cheer for your leaders
Mariella added three newspaper commentaries about the cozy relationships between the developer industry and a couple of your county commissioners.
Steve Otto says it all smells fishy, and Dan Ruth suggests that Brian Blair and Ken Hagan are nothing but a couple of whores for developers. But one sentence in Ruth’s column says all you need to know about politics in Hillsborough County:
They don’t care about being perceived as hot walkers for anyone with a shovel, because they also know they’ll probably get re-elected.
And he’s probably right. Until young people start paying attention to local politics, you can expect more of the same.
Talk to your kids, talk to your co-workers, and talk to your friends about this stuff. Explain what the commissioners do, and let them know what they are doing.
The development lobby has lots of money to spend on campaigns. They are able to effectively get the message out with advertising. The anti-development lobby does not have gobs of money laying about, so they must respond by getting the word out cheaply.
The only way to make changes is to make sure everyone knows what these jackasses are doing, and get them voted out.
Tags: county, hc bocc, politics
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October 2nd, 2007 at 9:26 am
I’ve seen concrete czar Ralph Hughes’ political strategies at play a few times. He and his puppetry are now even more formidable since he has his own self-endowed $1 mill. “Let’s make the world a better place because we’ve been here” PAC. Ironic name huh? Come BOCC election time, not much will happen until the last couple of weeks before the election, then you can expect the infamous Hughes mass mailers telling you how to think and vote, letters from cronies telling you how right he is, and a maelstrom of negative campaigning. It’s not smart campaigning (the guy is not terribly educated) and the message is bunk, but by throwing money at the situation, he often overwhelms.
October 5th, 2007 at 10:49 am
[...] they are finding it a bit more difficult to do whatever they want, whenever they want. I really hope that residents like you ARE paying more attention to this stuff, and encouraging others to be [...]
October 5th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
“Million-Dollar Sledgehammer”
http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:80237
October 5th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
“Activist’s company donates $1-million worth of influence”
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/07/18/news_pf/Hillsborough/Activist_s_company_do.shtml