Conexión Miami / Jeb’s values

Jeb Bush has trashed Obamacare as bad for America. That’s in spite of the fact he was profiting from Obama’s health care program as a director at Tenet Healthcare Corp. But now that he’s decided to possibly run for president, Jeb has resigned as a Tenet board member. Florida’s former governor has also given up a consulting contract with Barclay’s Bank – another possible problem on the campaign trail. Some view Jeb as saintly. We think he is just another politician who values profits over principles.  

Deportations down in 2014

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its 2014 enforcement statistics on December 19 in a report that indicated that deportations had declined. As Reuters noted of the report’s findings, “… Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a primary agency for border security, deported 315,943 people, down from 368,644 the previous year.”

Minimum wage gets a bump

Minimum wage earners in Florida will received a slight bump starting Jan.1. The minimum wage will increase by 12 cents to $8.05 per hour, benefiting an estimated 364,000 low-wage workers in the state. The increase is the result of a state constitutional amendment approved in 2004 that provides for annual rate adjustments to keep pace with the rising cost of living; it’s not because of well-meaning politicians in Tallahassee. At Progreso Weekly we still believe $8.05 is too low. If you work 40 hours a week, try living on $322 – and that’s before taxes.

Birds and planes don’t mix

Flying birds can be dangerous – if you’re flying an airplane. As the Tampa Tribune recently wrote, “Birds and airplanes are not compatible.” Bird strikes and other wildlife strikes to aircraft cause over $900 million in damage to U.S. civil and military aviation each year, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Over 250 people have been killed worldwide as a result of wildlife strikes since 1988. Some airports, like Southwest Florida International in Fort Myers, use dogs as a way to scare birds away from the tarmac. Tampa International takes a more blaring approach – lights and sirens and the occasional loud bang from cracker shells fired out of a shotgun.

Read Bush’s emails

A few weeks back Conexión Miami reported that Jeb Bush would release 250,000 emails from his years as Florida governor. They were recently obtained via a public records request by American Bridge from the Florida Department of State. If you have time to burn, click here and read them all. You’ll probably notice Jeb has been setting himself up for a presidential run for years, as the emails will show.

Another insurance increase

Owners of vacation homes and rental properties might be in for a shock when they get their policy renewals in the mail this spring. Although policy costs on older primary homes in flood-prone areas will go up an average of about 15 percent after April 1, a recent Federal Emergency Management Agency memo underscores a much harsher reality for non-primary residences: a 37 percent price hike on average. And that is in spite of the fact that a natural disaster (like a hurricane) has not hit Florida for almost a decade.

Influencing Pam Bondi

The New York Times reported that during a closed-door meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, officials voted to stop accepting corporate sponsorships. The action follows a series of articles in The New York Times that examined how lawyers and lobbyists – from major corporations, energy companies and even plaintiffs’ law firms – have increasingly tried to influence state attorneys general. The articles by The Times concentrated on three states, and included officials in Florida. They have examined whether lawyers who made appeals to Attorney General Pam Bondi, for example, violated state law by not registering as lobbyists.

Carlos Curbelo=Conflict of interest

Carlos Curbelo beat Joe Garcia in November for the Dist. 26 congressional seat. At the time he received more than $60 thousand in campaign contributions from interested parties who depended on his vote when he was a school board member in Miami. Francisco Alvarado reported in the Miami Herald that “Owners and executives of six firms that had contracts renewed by the School Board over the past two years contributed much of that money, $24,300. Curbelo cast a yes vote in support of each of those firms, records show.”

Will he run and give up his senate seat?

Marco Rubio is in a pickle. If Marco decides to run for president, according to Florida law, he is not allowed to seek the Florida senate seat he now holds. In other words, if he loses his presidential bid, he would also be losing his senate seat. Our advice to young Marco: go ahead and feed your ego: run for president. That will assure us of getting rid of you once and for all.

Utility companies in Florida=Crooks?

Herman Martinez hasn’t paid an electric bill above $11 for his 2,150-square-foot home in the two years he has lived in it, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Air conditioning? He runs it as much as he wants. Martinez not only lives in a net-zero-energy home but in an entire community where solar panels provide at least some power to every home. Every garage in the Trilogy adult community where he lives, 30 miles west of Orlando, includes an electric charging station. But Florida utility executives, and the state regulators they seem to control, don’t seem to like solar power. Regulators recently approved proposals by the utilities to gut their energy-efficiency goals and end solar rebates claiming that neither is “cost-effective.” One last thing: the utility industry also wants homes and businesses that use solar to pay more for a connection to the electric grid to help share the costs of power lines and big-box power plants.

Florida surpasses New York

There’s something to be said about warm winters. Florida has surpassed New York in population to become the third-most populous state in the union. Figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau show that Florida has at least 19.9 million residents. New York had 19.7 million residents. Florida added almost 300,000 new residents from 2013 to 2014. By contrast, New York grew by only 51,000 over that time period.

Same sex marriage

The Associated Press reported last week that most of Florida’s 67 clerks of court don’t plan to issue marriage licenses to gay couples on Jan. 6 because they are paralyzed by confusion over whether a same-sex marriage ban is being lifted across the whole state that day. The overwhelmingly majority of clerks who responded to AP’s inquiry said they wouldn’t offer marriage licenses to same-sex couples without further clarification from a federal judge.

Have you ever seen a sawfish?

They are large and bizarre-looking predators and can reach a length of 18 feet. Many of us think they’re sharks, but in fact they are a species of ray. They are also one of the world’s most endangered fish. The sawfish has been reduced to a core habitat along the coast of Everglades National Park, the Florida Keys and southwestern Florida. The decline of sawfish was largely because the fish were accidentally caught in commercial fishing gear. They also have been caught and used as a trophy. Another cause of decline has been coastal construction, which destroyed the red mangrove coastlines that sheltered juvenile sawfish.

Up in flames

Remember the satanic display approved for the Capitol Rotunda in Tallahassee? Susan Hemeryck, 54, described as a tea party activist, was arrested by police for trying to dismantle it – a three-sided diorama of an angel falling into flames.