FLORIDA'S DRACONIAN VOTING RIGHTS INDICATE HIGHLY ORGANIZED CRIMINAL ACTIVITY AMONGST POLITICALLY TIED BUSINESSES

          Florida has arguably some of the worst laws in regards to voting rights as many registered felons lose their right to vote indefinitely. Unlike Maine & Vermont where prisoners vote while incarcerated this type of extreme anti-democracy should not come as a surprise to the rest of the nation as the state has been riddled with Nazi-like corruption for quite some time; tons of children and young adults have been exposed to the bigoted peer pressure that still resonates throughout the state from the Civil War. Although certain scholars have attempted to correct the historical misinformation presented through modern public textbooks, federal taxing on seceding ports was the main economic issue that caused a split amongst the states. Rather than solve the issue of racial divide, the no-such-thing as a Civil War fueled racism to the point that we are at today. 
          Now prison populations have started to decline after nearly four decades of steadily rising numbers, and the African-American to Caucasian ratio has also began to become more proportionate; but with approximately a 4:1 ratio it's still uneven. With freedom being chanted at Americans everywhere we go it still remains difficult to ignore the true lack of it.  Florida continues to create laws that make it harder and harder for people to vote that have been charged with a felonious crime, which seems to indicate that lawmakers are actually at the heart of immoral activity. One has to ask the question: What do we risk by allowing prisoners to vote? 
          With all the money that circulates from prison contracting it's also difficult to ignore that certain groups and individuals were profiting from it. Probationary systems, court fees & scheduling, policing, surveillance, and legislation seems to indicate a pattern in the state's financial issues. The same old players keep pushing for Draconian laws, and with the rise of the Internet the networks are becoming more and more obvious. The Drug War has been historically a racially and sexually prejudiced issue. Ninety-three percent of people imprisoned are male. So why the push to disenfranchise felons?
          I'm not going to have to really jump off a cliff to postulate at this one. Florida's disproportionate populations of elders to youth combined with the well camouflaged racially-motivated politics has seemed to make the state one of the most corrupt. With the housing boom as a result of artificially injected capital in combination with the oil spill and the settlements around it a lot of people are well aware of the systemic injustices that has been inherited. Lavish spending amongst parties involved in public work projects also seems to indicate bankruptcy fraud in hopes of retrieving the vast amounts of money lost after the downturn.   
          The issue of restoring prisoners' right to vote is one that probably won't echo loud through the mainstream Florida media, but it truly is one of the most important issues. Essentially the more people the politicians throw in jail, the more likely they are to get re-elected; and for them that also means the less likely they would have to face a judge. 
         
  

To ALL Concerned Citizens

To ALL the concerned citizens of Bay County: I started to notice these anti-patterns developing in our community some time ago.  An anti-pattern does things wrongly, yet appears attractive for some reason…profitable or easy in the short term, dysfunctional, wasteful of resources, unsustainable, and unhealthy in the long term.  It also keeps reappearing. 

Inflation expands the money supply; this legalized form of counterfeiting dilutes the savings of the most productive members in our society.  In 2008 the United States refused to admit bankruptcy and administered the grossest display of corporate welfare to have ever occurred on U.S. soil, commonly referred to as the Bailout.  Capitalism had been preached religiously in this country; however when the time came for these responsible parties to accept their losses as a result of their own high risk taking, banking institutions in congruence with government organizations used their financial leverage as a means to legislatively avoid accounting. In this way the federal system was manipulated into public losses and private gains, in direct confliction to the previously agreed upon capitalist motto of private gains and private losses. 

The central bank’s manipulation of interest rates allowed local banks to drastically reduce the price at which they borrowed money, which increased the amount of borrowing and thus lead to more land purchases, more construction, and more developers.  This caused the price, size, and number of houses to inflate.  This distorted the entire local economy and siphoned dollars away from other sectors and other individuals. Condominiums, neighborhoods, complexes, and government buildings flooded the landscape. None of this seemed odd to developers or buyers at the time as the mantra was one could always sell the homes for more. 

An inherently insolvent Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation claims that certain community banks in the area were negligently using extravagant appraisal values and an over reliance on income from completed developments as a source of collateral on high risk loans.  In layman’s terms, in the hopes of making a lot of money, the richest were taking unlimited risks at the cost of the lives of the poorest with the belief that they had unlimited insurance.  It remains in the best interest of the community that these two parties go to a public trial instead of settling outside of court so that we may gather prized testimony that would release the information of what these particular financial institutions were up to. 

The oil leak continues to plague our environment. The physical damage caused to our local waters pains all the life that surrounds it, however the economic onslaught has yet to been uncovered.  The organizational structure of the Bay Zoning and Planning Board and the Tourist Development Council consists of non-elected members who have been granted authority to essentially design the infrastructure and economic movements of local citizens.  Majority of the representatives on the TDC own numerous and substantial pieces of property. They consist primarily of wealthy condominium, attraction, and restaurant owners.  Research into the political contributions to the county commission indicates that certain members of the TDC who were appointed by the commission also contributed to the campaigns of the commission.  The representative on the commission from the beach received overwhelming support in his campaign from developers, construction companies, financiers, real estate firms, insurance corporations, attorneys, and other business groups.  Upon further investigation campaign contributions to the Panama City mayor, the former chairman of the planning board, the property appraiser, the clerk of court, and the former sheriff links to a single donor.  In the book the Green Empire this individual was identified as the “unofficial king of infrastructure in Northwest Florida.” At this point in time assistance in a more detailed investigation into the alleged accounting fraud and racketeering of the events surrounding our economic downfall would be heavily welcomed so the community can relocate the assets from the incompetent and put it into the hands of the competent.   

Taking Aim

Taking Aim

           The Florida Department of Agriculture has recently released statistics praising their marijuana eradication efforts.  The commissioner, Adam Putnam, has announced that last year nearly 800 grow sites and 37,000 plants were destroyed.  Over 700 individuals were arrested in combination with the seizure of $1.7 million in assets.  The mission stated by the department includes these goals: to ensure safety, to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive business practices, to assist farmers, to conserve resources, and to promote environmentally safe practices. 

           As is the case for most governmental bodies, the department seems to be doing the exact opposite of their listed intentions.  One only needs to look to certain organizations such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) or the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to gather the overwhelming evidence against these enormously wasteful eradication efforts.  All the common arguments provided by federal, state, and local agencies can be easily dissected. 

           Arresting marijuana producers and consumers endangers children.  By removing productive workers from everyday society who voluntarily transact with other hard working producers enslaves the youngest by requiring the youth to respond to a once fulfilled workload.  By continually imprisoning valuable personnel, we promote the acceleration of our own bankruptcy.  In essence we force our children to start over and lose all the momentum that their predecessors had labored for.

           Consumers become neglected when heavily demanded markets are forced underground.  The quality of product cannot be guaranteed or protected by the courts, and in turn allows for questionable manufacturing procedures.  It remains completely unfair for government officials to sidestep the first amendment (freedom of choice) in order to siphon dollars in their own personal direction.  The highest form of deception present in the land today is the use of legislature as a means to eradicating competition.

           If the Florida Department of Agriculture truly desired to assist farmers they would keep farmers tending the soil and not mowing the grass on the side of the highways.  Oh, just a little side note out there for you readers: the largest crop produced in Florida is not oranges but grass, and the vast majorities of chemicals used for growing in the state is not for agriculture, but for grass as well.  Imprisoning marijuana farmers obstructs the supply to the market, and thus raises the price for the goods.  This in turn hurts other seemingly non related industries as consumers’ supplemental incomes becomes less and less.  By blocking the flow of goods to individuals a clot develops in the economy, and new creative businesses that would have popped up cannot come into fruition.  Impeding marijuana farmers is simply a tactic to eradicate the small farmers who wish to diversify their crop portfolio and to keep the dollars in the hands of enormous monocrop agribusinesses. 

           The human resources wasted by the attempt to eliminate the supply of marijuana remain outlandish.  It sends unnecessary money to the prison industrial complex while increasing human suffering.  The energy it takes to run these programs is also at the expense of the taxpayer.  It creates an unnecessary war on our homeland and forces technology to be used for perverse reasons, especially domestic spying.  Worst of all this war has been directed at minority ethnic groups, purposefully male, while the vast majority of demand and usage has come from middle and upper class Caucasians.  These practices have spread poverty while increasing violence.

           In closing, the Florida Department of Agriculture facilitates the destruction of environments.  Whether it’s tearing away fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters from their families or investing in the continuation of chemical agribusiness, the organization is failing on all fronts.  They’re explicitly in bed with government officials who are expanding an already disastrous infrastructure while concurrently assisting in the depletion of our beautiful and natural primitive old growths.  We do not expect or predict a change from the Department of Agriculture, nor from the commissioner himself, Adam Putnam.  In the darkest of ages, it has become difficult to find the light, yet the truth shall always prevail!

Settle for a Trial

           A recent video of Senator Elizabeth Warren at a banking oversight committee has gone viral on youtube, in which she asks the panel, “When was the last time you took the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street to trial?”  The panel fumbled around this very simple question and avoided a direct rebuttal.  The already known answer to this question was “never.”  Her point was that if these banks can break the law while profiting billions and then turn around and settle out of court by paying out from these profits then they really have no incentive to follow the law.  Warren was also making the point that every time there’s a settlement and not a trial we lose days and days of valuable testimony that would have allowed us to figure out what these financial institutions were up to.   

            The events that are happening in Washington are simply reflections of local political activities.  In December the FDIC filed suit against People’s First Community Bank.  The bank’s failure damaged the FDIC at an estimated $726.3 million.  There was also $77.1 million loaned out to unnamed recipients in which People’s First had been forewarned that the loans were of high risk and not properly capitalized.  Many of the defendants are still actively making decisions within the community, such as current Panama City mayor Greg Brudnicki and recently appointed Bay Zoning & Planning chairman and former Panama City Beach mayor Philip Griffitts Jr. 

            Many of us have not forgotten the Bailout, the grossest display of corporate welfare to have ever occurred on U.S. soil.  The Federal Reserve loaned out massive amounts of taxpayer money to failing institutions and did not release the complete list of recipients so that we could make informed decisions on where to wisely redirect our capital.  It remains important to know who received these bailouts so that we can put an end to the speculation of corruption and put the assets in the hands of more competent organizations.

            In conclusion, we citizens adamantly demand the People’s First lawsuit go to trial and not be settled outside of court so that we can gather prized testimony.  We also demand that this case go to trial as quickly as possible as time is of the essence; and in final we demand the list of the loan recipients so that we may rule out corruption and properly identify these locally failing businesses.  By not settling we would be sending a message that banks cannot simply write in settlement fees as a standard operating cost.    

Believe It or Not... Wonder Works!

Trust in the imagination produces infinite possibilities.  Creativity left to run a muck will deliver our dreams' manifest, and ingenuity shall overcome the most complex of dilemmas.

Infrastructural inflation busted on the scene all over the coast and the country.  Overdeveloped cities and accompanying outliers failed to see the misdirected capital.  The housing market found itself upside down.  As we let go of the dollar experience, we admit the sunk cost.  The signs are everywhere.  In Panama City Beach, Believe It or Not, Wonder Works.  

Regenerative Markets

Ultimate security exists in the ability to feed one's self tomorrow.  True reserves provide sustenance and nourish us.  All benefit when the quantity of quality food increases.  Prices plunge, art and creation flourish.   Time becomes abundant.

By reducing the amount of food we import and export locally, we drive the price down.  In turn we enrich our community & culture, lower energy costs, and improve overall quality.  The active application, permaculture, puts solutions into motion.  The video link below lays out modern problems with ancient solutions. 

Permaculture Thriving

Currency Diversification

By diversifying one's portfolio we insure resilience, which in turn provides security, stresslessness, and relaxation.  Relaxation leads to freedom, breath, and choice.  Choice enables us to escape imprisonment and become co-creators within our surroundings.

There are many hiking, biking, and horse trails on the Emerald Coast region of Northwest Florida, however no north-south passage from the woods to the beach exists.  This acts as a direct result of poor city and regional planning.  The attractive and heavily desired coastline had been primitive in its early years.  Roads that run parallel to the coastline prevent such a trail from existing, therefore eliminating the experience that could be enjoyed and highly valued.  These roads pave the way for concrete jungles, sprawl, desertification, poverty, crime, war, and ultimately death.