Man or Maniac?

Newt Gingrich Caught Lying About Romney's Lying

2012-01-29T18:42:00.001-08:00

OK, I wasn't going to start in on the race to select the next Republican candidate for President. I figured I'd wait until they select one. First, because none of the candidates are very good choices, and second, I figure "why not let them select the worst of the lot and make Obama's campaign a slam-dunk?"

Of course, I'm less confident of that since shitheads like Frank Paruas elected Rick Scott as Florida's governer, even though they thought he probably really was guilty of the largest Medicare fraud in the nation's history, because "he was the Republican candidate."

But now Newt Gingrich of all people is questioning someone else's honesty. That's right, Mr. "Sorry you're fighting for your life against cancer but I'm leaving you for this woman I've been cheating on you with" thinks he has some moral high-ground in this campaign.

From the CNN article:

In particular, Gingrich cited claims in Romney ads that he resigned in disgrace from the House in 1999 after being cited two years earlier for an ethics violation.

"I did not resign in disgrace," Gingrich declared, and he also rejected the assertion that the $300,000 he paid to cover the cost of the investigation against him was a fine.

Oh, really. So I suppose Newt would have us believe he resigned in victory.

ABC News also spoke with Gingrich:

“It’s fundamentally false,” Gingrich told me Sunday on “This Week.” “It’s typical of [Romney's] whole campaign. He knows… that this is a purely phony charge.”
- Jake Tapper's ABC News Blog

What a shame that we can't go back in time, back to 1998, to see what... wait a minute - WE CAN!

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the charismatic soul of the Republican Revolution whose members turned on him after unexpected losses in Tuesday's election, announced yesterday he will quit as speaker of the House.
- Washington Post, November 7, 1998

I guess they "turned on him" in adulation, huh?

Sources say Gingrich made the choice when he was told that as many as 30 Republicans would refuse to vote for him on the floor of the House. A close associate of Gingrich said the speaker did not want to be the center of attention and distract his party for the next two years.

Earlier Friday, Oklahoma Rep. Steve Largent announced he is seeking to
replace House Majority Leader Dick Armey in the No. 2 House leadership
post.

"On November 3rd the Republican Party hit an iceberg. And I think the question that is before our conference today is whether we retain the crew of the Titanic," said Largent, an ex-pro football player and member of the Hall of Fame. "Clearly the last two years are nothing to be proud of."
- CNN, November 6, 1998

It seems that Newt wants us to believe that Largent was comparing Gingrich to the team responsible for the worst shipwreck in recorded history in a good way.

"At least Newt didn't kill 1,517 people"

But those are his jealous co-workers; members of his own party that Newt could reasonably argue had an agenda to frame his resignation in negative terms. What did the American people think of his untimely resignation?

Americans overwhelmingly gave a thumbs up to Newt Gingrich's resignation...

The poll showed 70% of respondents favor Gingrich's departure... Ninety per cent said Republicans should find a speaker who tries harder than Gingrich did to work with the Democrats, not against them.
- NY Daily News, November 9, 1998

I dunno, when everyone is glad you're gone, comparing your leadership to that of the Titanic's, I don't see how you can say there isn't some element of shame in there.

Oh, wait, what about the $300,000? Was it a "fine," or merely a "reimbursement" as he claims?

First, let's determine what a "fine" actually consists of:

fine (noun);
3 a: a sum imposed as punishment for an offense
b: a forfeiture or penalty paid to an injured party in a civil action
- Merriam-Webster.com

OK, so a fine is a sum imposed as a punishment, or a penalty paid to an injured party. What did the media say about it at the time?

The House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to reprimand House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and order him to pay an unprecedented $300,000 penalty, the first time in the House's 208-year history it has disciplined a speaker for ethical wrongdoing.

In addition, five Democrats voted "present," many of them saying they believed the sanction was not severe enough. "If Newt Gingrich did what they said he did, he should have been censured," said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), one of the five who voted "present." A censure, second only in severity to expulsion, would have threatened Gingrich's speakership.

The speaker was barely visible yesterday, staying away from the House floor during the 90-minute debate and vote on his punishment.
- Washington Post, January 22, 1997

So Newt is lying his cheating little ass off when he claims that he wasn't fined for his ethics violations. And he's lying when he says that Romney is lying about it.

When you examine the facts, when you look at the history, it's clear that Newt Gingrich was found guilty by his Congressional peers, that he was charged a massive penalty - which he did pay, by the way - and that he did resign in shame a year later.

Everything that Gingrich claimed was "fundamentally false" is in reality "factually correct."

Fact - his Congressional peers found him guilty of ethics violations.
Fact - the $300,000 was a fine intended to punish him.
Fact - he did resign under a cloud that would have shamed any man of conscience.

Gingrich said something else:

"You cannot be president of the United States if you cannot be honest and candid with the American people," Gingrich said.
- CNN, January 29, 2012

Well, I hate to say it, but I agree with Newt on this one. Newt, I expect you to withdraw from the campaign by the end of the week. It's the honorable thing to do.

Which is why I won't hold my breath waiting for you to do it.

Forbes' Bogus DeBunker

2012-01-25T20:40:00.001-08:00

Forbes' Paul Roderick Gregory can beat the shit out of a strawman. But when it comes to "debunking" the "myth" that there's anything wrong with the tax code, he falls short of the mark.

In case you missed what Shah Limb Guru referred to "Obama's disgusting use of Warren Buffett's secretary," Mr. Gregory's article is being used to refute Buffett's - and Obama's - assertion that the differences between what Buffet is taxed versus what his personal assistant, Debbie Bosanek, is being taxed, demonstrates a problem with our tax code.

Warren Buffett’s Secretary Likely Makes Between $200,000 And $500,000/Year
Warren Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, served as a stage prop for President Obama’s State of the Union speech. She was the President’s chief display of the alleged unfairness of our tax system – a little person paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss.

Bosanek’s prominent role in Obama’s “fairness” campaign piqued my curiosity, and I imagine the curiosity of others. How much does her boss pay this downtrodden woman?

Did you see it? No? Let's go a little further...

....we need to determine how much income a taxpayer like Bosanek must earn in order to pay an average tax rate above fifteen percent. This is easy to do.

The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an adjusted gross income between $100,000 and $200,000 pay an average rate of twelve percent. This is below Buffet’s rate; so she must earn more than that. Taxpayers earning adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 to $500,000, pay an average tax rate of nineteen percent. Therefore Buffet must pay Debbie Bosanke a salary above two hundred thousand.

Do you see it yet?

I have nothing against Debbie Bosanke earning a half million or even more. Buffet is a major player in the world economy. His secretary deserves good compensation. At her income, however, she is scarcely the symbol of injustice that Obama wishes her to project.

OMG! She ~~possibly~~ earns ~~over $200,000 but no more than~~ half a million a year!

Isn't it cute how he slipped that higher figure in like it was cold hard fact? He boosted her from making "over $200,000" to "over a half million" in the blink of an eye; I wish I got raises that quickly!

Here's the big lie Mr. Gregory is feeding you; that anyone is arguing that Warren Buffet is underpaying his secretary.

This isn't about what she's paid. Her salary isn't the issue being argued. It's about the percentage of her income that gets taxed. Bosanek is taxed 35.8% of her salary, while Buffett pays only 17.4%. To put it in other words, his tax rate is less than half of her tax rate.

Buffett thinks that it's ridiculous that he is taxed at a lower rate than she is. Gregory's counter-argument, picked up by the witless Right, is that she makes a lot of money, therefore Buffett is wrong.

By the Numbers

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that she really does make a half million a year to be Buffett's personal assistant. It's not unreasonable, considering what her boss makes.

She makes a great living, no doubt.

But Warren Buffett makes a fucking gi-normous wage.

Let's compare their incomes, shall we? Buffett reported his income to Huffington Post last year, so we can compare his income to what Mr. Gregory has decided Ms. Bosanek probably makes.

Warren Buffett's total income: $62,855,038.
Debbie Bosanek's maximum income: $ 500,000.

A couple of other ways to look at it:

Every month, Buffet makes more than ten times what his secretary makes in a year.
Every week, Buffet makes more than twice what she makes in a year.

And his tax rate is less than half of hers.

That's not to say that he doesn't pay a shitload of money in taxes; he does. But this isn't about the numbers; it's about the percentages. The GOP would love nothing more than for you to believe this latest line of bullshit they're spreading. But it's simply bullshit.

The bottom line is that anyone who thinks that Paul Roderick Gregory has refuted anything in this argument is simply wrong. His arguments lack the substance of the strawman he pounded on today.

Miamians Duped by Casino's Siren Call

2012-01-23T21:25:00.000-08:00

I was reading the Miami Herald's article about how Miami-Dade voters are split evenly on both sides of the casino issue.

In a survey of 400 registered voters in Miami-Dade, voters split almost equally over the idea of large-scale casinos. The electorate is similarly divided over putting a destination resort and casino in downtown Miami on The Miami Herald's waterfront property.

Yesterday, we discussed how casinos are bad for business; how they suck in all the tourists, and keep those tourism dollars inside the casino. Casinos have their own five-star restaurants, so the hungry gambler can dine like a king and return to the gaming floor. Casinos will bring drinks right to you, wherever you are on the gaming floor, so you don't have to stumble out for a drink. They have beds, so you don't need to find a hotel. They have gift shops, so you don't need to go hunting souvenirs for the folks back home.

We mentioned that there was a 40% reduction in restaurants, and that they essentially wiped out most of the other businesses, from 3,500 the year the first casino opened, to under 1,400 at the turn of the century.

But for some reason, people are still supportive of casino gambling in Miami.

Let's examine their opinions, shall we?

It brings the tourists here. It gives them something to do besides sitting on the beach, said Barry Haber, a gambling supporter from Kendall.
- The Miami Herald, Jan 23, 2012

Well, Barry is right about casinos bringing in more tourists. He's also right that a casino will get people off the beach. And out of the restaurants, and out of the hotels, and away from other local attractions.

Yes, casinos brought in droves of gamblers to Atlantic City. They clog the streets and airport. And they spend almost every dime in the casinos. Great for the tax base, to be sure. But 2,100 closed businesses testify that those dollars won't help keep local businesses open.

Well, some businesses managed to hang on.

You can't see a movie in Atlantic City. You can't even buy gasoline anymore - you have to cross the bridge into Absecon or Pleasantville to do that now. Want groceries? You're leaving town again, to Absecon on the mainland, or Ventnor Heights, on a neighboring island. (I'll bet you forgot that Atlantic City is on an island).

Actually, one industry, besides the casinos, has increased in Atlantic City since 1977. Pawnshops multiplied ten fold in the first ten years.

There's usually one within a block of each casino.

Reading the comments attached to the article, it seems that most of those supporting the casino bill believe that it will bring jobs to Florida.

Cubanogm:

Anybody if they bring jobs.Miami unemployment is in the double digit numbers. Miami needs the jobs and once a miamian has a job who cares who hired him or her.This is a win,win situation.More jobs,more tourists that will bring more taxes and jobs.

MarkGarcia wrote:

Miami you need to get a reality check. You need jobs or you can close the city and turn off the lights. Miami needs to entice every business possible regardless of what it does, to come here, hire the 30% of unemployed workers that we have, raise wages and create benefits for all the underpayed and underemployed workers of this Banana Republic.

It sounds like Mr. Garcia needs a reality check. "Regardless of what it does?" Really? So, if it's a factory that spews waste that kills everything for miles, we should jump on it? It seems to me that jobs at ANY cost is a pretty stupid philosophy.

Fred Mariner:

Give us a chance to vote on this and it will pass overwhelmingly. Theres too much at stake to let the elitist jobkillers steal our chance to create thousands of jobs for South Florida.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/22/v-fullstory/2602584/poll-miami-dade-voters-evenly.html#storylink=cpy

Here's the thing; if casinos create lots of jobs, then places with lots of casinos should have low unemployment rates, right?

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Unemployment Rates for Metropolitan Areas
Monthly Rankings
Nov. 2011
286 Miami FL Metropolitan Statistical Area 9.4
354 Atlantic City NJ Metropolitan Statistical Area 12.4

Well, so much for THAT idea.

StopBraman:

It seems to me that all the nay-sayers prefer to have empty buildings full of drug users, prostitutes, and vagrants versus tearing them down and giving life to an area that badly needs it. There is no way that a Destination Resort can increase the crime that already exists in the area. Have any of you tried walking around that area at night? Definitely not safe. Nothing like going to the Adrienne Arsht Center for a show, in your finest clothes and looking across the street at hoodlums and vagabonds. Not exactly the optimal theater experience.

As long time readers know, I'm not exactly a Norman Braman fan. He got us to waste millions to recall a mayor with barely a year left on his term. He killed a much needed expansion of mass transit.

But there's "no way" that a "destination resort" can "increase crime that already exists in the area?" That's a whoppingly stupid statement. If there's no work, there's no money, there's nothing to steal. Anytime you increase jobs, you increase money, and crime increases because now there's stuff to steal. Theft is always higher in the rich neighborhoods.

So to StopBraman, I have to issue the challenge to walk around Atlantic City at night. Specifically, I challenge him (or her) to walk from the Taj Mahal to the Golden Nugget, straight across the city. Almost impossible to get lost;

It's only 1.8 miles through the worst neighborhood on the island.

I wouldn't do it alone. And I'd tape your insurance card to your body, because you probably won't get to keep the wallet all the way across.

...and through the second worst neighborhood, too.

I also have to point out that when the Kravis Center was built, you wouldn't have wanted to walk over to Roxy's after a show. I know - I lived there at the time. Same for the Broward Center. Of course, now you can walk from these beautiful venues to any number of excellent restaurants or bars, because there are any number of excellent restaurants and bars to be walked to.

Arts and cultural centers have a track record for attracting complimentary businesses. Check out Actors' Playhouse in the Miracle Theater. Of course, Miracle Mile wasn't quite blighted, but it was home to wedding supply shops that shut down at 5pm. It was dead down there at night. Now, Miracle Mile is a destination in and of itself; fine dining, clubs, galleries: it's a thriving business district.

Kids trick-or-treating along Miracle Mile in Coral Gables.

Build a casino, and that will be the only thing around for miles. And it will still be unsafe to walk there from the Arsht Center or the Museum, just as it's unsafe to stray from Atlantic City's boardwalk at night.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/22/v-fullstory/2602584/poll-miami-dade-voters-evenly.html#storylink=cpy

miami631:

Miami needs more of everything and anything if it is to become a REAL city and not just a playground to visit. A convention center focused hotel casino would be good for business.

As noted, not so much. A convention center - yes! We desperately need a new convention center. But without a casino; we have lots of great things to see and do, that need more people seeing and doing them.

todd scott:

Miami could become a world class city and attract even more tourist with a well constructed high end casino.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/22/v-fullstory/2602584/poll-miami-dade-voters-evenly.html#storylink=cpy

You mean, like Atlantic City is a world class city? It's got over a dozen high-end casinos, including the Borgata. I think you should be able to buy groceries in a world-class city, don't you?

Several people pointed out that most of the long-term jobs at the new casino will likely be low paying, menial jobs.

Here's how Bultproofsol put it:

The jobs the Genting would create will be mostly service industry jobs... custodial, bars and restaurants, retail, hotel, and other menial paying jobs. Construction jobs are temporary.

Manny Rodriguez responds to Buletproofsol:

So you're saying that bartenders are going to build the most futuristic project on the planet?

You, sir, are an imbecile

No, Manny, he's saying that construction workers will build the most futuristic project on the planet - for a year or two. Then they'll be unemployed again. We have a pretty good idea who's actually the imbecile, here.

John Balzer seems to be sharing a brain cell with Manny:

The notion that a world class resort can be run with "menial" jobs is ludicrous. While there will likely be a spectrum of jobs, is there anything wrong with having them? Right now, there are many people are out of work in Miami and they are eager to get employed. The Genting Group has a reputation for paying the highest salaries in the industry.

John, nobody is insinuating that a world-class resort can be run with menial jobs. The suggestion that anyone is claiming this is idiotic.

As you point out, Genting pays top wages. And they pay top wages to attract the best people. What's really ludicrous is the notion that the best people to run this new world-class casino are hanging around Miami waiting for this casino to open. World Class employees don't sit around collecting unemployment. They get hired, because they're, well, World-Class.

Any world-class resort would want to staff itself with the best people from around the planet; you don't want the former night-desk manager from the Sinbad Motel on Biscayne Boulevard running the place.

Contrary to popular belief, they don't have hourly rates. Anymore.

And last I checked, we didn't have hundreds of experienced dealers in the neighborhood. Unless they get hired away from the Seminoles and Miccosukees. And if that happened, then they'd have to bring in dealers from Vegas, Atlantic City, Hong Kong, Macau, and any place else that has exquisite, world-class casinos.

So, since it's likely that they'll be hiring resort management from the top resorts on the planet, and they'll be bringing in dealers from the most exquisite casinos in the world, what does that leave? Bellhops, maintenance staff, waiters and waitresses, and all sorts of other menial, minimum wage positions.

I left out security. Who would you hire locally to protect your assets? Miami cops? TSA agents? Hey, let's hire a bunch of folks who've been unemployed in South Florida for the last couple of years, stuck with mortgages ten times the value of their homes! They wouldn't be tempted to skim. Much.

But John Balzer isn't done being stupid, yet:

This argument doesn't stand up because it implies that it would be better to have NO jobs.

News flash for you, Johnny: saying that casinos are the wrong industry to bring into South Florida doesn't imply anything of the sort. We definitely need jobs. But we need them in an industry that's not going to put other businesses out of existence, as casinos have a track record of doing.

We could build a convention center; South Florida's convention centers are dire pieces of shit. And I say that with all due respect. They don't meet the needs of the convention industry; they lack mission-critical amenities, and I don't mean slot-machines. A hotel with a convention center, equipped with all the latest technology; it's clean, it creates jobs, attracts visitors, and it compliments the existing infrastructure.

Wendy Frish:

I voted in the poll and I votes YES on casinos in Florida. I need a job and so do all of my friends.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/22/v-fullstory/2602584/poll-miami-dade-voters-evenly.html#storylink=cpy

Enjoy making those beds, Wendy! Unless you've been dealing baccarat someplace.

Can you even spell 'baccarat', Wendy?

In which case, they'll probably still pass you over because any baccarat dealer worth anything wouldn't be lollygagging in Florida. You'd be working. If not at one of the Seminole or Miccosukee places, then on a cruise ship. And if you were serious about pursuing casino work, you'd be part of the 12.4 unemployment rate in Atlantic City instead of the 9.4 unemployment rate down here.

Joe7911:

The people funding this opposition and negative lies are coming from the ones that will loose the most, The indian casinos, Cruise to nowhere Casinos and the Islands Casinos. None of them contribute to our taxes and if this passes we will get a big income in taxes as well as employment.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/22/v-fullstory/2602584/poll-miami-dade-voters-evenly.html#storylink=cpy

Joe, you left out the biggest constituency of all; those of us who aren't idiots. I do not work for a casino, or a cruise line, or indians (native americans.) I'm a guy who's lived through this. I watched as the casinos sucked the life out of Atlantic City I know what casinos do for a city; they put local businesses out of business.

But Joe7911 has more to say:

WE are already filled with prostitution, and petty thief's, Major casinos will bring the money for better and more police presence, The crimes would be better controlled and much of eliminated. It would be a Major windfall for south Florida.

"Crimes would be better controlled?" Interesting approach. Why reduce it when you could control it? Maybe the Mafia will come in, and give us a piece of the action when they run the criminals. Let's just quit pretending, and give in to wholesale corruption. Great idea, Joe.

Since, as you say, we already have prostitution, why don't we skip the casinos and license some good old fashioned brothels? Talk about 'Miami Vice!'

Casinos are Bad for Business

2012-01-22T10:04:00.001-08:00

Miami Today reports that the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts is concerned about the casino proposed for the site of the Miami Herald.

Concerned that the Arsht Center area would be overwhelmed by a giant resort casino, the Town Square Neighborhood Development Corp. is asking lawmakers not to approve mega-casino legislation without fully considering the traffic impacts

That's a legitimate concern; I'm from Atlantic City. And I can tell you that it gridlocks twice a day due to the sheer volume of buses dropping off gamblers in the morning and picking them up in the evening. Pacific Avenue becomes almost impassable for several hours twice each day, lined with tour buses trying to loop through the city streets and back to the expressway.

But honestly, the traffic should not be our biggest concern about the proposed casino. While traffic in that area completely sucks now, and adding a casino will indeed make it into the worst area on the planet to traverse during rush hour, it's just an inconvenience.

The real problem is where the people coming in on those buses will be spending their money. They'll be spending it in the casino.

Now, you're thinking, "of COURSE they'll spend money in the casino, that's why they want to build one!" But you're missing the point. People coming in to spend money in the casino will ONLY be spending money in the casino. They won't step outside for a meal; the casino has restaurants, and they'll passing out vouchers or coupons for them on the bus. Want a drink? There's service right at the poker table, or even the slot machine. Want a souvenir? The casino gift shop has everything you need.

What anyone from Atlantic City can tell is that while casinos do indeed bring millions of gamblers to that city every year, casinos haven't stimulated the local economy for non-casino related businesses. Quite the opposite.

In 1979, there were 3,500 independently owned business operating in Atlantic City; restaurants, clothing stores, gift shops, nightclubs, and movie theaters. In 2000, there were only 1,400 independently owned businesses.

There are no movie theaters in Atlantic City. There isn't even a supermarket; residents either drive off the island to a neighboring town, or use one of the ten corner markets still operating.

Here's a photo of a typical grocery store in Atlantic City. You can see the Claridge poking over the top of the building.

While that Popeye's Chicken is relatively new, there's a been a 40% decline in the number of restaurants in Atlantic City. Most of those were fine dining; a fast food joint with 6-8 people per shift isn't an improvement over a restaurant with a wait staff of a dozen or so people collecting tips, not to mention kitchen and bar staff.

The bottom line is that we have to consider is this; what benefit does this proposed casino really bring to Miami?

Atlantic City was a blighted city before the casinos came, and it's mostly a blighted city now; only there are fewer places for locals to work; most of those promised jobs went to people with experience who came in from out of state. And while some locals are employed at casinos, the jobs lost as local businesses folded erased the gains.

That also means that there are fewer places for tourists to spend their money. And this despite the fact that the number of visitors skyrocketed with the advent of casinos. Casinos, by design, keep people inside the casino. So yes, you have HUGE acts coming to play the casino stages, and people drive for miles to see them. But every dime is spent inside the casino. They have a meal in the casino, see the show, maybe try their luck by dumping their pocket change into a slot machine, then head home.

The Performing Arts Center is drawing people who would love to have dinner before the show, and a drink after. This demand is not yet being met by area development, but the Arsht Center is only a few years old; we can turn to the Broward Center and the Kravis Center, both of which were built in blighted areas, both of which are now at the heart of destination neighborhoods, to see the promise of the futures. The museum will do the same, and some folks might see a show and wander to the museum, or stop in first before seeing their show.

While people come primarily for the shows, they don't come only for the shows; now that there are nice restaurants, they come for meals, they come for the galleries and shops. And in fact, some who come for the live bands at the bars see the big venue up the street, and go to see larger acts: so the local businesses drive business the other way; it's true symbiosis.

Miami should be looking for development that would enhance the Performing Arts Center, and infuse the area with new businesses that will work in symbiosis with it and the soon to be opened Museum.

A casino is absolutely the worst thing they could bring to the city. It will be black hole that strips dollars away from the local businesses, creating a zone of blight around it.

Scott Isn't Increasing Education Budget.

2012-01-10T21:41:00.001-08:00

If you're following the story in the news, you might believe that Governor Rick Scott is increasing the education budget by a whopping one million dollars. And there's a reason you might believe that; it's what The Miami Herald is reporting:

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott opened the annual legislative session Tuesday with a State of the State address punctuated by a vow to not sign a new budget unless it increases school spending by $1 billion next year.

But in fact, he's not increasing spending. He's only restoring most - but not all - of the money he cut away from the education budget last year. And in fact, The Herald does include this information, but sort of blows past it as it re-affirms the fictional increase:

Scott last spring signed a budget that cut school spending by $1.3 billion. But in a series of meetings with parents across the state, he said they resoundingly favored more money for schools...

Are you doing the math? Just in case you can't slip your shoes off to count your toes, if the legislature gives Scott what he wants, he will have reduced the education budget by 300 million dollars since he's taken office.

The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel did a better job of reporting the matter:

With anti-Scott protestors crowding the Capitol halls, the Republican governor used his 34-minute State of the State speech to a joint session of the Legislature to reiterate his demand that lawmakers boost classroom spending by roughly $1 billion – after cutting $1.35 billion last year.

Makes it a little easier to see the chicanery in action, doesn't it? And look, they didn't round down an additional $50 million like The Herald did.

The bottom line is that Rick Scott is spending $350 million less on education than his predecessor did.

And how is Governor Scott getting this $1 billion dollars, since he's slashed taxes and other sources of revenue in order to give tax breaks to corporations and a thousand or so of the wealthiest Floridians?

He's taking it from the poor.

Scott's budget calls for cutting $1.9 billion from the $21 billion Medicaid program that treats nearly 3 million poor, sick and elderly.

I guess the ran the company that committed the largest Medicare fraud in history figures that if you're poor, sick, and dying, what's a little more pain and suffering matter? Or perhaps this is a clever attempt to lower the unemployment rate; dead people don't show up as unemployed!

Nah, I'm sure that's just a happily opportunistic coincidence.

At least some Democrats are paying attention:

"To say we're adding money is disingenuous," said Senate Minority Leader Nan Rich, a Weston Democrat who complained cutting health care to fund schools was a bait-and-switch. "The same people are ending up paying the cost of what he's asking for." - The Sun-Sentinel

So under Rick Scott's plan, Dick and Jane might still be able to go to school, but Mom and Dad might be too sick to help them with their homework, and might even die.

Maybe then Dick and Jane can get into foster care! They might not be among the thousands of children who are abused and neglected, and there hasn't been a case of foster parents killing their wards in months!

Oh, wait, Govenor Scott gutted THAT agency, too. He fired 14% of the DCF workforce in order to create more jobs. So how is an agency that was already overwhelmed supposed to improve?

“I believe in the protective power and prayer and hope,” Governor Rick Scott’s Department of Children and Families Secretary David Wilkins said at a stop in Miami last week. - CBS4 Miami

Dick and Jane are so boned.

And we have Frank Paruas to thank.

Lowe's Does Something Stupid - AGAIN.

2011-12-12T13:25:00.000-08:00

There's a call for a boycott against Lowe's going around the inter-webs.

As you may have heard, home improvement giant Lowe’s pulled their advertising from TLC’s All-American Muslim. That in and of itself might not be a massive sin — companies have a right to spend their advertising dollars where they like, or order for a few episodes and don’t re-up. But Lowe’s, at every step of the way, has managed to give the impression that they’re rather aggressively folding to virulent Islamophobes.
- thinkprogress.org

I won't be joining this boycott; but that's only because I'm already boycotting them. I have been ever since they tried to build a shopping plaza in the Everglades. Fortunately, the state got involved and stopped it, but Lowe's never did display any kind of epiphany that what they wanted to do was an egregious violation of what's best for society.

But it's not just Lowe's refusing to back programming that promotes religious tolerance and expands our understanding of our fellow Americans; it's a lot of the soul-less corporations that we mindlessly do business with every day:

... companies that initially supported the program, but later did not have any advertising aired, were Airborne Vitamin, Amway, Diamond Foods, Dyson Vacuum, Estee Lauder, HTC Phones, Home Depot, McDonald's, Petsmart, Pfizer, Sears, Sonic, T-Mobil and Wal-Mart.

- World Net Daily

The point of the TLC program isn't to proselytize for Islam; it's to give non-muslims a look into the lives and beliefs of some of our fellow Americans. People upset about the program don't have any kind of moral high ground that should dictate anyone's behavior; they are simply bigots. Their only goal is to suppress knowledge and enforce ignorance to give them the freedom to spin out any lie they can imagine in order to divide our country into religious factions.

So yes, boycott these business, but take it one step further; pull out whatever discount card or loyalty coupons they've given you, and mail it back to them. And let them know why:

Dear ________,
I have decided to shop exclusively with stores that embrace the virtues bestowed upon us by our forefathers. Since you have chosen to pull your advertising from programming designed to encourage understanding of my fellow citizens who practice a faith different from mine, your organization no longer reflects the ideals of our great nation. I will find someone else to do business with; someone who acknowledges that the first step to becoming a truly united people is to foster an understanding of each other.

Sincerely,
A patriotic citizen.

Some of the irrational right-wingnuts are going on about how this is "nobody's concern. They should be allowed to advertise, or not, as they choose.

And I agree; they can do business as they choose; but they'll have to do it without mine.

A Very Special Maniacal Post

2011-11-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

The headline in today's Sun-Sentinel is:

Men, are you killing your sperm? Here's what can hurt male fertility

Well, duh.

So be careful what you do with your seed.

Deadly Candy

2011-11-07T13:57:00.001-08:00

NPR has been running a story that reveals the stunning idiocy of the counter-culture.

...a woman in Nashville, Tenn., advertised lollipops contaminated with the
varicella virus on Facebook. The tainted pops were intended for parents
who want to expose their children to the disease.

The theory is rather than inoculate your children to prevent them from getting the disease, just give them the disease. Since victims of chicken-pox won't get it a second time, there is some unfounded belief that surviving the disease gives you a better immunity from the disease than a vaccine that prevents you from ever having it.

Which is actually really stupid, since one of the complications of chicken pox is death.

Of course, dead people don't get chicken pox again, either. Or anything else.

This kind of stupidity was brought on by the hoax that claimed that vaccinations caused or were implicated in causing autism. But that was, in fact, a hoax. Every subsequent study indicates that vaccines have no part in autism, and in fact, do what they are supposed to do - prevent the onset of deadly diseases.

The belief that you can protect your children from getting a deadly disease by actually giving them the deadly disease is akin to believing you can protect your children from getting shot by shooting them.

If you want your kids to be healthy, get them vaccinated. It works better than anything else.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

2011-10-28T16:45:00.001-07:00

These two stories showed up in my news reader, which thinks they are unrelated:

Submarines bearing drugs... divers needing rescues... can this really be a coincidence?

Dictionary Fun with the Washington Post.

2011-10-26T06:58:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post recently wrote an inflammatory piece that claims that GOP wunderkind Marco Rubio has lied about his past.

...a review of documents — including naturalization papers and other official records — reveals that the Florida Republican’s account embellishes the facts. The documents show that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence more than two-and-a-half years before Castro’s forces overthrew the Cuban government and took power on New Year’s Day 1959.

The supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity, both before and after his stunning tea-party-propelled victory in last year’s Senate election.

The gist of the article is that Rubio's parents were not exiles. The story insinuates that since they voluntarily came to the United States before Castro took over Cuba, the Rubios can not be considered exiles.

But what, exactly, does exile mean? Let's look it up.

EXILE
a : the state or a period of forced absence from one's country or home
b : the state or a period of voluntary absence from one's country or home

Well, that pretty much skewers the Post's position.

By the strict definition of the word, it does not matter why they left. Did they plan to go back? Since they didn't apply for citizenship until the 1970's, I'd have to say that they originally planned to return to Cuba at some point - and in fact, they did so, in 1961. Finding that Castro was no improvement over Batista, they returned to the United States for good.

And if the simple fact that apparently no one at the Post owns a dictionary weren't enough, the blog Random Pixels found plenty of news stories in a Miami newspaper that refer to Cuban exiles, starting as early as 1948.

The Miami Herald responded to the Post article with an analysis of its own, showing once again that liberal media bias is a myth.

The Post also says "the supposed flight of Rubio’s parents has been at the core of the young senator’s political identity." That's a stretch. The actual story of the "flight" is far less emphasized than the fact that Rubio's an Hispanic Republican, and the child of immigrants and exiles

Further undermining the Post's claim that Rubio has been lying about his family history, the Miami Herald talked to Rubio about his pending autobiography, and touched on this very subject!

Rubio clearly told us his parents came here before Castro took power. He struggled to recall the year (this isn't in the story, it's in my notes) and said it was in "57 or 58 or 59."

When asked pointedly: Was it before the revolution? Rubio said it was before the revolution.

But the Herald article also notes:

Rubio's inability to remember these specific dates isn't much of a surprise. Rubio is sometimes sloppy. When he was in the Florida House, he failed to disclose a loan at one point and fill out his financial disclosures properly. He rung up a host of personal and questionable expenses on a Republican Party of Florida credit card and couldn't show how they furthered party business.

This "sloppiness" is why I won't ever vote for him for any office. I've known a lot of "sloppy" people. It's not evidence of dishonesty, only a lack of attention to details. And in Rubio's case, some of those details are pretty important.

But Marco Rubio is unquestionably a child of exiles. Whether he's a good candidate for office is an exercise best left for the individual.

Language Lesson for CBS4 Miami

2011-10-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

On their home page today, CBS4 posted a little poll. And they included an egregious language blunder in it.

Did you catch the mistake?

"I could care less" means that you do care. After all, if you could care less, it means you have to be caring at least a little bit. In order to care less, you first have to care some.

The correct phrase is "I could NOT care less." It's pretty clear that you can't care less than not caring at all. Your caring level is at rock bottom, there's no more down to go.

Where do I stand on the NBA lockout? Millionaires and billionaires are squabbling over crumbs while the workers who make the games happen are left without any income at all. People are losing their homes while the jerk players and the asinine owners bicker. Players making six figures a year and better can coast through this; the people who sell concessions, food, and beverages live paycheck to paycheck.

I care about the people the NBA is shafting, but I could not care less about the games.

Loveland High School: Unwarranted Intrusion

2011-10-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

If you want to find an example of unwarranted government intrusion, you need look no farther than Loveland, Ohio's high school.

Dozens of teens, including many honor students, were reprimanded this week for wearing yoga pants to Loveland High School.
- WLWT news

The school's dress code, in regards to girl's clothing, simply states that "revealing clothing" is prohibited, and students are not permitted to wear clothing that is "deemed to be distracting."

The school district's dress code is worthless. It's vague beyond any standard of reason, and only a pinhead would use this poorly constructed mess to punish students. There's nothing defining "revealing" or "distracting." By some standards, showing a women's face is "revealing," and wearing anything with color could be "distracting."

Just so you understand the issue in its entirety,
here's an example of yoga pants:

Yoga is about range of motion, and these pants are stretchy, to allow freedom of movement. But they're not really all that tight and clingy. They're just really comfortable.

What they are not is particularly revealing;they are loose, and are always fairly flared.

Compare them to current trends in blue jeans, which are permitted:

And certainly they show a lot less than the average skirt:

Personally, I am not opposed to school uniforms; it ends all the ambiguity. Everyone knows what's acceptable, and it ensures that no one can arbitrarily decide that a fashion they don't approve of is verboten on a moment's whim.

But there is no uniform code. In that case, a reasonable set of guidelines should be provided. It wasn't.

It's ludicrous that students were suspended for violating a set of rules that don't actually determine anything measurable. These suspensions should be reversed, and whoever approved them should be reviewed for competence, because this action sure doesn't indicate its presence.

Whatever idiot decided that yoga pants are an issue is disrupting the process of education far more than a pair of pants ever could.

But it's Not The Breed...

2011-09-27T20:30:00.001-07:00

South Florida Daily Blog often posts articles about Pit Bulls biting their owners, or neighbors, or other dogs, with the comment "...but it's not the breed" appended.

Of course, the intended message is that it is indeed the breed that dictates behavior.

Nature versus nurture, and SFDB says "it's nature."

But then there are stories like this one, from WTAE Pittsburgh:

CARNEGIE, Pa. -- A woman who fell down a hill and was crumpled against a sewer grate was saved by a pit bull.

Jimmie Belchick's American pit bull terrier, Cobain, helped to save the woman who fell down the hill and landed on the grate with no way to get help.

"My dog put Lassie to shame. He came and alerted me when somebody needed help and what more can you ask for out of your dog," Belichick said.

But it's not the breed.

Why Johnny Can't Add; The Failure of American Education

2011-09-26T20:17:00.001-07:00

On a recent visit to my sister's, I witnessed as my niece engaged in a struggle familiar to me; math homework. The difference; I struggled to juggle the numbers to come up with the correct answers. She was struggling to learn how to come up with the wrong answer.

I kid you not. The state of the art flavor of the day shit-for-brains educational theory is called "compatible numbers."

In proper math, you deal with the actual numbers to come to the correct answer.

In compatible math, you round up the numbers (or one of them) to one that's easier to deal with, to come up with an answer that is close to the actual number the problem should result, but isn't actually the number the problem should result in.

Is your head hurting yet?

OK, let's take 28-13. We round up 28 to be 30, because it's easier to deal with; 30-13=17, which is close to the correct answer of 15. Of course, even though 15 is the correct answer to the problem of 28 minus 13, it's wrong for the homework because they are looking for the wrong answer.

In essence, our schools are teaching that 28-13=17.

Just so you don't get as confused as I did, with two digit numbers, you only round up if the second digit is greater than five. Thus 69x14 becomes 70x14. And of course, you get completely different answers when you solve the equation.

Educators, however, have decided that "close is good enough."

Of course, this kind of sloppy thinking can actually kill people. Can you imagine the results if an engineer using this technique to design aircraft, or bridges? "Oh, the parts ALMOST fit, but close is good enough." Or if a pharmacist or nurse gave you "almost" the correct dosage?

It's completely unacceptable.

Some of you might remember "new math." New math differed from old math (or simply "math") in that the processing of the equations was broken down so that the student could work with smaller units. Sometimes this process was outrageously complicated. So complicated, that Tom Lehrer satirized it in song.

But the end result was still expected to be the actual, correct, answer. A number that was close, but incorrect, was still incorrect.

Proponents of this educational malpractice make an extremely lame argument. "We're teaching them how to estimate," they coo reassuringly. "WHYYYYY?" I hiss back at them.

Yes, many adults have been doing this kind of estimation for years; many of us can look at the multiplication example I gave earlier and say "yeah, that's gonna fall somewhere between 900 and 1000." And when we do the actual math, we nod our heads because the correct answer is close to what we projected.

But that's not what you teach kids. When you teach that at a primary level, sloppy thinking becomes a primary process instead of something you know you can get away with later in life. What you learn first is what sticks; it is the foundation for everything that follows. What you learn first usually ends up being what you learn.

Morris Kline, Professor of Mathematics, in his 1973 book Why Johnny Can't Add: the Failure of the New Math addressed this issue directly:

"abstraction is not the first stage but the last stage in a mathematical development"
- Why Johnny Can't Add, page 98

I doubt there will be funny songs about the use of compatible numbers. Teaching kids how to arrive at the wrong answer just isn't very funny.

Cain Isn't Able

2011-09-26T18:00:00.001-07:00

The results were sprawled across the news websites:

Herman Cain wins Florida straw poll

And like most people, my first thought was "Who?"

And after a little research, I can say with authority that Herman Cain is the other black man in the Tea Party. Unless the Tea Party is still pissed at Allen West, in which case Cain becomes the Tea Party's token black man.

Alright, I confess, I kid; but not by much. There have been accusations against the fringe conservative group since its inception, and Cain recently rebuked Morgan Freeman for calling the group racist. From his Fox News interview with Neil Cavuto:

...I doubt if Morgan Freeman, with all due respect, who is a great actor, has he ever been to a Tea Party? Most of the people that are criticizing the Tea Parties, Neil, about having a racist element, they have never been to a Tea Party.

Of course, other Tea Party defenders have come to other conclusions, such as The Economist's Lexington's Notebook column:

I SAID in a recent post that people, such as those in the NAACP, who call the tea-party movement racist did not know whereof they speak. Now, in light of the Mark Williams affair, I have to consider whether a correction is in order.

To judge by a "satirical" letter he wrote in reaction to the NAACP, Mr Williams, a tea-party activist, is indeed a racist...

...I concede that there are racists within the movement, maybe many more than I had realised.

Like Lexington, I'm willing to concede that the organization isn't intended to spread racism, and didn't set out to recruit racists. But take a look at this slideshow of photos taken at last weeks Conservative Political Action Conference, and take your own inventory.

My second thought, when I look at the numbers, it's hard to agree that he "won" the straw poll.

Here they are:

Herman Cain: 37 percent
Rick Perry: 15 percent
Mitt Romney: 14 percent
Rick Santorum: 10.9 percent
Ron Paul: 10.4 percent
Newt Gingrich: 8.4 percent
Jon Huntsman: 2.3 percent
Michelle Bachmann: 1.5 percent

Sure, he got more votes than the top two runners-up combined, but he still took only a little more than a third of all the votes cast. That means that about 2 out of every 3 participants voted against him. He didn't win so much as he didn't lose as badly as everyone else.

I wouldn't call it a stunning victory.

Everyone expected Rick Perry to win, even though he's an idiot. Of course, George W. Bush was elected, and he was an idiot. But last week, he had to hold his own with people who were much smarter than he was, or at least with Mitt Romney. Perhaps, like Sarah Palin, Perry should have written his prepared off-the-cuff retorts on his arm.

Mitt Romney would probably be a good choice to lure in voters from across the aisle, which is why die-hard conservatives won't consider him. Toss in the fact that he's a member of "a wierd cult," and we can see why Romney won't get the nomination. Again.

The rest are the usual flotsam and jetsam of knee-jerk conservatives spouting all the usual conservative talking points; lower taxes, less regulation, and screw anyone who isn't already wealthy.

The real message from the straw poll isn't "Cain is a great candidate." It's "can't you turd-herders come up with even ONE potential candidate who's not a complete jerk?"

Huntsman's Jobless "Jobs Plan"

2011-09-04T23:51:00.001-07:00

CNN reports that the Wall Street Journal loves Jon Huntsman's jobs plan.

The paper described Huntsman's proposals, which he laid out Wednesday in a speech in New Hampshire,"as impressive as any to date in the GOP presidential field, and certainly better than what we've seen from the front-runners."

Wow! That must be some great jobs plan, I thought, because so far, the one thing the Republicans have been leaving out of their jobs plans were the actual jobs themselves. All they've offered is less tax, and less spending.

Sadly, Mr. Huntsman's "jobs" plan also fails to include a single job.

Huntsman's plan:

1. Tax Reform

less taxes for citizens
less taxes for rich citizens
less taxes for corporations
and less taxes.

2. Regulatory Reform

Get rid of regulations (and the Healthcare act, too)
Gut the EPA (which is already underfunded)
Kill the NLRB
Gut the FDA
Give Patents away like lollipops
Privatize Fannie MAE and Freddie MAC

3. Energy Independence

Smack OPEC upside the head and drill, baby, drill!
Create a market for alternative fuels.

4. Free Trade

Let's repeat the success of NAFTA (which cost the US 879,280 jobs) with South Korea, Columbia and Panama, and what the heck, throw in Japan, India and Taiwan.

Why Huntsman's Jobs Plan Fails as a Jobs Plan

In short, it doesn't create any jobs.

Lowering Taxes Doesn't Create Jobs.
Well, the first section, lowering/reducing/simplyfying taxes. Hey, wouldn't it be great if it was easier to prepare our taxes? I wouldn't need an accountant to figure it out for me - which, of course, means that a lot of tax preparers are going to be totally boned, and likely will go out of business. Which I, for one, am not factoring in to this, because this thing stinks enough without pointing out how many people this plan puts out of work.

The fact of the matter is that lowering taxes doesn't create jobs. It's a pretty idea. And that's all it is.

Most businesses are, well, in business. And when you find you're making more money without having to do anything, you don't suddenly decide to hire a bunch of people, you pay it out in dividends. Free profit, baby!

Current Regulations Aren't Killing Jobs
Huntsman specifically cites EPA pollution regulations in his plan:

While the nation struggles to recover from economic turmoil, EPA has imposed vast new rules on the nation's energy producers, crippling one of the most critically important components of economic recovery: energy
supply.

The problem is that this isn't actually happening. The Washington Post rebuts:

An Aug. 8 review by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) refuted much of the criticism of the EPA’s regulatory push. Fears of disruption to the power sector are overblown, the CRS said: Newer coal power plants already have pollution controls, and many older ones are set to shut down anyway, in part because burning cleaner natural gas is now so cheap.

Furthermore:

....studies that many critics continue to rely on in their forecasts of expensive regulatory disaster assume stringent provisions that the Obama administration never proposed. A note from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, cited by many critics, admits that its analysis is “inadequate to use as a basis for decision-making, given that it used information and assumptions that have changed.”

In other words, at some point, the GOP assumed that President Obama would push for more regulation, and he didn't. But they're still using the same false assumptions even though the facts contradict them.

Economist Jared Bernstein weighs in:

Second, and this creates an upward bias to both X and e, you can’t only count the costs of regulations, you have to consider the benefits as well. Again, from the WaPo editorial:
“Reasonable people can disagree on how much economic cost is worth bearing for how much environmental benefit. But the Republican critique seems to deny that such a trade-off even exists.”
Suppose an allegedly “job-killing” regulation led to the improvement in public health, thus decreasing health costs or lost work days. To ignore these factors is to inflate both X and e.

But that's just what analysis shows us; what do business owners say about regulations harming their business? Well, funny you should ask; McClatchy Newspapers went out and asked them.

"Government regulations are not 'choking' our business, the hospitality business," Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. "In order to do business in today's environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order."

The answer from Rick Douglas — the owner of Minit Maids, a cleaning service with 17 employees in Charlotte, N.C. — was more blunt.

"I think the rich have to be taxed, sorry," Douglas said. He added that he isn't facing a sea of new regulations but that he does struggle with an old issue, workers' compensation claims.

Then there's Rip Daniels. He owns four businesses in Gulfport, Miss.: real estate ventures, a radio station and a boutique hotel/bistro. He said his problem wasn't regulation.

"Absolutely, positively not. What is choking my business is insurance. What's choking all business is insurance. You cannot go into business, any business — small business or large business — unless you can afford insurance," he told Biloxi's Sun Herald.

The article does mention that the US Chamber of Commerce points to the elements mentioned in Huntsman's plan, but noted that those complaints seem to come from the largest corporations, and not from the far more numerous locally owned business that offer the bulk of our nation's employment.

Energy Independence... Fine. Where are the jobs?
Part 1: drill, baby, DRILL!

Part 2. "eliminate the subsidies and regulations that support foreign oil and inhibit domestic alternatives such as compressed natural gas (CNG), electricity, biofuels, and coal-to-liquids, which are not price-controlled by OPEC."

It should be noted that the inhibition is basically that alternative fuels cost more than foreign fuel. So this plan is really "let's drive up the price of gasoline and oil for the consumer." Just want to make sure we understand the plan; he was kind of vague about it.

This plan is impractical if we're not also investing in mass transit so that we're sharing the cost of $10 a gallon gasoline amongst a large number of commuters. The best way to shake off dependence on foreign oil is to reduce our consumption by driving a lot less, and making better use of the fuel we do use.

But this is a jobs plan. Will this create jobs? I don't see it. Remember, he's already reduced revenue with the tax reform, which means much steeper cuts than we've seen to date. Traditionally, alternative fuel research has been subsidized by the government because the return on the investment has been too steep.

Of course, alternative fuels will become economically viable when gasoline costs soar; but I suspect that the sudden rise in costs will put a lot of people out of work. For example, if people stop driving cars in favor of mass transit, that's hit on the auto industry. Arguably, that could be partially offset by people seeking to replace their current cars with far more efficient vehicles, and building more mass transit systems. But I think at some point, people are going to start opting out of owning their own car, which means less manufacturing and less maintenance jobs.

Expanding Free Trade.
Remember NAFTA? As mentioned above, it cost 879,280 US jobs. 78% of the net job losses under NAFTA were relatively high paying manufacturing jobs. Sure, we eventually regained most of the lost jobs - 809,988. But the wages dropped 13-16%.

Worse, the idea was to make U.S. products more attractive to Mexican consumers, which would increase our exports there. But 61% of exports to Mexico are actually components for goods that are assembled in Mexico to be sold in the U.S.

Let's look at the list of Huntsman's proposed partners in trade: South Korea, Columbia, Panama, Japan, India and Taiwan. Without a Free Trade agreement, we've already lost a lot of jobs to South Korean, India, and Taiwan. What would be the effects of removing restrictions? After all, workers in most of those countries make a small fraction of U.S. workers; won't this only encourage companies to move more manufacturing jobs overseas? Sure, new jobs will eventually replace what's lost, but again, it's likely that we'll see markedly reduced wages. No net gain, just less money for the same jobs.

Jobless Job Plan
Considering all the factors, this jobs plan doesn't really do much to create new jobs - and remember, we haven't accounted for the jobs lost as Huntsman hacks away at the size of the government. He's talking about eliminating tens of thousands of government jobs, if not hundreds of thousands. That will contribute to unemployment even as the few jobs this plan will create eventually appear.

This Just In - Fidel Castro Is Still Not Dead

2011-08-31T09:58:00.001-07:00

The Miami Herald reports that the latest rumors about Fidel Castro are actually part of an attempt to infect computers.

According to Naked Security, the original message emerged early August as an email message with the subject “Fidel Castro is dead,” followed by a picture of him in a casket. Naked Security determined that the message about Castro was fake and linked it to programs designed to disrupt computer systems.

And while some folks can be lauded for trying to get an insider's view, Cuba's most famous blogger had this to say:

“My phone hasn’t stopped ringing. Everybody is asking me if it’s true that Fidel Castro is very sick,” was part of the message (Yoani) Sánchez wrote on her Twitter account around 3 p.m. Tuesday. “I DON’T KNOW, and if it were true, we Cubans would be the last ones to find out.”

So don't open any attachments to a "Fidel Is Dead" message, and don't forward it, because he's still not dead. Although I suspect he'd be pleased at the attempt to disrupt our Imperialistic social networking capabilities.

More Mismanagement by Rick "pink slip" Scott

2011-08-25T11:24:00.001-07:00

The Palm Beach Post reports the man in charge of Florida's prison system, Edwin G. Buss, has resigned after six months on the job. Which is not surprising, seeing as how Governor Rick Scott has been undermining his authority all along.

"Regarding Buss, Governor Scott said differences in philosophy and management styles arose which made the separation in the best interests of the state," Scott's office said in a statement.

The thing to keep in mind here is that Buss has a background in running prison systems while the governor has a background in bilking MediCare. Of course there are differences in philosophy; Mr. Buss has been praised as being one of the nation's top prison administrators, while Mr. Scott managed to avoid prosecution for one of the largest acts of fraud in US history.

It was a crowning achievement for Scott's administration to lure him away from his post in Indiana, where he had a reputation for effective reform and cutting costs.

Who would you rather have running our prisons - a man lauded as being top in the field, or someone who'd be serving time if not for the work of his shysters?

In the past 10 days, Scott's administration twice publicly accused Buss of initiating contracts and requests for proposals without getting prior approval from Scott's office.

Which in reality world, we'd call "doing his job." He was hired for his expertise; expertise not found in the governor's office. The question this raises is "why is the governor interfering with the daily operations of the prison system?"

The governor has no background in prisons. He's never run one, never dealt with one, never served time in one (unfortunately). His background, theoretically, is medical law. And of course, we know of at least one job he completely fucked up. He narrowly avoided criminal charges, but was involved in the lawsuit that followed. Since he barely understood the field in which he was presumably an expert, you'd think he'd stay out of a field in which he was completely ignorant.

And yet Mr. Scott had no problem voiding contracts that Mr. Buss had signed in good faith.

During the lawsuit that followed Scott's gross mis-management of HCA, which wound up paying a whopping $1.2 billion dollar fine for acts fraud committed while Scott ran the company, Scott denied knowing even the most basic terms relevant to running a hospital.

"Occupancy? No. No, I don't know what that means." - Rick Scott, under oath, March 17, 1995

Now, if you've ever worked in a hospital, you'd know that "occupancy" is the term used most often in business discussions about a hospital; it's the number of people in your hospital's beds. Occupancy to a hospital is like ticket sales to a movie; it's the life's blood of the industry. You can't get through the day without being aware of your hospital's average occupancy.

Unless, apparently, you're Rick Scott.

So, Rick Scott didn't even know the most basic terms of an industry he was actively working in, and now he's all pissy because an expert in a completely different field didn't consult him about operations in a field in which he admittedly has no background?

A good governor attracts the best talent, and then stays out of their way. Yes, he should be informed, but only informed, not mired in every single decision best made by experts.

One thing is clear; the wrong person resigned.

Hemorhoids Get a Bum Rap

2011-08-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

Last month, you may recall that The Orlando Sentinel declared that only hemorrhoids are more unpopular than Florida Governor Rick Scott:

The first-time governor — less than a year into his term, typically a honeymoon period for newly electeds — now has an approval rating of 27 percent.

That makes him one of the least popular politicians in the United States and only slightly more popular than a hemorrhoid.

I though that this might be a bit of hyperbole. So I polled my readers to see if there was any truth to this at all. After all, I'm always going on about how important it is to be honest, to report the facts, and to avoid pointless rhetoric. Time to practice what I preach.

And of course, there isn't any truth to it at all.

As you can see here, hemorrhoids are actually more than twice as popular as Governor Rick Scott, or Libya's ruthless dictator, Mohamar Ghadafi.

People would rather have hemorrhoids than Carrot Top, but Carrot Top is preferred over the company of either Ghadafi or Scott.

This makes perfect sense: in choosing between painful rectal itching and the comedy
stylings of Carrot Top, one must factor in the fact that there's a cream for
hemorrhoids.

In fact, it turns out that only Rev. Fred Phelps, bigot-in-chief of the hate group Westboro Baptist Church is less popular than Florida Governor Rick Scott.

So I'm afraid we have to label Scott Maxwell's claim that "Rick Scott is only slightly more popular than hemorrhoids" as false.

Land Shark Sighting

2011-08-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

I am not making this up:
Shark Found in Woods of Milton NH

Debt Crisis: It's Your Fault

2011-07-26T05:35:00.000-07:00

So I couldn't help notice the results of a recent CNN poll:

Now, it's great that so many people took 5 seconds to click on the poll. But if you're part of the 57% who isn't contacting your congresscritter and chewing them out, then you're part of the problem. And if your congresscritter is already voting per your wishes, then contact his or her opponent and let them have it.

Our democracy only works if we're all participating. And if you're bitching about the results while not voting or contacting your elected representatives, you have only yourself to blame for our current woes.

Let's Settle This Fairly

2011-07-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of talk going around about how unpopular Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, has become since taking office. His current approval rating is a record low 27%, which supposedly led The Orlando Sentinel to declare that only hemorrhoids where more unpopular.

I have to admit, this delights me no end.

So I thought I'd put it to the test and find out how unpopular he really is:

I figure there's nothing like a good poll to sort this out once and for all. Remember, vote early - and often!

(poll closed)

Maybe after this, I'll see what we think of Frank Paruas, who is responsible for electing Rick Scott in the first place.

Casey Anthony: A Case Study in Failed Prosecution

2011-07-05T20:47:00.001-07:00

This is the first of a pair of stories analyzing the Casey Anthony case from a layman's point of view. Later this week, I'll address the defense.

I haven't talked much about the Casey Anthony case. Frankly, I was disappointed at all the stories going around long before the case came to court. It was obvious that the State Attorney had decided to start Anthony's trial in the media. And to me, that was a clear indication that they had no case. After all, why release so much data that could taint the jury pool? The answer; to pre-dispose the jury pool. And once again, my earliest impressions were spot-on.

I did an earlier story about a defense offered by Ms. Anthony's lawyers.

But I digress.

Now that the Casey Anthony trial is over, and she's been found 'Not Guilty,' a lot of people are outraged, claiming that this is proof that the justice system is broken.

But no, the justice system is intact; this isn't a case of the system being broken, it's a case of a state attorney's office being broken. Or at least, it shows a level of arrogance and incompetence that is unnacceptable. But the justice system itself is intact.

Casey Anthony very likely killed her daughter. Given the facts we have - which are too few - it's hard to place them in a meaningful context without assuming that Casey Anthony killed her daughter.

But the facts do not actually prove that; they only indicate it. Our justice system demands that a prosecutor must prove his or her case beyond a reasonable doubt. That means that if the conclusions drawn by the prosecutor or the evidence he presents can reasonably be explained away, the jury must find the defendant "not guilty."

And while I personally believe that Casey killed her daughter so she could party like a kid in her twenties, the fact is that the prosecutor did not and could not prove that. It's a damned shame for Caylee and her grandparents, but it means that you and I are less likely to be convicted of a crime we did not commit.

Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton was apparently hoping that the jurors would be convinced by the narrative he could create with the available facts. Instead, the jurors noticed that while he could demonstrate that the narrative was logical, and that out of all the available suspects, and that she fit that narrative best, Ashton couldn't actually prove that anyone killed little Caylee Anthony.

Ashton can prove she's dead, and that someone dumped her body in the woods. And that's about all he can prove.

We don't know what she actually died of. As far as I can tell from what's been released to date, the only causes of death not on the table are incineration or being run over by a steamroller.

I sense that you may not believe that the case against Casey was as weak as it was. Let's take a look at it...

Cause of Death
The biggest hole in the prosecutor's case is the fact that we don't knowhow Caylee actually died. You might assume that because the medical examiner declared the cause of death to be murder, there must be clear evidence to back this assertion.

But there isn't.

...Orange County Medical Examiner Jan Garavaglia, told the jury that based on an examination of Caylee’s skeletal remains and all other available evidence that she had concluded that the case was a homicide – an intentional killing. But she added that she, as medical examiner, was unable to uncover enough evidence to identify the means used to kill Caylee. - CS Monitor

In short, Dr. Garavaglia assumed it was murder because Caylee's body had been stuffed in a garbage bag and dumped in the woods. Which, I agree, is not an unreasonable assumption. But it's still an assumption. A
guess.

Conclusion: Our legal system requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and failed to prove how the victim died.

The Duct Tape as Murder Weapon
Caylee's remains had several pieces of duct tape where her face had been; it's consistent with tape across her mouth, and across her nose. Tape in this location, had it been placed pre-mortem, would have sealed Caylee's airway.

Except that this isn't quite accurate. There was tape with the body. It had some of the corpse's hair on it, and it was the right size to have been over the face. The prosecution showed an adorable video of what the tape might have looked like on Caylee's face. It did not provide a photograph or any other evidence showing that the the tape was ever actually on her face.

It was not possible to determine that the tape had been placed while she was still alive, and it was not even possible to prove that it was actually sealing her airway.

One witness, forensic pathologist Dr. Wagner Spitz, testified that since DNA was not found on the tape, it must have been applied after she was dead - long after, in fact:

“They took a piece of duct tape in a roll – it comes in a roll – and tore off a number of sections, maybe this long, and stuck them on the skull,” Spitz said. He said it may have been done to hold the lower jaw in place and to keep the skull intact. - CS Monitor

Of course, this would indicate that the body had first rotted away, and then been placed in the bag and dumped, and no evidence was offered that indicated that this was the case. But no evidence was offered that this was not the case, either. Another question that remains unanswered.

Conclusion: while the tape could have been on her face, it was not conclusively on her face, and while it might have sealed her mouth and nose, it cannot be proven that it actually did so.

The Smell in the Trunk
Much has been made about the report that the trunk of Casey Anthony's car, after being recovered from an impound lot, smelled like "a dead body." This lead to a detailed examination of the trunk, including samples of air that held chemical traces of odor. But while the state of the art revealed the chemical markers that indicate a "decompositional event" could have had taken place in the trunk, the science lacked the ability to determine that it was a human being that had decomposed.

Conclusion: while the smell of decay was distinctive, we can't prove that the smell came from any specific meat, let alone a human being.

Hair from a Dead Person
Much has been made about the discovery of Caylee's hair in the car. As it turns out, they can't actually prove the hair was Caylee's. But this single sample of hair, found in the trunk, displayed "hair banding." This is a phenomena where the roots of hair form a dark band after death. The argument is that this proves that a dead body was in the trunk.

Conclusion: since it can't be proven that the hair is actually Caylee's, the entire argument is moot. It also ignores the fact that while the study showed that hair banding can occur after death, it did not state nor did it demonstrate that hair banding ONLY occurs after death.

Chloroform
Much has been made about the fact that someone at the Anthony household looked up "chloroform" on the internet, and that traces of chloroform were found in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car.

An expert in the field of human decomposition said the amount of chloroform found in the trunk of Casey's car was 10,000 times more than he would expect to see. - ABC News

First, let's note that this indicates that he would expect to see some amount of chloroform, just not as much as he believes was found.

The same testing done on a "control sample" of carpet from a similar make and model vehicle also showed chloroform, but the level was much lower, he testified. - WESH

The expert, Dr. Arpad Vass, scraped samples of acetic acid from the wheel wells of her car. It is not only a by-product of chloroform, it's also a by-product of decomposition.

Chloroform is made by mixing acetone, (a reduction of acetic acid), with bleach; both are common dark room chemicals, and Casey was a photographer. But did she every use a darkroom in the age of digital photography? Highly doubtful.

But that's not the only way chloroform can appear:

Triclosan, widely used as an antibacterial ingredient in household hand sterilization products, breaks down rapidly when exposed to chlorinated water and produces toxic chemicals including chloroform... - NaturalNews.com

Conclusion; chloroform is a chemical one might expect to in the trunk of a car like Casey's, and its presences in high amounts may be explained by the presence of common household chemicals.

Casey's Constant Lying
The most compelling evidence against Casey Anthony is her own behavior during the period when Caylee first drops out of sight. In the first month of Caylee's disappearance, Casey tells everyone - friends and family alike - that Caylee isn't missing. She claimed that her daughter was with a nanny. A nanny who took her daughter off to Disney World. For days.

It's an absurd story from the start: Casey didn't have a full-time job. Having failed to graduate high school, it's not surprising she didn't have a good job.

When the police finally become involved, Anthony claims that she had lost the phone number for the nanny, and that the nanny had moved. She identified the apartment she claimed the nanny had lived in; not only had the unit been empty for months, it was in a 55 or older community, and Anthony described her nanny as being in her thirties.
She even had a name for the nanny; and the only person who had that name didn't know Casey Anthony - and had alibis.

Casey then claimed that someone she worked with at Universal Studios had introduced her to the nanny. So the police went to Universal with Anthony, who led them around the park for awhile before admitting that she did not work there.

Since we now know that Caylee Anthony was already dead at this point, the lies are particularly damning.

Soon, new stories start coming from Casey Anthony; her defense lawyers claim that she was frantically searching for her daughter. But these claims evaporate under photographs of Anthony partying at clubs every evening, and statements from friends that she never seemed outwardly concerned about her daughter, and that she dismissed inquiries with the lies about the nanny.

Conclusion: while a stunning indictment of Casey Anthony's lack of concern for her daughter, the absurd fairy tales she spun still do not constitute proof that she killed anyone.

Our justice system is designed to prevent innocent people from being sent to jail unjustly by allowing the defendant to have a counselor who makes sure that the state has met the burden of proof. And in this case, it is apparent that the state really did fail to meat this standard.

Deja Vu - The Label is BIGGER

2011-06-26T17:21:00.001-07:00

The first time I saw the news, I laughed out load. I had to laugh, because while some misguided idjits think that they are making the world a better place, all they are really doing is fulfilling the words of comedian Denis Leary.

There's a guy... He wants to make the warnings on the packs bigger. Yeah! He wants the whole front of the pack to be the warning.

And here we are, the FDA has ruled that the warning must be bigger.

He sums up the issue in his show NO CURE FOR CANCER:

Yes, Congress has caved into the madness, mandating the most intrusive and potentially ineffective labeling law in world history. And frankly, it's highly likely to be overturned if it gets to court; after all, alcohol is similarly devastating, and no one has proposed slapping a diseased liver on cans of Budweiser.

And get this - scientific studies bear out Leary's claims that the labels won't stop people from smoking! The Discover Magazine blog 80 Beats discusses the matter.

In a 2006 study, smokers looked at cigarette warning labels from various countries as they lay in an MRI scanner, which measures blood flow in the brain. Brain regions associated with fear and alarm stayed relatively quiet. But the nucleus accumbens—an area associated with cravings, and a key player in the body’s reward system—showed lots of activation. These warning labels weren’t scaring smokers, the results suggest; the images were, strangely enough, making them crave a cigarette.

Behavioral psychologist Carol Tavris summed up the field this way, to Sara Reardon at ScienceInsider: “Social psychologists have decades of research showing that fear communications generally backfire, that people tune them out, and therefore that these tactics are generally not effective.”

Anyone born in the last fifty years is fully aware of the effects of cigarette smoking. We get it. We've seen the movies, we've followed the lawsuits, we've seen John Wayne lurching around with half his breathing capacity, we've seen Larry King on his fourth heart transplant. "Cigarettes, whisky and while women will drive you insane." Smoking baaad. We get it.

But the bottom line is this.

It doesn't matter how big the warnings on the cigarettes are; you could
have a black pack, with a skull and crossbones on the front, called
TUMORS, and smokers would be around the block going, "I can't wait to
get my hands on these fucking things! I bet ya get a tumor as soon as
you light up!"

- Denis Leary, NO CURE FOR CANCER.

So now the question is, if this is who we are, when do we start slapping pictures of morbidly obese people on McDonald's Happy Meals? How about sticking a photo of a mangled corpse on the side of our cars?

If the Congress honestly believes that these labels are a responsible and necessary approach to keeping Americans safe and healthy, then they are negligent in their duty if they don't mandate similar labels for other potentially dangerous products.

And if they feel that that is going too far, why the exception for tobacco?

WSVN Can't Get Facts Straight.

2011-06-19T06:01:00.001-07:00

WSVN-7 News covered the little protest we had the other day. And while it's great that they came out, it would have been more impressive if they got the story right.

The gist of their story - and their error - is in the second paragraph of the article:

Nearly two dozen print and professional photographers are angry. Friday afternoon, they decided to protest a Fort Lauderdale city ordinance that bans all photography within several hundred yards of the filming of the Hollywood movie "Rock of Ages."

The problem with this? There is no ordinance banning all photography, around the site, or anywhere else.

Channel 7 is good at showing up and getting footage. Getting the facts straight, not so much.

What we were protesting is best summed up by Carlos Miller, who broke the story on Pixiq:

Acting as hired guns for the Rock of Ages film set, Fort Lauderdale police officers have been harassing, intimidating and threatening photojournalists trying to photograph actors in public.

The cops even went as far as to erect a sign stating that “photography of this area is prohibited” and that violators will be arrested.

Here's the thing; photography is protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. The public has a right to take pictures in public spaces, and can take pictures of anything they can see from a public space. There is no ordinance against photography because such an ordinance would violate the Constitution.

Even the Sun-Sentinel managed to get the facts right:

Earlier this week, the North Carolina-based photographers' group (National Press Photographers Association) sent a complaint letter to Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Franklin Adderley questioning the constitutionality of the trespassing signs.

The signs cite a city ordinance that does not, in fact, address trespassing or photography...

But the team at Channel 7 just can't wrap their heads around it:

The Society of Professional Journalists filed a lawsuit against ordinance (sic), saying the city law is unconstitutional.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that WSVN can't get the facts straight: after all, it is a Fox News station.

Whoops.

2011-06-18T20:23:00.001-07:00

The Miami Herald reports that a man who could not get a job as a flight attendant using his own identity managed to get the job using a stolen identity that should have also been disqualified.

Jophan Porter is an immigrant from Guyana. The article doesn't mention what his immigration status actually is (or was when he applied for the job), but presumably it disqualified him from working on airplanes in our post 9-11 mindset.

So he stole the identity of one Anthony Frair. But Frair had an arrest record!

Frair was arrested four times in Largo, in Pinellas County, between January and October 2008 on charges of criminal mischief, domestic battery, witness tampering and battery with a deadly weapon. - The Miami Herald

This should have disqualified him - or anyone from using his identity - from getting a job at an airline. It's a clear security risk, and should have raised all kinds of red flags. It's like a jewel thief deciding to hide his identity by pretending to be a mugger.

Instead, Porter, as Frair, has been working as a flight attendant.

Friar doesn't know Porter, and doesn't know how Porter ended up with his identity. The theft came to light when Frair, now living in New York, applied for food stamps. He must have been surprised when he was rejected for being gainfully employed at a job he couldn't possibly hold.

Porter's being detained by immigration, and has been charged with possessing false government IDs, forgery, and possessing stolen driver's licenses.

No one has explained how he passed the background checks that should have uncovered Frair's record, if not Porter's actual identity. But their can be no doubt that someone really screwed the pooch on this one.

And the question on everybody's mind - will the story translate as a musical?

The Public Wins One

2011-06-17T21:20:00.001-07:00

Last week, there were signs posted all around the historic Himmarshee Village in Fort Lauderdale, stating that "photography of this area is prohibited", that the ban is "strictly enforced by FLPD", and "violators subjet (sic) to arrest". The signs even cited a city ordinance.

The law cited, City Ordinance 16-1, reads:

Sec. 16-1. - State Offenses and county ordinances adopted
(a) State Felony. It shall be unlawful for any person to commit, within the corporate limits of the city, any act which is or shall be recognized by the laws of the state as a felony, felony of the first degree, felony of the second degree, or felony of the third degree.
(b) State misdemeanor. It shall be unlawful for any person to commit, within the corporate limits of the city, any act which is or shall be recognized by the laws of the state of the as a misdemeanor.
(c) County Ordinance. It shall be unlawful for any person to commit, within the corporate limits of the city, any act which is or shall be recognized as a violation of any county ordinance which is effective within the city.
(d) Penalties. Any person convicted of violating this section, regardless of whether adjudication is withheld shall be punished in accordance with the penalty clause of the state statute that the person, corporation or entity was convicted of violating.

Basically, all that 16-1 says is "if it's against the law in the State and the County, it's illegal here, too."

Photography is not illegal in the State of Florida, or in Broward County. It can't be. As we noted above, it's protected under the First Amendment.

At least one lawsuit was filed, and Carlos Miller arranged for a group of photographers to make an appearance in Himmarshee Village.

Carlos Miller being interviewed by Channel 7.

But by the time we arrived on the scene, all the offensive signs had been removed.

This photo shows the same corner as the first photo in this article, a few days later.

Another difference in the last few days; uniformed cars have been replaced with un-marked cars. But there were still armed, off-duty police officers working security.

One of them tried pretty hard not to start citing the photographers, but her job was made difficult by the odd decision not to have any clear demarcation between public areas and the area being blocked off for the production. She couldn't resist going to the manager of Bourbon on 2nd Street to try and incite some trespassing charges; she stepped inside the restaurant, and within a minute or two, he stuck his head out to see if we were blocking the door.

Which we weren't.

Off-duty police officer pointing out the line she wants us standing behind.
She never did produce any supporting documentation for that line.

And what did they not want us to see?

I don't know either. The Glades never riled up such a fuss; I hope whoever thought the signs were a good approach gets the pink slip they richly deserve. Oh, not for the feeble attempt to violate our rights; for exposing the production to needless negative publicity. This should never have been an issue.

I would hope that this doesn't affect future productions from filming in South Florida. A lot of productions film without incident, and without riling up the locals.

We promise we won't interrupt your shoot if you don't violate our right to have one, too.

Chief Adderly: Movie Crews Are Not Above The Law

2011-06-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

This is in reference to this Pixiq story, and the images found there.

I know these Hollywood types are very impressive, but just because they insist that you do certain things, it does not mean that you can or should do them. It's just a goddamn movie. Filming a movie does not grant them any special rights or privileges. They have to abide by the law; the law does not abide by the film crew.

I know that they are pressuring you to stop people from taking pictures of the film in progress. I've worked in the entertainment business for 25 years, and I know that I frequently request that people stop taking photographs. I've even kicked people out of my theater for taking photographs.

The thing is, my theater is private property. I sell admittance to it at my discretion, and I have the right to revoke their right to be there. Tickets are sold with conditions.

Note that even if I catch them taking photographs, I can't take their cameras or their film, or their memory cards; it is illegal to seize private property without a court order (in the form of a subpoena or warrant). I can only kick them out.

But you do not have that legal recourse on public property. The public pays for it, they have the right to be there. Furthermore, they have the right to take pictures or movies of anything they see from that public property, even the filming of a movie. Court rulings are very clear on this; it is not and can not be against the law to take pictures or movies of anything you can see from a public right-of-way. They have ruled that photography is a form of communication, and thus is protected speech under Amendment 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

No state or municipal law may override the Constitution, and no law may infringe the rights guaranteed therein. Even if it pisses of some piss-ant film crew.

Now, I don't know which shit-for-brains ass-kisser motivated officer did it, but all those signs being put up stating that "photography of this area is prohibited" are not only insulting, they are also without any legal support whatsoever. I understand that a lot of these officers are off-duty. But they are exposing the city to legal action, and that should not be tolerated. Anyone you cite for taking photos, or worse yet, actually arrest, has the basis for a lawsuit that they will win. Every time this kind of thing has come up before the courts, the court has ruled that photography is protected speech. Every. Single. Time.

Now you're going to tell me that even though the streets are closed for the filming, you're trying to maintain access to businesses there. And that's laudable. But you cannot have it both ways; if you're letting the public on the sidewalk, then all their rights come with them. So if you want to keep the cameras out, keep the public out. The film company is responsible to recompense the businesses for their loss - it's actually included in the language of the permit. And the film company needs to make its choice; either shut everything down completely and foot that bill, or let the public in and live with the cameras. It's their choice; pay up, or put up with it. But violating the civil rights of citizens isn't on their list of options. And it's not on yours, either.

So to sum this up for you: if it's a public space, and the public is allowed to be there, so are cameras, and the public can use those cameras to take pictures of anything they see and there is nothing the Fort Lauderdale PD can do about it without violating the law.

Memorial Day Shooting

2011-06-03T08:23:00.001-07:00

Lots of hot hair is pumping over the police shooting of Raymond Herrisse on Monday. Were the police justified? I don't know. If they find residue on his hands, placing the gun found in his car in his hands, then very likely, yes. If ballistics from that gun show that it was used in an armed robbery back in November, then it's pretty clear the police did the right thing.

No, the shooting of an (alleged) armed criminal doesn't bother me. It's the people shooting video who claim they were assaulted, or had their cameras seized, that worry me.

The Miami Herald spoke with a couple who recounted their experience.

A West Palm Beach couple who filmed Monday morning’s deadly officer-involved shooting on South Beach has accused officers of intimidation, destroying evidence and twisting the facts in the chaos surrounding the Memorial Day shootings – a charge that police officials say they know nothing about.

Sadly, it's a familiar story in South Florida; cops are filmed arresting a suspect, and then round up the footage. Usually, the arrest involves complaints of excessive force, and often the video proves just that.

In theory, if the officers were following proper procedure, the videos would of course prove that beyond reasonable doubt. So when officers start grabbing cameras, we, the people, must be suspicious of this behavior.

Narces Benoit and Ericka Davis say that Miami Police got very scary:

The video shows Benoit get into the car, where his girlfriend, Ericka Davis, sat in the driver’s seat. He raises his camera and an officer is seen appearing on the driver’s side with his gun drawn, pointed at them.

“They put guns to our heads and threw us on the ground,” Davis said.

Benoit said a Miami Beach officer grabbed his cell phone, said “You want to be [expletive] Paparazzi?” and stomped on his phone before placing him in handcuffs and shoving the crunched phone in Benoit’s back pocket.

Benoit was later uncuffed, and slipped the memory card out of his wrecked phone.

Officers again took his phone, demanding his video. He said they took him to a nearby mobile command center, snapped a picture of him, then took him to police headquarters and conducted a recorded interview while he kept the SIM card in his mouth. He insisted his phone was broken.

He was given a copy of a police property record receipt dated May 30.

Not surprisingly, the police deny it. Specifially, Police Chief Carlos Noriega denied it.

“I was there during the second shooting and it was quite a chaotic scene,” he said. “We were trying to figure out who was who and it was a difficult process. Not once did I see cameras being taken or smashed.”

He goes on to say that if a complaint had been filed, Internal Affairs would be investigating.

IA is a division of the Police Department whose members just destroyed Benoit's phone, and held him and Davis at gunpoint, remember. Yeah, I'm sure they were anxious to run down to the Police Department after that experience.

When cops lash out at witnesses, confidence in the integrity of the police force is greatly diminished. Benoit and Davis had committed no crime, but still ended up being handcuffed at gunpoint, according to their testimony. Not filing a complaint with that police department is wholly understandable.

Noriega did make the observation that the video could help the investigation of the shooting, and he's right. But the law does not allow police to seize the private property of witnesses. They have to get a court order to do that.

Some people complain about the backlash of outrage whenever cops start seizing cameras. They say things like "well, the videos never show what happened before" or "they edit them to make the police look bad." And sometimes that is true. But maybe, if cops would follow the law instead of assaulting and harassing those with cameras, perhpas fewer people would be trying to slant the footage. And if the law was followed, court orders would bring out the full, unedited, video in each case, showing the real story, whatever it happens to be.

Of course, one would have to be confident that one had properly followed procedure before taking the legal and legally binding steps to secure the footage. After all, once it's been gathered by a court order, it becomes part of the public record. Video you grab in the heat of the moment can conveniently disappear if it shows you violating procedure.

And that's why the tendency of the police to lash out at photographers and videographers is so damning in the public eye.

I'm back.

2011-06-03T07:41:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I feel a little foolish. I guess I just needed an outlet for "the softer side." But suddenly I feel the need to point out the follies we're surrounded with.

Crime and...Punishment?

2011-06-03T07:37:00.001-07:00

You run two men down in the street, leave them to die in a pool of blood, get friend to lie about where you were, hide the car, and deny everything. Oh, and your license was already suspended for reckless driving.

And your punishment? You get sent home. To your house. For two years.

You know he's laughing all the way to his room. Hell, he's probably already ordered a keg for the party.

Ryan LeVin ran down Craig Elford and Kenneth Watkinson on February 13, 2009. They didn't get to go home to their wives and children.

LeVin had been racing his Porsche along State Road A1A. He'd lost his license for doing this, but he was at it again. And this time, he killed someone.

Judge Barbara McCarthy imposed an incredibly inadequate sentence; two years of house arrest, followed by ten years of probation, and his driving privilege is permanently revoked.

His driving privilege was already revoked when he killed the two men. This demonstrates that LeVin has no respect for the law or court rulings. If ever there was a man who need to spend time in a prison cell to re-assess his choices, it's Ryan LeVin. Instead, he'll have whatever pathetic friends he has over to watch The Fast and the Furious in hi-def, and send out for pizza.

But LeVin gets to go home, and hopefully won't find a way to slip out of the house to party, get in another race and run some more people down. After all, he didn't give up driving the first time the court made a ruling. Why should we expect that he'll behave differently now?

Meanwhile, the families of his victims have learned the bitter lesson that there is no justice in Barbara McCarthy's court.

Not the last post, but....

2011-05-30T22:21:00.001-07:00

Things have been slowing down; I'm sure you've noticed. It's not that I'm not interested in keeping up the blog; but it's been getting hard to get up interest in THIS blog, if you follow me.

Part of the problem is that this blog never really had a clear purpose. The earlier posts show that; it bounced from being a "how-to" to a photo journal, and ended up being mostly a place to vent my spleen.

So then I started spinning off other blogs. So each had a purpose, but each was soooo specific, that sometimes I don't know where a thing should be posted.

So I'm starting fresh. This blog will stay up, and I'm sure that occasionally I'll post something that fits MAN or MANIAC. And I'm sure that I'll occasionally update Camera Ephemera. The Theatre Scene is chugging along, so don't fret on that.

But for now, I'm going 'Round the Bend. I hope you'll join (the kinder, gentler) me.

Hit it!

2011-05-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

Tea Party Threatens Teen Over Debate

2011-05-20T18:08:00.001-07:00

The Daily Koz reports that Amy Myers, a high school student from Cherry Hill, NJ, has recieved numerous threats for challenging tea party darling Michelle Bachmann to a debate.

"I got a call from the principal that the main office received threatening mail," said the computer programmer and single father. - Courier-Post, May 20, 2011

I guess the Tea Party - or at least some of the extreme right-wing whackos who support it - understand that Michelle "Constitution, shmonstitution" Bachmann lacks the intellectual capacity to stand up next to a high school student without looking as batshit crazy as she in fact is.

They Say It Ends Tomorrow

2011-05-20T07:02:00.001-07:00

Reflecting on the end of the world, this song kept running through my head....

The Transparent Governor

2011-04-11T21:52:00.001-07:00

As you may know, Our Despicable Governor is pushing for drug testing of welfare applicants, and for Medicaid patients to be sent to private facilities.

Facilities like those run by Solantic, a company Scott co-founded in 2001.

Of course, this is obviously a clear violation of ethics. So Scott got rid of his shares of Solantic. Well, kind of.

“As you know, I’ve been transparent. I was transparent in my race. I’ve put those assets in my wife’s name,” Scott said. “Everybody knows it. I’ve been very clear. I’ve said that the state will not have a contract with that company. I’ve told everybody, ‘Hold me accountable.’ ” - Palm Beach Post, April 11 2011

That's right. He gave them to his wife. The woman he is married to. His partner. Whom he will have and hold, through richer and poorer. But mostly richer.

Yes, in fact, he didn't really get rid of his shares at all. They're still in the family, and he still benefits from any business he sends to them as a result of the policies he's putting in place.

Yes, Mr. Scott is transparent - we can see right through his lies.

But Mr. Scott has surrounded him with transparent cronies, who are just as dishonest as he is. Like his spokesman, Brian Burgess. Burgess claims that privately held stocks are hard to get rid of.

“I get that people think there’s a conflict, but I don’t get what people think should be done about it,” Burgess said. “If he can’t divest instantly, what should he do?” - Palm Beach Post, April 11, 2011

Well, how about resigning as governor? That would work for me. But since he probably won't do that, he should simply stop working on any policy or legislation that would drive business to his own wife's company. That's what he should do, Brian.

But we can see right through Scott's insistence that it's not a problem - no thanks to Scott.

Despite Scott’s reiteration that he’s been transparent about transferring the Solantic shares to his wife, it was The Post that first reported the transfer March 13 after interviews with company officials. Six requests to the governor’s office on the topic had been ignored.- Palm Beach Post, April 11, 2011

Yes, we can see right through your transparent schemes and conspiracies, Mr. Scott. We see straight through to your larcenous little lump of a heart. We see you lining your pockets, even if you've given them to your wife to wear

Evolution: What God Told Me (repeat performance)

2011-01-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a couple of years ago, but some recent conversations reminded me about it, so I've decided to re-post it with minor edits (mostly removing dead links)

******************************************************
~~Drooling morons~~ Top state leglisators say they're ready to ~~impose their superstitions~~ join the fight by ~~pushing their ignorant beliefs~~ ensuring that evolution is taught "as a theory," rather than the fact that it is.

How do I know evolution is a fact? God told me so.

Yeah, God and I are friends. We go waaaay back.

So I asked him. What's the point of having a personal relationship withyour deity if you can't get him to clarify the really big questions?

"Say, G; what about evolution?"

"What about it?"

"Is it bunk, or what?"

"No, it's not 'bunk.' Give me break. Why would I waste time on it if it were 'bunk?'"

"But according to the Bible, You created the universe and everything in it!"

"DUH."

"But then, doesn't that mean that 'evolution' is bunk? I mean, if You created it, life on earth should have just sprung up instantly, whole and perfect?"

"According to who?"

"Well, all those Southern Baptists, for starters."

"Feh. Like THEY know anything. I love them, like I love all my creations, but c'mon. They're dogmatic pedants. They're like puppies; I did not put them on earth to provide Wisdom, they're here to be fiercely loyal. And to piddle on stuff."

"Oh."

"What?"

"I thought that your creations were all, you know, perfect?"

"No, only I am perfect."

"OK, but...well...if You are perfect, why wouldn't everything You make be Perfect?"

"Why should it be? Like I said, I'm perfect. Just me. Nothing else. That's why I used the exact words 'ONLY I am perfect.' If other stuff were perfect, it would be ME. Since it is NOT me, it cannot be perfect."

"... so why....I guess I just don't understand."

"OK, OK, I'll explain it to you. About 14 billion years ago, I had a Thought. That Thought was expressed as the Big Bang. The idea of the universe blew into existence."

"So, then, everything is really old, and science is wrong?"

"Hush, now. I'm explaining all that. I Thought of the universe, but not all at once. First, there was, 'What if there was Reality?' and that was the Big Bang. Then I thought, what if there was STUFF in Reality, and then It was filled with all the basic building blocks of everything. Then I thought of swirling clouds, and then I thought they could get denser, and then I thought about STARS and PLANETS, and then I thought there should be LOTS of those, and then I thought about galaxies, and so on."

"Oh...."

"And then I eventually thought, hm, wouldn't it be cool if some of the planets developed Life? It could condense out of the chemical soups that puddled on the rocks. And then I thought it could evolve into really cool stuff; plants, animals, condrefinessors...stuff like that."

"Condrefin...WHAT?"

"Oh, just something that didn't take. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Changed my mind."

"Wait, are you saying YOU invented evolution?"

"DUH! Of course I invented it, dummy!"

"But...why?"

God takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly.

"Because I like things to develop, to change. Everything changes; change is good. Besides, do you really think I have time to engineer every stupid little insect on your little dirtball? Do you have ANY IDEA how fucking BIG the universe has gotten? it takes light ten times longer to get from one side to the other than the the whole fucking thing has even EXISTED!"

"oh, that's pretty, well, big I guess..."

"Bet your fucking ASS it is. So rather than waste my time on stupid details, I set up some Rules."

"Oh, the Ten Commandments! I know about those!"

"No, not the Stone Hoax; why would I make such a stupid and provincial code? I don't care who you worship, or any of that crap! That crazy old Egyptian stole most of those so-called commandments from the Babylonians, and they stole it from the Hittites, who borrowed it from the Klanduskans, and THEY adopted it from the Rock Falls Hard tribe."

"Crazy Egyp...I thought it was Moses."

"Yeah, Moses carved 'em up."

"But he was...Jewish...wasn't he?"

"He wished. Nah, he some random bastard son of the Pharaoh's who had the hots for a Jewess with a big family. He got her whole extended family to walk off into the desert to find 'the promised land.' Give me a break, they were in the garden spot of North Africa, and HE says 'there's a better place, follow me!' What a nutcase! Anyway, we're getting off the subject. No,the Rules of life were not the Ten Taboos. I'm talking about DNA. I eventually thought of DNA, and I set it up to build new life. I set it to mutate every so often,so that new kinds of life would happen. I then set up conditions that would test that life. Successful forms would live long enough to become new and better forms. Eventually, Life would grow into something interesting. I gotta admit, I was worried when that slime mold seemed to hang in there for a half-billion years, but then the planet shifted, and kicked everything into motion."

"So...You designed DNA to create us? Far out!"

"Uhhhhh, no."

"What?"

"No, I didn't design DNA to create you. You're a fancy ape; what good are you to me? OK, so you mostly don't throw shit at each other any more, but you kill each other and hurt each other and lie to each other. Nah, you're part of My Plan, but you're not My Plan in its entirety."

"But the Bible says You made man in Your image!"

"So what? I didn't write it. YOU, or rather, some of your fancy-pants ape ancestors, did. They aren't the boss of Me. No one gets to say what I did or did not do, or what I can and can not do."

"But I thought.. the Bible.."

"IT IS JUST A BOOK. For fuck's sake, the title even means 'book.' Men make books; I do not. I make universes, and I make Life. I can't be bothered with books. Besides, the Bible ALSO says that I am without form; that I am omniscient and omnipresent. Are YOU omniscient and omnipresent and without physical form? No? Really? then guess what? You aren't anything LIKE my 'image.' Know how you can tell? YOU HAVE AN IMAGE."

"Oh. I never thought of that."

"Well, why should you? You're a very fancy ape, just barely sentient. You're pretty smart - for an ape."

"So...why did you make us? I mean, humans? What are we for?"

"I didn't make YOU, I made LIFE. I made life because I could. You are 'for' whatever you choose to be 'for.' It's up to you; that's how free will works. You can do great things, you can reach for the stars, or you can go back throwing ape shit at each other. I hope you strive for great and wonderful things; did I mention I made a fucking huge universe? Lots of cool shit to see and do."

"But I though WE were the pinnacle of life?"

"Oh smell you. You can use tools and write stuff down, and wipe your ass, and suddenly you're the Focus of All Creation? Give me a break. When you evolve some more, when you can love without any hate, when you can act without any harm towards anything, when you can forfeit your flesh and remain conscious, when you are everywhere and nowhere and can see all creation in a glance and Know it, THEN you will be ready for a real conversation with Me, because on THAT day you will be truly in My Image.

But until that day, try not to throw shit at your fellow apes. And quit trying to define Me; I'm bigger than everything; even your 168,0000 MHz processor brain can't wrap its 100 million MIPS around Me. Phat? I'm
fucking gi-normous."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Hey, no sweat monkey-boy. Have some more coffee. Ain't coffee great? Man, you mix some ingredients into primordial slime and in barely 4 billion years, you get COFFEE out of it! 'Can I cook, or can't I!'"

Cassandra Complex: Challenger

2011-01-28T06:19:00.001-08:00

There's really not much point to this post. This is just my recollection of the Challenger explosion. It's not a pleasant recollection, and in the scheme of things, it's completely unimportant.

But this is my memory of the day, as I lived it.

I was living in Lake Worth, Florida. I remember the TV was on, the shuttle launch was delayed again, because of the cold. I remember I was running around getting ready for work, when they interviewed some of Christa McAuliffe's students about the upcoming launch. The students were all disappointed that it hadn't launched yet.

I remember my snarky comment to the tube: "You'll like it less when the damned thing explodes because they lifted off in the cold, dumb-ass."

It was two hours before the explosion.

There was about five minutes where I swear I was having a vision of the shuttle exploding. "SHIT! I have to call them!" But as I realized that 1. I had no idea who to talk to about stopping the launch, and 2. who the hell would believe me and 3. I was being ridiculous, there was no way I could possible know the shuttle was going to explode.

Besides, I was going to be late for work; the experts surely wouldn't launch it if it wasn't safe; they'd already held the launch. Of course they'd wait until it was safe. Like anyone would listen to an assistant manager at Rent-America "rent to own" about visions of disaster.

When I got to work, all the TVs were tuned into the launch that still hadn't happened. Still too cold. It was my turn to run to the bank to do the deposit. I drove down US1 to Barnett Bank (which would be my own bank until they held a cash deposit back for five days), and took care of business. It was a gorgeous day; crystal blue sky, with not a cloud in it. I'd only been living in Florida four months, so what's cold to me now was simply invigorating.

Finishing at the bank, I turned north onto US1, and saw a strange cloud on the horizon. Just another sudden Florida thunderhead, I thought. Kinda freaky, the way it's forked.

As I walked back into the store, my manager looked at me from the desk in the back. His eyes were really, really wide.

"Did you see it?" he asked.

"See what?"

"The shuttle just blew up!"

I could not believe it. Then the image replayed on all 58 color televisions in the store.

I remember walking up to one of the consoles, to see it larger. At one point, I pointed to a corner of the expanding cloud and said "That's the cabin, right there. I think they were alive, then." The news said otherwise, but months later they found evidence that the crew had indeed survived the initial blast.

There was no way I could have known it would actually explode, but I did.

There was no way I could have known the cabin remained partially intact, but I did.

And despite the reassuring words of NASA officials, I'm certain that most of the crew didn't die until the cabin hit the ocean. That's not at all reassuring or comforting.

Don't forget, I didn't believe me, either.

As Quoted by The POTUSA?

2011-01-25T22:02:00.001-08:00

For years, I've been saying that newspapers firing reporters to save money is like cutting the engines off of an airplane to save weight. Reporters are what drive newspapers. It's an example of taking desperate measures to solve a problem, but the solution only makes the problem much worse.

So imagine my shock when President Obama said the following in his State of the Union address:

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you'll feel the impact.

Did we just come to the same analogy, or has some of my commentary found its way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? What do you think?

Mayor Redd Seals Camden's Doom

2011-01-17T21:32:00.001-08:00

In 1968, my grandfather was mugged in broad daylight on the corner of Third and Stephens Streets in Camden, NJ. His skull was fractured, and his neck was broken. He lingered, bedridden and unable to talk, until he succumbed to his injuries two years later.

I'd say it was a horrible way to die, and it was. But worse, it was a horrible way to live; fully aware, and unable to communicate with anyone, being fed through your nose, and suffering bed sores that went to the bone.

No one was ever arrested for this crime. Indeed, the police never had any suspects. It's pretty certain they did nothing in terms of investigation; they reported that they had no idea where his car was; my father went to the spot where they picked him up, and it was parked 10 feet away. With a parking ticket on it.

Things have not improved in Camden since then. Crime rates have skyrocketed, earning Camden the title Most Dangerous City in the United States in 2004. It has consistently been in the top ten highest crime cities since 1998. Currently, it's number two behind St. Louis. In short, Camden has become hellish slum.

So, in a time of crisis, the very last thing you'd cut in a city with the highest crime rates in the country would be the police force. Unless you're Camden Mayor Dana Redd, who is reducing the police force by 44%.

From CNN Money:

The mayor's office says that the cuts will not affect public safety.

"We're still going to protect our residents," said Robert Corrales, spokesman for Mayor Dana Redd. Public safety "will remain our top concern. We'll shift our resources to be more efficient with what we have."

Which only proves that Corrales is either an idiot, or a liar. The city can't protect its citizens now. It certainly can't do it with any less, let alone half.

Since the city is also laying off a huge chunk of its fire department, it's obvious that the mayor and the city commission doesn't give a rat's ass about the safety of its citizens. They might just as well fire everyone and set off firebombs and burn everything to the ground; the end result will be about the same.

From CNN Money:

One local business owner, David Brown, said he was anxious to see how the cuts unfold Tuesday.

"I don't understand how you can do more with less," he said. "I don't want to be a pessimist, but I can't be optimistic."

Yep, David. You're fucked. The Mayor and the Council have decided that it's time to put a lock on the title "MOST Dangerous City" once and for all.

The Philadelphia Inquirer sums it up eloquently:

For longtime residents, who have watched the city change over the last half-century from a bustling manufacturing center to one of the nation's most- dangerous cities, the pending loss of almost half the city's police force felt like the beginning of the end.

Thanks to Mayor Redd and the city commission, it is exactly that. Perhaps Camden residents can find nice safe homes in Detroit or St. Louis. It's damned certain that businesses won't consider Camden - unless it's to dump toxic waste.

CBS4: Cheese BrainS 4 South Florida

2011-01-16T16:17:00.001-08:00

This is what the editorially challenged CBS4 news team posted on their home page Sunday evening:

There are three glaring flaws that anyone who knows anything about South Florida would catch:

The Broward clinic in question is not in Miami. It is not even in Miami-Dade County. It's in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, in Broward County. It has no business being listed under "Miami News."
"Broward Center" is not a generic term in South Florida. It names a specific place. The Broward Center is the performance venue in Fort Lauderdale, the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, and there was no explosion there, no one died there - at least not in the last few years - and it hasn't been closed for a year and a half. The article is in fact about the NEUBAUER Center, more formally the Neubauer Hyperbaric Oxygen Neurologic Center.
Lake Worth is also not in Miami. In fact, it is farther outside Miami than either the Broward Center or the Neubauer Center.

So, within a couple of inches, CBS4 got two locations wrong, and made a completely false statement about a venerated institution with a 20 year history in South Florida.

I wonder what other really basic and easy to confirm facts these cheese-for-brains have put up on their site?

Dictionary Fun with Miami Police Chief Miguel Exposito

2011-01-12T21:29:00.001-08:00

Miguel Exposito and the City of Miami Police Department has been making the papers by seizing and destroying video games that he claims are used for gambling.

The Miami Herald quotes Major Alfredo Alvarez:

"People get addicted to them, especially the senior citizens who live on social security,'' he said. It's immoral to have these machines out there the way they're hurting the lower to middle class.''

Note that he didn't say "criminal." I find that fascinating. "Immoral." My grandma tells stories about bathing suit inspectors, who would measure the gap between the hem of her bathing suit and her bathing hose, because it was immoral to show more than 3 inches of your knee at the beach. When someone is enforcing morality, I see them leering at young women, clammy hands gripping a measuring stick, looking for an excuse to prosecute someone who isn't doing damned bit of harm.

I'm from Atlantic City. I had a neighbor who was addicted to gambling; she cost her family everything. Literally. When they moved in next door to us the year before the casinos opened, her husband had parlayed hard work into apartment buildings in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, homes in both cities, cars for all the adults (he drove a Cadillac that year, and so did she), and a boat. 25 years later, he died a pauper, with the clothes on his back and a beater truck to his name. She lives with her granddaughter, now.

I remember well the day that her husband discovered that she had taken out second and third mortgages on their last property - their house - to settle her debts. She hadn't told him. (There's a long and complicated story on how that happened, but that's for another time). He thought he'd cut her off by not letting her have money. He never dreamed that she'd simply sell everything out from under them to get a stake.

So, when Major Alvarez talks about the harmful effects of gambling, I know full well what the effects of gambling addiction really are.

So what exactly, are the stakes on the machines? After all, the thrill of gambling comes from the rush of wagering a small amount against the possibility of winning a much larger amount. The longer the odds, the bigger the rush. So what can you win for your coin?

According to The Miami Herald:

Players insert money, receive credits and win when they land certain icons like a cherry or star.

Uh, say what? They get... credits?

Well, maybe I misunderstand the word "Gamble." So let's look it up, shall we?

gam·ble: intransitive verb - 1. to play a game for money or property
- Merriam Webster

OK, so you put in your coin, and you get... well, a number. A score. How is that considered gambling?

Do you know what else you put a coin into, and at the end all you have is a numerical score? A pinball machine. So why aren't the cops seizing pinball machines?

Because, apparently, pinball machines require skill, and it doesn't take skill to win anything at a video slot machine; you just pull the lever and pray. Games that require skill are legal. Games of chance require no skill, and so they are illegal.

That's it. That's the big crime the cops are protecting us from. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

I've never understood this reasoning. If it requires no skill to win, if it's all random chance, doesn't that level the playing field? "What does it take to win this game? DUMB LUCK!" Why is are games that require a skill, games where a skilled player can clean out an unskilled one - why are they "better" than a game of chance that relies on, well, chance?

And frankly, the money being tossed around these things - CHUMP CHANGE. Gran-dad lost his cigarette money - oh, no, now he's not going to kick off from lung cancer!!

But when you have a City police force full of thugs who shoot people at the least provocation, I guess arresting people who aren't actually doing any harm is more important than, I don't know, ticketing all those insane motorists who pose a real danger to life and limb by running red lights in this city a hundred times a minute. Or pulling over aggressive drivers before they shoot someone. Or shooting people who spit their gum out on the sidewalk. You know, actual criminals. They could be seizing guns, or drug paraphenalia, things that KILL people. Instead, they are protecting, for lack of a better word, our virtue.

I hate to say it, but Mayor Regalado is actually right on this one; license the machines and tax the owners. If people want to throw away their hard-earned money, who the fuck is Miguel Exposito to stop them? He should quit wasting taxpayer money on something so mind-bogglingly stupid, and go stop some real crime. It's not like we've run out down here in Miami.

And then you get pinheads like Bob Sertell. He's a "gaming expert." Which I'm pretty sure means that prosecutors pay him to tell juries that gambling is bad. Nice work if you can get it.

Here's an example of his so-called expert advice, again quoted from the Miami Herald:

"The `application of skill' is bull,'' Sertell said. "In actual practice, none of the machines do that.''

See, because someone decided that random chance, the guiding force of the entire fucking Universe, is wrong, they've decided to define gambling not by its proper actual definition, but a made-up one, where it's OK if it takes skill, but it's not OK if it doesn't.

Do you follow that? Me either, but that's because we're not puritanical assholes.

Let's look at it another way:

GOOD: working hard to save up $100,000,000,000
BAD: winning $100,000,000,000 in the lottery.

Why is playing the lottery bad? Because for every person that wins $100,000,000,000, there are about 200,000,000,000 who simply lost a buck.

Oh, wait, the Lottery isn't illegal! Which is odd, because 1. it takes no skill to play the lottery, and 2. it is actually gambling because you are risking a small amount of cash to win a large amount of cash. (remember, the video games being seized do not pay out anything - you earn a high score).

If gambling by laying a game that takes no skill to win is a crime, and the police must seize gambling machines at any cost, why hasn't Exposito seized a single Lotto machine? Lotto exactly fits both the actual definition of gambling - putting out a little money in hopes of winning lots - and fake priggish gambling - there is no skill whatsoever involved, it's all dumb luck. Why isn't Alvarez storming every Publix and 7-Eleven in town? Is there any way that this isn't a hopeless double-standard?

No. That's exactly, precisely, all it is.

What this tells us, ultimately, is that Chief Exposito and Major Alvarez aren't interested in catching criminals so much as enforcing arbitrary moral standards codified by a bunch of prudes onto the citizens of Miami, who largely don't give a rat's ass.

Which is why gang members are free to drive by people's homes and fire guns into them, assholes are free to run red lights, and none of us are safe in our own homes.

Exposito is supposed to be protecting us. He isn't. Instead, he's doing something else on the taxpayer dime:

GAMBOL: intransitive verb - to skip about in play : frisk, frolic

Hmm, sounds like just the crime he likes to prosecute....

Adler Tells an Old Tale

2011-01-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

When I read today's Pulp, something about the story seemed familiar. And then when I read the article in The BizJournal, I realized that I did know the story.

Charles, Lord Lichtman, is solicitor general for His Royal Majesty, The Emperor.

He is no fan of Russell, Lord BlackAdler, and his fiendish companion, the blackhearted Baldrickstein. Lord Lichtman has been biding his time, knowing that Lord Russell's swagger will lead him to the scene of the crime.

But BlackAdler is as slippery as his venomous namesake, and in the timeworn tradition of thugs and thieves, has arranged matters so that his henchman, Baldricstein, will take the fall for the foul crime.

Lord Lichtman: Lord BlackAdler, the Emperor has ordered that be you held for trial and face charges for defrauding the Crown by selling His Majesty imaginary clothes, while insisting they were in fact real clothes.

Black Adler: Oh, yes, Scott Baldricstein had me completely fooled.

Lord Lichtman: Excuse me?

Black Adler: Oh yes, I had no idea that the clothes weren't real.

Lord Lichtman: Do you expect us to believe that you didn't know that the clothes didn't exist?

Black Adler: Well, the governor and the sheriff didn't know. Why should I have been expected to know?

Lord Lichtman: Really? This is your defense?

BlackAdler: My dear Lord Lichtman, I assure you that I am as innocent as a suckling child.

Lord Lichtman: Didn't you work on the clothes?

BlackAdler: Well, not as much as Baldricstein. He sewed them together. He's quite skilled. I've little talent for manual labour, as you may know.

Lord Lichtman: So what was your part in the affair?

BlackAdler: Management and administration, mostly. Tried to modernize the old place, cut the red tape, go green, all of that - I made the firm paperless.

Lord Lichtman: In fact, did you not accomplish your "paperless office" simply by burning all of the firm's records?

BlackAdler: It was cold; I recycled them into heat. Waste not, want not, that's what I always say.

Lord Lichtman: But getting back to the Emperors non-existent -

BlackAdler: - situationally invisible -

Lord Lichtman: - NON EXISTENT - wardrobe, did you not have an active part in that?

BlackAdler: Well, I did cut them to the pattern of course.

Lord Lichtman: You... cut them to pattern.

BlackAdler: The pattern Baldricstein created. Yes.

Lord Lichtman: You took scissors to the cloth....

BlackAdler: Yes.

Lord Lichtman: ...and then you cut the cloth....

BlackAdder: Yes.

Lord Lichtman: ...even though there was no cloth to cut.

BlackAdler: Well, I had no reason to know that. I know, in hindsight, I suppose it does look rather foolish. But you must understand, Baldricstein was so caught up with the styles and colours, and sales were so good...

Lord Lichtman: Sales? You mean the sales of clothing that didn't exist?

BlackAdler: The customers were always so pleased with their purchases.

Lord Lichtman: But you weren't selling them anything!

BlackAdler: How was I to know that? Everyone seemed to think they were buying stylish clothes, everyone has their own tastes, who am I to say different? "To Each His Own."

Lord Lichtman: In fact, your firm never purchased cloth of any sort. Or thread.

BlackAdler: We had a sewing machine, and I used the scissors myself.

Lord Lichtman: On non-existent cloth.

BlackAdler: So you say. Baldricstein said it was "situationally invisible."

Lord Lichtman: "Situationally Invisible."

BlackAdler: Exactly.

Lord Lichtman: And what does that mean?

BlackAdler: In certain situations, you can't see it.

Lord Lichtman: "Certain Situations."

Black Adler: Exactly.

Lord Lichtman: Such as?

BlackAdler: Well, this is according to Baldricstein, you understand, if you were stupid, incompetent, or unfit for your position, you wouldn't be able to see the cloth. That's what he maintained, anyway, and he was running the show.

Lord Lichtman: And you went along with this?

BlackAdler: Well, I didn't want to appear stupid. After all, the Governor liked them well enough. He spoke highly of their fine textures and draping. I'd like to believe that I'm at least as smart as the Governor.

Lord Lichtman: Wasn't the Governor an old friend of Baldricsteins?

Baldricstein: You know, I do believe you're right.

(With apologies to Hans Christian Anderson)

Sanford Police Turns Its Back on the Law

2010-12-29T18:06:00.001-08:00

At least, that seems to be the case in Sanford, Florida. The Orlando Sentinel reports that on December 4, Justin Collison attacked a homeless man, rendering him unconscious, then sucker punched a bar patron. His friends tried to stop him, calling out to him, dragging him off his victims. The entire incident was caught on video:

Acting Sanford police chief Captain Jerry Hargett was interviewed:

Acting Sanford police chief Capt. Jerry Hargrett said late Wednesday afternoon that his officers made "blatant" policy violations that night, including not handcuffing Collison or patting him down.

But Hargrett did not fault officers for opting not to arrest Collison. He said he was not sure why the officers made no arrest but said there is no evidence that Collison was given preferential treatment.

Of course, Hargrett is a stinking liar. There is clear evidence that Collison has been given preferential treatment; he hasn't been arrested. Despite incontrovertible evidence that he is a clear threat to society who has clearly committed felony battery, this vicious thug was allowed to walk way.

Collison's father, you see, is a police lieutenant on the Sanford Police Department. It's glaringly obvious that the department is corrupt, protecting a vicious felon because his father is a cop.

His victim, Sherman Ware, who was knocked out in the attack, was taken from the scene unconcious. Officer Samuel McNeil, who should be charged for dereliction of duty, reported that he did not arrest Collison because Ware didn't give a sworn written statement.

You read that right; McNeil didn't arrest someone who had been recorded beating Ware up, in front of numerous witnesses, because Collison had rendered his victim unconscious.

People must get away with murder in Sanford; after all, dead men tell no tales, and the cops ignore physical evidence and eyewitness testimony. They might was well not have a police department.

The town of Sanford needs to clean house; this abrogation of justice is intolerable. McNeil and Hargrett should be ousted from law enforcement, and we should take along, hard look at the rest of the department. There can be no justice when police do not uphold the law.

Well, Now We Know.

2010-12-21T10:00:00.001-08:00

Back during the election, when Rick Scott was swearing up, down, and sideways that he had no idea his company was committing fraud even though he signed paperwork that flatly stated that they were, I said that either he was bald-faced liar, or incompetent.

Well, good news, everybody; he's incompetent!

As reported in the Sun-Sentinel, more than 400 state bureaucrats that had been told to resign so Scott could replace them with cronies stooges minions people of his own have now been asked to stay on, so he can fire them later.

So we call relax; Scott is not a morally bankrupt thug intent on sucking us dry, he's an incompetent dithering idiot who will surround himself with morally bankrupt thugs intent on sucking us dry.

Remember, you can thank Frank Paraus and thousands of other mouth-breathing partisan zombies for voting the Party link instead of voting for someone they felt would be a quality governor.

Unfortunate Proximity

2010-11-27T18:37:00.000-08:00

My brain keeps trying to combine these two news stories from the Sun-Sentinel:

Why No One Noticed When 93 Rock Died

2010-11-27T18:05:00.001-08:00

When was the last time you talked about listening to music on the radio with a friend?

Exactly.

93 Rock died because it had no soul. Or Soul, for that matter. It was
just a bunch of songs played through out the day. It was a wireless
jukebox of songs someone else selected from a limited catalogue at random. Bland. And frankly,
102.7 and 105.9 are not one whit better. But their audiences are not so
adept at technology as the younger tech-savvy fans of new music, people a little too set in their ways to replace their radios.

Hell, I was barely aware that there even was a 93 Rock until the announcements came that it was now the fabulously stupid Home of South Florida's Holiday Music. (Yeah, that'll work, up until about December 26). There was mention of a "Bubba the Love Sponge," which sounds like someone was desperately trying to grab the coattails of Sponge Bob Square Pants. I vaguely remember hearing the name and thinking it was someone who cleaned up porno sets.

Management thinks there's no audience for modern rock in South Florida; although classic rock still seems to be going strong. They also thought there was no audience for Jazz; but the first Sunday of every month, the Fort Lauderdale Jazz Brunch attracts throngs of people. With no jazz radio, we've turned to the internet. Which is great for listening choices, but horrible for music promoters who no longer have a local media outlet.

But it's not the music that's the problem; it's the way radios stations are presenting it that sucks, not the music.

Every day, around noon, Big 106 (or more accurately, 105.9) plays Billy Joel, like he's Big Ben or something. Listen for a day, and you will here some songs several times, and a limited number of artists. Listen for a week, and you will not be exposed to a new song by the end of it; or even an artist you haven't heard before.

It's boring. I am so bored with the dreck that ALL the South Florida stations are broadcasting that I've started listening to National Public Radio almost exclusively. It ain't exciting, but at least I don't know what they're going to say next.

So music lovers invest in satellite radio for our cars, or download MP3s of stuff we like, or stream Pandora to our computers. Which gives us a greater variety of choices, but even there, the listening leads us to hunt and gather amongst the selections; for an hour, it's "adult rock," followed by "classic rock," shake it loose with some "heavy metal," then who knows?

If radio wants to survive in the 21st century, it has got to unlearn all the poor habits it's picked up in the last thirty years. Radio started to suck when they stopped letting human beings program in favor of letting spreadsheets and statistics do the programming. And now, it's given us a sterile, bland, playlist that is reduced to background noise, like Muzak.

If radio wants to succeed, it has to throw away the labels; in truth, there are no such things as "rock and roll" fans, or "heavy metal" fans, or "country" fans, or "jazz" fans, that's all bullshit. Are there people who lean one way or the other? Sure. Are there people who cling to labels? Sure. But they don't matter. The market to appeal to is MUSIC FANS. People who like MUSIC.

If radio is to succeed, it has to embrace the concept that people simply like music. All kinds of music. When we were children, we were exposed to all of it. How much rock'n'roll was played in Bugs Bunny? None. But even now, if you gather any group of people and start talking about Bugs Bunny at the opera, they'll all start cracking up and telling their favorite parts. People say that theater is dying, but those old musicals still bring people in in droves. You can argue that WICKED has rock'n'roll influences, but WEST SIDE STORY?

People want to listen to good music, any kind of good music. Labels don't matter, quality matters. The ability to touch us matters.

Back in the early 70's, I remember stations played Sammy Davis, JR, followed by Glenn Campbell, followed by ABBA, followed by Kiss. Broadway show tunes made the charts; it was a brilliant free-for-all.

And that's what radio needs to do to survive. Throw away the labels. Throw away the playlists. DJs should be recruited from those people we find at every party, the men and women we snag as they come into the door and stand them by our stereos, because they'll pick cools songs.

The best mixes aren't the ones where you know what the next song is going to be; the best mix is when the song segues into something you never, ever would have thought to put there, and it works because it's a surprise.

If radio is to survive, and even thrive, it will need to invest in fabulous Disc Jockeys again. Not simply engineers who know what switches to flip at the station break, but men and women who simply love music, and who live music, and who live to share their love of music with others. People whose passions will engage us, and draw us in. People who will throw in random shit simply because they thought it was cool, and maybe we'd get a kick out of it.

The Sandwich

2010-11-26T12:59:00.001-08:00

In my family, when you say The Sandwich, you're really only referring to one, specific, sandwich. And we only make it twice a year.

Which is probably a good thing, because it's easy to gorge on this one.

I'm referring, of course, to the post-Thanksgiving turkey-leftover sandwich.

In my family, the dinner was really just the way to bring together all the elements for The Sandwich. Sure, the dinner was great. But the best dinner in the world can't hold a candle to The Sandwich. Outsiders joke about the sandwich; we don't care.

I remember one year, I was up at my dad's, while he was with wife #2. She just couldn't get over the fuss we were making. She had argued for a smaller bird, and my dad and I just stared at her like she'd gone insane. "Why do you need a 30 pound bird when there's only three of us?" she demanded. "To have enough for the sandwiches," my dad and I chorused.

That year, the first sandwich was breakfast the following morning (When I was a teen, it was often a snack a few hours after dinner).

"How can you EAT that?" She shook her head in disdain. So we made her one. She resisted, at first, but finally capitulated, and took a bite.

Her eyes went wide.

"Oh. My. GOD!" She started cramming the sandwich, praising it between bites. "My god....this is....I can't believe...."

We had to force her to wait until lunch for the next one.

You see, everyone thinks that our sandwich is just random overkill; it's not. We're not crazy, my family. We don't shovel things in there for nothing. Each element brings something special to the final assembly, something which makes the sum of the whole much greater than the sum of the parts.

It's an amazing sandwich. You can learn how to assemble it here. You'll be glad you did.

Red Light Camera Results are Revealing

2010-11-22T08:54:00.000-08:00

The Palm Beach Post reports interesting results from intersections with red light cameras installed:

...safety results offer a mixed picture. The number of wrecks declined, but injuries recorded in accident reports are up: five under cameras compared with one before.

So, less accidents are happening, but the accidents that are still happening are reported to have more injuries.

A little further into the story, it's stated a little more clearly in the case of Palm Springs:

Accidents are down significantly at three intersections in the early going there, with injuries running even compared with the same period last year.

Some are concluding that red light cameras are thus not eliminating risk so much as replacing it with a different risk. But they'd be wrong.

Damage cited in Palm Springs police reports dropped almost in half to about $100,000.

What the studies reveal is that red light cameras are in fact effective at stopping people from running red lights.

But it also shows that a lot of people are exercising poor driving skills. The bottom line is this: you are supposed to stop for a red light. And you are supposed to maintain a safe following distance from the car ahead of you.

The lesson isn't "get rid of red light cameras," as some would have you believe. The lesson is that an alarming number of people are getting licensed without mastering the skills necessary to safely operate a vehicle. It's too easy to get a license, and too easy to keep it.

TSA: Totally Stupid Agency

2010-11-21T22:34:00.001-08:00

Am I being harsh, calling the agency tasked with keeping American travelers safe "stupid?" I don't believe I am, once you examine the situation.

The TSA was created to keep terrorists off of our airplanes. And that's fine; it's not the mission that's the problem, it's the idiotic manner they are going about doing it.

How do you find a needle in a haystack? By looking for objects that are not hay.

But the TSA is trying to find terrorists by searching.... everyone who flies. They are trying to find a needle in a haystack by examining the hay. But the hay isn't what they are supposed to be looking for - if you're looking at hay, you won't see the needle.

The idiots are even making pilots go through scans. What's wrong with that, you ask? If a pilot wants to crash a plane, they don't need weapons or bombs to do it. The pilot is flying the plane. If they want to wreck it, they have their hands on the controls - literally. It makes utterly no sense to expose the pilots to xrays several times a day looking for weapons they don't need.

The fact is that millions of people fly on airplanes. Virtually all of them are NOT terrorists. Searching everyone is a waste of time, because you spend most of your time looking at people who are not a threat. That's time spent not looking for terrorists, and therefore it directly violates the TSA's entire raison 'être.

Now, I know that there are some of you that will start howling and spewing inanities like "how can we find the terrorists if we don't look for them?" And if you'd read what I wrote more carefully, you'd see that I actually am all for looking for terrorists. But you have to do that by looking for terrorists, not wasting time on efforts that won't find terrorists.

Searching everyone is a complete waste of time and money. Setting up impenetrable check points won't catch terrorists, because no terrorist is going to walk into such an obvious trap.

Besides, terrorist do not need to get onto airplanes to commit acts of terrorism. They just need someplace with a mass of innocent victims - like the line of people waiting to go through a scanner or get groped by a poorly trained underpaid security guard. And guess what? Our current system will let them get that far.

Do you know who has a serious problem with terrorist attacks? Israel. And does Israel use any of ridiculously intrusive measures employed by the TSA? They do not.

So how does Israel keep terrorists off of their planes?

Simple: they look for terrorists.

Now another group of you will probably start wailing about profiling. And some kinds of profiling is not useful, like racial profiling. Do the Israelis search everyone who looks like an Arab? They do not.

Everyone in Israel looks more or less like an Arab, so that's a waste of time. And even those who are noticeably Muslim are unlikely to be terrorists.

So what does Israel profile, if not race? They profile behavior.

Here's the thing; if you have a bomb on your person, you're going to act differently than someone who doesn't. You're going to be dealing with it at some level; you want to make sure no one can see it. You want to make sure no one is looking at you too closely. You don't want it to go off early. You don't want to accidentally disarm it.

So that's what Israeli security looks for; people acting suspiciously. And they start waaay outside the terminal. They're watching from the time you enter the airport. Terrorists are stopped long before they get into the heart of the terminal.

Michael J. Totten said it best in the NY Post:

Israelis don't use security theater to make passengers feel like they're safe. They use real security measures to ensure that travelers actually are safe. Even when suicide bombers exploded themselves almost daily in Israeli cities, not a single one managed to get through that airport.

But here's the chilling question for you? Why hasn't the TSA caught even a single terrorist to date, given that this is their job?

Didn't know that, did you?

Slate.com came to the following conclusion:

In May, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that SPOT's annual cost is more than $200 million and that as of March 2010 some 3,000 behavior detection officers were deployed at 161 airports but had not apprehended a single terrorist. (Hundreds of illegal aliens and drug smugglers, however, were arrested due to the program between 2004 and 2008.) What's more, the GAO noted that at least 16 individuals later accused of involvement in terrorist plots flew 23 different times through U.S. airports since 2004, but TSA behavior-detection officers didn't sniff out any of them.

What these numbers don't get at is whether the TSA airport screeners prevent terrorist attacks through their very existence—deterring plots by hanging around. This is quite probably the case, but it's not obvious that they prevent any more attacks than the private contractors who handled checkpoints before the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001 went into effect.

But the TSA has been an unqualified success in one regard: they have made millions of US citizens and innocent fliers absolutely miserable. And as noted above, they have made our airports themselves a richer target because of the throngs of innocent people held up by pointless "security measures."

The Fifth of November

2010-11-05T02:52:00.000-07:00

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!

Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James's sake!

If you won't give me one,
I'll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

Blame it on Frank

2010-11-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

George Washington warned us.

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally."

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it."

"One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to ...render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection."

"They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

- from George Washington's Final Address as President, 1796

Why do I bring this up? Because 214 years later, partisan politics is as ugly as Washington warned, and perhaps more twisted and vile than he could have imagined.

Check out this little tidbit, from today's Miami Herald:

Even Republicans who voted for Scott were wary of him.

``I wouldn't have voted for him if I had another Republican to choose from,'' said Frank Paruas, a 38-year-old Kendall Republican. ``I think Alex Sink isn't a bad person. But I just couldn't vote for anyone in the Democratic party right now.''

You are reading this correctly: even though, like most informed people, he believed that Rick Scott probably committed Medicare fraud, Frank Paruas voted for a probable criminal rather than vote for a competent executive with a clean record who belonged to the other party.

We should have listened to George.

And Frank - in the coming years, remember this: it's all your fault. And I will never, ever let you forget it. Every time Scott is caught playing fast and loose, I will remind the world that you , Frank Paruas, voted for Scott. Every time one of his appointees is investigated for fraud or corruption, I'll be gloating "Frank's boy does it again!"

You see, I've learned that simply telling the world at large the truth doesn't make a damned bit of difference. So from now on, it's all aimed at you, Frank.

Welcome to the Hell that you made by voting for a criminal.

Bullies Should Be Punished.

2010-10-26T18:30:00.001-07:00

In a cowardly act of unprovoked violence, a volunteer for the Rand Paul campaign participated in an act of thuggery that would have made Hitler's Brown Shirts proud.

While other Rand Paul supporters held down Lauren Valle, a 23 year old activist who'd been demonstrating along side Paul's appearances, Paul Campaign Coordinator Tim Profitt stomped on her head.

From the AP report:

"I'm sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand's safety," Tim Profitt told The Associated Press.

A judge will decide whether Profitt should face criminal charges.

Since Valle had protested along side Paul's campaign before without threat to his person, we hope that the judge throws the book at Profitt. Not only was it an unwarranted attack, it's a subversion of our political process, which is designed to support - if not actually encourage - voters' rights to express dissenting opinions.

Here you can watch as a crazed mob forces her to the ground, and see Profitt stomp on her:

As you can see, it was no accident. Profitt puts his foot down on her not once, but twice, and shoves her head into the concrete sidewalk.

Rand Paul and his campaign were quick to dis-associate themselves from this scumbag, and with good reason: this an occasion where comparisons to Nazi tactics is all too appropriate. The only thing missing were actual jackboots: the thuggery was all too evident.

Paul campaign manager Jesse Benton said Profitt's actions were unacceptable and would not be tolerated.

"The Paul campaign has disassociated itself with the individual who took part in this incident, and once again urges all activists — on both sides — to remember that their political passions should never manifest themselves in physical altercations of any kind." -AP report

While we approve of Paul's follow-up, we must examine the fact that this is the kind of supporter he attracts: we can be willing to accept Paul's assertion that he does not approve of this kind of action on his behalf, but the fact remains that these were his supporters, and their behavior was abominable.

Tim Profitt didn't just beat up one demonstrator; he attacked the fabric of our democracy, and he should bear the full brunt of the consequences of his wanton act of violence.

Sink, or Scott?

2010-10-25T21:41:00.001-07:00

Who should be the next governor of Florida, Alex Sink, or Rick Scott? It's a no-brainer; Alex Sink is the only viable candidate running.

Let's look at the recent debate:

Sink points out that when Scott was the head honcho of the company he founded, the company he was running committed Medicare Fraud, and the company wound up paying $1.7 billion in fines for ripping off taxpayers

Scott rebutted that the company Sink worked for was fined $6.7 million dollars for misleading investors.

Let's compare those two fines for a moment:

SCOTT - $1,700,000,000
SINK - $6,750,000

Notice anything? If the size of the fine is commensurate with the size of the crime, it's obvious whose crime is bigger.

But consider:
Scott was the founder of Columbia/HCA. He ran the company. He was the top dog. He set policies. Those policies included committing Medicare fraud.

Sink worked for Nations Bank. She was an employee - a highly situated employee, but someone hired on nonetheless. Policy was set by the home office, and didn't go through Sink.

Neither was charged with a crime. But in a civil suit, Scott claims that although he signed all the reports and letters that indicated he knew about his company's crimes, he never actually read what he was signing. His defense was he didn't know what his company, the one he founded, and the one he was running, was doing.

From The Miami Herald:

"I don't know what the document said..."

From the Palm Beach Post:

"It was a legal dispute that was settled," Scott said of the lawsuit against the Solantic health clinic chain. "It has nothing to do with running for governor..."

Actually, it has everything to do with running for governor; the governor is responsible for signing bills into laws, and to sign budgets to make them official. And Scott is on the record stating that he can't be bothered to read everything he puts his signature on.

In The Miami Herald, he claims that he "took responsibility" for his company's actions.

"What happens in companies is that you have to take responsibility for what happens under your watch. Mistakes that were made you take responsibility as CEO and you do everything you can to make sure those things don't happen. What I tell people is that's what I'll do as governor.''

Footage from his actual testimony:

The man who started with nothing and ended up running a multi-billion dollar hospital chain doesn't know what "predecessor" means. Or "chain" (as in his hospital chain). Or "occupancy." Or "market."

He'd have us believe that he didn't know anything about what his company was doing; and he's running on the strength of his administration of that company.

And what about Sink, and the fines her company paid? Investigators didn't find her to be involved in it in any way.

Sink has been very open, meeting with all 16 of Florida's major daily newspapers, and answering questions posed by their editorial boards. Scott refused to sit down with any of the newspapers' editorial boards. And his childish response, when it was pointed out that all 16 newspapers are endorsing Sink?

"Most of them endorsed Barack Obama. You're an Obama liberal. That's why they endorsed you," he said.
- Palm Beach Post.

Interesting theory, but I have a better one; since you wouldn't talk with any of them, they went with the candidate who came across as open and honest: the one who bothered to talk with them.

I have no doubt that Rick Scott would run Florida the way he ran Columbia/HCA; defraud taxpayers as a matter of course, sign anything put before him, and claim not to know why Floridians are paying through the nose.

Ripped from the Headlines

2010-10-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

As Dave Barry would say, "I'm Not Making This Up."

The following is an actual headline, published in the Palm Beach Post on October 24, 2010.

Foul....fowl...dead ducks...that's a groaner.

Meet Mark S. Roth: Hillcrest's Biggest Asshole

2010-10-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

WPLG Channel 10 brings us a chilling story. Imagine you park your car in your assigned spot at your condominium. It's your car, it's paid for, done deal. It's your spot, paid for.

You go out of town. And while you're away, the condo association decides to re-pave the lot. And when you come back, you no longer have a car.

That's what happened to Diana Lilue. She left, knowing her car was safe and secure at home. Only, it wasn't.

Now, the association could have had the car towed to another parking lot in the complex. It could have had it towed off-site, and returned. It could have charged the owner to do this, in either case, and been fully justified to do so.

Instead, Mark S. Roth, president of the condo association and the worst neighbor in human history, told the towing company to "tow it away." Which they did. And then they sold the $15,000 car for $1,448.88 to cover the cost of towing it and storing it.

Technically, it wasn't stolen, so she can't collect insurance on it.

Technically, the towing company was legally engaged to remove it.

Technically, the yawning cesspool jokingly referred to as "condo law" permits the association to remove vehicles that were in the way.

But, as noted above, it could have been moved to another location, or returned later. The towing company even states that that is what most condo associations do. After all, at the end of the day, your fellow condo owner is your neighbor. Just because a thing is legal, it does not follow that it is right. Roth's action, while legal, was humanly irresponsible.

But Mark S. Roth apparently doesn't give a shit about his neighbors, or doing a turn for someone who is ultimately a partner in a cooperative venture. He's the kind of sleazeball who gives condo associations a bad name. He's the guy who's made the term "condo association" derogatory.

And of course, he knows he's an asshole. Given a chance to tell Channel 10 that it was simply "an association matter" or that "it was nothing personal," Roth intead completely ignores reporter Jeff Weinsier, marching up to the condo's concierge desk and demanding that the police be called to remove the reporter and his crew.

"But we're guests of Diana (Lilue)!" Wiensier protested. "You're not guests of the association!" Roth barks.

How does an asshole like Roth live with himself? Easy - he's an asshole. Asshole's just don't give a sh*t about other people.

So watch out if you're near Hollywood's Hillcrest Condominium - it's being run by an asshole.

Flash Back Redux

2010-10-08T16:50:00.001-07:00

Rick over at South Florida Daily Blog posted a Slinky commercial, which reminded me of this "classic" from the Ren & Stimpy Show (back before it sucked).

SoFla TV Stations Too Gutless

2010-09-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

Here's the TV commercial that our local TV stations refuse to air: even WSVN, home of "if it bleeds it leads" turned it down.

Shame on WFOR, WSVN, WFLX, WPBG, WPEC, WPLG, WPTV and WTVJ. You're all worthless parasites, if you can't even accept a few dollars to run a commercial that drives home an essential truth: fast food is bad for us.

Rick Scott; Liar or Idiot: Either way a Bad Choice.

2010-09-19T10:23:00.001-07:00

I don't know which is worse; that Rick Scott ran a company that bilked taxpayers out of millions of dollars, or that his statements defending himself are so incredibly lame.

He's stated numerous times that he wasn't aware that his company was breaking the law; of course, as the CEO, it was his job to be aware of it. Just as it will be his job as governor to know when legislation serves a legitimate need, and makes good use of taxpayer dollars.

And now, the Miami Herald reports that he was aware of his company's indiscretions.

The warnings were contained in the company's annual public reports to stockholders that Scott, now the Republican candidate for Florida governor, signed as Columbia/HCA's president and chief executive officer.

So it turns out that Scott has been lying the entire time. But he offers up yet another incredibly lame defense:

"I don't know what the document said. I'm sure they used boilerplate that said something about they used all their efforts to comply with all the laws.''

And yet, he signed it. He signed a document certifying that he'd read it, and that it was accurate.

Hospital expert James Roberts, now general counsel with Gainesville-based Shands Healthcare, said Columbia/HCA was playing a "roulette wheel,'' betting that the risk of fines was lower than the profitability of the physician arrangements.

Roberts agreed that the language about physician payments was "boilerplate'' but said Scott -- an attorney as well as a hospital CEO -- should have known better.

He's right. "Ignorance of the law" is no excuse, particularly for a lawyer.

And again, what is the chief role of the governor? To sign stuff. To sign bills into laws. To sign budget declarations. To sign pardons excusing convicted felons. To sign execution orders for condemned murderers.

Rick Scott couldn't be bothered to read documents in the past, critical legal documents, declarations of his company's intentions. And now he expects us to elect him to a job where signing stuff is Job One?

Again, here's Rick Scott's statement on the matter:

"What happens in companies is that you have to take responsibility for
what happens under your watch. Mistakes that were made you
take responsibility as CEO and you do everything you can to make sure
those things don't happen. What I tell people is that's what I'll do as
governor.''

But Scott hasn't taken responsibility for any of it; he's done nothing but make excuses time and again: he didn't know, he wasn't told, he doesn't remember.

I have no doubt that he will do for Florida what he did with Columbia/HCA; and that's a problem.

Florida deserves a governor who will at least read what they are signing, and stand behind their actions later. We deserve better than Rick Scott.

US Air Force turns 63

2010-09-18T10:28:00.001-07:00

Amendment 4 - the "Case Study"

2010-09-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

Opponents of Amendment 4 cite St. Pete Beach as a "case study" into "the evils of Amendment 4." They say that the 10,000 person community became mired in endless litigation, just a small taste of what would happen with a statewide mandate.

The St. Petersburgh Times sums up the background for us:

In 2005, St. Pete Beach's five-member City Commission was considering changing its development plan, the comprehensive plan. The commission was debating incentives to lure additional hotels that could increase the density of a development and change the allowed uses.

The talk of change didn't sit well with many residents, who collected petitions to get a series of charter amendments on the city ballot that would require voter approval for height increases and other changes to land use plans.

From there it got contentious. The city sued to stop the vote, saying the proposed charter amendments violated state land use law. A developer also sued, saying the petition process was costing him money.

The city lost its case on appeal, and in November 2006, voters narrowly approved most of the changes to the City Charter. The results: St. Pete Beach became the first town in Florida where residents directly controlled development decisions. Voters also elected two members of Citizens for Responsible Growth to the City Commission, giving them a majority.

That prompted a pro-developer group to start its own petition drive and propose its own amendments to the city's comprehensive plan. The city's elected officials — who had gone from being largely pro-development to anti-development — tried to stop them.

It got even more contentious. There were more lawsuits.

Then, another election, another change of power, and eventually, another referendum. This time, the pro-development side won.

The upshot — four years after city voters decided they wanted control over land use decisions, the entire process has been sidetracked and stymied by lawsuits and politics, petition drives and egos.

Right off the bat, something jumps out at me; voters introduced the referenda, and not the local governments. Amendment 4 stipulates that local governments put up the referenda, not politicial action committees or concerned citizens.

Here are the relevant St. Pete Beach laws:

Section 3.15: Voter approval required for approval of comprehensive land use plan or comprehensive land use plan amendment.
A comprehensive plan (“Plan”) or comprehensive plan amendment (“Plan Amendment”) (both as defined in Florida Statutes Chapter 163) shall not be adopted by the City Commission until such proposed Plan or Plan Amendment is approved by the electors in a referendum as provided by Florida Statute Sec-
tion 166.031 or by the City Charter or as otherwise provided by law. Elector approval shall not be required for any Plan or Plan Amendment that affects five or fewer parcels of land or as otherwise prohibited by Florida Statutes including but not limited to Florida Statutes Section 163.3167.

Section 3.16: Voter approval required for approval of or effectiveness of community redevelopment plan.
A community redevelopment plan as defined in Florida Statutes Section 163 shall not be adopted by the City Commission until such proposed community redevelopment plan is submitted to a vote of the electors by referendum as provided by Florida Statute Section 166.031 or by the City Charter.

Section 3.18: Voter approval required for increase in allowable height of structure.
No amendment to the City’s Land Development Code providing for an increase in the allowable height (as defined by the Land Development Code) of any structure (as defined by the Land Development Code) shall be adopted by the City Commission until such amendment is submitted to a vote of the electors by referendum as provided by Florida Statutes Section 166.031 or by the City Charter.

The article actually identifies the key difference between what St Pete Beach had, and what Amendment 4 is:

Blackner walked PolitiFact Florida through how she says the new process would work.

Say a developer proposes an amendment to the comprehensive plan to build a condo high-rise in the middle of town. Currently, an application would be submitted to the local government that has jurisdiction; the local government would follow its approval process — two public hearings, etc.; and then the state Department of Community Affairs would be asked to sign off on the amendment. None of that would change.

But if the developer gets his approvals, Amendment 4 would add one more step. Voters would either ratify or veto the developer's plans at the next regularly scheduled election.

What's critical to note in St. Pete Beach's case is that citizens themselves proposed amendments to the comprehensive plan — an end-run of the process established by state law.

In other words, what happened in St. Pete Beach was that citizens introduced referenda before there was actually a change of plan created by the local government, a situation that Amendment 4 does not create.

So what really happened in St. Pete Beach? Here's the basic narrative:

Back in 2007, Save Our Little Village (SOLV), a politcal action committee, submitted 6 ordinances by initiative. This led to SOLV filing suit to compel the city to submit these measures to voters.

But SOLV's victory in getting its initiatives on the ballot led to a lawsuit; in Pyle vs. the City of St. Pete Beach, a citizen claimed that four of the six ballot summaries were "false, misleading, and deceptive." But by the time the suit was filed, the election was technically under way (absentee ballots had already been distributed) so the Court left the items on the ballot. The Court pointed out that voters could reject the items having inaccurate summaries on that merit, or for any other reason.

That led to the next lawsuit, on the same issue, when voters approved the four initiatives in question. A fourth lawsuit was filed, stating that the 4 ordinances (one created a countywide land use plan, the other three amended Land Development Regulations) did not comply with the existing comprehensive plan. A fifth lawsuit was filed, claiming that sections 3.15, 3.16 and 3.18 created an additional arm of the government, while a sixth lawsuit challenged the validity of the current comprehensive land use plan.

Now, Citizens for Lower Taxes is correct when they say St. Pete Beach was mired in lawsuits. The city was sued - but none of these suits are the results of anything mandated by Amendment 4.

But don't take my word for it; Ed Ruddencutter, former vice-Mayor St. Pete Beach, wrote in a letter to current vice-Mayor and Amendment 4 opponent Jim Parent:

St. Pete Beach has NEVER had a serious ballot issue in accordance with what you call our, "our mini-amendment 4 experiment here in SPB", also known as City Charter Section 3.15. The SOLV comprehensive plan vote was a citizen initiative petition, in accordance with City Charter Section 7.02, and had nothing to do with our requirement for a vote on Comprehensive Plan amendments. There has never been a Section 3.15 vote on a plan change that affected serious changes on land use, height, density or intensity. The lawsuits were as a result of a Section 7.02 vote only.

Amendment 4 does not state that citizens can change the local land use code by referendum; it only mandates that once a land use change has gone through its process - which dictates that in fact the measures are drafted and reviewed by City officials - the voters have the final say on whether or not those measures can take effect.

The Florida Supreme Court described it in 2005:

...the proposed amendment at issue in this case alters only one step in an already established process. It does not give the public the power to establish policy, collect funds, administer those funds, or adjudicate liability. - SC04-1134

Interestingly, this is the exact document linked by the Say No To 4 website, only they conclude that the court finding indicated that it adds all kinds of complexity to the process.

The "case study" cited by Citizens for Lower Taxes does not, in fact, stand up under close scrutiny.

Amendment 4; Is it really "Vote for Everything?"

2010-09-16T22:42:00.001-07:00

This is the first of a series investigating Amendment 4. Future articles will address statements and claims made by both the supporters and the opposition to the amendment.

Today, we examine the claim the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Amendment 4 dictates that we "vote on everything."

According to Ballotpedia. this is the current wording on the ballot:

Amendment 4: Referenda required for adoption and amendment of local government comprehensive land use plans.

Establishes that before a local government may adopt a new comprehensive land use plan, or amend a comprehensive land use plan, the proposed plan or amendment shall be subject to vote of the electors of the local government by referendum, following preparation by the local planning agency, consideration by the governing body and notice. Provides definitions.

On the face of it, it means that the city wouldn't be able to change an industrial district, like say, the marinas along the Miami river, into a residential area. They'd have to write up a referendum and put it on the ballot, and let the voters decide if the zoning can change.

Real world examples of the kind of radical changes to zoning include the City of Miami's attempt to allow a condominium project to be built on the grounds of Mercy Hospital, or the numerous attempts to change the Urban Development Boundary to allow shopping centers to be built in the Everglades.

Citizens for Lower Taxes claim that the amendment would require citizens to "Vote on Everything," a stark contrast to Florida Hometown Democracy's claim that it would only come up a few times each year.

According to the Citizens for Lower Taxes website:

The Florida Supreme Court plainly indicates that Amendment 4 would trigger votes not simply on all land use items, but, in fact, on every change to a local government's comprehensive plan. Citing statute, the court points out that Amendment 4 would lead to referenda on:

"A capital improvement element; a future land-use plan element; a traffic circulation element, a sanitary sewer, solid waste, drainage, potable water, and natural groundwater aquifer recharge element; a conservation element; a recreation and open space element; a housing element; a coastal management element; an intergovernmental coordination element; a transportation element; an airport master plan; a public buildings and related facilities element; a recommended community design element; a general area redevelopment element; a safety element; a historical and scenic preservation element; an economic element ..."

The problem is, that's not actually what the finding says. Sure, that entire section is a verbatim quote, it's just taken entirely out of context. The list is actually part of existing Florida State Stature 163.3177, "Required and optional elements of a comprehensive plan."

Back in 2005, the Court was asked to rule on whether or not Amendment 4 followed the proscribed template per the dictates of the Florida State Constitution.

The Attorney General petitions this Court for an advisory opinion regarding the validity of a proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution submitted by Florida Hometown Democracy, Inc., and the accompanying Financial Impact Statement submitted by the Financial Impact Estimating Conference.

...the Court limits its inquiry to two issues: (1) whether the amendment violates the single-subject requirement of article XI, section 3, Florida Constitution, and (2) whether the ballot title and summary violate the requirements of section 101.161(1), Florida Statutes (2003).

The Court was addressing a specific complaint about the amendment's ballot wording; specifically, the first line:

Public participation in local government comprehensive land use planning benefits the conservation and protection of Florida’s natural resources and scenic beauty, and the long-term quality of life of Floridians.

The court writes:

"The first sentence of the ballot summary in this case is misleading... because it focuses the voter on “scenic beauty” and “natural resources,” while local comprehensive plans include multiple components, many of which do not involve strictly environmental or aesthetic considerations. Section 163.3177(6)-(7), Florida Statutes (2004), sets out the required and optional elements of comprehensive plans, which include..."

In other words, the Court is addressing the fact that the wording of the first sentence indicates that the amendment is to allow us to vote on "scenic beauty" and "natural resources," when the reality is that they rarely come into play in most comprehensive plans. It is not stating that the amendment requires a referendum on each and every one those elements in ss 163.3177, just that many of those elements would be included in a referendum to change a local comprehensive plan. That being the case, saying it was for "scenic beauty" and "natural resources" is misleading. On that ground, they ruled against the amendment.

But that's the 2005 ruling. In 2006, the court found in favor of the revised wording (see top of page) of the amendment in SC06-161:

We conclude that the ballot title and summary sufficiently explain the chief purpose of the 2005 Proposed Amendment and do not mislead the public.

So the Florida Supreme Court says it's Constitutional.

But that wasn't the complaint; Citizens for Lower Taxes maintains that the amendment means we'll have to "vote for everything:"

Voters will be asked to vote not only on big development projects but also on all minor or technical changes to their local comprehensive plan.

But what does the Supreme Court actually say about what the amendment will lead people to vote on?

The Act does not provide a descriptive definition of a “comprehensive plan,” but instead defines the term as “a plan that meets the requirements of ss. 163.3177 and 163.3178.” § 163.3164(4), Fla. Stat. (2005)

And what does that mean, exactly? The Court clarifies:

The 2005 Proposed Amendment defines a “local planning agency” as “the agency of a local government that is responsible for the preparation of a comprehensive land use plan and plan amendments after public notice and hearings and for making recommendations to the governing body of the local government regarding the adoption or amendment of a comprehensive land use plan.”

In other words, the Court is saying that the Amendment means that voters will be asked if the land can be used for a purpose, but that the details that enable that purpose remain in the hands of the local government.

In 2005, the outdated ruling favored by the amendment's opponent, puts it even more clearly:

...the proposed amendment at issue in this case alters only one step in an already established process. It does not give the public the power to establish policy, collect funds, administer those funds, or adjudicate liability. In fact, the statutory scheme already in place allows local governments to utilize a referendum process in regard to a plan amendment if the amendment affects more than five parcels of land.

Contrary to what Citizens for Lower Taxes claims on its website, the Florida Supreme Court is not saying that Amendment 4 means we'll have to "Vote on Everything" at all. Quite the opposite, it finds that existing government agencies will still decide what goes into the comprehensive land use plan. It just means that the voters, and not local governments, decide if the comprehensive change goes into effect.

Twenty Five Years in Cars

2010-09-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

Looking back, I realized just how many cars I've owned since moving to Florida. I paid cash for most of them, clunkers that I drove into the ground. Friends will tell you that I never have luck with my cars, but I think that considering what I paid for them, I did very well.

But I have to admit, no one has ever dated me for my taste in automobiles.

1964 Rambler Classic (1982-1986) "Dame Elizabeth"
This is the car that brought me to Florida. It ran great, but had vacuum powered wipers. That is, instead of electric motors, it ran off the same vacuum system that operated various valves in the engine. It was a real throwback, and on the surface it seemed like a cool idea because you could adjust the rate of the wipers by pulling a knob. However, stepping on the gas or the brakes also changed the rate - drastically.

One day, the pulley for the water pump shattered, and proved irreplaceable in pre-Internet America. The garage welded the pieces back together, but it was out of true, and every six months or so the inescapable wobble would destroy the water pump. Combined with the inability to see while driving in Florida's torrential summer squalls because of the wipers, I replaced it.

1978 Mercury Bobcat Station Wagon (1986-1987)
Bought from my boss at Rent-A-Center for about $700. Coldest A/C of any car I ever owned; there was a leak in the gas tank, so I couldn't fill it more than half-way. One spark plug socket had bad threads, so periodically the plug would pop out, forcing me to pull over, wait until the engine cooled before re-inserting it. The V6 engine eventually devoured the rings (as they always did on Fords, I later learned), leaving me the option of replacing the engine or the car. I chose the car.

1976 Chrysler Cordoba (1987-1989) "The Enterprise"
Biggest car I ever owned; I used to joke that the hood was so long it was like driving an aircraft carrier. The body was totally cherry, but the leather seats were rotted out; "fine Corinthian" my ass. But I wanted a car in excellent mechanical condition, and by god I got it. It ran great, but the 360 cubic inch V-8 sucked down fuel like it was going out of style. You could literally watch the needle move while cruising down the highway. I could not afford to drive this thing out of the county, let along out of state.

This is the car that taught me that a lot of mechanics are stupid. There are only two occasions where it needed any work, and both times I would have been better working on it myself. But I had no tools, and no place to work on it. The first time, the thing choked itself off. I had AAA tow it to Lake Worth's Auto Hospital, figuring they could work on it overnight (as advertised), and I could pick it up and drive to work the next morning without missing a beat. But when I called the following morning they hadn't had a chance to look at it. They told me it needed a tune-up, and it would be ready in "a few hours." Finally, I picked it up in the afternoon, but driving home it was still running rough. Not wanting to lose another day to the Auto Doctor, I stopped at an auto parts store, read the Chilton's manual, and sure enough when I opened the distributor cap it was full of rust. Somehow, the $50 tune-up didn't include checking that.

A year or so later, I was driving along I-95 when the engine just cut out. It was exactly like someone turned a switch. I had it towed to a garage - NOT the Auto Hospital - and they replaced a cheap component and pronounced it fixed. I was happy enough until it cut off again. Had it towed back. Now I was told that the carburetor needed to be rebuilt, and that my problem was caused by flooding. Well, I didn't believe him, but made him guarantee that the rebuilt carburetor would absolutely solve the problem. "Absolutely!" When I came to pick it up the next day, it wouldn't start. Turns out, there was a component in the ignition that went bad, causing it to stop conducting electricity once it got warmed up. His boss read him the riot act after learning I had said that "it just cut off" and that I had suggested "it's an ignition problem" when I filled out the paperwork. I only paid for the carburetor, the garage paid for the new ignition system.

It ran great after that. Still sucked down gas, though.

1980 Datsun 200SX (1989-1992)
I bought this with the proceeds of my first stint on a cruise ship, for about $1,200. This was a great little car, a 5-speed with a sun roof, a perfect replacement for the gas-guzzling Cordoba. It was stolen in 1991, after I left my key-ring in the door late one night; I had and armful of groceries and kicked the door shut without thinking. Thankfully, it was recovered a few months later.

It was recovered due to an electrical problem I'd been tracing down when it was stolen. I had been stranded several times with a dead battery, and I'd just put in a new battery when it was stolen. But I wasn't sure if the battery was the original cause or if the alternator was going bad. It was stolen before I could figure it out.

The police "found" the car during a traffic stop. They pulled it over because it was running without headlights after dark; the driver had discovered the battery wouldn't charge, so he tried to drive it only during the day, and only for short distances. He maintained that he didn't steal it; a friend "lent" it to him in exchange for some tools, and the guy wasn't suspicious because his friend had the keys. My keys. The car was on the road every day from the time it was stolen, and it was dumb luck that they found it.

I put in a used alternator that I got for $25, installed it using tools the guy had forfeit when the cops caught him in the car, and I drove it for another year, until someone ran a stop sign and broadsided me one night. Luckily, they hit just forward of the driver side door, so I escaped injury. But the car was bent into a new and exciting shape.

1980 Mazda B2000 (1991)
I bought this a few weeks after the 200SX was stolen I had been hauling a lot of equipment around, and thought that maybe this $500 pickup with the tool locker was the answer. It wasn't. The first time I locked tools in the locker, they were stolen. Piggy banks were more secure than that thing. So when I gigged around with my guitar, there was no place to lock my gear while I went out for a post-show drink. I stowed the guitar and amp in the locker one time, but I sweated it the whole time, knowing how easy it was to pry the lock off.

About the time I discovered that head gasket was blown, they found my beloved 200SX. So I scrapped the B2000, after trying to sell it for several weeks, in which time it, too, was stolen. Unlike the Datsun, it was stripped, and its carcass abandoned a few blocks away. The thieves netted four mis-matched tires, an aging K-Mart battery, and a stereo that ate cassette tapes. I considered myself lucky to get $125 for it as scrap.

1986 Mazda GLC (1992-1993)
The hatch didn't open. But it ran well enough, until the front right break caliper locked just enough to completely fry my right front wheel assembly. I was driving along I-95 at the time, smelled something burning, and looked in the rearview mirror and realized I was leaving a trail of smoke. It was pouring out of the wheel-well. When I got out and peered through the smoke, I could see that the brake disc was glowing white-hot, and metal was...dripping...out of the mechanism.

I just couldn't bring myself to fork over $1500 to repair an $800 car. Fortunately, Mom was moving to England for a year or two, and gave me her Mazda 626.

1984 Mazda 626 (1993-1997)
Free car that ended up costing me a bundle. My mother never missed an oil change or tune-up; the car came with a folder with the complete service history. The head gasket blew about 6 months after I got it. But it was an immaculate car, so I paid to fix it; so my "free" car cost me a grand, but it was a great car, right? Then flooding in Jupiter caused the starter to fill with water; $275 to have it rebuilt. Running off a rain-slick road, I miraculously avoided damaging the car - I thought. 6 months later, discovered that the transmission mounts had broken when I went off the road, and the transmission had been quietly chewing up the gears due to the misalignment. Rebuilt transmission: $2,000. But hey, mom took care of this car, so I can probably get another ten years out of it, right? The car started running hot: $125 bucks to replace the cooling fan motor - and that's getting a mechanic friend of my dad's to sell it to me at cost; the dealership wanted $275 for it. Then the radiator started leaking while I was on a trip; to make it home, I dumped "stop leak" in it. $500 to replace the radiator, but now the car was still overheating. Not only did the head gasket blow again, this time all four cylinders were cracked. I finally accepted that this fucking car was going to nickel and dime me to death, and scrapped it.

1989 Ford Escort (1998)
After scrapping the 626, I went out on cruise ships for a couple of years. I picked up the Escort for about $800 bucks when I settled in Fort Lauderdale to free-lance. It wasn't a great car, but a good deal for someone who didn't have a steady job right at the moment. After a couple of months of free-lancing, I ended up at Actors' Playhouse full time. Then I discovered that the soft brakes were much more intense than a master cylinder, and rather than replace the entire brake system, I sold it to the mechanic for a couple of hundred bucks, and bought another car.

1988 Honda Prelude (1998-2002)
Since I was working, I decided to get a car I really liked; but still unwilling to go into hock for a brand new car, this was the compromise. It cost me $2,500, and was worth every cent. It was another 5 speed, with an even better sun-roof than the 200SX. By 2002, it was showing its mileage and age, and when my dad gave me his old car, I was going to scrap it. But it was still running, and Mike Vines needed a car, so I gave it to him.

1997 Honda Accord SE (2002-2007)
My dad wanted an SUV, and decided the trade-in value was pitiful, so he gave me his Accord SE. What a sweet ride! Fully loaded, with aluminum wheels, sun roof, clean as a whistle, the only thing I didn't like was going back to an automatic transmission. This car was taking care of me, and I was taking care of it, right up until it was stolen the day before Thanksgiving.

2001 Chevy Cavalier (2008- )
I needed a car, a friend needed to sell a car to finance a move to LA. Good karma. Merely adequate car.

I call it "The Last Chevy I Will Ever Own."

Why? All the little things; the dashboard that became brittle and cracked into a dozen pieces, the cupholders that are too small for many cups (and the ones that do fit block the A/C and vent controls), the compartment light that comes on no matter what and stays up for minutes after you leave the car, the mirror brackets made completely of plastic that get snapped off in a car wash. Very little thought went into the details of this car, and every time I drive it, I find myself being irritated by stupid petty design and construction choices that would have cost pennies to do right.

But it runs really well, for all that.

Looking Back a Quarter Century

2010-09-15T08:10:00.001-07:00

In 1985, I arrived late one September evening in a 1964 AMC Rambler loaded with everything I thought I would need for the next few years. It wasn't quite everything I owned; but at 21, I didn't own a lot to begin with. So I left boxes of books at my dad's house, and my winter clothes at my mother's. I had clothes, a few favorite books, my guitar, and a component stereo system.

I had to get off I-95 around Stuart to take the Turnpike down to Palm Beach Gardens because the interstate wasn't finished. And I hadn't realized just how big the state was; when I finally got to Boynton Beach, it must have been after 10 pm.

For the first couple of months, I stayed with my grandparents. It was my grandmother's invitation that brought me down; I had been studying acting in New York, and auditioning without much any success. I had decided that it wasn't a matter of talent; I had plenty of that. But so did every other actor in The Big Apple. It was a numbers game, really; the jobs went to the actors with the best resumés and the best connections; often with emphasis on connection.

I had only done a couple of professional gigs around South Jersey, at all two of the professional companies that existed there at the time. That didn't include working at the Brigantine Haunted Castle. The rest of my resumé was community and college theatre, and that didn't impress anyone. I had no connections because I hadn't done enough work to make them.

So my grandmother is talking about the vibrant local theatre scene, and particularly this acting workshop she found, led by Bob Carter, who had studied with Lee Strasberg. I was, at that time, studying at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York.

It occurred to me that there had to be less professionally trained actors in South Florida than New York; and here was a place I could continue studying the same techniques.

I got a job, I found an efficiency, and found my way into the local theatre scene. In 1989, I realized that there was a higher demand for production, and moved to the wings. I still performed occasionally onstage until 1994, when I decided it was time to fish or cut bait. I've been working full-time in theatre ever since.

Florida has changed, and not just the theatre scene.

Urban Renewal
In 1985, people were afraid to go into downtown West Palm Beach. I remember trying to get a friend come and see me in something at Actors' Rep, two blocks south of Clematis Street. "Isn't that, you know, down town?" she said. "Isn't that dangerous? People get shot down there!" But we knew that Clematis Street was going to change. We desperately tried to keep that theatre going, despite low attendance and evaporating support. Florida Rep, which operated out of the space where the Cuillo Center is, wasn't in any better shape. both companies closed in the early 90s.

There's theatre downtown again, but it's all "new growth." Not that there's anything wrong with that. And the two companies - Palm Beach DramaWorks and Florida Stage - are everything Actors' Rep and Florida Rep were not; well managed, well funded, with the resources to ensure that every production is at least as well-produced as the one before it.

While the Kravis Center certainly drew in people, it can't get all the credit; the Downtown/Uptown project, an urban redevelopment program, cleared the field for the Center, literally. It bought up the entire ghetto and bulldozed it, intending replace it with shops and restaurants and living space. Which eventually happened, although the original team went broke after leveling most of downtown. Kravis Center didn't have to revitalize a slum, it just had to lure developers into an area prepped for re-development. For a while, the Kravis Center dominated the landscape. Eventually, the re-development did happen; it's called CityPlace.

The Broward Center for the Performing Arts revitalized downtown Fort Lauderdale beyond any question. It stands over Esplanade Park, where the people gather once a month for a Jazz Festival along the river, and wedding occur at least weekly along the Riverwalk. Himmarshee Village is home to thriving restaurants and clubs.

Actors' Playhouse did much the same thing for Coral Gables. Once home to dozens of wedding shops that closed up at 5pm, the theatre started drawing crowds in the evening. Restaurants now make up most of the businesses, along with galleries and high-end shops. When I started working there in 1999, the meters and garages stopped collecting at 8pm. Now the meters are twenty four hours, and the garages are attended until at least 1am. Harder on the consumer? Perhaps, but it's an example of the revenue streams that open up when the arts come to town.

The Beach
Spring Break was still going strong in Fort Lauderdale when I moved here. It was painful to watch the city fathers kill their biggest tourist draw of the year, erecting fences and barriers to limit views of the beach - and to keep drunken college students from stumbling into traffic on A1A. I suppose it was necessary, but it's allowed South Beach to overshadow the place "Where The Boys Are."

25 years ago, beach access came to mind before sand, when talking about south Florida beaches. It's still an issue in spots, but now global warming and rising oceans tend to dominate the conversation.

Getting Around
I-95 was completed a few years after I arrived; a few years later, when they started to resurface the older parts of the interstate, Tri-Rail was started, in an attempt to lower dependence on driving down the highway. No one was sure if the system would have a life beyond the project, so no track was laid, inexpensive stations were built, and the even the trains were those used by another system that promised to buy our trains when and if Tri-Rail was disbanded. While it hasn't really reduced traffic to a noticeable degree, no one is talking about closing it down, either.

Traffic is heavier. And where it used to really tail off in the summer, it's now merely dipping from "awful" to "really bad." And the vehicles have gotten BIGGER, due largely to the fact that SUVs were exempted from emission control and fuel economy standards, so the automakers pushed them over more logical choices. Of course, this as more than doubled fuel prices over the last twenty years. If we'd stayed the course of smaller and more efficient cars, it's very likely we'd be paying less than two bucks a gallon.

Stormy Weather
The day before Hurricane Andrew hit, I was walking into the Florida Professional Theatres Association yearly meeting. It was a networking/mass audition event, and it was held in West Palm Beach that year. As I walked in the door, I found my boss, Louis Tyrell, standing with David Arisco of the Actors' Playhouse in Kendall, and a future boss. They'd just heard the hurricane was going to hit us.

I went and secured the theatre as best I could; the following Monday I wrote Florida Stage's first hurricane plan, so we wouldn't have to figure it out in an emergency again.

I took my supplies - a milk crate full of canned goods and a gallon of water - over to my friends' house. We listened to the radio and played poker until the wee hours. The next morning, the first stories creeped out. And I looked at my milk-crate and realized how massively unprepared I had really been. This was underscored in the following weeks, as I drove truckloads of relief supplies from the staging area at Palm Beach Fairgrounds down to the relief station at Metrozoo. You couldn't see the house that were left standing, because the debris was piled so high. And if it hadn't been for the convoy, I'd never have found where I was going.

I was working for Dave Arisco when Katrina and Wilma hit; the theatre was largely undamaged, but in the aftermath of Wilma we lost a weekend of GREASE because the entire region was without power. And even when we got power back at the theatre, most of the traffic lights were still out. Still, we were lucky that time. During Andrew, the old Actors' Playhouse lost their roof, and a lot of their subscribers lost their homes.

But on a personal level, I was prepared; I had packed my fridge and freezer full of ice, I had an assortment of food, and a proper camp stove. We had a gas grill out back of my apartment building, and I set up a tarp for shade. The building was fine, but for the lack of power.

Sunshine State of Mind
I've now lived and worked all across South Florida, from Jupiter to Coral Gables. When I moved here in 1985, I thought I'd build my professional resume for a few years, and then move back to New York City. But when I visit there, I am overwhelmed at how gray it seems to me. Even the drabbest corner of South Florida is ablaze with color and life; and nature hasn't been buried under yards of concrete, despite the best efforts of our various county commissioners and state representatives to allow that to happen.

I've met fascinating people, from all walks of life; artists and writers and lawyers and politicians and yes, famous actors. I know this place, and how it was shaped, and why it's like it is.

I've lived here over half my life; I am a South Floridian.

Boobs Banning Boobies

2010-09-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

The Keep A Breast foundation was simply trying to create a catch phrase that would keep awareness of breast cancer in the public eye.

They never imagined that grown-ups would take offense.

But the boobs who run the high school in Rocklin, California have taken disciplinary action against a student wearing one of the bracelets.

I guess dying of cancer doesn't offend them as much as the word boobies.

You have to wonder, did any of them, at any point, do what they're supposed to be teaching our children to do, and open a dictionary?

Merriam Webster:

boo·by - noun \ˈbü-bē\
plural boobies
Definition of BOOBY
1 an awkward foolish person : dope
2 any of several tropical seabirds (genus Sula) of the gannet family

This is what got their knickers in a twist? We haven't seen a display of ignorance since some dunces in Wilmington, North Carolina, decided that "niggardly" was a racial slur. (it's not.)

Kelly Avants, a boob for the Clovis Unified School District, is quoted:

"...jewelry with sexually suggestive language like 'boobies' is not allowed on our campuses. Please understand that the issue is related specifically to the choice of language on these bracelets and the fact that it specifically violates our existing dress code policy.”

So, Kelly, you find boobies to be sexually suggestive? Really?

I got to be honest with you, I think that anyone who finds "boobies" to be "sexually suggestive" is need of serious therapy. I mean, I see a booby and think "stinky fish breath."

It's sad that ignorant boobs are allowed to run our school system, where they can rain down punishment on children doing nothing more than showing awareness of the critical health issues that they and their families and friends face.

In fact, I find it offensive that ignorant boobs are permitted to work in education, where they can inflict and instill their painful ignorance on our children. Boobs like these have denigrated our entire scholastic endeavor. I think anyone offended by the word "boobies" should be terminated from their jobs in education.

Jim Aisenbrey, the Principal of Baltic High School in South Dakota, is quoted by NBC4i:

"If you say, 'No, we're not going to allow them,' it's going to appear insensitive to the cause, which is not the case, but at the same time you also have people in the community that would be upset if that was allowed,"

Psst. Jimbo, maybe, you should, you know, educate them. You could, you know, act like the educator you claim to be.

Are you a man, or are you a booby?

And what will you do when the Audubon Society starts celebrating National Titmouse month?

The MetroRail Photo Protest.

2010-08-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

South Florida photographers held a "shoot-in" photo protest at the Douglas Road MetroRail station on Sunday. The protest was arranged by photographer Carlos Miller, who has been actively lobbying for photographer's rights.

The protest was in response to several incidents of 50 State Security employees hassling photographers, and in one case they went so far as to seize a camera. They gave it back, eventually, but the mood was ugly. In each case, photographers had ascertained that the kind of shooting they were doing was allowed without a permit. In each case, the security guards demonstrated a dismal awareness of the law. Sunday's event was designed to change that.

The day went just as it ought. We bought our tickets, we passed through the gates, we waited for our train, we rode the train, and we took loads of photos.

Carlos Miller asking if the guards have any problems with him entering the station with his camera. They did not.

Carlos Miller as unfailingly polite and respectful, a professional in every way. So were the guards. I'm pretty sure they were briefed ahead of time: after all, the protest wasn't a huge secret. So the guards worked very hard at not harassing us. And there were extra guards on, so when you've got six guards not harassing you, that's a lot of harassment not happening.

Two of the guards at the Douglas Road MetroRail Station.

This is the only time I caught a guard expressing anything remotely negative. And it's a crop from a zoom. His partner seems OK with it.

Participants ride the escalator to the Platform

Photography is a right protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Just as we are allowed to voice disagreement with our elected and appointed officials, we are allowed to record their actions, and the results of those actions. The law permits photography in public places, and permits you to take pictures of anything you can see from those public places.

A man videotaping his MetroRail trip from the train.

Sunday, all the guards we met were aware of our rights. Will they remember them tomorrow? Next week?

Only time will tell.

But for now, I have a batch of photos to sift through... feel free to peruse the set on my Flickr photostream.

50 State Security Guard Steals Camera

2010-07-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

MetroRail needs to fire their security company, 50 State Security, before they get the county sued. Over on CarlosMiller.com, Carlos miller reports that guards provided by 50 State Security seized his camera, and then assaulted him and tried to take his iPhone when he started filming with that.

The bad news for MetroRail and 50 State Security; it's all on tape.

Two things to be aware of:

First, the public is allowed to take video and photographs on MetroRail property. Miller was not doing anything wrong, according to the law, or to MetroRail itself. 50 State Security has been informed of this repeatedly.
Second, MetroRail security guards do not have the right to seize property, period. Not for any reason. No one is allowed to do that; not ushers in a movie theatre, not waiters in a restaurant, not even the police. Seizure of personal property, under any circumstance, requires a court order.

Make no mistake; Miller's property was stolen. It was ripped out of his hands. The 50 State Security guards committed a felony. And even if Miller decides not press charges, MetroRail better fire these bozos pronto. Our government has no business employing criminals.

No one is safe while 50 State Security is on the job.

A Rude Silence Follows

2010-07-29T20:12:00.001-07:00

It's official. John Callahan, possible the world's most offensive cartoonist, has died.

If you'd seen Callahan's cartoons, they probably offended the hell out of you. He didn't "test boundaries," he didn't merely cross the line, he left the line waaay back there somewhere. He expressed ideas we didn't even have the guts to imagine. He made Gary Larson look mainstream and normal.

Typical is the drawing the Grim Reaper, walking down the street with two Grim Reaper Children. Across the street is someone with a box full of puppies they're trying to give away. One of the Reaper children is tugging on the parent Reaper's arm, saying "Mommy! Mommy! Can we kill the puppies?"

A quadraplegic, he titled his autobiography "He Won't Get Far On Foot." The
cover featured a sheriff's posse surrounding an empty wheel chair in the
middle of the desert. A later work was titled "Will the real John Callahan Please Stand Up." He found humor in exposing our own ridiculous tendency to go to any extreme to avoid offense, as well as the folly of trying to ignore your own limitations instead of learning to cope with them

I can imagine what he'd draw to commemorate his death: a mob of straight-laced, conservative people dancing on his grave. It would be captioned "Callahan throws a party."

The world just became a duller place.

Tut, tut, it looks like.....

2010-07-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

Seriously?

2010-06-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

There's a school of thought about red light cameras that goes like this: "If people suddenly start making panic stops because there are red light cameras, it will create a dangerous situation."

More dangerous than this?

I don't think so.

Blaming BP isn't enough.

2010-06-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

CNN reports that BP boycotts are hurting locally owned gas stations around the country.

"I don't ever intend to use BP again," said Atlanta resident Monica Manuel who held up a cardboard sign, "Boycott big polluters."
- CNN, June 12, 2010

Well, Monica, I hate to tell you this, but you're boycotting the wrong party. The guy who owns your local BP station has as much responsibility for the oil spill as you do. In fact, he actually is LESS responsible for it than you are. (More about that later).

In 2008, the London, England-based oil giant announced it was exiting the retail gasoline business because margins were lousy. Today, the 11,500 gas stations that carry its logo in the United States are owned by independent franchisees...
-
CNN, June 12, 2010

You're not boycotting BP, you dimwit, you're boycotting your neighbor.

The story reports that the the troubled international conglomerate has offered to "help" the thousands of independent station owners. The best way to accomplish that may be to let stations remove the BP logo, but I suppose they are going to make up for lost income. A few weeks ago, I pointed out that BP probably can't really pay to clean up the entirety of the mess it's made, and this is one more example of why they will ultimately fail: the scope is far bigger than most of us can wrap our brains around. It's not just a matter of capping the well, it's not just a matter of scraping a few beaches, it's not just a matter of rinsing off a few birds. It's entire industries wiped out, businesses erased, fisheries destroyed, and all the hundreds of thousands of people who relied on those industries, businesses and fisheries.

And we still haven't gotten to the full scope of the thing; the oil is still gushing into the sea as of this posting, diminished only slightly.

Here's why the boycott is stupid; BP doesn't own most of the stations displaying their logo. These stations are franchises, bought, owned and managed by people like you and me. So, the first thing about the boycott is that it's hurting the innocent. The second thing is that while BP is responsible for the Deep Horizon accident, they are not responsible for the system that allowed it to happen. And by that, I do not mean the Federal government and the MMS, although they certainly did screw the pooch on this one.

No, the real people to blame for the oil spill is all of us. As a nation, each and everyone of us has contributed to the ravenous consumption of oil. Each of us, each American driver, consumes more gasoline than any ten citizens of other countries combined. Our personal obesity from fast food is left far behind our greed for gasoline.

If you drive to work alone, or instead of riding the bus or train, you're responsible for the oil spill.

If you drive to the corner for milk instead of walking or riding a bike, you're responsible for the spill.

If you drive a big SUV because you "like sitting high so you can see over the other cars," you are responsible for the spill.

If you take a drive "just to get away," you are responsible for the spill.

So don't feel self-righteous as you pass a BP station to fill your gas-guzzler at the next station down the road; you're still contributing to the problem.

Another protester, Ruth Resnicow, said it was devastating to see the wildlife on the Gulf Coast being affected by the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. "The oiled pelican has been a logo of the disaster. People need to see change."
-
CNN, June 12, 2010

Ruth is correct: we do need to see change. But the change we need goes far beyond regulation of ocean drilling: we need to change the way we live. Because ultimately, as long as we consume oil like a plague of locusts, we will continue to find excuses to cut corners to feed our gluttony.

DCF: still "Destroying Children's Futures"

2010-05-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Daily Business News reports that Florida's most incompetent bureaucracy is still screwing up. And Florida's misguided decision to privatize child welfare is paying the expected dividends of ruin and despair.

Back in 2005, DCF entrusted a 10-year old boy to a company called Hillsborough Kids, who accepted responsibility for placing the child in a foster home. But they didn't to that; they passed the child onto another company to do it.

That company placed the boy in a foster home run by a single mother, which would have been acceptable if a 13 year old boy also in the home hadn't raped him one night.

A lawsuit has been filed on behalf of the boy, of course. And of course, everyone who was supposed to be watching out for this boy is now behaving reprehensibly. The subcontractor says Hillsborough Kids is responsible. Hillsborough Kids claims that DCF is responsible. Their argument? DCF is supposed to vet all the contracting agencies.

“It’s sad and a complete waste of resources when we see each blame the other or duck behind technical defenses while the innocent foster child is suffering and waiting to get help,” said Howard Talenfeld, a child advocate with Colodny Fass Talenfeld Kalinsky & Abate in Fort Lauderdale.

If the DCF is solely to blame, the child won't get more than $200,000. That's the maximum amount allowed by law. And let's face it, the DCF should hand that over. This ten year old boy is pretty badly scarred in so many ways. But the fact is that the DCF is not solely responsible; they found an ostensibly professional service that claimed it could care for the child for a fee.

Meanwhile, private contractors argue they should have immunity from large judgments just like the state despite a statute and contracts that say otherwise. Additionally, providers say they couldn’t afford rising insurance premiums and legal fees that would come with any increase in lawsuits.

Hillsborough Kids accepted responsibility for the boy's welfare. Once they signed for him, they became the arbiters of his fate, and while their argument that the DCF should have known better than to trust Hillsborough Kids is interesting, it still doesn't let them off the hook for their choices in the matter. They signed on for responsibility, and then chose to pass the kid along one more time. Hilllsbrough Kids chose, not the DCF. It was their choice who to pass him along to.

They argue that they should have immunity "just like the state" because they are "acting on behalf of the state." But they are wrong. They are not "acting on our behalf." They are paid to "provide a service," and when they fail to do so, and worse, when their actions cause the damage their service was supposed to prevent, they must be held accountable.

Hillsborough Kids should not only pay for their negligence in this case, they should be punished for having the gall to try to dodge that responsibility.

But providers say that’s unfair and Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon said he supports giving the contractors sovereign immunity, which could limit judgments, fearing a multimillion-dollar verdict could break them. He suggested increasing the cap on the insurance contractors are required to carry and barring judgments above that amount

Hey, George, I have a better idea: keep the kids safe in the first place, so no one will need to file lawsuits. Otherwise, sue the crap out of these agencies, yes, break them, ruin them, put them begging on the streets. We should not tolerate this criminal lack of oversight, and that's what you're doing when you build a business plan to allow for it.

Because we can't assign a dollar amount to a child's innocence, to their welfare.

Midwest Realty Management: A Stain on our Republic

2010-05-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

Dawn Price wanted to honor her husband's service for his country, and show support for all the other men and women serving our country. So she did what patriotic men and women have been doing in this country for over 200 years; she hung a US flag in her window. It's not a behemoth, like the Star Spangled Banner, it's just a simple flag, hung inside the glass.

But according to WLUK-TV, the Oshkosh NorthWestern, and numerous other sources, her landlord took issue with this.

Midwest Realty Management, a company with its head so far up its ass that it would make Rand Paul proud, decided that First Amendment rights don't apply, and have served an eviction notice to this patriotic family.

WTMJ spoke with a company representative:

"We just don't allow people to stick things in their window," Midwest Realty Management president Rodney Oschleger explained. "Instead of drapes or blinds, for example, we don't allow them to put sheets. We don't allow them to put flags or banners or religious or political things."

Oschleger insisted that the company’s objections are aesthetic and have
nothing to do with the message a particular flag or banner might depict.

Oh, I see, speech is free only if it is aesthetically pleasing. So much for all those rulings from the Supreme Court.

WLUK-TV spoke with property manager Randy Rich:

"This policy was developed to insure that we are fair to everyone as we have many residents from diverse backgrounds."

Great. MRM isn't singling out Mrs. Price's civil rights, they're trampling on the rights of every ~~victim~~ tenant they have.

Midwest Realty Management needs to be informed that someone has already found a way to "fair to everyone:" it's called the First Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights attached to the Constitution of the United States of America. It states that everyone has the right to make statements. Statements like hanging a flag or political or religious material in the windows of our homes for all to see. Our founding fathers thought that this right was so important that they made it the very first right they defined.

Sadly, the fact is that the US Constitution doesn't apply to individuals. That's right, the Bill of Rights doesn't impose any behavior on you or I; it is a set of rules for the government. This omission leaves the jackbooted thugs at Midwest Realty Management free to inflict their own petty tyranny on their tenants. "STFU or move the hell out." Yes, Randy Rich and his cohorts at MRM are completely within their rights. But that doesn't make it - or them - right. It's an affront to every American who has ever lived. It's a slap in the face to every single one of us.

WTMJ quotes Oschleger again:

“If you drove by the property you would see four huge American flags flying throughout the complex! We‘ve got them at the rental office, at the clubhouse, at the Brookside North area, and then another one just down the street! Four American flags and we‘re unpatriotic?”

The problem, Rodney, is that you're reserving that right for yourself, and denying it to others. That's not fair. And that certainly is not patriotic. That's why Freedom to Display the American Flag Act was passed, specifically banning real estate management organizations from doing precisely what you're doing. It's too bad Congress didn't think to choose the word "residents" instead of "homeowners." It's an oversight that needs to be addressed.

Since the law can't deal with the petty tyrants that call themselves Midwest Realty Management, it's up to us. If you're local, don't do business with them. If you do business with them, call them and let them know you're done with them.

If, like me, you're a thousand miles away, write or call to let them know what you think of a policy that runs counter to the high ideals we expect of all Americans.
Midwest Realty Management
2990 Universal Street Suite A
Oshkosh, WI 54904
fax (920) 426-2065
email: heidi@midwestrents.com

Fire the "Foxes"

2010-05-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

According to the Miami Herald, the Minerals Management Service has not only been lax on safety, but lax on collecting fees for all the offshore drilling.

Even as drilling exploration increased throughout the Gulf from 2000 to 2006, the MMS reduced the number of workers in its royalty compliance office by 75 positions. Spending on royalty enforcement in the Gulf fell nearly $3 million from 2003 to 2006. And, records show, the agency is increasingly relying on information provided by the companies in collecting royalties.
- The Miami Herald

That's right, the MMS relied on the companies it was supposed to be collecting the fees from to let them know how much was owed. Remind you of anything?

And while the MMS was issuing more drilling permits, resulting in more productive wells, the revenue from all those permits went down, and the MMS didn't even blink.

This case illustrates, once again, why we can't adapt the honor system so heartily endorsed by conservatives. As much as the GOP, the Libertarians, and the TEA Party would like to believe otherwise, big business can't be relied on to deal honestly with anyone where profits are concerned. Their continuing argument against reasonable regulations undermines their credibility when stories such as this keep coming to light.

It further undermines the credibility of right wing politicians like Rand Paul, who would like you to believe that incidents like the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are merely "unforseeable accidents," when the fact is that BP knowingly chose a less reliable but much cheaper option so it could complete the well sooner and save a few million dollars. Now BP wants us to know that they're "doing everything we can" to clean up the spill. Sorry, Doug, you weren't doing everything you could when it really mattered - before the rig exploded and starting pumping 70,000 barrels of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

And they saved their money at the expense of safety while knowingly underpaying the government - US - the fair share of profits made from its other wells in the Gulf. They were playing both ends against the middle in the name of undeservedly high profits at our expense. And the MMS let them do it.

While the Obama administration has called for re-structuring that will likely solve some of the issues, they stop short of actually solving the problem by allowing the corrupt administrators from the MMS to continue working in the new bureaucracy. Breaking up the MMS solves nothing if criminals are simply re-distributed.

The American people deserve better - a clean sweep and a truly fresh start.

Rand Paul's Platform; Irresponsibility

2010-05-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the growing disaster of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the oil conglomerate has been harshly criticized from all corners for its lack of preparedness, sloppy procedures, and inadequate response.

But not from Rand Paul. According to the Associated Press, the conservative politician and tea-party darling states that everything he has heard from BP indicates to him that they intend to pay for the oil spill.

That's little consolation to the locals:

"Everything in that marsh is dead as we speak," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said after touring the clogged marshes. "Had you fallen off that boat yesterday and come up breathing that stuff, you probably wouldn't be here, either."

Is BP really going to pay for the dead marshes? The destroyed fishing? The loss of tourism? The loss of the entire region's economy? Are they - CAN they - really pay for the total impact of the oil spill? Remember, it's not just Louisiana. It's not even just the coast line of the Gulf; that oil has entered the Gulf Stream. They may wind up scrubbing beaches in Ireland.

Not only is Paul satisfied with BP's response, he thinks they should not be held responsible for the 70,000 barrels of oil a day being pumped into the Gulf of Mexico.

"...I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen..."

I guess Rand believes that BP accidentally decided to drill in deep water with inadequate equipment. It's not like they didnt' know that wells can blow up. It's not like they didn't know that a broken well-head on ocean floor would need to be plugged. If you know that something is likely to happen and that you should prepare for it, how is it an accident when it happens?

But there's more; his views did not begin with BP and the oil spill:

"We had a mining accident that was very tragic. ... Then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen"

Here's the thing, Rand; accidents are when you have no way of foreseeing the incident, let alone prevent it. It's not an accident when you were not only aware it might happen, but you were told 31 times that what you were doing was going to cause it to happen. In fact, the coal mine operator he's referring to had been cited 2,973 times in five years for their gross safety violations.

"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Rand said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

This oil spill wasn't an accident; it was an inevitable event that BP failed to adequately plan for, and the damage will ultimately be far beyond the scope of BP's ability to "pay for" it. Ultimately, because BP didn't ensure that they had the ability to cap the well in the event of an emergency, millions of Americans are going to suffer the consequences; fishermen who've lost their livelihood, restaurants who sold the fish, resort communities that relied on beach-going tourists, and all the taxpayers who will have to pick up the tab when BP inevitably falls short.

In 1989, an Exxon tanker spilled its guts 21 years ago. The Exxon Valdez spilled 20,000 barrels of oil into Prince William Sound, and they are still cleaning it up; the herring fishery has never returned - and that industry has been destroyed. Exxon threw some money at them, but it didn't return their livelihood.

The lowest estimates of oil spewing into the Gulf put it at 5,000 barrels per day, but that number has been disputed, with some experts stating the amount is closer to 70,000 barrels a day. So at best, every four days since the oil rig exploded has matched the Valdez disaster, or every single day has nearly quadrupled it Either way, this disaster is several magnitudes greater than the Alaskan spill.

BP can't "pay for" this oil spill; no one can.

And if Rand Paul think's it's "un-American" to point that out, then he's not much of an American.

BBQ for Breakfast

2010-05-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

Well, not literally. Well, yes, actually. Literally.

I usually head for the counter at The Floridian for a leisurely Sunday breakfast over the Sunday paper, but this week my timing was off, and the counter was full of people. And not just full of people, but full of people reading menus. Not really a situation where you just wait for someone to finish and pay.

With a line of people waiting for tables, I got in my car, planning to drive over to Lester's - and not enthusiastically. Lester's is great for breakfast, but always packed. And this, being Mother's Day, was likely to be more packed than usual. So as I came up on 17th Street and US 1, I remembered that Ernie's is owned by the same people that own The Floridian. And here's the good part - they DO serve breakfast!

So I pulled into the nearly empty lot.

Inside, there were only a few tables seated. But I decided to stick it out, and took a seat. A waitress gives me a menu, and brings me a cup of coffee. So far, so good.

Right off the bat, you see that the menu is much smaller than diner across town, but that's to be expected; after all, the Floridian is a diner, and Ernie's is a BBQ joint. Some of The Floridian's signature omelettes are on the menu, as well as other basic breakfast fare. But management wisely chose to play to the kitchen's strengths, and you can have BBQ for breakfast. I ordered the pulled pork barbecue omelet, with home fries.

The coffee was better than The Floridian's. It was a little bit stronger and more flavorful. Perhaps, as a BBQ joint, they don't serve as much coffee so the machine is cleaner. Whatever, it was a pretty good cuppa.

At the next table, the waitress was explaining to the couple that Ernie's had been serving breakfast for some time, but it hasn't really taken off. "We had a banner, for awhile," she said, "but it blew away, and we went through a lot of turnover i the kitchen, so it was inconsistent, so no one wanted to push it, I guess." But then she added "but now we've got this really good cook back there, and things have really improved!"

And I agree.

The homefries were a hundred times better than The Floridian's, and maybe 10 times better than Lester's. They were firm, moist without being mushy, and perfectly browned on a couple of facets, just like ma used to make. My only complaint would be that the portions are smaller than the diners' portions, but hey, we don't really need that many carbs on the plate.

The omelet came with a small bowl of Ernie's BBQ sauce on the side, so I could season it to taste. It was savory, with small chunks of onion and tomato, and a hint of pepper that reminded me a little of the conch chowder they are known for. But it's a big honkin' serving, and I just couldn't finish the whole thing, although I really wanted to.

I did not think to ask if the rooftop patio was open for breakfast service.

Like The Floridian, Ernie's BBQ is part of what I like to call "Travis McGee's Fort Lauderdale." Founded in 1957, Travis McGee - or at least author John D. McDonald - might well have stopped in for dinner at some point. I'll have to re-read the books to see if a BBQ joint crops up at some point.

Ernie's opens for breakfast at 7am, 7 days a week.

The Go-Gos "Get Up and Go"

2010-05-06T17:11:00.001-07:00

I know what you're thinking:

"The Go-Go's are still together?!?"

Apparently so, but not for long.

According to their website ("The Go-Go's have a website?!?"), they'll be launching their farewell tour (called, appropriately enough, Happily Ever After: The Farewell Tour!) on July 7, 2010 in San Diego.

It looks like the closest they'll be getting to us is Tampa, on July 10.

To Put It Bluntly

2010-04-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here's my take on the New AriZona Immigration law:

Your actions define you; and this is how Arizona is defining itself.

Fort Lauderdale Cop Scoffs at the Law.

2010-04-28T15:29:00.001-07:00

Bob Norman's Pulp blog brings us the story of a Fort Lauderdale cop who is basically a threat to law and order, and an affront to our justice system. Officer Jeff Overcash arrested a man for having the temerity to ask Overcash for his name and badge number.

According to Attorney Brad Cohen, who is representing that man, this is what happened up to the moment caught on video:

"We have several witnesses for the incident prior to the arrest. The facts are essentially the train was going past the intersection, on SW 2nd Avenue, Fort Lauderdale. My client, Brennen Hamilton, was waiting with his wife and friends for the train to pass. My client leaned up against the rear of the police car.

Officer Overcash approached my client and took him by the arm and said "Get your ass off the car. How would you like it if I leaned my ass on your car?" My client remained silent and rolled his eyes. The Officer said "Really tough guy, you have something to say to me?" My client remained silent. Officer Overcash then said "Yeah, that's right tough guy, you've got nothing to say." The train passed and my client and his wife went to his car and called Fort Lauderdale Police, to complain about the treatment he just received. There wasn't a Lt. or a Sgt. working at that time, so he left his number. During the call he was asked for the Officer's name and badge number. He did not know that information.

After getting off the phone he went back to Officer Overcash and asked him if he could please give him his badge number and name. That is where the video is recorded . You can see my client approach calmly and request his badge and name. Without hesitation Officer Overcash immediately puts my client in cuffs, and ultimately charges him with resisting without violence and disorderly intoxication."
- JAA Blog

Here's the video:

Here's the thing; this crooked cop claims that he's arresting law-abiding Brendan Hamilton for "a previous incident." But if there was such an incident, Overcash would have been compelled by law to arrest Hamilton at the time of the incident. So either Overcash broke the law by not arresting Hamilton in the first place, or he broke it when he arrested him on camera. One way or the other, Overcash was clearly derelict in his duty.

But it seems pretty obvious that there was no "previous incident." Overcash and two other officers are slouching against the patrol care, looking in a completely different direction. There is no sign that just moments before there was any kind of scuffle that might have warranted arrest. They're leaning against the police care (just as Hamilton had done) watching the crowd go by. They almost look bored.

No, Overcash abused his power simply to punish a citizen for lawfully exercising his civic duty. And it should cost him his career.

We can't tolerate officers who abuse their power in this manner. Every day that thugs like Overstreet - who don't give a shit about the law - remain on the job, we're all in danger.

Let's all remind Chief Adderly that this city belongs to the citizens, not a few
jack-booted thugs. You can reach him at:
franka@fortlauderdale.gov
954-828-5590

A Salty Rejoinder

2010-04-27T07:56:00.001-07:00

NY1 reports that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is working with several companies to voluntarily reduce salt content of foods within the Big Apple.

And how does the salt industry react?

In a statement, Salt Institute President Lori Roman said, "The Mayor's time would be better spent educating consumers on consumption of fruits and vegetables...

The problem with that approach, Lori, is that it doesn't actually help us control our salt consumption, does it? And let's face facts: when my doctor told me to cut back on salt, he DID tell me to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables. We all know we're supposed to be eating our greens. We just don't do it.

When I prepare foods at home, I can track how much salt I'm getting. I can read packages in the grocery store to see how much salt is in prepared foods I might pop in the microwave. I can decide if I really want to eat a can of soup that has over half my daily intake of salt in it.

But when we go out to restaurants, all bets are off. There's no nutrition label affixed to my blue-plate special. That's not to say that restaurant food is too salty; while there are probably some meals at some restaurants that are, the real problem is simply knowing the content so we can track our intake.

Mayor Bloomberg is simply working to correct that.

Nobody is advocating the elimination of salt from our diets - that would be stupid. We need salt. But we don't need so much.

Fascism has a New Home: Arizona

2010-04-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

Back in the days of the Cold War, you'd have to travel behind the Iron Curtain to find a real Police State, where at any moment jack-booted troopers could demand that you prove you have the right to be out in public. Yes, those old Red Commies expected everyone to carry around all their identification at all times, or they'd haul you away and toss you into the gulag.

Not any more; in the enlightened 21st Century, you need only travel to Arizona. The Copper State has made the logical step to The Police State. "Innocent until Proven Guilty" is no longer a given in Arizona. If you "look" like a foreigner, Arizona will assume that you are. Constitution? That's just an old sailboat. Freedom? That's just some people talkin'.

I guess John McCain is a better representative of Arizona than I thought; like his home state, he sacrificed integrity for political expediency.

I know what at least one Founding Father would have said:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- Benjamin Franklin

Green Light the Red Light Cams

2010-04-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

Florida is poised to mandate the use of remote cameras to issue citations to cars running red lights, according to The Miami Herald. And while there are many detractors, when you examine all the arguments, the rational mind can really only conclude that the cameras are a good idea.

Most of the arguments for and against deal with a specific usage: issuing red lights to cars that run through them. We'll examine that in a bit, but first, let's address another use that nay-sayers are completely ignoring: providing an objective view of accidents at intersections.

Case in point: a co-worker was recently broadsided by an ambulance that ran a red light from a blind intersection. He and an eyewitness maintain that the ambulance did not have its lights and sirens running; the ambulance driver and an off-duty police officer that was behind the ambulance claim that he did. No one, apparently, is denying that the ambulance ran the red light. But with two eyewitnesses directly contradicting each, and each driver maintaining their innocence, we have no indisputable resource to settle the matter. Why would the cop lie? Well, why would the civilian witness lie? I don't know what happened; I wasn't there. Should the driver have seen the ambulance? Was he careless? Or was the ambulance driver recklessly ignoring traffic laws? A camera on the intersection would settle it beyond a reasonable doubt. I've advised my friend to find an excellent lawyer.

The arguments go like this:

It's unfair, because the owner might not have been driving the car.
Remember, you're not being cited as a driver; it's not criminal violation, it's a a civil one. The ticket works on exactly the same principle as parking tickets: you are responsible for your vehicle, so you get the fine. Since you should know who was using your car when it was illegally parked - or driven through the red light - you can certainly go to that person and demand that they pay you for the violation they exposed you to. But it IS your car, and you ARE responsible for how it is used.

As reported in the Murfreesboro Post, the Seventh District Court of Appeals agrees:

“Owners will take more care when lending their cars and often they can
pass the expense on to the real wrongdoer," the court’s opinion said.

The 7th District Court also addressed the next major complaint about red light cameras:

It's unfair, because municipalities make money off the fines.
So what? As long as the picture actually shows a car actually running a red light, why shouldn't a fine be levied? A law was broken, and public safety was put in jeopardy. If you want to deprive the city of the revenue, just stop before the light turns red. As the court ruled:

“That the City's system raises revenues does not condemn it. Taxes, whether on liquor or on running red lights, are valid municipal endeavors. Like any other exaction, a fine does more than raise revenue: It also discourages the taxed activity. A system that simultaneously raises money and improves compliance with traffic laws has much to recommend it and cannot be called unconstitutionally whimsical."

So what's next? An exceptionally lame argument, that's what:

But if people stop at red lights, the people behind them will be more likely to rear-end them.
Everyone is supposed to stop at the red light, not just the car in front. If you are operating the car properly, you are watching the car in front of you, and you are maintaining the proper safe following distance, and it won't matter when the person in front of you stops. What this argument really boils down to is "most people operate their cars unsafely and should have their licenses suspended, so they shouldn't be expected to follow the most basic traffic safety laws." IF, in fact, cars start getting rear-ended because drivers are stopping at red light like they are supposed to, the problem isn't that the cars are stopping at the red lights, but that too many bad drivers have been issued or allowed to keep licenses that they do not deserve to have. If people can't stop at red lights, they shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel, period.

It's unfair because it violates my right to privacy.
I can't decide if this is a more stupid argument than the "stopping at a
light causes accidents" idiocy; perhaps they are both equally stupid. You're on a public street: you have no expectation of privacy when you're out in public. If you had a right to privacy on a public road, you wouldn't have to have a unique license tag that identifies the owner of the vehicle mounted in plain view on the bumper. No one is issuing a ticket for the way you drive on your private property; ram that car through the back wall of your garage, if you like. But go out on a public street, you're doing it in public.

It Violates "due process."
No, it doesn't. You can certainly appeal it, if you're so inclined. What's that? "Facing your accuser?" The camera was decades in the future when the framers created the Constitution, so they couldn't specify cameras, but in the case of red light cameras, the photograph is your accuser, and you certainly have the right to "face" the photo. Its testimony is unlikely to change under cross-examination, however. About the only way to explain away a photo of your car running a red light is to claim that The State has doctored the photo to get at you. But I don't believe that police are wasting hours doctoring photographs so they can falsely charge you with running a red light; if we're really at the point where that is a reasonable expectation,this nation is already doomed.

The bottom line is this; the cameras can't stop anyone from running a red light. It can only photograph you doing it. If you think you have a valid reason to run red lights, you can continue to menace society in this fashion. And whoever owns the car you're driving is going to fork over some dough. And frankly, I have no problems with that. You won't be doing it in MY car. Not more than ONCE, anyway.

Sun-Sentinel Editor Steps Down

2010-04-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

And predictably, we have to read about it in The Miami Herald. The Sentinel will probably run the Herald story in a day or two.

Ironically, the article describes one of Maucker's greatest errors in a positive light:

Maucker also had a reputation for being financially prudent, she said. While other company papers sent staff writers to cover major events, the Sun Sentinel would often make do using sister papers' stories.

This ignores the fact that in this digital age, everyone is reading the sister papers. Maucker's "clever budgeting" was really a death blow to the paper: instead of fresh news, the Sun-Sentinel increasingly offers only regurgitated stories that were printed somewhere else, first.

Why read Herald or Post articles in the Sentinel, when you could read them sooner in the original location?

Sadly, we can't describe this as a positive change; the publisher of the Sentinel hasn't made a smart decision in years, and there's little evidence to suggest that we'll see real news in the Sentinel anytime soon.

Something good for SCRUBS fans

2010-04-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

The Blanks, known as "Ted's Band" on the TV show SCRUBS, have a show at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts tomorrow.

One More Blog

2010-03-21T21:04:00.001-07:00

Call me a maniac, but I've just started yet another blog. My interests are just too diverse to keep in one place, I guess. So, there's this blog, the theatre blog, the photo blog, the genealogy blog (which I can barely count, it's been so long since I updated). What's one more?

The new blog is Gluten-Free South Florida, a guide for people following a gluten-free diet due to Celiac disease or other medical conditions. It's still under development, but eventually I will have links to restaurants and stores that cater to those of us with special diets. I already have links to online outlets such as Amazon and The Gluten Free Mall.

I've wanted to write more on the subject, but it just didn't fit well with within the framework of MoM. And after learning of yet another friend who'd been diagnosed, I realized that it was time. In fact, it's probably a little past time.

But it's here now.

Rest in Peace, Fess

2010-03-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

I loved this show when I was a kid.

Davey who?

Nah, Dan'l Boone was a man, and THAT was the Fess Parker I aspired to.

Broward School Board; We Need The Arts

2010-03-12T09:59:00.001-08:00

Facing revenue shortfalls from the state, the Broward County School Board is considering cuts to what it considers "non-core" classes.

The choices: Four schools in the same zone would share a media specialist along with an art, music and physical education teacher; electives would be incorporated into classroom teachers' daily lessons; teachers of electives would be required to teach two classes at once, with the help of an aide; or specialty teachers would serve as consultants to their colleagues on how to incorporate electives into the curriculum.
-- the Sun-Sentinel

So let's take an already largely compromised system that is already failing to adequately educate our children, and cripple it. Interesting approach.

Art, music, phys-ed, and the library are mission-critical in educating our children. They aren't some whimsy thrown in for looks. At least, they shouldn't be.

In a nation where obesity is an increasing problem, staying fit is a necessity. The habits we pick up as children stay with us our entire lives. If exercise isn't incorporated into your day early on, there's a real probability that it never will be.

A lot of people misunderstand what art is. They think of it as decoration; pretty designs on clothes, or patterns on the wall. But that's not art, that's decoration. Art is about learning how to see the world, how to discover new perspectives on our lives. How is that not a core part of education?

Music is math. I'm not making that up; think about it. You play a major fifth, modulate to a minor third...it's all numbers.

And libraries are on the cutting block? Does anyone really have a coherent argument that libraries are not a necessary part of learning? Didn't think so.

"Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmatic" are certainly the foundation of a good education, but just as auto parts are not a car, the "three R's" are not a complete education. They are the tools to assemble a framework, and if we deprive our children of the entire package, we fail them.

And I know that if you glance at the proposals, it looks like they are keeping the electives But they are not. For example "incorporating electives into a teacher's daily lessons" sounds great if you don't consider what the teacher may know about the electives. It seems to me that most teachers are at wit's end just trying to teach the existing curriculum, without four very specialized fields being dropped in their laps.

If your child is not taking PE every day, if they don't have the chance to stop by the library on their way in or out of school every day, they are not getting an adequate education. While we need to find out where the state legislature lost 60-80 million dollars, we also need to consider the hundreds of millions the Broward School Board wasted on building schools in the wrong places, building them poorly, and how many nearly empty schools we suddenly have. If they had been responsibly spending our money at the outset, we would not have anything like the crisis we now face.

At least Robin Bartlet seems to understand her responsibilities:

Board member Robin Bartleman suggested scaling back work calendars of new administrators, or looking at district contracts to see whether there are programs that aren't worth renewing.

"Those music classes, those art classes … you can't take that stuff away from kids," Bartleman said. "Sometimes that's the only thing that's sparking the interest of the kid."
-- the Sun-Sentinel

Of course, the first place cuts should always be outside the classrooms.

Of course, an easy way to drastically save on administration costs would be to eliminate the white elephant that's been crushing education; it's time to get rid of FCAT. It has hindered proper education since its inception. All it has done is drive schools to teach children how to pass the test. So now we've got students who can do well on FCAT, but they haven't learned how to learn, the most important lesson our schools should teach.

The bottom line is this: you can't do a better job of educating our children by educating them less. And that's what the Broward School Board is proposing to do.

Speak out - to the school board, to your state rep, and to your congressional reps. Remind them that they answer to us. And let them know how badly they are failing us.

Miami Commission Turns Its Back on Citizens

2010-03-12T08:29:00.000-08:00

The Miami City Commission has lost sight of its responsibilities to its citizens - ALL of them.

Commissioner Marc Sarnoff's incredibly bad proposal is this; to combat the problem of feeding the homeless of Miami, make it illegal to feed them. Instead of helping voters and taxpayers help the less fortunate, he's chosen to punish them. And that is not the purpose of government.

The intent of the ordinance is to stop various independent charitable groups from picking random locations around the city to do what the city is failing to do itself; prevent homeless people from starving on our city streets.

From Miami Today News:

The proposed ordinance would require anyone who wants to feed the homeless to get a license, and would also mandate how the food is to be handled, that trash will be removed, and that portable bathrooms will be available.

Next month I expect the county commission to take on those frickin' Boy Scouts who help old ladies cross the street. How dare anyone try to help others! There are paramedics relying on scraping grandma off the street to earn a paycheck.

That's not to say that there isn't a problem being created by the way groups feed the homeless at random spots around the city; there is. But criminalizing good deeds is not a reasonable approach to the problem. As the New Times points out, the commission's actions reduces the status of homeless people to that of pigeons.

Who cares about human decency and hunger if it gets in the way of pretty sidewalks, right?
-- Miami New Times/ Riptide

To be fair, the city has setup some shelters; there are just not enough of them. And with a flagging economy and slashed budgets, that's not going to change anytime soon. The commission should be praising these groups for stepping up to take up the slack, not turning them into criminals.

So instead of trying to arrest people who are doing the right thing the wrong way, the city should build help them partnerships to solve the actual problems.

Obviously, there are groups willing to FEED the homeless, but this is resulting in trash, and according to Marc Sarnoff, public defecation. Let's create sites near where these activities are taking place, and put in the necessary support systems. Get someone to underwrite the costs of port-a-johns, and someone else to underwrite the costs of garbage collections. The commission needs to be PRO-active, not RE-active.

The Miami Commission, and Marc Sarnoff, appears to have forgotten that they are elected to serve the public, not to hinder them.

The sad part is that these kinds of ordinances are overturned with some regularity; the city could choose to provide a small amount of funding instead of spending millions defending against a civil rights suit. But I guess it's not their money, why should they be expected to spend it responsibly just because we elected them to do just that?