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2013 March

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

 

The Coconut Telegraph

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The Old 7 Mile Bridge walk is by far the nicest, most interesting walk that I have ever done.

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[Canals] A business next to mine for many years received donations(?), many of which ended up in the canal behind our building. My solution: a very long handled gaff to fetch the items out. When they were not able to be retrieved in that manner we jumped in and removed them. Waiting for another to do the job would have meant it never being done. Take the matter into your hands and good hearts, stand back and smile when the good deed has been accomplished. Cheers.

Linda Chynoweth aka l.C. went to dance with the stars on March 18,2013.She will be greatly missed by all that she touched. Fun and laughter were always on her agenda.

There will be a celebration of her life at the Big Pine Moose Lodge on Wilder Road on April 3rd at 6:30 p.m. Please bring pictures and stories to share and a dish if you wish.

Love and peace 

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[“Disability Checks; with every disability check comes free health insurance and other benefits”] Boy are you wrong!  SSD recipients do pay for their health insurance. It is not free. It’s deducted from their SSD check.  And there are no other benefits. And SSD recipients can work, are encouraged to work, if they can. 

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[Merge Lane] I think we should all start a campaign to draw attention to DOT and the horrible intersection at the light on BPK. I baffles the imagination why we don’t have more wrecks than we do. Don’t forget the squeaky wheel gets things done.

[Tech Savvy] I just wanted folks to know that I agree with the person giving kudos to the BPK Radio Shack. I’ve been in there several times with out of the ordinary electronic requirements and each time I have walked out with a good working solution. The most recent visit was with my buddy who had a new cable box installed by Comcast but with only one RCA connection on the TV, the techie plugged in the cable box and left the RCA plugs from the DVD player hanging loose, so no DVD player. We were dealing with some old technology that many would have upgraded by now, but the manager showed us a simple, inexpensive product to blend the new technology with the old–a switch box. My buddy is good for maybe another couple of years. Thanks to Radio Shack. They know their stuff!

donkey

 

Islam, stuck in the middle ages and never getting it right. 

Reasons to avoid sugar as if your life depended on it. No sugar is good sugar. Link
Thank you for the link to the Florida Keys Heritage Trail Master Plan. It is interesting reading, indeed. I just wonder why we have millions to spend on non-essential activities while the road and bridges are falling down, no affordable housing, and the County cannot finish central waste water connections to those areas most polluted who, just by coincidence, were left for service last. Do the politicians care about those who pay the taxes and live here or are they only concerned about the tourists? 
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an horns

 

[Sculpting the hand] How to sculpting the hand by Philippe Faraut. Art like you will never see in the Keys. Link

[Disability Abuse] The government should put a bounty on disability fraud and pay a commission on cases leading to a conviction. The bounty hunters could video people on total disability skiing in Colorado and collect a reward. That would save the government a lot of cash. 

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I just found out today that a long time friend and neighbor Linda Chynoweth (LC) passed away last week, R.I.P old friend.

[Disability] I was a building contractor and had to retire when my knees gave out and couldn’t do floors or ladders any more. I never even considered applying for welfare. I just found other less gainful employment. That’s how I was brought up –independent. 
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[Special Treatment for Big Business] What are our County Commissioners and School Board doing to oppose the bills giving Balfour Beatty a retroactive pass on property taxes from 2007? Identical bills are in the House and Senate, and one of them is set to be fast tracked voted on tomorrow in the Senate. Balfour Beatty made a deal, reneged on it and now wants the taxpayers to bail them out, and our legislators, including Holly Raschein, seem to be falling for it. Or is it a pardon for some dubious behavior back in 2007. The lobbyist’s line is that the law already exempts these corporations, so why are they trying to pass another law to “clarify”? Don’t want it to go to court I suppose. Smells bad, eh?

an donut chasing cop

 

Are our deputies all fat or just the ones shown in the Citizen? Don’t they have a weight code or something to keep them fit and healthy? 

[Disability is Not Welfare] You only collect what you have paid in, aka FICA. If Medicare and Medicaid are free and so great how come each year I have to pay more out of pocket!? They don’t pay for my chiropractic maintenance any more which I need to keep me mobile. Chill and don’t be so jealous of all the big bucks I am raking in for free. “Time to polish the Rolls,Jeeves!”
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[Disability Checks] I’m amazed at the many people I know who are getting a check. 
[“Construction on US 1 Master Plan”] The basic utility infrastructure of the whole country is failing and they are pissing tax money away on this crap that nobody needs or wants as the economy continues to worsen. The Keys are destined to be a park whether we stay or go. 

an underwear

 

In 1830, the Book of Mormon went on sale at a bookstore in Palmyra, N.Y. If you wear the special Mormon’s underwear you’ll go to heaven.

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[Security] My daughter was at the airshow on Saturday and was impressed with the speed and ease of driving in and out of the base. 

cushman25

 

[“Cushman Davidson”] Talk about roasted nuts over an open carb! 

[Disability Checks] Faking An Injury Or An Illness: The most common type of disability fraud, but it’s extremely difficult to detect. Phantom pains and other disabilities can easily be faked, and there isn’t much a doctor can do to prove that the condition doesn’t actually exist.

Working While On Disability: While many people who suffer from disabilities do hold legitimate jobs, there are many people who collect disability benefits, and still perform the exact same job that they’re receiving benefits for supposedly not being able to do.

Continuing To Collect Disability Payments After The Condition Is Remedied: Another extremely common form of disability fraud, The patient heals, but continues to collect benefits illegally.

For the reasons stated above, disability fraud can be an extremely difficult crime to combat against. Advances in medical and computer technologies have made combating fraud more effective, but it’s still a very difficult form of fraud to enforce against. Disability fraud is damaging to taxpayers, people with legitimate disabilities, as well as the world economy.

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[Presidents Are Expensive] The nonpartisan Congressional  Research Service says the federal government spent nearly $3.7 million on former presidents last year. That covers a $200,000 pension, compensation  and benefits for office staff, and other  costs like travel, office space and postage. The costliest former president?  George W. Bush, who clocked in at just  over $1.3 million. That includes almost  $400,000 for 8,000 square feet of office  space and $85,000 in telephone costs. President Bill Clinton came in  second at just under $1 million, followed by George H.W. Bush at nearly  $850,000. Costs for Jimmy Carter, the  only other living former president,  came in at about $500,000. 

paypal_logo[Phishing Scam] “Please complete the attached form to verify your Profile information and restore your account access.” Blabla, give us your password.

[Disability Fraud] One of the best weapons that Governments have in combating disability fraud are average citizens who file a report when they believe that fraud is occurring. This still isn’t a great system though, since most people aren’t going to know exactly what disability the accused offender has or how it affects them. In order to be vigilant, if you think someone who is receiving disability benefits may be collecting those benefits fraudulently, then you should carefully consider what condition they may be receiving benefits for before filing a report.
an_geek_power[Knowledgeable Service] All I can say is we have a physical storefront for drop offs and I think customers feel comfortable with that and the RS logo on our sign. Our prices are usually better than the competitors also. We give free estimates. We basically tell the customer what is wrong and how much it will cost to fix. They can then say yes or no.  ~Kevin at your Big Pine Radio Shack 

[“Islamorada looks like every other ritzy city in Florida”] Yeah, that’s what happens when people from other places move in and take over — they homogenize the place so it’s like everywhere else. Florida shoulda been left to the rednecks!

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[“Once you get on disability you can keep on getting more and more benefits as you learn to work the system”] I am not sure where this information is coming from, but I am truly disabled and had to fight in order to get my disability from the social security system that I paid into for forty years prior to my accident.  Now I must pay more for my medical coverage than anyone my age that is not disabled.  The only help I am able to get is my social security is determined by the amount that I had paid into the system all those years.  I would agree that there are probably people out there that are milking the system, but not all of us are liars and cheats.

coolcat

I am trying to find out how to post an ad to see if anyone has spotted any large cats (not a house kitten/cat) in the Big Pine area. Is this possible?

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rails-old-brdg00

 

The Pigeon Key bridge will not be looking like it does in the picture on here Monday after it is “restored” or “rebuilt”.   It will have lost it’s historic look forever.  It will be just another very expensive bridge that we taxpayers really can’t afford to pay for and the vast majority of us will never use

18 million dollars to rehab a bridge that nobody needs? Will there  be anyone checking piers underwater, caissons, footings & whatever holds the damn thing up.

[Thinking about a new Roof] Rick Williams of Big Pine, owner of Florida Keys Waterproofing. He is your man to call for a roof. 797-0985, tell him Robert sent you and you saw it on the CT.

Ending the silence on climate change. Link

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The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”  ~Sir John Buchan

I agree with the poster about the abuse of disability benefits.   

You might be interested in this Windows 7 tutorials site, it is very good. Link

CTIP2[Captain Doom and Gloom] You have seen those architectural wonders of Dubai. However, none are hooked up to a sewer system! An unbelievable amount of sewage is generated by the new high-rises and there is no place to dispose of it. Camel sense seems about right. Dubai does not have a sewage system for all those big new buildings so they haul it all away in tank trucks. They wait for days to dump their load. They must have the same junta running their monye bucket as the Florida Keys. Link

The County Administrator needs to be administrated ASAP!

May be if you put down that texting phone or stop putting on your greasy make-up you could see through the damn windshield and drive that 4000 pound bucket of bolts correctly!?

“The GOP has lost its message” I think not. I believe some posters are suffering from delusional thinking, believing that when our all caring Gov. apparatus hands out large sums of fiat money for almost any reason that this constitutes in some way a true form of social caring, if that is indeed the case how did we transpire so quickly from becoming a shining city on the hill to a march toward being a second rate wanna be? to use religion in what ever form to be responsible for this march is indeed a stretch, Their are always factions in religions or atheism for that matter which disagree with each other, but one thing can not rationally be denied for about 200Yr’s. the United States did pretty well , being a strong religious country, not perfect but compared to the next best thing. I think they did pretty well, so for this old military hawk, who actually once was a Dem until the Dem’s. wake up and purge from their ranks the Pelosis , Reids, Etc. I will continue to do what is right. 

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Every day on here we read about how our President is always costing us money. Ever wonder what ex Presidents cost us? Lets take a look at former Republican President GW Bush. He must not be very expensive because I’ve never read anything on here from FTR concerning Bush’s spending habits. lets take last year as an example.

In 2012. First off Bush’s yearly pay was about $200,000 last year. Not a bad start.Then Bush got an additional $96,000 for an office staff. Bush also spent almost $400,000 for 8,000 square feet of office space. Yet not a peep from the right. Of course when you have an office you need a phone system. yep, another $85,000 in telephone costs. We always read about our Presidents travel expensives but not 1 single Republican poster mentioned Bush’s $60,000 in travel expensive. I smell selective Pachyderm Poop.

an_wine_Grapes2

 

A sneak preview of tomorrow’s FTR post: “Whine Obama donkey-dung lefty whine whine team Obama whine bitch nasty arrogant whine facts liar RINO whine know-it-all whine Obama angry old fart Scott-good Obama bad whine Palestine is Gaza (wrong) whine whine.”

After I read FTR, I laugh and have a glass of whine.

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Of course when FTR guy refers to “the radical left”, he means everyone left of the John Birch Society.

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I wonder why our Homeland Security needs equipment like this? Does our government fear the people’s disillusionment with Obama?

Debunking Republican lies. Link

[Employment ratio] Further to the Wikipedia reference on “unemployment”, consider these statistics from it as well. The’employment ratio, that is the number of people working to the total population was the following for the years given on Wikipedia. 1970 64.0; 1980 67:2; 1990 72:2; 2000 74.1; 2001 73:1, 2002 71:9; 2003 71:2; 2004 71:2; 2005 71:5; 2006 72:0; 2007 71:8; 2008 70.9; 2009 67:6; 2010 66.7; 2011 66.6; 2012 58:6. Uh oh! Not good!

I haven’t read the FTR guy in months. I don’t have to, just read some of the rebuttal comments directed towards him. The man has lost it. Really has no facts on anything that matters. In every rebuttal I’ve read he is either dead wrong on what he posted or makes up too much of his BS.

FROM THE RIGHT

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Boy oh boy there is at least one CT poster who is really pissed at me. That was the person who went ballistic at my posting concerning Team Obama’s decision to shut down contractor operated towers at 149 public airfields.  I’ve got no problem with him/her being pissed  at me, but you and I both should have a problem with non-truths being offered as truth.

First.  Please understand that I have no problem with the sequester. No one should have any real problem with it. It is nothing more than a 2% deduction in the rate of growth in spending. I have zero problem with the FAA having a 2% reduction in the rate of growth of their spending. Under the sequestration, the FAA will not receive a penny less in funding than they did last year.

an scissors smThe problem is Team Obama’s choices of cuts. He and his are deciding on cuts that are certain to be seen as onerous by Joe Citizen. He’s doing that to inconvenience you and I and to demonize Republicans.

The FAA could have accomplished the same end by privatizing more towers rather than continuing to pay the very generous wages paid to government union controllers. In Key West the median salary for an ATC’er is $120K per annum plus incredible bennies. Remember that it costs an average of $1.3 million dollars less to operate each of the contractor towers that they are shutting down than it costs to run the government run and government union staffed towers.

Second. While it is true that legislators from both parties voted to implement sequestration, it also true that the idea came from Obama. I commend him for that. It was Obama who signed it into law, I commend him for that. Were it not for Obama there would be no sequestration. Good for him.

Third: I offer my congrats to the poster if he/she actually is a member of the general aviation community, a pilot. Acquiring a pilot’s license is a time consuming and expensive process that can be challenging in the amount of material and skills one must master.

You will note that he/she made no comment on the likelihood of any substantial increase in the danger of operating at fields with shuttered towers. But the posting did confirm my statement that there are about 5K general public and paved airports in the USA. The balance are privately owned or military.

Fourth. Apparently the complaining GA pilot, if he/she is a GA pilot, he/she has not had any experience in flight into and out of paved public fields that are not tower controlled. If he/she had any such experience, of if he/she should remember his/her training. Because it is a fact that air traffic safety and aircraft separation at non controlled airports is accomplished by standard/routine pilot radio statements on Unicom or CTAF (122.8, etc) while approaching the pattern, in the pattern, or taking off. Pattern entry procedure and pattern practice is routine/standard operating procedure known by every pilot. I’m not sure, but I believe that most GA flights originate and end at non controlled fields.

Fifth.  The critic was dead wrong when he/she woofed that this Olde Fart had never piloted an aircraft.  In fact I’ve had a pilot’s license for years.  Unfortunately I’m not current. After the private ticket, I got a commercial ticket with an instrument rating. I’ve passed the written test for CFI, but never got around to taking the flight test. I got the commercial ticket and the instrument rating because I was doing a little charter flying and ferry work. I had aspirations to be a 747 driver, I failed because I was unwilling to live the nomadic life of rookie pilots building hours. I’ve got about 1.3k  hours, most of which are in single engine aircraft, but I do have about 30 or more hours in twins including the venerable D-18 (not as pilot in command).  My first and second bosses routinely received governor’s assignments throughout the state. I routinely did the investigation side and they did the legal side. For many years I flew out of Pompano (then an uncontrolled field). For many years I was a member of the Aero Club at Pompano.  We usually had 4 aircraft, all single engines. We had some simple craft like the 172 and the Hershey bar Piper. But we also had more complex aircraft such as a Beech Bonanza (F) (the nicest flying aircraft I’ve ever had the joy to pilot), over the years we had several 182’s (I learned a scary lesson about carburetor icing from one of those in the Bahamas), a Cherokee 6 (300), several Cessna 210’s including two w/turbos.  I’ve got a fair amount of time in several different tail draggers up to and including the Cessna 185 and the D18. Hells bells, I’ve even still got my E6B.

an_pilotJust for the record, please be advised that I’ve flown in and out of nearly every public field, controlled and uncontrolled in Florida. And I’ve been in and out of nearly every airport in the Bahamas west of Eluthera. The only reason that I’m not flying now is that it has become too expensive for this Olde Fart to afford.

The critic, who claims to be a pilot, seems to have little knowledge of aviation. For example he/she wrote that this Olde Fart had no knowledge of flight over a “20,000 flight (sic) per annum GA field under the class A airspace.”

Deer Friends: first of air traffic at any airfield is not counted by “flights”, it is measured in operations. An operation is one take off or one landing. Key West, in 2006 had about 95K “operations”. My critic spoke of 20k operations per annum which apparently he/she thought was heavy traffic, that amount of traffic actually would mean a very, very quiet airport.

Class “A” airspace is all airspace above FL180 (18k) feet, or it is any airspace so designated by the FAA, usually surrounding a heavy traffic airport(s).  A pilot flying in or out of an uncontrolled airport in class A airspace would simply be required to file a IFR or SVR flight plan,  and to operate under IFR or SVFR rules, and to report in with ATC on becoming airborne or entering class A airspace. Undoubtedly his/her aircraft would currently be required to be equipped with a radar transponder. In class A airspace air traffic separation is managed by ATC.

Even though my critic might wail and moan, the fact is that the sequestration tower closings will only affect airports having less than 150k operations per year. Far less that the 20k “flights” spoken of.

Sixth: The entire thrust of my posting on Team Obama’s decision to shutter contract towers was to explain and to highlight the fact that Team Obama is doing all in its power to irritate and to scare the crap out of the public and to demonize Republicans. He’s failing.

Seventh: Just for the record, the Democrat controlled Senate has killed at least two bills offered by Republicans which would have given the Office of Management and Budget flexibility and the power to prioritize cuts under sequestration. Repeat: The Democrat Senate killed the bills.

And so, Deer Friends, once again we have a class A bumbled swing and a whiff from yet another left fielder.

an_sparrow2Aviation question for the day: Who was the pilot of “The Song Bird”?

Respectfully submitted: FTR@Reagan.com

No Name Key Electricity

[“No Name Key Puppets: Stop drinking the Kool Aid”] “We went to the County and inquired into the truth. It was pretty clear there would be no electricity to No Name Key in the future.” “No Name Key is remote, unique, pristine and has only 4 homes.” “You knew when you bought there.”

Really? When will you Jonestown folks stop drinking the Kool-Aid? The residents of No Name Key have always had a right to electricity to their legally built homes,until Ms. Putney arrived. No one is afraid of Putney and it is not “scared vs not scared of Putney” as poster claimed yesterday.

But everyone is getting tired of her repeated lies and the lawsuits she had cost the taxpayers. Please see the letter dated in 1995 from City Electric to Ms. Putney when she protested about it bring electricity to No Name and then she high jacked the county commission to adopt “her illegal prohibition”. Putney is responsible for Galleon Bay lawsuit (over 5 million tax dollars) and other takings in Big Pine Key, and it appears that she is promoting that the county should “take” the 43 homes on No Name to stop electricity. Why not, she has gotten her way in the past? She is playing poker, not with her money but with your tax dollars. If you are not outraged about how the county is handling this matter, then you are not paying attention. City-Electric-Letter-to-Ms.-Putney.pdf1_