Mark Bunker: How I changed seats and freaked out Scientology last night in Clearwater

[Today’s guest post is by Clearwater Vice Mayor Mark Bunker]

Attorney Elise Winters has hated the idea of me on the Downtown Development Board since I was elected. She previously tried to get me kicked off the board with some very transparent maneuvers and failed.  She has me exiled to the kids table out of sight with a mic that often isn't working. 

Last night, the other council member that sits with me on the board couldn't attend so I took her seat on the dais and apparently freaked out the attorney.  With a minute or two to go before the meeting began she called out to one of the Scientologists closest to me and told her you have to move down a bit and I knew what she was up to.  

"Oh, come on," I said quite loudly, seeing she was suggesting I may break the injunction that the police department has said for years they won't enforce. 

She replied, "I'm an attorney.  I have to take it seriously."  

"She is definitely more than ten feet away from me," I said.  She replied, "I know.  I measured it."

Well, then what the hell is she worried about?  Why even bring it up?  She seems to believe I am going to leap out of my chair and attack the Scientology board members while frothing at the mouth.  I've never done anything like that in my life and I'm not going to start now so she can relax.  Her biggest fear seems to be that I will mention Scientology, the one issue that the Scientologists on the board refuse to do anything about. 

At the end of the meeting, I talked about the great success of the re-opened Coachman Park and amphitheatre and said Scientology is the one remaining obstacle to turning the downtown around, and they (the majority of the board are Scientologists) were in the best position to do something about it.  That should probably be the central topic of each meeting. They could report on the progress they are making to convince owners to allow businesses to open, and ask the almighty David Miscavige to make it go right.

Instead, board member and Scientologist realtor Terri Novitsky angrily said I was being unfair.  "Other business owners who aren't Scientologists are leaving their buildings open as well," she argued.

Yes, well, they suck too, but they’re a drop in the bucket compared to the massive holdings of Scientology.  Ironically, she is in the best position to do something about it.  She is the broker for many of those purchases and I'm sure pocketed a pretty penny.  Much of it was likely donated to Scientology to get a shiny medal and big gold cup.  Hip, hip, hooray!

As we ended the meeting, I told the one member of the board who is not a Scientologist that he must be a very brave man.  I could snap and rush the dais and he would be their last line of defense.  He was cool with it.

— Mark Bunker

UPDATE:

You didn’t think we wouldn’t have a Mark Parry-Maddocks shoop today, did you? Sure, the dot org site is still down, but we asked Mark to send over his daily illo and he didn’t disappoint. He tells us the caption is, “Deputy Mayor Mark is quite right to be concerned about the make-up of the Downtown Development Board...” (click to embiggen)

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Tonyortega.org site down in dispute with GoDaddy

We have mentioned to you in the past that Scientology has been making takedown requests here at Substack in recent months. Scientology attorney Gary Soter has been making similar DMCA takedown requests at our original tonyortega.org site with GoDaddy, which bought MediaTemple, the company we were paying to host the site.

Last month, Soter complained about several images of L. Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige that we had used from Scientology’s publications for their news value. But rather than dispute the requests and risk litigation, we simply removed the images from the stories. (They were from stories that were years old anyway.)

However, we apparently didn’t also remove the images from our media server as well, and GoDaddy interpreted that as a challenge and took down our website until we can get that cleared up.

We are not happy that they took the site down in the meantime, and our attorney Scott Pilutik is doing what he can to get it remedied.

So for now, please comment here at the Substack, and we’ll get the original Bunker back up as soon as we can.

UPDATE:

The dot org site is back up again. Thank you to everyone for your patience. Now that we know Scientology has the site in its crosshairs, we’ll be taking some measures to keep this from happening again.

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Want to help?

You can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail).

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Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

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