Tag: Florida

Nassau Guardian Online, Wednesday afternoon:

The worst natural disaster to hit the Gulf Coast is likely to reach local coastlines by the weekend, according to Chief Climatological Officer Michael Stubbs, who said a shift in wind patterns is expected to propel the oil slick towards The Bahamas.

In an interview with The Nassau Guardian yesterday Stubbs said that in pervious weeks weather conditions have kept the oil slick contained in the Gulf of Mexico.

“As it stands now the wind is not supporting movement out of the Gulf. It’s keeping the oil particles that are floating along the surface in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Stubbs.

“However as Friday approaches we see the weather pattern changing and what would happen then is the winds in the area would be flowing clockwise, making it possible for oil floating on the surface to make it to the notorious loop current. So once the particles move into the loop current the chances are [higher] for it [the oil] to reach our area.”

[snip]

Stubbs, who heads a meteorological task force set up by the Ingraham administration to monitor the oil spill, said once the surface winds shift, oil sediments will most likely reach the Cay Sal Bank, Bimini, and western Grand Bahama – key fishing areas for the marine industry.

He said for this reason the government has already been warned to prepare for the likely arrival of oil in Bahamian waters.

[snip]

On Monday, Minister for the Environment Earl Deveaux told The Nassau Guardian that the government is doing all it can to tackle the issue which has persisted for more than a month.

However, just five days earlier in a press conference, Deveaux admitted that The Bahamas is not prepared for the level of calamity that the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could cause the country.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

This is going to be a relatively short essay.  In a state where only a few months ago, a popular, moderate, establishment-oriented Republican Governor (Charlie Crist) was not only expected to get his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate but, perhaps, coast to victory over any number of Democratic opponents, finds the governor’s party in crisis mode.

Lately, the news out of Florida has not been good for the Republicans.  The St. Petersburg Times reports this morning

As a volatile election season gets under way, the Republican Party of Florida is facing its biggest crisis of confidence in decades.

Donors and party activists are livid over newly revealed records that suggest outgoing chairman Jim Greer used the party as a personal slush fund for lavish travel and entertainment.  The records also show that executive director Delmar Johnson padded his $103,000 salary with a secret, $260,000 fundraising contract and another $42,000 for expenses – at the same time the once mighty Florida GOP was having to lay off employees amid anemic fundraising.

The disgusting act of gerrymandering is when partisan interests take control of the redistricting process, which is when congressional and legislative districts are redrawn and is usually conducted by state legislatures after the census, and use it to benefit incumbents and specific parties.

But there is good news.  There is a growing movement to end gerrymandering.  In 2008, Californians passed Prop 11, which moved the responsibility of redistricting from the legislature to a nonpartisan committee.  Now, a group in Florida is trying to put an end to gerrymandering through another ballot initiative, and they need your help today more than ever, no matter where you live in the country.

UPDATE:  Here’s a quick summary of what I’m talking about:

1.  Gerrymandering is awful and needs to be stopped

2.  FairDistrictsFlorida.org, a grassroots organization, is working to stop it by putting an initiative on the Florida ballot

3.  They’re asking for donations from Florida and across the country to pay for a processing fee of over $140,000 for their petitions

This is a repost from a few months ago.  I am reposting it because this organization needs to raise $25,000 in order to pay for the initiative to be qualified.  If they don’t do this, gerrymandering will most assuredly continue in Florida.

Our representatives are selecting their voters, as opposed to the voters selecting the representatives.  This is a situation that I think the American people should not accept.

–Barack Obama, 2/8/06

The disgusting act of gerrymandering is when partisan interests take control of the redistricting process, which is when congressional and legislative districts are redrawn and is usually conducted by state legislatures after the census, and use it to benefit incumbents and specific parties.  This is one of the more corrupt practices in state government – if you can believe that! – and is one of the more destructive forces on our republic today.

But there is good news.  There is a growing movement to end gerrymandering.  In 2008, Californians passed Prop 11, which moved the responsibility of redistricting from the legislature (who, like many other state legislatures, drew their own districts to their own advantage) to a nonpartisan committee.  Now, a group in Florida is trying to put an end to gerrymandering through yet another ballot initiative, and they need your help today more than ever, no matter where you live in the country.

Everywhere we look, it seems, the evidence is there.

Whether the “Birthers” or 10-year olds carrying signs equating Obama with Hitler or anti-choice murderers or “intelligent design” propagandists, an epidemic is breaking out across the United States. An epidemic whose manifestation, now, are screaming masses threatening the very underpinnings of American democracy.  As per blue aardvark,

In a democracy, power comes from the ability to persuade. You win because people like your ideas.

The Republicans are admitting they can’t win a fair fight. They are cowards.

While the attention is focused on the mobs storming Democratic politicians’ town halls and highlighted are the depraved (mal-informed) rages about health care, the reality is that anti-clean energy interests are sponsoring their own variations of outright deception and fostered screaming outrage. To a large extent, one thing shared among the “outraged” voices: a deep (and proud) embrace of know-nothingness.

But this outraged know-nothingness isn’t targeted solely at Democratic Party politicians seeking to communicate with their constituents, also targeted are Republican politicians who show any signs of seeking to link their policy concepts with reality.

Noted without comment: a study of drug deaths in Florida shows nearly three times as many deaths from legal drugs than from illegal drugs.

The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.

The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids – strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin – caused 2,328.

Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 – fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).

The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.

Florida scrutinizes drug-related deaths more closely than do other states, and so there is little basis for comparison with them.

Do you suppose that the government will start defoliating GlaxoSmithKline’s territory like they have been doing to Columbia for over a decade?