Some answers to Lake Morton/Johnson Avenue questions
My last post asked a series of questions related to the murder of Mario Acosta and LPD’s handling of crime in the Lake Morton area — and specifically Johnson Avenue in the last year. This includes a...
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The Johnson Avenue Stabbing, part 3: Of Mario Acosta’s pride and not knowing...
The night before he died, Mario Acosta cooked fajitas with strips of steak too large to fit on a tortilla. He doused the meat in hot sauce he picked up from some anonymous taqueria near his workplace....
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Johnson Avenue is 38 percent “better” than it was in 1999
I’m quite pleased with the Lakeland Police Department’s response to my series of articles concerning the killing of Mario Acosta on Johnson Avenue last month — and a series of other unpleasant events...
View ArticleLedger’s Bill Thompson: Bureaucratic suckerpuncher for a ridiculous institution
You probably didn’t see this, judging by how little response I received. But The Ledger dedicated essentially its entire Saturday editorial to me and my ongoing writing about how police deploy state...
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A monument to Annie Darracott’s fantasies; not Lakeland’s soldiers
Meet Annie Hanna Darracott, founder of the Lakeland chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). That’s her above, standing with a bunch of little girls in front of the Confederate...
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Grady Judd: Voice of the armed minority, deputy of the NRA, hero to white...
A few days ago, I asked the Polk County Sheriff’s Office two questions about Polk Sheriff Grady Judd: 1) Is Grady Judd a member of the NRA? 2) How many personal weapons does he own? I did this because...
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Lenore Devore’s special treatment: Why are Ledger leaders trying to undermine...
Late last week, former Mayor Gow Fields copied me on an email he sent to Ledger Publisher Kevin Drake and virtually everyone even loosely affiliated with I-4 corridor media. It contained a police...
View ArticleDoes The Ledger’s “independent ethics specialist” have a name?
“Gow, We had an independent ethics specialist look at this. There is nothing here to indicate a double standard, as evidenced by the fact that not one of the reputable news organizations that you sent...
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Dear Mr. and Mrs. Barnett: Why you should switch sides on prohibition
I want to share with you an essay I tried to submit to The Ledger a few weeks back. It was my way of answering its editorial page editor’s rather nasty and personalized attack on me for writing...
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College Football: America’s Violent, Immoral, Vital Confederation
In Intruder in the Dust, William Faulkner’s classic meditation on what white southerners owe black southerners, a whiggish white lawyer spends a lot of time talking about “Sambo,” his generic name for...
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The missing art of Generation Suicide’s World of (white) Hurt
You can lie to your mama. You can lie to your race. But you can’t lie to nobody with that cold steel in your face And the same God you were so afraid was gonna send you to Hell Is the same one you’re...
View ArticlePoo flingers and whiny babies: of power, honesty, and discourse on campus and...
I’ve had two fairly recent personal experiences with “free speech”-related kerfuffles. 1) I attended the Leadership Lakeland Alumni forum at Grasslands a while back concerning the strong/executive...
View ArticleDon Gifford walks among us
Don Gifford is a former Lakeland city and Polk county commissioner. He’s a well-known contractor and self-professed Christian. And he posted this on Facebook on Tuesday. “Islam is a cancer on humanity...
View ArticleShootings are down 55 percent in Lakeland year-over-year
Ed. note: I made two errors in the first draft of this. I referred wrongly to Capt. Rick Taylor when I should have said Capt. Sam Taylor. And I misstated last year’s number of “gang-related” shootings....
View ArticleThe Leroy administration cannot end soon enough, Hunt. Be mad about that.
From everything I understand, we are likely in the final days of Polk Superintendent Kathy Leroy’s tenure — which will be remembered for its assertion of gratuitous administrator power for its own...
View ArticleNO CONFIDENCE: Of Kathryn LeRoy, Greg Rivers, bad faith, and ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s hard for mere mortals to wrap our heads around the multi-dimensional game theory of malignant absurdity both revealed in the Kathryn LeRoy “investigation” and orbiting it in reaction. I’ve spent...
View ArticleHow big a check will we have to write, Wes Bridges? You should cover it
Look, I’m descended from lawyers. I don’t practice. But here’s what I see as the endgame for the LeRoy-Rivers Polk Schools fiasco. The great $435/hour effect of hiring a law firm to “investigate”...
View ArticleDear Polk Teachers Union: Get off your butt and do something for your members
I think it’s obvious that teacher quality of life is the most pressing on-the-ground issue in education today. It leads to our teacher shortages. And that, in turn, leaves too many kids in the company...
View ArticleThere are none so deaf, Dick Mullenax, as those who refuse to hear
The Ledger on Friday quoted School Board Member as saying the single stupidest, most clueless thing anyone has said in response the LeRivers fiasco. Mullenax said he thinks LeRoy has not lost...
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LeRoy first, then better leaders everywhere. Some thoughts from Citizens for...
When I called for a hasty meet-up for Super Bowl Sunday, I’d hoped 10 or 15 people would come. We got at least 50. Together we formed Citizens for Better Educational Leadership. We’re a coalition of...
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