Has SNP Acquired Chrome's ERHE Shares?

Anyone watching the meteoric rise of Sinopec NYSE: SNP), our partner in Blocks 2, 3 and 4 of the Nigeria-Sao Tome Joint Development Zone, has to wonder what's driving the stock's price - it's been up about $25 since last Friday, and is up $17 today to about $171.

As I thought about it, I realized that when Sir Emeka Offor transferred all of his 42% holdings in ERHC Energy (OTCBB: ERHE) to Chrome, Inc., his wholly-owned trading Cayman Islands holding company, he would be free to make any deal he wished with Sinopec with respect to those holdings.

Here's how that would work: He could sell out to Sinopec and simply not promptly or formally notify the officers of ERHC Energy until the very last moment. ERHC would have a reporting requirement if it were officially aware of the sale. But Cayman Islands law would not require Mr. Offor to notify ERHC, and since it would only drive up the stock price, he would have no motive to do so until the very last minute since he is no longer an officer or director of the company.

Sinopec, and indeed all of the Chinese-held oil companies, have stated openly that they are interested in expanding their ties to oil resources in Africa. What could be a better acquisition than ERHC's substantial share of equity in those blocks and others? Acquiring them at a fixed cost from Mr. Offor would save them a frenzy that might drive ERHE shares through the roof, but with First Atlantic Bank's shares would give them controlling interest in the company.

He has told us, however, that he hoped to enhance the value of his shares, and an ERHE-for-SNP stock swap would have accomplished that with no one being the wiser. The price of SNP is up $105 dollars over the past 52 weeks.

SNP would have been required to report the swap at some point, but when? Typically, a reporting company that acquires greater than 5% of the outstanding shares of another publicly-held company is required to report the acquisition within 10 days of doing so; if this swap occurred in recent days, driving the huge price spike, an announcement may be forthcoming.

This is pure speculation. However, under such a circumstance, it is unclear what value the remaining investor-held shares of ERHC Energy would have. I would like to invite discussion on this issue.

Joe McClash Stands Up To Boss Tar

BRADENTON, Fla., Oct. 2, 2007 - A lot of politicians would have accepted a "bribe" - a big, fat and legal campaign contribution - and let any outstanding issues of principle between them and a major developer slip away. Not Manatee County Commissioner-At-Large Joe McClash, who has taken the sometimes lonely and dangerous stance that the county's biggest developer, the owners of Lakewood Ranch, should use its own funds to expand the local highways its vast size and growing population may demand.

Naturally, the developers, Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, Inc. (SMR), want the county to pay the freight, even though the legislation that created the 8,500-acre master-planned community permits it to float up to $4 billion in bonds to pay their own way. (As an aside, a local reporter who covered the issue didn't even know that, and when he found out, never reported it.) But as local governments around Florida start to run out of money for such projects due to property tax reductions by the Republican legislature and the bite Big Oil is taking out of everyone’s pocket, money for new roads doesn't get approved as automatically as it once was.

The Lakewood Ranch development has up to 20,000 residents in peak season, and there are 11 schools and colleges there; it's a mixed-race community, with 1 percent Asian, 86 percent white, 7 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic. It's a clean and pretty place, but it's also a hungry one - hungry for new home sales, new projects within the master community, and for roads, roads, roads.

Until recently, when the good times cooled, no one ever noticed who paid the bills. Counties and cities believed that if they paid for the roads, developers would build homes and people would come buy them, local banks would prosper, the population would grow along with property and sales tax revenues, and both their own and the community's image would benefit.

But in much of Florida, people are moving out, not in, and homes go begging for buyers for months or years even at deep discounts. On one street near me, of about 30 homes, six are for sale; in my condominium building, part of a large, older development, six of the 32 units are for sale.

In the Sarasota-Bradenton area, one of the two fastest-growing markets in the nation until the hurricanes of 2004, about 30,000 homes and condominium units are waiting to be sold or are in litigation. On Bradenton's waterfront, dozens of small, affordable homes were abandoned to make way for a luxury high-rise building; now, squatters move into the affordable homes, for free, and most units in the the luxury building remain empty.

A condominium saleswoman known as the "Condo Queen" says that when she held a Sunday "open house" for six houses and apartments recently, no one - not one person - came. The financial devastation that keeps threatening to wreck the world's stock markets is already real to localities here and throughout the United States. And it's not clear that anyone can afford new roads.

It's important, then, to understand that the mother's milk of modern metropolitan politics is not money, but asphalt and its vast number of associated industries. The people who pump the tar and pave the roads have tens of billions of dollars in dedicated highway funds to slurp up whenever they "recommend" it.

Counties and cities, supported by sales, gasoline and property taxes, usually pay at least half the cost of road work and are partly dependent on state funds - unless an Interstate or federally-owned highway is involved, when the $15.7 billion Highway Trust Fund may pay 80 percent or more of the cost. Now, though, according to hearings in Washington earlier this year, the Highway Trust Fund is going broke because it is being spent at double the rate of revenue increases, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says; since 2001, highway spending has exceeded its revenues by about $16 billion.

"If annual [bond] obligation limits are set at the levels authorized in 2005, CBO projects that the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund will become exhausted at some point during fiscal year 2009; the Administration also projects that the balances in the highway account will be exhausted that year," the CBO said. "CBO expects that the mass transit account will have sufficient revenues to cover its expenditures until 2012; the Administration estimates that the mass transit account will become exhausted in 2011," a 2007 summary of the CBO findings said.

And if higher fuel efficiency standards are met (thus reducing gas tax revenues), if the economy doesn't improve, if oil rises further, and if gasoline taxes don't rise to make up the difference, the CBO says the National Highway Trust Fund could run out of money in 2009.

The expense of building roads, of course, has jumped with the price of oil, the base material of asphalt and macadam, but fear not: no lobby is more stealthy or more powerful, and no lobbyists are more skilled in assuring themselves a big pot of gravy each year than those of Boss Tar. That's why road jobs (try visiting Miami International Airport from LeJeune Road) go on in Miami for years and years and years, disrupting traffic and draining billions of man-hours from drivers. Manatee County has experienced the same thing on a smaller scale, frustrating drivers who can’t understand why roads remain torn up while no work goes on. The frustration only helps Boss Tar by driving voters to their politicians, demanding what Boss Tar not-so-subtly tells them to demand.

Read part of the Page 1 account from this morning's Sarasota Herald Tribune of a crash that killed two men and caused an 11-car pileup very early this morning and you may understand how that can be so:

Roadblock blamed in fatal I-75 pileup
FHP says the driver of the semi
that started the carnage had no warning
By TODD RUGER
todd.ruger@heraldtribune.com

SARASOTA -- The driver of a semitrailer that caused a fatal crash Monday on Interstate 75 likely will not face criminal charges, since he had no warning that traffic would be stopped for a construction project, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

Instead, trucker Pablo Merlos, 33, will probably be cited for careless driving because there is no evidence to support his claim that his cruise control malfunctioned, said FHP Sgt. Herbert Head.

The multivehicle crash occurred about 12:30 a.m., at the Bee Ridge Road interchange, where workers and an off-duty FHP trooper had set up a temporary roadblock while working to reopen a lane that was closed earlier in the night.

According to the FHP, drivers said the roadblock stopped them at the bottom of the back side of the overpass, which moves I-75 traffic over Bee Ridge Road. Northbound I-75 drivers coming over the elevated interstate had to brake quickly, including Merlos and another trucker driving next to him who stopped in time.

"I think there was a more appropriate place to be doing a roadblock or slowing down the traffic as it was approaching the construction zone," Head said.

The 11-vehicle crash killed two men, sent one boy to the hospital in serious condition and injured at least six more people. The other semi driver said Merlos accelerated up the overpass.

A construction supervisor, Robert Dowdell, told television reporters that the crews had warning signs drivers could see before the crash site, but had moved them by Monday afternoon.

Zep Construction of Fort Myers did not return a call for comment Monday.

The hapless driver of the truck is facing a careless driving ticket from the Floriday Highway Patrol; the people who put up and took down the roadblocks amd warning signs go free. At the trial of the driver, or maybe later, speaking of the injured and killed, and the damaged cars and trucks, someone will say that Manatee County needs to re-grade the overpass. "Even if it saves just one life," he or she will say, "it's worth the $100 million it will cost." And that will be the voice of Boss Tar.

Boss Tar Gets Paid Twice
Remember that Interstate bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed during rush hour a few months ago? Remember the collapse of Interstate 10 in the Northridge Earthquake, or the collapse of an elevated section of Interstate 5 that killed an LAPD officer the same day? Remember how Interstate 10 was washed away during Hurricane Rita in 2004? Remember the huge Sunshine Skyway bridge near Tampa that fell into the bay? Remember how Oakland's Bay Bridge collapsed on itself during the World Series Quake? All were occasions when Boss Tar got paid to build the same roads and bridges twice - and always for an awful lot more the second time.

Even in my hometown of Monroe, N.Y., my high school classmate, the student council president who became the Justice of the Peace and ran his father's paving machinery firm, went to jail for taking kickbacks. Between them, multiplied many times, you gave Boss Tar tens of billions of dollars - twice. And Boss Tar doesn't even have a face, does he? Who do you think of?

The roadbuilders and associated industries are also, of course, untouchable. No newspaper, magazine or investigative tv show will take them on. You need only raise a mild objection to anything the road-builders propose and they will flood you with complaints about traffic, potholes, rutted roads, flooded roads, and road hazards. They have an unending supply of supporters - thanks only to the knee-jerk indoctrination of the public with respect to roads - and so this industry is more powerful than banks, insurance companies and utilities. They know where the money comes from.

So Boss Tar always gets his way, except in those rare cases when a community or someone like McClash is willing to stand up and fight for everything they're worth. Boston doesn't have people like that, so they got the "Big Dig;" neither did L.A., so they got the shoddy construction of the (badly needed) Metro Rail subway. In the Greenwich Village area of New York City, however, in the late '50s and early '60s a group of upstarts - in politics, they are called insurgents - took over the corrupt local Democratic Party club, led by the immensely powerful Carmine DeSapio, and installed a new regime called the Village Independent Democrats.

They did so in the process of fighting the corruption that accompanied the planned construction of Robert Moses's proposed West Side Highway, which would have ripped the Colonial-era heart out of Greenwich Village. Once in power, the insurgents elected people like future Congressman and Mayor Ed Koch - and dozens of others - so they could stop the highway, and they did. It is the only instance I know of a community overcoming the asphalt business; the highway never got built, and still - 40 years later - isn't needed.

In facing off with Rex Jensen,, the developer of Manatee Ranch, Joe McClash takes the risk of losing his countywide base as an At_large-Commissioner, because Lakewod Ranch - now 6,000 homes and 3,675 more on the drawing board - is becoming a substantial part of the countywide population. Jensen's current vista includes seven different villages, thousands of businesses, two newspaper and a big hospital, affluent residents - averaging more than $56,000 per year in personal income - and 9 elementary, middle and high schools and a community college annex all built at public expense to serve his vision. in 2006 alone, developers like him have asked the county commission to add a cent to the county sales tax, $300 to the property tax and $0.045 percent to the property transfer tax - just to pay for roads.

When push came to shove at a commission meeting last Wednesday, Sept. 26, according to Herald columnist Vin Mannix, "Jensen said if the county commission requires developers to wait until State Road 64 improvements are completed in 2009 before their projects are permitted, they'd better be prepared for a fight."

In Jensen's corner, too, whether he knows it or not, is Boss Tar.

"Very few people realize," said E.L. Powers, Secretary of the [American Road Builders'] Association, "that highway construction has become one of the country's greatest industries. There are identified with it 80,000 highway oficials, 7,000 road contractors, 2,000 bridge contractors, 1,100 manufacturers and dealers in road building machinery, materials and appliances, 7,338 firms manufacturing highway transportation equipment, 15,000 civil and highway engineers, 10,000 automotive and chemical engineers, and 842 highway associations and engineers' and contractors' organizations, not to speak of the many publications devoted to good roads.

"In addition to these there are 7,338 firms manufacturing vehicles dependent on good roads, having a total invested capital of $6,000,000,000 and an annual output of 1,500,000 passenger cars valued at $400,000,000, and 165,000 tractors valued at $225,000,000. The 7,000 road contractors have a total invested capital of $65,000,000.

"Road building is largely in its infancy. Eighty-five percent of American roads have yet to be surfaced. ..."

-- New York Times, Nov. 6, 1921

Those were the days when the roadbuilders - Boss Tar - had a name and a face; it was 86 years ago.

Standing up to Boss Tar is a rare and illuminating event. At-Large Commissioner Joe McClash, whom I have never met or telephoned or contributed to (he does respond to email messages, and will meet with anyone), who is in the opposition party and whom I have never even seen except in many reruns of commission meetings on the Manatee Government Access channel, is one of the most exceptional and determined public servants it has ever been my pleasure to witness. I was on a first-name basis with every member of the Los Angeles City Council, and one of the County Supervisors, and the last and present mayor, but with all their good qualities combined they do not equal one Joe McClash. Only an exceptional man makes the leadership decisions he does.

Standing Up To Boss Tar
McClash is a cool, wise, tough, sometimes brush-cut ex-Marine and transplanted New Yorker from Astoria, Queens, who owns a heating and cooling business and 100 or so small rental homes. He has served on the County Commission since 1990 and been its chairman twice. Now 50, married and the father of two, he's both a sailor and a flyer and probably a jet-skier, water-skier and even a surfer, for all I know, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn he's one of those guys that paraglides over Bradenton Beach - he's soaring hundreds of feet above all but a few of his colleagues in the tricky business of politics. I see him as Governor of Florida one day soon.

All of these encomiums were brought into focus again today when the Bradenton Herald, a relentless patsy of the roadbuilders and developers, reported a series of man-in-the-street comments from ordinary citizens who have witnessed McClash in action in his confrontation with Jensen. Not one or two, but a rather healthy majority of Manatee County residents queried by the Herald told the paper how much they admired McClash and his strong stand against paying for the developer's paving projects. That didn't get onto their Website for posterity, though.

One of McClash's fellow commissioners, a former Florida Highway Patrol officer named Ron Getman, cast the deciding vote to stick another 5-cent tax dedicated to new road-building on the backs of Manatee County drivers. It's gone into effect as gas prices have gone through the roof.

I tried to run against Getman a year ago on that issue and the road issue, and so far as I know was the first politicians to say - in an article published in the Herald, with my picture - that folks weren't coming to Florida anymore, and that the roads and the ten of thousands of homes then approved would not be needed, positions vindicated by events ever since. Remember?

Shea added that he will fight to repeal Manatee's gas tax, which was raised by 5 cents last month for road improvements. He said commissioners are ignoring the need to preserve Manatee lands each time they approve a new development.

"I'm taking a pro-preservation stance," Shea said. "It's a mistake to think (developers) can build an unlimited number of homes, and an unlimited number of people are going to come here and buy them up. The hurricane cycle we're going through will severely cramp home sales and substantially reduce the flow of tourism and retirees moving to this part of Florida."

-- Bradenton Herald, June 1, 2006

On Sept. 29, 2007, the Wall Street Journal's top weekend story was entitled, "Is Florida Over?" But back in 2006, the coming crunch was apparent to anyone who was capable of telling the truth to themselves. Joe McClash was one of the very first, if not the first, to listen, understand and agree. His courage in facing the developers, and my regret that I could not join him in doing so, has persisted ever since. Electing Getman was like turning the county treasury over to Boss Tar, but the Herald, the local Gannett daily newspaper, was only too happy to oblige.

Troopers and asphalt go together like oil and Brylcreem, and now Getman's tax and Jensen's roads are joined on the battlefield of Big Tar against a man the angels named McClash - he's a fighter, and a prince among men.

Joe Shea is Editor-in-Chief of The American Reporter and a member of the Manatee County Democratic Executive Committee. Joe McClash is a Republican.

Robin Miller Speaks Up For Village of the Arts

The amazing human being who runs several of the world's most influential Websites is a resident of downtown Bradenton's Village of the Arts, a great idea that has not yet been fully realized. Robin (roblimo) Miller of the Open Source Publishing Group was kind enough to invite me to his home office - adjacent to his wife Debbie's art gallery - in Village of the Arts, and his Website displays the strong commitment he's made to Village in the form of interviews with many of the area's residents and gallery owners.

But residents of the Village have a number of problems, mostly with promised-but-undelivered infrastructure, and met with snickering city officials last night to get them addressed. Naturally, Robin Miller was there, and this morning his Website features a terrific review of the meeting you won't read in the Bradenton Herald:

Why Bradenton City Government Must Support the Village of the Arts

roblimo | Bradenton/local, Politics, Business | Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

Last night, Bradenton city officials met with Village of the Arts residents and gallery owners for the first time in three years. The local paper ran a story about that meeting this morning that got the gist of it right, but didn’t come to grips with the main issue: that the Village of the Arts is one of few attractions that gives Bradenton a unique identity, and deserves the city’s support for that reason alone.

In the back of the room, where the newspaper reporter couldn’t hear, several city employees scorned Village residents who wanted more city money spent on improvements (street lighting, sidewalks, and signage) in their neighborhood but, at the same time, complained about rising property taxes.

“How can they want it both ways?” one opined sotto voce.

What those city employees may not realize is that many Village of the Arts residents bought houses and opened businesses based on published City plans for the area. I know my decision to buy here, and my wife’s decision to open a small gallery here, were spurred in large part by my reading of the city’s 2003 plan for Village of the Arts improvements.

When I read the city’s 2003 plan for the Village of the Arts, back in 2004, I didn’t see any footnotes that said, “Hah hah - just kidding,” or, “If we actually do all of this (or even if we don’t), expect your property taxes to double or triple over the next couple of years.”

Basically, what most Village of the Arts residents and business owners want from the city is to see that 2003 Village of the Arts plan carried out. We want the improvements that were promised in 2004, promised again in 2005, but never quite happened despite major tax increases since then.

Funny how that happens, isn’t it?

Condo Sales Are Totally In The Tank

A real estate columnist in the Herald-Tribune, Harold Bubil, wrote Tuesday that:

The condo numbers are worse. On July 7, 2005, 1,154 condos were for sale, with a supply of 14.3 weeks. On Jan. 5 of this year, the supply had increased to 2,369 and the weeks on hand rose to 41.5. On Oct. 15, 4,067 were for sale and only 29 sold, for a weeks-on-hand figure of 140.6.

In other words, it takes about two-and-a-half years to sell a condo in the current market. But the price is going up.

Eulogy: On The Soul Of My Father

An American Passage
ON THE SOUL OF MY FATHER
by Joseph P. Shea

MONROE, N.Y., Sept. 9, 2006 -- Good morning. On behalf of my father and each member of the Shea Family, our thanks to you for being here this morning at a time which, with the passing of his brother Billy's beloved wife, Lorraine Shea, and indeed even the great matriarch of the Snee Family that gave that beautiful land to this church, that surely marks the passage of the generations.

From the era of our beloved father to this one a great deal of history has taken place, and at the time of every such passage it is appropriate and necessary that those whose lives have spanned so much of modern history speak to us about what they have seen.

From the beginning of his life near the turn of the century past, to our time, at the beginning of another, history has borne us forward from the rutted roads and open pastures of a bucolic farm to the urgent bustle and relentless energy of our own Monroe, a place that as many others are, is in the throes of constant change and facing the heat of constant challenge. And it is not different anywhere in the developed world.

That is why, when I was asked to speak this morning about my father's lifelong love of politics, I thought that the real job was to speak of what politics meant to him. As we commonly know it, politics is the fine art of reaching the compromises that make progress on any front possible despite our differences of opinion and character. And he was more than adept at that, having demonstrated it with the victory of his brother in 1954 by 64 votes in a hard-fought race for the municipal bench in Manhattan, where most of a century had passed in which the only Republican elected was his own father. But politics is part of a larger dimension, which is patriotism, and I have to tell you that patriotism infused every fiber of my father's being.

And it was not the popular fairy-tale version of patriotism that is pressed upon us from every corner today, but the deep, abiding kind that emerges from the long life of a man who not only loved but was his country. John S. Shea, Jr. soaked up the very roots of our great nation from the umbilical cord of his mother, whose family fled England long before the Revolution to escape religious persecution, and from the very seed of his forefathers, who fought for freedom and independence in Ireland before they fought here for a new version of those ideals in the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II and Korea. His life, if it could ever be distilled into one single essence, would shine with love and hope for his country.

But in this temporal world, he speaks to us from a higher, native ground, and I now think it was him who inspired the words that came to me one night, "Foremost, seek clarity; first, search for the truth." For in truth, his patriotism took the form of an icy cold clarity that tried always to gaze into the often terrible face of truth. I was constantly after him to speak to me about the world as he saw it, about the past as he saw it, about our nation and its leadership as he saw it. And frankly, he saw it with an unforgiving eagle's eye that never dwelled on discontent, nor dissension, nor partisanship, but always looked cooly beyond our immediate time and place to summon the visage of history itself so that he might see how time was steadily and slowly remaking it. He saw out from those cherished and well-protected roots and his observations were impeccable.

I'm afraid my comments this moning would be meaningless if I did not tell you some of what he saw. I think like the battlements of Jericho he saw this nation under siege from within and without. I think he feared that the fierce rock hammer of Satan himself was being slammed with infinite force against its battlements, and that the rage of a terrible enemy was arrayed against us outside our walls. You and I look around ourselves in this beautiful setting and perhps see no sign of that political catastrophe he believed was coming. He spoke often about "the man on horseback" he feared would bring an end to our democracy and replace it with the very tyranny his ancestors fought to escape.

We are profoundly honored today to have with us my beloved cousin, Lt. Col. Michael Kies of the United States Marine Corps, who can attest to you the truth of the rage and chaos that has overtaken much of the Middle East, where he pledged his life to bring order and sanity to a region gone mad in the torment of rapid change. My father sharply rejected the war in Iraq as an enterprise built upon the lies of a President whose personal search for revenge against Saddam had led him into errors of a Biblical proportion. I could not agree with him, but I could not argue from a moral plane against his observations, either.

While he was a strategist who told me he was once ordered by the President to devise a nuclear battle plan to strike against North Korean forces that had massed on the South Korean border when American forces were engaging almost all of our ready forces during a Tet offensive in Vietnam, he had a moral sense that informed his view of that and other conflicts, while our time, and perhaps myself, look at today's war as a strategic necessity whose morality is ill-made. That is a very typical difference of our generations.

Today we often pretend to a morality in politics we do not possess, while those who are truly moral are silent or shouted down. We adopt a strategy that has no moral content or merely a moral pretext and find ourself adrift and confused when the strategy threatens to falter or fail. In fact, I have deeply felt that what saved us from a nuclear war at that time was not the decision of the North Koreans to pull back after the President's warning, but his prayers for divine intercession, the same that guided George Washington up Orange Turnpike in the summer of 1776.

My father would not be shouted down. And he would warn us that Americans of our time need to gain a deeper insight into who we are and where we are going. He was an enemy of waste and self-indulgence and endless words. He would urge us to revisit, and not to abandon but to honor the democratic process. He would ask us to find a way to embrace our differences and love our country with our meaningful actions as one people under God. He would warn us as did George Washington - who passed this very place on those rutted roads of long ago - that we must never allow our nation to become the pawn in a war of competing partisan ideologies, but to always put God and our country first, our family next, and our party somewhere in upper echelon of other priorities. He would tell you that America is not about a fevered calculation of our interests; it is instead history's greatest idea, and one always worth fighting for.

I will share with you one more reckless insight. In his last months he had descended into an angry dementia that would erupt without warning, even as his blindness grew deeper than ever before. But in other times of the day, he was silent and calm and listened, and sometimes spoke with surprising clarity. I wondered as I prepared these words overnight whether he had not subsumed his identity to that spitting, screeching, storming eagle of the mountaintop that flies too far above us to be seen or heard. He sees beyond the battlements, beyond our shores and time, to a history relentlessly advancing upon our nation with intentions we cannot know. But he would tell us to be still, to be ready, to be watchful, to engage with passion in the great debates of our day, to be well-informed and to think deeply not only for ourselves but for our country, and to always care very much for one another. For me, and perhaps for my brothers and sister and beloved Mother, is the message of his life. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson's great essay, "On Politics," he is "the Republican at home."

Together, let us promise that we will fulfill his great vision for all of us. I leave you with his favorite and inimitable words: "Ah has spoken."

Joe Shea is Editor-in-Chief of The American Reporter. He delivered this eulogy for his father at Sacred Heart Catholic Church Chapel in Monroe, N.Y., on Sept. 9, 2006.

In Memoriam + John S. Shea, Jr. 1909 - 2006

My father, who enjoyed living in Bradenton in the Winter since 1991, passed away today at the age of 95. There is an obituary for him in today's American Reporter, which also appears below:

May He Rest In Peace
+ John S. Shea, Jr. +
January 30, 1909 - September 5, 2006
Loving Father, Great American and Trusted Friend

Passings
JOHN S. SHEA, JR., A MAN OF GREAT HUMILITY AND MANY ACHIEVEMENTS, DIES AT 95
American Reporter Staff
Bradenton, Fla.

John S. Shea, Jr., the father of American Reporter founder and editor Joe Shea, a lifelong resident of Monroe, N.Y., died Sept. 5 at 6:10 a.m. at Arden Hill Hospital in Goshen after a brief hospitalization for pneumonia. He was 95.

"I owe to my father my own deep interest in politics and world affairs, a hardy constitution and a country that was improved by his efforts at building a family, working a farm and serving America for 30 years," Joe Shea said this morning. "He was also the funniest man I have ever known, who taught all his children the saving power of laughter. And he was a wise man, both in the way he developed as a person and a father, in his insights into political and world affairs, and in his many prescient investments. We treasured his letters, his advice and his constant stream of quips that never failed to hit our funny-bones. Mireya and myself, and all who knew him, will miss him terribly."

The son of the then-Sheriff of New York County, John S. Shea, and Mary [Alcok] Olcott, John Jr. was born in New York City on January 30, 1909. His mother died when he was just two, and he was raised with his brother Billy by his father and his aunt, Annie Flanagan Froelich, at a family brownstone on the East Side of Manhattan, where his father served as Republican District Leader in the so-called "Silk Stocking District" for more than 44 years.

John was the loving husband of Nina D. Shea of Monroe, who survives him. They were married in New York City on November 30, 1936. Their marriage weathered 70 years of tumult and triumph, and the generations of Sheas that followed.

He is also survived buy his daughter, Mary Ann Kies of Long Beach, Calif., William P. Shea of Monroe, Ga., Joseph P. Shea of Bradenton, and Patrick O'Farrell Shea of Falls Church, Va., and many grandchildren, great grandchildren, nieces and nephews. His eldest son, John S. Shea III, preceded him in death.

John was a career Federal civil servant who began his career with the New York City Division of Elections, the Internal Revenue Service, the state Dept. of Corrections and the United States Air Force, where he served as Deputy Comptroller of the 32nd Air Division during the Cuban Missile Crisis and also as a Single Integrated Operations Plan officer at Misawa AFB on the northernmost Japanese island, Hokkaido, during the Vietnam War, where he prepared nuclear battle plans for the defense of the United States at the command of the President. He also served with Military Manpower Command of the United States Army after his retirement from the Air Force, and finally as Director of Internal Audit for the U.S. Customs House in New York City, where his father was Paymaster in 1892.

John's grandfather, Patrick Shea, was a New York City upholsterer, and joined the Republican Party in New York after being saved from near death after he suffered grievous wounds at the Battle of Gettysburg, where was a 15-year-old scout for the Confederacy. With five bullet wounds in his face from a confrontation with a Union cavalry officer, he was captured, cared for and then sent by the Union to relatives in New York City. He was to die there at the turn of the 20th Century when he was tossed down a flight of stairs by rioting Democrats. In\ fact, Patrick's son may be the real-life figure who campaigned for Sheriff in Gangs of New York, a movie in which the last spoken words are "Shea... Shea." The family's political history was a point of pride for John Shea.

"My father was a careful and deliberate thinker whose voting pattern underwent a remarkable change in his 80s. He was a lifelong Republican who found himself deeply dismayed by President George W. Bush, and he realized very, very early that the Iraq War was a costly mistake. He always supported the troops, of course, and especially his grand-nephew Lt. Col, Michael Kies, the son of his eldest child, Mary Ann, but he did not support the war. Among his peers - meaning seniors and Republicans - he was virtually alone in that. I was proud of his independence, and I hope I will always emulate it," Joe Shea said.

He will be remembered with love and laughter by his family and many friends as an unfailing pillar of strength and a man of great good humor whose quips, stories and advice sustained all of them through difficult times. He was also an astute investor who was working on Wall Street as a courier of stocks and bonds during the Great Crash of 1929. He served in the latter stages of Wiorld War II in the U.S. Army, and during the Occupation of Germany. He was campaign manager for his brother William S. Shea when the late State Supreme Court Justice first won election to the bench in Manhattan in 1954 - by just 64 votes - in what was the only Republican victory in Manhattan since John's father was elected Sheriff of New York County in 1909. After his father's death, he also served as District Leader in the East Side Republican Club of Manhattan, from which Mayor John Lindsay later emerged. Despite his many accomplishments, he possessed a simple humility, and his deep faith in God was well known to his family. He took great pride in his family's Revolutionary War-era home on Rye Hill Road, which his father purchased from New York Herald Tribune publisher Whitney Reid in 1909. He was living there with his beloved wife Nina at the time of his passing.

Friends may call on Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 7 and 8, during the hours of 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at Smith, Seaman & Quackenbush at 117 Maple Ave. in Monroe.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, where he was a lifelong parishioner. Burial will be at the family plot at St. Anastasia Church in Harriman, N.Y. Details are pending.

The Trib Two-Times The Herald On Local Crimes

We noted that in the two weeks since we criticized the Bradenton Herald for including the Bayshore Gardens Parkway neighborhood in the 9 and 1/2 square mile crime box devised by Sheriff Charlie Wells that the paper's weekly crime statistics have shown nearly a 300 percent increase from about four crimes a week to 13 in the last Sunday paper.

Whether that's driven by the new ordinance intended to drive the homeless out of Bradenton's city limits or the paper's fear of a lawsuit, we don't know, but the fact of crime here in southwest Bradenton was sharply heightened when I got to the bank this afternoon and found it had just been robbed.

The Bank of America branch at Bayshore Gardens Parkway and 14th St./US 41 got hit in an incident that witnesses said had police cars "flying in from every direction." I asked a departing bank teller I know if it had been robbed, and she answered, simply, "Yes." The banks public area was closed down, but the drive-in windows continued to operate. When I asked the teller what happened, she responded, "We're not allowed to talk about it."

[Later in the day I saw other tellers, and they told me no one was hurt and no money was taken in the incident.]

[At 12:43am Satuyrday morning, I found a fullish story in the incident on the Trib Website, but there's still nothing on the Herald Website. See below.]
I called the Herald a minute or two after I reached the bank, but hours have passed since then and they still are leading their website with irrelevant stuff like "a new address" for New College.
However, the Herald told me that there had been a hostage incident this morning near there, but they apparently haven't gotten a story done at 5pm EST Friday, as I write this.

The Sarasota Herald Tribune, however, has a pretty full account of the hostage crisis:

September 01. 2006 4:13PM

Shot fired, but South Manatee stand-off ends without injury

STAFF REPORT

SOUTH MANATEE — A sheriff’s deputy who was part of a SWAT raid Friday at an apartment fired a shot at a suicidal man armed with a handgun, narrowly missing the man in his bedroom. The nearly five-hour standoff ended without injury, police said.

Authorities did not identify the 41-year-old man who called 911 about 8:50 a.m. telling a dispatcher that he wanted a paramedic to respond to his apartment to pick up his body.

The sheriff’s SWAT team raided the apartment about 1:20 p.m. using a smoke device to disorient the man, who was found with a gun. A single shot was fired at the man, but the bullet missed.

The man, who lived in the 1000 block of Longfellow Court, off Whitfield Avenue, refused to come out of his residence, sheriff’s officials said. A lieutenant, William Evers, communicated with the man via cell phone.

Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow, explaining the missed shot, said it was dark in the residence and there was smoke lingering in rooms.

“It was pretty close to hitting him,” Bristow said. Bristow said the shooting is under routine administrative review. The man was taken into custody for a mental health evaluation.

Here's the Trib's story on the bank robbery from its Website:

September 01, 2006 5:48PM

Bradenton bank robber haggles with clerk just a little too long

STAFF REPORT

BRADENTON — A would-be bank robber never got a chance to execute his getaway plan, if indeed he had one.

Sheriff’s deputies rolled up up to the bank Friday afternoon as the man was apparently haggling with a clerk over the denomination of bills he was about to steal.

Sheriff’s officials said Bradenton resident William R. Dawson, 26, tried to rob the Bank of America in the 6100 block of 14th Street West about 1:50 p.m.

When deputies arrived, Dawson was still in the bank, Manatee County sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow said. Dawson was arrested on a robbery charge and taken to the county jail.

Witnesses told deputies that Dawson walked into the bank and demanded money. He told the teller he was armed, but authorities did not find a weapon.

“We certainly have our fair share of arrests, but not that often while the person is till trying to rob the bank,” Bristow said.

Bristow attributed the arrest to combination of a fast law enforcement response to the bank and a criminal who wasn’t paying attention.

“He had conversation going with the teller,” Bristow said. “He was asking for hundreds. She said we don’t have any. Then he asked for fifties. He kept going.”

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