Category: Florida

“No matter how much the embargo critics talk, no matter how many press conferences they hold, the bottom line is they don’t have the votes.” – Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart to the Miami Herald, August 2009.

This might seem inappropriately judgmental and even harsh. Or worse. So be it. But when we see tragic and often horrific stories that somehow involve a government agency, such as the Florida Department of Children and Families, my first inclination is not to scapegoat the agency. No matter how understaffed, shortsighted or bureaucratically backward and inept.

 

The quintessential bottom line, it would seem, is this: There are some things in life for which there are no ultimate subsidies. Some things that are so fundamentally basic that government purview can’t be a reliable option.

 

Indeed, we’re talking human values and civilizational norms.

Come to think of it, perhaps Charlie Crist should have appointed himself to the senate seat being vacated by the eminently replaceable Mel Martinez.

 

Not for Gov. Charlie’s own sake, of course, because such a move would have been seen as presumptuous and, well, cheeky. But for the sake of Floridians who, having seen all that he hasn’t done for Florida, would at least have an opportunity to see Crist in a different context.

 

The Crist gubernatorial era, to be sure, is no crisis-management exemplar. More of a reminder that do-nothing, nice guys can finish first. But it shouldn’t be enough to merely wish that taxes and insurance rates would “drop like a rock.” It shouldn’t be enough to simply hope that Florida avoids a bad hurricane season. It shouldn’t be enough to opportunistically put your hand out and accept stimulus money to balance a budget imploding into a sinkhole. It shouldn’t be enough to pull a Pontius Pilate on growth management laws. It shouldn’t be enough to be on the side of the people vs. pythons.  

 

So, instead of having the voters ascribe George LeMieux’s proxy votes to Crist, why not have the declared 2010 candidate carve out his own track record in his own name and his own voice over these next 16 months? Arguably, this interim crucible is not the time to play Edgar Bergen or Paul Winchell.

 

Key votes on health care, climate change and maybe immigration reform are headed for Congressional climax. Wouldn’t it have been worth it to see how Charlie handled the moment – and the scrutiny? Wouldn’t it have been worth it if Crist were representing Florida – not LeMieux representing Crist?

 

And then Charlie could have hired LeMieux back as chief of staff/campaign manager again.

 

But instead it will be 40-year-old Sen. George LeMieux, R-Consultant, the youngest person in the U.S. Senate, and Charlie Crist’s Karl Rove. True to form, Charlie stuck with what was most self-serving. Even though the taxpayers paid the tab for his dog-and-pony interview charade. Even though LeMieux has no Washington experience.

 

But this surrogate-“maestro” hybrid does have a Crist connection unmatched by any of the other, better qualified candidates that were in the mix. In fact, his is the ultimate nexus.

  

“I know his soul,” explained Crist. How reassuring.

As we know, the reality of open travel between the U.S. and Cuba is in a state of flux. As we also know, Florida is positioned to be a major beneficiary.   

 

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor of Tampa has been working hard for months — out front and behind the scenes — to get TIA added to the short list (Los Angeles, Miami, New York) of airports authorized for direct flights to Cuba. That has mattered since the spring when President Obama moved to lift restrictions on Cuban-Americans traveling to their home island.

 

And that certainly matters to Tampa, whose historic soul is Cuba. Why should local and regional Cuban-Americans have to travel to Miami to fly to Havana?  Rep. Castor doesn’t think so and wants Tampa to get a piece of that travel action.

 

But the Cuban-American demographic is only a portion of the potential market for passengers to Cuba. That number could easily triple or quadruple once all Americans are restored their rights to travel freely to Cuba. That’s why it makes no sense – beyond business-as-usual, political calculation – for Tampa’s Democratic Congresswoman to not do everything in her power to fill as many planes from Tampa as possible.

 

Ironically, she, along with the other 26 members of the Florida Congressional delegation, has conspicuously not signed the “Freedom To Travel To Cuba Act.” But more than 150 members of Congress, whose states will benefit less than Florida from free travel to Cuba, have done so.

 

Rep. Castor is uniquely positioned to make a difference in opening up Cuba to American travel. She has the ear of some key people. So, let’s see if we have this right. She wants flights taking Cuban-Americans to Cuba to leave from Tampa because that’s good for them and good for TIA. But she doesn’t want as many passengers on those flights as possible?

This whole “birther’ idiocy now has a Florida connection. U.S. Rep. Bill Posey has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would require a presidential candidate to produce a birth certificate “together with such other documentation as may be necessary” to prove natural-born citizenship. It would kick in by 2012, in time to matter to incumbent President Barack Obama.

 

This is the same Brevard Republican who still can’t find time to add his name to the 159 signatories of HR 874, Rep. Bill Delahunt’s (D-Mass.) “Freedom To Travel To Cuba Act.”

Anybody else – during these turbulent economic times – find themselves taking frequent umbrage at stories that chronicle politicians’ fund-raising? It’s like rubbing salt into recessionary wounds – as well as reminding us that money is the root of all political success.

 

But especially those accounts that involve Gov. Charlie Crist. He has, obscenely enough, already raked in more than $4.3 million for his 2010 Republican Senate campaign.

 

That the governor is a pleasantly lightweight empty suit who gives political opportunism a bad name is now a given. Taxes and insurance rates never dropped like rocks. He never got out in front on actually trying to alter this state’s antiquated revenue-raising formula. He signed off on the growth laws-gutting, knavishly-named “Community Renewal Act.” He won’t promote trade with Cuba – and all the economic and jobs’ scenarios that can promise.

 

Crist did, however, get credit for taking federal stimulus money. That’s how low the accomplishment bar is. But the fed dollars will only serve as a stopgap as the state muddles through the next year and a half. And then, of course, it all becomes somebody else’s burgeoning problem. Nice career move, Charlie.

 

After one disappointingly lackluster term, Crist is out of here. To a place where he cannot make as much difference to Florida as he could have in Tallahassee. How’s that for chutzpah and irony?

 

But Crist has raised $4.3 million – in the first 50 days of his campaign. This is a testimonial either to “bundling” lobbyists who want to back an accessible winner, even a GOP-Lite one, or to those who genuinely are enamored of politicians with ideologies of raw expedience. Or to those who will pay any price to help get him out of Florida before the next crisis hits.

Python: Monty, yes; house pet, no. Why is this still an issue? Some things inherently make no sense.

 

We already know that gigantic snakes such as pythons and boas are incompatible with this state – or anywhere outside of their unique habitats, such as the jungles of Myanmar. Their presence is invasive in the Everglades; their ecological threat serious and documented. And with the application of common sense, we know that creatures that grow well beyond 20 feet and 200 pounds can be lethal to domestic pets and some humans – notably, children. Recently a toddler from Sumter County was suffocated by one.

 

And yet they are legal. The permit costs $100. Failure to have one is only a second-degree misdemeanor. The law also requires such snakes be secured — under lock and key. Obviously they always aren’t. The child killed in Sumter was victimized by an albino Burmese python. She was also victimized by its owner, who didn’t have a license, a secured environment or, seemingly, whatever sense he was ostensibly born with.

 

Most of the people who own jumbo snakes are not herpetologists. Who knows what the attraction is for all the non-herpetologists, although the thought is unsettling. I wouldn’t want them living next door. Officials estimate about 450 licensees are allowed to possess such “reptiles of concern.” They have no idea how many unlicensed, “reptiles of concern” owners there are.

 

Here’s hoping Florida Sen. Bill Nelson’s bill – which would include pythons on the list of injurious, non-native species that can’t be imported into the U.S. – now gets some traction. Unfortunately, it has taken a needless tragedy borne of unconscionable stupidity and negligence to formally add public safety to the environmental-havoc rationale.

 

And doesn’t it speak volumes when, courtesy of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, we actually have – and obviously need – an exotic-pet amnesty day? Bring ’em in. No charge. No questions asked. Including the most basic query: “Why the hell did you want one of these in the first place?”

Crist Crucible:  Gov. Charlie Crist wanted his actions to match his words about wanting a more diverse judiciary. Specifically, Crist wanted to reject the all-white list of nominees for appointment to the 5^th District (Daytona Beach) Court of Appeal. But he was thwarted by the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled that – worthy rationale notwithstanding – he had to fill the vacancy from among the six candidates duly submitted by the Judicial Nominating Commission. Sorry, Charlie.

 

Writing for the court was Justice Jorge Labarga, a Crist appointee and the court’s lone Hispanic member. Labarga wrote that the governor does not have the discretion to refuse to act on the commission’s submissions even though “we applaud the governor’s interest in achieving diversity in the judiciary…” Indeed they do, especially Justice Labarga.

 

Recall that the Cuban native’s own appointment last year — a politically controversial one — served to underscore the governor’s high-profile commitment to diversity. Now it’s Justice Labarga, whose ethnic heritage was so instrumental to his Supreme Court seat, who had to make it clear that wanting diversity wasn’t reason sufficient to override the Constitution and ignore the nominating commission. Talk about irony.

 

Crist has 60 days to make his choice among the six white nominees.

And so the debate still rages about Florida’s high school graduation rate. Is it 71 percent, as this state’s own calculations, which includes GED diplomas, indicates? Or is it 57.5 percent as reported recently in Education Week magazine? In short, either nearly 30 percent of Florida’s students don’t graduate or more than 40 percent don’t graduate. One is bad, the other is worse. They’re both a disgrace. About that, there should be no debate.

Count me among those who think that accident the other day involving the texting teen who rear-ended the police car at a red light was, indeed, a pretty big deal. Notwithstanding the comments of the teen’s mom who didn’t appreciate the notoriety resulting from widespread news coverage.

 

The local print and electronic media, never known for nuancing the news, were correct to play it up the way they did. That’s because this is an alarming public safety issue – one that the duty-derelict Florida Legislature failed to address in its recent session.  

 

There’s a reason why a dozen states and the District of Columbia have flat-out banned text messaging while driving. It’s because drivers, passengers, other drivers and pedestrians are all at risk when a distracted driver — and the statistics skew disturbingly young on this — is under the influence of cell-phone texting.

 

Until there’s an enforced law prohibiting it, expect the rate of accidents, injuries and deaths due to mindless text messaging to continue to ratchet up. In the mean time, it falls to the high-profile vehicles that are the media to remind the public — and parents of teens — of this public safety menace.

 

Oh, and that texting teen should have been at her school, Freedom High, when she plowed into that police car.