Early warning signs?

Members of Downtown Rotary still are buzzing about a bizarre appearance by Mayor Alvin Brown a couple of weeks ago.
One said the speech -- full of platitudes and mush -- was the "worst speech I ever heard," and this person has heard many.
Yet, it was a prepared speech -- not one off-the-cuff, which might be excused.
On top of that, Brown applauded himself throughout the speech, while members of the audience stared in disbelief.
Since taking office, Brown has announced an "economic summit," which is kind of busywork with no clear reason or purpose. He also has expounded on the need for "downtown development," which has been a theme of every mayor for the past six decades.
The frosting on his cake is a plan to spend $70 million on a trolley.
This is just an old newspaperman's hunch: Before 2015 the RINOs -- I mean "prominent Republicans" -- who helped defeat a competent conservative candidate are going to be offering excuses for their foolish actions.

Changing times, and minds

In 2008 candidate Barack Obama said President Bush was "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic" because the national debt had increased by $4 trillion during Bush's eight years in office.
President Obama has added more debt in three years than Bush did in eight. Twice as many people are unemployed.
That's not all. The stock market is in turmoil. We have more military involvement in foreign lands than under Bush. China is closing the military gap with us, rapidly.
Yet in an Orwellian comment, the White House press office says the mounting debt is a "validation" of the sagacity of Obamanomics.
How much hypocrisy and chicanery will the American people take? Will they re-elect Obama in 2012 when he is still blaming Bush for all his failures, four years later?
There is a virtual certainty that if the election were next week and there was a 100 percent voter turnout, Obama would be chased from office.
But it is way too early to say what will happen in November 2012.
Obama already is trying to pose as a tax cutter and spending hawk. With the media's help, he might be able to sell that bill of goods to people who don't know the facts or don't care about them.

Journalistic malpractice

One local paper was so devoid of news this week that its editors felt the need to run a story made up from scratch by the Associated Press. It is a typical practice in the liberal media.
You select a conservative target and then make up a story that will cast the person in a negative light.
The big story was that Gov. Rick Scott gets health insurance, and pays the same rate as 32,000 other state employees.
Shocking!
Well, OK, not shocking. So, they have to jazz it up a bit.
They revealed the fact that Scott actually opposes the federal government's attempt to take over health care through the vehicle generally known as Obamacare!
That's it.
This is a news story?
Naturally, libs fell all over themselves with outrage. They didn't know what they were outraged about but I do. It is because Scott beat Alex Sink at the polls and became governor. Libs believe only Democrats are fit to hold public office.
They have been working overtime to demonize Scott since he was elected.
In this case, anyone who examined the story would laugh -- if they were capable of critical thinking. But, of course, the public schools don't teach critical thinking. They indoctrinate children to follow the liberal line.
Someone capable of thinking would ask, why shouldn't Scott buy health insurance that the Legislature voted long ago to make available to state employees?
At one time, it was free. Now the employee has to pay a cost. It is a low cost, because it is subsidized. Again, not Scott's doing.
The fact that he agrees with the majority of Americans on Obamacare has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Many of those 32,000 who get the insurance at the same rate undoubtedly agree with Scott. Are they to be held in disrepute also?
Are only those who think Obamacare is good policy entitled to have health insurance supplied by the state?
Previous governors of both parties got the benefits established by law, regardless of what federal government policies they agreed with.
Unlike them, Scott does not accept a salary from the state. This obviously more than makes up the amount of the subsidy he gets on health insurance.
This is a completely fabricated story. It is, in fact, not a news story. It is an attack on Scott.
It is much like one of the made-up stories published by this local daily. At one time they attacked a number of local citizens solely because of the amount of water they use monthly.
Water is a free resource that the city and private companies deliver to residents for a fee. Several years ago the fee structure was revised, in fact, to penalize those who buy larger amounts.
So people were held up to public ridicule and scorn just because they buy large amounts of a product that the city sells.
The implication is that they are "wasting" something valuable that belongs to "society," using more than their "fair share." This is one of liberaldom's favorite myths and themes.
We could not run out of water on the planet Earth if we wanted to. The worst that could happen is that some day Florida residents might have to use water from the ocean, as millions of other people around the gllobe do every day.
Libs also claim that food is scarce. So where are the stories castigating people who spend too much at the local groceries? You won't see those for two reasons: grocery stores spend millions on newspaper ads, and the city doesn't keep records of people's grocery bills, which makes it effortless to cook up a phony story about water usage.
If you read a story in a newspaper, which fewer people do every day, ask yourself: Is this news or propaganda?

The plan is working

Never let a crisis go to waste, Barack Obama's closest adviser told him.
But first you have to have a crisis.
If there's not one handy, create one.
Today's fall off the cliff in the stock market is a natural result of the spending and debt binge Obama has been on since he took office.
I'm convinced now that his plan is to create not just a recession, but a Depression.
He and his socialist pals, including George Soros, have to be licking their lips looking back at the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to move America further toward socialism than it had ever been. He did it by using the crisis at hand, which he didn't create but made worse.
Herbert Hoover had cut taxes and the nation was heading out of the recession of 1929 when Congress passed the worst piece of legislation ever, the Smoot-Hawley tariff. That put the nation, and the world, into a depression.
Roosevelt, after being elected by promising to cut taxes and balance the budget, did the opposite. When people needed jobs and food, he jailed employers for trying to lower wages and sell food at lower prices. His make-work job programs employed some people, but kept them out of work in the private sector.
Even his own financial adviser admitted at the end of FDR's first term that nothing they had tried had worked.
Obama's plan is to do everything FDR did, and double or triple it. With the nation in a depression, he can assume huge powers for the government, as FDR did, and the freedoms lost this time may never come back.
The only risk he is taking is that the economic hardships he is creating will backlash in November 2012 and prevent him from being elected. He is counting on Soros and the media to keep that from happening.
If he wins his gamble, there is nothing to stop him.

Let's get real

Mayor Alvin Brown -- ho, hum -- is calling for an "economic summit."
What is that?
It is a gathering of people to discuss how to increase employment in Jacksonville.
Those attending are the same people who have been trying to figure out ways to increase employment for years.
How are they going to be any more effective sitting in the same room? They all know all the remedies available and, truthfully, they are few.
Local government doesn't control local employment. The policies that affect business the most are set in Tallahassee, which is 175 miles away and, even more so, in Washington, D.C., which is 800 miles away.
The further away the politician, the less the accountability. But that is another issue.
Local government can do things to make it easier for business -- especially small business. This includes imposing only as much regulation as necessary, and keeping taxes low. It also helps to make easier access for things like permits.
But local politicians tend to worry more about big business, which really needs little help that they can provide.
What should Brown be doing?
He should be putting his newly appointed department heads in a room together and ordering them to provide him with a list of the cuts they would make in their budgets in case of a 10 percent reduction in funding.
This is an excellent exercise. It exposes the least necessary functions of government and also the management savvy of the bureaucrat.
It also gives a mayor a list to turn to when property taxes fall off, or state and federal funding is reduced. Admittedly, the latter is rare.
He also should be working with the City Council to fashion a smooth transition to a new employee pension plan that will not allow politicians to promise the moon in exchange for votes, and not have to worry about the consequences.
Sound, practical ideas are not likely to come from the dying daily newspaper. They are too busy praising Brown for everything he does. Because he is "historic," you know..
Whatever the hell that means.
If Brown helps get the local government through a tight period without dumping it all on the taxpayer, he might be up for the "historic" label, although other mayors have done pretty well on that score.
At the moment, he is just a guy with little experience in a new job and holding summits that are not likely to produce anything of benefit to the taxpayers.

Featherbedding again

Once again, teacher unions in Florida are proving that the government schools are operated for the purpose of providing safe, secure, highly paid jobs for adults, not for educating children.
A proposed amendment to the state constitution is under legal attack by the unions. What it would do is remove a 19th century provision with roots in anti-Catholic bigotry.
It also is a device the unions use in trying to prevent poor children from escaping dysfunctional, unsafe government schools. They succeeded in destroying one successful program and would like to eliminate all other competition.
It costs about $8,000 to $10,000 per year for a child to attend government schools. Many families can afford to send their children to a private school when they are not getting what they paid for in a government school.
Poor families cannot afford to escape failing government schools.
However, vouchers allow them to send their child to a school that is safe and actually provides an education.
If the voucher is $5,000, that saves the taxpayer $5,000 for each child getting an education.
Union leaders such as Andy Ford are unable to do basic math. They say it costs money when a child transfers from a government school to a private school with a voucher.
But they also say that it costs money for every child who attends a school. You can't have it both ways. There cannot be a cost both for educating a child and for NOT educating a child who attends another school.
All unions want is to force as many children into government schools as possible, whether they get an education or not. Each child has a price tag because the state funding formula funds government schools on a per-child basis. The more money the schools get, the more money unions get. The more money they have, the more they can spend on electing liberal politicians who will vote to give them even more money.
There is no correlation between spending money on schools and educating children.
If the unions want to convince the taxpayers that it is better to discriminate against Catholics, or that they should oppose vouchers, fine.
But what they seek to do is prevent the taxpayers from voting on an issue. They are against democracy.
Vouchers have nothing to do with religion. The parents make the choice where they use the voucher and it could be at a school run by Catholics, Jews, Protestants or any other religion or one that is non-denominational.
It is the state's job to educate children and it is failing miserably, yet at great cost. This is true not only in Florida but in every other state. One major reason is that government schools have no incentive and no accountability. Even good teachers, of which there are many, are handcuffed by red tape and bureaucracy.
The choice of a school for their children should be left to parents.

Hear not, know not

The sheriff's office is going to stop people from listening to police calls (if it can.)
This is a major, and rather disturbing, story.
The media and others listen to police scanners to find out what the police are doing. But the cops supply them with the scanners and now say they can't have them anymore, Channel 12 reports.
(I don't know whether people can buy scanners to pick up the calls. Apparently not. As I understand it, the local police use an encrypted signal that is only understood by their own units.)
This is just the latest retreat from transparency by the local police. It has been getting increasingly dark for the past several decades.
Long ago, the police locked reporters and the public out of police headquarters, allowing them access only when supervised and by appointment.
Naturally, the police cite security concerns. That is a poor excuse.
When I was a police reporter in the 1960s I had free run of the building. I spent all day talking to cops and detectives, and reading the reports they file, and going into the jail to read the dockets and see who was booked and why.. Offense reports now are made available to the press only in a room near the front door of police headquarters. No one knows if every report is provided or not.
I also had a police radio. It was not two-way but I could hear police calls. The cops gave it to me because they had a spare in the radio shop. It was a big help. It enabled me to be present at the scene of one of the biggest murder cases in local history, when the pastor of the Beaver Street Baptist Church was shot by his girlfriend.
There were no "information officers" to herd the press in those days, and none of the cops objected to the access we had.
In the next sheriff's election, open access to the public (NOT just the media, who are not anybody special) should be an issue.
It will be interesting to see if the local media push this issue or just continue to be wimpy.