FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
"every political insider should be reading right now."

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Sunday, May 01, 2005

Scandal

    This ought to be yet another scandal on "Jeb!"'s watch, but it won't be pursued by the media:
    The former chief watchdog of pesticide use in Florida says the state's health officials abdicated their responsibility to protect workers and the public years ago, largely because of political pressure from the agriculture industry.

    Dr. Omar Shafey, who headed the state Department of Health pesticide surveillance program from 1998 to 2000, says his superior told him that he could not "contradict" agriculture officials, even if he thought pesticide use was causing health problems.

    Shafey says his superiors also changed one of his reports about illnesses caused by malathion spraying during the medfly infestations of the late 1990s, a report that said victims of pesticide illness should be treated at state expense and compensated. Shafey calls the Florida Health Department "corrupt."

    "We're talking about bureaucrats whose first interest is self-preservation, in not causing controversy, and not in public health," Shafey says. "The system of protecting the public is broken."
    "Pesticide watchdog called ag lap dog".

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