We get bits and pieces of information on how Florida is being governed, and we react [as does the media] to all of the specifics....but the article below from Mother Jones takes an overall look at the last two years and exactly how Rick Scott and the Republican House and Senate have butchered our social safety nets and our environment, while making their buddies richer.
Some of you voted for them.....have a look at what's been done in your name......
This should be required reading for every Florida voter as a lesson for next year on who to vote for.....an excellent article.......
The really desperate come early. George Bishop, 61, a lanky, gray-haired cabinet builder in a tropical shirt, has a red, swollen nose from a boil caused by his third sinus infection in the past five months. Diana Rios, 54, cheerful despite the arthritis pain in her back and knees, holds on tight to her purse and to her seven-year-old granddaughter and translator, Sofia. Lindsay Oliver, 28, is here because of hypothyroidism, Sjögren's syndrome (an autoimmune disorder), anemia, chronic hives—and no insurance.
By 4 p.m. on a rainy winter afternoon, they are part of a small crowd assembled on a grassy field behind a chain-link fence outside the Palmer Feed Store in Orlando, Florida. Across the street is the county medical building, where volunteer doctors affiliated with the nonprofit group Shepherd's Hope see uninsured patients on weekday nights. The clinic doesn't start until 6, but it's a first-come, first-served operation, and demand is high.
Illustration: Scott Anderson
At 4:30, a security guard opens the doors to let the patients in out of the drizzle. Dozens of them soon fill rows of metal chairs in the lobby. They are anxious and ailing, but also chatty as they munch on the cookies offered up by the volunteer clinic manager. Many have multiple medical issues going wholly or partly untreated. Rios is here for "private" problems as well as back pain, arthritis in her knees, and bursitis in her shoulder that forced her to quit working in September when she could no longer lift the trays she helped prepare for an airline food company. As Sofia translates, Rios explains that she has been in Florida for 16 years but has never had health insurance. She ended up in the emergency room recently after she fell on her arm and was so immobilized that she couldn't brush her teeth.
The raven-haired Oliver lost her job as a bank teller supervisor in July, leaving her and her three-year-old son uninsured. After months of unsuccessful job hunting, she finally signed on as a housekeeper at a Disney hotel. She's gone without some of her expensive medications since August and is hoping the clinic can help.
Oliver, Bishop, and Rios are among the nearly 4 million Floridians who lack health insurance—more than 1 in 5 in a state with the second-highest rate of uninsured in the country. Obamacare is supposed to help fix that through a combination of new federal subsidies for private insurance as well as a generous expansion of Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor and disabled.
And in case you have any doubt, any lingering faith in the competence of the Governor, the Republican House and the Senate have a look at this. They passed a law so stupid, so inane and so actually illegal the Florida Highway Patrol said we are going to ignore this statute.....
They wanted every International visitor to Florida to get an International Drivers Permit to drive in this state......including Canadians.....
Not me, but some of you have voted morons into office......
Cerabino: Tourism officials say shelve, shove new law requiring foreign tourists get International Driver License
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Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The concerned phone calls and emails started a few days ago.
“There was a real hoo-hah going on,” said Leslee Rutman, a Wellington snowbird from the suburbs of Toronto.
Her Canadian friends and family were warning her about the new Florida law, the one that was the subject of a recent spate of newspaper stories and TV news shows in Ontario.
“They were all asking me what I was going to do,” Rutman said. “We had no idea that as far as the Florida law goes, we’ve been driving in violation.”
This is one of those stories that gets filed away in the drawer reserved for the crazy things that Florida’s lawmakers do.
Without fuss or fanfare last year, state legislators quietly amended a section of Florida’s laws pertaining to driver licenses. The change, which went into effect on Jan. 1, said that visitors with an out-of-country driver license would be permitted to rent a car or drive their own car in Florida only if they obtained an International Driving Permit issued by their home country in addition to their valid driver license from that country.
An International Driving Permit is essentially a driver license translated into 10 languages. The rationale for this was that Florida law-enforcement officers shouldn’t have to deal with drivers who have non-English words written on their foreign driver licenses.
One problem with this law change, which was made so quietly that it took more than a month for the media and AAA officials to discover it, is that it lumps all foreign nations in one pot.
OK - I've got you upset.....so watch this and calm down.....very good.....
We have our images of James Cagney [actor who played mostly gangsters in the movies] and Bob Hope [the consummate stand-up comedian of all time], but they both started out as dancers in the old way, through the vaudeville stage. Here they are in their 50's doing one of their old routines.......
You really, really don't see this kind of talent any more.......3 minutes.....
Todays blonde/lawyer joke
A lawyer boarded an airplane in Orlando with a box of frozen crabs and asked a blonde flight attendant to take care of them for him.
She took the box and promised to put it in the crew's refrigerator for safe keeping.
He advised her that he was holding her personally responsible for them staying frozen, mentioning in a very haughty manner that he was a lawyer,
and proceeded to rant at her about what would happen if she let them thaw out.
Needless to say, she was annoyed by his behaviour.
Shortly before landing in New York, she used the intercom to announce to the entire cabin,
"Would the lawyer who gave me the crabs in Orlando please raise your hand?"
Not one hand went up, so she took them home and ate them.
Two lessons here:
1. Many lawyers aren't as smart as they think they are.
2. Many blondes aren't as dumb as most folks think.
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