This has been a week of loss.  The deaths of longtime second banana Ed McManon, 70s beauty “Angel” Farrah Fawcett, and musical superstar Michael Jackson have brought people to asking themselves “What Next?”.  Locally, we’ve also suffered the loss of a dear public servent in Phyllis Brunansky, Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections.  And now, we’ve lost Tampa resident and professional pitchman Billy Mays this morning.

Lakeland Ledger - Florida’s Mystical Machines:  A concern that a dispute between the manafacturer of the Intoxilyzer, which measures the amount of alcohol in drivers, and courts across the country who have ordered CMI, Inc. to release the machine’s source codes is threatening hundreds of drunk driving prosecutions.

For all its massive complexity and expense, the US health insurance model rests entirely upon a single, simply understood Jenga piece: the willingness of private employers to pay for private health insurance and eat its inefficiencies. Pull that piece away, and the whole system falls down in a mass of wreckage - affecting everything from public health to doctors salaries. In this way, private health insurance resembles nothing so much as the institutional newspaper industry, which also long depended on an irrational business subsidy. For years, newspapers managed to convince businesses - and classified advertisers - that they needed to use the newspaper to reach customers in their particular market. At the same time, newspapers convinced themselves that advertisers were paying for their vital community journalism. Reality, in its merciless way, with a little nudge from web technology, has greeted these twin delusions with, “Uh, no” and “Uh, hell no.”

This has been a week of losses in the world of entertainment, and especially the death of Michael Jackson has flooded the news during the past couple of days.  But now we go back to the usual world of politics and public policy as we check out what to expect on the various chat shows…

This has been a sad week for the entertainment world.  Earlier, we made note of former Tonight Show announcer/sidekick Ed McMahon’s tragic passing.  Today, there are two more big names from show biz to remember.

Sadly, there are two passings of note today, one from the field of local politics, the other from the world of entertainment.

It was hard to miss The Ledger’s outing of Julian Mullis. It ran across the top of the local page, arguably the most read spot of real estate in the printed paper. Quick synopsis: Mulberry police arrested a man they described as in a domestic, live-in relationship with Mullis after accusing the man of throwing a plastic beer bottle at Mullis during an altercation at Mullis’ house. That’s right. Mullis is the victim of an alleged assault with a plastic container. And for that, his personal life gets splashed across the top of B1 as the featured local story of the day.

This story, which exists solely as the means for somebody to broadcast that Julian Mullis is in a gay relationship, is an object lesson of everything that’s wrong with institutional journalism in this country. It’s a great example of what I think Chris was saying in his Defeatism column a few weeks ago….

Daytona Beach News-Journal - Local Warming - Cap, Trade, Conserve, Tax:  Florida’s Way Out Of Crisis:  A reminder that global warming is also a local and state problem.

One of the reasons why judges have traditionally had discretion in sentencing defendents convicted of crimes is because they are able to review the specifics of the case such as his/her actual intent, wheather anyone was hurt as a result, and the defendent’s previous criminal record, if any.  Unfortunately, legislatures wanting to appear tough on crime have taken much of that discretion away with the advent of  mandatory mimimum sentencing for certain crimes, mostly those involving drugs…

Here it is, bigger and better than before. For those of you political freaks wanting to know who has filed to run for federal or statewide office in 2010, this is the page to check out. This information is thanks to the Florida Division of Elections Website, and they note it is an unofficial listing.

Are you happy with your state House and Senate representatives?  Or do you believe they’ve done a lousy job for you in Tallahassee?  It promises to be an interesting year and a half, especially as we have another legislative session to consider before the 2010 election.  Below are a list of the candidates seeking to fill the legislative seats along the I-4 corridor, as noted from the Florida Division of Elections Website.  In the 2010…

Because of the amount of research and updating required, especially with keeping up with the statewide and legislative offices noted in the two related posts, I am focusing my look here on the immediate Tampa Bay area:  Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Polk counties.  This information is drawn from the respective Supervisor of Election Web sites.

Lakeland Ledger - Public Plan Needed For Health Care:  “In a country that pays far more for health insurance than other, less wealthy nations - and gets less for its money - there must be a way.”

Everyone has been forewarned, for more than a year.  Today is the day that television stations across America will drop their analog signals for good and rely only on digital broadcasting.