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I'm a Minnesota Girl, living in the south. I tell my friends I try not to talk and think like a Yankee, but sometimes I slip up!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Keeping up with the Joneses


















It's not all Governor Voldemort, er, I mean Governor Scott, in Florida. No, our legislature is trying its best to keep up with every crazy type of legislation being passed by these kamikaze crazies (no, I won't call them conservatives, whom I respect) that have taken office in state legislatures in 2011 and proceeded to introduce every special interest piece of legislation they can dream up (but nothing about new jobs).


Let's see.... we only have 18 anti-abortion bills alive in our legislature, so we are running behind there, since there are 374 pieces of active anti-abortion legislation alive in all the states. We are doing are best to force doctors to give costly ultrasounds to women who are seeking an abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. That's our best piece...but little by little we are chipping away at Roe v Wade.


Our fair governor is enamored of drug tests, and is pushing legislation to enforce drug tests on those enemies of the people:


1. state government employees, those villains, who he wants to have take the

tests every quarter, at state expense


2. the unemployed, who are doing their best to cheat the government; they would

have to pay for their own before they receive the magnificent sum of $275 each

week


The leader of the house finally backed off on his bill to carve out pieces of 5 state parks to build Jack Nicklaus golf centers. That would have turned recreation land for all Floridians into space that only the top earners could pay for.


We are dabbling in a bill to allow concealed weapons permit holders to carry openly. Look for shoulder holsters the next time you come to our beaches. Disney has been told they would have to post signs prohibiting the openly carried guns in their parks.


We have constitutional protection of collective bargaining, so instead we are going to prohibit union dues and charity contributions from being withheld from paychecks.


We have a monster group of bills prepared to insure you can't vote. We are seeking to add a long time to make your voter registration official, and we are insuring that newly married women who change their names only can cast provisional ballots (we'll count them after their name lawfully changes).


On the brighter side, we are restricting Medicaid in such a way that we will lose millions of dollars of Federal matching funds, thus insuring that our poor will have fewer $$ for treatment.


We have categorically told the Fed to butt out of our water, citing the fact that we can protect our water better than the EPA.


We have decided not to sue the company that operated the underwater platform that created the oil spill last summer (Louisiana and Alabama have already joined this lawsuit). We think it will expose us to too many legal fees. So we are going to make nice to BP to see if they will settle our claim privately. I'm sure they will want to deal with our CEO, whoops, our governor, separately.


We are, of course, seeking to strenghthen our immigration laws. Perhaps we can pass a law that will allow us to be sued by the Justice Dept, like Arizona, so that we can spend money on THOSE kind of legal fees.


We have also legalized "leadership funds" for our legislators, so that corporations and lobbyists can make payments directly to those senators/legislators that will help buy their votes. We didn't need Citizens United, not much. We took it to the next level.


And that high speed rail line? Gone. The CEO, I mean governor, said so. All in all, Florida is doing its best to insure that we can pay for the tax breaks we just gave corporations.... perhaps Wisconsin, Michigan and Tennessee are a little ahead of us in this game, but we'll catch up.


It's been unique living in Florida. I like it. But 4 years of control of this governor and this legislature may drive me out for good.

4 comments:

Kelly said...

You know...there IS an uncanny resemblance!

quid said...

It really is funny, isn't it. Some people say Max Headroom, but I think he's Voldemort all the way. Or maybe he's just a sleazeball.

Serena said...

All I can say is -- good heavens! Sounds to me like FL needs to stage a revolt.

Anonymous said...

Quid,
A most heartfelt- and very good post!
I agree with what Kelly said about the resemblance of the accompanying pictures.
Raven