Gay Pride Plan Looms Large Over Board
H illsborough County commissioners will meet at 9 a.m. Wednesday for the first time since June 15, when the board agreed to ``abstain from acknowledging, promoting and participating'' in gay pride recognition or events.
Only Commissioner Kathy Castor voted against the policy, which has generated nationwide attention.
The policy is expected to dominate the 45-minute public comment period at the beginning of the meeting at Fred B. Karl County Center, 601 Kennedy Blvd., downtown Tampa.
BlogWood Redux: Tampa’s Welfare Daddies
Note: as promised, this week will feature some BlogWood classics that may just provide a little background to current events. This post first appeared in December of 2003. Click here for more on Civitas and Ed Turanchik's almost successful plan to take over the world.
December 18, 2003
Tampa's Welfare Daddies
Corporate welfare roles in Tampa continue to rise unabated as Tampa's elite join forces to attempt a massive transfer of public wealth into private hands.
BlogWood has learned that lazy, shiftless corporate entities are living large off the public dole, and asking for more! While honest taxpayers struggle to make ends meet, their government is taking their hard-earned money and throwing it at football fat cats, hot hotels, and loony land deals.
Years ago, Tampa leaders borrowed against our collective soul and built a fancy new football stadium for a bunch of rich white men. Complete control of said stadium, including all revenue streams, has been ceded to these Welfare Daddies in exchange for vague promises to try real hard not to ask for another stadium for at least 2 or 3 more years. The Buccaneers are worth $671 million dollars.
More recently, Tampa cut a deal with some other rich white men that pays them $32 million to operate a profitable hotel. But let's not begrudge these guys a little much-needed help. Why, one small part of the Marriott clan, John and Richard Marriott, are way down in the 100's on Forbe's list, with a measly net worth of just $6.2 billion.
Now, Civitas, a company owned by the creme de la blanc of Tampa's elite Welfare Daddies, is in need of our help. See, Ed Turanchik's Plan to Take Over the World can not possibly proceed without a little public assistance. Investors might not be guaranteed to make a profit if they have to pay for everything themselves, and if they can't make a guaranteed profit, then how do you expect them to steal from help the poor?
Make no mistake: Civitas is in business to help the poor. In fact, their primary goal seems to be to help the poor population near downtown Tampa to get the fuck out so that our homegrown Welfare Daddies can start making some money.
Their first pitch was in a meeting with City officials yesterday. Today, Ed Turacnchik will be making a presentation to the City Council.
Civitas' latest proposal calls for the city to swap land it owns within the company's 157-acre target area northeast of downtown for scattered sites the company owns in those other neighborhoods, said Mark Huey, Tampa's economic development director.
Civitas' latest proposal calls for the city to swap land it owns within the company's 157-acre target area northeast of downtown for scattered sites the company owns in those other neighborhoods, said Mark Huey, Tampa's economic development director.
Wednesday was the first meeting between Civitas and city officials since the company unveiled plans Dec. 4 to bring homes and businesses to Tampa's Central Park area.
Civitas also proposes buying some city land, and it wants city help to pay for road work, waterlines and other infrastructure improvements.
``This was the top layer of the onion,'' Huey said. ``We have a lot more meetings to have.''
Translation: 'We'll give up these sub-prime properties that are scattered all over the place in exchange for city properties that are concentrated in the area where we are working to acquire land. We absolutely need these city properties, so an ordinary seller could command top dollar, but we will pay or trade the city next to nothing for them and we will also be asking for many more handouts along the way.'
Stay tuned!
(Updated to add the rest of the Tribune quote I thought I had added in the first place. Doh.)
Ronda and Ronnie’s world
First came the broken bones. Then, the vomiting spells. Then, bruises and scrapes. At first, no one knew who or what kept sending little Ronnie Paris to the hospital. But by the time the 3-year-old died it was clear his life was far too short and none too sweet.
It became even clearer on Wednesday after a forensic pathologist detailed the results of an autopsy on the boy during his father's murder trial. His face scarred and head bruised, signs of abuse were written all over the toddler's body, said Hillsborough County associate medical examiner Dr. Sam Gulino.
"It's my opinion that the injuries that caused his hospitalization on Jan. 22 and eventually his death occurred as a result of blunt head trauma," Gulino said.
Prosecutor Jalal Harb argued Wednesday that the boy's father, Ronnie B. Paris Jr., delivered the fatal blow. Paris, 21, was charged with murder and aggravated child abuse on Feb. 1. Wednesday marked the second full day of testimony in his trial.
Nysheerah Paris didn't say anything about the beatings at first. She didn't want to get in trouble. She wanted something good to happen, for her son to come back, for him to start breathing on his own. She wanted him to be "Little Ronnie" again - his father's first and only son.
But 3-year-old Ronnie Paris didn't come back that day, or the next. Instead, he died Jan. 28 after he was taken off life support at St. Joseph's Hospital.
The boy's death came a week after his father gave him the beating of his life, prosecutors say.
It has been five months since Ronnie B. Paris Jr. was charged with murdering his son. On Tuesday, the boy's mother testified against him in court. She did not remember much about the six weeks she spent with her son after caseworkers moved the boy back to his parents' home from foster care. But she said she remembered the day she saw Paris Jr., 21, beat her son to death.
"Ronnie came in the kitchen. He was upset, and he slammed the baby up against the wall," Nysheerah Paris said.
The next day, the boy was acting strangely, she said.
The couple took him to a friend's house for Bible study. The boy spent most of the day asleep on the couch. They had just ordered pizza for dinner when she noticed something was wrong with her son.
"We was quoting Scriptures and stuff, and I looked over at my baby and saw he wasn't breathing," she said.
Even though the boy would shake and wet himself, his father, Ronnie Paris Jr., would box with the 3-year-old, slapping him in the head until he cried because he didn't want his son to grow up to be ``a sissy,'' the boy's mother testified Monday.
Others corroborated Nysheerah Paris' testimony as the prosecution built its case during the first day of the capital murder trial of Ronnie Paris Jr., 21, accused of abusing 3-year- old Ronnie Paris until the boy slipped into a coma Jan. 22.
He died six days later with swelling on both sides of his brain.
``He was trying to teach him how to fight,'' said Shanita Powell, Nysheerah Paris' sister. ``He was concerned that the child might be gay.''
Ronnie Paris would shake, wet himself and vomit as his father forced him into a box and repeatedly slapped him on the head in an effort to prevent him from being gay, the child's mother, Nysheerah Paris, testified Monday. The boy was 3 years old when he died from swelling on both sides of the brain on January 28.
......"He didn't want him to be a sissy," Shelton Bostic, the defendant's Bible-study friend, testified.
It really is a very small step from legislating hatred and intolerance to eliminationism and murder.
Not dead yet…
I am not dead in a ditch.
Nor am I wandering amnestic, wondering who in the hell I am.
No major crisis has befallen myself or my computer.
Yet BlogWood has fallen into silence. In fact, this has been the longest period of non-posting since the founding of this great blog, oh, a little more than 2 years ago.
What I am is very busy with some large projects that, with any luck, will pay some bills, including the blog bill. Alas, bills need paying, and BlogWood sucks up money like a regular Hoover while pumping literally nothing back into the local Woodconomy.
So don't fret over my relative well being, and do continue to check back every so often, as I fully expect a regular posting routine to resume rather soon.
In the meantime, I'll be updating the SideBlogs to your left quite often (I promise) and probably re-posting some classic BlogWood moments. The 2 or 3 of you who have been around since the beginning may find these stale old stories somewhat less than fully satisfying. Too bad.
The rest of you, those 3 or 4 readers who have managed to find me in the interim, will simply be relieved that you only have to slog through the tedious pap this one time. Consider yourselves lucky.
And if you must stay informed, check out all the good Tampa and Florida blogs listed to your left.
I'll be back soon.
Ronda Storms: The lady doth protest too much
pro·jec·tion......
8. Psychology a. The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or suppositions to others: “Even trained anthropologists have been guilty of unconscious projection—of clothing the subjects of their research in theories brought with them into the field” (Alex Shoumatoff). b. The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt.
Ill-Mannered Storms Cries ``Liar! Liar!`` Much Too Much
Once again, Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms has accused someone of lying. She made the claim during Ron Reagan's television show on MSNBC, poorly representing how people in Hillsborough County talk to one another.
Storms said a local gay-rights website misrepresented her position by saying gays were banned from Hillsborough. It didn't. But that didn't stop her from suggesting that if her opponent's position had any validity, ``She wouldn't have to rely on lies!''
Citizens expect elected leaders to ask tough questions, guard tax money like a bulldog and challenge facts for spin. We don't expect them to be name callers.
It's time to call out Ronda Storms for bad behavior, for polluting the public discourse, for labeling people as liars.
``That turns out, my friends, to be a lie. L-I-E, lie.'' - Ronda Storms, March 17, 2004
......``Let's just cut to the chase, Mr. McCrae. The allegation apparently is you're lying. Are you lying in your letter?'' - Ronda Storms, Oct. 25, 2003
......``I'm just going to lay it out there. I was just flat lied to.'' - Ronda Storms, Oct. 2, 2002
......``If you are lying (to) this board, there should be some sort of penalties.'' - Ronda Storms, Oct. 3, 2001
......``That's patently false. It's not true. That's otherwise known as a lie.'' - Ronda Storms, Nov. 4, 2004
......``Asking somebody, `Are you telling the truth?' doesn't chill (people) unless they're lying.'' - Ronda Storms, Feb. 21, 2002
Bringin’ it on
The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means.
So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
Bankruptcy bill bad for business
The new federal bankruptcy law, set to take effect this October, has been shown to be extremely bad news for consumers. As it turns out, it may also stifle entrepreneurship by unfairly punishing small business owners who take on personal debt to finance their companies.
It's not just debt-burdened consumers who end up in bankruptcy court, snowed under by medical bills and credit card debt, bedeviled by job loss and divorce. Entrepreneurs by the thousands file personal bankruptcy when their businesses go bad.
In fact, business failures are a factor in as many as 17 percent of the 1.6-million consumer bankruptcies filed each year, according to a provocative new study.
"There are as many as nine times more bankruptcies involving a business than the current government data suggest," says the California Law Review report by law professors Elizabeth Warren at Harvard University and Robert Lawless at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
That's a problem, they say, because Congress was aiming at spendthrift consumers when it tightened bankruptcy laws this year and didn't adequately consider the entrepreneurs who will be caught in the web of new rules.
The changes, which take effect in October, could end up discouraging business formation, since it will be more difficult for the self-employed to wipe out their debts and make a fresh start, these experts say.
The statistical discrepancy isn't the result of some vast conspiracy. The profs blame it partly on computer software that courts and lawyers use and on forms that are filled out incorrectly. The underlying culprit, though, is the way most small startup businesses get financed: out of their owners' savings. And when those are gone, out of their owners' credit.
"Taking out a home equity loan is often the first thing," said Shrimatee Ojah-Maharaj, manager of the St. Petersburg Business Assistance Center. "After that, they go on to their credit cards."
Even if the credit card is in the name of the business, the fine print in the application is likely to say that the person opening the account is responsible for the debt.
......Professors Warren and Lawless present their study as a challenge to conventional wisdom that small-business bankruptcies have been declining even as consumer bankruptcies were rising. Reports from the U.S. Small Business Administration even have cited the statistics as a sign of a healthy economy.
Official court statistics show that business bankruptcy filings hit a peak of 88,278 in 1987 and began to decline, falling to 37,078 in 2003. In the meantime, total bankruptcy filings were soaring, from 567,266 in 1987 to 1.6-million in 2003. As a percentage of total filings, business bankruptcies peaked at 18.6 percent in 1983 and fell to 2.3 percent in 2003.
"We had been told that small-business bankruptcy was basically nonexistent," study co-author Lawless said. "The truth is that small businesses continue to have problems and fail as they always have."
And, in fact, other statistics that once tracked business bankruptcy statistics began diverging in the mid 1980s when business bankruptcies began their decline.
"The coincidence in timing is with the computer revolution," Lawless said. "The software being used to generate these forms defaults to count cases as consumer rather than business."
Lawless and Warren dug deeper into the data by questioning 1,771 individuals who had filed for bankruptcy in five states and analyzing their court records. Even those who described themselves as business owners had not checked the "business" box on their bankruptcy filings. They concluded that the real number of business-related bankruptcies was closer to 300,000 than to the 37,078 reported in 2003.
......Warren, author of The Two-Income Trap, about the precarious finances of the U.S. middle class, opposes recent changes in federal law that will make it more difficult to shed debts in bankruptcy. The new law takes effect Oct. 17.
"Our economic system needs to encourage entrepreneurs to make new investments," she said. "Sometimes these investments will fail through no fault of their owners, and when that happens, the owners need to be able to move to other businesses and create new jobs and investment opportunities."
The new law will require many of them to enter five-year debt repayment plans.
"There are a lot of examples of successful people who have been through bankruptcy and were able to get a fresh start," Judge Williamson said.
......"The new law is not predicated on a fresh start," Williamson said. "It's predicated on repayment of debts over a period of years for anyone making more than median income. . . . They'll work for creditors for five years. If they're not successful in the five-year period, they won't receive their discharge and you'll potentially have a class of people who will have judgments against them and will not return as productive members of the business community."
......But supporters of the bankruptcy law say statistics won't change their minds.
"These folks chose to borrow as consumers and not as businesses," Philip Corwin, a lobbyist for the American Bankers Association, told the New York Times. "If they have the ability to pay a substantial amount of what they borrow, then why shouldn't they?"
No comment
Pastor Accused Of Using Church PC For Child Porn
A pastor has been accused of downloading child pornography using his church's Internet connection, authorities said.
The Rev. Eric Michel Young, of Fort Caroline United Methodist Church in Jacksonville, was arrested Friday and charged with possessing any photo or representation that includes sexual conduct by a child younger than 18.
The arrest followed a two- week investigation by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and federal agents from the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Secret Service.
According to authorities, Young was known online as ``Eric the Awful'' and ``Master Rick'' and made a habit of downloading child pornography.
The 700 Club commends this Jacksonville, Florida, church for showing their youth the love of Christ in a unique and teen-centered way.
Pedestrians beware: Bayshore residents won’t yield
Bayshore Boulevard is a busy 4 to 6 lane waterfront road that creates a dangerous interaction of speeding cars on the street with a mix of pedestrians, bicyclists, and other recreational users on its unbroken 5 mile sidewalk. Since Bayshore abuts wealthy neighborhoods along its entire length, and the wealthy residents of these neighborhoods tend to cross the road, when accidents occur, the victim is often a wealthy white person.
Not that that would have anything to do with all the attention that pedestrian safety along Bayshore is suddenly getting.
Recently, a city task force, coincidentally formed after a couple of pale skinned South Tampa residents were hit, recommended that a sidewalk be installed along the Southbound lanes. Currently, the Southbound sidewalk ends at Howard Avenue, so any pedestrians must either cross the busy road or trek through landscaped and unpaved rights of way.
But there's a problem: some rich whiners who live on Bayshore think that a sidewalk would inconvenience them, because they might have to yield to pedestrians as they enter their driveways. Seriously. That's what they're saying.
City officials are moving ahead with plans to build sidewalks along southbound Bayshore Boulevard between Howard Avenue and Bay to Bay Boulevard, despite opposition from some homeowners.
The Bayshore Task Force met with a handful of residents June 29 to discuss their concerns that the sidewalks could be dangerous for motorists who live along Bayshore. Construction is expected to start as early as next week.
"The city seems to have a sidewalk fetish about this," Bayshore resident George Hamilton said. "I'd be very surprised if any serious joggers would want to use the west side. Why would they?"
The existing sidewalk on the water side of Bayshore allows joggers, bicyclists and walkers to move freely without having to stop for traffic. Adding sidewalks on the other side would increase interaction between pedestrians and vehicles pulling in and out of driveways and streets, Hamilton said.
Marilyn Mancuso Weekley said adding sidewalks in front of her home would force her to yield to pedestrians, taking her longer to turn into her driveway from busy Bayshore.
......The city plans to hold off on building sidewalks in front of the Bayshore Diplomat, where residents don't want them, and the Weekley residence until officials can discuss the issue more with them. Mayor Pam Iorio appointed the task force, a group of neighborhood and city leaders, in 2004 after jogger Melissa McKenzie was killed crossing Bayshore during a morning run. Iorio charged the group to come up with ways to improve safety along the heavily traveled scenic street.
Artists Respond to Hillsborough County Ban Against Gay Pride Events
(From the mailbag)
“Family Values Portrait Project” is a “Just Say Know” initiated traveling photography exhibition in response to the current Board of County Commissioners ban against gay pride events.
WHAT: “Just Say Know” Family Values Portrait Project
WHEN: Opening Reception: September 9, 2005
DURATION: Friday, September 9-Sunday, October 2, 2005
PORTRAIT Dates: Listed Below – please call and make a reservation for your portrait!
EMAIL CONTACT: mmariposa@aol.com or cmackin1@tampabay.rr.com“Just Say Know”, a coalition of artists and activists gathering to combat anti-gay bias, have created an ad-hoc Family Values Photography Studio to shoot portraits of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and straight families in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties.
We invite all families to come have their family portrait taken by a group of professional artists at the gallery. Just as in any family portrait, bring your partners, parents, grandparents, children, siblings, nieces, nephews & anyone who is part of your family. On September 9, 2005, Covivant Gallery will host an opening reception, featuring the portraits in an effort to show the wider community the many faces of family pride, family values, and Families that do not support the ban.
Portrait Studio Dates @ Covivant:
Tuesday, July 19th 6-9pm
Wednesday, July 20th 6-9pm
Thursday, July 21st 6-9pm“Just Say Know” is a coalition of artists and activists working and living in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Our mission is to utilize our resources, both intellectual and material, to effect positive social change. With a reckless disregard for hierarchy, we value humor over violence, sophistication over brutality, education over ignorance, and progressive thought over the status quo. We transgress when we can, pay taxes when we must, spend far too much on our educations, and contribute an inordinate amount of cash into the city coffers via parking tickets. Our motto: Accomplish Everything.
For more information or a portrait reservation, please call Shari Feldman at 813-362-2000.
Covivant Gallery & Studios
4906 N. Florida Ave.
Tampa, FL 33604
www.covivant.com
813.234.0222
Or 813-928-4661