Toward the end of the Pearl Harborschool stuff post the other day, on the threat posed by the indiduals named below to the .5 mil tax for school operations referendum, was this paragraph:
To all you people working for the school district, to all you children who attend school in the Keys, and to your parents, if you bust your butts to get the referendum passed, good for you. If you bust your butts and the referendm doesn’t pass, you should send your thank you notes to Stuart Kessler, Larry Murray and Robin Smith-Martin. Dead fish, or letter bombs, in UPS packages also might not be out of order.
Reply on that from Stuart Kessler, who is Chairman of the volunteer school district Audit & Finance Committee (AFC):
Sloan,
I welcome vigorous debate on the issues, but cannot tolerate a call for personal physical retaliatory action against any individual under any circumstances because of their views, even if intended in jest.
I demand that you remove the following clause from your blog immediately.
“Dead fish, or letter bombs, in UPS packages also might not be out of order.”
In yesterday’s humanese vs. accountantese – school district post, I said that was a joke, and then I invited children, their parents and teachers to send thank you notes and dead fish, or letter bombs, to the school board members and school superintendent, if the referendum fails. I invited them to do that because the school board and school superintendent did not make the needed budget cuts to demonstrate to the voters that the school district deserved to have the referendum passed.
To that post, I received a copy of an email from Larry Murray, who is a member of the AFC, to Todd German, also showing copy to School Board member Robin-Smith Martin.
I gather from Sloan’s blog today that you thought his suggestion, should the .5 mil referendum fail, of sending letter bombs to Robin Smith-Martin, Stuart Kessler and myself was “obviously a joke.” Further, Sloan reports that you were “flabbergasted” that Stuart would take offense.
Perhaps Sloan said what he said as a “joke”, but, for some of us, it is not very funny. What has become of civil discourse as Sloan becomes more and more violent in his references. The three of us are described as “kamikaze pilots”. Robin’s election to the School Board and Stuart and my appointment to the AFC are characterized as “like giving a loaded gun to a two year old.” Do you agree that such statements are just “jokes”?
Disagreements over issues are to be expected, but incendiary statements do nothing to advance one’s cause. Rather, such comments trivialize important matters and distract from the affairs at hand. Hyperbole is one thing, but recommending violent action against an opponent, I would suggest, is “over the top”.
As I wrote to Sloan earlier, I do not understand what he expects to accomplish by insulting those who differ with him. Sloan has drawn you into the argument, effectively making you something of a coconspirator in his tirades. I am disappointed.
Sloan’s position on the .5 mil referendum is a valid and important one. I would suggest that he and his fellow supporters might be better served by intelligently and unemotionally articulating the reasons for passage rather than lambasting and insulting those that he perceives as the enemy. There are a great many positive things that can be said on behalf of passage of the .5 mil referendum.
An old friend advised me many years ago that it was not wise to “trade squirts with a skunk.” That is advice that I intend to follow. I will make every effort to speak sensibly and knowledgeably on the subject in a dispassionate manner and I urge others to do the same.
Larry
Larry Murray
Audit & Finance Committee
Monroe County School District
Todd’s email reply, which he copied to me:
Larry,
I spoke with Sloan today about his after hearing from someone on this subject.
I explained to Sloan that after talking to this person, I had conceded that taken out of context the statement could easily be seen as a threat or invitation to do harm. I suppose I was looking at all of this as a conversation debate among all those who have been a party to conversation. I also know Sloan better than most and understood he was joking, but again concede that to those who do not know him as well, his statement was alarming. One other point I brought up was that while I do think all the players in the conversation need to have thick skin, I was wrong to not have considered everyone’s families.
I really should remind everyone, Sloan is Sloan. When you enter into conversation with him you have to be prepared for just about anything. I have know him since he was a homeless man sleeping on the streets of Key West. He openly states he is guided by angels and will openly admit to being under psychiatric care in the past. He is irreverent, unconventional and somewhat unpredictable but he is also extremely intelligent and for whatever reason, has a direct line to just about every elected official in the Keys.
I suppose he should have a warning label.
Sloan aside, I truly think this entire conversation about the intricacies of the referendum serves little purpose. This has absolutely no effect on the substantive body of the referendum and can only serve to distract from the objective, which is to pass the exact same referendum which has passed overwhelmingly the last two times it was put to the voters.
I might further add that I bet just about every referendum question put before the voters could be dissected in a way similar to this one has. From what I have seen, the key to a successful referendum is finding a way to simplify the idea behind it for the average voter, who has only a moment to judge the merits of an item.
I believe the language used to describe the merits of this referendum by Chairman Dick and others “while not absolutely technically accurate” does in fact convey the basic idea of the question in a way that allows the voter to make an informed decision.
Todd
I got my civility and vigorous debate training in an Audit & Finance Committee meeting when Larry Murray got to ranting and raving over the school district not having a long-range budget forecast, and when called on his quite rude behavior by School District CFO Michael Kinneer, as AFC Chariman Stuart Kessler, who was running the meeting, sat there quiet as a mouse, Larry stood from his chair, gathered his belongings, and stormed out of the meeting still very much in progress, with a parting “You can kiss my butt!” aimed at Michael.
When State Attorney Dennis Ward call me yesterday, I asked if he was calling to arrest me for dead fish and letter bombs? He said no, but someone had contacted him about that possibility, and had asked if what I had done was illegal, and he (Dennis) had said probably not, but maybe. I said I had thought long and hard about dead fish, or letter bombs, before I put up that post. I said I knew it would produce a firestorm, but it seemed what I was supposed to do, so I let it fly.
Dennis and I cut up some, then said our goodbyes. He gets all of my posts and says he reads them. I campaigned hard for him to be elected in 2008, and hope he gets reelected next year. Despite stiff criticism from some segments of the Conch community, Dennis’ office prosecuted and convicted the Acevedos, who nearly destroyed the school district. Now we have two AFC members and a school board member doing their best to destroy the school district. I wish I could figure out a way for Dennis to prosecute and convict them.
I did not tell Dennis that when I took letter bombs out of a draft of the post, I felt a reaction in the spirit, and when I put letter bombs back into the draft, the reaction subsided. The other ways I had, including dreams, of “dowsing” the spirit all were okay with letter bombs being inthe post. So I let it fly, and now here we are, focused on me, instead of on the foxes in the henhouse: Larry Murray, Stuart Kessler and Robin Smith-Martin, who set out to kill the referendum by telling the pubilc they might get a tax refund if the referendum was defeated, even though the chances of a tax cut if the referendum failed were about as good as me being elected President.
For all I know, the angels want people who take everything litterally to expand their thinking, see metaphor, understand poetry. For all I know, the angels want people to learn some angelese. I cannot possibly recall the thousands of times the angels have sent me dead fish and letter bombs to get my attention. Nor can I recall the many times I wished the angels would send dead fish and letter bombs to other people; at the top of that list right now are Larry Murray, Stuart Kessler and Robin-Smith Martin.
When interviewed yesterday morning about dead fish and letter bombs on KONK Radio, an online radio station located in Key West, I said if Stuart Kessler, Larry Murray, and their School Board member stooge Robin-Smith Martin succeeded in convincing the public to defeat the referendum, it will be the murder of Keys children, their parents and school teachers. I’m sure Robin’s wife and young children are thrilled with him giving the voters a reason to commit that atrocity. I bet they love discussing that with him and hearing about it from other people.
Anything can be taken out of context and twisted. Politicians do it all the time. Larry and Robin did it promoting the possibility of a tax decrease if the referendum is defeated. Stuart did it after agreeing with me that what he and the other two were promoting against the referendum was not substantive, which to a lawyer, which Stuart is, means it was frivolous. Stuart thought I would give him a free pass after he continued to promote something frivolous against the welfare of children, their parents and teachers?
Wake up, Keys people! If you vote down the referendum, you will be guilty mass murder of children, their parents and teachers, and you will deserve lots of dead fish and letter bombs.
As for Todd’s email to Larry Murray, I told Todd German yesterday it was well written. Todd said of Stuart and Larry and Robin, if you want to play in the Big Leagues, you have to be prepared to take the heat. I said I knew no one who was not mentally ill, and said I often tell people I’m a lunatic, crazy. Why should anyone put any stock in anything I say?
As for my adventures with psychiatry, I found it has no clue what is really going on in people it attempts to treat. Barbaric would be too flattering to describe most of what psychiatry does. Barbaric would be too kind to describe defeating the referendum.
I usually can be reached at keysmyhome@hotmail.com, but today I’m in Key West auditioning for a bit part in a local production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Right, that’s a joke. I already am doing a bit part in that production.
