Category Archives: Florida

Occupy Everything, What’s Their Goal?

When you think about the Organizing Everything protests and Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel, and Barack Obama, do you ever think of the SEIU? Maybe most people would just think that the administration would do anything, like endorsing these protesters, to draw the focus away from their failed policies and onto the bogeyman, Wall Street.

Despite all attempts from the Left to legitimize these Marxist mobs by comparing protesting-corporate-greedthem to Tea Party rallies, these two videos will, all on their own, show them for what they are. Anti-capitalists, socialists, and then some.

First up is radical labor organizer Stephen Lerner, serving on the International Executive Board of the 2.2 million member Service Employees International Union, SEIU. He intends to take it to the next level and terrorize the families of bank executives in their homes as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Stephen Lerner . . .

There’s moments in history where people take action and do something heroic. Where we do something heroic. Where we take risks.

If we are really serious about movement building then we think one part is we have to act heroically. That we have to inspire people by our actions and we have to be willing to take incredible personal and collective risks.

And that’s the time and there’s moments where history shifts and we’re going to decide if it shifts.

And this one is an interview with one of the organizers of the Occupy Wall Street group. She says up-front exactly what they’re all about. Anti-capitalism, anti-corporation.

Now this third video just shows that some pundits on the Left, like talk show host Mike Papantonio, are a little out of step with the movement. Doing what lawyers do, progressive Papantonio says capitalism is great! Ed Shultz was speechless. Papantonio starts at 3:50 into the video.

However, the title of his video, Now’s The Time to Get Mad and Do Something, is right in tune with Stephen Lerner. Looks like he is inciting some front yard action himself. He does go on to whine about something local. The ATU / ECAT dispute. The union is the victim. They want to be exempt from the Obama depression. Oh well. He says they are being attacked by a foreign corporation that operates the bus transportation for Escambia County. The AFL-CIO affiliate is considering a second strike on the backs of the poor.

Papantonio And Other Bigots

Ring of Fire radio host Mike Papantonio is still calling the ‘Tea Party’ and the ‘Republican Party’ a bunch of racists. According to this video, Rick Outzen and Chauncey DeVega agree.

Mike Papantonio . . .

It’s the Republican Tea Party, it’s the same people. They’re interchangeable. . . . They are the Republican Party.

What we have here is the Left’s continuing and tired accusation of racism. Well, that and three guys living in their own bubble somewhere.

Maybe someone will show these three bigots this article. Proof? that the tea party people are racists. Not only are they racists, but according to Papantonio, ‘they are insane.’

Link: Are they racists? Lets see.

Lunch With Otis

My annual trek down to the seafood festival yesterday turned out to be something else. I met Otis.

Otis was walking away from the festival and I was walking to it. From a distance, I could see that this guy has something going on. I mean, aside from the bright red hat and umbrella. Curiosity getting the best of me, I had to stop and talk to him.

He let me take his picture then we talked. Knowing that I wanted to use his picture in my blog, I wanted to get his name right. And having nothing to write on or with, I pulled out my wizbang iPhone and recorded his name in the voice recorder. What followed was not what I expected.

Turns out he was just looking around. Asked if he had any of the seafood there he said no, he didn’t have any money. Upon which I instituted my own stimulus program. He accepted my offer to buy him lunch. He had calamari for the first time, some crawfish pie, and an adult beverage in a can. I ate the same, except for the beer. I’m not a big beer drinker.

I didn’t talk about politics with him, on purpose. We seemed to enjoy each others company and I didn’t want to do something that might have spoiled that chance encounter. I mean, it just didn’t seem the time or place to discuss liberal v conservative politics, or to point out that people like President Obama think that I hate black people and poor people because I consider myself allied with the tea party movement.

Lunch with Otis audio

Transcript:

  • Ross: Otis Womak, works at the Coffee Cup restaurant. Are you a cook?
  • Otis: A dish washer.
  • Ross: A dish washer, oh, outstanding.
  • Otis: I was dishes. I {unintelligible) work there for six and a half years. I came over to see my momma and daddy in the nursing home. So I ran down here to some, ya know ….
  • Ross: Get a little seafood?
  • Otis: Yeah. No I didn’t get no seafood I had no money.
  • Ross: Oh man.
  • Otis: I’m broke, today. So I go over there (unintelligible)
  • Ross: Ya wanna go eat some seafood?
  • Otis: Huh!
  • Ross: Come on with me.

It all worked out just fine. I’m satisfied in knowing that we both had a good meal and some fellowship from complete strangers. I gave him a ride home and called it a day.

ECAT Drivers Are Driving

Carlton Proctor at the Pensacola News Journal spoke to Michael Lowery, president of Local 1395 about the ECAT union bus drivers going on strike. Lowery also spoke to PNJ reporter  Thyrie Bland.

He told Proctor

“This is all about fair treatment on the job, it’s not about wages. It’s about fair treatment.”

He told Bland

“The employees have gone over 1,000 days without a raise, and working conditions are the worst I’ve seen in 16 years.”

Which Mr. Lowery are we to believe? And does it matter? The evolving version of why they went on strike looks a bit unorganized. Certainly not characteristic of organized labor. Keyword ‘organized.’

ECAT Working Conditions, Worst In 16 Years

The raised fist (also known as the clenched fist) is a salute and logo most often used by left-wing activists, such as: Marxists, anarchists, socialists, communists, pacifists, trade unionists, the SEIU, and black nationalists.

Escambia County Area Transit (ECAT) bus drivers are on strike. Thyrie Bland at the Pensacola News Journal writes ECAT drivers on strike, Wage issue halts public transit for thousands.

The human aspect of the bus drivers going on strike is inescapable. Their riders are their customers. They are people who don’t have personal transportation and that includes the working poor. They also include physically handicapped folk like Mr. Freeman. Regardless, these are folks that need to get to their jobs so they can put food on the table and pay their bills, get to the store or the doctor.

Being responsible for creating a hardship on those with no alternative transportation is unconscionable. But is also standard fare for organized labor negotiating tactics. A lesson about labor unions and liberals in general is that they are liberals first, they are union first, and you are not on their list.

I bet these riders vote. And I also bet that they will remember who it was that caused them to miss work. It was a government labor union member who has a full-time job making from $12-16 an hour.

According to Michael Lowery, president of Local 1395 . . .

The employees have gone over 1,000 days without a raise, and working conditions are the worst I’ve seen in 16 years.

No raise in a couple of years huh? How does it feel (government labor union member) to be more like your neighbors? The ones that still have a job. Surprise! It happens in the private sector too! That’s life in the big city. The article brings to question a dispute of one half on one percent. If there’s a half of a percent in dispute in the current contract, then ‘work’ it out.

Working conditions? What working conditions? With all due respect to the drivers, you drive a bus.

Worst working conditions in 16 years? Which begs the question, when the head of my local labor union says that my working conditions are the worst that they’ve been in 16 years, just what am I paying my dues for?

Here’s an idea . . .

A Time For Choosing

Since we were never given the choice in the last presidential election, the next election will be the time to choose. The 2008 election culminated in eight years of bashing Bush, and Bush not responding once. Americans were offered only hope and change. And who is against hope, and who is against change that makes things better? ‘Better’ being the operative word.

Obama never said, elect me and I’m going to nationalize health care and interfere with free-market economics by declaring some industries and businesses as ‘too big to fail,’ and borrow and spend trillions of dollars, not to stimulate the economy, but to ‘save’ union jobs in the public sector and the auto industry. He never said elect me and I’ll make it the responsibility of government to increase labor union membership.

Did we elect a President to put America on the fast track to Socialism? Do you think he would have beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries if he ran on what he is doing to this country today?

But now there is a choice. And it is no better illustrated than in Florida’s new law to drug-test welfare recipients and certain state employees in order to enforce a drug-free workplace. Progressives argue that Gov. Scott was trying to save money on the backs of the poor.

I don’t think it’s a matter of fiscal conservatism. Whether conservative or liberal, broke is broke. Just because someone is using drugs is no justification for spending more than we have. And it’s not that Scott, or Republicans, don’t care about poor people. They care about people who are on drugs and getting public monies.

The disintegration of the family among many poor people is a good reason to make bad choices. And it is welfare programs that tend to replace the father, or mother, and create this welfare class that is evermore dependent on the government. What Gov. Scott is doing is a move in the right direction. A move in the direction of teaching people some personal responsibility. Get off the drugs and you can continue to receive help.

This bill brings out the differences between the political Left and Right. One endeavors to fix the problem by attempting to fix the person. In this case, to provide an incentive to kick the habit and become self-sufficient again. The other seems content to be the giver of money, with no reason or motivation to quit a bad habit, which also tends to garner a strong voting block of welfare recipients.  In this context, it is Republican policies that try to heal and raise the poor by making them independent, if not just less dependent on government. It’s the old, “Give a man a fish and he won’t starve for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he won’t starve for his entire life” thing. It is Democratic policies that tend to keep the poor right where they are, dependent on the government for their livelihood, meager as it might be. The uneducated will easily identify with the person who gives them what they want instead of the one that wants them to earn what they want on their own. It’s about trying to teach people how to get off of welfare instead of trying to find out how we can find money to subsidize destructive behavior. Healing the person or family is better, more compassionate, than keeping them where they are. The bill isn’t about hating poor people.

Let’s look at the results of a landmark Democratic program. Nearly half of the country is getting some sort of government assistance. Does it look like the war on poverty (that began 50 years ago) has worked? There are drug rehabilitation programs out there, some at no cost. Individual responsibility means taking advantage of it and choosing to use what would be their drug money toward their own rehabilitation. How else does one teach personal responsibility if they have to do nothing on their own to make a change? They can get their welfare, if they choose to get off drugs first.

Democratic programs do nothing to reduce the number of poor people. What they have done is grow government and make poor people more dependent on government, and on the Democrat party. That is the result, whether intended or not.

There will always be people at the bottom of the ladder. The bottom of the ladder for U.S. citizens is half-way up the ladder compared to other countries. Democrat’s policies tend to make that ladder horizontal, destroying the notion of the individual.

Similarly, you will hear Democrats complain about the so-called income gap. They think it is evil that some people can make and accumulate wealth while some don’t.  I wouldn’t be so concerned about a gap between the rich and poor. I’d be concerned to make sure that the poor have every chance, the same chance, to get rich on their own.

Republicans have a HUGE up-hill battle to get people to understand that their policies are geared toward people helping themselves instead of relying on the government as their caretaker. Encouraging personal responsibility is so easily demagogued as Republicans hating the poor. And Democrats never miss the opportunity to do just that.

The immoral aspect of the Democratic social vision is that they put their faith in the government instead of the individual, which conditions poor people to look to them for sustenance. The fact that it builds strong voting blocks is no coincidence.

I’d like to see no minimum wage and no capital gains taxes. Since that has never been the case in my lifetime, one can only wonder how much better off ‘the poor’ would be. Again, it highlights the difference between the competing philosophies. Big government and control of economic conditions, or less government involvement and allowing free-market economic principles to work.

You don’t have to look far to see the difference. The free-market capitalism camp made us the greatest country in the world in under 200 years. The rest of the world is in the other camp and has nothing but shared misery to show for it.

11th Circuit Court Of Appeals Affirms Judge Vinson, Sort Of

Update 8/13/2011. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Friday that a provision of the law that requires people to buy health insurance or face an annual penalty is unconstitutional. The ruling affirmed an earlier decision by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Pensacola, Florida.

Curiously though, the court also ruled that absent the mandate, the Act can continue. What this means is that three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit pulled a severability clause out of their butt.

In Judge Vinson’s ruling, he concluded . . .

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.” {emphasis added}

The survivability of Obamacare without forced participation is zero. Well with one caveat. For Obamacare to survive without forced participation, the administration would have to speed up the elimination of the private health insurance industry process to before the next election instead of after. I don’t see that happening. So for all practical purposes, the fact that the rest of the Act may stay is moot. The court knows this. They also know that the Act contained no severability clause. That the court found the rest of the Act is constitutional and ignored the non-severability of the Act looks like a political decision with no real consequences. Well, except for the fact that the judges made a political decision here, instead of a legal one. Isn’t that like, not their job?

Let’s hope this gets to the Supreme Court this year. Today’s ruling did nothing to reduce the FUD factor. In fact, it only made it worse. That’s not what an economy struggling to survive needs if it is going to recover.

Markets don’t do well in an atmosphere of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The power grab the Obama administration has perpetrated over various industries and companies is sending only one message to business. Watch out, you could be next.

Link: LegalNewsline | Eleventh Circuit rules against part of ObamaCare.

Wasserman-Schultz, Gets No Respect

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (D-FL) gets bitch slapped by Rep. Allen West (R-FL). Oh thank you Rep. West. Thank you. Of course we’re talking metaphorically now.

Speaking on the House Floor, among other things to do with the Cut-Cap-Balance Act, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz said this about Allen West. West had left the chamber and was not present when Wasserman spoke.

“The gentleman from Florida who represents thousands of Medicare beneficiaries, as do I, is supportive of this plan that would increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries. Unbelievable from a member from South Florida.”

West responded in an email.

From: Z112 West, Allen

Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 04:48 PM

To: Wasserman Schultz, Debbie

Cc: McCarthy, Kevin; Blyth, Jonathan; Pelosi, Nancy; Cantor, Eric

Subject: Unprofessional and Inappropriate Sophomoric Behavior from Wasserman-Schultz

Look, Debbie, I understand that after I departed the House floor you directed your floor speech comments directly towards me. Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want a personal fight, I am happy to oblige. You are the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up. Focus on your own congressional district!

I am bringing your actions today to our Majority Leader and Majority Whip and from this time forward, understand that I shall defend myself forthright against your heinous characterless behavior……which dates back to the disgusting protest you ordered at my campaign hqs, October 2010 in Deerfield Beach.

You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!

 Steadfast and Loyal

Congressman Allen B West (R-FL)

Link: Allen West tirade: Wasserman Schultz ‘vile…despicable…not a Lady’

RICO Suit Against BP Dismissed

A RICO lawsuit brought against BP by Pensacola’s own Levin-Papantonio law firm was thrown out by a federal judge on Friday.

No proof . . .

Barbier dismissed the claims, saying there is no proof the plaintiffs were directly harmed by the alleged racketeering.

Levin-Papantonio and a Greenwood, Miss. law firm alleged that BP defrauded regulators in connection with the safety of its drilling operations, its ability to respond to any oil spill, and its response to the actual spill, to the level of racketeering.

Plaintiffs Attorney Mike Papantonio made this statement a year ago.

“If you consider why we are where we are with this catastrophe, it’s because we allowed the oil industry to dictate what we were supposed to do rather than us dictating what they are supposed to do. An agency charged with safeguarding all of us became captive and simply an extension of the petroleum industry.”

Last Friday, US District Judge Carl Barbier said . . .

there was no proof that the plaintiffs, which include businesses and homeowners, were directly harmed in a way to sustain their claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, or RICO. That law originally was intended to fight organised crime.

So a year later it turns out that following current law takes precedence over woulda coulda shoulda “law.”

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier gave BP another win by setting aside claims filed by one of BP’s partners in the well project that resulted in the disaster.

BP won another battle last month when the court said that the Sierra Club can not join the suit as a plaintiff. Because “the Sierra Club failed to show that its interests in the suit were strong enough to grant its motion to join the matter as a plaintiff.” No standing.

I guess we won’t be seeing Dick Cheney being frog marched for anything to do with the Deepwater Horizon accident.

2011 July BP Civil RICO Dismissal


Links:

 

Organized Labor Call To Action

Gov. Rick Scott will be in the neighborhood June 1. And BIG LABOR is trying to rally the climate change and social justice movements in Florida against Scott for not wanting the State of Florida to spend $300 million buying real estate for the Florida Forever program.

Of the $ 615 million vetoed from the$ 69.7 billion Florida budget, almost half of the $ 615 million was to help fund Florida Forever. Scott’s attitude towards working families, students, the unemployed and the working poor reflects in his attitude towards Florida’s pristine ecosystem- he simply has no respect for Florida’s citizens and the environment we live in!

In a broadcast email, Union representative F. Lee Pryor, Mobilization Coordinator for the The NW FL Central Labor Council FL AFL-CIO laments “we see where Scott and company interests lie and that is with big business!”

Odd that labor would not be in favor of an agenda that would focus on cutting deficits and creating jobs. No jobs, no labor. Organized or otherwise.

Pryor also says . . .

It is entirely up to you to show the strength of the working families movement and join with all of our allies in the social justice and climate change justice movements. We need to stand unified against this corporatist attack from Tallahassee politicians disconnected from the everyday lives of working people in the state of Florida. This is the very reason we must do whatever we can do on June 1st to let Rick Scott know that Northwest Florida will not back down!

Typical of liberals. Organizing to try to spend your money (that we don’t have) instead of their own. I have a suggestion to test their mettle in conservation. Use your own money, not that of Florida taxpayers.