Around Here
The Local Puppy Trainer notes that: No swimming on 6 miles of Walton beaches, health dept. says
While Pensacola got its worst oil impacts to date Tuesday, health officials in Walton County issued an advisory asking people not to swim on 6 miles of beach stretching from Miramar Beach to the east end of Topsail State Park.
Actually they advise that anyone not fit enough to run a marathon to avoid the air on the Gulf, but in a very tourist friendly fashion. They are getting masses of tarballs, and the air smells like one of those quick oil-change operations.
CNN highlights a major problem for fighting the spill: Frustrated Florida Panhandle counties find BP’s checks not in the mail
We have no money to fight the oil, but we do have money for a free concert:
In an effort to draw crowds to Okaloosa County beaches, the Emerald Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau will start a free concert series called “Rock the Beach” this Sunday, June 27, at the Boardwalk.
The bureau signed the Doobie Brothers to the 5 p.m. concert last Friday and added Kenny Loggins to the bill Monday night.
This is what Republicans do to government. Money is locked into specific functions and can’t be moved to do things that need to be done. The tourist development council has money, but they can’t give it to the emergency management people to fight the oil. School districts may have money to build schools that they don’t need, but can’t use it to pay teachers that they do need.
Republican politicians tell us that you have to do this because politicians are crooks and liars. Voters never seem to analyze the meaning of that statement.
So, we can’t implement the protections we want, and have approval for, because we have to wait for BP to cut us a check, but we can hold free concerts to attract people to the beach we can’t protect.
2 comments
You think that’s bad, come here to California. We have no money for medical care for children or for schools, because neither of those have a Constitutionally-protected source of funding. But we have money for mental health treatment for children, indeed, a huge surplus in that fund, because of a ballot initiative dedicating a tax to it that was made part of our Constitution. So we’re going to have the sanest dumbest sick children in the United States. How fucked is that?!
All of this stems from Prop 13 and similar efforts to “reform” taxes (led by Republicans, of course). So you’re right, it’s Republican asswipes responsible for this. BTW, the budget deficit in California is…. 1% of California’s GDP. That’s right. A 1% tax hike would wipe out the budget deficit. Sounds ridiculous that we just don’t do it, right? Welcome to California!
– Badtux the Taxing Penguin
California has been like that a long time. When I was out there most of SoCal was three days away from losing its entire foster care system because the politicians couldn’t pass the budget. One of my clients was the main contractor f0r the system and they gave me a heads up that they would be shutting down because they couldn’t make payroll even for the office staff, much less the payments to foster parents.
The people at the top hadn’t paid themselves for weeks to conserve cash and none of the local banks would no longer accept the state’s IOUs. That was in the late 1980s when Pete Wilson was governor. Wilson was a bit shocked when he figured out what a mess George Dukmejian had left him.
The same problem for over 20 years, and it still hasn’t been fixed.
Florida has only had these problems since the late 199os and the Republican take-over of everything.