<story><title>Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed</title><url>http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/florida-mental-health-hospitals/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>will_brown</author><text>I am not sure the answer is framing this as a Left&amp;#x2F;Right issue like a lot of the thread is doing.&lt;p&gt;The underlying reason for cuts in Mental Health is the same reason 1,000 State jobs got eliminated this year or $1.2B was cut from FL education the Governor&amp;#x27;s first year...it is a finite budget problem.&lt;p&gt;Take the Zika virus, a current South Florida news story gaining national attention. I haven&amp;#x27;t seen a single news spot&amp;#x2F;article mention how Zika is linked to the budget cuts (State and local) that gutted mosquito controlling programs.  There is no mention how before Zika, in 2009 under former Governor Crist the budget cuts for mosquito control lead to a Dengue outbreak (~4,000 cases).  Yet about $5.5M in mosquito control cuts lead to a $5.5B (10%) loss in FL tourism in 2009, these are not calculated political decision of the Right, but difficult budget decision that had horrendous consequences.&lt;p&gt;To really put it in perspective, Crist later ran for Senate as an Independent and then re-ran for Governor as a Democrat with full support of Obama...party affiliation would not have changed the decisions he made as a Republican Governor.  Further take the $1.2B education cut the first year of the new Governor, since then he has fully restored that amount and then some, why? Not because as a member of the Right he changed his political ideology towards education, but the reality is FL is $200B in debt; however, we are no longer running a $3.5B deficit, in fact not only is the budget balanced this year FL is projected to have a surplus and that has allowed the Governor to restore education funding.</text></comment>
<story><title>Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed</title><url>http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/florida-mental-health-hospitals/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>happyslobro</author><text>Stuff like this has happened in recent history in Canada too. At the federal level, and the BC provincial level. All in the name of fiscal responsibility, as if people existed for the sake of money, and not the other way around.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s too bad that the people who founded the country didn&amp;#x27;t lay down some sort of law against a (then colonial) government sabotaging itself. We even have a vestigial British governor general who could enforce it for us. The word &amp;quot;treason&amp;quot; comes to mind.</text></comment>