Sunday, September 7, 2014

Castañón called Reyes out, took from his pocket a copy of El Republicano, and asked him if he had written the article in question. Reyes answered that he had. Castañón shoved the newspaper in his face and slapped him. The crowd that surrounded them got agitated, word spread like wildfire, and factories and businesses shut down and all the towns-people went out into the streets. Mateo Orozco, a baker, angrily swore to confront Castañón at the first opportunity, and the next day, when Castañón tried to flee to Havana, Orozco hunted him down and killed him with two gunshots.

This confrontation was symbolic because, from that time forward, the lector began to be seen not only as a charismatic being with a grandiloquent voice, like a teacher, priest, or politician, but also as a figure capable of creating work stoppages and conflicts. This latter opinion circulated mainly among those who did not have direct contact with the cigar-making workforce and knew of lectores only through secondhand information. Castañón death surprised the Cuban community in both Cuba and the United States. A chronology and all the details pertaining to the incident were reported in Key West’s El Republicano. The newspaper became more well known and gained much wider circulation. In another sense, the function of the journalist/lector caught the suspicious eye of both Cuban and U.S. authorities.

But all was not politics, be it colonial, national, or Cuban. As in any workplace, there were labor struggles that directly harmed the lectores. We must recall that it was the cigar workers who paid the lectores. Thus, when disputes arose between owners and employees, and production was delayed for one reason or another, the lectores were stuck in the middle of the two groups, helpless. They could oppose neither the cigar workers, as they paid them, nor the owner, who could fire them. In 1873, amid a national financial crisis, the owners of the largest factories, that is, Martinez Ybor and Seidenberg in Tampa, began to terminate the employment of many cigar workers. Businesspeople, and political leaders set up a fund so that the unemployed could count on some income. In this case, the lectores were affected, because their salary was reduced, as the number of employees determined their pay

~U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Brian Morales.

Here’s is the front and back of the old Buccaneer menu. The “Buc” was the “in” spot in Marathon from the 50’s & 60’s to mid 70’s.

Snowden and his colleagues had discussed the routine deception around the breadth of the NSA’s spy­ing many times, so it wasn’t sur­prising to him when they had little reaction to Clapper’s testimony. “It was more of just acceptance,” he says, calling it “the banality of evil”-a reference to Hannah Arendt’s study of bureaucrats in Nazi Germany.

“It’s like the boiling frog,” Snow­den tells me. “You get exposed to a little bit of evil, a little bit of rule-breaking, a little bit of dishonesty, a little bit of deceptiveness, a little bit of disservice to the public inter­est, and you can brush it off, you can come to justify it. But if you do that, it creates a slippery slope that just increases overtime, and by the time you’ve been in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, you’ve seen it all and it doesn’t shock you. And so you see it as normal. And that’s the prob­lem, that’s what the Clapper event was all about. He saw deceiving the American people as what he does, as his job, as something completely ordinary. And he was right that he wouldn’t be punished for it, because he was revealed as having lied under oath and he didn’t even get a slap on the wrist for it. It says a lot about the system and a lot about our lead­ers.” Snowden decided it was time to hop out of the water before he too was boiled alive. ~Wired Magazine, September

Salt water intrusion

So EONE told the FKAA and County that they were offering a new, hurricane proof unit that has a plastic pit and plastic cover rather than the fiberglass pit and aluminum cover specified in the bid specs. And they were offering it at no additional charge!!   It should be noted that the bid specifications require that any materials proposed have at least ten years of successful use in large systems before they can be accepted. Oh, one more bit of bad news! A vacuum system has one pit, in the right of way for every few homes with a cast iron traffic rated top, while a grinder system has one pit for every home, located in your yard with a cheap plastic top that some kid may fall through when it gets brittle.   Dump the Pumps Inc. researchers discovered that one town in Florida has already changed out many of its grinder pit tops after just a few years due to warping. While our neighbors in the Upper Keys may have to change out a couple of hundred shared vacuum pits in the next few years in the road right of way, we will likely experience a change out of thousands of pits on private property when ours fail. Under normal circumstances a grinder pump system can be expected to last 25 years versus a gravity system’s 60-100 years. In the Florida Keys, with our harsh conditions, we may be lucky if we get 15 years. That will mean many millions of dollars for grinders just wasted by our politicians so that they could save a few bucks up front to buy Rowels Marina and start renovations on a piece of the Seven Mile Bridge that is not even County infrastructure. Oh, by the way! When we start getting serious I&I into the Cudjoe Treatment plant, the 0.94 million gallons per day average flow will certainly go over 1 million gallons per day, forcing the County to install deep injection wells.

An excellent example is The Bureau of Labor Stats jobs report for August. It ain’t pretty, and it is yet more evidence that Democrat governance is taking our nation into the toilet.

Last month non-farm payroll increased by only 142,000 jobs. That’s the lowest number of new jobs created since March…even worse, it’s half the number of jobs created in June. Here we go again, sliding backward.

While job creation in the private sector is back sliding, government hiring is at a 6 year high. Go figure! Perhaps the Obama/Democrat government is stocking up on new government union workers in preparation for the November election.

All of that is horrible news for economy, but it gets even worse. The labor force participation rate also fell to 62.8% in August, from 62.9% in July. That’s another disappointment. The Labor Department also said job creation in June and July was 28,000 lower than initially reported. Wages remained very nearly stagnant once again.

Democrats, with a straight face, claim to be the party that is the salvation of the poor, the “oppressed”. The truth is starkly different. The Democrats have had functional control of this nation’s economy for the past 7+ years. Democrat policies, philosophy and governance have been ruinous to the middle class and especially to the poor. In the Democrat/Obama economy everybody outside of the top 1 percent has been backsliding. The BOLS report reveals that a record 92,269,000 Americans are not in the labor force. The labor force participation rate matches a 36 year low. Obama/Democrat governance is taking us backward.

Wages gave been stagnant for the past 7 years, and a whole new underclass dependent on the government has been spawned.

Even the very liberal Huffington Post yesterday reported that median household income fell for the fifth straight year in 2012, the Census Bureau reported on Tuesday, to $51,017. That was the lowest annual income, adjusted for inflation, since 1995. And the record tells us that income has been stagnant or declining since 2012. Even as President Barack Obama touts “progress” in the economy, consumer spending is falling. Gallup tells us that nearly 60% of Americans believe that the economy is getting worse.

It’s no surprise that Obama’s approval rating has plummeted to 38%.

Yep, the rich get richer, much richer. That is because of the Fed’s policy of pumping money into the economy. That pumping is the engine that is driving the stock market to new highs. The rich are very nearly the only beneficiaries of the stock market staggering highs. If you have money in the market, I congratulate you on your prosperity, but caution you that when the Fed decides to stop pumping money, brace yourself for a fall from the cliff. The rich are gazillions richer than they were under Republican governance, and the poor are growing in number and depth of poverty under Democrat governance.

Perhaps the critic also finds our poors’ miserable situation amusing.

Part 2) Well, Obama is again changing his tune. You’ll remember that first he told us ISIS was not a threat, it was the “JV” team. Then he claimed that if it was a threat, he had not been briefed on it. Then he decided that even though it was a threat, that he could “manage” that threat. On Friday he painted yet another completely different picture. At a presser in Wales, he tells us now that ISIS is a huge threat that must be destroyed. He repeatedly hit the talking points that he would “degrade” and “ultimately defeat” ISIS. That’s at least the third change of posture in only 8 days and 3 press conferences. He has completely abandoned his words about ISIS being a “manageable” problem. Needless to say, his admission that he did not have a strategy was never mentioned. His admissions came on the heels of the Pentagon speaking out against the President by being vocal that they do actually have a menu of military options and strategies to defeat ISIS. And that he has been appropriately briefed for well over a year about ISIS.

All of this may well be moot if the US is unable to cobble together a coalition of willing partners. Now our previous partners do not trust us, they do not trust Obama, and they no longer respect us. Obama piles even more dung on that pile by insisting they we will not put American combat boots on the ground. As horrible as that option is, it may well be absolutely necessary. And taking any option from the table is nearly criminally stupid. You can be certain that ISIS takes great comfort in knowing what the USA will not do.

Part 3) Back in the day, Crist demanded that Bubba resign because of Monica Lewinski…..Crist was furious at Clinton’s behavior and was especially torqued at Bubba’s perjury. But that was then, this now. Now he is all kissy face with Bubba because Bubba is campaigning for him. Charlie changes his skin more often than a rattlesnake. It’s really fascinating watching a serial liar vouch for and promote a serial liar.