The Lake O Shit Show (cont.) ... by gimleteye

St. Lucie Estuary

The rampant pollution flooding out of the diseased liquid heart of Florida, Lake Okeechobee, is splashing onto the orthodoxy that holds Big Sugar, first in the heart of Tallahassee. You can feel the first, tentative shivering of political uncertainty in Tallhassee.

Big Sugar's privileged status has never been in doubt. Its BS will never be in question until voters throw out the bums who have been coddling and protecting the polluters for decades.

The question is whether public opinion, now more fierce against Big Sugar than ever before, will materialize into political opposition. It never happened on a scale large enough to matter, before.

It might happen, especially if well-heeled and wealthy property owners come to realize the only way to protect their real estate and equity and quality of life is to invest in political campaigning to unseat those senators and representatives who shelter Big Sugar.

Big Sugar pollutes Florida by obstructing the purchase by the state and the use of sugar lands for the creation of a flow-way adequate to the purpose of diminishing the pile up of poisonous water in Lake Okeechobee.

Because fresh water is obstructed by Big Sugar's manipulation of the politics of water management in Florida, coastal private property takes it in the teeth. This year's high rainfall has decimated the estuaries on which local economies and quality of life depend.

In 2012, Big Sugar tipped its big toe in the matter of removing local politicians who had the guts to challenge its hegemony. BS's first target was a moderate county commissioner in Lee County, Ray Judah. Sugar threw hundreds of thousands of "dark" money into a messaging vehicle, Florida First, that substantially contributed to the unseating of Mr. Judah, the only elected official in sight with the courage to take on Big Sugar's domination of water management at the expense of citizens. In 2013 Big Sugar took advantage of crummy legislation -- sponsored by its hand-picked legislative choice who led the defeat of Judah -- to claim environmentalists had joined in an "historic partnership" for the "final phase" of Everglades restoration. A mass mail and marketing campaign by BS has spread the BS among likely voters.

Ironically, this summer uncooperative and excessive rainfall shut down the Big Sugar BS machine among voters -- mostly Republican -- who live by the trashed estuaries on both coasts. Cruelly, it happened by destroying fueling the misery of ordinary people. The only question now: will leaders emerge to take up the cause and fight; fire with fire. It has to happen at the polls. Scalps need to be taken.