Immediately following the revelations in the recent Tampa Bay Times article by Tracey McManus, scientology launched their version of a campaign to convince the citizens of Clearwater they are in fact good for the city. They distributed Freedom magazines to people's doors in the dead of night to try to persuade them the reason downtown Clearwater looks like the set for the latest installment of the Night of The Living Dead movies is not because they bought it up and leave most of the properties empty or massively underutilized, it is because the big bad meanies at the Tampa Bay … [Read more...]
Sirius XM Radio Tuesday Morning
Michael Smerconish wants to continue the conversation we began on Saturday on his CNN show on his SiriusXM radio program. Hoping we will have a little longer to get into these issues in more depth. Scheduled to begin Tuesday morning at 11:04am on SiriusXM channel 124. For those who could not catch it live, here is a link. Unfortunately, the only place I know you can find it is on the SiruisXM site. … [Read more...]
CNN on Clearwater & More from the Tampa Bay Times
Earlier today I chatted briefly with Michael Smerconish on CNN. Unfortunately, there is no embed code for the video so you have to click HERE to watch it. It was a VERY short piece, not really enough time to explain such complex issues, but it is good to see national media paying some attention to this issue. Hopefully more media outlets than just the Tampa Bay Times will want to dig in to this. Tracey McManus also published a new story concerning community reaction to middle-of-the-night distribution of Freedom magazines. As usual, the glossy hype of scientology's PR effort does nothing … [Read more...]
Scientology Attempting to Revise Clearwater History
After Tracey McManus' bombshell article dropped on 20 October, scientology immediately began their efforts to revise history. The next day, Freedom magazines started popping up all over the city. I wrote an article addressing some of the falsehoods Scientology BS Grows Deeper Then they began trying to make a dent in the social media world to cast the article as a bigoted assault on scientology and highlight the wonderful contributions they make to Clearwater. Freedom magazine has a twitter account @Freedommag and on October 21 they began sending out tweets. This is the tweet that is pinned … [Read more...]
Scientology BS Grows Deeper
Scientology had this 116 page "rebuttal" magazine ready to distribute in Clearwater on Sunday immediately after the Tampa Bay Times bombshell dropped. It had been prepared and printed well in advance, with staged photo shoots and 116 pages of PR fluffery and outright bs ready to drop without the inconvenience of having read the article. In fact, it arrived in Clearwater mailboxes Monday morning, so it was mailed even before the article was published. A large percentage of the magazine consists of flowery pages of "I am a Scientologist" stuff. This is basically a rehash of what is shown … [Read more...]
Clearwater Politicians Weigh In
An interesting follow up piece by Tracey McManus quoting reaction from members of the Clearwater City Government to her bombshell expose from yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the Clearwater politicos don't have much to offer in terms of how this happened to their city, what they think it means or more importantly, what they are going to do about it. They have been overwhelmed by a far more sophisticated and well-funded opponent that doesn’t care whether they hurt anyone’s feelings as long as they get their way. Politicians in Clearwater in the last couple of decades have been more concerned … [Read more...]
Scientology Has Bought Clearwater
Tracey McManus' meticulously researched article dominating the front page of this morning's Tampa Bay Times is a bombshell. I doubt many people in Clearwater realized just how complete scientology's takeover of the downtown is. This is why I have been supporting and promoting Mark Bunker for the city council. Scientology ALWAYS Comes First Why Elect Mark Bunker? And the urgency of this is further highlighted by a passage in the article. For the non-residents of Clearwater let me give you a little background that is explained in the article. It concerns the dispute … [Read more...]
Clearwater Jazz Festival
Generally, scientology does not proselytize for new members in downtown Clearwater. They don't try to recruit new members -- "Flag" is for existing scientologists who make the pilgrimage to hand over cash and participate in advanced scientology courses and auditing. In fact, scientology would prefer there were NO "wogs" (non-scientologists) in the downtown area at all. They want it to be 100% scientologists. But there is a local "mission" in Belleair that is for "new people" who may be introduced in some fashion by scientologists in the local area (it is also where those who don't … [Read more...]
Scientology ALWAYS Comes First
Here is a perfect example of why scientologists cannot be trusted in positions where they are supposed to act in the public interest. Paris Morfopolous is the poster child of a fundamentalist scientologist. He has been a scientology business owner that has relied on scientologists' patronage in downtown Clearwater for decades. He is the head of Clearwater's Downtown Development Board. Tony Ortega's article describing Morfopolous' rant against Mark Bunker at the most recent DDB meeting tells the most recent story of his dedication to following the dictates of L. Ron Hubbard. With the … [Read more...]
Why Elect Mark Bunker?
Tracey McManus article on the Downtown Development Board should be sounding alarms for the citizens of Clearwater. She explains: Three of the five candidates running for three seats in the Oct. 8 election are downtown business owners who are also Scientology parishioners. Three of the seven current board members are also parishioners: Stu Sjouwerman, founder of cyber security firm KnowBe4, whose term ends this year and who is not running for re-election; Ray Cassano, owner of Station Square Realty, whose term ends in 2021; and Paris Morfopoulos, owner of One Stoppe Shoppe, who is running for … [Read more...]