What a week. One new amendment and a few new city commissioners later, and we're still reeling from all the political madness. As we inch closer and closer to Super Tuesday, presidential candidates have been dropping like flies, and the remaining few are fighting for their lives.
But we can't wait until we finally make it to Sunday, when we can watch a fight over something that people really care about - the Super Bowl. So before you start all your pre-gaming and nacho-dipping, sit back with this week's edition of…
Darts & Laurels
First up, we give a it-must-have-been-hard-to-cut-your-losses double LAUREL to former presidential hopefuls John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani. Edwards gracefully stepped aside to let history "blaze its path" without revealing an endorsement, while America's mayor dropped out after finishing third in the Florida primary and endorsed McCain.
Either way, they both handled it well for guys who just gave up on their Oval Office dreams, and now we get to see the real front-runners fight for the nomination.
Another fight may be brewing in the state Legislature, causing us to hand over a you-are-crazy-for-messing-with-a-sweet-deal DART to Sen. Jeremy Ring. His discriminatory bill to base Bright Futures scholarships on what a student chooses to study couldn't be more uninformed. The whole purpose of the scholarship is to keep talented students in Florida, not to make them feel like their state doesn't value them.
Sorry, Ring, but how we choose our major will never be based on a price. And we can't help but wonder what he majored in when he went to college, though we have a sneaking suspicion it wasn't rocket science.
As it turns out, some UF students will need more of that Bright Futures money in order to pay for campus scooter and motorcycle parking decals if a proposed price increase is approved.
A taking-advantage-of-students-to-make-some-extra-green DART goes to UF's Transportation and Parking Services. The proposal to increase the scooter decal price 236 percent, from $36 per year to $121 per year, is unreasonable, and will surely have more students switching back to driving their gas-guzzling cars on campus.
The fact that Ron Fuller, assistant director of Transportation and Parking Services, tried to justify the decal increase by referring to the "grand scheme of things" has us questioning just exactly what scheme he's really talking about.
Moving on to larger problems, all our fears were realized this week when Florida voters approved the adoption of property tax Amendment 1. So we give a did-you-actually-read-the-ballot-in-front-of-you-and-think-it-was-a-good-idea DART to Florida's voters, most likely senior citizens, who filled in the bubble next to "yes."
The amendment will now be just another benefit to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. We hope those who voted to pass it are ready to deal with billion-dollar shortfalls in local government budgets and less funding for first responders, parks and recreation, and infrastructure and development.
Finally, we offer a thank-God-there's-a-congressman-who-actually-does-his-job LAUREL to Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd. He vowed to continue to stop a Senate bill last week that would grant retroactive legal protection to any phone or Internet company that helped with the president's secret wiretapping program.
Our faith in Congress has been renewed - at least until next week.
