ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida officials are investigating an unemployment agency that spent public money to give 6,000 superhero capes to the jobless.

Workforce Central Florida spent more than $14,000 on the red capes as part of its “Cape-A-Bility Challenge” public relations campaign. The campaign featured a cartoon character, “Dr. Evil Unemployment,” who needs to be vanquished.

 Florida’s unemployment agency director asked Monday for an investigation of the regional operation’s spending after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about the program. State director Cynthia Lorenzo said the spending appeared to be “insensitive and wasteful.”

Workforce Central Florida Director Gary J. Earl defends the program, saying it is part of a greater effort to connect with the community. The agency says it served 210,000 people during its last fiscal year, placing nearly 59,000 in jobs.

Follow this link to the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110419/ap_on_re_us/us_capes_for_the_unemployed

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-jobless-cape-probe-20110418,0,1218799.story

Face Forward Says:
Well the capes couldn’t have been too much at $2.33 each. However, my guess is that the unemployed in Florida would have been much more happy to have had the money spent on helping them get a job. Helping the unemployed produce a better resume or even polish their interview skills would have produced more results. 

When governments have money to spend, they will spend it. It should not surprise anyone that our social security system is broken, medicare cost are rising, and illegal aliens are able to (very easily) steal benefits that are paid for by borrowed money from China. Thank god we had enough left over so we could dress up the unemployed in red superhero capes. I know they felt good wearing them around town.

TAMPA — The question of what law applies in any Florida courtroom usually comes down to two choices: federal or state.

But Hillsborough Circuit Judge Richard Nielsen is being attacked by conservative bloggers after he ruled in a lawsuit March 3 that, to resolve one crucial issue in the case, he will consult a different source.

“This case,” the judge wrote, “will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic Law.”

Nielsen said he will decide in a lawsuit against a local mosque, the Islamic Education Center of Tampa, whether the parties in the litigation properly followed the teachings of the Koran in obtaining an arbitration decision from an Islamic scholar.

The suit was filed by several men who say they were improperly ousted as trustees in 2002. The dispute may decide who controls $2.2 million the center received from the state after some of its land was used in a road project.

But attorney Paul Thanasides last week appealed Nielson’s decision with the 2nd District Court of Appeal, saying religion has no place in a secular court.

His client: the mosque.

“The mosque believes wholeheartedly in the Koran and its teachings,” Thanasides said Monday. “They certainly follow Islamic law in connection with their spiritual endeavors. But with respect to secular endeavors, they believe Florida law should apply in Florida courts.”

For the rest of this Story
http://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/civil/article1158818.ece

Face Forward Comments:
Here it comes America.  You are going to see this more and more all of the time. 
I have two truths for you. America is not a melting pot any longer and Diversity does not make us stronger.

In the middle of his tirade against House Republicans’ “mean-spirited” budget bill on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Senate Majority Leader lamented that the GOP’s proposed budget cuts would eliminate the annual “cowboy poetry festival” in his home state of Nevada. (See also: Reid’s prostitution lecture bombs.)

Reid clearly has a soft spot for the Baxter Blacks of the poetry world and thinks Republicans don’t.

“The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1 … eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts,” said Reid. “These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.”

Reid was attempting, of course, to criticize the spending proposal crafted by House Republicans that would cut $61 billion from the budget before he began praising the annual festival in his home state. The Senate majority leader also insisted Tuesday that he would do everything he could to schedule an up-or-down vote on H.R. 1 in order to force his GOP colleagues to take a position on the budget bill that Democrats argue includes “draconian” cuts.

For the record, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is in Elko, Nev., next January. The 28th annual festival, a “week-long celebration of life in the rural West, featuring the contemporary and traditional arts of western ranching culture,” is expected to draw thousands of people, according to the festival’s website.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0311/Reid_Save_federal_funding_for_the_cowboy_poets.html

Face Forward Comments:

I have nothing against Cowboy Poetry in fact I enjoy the images of the west and the simple life that their words evoke.  However, I don’t know if I would ever pay to go see a cowboy poetry competition (or any other poetry competition).  But guess what readers?  I have been paying for it all along.

That is the problem with Federal funding for the Arts.  We, the individual tax payer, end up paying for “Art” that we don’t like and in some instances, find offensive.  If an “Artist” wants to put picture of Mohammed, Jesus and The Buddha in a toilet bowl and call it art, that is his/her business.  When he/she wants me to pay for it, I have a problem.

The United States is set to pay off Afghan members who are part of the Taliban organization to switch sides, which adds to $1.3 billion under a new $680 billion defense appropriations bill.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama signed a new $680 billion defense appropriations bill, which includes a $1.3 billion “Taliban reintegration provision” under the Commander’s Emergency Response Program. Generally, CERP funding is usually intended for humanitarian relief and reconstruction projects. However, the US army will begin to pay members of the Taliban to switch sides, according to Reuters.

This strategy is to separate local Taliban from their leaders and a similar tactic was used in Iraq to neutralize the insurgency in that country called Sons of Iraq. Democratic Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently stated, “You got 90,000 Iraqis who switched sides, and are involved in protecting their hometowns against attack and violence.”

Nicholas Schmidle, an expert on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, told CNN that the program has some chance for some success but the old Afghan saying, “You can rent an Afghan, but you can’t buy him,” will eventually win.

Thanks to my conservative buddy,  Brian S. for this story