Now it's expected to do even worse. Changes to the state's Medicaid system appear likely to make it impossible for the vast majority of young enrollees to obtain preventive care, increasing the odds of toothaches and disease that can have costly lifetime consequences for children and society. Florida can do better, and Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature need to see to it.

Legislative staffers get theirs

"When Florida legislators this year broke the freeze on employee pay and offered state workers salary increases for the first time in seven years, legislative leaders made sure to give some of their own employees pay raises, too. Using criteria based on performance and promotions, the increases amounted to about three to five percent for most workers but as much as 20 percent for others." "Legislative leaders rewarded high-performing staff with salary hikes".

Florida, "a sub-tropical Deadwood"

Daniel Ruth: "It is probably safe to assume that a combination of morons, liquor, guns and strip clubs will pretty well guarantee that nothing much very good will result. And that's how it was that Fred Turner Jr. wound up dead — literally being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time."

This is what the all-too-easy proliferation of guns in our society has wrought. There was a time, before Florida opted to turn itself into a sub-tropical Deadwood, when tiffs like what occurred at the Gold Club coo-coo-ca-choo emporium would have been resolved with some innovative expressions tossed back and forth about the participants' sexuality, parentage and suggestions to commit various acts upon themselves all wrapped up very nicely by some halfhearted and ill-aimed punches attempted.

Now whatever untoward actions took place between two sad sack bumpkins sitting in a chintzy strip club apparently rose to the level where someone felt justified to shoot a total stranger.

It is probably sadly true that any serious effort to forge consensus on gun control is a political nonstarter. But just maybe some lives could be saved if society imposed a literacy test on slack-jawed yahoos wanting to enter a hoochie-coochie club.

Weekly Roundup

"Weekly Roundup: A Deluge of Planning as the Rains Keep Coming".

Fasano to step away from Tally?

"Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, has emerged as a leading candidate to replace Mike Olson, the long-time Pasco County tax collector who died last week. . . . Fasano's appointment as county tax collector would also likely eliminate any chance that he would challenge in a GOP primary for the state Senate in 2014. That possibility has been discussed in Tallahassee in the context of creating future alliances for the Senate presidency." "Rep. Mike Fasano emerges as candidate for Pasco tax collector".

And firefighters have the audacity to expect the pensions they were promised?

As we read the horrific details of how nineteen firemen were burned alive, "Wildfire cut off Hotshots' access to safety zone", let's not forget how just two years ago,

Two state firefighters were killed Monday after being overtaken by fast-moving flames and smoke while battling a blaze in rural Hamilton County that also injured two other firefighters attempting to rescue them . . . [As of June of that year, Florida's] Division of Forestry [had] battled more than 1,500 wildfires, which [had] burned nearly 200,000 acres across the state. Officials said firefighters have been facing an average of more than 31 new wildfires each day.

"The backstory is years-long and complicated"

"The backstory is years-long and complicated. But the conflict really comes down to a simple question: What counts as a parimutuel horse race in Florida?" "Group claims Florida ‘rubber-stamped phony horse racing’".

Database leak?

"The governor tried to kill it. Lawmakers wouldn't fund it. Few used it."

And now, less than two years since its birth, Florida's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program is the subject of new criticism, legal action and calls that it be overhauled — or abolished.

On Monday, the Florida Department of Health will hold a workshop in Tallahassee to discuss further limiting access to records of who writes and fills prescriptions for the most addictive drugs.

The meeting comes in response to allegations last month that medical data for 3,300 Floridians had been "leaked." The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida demanded a federal investigation, and critics pointed to the incident as evidence that the system was fundamentally flawed and had allowed an inevitable breach of privacy.

Murphy money

"U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, a Democrat from Jupiter, is one of the House of Representative’s top fundraisers." "Murphy rakes in big bucks in early fundraising".

"You want to bash Rick Scott . . ."

Nancy Smith: "You want to bash Rick Scott, look for something besides his defiant stand against college tuition increases. Right now he's a Florida student's, a Florida family's best friend." "Rick Scott Wages a Righteous War Against Mounting College Costs".

"Scott Sounds Alarm"

"Rick Scott Sounds Alarm over Obama Cuts to National Guard in Hurricane Season".

Water wars

The Tampa Bay Times editorial board argues that

Congress should intervene to keep Georgia and the Army Corps of Engineers from further damaging the seafood harvest and environmental habitat in Florida's Apalachicola Bay. The federal courts have sent a clear message they don't intend to bring fairness, clarity or a sense of urgency to ending the 23-year water wars among Florida, Georgia and Alabama. It's time that Congress established once and for all that the states must share a watershed that serves a distinct need for all three. And Washington needs to act before Apalachicola's oyster beds and estuary dry to the point of becoming both an ecological and an economic crisis.

Rubio was talented but untested. But he had another issue. As a Florida legislator he had brushed up against a financial scandal involving the Florida Republican party. In addition, then-representative David Rivera, a close friend and fellow office-holder, was under federal investigation for for campaign irregularities. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by Rubio, but among at least some Romney advisers there was concern that Rivera would be indicted before the election, and if that were to happen the story would become a major distraction.

Look for the same "distraction", among many others, to carry forward to Rubio's premature interjection into the 2016 preznit conversation. Meanwhile, "Ad praises Rubio, immigration bill".

Report: Gambling benefits Florida

"Florida has one of the most competitive gambling markets in the country, bringing in more state tax dollars than all but two other gambling states, a new report concludes." "State report: Gambling does have economic benefits". See also "State study: Florida already one of nation's top gambling locations".

"Battle to Replace Will Weatherford"

"The Battle to Replace Will Weatherford Begins in Pasco County".

"The purely nosy are going to be disappointed"

Paul Flemming warns that "the purely nosy are going to be disappointed with a less detailed financial disclosure from Gov. Scott. On the plus side, it’s much easier to see the less-detailed form. This year, for the first time, everybody can find elected officials’ financial disclosures online at www.ethics.state.fl.us. Be patient. The actual forms are appropriately redacted for exempt material before they’re published on the web, so many are in process following Monday’s deadline to file." "Paul Flemming: Governor's disclosure form is less than titillating".

Privatization follies

"Last year, the Florida Department of Children and Families signed a $42 million contract with the Philadelphia-based company privatizing housekeeping and grounds-keeping services at the State Hospital in Chattahoochee. The contract included jobs held by 110 employees who made up the hospital housekeeping staff, according to DCF records."

Those working under the Aramark contract now pay as much as 90 percent more for health insurance. Records show the company offers health insurance options starting at $124.15 a month for individual coverage and $223.60 a month for an employee and a dependent. State health insurance starts at $8.34 a month for individual coverage and $30 a month for a family.

Murphy treads carefully

"Scraping out victory in the country's most expensive and vicious House race of 2012, and ending the career of tea party hero Allen West in the process, Murphy faces another high-profile campaign that will test the delicate line he walks in a quintessential swing district."

In a bitter twist, the loss of a polarizing, donation-attracting opponent may make it harder for Murphy, one of just nine Democrats in the country to win a district that went for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. "His prospects of winning a second term are almost entirely dependent on Republicans nominating someone who is unpalatable to independent voters," said Wasserman, who gives Murphy no more than a 35 percent chance of besting any generic Republican.

The GOP began targeting Murphy immediately after he won the District 18 seat, which touches Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Martin counties, confident their voter registration advantage will benefit a less controversial candidate. Republicans make up about 38 percent of the electorate; Democrats, 36 percent; independents, 26 percent.

Most districts in the country are far more one-sided, the result of gerrymandering. It has pushed Democrats to the left and Republicans to the right, resulting in a Congress that rarely cooperates. "I'm lucky I'm in a seat where I can be myself," said Murphy, a Republican until 2011.

DWS was right

"Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was correct in saying South Florida has 'had nine inches of sea-level rise since the 1920s'" "Debbie Wasserman Schultz says in South Florida, 'we’ve had nine inches of sea-level rise since the 1920s'".

Lobbyists deciding what to do next

"The Obama administration's decision to delay the Affordable Care Act health insurance mandate on employers has lessened some of the leverage advocates of expanding Medicaid in Florida had on lawmakers, but it won't end the debate."

On Wednesday, House Republicans cast the one-year delay as proof that lawmakers are right to worry about the consequences of the law, which they say is deeply flawed. Supporters of Medicaid expansion, meanwhile, said the decision of the federal government shouldn't affect deliberations in Florida.

"Only 'half of the story'"

"A Big Sugar ad campaign has struck a sour note with environmentalists."

In fliers mailed to thousands of South Florida homes and in a television spot, the sugar industry touts legislation signed by Gov. Rick Scott in May — which extends a $25-an-acre tax on cane fields to help pay for an $880 million expansion of projects to reduce the flow of farm pollution flowing in the Everglades — as a “historic partnership” with environmentalists and the state that will “put the final phase of restoration into place.”

The ad boasts that “smart farming techniques" have helped preserve the Everglades and proclaims farmers the “largest private funders of Everglades restoration” with some $400 million invested in the effort to date. . . .

“It’s not uncommon for coalitions and businesses to reach out in whatever media form to make sure people understand the facts,’’ said Hughes. “The sugar farmers are proud of the work they have put in to be part of the solution.’’

But two environmental leaders quoted in the flier supporting the legislation — Eric Draper of Florida Audubon and Eric Eikenberg of the Everglades Foundation — aren’t exactly on board with its message.

Both groups caught some flak during the legislative session from other activists who wanted the industry to pay more of the massive clean-up costs. The state has already spend some $1.2 billion constructing sprawling pollution-scrubbing artificial marshes that have not yet met strict water-quality standards for the Everglades.

Under pressure from federal judges overseeing two long-running environmental lawsuits, Scott championed an expanded clean-up plan expected to take several decades to construct. The law, aimed at raising $32 million a year, adds 10 years to a $25-per-acre tax that Everglades sugar growers pay, extending it to 2026. After that, the tax declines to $20 and then, in 2036, to $10 per acre.

Draper said the flier tells only “half of the story.”

Florida, I expect, will be more subtle. The politics hereabouts, in an evenly divided state, are a bit more delicate.

Texas was among a slew of states, including Florida, that leading up to the 2012 election passed clever new laws designed to diminish voter turnout.

The purported goal, of course, was to prevent voter fraud, though anyone who follows elections in South Florida knew that to be fallacious. None of those “reforms” addressed absentee-ballot fraud, the mechanism that had been used to corrupt one local election after another.

While there was little evidence that illegal immigrants or other categories of unregistered voters would risk felony convictions to cast illegal votes, there was plenty of evidence — along with election-fraud convictions — indicating that vote brokers in Miami or Hialeah often collect and bundle absentee ballots, occasionally filling them out and forging voter signatures. Not that South Florida invented the practice. The profitable enterprise of absentee ballot fraud has a long, sordid, well-documented history in American elections. But earlier this month, the Herald’s Marc Caputo and Patricia Mazzei reported that the illegal brokers in Miami-Dade had gone high-tech in the 2012 election, devising a complicated scheme to fraudulently request 2,046 absentee ballots online, hiding their IP addresses by routing the applications through computers in India and Britain.

If clean elections had been the real goal of the so-called reformers going into 2012, they’d surely have tightened the laws regulating absentees. They didn’t. Instead, they crafted statutes, sometimes word for word, from boilerplate legislation concocted by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council.

The daunting waits diminished turnout by an estimated 200,000 voters in Florida. Kathy Culliton-Gonzalez of the Advancement Project, the advocacy group that sponsored the Herron-Smith study, called the delays a “time tax” on voting. “Voters of color paid that time tax more than white voters.”

Last month, Gov. Scott signed a bill into law that undid some of the damage caused by the 2011 law. Early voting was extended. And restrictions on early voting locations were loosened. The length of constitutional amendments was limited to 75 words. And, finally, the state enacted some restrictions on people who request absentee ballots.

Well, hurray. We’re not Texas. It’s almost as if Florida legislators seem a little chastised by their ham-handed efforts to beat down the minority vote and deliver the state’s electoral college votes to the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. All they accomplished, really, was to get that particular segment of the electorate riled and determined to vote. No matter how long the wait.

But you’ve got to worry, with the Voting Rights Acts crippled, with the good ol’ boys in Texas and elsewhere in the Confederacy raring to push another round of election “reforms,” that the gang in Tallahassee might get inspired to come up with new and novel ways to limit the turnout of certain demographics.

"Jeb!" strives for relevancy

"This will generate some 2016 chatter: On Sept. 10, Jeb Bush, chairman of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, will present the 2013 Liberty Medal to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Both, of course, are possible contenders for the presidency. 'Former Secretary Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy,' Bush said in a statement. 'These efforts as a citizen, an activist, and a leader have earned Secretary Clinton this year's Liberty Medal.'" "Jeb honors Hillary".

Scott's sells off state work to "inhumane" privateers

"The nation’s largest outsourcing of prison medical care is finally underway in Florida with the state turning to a private company with a history of problems in other states."

Corrections Secretary Mike Crews has sent letters to 1,756 employees, notifying them that Corizon will take over all health care in prisons in north and central Florida.

“The position you currently occupy with the Department will no longer be available,” Crews wrote.

He added that all displaced workers have a right to job interviews with Corizon and said: “It is anticipated that Corizon will ultimately employ a majority of health services employees.”

Some will earn less money than before and they will no longer accrue pension benefits with the Florida Retirement System. A spokesman for Corizon, Brian Fulton, declined to discuss the compensation package being offered to Florida workers.

In Louisville, Ky., six Corizon workers resigned and a series of lawsuits followed the deaths of two inmates in the county jail last year. One inmate suffered a drug overdose and the other had diabetes and heart disease and county officials said it took too long for them to get medical attention.

In Idaho, a court-appointed expert said Corizon’s care for inmates at the state prison near Boise was inhumane. The company countered that a national accrediting agency said conditions were satisfactory.

Corizon agreed last year to pay a $1.85 million fine to Philadelphia after an investigation revealed the use of a phony subcontractor to meet city rules for minority-owned vendors.

"Sachs draws ethics complaint"

"The ethics complaint was filed by a Broward voter who cited a local television report tracking state Sen. Maria Sachs to a Boca Raton residence." "Sachs draws ethics complaint for living outside her district".

"Crist comfortable with his multiple flip-flops"

"What kind of Democrat would oppose President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, support a constitutional ban on gay marriage and back legislation that every environmental group in Florida reviled as gutting growth management?"

The kind of Democrat who used to be a Republican struggling to tamp down backlash from the conservative GOP base, i.e., Charlie Crist.

"The meme that refuses to die among Establishment Republicans"

The radical right wingers comprising the Tampa Trib editorial board believe that "tough talk and no action" by their conservative friends "have cost the Republican Party many Hispanic voters who support conservative values." "Better immigration law threatened by fantasies".

That Hispanic voters somehow support the country club values of the Tribeditors and their friends is, fortunately, "the meme that refuses to die among Establishment Republicans." In fact,

if Republicans want to get on the right side of Hispanic political values, they will have to junk their opposition to Obamacare (Hispanic support for Obamacare: 62 percent), big government (Hispanic support for big government: 75 percent), and racial preferences (the Latino Caucus in California is close to its longstanding goal of overturning Proposition 209’s ban on racial preferences in public higher education), as well as their positive view of capitalism (55 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, the most of all groups surveyed by the Pew Research Center).

Scott "must stop excusing mediocrity"

The Miami Herald editors write that "Gov. Rick Scott, who just last week praised the DCF secretary, must stop excusing mediocrity and put children’s welfare first." "Heal thyself, DCF".