The Political Whore

About time.

• Romney Wins!
• Huck waffles!
• Congrats John!
• You’re busted!
• Apple wiffs?
• Babies booming?
• Mazel Tov?
• Renfro dead.

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“Wanna buy a computer?”

• Can Mitt Romney finally win one?
• Obama tries to calm the Dem’s burgeoning race war (surely angering Clinton in the process).
• The current national front-runners: McCain and Clinton.
• Florida election officials need some help with their spelling.
• Couric Raw: Katie bitches about a bad mic, compares Cindy McCain to a dog and says “shit” a few times in this video shot during the breaks on the 1/8/08 CBS Evening News.
• What’s hot for Christmas 2008? A rundown of the must-have digital goodies from last week’s Consumer Electronics Show.
• Speaking of Tech: Steve Job’s MacWorld keynote goes down today. Anyone want to buy a sub-notebook computer or rent a flick through iTunes?
• “‘People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it’s the end of times,’ said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. ‘It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.’”

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The Times reports that unsuccessful 2006 Republican legislative candidate Angelo Cappelli is off the Hotel Graybar for a 21-month stay:

Judge Joseph Bulone sentenced Cappelli to 21 months behind bars on Friday after Cappelli pleaded guilty to charges of grand theft and perjury.

“He wanted to get this behind him,” said Frank Louderback, Cappelli’s attorney. “He’s very remorseful and feels very bad about what happened.”

Cappell is a guy who had it all: a Yale education, money, a good job in banking (I know, that’s an oxymoron), house, car, wife, etc. When I sat down with him at the start of the 2006 election cycle for my column in CL, I was impressed with his in-depth knowledge of the issues and some of his ideas on how to solve them. I thought he was dressed far to garishly (expensive white-collared shirts, cuff links, braces, the whole corporate banking look) to come off as a “Man of the People” that was needed in the St. Pete district where he was running. Even our gay, married editor David Warner liked Cappelli, who was against gay rights, in a story Warner did about the Heller-Cappelli race. I was later disappointed to see that he had succumbed to the state Republican Party’s ham-handed inclination to attack his opponent, Bill Heller, in an unfair and untrue way in mailers and other ads. It cost Cappelli the election and his reputation as a caring, good guy.

Cappelli had some friends in high places, as well:

Well-known developer Mel Sembler and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker supported Cappelli’s run against Democrat Bill Heller for House District 52 in 2006. Cappelli ended up raising $160,000 more than Heller but lost the race in a difficult election year for most Republicans across the state.

I have spoken with folks who spoke privately with Cappelli right after his arrest story broke. He was devastated and didn’t have an answer for why he lifted $100K from the estate of a dead client. My source knew Cappelli fairly well and was dumbfounded, too.

I’ve already seen lots of blog chatter on Cappelli being a hypocritical Republican, and given the GOP scandals of the past three years, that’s understandable. But Cappelli admitted his crime immediately, paid back all the money, didn’t fight the charges, and his taking his medicine rather than paying sharp lawyers to get him off or at least appeal the case for years and years. He pleaded guilty but didn’t bargain for a low prison sentence.

I think Angelo deserves some credit for that, and not a fresh bunch of lumps from blog-commenting knuckleheads. I think Cappelli still has something he can contribute to our Tampa Bay community when he gets out; let’s hope he turns things around enough to be able to do that.

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Just in from the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World:

PLANT CITY – Commissioners, in a unanimous vote Monday night, decided to ban distribution of candy and beads at parades.

The commissioners took the action in response to the death of a 9-year-old Inverness boy who was run over by a float at the Plant City Christmas Parade. Jordan “Booka” Hays was helping distribute candy from a church float when he was killed Dec. 7.

The Trib’s Dave Nicholson goes on the report just how young Booka was killed:

Hays was reaching for candy from a box located forward of the float’s wheels when he was caught under the wheels killed. A city report faulted the float’s design and said Hays was too young to be walking the parade route, but there was no finding of recklessness.

The float was poorly designed and Booka was too young to be actually in the parade but nobody was at fault?? So the typical government solution is … BAN THE ACTIVITY INVOLVED IN THE HORRIBLE, TRAGIC ACCIDENT!! Trib commenters nailed it, calling Plant City’s vote “kneejerk” and the “easy way out.” It is likely more cost effective and efficient, not to mention it will give the city attorney reason to sleep easy every night, to simply ban candy and beads (and therefore, essentially, kids) from the parade rather than simply enforce common sense rules, like don’t have bead boxes at the the front of floats or let kids under a certain age march in the parade.

More than a decade ago, Philip K. Howard wrote a brilliant book, “The Death of Common Sense: How the Law Is Suffocating America,” a tract that every single elected official should not only be required to read but should be tested on, with 75 percent as the lowest acceptable grade.

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(*we’re fans of the new Buddy Johnson spelling of Giuliani’s first name, hoping it will give America’s Mayor the bump he needs to overcome his disastrous slide at the polls.)

This just in from the Giuliani Puts All His Chips on Florida Campaign:

New York City – The Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee today announced that accomplished actor Jon Voight has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for President of the United States and will campaign on his behalf in both Florida and California later this month.

Voight, who earned both an Oscar and Golden Globe for his role as a quadriplegic Vietnam Veteran in the 1978 movie “Coming Home” and numerous nominations for other roles, has been a powerful presence on the silver screen for almost four decades.

“America is approaching one of its most important elections in history and we must elect a leader with the strength and resolve of Rudy Giuliani,” said Voight. “His commitment to keeping our military strong and his track record of transforming New York makes him the right man at the right time for our country.”

“I am honored to have Jon Voight’s help on the campaign trail,” said Mayor Giuliani. “Our shared vision of maintaining America’s strength and providing the focus for the challenges we face is one that is shared by countless others who are supporting our campaign.”

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Saturday and Sunday’s SP Times brought plenty more evidence that Tampa Bay is not creating lots of good-paying jobs. This from the Water Cooler column:

The hottest $100,000-plus job markets range from New York and San Francisco to Seattle and Chicago. Tampa and Detroit continue to be among the tightest markets in the 20 markets surveyed.

Detroit. We suck as bad as Detroit. That’s saying something. (The info came from TheLadders.com, a job search website.) Those $100K jobs are competitive, as you might expect:

And which companies do those surveyed most want to work for in the area? Ceridian, L-3 Communications and Wachovia. For every job paying $100,000 or more here, there are on average eight candidates.

From Saturday’s paper, we find that Tampa Bay is stuck at a middling 49th in the Top 100 cities for new job creation:

 Forbes.com has come out with its list of the best cities for jobs in 2008 - based on measures like median income, unemployment, income growth, job growth and cost of living - and no Florida metro areas made the top 25. Then, Florida cities appeared in clusters with Jacksonville, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale at Nos. 26-28, respectively.

The only difference between today and 10 years ago in this area is that at least back then, the chambers and other public officials talked about creating new jobs and diversifying the local economy beyond tourism and construction.

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The Pinellas GOP reports a nice get: Rudy Giuliani is set to have a Town Hall-type meeting just before the local party’s monthly meeting on Monday, starting at 5:30 p.m. at Tucson’s on Ulmerton Road. Giuliani is doing a bus tour of Florida that day, and no surprise he would come to the voter-rich I-4 corridor and specifically Pinellas, where the party apparatus has endorsed him heartily, as many of them as former New Yorkers.

Also watch for a few presidential candidates to show up at the Pinellas Lincoln Day fundraising dinner on Jan. 26, just three days before the important Florida primary.

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“No, we’ll be taking a piece of the Middle East and keeping it. What did ya think I meant?”

• Traffic alert: I-4 remains closed as authorities continue to clean the wreckage from yesterdays 75+ car pile-up.
• The primaries roll on: McCain and Hillary ride the wave of the victor, Obama picks up the support of a key Nevada labor union and Sen. John Kerry, and Richardson looks for the exits.
• Bush predicts Mideast peace treaty before the end of his term. Is there a Vegas line on this one?
• First step to Mideast peace: Drop 40,000 lbs of explosives in 10 minutes outside of Baghdad.
• The next frontier in the real estate collapse: Commercial property.
• Who’s in favor of filtering the Internet? I mean, other than Microsoft, NBC and AT&T.
• Blu-ray or HD DVD? The porn industry decides …
• Retirement for the A-Train?

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The writing on these signs was the sentiment of many of the 330 people who turned out for a snoozerific three hours last night to discuss what could become of Tropicana Field in St. Pete IF, (SHOULD, MAYBE, PERHAPS, LET”S JUST SPECULATE) the Rays score a new ballpark on the waterfront. (I only echo the general tone of city and Rays officials statements to the crowd last night as they tried to head off growing skepticism of residents who think things are moving too fast.)

The Times characterized the three-hour urban planning session this way:

For the most part, people were cautious about replacing Tropicana Field, which opened in 1990. But many were at least open to the idea.

The Tribune’s take was inaccurately titled “Public Debates Dome’s Fate.” Let’s be clear; the exercise held by the city last night allowed for no “debate” and was carefully structured to both quiet angry residents who really want to express their opposition to the waterfront ballpark idea and to placate the daily newspaper neighborhood activists who were upset at the lack of public input into the Trop redevelopment plan. This kind of “consensus” exercise may look good on paper and satisfy those with MA’s in urban planning but provides little real public input to elected officials and — more importantly — makes for really dullllllll news stories. And beyond that, there is nothing to debate yet: No finances are on the table beyond a $450 million price tag for the new ballpark. The Rays aren’t saying yet what public $$$ they want, beyond a request for $60 million from the Legislature that they already dropped in the face of no support at all from the local legislative delegation.

The Trib story’s nut graf was only slightly less off the mark than the headline:

By the end of the 2 1/2 hour meeting, the crowd reached a consensus on three types of land uses: residential development with affordable housing, retail services and cultural and entertainment uses.

Uhhh, not so much. That may be what the exercise’s facilitators came up with at the end, but it doesn’t reflect what I heard and saw. Actually, as I wandered from table to table, I saw more redevelopment-option lists that featured such things as “Leave As Is,” “Rebuild on same site” and “baseball stadium new.” Other popular choices for the Trop’s future included recreation, green space, entertainment and affordable housing. Interesting (if not fiscally possible) options were and R&D park and a convention center/hotel site. When housing was listed, it was either identified as “affordable” or “moderate.” Those groups that wrote down retail almost always had the word “limited” next to it.

Clearly, there was little enthusiasm for the kind of high-intensity redevelopment that would be necessary to make a Trop-for-waterfront-ballpark swap financially possible, the kind of urban village envisioned (in the rendering on the right) by the Rays and their chosen redveloper, The Hines Co. of Houston.

“The project is not nearly a finished product,” Rays point-man for the deal, Mike Kalt, told the crowd. “There’s a lot of opportunity to develop this site ….”

He’s right; that kind of acreage in an urban area in Florida is gold. But redeveloping it in a way that will spin off enough profit to finance the new ballpark and bring real change to downtown St. Pete seems to be something that local residents aren’t warmed up to — at least just yet.

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All right, so we didn’t get a dispatch yesterday from our good alt-buddies at The Weekly Dig. That doesn’t mean they didn’t file to their blog, or that they were embarrassingly wrong in predicting that Barack Obama would win and bury Hillary Clinton in a piece headlined “McCain, Obama win in New Hampshire; the rest of us lose:”

As much as I’m glad to witness the demise of Hillary Clinton, the prospect of an Obama-led general election campaign should do little to cheer us up. Though not nearly as dull as Hillary on the stump, Obama never really says anything of substance. He promises to bring “change” the status quo by “reaching out” to Republicans – an idea that, for one thing, doesn’t make much sense, as John Edwards’ has pointed out. How can any principled liberal be impressed by such bland talk as wanting to end “bipartisan bickering”? Advocating “hope” and “unity” Obama has simply trotted out all meaningless cliches seen in previous election cycles. Obama is saying very little new or different than what John Kerry said and lost on in 2004.

The only remaining though admittedly far-fetched chance of stopping Obama now is if Hillary drops out of the race, which might allow the Tim Robbins and Ralph Nader-backed Edwards to effectively take Barack on by himself.

While you’re at it in NH with the Dig boys, here’s a link to the full piece they did on why you should skip voting this year all together.

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