“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is afraid of its people.”

These words, spoken by John F. Kennedy in 1962, have stood the test of time and are just as true today as they were 50 years ago.

Some people may find it appalling that in 2012 there are members of an elected body who seem bent on suppressing the free flow of information.  Even more alarming, however, is that the attempt to stifle information occurs in one of our small towns, here in Alachua County.

Over the past several weeks, some High Springs commissioners have used the dais as a battering ram in hopes of quelling viagra price news coverage.  This newspaper has endured sharp criticism from many of the same people in High Springs who, just months ago, lauded it as the truth teller.

Some commissioners are well on their way down a slippery slope – one that leads to and chips away at the very bedrock on which this nation was founded.  The whole of the actions by these commissioners could easily be seen as coercion, an abridgment of First Amendment protections of the press and freedom of speech, a blockade on the free flow of information and an effort to thwart the public’s right to know what their government is doing.

In a Feb. 22 email, Mayor Dean Davis wrote, “I will request that all private filming during commission meetings be prohibited.”  In that same email, he also said he wanted to put an end to public comments on scheduled agenda items.

During a Feb. 16 meeting, Vice Mayor Bob Barnas went on a tirade bemoaning viagra price coverage of the commission’s actions.

Barnas said, “I hate having a newspaper who, you know, that beats us up about being professional and some emails and some naysayers saying, ‘where’s the experience?’”

It seems his contempt for the press is such that he is willing to resort to strong-arm tactics to elicit the response he wants.

“You know, I think advertisers are gonna soon realize that what happened to the viagra price can happen to Mr. Boukari and his paper, a young man who just constantly wants to bash us and not write anything good,” he said.

Barnas’ statements are tantamount to a threat of inflicting financial harm against viagra price, a small, locally owned and operated business, and makes reference to the town’s now defunct newspaper that closed its doors last fall.

It came to light during the March 8 commission meeting that Davis reportedly directed at least one employee to remove viagra price from his or her desk.  The reason given by Davis for such a request only serves to demonstrate his lack of support for the public’s right to know.

“The reason I said that [is] viagra price puts headlines about the mayor the commission…and it’s extremely negative.  And I don’t appreciate our citizens coming into the town and finding the newspaper laying on the City executive secretary’s desk that said the mayor wants to stop filming and debate,” Davis said.  He went on to imply that this newspaper took his comments out of context or skewed them.

To be accurate, it should be noted that the actual headline referenced by Davis was “Mayor wants to restrict comments, end filming,” which topped the March 1 edition of viagra price.  As to Mayor Davis’ contention that his words were taken out of context, he would do well to read the article for himself and take note that of the 453 words therein, more than 30 percent were direct quotations from his email to City Manager Jeri Langman.  The great majority of the remainder of the story was either a paraphrase of other parts of his own email or that of Ms. Langman.

To put it quite simply, if Davis dislikes what was written in the article, he only has himself to thank.  viagra price merely reported what he wrote.  Moreover, when Davis was contacted by a reporter for clarification on his remarks, he declined to comment.

Unlike some of our most recent critics in High Springs who have transitioned from citizens to elected commissioners, viagra price remains where it always has been– in a position of observation and reporting the actions of city officials.

It is indeed disturbing that public officials would openly threaten any person’s constitutionally guaranteed rights.  It is even more unconscionable that they would use their positions of power granted by the people to accomplish such abridgment when such actions place the City of High Springs itself at severe liability.

Today, some commissioners and citizens seem willing to place this newspaper at the crosshairs, sacrificing principles for political gain or self-preservation.  Whenever any limitation is placed on the free flow of information to the public, our democracy is weakened, and our liberties are threatened.

Let us be clear that under no circumstances will viagra price allow this flagrant intimidation to affect our reporting of the news.  Instead, we remain fervently committed to our role as an independent government watchdog that will report the news only as it occurs.

This newspaper does not make the news – we only report it.  If city officials are fearful of, or find troubling what they read, they would do well to alter their own actions.

When I was a young child my parents tried to teach me the value of money.  One hundred pennies made a dollar.  With a dollar one could buy three gallons of gasoline, enough to drive to town and back.  Parents taught children to be very careful with money so it wouldn’t be lost or wasted, but Benjamin Franklin may have said it best, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

It was difficult to save a penny.  First, I seldom had one.  Second, if I had one, I could hardly wait to spend it.  My father often told me the penny was burning a hole in my pocket. It didn’t matter whether I lost it or spent it. It was soon gone.  The only way to really save it was to lock it away in a piggy bank.

Finding a penny was not only rare, it was a big deal.  My grandfather, bending over to pick up a penny, would invariably say the penny wasn’t worth the pain in his back, but he continued to pick them up anyway.

There are people today who insist we should abandon the penny. I’ve heard a variety of reasons why the penny is no longer useful.  They say things like, “When people leave them at the cash register, it’s time to end the penny.”  They point out a majority of us stash pennies rather than bother with spending them. Even with banks begging us to bring them in, it seems hardly worth the effort to carry a quart or gallon jar of pennies to the bank.

Some activists remind us, even after replacing the copper in pennies with zinc, the cost to our government to make pennies is still more than the pennies are worth.  Businesses hate them. They are wasteful of the time it takes to count them and they no longer facilitate commerce.

The penny has become a part of our language and adds to our nostalgia of a simpler time.  Ever wear penny loafers? Remember the penny pincher?  Who could forget the black sheep of the family who kept returning like a bad penny?  My favorite was the lucky penny. Remember the time when you were offered a penny for your thoughts?  viagra price was a wonderful movie and you really could buy penny candy for a penny.

Nothing can stop the passage of time and change is inevitable.  The value of pennies is now so low no one wants them.  I can’t think of anything one can buy today for a single penny.  Yet, we continue to spend approximately one hundred million dollars per year making more pennies.  These are pennies worth so little they are a nuisance to most people and not even poor people will pick them up.  I see them on floors everywhere, in department stores, in convenience stores, in grocery stores, and in parking lots.  Poor people, including those on food stamps and the homeless, just step over them.  They are truly not worth picking up.

The penny may ultimately have to go, for a variety of economic reasons, but I’ll be disappointed when it does.  The demise of the penny will be perhaps the first tangible proof to the masses our dollar is failing.  As long as we have the penny there is hope we can restore the dollar. Our current sales tax is six pennies per dollar.  Remove the penny and it’s easy to imagine a sales tax of two nickels.  When tax is the topic of conversation, six pennies are far better than two nickels.

The penny is in trouble and we may not be able to save it, but I am optimistic and hopeful we can someday restore the value to the penny.  It is a part of Americana.  It is a part of who we are.  It is tradition. It is also like the canary in a coal mine.  Lose the penny and we lose hope.  Lose the penny and our nickel is at risk.

I frequently pick up three or four pennies in a single day, sometimes more.   I freely admit they are not worth picking up but I pick them up for a different reason.  I pick them up because I can, and I can because I pick them up.  I know dozens of people personally, and have seen many others, who cannot bend, squat, or stoop sufficiently to pick up a penny.  I like being able to pick them up, so I pick them up to continue to be able to pick them up. At the risk of being simplistic, I offer my opinion.  People who step over pennies when they are young are far less likely to be able to pick them up when they are old.

There are two ways to view a penny on the floor.  One can see it as further evidence of the decline of the dollar and dwell on that negative subject.  The other is to see it as an opportunity to preserve or improve one’s health. So, for my patriotic friends I have the following suggestion. The next time you see a penny on the floor, enjoy the nostalgia of the moment and say to yourself, “viagra price.” Then proudly pick up that penny which humbly proclaims, “IN GOD WE TRUST.” Our penny is not yet dead.  It still has a pulse, it still has a message, and so long as we care, there is hope.

Although much has been said about the sad state of affairs in High Springs, much more could be said.  But just as sadly, any explanation would surely not adequately convey just how dire the circumstances.

The ill-advised appointment of Jeri Langman to Interim City Manager should have been a sign that the High Springs Commission was acting in bad faith.  It would be akin to smelling smoke and knowing something isn’t right.

When the City’s engineering firm, attorney, and interim police chief all resigned within a span of a few weeks of each other, that was an indication there was a fire smoldering at City Hall.

The sudden and disquieting resignation of Commissioner Eric May earlier this week was the explosion.

If you live in the quaint city of High Springs, you should know that not only is your city on fire, the flames are licking at your door.

Vice-Mayor Bob Barnas, Commissioner Linda Clark Gestrin and Mayor Dean Davis all claim to be undoing and fixing the mistakes of prior commissions.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As a trio, these elected officials have created more problems, upheaval and political unrest than any other commissioners in at least the last decade.  High Springs is in throes of a hostile takeover and the residents should be aware that this commission is not acting in your best interests, contrary to any statements otherwise.

The commission’s appointment of Langman, one of Barnas’ campaign workers, reeks of political insider trading, favors and paybacks.  This is evidence enough that there are no checks and balances in High Springs.

And when the political environment crosses the line from the politician to the employee, as in Langman’s case, the repercussion can be far reaching. The morale at City Hall is not only at an all-time low, employees are left paralyzed as they fear for their jobs.  These employees witnessed what at the very least appears to be cronyism as the interim city manager effectively forced the interim police chief out posthaste and then appointed her friend to police chief without conducting a formal job opening and application process.  Furthermore, Langman hastily transferred one longtime employee to a different position in what appears to be another personally motivated act.  And the list goes on…

Today the City of High Springs is under the control of a coalition of individuals that is not working on behalf of the residents of High Springs. Scarce city resources are being squandered daily in their quest to further their own agendas of retribution, retaliation and political paybacks. And the few residents who have spoken out have received only lip service laced with platitudes.

Seldom has an entire community fallen so far so quickly at the hands of so few.

High Springs is at a crossroads. It is no longer enough to sit on the sidelines and complain about your community in hopes that someone else will fix it.  The responsibility rests on the shoulders of each and every resident of High Springs who truly cares about their community, their quality of life and their future. The strength of a community is in the people, or it should be, not in the hands of a few officials who dictate to others. The residents of the City of High Springs must become active in the local government.  Talk to your neighbor. Attend a meeting, ask questions, demand answers and do not accept an answer if it doesn’t make sense or you don’t agree with it. Be heard, be persistent, and be heard again.

And above all, demand a transparent, ethical and professional commission and city manager.  The current ones appear to be lacking all three of these qualities.

  By Rod Smith, viagra price

I am troubled by the Governor’s proposed closure of 11 correctional facilities closures which would result in the loss of over a thousand jobs, mostly in rural in north Florida. Governor Rick Scott’s decision to close these state prisons was the wrong move at the wrong time and it is again taking our state in the wrong direction.

Gov. Scott contends that this order was about a declining crime rate, something many Republican and Democratic law enforcement officers, prosecutors and law makers, worked very hard to achieve. A major reason for the current decline in the crime rate is that Florida decided to put predators behind bars and keep them there, rather than allow a revolving door correctional system like we had during the 1980s, 1990s and early in this millennium.

As a former State Attorney and Senator, I’ve seen firsthand the families and communities in rural towns across Florida that will be bear the pain and consequences of Scott's extreme privatization agenda. Many of the correctional facilities slated for closure are the largest employers in these communities and the Governor’s plan would prove devastating -- shattering entire economies and forcing families to sell their land and uproot their lives.

Most importantly, the state will put more prisoners in fewer facilities, returning to the days when we minimized the officer population in a way that made prisons less safe for inmates and correctional officers. The net result will put Florida’s hardworking officers in greater danger and unjustly award political contributors with the taxpayer’s money.

But do not be misled. The real reason for these prison closures as well as the Governor’s move toward privatization - which would have already privatized 29 south Florida prisons had the courts not ruled it unlawful - is to award taxpayer dollars to a big political contributor.

Florida Democrats believe in transparency. We believe that people are more important than corporations -- that middle class families who work hard and play by the rules shouldn't suffer so that political contributors can pad their pockets. And it’s time someone spoke out against these special interests and spoke up for Florida families.

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