A cruel gesture (Florida - Jeb Bush)

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/01/08/Opinion/A_cruel_gesture.shtml

St. Petersburg Times, 1/8/04

A group of lawmakers is being asked today to make the cruelest of gestures toward Florida's poor and infirm. With the state already $113-million short in its programs to serve poor people who need doctors, hospitals and nursing homes, these lawmakers are being asked to shift nearly four times that amount into a reserve account. They are being asked, in the middle of a thunderstorm, to put money away for an umbrella

In this case, though, the poor get soaked.

Gov. Jeb Bush is the one who is urging this misallocation of resources, and his agency director assures lawmakers that "services to recipients will not be impacted by this change." Whom are they kidding? The state already has 63,000 poor children and 12,600 disabled adults on waiting lists to see doctors and therapists. It is also contemplating reductions in the meager compensation it provides to nursing homes, hospitals and group homes for taking care of poor people, even as new state laws require nursing homes to hire more staff to maintain quality.

Senate Democratic Leader Ron Klein was direct in his assessment: "It's morally wrong. . . . These are real expenses right now that affect people's lives right now."

nt

Few more years and we will be back to the rich only having hospitals and doctors. Some countries in Europe already have longer lives and more live births. We are on the way to being a third world country.And we are the riches country in the world? Money is not the only thing that makes you rich.We are forgetting what made us what we were.

The poor and disabled are parasites feeding upon the "free market system."

I wonder which JebFRAUD crony corporatists will be given dominion and control of these funds. Were the millions in federal funds illegally diverted to JebFRAUD's budget during his 2002 election campaign ever returned? Who replaced the $300,000,000.00 he arranged to be fraudulently paid to ENRON shareholders from the state pension fund immediately before they declared bankruptcy?

for a little over a year, and I'm seriously considering moving back to New York. This state is a disgrace. I hate cold weather, but I hate the politics of Florida even more. Jeb and his ilk are turning this state into a banana republic, a dictatorship so vile that it makes any levelheaded person want to get the hell out of here.