Best Of The Blogs: Gone For Good

Progress Florida Education Center’s Best of the Blogs for the week ending 6-7-13
Best of the Blogs is featured weekly as part of Progress Florida Education Center’s popular free Daily Clips service.

Town Where Once a Man Was Killed for Being Gay Now Shields Its Residents from Westboro Baptist Hate
By Trish Ponder 
Pensito Review
Somewhere, Ryan Skipper is smiling. No, Ryan Skipper is laughing, high-fiving, and doing the chicken dance.

NY Times focuses on Apalachicola Bay: in fact, no different from Biscayne Bay or Florida Bay. Once gone, it’s gone…
By Gimleteye
Eye on Miami
The state of Florida is ringed in a sea of pollution. In Miami-Dade elected officials, having shoveled under the carpet adequate pollution infrastructure until a lawsuit by Biscayne Waterkeeper (and, now, a $1.5 billion sewerage fix that is inadequate to the tasks), ignores its own staff acknowledgement of sea level rise associated with global warming.

Koch’s Comments On Need For “Agenda-Free Newspapers” Are Unconvincing
By Martha Jackovics
Beach Peanuts
Recently the word got out that Koch Industries was considering the purchase of Tribune Co. newspapers, which includes The Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, setting off protests and alarm that the move would turn newspapers into propaganda machines fueled by the Koch ideology.

Rick Scott vetoes hugely popular immigrant driver license bill
By Joan McCarter
Daily Kos
Florida Gov. Rick Scott is becoming increasingly politically schizophrenic as he faces re-election in 2014.

Appeals Court Allows Florida To Privatize Prison Health Care, Ignoring Rampant Abuse Of Inmates
By Aviva Shen
Think Progress
Florida will be allowed to outsource its prison health care system to a private contractor, the First District Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday.