Notes For Wednesday, February 05, 2003
FLORIDA TAX LAWS "AMONG THE MOST REGRESSIVE AND OBSOLETE IN THE NATION". "In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atom bomb. NATO was formed. A postage stamp cost 3 cents, and a gallon of gas averaged 26 cents. Television aired the first sitcom ever, 'The Goldbergs.' That same year in Florida, the Legislature killed 16 new or increased taxes proposed by Gov. Fuller Warren. Special interests succeeded in getting a sales tax implemented to help shield their wealth. Today our 54-year-old tax structure is widely considered among the most regressive and obsolete in the nation. Florida tax laws protect special interests.SR PETE TIMES: NO ELECTION FOR LT. GOV. The St Pete Times editorializes against the requirement, if any, that there be an election to fill the Lt. Gov. position. "Surely, given the budgetary deadlock in Tallahassee and the governor's proposed $111-million cut to the public university system, the Democrats can find a better issue to make headlines. The notion that Bush, or any Florida governor, should have to hold an election to fill the lieutenant's job is absurd." An election Florida doesn't need. 6:56 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]
WHITHER DCF? "Florida Department of Children & Families Secretary Jerry Regier unveiled a sweeping management restructuring on Tuesday that would rapidly dissolve the beleaguered department and turn over core social services functions to private agencies, local charities, law enforcement and other state agencies." Florida's troubled child-welfare agency to be dismantled. 6:48 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]
BUSH SOFT ON ANTI-CASTRO TERRORISTS. "On May 20, 2002, [GW] Bush specifically invited several famous (notorious?) terrorists to hear his speech in Miami. Orlando Bosch at first received an invitation to sit on the platform. Later, when one of his advisers discovered that Bosch had earned the FBI's label of the Western Hemisphere's most dangerous terrorist, the seating arrangement changed and Bosch got dis-invited off the platform and moved into the audience."
. . .
"Similarly, just before 9/11, Bush (43) also disregarded strong opinions from the FBI and INS and ordered the freeing from INS deportation custody of Virgilio Paz and Jose Dionisio Suarez. Both men had received twelve year sentences for confessing to conspiring with Chilean Secret Police officials to assassinate Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in a September 1976 car-bombing in Washington DC."
. . .
"After his speech, [GW] Bush attended a $25,000-a-couple Florida Republican Party dinner to help finance the reelection campaign of his younger brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is running for re-election. Some of the big donors, members of the governing board of the Cuban American National Foundation, have also financed terrorists like Bosch and his erstwhile partner in the airplane bombing, Luis Posada Carriles. That's what Carriles told Anne Bardach of the July 12-13, 1998 New York Times." Terrorists Are On the Run: Some Away from Bush, Others Toward His Nurturing Arms 6:40 AM
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