No Dana, No Cry

This one goes out Dana and anyone who has ever lost someone to the great operating system debate.

My 2008 Ballot

I'm planning on going to vote tomorrow and I haven't had the time to complete all my election posts. So in lieu of actual analysis I'm just going to post my ballot if anyone is interested.

Ben's 2008 Ballot

I did at least a little research on each of the races so nothing on here is a complete shot in the dark. Although I'm not claiming my analysis is complete. For some of the races there is very little information out there.

By the way - found another good resource for local election info: Space Coast Freethought Association's Voter Guide. I got a kick out of it because they actually reference the Christian Coalition of Brevard's voter guide! Awesome.

Also, for the Sebastian's Inlet stuff I found this Florida Today article that was pretty good.

Local Elections: State Judges

In Florida, State Appellate and Supreme Court judges are appointed by the governor but face a retention vote every six years. This articles covers the judges up for retention on the Florida Supreme Court and the Fifth District Court of Appeals.

It should be noted that since this retention system has been in place (1978), no Judge has ever been voted out. And in the unlikely event that one is - their replacement would be appointed by the Governor - which means Republican Charlie Crist. So I'm not sure why I'm writing about this really... this one will probably be pretty short.

Florida Supreme Court

The following is a description of the Florida Supreme Court by the Ocala Star-Banner:

Florida Supreme Court justices consider cases from lower courts throughout the state. Judges are appointed by the governor, serve six-year terms, and are paid $161,200 per year. The office is nonpartisan.

Charles T. Wells

Appointed by Lawton Chiles. Florida Bar's poll of lawyers shows 91% support for retaining. This is probably the only judge that is important to vote yes on since he was appointed by a Democrat and if not retained would be replaced by a Republican-appointed judge. The Florida Supreme Court is fairly liberal as most of it's members were appointed by Chiles and it's good to keep it that way as long as possible.

Florida Fifth District Court of Appeals

The following is a description of the Fifth District Court of Appeals by the Ocala Star-Banner:

Appellate judges hear appeals from circuit courts. The 5th District Court of Appeal is based in Daytona Beach and its jurisdiction covers Marion, Lake, Sumter, Citrus, Hernando, Flagler, Putnam, St. Johns, Volusia, Orange, Osceola, Brevard and Seminole counties. Judges serve six-year terms and are paid $153,140 per year. The office is nonpartisan

Kerry I. Evander

Appointed by Jeb Bush. Florida Bar's poll of lawyers shows 89% support for retaining. Bio Page.

C. Allen Lawson

Appointed by Jeb Bush. Florida Bar's poll of lawyers shows 87% support for retaining. Bio Page. This guy is a Clemson alum so I think I'm contractually required to vote for him.

Richard B. Orfinger

Appointed by Jeb Bush. Florida Bar's poll of lawyers shows 89% support for retaining. Bio Page.

William David Palmer

Appointed by Jeb Bush. Florida Bar's poll of lawyers shows 85% support for retaining. This guy is the chief justice of the court. I was looking at his bio page and noticed he wrote an article called "Focus on the Family Single-Parent Family." I haven't been able to find this article to see if it has anything to do with James Dobson's evil right-wing evangelical group called "Focus on the Family" but it raised some concerns. I then noticed that his bio page mentions he is very active in the "Tomoka Christian Church." I looked up their web site and the text under the google entry states the following "Non-denominational church seeking to make it hard to go to hell from our generation." I'm not sure why church is bold and I don't really know what it means but it scares me - they are definitely scary evangelical nutjobs.

Thomas D. Sawaya

Appointed by Jeb Bush. Florida Bar's poll of lawyers shows 88% support for retaining. Bio Page.

Conclusion

I'm tempted to vote no for all of these guys since they'll probably all be retained anyway. Not very much information out there on these guys. Palmer is the only one that seems really bad. Wells is the only one I feel motivated to vote for. I'm tempted to vote no on the rest of them just because they're almost assured to be retained.

Local Elections: State Amendments

Here's my overview of the proposed Amendments to the FL constitution for the 2008 general election.

Amendment 1

The following is a good summary from baynews9.com article that Kelly found on the amendments:

The current state constitution reads, "All natural persons, female and male alike, are equal before the law and have inalienable rights, among which are the right to enjoy and defend life and liberty, to pursue happiness, to be rewarded for industry, and to acquire, possess and protect property; except that the ownership, inheritance, disposition and possession of real property by aliens ineligible for citizenship may be regulated or prohibited by law. No person shall be deprived of any right because of race, religion, national origin, or physical disability."

The change would remove the portion in red.

Apparently the portion in red was added to the constitution at some point in the early 20th century to give the state the right to prohibit aliens from purchasing land - it was targeted specifically at Asian immigrants. Although there are no current state laws that utilize this part of the constitution - this amendment would remove this outdated and probably racist language.

The amendment is supported by The Organization of Chinese Americans, a non-profit group and minority rights advocate and Florida League of Women Voters. I don't know of any groups that oppose it.

I plan on voting for it.

Amendment 2

This is an anti-gay marriage amendment - it tries to apply a narrow definition to the word marriage by stating that "marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife."

I fully support gay rights and gay marriage so obviously I would never support this but I think that even if you don't support allowing homosexuals to use the word "marriage" you should still be against this amendment because it also contains the following language: "no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized." I'm pretty sure that makes civil unions unconstitutional too... wow.

Also, does anyone else see the irony in that the first amendment is to remove hateful, discriminatory language from the state constitution and that the second amendment is to add hateful, discriminatory language?

Amendment 3

This amendment basically says that if you make improvements to your house to make it more hurricane resistant (like wind shutters) or generate renewable power (like solar panels) then the government cannot increase it's assessed tax value to reflex those changes. This amendment would basically allow the legislature to pass laws to create property tax exemptions for making those improvements to your house.

It's not clear if a constitutional amendment is required to do this and apparently local governments already have the power to grant tax exemptions on renewable power sources. Also this doesn't apply to new or commercial construction.

Even with some of those negatives this still sounds like a good thing. I'll support just about anything that encourages renewable energy so I intend to vote for this.

Amendment 4

This amendment would create a "conservation" land classification and allow those lands to qualify for a tax exemption.

This seems to be a measure designed to encourage land conservation which is definitely a good thing. The down side is that if the laws based on this amendment are not structured very well then this could turn into a give away for developers. Currently all land is taxed at its highest and best rate unless it is classified as agricultural land. This means that non-agriculture land is taxed based on its future potential as developed residential property. Apparently agriculture land can be re-classified as normal land relatively easily so developers often abuse this setup by putting a few cows or trees on land they intend to develop eventually so they can get the tax break. If proper safeguards are not put in place a conservation classification could be used in the same way. If there is enough developer abuse then it could affect government tax revenue.

This amendment has pretty wide support from groups like The Nature Conservancy, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida Wildlife Federation, and Audubon of Florida. I don't know of any groups against it.

I think the concerns about developer abuse are valid but ultimately since this isn't structuring the actual conservation classification but just forcing the legislature to have one I think I'm going to vote for it.

Amendment 6

This is similar to Amendment 4 but instead of creating a classification for conservation it is instead creating a special classification for "working" waterfront property like commercial finishing.

The argument for this amendment is that waterfront property is so valuable as residential property that it makes it difficult for marine based businesses to turn a profit. The intention seems to be to maintain the viability of marine business to encourage economic diversity.

The argument against this amendment is that waterfront property owners do not lose their development rights and that there is no provision to recoup lost tax revenue.

Supporters of this amendment include the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida TaxWatch, boatyard owners, fish house owners, marina owners, and the Marine Industries Association of Florida. Opponents consist of the AFL-CIO.

I'm a bit unsure on this one but I'm inclined to vote no. I can get behind lost tax revenue for land conservation but for business it's less appealing. Besides, that land still maintains it's value and the owners still have development rights.

Amendment 8

This amendment would allow local governments to increase the sales tax to support community colleges. To implement the sales tax increase, local governments would need ballot approval which would need to be reauthorized by the voters every 5 years.

Basically what's happened is that the Florida legislature is targeting funding cuts for community college education and is attempting to shift the burden to local government. Community colleges are important and need to be funded in some way. This is allowing local government to pick up the slack.

The crappy part of this is that shifting the burden to local government creates all kinds of problems. It has the potential to create very unequal education opportunities based on which counties approve the tax increase and which don't. It opens the door for more state-level cuts in the future by trying to shift the burden. It's unclear what would happen if there is one community college serving multiple counties. It's inherently unfair to smaller, less affluent counties - especially since sales taxes are pretty regressive and hurt poor students and areas more.

Supporters of this amendment include Florida Education Association, Associated Industries of Florida, United Faculty of Florida, Florida TaxWatch, and Eduardo J. Padron, President of Miami-Dade Community College. Opponents include the Orlando Sentinel and Manatee Community College.

I think this is shitty solution to an ugly problem. Somebody needs to fund community colleges and since state government has apparently decided not to, I'm probably going to end up voting yes - I don't like it though.

Resources

• Ballotpedia.org
• Space Coast Progressive Alliance Amendment Guide (see pgs 10-12)
  
• Sun-Sentinel Recommendations
• Cape-Coral Daily Breeze
• BayNews9.com

Chocolate Jesus

This is a Tom Waits song off of Mule Variations. It's a classic. He sings it through a megaphone - you can check out a video of it on the Tom Waits post I did after we saw him in Jacksonville. At any rate - I noticed the other day that Garageband has a megaphone effect you can put on your voice and this cover was born. Also, I discovered there are "master track" effects that will be put on all the tracks in the song. So I used one of those as well - it's called "Old Movie" and it makes everything just a bit more grainy and lo-fi sounding. So this recording sounds pretty rough - but it's supposed to be that way! Just trying to capture the Tom Waits sound.

Great lyrics by the way - It's about an immaculate confection. I think my favorite line is "Pour him over ice cream for a nice parfait." Good stuff.



[Update: Apparently the blogamp thing doesn't show up in google reader - so most of my recording posts don't make much sense unless you actually visit the blog]

Walking the Cow

This is a Daniel Johnson song. If you don't know who Daniel Johnson is then I highly recommend you check out the documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston but in a nutshell he's a singer-songwriter from Austin, TX who suffers from bi-polar disorder. He's pretty lo-fi and his music is only semi-well known because alternative rock stars like Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder have promoted and covered it.

So, as you've probably already guessed, I've covered the Eddie Vedder version. Daniel's version is much more... spastic. Eddie turns it into a really sad, but beautiful, song. I've always been amazed by Eddie's ability to translate a song like this from Daniel Johnston's version to his version. There are a few other covers Pearl Jam does that are like this. You listen to the original and you're like - "how did they hear this?" Not that I dislike Daniel Johnston's version...

At any rate, this one was pretty simple - used my Strat with Garageband's ultra clean settings then it was just a matter of recording the vocal. I still need a better mic but I think this one came out pretty good.



[Update: Apparently the blogamp thing doesn't show up in google reader - so most of my recording posts don't make much sense unless you actually visit the blog]

My Grey Dove

Had some fun this morning playing one of my new electric guitars (I'll dedicate a post to that later) and recording a cover of "Pigeon" off of Stone Gossard's solo album. This is pretty much my first electric guitar recording and I probably went a little overboard. I doubled up the guitar track and put a garageband effect (Heavy Blues & Grunge) on each one. That gave the guitar a pretty cool sound. I didn't really care for my vocal that much because the song is way high for me - so I recorded a double track in a lower register. So there's this weird chorus effect that I don't think is in the original song but it's kinda cool.

I don't think I'm very good a mixing the volume - so there are probably improvements that could be made there. Also, the bridge isn't that great but I didn't feel like being a perfectionist.

I've gotta say, it's pretty fun working with a bunch of tracks like this. I was actually thinking today, "Wow, I need a bass guitar" but I've spent so much money on guitars lately that I think Hannah would kill me if I randomly bought a bass.




[Update: Apparently the blogamp thing doesn't show up in google reader - so most of my recording posts don't make much sense unless you actually visit the blog]