Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 21, 2009, at 5:00 am
For logistical purposes, CL has been consolidating its multiple blog platforms into one, and now it is The Political Whore’s turn to hang out the “We’re Moving” sign. It makes sense: we can’t use a common search engine among more than one blog right now. And we have to cross-post Green Community posts to both sites, to use just one example of content that fits into both blogs.
This will be the last post in this old blog site (Friday, August 21, 2009). Future PoHo posts will appear in our Daily Loaf blog, which also includes Green Community, arts, entertainment, sports, sex & love, film, TV and other pop culture posts.
You can read PoHo news pretty much the same way you read PoHo now, if you just want news & politics and not the rest of the Daily Loaf fare. Just change your bookmark from http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/politicalwhore/
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 20, 2009, at 3:51 pm
Bill Foster wasted no time in getting the Times recommendation on his website
The drumbeat that the St. Petersburg Times was considering an endorsement (errr, recommendation, as the Times will always let a candidate know its preferred term) of Bill Foster. On its surface, it seems ludicrous. After all, Foster is the same guy who wrote to the school board a few years back making a strong pitch against teaching Darwinian evolution alone in public schools, hoping it would mix in a bit of “intelligent design.”
But the lack of an emerging alternative to Foster left the Times in the inexplicable position of endorsing an anti-gay rights, anti-evolution mayor of St. Petersburg. More to the point, however, the editorial board chooses a candidate based on who will play ball with it. Which candidate will kiss the ring over on 1st Avenue S? That’s what gets you the recommendation. Disagree with the Times on a core concern at the paper — say, firing Police Chief Chuck Harmon, as Scott Wagman as vowed to do — and you are at a disadvantage, to say the least.
It is OK to disagree with the Times on social conservative issues, as long as you play your cards right, promise not to let those views play out in public policy at City Hall and generally keep your wingy-ness in the closet. After all, the Times’ former editorial chief, Phil Gailey, was totally tight with Rick Baker, who was also a social conservative who refused to recognize gay pride parades or appear in them.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 19, 2009, at 3:35 pm
Join me and other CL writers tonight starting just before 7 pm here as we live blog the Bay News 9/St. Petersburg Times mayoral forum from the Palladium Theater in downtown. i love the title: “Conversation with the Candidates.” I seriously doubt it will be anything that approximates a real conversation.
Watch along on Bay News 9 and throw in your comments, as well. It runs from 7-8:30 pm.
We’ll be providing live fact-checks, analysis and satirical snide comments in the comment section below.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 19, 2009, at 3:16 pm
It was a horrible choice in the first place, and the idea that Shelton Quarles was going to be the happy face of a regional tax referendum to pay for rail transit was pretty ludicrous. So today we hear that Quarles, the former Tampa Bay Bucs linebacker, will step stepped down. Bay Buzz reports:
Shelton Quarles, the former Bucs linebacker turned transportation authority chairman, is resigning from the board, vice chairman Frank Hibbard said today.
“I was just told yesterday that Shelton had resigned,” Hibbard said, saying the resignation was effective immediately and he would begin overseeing the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority board.
Read my story “Tackling Transit,” on Quarles when he was first appointed and the controversy about his selection.
And read Quarles PR statement released late today after the news already broke. Good job getting out in front of it, TBARTA:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 19, 2009, at 10:52 am
I was out of the office (and to some degree, out of touch with the important breaking news of the day) for the past two days, so the whole flapdoodle over First Lady Michelle Obama wearing (gasp!) shorts on her family vacation to the Grand Canyon got right by me.
But this morning, I got gobsmacked by the “news” when I broke my prohibition against watching The Today Show and saw not only a produced package report on it but an interview about it with the author of an upcoming book on Mrs. Obama.
So I’m damned if I write about this nothingness (because by doing so I am just perpetuating the media echo chamber on this particular non-news item) but if I sit by and let this phenomenon continue to go unchallenged I look either a) out of touch or b) like I condone such piffle.
So let’s be clear: Blame the Internet, blame the increasingly content-hungry online news media who will write about anything as long as it gets pageviews and resonates and gets Reddit’ed or Digg’ed or whatever’ed. But mostly, blame ourselves, the consumers of this mental junk food, because if we weren’t eating it, they wouldn’t be feeding it to us.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 12, 2009, at 4:08 pm
Todd Persico, the owner of Hop Tampa, was bemoaning Wednesday as a “very bad day” after the Hillsborough Public Transportation Commission voted narrowly to (in effect) put free electric vehicle taxi services out of business.
“They determined that we were for-hire vehicles, and without permits, we’re out of business,” Persico said late this afternoon. That puts seven drivers out of work, three $18,000 vehicles in the garage and Persico scrambling to keep his business alive after a year and a half of operations.
It is a classic Catch-22; electric vehicles operators downtown say they were told they didn’t need permits because they didn’t charge for their rides (they make their money on advertising on the vehicles and the drivers get tips), and since the PTC tightly controls taxi permits, they likely wouldn’t be able to get them anyway. But even though they are free and mostly provide rides that the for-pay taxis won’t/don’t give (short hops that aren’t profitable), the PTC put them out of business after cabbies complained.
So much for energy-efficiency and reducing our carbon footprints.
For a restaurateur such as Ferrell Bonnemort of Cafe Dufrain on Harbour Island, the electric vehicles were a godsend; advertising on them brought new customers, and they showed up to give patrons rides home when regular cabs took forever to respond.
“Before these kinds of vehicles came about, our guests would have to wait 45 mintues for a cab,” she said.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 12, 2009, at 2:03 pm
There is new video (a CNN feed from 10 Connects) from last week’s shoving and shouting match at the door to a town hall on health care reform featuring Congresswoman Kathy Castor in Ybor City. (h/t to Pushing Rope)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 12, 2009, at 5:58 am
Last night some Facebook users were invited to be part of a beta test for Facebook Lite (the link now bounces you not to Lite but to regular Facebook), but they soon found that the invitation was premature: Facebook pulled the trigger on too many beta testers, only to shut down the link.
So, what is Facebook Lite?
Depends on who you ask. Tech Crunch reports that it looks much like Twitter or FriendFeed:
Okay, while it seems that most of the users who are getting this message now are not seeing much different, earlier this week, it looks like a very select few may have gotten a sneak peak at Facebook Lite. According to their tweets on it, it appears to be a more Twitter-like. One user notes that it, “looks like a simplified version of twitter with comments enabled. On 2nd thought, it looks like simplified FriendFeed.”
That is of course very interesting since Facebook just bought FriendFeed for around $50 million yesterday.
Tech Crunch features this screen capture of Facebook Lite.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 11, 2009, at 2:00 pm
Back when it started, TBO.com was a pioneering website, easy to navigate with lots of good info fed into it from a robust Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV newsroom.
Today, 15 years after its birth, TBO.com is the growth engine on Parker Street for Media General, but it is a shadow of itself content-wise. It also uses video poorly (given all its access to video from owning the top-rated local TV station) and has an absolutely incomprehensible and unnavigable blog structure.
August 11, 2009 – Today, TBO.com celebrates 15 years of serving the Tampa Bay community online. August 11, 1994 marked the first date of online publishing for TBO.com, making The Tampa Tribune one of the first newspapers in the nation with a dedicated news Web site.
… Today, TBO.com serves more than 3 million unique visitors each month with well over 20 million page views every month. TBO.com recently introduced new interactive elements to its site including VIPIR Interactive Radar from Storm Team 8 allowing users to zoom down to street level and view storms just above their neighborhoods. TBOsnap.com launched as the new user video submission tool, allowing Tampa Bay residents to record news and report it straight from their video cell phones via e-mail to myshots@tbosnap.com. Also as a leader in mobile Web technology, m.tbo.com recently released news and weather videos on the iphone platform and is receiving record views from TBO mobile iphone users.
“The biggest change in 15 years has been the growth of digital news – first on the Web, and now on mobile and social networks. We’re proud of the team that’s dedicated to the success of this 24 hour news service and that continues to work every day to make us Tampa’s No.1 source for breaking news,” says TBO.com’s Content Director, Loren Omoto.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 11, 2009, at 9:20 am
Pro-reform AARP has planned a town hall meeting for Wednesday afternoon in Lakeland, and the big question is: Will it feature the same kind of testiness, shouting, shoving and calamity that has befell other town halls, including one last week in Tampa’s Ybor City?
Organizers don’t think so. A Florida AARP spokesman told March on Politics that the organization has already held some of these town halls (part of a grassroots-TV ad blitz to support the president’s initiative) and while some got heated none reached the level of the Ybor event. UPDATE: Florida AARP spokesman Dave Bruns tells me this afternoon that while the AARP events have seen some “very pointed exchanges” (and, in Leesburg, one woman who came forward and dumped her cut-up AARP card in front of the speaker) that they have not seen the kind of disruptions that have plagued other town halls. “There’s been some backlash about what happened in Tampa,” Bruns said.
The town hall is on the radar screen of the Lakeland 9-12 Project, an offshoot of Fox host Glenn Beck’s right-wing fomenting. But RedCounty — a conservative blog that chronicles various counties across the nation, including Hillsborough — is urging civility:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 11, 2009, at 8:14 am
Somebody’s cranky…
(It turned out that the question was wrongly translated, but wow, is our Secretary of State a little fed up with Bill getting the lion’s share of headlines?)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 10, 2009, at 2:04 pm
From Kansascity.com comes the tale you just knew would happen — an injured anti-Obama Town Hall protester is taking up collections to pay for his medical care because he lost his job and has no insurance:
Backers of Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis, gathered Saturday at the offices of the Service Employees International Union for an event organized by the pro-limited government Tea Party coalition.
The group claims union members attacked the politically conservative Gladney at the event two days earlier. But members of the union, which supports the president’s health care plan, say Gladney initiated the fight.
The melee, which ended in six arrests, was one of several at town hall meetings around the country as Democratic lawmakers returning home faced resistance to proposals to reform the nation’s costly health care system. U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Missouri Democrat, organized the event in Mehlville.
Gladney’s attorney, David Brown, received cheers from the crowd of about 200 people when he read a statement written by his client.
“A few nights ago there was an assault on my liberty, and on yours, too.” Brown read. “This should never happen in this country.”
Brown told the crowd that Gladney is accepting donations toward his medical expenses. Gladney told reporters he was laid off recently and has no health insurance.
You can watch video of the attorney speaking for Gladney at the rally after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 10, 2009, at 10:45 am
Another TV news personality has been urged not to have children. The twist is that this time it is a male anchor, not a woman.
For those not enamored of following Florida media insider baseball, you can bail out now. But for the rest of us media whores, there is a wonderful story that has been playing out for a week or so in Miami, where the ABC affiliate WPLG has fired one of its anchors who now claims it is because he is (gasp!) gay.
Charles Perez has fought back, with a sexual orientation discrimination complaint (which he claims triggered the firing) and a blog post in the Daily Beast in which he details his claims that station management was afraid of his increasing gay profile and urged him not to have children with his male partner. (The station, in written statements, denies Perez’s allegations.)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 9, 2009, at 11:21 am
This week’s column from the print edition of Creative Loafing:
About 500-600 people are voting for a new mayor of St. Petersburg every day now, part of what has become a vote-by-mail system of absentee voting in Florida. Nearly 60,000 city residents have requested an absentee ballot, almost 40 percent of the registered voters.
That’s a big number. So why do I hear so many complaints about the 2009 race to succeed Mayor Rick Baker being a real snoozer? Polling earlier in the month showed that 61 percent of the voters didn’t have a preference among the 10 candidates running. And although nearly 7,000 people had voted by the end of last week, there is very little visible to any of the campaigns, beyond the ubiquitous yard signs. It’s impossible to time the peak of your political campaign when Election Day lasts 45 days, and no candidate has enough money to run a full-bore mass media campaign for that long.
Take the latest mayoral forum, held by St. Pete Preservation last week in front of about 100 good folks at Studio@620. I popped in to shoot a few photos and perhaps hear their stump speeches, but after almost an hour the crowd had heard only from preservationists, who got five minutes apiece to school nine candidates on why historic preservation is important. Even the hometown St. Petersburg Times didn’t staff the preservation forum. When the candidates did begin to talk, there wasn’t much separation.
How can something be anticlimactic before it’s even over?
Here are the reasons why this year’s city election is having a hard time connecting with voters:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 7, 2009, at 11:32 am
UPDATE at 1 pm: Martinez will hold a 3pm newser and then Crist is expected to name former Secretary of State Jim Smith as the an interim replacement before the summer recess ends. Leading candidates so far include former Secretary of State Jim Smith, former Tampa Mayor and FLA Gov. Bob Martinez, former US Sen. Connie Mack and former Speaker Allen Bense.
After months and months of flat-out denying he would quit his Senate post before his term was up (ever since he announced he wouldn’t seek re-election in 2010), Mel Martinez today made a liar out of himself and announced he will step down now.
That leaves the appointment in Gov. Charlie Crist’s hands. Now, before everyone in the Democratic Party grassroots starts freaking out (too late, judging by my Facebook and Twitter account traffic), yes, Charlie can appoint himself but, no, he won’t. It would be political suicide to do that.
In 2005, CL’s then- Sarasota reporter Allyson Gonzalez gave Martinez a freshman report card. He didn’t do too well:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 7, 2009, at 6:35 am
The summer recess of Congress has sent politicians back home into their districts and straight into the guerilla theater that has overcome reasonable discussion about how to reform the nation’s broken health care system.
Witness: Hundreds of angry conservatives and anti-Obamacare people (a few violent) turned up at a town hall organized by state Rep. Betty Reed in Ybor City last night with one mission in mind — some with one mission in mind: disrupt the forum and get headlines.
They succeeded.
Driven by right-wing media nutz such as Rush Limbaugh (who mentioned Kathy Castor’ appearance at the forum during his Thursday radio show, bemoaning that she would be surrounded by “union goons”), the state and local GOP and Glenn Beck’s 9-12 movement, the anti-Obama crowd banged on windows and doors in an attempt to get into the overcrowded Children’s Board meeting room.
Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Joe Bardi of Creative Loafing’s Film & TV section were on board again this morning to tape the weekly HoCast, in which we examined the week’s top political stories, made sense out of them and played funny-sounding audio clips.
Here was our tentative show rundown as written before taping; we added the Tampa health care reform “near riot” to the top of the issues list and had some audio from the unpleasantness:
1. BIll Clinton (and Al Gore??) set free the journo-hostages from North Korea. The price? An unsmiling photo-op with an equally unsmiling and flaccid Kim Jong-Il plus some “face” for the North Koreans. Worth it or not? What happens next time a nation takes poeple hostage and we don’t send Slick Willy or a different ex-president to rescue them? Can you imagine the hilarity that would have ensued if we’d sent former President George W. Bush?!? And how long will Hillary stand for Bill upstaging her?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 6, 2009, at 9:11 am
St. Pete voters and other political junkies: It just got a lot easier to track all of our CL and PoHo coverage of the St. Petersburg mayoral race with our new widget. Just click on a candidate’s mug to get a listing of stories and podcasts about them. The St. Petersburg Mayor’s Race widget also lives full-time on our News & Politics section front.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 6, 2009, at 6:37 am
Hey, with all our other civic problems, transportation shortfalls, educational deficiencies comes this real news:
We Floridians are sick and tired of these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking state!
Burmese pythons have overrun the Everglades and are being openly hunted. Now, the state is considering banning them as pets after a pet snake killed a 2-year-old recently.
State environmental officials told Gov. Charlie Crist on Wednesday they are considering a ban on Burmese pythons, the mammoth snakes threatening Everglades restoration.
Col. Julie Jones, law-enforcement chief of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said the agency is strongly enforcing rules to keep track of pet pythons. In addition to a $100 annual fee, the “reptiles of concern” are having microchips implanted so that, if they are illegally released or escape, owners can be tracked down.
An 81/2-foot pet python escaped its tank and killed a 2-year-old girl at her Central Florida home on July 1. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has called for a federal ban on importing the snake, which can grow to 26 feet and 200 pounds.
The FWCC is running a “reptiles of concern” roundup. So far, seven herpetologists have been issued permits to trap them and three more are being screened by the agency.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 5, 2009, at 3:41 pm
I’ve spent some time interviewing the seven major candidates for St. Petersburg mayor, in the Sept. 1 primary election. You can still listen to podcasts of some of those interviews.
There are three other candidates whose campaigns do not appear to be on the same competitive plane as the other seven, but I wanted to give you some information about two of them so if you are a St. Petersburg voter you can be fully informed. The third minor candidate, Paul Congemi, does not appear to have a website or a serious platform to speak of.
Ed Helm is making his second attempt at the mayor’s office. He describes himself as a progressive candidate, and his website is at edhelm.com.
Richard Eldridge is a political newcomer. The 47-year-old says his military experience prepares him for service as St. Pete’s next mayor: “Having served honorably in the United States Marine Corps, I know how to lead, take risks, and make tough decisions. Some of the duties that I have had were Reconnaissance Marine, Marksmanship Instructor, Mortar Section Leader, and Physical Training Instructor.” His campaign website is at eldridge2009.com.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 4, 2009, at 1:45 pm
Angela Rouson stepped into the Creative Loafing recording studio this week to discuss her campaign for St. Petersburg City Council in District 5, against fellow newcomers Steve Kornell and retired police officer Joe Smith. Yes, she’s the wife of powerhouse (and controversial) African American politician Darryl Rouson; but she came off as her own person — bright, articulate, well-informed and passionate — in her recent Suncoast Tiger Bay Club event, and she likewise was engaging in this interview.
I asked her if she felt that St. Pete cops were being “reined in” and not fighting crime to the fullest of their ability, and she said:
I’ve talked with the sheriff, Sheriff Coats, I’ve talked with Chief Harmon (and done ride-alongs with both agencies), and the general consensus is there is some of that. And there is also a lack of resources to be able to address issues, because if you are going to take down, for example, a drug house, you need more than one officer on the beat. I think they are being held back to some extent, but I think resources play into that as well.
Is there a racial political component to the police being held back?
I can’t really answer that question. But what I can say is there is no rational reason for not addressing the crime. …As a member of City Council I’m going to work to make sure that the mayor works with the chief of police to be more aggressive in addressing the issues.
I also asked her — given her husband’s controversial anti-gay statement that being gay was “morally wrong” (he later apologized for saying it) — if she would participate in St. Pete Pride and about her stance on domestic partner benefits. Hear her answers after the jump in the full podcast:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 31, 2009, at 10:41 am
The late Ralph Hughes, shown with state Sen. Ronda Storms in 2006 at a Plant City Republican event.
The Tampa Tribuneis reporting that a new court filing by the Internal Revenue Service has more than quadrupled the amount of money it says it is owed by the estate of the late Ralph Hughes, a powerful anti-tax power broker in Hillsborough County.
From the Trib story:
Before he died last year, conservative powerbroker Ralph Hughes fraudulently took millions of dollars of his companies’ assets, leaving the businesses insolvent and owing nearly $300 million to the IRS, the federal government says in a new court filing.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 31, 2009, at 6:54 am
Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Joe Bardi of Creative Loafing’s Film & TV section join me later this morning to tape the weekly HoCast. What do you think about this week’s top political news? Have something to say on the show topics below? How about your nominee for Political Whore of the Week? Post a comment or tweet it to @poho and we’ll try to read it during the podcast.
Download or listen to a streaming version of the podcast, after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 30, 2009, at 10:22 am
From New Scientist comes proof why we watch insipid pundits on television, even long after they have been proven wrong time and time again (I’m looking at you, Jim Cramer):
EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It’s a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people’s self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice.
The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. And it spells bad news for scientists who try to be honest about gaps in their knowledge.
In Moore’s experiment, volunteers were given cash for correctly guessing the weight of people from their photographs. In each of the eight rounds of the study, the guessers bought advice from one of four other volunteers. The guessers could see in advance how confident each of these advisers was (see table), but not which weights they had opted for.
From the start, the more confident advisers found more buyers for their advice, and this caused the advisers to give answers that were more and more precise as the game progressed. This escalation in precision disappeared when guessers simply had to choose whether or not to buy the advice of a single adviser. In the later rounds, guessers tended to avoid advisers who had been wrong previously, but this effect was more than outweighed by the bias towards confidence.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 29, 2009, at 2:40 pm
Nobody emerged with a clear advantage from today’s federal bankruptcy court hearing in Tampa for the post-bankruptcy ownership of Creative Loafing. Judge Caryl E. Delano kept intact a negotiated set of auction rules while saying that she’s waiting until the Aug. 25 equity auction bidding to decide how to define and decide what the “highest and best” offer will be.
While today’s hearing about the rules and procedures for the bidding was given a pretty high-drama buildup in a 1B St. Petersburg Times story and in the Chicago Reader last week, it didn’t live up to its billing and was actually a complex, confusing, and undramatic court session.
Delano approved the negotiated set of bidding rules that was contested for two hours today, but she left some core issues unresolved and said, “I’ll make my ruling as to what the highest and best offer is” on Aug. 25.
If there was real news out of today’s hearing, it was that Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason is considering stepping down temporarily to focus on formulating a new equity bid for the post-bankruptcy company.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 29, 2009, at 9:47 am
I’m headed over to the Tampa federal courthouse to report on Federal Bankruptcy Judge Caryl E. Delano expected ruling after she hears both sides (and maybe more) argue about the rules and procedures for the planned Aug. 25 equity auction that will determine who owns the post-Chapter 11 Creative Loafing alt-newspaper and online news company. Will update once the 11:45 am hearing is over.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 29, 2009, at 7:14 am
Brian Blair: the political action figure, fighting for the rights of parents everywhere
You knew this was coming: Brian Blair has started his comeback bid after being cleared of child-abuse charges in a fight with his sons, even as he also fights elections law charges in connection with checks he accepted during his failed 2008 campaign.
Blair, in an exclusive sit-down with News Channel 8 set to air tonight at 11, said:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 28, 2009, at 2:16 pm
The state of Florida’s searchable campaign database
The St. Petersburg Times tried to do its job; it asked each and every St. Petersburg mayoral candidate if they would supply their campaign finance information (their contributions and expenditures) so the newspaper could create a searchable database for voters to use, just like candidates for national, county or state office do. But not the city, which puts up only .pdf’s of the reports, which cannot be searched for names that contribute to different campaigns or to do other important analyses of who is funding whom.
If you’ll recall, that is one of my six ideas to fix Tampa Bay politics on a recent cover of Creative Loafing.
With one exception, however, the Times‘ request fell on deaf or uncaring or incapable ears. From A-Sharock today:
We’ve been told by computer experts that providing this data would take as little as 15 minutes of work.
The response from candidates: Silence.
Only Scott Wagman’s campaign attempted to comply with our request. Candidate Bill Foster said he didn’t think it was technically possible and candidate Larry Williams declined. The other candidates didn’t even respond to our request.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 28, 2009, at 11:21 am
Because we just can’t get enough of her, the farewell speech of (now former) Alaska Gov. and Head GOP Whacko Sarah Palin is on full display on the interwebs, first off with this link to stunning interpretation of the Republican grande dame’s verbiage, as performed on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien by “master thespian” William Shatner.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 28, 2009, at 9:40 am
As the LA Times points out, the Church of Scientology, which has its international spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, has taken some public relations hits in the past 12 months, not the least of which was a three-part series in the St. Petersburg Times that detailed the accusations made against the church’s leader, David Miscavige, made by former high-ranking church officials.
Now, it has debuted a new series of 1-minute ads to push back against the bad PR, the LA Times writes:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 26, 2009, at 11:38 am
Illustration by Slug Signorina
From this week’s Straight Dope column:
Superman is able to use his super strength to squeeze coal into diamonds. Theoretically, if someone had unlimited strength in real life, would it be possible to do this?–marcusbrute
You realize, Marcus, we’re talking about what (a) a fictional character of virtually unlimited powers (barring kryptonite-related issues) could, (b) if real, be (c) theoretically but (d) realistically expected to do. Even by Straight Dope standards this takes us into a pretty abstruse realm. That’s probably why I got into a big argument on the subject with my assistant Una, who’s normally as tranquil as a September morn.
1. Craig Pittman of the Timesdetails how Tampa Bay Water was too inexperienced and rushed its massive public works projects, notably the cracked-and-expensive-to-repair CW Bill Young Reservoir. Public officials such as Ed Turanchik lauded its construction at the time, Pittman writes, but put an inexperienced 29-year-old in charge of managing the project and hired an engineering firm that had never built such a large reservoir.
2. Florida’s funniest newspaper columnist-turned-novelist Carl Hiaasen blasts Charlie Crist’s growing turn to political whoredom: “Unlike Sarah Palin, Charlie Crist has chosen not to quit his governorship early. Florida’s own one-term wonder is using his remaining time to ingratiate himself with as many deep-pocket interest groups as possible. The governor’s unseemly burst of groveling is directly connected to his upcoming run for the U.S. Senate. Sucking up to the National Rifle Association and the Christian right, Crist last week declared his opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whose confirmation is already a done deal.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 24, 2009, at 12:36 pm
Yesterday, former 2nd District Court of Appeal Judge Thomas E. Stringer Sr. pleaded guilty to one count of mortgage fraud in connection with a home he purchased in Hawaii with New York stripper Christy Yamanaka. PoHo has been abe to obtain surveillance audio from that real estate closing, and we warn, it is Not Suitable For Work (and entirely satirical):
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 24, 2009, at 8:59 am
Mrs. Former Fort Myers Beach Town Manager
This week’s HoCast marks a revamp of my format. While I will continue to do long-form interviews with political figures as podcasts, the PoHo brand will feature a fairly regular cast and a quick, funny format that looks at the top political and media issues, the Quotable soundbite and the Political Whore of the Week.
1. The shameful Today Show coverage of the Obama health care newser
2. The firing of the town manager of Fort Myers Beach for marrying a porn actress (shown above)
3. The Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail flap
4. ESPN’s multi-problems with censorship (the Ben Rothlisberger story)
5. Mary Mulhern uses tax dollars to go to Cuba
This week’s PoHo Award nominees are:
New York stripper Christy Yamanaka, who was involved in the Judge Thomas Stringer scandal. He pleaded guilty this week to one count of mortgage fraud in connection with a house the two bought in Hawaii.
And, via txt message from an anonymous politician, this nomination:
“The Jersey 44, that’s lookin’ like a real political gangbang! Even by Jersey’s standards.”
Listen to the HoCast after the jump to find out who won:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 24, 2009, at 6:38 am
From St. Pete’s best known anti-tax neurosurgeon, Dr. David McKalip, comes this e-mail apology this morning for the Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail I chronicled late yesterday afternoon:
I have had a very hard day. When you stand up and fight effectively for freedom and to protect the rights of patients from control by the government and insurance companies – you develop powerful enemies. They have used the opportunity of a lapse in judgment to try to discredit me since they can’t discredit my arguments. I am proud of my accomplishments in this fight. I am more proud of the hundreds of thousands of Americans I have come to know who feel as I do and are willing to stand up for freedom. The next few days will be difficult, and I ask for your support.
DR. DAVID MCKALIP SENDS APOLOGY DIRECTLY TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 24, 2009, at 5:30 am
Florida, in light orange-yellow on the Dept of Energy map, above, joins some other states without renewable portfolio standards to require renewable energy production.
By Rick Kriseman CL Green Community
Cross-posted from the Daily Loaf.
We are long overdue for a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in this state (a regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal). According to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, we are not only the most populous state without one, but we are joined by the likes of Alabama, Mississippi, and several other states not known for their progressive agendas.
In 2008, Gov. Charlie Crist signed legislation which required the Public Service Commission (PSC) to develop a renewable portfolio standard by February 1, 2009, which then had to be adopted by the legislature before being implemented. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 3:27 pm
FRIDAY AM UPDATE:He’s apologized. And he then resigned as president-elect of the Pinellas Medical Association.
Talking Points Memo is breaking the story that well known local brain surgeon and anti-tax crusader David McKalip forwarded this photoshopped illustration of President Barack Obama to a Tea Party e-mail group:
TPMuckraker calls it the latest example of online anti-Obama racism on behalf of conservatives. And McKalip told TPMuckraker:
Should a civic employee lose his/her job because they married an adult star?
That is the question behind the firing of Scott Janke, former town manager for Fort Myers Beach. The town council removed him from office with a vote of 5-0 after finding out that he is married to Jazella Moore.
Kiker acknowledged that Janke had violated no rules or laws and added that he had done a good job for the island town that had about 6,500 people, according to the 2000 Census. But the mayor was concerned whether Janke could remain effective and not distract the community from the business of the town along the state’s west coast. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 10:29 am
UPDATE: It was Judge Stringer! Feds announced the charges today. Our condolences to all the Buddy haters out there.
The St. Petersburg Times blows up the buzz in downtown Tampa today with the revelation that a federal public corruption case is just about to pop.
From the story:
During a public interview Wednesday for his office’s top job, a high-ranking federal prosecutor from Tampa said he is close to charging a public official with public corruption.
The person has agreed to plead guilty, said Robert O’Neill, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa.
He did not name the public official. He noted that the case resulted from allegations he learned about in the newspaper.
Find out the leading suspects and take our poll about who you think it is, after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 10:00 am
I’m retooling the Political Whore Podcast (or the HoCast, we we lovingly call it ’round these parts). I’ve added two regular guests, broadcaster/lawyer/former political candidate Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Joe Bardi, our associate editor whose political views shaped our hilarious Short List online for years.
We want to hear from you as we look at the hottest topics, sexiest political scandals and goofiest politicians each week. We’ll also name a Political Whore of the Week, somebody in national, state or local politics or government who best exemplifies that they are only in it for the money — or the stupidity.
We’re taping our weekly installments on Fridays at 10 am, so you can get us your ideas, questions or Whore nominations via Twitter (@poho) before then, or live during the podcast taping from 10-10:30 am. We’ll do our best to get the best of the tweets on the HoCast.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 8:34 am
A few weeks ago I announced to my wife that I would not be watching The Today Show in the mornings any more. I just got fed up with its growing tabloid style and insistence on flogging non-stories to death. Like this week’s “exclusive” multi-day interview with Susan Boyle. Or the dude trying to get his kid back from Brazil who is interviewed at least twice a week. Or the latest family with a loved one attacked by a critter/rescued from a certain death/dying from a disease/etc.
But this morning, I broke my rule and paid the price for it. Meredith, Matt, Al and the rest of the formerly great NBC morning news show led the broadcast with this top story: Barack Obama had ruined his newser on health care last night by criticizing the wrongful arrest of prominent Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week.
ABC’s Good Morning America apparently did the same thing.
St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans noticed, too, writing this AM:
…[W]hy did the Today show — by far TV’s most-watched morning show — spend its first segment this morning discussing what the president said about the arrest of a black scholar in Cambridge, Mass.?
Here is how the “journalists” left at NBC played the president’s desperate attempt to pull out his health care victory on the website this AM:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 23, 2009, at 8:01 am
Stuart Mellish Thinks the Republicans should get out of the way and let Obama fix this Country. You had your 8 years and you screwed it up. STEP ASIDE!
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 4:42 pm
Bill Foster, the St. Pete mayoral candidate with the strongest “get-tough-on-crime” stance, has picked up his second police office union endorsement. The Fraternal Order of Police Pinellas Lodge 43 joins an earlier nod from the Sun Coast Police Benevolent Association.
In a statement, Foster said:
“Knowing full well that public safety is the number one issue of my fellow citizens, I am honored to have the support of our brave men and women in local law enforcement. These are the same people that we entrust our safety to, and I am grateful that they recognize my qualities and vision as the most sensible and effective candidate to reduce crime in our city.”
That makes a clean sweep of rank-and-file cops for Foster. As for the rest of the candidates, Deveron Gibbons recently was pictured with some top SPPD brass who are supporting him. Despite his sketchy driving record.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 3:42 pm
‘Memba when Charlie Crist went to Europe last year? Orlando Sentinel columnist Beth Kassab (a former student of mine at UF years ago) takes the opportunity of the 1-year anniversary of the hobnobbing journey to see what exactly Crist accomplished.
Answer: not much.
The big news out of the trip heralded in a news release from the Governor’s Office last year – and the only point Crist mentioned to me when I asked him last week about results of his travels – was that Spanish solar energy company Renovalia would consider building a Florida plant.
Renovalia and Tampa-based Seminole Electric Cooperative signed an agreement to discuss that possibility.
Today those discussions don’t appear to have gone very far.
The formal agreement expired in December, and the two companies didn’t bother to extend it, though talks are still “ongoing,” said Seminole Electric spokeswoman Michele Collet Kriz.
And this man wants to be our next US senator? Can you say, junket??
A group comprising mostly Republicans, along with some influential Democrats, had tried to attach the gun amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, a must-pass piece of legislation. But the provision got only 58 votes, two short of the 6o votes needed for passage under Senate rules.
Two Republicans, Senators Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and George V. Voinovich of Ohio, joined with 37 Democrats to reject the amendment, which was bitterly opposed by a number of big-city mayors, including Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. “Lives have been saved with the defeat of this amendment,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, a leading opponent of the amendment, said in a statement. “The passage of this amendment would have done more to threaten the safety of New Yorkers than anything since the repeal of the assault weapons ban.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 10:05 am
From Media General, which owns TBO.com, the Tampa Tribune and News Channel 8 in this market:
RICHMOND, Va., July 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Media General, Inc. (NYSE: MEG – News) today reported net income for the second quarter of 2009 of $20.6 million, or 90 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $532.2 million in the 2008 period, which included a non-cash, after-tax impairment charge of $532.1 million. The current quarter included a $7.1 million after-tax gain on the sale of a CW television station in Jacksonville, Fla., a $3.6 million tax benefit that resulted from a favorable determination concerning a state tax issue, and $7.5 million of tax benefits attributable to the company’s first-half results from continuing operations. Excluding severance expense from both quarters, and last year’s impairment charge, income from continuing operations before taxes was $3.8 million in 2009’s second quarter compared with $2.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
“A 23-percent decrease in total operating costs year-over-year was a major contributor to the company’s improved operating results, helping to offset a 20 percent revenue decline. Actions driving the lower expenses included reductions in force across the company, a furlough program, a suspension of matching in the company’s 401(k) plan in 2009, and the final freeze of the company’s pension plan effective May 31, 2009. Service accruals ceased in the partial freeze of the plan in 2006 and now future salary increases do not affect retirement benefits. Media General has implemented many difficult but necessary expense reductions that strengthen our ability to weather the deep recession and recognize the reduced revenue streams available in our business. As a result, we are in a stronger position to take advantage of an economic recovery,” said Marshall N. Morton, president and chief executive officer.
“Our aggressive cost elimination actions were particularly evident in our Publishing segment, which generated a $12 million profit in the current quarter compared with $6.8 million in the prior-year. Publishing revenues declined 20.3 percent in the second quarter, about the same as the first quarter. We saw the rate of Classified advertising declines abate somewhat in the second quarter compared to the first quarter of 2009, mostly in the automotive category, and particularly in our Florida, Virginia and Alabama markets. The decline in Retail advertising in the current period was also less severe than in the first quarter of 2009.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 8:12 am
Michael Miner, the media writer at our sister Chicago Reader, has a good piece with Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason in which the once-and-possible-future owner of the online media and alternative weekly newspaper chain talks about how he plans to win a bankruptcy court equity auction to maintain control of the company.
The difficulty is that the company bidding against him, Atalaya Capital Management, could have deeper pockets. Atalaya loaned Creative Loafing $30 million in 2007 to finance the purchase of the Reader and Washington City Paper and is now owed in the area of $31 million.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 5:30 am
Thanks to a little internal housecleaning at Creative Loafing (I mean that literally, not in the figurative sense of firing folks), a copy of “President Obama’s 500 Promises Deck” showed up on my desk this week. The card deck — not quite a game — is a partnership between the St. Petersburg Times‘ Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact and U.S. Game Systems Inc.
The Deck features 500 campaign promises that Barack Obama made during his campaign and that PolitiFact is tracking after the president said, “I want you to hold me accountable.”
It has been on the market for several months, but it’s not tearing up the sales registers of America.
“I think it had a little bit of a problem finding its niche,” said Lynn Araujo, communications director for US Games Systems.
The cards don’t have a partisan slant; they merely recite one of the many campaign promises that candidate Obama made and invite card owners to go to PolitiFact’s online site to see an update on what progress President Obama has made on each pledge. They look like this:
But while that is pretty nonpartisan, apparently would-be buyers don’t see it that way.
Census figures released Monday show that of the 579,000 new voters who participated in Florida last year, nearly all were either Hispanic or black. Turnout among young voters increased from 39 percent in 2004 to 49 percent last year.
Young Hispanics and blacks helped boost the state’s voter rolls by 10 percent and lowered the average age among voters by one full year, to 50, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis.
Meanwhile, turnout among white voters remained stagnant last year while some of the state’s oldest voters stayed home: Turnout among voters 75 and older dropped from 72 percent in 2004 to 69 percent in 2008.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 21, 2009, at 6:44 am
The landmark US Sugar-Everglades deal fashioned by Gov. Charlie Crist – limping toward the finish line, a fraction of its once grand scale – could have received a shot in the arm this week with three new appointees to the South Florida Water Management District.
Crist appointed three new members to the district board that oversees and approves the deal to purchase more than 78,000 acres of US Sugar property and eventually take them out of farming production as a means of lowering pollutant runoff into the Everglades.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 20, 2009, at 1:29 pm
It’s Gov. X, of course!
At least, that is what the Rush & Molloy gossip column in the New York Daily News is calling him. The paper on Sunday reveals that a prostitute hired by former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer now says he was not her only gubernatorial fuck buddy. There was (as they say) another, an out-of-state date for the “high-priced escort:”
[Annie, the prostitute's pseudonym] contends that, in the spring of 2006, [madam Kirstin] Davis’ agency booked her for an out-of-state date with a man identified as “Michael.”
“He picked me up in an Italian sports car,” says Annie. “He was in his 30s, handsome enough to be an actor, an impeccable dresser. I wouldn’t think he’d have a problem getting girls.
“We went to a restaurant where the governor was dining at another table with two or three other men. Michael said the governor was a client of his. He introduced me to him. I thought it was odd that he’d introduce someone he’d hired, but the governor was very gracious. It was a brief meeting. Later, Michael and I went to an apartment our agency kept. We had sex.
“A couple of days later, Michael booked another appointment. He was supposed to come to the same apartment. I buzzed him in. When I opened the door, it wasn’t Michael. It was the governor. He was smiling. I knew what was happening. I was okay with it.
“He was a very standard client. He didn’t take the full hour. There was no exchange of money. Michael handled the payment.
Gov. X’s press ops have denied the allegation, but you know it must be true, because Annie’s madam Kristin Davis vouched for the story, and this is Kristin’s picture from the Daily News:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 20, 2009, at 1:00 pm
Jeff Kottkamp took his whacks for misusing the state airplane earlier this year, so it will be interesting to see how (if??) the public reacts to his announcement that he wants to be the GOP nominee for attorney general in 2010.
Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp filed paperwork today to run for attorney general in 2010, even as an ethics complaint over his use of state planes remains unresolved.
Kottkamp, a trial attorney who has served as Florida’s second-in-command since January 2007, told reporters that the attorney general job is the “culmination of a lot of the experiences I’ve had in my life, it’s something that I feel passionate about.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 20, 2009, at 10:49 am
My guest co-host for this week’s HoCast is Seth Nelson, a Tampa lawyer who is running for the Tampa City Council in 2011 (for Linda Saul-Sena’s citywide seat; she is term-limited).
He is a former law clerk on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, so we look at how Sonia Sotomayor did in explaining her statement about policy being made at the appellate court level. Plus, we discuss Walter Cronkite’s death and how it shows what is wrong with today’s news media and ask ourselves whether Barack Obama’s health care reform effort is in trouble.
And between all those headlines, Seth talks about why he’s running for the Council and what his top priorities are.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 18, 2009, at 6:30 am
I’m starting a new Saturday feature to wrap up news and blog posts you might have missed during your busy week. Here’s a look at the Week in Review:
New book blasts sportswriters for ‘hysteria’ regarding steroids – Mitch Perry. The WMNF anchor writes about a new book that lays the blame for steroid-mania at the foot of writers who aren’t aggressive. “The writers, the supposed experts, watched over the last 20-30 years as steroids became a very, very common substance. And they didn’t see it.”
POTUS and the Pope — Peter Schweitzer. Our contributors asks: if the US bishops are sideways with Barack Obama over his abortion stance, why is the pope so warmly receiving him?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 17, 2009, at 12:50 pm
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has a web-only ad out hitting Sarah Palin and Charlie Crist, among other Republicans, for “quitting” on their jobs.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 17, 2009, at 6:58 am
Some bad news for those County Commissioner Jim Norman haters out there: the champion of Championship Park has landed a near knockout blow (at least in terms of fundraising help) from three top GOP senators in his bid to get a promotion to the Florida Senate.
Three Republican state senate leaders, including the future senate president, have taken sides with Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman over state Rep. Kevin Ambler in the Republican primary for a Tampa Senate seat.
Norman and Ambler are running for the District 12 seat now held by Victor Crist, R-Tampa, who faces a term limit next year.
Norman got the endorsements of Sens. Mike Haridopolos of Merritt Island, who will be Senate president after the 2010 election; JD Alexander of Lake Wales, a key member of the Senate leadership team; and Don Gaetz of Niceville.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 16, 2009, at 2:53 pm
From my cover story in this week’s print edition of Creative Loafing:
I got an e-mail a few weeks back from the good people at the Greater Pinellas Democratic Club. I had agreed to speak at their monthly meeting in July and they wanted to know what my topic would be.
Without thinking, I said, “Fixing Tampa Bay Politics.”
Now I’ve been known to offer my fix-it advice to Tampa before: See CL’s Fix It Now series from 2008 for my thoughts (rants?) on growth, sprawl, transportation and diversity issues.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 16, 2009, at 1:55 pm
David Simanoff was a reporter at the Tampa Tribune for a decade before leaving just as massive layoffs and contraction began at the daily newspaper. He was pretty high profile and a business writer, showing up on News Channel 8 segments often. He is also a gay man.
Now, on his blog, Daily Dave 3.0, he writes about his mixed feelings about whether to join yesterday’s protest of his former employer, Media General, for broadcasting the anti-gay Speechless: Silencing Christians hour-long paid television show on the same evening as St. Pete Pride.
He ultimately decided not to join the Red Flag Rally, but most interesting are his recollections about how his former employer treated GLBT issues. Here’s what he wrote, using the acronym MFE for “my former employer”:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 16, 2009, at 1:24 pm
Dan Ruth, unceremoniously dumped from 200 S. Parker St. earlier this year, is apparently not content with his every-Friday column in the rival St. Petersburg Times; he has started his own blog.
It has taken a while for someone who began in the newspaper business back in the lead type days to come around to the vast world of the emerging new technologies, but with the help and encouragement of friends, here it is – the Ruthington Post blog of Daniel Ruth.
I’m still learning how to work with this form, so please bear with me. I will probably spend the next few days playing around and experimenting. But in the future I hope to be posting a daily blog that will deal with all manner of issues, from politics, to popular culture to who knows what?
Stay tuned. Let’s see what the future holds.
Welcome to the blogosphere and its world of quality journalism, Dan.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 16, 2009, at 11:04 am
This week’s Straight Dope column gets to the heart of a great throwback tech issue: the fear that the start of the 21st Century (Y2K) would see computer chaos:
What’s the final word about Y2K? We were told this was a serious problem, and that huge dollars and man-hours were needed to head off trouble. Why didn’t the sky fall, as predicted? Were the dollars spent before January 1, 2000, well spent or not? The date change seemed seamless to a layman. Was this because we headed off most of the trouble before it happened, or because it wasn’t as serious as predicted?–Paul Wheeler
One may inquire: Why am I answering this now? Because the question keeps coming in, and at some point you have to ask, if I don’t take it on, who will? So here’s the best answer you’re likely to get: 1. While the true extent of Y2K issues will never be known, what we do know suggests the problem was wildly exaggerated. In retrospect, it would have been smarter to focus resources on a few truly high-risk areas, wait till 1/1/2000 for everything else, and fix what broke. Looked at in that light, the money spent on remediation, estimated at between $100 billion and $600 billion, was mostly wasted. 2. That’s hindsight talking. To put things in perspective (I realize the argument cuts both ways) many now say the world as we know it is going to end due to global warming. You think the smart choice is to say: relax?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 15, 2009, at 8:53 pm
Gays and straights alike carried red flags (a comment on a Media General exec who said the station viewed Speechless: Silencing Christians and “it didn’t raise any red flags”) and signs relabeling the NBC affiliate in Tampa Bay as News Channel H8 on Wednesday afternoon. More than 100 protesters gathered along Kennedy Boulevard in front of the station’s News Center to draw attention to the hate program that was aired for what they believe was $35,000 paid by a Christian group.
In a sign of political courage, Tampa City Councilman John Dingfelder attended the rally and said of News Channel 8’s decision,”This is not who Tampa is. This type of hate is just not acceptable in our community.” Dingfelder is running for a County Commission seat, a demographic that is much more to the right than the city of Tampa where he has served two terms.
Watch CL video coverage of the rally after the jump.
Hillsborough County commissioners will discuss dropping conservative activist Ralph Hughes’ name from the county’s Moral Courage Award on Wednesday.
Commissioner Rose Ferlita put the controversial issue on the agenda for discussion weeks after the federal government said Hughes died owing $69 million in unpaid taxes.
Ferlita told the Tribune on Tuesday that Hughes’ son Shea has sent a letter to the commissioners asking that his father’s name be removed from the award.
UPDATE: County commissioners did just that. The vote this morning was unanimous.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 15, 2009, at 9:57 am
Organizers of today’s 5:30 pm protest at Media General-owned News Channel 8 in downtown Tampa have released two logos they are putting on signs and T-shirts for the event, playing on the station’s logo and the word “hate” that represents the station’s airing of the anti-gay Speechless Christian infomercial on Gay Pride day.
Here they are:
CL will be staffing the protest and bring you coverage on Twitter and video we’ll post on the blog.
I have never seen Florida’s economy and shortcomings so well explained and so depressing and dire. Here are the report’s conclusion:
Key indicators of the health of Florida’s economy point to a state in trouble.
Of particular concern for the future will be the need to direct spending to the most important priorities of the state, such as investments in education that will strengthen the capacity of Florida residents to prosper in a different kind of economy, with the goal of producing higher-paid jobs. The traditional drivers of economic growth in Florida have weakened and in some cases there is no prospect for change in the near future. Population growth is not expected to match the historic post-World War II rate, providing less demand for new homes and other construction – demand that spurs economic activity. The huge supply of existing houses for sale will further depress construction and economic activity which, in turn, will dampen tax revenue collected by the state. As the recession wanes, tourism spending will begin to recover, and so will jobs in that sector of the economy. But most of those are of the low-wage service variety — not the kind of higher-wage occupations around which to build a vibrant economy.
Creating an economy with better jobs in the future will be made more difficult against the backdrop of state funding in many areas that has long been inadequate and now is being further cut as a national recession drives down the tax revenues needed to pay for government services.
Still not at panic attack stage yet? Try these bullet points:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 14, 2009, at 12:01 pm
Earl Lennard, right, with Commissioner Ken Hagan earlier this year after winning the 2009 Hillsborough Good Government Award. Credit: Hillsboroughcounty.org
It is not a worst-case scenario for voters or Democrats who hoped that Gov. Charlie Crist would appoint a good adminstrator (and Democrat) to replace Phyllis Busansky, who passed away suddenly a few weeks ago. The choice of Earl Lennard is not wildly ideological, as he is not a fire-breathing conservative, nor especially partisan, as Lennard has been both a Democrat and Republican (or at least considered running as both/either for the State Senate in 2006, a race he entered as a Republican and later dropped out of) and spent much of his public life as an appointed nonpartisan leader.
But it is not, as many had hoped, the choice of Democrat Craig Latimer, who was Busansky’s chief of staff and the driving force behind the planned changes at the office.
Lennard makes sense in terms of a picking a relatively nonpartisan administrator who has run a large organization and who understands how to gear up for really big work days (first day of school vs. Election day). Some may grouse about it, and there are Lennard haters out there, but Crist surprised me with this pick. I expected something that would please conservatives more.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 14, 2009, at 11:50 am
The Big Irony for Tuesday was watching the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, one Jefferson B. Sessions III of Alabama, grill US Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over her statements about the judiciary and race. (He ascended to the top GOP slot on the committee when Arlen Specter switched parties.) Sessions cited what he termed a history of statements that show she would not apply the rule of law but instead use her life experiences and racial politics to make decisions on the high court.
Sessions himself was the target of a similar grilling in 1986, when he was a nominee to the federal district court, according to this account in the conservative Black Political Thought/Hinterland Gazette:
Twenty-three years ago he was engaged in the fight of his life. He was appointed a U.S. attorney in Alabama in 1981 and was nominated to become a U.S. District judge by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. J. Gerald Hebert, a career Justice Department lawyer, testified that Sessions had once called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” He said that they “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” He sealed his own fate by saying such groups could be construed as “un-American” when “they involve themselves in promoting un-American positions” in foreign policy. He is said to have made remarks that he thought the Ku Klux Klan wasn’t so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana. He said these comments were made in jest. Right.
Sessions faced a heated round of questioning from Sen. Edward Kennedy, who called him “a throwback to a shameful era,” and our current Vice President, Joe Biden. How ironic. The committee held four hearings during one of which Sessions pleaded that “I am not a racist.” Hebert also testified that Sessions had called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases. His nomination failed in committee on a 10 to 8 vote, with Specter joining the nominee’s original patron, Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) in dooming the nomination. In 1994, Sessions won a state attorney general’s race, and then won election to the Senate in 1996 after Heflin retired.
Talk about somebody who (it would seem) would be prejudiced against a process or person, having gone through what must have been a painful rejection by Democrats decades ago.
The Washington Post has a full transcript of the Sessions-Sotomayor interrogation.
Screening information: Outrage is screening exactly once, Wed., July 15 at 7 p.m. at Tampa Pitcher Show, 14416 N. Dale Mabry, Tampa, 813-963-0578. The film carries no MPAA rating.
If there’s a central message to Kirby Dick’s Outrage, it’s that living life denying one’s sexual orientation is an awful existence. Not only is the closeted person lying to their family and friends — often at great emotional cost to everyone involved — they are lying to themselves. There’s a lot of self-hatred hanging in the closet, and it’s an old saw that the most homophobic folks are the most in denial. Still, a person’s choice to keep their preference private is their own. But what about politicians living in the closet who work to advance anti-gay-rights legislation? Don’t they deserve to be exposed? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 14, 2009, at 8:22 am
The first two minutes are a little melodramatic and unnecessary, but this is a must-watch video to see the way that the Right tried to demonize Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, a reminder of the political demagoguery being exercised by the leading media faces of the Republican Party.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 14, 2009, at 7:31 am
I’m fascinated by John Warren, a longshot and last-minute candidate in the St. Petersburg mayoral race. He has a long history in the city as a preservationist, history advocate, real estate investor and — currently — the owner of Savannah’s Cafe on Central Avenue. Yes, he’s made rookie mistakes at a recent forum and in his campaign finances. But that’s not important. What is important is his message about learning from the past and looking at the city’s problems (especially those downtown) as all linked. He would restart the city’s visioning process to work on solutions in the aggregate.
Listening to Warren makes you think outside the box about the problems in St. Petersburg. Sure, as the Times has pointed out, he’s long on pointing out the problems and short on pat “solutions.” But his solution is the processes he advocates, the transparency and inclusion and comprehensiveness, and he bring an entrepreneurial bent and preservationist’s soul to the campaign, and that is refreshing.
I also asked him about the problem of aggressive panhandling. He had this to say:
Well, we do have an ordinance that serves a portion of downtown and it’s to discourage aggressive panhandling. But I think for a lot of the merchants who are down there right now, aggressive can be anybody who is sitting in front of their business. The presence of an unbathed individual sitting right at their front door is as aggressive and deters as much business as somebody that’s actually going up with a stick and asking you for a dollar.
CL: But that’s not something that’s drawing police action.
They are not. What really ought to be recognized is that downtown sidewalks and our whole street grid system is intended to allow for society to move, to flow, and your sidewalks downtown originally were owned by the property owners, and those rights were given up so that commerce could be conducted. Commerce is important for a strong tax base. Unless the community has a source of revenue, there is no way they can take care of the destitute. It’s important, No. 1, for us to recognize that the homeless, … is completely different from the career panhandler or the individual who has chosen not to live in a shelter or live in a home. And that distinction needs to be recognized. A lot of downtown business people are very charitable. They’d like to be able to help.
It makes business very difficult if you have the career panhandler who is competing and threatening the livelihood of those businesses whose sales and taxes are going to be providing for the other individual who genuinely has that need.
So, how do you balance that? One of the things that has been considered in other communities is extending to the merchant, or property owner, a bit more control. you’re not giving the land back to them, because you can’t, but assigning back to them some responsibilty for maintaining the property between the curb and their doors.
CL: So they would have the ability to say you’re trespassing on their area.
Exactly. It’s a delicate issue. There still are a lot of people who feel that any piece of property in front of business out to the curb belongs to the public, it’s a public right of way, without recognizing that public right of way was intended for infrastructure elements that are under the surface…
CL: And not as a living room…
It’s not somebody’s bedroom or bathroom.
Listen to the full interview with John Warren after the jump.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 13, 2009, at 1:54 pm
Rumproast.com put together this compilation of all of soon-to-be-ex Gov. Sarah Palin’s sighs, heavy breathing and other respiratory gasps during her crazy-sounding resignation newser. None are repeated and they are in their original order:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 13, 2009, at 1:38 pm
And it will be on Aug. 25, during a hearing in downtown Tampa that will start at 10 a.m. Federal Bankruptcy Judge Caryl E. Delano today approved a disclosure statement for Creative Loafing’s reorganization plan after a week of intensive talks between the chain’s owners, in the form of company CEO Ben Eason, and its largest creditor, Atalaya Capital Management LP.
Atalaya is the investment fund that was owed $31 million from financing CL’s 2007 pay-down of debt and purchase of the Chicago Reader and Washington City Paper. As part of the negotiations, Atalaya has agreed to write-down its promissory note to $12 million, which would be repaid at 8 percent interest-only for five years and balloon due at that point.
According to the terms of the reorganization plan and promises made in court today, all CL creditors would be paid in full with two exceptions: Atalaya and BIA Digital Partners, which provided additional lending in the 2007 deals. BIA is now part of an Eason-led equity group that will bid for ownership against Atalaya.
Monday’s hearing found the normally adversarial Atalaya and CL relationship thawed to some degree.
“We are on board and supportive of moving forward under this process,” Atalaya’s lawyer, Tyler Brown, told the judge via telephone during the noon hearing. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 13, 2009, at 8:39 am
The season of slime starts early, and isn’t even that original, to tell you the truth. Haven’t we seen these same “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” parody attack ads in every elections since at least 2004? Didn’t we see similar ads trotted out against Vern Buchanan two years ago?
Either way, the shadowy 527 group Don’t Bank on Sink has released an Internet ad mocking CFO and governor candidate Alex Sink’s use of state airplanes.
Watch the entire ad and learn more about who’s behind the group after the jump.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 13, 2009, at 8:13 am
Scott Wagman gets some help in his attempt to the be the next mayor of St. Petersburg, and two council candidates — incumbent Karl Nurse, long known for his conservation efforts, and newcomer Steve Kornell — also get the nod from St. Pete Sierra Club, which endorsed in just three municipal races.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 10, 2009, at 6:18 am
Applicants Sandy Murman, left, and Victor Crist.
As Charlie Crist looks to appoint an interim replacement for the late Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Phyllis Busansky, the governor has trimmed a list of 22 applicants to six people — four Republicans, two Democrats — who will get job interviews.
The list includes some frontrunners for the position — Republicans state Sen. Victor Crist (no relation to Charlie) and former state House member Sandy Murman (full disclosure: both are past clients of my former political consulting firm). Others who will get some interview time with the gov and/or his staff are Republicans Chris Hart, a former Hillsborough County commissioner, and Earl Lennard, former superintendent of Hillsborough County Schools; and Democrats Craig Latimer, a former high-ranking Sheriff’s Office official and Busansky’s No. 2 in the current office, and Bob “Coach” Henriquez, a high school football coach, teacher, state bureaucrat and former state House member.
As I wrote in our print edition this week, I expect Gov. Crist to have to appoint a Republican, as he is embroiled in a primary election for the U.S. Senate nomination in 2010. If there is any good news for Latimer, a favorite among those who mourn the loss of Busansky, it is yesterday’s fundraising ass-whupping that Crist put on his challenger, Marco Rubio, that will take some pressure off Crist’s need to appoint a conservative Republican.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 9, 2009, at 2:48 pm
Here’s a great opportunity for students in college or in the high school classes of 2010 and 2011 to get some serious civic education and training, courtesy of the Lawton Chiles Foundation: a two-day Leadership Corps Conference in Orlando, on Aug. 8-9. Download the application and read details of the conference after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 9, 2009, at 1:40 pm
Just getting back into the office today after six days off and getting caught up with stuff like this TV commercial from St. Pete mayoral candidate Deveron GIbbons. Yes, of course Charlie Crist is in the ad. As are Deveron’s parents. And footage of Deveron chatting with two old white ladies, evidence for nervous white St. Pete voters that it is all right to support a black candidate.
he Florida Supreme Court has just approved the latest financial impact statement from Hometown Democracy petitioners, after rejecting their previous two submissions.
The high court has already approved the HD ballot question for the 2010 statewide ballot; the proposal would require voters to approve local land use plans. But without a valid financial impact statement, the question would have appeared with a notation indicating that no such information was available, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
The court rejected HD’s prior two impact statements on grounds that they were misleading and/or vague. The new one, according to a court opinion released today, is “clear, unambiguous, consists of no more than seventy-five words, and is limited to address the estimated increase or decrease in any revenues or costs to the state or local governments,” and therefore passes legal muster.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 9, 2009, at 9:25 am
Why do I do this to myself? I get a call from perfectly nice people at the Greater Pinellas Democratic Club asking me to speak at one of their meetings (tonight at 6:30, to be precise) and I agree and then I am asked what topic, and I choose to speak on “Fixing Tampa Bay Politics.”
I should have opted for “Getting the Palestinians and Jews Together for Middle East Peace” instead. Tampa Bay politics are hopelessly damaged, so where do I even start?
You’ll have to attend to hear. And no, one of my suggestions will NOT be a plea for kumbaya-like bipartisanship or the like.
The social hour starts at 6 pm (let’s hope for the Club’s sake and listeners’ sakes that they’ve stocked a lot of vodka for me) and the meeting lasts until about 8 pm. It is at Banquet Masters in Pinellas Park, 8100 Park Boulevard. For reservations, call 727-360-3971.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 30, 2009, at 12:39 pm
His candidacy has been called “quixotic” as he flies into the face of a Republican challenger who likely will be Charlie Crist, but Kendrick Meek is strongly confident in his ability to force Floridians to examine the real record of their favorite, white-haired governor.
Meek is a rising star in the Democratic Party, finding himself with a seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee after just four terms in office. Helps to have a progressive voting record and agenda. It probably also doesn’t hurt when your mom served on the House Appropriations Committee with (now Speaker) Nancy Pelosi, as Congresswoman Carrie Meek did.
He’s largely untested (he won his seat in Congress unopposed after his mother retired so close to the qualifying deadline that nobody could mount a real challenge to her son) but he’s shown great energy and won a good deal of the hearts and minds in the Florida Democratic Party, so much so that a few major challengers have stepped aside rather than force an expensive primary race with him.
Meek was in Tampa today and stopped by the Creative Loafing offices. We talked about how to pay for health care reform, whether the stimulus is working, his role in forcing smaller class sizes in public schools and his famous 2000 showdown with then-Gov. Jeb Bush over the dismantling of affirmative action in the state, which resulted in a 26-hour sit-in at the lobby of the Governor’s Office after Bush refused to meet with him and another lawmaker.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 29, 2009, at 1:57 pm
UPDATE: We have 10 candidates for mayor, as Alex Haak didn’t qualify. They are Deveron Gibbons, Kathleen Ford, Bill Foster, Scott Wagman, Larry Williams, Jamie Bennett, John Warren, Richard Eldridge, Ed Helm and Paul Congemi. The primary election to determine the two finalists is Sept. 1.
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Today is the last day to file all the necessary paperwork to run for St. Petersburg mayor or city council, a day called Qualifying Day. We’ll know who is in and who is out by 5 pm.
A last-minute entry into the field, however, is entrepreneur, preservationist and restaurateur John Warren, 59, who owns Savannah’s Cafe on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg.
Warren, who has been frustrated by the city’s inability to help small businesses and truly grow its downtown in a sensible fashion, told supporters in an e-mail that he knows he is getting in late but doesn’t hear the issues he thinks ought to be disucssed.
“I don’t believe current candidates are addressing the issues that need to be discussed, nor do I feel they have the vision or experiences to deal with today’s challenges. Apparently many of you agree,” Warren wrote.
He also hints that he will get rid of controversial police Chief Chuck Harmon if the SPPD can’t start battling crime more effectively.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 29, 2009, at 1:41 pm
From the there’s-no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity-(or-polling) files comes this pitch to Scott Wagman supporters to pony up some bucks despite a pretty rotten showing in a recent St. Petersburg Times poll that placed Wagman tied for fourth, behind Kathleen Ford, Bill Foster and Deveron Gibbons and tied with Larry Williams.
For those not studied in the art of politics, this is called spin.
But before the Wagman haters chime in, let’s give some context to the poll. More than 60 percent of the voters surveyed said they didn’t have a preference yet, meaning that this is a wide open race and the poll was only an indication of a lack of voter engagement and existing name recognition, not a legit look at who will finish in what order. I don’t say this to defend Wagman’s poor showing; but the truth is not all of the campaigns have spent little or nothing in tems of direct voter contact (direct mail, television ads, radio ads, robo-phone calls, etc.) that is what gets voters ready to make decisions. At best, some of the campaigns have been walking door to door and using some new media advertising on Facebook and the like. That’s not enough to drive serious interest to an off-election year municipal election.
But Wagman felt his placement in the poll could be spun to his advantage with supporters and sent them this e-mail today: Read the rest of this entry »
Rhodes, 50, was supposed to be tried today on charges tied to his Jan. 16 arrest. But the trial was continued until Wednesday because his attorney was awaiting transcripts from a previous hearing.
Now, instead of going to trial, Rhodes will plead no contest on Wednesday to a misdemeanor obstruction charge, defense attorney Jeff Brown said.
As part of the plea deal, Rhodes will serve 50 hours of community service. Adjudication will be withheld, meaning he will not have a conviction on his record.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 29, 2009, at 10:22 am
Reporters are gathering at the Hillsborough Medical Examiner’s Office for a noon newser at which a preliminary report into the death of famed TV pitchman Billy Mays is set to be released. We’ll pass along coverage on Twitter (follow @poho) and over at the Daily Loaf blog.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 29, 2009, at 9:45 am
A stunning admission, if completely unsurprising to anybody who has run campaigns in any African-American community in this state: The way to get coverage in black-owned media is to pay for it.
That was the direct message to Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, from a group of African-American media execs over the weekend:
“At the end of the day, it’s about money. If you buy advertising, you’re more likely to get coverage,” said Johnny Hunter, president of the Florida Association of Black Owned Media and publisher of Sarasota’s Tempo News.
That according to coverage of the meeting in the Orlando Sentinel. Greer’s response?
Greer promised that the party would stop ignoring black media. He said that mainstream newspapers such as the Orlando Sentinel, Tampa Tribune and Tallahassee Democrat cover the party’s issues regardless of whether they advertise, but the party chairman nevertheless seemed willing to accept the quid-pro-quo arrangement.
“When I hear that when we advertise, the paper will be more likely to disseminate Republican issues, am I hearing right?” Greer asked. “I don’t understand the legitimacy of disseminating information and having a tie-in to revenue — but I get it.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 28, 2009, at 7:17 pm
Cross-posted from The Daily Loaf blog
By Denis Baldwin Daily Loaf contributor
Last week, I attended the Rhino Political Action Committee’s political mixer at NOVA. Like the first event I attended, local mayor candidates and other politicos met with the common man, answering questions and trying to convince us that they were the right person for the job.
Unlike the first one I attended, the candidates actually seemed to have an agenda now. Many spoke on the importance of keeping our children in programs to avoid gangs. Others spoke of keeping the streets clean, both of garbage and of drug users and prostitutes. Still others pushed issues involving the St Pete Pier and its ongoing subsidy by taxpayers. It seems that everyone was making good points, making this a valuable (if somewhat overwhelming ordeal).
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 27, 2009, at 6:00 am
By Heidi Lux Daily Loaf contributor
After my brief, stolen moment with Governor C. at the charity fashion show, my life returned to its usual mundane routine. I was a nobody. Why would C. even remember me?
So when I answered my cell phone after class Monday afternoon, I was astonished to find myself on the line with C.’s assistant. Apparently, the Governor had been impressed by me and wished to meet me under better circumstances, and would I be available Friday night? I would. I was instructed not to tell anyone the Governor and I would be meeting, nor was I told where the meeting would take place.
The week passed by me as I sat through my USF classes, unable to concentrate, my entire attention on C. What should I wear? Where would we meet? Was it a date? But the biggest question I had was, why me?
Finally at eight o’clock on Friday night, I stood on the stoop of my apartment building, in a black dress pilfered from my older and more fashionable sister Fate’s closet, and held my breath in anticipation.
Suddenly, a bright light illuminated the scene, accompanied by a loud noise and gusting wind. I didn’t know what to secure first, my hair or my skirt. So I halfheartedly tried to catch both while managing to hold neither, as a shiny, black helicopter descended in front of me. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 26, 2009, at 4:44 pm
Of the Big Six candidates for St. Petersburg mayor (Jamie Bennett, Kathleen Ford, Bill Foster, Deveron Gibbons, Scott Wagman and Larry Williams), the only one that I have not had a chance to have in the CL Studio was Williams — until now. The former St. Pete city councilman came in recently to tape his half-hour on the HoCast, talking about how to battle the city’s crime problems and whether he is behind the eight ball because he got into the race late.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 26, 2009, at 3:20 pm
Call it Phyllis Math: a gathering of Phyllis Busansky’s “five closest friends” numbered nearly 1,000 at her funeral at Temple Schaarai Zedek in Tampa on this dark, rainy Friday morning. It was a running joke throughout the tributes to the late Hillsborough County supervisor of elections, how Busansky had told so many people that they were one of her three or five or seven closest friends.
For some, that would be duplicitous; Busansky, however, meant it and was close friends with just about everybody she met, forging an instant connection, building communities and circles of influence, her longtime friend Jeannie McGuire told the gathered mourners. McGuire had one of my favorite lines of the funeral, talking about Busansky’s sense of fashion as not quite classic but “classic — plus dramatic.”
There were more laughs than tears.
Tampa Tribune columnist Steve Otto, who long held a valued spot on Busansky’s speed dial and in heart, called his politician-friend “a tornado with hair.” Busansky’s daughter, Rebecca, read a 2005 e-mail that came to Busansky’s husband, Sheldon, from a woman that Phyllis had helped in the 1960s get into a college. The woman was hoping that Sheldon was related to Phyllis so he could pass along her thanks.
Most touching was the remembrance of her son, Alex, who said he was happy to have had 47 years with his mother. “I am my mother’s son,” he told the crowd, which flowed over into a separate room and outside, where monitors were set up. “If you’ve met her, you’ve met me.”
The room was full of politicians and elected officials, from Mayor Pam Iorio to the county commission, city council and constitutional officers — including Gov. Charlie Crist. Even the man that Busansky vanquished in the 2008 elections, former Elections Chief Buddy Johnson, attended, making for an uncomfortable moment when Rabbi Richard Birnholz said he had endorsed Phyllis in that election because it was the community’s only hope to clean up a hopelessly bungled office. Johnson later shook hands with people in the parking lot.
For progressives, it was a trip down memory lane, a viewing of some of the people who helped Tampa and Hillsborough County make great strides during an eight-year period, from 1988 to 1996, when social conservatives began their destructive takeover of county government and the rise of suburban development gave them the numbers to consistently beat urban progressives at the ballot box. Busansky’s quarterbacking of the county’s landmark indigent health care program, part fiscal sense-part social justice, that was a highlight of that era.
