TOP OF THE WEEK: (Only 4 more weeks of hearing why you should punch “none of the above”)

More than once this blog has praised Sen. Jack Latvala for his work in Tallahassee and here in Pinellas. But we couldn’t disagree more with his reasons for supporting the ill-conceived Greenlight Pinellas proposal. Latvala feels the elderly won’t be harmed by the additional sales tax the proposal levies since they “only buy drugs and food” which are non-taxable. Hogwash - ask an elderly person about their expenses. But it’s the younger, low income people who really are going to take a hit on this – the people who buy clothes, diapers and other taxable items. It is simply an extremely regressive tax. And his comment about us being a major league county – a reference we suppose to having mass transit to get to Rays games doesn’t wash. First, the PSTA was asked to run shuttles to Ray’s games at their inception and punted. And knowledgeable people would be willing to bet serious money that by the time light rail ever was a reality, the Rays will be long gone from south Pinellas and perhaps Tampa Bay.

Around the Bay –

1. Perhaps to speed up bus service, we could convert the PSTA buses into combination food truck/buses – just in case the driver gets hungry. PSTA blames the lack of breaks for their drivers on lack of financing – or perhaps is it just lousy management?

2. In a related note, after all the gaffes at PSTA over the past year, do you think CEO Brad Miller’s job security might change after the Greenlight election – especially if it fails?

3. Remember the “Your Medicare plans will be unaffected” assurance with advent of Obamacare? Not exactly! Have you looked at your Medicare changes documents? More on that next week.

4. In the grand scheme of FSU’s budget, $160,000 is not all that much. But to spend that much money on a presidential search when the fix was in from the first day? Just short of criminal.

5. As we pointed out above, we still have four weeks’ worth of annoying political ads. But it will be hard to top the Charlie Crist “flipping” ad – a classic.

The Diamond, the Media and Other Stuff –

6. Yes, we know you are not supposed to lose your job on the playing field just because of an injury, but come on! Mike Glennon engineers a Bucs victory on the home turf of one of the toughest teams in the NFL, and Lovie Smith is non-committal on who runs the offense going forward?

7. We hit approximately .500 in our pre-season baseball predictions. We missed in predicting the Yanks would go deep into the playoffs; that the Nats would crumble (great job by Matt Williams) and Yasiel Puig would bottom out. He did but only occasionally. We had hits on the demise of the Phils and Bosox; that the Cards would return to postseason and the resurgence of the Marlins. We were a push on Tiger third baseman Nick Castellanos – nice first year but we expected even better.

8. Three little facts about the Green Bay Packers. They have sold out every game since 1960 – think about that - 54 years! They have season ticket holders in all 50 states and at least three foreign countries. Their season ticket waiting list tops 100,000. And never have they held a gun to their home city for a new stadium. Talk about a model franchise - which is totally community owned.

9. The Bucs, on the other hand, usually sell out a Green Bay game but few others. They may have season ticket holders in 50 cities but no foreign countries unless, of course, you consider Hernando County a foreign country.

10. Never get tired of that Vince Lombardi clip “What the hell’s going on out here”? There was a football coach!

IN CLOSING:

Not since Ted William’s last career swing homer has there been a more dramatic final home performance than that of Derek Jeter. It was classy of him to resist the temptation to end his career right there (and stick it to the Bosox one more time) by playing out the season at Fenway.