I left the United States and moved to Florida temporarily. Sixteen years, four career changes, three homes, two wives later, I am still here.
Florida is not just another banana republic. Boa constrictors and alligators battle for control of the Everglades. Republicans control the government. The reptilian-looking Governor (don’t believe me? Google Rick Scott) just announced his next budget. He wants to give a sales tax break to manufacturers who buy equipment and make yet another cut in the corporate income tax. To balance his budget, the Governor would cut Medicaid services & payments to hospitals, squeeze $9 million in savings from county health clinics, spend no more money for mental health or substance abuse prevention, eliminate 3600 more state jobs and freeze state workers salaries for the seventh straight year. Last year the Governor imposed a three percent income tax ONLY on government workers, while eliminating some fifteen thousand plus civil service jobs.
The Governor turned down 4,000,000,000.00 – that’s four billion – Federal dollars for high-speed rail which would have created thousands of high-paying jobs, badly needed hereabouts. He continues to delay the installation of “Obamacare,” despite the state having millions of children uninsured. There is no state income tax, which probably explains why Mike Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh have palatial estates here.
Over one million Floridians have concealed weapon permits. Not so long ago, a young groom was in a church closet, showing his buddies his new gun. Which went off, the bullet passing through the wall, killing the bride. A prosecutor recently announced he was trying a fifteen-year-old boy as an adult, because we are nothing if not tough on crime here. (Unless it is political graft.) Seems the boy was showing his buddies on the school bus the gun he found at home. The gun went off, killing a girl in the next seat. The girl’s father was so distraught he killed himself. With a gun. Meanwhile, the NRA reminded us guns don’t kill, but showing guns to your buddies kills.
In Florida, you can start a fight and, if you begin to get pummeled badly, you can “stand your ground”, pull a gun and shoot to kill. And get away with it. Oddly enough, the guy who had his face eaten off by a flesh-eating zombie-like attacker was unarmed. Ain’t that always the way.
I live in a less sophisticated area of the state, i.e., the Nature Coast, north of Tampa, a few miles east of Weeki Wachee. There are no book stores, but we are blessed with three Wal-Marts and a Sam’s Club. Starbuck’s went out of business.
Seeing a need to continue my own community service, I got myself appointed to the County’s Fine Arts Council. No kidding, whittlers are considered fine artists. My first Chairman of the Council let me know there was ‘no way in hell he was voting for that ___ insert N word here.’
The next Chairman was a youth pastor who was run out of town as a pedophile. That’s about the time I saw a need to discontinue my own community service.
I am really talking aloud here. Trying to explain myself. Maybe to myself. I always wanted to live in a foreign country, I just figured I’d have to leave the USA to do it.
Sixteen years ago, I thought my parents didn’t have long to live. Dad passed away several years back, but last week my Mom bought a Kindle Fire….
p.s., Mother died eleven months later and still didn’t know how to work the Fire. No surprise then where I get my mad computer skills. And I don’t know how to work it yet. – JDW