So the new Florida: An Economic Overview came out yesterday and shows some interesting statistics, this one shows unemployment by county. Orange barely slipped below the US average, St. Lucie didn’t come out so lucky. Give it a glance.
The new Census data got crunched to show income inequality by city and state in the United States. This is shown by a measure known as the Gini Index. The higher the Gini index is, the worse your income inequality is.
Florida Gini Index is 46.9, making our income inequality worse than Rwanda at 46.8 but better than China at 47.
Miami, being the second worst income inequality city in the United States with a 49.3 score, making it worse than Sri Lanka (49.0).
Tampa / St. Petersburg has a score of 45.9, making it slightly worse than the Phillipines (45.8)
My city, Orlando, has a Gini score of 44.2, making our city roughly equal to Iran, with a 44.5 score.
Get the scores per country here
Today, the Central Florida Political Pulse reported on a mailer sent from a “shadowy organization” in Tallahassee that is calling incumbent mayor of Altamonte Springs, Pat Bates, a “liberal democrat” and attacking her for tax evasion. Tons of money and resources has been dumped into this race by the “Small Business Advisory Council”, yet no ones knows much about this group. They were created four months ago, have not released public disclosures yet, and their chair refuses to answer questions. What business does a group from Tallahassee have dumping boatloads of money and resources into a small mayors race in the quaint town of Altamonte Springs?
The answer that all political insiders know, but the Orlando Sentinel can’t publish, is that she is the subject of a political hit job by Representative and future federal prison occupier Chris Dorworth.
In the house race for 2010, Pat Bates Republican and ex mayor husband, Dudley Bates, came out with this release:
- Dudley Bates, (R) Former Mayor, Altamonte Springs:
As a life-long Republican, I strongly believe in and support the conservative values of my party. That said, in the Florida State House District 34 race, I am compelled to cross party lines and support Democrat Steve Barnes.
Steve has shown a commitment to our community and to integrity in government that his opponent, incumbent Republican Chris Dorworth, has not.
Representative Dorworth has tried in his advertising to make this race a referendum on President Obama. This race should not be about partisanship and the federal government….it should be about who is best qualified and dedicated to bring new jobs to Florida, to serve the citizens of District 34 and central Florida, and to govern with integrity.
Having worked closely with both men, I am confident that Steve Barnes is best qualified in all regards and will make a better Representative for all the people of the District.
I strongly endorse Steve Barnes.
- Dudley Bates, Altamonte Springs City Commissioner 1981-87; Mayor 1987-99
The man Steve Barnes was running against was none other than our friend Representative Chris Dorworth. Dorworth was furious about this cross from his own party, but had no recourse. Dudley Bates had no intention of getting into politics, yet his wife was the current mayor and running for re-election. Dorworth is now dumping all his resources and connections into getting Dudley Bates back for his percieved cross. He has plenty of people willing to help him too, as he was recently announced as the future Speaker of the House.
It’s a real shame too, Pat Bates has been able to grow the Altamonte economy, get rid of the deficit, and is a self described “fiscal conservative”. The Republicans should love her, but this is personal and dirty. The Small Business Advisory Council hasn’t released their donor list yet to the state, but when they do I’d venture a bet that Dorworths Shadow organizations “Madison Christopher Holdings LLC”, “Rochelle Holdings LLC”, and the “Guerra Project” will be very prominent on there.
When the federal indictments start rolling down on Dorworth and the rest of the Republican Party, we’re gonna see this whole thing blow up.
Graph I just made on excel based on the new consumer confidence numbers that came out from the Bureau of Economic and Business Research. As you can see, Rick Scott entered office in January and since then consumer confidence has shot down to only 5 points over the record low in 2008.
This has long term implications, as consumer confidence is tied to demand, which is tied to private business, which will then get hiring again. Without consumer confidence, we have no chance of digging ourselves out of this hole. This is what massive cuts to government investment does to an economy, sucks the blood from it.
Thanks Rick Scott!
Representative Bullard spoke to me at Legicamp this weekend, asking me to put more pressure on speaker designate Chris Dorworth, as he “walks around like hes bulletproof, and has way to much baggage to act like that”. This is before any of us knew the firestorm that was about to rain down on Dorworth.
Above is State Rep Chris Dorworth. He is best remembered for his role as “Chunk” in the Goonies, in which he does the now famous Truffle Shuffle. Well he’s about to be famous for something else, as the future speaker of the Florida House who flubbed it up by being dirty and greedy.
In short, Dorworth’s house was being foreclosed on, he couldn’t cover his expenses, his only assets were 40,000 in cash and a car, and he only made a representatives salary. His investments were all under water Suddenly, last week, he released that he has accumulated 713,000 dollars from a group involved in development of Wekiva Parkway, a project he pushed hard in session. It’s looking more and more like there was rampant fraud in this case, dirty politics at its purest.
This is our time to take out this jerk-off once and for all. Call his office and tell his to answer the questions posed by Scott Maxwell. (407) 333-1815 . We need to put some pressure on this Goonie.
Look at her. She’s beautiful. She encapsulates everything we fight for, everything we as progressives do to make change, this is the reason. If everyone in the world saw her, we would have no problem winning in 2012. It takes everything Republicans have twisted over the last 40 years and shows it for the ridiculousness it is:
Shes just so beautiful, and we as progressives have been trying to show her to anyone who’s willing. This is way I love Occupy Wall Street, despite the fact that I disagree with the protesters on almost everything they believe economically. They are bringing attention to this graph, to the ideas that are held within this graph, and showing it to the world.
Keep on fighting the good fight guys.
Not until 1980 did the NES, The American National Election Study, ask the receiver if they were hispanic or not, it just wasn’t important to them. Now we have another trend that is equally as outragous. Pundits refer to each nation from the Latin American communities as “Hispanic”. “Hispanics believe this”, “Hispanics believe that.”
Perhaps these people don’t live in Florida and don’t realize how ridiculous this sounds, but talking to Hispanics, they are not just Hispanic. They are Colombian, Puerto Rican, Cuban, El Salvadorian. They all view politics as differently as New York and Texas do, and to fully understand this population you have to understand that they are not ONE population. Thankfully, one of my favorite political Wonks in Florida (if not my favorite), Steve Schale, tackles this issue in one of his rare blog posts. For a population that is estimated to control 30% of the electorate by 2016, analysis like this is worth its weight in gold.
http://www.stevenschale.com/blog/2011/10/23/floridas-hispanic-mosaic.html
When I was growing up, I remember the Republican Party being the party of common sense and rational thinking. It was the party that made its choices based on careful analysis, not on its gut. The Republican Party that I remember is gone, replaced by a new group of leaders who want to smash the old system to dust.
Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) recently stated that she wants to “turn out the lights” at the Department of Education. This is a dangerous idea at a time when, according to a study by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the United States is ranked in the bottom quartile for math and science and in the bottom half for reading, as well.
