Monday, June 28, 2021

I’ve been out of pocket all day, so we’re running late. Apologies to anyone who’s paying for this and is miffed about my tardiness.

Anyhow. More bodies are being found in the rubble of the oceanfront condominium that collapsed Thursday morning in a Miami suburb. As of this writing, 11 bodies have been found out of the 151 reported missing. Officials are not hopeful they’ll find anyone alive, and survivors and families are starting to voice concerns about how long it’s taking. Unfortunately, it’s looking like the way the collapse fell makes searching even more precarious than usual.

While it’s still way too early to tell for sure, a consensus is building that the collapse started or was caused by issues in the lowest reaches of the building. A pool contractor looking to put in a bid for cosmetic restoration shared pictures he’d taken with The Miami Herald that showed cracks in the foundation. He noted they looked pretty nasty, plus water from the pool system had started bubbling up to the parking lot.

It should be noted the condo was over 40 years old and there has been a history of residents complaining about issues relating to the quality of the building. However, nothing serious ever came out of it and most were settled out of court or dealt with. That all being said, a 2018 report noted some structural damage, most likely due to wear and tear, and it seems that it had yet to be addressed.

We’ve all watched “Miami Vice” so we all know about Miami in the ’80s, but a few folks in the know actually wonder if some of the shady dealings that went on in the Magic City during the decade of greed might have something to do with the collapse. Forty years sounds like a long time, but that was when building codes and the enforcement thereof were lax, to say the least. In any event, the search for answers and survivors goes on.

Moving on, the Mississippi Senate met today to start hashing out an answer to the whole medical marijuana question. If you’ll remember, Initiative 65 – which would have allowed the sale and growing of marijuana for medicinal purposes – passed in the November election with an overwhelming three-fourths of the state voting for it. However, the four-decade mayor of a Jackson-area white-flight suburb didn’t think it was fair she wouldn’t be able to profit off it and filed a suit with the state supreme court citing problems with the initiative system that the state legislature kicked down the road for two decades. In a move that surprised no one, the heavily conservative court ruled in her favor, kneecapping both Initiative 65 and the initiative system in general, further reducing the public’s voice in state issues. Speaker of the House Phillip Gunn, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, and Gov. Tate Reeves have said the Senate will have to look into fulfilling the will of the people.

And here we are. The Senate heard from healthcare experts, and representatives from two other states with medical marijuana programs today. The two states, Oklahoma and Utah, represent the opposite ends of the spectrum. The very conservative desert state has about 42 pharmacies allowed to sell the good smoke with around 23,000 citizens allowed cards. Oklahoma – where the wind comes whipping down the plains, mind – has roughly 400,000 card carriers and over 2,000 dispensaries. It’s also significantly cheaper to get a license to grow or sell for Okies.

Head of the Public Health Committee – and my senator, dammit – Hob Bryan said the Oklahoma version looked almost like recreational use. The Okie representative said that was not only fair, but they’d probably be better served with a recreational stroke. That had to get up Bryan’s nose, the tight-fisted old fart. One of the issues Utah has faced is directly due to the high fees – a hundred grand – causing problems with distribution and disruptions such as some being unwilling to sell to certain dispensaries.

Most argued for a “happy medium,” although some state officials are still under the delusion that “more testing needs to be done” before any definite action. Reeves said he’d be open to calling a special session to get things back on track – we were supposed to get things going August 1 – but he wants the Senate to get its ducks in a row before costing taxpayers thirty grand a day. I’ll give him that.

It looks like the general consensus is that we’ll get something in the works maybe even before the next legislative session in 2022. However, Reeves has been less willing to doing anything about straightening out the initiative system mess. He’s down with waiting until the 2022 elections. Hosemann isn’t taking a stand, either, saying it’s “in the governor’s hands.” Given that a Medicaid expansion initiative was in the works when the Court struck, I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t gutted whenever the government did get around to reinstating it. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t reinstated at all.

They’re assholes like that.