small town politics

A Freedom of Information request has been made regarding the City Managers expense account over the past three years. Lets see how long it will take for it to be answered. The requesters rear drivers side window was broken three days later. Nothing was taken but, coincidence? The front windshield was cracked a month before that, with a blunt instrument. Also a coincidence? or small town politics? A police report was made.

factual focus

For anybody to say X, Y, or Z is right, or wrong, without and proven facts or documentation is just one unsubstantiated opinion, and carries little weight or impact. This is a political forum and should be based on facts and figures backing up our opinions. Anything else is just hot air or political dogma.

crooks are bored, or afraid of being exposed

Incredible. Losing 300k per year is somehow BORING to somebody. Perhaps they are rich or more probably one of the recipients of our freebies at the pool. It is only boring to those pals of the City Manager who are receiving the free services. They are feeding at the public trough that the City Manager has provided, at the taxpayers expense. More mismanagement, if not corruption. The ones who are footing the bill certainly DONT find giving away 300k of their hard-earned tax dollars boring. We find it VERY interesting that NOTHING is being done to cut those losses at the pool and it is allowed to continues, with the permission of the City Manager. The question is WHY, is nothing being done? Is somebody receiving kickbacks for allowing the losses to continue? Is this just one phase of a corrupt management team? Poor judgement and mismanagement in every arena of the City's business. Hundreds of THOUSANDS of dollars lost on every project. How much longer can we put up with this terrible/inept/insane mismanagement/corruption ? Til they have bankrupted us? Its only boring to those who are lining their pockets and dont want to be exposed. All this is happening on the City Managers shift, under his supposed supervision. The buck stops there, right?

Iraq surplus

Obama repeated a stale talking point when he said, "We're spending $10 billion a month in Iraq at a time when the Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus, $79 billion." As we've pointed out when Obama said it on the campaign trail, when he repeated it at the last debate, and even when Biden mentioned the figure in the vice presidential debate, that number is wrong. The Iraqis actually "have" $29.4 billion in the bank. The Government Accountability Office projected in August that Iraq's 2008 budget surplus could range anywhere from $38.2 billion to $50.3 billion, depending on oil revenue, price and volume. Then, in early August, the Iraqi legislature passed a $21 billion supplemental spending bill. The supplemental will be completely funded by this year's surplus, and that means that the Iraqi's will not have $79 billion in the bank. They could have about $59 billion that could, would, and should be spent to rebuild their country.
Source-factcheck.org

misleading stuff

McCain: Sen. Obama has voted 94 times to either increase your taxes or against tax cuts. That's his record.

He's getting warmer — the first time we dinged him for this one, he said Obama voted 94 times to increase taxes, which is way off. He's now saying it's 94 votes either for increased taxes or against tax cuts. But that's still misleading. Seven of the votes were for lowering taxes for most people while increasing them on a few, and 11 votes were for increasing taxes only on those making more than $1 million a year (not "your taxes" except for a very few.)

Obama had his own misleading claim about vote counts:

Obama: And during that time, he voted 23 times against alternative fuels, 23 times.

We found that only 11 of those votes would have reduced or eliminated subsidies or tax incentives for alternative energy. The rest were votes McCain cast against the mandatory use of alternative energy, or votes in favor of allowing exemptions from such mandates.

Obama shift?

Obama flatly said he favored nuclear energy – embracing it more warmly than in the past:

Obama: Contrary to what Sen. McCain keeps on saying, I favor nuclear power as one component of our overall energy mix.

Previously Obama has been more hesitant. He said at a town hall meeting in Newton, Iowa, on Dec. 30, 2007, when asked if he was "truly comfortable" with the safety of nuclear power:

Obama (Dec. 30, 2007:) I start off with the premise that nuclear energy is not optimal. ... I am not a nuclear energy proponent.

He then went on to say later in the same response that he has "not ruled out nuclear ... but only so far as it is clean and safe." The energy plan Obama released in October 2007 only grudgingly conceded that more nuclear power is probably needed to reduce carbon emissions: "It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table."

whoops

McCain lamented having to "withdraw in humiliation" from Somalia in 1993, but failed to mention his own role:

McCain: We went in to Somalia as a peacemaking organization, we ended up trying to be – excuse me, as a peacekeeping organization, we ended up trying to be peacemakers and we ended up having to withdraw in humiliation.

What McCain isn't saying is that he led an attempt to force the Clinton administration to withdraw more quickly. After the First Battle of Mogadishu (immortalized in the book and film "Black Hawk Down"), Clinton proposed a six-month plan for withdrawing combat troops. Then-Sen. Phil Gramm complained that the plan was an attempt to "save face," and McCain introduced an amendment to cut off funding for combat in Somalia and force an immediate withdrawal. The amendment was tabled and the Senate backed Clinton's plan. In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain called his amendment "hasty" and wrote that he "regretted" what he came to see as "a retreat in the face of aggression from an inferior foe."

more debate misstatements

McCain: I am in favor of . . . giving every American a $5,000 refundable tax credit and go out and get the health insurance you want rather than mandates and fines for small businesses, as Sen. Obama's plan calls for. McCain's plan does not call for giving a $5,000 tax credit for "every American." It calls for a tax credit of $2,500. The $5,000 figure would apply to couples or families. And Obama's plan requires large businesses to provide coverage for their employees or pay into a national plan, not "small businesses," as McCain said. Obama's health care proposal, posted on his Web site, says: "Small businesses will be exempt from this requirement." McCain previously used this charge in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, and he repeated the claim in the debate, saying, "If you're a small business person and you don't insure your employees, Sen. Obama will fine you. Will fine you." As we said, that's false. Obama countered that he had proposed a refundable tax credit for small businesses of up to 50 percent of the cost of premiums, which is indeed part of his plan. We've noted before that neither man defines what he means by "small business."

benefits of electronic records

Obama: We're going to work with your employer to lower the cost of your premiums by up to $2,500 a year. We contacted health experts about this claim before – when Obama was saying the $2,500 would be the savings per family "on average." Some were quite skeptical. M.I.T.'s Jonathan Gruber told us, "I know zero credible evidence to support that conclusion." Obama has also said on the campaign trail that more than half of the savings would come from the use of electronic health records, a major part of his plan to cut health costs. When we looked into that claim, experts told us it was wishful thinking. Adoption of electronic medical records has been slow among doctors and hospitals. Obama could do much to speed it up, but it's not clear that he could bring about widespread adoption or reap such large savings from it. One of his advisers previously told us that the $2,500 figure included savings that would go to government and employers and that could, theoretically, result in lower taxes or higher wages for Americans. It remains to be seen whether savings could trickle down like that, even if Obama could gain the optimistic overall health care savings he touts.
Electronic medical records will save money and lives by cutting down on medical errors. Electronic records would also allow patients to go online to see their records, set up an appointment, have their x-rays and labwork readily available to doctors anywhere, and allow the patient to ask the doctor or nurse a question via email or a webcam, eliminating a trip to the doctors office, traffic, parking, and a wait in the waiting room- benefits all. These are NOT just possibilities, they are happening now at the Miami VA. Check it out.

setting the record straight

McCain: But you know, one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [T]hey're the ones that, with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back. Obama blamed deregulation of the banking industry: Obama: Now, I've got to correct a little bit of Sen. McCain's history, not surprisingly. Let's, first of all, understand that the biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system.
We've been here before. McCain has in fact been in favor of financial deregulation, but President Bill Clinton signed, and a lot of other Democrats supported, much of that same deregulation. And while Democrats really did fight McCain-cosponsored regulations of the FMs, McCain himself signed on to the bill just two months before the housing bubble popped.In fact, there's plenty of blame to go around. Experts have blamed everyone from home buyers to mortgage lenders to Alan Greenspan to both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Furthermore, McCain misspoke when he said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back." Actually those organizations did not make "home loans directly with consumers." Rather, they "work[ed] with mortgage bankers, brokers, and other primary mortgage market partners" and supplied them with the funds to lend to home buyers at affordable rates, as described on their Web sites. Sounds like there is PLENTY of blame to go around.

comments on Republicans

It appears that we have some blind McCain disciples posting, that believe anything he says. Nobody said he will take the 5000 away in taxes, but he will tax you on those monies that you use. Competition is what causes companies to lower their rates, along with a deepening recession. Are you suggesting there are NO questionable characters on the Republican side? Are you suggesting that we CAN drill our way out of this crisis? Nuclear facilities take 8-10 years to come online. What do we do in the meantime? McCain is backed by Big Oil- is there ANY doubt about that? The same Big Oil that has gouged us for $4+ gas prices that has put BILLIONS in their greedy pockets. Are you defending Big Oil as being good for anyone else but them? That would sound suspiciously like an attempt to justify greedy contractor or special interests, like is happening on Wall Street and Main Street right now.

comments

Other than a recall petition I know of no other way to stop them. There is a petition circulating around town to insure that the residents get a vote on any annexation issues that come up. That would effect their abilities to push ANOTHER ill-advised project thru-AGAIN. Our City IS being run into the ground, just as our nation is being run into the ground, by stupid/greedy/crooked (your choice, or all of the above) officials. We need to continue exposing their backroom deals to the public light. They have no conscience so they are almost IMPOSSIBLE to embarrass or shame. Between the control-freak City Manager and the blindly ambitious Council pursuing their personal legacies at the residents expense, there is PLENTY that they should apologize for, but their oversized egos will not allow that. So we get to remind them of their many screwups, giveaways, and poor judgement and management on a regular basis, in hopes that people will remember in April, at least. Everyone has a role- their role is to mismanage every project and disappear all of our tax dollars so they can raise our taxes and fees. Our job is to expose them for the blindly ambitious, greedy, and power-hungry control freaks they are, until the police come and take them away or the people revolt. One or the other is inevitable. The only question is whether that will be BEFORE we go bankrupt, or afterward. Petitions ARE circulating regarding annexation and the people having a voice in that process.

comments

I too believe that john McCain is a good, honest man. We just have differences in how we see the world, its problems, and its solutions. With all of those Big Oil executives running his campaign it is easy to see why he believes that more drilling is the answer to our energy crisis. let Big Oil drill on the 68 million acres they now have access to. Alternative energy would be competition for Big Oil so its no wonder that little emphasis is given to it by Republicans. Any drilling we would start today would have ZERO effect for 7-10 years on oil prices. Nuclear energy, while relatively clean, has the issue of spent fuel rods, multi-billion dollar construction costs, and public safety. Clean coal would be great, IF there was any such thing. There is cleaner coal but as scrubbers and washes are added the costs go up significantly, making them impractical. We CANNOT drill our way out of this, altho some selective drilling should be a part of an overall energy plan. This debate and discussion is great. Do you think this could happen in Russia? China? Cuba? No way. This is AMERICAN democracy at its best!

comments

As was pointed out last night, with McCains plan you WILL BE taxed when you go to use those health care benefits. THAT is revolutionary and unheard of in history. Never before has a healthcare plan taxed the users when it is utilized. He gives it to you with one hand, and takes it back with the other. Obama wants to start with the insuring of kids because they ARE the future and are relatively cheap to insure. If they get good healthcare when they are young it will reduce the expenses as they get older because any potential problems will have been addressed early, like asthma. It is preventative medicine, the best kind. Mandatory insurance puts everyone into a big pool and allows preventative medicine because there will be enough money to make it happen. Otherwise, people will not join until they are very sick, and expensive to treat. You can still choose your own doctors and plans, if you are happy with them. I respect John McCains service to our country but somebody who votes with Bush 90% of the time can hardly be described as a maverick. Sounds like more of the same to me.

checks or balances?

The City Managers of Coral Gables AND the City of Miami have been found to abuse their credit card priveleges with outrageous and expensive lunches, etc. Who reviews and approves our City Manager's expense account? Does anybody know? The City has NO fiscal restraints in most of its enterprises, could this be just another case of expensive outlays in a time of great financial difficulty?

common ground?

Obama wants healthcare for ALL children. He wants kids to have an oppurtunity to go to college. He wants his daughters to have a choice if they should be attacked, raped, and become pregnant. What about those proposals are anti-family? He wants his girls to have an equal oppurtunity. Isnt that what every Dad wants for his kids?

misguided rant

Sara Palin is an accomplished woman and ambitious politician striving for vice-president of these United States. Shes a little too conservative for me but to attack her personally and hatefully without a shred of rationale or evidence merely shows the ignorance and adolescence of that misguided poster. I have NO doubt that Sen Obama would, and should, repudiate that kind of classless, baseless, and demeaning attack on her in the strongest terms possible. That type of attack has NO place in the American political process, or ANY OTHER process for that matter. NONE. To criticize or comment on their ideas, or performance, or record is fair game, and Sen Obama would surely agree, as those are the established and accepted guidelines for our political discussions and debates. Profane and personal adolescent rants belong somewhere else. They are not welcome here.

bad judgement, or crooks?

The ex-head of Fannie Mae is a criminal? What was he convicted of and when did THAT happen? It is common knowledge that he, and many others, made some bad loans to people who couldnt pay them back. To want, and try, to put people into a home is a good thing, but he must put people into homes they can afford. As long as the homes were appreciating all was well but when that stopped happening, it went downhill quickly. It was certainly poor judgement and ineptitude, much like our Mayor and Council, and you may suspect criminal behavior (much like our Mayor and Council), but as of this moment no criminal case has been made in either case, has there?

hypocrisy on the hoof

I couldnt agree more that its not fair that Joe Sixpack has to bail out those greedy and crooked SOBs. It is also true that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac contributed to the problem. I dont think either party has the greed and criminal market cornered. I blame the Republicans, starting with Phil Graham in 1999, for the deregulation process that eliminated the oversight functions and allowed the crooks and greedy predators to proliferate, manipulate, and steal at will. If not for deregulation there would have been regulations and oversight for Wall Street and Freddy and Fannie. Penalize and imprison those crooks and greedy SOBs? YES. The Republicans want NO government interference or oversight UNTIL they run our economy into the ground. THEN they want the GOVERNMENT to bail their greedy and crooked butts out! Talk about hypocrites!

political wind power?

While its true that the Pickens Plan hasnt been endorsed by either candidate, Mr Pickens has spoken to both candidates personally, and his plan generally makes sense. We HAVE to get away from our oil dependency and a case could be made that part of the problem is a shortage of refineries. Mr Pickens DOES own Mesa Oil and would make a lot of money if we switched our focus to natural gas, but I dont have a problem with him making a profit, as long as he doesnt gouge us like Big Oil has. He is putting his money where his mouth is and building a one-billion dollar wind farm in Texas, which could serve as a prototype for others to follow. I assume and hope this plan is being scrutinized carefully by both campaigns and others. According to charts he has shown, we are the Saudi Arabia of wind power. The hot air generated by our politicians could provide half of our energy needs alone, no?

Obama signs disappearing

I am really not offended by the Springs for Obama or McCain signs because I know that only one speaks for me and if I want to show my support for either candidate I will put a sign in my front yard, for ALl the world to see- and some to steal. Apparently the sign stealers are back (didnt we get enough of this childishness before?) and the sign stealers are McCain backers, bacause only Obama signs are disappearing. Does John McCain support this illegal activity? It would be interesting to know what the Mayor and Council thinks about this activity, particularly Mr. Garcia, since he has experience in this area.

Big Oil

McCain has six Big Oil executives running his campaign. Big Oil bacame a four-letter word when they began gouging the people at the pumps for 4-dollars plus! A couple months ago Exxon made ONE billion dollars in PROFITS in ONE MONTH! on the backs of Joe Sixpacks everywhere. Having all those oil guys support your campaign doesnt leave any room for doubt where HE comes down on energy, like we can drill our way out of this energy problem. If we started drilling TODAY, it would be SEVEN years before any oil would come out of the ground. What do we do in the meantime? Turn over our paychecks to the Big Oil companies? McCain has no alternative energy plans of any significance. Small, selective drillings monitored closely are probably a part of any prudent energy plan but shouldnt be the longterm focus- alternative energy like the Pickens Plan is the way of the future. Check it out.

bathrooms redux

What are the final numbers on the bathrooms? The over/under was 500k and at last look it was over 414k. That was well over six months ago however. I am sure they have cost overruns of at LEAST 500k! That would put the total costs of these TWO little bathrooms at close to $500 a square foot, and almost exactly FOUR TIMES what it actually costs! Where did all that money go? That is approximately 360k that has disappeared into SOMEBODYs pocket! We KNOW it should only cost 140k to build those bathrooms, and INCLUDES a fat 25% profit for the builder. TWO YEARS later and 360k over budget, are they open yet? Are there any mop sinks or water fountains yet? Can you imagine what the new gym project will be? Incredibly botched by the City Manager from start to finish- AGAIN.

Jubak

For example, on Friday, Oct. 3, the Department of Labor reported that U.S. payrolls plunged in September. Job losses were the worst in five years as employers cut 159,000 workers from their payrolls. Unemployment stayed steady at 6.1%, but that's still 1.4 percentage points higher than in September 2007. So far, the economy has lost 760,000 jobs in 2008. Last year, the economy added 1 million jobs. Hours worked, a better measure of the state of the economy than the jobless number, went the data one better: Hours worked fell to their lowest level since the government began tracking the number, in 1964. On that trend, this slowdown could match the recession of 1981-82, when the economy shrank by 2.7%. All this Unhappy Talk! Its causing our economy to collapse! Where IS that Happy talk guy? At least HE could tell us some Happy stories about how well the contractors and other special interests are doing!!! THAT would fix our economy!! More Happy talk!!! and is it possible that a little might even possibly (theoretically) trickle down eventually to the average taxpayers?!!! probably not... but it IS a Happy Republican Thought !

Jim Jubak - MSN Money

I was wrong. I no longer think we're facing a garden-variety recession. At a minimum, it will last longer than the two quarters I projected on Sept. 30. Economists are now talking about a recession that will last three, four or even five quarters. (Keep some perspective here, please. We're still not looking at anything like the Great Depression. In 1932, the economy contracted by 13% and unemployment hit 24%.) And I don't think we're looking at anything like the hoped-for V-shaped recovery, in which the economy zooms out of the bottom, showing growth of 5% or more. The economy, I believe, is going to crawl off the bottom with growth that's likely to linger at less than the 2.5% the Federal Reserve calls the U.S. economy's noninflationary speed limit.

I no longer think this is the typical bear market, not even if your benchmark is the painful one of 1973-74 or the excruciating one of 2000-02. Stocks now face a triple-whammy. First, a slow-growing economy will keep earnings growth depressed from levels investors now regard as customary. That means price-to-earnings ratios will have to come down to something below the historical averages for stocks. Second, the higher interest rates will cut into earnings further as all companies have to pay more to raise capital and as some companies defer expanding production or developing new products completely. In industries where this deferral leads to supply lagging demand, it will also lead to higher inflation, which will push up interest rates.

sound familiar?

The Mayor and Council have NO problem charging up the credit card because its OUR credit card that WE will have to pay back, or go into bankruptcy. THEY add to their questionable legacies on the backs of the residents. Is there such a thing as a negative legacy? One that is embarrassingly wasteful and shameful in its entirety? In six months or a year they will admit that things have gone horribly wrong and blame it all on the recession, like it just snuck up on them and only then did they realize it, months after everybody else knew it. By then, of course, the change orders will have led to cost overruns that will have eaten up the 2.5 million and they will expect, like on a national level, Joe Sixpack (taxpayers) to pay for THEIR stupidities, greed, ineptitude, and criminality.

zero waste

We have 50k tons of nuclear waste spread out over 100 sites in the USA. The radioactive waste will remain radioactive for the next 10,000 years. Yucca Mountain will not be ready until 2017 and will be overflowing by then. Argonne Labs are working on a process to recycle those spent fuel rods and reduce the waste by 90%. Using a scrubber and different washes they can separate some of the contaminants from the spent fuel rods and recycle them. diapers in a landfill take 500 years to decompos but can be decomposed in 5 secinds in a plasma chamber. The process makes a synfuel gas that is further refined and used to generate power. the byproducts can be sold on the open market for roads, jewelry, and other products. Instead of paying $90 a ton to pick up garbage in New York, New York could make $15 a ton by using this process on its garbage. PLASCO Company is still testing this technology but it only results in 2.2 pounds of heavy metal waste per ton.

recycling stuff

In America we use 450 BILLION gallons of water each day. Forty percent of that is used to flush our toilets. We should use drinking water for drinking, and use rainwater or recycled water for flushing. Some of the more modern toilets use 40% less water by having two lever; one for liquid waste and one for solid waste. Red worms have a unique ability to neutralize any human pathogens so when they eate organic material and fully digest it, their poop is a great fertizer. Composting toilet systems are a great way to address our sewage problem. The problems arise when sewage is mixed with toxic chemicals, fertilizers, etc. Z-weed is like seaweed, and is is used to clean by a membrane sewage better, faster, and using only 25% of the area now needed. It has nanopores that filter out the water while not letting the particulate matter thru. Holes in the membrane are four times smaller than an HIV virus. viruses and bacteria are filtered out. Singapore is taking waste water and recycling it into drinking water.