Notes For Monday, January 20, 2003
STATE'S INSURANCE PLAN ON THE SKIDS: GOP PRIVATIZATION AND "SERVICE FIRST" PARTLY TO BLAME. The medical insurance program for state employees is "is running on empty", according to Bill Cotterell's column today. The problem is in part due to Bush's Service First initiative which "moved 16,000 jobs from Career Service to SES, so now there are about 35,000 employees who don't pay into the fund. They do, however, get sick." On top of that "[p]rivatization and 'outsourcing,' another trend accelerated by Bush, add to the strain on the insurance trust fund. Retiring baby boomers are not being replaced, and young employees whose jobs are outsourced are leaving behind an older work force with more insurance claims."
BLACKBURN HITS HOME RUN. Writing about John Ellis Bush's friend of the court (amicus) brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in opposition to the Univeristy of Michigan affirmative action program, Palm Beach Post editorial wtiter Tom Blackburn gives us a must read piece, which includes the following passages:
"The 'unfairness' of having flagship universities that can't take everyone who can do the work didn't keep the president from citing Texas and his brother's state as having better admissions systems than Michigan's, nor Gov. Jeb Bush from representing Florida with an amicus brief that reads as if it were written by his publicity department."
"To buy Gov. Bush's argument, one almost has to agree that Texas and Florida are smarter than Michigan. Proving that would be hard. How do you explain away whom they elect as their governors?"
"President Bush the Younger, with his brother in the Amen corner, calls the Texas and Florida non-policies on admitting minority students 'affirmative access.' But, like 'compassionate conservatism,' the noun counts, and the adjective is filigree. He might just as well call them 'hydrogen access' and 'kumquat conservatism' for all the difference the modifiers make."
"He's is playing around with a touchy subject, race, with a mind unsullied by curiosity and cobwebbed by disuse. His statement would be laughable if it weren't so pernicious."
["Bushes give it the old college lie"]
5:07 AM
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RIGHT, AS SOON AS WE FILE THAT AMICUS BRIEF OPPOSING THE DRED SCOTT DECISION. "Two Florida lawmakers have begun a campaign for support in their effort to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the state Constitution", according to the AP Wire.
4:55 AM
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IT MAKES YOU PROUD TO BE A FLORIDIAN. Of all the briefs filed in the Michigan anti-affirmative action case, the brief filed by Florida's Governor - or his lawyers, that is (the Governor is not a lawyer, he's a developer) - is the one that most impresses the extreme right wing, the likes of the Heritage Foundation and Ward Connerly. However, as Peter Wallsten points out, Florida's amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case "carries minuscule legal weight compared" and "looks more like the text of a campaign speech than a legal missive." It is, as Wallsten puts, "one man's view of himself".
The good thing about the Governor putting his "One Florida" plan in the national spotlight is that perhaps now it will receive some serious scrutiny. "One Florida" has yet to have any rigorous independent review of which we are aware. This is perhaps because the plan has not been in effect long enough to determine its real effect, particularly in graduate programs and premier academic programs. 4:37 AM
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LIKE BROTHER, LIKE BROTHER (PART TWO). As if one weren't bad enough, an AP wire report tells us how the Bush brothers are "on the same page". 4:23 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]