Recycled Dogma

    It pains me to think that in these tough economic times for the state and the people of Florida that the best the new Florida administration can do is recycle archaic dogma. What does it say for our potential future that the administration is re-enacting forty year old battles instead of presenting new ideas and solutions? What I refer to here is the partisan belief that unemployed prefer to remain unemployed and feed at the trough of public largess instead of finding jobs.

    In an article in the Orlando-Sentinel on December 23, 2010 it was announced that Governor Rick Scott's transition team was releasing a report that the unemployed put little effort into finding a job. Implied was the belief that the reason for the high unemployment was that the unemployed wanted to stay unemployed because they got paid for doing nothing. Forget the recession, the millions of jobs lost due to Republican policies, the appallingly low amount of jobs available and the low pay scale for the jobs that were available. These are just lazy people.

    But why rant now? The article is weeks old and better left to the trash bin. Valid points except that this article and belief are being repeated in commentary on radio and in conversations on the street. Let's end this. Unemployment is insurance, not welfare or a government bailout. The research used to defend this absurd point of view is misused and misrepresented as assured to us by the report's author. People on unemployment are not basking in the sun and living luxuriously on the manna brought by the payments from unemployment. They are losing their homes, cars, and dignity while they try to feed a family on the lousy $275.00 a week maximum some of them make from this underfunded and outdated program. Unemployment does end and often it ends before these people find jobs, a tragedy for the family and those that received this assistance. Finally people are unemployed because there are no jobs. In Flagler County alone there are over 5,000 people listed as unemployed and only 600 jobs available. Almost all of those jobs are in medicine, a field few are qualified to find employment.

    Forty years ago in the age of welfare both Democrats and Republican used this standard to win and lose elections. It is a tired old issue. It is dogma, not a serious issue to be discussed. It is, at best, our grandfather's debate. Let it die, with them and the misguided desire to relive the 1950's. We need to live now, in the age of computers, cell phones and social networks. We need ideas and solutions for the 21^st Century. The unemployed have enough problems; quit beating on them for your political advantage. Quit flying old flags to rally your troops. If you want to solve the unemployment problem, get to work on creating jobs. Isn't that why the governor was elected?    

Hypocrites and Politics

Florida House Speaker Larry Cretul in his opening remarks to his fellow representatives reiterated a Republican mantra that "government does not create jobs." When the opposite is so obviously true, why do we have to have the debate? Yet again why can't the debate begin? Mr. Cretul stated this mantra as fact. As if there were not and could not be any dissenting opinion. Yet he stands at the podium collecting a salary provided by government and because of government. This is a job. Governing is a job. Get over it. Government can and does create jobs, thousands of jobs every day. Not only in the ranks of those elected, but in the number of staffers that must be employed, the services that must be provided and the laws that must be obeyed. Government provides jobs in the police force, armed services, utilities, and infrastructure. It provides jobs to oversee rules, regulations and compliance. Government provides and creates jobs on a daily basis.

After running against the growth of big government, how could you even suspect that government doesn't create jobs. They just did. You ran against the creation. Oddly enough you ran against the very thing you created. The explosion of government jobs in the last decade has been under Republican control not Democratic. During my last campaign, my opponent sang the same song. Yet there he was the Chancellor of a College receiving a salary from that college that was partially paid by state government funding. My opponent championed the University system as a vehicle for job creation. Insisting we needed to use the Florida Universities to move our recovery forward. The University he was primarily referring was the state chartered and supported Florida State University, a major recipient of government funding. FSU could not make it, or would be in serious jeopardy if state funding was eliminated. Tens of thousands of jobs at the University relied on government funding and these jobs were created by government funding. The private sector jobs that may come from the research at these Universities will owe their existence to government job creation.

So let's get past these mantras and face the reality. Government can and does create jobs. Without government jobs the unemployment rate would skyrocket to levels of unimaginable heights. We need government to step up and create jobs where needed. Government must create jobs where private business can't and won't. We need to put people to work and the last thing we need is mantras borne of some distant dismissed ideology.