Legislature of the absurd (Oh yes, it's Florida.)

[seafan]

Legislature of the absurd

By Diane Roberts
April 21, 2008

Barack Obama probably wasn't thinking specifically of Florida when he made the comments that got him into a mess of trouble. Speaking to a gaggle of donors, the senator from Illinois opined that many Americans feel powerless, ignored. So they "cling" to religion, prejudice, and guns.
Half the country teed off on Obama, but come on: Is he wrong? Look at the Florida Legislature. Okay, our lawmakers are hardly powerless, and alas, it's becoming impossible to ignore them. But they are definitely clinging to religion, prejudice and guns — clinging like limpets with abandonment issues.

.....

Look at the legislature's priorities: pushing "I Believe" license plates sporting a cross and a stained glass window. Voting to sneak the teaching of "intelligent design" into high school science classes. Forcing pregnant women who want or need an abortion to undergo an ultrasound — and making them pay for it, too. Filing bills against the scourge of boys in baggy britches. Making sure you can you can tote your Smith and Wesson to the day care center, the mall, or that downsizing construction company — the one you're kind of mad at. And debating whether the faux bovine cojones known as "Truck Nutz" should be banned from the backsides of Florida vehicles.

.....

Now, the Republicans who run Florida don't cotton much to foreigners: You can tell by those bills they're touting to crack down on the dangerous illegal aliens cleaning your pool and mowing your lawn. Nonetheless, they are clearly disciples of the Iron Lady's "I got mine" ethos. "Society" only matters if you think other people are connected to you in some sort of common enterprise, or if you believe in the "collective good" (you communist!). In Florida, we're all about the individual, not the group.
Unless the group is the multi-billion-dollar rail company CSX. It's due to score $641-million of taxpayer money in fulfillment of a secret deal by Jeb Bush. The newspapers call it a "sweetheart deal," though that's like calling Eliot Spitzer's liaison with the hooker a "romance."
But hey, in a tight budget year you have to choose between corporate welfare and throwing chump change at hospice patients, pregnant women, foster children, the developmentally disabled, the blind, minimum-wage workers, and the poor.

.....

If Florida legislators could locate their brains among their "Truck Nutz," they could get creative and generate some revenue to address this state's needs. Why not raise "sin taxes" on tobacco or booze — Christian Taliban types would surely approve. Or get rid of some of those sales tax exemptions for services. House Democrats had the good idea to close a tax loophole and make the megacorps who make megabucks in Florida cough up their fair share. Companies like Wal-Mart benefit from huge tax breaks, passed when Florida was flush. Of course, that bill was voted down.

Meanwhile, the Legislature has moved on, not to education, not to insurance, not to poverty, but to bestiality. There's a bill up to make it illegal for you to have sex with your goat. Or dog. Or cow. Evidently, hot interspecies congress is yet another of our urgent social problems.

Let it not be said that your Florida Legislature does not serve you. Especially in an election year.

There's just nothing to add to this.

[Mika]

1. Nothing to add? How about this?

Bill bars Fla. medical license for doctors who studied in Cuba
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3180219

-

[seafan]

2. These right wing zealots in Tallahassee have 2 more weeks to assault Florida.

It will be worse than anything we've ever seen.


The alarms are blasting, but the GOP smash and grab goes on.


Thanks, Mika, for adding that story.

[Mika]

3. Then there's this complete waste of time and our money.

Cuba travel bill clears Florida state Senate hurdle
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/504569.html
A bill increasing regulation of travel agents selling trips to Cuba
passed a committee hearing in the Senate Monday afternoon.

TALLAHASSEE -- They called his measure political grandstanding. He called them business partners with the Castro regime.

Monday there was no love lost between Rep. David Rivera, a Miami Republican, and a group of Miami-based travel agents specializing in trips to Cuba.

Rivera's proposal to increase state regulation of agencies selling trips to Cuba passed through a Senate committee, but not before a heated debate from travel agents who came from Miami to speak on the issue.

''This bill is presented as an anti-terrorism bill, but what it does is stop travel from Miami and Cuba,'' Armando García, president of Miami-based Marazul Charters Travel, told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

Under Rivera's measure -- and a corresponding Senate version sponsored by Sen. Carey Baker, a Eustis Republican -- any Florida travel agency selling trips to countries on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist nations, which includes Cuba, would pay up to $2,500 in annual registration fees with the state. They also would have to place a bond of up to $25,000.

''He's playing politics with an issue that has nothing to do with politics,'' said Maria Teresa Aral, president of ABC Charters. ``This is about economic development.''

García and Aral contend that additional restrictions would force customers to fly from Mexico or the Dominican Republic to get to Cuba. Only Miami International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York are allowed by the federal government to carry flights to Cuba from the United States.

Rivera, who has pushed for similar regulatory measures, including a 2006 law banning the use of state money to fund educational trips to Cuba, seemed unpersuaded by the travel agents' arguments.

''In this case there are two business partners involved in these business activities,'' Rivera said. ``It is the travel agency here and it is the Cuban government . . . so I believe . . . that the Castro regime and their business partners here in Miami will make business decisions to stay in business in Florida.''

If the measure is approved by the Legislature, the travel agencies plan to go to court. ''This will not end here,'' García said after the vote.