Do your homework!
Going to the movies tonight?
Check out some of the allegations of falsehoods coming from the right and Michael Moore’s answers to those smears right here, and you too will be ready to verbally spar with the wingnuts who show up to protest this expression of free speech at your local theater.
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you: Politically motivated feel-good civil rights violations in the name of public safety!
A new law enforcement initiative announced Thursday will target some of Tampa's most violent criminals, especially the ones who illegally use guns.
Local members of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have teamed with Tampa police and other agencies to go after the "worst of the worst."
The initiative, called the Violent Crime Impact Team, has been unveiled in 15 cities nationwide. The idea, officials said, is to build on Project Safe Neighborhoods, initiated in 2000.
The Violent Crime Impact Team initiative will be more proactive, aggressively using new technologies, intelligence resources and traditional enforcement strategies to identify the worst offenders and get them off the streets, officials said.
That would be the civil rights violations part.
Tampa and the other cities were selected because they either had high crime rates despite the falling national average, or they had specific areas that needed help. John Ryan, assistant special agent in charge of the ATF's local office, said Tampa has the second highest crime rate of similarly sized cities in the country.
The two main target areas for the initiative in Tampa are Jackson Heights and Sulphur Springs.
"It starts with the thug on the corner," Tampa police Maj. George McNamara said at a news conference Thursday. "We are coming to get you."
The officials would not say how many agents and officers would be involved. The ATF is not getting any new agents in Tampa to help out, and McNamara said the police will not add more officers to the targeted areas. Ryan said it was more a "fine tuning" of resources.
No new resources, no new agents. This is where the “feel-good” part comes in.
Oh, and then there’s the politically motivated part:
In addition to Tampa, the cities identified for the initiative are: Albuquerque, N.M.; Baltimore; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Miami; Richmond, Va.; Greensboro, N.C.; Tulsa, Okla.; Pittsburgh; Las Vegas; Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Tucson, Ariz.; and the Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia region.
Ten of the cities selected for the initiative are in states expected to play important roles in the presidential election, and questions of political motives are bound to arise in an election year.
So, a few days ago, TPD announces that Tampa is in the midst of a horrendous crime spree. Now, John Ashcroft and the feds are going to ride in on black SUVs and save us from our gun toting neighbors. Don’t you feel safer now?
The test that ate Florida
The FCAT has eaten some of Florida's schoolchildren.
At 159 schools in 30 counties, a suspiciously large number of students disappeared just before the FCAT was administered in February and March. The students unaccountably "transferred" to -- who knows where? Florida's Department of Education is looking into the mass migration because the kids might have gotten "lost" so that their FCAT scores wouldn't drag down FCAT-based school grades.
Ten schools in Palm Beach County and one in Martin are on the list of schools with mysterious vanishings. "We're not just looking into transfers," said Education Department spokeswoman Frances Marine. "Playing with the numbers is not something that we will stand for. We're looking at any way the school districts tried to circumvent accountability."
But what about the ways the Education Department itself circumvents accountability? For example, as The Post reported June 17, the state changed the rules so that 191 schools statewide -- 21 of them in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties -- could get A's instead of B's this election year.
What was the change? Like most of the plethora of factors governing school grades -- including the break that lets schools discount "transfer" students -- it is likely to induce head-scratching. For schools to get an A, lower-scoring students had to progress year-to-year at roughly the same rate as higher-scoring students. This year, though, the higher-scoring students can leave the lower-scoring students behind at a faster clip. Clear? The state has made similarly arcane changes every year, making any claims of "accountability" laughable.
......One devious possibility is that the Bushes intentionally are creating punitive bureaucracies to drive people away from public schools. Even in the face of repeated voucher-school scandals, Jeb's beloved private voucher schools have not been saddled with the bureaucratic requirements -- such as the FCAT and school grades -- imposed on public schools.
Yeah, but Ronda never specifically said that the glass was broken, and she can’t help it if that’s the impression that the lying liberal media left you with…
MJ Malone questions Ronda “crawled across glass on my elbows” Storms’ veracity:
What feels like an urban myth has attached itself to Ronda Storms.
She's been poor.
She's been abused.
Oh, baby, she's even lived in the Salvation Army and out of her car.
She's worked for two bucks an hour.
Bloody but unstoppable, she has crawled across glass, put herself through law school, and now, lucky us, graces the Hillsborough County Commission with her presence.
I may be wrong that all this is an urban myth, one of those stories that sound like they have just enough truth in them to be real. I hope I'm wrong because Storms herself has unloaded these morsels during outbursts - does she speak any other way? - at commission meetings.
......Storms' latest declaration of her hard life came last Wednesday as the County Commission prepared to kill one token of humanitarianism, a proposal to raise the wage of the lowest paid county workers, and employees who work for county contractors, to $9.97 an hour, or, for a 40-hour week, a $400 gross.
Storms flew into one of her best, perverse routines. This was the day she talked about the Salvation Army, the crummy jobs, the glass.
She attacked the sexual habits of people who had come to make their case before the commission, dredging up cheap shots about welfare queens and missing men.
......That's the bizarre part of Storms' shtick. If her life has been as hardscrabble as she says, you'd think it would make her compassionate to the struggle of others.
But compassion isn't in her vocabulary. If she survived to make $84,000 a year, other people can.
(It's regrettable that such sinecures are hard to nail down outside politics.)
If others can't make it, it's their fault. Poverty isn't an economic condition. It's a moral failing.
Some ears are still burning over Storms' big mouth. On Tuesday, I visited with the pastor of an east Tampa church, the Rev. W.F. Leonard. He belongs to HOPE, the group that sought the living wage. Leonard couldn't get over how little sympathy Storms had shown for the poor and homeless.
If she really had been living among them, he said, she'd know that homelessness affects every stripe of the ordinary and unlucky.
......There's a contradiction in Storms' telling and retelling her story. She says she believes in every individual working hard, getting no more breaks than anyone else, and finally achieving equality.
But her yapping suggests she believes she's suffered more than others.
It telegraphs a sense that her suffering has made her not equal, but special.
Now, call me silly, but isn't the St. Pete Times a newspaper? And don't newspapers occasionally do investigative research and report on the results? I mean, MJ did say (in a part that I cut) that she called Ronda's office, but that hardly counts as investigation. Let's find out how true Ronda's claims of hardship really are.
AP seeks full disclosure of aWol reecords
Via corrente
There are questions as to whether the file provided to the news media earlier this year is complete, says the lawsuit, adding that these questions could possibly be answered by reviewing a copy of the microfilm of Bush's personnel file in the Texas archives.The Air National Guard of the United States, a federal entity, has control of the microfilm, which should be disclosed in its entirety under the Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit says.
The White House has yet to respond to a request by the AP in April...
Delay, delay. Slime and defend...
asking the president to sign a written waiver of his right to keep records of his military service confidential. Bush gave an oral waiver in a TV appearance that preceded the White House's release this year of materials concerning his National Guard service.
The government "did not expedite their response ... they did not produce the file within the time required by law, and they will not now estimate when the file might be produced or even confirm that an effort has been initiated to retrieve a copy from the microfilm at the Texas archives," the lawsuit says.
In the absence of any privacy objection by the president and in light of the importance of the file's release in advance of the November election, says the lawsuit, AP seeks a court order to compel the release of records "that are being unlawfully withheld from the public."
The released records were from the Texas Air National Guard at Camp Mabry and the Defense Financing Accounting Service in Denver.
Under Texas law, a copy of military personnel files of those serving in the Texas Air National Guard must be retained on microfilm at the Texas archives.
The lawsuit says that no one has looked at any of the Texas Air National Guard records maintained at the state archives since 1996.
(via AP)
Tampa crime is “up” – it must be budget time!
In March, Tampa Police touted new crime statistics that the department said showed crime falling in Tampa.
"I'm very proud," Tampa police Chief Stephen Hogue said of the overall decrease. "It's a combination of efforts. It's the high visibility of police officers, working in conjunction with detectives. It is also a function of the courts putting (offenders) in jail."
BlogWood readers might remember this reaction to the crime rate figures at that time:
...crime rate statistics are laughably manipulable. It behooves cities and states to report lower crime rates and therefore appear safe to potential visitors. Florida happens to be a tourist state, and is therefore extremely sensitive about these numbers. Also, rates often "coincidentally" go up when law enforcement is fighting hard for budget increases - higher crime rates tend to lead politicians to throw money at the "problem".
Once the money is allocated, crime rates invariably go down, and people who don't really understand what is going on buy into the statistical lies and trumpet higher law enforcement budgets, tougher penalties, and increased incarceration rates as the cure to all evil.
Now, we get this from today's Tribune:
``Tampa has an inordinately high crime rate,'' Hogue said. ``We're done making excuses. We've got to bring the crime rate down.''
The chief said Tuesday he wasn't trying to use statistics as ``a scare tactic'' to win support for his budget plans. He said the crime rankings shouldn't have surprised Tampa City Council members.
It was news to Councilwoman Rose Ferlita, chairwoman of the city's public safety committee, though.
``Wow, man,'' Ferlita said. ``I was taken aback. ... If you didn't have the ear of the people who will [decide] the budget, that certainly makes them pay attention.''
......
A key budget proposal calls for $4.3 million to build a police headquarters in east Tampa.
The building would serve police working in District 3, created in January as part of a redeployment aimed at improving service in the area, which includes east Tampa, Ybor City and the Channel District.
Reassigning officers was intended to improve productivity. Arrests have increased 25 percent, and traffic citations are up 67 percent this year, Hogue said.
Police reported in February that the city's numbers of violent and nonviolent crime dropped 3.4 percent in 2003.
A crackdown continues on drug sales in east Tampa, initiated after Iorio took office in April 2003, Hogue said.
``Street-level narcotics activity is what ruins a city,'' he said.
Ranking No. 1 in property crime and No. 2 in violent crime hurts the city as well, council Chairwoman Gwen Miller said.
``That's bad,'' Miller said of the statistics she heard from the chief Monday. ``We can't bring people into town if they read that.''
Don't worry - crime will come back down as soon as this year's budget is done. Then we'll all be much safer.
Voting while black
''This is a typical South [tactic], denying the right to vote based on race and class,'' Jackson said. ``You see classical voter disenfranchisement. These schemes to deny or suppress voters are not new schemes.''
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse.
These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.
How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.
While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers.
Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."
By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee's white- majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.
In other words, in the white county, make a mistake and get another ballot; in the black county, make a mistake, your ballot is tossed.
More MacManus
Rob Lorei of WEDU’s “Tampa Bay Week” responds to the recent BlogWood post on Susan MacManus’ GOP ties:
...... And you are right- she has close ties to the GOP. Sometimes we don't ID a panelist's political affiliation because they are appearing in their capacity as a journalist or political science professor. We could "out" all of these guests (Dan Ruth, Adam Smith, Mary Jo Melone, Dr. MacManus, Darryl Paulson, etc.) But many journalists and professors have asked us not to identify their political affiliation. They'd rather not appear if we do. So the solution has been to recognize (for example) that Dr. MacManus leans conservative, Dan Ruth leans liberal. In selecting panelists we try to balance the "unidentified" right with the "unidentified" left. This is not a policy set in stone and there may be good reasons to revisit it.
......You might be interested to know that we get a lot of complaints from conservatives who say the TBW panel too often leans conservative. Just two weeks ago (June 4th) we received an e-mail from a viewer who claimed that Tedd Webb was the sole conservative voice against "four Democrats". I'd be happy to share the conservative viewer's complaints with you (both phone calls and e-mails). So far, we tend to receive more complaints from conservatives.
Ultimately it's a question of balance. If, over time, we have not provided a group of strong debaters from all sides then we have not done our job. Please let me know what you think of the balance in the next few shows.
Update - a PS:
I forgot to add that Joe Brown was not identified this week (or any other week) as a "Republican Editorial Writer". He's always identified simply as an editorial writer/columnist/member of the TT editorial board.
I admit I was a little fuzzy on who was identified as what. See my original post for my original vagueness.
Update 2:
I made a mistake in my original reply. I should have said "we get complaints from conservatives who say the panel too often leans liberal".
(That's what I get for trying to dash my reply out so quickly).
Worst AG Ever
After my last piece on Mr. Ashcroft, some readers questioned whether he is really the worst attorney general ever. It's true that he has some stiff competition from the likes of John Mitchell, who served under Richard Nixon. But once the full record of his misdeeds in office is revealed, I think Mr. Ashcroft will stand head and shoulders below the rest.
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Today on MorningWood
Blogging on the radio: comments and insights rants on news and events.
The first hour of today’s show is dedicated to Mira.
In the second hour, back to blogging with clips from Monday’s The Daily Show and some random observations on current events from myself.
Iraq
From Juan Cole:
10 US Servicemen Die in Iraq, 11 Iraqis
Monday's toll (still incomplete but more complete than any one article I saw in any one language):
Playlists
Each week, I bring my planned songs in on CD. I usually end up playing most or all of them in the planned order. But sometimes things go askew. Sorry - no guarantees or refunds.
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