Category: Florida

All of a sudden, the effort to get serious momentum behind a medical marijuana initiative in Florida has credibility. Ubiquitous, committed, “For the People” trial lawyer John Morgan is now behind the campaign to get the issue on next year’s ballot as a constitutional amendment–and make Florida the country’s 19th state with a medical marijuana law.

Although anything containing the words “legal” and “marijuana” has more than its share of Tallahassee detractors and the capital doesn’t lack for Reefer Madness literalists, Morgan won’t exactly be tilting at public-policy windmills. His own pockets are plenty deep and he can tap into a serious fund-raising network to expedite the underwriting of petition gatherers. He would need nearly 700,000 valid signatures. Moreover, a recent poll by People United for Medical Marijuana showed more than 70 percent initiative support that transcended party, regional and demographic lines.

No, Florida isn’t Colorado or Washington, but it’s more than the sum total of its Tallahassee parts.

According to conventional wisdom, Jeb Bush is a 2016 GOP presidential front runner. In fact, to a number of observers, it’s his to lose. And despite that immigration hiccup, his ongoing media offensive is a sure sign of top-tier status. This is not a long-shot’s game plan.

In addition, Jeb! has all that wonky-smart, bi-lingual, moderate-Republican gravitas from two turns as the can-do governor of America’s pre-eminent swing state. He also made history; he’s the Sunshine State’s only two-term GOP governor.

Having said all that, conventional wisdom is often more conventional than wise. Jeb does have some baggage, certainly enough to eliminate that exclamation point. Indeed, Charlie Crist isn’t the only prominent Florida pol toting around a political valise.

For openers, Bush is still lugging that devalued surname around. When he lost to Lawton Chiles in 1994, he relinquished his “anointed one” family status and propped open the door of opportunity for his less-talented brother, George W.–who is far from revered by Republicans, let alone the rest of the body politic. Something about a squandered surplus, a skewed tax, ill-timed deregulation and an unnecessary war and a Medicare prescription-drug benefit that went unfunded. Heckuva job, “W.”

Other presidential-wannabe GOPsters, including the combative Chris Christie, can disown “W” for besmirching the Republican brand. But a younger Bush brother doesn’t have that option. This isn’t Bill Clinton distancing himself from Jimmy Carter. Ideological fratricide is not politically or personally appealing.

Then add in intimations of monarchial inheritance. The prospect of a third Bush presidency in five administrations connotes entitlement. How un-Tea Party. Hell, how un-American.

Bush Scrutiny Coming

And since American politics continues to devolve into partisan, cherry-picking free-for-alls, Bush’s generally well-regarded Tallahassee tenure will be seen by many through a less-than-adoring, less-than-objective lens. Don’t be surprised, for openers, with agenda-driven references to:

* Bush leading the effort to repeal the high-speed rail amendment that would have connected Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Then being “surprised” and “taken aback” by Gov. Rick Scott’s refusal of federal high-speed rail funds without allowing bids. For many, eco-unfriendly gridlock is still an economic-and-lifestyle issue demanding unequivocally enlightened leadership–not ideology or politics as usual.

* Bush’s compromised position on off-shore oil drilling. Many still prefer that he be flat-out against it. Others think he didn’t go far enough. Likely not a net winner.

* Bush’s signing of “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.

* Bush presiding over 21 executions, not considered a moderate number, and zero commutations.

* While many see Bush as the avatar for educational accountability, others see nothing beyond a curriculum-skewing FCAT debacle as Bush’s biggest classroom impact.

* Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education can also be perceived as something other than an “education governor’s” legacy. More will be heard about charges that the ironically acronymed FEE circumvented applicable proscriptions and used donations from for-profit companies to lobby for state education laws that could benefit those companies. Donors included companies that sell–or would aspire to sell–testing and charter school services to the state and to Florida school systems.

Which brings us back to right now. Bush’s co-authored Immigration Wars: Forging An American Solution has provided him with a literal coast-to-coast forum. From the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. to the CPAC gathering in Washington, he’s been able to touch the requisite conservative bases. Plus all those political-junkie, network-and-cable-TV shows that predictably morph into “I’m not saying yes–I’m just not saying no” coy-a-thons.

But there’s that major, unforeseen problem: Bush’s calculated immigration position–to the right of his previously moderate one–looked a lot better in galley proofs last summer than in the context of today’s post-Romney-loss GOP that’s in major Hispanic-pander mode. Now Bush has to explain to Hispanics and Republican pragmatists why he agrees–in writing–with those who maintain that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be given a pathway to citizenship.

Now he has to explain how he wound up to the right of Marco Rubio, whom he mentored, on immigration. Now he has to explain away a position on an issue that had been at the core of his “moderate” Republican image. It won’t be easy–no matter how he spins it–in either English or Spanish.

It’s a problem that the candid Christie–or the strategically “evolving” Rubio–doesn’t have.

In the early going, it seems as if some form of a texting-while-driving-limit bill could happen. One possible–politically pragmatic–scenario: Making distracted driving a secondary offense and allowing texting in hands-off, high-tech cars. The rationale: Road-safety bills remain touchy issues in Tallahassee. So, why not get what you can this year? Something is better than nothing. Then, perhaps, next year the compromise bill can be revisited and maybe toughened.

Yes, a compromise is better than no action–if those must be the lone options. But hands-off texting is not attention-on driving, which should be the goal of any legislation. People will still die unnecessarily as a result of low-focused drivers in high-tech cars. But not as many as might have been the case. What’s fewer lives saved when progress can be claimed?

Should Gov. Rick Scott want to double down on his re-election strategy, he might consider doing something that does not amount to a cynical 180 from a previous position. Polls indicate that most voters haven’t been fooled by Scott’s self-serving efforts at bribing teachers, accepting erstwhile “job killer” Medicaid help and acknowledging that Florida really does need to do a better job accommodating the rights of voters. He gets negligible credit for undoing previous wrongs–and still loses on principle. And, no, he can’t unreject high-speed rail money that was reallocated to other states.

What Scott needs to do is repurpose the gubernatorial bully pulpit for something other than Rick Perry shout-outs and big-government contempt. He needs to get out in front of issues that aren’t brutally partisan but merely beneficial to Floridians across the spectrum. Here are three that would find wide appeal–even if compromised legislators and Tea Party types disagreeably disagree.

*Text and drive: It remains unacceptable that Florida is still without a statewide ban on drivers texting. Thirty-nine states now flat out ban it, and five others proscribe it for teenagers. The need is self-evident. We already know that drivers are better off (legally) drunk than electronically distracted when it comes to behind-the-wheel awareness.

Were Scott to get out in front on this, he wouldn’t exactly be going solo. Motorists and passengers are increasingly leery of distracted-driver roulette. The headlines are too frequent. The crashes too horrific. The human losses too tragic. Moreover, the Florida sheriffs’ and police chiefs’ associations, the Florida League of Cities and many other groups are ardent supporters of legislation banning texting while driving.

Scott can mouth “personal liberties” platitudes, but this is about common sense, public safety, the moral high ground–and the influence of telecom lobbies. Legislation banning texting while driving will save lives. As a governor with abysmal ratings, let alone an ostensibly empathetic human being, how do you not push this?

*Internet sales tax: To date, Florida has seemed indifferent to e-commerce sales, which have been estimated at nearly$3.5 trillion nationally. In fact, such sales grew 15 percent nationwide last year. Economists estimate that Florida loses between $450 million to $1.5 billion annually in tax revenue on goods bought from Internet-only vendors.

The Legislature has been reluctant to move meaningfully on the collection of taxes owed on Internet sales, because the process can be philosophically defined as “tax hikes.” Scott, who has refused a compromise deal offered by Amazon, the largest online retailer, has said he would be open to an online sales tax bill if it does not raise the overall tax burden on Floridians.

Scott needs to untether himself from Norquist-think. Instead, he would be well advised to make the case for fairness. We’re not talking about increasing a tax; we’re talking about collecting what is–and has been–due. And in so doing, helping to even the retail playing field for Florida merchants. Fairness obviously has a constituency. Why not play to it?

And instead of hand-wringing about revenue neutrality, Scott might consider where any additional dollars could do the most good. Florida’s gut economic issue, as he should certainly know by now, is not the state’s tax structure. It’s infrastructure and education. They’re the business beacons for those who would expand into–or relocate with–the jobs of the future.

*”Stand Your Ground”: In winning election, Scott, in effect, ran against President Obama. If necessary, he should consider running against a Legislature–notably Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford–that remains in denial about gun violence and the unintended consequences of the deservedly maligned “stand your ground” law.

While the Trayvon Martin case has been prominently associated with the “stand your ground” defense, the most deleterious impact has been felt in the number of self-defense-claiming, violent aggressors–including gang members and drug dealers–who are back on the streets thanks to “stand your ground.”

Gov. Scott should stand his own ground on behalf of somebody other than gun owners, concealed carriers, Wayne LaPierre acolytes–and their favorite legislators. Media attention notwithstanding, he’d still be in the majority, where any candidate for re-election should want to be.

How ironic. Or how conspiratorial.

Either Jim Greer, the Florida GOP’s most notorious pariah, fell on his sword and took one for the team or fell in line with some incentive from vested Republican interests. To be sure, Greer’s guilty plea for grand theft and money laundering saved a lot of prominent GOPsters from explaining, among other things, their involvement in that scandalous duffers-and-hookers Bahamas getaway.

And nobody breathed a louder sigh of relief than former Gov. Charlie Crist, the man who would be governor again and the man who handpicked Greer for the Republican Party’s chairman post. Transcript outtakes would have become cherry-picked manna for the Rick Scott re-election campaign.

The year was 1988. Frank Borkowski was the new president of USF. He had succeeded John Lott Brown. In his inaugural speech, he spoke in the elevated tones requisite for such occasions. It was no time, to be sure, for modest goals. So, Borkowski referenced USF’s manifest potential. In fact, he could foresee this major-market, 28-year-old institution of higher education among the nation’s top 25 public universities. Applause, nods and smiles all around.

And then a come-to-Jesus moment.

Charlie Reed, Florida’s State University System chancellor, was not impressed. Nor was he subtle. In effect, who did Borkowski think he was with such an inappropriately aggressive goal? USF was a regional university. Didn’t even have a football team, let alone a law school that could prep the next generation of legislators. Did it not know its place? If anyone were going to aspire to such lofty heights it would be the system’s flagship university in Gainesville, the University of Florida, thank you. And, by the way, welcome to the Sunshine State.

Well, a lot has certainly changed in the system, as well as at USF. But there is still, of course, a pecking order. UF is still the biggest and most distinguished university in the system. And it has earned it. But that reality, it seems, has been reinforced in ways that hearken back to that respect-challenged, Reed-Borkowski dust-up.

Recall that UF President Bernie Machen was more than a neutral observer last year when that whole JD Alexander-driven USF Poly folly was coming down. Tallahassee didn’t side with USF. Neither did Machen. The UF president was also courted successfully–and unprecedentedly–by Gov. Rick Scott to defer his retirement and continue his presidency. Part of that courtship was an exclusive $15 million grant to UF to beef up its faculty hiring. It’s part of the means to the end of making Florida an elite university, the system’s lone such luminary candidate.

We get that, but there are better ways of upgrading. Ask FSU, not just USF. Higher education in Florida needs a rising tide, not canal locks to accommodate the first among unequals. Frank Borkowski found that out 25 years ago. That unnecessarily divisive message still echoes.

Last time we checked, Florida was the national leader in new death sentences imposed. That’s sobering. What is disturbing is that Florida also leads in the number of death sentences overturned. But what is unconscionable is that a jury can recommend the death penalty by a simple majority. A 7-5 vote, contingent upon what the judge determines after giving the decision “great weight,” can make the difference between a life or a death sentence. A 7-5 vote, which underscores levels of uncertainty and subjectivity in the jury room, can carry the live-or-die day. Outrageous.

Among the 15 new Florida senators, those with the highest net worth are Republicans with Tampa Bay ties. Tops is Wilton Simpson of Trilby, whose District 18 includes parts of Pasco County. He comes in at $12.2 million. Next is Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, whose District 22 includes parts of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. He’s at $10.3 million. Third is Tom Lee of Brandon, whose District 24 includes part of Hillsborough County. He’s worth $3.1 million.

If Gov. Rick Scott had more friends–well, a lot more–like Tampa Bay’s Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, he wouldn’t still be derided as the country’s most unpopular governor.

Scott, asserts Latvala, merely fits the model of the classic political outsider whom an electorate can understandably find appealing. Even, presumably, one who personally shelled out $70 million to fund his version of a populist, outsider approach.

Anyhow, Latvala, who, indeed, considers Scott a “friend,” has explained that “if you elect people like that, you have to give them a little learning curve. I think he has learned. I think he’s getting better all the time.”

Say what? There’s “learning curve”–and then there’s disingenuously expedient makeover.

What Scott is obviously getting better at is insider gamesmanship and all the self-serving optics prompted by political panic.

No, he can’t undo that character-revealing, Medicare-fraud deposition or that faux pas-pocked trade-mission sortie to Spain. Anymore than he can he undo the bid-precluding, high-speed rail debacle that would have brought jobs while fast-forwarding the Tampa-Orlando megalopolis. Nor can he undo his acquiescence in the USF Poly folly. And, yes, he’s still the privatizer from hell.

But what he can do, for openers, is a blatantly hypocritical 180 on voter-suppression gambits, that “$26 billion” it was supposedly going to cost Florida to sign on to Medicaid expansion and frontal assaults on teacher credibility and pay. He can also rein in the Eustis pep rallies and Tea Party love-ins at The Villages as well as do interviews with real media. Being satirized on Saturday Night Live and Hardball doesn’t count.

And as far as Scott risking the alienation of Tea Partiers and the Deliverance crowd as he “learns,” well, where else are those acolytes going to go? To Charlie? Alex? Pam? Buddy? Nan? Allen West won’t be in the hunt.

Scott desperately needs a gullible media to help enable his calculated game plan. And he can always use more clueless friends. Too bad Tampa Bay’s Jack Latvala qualifies.