Island Issues

Joe Biden Becomes First American President To Surrender; Fernandina Beach Mayor Dismisses And Ignores Tax Payers

Joe Biden Becomes First American President To Surrender; Fernandina Beach Mayor Dismisses And Ignores Tax Payers

When the Iranians took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 they took 66 Americans hostage.

Today the Taliban in Afghanistan hold thousands of Americans hostage and they didn’t have to lift a finger. Joe Biden handed them over.  He closed the impenetrable Bagram air base that provided air cover and an escape hatch, pulled out the 2,500 U.S. troops, lowered the American flag and shuttered the U.S Embassy. In addition, he handed over billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment and the keys. He surrendered.

It’s hard to argue with British Daily Mail newspaper columnist Andrew Neil when he wrote: “The fall of Kabul and return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan is the most humiliating foreign policy disaster for America since the end of World War II.”

Thousands of Americans and their Afghan partners scattered around the country woke up to discover they had been abandoned. Only a mindless buffoon would make a decision to pull out the military before taking care of the civilians and contractors they were there to protect? He not only didn’t protect them. He didn’t even tell them he was leaving. America’s allies in Afghanistan weren’t even consulted.

The American civilians and their families left behind are now frantically calling U.S. TV stations, relatives, or anybody else they can reach desperately pleading for help. The streets are teaming with armed savages hunting them down. Their chances of rescue are slim. Joe Biden has abandoned them. Their hopes of rescue are similar to the Iranian hostages whose last chance lay in flaming airplane and helicopter wreckage in the Iranian desert due to the ineptness of Jimmy Carter more than 40 years ago.

In a gasping mouth-covering pronouncement Biden went on national TV Tuesday, August 17 saying he doesn’t regret his decision. Then he blamed Donald Trump for his deadly and pathetic blunder, much worse than the 1975 Saigon helicopter optic of the U.S. helicopter leaving the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam. Kabul’s lasting optics are of desperate Afghans falling to their deaths from the wheel wells of departing U.S. jets. The worst is yet to come.

Biden surrendered without firing a shot and left Americans and our NATO and Afghan allies to be slaughtered by blood thirsty violent Taliban savages. Sitting smugly in the Afghan presidential palace are members of the Taliban that Biden and his pal, Barack Obama, let out of Guantanamo in exchange for American traitor and U.S. Army deserter Bo Bergdahl.

Is appalling enough that Biden abandoned our allies. Even worse are the repercussions. What country will ever trust the U.S. to keep its word in the future?

Biden’s action would be like Winston Churchill saying in 1940 that the British had already fought too many wars in Europe and the British and French troops surrounded at Dunkirk were on their own. Then supplying the Germans with billions of dollars in military equipment and blaming Neville Chamberlain for his decision.

Instead of fighting or even criticizing the Taliban, Biden says it’s all Donald Trump’s fault. He spent the past eight months overturning one Trump policy after another, but says the Afghanistan policy is one he couldn’t do anything about?

Would Trump have done this? No. By now the presidential palace would be a pile of rubble and the burial site of Taliban leaders. Taliban fighters roaming the countryside would be easy prey for American aircraft. And armed convoys would be taking Americans and Afghan allies to secure locations. But if Trump was still president none of this would be necessary because Trump wouldn’t have let it get to this point.

The Chinese and Russian embassies in Afghanistan are open and the staffs must be dancing around inside high fiving each other.

Even more absurd, disgraceful, and detached from reality than Biden’s empty rhetoric is the twaddle spilling from Nancy Pelosi’s mouth. “Any political settlement that the Afghans pursue to avert bloodshed must include having women at the table,” this idiot blurted. Her statement comes right after a young girl in Kabul was shot dead and left in a pool of blood by the Taliban because she wasn’t wearing a burqa after leaving her home. Others are beaten and threatened daily. Next she’ll demand the Taliban continue the Kabul University gender studies program and leave the rainbow flag fluttering on the closed U.S. embassy.

Now that Kabul and U.S. foreign policy are burning Biden and Pelosi can concentrate their efforts on continuing to destroy the U.S. domestically.

In addition to drug smugglers, MS13 gang members, Covid infected aliens, rapists, thugs and the illiterate and unskilled, we can soon expect the Taliban take advantage of Biden’s southern border welcome mat as their jihadist terror won’t stay in Afghanistan. Add this to rampant inflation affecting housing, gas, and food; Biden’s promised tax increases to pay for his idiotic green new deal garbage; and out-of-control crime rates in all major U.S. cities controlled by Democrats and the future doesn’t look promising.

If the U.S. Congress wasn’t such a cesspool of left-wing idealogues the time for a richly deserved impeachment would be now. If there has ever been a more inept, incompetent, and unskilled president in the White House I don’t who it was.

America will soon be remembering the more than 3,000 casualties of September 11, 2001, 20 years ago. That day will now be celebrated in Afghanistan as a national holiday. Does anybody think that Joe Biden will dare make a public appearance that day.

(Editor’s note: My above comments were posted this past Thursday on the national Business Pac Review site. It can be seen at https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/08/19/dave-scott-biden-first-president-to-surrender-1121168/. )

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Pay It Forward: Showing simple courtesy pays off. For example, yesterday I was in Publix, and I gave my place in the checkout line to a man who only had two items – a note and a gun.

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Local Left Coast Lunacy: I ran into Fernandina Beach Mayor Mike “Left Coast” Lednovich the other day and suggested that he tell the city’s department heads to cut four percent off their budgets to avoid a tax increase.

I told him that Jack Knocke, the founder of the  local watchdog group Common Sense, agreed with that and so does his membership. He dismissed me with a wave of his hand saying that if Jack Knocke and I are so adamant then we should run for office instead of telling him what to do.

Really? Hey, Mike it’s our money you’re spending. You work for us, not the other way around. We have every right to tell you how to spend our tax money. But, you say that if we don’t like what we elected you to do that we should run for office?

You are an inept, arrogant, pompous, jackass who doesn’t give a rip about what’s best for the community you were elected to serve. No, I won’t run for office, and neither will Jack. We do more for the city by exposing the incompetence of nitwits like you.  We think you should resign. You won’t listen to the tax paying voters. Maybe move back to California where the politics suit you better.

Commissioner Chip Ross is an unlikeable condescending blow hard. But he’s smart, very smart. When he makes a point he backs it up because he’s done his homework. He may be going in the wrong direction and rub people the wrong way, but he knows what he’s talking about. Lednovich on the other hand is flat out stupid. The vacuum that is his mind combined with his arrogance make him intolerable.

The next time you attend a City Commission meeting and fill out a form to speak for your allotted three minutes, be prepared to have “Left Coast” tell you to shut up, sit down, and run for office if you don’t like the way things are going.

This is the worst possible year to raise  taxes.

The Common Sense watch dog group sums up the situation nicely saying that for the past 20 years successive City Commissions have acquiesced to locals desires for increased facilities and services – which is all fine and reasonable. But these same Commissions have failed repeatedly to plan for the associated cost of sustaining them.

City Commissions don’t like to say “no”, and very rarely do. But there comes a time when it is necessary to question, even challenge, proposed expenses and not complacently accept what they are told. This is the time, says Mr. Knocke and others.

“How can this City Commission simply accept as “gospel” the expense list presented to them? How can this City Commission raise taxes when inflation is rampant and personal incomes of the majority of city residents, who live on fixed incomes, have not equally risen?” he asks.

Some say that the local economy is booming – and indeed tourism is returning and the financial picture for shops, bars, restaurants, hotels, resorts, and B&B’s is brighter. However, most of the workers in these businesses cannot afford to live in Fernandina Beach, so their prosperity is irrelevant to city taxpayers. Improved finances for business does not help the property tax burden of those who live here.

Every proposed expense needs to be reviewed, justifications need to be critically examined, and adjusted if necessary. This is tough work and requires fairness and honesty – don’t the taxpayers of Fernandina Beach deserve this?

Several sitting Commissioners have been advocating spending control, so now is the time to turn those words into real action. If not now, when?

Here are adjustments that total $1,045,000 and bring the City Manager Dale “The Big Spender” Martin’s proposed “tax-increase” budget to a more reasonable “no-tax-increase” budget based on the Roll-Back Rate of 5.1068:

  1. $272,000—saved by holding operating expenses in non-safety Departments to current year level.
  2. $157,000—defer recreation vehicle replacement
  3. $320,000 payroll module—defer or finance over several budgets
  4. $30,000—reduce “beach monitoring” to $25K, pre-COVID level
  5. $16,000 City Commission Promotional—what does that buy?
  6. $250,000—defer/cut City Hall Design

These adjustments do not harm safety, welfare, or the delivery of essential services. They are a reasonable way to recognize the impact of the pandemic on our community by minimizing the tax burden.

The City can and should recognize the need to curb spending during the second year of the pandemic, especially with living expenses skyrocketing.

If you agree that the budget should be cut back tell the City Commission by  sending them all a message. Tell all five commissioners to cut out the unnecessary spending by using this simple link:

Commissioners–No Tax Increase  or calling them or sending them one at a time.

There is also a poll on this site asking readers if they would like to have the city budget cut back to avoid tax increases. So far almost 50 folks say yes and only one says “no.”

The Commission would also do well to ignore anything that “Left Coast” Lednovich says. Let him act as the mayor/moderator and run the meetings, nothing more. That and an occasional ribbon-cutting ceremony are all the title of mayor hereabouts buys and that appears to be about all he’s qualified to handle.

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Wait! What? Have you ever read an article and come across a statement that you have to go back and read a second or third time to make sure you read it correctly?

While reading a review of  a book titled “Midnight in Cairo” about that city’s culture from the late 19th century to the 1952 revolution, I came across the following sentence that I think should be the subject of its own book : “One composer set to the task was so overwhelmed that he left the music business altogether and ended up on the street with a shoeshine box and a cat he trained to eat fruit.”

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Tax And Lie Dept: When politicians announce that they are going to tax corporations they make it sound like the average citizen won’t be impacted. It won’t cost you a dime, they say, just the big greedy corporations will pay.

Don’t believe it. We end up paying because those costs are passed on to us, the consumer. The politicians know that, but never say it. They lie to us because they think we’re stupid.

More than 18 percent of my AT&T Television, landline and Internet bill is for taxes and regulatory fees imposed on the carrier by federal, state, and local governments. These government fees also make up more than 17 percent of my cell phone bill. You and I pay the taxes government imposes on them, not the corporations.

Take a close look at your monthly TV, Internet, and cell phone bill and add up the bizarre fees ranging from things labeled federal universal service charges and city communications tax to regulatory video cost recovery fee and Florida local communications tax.

Whenever Joe Biden mumbles the same inane bromides about making the corporations pay their fair share in taxes, it’ll come out of your pocket.

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Things I Wish I’d Said: “Why does a woman reject a man who lives with his mother but sleeps with a man who lives with his wife?” – anonymous.

14 Comments

Hedley Lamar - 25. Aug, 2021 -

” Joe Biden makes Neville Chamberlain look like Sparticus”.

Nigel Glover - 23. Aug, 2021 -

Corporations don’t pay taxes. They collect them.
Read The Fair Tax by Bortz and ???

Amanda Borghese - 21. Aug, 2021 -

As USUAL….100% “right on” – about EVERYTHING!!!

Ron Barone - 21. Aug, 2021 -

Dave, Just how much will Uncle Joe pay the Taliban in ransom to allow safe passage of US citizens back to the US? What amount beyond the value of the tanks, fighter jets, and other equipment he left behind for them to sell to China and/or Russia?

Kirk - 21. Aug, 2021 -

Thanks Dave!

Glen Stettler - 20. Aug, 2021 -

After all we have watched unfold in the last few days, remember Joe Biden is doing his absolute best. Don’t expect more, he is operating at his peak efficiency.

Joe has not changed, this is what he has always been, why would anyone expect more?

Chuck Oliva - 20. Aug, 2021 -

I’ll certainly admit that the withdrawal was completely mishandled, but a far greater bit of national shame was when we abandoned or allies against ISIS, the Kurds, to be slaughtered along Turkey’s border in Syria. This was a policy that was sought after by Turkey that was pushed by their paid proxy Mike Flynn, who received $750K from Turkey while he was a member of Trump’s transition team. He was required to register as an agent if a foreign government but failed to do so. I hate to think that American leadership has become a choice between incompetence and seditious greed, but I know that people selling out American troops for a paycheck is unforgivable.

Ralph Oliver - 20. Aug, 2021 -

Dave Scott is an acerbic, caustic, SOB and well versed in the fine art of how to skewer pretenders , blowhards and other ner’do wells , much like another writer I’m very fond of.
BTW has anyone ever seen Sam Clemens and Dave Scott together?

John Callen - 22. Aug, 2021 -

Yes Ralph. They knew each other as young boys

Jack Knocke - 20. Aug, 2021 -

Dave,

Thanks for giving your readers an opportunity to quickly write to the commissioners. Commissioners have told me in the past that “people just don’s care” about tax increases. We need to let them know that we do care. Just cutting non-essential spending could get us easily to the rollback rate. The Common Sense group has given them many areas to consider for cutting. Thanks to Commissioner Bean for carrying the flag for the residents!

Commissioners–No Tax Increase

Jack

Richard Norman Kurpiers - 20. Aug, 2021 -

Biden got caught with his pants down and he rightly deserves the harsh criticism. One of his biggest blunders was not giving full attention to the vetting process for Special Immigration Visas which the Trump administration instituted – making it near impossible for immigrants from Muslim countries to migrate to the U.S.. Afghanis who provided support to the U.S. military in various capacities have been waiting years to attain SIV status, many of them murdered by the Taliban during the vetting process. Others have been forced into hiding. And now Trump announces he would have gotten them out before making an exit? The exit was negotiated by Trump. Everyone knew it was coming. Why didn’t he address the SIV process, the one he created, while he was on watch? And why didn’t the Biden administration make it a priority on their watch? The answer might lie in the brewing brouhaha among the GOP who are split on whether to let the Afghan people into the U.S..

Neil Borum - 20. Aug, 2021 -

You cannot pull the US military out before getting every American citizen and our Afgan partners out
but, that is what has happened.
Very sad

Bill Shaffer - 20. Aug, 2021 -

There was a time — maybe 15-20 seconds in length — when I wanted to cut the rookie President a little slack.

Time’s up.

Vince Cavallo - 20. Aug, 2021 -

Good read. I hope all those who voted for Biden are happy now that they do not have to complain about Trump’s tweets. After Bush made the dumb call to nation build in Afghanistan subsequent administrations have been happy to kick the can down the road. When the can stopped at Biden’s desk, his diminished mind decided let’s just pull the plug. As opposed to global thinking, his brain calculated we just need pull out the military. That is what happens when the country elects anyone who had zero record of achievement in anything besides politics. The border? Why bother with stopping anyone, just let them in and provide transit to where they wish to go. What bothers me is this jerk has an ego that underscores his bravado. Remember the I told him his country was not getting the aid unless the prosecutor (investigating his son) was removed? Perfect example of a political thug. What is next for this fool? Hard for the simpleton to be overwhelmed as he obviously puts zero time into his decision making beyond picking flavors of ice cream.