Stripping The Light Fantastic In Hillsborough

When Hillsborough County enacted tough new regulations that targeted sexually- oriented businesses, it put into motion the usual scenarios. Luke Lirot was on the case, and the county was soon sued. Lirot, representing three bikini bars, is seeking an injunction against enforcing the new adult-entertainment ordinance.

No need to repeat all of the details here, except that the suit’s couched in the bedrock context of First Amendment and due process rights.

It’s another high-profile skirmish in a long-running battle that pits governments against lap-dance emporiums and other adult businesses over the touchy, as it were, issue of where the First Amendment ends and lewd behavior begins. Likely, this is not what (even the randiest of ) the Founding Fathers and three-fourths of the states had remotely in mind when the free-speech, free press First Amendment (and nine others) was ratified in 1791. Arguably, no one could have foreseen the following 215 years as a speech-expression-behavior slippery slope.

What is without question, however, is that this is serious law and serious business – with serious ramifications: legal, economic and quality of life.

And yet, it is impossible to read with a straight face the rationales as quoted in the lawsuit. Among them: that the adult businesses provide a “socially enriching experience,” which can’t be bad for a community. Moreover, “The presentation of expressive dance performances is a beneficial social activity which creates an improved self-image for the dancer and joy and entertainment for the beholder.”

Not to straddle the issue, but this isn’t about Ginger and Fred. It’s about Jasmine and John and those who don’t want their stripping of the light fantastic nearby. And for those who keep tabs, it’s also about vice unit detectives running up big bar-dance-and-tip bills to convict a handful of raunchy Little Egypts polishing their self images.

In short, there’s a lot not to like about adult entertainment in your community, the problematic cost of litigating it and the ongoing parody of the otherwise sacrosanct First Amendment.

As for where legal ends and lewd begins, unfortunately we can never codify the 1964 common-sense musings of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.

Get Serious, Pervez

Back in the day, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon did the Jack Paar “Tonight Show” as presidential candidates. The latter even played some piano. And Bill Clinton flaunted his sax appeal on Arsenio Hall. Just a few months back, Al Gore warmed to the occasion with Jay Leno. Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani have all hit the circuit.

It’s part of running for high profile and high office and reaching all pockets of the American electorate. Especially if the exposure is free. It’s also a reminder of the parallels between politics and show business and America’s popular-culture penchant for politicians as celebrities.

But there was something profoundly disquieting about seeing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf last week on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. (But not as viscerally disturbing as seeing Danny Glover bear-hugging Hugo Chavez in Harlem.) Having a book (“In The Line Of Fire: A Memoir”) to hawk didn’t seem reason enough. Happens all the time; next up: Noam Chomsky.

The U.S. is in a civilizational war with Islamic jihadists. It’s an end game that won’t be resolved with a geo-political treaty. Someone’s way of life will end. It’s not a given that it won’t ultimately be the U.S. and the West. It’s that serious.

Having Musharraf exchange winks and nods and jihadi jokes with a faux news comedian is not what I was looking for from an ally who has to deliver. It would be like having Nguyen Van Thieu or Prince Norodom Sihanouk dropping in on Soupy Sales during the Vietnam War.

While Iraq is the recruiting poster, the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier is the nerve center of terrorism against the U.S. Here is where Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zarahiri and Mullah Omar still lurk. And Pakistan, which once claimed the Taliban as a client, is the key.

Musharraf is walking a very thin line. He is not popular with the Pakistani street, which is to say that assassination is a daily possibility. Domestic politics prompted him to proscribe U.S. and NATO troops from hunting for bin Laden and the others. He has pulled Pakistani troops from border provinces that house Afghanistan-raiding, Taliban insurgents. Whatever the reasons, including self-preservation, he’s still not doing enough.

Not a good time to wallow in a low-brow smugfest with Jon Stewart. It doesn’t underscore resolve.

Musharraf is “with us” because the rubble of the Stone Age was seemingly the alternative. Regardless, he and his country are critically important in the war against al-Qaeda and Islamaniacs. Arguably, it can’t be won without a major contribution from Pakistan.

It would be more reassuring if the man presiding over a Muslim country with nuclear arms that is a critically important ally against America-hating jihadists acted more like the president of Pakistan and less like a media-pandering American politician.

Maybe I’m just hopelessly old school. But what’s wrong with a head of state on the front line against terrorism taking a pass on a comedy spot and limiting his interviews to serious journalists?

Did the generous book plug mean that much?

Enforce The Rules

As anyone who has flown recently knows, the Transportation Security Administration checkpoints continue to be a crapshoot. The rules are necessarily subject to whatever the Mohammed Attas, Ramsey Yusefs and Richard Reids can concoct.

Only last week we were still in the better-safe-than-sorry throes of the moisturizer moratorium and the near-complete ban on carry-on liquids and gels of all sorts. Now it’s the era of the zip-lock baggie and the secure latte. Common sense and softer passenger traffic proved a holy alliance.

For now.

But back to the recent past. Going through security recently at Philadelphia International Airport, I was encouraged in that perverse, post-9/11 kind of way that I was flagged. For packing Neosporin. I had forgotten it was there. It probably predated the old, rarely-used briefcase it was in.

Regardless, good catch. Score one for the TSA. If these are today’s rules, enforce them.

And yet an accompanying backpack contained three thin, clear plastic vials of bubble mix – left over from a family wedding and reception the previous day. Sure, it was dumb to be packing bubbles in 2006; at least Neosporin made pharmaceutical sense. But more to the point, the bubbles went undetected.

Worse yet, they looked, well, downright suspicious outside their ceremonial context. It’s probably a good thing they weren’t Sam Rashid’s vile bubbles. Anyhow, strike up the contraband and take one back from the TSA.

Whatever the prevailing rules and degree of hassle, 50-50 is not the kind of odds you want in airport security.

Snubbed Again

So, Minneapolis, a city once thought to have a better shot at regaining the Lakers than landing a big Republican bash, has been awarded the ultimate: the 2008 GOP convention.

Was it politics or was it hurricanes? Call it the politics of hurricanes. You think anybody – starting with RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — wants to answer for what the weather around here might be like the first week of September 2008? Hurricane Ken loomed for Mehlman.

Rationales were found to go elsewhere. Inroads into Democratic territory. A really nice meeting facility. Nostalgia for the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Pre-emption of Dems who were also eyeballing electoral-vote challenged Minnesota. And Gov. Jeb phoned it in again.

Frankly, Cleveland and New York have a case too.

Regardless, Al Austin deserved better. Bad news for the GOP’s consummate good soldier.

The Pope And Islam: Here We Go Again

Another teachable moment squandered; another round of irony and hypocrisy displayed.

Granted, if you’re the Pope, you think thrice about saying anything about Islam that could conceivably make matters worse. Which can be confining and which basically precludes criticism — especially if it references, say, VIOLENCE. Even if it’s in the context of a Medieval quote.

For those who cherry pick the Koran, it’s hardly a quantum leap to be selective in what they take from a long lecture by that former academic theologian, Joseph Alois Ratzinger. The Pope’s greater messages were the dangers of secularism in the Christian West, the need to know God better and a call for religious dialogue.

But Benedict XVI is known to be a hardliner and no fan of fanaticism, notably the kind that uses religion to justify terrorism. He doesn’t always pull his rhetorical punches.

Not exactly inching out on a theological limb, the Pope noted that “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.” Oops. For good measure, he also decried holy wars and forced conversions, which have been pretty much discredited for more than a millennium.

But the zinger was bringing that Byzantine quote machine, Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, into the discourse. In a 14th century dialogue with a Persian scholar, MIIP seemed to be playing the devil’s advocate, if you will. “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new,” he is said to have said, “and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Oops. Big Time.

We all know what can happen as a result of an offending Danish cartoon, Dutch film or Indian best seller. So the fanaticism hit the fan again.

The predictable overreaction – street protests, burning Benedict effigies, some church fire bombings, the murder of a nun — was quick, thanks to the internet and major Arab television networks. Among the ironic, hypocritical retorts, this one by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. “

Truly Taxing Issue

Call it the perfectly taxing storm — that city council property tax-cut vote a fortnight ago.

*What a difference three months make. Back in June only council members Shawn Harrison and Rose Ferlita wanted to even consider it.

By mid-September, AKA “election eve,” it had passed. Only Linda Saul-Sena and Mary Alvarez voted against. John Dingfelder and Kevin White switched sides.

*To a majority of city council, the vote qualified as “listening to the people,” although, it was acknowledged, it was only a “symbolic” gesture. The owner of a $200,000 home will save, for example, about $20 – or the cost of two tickets to see “The Illusionist.” That’s what a reduction of .131 mills yields. In reality, most home owners have seen little increase in their taxes because most are insulated by Save Our Homes, the 3 per cent (but not portable) cap on the amount a homestead property’s taxable value can increase per year.

But guaranteed, they won’t look like “symbolic” dollars to the parks and recreation or code enforcement departments – and whoever it is who will feel the pinch.

*Mayor Pam had a late-night flappable moment. It was apparent even over a cell phone. It happens when a largely infrastructure- and neighborhood-focused budget needs to lop off $3.3 million at the 11th hour.

*City council is normally a budgetary rubber stamp. But this time more than a dozen tax protestors showed up with rhetorical pitchforks and doing a collective “mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” imitation of Peter Finch in “Network.”

That’s because property values are up. And up. And up. And tax revenues keep reflecting that assessment ascension. This year it’s up a projected $28.7 million, which surely looks like a windfall to a lot of folks — most notably those who own rental and commercial property or vacant land, which do not have homestead exemptions. But property tax (mileage) rates (6.539) had remained — for 18 years — the same, a mockingly misleading figure.

*And then there’s the halo effect. This comes at a time when enraged crowds around the state have been pressuring city and county officials to cut property taxes. And it occurs in the context of obscene insurance hikes, health care roulette and fuel costs that still remain too high.

*And once again, those not of a mood to revolt against the status quo stayed home in droves and made it easy for city council to hear — and appease — the (non-cell phone) voice audible that night.

Another Assessment

According to the U.S Census Bureau, property tax collections are up 35 per cent from 2002 to 2006. Tax cut proposals are being considered in at least 15 states. Here in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush has created the Property Tax Reform Committee to search for long-term solutions to soaring property tax costs. A series of public hearings are being held around the state. Tampa will host one Nov. 17.

One sure target will be tax assessors’ offices. In fact, the American Homeowners Association estimates that 60 per cent of homes are over-assessed. The reasons can often be a function of understaffing and consequent over-reliance on software or assessors eyeballing properties from the sidewalk or their car.

The October issue of Money magazine provides a handy checklist. Make sure the “basics” – from number of baths to size of the lot — are right, advises Money . Also, be on the lookout for “anything that could knock down the value of your home and your tax burden.” Examples include: “a sloped lot; a crack in your home’s foundation, easement, even a shared driveway or an old roof.”

Even architecture is a factor. The only contemporary home, for example, in a neighborhood of, say, colonials or bungalows, may result in that home’s value being lower than the tax rolls indicate.