Spending like there's no tomorrow -- even though there is
	Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

County Commission may "roll-up" library property tax rate
The debate over library funding continues on, with library supporters saying more funding is needed while budget hawks say the library needs to properly manage the money they already have. (Bumper stickers, anyone?)

It looks like the battle lines are being drawn in the County Commission, with a proposal gaining steam to "roll-up" the library's property tax rate. What that means is that the property tax rate for funding the library system would be set to whatever rate is needed to keep the library's funding amount the same as last year. Since property values are dropping across the Space Coast, that means the tax rate itself would have to be higher in order to bring in the same amount of revenue. Moderate Commissioners Mary Bolin and Chuck Nelson and liberal Robin Fisher are for it, while conservatives Trudie Infantini and Andy Anderson are opposed. Any final vote on the tax rate would probably happen in July.

It sounds like an ideal split-the-baby sort of compromise, doesn't it? The libraries get the same amount of money, and everyone's tax bill stays the same, right? Well, not exactly.

First of all, the economy here in Brevard continues to sputter, with many people continuing to see their pay cut or losing their jobs entirely due to layoffs. People are making less money than they used to. If their income drops while their tax burden stays the same, that means you're taking a higher percentage of their income than you used to. To those residents, that's a tax increase, plain and simple.

Bolin, Nelson and Fisher are also forgetting about the nastiest aspect of our property tax system here in Florida: the recapture rule. Here's how it works. Right now in Florida, there is a cap on how much your assessed property value is allowed to increase by from year to year, which in turn acts as a cap on how much your property tax bill can increase by. You probably know it as Save Our Homes. What a lot of people don't realize is that if your assessed value is capped one year due to Save Our Homes, the government can come along the following year and continue to increase the assessed value of your home towards what it would've been had it not been for the Save Our Homes cap -- even if your home's value actually dropped that year. That's the recapture rule, and every year it nails homeowners all across Florida.

So how does this tie-in with "rolling-up" the library property tax rate? Well, if the recapture rule bumps up your home's assessed value, that alone will increase your property tax bill. Add in the library property tax rate being increased, and your property tax bill will increase even more -- even as Commissioners Bolin, Nelson and Fisher keep telling you that your tax bill will stay the same thanks to their brilliant compromise.

The libraries need to be smarter about how they spend their money, plain and simple. Don't even try to tell me they aren't wasting a single penny of their funding right now. No government agency is that efficient.

BCC votes to turn over Cocoa Village Playhouse to city
Well, what a surprise. The Board of Trustees for Brevard Community College has voted to turn over control of the money-losing Cocoa Village Playhouse to the City of Cocoa. Fortunately, this isn't a done-deal yet, since the Cocoa City Council still needs to vote to actually accept control of the Playhouse first. But a decision could be coming up soon -- the next Council meeting is next Tuesday night, May 25th. They'll release the agenda for that meeting sometime on Thursday of this week, so I'll keep you posted if this shows up on the agenda.

Long-story-short, this is no time for the City of Cocoa to take on yet another spending program, not with the economy continue to falter and with tax revenues continuing to drop. Let the Cocoa Village Playhouse go private, and let them figure out ways to run more efficiently to turn a profit just like other private theatre groups do all across the nation. And if the Playhouse is as valuable to Cocoa Village as people claim, then it seems to me that the businesses in Cocoa Village will see plenty of incentive to support the Playhouse themselves voluntarily as a smart business decision. Getting the taxpayers involved in funding the Playhouse by force is simply not needed, and it's not what Cocoa needs to be getting into right now.

Gun-toting vigilantes run rampant along Space Coast!
Today's Florida Today story on citizens standing up against criminals caught my eye, and I think you'll find it's a good read. It shows once again what you can accomplish when you put firearms in the hands of well-trained law-abiding citizens. Guns are not the problem. The problem is what people choose to do with those guns. But just like guns can be used to commit crimes, guns can also be used to stop crimes.

Crist signs red-light camera bill into law
The state legislature's new law allowing and regulating red-light cameras in Florida has been signed by Governor Charlie Crist. So much for watching out for the people. But I am heartened by the fact that the new rules require a police officer to review every video, and that cities will be prohibited from using the cameras to target people who make rolling right-turns-on-red. Rolling rights on red are the most common and thus most lucrative red-light violation, but they're also by far the least-dangerous red-light violation. Hopefully, with those restrictions in place, many cities will find that red light cameras won't make enough money to be worth trying, and they'll leave them alone.

Yeah, don't tell me it's about traffic safety and not about revenue. A few cities in Georgia have proven what a lie that is.

Linda McKinney wants Tea Partiers to get active
Great suggestions from a very smart lady. Going to Tea Party rallies is great, but it should be Step One. Remember, the goal here is to reduce the size of government, and you can't do that just by waving a sign around for an hour while listening to speeches.

Supreme Court rules sex-abusers of children can be jailed beyond their sentence
Good intentions run amok. There's got to be a way to keep sexual offenders in jail longer without diluting everybody's Constitutional rights to due process. The idea that a government can arbitrarily decide that someone is "too dangerous" to be released from jail at the end of their lawful sentence is a dangerous line to cross, especially if it gets applied to other types of crime. I've got a better idea: the sexual offenders mentioned in this story had prison sentences as short as three years. Why not just make sure their initial sentences are longer in the first place? Three years is way too short for such a heinous crime.

Quick hits:

	Libraries: so poor, they're burning money to stay warm!
	Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

FairTax show encore tomorrow night!
If you missed last week's episode of The Vince Young Show on the FairTax, Friday night will be your chance to hear it again! My entire interview with Earl Medlen can be heard starting at 8:00pm on Friday night on AM-1300 WMEL. For more info on the FairTax, check out the program notes for that show.

Libraries waste money to complain about funding
Library funding has been a hot topic for the Brevard County Commission lately. The library board here in Brevard wants the Commission to raise the library tax rate on your property tax bill, and supporters of Brevard's libraries showed up in force at a recent Commission meeting to demand more money for Brevard's libraries. Personally, I see the library system as important to fund properly, but they're a government operation. And as with any government operation, I find it hard to believe that they're not wasting any of their funding, that every penny of their money is being spent wisely. The county's property tax revenues are drying up quickly, and no government department should be declared immune from having their budget cut if they're spending money that doesn't need to be spent.

Case in point: those "I LOVE MY LIBRARY AND I VOTE" bumper stickers that have been popping up on cars all around the Space Coast lately. Guess who paid for them? You did... whether you wanted to or not. I called the Cocoa library myself not too long ago and spoke with a very nice librarian who cheerfully and proudly declared that the Brevard library system paid to have all those printed up, and that I could get one for myself at the Reference desk.

So, let me get this straight. Brevard County's libraries are under-funded and desperately need more money in these hard economic times. But they have the budget to print up bumper stickers to promote a political viewpoint?

This is outrageous.

I pay property taxes in this county, including the library tax. When I pay that library tax, I want the library to spend it on maintaining the library buildings, operating their computer systems, buying books and research materials, and paying the wages of the employees. I don't want the library to spend my money to print up political bumper stickers expressing a viewpoint I disagree with.

Unlike some political commentators on the Space Coast, I like libraries. I think they serve a valuable role to improve the educational level of our population, and they open up access to books and to the internet for people who would otherwise find it difficult to pay for that access. When the library sticks to that purpose, library funding is money well-spent. But printing up political bumper stickers is not the library's mission. And make no mistake: "I LOVE MY LIBRARY AND I VOTE" is a political message, a threat to vote against any elected official who wants to freeze or cut library funding.

If some private volunteer group wants to print up bumper stickers with that message, great: they can take up donations, print 'em up, and slap 'em up on their cars. Free speech. It's wonderful. But the instant they want the taxpayers of Brevard County to pay for those bumper stickers, they have crossed a big fat line that should not be crossed.

Hey, Library Board: if you're really so short on funding, don't waste your valuable money printing up political bumper stickers. Spend your money more wisely, and we won't be so tempted to take it away from you.

Hard times call for hard choices
In stark contrast to Brevard's libraries spending our money printing bumper stickers to complain about how poor they are, Brevard's school Superintendent Brian Binggeli actually understands the reality of our county's revenue situation. The economy is still sluggish, tax revenues continue to drop, and the end of the shuttle program and the DeepWater Horizon oil spill are threatening to deliver a one-two punch to Florida's economy. And on top of it all, the state's school class-size rules are about to get a lot stricter.

Given these truths, Binggeli could be running around demanding higher tax rates and increased funding. Instead, he's combing through the budget and looking for ways to hire more teachers to meet the new rules while cutting spending elsewhere in order to be able to afford those new teachers. He's proposing to eliminate vacant (and thus unneeded) school jobs and to lay off media assistants that, while nice to have, aren't needed for the proper education of our children, and he's pushing for other spending cuts as well. As Binggeli recently told the School Board, "Everyone must share the burden. We are going to tell our community that there are some things they might be used to seeing that they aren't going to see anymore."

See, Brian Binggeli gets it: there's only a certain amount of money available for him to work with, and raising the tax burden on Brevard's citizens during this economy will simply make it even more difficult for already-struggling families to pay their bills. No matter how good or worthy a spending project is, if you don't have the money to pay for it, you don't have the money to pay for it. He knows he's going to anger some people by cutting unneeded programs and laying off unneeded workers, but he also realizes how important it is to make those cuts to save the rest of the school system. But it's a tough job, and I applaud Binggeli for having the guts to do what needs to be done.

Looking to our north, New Jersey's new Republican Governor Chris Christie has similar choices to deal with. Facing a deficit of $10,700,000,000 on a state budget of $29,300,000,000, Christie has rolled up his sleeves and started cutting. He has no choice: it's either drastically cut the state's spending programs across the board, or watch New Jersey slide into utter financial ruin. And despite this stark reality, the people whose government programs and government jobs are being cut are screaming bloody murder about it, basically declaring that their own selfish gain is more important than preventing the financial collapse of an entire state. Christie, to his credit, isn't listening to them.

Government officials and elected representatives at all levels need to take a lesson or two from Brian Binggeli and Chris Christie. The old ways of spend-spend-spend lead to nothing but huge public debts and people who are so dependent on government that they have lost the ability to take care of themselves. More of that model will simply lead to more of those problems. Kudos to Binggeli and Christie for recognizing the need for change -- true change.

Confirmed: Cocoa Village Playhouse loses money for BCC
Following up on yesterday's discussion about Brevard Community College possibly handing over control of the Cocoa Village Playhouse to the City of Cocoa... Florida Today confirmed it this morning. In 2009, the Playhouse cost BCC $263,000 to run. That explains why BCC is so hot to turn over control of the Playhouse and to force the taxpayers of Cocoa to cover those losses.

My idea remains the same: let the Playhouse go private, and let them make the decisions they need to make to operate more efficiently as a for-profit business. They wouldn't be the first for-profit theatrical group, and I'd be willing to bet that many Cocoa Village merchants would see it as a wise business decision to support the Playhouse to increase their own customer base.
 

	Cocoa and Titusville keep looking for ways to spend your money
	Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Cocoa considers taking over Cocoa Village Playhouse
Just to lay this out there right now... I understand how important art is. I've dabbled with writing music and acting and storytelling myself in the past, and I've been known to enjoy paintings and sculptures from time to time. Arts of all kinds are important for advancing and preserving any culture, including the culture of the state of Florida and of the United States of America.

What I'm not a big fan of is government funding of the arts. When I was a musician, I never stuck my hand out to ask for a government grant. It sure would've been convenient to ask the government to take money out of someone else's pocket and put it in my hands so that I could've devoted more time to my music, but as convenient as it would've been, it would've been wrong. If my music had been good enough, people would've been willing to make a private decision to support my music, either by giving me donations or by buying copies of my songs. Instead, I never made a penny off of my music, because nobody thought it was good enough to pay for. And if it's not good enough for someone to choose to buy it, then why should the government have the power to come along and force everyone to pay me for my music anyway?

So, it was with great interest that I read a story on Florida Today this afternoon saying that Brevard Community College has asked the city of Cocoa to consider taking over the Cocoa Village Playhouse. The city is nowhere near making a final decision, but the City Council has stated they're interested, though they want to study the Playhouse's financial situation first.

Now, BCC is already a government institution in and of itself, but it tries to run itself somewhat similarly to a business so that it doesn't have to rely on quite as much government funding. So switching control of the Cocoa Village Playhouse from BCC to the City of Cocoa would put it more directly under government control. For that reason alone, I prefer the Playhouse to stay under BCC's wing.

But ask yourself this question: why does BCC want to give up control of the Cocoa Village Playhouse? Think about this. BCC has limited financial resources based on a combination of government funding, private donations, and student tuition payments. There's only so much money to go around. If the Playhouse is making a profit off of box office ticket sales, then there's no way BCC would want to give up such a valuable source of income. So, that must mean one thing: the Playhouse is losing money, which means it's costing BCC money. That would be a great incentive for BCC to want to hand over control of the Cocoa Village Playhouse to someone else to free BCC of that burden.

If the City of Cocoa takes control of the Playhouse, that means the City of Cocoa would be losing money on the Playhouse instead of BCC. That means the city would need to make up the difference between the ticket revenue and the bills and expenses. And how would they get that money? By taxing you, of course, since the City of Cocoa doesn't have a single penny of money that it hasn't seized from somebody through force of law. That's how governments get their money.

But if Cocoa is like the rest of Brevard's cities (and it probably is), their land values are dropping, which means their property tax revenues are dropping. And between the unsettled economy and the upcoming end of the space shuttle program, that's likely going to continue for the forseeable future, which means less money available for the City of Cocoa to spend.

Given the trouble every city in Brevard has been having just paying for the expenses that are already on the books, can the City of Cocoa really afford to add one more thing to spend your money on while that money is drying up? Taking over the Cocoa Village Playhouse would be a costly mistake, one the city can't afford right now.

If Brevard Community College is concerned about the money they're losing on the Cocoa Village Playhouse, then it's time for them to cut the Playhouse loose and let it stand on its own, as a private business. Let them study their income and expenses and figure out how to save money and run more efficiently. There are theatre groups all across the nation, including here in Florida and even right here in Brevard, that operate privately, either as private charities surviving on donations and ticket sales, or even as for-profit businesses. There is absolutely no reason -- no reason -- why the Cocoa Village Playhouse can't convert to that model too. It will be difficult, but many of things worth doing in life often are.

Art will not shrivel up and die in this nation without government funding. Hollywood seems to do just fine. So does Broadway. So do small-time musicians and artists in concert venues and museums all across the country. If art is worthwhile, people will pay for it voluntarily on their own. They already do it every day. There's no need for the government to force people to pay for it at the point of a gun as well.

Let's tax existing businesses to bring in new ones!
The Titusville City Council has voted unanimously to offer cash incentives to businesses to move into the city in a move clearly meant to counter the perception that Titusville is business-hostile. And hey, on the surface, it sure sounds nice. Of course, new businesses will have to jump through all sorts of hoops and fill out forms to qualify for these grants, not exactly business-friendly practices.

But here's a bigger question: where is Titusville going to get the money to pay for these cash incentives? That's right: by taxing the citizens and business owners who already live in Titusville. Remember, this is an added expense to the city's budget, which is already facing a $5,000,000 shortfall due to rising spending and declining tax revenue. That means the city will need to take more money away from the businesses that are already in Titusville to pay for bringing in new businesses.

How does this make any sense at all? In order for Titusville's economy to grow, existing businesses need to be supported in addition to bringing in new businesses from outside. But instead, Titusville is going to make it harder for the businesses that are in the city right now to stay open by taking more of their money away. That shiny government grant may bring in a new business from outside, but at the cost of killing off a business that was already there by taxing them too much to stay profitable.

As usual, Titusville is missing the point here. There's a reason businesses are avoiding your city: your taxes are too high and your regulations are too strict. Lower your taxes and loosen your rules, and you will see businesses lining up from outside to join the ones that are already here. That's the road to prosperity, not coming up with more ways to spend money that you don't have.

Oops! Add $115,000,000,000 to the ObamaCare price-tag
That pushes the price tag for ObamaCare over the $1,000,000,000,000 mark over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And didn't I warn you that ObamaCare would end up costing more than President Obama and the Democrats were claiming? Government programs always end up costing more than predicted. Always.

Quick hits:

	Crist gets slick on oil; Brevard's budget woes
	Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Crist flips again on offshore drilling
Governor Charlie Crist is calling for a special session of the State Legislature. Why? To get a ban on offshore oil drilling in Florida onto November's ballot for a constitutional amendment vote.

I've talked before about Crist's other famous flip-flops, so add this one to the list. Back in 2008, Crist softened his stance against offshore oil drilling as public support turned in favor of drilling. Now that public opinion has turned against offshore drilling again, now Crist is against it again. What a surprise.

To those of you who still support Crist's run for the US Senate as an indie candidate: can you please tell me what, exactly, Crist truly believes in? Can you honestly say that he won't ever change his mind on the issues that matter to you? He may agree with you today, but there's no guarantee he'll agree with you tomorrow.

Titusville faces $5,000,000 budget gap
With grim economic prospects, the city of Titusville now needs to find a way to cover a $5,000,000 shortfall in their next budget. Just like in the rest of Brevard, taxable land values are continuing to drop, which means so is tax revenue.

Titusville's solutions? Well, they're talking about raising taxes, of course. No surprise there. They're also talking about cutting spending programs, to which I say good. But they're also talking about eliminating vacant city government jobs, thereby admitting that those jobs are unneeded, since the city government didn't fall apart when the person who previously held that job left it. That tells me something very important: that job wasn't needed in the first place.

If those now-vacant jobs weren't needed, why did they ever exist at all? Why was the city of Titusville seizing money from its citizens in the form of property taxes to pay the salary of a government employee who was carrying out a job that was not essential to the operation of the city? And more importantly, how many un-needed city employees are still on the payroll right now, sucking down tax money?

Government is not a jobs program. And there should never be such a thing as an "unessential" government employee. Either they're essential, or they shouldn't be a government employee. Cut 'em loose.

If it ain't broke, don't break it!
Why mess with things that are working just fine? Titusville's mayor is suggesting having trash trucks only collect garbage from one side of the street to save money. Meanwhile, Cocoa Beach is thinking about taking State Road A1A, currently two one-way streets through the downtown area, and converting it into two different two-way streets.

In both cases, things are working just fine the way they are now. Why try something different just for the sake of trying something different? That's how you end up with things like the Viera traffic circle.

Aren't we taxed enough already?
USA Today says that Americans are paying the lowest percentage of their income in taxes since 1950. That may be true. But USA Today makes the further leap that this is one of the reasons the national debt is so high. I disagree: the reason our debt is so high is because Congress keeps spending more and more of our tax dollars with no regard whatsoever to even trying to balance the budget.

Leave the tax rate alone: we're taxed enough already, and we used to be taxed too much. (Some would argue we still are.) Cut federal spending and get the debt under control that way.

Work a job, or get free money? Hmm...
You'd think that with Detroit's economy in such a shambles and with unemployment obscenely high that people in Detroit would jump at the chance to get a job as a landscaper that pays $12.00/hour to start. Well, guess again: people are turning down job offers in Detroit so that they can keep cashing unemployment checks without having to work!!! Interestingly enough, that's actually illegal. If you're on unemployment, you're required by law to actively seek a job. And if you turn down a suitable job offer, you can lose your benefits. But people are applying for jobs that they have no intention of accepting just so they can tell the unemployment office that they're "actively looking for work." And when they get surprised with a job offer, they turn it down and hope nobody notices so they can keep cashing the checks.

Hey, why work an honest job for eight hours a day outside when you can make almost as much money sitting on your butt at home watching Elimi-Date on TV? And it gets even better since Congress keeps extending everyone's unemployment benefits. Who needs a job?

Florida Republican Party releases credit card records
Now that the state Republican party has released the spending details from the much-maligned party-issued credit cards, Governor Charlie Crist is going to have a delicate line to walk. On the one hand, Crist will want to remind people as much as possible that Marco Rubio, as the one-time Speaker of the State House, had one of those cards and even charged a small number of personal expenses to that card. (Never mind that Rubio re-imbursed the state party for those charges quite some time ago.)

On the other hand, if Crist pushes that story too far, it could blow up in his face. Who was the chairman of the state party who made the decision to hand out those credit cards? Why, none other than Jim Greer, who also paid very little attention to who was charging what on those cards. And who was the close political ally who called in multiple favors to make sure Jim Greer got that chairman job? Why, none other than Charlie Crist. And remember, though Crist himself didn't have a party credit card, he has acknowledged that some of Jim Greer's credit card charges were on Crist's behalf. Crist got the guy into office who issued those cards and made this whole mess possible, and Crist benefited directly from the existence of those cards. That means Crist has far more to answer for on this issue than Rubio.

By the way, how much did everyone charge on these cards anyway? The St. Petersburg Times has the totals. Let's compare and contrast! Jim Greer charged $478,000 to his card, and Greer's own right-hand man Delmar Johnson charged a mind-blowing $1,400,000 to his card. Marco Rubio? Try $87,000 total.

Quick hits:

	Tonight: the FairTax and special guest Earl Medlen!
	Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

The FairTax
You've heard me mention the FairTax on the air before: a proposal to replace all federal income taxes on people and businesses with a national retail sales tax. But I've never really gone into detail about what, exactly, the FairTax is, how it works, and why it could be such a benefit to the United States of America -- or to any other nation that beats us to the punch and implements it first.

Tonight, it's time to change that. I'll be joined in the WMEL studios tonight by Earl Medlen from the Florida FairTax Educational Association as we lay out the case for switching to the FairTax.

The basics
Right now, the government of the United States is primarily funded through income taxes on both people and businesses. You know all about personal income taxes already: just look at your paycheck every pay-day. The government takes three chunks of taxes out of your gross pay: one chunk for Social Security, one for Medicare, and one for income taxes.

The side most people never see is businesses taxes. When a business owner decides what prices to sell their products at, they have to make sure they're setting a high enough price to cover their expenses: paying their employees, paying rent, paying for utilities... and paying taxes. Businesses look at taxes the same way they look at any other business expense, and they set their prices high enough to cover all of their expenses. In a way, businesses don't actually pay even a single penny in business taxes; you do, every time you buy something from that business.

The amount varies depending on the product, but studies have shown that for every dollar you spend buying something (a loaf of bread, for instance), about twenty-three cents of the price is to cover that business's tax bill. Economists call this an "embedded tax." But you never see it, just like you never see how much of that dollar is to cover their electrical bill, or their payroll, or any other expenses. All you see is that it costs you a dollar to buy that loaf of bread.

That brings us to the FairTax. The FairTax is a national sales tax on all goods and services purchased at the retail level. Under the FairTax, all personal and business income taxes would be eliminated and replaced with a national retail sales tax rate of 23%. In addition, every American citizen would receive a "pre-bate" check every month to cover the cost of any FairTax you would pay for the basic necessities of life, with the amount based on the number of people in each household.

What would this mean for you? First of all, look at your paycheck. Remember those three chunks the federal government takes out of each paycheck for Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes? Gone. Your gross pay becomes your take-home pay.

But what about when you need to buy something, like that loaf of bread from before? Doesn't it cost more now? Actually, no. Remember, the $1.00 price tag on that loaf of bread included $0.23 cents in embedded taxes: 23%. But now the store doesn't have to pay income taxes anymore either. Those embedded taxes go away. Of course, now we have the FairTax, and the store has to account for the FairTax in the price of that loaf of bread: 23%. Notice how it's the same percentage as the embedded taxes used to be? So you still end up only paying $1.00 for that same loaf of bread. Before, the store would spend $0.23 cents of that dollar to pay their income taxes. Now, they take that same $0.23 cents and send it to Washington as the FairTax on that loaf of bread.

And that's just the start.

April 15th now becomes just another pleasant spring day, as Neal Boortz likes to say. The pre-bate checks make sure that poor families aren't overly burdened by the new tax system. The underground economy starts paying taxes too, as drug dealers and under-the-table workers who used to just hide their income by not filing their income tax forms now start paying sales taxes whenever they buy something. (Hey, the crack dealer down the street has to buy bread too, and he buys it the same way you do: at the store.)

Want to know more?
There's plenty of details I just don't have time to get into here. For example, just for starters, there's the debate over whether the FairTax is 23% (which is the inclusive rate) or really 30% (which is the exlusive rate). There's plenty more questions you may have, and plenty of false arguments you'll hear from opponents.

If you want to learn more about the FairTax, a great place to start is, of course, FairTax.org. Clicking on the "About the FairTax" link in the upper-left corner will take you to some good general information and FAQs. Earl Medlen's group, the Florida FairTax Educational Association, has a great website for hooking up with other Floridians who support the FairTax. There's also FairTax Nation if you want to use the Internet to reach out to other supporters across the USA. And of course, if you're a real policy wonk, you can read the actual text of the Fair Tax Act of 2009 that is being considered in Congress right now: H.R. 25 in the House of Representatives, and S.296 in the Senate.

Oh, books too! WMEL radio talk show host Neal Boortz and Georgia Representative John Linder (Republican) have teamed up and written two excellent New York Times bestselling books on the FairTax, with Linder providing the intellectual heft and Boortz providing the entertainment value. (A book on tax policy that's fun to read? Who knew!) The FairTax Book introduces the concept and answers many questions and concerns. And FairTax: The Truth: Answering The Critics offers rebuttals to many of the tired, old, and often wildly inaccurate criticisms of the FairTax that have come out as the plan has gained political traction across the USA.

EDIT: If you have any questions you'd like to ask Earl Medlen about the FairTax, he has graciously allowed me to share his phone number with you here on the website: (772) 202-4062. He lives in Barefoot Bay, so don't worry: while it's technically long-distance, it's a cheap call. And hey, if you have a cell phone with free long-distance calls, then you're set.
 

	Next week's tentative schedule
	Saturday, May 1st, 2010 at 11:45am

Since my show gets pre-empted for Orlando Magic basketball games, the Magic's NBA Playoffs schedule affects my schedule. The Magic have already won their 1st-round series, so they're waiting for the 1st-round series between the Atlanta Hawks and the Milwaukee Bucks to end so that the Magic can play the winner in the 2nd-round of the NBA Playoffs. The Hawks won Game 6 last night, forcing Game 7 to be played Sunday night. That guarantees that I will have a show on Monday night, May 3rd at 8:00pm, since the NBA won't force the winner of Game 7 to immediately play the Magic the very next night.

As for the rest of next week... from what I can tell, the Orlando Magic will play the winner of the Atlanta/Milwaukee series on Tuesday 5/4 for Game 1 and on Thursday 5/6 for Game 2. That means I would get pre-empted Tuesday night and Thursday night, along with the Friday Night Locker Room pre-empting me on Friday night. That would leave me with another show on Wednesday night, May 5th at 8:00pm. But that schedule hasn't been confirmed by the NBA yet, so it's still subject to change.

But for now, I'm going to aim for Wednesday night being FairTax Night with Earl Medlen from the Florida FairTax Educational Association. I'll update this website if that changes.
 

	Infantini wants answers; oil slick spreads; Crist get blasted
	Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Yes, it's Friday night, and I have a show!
Since the Friday Night Locker Room did a special Thursday night show last night, that means they don't have a show tonight... which means I do. Alas, their game last night meant I got bumped at the last-minute... as did our scheduled guest, FairTax expert Earl Medlen. Details on that here, but suffice it to say we will still have him on, hopefully sometime in the next week. As soon as I can lock down a date, I'll let you know.

Next week's schedule still unknown
The Orlando Magic are waiting to see who wins the NBA Playoff series between the Atlanta Hawks and the Milwaukee Bucks, with the winner of that series taking on the Magic starting next week. Alas, until the Atlanta-Milwaukee series finishes, we won't know the schedule for the Magic games, which means I don't know what nights I'll have shows next week. Milwaukee currently leads the series 3-2, so if Milwaukee wins Game 6 tonight and wins the series, the schedule for next week will probably be announced Saturday morning. But if Atlanta wins tonight and forces Game 7 to be played on Sunday, that would guarantee a show for me on Monday night, but it would leave the rest of the week's schedule up in the air until Monday morning.

Basically, just watch this website. As soon as I know my on-air schedule for next week, I'll post it here.

Infantini: Show me the jobs!
I love this. County Commissioner and fiscal watchdog Trudie Infantini is challenging the Economic Development Commission. Since October 2007, they've been getting about $1,500,000 in taxpayer money every year to try to create jobs here in Brevard, with the stated goal of creating 2,250 jobs in the next three years. But after almost three years and $4,500,000 they've only created 256 new jobs in Brevard, about $17,578 spend per job. And Infantini is challenging the EDC to prove that they've really even created those jobs at all.

Keep in mind where the EDC gets the money for "creating" these jobs: by taxing hard-working business owners and citizens here in Brevard County in the form of property taxes and business license and permit fees. That's money that people could've spent to pay bills, improve their businesses, or -- *gasp* -- hire new workers.

For far too long, the EDC has been immune to spending cuts and has ceaselessly chanted the mantra, "We're creating jobs. It's money well-spent!" I'm thrilled to see Infantini holding their feet to the fire and demanding results. This is precisely why we sent Trudie to Viera: to bring more accountability to the County government. Great job!

More local pork, this time in Titusville
Democratic Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas had a brilliant idea recently: Let's make the rest of the USA pay $2,000,000 for a helicopter school in Titusville! Absolutely incredible... once again, we sent a bunch of money from Brevard County to Washington DC in the form of income taxes, and then held out our hands and asked for some of it back. I've got a better idea: let's keep the money here in Brevard County, pay for the helicopter school ourselves (if at all, since it should be the free market making that decision anyway), and cut out the federal middle-man.

What allowed this culture of federal pork to flourish? Attitudes like this:

	Thursday night's FairTax show postponed!!!
	Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 7:30pm

My apologies to all of you and to Earl Medlen from the Florida FairTax Educational Association... there's been a last-minute change to WMEL's on-air schedule for tonight. Instead of my show, we're carrying a special Thursday-night edition of the Friday Night Locker Room and their coverage of local high school baseball from 7:00pm until about 9:00pm, pre-empting my show for tonight.

For those of you who were looking forward to Earl Medlen, fear not: he will be back, and he's an absolute saint for driving all the way up from Barefoot Bay to Cocoa only to learn at the same time I did that we wouldn't have a show tonight. As soon as the Orlando Magic's schedule for the 2nd round of the NBA playoffs gets set, I'll pick a new day for Earl to come back in here, and we'll get the FairTax show on. We'll also be dedicating a second show at some point to code-enforcement abuses, an issue that Earl has some first-hand experience with.

The only good news in all of this? Since the Friday Night Locker Room is covering a Thursday night game this week, that means I'll have a rare Friday night edition of The Vince Young Show on Friday, April 30th! So I'll talk to all of you on Friday night at 8:00pm, on the Talk-To-Me Station, AM-1300 WMEL!
 

	Crist goes indie; I got something wrong
	Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Thursday night is FairTax Night!
Join me this Thursday night (that's tomorrow night!) at 8:00pm on AM-1300 WMEL as we talk to Earl Medlen from the Florida FairTax Educational Association. If you've ever had any questions about the FairTax, or if you're not even sure what the FairTax is, this will be your opportunity to talk about it with one of the biggest and brightest supporters of the FairTax you'll find around here. Thanks to Earl for agreeing to come to the WMEL studios for this!

A correction and an apology
The oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig that exploded and sank last week continues to spread in the Gulf of Mexico, with crews rushing to contain the slick before it hits Louisiana's coastal marshes. In fact, the Coast Guard is making plans to set parts of the slick on fire, a crude but effective way of containing the spill and saving the marshes.

While I've been keeping my eye on this story, Florida Today ran an article today talking about how the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico could pick up part of the oil slick, pull it down between Cuba and the Florida Keys, and then carry it north along the Gulf Stream current -- potentially all the way to the Space Coast. Nobody's saying it's likely, but it's certainly possible.

As I read the article, something in my brain clicked. So I pulled up VinceYoung.com, searched for the phrase "Loop Current," and found this:

	Tallahassee approves red-light cameras AND keeps spending your money
	Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Magic sweep means more talk-time for me!
With their win in Game 4 on Monday night, the Orlando Magic swept the Charlotte Bobcats 4-0 in the opening round of the NBA playoffs. That means the Magic won't need to play any games for the rest of the week, which means I'll be talking to you on Wednesday night and Thursday night!

Looking ahead, the Magic will play the winner of the Atlanta Hawks-Milwaukee Bucks series in the next round of the playoffs. But with Atlanta and Milwaukee tied at 2-2, that means that series won't end until at least Friday night. And if the Hawks and Bucks split their next two games, that would force a Game 7 on Sunday, which means the Magic might not even have their next game until next Tuesday or Wednesday night. But it all depends on what happens in the Hawks-Bucks series. As soon as I know the Magic's schedule for next week, I'll also know my schedule for next week, and I'll post it right here on VinceYoung.com.

Thursday night is FairTax Night!
Join me this Thursday night at 8:00pm on AM-1300 WMEL as we talk to Earl Medlen from the Florida FairTax Educational Association. If you've ever had any questions about the FairTax, or if you're not even sure what the FairTax is, this will be your opportunity to talk about it with one of the biggest and brightest supporters of the FairTax you'll find around here. Thanks to Earl for agreeing to come to the WMEL studios for this!

Red-light cameras could go statewide!
A new bill setting statewide standards for red-light cameras has been passed by both the State House and the State Senate in Tallahassee, and now goes to Governor Charlie Crist's desk for a signature. And look who one of the biggest supporters of this bill was: none other than Brevard's State Senator Thad Altman.

Now, there are two provisions in the bill which should help cut down on some of the biggest abuses of red-light cameras that have popped up in other states. All cases would have to be reviewed by a police officer watching video of the violation, so it won't just be a private monitoring company with a per-ticket commission making the call. And cameras would not be allowed to target drivers who make a rolling right turn on red, which is both the most-common and least-dangerous red-light violation.

But overall, red-light cameras are still a bad idea. Proponents of the cameras always say it's about traffic safety, not about raising money through extra ticket revenue. But six cities in Georgia proved what a bunch of malarky that is back in 2009 after they each shut down their red-light cameras. Why? Because the red-light cameras weren't making any money. A new Georgia state law took effect in January 2009 which forced cities with red-light cameras to make their yellow lights last one second longer. And when the yellow lights got a second-longer, red-light running at the camera-equipped intersections plummeted overnight, even at intersections where the cameras had been up for well over a year. Fewer violations means fewer tickets, which means less revenue for the cities. And suddenly, the same city councils that had been claiming the cameras were about "safety, not revenue" were shutting down their cameras due to the lack of revenue. The same story also played out in Denver, Colorado and in San Carlos, California under similar circumstances.

See, it turns out there's a study that shows that making yellow lights one-second longer does more to reduce red-light-running than red-light cameras do. This is because the vast majority of red-light violations are violations of less than a second, while most red-light violations that cause actual crashes are violations of more than a second. This means that red-light cameras are mainly catching the sort of violators who only rarely cause accidents. And when Schaumburg, Illinois realized that their red-light cameras were targeting the wrong type of violators under the false guise of increasing traffic safety, they took down their cameras too.

I've seen people attack the longer-yellow study, so let me point this story out as well. Remember those cities in Georgia who took down their cameras after making their yellow lights longer? Well, the longer yellow lights are still working, and red-light running remains down.

When a city puts up red-light cameras using the "safety, not revenue" argument but then takes them down when they stop making money, that really puts the lie to the safety argument, doesn't it?

But thanks to the Florida Legislature, red light cameras are about to get a lot more common here in Florida. Smile!

(Oh, and if you don't think these cameras can be abused, check out this old story from Vancouver, Canada.

State budget deal reached; state worker pay will stay the same
The State House and State Senate have reached a new budget agreement for the 2010-2011 budget. Price tag: $69,000,000,000. That's over $2,000,000,000 higher than the 2009-2010 budget of $66,540,000,000, which means our state government is spending even more of our money in a year in which we the people have less money to begin with thanks to the economy.

Less money, that is, unless you're a state worker. While many of us in the real world have been dealing with salary cuts and layoffs, state worker pay will stay exactly the same. I guess they get a special exemption from economic reality.

Tobia gave students extra-credit for working on his campaign
Melbourne's State Representative John Tobia (an embarrassment to the Republican Party) gave his students exemptions from final exams if they agreed to volunteer for his 2008 political campaign or for the campaigns of any of his Republican primary opponents. This on top of somehow paying cash for a luxury condo on a community college professor's salary, plus claiming his parent's house in Brevard as his primary residence to be eligible for office while he owned a home outside of the district. Tobia gets more and more questionable by the day.

Protests erupt over Arizona's new illegal immigrant law
If the federal government would do its job and enforce the border, states wouldn't see the need to pass laws like this. It's that simple.

Cut field trips? Or cut Blackberries at Viera? Hmm...
The Brevard School Board may be about to choose poorly. Meanwhile, parents have better ideas.

Oil rig spill continues to spread in Gulf of Mexico
This spill could get serious, though for perspective, 97% of the spill is a thin oil-water mix, with only 3% "pudding-like" oil, so it's not as bad as it sounds. But as I predicted last week, that hasn't stopped opponents of offshore oil drilling from pointing to the first big oil rig spill in 40 years as a reason to halt expansion of future drilling. And even Governor Crist is getting in on it!

Quick hits:

	Two chances to meet me this weekend!
	Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 9:00pm

You'll have two chances to meet me in-person this weekend at local events here on the Space Coast!

First up: Friday night at 6:30pm, Clerk of the Court Scott Ellis and Melbourne Councilwoman Joanne Corby will be hosting a forum at Kay's BBQ in Cocoa, on 520 just west of Clearlake. Topics will include code enforcement abuses, the possible creation of a new elected Comptroller position here in Brevard, and the ongoing county charter review. I'm not an official part of the event, but I'm planning to be there, and I hope you'll drop by and say "Hi."

Second, Sunday afternoon from 12-noon to 5:00pm, I'll be manning AM-1300 WMEL's table at the Melbourne Art Festival in downtown Melbourne. Check out the artwork displays and the live performances, and then come introduce yourself to me at WMEL's table. We'll have various WMEL staffers and on-air hosts at the table all weekend long, not just me, so keep stopping by and see who's there.

See you this weekend, and then I'll talk to you on the radio again on Tuesday night at 8:00pm on the Talk-To-Me Station AM-1300 WMEL!
 

	Will oil rig explosion sink offshore drilling in Florida?
	Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Sunken rig in Gulf of Mexico is spilling oil -- lots of oil
The floating oil rig that exploded and caught fire off the coast of Louisiana has now sunk. Now, the wreck of the drilling rig is leaking -- badly. There are reports that the rig could spill 336,000 gallons of oil and 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel. That's a lot.

Given how hot a topic offshore oil drilling in Florida has been over the past couple of years, I fully expect drilling opponents to point to this explosion and oil spill as Exhibit A in the case against drilling. And make no mistake, supporters of drilling in Florida will have to factor this into their thinking. You don't downplay an accident that kills at least 10 people and spills over 1,000,000 gallons of fuel and oil combined into the ocean.

But if we're going to discuss this accident, let's discuss the whole picture. First of all, while 1,000,000 gallons is not a small amount, it pales in comparison to the Exxon Valdez oil spill along the coast of Alaska in 1989, which spilled 11,000,000 gallons of crude oil. And the Exxon Valdez spill itself is dwarfed by even larger oil spills that have occurred in other parts of the world. The Valdez spill also occurred just offshore, while this week's spill in the Gulf of Mexico is much further away from the coast. So between the size and the location, the environmental damage from this explosion and spill will be much, much smaller.

Digging even deeper... right now, the USA gets a rather large amount of oil from overseas. We pump it into giant oil tanker ships and float it all the way across the ocean into our ports, where we pump it out and refine it. Now, take a look at a list of worldwide oil spills over time. Pay extra attention to the spills here in the USA. Notice what they're almost always caused by? Oil tankers crashing into things and spilling their load. Very, very few spills in American waters have come from offshore oil drilling rigs. In fact, the spill we're seeing in the Gulf of Mexico right now is the first such spill since 1969, when a rig spilled oil just offshore from Santa Barbara, California. That was 41 years ago. Going 41 years without a major oil spill from an offshore rig in American waters shows just how good a job we do of protecting the environment, and it shatters the myth that offshore oil drilling will automatically ruin the coasts of Florida.

Look: I want to see the USA get completely away from burning oil someday. Nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric... those will be the power sources of the future. But the future is just that -- the future. Right now, we need oil -- a lot of it. We're not ready to stop burning oil, not even close. And in the meantime, we need to get that oil from somewhere. We can either drill it right here in the USA using offshore oil drilling rigs that have major oil spills about once every 41 years, or we can ship it in from overseas using oil tankers with a pesky history of regularly crashing into things and spilling that oil.

This week's explosion in the Gulf of Mexico is a tragedy. But it really doesn't change the argument in favor of offshore oil drilling. One accident in 41 years shouldn't derail the entire concept of offshore oil drilling. The last time we made that mistake was Three Mile Island, which derailed the concept of nuclear power in the USA for decades -- leaving us dependent on oil.

State workers whine about proposed pay cut
State government employees and teachers in Brevard are getting grumpy about not getting pay raises, or in the case of state employees, possibly seeing their pay get cut. Check out this quote:

	Crist might go indie; FCAT gets declawed
	Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Florida F.A.C.E.OFF
Last night, I talked with Cindy Williams on the show about her fight with Brevard County's code enforcement agency over whether or not she's allowed to own pigs in a rural, unincorporated area. After talking to Cindy, we also took a call from a local group called Florida F.A.C.E.OFF, dedicated to fighting and publicizing code enforcement abuses in Brevard County and across the Sunshine State. They do good work, so I wanted to give them a plug. Check out their site, and get ready to get angry. Too often, code enforcement agents go far behind the legitimate role of balancing out the competing rights of neighboring landowners and cross over into bullying and authoritarian abuse.

Thank goodness, my one and only Code Enforcement encounter turned out to be mercifully simple and quick. But the instant heartburn that I got from seeing their initial violation notice for something I didn't even do is a testament to the well-deserved bad reputation that Code Enforcement agencies everywhere have picked up.

When law-abiding citizens fear their government, that means government is too powerful. Time to find a new balance.

Another flip-flop: Crist now admits he's considering going indie
As his chances of beating Marco Rubio evaporate in the Republican primary of the US Senate race, Governor Charlie Crist is now openly talking about running for Senate as a No Party Affiliation candidate. Under Florida's election laws, Crist has to make up his mind by April 30th whether to run as an independent or run as a Republican. And if he loses the Republican primary, it will be too late for him to pull a Joe Lieberman and run as an independent. Recent polls have shown he might win a 3-way race against Marco Rubio and Kendrick Meek, so that may be his only chance of becoming a US Senator.

Of course, if Crist goes indie, it will yet another classic Crist flip-flop. As recently as April 8th, Crist's campaign was denying that they were even thinking about going indie. Given his past record, I'm not entirely surprised to see him flip-flopping on a big issue yet again.

Most famous is his interaction with President Barack Obama. First, back in February 2009 Gov. Crist embraced the newly-elected President -- both literally (an on-stage man-hug at a speech) and figuratively (by welcoming Obama's government-stimulus cash). But later, as Obama's popularity began to wane and as Crist's lack of conservative credentials began hurting his poll numbers in the Senate race, Crist pulled about-face. He downplayed the man-hug, calling it an attempt to be "civil," and took out radio campaign ads that slammed Obama for over-spending -- never mind that a lot of that over-spent money came to Florida specifically at Crist's request.

There's also been Crist's slow turn-around on for state Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who was elected to that chairman's seat specifically because of strong support from Charlie Crist. As criticism of Greer's authoritarian control and over-spending reached a fever-pitch, Crist stood by his man -- until his man resigned in disgrace. And now Crist is suddenly in-favor of investigating Greer's spending, despite the fact that he opposed all such calls while Greer was still chairman.

And finally, there's Crist's veto of the teacher merit-pay bill. Don't get me wrong; I opposed the bill, and I'm glad Crist vetoed it. But Crist was all in-favor of the exact same bill early on, when nobody in the state was even aware of the bill. As more and more people found out about the merit-pay bill and how it would strip even more power away from local school systems, opposition to the bill grew. And as that opposition grew, suddenly Crist had concerns about the bill and ended up vetoing it, even though the substance of the bill itself remained virtually unchanged. That means Crist's veto had nothing to do with principle and everything to do with pandering to the voters.

So why, oh, why are so many Republican leaders telling Crist they want him to stay in the Republican party? This is a man with no consistent philosophical principles whatsoever, no core beliefs, no central idea of what government is supposed to be. When he has to make a decision, he licks his finger, sticks it up to see which way the wind is blowing, and then flashes his perfect politician's smile as he follows along.

Let him leave the Republican Party. He never belonged there to begin with.

Crist signs bill to replace FCAT, toughen graduation requirements
I'll give Crist credit on this one. The FCAT test needed to be replaced. Having single-subject final exams makes far more sense to me.

Hey Titusville: help businesses first, pick a new motto later!
Titusville business owners criticized the city government for making it too difficult to do business in the city. Glad to see the City Council seemed willing to listen. Now let's see if they set aside their silly quest for a new city motto and actually focus on doing some good for their residents.

Mom complains about principal adding son to a bully-list
Sounds like Mom is just upset about getting called out for not doing her job and disciplining her own son. Rather than address her son's bullying behavior, she wants the principal fired for punishing her son too severely. Hey Mom: if you don't want your son punished by the school, try punishing him yourself. Then the school won't see a need to step in.

MSNBC decries use of phrase "Obama regime"
They say that the word "regime" has negative connotations of a dictatorial, illegitimate government. Never mind that they were rather fond of using the phrase "Bush regime" once upon a time.

Quick hits:

	Commissioners: "Private property rights? When pigs fly!"
	Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

County Commission limits rural family to one pig
After months of hearings and permit applications, a woman in a rural area near Mims has basically been forced to pay $1,447 for the privelege of giving up one of her two pet pigs. See, it turns out there's a county zoning rule that says that you can only have pigs if your home sits on a plot of land that is at least 2.50 acres. But Cindy Williams's land isn't that big. It's only 2.43 acres. That means it's too small by 0.07 acres.

Now, how big is an acre? Glad you asked. Basically, take a football field. Chop off both end zones, and then chop ten yards off one end. There you go: that's an acre of land. Basically 90 yards of a football-field.

To legally own a pig at your home in Brevard, you have to own 2.5 acres, basically 225 yards of football-field. And Cindy Williams owns 219 yards, 6 yards short.

Thanks to that tiny fraction, Cindy Williams isn't allowed to own a pig, let alone the two that she owns. When someone filed an anonymous code enforcement complaint against her for this egregious violation of the law, county inspectors swooped in and told her she had to either get rid of both pigs or get a zoning variance from the County Commission -- at a total cost of $1,447 in fees to the county. And even then, the variance would only allow her to keep one pig, so she'd still have to give one away. Never mind that it's unincorporated land out in the middle of nowhere. Never mind that her land is just 3% short of the required size. Never mind that many of her neighbors own higher numbers of farm animals than she does, also against county rules.

So Cindy Williams drove to four different meetings in Viera to finalize the permit. And at the final County Commission hearing, she was told that the County Commission was -- get this -- doing her a favor by letting her keep one pig, as if she's supposed to be grateful.

	Zen and the Art of Debt Maintenance
	Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

How can we cut the national debt?
Matt Reed has some excellent information on the national debt today, and he paints a sobering picture. Our national debt will be as large as the national economy by 2020 without major changes. The reason? Skyrocketing expenses in the Social Security and Medicare programs. We are quickly reaching the point where nothing that we try -- cutting earmarks, growing the economy to increase tax revenues, raising tax rates, or any combination of the above -- will be enough to keep up with the growing costs of those two untouchable entitlement programs.

This is what happens when we take our responsibility to take care of ourselves and turn it over to the government. As more and more people expect more and more goodies from the government, the cost of providing those goodies continues to increase. And it gets harder and harder to find ways to pay for it.

This is simply unsustainable.

And yet what is President Barack Obama's answer to this growing national menace? Obama is content to simply reduce the yearly deficit. Problem is, any yearly deficit just adds on to the total debt. A smaller deficit is better than a larger deficit, but it still means a larger debt. We're in a car racing towards a cliff at 50 miles per hour, and Obama wants to slow us down to 30 miles per hour and then proclaim what a great thing he's done. But we're still heading towards that cliff. It's just going to take a little longer to get there.

Someone needs to stop the car and get us turned around. Will it be the Republican Party? Or will someone from the backseat have to climb up front and say "my turn"? Only time will tell.

Governor Charlie Crist vetoes teacher "merit pay" bill
This is a very good decision... the "merit pay" bill had some good parts, but overall it was the wrong way to increase teacher accountability. State legislators are already vowing the bill will be back next year, so hopefully they'll have time to get it right this time.

Of course, given how many conservative Republicans in the State Legislature were for "merit pay," Crist's veto has led to another round of rumors that Crist will drop out of the Republican Senate primary race and run as an independent candidate instead. Polls show he could win a 3-way race, but he'll have to make up his mind by the end of April. Stay tuned...

Moving endangered turtles? Okay. But at $1,700 per turtle?!?
That's how much Titusville will have to pay to remove 60 endangered gopher tortoises from a construction site for a new city water main. They will pay a company to come in, conduct a survey of the tortoise holes, and then excavate them so that they can be taken to a new home somewhere else.

Personally, I'm just green enough to go along with saving the turtles, rather than the old practice of burying them alive and moving on with the project. But $1,700 per turtle? A surveying project? Excavation jobs? Somebody is way overthinking this, and it's driving up the price tag. Just send me out there with a big box and some sunscreen. I'll walk around and find all the holes, and then I'll grab the turtles one at a time and move 'em. And I guarantee I can do it for less than $1,700 per turtle.

This isn't an environmental issue; it's a wasteful-spending issue. There is no reason to overspend on something that needs to be done.

County tries to educate drivers about Viera traffic circle
Can we please make sure nobody ever builds another one of these in Brevard?
 

	And CONSERVATIVES are the mean ones?
	Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

"Crash The Tea Party"?
It seemed like just the sort of thing a group of liberals would do. A website called crashtheteaparty.org announced a plot to get liberal activists to infiltrate local tea party events with mis-spelled, racist signs, with the goal of making the tea party look as foolish and out-of-touch as possible. The news broke on Monday, and conservative pundits across the country jumped all over it.

Well, I always like to get the whole story, so I visited the site for myself and found the initial round of reporting to be pretty much spot on. But then I noticed the site's message board. I got curious and clicked on it. Towards the top of the main forum, I saw a thread titled, "Tea-Baggers are SO gullible!"

Looks like it's all a hoax... a very well-executed hoax, but a hoax nonetheless. That thread states that the whole purpose of the site was to expose how paranoid tea-partiers are by getting them to believe in a non-existent organized plot to infiltrate them.

Of course, many people don't believe that thread, and think the claim that the site is a hoax is the hoax, that such a plot really does exist.

You know what? There's a great way to handle this, and it kills two birds with one stone. If you're at a tea party, and you see someone with a racist sign or someone saying truly offensive and bigoted things, challenge them. Reject them. Chase them off. A true conservative believes in equal constitutional protections for everyone regardless of their race, and any racist who claims membership in the tea party movement is a walking contradiction who needs to be expelled. Whether they are a sincere racist or a lone-wolf liberal infiltrator (and make no mistake, they do exist, even if the particular website up above is a hoax), they need to be kicked out before they get the chance to discredit the entire tea party movement.

The tea party movement is about freedom, not hatred. It's great to spread that message outside the movement, but we need to remember to spread that message inside the movement too.

(By the way, don't forget about the Brevard 2010 Tea Party later this week. It's this Thursday night April 15th, 6:00pm to 8:00pm, at the Wickham Park Pavilion in Melbourne on Wickham Road just south of Brevard Community College.)

Union leader prays for NJ's Republican governor to die!
Check out this quote from a recent internal memo from a New Jersey teachers union:

	Is the Cocoa City Council trying to sneak Holiday On Ice through?
	Thursday, April 8th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Cocoa City Council may be trying to pull a fast one
Time for an update on Holiday On Ice, the money-losing outdoor ice-skating rink that the city of Cocoa has foolishly tried over the past two Christmas seasons. At the last Cocoa City Council meeting, the council members debated bringing Holiday On Ice back for a third try, but in the end they decided to delay the decision.

Well, it's almost time for the next City Council meeting: next Tuesday night, April 13th at 7:00pm at City Hall. The agenda for that meeting was released earlier today on the city's public records website, and Holiday On Ice isn't listed there. But something else is, and it makes me wonder if the City Council is trying to get sneaky on us. Check out page 3, section VII (Council Business), item #3:

	Merit pay lacks merit; Commissioners okay sweetheart land deal
	Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

State Senate passes merit pay for teachers; House is next
The State Senate in Tallahassee has passed a bill that would link teacher pay directly to improvement in their students' FCAT scores, completely ignoring any and all other factors. The merit-pay bill has also passed a key vote in a State House committee, and it looks like this plan will pass the State House and then be signed into law by Governor Charlie Crist.

Supporters of the bill hail this as a new era of accountability for Florida's teachers, and I'm all for holding our teachers more accountable. However, you don't hold employees accountable for factors that they don't have much control over. A recent study by the University of Florida shows that a student's performance on the FCAT is mainly affected by the city and neighborhood they live in, much more so than who their teacher is. Higher-income families find it easier to stay involved in their child's education, so a good family situation at home usually translates into better FCAT scores. Therefore, a lousy teacher with a classroom full of rich kids with involved parents can end up with a higher salary than a great teacher with a classroom full of poor inner-city kids with uninvolved parents. That is simply not fair, no matter how you slice it.

There's also a subtle point that I think keeps getting missed: the pay rate is not tied to the FCAT scores, but rather to how much the FCAT scores improve by. But what if one teacher gets a classroom full of rich kids who already aced the FCAT test last year? If they're already doing about as well as they can, there's not much room for improvement... which means their teacher is already screwed no matter how well they do.

Teachers needs to be held more accountable, but this plan is not the way to do it.

County Commission approves lease deal for Merritt Island "working waterfront"
I've talked about this story before, but new details emerged today. The people who sold the land to the county will get to lease it back. The cost? $20,000 a year for the next five years. But keep in mind, those owners paid $20,146.08 in property taxes and assessments for tax-year 2009. So, they're basically going to get the equivalent of a slight break on their taxes, and they'll lock it in for the next 5 years. And we're at the bottom of the real estate market right now. That means there's a good chance of the value of that plot going up over the next 5 years. That would've meant more tax revenue for the county. Now it won't.

State House unanimously approves school supply sales tax holiday
Good. Unfortunately, it will only be three days instead of a full week.

Is Obama shunning Posey on planned space visit?
According to this article by Matt Reed in Floriday Today, President Barack Obama is making a visit to Kennedy Space Center on April 15th to discuss the future of America's space program... but hasn't invited Space Coast Congressman Bill Posey, a Republican. Considering how vitally important NASA is to Posey's district, leaving Posey out of the discussion is very strange and needs to be explained. And since the White House has yet to offer an explanation, we're left to speculate.

Hmm... I wonder if it has anything to do with Posey's bill in Congress to require all future presidential candidates to prove their eligibility to hold the office. Posey has been raked through the coals over this bill and has been repeatedly labeled as a "birther," even though he's made it clear that he believes Obama is an American citizen and is eligible to be President. (For the record, so do I.) And every time Matt Reed mentions Posey's bill, he gleefully points out that Posey has accepted campaign money from birthers. But regardless of your opinion on Obama or on birthers, this bill makes sense. Right now, joining Little League requires more proof of eligibility than becoming President. Why would anyone think this is okay?

If Obama is shunning Posey on his NASA visit just because of this bill, then Obama has reached a new level of political pettiness.
 

	And you ask why I'm a Libertarian?
	Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Obama's first pitch? Tiger's first press conference? Who cares?
No, I didn't see President Obama throwing out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals baseball game today. And no, I don't care how bad a throw it was. I have plenty of more important things to criticize Obama for than his pitching motion. If baseball skills mattered one bit in presidential performance, our last two presidents would've been Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.

No, I didn't watch today's press conference with Tiger Woods. Tiger can nail a 400-yard par-4 (among other things), but he can't use the force and authority of government to seize my money and limit my freedoms at the point of a gun. There are people out there right now who can name off half of Tiger's former mistresses but who can't name their Senators, their Congressional representative, or even the Vice-President of the United States. And that is nothing short of pathetic.

Look... I'm as much of a sports fan as any red-blooded American male. (Go Irish! Go Magic!) But why were these the top two stories today on CNN? Don't we have more important things to worry about?

Cocoa City Council meeting: next Tuesday 4/13
Don't forget, the next meeting of the Cocoa City Council will take place at City Hall in Cocoa Village next Tuesday night, April 13th at 7:00pm. They haven't posted the agenda for the meeting on their public records website yet. But I'm willing to bet they'll be discussing whether or not to bring back Holiday On Ice for Christmas 2010, outdoor ice skating rink in Cocoa Village that has lost a total of $105,000 of your tax money in 2008 and 2009. So keep next Tuesday night open on your schedule... if they decide to put this on the agenda, you need to be ready to attend that meeting and give them a big loud NO.

And to the Cocoa City Council, I have this warning. If you bring back this boondoggle, don't you dare insult our intelligence later by telling us that you need to cut back spending on the police department, the fire department or other essential services in order to balance the city's budget. If you think I'm angry now, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Come election-time, I will make sure the people of Cocoa remember how you voted on this.

Florida's budget to INCREASE?!?
Let me get this straight. We're in a down-economy, our state's unemployment rate is higher than the national average, and the end of the shuttle program is about to take a huge chunk out of our economic engine. And yet the new state budget could be $67,200,000,000 which would actually be almost a billion dollars more than the last budget of $66,540,000,000?

Oh, and this is a budget that was put together by Republicans too. And all my Republican friends wonder why I'm a registered Libertarian.

Tea Party? Or tea party?
As local activists wrangle over the proper role of the tea party movement within the political system in general and the Republican Party specifically, there's an interesting survey out today which shows that 40% of tea partiers are Democrats or independents.

As the Florida GOP turns...
So first, former Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer gets targeted by a criminal probe for mis-spending the party's money. Then Greer sues the state Republican party for not living up to a secret hush-money deal that may or may not have actually been signed. Then Democratic governor's candidate Alex Sink questions why her opponent, Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum, ordered state law enforcement officials to intervene in his own party's financial woes. This leads to Sink, McCollum, and -- get this -- Governor Charlie Crist all agreeing to ask for a federal investigation into Jim Greer. Oh, and who helped Jim Greer get elected as the party chair and resisted all previous calls to investigate Greer's spending? Why, Charlie Crist of course.

And again... all my Republican friends wonder why I'm a registered Libertarian.
 

	Taking bullying seriously; self-defense under attack
	Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

"Kids will be kids!"
A district attorney in Massachusetts has filed a variety of criminal charges against nine high schoolers who bullied a classmate so relentlessly that she ended up killing herself back in January. The charges range from criminal harrassment all the way up to civil rights violations, with the theory being that these teens were trying to deprive the victim, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince, of her civil right to attend school. But the DA didn't stop there. The investigation into Phoebe's death revealed that her teachers, the principal, and other school administrators were all fully aware of what was happening to Phoebe -- and did nothing to stop it.

In a similar story, a jury in Michigan ordered a school district to pay $800,000 to a bullied student. The boy there faced years of intimidation, insults, and even a sexual assault. Despite this, school administrators made only a token effort to protect him despite years of complaints and pleas from the boy and his parents.

Too often, on the topic of bullying, well-intentioned adults look at it as some sort of a rite-of-passage, a character-building exercise that teaches the victims how to stand up for themselves. They look at it as relatively harmless mischief and question whether or not there's anything they can even do about it. "Kids will be kids," they say.

To those adults, I say this.

You're right. Kids will be kids. That's why adults need to be adults.

My childhood experiences with bullies pale in comparison to what the two children above had to go through, and in the end I'm a better person for it. But I can tell you some stories. I can tell you about the time that a fellow student pushed me up against a wall and threatened to murder me. Inside the classroom. With a teacher twenty feet away. A teacher who had a clear view of us and never bothered to look in our direction. And this was a private, Catholic school to boot. Getting involved would've been difficult, so the teachers and the principal all looked the other way and refused to get involved. So since nobody was willing to defend me, I learned to defend myself. And yet every time I defended myself, I got in just as much trouble as the bully did.

But enough about me. That's all in the past, water under the bridge.

But what about the bullies?

Think about it. When teachers refuse to step in and stop bullies, the bullies learn a dangerous lesson. They learn that they can use force, threats, and insults to get what they want, and that nobody will lift a finger to stop them. When children learn this lesson in their youth, they carry that lesson with them into their adulthood.

I will always remember picking up Florida Today one day around the year 2000 and seeing a news story about a family who was terrorized in the middle of the night by a series of phone calls from a young man threatening to drive over and kill them all. While the police were taking a report from the family, the caller actually pulled up in their driveway in his car before quickly being subdued by the police. His name was Chad Eck, and he was one of the kids who bullied me in grade school while the teachers stood by and did nothing.

Just like the school system failed me, that same system also failed Chad Eck. They let him learn all the wrong lessons about how to act in society. He got used to authority figures looking the other way. But while teachers and principals often look the other way, the police don't. Teachers call his behavior "bullying," but the police use different terms, terms like "battery," "assault" and "criminal harrassment."

Bullies need to be taught that their behavior is unacceptable while they're still young enough to be taught. And principals and teachers need to get proactive and stop tolerating these acts. Kids will be kids, but that doesn't mean they should still act like kids when they become adults.

MSNBC freaks out over concealed-carry permits
You've got to read this. Only a liberal reporter could think it's a bad thing when an armed robber is shot and killed by his would-be victim. I don't think it's a coincidence that in cities and states where it's easier for law-abiding citizens to own firearms, the violent crime rate is lower.

New jobs? Sure... temporary Census jobs
Just keep this in mind when Obama starts touting the next round of job-creation figures. All these new Census jobs will go away in a few months, and then we'll be right back where we started.
 

	Today's magic word is: REPEAL
	Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 8:00pm

I'm doing the radio show tonight, but I won't have time to put up full program notes here on the website. So, here's links to all the news stories I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Man arrested for threatening to kill Republican Congressman
I demand that every Democrat in Congress denounce these despicable threats! Hey, what's good for the goose...

Weekly Standard: why ObamaCare must be repealed
Yuval Levin has laid out a devastating case against ObamaCare and why it needs to be repealed. Read it. It's good.

State Senate passes merit pay for teachers
If the State House passes it next and Governor Crist signs it into law, teacher pay will be determined solely by student improvement on the FCAT. Is this really a good idea?

School Board budget picture isn't as bad now
They were going to be short by $30,000,000 for the 2010-2011 budget. Now, they'll "only" be short by $10,000,000. But don't worry, they'll still make sure to keep their vacant middle-management positions filled with new hires in Viera.

Brevard's tourism board spends $200,000 per-year on-average
Is it worth it? Good question.

Privatize the Probation service in Brevard?
I'm all in favor of reducing the size of government, but law enforcement is a valid role of the government. Sometimes privatization makes sense, but it's not a magical cure-all panacea that will work on everything. This plan makes me nervous.

Cocoa Beach red light camera to switch from warnings to tickets
Smile for the cameras! And remember: their effect on traffic safety is negligible next to making yellow lights last one second longer. Just ask Norcross, Georgia. They turned off their red light cameras after longer yellow-lights made red-light running plummet.
 

	Both parties face death threats; Obama breaks tax pledge
	Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, as well as streaming live online at http://1300wmel.com. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Democrats face death threats -- this time
It's becoming a predictable pattern in American politics:

1.) Liberal Democratic politicians take an unpopular stand on an issue.

2.) Moderates and conservatives unite in protest against that unpopular stand.

3.) A handful of total idiots within the protest movement take it too far by threatening or even committing acts of violence against liberal politicians.

4.) Liberals and Democrats respond by making it sounds like all the protestors are either committing or supporting the threats and violence.

5.) Liberals and Democrats demand that all conservatives apologize for and denounce the acts of a few isolated crazies.

It's a very clever ploy, one that works time and time again. By demanding that all high-profile conservatives and Republicans denounce threats and violence, they are making it seem as if the default position of conservatives is a position of violence, and that if you don't specifically condemn it, that means you're for it. They want everyone else to look at conservatives and immediately think of us as violent and out-of-control.

Well, it's happening again. In the wake of Sunday's ObamaCare votes in the House of Representatives, a handful of Democratic member of Congress have received death threats. Democrats in turn have been milking it for everything it's worth, criticizing Republican leaders for not speaking out quickly enough against the threats and playing the sympathy card at every turn. Locally, Democratic Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas was also threatened over her Yes-votes on ObamaCare, and I'm just waiting for someone to try to link that threat to what I said about Kosmas on my website and my radio show on Tuesday.

To anyone who wants to try, I have three words for you: bring it on.

Go back and look at what I said about Kosmas on Tuesday. Notice my call of action at the end: to make sure that Kosmas doesn't get to keep her job in November. That's it. No calls for violence. No threats. Just an impassioned and, yes, angry critique of the way Kosmas has handled the ObamaCare issue. I offer no apologies, because I have nothing to apologize for.

As to the idea that I somehow need to apologize and condemn these threats... sorry, but I'm not going to play that game. My record speaks for itself. It's all right here on this website, and you can hear me whenever I'm on the radio. Not once have I ever encouraged any acts of violence. Quite the opposite: I've opposed all such acts of political violence in the past, even to the point where a couple of my listeners are frustrated with me precisely because, in their eyes, I don't take a firm enough stance against Obama and the Democrats. The United States of America is a constitutional republic, and in a constitutional republic, you resolve political disagreements by voting in regularly-scheduled periodic elections. That's the system I believe in.

You want an apology? Arrest the people who made threats and carried out violent acts, put them on trial, and punish them to the fullest extent of the law. And then ask them to apologize.

Republicans have been threatened before too
This may surprise some Democrats, but Republican politicians have been the subject of death threats as well in the past. Granted, the earlier report from today that Republican Whip Eric Cantor's office window was hit by a bullet turned out to be much ado about nothing, just a random bullet fired straight up in the air that happened to hit the window on its way back down. But the AP story I linked to earlier mentions that Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt received her own threatening message from an angry liberal extremist. Other Republican politicians in the past have received death threats over the years as well. A recent planned speech by Ann Coulter in Canada had to be cancelled due to concerns a large protest at the venue was about to turn violent. National radio host Rusty Humphries (heard every night at 9:00pm here on AM-1300 WMEL) has talked on-the-air about death threats made against him in the past, as have other conservative radio talk show hosts.

But notice something? There's a good chance you never heard about many of those death threats at the time. Why? Because when Republicans get death threats, they recognize the truth: that some radical idiot out there somewhere has jumped off the deep end. They don't run to the nearest microphone to hold a press conference. They don't demand that every Democratic politician and pundit down to the local dog catcher condemn the threats made by those extremists. They don't try to paint every rational and impassioned liberal activist with the same brush as the loonies who phone in death threats.

The liberal political movement has been home to quite a number of violent extremists over the years. Off the top of my head, I can mention Ted Kaczynski, the Weather Underground, and the Earth Liberation Front, who have all either killed people or come close to doing so. But I don't demand that Democratic politicians and pundits speak out specifically against them. Why? Because I assume that they, just like any reasonable person, oppose those sorts of violent acts.

All I ask for is the same assumption in return: the default position that I don't support political violence either. Unless I've specifically said otherwise (which I never have), your default position should be that I (and other conservative leaders for that matter) oppose political violence. Don't assume that I'm guilty and make me prove otherwise. That's not how this country works, and I won't let you change that.

Kosmas: "I didn't change my vote. The bill changed."
Nice try. As I pointed out on Tuesday, the original House bill that Kosmas voted No on last year was very, very similar to the combined effect of the Senate's version plus the "reconciliation bill" that Kosmas voted Yes on this past Sunday. The contents of the bill didn't change. Nancy Pelosi's need for votes is what changed. Pelosi didn't need Kosmas's vote last year, so Kosmas voted No. Pelosi needed Kosmas's vote on Sunday, so Kosmas voted Yes. It's that simple.

Obama breaks pledge, raises taxes on poor and middle-class
Heritage.org gives an excellent breakdown of the new taxes that will go into effect under ObamaCare -- taxes which will affect everyone regardless of their income level. So much for President Obama's campaign pledge that he wouldn't raise taxes on any family making under $200,000 a year, eh?

Rasmussen poll: 55% want ObamaCare repealed
No surprise here, given that an even larger number opposed the passage of ObamaCare in the days leading up to the vote. There is some good news for President Obama, though... post-vote polling from Scott Rasmussen shows his approval numbers took an upward turn. Hey, Americans love a winner, right? Only maybe love isn't the right word. His approval rating is still only at 48%, with 51% disapproving and 1% who just want to know when Tiger Woods will tee off next.

Matt Reed: cheaper to pay new penalty than to get health insurance!
So much for the health insurance mandate. Combine that with banning insurance companies from refusing coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions, and I guarantee there will be an epidemic of people dropping their health insurance entirely and just paying the penalty, saving money in the process. And if they get sick, hey, they'll just sign up for a new health insurance policy then to get their treatments paid for, because the insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse them coverage. It's no different than if I could drive uninsured, crash my car, and then buy an insurance policy on my car to make the insurance company pay for the repairs.

Brevard schools keep filling vacancies
Vacant middle-management positions are still being filled with new hires, even though the school district hasn't exactly fallen to pieces from those positions being vacant in the meantime. Considering that Brevard schools are about to lose $30,000,000 in funding, shouldn't they consider eliminating those vacant positions to save money?

NASA spends $66 per person per day for snacks at recent seminar
When you're short on funding, shouldn't you spend your money a little less foolishly?

Mother throws 1-year-old into moving SUV to stop repossession!
Mother of the year huh?

Earth Hour this Saturday!
I know, I know... most of you couldn't care less about turning off your lights from 8:30pm to 9:30pm. It's a meaningless and hollow gesture that won't do much for the environment. But, uh, you don't have to take the opposite approach of turning on extra lights either. What's the point of that, other than raising your own power bills?
 

	It's 8 o'clock. Do you know where your Congresswoman is?
	Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Kosmas holds tele-town hall AFTER the vote -- with 2 days' notice!
The e-mail hit my inbox late Monday afternoon at 4:56pm, a media advisory from the office of north Brevard's Democratic Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas. (Side note: that's Kosmas, not Kosmos. Y'all are killing me with that.) The good representative was going to be holding a telephone town hall meeting -- in 49 hours. Wednesday afternoon at 6pm. And if you wanted to participate, you had exactly 24 hours to call and register for it -- the deadline was Tuesday afternoon at 5pm. And keep in mind, I'm in the media, so I got this advisory before anyone in the general public. Most of the rest of you probably didn't see it until you read the news earlier this morning, giving you less than 12 hours' notice to call and register.

What a foolish and cowardly farce.

As you may recall, Rep. Kosmas pulled this exact same stunt last August. Announced the tele-town hall late Monday afternoon, cut off the registration deadline late Tuesday, held it on Wednesday. 24 hours' notice to register, 48 hours' notice to participate. At the time, Democratic Representatives and Senators were home on a break between sessions and were taking it on the chin at town hall meetings from angry voters. Many Democrats were cancelling town halls entirely and trying to hide from the voters. So when Kosmas announced her telephone town hall, I criticized her for the short notice, but I also gave her a little credit for at least showing some willingness to face the voters.

Fool me once...

In the aftermath of Suzanne Kosmas's pivotal vote for ObamaCare, it is now clear that Kosmas is only willing to engage in a bare minimum of direct contact with you, the unwashed masses. During her Congressional campaign in 2008, she shunned several opportunities to appear on local radio programs here in Brevard to share her message, sticking mostly with her tightly-controlled events. She has yet to hold a public face-to-face meeting with a large group of voters since taking office. Her first town hall meeting before the original health care vote last year was done over the telephone and on short notice, with tight control over the questions she would face.

And now this. I understand that the schedule for a Representative is busy, especially during a Congressional session with a huge vote coming up. I don't expect Kosmas to come home from DC to have a face-to-face town hall at a time like that. Her place is in Washington in that situation. But the beauty of a telephone town hall is that you don't have to come home to hold one. If Kosmas wanted to have a telephone town hall on health care, why didn't she hold it before Sunday's health care votes, and give enough notice for people to clear their calendars and participate?

I'll tell you why: because she didn't care what you had to say. She knows she's in a conservative district. She knows she's already in a tough situation as a Democrat in such a district. She knew that if she held any sort of town hall meeting before the health care vote, her ridiculous claims that the voters in her district were split 50/50 on ObamaCare would've been shattered. That could not be allowed to happen. So, she put in her earplugs, pretended to listen, and then cast her two Yes votes like a good little Democrat is supposed to. Must keep Nancy Pelosi happy, you know. Never mind the will of the people.

And now, when it no longer matters what we have to say about ObamaCare, when the bill has been signed into law -- now she insults our intelligence with a telephone town hall meeting so that she can preach to us about how wonderful and "fiscally responsible" ObamaCare is.

Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas, you have it backwards. It's not our job to listen to you. It's your job to listen to us. You have made it abundantly clear that you have no intention of doing your job. And that's why we the people will now do everything we can to make sure you don't get to keep your job this November.

Kosmas shows true color: blue
When Rep. Suzanne Kosmas voted against ObamaCare late last year, I held out some hope that maybe Kosmas wasn't the dyed-in-the-wool liberal that I feared she'd turn out to be. But given that the combined effect of the Senate bill and the reconciliation bill (which she voted yes for) will be similar to the effect of last year's House bill (which she voted no for), it's now clear that the content of the bill had very little to do with her vote.

We now know why Kosmas voted No last year: because she is in a conservative district, and because Nancy Pelosi didn't need her vote to get that first House bill passed. Kosmas voted Yes this time because this time the vote was closer and far less certain, and Pelosi needed every vote she could get.

And keep this in mind too: when Kosmas announced her intention last week to vote Yes, Pelosi was still considering the monstrous "scheme-and-pass" method to bypass an actual vote. Kosmas was ready to cast a vote in direct violation of Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution. Remember that in November.

Neal Boortz nails it
It's kinda long, but yesterday on his website, Neal Boortz wrote up an outstanding summary of ObamaCare and its likely consequences. I'm linking it here mainly for myself so that I'll have it within easy reach for the future, but if you haven't read it, go do so.

Unite behind the Republicans?
Food for thought... if we let the Republican Party take the conservative vote for granted this November, we won't get true conservatives back in Washington DC. The solution is NOT to just vote for anyone who is not a Democrat. Make the Republicans earn your vote this November.

One last thought...
If ObamaCare is so fiscally responsible, then why do they need 10 years' worth of new tax revenue to pay for only 6 years' worth of benefits? And what happens at the end of the first 10 years? Do they cut off everyone's health care for 4 years in order to let the tax revenues build up again to pay for another 6 years' worth of benefits?

The math simply doesn't add up. Don't be fooled.
 

	Pelosi deems Constitution to be irrelevant
	Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Scheme and Pass
It's one of the first things you learn in your first government class in school. One of the absolute basics of our system of government: Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution of the United States of America. Take a look:

	Rockledge approves ASR; USA's credit rating on the brink
	Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Rockledge City Council approves ASR testing
Well, they've gone and done it. At last week's special meeting, the Rockledge City Council voted 4-3 to begin testing their new Aquifer Storage and Recovery well. And if the current plan stays the same, they'll do that testing using 230 million gallons of partially-treated wastewater, pumping it directly into the soil deep underground and then trying to pump it back out again to use for irrigation later.

Why is this a problem? Read that last sentence again. The wastewater won't be in any sort of storage tank or any other structure. It will be pumped directly into the soil. The city's engineers say the wastewater won't flow out into the aquifer or the Indian River Lagoon because layers of rock, soil and clay will keep all of the wastewater in one place, but rock, soil and clay are not exactly known for being waterproof. That's why the aquifer is down there to begin with: because of rainwater hitting the ground and seeping down through rock, soil and clay. To rely on something that's not waterproof to be waterproof is asking for trouble.

One point that came up repeatedly from the City Council members is that it's hard to know whether or not ASR will work until we test it. To be honest, that's a valid point. And that's where the City of Cocoa provides an interesting example. You see, Cocoa has tested their own ASR well before, at a site about two miles from Rockledge's ASR well. But when Cocoa ran their test, they were worried about the possibility of contaminating the aquifer with wastewater if something went wrong. So, Cocoa did their ASR testing using hundreds of gallons of drinking-quality water to avoid any possible pollution problems. And it's a good thing they did, too, because in their testing, Cocoa was only able to recover 25% of the water they pumped underground. The rest stayed down there, and to this day nobody knows where it went. Good thing it was clean water, eh?

Now, contrast that with Rockledge's plan. Instead of doing their testing with clean water in case something goes wrong, Rockledge plans to do their testing using partially-treated wastewater. It is very much possible that the same thing that happened to Cocoa's ASR test will happen to Rockledge's ASR test, only this time, it would be over 100 million gallons of partially-treated wastewater that would disappear underground with no way to get it back out. Imagine that City Council meeting: "Ladies and gentlemen, remember the 230 million gallons of wastewater we pumped right into the soil under your feet? Well, we lost it. Don't know where it is. Might be in the aquifer, or the Lagoon. Sorry 'bout that!"

The only silver lining on this dark cloud is that later in the meeting, the City Council voted unanimously, 7-0, to look into the possibility of running the ASR test with drinking water instead of with wastewater, which would greatly reduce the pollution concerns if something were to go wrong. The opening battle has been lost, but getting Rockledge to use drinking water for their test would at least be a small victory and a step back in the right direction. That should probably be the next area to focus attention on.

But as for testing with wastewater, why the Rockledge City Council would move forward with such a reckless plan is a mystery. Why they would do so in the face of heavy local opposition is downright perplexing. Just check out the official meeting minutes. About 100 people showed up for the ASR hearing. Only two spoke in favor of ASR, and they were both Cocoa city employees. In contrast, 20 people spoke out against ASR, plus 2 more people who submitted letters opposing ASR. There isn't exactly overflowing support for this crazy plan, and yet the vote was 4-3 in favor of it.

So, remember these names: Joe Lee Smith, Dick Blake and newcomer Kimberly Prosser all voted No on ASR. They listened to the science, to the facts, and to you. Mayor Larry Schultz, Colleen Stuart, Georgia Phillips, and Frank Forester all ignored you and voted Yes to playing Russian roulette with the aquifer. I will remind you of these votes as they all come up for re-election, believe you me.

By the way, it should be noted that Frank Forester also cast the only No vote on freezing Rockledge's property tax millage rate in September 2009. He wanted to raise your tax rate during a lousy economy because he felt it was more important for you to cut back your budget than for the city to cut back their budget. Sorry, Councilman Forester, but you are oh-for-two on the two biggest votes for the city's future in recent history. I will remember your name when you ask us to vote for you again in 2011.

Credit where credit is due to Mayor Larry Schultz, however, for putting his wastewater where his mouth is. At one point, city engineers brought out a container with a sample of the wastewater they'll be doing the testing with. Florida Today reported that this led to a great deal of heckling from the citizens in the audience, with many daring the Mayor to take a sip. Florida Today omitted what happened next, but the meeting minutes from the city show that Mayor Schultz took them up on that dare and took a small sip of the treated wastewater. No word on if it made him sick or not, and to be honest it wasn't the wisest step for him to take. But I do have a small amount of begruding respect for Mayor Schultz for taking that sip.

Then again, if someone is dumb enough to intentionally drink wastewater, are they smart enough to be the mayor of a city?

Cocoa cancels 3/23 City Council meeting
I had promised to keep you updated on when the Cocoa City Council would be having their next vote on whether or not to bring back the outdoor ice skating rink in Cocoa Village for Christmas 2010 despite losing a total of $105,000 on this boondoggle in 2008 and 2009. Well, the Cocoa City Council normally meets on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month, which would put their next meeting on March 23rd. But according to the public records website for the city, the March 23rd meeting has been cancelled.

So, the next Cocoa City Council meeting will take place next month, Tuesday, April 13th at 7:00pm at Cocoa City Hall. I don't know yet if Holiday On Ice will be on the agenda, but the agenda will be made public on the city's website by Thursday, April 8th. So, I'll keep you posted.

County workers empty own trash cans, save $400k a year
I can just imagine the whiny e-mail to Florida Today's investigative reporter Matt Reed from some over-entitled puffed-up county employee. "Look what they're making us do now. They're making us valued county employees empty our own rubbish baskets at the end of the day to save money on janitorial expenses! What an insult!"

Get over it.

The county government is putting out large public trash cans in each office area, and they've told the janitors to only empty out those large trash cans, leaving each employee's own smaller trash cans alone. At the end of each day, each county employee will now have to pick up their own trash can, walk 10 steps down the hall, and dump it into the larger trash can. It'll save the janitors a lot of time, enabling them to do their cleaning more quickly. And that in turn will allow Brevard County to cut back on their janitorial budget by cutting hours a little bit, saving the taxpayers $408,000 a year.

I applaud this move, even if it means I'll need a bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket the next time I meet with a county employee. In this economy, the people of Brevard County have already had to cut back. It's about time our government cut back too.

USA is "substantially" closer to losing our AAA credit rating
Another dire warning from Moody's as the federal debt continues to skyrocket with no end in sight. Maybe we should ask our Congressional Representatives and Senators to start emptying their own trash cans each night and see how much money that would save.

Health care reform: down to the wire
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic Whip James Clyburn may want to have a little chat. When asked over the weekend if she has the votes in the House to pass the Senate's health care "reform" proposal in the House, the Speaker said yes, we do. But the Whip said no, we don't.

It's an interesting situation. Remember, right around Christmas, the Senate passed a watered-down health-care reform bill on a party-line 60-40 vote, but the House balked at the idea of approving it too. Liberal Democrats thought it didn't go far enough, while conservative Democrats thought it went too far. And then Scott Brown took a Senate seat away from the Democrats with his upset Senate win in Massachusetts, leaving the Democrats without the 60 votes they'd need to break a Republican filibuster on any newer compromise bills. So now, Pelosi and President Barack Obama want the House to do a straight up-or-down vote on the Senate's bill, with the promise of holding amendment votes in the House and Senate later. And to pass those amendments, they plan to twist the budget reconciliation rules in the Senate to bypass a filibuster so they'd only need 51 votes to pass.

But keep this in mind, ladies and gentlemen: once the House passes the Senate bill, it's the law of the land. And there is absolutely nothing that would force the Senate to go ahead with those amendment votes. That should make you very, very nervous. The amendments would make the Senate's version slightly less toxic to the free market, but do not trust Obama to follow through on them. Once the House passes the Senate's original bill, health care "reform" is the law. And Obama may very well decide that's good enough.

Do not be fooled.
 

	Rockledge debates ASR; Cocoa cools off on outdoor ice rink
	Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

ASR hearing tonight!
By the time my show starts, tonight's Rockledge City Council hearing on Aquifer Storage and Recovery will have been going on for about 90 minutes. I wasn't able to fit it into my schedule (hey, this radio show doesn't produce itself), and I'm not a Rockledge resident anyway, but hopefully turnout will be big.

ASR is a very risky idea with very little benefit. Why risk contaminating the lagoon and the aquifer just so you can have extra water for irrigating grass? Why rely on rock and clay to be waterproof when the very existence of the aquifer in the first place proves that rock and clay aren't waterproof? Why shut down all private wells within a certain distance of the ASR site if it's not dangerous? These are all questions the Rockledge City Council has tried long and hard to avoid answering. But they'll have a difficult time remaining silent tonight.

Tonight's meeting has no set ending time, so if you have time, go to the Rockledge City Hall and make your voice heard. It might not be too late.

Rockledge City Council flaunts Sunshine Law -- again!
I've criticized the Rockledge City Council before for their secrecy in discussing Aquifer Storage and Recovery. Last summer, in what I believe to be a direct violation of the state's Sunshine Law, City Manager Jim McKnight set up a series of secret meetings that allowed the city's water engineers to meet with each individual member of the City Council, one at a time, to discuss the "benefits" of Aquifer Storage and Recovery. After Florida Today reporter Rebecca Basu exposed the story, McKnight got defensive. He claimed the meetings were perfectly legal under the Sunshine Law since none of the City Council members spoke directly with each other. Never mind that the state of Florida uses this exact scenario to describe what not to do in their Government In The Sunshine Manual. Page 19 lists several examples of other local governments who did the exact same thing the Rockledge City Council did, with courts later ruling in each case that the Sunshine Law had been broken.

There's a very simple rule at play when it comes to the Sunshine Law: if you try to come up with a clever way to keep things a secret without breaking the Sunshine Law, you're probably breaking the Sunshine Law. It's written broadly, and for good reason.

So, you can imagine my dismay to learn that the Rockledge City Council has done it again. This time, though, they met with members of the local environmental group Save Our Aquifer -- the same group that protested mightily when the City Council had those secret meetings with the water engineers.

Now, I'll give everyone credit for their hearts being in the right place, but two wrongs don't make a right. It was wrong for the City Council to meet secretly with the ASR engineers, and it was wrong for the City Council to meet secretly with the ASR opponents. And it's a little hypocritical of Save Our Aquifer to say that secret meetings are bad -- except for when they're included in them.

The real answer is for the Rockledge City Council to conduct its business out in the open -- in the sunshine. No secret meetings. No hidden discussions. No legalistic weasel games. You work for us, Rockledge City Council. Show us what you're doing.

Cocoa Village ice rink loses money for 2nd year!
Let's review, shall we? In 2008, the Cocoa City Council came with the "brilliant" idea to put up a temporary "outdoor" ice skating rink in Cocoa Village during the Christmas season, in the hopes of bringing extra visitors to the downtown area. Nice idea -- in theory. And the city predicted the rink would turn a profit and bring in 18,000 skaters.

In practice, the "outdoor" rink was actually inside of a bland tent with practically no view of the outside, the rink itself was tiny and cramped, and the price to skate was exactly the same as the much-nicer and much-larger permanent IcePlex facility in Rockledge.

The results? The city lost $46,700 in taxpayer money after only 8,600 skaters showed up.

The Cocoa City Council's response? They voted 5-0 to try it again for Christmas 2009. They promised to get more corporate sponsorships, to improve the quality of the rink, and to advertise it more. They predicted that word-of-mouth would get way more people to come, and that this time they'd get it right.

The results? The city lost $59,000 in taxpayer money after only 7,300 skaters showed up.

Yep. They managed to go from Bad to Worse.

And yet, some members of the Cocoa City Council still want to bring this boondoggle back for a third try, despite failing miserably on the first two tries, namely Deputy Mayor Jim McCarthy and Councilman Jake Williams. Williams in particular has been a very strong supporter of this ice rink in the past, and his continued support in the face of these staggering financial losses really makes me wonder if he's getting some sort of personal or business benefit out of this. No, I don't have any evidence, but I'm sorry, Councilman Williams. When you continue to push this strongly for an idea that has cost your city $105,700 so far with no real economic benefit to balance it out, you're either corrupt or you're stupid. Take your pick.

In stark contrast, Councilman Clarence Whipple told the rest of the City Council, "We can't spend taxpayer money on events that are losing money." I've opposed Whipple on other issues before, but on this one, he's spot-on.

The Cocoa City Council has delayed a decision on bringing the "outdoor" ice rink back for Christmas 2010, but I'll keep you up-to-speed on what they decide.

The 2010 Census is coming!
I know, I know, a lot of people consider the Census to be intrusive. And if the Census asks you for anything more than your name, address, and how many people live with you, then I agree: anything beyond that is intrusive. But counting how many people live in each Congressional district is valid, and furthermore it's Constitutional. The government is required by the Constitution to carry out the Census every 10 years. So quit whining, fill out the form with the Constitutionally-required information, and send it back. But I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not to tell them your race, your income, how many toilets you have in your home, or any of the other more-intrusive questions. I don't plan to myself, but they are allowed to ask how many people live in my home, and I'll be glad to tell them that.

True story... for the 2000 Census, when my father got his form and saw the question regarding ethnicity, he decided to have a little fun. He checked off every box, in some cases writing in helpful explanations in the margin. Example: for Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, he wrote "I like to wear Hawaiian shirts." He also checked off "Other" and wrote-in "Klingon."

I wonder why the Census Bureau never sent anyone around to his house to get a more accurate answer...

Anyway, Brevard County's government is planning a big Census push, which I agree with. They want 100% participation, and I agree. But why do they want it? So we can get more federally-funded goodies, of course!

This system is madness: we take money out of Brevard County in the form of income taxes and send it to Washington DC, and then beg them to give us some of that money back so we can spend it on local projects. And again I ask: would you buy a car this way? Would you take $30,000 in cash, hand it to a complete stranger, and then ask them to give you back $25,000 of that money so you can go buy a car? No, you wouldn't. Why? Because it would be idiotic. So why is it that when government does the exact same thing, we suddenly think it magically makes sense?

Brevard's unemployment rate on the rise again: 12.7% in January...
Brevard's unemployment rate is now 12.7% as of January, and it will go higher when the space shuttle program ends next year. Titusville will be especially hard-hit. So, what is Titusville's City Council doing in the face of this economic apocalypse?

They're debating a new city motto.

Geez. Priorities, people! A new city motto will provide exactly 0 jobs for laid-off NASA workers. And you wonder why Titusville is already struggling economically?

School Board funding could drop by $30,000,000 next school year
They balanced this year's budget with federal stimulus money rather than making the hard choices to cut spending and eliminate waste, and now that stimulus money will go away next school year. Rather than using that influx of cash to turn a funding crash into a slow glide, they used it to just delay the inevitable crash by another year. Well, here we are. Nice job, School Board!
 

	Comptroller proposal gains steam; should school buses become taxis?
	Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Don't forget - Aquifer Storage & Recovery public hearing on Wednesday!
If you live in or near Rockledge, be sure to carve out some time on Wednesday night for the next Rockledge City Council meeting at City Hall on Wednesday, March 10th at 6:30pm. This will be the first public discussion held by the Rockledge City Council on the topic of Aquifer Storage and Recovery.

I talked about this last Thursday night. I still think it's insane for Rockledge to consider pumping partially-treated sewage water directly into the soil underground, relying on nothing more than layers of rock and clay to keep it from contaminating the lagoon, the aquifer, or private residential wells. Rock and clay are not waterproof; if they were, we wouldn't have an underground aquifer at all!

Make sure the Rockledge City Council hears you loud and clear on Wednesday night. Do not let them move forward with ASR.

Brevard Comptroller? It could happen...
Just like the United States government follows a set of rules known as the Constitution (well, allegedly follows), the government of Brevard County follows a set of rules known as the County Charter. Every now and then, a commission is put together to study the current Charter with an eye towards ditching rules that don't work well or adding new rules to prevent the latest abuses of power that our ever-clever politicians have come up with. And that's what's going on now.

One of the ideas being considered by the current Charter Review Commission is to create a new elected position here in Brevard: Comptroller. Just like any other comptroller in other governments, their job would be to review the spending habits of the other branches of the county government to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. Right now, that job is unofficially split up between the County Commission (with less-than-stellar results) and the Clerk of the Court. Right now the Clerk is Scott Ellis, and he has been spectacular in his role as fiscal watchdog, but it's not his primary job. That would be running the administrative functions of the county's court system. And while he can point out waste when he finds it, his powers to find it are limited, and there's nothing he can actually do about it other than sound the alarm.

That's where a Comptroller would come in. They would have more powers for both investigation and enforcement, depending on exactly what the Charter Review Commission comes up with. And this would be the only job of the Comptroller, allowing them to focus entirely on fiscal responsibility while allowing the next Clerk of the Court to focus entirely on running the court system. It's an idea whose's time has come, and I love it.

Who doesn't love it? The other elected officials in Brevard County, of course: the Supervisor of Elections, the Property Appraiser, the Tax Collector, the Sheriff's Department, and the County Commissioners themselves. They don't like the idea of being held accountable when they waste money.

Sheriff Jack Parker recently opposed the idea, writing, "Vesting this authority with a single individual also provides that individual the opportunity to abuse that authority for political purposes to discredit other elected officials." That's a red herring, since there are only two scenarios in which a Comptroller can go after someone. One is for the Comptroller to frame someone, in which case they'll have the chance to defend themselves against the false accusations and fight back in the court of public opinion. The other is -- brace yourself -- if the other elected official is wasting or mis-spending money. Quite frankly, if the Comptroller doesn't like you and wants to take you down, that right there is a darn good reason to make sure you don't waste money in your department, isn't it? Don't waste money, and the Comptroller won't have any way of taking you down. It's that simple.

Oh, and guess who else opposes it? Why, that paragon of fiscal responsibility himself, Property Appraiser Jim Ford, who calls a Comptroller a "redundant and an unnecessary additional cost to the taxpayers." Sorry, Jim, but your track record on following the rules is suspect, so you don't exactly have a high moral position to preach from on this issue. And making sure that our government is spending our tax money wisely is always a wise investment.

Here we have two elected heads of governmental departments who don't want anyone looking at their books. Makes you wonder what they're trying to hide, doesn't it?

Divorced mom wants school bus to be her son's taxi
A school bus driver has one job: transport kids from home to school and back again. Anything else should be up to the parents. Period.

Should code-enforcement complaints be anonymous?
A recent county experiment with requiring names on all code-enforcement complaints had interesting results.

Cocoa Beach starts raising funds for Independence Day fireworks show
Wow, having businesses chip in directly to pay for a fireworks show that will boost their bottom line? Sorry, Cocoa Beach, but you're doing this all wrong. You should have Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas put in a request for federal funding under the Stimulus Package. You'll get your fireworks money, South Dakota will pay for it, and President Barack Obama will get to brag that he "saved" a dozen jobs. Everyone wins!

Miami tears down sex-offender shanty-town
Released sex-offenders in Miami were camping out under a causeway because buffer-zones around schools and parks made it too difficult for them to find a legal place to live. A similar story in Georgia popped up last year with probation officers telling some sex offenders to camp out in the woods when they couldn't find a place to live.

Wah, poor sex-offenders, right? Why should you care? Well, here's why: having trouble finding a place to live increases the recidivism rate of sex-offenders. Kinda makes you re-consider buffer zones, doesn't it?
 

	Something smells rotten in the city of Rockledge -- your water!
	Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Rockledge City Council to debate ASR!
I first heard about this plan last March, and I couldn't believe it. The City of Rockledge wanted to take partially-treated sewage water and store it underground -- not in some sort of water tank, but directly in the soil itself, right next to the aquifer. It's called Aquifer Storage & Recovery, or ASR for short.

If you're like me, your jaw probably just hit the table when you read that. Well, keep reading.

Like many cities, Rockledge uses partially-treated sewage water to irrigate grass and plants in the city, and using ASR would make it easier for the city to store more of that water for future use. The theory behind ASR is that if they pick the right spot underground to pump the wastewater into, the different types of soil, clay and rock will hold that wastewater in a very small area and will keep it from seeping out into the lagoon, the ocean, or the aquifer, all of which would be very, very bad things. And if you talk to the city's engineers, they'll tell you that nothing could possibly go wrong, because their computer models say so.

And of course, when someone from the government tells us that nothing could possibly go wrong, we can trust them, right? Nobody ever makes mistakes! Just ask the passengers on the Titanic, or the guys who designed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Well, before I go any further on the topic of ASR (and believe me, I have a lot more to say), let me tell you this. After over a year of hiding from the public on this issue, the Rockledge City Council is finally going to hold their first public debate on their ASR plan: next Wednesday night, March 10th at 6:30pm at Rockledge City Hall. If you're a resident of Rockledge (or any nearby city that could be affected if this stuff starts leaking), make sure you go, and make sure you sign up to speak. The City Council has clearly been hoping that if they waited long enough, people would forget about this issue. It's time for you to show them how wrong they are.

So, what's so bad about ASR anyway?
Glad you asked. As I mentioned before, the whole thing rests on the idea that the wastewater will be held in place by the different underground layers of rock, soil, and clay. This will supposedly keep the wastewater from mixing with any underground aquifers or from leaking into the Indian River Lagoon or the ocean. If that leakage were to happen, it would be a fairly serious pollution event.

But I want you to think about something: there's already water underground. It's called the aquifer. And how did the aquifer get there? Because rain water landed on the surface and seeped down through the rock, soil, and clay. That's the very same rock, soil, and clay that is now supposed to magically become water-tight and keep the wastewater where it's supposed to stay. Relying on something that is not water-tight to be water-tight is not a very smart plan in my book.

I mentioned that the Rockledge City Council has never held a public debate on ASR. But they did allow some of the city's engineers to participate in a public debate last May. At that debate, those engineers trotted out computer models that showed that the wastewater would stay exactly where it was pumped and wouldn't flow anywhere else or mix with the aquifer or the lagoon. In response, an opposing expert brought up multiple examples of similar computer models failing miserably at predicting the behavior of dyed test-water pumped underground at other sites in Florida. Those models showed it would take several weeks for that test-water to flow from the injection site to monitoring sensors that had been drilled nearby. In reality, it only took a day or two.

When your computer models disagree completely with what actually happens, it's time to scrap the models. Instead, the city of Rockledge is sticking with those flawed models. Forget reality! We have computers!

Now, I might feel a little better if the Rockledge City Council was at least being open and forthcoming about their plans for Aquifer Storage & Recovery and was participating in a public dialogue with their citizens. But they haven't. Ever since last May's debate fiasco, the city of Rockledge has stayed completely quiet and hasn't said a single word in public about ASR. But they did keep discussing it in private. In fact, last June, the Rockledge City Council violated the Sunshine Law (in my opinion) with a series of secret one-on-one meetings between a city engineer and each individual member of the City Council, one at a time, to discuss ASR. After Florida Today caught them at it, the City Manager claimed it was all kosher because the City Council members never actually met with each other or talked to each other, making it a valid way to get around the Sunshine Law. Too bad the State of Florida's official Government In The Sunshine manual disagrees with them. Page 19 lists several examples of other city and county governments doing similar tricks and getting busted for it later for violating the Sunshine Law. When it comes to the Sunshine Law, if you're trying to come up with a clever way to avoid violating the Sunshine Law, you're actually violating the Sunshine Law.

They tell us nothing can go wrong, when they know full-well that no human being can ever back up that promise. They ignore real-life observations and rely on computer models that have no reliable track record. They depend on rocks that aren't water-tight to be water-tight. And they draw up their plans in secret behind closed doors to avoid having to hear from us. And the Rockledge City Council wants us to trust them to go forward with Aquifer Storage and Recovery?

Next Wednesday night. March 10th. 6:30pm. Rockledge City Hall. Be there.

Here come the half-truthed shots at Marco Rubio...
So last week, someone leaked Marco Rubio's spending records from his official Florida Republican Party credit card. Turns out he charged some personal items to the party's card, and then re-imbursed the party for them later. It sounds fishy, until you realize that it's perfectly allowable under the Florida Republican Party's spending rules for those party cards. In the end, Rubio paid for his personal expenses, making this a non-issue.

Well, except for Democrats who want to make it an issue by only giving half of the story.
 

	Money well-spent; money mis-spent
	Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Money well-spent: Wickham Road traffic light system saves money
Sometimes, it actually does make sense to spend money. A $1,500,000 project to link 14 traffic lights together on a busy stretch of Wickham Road has reduced travel times on that road by 17%, cutting the trip time on the 5.2-mile stretch from 13 minutes to 10 minutes. And those 3 minutes add up to $2,000,000 saved by motorists on gasoline each year. That means the program has already paid for itself after less than a year, and will continue to save us money.

Blue states are in more fiscal trouble than red states
What a shocker... a study by Forbes magazine has found that the more left-leaning the voters of a state are, the bigger their budget deficit is.

I don't want to be a shill for the Republican Party, and they've certainly shown a lack of spending discipline. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the biggest federal budget deficits have always come from Congresses controlled by the Democrats, while the smaller deficits and the surpluses have always come from Congresses controlled by the Republicans

Americans collected more in aid than they paid in taxes in 2009
How long until this leaves us bankrupt as a nation?

Jim Ford's legal fees: $350,000 and counting
But of course, Jim Ford still insists this is all just a politically-motivated witch-hunt. Pay no attention to the Property Appraiser staffers who have admitted to breaking ethics rules. Nothing to see here!

State House votes to delay unemployment tax increase
The vote was 117-0. Still has to be passed by the State Senate, but that shouldn't be difficult. And small business owners all across Florida will breathe a sigh of relief when they do. Without this delay, the unemployement tax rate on businesses will automatically increase by over 1,000% starting in April.

Exhibit #8,428 why I don't drink
Check out this story of drunken foolishness. Police in Wisconsin get a report of a car stolen from a bar parking lot. On their way to take the report, the police find the stolen car crashed into a snowbank on the side of the road. They also find bootprints in the snow, leading away from the driver's side door all the way back to the front door of the bar the car was stolen from. The police walk in, and there's a man at the bar, drinking a beer... and wearing snow-covered boots the same size as the bootprints outside. He turns out to be the owner of the "stolen" car.

He also turns out to be drunk.

After questioning, he admitted to trying to drive home drunk and crashing his car, at which point he hatched up the brilliant plan to walk back to the bar and report his car stolen so he wouldn't get busted for DUI.

He got busted for DUI -- his fifth. Fun, huh?
 

	Hey Viera: quit spending money you don't have!
	Thursday, February 25th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

County Manager repeats dire budget message...
At a speech yesterday, County Manager Howard Tipton once again sounded the alarm about Brevard County's upcoming budget woes. He's already said in the past that we could lose $18,000,000 in property tax income for the 2010-2011 budget, plus at least $50,000,000 lost in sales tax income and permitting fee income. And it could end up being even worse depending on how hard the end of the space shuttle program hits Brevard's economy. Check out this quote in particular:

	It's BAAAA-AAAACK! Obama-Care lurches up from the grave
	Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Obama's new plan: feds will regulate health insurance rates
President Barack Obama announced his shiny new health care "reform" plan today. The good news? No government-run health insurance company this time. The bad news? Everyone would be required to buy health insurance, whether they want it or not, with the government spending even more money we don't have to help those who can't afford it. The ugly news? The federal government would also have the power to regulate, reverse, or outright deny premium and rate increases by all health insurance companies. Click here for all the gory details.

The federal rate regulation is the centerpiece of Obama's new plan, but there's just one problem. State governments can already do this. And despite the fact that state governments already have the power to keep health insurance companies from raising their rates, our health care system is still broken anyway. So how is giving the exact same power to the federal government going to make any difference at all?

This is nothing more than a gussied-up, re-named, and fully discredited idea: government price controls. The United States has experimented with price controls in the past, and the results are always disasterous. The more the federal government tries to artificially control the prices of any goods or services, the more difficult it becomes for companies to provide those goods and services at a profit. Eventually, some companies give up entirely, which leads to shortages and rationing and less competition... which increases demand, which leads to higher prices.

We can see it with property insurance right here in the state of Florida. The state government regulates how much insurance companies are allowed to charge for property insurance. Every time a hurricane hits the state, the insurance companies lose a ton of money. That leads them to ask permission to raise their rates, especially along coastal areas. The state often denies it or approves a smaller increase than they asked for, and that in turn always leads to a few companies refusing to insure coastal areas or leaving the state entirely. That leaves fewer companies left to compete with each other for that coastal business, so they can get away with cutting back on the quality of their service, and they can also hold the state hostage over rate increases in the future by threatening to leave too. In the end, property insurance still ends up being too expensive despite the state's efforts to control the rates, and many homeowners have no choice but to buy their property insurance directly from the state government's own company: Citizens Insurance.

Having state governments regulate rates and premiums doesn't work. Period. And there's no reason to believe it will be any better just because it's being done by federal bureaucrats instead of state bureaucrats. All we're going to do is screw up the free market even more and drive companies out of the health insurance business entirely. And when no other companies step up to replace them... aww, gee, guess we'll just have to start up a federal government -owned health insurance company after all.

Sneaky, eh?

Democrats may use reconciliation to pass health care "reform" with 51 votes
Normally in the Senate, in order to pass a bill, you first need to hold a vote to close debate on that bill. It's called "cloture." By the Senate's own rules, you need 60 votes to close debate: a super-majority. And thanks to Republican Scott Brown winning the special Senate election in Massachusetts, the Democrats only have 59 votes in the Senate. That means in order to pass any health care bill, the Democrats need to get all of their members and at least 1 Republican to vote for cloture. The Republicans are closing ranks against President Obama's new proposal, so that's not very likely.

But wait! Budget bills in the Senate have a different set of rules due to the occasional urgency required in getting budget bills passed. It's called "reconciliation." You only need 51 votes to get cloture on a budget bill: a simple majority. The Democrats have that easily. And that's why the Democrats are now talking about using reconciliation to pass Obama's health care "reform" bill. Basically, they'd break the bill up into pieces, tack it onto a few budget bills as amendments, and then use reconciliation to pass them on straight majority votes. And presto! Health care "reform" passes the Senate, no super-majority needed. Now you just have to get the House of Representatives to pass it on their own simple-majority vote, then get President Obama to sign it, and it's the law of the land.

We the people have made our wishes known to Congress loud and clear on the issue of health care. We want reform, but we don't want any of the plans the Democrats have proposed. But the Democrats are bound and determined to get this passed against our wishes, because this is the first step in a long-term process towards a government-run health-care system. That's still their goal. Do not forget this.

$2,000,000 in federal money to expand TiCo Airport?
Why?!? What possible stake does the federal government have in a tiny little airport in Titusville? If the airport needs a new building, let them build it and let them pay for it. This is a local project with only a local impact, and it should be paid for locally.

Remember: we don't have this $2,000,000. We have to borrow it from China. Is this worth it? I don't think so. Not even close.

Lack of funding kept pedestrian bridge over Crane Creek unbuilt
Sometimes, being responsible with your money means saying "no" to otherwise-worthy projects. If you don't have the money, you don't have the money. Such a bridge might have prevented this weekend's tragedy of three teenagers getting killed by a train while crossing a railroad bridge, but walking 2 minutes to the east to US 1 would've prevented it too.

Sansom resigns State House seat to avoid investigation
Clever, eh? The State House could only investigate corruption allegations against former Speaker Ray Sansom while he was still a member of the State House. Thanks to his resignation, he's not a member anymore. Clever move... but it begs the question: what is Ray Sansom trying to hide?
 

	IRS attacked in Austin; hunters under fire in Rockledge
	Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Yes, there IS a show tonight!
The Friday Night Locker Room is doing a special Thursday night high school basketball game tonight, and they're running a little late. But don't fret: I should be on the air at 8:15pm to do a shortened version of the program. Stay tuned, and enjoy the game in the meantime. Sounds like a close one.

Anyway, here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:15pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Pilot flies small plane into federal office building in Austin
In a troubling turn of events, a businessman in Austin, Texas with a long-running tax dispute with the IRS set fire to his own home on Thursday morning, nearly killing the rest of his family. He then drove to the airport, took off in his small private plane, and flew it into the side of an office building with several federal government offices in it, including the IRS by some reports. By the grace of God, nobody died in the attack, though there were multiple injuries, and the resulting fire heavily damaged the building.

Almost as troubling to me are those on the extreme fringes of the conservative political movement I call home who are trying to turn this homicidal maniac, Joseph Andrew Stack, into a sympathetic figure or even some sort of crusading hero. I've been further dismayed by the people who point to Stack's rambling internet diatribe as evidence that the IRS brought this on themselves through their overly aggressive practices.

Let me make something abundantly clear right now. If the IRS is peaceably demolished and the federal income tax is replaced with a better system (like, say, the FairTax), it will be one of the happiest days of my life. The IRS's long-running record of grossly abusing taxpayers is well-documented and indisputable. But at the end of the day, they are using duly-granted legal authority from Congress to enforce the tax laws of the United States of America. They take our money, and occasionally throw scofflaws in jail. But they do not kill people.

To say that the IRS brought today's murderous acts upon themselves is preposterous. What they deserve is to be fully investigated, declawed, and shut down by Congress, if we can get Congress to listen to us. They do not deserve this level of violence to be leveled against them, not while we still have other means to resort to.

These were not the words and acts of a noble anti-government crusader. Remember, before Stack took off in his airplane, he set off a bomb in his own house with his wife and step-daughter still in that home. If Stack wanted to attack the government, then why did he try to kill off his own family as well?

I will reserve my sympathy for those Americans who still struggle today to make sense of our archaic and arcane federal income tax and the IRS's guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude. They deserve my sympathy, and yours as well. But my sympathy for Joseph Andrew Stack ended the minute he started assembling the bomb that almost killed those closest to him, not to mention when he tried to use murder to resolve a legal dispute.

If you feel sorry for Joseph Andrew Stack, I urge you to get help, before you follow in his footsteps.

Was this terrorism?
Government officials in both Washington and Austin have been quick to declare that Stack's airplane attack was not an act of terrorism. I'm not so sure about that. Let's look at the dictionary definition of terrorism:

	You want it? You pay for it!
	Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Let's make everyone else pay for our sand!
I couldn't get to this story yesterday, but it's so important that I want to make sure I get to it tonight. Yet another beach-renourishment project has begun in Brevard County. The beaches keep eroding away thanks to hurricanes and ocean storms, as well as the Port Canaveral jetty which interrupts the natural processes which once kept the beaches shored up. Without the jetty, you don't have Port Canaveral, so getting rid of the jetty is not an option.

So, beach renourishment it is. Over the next few months, 650,000 cubic yards of sand is going to be dredged up from the ocean floor and used to shore up the beaches along Indialantic and Melbourne Beach. It's vital and important work, to be honest. Beach tourism is a big boost to our economy, and the increased land values from the homes and condos along the coast are a big boost to the tax base. For both of those, you need a beach.

As important as it is, it's also expensive: $12,400,000 (or $12.4 million). Of course, considering that Brevard County's budget regularly tops $1,000,000,000 ($1 billion), you'd think we'd be able to come up with $12,400,000 for something so important right?

Except we don't. Brevard County is only spending $2,800,000. So where is the other $9,600,000 coming from? $2,600,000 comes from Tallahassee, the state government, which I can understand since the state's tax base relies on healthy beaches. But that still leaves $7,000,000. Where does that come from?

The federal government.

The same federal government that is on track to top $16,000,000,000,000 ($16 trillion) in federal debt just in time for the 2012 presidential election.

And where does the federal government get that money? By taking it away from the taxpayers in the form of income taxes. We in Florida pay an ever-increasing percentage of our income to Washington DC every year, and they take in all of that money and decide which local governments get that money for local projects in the form of federal grants. We Brevardians paid huge sums of cash to DC, and then hoped to get some of it back so that we could pay for renourishing our own beaches.

Why did that money ever have to leave Brevard County in the first place?

We desperately need to end this wasteful practice of having the centralized federal government being the middle-man to pay for local projects.

But Vince! But Vince! We need this beach renourishment! If the federal government doesn't pay for it, who will?

Simple: we will. Brevard County will pay for it. It's a simple formula: cut federal spending on local projects, and that allows the federal government to drop the income tax rate. That means local citizens have more money in their pockets, which means local governments can now raise taxes at the local level to pay for the projects that used to be paid for by the federal government. Only this time, you won't have the federal government skimming money off the top to pay for the employees who "manage" the money and decide who it goes to. You cut out the middle-man, and everyone saves money in the long-run.

Right now, we are forcing citizens in South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, and every other state to pay for our beaches, just like they're forcing Brevardians to pay for their "needed" local projects. We do this because somewhere along the line, we decided that if a project is "needed," that means it's okay for the federal government to pay for it. That's balderdash. I need a car to get to work. Did I make the government pay for it? No. I need food and water to stay alive. Did I make the government pay for it? No. And yet I have all of the things I need because I paid for those things myself.

Local government projects don't need to be any different. Just look at the price-tag on this beach renourishment project again: $12,400,000. That's about 1% of a billion-dollar budget, and we only have to do this about once every 5 years or so. If our County Commission can't find the money to pay for that without running to Congress for help, they're doing something wrong.

It's time to change our fundamental attitudes about the role of the federal government. Let the federal government worry about national defense, disaster relief, and vital spending with too large of a price tag for local or state governments to handle. Let local governments worry about their own local projects. If you cut federal spending and cut the income tax rate, those local governments will be able to find the money to take care of themselves.

...or we can just keep doing the things the same way we are right now, and run up another $16,000,000,000,000 in federal debt. And that's assuming we can find enough investors who are willing to lend us that money. Speaking of which...

Foreign demand for US debt drops sharply
In the month of December 2009, foreign demand for US treasury bonds dropped at a record pace. Overseas investors are getting more and more nervous about the USA's ability to pay off its ever-growing debt, and they're becoming more and more unwilling to loan us money by buying our treasury bonds. Sooner or later, we'll have no choice but to start offering a higher interest rate on those bonds to get people to start buying them again. It's the same as if your credit card company jacks up your interest rate: it means you have to pay more later to borrow money now. And if we're paying more money in debt interest, that will make it more difficult to pay off the debt itself.

And what's President Barack Obama's response? He's going to appoint a commission to find ways to reduce the size of our yearly deficits. Too bad that won't help, because having any yearly deficit, whether it's larger or smaller, still means that the national debt is still growing.

Reducing our yearly deficits isn't enough. We need to eliminate our yearly deficits so that we can start reducing the size of our national debt. If we fail, we will face the economic ruination of our once-proud nation.

Palm Bay red light cameras switch from warnings to fines today
Smile for the camera! And remember, it's all about safety, not about the money. Of course.

Obama announces loan-guarantee for 2 new nuclear power plants
We need more nuclear power, and these will be the first new nuclear power plants in the USA in three decades. Credit where credit is due... but blame too, since it's Obama's own liberal political movement that has kept those new plants from being built in the first place.

Alex Sink wants more workers per supervisor in state government
She wants a seven-to-one ratio. I think that's still too low. We expect our teachers to handle way more kids than that, don't we? Do government workers need more oversight than school children?

Federal audit finds waste and inefficiency at Census Bureau
Oh, wait. I guess government workers do need more oversight than school children. Silly me.
 

	Ex-con meets Castle Doctrine; protestors oppose offshore drilling
	Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Convicted felon legally shoots burglar with illegal firearm
He hasn't been charged for the shooting itself, since the Castle Doctrine applies. There's just one problem: convicted felons aren't allowed to own guns, which is why Lamar Coaston has been charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Coaston's attorney is now squawking that the shooting was justified, and you know what? He's absolutely right. But that doesn't change the fact that, under the law, he's not allowed to own that gun in the first place. That's the price you pay for being a convicted felon: you lose some of your rights.

That said, I could certainly understand if the prosecutor in this case wants to show a little leniency, maybe give him a plea deal and probation. There is a whiff here of a man being punished for defending himself, and I don't like it. But Coaston should've known having that gun was illegal due to his status as a felon. It's your responsibility to know the law.

Brevard protestors link hands against offshore oil-drilling in Florida
And who was right in the middle of it all? Local liberals Amy Tidd and Tony Sasso. Surprise, surprise. Tidd, by the way, is running for the State House again later this year. So if you've fallen for the liberal line that offshore oil-drilling is going to ruin our beachside view, scare off all the tourists, and leave our beaches entirely coated in spilled oil, she's your candidate.

Or you could educate yourself about the surprisingly clean record of offshore oil-drilling in the United States of America. Just sayin'.

Unneeded US1 driver license office to close down tomorrow
It's to save money, and I'm all for it. That office didn't need to be there anyway, not with the Sarno Road license office a 10-minute drive away.

Obama's debt schizophrenia continues
On Friday, President Barack Obama signed into law the new federal debt ceiling of $14,300,000,000,000.00 (or $14.3 trillion). But after signing it, he heaped praise upon a tiny little provision in that bill called "Pay-as-you-go" which will supposedly force Congress to live within its means. We'll see if that actually happens. But Congress has passed "Pay-as-you-go" on themselves before, and they've always either found ways around it or just plain overturned it in the past. So, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Beach renourishment project starts in Brevard -- with federal funds
Why aren't we paying for this ourselves? Why are we forcing South Dakota to pay for our sand? And why are we then paying for South Dakota's flood-control projects? There is absolutely no need for the federal government to gets its hands into so many different local-impact projects that we could pay for ourselves -- if we didn't have to send such a ridiculously high amount of money to Washington DC in the form of federal income taxes.

Transportation board will keep their extra $2,100,000 in stimulus funds
Same song, different band.

Cocoa to use special election to fill vacant City Council seat
Vote wisely, Cocoa. And make sure you elect someone who won't waste your money on outdoor ice-skating rinks while crime continues to spiral out-of-control.
 

	Name blame game; impact fees may stay dormant
	Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Scorotto's or Scirotto's? Fight erupts over deli name
So, some guy wanted to open a deli in Cape Canaveral. He found a good location, and then realized it's the same spot where there used to be a restaurant called Scirotto's that closed down in 2005.

So, what did he do? He named his new restaurant Scorotto's. Same pronunciation, same spelling, except for the third letter being an O instead of an I. It's an obvious attempt to take advantage of the name of the restaurant that used to be there. And he didn't stop there. The new owner is now handing out advertising fliers which say, "We're back. Same location. Same great food." And the owners of the original restaurant, the Scirotto family, are mad as hell because he never even bothered to ask their permission.

It's pretty clear to me that this new owner, Louis Siao, is trying to trick people into thinking the original owners have returned and re-opened their old restaurant. It's basically a con. But of course, like all good con-men, Siao has an excuse, an innocent explanation. You see, this is all just a giant misunderstanding. Siao says this new restaurant is meant to be an homage to the original Scirotto's. He's actually trying to honor and respect their legacy.

I'm not buying it.

Just look at the one-letter spelling change in the name. Just look at the wording on the flier. And most importantly, look at the fact that the first time the Scirotto family heard about any of this was when someone brought them a flier for the new restaurant.

The Scirotto family still lives in Cape Canaveral. You wanted to honor their legacy, and you couldn't even bother to pick up the phone and let them know about it first?

So, what should be done about it?

Some would say that the government should be able to force Siao to change the restaurant name, either through a law on the books or a lawsuit and a court order from the old family. It's a tempting solution. But it's also a completely unneeded one. There's already a free-market solution in place: don't eat there. The old family can go to the media and spread the word, as they've already done. And people can decide on their own what they think of Siao's name game and whether or not they should support him financially.

Until Siao changes the name of this restaurant and markets it more honestly, I sure know where I won't be going for lunch.

Impact fee moratorium could be extended
The County Commission has voted 5-0 to open discussion on the idea of extending the county's impact fee moratorium. Good. Brevard County's unemployment rate is already above the national average, and it's only going to get higher when 7,000 space shuttle jobs disappear next year. I firmly believe these impact fees are a big reason why our unemployment rate got so high in the first place, because new businesses chose other nearby counties to set up shop in instead, counties that actually acted like they wanted them to come in. We made it more expensive for new businesses while other counties made it cheaper. And here we are.

The County Commission will vote on the moratorium on Tuesday, February 23rd. Make sure you're there, and make sure the Commissioners understand that now is the time to make it easier for new businesses to move in, not harder. In fact, if the Commission was really serious, they'd eliminate the impact fee entirely, rather than just making it dormant. Eliminate the uncertainty about whether or not it will or won't come back. Next year, Brevard's economy will need all the help it can get.

Oh, NOW Crist says the state GOP should disclose its credit card spending
Well, sort of. The good governor says it should be up to the new state party chairperson. Way to lead there, Charlie. And thanks for waiting until after so much of the Republican Party's money was wasted before finally speaking up.

Is it any wonder why the State House Speaker-elect reversed a $655,000 donation to the party? Not even he trusts how it will be spent!

State officials are flying less on state's jets
Of course, it took a major budget crunch and a healty dose of public anger to make them behave more responsibly with our money...

NASA Blvd and Ellis Road to be connected
Long overdue, and it should really help commerce in Melbourne and West Melbourne. For once, a good use of our money by the government.

"Friday Fest" street parties come to Cape Canaveral
I want to know who's paying for it. Melbourne and Cocoa have events like this to benefit their downtown businesses and make money, but Cape Canaveral doesn't really have much of a downtown.

Poll: most Americans say swine flu is over
The attempts to make us panic didn't really work. So much for the early estimates of 90,000 dead in the USA alone.
 

	Jim Ford gets silly; illegals get counted; government gets expensive
	Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Property Appraiser blasts Florida Today on official government website
This is just getting silly. Property Appraiser Jim Ford thinks he should be completely left alone and allowed to run the Property Appraiser's office however he wants to, and he gets annoyed every time Florida Today or any other media outlet runs a news story about the latest investigation into him and his staff. How dare we hold him accountable for following the law! So when Florida Today tried to get an official reduction in the tax-assessed value of their printing equipment, Jim Ford decided this was his chance to zing them. He released a short but scathing press release criticizing Florida Today for their appeal. Then he tacked this onto the end:

	Local races start heating up; federal payroll hits all-time high
	Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 7:35pm

AM-1300 WMEL is off the air at the moment for routine maintenance on the transmitter, but we should be back up before 8:00pm in time for me to bring you The Vince Young Show. So don't worry! I'm right here and ready to go, and in a few minutes I'll update this website with my program notes for tonight.

Talk to you at 8:00pm!

EDIT at 8:07pm: Hmm... still working on the transmitter. Should just be a few more minutes, and then we'll get the show started for tonight. Hang in there!

EDIT at 8:25pm: Okay, we're back on-the-air. Let's get this thing started! Thanks for your patience, everyone.

Anyway, here's what I'll be talking about tonight on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Scott Ellis to leave Clerk of Court seat, might challenge Thad Altman
I've never been a fan of State Senator Thad Altman, a Republican-In-Name-Only who is infamous for being a consummate politician. Altman, for example, was a big driving force behind last year's state budget plan, which used the sneaky political trick of raising fees on state services in order to be able to claim that you didn't actually "raise taxes."

That's why I'm thrilled at today's news that Scott Ellis might challenge Thad Altman in the State Senate District 24 Republican primary later this year. Ellis has been a bare-knuckles fighter for smaller government and responsible spending during his political carrer as a County Commissioner and as the Clerk of the Court, and nobody can legitimately question his conservative credentials. Ellis has already confirmed that he will not be running for re-election as the Clerk of the Court, but given the conservative presence of Trudie Infantini and Andy Anderson on the County Commission, having a fiscal watchdog like Ellis in that Clerk's seat is no longer as crucial as it once was.

Ellis could face a tough battle. He often takes a much harsher tone than he needs to in his campaigns and his budget battles, and his primary race against Mitch Needelman in 2008 got downright ugly. Altman is a savvy politician and will no doubt pull out all the stops against Ellis to paint him as too angry to be effective. But I think Ellis's fire is exactly what we need in Tallahassee. When he's done with the state budget, the rest of the Legislature won't know what hit them.

Amy Tidd to challenge Ritch Workman for State House seat
Local Democratic activist Amy Tidd has thrown her hat into the ring in the race for the State House District 30. She'll be taking on Republican incumbent Ritch Workman. Quite frankly, we need to replace Workman, who failed to live up to his conservative pledges when he voted for last year's fee-raising state budget and for the SunRail program. But Tidd's hyper-liberal record will be far, far worse than anything Workman's ever voted for.

I continue to hope for a strong conservative to challenge Workman in the Republican primary, because if my choices are the spineless Workman or the liberal Tidd, I think I'll have to leave that race blank on my ballot.

Democratic State House candidate arrested, then released!
Political newcomer Joseph Crowley was arrested yesterday on child-sex charges, but then was released today after the charge was dismissed. Bizarre. Crowley will be running as a Democrat against Republican incumbent John Tobia for the State House District 31 seat.

Largest-ever federal payroll: $2,150,000
Our federal government is far, far too big.

EDIT at 9:10pm: Actually, it's worse than that. It's 2,150,000 employees, not 2,150,000 dollars. Apologies for getting it wrong at first. I guess that's what I get for rushing my show prep. Either way, the point still stands: our federal government is too big, and it needs to be trimmed down big-time.

Obama admits he broke his "C-SPAN" pledge on the health care bill
But he apparently thinks it's no big deal. Check out these two quotes from the President:

	Obama and Crist: spending goes up, popularity goes down
	Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

"We've got to spend our way out of this recession."
That's an actual quote from Rep. James Clyburn, the Democratic Whip in the House of Representatives. He's basically the #3 person in the House. Our nation's debt is at $12,300,000,000,000 ($12.3 trillion) and growing. China is openly lecturing us about fiscal responsibility and is seriously considering no longer loaning us any more money. Financial experts worldwide are getting closer and closer to downgrading our debt rating, and the main reason it hasn't happened yet is because of the staggering impact such a move would have on the economy of the entire world.

And this clown thinks we should be spending more?!?

Sadly, he's not alone. President Barack Obama has revealed his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011, starting in October of 2010. Total price tag: $3,830,000,000,000 (or $3.8 trillion, if you prefer). This despite the fact that here in fiscal year 2010, our deficit is projected to hit a record $1.6 trillion, pushing our total national debt up to $13.9 trillion. Then the fiscal year 2011 budget would have a slightly smaller deficit of "only" $1.3 trillion, which Obama wants you to believe is a sign of progress worth celebrating. There's just one problem: that deficit would still add onto the national debt, pushing it to $15.2 trillion by October 2011. And the deficit would still be a hefty $800 billion (or $0.8 trillion) for fiscal year 2012, leading to a national debt of $16 trillion just in time for the 2012 presidential election.

And all of this is assuming that we can convince investors around the world to loan us another $3.7 trillion dollars over the next three years. That is by no means a guarantee. Not anymore.

Simply reducing the deficit is not enough. Having any deficit means that the national debt is still growing. It's far past time for Congress and the President to acknowledge the sheer reality that we can no longer afford a government that is this big. Government is doing too many things for people that they could (and should!) be doing for themselves, and I guarantee you people could take care of themselves for a fraction of the cost of the government doing it for them.

We cannot afford to settle for a budget deficit that will be "only" $800 billion three years from now.

Obama's split personality
Part of Obama's economic stimulus package includes tax cuts for small businesses in an effort to promote job growth. Okay, I'm with him there. But dig deeper... in an effort to reduce the size of the deficit and to make up the revenue, Obama is also proposing increased taxes on people making over $250,000 a year. Those are the same people who own the very small businesses Obama is depending on to create more jobs!

Crist: "Hey, let's spend $3 billion MORE next year in Tallahassee!"
Not an exact quote, of course, but why are we going to increase the state's spending in a year when we're about to lose the space shuttle program and all of its jobs?

Rasmussen: Rubio 49%, Crist 37%
I wonder if Crist spending like a drunken sailor has anything to do with this.

Local Democratic Congresswoman takes swipe at Obama's NASA plan
Not even Rep. Suzanne Kosmas can go along with Obama on this.

Palm Bay to get tougher on abandoned swimming pools
Good. Letting a mosquito pond sit in your backyard is a threat to your neighbors.

Cocoa man uses shotgun to defend his home and property
Fantastic! I love seeing law-abiding people use firearms to stand up for themselves against thieves.

Surprise! Cellphone driving bans have no affect on crash statistics
Gee could it be that the real problem isn't cell phones, but rather all forms of distracted driving?
 

	Oil's clean record; Crist wants tax cuts; county waste watch
	Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Tonight's State of the Union address doesn't start until 9:00pm, so that means I still get to do a show tonight! Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Both governor candidates call offshore oil drilling a "threat"
I'd expect that from a liberal Democrat like Alex Sink, but et tu, Bill McCollum? Then fall, Florida's economy.

(Sorry. I'm in a Shakespearean mood today.)

At a press appearance earlier today, McCollum, a Republican and current Attorney General of Florida, called himself a "huge skeptic" of offshore oil drilling in Florida and raised the specter of an oil spill that "would just completely terrorize our beaches." Sink, the state's Chief Financial Officer, agreed with him.

Obviously, neither McCollum nor Sink have ever read this Human Events article from 2008 which showed that offshore oil drilling is cleaner than Mother Nature -- literally! Every year, mankind spills an average of 6,555 barrels of oil. In contrast, the earth itself leaks an average 620,500 barrels of oil into the ocean from cracks in the ocean floor, over 94 times more than we spill.

But so what? Oil drilling is going to ruin our pristine beaches, right? We all know it will... except that it won't. Let me give you two more numbers: one is the number of barrels of oil we extracted from oil drilling off the coast of the USA between 1980 and 2008. The other one is the number of barrels of oil those drilling platforms have spilled during that same period:

11,855,000,000 - drilled
       101,997 - spilled

	Obama pays lip service to national debt. How about paying money instead?
	Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Official US debt for fiscal year 2009: $12.3 trillion
$12,302,465,000,000 to be precise. That is how much money the United States government owes to the people and nations we've been borrowing money from to fuel our oversized government. And more and more people are growing more and more concerned about how we're ever going to pay all of that money back without defaulting on our debt.

More and more Democrats in Washington DC are also growing more and more concerned -- about their grip on political power. Worries about the national debt are a big reason for the popularity of the Tea Party movement and for President Barack Obama's ever-shrinking approval ratings. And that is starting to erode the power base of the Democrats, most obviously in the form of Republican Scott Brown's upset victory to replace Ted Kennedy as a Massachusetts senator, but also in polling data for 2010 congressional races all around the country. As such, more and more Democrats are joining conservatives in decrying the size of the national debt.

Now, talking about the debt is one thing. Doing something about it is another thing entirely. And what does President Obama want to do about the national debt? He wants to freeze about $15 billion in discretionary spending. Okay, it's a start... but not much of one. Remember, the national debt stands at $12.3 trillion right now. So how does $15 billion compare to that? I'll show you:

$12,302,465,000,000 - national debt
$    15,000,000,000 - spending freeze

	Democrats finally listen on health care, but still can't stop spending your money
	Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Democrats reject quick House vote on Senate plan
They're finally listening to you! But it took Scott Brown's Senate victory dealing a huge blow to their political power to make them remember who is really in charge -- you, not them. Now let's see how long it takes them to forget again.

It might not take long. Although the Democrats are shelving the health care "reform" bill for the moment, their quotes to press show that they think the American people are angry that -- get this -- the Democrats haven't gone far enough. They couldn't be any further from the truth. The message from the American people is loud and clear in poll after poll, protest after protest, vote after vote: the Democrats have gone way too far.

Senate Dems prepare to raise debt ceiling -- again!
They want to increase the limit by another $1,900,000,000,000 (or $1.9 trillion if you prefer). That would put the national debt limit at $14,300,000,000,000 ($14.3 trillion). Yikes! And the fact that they'd rather go more into debt than to cut spending and reign in the budget really takes the sincerity out of their new "We're listening to you!" posture.

Even more fun? In order to pass, they need 60 votes under the Senate's budget rules. With Scott Brown coming in soon, they're about to have only 59 Democratic votes... 58 if Senator Evan Bayh carries through on his recent threat to vote No. If it fails, Congress might be forced to default on some debt -- a move that would send an economic shockwave around the world.

How did we get to this point? Because both the Democrats and Republicans allowed it to happen by continuously spending more money than we could bring in, especially over the past decade. The only difference is that the debt grows faster under the Democrats than under the Republicans. This has been a complete and utter failure on the part of our public "servants" to do what is in our best interests, and it may lead to the economic ruination of not just us, but the entire world.

I'm honestly torn on this. I actually hope the Democrats do one last debt ceiling increase to stave off the immediate disaster of a debt default and then take immediate and drastic steps to cut the budget to reverse our growing debt. But just like it took Scott Brown's Senate victory to make the Democrats do the right thing on health care, it may take a debt default to force Congress (both parties) to do the right thing on the budget. Sometimes it takes a major shock to get someone to change their self-destructive behavior. So as difficult as a debt default would be, it may be a neccessary evil.

Property Appraiser staffers are close to settling their campgain ethics violations
And once again, Jim Ford himself is going to skate. How long will his cronies be willing to keep getting in legal trouble on his behalf?

Shuttle program job-loss report finalized
Brevard County could lose up to 6,000 jobs, and just central Brevard alone could lose 4,000 of those! This is gonna hurt, and hurt badly, and the hit to our tax base is going to make Brevard County's upcoming $18,000,000 deficit in 2010 look like chump-change.

School Board finalizes south Brevard rezoning plan
Some parents weren't happy, but too bad. Some students just had to get moved, which meant some parents were just going to be unhappy anyway. Kudos to the School Board for sticking to their guns and carrying out a thankless job. Up next: central Brevard's rezoning plan on February 9th.

An all-white basketball league? Yikes!
Some idiot promoter is starting up a 12-team basketball league just for white players, claiming that whites are becoming too rare in the NBA and need a place to play. He also claims that this league isn't racist. Let's check the dictionary, shall we?

	Massachusetts on red alert; new state tax hampers business
	Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Will Massachusetts replace Ted Kennedy with a Republican?
Maybe. Republican State Senator Scott Brown has taken the lead in opinion polls over Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's Attorney General, in the battle to fill Ted Kennedy's former Senate seat. Right now, there's a governor-appointed Democratic place-holder in the seat, but today's special election will replace them. You can check the results as they come in on the official election website for the state government of Massachusetts. Polls close at 8:00pm Eastern Time tonight, right as my show starts.

Why do you care? Because right now the Democrats have a 60-to-40 majority in the Senate, the bare minimum needed to shut down Republican filibusters and force bills through -- such as the health care "reform" bill. If the Republican wins today, it will be 59-to-41, and suddenly the Democrats will need to sway over a Republican to vote with them to shut down filibusters. And with even moderate Republicans like Olympia Snowe growing ever more hostile to the Democrats, that's going to be difficult.

It could also doom President Barack Obama's health care "reform" bill entirely. The House and the Senate have each approved two different versions, and any new compromise bill will have to be re-passed by both the House and Senate. With only 59 Democrats in the Senate, they won't be able to force a vote. That's why if Brown wins, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may go for a straight vote on the Senate's health care bill in the House, with no changes or amendments. Since the current Senate version has already passed in the Senate, passing it in the House too would send it straight to the President's desk to become law. Or the Senate could try to pass the health care bill using the budget reconciliation process, in which you only need 51 votes to close debate. Both moves are risky, though.

So, I'm rooting for Scott Brown to win today. But forgive me for not being too excited about a guy who once posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine back in 1982... while describing himself as a "patriot." Granted, it was a while ago, and hopefully he's matured a lot since then, but it does give me pause.

Sen. Lemieux asks for Constitutional review of proposed health insurance mandate
Dare I say it? Lemieux has been an improvement over Mel Martinez so far.

Unemployment fund business tax jumps by thousands of dollars due to rate hike
Surprise! Is this what you meant when you said state government needs to get out of the way of business, Governor Crist? No wonder our unemployment rate is higher than the national rate!

School Board votes first redistricting plan tonight; central vote on 2/9
Tonight is the vote on south Brevard, and the vote on central Brevard will come on February 9th. About 1,100 students are going to be re-assigned to different schools coming up this fall, and needless to say a lot of those kids' parents are angry. Tough cookies. We have 15 overfilled schools here in Brevard, and state law says those schools have to be at or under capacity in time for the 2012 fall semester. That means moving kids out of overcrowded schools and into other schools that are already under capacity. Everyone understands this, but everyone is demanding that their kids stay right where they are. Move someone else's kid, not mine, the parents say. And when every parent is saying that, it means there's no way to make everyone happy.

Sorry, but somebody has to be moved. Welcome to reality.

Of course, one of the reasons we got into this weird situation with overcrowded schools is because of past efforts to assign kids to schools based on racial concerns in an attempt to make sure that every school is diverse. Never mind how much it costs to bus kids around. Never mind that kids are going to schools nowhere near where they live, making it more difficult for their parents to be truly involved in their child's education. Never mind that it leaves some schools overcrowded while desks sit empty at other schools. Gotta keep the NAACP happy, of course.

Apartment residents freak out over gator next door
Um... you're aware this is Florida, right?

Bible verse codes engraved on US military rifle sights by the manufacturer
Um... why? The US military is not a church army, and not all soldiers are Christians. And I know al-Qaeda will keep insisting that we're carrying out a new Christian Crusade against the entire Islamic religion no matter what we do, but do we really need to do things like this and hand them propaganda points on a silver platter?
 

	Happy MLK Jr. Day; Nye vs. Bolin; Crist vs. Crist
	Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
Yes, yes, I'm well aware of his suspected communist ties, the accusations of plagiarism in his early academic days, etc. Nobody is perfect. But on balance, I believe that Dr. King did more than enough to help the nation and the world to balance out the wrongs in his life. And his message of true racial equality is one that should be heeded more by today's African-American political leaders such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and others who merely pay lip service to Dr. King's legacy and message today. Most of my fellow conservatives seem to understand this, thank God. But to those who don't, who for some reason choose instead to regard Martin Luther King Jr. with hostility, I urge you to reconsider.

The Bible is full of deeply flawed men who were used by God to carry out important works of grace. Whatever his personal failings, Martin Luther King Jr. left this world a better place. That's why I celebrate him today.

Matt Nye goes after Mary Bolin on county employee holiday
And of course, Florida Today misses the point. Matt Nye is planning a Republican primary challenge against current County Commissioner Mary Bolin, a wishy-washy moderate, and Nye for some odd reason is focusing big-time on Bolin's proposal last month to give county employees a paid holiday on New Year's Eve, December 31st. The proposal passed unanimously, and now Nye and Bolin are squabbling over how much money this will cost the taxpayers. Nye says it's at least $750,000. Bolin counters that it's more like $132,000 due to overtime for some employees, but that since the county employees were originally going to be working on that day anyway, the money for their wages was already in the budget anyway. On that front, Bolin makes a valid point.

But I don't think Matt Nye is entirely off-base though. Keep in mind, while the money was already in the budget to pay the county's employees on December 31st, they were going to be paid to work. Instead, they were paid not to work, and we lost an entire day's productivity from those employees. That's worth thinking about.

It's also worth thinking about that county budget could be short by $18 million next year. Every $132,000 expenditure you can save helps in that sort of a deficit. It's nice to give the county employees a break, but what about giving the taxpayers a break too?

Gov. Crist: state should get out of the way of businesses
You first, Charlie. You can start by repealing all of the fee hikes you signed into law last year. Talk all you want about reducing government, bringing back the school supply sales-tax holiday, and other conservative ideas, Governor Crist. We know who you really are, and we know your record. You may sound conservative, but you don't act conservative.

State considers tax on paper and plastic grocery bags
I already see more and more people using re-usable bags every day. Why do we need to legislate something that is already happening on its own anyway?

Melbourne synchronizes some US 1 traffic lights; more to come
Kudos for improving traffic flow with this great idea, but why did it take this long? And why isn't it done more often?

More info on Titusville's impact-fee moratorium
Mayor Jim Tulley and Councilwoman Martha Long voted NO, putting them on the losing end of the successful 3-2 vote. Their quotes to Florida Today show that they just don't get it.

How NOT to stop someone from breaking into your vehicle
Jumping into the back of their pickup truck as they try to get away? Bad idea. This guy is lucky to be alive today.

Fleeing defendant tries to jump through bulletproof window
Needless to say, it didn't work. Don't forget to check out the security video too. Priceless!

Palm Bay puts city finance info online
Florida Today's story is here, and the website itself is at http://open.palmbayflorida.org if you want to check it out. Yay for open government!
 

	Obama takes aim at banks; Cocoa Beach installs red-light camera
	Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Obama wants to tax banks to replenish TARP funding
President Barack Obama is proposing a one-time tax on the assets of every bank in the United States of America. He claims it's because so many banks haven't repaid their TARP loans back to the government yet, but are still giving big bonuses to their executives. To quote the President, "We want our money back, and we're going to get it."

Now, if a bank begged for money from the government and hasn't repaid it yet, you know what? I can kinda see Obama's point. But what about banks who have already repaid their TARP loan? They'll still get taxed. What about banks who never borrowed a penny of TARP money from the government in the first place? They'll still get taxed. What about banks who were ordered by the government to take TARP money that they didn't need in the first place and who haven't been allowed to pay it back? They'll all still be taxed as well. How is that fair?

If this were truly about responsibility or fiscal restraint, only those banks who asked for and voluntarily accepted government money would be getting hit by this. That's only fair; if you want help from the taxpayers, we're going to put some strings on it. But by also targeting banks that followed the rules and behaved responsibly, Obama has revealed his true motive here: control. He's sending a message to businesses all across the country: we're the government, and we are in charge, you peons.

That doesn't mean I'm a big fan of banks handing out big bonuses to their executives in this environment, not while they're turning down worthy borrowers for loans and refusing to re-work shaky mortgages so they can just foreclose instead. I'm not here to defend the behavior of the banks. But Obama is missing a big reason why these banks behave so badly in the first place: because the government makes it possible for them to behave badly without facing any serious consequences. If a bank behaves stupidly, makes poor decisions, and wastes its money on things like big executive bonuses and then finds itself in financial trouble, every bank knows all they have to do is ask the government for help and get a big fat bailout check.

In a truly capitalistic system, there's a built-in disincentive against making bad decisions and wasting money: the risk of failure. If bad decisions mean your business could shut down and you could lose everything, you have every reason to avoid making bad decisions. But when the government offers to "save" every business that has made bad decisions and is on the brink of failure, the government removes that built-in disincentive. The consequences of making bad decisions suddenly become much easier to handle. And in the end, that just leads to businesses being more likely to keep making those bad decisions.

Want to get these banks back on the right track? Here's what you do: announce the immediate and total end of the TARP program, and demand that every bank that still has TARP money pay back every penny immediately. I guarantee, you'll see a lot of executive bonuses get cancelled as banks scramble to come up with the cash. And if a bank can't survive without the TARP money, hey, that's why we have the FDIC: to save the customers of the failed bank so they don't lose their money. The failed bank goes away, and the surviving banks learn a lesson: don't do what that failed bank did.

That's capitalism. The free market already has incentives built into it for businesses to make the right decisions and avoid the wrong ones. Let those incentives work.

Yuppie 911? What does that have to do with banks?
I'll tell you. Wilderness rescue teams all across the country are dealing with a new phenomenon. Thanks to continued technology improvements for things like cell phones, GPS units, and emergency locator beacons, more and more people are going out into the woods and the mountains on camping and hiking trips. Unfortunately, many of these people have little or no wilderness survival experience. They get out into the wild, something goes wrong that they weren't properly prepared for, and they're immediately on their cell phone crying for help. Rescue crews have dubbed it "Yuppie 911."

On that topic, there's a wonderful quote from the head of Search and Rescue operations in California, a guy by the name of Matt Scharper:

	County still bleeding cash; Cocoa shoots themselves in the foot
	Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Only a 30-minute show tonight due to Orlando Magic basketball at 8:35pm, but here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Cocoa orders stop to building restoration -- when it was almost done!
So, let me get this straight. A historic but long-abandoned business building in Cocoa is slated for demolition. Last fall, a local family finds out, buys the building, and makes a deal with the city of Cocoa: if you give us some time, we'll renovate and restore the building for historic purposes. This will let the city get rid of an eyesore and hold on to a piece of its heritage at the same time, and everyone wins. So, the city says yes -- but gives the family a deadline of January 10th, 2010.

Time passes. The family collects some donations and gets to work. Progress on the building is obvious, and it looks better and better every day. But the donations dry up, so the family takes out a loan. The loan takes longer than expected to get approved, delaying some of the work, but eventually it gets approved, and work resumes. In early January, the biggest thing left to do is some repainting, but there's just one problem: the Great Cold Snap of 2010. Paint can't set properly if it's too cold, so the family waits for it to warm up.

And then the January 10th deadline comes.

At this point, the family has about a week's worth of work left, maybe less. The building already looks a lot better, and once the weather warms up, they'll be able to do the painting and some wrap-up work, and voila! A restored building.

Does the government of the city of Cocoa care? Nope. With only a week's worth of work left, the City of Cocoa has slapped the family with a cease-and-desist order. The weather is about to warm up, but the family won't be allowed to finish the painting work. Instead, the building will have to sit unfinished until the family can get a hearing with Cocoa's Code Enforcement Board on January 21st to get permission to finish the job. And keep in mind, if it weren't for the cease-and-desist order, the restoration work would probably have been finished before that date. It would've been finished one week after the original deadline. Now, it won't be finished until three weeks after the original deadline.

Only a government can think that a three-week delay in finishing a project is better than a one-week delay.

Let's say you have a project to do at your job, and your boss gives you a three-month deadline to get it done by. You work hard on it, but things go wrong, problems come up, and when the deadline comes up, you ask for another week to get it finished.

Will your boss be annoyed? Absolutely. But will your boss give you that extra week? Almost certainly. What he won't do is tell you to stop working immediately and wait two weeks for a meeting to decide whether or not you should get that one-week extension. Why? Because that's stupid, that's why; you don't stop all progress for two weeks while you decide whether to extend a deadline by another week. That just leaves you with a project that's three weeks late instead of just one. And any boss who did that would have to answer to his boss for it.

But government thinks it's okay.

And we want that sort of thinking to be in charge of our health-care decision-making? Yikes.

County tax revenue continues to shrink
The next budget could be short by as much as $18 million. Still don't think we're spending too much money?

Titusville votes 3-2 to suspend impact fees for 2 years
Mayor Jim Tulley and Martha Long voted No. Apparently they haven't driven around Titusville lately. That city needs MORE businesses and residents to come in, and taxing them extra to come in will just chase them away.

Pat McCrary steps down from Cocoa City Council due to illness
I wish her well in her recovery. Now let's replace her with someone who won't waste our money on bringing the Cocoa Village Ice Rink back.

More detail on County Commission's horse-dropping reversal
Why aren't these horses already wearing dropping-bags? That's what other riders do in other parts of the state, and they can use them here too.

Melbourne suspends "gated" street parties
Nothing like handcuffing local business during a down economy. Who needs to make money, anyway?

Melbourne leaves debate time limits in place for council members
Mayor Goode laughs evilly, rubs hands together, looks menacingly at Councilwoman Joanne Corby. (Well, no, not really, but it wouldn't have surprised me.)
 

	Quake hits Haiti, ice hits Florida, race hits Harry
	Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 8:30pm

Here's what we're talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Breaking News: 7.0 earthquake hits Haiti
A 7.0 earthquake has struck Haiti tonight, prompting a tsunami watch for parts of the Caribbean that was later cancelled. This quake is awful news for an impoverished island nation that can barely withstand a tropical storm, let alone a major earthquake centered 10 miles from the capital city. The only silver lining on this dark cloud is that no tsunami developed, so we most likely have nothing to worry about here in Brevard.

But pray tonight for the people of Haiti. They'll need every bit of help they can get.

Climate scientists: we may be starting a 30-year cold cycle
The climate gets warmer and colder in regular cycles? Wow. Who would've guessed that? Probably the most interesting part of the article is the fact that many scientists who believe in global warming back up the idea that we're entering a 30-year cool period, though they insist that the overall trend of earth's climate over a longer-term scale is still upward.

Here's what I think they're overlooking: temperatures world-wide were unusually cool in the 70s, prompting fears of a coming global ice age at the time. That would've been the end of the last 30-year cold-cycle. Then the temperatures warmed up worldwide in the 80s and 90s and leveled off in the 00s, prompting the opposite fear of permanent global warming. That would've been the 30-year warm-cycle. Now we're ending that and going back into the next 30-year cold-cycle again.

Gee. Could it possibly be true that the warming in the 80s and 90s was nothing more than a natural, regular cycle in the world's weather? Nah, couldn't be. Our climate models insist that the world is going to keep getting warmer. Never mind that those same models predicted continuous and massive warming in the 00s that never materialized. Never mind that we can't even predict the weather three days with dependable accuracy. If our models say it's gonna happen, it must be true!

But to turn off the sarcasm for a second, just a reminder: the recent cold snap in Florida and the USA is weather. Global warming or cooling or whatever is climate. Weather and climate are two different things. And a cold snap in the middle of winter (when cold snaps are known to occur) doesn't disprove global warming, just like a warm spell in the middle of summer (when warm spells are known to occur) doesn't prove global warming either. Both sides of this debate routinely get weather and climate mixed up, and it drives me crazy.

Harry Reid opens mouth, inserts foot
But does he really deserve the trouble he's in? I'm not entirely convinced he does. Basically, what Reid was saying is that the fact that then-candidate Barack Obama was lighter skinned and doesn't talk in an urban dialect would make it easier for him to win the Presidency. Certainly insensitive to say, but... isn't it sadly true? There are people in this country, sad as it is, who probably did find it easier to vote for Obama for precisely the reasons Reid listed. It troubles me to think about it, but I really get uncomfortable with the idea of punishing people for speaking uncomfortable truths.

Don't count me on the list of people demanding that Reid step down as Senate Majority Leader. I don't like Reid's politics, and I'm troubled by his words, but that's as far as I can go on this.

Crist loses straw poll 2-to-1...
...in his home county! I guess that's why he's suddenly pushing for a sales-tax holiday on school supplies. Where was he the last two years when the tax-holiday didn't happen?

Horse pucky! County Commission reverses vote on horse-droppings
Better clean it up, people!

IRS commissioner can't understand his own tax code!
He has to use a tax preparer every year. Time to simplify the tax code? Or better yet, implement the FairTax?
 

	Snow and guns in Cocoa; Greer bows out
	Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

"Best Of" show coming up on Monday night!
I'll be taking the night off next Monday night, January 11th, to take care of some personal business, but don't worry, because I have a treat for you. I'm proud of the live show I did on New Year's Eve, but I'm fully aware a lot of you might not have been tuned in that night. So I'm giving you an encore presentation of my live New Year's Eve show next Monday night, January 11th at 8pm right here on the Talk-To-Me Station AM-1300 WMEL! And then I'll be back in the studio for a live show on Tuesday night, January 12th.

Rep. Posey to hold town-hall meeting next Monday
Just a reminder, south Brevard's Congressman Bill Posey will be holding a town-hall meeting for the public next Monday, January 11th, from 2pm to 4pm at the Holiday Inn in Viera, on Wickham Road right by I-95. If you can go, be there! Details are here, and you can RSVP here.

Snow in Cocoa?
And no, I'm not talking about cocaine. I'm talking about actual, real, honest-to-God snow flurries that could be falling on Cocoa on Friday night and Saturday morning. And not just Cocoa. Rockledge, Titusville, Melbourne, Palm Bay, all of Brevard County. It's in the official forecast:

	Cocoa ice-rink meltdown; redistricting fight looms
	Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Rep. Posey to hold town-hall meeting next Monday
South Brevard's Congressman Bill Posey will be holding a town-hall meeting for the public next Monday, January 11th, from 2pm to 4pm at the Holiday Inn in Viera, on Wickham Road right by I-95. If you can go, be there! Details are here, and you can RSVP here.

Cocoa falls through the ice -- again
Looks like the Cocoa Village "outdoor" ice skating rink is going to lose money for the city again. This should not be a surprise. I laid out the case in late 2008 for what a bad idea the Cocoa Village "outdoor" ice rink was the first time it was tried. I told you last year how much money the city of Cocoa lost. And when the Cocoa City Council decided to try it again this Christmas, I warned you about what would happen. And what happened? Attendance at the Cocoa Village ice rink for Christmas 2009 is on-track to be lower than for Christmas 2008.

Meanwhile, while the Cocoa City Council earmarked more of your money for this boondoggle, the crime rate in Cocoa continued to rise, the drug problem continued to grow, and more people were murdered. And I just can't help but wonder if using the money spent on the ice rink to hire another police officer instead might have helped things a little.

Redistricting fight ahead for Florida
One meandering State House district here in Brevard may get redrawn, and efforts are under way to how the federal House districts are drawn in Florida as well.

Cash For Clunkers for appliances?
Here it comes...

Arizona may get rid of their speed cameras
Why? They're losing money. Oh, wait, I thought these cameras weren't about the money!
 

	A look back, and then a look forward
	Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 8:00pm

It's New Year's Eve, and I'm doing a live radio show tonight! I'm planning to keep things a little lighter than usual, so tune in and call in, and let's have some fun.

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Back at the beginning
Back when I first revived VinceYoung.com as a blog on local news and politics back in July 2008, one of the first stories I went in-depth on was the saga of Thijs Stelling and his service station in Melbourne Beach. It was a story I'd been following for several years on my own anyway, and I felt it was a great example of a small-minded government run amok. A small business owner in a small town wanted to expand his tiny gas station in order to make more money and benefit his fellow townspeople at the same time. But the Melbourne Beach Town Commission saw it as an opportunity to flex their muscle and show Stelling who was the boss, under the guise of protecting the "small-town feel" of Melbourne Beach. They almost destroyed it instead. After they spent years tying up Stelling's expansion plans in red tape, Stelling decided he'd had enough and put his property up for sale... to Walgreens.

Fortunately, the story ended up with a happy ending for all involved. The Town Commission finally agreed to stop holding up Stelling's expansion plans, and he agreed to halt the sale of his land to Walgreens. And now, as we get ready to ring in a new year, Thijs Stelling is getting a new start as construction begins on his new, expanded service station. It's ridiculous that it took this long to get to this point, but I'm absolutely ecstatic that personal freedom won out over government arrogance in this case.

Here's hoping that trend continues in the year 2010 all across the United States of America.

The legal blood-alcohol level for driving in South Dakota is 0.080.
Why am I telling you that? So I can tell you this. A woman in South Dakota was recently arrested for DUI. Her blood-alcohol level? 0.708. That's over seven times higher than the legal limit. Put it another way: a blood-alcohol level of 0.400 would be fatal for about half of the general population. And it gets better too if you read the rest of the story.

Fox-Bright House fight coming down to the wire
Could be a lot of frustrated Gator fans on Friday night... a judge today refused to order that the Sugar Bowl be shown, and the FCC says they're hoping for a resolution but that they won't intervene either. Good. This is a private business matter between two private companies. And as frustrating as it might be that people won't be able to watch the Sugar Bowl, there is simply no constitutional mandate for a football game to be shown on television. Government's only role in this fight is to make sure that both Fox and Bright House honor the terms of whatever agreement they eventually reach.

Don't forget, though... you can hear the Sugar Bowl (and all Florida Gators football games) right here on The Talk-To-Me Station AM-1300 WMEL! Pre-game coverage starts on New Year's Day at 6:30pm.

Urban Meyer wanted his chest pains kept private
What's wrong with that? Some people, especially in the media, are acting as if Meyer has something to apologize about for lying about why he went to the hospital in early December. It's a private medical matter. He doesn't have to tell anybody a darn thing about why he went to the hospital, just like you don't have to. And that's the way it should be.

Florida legislature readies constitutional challenge to Senate health care bill
Good to see a state government taking a stand against our over-reaching federal government.

12 GOP donors urge Jim Greer to quit
He needs to. Republicans in Florida have lost confidence in Greer's leadership of the state party, and it's hurting the party's fund-raising. It's time for him to leave.
 

	Unpaved roads, tasers restricted, and McCollum goes to court
	Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

John Mazziotti misses the point
Interesting article from Palm Bay in Florida Today this morning... a resident living on an unpaved road off of DeGroodt Road put up a homemade sign reading "All I want 4 Christmas is this road paved." Interesting expression of frustration with the number of roads in Palm Bay that remain unpaved, but not really news, right?

Well, this is. Florida Today went to Palm Bay Mayor John Mazziotti for a response. Here's his whole quote as it appeared in the paper, emphasis added by me:

	Pants on fire: Islamic terrorists AND Florida Today!
	Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Ominous warning from attempted plane bomber
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man who ignited an explosive substance in his pants in a failed attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit on Christmas, has an ominous warning: he is the first of many. A branch of Al Qaeda has already claimed responsibility for the attempted attack, which seems to have taken full advantage of more relaxed airport security rules in overseas airports. And if what the burned bomber is telling us is correct, there will be more such attempts in the future.

There are still some people who claim the threat from radical Islamic terrorism is overblown and always has been. Sorry, but just look at the attacks that have either been carried out or the attempts that have been thwarted recently. The massacre at Fort Hood by a radical Muslim who sympathized with suicide bombers. The shooting attack on a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas by another radical Muslim in the summer of 2009. The failed plot to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey by a group of radical Muslim men in 2007. And the continued heartache of suicide attacks and bombings in cities all around the world, attacks that are so commonplace that they often get scant media attention here in the USA because we've simply gotten used to seeing them.

This threat is not over. It is only beginning. And it's only thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan that the threat posed by radical Islam isn't even more severe. Al Qaeda is a shadow of its former self, which is why it often struggles to carry out even relatively simple attacks on American targets. But they're still trying, and if we let our guard down, sooner or later they will spill more innocent blood on American soil.

Do not even try to tell me this isn't a threat.

Fear and loathing in Orlando
Of course, at the other end of the scale is this interesting story from over the weekend. The initial story is that two Middle-Eastern men were behaving oddly on a passenger flight from Orlando to Phoenix, which led to the men being detained and questioned when their flight landed. They were quickly released and allowed to finish their trip after authorities determined they weren't a threat.

So, what was their "odd behavior"?

- They were talking loudly in a foreign language. Well, duh. They're Middle Eastern. They're speaking to each other in the language they know best. And some people talk more loudly than others. What's the big deal here?

- They were watching what appeared to be footage of a suicide bombing attack in the Middle East on a portable DVD player. You know what it turned out to be? An American movie from 2007 called "The Kingdom," starring Jamie Fox and set in the Middle East about -- you guessed it -- Islamic terrorism.

- One of the men stood up while the "Fasten Seat Belt" light was still lit. Okay, that's probably a good way to get tackled by an air marshall, and it's certainly not smart, but it happens more often then people realize. Typical response? A stewardess tells them to sit back down, and that's it.

Vigilance is good, but try not to let it creep over into paranoia. 99.9% of the Middle Eastern people you meet in your life are not suicide bombers bent on killing you in a blaze of religious glory, y'know. And as much as it may shock you to realize this, more than a few terrorist bombs in history have been set off by white guys.

Manatee statistics: guess the headline!
Okay, two manatee statistics for you to consider. In 2009, a record number of living manatees were counted in Florida: 3,802. And in 2009, a record number of manatee deaths were reported: 419.

Take one guess which statistic got the Florida Today headline, and which statistic got buried 11 paragraphs into the same story.

If you have a record number of manatees, and if the manatee death rate stays the same, you're going to get a record number of manatee deaths. It's basic math. The story here should be that the efforts to save the manatee are working. This is good news. Instead, Florida Today can't bring themselves to admit it, so this is the story they run instead.

Typical.

Should Pete Townshend of The Who be banned from performing at the Super Bowl?
Some say "Yes". Never mind the circumstances behind WHY he used to be a registered sex offender in the UK, or that he's not registered anymore.
 

	Rupe Request ends; Posey pulls a Paul; Crist slips
	Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 8:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Rupe Request sputters to an ending
First of all, a hearty welcome to Florida Today for finally running a story on the Rupe Request. Welcome to the party, guys! We've been covering this issue here on WMEL and on my website since November 17th, of course, but hey, better late than never.

I got a chance to watch the video of last week's County Commission meeting at which the Rupe Request was discussed. Yes, the Commissioners voted 4-1 (with Trudie Infantini casting the only No-vote) to waive Maureen Rupe's $595 fee for requesting 4,200 printed pages of public records, despite the fact that Maureen Rupe was told in an e-mail on September 29th what the total fee would be. The reason? Because on November 12th, Assistant County Manager Stockton Whitten unilaterally decided to waive that fee, completely on his own and without legal authority or permission to do so. After Whitten waived the fee, that's when Maureen Rupe finally came down to Viera to pick up the printouts.

Bear in mind, Howard Tipton had already taken over as the County Manager at that point, outranking Stockton Whitten. I guarantee you, if I gave away $595 worth of radio advertising on WMEL for free without checking with WMEL's owner first, I'd no longer have a radio show. And why did Whitten take this extraordinary step? Because he felt bad about how long it had taken the county to comply with Maureen Rupe's public records request. Believe me, I found the delay in fulfilling that request to be troubling, but six hundred bucks' worth of troubling? No way. No friggin' way.

But here's the really great part. Check out this quote from Stockton Whitten at last week's County Commission meeting as he explained his mindset:

	Who the hell is Vince Young?
	Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 10:30am

Okay, time to update my official biography for this website. The old one's kinda out of date at this point...

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.

So, who the hell am I? I'm a radio talk-show host, heard every weeknight from 8pm to 9pm on The Talk-To-Me Station AM-1300 WMEL in Cocoa, Florida, right smack in the middle of Brevard County and the Space Coast. (EDIT: I ended the radio show in May 2010, though I still work behind-the-scenes at WMEL.) I'm in my early 30s and I live in the city of Palm Bay, the largest city in Brevard County. I take a keen interest in news and politics, especially at the local level of city and county governments, but also state and national news as well. That's the focus of my radio show and of this website, but occasionally I allow myself to be distracted by such topics as Notre Dame football, the Orlando Magic, hurricanes and tropical storms, 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 better than you do. :)

My history with radio goes all the way back to my childhood, when several chance events led to me becoming "Vince Young, Young Meteorologist," a regularly-featured call-in guest on the Scott & Erica Morning Show on Mix 105.1 in Orlando for a short stint in the early 90s. Right around the same time, I started listening to talk radio and continued to listen all through my high school years. So when I went to Villanova for college, it only seemed natural to move from being a listener to being a host. I joined the panel on a political roundtable radio show on the campus radio station WXVU-FM, watched as the other panelists slowly got bored and dropped off one by one, and eventually turned the program into The Vince Young Show. I also discovered the local political talk radio hosts on WWDB-FM and WPHT-AM in nearby Philadelphia and became a regular caller on their programs, especially the legendary Rollye James.

After shocking the world by somehow flunking out of college, I returned home to Florida in 2000 and pondered my future. It didn't take long for me to get introduced to John Harper, owner of AM-920 WMEL in Melbourne, the station that would later become AM-1300 WMEL in Cocoa. He took a chance, brought me on-board, and put me on-the-air, and the rest is history. I've joined and left and re-joined WMEL several times over the years, serving in a variety of roles both on-the-air and behind the scenes and meeting some great people and some awesome listeners along the way. And I'm absolutely thrilled to be back on WMEL, hosting a political radio talk-show every night and giving the people of Brevard a chance to have their say.

But back to the year 2000... when I first joined WMEL, I decided I needed a website for my radio 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. :)
 

	Who would you prefer: Obama or Dubya?
	Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 8:00pm

This has been a busy week, so once again, no time tonight for detailed notes. But here's links to all the news stories I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

President Obama's approval number remains below 50%
Scott Rasmussen has the numbers here: 47% approve of Obama's performance, 51% disapprove, and 2% think Tiger Woods shouldn't have crashed that White House party. A popular president is better for the nation's economy, so even though I don't like Obama or his policies, I wish he could at least straighten things out and get above 50%. Cutting spending and backing off on health care "reform" might help his numbers...

Who would you rather have as President, Barack Obama or George W. Bush?
A recent poll shows Obama only leads Dubya 50% to 44%. Tough one for me here... I'm actually tempted to say Obama, but I really don't like that at all.

Should the Florida Supreme Court convene a panel on wrongful convictions?
A prominent lawyer has asked them to do just that. I agree.

Lamplighter Village protests $39/month rent increase?!? That's all?
They literally picketed the office of the well-known mobile home park. Sorry, but if a rental company's expenses go up, shouldn't they be allowed to raise their rent price in order to stay profitable?

Judges and lawyers in Florida can't be Facebook-friends
Makes sense to me.
 

	Democrats order another round of debt!
	Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 8:00pm

Okay, I ran way short on time tonight and only had enough time left for one thing: eat dinner with my wife, or putting up in-depth program notes on my website. Guess which one I chose. :)

So, no notes tonight, but something is better than nothing, so here's links to the news stories I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Dems want to raise debt ceiling another $1.8 trillion
New total: $13.9 trillion! Remember when it was going to be "just" $13.1 trillion?

Norwegians miffed by Obama's Nobel Prize event snubs
President Barack Obama went to Norway today to pick up his Nobel Peace prize, but some Norwegians are insulted that he's skipping some of today's events and skipping out on tomorrow's events entirely. Good. I'm with President Obama on this one. He knows he hasn't done anything to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, so it would be ridiculous for him to make a big deal out of it. But it would also be unforgivably rude to turn it down entirely. So, he's splitting the middle, and Norway needs to get over it. Next time, maybe they should pick someone who actually deserves the award.

Palm Bay to consider community gardens
IF they keep the expenses low and make the gardeners themselves pay for it, this could actually be a good idea. Worth a shot.

Sen. John Kerry will fly commercial to Copenhagen
Credit where credit is due, I guess. Now, if only he could convince other delegates to do the same. Gotta save the planet, you know.
 

	Tiger Woods is news? NASA gets money. And Obama wants tax cuts?
	Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 8:00pm

Apologies for the short notes again, but I want to make sure I have something up here for you. So here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

I could barely care less about Tiger Woods
Congress is trying to take away our ability to make our own health care decisions. Government officials around the world want to restrict our lives over scientific conclusions based on faulty, manipulated data. Our national debt continues to grow, and despite this our nation's fiscal policy is to continue spending, printing, and borrowing money. Our state legislature is spending over a billion dollars that it doesn't even have on rail lines nobody's going to use. Our local animal shelters are falling apart, our School Board is redrawing our school districts, one local city is debating an important step for the future of their economy, and another city is considering wasting your money on a wasteful legal fight they will almost certainly lose.

And you want me to talk about Tiger Woods?

Ask yourself this. Can Tiger Woods take your money away from you at the point of a gun without any legal consequences for it? No. Can Tiger Woods arbitrarily change the way you live your everyday lives? No. Can Tiger Woods do anything that has any real impact on your life? No.

I really can't believe how much attention the Tiger Woods story is getting from talk radio. You'd think nothing important was going on anywhere else in the world at all. Sorry, but I have more important things to talk about, and I'm going to talk about them.

Congress agrees to boost funding for NASA and Ares
It's about time Congress showed NASA some love. It seems like NASA is the only federal agency that is asked to do such important work with such little funding, and while I'm all for forcing government to do more with less, that idea has been taken to the extreme with NASA while other bloated agencies are held to very little accountability at all.

Obama calls for tax cuts for small businesses
Well, it's not much, but it's something. It's good to see a liberal president acknowledge that cutting taxes can spur economic growth. Now if we could only convince him to extend that thinking to the rest of the nation, and this economy might be able to get somewhere...

Some parents still don't get it on school redistricting
Some Brevard schools are overcrowded, and some are under capacity. Sorry, but there's just no way to keep every student in the school where their parents want them to be, and there's no way for every student to be in an A-grade school. The School Board is going to have to move some kids around, and this problem is not going away.
 

	SunRail passes while budget deficit swells
	Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 8:00pm

Short notes tonight, unfortunately, but here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Haridopolos will be the next State Senate President
Remember when he was just an "Aw, shucks!" modest community college professor? The transformation of Mike Haridopolos into a total political animal has been one of the most frustrating things I've watched here in Brevard politics. It's amazing what political power can do to a man.

State Senate passes SunRail bill
The vote was 27-10, and once again both of Brevard's state senators voted for it, both Thad Altman and Mike Haridopolos. This bill will spend over $400 million of our money on a new commuter rail system for the Orlando area, set aside even more money for high-speed rail lines between Florida's urban centers that nobody will ride, and bail out south Florida's cash-hemorrhaging Tri-Rail system. Total price tag: $1.2 b-b-b-billion, all while the state budget is staring down a deficit of $2.5 billion next year. We just don't have this money to spend!

Swelling debt threatens USA's AAA bond rating!
If the USA's debt rating is downgraded, it would send shockwaves through the world economy. So why does President Obama keep spending, borrowing, and printing money?!?

Titusville considers impact fee moratorium
Good. These impact fees do nothing but drive businesses away. And have you looked around Titusville lately? They need all the help they can get.

Blizzard hits Midwest
In other words, it's December. Blizzards aren't exactly rare in the Midwest in December, ya know. So why are so many global warming skeptics suggesting that this somehow disproves global warming? I'm a global warming skeptic too, but we're not going to get anywhere by taking normal, expected weather events and blowing them out of proportion. Besides, that's weather. The global warming debate is about climate. Weather and climate are two entirely different things... something both sides of the debate like to ignore.
 

	Rent-A-Cow costing us money? Plus Melbourne plans appeal
	Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 7:30pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

"Rent-A-Cow" saves developers from high property taxes
Florida Today had a great article over the weekend on how developers in Brevard, stuck with large plots of land that can't be developed right now thanks to the real estate bust, are getting property tax breaks by declaring their land is used for agricultural purposes. Basically, agricultural land gets taxed at a lower rate than other land under our current property tax system. It's meant to help out family farmers and ranchers, who need to own large swaths of land in order to farm properly. But by planting a few trees or literally renting some cows, developers can declare their land to be agricultural and cash in as well. It can save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on just one plot of land. And it's perfectly legal, thanks to the way the law is written.

	Confederates sue, high-speed rail chugs on, and parents whine
	Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 7:15pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Confederate Heritage license plates? Why?
The Sons of Confederate Veterans are moving forward with a federal lawsuit against the state of Florida. Why? Because they want a Confederate Heritage specialty license plate to be available to drivers in the state of Florida, but the State Legislature in Tallahassee won't approve it. The Confederate group says the approval process for specialty plates in Florida is unfair; hence the lawsuit.

	Obama FINALLY decides on Afghanistan; Sunshine Law; Climategate
	Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 7:00pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Obama to announce Afghanistan plans tonight
Tonight at 8pm, we'll go live to President Barack Obama's prime-time address to hear his new plan for Afghanistan. I'll probably just carry the speech live from CNN for the first few minutes, and then cut back to my program and give you the chance to call in and respond.

	Infantini on the show tonight; Steve Crisafulli wants to raise taxes?
	Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 7:30pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Looks like Tiger Woods needs a new driver.
There. I mentioned Tiger Woods and worked in a golf pun. Happy? Good. Now let's talk about something that actually matters

County Commissioner Trudie Infantini on the show tonight!
The county commissioner at the center of the Rupe Request will be on the first segment of my program via telephone tonight. We'll ask Trudie Infantini about both of the serious questions that have been raised regarding Maureen Rupe's much-discussed public records request to the county.

	Daily Bread wins expansion fight; global warming crowd caught fudging numbers?
	Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 7:00pm

Tonight is the last episode of The Vince Young Show before Thanksgiving, and I'm going to use it to catch up on some other stories other than the Rupe Request. Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8pm on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Court rules in favor of Daily Bread soup kitchen
The circuit court of appeals has ruled that Melbourne can't stop the Daily Bread soup kitchen from expanding. The nearby residents won't be happy, and neither will the City Council. But the Council has nobody to blame but themselves. Instead of working with the Daily Bread to find an alternate site for the soup kitchen to get it out of the residential neighborhood it's currently in, they decided to play silly legal games in a futile attempt to keep them from expanding at all. I really feel for the residents there, because having such a high homeless population in their backyard is a disruption and increasingly dangerous, but if the City Council had taken this issue seriously and looked for a longer-term solution, this all could've been resolved to everyone's satisfaction a while ago.

	Maureen Rupe on the show tonight; fight back, get fired?
	Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 6:30pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Maureen Rupe on the program tonight!
(To get yourself up to speed on the Rupe Request, please see my previous entries on this topic here, here, here, here, and here.)

In the first segment of tonight's program, we'll speak directly with the person at the center of the recent Rupe Request debate: Maureen Rupe herself! She'll talk to me and you about how a simple public records request about Brevard County's budget got so complicated, why she says she shouldn't be charged the $595 in fees the County now says she owes them, and if she can back up her allegation that County Commissioner Trudie Infantini is conducting official county business on a private e-mail account to avoid the Sunshine Law.

Speaking of, I'm still waiting for Maureen Rupe to e-mail that evidence to me. But she still has time before we go on the air, and she may just be busy, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for now.

So, why the big deal over $595 again?
So, why am I making such a big deal out of $595 that may or may not be owed to a County government with a budget of over a billion dollars? I'll tell you why. First of all, big government budgets are broken $595 at a time. If a government makes it a routine habit of making stupid decisions that cost them "small" amounts of money on a regular basis, those "small" amounts will start adding up fast. That's money that could be better-spent on things like school funding, road maintenance or crime prevention instead of being wasted frivolously. And a government that gets reckless with "small" amounts of money is a government that will soon get reckless with larger amounts of money. Better to stop it early.

There's more to this than just the money too. If the County Manager has employees who are literally forgetting to tell citizens they owe $595 for printouts of public records, then what other mistakes are being made? Conversely, if the County Manager has employees who will shy away from collecting money that is rightfully owed to the government just because the person who owes the money gets a little grumpy over it, that's literally the first step on the road to anarchy, and it's also unfair to the taxpayers of this county who will have to eat that expense in the form of higher taxes. One of those two scenarios has taken place. I don't know which scenario it was, but either way, action is needed from new County Manager Howard Tipton to get his employees back in line.

There's also the issue of whether or not a County Commissioner is discussing official county business on a private, personal Gmail account. Maureen Rupe says that a couple of the e-mails she received as part of her public records request were sent from Trudie Infantini's Gmail address, and if that's true, it needs to be addressed. I take the Sunshine Law very seriously. We've tried closed government before -- heck, much of the legislative work by Congress in Washington DC is STILL behind closed doors -- and we've seen that it doesn't work. Instead, it promotes corruption and bad government. Assuming Rupe's allegations are correct, I want to know the full story. As I've said before, there could easily be an innocent explanation for this, and Infantini may just have been careless, not corrupt. But we deserve to know how deep the rabbit hole goes.

And finally, there's a personal connection here. My radio program and website have been used to make potentially serious allegations against a sitting, duly-elected public official. If those allegations are legit, the voters deserve justice. If those allegations are baseless, then Infantini deserves to be cleared. Either way, it's time to get this resolved. And since this went down on my radio show and my website, it's up to me to make that happen.

So, yeah... it's all a bit bigger than just a $595 bill for photocopies, isn't it?

Should workers be fired for fighting back against robbers?
Interesting story in the Orlando Sentinel today. Two masked men with a shotgun tried to rob a bagel shop in Orlando early this morning. The workers in the shop fought back by pushing a bagel cart at the robbers, and the robbers responded -- by running away at top speed. The robbers had a shotgun, they wore masks, and they thought it would be easy to intimidate the workers into forking over the cash. When the robbers got a different reaction than what they were counting on, it scared them off.

	Sunshine Law issues pop up again; store owner defends himself with a gun
	Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 7:30pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Rupe Request round-up
After I first talked about the Rupe Request on Tuesday night's radio show, I posted a follow-up piece the next day on reactions to that night's program. To gather my thoughts, I ended up posting up both sides of the story as they had been explained to me, both from the county's side and from Maureen Rupe's side.

Basically, it looks like there's two questions. First, does Maureen Rupe actually owe that $595 fee for having that large public records request printed out? I'm getting disputed information on whether or not Rupe was told about that fee before she picked up the printouts (in which case she owes the money, hands-down) or after, and whether or not a county employee mistakenly told her there'd be no charge for the printouts. And the second question is this: is County Commissioner Trudie Infantini using her personal Gmail account to hide discussions of county issues from the public record? Rupe claims that she uncovered this during the course of this records request. I'd like to see if Rupe can back that up, and I also want to know if it actually means anything or not. Follow those links for the whole story.

Grocery store owner shoots armed robber. Good.
I always love to see stories of law-abiding citizens using firearms to defend themselves against criminals. Don't want to get shot? Don't commit felonies. Easy enough.

Two West Melbourne city council members broke the Sunshine Law? Uh-oh...
Fortunately, it looks like it wasn't much of a violation. It's worth mentioning though, especially since I endorsed John D'Amico for re-election earlier this month.

Senate Republicans want Harry Reid's health care bill to be read-in-full... out loud!
All it takes is one Senator to force it to happen. Official rules of the Senate. And the bill is so long it could take 34 hours to read it all. Why do we think bills that are this big are a good idea?

Climatologists are still asking: what happened to global warming?
The globe hasn't gotten any warmer for the past 10 years, and nobody seems sure why. Just goes to show you, we don't know nearly as much as we think we know.
 

	The Rupe Request: the view from Maureen Rupe
	Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 7:00pm

Alright, yesterday I gave you the county's side of the story on Maureen Rupe's recent county records request and whether or not she owes the county $595 for the printouts of those records. I was hoping to follow up immediately with Maureen Rupe's side but simply ran out of time yesterday, and I'm short on time today. But I'll do my best. I'm also hoping Rupe can provide more clarification and more backing documentation when she comes on The Vince Young Show early next week, either Monday night or Tuesday night, but what she's sent me so far raises some interesting questions.

To start, Maureen wanted me to correct the record on one point. I was under the mistaken impression that she's made several runs for political office in the past and I said so on the radio on Tuesday, but she tells me she's only run once, last year in the Democratic primary for a County Commission seat. It's a small point that's really not all that relevant to the overall discussion, and she's certainly been active in other ways, including serving on the Port St. John community advisory board for several years, and I'm also told she was active in the failed effort to incorporate Port St. John into a city. So it's not like she's a complete political outsider either. But I was incorrect to say she'd made several runs for elected office, and that was incorrect, so I'll correct it here, and I'll correct it tonight on the radio. Might as well get it right, right?

She tells me I got other things wrong too, but it looks to me like they fall into the category of disputed versions of events, and I don't know enough yet to declare which version of events is correct, so I'll let those point shake out as I learn more on my own.

Okay... the e-mailed account from County Manager Stockton Whitten says this all started in August, but Maureen Rupe says it actually began shortly earlier in late July with a request to the county for some information on the upcoming county budget. She soon heard back from the county's IT department that the information she wanted would be difficult to get to, so Rupe decided to simplify things by just asking for 3 months' worth (April, June, July) of the official county e-mails for County Commissioner Trudie Infantini so that Rupe could just search those e-mails herself to find the information she wanted. As Mrs. Rupe put it in her second e-mail to me, "I said I would take 3 months total emails as they do this all the time with no problem."

Point of contention here... in Mrs. Rupe's first e-mail to me, she disputed my statement on the air that Mrs. Rupe has a history of making public records requests. (Which, by the way, I think is a good thing, not a bad thing. I like seeing involved citizens.) She wanted me to retract it, but from her second e-mail, it sounds like she certainly has some familiarity with the process of requesting public records. And again, I think that's good. I really don't know why she has a problem with me saying that.

Another point of contention... Lindy McKinney's sources tell her the request was for all of Infantini's e-mails from since she took office, not just the previous three months. Mrs. Rupe says that's incorrect. And I don't know who is correct since the internal county e-mail from Stockton Whitten doesn't address that issue, so I'll lay that dispute out for you here and try to get an answer on it later. But again, I'm not sure it matters. Whether it was just three months of Infantini's e-mails or all of Infantini's e-mails, they're all public records anyway, and anybody can request them for whatever reason they want. So, continuing...

Mrs. Rupe asked permission to go to Viera and just look through the relevant e-mails on a computer in Trudie Infantini's office, which she tells me we have a right to do in the state of Florida. I don't have time to run a detailed search through the state code to find it, but perhaps Mrs. Rupe can point me in the right direction. Anyway, she was refused permission to do that, but the county staff offered to e-mail the files to Maureen Rupe, which they did... as the aforementioned PST files, then later as the aforementioned PDF files, and then still later with the PDF files burned to a CD instead of e-mailed, which Maureen Rupe paid a $30 fee for.

Remember, Assistant County Manager Stockton Whitten says that Maureen Rupe was complaining that she couldn't open PST files or PDF files on her computer. Maureen Rupe disputes that, saying that she could in fact open those PDF files just fine, but that the PDF files were incomplete and didn't include any of the attached files that were sent along with those e-mails. In the process of wrangling back and forth with the county on that issue, Mrs. Rupe states that a county employee advised her that County Commissioner Trudie Infantini uses two e-mail accounts: her official county e-mail address, and a personal e-mail address on Gmail.com.

Nothing unusual or nefarious there in and of itself. Plenty of government officials have personal e-mail accounts. But here's where it gets interesting. According to Maureen Rupe, the staffer went on to advise Mrs. Rupe that Infantini sometimes handles government business on that personal Gmail account, which the staffers don't have access to, so hence they wouldn't be able to meet Mrs. Rupe's request for all of Trudie Infantini's e-mails. Mrs. Rupe said she wanted access to Infantini's personal Gmail account to look for county-related e-mails, but Infantini refused to do so. Rupe says that Infantini later forwarded two county-related e-mails from her Gmail account to Rupe, but that's it. I haven't seen those e-mails myself, though I'd like to.

As for the $595 fee, Rupe forward to me an e-mail she got from Sally Lewis, the aforementioned county employee who was working on the public records request, dated September 22nd, 2009 at 8:18am, with the subject "Public info disk," which seems to refer to the files burned to CD that Rupe had already paid $30 for.

Maureen,

Following is the response from our I.T. Dept. about your problem with I.T.
Since you already paid, do you want me to just print this out?

Sally

	The Rupe Request: the view from Viera
	Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 8:30pm

(Yeah, I decided that this whole deal with Maureen Rupe's public records request needed a catchy title, and nothin' says "catchy" like alliteration. So, it's now The Rupe Request.)

	My Lawyer Made Me Change The Name Of This Entry So I Wouldn't Get Sued
	Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 9:45am

Bonus points if you got the reference to the band Fall Out Boy and their similarly-titled song. And don't read too much into it... I'm pretty much just amusing myself. :)

Speaking of fallout, wow, my Inbox blew up after last night's edition of The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL, with e-mails from Lindy McKinney, Trudie Infantini and Maureen Rupe. McKinney, of course, was on the show last night to help me introduce the topic of Maureen Rupe's recent public record information request to the Brevard County Commission and the questionable decision to waive the usual fee for printed hardcopies of those records.

Having McKinney on the show was quite literally Plan D. Plan A was Maureen Rupe so I could get her side of the story, but she turned out to be out of town on a day-trip and didn't get my e-mailed invitation until the show was over. Plan B was Assistant County Manager Stockton Whitten, the man who waived the printing fee, but no response from him at all. Plan C was County Commissioner Trudie Infantini, whose e-mails are at the center of the information request, but she didn't e-mail me back until 7:45pm, and I didn't get the chance to read her e-mails until I took my first commercial break at about 8:20pm, so we just couldn't coordinate things well enough to get her on the show by telephone. Complicating matters was yesterday's County Commission meeting, which tied up both Whitten and Infantini for much of the day.

When my microphone goes hot at 8:07pm after the top-of-the-hour news break, I have a show to do, and my listeners expect me to talk about something. Rupe's information request was my planned topic, but none of my preferred guests for that topic were available. Sadly, that's not unusual. The vast majority of my on-air invitations to people in the news are either ignored or rejected, so I had every reason to believe the same thing was happening once again in this case. So I moved forward with the information and the guest that were available to me at the time, in the hopes of opening up the conversation and starting the process to learn more. I'd say I accomplished that.

Maureen Rupe is now upset with me for not giving her side of the story, but I couldn't give her side because I didn't know her side. Now I do, and I'll still give her a chance to tell it. But when that microphone goes hot at 8:07pm, I don't have the luxury of saying, "Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I had a great topic lined up for you tonight, but since I haven't heard both sides, I'm going to avoid it completely and just play marimba music for you for the next hour. See you Thursday!" Instead, I worked with what I knew, and I did my best to make it clear that I was still working to get a more complete picture. Anything else would've been a dis-service to my audience.

There's clearly more to this story than just a disputed $595 bill for some photocopies... much more. My next show is this Thursday night, November 18th at 8pm, and I'm repeating my invitations to both Maureen Rupe and Trudie Infantini to be on the radio with me, preferably in seperate segments so that both sides can be heard fairly. In the meantime, watch this site throughout the day as I try to lay out the information I had both before last night's radio show and what I've learned since then.
 

	Public records request questioned; code enforcement goes wild
	Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 7:15pm

Short notes again today, but you'll live. :) Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

County employee waives $595 bill for copies of county records
Local conservative blogger Lindy McKinney has all the details and e-mail quotes... just go to her site and then run a text search for the name of Stockton Whitten, the Assistant County Manager of Brevard County. But here's the important bits. Local liberal activist Maureen Rupe recently put in a very LARGE public records request with the Brevard County government. After a bit of a delay, they e-mailed her the requested records in the form of some large PDF files so that she wouldn't have to pay through the nose to have them all printed out. But Rupe then claimed that her computer can't read PDF files and started complaining rather vocally that she felt the county wasn't properly complying with the state's public records laws... a pretty clear implied threat of a lawsuit. In response, Stockton Whitten agreed to have all of the requested records printed out and given to Rupe as hard-copies. Because of the size of the request, the County normally would've charged Rupe $595 in fees for printing those records, but Whitten waived that fee on the grounds that Rupe's computer can't open PDF files.

	Steele-d for a fight; bridge breaks again; environmentalists fibbing
	Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 7:15pm

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Brevard GOP chariman takes on state party
To be honest, I've never been the biggest fan of Jason Steele, but I'm definitely on his side in his ongoing fight with the Republican Party of Florida. Steele is the chairman of the Brevard Republican Executive Committee, and almost from the get-go, he's been publicly critical of state GOP chairman Jim Greer and his heavy-handed interference in local Republican primaries. That led one of Greer's local cronies, Travis Clinger, to file a formal grievance against Steele earlier this year in an attempt to have him stripped of his chairman's role. Brevard's Republicans rallied behind Steele, and in the end Steele was placed on probation instead.

	Fort Hood aftermath, EELS fight, and health care "reform"
	Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 7:15pm   (edited Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 11:30am)

Here's what I'll be talking about tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL. Call in at 321-631-1300!

Hasan was an Islamic terrorist. Period.
He shouted "Allahu akbar!" before he opened fire. He moved around the building methodically finishing off soldiers who had been merely injured during his initial attack. For quite some time, he's been openly critical of the United States and the Army, making positive comparisons between suicide bombers and soldiers who jump on grenades to save their comrades, and declaring the War On Terror to actually be a war on Islam. He made attempts to contact Al Qaeda online before his attack, and now some Muslim extremists are praising his actions.

	Breaking news: massacre at Ford Hood
	Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 7:00pm

Tonight at 8:00pm on The Vince Young Show on AM-1300 WMEL... everything else is on hold tonight as we deal with the breaking news of today's massacre at Fort Hood, an Army base outside of Killeen, Texas. The shooter, a major named Nidal Malik Hasan, shot 42 people, killing 11 of them, before being shot and killed himself by a civilian police officer. The victims are a combinatio