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The week: Florida takes its lumps

By Howard Troxler, Times Columnist
In print: Sunday, August 3, 2008

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Everybody was saying at the end of the week that Gov. Charlie Crist is not going to be vice president. This is probably just as well. It spares him a lot of grief at the national level. On the other hand, it does mean he will have to spend the next two years running Florida after all.

Running Florida is no picnic these days, not even for a cheerful governor. This past week, the economists for Wachovia — who put them in charge? — declared Florida to be in a recession. Florida's economy had its worst second quarter in 16 years.

"We're going to bounce back from this, but it's going to take a couple of years," a Wachovia economist said. By coincidence, Charlie has a couple of years left, so maybe things will get better in time for his next election.

Besides not getting a vice president, Florida got beaten up in a couple of other ways during the week. A federal judge did not like the way the state is proceeding in the Everglades — but who does, really? Congress also took a turn at bat and grilled Florida about the governor's deal to buy out U.S. Sugar.

Meanwhile, our agriculture commissioner, the wonderfully named Charles Bronson, went to Washington to seek justice for Florida tomatoes, which have taken the rap for bad Mexican serrano peppers.

The state lost the services of Bob Butterworth as its children and families secretary, but on the bright side, a federal judge upheld Florida's law saying that employees can take their guns to work, if they keep them in their cars.

Pinellas County joined the infestation of Formosan termites, which put regular termites to shame. St. Petersburg struggled with what to do with an art gallery owner who displayed an 8-foot penis on the sidewalk and hung a naked man from the ceiling while serving alcohol. Actually, the city didn't struggle much, except maybe when the police handcuffed the guy.

Clearwater put the demolition of the Spyglass Resort on national television by allowing the illusionist Criss Angel to stage an escape. It would have been more impressive if he had managed to do something about the economy or those termites.

The professional baseball team, in first place in the American League East, made news by not acquiring some guy from Pittsburgh by the trading deadline. This decision was criticized, although astute observers note that the guy bats only .190 against left-handed pitching anyway.

None of this may prove to be of permanent importance. Ten years from now, we might well say that the most important thing that happened last week was the confirmation of water on Mars. I confess I thought they had already discovered it a couple of times.

Another bit of good news was that they came up with a pill that changes carb-burning muscles into fat-burning muscles, like those of a long-distance runner. So far, this works only on mice. Maybe most important of all, some guys from MIT might have invented a really cool fuel cell that harnesses the power of the sun both day and night.

If so, that takes a little of the sting out of the news that Exxon reported a record $12-billion profit for the quarter. If not, just be grateful that you made more money last week than General Motors, that you are not a serrano pepper, that you are not in charge of Manny Ramirez, and that you now have about the same chances of becoming vice president as any other Floridian.