Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller’s Personal Web Site

Contractor Bryan Roberts is building Florida’s first Earthship right here in Manatee County — and if you’re a college student (or have part of this summer free, anyway), you can participate in a Greencamp and learn the ins and outs of Earthship building yourself.

(Recorded at the April 28, 2008 meeting of the Manatee-Sarasota Democratic Black Caucus)

It’s nice — and not nearly usual enough - to have electable Democrats run for local office around here!

I don’t get many telemarketing calls. I’m on every “do not call” list in existence, plus I use a Verizon service that intercepts phone calls from numbers with Caller ID disabled. But this call had a legitimate-looking number and name — “Intel Gateway, 538-6316″ attached to it, and since I write about technology and often get calls from tech firm PR people, I picked up. A heavily-accented voice asked me how I was today. “Marvelous,” I said.

Voice: “I’m (probably fake) (name) from First Federal Financial, and I can help you pay off all your unsecured debt, like credit card bills and medical expenses.”

Me: “Great! Give me your address. I’ll send them all to you and you can pay them.”

Voice: “Do you think I am joking?”

Me: “No, I’m just taking you up on your offer.”

Voice: “I do not have to put up with people like you.” (hangs up)

Well, no, you don’t. And a good way not to put up with people like me is to not call us with unwanted offers in the first place. Sheesh!

PS - I called the number back and got a “this number is no longer in service” recording. Double-sheesh!

One thing I look at when evaluating candidates for high office is how they manage their campaigns. I am not talking about ideology here, but about personnel turnover and — even more important — fiscal responsibility. So far, Barack Obama scores high on both fronts, and his opponents have done rather poorly. I don’t know about you, but I want a Chief Executive who can manage a budget, especially considering that the president who follows Bush is going to have one hell of a fiscal mess to clean up.
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Richard Jackson is running for the Florida legislature in house district 67. He’s a Democrat and he has two PhDs. His opponent (incumbent) is one of the party-line Republicans who helped make Florida the mess it is today. We need to get more people like Richard into our legislature!

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That’s it! This man is nuts. There is totally no way I’m going to vote for Rev. Wright as our next president. Of course, I still might very well vote for Barack Obama, even thought it seems that no, he really can’t bowl very well. Face it: Barack Obama has some nutsy friends. Ditto John McCain, especially ditto both Bill and Hillary Clinton. So do you, and so do I.

If you don’t want to vote for Obama, fine. Don’t vote for him. But please don’t let Rev. Wright be your excuse.

An old joke: The stockbroker takes a prospective client down to the marina and points out a row of gleaming high-end boats. “Those are the brokers’ yachts,” he says. The prospective client asks, “And where are the customers’ yachts.”

Now Bear Stearns is being “rescued” by a taxpayer-backed forced merger with JPMorgan Chase. Bear Stearns stockholders are being hosed. Many Bear Stearns employees are being laid off. And since the main cause of Bear Stearns’ problems was crappy mortgage loans that aren’t being repaid, lots of investors in “securitized” home mortgages are taking big losses, and homeowners who can’t pay their subprime mortgages are being evicted like mad.

The people who seem to be hurt least by all this are the very same Bear Stearns top executives who are responsible for all the bad decisions that led to this corporate meltdown. So far I have not seen a single article, anywhere, about a Bear Stearns corporate officer or board member losing his or her home.

If these execs, who made huge amounts of money from securitized mortgages, aren’t now being driven into bankruptcy ahead of everyone else whose lives they have helped ruin, why are middle-income working people like you and me supposed to pay for their mistakes with our tax dollars?

To put it another way:

Where are the Bear Stearns executives’ bankruptcies?

I was reading an article in the New York Times (free registration required to read) this morning about how the housing market is crashing not just in the U.S. but all over the world. And I was thinking, “Well, that makes the U.S. look a little less dumb in comparison to everyone else.” But it also means that investors and marketers all over the world have managed to overlook a basic fact about housing economics: If someone in an equivalent job to yours can’t buy in your neighborhood today, your neighborhood is overpriced and due for a “correction.”
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This video totally goes against the “shorter is better” rule of online video. It’s somewhat over an hour long. But it’s also the only full-length record of the 2nd Annual Village of the Arts Poetry Slam, held at The Village Bookshop in honor of National Poetry Month. I don’t think many people are going to watch this all the way through, but for those of you who have never been to a poetry slam or want to see what happens in Bradenton’s Village of the Arts besides selling paintings and crafts, here you go. (Note: the “slam-master” is Kevin Webb, nationally-recognized poet and owner of the Liberal Artz gallery in Bradenton.)

Islanders stand against tall bridge — Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Island residents back high-rise AMI Bridge — Bradenton Herald

That’s right, folks. Somebody got it wrong, didn’t they?

In this case, I’d say the Bradenton Herald is the one that got the story right. Their piece included hard numbers from the Florida DOT survey about Anna Maria Island bridge preferences, while the Herald-Tribune’s story only quoted a few people who were apparently part of a group that opposes a high, fixed-span bridge between the island and the mainland.

Good job, Herald reporter Duane Marsteller — and the editors who passed on the piece before publication, too!