Bradenton Times News Articles

Lance Armstrong won many cycling races, but now those wins have been stripped away. Armstrong fought off the accusations for years but now admits the wins violated the rules of the sport which made him an icon. The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which oversees anti-doping programs for U.S. Olympic, Paralympic, Pan-American and ParaPan American sport, has gone so far as to strip away those wins, while sponsors withdrew their support for this famous, larger than life cycling icon. We can only wish our political system would have a similar system of stripping those who win at any cost, including misrepresentations, violating laws and political corruption.

Americans seem to love feigning shock any time we are “betrayed” by those we worship, and the media is always willing to sensationalize a story that offers elements of corruption and deceit. But from Lance Armstrong to Major League Baseball to the crooks on Wall Street who nearly took down the global economy, evidence abounds that we live in a culture of cheating where the rewards for skirting the rules vastly outweigh the punishments for getting caught. It’s time to stop blaming the people we enable and take a look at our collective role in creating such an unethical society.

It appears that there is now clear evidence of what everyone who followed the once-in-a-decade state legislative redistricting process already knew: despite a new constitutional amendment forbidding legislators from basing boundaries on political calculations, that is exactly what they did. What’s more, the audaciously brazen manner in which they disregarded the will of their constituents demonstrates a complete disregard for the democratic process that must be meaningfully corrected.

I am starting to feel like there may be light at the end of the tunnel for our mess with the Manatee County educational system. The so-called accounting expert of a superintendent was allowed to resign (he should have been fired with all he messed up). The superintendent's support system will soon be retired. We have three School Board members now who question what is being presented. I have seen in the past where items were voted to pass 3 to 2 in the opposite direction of what was needed. Items were passed that were incomplete, that didn't have adequate time to evaluate and etc.

With the way Manatee schools operate, we should call it Manatee Government schools instead of public schools. Let me explain. When the Federal or State governments give incorrect financial reporting they might go back and change it, but not Manatee Government School District. Their first line of defense would be that it's a computer error, and if that didn’t work, there would be dead silence and still no corrections. Just ask the Florida State Auditor General.

Amidst all the turmoil in the school district, there is a shining light that should not be overlooked in the surrounding chaos. The high school academies were presented awards by the Adult, Career and Technical Education Department at the most recent School Board Meeting. This was a joint effort by both the teachers and the students to earn nationally recognized industry certifications. There are over 200 industry certifications available in career fields such as medical, business, engineering, construction, agriculture, culinary, communications and more.

Republicans put a full court press on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice that ultimately squashed plans to appoint her as Secretary of State. They have also waged an unprecedented campaign against Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense Secretary, based on perceptions of whether or not he'll be hawkish enough in the Middle East. But if they want to find fault in nominations to key positions which are likely to gain real traction with average Americans, there are much better battles to be fought.

How Will We Grow? A Conversation With The Community is a 190-page staff report, analyzing, what it says to be, alternative growth plans for Manatee County. The premise is: keep doing what we're doing and we'll keep getting what we've gotten -- and that would be, sprawl, sprawl, sprawl. The important question is: who is responsible for that?

At Tuesday's BOCC meeting, no one disputed that Ed Hunzeker performed his duties as county administrator competently, or that the county wasn't in a better place than many others that have also had to wind down budgets in the face of declining revenues. But it wasn't a question of whether he should be kept on. The board was voting on whether to significantly increase Hunzeker's compensation package, stuffing it full of lucrative benefits at taxpayer expense, while setting dangerous precedents for future administrative-level employees. In that regard, they failed to make an adequate case, in part because the board's chair was not even honest with the public about the proposal.

Programs like DROP were designed to provide a path for younger, and presumably cheaper, public employees to move up, while those who had become eligible for a retirement pension were given a sweetener in order to clear the way. In theory, there are multiple benefits to such policies in an economy that suffers from overcapacity and the high unemployment it helps to promote. But in Florida, it has too often been used to pad paychecks for the well-connected at the expense of the taxpayer. Cash-strapped governments should think long and hard about spending extra taxpayer money to keep retirement-eligible employees on the public payroll.