Some more on the ABC coalition

Just got off the phone with coalition spokesperson Melissa Seixas. She says more than 300 people have applied for one of eight slots on Jeff Lyash's coalition. We're still waiting, however, to see if those names will be released.

Comments

[kyle]

Check this out- Great cause, great weekend
http://weekend4ryleigh.blogspot.com/
3 nights at the Tradewinds, Kenny Chesney tickets, dinner, Golf at SPCC, Rays suite for 16, Brunch at the Vinoy, and much more.

[get-smart]

Clear Direction -

Multiple choice:

1. I believe the ABC blog was removed because they don't have enough volunteer time to register and screen the comments.
---
The original intent was have a loaded question to start the comments. The loaded question could only be answered in the affirmative.

2. I believe all the Pollyanna poppycock would be rebutted on this blog which leaves that blog a joke and open to ridicule.
---
After reading some of comments left by some of the blogsters here, I don't blame ABC from backing off on the blog idea. Some blogsters were actually calling the Rays owners carpetbaggers and worse.

One blogster had the audacity to write:

"I cannot see any city spending a billion dollars to enrich these greedy criminal NY Goldman Sacks investment bankers who became wealthy by aiding and abetting the outsourcing of our American jobs to China and now pushing oil to $200/bbl!"

I would like to see the evidence for that statement.

3. I believe the ABC blog will be back once they select the committee.
---
The ABC might be embarrassed into going forward with the blog to prove they are not intimidated by the outside anti force.

-

[since1962]

Jeff and the 'glee club' will need to find A RESPECTED politician willing to broker a financial and location COMPROMISE palatable to voters.

Toytown and MUCH less subsidy than the previously requested bed tax extension....

Any local pols with spine intact willing to 'take a swing'?

[Clear Direction]

Dear since 1962,

I have been told by both City Council Members and County Commissioners, that they were asked to provide non-elected liaisons to the ABC Coalition.

This, in spite of the fact that current elected members of both bodies had expressed interest in serving on the coalition.

The ABC Coalition is to be set up as a group of private citizens who will explore the location and financing options availible and then report their conclusions to the Ray's who will then, with the support of the coalition lobby the govenmental bodies and citizens in order to gain approval for the proposal.

So if you are looking for a politician to broker this stadium deal he or she will have to be out of office and working with 8 other boardmembers.

[Thomas]

Kool Aid, the Super Economist, is counting the Rays payroll as part of the lease.

Thomas: "So we're not talking about how much the Rays pay in player salaries. You specifically said the team would pay 'hundreds of millions of monies' to 'LEASE' the park."

Rick: "Of course that is PRECISELY what I was talking about."

That is the most awful spin job I've seen yet.

The Rays might want to think twice about resigning Crawford. According to Rick, their lease payments will go up if they do!

Really Kool Aid - counting the payroll as part of the lease? Is that the best you can do?

[Cathy Wilson]

To since 1962:

City Council, unless they surrender the right to the Mayor, would be the entity that would appoint citizens to any PUBLIC process involving the Rays, the Trop or Al Lang. I (and several others I know) have already emailed them asking for the process to begin and would ask that everyone else do so as well. Use council@stpete.org

I'm not sure I understand why Julie Weston or the Mayor would have a spin room since they're not the drivers of any public process that would happen. If you have an address, please let us know what it is - maybe we can cc it with whatever we write to City Council... Twofers are always nice when you can do it!!!

[Cathy Wilson]

To since 1962:

City Council, unless they surrender the right to the Mayor, would be the entity that would appoint citizens to any PUBLIC process involving the Rays, the Trop or Al Lang. I (and several others I know) have already emailed them asking for the process to begin and would ask that everyone else do so as well. Use council@stpete.org

I'm not sure I understand why Julie Weston or the Mayor would have a spin room since they're not the drivers of any public process that would happen. If you have an address, please let us know what it is - maybe we can cc it with whatever we write to City Council... Twofers are always nice when you can do it!!!

[Thomas @ 1:25 = Lie]

http://blogs.tampabay.com/ballpark/2008/08/al-lang-off-lim.html#comment-125990186

HaHaHaHa

[Jon McPhee]

Dear Council Members:

It seems pretty clear that a majority of you insiders think a majority of us voters can safely be ignored, or just run over by the eighteen-wheeler labeled "imperial fiat." Of course, the reference is to the MLB subsidy that is hidden behind the curtain at present, just waiting for you to spring it as an "October Surprise," and the trend of "government" as practiced these days. And to various sneaky ploys to further remove your activities from the public eye and from any submission to referendum.

You people were elected BY US to REPRESENT US, not drive us like cattle up the chute to the slaughter house, so you can dine on Prime Rib of Taxpayer every night.

It's patent that you, and the shady body known as "City Staff," work under the notion that cronyism and "boosterism" easily trump your fiduciary duty to ensure the welfare of this city. Slinking along toward dumping a billion dollars of public money into a few already loaded private pockets is not hardly acting for the good of all. I don't care how much condescending and paternalistic sugar-coating about "huge projected future tax revenues and public benefit" you try to slather onto this latest in the string of absurd and failed "grand development visions." You folks are no more Philosopher-Kings-and-Queens than your several predecessors in office.

What does it take to move you off the course you are steering, through the fog you yourselves have generated about fake "ABC Inc." "coalitions," and onto a path that is safe for the future of our entire population? What kind of irrational exuberance, the froth that gave us the dot.com bubble, fills your brains with the notion that gifting huge amounts of public money to the Rays owners, Jabil Circuits, and so many other slick-Willie deals, will help in any way to keep the social and economic and political ship called St. Petersburg afloat in a sea of debt and declining employment and bankruptcies and foreclosures? Do you see these times as just a last chance to feather your own nests, while "the weak" die off; those plain folks who built the foundations on which you now plan to erect your fanciful castles and coliseums?

Do you sit up there, secure and smug in the belief that the best us peasants can do is maybe vote you out of office, long after you do your dirty deeds to us, and institutionalize the notion that you are so steeped in noblesse oblige that whatever cockamamie payola you shell out is, ipso facto, "good for the peasants?" Is it that you feel so much more kindred spirit with a bunch of brandy-snifting, Cuban-smoking, $5,000-suited, Italian-shod "players" than you do with the guy who drives the garbage truck, teaches your community's kids, nurses you through illness and old age, or whips up your $6 latte?

The future will inevitably become the present. Your forebears had the developer spirit, up to a point -- they saw the wisdom in protecting, for example, a parkfront area along the water. Our own
Dear Mayor comes from Chicago, where for over a century the Burnham Plan has counterbalanced the profit urge that otherwise would have long since buried the lakefront under a manmade cliff of high-rise schlock, to where it would look more like NY's East Riverfront than what we benefit from today. You folks sponsored public processes like Vision 2020, that tell you pretty clearly what the community values. Are you going to just blow these off, and tell us we should just "eat cake?"

You are no strangers to lying to the public, to pulling the chair out from under the citizen trying to sit down and rest. Don't pretend that you believe you are acting in everyone's best interest. The "stadium" thing is inarguably a huge gift to people who will take the vast majority of that money right out of the community's pocket, to spiff up their estates in other lands. The average person can't eat the "community spirit" that supposedly will flow from, e.g., paying tribute to an MLB Inc. franchise.

A long-past President warned us all about trying to bribe pirates and corsairs not to strangle our trade with their predations: "Millions for defense, but not one red cent for tribute!" The Rays owners are modern-day buccaneers, hiding behind the smokescreen of "capitalism." Their assault on the community may not be as immediately bloody as those of Henry Morgan and Edward Teach and Anson and such, but it still cleans out the public treasury and impoverishes and even kills those who are unfortunate enough to be counted among the "weak." How's the Health Department's funding these days, and schools and public safety? You have your own notions of public duty, but maybe you need to be reminded that you are responsible to something beside the well-being of insiders and special interests and the Ed Strongarms and their clients. Or is it just that you no longer have any shame, or any memory of the oath of office that you swore?

People are still watching, folks, and waiting.

Sincerely yours,

Jon McPhee
St. Petersburg

[Begging]

please, please, please, Oh God. Please let Jon McPhee actually send that rambling crazy rant to elected officials.

Priceless!

[Jon McPhee]

I'm told the Council members and staff are much more likely to read these blogs than to read their own email (isn't that a "revealing" commentary in its own right,) but I sent this direct first before adding it here.

[Vote for the Rays]

I for one supported the proposed waterfront ballpark!! Let the council not be swayed by BS.

[Jon McPhee]

Vote, which BS are you referring to -- the Rrick BS, the Rays owners' BS. the staff's BS, POWW's BS, the ire of the electorate, or all of the above? You think your flavor of BS is more palatable than anyone else's?

It is GREAT to have a winning baseball team in town, and if you look at salaries, it's a cheap win for the Rays owners. I 'vote for the Rays" -- the PLAYERS -- to continue winning, and playing in the place that many of them have said they actually prefer. I and a lot of other people here don't "vote for the Rays owners" to be given half a billion or a billion dollars of public money, in "tax expenditures" and debt that will be paid off by more taxes, or to lose to a monster "whimsical" structure a piece of the scarce public waterfront.

But hey, that's what makes horse races and political issues. May the best set of exclamation points win!!!!!!

[surfdog pres. ACTMA]

people:

what is so WRONG about keeping our TROP??!!!

how many OTHER stadiums are AIR CONDITIONED??!!!

right now a new stadium would be rained out!!

this A.C. should be a major marketing campaign for the rays and the TROP

[surfdog pres. ACTMA]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kyle]

Check this out- Great cause, great weekend. All proceeds help a 2 1/2 yr. old with her fight with Leukemia.
http://weekend4ryleigh.blogspot.com/
3 nights at the Tradewinds, Kenny Chesney tickets, dinner, Golf at SPCC, Rays suite for 16, Brunch at the Vinoy, and much more.

[New downtown stadium!]

We need a new downtown stadium! The ideal spot is on the water, but a new stadium on the grounds of the Trop would be nice too.

The talk about Toytown and the gateway is silly. There's nothing interesting there and traffic is already horrible.

Let's showcase ST PETE to the world and the Rays are getting lots of national attention.

GO RAYS!!!

[Paul]

We are showcasing St Pete... and no, in case you haven't heard, the majority of us Citizens do not want a waterfront anything. So pack it up, move along, nothing to see here.

[Pella]

I am quite tired of all of the waiting.

Just when are Mr. Jeff, the Chamber, the Mayor, the City Council, the city staff and the Times going to let out their new game plan on baseball in order to fleece us citizens?

Haven't they had enough time to figure out how they are going to get us tax payers to give them a new toy on our waterfront?

I am ready to get this on. Sitting here waiting is not my cup of tea. Flanking movements, activism, information distribution are what I am about.

The Trop is perfect the way it is. The Rays win very well there. No parking problems. No cost to me. No cost to the other tax payers beyond our current obligations. In a few short years the Trop will be paid for and those mortgage dollars can go to some new useful project.

So bring it on already. Let's get this going. What's the hold up?

[Sure]

Pella . . . . Pel . . . . .la!

Pel . . . . . . . .la!

No.

[The Uhurus]

I have it on good authority that the next hurricane is ear-marked for downtown St Pete!
The Police are in cahoots with the people who fix the weather!
The next storm will wipe out the south side to get rid of "problem blacks" and also tear down al lang and the trop ... paving the way for the greedy white man to get his precious stadium ...AT ANY COST

FIGHT THE POWER!

[Jon McPhee]

anyone having trouble sleeping?
just read my ramblings & babblings