Cazual Conversation » 2008 » May http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com Your chance to comment on local politics Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:50:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 en-us hourly 1 Rollin’ on the Riverboat http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/26/rollin-on-the-riverboat/126/ http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/26/rollin-on-the-riverboat/126/#comments Tue, 27 May 2008 02:40:45 +0000 mcazalas http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/26/rollin-on-the-riverboat/ (For video of the trip with Caz, Burnie and Producer Jen)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8q4HZhKl38

So, Producer Jen is on the phone and it seems I’ve somehow won tickets to the Queen Ann Riverboat Comedy Zone Cruise.
Having seen Producer Jen only in workout pictures eating donuts, that was enough for me to decide this was a cruise I needed to make.

Photo gallery: http://www.emeraldcoastphotoseast.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=525231 

As you can see, Burnie’s dashing smile and brilliant white teeth took my mind completely off Producer Jen, who thought her five minutes of fame piloting the vessel entitled her to wear the skipper’s hat for the evening.

So, Saturday night, there we were. I anticipated a somewhat enjoyable evening based solely on my company for the evening - the daring duo of Talk Radio 101, Burnie Thompson and Producer Jen.

What we got was better-than-anticipated evening of professional comedy, a tasty barbecue buffet in an air-conditioned setting - with a bar - and a chance to mingle with about 40 people from all walks of life who came together for a two-hour cruise.

http://www.betsyannriverboat.net/

I’ll let the Website fill you in, but they back up the hype. The crew is friendly, and pretty, and the ride is sweet, especially the sunset cruise. You get your money’s worth.

After the show, folks wandered up top to watch the scenery and the sunset. Capt. Rick blasted the horn while we passed under the Hathaway Bridge - a cool sight from the water if you haven’t done that before - and we got to hear the booming echo from the cannon blast the Capt. unleased on our final pass.

Burnie regaled the passengers with his tales of fascism - I’m telling you, this guy is never off the clock - and it was one of the better evenings I’ve had in a while.

Sometimes the people you hang with make something fun, even if it isn’t. In this case, the evening surpassed my expectations despite my being surrounded by Talk Jocks.

If you’re looking for something different in a town accused of not bringing anything new to the table, or if you have friends coming in and want something to show off, the Betsy Ann has your ticket.

Post from: Cazual Conversation

]]> http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/26/rollin-on-the-riverboat/126/feed/ Help me win money http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/21/help-me-win-money/125/ http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/21/help-me-win-money/125/#comments Wed, 21 May 2008 19:48:00 +0000 mcazalas http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/21/help-me-win-money/ A normal person would not waste money on scratch-off Florida Lottery tickets after failing, repeatedly, to win.

We’ve previously established I’m not normal, so here goes.

I bought a $10 MegaGold scratch off ticket because my car payment is due and I’m $15 short. I need to win at least $15 to make this work.

Having given up on luck, it’s down to this. I’m going to propose 10 topics of discussion for my blog.

After typing each suggestion, I’ll scratch off two “prizes.” I’m willing to write about whatever the gods desire. They can show me by giving me a winning scratch when they see the topic they want.

Here goes:

1: Why is it so hard to get someone to build a grocery store south of 15th street where you don’t risk life and limb to enter?

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next topic.

2: Sheriff Frank McKeithen has ordered his folks to use their county vehicles for work-related duties. Kudos.

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next topic.

3: The trail date for the man accused of killing a woman and her three children has been set for mere weeks before the State Attorney’s Office election next fall. What does that mean?

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next topic.

4: The new airport construction is ahead of schedule. Wouldn’t that be a great topic?

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next topic.

5: Cedar Grove’s Police Chief says he was misrepresented about how much revenue his department generates through ticketing innocent motorists who’ve done nothing but break the speed laws.

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next Topic.

6: I taped the Lee Sullivan show today. Was he more distracted by my ADD than I was by his laugh?

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next Topic.

7: Do people really believe the alleged “Good ‘Ol boys” have wrested control of our website away from us?

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next topic.

8: Is it a good idea to put a statue of Gerry Clemons in the round-about at 19th Street and Balboa Avenue? I think so.

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Next topic.

9: If a Health Department employee takes everyone out for donuts and lunch, and said donuts are in their stomachs when they return, are they violating policy by digesting on the job?

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing. Last topic.

10: Could they pay a monkey to write this blog?

Scratch 1: Nothing. Scratch 2: Nothing.

I’ll take this as a sign I do not need to write a blog today, at least not until I get back with my $20 scratchoff Lottery ticket.

Post from: Cazual Conversation

]]> http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/21/help-me-win-money/125/feed/ Coming Wednesday: The News Herald unveils Online upgrades http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/18/coming-wednesday-the-news-herald-unveils-online-upgrades/124/ http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/18/coming-wednesday-the-news-herald-unveils-online-upgrades/124/#comments Sun, 18 May 2008 19:23:49 +0000 mcazalas http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/18/coming-wednesday-the-news-herald-unveils-online-upgrades/ Coming sometime Wednesday, if the Computer Lords are willin’ and the bandwidth don’t rise,  we will deliver to you our new online product.

It’s big. It’s the equivalent of redesigning the entire paper, from 1-A to the Classifieds, an excercise we manage to avoid for up to 10 years at a time.

You know when we’ve redesigned the paper, because your blood pressure rises and you call us by the hundreds to complain. Usually it’s to tell us the paper, as crappy as you thought it was before, at least looked good.

We don’t know what to expect with our new online product, but I suspect it will be well-received, because the computer savvy know it is due.

It will mean better delivery of breaking news, pictures and videos. It will make it easier for you to make your own submissions.

It will be orderly and make sense. It will be easier to navigate.

It will feature maps showing you where the felony crimes occur, links to public records, arrests logs, breaking news, national and international news, vastly upgraded sports news, exclusive web features, daily newscasts and more.

It will put much, much more of the decision making into your hands and out of ours as we go to live postings of comments and Squalls. 

That’s right, Squall Live, for the first time, will live up to its name. When you Squall or post a comment, it appears immediately.

Which brings us to the exception to the new-found happiness we think most of you will experience. Freedom isn’t free, and the ability to post live via our Website will now require registration.

We’ve steered away from this for years. It is unavoidable if we are to truly let you experience the Internet via The News Herald.

Some Squallers (the ones prone to vicious personal attacks and lurid postings), will find that they can still post anonymously as it goes to other viewers, will have a fit. That is OK. They will Squall and tell us how mean and dumb we are and compare us to dictators. This is OK too, because if they do, it will mean they registered.

We hope this encourages a more civil discourse and discourages the haters. The tradeoff is that Squall Live will now really be live and your story comments will post immediately, not when the Jr. Squall Editor recovers from his hangover.

You also will be tasked with policing yourselves.

It works  like this: Anyone offended by any post can “report” that it is offensive by clicking on an icon there. It will alert us so we can review it. Meanwhile, no matter what we think, if four of you click on a specific comment or Squall, it is removed immediately for our review.

We’ll tell you more in the coming days. Hang with us.

Post from: Cazual Conversation

]]> http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/18/coming-wednesday-the-news-herald-unveils-online-upgrades/124/feed/ CCA departure may mean jail time for sheriff http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/16/cca-departure-may-mean-jail-time-for-sheriff/123/ http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/16/cca-departure-may-mean-jail-time-for-sheriff/123/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 12:19:46 +0000 mcazalas http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/16/cca-departure-may-mean-jail-time-for-sheriff/ There are many things Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen might need.

More deputies comes to mind, or less grief from an increasingly difficult-to-please audience in the Internet age where the most heroic of acts can be denigrated anonymously.

“Bay deputy saves child’s life with CPR” the headline might read. An anonymous comment left online, I’m willing to bet, would chime, “I’m surprised the deputy had any breath left to do that if he was more than 10 yards from his patrol car. They’re all fat and should be fired.”

Such is the life of elected officials in these parts, who can do no right.

So it would seem that one of the things McKeithen does not need is the headache associated with running the Bay County Jail as CCA flees behind a thin veil of economic excuses from a county commission increasingly unwilling to put up with the company’s shenanigans.

Yet it very well could be what he is doing by the end of the fiscal year, which happens to be right around election time, when controversy is not what people running for office seek.

Nothing good, you see, is in it for McKeithen to assume that responsibility. Nothing good has ever come out of running a jail.

Even if McKeithen were to see it that way, it may be that he has a duty, a certain moral obligation, to take over the jail if that is what the county asks.

So how might that work? First, some history.

When CCA took over the Bay County Jail some 20-plus years ago, it was a progressive move by a progressive county commission that brought us the incinerator. The incinerator was very progressive, and is not so much a failure as it is a victim of the contracts associated with its early years. Burning, rather than burying, garbage has saved this county money and landfill space.

The jail was under intense Department of Corrections scrutinty, with lawsuits on the horizon if things didn’t improve. Things were not improving. CCA fixed that.

Knowing it had the first privatized jail in the country - one that puncuate its sales pitch to other counties and states - CCA turned it into a clean, top-notch facility.

As the company grew, the luster wore off the jail, conditions were allowed to slowly deteriorate, the company seemed less eager to please and complaints began to grow.

While CCA is calling an end to the relationship, it is somewhat like the husband who leaves on his own after the wife has repeatedly told him she’s one step from kicking him out.

So here we are.

McKeithen took a troubled Gulf County Sheriff’s Office and turned it around when Al Harrison was indicted. He won the loyalty of his employees. He tried some different things at the Gulf County Jail. He learned that the media is not always a monster to be handled at arms length.

So when he was into one particularly interesting experiment that drew media scrutiny, he invited the media out.

McKeithen had turned some inmates to gardening to grow their own food, and inmates behaved better. He had them sleeping in tents during overcrowding, and he spent the night with him to show it wasn’t all that bad. The inmates, as much as they could, seemed to appreciate that and the furor never gathered steam.

When McKeithen came to Bay County via Governor’s appointment, it was said he couldn’t do with a large department what he did with a smaller one. He proved them wrong, won the loyalty of the majority of his people, and brought some calm to a tense department.

The Gulf County Jail may be small, but the good things that happened there were more a matter of principal and technique, not numbers. There are things that work on any level, things that are more about the intent and the message than the size of the audience.

We needed CCA when it arrived. That need is not so evident now.

If McKeithen is called in, and agrees to do it, the hope is that the Sheriff’s Office and the county will approach it as a team, not as adversaries as it sometimes appeared prior to CCA’s arrival in the ’80s.

Because, really, it would not be the sheriff’s jail, it is ours.

We have to hope that a sheriff who has showed genuine concern for people in the past can manage to stay off the path of past sheriffs, can steer away from slipshod conditions that plague other counties, team up with our commissioners and make something good happen out of a situation that does not lend itself to goodness.

It won’t be cheap, and it shouldn’t be. If we’re going to take the jail out of private hands, the key should not be turning a profit, or breaking even. It should be doing whatever needs to be done to make sure everyone is safe - those inside and outside the cells.

There’s nothing in this for McKeithen, but there may be something in it for us.

Post from: Cazual Conversation

]]> http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/16/cca-departure-may-mean-jail-time-for-sheriff/123/feed/ Health Department brouhaha no laughing matter http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/09/health-department-brouhaha-no-laughing-matter/122/ http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/09/health-department-brouhaha-no-laughing-matter/122/#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 19:44:02 +0000 mcazalas http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/09/health-department-brouhaha-no-laughing-matter/ Dollars to doughnuts something odd is going on at the Bay County Health Department.

At first review, I liked the idea that director Jason Newsom banned employees from bringing fatty foods like doughtnuts in for others to share. It’s the Health Department, after all.

I mean, it wasn’t like Newsom issued everyone hand sanitizer and tissues for their desks in case he needed it during the course of the day. Or that he lets his office tap run for 15 minutes before pouring a glass of water to “clean out the pipes.”

That would be odd, I thought, as I read those very complaints in an anonymous letter to the state Surgeon General, Viamonte Ros, from an employee seeking relief.

So I called Newsom and asked him about the hand sanitizers and tissues.

“Those are bennies,” he said, “and I issued them to every employee as a benefit. I also gave every employee a box of tissues so they can sneeze into it at their desk and use the hand sanitizer to kill the germs so cold viruses and germs don’t go all over the office.”

Newsom explained that hospital employees — that would be those working to save the dying and working around open wounds and surgeries and such — use the sanitizers throughout the day.

So how often does he use the employee-issued sanitizers in the non-surgical environment at the Health Department?
“Every time I come out of the bathroom I get a squirt,” he said. “I get a squirt before I go to eat, and pretty much anytime I’m walking around the Health Department and have to shake hands. And times when I put my fingers on doorknobs I take a squirt.

“It’s just kind of a habit I’ve developed.”

And the running water?
“I love to drink water,” he said. “The only time the water is run is when I get the glass, so in order to get that metallic taste out of that water I let it run for 15 or 20 minutes to get the metal taste out of the pipes.”
Well, I don’t do that, and I don’t know anyone else who does.

“If you had to get that out of my sink you would,” he said. “It’s at the very end of the water distribution system of the building and at the very far end of the utility line. The water’s healthy, it just tastes really bad.”

How did Dr. Peter Sylvester survive, one wonders?

There’s nothing wrong with clean hands and fresh water, and the anonymous letter writer wasn’t being critical of either. The writer was noting a pattern that could cause the doughtnut issue to carry more weight.

“This is not an issue of staff made angry because the Director took away our doughnuts,” the letter stated. “We would just like to have a Director willing to do his job! One that is as concerned with public health and our community as he is about what I eat.

“He has found a job that pays well over $100,000 a year for concentrating on his pet peeves and hobbies.”

Asked if he could see how some might put all of that together and be a little put off by his management style, Newsom seemed genuinely confused.

“I thought these were wonderful employee benefit kinds of things,” he said.

Things started well, the letter said, with Newsom gaining employee discounts at local gyms and moving smoking areas away from the front of the building.

Messages on the electronic sign outside seem to have degenerated, and appear focused mainly on diet. “French Fry=Thunder Thigh,” for example, greets people with “thunder thighs” who must show up for various reasons, like getting a copy of a birth certificate.

So while Newsom’s edict initially sounded good — after all, employees were free to bring doughtnuts and such for themselves, just not for everyone — it may be indicative of one person imposing his will on others in a manner than goes far beyond encouraging healthy choices.

And that’s a concern.

In e-mails and notes to staff, Newsom preaches, essentially, that people can make their own choices unless HE decides those decisions adversely affect others.

The anonymous letter, for example, said Newsom is lobbying to have insurance benefits changed to reward the “healthy” and put the cost on the “overweight.”

Newsom wrote to staff that “if you currently pay $180/month” for the department’s insurance, but you do not smoke and are within 10 percent of your ideal body weight, “then your premium will be reduced to $0.” Fatties who do not smoke would pay $216 a month. Fatties who smoke would pay $360 a month.

That should be an interesting lobbying effort in Tallahassee.

Newsom can lobby for that all he wants, but until a higher power makes that decree, it’s not his position to force it on all. There is a difference between promoting and dictating, especially as it goes to personal choice.

Newsom can achieve his goals more subtly, because one of two things is going on here:

Newsom remains oblivious to the climate he is creating with his style, or he doesn’t care.

This far into the controversy neither is

Post from: Cazual Conversation

]]> http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/09/health-department-brouhaha-no-laughing-matter/122/feed/ No donuts for you? Good! http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/07/no-donuts-for-you-good/121/ http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/07/no-donuts-for-you-good/121/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 00:30:27 +0000 mcazalas http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/07/no-donuts-for-you-good/ This keyboard routinely generates easy copy when government oversteps its bounds and when dictators dictate, so the keys are in revolt at the idea that my fingers seem to be saying they agree with Dr. Jason Newsom’s donut point.

It cannot be helped. It hit a raw nerve with me, a guy big enough to eat Newsom’s weight in donuts over the course of a week if given the right incentive.

His stance on donuts - and other trashy, fatty foods - ought to raise my libertarian hackles just as much as an unnecessary roadblock or the police once again explaining how it is they have the resources to investigate LaRoyale (gay) for six months but can’t stop people from overdosing at the nightclubs (straight).

But when spread of Newsom’s bold stance - and we had time to read the somewhat silly letter of complaint an anonymous person sent to the state - somewhere deep down inside in a place we don’t talk about at libertarian gatherings, it sounded good.

If I fear I might get cancer and go to the American Lung Association to pick up a how-to-stop-smoking pamphlet, I don’t want it handed to me by someone with a cigarette dangling from his or her lip.

When I’m at Hooters, I want a server who, to the naked eye, is obviously well-versed on the owl population, not a muscle boy.

And when I’m at the Health Department to pick up a copy of my lost birth certificate, and I see all the people without health insurance who sure look they’re going to need healthcare awfully quick for some sort of diabetes-related ailment, it strikes me odd to see a 300-pounder wiping donut powder from his or her fingers before calling the next person in line.

There are so many things politically wrong with that statement that I don’t know where to start, so I won’t. But I give myself up to you, readers, to see if I’m alone.

Post from: Cazual Conversation

]]> http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/07/no-donuts-for-you-good/121/feed/ Thunder Beach whine and moan http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/02/thunder-beach-whine-and-moan/120/ http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/02/thunder-beach-whine-and-moan/120/#comments Fri, 02 May 2008 20:55:43 +0000 mcazalas http://cazalas.freedomblogging.com/2008/05/02/thunder-beach-whine-and-moan/ If nothing else we know this: there is something out there about which we can all complain, and nothing out there on which we can all agree.

Thunder Beach brings out the best in us.

When it first rolled to town a few years ago, I was amused at the people complaining about it. Let ‘em be, I thought, they’re not hurting anyone and they’re spending money.

That was when I lived far south in the Cove.

When I bought property closer to 15th Street, my attitude changed with the annoying arrival of in-your-face mufflers and the screams of engines winding down beating their way into my home.

Inconsiderate louts, I thought, get ‘em out of here.

Last weekend I borrowed a 2007 Saturn Sky souped up to 200-plus horsepower with all the extras, like a throaty exhaust system, and drove the heck out of it to Talladega and back.

It occured to me during one of numerous rapid accelerations and/or clutch-enabled downshifts that I was probably annoying other travelers.

For those few days, I did not care.

So for these few days, I can let the bikers be.

Post from: Cazual Conversation

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