The City of Parkland is now well known for the brutal attack and massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School not that long ago. The killer is about to learn his punishment. The city has been badly shaken in its optimism.
There was a trail of fraud, retaliation and connivance before the land in Parkland was developed. Voltaire knew about disillusionment when, in his book “Candide” he had his character, Dr. Pangloss, say: “Everything happens for the best in this best of possible worlds.” Nonsense!
I have doubts that the Parkland real estate deal would have happened without the information which was leaked to me by an inside officer of the buyer company. Hopefully it was legal and not very different from Mark Felt, who was assistant director of the F.B.I., becoming “Deep Throat” and supplying information to the Washington Post. Daniel Ellsberg divulged the Pentagon Papers which showed that during the Vietnam war our military had invaded Cambodia and Laos without telling the American people. Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act but was exonerated when the government again engaged in gross misconduct when Nixon’s “plumbers” broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to find damaging information about him.
In my story doctor Trumpet put the investor group together. When the potential buyer wanted to negotiate a deal, Doctor Trumpet didn’t even want to talk to them because of his own personal tax situation. When I told Doctor Trumpet that as a trustee for compensation, he couldn’t put his personal interests before the interests of his investors, he fired me on the spot. Fortunately, the second trustee undid this retaliation and immediately rehired me. Doctor Trumpet expected blind loyalty as do many people. It’s very prevalent in the corporate world and in the military and in politics. Try former president Trump who fired Jeff Sessions for failing to stop the Department of Justice investigation of Russian interference in our elections. No one has heard anything from Jeff Sessions in a long time. Talking about retaliation, what about the former president firing Andrew McCabe, assistant director of the F.B.I., for failing to bend to his will and firing colonel Alexander Vindman for testifying against Trump in the impeachment trial and gratuitously adding in Vindman’s colonel brother Yevgeny and having them both escorted out of the White House? Then there’s US envoy Gordon Sondland who made the mistake of testifying and the Ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, who also was fired by President Trump, all of whom didn’t think that it was proper for President Trump to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden in order to damage Trump’s political opponent in his domestic reelection campaign. It’s a long list. I almost forgot Geoffrey Berman a federal prosecutor in the Second District in New York who was fired because he was going after Steve Bannon for the “build a private wall” fund for which President Trump pardoned Bannon.
So as my friends in the City of Parkland well know, life is not a bowl of cherries. They take personal chances in seeking gun control reform. Vicious retaliation can follow kind and honest behavior. Fortunately, the Parkland deal worked out for the best. That doesn’t always happen. ~ Lewis