Daily Loaf

I attended a BOCC meeting last week where a brave Eileen Hart, winner of the 1996 Moral Courage Award, gave her award it back during public comment due to that award’s recent name change. Ms. Hart was not loud or rude (although she sure had a right to be) as she explained why she was now returning it.

Hillsborough County Commission Chairman Ken Hagan tried to shut her up by repeating quickly and rudely “thank you Ms. Hart, thank you Ms. Hart,” as she plopped the award in front of him. It looked like he threw it down and the Times reported it was indeed thrown away and later retrieved from the trash. The bad press since then has been significant starting with the report that day on TBO. Wayne Garcia also reported on the subject.

Saturday was a grand slam of bad press for the morally challenged on the BOCC… (Hagan, Blair, Higginbotham, Norman and White) as Dan Ruth threw them under the bus once again, Sue Carlton’s piece moved Ruth to second base, an editorial by the Trib loaded the bases and finally 5 letters to the editor in the Trib aptly titled Hillsborough County Commission Embarrasses Itself Yet Again knocked them all in. The sad part is do they care? Can they actually read?

Some notables from that same meeting not mentioned: During the presentation for the Chet Tharpe Award for Firefighter of the Year, a gentleman and his sister helping to present the award (which is named for their father) had to deal with several snafus from Commissioner Blair. It was mentioned at least three times during the presentation that Mr. Tharpe and his SISTER were presenting. At the end Mr. Blair thanked the man and his wife for coming down. The gentleman and members of the audience corrected Blair, who apologized and said it was a ” fraudulent slip.”

Someone then yelled out, “don’t you mean Freudian?”

“It was Freudulent, said Blair. This is what we are dealing with people! Don’t take my word for it though here are the transcripts.

So it was quite a week in the news for the morally challenged. Commissioner White was in the news regarding his sexual harassment suit (and you are funding his defense by the way) and the gang of 5 hit the stands regarding their moral hero and sugar daddy Ralph Hughes. This YouTube video also showcases one of our stellar commissioners.

Please do your homework before you vote this November. Hagan, Higginbotham and Blair are all running for re-election. You can contact the morally challenged here.

In addition to witnessing Ms. Hart’s display of courage that day, I also got to see Grandmother at Large, Marilyn Smith tell Blair to shut up as he interrupted her 3 minutes of public comment. I also picked up my very own Kevin Beckner t-shirt at that meeting. He is running against Blair for a county-wide seat.

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