BlogWood: Norwood's Fair and Balanced Nattering

Because if we have a free and democratic election, then the terrorists win...

No worries here - after all, we can certainly trust the thieves who stole our country to do the right thing.

The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission.

Such guidelines do not currently exist, said DeForest B. Soaries, head of the voting panel.

Soaries was appointed to the federal Election Assistance Commission last year by President Bush. Soaries said he wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in April to raise the concerns.

"I am still awaiting their response," he said. "Thus far we have not begun any meaningful discussion." Spokesmen for Rice and Ridge did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Soaries noted that Sept. 11, 2001, fell on Election Day in New York City and he said officials there had no rules to follow in making the decision to cancel the election and hold it later.

Events in Spain, where a terrorist attack shortly before the March election possibly influenced its outcome, show the need for a process to deal with terrorists threatening or interrupting the Nov. 2 presidential election in America, he said.

Disney backs anti-Moore film

Disney, which refused to distribute “Fahrenheit 9/11" on the grounds that it is a thought provoking and truthful representation of how we were manipulated into the quagmire that Iraq has become political film, apparently has no problem with getting behind a film that they are praising as the anti-F9/11 .

So now Disney is collaborating with the conservative group that tried in vain to keep Fahrenheit 9/11 out of theaters and threatened CBS last year until the network agreed to drop its TV movie "The Reagans." (The leader of this group, Howard Kaloogian, was also involved in the unseating of California Gov. Gray Davis). You'll remember that Fahrenheit was originally scheduled to be released by Disney's Miramax unit, but the company dropped Michael Moore's movie because of the film's content. Now we have a better window into Disney's rationale.

Sorry we missed this press screening of Disney's film "America's Heart & Soul," which the company is touting as a cinematic antidote to Fahrenheit 9/11. On the VIP list, the invite says, were Disney reps, Howard Kaloogian and his colleagues -- and Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse!

From the press release:

MOVE OVER MICHAEL MOORE…
Disney & Move America Forward
Team Up to Show a Brighter Side of America

(SACRAMENTO) -- Move America Forward is teaming up with Walt Disney Pictures to present an exclusive screening of Disney's "America's Heart & Soul" on Monday, June 28, 2004 at the Crest Theater in Sacramento, California. The private screening takes place at 1:00 PM and members of the news media are invited to attend. "Americas Heart & Soul" opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, July 2nd.

Unlike the negative and misleading storyline of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," Disney's "America's Heart & Soul" features a collection of upbeat storylines of real life Americans who pursue their passions in a way that underscores what makes America a great nation.
......

On its Web site, Move America Forward complains that: "Those who oppose the War on Terror have the mouthpiece of the mainstream media to disseminate their propaganda to the entire nation in an almost unchallenged effort. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week it is bash America, bash the military and bash the Bush administration." This, of course, is hardly true -- but it's even more ridiculous now that the company that owns ABC News is associated directly with Howard Kaloogian's anti-Moore efforts.

Michael Moore's reaction to the Disney/Kaloogian alliance: "Disney joining forces with the right wing kooks who have come together to attempt to censor Fahrenheit 9/11 must mean that Dumbo is now in charge of the company's strategic decisions. First, Disney tried to stop the movie from being released and now it is aligning itself with the very people who are trying to intimidate the movie theaters from showing the movie. Even Daffy Duck would tell you this makes no sense. This latest development only further disproves what Michael Eisner had claimed about 'politics' not being behind Disney's decision not to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11."

Group calls for e-voting audit

This sounds like a very reasonable proposal. I bet Jeb! shoots it down like a voter-mandated initiative.

Gov. Jeb Bush should increase voter confidence by calling Florida's Legislature into special session to order an independent audit of the state's voting system, a group of South Florida activists said Tuesday.

The organization, which calls itself the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, wants audits of all touch- screen electronic voting machines used in 15 Florida counties during the Aug. 31 primary.

The other 52 counties use optical-scan machines, in which voters mark a box on a paper ballot, which is then read by machine.

``He can either be the leader in election reform or he can stick his head in the sand and do nothing,'' said Sandy Wayland, spokeswoman for the coalition.

The group wants to be sure the machines record the touch-screen vote, tabulate it accurately and produce a paper report showing what happened.

"F 9/11" activist arrested for falling

Hillsborough Sheriff’s Deputies arrested a 51 year old woman for handing out literature at an AMC theater. There were cops at every AMC theater that I am aware of. They were stationed in order to prevent under aged people from seeing this movie and to prevent others from exercising their freedom of speech.

Actually, on private property, you have no freedoms. That is why many civil libertarians are concerned about the long trend away from gathering in public spaces like parks and toward gathering in private spaces like malls and shopping centers.

Even in the parking lot, this activist was still on private property, thus she really had nowhere to legally pass out literature. I’m really not sure why AMC decided to host this movie if the chain is so concerned about the potential behavior of the people in attendance, but by posting uniformed police in front of every entrance to Fahrenheit 9/11 and not in front of other theaters, they managed to create the feeling that simply seeing this movie was a subversive act.

On Saturday night, Elizabeth Zollner wanted to see a movie.

Not just any flick. The 51-year-old Brandon woman bought tickets to the documentary igniting political passions. And after watching Fahrenheit 9/11, she planned to pass out a handful of fliers promoting a political event featuring the movie's director, Michael Moore.

Politics proved the least of her worries.

Early Sunday, Zollner was jailed on charges of trespassing, obstructing an officer and battery on a law enforcement officer after an encounter outside Brandon's AMC Regency 20. Her arrest was the only one reported from last weekend's opening of the Bush-bashing film at AMC theaters nationally.

Zollner was released Sunday morning on $4,500 bail. A graduate student at the University of South Florida, she has no prior arrest record in Florida.

Zollner said officers unfairly singled her out for political reasons.

"Would they put a police officer in Shrek?" said Zollner, who is trying to hire an attorney to fight the charges. "They were looking for people who might try to do any political activity."

AMC Theaters were warned about political organizing around Fahrenheit 9/11, said Rick King, of Kansas City, Mo., a national spokesman for the chain. Company policy prohibits distributing in theaters.

Zollner said a security officer asked her to stop passing out fliers in the lobby for MoveOn PAC, a liberal advocacy group, so she moved to the sidewalk. The officer noted that she remained on private property, she said, so she moved to the parking lot.

By then, a crowd formed. More officers arrived.

"They were pushing me and bullying me, and I didn't like it," said Zollner. She said she did not realize she was dealing with an off-duty Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy. In the push, Zollner said, she began to fall and raised a leg for balance.

Sheriff's deputies saw things differently.

"She kicked our deputy in the leg and laid down on the ground," said Lt. Rod Reder, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.

"It looked like overreacting," said Joyce Halstrom, who watched her domestic partner's arrest in horror. "I'm 60 years old. Joyce is 51 years old. We're not rabble rousers. We just wanted to do our part to take care of the troubled situation George Bush has gotten us into."

Now, who, exactly, “warned” AMC about dangerous activists like Ms. Zollner, and what were the nature of these warnings?

Fight the power. Buy unaccompanied kids tickets to this “R” rated movie and escort them into the theater if you need to in order to ensure they get in unmolested by security. 15 year olds will be killing and dying in our names very soon. They need to see this movie now.

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Today on MorningWood

Blogging on the radio: comments and insights rants on news and events.

I’m totally out of time - gotta get to the station. Here’s what I think I may do / talk about / whatever:

F911 is going strong. Encourage America’s youth to sneak into this particular “R” rated movie: offer to procure tickets and help get ‘em into the theater.

A MorningWood exclusive: an shorter, edited for radio version of this interview. (Right Click the link and “Save As” to save to your hard drive and then play. Interview stolen from Sadly, No!. Pay them a visit and steal something for yourself.) For radio play, I just cut out some of the excess due to time constraints. I’m sure I didn’t change the context or anything. Really. Actually, the interview in its full unedited length is pretty damning all by itself. But wait - it gets worse - Bush was given the questions ahead of time and still managed to completely bungle the interview. Then the White House retaliated against the Irish TV station by cancelling a scheduled interview with the First Lady.

Krugman:

Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor.

IRR callups back on:: (a few weeks ago, the military was denying the possibility of such a callup, though recruiters were using it to their advantage.)

The U.S. Army is planning an involuntary mobilization of thousands of reserve troops to maintain adequate force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials said on Monday.

The move -- involving the seldom-tapped Individual Ready Reserve -- represents the latest evidence of the strain being placed on the U.S. military, particularly the Army, by operations in those two countries.

Roughly 5,600 soldiers from the ready reserve will be notified of possible deployment this year, including some soldiers who will be notified within a month, said an Army official speaking on condition of anonymity.

A senior defense official said, "These individuals are being called back to fill specific shortages for specific jobs."

The official said the last time the Individual Ready Reserve, mainly made up of soldiers who have completed their active duty obligations, was mobilized in any significant numbers was during the 1991 Gulf War.

Army officials are in the process of briefing members of Congress on the mobilization and plan a formal announcement on Wednesday.

The Army official said the mobilization "will be through the rest of the year. Some could be within a month."

"It would be an involuntary measure, an involuntary mobilization," the Army official said. "It's approximately 5,600."

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.

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist

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Castor, Deutsch share AFL-CIO endorsement

And Miami Mayor Alex Penelas was snubbed because his police force beat the shit out of some Union members during the FTA protests. Penelas has also been criticized for stopping the vote counting during the 2000 election - many feel that he left Al Gore hanging out to dry.

Fuck Alex Penelas.

The labor group snubbed Penelas because of what leaders described as his indifference to the alleged mistreatment of labor demonstrators during a Free Trade of the Americas meeting last November. Union members were upset that Penelas did not condemn police force used on protesters.

"We had retirees who were thrown to the ground and handcuffed. They had tear gas fired on them," said Rich Templin, a spokesman for the Florida AFL-CIO. "When the smoke cleared, (Penelas) said what a great job law enforcement had done."

Penelas campaign spokeswoman Danae Jones said that Penelas encouraged protesters to file complaints if they thought their civil rights had been violated. He also supported an investigation into what happened, she said.

F 9/11 rakes in $22 million on first weekend

This weekend's number one film.

More here:

Around three million people elected Fahrenheit 9/11 to be the No. 1 movie of America.

Incensing as many as it's entrancing, writer-director Michael Moore's Bush bash celebrated over the weekend with an estimated $21.8 million at 868 theaters, Lions Gate trumpeted on Sunday along with co-distributors IFC Films and the Fellowship Adventure Group -- the latter quickly formed by Miramax chiefs Bob and Harvey Weinstein to release the $6 million picture after buying it back from corporate parent Disney. Around $10 million was spent on prints and advertising, less than a third of the average Hollywood release.

With $21.958 million in the till since its record-breaking debut in New York City on Wednesday, Fahrenheit 9/11 is already the highest grossing documentary of all time -- excluding large format, concert and other non-"apples-to-apples" sub-genres – surpassing Moore's own Bowling for Columbine's $21.6 million lifetime gross.

Fahrenheit is also the first documentary to land in the weekend top five, let alone be No. 1. Its opening topped Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction's $9.3 million as the best ever for a Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner, and it was Tarantino's jury that handed Moore the prize this year.
......

Fahrenheit's performance harkens back to the days when big movies wouldn't play in every nook and cranny of the country, but would bow at around 700 or 1,000 theaters to sell out crowds. Perhaps the greatest example of this, Return of the Jedi debuted to $23 million at 1,002 theaters in 1983, which would adjust to $45 million by today's ticket prices. In terms of raw dollars, Fahrenheit is actually the biggest opening ever for a movie playing at less than 1,000 theaters, topping Rocky III's $12.4 million at 939 venues.

Fuck the fundamentalists

Dave runs a blog which seems pretty liberal, open minded, fair, and all that. That’s why I had a link to his blog on my blog. But now I’m having second thoughts.

See, Dave is a self-proclaimed fundamentalist, and while he’s not holding me responsible for a comment left by a BlogWood reader, he does expect me to disown the comment.

The topic was fundamentalist Christians and their never-ending quest for absolute power in this country. One featured fundamentalist was lamenting what she perceived to be a shortage of “righteous judges” and politicians despite the fact that she is on the Hillsborough County Judicial Nominating Committee and thus has a very strong voice in the naming of new judges.

Anyway, Chris, the BlogWood reader, left the following comment:

I'm vomitting right now. We need to feed these folks to the lions b4 they get out of hand.

Now, Dave, what part of that comment would you have me disown? I certainly have no problem with her nausea, so we’ll skip that part, okay?

Further, lions have to eat something, and it seems to me that a herd of right wing zealots whose beliefs are such that they often lead to acts of wholesale violence in the name of Santa Claus, er, God, would make a wholesome, though possibly very bitter, meal.

Fundamentalist Christians are the fundamental enemy of our participatory democracy. As a group, they tend to seek the destruction of the very important separation between your church and our state.

Many fundamentalists believe that the end time is near. They think that God is getting ready to swoop them up to heaven just ahead of the apocalyptic fires that are flaring up to consume the rest of us, so they care not about their fellow man.

These people think that environmental laws are unnecessary, since the world will be gone soon anyway. They believe that George W Bush is doing right as long as he keeps crusading in the Mid East and elsewhere in the world.

Fundies think that gay people can be cured. They say that sexual orientation is an individual’s choice. (A choice? Hmmm, so, at some point in their lives, these fundies must sit down and think: “Well, I can’t have it both ways, even though I’m obviously attracted to both sexes. Let’s see... I can openly seek a same sex partner and be shunned by my fundie family and friends, or I can be openly straight and just lust after same-sex partners in my heart and hope for an occasional priestly sodomization...” - At least, that’s the only intellectually honest explanation I can come up with for their professed beliefs and attempts to cure the faggots who made a choice to sin.)

Speaking of fags, fundamentalists blamed fags and liberals for 9/11. Fundies shoot and maim those who disagree with their politics. They refuse to compromise on anything. “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance is nowhere near enough for them. They insist on full-fledged prayer in school and viciously attack anyone who stands in their way, even more moderate fellow Christians.

Fundamentalist Christians have closed, brainwashed minds and they seek to eliminate any and everything that they fear or just plain don’t understand. And there’s a lot that they don’t understand.

They are my enemy because they declared war against me by attacking my lifestyle, by legislating morality, by holding themselves up to be somehow better than myself, and by being so uncompromising that they refuse to concede that there may be room in this country and this world for more than one point of view.

Fuck the fundamentalists.

“Fahrenheit 9/11"

Just saw it. It's everything you've heard. And more. Go see it. And if the theater chain in your neighborhood is strictly enforcing the age limits for this particular "R" rated movie, offer to buy some unaccompanied kids their tickets. Kids need to see this. They're the ones who are gonna be killing and dying in our names for the foreseeable future.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer

Fahrenheit 9/11 - Florida Tickets

Davis wants to overturn Cuba travel rules.

Jim Davis is taking advantage of the Bush administration’s mishandling of Cuba. Yeah, like most other things they have touched, they have managed to screw things up there too. New travel restrictions designed to make W look tough against Castro have actually created a rift in the Cuban exile community, which traditionally votes strongly Republican. See, family members would like to be able to visit with and send medicine and other goods to their relatives on the island, but Bush’s new rules prevent that.

Traditionally, any politician who dared to suggest a relaxation of even the most insignificant of Cuba trade rules would be rudely hounded out of office. Now, though, Davis is able to suggest some baby steps in normalizing relations with our close neighbors. Very small little baby steps, but it’s nice to see an indication that the tide may turn at some point.

Daisy Carbonell arrived at her neighborhood shipping company this week on a mission of mercy for her relatives in Cuba.

She lugged a garbage bag bulging with goods, including a dozen pairs of girls' underwear, three ladies' dresses, four men's pullovers, two packs of disposable razors, five cans of roll-on deodorant, two tubes of toothpaste and five bars of soap.

She also packed allergy medicine, vitamins and vials of vitamin B, D and C in injectable form.

She tries to send such items every month to three cousins and their families through what is known in Spanish as an envio company.

That's on top of the $50 a month she sends.

``I promised them I would send them help every month,'' Carbonell said.

New government restrictions, which take effect Wednesday, will make that harder for her to do.

Those restrictions sharply limit what Cuban-Americans can send to relatives on the island nation.

The regulations outlaw shipment of clothing, shoes, personal hygiene items, seeds, fishing and soap-making equipment.

The restrictions come on top of previously announced regulations restricting travel to Cuba by Cuban-Americans and limiting how much they can spend when they get there.

Under the new rules, Cuban-Americans can visit their family members in Cuba only once every three years and spend no more than $50 a day.

U.S. Rep. Jim Davis introduced legislation Thursday aimed at overturning the tightening of travel restrictions and spending limits. He also will seek changes to what family members can ship.

``Having been in Cuba 18 months ago, I know how terribly families are suffering under that regime,'' Davis said. ``One of the few sources they have for support are their families in the United States that provide them basic necessities.''

In the past, families could send monthly shipments to individual relatives. Beginning Wednesday, it's one shipment per month per household.

Backers of the new restrictions can only keep singing the same tired old tunes that got us into this mess in the first place:

``I think they are doing the right thing,'' said Luis Ribo, 83.

``This is the only way they are going to get rid of Castro. All of the cash and aid people send to Cuba lines his [Castro's] pockets and keeps him in power.''

Enrique Cotera, 66, put it like this:``Everything that is done against Castro is a good thing. Castro is a dictator that has ruled by fear and intimidation for 45 years.''

In the Miami area, about 60 percent of the exile community still feel an invasion of Cuba is warranted. This is actually good news, though, as these numbers are down from previous years, and as the older generation, the folks who fled Cuba as Castro took power, dies off, and the more reasonable attitudes of their offspring become the norm, we may actually be able to have a civil discussion about Cuba policy without veering off into insults and violence against our neighbors.

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.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer

Fahrenheit 9/11 - Florida Tickets

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you: Politically motivated feel-good civil rights violations in the name of public safety!

SP Times:

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.

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.

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

PB Post

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

Herald.com

''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.''

Greg Palast

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

Krugman

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.

Get Up with MorningWood!

Get Up with MorningWood, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 am (eastern) every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD

Building Fund Marathon

WMNF is raising funds for our new building from Tuesday July 6 to Tuesday July 13. MorningWood Marathon is on the last day, so please save some pennies for me!

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.

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.

MacManus not a neutral observer

Via FlaBlog and Florida Politics, an article that deals with hometown political pundit Susan MacManus.

She’s often quoted in the NY Times and other national publications, and invariably identified as a professor of political science, which she is. The problem is that she is also a Bushie. By presenting herself as a disinterested impartial observer, she is seen as neutral, but she has a habit of subtly slipping GOP talking points into otherwise innocuous statements.

On Rob Lorei’s “Tampa Bay Week” this past Friday on Tampa’s PBS affiliate WEDU, other guests were identified as “Businessman, Republican” or “Editorial Writer, Democrat” (not the exact descriptions, but you get the idea), but Susan was described as “Political Science Professor”, or something close to that, and no political affiliation was given. I don’t have access to transcripts from this show, but I was listening for and picked out several instances where she was pushing the GOP point of view.

Here’s an excerpt from the New Times article:

MacManus, a 56-year-old self-described Florida cracker, has appeared in every major newspaper in America -- including 30 times in the New York Times since 1995 -- and been on every cable news network. But her home turf is the Sunshine State, where she's the undisputed queen of punditry. The St. Petersburg Times, which has quoted MacManus some 400 times, dubbed her the most quoted Floridian during the 2000 election. Her name's been in more than 1,000 stories that mention Jeb Bush.

Problem: MacManus has served as an adviser to the governor and was a member of his transition team. Jeb Bush also appointed her to the Florida Elections Commission, which she chaired until 2003. Currently, she's a member of the Governor's Council of Economic Advisors.

That's right, she's a Bushie. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it's disclosed in the stories. But it almost never is. Instead, reporters routinely identify her only as USF political scientist or professor, which implies an Ivory Tower neutrality.
......

Some examples of the MacManus magic:

During the contentious 2000 presidential recount, she basically called for Al Gore to give up. MacManus criticized the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of a recount, for its "partisanship." In a column by political writer Buddy Nevins in the Sun-Sentinel, she said, "The more litigious this gets... the more angry people will become. People will feel their votes are being turned over to lawyers." Then she said one of the candidates should throw in the towel -- and that candidate, of course, was Gore. To borrow a Nevins' literary ploy, hmmmm.

In a 2002 Sun-Sentinel story about Jeb Bush's inaction regarding scandals at the Department of Children and Families, MacManus threw a spitball. Sure, you could see him as a poor leader, our USF pundit was paraphrased as saying, but the governor might also be regarded as "a patient man who gave his appointee plenty of time to fix DCF. Even the most patient person can run out of patience," she was quoted as saying. That's some sweet, sweet spin coming from a Bush appointee.

Her apparent love of all things Bush doesn't end with Jeb -- it permeates her comments about the president and his war. When Saddam Hussein was captured, she was quoted by Knight Ridder's chief Washington correspondent, Steven Thomma: "This is a real punctuation mark for the president... There's nothing like success to make the cost [of war] seem palatable." There's one rotating observation that didn't stand the test of time.

In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this past August, she downplayed the effect of constant troop deaths and bombings in post-invasion Iraq on the president's popularity: "What these stories do is simply rekindle in the back of a lot of Americans' minds that the same thing could happen here and we need to be proactive about it." Nice.

She routinely takes a negative spin on Democratic candidates. When Janet Reno was seen as Jeb Bush's chief rival in 2002, MacManus spoke in article after article about how Reno's Parkinson's disease made voters uneasy, as if she were repeating a mantra from Republican headquarters.

The list could go on and on. But MacManus isn't really breaking any rules. It's the reporters who rely too much on her and pass off her sprinkles of wit and wisdom as nonpartisan commentary that are in the wrong. And that's a long list of journalists.

The king of MacManus mania is William March, senior political reporter for the Tampa Tribune, which is in USF's backyard. He's used her in 59 stories during the past nine years or so, according to a search of Nexis, a news database service. One of the professor's princes is Mark Silva, a former Miami Herald reporter who is now the Orlando Sentinel's political editor. He's floated her words of wisdom 37 times.

Locally, I hope and I think the both William March and Rob Lorei are fair and honest enough to correct the record in the future.

Fundies fight for Florida

Florida Fundamentalist Christians are looking for lemmings, according to this Palm Beach Post article. They are never satisfied. On the day when this country passes laws mandating church attendance and random drug tests for all citizens, these people will be urging us to bomb Canada to stop the illicit over the border flow of verboten “R” rated DVDs.

Barbara Wilcox works hard for George Bush, Bill McCollum and God.

And if Wilcox has her way, Christian conservatives like her, voting in the largest numbers since 1994, will elect all three.

"We need to elect someone who will keep God in front of the people," said Wilcox, a retired real estate broker who is as active in politics as she in Tampa's 8,000-plus member Idlewild Baptist Church.

Gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, banning of prayer in schools and the belief that righteous judges are being kept off the courts have enraged many conservative Protestants and Catholics who see the 2004 election as their best chance for political redemption.

Correction: that should read “the belief that self-righteous judges are being kept off the courts...” Give me a break:

Wilcox, who as a member of the Hillsborough County judicial nominating committee helps pick that county's circuit judges, is worried that nation could lose touch with God if church-going people don't make their voices heard this year.

"The time has come that we as believers finally act."

Jeb! is right - we need property taxes

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio has the money quote in today’s throwaway Tribune article on the proposed property tax amendment. The article mentions nothing new, but here’s Iorio:

``I'm sure that when presented with an opportunity to decrease one's property taxes, most people think that sounds good,'' Iorio said. ``But I also think most people will think it through. They like having that park down the street. They like having the police come. They like having the fire department arrive on the scene. That's why they're paying these taxes.''

Surprisingly enough, even Jeb! is against this amendment, which means it must be pretty bad, and probably makes it the one issue on November’s ballot that we will agree on. (Actually, Jeb! probably hates the idea of having his hands tied by the voters and thus having a more difficult time cutting state services and taxes, but his motives aren’t important just now.)

In April, someone forwarded me an email from the tax cut supporters - those people who do not support police or fire protection or libraries or parks - and I posted the following (reprinted in full - it’s brief enough.)

From April 12 BlogWood:

I just got an email calling for my support to lower my property taxes. This particular proposal aims to double the homestead property tax exemption to $50,000.

Wow, what a great idea! I want lower taxes. Lets take a look at the tax cut website and see what this is all about. Here is the meat of the pitch:

Even with the property tax cut local governments have adequate revenues as a result of tremendous property appreciation over the past decade. They have more than they need. This will ensure that we reduce government waste by returning money to the taxpayer. Property taxes levied in Florida have increased 78% in the past 10 years. Meanwhile population has gone up only 21% during the same period. So, property taxes have increased three times faster than population giving local governments an additional $8 billion of our tax money.

Wait a minute. This argument is vastly oversimplified and possibly just plain wrong.

If you think local governments have adequate revenues, then why are schools going unbuilt. Why are public facilities under staffed and poorly maintained? Where is the money to pay for this tax cut going to come from? Increased regressive sales taxes, or just lots of new development?

There are no citations here, but even if we take Paul’s word on the 78% and 21% numbers, we must take into account the massive housing bubble fueled by ultra low interest rates. Factor in population increase, new development, and inflation, and those numbers start to look downright normal. Soon, housing prices and the property taxes that are based on those prices will both level off.

Another thing: The Save Our Homes amendment caps property tax increases at 3% annually. This means that a homeowner in Florida is protected against the whims of a fast rising real estate market. This amendment has been around since 1995 and works beautifully.

Most people have an instinctive reaction to support a measure like this one, but the reality is that conservative types have been trying to starve government for years. They would like nothing better than to de-fund government to the point that it basically ceases to act in any capacity for the common good. No schools. No parks. None of the things that only government can provide and which, in fact, government often does a very efficient job in providing, as long as it is given the funding necessary to do an adequate job.

I’ll give Steve Koppelman the final word:

Though we've been trained to be "anti-tax", I think most people if asked would say the want schools with permanent classrooms and pencils and paper in the supply closets and an encyclopedia published sometime after Eisenhower's first term, and that they want county hospitals (albeit better-run ones), smooth roads, the sidewalks and planted medians that increase their property values, and the parks with the green soccer fields and the lakes without garbage in them that (again) increase their own property values.

People seem to like that big, white concrete-and-glass regional library with its friendly research staff, its patient computer-lab attendants, its wide selection of recently-published books, and its big parking lot filled to capacity every afternoon with cars and SUVs. The families in there are homeowners and taxpayers nearly to the last. These things don't come from the Library Bunny or pixie dust, and these days they rarely come from the state or the feds. They come from local taxes. Be careful what you ask for.

Got Democracy?

In the past five days, the posters have appeared mysteriously on walls and buildings across San Francisco. They feature the most enduring image of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal -- the Iraqi man, hooded, his hands tied with electrodes -- but this time, the prisoner is set against an American flag, and this time, the image is juxtaposed with a headline that reads, "got democracy?"

The poster is designed to make people question whether the United States is adhering to democratic ideals if American soldiers have been guilty of widespread prison abuse, if the Patriot Act continues to trample civil liberties, and if Washington continues to instigate questionable policies, says the poster's co-creator, San Francisco novelist Robert Mailer Anderson.

Link

ACLU examines purge list

Buried in an article on executive clemency in The Miami Herald, is this little gem:

Chief among the groups complaining about the possible felon purge of voters is the American Civil Liberties Union, which on Thursday got a copy of the list of the nearly 47,000 voters drawn up by the Division of Elections.

The ACLU was able to get the list because it was retained by The Green Party as legal counsel to analyze it.

It was also the ACLU that in 2001 filed a lawsuit contending that contending the Department of Corrections was not following law that requires the department to inform convicts about to leave prison about the process of getting their rights restored.

Many groups have been fighting for access to this list. The fact that teh ACLU figured out a way to legally obtain it is very good news.

69,000 eligible ex-felons can't vote in 2004

Breathless headlines around the state the last few days have been trumpeting Jeb!’s spin on the restoration of rights for Florida ex-felons.

The numbers really aren’t as good as Jeb! and many of the state’s newspapers would have you believe (surprise!), and the bottom line is that tens of thousands of ex-felons who should have had their rights restored by now wont be eligible to vote in this year’s elections.

Florida’s executive clemency laws were enacted in 1868 to keep ex-slaves from the polls. The laws are now keeping many descendants of slaves from the polls, as a black person in Florida is five times more likely (pdf link) than a white person to be in a Florida prison.

And once a felon is released, the steps to achieve executive clemency are daunting.

"The Florida process is very complex," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., group that studies prison and inmate issues.

Here's how it works: Felons who are released from prison or finish probation or parole can apply to have their civil rights restored. Some felons can have their rights restored automatically.

But those convicted of serious offenses such as drug trafficking, sex crimes, battery or DUI manslaughter must request a hearing before the Clemency Board.

The governor and the Cabinet - the agriculture commissioner, the state's chief financial officer and the attorney general - review the cases. The governor wields the most power under the state constitution: He can make decisions unilaterally regarding pardons and restoration of civil rights.

Only 15 percent of Florida’s ex-felons ever get rights restored, a process that can be described as tedious, at best, even for those ex-felons who are eligible for “automatic restoration”.

Even if a former felon is entitled to restoration without a hearing, sometimes called automatic restoration, the process isn't necessarily quick.

After it's decided the individual is eligible, says a parole commission memo, ``The Office of Executive Clemency prepares a preliminary review list that is distributed to the Board of Executive Clemency for a 30-day review.''

During those 30 days, board members may object. If two do, the individual must go through the hearing process.

If there are fewer than two objections, the individual is ``listed on an executive order that is circulated to the Board of Executive Clemency,'' which consists of the governor and Cabinet. When the governor and at least two Cabinet members have signed the order, the Office of Executive Clemency issues a certificate of restoration of rights.

``This process ... can generally be accomplished within a year,'' the memo states.

Aug. 2 is the deadline to register for this year's Aug. 31 primary election, and Oct. 4 is the deadline to register for the Nov. 2 general election.

Berg said the number granted restoration of rights Thursday will cut the state's backlog.

But, he said, typically, only 15 percent of released prisoners in Florida ever get their rights restored. ``That's why Florida leads the nation in the number of disenfranchised people,'' he said.

These are folks who have served their debts to society, people who are being encouraged to reintegrate themselves into a working democracy, but they will never again be allowed to be full citizens.

To put a more positive spin on things, Jeb! has been emphasizing and mixing statistics, throwing numbers around in a confusing frenzy of hype. Jeb! is using 2 sets of numbers.

First, the “backlog”. In 2003, between 36,000 and 38,000 (depending on the source) ex-felons were awaiting word on their fate from the governor.

Of those, about 20,000 seem to have been eligible for and received “automatic restoration”. About 8,000 remain “backlogged” and will not get to vote this year.

The next set of numbers stem from a lawsuit filed against the state for failing to provide assistance and information to ex-felons upon their release.

Of 125,000 cases that festered from 1992-2001, 22,000 people were found to be eligible for “automatic restoration”, but only half of those folks have been processed. The rest will not be able to vote this year.

50,000 other people on that list are eligible for a hearing before the governor to beg for clemency, but that wont happen this year either.

So, out of 125,000 folks who should have been helped through the process, a mere 11,000 have had their rights restored to date. No wonder Jeb! is so happy.

As pointed out earlier, Jeb! mixed up these two sets of numbers in a blatant and very successful attempt to muddy the picture and produce positive headlines. In reality, by adding up the state’s numbers, it becomes clear that 69,000 ex-felons who should have had their rights restored or at least had their hearing to determine eligibility will not be able to vote this year.

69,000 represents just a little more than ten percent of the 600,000 ex-felons in Florida who remain disenfranchised due to a set of racist laws drafted specifically to keep black people from the polls.

ACLU officials said Thursday that they were glad that Florida has moved to restore the rights of thousands of ex-convicts, but they say there may be as many as 600,000 former prisoners who still do not have their rights restored.

The ACLU supports automatic restoration of rights for those who have done their prison time -- which would require a change in Florida's constitution.

''Restoring the rights of 21,000 is just a drop in the bucket,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU Florida.

Bush, however, defended the process, noting that he has pushed to streamline it and make it easier over the last two years.

''I think it's a fair process,'' he said.

Wait. Jeb! thinks the process is fair. Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of this whole mess. I mean, what’s 69,000 potential votes in a state the size of Florida?

Jan Platt disappoints

Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt voted against a living wage for the working poor last night. Her vote could have swung the outcome.

I expect hateful unimaginative moral crusaders to kick the working poor in the teeth every time they are given the chance. Thus, it was no surprise to see every Republican member of the Hillsborough County Commission vote against a living wage ordinance. But what the fuck was Jan Platt thinking? A letter to the feds? Give me a break.

Democrat Jan Platt, who joined Republicans Ken Hagan, Jim Norman and Ronda Storms in sinking the local plan, floated the idea of writing to Congress.

The Rev. Sharon Streater, HOPE's lead organizer, called that a cop-out, ``to say they did something when they turned away from the poor.''

Platt said she was ``sorry they felt that way'' but thinks, ``Their efforts ought to be focused'' at the federal level to eliminate poverty.

Commission Chairman Tom Scott favored the local plan, arguing that a county handing out corporate subsidies to lure high-paying jobs also should take care of those near the bottom on the earnings ladder.

Scott brushed aside a presentation by County Administrator Pat Bean about the myriad insurance and retirement benefits county employees receive.

``At the end of the day,'' he said, ``can I afford a loaf of bread? Can I afford clothes for my children?''

Ronda Storms favors sex and drugs

County Commissioner Ronda Storms apparently feels that the working poor are making plenty of money and babies right now, and that they should stop breeding and start having casual sex and spending their money on drugs.

"If you can't afford four children, birth control has been around since the 1960s," she said. "There is a little thing called the pill."

Ronda was in a snit because someone had the temerity to propose a living wage ordinance for Hillsborough County that would have required the county and its contractors to pay workers enough to feed and shelter themselves without having to resort to welfare or food stamps.

Municipalities across the state and country have enacted similar ordinances without causing the economic meltdowns forecast by opponents. In fact, if low wage workers start bringing home more money, they invariably spend it on things like food and clothing, thus stimulating the local economy and making everyone a little wealthier.

Storms said she has worked $2.01-an-hour jobs in her life, spent nights at Salvation Army and lived in her car. But she worked and put herself through school, she said, "crawled across glass on my elbows.

So, did Ronda spend her waitress salary on birth control, or were her scabby, blood encrusted elbows enough to turn off any would-be suitors?

Whatever. The important thing here is that Ronda has come out in favor of casual sex and drug use. I applaud the moral courage of this woman who has been known for years as a shrill, prudish hypocritical censor. In fact, a long time from now, as she is recounting this watershed period in her life, Ronda may well pause and reflect thusly:

“I worked as a government employee, spent nights in auditoriums. I slid downhill through fresh steamy horse shit as I toed the fascist line, attacking public access TV, libraries, and other repositories of unique opinion. And nudity. I hated nudity.

I found public debate boring, civilized discourse being a tool of snotty intellectuals who would have us argue every idea on its merits rather than relying on knee jerk emotional responses set in a moralistic frame.

Then I saw the light. I experienced an epiphany. Despite all of my fundamentalist leanings, despite my preachy outbursts and my crusades against sinners, I came to realize that it was not my place to tell others how to live their lives.

Of course, it took me a while to adjust my public rhetoric to reflect my new way of thinking. My instincts were still to preach, to demand changes in personal behavior, to blame unlucky folks for circumstances beyond their own control, but that all started to change when I finally admitted to myself and to the world that promiscuous sex and drug use may well be a good substitute for a fair salary.”

A fitting tribute

So, we can expect to see lots of businessmen and residents complaining about the burden of having to change their letterhead and business cards, right?

Ronald Reagan Road, Street or Boulevard could be coming to Tampa.

City Councilwoman Rose Ferlita on Thursday called for the city to rename a street in honor of the former president who died Saturday.

Ferlita said she hasn't picked a street yet, but it must be one significant enough that it ``warrants the type of respect'' the city wants to give one of the country's most popular presidents.

How ‘bout we rename the sewer system instead? I mean, Ron’s legacy has been pumped so full of shit this past week by his ardent supporters that it would be totally appropriate. And then no one would have to change their business cards.

No contractor left unpaid

Jeb!’s crew is getting ready for a little union-busting privatization.

Failing public schools would have to recruit top teachers and craft individualized education plans for every student or risk takeover by a private contractor under tough new rules being presented today to the Florida Board of Education, The Herald has learned.

The proposed rules could also force local school boards across Florida to suspend union contracts in order to rearrange staff, possibly sending some of the most veteran teachers to the failing schools.

''If the district can't deliver, we're going to do whatever it takes to turn these schools around,'' said Frances Marine, spokeswoman for Education Commissioner Jim Horne.

``Each of these steps are meant to stop the bleeding.''

The state's school grades are set for release this morning, and any school with at least two Fs since 2001 could be forced to follow the eight new regulations.

The rules would be retroactive, applying to the five Miami-Dade schools that have already received two F's -- even if they improve in today's results.

So-called ''double-F'' schools are already required to offer their students transfers to higher-scoring public schools or taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private school.

Under the new rules, they would also be required to build a faculty in which every teacher is certified in his or her subject area and had improved student test scores in prior years.

Get Up with MorningWood!

Get Up with MorningWood, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 am (eastern) every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD

Today on MorningWood

Blogging on the radio: comments and insights rants on news and events.

Michael Moore:

As reported by Orcinus, a right wing PR firm has put up a site on the Internet with the sole purpose of preventing Michal Moore’s new film “Fahrenheit 9/11" from being shown.

Luckily, the designers of this site have conveniently placed email links to many major theater chains, so it will be very easy for people who want to see the film to use the anti-Moore website and contact theaters in support of the movie.

Go ahead. Click through and email a few theaters. You’ll be glad you did it.

Now, we can have some fun with this right wing web site and actually use its own resources against it, which is great, but the fact is that we are in the middle of a culture war that is turning increasingly violent, and fascist behavior is creeping closer and closer to mainstream acceptance.

The Orcinus post cited above has an update on recent activities that will scare you. Check the Orcinus archives for other recent posts about creeping fascist impulses in this country.

Orcinus’ Dave Neiwert asserts that the effort to censor Moore’s work is part of a larger trend that includes physical violence and other forms of intimidation. Read the whole post for details.

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.

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist

Trailers

Lots of requests for this link to the “Fahrenheit 9/11" trailer.

Another good movie, delayed for a week, but coming out soon: ”The Hunting of the President” It’s about the vicious right wing attacks on President Clinton.

Building Fund Marathon

WMNF is raising funds for our new building from Tuesday July 6 to Tuesday July 13. MorningWood Marathon is on the last day, so please save some pennies for me!

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.

Back in a minute...

Regular posting will resume shortly. In the meantime, check out all these worthy blogs on the left side of the page.

See you soon.

Election year pandering

Organizers of Key West-Cuba Regatta Accused of Trading With Enemy - from TBO.com

The organizers of a sailboat race from Key West to Cuba have been indicted on two counts of providing unlicensed travel services to the Communist island nation, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Thursday.

Peter Goldsmith and Michele Geslin ran the race in violation of the Trading With The Enemy Act, federal officials said. The first count of the indictment could carry as much as a five-year prison term and $250,000 fine; the second count has a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and possible fine of $100,000.

Crews competing in the Key West Sailing Club Conch Republic Cup departed May 22, 2003 for Havana and several Cuban shore communities after receiving pre-race warnings they would be violating U.S. Department of Commerce licensing regulations.

About 20 boats took part in the race, which was then in its third year.

A call placed to the sailing club Thursday evening rang unanswered. A telephone listing in Goldsmith's name in Key West had been disconnected, and there was no listing in Geslin's name.

The sailors participating in the race brought humanitarian aid, including medicine, educational supplies, books and food for the Cuban people.

Prosecutors contend Goldsmith and Geslin "organized, administered and operated" the races despite being notified that they needed a license to provide travel services to Cuba from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Winning the war on the poor

Read Herbert on a textbook example of compassionate conservatism.

Representative Steve Holland, chairman of the House Public Health and Human Services Committee, told me this week: "My heart has been broken and crushed and stomped to pieces over this. I knew this was wrong."

He added, "This governor is my friend, but he's a Republican and his mantra is to starve this beast of big government in Mississippi."

I asked Mr. Holland if he thought Mississippi had a big government.

"Good God, no!" he said.

Driving Home with Wood in the Afternoon!

Update: I mentioned this article about a living wage in Hillsborough County on the air. The article mentions HOPE, a good organization.

I also mentioned Scott Harell's Weekly Planet Freeway Blogging article.

Thanks to everyone who listend and/or called in and/or blogged along right here.
end of update
###

I am guest-hosting on Sonic Detour today.

Drive Home with Sonic Detour, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 pm (eastern) Today!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD
Studio email: dj@wmnf.org

Today on Sonic Detour

Blogging on the radio: comments and insights rants on news and events, mixed with a good freeform music mix, with tons of new releases, and lots of political and social commentary.

I may read highlights from this week’s BlogWood entries, and perhaps some posts from other blogs as well. You never know - it’s live radio. Stay tuned.

One likely topic is the FCC and its recent crackdown on what it and the Christian Right consider indecent broadcasts. In honor of the FCC, here’s a popular bonus for BlogWood readers that I also posted last week: I wont be playing this song, due to the fact that I’m scared of the FCC. I’m talking “dirty” words here. Fuck shit piss etc. The FCC relaxes the rules between 10pm and 6am, and my regular show obviously falls into that window, but I’m still scared of that control freak and right wing tool Michael Powell. The FCC could effectively bankrupt a station like WMNF with one hefty fine.

So this song is too much, in my opinion, even though I play plenty of shit with bad fucking language in it all the time.

Fuck the FCC. Oh, and downlod this song! (Right click and “save target as...” to save it forever on your own computer!)

Speaking of the FCC, one artist who recently won a battle with the FCC is Sarah Jones. KBOO, a community radio station in Portland was fined $7,000 for playing her song “Your Revolution”. She fought the FCC and won. But this is still a chilling tale. It took her 2 years and many battles to get the FCC to back down and admit that it erred when it declared her music off-limits to broadcasters.

With little fanfare, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) late last week let it be known that it should not have held the hip-hop artist's career hostage for nearly two years. It now has decided that her music is not indecent and not patently offensive. After branding her work too controversial for many broadcasters to air, the commission rescinded a $7,000 fine it had slapped on a Portland, Ore., public radio station 21 months ago for playing her song Your Revolution on the air.

The fine was silly in the first place, and it took the commission an outrageously long time to come to its senses. But in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, it has to be said: In the end, the FCC got it right. With luck, Sarah Jones' victory will turn out to be a First Amendment turning point.

It was May 14, 2001 when the FCC first notified KBOO in Portland that it intended to fine the station for playing Your Revolution on the air more than 18 months earlier. The song, the FCC said then, contained "patently offensive sexual references" that violated the commission's rules against airing indecent material. The radio station responded that the song was not, in fact, indecent, and there the matter sat until last Thursday. The FCC is supposed to act within 60 days, but until last week it never issued a final determination, despite continuing appeals to federal courts filed on Jones' behalf by People for the American Way.

Because courts are reluctant to challenge the FCC's unparalleled authority over broadcast licenses and performers don't have much power to intervene, the commission has the astonishing ability to chill the expression of almost any vocal artist by fiat.

That is what it did with Jones. But this time, the commission picked the wrong target: a talented woman whose message actually goes against the sexually abusive content of many of the songs of the male rappers of her generation. While all this was pending, many stations were reluctant to play Jones' song, according to her lawyers, with one San Francisco program director quoted as saying Your Revolution is "a song that's been busted by the FCC." The experimental show on KBOO that played her song in the first place was temporarily canceled.

In short, because of the FCC's action, American radio stations put Sarah Jones' music on the "do-not-play" list for nearly two years — the equivalent of a lifetime in the world of music.

Jones carried on in other venues, to be sure. Her one-woman shows, "Waking the American Dream" and "Women Can't Wait" earned her critical success, good audiences and even a cover story in Ms. Magazine. And, ironically, she has performed Your Revolution before high school audiences across the country. Girls in the audience, by one account, are "spellbound." That's because high school girls understand Jones' song in a way that ham-handed government censors never will. The FCC said her song was intended to "pander and shock," but in reality it is aimed pointedly at misogynist rappers who, in their words and music, treat women as throwaway sex objects. They are the shock panderers, not Jones.

Your Revolution is not subtle. It borrows — and deflates — the pumped-up sexual vocabulary of male hip-hoppers who equate sexual conquest with power and even revolution. In one of the more printable verses, she asserts:

The real revolution

Ain't about booty size

The Versaces you buys

Or the Lexus you drives

Jones adds, speaking directly to the rappers: "Your revolution will not be you/ sending me for no drip drip VD shot."

That powerful image is followed by even more vivid ones, many mirroring and spoofing the lyrics of male hip-hoppers who have escaped the notice of the FCC. The lyrics decry unwanted pregnancies and the abuse of women, and even advocate abstinence and viewing sexual intimacy as an expression of love and commitment.

But always, Jones returns to her refrain, which echoes Gil Scott-Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: "Your revolution will not happen between these thighs."

I’ll play Sarah Jones’ “Your Revolution” between 5 and 6.

FREE MP3s

There are tons of good, free, legal MP3s, many of which the FCC would frown at, at protest records and even more good stuff at Music For America. Help yourself, and tell them that BlogWood sent you!

Trailers

Lots of requests for this link to the “Fahrenheit 9/11" trailer.

Another good movie, delayed for a week, but coming out soon: ”The Hunting of the President” It’s about the vicious right wing attacks on President Clinton.

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.

First segment (4 - 4:30) planned playlist

Second segment (4:30 - 5) planned playlist

Third segment (5 - 6) planned playlist

Live Playlist

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.

Jeb! punishes students for perceived sins of universities

Florida Politics (Scroll down to “Outrageous”) has questions:

This prompts other questions. Did "Jeb!" ram Service First through the Legislature, not because he "thinks" it was good policy, but because he thinks public employees, and particularly their duly selected collective bargaining agent (AFSCME), are/is a "bastion of liberalism"? Have funding decisions for state courts been driven by "Jeb!"'s belief that the judicial system (you know, the folks that, via the separation of powers doctrine, check and balance the GOoPer controlled executive and legislative branches) is a "bastion of liberalism"? Is that "Jeb!"'s primary motivator - punishing "bastions[s] of liberalism"? Is "Jeb!" that shallow and simplistic?

I have an answer: Yes.

New discrepancies found in Florida felon count

The Miami Herald headline says State sued over voters' list, which is true, but the headline appears to be referring to the CNN lawsuit, scheduled to be heard today in Tallahassee.

The Herald article is reporting on some new discrepancies found in lists of Florida felons who have had their civil rights restored. The Brennan Center for Justice may be joining the CNN lawsuit, but the Herald seems to have their lead wrong, as I can find no reference anywhere else to a separate suit by Brennan.

Florida's $2 million centralized voter database, which is supposed to help weed out felons and people who have died, may have a serious flaw, a New York legal group that is suing the state said Tuesday.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law says this new database may not be including the names of thousands of people who had their voting rights restored by the state of Florida during a nearly 40-year period. If the information is true, it would raise serious questions as to the accuracy of a new list of nearly 48,000 registered voters that the state says are potential felons who are ineligible to vote.

The database, developed in the wake of the chaotic 2000 presidential election, draws on various sources of information to come up with a list that can be given to county election supervisors so that ineligible voters can be purged from local voting rolls. Included in the database are arrest records, clemency records, death records and records of duplicate voter registrations.

Convicted felons released from prison are barred from voting in Florida unless their voting rights are restored by the state, a process handled by the Office of Executive Clemency.

The Brennan Center, which has filed a federal lawsuit to overturn Florida's voting ban for felons, says it requested records from both the state Division of Elections and the state Office of Executive Clemency and discovered ''massive discrepancies'' between the two offices.

Center lawyers said the documents revealed that the clemency office reported restoring voting rights to 171,408 people during a nearly 36-year period, while the Division of Elections said it only had records showing that 145,823 people had their rights restored at the time in question, between 1964 and 2000.

Jessie Allen, associate counsel for the Brennan Center, acknowledged that many of the people who had their rights restored during this period may have never chosen to register to vote or may have moved to another state.

POSSIBLE ERRORS

But it's possible that the new felon list developed by the Division of Elections may list some people as ineligible when they in fact had their rights restored, she said.

'We're not just wringing our hands, saying, `It's inaccurate,' '' Allen said in a phone interview from her New York City offices. ``The state should explain this. We don't know what the explanation is.''

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who oversees the Division of Elections, called the Brennan Center's review ''flawed'' and said that the organization has never shared any of its questions with state officials.

''They have come up with inappropriate conclusions,'' spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.

Marielba Torres, assistant general counsel for the Division of Elections, also insisted that the report was ''not credible'' and suggested that the Brennan Center relied on totals that may have included ''cases handled'' by the clemency office, not a listing of people who had actually their voting rights restored.

She also suggested that the organization may have counted people who did not have a full restoration of voting rights.

But Allen said that her organization went through all the totals provided by the Office of Executive Clemency -- and only added those listed as full pardons, restoration of all civil rights or restoration of voting rights by the Office of Executive Clemency. For example, her group did not count those who were listed as having their right to own a gun restored.

''It's not that we added wrong,'' Allen said.

So, add this to the growing list of problems with the 2004 edition of the Florida felon purge list.

County Supervisors of election are meeting in Key West to discuss the list and other matters related to this year’s elections.

The question will reverberate today in a Tallahassee courtroom and in the halls of a Key West resort, where the annual meeting of county elections supervisors is buzzing about a shake-up at the state Division of Elections.

Will Florida repeat the worst mistakes of the presidential election of 2000?

Polls suggest the electorate could be as evenly split Nov. 2 as it was four years ago when George W. Bush won Florida, and thus the presidency, by 537 votes.

And a study released Tuesday by a New York-based advocacy center suggests that Florida again is in danger of relying on questionable data to purge thousands of alleged felons from the voting rolls.

"These people were granted clemency, they had their civil rights restored, and they should not be on that felon purge list," said Scott Schell, a spokesman for the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.
......

Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles, the incoming president of the state supervisors' association, said that checking the felon list against the clemency list is one of the first things supervisors do in their research.

He and other supervisors pointed out that the state's list is merely a starting point and stressed that they will do their own investigations before beginning the process of removing anyone from the voter rolls.

But it's impossible for most people or media groups to independently verify, Schell said, because the Department of State refuses to allow unfettered access to the felons list.

In an April memo to all 67 county elections supervisors, Division of Elections Director Ed Kast said the felon list is part of the voter rolls and falls under the restrictions of a 2001 election reform law that allows only political parties, officeholders and state agencies to obtain copies.

The public can only view the rolls and is not allowed to copy the list or take notes.

The decision sparked a lawsuit by Cable News Network. Attorneys for CNN and several Florida news organizations will appear before Leon County Circuit Judge Nikki Clark today to argue, among other things, that the law restricting access to the list is unconstitutional because it was passed as part of a broad election reform package and not as a separate exemption to the Florida Constitution's broad open-government provisions.
......

Denying the public records request may be Kast's last official act. The 10-year veteran of the division submitted a three-sentence resignation letter to Secretary of State Glenda Hood on Monday.
......

Several elections chiefs at the Key West convention said they were surprised by Kast's sudden resignation.

Leon County Supervisor Ion Sancho said he thinks Kast grew weary of the controversy surrounding the felon list.

"It just saddened us, right in the middle of a critical juncture of our election process, our director leaves.... The speculation here is that this has put so much pressure on Mr. Kast that continuing on probably wasn't that much fun," Sancho said.
......

Most of the state's elections supervisors are meeting in Key West under the watchful eye of representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the liberal People for the American Way Foundation and officials of the state Republican and Democratic parties.

The elections chiefs plan to discuss the felon issue with state officials this afternoon..

Multiple barriers to voting. Key posts staffed by extreme partisans. Confusion surrounding the felon list. Sounds like 2000 all over again. But don’t worry: there wont be any recount headaches this time, because with new paperless touchscreen voting machines, many counties will have nothing to recount: (from the same Palm Beach Post article):

Several elections chiefs said they were surprised by Kast's sudden resignation. But under Florida's decentralized elections system, they noted that county supervisors largely run elections and rely on the Division of Elections for guidance and legal opinions.

"The division gives us interpretations of the law if we ask for it," said Sarasota County Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent. "They don't tell us how to run our individual offices."

Still, those interpretations can be significant.

It was a Kast letter, for instance, that told counties that use paperless touch-screen voting systems that they should not attempt to make printouts of electronic ballots to conduct manual recounts in close elections.

That led to state and federal lawsuits by U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach. Both suits were dismissed, but Wexler is appealing the decisions.

Update - see the state’s response to the CNN lawsuit here. (Link via Florida Politics)
Update: this from an alert reader in NY:

From your post:

The Herald article is reporting on some new discrepancies found in lists of Florida felons who have had their civil rights restored. The Brennan Center for Justice may be joining the CNN lawsuit, but the Herald seems to have their lead wrong, as I can find no reference anywhere else to a separate suit by Brennan.

Could be this: In 2000, the Brennan Center filed a class-action lawsuit regarding Florida's disfranchisement of former felons.

The lawsuit is Johnson v. Bush.
http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/dem_vr_lit_johnson.html

The Center, representing some 600,000 Florida citizens in a class action suit, is challenging the constitutionality of Florida's permanent disenfranchisement of ex-felons. Joined by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, Morrison & Foerster, and Florida civil rights attorney James Green, the plaintiffs' counsel argued that, because of its discriminatory intent and effect, Florida's voting ban violated both the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Center appealed a summary judgment ruling in favor of the state, and a hearing took place before the 11th Circuit in April 2003.

On December 19, 2003, the 11th Circuit reversed the summary judgment ruling in a decision available here.

The case is featured in a new documentary, "Trouble in Paradise."

The press release regarding the 11th Circuit's judgment is here:

http://www.brennancenter.org/presscenter/releases_2003/pressrelease_2003_1219.html

monica_nyc

So many lawsuits... my head is just spinning. Yes, this must be the case that The Herald refers to - it’s been remanded to the lower court for trial, so the phrase “a New York legal group that is suing the state” is accurate, but it sure would have been nice if The Herald had made clear exactly which lawsuit it was referring to. Thanks Monica!

Post 911 Saudi flight confirmed

The Tribune reported this flight the day after it happened, but missed the significance of it at the time. Since then, the government has denied it completely. Until now.

Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.

The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.

The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.

For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.

But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.

The odyssey of the small LearJet 35 is part of a larger controversy over the hasty exodus from the United States in the days immediately after 9/11 of members of the Saudi royal family and relatives of Osama bin Laden.

Felonious Junk: Florida elections chief resigns over purge list

Officially, he’s leaving for personal reasons. A few months before the presidential election. But this has nothing to do with the Florida felon purge list. Really. Nothing at all: (AP)

Less than five months before the Nov. 2 election, veteran elections official Ed Kast is quitting his job overseeing the state's voting machinery. Secretary of State Glenda Hood named the agency's top lawyer, Dawn Roberts, to replace him.

Kast said he'd been thinking about moving on to pursue other interests for some time and thought the Division of Elections had plenty of time to get ready for Election Day under new leadership.
......

Kast, 53, said he wasn't resigning because of any problems at the agency but simply wanted to pursue other interests after working at the Department of State since 1994.

"I just thought that this was the time to do it," Kast said. "I'm not getting any younger."

The South Florida Sun-Sentinal posits a slightly more believable scenario:

The head of Florida's elections division resigned Monday amid reports he was feeling political heat over a push to purge thousands of suspected felons from the state's voter rolls.

Ed Kast, who has worked for the state elections division for more than a decade, said only that he was resigning to "pursue other opportunities."

But Kast has told a handful of associates that he was uncomfortable with growing pressure to trim felons from voter rolls in time for the fall election, friends say.

"I've known him for 20 years, and I believe he has acted because under the circumstances it's the only thing he could do," said Leon County Election Supervisor Ion Sancho, past president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections.

"Ed had made a number of comments that the nature and timing of this felons list was not something he was responsible for. I think he felt in good conscience he could no longer be involved in the operations."

Hours earlier, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson joined a lawsuit to force state election officials to reveal the names of 47,000 suspected felons who could be dropped from voting lists, saying he wanted to be sure mistakes in 2000 are not repeated.

"This year, Ohio and Florida are looked upon as the two states that could decide the presidential election and we just can't go through this again," the Florida Democrat said.

In the 2000 election, which President Bush won after taking Florida by 537 votes over Al Gore, there were accusations that thousands were wrongly disenfranchised when the state purged the voter roles of suspected felons.

Even a former state Republican Party executive called Kast's resignation "very strange."

"The timing is very suspicious," said Geoffrey Becker, now a GOP consultant. "I know there's a lot of concern about getting out the message that voting is OK this time."

Kast's sudden resignation was the No. 1 topic for county election supervisors from around the state who gathered Monday in Key West for a five-day meeting, a conference where Kast is scheduled to appear.
......

Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who accepted Kast's resignation, did not return messages.

Hood named Dawn Roberts, the agency's attorney and a former legislative election specialist, to replace Kast.

Groups who have criticized the felon purge efforts seized on the announcement within minutes.

"It's a sign of serious disarray and instability," said Sharon Lettman, state director for People For the American Way Foundation.

More from PFAW here.

The timing issue was just starting to bubble to the surface. It’s been crowded out by the secrecy issue
and the protocol issue and the reinstatement issue and the application for restoration of rights issue and...

Get Up with MorningWood!

Get Up with MorningWood, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 am (eastern) every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD

Today on MorningWood

Blogging on the radio: comments and insights rants on news and events.

Reagan? Haven’t said a damn thing yet, but I may open my big mouth this morning. If I do, I’ll probably read selections from several different sources, since many others have already said what I woulda said, only better.

And I may read highlights from this week’s BlogWood entries, and perhaps some posts from other blogs as well. You never know - it’s live radio. Stay tuned.

Oh, and a popular bonus for BlogWood readers today that I also posted last week: I wont be playing this song, due to the fact that I’m scared of the FCC. I’m talking “dirty” words here. Fuck shit piss etc. The FCC relaxes the rules between 10pm and 6am, and my show obviously falls into that window, but I’m still scared of that control freak and right wing tool Michael Powell. The FCC could effectively bankrupt a station like WMNF with one hefty fine.

So this song is too much, in my opinion, even though I play plenty of shit with bad fucking language in it all the time.

Fuck the FCC. Oh, and downlod this song! (Right click and “save target as...” to save it forever on your own computer!)

Get some Wood in the afternoon!

This Thursday, June 10, I’ll be hosting Sonic Detour from 4 - 6 PM. That’s right: I’ll be broadcasting during daylight hours. Stay tuned for more details, and be sure to tune in on Thursday afternoon.

Trailers

Lots of requests for this link to the “Fahrenheit 9/11" trailer.

Another good movie, delayed for a week, but coming out soon: ”The Hunting of the President” It’s about the vicious right wing attacks on President Clinton.

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.

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.

Felonious Junk: Jeb!’s office delays rights restoration

A pleasant surprise from a conservative paper: The Tribune’s William March has been covering Florida “felon” purge list story pretty well. Today’s paper has another March article on this developing travesty, and a few new points are brought to light.

First, March clears up some confusion (mentioned here on BlogWood) over what Hillsborough elections supervisor and Jeb! appointee Buddy Johnson has accomplished to date as regards the purge list.

March’s article states that Johnson has asserted that he has reinstated the 533 Hillsborough County residents who were wrongly purged from the list in 2000. Good. That only took 4 years. (Yes - that’s 533 in Hillsborough alone, just one county in a state which Bush officially “won” with just over 500 votes.)

It remains to be seen how Buddy is going to handle the 2004 list. My fear is that he will follow the letter of the law and do the least he is required and no more. In fact, Jeb!’s buddy Buddy has the power to influence a close statewide election, and decisions made now on this year’s purge list will affect the outcome.

Another new revelation made in the March article is the fact that the Tampa Tribune may be joining the lawsuit brought by CNN to force the state to turn over the names on the 2004 purge list. Jeb! appointee Glenda Hood, Florida’s Secretary of State, is asserting that a law designed to protect the voter rolls from predatory commercial interests legally bars her from sharing the list with news and other organizations.

March also questions the timing of the release of the 2004 list, asking why it’s coming out so close to the election:

Hood said the statewide voter list required by the 2001 reform law was finished on time, in May 2002. But settling the NAACP lawsuit and devising the new matching criteria delayed production of the felon purge list until now, she said.

She said the names are considered ``potential matches,'' which the supervisor must check for accuracy.

``A supervisor is going to make absolutely certain that the name should be removed,'' and won't ``unless they have absolute proof,'' she said.

That means this year's process will be different from 2000, said State Department spokeswoman Jenny Nash, because the burden of proof is on the supervisor to make sure the voter is a felon, not on the voter to prove innocence.

But the supervisors themselves aren't so sure.

Deciding whether a voter has a criminal record can be a tricky investigative task, involving names, Social Security numbers and birth dates that are similar but don't quite match, and checks of state or nationwide criminal records.

``I'm trying to figure out by what authority, why we have to investigate this list of people,'' Browning said. ``It's not my job. I'm not an investigator. I don't know what I'm doing with this stuff.''

Other supervisors, including Ion Sancho of Leon County, have said they don't have the staff or money for investigations or the mailings or advertisements intended to notify affected voters.

According to instructions published on the State Department Web site, if a voter fails to respond to a letter within 30 days, the supervisor is required to remove the name from the list. Browning said that appears to leave the burden of proof on the voter, just as in 2000. ``I'm trying to figure out what's different,'' he said.

``If I got a letter saying you might be a felon, I'm not going to let that sit,'' Browning said. But some may not respond because of address changes, misunderstanding or other errors.

``For whatever reason, the assumption is that if they don't respond, maybe they are a felon,'' he said.

Most important, though, is the revelation that the restoration of rights for ex-felons who, according to the racist law by which we live, were legally removed from the rolls. The NAACP sued the state over the 2000 election problems, and the Governor’s office promised to mail out forms to all ex-felons so that they could easily apply to have their civil rights restored.

The process of restoration of civil rights includes a bizarre ritual in which supplicants must personally plead to The Emperor Jeb! for forgiveness, but not too many people are getting anywhere near that point in the process, since Jeb’s Republican pals in the legislature conveniently failed to budget for an increase in staff to handle to flood of applications:

Derek Graham, Willie Johnson and Jeffrey Key, who are black and of Tampa, were three of the thousands of people legally removed from the voter rolls in 2000. They have past felony records and hadn't had their rights restored.

But all three also say they had been registered, and voting, for years before being turned away in 2000.

``When they release you, they don't tell you that you have to go through a process to receive those rights back,'' said Key, 40, a Progress Village homeowner with two grown children, one in college.
......

Graham, 38, who operates a street sweeper for the city of Tampa, remembers voting for the Community Investment Tax in 1996. It has been 17 years since the drug possession charge landed him an eight-month sentence. He applied 10 months ago to have his rights restored. He hasn't heard back.

Graham and Johnson are among 43,847 Floridians waiting to have their rights restored as of June 30, 2003.

That number has gone up from 6,437 in June 2001. As part of the settlement of litigation prompted by the 2000 election, the state sent restoration applications to thousands of former felons, which swamped the Executive Clemency Office staff.

Spokeswoman Jane Tillman said the office hoped the number would decline this year, but that depended on the Legislature approving 20 new positions for investigators. It didn't.

The applicants may have a long wait.

David Scott Stiles of Dover, 34, a truck driver, registered to vote - legally, he thought - after getting out of prison for motorcycle theft in 1998. In 2000, he was purged.

Stiles applied for rights restoration in September 2002 but was just told, nearly two years later, that his case won't be acted on in time for him to vote this year.

``I'm a felon, I screwed up, but I paid for what I did,'' he said. ``Now it's time for the state to do what they're supposed to do.''

See the rest of the article for a good brief overview of our current purge list follies. See BlogWood for more in depth background and analysis.

Welfare Daddy update: Why are we paying this man's mortgage?

Tampa Corporate Welfare Daddy supreme Mel Sembler hosted pResident Bush in Italy this week. Sembler’s company is responsible for the empty pile of bricks known as Centro Ybor, and since the Dick who used to be Tampa’s mayor never met a development he didn’t want to subsidize with city funds, Tampa is now on the hook for Centro’s mortgage payments, because Mel is really roughing it in Italy, and he’s obviously very deserving of a little public assistance:

Protesters in the city were yelling ``George Bush, terrorist,'' yet the president was insulated from the anti-war demonstrations, tucked safely away in plush digs behind high stone walls and razor wire.

During Bush's 36-hour visit to Italy and Vatican City, he was staying at the home of U.S. ambassador to Italy, Melvin Sembler. The manicured grounds feature stucco buildings with red-tiled roofs, small mazes of hedges interspersed with roses and gurgling fountains.

A security perimeter extended several blocks out from the residence, situated on a six-acre plot. The blare of Italian sirens drifted over the walls as faintly as if they were miles away. Noise from outside the compound was practically drowned out by the sounds of birds chirping and breeze rustling through pines.

What was unclear Friday was whether noise from inside the compound is audible from outside the walls. Aides said Sembler has thrown parties virtually every night for the last week.

Sembler also summoned tailors Friday from a well-known suit maker in the heart of Rome, Brioni. They brought dozens of suits for the men in Bush's entourage to try on. There was no immediate word on whether Bush modeled suits, too.

Hmmm... George better check with sister in law Columba before he hits customs - she’s an expert in foreign clothing.

After partying with Mel and playing dress up, Bush dissed the pope: (from the same AP article cited above)

President Bush arrived 15 minutes late for his meeting with Pope John Paul II -- unusual for a president who makes no secret of his impatience when others keep him waiting.

It was a rare breach of protocol in Vatican City, too, and raised eyebrows in the papal delegation.

``The president is 15 minutes late,'' John Paul's secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, pointed out to Vatican reporters.

Jeb! likes this train

Jeb! is furiously attempting to derail a citizen’s initiative that called for the creation of a high speed train system in Florida. But don’t think that Brother Jeb! hates all trains. Specifically, a gravy train that benefits his friends by giving them state money with absolutely no oversight in the name of reforming education is just fine with him. (Oh, and it’s even better if the aforementioned program drains money from public schools with the logic that this will somehow make them better.)

Four Democratic state lawmakers said Friday that Gov. Jeb Bush should issue an executive order tightening oversight of Florida's two largest voucher programs.

The programs, which began three years ago, "have morphed into a taxpayer-funded free-for-all for unscrupulous individuals that will continue to thrive so long as the system goes unchecked," said Sen. Ron Klein of Boca Raton, minority leader in the upper chamber.

The programs are supposed to help children with disabilities and children from poor families. In the past year, they have been plagued by questions and concerns about misuse of the voucher funds and the quality of staff.

Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, said increasing state oversight of the programs was a priority during the two-month legislative session that ended in April. After a Senate bill died on the House floor, King predicted the programs were "a disaster waiting to happen" unless the state started keeping a closer eye on the programs.

Sarah Bascom, a spokeswoman for King, said her boss was already working on legislation for next year.

But Klein and the other Democrats said the programs can't go another year without greater state oversight. They called on Bush to issue an executive order similar to the Senate bill that died. Without an executive order, it will be "yet another year for millions of tax dollars going out the door into private hands without proper accountability measures in place," Sen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, told reporters.

Tribune readers can’t handle the imperialistic truth

The Tampa Tribune, hot on the heels of apologizing for printing a picture of a
rock-hard penis, is now worried that images of our brutal suppression of Iraq might be upsetting to some readers.

Yes, graphic pictures of war and occupation are disturbing. That’s the whole point. War is not a walk in the park. It is not just precision guided bunker busters dropped on anonymous pieces of earth by pilots flying thousands of feet in the air. War kills people. Brutally. Painfully. Needlessly.

Yes, needlessly. Our man W decided that it was more important to illegally invade a sovereign nation that had absolutely nothing to do with 911 than to finish the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Now, the Iraqi people are suffering like they never imagined under Saddam. They are being murdered and maimed on a daily basis by American so-called liberators as well as Iraqi thugs. It’s a good day when the electricity stays on for more than a few hours. Women can’t leave their homes for fear of rape or kidnapping or murder. Men face arrest and torture just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And the Tribune is worried that some pictures it published might be offensive? If the readers of Tampa’s republican rag are truly offended by these images, then they should urge their pResident to stop the madness and bring the troops home. That’s not likely to happen, though, since this whole little dust up about offensive snapshots is actually an excuse to skew coverage toward an even more favorable reporting of the occupation.

See, the Tribune, citing pressure from its readers, will stop printing pictures that portray a realistic image of current Iraq events. Instead, we will see many more “good news” pictures and stories designed to imbue our brutal occupation with a feel-good rosy hue that is completely detached from reality.

Tribune headlines that we’ll be seeing in the coming months:

“Guard unit praised for painting school”
“Marines make friends”

Or just make up your own generic pap.

Oh, and here’s the Tribune article that set me off:

Photos Create Controversy, Disturb People

Published: Jun 5, 2004

I t began with the bloody bodies of Odai Hussein and his brother Qusai.

Then came four charred bodies hanging from a bridge in Fallujah, Iraq, the flag-draped coffins of U.S. war casualties, the disturbing images of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi detainees and the beheading of freelance contractor Nick Berg in Iraq.

These are the disturbing images of war - of reality.
......

When do you show the disturbing realism of war? When don't you? At what point does a decision become censorship? These are questions editors struggle with daily.

In many cases, the images have been shown on multiple television outlets and posted on countless Web sites before the newspaper is published.

One reader protests: ``I am greatly disturbed by the photo on the April 1st front page [two Americans' charred bodies hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates River] and the shoddy excuses for running it. The public has a right to read the full details of such a crime, but does not want, nor need, to see photos of tortured corpses.''

Another writes: ``Must we see the photos [of abuse of Iraqi prisoners] every hour of every night on TV? Are the actions of a very few sufficient reason to tarnish the names of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military who performed their duty with honor and sometimes died to free these same Iraqis from one of the most sadistic dictators in modern or ancient history?''

About that last quote: could the Tribune and its reader have squeezed any more false and misleading right wing talking points into a single paragraph? First, it’s become very clear that the torture of prisoners was not simply the actions of a very few. The policy started at or near the top of the chain of command and became standard procedure.

Next, these images show torture, not “abuse”.

Also, our stated reason for starting this illegal invasion was the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction, so the fact that Saddam Hussein was a very evil man who treated his citizens almost as badly as the occupying army is treating them right now really shouldn’t even enter into the equation.

Finally, we may have “freed” the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam, but they are hardly better off now living in a completely lawless and broken nation.

Yes - we must see these photos in order to make a more fully informed decision as the whether or not we are willing to keep paying the price of a war which our pResident tricked us into waging. Instead of readers complaining of upsetting images, newspapers should be taken to task for not showing more of the horrors of war, especially newspapers like the Tribune and almost every other major daily in the country which incessantly beat the drums for war and even to this day continue to happily parrot every new and disingenuous justification for the invasion that comes tumbling out of the right wing echo chamber.

Florida's minimum wage amendment

Don't believe Jeb! Read Florida Politics

(No permalink - scroll down to "Minimum Wage Amendment")

Nelson to join CNN lawsuit against secret Florida purge list

(Links to today’s news stories blatantly stolen from Florida Politics, but the analysis is mine.)

Florida’s 2004 model super-secret felon purge list is drawing lots of attention, including a lawsuit by CNN with the support of the First Amendment Foundation and other groups. More lawsuits are being threatened by the ACLU and other interested parties. The lawsuits are in response to the state’s assertion that the list must be kept secret to protect the privacy of the voters.

Today, Senator Bill Nelson will announce that he is joining the CNN lawsuit against the state which seeks to open up the list to the Florida sunshine.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is joining a lawsuit filed by CNN demanding that Florida election officials make public a state list of names of possible felons who are to be deleted from voters rolls.

Nelson will announce the filing of a "friend of the court" brief supporting the CNN suit today during a news conference in front of the Palm Beach County elections office.

"The list should be open to the public, because of the potential for mistakes," said Nelson in a prepared statement.

The state compiles lists of possible felons and gives the list to county election officials who then review the names to determine if there are any felons who must be removed from voter rolls. In the 2000 election, many potential voters around the state said they were prevented from voting because their names were incorrectly on the list.

Meanwhile, brother Jeb! has his cronies lining up to defend the withholding of public records.

It has been called dangerous, bizarre and even unconstitutional.

But a Florida law that legally prohibits individuals from copying or writing down names of the state's registered voters -- which is now being challenged in court -- is needed to protect voter privacy, state election officials and key state legislators insist.

Groups such as the NAACP, eager to avoid a repeat of problems in the 2000 presidential election in which thousands of people in Florida were mistakenly purged from voter rolls, have demanded state election officials release the names of more than 47,000 suspected felons who may not be allowed to vote this fall.

A lawsuit brought by television news giant CNN demanding the names also is set to be heard Wednesday before Leon Circuit Court Judge Nikki Clark. She is the judge who in 2000 ruled in favor of George W. Bush's demand to count disputed absentee ballots. Bush eventually captured the White House with just 537 votes more than Al Gore.

The ACLU of Florida also is considering joining the lawsuit. State elections officials have refused to release names of so-called "potential felons" -- who may be dropped from voting -- sent to county election supervisors, citing a 2001 elections law that prohibits giving such names to anyone but government agencies and officials, political candidates, parties or committees.

The 2001 state law does allow parties to get computer lists of voter data such as names and addresses but requires them to take an oath to keep the information confidential.

One state Democratic Party attorney calls the law "wacky." Other critics go much further.

"It's outrageous. I would think the Division of Elections would want as many people as possible to look at this list to make sure it's accurate before we start kicking people off the rolls in error like we did four years ago," said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, which already is joining the suit against the state.

State election officials defend the law, saying there's nothing wacky about it and secrecy is necessary to protect election data and Florida voters.

"To release that information would violate the privacy of those individuals," said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood. "The law says the information is not to be used for `commercial purposes,' and I think that's why it was drafted."

Nash said voters can go to any county election office and look at their information -- they just can't take any notes or copy names.

So, the republicans are saying that gee, they are just concerned with the privacy of the voter, but the law was designed specifically to protect voter rolls (the list is not a roll - it’s a list of people who are scheduled to be disenfranchised unless they fight to keep their right to vote) from being misused by commercial interests. It is not designed to keep this list out of the hands of the press.

Much more on Florida’s Felonious Junk purge list here.

Remember that oil-rich country in South America?

Empire Notes has a Chavez update.

Oui oui: W flops

The man who never flip flops:

President Bush said he was never angry with France over its refusal to back the U.S.-led war in Iraq, as both countries sought to play down past tensions ahead of the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

"I was never angry with the French. France is a long-term ally," Bush told the weekly Paris Match in an interview due to be published on Thursday.

And Fries were always French, and we have always been at war with Eurasia Iraq er, terror. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Terror.

Send in the clown

Self-styled moralist and former city council member Bob Buckhorn is running for county commission. If this Zell Miller “Democrat” gains a seat on the same board as the certifiable Ronda Storms, we’re all in trouble.

For those whose recollection of Bob is a little fuzzy, stand six feet back and let me tell you just a little about him. Bob’s the guy who pushed the 6 foot rule, which makes it a crime to come within 6 feet of another person in Tampa, if that other person happens to be nekkid.

Bob was a backer of the failed facial recognition Ybor camera experiment that made every visitor to Ybor City a guinea pig for a private company that was attempting to make an intrusive facial recognition system that actually worked.

Bob likes curfews and knocking down “crack houses” for the evening news.

Bob knows better than you what’s best for you, and all of his intrusive moralizing is for your own good and has absolutely nothing to do with the furthering of his own career. Really.

Bob Buckhorn, a veteran of Tampa city politics, will try and expand his reach into suburbs from Carrollwood to Sun City Center. Ending weeks of speculation, Buckhorn said Thursday he will seek election to the Hillsborough County Commission.

Buckhorn, a Democrat, plans to pursue the countywide District 6 seat Jan Platt is leaving due to term limits. The field is already crowded with three Democrats - Ed Austin, Denise Layne and Willis ``K.C.`` Bowick, though Buckhorn's name recognition may present a challenge, Layne said.

The winner of the Aug. 31 primary is likely to face Republican Brian Blair, the only GOP candidate to declare for the seat.

Buckhorn worked as an aide to former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman and then served eight years on the Tampa City Council. Last year, he placed third in a race for Tampa Mayor.

``For most of the last 16 years, I have gotten up every day and tried to make this community a better place,'' Buckhorn said in a statement Thursday. ``The opportunity to bring those experiences and wealth of knowledge to bear on critical issues we face as a county would be rewarding.''

"Farenheit 9/11" trailer

Here

(Link via This Modern World)

Nudity and corrections

Alert readers will notice that I got the date wrong for the Hillsborough BOCC meeting yesterday. Actually, I got the day wrong too. In the future, I promise not to create hasty error-ridden blog entries at 1:30 in the morning right before my radio show. I know that BOCC meetings are on Wednesdays. I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote up that entry.

In related news, the meeting which I had wrong took place as scheduled yesterday. Joe Redner was there and he made sure that the Babtists were called on their lies. Also, Ronda Storms got a richly deserved but very rare comeuppance leading to a bizarre utterance about backstabbing. Ronda is a true nutcase.

Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms had more than 500 churchgoers in her corner. The crowd filled the commission's board room, flooded the stairwell and packed the lobby.

They came armed with more than 10,000 signatures and a video presentation. All to back up Storms, who was fighting Wednesday to get a referendum on the November ballot that would ban public nudity.

But in the end, Storms couldn't get even one commissioner to second her motion to put the item up for vote.

"I'm shocked at my colleagues," she told the crowd. "I'm shocked and appalled. You should give the people an opportunity to vote on it."
......

Storms' plea was preceded by appeals to the commission by Tom Biles of the Tampa Bay Baptist Association and David Gibbs of the Christian Law Association. Both men are also leaders in Citizens for Decency, a grass-roots group of church members spearheading the effort.
......

Amid the sea of Christians was nude dance club owner Joe Redner, who was thrown out for yelling insults at Biles as he tried to address the commission.

Biles argued that Hillsborough County had three times the number of adult businesses as Miami.

"That's not true!" Redner screamed from the audience.

Biles continued, throwing out rape statistics.

"That's a lie!" Redner said.

A security guard ushered Redner out of the meeting as he screamed: "He is a liar! Call a liar a liar. Pray for the liar!"

Redner then taunted the overflow crowd gathered downstairs with an article about a priest accused of molesting altar boys.

"This is where the child molesters are," Redner said, pointing to the headline.
......

When Storms made the motion to place the item - which has yet to be crafted - on the November ballot, she was met with silence.

"It died, lack of a second," Scott said. "There was no second."

Storms then offered a different motion: to have commissioners vote on placing the ordinance as it had been written and presented at a previous meeting.

That, too, failed to gain any momentum.

Later, when Commissioner Kathy Castor gave her reasons for not supporting a Pat Frank-backed item on the agenda, Storms looked at Frank and said, "Don't worry, I've got daggers in my back, too ... Feels good, doesn't it?"

School choice separate but equal

Hillsborough County has succeeded in weeding out undesirable students from desirable schools. Gee, do ya think the FCAT has anything to do with this, or is it simply pure racism?

The county’s new school choice plan has sputtered to life, much to the benefit of wealthier county residents. Either by design, or through flaws in execution, the plan has resulted in pushing poor and minority students out of desirable schools and into undesirable ones. Meanwhile, the flawed process allowed the slots that had been taken by poor and minority kids to go to others, so now there is no going back.

November 2003 marked the debut of the school choice program. Signs of impending problems were already apparent.
(Click the link below to continue reading this long post)

Today marks the official, and historic, beginning of the controlled choice application period for Hillsborough County public school students.

The choice plan, an alternative to assigning children to neighborhood schools, will eventually end three decades of busing for desegregation. It begins next fall, in the 2004-2005 school year, but families must make their choices in the next two months if they want to participate.

Its main purpose? To keep schools racially diverse without busing.

"This is indeed an important date because it signifies the opportunity for parents to choose where their son or daughter will go to school," said superintendent Earl Lennard. "It puts choice into the hands of the community."

Despite the historic significance of the choice application period, it's starting with more of a fizzle than a bang. Parents can do little until they have applications in hand.

That won't be for a few days.

Applications and 11-page booklets will be mailed next week to the 50,000 students eligible to participate in the choice plan's inaugural year, about one-third of the county's 180,000 enrollment.

Though most students don't have to choose, thousands are eligible.

Most students can stay at their current schools without filling out an application. The only ones who must indicate whether they are staying or going elsewhere are the 14,000 who are bused for desegregation. If they don't, school officials will pick one for them.
......

Eligible students have until Jan. 9 to return choice applications ranking their top three schools within their geographic region.

Students are not guaranteed their first choice, but will be assigned by a computerized lottery based on where they live and space available in their chosen schools.

Race will not be a consideration, but preference will be given to students who live in regions who apply to zone schools and zone students who apply to region schools.
......

Bus transportation will be provided to at least three schools in each region.
......

The board's only black member, Doris Ross Reddick, voted against the plan, saying its expectations are unrealistic.
......

Despite the choice plan's sweeping nature, interest in it has been less than overwhelming.

At seven school showcases held around the county last month, only 1,375 families attended, less than 3 percent of those eligible. There have also been few visitors to the seven Parent Resource Centers.
......

The most popular question? If I'm happy with my school, do I have to choose?

The answer is no for most students. But the bused students and the 17,000 students on special assignment will be asked to take home a separate "intent to return" form next week, which could be confused with the choice applications.

On the forms, they are asked whether their child will return to his school next year. The forms must be returned by Dec. 12 if parents want their children "grandfathered" into their existing schools. Otherwise, they forfeit their spots.

Some parents already have decided to get a jump on the process. About 300 applications have been turned in early.

Let’s review: we have done away with busing as a tool to desegregate our schools. In its place is a “choice” plan. This particular choice plan lets kids stay in their current schools without having to actually indicate their choice. Sounds good. Uh, except that some kids do have to make a choice if they want to stay in their current schools. These would be the poor and minority kids that were being bused to desirable schools.

These are the kids with parents who lack the wherewithal to follow through on a complex and confusing application process, yet this is the only group that was forced en masse to either make a choice or be assigned to whatever was left over.

And an interesting aside: the article infers that some parents were allowed to turn in applications early, even though November 15 marked the official first day. Who was allowed to turn in early apps, and did those people get coveted spots in full and desirable schools?

Anyway, the seeds of failure seem to have been sown early on in the process, but let’s hope for the best and jump ahead to this year. The January deadline came and went with little fanfare.

Then in February, word got out that some computer glitches may be causing some minor problems:

Blaming a computer glitch, Hillsborough school officials said Tuesday that dozens of students were wrongly assigned to crowded schools through the new controlled choice process.

The computer incorrectly enrolled students in schools in which there is no available space, officials said.

The error means these students will not be able to attend their chosen schools next fall despite being notified by mail last week that they could.

"We need to go back and apologize to some parents," said Hillsborough's chief academic officer Donnie Evans.

School officials said it wasn't known Tuesday how many students or which schools were affected by the problem, which was detailed during a School Board workshop. Officials do know that the mishap involves crowded schools. This year, 61 of the district's 183 schools are at or above 100 percent of capacity.

The majority of the affected students appear to be in middle and high schools.

Evans said he hopes to work through the problem and notify parents of children who were not assigned to the right schools by phone within two weeks.

Students will be enrolled in other schools in their area, preferably those they listed as their second or third choices - as long as those schools have room.

"We're checking name by name, school by school," said deputy superintendent Randy Poindexter. "This has to be corrected."

The problem is the biggest one so far for the choice plan, a new method of assigning students to schools that replaces busing for desegregation. About 47,000 students were eligible to fill out their top three choices of schools in seven geographic regions.

Less than two weeks ago, administrators said 84 percent of the 6,488 students who participated in the choice plan received their first pick of schools.

But as the numbers of students assigned to specific schools began trickling out last week, parents at crowded campuses, including Wilson Middle and Mitchell Elementary, wanted to know why more children were being packed into their already-burgeoning classrooms.

Wilson parent Leigh Joyner complained in an e-mail to School Board members.

"I understand that with Wilson's outstanding performance it is one of the more desirable middle schools to attend - but at what cost?" she wrote. "Giving someone outside the boundaries the choice to attend an already overcrowded school does not make the school choice program successful."

Wilson and Plant High parent Jeanne Tate said she has no problem with additional students assigned to her children's schools if there's room. But since the schools are packed, she said she believes more crowded conditions would take away from the learning process there.

"We're very fortunate we have the quality education those schools provide in a public school setting," she said. "We certainly don't want to detract from that."

So, thanks to emails from the alert parents from elite South Tampa schools, the school board caught this error. See, desirable schools are already full of wealthy white children from within their own district. Kids who get have to make a choice, kids that used to be bused to these schools, don’t actually get to choose a school that’s full.

The school district has a general policy of closing enrollment at schools at 100 percent of capacity. Through the choice program, students were only supposed to be assigned to schools where space was available.

Poindexter said a random review of student assignments showed many anomalies. One was that several Burns Middle School students who are currently bused for desegregation are now assigned through the choice program to Wilson, which is over capacity.

The students should have been assigned to either Coleman, Madison or Monroe middle schools, all of which have space. Wilson, with 637 students, is built to hold 554.

In other cases, parents whose children now attend private schools were enrolled in crowded schools.

"It should not have happened," Poindexter said.

Notice that Poindexter (who wins the “Best Name for a School Superintendent” prize) is concerned that private school students were getting caught up in this error. Telling?

Schools were notified Tuesday of the error and advised that some of their choice enrollments may be invalid.

Poindexter said once the errors have been corrected, an evaluation of the choice process will be done. Changes will be instituted next year, including delaying the notification of parents until the numbers are checked and rechecked numerous times, Poindexter said.

Despite the mishap with student assignments, school board member Candy Olson said she believes the inaugural year of the choice plan has turned out well.

"This is our first time," she said. "We have to expect there to be some mistakes."

Oh. Candy sez everything’s peachy. No worries then.

Wait. There’s more, but you knew that, right?

Parents had actually been notified that their kids were accepted into these much coveted spots at Tampa’s elite schools. Now, those notifications were being voided by the school board.

Sit tight and wait.

That's what hundreds of parents are being told one day after school administrators detailed a problem with the new controlled choice student assignment plan. An apparent computer glitch wrongly assigned students to 18 schools at which there is no space.

Students' enrollment in these schools for next year is now invalid despite recent postcards telling them they got into their chosen campuses.
......

The exact cause of the computer error is still unknown.

The glitch was discovered after parents at several South Tampa schools learned that children living outside their neighborhoods were being enrolled in their schools, which are already bursting with students.
......

Most students chose to remain at their existing neighborhood schools without participating in choice.

Remember: the only students who had the burden of making a choice to stay in their current school were the bused students.

An editorial in the St. Pete. Times a few days later said:

The foulup last week with Hillsborough County's new school choice plan highlights a problem choice was supposed to fix. Hundreds of families - the number won't be known for days - were incorrectly told their child could get into their desired school. Now the school district is calling parents with the news their children will be going someplace else.

The whole idea of choice was to level the playing field, to give students a fair chance at the best education the public schools could offer. As it replaced busing for desegregation, choice was also a covenant with the black community, which fought in court for 40 years to equalize academic opportunities for blacks and whites.
......

Still, for as many as one in four students, choice has been a mixed bag. It also is unclear what the racial breakdown is of those students who were wrongly assigned, and who now have seen their school options dwindle. Disappointing such a large number of people, in the year choice debuts in Hillsborough, could damage confidence in the plan. Imagine what could have happened had more than 6,488 of the 47,000 students eligible for choice taken up the district's offer to move. As parents become more comfortable with the choice plan, the district may face added pressure to place more students closer to home.

I gotta wonder why a paper with the resources of the SP Times has not bothered to find out exactly what the racial breakdown is here. Economic breakdowns might also be revealing, but I think it’s safe to say that a lot of the affected students were from poor and minority households.

A week later, the school board was starting to get things straightened out.

Now, after checking the numbers and looking at students' second and third choices, most of the 1,501 affected students will have seats in the fall.

Where they will go:

576 students will receive their second- or third-choice schools (486 received their second choice; 90, their third) because the schools they selected are not crowded.

296 students could not receive any of their choice schools because they all were crowded. These students will be assigned to schools in their neighborhoods.

277 students selected crowded schools and have no identified neighborhood schools, so they will be assigned schools by district officials.

196 students will be assigned to their neighborhood schools because they chose it as their second or third option on their choice applications.

156 students were excluded from the choice process because they were exceptional education, magnet school or kindergarten students who will be assigned to the school in their neighborhood.

Also, 549 students were assigned to crowded schools that are their neighborhood schools.

Because those students live in their schools' attendance zones, they still will be allowed to go there.

"These are youngsters that really did not have to complete a choice application," chief academic officer Donnie Evans said. "We have guaranteed any youngster who resides in a school's attendance area a seat in that school. Capacity is not a limiting factor if they live in that area."
......

About 47,000 students were eligible to apply for the choice program, of which about 6,500 students did.

More confirmation that those who can afford to live near a desirable school will not have to worry. The last sentence is also very revealing. Less than ten percent of eligible students actually took part in the choice process. It’s almost as if the process were designed to deter participation. Actually, the real numbers are even lower:

Hillsborough School District officials rolled out final numbers for the controlled choice plan Thursday and deemed the application process a success, even though a small fraction of students chose new schools. ......

The school district has 181,469 students currently enrolled. Of those, 47,218 were eligible to participate in the choice plan. That included all students who live in urban zones, and students from suburban regions entering kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades.

When the application deadline came in January, 6,033 students selected schools other than their neighborhood schools. But another 5,198 students living in urban zones opted to continue taking long bus rides to attend their satellite schools, which are largely in the suburbs.

And the number of students actually assigned to schools other than their neighborhood school is even lower. Among the district's 196 elementary, middle and high schools, 2,217 students were assigned under the choice plan. Another 3,371 students went through the application process unnecessarily and were assigned to schools they would have gone to anyway because they live in that school's attendance area.

Hillsborough's choice plan, unlike the one in Pinellas County, does not ask students to apply to attend the school near where they live.

The school district received a five-year, $10-million federal grant to implement the plan, and a $450,000 state grant to help other districts put similar plans in place.

Those are some pretty pricey choices: over $1,100 per student. But I digress. Let’s look at a summary of this year’s fiasco:

Assigning schools under Hillsborough County's new parental choice plan was supposed to be based on getting the application in on time and a random computer selection.

As it turns out, assignments to crowded schools, double assignments and lack of participation changed all that.

Some persistent parents and some who missed deadlines got the schools they wanted anyway, a top district official confirmed Friday.

At the same time, some who met deadlines lost out on their first choices as errors were being sorted out and other students filled those slots, Chief Academic Officer Donnie Evans said.

``If they called in with a problem, we worked with them one-on-one,'' Evans said. ``I put a dozen of those in myself.''

In fact, most families from the urban core, offered a chance to stay in suburban schools, missed the deadline to submit ``intent to return'' forms. But they are being allowed to return if there is room at the school, Evans said.

Oh my: parents who have the resources and the time and the education to go one on one with the school board may have been given preferential treatment. (I wonder: could these have been the private school parents alluded to by Sup. Poindexter?) In the meantime, some who jumped through all the right hoops but did not follow up verbally on their apps may have been bumped. (By the private schoolers?)

And, in fact, since the process was designed to be a burden on students “from the urban core,” many (most?) of those students will never be able to return to their old schools. Oh, unless there is room at the school, in which case it’s an undesirable school. (back to the Trib article):

Estella Gallegos was turned down Tuesday when she asked that her 13-year-old daughter, Maria Hernandez, be allowed to return to Mann Middle School in Brandon in August. Children from her neighborhood have been bused there to desegregate schools in the suburbs. The choice plan is ending forced busing, but Maria wants to go back.

The mother and daughter were attending a hastily called meeting of parents from Tampa's urban core. The students are being assigned by the district to two schools in their neighborhood - James and Washington - that will re- open in August as kindergarten through eighth-grade schools to provide necessary space.

About 2,000 urban core families did not apply for the program and were assigned to mostly urban schools, the district said.

Gallegos, who speaks little English, said through her daughter that she never knew she could apply to have Maria return to the Brandon school or she would have.

Maria says, ``I don't mind the bus ride'' from her home near Ybor City.

Under choice, the district is divided into seven regions, and families eligible for choice were supposed to be able to choose from schools within their region. The district would provide transportation to some of those schools.

Families eligible for choice this year were those with children entering kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades and all those living in the county's urban core. About 45,000 students districtwide were eligible.

As of Tuesday's sparsely attended meeting, letters had not been sent to all the affected families notifying them of their assignments, district officials said. Families that attended were confused, and some did not like their options.

Left Feeling Deflated

Derwin and Loretha Bozeman applied for choice by the Jan. 9 deadline. They showed up with a worn notification card saying they got their first choice of Tampa's Wilson Middle School for their daughter, Bianqa, who has been attending Pierce Middle School. They then got a letter saying they failed to participate in choice and needed to come to Tuesday's meeting, they said.

``We were told we can go to either Booker T. Washington or back to Pierce,'' Derwin Bozeman said. ``We want Wilson. It's the only blue-ribbon school in the area, and we live closer to Wilson than Pierce.''

As of Friday, the family had made no decision. ``This is like a big evacuation of air from the balloon. We don't know what we're going to do.''

The Bozeman family is among a group of 1,500 families the district erroneously assigned to already-crowded schools. They were all supposed to be called, but the Bozemans said they never were.

Choose One Or The Other

Other families said they had applied for choice and magnet programs and were confused about assignments.

That was another problem for the district, Evans said. Families were encouraged to apply for choice and magnet schools, and computers were supposed to sort them out. Instead, they were assigned to both, snapping up spots that others could have had.

(Is this a new computer reservation system designed to hold slots for the right people er, problem that has not been reported yet? It sure sounds like it.)

Now families dissatisfied with their assignments are being encouraged to apply for special assignments to any district school they want as long as it has room and they provide their own transportation. The deadline is June 30.

This seems fair, since transportation is so cheap and easy to come by in this area. I’m sure that the working poor from the urban core can easily afford to arrange transportation for their kids.

Alright - it seems clear that this school choice sham is a thinly disguised return to the days of separate and equal. So, where is the NAACP? Their voice has hardly been heard during this whole affair. Remember the SP TImes editorial (back):

As it replaced busing for desegregation, choice was also a covenant with the black community, which fought in court for 40 years to equalize academic opportunities for blacks and whites.”

Well, during a press conference in March, school choice seemed little more than an afterthought, despite the fact that the NAACP had called the press in to trumpet the need to improve educational opportunities for minorities.

After decades of watching black, Hispanic and poor students lag behind white students in education achievement, Hillsborough NAACP officials said the time has come to find a way to narrow the gap.

"The need has been there all that time," said branch president Sam Horton, who saw the gap up close when he was principal of Jefferson High School in 1977. "But the mobilization hasn't been there until now."
......

Horton cited statistics from the federal government's Adequate Yearly Progress Report that show:

65 percent of white students last year read at or above their grade level, compared to 32 percent of black students, 41 percent of Hispanic students and 37 percent of poor students.

71 percent of white students scored at or above their grade level in math, compared to 35 percent of black students, 49 precent of Hispanic students and 42 percent of poor students.

"This clearly points out the gap ethnically, but it also points out the gap in terms of economics," Horton said. "The gap exists. The question is how do we close that gap? . . . It's time for us to be successful. It's time for action, action, action. Collectively, we are responsible."
......

Marilyn Williams, an NAACP member who served on the education committee that studied the gap, said black students represent the leading edge of a much greater problem. "Black and brown children are like the canary in the coal mine," Williams said. "All children in Hillsborough County are being cheated from a good education. While we're here struggling to improve the education of black and brown children, we're trying to improve education for all children."

Walter Smith, a former president of historically black Florida A&M University, said the achievement problem has not improved since he first took on the issue in 1982. The chief reason for the continuing disparities, Smith said, is the reliance on standardized tests he described as "culturally biased."

Horton, who called Tuesday's news conference to announce the summit initiative, said he wants to alert the community to the gap and create a groundswell for finding a solution.

"We're trying to be sure we've got the soldiers behind us," said Horton, who plans to open talks with Hillsborough school superintendent Earl Lennard next week.

"We're always interested in what the NAACP has to say," Hart said. "But how to close the achievement gap issue is something that's being addressed on the local, state and federal levels."

Arghhhh. We have a man-made crisis right here right now, as thousands of minority and poor kids were just thrown out of good schools and into decrepit schools “that will re- open in August as kindergarten through eighth-grade schools to provide necessary space.”

So, why isn’t the NAACP doing more?

The voice mail sometimes has a backlog of 80 messages.

Some callers want to file lawsuits against their employers. A few complain about the way their children were treated in school. Others just want information about the group.

But for Clearwater's NAACP branch, returning all of the phone calls is an arduous task. The branch has no office, no secretary and relies on volunteers to check the phone messages.

Such problems are increasingly common locally and nationally as the NAACP deals with an aging, less active membership and a faltering national profile.

Since the organization was founded 95 years ago, it has been in the forefront of issues affecting the black community: lynching, segregation, affirmative action.
......

Across the Tampa Bay area, the four NAACP branches are so separate that their collective voice is mute. Hernando County's has no office and no general phone number. Only about a dozen people attend the meetings in Hillsborough County.

"People don't come to the meetings because they have gotten complacent," Hillsborough County NAACP president Sam Horton said. "They don't know the history of segregation in the South and what the NAACP had to do to break it down."
......

"If we are lacking anywhere, it's in young adults, people 25 to 40," said civil rights pioneer Julian Bond, chairman of the national NAACP. "That's a population that is starting a family. They are establishing themselves in jobs, and those concerns, unlike those younger and older, are a top priority for them right now."
......

Some young people say apathy is not the problem. The problem, they say, is the NAACP doesn't take on issues.

Deveron Gibbons, 31, former board member of the St. Petersburg branch, stopped going to meetings, saying the group seemed too concerned with social events to make a difference.

"All these meetings for planning one dinner, I don't have time for that," Gibbons said. "If you're sitting there having meetings all the time, you ain't helping no one."

William Thomas, 41, sees no direct benefit from paying the $30 yearly dues.

"There's no carrot dangling in front of me," said Thomas of St. Petersburg. "We are successful because of what they have done, but giving back to something that has old leadership and old goals? Nah."

No unifying cause

Part of the problem, some say, is there is no single, unifying cause. The NAACP, they suggest, needs to use focus groups to determine what issues are most vital.

"When we were growing up, everyone knew what the community wanted," said Randy Lightfoot, social studies supervisor for Pinellas County schools. "People probably want some of the same things, but now we're so fragmented that the message is getting lost."

To make that message clearer, Rouson two years ago proposed merging the Clearwater and St. Petersburg branches. The idea was met with resistance, he said.

Under his watch, membership in the St. Petersburg branch has tripled to about 450, while Clearwater's branch has struggled to recruit members - even though it includes all of Pinellas north of St. Petersburg.

Rouson also suggested that the three Tampa Bay branches combine their annual fundraisers into a single Freedom Fund dinner.

That didn't work, either. Roslyn Brock, vice chairwoman of the national NAACP, spoke at the Clearwater branch's dinner last month. And next month, St. Petersburg's branch is bringing her back.

Infighting and malaise. Hillsborough’s neglected population is in sore need of some help. I would think that this school choice fiasco could provide a spark for some good old fashioned activism by the Hillsborough County NAACP, but the press conference they held in March didn’t even touch on school choice. Instead, NAACP leaders called for “summits” and conferences. We need action right now, and the people we count on for assistance are looking to socialize.

Hillsborough County school officials have either taken advantage of the lack of concern on the part of the NAACP, or they have bought the loyalty of their (former?) employee and current Hillsborough County NAACP branch president Sam Horton with promises and trinkets. Either way, minority and poor students have just been sentenced to more sub par educational chances while their pale wealthy neighbors continue to enjoy the benefits of well subsidized schools with active parents and good scholastic reputations.

Why does Jeb! hate democracy?

Jeb!'s attempt to thwart a popular citizen initiative - a mandate that the voters sent to Tallahassee which the GOP has all but ignored - is moving forward.

A proposed ballot measure to kill Florida's voter-mandated high-speed rail project reached its first milestone Tuesday, garnering enough signatures to warrant review by the state Supreme Court.

Elections officials have verified nearly 55,000 petitions submitted by Derail the Bullet Train, a campaign led by Florida Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher. That's more than 10 percent of the 488,722 needed to make the ballot.

All citizen initiatives must get a green light from Florida's high court.

The court doesn't consider the merit of the proposed constitutional amendments but reviews them to make sure they deal only with one subject and are fairly described in their ballot title and summary. That review isn't triggered until a campaign has 10 percent of the signatures needed.

In 2000, voters approved a ballot measure ordering the state to build a high-speed train. The first leg of the proposed rail network would run from Orlando to Tampa. The plan is for the train to connect Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Gov. Jeb Bush, a persistent and loud critic, and Gallagher are pushing for a repeal through a petition drive that seeks to make the 2004 ballot.

The irony here is that Jeb! and Gallagher are high governmental officials who have expressed disgust at the whole citizen initiative process, yet they see no conflict in using the very process that they tried to kill to fool the people into derailing a program which Jeb! doesn’t like.

"Farenheit 9/11" in US theaters June 25

SF Gate

Michael Moore's award-winning documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" has picked up a U.S. distributor and will hit theaters June 25.

The film will be released by a partnership of Lions Gate Films, IFC Films and the Fellowship Adventure Group, which was formed by Harvey and Bob Weinstein specifically to market Moore's film.

The Weinsteins, who run Miramax Films, bought the rights to the movie from The Walt Disney Co., which owns Miramax and refused to distribute Moore's film.

The Weinstein brothers will personally finance and control distribution and marketing, they said Tuesday.

"I am grateful to them now that everyone who wants to see it will now have the chance to do so," Moore said in a statement.

"On behalf of my stellar cast -- GW, Dick, Rummy, Condi and Wolfie -- we thank this incredible coalition of the willing for bringing 'Fahrenheit 9/11' to the people."

Federal abortion ban declared unconstitutional

Planned Parenthood:

The federal abortion ban passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush last year is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced, Federal District Court Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton ruled today. The ban, challenged in Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) v. Ashcroft, could have outlawed abortions as early as 12 to 15 weeks in pregnancy, including those that doctors say are safe and among the best to protect women's health. PPFA hailed the ruling and questioned the Bush administration's efforts to enforce the blatantly unconstitutional ban

Get Up with MorningWood!

Get Up with MorningWood, on 70,000 Watt Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org. 4 to 6 am (eastern) every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD

BOCC Meeting

Tuesday morning at 9:00am, at the County Center in downtown Tampa.

The Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners is scheduled to discuss the public nudity ordinance at 2:30pm. A group of Baptists calling itself Citizens for Decency is agitating for a law making it a crime to disrobe within the borders of Hillsborough County. Seriously.

Nudaphobe Commissioner Ronda Storms is leading the discussion, so it should be a lively one. Go to the meeting and make your voice heard. If you wish to speak on this or any other agenda item, you must sign in before the meeting starts. View this PDF file for all the information you need.

Today on MorningWood

More blogging on the radio: comments and insights rants on news and events.

I’ve got a lot to say about Hillsborough County’s new school choice program. A blog entry will be coming soon, but I may give a sneak preview on MorningWood if I can get organized. In a nutshell, the program, which is designed to replace integration through forced busing, seems to be transferring urban youth into failing inner-city schools. As I said, more on this to come.

So, if Hillsborough County is backsliding toward segregation, where is the NAACP? Almost invisible in many parts of the Tampa area, says the SP Times.

And I may read highlights from this week’s BlogWood entries, and perhaps some posts form other blogs as well. You never know - it’s live radio. Stay tuned.

Oh, and a bonus for BlogWood readers today: I wont be playing this song, due to the fact that I’m scared of the FCC. I’m talking “dirty” words here. Fuck shit piss etc. The FCC relaxes the rules between 10pm and 6am, and my show obviously falls into that window, but I’m still scared of that control freak and right wing tool Michael Powell. The FCC could effectively bankrupt a station like WMNF with one hefty fine.

So this song is too much, in my opinion, even though I play plenty of shit with bad fucking language in it all the time.

Fuck the FCC. Oh, and downlod this song! (Right click and “save target as...” to save it forever on your own computer!)

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.

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.