Ben Kirby - page 5

With the exception of tanking approval ratings for the GOP, and increasing frustration with the government shutdown, nothing really changed in Washington, DC last week. No laws were passed, no important national policies enacted, no critical debates about the direction of the world’s most powerful nation. With the exception of the nomination of Janet Yellen to chair the Federal Reserve Bank, and the continued marginalization and rightful villainization of Senator Ted Cruz, everything in DC was very, very quiet. Here…

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In 2008, my friend Jason and I engaged in a little friendly electoral wager. For whatever it is worth, he beat me quite soundly in nearly every category. What lead to that friendly online series of predictions on my old blog was a robust conversation about politics, and, interestingly, the potential break-up of the Republican Party. It seems easy to say we thought of this now, but remember: our conversation happened before the rise of the tea party lunacy. Even more…

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I have a unified theory about politics in Pinellas County: nothing matters until Congressman Bill Young retires. And guess what? Today, that theory was proven true by no less than the Tampa Bay Times with the image on their front page rotater just hours after Young announced his retirement, with a link to the Adam Smith piece, The Race to Succeed Young.  Ten people in that picture — five Democrats, five Republicans — none of them, it should be noted, current announced…

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The Rays went to Boston and took a beating tonight in Game 1 of the ALDS against the unbearable Red Sox, 12-2.  But some of the baseball excitement could be found in Tallahassee, of all places, where Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn struck out in front of the Economic Club of Florida in a speech. “We’re all Rays fans at this point,” he said. “They may physically reside in St. Petersburg, at least for a little while, but we all share…

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Anna Phillips at the Tampa Bay Times reports that the number of homeless in Pinellas County is around 7,000, higher than the last count in 2011 which reported 5,887 homeless. But don’t take those numbers to the bank. Even Sarah Snyder, the executive director of the Homeless Leadership Board, which oversaw the count, said the number could be as high as 23,000.  I am not sure what the point of a homeless count is if the number that you count could actually…

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All eyes are on Republican House Speaker John Boehner, which may be the point of this whole mess.  Indeed, there is no question that Boehner is in the driver’s seat of the shutdown, for a couple of reasons. First, he has clearly chained his entire party ideology to the vocal minority in the House of Representatives driving the shutdown. Vulnerable and centrist Republicans in Congress are already doing everything they can to signal a cry for help: their Speaker is…

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As he embarked on his campaign to be mayor of the fourth largest city in Florida, an early critique of Rick Kriseman was that he lacked specifics. Yes, he talked about having a “vision” and the “potential” of the City of St. Petersburg. But what is the plan, complained the media and political watchers. No longer will they need to ask. Today, at Seminole Park in Historic Kenwood, we got the first real glimpse of what a Kriseman Administration would…

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