Daily Clips for November 8, 2011

FEATURED STORIES

More than half of new Florida jobs have come in low-wage industries
By Marcos Restrepo
Florida Independent
On Oct. 13, Gov. Rick Scott touted the news that Florida’s unemployment rate had dropped one tenth of 1 percent between August and September, saying in a statement, “Florida is headed in the right direction.”

Florida antiabortion group wants its own 'personhood' amendment, faces long odds
By Katie Sanders
St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Voters in Mississippi will decide today if a fertilized human egg should be recognized as a person under the state constitution, an antiabortion strategy that a group of Christian conservatives are hoping to mimic here in Florida.

Pushback against Florida's decision not to implement parts of new federal healthcare law
By Janelle Irwin
WMNF Community Radio Tampa
Florida has put off implementing some provisions of the Affordable Care Act set to take effect in 2014.

Bondi keeps arm's length from firing of foreclosure fraud investigators
By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post
The curt ousting of state foreclosure fraud investigators June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards is five months behind them.

Democrats Betting Big on Florida Redistricting
By Joshua Miller
Roll Call
Florida is a state where, as millions of Disney World-bound children know, dreams come true.

FLORIDA POLITICS

The Cost of Pushing the Constitutional Envelope
By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
The pace of controversial laws and legally questionable edicts coming out of Tallahassee this year has been so ferocious, it’s almost easy to forget how close to the constitutional edge state leaders have ventured.

Sen. Alan Hays says proof of citizenship isn't necessary to register to vote
By Amy Sherman
St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald PolitiFact
State Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, ignited a firestorm of criticism when he said congressional districts should not be drawn to benefit potentially illegal Hispanic immigrants and that the state should first check their citizenship.

8 Occupy Tampa members arrested in struggle to take Kiley Garden
By Josh Holton
WMNF Community Radio Tampa
Just after midnight this morning four more members of Occupy Tampa were arrested for trespassing in Kiley Garden in downtown Tampa, and opposing an officer without violence.

POLITICAL RACES

Florida politicos weigh impact of accusations on presidential contender Cain
By George Bennett
Palm Beach Post
A top Florida supporter of Herman Cain says the Republican presidential candidate deserves the benefit of the doubt after a woman today publicly accused Cain of reaching under her skirt and pulling her head toward his crotch 14 years ago, when she was seeking employment help.

Voters to pick mayors, council members in Central Florida elections Tuesday
By Ludmilla Lelis
Orlando Sentinel
Voters will go to the polls in 13 cities across Central Florida on Tuesday to choose six mayors and 16 city council members.

Florida Tea Party Convention fails to draw top GOP officials, candidates
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Independent
This weekend’s Florida Tea Party Convention failed to draw many of the GOP candidates invited to participate: Out of the eight GOP presidential candidates, only Rick Santorum showed up to speak.

ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY

Court rejects appeal of environmental group ordered to pay developers' legal costs
By Bruce Ritchie
Florida Current
The full 1st District Court of Appeal has refused to hear a case in which a three-judge panel ordered environmental groups to pay attorneys fees in a development challenge in Martin County.

Allen West says EPA wants to hire 230,000 workers at a cost of $21 billion: False
By Amy Sherman
St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald PolitiFact
The Environmental Protection Agency has been the source of a series of eye-popping but false claims including that the federal agency intends to regulate dust, that it treats spilled milk the same as oil spills and that it plans to implement what has been dubbed a "cow tax."

EPA backs off tough clean-water rules in hopes of helping Obama carry Florida in 2012
Editorial
Palm Beach Post
Facing a choice of cleaning up Florida's actual waters or navigating Florida's political waters, the Obama administration went with the 2012 election.

EDUCATION

Lawmaker calls for inquiry into testing company
By Laura Isensee and Kathleen McGrory
Miami Herald
In 2009, Florida’s education commissioner went to Helsinki to meet with education officials from Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom and other countries for a 10-day summit on Finland’s lauded education system.

Cursive writing becoming a lost art in Florida schools
By Chris Umpierre
Ft. Myers News-Press
When longtime Tanglewood Elementary teacher Lou Quattrucci was in grammar school, he used to spend months perfecting his cursive signature.

JOBS, BUDGET, AND ECONOMY

Businesses spend big to influence hotel-tax fight
By Jason Garcia
Orlando Sentinel
For several years now, competing interests have been warring in front of the Florida Legislature over how taxes should be calculated on hotel rooms sold through Internet intermediaries.

Retailers line up against casinos as horse industry fights Gretna barrel racing
By Gray Rohrer
Florida Current
The Florida Retail Federation announced Monday it will oppose attempts to place large casinos in South Florida, adding to the contingent of business groups standing against those efforts.

Jennifer Carroll visits South African officials
Staff Report
Florida Times-Union
Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll is on state business in South Africa again today, where for the second day she is meeting with local officials and doing some business networking, part of the administration’s efforts to create jobs in Florida.

Wall Street lessons not learned
Editorial
St. Petersburg Times
If there is one lesson to be drawn from the 2008 financial meltdown, it is that strong regulation is the key to keeping markets trustworthy, transparent and healthy.

HEALTH AND SENIORS

Some ALFs pay kickbacks for residents, task force told
By Carol Marbin Miller and Michael Sallah
Miami Herald
Related editorial: Toughen ALF rules
When assisted-living facility owner Linda Cole phoned another owner in the hope of buying his Internet domain name, the man told her he found new residents the old-fashioned way: He paid for them.

Personhood and Consequences
By Marie Diamond
Think Progress
This Tuesday, voters in Mississippi will have to decide a very strange question: should newly-fertilized zygotes have the same rights as human beings?

Poll: Majority of Americans want U.S. to invest in public health
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Independent
A new poll conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health found a majority of Americans prefer that the federal government invest in public health.

Four DOH managers forced out amid department reorganization
By Bruce Ritchie and Christine Jordan Sexton
Florida Current
Four high-level managers at the Florida Department of Health have been forced out in the past two weeks amid a reorganization that's following legislation OK'd in 2010, according to department sources.

Bill aimed at Lake hospital district offers glimpse of hospital commission recommendations
By Travis Pillow
Florida Current
A proposed bill that would dissolve the North Lake County Hospital District and propose a revamped district in its place, subject to a referendum, offers a preview of some of the policy recommendations likely to emerge from a statewide commission studying hospital taxing districts.

CIVIL RIGHTS, PEACE AND SOCIAL ISSUES

Residents to officials, prison executives: Take your immigration detention center elsewhere
By Marcos Restrepo
Florida Independent
About 250 southwest Broward residents attended a Saturday meeting in the city of Pembroke Pines to tell local and federal officials, as well as prison industry executives, that they don’t want an immigration detention center built in their area.