Category — Florida

MSNBC has a video report on people complaining that their neighborhood is overrun with rats. My suggestion would be for them to buy a Spanish-English dictionary and look up the name of their town: Boca Raton. Do you think there might be a reason the Spanish explorers chose the name “Rat Mouth”?

You clear the land and kill all of the large snakes and you are going to have rats in Florida.

On the ballot there are retention votes for 7 judges.

For outsiders, judges on the Florida Supreme Court and District Courts of Appeal are nominated by a separate entity, the Judicial Nominating Commission. The governor then appoints them, but they are subject to a retention vote every six years.

The retention of justice Charles T. Wells of the Florida Supreme Court is on the ballot, and I will vote for him, even though I don’t always agree with him because he is consistent in his decisions. You know where he stands, and that is with the law and Florida constitution. Unlike the US Supreme Court in 2000, Charles Wells doesn’t make things up to suit his personal or political preferences.

On the other hand, I am voting NO! on all six judges up for retention in the First District Court of Appeal.

[Read more →]

Early voting started today and runs until November 1^st, Monday through Saturday 8:30AM to 4:30PM in Okaloosa County.

The County has two sites:

• North County: Robert L.F. Sikes Public Library on Commerce Drive in Crestview.
• South County: UF Research & Education Education Facility on the corner of Lewis Turner Blvd. and North Poquito Road.

The Supervisor of Election offices will be limited to handing out absentee ballots.

Note: I’m voting NO! on all of the constitutional amendments except 3 & 6.

Amendment 2, the marriage amendment is toxic.  Don’t think that it doesn’t affect you because you aren’t gay.  It is a badly worded chunk of garbage that can be put to a lot of nasty uses by an enterprising attorney or religious mental case.  When you put vague and undefined phrases like “substantial equivalent” before an attorney, don’t expect they won’t use it in innovative ways.

Even around Tampa: Florida mailman bitten by snake during his rounds

The 66-year-old was bitten as he put mail inside a mailbox. He told authorities that he shook his arm and thwacked the snake against his car door to break its grip.

It wasn’t a very big Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, so he finished delivering his route before he went to the doctor.

Today was the last day for registration to vote in the November general election in Florida.  If you missed it, you have to stop complaining and take your lumps.  If you don’t vote, don’t expect to be taken seriously.

The people I vote for rarely win, but I at least announce that there are people who oppose the stupidity.

Even if you can’t stand the candidates there are always ballot initiatives to oppose.

From the Okaloosa County elections office:

BOOK CLOSING
Books close on October 6, 2008 for the November 4, 2008 General Election. Be sure all new registrations and party changes are submitted to our office or mandated sites by close of business.

There’s less than a week left to register in Florida to vote in the November election. At this point you really need to register or make changes to your registration at your county’s Supervisor of Elections office, so if there are any questions or problems they can be dealt with immediately.

VoteSmart Florida has information on the Florida ballot initiatives. There are three fewer than I wrote about in June. The Florida Supreme Court threw out:

5. Another attempt to shift costs from property taxes to sales taxes, this time aimed at schools.
7. Gets rid of the ban to giving tax money to churches.
9. Tells schools how to operate while providing a backdoor for vouchers by overriding a court decision.

There is still a lot of dross left. My rule on these things is that if the purpose isn’t absolutely clearly something you agree with, proposed by a group you trust, vote NO. There has been a lot of mischief done with deceptive ballot initiatives.

The “bubble” started in South Florida, burst there first, but the banks have tied themselves in knots because of their greed. The Miami Herald has the grisly details: Homes more affordable; loans are not

To understand how the credit crisis is hitting home in South Florida, consider the plight of Teresa and Hoover Encalada. The couple found a two-bedroom condo they loved at the Plaza on Brickell. At $434,000, the price was right. Their credit was good.

Friday, they got the bad news: The lender wants 45 percent down on a five-year loan with an initial interest rate of 7.8 percent. Now Encalada, a 39-year-old administrative assistant, and her husband, an Ecuadorean banana grower, are waiting on a second bank offer requiring only 40 percent down before they proceed.

Existing home prices in South Florida have fallen 20 to 30 percent over the past year, putting once-unaffordable homes within the grasp of buyers — if only they could qualify for a loan at reasonable rates.

If you have the cash, the prices are in line again. If you need a mortgage, forget it.  That “mortgage” offer isn’t even a good deal for a car loan.

The Miami Herald reports that Florida pension fund, Citizens hold Lehman securities

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a prestigious Wall Street firm, will touch Florida’s pension funds and the state-run insurer because both hold its securities.

The State Board of Administration holds $322 million in Lehman stock and bonds. The SBA manages the state’s employee fund and more than two dozen other funds, including assets for the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and the Florida Prepaid College Plan.

Dennis MacKee, a spokesman for the SBA, said the agency has an $84 million unrealized loss on its holdings.

Can you say “John Ellis ‘JEB’ Bush”? I thought you could.

[Read more →]

From the Miami Herald: Lake Okeechobee draining may have to start quickly:

The slow draining down of Lake Okeechobee could begin as early as Wednesday.

With three tropical systems looming in the Atlantic Ocean, the Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday it hopes to begin slowing the lake’s record-setting rise — and lowering the potential risk to its aging levee.

The level of the lake had been so low that there were fires in the lake bed earlier this year, but Tropical Storm Fay has more than re-filled the lake and the huge size of Hanna guarantees that more water is coming.

At least the Everglades are getting a decent drink, but if the lake fills too quickly, the 70-year-old Herbert Hoover Dike may not stand up to the strain. The levees were built following the 1928 hurricane that passed over the lake resulting in more than 1,800 deaths from the flooding.

There is also the problem caused by the burrowing of the South American sailfin catfish, one of our many invasive species.

But, other than that, No Problems 😈

Come on, of course US 98 on Okaloosa Island is under water and sand again. It always happens when there’s a hurricane within 200 miles of us. After the water goes down and they scrap off the sand, they can see if it’s been washed out…again.

You didn’t want to go to Destin anyway.

I assume that Floridians remembered that today was the regular Florida primary, and went to the polls.  There’s only about an hour left in the Eastern zone and two hours left in the Central zone if you didn’t.

CNN is covering some of the problems.

Two women have died swimming in the Atlantic off the coast, and rip currents are the most probable reason, as tropical storms and hurricanes create the conditions for the currents. The biggest problem is that people tend to choose to swim in areas that have rip currents because the surface of the water is much smoother than surrounding areas. That is one of the easiest ways of spotting a rip current from the beach, unusually smooth surface waters. The currents are channeling water away from the beach and are the result of a low spot on the bottom.

The third death was an individual testing his gasoline generators INSIDE HIS HOUSE! Of course it will kill you, and anyone else in the house, as it fills with carbon monoxide. This is just so needless. The PSAs telling you not to do this are endless on all of the media during storms, but every storm there are deaths.

On Monday early voting began for Florida’s August 26^th primary.

During this period Florida counties are using the new “Ballot on Demand” system to print the required ballot for an individual vote. In Okaloosa County alone there are 137 different ballots required in this primary, so, if it works as advertised, this should eliminate waste and confusion.

Our long-time and much appreciated Supervisor of Elections, Pat Hollran, is overseeing her last election, as she is retiring at the end of the year. Unfortunately she was involved in a serious motor vehicle accident on Tuesday morning during a thunderstorm. She is in stable condition in the hospital and I’m pulling for her full recovery so she can enjoy her retirement.

Sinfonian wrote about More trouble with voting in Palm Beach County, which was apparently tied to the state’s voters data base. The state claims the problem was caused by Walton County and a glitch in their system. I don’t know, but Walton County, just East of me, only has about 35K voters who are two-thirds Republicans, so I would think that the state could just give them a call and make them correct the problem that is inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of other people through out the state.

[Read more →]

Hipparchia discovered that Jeff Miller (R-FL01) is running a poll on the left sidebar of his official website on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  Please go over and say NO!  The sea turtles, dolphins, greedy real estate speculators, and US Military will thank you.

Despite being the Congresscritter for the Florida Panhandle he doesn’t mention that leasing the area off the Panhandle will

• Produce no results at all for at least a decade;
• Oil companies are under no obligation to sell anything found to the US;
• The sight of oil platforms reduces the value of coastal property, and endangers the area’s tourism attractiveness;
• The presence of oil platforms will bar the military from using the area for training and testing missions, endangering the status of Eglin Air Force Base;
• Another visit by an Opal or Ivan will guarantee an oil spill, as happened after Katrina.

Drilling in the Gulf, if the most optimistic of estimates is true and the oil is sold in the US, will not affect the price of gas by more than a few cents a gallon. Properly inflating your tires and performing routine maintenance on your vehicle is more that twice as effective as the drilling at reducing your cost of gas, and you can start saving money immediately, ask any mechanic.