Panhandle Fantasies

The grisly Billings murders have their sensational aspects, which is why the news media keep desperately flogging it with breathless "breaking news" cable TV reports and front-page headlines. At bottom, however, we've always thought it was merely a story of a bunch of profoundly stupid low-lifes who committed an unspeakable crime with astonishing clumsiness, and left a household full of children bereft.

That's about it. We've seen no profound public policy issues in any of this.

But reformed ad-man Mark O'Brien found one for the Pensacola News Journal. He leaned back in his columnist's chair and endured more than three-plus hours of a videotaped interview of Hugh Wiggins, one of two husbands snagged simultaneously by accused accessory-after-the-fact, Pamela Long Wiggins.

One thing O'Brien learned is that Hugh Wiggins' "good friend" -- alleged trigger man and presumed lame-brain of the conspiracy, Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr. -- thought Hugh Wiggins was some sort of Mafia big-wig. This was an incorrect thought, of course, as anyone with eyes can tell.

For heavens' sake, look at the man! No one with any sense would allow this guy to bag groceries, much less be the conduit for a "Mexican drug cartel."

So, where's the public policy issue? Writes O'Brien, Wiggins developed his reputation as a "made guy" due --

to the fact that he owns lots of guns, partly because he likes weapons and partly because he fears "armed insurrection" if the United States doesn't change its ways.

"I love machines. Why do I have three bikes in the shop? I like machinery," said Wiggins, who intensified his gun collecting out of concern that President Barack Obama would push for gun control. "It looked to me like the Second Amendment was going to be in jeopardy."

Holy cow! Probably half the people in the Florida panhandle have the same political opinions as this goon.

Which makes one wonder.... Just how many more Hugh Wiggins are lurking out there among the Obama-hating masses of the Florida panhandle, busily fondling their joy sticks while fantasizing that they're defending the Constitution? And, what more do you suppose the Florida Legislature will do enable them?

Real People in Real Trouble

St. Petersburg Times:

A growing number of Americans who are 50 to 64 are losing their health insurance, casualties of rising unemployment and the increasing number of businesses that can't afford to cover their workers.The AARP estimates more than 7 million people in this age group are uninsured, a number that is rising fast and adding a new dimension to the national health care debate.
* * *
The newly uninsured who try to get coverage on their own are learning that it's often unaffordable at best, and virtually unavailable at worst.
* * *
Studies have shown that uninsured people are more likely to put off necessary treatments than people who are insured, and that can lead to declining health for them and higher public costs in the long run.

A new Harvard study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that people with intermittent or no health insurance end up costing Medicare $1,000 more per year when they turn 65 than those who had coverage all along.

And that's if they even reach Medicare age. Another Harvard study, published in the policy journal Health Affairs, found that the risk of death among uninsured people age 50-64 is 43 percent higher than it is for people with coverage.

Fox News and the Locofoco Connection

"Because traditional journalistic organizations have understood the Administration's push back against Fox an attack on journalism generally, and not as an attack on the newly emerging partisan press, these organizations, by rising to the defense of Fox News are helping to dig their own graves."

-- Jack Balkin

Law professor Jack Balkin today has the most penetrating analysis we've yet seen about the White House kerfuffle over Fox Cable News. Here is a distillation of his main points:

We have been witnessing the return of a twenty-first century version of the party presses of the late 18th and 19th centuries. These party presses have no obligation to be journalistically objective, and they are not. They may say, as Fox News does, that they separate out news coverage from editorial writing, as the Wall Street Journal has done for many years. But do not believe it. ...

This new form of journalism is not, strictly speaking, a "party press" in the early 19th century mold because it is not owned and operated directly or indirectly by a political party. It is, however, a "partisan press," because it is unabashedly partisan in its purposes and its product, including both editorial and news operations. Indeed, the two operations increasingly merge in the new partisan press, as they did in the nineteenth century party press. (Fox's protestations that it keeps these two elements of its product rigidly separate cannot really be taken seriously. ...)
* * *
Barack Obama's Administration is the first Administration that both faces a dominant and hostile new party press and has publicly recognized it as such. It is seeking to change politicians' (and Presidents') relationships to a media that has already changed for better or for worse. It is the first Presidency to recognize and adapt to the rise of a powerful party/partisan press, which, if the current decline of traditional newspapers continues, is likely to be an increasingly dominant form of journalism in this century.

The irony of the Administration's response to Fox News is its declaration that Fox is not a "legitimate" news organization. It is not a legitimate mid-twentieth century news organization. But it is a legitimate nineteenth century news organization and it could well be what twenty-first century news organizations increasingly look like..

Like Balkin, we've been struck by how closely today's emergent media echo the partisan and vituperative press of two centuries ago. For just a mild taste, check out the "news" item in the Trenton State Gazette, which appeared just a week before the 1848 presidential election, where you'll learn, "We all know that a locofoco cannot be trusted politically."

"Locofocos" [crazy lights] was a common Whig pejorative for Democratic Party sympathizers -- a party whose platform principles at the time favored states' rights, the conquest of Mexico, opposition to internal improvements [read: "stimulus"] funded by the federal government, and (for the most part) return of runaway slaves who sought refuge in free states. (Almost sounds like today's Republican Party, doesn't it?)

The Whigs, on the other hand, were so diffuse in their individual political views and factions that as party they didn't stand for much at all. But they were the closest thing to a Peace Party then available. A significant proportion of western Whigs favored federal financing of roads and canals linking the states together. Another faction insisted on complete abolition of slavery. No one faction could gain the ascendancy. (All of which sounds rather more like today's Democratic Party, doesn't?)

Also like Balkin, we would not be surprised if all "twenty-first century news organizations" become more partisan. Many social and economic parallels between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries augur well for such a development. By no means the only, but certainly one of them is the shrinking amount of leisure time available to the mass of people in the economic middle and below.

In the nineteenth century, both husbands (in the field or shop) and wives (at home and in the garden or field) worked long hours and were compelled to budget their leisure time as well as pinch their pennies. As the twenty-first century opened, things are looking very much more like a return to that condition for the mass of Americans.

If you have only an hour to spare every day to learn the political news, how would you rather spend it? With some columnist or media performer who shares your perspective or one who favors a world view you find repellent? In our household, She Who Must Be Obeyed tivos MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and not, god forbid, Bill O'Reilly. Time was when we watched Jim Lehrer's News Hour or BBC News, instead.

The thing to bear in mind is that the nineteenth century partisan press had a very tough time making a go of it, even as it became more one-sided and vituperative. Almost as many newspapers died as were born, as even a short recitation of newspaper history in one city illustrates.

If Balkin is right, you can look forward not only to more tendentiousness in your news, but also shorter-lived news entities from whom to get what you want.

Wall Street Bankers Hit the Tables - Again

Robert Reich:

"The Street is back to where it was in 2007, but most of the rest of us are poorer than we were then -- largely due to the meltdown that occurred because Wall Street overreached. The oddity is that we bailed out the Street, including Griffiths and his colleagues, but apparently won't even be repaid. And now that Griffiths et al knows his firm and the other big ones on the Street are too big to fail, he and his colleagues will make even bigger gambles in the future with our money."

Just call 1-800-Screwed

Pensacola Charter Question

We don't mean to step on anyone else's turf to argue for or against the proposed new charter for the City of Pensacola, which goes to a vote in late November when almost no one will be looking. Progressive Pensacola is doing a fine job describing the contending theoretical differences, as is Rick Outzen's Independent News.

We just want to ask one question. What makes anyone suppose the intelligence and discernment of Pensacola voters will be any more acute under a strong mayor-council system than under the mayor-city manager system we have now?

Oops. Change of plans. We'd like two follow-up questions, please.

Have you checked out the pitiable quality of county commissioners and state reps routinely elected over the years by voters who live mostly inside Pensacola's city limits? (We include, of course, the ones who were later paroled as well as those who narrowly escaped indictment or conviction.) Is that the kind of politician you want occupying the chair of a "strong" mayor?

The Greatest Play That Wasn't

"That was very clear, and very simple."

Some people have sympathy for the umpire here. We have sympathy for the catcher. Check out here the greatest play of the year, that wasn't.

Dept. of Copyright Claims
10-21 pm

There was a Youtube and a separate TV broadcast news video of the play available, for a short time today, on multiple Internet sites. Major League Baseball, the behemoth that enjoys a unique court-authorized exemption from antitrust laws, objected to its use on the grounds it owns a copyright of every frame of the video and reproductions of the same.

Now, the video is gone. We can hope MLBs antitrust exemption will soon be gone, as well.

A Useful Newspaper Experiment

Pensacola News Journal columnist Reginald Dogan confessed the other day that after moving here from somewhere else, he's had a come- to- Jesus realization that off-shore oil drilling is bad. Good for Reggie. Glad he woke up.

In the on-line version of the column, however, this was soon followed by comments from the usual collection of minimally-educated knuckle-draggers, who advance arguments like --

• oil is good for you
• oil corporations are just swell
• oil technology is oh-so-terrific
  
• fishes love oil rigs, so they must be good for us, too
  
• Hey! I work on an oil rig; and
  
• Mother Nature has bad taste, anyway, so what the heck.

The best that can be said for the New Journal's "In Your Voice" on-line comment board is that it usually takes two hands to type. So, as long the Neanderthals who inhabit the PNJ comments section keep vomiting their brain cramps through the Internet Tubes, they can't be loading their guns.

It's a good bet the one thing they are not is subscribers to the newspaper. Too few people are, which is why PNJ slims down the news so much these days. Fewer subscribers means less news; less news means fewer subscribers. It's a vicious circle that can't end well.

Today's print edition of the PNJ carries another column about this very conundrum. It's a canned piece by Gene Policinski describing one small part of the problem but offering no real solutions beyond charging for on-line access to the news. You can read Policinski's pedestrian piece just about anywhere Gannett Corp. is losing money.

There are other solutions, and to our mind better ones. But, what the heck -- maybe Policinski has a point. The News Journal should test it out.

Here's a useful experiment: Limit on-line commentating to Pensacola News Journal subscribers. Print subscribers can log on with their account number; on-line subscribers with their screen names, after paying by credit card, if they have one.

To be frank, this might, or might not, generate all that much revenue to ease the newspaper's financial crisis. But it sure would improve the image of Pensacola and its residents that the PNJ presents to the world.

What Doesn't Roll Downhill in Gulf Breeze?

To the surprise of no one, the Gulf Breeze City Council on Monday approved raising utility rates on everyone who doesn't live or vote in the City of Gulf Breeze. The "Wanker Paraphrase" of the week came from Dick Snyder, lifetime chairman of the "advisory committee" that recommended the rate increase:

Don Richards, president of the United Peninsula Association, read to the council a position paper that stated the association "adamantly opposes the arbitrary rate increase ... for the users of the 32563 ZIP code."

South Santa Rosa Utility board chairman Dick Snyder disputed Richards' remarks. He said there has never been anything arbitrary about the utility board's recommendation to the council to raise rates.

Differential rate hikes by zip code, rather than actual cost-of-service, aren't "arbitrary?" And just how does Dick Snyder -- who repeatedly utters sweeping conclusions unsupported by facts -- know this?

There hasn't been a cost-of-service analysis released to the public since the City of Gulf Breeze bought the South Santa Rosa Utility (also housed in "improper" 32563, by the way). But, it's a dead certainty it costs more per household to pump the sewage of "proper" Gulf Breeze residents (32561) to a point some eight, ten, or more miles eastward than it does to dispose of sewage from "improper" residents (32563), most of whom live within a much shorter distance of the sewage treatment plant and various spray fields in "improper" Gulf Breeze.

So, now "proper" residents will be costing more but paying less than "improper" residents for sewage disposal. In Gulf Breeze, sh*t doesn't roll down hill. It rolls eastward.

Circulating Pensacola Beach Letter

Letter from Bill Post

Dear Santa Rosa Island Leaseholders,

Governor Crist, on October 14, 2009, announced that he is asking for a Grand Jury Inquiry into the conduct of county officials statewide. He specifically named 5 Judicial Districts in south Florida , but said no counties are excluded. See below. This is the leaseholders’ opportunity to complain about the Escambia and Santa Rosa County taxing officials and others, and to have the complaint heard outside the confines of the two counties.

This attached letter is the third which I have written the Governor. The first letter did elicit a response from the Governor’s Office. Specifically the Chief Analyst from the Office of Policy and Budget was asked to respond on the Governor’s behalf. Although his response was error ridden, it gave me a chance to send a second letter which hopefully was an eye-opener for the Governor’s Office. There has been no reply to date to my second letter. In both letters I asked for an outside investigation. Whether the Governor’s Office has taken my requests to heart is unknown. But with the Governor’s recent announcement I believe this third letter is now timely.

I hope my letter will motivated you to write a letter of complaint as well. A complaint letter is not a sure solution for the injustice, but worth the small effort. Simply state that the Property Appraiser is not following the law and is not upholding his constitutional duties. Receiving many complaints may convince the Governor’s Office to include our two counties in the statewide investigation.

Let’s see if we can create a letter writing campaign by spreading this message beyond the hand full of email recipients I have started with. Please send this email to any fellow leaseholders for whom you have email addresses. We must pressure the Governor’s Office to study the injustice of taxation of Santa Rosa Island.

Best regards,
Bill Post (Author of "Deceit Beach")

-------------

MEMORANDUM: GOVERNOR CRIST PETITIONS
FOR ORDER TO IMPANEL STATEWIDE GRAND JURY
October 14, 2009
Contact:
GOVERNOR'S PRESS OFFICE
(850) 488-5394

Governor Charlie Crist today filed with the Florida Supreme Court a petition for order to impanel a Statewide Grand Jury. Governor Crist deems it to be in the best interest of the public for a Statewide Grand Jury to investigate criminal activity committed by public officials while acting in their official capacity.

Statement by Governor Charlie Crist
Regarding Statewide Grand Jury

"A recent rash of crimes committed by public officials in South Florida has led to a crisis of confidence among those who have elected them to office. Today, I have petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to impanel a Grand Jury to investigate these crimes, bring indictments and provide specific recommendations to address fundamental problems within the system that may be cultivating a culture of corruption."

Please find attached the Petition for Order to Impanel a Statewide Grand Jury filed today by Governor Charlie Crist.If you have any questions or need additional information, please call the Governor’s press office at (850) 488-5394.

Petition for Order to Impanel
a Statewide Grand Jury

Pacifying Our Enemies

CLICK FOR SLIDE SHOW
We've made this point before, somewhat jocularly: Don't make war, make hamburgers. But there's something to it. Now, it seems, Vietnam is going ga-ga over golf.

Until last year, according to experts who have done the calculations, licenses for new courses were being issued at an average of one a week, for a total of more than 140 projects around the country.

So, 58,178 Americans died on the supposition they were saving the world from evil communism. It turns out, though, what they were really doing is clearing the war for the Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail -- a much more effective way of pacifying villages. Just read what Nguyen Dang Van has to say about it:

“Golf courses are for rich people, account for vast areas of land, cause pollution and affect food security... ,” he told the newspaper Tuoi Tre in July.

Can we learn from our mistakes? Instead of drones, robots, helicopters, machine guns, and risking tens of thousands of young people's lives, we ought to be flying C-130's over the landscape, dropping Big Berthas, Nike golf balls, and endless bags of tif dwarf grass seed.

Yep, It Was the Yes Men

Confirmed: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce does not favor anything that would really prevent global warming.

Breaking News on Cable TV!

The Yes Men strike again:

Prank Pops Balloon of Chamber of Commerce

It's a good guess it wasn't a six year old boy with a helium balloon. He's too busy making fools out of the media. Probably, it was the intrepid and hilarious Yes Men who are behind today's fake press release punking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber is now under the antediluvian leadership of Thomas Donohue, who richly deserves all the punking he gets. Donohue has put at risk the entire organization (not to mention the entire planet) by vigorously opposing any meaningful regulation of carbon emissions to save the world from global warming. Already, Nike, Apple, Levi Strauss and several utility companies (!) have quit the Chamber over his mis-leadership.

Today, Reuters, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and any number of other news organizations that snag off of them or use Google News, dutifully reported that the Chamber of Commerce was reversing its position on global warming. An improbable 'spokesman' for the Chamber said:

"We at the Chamber have tried to keep climate science from interfering with business. But without a stable climate, there will be no business. We need business more than we need relentlessly higher returns."

The good news that the C. of C. was joining the 21st century also was announced from a podium at the once-prestigious National Press Club:

Environmental activists held a hoax press conference Monday morning, pretending to be the business group -- and pretending to announce that the chamber was dropping its opposition to climate-change legislation now in Congress.

The event, complete with fake handouts on chamber letterhead, at least a couple of fake reporters, and a podium adorned with the chamber logo, broke up when a spokesman from the real chamber burst in.

What followed was a spectacle not usually seen in the John Peter Zenger Room at the National Press Club: two men in business suits shouting at one another, each calling the other an impostor and demanding to see business cards.

"This guy is a fake! He's lying! This is a stunt that I've never seen before," said Eric Wohlschlegel, an official at the actual Chamber of Commerce, who said he'd heard about the hoax event from a reporter who'd mistakenly shown up at the chamber's headquarters.

Almost surely this was the Yes Men in action, again. They pulled a very similar "identity correction" stunt a few years ago by announcing that Dow Chemical and its wholly owned subsidiary, Union Carbide, were reversing 20 years of ignoring the worst chemical spill disaster in history, and would fully compensate more than a hundred thousand injured survivors and relatives of about 15,000 left dead by the U.S. company. The prank served to remind the world of Bophal, and put the U.S. company into the embarrassing position of having to announce to the world that it still refused to do the right thing by the people it killed and injured.

The hoax ran twice on BBC World and was picked up by the major news wires before the BBC determined that no man named Jude Finisterra worked at Dow and he was an imposter. The company was forced to remind the world it did not take responsibility for the disaster and said there was no compensation fund set-up for the victims.

Today, we're guessing it was the Yes Men who forced the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to admit that it favors profits over people by opposing all meaningful steps to halt global warming. Donohue and his puppets did a very good job of it, too.

Wing-Nuts Roasting on Obama Flyers

Before all of those semi-literate Florida panhandle wing-nuts who have our email addy start flooding our in-box with their usual ill-informed hysteria, would someone, please, let them in on this --

More from Snopes:

In mid-2009 an e-mail began circulating claiming that this year the White House sent out a letter brusquely informing past participants that henceforth arboreal adornments would be referred to as "Holiday trees" (rather than "Christmas trees") and that submission of ornaments decorated with religious themes would not be welcome. We could not confirm (through anyone connected with the White House or otherwise) whether the practice established by Laura Bush will continue throughout the Obama administration, but according to White House spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield, the claims made in the e-mail are untrue:

There is no truth to this, and the letter referenced in the e-mail does not exist. No letter has gone out yet from the White House pertaining to Christmas tree ornaments. The trees in the White House will be called Christmas trees, and the tree on the Ellipse will be called the National Christmas Tree. There will be no name changes.

(HT to archy the cockroach)

Holly "Go Lightly" Benson

Via St. Petersburg Blog:

Heartless or brainless? You be the judge.

You'd think the kind of sentiments Holly Benson displays would play well in the deeply red political netherworld of the Florida panhandle. However, even here on her home turf in Republican circles Holly Benson is widely considered a "flake."

Regardless, at this point she's pulled too many Sarah Palin's to have any real chance at statewide elected office. First, she resigned in mid-term as a state representative to become director of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. A year later she resigned that job to become director of State Health Care. Now, she's resigning after less than two years as State Health Care Director. In all likelihood, she is about to run for state Attorney General.

It's always amusing to see Republican politicians who spend their entire adult lives nuzzling in the public trough for salary money hitting the campaign trail to screech about the evils of government. But, could Benson have picked a worse time to quit?

Not likely, with "shameful" barriers still standing in Florida against effective vaccine programs for swine flu and cervical cancer, HIV/AIDs continually hovering near epidemic proportions in the state, national health care reform front-and-center with what looks like a very large role for states to play, and the nutty "personhood amendment" likely to be on the next Florida ballot.

Holly Benson goes away lightly from every public office she's held. With her, it's not about serving the public; it's all about serving herself.

If elected, how many months, weeks, or days do you suppose she'd be willing to serve as Florida Attorney General before quitting -- again? Just because she never finishes a job doesn't necessarily mean she's a featherhead; it just means she has a lot more time to run after some other public office.