Gun-rights advocates in Congress are pressing appropriators to keep a provision that would let Amtrak passengers check in handguns with their baggage.
The provision, which calls for withholding $1.5 billion in Amtrak funding if the policy isn’t implemented before April, was inserted into the $68.8 billion Senate transportation and housing and urban development spending bill as an amendment. All 40 Republicans, 27 Democrats and one independent voted for the amendment, sponsored by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).
“We don’t think we’ll be able to do that March 31 deadline, and, of course, finding the funding to make all of that happening,” said Amtrak spokesman Steve Kulm. Failing to meet that deadline and missing out $1.5 billion in appropriated funds, its entire funding request for 2010, would bring a “cessation of train service nationwide,” Amtrak Chairman Thomas Carper wrote to appropriators last month.
Kulm said that Amtrak trains and stations lack security systems seen at airports, baggage cars that are separate from passenger areas and a secure baggage loading area. Under its current policy, only law enforcement officers can bring guns onto its trains.

I’m sorry, but this is just absurd.

I don’t understand why we ever allowed guns on trains in the first place. Why would we want them? It would only create problems.

The City of Jacksonville is unlike most places in Florida and the United States in it’s government. There is one government. One city within one county.

It was so different for me coming to Broward and working for the local government and working with 31 municipalities plus the county (the stat is incorrect in the article by the way)!

The General Counsel for the City of Jacksonville, Rick Mullaney, has given a brief history of the movement on the popular, grass root website MetroJacksonville.

I find this stuff super interesting! Read the article if you’re at all interested. There will be a second part tomorrow.

Here’s some key features:

“It’s a contrast of democracy versus jurisdictional battles between competing entities—-all with their own separate powers.
And around the rest of the state we have seen this local government structure with a county government, multiple municipalities. In Miami-Dade, for instance, there are 35 police departments and a county police department, 35 Public Works Departments, 35 City Councils—- a number of different structures, very difficult, very challenging.
[…]
And in August of 1967, something very remarkable happened. We went to the polls here in Jacksonville — and at the same time it failed in Tampa — by a two-to-one margin we voted — pretty remarkable — to abolish the county government that existed at that time, to abolish the city government, and to adopt our Charter, a very dramatic and revolutionary reform. And on October 1st of 1968, this charter went into effect.
It was Consolidated Government.”

This frightening investigative piece by the New York Times reinforces one reason why I rarely eat beef any more.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

[…]

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.

So, if the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service exists to do “not just what is best for public health,” then I think there needs to be some readjustment of the purposes of government.

After reading this article, it is much easier to justify becoming a vegetarian. Not to mention all of the irresponsible and unsustainable practices associated with the meat industry.

“On its second try, the Miami City Commission approved the ambitious and controversial Miami 21 zoning code by a 4-1 vote after a day-long hearing Friday, charting a new, pedestrian-focused course for future development in a town famously built around the car.”

Lemieux is Crist’s former chief of staff and ran his gubernatorial campaign. Crist has named him senator for a year and a half, just in time for Lemieux to run Crist’s campaign for the same seat in the senate…

Political move, eh?

brentgilliard:

adrifting:

“Florida’s last population decline occurred from 1945 to 1946, when America defeated the Nazis and Japan. The state had housed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen in places like Drew and McDill airfields in Tampa and Camp Blanding near Gainesville. Many military men and their dependents departed at the end of the war.

Even during the real estate bust of the late 1920s and the economic cataclysm of the 1930s, the population continued to rise. You would have to go back to 1916-18 to find the next instance of a population decline.”

This is both great and not so great.

Since Florida is so overcrowded along the coast and in all of it’s sprawling metro areas, any reduction in immigrants to the state is a good thing for reducing more and more suburbia and sprawl. A continual influx of new residents whether snowbirds, retirees or foreign immigrants, only threatens our already dying fragile environment and puts a burden on existing infrastructure and resources.

People are mostly attracted to Florida for its sandy beaches, sun, theme parks, and the chance to have NO income tax. Therefore, Florida’s economy thrives on tourism and GROWTH. Construction and real estate are the only major industries that Florida’s revenue comes from. The state relies on property taxes which must cover the lack of revenue from no income taxes. If there is no new growth in the state, revenues go down. If people leave the state, revenue really drops.

Unfortunately, there really haven’t been any other worthwhile investments in other industries in Florida, therefore making the lack of growth detrimental to the state’s budget. No growth seems so great because we can use what we have and possibly gain back some of our lost wetlands, forests, and swamps. But without that growth, our schools, hospitals, police and fire departments, and local governments suffer tremendously. No property taxes = less investment in our future.

Florida needs to change the way they do things, don’t ya think?

• New and different industries?
• Creating an income tax (no, we would never go there…all the old people would leave…ha)?
• Encourage new residents to live in and revitalize old neighborhoods and urban districts?

I wonder how messed up things are at the state level. Are we talking California-style dysfunction, or just the usual? Can the state government shift (however you like) from relying on develpment before a budget crisis?

Question two: What is the relationship between the state and municipalities? Can the state force them to meet certain standards (let’s say of form or density) for new development, or even prescribe the limits of development? Because when growth returns to Florida, it would be pretty silly to let the old foreclosed homes deteriorate while new facsimiles are built further out in the swamp. You need to stop doing this, at least.

Assuming that state is not broke, it would be a good idea to tie together all those big metro areas with fast trains. There are 18 million people in Florida and they all live just a little too far apart.

I’m not sure there are any transformative industries that could replace development and fuel another boom. Maybe someday we will harness the power of hurricanes. In the meantime, Florida should continue to capitalize on its large Spanish-speaking population. I understand Miami is the capital of Latin American banking. Perhaps a Spanish-language university attracting the young, the rich, and the smart from across the continent? I’m just thinking out loud here.

Ok, Florida may not have quite the budget crisis that California does, but at least California is being sort of smart and making investments in alternative energies, high speed rail, and other new and high-tech industries.

The relationship between the state and municipalities is pretty weak in my opinion regarding growth policy. The only policies for growth encourage it. For example, Senate Bill 360, which passed this past June, allows new developments to be built without proper infrastructure already in place, thus encouraging sprawl and causing traffic gridlocks. This may bring the state’s economy back to its feet, but it is right back where it was before. These type of things only create more new development leaving the environment in shambles and the inner cities abandoned. It’s sad, really.

No, the state is not completely broke. Yes, we do have trains that connect the cities, but it is all Amtrak and it’s complicated and never worth the time to take a train from Fort Lauderdale to Jacksonville for instance. I’ve checked before, and sometimes you must go through Lakeland (which is out of the way) and catch a Greyhound bus for half the trip!

High speed rail is a swell idea, and there are a number of proposals out there to put it in place, which is a good thing. But just recently announced, the only commuter rail in the state is facing such budget cuts that the possibility of it remaining open next year is in jeopardy! If we can’t maintain commuter rail, then I have no idea how we would keep up high speed rail. The state will only wait for a federal mandate, which hopefully will be beginning with all of the stimulus package.

It sucks being a pessimist, but I’m just trying to look at the future realistically, you know?

We have spoken in some of my classes about making Miami/South Florida the banking center of Latin America. I think it would be a brilliant idea! Another idea would be to create manufacturing industries and using our two excellent ports to ship things to Latin America like construction supplies or…well we haven’t got anything else…we don’t know anything else. Maybe yachts? Wait, the good ones are made in Germany. Maybe palm trees? Sandy beaches?

We need something new!

“Florida’s last population decline occurred from 1945 to 1946, when America defeated the Nazis and Japan. The state had housed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen in places like Drew and McDill airfields in Tampa and Camp Blanding near Gainesville. Many military men and their dependents departed at the end of the war.

Even during the real estate bust of the late 1920s and the economic cataclysm of the 1930s, the population continued to rise. You would have to go back to 1916-18 to find the next instance of a population decline.”

This is both great and not so great.

Since Florida is so overcrowded along the coast and in all of it’s sprawling metro areas, any reduction in immigrants to the state is a good thing for reducing more and more suburbia and sprawl. A continual influx of new residents whether snowbirds, retirees or foreign immigrants, only threatens our already dying fragile environment and puts a burden on existing infrastructure and resources.

People are mostly attracted to Florida for its sandy beaches, sun, theme parks, and the chance to have NO income tax. Therefore, Florida’s economy thrives on tourism and GROWTH. Construction and real estate are the only major industries that Florida’s revenue comes from. The state relies on property taxes which must cover the lack of revenue from no income taxes. If there is no new growth in the state, revenues go down. If people leave the state, revenue really drops.

Unfortunately, there really haven’t been any other worthwhile investments in other industries in Florida, therefore making the lack of growth detrimental to the state’s budget. No growth seems so great because we can use what we have and possibly gain back some of our lost wetlands, forests, and swamps. But without that growth, our schools, hospitals, police and fire departments, and local governments suffer tremendously. No property taxes = less investment in our future.

Florida needs to change the way they do things, don’t ya think?

• New and different industries?
• Creating an income tax (no, we would never go there…all the old people would leave…ha)?
• Encourage new residents to live in and revitalize old neighborhoods and urban districts?