Category: The Sunshine State

I went to the beach and I saw a beach

All my life I could count on the rocks of Honeymoon Island. I don’t know the complete history of Honeymoon Island, but I seem to recall a story about a developer who thought it would be a good idea to stabilize the island by dumping tons of rocks on the shoreline. In any case, the rocks were the sole sore subject of the island since I came to Florida as a young lad during the summer of ’79. If you weren’t interested in unprotected walking on the beach (re: barefoot), the island was great. The woods were a great place for exploring, the rocks were great for throwing… and if that wasn’t enough… for a long time the north part of the island was a haven for nudists.

This was great stuff for any kid with a good pair of shoes: adventure, ammunition, and titilating urban legend.

Several years ago the state took over the whole kit and caboodle, and the nudists (real or legend) have been long gone. But we still had the rocks to kick around.

Wouldn’t you know it, we went to the beach last week and there were no rocks. For the first time I can remember there were more people than rocks. It was a regular hot-bed of Florida style frolicking in the sand and surf.

At this point I’m not entirely sure it was real. I may need to go back to verify my previous findings.

Sacred cows

For better or worse, right or wrong, there are two institutions I associated with Florida as a growing lad: Publix and Sonny’s Real Pit Bar-B-Q. When I moved with my family to Florida in 1979, there were was one developed corner of what is now a major intersection – and on that lonely corner of incadecent and neon lights sat our neighborhood Sonny’s. With my mother’s unexpected conversion to veganism, we didn’t get to go to Sonny’s all that often – but it was always there, pumping the eye watering smell of the pit into the surrounding air.

When I moved away from home to go to college, we still had a Sonny’s and a Publix. When I moved to Orlando after college, we still had a Publix and a Sonny’s.

Well friends, we don’t have a Sonny’s around these parts anymore. I drove by this afternoon as was shocked to see a pile of rubble where Sonny’s once stood.

I feel like I should send someone flowers, or make a contribution to Sonny’s favorite charity; something to deal with my grief.

Bogota, we have a problem (another entry about coffee)

I think I have the symptoms of a serious chemical imbalance. Specifically, America’s favorite stimulant doesn’t seem to be working as a stimulant. I am familiar with the concept of tolerance… but this goes well beyond your garden-variety tolerance issue. It’s as if I’ve punched my ticket to bizarro world, or left this plane of existence, did not pass go, did not collect my $200, and went straight to hell. You see I’m strapped in the back seat of a van barreling down the highway towards Orlando, Florida.

*** This is a test of the Vacation Disaster System. In the event of an actual vacation, this alert would be followed by an intervention; to make sure you really wanted to spend your vacation in Central Florida. ***

As it happens the occasion of this trip is not a vacation, but a visit with some blood relations of my in-laws. Anyway, I’m sitting in the van with my knees pushed back into my appendix, sipping some store brewed joe, when I begin to feel drowsy. DROWSY?!? I just sucked down thirty-two ounces like a horror movie monster; I should be wired like the gas tank of a ’76 Ford Pinto hatchback.

I’m beginning to suspect foul play. I can just picture a disgruntled Dunkin Donuts employee indiscriminately slinging decaf to the unsuspecting a.m. customers with an evil gleam in his eye.

Politically depressed

I resisted half a dozen urges to post a political entry today, despite several that left me seething. My straw came in the form of a mailing from “Florida’s Working Families.” It was an attack on the congressional voting record of the Democratic nominee for Governor in Florida, Jim Davis.

As anyone can tell you, misleading attack adds are a dime a dozen during election season. What makes them worse – and WAY, WAY more prevelent – are all of the Political Action Committees who do all of the dirty work for a given candidate, granting him or her “plausible deniability” against the charge of “going negative” in an election. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Republicans are worse than Democrats when it comes to slinging mud (even if they do have more money, which means they can mail out more of it). Nobody’s hands are clean, and my intent with this entry is not to demonize one party or the other. This is just an example that jumped out, because I was very familiar with the issue being misrepresented.

Among other charges (of which I’m less familiar, and have no inclination to research now), it states: “JIM DAVIS voted against limiting the amount of interest credit card companies can charge; squeezing working families and the middle class after taking nearly $400,000 in campaign cash from corporate banking interests.” There was a little, superscript “4” next to this sentence, referring to the fine print: “S. 256: April 14, 2005.”

The reason I was pissed off (besides everything else that happened today), was that I knew what Senate Bill 256 (2005) was… it was more commonly known as the: “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005.” Anyone paying attention to the 109th Congress knew that this was one of the big news makers of the year… and that it was well known that the bill had two PRIMARY, practical effects: it made it harder to file for bankruptcy, and it made fewer debts dischargeable in bankruptcy proceedings. Depending on your political leanings, you may or may not have thought this was a good idea… but think of it in light of the charge against Davis. Considering credit card companies and banks had a HUGE stake in what debts can be discharged (given that much of those debts are owed to them), and Davis voted against the bill that would keep more of that debt in tact… that $400,000 in campaign contributions to Davis wasn’t very well spent, was it? If I recall correctly, the banking and credit card industries (which are mostly one and the same) were lobbying really-really hard FOR this bill. I figure working and middle class families probably had a lot at stake too. I may be wrong, but my guess is they are the LARGEST group of folks who file for bankruptcy… since they are the largest group of the US population. A working family who falls on hard times, through no fault of their own, would probably like to discharge debt in a bankruptcy, duh? I’m really going out on a limb here, but they might even like to be able to file in the first place.

It is true that part of the bill sought to reduce the amount of interest credit card companies charge, in order to help reduce the number of filings in the first place, but I still think it’s disingenuous (at best) to make the claim Davis was against capping credit card interest rates. That’s only one part of the bill. Considering that banks and credit card industries were lobbying for the bill, and banks and credit card companies often have this hang-up over WANTING TO MAKE MONEY… which do you suppose they stood to lose more money over: the reduction in credit card interest rates, or debts that continued to get discharged in bankruptcy proceedings. It doesn’t take a math major to figure that a bank could make up a reduction in interest rates with an increase in VOLUME (of debt still owed). It’s the same principle that allows Wal-Mart to drive out competition in the old retail “downtowns” of years gone by. Given the answer to that question, which outcome do you suppose was more in favor of working and middle class families? What’s good for the collector can’t be good for the debtor too.

The Democratic Party is far from perfect, but the economic issues of the working class (and working poor) are the bread and butter of the Democratic Party (re: universal health care, minimum wage increases, etc). I have no doubt that 100% of the Democratic Congress would vote yes on a bill that did nothing BUT cap interest rates on credit cards, and would have on this bill too if a big target of this bill wasn’t working class families who file for bankruptcy (or used to anyway).

I’m done now. I’m giving up politics for a while (I’m going to try anyway)… it’s just too damn depressing.

**Author’s note: I guess I wasn’t done. It’s an hour later and I’ve posted about 15 or so revisions of this entry since it was first posted at quarter to ten. Now I’m really done – if for no other reason than my fingers are starting to really hurt.

Gallagher v Crist

It’s never too late to go to the well, and Investment Bob went last night in his debate with the tuna (sorry Charlie). Investment Bob says there are three liberals in the Florida race for Governor, and he’s the only conservative. In fact, he took the gloves off and called the tuna a liberal. A LIBERAL!?! You take that back! Chain Gang Charlie struck back with a “nanny-nanny boo-boo” of his own… “Well Bob, at least I’m not a crook.” (He didn’t use those exact words, but that’s a loose translation.) I would have liked to have seen Investment Bob channel Tricky Dick… “Floridians have the right to know that their candidate is not a crook, and I am not a crook.”

Man I wish I had remembered it was on.

A farewell to freedom

July, we hardly knew thee. In less than one week’s time, Beth will join thousands of school age children in the annual event known as “the first day of school.” Like years past, it will be a time of sorrow in The Kauffman Household (version 2.2.1).

As many of you know, the school year starts really freaking early in parts of Florida. If you think we’ve got it bad, our neighboring county is starting school today! In the rush to get as much of the school year wedged in during Hurricane Season as possible, many school districts are starting up during the first week of August. (Full disclosure: I think the school systems are starting earlier to maximize the number of teaching days before the FCAT… but I’m going to REALLY try hard not to get started on the FCAT.)

Well friends, an unexpected bit of good news surfaced in the Florida Legislature this year, by way of House Bill 7087 (signed into law by the Governor earlier this year). Among other things, this bill limits school districts to starting the school year NO EARLIER THAN two weeks before Labor Day. What does this mean to us? Simply put, it means two weeks. Instead of starting August 8th, school would be starting August 21st – if the law took effect this year rather than 2007. (It’s almost three weeks if you have the misfortune to live in Hillsborough County.) It also puts more summer in summer vacation. This year about forty-three percent of summer vacation took place during spring. Inconceivable? Outrageous? Sacrilegious? All of the above? Sure, we’ve all got a soft spot in our hearts for Hurricane Days, but Hurricane Season doesn’t peak until late September anyway. There’s still plenty of opportunity built in there.

There are those of you who will say that it’s all a wash anyway… after all, won’t the school year just end later? Sure it will. But I ask you this: what of tradition? Sometimes there’s a reason why “we always did it that way.” I remember when summer vacation trudged right through the hottest month of summer… those brutally hot, middle days of August when you couldn’t walk in the street without shoes, unless you liked third degree burns. The only thing that made those days bearable was our freedom; that and the neighbor’s pool. Now imagine my daughter in the weeks to come: trudging through the peak of the heat, Florida summer in its prime, further weighed down by the yoke of academic responsibility.

It breaks my heart.

Here’s the “totally whack” conspiracy theory portion of this entry. Yes, I’m going to get started on the FCAT now. Assuming that school districts were starting earlier in the year in order to get in more instruction time prior to the FCAT, the Legislature could have mandated that the testing authority (CTB/McGraw-Hill**) give the test later in the year (to my knowledge, they haven’t). That would kinda force school districts to start up and run later (in the year) too, wouldn’t it? After all, it would be difficult at best to end school the first week of May, then call the students back a week later to take the FCAT (assuming they pushed the test date back). Now imagine that YOU are the Florida Legislature. Imagine that YOU really like the idea of privatizing education, and YOU were still stinging over the legal challenges to your partial privatization scheme – whereby schools deemed to be failing, as measured by FCAT results, got less funding and lost students to private schools. Setting up more schools to “fail” by limiting their time to teach the FCAT would prime the pump for a BIG FAT I TOLD YOU SO for your voters, wouldn’t it? In the immortal words of Bill and Ted: “Dude, that’s totally awesome!”

I’m not quite that cynical. I don’t think our legislature is (quite) that nefarious. It was a fun mental exercise though.

** A private company contracted to administer the FCAT by the State of Florida Department of Education.

Good news

There is little I find relaxing about a summer vacation in Florida. What about Central Florida theme parks? Here’s a theme for you: dehydration, heat exhaustion, and sun stroke.

So here are my first three responses to the proposed weekend trip to Orlando that just passed:
1. “No.”
2. “Please don’t make me go.”
3. “Ah… um… (Sigh)… fine.”

Now here’s where the whole thing gets a little weird. Despite years of experience suggesting the contrary, I had a decent time. This was due largely to much of the Kennedy Space Center being enclosed and air conditioned. Although we spent A LOT more money than we anticipated, I felt good knowing that the folks at NASA seem to be putting that money to use keeping up and expanding the visitor facilities. Perhaps the biggest surprise was finding the old Saturn V rocket still on display… but indoors… in a newly built facility showcasing the Apollo missions. Where else can a space buff eat pizza underneath the third stage of a moon rocket? I’m telling you right now, that all by itself was worth it. Everything else: the walk-thru of the International Space Station assembly building (seeing the next pieces to go up being worked on), the tour of the launch facilities, touching a moon rock, seeing the newly recovered Liberty Bell 7, watching an AWESOME 3-D IMAX movie about the Apollo missions – that was gravy. I’ve been to Kennedy several times, and before this weekend I never would have said there was too much to see in one day. No more. We barely had enough time to go on one tour, eat lunch and see one of the IMAX movies. Left unseen was three quarters of the original visitor’s center and all of the Astronaut Hall of Fame (which was included in our admission fee).

It was one of the few times as an adult that I left a Central Florida attraction not feeling satiated. You don’t catch me being overly enthusiastic very often, so when I say: “I was blown away,” you know it must have been good.

Whistle while you wait

In the twelve or so years that I’ve been paying attention, the Florida Legislature has not once increased the reimbursement rates for travel related expenses (of state employees, on state business). That is, until this year. One of the biggest increases is the reimbursement for meals – which doubled (Senate Bill 428, Govenor’s signature pending). Coincidentally, this is the year that a law went into effect which bans representatives to the state legislature from accepting free meals from lobbyists.

It’s refreshing to see that our leaders have the interests and well-being of the average civil servant at heart. (Insert Bronx cheer here.)

All of you cynics out there… stand up and take a bow. Vindication is nigh!

Second thoughts about gambling

Over the last twenty-four hours, I’ve rethought my views on legalized gambling, although my plan goes much farther than any of the proposals thus far. If we are really interested in raising money for state government, things like education and health care for the needy, why should we allow a private company to take a share, when the whole take could go back to the good folks of the State of Florida? Rather than a Department of the Lottery, we could have a Department of Gaming. That’s right, I envision an entire slate of state run gambling, kind of like the state owned liquor stores in New Hampshire. Why stop with selling meager lotto tickets and taxing slot machines when we could have it all. Picture a state run casino, with tuxedo clad state employees, running blackjack tables, dealing high stakes poker, and jockeying the dice. In this age of recasting old, disagreeable practices, with new, more palatable names, we could discard the term “gambling” in favor of the “Voluntary Tax.” I can envision Voluntary Tax kiosks in the malls, self serve “Voluntary Tax stations” in high pedestrian traffic areas that accept all major credit cards, and authorized Voluntary Tax “resellers” at all of your favorite retailers. Just imagine going through your favorite fast food drive-thru, but instead of being asked if you want your value meal super-sized, you are asked if you would like to take the points on this week’s Bucs game.

An ad campaign that counts on the viewer’s stupidity

If you decide to vote this November (I’m talking to you, 49%), you’ll be asked to make a decision about gambling. Yes, gambling rears it’s ugly face in Florida politics once again this year. This time, pro-gambling forces are making a play for a foot in the door – rather than the heretofore-unsuccessful full frontal assault.

Here’s the ballot language (courtesy of Vote Smart Florida):
“Authorizes Miami-Dade and Broward Counties to hold referenda on whether to authorize slot machines in existing, licensed pari-mutuel facilities (thoroughbred and harness racing, greyhound racing, and jai alai) that have conducted live racing or games in that county during each of the last two calendar years before effective date of this amendment. The Legislature may tax slot machine revenues, and any such taxes must supplement public education funding statewide. Requires implementing legislation.”

Here’s what the folks supporting the amendment have to say about why you should vote ‘yes’ (www.yesforlocalcontrol.com/):
“Yes on Amendment 4: When it comes to increasing education funding through the regulation and taxation of slot machines… Shouldn’t You Have the Right to Decide?”

I know what you are thinking, “Gambling may not be the best thing to have in my backyard, but who can say no to more education spending.” Being against more education funding is kind of like being pro-drunk driving. There may be a few out there who feel that way, but not many of them will admit it publicly.

Now, here’s a history lesson, courtesy of yours truly. Citizens amended the Florida Constitution on Election Day in November 1986. This amendment allowed for the creation of a Florida Lottery. Then, as now, the carrot swung before the voter’s eyes was additional funding for education. Chapter 24 of the Florida Statutes covers the lottery, based on the constitutional amendment passed in 1986. Here’s what it says:
24.102 Purpose and intent.–
(1) The purpose of this act is to implement s. 15, Art. X of the State Constitution in a manner that enables the people of the state to benefit from significant additional moneys for education and also enables the people of the state to play the best lottery games available.

Notice the subtle use of the word “additional” in the statute? Now ask your local state representative how much “additional money” from the lottery goes to education. It is widely known that the legislature has been much more familiar with the phrase “in place of” since 1986 when the “Education Lottery” amendment was passed.

If you think gambling should be legal, vote for the amendment. But let’s be honest, this amendment will ultimately have about as much to do with education as this web site.

Fool me twice? I don’t think so.