I am scratching my sparsely thatched noggin and getting dandruff all over my blue blazer trying to figure out how a guy who can’t fill out a reporting form could possibly be qualified to pass laws we all must live under.
Ah, democracy, it allows everything to bob to the surface. Alas, human beings are too untrustworthy to entrust the leadership of our affairs to a platonic-like elite.
Poor old Rodney Woods’s campaign reporting forms for the upcoming Largo election (March 7) are sad testimony indeed. Testimony as to what, take your pick.
Also, Woods has not taken advantage of space made available on the city’s web site for the six candidates for three commission seats (including the post of mayor) to make a statement of his goals and promises, nor has he posted a photograph as have all the rest. One wonders.
Oh, he’s a nice enough fellow and harmless, but in this world we can’t all get to be what we want just because we want it (the only thing that prevented me from playing quarterback for Alabama was size and lack of talent, mostly the latter).
A review of the campaign reports filed by the candidates (there have been three such reports already, the last filed on February 3) are very instructive indeed for those who like to read between lines, etc. and look for information that might otherwise be hidden or obscure.
Exempli gratia – while the Big Paper made a big deal over one noteworthy figure in our community giving substantial contributions to three candidates, with the suggestion that said figure had something to gain, it made observers (i.e., this agent for one) wonder why Patricia Gerard, trying with all her might and main to unseat Bob Jackson as mayor, has so many contributors from out of town.
Oh, there is flock of them. As of this date, some 75 percent of her money backers do not live in Largo. Does this make you go hmmmmmm, too?
The suggestion is that many, if not most or all of these backers have an interest in an issue that would, frankly and straightforwardly, make Largo very friendly to a segment of our society.
That is, the intent is to make Largo into a mini-Key West north or Provincetown south in terms of a certain lifestyle.
An attempt to signal to all and sundry that “Largo is friendly to you” was made a couple of years ago. It failed. It should fail again.
Its goal goes under the rubric of “diversity.” But it is a focused and limited diversity, with one aim only.
The segment of the planet outside Largo supporting Madame Gerard includes many jurisdictions in Pinellas County and is as far flung as Tampa, Ohio and Texas, out there in the great big world. Again, one wonders.
But consider Doctor Woods’s wondrous ability with arithmetic where he seems to have paid necessary expenditures but miraculously had listed none in his first two reports. In his third report, he mentions a “reimbursement” to an individual for an expense that was obviously incurred within the first two reporting periods.
No amendments were required, although other candidates have been hassled for amendments where a comma was missing or an “i” was not dotted.
In an amusing footnote to all this, one questioner broached a city hall official with this nagging mystery on the required reports by Woods. “Maybe he paid for them in cash,” was the rejoinder.
Huh? The cash had to come from somewhere and this needs to be reported as a contribution. Because it was money paid out, it needs to be reported as an expenditure. As of that moment, the Woods report sheets showed zero expenditures.
While other candidates were required to file amendments to their reports because every jot and tittle was not just so (remind me to tell you sometime where this marvelous phrase “jot and tittle” comes from), ditto was not required of Woods.
Such is the state of things these days at Festung Largo.