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Coral Gables Candidate Forum–Real Questions or Political Pablum

December 28, 2010 Leave a comment

The Ponce Business Association has announced a series of candidate forums before the coming April elections for two commissioners and mayor.

I reproduce their invitation, as follows:

The Ponce Business Association is sponsoring three Candidate Forums (one for each seat) for the upcoming Coral Gables City Commission election that will be held on April 12, 2011.

Our first Forum will be for the Commission Seat of Mayor (Group 1) and will be held at the Coral Gables Congregational Church on January 18, 2011at 7:00 pm. The moderator will be CBS4 news anchor Eliott Rodriguez. The Forum for Seats 4 and 5 will be held in February and March.

Seating is limited. Please reply to this message with your RSVP to poncebusiness@gmail.com

Question: Will this be an forum in which the candidates answer open questions from the audience? Will there be a period in which the candidates question each other or participate in a debate?

Comment: If these forums follow the model of some of the candidate forums I have attended in Coral Gables in the past, the events may turn into a useless exercise in which the candidates make unchallenged ambiguous statements of intention.

Let’s hope that this is not the case.

Filed under Coral Gables, Politics

Children and Poverty

December 28, 2010 Leave a comment

As one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, we are grossly negligent about our children living in poverty. I have no idea the number of children living in the poverty in Coral Gables. Is anyone concerned about poverty in Coral Gables–I have certainly never heard a word about this issue from our town fathers and mothers.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 42 percent of American children live in low-income homes and about a fifth live in poverty. It gets worse. The number of children living in poverty has risen 33 percent since 2000. For perspective, the child population of the country over all increased by only about 3 percent over that time. And, according to a 2007 Unicef report on child poverty, the U.S. ranked last among 24 wealthy countries.

This is a national disgrace.

via Suffer the Little Children – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, Poverty

Obama Revealed as a quasi-Republican Centrist

December 24, 2010 Leave a comment

Decisions of President Obama to assume the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, accept lower estate taxes, reduce social security taxes, approve a minimal 13-month increase in unemployment compensation, maintain Guantanamo to hold people indefinitely without due process, expand the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, all have given the President a quasi-Republican profile.

This should help him in Florida in the 2012 election, no doubt.

Filed under Coral Gables