Tag Archives: Broward County Florida

The Technology Is Not Quite Ready For Prime Time

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On Friday, Hot Air posted an article detailing what has happened when municipalities decided to use electric buses. The article reminds us that electric buses do not do well in cold weather and that use of electric school buses in New York State and other northern states left students cold and stranded.

The article reports:

In March, I had a field day posting some of the latest news that had come in on both the urban and school district E-bus experiments. Tragically for the tax dollars involved, and, in some cases, the health, comfort, and well-being of the kiddos on the buses, most were abysmal disappointments and many flat-out disasters.

There were mechanical issues galore, scary fires that thankfully erupted in unoccupied vehicles but consumed the fleet in some cases, and maintenance/parts problems arising from bankrupt bus manufacturers that seemed insurmountable.

Tellingly, data was also now available from some of the school districts that had first adopted the E-buses, and the promised affordability was nowhere to be found. This was causing considerable consternation.

…This is with the Naples (NY) School District running only two electric school buses, both of which had initially paid for by federal grants, etc.

36 cents per mile for diesel and $3.18 per mile for electric

The article concludes with an example of this mess from Florida:

Local 10 News has learned that because federal grant money funded a significant portion of the electric bus fleets in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, there are federal guidelines tied to how long those buses are expected to remain in service.

If the buses are taken out of service early, counties may have to repay a portion of that federal funding.

That possibility is now driving decisions in both counties in very different ways.

In Broward County,transit officials have formally asked the Federal Transit Administration for forgiveness in an effort to avoid paying that money back.

“And so one of the things that we are, the application that we submitted to the FTA is for us to be able to get forgiveness from them so that we do not have to reimburse them for the funds that they have provided to us and also to be able to dispose of them,” said Coree Cuff Lonergan, CEO and general manager of Broward County Transit.

In Miami-Dade County, leaders are taking a different approach.

Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is still trying to find a way to get the buses back on the road.

“We are still hopeful we can still put them into service. The company that is the successor company is not able to give us the level of service we need,” she said.

…I think they need to scrounge up a new mayor, but that’s just me.

How much money did this electric boondoggle cost taxpayers?

Opposing Honest Elections

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It kind of makes me wonder what in the world is going on when I see someone opposing a voter integrity group. Does the group oppose the idea of honest elections?

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about group that is opposing voter integrity lawsuits. Oddly enough, one of the leaders of the group is Senator Elizabeth Warren‘s daughter. The group is funded by George Soros.

The article reports:

Demos, a New York City-based progressive public policy organization, is assisting unions in pushing back against election lawsuits filed in North Carolina and Florida. The group is also writing letters of interest in another lawsuit in Pennsylvania. Amelia Warren Tyagi, Warren’s daughter, chairs the board of Demos.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an Indiana-based legal group that litigates to protect election integrity, filed a lawsuit against Wake County, N.C., on behalf of Voter Integrity Project NC, a research organization dedicated to fair elections, after the county had failed to accurately maintain their voter rolls.

…”According to publicly-available data, Wake County has more registered voters on the rolls eligible to cast a ballot than it has citizens who are alive,” PILF wrote. “The complaint states that ‘voter rolls maintained by the Defendant for Wake County contain or have contained more registrants than eligible voting-age citizens. The number of registrants in Wake County, North Carolina has been over 100 percent of eligible voting-age citizens.”

A motion to dismiss the lawsuit was filed February 21 by the Wake County Board of Elections and three attorneys. Senior U.S. Judge W. Earl Britt ruled in favor of the Voter Integrity Project and denied the request.

Cameron Bell, a legal fellow at Demos, is assisting the attorneys on the case. One of the main goals of Demos is to reduce the role of money in politics and to guarantee “the freedom to vote,” according to its website. Demos received hundreds of thousands in funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

Individuals from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a progressive nonprofit in North Carolina, are also assisting on the lawsuit. The Southern Coalition for Social Justice has also received funding from Soros.

I will admit to being a fairly simple person, but it seems to me that if a county has more registered voters than it has live citizens, there might be a problem with the voter rolls. It would also be interesting to know what the percentage of actual voters was. I would like to note that in the 2016 presidential election, the early voting turnout in Wake County broke all previous records (story here). Since most voter fraud occurs in early voting and same-day registration, that is an interesting statistic.

The article further reports:

Broward County (Florida), like Wake County, has more registered voters on their rolls than the number of eligible citizens who can vote in 2014, PILF said.

Cameron Bell, the Demos attorney who is involved in North Carolina, also interjected in Broward County. In addition to Bell, Scott Novakowski and Stuart C. Naifeh, counsel from Demos, are involved in Florida.

Individuals from Project Vote, a nonprofit that formerly teamed up with the scandal-plagued and now defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), are also in Broward County.

Demos and Project Vote additionally wrote amici in a Philadelphia lawsuit but has not intervened.

“Just like when leftist financiers tried and failed to block voter ID laws from coast to coast, the checkbooks are open again to preserve the status quo were poor record maintenance is concerned,” Logan Churchwell, PILF’s spokesman, told the Washington Free Beacon. “When you view vulnerability as currency, it must come natural to want to protect not only the weaknesses in a system, but the actors who exacerbate them.”

Democrats have scrambled to build up a massive network to counter voter integrity efforts after Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

Voters are disenfranchised when there is voter fraud. It is time for Americans to take action to protect the integrity of their elections. Voter ID laws are needed. When an area reports 105 percent turnout, there is a problem.

Inviting The Fox Into The Hen House

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is not a friend of America. The group was created in 1994 and has been named by the US government a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas.

Front Page Magazine posted an article today about Nezar Hamze, the head of the Florida chapter of CAIR, who is also a Deputy at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

The article reports:

CAIR-Florida reflects the same violent extremism of its parent organization. In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas,” “Let’s go Hamas,” and “Hamas kicked your ass.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, wrote in Arabic, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”

CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly has referred to Hezbollah as “basically a resistance movement” and “absolutely not a terrorist organization” and, in August 2014, tweeted, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God…” In December 2010, CAIR-Florida CEO and Statewide Regional Operations Director Nezar Hamze repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas, when given numerous chances to do so, stating “I’m not denouncing anybody. I’m not getting involved in the politics.”

Today, apart from his full-time roles with CAIR, Hamze is a full-time Deputy at the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO). He was referred for the job by Scott Israel, the current Sheriff, who calls Hamze his “friend.” Israel hired Hamze against the advice of all three BSO Majors who had evaluated Hamze during the hiring process. In May 2013, they unanimously signed a form stating, “At this time, I do not recommend Officer Hamze for employment…” Hamze was found to be lying on his polygraph exam about “use of illegal drugs” and about “buying illegal drugs.”

Why was this man hired? Please follow the link above to read the entire article–this man is not working for the safety of the citizens of Broward County.

Voter Fraud Or Incompetence ?

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Unfortunately, election fraud has become a fact in America. The hope is that there is not enough of it to change the results of an election. It is time for America to institute either voter identification or the purple finger used in Iraq.

PJ Media reported yesterday that nearly 1,000 uncounted ballots have been found in a warehouse in Broward County, Florida.

The article reports:

…963 filled ballots were found in a warehouse. The supervisor of elections, Dr. Brenda Snipes, said this happens all the time, especially when dealing with paper ballots. Her department is not the only one to have seen more ballots added to the final number after the election, and they have until Nov. 18 to certify all the votes.

In accounting, there is a concept called an ‘audit trail.’ Shouldn’t ballots be treated with equal respect? We need to know who has custody of every ballot from the time that it is cast.

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