Category: Florida

Periodically, we hear updates on the case of Curtis Reeves, the 71-year-old retired Tampa police officer involved in that notorious shooting death inside a Wesley Chapel movie theater. We know Reeves was denied bail in a hearing and has another one coming up in July. We also hear he’s confident that the second-degree murder charge will not stick.

Maybe it won’t. Never know in this stand your ground environment, let alone a he-said/he’s dead scenario.

But we weren’t there. No one other than the shooter truly knows the state of mind that prevailed. His word will either be first-person honest or consummately self serving. We know the drill by now.

And we also know this. The suspect was armed with something other than Cracker Jacks or Milk Duds. It more than begs the basic question: Why the hell do you go to Grove Cobb 16 with a gun? Because you legally can?

Absent that pistol, of course, we would be talking about lost tempers and an intemperate exchange of hurled invective and tossed refreshments. Confrontational and dumb, but not lethal and tragic.

While we should look to repeal–or at least alter–the easily abused stand your ground principle, we have to reset our conceal-and-carry culture: 1.1 million and counting. A judge and jury will determine legal guilt in the Reeves case, but nobody who brings a gun to a movie is innocent.

Recently Gov. Rick Scott came to town. By now we know his basic MO: blame and bask. Blame President Obama and Charlie Crist because life still isn’t fair and bask in empathy for a given audience. And then prepare non sequitur answers, typically beginning with “Gosh,” for any annoying media interlopers.

Most recently he stopped at Jefferson High to talk to hand-picked, 16-and-17-year-old students about their goals–and to see if steep tuition hikes for college was something they could do without. Indeed, they were not in favor of paying more for college.

He’s on their side. Mission accomplished.

Scott is not alone in such orchestrations. But School Board member April Griffin was right. This smacked of using high school students as props. In a campaign year, it’s unseemly.

Articulate, well groomed, and polite, they were still impressionable teens on a media stage with a major authority figure. It’s their school, but it was an away game for them. They’re not old enough to vote or have a mature, contextual take on budgets and politics, but they’re the perfect, young-adult age to prop before a governor listening to concerned constituents of all ages.

If Scott truly cared what they thought–from standardized tests, their school’s grade and AP courses to their ambitions in life–he would have taken voluminous notes behind closed doors.

What to make of Gov. Rick Scott’s recent contretemps with Florida Hispanics, who comprised 17 percent of the electorate in 2012? Frankly, it’s an extension of second-rate staffing, a maladroit modus operandi and persistent misperceptions about Florida Hispanics. Three and a half years in, Scott still doesn’t get the fact that it’s about more than Little Havana Republicans.

Notice who it was who rallied in his behalf after Mike Fernandez, Coral Cables billionaire and co-finance chairman of the Scott re-election campaign, publicly quit amid allegations of poor Hispanic outreach as well as some insultingly, anti-Hispanic behavior by Scott staffers. The usual South Florida amigos, U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart and former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, led the way.

They haven’t forgotten that shortly after being elected, Scott pandered to the Cuban-exile community by coming out for legislation that would have prohibited Sunshine State governments from doing business with those who were doing business in Cuba. No surprise that Scott’s been supportive of the embargo, especially since Charlie Crist is now against its continued implementation.

What non-Cuban Hispanics–the Latino majority–recall is that before he was governor, Scott showed his true colors by pandering to the right wingnut crowd with his enthusiastic backing of an Arizona-esque, anti-illegal immigration bill. And Hispanics were prominent among minorities obviously targeted by the Scott Administration’s high-profile efforts at voter suppression in 2012. And, yes, they likely see through the puto role of Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera as he led the charge to blame Mike Fernandez–not Scott insiders.

But, no, it won’t help for Scott to plan another photo op with King Juan Carlos.

Call it fair. Call it doing the right thing. And, yes, you can also call it enlightened self-interest.

The Scott Administration should reverse itself when it comes to the restoration of felons’ voting rights. Even if it means Scott is on the same side as Charlie Crist. The side of public safety is the one that counts most.

The rate of recidivism is notably less among felons who have served their time and regained their rights: to vote, sit on juries or even run for governor. Not surprisingly, recent reports show that non-stigmatized, former prisoners who have had their rights restored re-offend at one-third the rate of other inmates who had completed their sentences. This is in everybody’s collective interest. Surely Scott can spin public safety. Surely.

The reality is that most felons don’t stay locked up in jail. And serious impediments to reintegration into the general population have a notable societal downside. That can’t be in anybody’s best interest.

But there is one caveat constant. Whereas the Crist Administration’s streamlining policy was for felons to regain their rights without a hearing, it only applied to those who weren’t convicted of serious offenses, such as murder. The latter required a hearing and investigation. As well it should.

And that shouldn’t change. We can’t be swayed by the seemingly unassailable contention that those who have paid their debt to society should now automatically regain all rights. “Paid their debt” is one of those seductive catch phrases–like “right to choose” and “choose life”–that comes with subplots.

A plea deal, for example, may have resulted in a reduced (debt) sentence. Expedient legal stuff happens. There is also the victim factor, depending on the crime. Even after “closure,” there is no unscarring of the scarred. If a victim has not been made whole, how has that societal debt been squared away? Literally, how can it ever be?

Obviously, there are as many inherent limits and variables as there are felons and felonies. Enough so that nothing involving a serious crime should ever be automatic. Enough so that the passive serving of a required sentence isn’t equated with actually “earning” something. (Thank you, for not channeling Hannibal Lector.)

It’s not, candidly, inappropriate to want further proof of reform and societal-re-entry worth, both as an inmate and as an ex-prisoner. It’s fair, in effect, to ask for a good-faith track record, however defined, for whatever reasonable time frame.

But, no, waiting a minimum of five years, as is currently the case in Florida, in order to apply to have rights restored is unacceptable. In too many cases that will be five years’ worth of a ticking, societal time bomb. If it lasts that long.

The orchestrations, subplots and serious concerns are well underway. Republican establishment types want back in the White House in the worse way. And the best way to expedite this–and ultimately beat Hillary Clinton–is not, as they see it, via a Tea Party-favored candidate or a Libertarian. Presidential elections are won closer to the ideological center. They know that a Ted Cruz or a Rand Paul have appeal and activist followers, to be sure, and can play well in the primaries. But they are beyond skeptical about how that plays out in a general election against Clinton’s brand name and demographic appeal. Cruz is the avatar of Tea Partying zealotry. That’s not the stuff of a viable 2016 presidential nominee. And seeing Paul play (University of California) Berkeley had to be anxiety inducing for traditional GOPsters. Being well received in a lefty citadel is beyond anomaly. Paul’s anti-NSA surveillance pitch and anti-hawkish, foreign-policy take went over well. But the establishment knows that when Paul gets away from that limited script, he becomes much more problematic to mainstream voters. So where do these establishment types–and their money–go for a viable candidate with appeal beyond a conservative party’s right wing? Up until “bridgegate,” New Jersey’s Chris Christie, a wide-profile Republican governor in a blue state, was increasingly looking like their guy. Now he looks like the chief executive bully in a state with ugly, pay-back politics. So, to whom does the Republican establishment turn? More and more, we’re hearing the name of Jeb Bush, the only two-term Republican governor of America’s pre-eminent swing state. He governed as a wonky-smart conservative, is associated with educational accountability, is supportive of immigration reform, is married to an Hispanic and is bilingual. He’s comfortably Republican enough to win the super PAC money game. He has a case. And it’s possibly now or never for “W’s” younger brother, now 60. Jeb Bush certainly is saying all the right things. He’s “thinking about it,” for sure. And he’s saying it while traveling extensively–from stumping for political candidates and doing media interviews to attending events ranging from a Broward Workshop business breakfast to the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) gathering in Washington to a Las Vegas VIP dinner arranged by the deep-pocketed casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson. Reportedly, Adelson’s spending on the 2012 presidential race ran to nine figures. And when Bush speaks, he’s not afraid to go beyond the red meat rhetoric of tax cuts and pro-growth policies. He will chastise elements of the Party about “inclusion” and chide those who are seemingly “anti-everything.” The establishment, which yearns for broader Party appeal, fully approves. This, arguably, is the modus operandi of a pre-candidate out to send signals as crunch time nears. And those in a position to matter have been noticing. Several nationwide polls and the University of Virginia’s prestigious Center for Politics have shown Bush as an early frontrunner for 2016. And yet. For starters, Jeb still lugs around that devalued Bush surname. Had he not narrowly lost to Lawton Chiles in the 1994 gubernatorial race, Jeb would have been the chosen brother in 2000–not his less talented, older sibling, George W. Bush. Jeb is the only Republican candidate who can’t truly–and convincingly–distance himself from “W’s” track record: from squandered surplus and ill-timed deregulation to an unfunded prescription-drug benefit and an unnecessary war. And the prospect that three of the last five presidents would be Bushes smacks of more than political aristocracy. It connotes entitlement. And we know how the GOP feels about that term. While Jeb Bush was known as the “education governor” and went to the pedagogical and political mattresses for accountability, there is another spin. It’s more than Common Core standards. He is synonymous with “FCAT” and the A-to-F school grading system. These, along with the Jeb-supported parent “trigger bill,” are no longer political winners. The public, not just increasingly demoralized teachers, realizes that teaching-to-the-standardized-test scenarios are counterproductive. Your basic business model can’t be imposed on schools. Moreover, Jeb has other issues militating against the ultimate, political ambition. Self-serving cherry-pickers will weigh in. * It will be noted that he led the charge to repeal the high-speed rail amendment that would have connected Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Then was “surprised” and “taken aback” by Gov. Rick Scott’s refusal of federal high-speed rail funds without allowing bids. * Jeb’s compromised position on off-shore drilling will come up. Many still prefer that he be flat-out against it. Others think he didn’t go far enough. Not a net winner. * Jeb signed “Terri’s Law”–later declared unconstitutional–that would have given government the right to the ultimate intervention in the case of the comatose Terri Schiavo. * And Jeb presided over 21 executions, not considered a moderate number, and zero commutations. On balance, not helpful. Sure, all of the serious contenders are flawed. That’s the human condition. But a party all atwitter over accommodating its grandstanding ideologues and establishment pragmatists is fundamentally flawed. But it does have those super PACs. The upshot: A Bush-Paul ticket, anyone?

As we’ve been seeing, the Rick Scott-Charlie Crist attack ads are already underway. Normally–more than seven months out–the ads would be more inwardly directed: as in defining the candidate, rather than going negative at the opposition so soon. But this, of course, is the new, however repellent, normal. And this is Florida.

Crist has a 30-second ad that skewers Scott on health care and ends with a shot of Scott in a deposition when he ran Columbia/HCA. Advice to Crist campaign: Make even better use of that (civil suit) deposition footage with actual outtakes of Scott’s Fifth Amendment-riddled performance. It’s character revealing in his own repetitious words.

How ironic. The University of Florida basketball team goes 36-2 on its way to a number one national ranking, top NCAA Tournament seed, 30-game winning streak and a spot in the Final Four. Those early-season losses came to two of the teams (Connecticut and Wisconsin) also in the Final Four. The other team (Kentucky) lost to UF three times.

They’re called Bright Futures scholarships. They help bright Florida high school students with obvious educational upsides with in-state tuition. They are based on merit.

There was a time when none of that would have elicited anything other than unqualified praise since the Florida Legislature passed the Bright Futures Scholarship Act in 1997. After all, we were rewarding achievement.

Moreover, we were also addressing an ongoing “brain drain” from the Sunshine State to places that connoted something other than sprawl and a great place to vacation. Bright Futures was an alternative to hand-wringing over the challenge of keeping more of our “best and brightest” right here in Florida. And we were paying for it with Lottery money, not tax hikes.

What’s not to like? Several things, as it turns out, more than a decade and a half later.

For one, Bright Futures’ costs exploded from the original price tag of $70 million in 1997. By 2008, those costs were more than $400 million. Then lottery funds peaked and the state even resorted to federal stimulus money one year.

Bright Futures needed budgetary reins, so Florida slashed the value of the scholarships and then hiked the standards that consequently reduced the number of Bright Futures recipients. USF analysts have projected the number of college freshmen getting Bright Futures scholarships at state universities at approximately 15,000–or about half of what it had been.

Then the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights got involved.

It had been looking into Bright Futures, which has now paid out more than $4 billion in scholarship funding, because of concerns about its fairness. In short, it’s skewed to the better-testing affluent and white–even more so in the past few years when minimum SAT and ACT score-standards were raised. De facto discrimination against blacks and Latinos, it’s been asserted, has been the result.

Critics have called for a financial need factor to be weighed as well as a “sliding scale” that combines Grade Point Average and test scores to be implemented. Currently the minimums are 3.0 GPA and 1170 SAT. (Three years ago the SAT minimum was 970).

Maybe what we need is the legislature/higher education version of a come-to-Jesus conversation. Is this about government-subsidized “scholarships” or government-subsidized aid?  Is this about merit or about social-change agents?

If it’s the former, then serious, even daunting, standards have to be maintained as the top priority. GPAs, as we know, can be a function, in part, of school, curriculum and teacher variables. But they are hardly unimportant. If a “sliding scale” is to be employed, then the minimum GPA should be ratcheted up from 3.0. If we’re talking about recruiting our own “best and brightest,” wiggle room will be at a premium–even though results are not equal across the racial and ethnic spectrum. Maybe a well-reasoned, well-organized and well-evaluated SAT essay could be a tie-breaker.

If it’s the latter, then means-testing, not unlike with federal Pell Grants–which currently help more than 5 million students nationally–has to be more of a Bright Futures’ priority than those “best and brightest” standards.

But this much is obvious. Given budget realities and state priorities, Bright Futures can’t be all things to all good, hard-working students. Life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t make Bright Futures unfair.

Too bad State Rep. Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) had to cancel his Stand Your Ground-forum appearance at last week’s Tiger Bay Club of Tampa luncheon. As the prime sponsor of the controversial SYG statute in 2005, his role would have been to clarify legislative intent and take the lion’s share of incoming fire. So, no stop-the-presses stuff.

But Mark O’Mara, the increasingly high-profile, media-friendly attorney who represented George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case, was there.

Some O’Mara outtakes:

* Inherent subjectivity and fluidity of “reasonableness” concept: “What happens in the last 10-15 seconds can matter most,” regardless of what has preceded it.

* “Emboldening.” Likely effect that possession of a weapon would have on those inserting themselves into a situation that could, in turn, escalate into a “reasonable” fear scenario that could, in further turn, culminate in a lethal-force tragedy.

* “Stand Your Ground” connotations: “It sounds good to those who want it to sound good. It’s visceral.” Yes, he could live with the phrase being eliminated, but, no, it wouldn’t change the law.

* Guns and society: “I don’t think the Founding Fathers had assault weapons in mind. … If we could reboot society, it would be better not to have so many (guns).”

* Racism and the Trayvon Martin killing: “No, you can’t say the (SYG) statute is racist. It’s the system. It’s biased. You can’t deny that.”

* Role of defense attorneys: “We’re the people you know over in the corner somewhere–until you need us.”

* Hypothetically, would he have defended Trayvon Martin had the teen responded to being followed with a confrontation that turned, say, a brick into a lethal weapon? “Yes. It’s what I do.”

No, nothing was settled except for further underscoring that we remain saddled with an awful statute that is Exhibit A for the law of unintended consequences: Where “Gunshine State” meets “Flori-duh.” Where an armed defendant can unreasonably–and ironically–initiate a context that escalates–without an obligation to back down–into the use of deadly force based on, what else, reasonable fear.

I’m wary of anything that RNC chairman Reince Priebus says. His overly broad, gloating assessment of David Jolly’s win over Alex Sink in the District 13 special election is no exception.

“His victory shows that voters are looking for representatives who will fight to end the disaster of Obamacare, to get Washington to spend our money responsibly, and to put power in the hands of families and individuals,” said Priebus.

Actually a swing-district win by 1.8 percent and 3,500 votes shows something other than a mandate. Sure, there was the health care dynamic, the ongoing ripple effects from Citizens United, some carpet-bagging baggage, possible robo-call harassment, an unappealing candidate persona and enough base GOPsters to vote their party’s ideological talking points. But what it came down to, as a number of pundits pointed out, was a lack of Democratic turnout in an off-year, special election. The rationale: A moderate Democrat, reaching out to independents, didn’t motivate the base.

That makes, alas, sense, but there’s also this. What a dumb, lazy-ass base. It needs more progressive pampering because preventing a GOP yes man from keeping the seat in Republican hands isn’t incentive enough? A Republican who favors the repeal of Roe v. Wade as well as the ACA? A Republican who favors an economically-restrictive balanced budget amendment and a more hawkish foreign policy?

Preventing a Republican win in a district the whole country was watching wasn’t motivation enough? That wasn’t an ironic outcome from idealized progressives. That was the inevitable payback from clueless regressives.