The Florida Legislature in the Middle Ages ... by gimleteye

In the past I've written that our state capitol, Tallahassee, is like a castle with a moat and a drawbridge guarded by lobbyists. The new legislature, more conservative than in "a hundred years" according to House Speaker Dean Cannon, takes that metaphor to new levels.

This is an unanticipated consequence of the bailouts that prevented bread lines and soup kitchens from forming all across the United States: that the underlying economics and power structure-- formed around banks and speculative real estate activities-- have been allowed to prosper, if not thrive. Because banks have not been required to market-to-market the toxic assets sitting on their balance sheets, the financial system still harbors the same actors who created the worst crisis since the Depression. From their positions of power and authority, they have used the financial crisis to handcuff themselves to the levers of power.

What House Speaker Cannon meant, is that the current status quo will not be pried from power in 100 years. The Democrats, of course, who have behaved like the party of Republican Lite in Florida, are now so marginalized that they might as well join the angry townspeople outside the castle walls. Help hold signs or do something useful.

Here is the partial line-up of new committee chairs in the Legislature. Senator Michael Bennett, a Bradenton developer, is chair of Community Affairs. Bennett's chief goal in past legislative sessions, and one that he will realize this session, has been to dismantle the Florida Department of Community Affairs. DCA has been the last bulwark against rampant suburban sprawl, where the nest of economic pythons strangling Florida make their home. Bennett also emerged as a fundraiser for a lawsuit by members of the Florida congressional delegation, Lincoln Diaz Balart and Corinne Brown, against the new Fair Districts law; in other words, a state legislator helping a federal legislator overturn a state law that the legislature is obliged to follow.

Senator John Thrasher, a key Jeb Bush lieutenant, is chair of the Rules Committee and Calendar Group. (Thrasher was the visible face against Amendment 4, Florida Hometown Democracy that would have taken away rubber-stamp zoning authority from local elected officials in changes to master plans supervised by the DCA.) In other words, the official who gives orders when to raise and lower the drawbridge at the moat, guarded by lobbyists, is literally just that. Senator Don Gaetz, who led the fight against Fair Districts, has been appointed chair of the Senate committee that will "implement" the fairness measure passed by more than 60 percent of Florida voters in November. Miami-Dade's Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, lately a lobbyist for developers seeking to move the Urban Development Boundary-- a position antithetical to his early career beliefs as a county commissioner-- and who has since sharpened his mean streak against the public good is chair of the Subcommittee on Ethics and Elections.

Far from re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, the worst economic crisis since the Depression has hardened positions of the powerful who were already in charge. They have tightened down the hatches. Would we have been better off with a full scale Depression that swiped the slate clean?

It is not a trivial question because now, in Florida, we have the spectacle of voters endorsing the same interests who created the economic crisis in the first place, lining up politics from the lowest rung of the ladder in city and county commissions up to the highest to serve the interests of fraudsters and mortgage thieves and financial engineers on Wall Street.

We are in the Middle Ages in Florida as a result of recent elections, in the mistaken belief that the way out of a building on fire is to run back in.