Commentary on statewide issues.
First, the good news.
The Florida Power & Light Sarasota solar plant was recently dedicated.
The bad news? The Sunshine State, which has approximately 8.5 million homes, now has a total of one solar plant, including the one in Sarasota. It can provide enough energy to power 55 of those 8.5 million homes.
Gov. Charlie Crist, we are continuously reminded, is on a roll. The popular Republican hybrid has been riding high since hitting the daily double with John McCain and Amendment 1.
No one doubts Crist’s political instincts – ever since taking one for the team and sacrificially running against the unbeatable Bob Graham in the 1998 senate race. It brought Crist statewide name recognition and a bunch of IOUs. And his gut obviously didn’t desert him when it came to getting out in front on behalf of fellow maverick McCain as well as the delusory property-tax cut.
But if Crist really wants to take one for the home team — as in the state of Florida and its long-term economic viability — there’s something that needs all the political capital and bully-pulpit skills he can muster. Right now.
How about trying really hard to help fix a broken tax system, one that hasn’t changed meaningfully since LeRoy Collins was governor? One that has yielded – thanks to the end of the rapid-growth era and the onset of mortgage meltdowns and property-tax cut fever — a $2 billion shortfall. And, no, that locust-like, once-every-20-years Taxation and Budget Reform Commission won’t do anything dramatic.
It’s time for Florida’s quintessential populist — the one who’s “open-minded” and all about doing “the people’s business” — to do the right thing by getting behind the sort of tax reform that Florida’s 21st-century economy demands. The sort of tax reform that would make possible truly substantial property-tax cuts across the board. The sort of tax reform that is, perforce, politically dicey and would take guts as well as “open-mindedness.”
To wit:
*There’s the $100 billion laundry list of sales-tax exemptions, a sizable chunk of which is NOT for food, prescription drugs, health services and solar-energy investments.
*We are a service economy. Yet, we don’t tax services. Sure, it cost Bob Martinez in his re-election bid, but a real leader with a real feel for the financial fix that Florida is in today won’t continue to treat services like another political third rail.
*And as Florida Tax Watch has noted, this state could reduce property taxes by at least $2 billion annually if Florida collected sales taxes owed on Internet purchases. Of course, it’s problematic, but nearly two dozen states belong to the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, which hopes to build enough leverage to prod Congress into mandating collection of e-sales taxes by retailers. Florida is not among those states.
*And then there’s Floridians’ birthright: No to even a minimal state income tax, the least regressive alternative of all.
Meanwhile, Crist keeps manipulating the ad hoc shells of the revenue-raising game. Expand the lottery. Sell the lottery. Lease bridges. Raid a trust fund. Oversell Seminole gambling. Impose strip-club surcharges. Delegate state services to locals.
The time for making the tough, gutsy calls is never politically ideal. But with the governor riding high and Florida’s future riding on serious revenue reform, the time right now is as good as it will get.
The passage of Amendment 1, even with the 60 per cent threshold, is a reminder of what is so critical to the passing of a referendum issue. How well financed the opposing sides are and who has the better demagogues are obvious. But even more determinative is how the issue is viewed in its most simplistic terms.
We have the law of unintended consequences imposed upon us thanks to “smaller class sizes.” Who’s not in favor of better student-teacher ratios? The average homesteaded home owner will now save $240 per annum, but might not like the quid pro quo of services reduced or eliminated. Who’s not in favor of paying less in taxes?
And remember how Gov. Jeb Bush characterized his educational reforms and initiatives? We have the onerous FCATs because the issue was couched in terms of “accountability” in our schools. Who’s not in favor of accountability?
The question ultimately begged is this: Anyone not in favor of reading the fine print?
The signs were manifest.
The literal ones: “Florida (heart) Straight Talk.” “Tampa Loves McCain.” “Florida Stands With McCain.” “Veterans For McCain.” “Supporting The Mac: Martinez, Crist, Stallone.” (Take that, Chuck Norris.) And, interestingly enough, “McCain Protecting Your Pocketbook” and “McCain = Prosperity.”
The music: upbeat ’60s Motown (The Four Tops) – and ironic: “I Can’t Help Myself.”
The introduction: as politically high profile as it gets in Florida — Gov. Charlie Crist.
The message: Brief and blunt.
The rhetoric: red meat applause lines.
Those who jammed a break-out room at Tampa Convention Center last week to hear feisty, 71-year-old John McCain were not disappointed. “Keeping America safe” was the unvarnished theme. To be sure, there was a sidebar on better veterans’ health care and a promise that McCain “will call Americans to serve” a cause “greater than their self interest.”
The Arizona senator also took less than 30 seconds to remind true believers that he’s on the right side of technology and innovation and definitely in favor of the government getting “out of the way of business.” That was it on the economy. Except for the unspoken fact that his campaign was battling insolvency.
Make no mistake, this whistle stop was all about trenchant warfare — a national security stream of conscious for the masses. Outgoing rhetorical rounds that referenced “The transcendent challenge of Islamic extremism.” And reminders that: “The central battleground is Iraq
As this state’s Jan. 29 Florida primary draws nears, this much — despite months-long, Cassandra-like warnings to the contrary — seems evident. Yes, our Florida primary votes will matter and, no, no Florida voter will be “disenfranchised.”
Big, momentum-assuring lifts await the primary winners of the nation’s pre-eminent swing state, one that is a demographic microcosm of the United States. And don’t be surprised if the infuriating “boycott” gets parsed even more this month. Florida is that important.
As to the seating of delegates, does anyone actually expect the conventions to determine the nominees? Not even those nostalgic for smoke-filled-room cabals think so.
Thus, the nominees will be known beforehand and will come to the conventions for their coronations. And they will have the most clout when it comes to making sure that all delegates are seated in Denver (Democrats) and Minneapolis (Republicans).
It’s called self-interest, something that political candidates with an eye toward the general election are well schooled in.
Word is that Democrats will seriously challenge U.S. Representatives Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart of South Florida this November. This is significant because the Congressionally entrenched, Cuban-American brothers are the consummate hard liners when it comes to supporting the failed, counter-productive Cuban embargo.
The two Democrats are Raul Martinez, the ex-mayor of Hialeah and Joe Garcia, the former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. Martinez would run against LD-B in District 21 and Garcia against MD-B in District 25.
It’s worth keeping an eye on. Nothing major will change nationally until it happens in South Florida. Obviously changing Cuban-policy attitudes have yet to be reflected at the ballot box.
We all know what the Jan. 29 Florida presidential primary has begot, especially on the Democratic side. Candidates have sworn not to do any primary “campaigning” here. But they – or their surrogates – can still come in to the Sunshine State ATM and fundraise. That such a scenario is as ludicrous as it is hypocritical is well documented.
But according to the media, Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who doesn’t have the name recognition of Hillary Clinton, has been particularly hamstrung. And according to conventional wisdom, which is often more conventional than wise, Obama hasn’t, alas, been able to get his message to the state since the “boycott” was announced this summer. This is media mantra. This is nonsense.
You’d have to be comatose or living in a cave to not be privy to any candidate’s message. Especially in the nation’s pre-eminent swing state, where candidate organizations aren’t exactly sitting on their hands. You don’t have to attend a fund-raiser or a town hall meeting to find out where candidates stand. If newspapers, network television, cable talking heads, myriad debates and the blogosphere aren’t enough, than the problem obviously transcends a sham boycott.
Frankly, you’d hope that a candidate wouldn’t want the vote of anyone who, despite being part of the world’s most wired electorate, still couldn’t find a “message.”
The University of “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” Florida continues on its slippery-slope, First Amendment descent. The latest was the politically correct, administrative putdown of a campus group that sponsored a showing of the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.
Posters advertising “Radical Islam Wants You Dead” as a movie tease prompted more than official disapproval. A vice president of student affairs demanded an apology because the publicity approach was offensive to Muslims on campus.
Two points:
*”Radical Islam Wants You Dead” is protected speech, even if it offends. Communicating in this democracy can, at times, be discomforting, unpalatable and insulting to some – or to most or, seemingly sometimes, to all. But it’s the price we pay for unsupressed, free speech.
*Second, “Radical Islam Wants You Dead” is, quite arguably, true. To anyone paying attention in the post/9-11 world, it’s not exactly hyperbole or character assassination. In fact, “You” also includes non-radical Muslims.
And, yes, I’ve seen Obsession . It ends, appropriately enough, with the famous quote of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
It still applies.
In the aftermath of the academic scandal that has befallen Florida State University football players, two things are clear.
First, any time you let students, let alone student-athletes, take an exam online, you’re obviously courting trouble. Apparently an instructor giving the same (Music and Western Culture) test year after year wasn’t sufficient help. What a travesty; the biggest academic sham since Deion Sanders pretended to be a student his senior year.
Second, FSU should be glad that Steve Spurrier’s no longer at the University of Florida. We know how he turned the Foot Locker flap into “Free Shoes University.” Imagine what he could do — and still might — with a team wracked by as many as 25 academic-fraud suspensions heading, ironically, to the Music City Bowl.
Don’t look for any presidential candidate, including the Democrats, to show real geo-political guts on Cuba. Why should they when no member of Florida’s congressional delegation does? And that’s the way it (embar)goes.