Category: Florida

The aforementioned U.S. Rep Dan Mica, presumably with a straight face, said this in the aftermath of Gov. Rick Scott’s approval of SunRail: “This is as significant for the state as when Henry Flagler brought the railroad to Florida and when President Eisenhower initiated the interstate.”

That’s not even acceptable hyperbole.

Jon Huntsman is making history, as he has recently pointed out. His is the first Republican presidential campaign to be headquartered in Florida. He has set up national shop in Orlando–where his wife grew up.

Huntsman, a refreshing respite from celebrity and caricature candidates, may not win his party’s presidential nomination, but his entrance into the GOP race at least guarantees that civility will have a forum. The process will be better off with his inclusion, even if that’s of no consequence to tea partiers.

Just one incongruous campaign inclusion in the early going. In the understandable effort to staff up with Florida-savvy advisers, he has hired Susie Wiles. She’s the former campaign manager for Rick Scott.

When it comes to Gov. Rick Scott, there is, as we’ve seen, no middle ground. It’s zero-sum city.

To his followers, he is the no-nonsense, non-career politician with solid tea party credentials who had a jobs plan and a taxpayer-friendly agenda. He reminded everyone that government, to quote Ronald Reagan, was the “problem.” The bigger the badder.

Scott backers loved that he ran against a “socialist” president, as well as for lower taxes and less regulation. He also wasn’t afraid to put the liberal, gotcha media in its place. When the subject was infrastructure, Scott made it clear that he meant ports, not rails. Jobs mattered most, he underscored, when they were in the private sector. Budgets were there for the cutting. Waste would be found and given the heave ho. No time like the present, he said in mantra-like fashion, to return to basics, grow Florida with business incentives and “get to work.”

For the opposition, gashed budgets gored more than “earmark” oxen. Education, the environment and smart growth, for example, were hardly fringe constituencies. Privatization was not a synonym for panacea. Transparency in government was turning into an oxymoron. The elimination of some 4,500 state jobs during double-digit unemployment seemed to mock the “jobs budget” label. Giving back high-speed rail billions to the feds will forever stick in the megalopolis craw of I-4-relegated Orlando and Tampa.

To the other side, Gov. Scott will always be reviled for spending $70 million to buy his election and for being tainted by Medicare fraud. He will continue to take ad hominem hits for looking like Skeletor, Count Voldemort or Bailiff Bull.

And yet.

While the middle ground remains an ideological — and increasingly personal — sinkhole, the governor still has had a theoretical card to play. The begrudging-respect card. The track record of most politicians is not one of doing what they say — especially when there’s mounting opposition to what they’ve been saying. Scott didn’t blink.

So the “‘I-don’t-govern-based-on-polls’-is-more-than-rhetoric” card was available. Along with the “I-will-take-the-personal-short-term hits-to-get-all-of-us-to-where-we-need-to-be-in-the-long-term” card. As well as the “I’m-not-two-faced, otherwise-why-would-I-be-wearing-this-one?” card. And, ultimately, the “take-the-heat-and-show-some-guts” card.

But that opportunity, it appears, has passed.

*Otherwise, Scott would not have gone to that Eustis tea party rally in February to propose his version of the budget. Since when is an ideological panderfest an appropriate venue for how everybody’s money is to be spent?

*Otherwise, he would not have gone to The Villages, that prototypical conservative retirement community in central Florida, to formally sign the $69.1-billion 2011-12 state budget. In so doing, he acquiesced to doing the signing in The Villages’ (Republican Party of Florida-rented) town square at a “private event.” Since when is party affiliation a qualification to witness the public’s business?  Such that sheriff’s deputies morphed into gubernatorial goon squads to deny entrance to non-acolytes and non-true believers.    

*Otherwise, Scott (and the Republican Party of Florida) would not have conspired to go robo later that same day with automatic “spoofed” calls to voters to partisanly spin Scott’s budget. Including the disingenuous take of diverting “special interest waste” into much worthier causes — such as education. And not including the $370 million in vilified stimulus funds stashed in the budget. I know, I got one of those self-congratulatory paeans.

*Otherwise, he would have stayed in Tallahassee, looked Floridians — and their surrogates — in the eye, signed the budget with the pomp-free conviction of one who largely did what he said he would do and accepted the role of naysayers as well as yeasayers. Instead he did cocooned road shows for the benefit of those who constitute his 29 percent popularity rate. How do you respect that?

And in so doing, he likely signaled that more us-vs.-them, partisan wagon-circling will follow — and likely assured that 29 percent will probably be a high-water mark.

Whatever happened to Kurt Browning? Didn’t he used to be a public official worthy of respect for his 26 years as Pasco County Supervisor of Elections and his tenure as Charlie Crist’s secretary of state? Wasn’t he known to have more than glaring deficits when it came to independence and integrity? Didn’t a number of Dems think he would have been a good choice to replace Jim Norman had it come to that?

And now he’s the point man still shilling for the reviled HB 1355 that Gov. Rick Scott recently signed into law? That transparently partisan “elections bill” that amounts to a frontal assault on the voting franchise.

Kurt Browning, we hardly knew ye.

Florida State University finds itself mired in an embarrassing position as a result of the apparently Faustian deal it cut with the Charles G. Koch Foundation to allow Koch to fund and approve faculty positions in its economics department. Hardly academic freedom’s and integrity’s finest hour in Tallahassee. We’re now seeing scathing references to “FSU: For Sale University.”

Which certainly puts Steve Spurrier’s Seminole taunt from 1994 into context. To recap: the NCAA investigated FSU (and four players were suspended) about an after-hours shopping spree by some FSU football players–arranged by agents–at a Tallahassee Foot Locker store.

Spurrier rhetorically pounced and told the Polk County Gator Club that FSU stood for “Free Shoes University.” A funny, skewering line by an in-state rival. FSU officials felt it was a cheap shot.

But “For Sale University,” to be sure, is not coming from rival football coaches entertaining their boosters. FSU President Eric Barron should be more upset with dubious private foundation access than with the media calling attention to an ethical slippery slope.

The Obama Administration’s position on Cuba (read: economic embargo and travel restrictions) has been one of incremental change. Political pragmatics over doing the right thing. The rationale: Why unnecessarily provoke South Florida exile-community politicians plus the right-wing punditocracy and their loyal followers, when you have higher-priority battles to fight?

But maybe the U.S. Supreme Court can give the Administration some cover. The high court has been asked by the American Civil Liberties Union and several Florida state universities (including USF) to review a (2006) state law that bans Florida universities and public schools from using state money–or even getting creative with their budgets–for travel to countries on America’s “sponsors of terrorism” list.  Cuba is on that list–as are Iran, Sudan and Syria. Last September the law was upheld by a federal appeals court in Atlanta–after having been declared unconstitutional previously by a U.S. District judge in Miami.

As for the Supreme Court, it has invited the Administration to file a brief outlining the U.S. stance on the law.

The legal ball is now in the court of the U.S. (acting) solicitor general, Neal Katyal, who would represent the Administration.

Not within the purview of the Court, however, is another matter. What in the world is Cuba doing on that “sponsors of terrorism” list?  Three Mideast powder kegs and a Cold War relic that is nothing but a personal-vendetta target for the sovereign state of South Florida? It makes no sense. Nor did it when the list was renewed–less than two years ago.

“It could have been worse.”

That’s where the rationalization bar for meaningful, genuinely helpful legislation amid challenging times is now set in Tallahassee, aka GOPsterWorld.  Yeah, it could have been worse. We could have been saddled with dueling Supreme Courts, an Arizona-like immigration policy,  a swaggering “Gunshine State” moniker and ongoing, unaddressed bestiality subplots.  

The sobering reality is that we’re left to ponder a Legislature increasingly rallying around tea party bullet points, ideological slogans and simplistic mantras. From anything-in-the-name-of- “accountability”-must-be-good to anything-with-an-Obama-appellation-must-be-bad. And who but the chronically lazy or the terminally liberal could possibly find fault with “let’s get to work” as a recession-recovery theme? When in doubt, deregulate it or privatize it or untax it.  

But the disturbing reality is this.  This state is now worse off. The very tip-of-the-iceberg outrages:

*Growth mismanagement is back. The bottom line: The welcome mat is back out for the paving-over-paradise crowd. The Sunshine State is betting it can sprawl its way to economic recovery. Even as the prospect of more than 400,000 foreclosed homes coming on the market would seem to preclude such a scenario. Worse yet, a resultant compromised environment–from weakened wetlands protection to degraded water quality standards–now beckons. Work that into a sales pitch.

But it will bring more (construction) jobs, say proponents. A specious trade-off at best, but not even enough to replace those lost when high-speed rail was sent elsewhere by Gov. Rick Scott, say opponents. The opponents remain right.

*And when faced with a $3.7 billion shortfall in a $69.7 billion budget, why not target public education for a big chunk ($1.35 billion) of it? That’s about an 8 percent hit. Overhauling tenure made sense, but overkilling the budget is counterproductive in a state where educational deficits (not taxes) are the biggest impediment (along with transportation shortcomings) to recruiting the “best and the brightest” and their jobs of the future–immediate and long-term.

In any other year–in any other era–we would be most concerned by the comeback of special interest, euphemistically-obscene “Leadership Funds” and various measures to cynically suppress voter niches in the disingenuous name of (faux) fraud prevention. Plus the privatization  of (South Florida county) prisons, the maintenance of property insurance inequities, the “revival” of the state economy at the expense of counties and cities, the placement of 3 million Medicaid recipients into HMOs, the intrusion into abortions with mandatory ultrasound counseling, the limits on doctors asking patients about guns at home, further cuts of state benefits for unemployed Floridians and the elimination of 4,500 state jobs during double-digit unemployment.

And once again, there was no movement on the revenue-raising side because that would presumably mock the overarching, anti-tax sentiment and rhetoric of the majority.

As a result, no online travel-tax change. Online travel companies will still be allowed to pay taxes on the wholesale price of hotel rooms they resell. But at least there was a bill addressing the issue and the implied acknowledgement of a less-than-fair playing field. Not so with the dicey subject of sales-tax exemptions, including the third-rail issue of equitable sales taxes on services. Their advocacy, of course, would have amounted to political suicide or at least a tea party pillory.  

And the chances were again greater that the Legislature would consider more gambling scenarios than risk taxing internet retailers. Florida continues to be indifferent to a possible piece of e-commerce sales, now estimated at nearly $3.5 trillion nationally.

And nothing will change under one-party rule. Unless it gets worse.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d probably be thinking there is no end to the Libertarian, tea party incursion in Tallahassee. Now we have learned that the billionaire Koch brothers are behind the funding of some economics department positions at Florida State University. What’s next? Rick Scott as an adjunct prof? Is there no governor on ideological encroachment?

But the Koch compact is surely a coincidence, even if one Koch brother, Charles, cofounded the conservative Cato Institute, and the other brother, David, started the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which is quite simpatico with the tea party movement. It’s surely a coincidence that Florida Gov. Scott is an ardent tea totaler whose ideology includes Cato Institute talking points.

But, seriously, it’s no coincidence that the Brothers Koch are represented on a college campus. It’s part of what they do with their money, estimated at more than $40 billion. They are staunchly anti-regulation free-enterprisers and look at academic departments — at universities known to be receptive to a diversity of economic views — as opportunities to advance their agendas.

And keep in mind, most universities define diversity in terms of their student bodies, not in terms of their faculties. Aside from Liberty University, Bob Jones University and the Academies, there aren’t many institutions of higher education with ideologically diverse faculties. Fostering free-market principles is the Koch cause.

Several other points.

* The Koch-FSU deal was consummated in 2008. The conservative-driven, GOP election tsunami of 2010 was still two years away. It was mid reign of Gov. Charlie Crist, an ideological virgin. So much for conspiracy.

* It’s their money. The Kochs care passionately about unfettered free enterprise.  To that end, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation funnels grants — some a lot more than others — to more than 100 universities across the country. It includes the underwriting of the Mercatus Center at Virginia’s George Mason University, where faculty focus on “how institutions affect the freedom to prosper.”

* It’s FSU’s call. While there are those in Tallahassee who actually turn down donor money, cash-strapped public universities — as opposed to cash-strapped states — don’t have that luxury. In this case, FSU gets $1.5 million — over six years — for economics department positions that promote “political economy and free enterprise.” Then it’s up to the university and the donor to hash out the details.

* Speaking of FSU’s call, the Koch deal candidly smacks of a sell-out. Whereas most donors, no matter how prestigious and how appreciated and how generous, are limited in influence, Koch is accorded virtual veto power for its $250,000 per year.

Too little money for too much input. A classic lose-lose.

As for those donor details, they include a Koch-appointed advisory committee that, in effect, vets candidate applicants. Moreover, Koch can opt out if it doesn’t like the results, or if those hired don’t pass muster with Koch’s annual evaluations. Suffice it to say, not everyone agrees that the deal is compatible with viable definitions of academic freedom and university credibility.

* Not surprisingly, among those fervently defending the Koch-skewed relationship is Bruce Benson, who chairs FSU’s economics department and sends annual progress reports to Koch. He’s also an ardent free-marketer. He’s satisfied, he says, with his department’s resultant diversity spike and additional course options for students.

“I agree with what they believe,” explains Benson, “whether they give us money or not.”  

Chances are, the Kochs didn’t have to sign off on that comment.

Not that we needed reminding, but Sen. Marco Rubio has again indicated that when he comes to town next year for the GOP convention, it won’t be as part of a presidential ticket. He has again reiterated that, tea party buzz notwithstanding, he doesn’t want to be vice president. But once again he passed on a more candid rationale. For the record, he did not say:

            “Look, I’ve been a senator for all of a few months now and this is all, to be sure, very flattering, but I’m not, frankly, qualified. Being on a ticket should mean more than adding, say, demographic attractiveness and glibness to die for. It should mean that you’re fully capable of being next in line to succeed the president.

            “That’s way beyond my pay grade right now. So, no, I’m not the man for that job. Hell, Dan Quayle was better prepared. But in the event, God forbid, that fate would intervene and something were to happen, then someone better qualified will be in position to succeed President Bachmann.”

What a difference nine months makes. For Florida Senate President (and U.S. Senate GOP candidate) Mike Haridopolos, it’s the gestation period for a viable, Republican-primary, oil-drilling position.

Last summer, in the aftermath of the BP oil spill, Haridopolos was telling fellow Floridians that it was time for the Sunshine state to “turn the page” away from Gulf drilling. Of course it was. It’s no secret that America can’t drill its way to energy independence, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. The risk-reward ratio, including jobs, is an unimpressive non-starter. Even a number of Republicans had no choice but to agree with Haridopolos’ page-turning epiphany.

But that was then and this is clearly not. Gas prices have been spiking. So has Haridopolos’ energy rhetoric.

“We have to start drilling, we need to become more self-dependent,” he said in a recent interview. “We need to open up those new opportunities in the Gulf and ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). … America needs to lead by example.”

Apparently the example of 200 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico is no longer compelling. Neither, presumably, is BP’s less-than-helpful cooperation on victim compensation. Nor is the specter of Florida’s fragile eco-system and visitor-dependent economy being at the mercy of Deepwater Horizon, the sequel.

But it is a GOP primary position.