Open Thread: Keep It Rolling!
{This thread is closed. Use the new "Open Thread" posted on January 19 for your discussion topics.}
How about some new space for a continuation of what’s on your mind?
Here is a question to start: Have you made any "political" New Year’s Resolutions for 2008?
posted by Blog Master @ 10:13 AM
37 Comments:
About Black Rock and management fees, I missed that information.
You get what you pay for.The state fee was cheap and you got incompetent management from a political hack who got his job because of a brother who was a big donor to JEB BUSH.
Unfortunately, all the king's men and all the king's horses aren't going to put the fund back together in one piece again.
From what I am hearing the pension fund is next.
The state's exposure to Enron and the big hit it took, was a lesson lost.
I suspect you will be hearing the word kickbacks coming from Tallahasee in the near future.
Clayton Ellsworth
Can you imagine anyone like these two people? What is happening to responsible parenting in our country?
PENSACOLA, Fla. — A couple was charged Friday with trying to sell their 2-month-old baby for $30 in a store parking lot, authorities said.
Robert G. Ellingson, 23, approached two people in the PetSmart parking lot and offered them a beer. When they refused, he offered to sell his child, Escambia County Sheriff's officials said.
"At first they thought it was a joke," sheriff's spokesman Glenn Austin told the Pensacola News Journal. "But then the mother yelled to the group that they were trying to sell the baby. And one of them called us."
Ellingson and Maghen Duvala, 25, the baby's mother, were each charged with four counts of child neglect. They were being held in Escambia County jail — he for $27,000 and she for $15,000. It was not immediately known if they had legal representation. They were expected to make a first appearance Saturday.
The Department of Children & Families took custody of the baby, whose name was not released.
Authorities said the couple also tried to sell their baby in a bank parking lot a few blocks away an hour earlier. They are each charged separately for that incident by Pensacola police with one count of child neglect.
The baby would have been better off if some caring and sincere person had paid the $30 and taken the baby instead of having to turn it over to the DCF.
Want to bet there is a drug connection.
To My Democrat Friends,
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes.
To My Republican Friends,
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
when will county attorney and county administrator be getting their evaluations at a public workshop
Soon. yes. word is: tough.
read: resignation.
one or more.
Creeky, oh creeky, you aint splained your constant interest in things homosexual and pornographic. Pleeze, creeky, wont you splain?
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It was a couple of years ago that I began asking people what then county commissioner Randy Harris, county administrator Pat Howard, and former library advisory board member Eddie MacCausland have in common. My answer is that all three have at various times advocated library book challenge procedures that would give them an official reason to privately get up close and personal with challenged public library material that some in Marion County refer to as pornographic.
While a library advisory board member, McCausland advocated that the library advisory board on which he sat have final say over challenged library material, giving him official notice of the availability of the material and an official reason to look at it. In an effort to establish himself as an authority on the matter, MacCausland made reference in a library advisory board meeting to past contact with pornography. He was appointed to the board by county commissioners Harris, Larry Cretul, Steve Henning, and Parnell Townley.
As many people know, in 2000, Harris began enthusiastically advocating that he and other county commissioners have final say over challenged library material, giving them an official reason to handle the material.
Harris would have to wait years before such a challenge procedure was put in place, but in 2000 he made a visit to library headquarters with then assistant county administrator Janet Tutt to take personal possession of the library reference copy of “It’s Perfectly Normal,” which does not normally circulate and which had not been subject to any adverse administrative decision. Harris held the book for weeks even though most adults could easily read it in no more than an hour.
Meanwhile, Pat Strait, the harridan appointed to the library advisory board by the same four county commissioners who appointed MacCausland, held tightly the circulating copy of “It’s Perfectly Normal,” which was circulated among members of the library advisory board considering a challenge to the book. Strait took the book to the office of a fellow library advisory board member and sat outside his office for an hour waiting for him to return it to her even though it was not checked out to her. Strait’s library advisory board ally MacCausland called this book “kiddie porn.” Strait had the material in her possession for months.
When “Eat Me” was challenged in 2003, Strait was so eager to immerse herself in the book dubbed “pornographic” by its critics that she lobbied Community Resources Bureau Chief Lee Niblock to personally intervene with the library director so Strait could get the book faster.
In 2005, Harris got his wish for county commission review of challenged books on appeal, but not before Howard made an unsuccessful push in 2004 to get the library advisory board to recommend a book challenge procedure that would have had appeals of decisions by the library director going to Howard as county administrator. Howard was so eager to get his hands personally on this material that he wrote a whole memo about why he should make decisions about it. Howard was originally hired by county commissioners Harris, Henning, and Andy Kesselring.
Both Strait and Harris cheerleader John Lund have done public readings of first person descriptions of oral sex on the male genitalia. These are internet postings quoted in a library book addressing transmission of sexually transmitted disease. Strait did her reading in a library advisory board meeting. Lund did his during an after-school broadcast on his now defunct talk radio program on WOCA in May of 2002.
Lund carried a hyperlink on his personal website to the first chapter of “Eat Me” so his tiny band of listeners could immerse themselves in what he referred to as “absolute pornography.”
Keep in mind that some of these people claim the material they are repeatedly contacting or trying to contact can cause sexual arousal. I have never heard anyone state publicly or privately that they became sexually aroused by books in our public library, but given the certainty with which the charge is made that the material is sexually arousing you have to wonder if the people making the charge are speaking based on their personal experience with the material.
Voyeurism has been a component of censorship since the first censor went in business.
I doubt we will see any public floggings of the County Attorney or
Manager anytime soon. The Nugent episode will have made the County Commissioners a bit gun shy about doing anything public. Expect some individual conversations--tough ones--in private.
I'll bet if those private conversations are too tough or frank both the County Administrator and the County Attorney being professionals may choose to negotiate their departure and get real severance pay rather than waiting for the inevitable.
creekybaummy you are one sick individual to try and claim the county officials you named are actually after an opportunity to raed porn. let e life.
RIGHT ON!!!!
July 2008: Howard is replaced.
Clayton--Looks like the baby boomers are starting to skip Florida as a place to live:
www.theledger.com/article/20071229/NEWS/712290459/1374
anon at 6:38 12/28 --
you are about right, give or take a month or so depending on the election.
The Marion County Interfaith Alliance will conduct a public forum on Tuesday, January 8 on the topic of “How Do We Respond When Government Infringes on Individual or Religious Freedom?”
The forum will take place at Joy Lutheran Church, 7045 SW 83rd Place. Forum begins at 7:00 PM. County Commissioner Barbara Fitos will be one of the panelists.
www.unityocala.org
“How Do We Respond When Government Infringes on Individual or Religious Freedom?”
Is this a trick question?
Here let me try, WE VOTE THEM OUT!
Anonymous: Re Baby Boomers.
Just back from 2 weeks in southern Florida, Marion County looks good to me.
I have not read the article you referenced.I will when I catch up from being gone.
I have felt all along that the baby boomer rescue of Florida was mythical.
Boomers are highly leveraged, still spending with inadequate net worth to afford Florida.
I have seen various numbers on the actual net worth, with the median being around $140,000.
Of course you have the upper crust, which is smaller than you think, with 1 million plus net worth which raises the average higher.
We spend 2 weeks each year at Destin in the panhandle where St. Joe has developed their much ballyhooed Watercolor Developement next to Seaside. To say this developement planned for boomers from Atlanta is a bust, is being kind.
Worse yet is the St.Joe developement called White Fences which are farmettes along St.RT 20,
on some of the poorest and most desolate land in Florida.
When we saw this froth in 2005, we just shook our heads in disbelief.
It amazes me to see how the so called "smart money" can be sooo wrong.
Everybody was inhaling the fumes and listening to the drum beat of how wealthy the boomers were in the late 90's. Now we know differently.
Clayton Ellsworth
Anyone who thinks Randy Harris’ political career is ended better rethink that assumption. A recent discussion with him at the annual Gator Bottom fundraiser breakfast for the Interfaith Emergency Services indicated Randy is a long way from finished. Stay tuned!
By the way, the breakfast was a great event with about 500 in attendance to raise money for an important local cause. Thanks to the many Republicans who attended and contributed.
Harris became addicted to government money. Especially given the state of the housing industry in which he sought refuge after his election defeat last year, you can bet he’s trying especially hard to figure out how he can get back to comfortably living off the taxpayer.
What can you do when the government infringes on individual or religious freedom? You can do what John Quinones and David Booher did. You can sue in federal court.
Quinones is the head of the church that was denied access to the community center at Marion Oaks that operates under the policies of a Marion Oaks MSTU for which the Marion County Board of County Commissioners is the governing body.
How ironic that we have a county commission well stocked with people eager to flaunt their religiosity during elections who in a March 20, 2007 closed session were told by their outside legal counsel about the policies for which they were responsible: “This policy, however, prohibits religion.” Incredibly, County Administrator Pat Howard admitted in this meeting that he didn’t even know whether the county commission had approved the policy.
Their outside counsel also told the county commission: “As you can probably tell, my – I am very concerned – well, let me be perfectly frank: we will not prevail; we will lose this litigation. I have been doing this a long time. This is the first time I’ve ever said that, period, as a lawyer.” I guess he never previously had a client as incompetent as the Marion County Board of County Commissioners.
On the advice of its outside legal counsel, the county commission quickly folded on this one to prevent further financial exposure. This is what happens when you elect and hire incompetent people, folks.
Booher is the homeless man convicted and jailed numerous times for a total of over 200 days under the dishonest panhandling ordinance instigated by Randy Harris and passed unanimously by the county commission in May of 2006. Booher, whose case is ongoing, won a preliminary injunction in his suit against Marion County and the sheriff, preventing the county and the sheriff from enforcing the ordinance.
Federal District Court Judge William Terrell Hodges states in the order issuing the preliminary injunction, "It is clear from the law that the underlying purpose is to preclude homeless and indigent individuals from freely engaging in protected speech activity, because it is deemed undesirable." This is called CENSORSHIP.
The county commission’s ordinance is so pathetically dishonest that even their outside legal counsel refused to defend an essential provision when invited do so by Hodges during a September 18, 2007 hearing before the preliminary injunction was ordered.
While purporting to be about traffic safety, the ordinance distinguishes between those soliciting on behalf of themselves and those soliciting for others. Here’s an excerpt of an exchange between Hodges and Marion County’s outside counsel Virgil William Wright (as distinguished from County Attorney Thomas Wright):
THE COURT: … what would you say to plaintiff’s equal protection argument? Wouldn’t the same threat to vehicular safety be posed by firefighters and other charitable organizations soliciting funds in the middle of the street?
MR. WRIGHT: Yes, it would, Your Honor.
Duh.
Later in the hearing, Hodges gives the outside counsel for Sheriff Dean a similar opportunity to defend the distinction in the ordinance but he doesn’t want that hot potato. He declines to defend the distinction and defers to the attorney for Marion County because his client, Dean, is only enforcing the ordinance and did not enact it.
Apparently, Harris, Kesselring, McClain, Payton, and Stone made the mistake of believing that federal judges are as easily hoodwinked as some of their local supporters.
The provision of the United States Code under which Booher is suing Marion County over this Harris-instigated ordinance originated in the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
Council President Charles Ruse's "trailer trash " statement really offends me.
Besides being a bigoted remark, Ruses concept of a better Ocala made up of residents who appreciate better services is a figment of his imagination. What better services ?
Concerning annexation, I know from the personal experience of serving on a planning commission, you better have something to sell that somebody wants or be prepared to face tough sledding.
I suggest that Mr. Ruse look up the words territorial and provential in the dictionary, then go back to the drawing board.
As ubsurd as Mr. Ruses "vision" of a better Ocala is, I will not be surprised if he suggests selective breeding on the part of Ocala residents.
Clayton Ellsworth
News Flash !!!
Ocala home sales dropped 50% in November, tieing Miami with the biggest drop in the State. Source, channel 2 Orlando.
Clayton Ellsworth
More on Ruse Abuse :
Marion County / Ocala needs many more better paying jobs, better schools, better and proactive leadership at the government and private sector levels.
If this is not forth coming soon, Marion County will experience negative growth if it is not already.
Marion County has a lot to offer than can be better packaged to sell the area. The same tired Chamber Of Commerce bull---- is not going to work, it isn't working now.
The notion that Marion County is some kind of Utopia that is going to bring people here seems to prevail the more I poke around and listen.
I am reminded about a personal experience during the 70's.
Industrial developement was at a complete stand still in Ohio. Their was no natural gas for industrial use.
A private group bought a failing industrial park on the old City Of Wooster airport land that the city and Chamber Of Commerce could not market.
The major new stockholder was talking the park to another death. The second largest stock holder and I rallyed all the token stock holders together and took over management of the park.
Very quickly, we learned that the Chamber of Commerce was pidgeon holing the very infrequent leads in defference to local industry which included Rubbermaid and Wooster Brush Co. We cut them out completely.
WE then brought in a propane farm bought in distress from New Jersey, filled the tower and then thumbed our noses at East Ohio Gas who then immediately lifted their ban to the park.
Next step was going to the Chairman and CEO of Rubbermaid who said that it was nonsense to restrict industrial
developement.
On his next trip to Europe Don Noble brought back a lead from Germany which almost immediately became a done deal.
The Germans arrived in a charter bus with their Japenese Camera's, asked to see the most distant land so they could hide from unions.
The welcoming group was two no nonsense people, My big shot friend and me. Deal done in 20 minutes.
We had what they wanted, plain and simple, we quickly realized that by listening not selling.
Today, Rubbermaid is long gone The first buyer is the largest manufacturer in Wayne County, pays very well, has terrific benefits and is looking for more land adjacent to the park as the park has been full for over 20 years.
Moral of story. Marion county is not listening, is playing politics in winnowing leads and has no clue on how to get major new industry. [Sorry Peter Tesch and COC.]. I site their results as proof.
There is no place for politics and a agenda oriented COC in successfully gaining new industry. Do I see a change ? No !
Happy New Year !
Clayton Ellsworth
The bloom is off the roses :
In a story, first reported by the St. Petersburg times, The Census Bureau reports that in the year ending July 31st 2007, Florida's population increase from US residents was only 35 thousand, lowest since 1990 when this measure was first made. Increases in Florida's population from foreigners was 88,111, the first time this category exceeded domestic growth in Florida.
Total new Floridians--123,111 in 2007
Reasons cited where "surging housing costs including insurance and taxes". Now there is a real revelation.
Also cited were congested roads, low wages and memorys of hurricanes.
Problem is that Florida's economy depends on population growth.
I have previously writen about what Florida must do to increase population by attracting industry. Sunshine, sand and palm trees have become maxed out as a reason for moving to Florida.
Obviously, something has to be done about taxes and insurance. I would add to the list, improvement in education.
If a business model isn't working, you change it. Same with state government.
Listen up Florida, you are running out of time.
As the national economy continues it's slide into further maturity, so will Florida's.
The time to have dealt with this econpmic reality was yesteryears.
Clayton Ellsworth
County Commissioner Andy Kesselring is one of 16 applicants for the post of Planning Department Director. The current head of the Planning Department, plans to retire by Sept. 30.
Kesselring does not plan to seek four more years on the County Commission when his current term expires in 2008. If he doesn't get the Planning Director job he will run, as already announced, for Florida House District 24. That's the seat which former Marion County School Board member Kurt Kelly won in a special election last summer.
Not sure what Andy thinks he can get done better as a County employee than he has as a County Commissioner.
It’s not clear to me how a member of the county commission to whom the county administrator reports can be objectively evaluated as a candidate for a position under the county administrator that reports directly or indirectly to him. I don’t see how someone can possibly sit as a county commissioner without at least there being the appearance that the hiring process is biased by the status of one applicant as a county commissioner with formal authority over the whole county government.
It would be interesting to know how this sort of situation has been addressed here or elsewhere in the past. It sounds unusual.
I suppose one option for maximizing the chances that qualifications will be objectively evaluated would be for the county commissioner to resign if he wishes to pursue employment in the county government, but I don’t see any mention of that.
Is Kesselring going to leave his position of county commissioner to serve as planning director or would there be overlap? I don’t know what the legalities would be, but it sounds even more problematic for someone to try to hold both positions simultaneously.
Once the County Commissioners (including Kesselring) give Pat Howard his performance review, there will be no way that Howard selects Kesselring. That's unless Howard isn't around to make the decision after the review.
Agree with Creekbaum, too many potential conflicts in hiring Kesselring. Although, all said, Kesselring would probably be a very good person to put in the job. He is sure familiar with many of the planning screw ups the County has instituted.
Kesselring :
Based on my own experience of serving on a planning commission that hired first a part time planner and then a full time planner; you must have a professional who can stand up to the pressures they will get from local special interests. Also you are paying for professional knowledge and professional .
experience.
Put another way, Kesselring is the worst possible choice the county can make.
Immediately after our first planner arrived in Wooster, Ohio ; he was beseiged by realtors, developers, local obstructionists and political pressures
The planner was made off limits to any of the above.The planners job was to plan and we literally put a wall around him. Mitz auf.
The result was the beginning of real planning not plotting.
I challenge anybody to visit Wooster Ohio and not leave with the impression of a beautiful and well planned midwestern community.
Marion County is at a crossroads.
Proper planning is needed not more political cronyism.
Clayton Ellsworth
Good move by Andy Kesselring. Would set him up to replace General Howard as County Administrator.
IMO Ellsworth is wrong about Kesselring. Andy is the only Commission member who has stood up to the developers and not caved to them. He would do the same as the Planning Director and can do it better with no political fallout to his decisions.
Anonymous :
Maybe so, however, Kesselring lacks the book learning, the professinal training as well as the planning experience needed to be a planner in a county this size.
An outsider whithout any preconceived ideas of Marion County, whatever they might be, is essential.
What does IMO mean ?
Clayton Ellsworth
Kesselring putting himself in a postion to replace Howard if slected as planning director? Highly unlikely given that the other Commissioners would have to vote to select him. Doubt he would get one vote, if that much, from the current commissioners.
I agree, Kesselring could never get the votes to become the County Manager.
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