Carolyn Timmann, director of open government in the executive office of Gov. Rick Scott, confirmed Monday that she will resign her $90,000-a-year post effective the first of the new year.
"I want to run for clerk of the circuit court back home in Martin County," Timmann said. "It's the job I've always wanted and it seems to me all of my training has been leading me to that seat."
Wanting to call the Christmas season Christmas season -- which hasn't been politically correct in Florida for decades -- turned state Sen. Stephen Wise into my new favorite hero.
Despite a majority contingent of speakers testifying on behalf of dispensing physicians, HB 511 -- a bill limiting how much dispensing physicians can charge for their repackaged drugs -- sailed through the House Insurance and Banking Subcommittee on Wednesday.
Fort Lauderdale Democrat Evan Jenne was the lone dissenter.
It was a first-round victory for the insurance industry and its business community support group, in particular the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida.
All of a sudden a classic David and Goliath struggle is emerging in the Legislature, with the Florida insurance industry muscling up against the minority of physicians in the state who don't send workers' compensation patients to pharmacies but dispense repackaged drugs to injured workers at the point of care -- in their own offices.
The insurance industry claims that physicians overprice for this service. It claims that if the price of physicians' drugs were capped, it would save the state some $62 million in workers' comp rates.
Apparently if you're an environmentalist in Florida, Charlie Crist is like a polar bear in a blizzard. You don't see him.
Women of the Grand Old Party -- for that matter, men of the GOP -- what could you be thinking? Newt Gingrich? Really?
While it's fashionable to blame Rick Scott for everything bad but cancer, the governor absolutely, positively had nothing to do with a tuition increase at any Florida university.
If the Florida Legislature wants to pound another nail in the coffin of the middle class during this long recession, it can go ahead with the ill-conceived idea of eliminating tax-free Internet shopping.
How come 47 beat-up states can pare their budgets in bad times, but the bloated federal government can't?
Time for Republicans to take a deep breath and remember what the pot of gold at the end of the Election 2012 rainbow really is: the defeat of Barack Obama.
