Several years back, the Palm Beach Post endorsed the Super Majority vote here in
Today the Post in its editorial says that the Senate should only be required to get 51 votes for majority to rule otherwise it is a minority rule.
When it comes to certain legislation, the super-majority vote is the only one that will ensure that the legislation proposed is indeed the best for all and in the best interests of the majority. We need full and even exhausting debate when we have laws that will affect us. No one has ever been hurt by healthy debate.
However, the 60 vote rule in the Senate makes sense. The 60 votes prove that an over-whelming majority think it is good for the country. Once there are 60 votes in the Senate, it ends the filibuster and prevents that one lone Senator from trying to delay a vote on a bill and debating it to death thus driving it to defeat. It stops the bull. What it did on the health-care bill was end the power grab by the federal government and the SEIU. The 60 vote rule does not apply when passing budget bills.
The 60 vote rule has strengthened the vote of the majority.
The reason for the 60 vote rule was to aid the minority in keeping the majority in check. It kept the simple majority of 1 vote from instituting major legislation. Our founding fathers would agree that this added protection for the people IS democracy.
On another note, with the reported 11.7% unemployed in
13 comments:
oh lynn, i've avoided commenting on your lopsided editorializing of this whole annabeth thing, but alas, i can no longer hold back. do you not see the inherit conflict of interest in allowing someone who frequently works on local campaigns with access to the city's census data? for one who frequently rails against the city and "no-bid" contracts and corruption, to have a city commissioner recommend her former campaign manager for a city job with only the slightest pretense of attempting to advertise for outside candidates kind of reeks of hypocrisy.
corruption! robo-calls! flyers! dolphins! uh oh, I was almost blindsided by your empty rhetoric.
not once have you mentioned that the city would be spending more then Palm Beach County on its census efforts. For one who constantly cites "waste" by the city, why pay two people $30k when the CRB can do it for free?
RJ: Truth be told, I don't see the conflict in Annabeth having access to the Census data. This type of data really won't help a political campaign much.
Voter data is what a political campaign needs, it is public record and anyone off the street can buy it from either the Supervisor of Elections office or from the State Division of Elections.
The voter data file is much more useful. It gives you their voting history, age, DOB, gender, race, party affiliation, address and phone number.
Unless Annabeth had intentions of falsifying the Census data she collected, I don't get why she was fired.
As stated by the Commission, $30,000 is a small price to pay to someone to GET IT RIGHT. This count is very important and it means millions of dollars to the City of Lake Worth. I have never been interested in how the County or the city next to me does it as an example as to what is right or wrong. Speaking of nearby cities, we have plenty of them that owe us close to 6 million for our sewer system.
Annabeth knows this town well and would have done a great job. She was fired because a couple of people went to the city manager and said "Fire Annabeth or come next election YOU won't have a job. Our city manager caved to non pressure by a small group of WACKOS and sadly ,our city Commission also threw a well qualified person under the bus. Now if someone like Elizabeth Arevalo had applied for the job and been fired, I would understand. Mary Lindsey did not have to put out an illegal,purposefully deceitful political flyer.BUT SHE DID, Rene Varela is involved in the dolphin trade,no matter what he says or does to rationalize his behaviour.As for the Super Majority, Tom Ramiccio and the state wide chamber of Commerce spent an incredible amount of money and lied their faces off to defeat something that could have helped Lake Worth. Oh well, not having a Super Majority has come back to bite "the Ramiccio crowd" in their ample rears many times.
Oh my, I must object to several mis-statements. Annabeth was Cara's campaign manager? I think not. Trust me on this.
I have been reading in the PB Post for weeks now that PB County is hiring 4,000 people to work on the census. They are paying $14 per hour. Check today's paper.
If 4,000 people work for only one hour, the cost is $56,000. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it APPEARS that PB County will be spending waaaaay more than Lake Worth on their census people. They are actually paying people to do what AB would have gotten people to do for FREE.
So RJ, drop $.50 in the machine and get up to date sometime, huh?
And hey, let's give AB and Shauna a nice, big raise! Yeah!
That's true, Laurel, and here is the Price List from the Supervisor of Elections.
http://www.pbcelections.org/content.aspx?id=115
Again, I don't see the conflict. A political campaign has nothing to do with Census taking or organizing one.
My understanding of Annabeth is that she is well known and trusted in both the legal, as well as, the illegal immigrant communities.
This is the area where Census data is the hardest to collect. Perhaps her firing was more motivated by those who don't want this segment of the population counted.
The fact is, it is federal law that everyone is counted, regardless of immigration status. These counts will directly impact the number of dollars we get for hospitals, education and other constitutionally mandated services locally.
The more heads counted correctly, the more accurate the data, the more federal dollars that come back to the state. We give the Feds much more than we get back at the moment.
Personally, I'd like to see some of that money come back home.
To kkss21:
I want to say this with all respect. The Varela dolphin thing is a load of crap.
Rene is the vet for the company. He doesn't decide that side of the business. Is he happy about this portrayal of his involvement in this company? I can assure you, I don't believe he is.
If he is making and has made so much money on the dolphin trade, why does his wife work six days a week and he also works part time in a vet's office three days a week? If it were me making all this money, I'd be shopping. A LOT! =)
Rene is my personal vet for my two dogs and one cat. (Thank GAWD I got rid of the hamster...) =) He is wonderful with the animals.
This smear was twisted, turned and spun into a tall tale, a political ploy to win an election, plain and simple.
It was a page right out of the dirty politics playbook. It worked for some. That was the whole point of the exercise.
My two cents...
The point with Varela is--he is/was a partner in a business that traffics in dolphins. There is no way that he didn't know how they make their money. Because he treated these animals does not let him off the hook because it was the other side of the business. That IS THE PLOY, AND THE HOOK THAT YOU FELL FOR. They would not have had to be treated if they had NOT been captured--for $$$$.
This was not a tall tale. Did you see the video? It speaks for itself. Rene was in it. It is very real. This was NO political ploy. Yes, Rene comes off as very calm and quiet and we naturally trust vets. I am sure that he is. He just is NOT when it comes to his business, Ocean Embassy and how they make their money. An elected official must have certain character traits and greed at the expense of wild animals is not one for which I admire. It is the truth.
The ploy was the "racist" thing against Maxwell. The ploy was the deceptive flier that Mary Lindsey did. the ploy was the robo call that the firefighter's union did.
Exactly as Lynn so well stated. Rene IS INVOLVED IN THE WILD DOLPHIN TRADE ! Nobody said he got rich off of it. The point is HE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON! Instead of washing his hands of this company like any honest vet would have-RENE WENT ALONG FOR THE RIDE,with FULL KNOWLEDGE of what was going to happen to these animals !!!!Like a slave physician of the past-he helped to make sure that a very valuable commodity was healthy enough to get to market. Rene Varela should hang his head in shame but HE HAS NO SHAME. And you,Diana,should be ashamed that you helped to put this creep into office !
To call the Truth “dirty politics, twisted, turned and spun into a tall tale and a political ploy” is exactly what any good ministry of propaganda in any communist country would say.
Fact 1. Varela was a founding partner in Ocean Embassy… not an employee as you might suggest by your statement “he doesn’t decide that side of the business.” The sole purpose of that company is directed at trafficking in wild Dolphins for profit (stated by the CEO in the documentary) which is considered by most an immoral and unethical MISUSE of Varela's education. It is also illegal in the US but not in Dubai.
Fact 2. Varela supporters claiming that his being a PARTNER in the immoral and unethical conduct of his company’s pursuit of profit doesn’t make him guilty of anything… is exactly analogous to saying that because Adolf Eichmann was only a partner in Hitler’s Reich that he too isn’t responsible.
Fact 3. Varela has not distanced himself from or resigned his partnership in Ocean Embassy which continues trafficking in Dolphins.
So say what you want… whether its just plain greed or stupidity that keeps Varela an active and willing partner in what most of the world considers criminal activity (poaching) in a flagrant disregard for the suffering of Dolphins in captivity… it doesn’t absolve him from the Truth about his partnership in crime regardless of what you try to spin and propagandize about him.
kkss21 - Your statement is inaccurate. Varela has been accused of making millions off of this so-called dolphin trade.
Did he treat the dolphins? Yes. Should he have treated the dolphins? Yes. What else would you have him do? Ignore the sick animals?
Have you ever sat down and had a conversation with the man? Just curious.
Quite frankly, I am proud to have helped put him in office and I will gladly do it again.
See you next election. =)
Should Rene treat the sick dolphins? No! Rene should be publicly working against the wild dolphin trade, not enabling it to be a very profitable enterprise.Do I know Rene? Last year when he was an unknown,myself and two other people,Donna Ross and Lynn Anderson, worked countless hours over several months to try to get him elected.We all walked door to door on his behalf for weeks.His own democratic club here in Lake worth, of which he was a member, screwed him over by supporting a republican !At the election night party at Rene's house, his Dad was irritated at him for not running for office at a state level! In the intervening year, Rene has barely spoken two words to Donna ,Lynn ,or me. Look,I don't expect anybody to kiss my a##, but a "Hi, hows it going" when we're sitting in the same meeting would be nice . (No, it would be NORMAL )! When he decided to run for mayor ,you would think that he would at least contact the people who had walked door to door for him in the last campaign. Not a word,not a volunteer invite,nothing.I live about two minutes from Rene and his wife (who is a real sweetheart ). Where do you live ? I made the statement that Rene has no loyalty or honor BEFORE I knew anything about his involvement in the wild dolphin trade,Now I say that Rene has NO LOYALTY, NO HONOR, AND NO SHAME.Rene is a politician.
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