Good Morning Key West

District 2 Conspiracy – Florida Keys

Sloan — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:09:56 +0000

The accused

The editorial in today’s Key West Citizen (keysnews.com) leans strongly toward the county government taking over and operating Mosquito Control because of runaway spending and infighting there.

When I ran against District 2 County Commissioner George Neugent four years ago (he’s the fellow above in the coat and tie), I was asked at a candidate forum if the County should take over Mosquito Control? New to county politics, having only run for Mayor of Key West in 2003, I said I thought we ought to get rid of Mosquito Control because I felt the poison used to kill mosquitoes was more dangerous than the mosquitoes. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, as George leaned over and whispered to me, “That sure would create a lot of affordable housing.”

Maybe part of what prompted me to say that was I lived on Little Torch Key, next to a federal wildlife refuge, and despite a Mosquito Control truck spraying my street and neighborhood twice a week, I had a healthy host of mosquitoes lurking around my home, anxious for me to spend time working in my yard and gardens. The skeeters weren’t so bad during the cooler months, but during the warmer months, when it rained more, as far as I was concerned, whatever Mosquito Control was putting out was a waste of time and money; and for all I knew, the skeeters loved and thrived on it. Maybe also clouding my judgment was I remembered many times back in the sixties and seventies, when I would be out in a my father’s skiff stalking bonefish on the flats on the inside of Lower Matecumbe Key, and a DC 3 would fly over and spray me with DDT. I remember learning later that DDT wasn’t very good for people, or for birds.

Anyway, when the very same question was asked this year at a candidate forum, this time to all county commission candidates, I was amused by all of the others candidates all saying they were not going to touch that one; leave Mosquito Control under the control of an elected Mosquito Control Board. Not capable of following suit, I told the story of what had happened four years prior, and said maybe bringing Mosquito Control under the control of the County would be a good idea. When I took out after Mosquito Control and Ed Fussel’s salary, and praised Mosquito Control Board member Dick Ruddel, at a Finnegan’s Wake candidate forum in Key West some time later, I got several loud ovations.

At a later Finnegan’s Wake candidate, the ovation began with dropped jaws and stunned looks, when I told the audience, if they didn’t vote for George Neugent in the Republican primary, they needed to go in and have their heads and assess and other parts of them examined. I then told of my having learned on and near Big Pine Key of serious difficulties George’s Republican opponent Danny Coll was having with his NAPA business, and that was why they should vote for George. As the forum progressed and I got to say more, the loud ovations and calls for more resumed.

I ran into Citizen reporter Tim O’Hara at yesterday afternoon’s County Commission meeting in Key West. Tim said he was hearing Democrats were upset because George Neugent and I got together and conspired to close the District 2 County Commission Republican primary, when I filed to run. Tim said Democrats wanted to have a choice between George and Danny Coll, and do not consider me a serious candidate.

I laughed, asked, “Why didn’t the Democrats field their own candidate?” Question rhetorical. I continued. “Tell your Democrat friends I asked that question.” I continued. “Tell the stupid mother fuckers they could have registered as Republicans, they had about six weeks to do it after I filed to run and closed the Republican primary only to Republicans.” “Tell them I said I wouldn’t have come out for George against Danny, if I had not learned what I did about Danny.” I continued. “Tell them to call me and I will tell them why they did not want to vote for Danny Coll.” I continued, “Who are these Democrats going to vote for? They don’t like George and they don’t like me.” I asked again, “Why didn’t the Democrats field their own candidate?” I wanted to ask, but the devil stopped me, ”Was Danny Coll really a Democrat in Republican attire?”

I wrote probably a dozen posts saying why Danny Coll was not ready to be a county commissioner. But do the Democrats Tim O’Hara has been listening to want to know about that? Tim O’Hara gets all of my posts. Did he read any of the posts I wrote about Danny Coll? Maybe Tim will forward this one to these Democrats he knows who are upset because they didn’t get to choose between two Republican candidates. I bet the National Democratic Party would be tickled pink to hear about that, and about the local Democratic party not fielding a candidate this year to run for the District 2 seat. The Democrats didn’t field a candidate for the District 2 seat in 2006, either. Nor did they field a candidate for the District 4 county commission seat this year, where two Independents filed and closed that Republican primary and nobody ever howled foul about that.

Listen up, Keys people. There is no way God would let me be talked into running by George Neugent, or by anyone. The plain fact is, God wanted George and me to face off again. Why, I haven’t a clue, but that is what God wanted and that is what you have. If you don’t like it, lodge your complaint Upstairs, and may God have mercy on your souls because I just don’t have it in me after all these many years of telling you I run for office because God tells me to run, or else, and nobody ever believed me.

Sloan Bashinsky

political advertisement, approved and paid for by the God-made-me-do-it candidate for the District 2 seat on the County Commission

There is a cuddly warm fuzzy Stand Up for Animals post today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com. Click its hyperlink to get there.

You can reach me at keysmyhome@hotmail.com.

The Road Less Traveled by, and Then Some . . .

Sloan — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:40:35 +0000

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

A question from Sancho Panza about the poem in yesterday’s A Calling to Serve – Florida Keys post:

“SHANGHAIED”

“A calling to serve carries its own wisdom,
which legitimates both the calling and the serving
so that the two are one:
Only the one called to serve
can know this wisdom,
and for some who are called
the knowing comes easily,
while for others the knowing is a fiery baptism.”

Were you channeling Kahil Gibran? “The Prophet”!

My reply:

Maybe. I read two biographies about Gibran in the early 1990s: one by his American mistress and confidant, and secretary, I think, who was with him when he lived in New York; the other by a fellow Lebanese man, who acknowledged the New York woman in his treatment, but focused mostly on Gibran’s impact on Lebanon when he still lived there and was inciting the Lebanese people to chart their own destiny, free from foreign influence and, maybe I don’t recall correctly, free from monarchy.

The Lebanese biographer acknowledged “The Prophet” and other of Gibran’s later published works, but did not view them as important for Lebanon, again as I recall. The American woman told about Gibran the man, and of his waiting a long time, at his mother’s suggestion, to publish ”The Prophet,” and of his having had to leave Lebanon for his own safety, due to his earlier writings. She also described his serving as a spiritual teacher to people who came to see him and of his and her relationship’s different aspects. He died young, in his fifties, as I recall. And I don’t think he ever returned to Lebanon, again as I recall.

I was deeply moved by both biographies, and, of course, who would not be moved by reading “The Prophet.” However, it was not the poem, ”Shanghied,” which I used in today’s post, that reminded me of ”The Prophet” when it fell out of me. It was this poem, which I used in a post about ten days ago, entitled ”Heavy Traffic – Florida Keys,” that reminded me of ”The Prophet,” when it fell out of me in mid-April 2001, in Key West.

I know what it is to love fully,
have my heart broken by death
and by loved ones’ rejections,
Over and over again,
So I can love even more.

I know what it is to be engulfed in pain,
Awash in evil,
Terrified, enraged, despaired,
Believing God has again forsaken me,
Then be given the truth
that again makes me free.

I know what it is to doubt,
Be lost and wandering
time and time again,
Then be rescued yet again
and my faith grows deeper.

I know what it is to blindly trust,
Then be destroyed by betrayal
time and time again,
Until I trust only God.

I know what it is to have much
and be completely of this world,
Then have it all taken away
and be in the world but not of it.

I know what it is to fail in this world,
And fail and fail and fail:
The world’s greatest failure,
I can serve only God.

I know what it is to give
and give and give and give;
I cannot stop giving
because giving is receiving.

I know what it is to explain God
time after time after time again.
Something demands I keep explaining:
Maybe someone will listen,
Maybe me.

(mid-April 2001, Key West)

As I wrote in the “Heavy Traffic” post . . . ”no way I invented that poem. It was given to me, just as running for the District 2 seat this year was given to me.”

“I know what it is” fell out of me mid-morning as I sat using a Key West Library computer. I had been told before dawn, as I slept on cardboard boxes in a Fleming Street doorway, next to the local bookstore, “You will fail, but you might enter the Kingdom of God.”

After that, I was shown through experience not to expect anything I undertook/was given to me to succeed by the measure of this world. I was already on that trajectory, but after ”I know what it is” fell out of me, failure on this world seemed to become cast into stone. I understood it was a cosmic joke, dating back to the beginning of my relationship with the spirit realms, triggered by this baleful poem in early January, when I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico:

“Dear God, I do not want to die like this, failed. Please help me.” I paused, added, “I offer my life to human service.” Be careful what I ask for.

The “Shanghied” poem came about similarly, after a long, awful struggle inside of me, which you witnessed during the first few months of 2004. I filed to run for county commission as a write-in candidate. Alyson Crean, Bureau Chief of the Keynoter, wrote a splendid announcement of my candidacy — this was on the heels of my fun for mayor of Key West while recovering from the near-death experience with MRSA, living in a homeless shelter. I received a friendly letter from County Commissioner George Neugent, welcoming me into the county commission race. My opponent was the incumbent, Sonny McCoy. I knew nothing about Sonny. I did not know many people wanted him out of office, which became clear as time passed. But I never got that far.

A wealthy Key West gay man, who was very politically active behind the scenes, approached me about helping me with my campaign. He said I was head-and-shoulders above the other candidates in the Key West mayoral the year before. I was smart, thought out side the box. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, as I was inclined to think I was not to take campaign contributions or help.

I was going through another horrific break up with Patricia. I was trying to move into relationship with the woman up your way, to whom you introduced me, but she had no inclination to do inside work and was skittish as a March hare and viewed men as “males,” by her own admission; like, you know, cattle, breeding stock, handy sometimes but expendable, etc. I was being put through a crash course in the female approach to writing, which I was flunking almost every day, and my interior life felt like someone dying of cobra bite, and my external life reflected the internal. I was living in a tent in a homeless encampment populated by drunks who sometimes became violent in the middle of the night. I still had MRSA recurrences. I went around the bend into a Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde dance with my own insides.

Then, I pulled out of that county commission race. Then, I got even more screwed up and felt like I was going backwards at an increasing and terrifying rate of speed. Then, I was taken off the street through an offer to house sit a bridge friend’s rental home which was empty. Then, before dawn one morning, my fleeting honky tonk angel wife, Patricia, came in a dream, standing next to a large mountain, and said to me, “Sloan, you need to go back to Helen.” As in, Helen, Georgia, where I had summered in 2001 and 2002. Where the novel HEAVY WAIT had fallen out of me in 2001, as I was getting to know Patricia and a number of other people in and near Helen. God, I thought HEAVY WAIT was going to be made into a movie and the $$ from that would get me off the street. I seemed to have overlooked the ending of HEAVY WAIT was the poem, “I know what it is.” I also seemed to have forgotten how HEAVY WAIT ended, with the hero in a Florida prison, doing ten years for kidnapping his soul mate.

Anyway, after breakfast that June 7, 2001, morning, I got out my drawing pad and drew a mountain, with Patricia standing beside it, as I recall. A mountain I knew I was going to have to climb over, instead of go around. And then, as if on the wings of a snow white dove, I turned the finished drawing over and with a magenta Crayola, magenta was Patricia’s prime soul color in my many drawing of her back in that time, I wrote “Shanghaied” diagonally as fast as I could put it down in the back of that drawing, which was done on the diagonal, not as a rectangle. I knew ”Shanghied” was genuine because, when it became clear in the summer of 2001 that Patricia and I were going to be in item, she had a dream of a beautiful, white sailing ship of old, on which we were embarking on what she was told would be an “exotic” journey. Later interpreted, we would get our lunches handed to us plenty of times, and hour hearts ripped out, and our souls shredded, and so forth. Even as we did have truly remarkable experiences together, on this world, in the other realms.

I saw “Shanghied” as being directly tied to that ship of fools in Patricia’s dream, and I knew I was headed to Helen, and within about a week I was en route. “Shanghaied,” coupled with the “I know what it is” poem, tripled up with a poem that came out of nowhere just before I neard died of MRSA in June 2003, shortly before I ran for mayor of Key West the first time, became the tripod foundation of my life. For all I know, Kahil Gibran’s spirit influenced all three poems. I’m certain Patricia’s spirit influenced them, and I’m certain she was the Muse for every run for office I made, including this current race. I was shown in the spring of 2002 that Patricia’s soul is an emanation off the spirit that had manifested as Jesus, and, having been Judas in that life, I understood then and there why it was so pandemonious for Patricia and me as a couple. In the spirit, in my dreams, it always was/is so very different between us. But this world is so fucked up, that is, the people are so removed from their own spirit, that very little happens here that could happen, if it this species were not so mutated.

Here’s the third poem. You have seen it and the other two poems a few times in posts I have put up over the years.

I am a man.

I said,
I am a man!

What means it,
being a man?

A man is a warrior:
he lives by a code of honor,
his word is reliable,
his actions confirm his words,
his commitment is holiness,
his enemies are welcome at his hearth,
he fears but moves forward,
he cries and gets up again,
he hates but forgives,
he loves and let’s go,
he doubts but trusts God,
he’s a good friend,
he seeks resolutions,
he demands nothing,
he risks everything,
he regrets his mistakes,
he seeks to make amends,
he puts others’ welfare first,
he accepts apologies truly made,
he expects nothing back,
he lives ready to die,
he laughs when he “should” scream,
he screams when he “should” laugh,
he sings just because,
he shrugs off insults,
he learns from misfortune,
he cusses God for making him,
he wishes he was done,
he loves children and animals,
he relishes a woman’s scent,
he smiles when he’s content,
he knows God’s his master,
he walks in rainbows,
his garden is the world,
his way is nature,
he loves fishing,
his wife is his soul,
his food is life,
his pay is whatever he receives.
Yep, he’s crazy.

(early June 2003, Key West)

Whenever I think of Robert Frost’s mantra, ”I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference,” Frost remains Key West’s poet laureate, I say amen and wonder what he would think of the journey I took? I sort of have my doubts he would cotton to the road I went down nearly as well as Kahil Gibran would cotton some to it. Patricia didn’t like it all that much. Hard to blame her. And hard to imagine Kahil Gibran living on the street in Key West. Wherever those three poems ultimately came from, they came through Patricia and just for me, I sort of think.

Here’s “Shanghaied” again, to round it all out.

A calling to serve carries its own wisdom,
which legitimates both the calling and the serving
so that the two are one:
Only the one called to serve
can know this wisdom,
and for some who are called
the knowing comes easily,
while for others the knowing is a fiery baptism.
Each calling is different,
and while some callings can be declined,
others cannot,
and those whose calling is without repentance
know they are in it for the duration of the calling,
and while others may try to persuade them out of it,
the calling for ones such as these always prevails;
thus is it advised to all called for keeps
that they view their calling as a blessing
even when it seems at times to be a curse,
and that they try to reconcile the loss of their captain status
and allow the Spirit of God to man the helm of their ship,
and be glad and willing crew members thereon,
knowing that all sailing ships of souls
need a crew as well as a captain
to maintain and navigate the ship through
seas of many tones, depths and flavors;
so consider each league sailed
as part of the overall journey
going to where the captain deigns to go
by using whatever winds and sea currents available
to navigate the ship to the experiences
this ship and crew need to have
in order to fulfill their calling and its wisdom
revealed by the journey of many leagues,
many known only to the ship and its crew,
all of whom come to know,
some sooner than others,
that once conscripted
there is no safe jumping ship.

(June 7, 2004, Key West)

Sloan, the fool. What do I know, maybe the Great Poet Above has grown weary of this sport and wants the fool now to kneel and make another sort of prayer. Who can say what the Great Poet Above has in store, when this sort of poem was sent down to me around my youngest daughter’s birthday, 1994, which is April 14, the day before Uncle Sam claims his worldly due.

Only foos rush in

where angels fear to tread,

But if there were no fools,

Who’d lead the angels?

You also have seen that mad one a few times before today, Sancho.

Don Q

The laws of this dense world require me to stoop to saying this is a political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, Sloan Bashinsky, District 2 county commission candidate from some place you probably won’t find in any travel guides this world puts out . . .

There is a slightly more grubby, hopefully a bit more hilarious, road less traveled by post today at goodmoringfloridakeys.com.

You usually can reach me nowadays at keysmyhome.com, now that the aliens gave up abducting and trying to “fix” me.

A Calling to Serve – Florida Keys

Sloan — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:33:07 +0000

From yesterday’s Key West Citizen:

Have corrupt politics eroded our patriotism?

“My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country,” “Give me liberty or give me death,” “Uncommon valor was a common virtue,” “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Have these sentiments been so eroded through the years by corrupted politicians and a school curriculum that finds favor and correctness in instructing its students to feel repugnant and adverse towards their country that we have reached a point where we will settle for any old type of reckless and incompetent governance from the individuals that we put into office, simply because we want them to be our “monkey”?

Recovering from treatment to decrease some of the pain from wounds incurred in combat, I ambled along the Minute Man Trail in Lexington, Mass., where I came across a monument commemorating the patriots who were killed during the Battle of Lexington. The inscription on this stone read: “They gave all that was dear, for their country.”

Does anyone really feel that way anymore? Do any of the politicians running for office in Monroe County feel that way?

We will suffocate in our own filth, strangulating any decency that could come out of our upcoming elections, if we don’t connect with that part of ourselves that knows the difference between right and wrong. Acting courageously and intelligently will bring about the long sought after result desired by all; a responsible, clean and effective government.

There is not much wiggle room left in this county; the forces of darkness have had their way with us. Unless the sunshine dispels the remnants of past mistakes, the future will be dim.

It is time for us to rally together, delving within, to do what is right for ourselves, our children and our country.

John Donnelly

Key Largo

Dear John Donnelly,

I submit to you there is a person in the Keys who matches the description of the fugitive you seek. I submit to you that person is not a politician, however. I submit to you that you can read all about that person in the goodmorningkeywest.com archives, which begin July 2007. Maybe if you hadn’t been asleep all this time, Mr. Donnely, maybe if you had been paying any attention at all, this reply might not be necessary.

“SHANGHAIED”

Sloan Bashinsky

(June 7, 2004, Key West)

campaign advertisement, approved and paid for by a poet you never read about in Solares Hill or Key West Citizen or The Robert Frost Poetry Festival literature, perhaps because he really did take the one less traveled by and that really did make all the difference . . .

There is a slightly different version of the same theme today, a bit more down to earth, so to speak, at goodmorningfloridakeys.com. Click its hyperlink to get there, if you wish.

I can be reached most days and nights at keysmyhome@hotmail.com.

Sanity Is a Five-Letter Word – FU

Sloan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:34:20 +0000

Todd German’ German’s reply to yesterday’s Go Inside When It Rains – Florida Keys Political Madness post, which you can view by clicking on the hyperlink.

“I’d be certifiably insane, if I actually wanted to be a county commissioner, and that I do not is positive proof I am sane.” [quoting me]

Yet you are running and could be elected, hence I am back to questioning your sanity.

Even if George Neugent, as the incumbent, didn’t have Ocean Reef Club and the absentee ballots sewed up, if I thought I had a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected I would be certifiably insane. Not so insane, though, that I would not run for office after being told by the Boss to run. Now, that would be insanity the likes of which my critics could not have a snowball’s chance in hell of conceiving, because not a one of them has ever had any up close personal dealings with God. I have known many crazy people, as in, psychiatrists told them they were crazy, their family and friends and ministers told them they were crazy; but not one of those certified crazy people would ever tell God to take a hike. That’s something certified crazy people leave for their psychiatrists, family, friends and ministers to do.

When Kay Thacker told me yesterday that her residential federation on Key Largo is doing its candidate forum this year in the same cumbersome, wearing way it’s always been done, I asked why? She said, dumb me for asking, because that’s the way it’s always been done. Out of my mouth blurted, “The people of this county want to see changes in their government, but they want to keep doing things the way they have always done things. They will never see changes in their government, if they do not change.” AA and NA people cluck something like, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.”

The other day, somebody posted to the Coconut Telegraph of bigpinekey.com that he had met Kay Thacker and me, and she and I are either husband and wife or brother and sister.

Kay and I both are political activits. In that, we are alike.

Kay didn’t back me in my two previous county commission campaigns, and she told me to my face in 2008 that she didn’t think I was a serious candidate.

Kay backed David Rice in the recent Republican primary. She, along with David and George Neguent, thinks it’s wonderful that Ocean Reef Club has five taxpayer-paid deputies tied up doing nothing behind the castle walls where the peasants cannot go.

If this person on the Coconut Telegraph had actually met Kay and me, and if this person actually had a brain, then this person would know Kay and I are no more alike than this person and I are alike. Meaning, this person does not have a brain.

I think it’s time for me to resurrect the The Finger Candidate – District 2 County Commission Race post, in which I said I was going to strive to get no votes. Not a single vote, a Ripley’s Believe It or Not World Record. After reading The Finger Candidate post, Todd German called and said he found it intriguing; it reflected the mood of many Americans today toward government at all levels. I said I had not thought about that when it came to me to write the post, but he was correct. It also reflected my mood of not wanting to get one vote, not even my own.

In the next day’s post, I wrote . . . “the finger might become a very popular anti-government symbol before this is all said and done. In fact, it might become so popular that it eclipses such icons as the salute, the right hand over the heart during the Pledge of Allegiance, the bow, the curtsey and the handshake. The finger could be accompanied with quips like, ‘And the horse you rode in on,’ ‘Up yours,’ ‘Eat shit and die,’ ‘I’m also showing you your age and IQ,’ ‘Rotate on this mother fucker,’ and ‘That was the good news.’”

I keep trying to get somebody to bump me off, but so far I’m not having any luck. So I will try a different tact today. Who, but a certifiably insane person, would want to serve in an elected office in a juvenile insane asylum the size of the Florida Keys?

Meanwhile, to people on the Coconut Telegraph who were grossed out by someone who actually really does know something about MRSA writing about it and a real cure, isn’t it time for your mamas to come change your dirty diapers and clean your stinky bottoms?

The Finger Candidate

political advertisement, approved and paid for by Sloan Bashinsky, District 2 county commission candidate from the Sigmund Freud Insititute

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Go Inside When It Rains – Florida Keys Political Madness

Sloan — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:34:09 +0000

County Commissioner George Neugent

George’s reply to my recent Five Easy Pieces & Independent Tsunami – Florida Keys (click hyperlinke to see enitre post), concerning the Brown family of Cudjoe Key. George’s part is in italics.

A) I think you’re right Sloan. Having met with the family I think this is a compelling case.

2) FEMA has within its own guidelines and mandate wiggle room to make exceptions for compelling cases.

B) That, at this point in time, I have not confirmed. They have variances that apply to land elevations; as of yet, i am yet to find anything that applies to residents.

3) The Browns’ home and the downstairs enclosure were permitted, built and inspected many years before they purchased it. From the County’s code perspective, the entire home is legal.

C) That’s not completely accurate – the downstairs was permitted as a recreation room. A bedroom & other amenities were added without benefit of a permit. These illegal uses can be corrected and for the most part have been.

4) Granting the Browns a hardship conditional use variance will not open the flood gate to a horde of similar variances because, at most, there could not me more than a handful of comparable situations in the Keys.

D) I’m dealing with the Brown’s situation. I know of no other similar situation.

5) The Browns are only asking for permission for their crippled son, Darren, to be able to live in the downstairs enclosure for so long as he lives and lives in this home. The Browns are not asking for a variance that will travel with the home and land to a subsequent owner. After Darren no longer lives in the home, it will revert back to what it was before the condititional use variance was granted.

E.) And you are correct; I have insisted that a covenant would be placed on the residence a and the non-conformity(s) would have to be corrected.

I was told of the five easy pieces (my terminology) yesterday by Rory Brown, who said it is your forumula, which you gave to him. Rory also said you had said you are going to be really pissed off, if the other commisisoners don’t go along with it. I decided to leave those parts out today.

I meant to write when the house was built with the downstairs enclosure it was code legal.

Rory told me the interior changes would not have required permitting. I don’t know if that is correct, but it appears the downstairs enclosure originally permitted is what is still there; the changes made for Darren were within the same exterior/interior footprint. The Browns took out the kitchen, left the bathoom. Sounds like picking hairs to me, to argue what’s there today isn’t code legal, when what was built, with a kitchen, was county code legal.

George, you and the other four commissioners need to approve this application. Unconscionable, otherwise.

Agreed, agreed.

=================================

I spent half hour on the phone last Thurdsday with Rory Brown after he spoke with George Neugent, who is the Browns’ county commissioner because they live in his voting district. Rory drilled into me the five compelling reasons George had stated to him, which George told Rory should convince the other four commissioners to grant the Browns’ application. I published what Roy told me he had been told by George.

I told George the day after he won the Republican primary that the Browns’ case should not be a campaign issue in this year’s races. I said their application for a variance needed to be approved, and we (George and I) needed to talk about the broader issues during our District 2 race. George agreed. I said the Browns’ application should be approved quietly, and George agreed that was the best way to do it. I said it would be simple enough for county staff to be told by County Administrator Roman Gastesi to approve the Brown’s variance.

That is what George earlier had told me would have happened if the Browns had come to him initially. But after the Browns went to Key West Citizen and made their plight public, George seemed to think it could not be done quietly through Gastesi any longer, while I insisted it still could be done that way. We all know this sort of thing is done in the Keys. That it could have been done, but for the Citizen article, is proof enough of that.

Rory told me that when he and Debbie and their paralyzed son Darren met with George in his county commissioner office on Big Pine Key maybe two weeks ago, George called county staff and had a discussion about the Browns’ case. The Browns heard George’s part of the discussion but not the person’s on the other end, whom the Browns understood to be a woman county attorney, perhaps Susan Grimsley. George did not share with the Browns what the attorney said to him.

After waiting a while and not hearing anything back from George, Rory called me last Thursday, expressing concern that maybe they were being given the runaround again. I suggested he try to find out if their application for a variance was on the agenda for the September county commission meeting. Debbie called Growth Management Director Christine Hurley’s office and spoke with her aide, Mayra, who said she’d have to look into it. (The same Myara who had pushed the Browns and their lawyer, Lee Rohe, to get all of their documents and photos in, so their case could be heard by the county commissioners at the July commission meeting. The same Mayra who then contacted and Browns and told them she was mistaken, her boss had said their application was not on the July agenda, even though I’m looking at a county document showing the Browns’ application indeed was on the July commission agenda.)

Later last Thurdsay, a few hours after I had spoken with Rory and Debbie had called Mayra, I “accidently” ran into County Commissioner Kim Wigington at Coco’s Kitchen in the Big Pine Key shopping center. I told Kim that the Browns were having trouble finding out if their application was on the September commission agenda. I said the Browns were planning on being at that commission meeting anyway, with lots of their friends and supporters. They were going to insist that they be heard and given relief, whether their application was on the agenda or not. I said the Browns had spoken with Dennis Reeves Cooper, at Key West the Newspaper, who had said he was interested in their situation. I said the Browns had talked Tim O’Hara at the Citizen, who had done the first article that let George Neugent know about their plight, and Tim was readying to write another article. I said it was no accident that we (Kim and I) had met at Coco’s; the angels arranged it. The next morning, Christine Hurley called Debbie Brown and told her their application was on the September commission agenda.

Kim was the first commissioner I approached about the Browns’ application. This was just a few days before the July county commission meeting. I wanted Kim to know about the Browns and hoped she could find out why/how their application was taken off the July county commission agenda. Kim said she had never heard of the Browns and knew nothing of their being on the commission agenda and then being taken off. I still don’t know why the Browns were taken off of the July agenda, but I can’t help but wonder if it was to protect the two incumbent commissioners, George Neugent and Mario Di Gennaro, in the Republican primaries.

I also can’t help but wonder if a county commissioner was involved in removing the Browns’ from the July commission agenda. If a county commissioner indeed was involved, I am satisfied it was not George Neugent or Kim Wigington. Perhaps Christine Hurley alone made the decision. Whatever happened, the public is entitleld to know. Now that the Browns’ application is an item on the September agenda, that will be the time for the commissioners to ask Christine who was involved in removing the Browns’ application from the July commission agenda, and why it was removed.

During a nap yesterday, Kim Wigington came to me in a dream and said, “This county has done many things wrong to its citizens and now it’s time to take a stand.”

A Summerland Key snowbird, a staunch Republican and retired accountant, wrote to me about the Browns yesterday, “I agree with you, Potentate. Some bureaucrats are so used to doing things by the numbers that they don’t know enough to go inside when it rains.”

I told Rose Dell yesterday, co-owner/operator of Coco’s Kitchen, “I’d be certifiably insane, if I actually wanted to be a county commissioner, and that I do not is positive proof I am sane.”

Sloan Bashinsky, citizen and unfortunate District 2 county commisson candidate

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

MRSA Treatment & Pilgrim From the Mutant Species – Florida Keys

Sloan — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 11:28:23 +0000

MRSA skin-type staph abscess, eventually spreads leprosy-like and is fatal if untreated

From yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph page of bigpinekey.com.

[Staff Infection] Please help by telling me what is, and how to help my husband who has Mersa. What and where does this come from? Too many are getting it lately in the Keys — 12 cases!

I pulled this from Wikipedia online:

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterium responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans. It may also be called multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or oxacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (ORSA).

MRSA is, by definition, any strain of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria that has developed resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics which include the penicillins (methicillin, dicloxacillin, nafcillin, oxacillin, etc.) and the cephalosporins.

MRSA is especially troublesome in hospitals where patients with open wounds, invasive devices and weakened immune systems are at greater risk of infection than the general public.

MRSA-type skin staph infection is pandemic in the Keys. It thrives in a subtropical/tropical environment. Contrary to what many believe, MRSA is not a disease only homelees people contract in the Keys. It is widespread throughout the mainstream population also.

MRSA is contagious and can be passed by touch. It might also be able to jump from an infected to a non-infected person. Washing with soap and water is effective prevention, if you come in contact with someone presenting open MRSA sores, which are unmistakable.

If MRSA infection is internal, the patient probably should be put under a steady IV antibiotic drip for a month, or even longer, in a hospital.

MRSA nearly finished me off in the summer of 2003, after I contracted two nasty abscesses on either side of the base of my penis and one in the right side of the crack between my buttocks. Emergency surgery gouged out the abscesses, leaving horrible open non-sterile wounds. It took two months for the surgical wounds to close. I had to wash them daily and apply jells furnished by the doctor. There was no reinfection in the surgical wounds.

I was on a course of powerful antibiotics for a while. However, after stopping the antibiotics I experienced recurring abscess outbreaks in new places on my skin over the next few months, each of which outbreaks a new round antibiotics resolved but not even more new outbreaks. Eventually, the angels stopped the recurrences. More on this further along.

Flash forward to 2009. Another MRSA outbreak in an abscess on the right side of my stomach. This time I did not use medicine. Instead, I applied oil of oregano to the abscess for a few days. I got this oil at Sugar Apple health food store in Key West.

I also applied a mixture of iodine and Vaseline petroleum jelly. Iodine kills any bacteria but is too powerful to apply undiluted to abscesses, because it eats up the skin in the abscess. Vaseline jelly dilutes the iodine, keeps the wound moist and open, so it can heal from inside out. Apply the iodine/Vaseline jell directly to the abscess four times daily. Do this regardless of what a doctor tells you. Maybe best not to tell a doctor you are doing it. Do it until the MRSA abscess is entirely gone.

You can purchase Vaseline and tincture of iodine at any drugstore. Neither are expensive. Open the Vaseline container and use a spoon or table knife to remove some of the jelly. Open the bottle of iodine and pour it into the vacated space in the jelly. Use a toothpick or the table knife to work the iodine into the jelly. Do this in as little light as possible, because light weakens and even destroys the medicinal value of iodine. Keep working the iodine into the Vaseline until you have a uniform pink jelly. Then apply some of the iodine jelly to the abscess and close the container tightly and store it in a dark place, away from heat. Store the tincture of iodine in a dark place, away from heat.

There was a spiritual component with both of my MRSA outbreaks, both of which followed nasty conflict with other people. I knew via spirit means that these nasty conflicts triggered the MRSA infections in 2003 and in 2009. This is not something I would tell a doctor.

I was unable to work through the spiritual component of the 2003 MRSA skin outbreak, followed by repeated skin outbreaks. As indicated agove, angels healed the infection after I had suffered with it for about nine months and was convinced new prescriptions of antibiotics were not going to stop the recurrences. The second round of skin MRSA in 2009, I was able to work through the spiritual component and the abscess on my stomach responded to the home remedies and slowly went away and there was no recurrence.

I realize many people do not like to think in this way, but there are people who do think in this way and it is for them, mostly, that I speak of the spiritual component of MRSA. Like it or not, there is a spiritual component to most human diseases. This is so regardless of what doctors might say to the contrary. In fact, there is a spiritual component to just about everything experience, whether we like or dislike the experience. Some people are able to approach life in this way, but most people are not.

It is too bad doctors are not trained in the spiritual component of human disease. Some doctors learn about it on their own, but most do not and treat only the physical component of human disease.

The same lament can be said of psychologists, lawyers, and other help professionals. There is a spiritual component to almost all adversities human beings experience, but the methods of this world nearly always only treat the physical component.

Everything I write is aimed at both the physical and the spiritual components in the target. I never treat just the physical anymore, because there is no separation from the physical and the spiritual. As below, so above. As above, so below.

To the woman who wrote in about her husband’s MRSA, get with your husband and ask God, or whatever you believe really is in charge, to show you both what you need to see that is related to your husband’s MRSA. If it is skin MRSA, use the home remedies right away, and keep using the iodine-Vaseline jelly until the MRSA is completely gone. Also use the antibiotics your doctor prescribed. But do not rely entirely on the doctor, because he/she is treating only the physical part of the MRSA infection, and antibiotics cause their own troubles, but the iodine-Vaseline jelly only causes trouble for skin MRSA.

Whenever I get an open cut or abrasion now, I apply the iodine/Vaseline jell to it. No point in taking any chances with open wounds in this climate. I also would use iodine/Vaseline jelly on spider bite after dousing the bite in hydrogen peroxide solution as soon as possible.

Sloan Bashinsky, citizen

Photo taken last night at Parrotdise’s Friday open mic. Parrotise is a waterfront restaurant and lounge on Little Torch Key. The damsel was with a friend damsel. They asked if I had anything to do with the Coconut Telegraph? Yeah. Was I Sloan? Yeah. The damsel not in the photo asked if she could take my picture to send to her mother in Wisconsin, I think she said. She said her mother had recently started reading the Coconnut Telegraph and had made it part of her morning routine, and she had expressed interest in the crazy person who wrote stuff there. Voila, be careful what you ask for.

Postscript. Over the past few months, I have been working on several local issues that, in spirit, are MRSA infections. I will name three: the relationship between FEMA and our county government over downstairs enclosures; the Anti-Sloan, who recently was banned from the Coconut Telegraph; and Tim Gratz, Danny Coll’s campaign manager. For my involvement in those issues, I have experienced skin eruptions on my right arm and right foot, which so far did not progress to MRSA abscesses, but I am ever on guard that it might go there. As I do the work that is given to me to do with each of those issues, I receive some sort of spirit help internally with the spirit poison in these situations, which I absorb through a process beyond my mental facilities to block or effect. The poison is not all outside of me; some of it is inside of me, and the outside poison mirrors it. As I work on the outside poison, I get help with the poison living in me. This is advanced spiritual work alien to most people. Most people would run straight to a doctor. The doctor would do something. Symptomatic relief might come, but the underlying spiritual issue in the patient would not be addressed, and would manifest again, perhaps the same way, perhaps in a different fashion. Perhaps in a more severe, more dangerous way. The soul will have its expression. That is a given. What is not predictable is how the soul will express. What is predictable is using gross methods to deal with soul processes causes troubles that often are never related back to the gross treatment. The dots are never connected. This is how most people live. This is why I do not run to a doctor every time something happens to me that would cause almost everyone I know to run to a doctor. Sure, I sometimes use doctors, but only when it clearly is necessary. If I had not had the emergency surgery in 2003, I would have died, because the MRSA infection was too far advanced physically to be turned around by antibiotics. I waited to long to see a doctor about it. I thought doing the spirit work would resolve it, but I was out of my depth and was unable to do the spirit work that was necessary. More accurately, I had botched the spirit work and the consequence was the full-blown MRSA eruptions around my genitals and anus. If you guess the causative agent was a rupture in a relationship with a woman, you guessed correct. Two women, actually. I mishandled both situations, MRSA was the result. No, I did not physically abuse the women. It was a disagreement that escalated in words into sheer violence in spirit. There was no physical attack. It was all in the soul. MRSA was the result. I am always at risk to a horrible result, if I botch what is given to me to do. So I try very hard to do only what is authorized, which sometimes seems violent to other people. It even seems violent to me, but when I am satisfied it is authorized, I do it, even though I don’t want to do it; even though I know it’s going to make people really angry at me. For if I don’t do it, I get raked over the coals in my soul, which translates into severe and often terrifying physical discomfort as well. As I said, this is very advanced spiritual work. Very few people do it. It requires considerable training and considerable inside healing and change in the pilgrim who has been cut out of the herd, to be able to do it this way. The changes often are terrifying and horrible, inside the pilgrim and in outside relations. A statement of just how far away from the divine blueprint human beings have mutated. All I’m describing here is a divine intervention that was instituted in me by angels, to try to restore me to what I am supposed to be. If I were alone in having this experience, I would probably view myself as insane. However, I have known others people who have been in this experience, who knew they were in it. I have known many more people who know physical illness is rooted in spirit trouble, and going to a doctor sometimes can make things a lot worse. I have known many people who know personal troubles and relationship upheavals have spiritual roots and need to be addressed in spirit ways, if they are going to resolve in the soul. Knowing of this way of living is a big step, but living it is something else altogether. In my case, if I were not led day and night by angels, if I were left to my own mental effort and meager understanding, I would be lost. The spirit terrain simply is too tricky and difficult for his man to navigate it by his own wits. My opinion, based on many experiences with and observations of other people, the spirit terrain is too tricky and difficult for any person to navigate without angelic help. I don’t expect even one person to believe me, but that does not make it something I have imagined. It just makes it something I see and appreciate because of the experiences I have had, which the naysayers have not had.

Sloan Bashinsky

political advertisement, I suppose, approved and paid for by me, District 2 county commisison candidate from the mutant species

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Out of the Box Candidate – Florida Keys

Sloan — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:57:53 +0000

Campaign ad run by Sandy Downs last year, on her dime, in Key West the Newspaper (kwtn.com). Slightly exaggerated facsimile, it certainly spoke to the heart of untruth in political advertising.

Letter to the editor in today’s Key West Citizen:

Let’s find better way to elect our leaders

All institutions of government are constrained by evolutionary selective pressures which strongly favor incompetence. Every year, thousands of businesses go out of business. These businesses fail because they prove unable to effectively differentiate between advantageous practices and disadvantageous practices. Successful businesses select advantageous practices, which persuade customers’ voluntarily patronage, furnishing financial support to the business.The provision of voluntary financial support acts as a mechanism of natural selection favoring only those institutions which successfully differentiate between advantageous and disadvantageous practices. Removing this selective pressure from any institution, such as is the case for institutions coercing financial support from patrons by threat of incarceration for not paying “taxes,” also removes the selective pressure that favors the survival of only those institutions possessing real world competence and does not induce the failure of institutions that do not possess real world competence.Real world competence is defined here as those practices that actually prove efficacious and that the majority of people find valuable. Institutions that are not subject to such beneficial selective pressures, such as all institutions of government, accrue bad ideas and good ideas at their naturally occurring rate rather than at the rate induced by such a beneficial selective pressure which strongly favors good ideas.Since there are a hundred bad ideas for every good idea, the only protection a government agency has against adopting disadvantageous practices are the mental faculties of its leadership. As evidenced in the number of failed businesses each year, even the best businessmen often fail because the mental faculties of even well- educated men prove nearly useless in predicting real world competence.For each advantageous practice adopted by any government institution, many disadvantageous practices are accrued. Perhaps Thomas Paine already knew this when he said “government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” The answer lies not in eliminating taxes, but in a novel means of electing leadership. Our current method of election selects leaders who are good showmen, not good leaders. Jerry Wickey, Key West

From a fellow I used to work with at Godlen Flake Snack Foods, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. Mike was the bean counter/money manager’s dream. Today he lives on the Florida gulf coast and is a lot happier than when he was butting heads day and night with corporate ignorance and stupidity. Golden Flake was my father’s business. We competed head-on with Frito-Lay. I was expected to take over the helm.

———————————

O.K. Sloan… I have been following the drama of the election process in your area. I feel there are some things people there need to know that can only be revealed by someone who has worked around you and seen your actions. I feel qualified to reveal things because I worked with you during a time when you made an effort to learn things about your family’s business and make a contribution to that business. I never heard you complain about The treatment you ran into there, but you were damn sure smart enough to see it. There were people I felt had a vested interest in seeing you fail. Had you moved into the position your birthright offered, they would perhaps have not moved into the positions they moved into. This actually created the current situation in the company because no one has the power to override the decisions being made by an outsider that did not grow up in the business and a group of people who know better than to try to contradict bad decisions.

Lesson #1: There was no anger on your part in attempting to work in that bad situation. Had you been “elected” into a company you loved, it might be thriving now.

Lesson #2: Yes, you have always had some wild hairs for ideas mixed in with some good ideas. I saw some of those “wild hairs”. I also saw you search for input from other people who might be able to bring thoughts to the “wild hairs” and constructive criticism to them. Even “wild hairs” have some basis in fact and reality that should be explored. Half of a “wild hair” is often better than a full blown idea that sucks. If the Keys are to survive in any form of quality of life, SOMEBODY needs to question things. I am often amused at watching politicians practice verticle smiles because verticle is the best way to kiss ass.

Lesson 3: Never seen you with a verticle smile.

Final lesson for the guy who felt his arm had been pulled out of socket. This lesson came from my own life and thank God I learned it. I always called this “The Flat Nose Theory” because I originally intended it to explain why some women insist and persist in mouthing off at people who are too polite to tell them off, or worse. No slight is intended to women, but the contrast in learning curves is important.

Lesson 4: First, the little girls. Watch 3 little girls (perhaps ages 8-9 through 13-14)at play. They play every day. After a few hours of play, two will begin to pick on the third one until she is upset and goes home. Next day, they play again and a different two of the three eventually begin to pick on the other one. Once again, the day’s outcast runs home. Repeat…repeat…repeat. Women that mouth off unnecessarily never learned as children that there is a freedom to mouth off, but there is possibly a price to pay.

Lesson 4. Part 2: This is for the “pooooorrrrr” man who felt his arm had been pulled out of socket. Wgen I was 12 or 13, my YMCA basketball team won the right to go to the state championships with 3 (I think)other teams. We only had 9 players so we had to have a warm body to make 10 players for practice. A boy, named Butch, that was a year older than we were agreed to “help” out. He wasn’t very good, but he at least got in the way to help us practice. The problem was, he fouled us constantly. After being knocked down twice trying a layup, I yelled at him, using his secret name. “BITCH, QUIT FOULING US…IT DOESNT HELP PRACTICE!”

Oops, I used the secret name we called him behind his back. He didn’t say a word, just punched me in the nose and made it bleed. I learned a valuable lesson. I could call anyone, anything, but I had better consider consequences before I opened my mouth. The clown who was angry and mouthed off to you didn’t grow up in my neighborhood, or he would have considered his comments and then not whined at something as simple as an attempt to continue a discussion HE started.

I was 12 or 13…how old were you other guys and who punched you in the nose…think Barbara Striesand singing “Memories”!

Run hard and win Sloan. You have things to offer that are needed.

Every time I run for office, I say I am the out-of-the box candidate. Every time I run, I say if you don’t want things done differently, don’t vote for me.

Sloan Bashinsky

political advertisement approved and paid for by me, District 2 county commission candidate from some place else, a little bit more of which is somewhat further described at goodmorningfloridakeys.com today, in the Five Easy Pieces & Independent Tsunami – Florida Keys post.

I usually can be found at keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Five Easy Pieces & Independent Tsunami – Florida Keys

Sloan — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:33:59 +0000

County Commissioner George Neugent

The Brown family case, County Commissioner George Neugent’s five compelling reasons to give them relief:

1) This is a case of first impression, never before has such a compelling cry for extraordinary relief been before the Commission.

2) FEMA has within its own guidelines and mandate wiggle room to make exceptions for compelling cases.

3) The Browns’ home and the downstairs enclosure were permitted, built and inspected many years before they purchased it. From the County’s code perspective, the entire home is legal.

4) Granting the Browns a hardship conditional use variance will not open the flood gate to a horde of similar variances because, at most, there could not me more than a handful of comparable situations in the Keys.

5) The Browns are only asking for permission for their crippled son, Darren, to be able to live in the downstairs enclosure for so long as he lives and lives in this home. The Browns are not asking for a variance that will travel with the home and land to a subsequent owner. After Darren no longer lives in the home, it will revert back to what it was before the condititional use variance was granted.

There comes a time when human need takes precedence over cold government regulations and policy, and this is such a time and such a situation.

Darren was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in 2005, and is paralyzed from the chest down. He can move his arms and head and neck okay, but he requires a wheel chair to get around. This is a real injury and a real tragedy. We are not dealing here with a trumped up disability supported by a faked letter from a dishonorable physician.

What truly puzzles me, and the Browns, and everyone to whom I have spoken about their case, is why county staff, starting with Code Enforcement and working its way up to Growth Management and the County Administrator, did not recognize the uniqueness and compelling nature of the Brown’s situation immediately? Why was not this case flagged for extraordinary handling? Why was not the Browns’ county commissioner, George Neugent, apprised of their plight by county staff? Why did George first learn of the Brown’s case by opening and reading Key West Citizen one morning?

I can’t imagine our county commissioners not reaming staff out for not giving the Browns’ case special handling, flagged all the way up the line to the county commissioners. Are county staff robots? Are they heartless? Are they so afraid of FEMA that they are totally paralyzed? Are they so afraid of having to deal with other applicats making the same kind of pleas for mercy that they abandon mercy altogether? I can’t imagine how those in county staff, who treated the Browns’ case like it was ordinary, who automatically denied their pleas up the line all the way to the top of Growth Management, can even sleep at night. I hope nothing like this ever happens to county staff or their loved ones. I hope county staff never get to experience what they did to the Browns.

The Browns’ case is set to be heard and considered by the County Commission at its September 15 meeting in Marathon. See you there. Bring a friend. Let the commissioners know how you feel about how this case was handled by county staff, and back Commissioner Neugent’s five easy pieces solution.

While you are at it, let the commissioners know how you feel about the Browns’ case being taken off the July commission docket at the last minute by Growth Management’s Director, without explanation given to the Browns or their attorney, Lee Rohe. Taking the Browns’ case off the July docket put it over until after the primary elections.

Also while you are at it, let your commissioners know how you feel about the Browns’ case being on the September commission docket only because the day before that docket was formalized, the Browns ”convinced” The Director of Growth Management to put their case on the September docket. Part of that ”convincing” was a promise from the Browns that they and their friends and supporters would be at the September meeting demanding their case be heard by the commissioners, accompanyied by mucho prior newspaper coverage. But for that insurgency, the Browns’ case would not be an item on the September commission agenda.

But for the Browns going to Tim O’Hara of Key West Citizen, but for Tim writing his article about the Browns, county staff would have treated the Browns as if they were just another piece of paper cruising through county staff offices toward the “Application Denied” rubber stamp bin.

George Neugent is doing all he can to give the Browns what they need. Be at the September 15 commission meeting to encourage the other four commisisoners to back George unanimously.

Refrain.

1) This is a case of first impression, never before has such a compelling cry for extraordinary relief been before the Commission.

2) FEMA has within its own guidelines and mandate wiggle room to make exceptions for compelling cases.

3) The Browns’ home and the downstairs enclosure were permitted, built and inspected many years before they purchased it. From the County’s code perspective, the entire home is legal.

4) Granting the Browns a hardship conditional use variance will not open the flood gate to a horde of similar variances because, at most, there could not me more than a handful of comparable situations in the Keys.

5) The Browns are only asking for permission for their crippled son, Darren, to be able to live in the downstairs enclosure for so long as he lives and lives in this home. The Browns are not asking for a variance that will travel with the home and land to a subsequent owner. After Darren no longer lives in the home, it will revert back to what it was before the condititional use variance was granted.

There comes a time when human need takes precedence over cold government regulations and policy, and this is such a time and such a situation.

Sloan Bashinsky, citizen

Comic Relief Department:

Email jabber yesterday with an official of independentvoting.com.

Received a call from one of your fundraisers today. Random apparently, as she had no idea I am an Independent candidate for county commission in the Florida Keys. We run by district down here, and have to live in the district for which we run, but voting is countywide.

We have partisan primaries, when two or more Republicans or Democrats vie for the same office. The primaries are closed to voters registered to the same party as the primary partisan candidates, unless there are no other candidates. In which case, our primaries are open and any registered voter can vote in them.

I did something bizarre this year, according to some people anyway. I waited until two days before the deadline to file in this district for the county commission. Two Republicans had already filed quite a bit sooner. So my filing closed their primary to Republicans.

We have about 20,000 registered Republicans, about 19,000 registered Democrats, and about 15,000 non-affiliated registered voters. Meaning, unless they registered as Republicans after I filed, they had about six weeks to do it, registered Democrats and non-affiliated voters were “disenfranchised” in the Republican primary for this district’s county commission seat. I did not file to create that result, but it was the result of my filing. Same result, if I had filed three months sooner. Had hoped God would give me a free pass, which is why I waited to the filing deadline. Alas, none was issued.

As the campaign season progressed, I became alarmed over what I was learning about the Republican challenger, and having known the Republican incumbent a while, having run against him in 2006, and having felt he was a pretty good commissioner for the most part, I started campaigning for him and beating up on his opponent, whom I became convinced would have been a disaster movie on the county commission. This earned me a few more evil stares and labels. As did my beating up on a few candidates in other races, county commission and otherwise, whom I felt were not exactly what we needed in public office. This ain’t the first time I’ve behaved in this uncivil way down here.

Now that the Republican incumbent has prevailed in the primary, it’s a new ball game moving toward the November 2 general election.

What I’ve been telling the people who are upset over what I did is, if they don’t like it, then get rid of partisan primaries in our county. Let all races be open, and if no one candidate garners more than 50 percent in the election, then let there be a run-off between the top two vote getters.

I believe this is a little different from what your organization is trying to achieve, as I do not see you trying to eliminate partisan primaries altogether. Rather, you are trying to make them open to all voters, yes?

I see partisan politics as a huge problem for our country, and I don’t care for the Electoral College system, either. If I had my way, it would be a democratic voting process throughout. Maybe that’s your organization’s long-term goal, maybe not.

Our perhaps differences are not why I declined to contribute to your effort. I told the caller I don’t solicit campaign contributions, so I was not able to contribute to your campaign efforts. I don’t accept campaign contributions, either. Nor do I use road-side signs, posters, buttons, bumper stickers, radio, TV or telemarketing. I put up plenty of rhetoric to goodmorningfloridakeys.com and goodmorningkeywest.com, and to a local popular Coconut Telegraph blog at bigpinekey.com. The Coconut Telegraph is sort of like a tropical version of the shootout at O K Corral. Of course, I don’t have nuttin’ to do with none of that.

I attend candidate forums and submit to media interviews, of which (media interviews) I have done several hundred in my peculiar life; many before I became involved in politics, which I thoroughly despise and would like to nuke to extinction.

I told your caller that, due to the high tourist traffic in the Florida Keys, drawing in people down here from all over America, this might be a very good location for your organization to spend some time and focus. I told the caller that people come down here and get their world view rearranged as often as not, then they go back to where they came from and talk about it.

Well, I’ve prattled on quite enough probably.

Good hunting. I hope you bag your limit.

Sloan Bashinsky

Little Torch Key

about 45 minutes by car up US 1 from Key West
a tad in the boondocks, this area,
Key deer, peacocks, iguanas,
four variety of dove
and a bejillion other birds,
including about half dozen
variety of raptors, including
osprey, bald eagle and falcon,
butterflies, lizards, bugs,
mosquitoes big as vampires,
bikers and drops outs,
a real menagerie,
including a few ex-lawyers,
lots of rednecks and wannabes,
plenty of emigrants and business people
and poor white working stiffs, too,
mixed with mucho mostly anglo snowbirds,
and how political parties survive down here
it a darn mystery to me,
not likely they get on the endangered species list
anytime soon, but one must keep trying,
so I keep eating lots of raw mangrove blossom honey
which is real good attracting flies . . .

Hi Sloan – Thanks for your email. To clarify – Independentvoting.org does support nonpartisan elections. We fought long and hard for them in California, and were part of the coalition that succeeded in getting Prop 14 passed. While it would be good to open the primaries to the 2.5 million who are now excluded in Florida, our preferred option would be a Top Two campaign. Linda Ricke from Sunshine Independents is doing a grassroots petitioning campaign for open primaries. You can check out her website.

We also just lost an attempt to put nonpartisan elections on the ballot in New York City. NY has what’s called a Charter Revision Commission who can put initiatives on the ballot. While they declined, we succeeded in creating a dialogue amongst ordinary New Yorkers who generally support nonpartisan elections.

Unfortunately, taking on the major parties cost money. It takes a lot of money to build a movement. Please check out our website at www.independentvoting.org.

Good luck in your efforts, and if you’d like to be part of our network, send me your information and I’ll let you know about our national conference calls and other activities.

By the way- I assume when you said “beat up” you meant verbally, not physically. Being part of the independent movement is empowering. Independents organize groups that work on reform issues to change how politics is done. Anger doesn’t change how politics is structured, but organizing does.

Nancy Ross

Hi, Nancy. Yeah, with words. Don’t want to go to jail. Use comic relief sometimes, too. But a theme of take no prisoners pervades. Glad to see you are a Top Two mission outfit. I don’t join organizations too well, hard to breathe and be me. Fortunately, I’m old and wearing out and probably won’t have to put up with much more of this foolishness too terribly much longer. Maybe somebody will shoot me and hasten me more pronto to the bone yard. I keep trying. After writing to you earlier, I felt remiss leaving out mention of multitudinous sea creatures and critters, including quite a few mermaids who seem not to take any shine to me. I got your email address off the independentvoting.com website. Was hard to find on it someone to write to. Didn’t see a “To Contact Us” to click. It takes a lot of money to build anything on this world, which may be why I spend more time trying to build ideas and different ways of thinking, mostly using the Internet, which for now is protected from too much government, political, religious interference. If you want to see examples of what I mean by beat up on, go to goodmorningfloridakeys.com and start reading back in time. You will run out of water and provisions long before you get back to the trailhead. None of what I post is copyrighted, I only ask that it not be used out of context. If you want me included in a national conference call - (305) 407-4287. You have my email address. Again, good hunting. Sloan

political advertisement, approved and paid for by the Distict 2 county commission tsumani surfer candidate from Little Torch Key . . . if you only knew just how real that analogy is, you would never come out your hardened waterproof concrete bunker again . . .

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

If It Looks and Smells Bad, Don’t Do It

Sloan — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:51:57 +0000

State Attorney Dennis Ward, left, was on US 1 Radio yesterday morning with news coordinator Bill Becker. After doing a segment on the Monica Acevedo sentencing, Bill had Dennis come back for another segment of the program. In that segment Dennis expanded the discussion to other areas, including the need for county ethics laws regulating lobbyist registration, county employees accepting gifts from outsiders, and conflict of interest. Dennis specifically mentioned a smelly situation at Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, which I had only just the day before discussed with County Commissioner George Neugent.

Read what follows and tell me if you think it’s a smelly situation.

FKAA recently asked for bids for an external audit. Six firms submitted bids. All firms were deemed qualified. The list was paired down to three firms. One of the three was Orpeza & Parks, which had done FKAA’s external audits for 30 years. Another firm was Grau & Assoc. The third firm was Marcum Rachlin. (Forgive me if I don’t have these three firms’ names spelled exactly right.)

FKAA Board Vice-Chairman Rose Dell learned that Macrum Rachlin had done work for the City of Marahon, so she asked FKAA’s internal auditor to check with Marathon to see how its dealings with Marcum Rachlin had gone. Marathon came back thumbs up for Macum Rachlin. Dell reported this to the FKAA Board at its last meeting, at which one board member was absent.

Orpeza & Parks bid was for $106,000. Grau & Assoc.’s bid was for $85,000. Marcum Rachlin’s bid was for $58,000. Before the FKAA Board members turned in their rankings, Rose Dell asked the Board if any of them had had personal or business dealings with any of the three bidding firms. David Ritz said he has used Orpeza Park for the past 18 years. The other three directors said nothing. The directors gave their rankings. All directors present but Rose Dell ranked Orpeza & Parks first. Dell ranked Marcum Rachlin first. Orpeza & Parks got the contract for this year’s external audit, even though its bid was considerably higher than Marcum Rachlin’s. There was discussion about negotiating with Orpeza & Parks, to reduce its bid. The matter was to be finalized at a later meeting.

After hearing of this, George mentioned the selection of Keith & Schnars, for a $1,000,000 fee, to help the County develop a new Comprehensive Plan. George said other firms came in with lower bids but the county commissioners selected Keith & Schnars because it seemed far more capable of doing the job. I said, “What if you had been a stockholder in Keith & Schnars? Would you have had to recuse yourself from the selection process?” George said he would not have to recuse himself, because he would not be getting paid anything by Keith & Schars. I respectfully disagreed. George said, what if this was Ford Motor Company, with many shareholders; would he have to recuse himself? I said probably. Then he said Keith & Schnars is probably a closely-held company. I said that’s why I used them to ask my question.

I didn’t get the impression George thought David Ritz should have recused himself from the selection of Orpez & Parks. Perhaps David being the Despot of Ocean Reef Club, who decides which candidates Ocean Reef will back in local elections, had nothing to do with George’s position. Perhaps George playing golf from time to time at Ocean Reef Club had nothing to do with his position. Perhaps George simply believes that unless money is coming directly into his pocket from someone who comes before the County Commission, he does not have to recuse himself. George saw nothing wrong with the lucrative no-bid contracts the Guidance Clinic and David Rice had with the Sheriff and the County, when David was CEO of the Guidance Clinic and a county commissioner.

I’m of the school that if something bears the mere appearance of impropriety, then a government official should not do it. I am of the school that David Ritz should have recused himself from the selection of Orpez & Parks. To his credit, David disclosed his prior relationship with Orpez & Parks. Not to his credit, David only did so after Rose Dell asked if any of the FKAA Board members had dealings with Orpez & Parks? Given how I have seen things go in this community, I wonder if other FKAA Board members were not as honest as David Ritz? If not, and if they get found out, then I sure wouldn’t want for Dennis Ward to hear about it. We now have a State Attorney who works for We the People, for a change. AMEN.

It is well known in accounting/auditing circles that you need to bring in a fresh external audit team every few years to make sure the previous external audit team was not missing something the client was doing, and to make sure there were no shenanigans going on between the previous external audit team and the client. For the same external auditor to be used 30 years straight is a very big red flag. For the same external auditor, in a competitive bidding with other qualified external auditor firms, to make the highest bid by some margin and still get the bid is another big red flag. For a FKAA Board member, its Chairman, actually, who has done business for a long time with the 30-year external auditor, to vote to retain that auditor in the face of much lower bids, is yet another big red flag. For the external auditor to be a local firm (think bubba), and the other two external auditors to be from the mainlaind (thing non-bubbas), is yet another red flag.

Another red flag flew at the last meeting when Chairman Ritz said he would be out of town at the next scheduled Board meeting, which meant Vice-Chairman Rose Dell would chair that meeting. Upon hearing this news, Board member Bob Dean tried to get finalizing the new contract with Orpez & Parks put off until Chairman Ritz could be present. Before the next meeting is held, I believe it is really important that someone find out if any more members of the FKAA Board are doing business with Orpez & Parks. One Board member was not present at the last meeting. And, as I stated above, this being the Keys, I simply don’t trust public officials to necessarily tell the truth all of the time. I wish I didn’t feel that way, but I know I have lots of company.

As you are thinking this over, also be thinking over that the City of Marathon once hired Keith & Schnars and paid them a $500,000 fee. By and by, Marathon had to fire Keith & Schanrs and have city staff do what Keith & Schnars had been paid $500,000 to do. This was before our County Commission hired Keith & Schnars for $1,000,000, to do what county staff could have done for what we were already paying them. Do you see county employee raises flapping away to Keith & Schnars? If not, you must own stock in Keith & Schnars.

Sloan Bashinsky

political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, theDistrict 2 county commission candidate who keeps looking for ways to get himself bumped off

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

The Devil Made Him Do It – District 2 Race

Sloan — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:29:19 +0000

I attended Monique Acevedo’s sentencing hearing in Key West yesterday. Judge Mark Jones gave her 8 years in prison, followed by 22 years probation and restitution of the $413,000 she had stolen from the school system.

Driving back up to my place on Little Torch Key, I called Bill Loewy, who has been up on the mainland for a couple of weeks, and gave him the news. Then, I shared my theory on how Danny Coll and his backers had designed a slick campaign to defeat George Neugent in the Republican primary. Bill said I should share that theory with George .

So I called George, to see if he was at his county commissioner office on Big Pine Key, the next Key up US 1 from Little Torch. I got his voice mail. It was closing on 1 p.m, and I decided to head to Big Pine to have lunch with Rose Dell and her mother, Coco, who own and operate Coco’s Kitchen in the Big Pine shopping center. Originally from Nicaragua, they came to America when Rose was very young. The story of their history in the restaurant business and the Keys would make a good story in the Keynoter or Citizen.

Anyway, I walk into Coco’s and grab the only stool left at the counter, only then to see my left-hand diner is George Neugent his own self. I say, ”There you go running my traps again.” I had learned that line from George when he accused me of running his traps after finding me in Coco’s one morning for breakfast, eating his regular Coco’s breakfast – huevos rancheros. My regular Coco’s breakfast, too.

I let out what happened at Monique’s sentencing hearing after she pled straight guilty, not no contest (nolo contendre). Then I tell George that Bill Lowey told me to tell him my conspiracy theory about how Danny Coll’s sneak attack. George doesn’t buy it. He says the outcome would have been the same vote split, if I hadn’t entered the race and closed the Republican primary to just registered Republican voters. Maybe so. Against Danny, George would have swept the Ocean Reef precinct, and, as they say, all the rest would have been history.

Ocean Reef going for George was the upper Keys centerpiece of Danny’s strategy. The lower centerpiece of Danny’s strategy was Key West and its large Cuban-American voter contingency. The middle strategy was Danny’s personal and business presence on Big Pine and nearby Keys. The Ocean Reef negative-vibe strategy ran down the Keys, the Key West positive-vibe strategy ran up the Keys. Surely I jest. Read on.

During the primary campaign, Danny Coll’s good buddy, Mark Howell, Editor of Solares Hill, did a huge documentary spread on Cuban-Americans, in which Danny was one of two featured, successful Keys people who had been born in Cuba. It was a good piece. However, it ran in direct violation of a Solares Hill and Citizen (which owns Solares Hill) policy of not giving candidates for office gratuitous press coverage before the election. I knew of that policy, having had Mark Howell himself once explain it to me. So I wrote to Mark and said to forget me, but Solares Hill owed George Neugent equal treatment, to level the playing field in his and Danny’s race. Not a peep did I hear back from Mark.

At Coco’s yesterday, George chipped in another piece of Danny’s strategy. Just before the election, Danny ran radio ads in Spanish up and down the Keys, which George said had caught him napping and had enhanced Danny’s showing in the primary. But for those ads, George said, his margin of victory would have been greater.

A lot of people do not realize that nearly all Cuban-Americans are Republicans because President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, chickened out in the middle of the American-backed invasion of Cuba, launched to oust Fidel Castro and return Cuba to Cuban expatriates living in exile in America.

I had never considered the possibility of a Cuban-American voting block in the Keys, until I dreamt of large Hispanic men, wearing black suits, black ties and white shirts moving in on and taking over a community in which I was involved. I wrote about that dream, and that it had caused me to wonder if there was a Cuban-American voting block in the Keys, with ties to South-Florida Cuban Americans? If so, was Danny Coll their front man? If so, why would they choose Danny when he had so many troubles in his personal and business life? Why wouldn’t they choose a cleaner candidate?

(See my 7/27/2010 Men In Black – District 2 County Commission Race post to goodmorningfloridakeys.com. You can get to that post by clicking on its title in the previous sentence.)

Enter Richard Sands, who wrote a letter to the editor about a week before the primary elections, which the Citizen published. In his letter, Sands said the above post revealed the real reason I was backing George Neugent and getting onto Danny Coll. Sands said I am a bigot and am racially prejudiced against Hispanic people.

Sands letter actually was crafted by Danny Coll’s campaign manager, Tim “Hit Man” Gratz, whose reputation in not entirely clean campaign tactics, according to what I read on the Internet, dates back to Watergate times. The Internet search also revealed Tim had shown keen interest in Cuban-assassination-of John-F-Kennedy theories, which is what drew Tim and Danny and Mark Howell together. Mark had run a number of pieces in Solares Hill about that watery topic.

The Citizen published next day George’s reply to the Sands/Gratz letter, but the Citizen waited until after the Republican primary to publish my reply, which I had sent in before George had sent his. The Citizen waited to publish my reply, because it didn’t want Cuban-American/Hispanic voters to see it before the election. Here it is again.

In a recent letter to the Editor, Richard Sands accused me of being bigoted and racially prejudiced toward Hispanic people, and he said that‘s why I have been telling people to vote for George Neugent in the District 2 county commission Republican primary.

My bigotry and prejudice against Hispanic people is blatantly evident by my having eaten several meals a week at El Siboney in Key West, until it was sold to Hispanic people I didn’t know and the people who had been like family to me faded away.

My bigotry and prejudice against Hispanic people is blatantly evident in the five or so meals a week I have with Rose Dell and her mother at Coco’s Kitchen in the Big Pine Key shopping center, where I cut up with Rose and her mother, and with gringos and Hispanics, and anyone else I can get to play with me. Rose nearly split her sides laughing when I told her of Sands’ accusations.

My bigotry and prejudice against Hispanic people is blatantly evident in the number of Hispanic people, usually men, but a few women, I pick up at bus stops on US 1 and give a free ride to Key West or up the Keys.

As I wrote to someone the day before Sands’ letter to the editor was published (later published to goodmorningfloridakeys.com), I like Danny Coll; if he gets his business and private life straightened out, he might make a good county commissioner in four years and his Cuban origin might come in real handy if/after the US normalizes relations with Cuba.

I think it was two years ago that the Citizen adopted a policy of not endorsing candidates for office, which I had sometimes written was what the Citizen should do. Report the news, present interviews with the candidates, then let the voters decide which candidate to vote for. Alas, the Citizen, and its captured monkey rag, do not follow their own rules. The big rag and the little rag backed Danny Coll all the way. If you don’t now believe this in your heart, you need to see a psychiatrist.

Flash forward to today’s Citizen (keysnews.com), which contains a letter to the editor from the real author of the Sands’ letter. Read Tim Gratz’s letter today, which again does not tell readers how to get to my7/27/2001 Men In Black – District 2 County Commission Race post to goodmorningfloridakeys.com. Observe how Tim twists what I wrote into his own psychotic delusion.

After making the comparison, ask yourself why in the world Danny Coll associated himself with Tim Gratz? Ask yourself if you would want Danny Coll for a county commissioner, knowing he was being steered behind the scenes by Tim Gratz, a disbarred lawyer, who stole fiduciary funds from a client. A father being prosecuted in the courts for not paying child support. Ask yourself why Danny Coll associates with Tim Gratz?

Back to the District 2 race between George Nugent and me. Here is another erectile-dysfunction attack on bigpinekey.com ‘s Coconut Telegraph blog (yesterday):

[The Devil Made Me Do It] Most of us just laugh at our perennial candidate who claims he does things because God tells him what to do. How many times have we read that someone does harm to someone because God told him to do it? We have seen his vicious writing attacks on a number of folks. Because our local weirdo takes no personal responsibility for what he does (he blames it on the “voices”). Maybe we should realize he has the potential to do harm because God told him to do it.

Right, the Devil made me back George Neugent over Danny Coll. Right, the Devil sent me that dream about Danny Coll being a front man for South Florida Cuban-Americans. Right, the Devil made me file in the District 2 race, which closed the Republican primary to only registered Republicans and very well might have stopped Danny Coll from beating George in that primary. Right, the Devil made me write this post today.

You can bet the conch farm the Devil is running whoever put up that comment on the Coconut Telegraph, I suppose one of George Neugent’s groupies. You can bet the conch farm the Devil is running Tim Gratz. I told Danny Coll to get rid of Gratz. When Danny didn’t do it, that told me the Devil was running Danny, too. What a bucket of snakes.

Sloan Bashinsky

political advertisement, approved and paid for by me, the infuriating candidate from Little Torch Key