Friday, October 17, 2014

T.G.I.F. from Springer’s Bar & Grill

Y’all come in and see us!

Wives are like grapes on the vine. Some are good for wine, some for eating, some for jelly and some to toss away.

Little Feat — The Fan

Come on in and visit your friends and neighbors at the best place to socialize on this island. All your favorite vendors are ready to see you. We have a lot of new vendors and new interesting things to shop for. See you at the market!

The Big Coppitt facility is a necessary facility as a lot of FKMCD operates in the Lower Keys. As to its size, recall the Marathon building was built – not without controversy – nearly twice as large as needed at the time; but, thinking forward, it was built and has certainly met that forward thinking as it becomes utilized to capacity! I expect the future of the Big Coppitt building may prove equally useful. I would hate to see a major outbreak of mosquito borne disease with us unable to adequately respond to protect the public and our tourism industry. I don’t view putting the infrastructure in place to protect public health as a “massive waste of your tax dollars.” This slash-and-burn mentality is the same ideology that has cut other human health programs like the CDC and food safety from effectively doing their jobs. However, when it’s time to pony up on that issue, the fingers usually point to the workers with little resources and not to those who cut the funding they needed. I guess this type of thinking, putting public health and safety first and protecting our economy, is the “wrong” that the unelected, governor-appointed incumbent is attempting to right?

Term limits. Every term is limited to four years. All voters in the Keys have an opportunity to turn out anyone not doing the job they expect. I am confident in the intelligence and knowledge of the voters of the Keys and believe that if they are dissatisfied with the job an elected official is doing they will have no problem dispatching them. I would hope that the appointee would not have such little respect for the voters as to believe that they cannot vote undesirables out of office. Perhaps the bigger issue for the appointee is that longevity in office provides a continuity that makes it hard to push his agenda.

There are lots of methods of learning technical operations. Technical publications and the Web are great resources. However, there’s much to gain attending educational opportunities, meeting face-to-face others in the field, and learning innovative techniques that they may have tried with success or failure. If it’s failure, then we have learned what not to do. The appointee stated he sees no value and nothing to learn by networking with others intimately involved in mosquito control. When you have such a high opinion of yourself, that you have nothing to learn from others, then yes, I question his motives and effectiveness. But then when you sit high in your white castle, it must be easy to look down on others who have something to contribute.

Yes, I have a degree in communications and I’m a pretty good communicator. Effectively communicating has proven very useful in the 18 years I’ve worked in real estate. I find one of the best ways to find solutions to problems is through open give and take dialogue. I freely admit that and would like to thank the anonymous poster for again highlighting this attribute.

I am aware of both George Neugent’s and my political party affiliation; perhaps I wasn’t referring to myself specifically in referencing an inability to beat him in a primary. Something to ponder if you really want to know what is likely motivating the appointee. I’m sure he’d like to have seen a term limit on that seat as well.

I am not suggesting any chicanery on behalf of the Republican Party, only to say that when your donation is from the party as an organization the public does not know the specific individuals that make up the donors. Really all the public does know is that they may or may not be Republicans. But this gets to a larger issue of overall transparency or in the appointees’ case, lack thereof. His campaign signs all state “re-elect”; however he was never elected in the first place – he was appointed. He never states specifics about what he wants to do with Mosquito Control, but only speaks in generalities. Yet now here I am responding to an anonymous poster who attacks me and champions the appointee! This leaves a lot of questions in my mind as I am sure it does with other voters.

I’m going to simply gloss over the rest of the poster’s issues:

Learning on the job. The appointee never once attended a meeting of the FKMCD prior to his appointment by the governor; he, like any commissioner, learned FKMCD-specific knowledge on the job;

The loss of the Navy contract has been fully addressed and accounted for by FKMCD staff without the luxury of being micromanaged by the appointee;

Ed Fussell introduced science-based protocols to the FKMCD. Before that, it was seemingly dump-whatever-you’ve-got into the environment and hope for the best. I don’t personally know Mr. Fussell at all other than being told he was extravagant, well paid, and a bit lacking in humility – that last bit something he seemingly shares with the appointee. But there’s no denying Mr. Fussell brought the FKMCD into the modern age and stopped a lot of toxins from entering the environment. I find it sad to summarily denigrate his contribution.

As to the poster’s endorsement of Tom McDonald, Mr. McDonald has made it abundantly clear that his primary purpose in running is to “team up” with the appointee and “reign in the budget / cut spending.” Sounds like the start of a mini Capitol Hill in the Keys to me. I’ve heard nothing substantial out of him either except, as he stated at the forum at Boondocks on 10/2/14, when asked about global warming, “The jury is still out on that,” and “I don’t believe that is a realistic particular [sic] problem.” I guess 2+2=3 for Mr. McDonald because as any CPA knows, math is just a belief system. Either way, Mr. McDonald’s accounting expertise is clearly subtraction.

As for me, Roger Cousineau, I can assure you my primary mission and focus is to:
Protect human health and our tourist economy, which most of us all rely on to live in Paradise.
Provide for the tools that Mosquito Control needs – including infrastructure – to effectively meet the mission, including investigating new and better methods and techniques for accomplishing this task.
Support environmentally sound practices to reduce and replace harmful chemicals with alternatives when feasible without compromising the fight against mosquitoes and mosquito borne diseases.
Promote community outreach programs, and actively participate in them and earn my commissioner salary.
Support an independent, open and transparent mosquito control that is always ready to be proactive, not reactive.
Make use of the resources available to me and the trained and highly educated staff when making sound decisions.

Thanks for your time and thanks for your vote on November 4th.
I’m Roger Cousineau, via an open posting, for Mosquito Control Commissioner, District 2

The bartender approached the little drunk and said, “Tell me, Paddy, it’s your business if you want to buy the lady a drink, but why do you keep calling her the ballerina?”

The drunk replied, “Any woman who can lift her leg that high has got to be a ballerina!”

So allow me to explain. Let’s say you come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighborhood. Your home has sewage all the way up to your ceiling.       What do you think you should do? Raise the ceiling or pump out the shit? Your choice is coming in November.

As to Paul Roxenberg, President of the Big Pine Key Volunteer Fire Department’s comment about seeing Mr. Neugent in his office.  No offense to you sir, but you have something that Mr. Neugent needs, you have clout, a title and influence with your men.  He will gladly come over the bridge to talk to you.  But what about the little people, the taxpayers of this community that have tried to communicate with him.  My neighbor told me a few weeks ago that it took him 2 years to talk to Mr. Neugent about a property that he felt was being wrongly developed. It was.  Or how about the single mom who had to take a day off from work and drive 70 miles to go in front of the County Commission  to advise them of their own regulations in order to remove roosters from a residential neighborhood.  That is not serving the people.   Mr. Neugent has not carried his district in the last 2 elections.  He is being put upon us by the other districts.  If Marathon wants Mr. Neugent, then he should be running against Mr. Rice.  He knows that I know, that he does not live in our district, that they extended our boundaries to encompass his neighborhood in order for him to run.  That is something I will be fighting against in the future.  District 2 needs someone from District 2 to represent them.  So what will I do?  The best that I can, to represent you the taxpayers and to make sure that your money is spent wisely.

The above was drafted over the last few days and between work and forums. I have not changed my opinion, but I understand that Mr. Neugent’s family is having a health issue at this time and I wish him and his family a speedy recovery. It is not a personal battle that I fight with Mr. Neugent, it is a political one. I will be speaking along with all the other candidates with the exception of Mr. Neugent, tonight at Cabana Breezes. Please come and listen if possible. If you can not attend then please make sure that you come out and vote. It is the one of the many privileges that makes this nation great.  ~Eleanor McAdams

Sarafan Advertising Agency, which brought out the adverts, said the company would compensate to all the victims. “We are planning to bring a new advertising format onto the market, encouraging companies to place their ads on the sides of trucks, as we thought this would be a good alternative to putting them on the sides of public transport. “We wanted to draw attention to this new format with this campaign. “In all cases of accidents, the car owners will receive compensation costs from us that aren’t covered by their insurance,” the report quoted a company spokesman as saying.

Thanks for visiting.

DEF: Alcohol n, The spinal fluid of the inept.
DEF: WAR n, A needless insanity involving insane needless people.
DEF: Drunkenness n, A Keys happening that off-sets reality and marriage strife!
DEF: Autobiography n, The self gratification of a person who is not important except to themselves!
DEF: Marriage n, The happiest time of life until you dump the chick and realize you are free again! SEE: BOAT
DEF: Dating n, Legal prostitution.
DEF: Doctors n, Medicine men with suites and cell phones instead of feathers and tambourines !
DEF: Fart n, An odorous vacillation from a politico’s oral orifice.
DEF: Tit for Tat p, The pictorial areas on each side of one’s cleavage displaying graphic images using colored inks.

Why don’t they publicly urge Obama to ban travel to nations that have Ebola running rampant.

John Boehner’s urging of a travel ban is being ignored.

Face it, its fact, that at least one person, that we know off, with Ebola has arrived on our shores. That person, now dead from Ebola, has infected at least two other persons who now also have Ebola. The index, the first, patient, also came in contact with dozens, if not hundreds of other people enroute to, and on his arrival in America, in his home, and at the emergency room where he waited for hours for treatment. The ER staff checked him out and turned him away. Then he went away and had God only knows how many other contacts with people. On his final admission to the hospital he infected two nurses. Those nurses have had contact with God knows how many other people. One traveled on an airliner after receiving an OK from the CDC officials. God only knows how many people she had contact with. The airliner she traveled on has had many hundreds of passengers since her flight.

Why does the ruling party, the Democrats, refuse to minimize the possibility of other infected persons from arriving on our shores by putting a travel ban in place?

Prior to the Ebola mess, Obama’s obsession with open borders has already lead to the spread of disease.  Prior to the flood of illegal children Enterovirus D-68 was rare in the US. Not anymore.

There is an EV-D68 epidemic in the US. It began only after this year’s surge of unaccompanied alien children illegally crossing the border from Latin America, a region where the virus is more prevalent among young children.  EV-D68, believed to cause polio-like paralysis in addition to flu symptoms. It can be fatal, and it has caused deaths of children in the US.

The surge in EV D-68 in the U.S. became evident in mid-September when the CDC first reported it had reached epidemic levels in six U.S. states: Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky and Missouri.

Given the Democrats penchant to pandering to voting blocs such as Latin’s and Blacks, one must wonder if the Democrat leadership is putting their pursuit of political power above the health of the American public.