Author: opinionstogo

You Go, Koz

Finally.

 

Enough of bending over backwards to be cultural contortionists. Enough of misplaced, colonial guilt and ethno-centrism paranoia. Enough of appeasement in our time.

 

Nicolas Sarkozy has declared the burqa, the face-covering, body-length Islamic shroud for women, formally unwelcome in France. It is, he underscored, a symbol of subservience and, as such, at odds with French values. He is the French President – not the Burqa King – he, in effect, stated.

 

He called women wearing such identity-suppressing garb “prisoners behind a screen.”  He didn’t have to reference the obvious security ramifications.

 

Finally, a Western leader not so tethered to the shibboleths of diversity and inclusion that anything — including that which is patently demeaning — is acceptable. Finally, a leader who doesn’t see common sense as incompatible with legitimate issues of cultural sensitivity. Finally, a person of influence who recognizes outrage – even in a cultural guise.

 

Finally.

Hernando’s & Don’ts

It’s not Hernando’s hide-away any more. The times have apparently caught up.

 

The Brooksville City Council recently voted to approve an updated city dress code that, among other directives, requires employees to wear underwear and use deodorant. You read that right.

 

By way of explanation, Brooksville Mayor Joe Bernadini offered this rationale: “There are those who have to be told.”

 

You can’t make this stuff up.

Iorio’s Take On Rail, Cuba, Career

At last week’s Tiger Bay Club of Tampa luncheon, Mayor Pam Iorio was notably adamant about three issues:

 

*She will go to the mattresses to sell light rail.

*She won’t be visiting Cuba any time soon.

*She won’t be publicly addressing her political future for a while.

 

If Iorio could choose her legacy, it would likely be “light rail visionary and initiator.”

 

Not that the Riverwalk won’t be in the mix, but others, notably her predecessor, had a major role in securing requisite waterfront land. But if next year’s referendum vote – and accompanying tax hike – get passed, it will be in large measure because Tampa’s two-term mayor mustered all her remaining political capital and maxed out on her bully-pulpit forum. And as she reminded Tiger Bay attendees, her podium skills, engaging repartee and powers of persuasion are formidable.

 

“We have it all,” said Iorio. “The only thing we don’t have is light rail. It’s the missing link. I mean, Detroit (currently the only other major market sans light rail) is now working on it. We also need a more robust bus system.”

 

According to Iorio, much will ride on how light rail is “presented.”

 

“It’s not a frill,” she noted. “It’s not ‘icing on the cake.’ We have to get past the ‘It doesn’t just help me’ mentality. The demographics are changing. Mass transit is not just for people who can’t afford a car.

 

“To not consider rail seriously is not 21st century thinking,” stressed Iorio. “It will set us back as a region. We can’t say: ‘If you move to Tampa, you better own a car.’ No more. We can’t afford to have nothing more than a HARTLine bus system. I can’t be a part of it.”

 

She also referenced the Interstate system begun by the Dwight Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. “We need this just as much as we needed the interstate system,” she said. Indeed, Iorio also pondered the viability of the interstate system had it been subject to regional referenda.

 

And she’s obviously heard her share of cost-benefit ratio and subsidy arguments proffered by small-government advocates.

 

“All transportation is subsidized,” underscored Iorio. “Dale Mabry is subsidized. And why do we subsidize things? Because we think it’s for the community good. If we only have HARTLine buses, we’ll be so far behind – and pay for it in so many ways.”

 

Cuba: Todavia No

 Even though Florida – and Tampa – are uniquely positioned to take advantage of normalized relations between Cuba and America, Iorio is not about to be any bolder than the Obama Administration when it comes to making it happen. She can see the incremental changes occurring in the Cold War-relic relationship between America and Cuba, but sees no need to get out in front on this one. She’s certainly not about to emulate the plans of some other locals, including at least one Tampa City Council member, who hope to visit Cuba this summer.

 

“If the private sector sees opportunities, it should act on it,” said Iorio. “But I could go and make a big splash, and it will change nothing. This is a federal issue. It’s not appropriate for me to embark on my own foreign policy.”

 

No Post-Mayor Talk

Now is not the time for Iorio to be musing in public about where her post-mayoral, public-service career may take her. There are too many political subplots beyond her control next year and too much on her lame-duck plate to entertain such speculation.

 

“I don’t know what my future holds,” stated Iorio. “I don’t worry about it. I don’t want to short-shrift this job.

 

“The county-mayor? There is no county-mayor position. It doesn’t exist.”

Bean-Beckner-Ferlita Flap

This much we know:

 

*Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean’s budget proposal includes a tax hike, the first one in 14 years.

*Bean’s plan also proposes to slash the budget by some $140 million and eliminate hundreds of employees and as many as 1,000 positions.

*Bean had given her top six deputies, each of whom makes six figures, raises ranging from 7 to 17 percent. There was no public notice. Some had taken on extra duties; some had received promotions.

*To a skeptical County Commission, Bean recently explained: “I had to be able to compensate them in order to get them to take on the additional work.” She also noted that even in a down economy employees are not precluded from receiving raises.

  She may want that public rationale back – certainly in the context of those who are flat-out losing their county jobs in a region with 10 per cent overall unemployment.  

*Rookie County Commissioner Kevin Beckner, who wasn’t on the board when those Bean pay raises passed county muster, recently called for a comprehensive analysis of how exactly Bean goes about — and gets away with — her down-economy pay raises.

*Fellow Commissioner Rose Ferlita took considerable umbrage at Beckner’s call for a public vetting. After condescendingly addressing him as “young man,” she accused Beckner of “grandstanding” and not seeking information in an “adult way.”

Not unlike Hillsborough Administrator Bean, Ferlita may also want an ill-advised public utterance back. But it’s too late. Look for it to show up in some form on somebody’s mayoral-candidate brochure next year.

 

That much we know.

Newspapers Accelerate Own Demise

Suffice it to say, anyone who writes for a newspaper is acutely aware of the challenging – OK, scary – times now upon us. And, yet, as I settle in with my Cuban coffee to savor my morning papers, I increasingly find myself doing as much wincing as reading. And it has nothing to do with all the non-breaking news that the dailies are now relegated to. I still get analysis, variety (including a sports fix) and portability.

 

But increasingly those “typos” you’d occasionally encounter on a jump page are found anywhere, including seeping onto the front page. In the body, in cutlines. Oxycontin or oxymoron? Proof readers? Were they all let go?

 

But even more than that is the news judgment. And I’m not even talking about the page-two celebrity piffle that now passes for news.

 

Just last Friday the two local dailies provided Exhibits A and B with their front pages. One featured a large color photo of lightning-struck cows. It was sad and unnecessarily graphic, but it was available — from TV coverage. So, it ran. Tellingly, the actual story was buried on page 6.

 

The other daily thought it appropriate to run an account — with accompanying color photo — of President Obama swatting a fly during an interview. The sub-head included the ostensible rationale: “What does that say about him…and us?” And, candidly, I thought, “this medium.”

 

But these were just two, given-day examples. I don’t need any more in-your-face animal cruelty stories or the latest update of what some mutant from a dysfunctional culture did — yet again — or what some slug has on his computer that involves kids. OK, cover it. It happened. This element is out there. Thanks for the heads up, just don’t bludgeon me with it.

 

Call me naïve or addled or woefully out of touch. I’ve been called worse. But I still believe the daily newspaper’s job is to inform — and also entertain. But neither is a synonym for pander.

Benchmark Thinking

Good think-piece penned by Fred Karl, the former Florida Supreme Court Justice, in last Sunday’s Tampa Tribune. He made the point, and he would know better than most, that “There is nothing involved in being appointed to the court, or being enrobed as a member, that changes a person’s critical attributes or purges one’s mind.” He recalled his own slogan when he was a Florida Supreme Court candidate: “A Justice is the sum of his past.”

 

Put more prosaically, we all do the best we can to make objective evaluations – especially those that pertain to the law. But everyone lives their life subjectively. It comes with the human condition – whether you’re Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia or Sonia Sotomayor.

Talib As Totem?

Now that Derrick Brooks and Warrick Dunn are no longer Bucs, the team has had to replace those 83-by-40-foot Brooks and Dunn banners that had adorned the side of Raymond James Stadium. Barrett Ruud, the nice-guy middle linebacker, is an obvious choice as a banner replacement. But Aqib Talib?

 

Recall that the second-year player had a checkered career at Kansas and has displayed a thuggish temper among his teammates. He’s already been the instigator in two major, intra-squad altercations. This guy needs a serious attitude adjustment, if not overhaul, and should be reined in. Instead, his larger-than-life likeness is a marketing totem?

Graduation Rate Disgrace

And so the debate still rages about Florida’s high school graduation rate. Is it 71 percent, as this state’s own calculations, which includes GED diplomas, indicates? Or is it 57.5 percent as reported recently in Education Week magazine? In short, either nearly 30 percent of Florida’s students don’t graduate or more than 40 percent don’t graduate. One is bad, the other is worse. They’re both a disgrace. About that, there should be no debate.

End-of-Life Dilemma

There’s no lack of vested interests weighing in on health care reform. Among locals offering input is Dr. Stephen Klasko, dean of the College of Medicine at USF and CEO of USF Health. Dr. Klasko recently noted that health-care providers now have “incentives to do more and more.” Klasko was zeroing in on a huge — and hugely sensitive — health-care cost driver.  

 

He was referencing the inordinate amount of medical expenses incurred in a patient’s final months. Nobody wants to talk in terms of the ultimate bottom line when it’s a loved one at death’s door – with the prospect of buying a few more months of marginal quality of life at extraordinary cost. It’s a touchy subject, but no longer too touchy to talk about.