Today at the editor’s glance: A light Bunnell City Commission meeting ahead of July 4: the administration is looking to renew its engineering contract with Kimley-Horn & Associates for another year, and to make changes to its internal phone system, especially to allow for connectivity with employees working remote. Today is the first full day of Heidi Petito’s tenure as Flagler County’s latest interim administrator, what could be a multi-month job interview for the permanent post. (See: “With Nod to Continuity, Not Salinas, County Appoints Heidi Petito Interim Administrator for 3 Months.”) She replaces Jerry Cameron, who has ostensibly gone into retirement again, though keep your eyes open for the possibility of a lucrative consultancy with his old employers. You can wish Petito well by email here. Almost trivial: For you romantics out there today is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 309th birth anniversary (his emanations are resting at Paris’s Pantheon), giving you license to swoon and moan, or, if you’re more inclined to bone up on socialism and totalitarianism’s origins, to re-read his “Social Contract.” Euro 2020: Round of 16 play: Croatia v. Spain at noon from Copenhagen, France v. Switzerland at 3 p.m. from Bucharest.
Vaccinations: The Flagler County Health Department (DOH-Flagler) is offering three COVID-19 vaccination clinics next week, as well as a $10 food coupon to thank clients for getting vaccinated. Clinics this week:
- Tuesday, June 29 – Pfizer only, 4:30 to 6:30PM — After-Hours Vaccination Clinic at DOH-Flagler, 301 Dr. Carter Blvd in Bunnell. Ages 12 and older — Pfizer only
- Saturday, July 3 – J&J and Pfizer, 10AM to 6PM — Freedom Fest, Flagler Executive Airport. Look for the Health Department tent near the entrance
Appointments for the Pfizer-only clinic at the health department are preferred, but walk-ins will be accepted. Please call 386-437-7350 ext. 0 for scheduling or questions. June 25, 2021. Eighteen pharmacies in Flagler County offer COVID-19 vaccinations, and 12 of these offer Pfizer, which is approved for individuals ages 12 and over. The health department will offer COVID-19 testing on Friday, July 2 between 2:30 and 3:30PM at its main office, 301 Dr. Carter Blvd.in Bunnell. For more information about COVID-19 vaccination and testing efforts, please visit https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/.
Navy Bombing in the Ocala National Forest: Navy training schedules indicate that inert and live bombing will take place at the Pinecastle Range Complex located in the Ocala National Forest this week. Bombings at times can be heard in Flagler-Palm Coast. The bombings are scheduled as follows:
Monday: 9 a.m.-12:45 p.m. and 3:45-5:30 p.m. – Inert
Tuesday: 10 a.m.-Noon – Inert
Wednesday: 9-11 a.m. – Inert
Thursday: 10 a.m.-Noon – Inert
During bombing periods wildlife may be temporarily displaced. Use extra caution when driving through the Ocala National forest and surrounding areas. Secure any items around your residence that could attract wildlife. Always be mindful of larger animals including black bears and practice bearwise measures. The telephone number for noise complaints is 1-800-874-5059, Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility, Jacksonville, Fla. For additional information, call (904) 542-5588.
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Acoustic Jam Circle At The Community Center In The Hammock
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
For the full calendar, go here.
“Then I read about what happens to bravery. William Marland was governor of the state of WV. He tried to put an excise tax on coal and the industry broke his ass down. He started drinking. He disappeared in the 60s. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune was riding in the back of a Chicago taxi cab. He looked up at the name of the taxi cab driver. He said, ‘Hey, you have the name of the former governor of West Virginia.’ The taxi cab driver said, ‘I know, that’s me. I was the governor of the state of West Virginia.’ He was an old man. He was a drunk. He tried to protect and help the people once. This is what happens to you, you wind up a drunk driving a taxicab in the city of Chicago.”
–Scott McClanahan, from “Crappalachia: A Biography of a Place” (2013).
Ray W. says
I am reminded of one of the short stories in Kapuscinski’s great books, The Shadow of the Sun. Kapuscinski, a Polish reporter who grew up in war-torn Europe, reported extensively from Africa during the decades of violence and upheaval following the European mass withdrawal from colonial rule. Puppet governments set up by the exiting governments quickly fell and the shaky replacement governments were staffed by relatives and followers of tribal leaders who had little knowledge about governing fractured nation-states.
In one story, Kapuscinski describes having interviewed a prominent minister (education, as I recall) who suddenly disappeared from government, leaving his family behind. The minister had all the trappings of power, including a large colonial era home. European powers had built capital cities on European plans, with government district sets among broad boulevards lined with stately trees and palatial homes. The government districts were surrounded by business districts, with the slums far from the power centers. Some time later, Kapuscinski was travelling in a rural area. He stopped at a roadside stand for food and a drink. When he recognized the owner as the former government minister, the owner begged him not to tell his family where he was. He explained that once he became minister, every distant relative from his wife’s family immediately moved to the capital and set up tents and shanties on the lawn of his expansive estate, demanding food, money, jobs, etc. He couldn’t take the incessant demands anymore and fled the city.
For those among us who dream of overthrowing America’s elected government – yes, I am talking to those fools who fly their “Biden is not my President” flags – and replacing it with a fantasy government concocted on a model deemed popular on internet boards, this is a lesson for all of you. Human nature will demolish your fantasy government in short order. The American Constitutional form of government was established in the hopes that it’s framework would inspire men (and women) of virtue to commit to service to the country as a virtuous act, but our founding fathers also put checks and balances into the terms of the Constitution to ensure that no one person would hold unlimited power for an indeterminate period of time. They hoped for virtue but established defenses against mob rule.
Pogo says
@With the Republican party you get the Mob leading a mob.
And so it goes.
Gina Weiss says
Hi Ray: I must say you are one of the few on here who I really enjoy reading your comments , you are interesting with a world full of knowledge, I may not agree with you but you always leave room for thought. However I would like to debate some of what you had said. Hillary Clinton was also one who did not accept the outcome of her candidacy she was all over social media about it, and let’s be honest every POTUS brings his own team into the White House and cleans house. I understand in your 3rd paragraph you are speaking about people who dream about overthrowing America’s elected government as there are also people who want to forever change our government and our nation and its checks and balances, with that said there were also Trump is not my President flags, the burning of American flags by terrorist groups, Maxine Waters shouting out to get into people’s faces, and not to leave out the control of big tech along with their buddies on news media.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Gina Weiss, for the type of reply I hope to foster by my postings. I appreciate your thoughts. Indeed, I agree with you on many of your comments, if only partially so, sometimes. Too many people live in a perfect or bad world. I happen to live in a good, better, best/bad, worse, worst world. In a perfect or bad world, either you completely agree with my point or you are completely wrong. Use of the term RINO is but one example of such thinking. In a good, better, best world, you can present a better point than I, yet that does not automatically prove my point bad, it only proves that mine is less good. Attorneys often argue to civil trial jurors that the greater weight of the evidence means 51% to 49%. The argument accepts the concept of a winning side being only slightly better than the losing side. Each party may present good arguments, but the jury’s job is to decide which party’s argument is slightly better. In this way, a person can be right and wrong at the same time.
On the other hand, sometimes people have to be bad to be good. My father often laughed when he recounted his early years in the practice of law, with Ralph Clayton as his law partner. Business for lawyers fresh out of law school was slow. Indeed, in the early ’50’s, my father managed a drive-in theater simply to earn side money, while my mother waitressed at the Beef & Bottle, the restaurant of choice for the legal community. He often claimed that either he or Ralph, lacking business and bored while sitting in their office with nothing to do, would exclaim: What can we do to stir up a little hatred and discontent and get our names into the newspaper?
I agree with your point that plenty of people want to change our government. I am one of them. But, there has been only one insurrection, at least for now. Personally, I want to bring back the old way of appointing judges. Following scandals culminating in a couple of Florida Supreme Court justices being ousted for corruption, Florida adopted a non-political method of appointing judges. Each of 26 judicial nominating commissions (20 circuits, five districts and one Supreme Court) had nine members. Three were appointed by the governor, three by the Florida Bar, and the remaining three were selected by the six appointees. The process was designed to avoid the appearance of impropriety and eliminate political maneuverings. When Jeb was elected in 1998, one of the first bills passed by the Republican House and Senate in 1999 was a revamping of the 26 nominating commissions. That legislation allowed Jeb to appoint five members to each nominating commission. The Florida Bar appointed the other four. So much for the appearance of propriety and the lack of political maneuverings! It is even worse now. It is no accident that up to 40 lawyers used to apply for open judicial positions prior to the Republican changes. Nowadays? Sometimes as few as 10 apply. Ask yourself why so few lawyers try to become judges now, when there are so many more lawyers than ever?
You mention a number of disaffected groups. While the disaffected among us choose many different ways to express their feelings, one need only watch the rage displayed on January 6th to realize that Hillary, Maxine, big tech, and buddies on news media are simply banging drums, while the MAGA insurrectionists were out to kill, literally and figuratively, our liberal democracy, in the true meaning of the phrase (freedom, rule of law and human rights). Your point about terrorists burning American flags is just not in the same league as MAGA insurrectionists spearing Capital Police officers with sharpened flag poles, all the while chanting the names of those they want to kill.
I reiterate, perhaps too often, Hamilton’s great question in paragraph one of Federalist Paper #1: “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident or force.”
To Hamilton, establishing good government by reason or choice meant members of duly elected ratifying commissioners from each state considering the pros and cons of the proposed Constitution and selecting or rejecting the proposed Constitution. Please remember that we already had a post-Revolutionary War government based on Articles of Confederation. The Articles established a weak central government, with most of the political power inhering in the state governments. No federal chief executive. No federal courts. Only a federal congress. The proposed Constitution was a radical change from the Articles and many opposed the change.
To Hamilton, “accident” meant succession of kings. When a king died, you got the next in line, i.e., an “accident of birth.” To Hamilton, “force” meant government by tyrant or dictator. Was the January 6th insurrection an exercise of force? Hamilton draws a clear dichotomy between reason or choice and accident or force. If we ever lose our precious and precarious ratified constitutional form of government, how will we ever get it back? Who will call for the election of new ratifiers? Hamilton wondered whether we were “forever destined” to depend on governments based on rule of kings or tyrants or dictators, and the jury is still out. Is tyranny still our ultimate destiny, as Hamilton claimed it had been for all pre-Revolutionary War experiments in democracy?
Perhaps Alexis de Tocqueville wrote it best: “But it is new in the history of society to see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself when apprised by the legislature that the wheels of its government are stopped, to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil, and patiently wait two whole years until a remedy is discovered, to which it voluntarily submitted without it costing a tear or drop of blood from mankind.” Did the January 6th insurrectionists turn a calm and scrutinizing eye?
You mention room for thought! Please remember that the following is just a thought exercise and I am not arguing it to be true. Concerning your point that Hillary was all over social media as not accepting the 2016 election outcome, I have to ask the question of whether the pollsters were right in 2016 and 2020, and that Hillary actually won the Electoral College vote and that Biden’s win was bigger than the official count. Trump followers did gleefully proclaim pollsters as being wrong after each election, and significantly so, outside of statistical probabilities. What if the reverse is the actual truth? What if election fraud did occur in both 2016 and 2020, but it was Republican fraud, not Democratic fraud? What if the voting machines can be manipulated and that Republicans know how to do it? Why is this impossible? I do not believe that happened, but the question can be asked. After all, the entire “stop the steal” campaign is premised on on the claim that somebody, anybody (Chinese bamboo paper ballots, the military flying Trump ballots to Europe, space lasers, etc.), is able to manipulate voting machines and/or ballots.
Continuing the thought exercise further, please consider that Hillary did not run in 2020. This leaves Trump as the only constant between the two elections. Is it possible that Democrats were more united for Biden and Trump followers remained largely a static group? In this scenario, Biden could easily have pulled down 14 million more votes, given motivation to support Biden after Trump’s four years of chaos. With a static base, Trump could have pulled in the same 64 million votes, as he was the constant in the two elections (as stated above), yet the total is reported as 74 million Trump votes. How many of the additional 10 million Trump votes were fraudulently manipulated by Republicans? Again, I am not saying this actually happened, but if Trump’s claim of fraud is possible to Trump supporters, could it be equally plausible to argue that Trump engineered a fraudulent election, but just not fraudulent enough for him to win. He botched so many other things. Why not fail at engineering a fraudulent election? Remember, this is only a thought exercise. Trump’s approval rating never really changed during his four years, and Biden’s approval rating is far higher now than Trump’s ever was. Did Trump really garner 74 million non-fraudulent votes in 2020?
I am still waiting for the reporting period to pass so I can find out how much money Trump’s sons raised to “surprise” their father with a birthday present. $14 million last year on June 14th, alone. Supposedly, $40 million over the four day period between last year’s request for a “surprise” birthday present and the birthdate. If Trump’s sons can raise that much money in four days, with few restrictions on how it is to be spent, what are the chances that Trump will do and claim anything to stir up hatred and discontent and then run again in 2024? Is the issue political power or the ability to raise money? Both? Both and more?