According to untrustworthy high level school board sources, the recent revelation that Governor Jeb! Bush feels that evolution need not be included in any future statewide science standards combined with the upcoming fight over the future of sex education in Hillsborough County Schools have spurred this anonymous internal memo, apparently written by a conservative School Board member and leaked to BlogWood by a super-secret mole, which very frankly lays out the basic framework for dealing with these and other burning issues.

From: (Redacted)
To: School Board Members
Re: A simple strategy for dealing with many contentious issues

I think that we can all agree that these contentious issues could well tear apart our community and cause rifts that could take years to heal. By enacting the FAD! Club and making attendance mandatory, we will avoid potential confrontation by eliminating any possibility of controversy.

Posted as Florida, Tampa

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(Note: Yes, this is the post that I promised to put up yesterday. Yes, it is late. For those of you who have been waiting with baited breath, I apologize, and I will fully refund the cost of your subscription upon request.)

Howls of derision from the usual sources are accompanying Ronda Storms’ (R – Homophoburbia) testing of the waters for a possible State Senate run. Call me crazy, but I, for one, think it’s a great opportunity for the Tampa area.

Look, for the past few years, due to the hard work of Rep. Dennis Baxley, Ocala has been in the legislative limelight as Dennis’ wise leadership has led to numerous widely noted initiatives.

It’s time for the Bay Area to stand up and send our own Dennis Baxley to Tallahassee. With the experience Ronda has in Hillsborough County’s political minor leagues, she should be able to hit the ground ranting and make an immediate impression state wide that will bring our area the widespread recognition that it deserves.

Patriot Baxley chairs the House Education Panel, and one of his top priorities has been to ensure that every classroom in Florida is equipped with a properly sized American flag. Some classrooms were actually displaying non-conforming flags and buying textbooks and computers with funds that could have been used for jingoistic displays. Baxley sponsored a bill that put an end to those questionable practices.

He also led the charge for the state to save poor Terri Schiavo’s productive and meaningful life. Some people, such as Terri’s evil husband, felt that Terri’s stated wish to die should she ever find herself absent a functioning brain should be honored. Baxley knew better, and sponsored a bill explicitly designed to derail our society’s ‘culture of death.’

Speaking of death, Dennis’ best known effort might be the ‘Cracker Git Yer Gun’ law which allows a citizen to legally shoot criminals and other brown skinned types who may seem to be a threat. This law was way overdue and replaces the much weaker castle doctrine. The castle doctrine is for pussies.

Baxley is also actively involved in an effort to reign in liberal college professors and protect vulnerable young fascists from having to engage in thought while attending institutions of higher education. See, those liberal professors abuse the young republicans by basing grades on evidence that students have absorbed and retained a portion of the brainwashing reeducation that is common on our communist infested campuses. Baxley knows that this is an unfair abuse of power on the part of the professors.

These are but a few examples of the work that Baxley has done, all of which reflects back on his home district of Ocala.

Based on her local performance to date, our own Ronda, should she find herself in Tallahassee, could easily jump right in and make a splash in the Senate, bringing some much needed notice to our area.

Ronda wisely micromanages public library decisions, and provided the spark that gained Tampa national recognition as the area which is morally strong enough to stand up against the homosexual agenda.

Ronda is leading the fight against nudity. As a conservative, she knows that any government which allows its citizens to practice freedom of speech by gallivanting around all nekkid is not exercising enough control.

And, much like our glorious President, Ronda recently broke the law and violated people’s civil liberties in order to protect us all from severe threats. In Ronda’s case, she had the moral strength to interfere with the opening of a bikini bar – an establishment that fully intended to employ scantily clad sexually loose harpies to trick good Christian men into consuming mass quantities of alcohol.

I could go on and on listing Ronda’s numerous accomplishments, but her good works are just too numerous to fully document. Suffice it to say the Ronda is ready for the big leagues, and if elected, she’s sure to garner tons of state and national publicity for Tampa and Hillsborough County.

So, run, Ronda, run! Let’s show those hicks in Tallahassee what Tampa is made of!

Posted as Florida, Tampa, Legislature, Hillsborough Homophobia, Politics

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Later today: Ronda Storm’s would do the Bay Area proud as State Senator. Find out why, later this afternoon at BlogWood!

Posted as Florida, Tampa, Politics

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Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho started testing his e-voting system earlier this year. He quickly determined that an insider, or someone who gained access to the inside, could easily manipulate vote totals.

Now, with a decision to scrap the old system in favor of a new model, Sancho has tested some more, allowing experts access to the central computer that tabulates votes in an election. The experts were able to change results and leave no trace whatsoever.

Tests show some Diebold voting machines used in Florida and elsewhere around the nation can be hacked by election office insiders to change results, Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho charged Thursday.

Sancho said the tests on optical machines that scan paper ballots, conducted for his office and a monitoring group, also indicated they can be manipulated without leaving any evidence of tampering.

“This is not supposed to be possible,” Sancho said. “We did it.”

Diebold spokesman David Bear discounted the tests as unrealistic because they bypassed normal security procedures.

“If I gave you the keys to my house and I turned off the alarm and told you when I wasn’t going to be home, I don’t doubt you can get into my house,” Bear said. “But is that going to have any effect on the election? Absolutely not.”
……

He was unable then, however, to test if altered results on the cards could be uploaded into his mainframe computer because he was afraid it might be contaminated. He said he performed the upload this week only after county commissioners approved his request to buy a new optical scan system from another company.

The hacked results transferred into the mainframe although Diebold had contended its software would prevent that, Sancho said.
……

Bear said the tests were unrealistic because polling places and vote-counting centers are filled with observers, including representatives of both major political parties, who are watching for such tampering. Sancho said the system could be hacked by an elections staffer or technician beforehand to produce faulty results.
……

Most of the debate over voting machines in Florida has focused on touch-screen computer systems because the state doesn’t require that they also spit out paper records that can be counted by hand if needed.

That makes Sancho’s tests somewhat ironic, Bear said.

“Now we’re not trusting paper,” he said. “Somebody could also steal the pencil and then you couldn’t mark the ballot.”

Paper ballots are examined only during a recount triggered when results are very close, Sancho said. He said they would never come into play if an election thief made sure the difference was larger.
…..

In 2003, Diebold’s then-CEO Walden W. O’Dell invited people to a fundraiser for President Bush with a letter stating he planned to help “Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president.” Ohio turned out to be the state that clinched Bush’s re-election in 2004.

Here’s how a system like Leon County’s works: data is moved from individual voting machines via flash memory cards - in Leon County’s case, these machines are optical scanners which have tabulated votes at precincts. Other counties use touch screens but transfer data with similar flash cards.

The flash cards, just like the ones in digital cameras and phones, are transported to the central office and fed into the central computer. The central computer then tallies the votes and spits out a result.

Sancho’s tests show that flash cards can be altered with no trace. A person could simply pre-program the card with bogus numbers and no one would be the wiser. This has always been a much more likely scenario than someone hacking in from the outside, though media, fed by the GOP, like to present (and mock as partisan conspiracy theory) the much sexier Internet hacking scenario in which some geek breaks in through a home computer.

Diebold, the manufacturer of Leon and many other county machines, is pissed, but is offering no real defense – they are belittling the very idea of testing their equipment while screaming about licensing agreements and warning ominously that Sancho’s soon to be replaced machines could now be compromised.

And the state of Florida is not very concerned.

Ion Sancho, Leon County’s election chief, said tests by two computer experts, completed this week, showed that an insider could surreptitiously change vote results and the number of ballots cast on Diebold’s optical-scan machines.
……

The Leon County test results are likely to further fuel suspicions that the new electronic voting systems in Florida, in place since the 2002 elections, are susceptible to manipulation.

When the debate hit fever pitch before last year’s presidential election, many conservatives said questions about the machinery were a liberal ploy to undermine confidence in the voting system.
……

Sancho said Diebold isn’t the only one to blame for hacker-prone equipment. The Florida secretary of state’s office should have caught these problems early on, he said, and the Legislature should scrap a law severely restricting recounts on touch-screen machines and equip them with the means of producing a paper trail.

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office said any faults Sancho found were between him and Diebold.

‘’If Ion Sancho has security concerns with his system, he needs to discuss them with Diebold,'’ spokeswoman Jenny Nash said.
……

Sancho said he tried to discuss the problems with Diebold, but met with resistance. On Monday, he did one final test with Hursti at the Leon County supervisor’s office, Hursti hacked the memory card to spit out seven ‘’yes'’ votes on an issue and one ‘’no'’ vote.

Then, six ‘’no'’ votes and two ‘’yes'’ votes were cast into the machine the same way voters would. Those results didn’t show up in the final tally — just the ones hacked into the card.
……

‘’These were sold as safe systems. They passed tests as safe systems,'’ Sancho said. “But even in the so-called safe system, if you don’t follow the paper ballots, there is a way to rig the election. Except it’s not a bunch of guys stuffing ballots in a precinct. It’s possibly one person acting in secret changing thousands of votes in a second.'’

This could all be easily solved with a paper trail. Optical scan systems like Leon County’s are preferred, but touch screens can be equipped with printers. Combine a paper trail with random audits of precincts and individual machines, comparing paper and electronic tallies, and it suddenly becomes much more difficult to rig an election.

In truth, it isn’t surprising that a dedicated hacker can break into election machines. After all, hackers have broken into computers at IBM, the Department of Defense and elsewhere.

What is troubling, though, is that the Florida Legislature and state election officials haven’t done all that they can to make sure that Florida’s elections aren’t an invitation to fraud or abuse. Florida does not require a paper trail for votes, which would give election supervisors a means to verify the accuracy of a machine count.
……

At minimum, the state should require more testing of voting machines and audits of elections. Ultimately, though, the state should require that all voting machinery provide a paper trail. Banks already do that with receipts for ATM transactions. Voters deserve the same consideration.

Posted as Civil Liberties, Florida, National, Politics

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Joe Redner has a holiday gift for Ronda Storms and Killer B. Brian Blair.

Joe Redner, king of the strip clubs, says he’s gay.

The disclosure came in his federal lawsuit against Hillsborough County commissioners, who recently banned the county from acknowledging or participating in gay pride events.

The longtime activist who has made millions from strip clubs said he included his sexual orientation to bolster his argument that the policy directly affects him.

His original suit, filed in October, didn’t mention he was gay. Concerned that he needed to show a personal connection, he added the language to papers filed last week in the case.

Asked about that new information, Redner’s voice shook a bit as he said he was frustrated that his sexual orientation would merit such attention. He confirmed that he is gay and denied that he would say he’s gay simply as a legal strategy.

“Why is everybody so afraid to be a homosexual?” said Redner, 65, who has been married twice and has children and grandchildren. “They don’t even have a right to ask the question whether I’m a homosexual or not. They don’t have that right. They think you choose to be a homosexual.”

Put it this way: unless someone can prove Joe Redner is not gay by producing pictures of him not in bed with a live boy, it’s totally up to Joe to make the determination.

Past behavior has absolutely no bearing on the issue. Our raging Christian-led homophobia ensures that many folks remain closeted for most or all of their lives.

Further, there exists no physical test for gayness. I can truthfully declare myself gay today and straight (or cured!) tomorrow, based solely on what I perceive to be my feelings at a given moment in time.

Homosexuality is defined as attraction to members of the same sex, said Michael Cole, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. It’s about orientation, Cole said, not necessarily partners.

“The best way to know if someone is gay is to ask,” said Cole, whose group is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political organization.
……

But county Commissioner Brian Blair, a defendant in Redner’s lawsuit, said he doesn’t buy it.

“I just think it’s a publicity stunt,” Blair said. “Why would this have not come out before?”

This is gonna drive Ronda and Brian batty.

Radio hosts Jack Harris and Tedd Webb were grilling Redner on his recent disclosure of his sexual orientation - homosexual.

When the truthfulness of his revelation in federal court records was questioned, Redner answered: “That would be perjury.” Then he laughed.

Storms flipped.

“I said to myself, “It’s a court of law, it’s not a circus, this is serious, the integrity of the court is serious,’ ” Storms told the Times on Tuesday.

Posted as Tampa, Hillsborough Homophobia

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Michael Schiavo is back.

The husband of the Pinellas County woman who became the focus of a national end-of-life controversy has started a political action committee to keep the heat on politicians who tried to intervene in the case and fight his efforts to remove her feeding tube.

“The easiest thing would be to move on and let the headlines fade,” Schiavo said in a statement Wednesday. “But my experience with our political leaders has opened my eyes to just how easily the private wishes of normal Americans like me and Terri can be cast aside in the destructive game of political pandering.”

The Schiavo controversy already had emerged as a political issue. Polls showed voters overwhelmingly supporting Michael Schiavo’s position in the debate, and Democrats in Florida and elsewhere routinely bring up Schiavo to cast the GOP as out of touch.
……

When courts consistently ruled in his favor, leaders in Tallahassee and Washington tried to step in to keep her alive. President Bush cut short a vacation in Texas last year to join more than 200 members of Congress who passed legislation designed to force the reinsertion of her feeding tube.

“Those politicians lost a basic respect for marriage, family and personal privacy,” Schiavo said.

The new federal PAC, TerriPAC, will raise money to “educate voters on where their elected officials stood when they had a choice between individual freedom and personal privacy and overreaching government action.”

Another political committee is planned to concentrate on state races in Florida.

TerriPAC will request donations through its Internet site (www.TerriPAC.org) which also will provide information on how members of Congress voted on the Schiavo bill and what they said on the issue. The site also will encourage people to obtain living wills.
……

“It would be easy to dismiss my actions as partisan. But I was a lifelong Republican before Republicans pushed the power of government into my private family decisions,” Schiavo said. “And it is not so simple to forget those politicians who shamelessly sought to squeeze political leverage out of my family’s most emotional hour.”

His critics remain unforgiving.

His endorsement of Virginia’s new governor, Tim Kaine, drew attention. Now, TerriPAC’s targets are Florida gubernatorial candidates, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., U.S. Senate Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the embattled former House majority leader, said Schiavo’s adviser, Florida-based Democratic political consultant Derek Newton.

Schiavo said he is channeling his “sadness, anger and worry” into defeating “politicians who shamelessly sought to squeeze political leverage out of my family’s most emotional hour.”

Others see different motives.

“He’s exploiting a tragic situation and dishonoring Terri’s memory,” said Anthony Verdugo, director of Miami-based Christian Family Coalition.

BlogWood Schiavo coverage

Posted as Florida, National, Tampa, Religion, Politics

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On Wednesday, Ronda Storms had a premature referendum.

“I may be dead wrong,” Storms told her colleagues.

Her proposal caught commissioners off guard. They said it’s premature to call for a referendum.
……

Hagan and other commissioners said they support Storms’ desire to put the ordinance to a vote and could place it on the ballot in November.

The nudity issue flared during a morning discussion about prohibiting mobile adult entertainment venues, such as the “stripper bus” parked outside Raymond James Stadium during the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ most recent home game.

Hagan said he wants lawyers to review whether regulations deal with mobile adult entertainment or whether changes to strengthen the laws are needed.

Storms said taking such an approach to the adult industry, which she described as “a bottomless pit of creativity,” was piecemeal.

Last year, commissioners refused to allow a nonbinding referendum on whether to ban nude entertainment, even after 10,000 people signed petitions calling for the vote.

This year, the county hired attorney Scott Bergthold, who specializes in adult regulations, for $10,000 to review county rules that restrict, but do not prohibit, nude entertainment.

Posted as Tampa, Politics

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The most telling moment of the Al-Arian trial came when his lawyers opted to put on no defense. They simply declined to answer what they said was insufficient evidence presented by the government to prove their client’s guilt. Apparently, the jury agreed.

Once billed as a major strike in the war on terrorism, the case against Sami Al-Arian crumbled Tuesday when jurors rejected federal charges that Al-Arian and three co-defendants operated a North American cell for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Tears of joy at the defense table met with blank expressions of shock among prosecutors after jurors deadlocked on nine counts against Al-Arian and found him not guilty of conspiring to commit murder abroad, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
……

Defendants Sameeh Hammoudeh and Ghassan Ballut were acquitted on all counts. Hatim Fariz was acquitted on the counts on which jurors could reach a verdict.
……

“This ranks as one of the most significant defeats for the U.S. government, for the Justice Department since 9/11,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University Law School who has represented other terrorism defendants.

“The Justice Department spent copious amounts of money and time to make the case against Al-Arian.”
……

One juror, who gave only her first name, said prosecutors failed to connect the dots on the conspiracies charged. Jurors were left to assume the defendants were aiding the Islamic Jihad even when the evidence didn’t prove it, said Thanh, a 38-year-old department store sales associate from Lakeland.
……

U.S. Attorney Paul Perez first had no comment when asked what effect the verdicts would have on the country’s war against terrorism. But then he said, “I don’t think there’s any connection between the two things.”

That’s at odds with statements he and Ashcroft made in announcing the indictment.

Then, Perez called the defendants “major terrorist financial supporters who took advantage of the freedoms of an open society to help foster anti-Western violence.”

“We have an extensive record in breaking up terrorist financing,” Ashcroft said. “Our record on terrorist financing is clear: We will hunt down the suppliers of terrorist blood money, we will shut down these sources, and we will ensure that both terrorists and their financiers meet the same swift, certain justice of the United States of America.”"

Al-Arian has been defending himself against these charges for years. First, the Tampa Tribune attacked him in print. Then, he was arrested and held in solitary while Bill O’Reilly churned up enough outrage to have him fired from his professorship at USF. Finally, he was charged, with John Ashcroft announcing the indictments with great fanfare and much talk about the Bush regime’s winning strategy against terror.

In the end, not a single guilty verdict was returned after a six-month trial that included more than 80 witnesses and 400 transcripts of intercepted phone conversations and faxes.

The verdicts were a major defeat for the federal government, which characterized Al-Arian’s indictment as a major case against terrorism, and a victory for Al-Arian’s attorneys, who considered the government’s case so weak they they declined to put on a defense.
……

But officials with the U.S. Justice Department, which investigated Al-Arian for years before filing charges, are still deciding whether to retry Al-Arian and co-defendant Hatem Fariz on charges for which the jury deadlocked.

One remaining charge against Al-Arian and Fariz, a racketeering conspiracy charge, carries a potential life sentence. Al-Arian was returned to the Hillsborough jail after the verdict. His attorneys could try to get him out on bail but said it was likely immigration officials would immediately pick him up for detention. “The Justice Department has a strong track record of success in prosecuting terrorists and those who support terrorist activities. We remain focused on the important task at hand, which is to protect our country through our ongoing vigorous prosecution of terrorism cases,” said Tasia Scolinos, director of public affairs for the U.S. Justice Department.
……

A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said Tuesday the agency would work with the Department of Homeland Security to deport Al-Arian, who is not a U.S. citizen, at the conclusion of legal proceedings.

Al-Arian attorney William Moffitt called that move “totally vindictive” since Al-Arian has not been convicted of any crimes.
……

Al-Arian went from computer science professor to controversial international figure in the decade after a television documentary and articles in the Tampa Tribune raised questions about terrorist ties to a think tank he ran at USF.

FBI agents tapped his phones for nine years. They twice raided his home and offices, taking dozens of boxes of personal belongings. He was arrested in February 2003 and fired by USF in that same month. He spent the past three years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, charged with 17 counts of terrorism-related activities. His trial began June 6, 2005. It ended Tuesday, exactly six months later.
……

As it turned out, the great majority of jurors wanted to acquit Al-Arian and the three co-defendants on all charges. But, they say, two to three others held out for conviction, which resulted in a hung jury on a combined 17 counts for Fariz and Al-Arian.

“Usually, there were 10 of us for acquittal on the charges, sometimes nine of us,” said Ron, a juror from Pasco County who did not want his last name used. Because of the nature of the terrorism case, the government kept jurors’ identities sealed from the public.

“Of course, we hate terrorism,” said Ron. “But the evidence making these guys terrorists just wasn’t there.”
……

Beyond the question of whether Al-Arian and those associated with him violated federal law, the trial did shed some light on unresolved questions about Al-Arian.

Wiretap conversations clearly show that, during the time he was presenting himself as an independent advocate of Palestinian rights, he was, in fact, deeply involved with PIJ, proposing changes in their leadership structure, overall strategy and financial management. Those discussions did not include talk of violent acts.

Moreover, evidence showed that top employees of WISE, including Al-Arian’s brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, were receiving payments from PIJ while they were working in Tampa for the think tank and the university.

After five months of prosecution evidence, Al-Arian’s defense attorneys caused a stir Oct. 27 when they rested without putting on a defense.

“Because there is a document called the U.S. Constitution - unless we’re about to repeal it - it protects Dr. Al-Arian’s right to speak, and the government has not proven that Dr. Al-Arian has done anything but speak. . . . The fact that Dr. Al-Arian is a Palestinian deprives him of no civil rights,” said Moffitt, explaining the decision.

Now, having been acquitted, he’ll be rapidly deported. USF wont consider reinstating him, and Bush’s justice department will probably just slink away from a second and possibly even more humiliating trial.

Posted as Civil Liberties, National, Tampa

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Ford Motor Company is regressing toward the philosophy of its founder.

Background:

In a nutshell, the rabid homophobes at the American Family Association threatened Ford with a boycott earlier this year because they were advertising in the gay press. Suddenly in June the AFA called off their threatened boycott because local Ford dealers had contacted the national Ford office and, apparently, suggested Ford might be amenable to working out a deal. Now we find out that Ford is pulling its gay ads and that Ford even tells the Advocate that the AFA’s press release claiming credit for this entire thing is accurate.

Action:

UPDATE: The classic response from the folks you contact will often be “we’re the wrong people to contact.” They’re not the wrong people to contact, though they may think they are. These are all people in Ford’s marketing division, and Ford needs to hear from everyone in their marketing division that their very bad marketing decision is causing a firestorm of protest. We’ll move on to other employees tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on. And each day we’ll probably hear the same thing - Paramount and Microsoft both said this too us all the time, we’re the wrong people. Well, find the right people and tell them that this is a big problem.

For this afternoon’s action, please contact the same Ford marketing people by phone this time. They’re apparently now blocking their email accounts, which means you got to them. Now phone them.

Steve Lyons: 313-845-1621
Mae Smith: 313-845-1510
Terri Cavanaugh: 313-845-0580

These people are all in Ford’s marketing department - some are execs, others are staff. We are intentionally targeting both high-level and lower-level staff in the marketing department so that our message is heard throughout the entire company, not just by one vice president.

As always, be nice but firm, and don’t threaten them or do anything else obnoxious. Leave that kind of behavior to America’s Taliban. But do make clear that their company is toast.

Background on what Ford has done. Amongst other things, you might want to ask Ford if they’d pull their ads from African-American or Jewish publications if the Klan objected?

Posted as National, Religion

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In Tallahassee, as Legislators gather for a special session, Jeb! is saying ‘Trust me,’ but some are actually questioning the wisdom of assuming a Bush has a good plan and the intent to earnestly implement it.

Medicaid reform is on the table. The agency that has been working on Jeb!’s plan says it’s too hard to produce actual cost estimates right now, but that everything will work out just fine.

The key change proposed for the Florida Medicaid system is to switch from an open-ended payment system to one where the state will pay managed-care organizations a predetermined, capped premium for each beneficiary.

But the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which has been working on Gov. Jeb Bush’s reform proposal for more than a year, still has not calculated just what those premiums will be.

And it doesn’t expect to before the end of the special session called for this week in large part to pass the Medicaid reform. Secretary Alan Levine said the health care agency hasn’t been able to determine those rates because it’s a complex process and because of a delay in purchasing a computer program that would automatically input all the historical medical data needed to determine the new rates.
……

“We better have some numbers by next week. And there’s 39 other people who want the numbers too,” said Sen. Durell Peaden, R-Crestview, chairman of the Senate Health Care Committee, referring to the 40 members of the Florida Senate. “It’s not just me. It’s Republicans, Democrats, north and south. We trust (the health care agency). We do. But once in a while, you need to perform.”

It’s the same split that has driven the Medicaid debate since Bush first proposed the change early this year.

House members have been eager to follow Bush from the start. Just last week, Rep. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, head of appropriations for the House and a candidate for Florida attorney general, said he didn’t need those budget numbers to approve Medicaid reform.

“I think government needs to take risks just as we do in the private sector,” Negron said.
……

Medicaid insures 2.3 million Floridians, including more than 1 million children, much of the state’s blind and disabled population and two-thirds of those in nursing homes.

Joe Negron is a wise man. By risking only the welfare and lives of the powerless, much like the private sector, he is minimizing any actual risk of his losing an election. And if many of those people die, then they won’t ever be able to vote against him.

Meanwhile, California has had an HMO type system in place for quite some time.

When the private, nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research examined California’s switch to Medicaid HMOs, it found the change brought “a substantial increase in government spending but no observable improvement in health outcomes, thus apparently reducing the efficiency of this large government program.” That “cast doubt on the hypothesis that HMO contracting has reduced the strain on government budgets.”

What key issues will the Legislature consider?

Sen. Les Miller, D-Tampa, said he wants to hear details about Bush’s plan. “There are rumors flying around like mad,” Miller said.

Details, such as the facts that much of Medicaid’s rising costs are due to an enrollment surge, and that Medicaid costs are rising at a slower rate than private insurance, are for policy wonks. Why can’t Les Miller simply have faith that Jeb! will do the right thing?

Posted as Florida, Politics

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