Regular blogging will resume soon.

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Plan for Central Park okayed

Replacement housing for the more than 1,300 residents of the 484-unit complex is of particular concern. The Central Park Group’s plans call for only 182 new public housing units.

Posted as Florida, Tampa, War on the poor

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What a happy day: a couple of ex-residents of blighted public housing got to move into new digs in the complex that replaced their old neighborhood.

Nearly two years ago, the Tampa Housing Authority tore down Riverview Terrace, a six-decade-old public housing project with a reputation for drug deals and crime.

In its place is a development called the Oaks at Riverview, a planned community of apartments, town houses and single-family homes in Seminole Heights, off Florida Avenue.

Last week, former Riverview Terrace residents Ruby Poole, 63, and Cardidad Menendez, 72, became the first Terrace occupants to move into the Oaks.

Other Riverview residents and new arrivals will join them in the coming weeks.

The Oaks is the new face of public housing, meant to blend with the surrounding neighborhood, said Jerome Ryans, the housing authority’s director.

Its brochure touts roomy closets, private balconies and patios, a fitness center and a resort-style swimming pool.

“The whole idea is to give people a better place to live,'’ he said. “There is no reason poor people shouldn’t have options.'’

Yes, the poor should have options, but unfortunately, the two residents cited may be the only ones who get to return, since mixed use developments like this one typically leave the poorest residents behind. These poorest of the poor are left to flounder in the Section 8 grant pool, forced to come up with security deposits and living at the mercy of slumlords as they and their former neighbors are scattered to the winds.

Across the bay, the Tampa Housing Authority will have about 1,000 fewer public housing apartments when several projects under way are completed by 2006.

The gradual but steady dwindling of federally owned public housing reflects an ongoing shift by agencies away from owning low-income properties and toward buying mixed-income sites and moving residents into the private rental market with subsidized rent vouchers under the Section 8 program.

Housing officials say the redirection is vital to their survival in an era of significant drops in federal funding for public housing.

They insist the residents they serve, some already teetering on the edge of homelessness, aren’t left more vulnerable. In fact, they say, residents in the Section 8 program - in which federal dollars make up the difference between market rate rents and what residents can afford to pay - may use the vouchers to live almost anywhere they choose.

“The Housing Authority is positioning itself for the future,” Syl Farrell, an agency spokesman, said in a statement. Darrell Irions, the St. Petersburg Housing Authority’s executive director, and Debbie Johnson, his deputy, declined to be interviewed for this story.

“Our portfolio is evolving to provide affordable mixed-income housing opportunities rather than providing a concentrated public housing product. In this era of federal funding cuts to the public housing program, it just makes good business sense for the authority to reposition itself,” Farrell said.

“Additionally, providing residents with choice in their search for housing will benefit the residents and community as a whole.”

But some low-income housing advocates offer a different, less sunny take. Public housing, they say, is a “precious resource” during a “huge” affordable housing crunch.

Moreover, they say, moving residents from public housing to Section 8, a program already under enormous pressure, puts residents at further risk. Families armed with such vouchers face a new set of challenges: looming threats of cuts by Congress; scraping up additional money for security deposits and paying utilities; and finding an affordable, available home to rent with the voucher in the first place.

“The federal government can take away a voucher just as easily as they give it,” said Charles Elsesser, an attorney with Florida Legal Services, based in Miami. “But they can’t take away a brick and mortar building. In selling the property they’ve given up an asset dedicated and targeted to the lowest income.

“Vouchers do not necessarily provide long-term housing for these people,” said Elsesser, who serves on the board of the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the advisory board of the Florida Housing Coalition. “Housing authorities are not fairly calculating the benefits of public housing and the difficulty of using Section 8 vouchers.”

To be clear, I am not against improving the living conditions of public housing residents, but when we simply evict them and build something nicer then set rents that ensure that the vast majority will never return, we have solved nothing and helped only a very lucky few.

Posted as Florida, Tampa, War on the poor

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Last week, St. Petersburg cops arrested several peaceful protesters for trespassing on a public sidewalk. This week, St Pete for Peace will be back at BayWalk.

Saturday, August 13th from 7:30-9:30pm
Baywalk, downtown St. Petersburg (map)

Tell Baywalk that the public sidewalk is for the people, not for the corporations!

Speak out against imperialism, torture, oppression, and the attack on our civil liberties.

Signs and banners are available, or bring one that expresses your views.

We’d like to discuss a few things before the protest, so if you’re able, please arrive by 7:30pm and meet on the the corner of 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street N (map). [Note the new meeting location]

Following the protest we will be having a potluck picnic at Crescent Lake near the big banyan tree, on 15th Avenue and 5th Street N (map). [Note the new picnic location]

More info here .

Posted as Civil Liberties, Florida, Tampa

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(From the BlogWood mailbag)

Ever heard of the Continental Management Group? They run most of South Florida’s condos. If you live in Miami, chances are they run yours.

Well, Continental’s greed and poor service has gotten so bad, it’s provoked this hilarious new music video:

Screw This Condo

The flash is funny, but what’s going on in the lucrative luxury condo industry in South Florida is not. Leydis Borrero cleaned condos for ten years for Continental Group, the largest employer of condo workers. Her reward for a decade of loyalty and hard work was a paycheck of $7.25 an hour with no health insurance for herself or her four kids. When she joined together with her co-workers for a living wage, training opportunities, and family health care, Continental fired her.

Condo workers are finding out that they have a lot in common with condo residents who also get taken for a ride by property management companies like Continental. Fees keep going up, and Continental’s parent company makes money by “cross-selling” additional services such as painting, landscaping, and pool cleaning.

Elected public officials, condo residents, and condo workers have been holding public forums and pushing for legislation requiring licensing, fiscal and ethical standards, and full disclosure of contracting relationships.

That’s the new union movement. Giving a voice to the voiceless. Uniting with community groups for everyone’s benefit. And making sure that working people have the tools and training they need to provide a service they can be proud of.

Check it out at Screw This Condo and CleanCondos.org.

For more information about how we’re working with residents and other public officials to reform the condo industry, go to CleanCondos.org

To see what else the labor movement in south florida has been doing go to:

SEIU Local 11

Posted as Florida, Workers, War on the poor

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Click the link to show your support for Cindy Sheehan.

The mother of a fallen U.S. soldier who started a quiet roadside peace vigil near President Bush’s ranch last weekend is drawing supporters from across the nation.

Dozens of people have joined her and others have sent flowers and food.

Cindy Sheehan, 48, of Vacaville, Calif., says she was surprised at the response.

“Before my son was killed, I used to think that one person could not make a difference,” she said Wednesday under a tent where she has slept since Saturday. “But one person that is surrounded and supported by millions of people can be heard.”

Although a few residents have complained about the protesters, no one has been arrested because the group has been on the public right of way, said Capt. Kenneth Vanek of the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office.

On Saturday, two high-level Bush administration officials, the national security adviser and deputy White House chief of staff, talked to Sheehan for about 20 minutes.

Sheehan called the brief meeting “pointless” and still wants to talk to the president.
……

Although she doesn’t expect Bush to meet with her in Crawford, she says if he did she would ask him whether he has encouraged his twin daughters to enlist.

“I want him to quit using my son’s death to justify more killing,” she said. “The only way he can honor my son’s death is to bring the troops home.”

BlogWood Redux: Blogged Again.
The following post first appeared in December, 2004.

December 21st, 2004
Blogged Again

A Freeway Blogger has struck BlogWood International Headquarters. This is the second time this year that some unknown persons have taken advantage of the highly visible BlogWood campus.

This time, the Executive Residence Building was struck, and a large sign in the memory of a fallen American soldier was placed high up on the balcony fronting Tampa St.

With at least 1319 dead American troops. That’s over 1300 American lives, and counting, thrown away in a stupid, baseless, unwinnable war.

Posted as National, Imperialism, Tampa

Other posts by Norwood.

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Dr. Dobson’s Newsletter: June 2002

Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

Based on my work with adult homosexuals, I try to avoid the necessity of a long and sometimes painful therapy by encouraging parents, particularly fathers, to affirm their sons’ maleness.

BlogWood Redux: Ronda and Ronnie’s world First posted on July 18.

St. Petersburg Times

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.

St. Petersburg Times

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.

TBO.com

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.'’

Yahoo! News

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.

Posted as Florida, Tampa, Religion, Culture war

Other posts by Norwood.

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The St. Pete Police came down hard on some peaceful protesters Saturday night. Mel Sembler’s BayWalk has been complaining about the protesters, who occupy (but do not block) public sidewalks on Saturday nights.

Apparently, the war in Iraq is bad for business, so Bush lackey Sembler wants to suppress free speech and support the troops by taking ownership of a public sidewalk (see original post below) and encouraging the general public to completely ignore the fact that our glorious empire is the cause of death and extreme hardship for hundreds of thousands of innocents around the world.

St. Pete for Peace has the whole story. St. Pete Times has more.

And, continuing the recently founded tradition of BlogWood recycling, here are two informative blasts from the past.

This post first appeared on May 14, 2004.

May 14, 2004
Mel Sembler: Corporate Welfare Daddy

Yesterday, the Tampa City Council signed a check for another big mortgage payment for strip mall developer and Corporate Welfare Daddy Mel Sembler’s generic failure of a mall known as Centro Ybor.

The Dick who was our last Mayor made a sweetheart deal with Sembler. The city spent millions to build parking garages and promised to route the $56 million Marriott Tourist Trolley right past the doors of Centro. But that was just the start. Dick also had the city guarantee Centro’s mortgage. At the time, of course, Dick smiled and pretty much said that no way would we ever have to pay a dime of this guarantee because his buddy Mel was absolutely sure to make sizable profits every year as Centro brought the great unimaginative washed white masses surging back to Ybor, a rushing current of disposable income!

Unfortunately, the masses chose to steer their own course, and their money has been flowing to Baywalk in St. Pete (another Sembler joint) and the Channel District in Tampa. Centro Ybor is a massive failure, and Tampa is now on the hook for over $16 million in guaranteed mortgage payments as well as the maintenance and upkeep of a few mostly empty parking garages.

In January, the city decided to steal from the poor to make February’s mortgage payment:

The February payment, about $300,000, will come from Community Development Block Grant funds, city officials said. But after that, no one knows for sure where they’re going to come up with the money.
……

The city is scrambling to come up with money because Centro Ybor, the shopping complex that was supposed to drive the revitalization of Ybor City, defaulted on its loans and sought a bailout.

To make the project happen, the city had pledged tax funds to cover a $9-million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. If developers couldn’t make the payments, the city promised it would. It pledged dollars intended for low-income housing and community development.

Over the next 14 years, the total price tag, with interest, will be more than $16-million.

Yesterday, the city stole the money from funds designated for infrastructure improvements, and they’re looking for more accounts to raid:

The city council approved taking $455,755 reserved for improvements in Ybor City to make an August bail-out payment for the struggling Centro Ybor entertainment complex.
……

City officials learned in January that a 1998 agreement to help build the $53 million Centro Ybor complex had left the city on the hook for $16 million when the developers couldn’t continue making loan payments.

The city, under former Mayor Dick Greco’s administration, agreed to guarantee a $9 million loan for developers. Under the agreement, the city would take over payments after five years if the complex struggled.

Including the interest, the city now must make payments twice a year of about $400,000, with a $5.6 million balloon payment due in 2018.

In January, $300,000 in federal grant money intended for housing programs and improvements in low-income neighborhoods was used to pay the city’s first installment. The city council then urged the administration to come up with other sources for future payments so poor neighborhoods wouldn’t shoulder all of the burden.

The council said Thursday that it doesn’t like Iorio’s alternative any better.

Council members questioned the legality of using tax increment finance money dedicated for Ybor City to pay a city debt because it is set up specifically for infrastructure improvements.

Sam Hamilton, an assistant city attorney, said there is a loophole in Ybor’s community redevelopment plan that makes it legal.

When Ybor’s redevelopment district was created, the historic Centro Espanol building was identified as a potential redevelopment project. Because that building is part of Centro Ybor and was renovated by the complex’s developers, the tax money can be used, Hamilton said.

“Just because it is legal doesn’t mean it’s right,'’ Councilman Kevin White said.
……

CRAs are designed to improve infrastructure by capping property taxes that go into city and county general revenue. As property values increase, the extra tax revenue is reserved for the district.

Actually, CRAs are designed to improve the bottom line for the rich developers who tend to benefit from them, uh kinda like what is happening here.

Speaking of rich developers, just who is this Mel Sembler, and why are we giving him so much money. First, the second question. Mel is a friend of Dick. Friends of Dick did very well during Dick’s tenure as Mayor.

Now, on to the burning question: who is Mel Sembler?

Mel is the founder of Straight, which offers cultish, much aligned drug treatment programs for children (whose parents can afford it) and has received hundreds of millions of dollars in government money since its founding.

How bad is Straight? Even conservative Fox News has some problems with its methods:

Samantha Monroe was 12 years old in 1981 when her parents enrolled her in the Sarasota, Fla., branch of Straight Inc., an aggressive drub rehab center for teens.

Barely a teen, Samantha also had no history of drug abuse. But she spent the next two years of her life surviving Straight.

She was beaten, starved and denied toilet privileges for days on end. She describes her “humble pants,” a punishment that forced her to wear the same pants for six weeks at a time. Because she was allowed just one shower a week, the pants often filled with feces, urine and menstrual blood. Often she was confined to her closet for days. She gnawed through her jaw during those “timeout” sessions, hoping she’d bleed to death.

She says that after she was raped by a male counselor, “the wonderful state of Florida paid for and forced me to have an abortion.”

There are hundreds of Straight stories like Samantha’s. Wes Fager enrolled his son in a Springfield, Va., chapter of Straight on the advice of a high school guidance counselor. Fager didn’t see his son again until three months later ‘ after he’d escaped and developed severe mental illness.

Since then, Fager’s set out to clear the air on Straight. He has accumulated stories like Samantha’s and his son’s on a clearinghouse Web site. They are stories of suicides and attempted suicides, rapes, forced abortions, molestations, physical abuse, lawsuits, court testimonies, and extensive documentation of profound psychological abuse at Straight chapters all over the country.

Yet, the Straight model of drug treatment is thriving, with the trend toward “boot camp” style rehab centers growing more and more en vogue and Straight’s founders, high-powered Republican boosters Mel and Betty Sembler, wielding enormous influence over U.S. drug policy.

Mel Sembler is currently serving as President Bush’s ambassador to Italy, and the Semblers serve on the boards of almost every major domestic anti-drug program. They are longtime close associates of the Bush family, and are behind efforts to defeat medicinal marijuana initiatives all over the country. Despite the horrors that have surfaced about Straight’s history, they are proud and unrepentant about the program.

With more and more U.S. states turning to mandatory treatment instead of incarceration for minor drug offenses ‘ with Mel and Betty Sembler continuing to flex political muscle in the power corridors of the drug war ‘ the story of Straight is one worth hearing.

Straight was spun off of a rehab program called The Seed based on the “synanon” method of treatment. Established in 1972, the program lost its funding after a congressional investigation turned up evidence of brainwashing and cult-like mind control tactics. But a Florida congressman named Bill Young persisted. He found advocates in the Semblers and persuaded them to start a similar rehab center in St. Petersburg, which they called “Straight Incorporated.”

Despite allegations of abuse from escaped members and pending lawsuits, over the next 15 years Straight won laudatory praise in Republican circles. Luminaries from Nancy Reagan to Princess Diana visited Straight branches and touted their successes (though by most estimates only about 25 percent of Straight “clients” ever completed the program).

But Straight’s tactics soon caught up to it in the courts. A college student won a false imprisonment claim of $220,000 in 1983, and another claim cost Straight $721,000 in 1990. A Straight spin-off called Kids of North Jersey lost a $4.5 million claim in 2000. Straight chapters across the country began to shut down, culminating with the last branch in Atlanta closing in 1993.

But the Straight philosophy was far from finished. Many chapters and directors reopened new clinics that employed the same tactics under different names ‘ such as KIDS, Growing Together and SAFE. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush visited and praised SAFE, despite the fact that a Miami television station reported widespread Straight-like abuse at the facility in a 2000 expose.

Amidst mounting lawsuit losses and bad publicity throughout the 1990’s, the umbrella organization Straight Inc. changed its name in 1996 to the Drug Free America Foundation. DFAF thrives today ‘ receiving $400,000 in federal subsidies in 2000 and $320,000 from the Small Business Administration.

“It amazes me that despite the pattern of complaints and abuse allegations, Straight chapters can simply change their names and continue to operate,” says Rick Ross, a cult expert and intervention specialist. Ross says there’s an unfortunate market for “rehab” centers that take burdensome children off the hands of troubled parents.

Most troubling, however, is the considerable and continuing political clout of Straight Inc.’s founders. Former President Bush once shot a television commercial for DFAF, and designated the Semblers’ program as one of his “thousand points of light.”

Long a presence in Florida Republican circles, Mel Sembler was tapped as ambassador to Australia in 1989. Today he serves the younger Bush as ambassador to Italy, and he served on the board of the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Betty Sembler co-chaired Jeb Bush’s campaign committee. In return, the governor declared Aug. 8, 2000, “Betty Sembler Day” in Florida ‘ due, he said, to her work “protecting children from the dangers of drugs.”

She also serves on the board of DARE, the largely failed anti-drug program for elementary school students.

DFAF also worked with then-governor Bush on anti-drug programs in Texas, and today claims to have his ear on national drug policy as well. Indeed, Arizona prosecutor and Sembler favorite Rick Romley was on Bush’s short list for drug czar. Though Romley wasn’t nominated, Bush did tap staunch drug warrior John Walters. The nomination caused Betty Sembler to remark, “…. we have lacked the leadership and support of the White House … until now.”

“It’s really shocking that the Semblers are still lauded and honored after all that’s come out about their organization,” says cult expert Ross, a self-described Republican.

Last year, a reporter from the Canadian e-zine Cannabis News asked Betty Sembler in person about the horror stories he’d read from Straight survivors. “They should get a life,” Sembler replied. “I am proud of everything we have done. There’s nothing to apologize for. The legalizers are the ones who should be apologizing.”

That’s the attitude of the drug war’s power duo, who can be unrepentant about the lives their program destroyed because they believe a win-at-all-costs approach is the only way to remove the scourge of drugs from society. Shattered lives, suicides, forced abortions, fractured psyches ‘ all necessary casualties of the drug war, and nothing to apologize for.

I read that article 3 times hoping to edit it down, but there’s just too much good stuff in it. Now, besides being the King of Anti-Drug Crusading Corporate Welfare Daddies, Mel also has a knack for slapping up ugly strip malls, specializing in providing retail space for Eckerd’s.

And Sembler has his hands in other developments all over the Bay Area. A quick google search turns up tons of references that tie Sembler to project after project around here. It seems that even if Centro Ybor is failing due to competition from other shopping districts (like the Sembler developed Bay Walk) that Mel is making his money. And rest assured: odds are good that many of Mel’s other projects benefit from corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks or incentives or other government subsidies. Mel has gotten rich off the backs of the taxpayers.

Which brings us back the the point of this post: Mel Sembler is an unapologetic right wing crusader who has ruined countless lives and continues to lure unsuspecting victims into his web of government subsidized treatment programs cults. He has more money than god, yet he sits back and allows hundreds of thousands of dollars (so far, but we’re still counting) to be stolen from poor people who actually need the money so that one of his many shopping malls can keep its mismanaged doors open.

Actually, I have no idea if Sembler still has any stake in Centro Ybor, but I have no problem using him as the poster daddy for shiftless, lazy, greedy corporate welfare cheats who get paid by the government to give birth to butt-ugly strip malls and other generic piles of bricks.

If Corporate Welfare Daddy Supreme Mel Sembler had an ounce of compassion, if he cared one iota about the community as a whole, he would let the city of the hook and take his losses in Centro Ybor just like an average investor who made a bad choice would have to.

That’s not likely to happen, of course, since Mel knew going in that his ‘investment’ was safe, guaranteed by the FDWC (Friends of Dick Welfare Corporation, aka Tampa). People like him, folks who claim to be conservatives, yet get fat off of questionable government subsidies and then get rewarded for their thefts with cushy government jobs, have usually brainwashed themselves into truly believing that they are somehow deserving of this public largesse.

I say we stop payments to Centro Ybor. Let it default on its mortgage, and let the bank have the damn place. Nobody around here likes it enough to visit anyway.
######

This post first appeared on April 14, 2005.

April 14, 2005
Welfare daddy seeks another public handout

Welfare daddy supreme Mel Sembler is seeking ownership of a public sidewalk. The problem is that some people think that just because they have a constitutional right to freely and peacefully express their opinions that they ought to be allowed to do so. Silly people: they actually feel that the constitution is more important than shopping!

Thankfully, a majority of St. Petersburg City Council members may actually agree that allowing safe and legal protests on public property is not necessarily a bad thing.

Hoping to ban demonstrators from BayWalk’s main entrance, officials with the entertainment complex want the city to grant them control of the sidewalk in the area.

City Council members have asked administrators to study BayWalk’s request, which would convert the sidewalk on the north side of the Second Avenue N, between First and Second streets, into private property.

Craig Sher, president and CEO of the Sembler Co., which owns and manages BayWalk, said moving protesters was among the recommendations that grew out of three recent community forums held to address a January fracas among teens at the complex.

Sher said protesters have hurt businesses and jeopardized public safety. Pedestrians have been pushed or fallen into the street to avoid demonstrators congregating on the sidewalk, he said.

“There have been lots of near misses,” Sher said. “There’s been screeching brakes and swerving cars. We want our business to thrive and have our customers come in unimpeded.”

I’ve gotta call bullshit on this one. This stretch of road, which runs right through the middle of Bay Walk, is congested with pedestrians and very slow moving cars ‘ it’s impossible to drive quickly without causing major mayhem. Further, there are always plenty of cops around to keep protesters from blocking sidewalks, and the protesters know and follow the rules.

In fact, traffic moves so slowly that when I was driving the world famous True Majority Pig Mobile through the area one Saturday night last year, an over-enthusiastic teenage girl ran up to the moving vehicle and jumped onto one of the pigs. I stopped within a few seconds, and by the time I opened my door to shoe her away, 2 cops were already on the scene preparing to call parents and lecture. (They flagged me down a little later to fill me in and get my side of the story)

Anyway, anyone who claims that the protesters are causing a public danger or that the cops are not providing adequate crowd control is completely full of shit.

Now, back to our story…

But St. Petersburg civil rights attorney Marcia Cohen worries granting blanket control of the sidewalk to BayWalk could squelch protesters’ constitutional rights.

City laws allow police to keep sidewalks passable and safe, she said.
……

Since BayWalk opened in 2000, protesters have gathered along the Second Avenue N sidewalk, usually on Friday or Saturday nights. People must pass the demonstrators to get from a nearby parking garage to BayWalk.

The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement demonstrated at BayWalk weekly for eight months after one of its members was arrested there. It stopped after BayWalk officials agreed to loosen their code of conduct. The anti-war group, St. Pete for Peace, began staging protests during the buildup to the war in Iraq.

“It’s the only place in downtown that’s vibrant,” said Jay Alexander, a member of St. Pete for Peace. “It’s more exposure.”

The anti-war group typically has 15 to 50 people at BayWalk. It recently scaled back its presence from weekly to twice a month, on Saturdays between 7 and 9 p.m.

Chris Ernesto, one of the peace group’s organizers, said he thinks the battle has been fought and won against limiting protesters at BayWalk.

In July, city officials canned a controversial proposal to bar protesters from BayWalk and Tropicana Field. It would have created “no protest zones” and prohibited demonstrations on the north side of the Second Avenue N sidewalk, among other areas.

“At this juncture we are bestowing our confidence with the City Council to side with the Constitution,” Ernesto said. “It’s a public sidewalk. It’s for use by the public, which includes protesters as defined by our Constitution.”

Many council members acknowledged they are wary of giving up control of a sidewalk to move protesters.

“There are a lot of ramifications,” council member Virginia Littrell said. “If we do it for BayWalk, do we do it for everyone? In St. Petersburg we try to make sure we treat everyone equally.”

Council member James Bennett said he sympathizes with BayWalk officials, but would prefer exploring the idea of closing Second Avenue N to traffic, temporarily on weekends, or permanently.

“Legislating for one part of the sidewalk, I’m not necessarily in favor of doing,” Bennett said.

“I don’t know if we’re ready to cross that bridge.”

Council member Jay Lasita, who is undecided on the issue, said he’s more amenable to selling the public property to BayWalk instead of just handing it over. “That way it becomes a business transaction,” he said.

St. Pete for Peace will be protesting at BayWalk this Saturday . Everyone is welcome.

Posted as Civil Liberties, Florida, Tampa, Politics

Other posts by Norwood.

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Note: As noted previously, I’m re-posting some tired old stuff during this time of light blogging. This post first appeared in May.

Fond of inserting annoying little creatures into his rectum.

Like Mr. Slave, who brilliantly answered Paris Hilton’s pineapple trick by entirely inserting Paris herself into his asshole and lisping “Oooh, Jesus Christ!”, Tampa has won a big Whore Off contest by simply out-whoring the other big whores: because we were number two, we whored harder .

Wearing snappy suits and anxious looks, Tampa Bay area leaders leapt from their chairs, whooped, hugged and pumped their fists. It was as if they had just won the Super Bowl.

In an upset, they had.

Tampa was awarded Super Bowl XLIII by a vote of NFL owners Wednesday at the league’s spring meeting, narrowly beating Atlanta with promises of roller-coaster rides, golf courses and sunshine.
……

Tampa Bay spiced up its bid Tuesday with an additional $1 million, including $759,000 for tending (sic) the NFL Experience, bringing the bid total to about $11 million. Tampa also promised to give the 31 NFL owners 150 tickets each to a party at Tampa’s Busch Gardens the night before the big game.

$230,000 worth of tickets to Busch Gardens - I wonder if the unused ones are redeemable for cash? The tickets were part of the original bid, which has been widely reported to be worth around $10 million – 3 times the value of the next sleaziest city’s bid, and a record that will no doubt have to be surpassed by the next group of sluts that offer themselves in exchange for promises of fame and fortune.

“We made every concession any city can make,'’ said Paul Catoe, CEO of the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau. “There’s no city out there that can beat what we have on the table. We’ve given the NFL $1 million in game-day expenses … no one else is stepping to the plate with $1 million.'’

So, now we’re officially up to $11 million, but we can expect that figure to rise exponentially, as it did in Jacksonville.

The additional costs bring the city’s overall tab to $12.9 million for hosting the Super Bowl, which drew more than 100,000 visitors. That’s more than four times the $2.8 million estimated in February 2004.

Still, 10 or 12 or $44 million is money well spent, since the economic impact of these games is legendary .

“We always like events that generate a tremendous economic impact,” said Mark Huey, Tampa’s economic development manager.

Tampa didn’t do an economic impact study after the 2001 Super Bowl, said Paul Catoe, president of the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau. But studies showed that the game pumped $340 million into San Diego in 2003.

“By the time it rolls around back to Tampa we’re probably in the neighborhood of $350- to $370-million,” Catoe said.

That’s quite an impressive number that Mr. Catoe is pulling out of his ass (Oooh, Jesus Christ!). It’s too bad that no one did a study of the 2001 game. Oh, wait: Tampa didn’t do a study, but the NFL says that the game provided a $250 million economic impact.

“I think those are gross exaggerations,” said Alan Sanderson, a University of Chicago economist.

Out of that multimillion-dollar number, he said, you have to subtract expenditures that would have happened regardless of the Super Bowl. Take out jacked-up hotel room prices that go to an out-of-town company like Hyatt. Take out ticket prices and souvenir sales for hats and jerseys made outside of Florida. Subtract the millions that won’t be spent at area malls because of Super Bowl-related events.

Then add in estimates that Sanderson says are usually not included in forecasts, such as “additional security costs, marketing and advertising that the NFL may foist off on the locals to do.”

In the end, “if the NFL gives you a number of $300-million, I’m going to say $50-million max of that” will end up helping the Tampa economy, he said.

Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., said that while a Super Bowl can pull in many out-of-town fans, those fans are usually replacing other visitors who would be in town anyway. It’s a phenomenon that is particularly pronounced in a warm-weather city such as Tampa, which draws large numbers of visitors during the winter months.

Philip Porter, an Economist at USF, has made a name for himself studying the financial impacts of Super Bowls and other big sports events. Back in 2000, he suggested, though in a more genteel way than I ever would, that certain people had been pulling figures out of their asses for quite some time.

One must wonder where the impact number came from. The Task Force didn’t commission a study and none of the members are economists.

History didn’t reveal it to them because I’ve studied Super Bowl impacts and there is nothing in the record of economic activity that suggests this. I’d bet the mortgage that the Task Force members couldn’t tell us what those numbers mean or how they were estimated.

It’s a good bet because $250 million is so far beyond possibility and the truth is so easily observed that if the Task Force had any clue, they would never make such a claim.

The facts are the National Football League gave the Task Force that figure. It represents a gross exaggeration, and the Task Force should know better than to trust the NFL’s objectivity.

The NFL uses these figures to justify government subsidies to teams including paying $400 million for Raymond James Stadium.

It’s important that we all understand what economic impact means.

Economic impact is merely sales impact. That’s important when economic impact is used to justify government expenditures. The $400 million that taxpayers will pay for RJS and the several million dollars we pay to support the Super Bowl are tax dollars, and every dollar of sales impact generates only about a nickel of tax receipts for local governments.

We need $8 billion of sales impact to pay for RJS and $100 million to pay the cost of hosting the Super Bowl.

The Task Force should do its own work and question whether $250 million worth of sales is reasonable.

Consider that Hillsborough County now sells about $1 billion worth of goods and services in a typical January, roughly $65 million every two days. For us to absorb even 25 percent of the NFL’s claim in two days, we would have to sell twice as much of everything — not just twice as many hotel rooms and restaurant meals, but twice as many cars, boats, refrigerators, television sets, clothing items, stereos, furniture, lawn mowers and weed whackers. Every line in every store would have to be twice as long as usual on Super Bowl weekend.

Consider that Tampa Bay area hotels typically are 80-percent full in late January and that 85 percent is considered fully occupied — so there is not much available space.

With double occupancy, we would have to build 100 large hotels to handle the additional people. Consider that roughly 40,000 people pass through Tampa Bay area airports each day. We’d have to more than double the number of flights at every airport to handle the new influx. It takes nearly 700 jet flights to ferry 100,000 people. If you could somehow manage to land and service an additional plane every six minutes, it would take more than three days to deliver them using the Task Force’s economic impact number as a base.

Tampa already hosted two Super Bowls and Hillsborough County collects data on sales. The Task Force should make its own comparisons.

In January 1991 when Tampa hosted the Super Bowl, Hillsborough County recorded sales of $720 million. It had sales of $727 million the previous January (1990) and $742 million the next January.

In January 1984, when Tampa hosted the Super Bowl, Hillsborough County recorded sales of $472 million. The average for the preceding and following Januarys was $482 million.

And this economic impact evidence is consistent with every Super Bowl.

In Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Minn., and Detroit, and in every Super Bowl in California, sales do not respond to the presence of a Super Bowl.

The NFL’s estimates are wrong and they know it.

OK – it seems that any economic impact may, in fact, be legendary after all. Probably less than the annual economic impact of the arts in our area, and certainly more costly to attract. So much for the fortune. But we still have fame, right?

Well, as Mr. Porter is fond of pointing out, we may have a better chance at infamy than fame. If the game were in another city, we could purchase a TV spot and make our pitch. Not so with the game here. Anyone remember Bamboleo?

In 1991, as the world watched, Tampa’s white elite showed their true color by refusing to let any black folk take part in the Gasparilla Parade , which had been scheduled to coincide with the Super Bowl that year. (Actually, several people of color were slated to march - carrying shovels behind the horses.)

The parade was called off, Bamboleo was cobbled together at the last minute as a lame ass substitute, and promptly ignored by everyone, especially these people.

In the late 1980s, early in her term as mayor, Freedman found herself ducking for cover under a table at the Tampa Yacht Club while some of Tampa’s most prominent citizens — dressed as pirates for a pre-Gasparilla luncheon — mischievously hurled volleys of food and silverware at each other.

The people making the mess had been drinking. They were white, moneyed and male. The people who would have to clean it up, Freedman noticed, were all black.

“You could just see the disgust, the disillusionment” on those workers’ faces, she said.

The experience crystallized Freedman’s qualms about Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, the 750-member, all-male social club — then exclusively white — that sponsors Tampa’s biggest one-day outdoor event, the annual Gasparilla invasion and parade. In 1990, Freedman decided to pull police support and clean-up service for the parade — which had cost the city $30,000 — because of its all-white membership.

That was a painful year for the Krewe, a national embarrassment that members don’t like to talk about. With the parade moved to coincide with Super Bowl XXV in January 1991, the Krewe came under fire for its exclusivity from the National Football League and an ad hoc group of local activists called the Coalition of African-American Organizations, which demanded that the Krewe integrate. Rather than immediately open its doors to blacks, the Krewe canceled the party.

After the 1991 Gasparilla parade was scuttled, the city scrambled to come up with a substitute. The result was Bamboleo, a multicultural festival, which flopped. People missed the pirates. The next year, the Krewe accepted two blacks into its ranks, then four.

There are plenty of other examples too.

Porter recalled that some of the press coverage of this year’s Super Bowl in Jacksonville focused on how quiet and boring that city is, while the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa generated coverage of local strip clubs and lap dances.

“You are exposing your community, but the exposure may be good or bad,” he said. “It’s not “priceless,’ and it’s not advertising.”
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“It means a whole helluva lot of money for this area,” said Joe Redner, owner of several Tampa strip clubs. Previous Super Bowl weekends have been his biggest moneymakers. “We raise the prices, and we have more people. It’s just a bonanza.”

Actually, Joe Redner is one of the best things that Tampa has going for it, so if the game benefits him, then it may well benefit the rest of us just through his community minded largess. Ironically, Tampa’s civic leaders spend countless government resources unconstitutionally legislating morality just to fight Joe, despite the fact that his world famous Mons Venus probably provides a greater economic impact than the handful of football games that the Bucs play at home every year in their shiny taxpayer financed stadium. We should be building Joe a new strip club with luxury skyboxes. But I digress.

Fans at the 2001 game were reportedly happy with the strip clubs and lap dances, but many took offense when it was learned that big brother was watching them watch the game.

the Tampa Police Department employed a recently developed surveillance system to take pictures of all those entering Raymond James Stadium for Sunday’s Super Bowl. The ACLU believes this activity raises serious concerns about the Fourth Amendment right of all citizens to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
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Reports indicate that the Tampa police digitized the facial images and checked them electronically with databases maintained by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Among the many things that are not clear about this program is whether the images were checked against those who have a record of a criminal conviction or databases that include records of those law enforcement agencies regard as criminal suspects. Reports of the use of this surveillance technology also indicate that the same technology has recently been installed for use in the Ybor City section of Tampa.

We fully understand that while everyone has a reduced expectation of privacy while in public, including sitting in the stands with one’s family at a Sunday afternoon football game, we do not believe that the public understands or accepts that they will be subjected to a computerized police lineup as a condition of admission.

The Ybor technology alluded to in the ACLU letter was the infamous FACE-IT system. Tampa was leading the Orwellian bandwagon back then.

Still, I suppose the contention can be made that any publicity is good – if Tampa’s name is getting out there, then we will benefit in the long run. And we may find a nice niche by targeting the aging paranoid racists who would trade civil liberties for the illusion of security demographic, but I’m just not swayed by those arguments.

And I’m getting tired, so I’ll wrap up this rambling reality based screed by pointing out an interesting coincidence that may imply that maybe, just maybe, the fix was in and we didn’t really have to be the biggest whore in the contest just to get fucked by the NFL.

It was May 1987, one week before the host city for Super Bowl XXV was to be announced at a press conference in San Diego, and Walter Baldwin’s heart had just dropped to his stomach.

Baldwin, chairman of Tampa’s Super Bowl Task Force, had learned that a key player in Tampa’s bid, Bucs owner Hugh Culverhouse, was going to skip the press conference to vacation in China.

Baldwin panicked. How could the home team’s owner miss the announcement? He called Culverhouse. “What have you done?” he yelled.

Apparently, Culverhouse knew something Baldwin didn’t. “Don’t worry about it,” he said calmly. “It’s all taken care of.”

And in 2005,

when Tampa Bay’s Super Bowl committee officially revealed Tuesday its bid to host the Super Bowl in 2009, the panel that met the media at Raymond James Stadium was missing a key player - a member of the Glazer family, which owns the Buccaneers.

Neither Malcolm Glazer nor sons Bryan, Joel and Edward appeared among the tourism and political officials to voice their support for Tampa’s bid.

Oooh!

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LATE Update: Images blatantly stolen from www.gregpalast.com and
Psychedelic Republicans. I, of course, should have acknowledged the original sources and linked to the sites in the first place. Sorry.

Unretouched photo of Katherine Harris

Detail from a ‘Colorized’ photo of Katherine Harris

Makeup queen Katherine Harris, the Cruella DeVil bad cosmetics poster girl, now says it was all an illusion. See, the mean liberal media “colorized” her photos to accentuate her blue eye shadow in order to make fun of her during the 2000 presidential recounts.

The fact that no pictures with the aforementioned eye shadow can be found is just part of the plot. Really. And the idea that most people actually saw Harris on TV rather than in print is just a distraction, or maybe CNN employed legions of kids with crayons to mark up the live video feeds as they went out. Or something.

Anyway, everyone should just forget all about Katherine’s makeup challenged past and no one should pay any attention at all to any color pictures of Ms. Harris, because the nerdy kids who edit the yearbook are obviously out to get her.

On Monday, on a conservative radio talk show, Harris, now a congresswoman from Longboat Key running for the U.S. Senate, hit back, blaming newspapers for the criticism and charging that some - without saying which - altered her photographs.

“I’m actually very sensitive about those things, and it’s personally painful,'’ Harris said when host Sean Hannity asked about her image problems from 2000.

“But they’re outrageously false, No. 1, and No. 2, you know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph,'’ Harris said.

She didn’t explain what she meant by “colorized.'’

Asked Tuesday to point to an altered photograph, Harris and her staff could not.

Her response to the question, said spokesman Adam Goodman, was, “I haven’t worn blue eye shadow since the seventh grade when I was in the Girl Scouts.'’ She didn’t name a newspaper that showed blue eye shadow.
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Most newspapers, including the Tribune, forbid changing photographic images.

“Manipulating an image in any form is not allowed'’ by The Associated Press, which distributes photos to newspapers nationwide, said David Ake, AP national deputy photography director. “We’re pretty adamant about that. We have terminated people for it.'’

Ake was AP photo editor in Florida during the 2000 recount, “and I can tell you we did no manipulation whatever,'’ he said.

Some political experts say Harris’ charge makes little sense because most Americans got their visual image of Harris from television.

At least two Harris news conferences in November 2000, detailing her decision to enforce a deadline and forbid recount results, got national TV coverage.

“Of course it wasn’t newspapers, it was television,'’ said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. “I can remember watching her and thinking she learned all the wrong makeup lessons from Al Gore in the debates.'’

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