Ashamed to be a Floridian

Today is the second day ever that I am ashamed to be a Floridian.

Back in August of 2005, Florida got scraped by a little hurricane called Katrina. It proceeded to go around the panhandle and absolutely decimate Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Then part of Florida’s finest Highway Patrol got dispatched to the disaster zone to help with the crisis management, driving 10+ hours to the affected areas, just to immediately turn back and go home. These scumbags, supposedly sworn to protect us, drove across the state, tagged in, and because in the middle of the catastrophe their assignment wasn’t available immediately, they decided to turn back and go home – right away.

Today, we have yet again solidified our position as the most ignorant state in the union. We collectively decided to ignore the infrastructure, education and support problems that the state faces, and decided to give ourselves a well deserved property tax break. After all, who makes better financial decisions than the poor and lower middle class families that are not just taxed the most but hit with the highest insurance premiums and second most regressive tax system.. We elected to give a giant middle finger up to the education, debt payback, insurance reforms, infrastructure investments that would actually drive businesses into the State… and chose to get ourselves a little cash back that will just go to pay for fast food and a new iPod.

I am sad, ashamed and disappointed in this turn of events. We want to live in paradise, we just don’t want to pay for it. We want to have affordable education, we just don’t want to pay for it. We want to live on an acre of land, we just don’t feel like its our duty to pay for the road, power, utilities, police, fire departments and amenities required for us actually to live there. We want to drive businesses to the State, but we don’t want to train our population to work in the kinds of jobs that still make America competitive with the rest of the open WTO world.

It is called sacrifice folks, money does not grow on trees and we cannot pound the ATM window and cry every time we need more. This is the very basic fundamental truth of fiscal responsibility that seems to be lost from the highest levels of our government to the very lowest income families that today cemented our future for a quick and meaningless rebate.