Exxon Muscles The Yes Men

The Yes Men struck oil two weeks ago. Now, Big Oil has struck back.

Posing as Exxon-Mobil executive Florian Osenberg and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representative S.K. Wolff, two Yes Men pranksters in mid-June gave the featured presentation to 300 oilmen at "GO-EXPO," Canada's largest annual oil conference. The topic was "Vivoleum," a new alternative fuel source made from the remains of people who become "victims of climate change."

To demonstrate how oil companies can "keep fuel flowing" and prosper even as billions die from the effects of global warming, candles made from the cadaver of a deceased Exxon-Mobil janitor were handed out to the audience. It was only at that late point that understanding dawned for Simon Mellor, a director of the company putting on the event. Scoop.com reports he "strode up and physically forced the Yes Men from the stage."

Here, you can see a part of the spoof speech and Mellor's reaction as reported by Ashley Hargrave from the convention center and broadcast on BNet News:


The story doesn't end there, however. In angry reaction, Exxon-Mobil -- the largest corporation in the world -- allegedly hacked the Yes Men's web site, disabled their email service, and forced their web host to censor all references to the oil company. Only yesterday, bloggers and other fans of the Yes Men began receiving news of this extraordinary corporate thuggery.

Infoshop, among too many others for even Exxon-Mobil to silence, has the story -- along with a reprint of the Yes Men's new email message describing the hack:

One day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement that ExxonMobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men's spoof website, and cut off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose source they will not identify. The provider, Broadview Networks, also made the Yes Men remove all mention of Exxon from TheYesMen.org
before they'd restore the Yes Men's email service.

This is so typical of the chronically short-term vision of the oil industry. Until Exxon hacked the Yes Men, almost no one outside Calgary, Canada, even knew about the June 15 prank. Now, the story is circulating throughout the world wide web.

Way to go, Exxon! Is this what you mean by "high ethical standards, operations integrity, and flawless execution?"

The Goose Truth

With help from a number of witnesses and readers, including a Wall Street lawyer who lives at Tiger Point, we've finally managed to pin down the gory goose truth about los desaparecidos.

Rumors have been swirling at Tiger Point Golf & Country Club for over a week after a dozen or more residents witnessed the abduction by parties unknown of a gaggle of Canadian geese who inhabited the East Course.

Murder Most Fowl?

Were the geese killed? Even eaten? Or, were they simply "removed and relocated" as some Tiger Point managers have been telling their angry members?

Was it "wrong, wrong, wrong," as one reader commented here earlier this week? Or, was the "taking" of annoying waterfowl from a semi-public golf course in Gulf Breeze an ecologically responsible action that has been badly misunderstood by emotional or misinformed residents?

Some claim that in the gathering darkness last Wednesday evening as many as a hundred birds were lured by a food trail laced with drugs into a fenced temporary corral near the fifteenth green and then trucked away. Others say they saw several men, identity unknown, trap and remove ducks as well as geese. At least one witness said she saw a recalcitrant goose killed on the spot when it tried to make its escape.

No one has been sure about the facts or the fate of the birds. Club management told concerned residents they were "removed and relocated." Skeptics asked, "To where? "

No one offered a convincing answer.

Obfuscation

Others asked, "Removed by whom?" Neither club management nor state game and fish officials contacted by outraged residents could -- or would -- say. Even a few residents, as it turns out, were complicit in the widespread obfuscation. One husband we know actually told his wife the geese were taken to "an animal refuge." Later, when we were alone, we asked him where that refuge might be.

"Goose Heaven," he said somewhat sheepishly. The husband explained that his wife was so upset he didn't want to tell her what he really thinks happened to them.

More than one state official told us the only way to know for sure the fowls' fate was to track down every licensed trapper in Northwest Florida and ask him if he had anything to do with it and, if so, what happened to the birds. That, of course, would have been a fool's errand. It's difficult not to believe this was advice calculated to take citizens so long to complete that public anger might exhaust itself in the meantime.

Using more direct methods, we and a couple of our correspondents were able to track down the answers from an authoritative source: the very government official who approved and undertook the action. We've reviewed the permits he provided and sorted through the evidence.

The truth can now be revealed.

The Great Goose-capade

"Fifty-two Canada geese were taken," John Dunlap, district supervisor of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Wildlife Services office in Gainsville, told us. Dunlap describes himself as a biologist who earned a bachelor's degree in 1999 from a Tennessee university.

"We made sure that only resident Canada geese were removed, " he said. "No ducks or other waterfowl were taken."

He explained that the action was necessary because the birds "were causing problems." They were "resident" geese, he said, who "no longer will migrate north."

That's a complaint we've heard before, from both golf course personnel and State Fish and Game officials. Those who make it seem unaware (or unwilling to admit) that the Canada geese in Santa Rosa County are descendants of a species-population experiment to seed the state with native Canadian geese which was initiated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in the late 1960's and early 1970's:

In 1967 and 1968 868 Canada Geese of the subspecies maxima (called moffitti by Palmer [1976]) were released in the Tallahassee area by the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission [editor: now Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission]. In 1974 160 birds were released in northwestern Florida and 76 in the central peninsula south to Lake County. According to Spillan (1978 in Stevenson and Anderson 1994), a total of 1,450 nonmigratory Canada Geese were released in Florida, mostly in Jackson, Leon, Wakulla, Jefferson, Alachua, and Duval counties.

By 1987 they had established breeding populations in Santa Rosa County, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Gainesville, Ocala, and Daytona Beach (J. McDaniel, pers. commun. in Stevenson and Anderson 1994). Atlas records in counties south of these locations were established for Manatee in 1986, Seminole in 1987, Pasco in 1988, and Dade in 1991. Although some of these records refer to birds recently released (B. Loftin, VRF 1987; L. McCullagh, VRF 1990), most birds are probably the offspring of those released in the 1970s and are extending their breeding range southward. [emphasis added]

Like many golf courses in Florida, Dunlap says, Tiger Point has "highly fertilized grass. The geese feed on the grass seed and leave feces on the greens. Management tried to clean it off every day, but the problem just got worse and worse."

Dunlap's description of the annoyances the Canada geese can cause is closely matched by descriptions one can find all over the Internet. For example the University of Michigan's Zoology Museum states in part:

Canada geese can become a nuisance, especially when normally migratory birds become resident. They can overgraze lawns and crops, leading to erosion. On lawns, their feces can annoy humans. Build-up of fecal matter can lead to reduced water quality, by fostering bacteria and adding much nitrogen and phosphorus. Canada geese can be an exceptional annoyance in Atlantic flyway states by crowding in on golf courses, beaches, parks, playing fields, and yards.

For another example, a Wikipedia entry states:

Through different areas of North America, non-migratory Canada Goose populations have been on the increase. They frequent golf courses, parking lots and urban parks, which would have previously hosted only migratory geese on rare occasions. Their adaptability to human-altered areas has made this the most common waterfowlNorth America. In many areas, these non-migratory Canada Geese are now regarded as "pests". They are suspected of being a cause of an increase in high fecal coliforms at beaches. An extended hunting season and the use of noise makers have been used in an attempt to disrupt suspect flocks over the course of several years.

Asked what, if any, steps short of "taking" the birds were tried, as is required by federal regulations, Dunlap was less convincing. He told us he was first contacted last year by Meadowbrook Golf company officials, who own the Tiger Point Golf & Country Club. "I think they tried a spray and used dogs," he said somewhat tentatively.

The "spray" may have been Methiocarb. The University of Michigan describes it, somewhat ominously, as a pesticide "the toxic effects" of which "are still being researched."

No one we know can attest to any use of "dogs" by course management to reduce the population of Canada geese who have been breeding on the Tiger Point golf course for the past decade or more. As far as that goes, someone is trying to pull the fur over our eyes.

"Standing" Permit

Eventually, golf course officials "contracted" with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to have the birds "taken," as Dunlap delicately puts it. Acting under what he termed a "standing permit to take Canada geese in the State of Florida," Dunlap organized and oversaw last Wednesday's event. He emphasized that the permit was issued in compliance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and a dozen or more other international conventions and federal statutes.

The particular standing permit in this instance is designated "Permit No. WX04137A." It was issued on June 15, 2004 "by the State of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission" to "Bernice Constanine" [sic -- the correct spelling is Constantin]. Constantin is director of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service - Wildlife Service office. The permit expires the last day of this year.

Essentially, that permit authorizes Constantin's office "to take and possess mallard ducks and Canada geese in Florida" subject to several conditions which can be summarized easily:

• "Canada Geese, nests, and eggs may be taken between March 1 and September 30 when such taking is also federally permitted or authorized. Taking should be done discreetly and in such a manner as to avoid conflicts with the public, and in adherence with Florida Statute 828.12 regarding animal cruelty."
• Permission to enter private property must first be secured from the owner.
• The federal authorities also must issue a permit and both state and federal permits "must be readily available for inspection at all times while engaging in the permitted activities... ."
• When "other qualified personnel" assist in the "permitted work," there must be a USDA authorization letter provided to the property owner and "other personnel" engaged in the "taking;" and
• "A detailed report of all activities engaged in pursuant to this permit must be submitted with 90 days subsequent to the permit expiration ... ."

What Really Happened to the Geese?

In the permit itself, and in multiple conversations with Florida state fish and game officials who surely knew more than they were admitting, and throughout Mr. Dunlap's narrative as well, the euphemistic word "taking" was used repeatedly to describe the fate of the Tiger Point geese. Like the husband we mentioned above, it's as if they were unable to bring themselves to utter the truth for fear we couldn't handle it.

When we realized that after almost twenty minutes of conversation with Mr. Dunlap he still hadn't told us what happened to the geese after they were "taken," we asked him point-blank, "What do you mean 'taken'? Were they relocated or killed?"

After a short pause, Dunlap adopted the reticent tone of a funeral director and said unctuously, "They were euthanized."

"It's okay," we assured him. "We can take it. You mean they were killed?"

"Yes. I'm afraid so."

Lessons Learned

Probably there are some lessons to be learned from all of this. We hope one of them has been learned by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission: be more careful when you mess with Mother Nature. It doesn't make much sense to import Canada geese to North Florida and encourage them to breed, then start killing them off by the scores because they "no longer are migrating birds."

For another, it shouldn't have taken a full-bore investigation by several private citizens to find out what their government really is doing in our own neighborhood. It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that State game and fish personnel, as well as Tiger Point management, deliberately hid the truth from residents. Government, especially, should make its actions transparent to the people it serves, even at the risk of offending their sensibilities. We're all adults, for goodness' sake. We ought to be able to take the truth.

Public Education

Indeed, we need to know the truth about the world around us, even when it comes to the little things such as cute Canadian geese waddling across the fairways in front of their golf course homes. As an oft-cited "draft" research paper by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on the problem of "Management of Canadian Geese in Suburban Areas" states [pdf format]:

Public attitudes toward geese often conflict, juxtaposing environmental needs with personal belief systems regarding wildlife protection and welfare. Suburban areas contain increased populations, and different groups will define ‘nuisance’ from geese differently. * * * Any method [of wildlife management] that involves destruction of birds, eggs, or nests will often create a highly emotionally charged atmosphere. * * * Usually, the first step in reducing these types of conflicts is education.

Both Tiger Point and, sad to say, the Government of Florida hasn't been forthright or candid with Gulf Breeze residents and users of the Tiger Point golf course. By contrast, John Dunlap deserves praise for 'fessing up. (You can email him here.)

Next time, if there is one, all could learn from this experience: join the Reality Community. Educate the public about your intentions and the reasons behind them. Enlist golf club members to serve on a "citizen task force," as the New Jersey paper recommends. Prominently post the permit under which you propose to act.

Above all, treat citizens like rational, intelligent adults -- not mere children to be manipulated with magical thinking, superstition, false assurances, and fantasies about "goose heaven." In big things as well as little ones like this goose caper, stop the assault on reason and, as Al Gore puts it, "trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry."

Gassing Geese on the Green

A curmudgeon we know writes privately:

"Why it is comfortable middle class retirees can get so upset over a gaggle of geese disappearing but say and do nothing about hundreds of thousands of Iraqis being killed by our own Government with bombs bought with their tax dollars?"

When we passed that same question along to a friend, this was the reply:

"Maybe if people lived in Iraq and saw people disappearing instead of geese they would care. Or, if our Government came in and took people randomly out of their homes on the golf course and gassed them on the greens they would care."

Good point, but don't tell the Cheney Administration. They might think that's a great idea.

Wild Goose Chase

As one of our private correspondents tells us today, trying to pin down what happened in Gulf Breeze last Wednesday evening when over a hundred Canadian geese and ducks were 'disappeared' is as tough as finding out who really has been running the country over the past six years. (Hint: It's Dick Cheney.)

Following up yesterday's post, we can report today that according to one Tiger Point Golf Course manager, the 'disappearance' of the geese and ducks was the work of "the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services." It should be emphasized that this claim, for the moment, is unconfirmed. We aren't even sure there is an agency called "Wildlife Services," much less than it was responsible for "everything that happened out there," as club manager Aaron Williams told our informant. Just as likely, he may have meant the U.S.D.A. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

In any event, Williams apparently says that the club called the U.S. Department of Agriculture and that federal agency sent a "biologist" to inspect fowl inhabitants of the course. The problem, as perceived by Tiger Point Golf & Country Club, was that the birds "were defecating on the course and the greens."

The club manager did confirm that los desaparidos were "migratory birds" -- Canadian geese and migratory ducks. However, he said, human residents living adjacent to the course in recent months had taken to feeding the birds. "They wouldn't leave like they're supposed to," Williams complained of the birds. "They aren't really migratory anymore."

If the disappearance was engineered by the feds, and if there is a U.S.D.A agency known as "Agriculture Wildlife Services," and if that agency reclassified the Tiger Point Golf Club geese and ducks as non-migratory, there is no known record of such a federal action. Which is no more reassuring than the state system in Florida which, as we learned yesterday, licenses trappers and then doesn't haven't a clue what they do.

There were quite a few eye witnesses to the mass 'disappearance' of the geese and ducks, many of them living along Hole 15 of the Tiger Point's East Course. This much is confirmed by multiple sources: the fatal action began Wednesday evening, June 20, around 5:30 pm and lasted until dark. Two trucks predominantly white in color rolled up. One or more men laid a trail of doped-up food for the birds. (Some say they had been doing this for a week or more as a way to condition them.) The birds followed the food trail to a temporary corral set up near the 15th green. The tranquilized geese and ducks offered no resistance as they then were herded into the corral and, later, a truck.

Many suspect that inside one of the trucks the geese were gassed, not "relocated" as the club has been telling angry residents. Some among the eye witnesses claim to have seen at least one goose killed outright as it tried to escape. At least one resident reportedly took photos of the episode as it happened.

According to one official we spoke with today at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Panama City, killing migratory birds is not lawful. "But what if someone in the U.S.D.A reclassified the birds as "defacating" or "lazy" birds who were "retired" from migrating?" we asked.

"There is no such classification," was the reply. "A migratory bird is a migratory bird. They don't have to keep to a flight schedule."

Duck Duck, Goose Goose - Gone!

Residents and golfers in suburban Gulf Breeze, across the Sound from Pensacola Beach, are buzzing about the sudden disappearance of scores of geese and ducks who long have inhabited the fairways, creeks , and ponds of Tiger Point Golf and Country Club. Indeed, some of los desaparecidos are featured on the front page of the "scenic" golf course's own web site, where they appear to be guarding against any golfer's vicious slice into a pond -- Poof! Last week, all the ducks and geese just disappeared. By some counts, as many as 100 adult loons, ducks, and their offspring are simply gone. A common rumor among residents is that they were all "caught and gassed."

A dispatcher at the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission denied that today. He told us the wildlife was "relocated" -- although he couldn't say where or when and didn't know who would know other than the trapper who caught them. No one else at the agency knows, either.

As it turns out, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission doesn't keep records on specific wildlife removal activities and doesn't require reports. All the agency does is issue annual permits to qualifying trappers. Then it turns a blind eye while the trappers have at it.

"It's private enterprise," another Fish & Wildlife commission worker said. "You'd have to ask the trapper and we don't know who that might have been."

Not exactly a license to kill, but pretty close.

One local trapper we spoke with, Mark Hughes, has been called out to Tiger Point on other occasions involving wounded birds. Hughes had nothing to do with last week's episode and was surprised to learn of it.

"Those birds weren't harming anyone," he said. "I can't see why anybody would have them removed."

Asked if some licensed trapper could lawfully collect geese and ducks at the golf course's request, Hughes told us, "Not really. Federal rules about migratory birds make it almost impossible to touch 'em. You can't kill 'em and there ain't hardly any place to take 'em, neither."

There are a number of federal and state laws and regulations protecting migratory bird populations. The Extension Service at the University of Florida conveniently summarizes those laws in plain-speak:

Resolutions to conflict between humans and wild animals shall first be attempted using non-lethal means, except under extreme and immediate circumstances where human safety or the safety of a companion animal is imminently threatened.

Wildlife control, including non-lethal actions, shall not be conducted simply because a homeowner considers the mere presence of a wild animal to be a "pest" or "nuisance."

The approach to wildlife conflict resolution shall follow a series of steps.

• To promote an understanding of how connected humans are to wildlife and to the surrounding environment

• To foster tolerance, respect, and understanding of all living things

• To provide opportunities for Harmony residents to view, hear, and interact with local flora and fauna in an ecologically and environmentally friendly way

• To create and provide educational activities which will foster a community-wide land ethic and promote future land stewardship.

Many area residents at Tiger Point took an interest in watching the birds raise their young. A few golfers possibly blamed them for an errant tee shot or a putt gone awry -- not a "nuisance" but in the view of some a capital offense.

But almost all folk at Tiger Point are taken aback at the weirdness of the apparent mass exodus -- or extinction. They say it's eerie to see the course suddenly denuded of all waterfowl. Florida Fish & Wildlife workers confirm they've been fielding a lot of complaint calls about the disappearance.

Our calls to golf course managers seeking more information about the trapper's identity and the fate of the flock have not yet been returned.

When Is Al Qaeda Not?

When is Al Qaeda not Al Queda? According to Glenn Greenwald whenever the press unquestionably transcribes military propaganda and dresses it up as news:

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically. I don't think the New York Times has published a story about Iraq in the last two weeks without stating that we are killing "Al Qaeda fighters," capturing "Al Qaeda leaders," and every new operation is against "Al Qaeda."

The Times -- typically in the form of the gullible and always-government-trusting "reporting" of Michael Gordon, though not only -- makes this claim over and over, as prominently as possible, often without the slightest questioning, qualification, or doubt. If your only news about Iraq came from The New York Times, you would think that the war in Iraq is now indistinguishable from the initial stage of the war in Afghanistan -- that we are there fighting against the people who hijacked those planes and flew them into our buildings: "Al Qaeda."

What is so amazing about this new rhetorical development -- not only from our military, but also from our "journalists" -- is that, for years, it was too shameless and false even for the Bush administration to use. Even at the height of their propaganda offensives about the war, the furthest Bush officials were willing to go was to use the generic term "terrorists" for everyone we are fighting in Iraq, as in: "we cannot surrender to the terrorists by withdrawing" and "we must stay on the offensive against terrorists."

But after his 2004 re-election was secure, even the President acknowledged that "Al Qaeda" was the smallest component of the "enemies" we are fighting in Iraq:

A clear strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy we face. The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein -- and they reject an Iraq in which they are no longer the dominant group. . . .

The second group that makes up the enemy in Iraq is smaller, but more determined. It contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam Hussein -- people who still harbor dreams of returning to power. These hard-core Saddamists are trying to foment anti-democratic sentiment amongst the larger Sunni community. . . .

The third group is the smallest, but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda.

And note that even for the "smallest" group among those we are fighting in Iraq, the president described them not as "Al Qaeda," but as those "affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda." Claiming that our enemy in Iraq was comprised primarily or largely of "Al Qaeda" was too patently false even for the President to invoke in defense of his war.

Once again, as Prof. Brad Delong often laments, "Why, oh, why can't we have a better press corps?"

Rubber Stamp Ed

Even as Escambia County commissioners were deciding to postpone until next month the "condo-tel" vote, commissioner Gene Valentino was announcing his new choice for appointee to the Santa Rosa Island Authority's governing board. It's Elwyn "Ed" Guernsey, a Pensacola insurance agent.

Perfect. Who better for the role of Gene Valentino's rubber stamp than someone whose career is selling policies written by other folk rather than himself?

Just one suggestion: Guernsey could save taxpayers the $400 monthly SRIA board member honorarium if he just mails in his votes.

Beach Occupiers

UPDATED BELOW

"Gene Valentino has hopped into bed with developers who are angling to evade the residential cap on Pensacola Beach and he wants Robertson to hold his underwear."

The ugly, dark side of Escambia County's continued political occupation of Pensacola Beach was revealed yesterday when District 2 commissioner Gene M. Valentino abruptly demanded the resignation of SRIA board member Kelly Robertson. According to PNJ reporter Derek Pivnick, if Robertson doesn't resign today Valentino has informed him he will be "automatically terminated."

Technically, that can't be right. So far as we recall, state law governing the appointment and removal of county commission-appointed members of the SRIA requires affirmative action of all commissioners. But it's certainly true that local custom allows each commissioner to name and remove "his own" appointee. It's not "automatic" though -- Valentino will have to wield the knife but his fellow commissioners will have to hand it to him. That's unlikely to bother Valentino. He knows what he wants -- total county commissioner control of Pensacola Beach.

The simple truth is that Gene Valentino has hopped into bed with developers who are angling to evade the residential cap on Pensacola Beach and he wants Robertson to hold his underwear. Robertson isn't enthusiastic about that.

What was Robertson's sin? Voting with the Santa Rosa Island Authority board majority late last week in a 5 to 1 SRIA board decision "to establish its own policies in defining what a hotel is on Pensacola Beach." It's not that this SRIA vote was anti-developer, particularly; it's that a vote in favor of the SRIA continuing to do its lawful duty of managing the beach in the public interest (as the SRIA's own attorney has advised the board it must do) is a vote against Escambia County commissioners pillaging the joint.

Valentino, being a county commissioner, couldn't abide that.

There's a subplot even more disturbing. Under the county's Comprehensive Plan, which was updated just before County Administrator Barry Evans retired a few years ago, for decades it has been stipulated that no more than 4,128 "residential units" can be built in "mixed use" and residential zones on Pensacola Beach. Over the years, thousands of builders, real estate brokers, and beach lessees invested in Pensacola Beach in no small measure because they were encouraged to rely on the implicit promises in the county's Comprehensive Plan when they built, sold, or bought residence or business leases on Pensacola Beach. A common expectation of all was that beach zoning and land use restrictions offered reasonable assurance that they wouldn't wake up some morning to find a high rise condo, or a slaughter house for that matter, going up next door.

To be sure, the maximum number of residential units on Pensacola Beach, if anything, probably is too high given increased hurricane activity and the limited number (just the one at the moment) of escape routes. Even that high number was essentially used up eight years ago when the SRIA expressly allocated all remaining residential units to the Portofino complex. The beach is full. It has reached maximum carrying capacity.

Oblivious to all of this, high rise developers have of late been seeking ways to get around the cap so they can continue building sky-high buildings. Their current strategy relies on a nonce word: 'hotel-condo.' Straight out of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

By building what some call "condo-tels", or hotels that contain within them units large enough to be occupied over the long term as residential condo units while avoiding the root word "residence" and its variants, developers hope to keep on building and building and building until the island sinks under the collective weight of high rise cement.

Until now, the only thing standing in the way was that Barry Evans' crew -- the brightest group ever to administer Escambia County -- foresaw this dodge and engineered an amendment to the county's Comprehensive Plan ten years ago that for the first time defined "hotels" in terms of maximum square footage and specified they cannot be continuously occupied by the "owner" more than two weeks a year.

What Valentino and all the commercial builders who donated so generously to his campaign for public office want to do is eviscerate that section of the Comprehensive Plan. If they succeed it will be 'bombs away' for every area of Pensacola Beach designated as a "mixed use" building zone. That includes a great many areas that beach residents and visitors think of as residential -- because that's the way they currently look to the naked eye and, after all, the beach has maxed out on residential units, right?

Caveat emptor. With county politicians like Gene Valentino in office, no property on Pensacola Beach will be safe.

Today, Valentino published a two-page "position statement" on the condo-tel issue. It can be downloaded and read by clicking here [Word format].

While Valentino is due some credit for posting any kind of position paper that can be read by the public, the commissioner's statement on this issue is, to be generous, incoherent, fact-free, and delusional. But bleeding through all the balderdash about "the creatively talented individual" and "looking at the big picture" and "neutralizing" supposed zoning "disparities... by merging many of the zoning categories together" one theme comes through loud and clear: Valentino wants to erase all zoning and Comprehensive Plan restrictions on beach development because he thinks it will generate more revenue for county government.

That's not "looking at the big picture." That's looking like a short-sighted pig.

UPDATE

County commissioners have put off until next month a decision on reviewing the "condo-tel" rules adopted last week by the SRIA.

"The Dumbest Columnist Ever"

The 'dumbest columnist ever" just may be Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, according to Robert Parry of Consortium News. He makes a strong case --

[B]eyond a talent for reprising the conventional wisdom from Washington dinner parties, it is hard to tell what justifies Cohen’s long career as a political columnist. On nearly every major development over the past couple of decades, Cohen has missed the point or gotten it dead wrong.

For example, during the Florida recount battle in 2000, Cohen cared less about whom the voters wanted in the White House than the Washington insiders' certainty that George W. Bush would be a uniter, not a divider.

“The nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse,” Cohen wrote. “That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”

Cohen also joined the Washington herd in the disastrous stampede for invading Iraq. After Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deceptive Iraq War speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, Cohen mocked anyone who still dared doubt that Saddam Hussein possessed hidden WMD stockpiles.

Cohen also joined the Washington herd in the disastrous stampede for invading Iraq. After Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deceptive Iraq War speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, Cohen mocked anyone who still dared doubt that Saddam Hussein possessed hidden WMD stockpiles.

“The evidence he [Powell] presented to the United Nations – some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail – had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them,” Cohen wrote. “Only a fool – or possibly a Frenchman – could conclude otherwise.”

It took Cohen another three years before he recognized that his enthusiasm for the war had been misplaced.

And then Parry adds this, plus a question:

In normal work settings, incompetence – especially when it is chronic and has devastating consequences – justifies dismissal or at least demotion, maybe a desk in Storage Room B where Cohen could sit with his red stapler, but without access to a word processor.

[I]s Cohen just a clueless incompetent when he berates Fitzgerald for the “train wreck” of the Libby conviction or is this columnist really a clever guy who is very skilled at knowing how to stay on the gravy train of modern Washington journalism?

You do have to wonder what, other than presumably nice table manners, qualifies Richard Cohen for any job at a national newspaper, much less one that depends on the ability to digest facts and express reliable opinions?

Lights Out

What Glenn Greenwald says.

The Best Republican Presidential Candidate....

.... just quit the party.

Baghdad Panic

What Kevin Drum says...

The Ticketmaster Circus

Never run away to the circus over the Internet. Sadly, that's the lesson we draw from spending several hours trying to buy tickets to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus, which opens a five-day stand in Pensacola tonight.

In cyberspace, not only is the circus coming to town but so is the Internet fraud forest popularly known known as Ticketmaster. (We say "popularly known" because as you can read below not all web sites that look like Ticketmaster are Ticketmaster.)

More likely than not, as assistant Pensacola Civic Center manager Phil Ashler confirmed to us by telephone last week, if you try to buy event tickets from Ticketmaster over the Internet it may well cost you far more than if you simply drive down to the Civic Center and buy them in person -- gas included.

Indeed, based on our own experience it might be cheaper to buy your own elephant and ride there in high style.

Contrary to most folks' experience with Internet sales, when it comes to Ticketmaster it can be more expensive to buy on-line than in person. A lot more. Broadly speaking, there are two reasons for this:

1. Ticketmaster itself advertises a "ticket price" that has little relation to reality. If a bricks-and-mortar retailer advertised prices equally divorced from the reality of what is actually being charged, the Florida Attorney General's consumer protection division would have them in court by nightfall.
   
2. Ticketmaster licenses a great many other go-between agents to sell tickets to the same event at even higher prices with even more add-ons. Most of these "go-between betweens" claim to be selling "discount" tickets or have web sites that cleverly spoof the official Ticketmaster site.
   

Here's a screen shot of the real Ticketmaster's "advertised price" for two common tickets offered to a web site visitor earlier today:


"$40 per ticket"? That's just to hook you in. As you start to fill out the forms, give up your personal data and credit card number, and hit the "continue" button to proceed to the next page, the price mounts. At each subsequent screen, Ticketmaster accumulates so-called "service charges," "delivery fees" and other add-ons that wind up inflating the original stated price by anywhere from 18.5% to 50% more. And that's before taxes.

Here's a screenshot of what those same two "Section 109" tickets, above, will cost before the state and county's 7.5% sales tax:


Remember, that's what the "good guys" who really are Ticketmaster are charging. There are scores of other agents who have wedged themselves in between the Ticketmaster middlemen and you who routinely receive ticket allotments from Ticketmaster, too. On the web, they do their best to make themselves look like an official Ticketmaster site or a trustworthy Internet discount ticket agent. In fact, though, most have inflated ticket prices to the same event even more -- before aping the Ticketmaster system of adding on extra charges for "service," "delivery," and even a separate charge for printing an e-ticket at home on your own printer!

Section 106 tickets, which we known to be effectively identical to the "section 109" tickets shown above, are advertised by one such typical web site for $65 apiece -- nearly 40% more:

But after filling out the forms and "continuing" to new screens, guess what? The price escalates to nose-bleed levels as mysterious and sundry service and maintenance and other synonymous charges are folded in, plus a $15 charge for "2-day delivery" (the cheapest this one makes available).


On one "middleman's middleman" web site, after a bit of searching we found this menu listing the types of add-on charges that can inflate your ticket prices to breath-taking levels:

It would be only slightly more honest if this web site added "76% per ticket - Sucker charge."

Ticketmaster has earned a terrible reputation in some quarters, as this Wikipedia article makes clear. After trying to buy circus tickets over the Internet, we see why. Although mentioned in the context of music events, the same Wikipedia observation might be said of its circus ticket pricing practices:

Ticketmaster is doing its part, like most corporations, to exploit music and ruin it for everyone with outstandingly high ticket prices and ridiculous additional charges.

"Why Ticketmaster Sucks" makes some of the same points, and adds a strongly-worded caution about the risks to your privacy when you shop on line with Ticketmaster. And E-opinions about Ticketmaster are nearly uniformly of the same view.

So what's the weary consumer to do? Here's what: shut down that 'puter, hop a ride, and run away to the Civic Center to buy your circus tickets in person.

Taking the Pledge

It wasn't that long ago that true conservatives in the U.S. believed in individual freedom, a non-obtrusive Federal Government, balanced budgets, and even -- most especially, perhaps -- the Bill of Rights.

No more. As Scott Horton notes today --

[W]e have political figures who call themselves Conservatives, but whose notions of what constitutes conservatism seem drawn from certain political movements in Europe between the wars.

Wonder which "certain political movements... between the wars" he's thinking about? Think brown shirts and swastikas. But today, right here in America, people who call themselves conservatives, from the top of the Republican Party to the lowest level of plain citizen --

think, for instance, that balanced budgets are a thing of the past and that deficit spending is the fashion of the day. They believe in big government that grows in size every year and becomes more intrusive into the lives of citizens as every day passes. Among what Thomas Jefferson called the “essential pillars of our Government,” the new “conservatives” don’t feel that any are essential, indeed, they tend to think of all of the “pillars” are quaint and obsolete.

Indeed, they have already suspended one of Jefferson’s “pillars,” habeas corpus and they’re busy working on the others. And in the area of foreign affairs, the new “conservatives” have never seen a war they didn’t want to fight, nor have they ever seen a war they would trust the uniformed professionals of the armed services to manage. This is balanced by the fact that none of them ever served in the armed forces, because they had better things to do.

At last, there is a movement of true conservatives that seeks to turn the Republican Party away from neo-fascism and bring it back to the party's more honorable roots: The American Freedom Agenda.

Led by conservative lawyer Bruce Fein, direct mail specialist Richard Viguerie, former Republican congressman Bob Barr, and American Conservative Union chairman David Keene, the AFA is trying to rescue the nation, not just the Republican Party, from the unprecedented authoritarian path being pursued by the Bush-Cheney administration.

The AFA recently announced a "10-point agenda" that almost everyone should support since it mirrors the Constitutional system of laws that has served us so well for over two hundred years. Most notably, that agenda would strengthen the Constitution’s checks and balances, prevent executive branch usurpation of legislative and judicial powers, protect personal privacy from intrusive government wiretapping and home invasions, prohibit kidnapping and torture on the mere say-so of a president, and restore the centuries old "writ of freedom" known as habeas corpus.

The thoroughly conservative AFA is now asking Republican presidential candidates to sign on to that agenda. Sad to say, G.O.P. presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the first to refuse. Consequently, the AFA has (rightly) "pronounced him unfit to serve" as president.

The American Freedom Agenda strikes us as something every candidate for president should be proud to sign onto and faithfully execute, Republican or Democrat. Every American voter should be insisting on it. Don't pledge your support to any candidate unless he (or she) does.

Into the Lion's Den

Florida's newly elected state Chief Financial Officer, Alex Sink, is coming to Pensacola with the "legislatively - created task force on Citizens Property Insurance Claims Handling and Resolution." Everyone's invited to give them a piece of your mind.

The meeting will be held June 13, from 2 p.m. - 8 p.m. at Hagler Auditorium, Building 2, Room 252 on the campus of Pensacola Junior College, 1000 College Blvd. in Pensacola, Fla.

The public is encouraged to attend and will be able to offer personal testimony from 2:30 p.m. - 4 p.m. as well as from 6:15 p.m. - 7:45 p.m. The Department of Financial Services will also have consumer assistance on site to help Floridians with questions regarding Citizens claims and policies.