The worst legislative session in Florida history is all but done. GOP legislators-- the most conservative in modern history-- wiped out more than 30 years of environmental protections with scarcely a debate in the Senate. Is this what Florida voters wanted, when they elected Rick Scott as governor and a legislature that clearly meant to use the economic crisis to impose a final solution on environmental rules? Those are the same special interests that pushed the economy built from housing and construction off a cliff with support for fraudulent growth schemes sold to gullible buyers as "what the market wants".
One thing is for certain: the land speculators who control Miami-Dade County are thrilled that the Florida Department of Community Affairs is gone: now it will be up to the county commission to allow more platted subdivisions and strip malls all the way to the Everglades. Just like Broward. And Palm Beach, on behalf of the billionaire Fanjul sugar barons, is not far behind. What is nauseating, more, is that they didn't even wait for the legislative session to finish before setting the gears in motion; using county commissioner Linda Bell to pick up where disgraced and recalled Natacha Seijas left off-- hobble the county's environmental regulatory agency, DERM.
This is the catastrophic result of an economic crash, unequalled since the Great Depression through which no accountability was ever assessed. If the perpetrators had been held to account, then voters might have some clue about who was responsible and what is needed to reverse a course that has already shifted millions of middle class Americans into what appears to be a permanent state of fear and uncertainty.
The GOP in Florida successfully exploited this climate of fear. But what about Florida's Democrats? Where was the leadership to explain to Floridians how voters' pockets were thoroughly picked during the boom and now their possessions sold to carpet baggers during the bust? Where is the Democratic voice standing up for protecting Florida's natural resources and communities from lobbyists like Associated Industries and other so-called business leaders who betrayed thirty years of effort to control the rampant sprawl and over-development of Florida?
In fact, the elimination of robust Democratic leadership in Florida has marginalized moderate Republicans, too. What is left is the radicalized, extremist version of the GOP that turned this legislative session in Tallahassee into a bloodbath against environmental protections and the very notion of the public commons.
Environmentalists are back to square one in Florida, but the baseline of natural resources shifted long ago to something unrecognizable. Florida's waters are more polluted, degraded, and filled with toxics like mercury and still voters are passive, compliant, and mute. Republicans charge that environmentalists are "sensationalizing" the impact of this session's revolution. At best they have blinded themselves. At worst they are shameless liars, doing what they do to maintain their standard of living. Honestly: their programs can't be based on principle, because if the record of the last fifteen years shows us anything it is that empowering corporations and private industry to "take over" the functions of government does not work, pure and simple. They gave us a government designed to fail. Florida belongs, now, to the scavengers.
8 comments:
Let the scavenging begin.
What the Detrituscrats need are distaff candidates with pretty hair.
the dumbing down of America is obvious, the dumbing down of "environmentalists" is no surprise either. the pendulum swings again.
Shameless liars, yes.
Speaking of Lynda Bell, she did - at least - give me a good laugh today while I was visiting my local library where she appeared on a promotional "READ" poster. Bell is holding the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, which I understand is required reading these days for the Right. I suspect that Bell has no idea that Rand was an outspoken atheist. And here's a quote from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights "Abortion is a right, and all rights are absolute and cannot be "balanced" away. Ayn Rand has explained: "A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context."
Shameless liars, yes.
Speaking of Lynda Bell, she did - at least - give me a good laugh today while I was visiting my local library where she appeared on a promotional "READ" poster. Bell is holding the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, which I understand is required reading these days for the Right. I suspect that Bell has no idea that Rand was an outspoken atheist. And here's a quote from the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights website "Abortion is a right, and all rights are absolute and cannot be "balanced" away. Ayn Rand has explained: "A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context."
If those in power think our fuel is expensive, wait until most of our food suppy is imported. And our latest water wars will be childs play in the future.
A good start but still a long way to go to restore the rights back to the people and away from the limo-libs.
Freedom will prevail...deal with it Hippies!
AnthonyVOP,
You will feel differently when the removal of these protections effects you directly. It's called NIMBY, and it is essentially an extension of the "I've got to get mine and screw everybody else" mentality that sarted duirng/as a result of the Reagan Administration.
In the end, the pendulum ALWAYS swings, and that includes both directions. It took approx. 15 years after earth day to get the government to fully get in place protections for the environment based upon the "Silent Spring" mentality that what we were doing was destroying the planet. Then another 25 years to get to this point of relaxing protections (which, by the way started with Rush Limbaugh sound bites in the 1990's about how the environment ewas cleaner than anytime in the past 100 years, there were more trees, etc. - neglecting to realize that the first few decades after Earth Day was spent fixing the things that were easy to see and easy to fix). Now it will start again, but this time, the loss of species and ecosystems won't/can't be the rallying cry because people fail to see how that effects them. The discussions will have to center around safe drinking water supplies, cancer clustering and the like. It just means further educating the enviros, non-enviros and the public at large. Today is but one moment in time. You'll see.
If, as you say, "Florida's waters are more polluted, degraded, and filled with toxics like mercury and still voters are passive, compliant, and mute.", how can the current crop of GOP lawmakers and their Republican counterpart in the governor's mansion make things worse?
And how is it that environmentalists have been so ineffective up to this point?
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