With early voting for Florida primary elections having begun on August 9, the 2010 election season is well underway. The official date for the primaries is August 24, and the mid-term general elections, November 2.

As expected, the elections are shaping to be a fierce battle between Democrats and Republicans, with the latter, in several races, trying to grasp control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate from the ruling Democrats. Republicans are casting blame directly at President Barack Obama and his administration for everything they disagree with, and that’s a lot.

There is nothing strange or unique about the political warfare taking place, as it has become traditional in American politics for the opposing party to make inroads with the ruling party during the mid-term of a new administration.

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Each year for the past 48 years when the anniversary of Jamaica’s independence from Britain is commemorated, Jamaicans in the Diaspora, especially those fortunate to have witnessed the historic events of August 6, 1962, become nostalgic about the land of their birth.

Interestingly, and ironically, particularly during the independence commemorations, Jamaicans who migrated overseas experience some sadness that they are living elsewhere. This sadness, or nostalgia, is usually reflected on their faces as they sing the words “Eternal, father bless our land,” from the Jamaican national anthem in a church service or other function held to celebrate Jamaica’s independence.

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Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz

The troubles were evident back in the fall of 2006, when our state started losing jobs. For every month in 2007, 2008 and 2009, we saw Florida’s unemployment rate increase, only to become one of the highest in the nation.

But we are starting to see an economic turnaround. Florida has had three straight months (April, May, and June) of decreases in the unemployment rate. And nationally, our country has had six straight months of private sector job growth, at the rate of roughly 100,000 private sector jobs created each month this year. Manufacturing jobs have also grown for eleven straight months.

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Last week’s raging national controversy over the firing of Shirley Sherrod, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Director of Rural Development in Georgia, over alleged racism, has extended focus on the issue of racism on the heels of the NAACP/ Tea Party controversy.

In what was proved to be a rush to judgment, Mrs. Sherrod was fired because she was wrongly accused of making a racist speech at a NAACP meeting in March, when she made reference to work she did on behalf of a White farmer some 24 years ago. Within hours after being fired by the Secretary of Agriculture, it was discovered that the version of the speech leading to Mrs. Sherrod dismissal was craftily edited to make her seem to be making racist comments, which was not the case. This resulted in members of the Obama administration, including the president, apologizing to Mrs. Sherrod who has been offered a new job in the DOA.

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