Florida 2012 Amendments: Know Before You Go.

Florida 2012 Amendment ballot measures

It's crucial to be informed on the proposed constitutional amendments which are on the ballot in the November elections. The wording of the amendments is unnecessarily abstruse and misleading. Of course I would encourage everyone able, willing and planning to vote to conduct their own fact finding research. Although most of the proposals are related to taxes several are unambiguously drafted to curtail basic civil liberties. The Republican controlled congress in Tallahassee is relying on the fact that most voters won't delve any deeper into the intentionally confusing verbiage of the ballot measures. This sort of de facto plutocratic oligarchy is what has led the country down the garden path to its current despondent socio-economic situation. I'll try to briefly outline the amendment and provide links to dissenting opinions of the amendments. The sage advise from the State Department on foreign travel applies well to voting: “know before you go.”

Amendment 1:  Health insurance mandates (SJR 2)

Prevents penalties for not purchasing health care coverage in order to comply with federal health care reforms.

Opponents point to the fact that the United States Supreme Court decision would override the amendment which would in turn make the amendment a moot point.

Amendment 2:   Veterans property taxes (SJR 592)

Expands discount on property taxes to all veterans disabled as a result of combat, not just those who are Florida residents.

Opponents say state and local governments face mounting budget shortfalls in part because of diminished property tax returns brought about by the collapse of the housing market. Schools and local governments need to maintain the tax base or consider cuts to public services

Amendment 3:   Capping state revenue (SJR 958)

Imposes a limit on state revenues based on a formula that includes changes in population and inflation.

Opponents, like the League of Women Voters and AARP, site that the proposed revenue cap could prevent government services from keeping up with demand.

Amendment 4:   Florida Property Tax (SJR 314)

Amends commercial and non-homestead property taxes.

Opponents say it would create tax disparities and strip an estimated $1 billion from the tax base over the next three years at a time when local governments are struggling to provide basic services.

Amendment 5:   Florida Supreme Court Amendment (HJR 7111)

It provides for Senate confirmation of Supreme Court justices; give lawmakers control over changes to the rules governing the court system; and direct the Judicial Qualifications Commission, which investigates judicial misconduct complaints, to make its files available to the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

Opposition claim this amendment is a thinly veiled attempt to exert legislative influence over the judicial branch by imbuing the state congress with more autority.

Amendment 6: Abortion (HJR 1179)

To include in the Florida Constitution the federal ban on use of all public funds for abortion. It would also overturn all court decisions that rely on privacy rights in the Florida Constitution to reject abortion restrictions.

Opponents say this amendment discriminates against women, strips away a woman’s fundamental right to choose, and erodes established law, including rights of privacy. It could impact family planning centers and women's health clinics.

Amendment 7:  Freedom of Religion

This amendment was retracted on behest of the Florida chapter of the ACLU who challenged the wording of the amendment. The amendment was rewritten and submitted again as Amendment 8. This is why there will be no amendment 7 on the ballot.

Amendment 8:  Religious Freedom (SJR 1218)

Repeals current prohibition of state funding, directly or indirectly, for religious institutions (e.g. tax payer funding). This provision has prevented school voucher opponents from enacting law to provide state vouchers directly to private schools.

This voucher system would pave the way for tax-payer subsidized religious schooling. Opponents of the amendment point to critical resources, namely financial, being depleted from an already strained education system. The proponents of Amendment 8 claim it will safeguard against alleged religious persecution. Yet, the Florida State Constitution had a separation of church and state since 1885 which makes amendment 8 appear to be fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.

Amendment 9: Florida Property Tax Exemption for Surviving Spouses

This would grant a full property tax exemption to the surviving spouses of military veterans who die while on active duty and to the surviving spouses of first responders who die in the line of duty.

Opponents stated that if passed the tax revenues schools and local governments need to provide services will be drastically reduced.

Amendment 10:  Florida Tangible Personal Property Tax Exemption

(HJR 381)

Gives a series of property tax breaks to first-time homebuyers, commercial property and those with second homes in Florida. First-time homebuyers would receive a homestead exemption worth up to $200,000 to be phased out over five years. It lowers the cap on the amount a property assessor can raise the assessed value of a commercial property and non-homestead second homes from 10 percent to 5 percent each year.

Opponents say this amendment is part of a trickle-down economic theory that does not work. They say it will strip millions in tax revenue from local governments struggling to provide basic services.

Amendment 10 would reduce property tax collections across the state by a combined $61 million over its first three years, according to the state Revenue Estimating Conference.

Amendment 11:  Florida Senior Homestead Tax Exemption

This amendment would give an additional property tax exemption to low-income seniors who have lived in their home for more than 25 years.

Opponents stated that if passed the tax revenues schools and local governments need to provide services will be drastically reduced.

Amendment 12:  Florida Appointment Process for State University System Board of Governors Revision

Amendment 12 would replace the president of the Florida Student Association with the chair of the council of state university student body presidents as the student member of the Board of Governors of the State University System. The amendment also requires that the Board of Governors create a council of state university student body presidents

Opponents site the amendment as superfluous and unnecessary.

Sources:

Tampa Bay Times

Ballotpedia

Florida DOS

Collinscenter

Creative Loafing Tampa

It's about Time

Building a Blooming Garden Clock

The concept of time has insnared us all across the globe. We're enmeshed in all facets of time whether we consciously adhere to the scientific principle of a fourth dimension in space time or the banal realization that we have a ordinal daily behavior. As the digital age steadily composes new guidelines for how we conduct our lives so does the notion of time recompose itself. Conceptually time has simultaneously metamorphosed into an almost neurotic OCD laden encumbrance. It permeates our lives in slogans and jingles and mnemonic phrases like the ubiquity of commercial advertisements. These pervasive euphemisms are all to familiar: Time is of the essence; the time is now; no time like present; time to get up; time to leave; do we have enough time?; time to do whatever. Throughout anecdotal and recorded history and continuing up to present day, societies have fabricated codes and parameters for measuring time. These societies have bestowed this time keeping acumen on a fraternity of time lords. Historically these time lords were once exalted shaman or priests or soothsayers able to interpret the omens and miracles and predict occurrences, like the harvest moon, by telling time. Modern time lords are better known to the world as scientists and have been bequeathed the responsibility of recalibrating the global atomic clocks down to the nanosecond which behooves any traveler who expects GPS to function properly.

Clocks and timepieces have emerged as the de facto mechanism which facilitates a baseline for keeping time. This wasn't always the case. The first timepieces were based on the Sun, the Moon and the starry heavens. The phases of the moon were used to calculate large chunks of time but weren't especially useful for keeping time on a micro level. Consultations and planetary movement are magnificently pragmatic for charting relative time but don't work so well in the light of day. Enter the sundial into the fray of time keeping. Although the Sun's phases during the day can elucidate a general idea of fixed time (e.q. dawn, noon, dusk) it wasn't until the sundial that better incremented time could be kept. However glorious the invention of the sundial was it had its obvious limitations. Of course, there were other various ways of keeping time but they were highly subjective and situation specific like candles and hourglasses. With the invention of mechanized timepieces the baseline for keeping time seemed to have been canonized.

Although keeping time with clocks and timepieces was now regulated, allowing for better logistical control, the standardization of time remained elusive. The authority of the time lords had succumbed to hibernation after the proliferation of clocks and timepieces. For instance, if one had a clock in the home it could show a different time than the company clock at which one worked. Furthermore, all shops and businesses and governmental organizations kept their own specific time which meant that one was in a constant state of time warp. It wasn't until the heyday of the locomotive and train travel that standardized time keeping revolutionized our fixation on time. Railroad companies needed to coordinate arrival and departure times in order to essentially avoid collusions. Naturally, the marketing machine claimed that strict schedules and deadlines were paramount to affording better service; the underlying precept was to reduce crashes. This evolution of punctuality is the cornerstone of today's unwitting obsession with the minutiae of time and time keeping.

Interestingly, as orthodoxy rears its head in the behavioral conventions of a society too does opposition creep in as its concurrent anathema. There arise those who yearn for an innovative push back or an alternative to the protocol. Horologers artfully designed new and intricate clocks and timepieces to approximate time keeping to sate a growing obsession. There were clocks which chimed with varied aroma's or tastes which enabled the owner to reasonably assess the time primarily during the dark hours of night.

As the fledgling European saltwater expansion progressed during the 18^th century they encountered vastly different cultures. Each of these cultures superficially appeared to the European explorers as benighted and culturally backward in comparison to European culture. Yet these cultures had unique and reliable means of keeping time which were symbiotically in tune with their milieux. For instance, some rainforest peoples of New Guinea adapted their children's peer group play time to the calls of particular birds. A certain bird call in the early morning signified that the children were free to roam and play. Conversely, a different bird call ushered in the end of the playtime and meant the children needed to set their compass to home.

Some revolutionary European thinkers in this period admired the romantic ideal of the “noble savage” as espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They tinkered at ways to introduce aspects of it into the cultural lives of Europeans. One such thinker was the Swedish renaissance man Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus, a botanist, physician and zoologist, is perhaps best remembered for his taxonomy of the plant and animal kingdoms. At some point amidst the herculean task of classifying and cataloguing all the known plants and animals, Linnaeus took a break and pondered about time.

Having amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of plants as well as being an avid gardner it wasn't long before he melded the two endeavors and applied it to time keeping. Linnaeus devised a botanical scheme for keeping time based on the general daily blooming period of plants and flowers. For reasons unknown, Linnaeus never brought his “noble savage”/ “back to nature” blooming garden clock to fruition. The theoretical botanical clock remains just that; a hypothetical. Despite that fact, constructing such a garden clock can be as enjoyable and entertaining as it could be functional. Here is a partial and by no means exhaustive list of plants and flowers with their corresponding opening and closing times which can function as a blueprint for ones own blooming garden clock. Happy gardening; it's time to get busy.

Flowering Plant                                  Opening                          Closing

Goats-beard                                          3 am                                 11 am

Chicory                                                 4-5 am

Hawkweed                                           6 am                                 5pm

Garden Lettuce                                     7 am                                 10 am

Scarlet Pimpernel                                  8 am

Ice plant                                                9-10 am                            3-4 pm

Day Lilly                                                                                       7-8 pm

Blue Sow-thistle                                  7 am                                   noon

Marsh Sow-thistle                               7 am                                   2 pm

Splitting Hairs with Occam's Razor: The First Temple

The Enemy of My Enemy's Friend is My?

The historical record on this Pale Blue Dot, as the deceased astro-physicist Carl Sagan once deemed the  Earth, has been fraught with violence and war. Carl Sagan used the Pale Blue Dot nomenclature as a metaphor to humanity in order to reflect on the infiniteness of the universe and subsequently the Earth's place within this vastness. When Voyager 1 took its last instructed photograph as it exited our solar system, that speck of blue in the lower left corner was the place where everything and everyone we know happened. There dangling in space was the epicenter of our history which constitutes only a fraction time in the space time of the universe.

The present day infighting amongst various religions, some which have emphatically entwined lineages, only strengthens the concept sent forth by Carl Sagan. Violent clashes between groups of people is sadly endemic to the human species. Taken to the extreme war then becomes the penultimate expression of violence between groups. There is a biology infused anthropological premise that resources and access to them precipitates groups to resort to violence. This theory is called the “protein theory” which romantically applies to hunter gather societies. Societies which Rousseau labeled the “noble savage”.

In the modern age not much has changed in the way of motivation which sways the “noble savage” to conduct violence in the form of war. Yet as societies developed more abstruse ways of differentiating themselves from other societies their intrinsic motivations also evolved. Of course, the fundamental reason might be an overextended population which was in competition with its neighbors for resources. But with an extended philosophical and metaphysical palette the society could paint a richer and more convoluted rationale for war. The desire for the “US” feeling is defined by psychology as a sense wanting to identify and belong to a group. A sense of “brotherhood” is this psychological concept as it is borrowed and tweaked by sociology when they apply it more widely to societies.

Brotherhood is a term with a thousand faces. It can allude to nations, subcultures, secret societies and even ethnic groups. However, the one pervasive group throughout modern history which the concept brotherhood is inextricably linked is that of religion. From the Christianization of pagan Europe through to the bellicose clashes of Europe and Asia Minor during the Crusades then the upheaval of the Counter Reformation when the Catholic Church attempted to reassert its hegemony over Christian doctrine, modern history is defined by the careening of ideologies wrapped in the concept of brotherhood. It is not a level of sophistication which mans the wheelhouse of derision between brotherhoods and leads them to war. Rather, it's an inability to collectively gaze at the Pale Blue Dot.

Sometime before the Neolithic Revolution about 12-13,000 years ago disparate groups were able to meld their sense of brotherhood and create a landmark to religious unity. They accomplished this without the aid of a priest class or arcane philosophical tenets. These devices enable a modern stratified society to set parameters for the brotherhood concept to function. Yet the earliest religious temple built tells a different tale even if the scientific community isn't able to see the Pale Blue Dot.

Göbekli Tepe is the earliest sophisticated temple constructed by man before the neolithic revolution which belies a level of sophistication and societal diversity that wasn't developed for thousands of years later. From the weird to the wonderful a handful of theories have been postulated for the sociological quantum leap. The theories run the gamut from a benevolent extraterrestrial assistance to a culmination of hitherto undiscovered advancement in technology and familial cohesion.

Science and scientific discovery are driven by a conjecture motor made up of guess work and hunches. The allure of unraveling a mystery by using an avalanche of intricate data and detail often befuddles the basal goal which is to explain. Sometimes removing the cadre from scientific protocol is what is truly propels knowledge and discovery. The refocussing on more concise and simple explanations will facilitate the development of ones which prove to be the most plausible. This is sometimes referred to as Occam's Razor which posits that if you are confronted with two competing theories the simplest of the two is usually right. Put another way, if you are able to think outside the box you might be able to see a container.

So what is Göbekli Tepe? Why is it a mystery? How does it shape and mold our perception of the sociological and anthropological leap forward? As will become apparent; the enigma wrapped in a mystery is also cloaked orthodox scientific paradigms which untangle neatly when we slice them open with Occam's Razor.

The theory goes that the evolution of a nation state journeys through immutable phases until it reaches it peak of a stratified society. The domestication of plants and animals theoretically frees the entire clan/tribe from necessarily foraging and hunting for food. A key factor is that it call in a de facto cooperation mechanism with strangers. In the case of Göbekli Tepe it was a shared codified belief system presumably in an afterlife. The fact is that there had to have been a fully functioning cosmology beyond a basal animistic/totem belief. The complexity of the temple suggests that a diverse array of animals and demigod like deities existed in their shared cosmology because of the wide variety of stone carvings. But they were not a settled, stationary society. 

My claim is they were semi-nomadic and came together during an immense abundance of food stuff which grew naturally around the area of Göbekli Tepe. The climate did not afford the builders of Göbekli Tepe to remain year round in this place and thusly they convened only during the more hospitable weather months. The fact is that they needed to have time and expertise to practice and perfect these new building techniques and artistic trades. No social or evolutionary advancement occurs in a vacuum. But how did they acquire the technology to carve and build? Moreover, why are there no jewelry or ornamental beads or adornments found in situ? Clearly, if they were able to produce the carvings they should have been able to make animal bone necklaces or trinkets like totems or tikis to travel with on their semi-nomadic treks to warmer climes during the winter and autumn? Perhaps several different ethnic groups gathered in the same area and the same time during the wet and cold months of the year. During these periods they were able to swap technologies and stories and building techniques through diffusion or enculturation. These accomplishments were made with basic stone tooled flint flake technologies. The point is that the temple was constructed and it was done so outside the confines of orthodox scientific theories.

To illustrate the axiom of Occams Razor as it applies to the confounding theory of how Göbekli Tepe was erected a brief overview the Calusa Indians of Florida will be discussed. The Calusa Indians society will prove that a fully developed an functioning stratified post Neolithic Revolution society is not required to evolve culturally. Of course there are other examples, like the Monte Sano Middens in present day Louisiana or the dissemination of Polynesia culture from the Marquesas Islands, but for sake of space I have limited it to one example.

The Calusa were a people who inhabited the coastal regions and interior waterways of Southwest Florida from about 5000 BC until the Spanish encountered them on their explorations in the early 1500's. The Calusa had a vast kingdom built upon a tribute system to a single chief who had many thousands of subjects encompassing a huge amount of territory. They erected large religious middens and settlements as well as waterways for irrigation and transportation. These accomplishments seem tame almost benign at first glance. However, all of these advancements were made without sedentary farming and agriculture. The Calusa culture, also referred to as the Caloosahatchee culture, was based on estuarine fisheries. This means to say that the classic model employed by scientists to trace the evolution and therefore the ability for complex societal endeavors is turned on its head. In other words, similar to Göbekli Tepe there was a “goldilocks” scenario in the region where the climate was right for staying in one place.

The Calusa didn't construct anything quite on the magnitude of the religious edifice found at Göbekli Tepe but they did prove that the evolution of societies are like snowflakes; each one is unique. So what does this tell us about brotherhood and war? The commonality of the human experience is what binds those details of that experience, like religion, culture and brotherhood. But what binds us more as we move forward is the global brotherhood we share as we gaze in our minds eye at the Pale Blue Dot.

Historical Blinders: The Roaring 20's Redux

America in the year 2012 resembles the America of the 1920's more than we realize or should accept. The revisionists have yet to take their first awkward steps on the slippery terrain of reexamining the historical paradigms. Today's political pundits and social trend watchers are recording their versions of eyewitness accounts as history unfolds. Logically they are not graced with the ability to reflect objectively on the aggregate of the events but they should delve into history for less prosaic insights than they are offering us now. Until an introspective glance into the past America will continue to be tethered to collective historical amnesia. The enigmatic quote from the Spanish born and American educated philosopher George Santayana sums it up best; “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

History is always subjective because it is always written by the victors. It usually is imbued with all the hallmarks of a winner's propaganda. The historiographies written long after the initial histories have been canonized illuminate the motivations and cultural ethos of that era. Those histories, much like mythologies, reveal a cultural and sociological necessity to support and legitimize the means employed in order to construct a historical paradigm. History isn't an exact science. It generally relies on other social sciences to construct parameters which can be quantified and mathematically fact-checked. In other words, the manufacture of history is characterized by the Machiavellian axiom “the end justifies the means.”

America during the antebellum of the 20^th century is referred to as The Roaring 20's. It is often seen as a boon period in modern US history. This era in America history was characterized by tremendous economic affluence and the burgeoning of a cultural transformation. Wall Street was alit with trading; jazz music had become a distinct American innovation; some of American's greatest literary figures were honing their craft; the Harlem Renaissance was hitting a critical mass; women were now a viable political force; yet there were discernible cracks in the foundation. To paint the Roaring 20's as a pax americana would be to fall prey to a rhetorically feeble semantics game. History is a classic exercise in cause and effect. The act of writing a history is contingent on realizing that events don't mysteriously appear in a vacuum.

Despite the demagogic rhetoric tossed back and forth between Republicans and Democrats as they play ideology “keep away” from other political third parties, the US of 2012 is still a world leader in key areas. The digital and nanotechnology industries in places like Silicon Valley almost singlehandedly dictate trends and innovation over the entire world. The film industry has been injected with new vigor from independent film makers. Coupled with that there is a resurgence of documentary films which are both culturally and economically relevant. Scientific and academic enterprise continue to be hallmarks of an elite educational system. However, we are all bitterly aware that the fabric of American society is becoming threadbare. Now that the combat portion of the war in Iraq has been quelled and America enters into a phase of introspection the cracks in foundation of modern America are more evident.

Here follows a short list of parallels between America of the Roaring 20's and America of 2012. The list is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather it's purpose lies more with culling examples from the past. Reflecting on and discussing those lessons from the past will ensure that we aren't repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again.

US: Roaring 20's                                           US: 2012

Segregation                                                    Immigration

ghetto forming upheld by the                          Show me you papers laws in Alabama and 

Supreme Court decision                                  Georgia

Corrigan v. Buckley(1926)

Poll Tax and Jim Crow Laws                      Voter Picture ID

24^th amendment ending poll tax                      Poll Tax

not until 1962

Americanism                                                  Americanism

militarized xenophobia                                    anti-LGBT marriage laws

the heyday of the modern                                (Defense of Marriage Act), anti-moslem

Klu Klux Klan. Anti-immigrant                       sentiment reflected in the                                               

zeitgeist typified in a mistrust                           ungrounded fear of Sharia Law

for anything divergent from

white anglo-saxon culture

Prohibition                                                    Prohibition

a costly and losing war primarily                   a costly and losing war on drugs, primarily

on alcohol. Repeal by congress                     marijuana. Federal crack down on  

with the 21st Amendment                              dispensaries at the State level                                               

Political Wizards Turn Immigration Reform into Racial Profiling

On 20 August the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ruled that at least one derisive feature of the Georgia and Alabama illegal immigration laws will be left intact. The so called “show me your papers” provision is intended to allow law enforcement to more verdantly apprehend illegal immigrants who are suspected of a criminal wrongdoing. According to civil rights advocacy groups the “show me your papers” is at its core just a thinly veiled mechanism for wanton racial profiling.

Much like the a priori green light given to Alabama and Georgia to racially profile, a smoke and mirrors game is being played in the public arena while debating the efficacy of social justices like gay rights, equal pay for woman, economic imperialism and the dominion over ones body. One could go so far as to say that most politicians represent their particular constituents and electorate by agreeing that racial equality as expressed in the civil rights movement was and is a non negotiable steadfast given. Why are we still debating the minutiae of civil unions, LGBT marriages and the traditional Judeo Christian marriages? Of course, there are those who genuinely believe these are topics which need to be debated above others because of a perceived moral decay that they feel must be abated.

Whatever their motivation is behind the tactics the fact remains that our congress and the media as a whole are engaged in discussing these topics while avoiding other more pressing topics like economic woes.

Let's shift gears to consider what some see as an almost repressive economic hegemony imposed by the US on Mexico. What is at the crux of the fear-mongering which is fueling an inhumane and malicious idea about building electric fences along the Arizona boarder with Mexico? Presumably it's to keep the undesirables out. Yet I see it missing the mark on a few fundamental points. The most glaring point is the notion that these economic and political refugees are sneaking through our porous national boarder to parasitically dine on America's bevy of good fortune. The fact that America has been transforming herself into a 2^nd world country with it's chasmic separation of the have's and have not's would seem like a fools errand to those el sud emigre’s. The wealth in the US is not being distributed equally as bared out in the appalling employment and job indices. This is not meant to ignore nor forget the rapid decay of relative buying power compared to the inflationary index. We all experience the price of goods and services as it goes through roof contrasted to the money most Americans are taking in each month.

Let's pause and remember that our militant nostalgia for an agrarian economy is in reality run by gigantic agribusinesses. Nonetheless, this nostalgia is firmly rooted in the realm of “invented tradition”, which was espoused by the Marxist historian Eric J.Hobsbawm, and won't be dissipating anytime soon. These mammoth corporations, like all corporations, are intrinsically psychopathic in their behavioral patterns. They have a singular myopic drive to maximize profits which logically entails minimizing costs. One of the biggest costs to agribusiness is labor. As the statistical trend continues less Americans are willing to engage in these horrendous working conditions for meager pay, marginal job security and negligible health benefits. These emigre's from Mexico primarily have filled those employment gabs which Americans are reluctant to do.

Perhaps if we didn't have the political talking point of a tidal wave of economic refugees flooding the American labor force, then Americans might be lulled back into those jobs which would ipso facto be vacated by the Mexicans.

Of course, I think that might be a jolly mental exercise which may even bear fruit; albeit bitter fruit. The logical overarching question to ask then becomes; why would the Mexicans want to stay in Mexico?” More to the point; “how can we keep them there because they want to be there?” I don't mean to be derisive or flippant nor denigrating. Simply how can America foster a love affair between Mexico and Mexicans? Before the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) the US mounted several overt military filibusters throughout Latin America in order to pave the way for more favorable American investment. NAFTA has covertly and overtly assisted large and influential American businesses to kept a bulwark of research and development in America while shifting the manufacturing jobs to Mexico. The reasoning is a 1-2-3 police line up of all the usual suspects: favorable tax breaks for investment, tax reduction being paid in America and cheap cheap cheap labor.

If Mexico could garner some long term economic boon coupled with modern manufacturing for herself, publicly and privately owned and run, wouldn't that be at least a motivating factor to stay put and reap some of the economic bounty? America has to rethink and retool it's economic/political/social ideologies and policies. The quick fix to a symptom doesn't heal the disease. Maybe someone will have the moral fortitude to touch on some of these realistic North American problematics at the upcoming political party conventions. Let's hope so.