Michael Putney The Miami Herald

January 14, 2010

Michael Putney
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: “that’s you and me, bunky” – Some comments on your column about the governance of Florida with a covert air of what have those damned voters done now.

Mr. Putney,

The Great Nechemie, CPA to the big time Democratic pols of New Jersey [plus me], and the only man I knew who voted for Henry Wallace, oft times called me “Bunky”. Since he has gone to that great counting house in the sky, Green Eye Shade Heaven if you will, I consider it my duty to keep his name alive.

Your reference to the $33,000,000 mortgage that the people of Florida took out to build a court house, hereinafter referred to as Taj Mahal 2, misses, in typical modern American Liberal fashion, the point.

I began to vote against all bond issues – no exceptions – in 1984. The reason was simple. The language in the referendum was in violation of Federal law. The particular law is called the Truth in Lending Act.

I bought a new car that year. The dealer wanted to finance the purchase. He explained how much the loan would cost me right down to the last penny. He even told me how the Rule of 78 would apply should I, in a burst of husbandry disguised as a memorial to the doomed Polonius, decide to prepay the loan.

Thus, the people of Florida did not pay $33,000,000 for TM2. We will pay $82,000,000 for it. That figure consists of the original amount, $33,000,000, plus $49,000,000 in interest. If a Suede Shoe Sam, a used car salesman wearing electric blue slacks with a knock off Versace shirt, did not tell me how much the loan would cost me I would wind up owning his lot. Shouldn’t voters have the same right?

From that day to this every referendum about indebtedness gets an automatic “NO” from me. Whether it’s for manatee charter schools, bovine eructation internal combustion engine plants, highways, bigger highways, Save the Swamp, the one most treacley, the lachrymose laden, perpetual plaint “For the children”, and the latest pilfery, underfunded public pension plans it gets an automatic “NO”.

You may want to take a peek at the MOATC – the Mother of All Taj Mahal Courthouses.




It’s in Boston.

The people of the United States began to build a Court House in Boston in the late ‘80s. After getting the people of this fair land to spend $15,000,000,000 [that’s 15 billion dollars] to build a tunnel under Boston a new Federal building was a mere bagatelle.

Little did the sap citizens know that it had both beginner and advanced ski slopes in the basement. In addition to waterfalls and an East Cost version of purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain there were salmon runs, parquet basketball courts with the voice of Johnny Most in perpetual rasp, mosh pits, alas, no pistol ranges, a rubber room for anybody named Kennedy, and a mirror lined smoke filled room so that the Judges could better decipher the penumbras and emanations that the Founders had hidden in the Constitution.

No one knows how much it cost. If it were built as well as the Boston Tunnel, known affectionately as the Big Ditch, no one will ever know how much it will cost. The tunnel ceiling, in continuous repair mode, doesn’t leak that much anymore. Miles of Duck Tape and tankers filled with Gorilla Glue seem to have stanched the surge. Global Warming, the reason why the water in Boston harbor has risen 26 feet, might yet overcome it.

Dillard High School, one of the crowns in Broward County education, has incurred rebuilding and renovation costs of almost 5 times the original construction cost. As the legal community likes to say, “Stare decisis”.

The man in charge of the Boston Court House was Chief Judge David Breyer. It was like putting Dracula in charge of the Blood Bank. Spending the public’s money like a thirsty sailor on leave did not prove to be a career impediment for him.

I’ll say this for modern American Liberals. They take care of their own.

I am not sure there is a declarative sentence definition of “snarkiness” but your comments on Governor Scott’s familiarity with the words of “God Bless the U.S.A” is surely a supreme specimen of “snarky”. I am sorry that “at least”, as in “at least I know I’m free”, rankles you. Would you have preferred that he accompanied some long haired transgendered tattooed hippy zither maestro playing “Kumbaya”? How about “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow”. Would that have given you hope for the future? To quote Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be his Name, Scott “won” the election. He can pick any song he wants.

You know what rankles me? The ability of an ink stained wretch to have his olfactory senses so trained that he is unaware of the foetid bouquet of his “Nonmalodorous Fecal Matter Syndrome. ?? Send a SASE.



At the memorial service/pep rally in Tucson there were tee-shirts which said “Together We Thrive”, a slogan destined to be forgotten in record time, a man from the other side of the mirror babbling on about Father Sky and Mother Earth, cheerleaders, and yet one more rendition of “Theme for the Common Man”. The estate of Aaron Copeland has surely benefited handsomely from it being played at every public function that has a Democrat holding the microphone. The only thing missing was Oprah, her couch, and Dr.Phil.

Am I the last man standing who thinks that Mozart’s “Requiem” may have been a tad more appropriate? Surely someone in the White House has heard of Beethoven.

Perhaps Scott will turn out to be a helpless naïf in the Tallahassee Knocking Shoppe called the legislature and controlled by hated special interests, particularly those that advocate things that you oppose. Perhaps he will turn out to have some Mary Magdalene qualities. Perhaps is, like money, the Mother’s Milk of Politics. It’s why we have elections.

In either event the people, those ungrateful lizards, have spoken.


Kevin Smith



PS – I am from Hudson County, New Jersey. Bayonne to be precise. The first Taj Mahal we learned about was not the one in Agra but the one in Jersey City. It was the Hudson County jail. The Sheriff was known as Ali Baba. Guess what his deputies were called.