Mike Fasano Appointed As Pasco County Tax Collector

Gov. Rick Scott has finally made an appointment that I can support. Scott has appointed Mike Fasano as Pasco County tax collector. Fasano has done his Farm Share Holiday Food Giveaway to provide meals for needy families during the Christmas holidays. Fasano is a Florida Republican to be featured on Democracy Now. Fasano is not your standard Republican.

Pasco County Swings Republican

Mitch Perry writes that Republicans outvoted Democratsin Pasco County, Florida by 8 points.

No, that's not just early voting/vote by absentee calculations - Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley is actually posting in something like real time - as real as it gets, I suppose - the total number of votes cast today, Election Day, in Pasco.

As of 4 p.m., 81,950 ballots had been cast in total by Republican voters - that includes early voting, absentee, and votes at the polls. Democrats were at 41,650. Broken down percentage wise, that's 43 percent for Republicans, 35 percent for Democrats.

No Democrat has won Pasco County since Al Gore won by under a thousand votes. I'm actually surprised to learn that Gore won the county in 2000. Pasco County is very rural and conservative. Romney needs to do well in counties like Pasco, in order to win Florida. Short answer: Obamanever hadachance in Pasco County

Tampa Job Market Sucks

The Tampa area lost 23,100 jobs from June 2007 to June 2008. Hillsborough County's employment rate was 5.7 percent for June 2008. That Pinellas County's June unemployment rate hit 5.5 percent in June. Pasco County skyrocketed to 6.8 percent.

WMNF interviewed job seekers at a recent Tampa job fair. Many people are not optimistic about their prospects. USF student Adam Elminshawy needs a job to get out of debt. "I need a job bad. The economy is screwed up. … This is ridiculous," Thomas Phillips. "I’m out here looking for a job and I’m just not finding a way. This is why the crime rate is so high in Tampa Bay."

The Tampa Bay Business Journal reports Tampa has lost more jobs than any other city since the beginning of 2008. The numbers come from the Agency for Workforce Innovation. The numbers are issued by the Florida government. The AWI adjusted numbers have state job growth in June of 2008 at -1.0 percent. The report says that Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida legislature will spend $10 billion on "projects that create jobs for Floridians." We'll see.