Category Archives: Pensacola

Economy, Florida, Organized Labor, Pensacola, Politics, Uncategorized

ECAT Working Conditions, Worst In 16 Years

3 Comments
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 . . .

 

 

Economy, Media, Pensacola, Politics, War On Terror

Remembering 9/11

Reflecting back on the 9/11 attack is easy for me, because I’ve never forgotten it or the aftermath. The prayers and sympathy for the victims and their families goes without saying.

I remember vividly how that horrific attack galvanized America as one unit focused on helping the victims and, at the same time, finally fighting back at those who had been killing Americans for years.

 

Our enemy had a good day. Aside from killing innocent Americans, they hurt our economy so badly that it took years to recover.

Feeling eerily uncomfortable with pro-American unity in both political parties, Sen. Ted Kennedy must have felt his party was threatened to minority party status for decades unless he could do something to stop it. Sadly, I remember how America’s unity ended when Sen. Ted Kennedy made the false accusation that the Bush administration believed Saddam Hussein had “planned the 9/11 attack.” I remember how quickly the political Left ate that up, buttressed by a willing media. It was the ‘lion of the senate’ who politicized what was called the ‘war on terror.’ For that strategy alone, Ted Kennedy deserves credit for being the one person most responsible for prolonging the war to a tenth anniversary, and counting. That’s what I remember.

The reason I’ll never forget it goes to survival. Because the people in charge of the war on terror now, all Ted Kennedy acolytes, want to give the enemy our constitutional protections, lowering the bar to a criminal matter. They want to scrap the ‘war on terror’ and the most effective parts of the ‘Patriot Act,’ calling it an ‘overseas contingency operation.’ And we have Ted Kennedy to thank for it.

There’s a saying, “what goes around comes around.” This applies to Sen. Ted Kennedy too. He went from the lion of the senate to a maggot in hell. A small consolation in the fight that continues to this day.

Link: Schneider: Tell us what you remember, why you will never forget  | Media Research Center video

Update 9/11/2011: This is a repost from August 14, 2011. Didn’t make the cut for today’s edition of the Pensacola News Journal. And so it is that the political aspect of the aftermath will only be found here. Just added a video “Tribute To The Media” put together by the Media Research Center.

Economy, Florida, Judiciary, Pensacola, Politics, Supreme Court

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.

Energy, Florida, Judiciary, Pensacola

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

[scribd id=60103140 key=key-1lvzxa3tr5b4h5qjky3d mode=list]
Links:

 

Economy, Media, Pensacola, Politics

Liberal Translation

2 Comments

There are a couple of things going on in Washington. I mean besides class warfare and wealth envy from Democrats and the Progressive talkers out there.

From now on, instead of increasing taxes, the term to use (in Obamaspeak) is increasing revenue. After all, who doesn’t want more revenue? Fact is, they just can’t sell their plan if they have to be honest about what they want to do, which is raise taxes, on millionaires and billionaires. Translation, mostly small business owners.

Next is the debt ceiling debate and the way President Obama is lying about it and its effects on social security checks in a few weeks.

The deception that Obama counts on is that the dumb masses will equate, like he suggests, that if he doesn’t get the debt ceiling increased, and if he doesn’t get to raise taxes, then Social Security, Medicare, and Military checks might not be paid. And as Ed Shultz and Mike Papantonio and their callers suggest, the Republicans want old people to just get sick and die, and will leave soldiers oversease stuck there with no ammo, food, or a way home.

One of the Liberal callers to the Ed & Pap show actually told Ed Shultz that the two, debt limit and SS payments were not related. Shultz passed that on as a big oh hum. Without comment. How could he comment? After all, it was only yesterday that President Obama told America that those checks might not be cut if he doesn’t get to raise taxes and increase the national debt. The fear the President spews has no limit. It’s amazing to me how Ed Shultz missed such a contradiction.

As you might suspect, there is no connection with all of those obligations and the debt ceiling. Not now, and not next month either. Those obligations are already made and are separate from the over $14 Trillion in national debt. Truth is, the country is currently pulling in enough tax revenue to cover current recipients for now and at lease another decade. Truth is, it is the out-of-control government expansion, government spending, and government policies like Obamacare that is causing the FUD factor to prevail in all business decisions and a double dip recession to . . . flourish.

Economy, Pensacola, Politics

Miller Cosigns Cut-Cap-Balance

Our very  own Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL-1) cosigns the Cut-Cap-Balance letter sent to house leaders Boehner (R-OH-1) and Cantor (R-VA-7).
RSC letter to GOP leadership

 

Economy, Florida, Organized Labor, Pensacola, Politics

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.

Economy, Florida, Pensacola

Opportunity Knocking

The tornado frenzy that swept the South and Southeast makes the word destructive seem mild. Whole towns leveled, an uncounted number of people lost everything, including their lives.

It is hard to compare hurricane Ivan or Katrina to the tornadoes of the last couple days. Those hurricanes leveled or damaged homes, towns, and neighborhoods too. And the people responded. Contractors and companies from all over the United States came here and had years of work for thousands of people. The rebuilding effort created more jobs and economic activity than any other single event in the 31 years I’ve been here.

There’s no enjoyment in saying this, but this weather disaster has just opened up a lot of work for a lot of people willing to move. Trying to coördinate the rebuilding effort on the national level requires some leadership and ingenuity in putting a  lot of people back to work. A digital infrastructure like Twitter and Facebook already exists. On second thought, the Red Cross is already setup to assist. Contact them and go there. Or, go there then contact them. A  dot GOV website would be most helpful. And as always, don’t wait for the government to invite you. Pack your car or truck and head to where ever you want to work and live for the next few years. You know, it’s that whole ‘early bird’ thing.

And before you even think it, the answer is NO. That’s not government intrusion. That’s government doing one of the few things it is actually responsible for doing.

Economy, Pensacola

Some Sign Holders Get The Boot

2 Comments

There was an article in the local paper (Pensacola News Journal, April 11) about the ‘sign holders.’ You’ve probably seen them in your city too. It was more a human interest story than anything political or requiring police action. It was exactly like the writer, syndicated columnist Mark O’Brien said, an example of making lemonade out of lemons in these tough economic times.

But later in the week, the light-hearted piece took a dark turn for the one-man entrepreneurs. On his blog, O’Brien wrote . . .

As a result of the article, City Hall got complaints and the men were told to get off the sidewalks.

According to Police Chief Chip Simmons, ‘complaints’ were received at the Police Department that a city ordinance was in violation and the men were told to leave. The violation was for ‘doing business on city property.’

Which begs the question, when does freedom of speech end and business begin? These guys were not doing business. They were holding signs. Prostitutes do business on the sidewalks.

O’Brien notes the inconsistency in enforcement. Long live the ‘going out of business’ sign holders, and the furniture company and ‘buy your gold’ sign holders, and the ‘homeless, please help’ sign holders. And the ‘buy my pizza,’ ‘file your tax return,’ and ‘save the ta-ta’s car wash’ cartoon characters and sign holders.

So the City of Pensacola decides to dump on those that can least afford it. Just where is the ACLU when you need them?

Energy, Florida, Pensacola

G.E. to Build Largest U.S. Solar Panel Factory, In NW Florida?

Dateline San Francisco –  In a move that could shake up the American solar industry, General Electric plans to announce on Thursday that it will build the nation’s largest photovoltaic panel factory, with the goal of becoming a major player in the market.

The plant, whose location has not been determined, will employ 400 workers and create 600 related jobs, according to G.E. The factory would annually produce solar panels that would generate 400 megawatts of energy, the company said, and would begin manufacturing thin-film photovoltaic panels made of a material called cadmium telluride in 2013

With one big G.E. investment in wind energy already in Pensacola, seems like a solar panel factory here too would be a good move. G.E. said it was not applying for a loan guarantee but was exploring applying for state and federal manufacturing tax credits.

Here’s a new project for City, County, and state officials. Go after that business and the jobs that go with it.

Link: G.E. to Build Largest U.S. Solar Panel Factory