Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 22, 2009, at 9:23 am
OK, I get it that people are angry. I’m angry. I get it that in tough times, nationalism is the natural response. I don’t like that, but I also get it.
But here’s my question to the people who go to the so-called Tea Parties: Are you carrying zero debt? Do you have no credit cards, or an equity line, or a mortgage on your home that is in excess of its value?
Because unless you can meet that test, you are PART of the credit crisis/banking problem and have no room to bitch about the government efforts to have us (all the US citizens who caused it by taking on too much personal debt) pay for it.
…More than 4,000 people attended the Orlando Tea Party, a conservative rally aimed at expressing discontent with Washington.
“This is maybe the greatest single gathering of God-fearing patriots in the history of Orlando, Florida,” local conservative radio host Bud Hedinger, who emceed the event, told the crowd.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 17, 2009, at 7:46 am
A stuck anchor is being blamed for the boating accident that killed two NFL football players and a third man off the Florida Gulf Coast in late February.
The Associated Press is reporting, based on a Freedom of Information Act request, that the lone survivor, Nick Schuyler, said the boat capsized as the four men tried to free its anchor from a coral reef.
Hypothermia and time, however, took their toll quickly, and within four hours the men were weakened in the frigid waters.
Schuyler told the Coast Guard that one of the men “freaked out” and took off his life vest and disappeared that night.
Another started getting unruly, throwing punches and later took off his life jacket, dove under the water and was never seen again. The third man thought he saw land nearly two days after the boat capsized and decided to swim for it.
That man said his life jacket was too tight and he took it off, Schuyler told the Coast Guard.
Officials have said they found three life jackets: one on Schuyler, another near the boat and a third underneath.
It’s unclear how accurate the account is. Schuyler, who was found clinging to the overturned boat about 35 miles off Clearwater and nearly 48 hours after the accident, was suffering from hypothermia and he has provided different accounts to the men’s relatives.
Posted by Ben Luongo on Mar. 16, 2009, at 10:30 am
By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor
Ben Luongo is a USF political science graduate student. He will be graduating this spring.
Tampa’s 15 billion gallon reservoir is now basically drained and the rainy season is months away. According to Tampa Bay Water spokeswomen Michelle Robinson, Tampa is now going to have to rely on both the underground water aquifer, which could increase the risk of sinkholes, and the small of amount of desalinated water from the plant.
When people think of Florida they might find it unlikely that it would suffer from a water shortage. However, after decades of development even a state surrounded by water is prone to shortages, and Florida is not the only one. According to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, 36 states are projected to suffer water shortages in the next five years. Water shortage is a problem felt at local levels, like the city and state, but also at national and international levels. This means that efforts to remedy water shortages are going to require both state and federal solutions.
However, on a more individual level, there is stuff that we as Tampanians can do to reduce the amount of water that we use on a daily basis. Here are some easy and cheap examples:
The space shuttle and its crew of seven blasted off Sunday just as the sun was setting. The shuttle is carrying a final set of solar wings for the space station that the astronauts will install.
NASA is thrilled to see Discovery finally on its way. A hydrogen leak Wednesday scrapped the first launch attempt. Before that, valve concerns kept postponing the flight that was originally scheduled to launch in mid-February.
Here’s the view from St. Petersburg, by our own Jamie Ostrand over in the Ad Dep’t.:
This one is from the East Coast, about 45 miles away from the launch pad:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 15, 2009, at 7:26 am
She’s living now in Arizona, a long way from Largo where her transgender revelation as Steve Stanton cost her a longtime job as city manager, but Susan Stanton has a shot at returning to the Sunshine State.
Stanton’s gender was not mentioned by [Lake Worth] city commissioners Thursday during a discussion of city manager finalists.
“We don’t have time for bigotry in the city of Lake Worth,” Mayor Jeff Clemens said. “There’s too much for us to do. I’m going to make my decision based on who the best candidate is, period.”
In her cover letter to the city, Stanton offered to work 90 days without pay on a trial basis. The letter says she used to live in West Palm Beach.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 15, 2009, at 3:02 am
With echoes of the Cold War, the Kennedy Boston accent and Khrushchev’s shoe-banging comes this news: Russia is considering basing some of its strategic (read: nuclear) bombers in Latin America.
A top Russian Air Force official said that the government was weighing whether to base strategic bombers out of Cuban territory or on a Venezuelan island that has been offered by President Hugo Chávez, according to the Interfax news service.
In comments made at an awards ceremony on Friday night, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of staff for Russia’s long-distance aviation division, told reporters that either option would be practical.
“There are four or five airfields in Cuba with 4,000-meter-long runways, which absolutely suit us,” he said. “If the two chiefs of state display such a political will, we are ready to fly there.”
As of this week, Tampa Bay Water has virtually drained its 15 billion-gallon reservoir. From now until the summer rainy season, it must rely on its two remaining sources of water: its sometimes troubled desalination plant and the dwindling supply in the underground aquifer.
“It’s going to be a long couple of months waiting for the rainy season,” Tampa Bay Water spokeswoman Michelle Robinson said Friday.
The regional utility expects to again ask the Southwest Florida Water Management District to impose the toughest watering restrictions in history on Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough county residents. Swiftmud turned down that request last month – but that was before the reservoir ran out.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 11, 2009, at 6:07 am
A gunman in southern Alabama is leading the morning’s news shows and online news outlets after starting a killing rampage by killing his mother and burning her house down before heading to another town to kill other relatives.
Police were investigating shootings in at least four different locations in several communities, all of which were believed to be the work of a single gunman who had not yet been identified by investigators.
The afternoon of bloodshed began in Kinston, near the Alabama-Florida border, where the shooter burned down his mother’s house, according to the Coffee County coroner, Robert Preachers. Officials located the woman’s body inside the house, but they had not been able to get inside the still-burning house to determine if he shot her first.
The gunman then headed east, into Geneva County, where he shot and killed five people-four adults and a child-at a home in the nearby town of Samson. Then he killed one person each in two other homes. The identities of all the victims were unknown, but Preachers said they included other members of the shooter’s family.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 9, 2009, at 6:02 am
Hey, it’s another Tampa Bay teacher sex-related case. From TBO.com:
Police arrested an Azalea Middle School teacher Saturday on charges of sending pornography to a student.
Christy Lynn Martin, 32, 3457 Lynn Lake Drive S., was charged with sending pornographic photos to a 14-year-old boy’s cell phone. The boy is an eighth-grade student at Azalea Middle School, but is not a student in any of Martin’s classes, St. Petersburg Police said.
She is charged with one count of transmitting pornographic images through an electric device and one count of transmitting material harmful to a minor.
Martin was released just after midnight on $20,000 bail, according to the PCSO website. Updates later in the day said she and the boy exchanged photos via cell phone, and that the boy told a relative who told the boy’s mother, who told police.
“Close them down, get them out of business,” Mr. Shelby, the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, told ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “If they’re dead, they ought to be buried.”
While the Alabama senator did not say which banks to shutter, he suggested that Citigroup might be on that list, saying the bank has “always been a problem child.”
Mr. McCain, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” echoed that sentiment without identifying any banks. Mr. McCain, who lost the presidential election last November, also accused the Treasury Department of avoiding the “hard decision” to let “these banks fail.”
Home furnishings made in Sweden will soon find its way into Tampa Bay homes with the opening of IKEA’s 3rd Florida store. May 6th, 2009 is the target for the official opening of the store that lets the consumer assemble many of the products at reduced prices.
Store officials claim in addition to the 400 to be hired to work for IKEA, nearly 500 construction jobs were created while the store was being built along Adamo Drive and 22nd Street.
Future store manager Monica Varela is excited about the progress, ” We are thrilled at the excellent construction progress made in the summer and fall….”
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is moving to allow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to temporarily borrow as much as $500 billion from the Treasury Department.
The Connecticut Democrat’s effort — which comes in response to urging from FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — would give the FDIC access to more money to rebuild its fund that insures consumers’ deposits, which have been hard hit by a string of bank failures.
Governor Charlie Crist has suspended Okaloosa County Sheriff Charles Morris from office.
The governor issued an executive order Friday to suspend Morris and appointed Edward Spooner as interim sheriff.
The order noted an arrest warrant issued for Morris by the U.S. District Court in Pensacola on Wednesday that charged Morris with theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, wire fraud and conspiracy.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 27, 2009, at 7:12 am
Just when you thought the Hulk Hogan saga couldn’t get any wackier, the father of the soldier left in a near-vegetative state in an accident caused by Hogan’s son, Nick, is in jail, charged with plotting to kill his wife.
Ed Graziano paid more than $2,000 in cash, check and a Westshore Plaza Pizza gift card in an attempt to have his wife, Debra, killed in what was supposed to look like a car accident, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. Tipped to his plot, Pinellas County sheriff’s detectives had an undercover deputy act as a go-between in the plot.
Graziano was jailed yesterday. And today, 10 Connects reports, Hogan’s estranged wife, Linda Bollea, believes she may have been a target of Graziano’s as well.
Bollea’s publicist tells 10 Connects “people around the case” have told Hulk Hogan’s estranged wife Graziano also made threats aimed at Bollea. After hearing about the possible threats Bollea’s publicist described her as “scared to death.”
Bollea issued a statement Thursday night saying “Any threat from Ed Graziano would and is being taken very seriously.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 26, 2009, at 8:51 am
Strong words from one of the greatest congressional douchebags of the last decade, but Tom DeLay blames Charlie Crist for Florida’s fiscal tanking:
I think MSNBC takes a sick delight in putting the most ridiculous Republicans on their programs just to let them sprout all sorts of nonsense. So naturally Tom DeLay, the disgraced former Republican House Majority Leader, stopped by Hardball with Chris Matthew last night to face off against former Democratic Congressman Harold Brown Jr.
After calling Obama’s non-State of the Union “the most hypocritical and irresponsible speech I’ve ever witnessed,” he gets into a debate about Obama’s recovery efforts. Brown quickly brings up Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s support of the stimulus.
Without missing a beat DeLay retorts that the Moderate duo are “two governors that are dead wrong and have driven both their states into the economic toilet.”
Supervisory Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Rhew in Tallahassee says search warrants were served at the university’s Innovative Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute.
Rhew would not comment on the target of the investigation, but University of Florida spokesman Steve Orlando says the FBI was in the office of professor Samim Anghaie, the Iranian-born director of the institute.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 25, 2009, at 3:01 pm
There are so many blog posts about “the future of journalism” (we had one here just this week), but this one is about its past, an attitude of service and storytelling that is getting increasingly rare.
Some day, unfortunately in the very near future, Stephanie Hayes’ work is the kind of writing we are going to miss about old-fashioned, storytelling journalism. Not because no one will want to do it, or that no one will think of doing it, but because nobody can pay you to do it any more.
Here is the St. Petersburg Times‘ Hayes’ story about her time on the obit beat, during which she crafted some amazing, small gems of narrative storytelling under tough situations and in relatively few words. She is 25, and she rocks. I’m sorry I missed it in Sunday’s paper, and I’m sorry the Times can’t afford to have a Floridian section every day because this is the kind of thing you could expect daily from it:
The week before I started the job, I sat at the kitchen table with my grandpa. I explained what I’d be doing, the best I could. Truthfully, I wasn’t totally sure.
Dead people. Obituaries.
He had just the gift for me! He went to the basement and brought back a rusty old biscuit tin. I flipped it open, a mushroom of must and news clips swelling out.
A box of death.
For years, he’d snipped obits from his Lorain, Ohio, paper, the Morning Journal. There were a couple of interesting locals, but mostly celebrities like Dinah Shore and Burt Lancaster and Gene Autry and Gene Autry’s sidekick. People he spent his life watching.
Buried deep, there was a prayer card for Padre Pio, a saint believed to have cured the sick.
As we sat together reading of heart attacks and cancer and stroke, I wondered – what was the fascination with death? And how could I spend my days in it?
You can (and should) read the full story here. And understand the passion that still drives some people in this financially troubled industry.
Trouble does not seem to be going away for former Hillsborough elections chief Buddy Johnson.
The FBI is already digging around the finances during his time in office. Now his personal real estate dealings are gaining scrutiny.
Johnson is facing a lawsuit filed by a retired couple accusing him of swindling them in a land deal completed in 2007. But now, according to Bay News 9’s partner newspaper the St. Petersburg Times, federal agents are investigating the deal.
A Plant City property appraiser who looked at the land deal confirms the FBI contacted him this month.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 18, 2009, at 7:29 am
Score one for the Church of Scientology, and from an unlikely ally: the Clearwater Police Department.
The St. Petersburg Times got more than 200 pages of investigative records into the death of 20-year-old Kyle Thomas Brennan. Longtime Scientology foe, attorney Ken Dandar, filed a federal lawsuit last week on behalf of Brennan’s mother, who blames Scientology and three individual church members for allegedly withholding Brennan’s anti-depression medicine. Brennan killed himself in Clearwater in 2007 while visiting his father.
But the Times found the police investigation doesn’t support that version:
The reports don’t provide evidence of a key claim in the lawsuit: that Brennan was denied access to the antidepressant Lexapro.
Police instead learned that Brennan wasn’t taking the medication regularly. The only Lexapro pills police found were in a 30-pill bottle issued to him almost three months earlier. Sixteen pills remained.
The mother’s attorney, Ken Dandar, said Kyle was taking the medication as needed.
The young man’s own psychiatrist told police the prescription would have to be carried out on a regular basis. He was not aware of any “major side effects” from suddenly withdrawing from the medication. The drug’s Web site states that quickly coming off the drug can increase the risk of suicidal thoughts.
The Times story also details Brennan’s strange cross-country travels before coming to stay with his father, who was a Scientologist and worked for the church in 2005 and 2006.
ABC Action News has learned that Dr. Abdul Rao, an associate dean of the USF College of Health will resign effective Friday.
As it was first reported last week, Rao admitted to taking the bike belonging to a graduate student in the health department, but claimed he only lent the bike to a handyman who needed transportation.
Rao makes a salary of $384,000 per year overseeing research grants at USF. The bike was worth about $100.
Rao came to the university in 2006 and at least two professors in the College of Medicine tell ABC Action News that Dr. Rao was widely disliked among the faculty.
Video of his re-creation of “The Bicycle Thief” after the jump:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 17, 2009, at 7:14 am
A wrongful-death lawsuit blames the Church of Scientology and its Clearwater-based Flag Service Organization for the 2007 suicide of Kyle Thomas Brennan.
The lawsuit claims the 20-year-old fatally shot himself while visiting his father in Clearwater.
More details and download the full lawsuit after the jump:
Continuing our streak of scooping up talented longtime journalists from other outlets, the St. Petersburg Times has hired Irene Maher, former medical editor at the Tampa NBC affiliate WFLA-Ch. 8, to contribute a column to the newspaper’s weekly health page, Pulse.
Maher, who was laid off last year from WFLA after 23 years, will work for the Times part-time, also contributing material to the newspaper’s Web site.
The Times has also featured work by laid off Tribune columnist Dan Ruth, displaced Creative Loafing writer Wade Tatangelo and former Tribune classical music critic Kurt Loft.
The Tampa Tribune became the latest newspaper to deliver copies of the New Testament to subscribers as a part of national effort by the International Bible Society, distributing 56,500 copies in its Saturday edition before the Super Bowl.
The effort was spearheaded by a pair of local residents who raised about $127,000 from 15 area chruches and 19 local businesses, including McNichols Co., AnazaoHealth Corp., Ferman Automotive Group, Idlewild Baptist Church, Florida Dental Centers and Bayshore Baptist Church.
The Republicans thinking about a Senate run work the crowd at the Orlando Rosen Shingle Creek.
Broder whacks Obama: “After a near-perfect month of transition operations, Obama has stumbled twice in two weeks, first being caught unaware by the investigation of Bill Richardson, his choice for commerce secretary, and then being outmaneuvered by Burris and his tawdry sponsor, Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 8, 2009, at 8:04 am
The karaoke killer? Police say Robert Farley killed his father then returned to a Plant City hotel to dance and sing the night away, caught on hotel video (click here if video doesn’t load on your browser):
“When you have a disaster strike, you have to have someone in charge. They didn’t have anybody in charge in New York during 9/11. They didn’t have anybody in charge in Katrina. And you get a mess.”
