June 22nd, 2009
NSBShadow.com....
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1. DIFFERENT WEBSITE
We believe that slick (bought from Blogger) is the description of a website primarily devoted it appears to anti-growth and environmental concerns of unknown sponsors. There are sections that suggest it is replacing the Daytona Beach Journal for some local issues. It is stated to be run by a real live mom. It supports one position on the political spectrum and it would be only fair to the readers to publish who is its sponsor. We originally thought the Observer had a website, but admit we would only be speculating. Nothing wrong with the position except you do not know who is publishing it.
2. CORRECTION: AD HOMINEM; WIKIPEDIA
Ad hominem argument is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.
Other common subtypes of the ad hominem include the ad hominem circumstantial, or ad hominem circumstantiae, an attack which is directed at the circumstances or situation of the arguer; and the ad hominem tu quoque, which objects to an argument by characterizing the arguer as acting or arguing in accordance with the view that he is arguing against.
Ad hominem arguments are always invalid in syllogistic logic, since the truth value of premises is taken as given, and the validity of a logical inference is independent of the source making the inference. However, ad hominem arguments are rarely presented as formal syllogisms, and their assessment lies in the domain of informal logic and the theory of evidence.[1] The theory of evidence depends to a large degree on assessments of the credibility of witnesses, including eyewitness evidence and expert witness evidence. Evidence that a purported eyewitness is unreliable, or has a motive for lying, or that a purported expert witness lacks the claimed expertise can play a major role in making judgements from evidence.
Argumentum ad hominem is the inverse of argumentum ad verecundiam, in which the arguer bases the truth value of an assertion on the authority of the source asserting it. Hence, while an ad hominem argument may make an assertion less compelling, by showing that the source making the assertion does not have the authority it claims, or has made mistaken assertions on similar topics in the past, it cannot provide an infallible counterargument.
An ad hominem fallacy is a genetic fallacy and red herring, and is most often (but not always) an appeal to emotion.
It does not include arguments posed by a source that contradict the source's actions.
“Best Blogs of the Week”
(Edited for grammar and punctuation)
A POTPOURRI OF CITIZEN COMMENTS IS
AGAIN PROVIDED THIS WEEK IN ORDER
FOR YOU TO GET IN TUNE WITH THE
MOOD OF OUR READERS
6/15/2009, 6:05 am
Pescador Chico
It's been one year ago this month that Mayor Sally began the process to address the use of city riverfront property (pocket parks) and nothing has transpired but two public meetings. Oh, plus Commissioner Randy picking a advisory committee to develop policy for the parks and letting them meet outside of the Sunshine Law. Good work Mayor Sally and Randy.
6/16/2009, 12:51 am
karnage
Reply to Dr Phil: Can you not read????...I am a taxpayer (Not an IAFF member NOR a ff) and want all of the waste stopped. And, when City and County administrators are asked for public records and then LIE about it, they have crossed a line and they need to be BOOTED!!!! In Reply to others ref. County Fire Services plans for staffing, etc....there is information on the County's web page showing a Council agenda item #3 as a Mini-budget workshop for the Fire Services group; specifically noted - funding and level of service. Anyone may access that at volusia.org, then access the pull-down menu and highlight the County Council. Once on their page, scroll 1/2 way down and click on the link for Agendas. Chose June 18th meeting date and check it out for yourselves. But, if someone could attend they could get more information...that is, as long as they do not cancel it, as I've seen them do in times past.
6/17/2009, 6:50 pm
Medic
Email: one@aol.comJavascript required
NSBKingfish -
The Director of EVAC's salary is a matter of public record... around 165,000 per year. Not too bad, as that is slightly more than one Fire Chief. Add up all the fire chief's salaries to see what is costs for fire management throughout the county, then compare that to what it costs for EVAC's management. Careful, because pulling numbers out of your a$$ is dangerous.
Second, EVAC and Fire Department is not comparing apples to apples. For starters, it is not about the training. The training and levels of certifications are the same. It's about the quality of care provided, the quality of the equipment, the level of customer service, and the experience. Again, for every patient a fire crew treats, an EVAC crew treats 3-5 times that.
True, EVAC does not perform fire suppression. That is the purpose of a fire department. The point made was that Fire Department's have got out of control with needless growth and wasteful spending. Multi-million dollar stations all over the place, exorbitant salaries, retiring as early at 40 years old with pension. Let's face it, fire departments have taken advantage of every tax payer for decades. Now they are tired of it, and the Fire Departments are doing whatever they can to save jobs.
To little to late
EVAC's financial records are a matter of public record. Perhaps you should examine what is available rather than creating imaginary records.
DEAL1390@aol.com" to postmaster, nsbshadow, me
to postmaster, nsbshadow, meCan any one explain why Flagler Ave. is still covered in sand? Phone calls have been made and politicians have been asked and it continues to be a hazard. The first time someone slips or a bicycle crashes, I'm sure the city will have a lawsuit on their hands. Sat. is bike and bar tour and it will be a miracle if no one falls on that street.
NOTES
1.FIREMAN OUT OF WORK
One of the interesting debates on the Blog is over the fire departments efforts to take over EVAC. The Shadow’s “take” on this discussion is that the fire departments ran out of fire calls to answer years ago and morphed into a an emergency call service for medical calls. The first thing they did was get rid of all of the volunteers because volunteers reduced the need for overtime. None of the four stations in New Smyrna Beach have much work, particularly if you look just at fire calls. Now that even medical calls are diminishing, they need more work because taxpayers see how little they do for the money they receive. Running the ambulance service is the logical place to raid for additional work. Instead, why not close down a fire station or two and assess whether there is any change in either loss of property from fires because of an added few minutes in response time. Medical emergencies would still be handled efficiently by EVAC. Further, there is no showing that lieutenants add one iota to public safety, but they cost we believe hundreds of thousands of dollars for each station—about $200,000 per station.
Another posting stated that the Director of EVAC is paid $165, 000. Another said $215,000 See BLOGs. Given the salary level at Bert Fish where the CEO pulls down $ 250, 000 plus benefits, if either posting is correct, it is not out of line. And remember that the New Smyrna Beach lawyer receives $210,000 a year just in salary.
2. AIRPORT: CITY OWNED FLIGHT SIMULATOR
At an afternoon meeting two weeks ago the Mayor stated that maybe the City should explore buying a half million dollar ($500,000) flight simulator that it would rent to the flight schools. To pay off the bond for this machine they would in all likelihood impose a landing fee. But why should the rest of the general aviation public subsidize buying a machine to partially satisfy the few complainers who moved next door to a functioning air field and complain about the noise? Noise, by the way, that is non-existent according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s preliminary report . The FAA is unlikely to spend, it seems, any more resources to further study the so-called noise complaints. Moreover, a scant 12 miles away Embry-Riddle we are sure has simulators which may be leasable.
The LINK is to a letter written by Chairman of the Friends of NSB Airport, Inc., about a meeting held where the complainers it seems want to hobble all the airports in the County and the Mayor seems to think that is a good idea. All to buy a few votes of those few malcontents who moved to a nuisance and then complain.
DEAR KHALID
As we have stated in the past, we realize that the City Manager is limited in the resources available to him for pursuing cost reduction projects, so we have decided to help him out and provide draft letters for his review. As we have said this will free him up for important things, like dealing with all the serious problems of the police and fire department pensions.
TO: MAYOR MACKAY
From: From: Khalid Reishdat
The Shadow has found out that we spent $7,600+ for a “Citizen Survey” which is a political poll for the Commissioners running for reelection paid for by the taxpayers. This does not include staff time in putting the loaded questions together and amassing the 5,000 telephone numbers. Worse, the Shadow has a copy of the questions and thinks that even an idiot can see it is a loaded push-poll survey designed to get answers you want. It looks like a political scheme by the Commission to justify raising taxes and giving the fireman and police another 2% pay raise on top of their annual increases. Everybody knows that you could ask anyone what services they think are most important and public safety would be on top. For a change, could you own up and say this was your idea. Commissioner Grasty has already stated publically he knew nothing about it. Please, since I signed the contract, I need cover.
Khalid
NEW CITY WEBSITE---$21,000 to $50,000
The Shadow was curious as to why the City purchased the help of a website vendor to change and modify the City website. First we thought the old website was more than adequate. Secondly, we thought that there are a couple of IT employees on the City pay roll who should have been told to learn how to do this type of web building programming. There are certainly a large number specialists in town who are capable. We can think of three off the top of our head, and probably a number of kids over at the high school who are computer geeks.
We asked for the invoices and were told that the fist payment was $20,600. LINK..Since we were told that this was the “first” payment, a month or two later we asked for the rest of the invoices.
Now we are having a problem with figuring out how much this cost. The individual invoices add up to about $26,000 which is a little less than the average taxpayer earns annually in the City. But the bill paid so far on June 10th says $20,600? All we know is that in a year of declining tax revenue they are spending money on pay raises and frivolous ornaments like new web page designs. It does not matter particularly whether it was $21,000 or $50,000, it is too much if it was even a dime.
PUSH-POLL;PUSH-POLL;PUSH-POLL; PUSH-POLL
RAISING TAXES: PUSH-POLL IS IMPROPER IF NOT ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN POLLING BY COMMISIONERS USING YOUR TAX MONEY
Here is the contract and questions asked in the PUSH-POLL paid for out of City funds ($7,600 or $15 per telephone call) to justify raising taxes. Attached is the questionair and contract.LINK They even had the audacity to ask whether you would be satisfied if you paid last year’s tax despite a 21% shortfall in the value of your property. That would be an unconscionable 21% rise in your property taxes. We doubt if more than one or two people asked the question knew they were agreeing to a huge tax increase.
They could have asked you if you thought it right to give annual 2% pay increase to $60,000 plus blue collar workers with high school degrees at the police and fire departments. They could have asked whether the City should ask the Volusia County Sheriff what he would charge to provide the same or better police service (We believe half of what we are currently paying if you look at what he said he would charge Edgewater). Hey, they could also have asked what you thought of increasing the subsidy to the golf crew, or whether the City should receive fair market value for leases of its property.
The Shadow can think of a lot of questions they did not ask as they try to justify using public safety as their wedge phony issue for a huge tax increase. They do not want to run out of money for those $65,000 pensions paid to 46 year old fire department employees 20 years before you can draw a Social Security pension. That is why they used this outrageous PUSH-POLL. It is an election gimmick.
On top of that it is an additional sop to the government employee unions. Use the biased so called “neutral” poll to show that nobody cares how much they continue to pay employees—all in the name of the phony argument that any cut in fire or police pay, pensions or benefits will result in a loss in public safety. As we have stated in the past, post every job for under $35,000 and see how many applicants you receive. You would have to call out the Florida National Guard to keep the crowd in order.
The City passed an Ordinance which sets the final date for filing for office as an elected official between August 10, 2009 and August 19, 2009. The Ordinance of city election changes actually states August 20th, but there is a catch. The Ordinance stated time for filing is before 12 noon. You read it right. Go read it again. Not the close of business but 12 noon. Here it is June 22, 2009 and it was not even posted or noticed on the new expensive website as of June 16th. You would think that if they were amending the Ordinance they would change the time to reflect what is normal. LINK
Mayor Mackay stated that the municipal golf course was operating in the black. Not true. Next week we will publish an analysis of what may turn into another half a million dollar give away. They lost over $500,000 in subsidizing the golf course in 2008, and the “new” membership rate is again almost identical to the one in place in 2008.
Also, they admitted at a meeting last week that the Marine Discovery Center Water Taxi is in the red by at least $55,000. More on this too in a week or two.
RODI AND THE UTILITIES COMMISION COULDN'T
CARE LESS ABOUT THE RATEPAYERS
The following “Blog’ was submitted by ‘NIMBY’
On April 30 2009 the Wall Street Journal a Front Page article was written about a Major Natural Gas Discovery was made in Caddo Parrish La. This was a finding of over 200 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas. That is equivalent to 33 Billion Barrels of Oil or 18 years of current Oil Production. And several Industry Experts say it could be several times larger. Then the Article goes on to state that along with HUGE New Fields discovered in Texas, Arkansas and Pennsylvania Industry backed estimates that the U.S has over 2,200 Trillion cubic feet of Natural Gas waiting to be pumped. I suggest you read this Article as Obama is Very interested using Nat Gas to move away from Coal Fired Power Plants. I am going to include Two Links with this post. One is for the Wall Street Journal and the 2nd for Natural Gas Price. Now for Your edification I am going to take Rodi to task. HE wants this Garbage plant! HE runs down Gas Turbines as Polluters and Gas prices in the future SKY HIGH! WRONG!! Gas Turbines (The LN6000) are used in the State of CA. and That State is VERY SERIOUS about Pollution. Rodi apparently does NOT keep up on Technology. The Garbage Plant is MUST RUN! Full Speed and FULL Load. PERIOD! There is NO In between! Only Stop and Full. A Gas Turbine can adjust for Loading! So when NSB does not require 36MW it goes TO Progress Energy. When NSB needs more it comes FROM P. E. Have we been told the Power required to operate this Plant? NO! That Plasma takes Energy. So just how much is the true output after Parasitic Load? Now think of this. Ever been in a Bad Hurricane? The Plant needs Garbage Every Day. Stop the garbage and Stop the Plant. Not to worry as Progress Energy will sell it to NSB at I am sure is a reasonable Cost. On April 30 2009 the Wall Street Journal a Front Page article was written about a Major Natural Gas Discovery was made in Caddo Parrish La. This was a finding of over 200 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas. That is equivalent to 33 Billion Barrels of Oil or 18 years of current Oil Production. And several Industry Experts say it could be several times larger. Then the Article goes on to state that along with HUGE New Fields discovered in Texas, Arkansas and Pennsylvania Industry backed estimates that the U.S has over 2,200 Trillion cubic feet of Natural Gas waiting to be pumped. I suggest you read this Article as Obama is Very interested using Nat Gas to move away from Coal Fired Power Plants. I am going to include Two Links with this post. One is for the Wall Street Journal and the 2nd for Natural Gas Price. Now for Your edification I am going to take Rodi to task. HE wants this Garbage plant! HE runs down Gas Turbines as Polluters and Gas prices in the future SKY HIGH! WRONG!! Gas Turbines (The LN6000) are used in the State of CA. and That State is VERY SERIOUS about Pollution. Rodi apparently does NOT keep up on Technology. The Garbage Plant is MUST RUN! Full Speed and FULL Load. PERIOD! There is NO In between! Only Stop and Full. A Gas Turbine can adjust for Loading! So when NSB does not require 36, it can be adjusted.
Look at the Orlando Sentinel Article on June 15, 2009 concerning the audit of the City of Longwood. You might note the last paragraph. John Drago is one of the finalists for the City manager of New Smyrna Beach. LINK
