It is the same scenario as when I lived in California, but times were better, so the system could tolerate it. In tough times people can’t afford to wait for payment.

The banks don’t really have the assets to extend interest free loans to people while politicians make up their mind. Even in the old days when one of these impasses happened the banks charged businesses interest on state vouchers while they honored paychecks. Small businesses went bankrupt as they lost money dealing with state contracts.

Hipparchia, this is Florida, everyone gets to carry a gun.

Gee…if they wanted to cut the fat out of the budget….they could start with some of these portly politicos. They should stop hanging out in restaurants with lobbyists.

We gotta get rid of this stupid 2/3 thing. The minority party always throws monkey wrenches into the process…and folks don’t deal with reality of things. Not everything is rosy and not everyone is able to financially deal with disaster…not every County can pay for clean up and fighting fire…after fire….after fire.

besides, i got to vote for a black woman today. woo hoo! not that this is completely unheard of here, but it’s still great to see it happening.

glad to learn that about your sheriff. i’ll make sure all my road trips are to the west now. my various, uh, encounters with the fhp, whether because i was driving a bit too fast or stuck on the side of the road because i forgot to look at the gas guage, have all gone well, but the ones with more local forces, not so much.

I got to vote for Sheriff, a county commissioner, and the Supervisor of Elections.

Supervisor of Elections was easy, because the current Supervisor’s deputy was running, and out elections have always been run smoothly and efficiently.

In the county commission race, the incumbent works full-time for a local jurisdiction, and that is a conflict of interest to my mind. The second thinks we can ignore things or privatize. The third wants to actually analyze the problems and develop strategies to solve them.

The current Sheriff thinks dressing deputies like ninjas and giving them automatic weapons is a good idea. The second candidate thinks we should be doing something about illegal immigrants. The third is a retired Air Force Security Policeman who thinks that law enforcement and security should be the first priorities of the Sheriff’s Department.

I feel confident that only my choice for Supervisor of Elections will win, and the incumbents will win in the other races, but I voted anyway.

there weren’t any republican primaries for me to vote in today, meaning that each race has at least one dem challenger in the upcoming general, PLUS there were two races with more than one democrat! two democrats running for sheriff, three democrats running for the school board seat. it’s quite a sea change.

of course, now there’s this pesky little question of whether or not the democratic party/ies will recognize all this as the people saying we really do want some changes made around here.

Jill, everyone knows that all you have to do is cut out the “fat” and governments will be free. There’s no need for taxes. 😈

Hipparchia, I got to vote in the Republican races that will decide the office, because there are no Democrats running for anything over here. There were three races in which there are no write-in candidates, so everyone gets to vote.

The only thing new was they swapped the sides of the town hall for the two precincts that vote there. My precinct has been on the North end since I move here, but this time it was on the South.

This is the normal Florida primary, Moi, and has been held on the last Tuesday in August since I moved back. The Presidential primary and local elections, is the one they moved, adding more work and more cost to the county.

when i didn’t get around to re-registering as independent after the january kerfuffle, i decided to wait until after the local races, just in case. got to encourage people to run for local offices.

and now, since it’s the middle of the convention, i’ll wait and see if the democrats do anything spectacular, like change the platform to full-on support of single-payer national health insurance, that deserves my continued support, meager though that support may be. i’m not expecting them to, mind you, but what’s a few more days?

we have all new machines and ballot designs. just when i was getting used to the old ones.