Category: Florida

Interesting — no, make that shocking — how major segments of the mainstream media are buying Gov. Rick Scott’s extreme makeover. From inviting the Tallahassee press corps in for Danish to issuing kinder-gentler official photos to doing gimmicky “work days.”

As if it were mostly a matter of a rookie needing some time to get his political sea legs.

As if abysmal popularity ratings and RNC concern for the 2012 Florida election aren’t driving this cosmetic overhaul. As if Scott is no longer arrogant and no longer more beholden to Tea Partiers and the Koch Brothers than to most Floridians.

But make-overs don’t mean do-overs. Just ask teachers. Or would-be workers and developers who could be prepping the I-4 corridor for rail. Or those most directly impacted by a growth-management charade. Or the League of Women voters.

Almost as shocking as having Rick Scott for a governor is how so much of the media seem to be buying his contrived image makeover. As if as the consummate outsider and political rookie, he’s just been learning on the job and now sees that he needs to be more accessible. Even his innate awkwardness is seen by some as a positive — as if it’s an endearing function of his non-career-politician background.

Much more balderdash than verity. From Count Voldemort to Howie Mandel? Hardly.

It’s so obvious what’s going on. Those still-awful Approval Ratings borne of:

*A certain ideological, anti-Obama move that undermined Tampa-Orlando megalopolis plans while derailing short- and long-term job-creation scenarios.

*A declaration of open season on serious growth management.

*A recession-era pink slip policy, including teachers.

*Disincentives for the get-out-the-non-Republican vote.

*Dismissive, arrogant attitudes for all but acolytes. Underscored by us-against-them gatherings in Tea Party-friendly enclaves such as Eustis and The Villages.

*Contemptuous dislike for the media — or anyone else who dared bring up Scott’s involvement in Medicare fraud or how he bought an election.

*Disingenuous, self-congratulating robo calls to unsuspecting Floridians.

*And, alas, a lot more.

Then add the pressure from the GOP establishment to not be: A) an embarrassment at next year’s Republican National Convention in Tampa (think: media-manna, “Pink Slip Rick” demonstrators in front of the St. Pete Times Forum) and B) enough of a disgust-magnet as to cost the party Florida in the general election.

That’s why he’s inviting the Tallahassee press corps in for Danish. That’s why he’s giving interviews to somebody other than the Koch Brothers. That’s why he’s resurrecting Bob Graham’s old workdays’ gambit.

It’s as calculated as it is transparent.

And speaking of those Scott “workdays,” here’s hoping next up is selling newspapers. Make that “hawking” newspapers. From a median at a mega-busy intersection. Maybe Dale Mabry Highway and Kennedy Boulevard. First, he may be tempted to read one. Second, let’s see if he survives. If so, then maybe the safety issue is, indeed, overstated.

This much we know for sure: Even in an arena more than familiar with the decorum-challenged, South Florida Rep. Allen West was over the top and below the belt with what he said about fellow South Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. “Vile.” “Despicable.” Say what?

The only understandable context for such verbal venom would have been criticism of Wasserman Schultz’s unconscionable stand on Cuba. The one she still gets a pass on because her District 20 is, after all, in South Florida. Say no more. She’s otherwise on the right side of Israel and the liberal side of most everything else.

Except for the exile side on Cuba. She’s a staunch defender of the Cuban embargo and not receptive to Americans having the freedom to travel to that nearby island. She takes money from the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC and helped found the Cuba Democracy Caucus, a pro-embargo coterie of legislators. She’s a comrade-in-arms with vendetta-agenda influentials such as Sen. Marco Rubio, the Brothers Diaz-Balaart and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the strident, Havana-born chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Wasserman Schultz makes no apologies for being out of step with the majority of her constituents, her party, her president, a majority of Cuban Americans, most Floridians, this Hemisphere and the rest of the world. She knows what still makes self-serving political sense, regardless of the implications for Florida, the United States and countless, powerless people still awaiting the end of a Cold War relic.

To play a part in the perpetuation of such a counterproductive, pandering policy is, in fact, despicable.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the high-energy, high-profile congresswoman from South Florida, has often been compared–and contrasted–with rookie Sen. Marco Rubio, the charismatic South Floridian who, as a candidate, dispatched Charlie Crist to Morgan & Morgan.

Both are young, articulate and ambitious–with huge up-sides within their respective parties. Sen. Rubio is mentioned as possible Republican presidential-ticket material next year. U.S. Rep. Wasserman Schultz is already chairing the Democratic National Committee.

The contrast, however, goes beyond simple Democratic-Republican labels. They’re practically polar opposites on the political spectrum. Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles, is a Tea Party favorite, if not poster boy. New York native Wasserman Schultz is a classic, Jewish liberal.

With one glaring incongruity. They both have the same position on Cuba.

Rubio sees Cuban-American politics through the hard-line exile lens. It’s an issue that is still personal. Living the American Dream precludes making up with a dictator. Etc. What’s best for America–from geopolitics to trade to humane considerations–and the Cuban people is less important than an ongoing vendetta agenda. It is what it is.

What it is for Wasserman Schultz is pure, self-aggrandizing politics. Her district 20 encompasses parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties. She’s known as a staunch defender of that counterproductive Cold War relic–the economic embargo against Cuba. Sanctions are sacrosanct. She takes money from the U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC and helped found the Cuba Democracy Caucus, a pro-embargo group of legislators. She’s pals with GOP Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the influential, pro-embargo harridan from South Florida.

She makes no apologies for being out of step with the Democratic Party, her president, this Hemisphere, most Floridians, a majority of Cuban-Americans and the rest of the world. She knows what plays well in her district and panders accordingly, regardless of the implications for Florida and the United States.

“We should not be opening up our markets and our travel before the Castro regime brings true reform to the Cuban people,” she underscored recently.

Sen. Rubio, singing from the same hymnal, wouldn’t have changed a word.

And just for the sake of raw irony, this just in. Three U.S. Navy ships have been welcomed in Nang, Vietnam for joint training. It’s part of routine American-Vietnamese exchanges. Routine exchanges with a country where we went to war and lost more than 50,000 GIs.

But personal back stories haven’t resulted in ultimate leverage over U.S. foreign policy. We now have normalized diplomatic and economic relations with Vietnam.

Meanwhile, the South Florida de facto veto over ending the embargo and opening up travel for all Americans is still in force. And Wasserman Schultz, a clout-carrying Florida politician, remains a comrade in arms with the likes of Ros-Lehtinen, representing the sovereign state of Little Havana–to the detriment of everybody else.

Six months into the Rick Scott Administration, the public is increasingly familiar with the governor’s singular MO as well as who the members of his inner circle are. True believers see what they like — and were promised. Others, lots of others, see it differently.

But no one could have foreseen this.  The governor who disdains polls more than he despises editorial boards has one of the country’s most prominent pollsters on staff: street-smart, Brooklyn native Tony Fabrizio.

Nor would most folks have imagined this. Fabrizio, inexplicably, still seems dumbfounded by a key catalyst in Scott’s tanking popularity and abysmal poll numbers.

“I don’t think anybody expected high-speed rail to be as big a deal as it was,” recently noted Fabrizio. “We didn’t know it would last like that.”

Say what?

A Tea Party intern could have anticipated what that $2.4 billion in federal dollars would have meant to the Orlando-Tampa megalopolis during the Great Recession. Even if projected job numbers were rounded up. Even if it was referenced as “ObamaRail.”

And even a Cato Institute rookie could have predicted the no-win uproar across the political spectrum when the governor signed off on the high-speed rail-juxtaposed SunRail, also known as the financially suspect Poinciana-Deland commuter line that will cost Florida taxpayers more than $650 million. Everyone–or almost everyone–knew that SunRail, the litmus-test-of- “principle”-from-hell for an ideologue, was looming. High-speed rail precipitated the perfect political storm.

Not that “big a deal?”

Perhaps Fabrizio, the hired gun with a reputation for being a savvy strategist and a take-no- prisoners pragmatist, has been paying too much attention to Scott’s self-congratulating, counterproductive robo calls.

Karl Rove, call Tallahassee.

Interesting to see that a number of outsiders and pundits have been taken aback by Gov. Rick Scott’s abysmally low popularity numbers. As in: “He’s only doing what he said he would do. Shouldn’t promise-keeping, hardly the MO of most politicians, endear him to much more than 29 percent of the voters?” 

(Scott presumably would agree, but he doesn’t, of course, care about polls, he insists. Surprising, then, that he actually has a staff pollster–moreover, that it is the nationally recognized Tony Fabrizio.) 

Some theories on how this came about:

*Not to go all Fall-of-the-Roman Empire and to-hell-in-a-handcart here, but the Rick Scott candidacy was tailor made for an alarming, contemporary American reality: an increasingly ill-informed, lazy democracy. The combination of true-believing, anti-Obama Tea Partiers and their  self-validating infotainment gurus plus those informed via $73 million worth of misleading, self-funded “Let’s get to work” Scott ads was telling. So much so that the candidate’s distain for skeptical media and involvement in a mega Medicare fraud case didn’t seem to matter.

*A lackluster campaign by his opponent, such that some frustrated Democrats would like to see a governor on any more gubernatorial ambitions by any member of the McBride family.

*Maintaining campaign glibness and repeating bullet points are not to be compared–or confused–with actually governing. Nobody’s against a more accountable government. Against streamlining the bureaucracy. Against eliminating “frivolous and wasteful spending.” Against attracting more business. Against creating more jobs. But voters can be less than approving of what a governor actually does in the good name of accountability, bureaucratic efficiency, prudent spending, business wooing and job creation.

Jettisoning thousands of public sector jobs, some of them teachers, won’t win universal plaudits, especially during times of high unemployment. Turning down $2.4 billion in high-speed rail funding–and all the redevelopment subplots and short-and long-term jobs scenarios–was never spelled out during the campaign. Nor was settling with BP for pennies on the oil-spill dollar. Voters, a number of whom were anxious about their own employment status, could only infer what Scott meant by “looking out for taxpayers.” 

*Ironically, once Scott was in office it became apparent that his approach to quality, jobs-of-the-future recruiting was counterproductive. The most-sought after companies are not overly impressed that one of the lowest corporate-tax states in the country is doing further cuts. They want to see education commitments; smart anti-gridlock growth; quality-of-life enhancing ecological priorities; 21st century modes of transportation; and a political environment that doesn’t include rigid orthodoxy, a sense of instability and weekly material for the Colbert Report.

*It didn’t become fully apparent till he took office how arrogant Scott and his inner circle really were. Nor had it been clear to all how truly beholden Scott was to his Tea Party base and his favorite libertarian think tanks and the Koch Brothers. Self-congratulating robo calls and support for SunRail showed highly unflattering, hypocritical sides: “smaller government” could still be intrusive and “principle” wouldn’t get in the way of a more politically palatable, if less financially sensible, rail project.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all when it comes to cherry-picked biblical and constitutional rationales, you realize you’ve haven’t, alas, heard it all. Thanks to the leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, Edna Matos, we now have the ultimate justification for objecting to manatee protection–yes, manatee protection–in Kings Bay. Indeed, THAT Kings Bay, of swimming-with-the-manatees fame.

“We cannot elevate nature above people,” proclaimed Matos. “That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.” You betcha.

Because boats with propellers, boaters who like wakes, and manatees who enjoy living but can’t vote make for a fragile co-existence, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing new human restrictions–mainly affecting boaters. It wants to make the acclaimed Kings Bay a permanent refuge for manatees and limit boat speeds year round.

Jonah call home.

Who needs more protection? Gentle sea cows or intemperate boaters? Maybe there’s something in the water up there–besides those freedom-marginalizing manatees.

Frankly, it makes the predictable, pro-business stands of the Crystal River City Council and the Citrus County Commission–who say being so protective of manatees is not good for the local economy–look refreshingly honest.

The good news for Florida State University in that Koch-contract controversy:  FSU dodged a serious, integrity-questioning bullet. The one that gave representatives of Charles G. Koch, the libertarian billionaire, the power to influence hires and evaluations for his $1.5 million donation. In the higher ed biz, that’s beyond undue influence; it’s an academic-freedom sellout. And an outrage.

But it never happened. That’s because FSU didn’t actually implement those stipulations.

So, FSU can now do some touting. It never sold out; it never violated academic freedom; and it will be changing that indefensible, donor-involvement clause. It’s on the case and standing tall for academic integrity.

The one facet it won’t be touting: “We’ve been known to sign agreements we don’t keep.”

In the end, Gov. Rick Scott likely will get what he deserves.

*For brazenly buying an election.

*For outsourcing his ideology to right-wing think tanks.

*For caring more about the approval of Tea Party zealots and the Koch Brothers than those concerned about the stewardship of a state whose ecosystem is as fragile as its economy. 

*For being dismissive of and unavailable to those who disagreed with his priorities–not just the media.        

*For treating public records as a bothersome affront.    

*For promoting himself as a job-creating avatar whose early track record includes jettisoning jobs and pre-empting future ones. And then taking credit for business-cycle growth after an economic bottoming-out.  

*For comporting himself as a small-government zealot who signs off on mandatory drug tests and intrusive, self-congratulatory robocalls to voters. 

*For providing Stephen Colbert with entirely too much material. “Flori-DUH” is back.

But ultimately–and ironically– he couldn’t stay on course, however perverse. SunRail, with the high-profile backing of Winter Park Republicans U.S. Rep Dan Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon, was waiting. The real litmus test of “principle.”

It was always clear that Mica’s real priority was SunRail, not the high-speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa. And he had the clout, including lobbying heft, to make a special-interest stand–and Scott caved. The governor was not about to go to the mattresses for his “taxpayers-on-the-hook” principle. Especially since he couldn’t use President Obama as a stimulus foil.

So now the Tea Party is angry at betrayal, while independents and Democrats see raw hypocrisy and unconscionable blundering and pandering.

The latter remember the $2.4 billion high-speed line that would not have cost Florida anything to build and would not have put the state “on the hook” for construction-cost overruns or operating losses. And would have been a redevelopment and jobs catalyst for the Orlando-Tampa megalopolis. No matter how the Reason and Cato Institutes spun it for Scott.

The $1.28 billion Poinciana-Deland commuter line that is SunRail will cost Florida taxpayers more than $650 million. It will create far fewer jobs and carry far fewer riders than the high-speed line would have. No wonder the federal government dubbed SunRail one of the least cost-effective rail projects in the country.

If possible, Scott’s abysmal approval ratings could fall further.

No wonder some influential Republicans are already speculating about potential primary challengers to Scott, such as ambitious Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, in 2014. (Much, of course, will depend on how Scott impacts President Obama’s Florida strategy next year.)

But, Scott, as noted, is likely to get what he deserves. Alas, Floridians won’t get what they deserve. They won’t get back what they lost. From more paradise paving to no economically energizing high-speed rail. Helluva legacy in the works.