Letter to the Editor - Dr. Steve Rosen speaks out

Comment Up

Our friend, Dr. Steve Rosen, wrote a letter to the Sun Sentinel editor.  Although this election does not affect us here, following is his letter:

I would strongly advise voters in Florida's 34th Senate district to support Maria Sachs for re-election over Ellyn Bogdanoff. In 2012, then Sen. Bogdanoff, at the behest of a local dog groomer, added Amendment 303390 to an agriculture bill that lifted a 40-year ban on the artificial coloring of animals.

The animals affected by this included chicks, ducks, rabbits, turtles as well as dogs whose owners colored their coats to win contests.

The coloring led to their sales as presents for small children who were not mature enough to handle them. As soon as the children lost interest, the animals were often taken to places like the Wildlife Care Center, or simply dumped outdoors to fend for themselves — which meant starvation or being eaten by predators. Often the animals were abused by small children and showed up at rescues with broken bones. Fortunately, we were able to reinstate this ban with the help of Maria Sachs.

This is the legacy of Ellyn Bogdanoff. If you believe her empty promises about prison reform, non-violent offenders and other talking points she spouts to win election, consider the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:

"Compassion towards animals is essentially bound up with goodness of character. Whoever is cruel to them cannot be good to men."

Dr. Steve Rosen, Davie

The American Dream - Right on the Money

Comment Up

The American Dream is a 30 minute animated film that shows you how you’ve been scammed by the most basic elements of the government system. According to Steve Rosen, this film is "right on the money."

Biotech Blunder costs the taxpayers

Comment Up
A total waste of taxpayer money. The voters should have had a say when it came to this costly decision, but we voted these officials in and they want to be ensured of all the power to make these decisions like "Ooops, I made a mistake," Aaronson. We let them continue to do that when we voted on Election Day.

In December 2004, Palm Beach County closed on the Mecca Farms property for $60 million, paying $31,000 an acre. The Mecca family had bought the property in 1983 for $6,000 an acre. The purchase caused four law suits and environmental groups protested.

At the time, board members of the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County voted unanimously to support keeping the project on Mecca Farms, saying, "Allowing environmental groups to set public policy ... faults the judicial review process and relinquishes future decisions regarding bio-scientific companies' expansion plans into our county to the whims and desires of the same litigants."

Biotech blunder at Mecca Farms keeps costing Palm Beach County taxpayers

City and County Commissions continue to make horrendous "mistakes" and the taxpayer has no say, no vote. "We made a mistake," Santamaria said about the county's purchase of Mecca Farms. "We have to get rid of it. … Bite the bullet."

Steve Rosen says, "Here you go, dumb ass politico scum in Palm Beach County, costing taxpayers a TON with excuses of 'if only we knew then what we know now' BS. Yep. Elected officials are much more qualified to determine future growth than us dumb ass members of the general public. This is THE CLASSIC example of why Amendment 4 was needed. Let the taxpayers in Palm Beach County pay and pay and pay and pay. They deserve to have to pay endlessly and forever. They can go suck wind when they write checks."

Hey David, Amendment 4 needs your sling-shot

Businessman, Steve Rosen
has donated more than $675,000 to Vote Yes on 4
Florida Hometown Democracy

Interesting article in the PB Post this morning that illustrates what a grassroots organization has had to endure in order to get something on a ballot when all the while the biggest obstacle for Amendment 4 is HUGE/big money from those fighting the people's right to vote on land-use changes.

You would think that Amendment 4 advocates were stealing money right out of their pockets when in fact this has nothing to do with anti-growth but everything to do with corruption and greed and power. It has everything to do with our right to vote when these politicians make changes to our Comprehensive Plan. Why spend millions of dollars even developing a Plan if politicians change it at the demand of a developer? Does someone not get it that you should vote on things like this when it is costing you money?

Florida Hometown Democracy spent millions just fighting the legal suits against it from the Chamber PAC, one now defunct and a new one formed called Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy. Even the name of this PAC is a big lie. They have so much money that they have perfected the lie.

FHD has received 3,201 donations from people across the State who just want to preserve what we have without building going up all around us. These donations have been less than $100. The Vote NO group is funded by all big business, the Chamber and Realtors and has received donations of $100 or less from only 388 people.

David, we need you.

Letter from Dr. Rosen to Vice Mayor Martha Webster in Royal Palm Beach

Dear Ms Webster,

Your condescending comment--
Councilwoman Martha Webster’s recent comment to the press: "I wish we could get people to see that we are thinking in their best interests," assumes the public is an unintelligible conglomerate of idiots wandering thoughtlessly through life and we should all be glad people like you are there to tell us what to do and what is best for us.

Even my mother never talked down to me like that when I was a small child. Unlike you, she respected my thoughts and opinions and sought not to demean my ability to think and participate like you have just done with this statement of arrogance so common among elected officials.

In fact, you owe the resident constituents an apology for insulting their intelligence. Essentially, you are a drain on the well being of Royal Palm Beach Village and should resign so someone with heart and who really cares about the constituency you represent can do the job correctly.

I thought Debbie Wasserman Shultz was bad but you just come out and say it straight. She is clever enough to couch her remarks.

Dr. Steven Rosen

Las Olas Riverfront Complex

Heavily underwritten by tax money, the complex located just off Las Olas Boulevard and Andrews Avenue, Las Olas Riverfront in Fort Lauderdale, has become a ghost town.

When this complex first opened, parking was free and the place bustled. The City got greedy and put in parking meters and everything started to go downhill.

Steve Rosen says,
"Local political idiots touted this waste of money as a big deal years ago. I visited the area during the heyday but like all of our elected officials and their expert consultants with their years of experience that us lowly members of the public now want to do away with per that editorial, they have failed again. This is what years of experience bullchit gets you when bribes and political contributions matter more than doing the right thing."

Read about it HERE.

CAFR - Political Accounting 101 and Dr. Steve Rosen – Part II

Comment Up
Dr. Steve Rosen, who is not short on words, is back with more on what he considers a real cause of our budget deficits, CAFR Funds. He implies that government may be stealing from us.

Guest Blogger
Dr. Steve Rosen

Many budget shortfalls are artificial and are created by these B$%^&* in order to justify an alleged “shortfall” and a new demand for tax increases.

Sure a lot is saved for state pension funds, etc. but the vast bulk of it is not used.

See the web site www.cafr1.com where Walter Burien gives a detailed explanation.

For instance around 1999-2000, Florida alone had around $84 billion tied up in these investments. California right now has enough--near a trillion to pay off there phony $25 billion shortfall with money left over but the politicos are not about to tell anyone about this and woe be anyone who does raise it publicly.

States take funds from all the municipalities in a particular State and invests it in stocks, land, etc. for the earnings. By law, States can buy no more than 5% of a public company’s stocks but that did not stop them.

They formed investment pools run by private investment companies that pool the monies from various States. In this form, State governments can collectively control large bulks of a company’s stock. Part of the outsourcing of jobs overseas is at the behest of these group funds in order to enhance their bottom line using OUR MONEY.

You don’t really believe these people care about jobs creation do you? If so, you are living in the twilight zone! It’s all about money, power and keeping us in our places.

Anything else is pure spin and baloney in order to assure they get re-elected. I could go on and on about the care and feeding of a future elected official and what goes on inside party meetings and will gladly do so if anyone cares to know about this stuff.

We are being robbed blind and any budget shortfall is artificially created through bookkeeping entry tricks.

CAFR - Political Accounting 101 and Dr. Steve Rosen - Part I

CAFR Unlimited is completing their work on the draft of the Fund Financial Statements. These will be forwarded to the auditors upon completion. They will then proceed to the combining statements, Government Wide Statements and footnotes in the coming week.

The above is an excerpt from the latest City Manager’s Report.

What is CAFR Unlimited? "It is a highly specialized financial report writer specifically designed to assist government finance professionals in producing presentation-quality financial reports. Many customers have said that the CAFR Unlimited product has made their audits go much more smoothly, saving both time and money.."

It aids those who must do a comprehensive annual financial report which states a government's "true worth."

CAFR Unlimited further states that "it gives you the ability and independence to produce your financial statements in-house relatively easy while reducing some of the possible SAS 115 deficiencies that can occur with manual processing. It also provides tools for meeting other reporting requirements, such as budget, grant and state regulations. The software is GASB 34 and GASB 54 compliant."

Finding the subject of CAFR's on the City Manager's Report interesting because of my latest communications with Dr. Steve Rosen, businessman, on budgets and CAFR’s, I wanted to share his thoughts with you.

A little on Dr. Rosen: Dr. Rosen has been a guest blogger on this Blog. He is an astute businessman who cares deeply about the environment, our wildlife (animal rights is the most unextreme philosophy imaginable) and the over development of our State that has caused its collapse. Some may find this incongruent to his activism in animal rights but he says, I am a vegetarian, but a lifetime member of the NRA and member of Gun Owners of America."

He became passionate about animals, our environment, and over-development in our State way before it became fashionable and some thought it even radical and long before Florida Hometown Democracy came on the scene. (Amendment 4 is a ballot initiative on November 2, 2010 that will help curb the over-growth and devastation of our State by allowing the residents to vote on Comprehensive Plan land-use changes)

What Dr. Rosen has to say about the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reporting:

"CAFR funds indeed are interesting. Here is how you create a deficit budget.

Say the county or whatever owns a water treatment plant and it generates $40,000 revenue a year. Now the County decides it will need a much bigger plant in ten years. (In Lake Worth’s case, think of our Reverse Osmosis System) So, off they go to cost it out. When they figure out the cost, what do they do? Simple...they add it to the CAFR list as a liability which creates debt on the books. Now, the $40,000 profit is credited to the account for the new water plant, however to get it paid for on whatever payment schedule they cook up, you need $70,000 instead of $40,000 so you have created an instant fantasy deficit of $30,000.

Get the drift? This is the answer to your question of why we are always having budget shortfalls. It's all accounting tricks to manipulate the public into thinking we really have deficits when all along it’s a scam to convince us we need to ante up more tax dollars or police and firemen will be laid off. You couple it with a scare tactic like that and there you go.

No matter how much we pay in taxes, it will never be enough.

Welcome to politico-accounting 101!”

Dr. Rosen speaks more on CAFR...
Part II coming Monday

The Political Solution - Build more

Comment Up

I-595

We don’t pay attention to what’s happening in the rest of the State. We have enough problems right here at home to gripe and worry about when it comes to over-development and sprawl. We do know that we are rapidly losing our quality of life in Florida.

We are now just a bundle of people living on top on each other. To solve that, developers just keep building in from the coasts and encroach on animal habitats and every square inch of land they can get their greedy little hands on. And the government is complicit and their answer to just about every woe we have in our State is to build—build anything anywhere. Create the jobs, get the growth, more money in the coffers.

Commissioner Golden recently said at the joint CRA meeting, that we should start fixing our roads before we worry about the rest. Usually government does just the opposite. One day it wakes up and says, Holy moly folks, we have a problem; let's build or widen another road. And this mindset continues; it is endless.

Developers have been allowed to come in with local municipal approval by changing Comprehensive plans and build large tracts of homes or commercial centers without considering the infrastructure. All of a sudden…boom…we have a traffic congestion problem or not enough roads to accommodate the population. How long has it taken to widen I-95 just here in Palm Beach County? It took seven years and nearly $400 million dollars and I still see barricades as I drive farther north. For years I hated to drive I-95.

What all this road construction does is buy us several years of reprieve all over our State because of the influx of people moving here and the never ending building in our State to accommodate the thousands of people migrating here. It is a constant game of catch-up and money that our State and the residents here can no longer afford.

Dr. Steve Rosen says about his neck of the woods-- "State goons are spending over a billion dollars to revamp Interstate I-595 that runs right in front of my business. When it first opened around 10 years ago, it was a nice drive. However, all it did was open West Broward County up to an explosion of development. Five years later, the road is clogged during rush hour.

So, the politicos came up with a solution: Use stimulus money and double deck the road-- widen the hell out of it too to accommodate the bulging traffic.

Why bother with all this? Simple. It opens the West end of the county up to even MORE burdensome unwanted development. I wonder how long, without Amendment 4, it would take before the road is once again maxed out.

This is the politico scumbag way. Too much traffic, widen the roads. They did this for years in Miami-Dead County. Now they can’t do it any more so what do they do, divide the road into toll and non-toll sections to suck even more money from us.

Amendment 4 is the only answer. These scum have run amok and are totally out of control."

The True State of Affairs

Dr. Steve Rosen
GUEST BLOGGER


This State of "idiots" and all other States, especially California, have NO real debt like they claim. For YEARS they have been scarfing away our tax dollars in private investments so they could use our dollars to buy into the private sector.

Each State has a CAFR fund or Comprehensive Annual Financial Report that outlines all of these dealings. California has over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money tied up in private investment yet they whine about being broke and going bust. Bullshit. Likewise for Florida and other States. There is no shortage of cash. Period.

The politico scum just don’t want anyone catching on to this travesty. Why do you think so many jobs are outsourced? One reason is the controlling shares of stock in major companies owned by investment pools of local and state government investments. Each local government can buy no more than 5% of a company’s stock so they formed private investment arms to pool the tax dollars they invest and are able to buy controlling shares of companies.

In the lust for more profit, it is in many cases that our very own governments that are directly responsible for outsourcing US jobs to places like China. Why else would there be no significant import duties on these goods so US based manufacturers could have a fair market?

Think about it. If you want more information, go to www.Cafr1.com where it’s all nicely laid out. This information should be pushed by Florida Hometown Democracy. After all, the two clowns running for governor, Alex Stink and Bill McCrapem along with the current idiot in the governor's mansion, Crusthead, comprise the State Board of Administration that over sees the state CAFR funds. Remember last year the fund lost around $200 million in poorly handled real estate investments and localities started pulling out the tax dollars that belong to us!!

Nobody talks about this but this is where the tax dollars go! This should be part of FHD campaign strategy to expose this travesty.

Dr. Steve Rosen


Surplus Taxpayer Money in Florida

Editor Note of Explanation: "The CAFR is the accounting Bible for all local government. It shows the total gross income, investment structure, and also shows the general purpose operating budget as is "selectively" created by your local government. I note that the selectively created operating budget usually amounts to one-third of the gross income and is where 100% of tax income is shown. The other two-thirds of the gross income is shown only in the CAFR report and the other two-thirds is derived from return on investments and enterprise operations of which said enterprise operations will have their own CAFR or Annual Financial Report listing their own investments and gross income separate from the local government they are under. (many games are played here)"

Dr. Steve Rosen - Florida Hometown Democracy Part IV - Conclusion

Comment Up

A Payback on Politicians--
By Dr. Steve Rosen

As I attempted to work with the Florida Fish and Widlife and the system in general in what began as a serious effort to protect the gopher tortoise with no results, I one day happened to read an article in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel about Florida Hometown Democracy.

After mulling it over, I determined that there was still hope. I could effectively bypass the Florida Legislature, the Fla Fish and Wildlife “Con’servation Commission stacked to the hilt with development interests, the courts and the developers and go directly to the public. When I finally met Lesley Blackner, Chair of Florida Hometown Democracy, she had already reached this conclusion about bypassing the courts and politicians who could care less about the rest of us.

I told Lesley I wanted to contribute enough money to assure this issue makes the ballot and sure enough, thanks to a great team effort, it happened.

Meanwhile, none of the detractors will attack me. No newspapers want to interview me. I wonder why. I am the second largest donor to FHD. Even Ryan Houck and company refuse to acknowledge me. Maybe I should buy some strip clubs? They won’t touch me because there is no ammunition in their box with which to attack me.

What started as an animal rights action became a payback on politicians and judges when I joined FHD. Given the current political climate, consider that FHD is the ONLY avenue available in the United States today that can directly transfer power back to the people where it belongs. The judges and politicians can no longer stop it. The Florida Chamber and all the Ryan Houck motor mouths parroting talking points can’t stop it either.

So now I ask you, why won’t the newspaper’s talk to me? Why won’t the opposition attack me? Well, I did file a few other lawsuits against politicians for killing animals which they really seem to enjoy. Go search Miami International Airport jackrabbit rescue, 2003. The lawsuit I filed against Miami Dade County where I was born is still open.

Florida Hometown Democracy has morphed in my mind into more than its face value of public control of comp plan changes. It can be the focal point of a new wave of efforts that show the public how they too can take back their power!!

Go Amendment 4 in 2010!!!!

Steve Rosen

Dr. Rosen's Story, Part III
Dr. Rosen's Story Part II

Dr. Rosen's Story Part I

Dr. Steve Rosen's Story - Florida Hometown Democracy Part III

PART III- Gopher tortoise not really protected

The way around the stringent protections offered by the Endangered Species Act is the so called Candidate Conservation Agreement or CCA. A CCA is a “private” contract like you or I might undertake with someone who builds a home or provides some other service that completely bypasses the Endangered Species Act and allows this flimsy approach to protecting the animals. This agreement can have whatever policies, protections or other stipulations that the parties forming it want to include. The bottom line is that, based on research by my attorney which is in my possession, these so-called CCA’s NEVER WORK. The animals covered by these private agreements always lose out.

When my attorney attempted to attend a second meeting with these sociopaths at Booz Allen, in Atlanta, Georgia, he was initially invited and prepared to go. He reserved a hotel room, rented a car and bought his airline tickets. Two weeks before the meeting, he received a phone call telling him he could not attend the meeting. He could be arrested if he appeared. Apparently, the wildlife goons were aware of who he was and were refusing to attend the meeting if he were there. This second meeting was to finalize terms for the Candidate Conservation Agreement.Thus my attorney and I had to eat some of the costs involved with canceling his trip.

The group goes by the acronym SERPPAS for South East Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability. The gopher tortoise CCA can be found by clicking on the “projects” link at the left and scrolling down to the bottom of the page. CLICK HERE for a link to the page. Scroll down to the end of that page for the link to the final Gopher Tortoise CCA that they cooked up for the phony protection of the gopher tortoise.

in my opinion, all of these dealings, "winings and dinings" were done behind the backs of Florida voters in violation of the Sunshine laws. The Fla. Fish and Wildlife Con-mission never listed any of this material on their web site because they do not want the public to know about it. I handed a stack of documents from these meetings to Dave Fleshler who promptly killed the story asking me why I am complaining because he writes stories about the gopher tortoise.

With these defeats, my attorney advised me to try to force US Fish and Wildlife to review the Endangered Species Act application for the gopher tortoise. I learned that even if they did agree to review the application and even if they agreed to offer the protection, you still need to protect the habitat as a separate action. That would never happen given the politics involved in massive uncontrolled development power in Florida. There was no way I was going to win this, or was there?

Steve Rosen

Next Sunday is the conclusion to Dr. Rosen's story and his payback on politicians.

Dr. Rosen's Story Part II

Dr. Rosen's Story Part I

Steve Rosen's story and Florida Hometown Democracy - Part II

Comment Up
PART II – The Motion to Dismiss and the Gopher Tortoise

Jeb Bush appointed Judge Thomas Bateman who granted the State’s flimsy Motion to Dismiss so I appealed the dismissal. The State Court of Appeals in harmony with their politico buddies upheld the dismissal and offered NO WRITTEN OPINION with their opinion. Without that written opinion, per the statutes supposedly written to protect the public, I was unable to further appeal my lawsuit. Welcome to the People’s Republic of Florida where the laws are written solely to protect those in power from people like me who call them to task.

While all this was going on, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation goons were being wined and dined by the Department of Defense along with state wildlife officials from neighboring states like Louisiana, Georgia and a few others.

All of this wining and dining, all expenses paid by the Dept. of Defense, was being coordinated by the Dept. of Defense’s slimy contractor Booz, Allen, Hamilton, a company with the resources to have planned a 9-11 or Kennedy assassination if you review their web site at www.booz.com.

The purpose of all this wining and dining of wildlife officials concerned what else, the gopher tortoise.

The Dept. of Defense and their buddies in these various state wildlife commissions did not want the gopher tortoise protected by the Endangered Species Act. An application had been filed in early 2006 and naturally the US Fish and Wildlife Conservation missed their mandatory deadline for reviewing it and blamed endless lawsuit settlements they had to deal with before they could review the application. As you can see, rules only apply to the little people, us. The “government’ can do whatever it wants because the rules don’t apply to them.

I can only assume the Defense Department wanted to avoid protection for the gopher tortoises so they could do what they want with their various bombing ranges, etc. in the Southeast.

However, not only did this group not want the gopher tortoise listed under the Act, they wanted to DELIST the already protected Southwestern Gopher tortoises which “were” protected by the Endangered Species Act.

My attorney attended one of these meetings at the Atlanta, Georgia offices of Booz Allen. Security is so tight you have to be accompanied by security to use the restroom!!!

What I also learned from all this while my court case was winding through the system on its inevitable course of failure, was that there is a glaring loophole in the Endangered Species Act! Are you really surprised?

Dr. Steve Rosen

Next Sunday, Part III, Gopher tortoise not really protected

Part 1

Dr. Steve Rosen's Story and Florida Hometown Democracy - Part I

Comment Up

Over the next several Sundays, we will be printing Dr. Steve Rosen’s story and why he became involved in Florida Hometown Democracy. Steve is one of the biggest supporters of Florida Hometown Democracy, not only philosophically, but financially.

Steve Rosen is a native Floridian, 58 years old, who attended the University of Miami and Florida International University. He graduated from FIU in 1973. He graduated from Emory University School of Dentistry in 1977 and practiced dentistry for 17 years.

In 1985 he invented a skin care product that clears ingrown hairs and razor bumps. He says, "It took nine years to traverse the learning curve." He never borrowed money for the business and paid off a ton of debt from his dental practice and school loans and now says, “I am fortunate to be able to be a part of Florida Hometown Democracy.”

The gopher tortoise digs and lives in burrows

FLORIDA HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY
By Dr. Steve Rosen

PART I--WHY I GOT INVOLVED

Mainstream media and opponents of Florida Hometown Democracy are refusing to cover my participation in this project. They have harped on another business owner from south Florida because he is a strip club owner thinking to discredit the effort on that basis. This is a typical attack fronted by opponents who have no substantive argument against passage of FHD other than it hurts their personal pocketbooks. They know it and we know it. None of them have the guts to face Lesley Blackner in a debate. Instead they pay some two-bit hired mouth to parrot their points so they themselves can avoid her. They are afraid to the bone of Lesley Blackner. This is a good thing.

I am the animal activist in the core FHD group. My participation stems from frustration based on the following account which the Florida Sun Sentinel refused to cover even after I personally handed a stack of documents to Dave Fleshler, a reporter who covers environmental issues. To this date Fleshler denies my claim that his bosses carefully screen stories so as not to annoy their benefactors, powers that be or whomever they answer to. Here is my account.

In 1991, and what is now the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, all gubernatorial appointees and all earning their income from the development industry, decided to help their fellow developers save time and money. They issued a dictum stating that no longer would developers have to painstakingly dig up Florida Gopher Tortoises from their six foot deep and up to thirty foot long tunnels so that land development would not kill these animals and the 200 plus other species that inhabit these tunnels. One such inhabitant is the East Indigo Snake which is protected under the Endangered Species Act, a law despised by the Commission and their ilk. They had to keep the Ponzi development scheme going no matter the cost.

After endless whining by developers, the Commission said “no problem”. Starting in 1991 developers were allowed to cough up some money to purchase ITP’s or “Incidental Take Permits.” As you will see the word “incidental’ should be changed to “Massive” take permit because that is exactly what happened.

The fees paid were “supposedly” to permit state officials to purchase other tortoise habitat for “mitigation” purposes, i.e. preserving other habitat to replace habitat lost to the bulldozer.

From 1991 until 2007 when the Commission finally ended the practice, developers literally buried alive over 90,000 gopher tortoises plus whatever else was inhabiting the tunnels at the time including Federally protected East Indigo Snakes which by law, the Florida Wildlife Commission cannot interfere with.

I learned about this mass killing in 2005 and immediately filed suit against the Fla. Fish and Wildlife “Con”mission. They immediately filed a Motion To Dismiss.

Next Sunday, Part II of Dr. Rosen's story.

Behind the Brown Door - revisited - Florida Hometown Democracy is the Key

Spooky and Ominous. What's behind that door?

Behind the Brown Door was an article I wrote for Lake Worth Media in November 2007. The PAC that hired the group behind this door is still out there and still spreading the lies about Florida Hometown Democracy. They hired John Thrasher as a spokesman then. Does anyone remember him?

Florida Hometown Democracy has received the bulk of its contributions from the Sierra Club, Lesley Blackner (one of its founders) and other concerned citizens or environmentalists like Steve Rosen...caring people and who, unlike developers, have no other motive but to preserve our State and all its splendor.

A few years ago, Save Our Constitution, a PAC, hired John Thrasher as a spokesman for them. The Group also includes many builder groups as well as the Florida Chamber of Commerce, a group that I refer to as "evil" and one that always gets its hands into Florida politics when it involves development. It doesn't matter whether it is a 4.02 parcel of land in Lake Worth or a development issue that involves the entire State. They are right there to leap down and snuff out the people's right to vote and they have tons of money.

Associated Industries, which represents Florida businesses, including Publix Supermarkets Inc., is heavily behind the group out to defeat Florida Hometown Democracy. They, back in July 2007, hired a Palm Beach County public relations firm, Public Concepts. This is their door. I thought it an interesting enough shot to bring back to remind all of us that evil lurks behind the brown door. Marketing companies, like lawyers, went to the same school. (Okay, let's hear from all my lawyer friends out there)

Vote For 4! 2010 is the year. This time all the residents of Florida can decide whether we want urban sprawl and every square inch of land paved over. This time, voters can make a big difference in preserving the beauty of our State. There is no doubt in my mind how you will vote in spite of the huge developer money ($3.5 million reported so far) machine behind the defeat of this grassroots, environmentalist effort.

The Brown Door picked a loser for a spokesman two years ago and developer groups have a losing argument against Florida Hometown Democracy to this day.