Robin ‘Roblimo’ Miller’s Personal Web Site

The vast majority of new housing planned for Manatee County, Florida, is far away from employment centers. Developers have bought up huge tracts of land in rural areas and hope to cover them with $300,000 to $600,000, 3000 to 4000 square foot detached houses that have no shopping or gathering places within walking distance. Most of the other planned (but currently stalled) developments around here are mid-rise and high-rise condominiums — again in the $300,000 and up price range. In an area where the average wage is less than $11 per hour, and gas looks like it’s going to cost $3 per gallon or more (possibly much more) for the rest of our lives, these kinds of developments may not sell well enough to be worth building. Builders and planners need to stop thinking about a housing market “recovery” in the sense of making everything like it was a few years ago, and start thinking about what kind of residential and commercial building will fill our future needs.
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I am against illegal immigration. Our country is more crowded than I believe it should be, and I dislike the idea of a permanent underclass that holds down wages for people who do physical work. But I’ve also been to small towns in Mexico where the average person has no opportunity at all, and the most certain way to get ahead — or even support a family in the most modest circumstances — is to send at least one family member to the United States. Meanwhile, on this side of the border, I know illegal immigrants who are law-abiding in all other ways, work hard, and are generally good people. But I also know Americans who have seen their jobs taken by illegal immigrants who work for less money and don’t expect to be covered by health insurance or even get overtime pay required by law. How do we solve this set of problems? Are they even solvable at this point?
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As a Florida Democrat, my vote in the primary election on January 29, 2008, would not count. This is the official word from the national Democratic Party. All Florida Democrats are effectively disenfranchised in the 2008 Presidential primary, and that’s that. The Republican Party has stripped Florida of half its convention delegates, which apparently means that in Republican-land we Florida people are only half as worthy as voters elsewhere. But half a vote is still better than none, right?

After the January 29 primary I’ll go back to being an “unaffiliated” voter, a group whose number is increasing in Florida faster than either Republicans or Democrats (which might tell you something about the growing contempt here for the leaders of both major political parties).

If you are a Florida resident who wants to make the same (hopefully temporary) switch to the Republican Party that I made this morning, you need to do it before January 1 (effectively, by the end of this week) for your vote to count in the primary. I’m not saying you *should* do this, just that if you *want* to do it, you don’t have a lot of time to waste.

Let the man speak for himself:

Worse, some of the secular libertarians who support him need to deal with the fact that he’s not big on that silly old church/state separation thing, either — or at least he wasn’t back in 2003 when he wrote a Limbaugh-like screed titled The War on Religion. And a few extra-astute Paul followers may even note, to their dismay, that Rep. Paul isn’t talking about religion in general here, just Christianity.

Oh, well. A number of religions (including Christianity) warn about idols with feet of clay. It looks like Ron Paul falls into that category. Sorry, Ron Paul supporters. I’d hoped he was different, too.

Accompanying text, including mentioned links, are at Linux.com.

You really want to read the text at Linux.com, too.

Click To Play

Naturally, you’ll want to go to Linux.com to see the story links Lisa mentions. Besides that, this is a pretty good example of how to make a “talking head” video interesting enough to watch for over four minutes, which isn’t the easiest task in the world.