Tampa Tribune – Top Priority Must Be Jobs: “Unemployment is high and getting higher. A forthright assessment is overdue, along with practical solutions.
“A jobs summit to be hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House next month would be a good forum for such an address. Obama is right when he says, “It’s important that we don’t make any ill-considered decisions – even with the best intentions – particularly at a time when our resources are so limited.”
Daytona Beach News-Journal – From Go-Go To No-Grow: “It’s no news to Florida lawmakers that they’re in a budget hole — a hole about $2.65 billion deep, by the most-recent figures. And they know they are running out of gimmicks to balance the books.
“But do they understand that after three straight years of budget cuts, they’ve gone beyond cutting fat, to cutting the muscle and bone that give structure to state government?
“In the short term, lawmakers can help make ends meet by making two simple changes, without raising the sales-tax rate. The Florida Senate has already started on the first task, a review of loopholes in the state sales tax that could put an additional $560 million on the table by repealing a range of unwarranted exemptions, including tax breaks on haircuts, chartered fishing boats, dry cleaning, Super Bowl tickets and bottled water. And it could join a national effort to collect sales tax due on Internet purchases — an estimated $2 billion annually that, thus far, legislators have been reluctant to tap, to the detriment of brick-and-mortar businesses that are located here and employ Floridians.”
St. Petersburg Times - Halt Abuses Of Debt Collectors: “Florida’s leading contenders for governor finally offered fixes for policing debt collectors earlier this month after a newspaper detailed how the state rarely punishes the bad actors — even as the lousy economy has prompted more complaints. ..But Floridians won’t be served unless they work together with the Legislature to find better ways to protect consumers from bad debt collectors.
“Recent reports in the Orlando Sentinel detailed an explosion in complaints to state agencies in the last 18 months about collection agents who, in violation of state law, use obscenities and racial epithets and threaten everything from jail to physical harm. Some even call children of the elderly who have debts and make similar threats.
“The Attorney General’s Office already has received 4,400 such complaints this year. The Office of Financial Regulation — which [Attorney General Bill] McCollum and [Chief Financial Officer Alex] Sink oversee along with the governor and agriculture commissioner — has collected 780.”
Lakeland Ledger – Two Worthy Programs Employing Veterans: “When our troops leave the armed forces, they have both skills and needs. Society must make sure those skills are being used and those needs are being met. That’s why two federal programs aimed at those who are leaving the armed forces, one newly announced and another getting a push to expand, make such good sense.
“President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week creating the Council on Veterans Employment, part of a plan to make federal agencies recruit and train more veterans. The program also seeks to help veterans adjust to the civilian world.
“At the same time, a bill pending before both the U.S. House and Senate would greatly expand the Troops to Teachers program. The program began in 1994 and has provided stipends for more than 12,000 servicemen and women to become teachers, but a broad-based bipartisan coalition of senators and congressmen is pushing to expand the program.”
Orlando Sentinel – Don’t Throw Kids Away: “Florida is ground zero for a question that the U.S. Supreme Court was pondering this past week: Is it constitutional for judges to send children to prison for the rest of their lives for crimes other than murder?
“Nationally, just 109 prisoners are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for crimes — short of homicide — that they committed as minors. But 77 of them, more than two out of three, are in Florida. No other state comes close — California has four…
“It would make far more sense to allow a parole board sometime in the future to decide whether a child convicted of a serious crime has been rehabilitated enough to get a shot at being a productive taxpaying member of society, rather than a tax-draining prisoner.”
Bio: Robert is a former radio personality, which ended with five years at Winter Haven station WHNR where he eventually rose to become Assistant Operations Manager. For the past decade he has continued to make a living running his mouth, working in the call center industry. Currently he is working as a Customer Services Professional at a local facility representing one of North America's major heating & air conditioning sales and repair companies.