Reading Rubio

It’s not surprising that the position of Marco Rubio, a proponent of expanded offshore oil drilling, would be under increased scrutiny in the aftermath of the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

Neither is it surprising that Rubio’s response was well parsed and politically prudent.  In effect, he said: “Let’s investigate this really, really thoroughly and not move ahead on more drilling right now, although I suspect this was a freakish occurrence — likely not enough to preclude future drilling, which, to be sure, is no less necessary.”

Among comments Rubio did literally make, this one as quoted by the St. Petersburg Times: “I believe you can safely drill for oil. It’s been done all over the world, it’s been done in the Gulf of Mexico. We should be very concerned with what led to this disaster, and until that question is answered I don’t think we can move forward on anything else.”

Also among Rubio comments, this one quoted by the Tampa Tribune: “The question is why did this happen and is this something that has the potential to be commonplace or is it an isolated instance…It would be irresponsible to make any line-in-the-sand statements until all the information is known.”

So, maybe it’s not surprising that the Times’ headline was: “Rubio Backs Off Drilling Support,” while the Trib went with: “Rubio Won’t Back Off Stance On Gulf Drilling.”

Something for everyone except old-school editors who still venerate truth-in-headlines convention.

All things to all readers — while not abandoning your “drill here, drill now, pay less” base. What a scenario. On balance, as it were, opposite-take headlines was good news for Rubio.

It’s Definitely Not “Floridull”

Just when you thought Florida’s singular senate race — featuring a Tea Party Cuban, a newly-minted, blockbuster independent and a potentially history-making African-American  — couldn’t get any more bizarre, it does.  Witness the addition of Jeff Greene to the Democratic mix.

In all likelihood, U. S. Rep. Kendrick Meek will still inherit the Dems’ primary blessing, but Greene will get attention. He will buy it. Tons of it. He’s that rich. Ad agencies and electronic media will appreciate the stimulus package.

But he’s not your basic billionaire. Or even basic billionaire Democrat.  He didn’t make his money the old-fashioned way; he came out way ahead in the credit default swaps sweepstakes.  And Mike Tyson was best man, as it were, at his wedding. And Heidi Fleiss crashed at his guest house after getting out of the slammer.  

Greene’s been here all of two years. He relocated from California in 2008 and recently bought Malcolm Glazer’s Palm Beach pad.  

His message: He’s not a “career politician” and will not have to “take a penny of special interest money.”

Close enough. That’s what he’s not, and what he won’t do. That’ll have to do.

Remember when it was the Republican primary that was drawing all the attention and nightly notoriety? Seems like an eon ago now.

Brown-Waite’s Collusion

U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, until recently best known for quoting Larry the Cable Guy, not voting for the stimulus plan, being against gun control and mis-identifying Puerto Ricans as “foreign citizens,” has further tainted her tarnished legacy. The four-term Brooksville Republican from Florida’s 5th Congressional District has just orchestrated the selection of her likely replacement.

By saying nothing about her plans to retire until the last minute to anyone but her hand-picked successor, Hernando County Sheriff Richard Nugent, she effectively pre-empted other viable candidates from entering the Congressional race. Two notable Republicans, Public Service Commission Chairwoman Nancy Argenziano and state Sen. Mike Fasano, say they would have considered running had they been accorded a head’s up. They are not pleased.

Neither should the Central Florida electorate be.

Keep in mind that the Congressional 5th is GOP-skewed, and Sheriff Nugent is likely its next U.S. representative. This is obviously what Brown-Waite wants. 

While it’s well within her purview to endorse whomever she wants, it’s not Brown-Waite’s job to select. That’s for the voters. She, in effect, just held her own primary, screened out capable, would-be candidates and handpicked Nugent, who had qualified just before the deadline.

This is beyond heavy-handed orchestration. This is an arrogant  affront to the democratic process itself.

 Even at a time of nasty, polarizing politics — and attendant cynicism with politicians across the spectrum — this is a new low. Ginny Brown-Waite’s legacy now includes this sleazy, presumptuous lesson in stealth politics.

Tenure And Common Sense

So much, thanks to Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto, for the top-down, heavy-handed Senate Bill 6. But the issues of teacher tenure, pay and overall accountability are still alive and, well, divisive and will return.

Whatever the form, here’s hoping that a Tallahassee consensus can rally around — or at least accept — a few fundamental principles. To wit:

*Tenure should change because teaching can’t be a sinecure for those who are not very good at teaching kids. Being boring, irrelevant and ineffective should be a fire-able offense.

*Any tenure and pay changes should be premised on teacher input — and not overly dependent on tests that are too vulnerable to variables that skew results.

*Let’s not evaluate teachers as if they were foremen responsible for the widget output of generic shift workers.  Schools aren’t learning factories. Indeed, many are de facto, one-stop social agencies for whoever and whatever comes coursing through their portals.

Tallahassee: A Skewed Priorities Update

Here we go again: The Florida Legislature’s annual exercise in avoiding necessary revisions in the state’s antiquated, revenue-raising formula. Once again, no one in Tallahassee wants to talk about taxing services, eliminating unjustified sales-tax exemptions or getting serious about taxing Internet retailers. 

In fact, if the House had its way, it would help balance the budget by redirecting more than $460 million from the state’s transportation trust fund. Now it’s compromised to a proposed raid of less than $200 million. That could still mean project delays for a state that is already transportation-challenged. And it would still  mean undermining one of the better job-generating catalysts at our disposal.

The bottom line: (mega-growth era) business as usual during times that are anything but.

Cuban-American Politics: Como Siempre

Florida Rep. David Rivera has upped the ante again on pandering politics. The Miami Republican who nearly succeeded in imposing exorbitant fees on travel agents booking flights to Cuba two years ago is back at it.

This time the man who hopes to replace Cuban hard-line U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in Congress has proposed an export gambit. He wants Florida to ban the distribution of its “certificate of free sale” on goods headed to Cuba. It’s not that much, but it’s symbolic. While “No certified ham croquettes for Cuba!” won’t become a memorable rallying cry, it will doubtless be politically helpful in a congressional district with lots of Cuban-Americans.  

By way of an explanation other than political self-interest, Rivera cites the federal government’s incongruous list of those countries it accuses of sponsoring terrorism. Cuba is still implausibly lumped in with the likes of Iran and Sudan.

Or maybe Rivera knows more than he can let on. Indeed, if Cuba does have ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, it sure in hell shouldn’t get certified croquettes from Florida.

Tenure Compromise Is Best Approach

When it comes to the controversial mess that is teacher tenure, this much seems evident:

*Teacher security, per se, is not a good enough reason for tenure, because it’s the flip side of the dead-wood argument. It practically takes a felony to can somebody. Ask Stephanie Ragusa and Debra Lafave. Being irrelevant, boring, lazy and ineffective are not fire-able offenses. That’s what transfers are for. Make it somebody else’s problem.

*This isn’t higher education, where the political pendulum can still potentially wreak havoc with academic freedom.

*We require teachers to be more than knowledgeable in their subject areas. We also expect them to be inspiring, caring and willing to work beyond 8-to-4 for less-than-market wages. If they’re also coaches or sponsors, their stipends are less than minimum wage. We want them to be beacons, even amid the miasma of societal dysfunction. So some sense of security is only fair.

Altering the rules makes sense. Relevant employment standards and real-world accountability. Bring it. The current system still protects the dregs.

But change can’t be dictated from Tallahassee. It’s also fair to give teachers meaningful input into the criteria — and provide support for those trying hard but struggling. What has been proposed by the Florida Legislature, featuring disproportionate weight being given to test results, is a counterproductive exercise in top-down, politically-driven, heavy-handed disrespect.

* While we all sign on to accountability in the abstract, let’s be mindful that everything in the workplace is not equally quantifiable. So let’s not evaluate teachers as if they were foremen to be judged by the widget output of their shift workers. Schools aren’t learning factories.  Many are, in effect, one-stop social agencies for whoever and whatever comes coursing through their portals. This includes the learning disabled, the de facto homeless and criminal justice system wards in waiting.   

* One other point. Perhaps the only quotable thing uttered by President Calvin Coolidge was that “Nobody has the right to strike against the public welfare.” President Ronald Reagan used this as the basis for firing striking air traffic controllers.

Now under Florida law, teachers are not allowed to strike. But we just saw a mini, strike-esque “sickout” by thousands of Miami-Dade public school teachers in protest of bills to abolish tenure. It turned a school day in the state’s largest school district into a substitute-infused travesty. This kind of overreaction hardly helps, especially when the opponents are posturing politicians. More to the point, it’s  never appropriate to hold students hostage to adult politics and leverage games. 

We expect it of our politicians, not our teachers. It’s not professional. It’s not right. It’s not smart.

McCollum: Politics And A Mandate Waiver

Whether the Bill McCollum-led federal lawsuit over health care reform is successful or not is likely moot.

Indeed, the legal consensus is that the Pensacola-filed suit, which says the Constitution hardly  authorizes the U.S. to mandate that “all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage,” will probably not prove a winner. Overcoming a couple of Constitutional clauses — namely supremacy and commerce — is likely too daunting.  But more to the pragmatic political point, Florida’s Republican attorney general will have won if he can convert the suit to political momentum and ride the tide of anti-health care reform partisanship to gubernatorial victory in November.

Early returns indicate McCollum, who has received plenty of national face time for his “living tax” penalty contention, is already benefiting in the short term. His gubernatorial lead over the lesser-known Alex Sink, the state’s Chief Financial Officer, has now widened in the aftermath of the high-profile lawsuit with 12 other attorneys general. The recent Mason-Dixon Polling & Research survey showed that a majority (51 percent) of registered Florida voters approved of McCollum’s lawsuit, and 39 percent opposed it.

Strategically, that’s one way to diffuse a charisma-challenged, status quo-venerating “career politician” label. Toss some energizing, legal red meat at the GOP base, the Tea Partiers and disaffected independents and Democrats, and enough voters could forget about all those Howdy Doody look-alike references.

But the lawsuit gambit is only as effective as the campaign dynamics it’s intended to stoke. Political tides rush as well as recede. Anyone can take a snapshot, especially during these partisan, protean times.  

For example, health care reform might be perceived differently by the public in the fall. Keep in mind that by election day, a number of health care reform benefits will already be in effect. Among them: providing immediate access to high-risk pools for those with no insurance due to pre-existing conditions; barring insurers from denying people coverage when they get sick; barring insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions; barring insurers from imposing lifetime caps on coverage; requiring insurers to permit children to stay on their parents’ policies until they turn 26; and reducing the “doughnut hole” in Medicare drug coverage.

Repeal would then mean undoing what a number of voters just might want to keep. And the mandate for most people to obtain coverage or face penalties doesn’t kick in until 2014.

There’s also the Obama variable. Even his staunchest critics concede the president, even if he is the socialist from hell, is formidable when he’s on his game and in campaign mode.

But if McCollum truly wanted to max out on chances of his lawsuit’s passage, he would do this: He would add an “individual waiver” to cancel out the “individual mandate.”  Moreover, it couldn’t help but energize the individual-liberties-on-steroids set.

Something like: “I’m young, healthy and pretty much invulnerable, if not immortal. But if, by some unimaginably implausible happenstance, I should find myself in dire need of medical assistance and immediate transport to an emergency room, it’s permissible to leave me unattended. It wouldn’t be fair to charge taxpayers, given that I’ve formally opted out of helping others. That’s my individual right, and I’ll die for it, if necessary.”

Gubernatorial Candidates’ No Guts Approach

This much  seems certain about the next governor of Florida, whether it is Attorney General Bill McCollum or Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink. Neither will touch two topics that need more than touching if Florida’s best interest is to be served: an overhaul of the state’s antiquated revenue-raising formula and an enlightened self-interest approach to Cuba. Both would probably make the candidates’ bucket lists from hell.

They’re off the table because a candidate still needs a modicum of political guts to put them there. On the budget front, it’s a lot easier to offer safe suggestions on efficiency to Florida TaxWatch than incur the possible wrath of special interests. On Cuba, it’s still prudent to not rile the exile community in the sovereign state of South Florida.

Florida is facing a $3-billion budget shortfall. The future is financially fragile. Stimulus dollars will wind down and Charlie Crist’s legacy — stopgap measures to buy time before an early exit — will not be enough for post-Ponzi Florida.

Somebody has to say if not now, then when do we finally get serious about unjustified sales-tax exemptions, including services? Somebody other than Rep. Kevin Ambler has to get out in front on the issue of collecting Internet sales taxes.

As for Cuba, why should Congress and the incrementalist Obama Administration change when one of the biggest beneficiaries of an open Cuba — Florida — doesn’t consider it a priority? As if trade, tourism and investment opportunities are immaterial — especially during the Great Recession. And it’s hardly inconsequential that there would be humanitarian benefits to those impacted by a Cold War-era embargo and that the U.S. would benefit geopolitically, especially in Latin America.

It’s obvious there is no governor on the political ambitions of either candidate. Unfortunately, there  is one on doing the right thing for Florida during the most challenging economic climate in memory. 

Cranking up the bully pulpit on sales-tax exemptions and a smart, pragmatic policy toward Cuba have never made more sense. Alas, we’ll sooner see a candidate campaign on the merits of suing over health-care reform’s “individual mandate” than one who would manifest political guts and real leadership about what’s best for Florida.

The Case For Civics

When it comes to a Legislative session, it’s a given that the annual Tallahassee gathering will feature its share of problematic bills. They can range from the absurdly unnecessary to the recklessly dangerous. This year’s Exhibits A and B would arguably be the ban on bestiality and the proscription on adoptive agencies asking prospective parents if they have any guns around the house.

And yet this session looks promising — in both the House and Senate — for a requirement that has been too long deferred — the teaching of civics in middle school. The wonder is that we’ve tolerated its absence so long.

The need to know about government and the value of civic engagement is especially acute in a state such as Florida, where so many are from so many other places — such that a sense of community is much more of a challenge.

And getting an early handle on how government works can help prepare tomorrow’s voters to discern whether, frankly, it does or doesn’t. And who knows, perhaps a better grounding in civics will lessen the need for so many adults to outsource their views — from term limits and Hometown Democracy to the intent of the founding fathers — to partisan political hucksters.

Two other points. The civics class, aimed at being in place by 2012, comes with an end-of-course assessment test. In a state educational environment that defines accountability — and priority subjects — via tests, it was the correct, pragmatic route to go.

Second, this effort deserves a shout out to former Governor and Senator Bob Graham, who, along with former U.S. Rep. Lou Frey, worked tirelessly to make the teaching of civics in our schools a priority. Graham has long been making the case that our system of government is only as good as its citizens. We undereducate them in the basics at our own democratic peril.