What is YOUR "Quality of Life"?

Paid political advertisement. Paid for and approved by Linda McKinney 6025 Keystone Ave. Port St. John, FL 32927

Paid electioneering communication paid for by Linda McKinney 6025 Keystone Ave. Port St. John, FL 32927

Paid political advertisement. Paid for and approved by Linda McKinney 6025 Keystone Ave. Port St. John, FL 32927. No candidate approved this advertisement.

Maureen Rupe is always trying to tell us that she is fighting for our "Quality of Life". She touts this on her website ad infinitum. She touts it on her Home page; Sales Tax page; What Qualifies Me to Run for County Commissioner page; Budgetary Challenges and Opportunities page; Sustainable Growth Management page; CAPIT video; About Me page; and her writings in the local rag, HAPPENINGS (see page 6, Issue 218, July 2008: "We believe our parks and environmentally sensitive lands are important to our quality of life [my italics]"). Who is "we"? And, who asked her to decide for us what our "Quality of Life" should be: much less to decide for us what we think it is?

If you asked 30,000 people on earth what "Quality of Life" means to them, you would get 28,000 different answers. Does that mean that those 2,000 people who had a similar idea as to the definition of "Quality of Life" should be allowed to force the rest of us to do as those 2,000 people think? Or, being individuals and being capable of making up our own minds, should we exercise our own human rights and decide for ourselves what "Quality of Life" means to us and act upon our own ideas? Why has Maureen Rupe, for all these years, gone around deciding for the residents of PSJ and other areas (all those committees, all those organizations, all those meetings deciding what we can and cannot do with our property, trees, etc.) and all while unelected as our representative. Isn't that a bit presumptuous on her part? She never asked us what we wanted as our "Quality of Life", did she? Did you ever receive a poll or questionnaire from Maureen Rupe asking you what "Quality of Life" you wanted; what you thought that would be? And yet, Maureen Rupe has gone around all these years attending meetings and deciding for you. In other words, telling you what is best for you.

Ask the Mek or Kombai tribe and you'll get a different answer as to what "Quality of Life" is. They don't need more green, but neither do they need anyone coming in and telling them that they can't cut down that "endangered" tree that helps them harvest and eat grubs for their gatherings. They wouldn't be able to say that "Quality of Life" is a car in every garage, a television set in every room, and an ice cold drink in every hand because they've never experienced those things. But they have a good life to their standards. They like the way they live and choose not to change. Having enough of the things to eat that they wish to eat = "Quality of Life". Having a good roof on your hut, even if it is made out of leaves, = "Quality of Life". Having a good bow to hunt with = "Quality of Life". Should others be allowed to come along and tell them how to live? Should others be sent in to tell them that their "Quality of Life" would be much better if they wore clothes, had "real" houses and used the internet while flying in airplanes?

Ask a Mongolian nomad if they wish to give up their little round houses, their "gers", so portable and cozy, if they wish to have "Quality of Life" and what that would mean to them. They would probably say that another horse or camel might make life easier, but that would also mean that they would have to find pasture enough for that new animal to eat as well. They might want to have a different tobacco, or a new coat, but would they want a "green belt" around them, something that their animals could not eat and they had no real access to because it was "conservation land"? Is that what would make their lives better, give them a higher "Quality of Life"? Or would they prefer to be left alone to live as they wish, to pursue their own dreams and to raise their children to believe in what they were teaching them and that the old ways are best? What would they choose as a higher "Quality of Life"?

Ask a New Yorker if their "Quality of Life" is lacking because he lives in the "concrete jungle". How many times will you hear, "What? No. Not at all. I love New York!" Even though he hardly ever goes to the "green" spaces around him that doesn't mean that his "Quality of Life" is lacking. It means that he is living his life as he sees fit: in a highrise apartment, using subways to get where he wants, enjoying the hamburgers he eats in restaurants that aren't exactly the Ritz and using the internet for almost six hours daily, that doesn't mean he is dissatisfied with his "Quality of Life". He's choosing his own life; no one is choosing it for him. That is America. That is "Quality of Life". But what if Maureen Rupe got to make him give up his highrise because they aren't good for the air quality, the subway was filled in because it was bad for the environment, the internet was limited to half-an-hour daily and the restaurants he ate in were changed to tofu and veggie burgers because "animals have rights, too"? Would that change his "Quality of Life"? Would that make him happy, or just those who would be forcing those changes upon him?

Ask a "beach bumm" in California if living on the beach and bumming money from people to buy food so that they wouldn't have to get a job because they want to surf all day if his "Quality of Life" would be improved by more regulations regarding him sleeping on the beach, or on a bench, or surfing all day. Ask him if he'd prefer to work nine to five, have a mortgage and a car. Chances are, you'd hear, "You're crazy, man." His "Quality of Life" is just fine with him. He's happy doing what he's doing. He doesn't need outsiders interfering; for that matter, he doesn't need "insiders" interfering, either. His "Quality of Life" depends on him making his own choices, being able to live as he sees fit, and asking no one for permission to do anything. Should Maureen Rupe be able to change him, too?

Ask a beduin nomad if they want to have their desert covered with a canopy of trees and grasses under foot with all kinds of shrubbery and tortoises and birdies surrounding them and they'd probably look at you as if you had gone mad. But it would improve their "Quality of Life", yes? Don't you think that would be better for them: a full tree canopy, grass, shrubs, birdies and tortoises? But it's prettier than a desert. It's cooler than a desert's heat. It's better for the enivornment of the earth; it will help clean some of our greenhouse gasses. It will improve their "Quality of Life", won't it? Ask them if they want that before you go forcing it upon them. Their "Quality of Life" is their business and their choice. Forcing your views upon someone -- as Maureen Rupe did during the PSJ incorporation battle with the communities of Williams Point, Delespine, Hardeeville, Frontenac and part of Sharpes -- is wrong. But that didn't stop Maureen Rupe.

Do I want Maureen Rupe, the Nature Conservancy, The Partnership for a Sustainable Future, The Seirra Club, the Surfrider Club, or anyone else telling me what my "Quality of Life" should be? Nope. I know what is best for me: they haven't a clue! And yet, if Maureen Rupe gets her greedy little hands into our lives, she'll take away our land so that we can have a better "Quality of Life" because there's now a "greenbelt" made out of it. Then she'll take away our money to pay for the upkeep of the "greenbelt" and then they take away our right to visit our ex-property; even though we spent our hard earned cash buying it in the first place and paying the taxes for it in the second! We don't need Maureen Rupe deciding what our "Quality of Life" should be. If she gets her way we'll probably all be living in little huts made out of recycled milk cartons without electricity and without wood burning fireplaces for winter heat because if we had that, it would affect the environment around us and that would affect our "Quality of Life"!

Did Maureen Rupe think that taking away the family heritage of Williams Point was going to help the Williams family's "Quality of Life"? Did Maureen Rupe think that forcefully incorporating Delespine, Hardeeville, or Frontenac (whose heritage is about as old as Titusville's; both older than PSJ's) was going to help the people in those communities' "Quality of Life"? Did Maureen Rupe even understand that it isn't acceptable in America to take upon oneself the role of "Savior of the World" unless you really are? Our "Quality of Life" is up to us to decide; not for someone else to foist upon us. It is up to us to improve our "Quality of Life", not those who wish to save a tree, tortoise, or jack-a-hinto-buggar-bear-fly (althoug there is no such thing) to force us to do what they think is an improvement in our "Quality of Life".

And that's why I have a real problem with Maureen Rupe doing all this "Quality of Life" crud. Maureen Rupe does not seem to get the fact that it isn't her right -- nor the right of the organizations she belongs to -- to act on our behalf and to try to improve our "Quality of Life" unless and until we ask Maureen Rupe and/or the organizations to do so. It is the squeaky wheel that gets greased (all those "environmental" organizations that make such a fuss all the time), but it is the majority that should have the final say in a democracy. And if you want to protect our democracy and our "Quality of Life" from Maureen Rupe and her desire to tax you at every possible chance, to enclose you with "green space" that will prevent your children from building their homes near you, and to make sure that the liberal agenda is served, then you must vote for someone other than Maureen Rupe on August 26th.

I strongly recommend that "someone else" be J. Roger Shealy. He is a good man and I think you will like him as well. Go to his site, ask questions. Get real answers, not links that disappear and answers that gloss things over. He gets my endorsement, even though he never asked for it, and he may not even want it, but there ya' go. Vote for J. Roger Shealy instead of Maureen Rupe. He's a much better -- and more conservative -- alternative.

Paid electioneering communication paid for by Linda McKinney 6025 Keystone Ave. Port St. John, FL 32927

Paid political advertisement. Paid for and approved by Linda McKinney 6025 Keystone Ave. Port St. John, FL 32927

Paid political advertisement. Paid for and approved by Linda McKinney 6025 Keystone Ave. Port St. John, FL 32927. No candidate approved this advertisement.

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