The media is reporting this morning that the
upcoming legislative session could impact Florida CEO Scott’s interest in being
reelected. This is because if he doesn’t
have a “successful” session, his already weak poll numbers will sink further
and his much coveted reelection might just slip away into the tanned, unsweating
palms of a smiling Charlie Crist.
Everyone now knows how dumb it was for Scott
to take all those highly regarded governmental programs and experienced people
- ensconced over the last 50 years to
take Florida forward for a healthy future - and so callously and thoughtlessly kick
them to the curb … some to the gutter. People,
even some republicans, are realizing that the state will suffer for years because
of these really stupid actions and Scott is trying his political best to shift
course without admitting he was wrong, bad wrong, disastrously wrong.
Take for example the number of “For
Immediate Release” releases that DEP was spewing out seemingly every day. Each would bugle some amazing accomplishment
by either the clearly inept secretary of DEP, Herschel Vinyard, or the clearly
inept governor. Most of these “noteworthy”
accomplishments were actually nothing more than the department doing its job which
neither Scott nor Vinyard actually had any part in, or adamant denials that the
stupid things they were doing in the interest of politics were not in the
interest of politics – so called, “setting the record straight,” as these denials
were many times entitled.
In any case, the number of these
propagandistic missives has slowed dramatically and now the DEP spin mongers
are careful how they mention anybody.
Take for example their latest little communiqué which suddenly announced
that, out of an excess of wisdom, it was no longer going to try to sell
environmentally valuable lands in order to raise money to buy environmentally
valuable lands, a gambit Senator Jack Latvala has labeled disastrous and a
charade. No mention was made in the release
of Scott, and Vinyard was quoted only as simply thanking his staff for its
efforts. They held a lot of public meetings
and spent a lot of time and public money … and sold nothing.
Seems Senator Hays must have had an epiphany. Wasn’t he the guy who announced that the
public owned way too much land and shouldn’t, because it should be owned by
corporations and individuals for profit-making, public interests be damned? Has he suddenly realized that environmentally
valuable land held for and by the public of this state is a key factor in securing
the state’s economic future?
This latest release doesn’t mention Scott
but wouldn’t you like to have been a fly on the wall when Vinyard, Scott and
Hays, the brilliant ones who put this idea into law, decided it was a political
liability, a really crappy thing, and needed to be flushed?
Environmentalists are happy but they should
be wary about this sudden-found apparent wisdom. Those responsible for the craziness of the
idea in the first place, haven’t yet left the building. The heat they felt on their political
backsides that made this reversal of misfortune happen should be stoked even
hotter. For example, I doubt if Hays has had any such revelation. He is still full of ill-advised bad ideas and
even more misunderstood good ones. Thinking
he has now left the side of the special interests he has served so religiously would
be foolish. In terms of natural Florida’s
best interests, the man is still very dangerous and will remain so as long as
he is a legislator. A smile and thanks
for those who truly saw the light is appropriate but as for the rest, no rest.
It’s noteworthy that senate president Gaetz
and house speaker Weatherford are being insensitive to the governor’s reelection
plight and have identified several legislative objectives that are making Scott
squirm. Their dilemma is that they find
themselves between a rock - the fact that Scott could be headed for a lost reelection
bid - and a hard place - the fact that if he loses, republican imperatives will
likely get lost in the dust from a resurgence of Tallahassee democrat power. In other words, they’re figuring they might
best strike now while the governor is still a republican to achieve what they
know will be difficult victories, because that circumstance could change in
November.
Pardon, I should probably stay focused
on other issues but one of their more brilliant proposals, for example, would further
erode the right of a woman to manage her own body by “tightening” the laws that
define when abortions will be legal and not.
The republican concept is that women are not capable of deciding if and when
they should end a pregnancy they do not want, and only government can and
should make that decision. Weatherford
must have some expansive background or understanding and knowledge of this
matter because as speaker he’s spinning it up for consideration by the house. Scott’s handlers understandably would rather
the legislature not stir the hearts of the state’s childbearing women against
this indefensible republican tenet.
Another bothersome proposal is this. Remember when Scott and his legislative
lemmings said the state’s oversight of comprehensive growth management should be
removed from Tallahassee and left to the wisdom of its 67 individual and
disparate county commissions, because there is no need to pursue a long-term
state plan that would only serve to provide some level of desirable direction
for its future in the decades ahead? Remember
when they were saying state-level planning was a useless pursuit that only
served to slow the approval of sprawl, and since sprawl is where the jobs are
we needed to have more of it and get rid of state planning?
Well, the special interests were not
satisfied. They have directed the
legislature to go further. Now that
control of large projects has been returned to 67 individual county commissions
and any number of cities with no functional way for them to coordinate the review of projects that affect more than one jurisdiction among themselves, they
are demanding local governments be even more limited in what they control. Locals should be prohibited by law, for
example, from requiring developers to insure roads will be ready for those who
will live in a development by the time they actually move in. Inexplicably, the idea that the availability
of roads should be concurrent with the need for them seems too elusive for
Tallahassee legislative logic to grasp.
In addition, there are legislators ready to
give greater control of water over to private interests until the lines between
control and ownership become blurred to the extent there is no legal difference.
The more scarce water becomes, the more the legislature wants to take
control away from the public and hand it to the private sector to sell. There’s huge money to be made if this happens
and Tallahassee is all about money. Doesn’t
matter that those who will need water the most will pay the most, and those who
own it will also control it and become very powerful, indeed.
Yes, “when the legislature is in session
there isn’t a man women or child safe on the streets of Florida.”
But here is something that makes me smile
anyway. A hugely apparent dilemma for
the republicans who are trying to find something negative to say about Charlie
Crist is that there is nothing negative they can say that hasn’t already been
said and profusely written about. He was
a republican, then an independent, and now a democrat. There have been rumors as to why he was never
married, but now he is and, it seems, happily so. He’s known as supporting an issue yesterday but
not today, and vice versa. (Haven’t we all?) Talk about transparent! And, we have absolutely no doubts about how he’ll perform
as governor, do we? He can answer
questions extemporaneously without robotically having to stick to his handlers talking
points like some automaton, and he always knows, recognizes and says hello to everybody in the room. How can he be disparaged for that?
It is actually refreshing that the man, literally,
doesn’t have anything to hide. What can
the republicans possibly bring forward that we don’t already know and which would
amount to such a shocking revelation about him that he would lose support to
Scott? Everybody knows about Charlie and
the conclusion is, so what, it’s still a whole lot better than what we know
about Scott.
You need to take a long hard look at the
alternative to Charlie. I’m a republican
and I have, and I’m sticking with the man I know and who will be so much less
dangerous than the guy we’ve had for the last 3.5 years. Good luck Charlie.
