Kool Aid Chuggers Part II: The Conspiracy Theorists....

It is oftentimes fascinating and simultaneously sad to watch the lengths some will go to in order to try to validate invalid, non-existent ideas, concepts and theories

After spending a relaxing weekend--playing tennis, going to the beach, spending time with my wife and family, eating downtown, and catching up on some work around the house--I wake up this morning early to find there are some conspiracy theorists hard at work cooking up new theories and conspiracies to consume their lives and their very existences.

As I discussed in part I about some folks who just walk around aimlessly regurgitating talking points, like parrots, there appears to be a new breed of Kool Aid Chugger arriving on the scene:  The Conspiracy Theorist!  Like the "talking point regurgitators" (who like Kool Aid Chugging Parrots are also Cavity Nesters)sometimes they just hear something, do no study at all, then run with it.  This often times ends like the Red Bull Flying Contraption contests we've all seen on YouTube.

Everything is a conspiracy, everything MUST have an ulterior motive, nobody is good (except our guy that we love) and anything person "X"  does = BAD! (Person X being anybody the conspiracy theorist does not like)

LOL--these guys are a hoot.

Here's the thing about conspiracy theorists though:  They are, if nothing else, entertaining to watch.

The really amusing thing to witness is when the conspiracy theorist is manipulated like a claymation "little monster", into doing the bidding of someone else.  This is great.

Some of these conspiracy theorists are manipulated by folks much smarter than they are, into believing in OUTLANDISH things like.....:

1.The Loch Ness Monster esxists
2. Ancient Alien Astronauts are documented on cave paintings
3. The Movie Capricorn One is based upon a True Story
4. Steve Austin was a real air force test pilot that got a rebuilt body
5. Bigfoot is Real
6. The Pleadians live on the Zeta Reticuli

Yes, This Would Be Like That...

In a blog entry I posted last week, I asked a hypothetical (and real) question.

Everybody knows it was immoral, unethical, and illegal to use a $1.00 Food Stamp Bill to go to a store and buy a $.07 cent pack of kool aid, keeping the $.93 cents, and then repeating the process over and over until you cobbled enough money in change to buy what you really wanted (cigarettes and alcohol) but what you could not purchase with food stamps.  I saw people do this as a bagger when I worked at a local supermarket here in Pensacola in the 1980s.  It was ridiculous but nobody stopped the practice so it continued.....

But what about a county using LOST funding to purchase a property for "economic development" purposes (specifically allowed under statute)--and then subsequently selling such a property and depositing the proceeds not back into the LOST fund (where uses are restricted) but to the general fund instead(which has more flexibility with respect to what can be purchased/how the funds can be utilized)?  Nobody seemed to know for sure.

So I asked the question on Sunday--in writing.   Now we have the answer, (see below).  As I suspected, this shell game scheme  cannot be done.  Proceeds realized from the sale of property acquired with LOST funds must be deposited back into the same LOST fund from which such purchase funding originated.  So to the developer that thinks we should sell the OLF 8 property for "what we have in it and use the money to take care of operating expenses"--as I told you in person Friday, that is not legal.  see below.

Wouldn't This be Kind of Like That?

Of course it wasn't right and it wasn't  legal for people to purchase $.07 cent Kool Aid packs with $1.00 food stamps in order to cobble together enough change to buy alcohol and cigarettes........

There is now, officially, a movement afoot to pressure the Escambia Board of County Commissioners to "sell" the property in Beulah known as OLF 8 to the "private market" for "development....

Forget the fact that we do not even own it yet.  

Forget the fact that the plan from day one has been to develop that property to create jobs (good paying, high-tech manufacturing and assembly jobs).  

Forget the Restore Act Grant and the Triumph Grant that if pursued and won (The OLF 8 Commerce Park was the #1 Economic Development project as rated by the Restore Act Committee) would exponentially increase the value of that property (by injecting $Millions of dollars into the construction of infrastructure on that land) for the Escambia County taxpayers who have paid the bill to work toward acquiring that property.

Forget all of that.  

Now, all that matters is that this property be sold to the highest bidder so someone can double, triple, or quadruple what they spend for this and build more condos, townhomes, a private park,  single family homes, a giant parking lot, and a large open-space buffer-zone and low-wage service jobs on this site. ( we already have enough town homes and condos and single-family homes being built in Beulah--we have enough.  We also already have enough dead-end, low wage service sector jobs in Escambia County as well---we can do better!)

The logic goes a little something like this (paraphrased below), according to one developer with whom I recently spoke.

“Why don’t you sell the land for what you have in it, and let the private sector develop it, and you can use the proceeds to help with your budget problem over the next several years?”   

But wait a minute--would this even be legal?  I believe, even if we were to countenance the nonsense idea of selling the property outright, once we acquire it, for "what we have in it plus a dollar"--I believe those proceeds would have to go right back into our LOST fund--because that is where the money to acquire that property came from in the first place.  So I asked the question.  And I got a nebulous confirmation back that I am probably right about this.  

I mean, just imagine if counties around the state could sell property acquired by LOST funds and then subsequently dump those funds back into their respective general funds?!?could this not become a shell game that counties around the state could play when financial times get tough by “entering” the private real estate markets locally, purchasing “needed” buildings and property with LOST monies, and then turning around and “declaring surplus” and selling the same properties on the market (regardless of profit or loss—even if the sale price back was $.50 cents on the dollar) to generate desperately needed money for their respective general funds? 

To me this would be a shell game, and I can't imagine it would be legal.  As a matter of fact, it reminds me of what I witnessed back in the 1980's working as a bagger at a locally-owned supermarket chain here in Pensacola.  Parents would send their kids into the store, one at a time, over and over, with $1.00 dollar food stamp bills and they would purchase $.07 cent "kool aid" packs---and they would receive the change back in 

If you buy $.07 cent kool aid packets with $1.00 Bill Food Stamp coupons, you receive $.93 cents in change back in real money currency that can be used to purchase anything---that's why people did it--even though it wasn't right....

regular coin currency.  And they would do this over and over, until eventually the parent would come in and purchase a carton of Doral or Newport Cigarettes and a 12 pack of Bush--- all with loose change.  It was wrong, but it happened.  They

Kool Aid Chuggers....

Some People Love to Chug Kool Aid--even if it makes them look foolish to do so....

Some people are true believers, they love to chug the Kool Aid.  In fact, they love the Kool Aid so much they shotgun it by the pitcher like frenzied spring-breakers shotgunning  canned-beer at the beach in six-tubed bongzillas....

Some of these folks, had they been around in 1978, would have rushed to the front to chug the Kool Aid in Jonestown.  They would have knocked Jim Jones out of the way and said "Me First!"

These are the Kool Aid Chuggers.  

Chuggers are simpletons that are gullible, believe the propaganda they are fed, and spew out talking

from wikipedia "The vast majority

of parrots are cavity nesters" human parrots 

share this characteristic.

points based upon their flawed notion of reality--- as if what they have to say is somehow coherent at all, or that it is meaningful in any way. Sometimes chuggers know what they say is rubbish, but they say it anyway just because they can.  Sometimes these chuggers can't comprehend the reality of anything so they just regurgitate talking points like a squawking, annoying Parrot sitting in a cage.  Nobody really cares about what the Kool Aid chuggers think, though.  Nobody takes them seriously because people that know can spot them fast.  They are just amusing to watch in their folly and ridiculousness.

Take for example the guy I discussed in a previous entry to this blog.  He talks a lot about how he makes no money, gets no raises, thinks nobody wants him to get raises, etc. etc.  To hear it from this guy, you'd almost think he is on food stamps, working weekends at the Flea Market selling apples from a cart, buying his clothes at the second-hand rummage shop, and eating from the soup kitchen on skid row!  But wait!!, lo and behold, I come across his W-2s for the last several years and what do you know---he has clocked an average of  a 10% year over year pay increase for each of the last three years in a row!  10% per year!!!  (Who in the world would realize ten percent pay increases, year over year, for multiple years running in a string, and then beyatch about someone who got a 4% raise once in three years?  Who the hell would do this?!?, Well the answer is-- a Kool Aid chugger would!

But now I'm told that this same individual is "upset" because other constitutional officers (like his boss the sheriff) received raises totaling a little over 4% this year.  Okay, I'm not Einstein, but here's a quiz:   What is a better pay increase...4% or 10%?  Doesn't take a genius to work that one out, unless you are a Kool Aid Chugger going through life with blinders on like a horse at the racetrack running around in circles forever.....

So again, to refresh this Kool Aid guzzler's memory, here was his pay for the last several years:  Put down the Kool Aid and pay attention:

2014

$40,420.66  (total compensation paid excluding side work which is accounted for via 1099 form that is provided by any private company that pays off-duty wages)

2015

$45,665.39  (total compensation paid excluding side work which is accounted for via 1099 form that is provided by any private company that pays off-duty wages)

2016

$49,884.67   (total compensation paid excluding side work which is accounted for via 1099 form that is provided by any private company that pays off-duty wages)

So yes, this guy clocked increases of 10% per year over the last several years ( I do not have his latest W-2 yet, for 2017)

Okay, now here is where the chugger (and fellow travelers, uh, I mean chuggers) must  pay attention--here are the BCC pay increase percentages over the last three years, and the sheriff's pay increases over the last three years (which, by the way neither the sheriff nor the BCC has any control over--these salaries are set by the state.....)

Pay increases Sheriff:                                                 Pay Increases BCC 

2014     $144,171.00                                                   2014    $76,697.00
2015     $144, 521.00  (.028%--approx.)                       2015    $76,960.00   (.028%--approx.)
2016     $144,940.00   (.03%---approx.)                        2016    $77,270.00   (.03%---approx.)
2017     $151,139.00   (4.25%--approx.)                       2017    $80,664.00   (4.25%--approx.) 

3 yr. avg increase = (1.436%---approx)                         3 yr. avg increase = (1.436%---approx)

So, I guess if this guy still can't figure out he is clocking much bigger increases year over year than his boss and the rest of the constitutional officers like Commissioners are realizing--maybe there is no helping him.  Although he is entitled to his own opinion--he is not entitled to his own facts because #Factsmatter.