Category — Florida

A check around the Florida blogtopia™ has produced a not outrageous selection of Democratic candidates for various jobs in 2010:

Governor: Alex Sink Update: Alex is In!

Attorney General: Dan Gelber

Chief Financial Officer: Dave Aronberg

Senate: Kendrick Meek

I’ve already talked about Ms. Sink.

Dan Gelber has been looking at the Senate race, but that was before Charlie declared his run. Gelber has the credentials for Attorney General and it positions him to make his name known statewide.

Dave Aronberg has been looking at the Attorney General race, but he has better credentials for CFO, and nowhere near the experience of Gelber. Again, he will get statewide name recognition.

Kendrick Meek essentially inherited his seat in Congress from his mother, Carrie Meek, and hasn’t faced an opponent in an election in 6 years, but he has a huge war chest and was an early supporter for Obama. Let him have a shot and see if he can campaign. I don’t think the Dems can afford a primary battle at any position and if the Republicans destroy each other in the primary, and he gets Obama’s support for turn out, he could win. It’s a long shot, but no one will know if he doesn’t move beyond his current position.

Charlie Crist probably has the Senate seat sewed up as he remains a very popular governor. Charlie is an archetypal Floridian: the moral fiber of a real estate developer with mental capacity and skin tone of an orange – what’s not to like. Marco Rubio is Rick Santorum on domestic issues and Jessie Helms on foreign policy, and has almost no name recognition outside of South Florida. To be honest, his name is probably a negative for him in the Panhandle [thanks to Lou Dobbs, among others], the most Republican part of the state.

Alex Sink can win the governor’s race. She and Bill Nelson are the only Democrats who have won state-wide races in years. It is important for her to run and to win as there will be redistricting after the 2010 census and people other than Republicans need to be represented in the process to break the 65% stranglehold the Republicans have on the state legislature.

This would open up three statewide offices for competition: Chief Financial Officer, Attorney General, and Agricultural Commissioner, if Bill McCollum and Charlie Bronson join the race, although Bronson is term-limited out of a job in any case.

There is a world of opportunity for the Democrats in 2010 in Florida, if they get their act together, because the Republican bench is pretty lame at the moment.

The Miami Herald reports that at 9:12AM EDT Gov. Charlie Crist announces bid for U.S. Senate

Just 14 minutes after Crist’s news release came out, the National Republican SenatorialCommittee endorsed him over former House Speaker Marco Rubio. It’s rare for a national party to intervene so publicly in a primary.

The McClatchy main site has a background piece that was published in anticipation of this move:

“It’s going to be like a fruit basket overturned,” said Joyce Russell, of the non-partisan Forum of the Palm Beaches, where Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink spoke Monday amid buzz about her potential gubernatorial campaign. “I like consistency. This makes me nervous.”

Besides Crist and Sink, the other statewide elected officials expected to seek new office are Attorney General Bill McCollum and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, both likely to run for governor.

[Read more →]

After a week of overtime the Florida Legislature finds a way to balance budget, says the Miami Herald, which is technically true, but leaves out the part about how this is dependent on revenue forecasts being accurate and the economy not dropping further, so we are going to see a special session to deal with the shortfall. They raised all of the “fees” they could think of, because paying the state for your license plate isn’t really a tax on your car and as long as it isn’t called a tax, you can raise it. They did raise the tax on cigarettes to pay for additional medical costs of smokers, [except that the cigarette manufacturers already did that as the result of a law suit, and smokers actually cost less than non-smokers due to a shortened life span, but don’t let facts interfere].

They also cut the salaries of some state employees, who haven’t seen a raise in over three years, which might put some of the Federal stimulus money they are counting on in jeopardy.

At least we don’t have to worry about any stupid laws being enacted while they are shut down. The only thing they are required to do is pass a budget. The Republicans have a 65% majority in both houses, and the governor is a Republican, but they needed extra time to pass a budget. When they say “government doesn’t work”, they really mean, “we don’t know how to govern”.

[Read more →]

The Pensacola News Journal reports Judge: Prayer ban OK

A federal judge on Friday approved a consent decree that calls for Santa Rosa County School District officials to stop promoting their religious beliefs in schools.

School officials now are prohibited from promoting or endorsing prayers during school functions and from organizing school functions at religious venues. The consent decree must be distributed to all employees.
…

District officials admitted the allegations. Board members signed a consent decree in March that listed steps the district will take to end the violations.

School Board Chairman Ed Gray said they intend to abide by the judge’s order.
…

[Read more →]

The Pensacola News Journal shrieks: Okaloosa County has case of probable swine flu. Which is terrifying news, because everyone knows there are no other possible causes of death in Okaloosa County … well, except for all of the other diseases on the planet, and with military people who are sent all over the world, we get to see them all. I guess the lethal mix of terrible local drivers and tourists on overcrowded roads, is sort of dangerous. We do test all of the airborne weapons systems that the US has in the county. There is that Explosive Ordinance Disposal school here. We’ll probably have to include all of the crazies with access to guns.

Yeah, but this is THE FLU, you know, not just a cold. You get a fever with this one and there are reports of nausea.

I’m sorry, but I’ve spent a lot of time in areas around the world where living until the age of 40 was a rare thing, and making it to adulthood was a 50-50 bet. We are going to have the same problems with this flu that we have with regular flu, and one of the biggest problems is the lack of a single payer health care system that would have people visiting a doctor’s office, instead of crowding into an emergency room.

The NWFDN reports County officials ‘disappointed’ in Odom’s change of plans.

Jay Odom was part of the deal that got the Speaker of the Florida House and the president of a local college indicted for his scheme to have the state build him a hanger for his aircraft by calling it an educational facility.

Jay Odom is a real estate developer, which means he the lacks the moral fiber to sell used cars.

Jay Odom has his hand out for every government program that he might possibly qualify for, and is ready to create new ones if he thinks it will make him some money.

The County Commission should have known better than to deal with him in the first place, and they have to be the most naïve people in the area if they expected that he would willingly reveal the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, if it suited his profit margin to be other than candid. They can have their attorney look at the deal, but Odom has a long history of not exactly violating the law, so I wish them luck.

The Orlando Sentinel has a photo gallery of Florida specialty license plates.

There are 130 photos, but some of the plates have had design changes. They don’t include the multiple free and special purpose plates also issued. Things have really gotten out of hand.

From the Panama City News Herald this local color – Man to police: You ‘missed it;’ I’ve sold all my weed

CRESTVIEW — Police executing a search warrant were told by the suspect they had “missed it” and he had just sold all of his marijuana, according to a Crestview Police Department arrest report.

When officers stopped Justin Ray Smith, 19, on April 17, he said he had sold “somewhere between one to three pounds about six hours ago,” the report said. They recovered about $2,700, of which $1,100 was from that sale, Smith told officers, according to the report.

You tell them. They see it on TV. It doesn’t matter – they still talk. Never underestimate the power of stupid.

Pensacola’s Fiesta of Five Flags has also started. This year marks the 450^th anniversary of the first attempt by the Spanish to settle in the area that has become the US. That attempt was interrupted by a hurricane, which is why St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied city [founded by Europeans] in the US.

They still use the wrong flags, but they have gotten better. I did notice that they use the wrong British flag at their Fiesta site, but the correct one on the city’s flag poles. At least Earl Bowden got them to use the proper flag for the Confederate year.

John Barry, a staff writer for the St. Petersburg Times is the path to perdition, as my grandmothers would say.

There will be letters, I guarantee it.

The NWF Daily News reports: “NICEVILLE — The Northwest Florida State College Board of Trustees voted 4-3 to fire President Bob Richburg Tuesday morning.”

No doubt he will get a severance package, but he can use it to pay his attorney, rather than our paying for a public defender. Richburg wasn’t an educator, he was an empire building developer who used his position to help himself.

The NWF Daily News as published some background on the shooter, and it is too familiar a story: just laid off from his job, too many guns, upset about Obama’s election, fear the government was coming to take his rights, history of violence.

He was already on probation for a prior domestic abuse charge, but wasn’t attending the anger management classes, so he would have gone directly to jail for a violation of that sentence, before any new charges were tried.

Read it and wonder at the death of three people triggered by a missing tube of Clearasil®.

It is appropriate that this comes from the St. Petersburg Times: Florida Senate approves religious license plates

TALLAHASSEE — If you want Jesus on your license plate, the Florida Senate is looking out for you.

Because why worry about a budget impasse or property insurance when you can spend more than an hour talking about Jesus, the devil and license plates?

Religious specialty plates offered by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, made it onto a bill Friday even though many members had not seen images of those plates and none was produced for the debate.

Senator Ronda Storms is on a crusade to replace Michele Bachman as the Craziest Christianist Conservative in Congress. I will include the graphics below the fold so no one will be offended or outraged. If you think I’m protecting atheist sensibilities, it is only because you haven’t seen the plate – something to offend everyone.

[Read more →]