6 reasons Floridians should be afraid — very afraid —

'Tis the season to enjoy a scare or two, but upcoming developments in Florida's legislative and political climate could make it feel like Halloween all year long around here. Here are six reasons to be concerned about what's next for our state — or what's already in effect.

1. The Florida Right To Life Act is coming back.

In the 2011 Florida Legislative session, no fewer than 18 pro-life bills were introduced — and five made it through both houses of the Legislature and were signed by Governor Rick Scott.

But you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Let us introduce you to the Florida for Life Act, which one South Florida blogger dubbed the Florida for Life Imprisonment of Doctors for Providing Abortions Act, since that's essentially what it would do.

Though the bill has not yet been officially introduced, its sponsor, Palatka Representative Charles Van Zant, tells CL he will do so before the session begins in January.

His bill would prohibit induced abortions and punish abortion doctors as felons should they violate the measures included in the bill. An exception would be made for the health of the mother (though even in those cases, the doctor would need a second physician to approve the procedure). No exceptions would be made for incest or rape.

The bill would make abortion a felony, but instead of punishing patients, it would punish doctors. We asked Van Zant if this could mean jail time for physicians.

"Absolutely," the Republican House member told CL last week. "That would be a murder. He would be involved in the death of the lives of an infant child and certainly there would be penalties."

Similar legislation is floating about in various states; in Mississippi, voters will have a chance next month to vote on a measure that would outlaw abortions, birth control and in-vitro fertilization.

Pro-life advocates have never forgiven the U.S. Supreme Court for its 1973 Roe V. Wade decision to legalize abortion in America. Some say the addition of one more pro-life justice could reverse that decision, but Representative Van Zant says that might take too long.

"They made the decision to make abortion legal, which was wrong of them to do years ago. And the present judges now have to decide that the life of the unborn is a life of a U.S. citizen, unborn or not, that life is being created by the almighty, and they as judges do not have the ability rightfully to snuff that life out, or allow it to be snuffed out."

Van Zant says there is nothing in the Constitution that gives a mother or a doctor the right to abort a child.

"This is a scam on the American public by abortionists and by the population control movement," he said, "eugenics and others who are out there from, gosh, since the Civil War. I mean we've seen it over and over and over for decades and decades, and we have the abortion movement in our nation that is no more than the population control mechanism of the federal government because they fund them and support them."

2. Will downtown Tampa be an armed camp by next summer?

Look, we get it: Yes, in fact, there have been real, legitimate troublemakers at Republican National Conventions over the past decade. "Anarchists," of course, is the go-to word for such troublemakers; Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and his administration throw it around, perhaps a bit too loosely, whenever the subject of such dissent comes up.

At a Tiger Bay meeting in St. Petersburg last month, Buckhorn said, "There will be people serious about causing mayhem… the anarchists… they're dangerous, they're violent, they are not here to represent any cause, they are here to do damage, and we need to be prepared for that."

The city is waiting to get $55 million from the federal government to help pay for security needs at the RNC. Half of that is supposed to pay for law enforcement personnel, as the city will hire 3,000 extra police officers in Florida to augment the 1,000 members of the TPD. The funding will pay for the housing, feeding and salaries of those officers, though that doesn't come close to $20 million. The other half is for technology, including over 200 cameras to document crowd disturbances, license plates and "high-risk" activities.

Much to the relief of fans of George Orwell's 1984, however, there won't be any unmanned aerial vehicles hovering over residential homes in South Tampa. TPD officials decided earlier this month that drones wouldn't fit into their budget.

3. Florida's new elections law will be in effect.

The legislation reduces early voting days and imposes restrictions on voter registration drives. The ACLU and other groups are suing, and the Brennan Center for Justice found in a study released in early October that the new laws could have a significant impact on next year's presidential election because those changes will mostly affect minority and low-income voters, who traditionally have supported Democrats.

"This is the most significant cutback in voting rights in decades. More voters may be affected than the margin of victory in two out of the past three presidential elections," Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice, said in a statement released with the new study. "In 2012 we should make it easier for every eligible citizen to vote. Instead, we have made it far harder for too many. Partisans should not try to tilt the electoral playing field in this way."

4. Florida nursing homes may be unable to meet payroll.

A cut in Medicare payments to nursing homes, combined with a rollback in state Medicaid reimbursements, will leave some Florida facilities with no way to meet payroll expenses — and it will get worse.

Approximately 80 percent of Florida nursing homes rely on government funding. But these two major budget cuts are already forcing staff reductions in state facilities, which will in turn drastically affect services.

At the beginning of this month, an 11.4 percent cut in Medicare payments to nursing homes across the country took effect. Combine that with an earlier reduction of 6.5 percent in state Medicaid reimbursements, and Tallahassee, we do have a problem. That's a total of nearly $332 million this year in cuts for state nursing homes.

Scott Allen runs the Palm Garden of Tampa, a facility that takes care of 120 residents. He says that the state and federal cuts mean $30,000 less income coming in every month, equaling his entire profit margin.

He says anecdotally he's heard that more cuts are coming, and believes that between six and eight facilities across the state are planning on closing.

5. The return of the homophobic campaign attack ad.

Let's state this up front: Nobody should be immune from political attacks. The question of fairness went out the window a long time ago. But if a recent fundraising letter sent out to "fellow conservatives" is a taste of what's to come, Hillsborough County voters need to be warned about this upcoming offensive.

An objective analysis would say that, by all accounts, Kevin Beckner — the only countywide Democrat on the Commission up for reelection in 2012 — has done a solid job for the citizenry. Naturally, that can and should be debated next year as he faces re-election.

But when we say "debated," we don't mean a campaign that uses anti-gay epithets, veiled or otherwise, to oppose him.

We've already seen one blogger aim and miss, trying to imply that Beckner has gained financially from his office. That attempt didn't succeed, and while we can't say the tactic was homophobic, a fundraising letter by GOP candidate Margaret Iuculano undoubtedly was.

Iuculano, chair of a nonprofit for foster children, sent a missive to prospective donors assailing Beckner, hardly a radical left-winger, with trying to impose a "San Francisco Style Agenda" on the board of County Commissioners.

Iuculano wrote that throughout the country now, "Local government has become the lynchpin of the radical liberal agenda." Her letter goes on to bash the city of San Francisco — it barely mentions Tampa or Hillsborough County.

Since the mid-1980s, the sobriquet "San Francisco Democrat" when uttered by Republicans is code for full-on left-wing crazy. It got new life five years ago, when Nancy Pelosi, who represents the city, became the first female Speaker of the House.

And of course it's inescapable to miss the implied connection between the country's biggest gay-friendly town and Hillsborough County's first openly gay elected official.

When asked about that, Iuculano dismissed the notion, telling CL that the phrase refers to a liberal agenda only — "no mention from me about homosexuality." She also said that that she respects Beckner for his willingness "to take a stand and represent his constituents." However, the only evidence she provided of Beckner's so-called "San Francisco" agenda was his attempt in 2009 to expand the Human Rights Ordinance to cover the LGBT community.

6. The potential return of the firing squad for Florida executions.

Firing squads as a means of execution are basically a thing of the past in the United States, but leave it to DeFuniak Springs GOP Representative Brad Drake to do something about that.

Last week, Drake introduced HB 325, which would change the execution method for Florida's death row prisoners to electrocution or firing squad, rather than lethal injection. He said he got the idea after hearing some constituents in a Waffle House complaining about the three-drug "cocktail."

Electrocution would seemingly have no chance of returning to the Sunshine State as the ultimate sanction, considering the loads of negative national publicity after some notorious malfunctions in the 1990s, including incidents of flames shooting out of the prisoners' heads.

And firing squads? Well, only Oklahoma uses such a method of executing its death row inmates — if the death row inmate requests it.

This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2011.