Important headlines for February 26th
Bottom Line: These are stories you don't want to miss and my hot takes on them...
Excerpt: Jackson Memorial’s 40-bed children’s and adolescent psychiatric unit has been operating at or near capacity since the shootings, Ares-Romero said. Two-thirds of those beds typically are empty.
The lion’s share of admissions to Jackson involve middle schoolers aged 12 to 13, Ares-Romero said, and the majority of the youngsters are experiencing acute anxiety, depression and fear.
Hot Take: There's an important balance in life to consider. In this case it's under reacting as opposed to over reacting regarding mental health issues in our state and country. Only in time will we know if there's an overreaction occurring but for now the increased awareness and sense of urgency to attempt to seek help for those of concern to those closest to them is probably a silver lining in the wake of the horror in Parkland. Today, in a two-part story, I breakout the biggest takeaways and our sentiment from the governor's proposal for reforms. Nothing is a higher priority to an aggregate of Floridians than mental health evaluations and reforms. It's encouraging, if not potentially a bit of an overreach, to see people doing what they can to attempt to be smart and safe in the wake of the shooting.
Hot Take: This is another encouraging sign about law enforcement doing what they can to be more proactive to identify and address perceived threats. In this instance it's a student holding a rifle up while taking a selfie. Not a good idea for starters and yes potentially alarming in the wake of Parkland. While new laws and reforms might be called for, there's already a lot of opportunity for action with existing, underused laws and abilities.
Small Businesses Are Booming Under Trump Tax Cuts Gary Rabine, USA Today
Hot Take: Goldman Sachs said that US economic data is as "good as it gets". Now imagine this for a moment. We'd never gone more than four years in US history, including during the Great Depression, without a year of 3%+ growth. Under the Obama administration we went eight years (plus three preceding him for a total of 11). With the election of President Trump doomsday economic stories ran rampant. The New York Times top economist Paul Krugman said the markets would never recover from this election. A year ago, at this time economists, and their willing lemmings in the media, were still making fun of President Trump's assertion that the economy would grow at 3% or greater. We were told it couldn't happen. Then it did in the President's first full quarter as President after cutting thousands of Obama era regs and we never looked back. Just months before the tax cuts were passed we were once again told that they'd hurt the average person and the economy. Now you see it in your paycheck and Goldman Sachs acknowledges that the economy couldn't be any better.
The question, at some point, is why and how anyone could continue to go back to the dishonest, partisan media hacks that have continued to lie and mislead people being provably wrong every step of the way. The only way that happens is if one's so driven by partisan angst that they're rooting for the county to suffer just because of their political preferences and those outlets articulate what they wish were true. Which by the way is a pretty awful thing...