BigPineKey.com

Phil Goodman

Goodman is a retired chemist with more than forty years experience in the global chemical industry. He served for thirty days as a volunteer for the USCG and USCG Auxiliary at Deepwater Horizon (DWH). As a result of that experience Goodman realized the need for locally trained pollution response teams and studied to become a USCG Certified Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) instructor. Since DWH he has organized and taught more than twenty HAZWOPER classes throughout the Keys, certifying more than 800 local residents to assist as volunteers should the Keys experience a major pollution event.   Elsie S. Metcalf, Division 13 Commander, USCG Auxiliary says of Goodman,   ”Many people talk about protecting our environment but Phil is doing something about it.”

Goodman is a regular guest lecturer on environmental issues to local organizations. He is an active member of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council, the Mote Marine Laboratory Advisory Board, the Florida Clean Boating Partnership and a Commissioner on the Florida Keys Mosquito Control Board. The USCG Auxiliary is an all volunteer member of Team Coast Guard that assists the USCG in many of its missions. There are more than 350 Auxiliarists in Monroe County and more than 30,000 in the USA. For more information on the USCG Auxiliary, visit Link

I would like to know just how outrageously Zuelch is lying this time. I believe FKAA has lost all public confidence and respect with the sewer bait and switch, the sewer system lies, and now this. Remember, the FKAA answers only to Gov. Rick Scott, and apparently he approves of everything as does Holly Raschein since they have done absolutely nothing in response to written complaints and even lawsuits about the actions of FKAA. . ~rocketscienceeh@gmail.com

Spending of $720,000 was also authorized to repair the little ramp bridge to Pigeon Key, so that is $14.92 million altogether.

The school thought they could easily raise $10 million but the contractor they hired (CCS) to the look at that possibility found that could they could not even get even close. They found that a lot of the community does not care about FKCC. All they see is the same old group of disconnects running the school, they all play musical chairs. Snyder, Rice, and McPherson have been at the center of every controversy that has surrounded the school in the last 6 or 7 years. Snyder continues to alienated the faculty, Rice is self-serving and none of his programs are of any importance, and the McPhersons, both at FKCC and in the Monroe County school system, have been milking these system for years. They never have enhanced the educational experience in the Keys.

The current board also does not seem to want any progressive changes. They always vote unanimously with very little discussion. They are incapable of leading the school into the 21st century of educational reform.  There is a lot of money available, but these guys have no idea how to get it. The board and the school’s administration showed how insecure they really are when they showed a tremendous resistance to a faculty survey conducted by Ms Don. She was chastised, threatened, and alienated by Snyder because of it. The board and school should have embraced the survey.  This is something that is done at large laboratories and universities to gain an insight into the relations between management and faculty. These guys failed management 101. Been in the Keys too long. The current president may be an ok guy, but he is still a Washington DC bureaucrat with a very thin skin when it comes to any type of criticism and meaningful reform.

When is the community going to demand changes at the school?  Until they see these changes, FKCC cannot expect any large influxes of money from the community. Nobody has any emotional attachment to the school, when for years the same group of uniformed individuals have played musical chairs in an attempt to hold on to their privileged positions at FKCC. ~clide@cableone.net

Islam is no more a threat than the Soviets were during the Cold War. The only way to control the sheep of the world is for the leadership to maintain a bogey man. Religion failed at keeping us humble and enslaved by the fear of going to hell, the threat of being blown up will not fail because if we don’t succumb, they, the globalists, will blow us up.

FTR’S RESPONSE: It must be dreadful, terribly dispiriting to be a liberal or a Democrat. Over and over we’ve seen that their political beliefs are based on victimhood. Their victimhood. Yesterday’s poster was a classic example.

First the poster complained that it is the Republicans who are victimizing labor by “voting down” a huge hike in the minimum wage. The poster apparently has forgotten that the Democrats had full control of the Congress from 2007 until 2011. For two of those years they also held the Presidency. The could have enacted just about any minimum wage that they desired. They did not. Now Obama is chest thumping that he has regal executive powers. He certainly could take executive action on the issue. He chooses not to.

Perhaps because the minimum wage proposals being floated would be ruinous to our economy.

According to the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is a joint effort of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, only about 2.9% of wage earners receive the minimum wage…of that small fraction, more than half of them are aged 16 to 24, and 62 percent of that group are students.

Nearly 80 percent of those earning the minimum wage work part-time jobs and belong to families that earn nearly triple the poverty level for a family of four at $65,900 a year, while only 22 percent live at or below the poverty line. Three percent have finished college and obtained a degree, and 5 percent are married. Link

Obama’s Congressional Budget Office reports that raising the federal minimum “might help” some 900,000 workers out of poverty, that’s far less than 30% of those earning the minimum wage. That speculation also suggest that the minimum wage will kill about 500,000 jobs. Can we afford to lose jobs?

Then the poster blamed the GOP and “big business” for “eliminating” the unions. The poster’s logic is deeply flawed, flawed by the liberal victimization mind set. The fact is that business cannot “eliminate” unions. When a union attempts to unionize a business, it is the employees of that business who vote the union in or out. In recent years unions are losing membership and power in the private sector, but are growing like a malignant tumor in government.

The Bureau of Labor Stats reported in January 2014 that membership in unions–was 11.3 percent, the same as in 2012. Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.3 percent), more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent). Another source reports that private sector union membership peaked at around 35 percent in the 1950s.

Public sector unions are anathema to good government. The union bosses have far too much power in choosing public officials and public policy. The unions are dying in the private sector of self-inflicted wounds, not the acts of the Republicans nor employers. GM and Chrysler are classic examples of the risk workers run when unionizing.

As for the poster’s comment “We are becoming a nation of serfs.”…Perhaps there is some merit in that thought. Every single day the number of persons who are reliant on the government for their sustenance grows. Every day more and more people drop out of the labor force, they just give up taking care of themselves. The BOLS has just reported a study that reveals that on the average day, an unemployed American is more likely to be shopping—for things other than groceries and gas—than to be looking for a new job. Democrat policy and practice serves to encourage this behavior. Our government spends long tons of tax money urging people to sign up for welfare. It is a vile way that the Democrats recruit new voters. That is serfdom of the most pernicious sort.

There are solid reasons why business, wages, and economic growth are stagnant. One is the tsunami of new federal regulations under Obama. As of 2012 there were an additional 11,349 pages of new federal regulations. Another is the Fed pumping money into our economy. It is making investing in the stock market virtually risk free, those investments would normally go to businesses for expansion. Another is the soon to be felt impact of Obamacare on businesses big and small, it has effectively stifled nearly all incentives for businesses to expand and hire new employees. Businesses are hoarding money rather than investing in themselves. Another drag is Obama’s big union appointees to the NLRB. Yet another drag are many of the damn fool environmental regulations that can ham string start up companies.