Put aside the economic ramifications. Put aside the dating ramifications for the single folks. Put aside the calm. Put aside the peaceful ambiance.

Put aside all those other factors.

There is one overwhelming reason to bring more tourists back to town.

More people equates to more targets for the local mosquitos.

I don’t think it’s just me, but it seems like there are more mosquitos attacking the local populace this year than in any recent year in my failing memory.

And during one particularly weird period of conversation recently, we came to the conclusion that there really aren’t more mosquitos. There are simply fewer targets for the mosquitos we have.

Take for instance the mosquito that lands on the back of your hand at every inopportune moment.

If you’re able to get your other hand free to swat the pesky creature, you leave it in a small puddle of blood on your knuckles. Suddenly you feel yourself surrounded by an entire army of the flying critters.

Our theory was this: When you swat one mosquito, the nearest eyewitness mosquito immediately spreads the word to the rest of the clan and they come buzzing in for the funeral as you brush the offending creature from your skin onto the floor, ground or whatever surface happens to be closest.

Of course, as with any self-respecting mosquito, they come to the funeral hungry, so they stop on the way and munch on whatever accommodating human being they can find.

Since we have a dearth of tourists right about now, and it’s way too early for the snowbirds to be piling back into town, what we have is a diminished population of humans for the mosquitos to choose from. Ergo, instead of the normal 10 or 20 mosquito clansmen coming in for the ceremony, we now have 80 to 100 clansmen coming in for the delivery of the death rites.

And since there aren’t three tourists for every local, those higher numbers of bugs have fewer choices. As a result, we have to bat away that many more flying bugs.

Of course, that particular semi-lucid period of conversation may have absolutely no bearing on why it seems that I’m getting tagged by more mosquitos this year than in recent memory.

It just might be that we have a lot more standing water after the recent rains, thus giving rise to more mosquito breeding grounds. More breeding grounds gives rise to more eggs hatching, and living as we do in the middle of the Key Deer Refuge where plant life is plentiful, it probably makes for a proportionately higher mosquito population.

And the next to last thought on the subject is that is only seems like there are more mosquitos running around right now than I remember from years previous because I haven’t seen a Mosquito Control truck in my neighborhood in the last year.

I’m told that the trucks won’t be spraying my neighborhood anytime soon and that we’ll try to control the pests using larvicide techniques and by eradicating standing water in local yards.

Good luck with that one.

As the rains have increased, and the instances of standing water in low-lying areas has increased, the number of trips from the spray truck has decreased.

Lack of spray truck trips. Increase in mosquitos. Hmmmmmm. Probably some correlation there.

And of course, the last thought on the subject is that it seems there are more mosquitos this year than in recent memory because my memory isn’t near as good as it was a year ago. Seems the older I get, the less I remember from the previous year. I can remember hiding in the bushes from my family as an eight-year-old child with chicken pox (I’ll tell that story some other time), or getting shot in the butt with a BB gun when I was six, or walking down a dirt road to school in California when I was five, but I can’t remember if there was a flood of mosquitos just last year.

Now what was I was talking about?

Can anyone tell me?

By nearly a two to one margin, voters Tuesday agreed that a school superintendent should be hired by the local school board instead of elected by the populace.

The same question had gone down to defeat four times before.

But spurred by a financial scandal that rocked the school system earlier this year and still echoes through its hallways today, voters decided that the Superintendent needed to be beholden to someone other than the people whose job’s he or she controlled.

That financial scandal resulted in the arrest of Superintendent Randy Acevedo, twice elected by voters to run the school district, for covering up the alleged crimes of his wife, Monique, who worked for the district under Randy, because everyone worked under Randy.

The scandal also snagged several Acevedo supporters who relied on the elected Superintendent’s good graces to keep their jobs, meaning they had legitimate reasons to turn a blind eye to the shenanigans allegedly undertaken by Monique.

And of course, there was the fact that everyone who turned a blind eye eventually answered to Randy.

It was a tailor-made prescription for abuse and disaster. It became just that.

But Tuesday’s vote ends the vicious cycle of must-scratch-each-other’s-back.

The appointed superintendent will no longer be beholden to the employees’ good graces for his return to office, and the employees will no longer have to assuage the ego of the elected superintendent to ensure job security because he isn’t answerable to the school board.

This decision ensures that the school system has as its administrative leader a highly-qualified individual that has proven their expertise over years of producing results. His decision ensures that a bad choice for superintendent can be rectified by the board elected by the people to safeguard their kids.

We didn’t have that ability before.

Now a crappy school system can be blamed solely on the elected board that sets policy and is elected to oversee the correct functioning of the system toward what should have always been its end goal—that of educating our children.

And that elected board can take action to head off problems by changing administrators, or they can answer to the voter.

In all, not a bad day’s work for our electorate.

This decision may also herald a general shift in voter attitude, or at least we’d like to think it might.

Because voters still have some important decisions to make in November, not the least of which is the fate of Amendment Four to the Florida constitution.

Amendment Four will give the voters final say over changes to the local comprehensive land use plans.

For years, elected officials have been taking small steps to get the process of controlling development further and further away from the voice of the people.

Amendment Four, born on the heels of the building boom and bust that nearly destroyed Florida’s economy, is the people’s initiative to take back control of their neighborhoods.

And just as our local question of whether to hire or elect a superintendent was a statement about forcing the hands of politicians to cater to the will of the people, so is the controversy surrounding Amendment Four.

People have the chance to tell politicians that business as usual isn’t going to be business as usual.

We did it locally. Now we need to help others do it statewide in November.

I like the new security guards one of our local banks has hired to protect its grounds after hours.

They are vigilant.

I had to drop off a deposit bag after hours (full of little of nothing) and I spotted them as soon as I turned off the road into the parking lot.

As long as I remained on a normally-travelled path, they had little problem with me being on the premises.

I guess you could say we had an unspoken understanding.

I drove through the drive-through area (as I’m told I’m supposed to do), stopped and dropped the bag in the night deposit.

The guards were unobtrusive, maintaining their vigilance from a distance.

I remained at the night drop maybe a few moments longer than the guards thought prudent. They began to stir in a somewhat menacing fashion.

I shot off the phone, decided that dialing home would be best accomplished later, and pulled out of the drive-through.

To exit the bank, I either have to turn back onto the highway and make two unnecessary turns to get back in the right direction, or I have to swing around behind the building to the auxiliary exit.

This where the cadre of security guards and I began to have a little bit of a problem.

Apparently, they aren’t fond of people who swing around behind the building. That tells me that’s where they hide the good stuff.

Two of them got underway, attempting to shepherd me out the front exit to the highway.

I am a stubborn sort and I didn’t want to go that way.

So I turned into the drive that takes me behind the building.

You would have thought I was attempting to invade a Presidential motorcade. Two of the guards broke off their own patrol routes and fell in running beside my vehicle. Had I turned slightly either to left or right, I would have run the risk of running down one or the other.

And like most security personnel, they were so similar as to be indistinguishable from one another. Locating next of kin for proper notification might have been well nigh impossible so closely resemble one another did they.

They continued to run alongside my vehicle until I made the turn behind the bank and straightened out to hit the back exit. One of them set up shop to my right, the other to my left.

Just off my left rear bumper was another guard with fidgety feet and shifty eyes, watching me closely and gearing up I guess in case he had to make an attempt to corral my vehicle should I stray from their predetermined path again.

I didn’t. I had learned my lesson.

I hit the exit and had to stop to allow traffic to pass before I could turn onto the street that would eventually take me home.

Apparently, the guards didn’t think stopping was in my best interests, so they began creeping closer to the vehicle. I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t just pick up the Jeep and heave it into their preferred path, so I found the first opening that even remotely seemed large enough to allow me into traffic and gunned the accelerator.

As I pulled into the street, I looked in my rearview mirror to make sure I wasn’t being tracked by these ever-vigilant ones.

They were at ease with my departure.

They stood on all fours, munching close-cropped grass and low-hanging tree branches.

As I almost lost sight of them in the side-view mirrors, I would swear that one of the bright green iguanas that had laid claim to the bank’s lawn as their own private domicile flipped his tail in the air at me as if to say, “And you better stay away, sucker.”

My congratulations to the personnel manager who brought these three vigilant guards on board.

They work cheap, and save money on lawn maintenance to boot.

All too often driving becomes something else we’re doing while doing something we believe to be more important.

During the time when school is in session, there is nothing we do while driving that is more important than paying attention to the road.

That’s not to say that there’s anything more important at any time while behind the wheel than paying attention to the road.

But when our youth are out and about going about the business of obtaining an education, it becomes our responsibility to make sure we take extra precautions to keep them safe.

When traveling through residential neighborhoods, we need to put down the phone and watch out for our kid as they make their way to or from the various bus stops.

Talking on a cell phone is distracting. Of that there is no dispute.

Texting on a cell phone is distracting. Of that there is no dispute.

Checking emails while driving is distracting. Of that there is no dispute.

Surfing the internet while driving is distracting. Of that there is no dispute.

Knowing all of this, we still watch daily as people do these things while trying to drive a car.

Our children are much too important a resource to our future to take chances with their lives.

Children like to have some fun. The younger they are, the more easily distracted they are to something fun.

We, as drivers, never know when a young child may come bolting out into traffic chasing a ball, chasing an errant school paper, chasing a friend. We can’t expect small children to stop and check crossing traffic before they bolt out into the street.

We hope they learn that lesson often and well at a young age. But we’re realistic enough to know that young minds don’t have the attention span older minds have.

We have to pay attention to the school bus. And we have to slow down in school zones.

When the bus is stopped on our side of the road taking on or letting off passengers, we must stop and wait until the bus begins moving again.

If the bus is stopped in an oncoming lane and there is no divider, we must stop and wait while the bus takes on or drops off passengers.

The reasons for that are simple. If we continue driving past the bus, the children exiting, or waiting to enter, will be standing in the way.

It is up to us to keep our children safe.

Put away the cell phones. Put away the laptops. Put away the makeup. Put away anything that you might be tempted to use while driving so you can pay attention to our kids.

The sheriff’s department has already announced that extra attention will be paid to school zones next week as we all gear up toward remembering the return of school children.

They will issue citations for speeding in school zones and illegally passing buses.

We also want to remind our children who ride bicycles that they must follow the same rules of the road as cars if they’re riding to and from school or the bus stop, and if they’re using a sidewalk, they must yield to pedestrians crossing the streets.

Children under the age of 16 must wear helmets on bicycles, and riders are subject to a $25 fine for not obeying bicycle rules.

We’re not looking to establish a punitive atmosphere.

We want safety for our kids. It’s something that will take all of us paying attention, being vigilant, slowing down and obeying the traffic laws.

Finally, after all these months of wailing, gnashing of teeth, placing blame and just downright stupidity in most cases, we get an economist who has the easy, simple, eloquent solution to end the recession we are in the final throes of today.

We’ve listened for three years now to various methods to end the current economic downturn.

Most of the ideas are lofty, powered by incredible brain trusts, and have a partisan political theme that nowhere near touches the actual issue driving the recession.

Why, one might ask, do we have a continuing recession when Wall Street, banking, automotive and financial services sectors have shown such strong rebounds in the last year?

Each of the industries mentioned above have one thing in common. They each make more money by liquidating employees. When the biggest employers liquidate employees, more people have less money to spend.

I’ve personally listened to the clap-trap of trickle-down economics for more than three decades. And that’s all it has ever been—clap-trap.

This country, and its sort-of-but-not-quite capitalist economy, has never enjoyed economic prosperity when people don’t work. Corporations make their money when other people spend money. Banks make their money when other people spend money. Wall Street makes its money, well, who the hell knows how Wall Street makes its money.

There is one common theme here. Everybody relies on other people spending money to make money.

Take that one step further. When people spend money, everybody makes money. I’ve never understood why economists find that so hard to figure out.

If 5,000 people have $100 in discretionary income, and they spend it all, several thousand someone(s) make $500,000 altogether. If 100 people have $5,000 in discretionary spending and they spend it all, a lot fewer people make $500,000 altogether, so the rollover dollars from the second tier is more limited in the second scenario than in the first.

It’s actually that simple.

McDonald’s make its billions getting 1,000 people a day to spend money in their various stores. They in turn gave 35 people money to spend per store. A high-end restaurant made the same billions but only passed it along to 15 people.

It’s actually that simple.

So anyway, this economist has decided that if we simply stop giving stimulus money to governments that will bid projects into the hands of a few who will employ as few people as possible to maximize profits for themselves, and start hiring five times as many people to do the job, we eliminate the hope that the one person at the top will actually employ those same people on the same job for the same money.

Put 30,000 people in Detroit back to work repairing our country’s collapsing infrastructure, paying them directly from government funds, and 100 businesses open back up to service the 30,000 people who now have money to spend.

And the taxpayer saves money because we get something in return for our tax money, and if we eliminate the middle man, we eliminate another layer of capitalist-induced profit.

It really is that simple.

Keep the money out of the hands of those who would simply add it to their bottom line and put it in the hands of those who will have to spend it to survive, and our economy becomes the thing of beauty we all once thought it was.

It really is that simple.

Of course, we all know that simple has no translation in government-ese.

But at least one guy gets it.

Seats in the State House of Representatives, US House of Representatives, Governor’s mansion, US Senate, local county commission, local school board, mosquito control district and county judge’s chair will be up for grabs in this election cycle.

Some of those races, particularly school board and county judge, could be settled with next Tuesday’s primary if one candidate pulls more than 50 percent of the vote.

That makes it important that everyone eligible get out and cast a ballot.

And every registered voter will be able to cast a ballot in the primary. The races will be limited, particularly for the rising number of voters registered with no party affiliation, but there are decisions to be made.

Every voter in Monroe County will get the chance to cast a ballot for county judge and for school board seats. They will also get the opportunity to vote on an elected or appointed school superintendent.

Just because this is a primary election and the final doesn’t take place until November, there are still many races and issues the voters need to act upon.

We have listened to the various candidates, talked to many of them, questioned many of them, and even have often gotten answers.

We know how we intend to mark the ballot come next Tuesday.

But we never presume to tell others how to mark their ballots.

During election season there are a multitude of sources from which the voter can draw information about candidates for the various elected positions.

If you can’t get to one of the dozens of candidate forums, there are profiles in almost every newspaper of at least some of the races.

There are radio and television interviews.

There are candidate advertising messages.

There are web sites.

There are fax numbers.

There are phone numbers.

There are email addresses.

Anyone who wants to become an informed voter has more opportunity to do so than they can probably take advantage of.

It is only by being an informed voter that a truly representative democracy works for all of us.

And we have always felt as though our readers are smart enough to gather enough information for themselves to be able to make intelligent decisions on who they want to represent them, and what issues they wish to support.

We always try to print as many candidate profiles as we can to help in the process, but staffing and space limitations prevent us from covering every race.

So we point out the multitude of other sources available.

We don’t offer an opinion on candidates. We will, however, offer an opinion on issues, usually in the vein of trying to disseminate information.

We also tend to turn away endorsement letters for political candidates. We will allow anyone to offer up their opinion on what a currently elected leader may or may not have done that they do or don’t agree with.

That’s called public discourse. And we encourage that. It adds to the pile of information.

You have 11 days left in which to get educated about the candidates and issues you will see on the ballot Tuesday, August 24.

You should.

Those issues will be the guiding principals for sometime to come.

Those candidates may well be the ones that will make the decisions you will have to live with for the next two or four years, possibly longer.

And if you are registered to vote you should find a way to do so.

It’s time to start building the old Fantasy Fest float again.

Our trusty trailer for the last three years has finally given up the ghost and we’ve been forced to go to a new and improved version that we hope will not have the flaws that the old one had.

This trailer has weight capacity that even we can’t exceed, and it has enough room that we can build pretty much anything we wish and still be able to put people on wherever we need them.

But it still has its design challenges.

And the most challenging aspect of any float that is meant to be hauled through the parade that is Fantasy Fest is the challenge of making sure people can stay on the thing after a few cocktails.

Every year we invite a band down from St. Petersburg. One of the members has a home here on Big Pine, so we don’t feel like we’re slighting the local guys. And they play only rock-n-roll music, the music from our era, so we feel comfortable with them.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the lead guitar player and vocalist is a friend of ours, so we get a break.

And the name of the band is Out of Control. It is absolutely appropriate for the bunch we have on the float every year.

And they understand that a floating stage can have its drawbacks. They’re OK with that.

We do what we can to make sure everyone has a safe and fun evening. We install hand holds every few feet so the number of cocktails isn’t usually an issue.

This year, however, the theme for the parade, “Habitat for Insanity” sent the brain of yours truly into overdrive.

We wanted to stay away from the loony bin theme, and we wanted to stay away from the conservative homebuilder theme.

And we hit on what we think is going to be a hoot. Our float will be an island castaway theme, where the people have been stuck too long, and mental illness has become the norm.

We never dictate costuming, so we fully expect to have a few schizophrenics with two faces, a manic depressive wielding an axe, some zany psychiatrists with extra appendages, and I believe we’re even going to have a cross dressing coconut clothier.

The engineering on this one has proven to be a little bit more—shall we say—testy than in years past.

One of our eclectic group decided that since every island where people manage to survive for enough time to go nuts must have a fresh water supply, we should have a waterfall.

Have you ever tried to install a working waterfall on a platform that constantly moves?

We never had. But I think we finally have that one figured out. With a sump pump and a plumbed in shower head, we believe we have solved the problem. The waterfall gives us two advantages. One, we won’t be hot because we can just step under the waterfall to cool off. Two, we have a ready-made source of cool water from which we can drink at any time.

Of course, we’ve also never seen a float with a working waterfall, so we think it will be unique enough to draw some attention.

Every isolated island also needs a volcano, a bridge to get around and a handy assortment of sea life.

We have spent the better part of two weeks figuring out ways to make all of those elements work together. We have a very talented group.

And we also have a ready supply of cold beer very close by that helps with the creative process you know.

If we get stuck on a particular problem, we go for a cold one. The answer usually comes to us in short order.

Of course, we usually have to change the original solution somewhere down the road, but by then—we really don’t care.

You will see us I’m sure if you attend the Fantasy Fest parade. Just look for the float that has a running waterfall.

We’re looking forward to it again.

And that theme, unfortunately, is going to mean that more of us pay more in taxes than we did last year.

While the economy has recovered to some degree over the last year, we haven’t yet shaken off even half of the disastrous effects of eight years of even more disastrous national fiscal policy decisions.

Comfortable has devolved into stressful, and stressful has devolved into worried. Worried usually means already left the Keys.

Yet our elected leadership still hangs on to the rollback option. Rollback is the tax rate that will raise as much money for the local government as they had to spend last year. They tend to ignore that very few of their constituents have as much money to spend this year as last year.

Our county government has promised to come in under rollback, but not significantly so.

What we want taxpayers to understand, however, is that rollback is not a flat tax rate from last year, or even a decrease from last year. It will still be an increase.

Property values continued to decline last year, which are the assessments from which this year’s budget will be calculated.

Local real estate professionals say that the average home price has dropped back to about 2002 or 2003 levels, and appears to be headed no lower. What that generally means for the taxpayer is that if they bought prior to 2002, or in 2002, they will still see a three percent assessment increase on homesteaded property. And they will be taxed a higher percentage on that increased assessment, meaning property taxes will be higher.

That will happen not just with one taxing authority but thus far, it will happen with every taxing authority.

Bottom line—taxes are going up for many properties.

We have watched as taxing authorities have taken some cream off the top of their yearly budget spending proposals, but we are also aware that there is still low-lying fruit that can be picked off the spending tree without hampering operations.

Every taxing authority builds funded, vacant employee positions into its yearly budget requests. That keeps the positions open while no money gets spent in case an extra person or two is needed here and there to handle additional workload.

And yet we hear every year how our government staffs are running on bare bones. Then we watch as positions are filled in the course of the year following the announcement that the expense was included in the budget.

Tax rates must start going down. People can no longer afford the “if you don’t spend it you won’t get it again,” mentality of many governmental agencies.

We no longer want to hear that the next round of cuts must be in critical services until we have watched our taxing authorities scrub vacant positions from the budget and we’re sure they are really operating in a bare bones atmosphere.

That would put them on par with the rest of us that have to endure these constant tax rate increases while we watch discretionary spending dwindle, and even non-discretionary spending dwindle.

Now more than ever it is time to scrub the budget of any and all vacant positions that are budgeted, and possibly even to look at consolidating some employee functions across municipal and county lines.

Now is not the time for shy money managers. We have to have bold leadership that mandates spending cuts, and then watches closely to make sure those cuts are in non-critical areas first.

We don’t need more fear mongering and scare tactics that get enough of an outcry going from the taxpayer that we’ll let things slide for the sake of not losing something precious to us.

Give us a bare bones budget. We’ll handle the outfall.

To say that I have fallen a little bit behind in the world of today’s technology would be an understatement.

About a dozen years ago, I was on the cutting edge of technological advances. I was the guy a lot of other folks came to for answers to pesky technical issues. I could write computer programming, fix desktop systems, I could even program my own VCR. I just never figured out my watch.

I once wrote a program for older computers (older now, fairly new then) that would install itself at boot up and then force the keyboard operator to tell the machine it loved it before it would allow them to move on to something productive.

I guess technically you could call that a virus, but that was back when viruses were practical jokes and did no harm to machinery or data.

Then, I decided I could no longer afford to keep up with technology, so remained mired in the after market.

And I liked it there.

Our oldest son educated himself into a computer geek, and our oldest daughter married a computer geek. I had plenty of ready-made sources for technological advice on computers.

Our second-oldest daughter has long been the re-programmer of my watch, and our youngest daughter has for the last few years been the educator for any new cell phones we may have purchased.

And I didn’t mind that at all.

Then, Holly forced me into a newer technology with my latest cell phone.

It’s one of those phones that allows calls, texts, and will send and receive emails. It will also check the weather for me, tell me where I am, and find out where I should go, although to the chagrin of my detractors it will not show me the shortest route to Hades.

Now, it seems as though everyone thinks I am instantly available at any time, by any means.

Wrong.

I still don’t hear as well as I did in my younger days. Living underneath a flight deck for months on end can screw with one’s hearing, and listening to and performing really loud rock-n-roll music can finish the job.

So I don’t always hear the phone ring.

Then they’ll try the text message route. I don’t have any sounds on that one yet, but the phone will vibrate when one comes through, so if the phone is on my hip or in my hand, or lying on a hard surface where it can dance to the vibration, I can get the message fairly rapidly.

Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until I pick the thing up and check messages.

If I don’t respond right away to text messages, after I haven’t picked up the phone, I’ll get an email asking me why I didn’t do either.

I don’t check email while driving, and if I’m sitting in front of a computer, I use the real thing.

But I think the thing I dislike the most about this new phone is that it tells me where I am and how to get from there to anywhere.

Now you may think this a little weird, but I actually enjoy getting lost sometimes, and I’m not one who frowns on asking directions.

Once I got lost in deep Eastern Kentucky when I lived and worked there and I wound up on a small mountaintop with a beautiful post-strip mine lake surrounded by new growths of pine trees.

Not to let a good thing go to waste, Mother Nature (maybe with some help from local folks) had stocked the lake with fish.

I didn’t care where I was, or how to get out of there. I spent a lazy afternoon just feeding the fish my leftover hamburger bun. I balled part of it into a ball and tossed it in the lake. Because the lake wasn’t near any man-made pollution source, the water was rain-pure clear.

I watched the fish play football with that dough ball for nearly 20 minutes until the biggest fish in the lake swam up and swallowed it in one gulp.

I even kept score.

If I had a phone back then that received calls, texts, emails and had told me how to get off that mountain top, I would have missed that experience.

I finally found my own way down. I found a cute little country store, a bootlegger’s cabin and some beautiful scenery on the way out. I made use of all three again.

Now, I have to put up with something like this on a regular basis.

A text comes across the phone. My butt starts buzzing. I pick up the phone to read the text and the phone rings. My hand starts buzzing. I answer the phone and an email comes through. My ear starts buzzing.

The caller wants me to look at my email and answer. The texter wants me to call him on the phone. The email is asking me to use the navigator and find out how to get from somewhere to somewhere else and text the directions back.

Yeah right.

Oh and there’s one other thing.

I need to find the designers of these particular creations of the devil and slap them upside the head with my left hand.

It appears that most phones are made for right-handed people. My right ear is terrible, I can barely hear anything on that side, ergo, I use my phone with my left hand.

Or maybe I use it with my left hand because for many years I drove a stick and needed my right hand free.

Whatever the reason, the phone is very easy to use right handed, very difficult to use left handed. The text keyboard, which is a virtual keyboard (what happened to buttons?), almost requires me to hit the little rectangles with my right hand or it won’t read properly.

I’m ambidextrous. I don’t care which hand I use, but I care which ear I use, and I choose to use the left ear, thus the left hand.

Unless I want to put my forearm across my face and use my right-handed phone in my left ear.

Technology to make my life easier? Yeah right.

Last week, the state Legislature met in special session with but one goal. That goal was to discuss and possibly approve placing a constitutional amendment question on the ballot for Florida voters this November.

The question voters would have been asked was if they would like to enact a constitutional ban on off-shore drilling for oil in Florida state waters.

A couple of years ago, the issue may have been too close to call, with the extreme right-wingnuts constantly chanting “Drill, baby, drill” and touting the non-existent benefits to a Florida tourism-based economy of putting mostly foreign-owned drilling rigs 125 miles off shore where the workers would live in the tax-free island nations.

With the massive oil gusher that was the Deepwater Horizon pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the last three months, and thousands of Sunshine State residents watching the oil’s inexorable march across the water to impact our shores, that mind set had changed.

No amount of half-truths and error-by-omission spin was going to change the minds of Florida voters that keeping oil rigs and their potential spill impacts away from our hundred-billion-plus dollar beachfront was a very good idea whose time has come.

So our Governor did the right thing by the people. He called a special session to take up the question of allowing the people the opportunity to forever solidify our dissatisfaction with oil rigs drilling beneath our economic engine.

Our learned Legislators laughed at the notion.

The Senate made a show of showing up for work. The House didn’t even do that. The latter body simply adjourned without even bringing the matter to the floor for discussion, let alone a vote.

And the former body had to follow suit later that same day because such an endeavor requires approval from both houses of the Legislature.

The House leadership said it hoped to harm Gov. Charlie Crist, who had the audacity to ask comfortably ensconced running-for-reelection representatives to return to the Capitol to take up state business, in his run for US Senator.

What the move did was make a group of supposedly grown men look ridiculous, and proving that most are totally out of touch with the people they are elected to represent.

But we believe the move, as so many in the Republican Party are these days, was hiding a far more obscure reason.

Many of the seated representatives are running for reelection. Many of those have already accepted corporate oil money to finance that reelection campaign, and many more are hoping to receive corporate oil money to help finance that campaign.

Putting the issue out to voters, who at this point in our history would surely have enacted the ban, would have lost our politicians that lucrative source of campaign donations.

And it is a source they could never have gotten back if the voters were allowed to make the ban part of the state Constitution and take the decision out of the hands of elected politicians eager for oil money to finance campaigns.

As long as the decision on off-shore drilling rests with the elected politician, the money will have to continue to flow from corporate oil coffers so the international oil conglomerates have a hope of someday garnering enough support to allow drilling in some of the most sought-after commercial and recreational fishing waters in the world.

For once the Legislature failed to give the voter a chance to make the ban a permanent one, it left the eventual decision on whether to lift the current ban in the hands of the elected politicians—the very same politicians who have tried to lift the ban before, including this year just days before Deepwater Horizon went to the bottom and our shores became target three for the free-flowing oil.

But the politicians, fueled by corporate oil campaign contributions, will be back next year, or the year after, trying to lift the state’s ban again, and as of now, they won’t have to worry about that pesky voter-mandated ban that would have emerged had they actually allowed the voters to have a say on the issue.

Every State Representative who voted for the adjournment without action last week should be voted out of office. That won’t happen due to voter apathy and the megabucks corporate oil will pour into campaigns to maintain the status quo, but it’s a nice thought maybe we can keep around for next year when legislators, unhampered by a voter mandate they don’t want to seek, try again to lift the drilling ban in state waters.