Opinion
By Dave Scott
7-15-22, Fernandina Beach
While Miami is welcoming Chicago‘s $51 billion dollar Citadel hedge fund, and Texas is toasting the arrival of that violent city’s Boeing and Caterpillar headquarters operations, clueless sad sack Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is toddling off to Europe to promote her crime-ridden city as a viable place to do business.
At the same time as the Chicago Exodus tone-deaf, slick-haired snake oil salesman, California Governor Gavin Newsom, is begging his state’s former residents to make a U-turn and head back West.
Democrat lightweight Lightfoot claims that “Chicago’s economy is thriving, and our business sector has set records, keeping us competitive with top global financial cities.” How well are they doing? Citadel’s Ken Griffin reported that he has had “multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint, a colleague stabbed on the way to work and countless issues of burglary.”
The pathetic Lightfoot is as delusional as Governor Newsom, who recently placed hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertisements in Florida begging departing Californians to turn those U-Hauls around and head back to California where he says: “freedom reigns.”
He maybe be right if your idea of freedom is to live, poop and shoot-up publicly on city streets, steal whatever you require from the corner drugstore, and shoot your neighbor and take his property without suffering any consequences. Other California benefits include the highest state taxes in the U.S., man-made drought caused by environmental extremists, rolling blackouts, sanctuary cities, paying double for electricity and quadruple for rents so you can live amongst homeless mentally deranged vagrants and watch homicidal maniacs roam the streets because leftist prosecutors won’t prosecute them.
Newsom appears seriously puzzled as to why Florida is attracting some 3,000 new citizens a day and the roads headed out of California are clogged with U-Hauls headed to Texas and the Sunshine State. Lightweight Lightfoot must think Europeans are unaware of the chaos and mayhem taking place in Chicago.
For the first time in its history Florida has reported it has more registered Republican voters than Democrats….currently 50,000 more.
One of the major reasons so many folks are skedaddling out of California and Illinois and headed to Florida is rampant crime in their current home states.
They’re aware that Florida is a safe place to live because it has managed to achieve something that Democratic district attorneys in their cities won’t – actually reduce crime.
Citizen-funded billboard on I-95 entering Florida.
And that no-nonsense approach to crime is happening right here in Florida’s Fourth Circuit, covering the counties of Nassau, Clay, and Duval.
Our district is headed by Republican State Attorney Melissa Nelson, who’s made a name for herself by pursuing creative policies for finding and prosecuting criminals.
One of her methods is to bring firearm charges against repeat offenders in connection with weapons that show up in music videos. She also pursues harsh penalties against those convicted of gun crimes.
Jacksonville, one of Florida’s most crime-ridden cities, has benefitted from Ms. Nelson’s tactics. “In 2021, Jacksonville’s murders were down 30% and overall shootings down 17% from the year prior,” David Chapman, speaking for the Fourth Circuit State Attorney’s Office, told Fox News, citing records of non-domestic shooting incidents from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
So far in 2022, the district has experienced another reduction in homicides, though shootings remain consistent with last year’s statistics. In an interview with Fox News Nelson explained her take on the situation. “Improving public safety and fighting violent crime remains a top priority for our office and law enforcement partners,” she said. Governor Newsome must read that and think: “What a unique concept!”
This is a huge contrast with Democrat-run cities around the country like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore where progressive prosecutors have made it clear that they won’t pursue criminals and their crime statistics reflect their lack of enforcement.
We are indeed fortunate to have Ms. Nelson enforcing the law and to have a governor like Ron DeSantis in charge.
Maybe we can get Ms. Nelson to take a look at the some of the shenanigans going on in the City of Fernandina Beach’s building and permitting departments. Why are some of the rates there more than five times those in the county? Are state rules being followed? If not, why not? Anyone from the city care to answer?
***
End Of An Era: When I was a reporter for The Tampa Tribune many years ago there were five daily newspapers within a 50-mile radius: The Tribune, the Tampa Times, the St. Petersburg Times, the St. Petersburg Independent and the Clearwater Sun. Two of those papers (the Tampa Times and the Independent) were afternoon papers.
All of these papers had one thing in common – they were generated on linotype machines, clanging, banging, Rube Goldberg-like contraptions that used molten lead and enabled its operators to produce entire lines of type. By the 1970s those machines were gone replaced by computers. So are most of the newspapers.
The only remaining daily newspaper in the Tampa Bay area is the Tampa Bay Times. There isn’t an evening paper left anywhere in Florida. There is only one left in the entire country, the 2,500 circulation Livingston, Montana Enterprise, and its future is precarious as it’s a money loser.
There is also only one linotype machine left in the country, a 1920 model owned by 70-year-old Dean Coombs, publisher and editor of the Saguache Crescent, a Colorado weekly that boasts 360 subscribers and costs $16 a year or 35 cents a copy. It may be the only surviving linotype machine anywhere in the world that is still operational, the rest having been melted down for razor blades many years ago.
Personally, I don’t like reading the news on a computer and having to sit through a variety of advertisements to view it on TV or hear it on the radio. I enjoy having a cup of coffee with a newspaper or magazine in my hand, ripping articles out or highlighting them with a pen. That may harken back to when I was an elementary school kid and my mother insisted that I at least read the headlines in the paper at the breakfast table before I left the house. I soon discovered the sports section and baseball box scores and today am still a hardcore fan.
I eventually wandered through the rest of the paper finding fascinating items including the daily horoscope, the crossword puzzle, comics, Ann Landers and Dear Abby, TV schedules for the three networks, updates on the Korean War, the Eisenhower-Stephenson presidential elections, how to survive a nuclear strike, crooked local politicians, Castro’s Communist takeover of Cuba, and our neighbor Mike Morgan’s daily humor column “Moment With Morgan.” I was hooked and still am, but other than the daily Wall Street Journal, there’s not much print news to choose from anymore. And don’t look for baseball box scores in the WSJ.
When I was a kid the daily newspaper subscription was one of my widowed mother’s few luxuries. And it packed a lot of information and entertainment for the per issue bargain price of 10 cents.
I also discovered that working in the news gathering business was intense and exciting but not very lucrative. When I started as a daily newspaper reporter with the Tampa Tribune, the paper cost 25 cents. My starting salary was $92.50 a week.
Despite their diminishing numbers, whenever we travel to a new town, I always look for a local paper (usually a weekly nowadays) to get a feel of what’s going on in the community. The letters to the editor, schedule of local events, and police blotter give visitors a general idea about the economic health of the area, places to go and places to avoid.
Reading the news on a computer screen doesn’t provide the same comfort factor.
***
Speaking Of News Outlets: Publisher George Miller tells me that his newly created online newspaper, the Citizens Journal, covering Nassau County, is now online with area news, commentary, events, etc. To access it go to https://www.citizensjournal.net/
George says the outlet is still seeking reporters, writers, editors, social media, circulation, sales (commissioned) and more! “We conducted and are still conducting training for use of the site for authors to submit their work, as well as mentoring new writers and editorial staff, ” he says.
“We are also looking for charter advertisers and donors to keep us publishing and growing,” he adds. “We’re starting to receive and publish ads as well, offering a charter advertisers special that includes a 300 x 110 pixel (like a business card) or 300 x 210 pixel ad, plus a multi-page advertorial, plus display in our email version- contact [email protected]”
Those interested can contact George at the above email or call him at 805/807-5114.
***
Non-News News: A few months ago Susan Steger announced that newcomer Mike Phillips would take over her online Fernandina Observer “news” outlet that had been operating as nothing more than a public relations vehicle for the folks at Fernandina Beach’s city hall. Mr. Phillips has been in charge for a couple of months now and I’ve yet to see any change in the tripe it considers newsworthy, unless photos of birds and sunsets and state wire service items are your idea of breaking news hereabouts.
***
Another Reason To Skip College: During a Senate a Judiciary Committee hearing on abortion rights Tuesday, July 12, Berkeley Law School professor Khiara Bridges provided a reason to skip attending college.
During the session Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) demonstrated that it is impossible to engage in any kind of a rational discussion with an illogical preposterous leftist when the Berkeley professor insisted that men can get pregnant while accusing the senator of being transphobic and exposing transgenders to violence if he doesn’t think like her.
The woman, who appeared to be wearing hula hoops for earrings and boasted several decorative nose rings, also demonstrated with her daffy babbling why parents should immediately yank their kids out of any class taught by this mental midget or save a boat load of money by skipping that university altogether.
When Senator Hawley tried to get a straight answer on what Bridges had repeatedly referred to as “people with the capacity for pregnancy” the Berkely loony tune came unglued.
Senator Hawley asked: “Professor Bridges, you said several times, you’ve used a phrase I want to make sure I understand what you mean by it, you referred to people with a capacity for pregnancy, would that be women?”
“Many women, cis women have the capacity for pregnancy, many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy,” Bridges responded. “There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as non-binary people who are capable of pregnancy.”
“Do you believe that men can get pregnant?” Bridges asked the senator.
“No, I don’t think men can get pregnant,” Hawley answered.
“So, you are denying that trans people exist,” Bridges exclaimed. “Thank you.”
“And that leads to violence? Hawley asked. “Is this how you run your classroom? Are students allowed to question you, or are they also treated like this, where they’re told that they’re opening up people to violence by questioning?”
The Mad Hatter Tea Party babbling by the nutty professor shines a whole new light on the term “higher” education. Who hires these people? Are the administrators at the universities as insane as the instructors? Why would anyone pay to attend a class taught by this imbecile?
***
Speaking Of Imbeciles: Last Friday, July 8, Joe Biden railed about the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, reading from a teleprompter, and calling the decision an “exercise in raw power.” But when he quoted the majority decision, he read the instructions inserted by a speechwriter.
“Women are not without electoral or political power, it is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast a ballot is consistently higher than the percentage of the men who do so, end of quote, repeat the line,” Biden stammered.
He would have read the recipe for his grandmother’s pot roast if someone had inserted it in the teleprompter.
***
Unanswered Questions: Where is Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book containing the list of folks he flew to his sex island with underaged girls? His imprisoned long-time girlfriend and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, surely knows who these prominent politicians, businesspeople, entertainment celebrities, etc. are. But like Hunter Biden’s laptop, the media and government law enforcement officials haven’t shown any interest? Why not?
***
Short Sellers? The most recent poll posted here asks: “Have the Biden Administration’s policies had a positive, negative or no impact on you economically?” Some 151 people responded with 135 or 89 percent saying negative; 11 folks (7 percent) saying positive and 5 people (3 percent) saying no impact. I’m curious what those 11 people who said it had a positive impact did. Maybe they’re short sellers in Biden’s down markets. Will one of these financial whizzes share their wisdom?
***
Speaking Of Sellers: Florida Politics wire service’s Wes Wolfe reports that Chris Ragucci is selling his Worldwide Terminals company at the Port of Fernandina to a joint effort of Utah and New York firms called Transportation Infrastructure Partners (TIP). TIP’s split 50-50 between Salt Lake City’s Savage Services and Ridgeway Infrastructure in New York City, with Savage being the operating partner reports Wolfe.
Republished with the author’s permission. Read The Dave Scott Blog– subscribe Free
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
