Category — Florida

The Northwest Florida Daily News reports: Two Okaloosa deputies slain, gunman dead:

CRESTVIEW – A gunman shot and killed two Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies Saturday afternoon as they were attempting to arrest him for an earlier domestic violence incident.

The gunman then fled in a pickup truck to DeFuniak Springs, where he was killed in a shootout after lawmen rammed his truck.

Joshua Cartwright, 28, shot deputies Warren “Skip” York and Burt Lopez just before 1 p.m. at the Shoal River Gun Club, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The deputies were pronounced dead at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola a short time later.

The deputies were at the gun club responding after a domestic violence call from Cartwright’s apartment in Fort Walton Beach – the Consul Apartments on Monahan Drive.
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We have too many issues decided by initiatives in this state, but that is the only way we can stop the criminal conspiracy that the legislature has become from pulling stunts like this.

The Miami Herald reports that a Florida House panel OK’s oil drilling bill

TALLAHASSEE — In a full-barreled appeal to the House Policy Council, the oil and gas industry persuaded lawmakers to vote, 17-6, along party lines Tuesday for a bill that opens state waters to exploration and taps into new revenues for the state’s ailing budget.

The council approved an amendment by Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Orlando, that would lift Florida’s ban on oil drilling in state waters and replace it with a plan to allow the governor and Florida Cabinet to seek bidders for exploration and drilling in the Gulf of Mexico between three and 10 miles offshore.

There are no revenues for years, if ever, and the construction off the coast will destroy the value of beach homeowners and the tourism industry. The Republicans don’t want to put the state on a real, sustainable tax system, but keep looking for “silver bullets” and other ways of funding the programs they approve of without having to give up on all of their give-aways to business interests.

Drilling for oil is a source of pollution. There is no environmentally sensitive way of doing it, and we are moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. This is another get-rich-quick scheme from a group of people too lazy to do their jobs.

Only 30 hours late due to an “anomoly” the NWFDN reports F-35 lands at Eglin, and includes the important part:

Sound level meters on the ground registered about 107 dB as an F-35 and an F-16 flew overhead. That compares to between 76 and 86 dB recorded from the curb of Racetrack Road during traffic.

Kudos to the newspaper for not only taking a sound meter with them for the arrival, but providing a standard point of comparison.

Lest anyone believe that we are running out of whackos down here, the Local Puppy Trainer has another candidate for Countdown: Obama sign pops up on Hollywood Boulevard

FORT WALTON BEACH —- Richard Tona said the two signs he’s posted in front of Tona Auto & Collision Center on Hollywood Boulevard aren’t meant to attack President Barack Obama, rather, it’s to inform residents about where their tax money is going.

“I think a lot of taxpayers don’t know,” Tona said. “It’s a matter of standing up for what is right and speaking up about it.”

The larger sign states “$789 billion stimulus. Killing human embryos.”

Tona said he’s just “repeating what’s happening in the White House.”

These signs have better spelling and typography, and the same distortions.  Rest assured that Mr. Tona has more than a few “fish” slapped on his vehicles and property.

Once again with feeling: George W. Bush was President when the bank bailout was passed by Congress with the approval of the Republican candidate for President, John McCain. The need for the stimulus package is because the George W. Bush administration didn’t regulate the financial institutions, and didn’t investigate the crimes they were committing. The current depression belongs to the George W. Bush administration which took the surplus of their first year and plunged the nation into massive deficit spending by launching needless wars against people who were absolutely no threat to the United States, while not pursuing the people who had attacked the United States on 9/11/2001.

It is a bad time to be a public employee in Okaloosa County. People are starting to ask questions and look at the books.

The Local Puppy Trainer reports that the FWB golf course director forced to retire

Jim Frazier, director of golf at the Fort Walton Beach Golf Course, has been forced to retire.

The action comes as city officials say they’ve found evidence Frazier has given away at least 20,000 free rounds of golf since 2005.

City Manager Bob Mearns said the reason Frazier was facing termination was for insubordination. He was allowed to retire at his own request, Mearns said.

In a letter he forwarded to the Fort Walton Beach mayor and City Council, Frazier called Mearns’ hounding him about complimentary golf rounds a “witch hunt.” He accused former City Councilman Mike Minich, who records indicate played about 40 free rounds, of sicking [sic] Mearns on him.

Frazier works for the city. Mearns is the City Manager. Mearns is Frazier’s boss, but Mearns is new, while Frazier is not.

Frazier claims it is a “computer error”.  The “error”, as Frazier explains it, does overstate the number of free rounds, but it also would overstate the total number of rounds played, and make the golf course seem busier than it actually was.  You have to wonder: is that a bug or a feature?

The city recently spent a lot of money upgrading the golf course, based on the use figures supplied by Frazier and it still loses money.

The Pensacola News Journal has a fashion tip for mothers picking up their children at school: Trench coat, guns, knife

A woman wearing a trench coat outside Gulf Breeze High School was arrested Monday after police found she had brought two guns and a knife to campus.

Judy Hall’s arrest came on the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings that left 12 students and a teacher dead in suburban Denver. The two students who carried out the massacre were dressed in trench coats.

Police are not sure why Hall, 61, brought the guns to campus on the anniversary of the Columbine shootings.

“The mother did not identify that she was trying to make a connection to Columbine,” Gulf Breeze Police Chief Peter Paulding said. “But it did involve a trench coat and guns, and this is the 10th anniversary.”

Hall of Finch Drive in Gulf Breeze was booked into Santa Rosa County Jail on Monday on charges of carrying a concealed gun, bringing a gun to a school, and resisting arrest without violence. She still was in custody Monday night.

I don’t remember June packing heat to pick up Wally, even if he was with Eddie Haskell. Well, it was only 77° yesterday with a few clouds, so she probably thought a rain coat was necessary, and she did bring two guns, so maybe it was going to be a parent/child bonding experience.

There are still people who wonder why the St. Petersburg Times has a separate section called: Bizarre Florida.

The Local Puppy Trainer has a article on Okaloosa’s tarnished image which is totally devoid of a connection to the real world. They need to do a little traveling to find out what people have always thought when you mention Northwest Florida. The county’s image hasn’t been “tarnished”, for most of the rest of the world it has been confirmed.

The Panhandle has been called the “Redneck Riviera” for a very long time, and most people are not smiling when they say that. When people visit, they want to stay in Destin, because they see it as divorced from the “trailer trash” that inhabit the rest of the county. The unregulated development, and total lack of urban planning has turned the “Miracle Strip Parkway” into a long strip mall with a collection of ugly commercial buildings.

The revelations about out local officials being corrupt is nothing new, the original “He-coon” of Southern politics, Robert Lee Fulton “Bob” Sikes, set the tone, and older people remember it.

The next election should see a new Sheriff, Tax Collector, and member of the Florida house. It is to be hoped that NWFSC trustees will start looking for a new president, and there are some changes on the county commission. It is highly unlikely that the new people will be any better than the old, because the “good ol’ boy” network isn’t about to let in outsiders.

Sorry, but we have never had a reputation that could be tarnished.

In addition to his recent indictment for official misconduct [malfeasance] and perjury, NWF Daily News noted that the “esteemed” president of Northwest Florida State College, Bob Richburg is a “double-dipper”

Richburg retired as president of the college in 2007 and received a lump sum of $553,000 for his 30-plus years of service to the state.

He turned around 30 days later and got rehired at a new base salary of $221,450 – a 3 percent raise over the approximately $215,000 he’d been making before retiring.

And a year after being rehired, Richburg started collecting $8,546 a month in additional retirement pay.

Once again the bill that was supposed to make this practice illegal has disappeared in the state senate, so even if “Fast Buck Bob” is convicted and sent to prison, he will still continue to receive his $100K/year state pension at a time of fiscal meltdown for the state.

After this, no one will dare to back any funding for anything at NWF State College. It will become the pariah of the system. It was once a nice little community college that served the needs of the area, and now it will be shoved to the back of queue for everything, because one guy wanted to build an empire, instead of educating students.

In response to problems with Florida’s election law [Democrats won a state-wide office, and the Presidential contest in the state] the Republicans have proposed a complete new law.

The Miami Herald reports on the new bill: Changes at voting polls rile up critics

The 81-page bill was debated for just six minutes before it passed on a 10-5 party-line vote at a one-hour meeting at 8 a.m. of the House Economic Development Council. No other committee is slated to review the bill, so there’s no chance for additional public testimony in the two weeks left in the session.

Similarly, the Senate version (SB 956) was heard for the first time Thursday, passing the Ethics and Elections Committee 5-3 over Democratic objections.

On Friday, Republican Rep. Jennifer Carroll of Green Cove Springs suggested restricting debate to six minutes. When the committee chairman, Rep. Dave Murzin, R-Pensacola, allowed two people to make brief statements, Rep. Rob Schenck, R-Brooksville, insisted that no more testimony be allowed.

That’s right, a complete re-write of the election law with 6 minutes of public comment, and straight party-line votes, but the tea parties were about what the Federal government is doing.  The state of Florida has strong open government laws … well, except for the legislature which exempted itself from the intrusions.

The St. Petersburg Times does a follow-up on the Sansom/Richburg indictments: Grand jury calls on Florida Legislature to make budget process transparent

TALLAHASSEE — The grand jury that charged Rep. Ray Sansom and college president Bob Richburg with crimes Friday saved its harshest criticism for the Legislature itself — for backroom dealing and a culture dominated by special interest money that “has the potential to breed corruption.”

“The appropriation process that gives unbridled discretion to the president of the Senate, speaker of the House of Representatives and appropriation chairmen needs to be changed. This state should be guided in openness and transparency,” the grand jury report said. “This process allows taxpayer money to be budgeted for special purposes by those few legislators who happen to be in a position of power.”

Of course the Republicans say you can’t have a publicly debated budget – it would be too political.

As opposed to what? I would note that the Republicans also felt the grand jury report was political for noticing the lack of transparency.

Grand juries in Florida, and most states, have the right to investigate anything they feel like, not just what a prosecutor brings before them.

The Northwest Florida Daily News actually reports on the law working for a change:

Tom McLaughlin takes some time away from the Sheriff’s Office to report that a Leon County Grand jury indicts Sansom and Richburg:

State Rep. Ray Sansom and Northwest Florida State College President Bob Richburg have been indicted for official misconduct, a third-degree felony.

Richburg has also been indicted on a charge of perjury.
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The NWF Daily News says that the F-35 to debut along Emerald Coast next week

The F-35 visit will also mark the first opportunity to hear, firsthand, how loud the “sound of freedom” will be. The JSF Program Office and Lockheed Martin, producers of the F-35, released a summary of F-35A acoustics testing from data collected October 2008 at Edwards AFB.

According to the summary, the worst case scenario for the F-35 at a distance of 50 feet is 145 decibels at military power, the same as the F-16 and one decibel less than the F-22A. Using its afterburners, the F-35 is the same as the F-18E/F at 148 decibels. F-15s, F-22s and F-16s are higher.

The summary also predicted community acoustics, from 1000 feet, would be worse than an F-18 and equal to an F-22A at military power. The Sound Exposure Level (SEL) would be 121 dbA. At minimum power, the SEL would be 94 dbA, 6 to7 dbA less than the F-18 and F-22.

The shortest distance between any of the three runways and Valparaiso is about 2000 feet. The longest runway, and the runway used by the current fighter wing is much further away and involves no overflights of Valparaiso.

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It is being reported that Comissioner Don Amunds resigns from Sheriff’s Office. This is known as covering your butt, because being associated with Charlie Morris’s Sheriff’s Office is not going to be a good thing for any local politician and it takes a while for the anger to die down.

It should be illegal to hold down more than one government job at a time, but that’s not how things work around here.

On the national front, Atta Turk has a picture of President Obama at the White House Easter Egg Roll wearing a plain black windbreaker and reading a book.

If it had been the Shrubbery, it would have featured the Presidential seal, his name and title [Bunny in Chief?], and probably have been festooned with red, white & blue Easter Eggs. He would have been standing behind a podium with the Presidential seal on the front.

The NWF Daily News reports: one struck by lightning, one tornado [probably came ashore on Hurlburt Field], all of the recent road repairs undone, and the rivers are raising again.

They have video of a street two blocks from where I am sitting with the water up above cars’ axles and the idiots driving through it. Even if you were in good shape when you entered, the wake from the 4WD coming the other way will probably flood you out, and the waves were obviously washing into the Gas Company office. They don’t actually show that happening, but the office is at that location and it is on a ground level slab as it was formerly a service station. [Storm drains? We don’t need no stinkin’ storm drains! You just want to raise taxes!]

For something completely different, if you can deal with video, go see these amazing birds found by Mary at Pacific Views.