Archive for November 21, 2008

How Many of You Are SICK of Being Preached At About “Climate Change”?

November 21, 2008 · Filed under Climate crap, life in Florida

I know I am, and I don’t believe I’m the only one. Watts Up With That brings news of upcoming changes at The Weather Channel including my personal favorite, axing the entire Forecast Earth environmental program. I (used) to turn on TWC to watch the weather, not to get bitchy lectures about the state of the environment (which is apparently All My Fault™) based on very questionable pseudoscientific “evidence”.

Perhaps if The Weather Channel gets back to actually making weather forecasts instead of berating their viewers with Ain’t It Awful and We’re All Gonna DIE and It’s ALL YOUR FAULT catastrophe scenarios, I can turn the channel back on again.

Since the buyer is NBC, they’re probably concerned that The Weather Channel has actual viewers left and wishes to get rid of them ASAP by giving even less weather and more “Humans Should All Just Die Already” programming.

Meanwhile, it’s freezin’ down here in Sunny, Warm Florida™.

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Lease Dispute Could Send “Burn Notice” Out of Miami

November 21, 2008 · Filed under dumbass government stunts, life in Florida

The Miami Herald has an interesting article today:

Michael Westen isn’t the best tenant: He makes bombs in his apartment and people tend to shoot at him. But Miami’s effort to get him off public property by August has erupted into a tense showdown between city officials and South Florida’s production industry.

Westen (played by Jeffrey Donovan) stars in Burn Notice, the hit USA cable series that Fox Television Studios films in the city-owned Coconut Grove Convention Center. Though Miami plans to demolish the expo for a waterfront park, city commissioners agreed to let Burn Notice film a third season there in 2009.

The dramatic tension comes in the details: City Manager Pete Hernandez’s staff proposed Burn Notice vacate the facility by July 31. Fox says it needs the facility through September in order to shoot all 16 episodes of Westen’s escapades as an ex-spy marooned in Miami.

So there is a successful television series filmed in Miami with all the good publicity that goes along with that, and the City Manager wants them out ASAP in order to demolish the area and turn it into a park.

The first words that came to mind, predictably, was wondering about what kind of dumbasses invest public offices in Miami. Then I started wondering about kickbacks that may be involved between city management staff and developers.

According to the article, the production has 110 employees and has spent $25 million in Florida since beginning filming in 2007. If Miami doesn’t want the jobs, money, or publicity, I’m sure there are plenty of other cities that are not too proud to host a television series.

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Jacksonville Unemployment Rate Rises Slightly in October

November 21, 2008 · Filed under life in Florida

From Jacksonville.com:

Jacksonville’s unemployment rate rose in October, with just about every sector of the local economy recording job losses over the past year.
The unemployment rate in the Jacksonville metropolitan area — consisting of Duval, Baker, Clay, Nassau and St. Johns counties — rose from 6.4 percent in September to 6.6 percent last month, the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation reported today. The area’s jobless rate has held between 6.4 percent and 6.7 percent for the last four months.

The state labor agency also said that Jacksonville area employers have cut their payrolls by a net total of 9,300 between October 2007 and October 2008, a 1.5 percent decline.

I believe that that Nassau county unemployment rate is slightly lower than 6.7%, and the Jacksonville’s rate is actually slightly higher. If you are unemployed, this is a great time to start that business you always dreamed of! Er, uh, unless it entails shoveling huge loads of borrowed cash into the bank accounts of property managers, Porsche dealerships, and high-end catering firms until such time as “the business” actually turns a profit, if ever. Not a good time for that.

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