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Archive - October 2008
The race for County Commission District 3 is one of those rare races in which I can be happy with whoever wins, whether it's uber-accountant Trudie Infantini or veteran city leader Ed Geier. But of course I can only pick one of 'em, so that's where Bill Mick's interviews came in handy. Infantini made it in for a pre-recorded 50 Minutes With segment for Bill's website. Geier wasn't able to come in for his 50 Minutes With appointment, but he did make it in for the on-air debate with Infantini, which showed the contrasting styles of both candidates quite well.
Normally, when a government agency sets its budget, it uses the previous year's budget as a starting point, leaving all existing spending in place, and then goes back in and makes changes as needed. But if a particular line item doesn't draw scrutiny, it can stay in there untouched for years... and often does. Zero-based budgeting is the polar opposite. You start your budget at... you guessed it: ZERO. Nothing carries over automatically from the previous year; you have to specifically ask for it again. And it specifically forces that government entity to specifically defend everything that they put into their budget, making it harder to sneak wasteful spending through. Zero-based budgeting is an idea for which the time has come, and Trudie Infantini is leading the charge. Infantini also wants to bring more accountability back into the awarding of government contracts, making far more use of bidding rather than just handing a contract to who ever comes along. In her 50 Minutes With interview she had several astonishing anecdotes about how out-of-control the awarding of contracts has gotten in Brevard. I'm not certain there's any true corruption or graft taking place, but it certainly looks like there's an appalling lack of attention being paid to this issue by the current Commission, and that's bad enough. Infantini is pushing for more accountability for the EELS program as well, but in an interesting twist she doesn't seem interested in shutting it down as most conservatives are. In fact, she voted for EELS originally. But she feels the money is being mis-spent on lands of dubious conservation value at inflated prices, without enough money being saved up for future maintenance of the lands that have already been bought under EELS. Every true environmentalist who cares about the future of the EELS program should consider Infantini an ally, because she's trying to get EELS to be run the way we voted for it to be run, rather than the bloated land-grab farce it's become instead. For too long, the members of the Brevard County Commission have spent money like it was going out of style, consistently failing to encourage any true fiscal restraint or future planning. With the economy teetering towards recession and tax revenues shrinking by the minute, the old way of doing things in Viera simply won't cut it. That's why we need Trudie Infantini, and that's why I'm voting for her.
Unfortunately, we have very specific needs on the County Commission right now. Spending must be reigned in and the size of the government must be scaled down, and that will mean cutting optional programs and maybe even laying off workers. And in a recent vote on the Palm Bay city budget, Geier left us a major clue as to how he would approach these issues if he were to be elected to the County Commission. The budget included the elimination of several unfilled city jobs but also included layoffs of a handful of city employees, a neccessary move with the city's property tax-base shrinking in the face of dropping home values. Geier voted against the budget, telling Florida Today, "It's the wrong time to be laying off people. I said at the beginning of this that if any jobs were lost inside this budget, I wasn't going to support the budget." How many actual employees were being laid off? Seven, according to the article. On the one hand, layoffs should never be undertaken lightly. I've said before that government is not a jobs program, but government workers are people too, so their jobs shouldn't be pulled out from underneath them capriciously. But sometimes it's just neccessary. Their paychecks are paid for by the citizens who pay taxes out of their own hard-earned paychecks, and taxpayers are people too. So in an environment in which the taxpayers are finding it more and more difficult to afford their tax bills, I really don't think laying off a grand total of seven city workers is all that unreasonable. Ed Geier obviously disagrees. I can understand why, and I believe in his mind he thinks he's looking out for those city workers who, unfortunately, now have to find other jobs in this economy. But Ed Geier is supposed to represent the taxpayers as well. Geier's answers in the on-the-air debate with Infantini on WMMB pretty much confirmed the way Geier feels on this subject. Geier talked a lot about prioritizing spending and not increasing taxes. But whenever Bill Mick asked a specific question about actually cutting spending, Geier made it clear that he doesn't think now is the time for budget cuts. Since he didn't call for any new spending either, it sounds to me like Geier wants to hold the line on the budget and on taxes. But in the current economic environment, that's impossible. Tax revenue is falling, because people's incomes are falling and people's property values are falling. And if you rule out spending cuts, that leaves you with only one choice: raise the tax rate to try to stabilize tax revenue so that you don't have to cut the budget. And Geier ruled out raising taxes. Which means that his budget philosophy is the very definition of a paradox. There may come a time when Ed Geier will be the perfect choice for the County Commission. I can envision certain scenarios in which he could step in as a stabilizing presence, calm down internal squabbles, and help the county government move forward. But that's not what we need at the moment. What we need right now is someone who understands the realities of the current budget situation and who knows that the current economic climate requires us to either cut spending or raise the tax rate, and who further understands which of those options is more potentially damaging. Ed Geier has not convinced me that he is that person. Trudie Infantini has.
Next up is the race for Supervisor of Elections. Three candidates are running to replace the previous Supervisor, Fred Galey, who leaves huge shoes to fill after keeping Brevard's elections nearly glitch-free during his entire time in office. Republican Lori Scott and Independent Frank Buckoski (who is running as no-party-affiliated) both joined Bill Mick at WMMB for individual 50 Minutes With segments, and also a debate segment together. But the Democrat, Frank Grieco Jr., curiously chose not to appear, just as he chose not to appear when he was invited to be on-the-air during the primary season. His loss.
Fortunately, there is some comfort in that history. True, she's mostly worked alongside Republicans such as Bill Posey and Mike Haridopolos, but once upon a time she also worked on the staff of Democrat Patsy Kurth. That's probably not something a lifelong Republican like Lori Scott wants people to know, but it shows a bipartisan side to her that makes me a bit less nervous about putting her in a job where partisan impartiality is critical. In every interview she's had with Bill Mick, Lori Scott has demonstrated a solid grasp of the duties of the office and the potential perils that need to be avoided. She pretty much agrees that Fred Galey had things right and that few changes are needed. The few changes she has proposed make perfect sense, such as trimming back the budget. In particular, she pointed out that the current budget plan for the Elections office calls for replacing all of the office equipment every 3 to 5 years, an extravagance that can safely be eliminated to save money. She also prudently plans to continue holding money aside each year to save up for future equipment upgrades, such as replacing the troubled touch-screen voting machines that are used for disabled voters in Brevard. But most importantly, Scott has no plans whatsoever to replace the optical-scan ballots that Galey implemented. That's key. Filling in a bubble next to a name is ridiculously easy, it's a paper ballot that's easy to count and easy to re-count, and it already works. To be fair, the other candidates want to keep the optical-scan ballots as well, but hey, it's an important thing to know. Lori Scott has the knowledge, the temperment and the drive to make an excellent Supervisor of Elections. She has earned my enthusiastic vote.
He wants you to vote for him BECAUSE he's no-party-affiliated. Think about how silly that is. Voting for somebody just because they're no-party-affiliated is no different than voting for somebody just because they're a Republican, or a Democrat, or a Libertarian. All he's doing is asking you to trade in one form of partisanship for another, as if no-party-affiliated was just another party label. And it's every bit as shallow as pulling a party lever. But anyway, Frank Buckoski (who is running as no-party-affiliated) has chosen to make this the center of his campaign, so let's look into it, shall we? Buckoski (who is running as no-party-affiliated) thinks his non-partisanship is important because it will keep him free from any corrupting partisan influences. His campaign is self-financed, so he doesn't owe anyone any favors. And he won't have party bosses peeking over his shoulder telling him what to do or how to count the votes. All good arguments, to be fair. Except I can't recall a single instance of any accusations of partisanship against the previous Supervisor, Republican Fred Galey. Galey was a big-time Republican. He had party bosses to talk to. He had partisan big-wigs contributing money to his campaigns. And yet when it came to doing his job as the Supervisor of Elections, Fred Galey was above reproach, and was respected immensely by Republicans and Democrats alike. If Galey was using his authority to further the goals of the Republicans at the expense of the Democrats, wouldn't the Democrats have raised a fuss about it by now? Basically, Frank Buckoski (who is running as no-party-affiliated) is railing against a partisan corruption problem that simply does not exist. Bill Mick tried on several occasions to get Buckoski (who is running as no-party-affiliated) to name any specific instances of partisan malfeasance on Galey's watch, and the best he could offer was that he'd heard things from people but couldn't elaborate, and that anyone who is partisan MUST be corrupt, because lobbyists and party big-wigs don't donate to campaigns unless they expect something in return. He stated it with such an astonishing air of certainty, and yet couldn't offer up one shred of evidence to back it up. But perhaps most telling is what happened during the 50-Minutes-With debate when he pushed Lori Scott a little too far on the lobbyist contributions she's been accepting for her campaign. Scott finally retorted with the fact that Buckoski (who is running as no-party-affiliated) only dropped his party affiliation 5 months ago. Before that, he'd spent quite a long time registered as a Republican, and only dropped the party label when it came time to file the paperwork to run for this office. He never denied it or disputed it, and he never offered up any legitimate reason why he would leave the Republican party. And that makes me seriously question the sincerity of his campaign theme. He just kept hammering how important it was to have a Supervisor of Elections office that is free from party influence. Never mind that we've basically had that already under Fred Galey for quite some time now, and I see no reason to believe it won't continue under Lori Scott. Frank Buckoski (who is running as no-party-affiliated) sounds like a man on a mission, a mission which includes a major shake-up of the Supervisor of Elections office. But that office doesn't need a major shake-up. That's why I can't support him in this race.
But he's not doing the best job of reaching out to them either. I can understand a candidate having limited campaign time due to job obligations, but such a candidate needs to understand that they need to find some way, somehow, to get their message out there. And that's where a campaign website comes in. A website is cheap to design, cheap to put up, and cheap to update. You can go as in-depth as you want, as long as you can hold the reader's interest. A website can be a powerful tool for a time-strapped candidate, especially if well-publicized. But looking over Grieco's website, there's just not much there. A few vague issue statements, a few sentences, a sparse resume, and a dark and badly-lit photo. That's it. It's a little hard for me to vote for a candidate without knowing anything about him. Sorry, Frank.
Holy cow, is the election a week away? I'd better get crackin' on these election write-ups. Alright, let's start with the Sheriff's race. Both candidates sat down with Bill Mick at WMMB earlier this month for individual 50 Minutes With pre-recorded interviews for Bill's website, along with a pre-recorded debate. Then on Friday, they returned to the WMMB studios for an on-air debate. All of them are still available for download if you want to check them out for yourselves, like I already have.
The crime rate is up in Brevard County since Parker took over in 2005. Among similarly-sized counties, Brevard's crime rate has increased the fastest, and it also has increased faster than all of our neighboring counties. But the crime rate has been on the rise in the entire state of Florida during that same time period. And while Brevard's increase in crime has been the fastest among similarly-sized counties, the actual crime rate itself still remains the lowest among similarly-sized counties, and still remains below the statewide average. Parker also claims that in the first six months of 2008, the crime rate in Brevard has begun to drop again, though his opponent Gary Young disputes those figures and says they haven't been validated by the federal government yet. For his part, Parker has admitted Young's basic assertions about the higher crime rate in Brevard and accepts the blame for it, and he also hesitates to take credit for the drop so far in 2008 until he knows more about the reasons behind it. Young has also pointed out in his campaign that the Sheriff's budget has grown by $30 million since Parker took office, a figure I haven't heard Parker dispute. But quite frankly, I'm not surprised, nor am I dismayed. Parker oversaw a significant expansion of the jail up in Sharpes, including the construction of the new "tents", a remodeling of the existing jail building, and a drastic and much-needed overhaul of the county's once-failing 911 response center. Those things cost money, and an expanded jail will remain more expensive to maintain. Parker also streamlined the management structure of the Sheriff's office, eliminating many supervisory positions and reassigning officers in order to get more deputies out of the office and back on the streets, so he's taken steps to reign in the budget somewhat to keep it from growing even faster. Parker has also initiated or expanded some very intriguing programs and practices at the jail in an attempt to further curtail expenses and instill more of a work-ethic in the prisoners held there, in the hopes of increasing their pride in the community and keeping them from becoming repeat offenders. He used inmate labor during the construction of the jail expansion, and continues to use inmate work crews for building maintenance, litter clean-up, and even sewing uniforms and bedding for the rest of the prisoners. It remains to be seen whether these will have the desired effect of lowering the crime rate in Brevard, but as more and more of the prisoners from these programs complete their sentences and are set free, we'll find out for sure. In the meantime, I find programs like these to be very forward-thinking and certainly worth a try. However, some of these same programs have been a bit overreaching and have helped to bloat the budget a bit, and Parker should take more care on that front. For example, local blogger Sheree Shatsky has been particularly critical of Parker housing dogs from the Humane Society in one of the jail tents, which currently sits otherwise unused and unoccupied while they wait to finish it for use in housing prisoners in the next expansion phase. The dogs are there as part of a program in which prisoners work with the dogs, care for them, train them, and prepare them for adoption in new homes. Certainly a noble idea... but is it the best use of taxpayer money? Not exactly. Just because a deed is good doesn't mean government should be doing it using money taken from you and me, and it serves as a distraction from the main mission of the Sheriff's office: preventing crime. For the future, Parker wants to continue to add more deputies and continue expanding the jail, which he says still remains overcrowded. He also plans to continue pushing for a cost-of-living pay increase for the deputies, which may be a tall order in the current budget-cutting environment. These are basically extensions of the campaign promises he made in 2004, and he's made progress on all of those promises so far. I think it's safe to assume he'll continue to do so. And that's why Sheriff Jack Parker will get my vote next Tuesday. While he's had some mis-steps and mistakes, I believe Parker has the Sheriff's office moving in the right direction. I simply don't see the case for replacing him at this time, no matter how well-qualified his opponent may be for the job. When things are going well, you don't replace the person in charge without a damn good reason.
But when you're the challenger in an election, you need to do more than just convince me that you'd do a good job. You also have to convince me that the person currently holding the job needs to be replaced. And that's where Gary Young falls short with me. I've already mentioned the Brevard crime statistics that Young has been trumpeting, and they are troubling numbers and trends. But Brevard hasn't exactly become an extension of the south side of Chicago in the past four years, and this is still a pretty safe county to live in overall. That's why Young has to do so much statistical cherry-picking to make his case, and it hurts the effectiveness of his argument. Young's criticism of Parker's budget is valid as well, though I've already discussed that up above, and the excesses in Parker's budget, while also troubling, haven't exactly risen to egregious levels. Young also relies greatly on anecdotes of individual incidents involving the sheriff's office under Jack Parker while failing to make the case that these are more than just isolated incidents. During the on-air debate on WMMB, a caller opened up a discussion on Parker's 2005 hiring of Armor Correctional Health to provide medical care for prisoners in Brevard. Armor has been caught up in shady dealings elsewhere in Florida, including a no-bid contract awarded by a sheriff in another county. The resulting back-and-forth ended up invoking the name of local blogger Sheree Shatsky, who back on September 18th stumbled across an old Sarasota newspaper story from 2007 which said that Armor had actually gone so far as to pay Sheriff Parker as a lobbyist. There's just one problem: shortly after running the original story, the newspaper in question retracted that claim, something Sheree wasn't able to track down until October 2nd. And with that, there isn't really much left to say about Parker and Armor. I'll grant you that Armor is dirty, but that doesn't mean everyone who's ever done business with them is automatically dirty as well. Unless someone can point out to me something more substantive to show that Parker's dealings with Armor have been unethical, this story doesn't hold much water with me. But it is, however, something to keep an eye on in the future. In the meantime, Sheree has of course written a brief piece on that part of the debate that you may want to read. It's also worth nothing that Gary Young was one of the deputies who was demoted and reassigned during Jack Parker's initial reorganization of the sheriff's office. Young responded by filing a lawsuit which later failed. And oddly enough, I actually talked about this lawsuit last year when I subbed in for Carole Nelson on WMEL radio. I wasn't impressed with the lawsuit then, and I'm still not now. You can hear the audio of that segment here. (It's around the 14-minute mark, and apologies for the bumper music... I didn't pick it.) I truly believe Gary Young would make a good sheriff. But we already have a good sheriff: Jack Parker. I simply don't
see the need to replace him at this time.
But those are just the on-air interviews. In a neat twist, Bill has also been doing recorded off-the-air interviews with the candidates. No callers, no commercials, no interruptions, just 50 minutes with Bill. He's been doing both solo interviews with each candidate and debate-style interviews with all the candidates for each race in at the same time. I'm looking forward to hearing the ones for the races on my ballot. Here's the schedule for the live on-the-air interviews:
Looks like there are some races that won't have any on-air interviews. Not sure why...
Bill's also not doing any of the city council races either. I'll be doing write-ups on the Palm Bay City Council races
later, but those are the only city council races I'll cover for any city. (Well, okay, I already skewered Pat
Poole in the Melbourne City Council race, but I'm not planning to go into that race any further.)
Just a quick note to say that I saw a welcome sight earlier today: gas below the $3.00/gallon mark. $2.99/gallon at the GasQwik at the corner of Babcock and Eber. That's an important psychological barrier, and I expect other gas stations to quickly follow suit, even if it means losing some money on gas in the hopes of drawing you inside to buy drinks and snacks. Of course, Barack Obama will continue to ignore this and will still insist this is the worst economy since the Great Depression. Unemployment at the height of the Depression? Around 24%. Unemployment now? Around 6%. You do the math. I'll do some further research and get you some links to back this up later when I have more, but I've read both of those numbers recently from mainstream media reports, so I'm running with them. You could probably argue this is the worst economy since Jimmy Carter's administration... but then Jimmy Carter was a
Democrat. I wonder if that's why Obama doesn't use that as his benchmark.
The year was 2001. I was still on-the-air on WMEL, doing a local political talk show on Saturday nights, and on this particular Saturday night I had a hum-dinger of a topic. Due to "popular demand" (which was conveniently and coincidentally led by a former high-ranking staffer for Weldon who had just quit a few months previous), Congressman Dave Weldon had just announced he would forgo his pledge to serve only four terms in the House of Representatives and would run for a fifth term in 2002. Many other Republicans around the country were breaking similar pledges, and the spirit of the 1994 Contract With America seemed to be on life-support, if not already brain-dead. I was mad as hell. A promise is a promise, and that promise was one of the reasons I had been supporting Weldon despite his milquetoast demeanor in Washington DC. And now he was breaking that promise, forever crossing the boundary into the land of power-hungry Washington insiders. So I talked about it on the air, and I ripped Weldon a new one, laying out the conservative case for why Weldon should not be supported for a fifth term. Then I opened up the phone lines for calls. In the audience that night were two new listeners, two little old ladies who thought they had me figured out after listening for a grand total of ten minutes. They called in back-to-back to tear me a new one under the mistaken belief that if I was criticizing a Republican, that must mean I was a Democrat. I was still a registered Republican at the time (I'm now a registered Libertarian), and they were completely unprepared for the concept of a Republican who didn't allow his principles to be overridden by blind partisan loyalty. I verbally sparred with the first one for several minutes but couldn't get her to understand this, and she got me quite worked up. When I moved on to the second caller and she started down the exact same line of attack, I actually hung up on her in anger. In partisan politics, there are just some people who don't understand the concept of ideological purity. The Party is everything, and if you don't support The Party, you are The Enemy. Those two callers on my show were perfect examples of this way of thinking, and it is this way of thinking that allowed Dave Weldon to break his promise and run for a fifth term without retaliation. And a sixth term. And a seventh term. The whole time, he's remained the same ol' mild-mannered politician, unwilling to take strong stands on anything, dancing around pointed questions from constituents (getting a straight answer from him on the FairTax was always an exercise in futility) and doing everything he could just to hang on to his House seat and all the perks it entails. Meanwhile, other well-qualified Republicans and conservatives have languished in the shadows, people like Bill Posey or Frank Zilaitis or Mitch Needelman or Scott Ellis who would be perfectly capable of representing Brevard County in Congress and fighting for the conservative ideals that so many of us hold dear. But people kept voting for Weldon thanks to that magical R next to his name, never questioning if he was the best person to represent not just the county, but to represent the party, to represent a wider set of ideals. Oh, they'd give you reasons, chief among them that "we need Weldon's experience in Washington." But I defy you to name one accomplishment from after 2002 that Weldon's experience made possible that, say, Mitch Needelman couldn't have done too. As long as the blind partisans kept allowing Weldon to run for that fifth, sixth, seventh term, they prevented anyone else from going for the Republican nomination. All the partisans wanted was to make sure someone with an R next to his name won, and it didn't matter whether or not he was actually the best person for the job. It might've been tolerable or maybe even forgivable if we at least had a fighter, someone willing to take a strong stand for conservative ideals. Instead, Weldon kept going along to get along, staying out of big fights in a vain attempt to appeal to everyone, to reach out to the other side of the political aisle and avoid offending them. Not that it did him much good, considering the rhetoric that the Democrats and liberals in Brevard have continued to blast Weldon with over the years. You'd think he was the unholy clone of Pat Buchanan from the way some people in this county talk about Weldon when in fact he's one of the tamest, most-harmless members of Congress in either party. That attempt at a broader appeal won him zero from the other side. So, no, I'm not going to miss Dave Weldon in Congress. He seems to me to be a good enough guy, even if he has gotten too
attached to life in DC, and coming back home and stepping away from his power will do him a world of good. He has been a
significant help to NASA and the space program, and bringing the VA clinic to Viera was a surprising and positive
accomplishment early in his Congressional career. But his time in Congress was over six years ago, and he has accomplished
nothing of consequence since his broken term-limits promise. Hopefully his replacement, whether it be Frank Zilaitis or
Bill Posey, will understand that we want someone who will fight for conservative ideas in government, not just talk
about them.
So, yeah. Pat Poole is running for her old seat on the Melbourne City Council. She retired from the council a few years ago after years of cantakerous contrarianism, and I foolishly believed we were finally rid of her. But over the past year, she's gotten increasingly vocal on the issues of development in Downtown Melbourne and especially over the proposed expansion of the Daily Bread soup kitchen. She has a small but devoted group of followers that adore her for the stands she's taken, and it seems to me that she's gotten a taste of the power she once held and is now hungry for more, culminating in her decision to run for election to the City Council once more. I went through my old radio show program notes from 2000 and also used my Google-Fu to give myself a refresher of some of her inaner moments over the years, and a consistent picture emerged. Pat Poole seems to love picking fights with people and almost thrives on having people royally pissed off at her. She's shown no signs of mellowing out, and I expect a return to the City Council would mean more of the same. Let's review, shall we? First there's this old Florida Today article from September 7th, 2000 which brings out several items from Poole's past: Moving on from that article... in October 2000, I attended a candidates' forum hosted by a local chapter of the NAACP, and Pat Poole was one of the candidates who showed up. Most of the audience was black, and Poole had some flippant remarks about how nobody in the room was going to be voting for her anyway. She had a sour attitude all the way through the forum and clearly couldn't care less about whether a room full of people from her own council district liked her or not. Her complete disdain for her own constituents was in full view, a shocking display of arrogance from the person who was running to represent the very people she held in such disdain. And she knew she could get away with it, thanks to the fact that Melbourne uses city-wide at-large voting in its City Council elections. She could piss off her own district and still get elected thanks to votes from people in other districts, thus guaranteeing that her own district would have no true representation on the City Council. Lovely, Pat. At that same forum, Poole dodged a direct question about whether any Melbourne street should be renamed after Martin Luther King Jr. Her reason? Commenting on upcoming Council business would create a "conflict of interest." Never mind that she answered every other question posed to her about upcoming Council business on a variety of other issues. She was just too cowardly to tell a room full of black people what she thought of Martin Luther King Jr. And it's not just racial issues where Poole has shown this sort of attitude. In the aftermath of Hurricane Frances in 2004 when Poole was still on the City Council, large swaths of the city were without power for up to two weeks, and many people resorted to running generators to run their refrigerators, lights, and air conditioning in their homes. At the time, the Deputy Chief of the Melbourne Police Department got fed up with the noisy generator being run by his neighbor, so he went next door late one night and threatened to have the neighbor arrested for violating city noise ordinances. The neighbor went to the media, and soon Florida Today, WMEL and WMMB were all loudly trumpeting the idiocy of this abusive officer. Then-Mayor John Buckley convened an emergency meeting of the City Council to vote on temporarily rescinding the city's noise ordinances so that people could run their generators until their power came back on, and the measure passed 6-1. Who voted "nay," you ask? None other than Pat Poole. In the minutes of that meeting, Page 2 shows she opposed it basically because she's lived in a house without air conditioning since she was 6 years old and has gotten along fine, completely ignoring that some people were running generators to save the food in their refrigerator, to keep a business running, or to power medical equipment at home. Well, actually, she did address people who had health issues, saying they should just go to a hurricane shelter instead of running a generator at home. Yeah, swell, Pat. Tell people to abandon their home in the aftermath of a major natural disaster while looting is actively taking place. Makes sense to me! She also criticized the media for stirring up the story of the threatened arrest, effectively defending the Deputy Chief for his blatant abuse of his law enforcement authority in a personal dispute. That should show you what she thinks of the citizens of Melbourne: you should all just shut up and roll over if a cop wants to throw you in jail over something incredibly stupid. And how dare the media report on it! More recently, Poole has led the charge against expanding the Daily Bread soup kitchen in downtown Melbourne, and I actually agree with her on that point, thought not quite with the same fervor she brings to the issue. She also managed to get herself ejected from the audience at a City Council meeting back in March of 2007 for going past her speaking time, but I've heard Mayor Harry Goode is a bit of a stickler on enforcing the rules at Council meetings, plus I wasn't there to see what happened for myself, so I'm not sure how useful that info is. But there you go. Pat Poole is the wrong person for the Melbourne City Council. Her attitude towards the citizens of her own district
borders on contempt, and her attitude towards the citizens of the rest of the city isn't much better. She has a history of
being combative and cantankerous just because she can. She seems to go out of her way to piss people off, and while a
little dissension in government is a good thing, dissension solely for the sake of dissension is pointless. That's all Pat
Poole has to offer, and the city of Melbourne can do better than that.
Coming up later today will be my long-promised article on Pat Poole. But first...
If you were paying attention during the Notre Dame-Stanford game last weekend, you could pick out the precise moment at which my vacation schedule actually allowed me to turn on the TV and start watching the game: the start of the 4th quarter. That's when Notre Dame went into their ingenious three-and-out offense with a 28-7 lead and allowed Stanford to score two quick touchdowns, making it 28-21 with way too much time still left in the 4th quarter. Thank goodness for that stupid, stupid Stanford punt returner for catching Notre Dame's final punt at his own 2 yard line and getting nailed right there, dooming Stanford's chances at completing the comeback. But it pretty much confirmed my status as Notre Dame's official bad-luck charm. The instant I turned on the TV, they forgot how to play football and did everything they could to hand the game to Stanford. Imagine if I'd turned on the TV earlier! Further evidence... Notre Dame is 0-5 in games in which I am personally in the stands watching. In 2005, I was watching the close finishes to Michigan State and USC in which the Irish lost, but I was unable to watch the close finish against Stanford in which the Irish won. I also missed the entire 4th quarter of the '06 Michigan State game, in which Notre Dame capped off a furious comeback with a miraculous victory. Oh, and during the disasterous '07 season, the only game I couldn't watch was the UCLA game... which turned out to be Notre Dame's first victory of the year, and their only win until mid-November. Maybe I shouldn't turn on the TV for the Notre Dame-North Carolina game later today. At any rate, if I'd posted before the Stanford game, I would've predicted a loss, because I genuinely fear the ability of Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh to get his guys fired up for a big game. And hey, Stanford came pretty close, but in the end the Irish held on for the win. Now we're 4-1, but the offense is one-sided, the rushing game is woefully anemic and shows scant signs of improvement, the defense isn't particularly stout, and we haven't beaten anybody of any real worth yet. So, I'm sticking with my prediction of a final record of 8-4. That means we're gonna lose 3 more games. USC is a gimme -- we ain't got the horses to keep up with them. Two more losses... I still say one will be to Pittsburgh, because Dave Wannstadt ("the Wannstache") has that infuriating ability to steal a big game one week and then lose to Southeast Rhode Island A&M Tech the following week, so he's fully capable of getting a sneaky trap win on the Irish. That leaves one loss left, and North Carolina has looked pretty strong so far. Butch Davis has them playing well there in Chapel Hill, and it's a road game against a ranked opponent. So, you heard it here first. Notre Dame loses to North Carolina today, 24-13. And as always, I hope I'm wrong. Hey, I was wrong about the Stanford game. GO IRISH!!!
Sorry it's been so quiet here lately. Things have been tumultuous at work, and then things quieted down just in time for me to go out of town for a vacation for a few days. But now I'm back, I'm rested, and I'm rearing to go. Give me a day or two to catch up, and then I'll start filling this page with updates once again. It's good to be back,
in more ways than one.
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Starting on Monday morning, 
Lawrence Salberg over at
So, yeah. 
Oh hey, look, my first full update since my
vacation and it's about Notre Dame football. Shocking, I know.
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