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Archive - July 2008
Earlier this week I made the time to listen to the podcast of Bill Mick's interview with the candidates for School Board District 3: incumbent Amy Kneessy and challenger Seeta Begui. As with Bill's other candidate interviews, I'm using this as a starting point for my own research later on before I decide who I'm going to vote for. The School Board races are all non-partisan, and they actually get decided at the same time as the party primaries. So if the School Board is important to you, make sure you vote on August 26th or you'll miss your chance at helping to decide this race! By the way, I've been continuing to save the MP3s of Bill Mick's candidate interviews, even the older ones that have been deleted from his podcast page. So if you ask real nicely, I'll be glad to e-mail you a copy of any interviews you may have missed and still want to hear.
Speaking of the budget, she has no problem with allowing corporate sponsorships in Brevard's schools in order to bring in extra revenue. That's an idea that makes me uncomfortable, but it's hard to turn down a source of funding in this budget environment. She opposes "zero-tolerance" weapons policies in the schools and wants principals to be able to apply common sense to individual situations so that the Boy Scout who accidentally leaves a whittling knife in his car on school grounds doesn't get treated the same as the known troublemaker who gets caught with a switchblade in his pocket, and I'm with her there. Kneessy wants to do away with the FCAT, which is a very chic position for both liberals and conservatives alike to take nowadays. I will concede that I don't think the FCAT is being used or applied properly and there's far too much emphasis being placed on that test, but the test itself could still be a valuable tool if used correctly. Just because someone is trying to use a screwdriver to hammer in nails doesn't mean there's something wrong with the screwdriver. I think there's something to be said for having an objective, measurable standard to use in evaluating schools, as long as it's just part of the overall picture that's being looked at. There are other more-subjective factors that matter as well, and they don't get looked at enough, but that's not the fault of the FCAT itself. It's the fault of the government officials who decided to overrely on the FCAT as a quick-and-easy source of information on schools in lieu of taking a more thorough look. Where the interview really got interesting was the topic of the School Board's interaction with School Superintendent Richard DiPatri. DiPatri is an employee of the School Board. They set his salary, they evaluate his performance, and they determine whether or not he gets to keep his job. That's why it amazes me so much that DiPatri so often acts like he is above the School Board and doesn't really have to answer to them... and it amazes me even more that 3 of the 5 Board members put up with it! The two that don't are Amy Kneessy and Barbara Murray. (Murray in particular has been critical of DiPatri for failing to respond to information requests.) Kneessy and DiPatri had a bit of a private fued going last year that Kneessy finally took public at a School Board meeting in December, which in turn led to fellow board members Janice Kershaw and Larry Hughes publicly criticizing Kneessy at that same meeting for her attitude. I took Kneessy's side in that one. DiPatri does a good job of running the schools in Brevard County, but he still has to answer to the School Board, and through them, he still has to answer to us, the citizens and voters of Brevard County. But back to the interview. The School Board is in the process of wrapping up their review of DiPatri's performance and deciding whether or not he should get the $20,000 performance bonus he's eligible for. Kneessy stated emphatically that DiPatri has done a good job, but that given the current budget crunch, giving DiPatri a bonus sends a bad signal to the other school system employees who might not even get a cost-of-living increase this year. I agree with Kneessy: $20,000 would buy a lot of pencils. There's better ways to spend that money, and DiPatri makes plenty of money right now anyway.
All throughout the interview, Begui stated time and time again how important it was to increase the number of students in the government school system and seemed oddly devoted to that goal. (Yes, they're government schools, not "public" schools. Try wandering around the local high school campus unescorted some time. You'll get a quick lesson in just how "public" the school really is. They're government schools.) She also stated repeatedly how important education is. Uh, Seeta? We already know that. When asked specific questions, Begui's answers routinely veered wildly away from the question and into a vague mush of generalities and cliches, with very few specifics or proposals. On several offcasions, Bill Mick actually re-asked questions solely to squeeze a more specific answer out of Begui, and he had to get very tight and specific with his questions later in the interview to keep Begui from verbally wandering. Once Bill got specific with his questioning, we finally got to find out what Begui was all about. What it comes down to is this: she was in the audience at the School Board meeting where Kneessy got into it with DiPatri, Kershaw and Hughes. Begui didn't like what she saw and decided that Kneessy wasn't being civil or polite, so Begui decided then-and-there to run and restore civility to the School Board... in other words, to be rubber-stamp #4 for Richard DiPatri. Begui flabbergasted Bill (and me!) by bluntly stating that Amy Kneessy was out-of-line for criticizing Richard DiPatri, because -- get this -- employees shouldn't publicly criticize their supervisors. (!) She had it totally backwards. She actually seemed to believe that the School Board members work FOR Richard DiPatri, and that HE is THEIR boss. Bill hammered Begui on that point as soon as she said it, and she quickly back-pedalled and focused on criticizing Kneessy for not being more civil. But the damage was done, and it's clear that if elected, Begui will go-along to get-along with Richard DiPatri. That's not what I want to see on the School Board. Begui pretty much agreed with Amy Kneessy on all the issues, although she had curiously little to say about cutting the budget or prioritizing spending. But the big difference was the issue of DiPatri's potential $20,000 performance bonus. Kneessy, of course, thought that money could be spent more wisely on other things. Begui, on the other hand, stated firmly that DiPatri should absolutely get that bonus. I still plan to do more research on both Seeta Begui and Amy Kneessy, but I've gotta say... just based on their
performances on the radio, Kneessy won me over in a landslide. I'm convinced that Begui would not have the courage to
stand up to Richard DiPatri if the situation ever called for it. Both Begui and Kneessy have proven they can reach out
and work with others to get things done, but only Kneessy has shown she also has the strength to stand and fight when she
needs to. I want my School Board member to be capable of both. At this point, I strongly support Amy Kneessy, and it would
take a miracle to pull me over to Seeta Begui.
Congressman Tom Feeney's district is easily within range of WMMB's signal on both AM-1240 and AM-1350, so he should've been in the studio, and I was surprised when he didn't show up. But it may have been an honest mix-up. Bill Mick sent the on-air invitation to Feeney's campaign office, just like he did with everyone else. And for some stupid reason, it looks like the campaign office never passed the invitation along to Feeney's Congressional office until late last week. When Feeney himself finally got it, he was in Washington DC and couldn't come down in time to be in-studio, and Bill isn't allowing any of the candidates to call in. It's in-person or nothing at all... a hard-line stand, but one I can understand. I used to work in radio myself, remember, and I despised telephone interviews. They don't sound nearly as good. So while Feeney still deserves a slap for a lack of organization between his two offices, it's a gentle slap because I don't think he made an intentional decision to skip out on Bill. Three candidates for County Commission District 1 were no-shows as well: Republican Meredith Eberhart, and Democrats Robin Fisher and Maureen Rupe. However, the vast majority of District 1 is Titusville and points north, along with Port St. John and parts of west Cocoa. The bulk of the voters are in Titusville. WMMB just doesn't reach up there very well, and there aren't many callers from Titusville on Bill's show. I still think it would've been smart for those three candidates to make the effort to take advantage of Bill's offer of free air time, as four of the seven candidates did. But they may have just decided to concentrate their campaign efforts closer to home. Still a dumb move in my opinion, but not as dumb as, say, a county-wide candidate or a Melbourne candidate pulling a no-show. But if you're a no-show, you get put on the No-Show Watch. No way around it. Here's the No-Show Watch as it stands now: Kevin Lehoullier (R) - US House District 15
Then he shaved it off. :) The whole thing was just so silly and ridiculous that I had to take a swing at parodying it. And thus the First Church of Al Gore's Beard was born. And somehow it hit the search engines and was suddenly getting linked from political forums, message boards, and even the occasional proto-blog (back before the word "blog" had been invented yet). So I've kept the page up all these years. It's not very well-written, and I'm not particularly proud of it (though I still like the final joke about income tithing credits), but the fact remains that it's quite possibly the single most-popular thing I've ever done on the Internet. Hopefully I can change that with this new blog, but in the meantime, incorporating the old Church into the new website makes sense. So here you go: The First Church of Al Gore's Beard. Um... enjoy?
To clarify: as currently written, I'm against the Foreclosure Prevention Act. It's clogged with too many wasteful side projects that just spend money while not doing anything to help the country's mortgage problems -- and in some cases just making the problems worse. So, I was glad to see both Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney vote against it in the House last week. Alas, over in the Senate, the roll-call vote record shows that both Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson voted for it this past Saturday. (The overall vote was 72 YEAs to 13 NAYs.) No surprise coming from Nelson. It should be a surprise coming from Martinez, but he's shown himself to be such a milquetoast in the Senate that I'm not surprised at all. (Why, oh, why couldn't McCollum have won that primary over Martinez? *sigh*) But as for the centerpiece of the legislation, the much-hyped "bailout" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... I'm actually for that. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are basically government-backed corporations tasked with making the home lending business more efficient. We can certainly have a rip-roaring debate about whether or not they do their jobs properly or whether or not they should even exist in the first place, but that's going to have to be a debate for another time. In the here-and-now, those two corporations between them either guarantee or outright own 50% of the nation's mortgages. Let that sink in. HALF. We can also have a rip-roaring debate about how wise that is (spoiler alert: it's NOT wise), but that's also going to have to be a debate for another time. For the reasons I laid out in my previous post, we do not have a mortgage crisis right now. But we WILL have a mortgage crisis if Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac goes belly-up. For the short-term, making sure the government is in position to keep them both running is the right thing to do. That's the part of the Foreclosure Prevention Act I agree with. There are people who oppose even THAT part of the Act on the grounds that they don't like the idea of bailing out businesses who made bad business decisions. I don't like it either, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are quite a bit different than other businesses and other banks. They were government-created, government-sponsored and government- chartered, so having the government come in to bail them out isn't quite the same as, say, bailing out Bank of America or Washington Mutual or any other traditional private bank. Combine that with the fact that these two companies are directly involved with half -- HALF -- of the nation's mortgages, and that means a different set of rules comes into play. But now the Foreclosure Prevention Act (and all of the bloated and unneeded spending attached to it) has passed the
House and the Senate and is about to be signed by the President, so there's not much left to be done to stop it. But when
the dust settles and the mortgage market gets a bit more stabilized, we as a nation will need to take a long, hard look at
how we allowed ourselves to get into this mess in the first place... and at what we can do to keep it from happening again.
Make no mistake: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enabled quite a few private banks to take some extraordinary lending risks...
risks they might not have been so quick to take if they didn't know there was a big federally-backed bank ready to buy
those risky loans from them. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have not served the nation well, and a carefully-crafted long-term
plan to either fully privatize them or shut them down entirely needs to be considered.
Good. I mentioned in passing the other day my belief that there is no housing crisis. Only 2.47% of all home mortgages in the USA are in foreclosure right now. That's about 1 out of every 40. Yeah, that's higher than normal, but it's hardly an amount to panic over. And a good chunk of those -- probably most, I'd guess -- are people who made a stupidly emotional decision to buy too big a house at too high a price tag and made mortgage decisions based on a perfect scenario for their future incomes. And they allowed themselves to get talked into these bad decisions by unscrupulous salespeople who were getting paid on commissions based on how many mortgages they closed and how much they were worth... the equivalent of a chicken asking a wolf for advice on what to cook for dinner. Back in 2004, when the housing bubble was really starting to grow, I was getting ready to move from Palm Bay to Merritt Island. (I've since moved back to Palm Bay.) I was planning to just find a new apartment up there, and along the way, I took a look at several rental units that were all being managed by the same realtor. (Can't remember his name now, and no point in singling him out anyway.) As he was driving me from his office to one of his properties, he started asking me questions about my job and my income, and then he turned on the high-pressure pitch. I was a "perfect candidate" to buy a home, he said, and there were all sorts of first-time home-buyer programs that could get me into a great home and all sorts of financing options that would help me afford it. He pushed DAMN hard, and I was a captive audience, sitting there in the passenger seat of his car on the way to see what could have been the apartment I was about to move into. But I knew my full financial circumstances. I knew whatever he was trying to coax me into would probably balloon into something more expensive before the process was done. And I also knew that his "very" affordable mortgage payment would push my finances to the absolute limit, with no room for emergencies, unforseen expenses, or natural disasters. But most importantly, I knew that no matter how logical and well-argued his points were, he had one goal and one goal only: to make money. Getting me to say "yes" would mean putting money in his pocket, which gave him every incentive to say whatever he needed to say to get that "yes" from me and absolutely no incentive to give me the complete and honest picture. So, I fought him off, politely at first, then sternly when he wouldn't take "no" for an answer. In the end, I avoided him entirely and rented a room from a great land-lady instead, and stayed there for 2 years before returning to Palm Bay. I was smart enough to know that life isn't always rosy. Things go wrong. Jobs get lost. Cars break. Shit HAPPENS. Rather than listening to my heart and buying a house I could barely afford and hoping life stayed perfect, I listened to my brain and assumed life would suck and planned accordingly. Good move... later that year, I lost my part-time job and had to scramble to find another one (which turned out to have MUCH better pay, so it was a blessing in disguise.) Then Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne all came through, all of which cost me money to prepare for. They also damaged the building at my full-time job, which forced them to cut back somewhat on my hours, and thus my income. Then came several costly car repair bills. Fortunately, I had the money to deal with all of those crises... but I wouldn't have had that money if I'd listened to that realtor's seductive pitch about the wonders of owning my own home. Too many people back in 2004 listened to that guy and thousands of others like him, and instead of listening to their brains and planning for the future, they listened to their hearts and decided it would be nice to own a house instead of renting, or that they needed to move into a nicer or bigger house than the perfectly good one they were already in. And now they're having trouble with their mortgage payments, and some of them are getting foreclosed on and getting kicked out. And I'm supposed to believe this is a crisis. No. No it's not. For the most part, these people still have jobs and money. They may not be able to afford the $1,800 monthly payment that their adjustable-rate mortgage ballooned out to, or the fixed $1,600 monthly mortgage payment that they assumed they'd always have the income to cover. But they still have jobs and money. They can downgrade. They can get a smaller house and a smaller mortgage, one with a $1,000 monthly payment. Or they can go back to renting at $800 a month. They're not suddenly going to be living on the street, begging for alms. And for those people with genuine totally beyond-their-control circumstances that couldn't be foreseen or planned for, there are already charities and government programs in place RIGHT NOW that can help them. We don't need more. But Congress disagrees. I don't mind them shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, since they in turn shore up the mortgage market. If they go down, then this will be a crisis, and that's worth spending money to avert. But they're also going to spend $5.3 b-b-b-billion on providing more crappy federally-run low-income housing. They're going to spend $3.9 b-b-b-billion to give grants to state and local governments to buy foreclosed homes, because nothin' says "prudent fiscal policy" like buyin' up privately-owned land and taking it off the property tax rolls. And... wait for it... they're going to spend $4.6 b-b-b-billion for tax credits for first-time home buyers, the same sort of buyers who made so many of the stupid home buying decisions that led to this so-called crisis in the first place, so that we can lay the groundwork today for the so-called housing crisis of tomorrow! And where are they going to get those billions of dollars from? Some of it's going to come from me -- oh goody! The rest will come from the rest of you, because misery loves company. All because several years ago, 1 person out of every 40 who was buying a house made their home-buying decision based on their heart instead of their brain. I've got a better idea. Save the money and let them suffer some consequences for their bad decisions. They'll learn
from their mistakes, and they'll be more careful the next time they buy a house. Subsidizing idiocy just creates more
idiots. Let's try making idiocy painful instead.
Melbourne and West Melbourne have been fighting over their water contract for, what, over two years now? Both sides have legitimate gripes, but rather than work things out civilly, they'd rather take slaps at each other like a couple of grumpy kids in the back seat of a car on a long road trip. Melbourne has the water, so they're the big brother using their bigger size to push the little brother around and trying to bully West Melbourne into agreeing to a new, more expensive water deal. And West Melbourne knows they can't win a full-on fight. So in the grand tradition of annoying little brothers everywhere, they're poking at the big brother and aggravating him at every turn, including promising Melbourne's water to new West Melbourne housing developments without Melbourne's permission, or refusing to pay for new more efficient water mains in their own city limits. So now the big brother is ready to give the little brother a black eye and a split lip to make him stop: a lawsuit, of course, and possibly even cutting off water. And West Melbourne is sticking their tongue out and saying they'll just go get their OWN water. And now Melbourne is upset at the thought of losing a lucrative water customer and having to compete with another city for the same water supplies. I fully expect that at the next West Melbourne city council meeting, they'll pass a resolution demanding that the Game Boy should be shared evenly and that they take turns sleeping in the top bunk every night too. Grow up, people. Put the lawyers away and work this out like adults. This water fight helps nobody, and it's gone on
long enough.
And now you've just lost your appeal in front of the Brevard County Circuit Court. Your conviction stands, Bob. Are you done yet? NO! Of course not! Now you're appealing your appeal! *facepalm*
To take down Feeney, Kosmas will need every weapon she can get. Instead, she just loaded her gun with blanks. Congrats, Suzanne! You're on the No-Show Watch. What's interesting is the party breakdown on who has turned down Bill Mick's invitations thus far. Bill is an unabashed conservative Republican, so I can certainly understand why a liberal Democrat would be nervous about appearing on his show. And yet every liberal candidate who has already appeared on his show was treated quite well by Bill, because that's just how he rolls. (The callers have been another story... geez, people, would it kill ya to be nice for a few minutes when Bill brings in a guest you disagree with?) If anything, Bill's been harder on the Republicans, probably because he wants to hold his own side to a higher standard. Maybe that's why more Republicans are on the No-Show Watch than Democrats so far. :) Here's the No-Show Watch as it stands now: Kevin Lehoullier (R) - US House District 15
I've spent the past few days listening to podcasts of Bill Mick's interviews with the candidates for US House District 15, the race to replace the mercifully-retiring Dave Weldon. I still plan on doing more research on my own, but these interviews are great for forming initial impressions. Being a registered Libertarian myself, I can't vote in any of these primaries, but I can at least pick someone to root for. My fiance Cake Buzzard is a registered Democrat, so she gets to vote in the Democratic primary and has even more at stake than I do. (I might give her a guest entry on here to talk about the Democrats in this race, but she may prefer to do an entry on her own blog instead. We'll see.) By the way, I've saved MP3s of every candidate interview that Bill Mick has done so far, even the ones that are more than two weeks old and have since been deleted from his podcast page. So if you ask real nicely, I'll be glad to e-mail you a copy of any interviews you may have missed and still want to hear. Here's my initial thoughts based on the interviews, with further research on all candidates to come later.
Zilaitis is basically a Ron Paul Republican, but he seems a lot more upbeat and optimistic than Ron Paul was. That makes him far more likeable and thus far more electable, and there's a good chance he'd be able to work together with other Congressional Republicans, much the same way that independent Senator Joe Lieberman works with the Democrats. He's a huge proponent of the FairTax and plans to sponsor the FairTax bill, with the long-term goal of getting it passed, followed by ratcheting down government spending to push the FairTax rate lower and lower over time. He also already has legal experience with helping to write legislation, which should give him a head-start on writing and sponsoring his own bills when he gets to DC. Of course, being a Ron Paul-style Republican, Zilaitis disagrees with me and opposed the Iraq War. But given that even the Bush administration and the Iraqi government are now talking about the end-game, opposition to the Iraq War is quickly becoming something I can forgive. He advocates bringing home our troops stationed all around the world and using them to patrol and secure our borders, certainly something I can get behind. (I personally think we need to keep troops in South Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan for now, but everyone else can come home. I'd like to get more detail from Frank on this.) Zilaitis favors a transition away from burning fossil fuels for energy and towards nuclear power, though he'd be open to building more oil refineries to help with the current supply issues. I'd LOVE to see this guy run for a lower office for some extra seasoning, but I think he's ready for Congress right now. I can safely say he's the front-runner for my vote in November right now, though I will admit his overall chances are slim. But if he doesn't win, I'll strongly encourage him to run for something smaller so people will have a chance to see what he can do. We'll certainly see more of Frank Zilaitis in the future.
Local Libertarian Bruce Wechsler rode shotgun with Bill Mick on this interview and absolutely grilled Bergman on the Federal Reserve. Now, I personally think a lot of the opposition to the Federal Reserve is a bit overblown, so I didn't mind Bergman's attempts to defend it. What I DID mind is that he sounded like he knew even less about the Fed than *I* do, and I am no expert. Bruce just ran circles around him. If Bergman can't stand up to little ol' Bruce Wechsler in a radio studio in Melbourne, how the hell is he gonna stand up to Nancy Pelosi in DC? Bergman also seems awfully cavalier about my Constitutional rights... I hesitantly agree with his support of the FISA bill, but geez, did he have to be so gosh-darn EAGER about it? There are VERY legitimate reasons to be VERY concerned about FISA, and he seemed to shrug them all off. Bergman also took some childish slaps at Bill Posey. In response to a question I called in to ask him, Bergman asked me if I really believed Posey was more experienced than him. Uhhhhhhhhhhh... yeah. Yes I do, and yes he is, Alan. He also tried to claim that Posey ONLY talks about his past record and NEVER talks about what he's going to do in the future, a claim that Bill Posey obliterated during his own interview. And he snuck in a crack about Bill Posey probably not even being awake yet at 7:30am... laughable, considering that Posey's interview with Bill Mick 3 days later started at 7:00am. This is not the attitude I want from my elected officials, and Bergman needs to seriously reconsider his approach before he ever runs for office again. He did not impress me. At all. About the only thing he has going for him is that he supports the FairTax, and that's not nearly enough.
If Kevin Lehoullier won't talk to us, why should we vote for him? And as a long-shot underdog against a grizzled political veteran, he should be jumping at every chance to get his name, face and views out there. Passing up one such opportunity is bad. Passing up multiple opportunities is downright idiotic. FAIL.
On other issues, sadly, Blythe's liberal side really came out. He surprised me by clearly understanding the FairTax and stating that he could support it or a flat income tax. But he thinks NAFTA is a massive drain on our economy and our autonomy and wants more protectionist trade policies, which I strongly disagree with. Blythe was "disappointed" when Nancy Pelosi took impeaching President George W. Bush off the table. Blythe opposes any more drilling or oil exploration and wants a 100% focus on alternative energy sources, while I believe that a limited approach to energy policy is a disaster waiting to happen. Let's drill for more oil AND pursue alternative energy, so that if wind farms and solar power turn out to be a bust 10 years from now, at least we'll have oil to fall back on. Continuing the liberal hit-parade, Blythe wants a moratorium on foreclosures and lots of government interference in the mortgage and housing "crisis," such as forcing banks to accomodate renters who occupy foreclosed properties. (Only 2.47% of all home mortgages in the USA are in foreclosure right now, and the vast majority of those people have plenty of income to just drop down to a smaller mortgage on a smaller home or to rent an apartment. There is no housing crisis, just lots of stupid lenders and stupid borrowers getting burned by their own stupidity.) He wants a guest-worker program and penalties on businesses who employ illegal immigrants, but we already have both of those right now anyway. He also wants our troops out of Iraq to focus on Afghanistan, with -- get this -- with the United Nations taking over in Iraq. Never mind that the UN already had a chance to get involved in the Iraq conflict in 2003 and ran away at Warp 2 instead. So, I can't support Steven Blythe in the general election. But his approach to health care and his support for the FairTax make him my preferred Democrat in this race by far.
You name it, Paul Rancatore is probably liberal on it. He consistently looks to government for solutions, especially on health care and on bringing more jobs to Brevard County once the space shuttle goes away. He clearly believes America is great because of its government, not its people, and wants to make government more efficient so that it can do an even better job of taking care of us. Yikes. He wants to boost our border patrol but doesn't want to spend money on a fence that he believes could be dug under or climed over. He's also strongly pro-abortion, even to the point of forcing federal taxpayer funding of abortions in certain situations. On Iraq, Rancatore wants to take our cue from the Iraqi government and pull our troops out, though he wisely opposes any public announcement of a set timetable for that. Surprisingly, he supported the FISA Bill, which may come from the work he did on the 9/11 Commission, though I found it odd that he kept referring to "Guantamano Bay." Paul, it's GuantaNamo. Two N's before the M. Just some friendly advice. Rancatore's biggest gaffe during his interview with Bill Mick came when he was asked about the FairTax. He told Bill he would prefer to streamline the tax system we have now rather than switching to a flat tax. Bill was stunned silent for about two seconds before he pointed out that the FairTax is a national retail sales tax, NOT a flat income tax. I can tell you from experience that the FairTax has a small but almost-fanatical support base, and as a Congressional candidate, odds are that Paul Rancatore has been contacted about the FairTax on multiple occasions. How could he be so uneducated as to not even understand what the FairTax is before opposing it? This isn't a quibbling detail. Thinking a proposal for a sales tax is actually an income tax is an appalling display of ignorance. If that's the level of detail he's going to pay to every other bill that crosses his desk, I don't want him in DC, regardless of his views.
When asked about the FairTax, Lowing expressed his support for it but then bizzarrely stated that he would not co-sponsor any FairTax legislation -- or any other pending bills on any subject -- on the grounds that they could be changed or amended after he agreed to co-sponsor them. I guess Lowing doesn't know you can take your name off a bill if it changes to something you don't like. Lowing also contradicted himself on privacy, calling out both the Orlando city government and the RIAA for violating privacy rights, then turning around and strongly defending the Patriot Act. When a caller questioned him on it and mentioned Judge Andrew Napolitano's opposition to the Patriot Act, Lowing had no idea who Napolitano was and implied that he must not fully understand the Patriot Act. Trevor, for the future... Andrew Napolitano is one of the most respected legal experts in the country. Yeah, that's a Wikipedia link, but it'll give you a place to start. Read up on him. I think you'll quickly realize he knows what the hell he's talking about. Overall, Trevor Lowing hit me as a lightweight who is not ready for prime-time. But he has room to grow, and I'd certainly be willing to give him another look in the future.
That's precisely what Bill Mick has been offering on NewsTalk 1240/1350 WMMB. He sent out invitations to all of the local candidates with several weeks'-notice, advising them that the interview schedule was set in stone but pointing out -- correctly -- that if they valued the opportunity to talk to Bill's audience, they'd have plenty of time to rearrange their schedules and make time to appear. Most of the candidates have done precisely that, but some haven't... including an independent candidate and a heavy primary underdog, precisely the sort of candidates who NEED opportunities like this just to have a CHANCE at winning! Talk-radio listeners are VERY politically active. If you're too dumb to take advantage of a free opportunity to talk to those listeners, you're too dumb to serve in office. How can you expect people to vote for you if you're not willing to talk to them? So, this is the No-Show Watch, a list of the candidates who have skipped out on their chance to appear on Bill Mick Live thus far. There's no way in hell I could vote for any of them: Kevin Lehoullier (R) - US House District 15
FAIL.
It all started with the Chevron station at the main crossroads in the heart of town. The one that's been there for as long as I've been alive and probably longer than that. The one that's locally-owned. The one that just has Chevron signs up because that's the company the local owner buys the gas from. The one that is every bit a part of the heritage of Melbourne Beach as many of the other homes, businesses and landmarks in town. In addition to being a gas station, it's actually also a full-service auto repair shop, and has been for as far back as I can remember. None of this is new. So years ago when owner Thijs Stelling bought the lot behind the Chevron station with plans to expand the auto-repair shop and add in a couple of bays, he probably figured it would be easy to get the town to go along with it. He'd been there for years, decades. He owned a local small business, PRECISELY the sort of business the town government wanted to have there. This would allow him to make more money, increase the value of the land, and make it easier for the town's citizens to get their cars fixed up without having to drive over the Melbourne Causeway. This would be a no-brainer. Apparently, the town commissioners didn't have brains. First, they told Mr. Stelling no. The commissioners were concerned about extra pollution and extra traffic. Never mind, of course, that the same amount of cars were still going through that exact same intersection in order to get to out-of-town repair shops rather than stopping at Mr. Stelling's station. He eventually got them to change their mind, but a short time later they changed their mind and said no again. Stelling kept aruging with them, and finally the commissioners told Stelling they'd study the issue further, try to get more information on the impact of expanding his shop, and get back to him with a final answer. At this point, several years had taken place, and all the while Stelling was paying taxes on that plot of land he'd bought, unable to do anything with it. Potential business for the expanded repair shop kept driving by, day after day after day, lost revenue that Stelling would never be able to get back. And he waited. And waited. And waited. And the town commission never got back to him. And finally Mr. Stelling got so frustrated that he decided he was through with it all. Quite some time later, the town commission DID give Mr. Stelling a final answer: yes. You can expand your shop. And Mr. Stelling told them it was too late. He had already decided to sell both plots of land together... to Walgreen's. They were ready to pay him a princely sum for that prime corner location, enough to make up for all of his trouble over the past several years. So instead of a locally-owned small-town gas station and auto-repair shop that had been there for decades, there would now be a monolithic national chain pharmacy shaped like a giant beige box -- right in the heart of Melbourne Beach. And the people freaked the hell out. Melbourne Beach has been doing everything they can to block the sale of the property, prolonging Mr. Stelling's multi-year ordeal by several more years. And now it's all coming to a head, with a special magistrate mediating the dispute and set to make a decision in the next two weeks. It'll be non-binding, though, which means it'll just be fodder for the inevitable lawsuit that will be filed by the losing side, prolonging this even further. And to avoid ALL of this, all the town commission had to do years ago was approve a small expansion for a locally-owned small-town gas station and auto-repair shop that had been there for decades. But instead of being reasonable, they had to flex their muscles in a short-sighted display of political power. They pushed Mr. Stelling around for years, and finally he pushed back. And if they thought his expanded auto repair shop was going to bring in more traffic and pollution, wait'll they get a load of Walgreens. I'm actually kinda rooting for Walgreens at this point. Let that big beige box go up on that corner. Let it serve as a colossal monument to the stupidity of a government that forgot that they're supposed to serve FOR the people, not rule OVER the people. And maybe next time a small business owner in Melbourne Beach or some other small town in Brevard has a similar request, the government there will give it a little more thought instead of giving a knee-jerk no just because they can. I hear McDonald's would LOVE to put in a store down there...
What I'm not enjoying is the interview schedule he has crammed down in the corner of his website, hard to read, smooshed down, and often lacking basic info such as who exactly these people are or what they're running for. So, I decided to do something about it.
You're welcome. :)
Hi! My name is Vince Young, and as you can probably see from my photo, I am *NOT* the famous NFL quarterback who shares my name. If that's who you're looking for, try Google. I'm in my late 20s and living in Florida in the city of Palm Bay, the largest in Brevard County along the Space Coast. I take a keen interest in news and politics, but with my busy life it's very easy for me to lose track of people and events, especially at the local level. So I decided I needed some way to keep everything straight in my cluttered head, and this newly re-opened website is the result. Anytime I have something to say about news or politics at the city, county, state or national level, I'll say it here. You'll also see occasional posts on such topics as Notre Dame football, the Orlando Magic, hurricanes and tropical storms, local talk radio, music, movies, TV shows, and everything from the ridiculous to the sublime. My full name is Edward Vincent Young, but my parents called me Vincent from the moment they first named me, and in the early 90s I shortened that to Vince to sound less stuffy in high school. So, I've either been known as Vincent Young or Vince Young for my entire fricken' life, so don't tell me that I'm not "really" Vince Young. I think I know who I am, 'kay-thanx. :) A tiny fraction of you will actually remember me from my old days on-the-air on The Talk-To-Me Station AM-920 WMEL in Melbourne, FL. (They've since moved to AM-1300 in Cocoa, but it's still the same station.) I used to do my own political talk show on Saturday nights, briefly co-hosted the morning show with Bill Mick when he was still at WMEL, hosted Trade Radio off-and-on for several years on Saturday mornings, and did some sales work, news reporting and board-operating. I'm not in radio at the moment, but I'm a frequent caller on Bill Mick Live weekday mornings on News-Talk 1240/1350 WMMB in Melbourne, FL. Ever heard "Vince from Palm Bay?" That's me. Back in 2000 when I first joined WMEL, I decided I needed a website for my show and a domain name to go with it. I found out that www.vinceyoung.com was available and snatched it up, and I've owned it ever since. At the time, the "other" Vince Young was just starting his high school football career in Texas, was still riding the bench, and was not famous at all. Luckiest break I've had in my entire life. By the time he became famous enough to want his own domain name, I had owned vinceyoung.com for years and wasn't particularly interested in selling, and his agents weren't particularly interested in buying. And since I bought the domain first and run this site for a legitimate personal reason, it remains mine. I'm a political conservative registered with the Libertarian Party, because the Libertarian platform and track record comes closer to my own views than the Republican Party does -- at the moment. I'm not in 100% agreement with the Libertarians, or any political party for that matter. But the main focus of the Libertarian Party is a STAUNCH devotion to reigning in the size and power of government, reducing the tax burden on everybody, and promoting increased freedom and liberty for all Americans so that they have the ability to take care of themselves. Those are all goals that are very, very important to me. The Republicans talk a good game and are still light-years ahead of the Democrats on these issues, but the Republican track record on making these things happen is -- at the moment -- piss-poor. Hence why I'm a Libertarian. Oh, and I'm 100% for the FairTax. :) I currently work two jobs: full-time in a service industry job in a management position (no, I'm not telling you where)
and part-time in a financial industry job (no, I'm not telling you where). I have a long-term goal of working in radio
again someday, but radio doesn't pay much, and right now my finances have to come first. But at least this website will
give me a chance to vent. :)
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This will be a sort of kinder, gentler
Over the years, there's
one page on my site that has consistently been the most popular by far: 
And you people think Palm Bay looks stupid?
Okay. Bob. You got arrested for soliciting sex
in a park from an undercover officer, an officer who wasn't even working for Vice that day, but you weren't done yet. You
graced the world with that mugshot, but you weren't done yet. You blamed the whole thing on being afraid of getting
mugged by black people despite it being two in the afternoon on a sunny day in the middle of the week with plenty of other
people there in the park too, but you weren't done yet. You lost your committee assignments in the Florida House, and
eventually your House seat itself, but you weren't done yet.
I've been following the saga of
As previously mentioned, I'm a big fan of 
(EDIT - 4/4/2009 - I'm back on
the radio! See | © 2000-2010 E. Vincent Young. All rights reserved. So there. |