The Bad Ju-Ju of Jeb Bush... by gimleteye

A Miami Herald news report highlights the possible bid by former Governor Jeb Bush to fill the US Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez. In The Hill, Al Cardenas, "a two-term chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and one of Bush’s closest friends (says,) “He’s been really disappointed with the party’s performance, and he sees this as a chance to reinvigorate it and help it follow a new path. This is a call to arms for him.”

This notion of a Terri Schiavo-esque intervention is in line with Jeb's personal drama that all along it was he, not Newt Gingrich or his incurious brother, who was originally meant to lead the Party from the Clinton-era wilderness.

But this is not a view widely shared. The succession of Bush by current Governor Charlie Crist was greeted with a palpable sense of relief. Huffington Post writer Bob Fertik is mistaken to write as he did yesterday; "Will Jeb Bush lead a Southern Republican Rebellion Against Obama"? "A Martinez resignation would allow Gov. Charlie Crist -- another close ally of Jeb -- to appoint Jeb as the replacement Senator."

Governor Charlie Crist is not a close ally of Bush. From the beginning, Crist has been fighting off the remnant soldiers of the failed Bush terms.

"All of us will lay down for Jeb," says former House Speaker Allen Bense. But the Florida economy, now buckling under the weight of the worst housing market crash since the Depression-- is the fruit, to a large extent, of laying down before the anti-regulatory 'wolf in sheep's clothing' of the Bush era.

For most Floridians, the Bush "my way or the highway" tenure in Florida was a disaster. Crist is at the unlucky end of the housing market inflation propelled by the radical pro-growth agenda of Jeb and his campaign supporters from the construction and building industries. And it is on the record of that radical agenda--and its devastating results in Florida, to the people, the environment, and the economy-- that a Jeb Bush senatorial bid would be judged by voters.

Bush loyalist Al Cardenas told The Hill that Jeb "wants the Republican Party to re-examine its philosophical roots, cleanse itself of ethical improprieties and redouble its outreach efforts to Hispanic and younger voters." The Hill doesn't mention that the very ethical improprieties the Republican leadership has been marked for are represented by another former House Speaker, John Thrasher, who is given the last word: “I think he (Jeb) thinks that the Senate may be the place to be to do those things... For someone to stick a flag in the ground and say ‘This is what we stand for.’”

Here is one example of what Thrasher and Jeb Bush stood for: the permission of a major polluter to build a cement plant on one of Florida's most treasured places, the Ichetucknee River. "Four years after Gov. Jeb Bush canoed the aqua-blue Ichetucknee River and vowed to protect it, his administration is (permitting) a nearby limestone mine to grow by eight times despite ongoing environmental violation. Among those who tried to stop the plant, there's bitterness about allowing heavy industry in one of Florida's finest places." ("Mine to grow near pristine river", St. Pete Times, May 25, 2002) "The Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued the cement plant permit in secret negotiations with the company, prompting charges of back-room dealing. The company's chief negotiator was Steve MacNamara, a top aide to then-Florida House Speaker John Thrasher. DEP staffers later complained that they thought MacNamara was representing Thrasher, and didn't know he was also on Anderson Columbia's payroll. The state Ethics Commission found probable cause that MacNamara violated ethics laws."

The Ichetucknee is only one example how an anti-regulatory fervor that Jeb Bush embraced stoked the flames of the housing boom and asset bubble whose wreckage is now scattered across the Florida landscape. Another is the background of staunch Bush ally Al Hoffman, a former chairman of both Jeb and George W. Bush campaigns, whose former company-- WCI Communities, Inc.-- is bankrupt.

In The Miami Herald today, Hoffman says, "There isn't a person in Florida that doesn't know Jeb Bush and know that he is own man, his own thinker, is own innovator..." said Hoffman. "I'd be the first to line up with his supporters." In 2002, Hoffman bubbled to The Washington Post about suburban sprawl, "You can't stop it," said Al Hoffman, the most influential developer in a state crowded with influential developers. "There's no power on earth that can stop it!" Strange, how reality works.

The Post went on: "The market is so hot that some builders start moving dirt without permits because fines cost less than brief delays. WCI had seven pages of ads in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal, promoting $5 million estates and $11 million penthouses. ... Last year, even Jeb Bush's developer-dominated Growth Management Commission -- led by an Orlando politician named Mel Martinez, who is now President Bush's housing secretary -- agreed that traffic, crowded classrooms, water shortages, pollution and other sprawl-driven ills are "growing problems in the state."

In Homestead, Florida-- where one of Hoffman's early developments, Keysgate, is located in former farmland edging the Everglades now dotted with thousands of foreclosures-- an anonymous resident recently posted to reddit.com in the aftermath of the Jeb Bush era: "CiXeL 21 points 1 day ago* [-] when i first moved down to homestead/florida city (down at the tip of florida) in 2005. i went to the walmart and was shocked to see an entire line of people in the checkout line holding welfare cards, rolls of 20 dollar bills and a credit card. it seemed like the most massive fraud ever. i wouldve killed to have had a camera handy to take a picture of it. i remember talking to our neighbors who told us that they had deals worked out with their employers to get half their pay in cash and half as a check so that they could qualify for section 8 housing and thats how they could afford to live there. we moved a little further north but the fraud down here is still rampant. my girlfriend's boss tells her coworkers how to commit car insurance fraud by getting full coverage and then having your friends dump you car in a canal and then you report it stolen. nice. fraud is like pervasive in the society here its insane. its gotten a little better. you see alot less cars now without license plates since the police are doing a better job I imagine."

This is how the "ownership society" is panning out, in Florida where ten thousand suburbs bloomed under Jeb, helping to propel the nation into an economic crisis. Today, production homebuilders, Jeb Bush's strongest supporters, are begging Congress and the US Department of Treasury for bailouts, tax relief, and incentives to get the nail guns going again. A Bush campaign for Senate in Florida will be a reactionary backlash by "free market" freeloaders who believe in restoring a failed ideology: anti-regulatory, pro-growth at any cost and meant to be the foundation for Florida's future.

This is what a Florida Senate campaign by Jeb Bush would represent: a state-based experiment for the nation that George W. Bush failed and his younger brother imagines he can redeem.