Category: Florida

When you look up “hazing” in the dictionary, you’ll find variations on an “initiation” (as in a college fraternity) theme that references the exacting of
“humiliation” or the playing of “rough practical jokes.” We get it. Rites of passage underbelly.

But as short hand for assault? As code for thuggery? As euphemism, in the case of the FAMU marching band, for pummeling to death?

Imagine, your kid’s a clarinet player–not a contact-sport jock or a gang-banger–and is beaten to death while representing his school? How incomprehensibly sick is that?

No Poly Folly: Looks like USF President Judy Genshaft, who had been getting criticism for not taking a stronger stand against USF Polytechnic independence, played it just right. She never responded in kind to the zero-sum, cheap PR game that legacy-hungry Sen. JD Alexander and egotistical Poly Chancellor Marshall Goodwin played.

She stayed above the fray, while staying abreast of it. In the end, she made the case that Poly could accomplish its goals through USF–not by going its own ill-advised way. She believes in building bridges, not burning them.

Genshaft also helped orchestrate an impressive turnout in front of the Board of Governors. She obviously realized she still has to work with Poly people, although Goodwin may not be among them for long.

Ultimately, Alexander and Goodwin’s 14-week secession campaign yielded a consolation prize: the Alexander Vo Tech concept, per se, was not deep-sixed. Which means if independence from the USF Tampa mother ship does happen, it will be years down the I-4 road. But not now. Not even close.

Regarding the effort to take USF Polytechnic independent: How is this even a close call?

Those in favor: Senate Budget Chairman J.D. Alexander, Chancellor Marshall Goodwin. Those opposed: Faculty, students, taxpayers.

As we well know, Sen. Marco Rubio has had his share of bad Florida publicity of late. As we also well know, it was well-deserved.

For the record, Rubio’s against those extra charter flights between the U.S., including Tampa, and Cuba. To Rubio, it’s all about abetting “a dictator”–not aiding local Cuban-Americans who want to visit their home island or helping the regional economy or just doing the right thing–he says in his exile-playbook talking points. And then that flap over his calculated misuse of family chronology. And, of course, he has that matter of not wanting to sound like a Tea Party wing nut on immigration. As a result, the past three weeks Rubio has been pursuing an obvious, familiar strategy right out of Political Spin 101.

* First, he conceded he made an ostensibly honest mistake on pre- or post-Castro timing.  But Cuban-Americans don’t transpose dates around the revolution. That’s beyond self-serving disingenuousness. That’s an obvious lie.

* He then reframed the issue to put the focus elsewhere by emotionally referencing Communism and Castro and railing against his political enemies and their liberal media-lackey co-conspirators. It’s classic turn-the-rhetorical tables. Herman Cain can identify.

* Now it’s change the subject–and align yourself with something unassailable. Last Friday on the Senate floor he focused on human trafficking, a legitimate international concern. He wants to help Sen. Bill Nelson, who he doesn’t often help, update the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act that Nelson has co-sponsored. It’s serious and safe. There is no pro-slavery lobby.

Sen. Marco Rubio is not the first celebrity/politician to have been caught padding his resume, but his case is unique. It has nothing to do with improving grades, adding a degree, exaggerating responsibilities, enhancing military service or quashing an arrest warrant.

The rookie senator/GOPster rock star was simply off by a few years as to when his immigrant parents came to this country. Hey, chronology happens. Especially someone else’s. Who can’t empathize?

And had Mario and Oriales Rubio come from any country other than Cuba in the 1950s, it wouldn’t matter. But the political crucible that is Cuba in Florida, as we well know, matters big time.

The fall of Fulgencio Batista and the revolution led by Fidel Castro was a seismic geopolitical occurrence in this hemisphere, country and state. It was an instant Cold War domino. Castro ultimately triumphed in 1959. Rubio’s parents left Cuba in 1956–when Mexico-based Castro was still scrambling in low-profile exile. As for the timing of the Rubios’ departure: It’s the difference between fleeing and relocating. They came to better themselves economically. Miami as a de facto Ellis Island.

Until recently, Rubio’s biography on his official Senate website said his parents “came to America following Castro’s takeover.” It was off by 2 1/2 years. It might as well have been a light year. How did it happen?

He was “going off the oral history of my family,” he explained. That was good enough for him. The counter-argument: You don’t have to be a, well, lawyer to want to see the actual paperwork to determine the anniversary of when your parents escaped a communist thug and landed on the shores of the land of the free.

Pre- or post-Castro is one chronology that nobody would err on. Government overthrow is that defining. Hence, it’s that deceptiveto screw up the timing.

It’s like saying “early December, 1941” when you want to imply, for whatever reason, the date of Pearl Harbor without actually saying it. It’s like waxing vague about whether something was pre- or post-9/11. It doesn’t happen unless vested-interest misrepresentation is on the agenda. There’s no possibility of imprecision when you’re talking about events this seminal–and a politician this ambitious

As for agendas, Rubio’s became obvious.

He wasn’t going to rely solely on looks, smarts, charisma, glibness, political acumen and a party credit card. No, he also wanted the quintessential back story that would resonate in Florida–and beyond. The American dream on steroids: freedom’s phantasm.

Rubio wasn’t just the son of immigrants, but the son of exiles fleeing the vile Castro, the avatar of dictatorship. No one could grow up appreciating liberty and American exceptionalism quite like the son of those who fled communist tyranny. He had become an uber compelling, central casting émigré–and a Republican beacon to the Hispanic electorate. That’s how you get on the short list for vice presidential candidates after less than a year in the Senate and not yet out of your 30s. That’s why you can’t settle for merely being the son of motivated, hard-working immigrants, as legitimately moving a chronicle as that is.

Rubio’s response to being outted over his embellished exile bona fides was predictable. Reframe the issue. Concede the minimum–then bridge to the offensive and ratchet the rhetoric. In a column published in POLITICO, he said: “I accept that.” He meant mistaken chronology dates. In effect, he said: “My bad for getting some dates wrong. I might be pretty special, but I’m still human. Sorry about that.

Then he became infuriated. And turned the onus on others. As in political opponents and their media lackeys. How dare anyone downplay the tragic reality that his parents were ultimately deprived of their native soil because “a brutal, Communist dictator took control of their homeland”? How dare anyone question that the exile experience was anything other than tragic and “painful”?

Not surprisingly, the spin seems to be working within Republican ranks. The party is rallying around one of its best and brightest, who’s also a poster lad for Tea Party faithful. Allies such as former Gov. Jeb Bush and former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez have remained staunch Rubio supporters and even denounced the Washington Post, the source of the major piece on Rubio’s errant account of his parents’ departure from Cuba.

Rubio vs. the liberal media, however appealing to the polarization-prone GOP, might not play nearly as well during a general election. Perhaps the publicity will have died down by the Tampa GOP Convention. Or maybe it will have prompted a closer look at Rubio’s use of a Republican Party credit card for personal use during his Florida House days. Such scenarios could yet loom by August–and there’s no changing that date.

Enough already. Amazing the media legs that grew under Gov. Rick Scott’s throw-away line that Florida “doesn’t need a lot more anthropologists.” The context was the need for more emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and attracting the employers of the future.

Immediate umbrage was taken by anthropologists, anthropology students and university officials and professors. And, candidly, they made some good points. Most anthropologists are not budding Margaret Meads. The discipline’s application is more widespread than is generally known. Ironically, this could be a PR coup for anthropology studies.

But let’s also be fair to Gov. Scott. Yes, he’s been a disaster as governor so far. But, no, his seeming anthropology put-down in the context of referencing STEM emphasis was not totally out of line. He wasn’t talking in absolutes–but in relative priorities. He was talking hard–not social or behavioral–science. That which is most directly related to recruiting jobs of the future.

It’s just too bad Scott didn’t assert that Florida “doesn’t need a lot more lawyers.”

When it comes to criticizing Gov. Rick Scott, the pickings aren’t exactly slim. Disappearing e-mails and disingenuous comments on his “7-7-7” job plan are merely the latest. But there is one recent incident where he could genuinely have been cut some slack. That flap about anthropologists.

Here’s what he said that grew a week’s worth of media legs: that Florida “doesn’t need a lot more anthropologists.” Context, as always, is critical. He was talking about future job creation and attraction and the merits of upping the ante on increased emphasis in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)education. And he’s right.

He was trying to make a point about relative priorities. And anthropologists, along with sociologists, psychologists and many other worthwhile callings, are simply less critical in recruiting the jobs of the future than are the STEM professions.

Too bad Scott didn’t say that Florida “doesn’t need a lot more arbitragers and lawyers.”

Call it the Sunshine State’s quadrennial deja view of the political landscape. It’s Florida in the role of presidential primary cause célèbre. Again.

This is what it comes down to. It’s a political given that presidential candidates have to win Florida to be elected. That’s because Florida–with its diverse 12 million registered voters–is the ultimate swing state: 29 electoral votes’ worth. Given that reality, it makes no sense for a state that can determine who is elected president to not have a meaningful say in who gets nominated to be president.

In the past, Florida has found itself as a rubber-stamp in the primary process, ceding inordinate influence to the likes of New Hampshire and Iowa and then Nevada and South Carolina as well–who are hardly the equal of Florida as a demographic microcosm of this country. They are the products of tradition and the beneficiaries of ethnic and racial tokenism.

That’s what prodded Florida to ignore Republican National Committee etiquette (no sooner than March 6) and move its primary–for the second consecutive election cycle–to late January. This time it’s Jan. 31. The trade-off of losing half its (Republican) convention delegates for serious front-end influence was deemed a worthwhile tradeoff. There hasn’t been a brokered convention by either party since 1952, the year Adlai Stevenson outmaneuvered Estes Kefauver in Chicago.

Recent primary history tells us that the bandwagon effect is critical. Just ask John McCain, who all but clinched the 2008 GOP nomination by winning the Jan. 29 Florida primary.

Of course, Florida’s move up isn’t the only one, although it’s the one that makes the most sense. Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Michigan are also defying the March 6 cutoff. And New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina will play primary leap frog as well.

None of which pleases the RNC, whose top priority is avoiding chaos from front-loading–not assuring that make-or-break-election states are fairly represented in the primary system.

Which begs an obvious question. Why doesn’t the RNC lobby Congress to push for a better system than make way for the Gang of Four and skew everyone else? It’s not as if no one has thought of a preferable, albeit imperfect, plan. As in rotating, regional primaries.

It would give the RNC the order it craves, but it would give voters a more representative voice.

*Interesting that in the four hours of Republican presidential debates in Tampa and Orlando only one nominal question was asked about Cuba. In Orlando, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who was new to the debate stage and has less of a chance of becoming president than Fred Thompson, was asked about recently resumed direct flights to Cuba from Fort Lauderdale. He said he supported the initiative and added that “trade promotes friendship.”

But nobody else got this question, which could have opened embargo-related floodgates, that is of more than nominal interest to the ultimate swing state. One that any GOP presidential candidate must carry.

But then Michelle Bachmann jumped in to get on the record for something other than bashing science, the social compact and “Obamacare.” Sounding not unlike an honorary Bastistiana, she said no way should more direct flights from Florida to Cuba be allowed. Cuba, she bellowed, was “a state sponsor of terrorism.”

Technically, of course, she’s right about Cuba’s, however unconscionable, inclusion on a list that is otherwise comprised of Iran, Sudan and Syria. No one outside Little Havana thinks this is a defensible position.

Too bad none of the other candidates were able to weigh in.

*How ironic that Rick Perry, who was not at his brash best in Orlando, is vulnerable in such debates on a couple of issues that would actually play a lot better in a general election. He’s to the left of his peers, at least the most outspoken ones, on giving in-state tuition breaks to children of illegals. He couches it in humanitarian as well as pragmatic terms.

He’s also responsible for an executive order mandating that young girls be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus. He was portrayed as being too governmentally heavy handed in helping prevent cervical cancer.

For a lot of  non-Tea Partiers–and that’s still most voters–it helped Perry to soften and moderate a candidacy that appears all-ideological, macho hat and no centrist cattle.

* Good news for Democrats: Gov. Rick Scott was very warmly received in Orlando. To the degree that Hillsborough County Republican chairwoman Deborah Cox-Roush gushed that “Gov. Scott is becoming the leader of our party.” Obvious caveat: Be careful what you gush for.

When it comes to improvement in relations between the U.S. and Cuba, incremental progress remains the name of the game. And given all the high-profile Florida elected officials who are still politically deterred from even traveling to Cuba, no major foreign-policy leaps seem in the offing. So, we continue to settle for incremental progress — for now.

Case in point: recently eased travel restrictions and the inclusion of TIA among airports cleared for direct charter flights to Havana. Welcome news, to be sure, but the vendetta-agenda politics and PACs out of South Florida still preclude truly significant changes. As in unfettered trade and travel between the U.S. and Cuba.

Another, more symbolic and subtle, case in point: Al Fox, the outspoken activist and advocate for ridding America of its Cold War-era approach to Cuba, spoke to the Tiger Bay Club of Tampa last week — and it was a love-in. Not just that the Tiger-members were tame, but that none of the usual suspects showed up to harangue or hector.

Granted, Tampa is not to be confused with Miami as a tinderbox of exile-driven emotion, but it has had its share of high-profile demonstrations and outspoken critics of American rapprochement with Cuba. They’ve not been no-shows at previous Cuba-centric conferences and debates that Fox, who has been a lightning rod on this subject, has been party to. But none were within a decibel’s distance last Friday. And nary a placard or a leaflet greeted the founder and president of the Alliance For Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation.

Call it incremental progress because time was when anyone speaking out in a major public forum about America’s unconscionably counterproductive Cuban policy would be a magnet for the anti-Castro zealots.

Among Fox’s major points:

*Bemoaned that other states’ trade missions — led by prominent elected officials — have been allowed, in effect, to trump Florida and cultivate the kinds of relationships that will pay economic dividends down the road. “I’m afraid Florida is getting left behind so that when there is a regime change or the trade embargo is lifted, that Florida won’t really be fully prepared to take advantage of our location advantage.”

*Lamented not just lack of help by those with serious political clout — but those who made common cause with the politically-savvy, Cuban-American obstructionists. “She (Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz) should be ashamed of herself. She makes Marco Rubio look like Mother Teresa.”

*Underscored his top lobbying priority: repealing the 2006 Florida law that prohibits public university faculty and students from using taxpayer money to travel to Cuba. No other state has such a law. “It makes Florida look like a backwater.”

*Didn’t see anything approaching a bonanza for TIA until unlimited travel is adopted. “How is Tampa going to sustain three, four flights a week? Not going to happen. The real business will come when Anglos can buy a ticket.”

*Although he lost a Congressional race to Kathy Castor in 2006, he acknowledged that he has voted for her since and has seen her expanding her involvement in the Cuba issue, most notably, of course, in pushing for the charter flights out of TIA that will begin next month. “In her heart she knows what’s right. She’s going to get there.”

*The real motivation behind those most vehemently defending the economic embargo and rigidly restricted travel: “This has nothing to do with Fidel Castro. It has everything to do with vengeance, pride, hatred and money. They want to overturn the results of 1958.”

One postscript.

Florida’s former CFO Alex Sink, who came ever so close to being elected governor last November, was among the luncheon attendees. In her own way, she ironically helped Fox make his point about those with clout not willing to use enough of it if potential political fallout were involved. Which, of course, it always is on this subject.

No guts, no glory, no matter.

Sink agreed in principle with reducing a number of restrictions and the need “to try something different.” But she was never of a mind to travel to Cuba herself on behalf of Florida. It was, she stressed, out of deference and “respect for my friends,” who harbor major misgivings about human rights abuses.

It’s a familiar politician’s refrain and typical political cover. It’s as much an obstacle as the vendetta agenda of the strident pols from the sovereign state of Little Havana.