Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Commissioner's actions amount to public theft

I have been reading articles in the newspapers with grave concern about the Florida Keys Mosquito Control [District] board. As a taxpayer here in Monroe County, I am very disappointed that elected Mosquito Control board Commissioner Bill Langstaff allegedly has not paid his property taxes since 2002, according to the Monroe County tax collector's website -- the site is showing an outstanding balance of $43,052 owed on this property, which is in foreclosure, according to the Clerk of the Court's website.

Yet, we the taxpayers are paying his salary of almost $24,000 a year and paying for his health care costs -- and he does not meet the condition of living in Monroe County to serve on the Mosquito Control board.

According to a line item in the proposed 2011 budget titled life and health insurance costs, the district's insurance benefits cost taxpayers $1.5 million a year.

Langstaff has also been cited by Monroe and Levy counties for having filed a homestead exemption in each county. Yet Chairman Stephen Smith and district attorney Dirk Smits assured the board that Langstaff was breaking no laws by remaining on the board.

Smith or Smits, do you think anything should be done to protect the taxpayers? What about you, Commissioner Langstaff? Do you think you should do what is expected of an ethical, moral, decent and principled person and resign?

I am requesting that Langstaff remove himself immediately, discontinue drawing his salary, stop collecting his health care benefits and pay his back taxes.

Taxpayers, do you think you should be enraged, or feel like you have been disrespected by the lack of action on the part of Commissioner Smith and attorney Smits? I know that I am!

Do you see any difference in what former Superintendent Randy Acevedo was convicted of and the alleged crimes that his wife, Monique, is charged, with and this situation? We the taxpayers, as I see it, are being stolen from and nothing is being done to protect us and our hard-earned money.

Kay Thacker

Key Largo

Stop WASP terrorists from building near site

Like any other prouder-than-proud patriot fearing for the safety and survival of his beloved country, I've never forgotten the horrible bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Just the remembrance of the smoking wreckage where so many innocent men, women and children died makes my blood boil.

As a result, I call for the following: No White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) should ever be allowed to own or develop any property in close proximity to such a hallowed place. It's obvious these people cannot be trusted. Every time I see one of them riding around in their huge pickup trucks, or gnawing on some barbecue, or spitting tobacco juice, well, it just gives me the creeps.

Why don't they go live somewhere else and leave the rest of us good Americans alone?

Look at the history of these people: the genocidal appropriation of this continent, the enslavement of millions of Africans, the savage Puritanical witch hunts, the brutal colonial usurpation of so much of the Third World, the Holocaust (I'm not sure if the Germans are WASPs, but close enough), etc.

There they are, in their militias, running around in the woods with their rifles and combat fatigues. I mean, they might attack at any moment. These people are dangerous!

Mr. and Mrs. America, don't be fooled, the threat is real. They are amongst us. They are always plotting their next sinister move. If we let our guard down, before you can say Sarah Palin, they'll be running everything and the America we all know and love, the free and tolerant one, will be gone. Wake up! We will never forget 4/19/95.

Jerome Grapel

Key West

Keys should be able to stand on their own

If we were cut off from the mainland for any length of time, we would wish we had begun solar or wind or tide power. And how about desalinization? Even if the pipeline, which was put into use in the '40s, remains intact, the Miami aquifer that is shared by a large population -- and growing daily -- is not infinite.

There is a closed-up desalinization plant on Stock Island. Why not get it into use? We just go on as if things will never change. We've been lucky. We are very vulnerable. Let's be smart, officials. We never anticipate -- just slide into problems, then a wild scramble and blame-throwing.

We don't know if bad stuff will happen or not, but every indication says let's make a change by choice, not desperation.

Gloria Shaw

Key West