Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 26, 2009, at 1:24 pm
Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad name for a law firm, “Welcome to Niemann, Sullivan, Leto & Schweitzer, how may I direct your call?” But back to the job at hand: I have four new contributors to announce. I am excited about the knowledge and qualities they bring to PoHo, including some indepth writing on historic preservation (Leto) and the intersection of religion and public policy (Schweitzer).
Here are their bios, after the jump. I will have some more to announce by the end of this week:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 26, 2009, at 10:39 am
Dan Waite e-mailed me to tip me off to his first effort to make and post a political video, and it is a good one, explaining how Senate Bill 360 that is on Gov. Charlie Crist’s desk is a bad one.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 26, 2009, at 10:19 am
Here’s a quick look at how the media — professional and otherwise — are treating this morning’s announcement of District Court of Appeal Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first Latina to be nominated to the highest court in the land.
[UPDATE: after the jump, I've added the Libertarian Party's blistering assessment of Sotomayor as an activist judge.]
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 26, 2009, at 6:46 am
I was on Rob Lorei’s Florida This Week last Friday and was asked to lead off discussion of Florida’s chances of getting high-speed rail. I was taken by surprise, because I had studied Barack Obama’s stimulus plan extensively, especially its engineering aspects, for a freelance piece I did for the UF Engineering College alumni magazine and didn’t remember any money being set aside for high-speed rail in Florida.
It turns out that even Obama himself mentioned Florida as a possible recipient in a recent speech. But I’m guessing that it’s more of a hope than a reality, and a South Florida Sun-Sentinel story lays out the problems with Florida being competitive for some of $8 billion set aside in stimulus dollars for a Miami-Orlando-Tampa high-speed train:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 24, 2009, at 6:00 am
Editor’s note: Weekend Rewind is a new feature of PoHo, republishing the best, longer posts about politics and public affairs from my blog and Daily Loaf as well, in case you might have missed them the first time around. Think of it as my version of a Sunday/weekend newspaper.
So it’s come to this? “Global warming” is out and “climate change” is in? We are no longer looking for a “silver bullet”, but rather seek “silver buckshot”?
Based on a recent article in the NYTimes, linguistic battles are shaping as PR firms and lobbyists look to shape the language of debate over climate-change legislation working its way through the halls of Congress. Though, navigating this new lexicon may help to improve the image of this most important social, environmental, and geo-political issue. Perhaps when renamed, “global warming” will climb from its last-place position of twenty important voter concerns (based on a recent Pew Research poll). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 23, 2009, at 6:00 am
Editor’s note: Weekend Rewind is a new feature of PoHo, republishing the best, longer posts about politics and public affairs from my blog and Daily Loaf as well, in case you might have missed them the first time around. Think of it as my version of a Sunday/weekend newspaper.
By Grant RImbey, CNU
Green Community contributor
A year ago I was doing microfilm research on local history at the John German Library in Tampa. Anyone who’s done this research knows how tedious it is; there’s no index for microfilm so to find pertinent articles one must scan each newspaper page on each microfilm roll. While doing this I was flabbergasted to discover a Tampa Tribune article from Nov. 25, 1924, that mentioned the work of the famous town planner John Nolen in connection with Tampa.
To my surprise, the City of Tampa commissioned Nolen to survey the city in 1924 in preparation for a master plan that he was to create for the city. I know a good deal about the planning and architectural history of the area but hadn’t heard that Nolen was working in our area. Tragically, Nolen created his survey but was never commissioned by the city to create his master plan for Tampa: 1924 was the height of delirium during the 1920s Florida real estate boom and the development industry of the time did not want to slow down the good times enough to allow the creation of a master plan and code to direct them. The great depression came early to Florida and by the end of 1926 the roaring 20s were over.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 22, 2009, at 9:49 am
With a h/t to Tampa Bay political consultant Gregory Wilson, here’s a contrarian view on scoring yesterday’s pseudo-debate on terror, Gitmo and national security. I agree with Congressional Quarterly’s assessment of Barack Obama on conventional political terms. It is a truism: When you’re ’splaining, you’re losing. And I believe Obama made no headway with the crazy left who wants to shutter Guantanamo immediately and just cut loose the terrorists or bring them on down to circuit court for good ol’ U.S. justice system trials.
But Obama won the day, make no mistake about it. He was historic, clear in his ethics, determined in his purpose that we can win against terror without becoming terrorists ourselves. He may have lost in terms of short-term public opinion but he wins the longer war. And that is what CQ, in its traditional wisdom, fails to grasp.
Having said that, reading the full CQ article makes ya think…
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 22, 2009, at 6:27 am
With three Tampa Bay locations, BankUnited is not most ubiquitous of Tampa Bay thrifts, but today its customers have discovered that the failing bank was seized overnight.
The federal seizure of struggling Florida thrift BankUnited FSB is expected to cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $4.9 billion, representing the second-largest hit to the FDIC’s insurance fund since the financial crisis began felling banks last year.
The costliest was last year’s seizure of California lender IndyMac Bank, on which the bank insurance fund is estimated to have lost $10.7 billion.
The Office of Thrift Supervision, a Treasury Department agency, said Thursday that BankUnited FSB reported $1.2 billion in losses last year as defaults on loans piled up. The thrift “was critically undercapitalized and in an unsafe condition to conduct business,” the agency said in a statement.
Coral Gables, Fla.-based BankUnited FSB is the 34th federally insured institution to be closed this year, and the biggest.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 21, 2009, at 6:08 am
Anybody needing a distillation of the differences between the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama on the “War on Terror” need look no further than today’s competing speeches by Dick Cheney and Obama on the subject.
President Barack Obama will attempt to regain control of a boiling debate over anti-terrorism policy with a major speech on Thursday — an address that comes on the same day that former Vice President Dick Cheney will be weighing in with his own speech on the same theme.
The dueling speeches amount to the most direct engagement so far between Obama and his conservative critics in the volatile argument over what tactics are justified in detaining and interrogating suspected enemy combatants.
The national security debate — egged on by frequent charges from Cheney that Obama is leaving the country more vulnerable to attack — is the only subject on which many Republicans believe they have been able to gain traction against a popular president and the Democratic majority that now dominate Washington.
It ought to be hilariou-scary to see Cheney defend torture and keeping Gitmo open. The key to today’s semi-debate is not whether Cheney, wildly unpopular even in his own party, wins the hearts and minds of the U.S. citizenry but whether the president can score points on the left and in the middle with his “walk a thin line” approach.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 20, 2009, at 1:00 pm
Tampa Bay’s leading freaky celeb Terry Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, has asked the judge in case brought against him and his family (including fellow reality-semi-star wife Linda Bollea who is trying to divorce him) by the family of accident victim John Graziano to ban us stinkin’ news media types from sitting in on the wonderfully delicious depositions in the case.
The motion, filed last week in civil court, claims that allowing news media or the public into the proceedings could damage the family’s right to a fair trial and create “annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense.”
Terry Bollea, who wrestled under the name Hulk Hogan, and his family are facing a multimillion dollar civil suit from the August 2007 car crash that severely injured Graziano, a family friend. Graziano was a passenger in a sports car driven by Terry and Linda Bollea’s son, Nick Bollea.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 20, 2009, at 12:26 pm
Here’s the latest tweak of our enormously popular governor, from his friends across the aisle in the Florida Democratic Party. It’s the first online ad with the “Cut and Run Crist” theme that the party has been drum-beating since Crist announced his Senatorial bid last week.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 20, 2009, at 11:00 am
2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who spurned Charlie Crist in his vice presidential selection process, has endorsed the Florida governor in Crist’s bid for the U.S. Senate in 2010. The Florida Capital Bureau reports:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 20, 2009, at 6:51 am
Continuing in our series of summer vacation videos, shot for our Summer Guide 2009 being released on newsstands today, here is Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio on her plans, or more accurately, lack of plans:
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a summer vacation planned for ‘09, I think based on your question I’m going to go home and plan one right away.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 20, 2009, at 6:22 am
Late yesterday, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio weighed in on a movement to perhaps lift her city’s lawn-sprinkler ban and water restrictions, the toughest in Tampa Bay.
In a letter to city council members, Iorio said the recent torrential rains have helped — but not enough to lift the sprinkler ban. She set a goal of a flow of 60 million gallons a day in the upper Hillsborough River before lifting the restrictions.
Going forward, the best way to decide when water restrictions should be eased is by the level of our reservoir and the rate of flow in the river. This is an approach that is scientific in nature, not subjective. Our staff indicates that when the reservoir level is at 21 feet or higher, and Hillsborough River flows exceed 60 million gallons per day at Morris Bridge, we will propose that our watering restrictions be relaxed to the Southwest Florida Water Management District Phase 4 modified level, which will allow customers to irrigate once a week on their watering days.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 19, 2009, at 10:00 am
He’s got plans this summer for vacation with his family, but the most interesting thing about speaking with St. Petersburg City Councilman Wengay Newton for our CL Summer Guide 2009 was hearing him talk about the old days, growing up in a large family that didn’t have a lot of financial resources (translation: money):
“It was eight of us with a single mom, so there wasn’t a lot of vacationing. We’d go to Busch Gardens … one or two of us, then we would come back and tell the rest how it was.”
Watch the full video of Newton and his summer vacation plans/memories after the jump.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 19, 2009, at 9:26 am
You may recall from this blog earlier in the year that the state was considering, to be quite blunt about it, selling the stretch of I-75 known as Alligator Alley (across the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp) to the highest bidder, who would pay the state upfront and then collect the tolls on it for decades to come. (Technically, it was a long-term lease, but the net effect is the same.)
The plan sucked. And now, one South Florida lawmaker tells the Fort Myers News-Press, it is dead, at least for now:
Alligator Alley will remain in the hands of the state, for now. The Florida Department of Transportation received no bids to lease the 78-mile section of Interstate 75 by Monday’s deadline.
Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, said he hopes the state’s efforts to lease the alley are over.
“This idea was ill-conceived from the very beginning. It was sped through the process with minimal public input, and it deserves to be dead and buried forever,” said Aronberg, whose bill to bar foreign companies from leasing state roads did not pass during session.
“It was a bad deal for taxpayers, a bad deal for the state of Florida and would have set a dangerous precedent.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 19, 2009, at 9:04 am
There is a lot of talk about the 2011 Tampa elections, how all or almost all of the City Council could be turning over, due to higher ambitions, term limits and (in the case of Joseph Caetano) susceptibility to being beaten.
Caetano has had his hair styling business in Chapter 11 bankruptcy court (just like my own publication!) since November, but now comes a headline that surely will be on attack mailer ads in 2011: Caetano bought pricey Super Bowl tickets despite his financial straits.
Meet Tampa City Councilman Joseph Caetano, who has fallen on tough times. But, despite the fact Caetano closed his Bostonian Hair Studio and Spa and filed bankruptcy in November, he took advantage of the offer to elected officials and bought two Super Bowl tickets for $1,000 a piece.
Caetano says it was one of those last minute decisions that he debated whether he should or should not buy the tickets. In the end, Caetano decided he should buy the tickets.
Caetano says he worked hard all his life and he felt he deserved it.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 18, 2009, at 1:05 pm
St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett — his campaign wounded by two weeks of revelations and accusations about dirty tricks, not to mention the firing of his campaign manager Peter Schorsch — has issued a statement today saying he is NOT going to quit the race and has hired a new campaign manager.
“In the days since I learned of Peter’s outrageous conduct, I have reflected and consulted with family, friends and political supporters about what I should do,” Bennett said in a statement he e-mailed to the press. “I care about our community far too much to be disheartened or discouraged by this personal and political setback. I simply will not allow the irresponsible actions of one individual to deny our community the vision and leadership we all deserve in our next Mayor.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 18, 2009, at 11:27 am
Cross-posted from the Daily Loaf blog:
By Michelle Schenck
Green Community contributor
The Florida Green Building Coalition is organizing its Sixth Annual Florida GreenTrends conference to take place between June 10-12 at the Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront. The GreenTrends 2009 conference focuses primarily on housing and building green trends that are both cost effective for the individual homeowner and business owners.
Some of the Education sessions that are already set in motion include Green Remodeling, Greening your business, and new trends in water efficiency. There are also myriad keynote speakers, ranging from general contractors to solar energy experts. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 18, 2009, at 9:01 am
Florida’s right-wing attorney general, Bill McCollum, is set to confirm his gubernatorial bid this morning, a genuinely scary thought since he could be a fluke election away from being our next governor.
Here’s my column from the upcoming print Creative Loafing issue about how McCollum should be freaking you out by now:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 18, 2009, at 6:24 am
As part of our upcoming Summer Guide issue (on newsstands throughout Tampa Bay on Wednesday), we asked a lot of people in Tampa Bay about their vacation plans and memories. I’m going to run the political vacation videos here on PoHo, starting with St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, who said:
I go to a place that’s kind of like a summer camp for families (in North Carolina). Every night they have either square dancing or some sort of music or karaoke in the big pavilion. For me, the cell phones don’t work, and I like that.
See the full video of Baker talking about how he rolls on vacation after the jump.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 15, 2009, at 2:34 pm
It’s not unexpected news that General Motors today started notifying some 1,100 dealers that they no longer want to do business with them, as we’re learning today, so why does President Barack Obama’s minions feel the need to euphemize the job losses?
Here is the top of the news release from Treasury:
Treasury Department Statement
on GM Dealer Consolidation Announcement
WASHINGTON – Today, General Motors initiated the dealer consolidation plan it laid out in its interim plan on April 27, 2009.
Under that terminology, we’ve got one helluva jobs consolidation situation going on right now.
General Motors notified 1,100 of its 6,000 dealerships Friday that it is terminating their contracts with the struggling automaker, the first step in cutting up to 40% of its retail network.
GM spokeswoman Susan Garontakos said that the dealers receiving notice Friday are being told that their contracts will not be renewed in October 2010. Many of them are expected to close shop this year.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 15, 2009, at 2:06 pm
What else are you going to do after you cut daily home delivery to an entire county? Raise your rack prices.
The Tampa Tribune will increase the price of single copy newspapers – those sold at stores and in boxes — starting Monday.
Single copies of the newspaper will now cost 75 cents Monday through Saturday and $1 on Sunday.
“Most metropolitan newspapers charge in these price ranges for their newspaper as single copy purchases. We publish a fresh, unique, local paper every single day,” said Denise Palmer, publisher and president of the paper in a prepared statement.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 15, 2009, at 9:30 am
It may have been the worst news conference performance by a sitting Speaker of the House ever. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi harmed her own cause and ratcheted up the torture debate in a newser in which she parsed her knowledge of CIA waterboarding briefings and accused the spy agency of lying to Congress.
Even Florida’s former Sen. Bob Graham (and his infamous lil’ notebooks) has leapt to her side, telling HuffPo that he, too, was lied to by the CIA about torture tactics and use. From that interview:
“When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held,” Graham recalled. “And they contacted me and gave me four dates — two in April ‘02 and two in September ‘02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 15, 2009, at 6:37 am
The shockwaves from the government-labor takeover at Chrysler is reverberating in the Tampa Bay area, as seven dealerships are set to be closed as part of nearly 800 dealer closings across the nation.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 14, 2009, at 8:56 am
I came to Tampa Bay in 1988 to work for the Tampa Tribune in Pinellas County, then on the front lines of the newspaper war with the St. Petersburg Times. So it is with sadness I read this story about the Trib finally giving up the fight, from the Times:
The Tampa Tribune will be ceasing daily subscription service in Pinellas County after this weekend, according to a flier distributed in the newspaper this morning.
The flier said that weekend or daily subscription will change to Sunday delivery only, beginning Sunday, May 17. It offers a courtesy subscription to USA Today through May 22, and tells readers to “watch your mailbox for a special offer” for the national publication.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 13, 2009, at 2:17 pm
From the recent Florida Humanities Council “A Tale of Two Cities” forum featuring Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, here are the two mayors answering the question: Who is your favorite mayor from your city’s past?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 13, 2009, at 12:39 pm
Having another guv from the Tampa Bay area (Alex Sink and her hubby, former gov candidate Bill McBride, still have a large lakefront home out in Thonotosassa in eastern Hillsborough) wouldn’t be a bad thing. Last one was Bob Martinez in the 1980s. And today, Sink, a former banker turned Florida’s chief financial officer, made it official that she will seek (and get) the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010 as Charlie Crist flees the mansion.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 13, 2009, at 12:29 pm
President Barack Obama has reveresed himself on how open his Administration will be on the torture approved by the previous George W. Bush Administration of Horrors, refusing to release Abu Ghraib torture photos. Daily Dish reports:
In what can only be seen as a stunning reversal, the president is now refusing to release photographs that would help prove that the abuse and torture techniques revealed at Abu Ghraib were endemic in the Bush military. I can’t help but wonder if this is related to his decision to appoint Stanley McChrystal as the commander of his Afghanistan war and occupation. There is solid evidence that McChrystal played an active part in enabling torture in Iraq, and his activities in charge of many secret special operations almost certainly involved condoning acts that might be illustrated by these photos. The MSM has, of course, failed to mention this in their fawning profiles of McChrystal.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 13, 2009, at 6:51 am
Here is a video that was the winner of The Congress for New Urbanism CNU 17 video contest, a film that looks at the connection between suburban sprawl and environmental degradation. From independent filmmaker John Paget.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 12, 2009, at 11:10 am
From the nascent Draft Jeb! movement. We can only hope the movement is limited to the folks in this photo, but knowing the state’s electorate the way I do, I doubt it.
St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett is pitifully ignorant or disappointingly complicit when it comes to a series of campaign mistakes and second-rate dirty tricks. He has fired the campaign manager he never should have hired, but if he stays in the race that will not end the questions or remove the stains.
Sorting out who knew what when between Bennett and his former campaign manager, Peter Schorsch, may be an exercise in futility. But some of their maneuvers cannot be dismissed as low-grade sleaziness. At least one neighborhood president was given campaign literature and requests for contributions along with free baseball tickets to the city’s Tropicana Field suite. Candidates cannot legally use public resources to benefit their campaigns. Bennett said Monday he did not know that happened and has apologized for “a blurring of lines and lack of oversight on the baseball tickets.” But he continued to distribute the baseball suite tickets he receives as a City Council member to neighborhood association presidents even after the issue was publicly raised.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 12, 2009, at 10:07 am
“Some politicians support trillions in reckless spending…” is one of the attack lines from the Marco Rubio campaign as it launches a full spread of phaser and photon torpedoes (yes, we’re staying with the Star Trek theme until the movie drops below $10m a week at the box office) at Charlie Crist just minutes after the governor declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
The ad, predictably, ties Crist at the hip with President Barack Obama.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 12, 2009, at 5:00 am
Former Creative Loafing reporter and mensch Max Linsky (picture, above, in the good old days in Tampa, moonlighting as a freelance restroom attendant) has an exciting new gig: Managing editor at The Stimulist, an Internet news start-up being headed by MSNBC’s Carlos Watson.
From Business Week:
Another personality who first made a name in traditional media is putting the final touches on an ambitious online destination. Carlos Watson, an MSNBC anchor who also hosts a weekend show on talk radio network Air America, and a small band of staffers are readying The Stimulist, a news and opinion site slated to go live on May 12.
Watson bills The Stimulist as being aimed at what he terms “the change generation;” that is, an audience of young professionals between the ages of 25 and 49. Watson is still on the shy side of 40 and counts himself as a card-carrying member of this cohort, and freely uses the words “we” and “us” to describe his intended audience. “People in their 20s, 30s, and 40s—educated but edgy,” he says. “I don’t think of us as the same as the yuppies of 20 years ago. We are more down to earth, more digitally savvy, and more diverse.” And more global: The Stimulist aims to draw 30% of its traffic from outside of the U.S., which would be significantly more than even a site like nytimes.com gets.
Obviously, the Web is a very crowded place, and many who have succeeded in more traditional precincts of media have encountered less success online. The ultimate success of The Stimulist may hinge less on its precise editorial positioning than on whether Watson can supercharge his career and to what degree his personal brand takes root in the market. There is chatter regarding his roles being expanded at both Air America and MSNBC.
… Watson, who worked for McKinsey & Co. and started and sold an educational company before beginning a media career, is the sole bankroller behind The Stimulist, though he expects to lure outside investors eventually. The site’s managing editor is Max Linsky, a former editor in the Creative Loafing chain of alternative-weekly newspapers. Its chief operating officer and chief revenue officer is Taiye Tuakli-Wosornu, who has worked closely with Watson on his TV shows.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 11, 2009, at 11:19 am
Nobody can really be surprised by the tangle of accusations and revelations in the St. Petersburg Times over the weekend by former PoHo contributor and political consultant Peter Schorsch about Jamie Bennett and his mayoral campaign (IF we can believe any/all of Schorsch’s allegations), just surprised that the meltdown caused by having Schorsch in the campaign happened so suddenly.
Whether the allegations are true or not, Bennett’s ability to be elected mayor is mortally wounded. Nothing worse for a politician and campaign worker than a publicly played-out, back-and-forth session of throwing each other under the bus.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 11, 2009, at 11:09 am
Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who a few months ago expressed interest in Mel Martinez’s seat in the Senate, said today she will not run for statewide or national office in 2010.
“My four-year term as mayor does not end until March 2011 and I believe that running both the city of Tampa and a statewide campaign at the same time over the next eighteen months would shortchange the citizens of Tampa,” she said in a statement e-mailed to supporters and the news media.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 8, 2009, at 2:14 pm
The evolution of a mayor, 1974-present?
In Tampa these days, playing “Will Dick Greco run for mayor in 2011?” is getting to be nearly a full-time sport, the rumors are just that hot-and-heavy. So I picked up the telephone and gave him a call and asked him, “Are you getting ready to run for mayor – yet again?”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 8, 2009, at 6:48 am
The controversial Orlando light rail plan, known as SunRail or the CSX deal to opponents, just won’t die. Today’s Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the city’s mayor, Buddy Dyer, is vowing that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to trying to figure out how to resurrect the twice-killed plan.
Former Illinois police sergeant Drew Peterson is set to be arraigned for murder today in the drowning death of his third wife Kathleen Savio after Illinois State Police officers arrested him about mile from his home Thursday evening.
Savio’s body was found in a dry bathtub in their home in 2004. Her death was initially ruled an accident, but later classified as a homicide after a second autopsy was done. Last month, Savio’s family filed a civil suit against Peterson, claiming he caused her wrongful death.
“I guess I should have returned those library books,” a handcuffed Peterson told police as he was escorted out of his home, the Daily Herald reported.
They still haven’t found Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy, who disappeared in October 2007. Best news out of this is that Peterson is being held on $20 million bond and won’t be appearing on The Today Show any time soon.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 7, 2009, at 12:04 pm
They are an unlikely pair: She’s a lifelong Democrat, and he’s a conservative Republican. Their cities are known for decades of feuding and rivalries, a history that seems remote in these days of regionalism. But Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker both share a passion for history; Iorio was a history major at USF and earned her master’s in the subject, while Baker has written his own history of St. Petersburg.
In “A Tale of Two Cities,” a forum held last night at the historic Centro Asturiano building between downtown Tampa and Ybor City, Baker and Iorio showed off their historian chops in front of a crowd of a few hundred people. USF historians Gary Mormino and Ray Arsenault moderated.
I was asked to join La Gaceta publisher Patrick Manteiga and St. Petersburg Times columnist Ernest Hooper in questioning the two mayors on historical matters, and I asked both: What one historical building that no longer exists in your city would you like to have back, and why?
Their answers, and pictures of those two buildings, after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 7, 2009, at 6:58 am
Our governor is not having a good 2009. Maybe it all started when he (rightly) stood with President Barack Obama to tout the economic stimulus plan. Whatever the start of the slide, one thing is increasingly clear: Charlie Crist’s political capital in Tallahassee is near zero.
His clean energy bill — a priority — was killed by the speaker-designate in the House as retribution for not getting messy offshore oil drilling. Crist’s proposed budget was ignored on arrival. He faces a tough primary battle against conservative forces led by Marco Rubio should he decide to seek the U.S. Senate nomination in 2010 that, just a few months ago, was viewed as more of a coronation than an election.
The latest slip in Crist’s power? The Legislature has approved changes that give the governor less latitude when outsourcing public work to private industry. Former Miami Herald scribe Gary Fineout blogs:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 7, 2009, at 6:14 am
CNBC’s reputation-damaged investment show host Jim Cramer just told The Today Show that the “banking nightmare” is over as a result of the stress tests on banks being released today.
His point? That even though a few banks still need billions to shore up their balance sheets, they are making money and likely can raise those extra funds in the market – not from taxpayers.
Bloomberg reports that the market indeed likes the results of the financial stress tests:
Stocks rallied after the news, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index to its highest level in four months. The results are the culmination of weeks of investigations, led by the Federal Reserve, into the banks’ lending practices, funding strategies and securities and loan portfolios.
“The markets are telling us we’re in a recovery and the banks are beginning to heal,” William Isaac, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said in an interview today. The end of the stress tests after “three months of water torture” is providing investors some relief, he said.
The regulators put an emphasis in their reviews on tangible common equity, and will give firms needing bigger reserves six months to meet their requirements. Citigroup’s assessment reflects the New York-based bank’s previously announced plan to convert some of its preferred shares into common stock.
Legislative negotiators agreed on what Gov. Charlie Crist called a “great” deal to expand gambling at Seminole Indian casinos Wednesday, some six hours after their talks were on the brink of collapse.
Both sides made concessions. The House accepted a broader gaming expansion than many of its members wanted. The Senate agreed to less than it had been pushing for.
The agreement has the potential to generate millions of dollars for state coffers that have been shrinking due the faltering economy.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 6, 2009, at 3:10 pm
You recall last week that PoHo contributor Kelly Cornelius commented on the unusual deal being mulled over by the Hillsborough County Commission: sell a piece of publicly owned ranch land in order to prevent it from being developed into a subdivision. Not that it is being threatened for such development, since the county already owns it and is keeping it undeveloped.
The Times reports that commissioners want to study the deal and are appointing the ubiquitous task force for the, um, task:
A panel of environmental leaders will help Hillsborough County commissioners scrutinize a proposal to sell 12,000 acres of public land in the name of preservation.
Commissioners voted unanimously today to consider a proposal to sell off the Cone Ranch well field — nearly 20 square miles of undeveloped land in northeast Hillsborough.
The county’s water department owns the land, which was bought two decades ago for the drinking water that might one day be pumped from the aquifer.
The group bringing the deal to the table has all kinds of hard-right-wing ties outlined in the Times pieces.
Negotiations between the state House and Senate over how much to expand gambling in Florida appear to be at an impasse, despite pressure from Gov. Charlie Crist for the two sides to reach an agreement.
As he did yesterday, Crist took the unusual step of showing up for a meeting of the negotiators that just concluded, a way of demonstrating his concern and pushing the two sides to reach an agreement. Also attending were tribal leaders and their representatives.
But he can’t have been encouraged with what he saw: The top House negotiator, state Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, accusing the Senate of “going backward” in the negotiations and then stalking out of the room as the meeting adjourned, with a closing comment that suggested there might be no more meetings.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 5, 2009, at 7:34 pm
From tonight’s Green 100 party: Tampa City Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena says she is a candidate for mayor in 2011, when Pam Iorio has to step down due to term limits. The field is already crowded: On Monday, her council colleague Tom Scott announced his candidacy, former Councilwoman Rose Ferlita is already in and others (Bob Buckhorn, Dick Greco and Ed Turanchik) are rumored and in various stages of likely. Saul-Sena said she won’t formally announce for some time, believing that opening a campaign two years before actual balloting is not smart.
Saul-Sena said she is hiring Democratic consultants Mitch Kates and Larry Biddle to assist her in running the campaign. Kates-Biddle are currently busy running the Scott Wagman St. Petersburg mayoral campaign.
Disclosure: Saul-Sena was a client of my former political consulting firm in the 1990s.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 5, 2009, at 2:36 pm
Just in time for Marco Rubio’s announcement today that he will seek the U.S. Senate seat in 2010 from Florida comes a film that features the man widely expected to be running against him, Gov. Charlie Crist. Outrage appears to be a well told look at the hypocrisy of closeted politicians, done by director Kirby Dick.
The film opens this Friday nationwide but we have not been able to find a Tampa Bay location for it yet. Will update when/if I do.
Here is the synopsis from the Outrage website:
Academy Award nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) delivers a searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to. OUTRAGE boldly reveals the hidden lives of some of our nation’s most powerful policymakers, details the harm they’ve inflicted on millions of Americans, and examines the media’s complicity in keeping their secrets.
And the long-rumored bisexual life of our governor is a topic for the film, reports Bob Norman, the Broward-Palm Beach New Times reporter who had documented several men who say they have had sex with Crist:
I’m in the new film Outrage about hypocritical gay Republicans. And no, I offer no proof that our governor is gay.
Just a lot of compelling evidence.
The Academy Award-nominated documentarian Kirby Dick — who has compiled an excellent body of work – came to my house to talk about my reporting on Jason Wetherington and Bruce Carlton Jordan, the pair of Katherine Harris campaign staffers who told numerous witnesses they had affairs with Gov. Charlie Crist. The filmmaker interviewed me and retraced some of reporting on those stories for the movie.
Watch the full trailer for Outrage after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 5, 2009, at 6:15 am
It’s on like Donkey Kong: a battle for the heart and soul of the Florida Republican Party!
Conservative standard-bearer Marco Rubio has thrown his hat into the post-Mel Martinez 2010 U.S. Senate elections, setting up a likely battle royal with Gov. Charlie Crist that will be one of the national Republican Party’s highest profile battle between its conservative faction (Rubio, Jeb Bush) and its centrist, big-tent faction (Crist, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as examples).
Rubio made the announcement on the Spanish language Univision and followed up with a video on YouTube this morning.
Rubio says he wants a balanced budget amendment and pro-business laws. He also obliquely acknowledges the 800-pound GOP elephant in the room that is Crist: “I know that there are people more famous than I who will enter this race. But nothing in life worth doing is easy.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 4, 2009, at 1:41 pm
In my continuing series of interviews with St. Petersburg mayoral candidates, Deveron Gibbons today stepped into the plush West Tampa studios of Creative Loafing to cut a half-hour podcast interview with me. With his political consultant Adam Goodman listening in, Gibbons talked about how he feels about the St. Pete Police Department (historically, it has made great strides, he said) and the impression by skeptics that he doesn’t have the gravitas to be mayor.
Federal investigators are sifting through the records of money that helped John Edwards’ presidential campaign to determine if any was used to keep quiet his affair with Rielle Hunter.
Edwards, a Democrat and former U.S. senator, acknowledged the investigation to The News & Observer.
“I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,” Edwards said in a statement.
Hunter is the filmmaker employed by a PAC aligned with Edwards to make campaign films – while the two were “doing it.” While Edwards wife was being diagnosed with terminal cancer. While Edwards held himself out to voters as a paragon of caring for the little guy (’memba his work in Louisiana’s Katrina wreckage photo ops?).
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 4, 2009, at 6:20 am
Adam C. Smith, political editor over at the St. Petersburg Times and chief Buzz-ster, asks an intriguing question in light of the party switch of Penn. Sen. Arlen Specter:
Can the stimulus-lovin’ Charlie Crist possibly find a home in the increasingly right-wing GOP?
It’s a crazy question, considering the GOP these days is only marginally more popular than the flu, while the Republican governor of America’s biggest battleground state enjoys astronomical approval ratings.
But it’s worth pondering now that moderate Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has become a Democrat, and the political world is convinced that the moderate Florida governor is about to run for the U.S. Senate. If Crist runs and wins, he will join Maine’s Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe – a pair reviled by many conservatives – as the only Republican senators who supported President Barack Obama’s stimulus package.
“If you agree with Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe on some of these issues, you might as well become a Democrat,” said former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a Republican who is likely to run for the Senate, whether or not Crist does.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 3, 2009, at 5:56 pm
Swine, errrr, H1N1 flu worries will keep kids out of three public schools in Hillsborough County this week, after students reported symptoms that health officials believe are from the fast-spreading influenza.
An 18-year-old male student at Freedom High School and an 11-year-old male student at Wilson Middle School are among the latest suspected cases of the H1N1 virus reported to the Florida Department on Health.
Both schools will be closed starting Monday, and will not reopen until next week. Liberty Middle School will also close, since it shares its cafeteria with Freedom High School, officials said.
Students are being asked to stay home and avoid public places like shopping malls or movie theaters.
None of the five Hillsborough victims of the flu have been hospitalized, and all are recovering.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 1, 2009, at 10:08 am
President Barack Obama addresses the American Tea Party rallies (and Fox News) by saying he welcomes a serious discussion of the issues and, specifically, how to pay for health care in this CNN clip.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 1, 2009, at 9:42 am
The Poynter Institute, the nonprofit media educational facility and think-tank, owns the St. Petersburg Times in a unique relationship in U.S. newspapers, one that allowed it to avoid being snapped up by Wall Street (and then ruined) or other ownership succession entanglements. The Poynter, located just south of downtown St. Petersburg, does great work to forward the state of knowledge in news media and once was flush with cash, as its lush offices demonstrate.
But with revenues down at the main money generator, the Times, the Poynter is tightening its belt. Poynter officials today said they are following up a January pay freeze with voluntary retirements packages for all employees 55 and older.
Details after the jump. And here’s Dean Karen Brown Dunlap’s memo to the Poynter staff.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 1, 2009, at 9:20 am
The news story that helped set the tone for the public discussion about torture and waterboarding during the Bush Administration was (you guessed it) bullshit, as it turns out.
A high-profile 2007 story by ABC News and correspondent Brian Ross was wrong when it reported that an Al-Quaeda suspect broke after a brief waterboarding.
The original 2007 story aired former CIA officer John Kiriakou’s unverified and second-hand claims that suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah broke after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds.” The story was suddenly the focus of renewed attention when The New York Times ran a big story earlier this week pointing out that the extensive waterboarding detailed in the torture memos sharply contradicted ABC’s widely-cited tale.
ABC News’ correction appears almost in passing in the network’s new story. It mentions that the new memos show that waterboarding was used far more often than originally thought, adding that Zubaydah was waterboarded “at least 83 times.” It continues:
That contradicts what former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who led the Zubaydah capture team, told ABC News in 2007 when he first revealed publicly that waterboarding had been used.
ABC doesn’t mention the huge role played by original story in shaping the subsequent debate, and to my knowledge the network hasn’t said it regrets the error. While it’s good that ABC corrected the record, the damage of the original story has long since been done.
Hillsborough Commissioner Kevin White has lost a key alibi in his defense against a sexual discrimination lawsuit brought by a former aide.
His uncle has recanted a statement that White stayed the night at his home during a now infamous 2007 trip to Atlanta that is central to the suit.
The aide, Alyssa Ogden, has claimed White asked her to accompany him to Atlanta within days of hiring her in April 2007. While there, Ogden says, White showed up at her hotel room asking to share her bed, saying, “I just don’t like to sleep by myself – I’m an only child.”
White’s uncle originally said White stayed at his Stone Mountain home during the trip in question, but now says he was wrong and may have been mistaken due to medication when he first gave the alibi statement.
Kevin White faces a Democratic primary challenge in 2010 from former state Sen. Les Miller.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 1, 2009, at 6:35 am
For better or for worse (and there are some who say it bodes poorly for efforts to get rail transit here in Tampa Bay), but Orlando’s five-year effort for a light-rail system using CSX freight tracks appears finally dead.
A floor vote in the Senate yesterday that could have helped switch more votes to its side failed. From the pro-SunRail Orlando Sentinel:
SunRail proponents could try to bring up the measure again today – the last day of the regular session – but its chances of success are low because it would take 27 votes to do so.
“It’ll take some maneuvering to get it done. I think the forces of evil have won,” said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.
He was among the dozens of supporters who tried in vain to corral the 21 votes necessary for SunRail to prevail. But he lost two members of the Central Florida delegation: Sens. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, and Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach.
And despite the support of Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and numerous Central Florida business leaders, 15 Republicans voted against the measure.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 30, 2009, at 1:10 pm
Scott, now on City Council after a stint on the Hillsborough County Commission, says he will make his future plans known at a Monday news conference. The Times’ Janet Zink reports that it is widely expected to be a mayoral campaign:
Tampa City Council chairman Tom Scott will announce plans “about his political future,” at a news conference Monday. Scott is widely expected to run for mayor in 2011, though he declined to confirm that today.
“A lot of people have been asking questions about my intent. I look forward to sharing that on Monday and put everybody’s mind to rest,” he said.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 30, 2009, at 12:46 pm
And seriously, am I going to have to put the name of the low-priced Swedish furniture store in all caps forever?
I digressed. Jeff Houck over at The Stew has a great review of media day yesterday, including the Scan-food offerings. Just love the buffet line photo:
Most everyone was there to cover the furniture and home accessories. I decided to focus on the food.
Why? Because no one can ever get enough pickled herring.
And Ikea was only happy enough to help.
Go to The Stew to read the entire story. Du kommer vara glad att du gjorde.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 30, 2009, at 6:40 am
So even before my first cuppa this morning I am subjected to a live Today Show interview with beauty queen aspirant Carrie Prejean, the Miss California entrant who believes that celebrity blogger and out-gay Perez Hilton cost her the Miss USA title with his query about same-sex marriage.
So giving her the benefit of the doubt at that time, Prejean was a very bad question-answerer.
Now, however, we have confirmation that she is a bonafide gay hater. Prejean is part of an anti-gay-marriage advertisement being unveiled today by a national anti-gay group. It won’t embed, so you have to check it out here. Politico reports:
The anti-same-sex marriage National Organization for Marriage is trying to turn the tables on gay rights activists this morning with a new ad accusing them of attacking Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean for opposing gay marriage.
The ad … will be released at a press conference with Prejean — the new star of that movement — today in Washington, D.C.
Video of Prejean on Fox News right after the pageant after the jump.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 30, 2009, at 5:00 am
Why wait, I always say. Actually, given Charlie’s continuing tremendous popularity ratings, starting to whittle him down to size is a good tactic for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which released the ad today.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 29, 2009, at 1:55 pm
Daytona Beach News-Journal columnist (and early media blogger) Mark Lane is money in his latest column about Gov. Charlie Crist and how the sun-tanned one embodies the finest principles of Taoism:
Charlie Crist is Florida’s Taoist governor.He strives by not striving. He wins by not playing.
He is the uncarved block upon which independent voters can visualize their wishes.
Crist does not react to the flow of public opinion; he is one with the flow of public opinion.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 29, 2009, at 11:09 am
Not to surprising but the tone was amazing. Today in the Florida House of Representatives, Republicans led a hog-slaughtering of Florida’s growth management laws and opened vast areas of rural property to sprawl by approving its version of the controversial SB 360.
The bill was so bad that the Republican governor’s top growth management official, Tom Pelham, said yesterday that it would “seriously undermine Florida’s growth management laws.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 28, 2009, at 6:51 am
I will be joining a panel discussing the accomplishments/lack thereof in the 2009 Florida Legislature on Fox 13’s Your Turn show with Kathy Fountain. Phone or e-mail your questions in, yourturn@wtvt.com or call 813-875-8255 or 800-826-4434 (according to the Fox website.)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 28, 2009, at 6:18 am
From the Stooopid Idea Dep’t.:
Fly the backup of Air Force One, a 747, with its engines screaming, low over Lower Manhattan, F-16 trailing it, without telling New Yorkers it was all for a photo shoot and not another 9-11 attack.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 27, 2009, at 2:31 pm
Craig PIttman — shown above, right — and Matthew Waite (and I’m going to use a technical journalistic term here) are the bomb. The St. Petersburg Times duo have literally written the book on Florida’s bulldozing of vital wetlands in Paving Paradise:Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss, their new book that grew out of a series of stories in the Times.
Brilliant stuff, from the narrative history of how Florida was dredged-and-filled (yes, I grew up on one of those finger islands off the New River in Fort Lauderdale, so I know all about it) to the computer analysis of satellite photos that (for the first time) documented the loss of 84,000 acres of wetlands to construction since 1988. As Waite points out in the podcast interview, that is a land mass the size of the city of St. Petersburg.
You can buy the book lots of places, but one good indie bookstore where you can find it is Inkwood Books in South Tampa. It is a must-read. Just as this podcast with the authors is a must-hear.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 27, 2009, at 11:49 am
I suppose that looking at print circulation numbers is anachronistic, if not downright depressing. But the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s Fas-Fax report is out and it is across-the-board bad news for Florida print journalism.
Circulation fell at all major FLA dailies, and it fell 7 percent across the nation. That is 3 million-plus fewer print readers than six months ago.
The St. Petersburg Times remains one of the nation’s top 25 circulated newspapers, but like its counterparts, the Times’ daily numbers are eroding.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations ranked the Times 22nd in the nation in Monday through Friday circulation over a six-month period ending in March despite a 10 percent dip that brought its daily print run to 283,093 compared to 316,007 a year ago. Although it lost more than 32,000 subscribers over the past year, its declines weren’t as sharp as many other newspapers in the top 25, and it even moved ahead of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in overall Monday through Friday circulation.
Daily circulation at The Tampa Tribune dropped by more than 25,000 subscribers Monday through Friday, representing an 11.4 percent drop to 195,277 subscribers. The Sarasota-Herald Tribune lost 17,650 subscribers, a 15.4 percent fall to an average of 97,254 subscribers.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 27, 2009, at 6:40 am
Here’s a good review from the Tallahassee Democrat of just how the petroleum industry and its lobbyists sprung their 11th-hour surprise to end a 20-year ban on offshore oil drilling on the House of Representatives.
With a little less than an hour’s discussion, and a quick, mostly party-line vote, every conservationist’s worst nightmare was headed for the House floor. The House gave preliminary approval on Friday.
“This is like a Carl Hiaasen novel,” laments Janet Bowman, a lobbyist for the Nature Conservancy.
But unlike the colorful characters who scheme to sell out Florida’s natural wonders in Hiaasen’s works of fiction, the supporters are very real. Their ranks also include some respected names, including Martha Barnett, a former president of the American Bar Association.
Former House Speaker John Thrasher, a lobbyist who is also pushing the measure, smiles broadly and praises Cannon’s master stroke.
“He’s a rising star,” Thrasher said. “We needed to look at this, not just pull it out and have everyone just say no. It’s been amazing to see the pent-up energy for this.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 27, 2009, at 6:06 am
Even financial markets and instruments aren’t immune from the spreading human swine flu outbreak. Media reports link the flu fears to lower stock trading and depressed monetary values in some countries.
Governments around the world moved on Monday to contain the spread of a possible swine flu outbreak, as a virus that has killed over 100 people in Mexico spread to the United States and elsewhere.
At 0835 GMT, Dow Jones futures were down 1.9 percent, S&P 500 futures fell 1.8 percent and Nasdaq futures traded 1.5 percent lower.
Europe’s benchmark FTSEurofirst 300 index. FTEU3 was down 1.1 percent, weighed down by a 4.3 percent slide for the DJ Stoxx travel & leisure index. SXTP, which includes airlines.
The U.S. declared a health emergency for swine flu as cases were reported in several states, all believed linked to an outbreak in Mexico that has killed more than 100. No swine flu cases have emerged in Florida.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 26, 2009, at 7:49 pm
I’ve lined up two great journalists, Craig Pittman and Matthew Waite (Pulitzer Prize-winning Matt Waite) of the St. Petersburg Times to come in Monday morning to talk about their book, Paving Paradise:Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss. The podcast of our chat will be No. 7 in the Political Whore podcast series (Poho Podcast, or HoCast if you’re nasty) and should be up for your listening pleasure by Monday afternoon.
Let me know if you have any specific questions I need to pose to them about their book, Florida’s wetlands and the knuckleheads in the state Legislature who obviously haven’t read the book.
Voters could be asked next year to raise the sales tax to build a multibillion-dollar light-rail system and to double bus service in Pinellas County.
A panel of local officials has worked for several months to fashion a plan. The likely favored option: a 1 percent tax increase on the 2010 ballot.
“It is the only viable funding source out there to move forward with light rail,” said Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch, a member of the panel that is working through the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority.
The cost to build rail and double bus service would be $3.8 billion to $7.4 billion, according to estimates provided to County Commissioner Karen Seel. Running the rail and bus services could cost $2.7 billion over 25 years.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 23, 2009, at 1:22 pm
Yes, politics is all fun until somebody gets Tased. Then it becomes unbearably delicious.
St. Pete mayoral hopeful Bill Foster has become the first candidate in the race (as far as PoHo knows) to get Tasered in the course of proving his worth to the voters. His campaign posted a video of the former city councilman (and strong advocate of the police) getting the juice put to him.
The campaign wrote:
Bill Foster has always been insistent that our police officers have every tool they need to keep us safe. Watch the below demonstration and see how Bill really went the extra mile when it came to arming our officers with Tasers. Ouch.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 23, 2009, at 1:08 pm
You loved him or hated him. Many fell into the latter category. During his years in the Florida Senate, and during decades as a no-holds-barred political consultant, Jack Latvala was legendary as a power broker in Pinellas County. (It helped that his then-wife Susan was also an elected official, both on the school board and later the county commission). He was also a reasonable and hard-working elected official who didn’t take any shit from the crazy right-wingers in his own Republican Party.
Now, after leaving Tallahassee in 2002 and keeping a lower profile for the past seven years, Latvala is mounting a comeback. He has announced he will run for Charlie Justice’s Senate Seat.
Oil drilling: “I’m opposed to drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said, breaking with some Republicans pushing for more drilling.
Insurance: He supports legislation freeing insurers to charge higher rates without requiring assessments to Citizens. “I don’t see anything wrong with giving people that option. I just think we need further reaching solutions than what they’re offering now,” he said.
At least we now know for sure that the 2010 elections will not be dull.
Before Twitter, before Facebook (Facebook reviews), before MySpace (MySpace reviews) – heck, even before Friendster (Friendster reviews), there was a service known as GeoCities. For those who grew up on the Net in the 90s, it was about as close as you get to what we know today as social networks. It was essentially an organization of like-minded user-created homepages in different topical communities like sports, entertainment, and tech.
Yahoo bought the company near the peak of the dotcom bubble for more than $3 billion, which, along with the rise of alternative services, quickly spelled the end of GeoCities’ prominence. Today, it appears that the end of GeoCities is being made official, as Yahoo has closed the service to new accounts and posted an FAQ with some details as to how the shutdown will go.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Department chief Henry Paulson pressured Bank of America Corp. to not discuss its increasingly troubled plan to buy Merrill Lynch & Co. — a deal that later triggered a government bailout of BofA — according to testimony by Kenneth Lewis, the bank’s chief executive.
Mr. Lewis, testifying under oath before New York’s attorney general in February, told prosecutors that he believed Messrs. Paulson and Bernanke were instructing him to keep silent about deepening financial difficulties at Merrill, the struggling brokerage giant. As part of his testimony, a transcript of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis said the government wanted him to keep quiet while the two sides negotiated government funding to help BofA absorb Merrill and its huge losses.
Under normal circumstances, banks must alert their shareholders of any materially significant financial hits. But these weren’t normal times: Late last year, Wall Street was crumbling and BofA faced intense government pressure to buy Merrill to keep the crisis from spreading. Disclosing losses at Merrill — which eventually totaled $15.84 billion for the fourth quarter — could have given BofA’s shareholders an opportunity to stop the deal and let Merrill collapse instead.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 23, 2009, at 9:38 am
While we await the result of the necropsy, there is a good story on the dead polo horses in Time this week. It talks about the “vitamin” supplement that is the leading culprit but also the horses’ owner:
But whatever the cause, the tragedy has thrust Lechuza’s obscure but powerful owner, multi-millionaire Venezuelan banker and polo fanatic Victor Vargas, into the spotlight he usually avoids. In fact, since the beginning of the week, Vargas has not been seen at the Palm Beach Polo Club in Wellington; newspaper reports in the Palm Beach Post and other South Florida media say he’s either holed up in the $70 million Palm Beach mansion he purchased last year – one of six homes he owns in Venezuela, the Caribbean, the U.S. and Europe – or has flown overseas in one of his luxury Gulfstream jets.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 22, 2009, at 12:58 pm
City Councilwoman Mary Mulhern has put green jobs on her board’s monthly workshop agenda for this Thursday. Details for those who want to attend are on the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 22, 2009, at 12:53 pm
It’s not big news, in that we’ve known for some time that the Obama stimulus plan included money for governments and transit systems to upgrade their fleets to be more energy-efficient and alternative-fuel-oriented, but the administration used Earth Day to release some details about the $300 million addition to the Clean Cities program.
Here is the full text of the news release, after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 2:55 pm
Just got off a conference call arranged by a Tallahassee PR agency along with Associated Industries of Florida (a pro-business insurance interest) that was pitching heavily for a surprise move in the Florida Legislature to end a 20-year ban on offshore drilling and oil/gas exploration.
HB 1219’s explosive provisions came up all of a sudden, in the last two weeks of the session, clearly a strategic move to limit public discussion on the controversial issue. 20 years of protecting Florida’s beaches from oil spills could be gone in a matter of days in the blitzkrieg, but the oil production advocates on the phoner said that’s not important. What does matter is that Florida is losing out on millions in revenues from state and federal oil leases that could materialize. (And more importantly, lawmakers might miss out on the more than $1.1 million in campaign contributions that petroleum interests have made in the past 15 years.)
It’s about “hard cold cash” for the state “as opposed to political rhetoric,” said Barney Bishop, the head of AIF, who wouldn’t reveal the oil production members of his association who are pushing the legislation. “We’ve never identified who our members are. Our members just brought this idea to us. It was a unique idea. The fact that it was a 20 year [prohibition], that doesn’t mean a doggone thing. That’s really a non-issue.”
Orlando economist Hank Fishkind put the state’s proceeds at more than $1.5 billion a year for 20 years, or $31 billion.
Yes, they flat out dangled lots of cash. Want to fix your budget crisis, Florida? Just drill, baby drill. Pretty odious stuff, especially the shadowy timing of this and the use of Dean Cannon, the next speaker of the House, to introduce the bill and push it through a House council vote along party lines, 17-6. The change in state policy would allow the Cabinet to consider proposals for oil drilling from zero to 10.35 miles offshore. The federal moratorium from 10.35 miles to 200 miles out likely would fall, too, if the state lifts its ban.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 1:00 pm
In my two decades in Tampa Bay, there have been three dominant Metro columnists at the Tampa Tribune: Steve Otto, Howard Troxler and Dan Ruth (who was on 1B for a while before being moved inside the A section and god knows where else).
So it is an indication of the Trib’s decline that two of those three now work for the rival St. Petersburg Times. And here is a weekly video segment with Ruth and Troxler discussing the ideas of the day, and it is surprisingly good (for two old print guys sitting in front of a camera, that is).
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 11:43 am
It’s a tangled web, so maybe that is why it is not exactly evening news material. But the revelations this weekend that former AG Alberto “I know nooooo-thing” Gonzalez blocked a criminal investigation into a member of Congress as a political favor is explosive stuff. Here’s a recap from Mother Jones:
Everyone is entitled to a presumption of innocence–at least in a courtroom–but it is certainly suspicious that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not denied the most recent allegations against him. My CQ colleague Jeff Stein reported late Sunday night that Gonzales had blocked a preliminary FBI investigation into Democratic Representative Jane Harman, who had been captured by NSA eavesdroppers telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would try to use her clout to lessen espionage-related charges filed against two AIPAC officials. In return for her assistance, the suspected Israeli agent reportedly offered to help Harman become chair of the House intelligence committee. On Tuesday, The New York Times confirmed much of the story–including the piece about Gonzales: that the then-AG killed the inquiry because Harman, then the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, could help the Bush administration defend its use of warrantless wiretaps.
So there are two lines of inquiry that official investigators ought to follow. First, whether Harman broke the law by offering to lean on the criminal investigation of AIPAC for help in advancing her career. (The Times reports that the suspected Israeli agent promised that media mogul Haim Saban would threaten to hold back donations to Rep. Nancy Pelosi if she did not award Harman the top slot on the intelligence committee; Saban’s spokesperson did not respond to the Times’ request for comment.) Second, whether Gonzales stopped a criminal investigation because the target (Harman) could help the Bush administration. Harman has put out a very carefully-worded denial that’s full of holes. Gonzales, though, hasn’t said anything. That’s not very reassuring. Shouldn’t a former attorney general be able to declare that he never halted an investigation as a favor to a lawmaker who was doing the administration a favor? If not, there’s a problem–and a problem (no matter Barack Obama’s penchant for leaving the past behind) deserving a thorough examination by someone with subpoena power.
The CQ story: http://static.cqpolitics.com/harman-3098436-page1.html?docid=hsnews-000003098436
And the NYT folo: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21harman.html?_r=1&hp
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 11:37 am
How bad are things at Centro Ybor, the entertainment and restaurant destination in Ybor City (that, disclosure time, I once did PR for)?
Even the Starbucks there is looking at shutting its doors. As part of a nationwide closure of the ubiquitous coffee shops, the coffee monster wants to shutter the Centro store, but the neighborhood association is not taking this lying down, according to TBO.com:
It isn’t a full-fledged protest yet, but an Ybor City neighborhood association has launched a modest campaign to persuade Starbucks to stay at Centro Ybor.
The Historic Ybor Neighborhood Civic Association is encouraging Starbucks fans to call the Seattle-based corporation and urge it to stay put at the Ybor City entertainment center. Starbucks revealed earlier this month it plans to leave Centro Ybor, but hasn’t given a time or date.
Okay, if you were asked which local governments were early proponents of all things green, you may think: Sarasota with its early adoption of green ordinances; St. Petersburg, Florida’s first certified Green City; or Tampa with its initiatives and recent Green City designation. Yes, all good choices, but I bet it would surprise you that Hillsborough County led the pack. With little fanfare, one of the county’s employees has been quietly implementing energy saving strategies. It all started way back in 2000 when the county made the bold move of hiring Energy Manager Randy Klindworth. Back then, all he set out to do was curb expenses. Nine years ago, who would have thought that carbon footprint, sustainability, green, or Energy Star would be part of the vernacular?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 9:31 am
Tim Fasano has consistently been one of the most fascinating bloggers writing in Tampa Bay, from his details of life as a hack to the death of loved ones to his sideline career as a tasteful nudes photographer.
But now the blogger behind Tampa Taxi Shots has topped himself with a post detailing his growing belief that WE ARE NOT ALONE!!
Serious. Are you open minded to the prospect of an advance life form previously unknown that my be living in North America and has found its way into Florida? There is a body of evidence that is now supporting this theory.
Michael Crichton.in his novel Congo speculated on what would be the circumstances of man encountering a previously unknown intelligent primate that may have branched off of our evolutionary tree. I am not talking about the movie which was loosely based on the novel, but his book which was more interesting.
The research I have done is leading me to this conclusion that there is more out there then what we know. In the North East part of Hillsborough County I have found “Forest Anomalies” that the team Bigfoot Research Field Investigators have found throughout the country. It is beleived that these structures are territorial markers used by Sasquatch to mark or show a pathway thru the forest.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 6:39 am
The Republicans have gone back to their old ways when it comes to trying to regain power: rig the election process rather than appeal to the majority of voters.
This time it is a Senate bill (SB 956) that is the target of just about every voting rights and civil rights group in the state. The bill would make it harder for older voters to cast ballots (by outlawing two alternate forms of ID they often use to register and vote), make it harder to gather petition signatures for candidates and referenda, force people who move within 29 days of Election Day to cast provisional ballots and install other vote-blocking reforms in the name of voting security.
From the Times:
Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday strongly hinted that he would veto a proposed rewrite of Florida’s election laws as a broad array of grass-roots groups launched an all-out assault on the legislation.
“What is it we’re trying to cure?” Crist asked in a Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau interview. “The more opportunity you give people to vote, the better it is for democracy. So that aspect of it concerns me.”
“It always seems to me that when there may be legislation that attempts to sort of make it harder for people to do something — the people we work for — generally that’s not good,” Crist said. “I don’t look on that in a favorable light and that is true of this particular part of this legislation.” Asked if he would veto it, Crist said: “I don’t like to use the V word … but I’m not fond of that provision. It concerns me.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 6:07 am
The Central Florida light rail plan known either as SunRail or the CSX deal remained alive in the Florida Senate, barely slipping by an important committee vote yesterday.
The $1.2 billion project may need to go before another committee, or it could end up on the Senate floor for a vote that would determine its fate. With nine days left before the session’s scheduled adjournment May 1, supporters want to go to the floor soon, though it is not certain they have the 21 votes necessary to win in the 40-member chamber.
The would-be train eked out a 4-3 vote in the Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Committee, but the swing vote – cast by Sen. Chris Smith, D- Fort Lauderdale – was less than enthusiastic.
Smith’s vote came only after sponsors allowed him to attach a local-option rental-car surcharge, a $2-a-day levy that would require approval by a county commission supermajority and a county’s voters in a referendum. South Florida legislators are hoping the tax could raise as much as $40 million to support their Tri-Rail commuter system.
SunRail has been opposed by some because it would pay hundreds of millions to CSX for 63 miles of track. Some Lakeland residents oppose it because CSX would then re-route its freight traffic hub through downtown Lakeland.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 20, 2009, at 4:39 pm
The St. Petersburg Times can thank former Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia for its most recent Pulitzer Prize, because as it turns out, the right-wing Democrat is the one who inspired the creation of PolitiFact, the fact-checking website that won the 2009 National Reporting category award.
“It was at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, and it was the speech by Sen. Zell Miller making claims about John Kerry,” recalled Bill Adair, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the Times who came up with the idea for PolitiFact. “I was thinking, that’s not true. [But] I didn’t do anthing about it.”
Adair had other stories to write that night, not covering a minor speaker at a speaker-laden national convention, and documenting lies in politics must have seemed like trying to count water molecules in the Atlantic Ocean for reporters seeking a traditional news story on deadline. But the problem of letting politicians get away with lying stuck with Adair.
“A lot of things that Zell Miller said went unchecked,” Adair said late Monday afternoon from the Times‘ newsroom, where a celebration was winding down. In spring 2007, Adair and Times editors were planning coverage of the 2008 elections, and he suggested they do a website that looked at truth in politics. “It was based on my own and others’ sort of shortcomings, that we didn’t do a lot of fact checking in the past and we let a lot of candidates get away with misstatments,” Adair said. “This is penitence for those shortcomings.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 20, 2009, at 12:13 pm
This week I was joined by ABC Action News anchor Brendan McLaughlin and Democratic consultant Ana Cruz. We discussed, according to my pre-production notes and links:
Is Obama a wimp? The NYT questions Obama’s determination for a good fight and details how he has compromised and capitulated. And is Obama too enamored with being on TV and being a star and not enough on producing the change he promised? What about this handshake with Hugo Chavez? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/politics/19lobby.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 20, 2009, at 11:08 am
If your telephone rings next week, it might be TBARTA calling.
The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, the group trying to put together a seven-county transportation and light rail system, is going to randomly call residents starting next week and ask them to participate in a phone-in town hall meeting, in a system called iTownHall.
For those not called, you can take part, too, if you like. Just call toll-free, 1-877-269-7289 and enter PIN# 14837 prior to each call. The schedule for which TBARTA elected officials, staffers and appointed board members, and the full news release, is after the jump:
