There is a post today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link:

the Florida Keys school district keeps giving its shadow school board lots of ammo

Meanwhile,

From: “Mark Songer” <marksonger72@gmail.com>

Date: May 25, 2013 7:45:57 AM EDT

To: <mesonger@comcast.net>

Subject: Kick off to Stop the Study

Dear Friends:

The Key West Committee for Responsible Tourism invites you to our campaign launch party

Friday May 31^st from 6:00 to 8:00pm at McConnell’s Irish Pub and Grill – 900 Duval Street

We will have guest speakers to give you information about the campaign and how you can get involved to Stop the Study.

Stop by early to pick up our campaign swag or make a donation for the premiere campaign t-shirt.

We’re looking forward to seeing you next Friday!

Mark E Songer, Treasurer

Key West Committee for Responsible Tourism

PO Box 1331

Key West FL 33041-1331

www.responsibletourismkw.com

mobile 305-394-3807

I wrote to Jerry:

I hope someone who knows how will blow up the attached photo of the cruise ship tearing up the channel bottom, to show at pep rallies against the channel-widening referendum, the wording of which, alas, favors the cruise ship lovers.

That attached photo will make a great anti-channel-widening-study campaign poster. As will the attached editorial cartoon from The Citizen.

All’s fair in love and war, even the truth.

——————————————

Songer led so-called Last Stand’s charge to give the Key West Chamber of Commerce and city commissioner Tony Yaniz the referendum language they wanted. I propose Last Stand change its name to Custer’s Last Stand. A letter to the editor in the Key West Citizen today - www.keysnews.com - cuts to the chase:

Why bother to have election on channel?

We have an opportunity to vote on whether or not to request the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a feasibility study on widening the main ship channel to permit larger cruise ships to enter our harbor. This study is the second step in the widening process. The first step was a reconnaissance study dated November 2010, done by the Corps at the request of the city. A few highlights from that study are of interest: 

1) Project cost is projected to be $35 million: $6 million for dredging and disposal, $23 million for environmental remediation, and $6 million for non-construction costs; 

2) Maximum yearly ship visitors are projected to be 1,280,964 for economic benefit calculations; 

3) “Increased urban congestion, pollution and noise could be expected”; 

4) The project “is anticipated to have a significant negative effect on environmental quality and critical environmental habitat. Increased cruise traffic … would likely cause an increase in water pollution and turbidity”; and 

5) The project is in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary where dredging is prohibited under the current laws and regulations. 

The Corps anticipates “that resource agencies will oppose any channel widening.” It recommended that “the city … facilitate a meeting with state and federal resource agencies to request a one-time waiver such that channel widening could be accomplished. Such a waiver would also require congressional approval. … If resource agencies don’t agree to permit dredging, further analysis that does not include channel widening is warranted. … It is likely that the Corps would be prohibited from entering into a feasibility study with the proposed channel widening recommended design until relief [from applicable laws and regulations] has been granted.” 

No resource agencies have agreed to allow the dredging in the sanctuary, and there has been no congressional approval. 

Why are we wasting time, effort and money to have an election to determine if a feasibility study should be done by the Corps, given their recommendation quoted above? Or is this really simply an election to determine voters’ preferences on channel widening? In either case, vote no. 

Dave Horn 

Key West

Also in The Citizen today are two front-page articles, one about Jennifer Hulse, a lawyer who arrived in Key West three years ago and has become the Chamber’s orifice for raping the channel, even as she lies through her orifices that a study has nothing to do with widening the channel, and the Chamber’s PAC, for which she speaks, is separate from the Chamber. For her stellar efforts, Hulse get the first ever Key West Memorial Day Duval Street Working Girl Award.

Excerpts from that article:

BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com

Today begins an occasional series profiling people behind the debate over widening the main shipping channel for cruise ships. Voters will be asked Oct. 1 to approve an official study on it, or nix the idea.

But ask Hulse what brought her to Key West, which she visited for years prior, and she answers without a moment’s hesitation.

“I moved here for the water,” Hulse said, seated behind her desk Thursday afternoon, with her law degree from the University of Louisville one of several accomplishments affixed to the wall behind her. “I was into sailing. I had a 32-foot Catalina. I dive.”

Yet her job has shoved her into a political spotlight over Key West’s white hot debate on whether the city should order an Army Corps of Engineers study of potential impacts of widening a portion of the main channel to attract cruise lines, whose newer ships have grown larger

Hulse, 36, whose accent immediately confirms her hometown is Louisville, Ky., has been a regular during the public comment period at City Commission meetings, speaking on behalf of the newly formed Greater Key West Chamber of Commerce political action committee (PAC) and at times also for the Key West Chamber as its cruise ship committee chairwoman.

The PAC isn’t the chamber, Hulse says, and the two operate independently, as required for the nonprofit chamber.

Despite recently being in the spotlight before the City Commission, Hulse said she will not continue as the public voice of the “Support the Study” contingent

“I’m not going to be the ‘spokesperson,’” she said, adding that the PAC is looking for someone with that specific type of experience. “I’m the lawyer for the PAC.”

One of the heaviest criticisms of Hulse and the pro-study circle is that the “It’s just a study” refrain is disingenuous, at best.

Not so, said Hulse, pointing out that city commissioners would still have to approve any dredging — the word she calls “loaded” and successfully fought to keep out of the ballot language, which refers only to “widening” the channel

“The phase we’re in right now is just a study,” Hulse said. “Before you can take any action to widen the channel, the Army Corps of Engineers requires a feasibility study. No dredging is coming out of this referendum.”

At issue is “Cut B” in the channel, which is about 1.4 miles long and 300 feet wide.

“It needs to be widened by 150 feet to handle the comparable class of cruise ships we handle today,” according to press releases from the Key West Seaport Alliance.

Congressional approval, in the form of an exception for dredging in a National Marine Sanctuary, would be required before any work is done. Also, “mitigation,” the buzzword meaning that anything harmed by dredging would require new investment into the reef, could mean financial help for the ailing local environment, Hulse said.

“The amount of money for that would do wonders for the reef,” she said.

Hulse would make a great rape hotline worker.

Caller:

“Help, I’m being raped!!!”

Hulse:

“Be sure and remember what he looks like; be nice to him, try to get his name and address. Later, we will sue the bastard for big bucks!”

Filosa’s article spends as much time fawning Hulse’s Louiseville, KY horse-racing heritage and her spectacular lawyering, as it spends on Hulse’s channel-raping. Hulse could not have gotten better advertising for her social calendar and law practice.

A not quite so long channel-raping article in The Citizen today is about a young Key West Conch writer, Jolly Benson, whose older flats guide brother Will has staunchly opposed channel-raping publicly.

Excerpts from The Citizen article:

“Environmentally we all know it’s a disaster, regardless of mitigation,” Benson said, nursing a pint of beer over a couple hours at The Porch, a Caroline Street bar. “It’s only a study? No, it’s a decision.

He is chairman of the Key West Committee for Responsible Tourism, the newly created political action committee (PAC) urging voters to fill in the “No” circle at the polls Oct. 1 beneath the question of whether the city should ask the Corps to deliver a full study on “widening” the channel.

The decision is binding to this present lineup of city commissioners, and only a majority is needed to pass it.

Benson has read the studies, the texts about the cruise industry and has an unwavering stance that any study ordered by Key West will lead to dredging of Cut B

The opposition wants to dredge, Benson said, period. And that will rip up the coral bottom and further endanger the reef.

But his gregarious nature sets him apart from some environmental activists. He doesn’t trash-talk opponents or smirk.

“Right now I’m happy to sit down with anybody,” said Benson. “I’ve been on this for a few years. My job is to make sure they’re not ill-informed.”

LOL, Jolly. Wear condoms when you sit down with them.

 

Nashville J replied to yesterday’s now you see it, now you don’t – Key West post:

I’m a little slow and need some splannin! Please. This comment:

Doyle said his Key West mosquito crew needs a building that can hold 16 employees and 27 trucks.

Why do they need 27 trucks for 16 employees? Why not just go on and buy 5 more trucks so everyone can have TWO trucks each?

Keep up the good work Sloan and I wish you a great Memorial Day weekend.

J 

I wrote back re a great Memorial Day weedend:

Arrrrghhhh! Although, I did sweet dreams last night with the lasse who was the model for the attached soul drawing .

More about that drawing at this link:

• Campaign Billboard — Aphrodite version

which is a page at www.goodmorningkeywest.com.

Here is the link to the other side of that fair lasse’s behindsky.

• Campaign Billboard–Ripley’s Believe It or Not version

Both sides made up my mayor’s campaign billboard in 2009 - a walking billboard, ahem, a T-shirt. Had close to 1,000 made, as I recall. The only campaign, out of seven, I spent money advertising. The T-shirt went over very well, but did not translate into votes, although I did get around 260 votes, compared to 60+ votes in 2007 and 30+ in 2003 mayor races.

I felt, after waking from Aphrodite getting up close and personal with me last night, in her birthday suit, that I should not be surprised to be moving down to Key West by and by to keep Mayor Cates from winning because nobody filed to run against him.

Right now, I’m wondering, hoping might fit better, if Aphrodite, whom I bumped into in Key West maybe three weeks ago, might finally concede that we ought to be an item, at least for a while, just so we won’t end up wondering because we never gave it a chance. So far, she hasn’t been interested, something to do with me being older than her father. Darn, if I don’t swoon and get all warm and fuzzy feeling inside every time I am around her, though.

If you think the shit I have been writing since you stumbled across me is bizarre, it’s pretty tame compared to some of what happens during campaigns in Key West.

Sloan

J replied:

At least you had a pleasing dream!

Not sure how you didn’t get all the ladies votes at least! 

Note: Readers will have to open the second link I sent to J, about the front of the T-shirt, to appreciate his comment about the ladies.

Although Cates’ and my positions on a variety of “hot” Key West issues are pretty much in opposition, the thought of running for mayor again gives me the willies. I already proved Key West doesn’t want a mayor who sees what is going on above and below the waterline. I already proved Key West doesn’t want a mayor who is Mother Nature’s lawyer. If Last Stand really was Last Stand, it would have pulled out all stops to get me elected in 2009, and in 2007. Last Stand used to really stand for something, but today it is a bunch of politically correct weenies. We know that from the way the channel-widening referendum got worded with Last Stand’s ok. We also know that because Last Stand has not come out against Mayor Cates, whom is known to favor channel-raping, because he voted to put the channel-raping study on the ballot. 

If Key West had gotten itself a nude beach back in 2009, it would have experienced an influx, as in horde, of nude beach lovers from the mainland and from overseas. Nude beach lovers who came to hang out for a while. Who stayed in hotels, motels, lodges, guesthouses. Who ate in Key West restaurants and drank in Key West bars. Who patronized Key West businesses, especially watersports. Real tourists. You’d have thought a city with Duval Street and its sex-propelled economy would have gone wild to have a nude beach. You’d have thought wrong. You would not believe how many Key West people, who claim otherwise, are Puritans (when they are not on Duval Street). 

Also from the southernmost tip of the asteroid belt yesterday, this ain’t pretty and I ain’t proud of it, but I dreamt in nap of it coming, and then I woke up and went to my email account and found this from Tim Gratz of Key West:

From: tim3056008000@hotmail.com
To: vickyfay@terranova.net; gyvelberkley@yahoo.com; jennastauffer1@gmail.com; drjcarey@yahoo.com; mhowell@keysnews.com; murphyslawpizza@hotmail.com; srhoades@aol.com; rob@keysmedia.com; keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: A very important read
Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 01:02:00 -0400

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-m-ryan/homeless-youth-sex-trafficking_b_3321193.htmlA

I replied to ALL: 

Tim, I told you in an email recently, that Keys Coalition had strayed from its mission of preventing child sex trafficking in the Key. I told you many times I didn’t want to receive anything else from you about child sex trafficking on the mainland. I told you that you are projecting your own deep soul wounding, centered around you being molested in childhood, into the crusade, in which you admitted you are a fanatic, after I told you that you are a fanatic. I asked you to stop sending me Coalition material, which did not relate to Coalition efforts to stop child sex trafficking in the Keys.

You wrote to me the other day, “Of course we will honor your request and send no more e-mails unless directly related to sex trafficking in the Keys.” Now I receive yet another mainland-related email from you. I suppose you justified that because it’s about homeless kids ending up in the trade. But it’s not about Keys homeless kids ending up in the trade. I never even saw a Keys homeless kid when I lived on the street in Key West. I never heard of a Keys homeless kid in Key West, who lived on the street, had no place to live, say with a parent in a vehicle.

You are operating totally out of the masculine, Tim. The feminine is not functioning in you. It is that way for all fanatics, regardless of the topic they pursue.

Connie Gilbert’s “guest editorial” in The Citizen today is all over the place. For me it looks like spaghetti thrown against a wall.

Connie told me she was molested in childhood, and she was healed of it. She was not healed of it. Like you, Tim, she has no boundaries, she is all over the place.

She wrote to me maybe a month ago that she was upset with you using Keys Coalition to pursue your various global slave-related causes. She said she intended to bring that up at the next Coalition meeting, to try to return the Coalition to aiming at preventing child-sex trafficking in the Keys. When I reminded you of that the other day, and Connie, and did not hear back from her, you forwarded me an email from Connie re her taking interest in tomatoes being grown with child slave labor, with hint of boycotting Publix. I replied to you, well, that would mean boycotting Winn-Dixie and Faustos, too. You then sent back something equivocal, further investigation would be needed, you would send me your final report, if I wanted to see it.

No, I do not want to see your report. I want to see you and Connie boycott Publix, Winn-Dixie and Faustos, and all restaurants in Key West, and the soup kitchens, because all commercial food shipped down to the Keys is grown much the same. I want to see you and Connie only eat vegetables and fruit sold at heath food stores, or grown locally.

That aside, you and Connie both have refused to deal with what I am convinced is true because of the way I came to hear of it. A prominent Key West gay man has a chicken farm in the Caribbean. For the other readers, that is a place where young boys are stabled. Connie told me several times that she would speak to this man, who was her good friend, and she would report that to me; but I never heard from her that she spoke to him, and when I reminded her of that from time to time, she did not respond to my inquiry.

I told you and Connie both, many times, there is a huge child-sex trafficking magnet in Key West, which is on and just off Duval Street. I told you both, many times, if you were serious about Keys Coalition’s stated mission, you would go after that sex magnet full-bore. You would go into those sex businesses, Mark Rossi’s, 801 Club, Scrub Club, others, and raise hell. You would raise hell at commission meetings. You would walk Duval Street with signs protesting the city’s sex trade businesses. You would wear them out, and you would lose friends over it.

I told both you and Connie what drives you both, and many people, via my blogs, and how I was healed of sexual child sexual molestation; and how you and Connie would be very changed by experiencing it, if the angels decided to apply it to you also. IF. For that healing is not something human’s can initiate or control. Humanity has no way to heal child sexual molestation.

In expanding Keys Coalition’s mission beyond the original Keys geography, to global, and far beyond child-sex trade, to all forms of slave trade. In doing that, you and Connie have inadvertently enlarged and deepened your own child sexual molestation soul wounds. You both are headed into a black hole. Or, you both have already arrived there.

I told you the other day, Tim, if you held to your present course, you would end up in grave trouble. I could have told you that you already are there, and there is no help for it. I didn’t tell you that, because I wanted to leave you room to wiggle back toward sanity; I wanted to leave you hope; I wanted you to ask the angels who connected you with me, who actually know something about what soul wounding is and what its healing entails, to ask the angels for help.

Alas, you wrote that you were pleased to be a fanatic against slave-trading of all kinds all over this world. You said the author of “Amazing Grace,” who had been a slave trading mercenary when that was legal in England, was one of your favorite heroes. You said being a fanatic against the global slave trades makes you feel good about yourself.

What your fanaticism makes you do, Tim, is feel good about trying to save yourself, in whom you see the millions of various slave trade victims. What your fanaticism does, Tim, is cause you to feed on slave-trading. What your fanaticism does, Tim, is it makes you a slave trafficker, because you are getting emotional pay-back. There should be no emotional-pay back. There should be no monetary pay-back. There should only be hard work and risk taking, grave risk taking, life-and-limb risk-taking, by you and Connie.

An old amiga, who has considerable psychic presence, currently living in Key West again, sent me something today about that charlatan Jorge you keep sucking up to in the Miami area, or maybe it’s Ft. Lauderdale. Jorge, whom you gave me a full-court press to go to a church in Marathon last year, and hear him speak on child-sex trafficking. What he spoke on was trying to build up his new business of advising and counseling people about child sex trafficking. After I could stand no more, I told him it was forbidden to try to profit from something so horrible, and I walked out. I wondered what were you thinking, sucking up to him? Yet even last week, you tried to get me to suck up to him again. Well, here’s what my friend wrote about him today.

… anyway, have been enjoying your writings about the HOB project; what a mess! also find interesting this fellow (name escapes me) who is trying to profit from child sex trafficking here in south florida. i am in agreement with you. asking for any money to aid in this tragically futile (and half-assed) effort is no better than the problem itself. hugs

This amiga knows childhood molestation all too well. Childhood molestation dwarfs child-sex trafficking, and all other forms of slave-trading by many multiples. About one-half of all children on this planet are molested. You and Connie and Keys Coalition won’t be able to do anything about that number, either.

As I have written to you and Connie several times before, and have published, the people outside of families who are in the best position to do something about child molestation are pediatricians, family practitioners and grade school teachers. But do they have the courage to report what they see in their young patients and young students?

As I wrote above, to do this work correctly, you put your own life and limbs at risk.

Sloan

keysmyhome@hotmail.com