Category: Florida

Can’t forget that Florida’s ban-on-texting law has kicked in this week. But, as we know, violations will be considered secondary offenses–a sobering reminder that Florida still doesn’t consider highway roulette a primary concern.

It’s now officially official. Alex Sink will not be running for governor again. It’s one and done after nearly being won and one more. The former banker and state CFO lost by less than 1 percent last time and there will be no next time.

That’s politics–as well as candidate variables and electorate dynamics. But it’s also something else: misleading.

Regardless of Scott’s obscenely self-funded gubernatorial campaign–and despite it being an anti-incumbent party year–that election was absolutely Sink’s to lose. And she surely did. Her opponent was an awkward, charisma-challenged outsider with unconscionable connections to Medicare fraud. And this is Florida! His rhetorically shifty deposition from hell was the only political ad she needed to run.

But hers was an amateurish campaign–right through taking a campaign aide’s call during a debate. She spoke at UCF and misidentified it. Were not the Democratic alternatives unknown Nan Rich, all-too-well-known Charlie Crist and septuagenarian Sen. Bill Nelson, the Sink speculation would not have had legs as long as it did. Word was she wanted to run–but knew she couldn’t raise the money. That had been less of an issue in her CFO days.

A suicide. A traffic fatality.

These days they can be variations on the same theme. What has technology wrought? How are adults in charge responding?

Let’s start with the suicide, or at least the most recent one–that of 12-year old Rebecca Ann Sedwick of Lakeland. She tragically took her own life after more than a year of constant bullying, most of it of the cyber sort. She was targeted by more than a dozen girls lethally wielding social-media applications. “Go kill yourself” and “Why are you still alive?” were among the rhetorically devastating assaults aimed at the pre-teen.

Since such bullying is no longer a societal shock, law enforcement has been adjusting. Florida now has an antibullying law that includes cyberbullying. Among the charges that could ultimately be brought in the Sedwick case: felony cyberstalking. It’s a prosecutorial option when the victim is younger than 16.

It’s likely that a higher-profile educational campaign about cyberbullying and cyberstalking would help, especially when the consequences–deaths and arrests–are underscored. But that only deals with half of the equation: societal threats amid our protean technologies. The ubiquity and anonymity of social media is a daunting 21st century challenge.

What also needs confronting is more, well, old school in concept. Some things, we know, haven’t changed about raising kids–even in a cyber society. “Kids can be cruel” has been acknowledged since time immemorial. Only cruelty has now transcended immaturity and insensitivity and morphed into the unconscionable. Stalking-and-bullying isn’t merely an updated version of “girls-will-be-girls” or “boys-will-be-boys.” We’re now talking about hateful, disgustingly vile, life-endangering behaviors–seemingly accompanied by Internet impunity.

Something has gone terribly wrong–and untaught–at home. The implications have never been more dire. Retreating to Plato’s cave is not an option for victims.

Put it this way: As child-rearing becomes ever more challenging–with potential consequences ever more life-altering–the onus is on adults in charge to be better parents. Where there’s an Internet, there’s also an Internot. It’s never been more necessary to spend quality time with those they are responsible for–not just helicoptering them about for self-esteem activities.

As for traffic-fatality scenarios, the message not to text and drive obviously has to be reinforced at home, at school and in the state legislature. It hasn’t helped that Florida hasn’t had a law banning the practice until later this year (Oct.1). But that law does the absolute minimum.

A texting-while-driving violation will be a “secondary” offense. And drivers, including teens, can still text at a red light, which will change color in a blink. Or in hands-off, high-tech cars–as if “hands-off” guaranteed “brain’s on.” By the way, the TWD penalty is $30 plus court costs for a first offense and $60 for a second offense, which is still far cheaper than a ticket for a gotcha, rolling right-hand turn caught by a red-light camera.

David Teater, senior director of the National Safety Council, has characterized Florida’s secondary-offense ban of texting while driving as “worthless.” “The state is telling kids that you can text as long as you don’t do anything else wrong,” he points out. “The degree of risk involved in driving while texting is similar to drunk driving, speeding and reckless driving–and it’s a ‘secondary’ offense?” As if only “secondary” lives–of drivers, passengers and oncoming motorists–were in jeopardy.

No wonder the state–via Gov. Rick Scott’s veto–never even bothered to allocate the proposed $1 million to promote the new–“secondary”–law. In so many ways, Florida has been saying that texting while driving is not really a primary concern.

The Florida A&M University marching band performed over the weekend. It marked its first appearance in a football stadium in nearly two years–or since the hazing death of one of its drum majors in 2011. One notable change: There’s only 126 band members now. Before the savage beating death of Robert Champion, there were more than 400–not all of whom were enrolled as FAMU students. Hopefully, enough time has elapsed for the culture of homicidal hazing to have been purged.

Conspicuously absent from the Florida Citrus Bowl was Pam Champion, mother of the late Robert, the hazing victim. “I still feel there has been a rush to put the band on the field and that rush … has to do with finance,” she said. “They are putting profit before safety.”

Ouch.

But notably present was Tracy Martin, the father of Trayvon Martin, killed in Sanford by neighborhood watch vigilante George Zimmerman, who was acquitted earlier this summer. Martin was an honorary captain for FAMU’s season-opener in Orlando. He even led the Rattler football team onto the field.

One question: Did officials really mean to associate “stand your ground” abuse with black-on-black crime?

Perhaps this can cut through the ideological smog of those still denying climate change. Four former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency have gone public to promulgate a message via the New York Times: “The United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally.”  So said William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman. The presidents they served: Republicans all–namely, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Editorial pages around the country, including this market, have published it.

The EPA Four support a market-based approach, such as a carbon tax, but acknowledge that’s now a non-starter in politically gridlocked Washington. However, they do look favorably upon President Obama’s recent climate action plan that calls for tougher restrictions on carbon emissions from new and existing power plants. He would also invest $8 billion next year for clean energy research and development and commit additional billions in grants and loan guarantees to promote, among other things, renewal energy and “green” construction.

But–and this sounds infuriatingly familiar–the implications for Florida are minimal. That’s because this state has no renewable energy standards. It has no master plan for diversifying its energy mix. Natural gas is fine, thank you. Solar energy in the Sunshine State remains a light year away. Florida is not serious about partnering with the private sector.

So, forget about federal “Obamadollars.” What’s another jobs bill to a tax-donor state that’s  already turned its back on serious rail and Medicaid money? But this time it’s about more than employment, infrastructure, the economy of the future and whatever is meant by quality of life. It’s about saving us from ourselves.

Remember when the Sunshine State was dubbed “Flori-duh” for its pivotal, hanging-chad role in electing a president who didn’t get the most popular votes? Those were the days. They practically induce jai-alai-like nostalgia now.

But that was then–and this is not.

What has happened since is that the rest of the country has noticed, for example, that some of Florida’s presidential-election, voting lines looked like UN food queues in sub-Sahara Africa. And Washington insiders have noted that a net tax-donor state has inexplicably turned down federal dollars for needed infrastructure and health-care help. In addition, many outsiders have been taken aback by a lingering, Cold War time warp regarding a certain nearby island. And, most notably, Americans have seen that “right to carry” permits have been issued like driver’s licenses and that “Sunshine” has perversely morphed into “Gunshine.”

Forget the “Live Free or Die” crowd. They’re sounding increasingly idealistic. To too many, Florida is simply the “Itchy-Trigger-Fingers-R-Us” state. As a result, it’s more than Jon Stewart having a Rodney Dangerfield-day at our expense.

And then it got worse.

The Revved Jesse Jackson, America’s avatar of racial opportunism, showed up in Tallahassee–ostensibly to support Capitol protestors who have been demonstrating on behalf of a special legislative session to overhaul the state’s self-defense laws.

It got worse because the legitimate issue of doing something about Florida’s fatally-flawed misunderstand your ground law became muddled. Jackson’s polarizing presence and drive-by sound bites co-opt any spotlight. As a result, the focus shifted from stand your ground to the made-for-media flap over whether Jackson should be apologizing to Florida for his insulting, race-baiting rhetoric.

Jackson, inevitably, became the issue–not stand your ground and Florida’s heat-packing culture. Moreover, since drug dealers and gang bangers are often the beneficiaries of SYG, this is not a civil rights and racial-profiling matter. This is a common sense meets self defense matter.

It might be a good applause line, but it’s wrong to characterize Florida as the “Selma of our time.” Florida is not “Apartheid” the sequel, nor is it a Jim Crow state. If anything, it’s been evolving into a Grover Norquist, Marco Rubio, Ted Nugent, Koch Brothers, NRA, Glenn Beck state. Rick Scott is more like Sarah Palin than George Wallace.

The Jackson diversion has also given Scott a fortuitous opportunity to “defend” Floridians and call out Jackson for being “divisive.” Scott, ironically, has been the embodiment of division in Florida.

“It is unfortunate that he (Jackson) would come to Florida and insult Floridians and divide our state at a time when we are striving for unity and healing,” said Scott with a straight face. What Jackson actually did, of course, was divide our attention. The result: There was less focus on how Scott, who has been defending the indefensible, was handling calls for a SYG special session that he clearly opposes.

As it turned out, there won’t be, to be sure, a special SYG session. But there will be a less-than-special hearing–not to be confused with an exercise in “unity and healing.” The hearing seems reminiscent of Scott’s do-nothing, Jennifer Carroll-chaired task force on SYG last year. For this forum, House Speaker Will (not) Weatherford has assigned hard-line Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, as hearing chairman. Gaetz wasted no time in flaunting his lack of objectivity on the issue.

“I don’t support changing one damn comma of the ‘stand your ground’ law,” he proclaimed. “It would be reactionary and dangerous to make Floridians less safe to pacify uninformed protestors.”

No, Florida is not the “Selma of our time. ” Alas, it’s more like the Dodge City of our time.

Let’s keep everything in context and not get carried away.

Sure, there’s been a welcome spate of good recruiting news recently ranging from the Bollywood Oscars show to additional international flights to a Bristol-Myers Squibb operation. And it looks like we’ll be getting our own Amazon warehouse, and, yes, we’ll soon have a Trader Joe’s and a Bass Pro Shop to call our own.

But that’s a function of a recovering economy, pro-active–often incentive-armed–recruiters and projected growth. Speaking of, it is estimated that Hillsborough County alone will add a half million residents over the next two decades. Whether they pile in as sprawl the sequel or integrate as key components in the economy of the future is the question.

The key variable will be transportation. And, no, we’re not just talking about highway paving and HOV lanes.

The business community agrees. Editorial boards agree–with each other as well as with the business community. And back in 2010 a majority of city voters, along with the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, the Tampa Downtown Partnership, the Tampa Bay Partnership, the Sierra Club and Mayor Pam Iorio, all agreed. And that is: Too much rides on modern mass transit–literally–to keep deferring it.

There is no actual status quo. It’s fall behind the competition–and that includes Orlando and Miami as well as Charlotte and San Antonio–or make the case for being better. The potential of this region and its increasingly assertive hub city will go frustratingly unrealized if the concept of commuting is still synonymous with driving. It’s that important as a quality-of-life and a quality-of-economy issue. There’s a reason that the Brookings Institution ranks Tampa Bay 77th among the top 100 metro areas for accessible mass transit. Not to rub it in, but Brookings lists the likes of Little Rock, Ark. (66), Greensboro-High Point, N.C. (74) and Jackson, Miss. (76) ahead of Tampa Bay. And Detroit, the embodiment of a future-less city, comes in at 73rd.

“I think that the lack of reliable mass transit adversely affects our ability to attract a younger demographic that does not want to drive to work or entertainment,” says Tampa Chamber Chairman Greg Celestan. His day job is running Celestar, which is not a call center or a retail franchise–but a 150-employee defense firm.

So it was at least heartening to see that recent (transportation policy leadership group) gathering that brought together an eclectic mix of CEOs, elected city and county officials and the head of HART. The message of the real-world execs: It will only get harder to recruit blue-chip, tax-base-expanding businesses and their life-style employees with an ongoing reputation for mess transit and ever-encroaching gridlock. And time, of course, is never an ally in such matters.

“You can have short-term reactions to business needs or you can have long-term planning that drives business growth,” underscores Gary Sasso, the president and chief executive of the Carlton Fields law group and a former chairman of the Tampa Bay Partnership.

The fact that mayors and city-centric execs were weighing in with commissioners was also a welcome sign. For too long unincorporated Hillsborough, which is ideologically more attuned to Grover Norquist than John Maynard Keynes, has comported itself as the rural outlier scold to its elitist, citified neighbors. That counterproductive dynamic has to go.

The future of Tampa and Tampa Bay is all about enlightened, regional self-interest. To that end, Pinellas County is planning a tax referendum next year for mass transit that will include light-rail service with a connection to Hillsborough County via the Howard Frankland Bridge.

On the Hillsborough side, election results need to yield more county commissioners such as Mark Sharpe, who can marry mass-transit investment with pragmatic, fiscal conservatism. Bob Buckhorn certainly gets it, and now he’s joined by the transit-awakened Frank Chillura, the mayor of Temple Terrace. Perhaps Hillsborough, with leaders not pandering to the loudest Tea Partiers and acknowledging the change in economic climate, will soon be ready for a transit referendum redo that will be more detailed than the ill-fated, 2010 version.

In the mean time, Mayor Buckhorn–along with key mayoral counterparts from around the state–will assuredly be making return trips to Tallahassee to make the case for city-only referenda. Earlier this year Buckhorn and fellow mayors lobbied without luck, but they at least formally broached the subject that cities should be allowed to control their own destinies and not be hamstrung by the prospect of non-resident vetoes. What a novel concept.

And lest we forget, the Tampa Bay region’s unemployment rate is 7.1 percent. We’re hardly flush, recent recruiting successes notwithstanding. Smart growth has to be our mantra.

The need for meaningful, multimodal mass transit, which was apparent decades ago, will only accelerate going forward. What will be determinative is whether we’ve learned anything along the way about cost-benefit ratios.

If Gov. Rick Scott is somehow in position to endorse a Republican presidential candidate in 2016, it surely won’t be Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor. Ideology, a possible favorite-son scenario and President Obama-related political optics would be issues, to be sure.

But there’s also Scott’s recruiting–or “poaching”–efforts to lure business relocations. It includes Christie’s turf.

Bristol-Myers Squibb just laid off 200 New Jersey workers who will become Hillsborough County hires as B-MS prepares to open a marketing, technology and finance operation here early next year. Previously Hertz had announced that it was moving its headquarters from the Garden State to Lee County.

Amid all the gut-level frustration and furor over fairness in the George Zimmerman acquittal, the overriding–indeed, determinative–issue at play remains Florida’s unconscionable “Stand Your Ground Law” and the Wild West mentality behind it. Without it, arguably, Trayvon Martin would be alive and his name wouldn’t be synonymous with tragic death and racial double standard.

This, however, is not to dismiss the role of profiling, which remains embedded in racially-skewed America. But the uncomfortable, contextual reality for this persistent, perverse phenomenon is one we typically shy away from–except at times such as this. Thus, we’re now hearing it from the polarizing, white-right rants of Pat Buchanan to the sobering acknowledgements of Michael Nutter, the moderate black mayor of Philadelphia. They are reminding us of ever-alarming, black-on-black crime rates and the dysfunctional culture that often incubates and enables them.

It’s also a reminder of why profiling even happens. Just ask 20-something, post-9/11 Muslim male airline passengers. Not all furtive glances are equal. Not fair to any individual. Of course it isn’t. But human nature, statistical generalizations, knee-jerk over-reaction and drumbeat headlines can create its own biased dynamic.

But while profiling was part of the Zimmerman trial back story, it wasn’t causal.

Put it this way: Were this not the Gunshine State, where an unnecessarily armed George Zimmerman could willfully insert himself into a context that could provoke confrontation with immunity, there would doubtless have been any tragedy. Without a gun-emboldened Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin doesn’t get followed, doesn’t get into a fight and doesn’t get shot dead. Without that vigilante-motivating piece of 2005 legislation and a license-to-carry culture, Zimmerman may have become a literal “watch” captain and Martin an anonymous graduate of Dr. Michael M. Krop High School.

Recall that before Florida enacted SYG, people could not use deadly force to defend themselves if it were reasonably possible to retreat. So much for reason. In effect, an armed individual can go out of his way–and home–to exercise an extension of his “castle”-protecting rights. It’s hardly happenstance that last year there were a record 66 justifiable homicides in Florida. The average from 2001-05: 13. It’s hardly coincidental that SYG has worked to free an inordinate number of gang bangers and violent attackers in the name of specious self-defense claims. It’s, well, criminal.

What SYG does, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is “senselessly expand the concept of self-defense” and increase the possibility of deadly confrontations. For that reason, AG Holder wants SYG laws re-examined, which is code for repealed.

The sham that is SYG–and there are variations in more than 20 other states–should be priority one for all demonstrations, rallies, vigils, pulpit orations and cable-TV harangues.

Calls for a civil-rights redress trial–actually a federal, pay-back, double-jeopardy work-around–are not a prudent use of the energy of outrage. Zimmerman was hardly the embodiment of racial animus and stalking. That’s the main reason Florida’s own hate crime laws were never invoked against him. Also not helpful: Rodney Kingesque “No justice, No peace” signs. This is a still a matter of law, not a forum for courting violence. Fortunately, there’s  been little of the latter.

The Scott Factor

So let’s hear it for the youthful “Dream Defenders” who have been peacefully sitting in at the Tallahassee Capitol making the high-profile point that SYG needs repealing. “We think ‘Stand Your Ground’ has created a culture that allowed Zimmerman to think that what he did was okay,” said Gabriel Pendas, a founder of the student protest group.

The campaign, as we know, will be beyond formidable and needs grass roots activism well beyond “Dream Defenders.” Gov. Rick Scott is already on the record for saying that he believes that “‘Stand Your Ground’ should stay in the books” and that it’s not worth calling a special legislative session over. This, of course, is no unexpected response given the “no-changes” recommendation by that less-than-neutral SYG task force that was chaired, so to speak, by ex-Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll last year and the seemingly unwavering support by Republicans in the Legislature. Even renegade GOP state Rep. Mike Fasano approves of SYG.

Maybe the biggest hopes–given that common sense and public welfare appear non-factors–for at least a special session are a serious state threat of a boycott beyond Stevie Wonder or some last-minute gubernatorial flip-flopping.  We’ve seen how Scott has pandered to teachers after having shafted them earlier. We’ve seen him “accept” federal Medicaid money but not raise a finger to actually lobby for it. We’ve seen him turn down Orlando-to-Tampa high-speed rail billions, only to sign off on the politically shady, Orlando-area SunRail/CSX deal. He’s too self-servingly duplicitous to count out.

If, as an unpopular incumbent, Scott thinks he needs an ideology-challenged game-changer–and he did blindside Won’t Weatherford’s House and his Tea Partying fan base on Medicaid expansion–there’s no telling what he might ultimately do to win re-election.

Then again, a special session is only a guarantee of melodramatics and posturing. But the idea is to make everyone–and lawmakers can be pro-gun and anti-SYG–on that side sign on again in the post-Zimmerman/Martin environment that wasn’t the reality of 2005.