This will be the last MPR before the Thanksgiving holiday. Regular readers may recall my whining about not getting any days off – the fact that I might start losing some company days off means there won't be a report here tomorrow, and management is giving the staff at this weekly paper Friday off, which didn't happen last year.
At this time I want to say publicly goodbye to two staffers at our our paper who are departing: Sales & Marketing staffer Kristina Woo is departing to return to her native Boston (and gets to watch her beloved Patriots every Sunday again). She was always helpful to me and we'll all miss her here.
And Stephen Hammill, our online producer, is moving to the Left Coast – Pacific northwest edition in Portland. When I was hired 14 months ago, Stephen had to teach me a ton of things as I made the transition to writing daily on the Internet (I guess it's called blogging). I want to publicly thank him for all of his help back then, and we wish him happiness and success in Oregon.
Okay, now on to today's news. We don't have anything to say about the violence overnight between North & South Korea – except that it's kind of scary, and everybody in the world hopes it doesn't escalate.
Back in the states, it's still all about the TSA and body-scanning machines. USA Today reports on how the companies who make those body-scanning machines at airports has seen their lobbying efforts doubled over the past few years – not that Chris Matthews has any clue about that.
Rick Scott made a big issue about creating 700,000 jobs in the next 7 years if elected by proposing some pretty radical measures. But according to state economists in a report yesterday, if Scott does nothing, a million jobs will be flowing into the Sunshine State anyway.
And we've got more news on some new and not so new Tampa City Council candidates, like Yolie Capin, Kelly Benjamin, and we'll shortly have a new post up on the newest entrant, Herold L. Lord.
the report here.
This article appears in Nov 18-24, 2010.