Question: Do you think the Federal Reserve is going to be able to guide us out of this economic catastrophe?
I’m going to tell you a story - a story of corruption, deceit, greed and political intrigue. As it turns out, a true story, one stranger than fiction as true stories usually are. But amazingly, this story is little known by most of you, for the parties whom the story is about do a masterful job of hiding their true intentions while convincing you they are your best friends. They insist you need them, and without them your lives would be chaos. It’s all smoke, of course. But I assure you, most of you believe them because the machine they control is incredibly powerful. So powerful, in fact, that… well I get ahead of myself.
The story begins just after the turn of the 20th century, when, in 1910, seven men board a train in Hoboken, N.J.
By Catherine Durkin Robinson PoHo contributor Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.
When he speaks about the impact of captivity on the mammals, he doesn’t sound like a showboater, and what might seem like New Age-y talk about dolphin intelligence is pointed up with footage that left me haunted, too. That smile, says O’Barry, is nature’s greatest deception. Dolphins smile even when they’re crying on the inside.
Living in Florida, I am used to certain theme-and-water-park douchebaggery.
Comes with the heat, bugs, and old people driving 30-mph down the highway.
But there is something vastly disturbing about certain aquariums and water parks. And not only in Florida.
(Read the rest and see the film’s trailer after the jump)
Posted by robpiccirillo on Aug. 13, 2009, at 5:00 am
By Rob Piccirillo PoHo contributor
It may be a surprise to most people who know me that I used to own an insurance agency.That’s right!I, Rob Piccirillo, for a period of about one year and seven months, owned and operated a Florida Insurance Agency, which specialized in selling private health insurance.
My company sold various forms of private insurance, but our bread and butter was Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is a private option that beneficiaries may select instead of Original Medicare (parts A & B), which is provided by the federal government.
I will tell you now, and may the Lord Almighty strike me dead if this is not so: Sometimes it was hard to sleep at night knowing the disservice many in the industry, my cohorts, perhaps even those in my own company had done to many people on many occasions.And although the money I made got me the necessary REMs, the moral question made me quit the business!(That’s why I’m here writing this blog.Do you think the owner of a successful insurance agency would bother scribbling a Political Whore post?Negatory…)
Anyway, the fact of the matter is this: I received a bird’s eye view of what goes on in the health insurance industry.Read the rest of this entry »
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 Ben Luongo on Aug. 12, 2009, at 10:28 am
By Ben Luongo PoHo contributor
Our debate on health care reform has been a disappointing state of affairs. Stories of town hall meetings turning violent and reports of organizations planting disruptors are hardly proud examples of a successful democratic process. It speaks volumes of how political a society we have come to be.
Click after the jump to watch what has been happening in Florida.
Posted by Tom Bortnyk on Aug. 12, 2009, at 10:10 am
By Tom Bortnyk PoHo correspondent
“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American” -Nancy Pelosi
Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights as American citizens. So, too, is the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government without fear of punishment or reprisal. These rights are the foundation for Western Civilization as we know it.
Why then, Madam Speaker, do these rights only apply to citizens who share your ideological views? It seems to be the very definition of irony and a text book example of hypocrisy. The political Left in the US has been working diligently to silence opposition, not only with the current health care debate, but in numerous instances in the past.
Question: The government economists are telling us that the economic crisis is over and things should slowly get better now. Should I believe them?
When I first heard the doom and gloom talking heads being trotted out onto the daily money shows like CNN, FOX financial, Bloomberg or CNBCs Squawk Box, I took them with a huge grain of salt like everyone else. Their arguments simply didn’t seem plausible to me. At the time (2005-06), the economy seemed fine. In fact, we were gloriously bouncing back from the 2000-03 recession caused by the “dot-com” bubble. However, the reason they didn’t seem plausible, I have reluctantly come to admit, is because I was ignorant.
Not only was I ignorant, but I simply didn’t want to believe that things could get as ugly economically as they predicted. I have finally come to accept the harsh reality that confronts us. But so many of the people around me, certainly many of you, still haven’t accepted it and understandably so. For the vast majority, what is happening to us, even as we live through and witness it first hand, just doesn’t seem real. It is so surreal, in fact, it often seems like we are living inside a Salvador Dali or a Picasso painting.
In the past two years, I have read and studied more about banking, money and financing, and particularly economics, than I could ever have guessed I would in my wildest dreams. I have become obsessed with it because the more I learn the more I realize how preventable was the magnitude of the current crisis (though not the crisis itself), and unfortunately, how inevitable is the bleakness of our future.
There are three men today whose voices I trust when I hear them speak.
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. 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 Mitch Perry on Aug. 10, 2009, at 6:38 am
By Mitch Perry PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio
Thursday night’s Town Hall Rally on health care with Congresswoman Kathy Castor in Ybor City has been dissected throughout the country thanks to YouTube.
The atmosphere both inside and outside of the Children’s Board was as intense and, at times, incendiary as the days after the presidential election in Florida in 2000. (I’ll never forget Day 3 of the 36-day recount in West Palm Beach, when I saw Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler sprint for safety into a trailer from incensed Republicans after finishing a live interview with then CNN anchor Greta Van Susteren).
Although the failure of both houses of Congress to vote on health care legislation before the August break was initially viewed as a loss of momentum for President Barack Obama, the fact is that the American public does need to sit and discuss what is in this once-in-a-generation legislation.
Unfortunately though, through the first week of the Congressional recess, the Town Hall format ain’t the place where that’s happening (and probably won’t , as more members of Congress can use footage of Tampa, St. Louis and Detroit to blow off further encounters).
By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.
Keith Meinhold is one of many decorated veterans who can no longer serve his country … because he’s gay.
Question: We’re not headed into another Great Depression, are we?
Can you see the similarities between the chart patterns above? If I told you the left chart was a prelude to the greatest economic disaster in American history, what would you surmise about the chart on the right?
By Mitch Perry PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
With the recording industry in freefall, the manager of one of the most respected bands in rock announced last month a new sort of record label, perhaps more akin to a venture capital company.
Brian Message represents Radiohead. But now with Polyphonic, a new company he’s helping to create, new artists will be signed and given funding but then will record their own music and choose outside contractors to handle their publicity, merchandising and touring.
According to the NY Times,
Instead of receiving an advance and then possibly reaping royalties later if they have a hit, musicians will share in all the profits from their music and touring. In another departure from tradition in the music business, they will also maintain ownership of their own copyrights and master recordings — meaning they and their heirs can keep earning money from their music.
Meanwhile, Nielsen reports that sales of physical albums fell off , while individual digital tracks rose 27 percent. That follows news from earlier this year that indicates that teenagers are not only buying fewer CD’s (nothing too radical there), but also fewer digital downloads of music, prompting a market researcher to remark, “ These declines could be happening due to a lack of excitement among teens about the music available, but it could also reflect a larger shift in the ways teens interact with music, given that so much music is now available whenever and wherever they want it.”
Intrigued, I asked one of the veterans of the music industry, Danny Goldberg, what he makes of what’s happening in the industry he’s worked in for his entire adult life. He said these developments are part and parcel of the radically different environment in the music industry.
Jeb Bush spoke recently with the Miami Heraldabout our education system and offered that America should be open to learning from other successful education systems around the world and adopting similar working models if they apply.
According to Bush:
We should be taking the best ideas from around the world, tearing down the barriers to let these things happen, and apply them in a way that we move away from this homogenous type education system where every child learns the same way and learns the same thing.
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.
Q: The recession is over, they tell me, and with home prices really, really low, should I go ahead and buy that house I have been ogling for two years?
So you think just because housing prices are at all time lows that they are a good bargain today? Interest rates are low, prices are low, inflation is just around the corner so … now is the perfect time to buy, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!! Listen to me, straight up; if you buy a house today you are a fool. Maybe I shouldn’t put it so strongly — you are a patsy. Want to know why?
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 Mitch Perry on Jul. 27, 2009, at 9:12 am
By Mitch Perry PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
Last week had to the roughest in the first half year of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate would not be able to vote on a health care bill before the August recess; Obama admitted his comments regarding the controversy over the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates had in a way exacerbated the conflict; and one major poll now shows him below 50 percent in approval ratings.
To add to all of that, there was this: The bizarre world that is the deniers of his citizenship suddenly broke out of the conservative blogosphere and into mainstream conversation.
By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.
This is not an easy post to write.
I struggle with my weight. Eating right and exercising takes effort and I work at it every single day. As President Obama encourages a national conversation about health care, what often gets overlooked is the part we play in our own demise.
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 »
By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.
When Alexandra Zayas fromthe St. Petersburg Times called to talk about the Channel 8 protests, I couldn’t have been happier. Intelligent, friendly, compassionate — Zayas understood the topic and had done the research. She was covering the protest and surrounding story, gathering opposing points of view from friend and foe alike.
Hers would be a well-rounded story. I could just tell. So I was happy to contribute a verse.
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.
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 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.
Posted by Jim Johnson on Jul. 14, 2009, at 7:47 am
By Jim Johnson PoHo Contributor
Jim Johnson is the creator of The State of Sunshine blog.
Tonight, Major League Baseball is holding the 80th All Star Game in St. Louis. With the recent success of the Tampa Bay Rays, the question could be asked – when will St. Petersburg host the All Star Game? Read the rest of this entry »
On Saturday, June 27, thousands of people gathered in the streets of St. Petersburg, FL for the city’s annual Gay Pride parade and festival. While we were celebrating and honoring the legacy of the LGBT civil rights movement, our local NBC affiliate (WFLA-Ch. 8) was airing Speechless: Silencing the Christians, an hour long special paid for by the conservative American Family Association (AFA) that makes a series of specious and demeaning claims about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
While many US bishops would wish it wasn’t so, President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict are eager to dialogue and engage each other on the world stage. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Mitch Perry on Jul. 13, 2009, at 7:54 am
By Mitch Perry PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
Los Angeles Dodgers star Manny Ramirez’s return to Major League Baseball two weekends ago after a 50 game suspension for using a performing enhancing drug was met with predictable hand wringing by much of the sporting press.
Ramirez’ bust in May (for using a female fertility drug) was wedged between similar outings of Alex Rodriguez and Sammy Sosa, who both reportedly failed drug tests back in 2003. Despite the fierce criticism in some quarters, A-Rod and Manny have been received pretty much like the conquering heroes they always have been by their home town fans since the embarrassing disclosures. And that annoys many ink stained scribes. Read the rest of this entry »
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:
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
Last Saturday in Brandon’s Clayton Park, approximately 200 citizens gathered for a TEA Party (Taxed Enough Already) organized by conservative activist Terry Kemple, and featuring a rally-the-troops speech by State Senator Ronda Storms (right).
It was one of what was supposed to be over 1,000 such expressions of outrage at government spending under the Obama administration around the country on Independence Day, and followed a similar outburst of conservative sentiment at the first “Teabag” parties held on Tax Day, April 15th.
That day was also dedicated to federal largesse, though you may recall it more as a media battle between the seeming outright advocacy of the Fox News network, and the derision of it by more liberal commentators, including way too many allusions to what the phrase ‘teabagging’ meant. (This Keith Olbermann bit was just part of that onslaught.)
The growing federal deficit was on the minds of most of the citizenry. Despite the fact that a large part of the current deficit can be laid at the feet of former President George W. Bush (as my previous column, referring NY Times columnist David Leonhardt, can attest to), those in attendance on Saturday were of no mind to hear such specific facts. Read the rest of this entry »
