Mitch Perry
Good morning again from the Parkway Inn in Miami Springs, where the sun has yet to rise …
Big late-night news out of Tallahassee, where we apparently have a budget deal. With that $80 billion budget comes the announcement of a number of local projects receiving funding. For officials in Tampa, their fears were partially allayed when it came to getting state money for the USF Medical school going to downtown Tampa.
Lawmakers approved $17 million to move the Morsani College of Medicine to a new downtown Tampa location, but the request for $16 million for an adjoining Heart Health Institute didn’t make the cut.
Meanwhile, the burning question I have with presidential politics is: Will the Donald pull the trigger today?
OK, so everyone knows Donald Trump isn’t a very serious contender for the Republican nomination for president, and I found it difficult to ask him questions with a straight face about his “candidacy” when he appeared in Sarasota last month. Considering he’s flirted with such a possibility at least three other times tends to make one skeptical, of course.
But with 11 officials candidates in the race, why not a 12th? We’ll know more after 11 a.m.
Meanwhile, congratulations to the Chicago Blackhawks for winning their third Stanley Cup in six years. That’s a modern dynasty in my book. Not that I’ve been paying that close attention, but last night’s game didn’t seem that close to me after Chicago finally scored in the second period, not if you want to quantify which was the more aggressive team. Congrats as well to the Lightning for a fantastic post-season.
In pubic policy stories, bad news for marijuana legalization advocates, via The New York Times. The newspaper reports that the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that an employee can be fired for smoking pot, even though it’s now “legal” in the state.
It’s another illustration of how federal and state law is divided over the use of pot, something that has been the case ever since California became the first state in the nation to legalize medical marijuana back in 1996.
Pot advocates lament the fact that its been under Democratic presidential administrations that some of the most zealous prosecutions have taken place. I wonder if, like same-sex marriage, this issue might only be resolved with some type of national law.
Let’s face it: That probably isn’t going to happen anytime in the next decade. States’ rights advocates may or may not want to pick up on the issue, but there is a big, yawning gap between what the people of Colorado voted on, and what their judicial system is claiming to be “the law.”
It should be noted that the worker who was fired failed a drug test. Apparently it wasn’t a situation where he was actually high on the job.
And in other news …
We have been in South Florida for the big Jeb Bush announcement. Here’s our take on how it went down Monday at Miami Dade College in Kendall.
Is it all about money for Jeb? It somewhat seems that way, what with his soon-to-be-expected $100 million fundraising effort for his Right to Rise super PAC. And now that the “official” campaign has begun, his fundraising team wants to raise in the final two weeks of this month what other campaigns have been doing for the past two months. That’s what his finance director said Monday night.
It wouldn’t be a Miami GOP Presidential announcement without Debbie Wasserman Schultz thoroughly repudiating the Republican’s agenda be it Bush, Marco Rubio or any of the Republicans in the race.
