Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Brian Entin with the latest: "Who was in charge when Corey Jones was killed?"

Haven't seen a word about this in The Palm Beach Post. Here is an excerpt from the text of the news segment:
     Police sources tell WPTV a sergeant was in charge of the night/early morning shift when Corey Jones was shot and killed by Officer Nouman Raja.
      "It is surprising and unusual to have a sergeant in charge of a shift and be the highest ranking police officer in the entire city," police expert and former Fort Lauderdale Asst. Police Chief Chuck Drago said. [emphasis added]
     Following a meeting with Corey Jones protest organizers and city leaders Monday, the mayor said he was not sure who was in charge of the department when Corey Jones was killed.
Here is the video:

Monday, November 16, 2015

The Criminal Justice Commission in Palm Beach County approves changes

The PBC Criminal Justice Commission will probably be front page news in The Palm Beach Post tomorrow. They're going to change the organizational structure and possibly become a more diverse group then they currently are.

If they really want to shake things maybe Lake Worth Anarchist Panagioti Evangellos Nasios Tsolkas (aka Peter Tsolkas) would be a good choice? Read about Mr. Tsolkas' Ecology of the Police State and you can also read Tsolkas' now-famous Kalamata Treatise. You can see why having someone like Mr. Tsolkas' on the Criminal Justice Commission would give another perspective on PBSO and Sheriff Bradshaw for example. Below is an excerpt from the Kalamata Treatise written October 10, 2011, where he predicts the future of global economics and what he sees coming to Lake Worth, FL:

Not to be doom-and-gloom, but things are not looking up in the world of conventional economics. [emphasis added] As I write this from the olive-laden hills of Kalamata [Greece], the European Union is on the verge of crumbling. The writing is literally on the walls of every city I’ve been through (usually with black or red spraypaint...) And despite the state of the EU, the exchange rate for the dollar gets lower by the day. Which is another way of saying, things are worse here in the US. Globally, things are worse than we are admitting… Surely you’ve noticed some signs of this yourself. Anyone else notice that Wall Street has been "occupied" all month?! Nearly 1000 people arrested in NYC amidst the growing rebellion against the dictatorship of the market. I hear the "occupy everything" fever might even be coming to Lake Worth...

 —panagiotis evangellos nasios tsolkas:
PBC Environmental Coalition, co-chair
Night Heron, steering committee member
Earth First! Journal, editorial collective
Everglades Earth First!, agitator
Sierra Club, Loxahatchee, ExCom member
Lake Worth Community Relations Board, chair etc.
A sign used at a protest in Lake Worth. Read about that event here.

From Bethany Rodgers at the Orlando Sentinel: A clever way to fix a vexing problem in Altamonte Springs

The problem of dirty water run-off from I-4 into Altamonte Springs was solved in a very clever way by the city, FDOT, the St. Johns River Water Management District and the Florida DEP. Here's an excerpt from the article in the Orlando Sentinel:
     On the average day, a slurry of dirty rainwater capable of filling seven Olympic-sized swimming pools slides off a section of Interstate 4 and drains into Altamonte Springs.
     City officials couldn't be more excited.
     They see the runoff that many would treat as waste as a resource that can help meet water needs for miles around. And with the recent completion of a $12.5 million system called A-FIRST, they'll be collecting the water, cleaning it up and using it to hydrate lawns across Altamonte Springs and Apopka.
     "With this project, we now make usable 4.5 million gallons of rainwater a day," Altamonte Springs city manager Frank Martz said.
It's the first time that runoff from a major highway in Florida has been collected and re-purposed in this way. In fact, city officials say A-FIRST might be the first system of its kind anywhere in the United States. [emphasis added]
The Friends of the Wekiva River, a local environmental group, is also quite happy with this development.

An important distinction: the difference between Baptists and the Southern Baptists

Within the Protestant realm there are Baptist churches of many varieties and there are also different types of Southern Baptist (SB) churches. For instance, there's the SB church in downtown Lake Worth, Florida that's been acting out in all sorts of ways: like this example and this one too. There are radicals in all faiths and no one church is indicative of all the people who practice that particular religion.

How many different views are there in the SB faith? Peoples beliefs can break down into differences over how the world is going to end: amillennialism or dispensationalism. And there are many others.

Around 1960 or so many Southern Baptists became angry with the liberalization of America and they broke away from the Baptists. Suffice to say it was a nasty fight and it continues to this day. In 2004 the SB church withdrew from the Baptist World Alliance and swung far to the right in American culture. That move has hurt their membership and you can read about that in this article. Here is an excerpt from that article which appeared in Christianity Today on June 11th of this year:
     Headlined "SBC [Southern Baptist Convention] reports more churches, fewer people" by its official Baptist Press, the story is that even as the number of congregations affiliated to the denomination grew for the 15th year in a row, membership dropped by 200,000. It's the largest one-year decline since 1881. [emphasis added]
     Baptisms fell by 5,067, and weekly worship attendance also fell, by 2.75 per cent.
     This year's headline is a virtual re-run of last year's, which saw the South Carolina Baptist Courier report on 2012 figures: "State of the Church: SBC churches increase, but members and baptisms fall."
      The 2014 figures were announced by the SBC's LifeWay Christian Resources, whose president Thom Rainer said: "It breaks my heart that the trend of our denomination is mostly one of decline." He added: "Programs and meetings are not going to revive our people – only prayer and repentance will lead our people to revival."
The big takeaway seems to be, keep doing what you're doing at the 'Common Ground' (no 's') church here in the little City of Lake Worth:
"Jesus hates religion" in Lake Worth.
Another charming message from the Common Ground church.
Read about the "War On Religion".

Just to be clear: I agree with Ryan Maier (now a Lake Worth commissioner)—Invocations before City meetings should be eliminated

At a debate at the Lake Worth Playhouse, John Paxman (the moderator) had a Yes/No question for the candidates: Should the invocation at the beginning of City Commission meetings be eliminated? Then-candidate Maier said "Yes", they should be eliminated from the City's agenda.

Just to be clear. . .I agree with Ryan Maier. It's my personal view that prayer has no place in government meetings. But I also have nothing but respect for those that disagree, like Lake Worth Commissioner Ryan Maier.

I hope that clears things up.

Lake Worth's Parrot Cove Neighborhood Meeting Tonight (11/16) at 7:00

The Parrot Cove Neighborhood Association is part of the greater Lake Worth Neighborhood Assoc. Presidents' Council (NAPC). You don't need to live in the neighborhood to attend; it's actually a good idea to attend any neighborhood meetings that you're able to. For instance, the recent meeting by Tropical Ridge received a lot of attention in the City.
The Beach Club is located at 1 7th Ave North.

Signs of the times: The hot real estate market in the little City of Lake Worth—a city with a BEACH!

These two properties were featured in The Palm Beach Post yesterday (Sunday 11/15):
If you're looking for a home in Lake Worth, one of the more charming and historic cities in south Florida, there's a lovely home on the city's south side. If you've thought of operating a Bed & Breakfast a quaint and spectacular one is for sale next to Lake Worth's golf course. 

Visit Lake Worth and look at these beautiful properties and have lunch at Callaro's. One of my favorite spots for lunch. 

Very interesting article from Kimberly Miller at the Post: Why is Florida so hot this year?

No one has the answer but a lot of smart people are searching for clues. Here is one possible theory, an excerpt from the article:
     One variable that may have indirectly impacted Florida temperatures this year is La Nina’s brother, El Nino. This year’s El Nino, which warms ocean waters and changes weather globally, is one of the strongest on record.
     It’s responsible for the fierce upper-level winds that steered most of the tropical systems, including four hurricanes, away from Florida.
     But the lack of storms impacting Florida has meant less rain, fewer cloudy days and more sunshine to jack up temperatures. [emphasis added]
When the subject of weather comes up two things get lumped together (not in the article cited above; the reporter does a good job explaining the nuance) many times which are completely different topics: they are climate and weather. Weather can change by the minute but the climate is long-term; weather is not necessarily an indication of the climate and vice versa.

And an observation on the "climate change" debate in general: Why are people who question whether the climate is changing called "deniers"? It's a very clever word to use when you think about it. Saul Alinsky would be very proud of whoever came up with the tactical use of this word. It ends any constructive debate right in its tracks just like it's intended to do.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Looking at a new hotel west of I-95? On the south side of 10th Avenue North near the Park of Commerce. . .

The architecture for hotels of late leaves one uninspired. Long, four story rectangular boxes that consume most of the property. It would be nice to find a way to bring more motels/hotels to the eastern side of Lake Worth, perhaps along Dixie Hwy. I stumbled on some inspirational designs that would be considered Mid-Century Modern that would fit into a highway architecture theme. I am sure that elements of these are not possible due to building code issues (wind standards, etc.), but can we have a little more creativity in the designs that we do end up building? I hear a Holiday Inn is slated for the southwest corner of Boutwell and 10th Avenue North. Can we expect another corporate box there? And where praytell will be the location of our new Wawa?

Homeless advocates declare war on family park in Lake Worth; but what West Palm Beach is doing is just fine? (a re-post by request)

At a Lake Worth city commission meeting (8/18) the City was given a warning, or some might take as a threat, to make our Bryant Park ground zero in the continuing debate about homelessness in south Florida.
Again at a city commission meeting on 9/1 former commissioners Cara Jennings and JoAnn Golden ramped up their rhetoric. They are determined to use our City's family park, Bryant Park, as a pawn in their fight against "homelessness". Pay particular attention to what Golden says the the 1:20 mark in the video below:
Here is the reality: this drama is a Kabuki dance and has nothing at all to do with the homeless. The homeless, innocent actors, are being used as pawns in a political struggle to regain control of City Hall once again. And if they can drive tourism away, damage businesses in the City, and stop a hotel from re-opening (across the street from the park) that would be an added bonus.

Here is proof this has nothing at all to do with the homeless: just north of Lake Worth is West Palm Beach and the city there is taking steps to reign in the out-of-control homeless along Flagler Drive. What has been the response from the 'homeless advocates'? Silence.

Here is a news segment from Rachel Leitao at NBC5/WPTV, and an excerpt from the text of the news segment:
"Basically we're trying to discourage people [the homeless] from hanging out here and turning this into a make shift camp," says Elliot Cohen, Communications Director for the City of West Palm Beach.
So it's OK for West Palm to take steps and make their public spaces better for the public but not OK for Lake Worth? It's not hypocrisy; it's just politics.

From Vox: Was the attack on Paris by ISIS a sign of weakness?

Vox is one of my favorite websites for an alternate take on the news. After any major event such as the Paris attacks the media settles on a narrative and, for the most part, they all fall in line. In this 2-minute video Vox has a different take you might find interesting:

It is ordained. Lake Worth is that city!

Stop bragging and procrastinating! Go forth to That City and Buy and Sell and Make Money. Sell Coffee or whatever. Just Go!

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city. We will spend a year there. We will buy and sell and make money." — Jas 4:13


Oh, and did you know there is one church in Lake Worth, Florida that is superior to all other churches in the City?

The downfall of suburbia and the road that got us there

"Racism, bad intel, profits, taxes – all played a part in our unsustainable suburban sprawl. The pending demolitions of Northland and the Silverdome bring that home. What lessons we learn remain to be seen."
—John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press (see link below)

Here is an article from the Detroit Free Press on the suburban phenomenon and the automobile. Perhaps no other North American city suffered more of the effects and the unintended consequences of designing cities around the convenience of the automobile than the Detroit metropolitan area did. Most everyone understands the flaws now but few did when the exodus from the cities began. The "driving" principles (pardon the pun) ruled the day and Detroit fell to decay and neglect.

The Silverdome, once the home to the Detroit Lions, still stands with its 80,000 seats empty and open to the elements; its once-revolutionary fabric "roof" is in tatters. Northland, one of the first major suburban shopping centers was built in 1954. It is now empty due to changing consumer tastes and in part because it was designed specifically for the automobile to get you there.

From the article cited above, below are four of the eight reasons given by the reporter why once revolutionary structures like Northland and the Silverdome now lay in ruin :
Home Rule. Michigan law gives every local community wide leeway in deciding its own development policy. That has led to a lumpy development map across the region, with some townships opting to remain more rural while others go for more intensive development and the taxes that brings. What’s best for the region as a whole never gets considered. [emphasis added]
Bad demographic estimates. Back around 1950, when Southeast Michigan still enjoyed a heady population growth, some regional leaders believed that perhaps 10 million people would call the region home in the year 2000. Today the real number is a little more than 4 million. Planning for a population surge that never came lay behind much of the urgency in suburban growth.
Urban planning. Urban planners during the era of suburban sprawl paid more attention to the concerns of vehicle traffic than to concepts of walkability and urbanity. The result: Vast expanses of low-density suburbia are given over to paved parking lots and extra-wide streets. Northland and the Silverdome were typical in being plopped amid acres of concrete.
Racism. Toxic racial conflicts between blacks and whites did more than drive middle-class residents out of the city of Detroit. It also gave the newly minted suburbanites a sense of correctness – that Detroit had become a hell-hole best left abandoned. Better race relations no doubt would have lessened the urge to sprawl.
The four other reasons given are federal policy, local elected leaders, and the home builders/road builders who reaped the rewards from the elected's largesse.

These elements are not unique to a metropolitan area such as Detroit. Many are at play here in south Florida. We can thank Florida's growth management apparatus that operated (past tense) to mandate at least some level of state and regional oversight for growth and development. Michigan never had such a state agency. Regional planning was an afterthought there.

My school district as a youngster in suburban Lansing, Michigan projected a high school population of 10,000 people when it built its new high school in the late 1950s. To accommodate that future growth it was built into different "modules" so that new buildings could be added to the campus over time. That resulted in having to walk between buildings to get to your next class. This was especially fun in February when the wind chill was −40°F. When I graduated from high school the total enrollment was 1,200. The anticipated growth never arrived but the roads and other infrastructure went ahead anyway.

One other factor that portended the future was the impact of the oil crisis of the 1970s and the domestic auto industry being slow to react. Fuel prices are market driven; when supplies are plentiful few plan for a future when they're not.

A question we need to ask ourselves here in south Florida is why do we keep developing land "out west" for new, greenfield development? Why are we following the same steps that have led to the collapse of entire regions? We don't have to research ancient societies on other continents for answers—what happened to Detroit in the late 20th Century is clear enough.

It's estimated that 800 people are moving permanently to Florida each and every day on average. We should be encouraging these new residents towards our older, coastal communities and Lake Worth is one of those. Lake Worth is a bikeable and walkable city that was designed and platted prior to the automobile becoming the dominant transportation choice, pre-I95, pre-Turnpike, and pre-Uber too if you can believe that.

But instead politics, pandering, and short-sighted leaders get bogged down in arguments about 3-story buildings versus the charming 2-story variety and whether a developer should install gates or use hedges instead and on and on it goes. The gullible public gets furiously excited like hamsters on a spinning wheel and when they get tired or distracted their puppet masters yell "sea level rise!" or "somebody's trying to steal our BEACH!".

Meanwhile the Florida Everglades are getting paved over and another Lake Worth-sized city is planned between I-95 and the Florida Turnpike. Sad.

Is a Southern Baptist church in downtown Lake Worth, Florida superior to all other churches in the City?

There's a group out of Orlando that's been trying to plant a church in downtown Lake Worth and you might have read a thing or two about that on this blog. Church 'planting' is lot like franchising. Let's say you come up with an idea for the best chicken slider ever dreamed of and you want to start a chain of restaurants. You would search for interested franchisees and go from there.

The church in question, the 'Common Ground' (no 's') church, in order to attract people to their church located in a nightclub/bar is pitching the idea that they're the best church in town. Here is one way they're trying to do that (via Facebook):
"Jesus hates religion" in Lake Worth?
Their pitch is that they're not a religion and offer the best interpretation of what Jesus' message is to the world unfiltered by humans. They don't want you to be manipulated, you see. Are we therefore to conclude that all the other churches in Lake Worth are teaching the wrong message of Jesus according to the 'Common Ground' (no 's') church? If you use this website to find a Christian church in Lake Worth I count a total of 29 that are within the City limits and that's only Christian religions. 

Here is a breakdown of religious affiliation in Lake Worth. Baptist is 4% and Southern Baptist is a tiny fraction of that. In perspective, the people of the Jewish faith number 3% in the City. You can say with some confidence the supreme message from the 'Common Ground' (no 's') church isn't exactly "carrying the day" in the City of Lake Worth. 

Below is a partial list of the 29 Christian churches in the City. Being somewhat familiar with a few of the churches below can attest they're more concerned with making Lake Worth a better community and City than criticizing their counterparts in the greater religious community (a link is provided to each church in the list):
If you're looking for a church in Lake Worth there are many to choose from. But if you're looking for the Good Word in a bar. . .

Learn more about the debunked yet fanciful and hilariously mythical "War on Religion" in the video below. Watch 'pastor' Olive (starting at the 1:30 mark) when the 'war' was at its hysterical peak.

Grand Bahama Island: Plan to create clean electricity and doing their part to save planet Earth

Below is an excerpt from an article by Susan Salisbury in The Palm Beach Post on efforts in the Bahamas to cut down on greenhouse gases:
     The U.S. Department of Energy has given the go-ahead to a Canadian energy company that wants to export compressed natural gas from the Port of Palm Beach in Riviera Beach to Freeport, Grand Bahama Island, but the operation still needs further local approvals.
     Emera Inc., a publicly traded company headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the majority owner of Grand Bahama Power Co. The utility supplies power to all of Grand Bahama Island. Its main source of power generation is heavy fuel oil. [emphasis added]
What is fuel oil you wonder? You can learn more at Wikipedia:
The term fuel oil is also used in a stricter sense to refer only to the heaviest commercial fuel that can be obtained from crude oil, i.e., heavier than gasoline and naphtha.
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