Thursday, November 30, 2017

Sugar Tax Fuels Florida Politics And Environmental Destruction: don't believe it? Judge the results, plain as day ... by gimleteye

The money goes from the cans of soda you buy at inflated prices because of the sugar subsidy straight into the pockets of legislators and aspiring US senators like Florida Gov. Rick Scott. It fizzes in your mouth, but that sugar unleashes torrents of cash into the hands of politicians who care first and foremost for their own power. Think I'm wrong?

Call Gov. Scott today and ask him why his South Florida Water Management is failing to do the right science to assure that Florida's communities, waterways and Everglades won't be used as sacrifice zones for Big Sugar, just like they are every time Lake Okeechobee fills to the brim. Instead of 500,000 acres of sugarcane downstream absorbing the impact of the diseased lake outflows, downstream residents and taxpayers get it in the teeth.

If you think I'm wrong about Gov. Rick Scott and his Cabinet AND the Florida legislature, they think you are too dumb to figure out their scam.

Consider the unfolding disaster: last year's blockbuster legislative agenda -- creating a massive reservoir in public lands once designated for shallow-depth stormwater cleansing -- is moving in the wrong direction after all the politicians took the praise and accolades, after the articles had been published and the photo ops duly recorded.

A nearly $2 billion boondoggle could be arising for its most predictable, political purpose: to a) prevent sufficient lands being used for protecting the public, and b) to irrigate Big Sugar when it is too dry and provide additional water benefits when it is too wet.

What about coastal communities who arose in fury at the unrelenting puke from Lake Okeechobee, fouling Florida's treasured waterways and real estate and Everglades?

Call Gov. Scott and ask him. You'll get fed the same standard bunch of gobbeldy-gook that is coming out of the water management district today. Evasion. Dodging.

One way that Big Sugar gets away with this: a provision in the US Farm Bill that guarantees excess profits to a few Florida Big Sugar billionaires; the Fanjul family and the descendants of Charles Stewart Mott who own US Sugar Corporation. Doesn't matter even if conservative Republicans rail against corporate welfare: the injustice prevails because those same Republicans (and Democrats) refuse to enact either reform of the sugar subsidy -- a tax on all consumers of domestic sugar -- or meaningful campaign finance reform.

Read what the conservative American Enterprise Institute has to say, or any of the opinions from the Wall Street Journal to Forbes Magazine over the past decade. Better than that: rush to the polls and stop Gov. Rick Scott from becoming the next US senator from Florida. You can do it, and you must.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cuban Americans can make their first positive move to promote democracy in the mother land and promote goodwill in the USA by asking Fanjuls to transfer all sugar cane lands to the national parks and move operations to Cuba to promote democracy there.