If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would’ve saved more stuff. Like money. The following from a spring day twenty-five years ago. – JDW
There’s a street corner in Tampa called Broadway and Baseball. Which pretty much sums up Spring and State Politics here. Show biz and a lot of crotch scratching.
In Tallahassee, the state capitol, the struggle for potty parity is won. THE BATHROOM EQUALITY ACT (SB 76) guarantees three women’s toilets to every two men’s toilets or urinals. Feminists are flushed with pride.
Legislators almost put together a gambling bill that’s the envy of Organized Crime.
Politicians, of course, compete in the unorganized category.
Lotto money is NOT being used to improve Florida’s educational system. That was just a marketing ploy to get voters to approve state-controlled gambling.
By skimming off the new games, the white boys at the Big House hoped not to raise taxes in an election year.
In a state where the lottery opens up at seven million dollars each week, there is parimutuel betting on horse racing, dog racing, and jai alai.
State-regulated Fantasy Five. Daily Numbers. No runners. You can still place a wager at the newsstand.
The proposed bills would permit video poker, sports betting, and card games. Telephone betting, too.
No reason to raise the morality question. Native Americans hold million dollar bingo games.
Office pools. Church raffles.
Some folks are against everything they don’t like to do, and they’re for anything they do like. Tell you this. These church-going, hymn-singing, entitlement-protecting, Republican-voting, Just-Say-No-ing, Desert Storming, AARPingly anti-NEAers, they like their games of chance.
Nickel-Dime shuffleboard. Penny-a-pin bowling. Push rummy.
Polls show Lawton M. Chiles’ popularity ratings are lower than petrified whale poop. The governor feels gambling is “evil” and he’s trying to save the people from themselves.
In a better world, this philosophy would be considered ETHICAL LEADERSHIP. In Florida in 1992, it’s political suicide. Mr. Chiles, whose job is not at risk this election, has proposed several gazillion dollars in new taxes.
Politicians could vote themselves pay cuts.
Don’t bet on it.
Meanwhile, school children are organizing spontaneous rallies to protest budgets which hurl chunks of education into the streets.
Then kids grow bigger and become more expensive and go to college. (If they’re lucky.)
Where hopefully they’ll learn to read.
The gerry-mandering process here is the ugliest thing seen since my little brother, then twelve, stumbled accidentally into a bucket of snail snot I’d saved patiently since seven.
The Bi-Partisan Bubba Committee To Keep Our Jobs decided at one point to expand the number of seats available to blacks. While sacrificing various female incumbents.
That’s when I stopped paying attention.