A Man Of His Convictions

By Bill Yanger

Another in a continuing series of imagined conversations over coffee at the Rod & Reel Pier. Any resemblance to persons or personalities, real or imagined, is entirely coincidental and mostly unintended.

Good morning

Is it?

Huh?

Is it a good morning?

Well…seems so. Sun’s shining, I ain’t wearin’ that ratty sweater for the first time since Halloween and the traffic is backed up only halfway down Pine.

Yeah, I guess, but…

But what?

But, just seems…I don’t know...sure, the sun’s making me squint again and I love that but don’t it feel like there’s a cloud hanging low and dark around here?

Cloud…oh, got it. Right. You mean all that email in the sunshine shi…uh…stuff with that new commissioner and the convict guy from Sarasota?

Exactly what I mean. What the hell’s going on around here?

What’s going on? Nothin’ new really. A classic Florida clash of growth or no growth, development or no development, Disney-ized towns or real towns with real people…you know. People get real serious when it comes to makin’ money. And people get just as serious when it comes to protecting their town, especially this one.




Right right and right. But there’s more to it now, it seems. It’s seedy. We got an ex-con who tried to bribe a federal judge being hailed as some kind of legal Prince Valiant on a white horse by the press. Why in the hell would any self respecting person or lawyer or company want their name splattered all high profile-like with a guy like that?

Maybe because he’s paid his debt to society, you know, learned his lesson? That’s the line he used.

Oh don’t feed me that load’a hooey. He didn’t get snagged trying to feed his family by hauling pot from some banana republic like all those folks down in the Everglades did after the net ban. He didn’t overcharge medicare from some back alley pain clinic or hi-jack a tractor-trailor load of Marlboros across state lines so his kid could get chemo treatments. He tried to set up a frikkin’ federal judge! He lied about the judge and the prosecutor, said they were in cahoots. He faked some documents and tried to con the FBI…the F-B-I, man! Come on! This wasn’t detention in the principal’s office or even a weekend in some backwoods sheriff’s drunk tank. This was high brow, top level crime.

He sure seems to know the law about emails and stuff.

Of course he does. He was convicted of wire fraud too. Know what wire fraud is?
Not really, no.

Well I didn’t either so I looked it up. It’s any criminal activity involving electronic communications of any kind. Get it? Electronic communications?
You mean like e-mail?

Yeah, just like e-mail genius. And this is who we have telling us all what the law is around here, a guy who admitted, twice, to wire fraud. This is the guy who the newspaper drools and pants over for spicy quotes without challenging him. Geez, at least get a second opinion from someone else, don’t cha think? Maybe someone who hasn’t spent a couple of decades in a 10 by 10 concrete room with a stainless steel crapper in the corner. What’s next, legal opinions from some serial killer on death row in Stark about that poor missing lady from Haley’s Motel? My lord, how hard can it possibly be to call a law school professor or even an actual lawyer that actually does that kind of work and get their take? And to top it off, does whoever hired him really want to be walking down the aisle arm-in-arm with a straight out convict who pleaded guilty? Give me a big fat break.
So who did hire him?

Don’t know but most folks have their own assumptions. Ain’t a whole lot of us in this town that need or even want the information the convict thinks he’ll find, know what I mean?

The dude has a right to earn a living.

Yeah, but since when do supposedly self-respecting people in this town have to stoop low enough to pay this guy that living. Hell, the convict himself admits anyone can do what he does. It ain’t quantum physics to send a mindless form letter and sit back while some poor city clerk scrambles to locate, organize and then send you a stack of papers simply because the law says they got no choice. You tellin’ me there aren’t other guys out there who can do that? Or is it a talent you can only learn in some cell block behind razor wire? Just makes me want to take a bath, you know? Ick.
But he found some interesting stuff don’t you think?

Interesting? Yeah like peeking in a neighbor’s window late at night is interesting. How about you let me and everyone else read all your emails?

I was not elected to anything so I’m safe.

Oh really? You got all kinds friends at City Hall. Ever email a building official or a P&Z guy, even to their personal e-mail? Or one of those feisty parking safety committee guys? How about the Mayor? Or say you send something to me and I forward it to a commissioner or that planner guy without you even knowing. It’s gonna be sitting in some computer somewhere just waiting for the convict to ask for it. Or for any one to ask for it, actually.

Really?

Really.

Oh.

Yeah, “oh” is right.

I’ll bet e-mailing is not as popular around here as it was a week ago. Especially since some of the stuff in the emails was ...well…kinda dumb, huh?

Dumb? Okay I’ll give you that too. Probably not a genius political strategy to talk about suing the city but it ain’t illegal. Remember, my good friend, that just because you hold office or know someone who does, it doesn’t mean you surrender your right to redress your grievances in court or to even talk about doing it. I can see the bumper sticker now: “Elected People Are Citizens Too!”
Funny. But they are still saying some of it is illegal.

“They” are saying? Who’s the “they” you’re talking about? The convict who made up crap about a federal judge so he could bribe him before the judge died? You think if he has the cojones to concoct entire documents from thin air and lie about it straight in the faces of bad-ass FBI G-Men and a federal grand jury …well, you gonna trust him to be straight with ham ’n eggers like us? You know the old saying…a leopard doesn’t change his spots blah blah blah. Do you really expect him to make a big show of his “expertise” in sunshine laws and then say he didn’t find anything scandalous or awful? That’s how his schtick works, man. That’s his M-O, for chrissakes. He sniffs around behind a little pack of sketchy lawyers looking for small city dust-ups, like in Venice a year or two ago, then get’s himself hired to do the same “email in the sunshine” thing for them. Of course he screams stuff like “serious violation of law” and “shadow government”…he has to cuz without the illegal part, he’s irrelevant and he’s got no job. It’s like the old guy in the western movies with the wish-bone tree twig divining rod hired to walk around lookin’ for a spot to dig the well in some dusty town. The bozos pay him in cash, he dips the twig and yells “Eureka!” and then hops the next train to the next tumbleweed town to find another desperately thirsty sucker.
But the convict is not the only one saying the law was broken.

Only other one I’ve seen say anything about broken laws was the Mayor and it seemed to me like she was just repeating what the convict said. Since when does a Mayor rely on the say-so of a five-time lying felon to accuse a commissioner of breaking the law before the lawyers have even weighed in on it? I mean, who the heck is advising these people? She’s knows better than that. Saying someone “totally violated the sunshine law” is fine I guess, as long as it turns out to be true. If not, what’s she accomplished other than placing her and our city in the bulls-eye of those same sketchy lawyers? Think she’ll apologize if it turns out that the commissioner guy “totally” did not violate sunshine laws? Huh? She likes to pick sides in public. Guess we’ll see about this one.
So what’ll happen now.

Seems to me too much damage is done. A while ago, back when we were seeing just a knick here and a bruise there…no deep bloody gashes, I’d have said they should all sit down, patch their little wounds and talk like neighbors, if not friends. Find a fix and make our little city a better place, even if one doesn’t get as much as they want to get or the other has to give up more than they care to give up.
You mean a compromise…like the health care bill.

I wouldn’t go quite that far but your analogy is appropriate because all those little wounds… they never healed. They just pussed up and festered and now they’ve gone gangrene…and I’m afraid something’s gonna have to get lopped off one way or the other. Too bad, really.

I’m not so sure it’s a lost cause. But with, what, two new lawsuits and another administrative thingy facing the City, any energy left is getting directed at fighting and not much at fixing.

So what would you do?
I’d tell the Mayor to do what she was elected to do…stop picking sides and start being a leader. I’d tell her to call a summit, get the decision makers from each side, toss them in a room, give ‘em coffee and provisions for a week, then lock the door and throw away the key. Sit there and twist arms until a deal was done. This ain’t about the next gotcha moment. It’s about how we want to live where we want to live, you know? We are all in this together now and if either side gets what they really seem to want, which seems to be the elimination of the each other, then we all lose, really.

Well if the Mayor doesn’t have the inclination to step up to the plate like that, I guess it’s a stalemate until someone pushes the wrong button. What did they call it in the Cold War? Mutually assured destruction?
Well said, but I disagree about the players, on both sides. These folks aren’t idiots. They are sophisticated, educated, motivated and yes, passionate adults. They should act like adults, stuff the pride, the venom and the lawyers in a bucket off a dock somewhere and get down to cuttin’ bait together instead of carving each other up. Might catch something worthwhile, you know?

Speaking of bait, when we heading out? Got the little outboard kicker purring again. Caught a chunky trout on the bulkhead flat yesterday with a mouth as yellow as a sunflower petal. She’d been gorging on all those glass minnows been poddin’ up in the bay.
Respoolin’ my reels tonight in fact. How about tomorrow…after coffee? Big moon, tide’s pushing in all morning.

See you tomorrow.
Yeah, tomorrow.


© 2010 – William L. Yanger