Step on the trailer trash. They can't fight back: Eric Alan Barton's February 10 story of the Tropical Trailer Gardens Mobile Home Park ("Trailer Trashed") gives a deplorable example of a problem rampant in South Florida. "Investors" buy large apartment complexes or mobile home parks. They then extract as much cash as they can from the unfortunate renters and do minimal maintenance. When the property value is right, they sell it to developers. The low-income people living there are then evicted and treated like unwanted trash.
In Coconut Creek, the owner of Coral Lakes Mobile Home Park and the city want to rezone the property to build expensive condos. This would displace at least 800 people living in the park. The owner was fined by the city for hundreds of code violations in 2004. The city put a lien on the property in August 2004 for the $500,000 worth of fines that had accumulated. Several days later, the residents of the park got notices that a rezoning application had been submitted to the city planning and zoning board. If the city has a financial interest in this property's being developed, how could it make an objective decision?
Even though the rezoning has yet to be approved, the developer has begun advertising the proposed project. Loan sharks and a relocation service started offering to "help" the residents. The owner began evicting residents who had made previous arrangements to pay off back rents.
The city claims it wants to be "progressive" and plans to build a high-end residential and retail complex in the area where the mobile home park is. Part of this "progressive" plan includes displacing hundreds of low-income families. In the midst of a countywide affordable-housing crisis, this is both heartless and irresponsible.
Janice Ellery
Coconut Creek
Tell It to President Kerry
Is anyone paying attention? Regarding "Pulp Nonfiction" (February 10, Trevor Aaronson), you'd be on the edge of a real media breakthrough by seriously looking into the evidence that has been collected. Start by looking at the ridiculous job done by the Miami Herald: They handcounted two "Dixie-crat" Florida counties and a third partially. The county with the partial handcount was Suwannee. The Herald then declared that the election was not fraudulent. Why did they stop counting Suwannee? That alone begs more questions than were answered.
Is anyone in the press paying attention to this? Ask people if they are sure their votes for Kerry didn't get switched to Bush on touch-screen machines. How many touch-screen machines were in use on November 2? How many were down-level software from Diebold? Did you know Diebold and ES&S were big Republican donors? Are you sure your vote was counted? I'm fairly certain mine was not.
The corporate media blackout on this topic has drawn a line in the battle for truth. Americans are being starved of this truth -- but the Internet has become the de facto mainstream media for those who won't give up, those who still research a topic and make up their own minds based on irrefutable facts. Evidence of the fraud is rampant. Have fun -- go dig a little.
Vera DuLaney
Lighthouse Point
Why not? Demand a recount: Dear New Times: Thank you for "Pulp Nonfiction." This story broke some time ago, and I am very glad to see that it has not died down. Clint Curtis gave testimony described as "shocking" at the Conyers' hearings on the November 2 election. Thank you for keeping this story at the forefront and keeping your readers informed. The level of fraud in our national elections is not excusable, and we will get to the bottom of this.
Christi Clemons Hoffman
Kansas City, Missouri
Policing the Police
Up against the wall: Reading "Bruiser in Blue" (Trevor Aaronson, January 27), it turns my stomach to see that these pieces of garbage who were sworn in to serve and protect can continue with their internal crime and no one has any clout to dissolve them.
It indicates that the high-ranking officers down to the low-life road patrol are all part of the master plan. How sad that such a lovely city can have such a charred reputation.
Fred Kraut
Coral Springs
Far Out
One trip he didn't want to take: I am a former psychedelic traveler, as well as a former prisoner of the war on drugs. In 1992, I was sentenced to 12.7 years for distribution of LSD. Jeff Stratton's article ("Acid Again," January 27) didn't touch on the LSD weight issue, which is actually fodder for its own article.
For years, people were sentenced based on the weight of the drug, causing a gross disparity in the sentencing structure. Somebody caught with one gram of pure LSD, enough to make about 10,000 hits, would get five years under the federal sentencing guidelines, while somebody like me with 100 milligrams of LSD dissolved in water would get 12 to 15 years (I was convicted of selling 1,000 hits for $710), because they would actually weigh the water that the LSD was dissolved in. The water weighed 60 grams.
I was released in 1995 after serving three years, when the weight issue was restructured, charging on the purity of the drug rather than the gross weight. Sen. Joseph Biden said that "weighing the carrier makes about as much sense as weighing the defendant." Still, it was a great article.
Evan
Via the Internet
