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Florida land, A dream lost
Interesting story here "A Dream Lost" about Jesse, a land investor in Florida.
The funny thing is that ALL the Florida papers
are SUCH god-damned lying, thieving, slave-plantation
owning WHORES, that they see ZERO, ZIP,
NONE, NADA, ZILCH _responsibility_ to INFORM
their readers and public about the STATUS and
PROGRESS of the $8.7 BILLION dollar fed/TAXPAYER
funded EVERGLADES RESTORATION PROGRAM.
FOR SHAME! WHAT SAD, DISGUSTING, PATHETIC,
CRAVEN media WHORES they are,
printing all their happy, useless, bogus Bullshit,
and IGNORING a story as vital to Florida's future as this one.
The "understanding" is that Rethuglicans OWN the
state of Florida - the statehouse (both house & senate),
the Gov's mansion, all the muckety-muck
bureaucratic SOBs in high offices (uhh.. maybe the Treasurer and
a few other officials are Dems?) - and they can
STEAL VOTES, elections, and taxpayer funds carte-blanche,
with NO OVERSIGHT from the Florida WHORE newspapers,
except when a local official gets caught red handed.
(A PB County Commissioner just got sent to prison
for his efforts to get a fat check for his rural property by giving
developers a cozy county contract on a 2nd or
3rd other property.)
"THERE WILL BE _NO_ REPORTING OR OVERSIGHT of
the TAXPAYERS $8.7 billion restoration funding"
ALL THREE of the South Florida whore papers
agree.
It is by DESPICABLE tricks like these that
Florida keeps "voting" for Rethuglican presidential candidates,
even though Broward, Dade, and even Palm Beach
County are strongly Democratic (or were till the WHORE
local papers, Palm Beach Post, Ft. Lauderdale
Scum-Sentinel, and Miami Herald the naked emperor all decided
to LEGITIMIZE MASSIVE VOTE STEALING for fun and
crony profits. )
In 1998 the three whore papers aligned
with the business community to SHOOT DOWN the
"Penny per pound sales tax on sugar" to fund
Everglades restoration. Since big sugar was getting
MILLIONS in fed subsidies, they could afford
the losses. But the WHORE papers SNEERED
at the enviro programs as "TAX AND SPEND LIBRULS",
and sweet-talked the Big Sugar POV.
Worse than merely defeating the Penny-per-pound
Everglades Restoration plan (which Congress
took up and passed OVERWHELMINGLY with American
public support after Florida voters
rejected it) the WHORE Florida papers paved
the way for George Idiot Bush to STEAL THE
ELECTION in 2000, by preparing the Right-Wing
big-biz mantra in Florida voter's minds.
AL GORE RAN INTO A BUZZSAW that had been building
for 2+ years (more if you count
the "Get Clinton" white-collar lynch-mob.)
NO ONE IN AMERICA - and
this is saying a lot - has MORE RESPONSIBILITY for the
STOLEN ELECTION of 2000 and putting George
W. Bush in the White House (and ergo,
ALL the atrocities since) than the 3 big god-damned
South Florida papers, who between them,
couldn't report THE TRUTH on ANYTHING if their
lives depended on it.
This article (yours)
is one of the first I've read on the restoration plan in action in months.
(Although, I must confess, I don't read the papers
anymore.) I would say that if Jesse got
FIVE MILLION taxpayer dollars for his 160
acres, he could have bought a nice 20 acre estate, built a
million dollar mansion, and still had $2 million
in the bank - easy. And he still could have
had a few
hundred thousand dollars for another investment
scheme, somewhere north of the Everglades restoration plan.
I hate to say it, but I am GLAD to
hear that they are CONDEMING private property to
RESTORE THE WATER FLOW in the Everglades, and
I fear that many private landowners
are getting WAY MORE than their property
should be worth. God knows, the state and counties
will CONDEMN your property in a New York second,
if they want to put an expanded road,
highway or (heaven forbid) freeway interchange
where your home is.
KEEP SWING THAT HAMMER, Bart - we
need all the help we can get after the CRAVEN,
COWARDLY, STUPID Dems CAVED YET AGAIN - TWICE
these past two weeks.
(First CAVING IN on the Gonzales IMPEACHMENT,
and then going back and retroactively
LEGALIZING the shit that he lied about, the "UNLIMITED
SPYING ON AMERICANS" fisa bill)
(PS - Hillary looked fairly intelligible tonight
- with Keith Olberman as moderator,
ALL the Dem candidates looked good.)
Lj
===
A Dream
Lost
http://www.jessehardy.com/
Jesse Hardy became disabled from a chopper jump
after 14 years of service as a U.S. Navy Seal.
In civilian life, he became involved in real
estate. In those days, the best time to buy Florida property
was during rainy season, exposing the high, dry
land. In 1976, Hardy bought 160 acres in Collier
County less than two miles south of the east-west
corridor of I-75.
It is recorded as being 13-to-14-feet above sea level.
Jesse got the idea of creating 20-acre fish ponds
for families to visit, camp and fish. He obtained
necessary permits from the county and state,
and proceeded to dig, selling the quality limestone
to the county for road fill. A win-win situation.
Those who helped him with the permitting had a
change of heart. The 8.5 billion dollar
Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project
(CERP) includes deconstruction of roads
and plugging canals (originally built to drain
the land and direct water to the Gulf). The intent
of the project is to restore natural water flows.
The government proceeded to buy out all
privately owned land in South Golden Gate Estates,
formerly planned for housing developments.
Hardy, the last lone holdout realized that the
Northern-most point of CERP is some eight miles
south of his property, and that flooding cannot
occur unless his 160 acres is leveled, which isn't in the plan.
Hardy and his son lived a primitive life with
all the necessary commodities, clean water and air,
a generator for refrigeration, air conditioning
and heating. This was his choice. He valued his land
above any material things in life, and was generous
and willing to share his fortune with families,
in an education process of days gone by.
Hardy had one of his finished lakes stocked with
fish and he and Tommy enjoyed their time fishing
and swimming. A remarkable feat, since Tommy
was born with hydrocephalus and diagnosed with
the inability to ever walk. His grandmother asked
Hardy to take him in and care for him, as cancer
would soon be taking her life.
Today, Tommy attends school, rides a bike and
performs like any boy, thanks to Hardy's custodial
love and patient willingness.
For years, Jesse Hardy fought with all his might
to hang on to his homesteaded property. In the end,
at the last of twelve hours of negotiations,
Hardy signed over his property to the state. He was beat and broken.
The state paid him 4.95 million dollars for his
160 acres with lakes and limestone deposits. Nowhere
in Florida can Jesse buy another 160 acres, and
certainly not with leftover cash after attorney fees.
About half of his gains were spent on the purchase
of a 2-acre lot with a modest home in Collier County.
The 55,000 acres called Southern Golden Gate Estates,
South blocks, were purchased with tax dollars.
Condemnation of 200 miles of roads, along with
25 or 30 bridges, is just a part of the growing 8.5 billion
dollar project approved by voters as "Florida
Forever Project" in 1999.
Program details eluded the minds of voters, as
did the expected overruns and no guaranteed results in
achieving the desired outcome. In the meantime,
private property is taken, not just by eminent domain,
but by harassment, attorney fees, forced wetlands,
mitigation fees, and saving endangered species for environmental
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