In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Our St. Johns County Commission lacks courage, other than our 5th District Commissioner, I. Henry Dean. At least 92 St. Johns County residents have died from COVID-19. Our Commissioners have shown a Negative Profile in Courage in the face of their own ideological perversions, shared by the Ignoranti, who disdain science and worship at the profane altar of DJT. Enough. Commission needs to enact a mask requirement and sponsor PSAs.
Stuart Korfhage's name was misspelled online today in an insert and link into his valedictory column.
After 20 years of service to our community, its Establishment and real estate speculators, GANNETT manageers in Texas and New York could not spell our soon-to-be-ex-Managing Editor's name correctly.
See Stuart's column, below.
The gauche, louche GANNETT disorganization added an extra "p" in his surname:
He worked for the Record for 20 years and they cannot spell his name right!
These same GANNETT mis-managers have slashed the Sunday opinion section to one page, and slashed local news to where the St. Augustine Record looks like a bastardized version of USA Today, yet another pretty McPaper, with rapidly rising prices and declining subscribers.
So little do Japanese SoftBank, Fortress Investments and the other absentee owners care about local newspapers that they have continued the bloodletting.
At least GANNETT offered Stuart Korfhage a buyout, after ten months as Managing Editor.
His predecessor, Craig Richardson, got a raw deal and was wrongfully fired in 2019. I hope he sues.
Richardson's predecessor, Kathy Nelson, was utterly unqualified and was righty fired. She wrote slavishly in support of Sheriff DAVID SHOAR after she accused The New York Times of "parachuting in" with its investigation of the September 2, 2010 murder of Michelle O'Connell in the home of Deputy Jeremy Banks.
Like Nelson and Richardson, Stuart Korfhage was uncritical of Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994. Like other journalistic prostitutes at home and abroad, they dishonored a great profession.
(more)
EDITORIALS
After 20 years, Record Managing Editor Stuart Korfhage says goodbye
Although I’ve written a few columns over the years, one thing I’ve always tried to remember about being a journalist is that the story isn’t about me.
In the thousands of stories I have written for The Record in my 20-plus years here, I’ve mostly kept to that rule. And, frankly, it’s been pretty easy because the people in this community are pretty darn interesting. And you’ve been wonderfully generous with your time as well as your sometimes very personal details.
This is my time to say thank you for making yourselves accessible and sometimes vulnerable to allow me to tell your stories. Thank you for trusting me to properly share a glimpse of the people you have loved or the ideas that you’re sharing publicly for the first time.Thank you for your patience when I haven’t gotten it completely right, but was at least willing to correct my mistakes.
Thank you for understanding when I’ve had to delve into a subject that you would have rather kept private.
If you haven’t sensed it yet, this is my very slow way of saying goodbye to the readers of The Record.
In just a couple of days, I’ll hand in my laptop and head out into the world as something other than an employee of The Record. It will be the first time in more than two decades that I won’t be part of the organization.
It’s been an interesting ride. I’ve been allowed to do so many different things.
I got to watch a kid named Tim Tebow grow from a man-child on local high school fields to the Heisman Trophy winner in New York City.
I covered the Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and Little League All-Star games.
Over my career here, I’ve covered a gas station explosion, trials for those accused of awful crimes and political campaigns going up and going nowhere.
And it’s all been tremendously interesting. (Well, some of it was really dull, I’ll admit. But I tried to squeeze out the few interesting bits for the readers. I won’t pretend all of those three-hour meetings I covered were interesting, only the end results.)
I wish I had the gift of writers like my friend Jim Sutton — who hired me back when we were young — of sharing some hilarious anecdote about my work. I’m much better at telling other people’s stories.
What I do remember about starting at The Record is that my first impression of the whole operation was less than flattering.
I started at the old building on Cordova Street, which was truly horrifying inside. When I walked in for my initial interview, I nearly turned around and said, “Never mind.”
That’s not a joke. It was the worst building I’d ever thought of working in. The computers they were using appeared to be from the year I was born, and the paper’s design was so bad that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.
But whatever. St. Augustine seemed like a decent place, and this was just going to be a stepping stone. It’s not like I was ever going to be editor or something.
Then, whoosh. Twenty years just went by and here we are. I might not have made it to the status of Margo Pope or Sutton or Anne Heymen, but I did outlast every other journalist who was in the office that day in 2000, and lots of them who came afterward.
For that, I don’t want or deserve any congratulations. I stayed because I loved what I did. Still do.
I stayed because of the way this community embraced me.
And although I’m leaving The Record, I’m not leaving St. Augustine. So if you see me around town, come up and say hello. If I wrote about you at some point, but I can’t remember your name, let me apologize now. My memory is imperfect, so you might have to jog it.
Finally, if you’re thinking of a story you read in the paper and wondering if I wrote it, just tell me if you liked it.
If the answer is yes, then yep, I wrote it. That’s the story I’m going with.
We are wishing St. Augustine Record Managing Editor Stuart Korfhage well in his life after Chain Gang Journalism at GANNETT.
I heard this program last month on NPR and my heart leaped with joy. Listen to the interview, or read the transcript. NPR's Living On Earth has been doing an excellent job for here decades. From LOE website:
John Kerry Cochairs Biden Climate Plan
Air Date: Week of October 2, 2020 stream/download this segment as an MP3 file
Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden speaking with Iowa voters. (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Joe Biden is offering a $2 trillion climate plan as part of his presidential campaign’s “Build Back Better” economic recovery agenda. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, cochair of the Biden Climate Task Force, joins Host Steve Curwood to talk about how the Biden campaign is connecting its climate ambitions with public health crises and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They also discuss Joe Biden’s stances on nuclear energy and fracking, President Trump’s lack of climate leadership, and the urgency of voting with climate in mind this November.
Transcript
CURWOOD: During this presidential campaign we’ve invited Joe Biden and Donald Trump to come on the show or send a surrogate to discuss their positions on climate change. The Trump campaign has yet to respond to repeated requests but John Kerry, former Secretary of state and himself a democratic nominee for president in 2004 joins us now on behalf of the Biden campaign. Along with New York democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Secretary Kerry cochaired the Biden-Sanders climate unity task force. This task force crafted a $2 trillion climate plan for Biden which aims to achieve a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than mid-century. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Secretary Kerry!
KERRY: Happy to be with you. Thanks for having me.
CURWOOD: Secretary Kerry, how important do you consider Joe Biden's $2 trillion climate change plan is to the campaign as a whole?
Former Vice President Joe Biden speaking with Secretary of State John Kerry in the Oval Office in October 2014. (Photo: Pete Souza, Official White House Photo)
KERRY: Critical. Absolutely critical because when he is elected, he is going to be facing the biggest economic crisis we've had since Franklin Roosevelt in 1932; I think the Vice President knows that. So building back from COVID-19, and from the position we find ourselves in will be hugely advantaged by building out a energy grid, by doing what we need to do to incentivize the shift to electric, to solar, to wind, to hydrogen. There are huge options available to us that will kick the economy into gear. And the Vice President is deadly serious about getting government to focus on this, but he doesn't view it as the whole solution. The private sector has got to step up; innovation, development, research, infrastructure, those are the key elements. And they happen to be the key elements of recovery, too.
CURWOOD: How excited are you about this? You've been concerned about the climate for decades, literally. How does the, the Biden plan compare to your vision of what you think needs to be done?
KERRY: I think it's the best, detailed, climate plan, climate crisis agenda that has been put forward by any Presidential candidate to date. And I'm extremely excited about it, because I see in it leadership restored for America on an international basis, I see in it our dealing with a whole bunch of Americans who've been on the wrong end of environmental decisions for a long period of time. You look at the problem in the Bronx, for instance, of environmentally induced asthma. The biggest cause of children being hospitalized in America in the summer, is environmentally induced asthma. And part of it is because diesel trucks get routed through communities that don't have the political power to resist; more often than not, minority communities. And so he'll be addressing a whole group of concerns for the average citizen in our country that can be addressed through a combined economic government--private sector partnership. I mean, Joe Biden is talking not just about $2 trillion for infrastructure development, but he's going to make sure we have carbon free power by the year 2035. That's an ambitious but achievable target. And he's going to work with the power companies, utilities and others to achieve that. He is going to have 500 million solar panels that are going to be deployed during the course of five years. Transition of buses, from internal combustion engine to electric. I mean, there are many, many different things we can do. And nobody, none of your listeners, I hope, will sit there and say, Well, wait a minute, that, that's, that's going to hurt the economy, that's going to cost me my job. No! No, no, it's not! It's going to, in fact, lower the price of goods over time, it's going to provide tens of millions of jobs in our country alone. And it is going to provide the ability to be able to have better quality of life because there'll be less particulates in the air, less emissions -- which are pollution. Emissions is too nice a word for pollution. People don't want to breathe dirty air and drink, you know, polluted water. And the reality is that that's what we've been doing for years because we haven't been paying attention.
Former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden discuss solar energy in Denver, Colorado. Biden calls for installing 500 million solar panels within five years. (Photo: Pete Souza, Official White House Photo)
CURWOOD: Right now, I think it's fair to say that a lot of environmental activists are very concerned about the general election, want to see Vice President Biden elected. But the day after he takes office, they're going to look at your climate plan, which has fracking, nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, things that some environmental activists have said over the years are steps backwards instead of forwards.
KERRY: Steve, it leaves the possibility of nuclear power, it doesn't have nuclear power, it just doesn't eliminate it. And if the next generation of modular power plants can prove they are economical, and they solve the problems of meltdown and waste, they may earn themselves a place at the table. What Joe is doing is not eliminating automatically things, because it is zero emissions. If somebody comes up with a way of doing it safe, sound, deliverable, priced right, I think a lot of people would embrace it. We have 20% of our power today in America is nuclear; 70% of France's power is nuclear. So I think it's a question of not eliminating. So his first choice is solar, wind, renewables, alternative, move in a clean direction. Now on the fracking, what he has said is, on existing fracking, that is in private land, he's not going to interfere with the already existing levels, partly because we need the natural gas as a transition fuel as we move into the new technologies. And we can't just cut it off today or tomorrow, and I think reasonable people understand that. So we have to have this transition period, but we have to do it fast enough that we're not cutting our throats while we're in the sort of delay period, we got to move rapidly. That's what Joe Biden understands.
Joe Biden discussed his clean energy ideas at the Moving America Forward Forum on infrastructure in Las Vegas, Nevada in February 2020. (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
CURWOOD: But what about more infrastructure for, for natural gas, for fracking?
KERRY: So that's dangerous. I'm not for building up, I personally would, would not want to see us build a whole lot of new infrastructure. Because then as you make the transition, the pressures will come, as they automatically do, politically, "hey, you know, we can't transition our jobs, etc," number one. And number two, you'll have what you call stranded assets, which the economy doesn't want to do, I mean you want to try to minimize that exposure. So we're doing it, but people need to embrace the possibilities of transitioning and providing many more new jobs, better jobs, that actually help us solve this crisis.
CURWOOD: To what extent does the Biden climate plan look at both forestry here in the United States, but perhaps more importantly, at forests around the world as a way to cope with the climate emergency?
KERRY: The reality is the Biden plan is focused on agriculture, regenerative agriculture, it's focused on building out what we call sinks. Sinks are those things or places where carbon dioxide gets consumed. The ocean is a sink, carbon dioxide, maybe 50, 60% of our heat and carbon goes into the ocean. It's a great storage center. Well, so is the rainforest in Amazon. And Joe Biden has called for practices by other countries that are going to respect the international goals here of sustainability, and sustainability requires us to protect those forests. But his largest priority will remain getting all nations, particularly developed nations, back to and beyond the Paris Agreement. I had the privilege of leading our negotiations in Paris, and I can tell you that what helped make that happen was bringing China to the table, working with India, working with Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, other countries. We exercised, I think, strong diplomacy, strong leadership. In the end, 196 countries signed on to that agreement. Only Donald Trump, he's the only President in the whole world who has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. And he has done so without any scientific rationale. He's done so, in fact, lying to the American people about the burden that it put on America, when in fact, the program that we adopted was written by Americans, for Americans, including Fortune 500 companies, Big Oil, they were all at the table. The largest companies in America helped to write our plan. And it does not place a burden on America, it places before us a huge opportunity.
On Earth Day, April 22, 2016, then US Secretary of State John Kerry signed the Paris Agreement at the United Nations as his granddaughter Isabelle looked on. Just over a year later, President Trump announced he was withdrawing the US from the landmark climate change agreement. (Photo: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
CURWOOD: The other day, China announced a goal of going carbon neutral by 2060. How could a new administration rebuild the US-China relationship to lead the world on setting strong climate targets? Because, 2060 is necessary, but not sufficient, I would think.
KERRY: I couldn't agree with you more. I welcome the fact that they've taken awareness of it and that they've targeted 2060. But that doesn't work. It doesn't work for the rest of the world. China is about to bring online, some 21 Gigatons of coal-fired power. That doesn't work for us, doesn't work for the whole world. It may work for China in the short term, but it's not even going to work for China in the long term. We worked very effectively with China during the Obama-Biden administration. And Joe Biden has a very strong relationship with President Xi. He knows how to be tough, but he also knows how to get things done. Unlike President Trump, who hasn't gotten anything done with them, except to raise the decibels and wind up making food products much more expensive for American farmers and making those, those farmers' lives quite difficult over the last three years.
CURWOOD: Let me ask you about a coalition that you called World War Zero, just a couple of months before the coronavirus pandemic hit; remind me of World War Zero's mission and how the pandemic has now reshaped your on the ground work.
KERRY: World War Zero is a group that we brought together on a bipartisan basis. I was working with former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, with former Governor Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey, with former defense secretaries, Senators Bill Cohen and Chuck Hagel. A whole bunch of people came together saying, we've got to talk differently about climate change, crisis. We can't be polarized. And we can't let actions we know we need to take be prevented because we can't build a majority for this. So we came together with a view to trying to help people realize, as unlikely allies -- I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Kerry, these folks, they're unlikely allies. But they are allies on this climate crisis. And they came together to urge people to vote. We're not telling people how but we're trying to urge people that climate crisis is worth finding the person that you think is going to do something about it. And we're asking you to vote for that person. So it's World War Zero -- it's World, because the whole world has to be at the table involved in this. It's War, because, unfortunately, some people have decided to declare war on science, war on facts, war on evidence. And we're going to push back against that. And it's Zero, because zero is the target figure we must reach by 2050, we have to have a net zero carbon economy, and frankly, I think sooner than that. And we've had many, many, many digital conversations with people, we've had incredible learning sessions where we've had different scientists, we had a glaciologist the other day talking about what's happening to Greenland and Antarctica, and we're trying to help inform people, so they can go out and make an informed vote. But the key, the key is this: in 2016, when Trump was elected, only 55.6% of eligible Americans decided to go vote. That's horrible in a democracy. And the truth is that of the young people, 18 to 25, only 19% went to vote. So if we're going to win our future, if we're going to make our democracy work, you got to vote. Vote climate, and vote for people, whatever party or walk of life they're in, who are going to help us address this crisis.
Supporters at a phone bank at Joe Biden's presidential campaign office in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
CURWOOD: John Kerry is former Secretary of State and cochair of candidate Joe Biden's climate task force. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today, Mr. Secretary.
KERRY: My honor to be with you, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
I'm grateful to our Founding Fathers that our U.S. Constitution worked, again.
I'm grateful that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will soon restore honor and dignity to our White House.
I'm grateful that true-blue Democratic patriots have succeeded in raising the bar on energetic, ethical, well-organized political campaigning. I'm grateful for all the local letter-writers whose opinions have graced the St. Augustine Record this year.
I'm grateful that Americans, in our righteous wrath, fired President Trump, by vote of 306-232 in the Electoral College, a popular vote margin of 51% to 47.2%, a decisive margin -- six million votes! President-elect Biden received some 80,000,000 votes, a record. .
Trump also set a record -- 22,510 false and misleading statements. To Trump: you're fired!
The Butcher's Bill for Trumpery on COVID-19: 92 St. Johns County residents dead, 18,156 Floridians dead and more than 260,000 Americans dead.
I'm thankful that America will soon lead the world again on climate change and human and civil rights.
I'm grateful that our Federal courts, like other professionals, honored their oaths under Article VI of our Constitution.
I'm grateful for our independent judiciary. Ronald Reagan spoke on television to the Soviet people, "Go into any American courtroom and there will preside an independent judge, beholden to no government power." Courts repeatedly rejected Trump's illegal, hare-brained and corrupt schemes.
I'm grateful for The New York Times, The Washington Post and other news media, which still serve as watchdogs, not lapdogs, reporting without fear or favor about government and corporate abuses of power and exposing misinformation/propaganda.
Attorney General Robert Kennedy said that "If the First Amendment were written in the style of Saint Paul, it would have said, "But the greatest of these is speech."
At Thanksgiving 2020, we shall celebrate democracy, with an attitude of gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving!
Under the incoming St. Johns County Sheriff, Robert Hardwick:
Body cameras will be adopted, starting with one shift. St. Augustine Police have body cameras now, too. 9Sheriff DAVID SHOAR had rejected body cameras, saying he "rejected the false narrative that cops need to be watched." The author of the Michelle O'Connell homicide coverup, SHOAR is retiring on December 31, 2020.o
Top SJSO executive officers are being down-sized from 22 to five highly-paid apparatchiks.
Those apparatchiks who remain are now expected to show up for early morning staff meetings, at 6:30 am and 7:00 am. They're being expected to put in a day's work for a day's pay. No more slothful sinecures for glorified political patronage hires and janissaries.
There will be an equestrian division, with horses trained at crowd control, perhaps obtained from the City of New Orleans.
At least four employees will not be sworn in when the new Sheriff is sworn in.
UnderSheriff MATTHEW DANIEL CLINE is out, but could remain as lawyer. The 2003 graduate of a failing for-profit law school, mendacious MATTHEW CLINE was most noted for his creepy, overbearing, lying, bullying ways, as demonstrated on Jeffrey Marcus Gray's video, shared by The New York Times in 2017.
MATTHEW DANIEL CLINE did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment for this story.
MATTHEW DANIEL CLINE was not even qualified to wear a gun and a badge, but the insolent, insipid CLINE was empowered with a sinecure by insecure St. Johns County DAVID SHOAR as consigliere and Under Sheriff.
CLINE was an assistant State's Attorney for RALPH JOSEPH LARIZZA, and was then hired as General Counsel by Sheriff SHOAR. CLINE was made UnderSheriff in 2015.
In his jobs at SJSO, MATTHEW CLINE was hostile to public participation and public records requests. CLINE was stiff-necked, unfriendly, unsupervised and authoritarian and even supercilious in speaking to County Commissioners, like a "mini-me" of corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994.
Cashiering CLINE from the Under Sheriff job is a good sign that soon-to-be Sheriff Robert Hardwick is an ethical man.
Unctuous, unethical, uncouth, unkind UnderSheriff CLINE was among the generous contributors to Hardwick's campaign.
At least $3000 was contributed to Hardwick's campaign by Mr. Cline, his wife, Dr. Shelby Harper Cline, M.D., and her pediatric medical practice.
The Cline contributions got him no kid gloves treatment.
Other David Shoar henchmen who covered up the Michelle O'Connell case are sweating bullets tonight.
Yes, there's a new Sheriff in town.
Sheriff Robert Hardwick takes office on January 1, 2021.
As of this morning, November 24, 2020, this blog has had more 4,000,000 page views.
Founded in 2006, this blog has helped turn over rocks here in St. Augustine and St. Johns County, Florida, a place that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "the most lawless" in America.
Thank you!
This blog has now had more than four million measured page views since 2005.
Soon to be ex-President DONALD JOHN TRUMP planning to spend time at Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach effective January 20, 2021 at Noon. Construction modifications are reportedly underway.
Mar-a-Lago is a private club, not a legal residence. TRUMP has allegedly violated the deal with local officials, and, without relief, he would be residing there illegally, a possible violation of local codes.
Also, TRUMP's Mar-a-Lago Club is owned by a corporation and is commercial property, subject to creditors' ordinary collection proceedings, should litigation ever result in remedial relief for plaintiffs.
It is not a homestead property under Florida asset protection law, which is Article X, Section 4 of Florida's Constitution.
Mar-a-Lago is not exempt from execution of civil judgments under Federal and Florida Rules of Civil Procedures.
If a civil or criminal RICO suit goes against him, he could wind up losing his waterfront property in West Palm Beach.
Article X, Section 4 Florida Constitution
SECTION 4. Homestead; exemptions.— (a) There shall be exempt from forced sale under process of any court, and no judgment, decree or execution shall be a lien thereon, except for the payment of taxes and assessments thereon, obligations contracted for the purchase, improvement or repair thereof, or obligations contracted for house, field or other labor performed on the realty, the following property owned by a natural person:
(1) a homestead, if located outside a municipality, to the extent of one hundred sixty acres of contiguous land and improvements thereon, which shall not be reduced without the owner’s consent by reason of subsequent inclusion in a municipality; or if located within a municipality, to the extent of one-half acre of contiguous land, upon which the exemption shall be limited to theresidence of the owner or the owner’s family;
(2) personal property to the value of one thousand dollars.
(b) These exemptions shall inure to the surviving spouse or heirs of the owner.
(c) The homestead shall not be subject to devise if the owner is survived by spouse or minor child, except the homestead may be devised to the owner’s spouse if there be no minor child. The owner of homestead real estate, joined by the spouse if married, may alienate the homestead by mortgage, sale or gift and, if married, may by deed transfer the title to an estate by the entirety with the spouse. If the owner or spouse is incompetent, the method of alienation or encumbrance shall be as provided by law.
Maladroit owner of some 261 newspapers slashes staff and local news. eliminates two-page Sunday Opinion section. These profiteers don't give a fig about St. Augustine, Florida:
