Today in a Miami federal courtroom, Florida's Attorney General is waging a battle to assure poor and disabled children in our state are denied basic health care. Yes, our Attorney General is spending millions of tax dollars to guarantee that Florida's most impoverished kids do not get timely check-ups or proper dental care.
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A call out to my Palm Beach friends from "testing is not teaching," and the CTA — good luck today. Your issues over testing and education policy are not unique to your county and many parents of public school kids, like me, all over Florida will be rooting for you.
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Over the weekend I was in Orlando to receive the FEA "Champion of Education" Award. It was especially gratifying because my middle child Hannah went on a "field trip" with me and I know she was proud of her Daddy. I don't believe there is a more important battle in Florida than the fight to create a school system that is high quality.
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I wrote this guest blog for Rep. Dan Gelber's website in September shortly after Governor Palin assured the American people that she would be an advocate for the disability community in the White House. At that time, I looked on the McCain Palin website and found no policy statements relating to disabilities, and I wrote that I hoped that would change. Today, twelve days before the election, Governor Palin delivered a speech in Pennsylvania falsely criticizing Senator Obama's tax policies and laying out a plan for specials needs families - TWELVE DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION.
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Spent the weekend in the bottom bunk.

23 years ago a few exceptional women led by Lee Klein of Miami asked me to help organize a summer camp they wanted to create for the patients of the Children's Cancer Caring Center. I took them up on it and for nearly every summer since, I've found myself in the cabins of Birch State Park in Ft Lauderdale with 70 children and staff, enjoying the extraordinary natural gifts of our state - and the great camaraderie of Camp Fiesta.
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Yesterday a respected and nonpartisan foundation issued a report ranking Florida's child health care delivery 50th in the nation (only Oklahoma was worse, Louisiana and Mississippi were slightly better). The independent Commonwealth Fund (see www.commonwealthfund.org ) analyzed a litany of categories including health care access, costs, infant mortality, and health equity. In nearly every category Florida's children were near the bottom of the 50 states (and the District of Columbia). The statistics were startling: nearly one in five of our children do not have health insurance; more than one in five do not get key vaccines; only two in five have a regular doctor; and nearly eight out of every one thousand Florida infants die.
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By leaving the issue of taxpayer—funded corporate pork off the table, we are failing to give Floridians real choice. For example, why are we choosing between children's health care or Hospice care when there is another choice: closing the loophole that allows multi—state corporations to avoid paying their fair share?
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