opportunity to restate his support for the proposed no-fault liability arrangement between the state and CSX for the Central Florida commuter rail project, saying the proposal is "not outlandish or overreaching." Mica urged Hillsborough rail supporters to work with the legislature to come to an agreement on the liability issue. "You're on hold and everybody else is on hold until that gets resolved," he said.
Posted by Janet Zink at 1:12:45 PM on November 26, 2008
in | Permalink
Mica's stoked about Obama
U.S. Rep. John Mica says he's excited about working with president-elect Barack Obama. What's got him so up? "The neat thing about the new administration is they have been committed, at least in their public declarations to date, to new infrastructure," Mica told a group of Hillsborough County leaders yesterday during a briefing on federal funding for mass transit. "I'm a right-wing conservative fiscal Republican," said Mica, a leader of the House transportation committee. "But I am adamant about public transportation." Mica says investment in infrastructure will help create jobs, something he says George Bush didn't understand. "I spent eight years arguing with the administration about simple things," he said. Read more about it here.
Mica also used the opportunity to restate his support for the proposed no-fault liability arrangement between the state and CSX for the Central Florida commuter rail project, saying the proposal is "not outlandish or overreaching." Mica urged Hillsborough rail supporters to work with the legislature to come to an agreement on the liability issue. "You're on hold and everybody else is on hold until that gets resolved," he said.
Posted by Janet Zink at 1:12:45 PM on November 26, 2008
in | Permalink
Persistence of citizens prevails in dumping order
Persistence of citizens prevails in dumping order
By ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 05/25/08
I am proud to live in our Nation's Oldest (European-founded) City because of our citizens' character and diversity. Thanks to you, on May 12, City Commissioners unanimously approved a consent decree with Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP): It guarantees that solid waste illegally dumped in our Old City Reservoir will be disposed of properly in a Class I landfill -- it will not be returned to our historic African-American community of Lincolnville. Commissioners unanimously voted Nov. 13 to support Commissioner Errol Jones' ill-advised motion to send waste back to Lincolnville.
On May 12, commissioners heard and heeded hundreds who turned out at the St. Paul's A.M.E. Church on Dec. 13 and January 10, supporting the seven community activists who asked FDEP to stop Lincolnville dumping (Judith and Anthony Seraphin, Diane and Gerald Mills, Dr. Dwight Hines, David Thundershield Queen and me).
The people have won yet another round against City Hall. Your victory bodes well for what our community can do to observe 11,000 years of history (450th anniversary of St. Augustine and 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida).
As Dana Ste. Claire rightly urged, we must celebrate diversity. We need a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway, about which County Commissioners may schedule a straw ballot vote.
I agree with former Mayor George Gardner, who rightly blasted the lack of energy and creativity in our city's Heritage Tourism Department.
Our City Hall needs a clean sweep.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead said it best, "A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again."
Mead also said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead visited Oak Ridge, Tenn., and exposed its provincialism, not knowing secrecy perpetrated a massive environmental crime.
Twenty-five years ago, on May 17, 1983, our small weekly newspaper (Appalachian Observer) won declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in world history. Our federal government in Oak Ridge, emitted 4.2 million pounds of mercury into creeks, groundwater and workers' lungs and brains -- more than was dumped in Minimata, Japan.
Oak Ridge's pollution scandal started scrutiny of the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex -- a cleanup still ongoing.
Then-Rep. Al Gore held an investigative hearing in Oak Ridge on July 11, 1983, swearing in witnesses (a nuclear complex first). I called for criminal prosecution of mercury-dumping Union Carbide and Department of Energy officials.
For decades, Oak Ridge residents were afraid to speak out. As a result, government environmental crimes were never punished.
Contrast that with the free, independent spirit of today's St. Augustinians, who swiftly achieved significant results against one of the worst abuses of power anywhere.
Like Oak Ridge's mindless, maniacal mercury-dumpers, St. Augustine's city manager was never reprimanded for dumping solid waste in the Old City Reservoir -- William Harriss got a pass (and a plaque) in the midst of a pending criminal investigation.
Unanswered questions remain 27 months after St. Augustine dumping was reported. Other local dumps await investigation/cleanup. (To report pollution, call the National Response Center, 1-800-424-8802). The illegal city dump at the south end of Riberia Street awaits a consent decree and cleanup. Our search for truth continues.
With your help and prayers, our city will become a much better place for all of our citizens.
As we sang at St. Paul's on Jan. 10, "we shall overcome."
Ed Slavin earned a degree in diplomacy from Georgetown University and a law degree from Memphis State University; he was recommended for a Pulitzer Prize by Oak Ridge District Attorney Jim Ramsey in 1983.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/052508/opinions_052508_071.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
By ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 05/25/08
I am proud to live in our Nation's Oldest (European-founded) City because of our citizens' character and diversity. Thanks to you, on May 12, City Commissioners unanimously approved a consent decree with Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP): It guarantees that solid waste illegally dumped in our Old City Reservoir will be disposed of properly in a Class I landfill -- it will not be returned to our historic African-American community of Lincolnville. Commissioners unanimously voted Nov. 13 to support Commissioner Errol Jones' ill-advised motion to send waste back to Lincolnville.
On May 12, commissioners heard and heeded hundreds who turned out at the St. Paul's A.M.E. Church on Dec. 13 and January 10, supporting the seven community activists who asked FDEP to stop Lincolnville dumping (Judith and Anthony Seraphin, Diane and Gerald Mills, Dr. Dwight Hines, David Thundershield Queen and me).
The people have won yet another round against City Hall. Your victory bodes well for what our community can do to observe 11,000 years of history (450th anniversary of St. Augustine and 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida).
As Dana Ste. Claire rightly urged, we must celebrate diversity. We need a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway, about which County Commissioners may schedule a straw ballot vote.
I agree with former Mayor George Gardner, who rightly blasted the lack of energy and creativity in our city's Heritage Tourism Department.
Our City Hall needs a clean sweep.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead said it best, "A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again."
Mead also said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead visited Oak Ridge, Tenn., and exposed its provincialism, not knowing secrecy perpetrated a massive environmental crime.
Twenty-five years ago, on May 17, 1983, our small weekly newspaper (Appalachian Observer) won declassification of the largest mercury pollution event in world history. Our federal government in Oak Ridge, emitted 4.2 million pounds of mercury into creeks, groundwater and workers' lungs and brains -- more than was dumped in Minimata, Japan.
Oak Ridge's pollution scandal started scrutiny of the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex -- a cleanup still ongoing.
Then-Rep. Al Gore held an investigative hearing in Oak Ridge on July 11, 1983, swearing in witnesses (a nuclear complex first). I called for criminal prosecution of mercury-dumping Union Carbide and Department of Energy officials.
For decades, Oak Ridge residents were afraid to speak out. As a result, government environmental crimes were never punished.
Contrast that with the free, independent spirit of today's St. Augustinians, who swiftly achieved significant results against one of the worst abuses of power anywhere.
Like Oak Ridge's mindless, maniacal mercury-dumpers, St. Augustine's city manager was never reprimanded for dumping solid waste in the Old City Reservoir -- William Harriss got a pass (and a plaque) in the midst of a pending criminal investigation.
Unanswered questions remain 27 months after St. Augustine dumping was reported. Other local dumps await investigation/cleanup. (To report pollution, call the National Response Center, 1-800-424-8802). The illegal city dump at the south end of Riberia Street awaits a consent decree and cleanup. Our search for truth continues.
With your help and prayers, our city will become a much better place for all of our citizens.
As we sang at St. Paul's on Jan. 10, "we shall overcome."
Ed Slavin earned a degree in diplomacy from Georgetown University and a law degree from Memphis State University; he was recommended for a Pulitzer Prize by Oak Ridge District Attorney Jim Ramsey in 1983.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/052508/opinions_052508_071.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
St. Augustine: We can make it much better
St. Augustine: We can make it much better
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 06/25/06
In Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1983 and in St. Augustine, Fla., in 2006, the stories were similar. In Oak Ridge, nuclear installations perpetrated the largest mercury pollution event in world history -- 4.2 million pounds, declassified on May 17, 1983.
In 2006, our city of St. Augustine polluted our Old City Reservoir, where people bass-fished and swam for decades. Violating St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) orders -- dumping even after criminal investigators arrived Feb. 27.
Former EPA Regional Administrator John Hankinson calls the city's coquina lake "an open sore straight down to the aquifer/groundwater."
Current City Commissioners ran as reformers, promising not to "rubber-stamp" City Manager William Harriss. Now they're on his team, junketing to NYC, Spain and Germany.
Amid a criminal investigation, commissioners in March presented Harriss an award, expressing "confidence", later terming dumping a "mistake."
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) photos show bedsprings, tanks, old refrigerators, pipes, electrical cable, toilets, metal, plastic, asphalt -- 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted contaminants from our city's old illegal dump on Riberia Street -- dumped in water.
That's enough to fill in six Olympic size swimming pools six-feet-deep (or cover a football field 11.2 feet).
On Feb. 24, Mayor George Gardner told me that he was told that the dumping was "clean fill." Even if that were true, it would have been illegal, violating SJRWMD's orders. Furthermore, "there are no bedsprings in clean fill," as retired EPA regulator John Marler says.
Our city's secrecy and 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted water pollution symbolizes a crisis of spirit.
Just how secretive?
Our city refuses to web-post commission agenda-packet documents on its Web site, unpersuasively claiming it's "too expensive." What dupery and flummery. St. Johns County Commissioners and SJRWMD web-post such documents. Congress and legislature web-post bills/reports.
Our city is too secretive. We need government watchdogs.
That's why SJRWMD, Miami-Dade County, state and federal agencies all have independent inspectors general. Our city and county need them, too. We need open national searches for the next city manager (with annual performance evaluations).
What other reforms should we consider?
Let's protect employees against retaliation, protecting the flow of information. Let's investigate our city's $45 million budget. Let's remedy its lack of planning. Let's reform purchasing. We need more competitive bidding and energy conservation. Can we start buying gasoline intelligently; by long-term contract (not spot market phone quotes)?
Can we use hybrid vehicles and recycled cooking oil fuels instead of diesel (like SJC)? Can we use GPS monitoring for vehicles?
Time-Warner cable TV's city franchise expired in 2004. Can we seek better deals, including wireless internet (WiFi) to attract sophisticated visitors and small businesses? City Commissioners voted a questionable new 10-year lease, ignoring public hearing witnesses -- every single one of whom testified against Time Warner.
Traffic snarls our city. Time to discuss trolley cars, as in 1920s? Our city gets only about $50,000 in federal grants annually; it missed the deadline for a $1 million state grant to fix City Hall/Lightner's roof. Can we do better to preserve history and promote heritage tourism?
Commissioners voted for stripmall/condos north of SAHS, preserving only part of a 3,000- to 4,000-year-old archaeological site. The developer-consultant's archeology report wasn't first provided to government archeologists.
Let's preserve 10,000 years of history with an emerald necklace of parks.
JFK said, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Let's help create good jobs; raising living standards. Let's consider a Living Wage ordinance, like other Florida jurisdictions.
Let's respect/protect diversity and human rights/lives with equality/ fairness in hiring/services and disaster planning -- including evacuation help and pet-friendly shelters.
America was founded to put people first. "We the people" are sovereign. We deserve "government of the people, by the people and for the people," in Lincoln's words.
Ask questions. Demand answers. Expect democracy. See www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Think globally, act locally.
Help change history right here in our Nation's Oldest City. Let's elect reformers (and watchdog them).
St. Augustinians get to overthrow our government every two years.
(Slavin is a former practicing attorney and a frequent and outspoken critic of city policies and politics).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/062506/opinions_3656546.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Ed Slavin
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 06/25/06
In Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1983 and in St. Augustine, Fla., in 2006, the stories were similar. In Oak Ridge, nuclear installations perpetrated the largest mercury pollution event in world history -- 4.2 million pounds, declassified on May 17, 1983.
In 2006, our city of St. Augustine polluted our Old City Reservoir, where people bass-fished and swam for decades. Violating St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) orders -- dumping even after criminal investigators arrived Feb. 27.
Former EPA Regional Administrator John Hankinson calls the city's coquina lake "an open sore straight down to the aquifer/groundwater."
Current City Commissioners ran as reformers, promising not to "rubber-stamp" City Manager William Harriss. Now they're on his team, junketing to NYC, Spain and Germany.
Amid a criminal investigation, commissioners in March presented Harriss an award, expressing "confidence", later terming dumping a "mistake."
Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) photos show bedsprings, tanks, old refrigerators, pipes, electrical cable, toilets, metal, plastic, asphalt -- 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted contaminants from our city's old illegal dump on Riberia Street -- dumped in water.
That's enough to fill in six Olympic size swimming pools six-feet-deep (or cover a football field 11.2 feet).
On Feb. 24, Mayor George Gardner told me that he was told that the dumping was "clean fill." Even if that were true, it would have been illegal, violating SJRWMD's orders. Furthermore, "there are no bedsprings in clean fill," as retired EPA regulator John Marler says.
Our city's secrecy and 20,000-cubic-yards of unpermitted water pollution symbolizes a crisis of spirit.
Just how secretive?
Our city refuses to web-post commission agenda-packet documents on its Web site, unpersuasively claiming it's "too expensive." What dupery and flummery. St. Johns County Commissioners and SJRWMD web-post such documents. Congress and legislature web-post bills/reports.
Our city is too secretive. We need government watchdogs.
That's why SJRWMD, Miami-Dade County, state and federal agencies all have independent inspectors general. Our city and county need them, too. We need open national searches for the next city manager (with annual performance evaluations).
What other reforms should we consider?
Let's protect employees against retaliation, protecting the flow of information. Let's investigate our city's $45 million budget. Let's remedy its lack of planning. Let's reform purchasing. We need more competitive bidding and energy conservation. Can we start buying gasoline intelligently; by long-term contract (not spot market phone quotes)?
Can we use hybrid vehicles and recycled cooking oil fuels instead of diesel (like SJC)? Can we use GPS monitoring for vehicles?
Time-Warner cable TV's city franchise expired in 2004. Can we seek better deals, including wireless internet (WiFi) to attract sophisticated visitors and small businesses? City Commissioners voted a questionable new 10-year lease, ignoring public hearing witnesses -- every single one of whom testified against Time Warner.
Traffic snarls our city. Time to discuss trolley cars, as in 1920s? Our city gets only about $50,000 in federal grants annually; it missed the deadline for a $1 million state grant to fix City Hall/Lightner's roof. Can we do better to preserve history and promote heritage tourism?
Commissioners voted for stripmall/condos north of SAHS, preserving only part of a 3,000- to 4,000-year-old archaeological site. The developer-consultant's archeology report wasn't first provided to government archeologists.
Let's preserve 10,000 years of history with an emerald necklace of parks.
JFK said, "a rising tide lifts all boats." Let's help create good jobs; raising living standards. Let's consider a Living Wage ordinance, like other Florida jurisdictions.
Let's respect/protect diversity and human rights/lives with equality/ fairness in hiring/services and disaster planning -- including evacuation help and pet-friendly shelters.
America was founded to put people first. "We the people" are sovereign. We deserve "government of the people, by the people and for the people," in Lincoln's words.
Ask questions. Demand answers. Expect democracy. See www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Think globally, act locally.
Help change history right here in our Nation's Oldest City. Let's elect reformers (and watchdog them).
St. Augustinians get to overthrow our government every two years.
(Slavin is a former practicing attorney and a frequent and outspoken critic of city policies and politics).
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/062506/opinions_3656546.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Letter: End tyranny, waste in our Oldest City
Letter: End tyranny, waste in our Oldest City
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 07/04/06
Editor: I strongly agree with Ed Slavin's June 25 column, "St. Augustine: We can make it much better."
Congratulations to The Record for its recent journalism prizes, particularly reporter Kati Bexley's investigative story on the New York City junket by five commissioners, the city manager and their spouses and significant others.
Our city of St. Augustine has so much to be proud of ñ our people, nature, beauty, schools, music, art, culture, scholars and history.
It's a tragedy that our city government so poorly serves our city's people. It discriminate against African-Americans and gays, while refusing to discuss a Living Wage Ordinance. It rubber-stamps sweetheart contracts and wastes money on junkets to New York City, Germany and Spain.
Since I moved to St. Augustine, I've noticed apathy is ending. It's about time.
A bit of our city's soul died earlier this year when our city manager and his cronies polluted our Old City Reservoir with the contents of the old illegal city landfill.
Ed Slavin blew the whistle on the pollution, reporting it to the U.S. government's National Response Center; which referred it to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; which began a criminal investigation.
I've known Ed Slavin for 17 years. In 1983, as a young weekly newspaper editor, Ed obtained the Department of Energy's declassification of the world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Ed has helped reform the nuclear weapons complex and other tyrannies, holding governments and corporations accountable and investigating abuses of power for three decades.
Ed has rightly been speaking out on St. Augustine city government issues.
We must protect the rights of our citizens and government employees and end the tyranny and waste at City Hall.
As Ed said in this column, we get to "overthrow" our city government "every two years."
Register and vote.
See www.cleanupcityof staugustine.blogspot.com.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070406/opinions_3930124.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 07/04/06
Editor: I strongly agree with Ed Slavin's June 25 column, "St. Augustine: We can make it much better."
Congratulations to The Record for its recent journalism prizes, particularly reporter Kati Bexley's investigative story on the New York City junket by five commissioners, the city manager and their spouses and significant others.
Our city of St. Augustine has so much to be proud of ñ our people, nature, beauty, schools, music, art, culture, scholars and history.
It's a tragedy that our city government so poorly serves our city's people. It discriminate against African-Americans and gays, while refusing to discuss a Living Wage Ordinance. It rubber-stamps sweetheart contracts and wastes money on junkets to New York City, Germany and Spain.
Since I moved to St. Augustine, I've noticed apathy is ending. It's about time.
A bit of our city's soul died earlier this year when our city manager and his cronies polluted our Old City Reservoir with the contents of the old illegal city landfill.
Ed Slavin blew the whistle on the pollution, reporting it to the U.S. government's National Response Center; which referred it to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection; which began a criminal investigation.
I've known Ed Slavin for 17 years. In 1983, as a young weekly newspaper editor, Ed obtained the Department of Energy's declassification of the world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Ed has helped reform the nuclear weapons complex and other tyrannies, holding governments and corporations accountable and investigating abuses of power for three decades.
Ed has rightly been speaking out on St. Augustine city government issues.
We must protect the rights of our citizens and government employees and end the tyranny and waste at City Hall.
As Ed said in this column, we get to "overthrow" our city government "every two years."
Register and vote.
See www.cleanupcityof staugustine.blogspot.com.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/070406/opinions_3930124.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
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