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Nevermind 2007; Pasco County Exerted Its Influence On The World In '08

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By TOM JACKSON The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 30, 2007

The years they come, and the years they go, but it's unlikely we soon shall see another year like the one just concluded, the amazing, astounding and genuinely history making twenty-ought-eight.

Who would have imagined, at the same late moment in 2007, with the sensational surge in Iraq - an influx of new troops that included a Pasco County new car dealer (Tom Castriota) and a former Pasco Tribune reporter (Lorie Jewell) breathing fresh life into ambitions for cracking the back of radical Islamist terror; the nationwide housing retreat hitting hardest in Pasco's backyard; the identification of the once-beleaguered Cross Bar/A1 Ranch as a prime candidate for permanent preservation; the ascendancy of rookie County Commissioner Michael Cox as a one-member majority; the confounding process and unnecessary spectacle of funding the sheriff's office; the retirement and sudden reconsideration of same by Zephyrhills City Manager Steve Spina; the wacky charges of conspiratorial vote-fixing against Mayor Hutch Brock made by City Commissioner Camille Hernandez; the agonizingly prolonged hunt for an unflawed diamond in the rough to succeed Harold Sample as city manager of Dade City; Port Richey lawmakers' announcement that they would skirt state statute and install cameras to identify red-light violators at certain problematic intersections; and the ludicrous and needlessly provocative declaration that Wesley Chapel would have, at its spanking-new community park, a conical evergreen, decked out in colored lights and ornaments, whose official title would be not what it appeared to be but, instead, "holiday tree" - who would have guessed, with all that going for it, the events of 2007 would pale in comparison to those of the year now just ending?

The Remarkable President Cheney

Oh, wondrous, oh, stunning, oh downright amazing 2008, how shall we remember you?

Certainly not for the event that, on Jan. 1, promised to be the most carefully watched, most sifted, most turned and inspected of the year. Yes, America elected a new White House resident to succeed President Richard Cheney, who, despite his brief, eight-month tenure in the Oval Office, left the job with an 81 percent job performance approval rating, which some chagrined pundits noted was a precise reversal of Cheney's numbers when, having personally directed the special-forces capture of Osama bin Laden and his top dozen aides in the mountains of north Pakistan in April, George W. Bush returned to Washington and handed in a two-word letter of resignation: Mission Accomplished.

Bush went home to cut brush in Crawford, Texas, and Cheney moved in to use blunt objects on the Democrat-led Congress, extending tax cuts, lowering marginal rates and making it clear to Iraqi leaders that if they didn't take care of business, he would be taking American troops with him when he left office, then using the same tone with Congress to ensure adequate levels of funding didn't hamper American military efforts. "I'm no lame duck," Cheney was heard to say. "I'm just a short-timer. What do I have to lose?"

But really, how could an election that continued the two-family domination of federal politics for at least another four years rise above other, more remarkable, events, some of which, though they happened in Pasco, had national, indeed, international implications?

Getting To The Nitty-Gritty

For instance, wasn't it in Pasco, in a downtown New Port Richey eatery during a frantic week of campaigning before Florida's nomination-shaping primary election in late January, that then-frontrunner Rudy Giuliani suffered a pivotal setback? Wasn't it right there on Main Street when an open microphone caught America's mayor murmuring to a campaign aide, "Grits and eggs; grits and fried chicken; grits and shrimp, grits and grits. What is it with these Southerners? I'll eat the damned things now, but I tell ya, after the election, after I'm inaugurated, there won't be grits within five miles of the White House."

Wasn't it then, soon after Rudy's ill-timed faux pas turned up on YouTube, that his support in the Sunshine State and the South, never deep to begin with, began to slide, primarily toward Fred Thompson? And wasn't it in Zephyrhills that a man-in-the-street interview with a new Thompson supporter turned up the quote that became instant T-shirt material: "I love his grit-eating grin"?

On the other hand, Pasco gave a boost to the sagging campaign of John Edwards when, having emerged from a lengthy tour of Moon Lake, the former senator from North Carolina declared to the national press corps, "Mayun, forget that two Americuhs stuff I been talkin' about. Where I just been persuades me there's at least three Americuhs, maybe four or five."

Follow-up profiles on the colorful, hardscrabble community in major newspapers, news magazines and the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric (seen by no one in Moon Lake, by the way) resonated with voters who live in other, similarly entertaining enclaves around the country. What an Edwards presidency might have done for any of those locales remained problematic, but enough voters were sufficiently impressed by the candidate having identified a separate species of American that his campaign was soon nicknamed the "That's What I'm Talkin' 'Bout Express," and it carried him all the way to the convention and a floor fight for the nomination.

But these moments, having occurred in January, were eclipsed only a couple of months later when, during the final inspection process after which the state Department of Environmental Protection was expected to issue its ruling regarding installation of a so-called "bioreactor landfill" on east Pasco wilderness controlled by Angelo's Aggregate Materials, seismic tests with super-sensitive instruments detected something unexpected. An arm of the vast lake of oil and natural gas long suspected to lie beneath the Everglades extends north, precisely below the proposed landfill site.

Further tests indicated the reserves, easily accessible from the Angelo's site, exceeded 200 billion barrels, a 27-year supply for U.S. needs at the current 20 million barrels-per-day consumption rate. The Iafrate family, owners of Angelo's, instantly applied for a drilling and recovery permit and, before you could say, "Carl Roth, call your office," Pasco was in the oil business.

The $20 Fill-Up Returns

In honor of the man whose tireless war had subjected the Angelo's landfill application to unprecedented scrutiny, leading to the oil find, Dominic Iafrate proposed to name the first well "Carl's Hole."

Moreover, because this market-altering discovery came within the more or less secure borders of the world's foremost democratic power, anticipation of a perpetually reliable and abundant supply caused worldwide oil prices to shed virtually all of their uncertainty overnight. The bill for a barrel of light, sweet crude plummeted to about $60, with a similar swoon in the price of a gallon of gas. A station in Valdosta, Ga., was soon selling gas at less than $1 per gallon; nationwide, the $20 fill-up had returned.

Voters approved, of course, the state constitutional amendment fundamentally altering property tax collections, but the gloom-and-doom crowd was dispersed by news of what oil royalties would mean to the state treasury, not to mention Pasco's.

Meanwhile, the man many thought was a threat to life as we know it was busy scribbling his Dominic Iafrate at the bottom of six-figure checks to area charities and nonprofit organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, CARES, Sunrise, the Audubon Society and Toys for Tots. Yeah, folks agreed, good thing his company didn't wind up providing a service often provided by government.

Summer saw the return of the traditional rainy season and then, some without so much as a single tropical wave crossing the state, most of the Nature Coast recorded more than 60 inches of rain from June until early August. The summer months were so wet, in fact, that the school board took the unprecedented step of recasting the 2008-09 academic calendar, pushing back-to-class day to the Tuesday after Labor Day.

Those who wailed that students would have to take first semester exams after the Christmas/Winter Solstice/Yuletide break were met by a steely Marge Whaley. "Listen," she said, "I'm not up for election ever again, so I can tell you precisely what I think. If your kids, our students, can't hold information in their brains for three weeks, I scarcely think we can say what we're doing is teaching, or what they're doing is learning."

Now the year is almost over, and the future looks entirely bright, for the nation, the state and the county.

As this is written, Land O' Lakes' Drew Weatherford is preparing to lead the FSU "Comeback-inoles" in the Bowl Championship Series title game against (Go-for-O)hio State, losers of three straight national championship opportunities. His brother, Will, rising in the ranks of the Florida House of Representatives, is being mentioned as a future gubernatorial candidate. And the Cincinnati Reds, having been courted all these months by Pasco officials, just last week committed to partnering with the county on a state-of-the-art spring training facility off the Suncoast Parkway near State Road 54.

About all that remains is awaiting the swearing-in of the new American president, the first to have emerged from a convention floor battle in more than 40 years, but the second in two elections to have the outcome predicted by Pasco's results. Yep, we went 60-40 for the winner early last month, the candidate who, a year ago, polls said the greatest number of folks could never be persuaded to support.

But here we are, barely more than three weeks away from the event that will continue that Bush-Clinton dynasty. Even now, however, it feels awkward on the tongue.

President Jeb Bush. How weird is that?

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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