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Community Created General
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Written by Ken Caldwell
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Maybe
there is some good news in Bay County's future after all. With this
weeks' election in Cedar Grove to dissolve the city, it may be the
first of the nine dominoes that have to fall to take the county to a
Metropolitan government. Yes, there are concerns about loss of jobs for
soon-to-be former employees, but it seems reasonable to me that as many
as half of those folks will be absorbed into the Bay County government
system. If that is the case, there will be 15 fewer people on the
taxpayers back. Now, if only the other eight little fiefdoms
surrounding Panama City will see fit to dissolve, county taxpayers
could actually save some serious coin, and eliminate the regular news
reports of scandal by community leaders and/or employees. A merger
between Panama City and Bay County, forming a Metropolitan
government is the best and most economical solution for the region. It
is working well for other communities. It could work well for us.
As
we continue to monitor the economic meltdown that has produced the
greatest drop in the DOW ever, there are some names and faces who are
conspicuously absent in the media. That would be the CEO's, CFO's, and
members of the Board of Directors of the affected, and the potentially
affected, financial institutions. Isn't it strange that those folks
with egos large enough to demand multi-million dollar annual salaries,
and who have collected more millions in bonuses predicated on
profitable annual reports (that in the light of today may be more
fraudulent than factual), are nowhere to be seen. These corporate
pirates have taken a very low profile as they await the outcome of
congressional efforts to "right the ship" by buying up the "toxic"
paper generated by wheelers and dealers of Wall Street. Wouldn't it be
prudent for congress to have hearings and drag the scrupulously
challenged investors out of the shadows and hold them accountable for
their personal and their firm's misguided decisions affecting millions
of small investors? Aren't we all just a little sick and tired of
seeing the guilty go rewarded and the innocent be punished? Or maybe
this will never occur because congress would be extremely embarrassed
to be reminded that it was their initiatives that triggered the
"subprime" mortgage roll-outs. And now they are really going to "fix"
it for us? Oh, brother can you spare a dime!
And finally, I'm not Nostradamus but, ..........this week in 1959, Rod
Serling's "Twilight Zone" premiered on CBS-TV. There is unspeakable
irony and significance of such a coincidental occurrence of events. |
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Community Created General
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Written by Marty Martin
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Karate Championships Results:
18th Annual Southern Open Karate
Championships, Phenix
City, Al. Oct
4th, 2008
6 Members of the Thunderbirds
National Karate Team, training out of the Karate Training Centers brought home
12 trophies out of 12 events from this Open martial arts event.
Coach Martin – “I am really proud
of the team members who went to and won at this event! They faced strong
competition from nationally ranked NASKA and the AKL organizations, many members
from these other teams like Elite, ProRank, Kick Team, Team ATL are paid
professional sponsor’s. This might have been a smaller tournament but was full
of talented competitors - thanks to Young S. Won the promoter.
Jared Moneyham. - 1st Sparring,
Eric Moneyham - 1st Sparring, Matt Hunter - 1st Sparring, 1st Open Forms, 2nd
Weapons; John Hunter - 3rd weapons, 3rd forms, 3rd sparring, Chris Johnson - 3rd
weapons, 3rd forms, 2nd sparring, John Johnson - 1st sparring. Coach Martin –
“We did very well in the fighting division, it shows how hard our kids work, I
am anxious to see how they do at the Wide World of Sports Disney Festival at the
end of the October”.
Submitted from
Marty Martin
Coach Thunderbirds National
Karate Team
Karate Training Centers
www.panamacitykarate.com |
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Community Created General
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Written by Ken Caldwell
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What
a week this has been! By any measure this has surely been eventful,
frightening, and anything but boring. So there are a lot of things I
could write about. There's the proposed $700 Billion bail out of Wall
Streets "bad boy" financial institutions. I can't even conceive of how
much 700 billion is. The political campaigns, both locally and
nationally, have brought out the nasty in some of the candidates. Folks
in Galveston are trying to regroup, (survive may be more appropriate)
after Gustav's visit to their neighborhood. Even the folks in the
Midwest suffered Gustav's fury with serious flooding and power outages
over wide-spread areas. The new airport continues its controversial
journey to completion. Panama City Beach city council is talking about
lifeguards again. Oh, and there is still a war going on in Iraq. Yes,
there is plenty about which to write.
But
with all the economic gloom and doom being prophesied, the weather
uncontrollable and the price of oil continuing to jack upward, I am
more concerned about a personal matter. You see, on Sunday I will have
my 59th birthday. "Fifty-nine and holding" I am sure to say in the next year.
Millions of other men and women have reached their 59th
so perhaps it should not be a big deal for me. I've been thinking about
how it has all gone so quickly. I remember sitting in home room during
my senior year in high school wondering what the year 2000 would be
like. That was in the fall of 1966. Two thousand seemed a lifetime away
and it passed eight years ago. Now I find myself wondering what will
happen in just the next eleven years. For gosh sakes I'll be 70 (if I'm
still top-side). Fortunately quite a few of my golfing buddies have
already weathered their 70th birthday and seem to be doing pretty well. Whatever the case, I can't stop the clock. Time truly does march on.
And
so I view the current events through the eyepiece of the hour-glass.
It's hard for me to get too worried about the crisis of the day, as
many as there are. I have come to realize that any concerns that I may
have about issues, serious or trivial, will soon end anyway. I'm now
much more interested in thinking about what comes after I leave the
temporal and join the celestial. Don't get me wrong. I haven't given up
or become fatalistic. I'm not in a hurry to leave. I just happen to
believe that the best is yet to come, and the best won't be provided in
a program generated by Washington or Wall Street. |
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Community Created General
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Written by Ken Caldwell
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"Hold onto your butt!"
Perhaps
you don't remember this line from the first Jurassic Park movie. It
occurred after the greedy computer nerd had sabotaged the computer
network in order to make his getaway with the embryos of dinosaurs to
be. Because of the sabotage, the protective electric fences of the park
had been disabled and the inmates known as flesh eating dinosaurs were
on the prowl. In order to re-establish network control, the next
computer nerd in charge suggested shutting down the network and going
for a re-boot. With everything dark in the computer room after the
shutdown, and a cigarette dangling from his lips, the foreboding line
was spoken just before hitting the "on" button to restore park control.
With
the events we have just witnessed on Wall Street this week, we are
pretty much in the same shape as the park goers in the movie. Greedy
execs at several of the large investment banks have lost control of
their playground and are now being gobbled up by the stronger of the
species. In the meanwhile, we who are the average investors are seeing
our investments get clobbered by the rapid decline in the over-all
market. For many of us those investments represent our current or
future retirement income sources. It is definitely time for us to "hold
onto our butts".
What
is truly sad (and unfair) about this turn of events is that the
executives, who were responsible for taking on far more risk than their
companies should have borne, are going to skate when this is all over.
They have been enjoying multi-million dollar salaries with the
obligatory annual bonuses. If they never work again, they have the
resources to enjoy a long and prosperous life. Meanwhile, as millions
of average Americans have toiled and put savings away in 401k's or
IRA's, they now see much of those savings evaporating at the over 500
point drop in the DOW as of Monday, September 15th.
But
with all of the bad news, there is a bit of good news for the rational
investor. Recent radical market fluctuations have very little to do
with the values of the companies listed on the exchange. Let's face it.
The true value of large corporations does not ratchet up and down like
a yoyo on a daily basis. The book value of their assets and liabilities
remain relatively constant and stable over short periods. Their
earnings per share do not fluctuate wildly on a day-to-day basis. And
after all, isn't that what the price per share of stock is supposed to
be fundamentally based upon?
So
why do we see all the major swings hour-by-hour and day-by-day in the
markets? I think there are two causes that work hand in hand to
undermine the value of the market. First there is the issue of
"over-information". Players in the market base their actions on what
they think they know, and how what they think they know will play out
in market transactions. Every day as you listen to the analysts, they
come up with reasons for why the market did what it did. Most often,
it's a bunch of words. And those words cause some investors to react
with knee jerks and irrational market responses in their effort to
outguess the market movement. Secondly, I believe that the emergence of
the day-trader has had significant negative impact on what used to be a
predictably stable marketplace. Traditionally, stocks were purchased
and held over longer periods of time. The day-trader is anathema to the
traditional market. Stocks may now be held for only minutes before they
are sold on the next uptick and the profit skimmed. With that kind of
trading it is not surprising that the market hops up and down on a
daily basis. So, if you are in the market, "hold onto your butt!"
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