Publishers Notes August 2018

By TomL

Do a google search that says “Did Obama ever have a job in the private sector?” Some claim his was the front man for an investment group run by two of his close friends. The federal government would attack a certain industry, knock the business to its knees, devalue it and the investment group would step in and buy it dirt cheap. There are a number of deals like that about the time that Obama was re-elected. A couple of names involved were a Biden name and Kerry name in a deal where a University was acquired for penny on the dollar. The University was attack by the Federal Government for supplying student loans. The Scandals go on and on in a book on a site if you just look! Do you know what the real shame of all this is? The HUGE media machine knew about most of this and would not print anything about it!

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I have been listening to fake news talk about  ICE agents so I got on the internet and looked up what is ICE agent job description. Here is what the internet says: ICE agents may either be involved with customs issues or immigration issues and may be assigned a variety of tasks in such areas as border patrol, human trafficking and child exploitation, cyber crimes, deportation, and intelligence gathering.

Publishers Note: How could we do without them? They are a very important part of our Nation’s Law Enforcement, especially with what is going on in the DOJ leadership.

Anyone that wants to get rid of them is a fool!

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The Social Security Fund will be depleted during our children’s time. The Federal Government claims the fund is losing ground. I paid 15% of my income my whole working life. My employer paid in 15% to match what I paid in. Here is what an investment calculator came up with: If you invest 30% of $30,000 every year for 30 years (15% your money and 15% your employers matching funds) you’d have $636,847 at the end of those 30 years. That would mean you could draw 1,769 every month for the next 30 years.

Instead of investing the money so it would draw interest, the Federal Government has borrowed from the fund, used it for  politicians’ projects and did not pay it back. We the tax payers become the victims! I started paying  in when I was 14 years old. Some of the numbers above are approximates but as you can see the fund has been mismanaged.

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Tariffs on Canadian Newsprint will no doubt have a troubling effect on United States newspapers. It is no secret that the internet is taking revenue from all media but print seems to be holding its own at about 40%. My largest expense is the printing of the newspaper. We are working hard to reach as many people as we can by internet and print so that we can give our customers good results. Right now newspapers advertising revenue is number four in the nation on money spent in advertising. In the north there are many car dealers finding out that a good mix with print mixed in does produce sales. So there is hope for us yet! Right now if you run an ad in all four newspapers we have one of the largest circulations in the area and the newspapers go online so that means you have a second form of advertising. If you go to tomlpublishing.com you can subscribe to the digital paper free.

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If you don’t stand for something then you won’t stand for anything… have you ever heard that? The quote is right but if you stand up for the wrong things it could be expensive. The way I see it is if I stand up with the Republicans I have lost half my customers or if I stand with the Democrats I lose the other half my business. So here I am trending back and fourth between issues I believe in. I have been verbally attacked by the atheist, the Gay rights people, Republicans, Democrats but they seem to come to terms with what I am trying to do. This one guy wrote a letter demeaning me. I printed it. He called me and commended me for giving him opinion space in my paper. That is what I do.  If I did not do it then I would not be doing my job. I do not get everything right but I’m not going to be someone’s patsy. As anyone who knows me, I stand up for the count when it is important.

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I run into people every couple of years just during election time. I wonder why that is? I wonder where they are the rest of the time. Where do they go? What do they do??? It’s my job to ask questions and bring you the answers that I find out. I can tell you one thing. If you have a business or a career it’s pretty much gone when you run for political office.

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The County Commissioners are doing a good job. On the Coastal Corridor project, it’s hard to stand up against a State Agency like the Florida Turnpike Authority Enterprise, but they have and the document was worded perfectly in my estimation. These agencies like the FTPAE spend a lot of time spinning their wheels and when they get caught they will spin the conversation. The latest is the Coastal Corridor project. If you go to Citrus County you will see a 500 ft wide corridor for miles. Do you realize how much land that is and the state will own it. They use the same engineering right-away lines that were used by so many. First the Turnpike extension wanted to go through my farm 30 years ago, then the Sabal Trail Gas line which did go through my farm, now the Coastal Corridor wants the same route. It’s kind of funny that they proposed one of the extensions routes on top of the Gas line. Bright bunch of guys and gals. I mentioned that and they said we’ll just move it over!

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Land clearing is making Animals relocate. As we take their habitat they become more visible. We have not had deer in our neighborhood for years and low and behold, we had deer. Wait just for a short time. Everyone wanted to be a hunter in a residential area, come hunting season they hunted them. The land developing on 484 in the Dunnellon area got the rattlesnakes moving, I have heard of several dogs being bit. Most the time they don’t survive.

Has anyone seen my ads that I’m running on other media?