Category: Politics

The campaign of James Ryan O’Hara issued a Community Vision Report.
O’Hara is running for State Representative for the newly drawn District 81. The only other candidate is Steve Perman, as far as we know.
We hope that other candidates will provide us with updates over the next several months.

About 50 people attended for a West Boca Chamber breakfast meeting. Upcoming chamber events include a Women in Business luncheon (men apparently not welcome) on May 16th at Boca Greens Country Club, and an After Hours Networking event at the Jimmy the Greek Taverna on May 24th at 5:30 pm. Also notable is the October 5th golf tournament to be held starting at 1 pm at Boca Greens.

Judges Ron Alvarez and James Martz led the pledge of allegiance. Both are running for reelection in August. Apparently someone doesn’t like Judge Martz, but we suspect that’s just sour grapes. Alvarez has some competition for his seat, according to WPTV, but the last name Goodman isn’t going to help at the moment. For more on the judicial race, see this article in the Palm Beach Post.
Attendees introduced themselves to the room, describing briefly what they do. The attendees were a wide array including attorneys (many attorneys), accountants, insurance, investment and real estate professionals, candidates, contractors and so on.
Next meeting will have meteorologist Kate Parker. I did not hear the date and it’s not on their website.
Capt. Eisenberg reports an increase in car break-ins and residential burglaries.
Don’t leave anything in your car. The criminals seem to target shopping plazas during the day and your driveway at night.
Put your alarm on during the day. This appears to be a quasi-professional organized effort going on all over South Florida. Call the police if you see something suspicious.
Rep. Steve Perman spoke about the state legislature. He described four major issues during the past session, including the budget, redistricting, destination gambling, and insurance reform.
The new District 81 will be entirely within Palm Beach County, mostly west.
Destination Gambling: Perman discussed the pros and cons. The proposal did not have enough support and was withdrawn.
Budget: State budgeting now tends to push costs down to the counties.
Perman opposes cuts to education, including taking $350 million from Bright Futures.
Insurance Reform: Citizens Insurance program is oversubscribed. Private carriers leaving Florida. Majority solution was to move people into “surplus lines” that are based in other states, using an opt-out approach. Opposition wanted opt-in. The measure did not go through.
Perman suggests encouraging carriers in other places to do business here but wasn’t completely clear how that would work.
Change in PIP. Reduction in PIP benefits for most claimants from $10K to $2500. Turns on whether patient seeks emergent care, not including chiropractors (Perman is a chiropractor), podiatrists and a couple other fields. The part that reduces premiums was removed.
Your correspondent asked: Would you cut spending or raise taxes?
Perman criticized a corporate tax deduction for contributions to private schools. He later admitted this would not be enough money to cover the amount he wants to spend.
He spoke at length about philosophy but did not answer the question of where he would cut or where he would add taxes.
He spoke philosophically asserted that government services are more transparent and accountable than private services (like schools). A couple attendees groaned in disagreement.
There was a good discussion about the negative effect of testing on the schools. Perman blamed the GOP supermajority and at least one audience member blamed Gov. Scott.
Perman stuck around after his talk and engaged in conversation with attendees. He was personable and pleasant. While he did not have great answers for questions about the budget, few Republican candidates provide adequate answers.
Paul Tocker is running for County Commission, District 5. He is strongly supportive of the Inspector General and feels the Democrats are not supporting this key effort for ethics and accountability. He pointed to evidence that Democrat insiders have been trying to use their influence improperly, such as this story in the Palm Beach Post. In the article the current commissioner, Burt Aaronson “said he has ‘always supported a system where we don’t go against sitting judges.'” This is a disturbing attitude, since it denies the whole point of having elections. It also appears dishonest, since the article continues: “For months before McAuliffe resigned, Aronberg had planned to challenge him in the Democratic primary with the backing of Aaronson and other prominent political figures.”

Reminder – West Boca Chamber breakfast tomorrow, 7:30 am at Boca Greens.

I attended the Palm Beach County Tea Party event last night at the Boca Greens Clubhouse. There were at least 100 and possibly 150 people (I counted 15 tables with 8-10 people each, plus some sitting in the back).
The featured speaker was Blaise Ingoglia of Government Gone Wild. His GGW Seminars YouTube channel has over 6.6 million video views. He led off with a joke about nativity scenes being banned in Washington DC because they can’t find three wise men or a virgin.

If information is power, Ingoglia is very powerful. He explained in simple terms the staggering debt our country faces. This includes not only the national debt of roughly $16 Trillion, but also unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare totaling some $118 Trillion. When you add all our debt and unfunded liabilities together it works out to over $1 million per family. The cost of interest payments is quickly overwhelming our federal budget.
His biggest video is below:

Our debt is expanding “very, very, very rapidly,” and he described President Obama’s cuts as reducing that to “very, very rapidly.” In the subsequent Q&A he conceded that the budget proposals from Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney only reduce this to “very rapidly.”
Ingoglia warned that we are facing a serious risk of high inflation or even hyperinflation. He expressed concern about the growing share of the population that is dependent on the federal government, with figures like:

• 41% of live births are paid for by the government
• 60% of senior care is paid for by government
• 1/3 of the population is on programs like welfare, Medicaid and food stamps, now renamed SNAP to reduce stigma.
• 144 million people do not pay a dime in federal income tax – “no skin in the game”

–Update: Prompted by a friend who asked about whether all these numbers are accurate, I did a little checking. Most are at least in the ballpark. The “unfunded liabilities” number is tough to verify. See this Heritage Foundation report for some info, but also see support for Ingoglia at Enlightened Economics—

He said that the Obama administration is paying consultants to market government programs in order to get more people on them. This creates a culture of dependency that makes it harder to reduce government.
For the comedy portion of his routine, Ingoglia advocated term limits – “for Democrats”. He said he supports Cap and Trade – capping Obama at one term and trading him for a 5th round draft pick.
Ingoglia described 2012 as the biggest election in the history of our nation, with a well-received point about Obama appointing another one or two Supreme Court Justices.
The Q&A session was a lengthy and odd moment. Despite the efforts of the moderator to focus on questions relevant to the talk, a number of audience members spoke up about topics that had absolutely nothing to do with it. For example one brought up a recent incident involving fake eviction notices at FAU.
Another question/comment complained about the “liberal media” which was a popular sentiment. Ingoglia had a pretty good response: “Don’t read, don’t buy, don’t click” – that you can punish the media you don’t like by not supporting them. When you read their publications you help them increase their revenue from advertising.
The Q&A did show that the Tea Party movement is diverse – people have a wide variety of reasons for hating President Obama.
Alex Berry, one of the co-founders and coordinator of the Boca chapter, started off the event stressing that the Tea Party message is “Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government, Free Markets”. He made an interesting and somewhat lighthearted comparison between the personal history of President Obama and a historical figure who is not currently popular, and also pointed out the political history of the use of the word “Forward” as a political slogan.
Pam Wohlschlegel spoke next. She is also a co-founder and the current county chair. She spoke about the national Tea Party Patriots, and their big effort at the moment to educate people about the upcoming recall election in Wisconsin. She also mentioned a couple of groups that are becoming more active in the area, including Americans for Prosperity which is setting up some phone banking.

Berry spoke again to mention some upcoming events of interest to the audience (and hopefully to our readers):
The Italian-American Heritage Society of Boca Raton will have a Memorial Day Picnic on May 28th from noon to six at St. Jude’s, 21689 Toledo Road.
The American Jewish Committee has an event on May 10th cosponsored by the ADL and B’nai Torah. However, I was not able to find more details on the event.
The Republican Jewish Coalition will have a fundraiser for Adam Hasner on May 23rd. Again we could not find full details but there is a luncheon the same day with Allen West through the Republican Club of the Palm Beaches, so it might be related to that.
A few candidates were present for the event, including Geoff Sommers who is running for State Senate, Joe Talley who is running for Sheriff, and James Ryan O’Hara who is running for State Representative.
Candidates were allowed to introduce themselves but not to make campaign speeches nor deliver campaign literature within the event. The organizers stressed that the group does not support particular candidates or parties.