Category: Florida

Not exactly another day at the politically partisan office. Who would have thought history–not ideological sausage–was going to be made?

But that’s what happened. For the first time the Florida Legislature voted to approve a marijuana product.

Indeed, what were they smoking in Tallahassee?

As it turns out, the Florida House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice was inhaling empathy. No, the grouse house hasn’t morphed into the grow house, but civility and compassion reigned as representatives heard testimony from those making the case that marijuana actually helped those in pain. As in brain cancer. For those subject to seizures. As in Dravet’s Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.

So, why not seriously look at a low THC strain with a track record of results?

* “People here in Tallahassee have realized that we can’t just have a bumper-sticker approach to marijuana where you’re either for it or against it,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Shalimar, the committee chairman who sponsored the bill.

Imagine, a non-bumper-sticker approach to a high-profile, societal issue.

* “Frankly, we need to be a state where guys like me, who are cancer victims, aren’t criminals in seeking treatment I’m entitled to,” added Rep. Dave Hood, R-Daytona Beach.

Imagine, brain cancer metastasizing the length of the political spectrum.

* “We’ve got a plant here on God’s green earth that’s got a stigma to it–but it’s got a medical value,” underscored Rep. Dane Eagle, R-Cape Coral. “I don’t want to look into their eyes and say I’m sorry we can’t help you. We need to put the politics aside today and help these families in need.”

Imagine, putting politics aside and doing what you can to help people in demonstrable need.

Nobody referenced John Morgan, Charlie Crist, Rick Scott or “Reefer (‘Women Cry For It! Men Die For It!’) Madness” outtakes. No one issued any red-meat, “drug-crazed abandon” quotes for the morality-tales-gone-loony crowd back home.

No, this wasn’t smoke and mirrors. It was a subcommittee that had checked law-and-order bona fides and any gateway-drug misconceptions outside chambers.  It was also a what-if? moment.

What if subcommittees routinely turned into deportment departments?  What if the rhetorical bombast, posturing and bumper-sticker mentality that works so well on the hustings was typically absent when it actually came to law-making? What if demonizing were no longer considered a viable strategy?

Imagine more than opposition lip service and zero-sum negotiating on issues ranging from Medicaid expansion and Stand Your Ground to state pensions, flood insurance, Common Core, casino gambling, solar energy, voter-fraud incidence, privatized prisons and environmentally sensitive growth.

Who knows, there might even be grass-roots support for it.

That was quite the big deal recently with the high-profile, highly-orchestrated acknowledgement by Gov. Rick Scott that he was, indeed, personally earmarking $194 million from his transportation budget toward the cost of the $943 million Tampa Gateway Center. That’s the 2.3 million-square-foot TIA car rental and retail facility that will be linked to the airport by an automated people mover. And that 1.3-mile people mover could eventually be extended to the West Shore Business District.

Several points:

^Although TIA actually had lobbied for $272 million, $194 million is a critical jump start for what is the first phase of TIA’s 20-year, $2.5 billion master plan.

^The Legislature still has to sign off, but Scott seemed assured of passage. This isn’t Medicaid expansion; the governor obviously wants this to happen.

^Scott will never be able to make up for his Tea Party-appeasing, high-speed rail veto that would have cost less and mattered even more. Lest we forget, the rail kill pre-empted actual bids and two independent consultants later concluded that the Orlando-Tampa phase would have been profitable.

^Local officials, including Mayor Bob Buckhorn and TIA CEO Joe Lopano, were on hand for Scott’s Tampa announcement and were understandably and outwardly grateful for major, 21st century transportation help–and all the accompanying, economic implications.

“Yes! This is the best example of strategic alignment I’ve seen in a long time,” gushed Joe-Lo. “We have a governor who believes in tourism, who creates jobs. We have a secretary of transportation who gives us a grant so we can support increased tourism. And we have an airport that has the vision and a project that makes sense, that is going to benefit not only the west coast of Florida, but the entire state of Florida.”

Anyone think we won’t be seeing some form of this quote in a Scott ad later in the gubernatorial race?

We’re now two weeks into the Legislative session and, no, there’s little likelihood that Stand Your Ground will be repealed. Of course not. But it’s not as if the issue of guns will go unaddressed. Hardly.

Among the gun-related bills wending their way through the legislative process: one that would actually extend SYR (to those who fire a warning shot), one that would permit armed education personnel in schools, and one that would better accommodate those applying for concealed weapons permits.

Yes, Marion Hammer is still the patron saint of the Florida Legislature.

Only in Florida–and Pamplona.

Nearly 7,000 participants and spectators turned out in Dade City last Saturday for the inaugural Great Bull Run at Little Everglades Ranch. The specifics: 18 charging, 1,500-pound bulls chasing seven waves of 500 people who had spent $65 each for the experience. No one was gored or trampled. Yes, everyone signed a release.

Founder and director Rob Dickens put the unlikely Pamplona-Pasco nexus into perspective.  “If it was a completely safe event, there would be no lure,” he noted. “You could die.”

Good point. Explains skydiving–if not texting while driving.

It’s a given that even a well-funded Charlie Crist will be outspent in the upcoming gubernatorial race by deep-pocketed incumbent Rick Scott. While Crist will not lack for ad material, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see Scott’s Medicare-fraud past with Columbia/HCA return to the air waves.

And while it was part of a civil suit–not the one that caused Columbia/HCA to pay a $1.7 billion Medicare-fraud fine and Scott to resign in (golden-parachuted) disgrace–there’s another case that would be tempting to revisit. It’s the civil suit that featured Scott taking the Fifth Amendment no less than 75 times in 2000. It’s the video deposition from hell–and it still has character-revealing legs.

That recent thrust-and-parry on Cuba between incumbent Gov. Rick Scott and challenger ex-Gov. Charlie Crist spoke volumes. About political expedience–as well as what’s best for Florida.

It was initiated by Crist, who, while making his book-hawking rounds, told HBO’s Bill Maher that he favored ending the embargo. He said it was time for real leaders to “stand up to” the usual South Florida suspects.

He also underscored that Florida would be an obvious beneficiary if the embargo were lifted. Such an occurrence would, indeed, “boost Florida’s economy and help businesses create more jobs in our state,” he emphasized.

Of  course it would, although Crist was not exactly outspoken on the subject when he was governor.

Anyhow, Scott definitely didn’t respond with the “jobs, jobs, jobs” mantra that he typically pivots to whatever the campaign issue. That’s because in this case, it would align him with Crist and alienate a still formidable, South Florida special-interest demographic. So, he appears to view the counterproductive, Cold War-relic embargo through the same vendetta lens as Cuban hard-liners (Rep.) Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, (Rep.) Mario Diaz-Balart and (Sen.) Marco Rubio. What an unlikely fourth amigo.

“The suggestion that Cuban Americans need to be ‘stood up to’ is insulting,” rebuked Scott. Then he doubled down by warbling from the exile-community hymnal.

“The importance of maintaining the embargo is that it stands for the Cuban people’s right to be free,” he said. Use of the word “free,” of course, is expected to carry the rhetorical day–no matter the context, including an embargo policy that’s been an abject failure for more than half a century.

Just so that we have this straight. “Let’s get to work,” as all encompassing as that theme has been for Scott, doesn’t trump partisan political expedience on a policy that disadvantages this country, this state and this port city. Jobs, jobs, con jobs.

¡Qué hipócrita!       

“Stand Your Ground.”

Here we go again, you must be thinking.

No, here we are still. Call it a Florida state of mind. “Gunshine State” is now as well-worn a cliché as “Flori-duh.” And that won’t change as long as we keep providing ammunition for rhetorical overkill. But at least nobody died from a hanging chad.

After our most recent notorious case of someone shooting and killing an unarmed person–the ultimate silencer of loud music–it would be unconscionable if the Florida Legislature doesn’t either repeal or amend SYG. That said, anyone not expecting the unconscionable out of Tallahassee this session? Anyone not expecting the squeakiest of cogwheels, the National Rifle Association, to all but assure the status quo?

Maybe it will take a texting legislator on the wrong end of a gun-barrel confrontation to change course. Maybe Marion Hammer will have to morph into Mahatma Hammer.

Or maybe enough-is-enough will finally prevail. Better a long shot than a gun shot.

What can’t keep happening, however, is the politically partisan characterization of the issue as a zero-sum confrontation between common sensical, Second Amendment guardians who believe in self-protection vs. cluelessly naive, gun-rights-undermining liberals who have no respect for our Founding Fathers. An ongoing scenario, where compromise is seen by too many as a prostituted principle, is in nobody’s best interest.

What also can’t keep happening are further iterations of the law of unintended consequences. We’re smarter than this, aren’t we?

Just because it sounded sensible in 2005 to further protect Floridians who felt “threatened,” doesn’t mean we remain indifferent to its manifestly obvious, consequent abuses. The Biggert-Waters Act on flood insurance, as we well know, also appeared to make sense back in 2012.

The point is this: We now know, do we ever, that an alarming, Mack truck-sized loophole of ambiguity exists in legally allowing defendants broad discretion–in using deadly force–about their “reasonable” fears of bodily harm. Absent a duty to retreat if it’s an option, this is a deadly brew, as we–and the rest of the country–have been seeing.

And it’s not just the high-profile, tragic cases of Trayvon Martin, Chad Oulson and Jordan Davis that have been impacted. Studies have shown that SYG has been used in defense of drug dealers and other violent offenders, many of whom actually INITIATED, not unlike George Zimmerman, the confrontation. Many of whom went free.

Imagine, a defendant can insert himself into a confrontation-causing situation, where he may very well be the only one armed, and then make the call–often in post-facto fashion–that he is subsequently in fear of bodily harm, not feel legally obligated to retreat and employ whatever force he’s packing. That’s not standing your ground. That’s usurping it.

The Florida phenomenon recently prompted this disconcerting comment from John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Dennis Kenney. “For a free society to work, the police have to have a monopoly on legal violence,” said Kenney. “That requirement is now doubtful in Florida.”

Ouch.

Moreover, even if SYG isn’t “invoked,” it is still a viable factor because jury instructions–thanks to the Florida Supreme Court–have been modified to reflect the SYG reality. It’s the elephant in the jury box.

The bottom line here is more than a Legislature in bed with the NRA and co-opted by an ideological wish list. It’s Florida’s gun culture.

We’ve seen it manifested earlier this year when a gun-rights group sued to force state universities to allow guns in on-campus housing and in on-campus cars. Who, after all,  would want to find himself unarmed in a road-rage incident on the way to school?

It’s reflected in the 1.1 million Floridians with a license to conceal and carry. Anyone really think that has made for a safer society?

It’s why a popcorn assault at the Cobb Grove 16 wasn’t responded to with a hail of Cracker Jacks instead of gunfire. It’s because the annoyed defendant fatefully had his piece with him at the theater. You’re packing a .380 semiautomatic for a movie? You betcha. Never know when somebody will need to be put in their place.

It’s beyond problematic when packing a concealed weapon for self-defense is seen not as a failure of civil society, to be lamented, but as an act of citizenship to be celebrated.

It’s also beyond problematic that the Legislative session, which begins this week, will do what’s right–and not just reference polls and expectations of the usual suspects. Chances are, SYG will still be standing here in the sink hole state. And seemingly still in the headlines as another high-profile defendant recognizes his right not to retreat and “reasonably believes,” however dubiously defined, that it’s necessary to shoot to protect himself from bodily harm. It’s coming.

You can reasonably believe it.

***

Plant High alum James Wilder is hoping the impression he made at the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis helps his upcoming draft status. The 6’2″, 229-pound Florida State running back, who is forgoing his senior year in Tallahassee, is projected as a 4th- or 5th-rounder. All in all, not bad for player who didn’t start in his three years at FSU–and one who most schools had recruited as a linebacker.

John “For the People” Morgan was the well-received guest at last week’s Tiger Bay Club of Tampa luncheon. He was there, to be sure, to talk medical marijuana–not slip-and-fall accidents or nursing-home abuse.

Early in his presentation, however, one of the servers dropped an empty platter that made a loud, disruptive noise. Bada bing: One workman’s-comp joke seamlessly inserted. Morgan was on his game. It was that kind of presentation, periodically leavened with humor. Here a Cheech and Chong reference, there a “brownies are kicking in” aside.

You can only imagine what this affably informal, Kentucky native would be like in front of a jury. Engaging. No slick shtick. Down-home but dead-on.

This is the Morgan, downsized and upgraded, who can’t truly be depicted on a billboard, a favorite forum for personal injury attorneys around here. This is the Morgan, obviously at ease with wandering from a script, who can’t be delineated from those ubiquitous, on-message “representing the people, not the powerful” TV ads. This is the chubby 57-year-old who wasn’t sent by Central Casting to play the part of the high-powered barrister who runs Orlando-based Morgan & Morgan, the largest consumer protection and personal injury firm in the Southeast. The one that has 240 lawyers, 1,400 employees and a $45 million annual advertising budget.

He spoke in populist parlance, sometimes a bit salty. More “aw s—” than “aw shucks,” shall we say. He confided that Ultima Morgan, his attorney wife of 31 years, is a Republican and that he, indeed, “sleeps with the enemy.” But they’re both all in on this amendment.

The attendees loved it. Some were surely late returning to work. Morgan talked–and talked–about why he has invested nearly $4 million to get that medical marijuana amendment, which would allow people with chronic, debilitating conditions to use marijuana if a licensed doctor recommends it in writing, on this November’s ballot. And why he is so passionate about it.

Morgan’s Motivation

“It works.”

That’s Morgan’s bottom-line response to why he is so involved in this medical-marijuana crusade that he calls a “mission of mercy.” It’s an end-of-life drug, he pointed out, that has been prompting countless hospice-nurse phone calls encouraging his deep-pocketed campaign. “We know that 350,000-to-400,000 people would benefit day one in Florida,” he underscored.

He also bristles at the “Reefer Madness” crowd’s fear-mongering but doesn’t see it gaining traction against truth. “Nobody dies from a marijuana overdose,” he emphasized. “The pharmaceutical industry knows it works.”

There’s another reason. It’s personal.

Marijuana helped relieve his dying father’s pain from esophageal cancer and emphysema and helped his paralyzed brother Tim’s pain. It’s the right–“compassionate” and “humane”–thing to do, he said. “You would give it to your pet.”

Moreover, his mission is grounded in a core belief. “We have a duty to take care of each other,” he noted without sounding preachy. “We can all do something from where we are. This is where I am.” He sees health care as a fundamental “human right.”

He also doesn’t trust public officials to do the right thing. He did a minor riff on politicians to illustrate his point.

“They’re more interested in the next election than in their next door neighbor,” he declared. “Public service? Every time I hear that I think: ‘Bull—-, bull—-.’ It’s about vanity. About being somebody. It’s about them, not about us. I will take this directly to the people.”

Pot Politics

He has, of course, been encouraged by the polls and surveys that uniformly show strong support for the medical marijuana amendment. He’s optimistic, but still wary because 60 percent is a formidable threshold, and off-year turnouts can be an electoral crapshoot.

“It’s become a Republican-Democrat issue,” he assessed, one that Republicans, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, will likely regret being on the wrong side of. “Disease and injury don’t pick political parties,” he stated. “I think it’s a mistake for the Republicans. Deep down, they know it’s right.

“If we had to polygraph every Republican legislator in the state, how many of them do you think smoked marijuana illegally?” he asked rhetorically. “The hypocrisy is beyond puke factor.”

While he’s bullish on the amendment’s chances–after getting all those petition signatures and a Florida Supreme Court seal of approval on amendment wording–Morgan is also realistic. As the campaign against the amendment ratchets up later in the year, potential opposition could come from several sources.

They include the “tunnel vision” sorts who might be over-reacting to a rehab situation in the family–and not necessarily aware, for example, that medical marijuana would be a much safer, less addictive alternative to painkillers such as oxycontin, a common gateway drug to heroin. He also mentioned “big pharma,” which makes money from chemotherapy and has unsuccessfully tried to duplicate marijuana in pill (“Marinol”) form. Also in the hypothetical mix, according to Morgan: for-profit correctional facilities and “maybe the Colombian cartel.”

“But nobody will put up this kind of money,” he added confidently.

Morgan Outtakes

* “I’m not going to spend almost $4 million of my own money to get Charlie Crist elected. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I like Charlie Crist, but I don’t like him that much.”

* “I’m not Machiavellian.”

* “Why are people scared of science? Why are people scared of the truth?”

* “How do you want to die, Daddy?”

* “The war on drugs was lost a long time ago. We treat addicts as criminals. We’re not as forgiving as we think we are.”

* “A lot of people have a lot of money, but no peace. This journey has given me a lot of peace.”

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist recently made the media rounds hawking  The Party’s Over: How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat, the book he co-wrote with (Fox News analyst) Ellis Henican. The only thing approaching news-worthiness was Crist telling HBO’s Bill Maher that leaders should “stand up to” the usual South Florida suspects and end the embargo against Cuba. And that no state, of course, would benefit more than Florida.

“…The reality is that no state’s economy is hurt more by America’s Cuba policies than Florida,” underscored Crist, who didn’t quite see it this way when he was the Republican governor. “Changing these policies to allow Florida’s farmers, manufacturers and construction industry to sell goods and services in Cuba would boost Florida’s economy and help businesses create more jobs in our state.”

Obviously.

Unsurprisingly, Crist’s opponent, incumbent Gov. Rick Scott, can’t allow himself to view the embargo in the same “jobs, jobs, jobs” context he sees virtually every other campaign issue. The erstwhile political outsider now seems to view the counterproductive Cold War relic through the same Cuban-American, vendetta prism as exile-community hardliners. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott: the four amigos.

“The suggestion that Cuban Americans need to be ‘stood up to’ is insulting,” said Scott. Then he sang from the exile-community hymnal. “The importance of maintaining the embargo is that it stands for the Cuban people’s right to be free.”

Just so we have this right. “Let’s get to work” doesn’t trump partisan political expedience on an issue that disadvantages this country, this state and this port city.