  Mood: NO MORE NICE CATHOLIC GIRL! Playing: ANATHEMA: INNER SILENCE Well, that was fun but it was also enough of a break. I'll put up a Poll for you to vote on my Personality Issues. Now I'm afraid Jeb does NOT appear to have paid enough attention to the fact we flooded his Inbox and shut down his Auto-Response Program.
Sometimes you just can't people's attention unless you 'beat 'um with The Stupid Stick'! Figuratively, that is. Now he's broadened his Theatre of Depredations to include...Yep, Children! And not just any children- Developmentally Disabled Children. This AMADUAN (Gaelige for Male Fool) makes Scrooge look good even BEFORE his Midnight Visitors! Now, I also took umbrage at a columnist from the Tampa Tribune. He followed the column (you need to read) below the next day with one dealing with his Annual Chili Cook-Off!
Can we say Marginalization! SURE YA CAN! So, I felt a response was needed. This is going to be a Part A & B Column. Right now I need to know if we ignore this or ramp it up. I’m betting you vote for the latter. There are children who are betting on you as well. I’ll wait a wee bit and Post Part B to give everyone a chance to weigh in.
Do we let the Brothers Bush steal from Children? Yea or Nay. There are no Maybes on this one. Slan leat, Elaine AKA Cabin Fever TAMPA TRIBUNE: Jeb Decides To Leave Some Kids Behind STEVE OTTO Published: Jan 25, 2004 What the governor's budget needs is a title, something glib and meaningless. You know, like when the space shuttle blasts off and you hear the voice on the TV saying, ``Endeavour, on a mission to grow mushrooms in space! '' It adds flair. It's even better if the slogan has little to do with actual results. A good model would be the president's education legislation, the one with the feel-good title of No Child Left Behind.
It might be called correctly Most Children Dragged Down, but that's another story. So last week, when Jeb Bush stood up and outlined his proposed state budget for 2004-05, he should have given it a zippy name like $55 Billion and You Still Owe Us or Hey, It's Your Money. The thing about an instrument of this size is that even if you speak budgetese, it's almost incomprehensible. It is the sort of thing that lets you spend a few million dollars more than you did last time and still be stripping something bare.
A few things are obvious. Once again, the most vulnerable in our state are going to get the short end. Is that a surprise? The young, the old, the disabled will be the losers. Pushing Buttons Among those failures, one of the more obvious involves children without health insurance. The particular program is called KidCare. This is a complex state and federal program that uses Medicaid money to cover health expenses for children from poor families.
The program has a waiting list of more than 100,000 children, including nearly 10,000 in the Tampa Bay area. I called my old friend Dennis Penzell to talk about it. He's the medical director of the Suncoast Community Clinic in Ruskin, a hands-on place that provides health care to nearly 30,000 people. Where it is especially strong is in early intervention, in getting care to families that once used emergency rooms for primary care.
I didn't have to push too many buttons to get the good doctor fired up. It is outrageous, he said. Who knows how many diseases we could have diagnosed, how many far more serious problems down the road we could have prevented, if we could get these children into a doctor's office early on? We have to give families the security of knowing they don't have to sacrifice meals for health care. Saving Money Then Penzell made another argument. You have to wonder why politicians don't push this idea when looking for money, he said.
You always save money on the front end of health care. You can see the results we have measured with the Hillsborough County health care program. That's the program using a fraction of a cent in sales tax to give basic care to the county's poor, which saves us from spending even more on subsidized emergency care. Even if you don't care about creating healthier children and families, Penzell said, you can always justify it by the money you will be saving taxpayers.
Let me ask you something. Why is it that there are health insurance programs for the elderly and not for the very young? It was a rhetorical question. Penzell went ahead with his answer: The elderly can vote. Children do not. Of course, this is only Jeb's proposal.
By the time the Legislature gets through with it, we'll probably have poor kids working in sweatshops to make specialty license plates that say: No Child Left Behind - Or Insured. 
