Karen Cyphers - page 17

In 1988, Florida House Clerk John Phelps and Senate Secretary Joe Brown flipped a coin to determine which chamber would file odd numbered bills, and which even. The House got odds, and have since owned bill number one.  For 2014, HB 1 is claimed by Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda with a well-intentioned but misguided measure to require the retail labeling of all genetically modified foods.  Nature has been genetically modifying food for millions of years, and humans for thousands.  The…

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Florida lawmakers have a lot to congratulate each other about as the state rises in national rank on numerous economic, employment, and health care factors.  But access to oral health care is not one of those things. To the contrary, Florida has continued its barely abated tank in all measures of oral health: fewer low-income kids in Florida see a dentist than in any other state. Florida has the 8th worst dentist shortage in the nation, and more than one-third…

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SETTING THE TONE Of the millions of sound bites generated in Florida politics this week, these bubbled to the surface: Unemployment rose in most states in July, and fewer states added jobs than in June.  But Florida’s unemployment rate held steady at 7.1 and the state added 34,500 jobs.  Rick Scott, or at least his handlers, raised eyebrows with some sloppy advance work according to the Crowley Report, when his “SUV slid past hundreds of protesters, a gaggle of media, and…

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The Obama administration and Affordable Care Act allies have spent much of the summer mounting a multimillion-dollar outreach campaign to raise awareness about the law, yet according to a Gallup poll that was released Thursday, these efforts have been largely in vain. With the opening of health insurance exchanges coming in less than two months, more Americans still disapprove (49%) than approve (41%) of the Affordable Care Act.  Further, only 15% of respondents claim to be “very” familiar with the…

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A study to be published in September’s Political Research Quarterly set out to uncover to what extent members of Congress respond unequally to people in different economic situations, and asked whether partisan control of the agenda changes how Senators respond to the poor. The study’s conclusion reads differently than pop culture would have you think: “Republicans are more responsive than Democrats to middle-income constituents in the 109th Congress, and a case study of the 107th Senate reveals that responsiveness toward…

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It is easy enough to validate that the southern half of Florida has a high concentration of northerners.  But that doesn’t stop maps from being fun, anyway.  The following maps represent results from a linguistic survey as visualized by Joshua Katz, a PhD student in statistics at North Carolina State. A few of the more notable findings relative to the Sunshine State include evidence that the Panhandle calls sweetened carbonated beverages “Coke” while the rest of the state follows the…

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State Rep. Steve Crisafulli wants friends and supporters to “save the date” — Wednesday, Sept. 25 — for a fundraising reception as he seeks a third term in the Florida House. Crisafulli is running (unopposed, so far) for the newly redrawn House District 51, which covers much of Brevard County. Crisafulli is House Speaker-in-waiting, set to become House Majority Leader during the 2014 Florida legislative session. Speaker Will Weatherford chose Crisafulli, who will be the Speaker in 2015, as the…

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