mirror mirror on the wall: the dark side of the Force, Key West and America - includes memorial to Key West’s living treasure, Hatman

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dream police

In a dream before dawn this morning, I was up in middle Tennessee, looking to do a little white water paddling in my canoe, something I used to do a lot of in another life. The dream pointed me toward something from Nashville J yesterday.

Grand Ole Opry

J wrote:

Sloan:

I am sure you will find this of interest.

Honolulu homelessness crackdown catches tourists
Associated Press
21 hours ago

HONOLULU (AP) — As Honolulu tries to brush up its image for tourists by cracking down on homelessness in Waikiki, it is causing legal problems for some visitors.

Hawaii News Now reported (http://bit.ly/1eGRoKr) that one in five of the citations issued for nighttime beach visits have gone to tourists, according to city prosecutors.
Honolulu began closing popular Waikiki beachfront parks at midnight to stop homeless people from settling. Violators receive a criminal citation, which could become a warrant if they do not show up in court.
Those who pay the fine will have a criminal mark on their record, and that could cause non-citizens to be refused entry to the U.S. if they return.
The morning after her 21st birthday in late March, Jalisa Jose and several friends from Idaho were on Waikiki Beach around 2 a.m., during their spring break from college. Police officers approached the group and wrote citations, she said.
Jose said they didn’t realize they were breaking the law by sitting on the world-renowned beach, even though there are signs posted about every 50 yards along the sidewalk.
“A couple nights before we were on a beach where it was OK to be on late at night, so we didn’t really know,” Jose told Hawaii News Now from her home in Lewiston, Idaho.
The citation set a court date of May 27, which she missed. That could lead to a criminal warrant.
Tourists hit with citations have no easy out. They can hire an attorney or request permission to plead guilty by mail, but fighting the citation is more difficult, because you must be present in court for trial. One Toronto woman ended up with a criminal warrant after missing her court date.
Police officers do issue warnings, but they can’t make exceptions just for visitors, the department said.
The police may be worried about being sued by advocates for the homeless, said attorney Victor Bakke, who has helped several visitors who received citations. “They don’t want to look like they are discriminating against the homeless people,” Bakke said.
The mayor’s office confirmed the police can’t just give visitors a break.
“Police have to enforce the laws equally against everyone,” spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke said. “They don’t target homeless in park-closure enforcements.”
Some tourists have told attorneys and court workers that they are so upset they vow never to return.
http://news.yahoo.com/honolulu-homelessness-crackdown-catches-tourists-224437632.html

I replied:

I saw this earlier today, perhaps in The Citizen.

J wrote:

It would be fun to watch KW start arresting the tourists for open containers like they do the homeless and make the tourists come back and appear in person at the court. That would pretty much make KW into

I replied:

When brontosauruses fly is when KW will start arresting tourists for open container, what I imagine could happen much sooner is cities like Key West, Honolulu, start killing homeless people using the same thinking Hitler and his henchmen used killing Jews and Gypsies, and Stalin was about as nice.

As if something was in the wind, Key West the Newspaper (www.thebluepaper.com) co-publisher Naja Girard sent yesterday:

Sloan,
Do you know enough about what happened with Hatman to answer this person…(see below).

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dwight J <dwight.a.johnson@______.com
Date: 31 May 2015 6:59:13 pm GMT-4
To: editor@thebluepaper.com
Subject: Hatman

Editor,

I am writing to you to ask about Hatman.

It has been over a year since I have been in Key West. I just heard that my acquaintance Hatman may have died recently.

I heard that he had moved north after his continued lodging troubles in Key West.

Can you confirm that Hatman is no longer with us? If that is the case, do you happen to have any details of what happened? Possibly a link to an obit?

I know Rod was controversial with some of the authorities in KW, but I very much enjoyed the long conversations I had with him when I was in Key West. I would seek him out each time I was in town and he was always friendly and happy to see me.

Thanks for any help you can offer,

Dwight Johnson
Ottawa, Ontario

I replied to both:

Hi, Naja -

Dwight -

I heard Hatman had died, perhaps suicide, but no details. The next day, a radio discjockey I know saw me on Elisabeth street near your and Araud’s “project development” :-), Naja, and walked over to me and said he knew Hatman and I were friends, and here’s what he heard. Hatman had bought a home near Daytona on the cheap using a special kind of loan program. Then, he learned he had cancer and he didn’t want to take the cobalt treatments and killed himself. The discjockey said maybe Hatman faked his death to make the cops think he was dead. But I think there later was something about Hatman being dead.

He was colorful, and I had heard many of this stories about his run-ins with KWPD, and sometimes had given him legal advice, which he seldom took. He sometimes did pretty well representing himself; he viewed it as interesting, perhaps a game, perhaps a spiritual discipline even. He seemed to become more and more educated as time passed and he studied the law and progressed through its twists and turns.

Note, I have no confirmed proof Shadahroba Rodd is dead, but that seems to be what everyone who knew him thinks. I think I was one of the first people down here to hear about it, and I published what I told you above right away at goodmorningkeywest.com.

Sloan Bashinsky, ex-lawyer

P.S.
I should add, when Hatman came back down here earlier this year, he had a new van, or a new paint job on his old van. Gone were all the provocative gibes toward KWPD, now it was just hats and Hatman art on the van, which was white. He told me the last case took the wind out of his sails. I attended the trial. Was convinced the two cops, egged on by assistant city attorney Ronald Ramsingh, whom I had already felt and published at goodmorningkeywest.com several times, should be disbarred and put in prison because of his behavior in Tree Commission meetings … Well, I was convinced the two cops invented that they smelled human feces in a bucket in Hatman’s van. I was convinced, because there was nothing about the bucket in their incident reports. First Hatman heard of it was when they testified at his trial. It was not necessary evidence. The charge was living in his van. It was not contested he was living in his van. But Judge Wayne Miller seized on the smelly bucket testimony, as did Ramsingh, saying it proved Hatman was a threat to public heath and welfare. One of the stated legislative reasons for the passage of the no lodging in a vehicle ordinance was lodging in vehicles was a threat to public health and welfare, and another reason was, it was a threat to tourism, so, they wanted to nail Hatman as a threat to public health and welfare, I suppose, since he was, in fact, quite a tourist attraction and no threat whatsoever to tourists, although living in his van was, paranoid thought, a grave threat to hotels, motels, lodges, guest houses, and, I suppose, the youth hostel and the city’s homeless shelter (KOTS) and the jail.

Hatman told me he had a cop tell him to get rid of his van and sleep nights at KOTS. I told him to defend his case on this theory: A man’s home is his castle, that goes back forever in the common law. His home was his van, which was the only home he could afford. Therefore, enforcement of the city no lodging in a vehicle ordinance was a taking of his home by the City of Key West and violated his US Constitutional property rights, not to mention his Declaration of Independence Rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Alas, he did not make that argument at his trial, and the opportunity to make that a good defense in local law cases, or have it established on appeal, was lost and remains slumbering until such a case comes up again in Key West and the hapless vicious van dweller criminal makes that argument.

I found myself wondering why there was no effort in Key West to memorialize Hatman. He was sort of a loner, pretty much kept to himself around Higgs Beach. I remember seeing him standing on a milk crate on the corner of Duval Street in front of The Bull bar, wearing only a G-string, chatting up the passing pedestrians, having a great time, them, too, for the most part. Oh, he had on one of his wild hats, too. Otherwise, naked, including barefooted. Well, just three flights up the stairs, at the Garden of Eden rooftop bar, he could have tossed the G-string and the hat.

Ciao

As if even more is was the wind, in today’s Key West Citizen (www.keysnews.com), my interjected thoughts in bold italics, I added the pics and YouTube link:

Darth Vader Key West - YouTube

Sunday, May 31, 2015
Duval performers need a license to thrill
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com

It’s nearly 10:30 p.m. and Darth Vader, the one with the banjo who ekes out a living posing for pictures with strangers on Duval Street, is tired.

“Give him five bucks, Shasta,” a young woman urges her admittedly drunk friend after she posed with Vader, who is planted across the street from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 401 Duval St.

Shasta complies, adding money to the tip can, and then stumbles off with her two friends.

This is how James Pierce, 46, a street performer in Key West who hails from Washington state, has earned a living here for two years.

“Stay, be one of us,” his Vader character tells one tourist.

Another woman approaches. “Sing it to me, Darth,” she slurs.

“I don’t sing,” Pierce replies from beneath the all-black costume. “I find it cuts into my tips.”

The Vader costume, complete with hardshell mask, is hot inside and standing for several hours at a time, while dealing with the ever-unpredictable collection of passersby on the world-famous party street, can leave him weary.

“I try to give them the last word, and take the Buddha road,” Pierce said the other night, having unmasked as Vader. He carefully packed up his costume and belongings, using a trash cart as a table.

He packs up the tools of his trade, including a handwritten sign that exhorts people to, “Tip your Vader.”

Darth Vader, the iconic villain from the Star Wars film series, was the best costume he could afford, Pierce says.

So far, his Vader-plays-the-banjo act has paid his bills as one of the 25 permit-carrying street performers in the city of Key West, according to the last count.

The city also has 29 artists holding the permits, according to code enforcement director Jim Young. The artists must collect and deliver state sales tax but the performers don’t have to report their earnings to the city.

Where has this former tax lawyer been? Street performers have to collect and remit state sales tax? For real? Jeepers creepers! Does that mean homeless panhandlers have to do the same? Double jeepers creepers! Evil Empire, for real!

Key West has an ordinance specific to street performers, but the city doesn’t regulate the various talents expressed on Duval Street.

Instead, the law bars street performers from locations such as the Truman Waterfront and Mallory Square, where the daily sunset celebration performers are governed by the Cultural Preservation Society, which leases the space from the city.

Street performers must stay 20 feet away from the closest intersection and 10 feet from another permit holder, the law reads. They have to provide their own power source. Pierce uses a battery pack to make the face of his banjo glow a soft blue or at times, pink.

As long as Duval Street performers don’t break the city’s sound ordinance, block the sidewalk or aggressively panhandle, they are acting within the law, Young said.

City code enforcement has a pending case against Michael Dicken, who plays a drum kit in the 300 block of Duval Street for tips. His drumming, complete with cymbals, has drawn threats of violence from tourists trying to sleep at nearby guest houses, Dicken said.

Well, Dicken, perhaps you need a pet to accomplice your act, like some street musicians have. May I suggest a pit bull?

Code enforcement has received several complaints that Dicken’s drumming violates the city’s sound ordinance.

But then, by say 11 p.m., if you are still banging away, that would be a good time to hang it up for the night, so the drunk party tourists can turn in early and get their beauty rest. And, if you are using an amplifier, are you? Then, stop using it. Drums and symbols are plenty loud all by themselves.

Most of the street performers’ permit applications lack details of what they’ll be doing on Duval Street. The man who drums on buckets, Howard Bell, wrote “percussion and guitar” on his form.

Bell is among three drummers who have a permit to perform on Duval. Three other performers enlist parrots in their acts.

Bell seems to go out of his way to play his buckets at a decibel level considerably below what he could play it at, if he was really cutting loose.

The city hasn’t required would-be street performers to audition since 2008, when the volunteers from the Art in Public Places board opted out of acting as a jury for the artists.

“It was like ‘The Gong Show,’” Young said Friday.

Another version of the Gong Show is the city requiring street performers to have business licenses and insurance.

The Duval Street performer permit is readily available to essentially anyone with the $150 fee, which buys a one-year permit that cannot be transferred to anyone else, and the insurance coverage, which Young said runs about $100 a year.

Self-taught on the banjo, Pierce landed at the end of U.S. 1 having walked and camped his way from the Seattle area.

Pierce says he can make enough as a Duval Street performer, licensed with the city via a permit and proof that he carries insurance for up to $300,000 for bodily injury and property damage, to “live indoors and eat like a King.”

Aw, just $300,000. Heck, you are the dark side of the Force. Your Death Star destroys planets. Up that web of benevolent protection to at least $3 billion.

But he won’t divulge his income, politely joking that it’s between him and his accountant.

Amen. If you tell them what you are making and they will demand more of it, and, yeah, then the IRS will know what you are making.

In exchange for the folded bills and assorted change, Pierce gets his share of abuse from the strangers passing by, some tipsy and others fully loaded.

“I’m not meeting people at their best,” Pierce said. “I’m deliberately provoking a strong reaction in drunk people. They’re supposed to laugh.”

Drunk people are liable to do anything, it’s their nature. Key West loves drunk people. Without them, the city would go bankrupt.

This Darth Vader with the banjo, affable and charming while on the street, is introspective and almost conflicted by his profession when unmasked.

Taking cash from strangers for posing before cameras and playing a line or two from “Dueling Banjos,” the banjo instrumental made famous by the movie “Deliverance,” took some getting used to, he said.

“It’s gauche,” Pierce said.

Aw, don’t you think its a good thing, Darth, to help people, including yourself, remember the dark side of the Force in themselves?

About a block away, George Davis, aka “Cowboy George,” smiles when asked how often passersby are unkind.

“This is alcohol alley,” said Davis, 57, who has been a street performer on Duval for more than 17 years. He lives with his wife on a boat moored offshore.

Why, George. The mayor and city commissioners and chamber of commerce and tourist development council have been trying so hard to make it out like Duval Street is wholesome as mom’s apple pie, and here you go busting their fine efforts to smithereens. Must be some kind of karmic hangover from having named your next prior pooch accomplice, Monster. Oh my God, I bet you lost count of the number of tourists that lovable mutt ate in one big gulp just as they were reaching down to pet his cute head and drop money in your tip bucket.

“I’ve had people get drunk, punch me in the head,” Davis said, while strumming his guitar outside Wendy’s. Business owners have tried to force him off Duval, calling the police regularly.

Once, a building owner sent a man to power-wash his property, making sure the water sloshed in Davis’ direction, he said.

Well, George, if Monster had been a pit bull, maybe that would have leveled the playing field a bit, don’t you think? One of your competitors who plays a flute has a pit bull, and I don’t imagine anybody assaults him.

In the early years, the city didn’t have such a thing as a street performer permit, Davis recalled. He was among the locals who helped craft the city ordinance, he said.

Overall, Davis said he has a “stress free life,” playing his songs on Duval Street. A Navy brat, born in Bethesda, Maryland, Davis said for years his job was insulating pipes in the emergency shut-off systems of nuclear power plants.

“This is what I want to do,” he said, cradling his guitar, as his dog, King Coconut, a miniature Pinscher mix, sits silently at his feet.

“I make millions of people smile,” Davis said.

King Coconut wears sunglasses and various costumes, including one that makes him look like a bumble bee.

“He’s a professional,” Davis said, of the third dog he has had over his nearly two-decade career.

Like Davis, the Darth Vader-costumed Pierce has to make his work schedule conform to the weather.

Key West’s tropical heat forces him to work mostly at night, he said, estimating he works about three hours a day.

It’s when people touch him that he cringes a little. Then there is the outright violence. At least once a week, Pierce said, someone takes a shot at him: a fist punches his Vader helmet-mask or a hand slaps his shoulder.

He recalled how members of a wedding party once paraded down the Duval Street sidewalk. By the time the 15 or so people had passed him by, at least three people had struck him. One used a tambourine.

Pull your light saber out of mothballs, Darth, set it on stun and use it liberally.

Pierce said he has written a novel, which he wants to rewrite, and for years lived abroad working as an English teacher. He lived in Japan, Thailand and India, he said.

He landed in Key West broke and banged up from the walking trip he said took 256 days in all. Sometimes he slept on people’s couches. Other times he camped. Now he has a girlfriend and they share expenses to rent an apartment. He rides a bike, lugging his banjo and Vader costume to and from home to Duval Street.

Pierce said there are people who are kind to him. Once as he was packing up his gear on his bike for the night, a stranger walked out of a nearby apartment and recognized the Vader-with-the-banjo man.

“He said, ‘You’re a Key West icon,’” Pierce recalled, smiling.

gfilosa@keysnews.com

If Pierce is a Key West icon, Hatman was a Key West living treasure. R.I.P. brave soul. Darth and lots of other people in Key West could have learned a great deal from you. Could have.

2:20

Hatman’s colorful Facebook page does not come up when I try to open it. I suppose that’s further indication he has gone on to what I hope for him is a happier hunting ground.

Amiga Christine Russell continued our “state of the Union” email discussion reported in yesterday’s and prior posts at goodmorningkeywest.com:

Click here: Test Your News IQ – Pew Research Center

Sloan -

I missed 2 questions also. I too missed the # of female supreme court justices. I am ashamed as a woman to say that, but I didn’t get that one I said 2 too. I also had the wrong % of republicans in the senate - I thought it was higher. The question about Obamacare - yep it is the IRS that will be handing out the fines for those not compliant - no surprise there! I have been reading everything I can about TAHCA over the last couple years and what a mess! I ran across an insurance agent at a meeting some time ago who live in the upper Keys and she knows more about OC than anyone I have talked with and asked questions of. Why is it that other countries can provide free care to all of its citizens or offer care for less than $100 a month (NO government subsidies) - and some of that care is every bite as good as what you get in the US, maybe even better. And how good is great care if you can’t afford it! My health care went from $150 to over $350 a month (that for a $10,000 deductible) in just 5 years. NOW that OC is here, you can not buy a policy under $800/month. What happened there? Is the government in cahoots with the insurance companies? We probably already know that answer. I support affordable care for everyone, but OC will cost the US dearly in the next few years - none of us have any idea of the consequences of it all. In time it play out. This report may be a year old (but the US system has NOT gotten any better in the last year!) but it shows how poor our healthcare system is compared to the rest of the world:

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, 2014 Update: How the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally
Executive Summary

The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but this report and prior editions consistently show the U.S. under performs relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last or near last on dimensions of access, efficiency, and equity. In this edition of Mirror, Mirror, the United Kingdom ranks first, followed closely by Switzerland.

So Sloan, we did ok on the test 10 out of 12 is not bad! I would have liked to see a couple questions on the quiz about the financial situation of the country. What is a fiat currency? Who owns the federal reserve? What are the 4 reserve world currencies? The questions the quiz asked certainly covered a broad variety of topics, but personally I think paying attention to the financial situation of the US and world should be far more important. Of course there are other important issues such as personal liberties, understanding our rights from the Constitution and Bill of Rights. These days I try to not pay too much attention to the dysfunction in the government - it makes me too angry. But since I still spend time in the US and am a US citizen, I feel I should know something about what is going on. I pay more attention the politics of Panama and I am certainly a lot happier about the way President Varela is seeing to it that criminal politicians are being brought before the National Assembly and Federal prosecutors, and being charged with crimes, thrown in prison, and having houses and million $ bank accounts confiscated - it does my heart good to see the criminal politicians actually being held accountable. Wish someone would hold politicians accountable here. Wish the country would do away with lobbyists - as my friends in Panama call it - legalized bribery.

I am afraid I have to agree with most of Mr. Fairey’s comments. I am no longer an Obama supporter, though I voted for him the first time. Second round I did not vote the presidential race - one seemed as bad as the other. I think many have been disappointed in Obama. We all wanted the CHANGE that he promised us. Is it his fault that we did not get change? My biggest fear is that the Washington political system is so corrupted and out of control, I don’t see how it can be saved. I have long wanted to make a movie where our founding fathers come back to the current situation - maybe they show up one day sitting in the Senate or House in D.C. in their period costumes and discover what a sad mess the country has become. Can you imagine what a shock it would be to Thomas Jefferson and others? Maybe the end of the story would be they figure a way to unite the citizens to take their government back and the government would put the well-being of its citizens before the profits of corporations. It could be a great story to tell. I think the public would appreciate and support such a message and story and maybe it could create a movement to get the country back on track. But I am no film maker or script writer. I have thought about writing Michael Moore, but I’m sure it is impossible to reach him. Maybe you or someone you know, knows how to get ahold of Quincy Perkins here in KW? He seems to be a rising star!

Something else you mentioned that is really interesting - you said there are 3 million military and 6 million in the militia. Until a few years ago I though militias were only something in the movies or in theory, then with some traveling I learned they are a real thing, and they sound very organized. I began to understand MUCH more about the importance of the second amendment! Though I am still not sure where I stand on automatic weapons, but with the militarization of local law enforcements around the country - maybe everything should be fair in love and war, and both sides should be armed equally. I don’t know. Someone once asked me what I thought would happen if the government gave the order for the military to turn on its own citizens. God, that is NOT something I want to think about - but it is a very good question. This person told me, they did not think military personnel wound gun down it’s own citizens, friends and neighbors. I have asked others what they think, after the question was proposed to me and I did not know how to respond. Others agreed, they did not think the military would turn on its fellow citizens. I hope they are right. I don’t want to be here to find out!

Happy Sunday Sloan!
Christine

I replied:

Hi, Christine -

I don’t imagine the Founding Fathers would be thrilled to be put into the mess America has become, but then, perhaps some of that mess is karma for how the Founding Fathers and their relations and ancestors and descendants treated the real Americans and the African slaves.

In “Cleanskin”, the young Muslim, who is moving from a normal, peaceful man, to a suicide bomber, tells his law professor and fellow law school classmates, that force has always won out over law; the person, or the country, with the most power, the best weapons, wins; the law is irrelevant.

I’m on Social Security, have medicare, so am not on top of Obamacare. However, I have heard the insurance companies raised their rates on those who could pay, to subsidize their rates for those who could not pay.

I spent about an hour today with a man you know well, whose son recently died of heroin overdose. Don’t know if intentional or accidental. Is there a difference with heroin, oxycontin, booze, etc., between accidental overdose and intentional?

America is overdosed on military and war, and that’s why it cannot afford, nor does it provide, the health care other “civilized” countries provide. Michael Moore did an excellent documentary on US health care, including comparing it very unfavorably to what Cuba provides, by going to Cuba. Sunk the US health care ship, that documentary.

I told our mutual friend that his son now is in a better place, he is being cared for, he is, or will be, going through a life review from his perspective and from the perspective of the other people in his life when he was alive. He will see things very differently, as the life review proceeds. After it is completed, he will move toward what he will do next, as a soul. Perhaps another life on this planet, as a human being. Perhaps something else, somewhere else. He will not come back here as a cow or a sheep.

America doesn’t get to do that. As did previous empires, some far greater in size and influence relatively speaking, America will pass away, and there will be no happy reception in heaven; there will be no life review; there will be no readying for the next experience. It will be over, like it became over for the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, etc. Over. Finito. Kaput.

Meanwhile, America’s death throes have begun and very well may take a while to kill the nation and put it into rigor mortis. I hope I’m not here for that, but maybe it will come before I die. I found myself thinking a few times today, that how it comes might not look like what anyone had thought it would look like; the final trigger, blow, coup de grace, might be a surprise.

Why would you, Christine, or any American, think the US Military would not fire on Americans? Ever heard of Kent State? I was married to a woman once, who many years before was one of the students the Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on, and nothing ever was done about it; the Guardsmen skated. She never got over it; she never trusted government, or police, again.

Which brings me to my next question. Why would you, or any American, think the US Military would not fire on Americans, when American police officers already are doing that and we are reading, hearing and seeing all about it and civil unrest stirred up by it?

This may surprise you, Christine, but I know how to shoot a pistol, a rifle and a shotgun. I know how to load them. I once knew how to field strip an M-1 rifle, which was the mainstay of the Army infantry during World War II. I know how to stockpile food and ammo. I have done it. But I got over living in that way, I started taking what came as what I was supposed to experience.

What do I know? Perhaps some day I will move back toward how I used to think and live. Maybe I will arm myself, stockpile food, water, ammo. This is dead serious conversation, Christine. Millions of Americans already have done that, and millions more are doing it now. Lots of Americans are heavily armed, and the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution not only permits but encourages it.

If I were US President, would I turn my armed forces loose on Americans? Yes, defensively, to protect Americans who were not armed, or were not attacking, and were being attacked by Americans. And, I would use my troops to disarm, or eliminate, Americans who were killing Americans who were not armed, or not attacking. And, I would hate doing it. But I would do it.

I would hope that the various militias scattered around the US would side with me and my troops, for I would not bother the militias, if they were not attacking unarmed people, or armed people who were not attacking the militias. In fact, I would invite the militias to serve side by side with my troops, to protect unarmed people, and armed people who were not attacking anyone.

I was talking with Todd this morning about the US invasion of Iraq. We seemed to agree, there was a lot of uncertainty back then, going in, whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I said, so what? Had Iraq ever attacked America? Had Iraq ever even threatened to attack America? Had not Iraq been a US ally against other Islamic countries? So, even if it was crystal clear Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, what was the justification for USA attacking Iraq? Russia had weapons of mass destruction, and President Bush did not attack Russia. Why didn’t Bush attack Russia, which many, many times had threatened America with annihilation? Why didn’t Bush attack Russia, which had killed far more people than Saddam Hussein had killed? For starters, how many Afghans did Russia kill?

It’s madness, Christine - war. It’s an addiction - war. And, like that river in Egypt, it’s what nobody seems to want to talk about when they raise the issues you raised in your email. Instead, everyone wants to try to fix or meddle with or tamper every thing going on in America and in its foreign trade policy and deficit. But the strike point, the target, which almost no one wants to face, much less do anything about, is America’s war addiction, its heroin. And that’s what it is, Christine - a horrible narcotic, every bit as bad as heroin, and it is proving to be America’s undoing, and it will be America’s undoing, even as the finger is pointed every where else by nearly all Americans.

Perhaps America’s epitaph, written by angels, will be:

Lived
and died
by
the sword

Ciao,

Sloan

Down here in paradise pretend …

“cartoon” by Arnaud Girard,

co-publisher, Key West the Newspaper (www.theblulepaper.com), which broke and continued to break the Charles Eimers death in KWPD custody case

I told my gracious host Todd German last night, that the way Key West’s mayor, Craig Cates, and the six city commissioners, I named them all, embraced KWPD officer Gary Lee Lovette,

who led the KWPD charge to kill Charles Eimers on South Beach Thanksgiving Day 2013, after suspecting he was homeless, the seven elected officials made Lovette their model poster cop, the kind of cop they want on their police force. We know that because they did not scream to have him removed from the force. That told me everything I didn’t want to know about the seven. Contrary, I said, the city’s insurance carrier saw Lovette for what he is, and settled the case because they did not want a jury hearing the various damning things Lovette had said during the incident and afterwards, recorded on his taser and reported by other people who heard him. I said, the insurance company was worried about, not a $1,000,000 dollar judgment against the city, which was the policy limits, but a $5,000,000 judgment, which the insurance company would have had to pay if it had not tried to settle the case for near the policy limits, which it did, for $900,000.

Todd said, he wondered why the city only carries $1,000,000 coverage? Obvious answer: that’s the value of a human life to the mayor and the six city commissioners. I suppose the street performers are fortunate the seven don’t make them carry $1,000,000 insurance coverage.

On the US President 2016 campaign trail, from Sancho Panza yesterday:

Subject: How much money is in your SuperPAC? LOL

Photo

Hillary Rodham Clinton in Monticello, Iowa, last month. She wants to raise around $1 billion. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Over the last few months, Harold M. Ickes, a longtime ally of Hillary Rodham Clinton, has helped organize private meetings around the country with union leaders, Clinton backers and Democratic strategists. The pressing topic: Who will step up to be the Democrats’ megadonors in the 2016 presidential race?

Republican contenders have already secured hundreds of millions of dollars in commitments from a stable of billionaires, including a Wall Street hedge fund executive, a Las Vegas casino magnate, a Florida auto dealer, a Wyoming investor and, of course, the Kansas-born billionaires David H. and Charles G. Koch. But none of the biggest Democratic donors from past elections — for example, the Chicago investor Fred Eychaner, the climate-change activist Tom Steyer and the entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg — have committed to supporting Mrs. Clinton on nearly the same scale.

“No one has stepped forward as the savior,” said Matt Bennett, a longtime Democratic consultant in Washington.

What Hillary Clinton Would Need to Do to Win

Mrs. Clinton can expect little if any opposition in the Democratic primaries. But she was similarly well positioned when she declared her candidacy in 2007.

The leading super PAC backing Mrs. Clinton, Priorities USA Action, has won commitments of only about $15 million so far, Democrats involved with the group’s fund-raising said. And while the absence of a competitive race for the Democratic nomination gives Mrs. Clinton more time to catch up with Republican rivals, her allies are planning to push the party’s wealthiest donors for more money than most of them have ever given.

In planning sessions and one-on-one meetings with donors, Mr. Ickes, who is a Priorities USA board member, and other Clinton supporters are discussing how to raise as much as $300 million for Democratic outside groups. That is almost twice as much as Democratic super PACs and other outside groups spent to help re-elect President Obama in 2012, when conservative super PACs far outspent liberal ones.

This ambitious goal will require the emergence of a new class of at least 20 Democratic donors who can give $5 million or even $10 million each. Mr. Ickes said recruiting them would not be easy.

“Our side isn’t used to being asked for that kind of money,” Mr. Ickes said. “If you asked them to put up $100 million for a hospital wing, they’d be the first in line.”

The hurdles begin with the candidate. While Mrs. Clinton has committed to meeting personally with potential super PAC donors, people close to her say she has not yet grappled with the kind of big-donor courting that has framed the early months of the Republican race.

She is also navigating the intricate rules on what a candidate may do to help super PACs, which, since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, can raise unlimited funds from individuals and corporations but may not “coordinate” with candidates. Fearful of violating the rules, Mrs. Clinton plans to limit her direct appeals to donors.

Those appeals also threaten to undercut her message on the corrupting influence of unchecked money in politics: She has called for repealing Citizens United and has said that changing the country’s campaign finance system to “get unaccountable money out of it once and for all” would be among her top priorities as president.

Mrs. Clinton also faces a perception that neither she nor her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is exactly lacking cash. Together, they earned at least $30 million in the last 16 months. And Mr. Clinton’s aggressive courting of donors, in the White House and now as head of the Clinton Foundation, has been an enduring source of controversy.

Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?

At least a dozen Republicans and a handful of Democrats have expressed an interest in running for their party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Inflated estimates of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign budget — a figure of $2.5 billion was widely circulated — have also been a headache for her campaign and for Priorities USA. A more realistic fund-raising target for her campaign, they say, is around $1 billion.

One challenge for Mr. Ickes and other fund-raisers is convincing potential donors, large and small, of the importance of super PACs to Mrs. Clinton’s chances. In part to convey that message, Priorities USA recently brought in Guy Cecil, a well-known Democratic operative with close ties to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, to lead the organization.

In an interview, Mr. Cecil acknowledged the need for a cultural shift among Democratic givers. “People are starting to understand that Priorities’ work is critical and not just a luxury,” he said. “If we are going to be successful in 2016, it will require more from everyone, at every level.”

Mrs. Clinton will have little difficulty mustering a large network of so-called bundlers, the donors at the heart of a presidential campaign’s fund-raising operation, who solicit contributions limited to a few thousand dollars from their friends and business associates. But the pool of Democratic super PAC donors is smaller and more specialized: The checks they write are far larger, and the money would go not to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign but to outside groups like Priorities USA.

Some of those donors have poured substantial sums into Democratic super PACs in past election cycles: Mr. Steyer, a retired California hedge fund founder, invested $74 million in 2014 to pressure candidates to back policies to combat climate change, becoming the Democratic Party’s leading donor. Mr. Eychaner, a press-shy Chicago media investor active in gay rights issues, gave at least $22 million to Democratic super PACs in 2012 and 2014.

Other potential super PAC donors, like the Walmart heiress Alice Walton, the Los Angeles investor Ron Burkle and the media investor Haim Saban, are believed to be prospects this year because of their longstanding ties to the Clinton family. Another possibility, and one of the wealthiest, is former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, though most of the millions of dollars he has donated in recent years have gone to his own super PAC, which has backed Republicans as well as Democrats.

Other potential donors of $10 million or more, fearful of being targeted for attacks by Republicans, want to write the biggest checks only when their peers do, forcing Democratic fund-raisers to devise what are in effect donor buddy systems, matching up would-be givers who can synchronize their check-writing.

For those still nervous, Priorities USA is also considering resurrecting an affiliated nonprofit group that could accept secret donations. Such fund-raising has been roundly denounced by watchdog groups — and, recently, by Mrs. Clinton herself.

A bigger problem, Democratic fund-raisers and super PAC officials acknowledge, is that they are out of practice. The peak for donations to Democratic outside groups was 2004, when the hedge fund billionaire George Soros and the insurance executive Peter B. Lewis poured close to $40 million into groups opposing President George W. Bush. The groups collected almost $200 million, largely on the strength of liberal donors’ dislike of Mr. Bush.

“There will definitely be some sticker shock,” said Michael Vachon, a political adviser to Mr. Soros. “The money game has changed even since the last election.”

“Ted Cruz’s super PAC raised $30 million in a few weeks,” Mr. Vachon added, “and he has no more chance of being president than I have.”

He said Mr. Soros had not yet decided how much he would give during the 2016 cycle.

Mel Heifetz, a Philadelphia real estate investor who gave $1 million in 2012 to Priorities USA, plans to contribute roughly the same amount for this campaign. But he worries about how much his fellow donors will give. “Even the wealthy Democrats I know have limitations as to what they’ll contribute,” he said.

In each of the last two election cycles, 14 of the top 20 donors gave their money to conservative organizations and Republican campaigns, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. That does not include most donations to the conservative network overseen by the Kochs, composed largely of nonprofit groups that do not reveal their donors. The network is planning to raise $889 million for its political and philanthropic efforts through 2016.

Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino developer who spent $93 million in 2012 to support Republican candidates, is likely to invest a similar sum this time. Robert Mercer, a hedge fund executive, has helped bankroll super PACs supporting Mr. Cruz, a United States senator from Texas. Norman Braman, a billionaire Miami auto dealer, plans to spend $10 million or more to support the campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. And Foster Friess, a mutual-fund investor in Wyoming who spent more than $2 million in 2012 on Rick Santorum’s bid for the White House, is supporting him again this time.

Democrats concede that they may simply be outgunned in the battle for wealthy donors.

“It’s really David versus Goliath,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist and adviser to Mr. Steyer. They hosted a fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton at Mr. Steyer’s San Francisco home this month, with donations capped at $2,700.

Mr. Steyer has not said how much he plans to spend in the 2016 elections, but Mr. Lehane said his contributions would be “a drop in the bucket compared to what the Koch brothers and Big Oil are spending to push their agenda.”

Eric Lichtblau reported from Washington, and Nicholas Confessore from New York. Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.

Follow The New York Times Politics and Washington on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on May 31, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Seek a Richer Roster to Rival the G.O.P.

I replied:

Well, shyte, Sancho! How’s I gonna compete with this sort of mammon confounding shyte?

Maybe something’s in the wind, or dropping out of angel wings, or various feathered portals. Just yesterday at Sippin’ Internet Cafe, before the poker tournament began, the owner and my friend Michael Kinneer,

a former practicing lawyer from Chicago, as I recall, asked me how’s the presidential campaign going? I mumbled something probably unintelligible, maybe in Martian, or Venusian, or Pleiadean. He asked if I had set up a PAC to raise money? That’s what presidential candidates do, don’t they? I said that reminded me of a movie advertisement I’m now seeing at Regal Cinema. Earthlings sent a spaceship into outer space with with a message and video of different stuff that interests Earthlings, hoping to receive a response back. What came back was an alien invasion of PAC Man robots chomping everything they could find to chomp.

Shortly after that, while finishing a letter to Kari, I saw the old poem I had reread in my notebook the night before and wondered if it somehow, if only to heckle, pester, lampoon, jest, poke, was in play for my presidential campaign? I first read it at a Key West Poetry Guild meeting last year during the mayor’s race, in which I did my all time best showing, 172 votes – can you believe there are that many aliens actually living in Key West?

Rules

Who invented the RULE
that a candidate must
put out campaign litter,
er, signs,
pollute the air waves
with vote for mes!
Vote for mes!
Vote for mes!
which say nothing about
the candidate
but he spent money
begging people to
vote for me!!!
Yech!!!
Anyway,
just tell me,
yes, please tell me,
who invented
that really stupid fuckin’ rule?!!!
Surely it wasn’t the maker
of the first stone —
otherwise, there’d be no stones
to break all them slavin’ RULES!!!

That said, how’d you like, Sancho, to start a Super Pac to pay for my campaign? You can have have 50% of the donations, as a duly hard earned commission, finders fee, bounty, golden parachute, ill-gotten gain, or whatever best suits your mood and image to call it.

And while you be about that, be about coming up with new villains to be the gang of three in 2016, if not already.

Mucho obligedo

Don Q

sloanbashinsky@outlook.com

my V.P. runing mate Kari Dangler and moi at Burger King, Key West