United States of Florida

I ran across a November 2007 post by Praxis, who wrote about the need for the Florida netroots to focus more attention on state politics.

The post went on to mention how several Florida blogs focused more on national politics rather than state politics. "Three of those blogs (FPC, Smashed Frog, and Change in Tallahassee) were nominated as "best state blog" in the recent Florida Netroots awards."

Well, Praxis after the last few days of controversy here on the Frog, I don't think "Best State Blog" will be a worry for next year.

But allow me to explain why this Florida blog concentrates so much on national politics.

We can bang our keyboards all day long in earnest attempt to change the way business is done in Tallahassee, but the truth remains--the Democrats are the minority party with a minority voice.

The Sunshine State has been roughed up and double-teamed by the Bush brothers for years. The true legacy left by J.E.B. was the bludgeoning of Florida into its present financial free-fall----all with the help of his Republican majority legislature.

Because J.E.B. was politically Siamese-twinned to his older brother, the policies of George Bush were suffered more oppressively by our citizens, more so than in any other state.

Absolutely no deviation, no wiggle room.

No individualization.

No Child Left Behind is an example. The sex offender laws are another. Researching the laws passed on these two issues by other states reveal that the Florida legislature passed cookie cutter duplicates of federal policy signed into law by George Bush that trickled down to the Republican majority Florida legislature like manna from heaven.

Hard core, hard on the people, hard time law.

Regular citizens have finally cried No More! and awakened from their hibernation to reinvent Florida, threatening to ouster a Republican majority focused on causing its citizenry pain, worry and grief.

With the upcoming presidential election, I feel this country might have a chance to turn our luck around. So I've blog nationally with vengeance.

I hit Hillary Clinton long and hard in this blog because my feeling is--she's a say anything, do anything type that went with the Flow of George, careful not to do anything too controversial, careful not to rock the boat..well, except that "yes" vote on the war.

I feel Barack Obama believes in the Constitution and innately understands this grand document could lead us back toward the people we are, not the people we have become.

Divided. Bitter. Distrustful. Fearful. Powerless.

With such national leadership in place--with the Constitution back in play as the law of our land--the trickle down policies to Florida will be a much-needed rain to wash away the damage done to our state.

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement by Praxis. "Most public policy that effects your life is enacted and enforced at the state level, even if it's a national issue or law."

But never before has a state been so thoroughly tag-teamed.

But most of all, I blog for Christopher. His life and the life of his family have suffered the brunt of a national issue gone state, easily enforced with Fear upon those who never suspect our government might possibly be pulling the wool over our sheep eyes.

Hear his words.

Dear Governor Crist:

I'd like to tell you a story; a story of a family composed of two sons, 9 and 5, and a mother, with a potentially fatal heart condition. For three long years, on every Saturday, this family visited Bill Pratt, a sex offender, in jail for an hour. It was a long trek to the jail, and almost every time we went, we were harassed by the guards. "Your not allowed to wear chachi pants," or "Stamp with your left hand not your right!" said the guards, as we were shoved in the the small, tight, and loud maximum security room, with armed guards at every few meters. Every week we would drive an hour there and an hour back in the cold New Jersey night, and if we were minutes late, then too bad, the guards didn't care; they didn't care that we were two innocent kids and a single mom with a heart of an 80 year old, working two jobs, and had more then enough stress for five people combined. But they didn't care, and treated us so.

Finally, after those long, strenuous years of legalized harassment and hours of crying in dark corners, his day had come, my dad was being let free. By that time, we had already moved to Florida. He jumped into his car, and drove down to Florida. Now it's expected that we lived happily every after as a good happy family, right? Well it has kind of turned out a bit differently then expected. Over the years after my fathers emancipation, I as an individual, as well as my mother, and especially my brother, because everyone knows kids can be real bastards, have faced ridicule, outcast, and have been denied friends and oppurtunities because my dad's a sex offender. Our entire family, me included, has had multiple serious mental breakdowns, where we have had serious problems such as overeating, heart related chest pains which signal grave things, and failing every subject in school along with being late every day. Along with that, my mother's stress is still through the roof, what with having to still work two jobs and overtime just to keep us out of debt, and the fact that my dad can't keep a job for more then a few months. All he can find work at is construction companies paying little above the minimum wage because he is a sex offender. Keep in mind that this man has a masters degree in Business, and was one of the top managers at Lockeed Martin at the time.

I am now 15, enduring worsening hardship with each passing year. I thought by now, as with all other ex-felon families, that all of this would be behind us and I could enjoy life as a normal teenager. But, my father was arrested while going to work because the police thought that he had not registered a temporary address. He was in fact registered at our home, but the police wouldn't listen. So to keep him out of jail for even more undeserved years in that overcrowded hellhole, my mother had to use the families last $2000 to bail him out of jail and are still paying for the attorney, to keep him out of prison.

And now, when things were starting to look up, what happens? 5 days before Christmas, he is arrested again while going to work, because of a suspiciously deliberate administrative screw up by the state of New Jersey and they are threatening to extradite him back to New Jersey, when they new all along my father was legally registered as a resident of Florida (for the past 3-1/2 years).

This means many things for my family. My mother will almost guaranteed- die- beauce of her heart condition, that non one seems to care about , my brother will fail 6th grade, and we will probably never, and if we do it will be in many, many years, see my father again. He will miss my mothers passing away, my brothers and my first girlfriend, our high school graduation, our college graduation, and maybe even our marriages.

I'm sure the father's of our Constitution (yes, I am an honor student at a school of choice- learning about this not-so great country) could not have envisioned the law's of today. Yet, please, uphold what they set forth and understand my mother, brother and I have lost our civil rights to privacy, etcetera, because of the out of control sex offender laws.

Governor, please do not allow my brother, mother and I to continue as collateral victims to a crime of my father's that was long ago and which he already paid for. We want and need him back in our life. Please, we have suffered so much already and you are the only one who can help us!! Please let my father out of jail- he didn't do anything, but go to work. We can't bear being without him again. He is all we have- we have no other family (no grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) and have passed too many holidays alone.

Thank you for your time and I hope, clemency, for my father. We need him back!!

Christopher William P. (for privacy sake- if there is such a thing in my life?)