Monday, January 14, 2019

Florida GOP Officially The Party Of Donald Trump

New Florida GOP chair 
Joe Gruters declared the state GOP “the party of 
Donald Trump” after he was overwhelming elected chairman by party officials on Saturday. HERE

YBOR ROB ARRESTED /Police Academy (First Amendment Audit) Went Wrong

Alex Sink Gaslighting

The perennial loser and Florida DINO said Democrats would have won the governorship had they nominated former Representative Gwen Graham, who narrowly lost to Mr. Gillum in the primary. “What would they have pinned on her?” asked Ms. Sink, alluding to Mr. Gillum’s left-wing politics and to an F.B.I. investigation into potential corruption in public real estate development in Tallahassee under Mr. Gillum. HERE
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My post on October 6, 2018

Rick Scott Is Pissing Off All The Florida Republicans

Florida's former asshole governor Rick Scott and Florida's new asshole governor Ron DeSantis have been butting heads for the last week or so, making a bit of a hash of DeSantis's transition into office. HERE

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Candy Lowe's Meet and Greet with Harry Cohen


Ybor City Musicians

Centro Ybor

Safety Harbor singer songwriter Jessica Rose Powell

VISIT HER HERE

Ybor Paparazzi

Lexii

What Stogie Had For Dinner


Sushi with soup and salad
At SAMURAI BLUE in Ybor City
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EAT LOCAL!

Donald L Dowridge Jr at Saunders Library in Ybor City

CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF 
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
JOIN DONALD L. DOWRIDGE, JR.
FOR A IN DEPTH LOOK & TEACHING ON THIS
CIVIL RIGHTS ICON!
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JANUARY 14TH 5:30 PM!
Robert W. Saunders Sr. Library
THIS EVENT IS FREE TO THE PUBLIC.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

RAYBOR IS STILL ALIVE AND WELL DAMN IT!


For the last regular meeting of the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, held on January 9, there was an item (Item F-8), which was added as an addendum to the agenda as the last item for discussion. Yesterday, Item F-8 was listed as an agenda item "F-8 Discussion concerning the County's representation in any future negotiations with the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team regarding a stadium in the County.". Today, the official agenda (HERE) shows that Item F-8 has been deleted and relisted at the end of the agenda as "F-8 Off the Agenda". The discussion DID take place at the end of the Commission meeting, as you will see in the following videos, so it WAS officially addressed during the meeting. The following videos and texts will clearly show that the negotiations to bring the Rays franchise here to Hillsborough County and very possibly the original selected site in Ybor City are still very much active and still being held outside public scrutiny. During the discussion Mariella Smith, one of our new commissioners, placed a motion to disband the commission's involvement in the "informal" work group created in 2015 to negotiate with the Rays. In a 4-3 vote, Commissioner Smith's motion was defeated (Commissioners Hagan, Miller, Murman and Overman voted to retain the Commission's active involvement in the work group and therefore continuing negotiations). It was mentioned during the discussions that the contract for the legal firm hired by the Commission to represent them during their involvement in the negotiations will be taken over by the Tampa Sports Authority. Ken Hagen stated "The TSA assumed Council's contract and any future negotiations will be led by the TSA.". The TSA has no obligation to make public any of their proceedings.

I will present here segments of the video of this County Commission meeting, touching on the most pertinent statements during the discussion. With each segment, I will give some commentary of the VERY obvious implications that arose. The full video of the meeting can be found HERE and the Item F-8 discussion begins at 3:28:24 in the video.

In the first video excerpt, Mariella Smith explains why the working group, which was intended to work "out of the sunshine" is no longer needed.

In this excerpt, Ken Hagan explains why Commissioner Smith's intended motion is "moot" and, as he has many times, expressed that he is not and never was a "negotiator" during the dealings with the Rays. Hagan, quite obviously does not want negotiations to end because he, the County Administrator, Mike Merrill, and other friends of his, who were given information withheld from the public, have made serious financial investments into the success of a Rays stadium in Ybor. At the end of the video, I have added an excerpt from a radio interview Hagan did in 2017* (HERE) which clearly shows that he was taking a lead in the negotiations with the owner and manager of the Rays and that he was having private meetings with both. Though he stresses that he was never "officially" a negotiator, he was definitely a negotiator, if not the lead negotiator.

Pat Kemp states that things have changed since the last meeting, alluding to the fact that much of what the Commission intended to keep secret was ultimately reported by local media and that the public, namely the Ybor 6, responded. She also explains that even she, a commissioner on the board, had difficulties obtaining information from the working group. Les Miller then asks Commissioner Smith, "Do you think a motion is necessary at this point?", seemingly trying to encourage Mariella Smith to retract her motion. She doesn't but instead places the motion before the board.

And that leaves a couple final comments and the vote. Ken Hagan again tries to counter the motion by offending Commissioner Smith and calling it "meaningless", in a patronizing and insulting way. He then contradicts his "meaningless" comment by explaining that voting Yes on the motion might effectively "kill the deal" with the Rays. Les Miller climbs onto the misogynistic challenge to Commissioner Smith by calling the motion "fruitless" and "not appropriate". The motion is then voted on and defeated. Kimberly Overman, had she been the progressive she purports to be, could have been the vote to help kill the negotiations with the Rays but, instead voted to NOT disband the working group.

To wrap it all up, our County Commission is making it clear that negotiations are going to continue with the Rays franchise and that, because their plans for secrecy were thwarted by a local media outlet and the appearance of several citizens at the last meeting, voicing their clear opposition to RAYBOR, future negotiations will be conducted even further from the public eye. The negotiations are being handed chiefly to the Tampa Sports Authority in order to further conceal from the public what they are doing, in effect moving the back room dealing to a back room in the back of the back room. During the discussion, both Mike Merrill and Les Miller stated that "We have the money!" but they continue to ignore that they have only private investor's money, which amounts to 50% of the projected cost of a new stadium and ignoring that they ultimately intend to use $500 million, or more, of taxpayer funds to make up the other 50%.. Besides the private investments to partially fund the cost of the stadium, there is is also money invested in properties in the area surrounding the originally proposed Ybor City site and I have no doubt that the continuing negotiations will focus on Ybor City.

We have GOT to continue to pressure the officials in our government to listen to the citizens they are sworn to serve and end forever any further negotiations to move the Rays to Hillsborough County, and especially to Ybor City, and to realize that the voters of this county will NEVER accept having to fund half of the third most expensive stadium ever built, yet the smallest stadium in all Major League Baseball, smaller even than Tropicana Field. It would be doomed to fail and destroy Ybor City along with it.

* Correction: Ken Hagan's interview with Sports Talk Florida took place on May 31, 2017 instead of in 2015 as I mistakenly stated.

Ybor Paparazzi

Carlos and Danny with friends at Chillum

Kurt King Interview/Hamburger Mary's

Ybor City Homeless

Kristan

County Keeping Rays Ybor City Plan in Play

Even though the team has walked away from discussions, Hillsborough County is working for now to keep the door open for a new Tampa Bay Rays ballpark
Hillsborough County Commissioners Overman, Murman, Miller, and Hagan nixed a motion that called for disbanding a working group created several years ago to help bring the Rays to Tampa. Officials indicated instead that, for now, they want to keep the proposal on the table in the event that discussions could resume. MORE
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"Why would Kimberly Overman join Murman, Miller, and Ken Hagan in voting to keep the Raybor working group? This takes away any transparency that we should have in regards to continued negotiations to bring the Rays 
to Tampa." Beth Eriksen Shoup

MARCO RUBIO AND HIS COLLEAGUES NEED A REFRESHER ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT

This week, amid a partial government shutdown, senators tried to sneak through a bill that would encourage states to suppress constitutionally protected political boycotts of Israel.
Ultimately, the Combating BDS Act failed to make it to the Senate floor, largely because enough people exercised their First Amendment right to protest the bill and educate senators that they should get their priorities straight. HERE