The Political Whore

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

Hooray for Florida’s very own  Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen! On Wednesday, along with a bipartisan coalition of 100 House members led by Rep. Barney Frank, she introduced a revised (read: trans inclusive) version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). When passed, ENDA will extend existing Federal protections against employment discrimination to also protect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

A version of ENDA that did not include protections for transgender people passed the house in 2007 but died in the Senate. In a recent interview with the Washington Blade, Frank was cautiously hopeful about the bill’s prospects in 2009: “Things have gotten better. The transgender community is lobbying hard.  I just need to remind people that when we have trouble doing something in New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, it doesn’t get easier when you have South Carolina, Utah and Nebraska.”

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

eQuality Giving, an online community that provides strategic advice for philanthropists interested in legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans, has ranked all 50 states according to the number of Equality Goals each has achieved. On this States of Equality list, Florida ranks an embarrassing 37th with a score of 1.5 out of a possible 6 points barely beating out Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and other shining beacons of progressivism.

What hurt the Sunshine State’s score?

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Saturday and Sunday’s SP Times brought plenty more evidence that Tampa Bay is not creating lots of good-paying jobs. This from the Water Cooler column:

The hottest $100,000-plus job markets range from New York and San Francisco to Seattle and Chicago. Tampa and Detroit continue to be among the tightest markets in the 20 markets surveyed.

Detroit. We suck as bad as Detroit. That’s saying something. (The info came from TheLadders.com, a job search website.) Those $100K jobs are competitive, as you might expect:

And which companies do those surveyed most want to work for in the area? Ceridian, L-3 Communications and Wachovia. For every job paying $100,000 or more here, there are on average eight candidates.

From Saturday’s paper, we find that Tampa Bay is stuck at a middling 49th in the Top 100 cities for new job creation:

 Forbes.com has come out with its list of the best cities for jobs in 2008 – based on measures like median income, unemployment, income growth, job growth and cost of living – and no Florida metro areas made the top 25. Then, Florida cities appeared in clusters with Jacksonville, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale at Nos. 26-28, respectively.

The only difference between today and 10 years ago in this area is that at least back then, the chambers and other public officials talked about creating new jobs and diversifying the local economy beyond tourism and construction.