Letters

Free Weekly Throws Election! Evil Reigns!
If Jeb Bush is elected governor on November 3, it will in large part be due to the lackluster performance of New Times during this election season. As readers will presumably have noticed, New Times deliberately chose to ignore Florida's elections until the very last moment. And even then it was too little too late, as evidenced by Jim DeFede's article "Jeb Repackaged" (November 4). Not only did DeFede and New Times fail to convey the true extent of Bush's sordid past, but you also gave him a rather generous makeover just in time for election day.

New Times, for example, failed to tell Florida voters that
*Jeb, back in the Eighties, hobnobbed with officials working for the infamous bank known as BCCI, a.k.a. the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International.

*Jeb may have played a part, in the mid-Eighties, in helping organize right-wing Cubans in Miami to attack Nicaragua, where tens of thousands were killed by American-supplied mercenary thugs.

*Jeb was connected to the S&L crisis, another colossal rip-off of the U.S. taxpayer that cost tens of billions of dollars.

*Jeb had a cozy relationship with the infamous Miguel Recarey, whose health maintenance organization, International Medical Centers (IMC), was charged with Medicare fraud.

*in 1995 and 1996, Jeb served on the board of directors of the Ideon Group, Inc., a Jacksonville credit card service company that was sued by its shareholders and settled for millions of dollars.

*Jeb had business dealings with bloodthirsty military dictatorships in Nigeria and Indonesia.

What is worse, however, is DeFede's generous makeover of Jeb in time for the election. DeFede refers to Jeb as a "political pragmatist," ignoring that this shameless Republican right-winger, who wants to speed up executions and to impose the evangelical agenda on abortion, also

*wants to gut not only Aid to Families with Dependent Children but also Head Start, prekindergarten, subsidized day care, free school lunches, and school health clinics.

*likes to demonize water boards, which regulate development in wetland areas. Jeb says these boards are guilty of seeking the erosion of property rights.

In glossing over Jeb's antidemocratic past and thoroughly reprehensible positions, New Times and DeFede rendered our community a disservice. What will it take for DeFede and the editors to write articles with true political commitment?

Nikolas Kozloff
Miami

Kropola: Try Spelling It Backward
After reading the article by Ted B. Kissell on school board member Michael Krop ("The Naming Game," October 22), it came as no surprise to us to learn that Krop actively lobbied to get his name on a new school in his election district, and that vote trading is a common practice at the school board.

Dr. Krop is one of northeast Miami-Dade's eminent pork-barrel politicians. At civic meetings he always makes an announcement that he has found money for some special project at some school, as if the money weren't there before he "found" it. What a guy! (Note that "Krop" is "pork" spelled backward.)

What surprised us was that board member Manty Sabates-Morse said she would have voted to put Dr. Krop's name on the school had she been present for the vote. Sabates-Morse is also chairwoman of the county Republican Party. What will she suggest next? That we put Bill Clinton's name on party headquarters? Clearly she has a genuine conflict of interest. She cannot openly support the immortality initiatives of sleazy Democrats on the school board and continue as party chairwoman.

We might as well name schools for the other school board members and finish the job. Here are several suggestions:

*Stinson Magnet School for Drunk Driving and Chain Smoking: Named for youth role model and board chairman Solomon Stinson (DUI conviction in 1996), who can regularly be seen standing outside the school administration building satisfying his nicotine addiction. Each student receives a free carton of Camels and a bottle of Jack Daniel's to start the semester. Stinson can supervise the demolition derby every day in the school parking lot.

*Perez-Hantman-Castro Academy for Pompous Windbags: Named for board members Demetrio Perez, Jr., Perla Tabares Hantman, and the Twentieth Century's greatest windbag, Fidel Castro. Perez and Hantman can't go on for six hours like Castro, but they can make six minutes seem like six years.

*Junior Junior Junior High School: Named for Demetrio Perez, Jr.'s son, who is also his staff assistant at the school board. Demetrio's gofer has been nicknamed "Junior Junior" by his fellow staff aides. If we're going to name schools for the most ordinary people we can find, people who've never done anything notable or said anything memorable, we might as well name one for Junior Junior.

Michael A. Van Dyk, president
North Dade Republican Club
Miami

Kropola: A Motherlode of Dirt
Message to Ted B. Kissell: Dig deeper! At last someone has realized that the greatest corruption machine in Miami-Dade County is the public school system.

Shirley Spiegel
Miami

Pooch's Something or Other from Nothing or Other
Regarding John Lantigua's article "Deconstructing Tommy" (October 8), I say congratulations to Tommy Pooch for making something (whatever it is) out of nothing (South Beach). It's amazing that a world-class restaurant and club like the Forge couldn't get away from the blue-hairs and their walkers until the Poochmeister showed up. (What does that say for Shareef Malnik's intelligence?)