The county leaders want to use about half of the $120 million they expect to gain from this new tax in five years to buy land to prevent development. This is money taken from everyone to take property off the tax rolls, which doesn't make economic sense.

St. Johns County Commissioner Ron Sanchez and Adam Guilette, state director for the nonpartisan Americans for Prosperity, will debate a sales-tax increase that will be decided next week by county voters.

The Home Rule Charter and the 1-cent sales tax increase for conservation lands are both heading toward defeat in the Nov. 4 General Election ballot, according to a random telephone poll of 2,233 likely St. Johns County voters taken this week.

Blame for today's financial panic can be assigned to a Federal Reserve that kept interest rates too low while a bubble inflated; unscrupulous lenders; people who bought homes they couldn't afford; Wall Street wizards who overleveraged and wrote derivatives they couldn't pay; and a Congress that set the policy goal of universal home ownership and recklessly grew Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pursue that goal.

The James Madison Institute recently published a guide explaining each of the proposed amendments to our Constitution.