Another local official arrested.

The Local Puppy Trainer informs me that Okaloosa County Commissioner James Campbell has been arrested on four counts of official misconduct and four counts of perjury.

While investigating the misconduct in the Tourist Development Council office, the Sheriff discovered a payment involving Mr. Campbell that didn’t look right, so the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was called in to investigate. [In Florida we know better than to trust the county sheriff to investigate other county officials.]

Mr. Campbell’s story was that he wasn’t really hiding the money from the state, he was hiding it from his wife. Since his wife filled out the state mandated financial disclosure form, if he had included it, she would discover how much he was spending on his hunting trips. [There was a time when that would have been a plausible excuse here, but that time is past.]

Fortunately he didn’t run for re-election, so there is a replacement waiting to take over, and we aren’t forced to have an expensive special election.

From the blind side for the Mittster. It is appropriate that the latest problem was the result of his speaking in Boca Raton. It is a bit childish on my part, but I find humor in the fact that Boca Raton means “Rat’s Mouth” in Spanish. [If you looked at an old map of the inlet on the Atlantic Ocean before real estate developers changed it, you would see the origin of the name.]

CBS NEWS actually fact-checked the 47% comment:

In order to assess whether or not, as Romney claims, these non-income tax payers “will vote for the president no matter what,” it’s helpful to look at a breakdown of who they are. According to 2011 data from the Tax Policy Center, more than half of the filing units not paying income taxes are those with incomes less than $16,812 per year. Nearly a third – 29.2 percent – of those paying no income taxes are tax filers earning between $16,812 and $33,542, and 12.8 percent are those with incomes between $33,542 and $59,486. In other words, the poor are least likely to pay federal income taxes, but many middle-class families are also exempt. Smaller but significant numbers of the higher-income earners are also exempt: The same data shows that in 2011, 78,000 tax filers with incomes between $211,000 and $533,000 paid no income taxes; 24,000 households with incomes of $533,000 to $2.2 million paid no income taxes, and 3,000 tax filers with incomes above $2.2 million paid no income taxes.

It’s the 105,000 filers who made more than $211,000 in 2011 and paid no income taxes that really burns and shows how broken the tax systems is. What happened to the Alternate Minimum Tax that was supposed to kick in? Congress keeps messing with it, but it obviously isn’t very effective.

After the fold are three maps that I find interesting:

[Read more →]

Position: 35.8N 32.2W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northeast [025°] near 7 mph [11 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Wind Gusts: 65 mph [105 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 230 Miles [370 km].
Minimum central pressure: 993 mb ↑.

Currently about 325 miles [ 525 km] West-Southwest of the Azores.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the islands of Flores, Corvo, Faial, Pico, Sao Jorge, Graciosa, and Terceira in the Azores.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]