As published in the San Francisco Examiner on September 11, 2019 by columnist Stuart Schuffman.
“I’m in a Facebook group called San Francisco Current Events. It’s exactly what it sounds like; people share all kinds of newsworthy things going on in SF and the Bay Area. The other day I checked it out and found something extra special: the mayor of tiny Vero Beach, Florida wrote a letter, on official letterhead, lambasting San Francisco and the Board of Supervisors.
Since Mayor Val Zudans is a ‘lifetime NRA member, concealed carry permit holder’ he took particular umbrage to the supervisors designating the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization”— and taking inspiration right out Trump’s playbook — used his official position to call San Francisco a ‘sanctuary for criminals, addicts, and homeless encampments’ and that ‘Your most recent action stinks like the steaming excrement on your streets.’*
I’d like to take a moment to respond to Mayor Zudans’ letter:
Dear Mayor Zudans –
Your concern for the well being of San Francisco has been duly noted. After consulting with the citizenry of our fair city, it’s been universally agreed upon that nobody asked for your damn opinion. While I’m sure that being mayor of a town of 17,000 people has its challenges, San Francisco is a city of nearly a million people and has a $12 billion budget. Heeding your advice on how a city should be run would be like the San Francisco Giants taking advice from a t-ball coach.
Maybe I should use a more familiar analogy for you since Vero Beach doesn’t have a professional sports team…or even a real airport for that matter. You’re an ophthalmologist right? Your attempt to tell San Francisco how to run itself is like a drunken teenager watching a YouTube video on eye examinations trying to advise you on your practice. What I’m getting at here is: stay in your lane, Val. Stick to performing Lasik surgery and trying to upsell transition lenses.
In your absurd, misguided, and frankly uninspiring letter, you mention that owning a gun is one of our ‘God-given Constitutional liberties’ and to be honest Val, that just made me smile. I’m not exactly a Biblical scholar, but I’m 100 percent certain there is no mention of guns anywhere in the New or Old Testament. Besides the fact that guns weren’t invented when any part of the Bible was written. Could you imagine hippy-ass Jesus saying ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me…and obviously trust in my Beretta’?
On top of that, God didn’t give us this land, we disgustingly took it from Native Americans by force and through genocide…which is something I figured you might know about considering your city is in Indian River County. And God didn’t give us those Constitutional liberties, they were written by a bunch of men who owned slaves and treated women like second class citizens.
Which brings me to my next point, you seem to be obsessed with the idea that, if something is a law, then it must be just. Remember how two sentences ago I mentioned owning slaves and treating women as second class citizens? Well, that used to be legal. Do you think prohibition was just and fair? That was, stupidly, a constitutional amendment. And didn’t Jesus get killed for breaking the law? Your argument is weaker than a Mai Tais at Disney’s Vero Beach Resort.
I covered this in my column a few weeks ago Val, but since you’re just now becoming an avid reader of my column, I’ll break it down for you real quickly.
If the government wants you, your guns won’t protect you. They have bigger guns, and drones, and tanks, and hell, they even bombed an entire neighborhood in Philly in 1985 to kill armed American citizens.
As for the idiotic pissing contest that is the idea that ‘the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’: that lie has been disproven through 40-plus years of data and reported by Stanford University and the FBI.
In closing, I’d like to thank you for being the most absurd Florida Man yet. It’s only through the hard work of enterprising nitwits like you that Florida can continue not just looking like America’s Limp Weenie, but acting like it too.
Sincerely,
Stuart Schuffman
*The difference here between the supervisors passing a unanimous resolution and an individual using his office as a pulpit shouldn’t need to be explained.”
Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, TV host and poet. Follow him at BrokeAssStuart.com and join his mailing list at http://bit.ly/BrokeAssList. He is a guest columnist and his point of view is not necessarily that of The Examiner.
Please access this link for Mr. Schuffman’s article and reader comments.
A letter to the Florida mayor who trashed our fine city of San Francisco
Vero Beach, FL Mayor Val Zudans (Free Bing image)
Vero Communiqué 
“Small-Ball” trying to play in the big leagues to get his 15 minutes of fame.
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Very curious as to why the mayor thought he should present what is clearly his own opinion as if it had the (minor) weight of the citizenry of Vero Beach behind it? You do not speak for Vero Beach, Mr.Mayor, when you espouse an opinion on something that has NOTHING to do with Vero Beach or even, in this case, Florida. Get with the program, and stop hiding behind your title.
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Perhaps if this site had actually published the entirety of Mayor Zudans’ letter, the “conversation” here would be more informed.
It is odd that Mr. Hardy saw fit to publish the entire SF Chronicle piece, but selectively quoted from Zudans’ letter to the Supervisors.
Nevertheless, the rant from the SF Chronicle is about par for that course. It is full of name-calling, misinformation, and grossly lacking the decorum this site noted missing in Zudans’ letter.
It is clear that Stuart Schuffman didn’t read Zudans’ letter very carefully. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written: “used his official position to call San Francisco a ‘sanctuary for criminals, addicts, and homeless encampments’ and that ‘Your most recent action stinks like the steaming excrement on your streets.’”
Zudans used official stationary. Yet he clearly indicated his letter represented his own views (not those of Vero Beach, or the NRA, or Florida concealed carry permit holders).
No point itemizing the host of Schuffman’s errors. It would take far too much time and space and, quite frankly, isn’t worth the effort.
Suffice it to say, Schuffman’s letter was full of snide, irrelevant, inaccurate, self-serving sophomoric rubbish that anyone possessing a modicum of rational process could see through as if it were spotlessly clean glare-proof glass.
Such is the typical reaction of the far Left to the messes they create.
Blame someone else. Look the other way. Pass silly resolutions signaling their version of “virtue” to their own small mind.
When the Left, bereft of rational support for their actions and policies, attempt to engage in argument, they are reduced to name-calling and misrepresentation because they cannot support their positions with truth, logic, and rational process. Schuffman’s letter is a classic example.
Stuart Schuffman deserves the mess he wallows in.
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While I agree with most, that Zudans is a gasbag and I do not feel he should have used his letterhead as Mayor to write something so nasty to SF, I agree with him on his stance on the NRA. They have protected citizens armed rights in this country for decades.
The NRA is most certainly not a terrorist organization. Just because Zudans is a jerk, do not allow the message to be muddled.
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ur concern for the well being of San Francisco has been duly noted. After consulting with the citizenry of our fair city, it’s been universally agreed upon that nobody asked for your damn opinion. While I’m sure that being mayor of a town of 17,000 people has its challenges, San Francisco is a city of nearly a million people and has a $12 billion budget. Heeding your advice on how a city should be run would be like the San Francisco Giants taking advice from a t-ball coach.
Maybe I should use a more familiar analogy for you since Vero Beach doesn’t have a professional sports team…or even a real airport for Olkkwamea
that matter. You’re an ophthalmologist right? Your attempt to tell San Francisco how to run itself is like a drunken teenager watching a YouTube video on eye examinations trying to advise you on your practice. What I’m getting at here is: stay in your lane, Val. Stick to performing Lasik surgery and trying to upsell transition lenses.
In your absurd, misguided, and frankly uninspiring letter, you mention that owning a gun is one of our ‘God-given Constitutional liberties’ and to be honest Val, that just made me smile. I’m not exactly a Biblical scholar, but I’m 100 percent certain there is no mention of guns anywhere in the New or Old Testament. Besides the fact that guns weren’t invented when any part of the Bible was written. Could you imagine hippy-ass Jesus saying ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me…and obviously trust in my Beretta’?
On top of that, God didn’t give us this land, we disgustingly took it
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Neither Zudans nor the NRA can be blamed for the mess created by San Francisco politicians (homelessness, drug addition, street defecation, tent “cities” within SF) who take umbrage with anyone who objects to their, quite frankly, stupid actions that facilitate he growing mess in SF and prompt the response of people across the land.
While Zudans used bad judgement in using the Mayor’s stationary, he didn’t make the bad judgements that have led to the slow death of San Francisco, once thought of as the most beautiful city in the country (after Detroit self-destructed under the control of the same type of politicians who are now destroying San Francisco).
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Zudans is pretty well known in Vero for sticking his foot in his mouth and his opinions where they should not be.
He definitely should not have written any article berating SF on ANY official letterhead. I would imagine he did so, thinking that put an air of credibility to the letter. It did not. It only shows his narcissistic personality.
SF is what it is. No need to point out their failures anymore than it is necessary to point out IRC’s. While we have some great people in this community, it is also run by many corrupt individuals who think the laws do not apply to them. Almost everyone knows this but few are willing to do anything about it.
So before we start pointing out the failures of others, maybe we should look at cleaning up our own house first?
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