Sarasota has some good Democrats, and a good Arts and Music scene,but there's a lot of ugly there, often retirees and condo-commandos. It gets worse the further south you go...SW Florida has nice weather and beautiful beaches, but is populated by some of the foulest creatures on the planet.

We are the melting pot for the 21st Century and there are people here who still think they are living out the Frontierland era.

Feels more pre-apocalyptic to me.

But the big roadblock to progress is the retirees. They think they no longer should pay taxes, so are against funding schools, parks, mass transit...anything that doesn't directly affect them. Also, they have a lot of free time on their hands for complaining.

Last edited Fri Jul 17, 2015, 06:20 PM - Edit history (1)

stability in a state that doesn't care about the working class. We don't really know if the "attendee" was retired or not, so this is straw manning and unfair.

I lived there when I was three but that was 48 years ago so I don't remember much. But my job takes me up and down the gulf coast so I get to drive through there often and I usually try to take the scenic route. I aim for lunch or dinner time too so I can eat at the Amish places. Butterscotch pie from Yoder's is reason enough to show up.

My aunt and uncle are in their 80s and live a little further south in Venice and they are two of my democratic liberal heroes.

My aunt would have shredded that "attendee" had she been there to hear such a disgusting thing said about another human being.

My MIL lives in Venice, with her third husband (AKA "Cranky Old Coot&quot . My husband and I like to joke that the Democratic Club of Venice can hold its meetings in a storage closet. So, your aunt and uncle must be the two Dems in Venice.

Hubby keeps wanting to move to the Gulf Coast to be closer to his Mom. There's too many bugs, crazies, and Republicans there for my tastes.

My mom and aunt were born and grew up there and it is weird how my mom went far right-wing religious crazy but my aunt is as liberal as they come. Or maybe it's because they are sisters they just had to go polar opposite. I blame my stepfather for most of mom's crazy. But before she died, mom started visiting us at christmas without him and everything was WAY calmer and more fun. I enjoyed driving her down to Venice and visiting with my Aunt and Uncle. They all agreed to (mostly) not talk about religion or politics so it usually ended up being a good time. I still stop in on them when work takes me through.

If you want to put an end to this Frontierland fantasy, first, start with the lawyers. We have good ole boy lawyers who help push a two tier legal mentality that allows backwater reasoning to take hold in a community. These are Chamber of Commerce type lawyers who rely on their social networks in both the public and private sector. They take over city attorney positions, where they intentionally are nebulous with legal interpretations.

I have seen attorneys with County attorney experiences act ignorant about the public records law; or lawyers who intentionally withheld a legal opinion that would have reigned in a rogue city commissioner who was amassing far too many chairperson positions at the County level. It didn't help the perception of that lawyer's ethical standards when he represented a private client before that commissioner before a county board that she chaired.

And these examples trickled down into the community, where people with inside knowledge of these lax ethical standards, just join in the partnerships and assist by defrauding their own neighbors.

That's why I see this as more pre-apocalyptic than Frontierland mentality, since we are all Americans and the system is feeding on itself.

The crimes they commit are civil torts, which means that our tax dollars won't take care of the problem. Newcomers to Florida are sitting ducks because people tend to use referrals to select a lawyer, and the people who live around here will more than likely refer them to one of the "trusted" attorneys. These lawyers, instead of reading legal documents to reach their own conclusions, know to make the right calls to ensure they follow the legal memes set by prior attorneys.

So, start with the lawyers. Remove the old, and bring in a new group that isn't afraid to do their own legal research and call out the ethical breaches where they see them.

Two changes we need right now is Whistle blower protection for anyone who turns in unethical lawyers, and do away with the statute of limitations wherever anyone can prove that there was conspiratorial actions that prevented them from discovering the truth in a timely manner.

As many of the liberal bastions there are held by Lawyers. If Morgan and Morgan did not fight for legal cannabis, the vote never would have gotten the more than 50 percent vote to call it the majority. Granted, Jeb made damned sure to run the concept of majority to 60 percent, because he got tired of ignoring calls to fund education. 60 percent is of course, only reached with the help of the back door people who bake and prepare politics long before it even gets to Tallahassee, the agricultural giants, the real estate giants, and the churches, who have been helping keep the powerful safe since long before the Civil War.

Yes, many lawyers need to be shown the door, but without actually attacking the funds, it's window dressing, as the corporation can make sure some lawyer that oddly enough, the Florida Bar accepted, gets shipped in straight from anywhere in the world. I will say that the Florida Bar needs to be broken, period. The real sources that need to be attacked are the land barons and the churches, which is why, unlike what Alabama calls an income tax, we need a progressive one that targets the uber rich, who will still come down here because when they go broke, we will not take their McMansions. Use that to fund, among many other things, a real state insurance agency that will focus on the waterfront developers, whose play hotels will be the costliest things to rebuild in a hurricane. We also need to seriously prosecute Churches that get involved in elections, because all of them make their desires felt among the pews.

BTW, I am considering doing a whole screed on this 60 percent rule, because it illustrates the outright contempt Jeb has for anything but Jeb's rule. But if you beat me to it, please do. Jeb is sellign himself as the nice Bush, and those of us who know he is anything BUT that need to put this in Neon.

I'm tired about hearing about liberal bastions in Central Florida. Newflash: We don't have any Liberal leaders here that could galvanize us together to fight the unjust system that we're faced with today. Ergo, we don't have a liberal bastion.

These leaders are so entrenched in the good ole boy networks that they will be more inclined to share a drink with the truly corrupt lawyers that should be pushed out of the system, than they would be inclined to launch an investigation against them.

And this, newcomers do not realize. It just shakes me to the bottom of my toes when I visualize a newcomer walking into a law firm to seek relief, just to step in the hall and bump into a lawyer that was at the helm of bad legal decisions that helped create the foundation for the backwater system that is still with us in the 21st Century.

At some point, someone has to stand up and say that there is something terribly wrong with this. Central Florida is truly warped.

I applaud Morgan for taking the helm for the marijuana vote, but seriously, he should have thought that one through better because he shouldn't have been the sole spokesman for that bill.

Lawyers are especially subject to the human flaw of personality mitigation. They think they can mitigate all the distasteful things they do by following them up with good community works to balance things out. But, life isn't a court of law. There isn't one judge that will make you whole again. You have to deal with personal judgments on a person by person basis.

And, once a person feels harmed by a lawyer, everyone that provides them succor becomes suspect. That's why nobody trusts the legal field. Lawyers are too intricately networked. We need outside help to clean this up, but I agree that getting rid of the Florida Bar Association would be a good start. They actually will do nothing until someone will call in to turn in these lawyers, but trust me when I tell you that they do nothing to encourage that individual once that call is made. Unless the issue has to do with something easy, like over-billing or poor legal representation on a case, the impression they give the caller is that they better be as sharp as a trial lawyer or they shouldn't bother to proceed.

Go ahead and write your piece on the 60 percent rule. It sounds interesting and my observations are more community oriented so there's no overlap.

What a crazy world we live in when we find out that we have to fight Republican pathos-inducing agendas at a grassroots level, because we really don't have anyone we can depend on to help us because there's just no money "innit."

Where are the Algernon Sydney Sullivans in today's world? They simply don't exist.

more than believing all that sissy, pinko stuff Jesus said.

The most cost effective way to deal with the "homeless problem" is to provide basic housing. Many will clean up and most already have jobs. Hospital admissions and jail time both decrease and that saves the town a lot of money. This has been proven to be the case wherever it has been tried.

First the Indians, then the Chinese, then the Blacks and now the Homeless. Disgraceful!

brought to Sarasota just a week or so ago... This homeless man is definitely "people" and so are all the others out there. They all have their stories and deserve a chance and a support system to help them along.

(Update: Donald Gould is now in rehab, has had contact with his 18 year old son, has been offered a scholarship to finish the three semesters he needed to finish his degree in music theory, and a go fund me account has been successful in raising money for him to make good.)

a wonderful pianist who had some mental health issues. (There is now speculation he may actually have been Autistic.)

Probably Asperger's. I am, and he certainly seems like he was one of us; genuinely eccentric geniuses are more likely than not to be on the spectrum. And we claim Einstein, too.

Last edited Fri Jul 17, 2015, 05:16 PM - Edit history (1)

Wherever there are stupid people, there need not be a sudden knee jerk pointing of fingers at a particular age group, anyway. Nor even a particular city. Florida has homeless everywhere. Everywhere. I grew up so poor in the Southeast area of the state that you wouldn't even call where I lived for a four-year period a house. Now I retire near Sarasota in the winter.

Florida Republicans make life on everyone, from the working class downward, hard, and Florida Republicans in Washington, particularly low profile Vern Buchanan, want to keep the situation that way.

The retirement demographic of the West Coast, particularly Sarasota, pay all the same taxes -- city, county and state retail taxes -- that Floridians do, since Floridians don't pay a state income tax, anyway. We retirees therefore contribute as much as any tax paying Floridian to the building of schools and parks.

As for mass transit, I read newspaper letters frequently that voice that we'd love to contribute to its construction, but fossil fuel industries press their related gas and car sales industries to hold their ground while the state's governor doesn't want federal money for fast trains, and the locals prefer bicycling or cars. Retirees, overall -- by buying real estate, food, utilities, using all kinds of maintenance, medical services that create jobs -- contribute much to the economy of Florida's coasts and its economy in general.

Most of Sarasota is populated by 5%'ers and commerce is run by 1%'ers. Florida State University (my alma mater) runs both the Ringling Museum, its mansion, nearby theater and Ringling School of the Arts, visited mostly by us and tourists. The well heeled of Sarasota patronize local theater, galleries, restaurants and other night life. I'm in downtown Sarasota a few times a week, and on its side streets, and see the homeless problem as easily, humanely solvable. If I were poor and homeless, Sarasota is where I'd want to hang out in the winter, too.

The attitude of this one resident is appalling, reflects the snob side of residents, but the fact that the city pays for an Initiatives Director to solve this problem is to its credit, very likely most "attendees" were probably as appalled as anyone here.

I like that Gould guy. There are a few other buskers who do what he does, but for contributions, which I'm happy to give, and I don't care what they use their money for. Okay, I'll quit.

Sarasota does have it's art community, including an Opera company that is one of the best in the nation. However, there is a true snob factor that does stink up the place. For example, at one point, the city wanted to use "clown" banks for charity, where local artists would paint banks shaped lie clowns. Keep in mind, this is a city whose wealth, from the Ringling Museum to the very ability of the city to be recession proof, was due to Ringling Bros. Circus. Needles to say it was shouted down, even though the city that inspired it was Venice, Italy. The response was, that Sarasota felt they were too good to do what Venice did.

However, the above reply does point out that Sarasota at least realizes it has to do better. St. Petersburg, home of the very liberal Tampa Bay Times, has an outright nasty attitude towards the Homeless. Read any story on homelessness, and see the right wing replies bubble up like acid from an ulcer.

There is a working class saying, immortalized in the Pink Floyd song "Money" that says "I'm all right Jack, keep your hands off my stack." That is very much the attitude of many Floridians. It is also why Rick Scott gets elected, and the Democratic party here is so weak it is actually toxic.

I agree that St. Pete is as inhumane as it is beautiful.

SO true about Floridians' philosophy and politics. I also note a speaking style of theirs -- which I also acquired -- which I call the "Florida Gruff."

Thanks for your post!

One of the main concerns is how to keep homeless people out. To be fair, the "Lens" design that got shot down was truly awful, but the fact it got shot down had a lot to do with the fact that many of the pretty, but snobby places on beach ave wanted to keep the homeless away. It's also why their baseball stadium, the one that everyone complains about, the one that is empty, is not well attended, because they tore up the black middle class section of town to build the stadium there. We cannot allow our beloved waterfront to stop being pretty after all. It's beautifully ironic as they Tampa Bay Rays are the franchise which almost singe handedly keeps the Yankees and Red Sox from buying the championships every year; most franchises would kill for our playoff record, especially against the Yankees Yet, empty seats, which cause concern because, OH MY GOD, the homeless might sleep there. Never mind the stadium was supposed to double as a homeless shelter.

rocks!

I'm sure I'll be chastised for suggesting that Christs message had something to do with being kind towards all people, but . . .

Bryant

that?! you have to be one cold, heartless shell.

The species is flawed.

I love it when someone reports about an intolerant prejudicial incident and then proceeds to do exactly the same fucking thing. Your last line is pure.

for Florida - and sympathies for fellow liberals and Democrats there.