At a time when our traditional words for describing political inclinations are losing all relationship to the way politics actually functions on the ground, Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, has carved out an original and powerful niche, if Republican voters are smart enough to seize it. She's a reasonable conservative populist.
or the last month or so, I have directed the bulk of whatever creative energy I could muster to a new project, a blog study of the almost famous Cross Creek Trial of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling, Cross Creek and a number of other novels focused on the rural area near Gainesville where she lived on and off from roughly 1930 until she died in the 50s. I have a bit of a unique perspective on this trial: My great aunt, who I was very close to, with help from my great-grandfather, represented the woman who sued Marjorie over how she was portrayed in Cross Creek, which was a sort of stylized memoir. Here's my little kicker introduction from the blog, which you can access here.
Charles Krauthammer, a columnist generally referred to as very conservative, has a proposal for health care reform that I consider serious. Basically, it boils down to 1) a massive middle class tax hike designed to sever insurance from employers, coupled with smaller tax credit (which would not nearly cover the full cost for a family) to help individuals and families buy their own insurance and 2) basically outlawing medical malpractice lawsuits. Read the column for yourself. Does it sound a little familiar? It's almost exactly what John McCain proposed during his campaign. I wonder if those of you who refer to yourselves as conservative like the idea that the Republican nominee ran on. If not, and if you don't like Obamacare, I'd like hear what you would like. I'm going to list a few basic facts, as I understand them, about US health care today. I'd like any of my handful of readers to either tell me my facts are wrong or suggest a way to address them.
I do think that building a publicly controlled rail corridor, high speed or other, linking Tampa, Orlando, and ultimately, Miami, will carry important long-term benefits for the state. And of all the rail routes discussed for Florida, the Tampa-to-Orlando stretch has greatest potential ridership. So, I'm happy to see everyone moving forward on it. (Everyone, that is, except JD Alexander and the Winter Haven folks.) But, in the interest of intellectual honesty, and embracing the uncertainties and potential consequences of what I support, I want to make a few points.
During a comment discussion a couple of weeks ago concerning my bigfoot conservatives post, I said that military spending accounts for about half of the federal taxes we pay. My buddy Al Whittle called me on it, correctly. Military spending, depending on the accounting source you use, accounts for about 20 percent of the US budget. It's virtually identical to Social Security and the combined medical entitlements, which also account for about 20 percent. It's confusing because the previous administration factored out large parts of military spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, but this is the best I can figure it. Military spending does account for about half of discretionary spending, that is spending without it own specific tax source, and I think that was what I was trying to say. But I garbled it.
No recent movie has left me so intellectually unsettled – in a good way – as “District 9″, the new alien/anthropological study/whatever else it is. I can’t stop thinking about it. You probably know the premise of the story by now, if you’re paying attention to pop culture. A gaggle of unattractive aliens show up [...]
In my favorite "X-files" episode ever, Scully and Mulder are debating a killing that appears to be the product of a bloodsucker of some sort. Their conversation goes like this: Scully: "Well, we know it can't be a vampire." Mulder: "Why?" Scully: "Because they don't exist." This is what I think about conservatives, right now. They are mythological.
I could save Orange County taxpayers more than $30 million per year starting tomorrow without cutting a single county service, but in a way that makes county government employment a less attractive proposition. Sound good, conservatives? It should, if you believe your own rhetoric. But while this reform is simple, it ain't easy. What is it? Stop providing health insurance to county government employees.
Sorry to anyone who cares about my absence. I spent a week on a family beach vacation and then a week digging out from that week. I'll be posting Monday morning a, ummm, provocative local policy proposal concerning health care that you good conservatives ought to support. In the meantime, I regret to inform you that our good sheriff has declined my offer to talk about the wisdom of continuing to outlaw marijuana.
Monday marks the 40th anniversary of the moon landing of Apollo 11. For my father, Bill Townsend Jr., this entire summer marks the 40th anniversary of his service in Vietnam. In about three weeks, he'll mark the 40th anniversary of the wound he suffered that ended his tour after about four months. Over the years, the story I heard Dad tell most often recounted the strange duty he was performing when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. My mother, my sister, and I convinced him to finally write it down. I think it will speak for itself. Enjoy. The moon landing would occur at 4:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time on July 20th, 1969, according to the spate of old news reruns and modern specials I’ve seen as part of the 40th anniversary. In my world, the touchdown happened at 0317 military time--just past three o’clock in the morning--on July 21st. The waning moon had set, and the meager lights of a nearby town were almost nonexistent. It was very dark.
Last week, over at Lakeland Local, I quite publicly labeled a letter-to-the-editor written by a Medicare recipient as the "dumbest letter ever written to The Ledger." The author had railed against the supposed liberal takeover, blah, blah, blah, of US health care (I only wish) while simultaneously praising his own Medicare coverage and insisting that he's worked all his life and nobody better screw with it. I'm paraphrasing, go see it for yourself. One commenter took me to task pretty thoughtfully in a pair of long comments he or she must have spent some time composing. I wanted to answer.
The Hold Steady, a self-proclaimed bar band from Minneapolis emerging as one the country's beacons of modern rock and roll, has a special affinity for Ybor City, or at least the the way the words sound in songs. So last night's show at The Ritz in Tampa was a sort of homecoming. Your humble scribe was there.
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."
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....
In this economy, CSX will not lightly walk away from more than $600 million in cash and system improvements, liability or no. FDOT probably still wants to hand that money over to the company. In fact, it's already done so to some degree in the form of ongoing overpass improvements in north central Florida. Buddy Dyer is out begging for $20,000 in legal expense money so lawyers can try to figure out a way around the senate. Democracy in action. (Funny that with all the money spent on John Thrasher and other uber lobbyists during the session, Dyer is reduced to panhandling for this. You would think GrayRobinson would just pick it up for him.) Anyway, this isn't over. But it's worth taking a moment for some post mortem thoughts before this deal reveals itself as the undead zombie vampire that we fear it might be...
Bio: Billy Townsend was a longtime government, political and general assignment reporter in Polk County and the wider I-4 corridor. He wrote extensively about Polk's unique regional identity and the issues shaping it, including USF Polytechnic, the Heartland Parkway and the CSX rail deal. Billy recently left professional reporting to take a corporate writing job, but he keeps close tabs on news of all stripes (especially political news) and the changes in modern journalism. Billy's wife is Julie Townsend, executive director of the Downtown Lakeland Partnership.They live with their three children in the Lake Morton area. His work at Lakeland Local is his first as an amateur hyperlocal writer.
