"Red Tide Rick": the nickname sticks ... by gimleteye

"Red Tide Rick" bet on killing environmental rules as governor.  Look what he did.

In his eight years as governor, Rick Scott axed the state capacity to effectively regulate and enforce against pollution of Florida's waterways. Now the toxic waters are wreaking havoc across the state and he wants your vote for US Senator.

His latest gambit is to call for the creation of research center for red tide. My God, man!

2013, 2015, 2018: Lake Okeechobee has been gushing billions and billions of gallons of toxic waters in serial calamities and NOW Rick Scott is paying attention?

He didn't paying attention as governor, or, better to say: he was ONLY PAYING ATTENTION TO POLLUTERS. His signature achievement: lax enforcement of environmental rules. Another achievement: putting hacks and polluter-friendly cronies into important positions on the governing boards of the state water management districts. From those perches, environmentalists have been attacked, marginalized, and ignored.

When environmentalists protested at the South Florida Water Management District, Big Sugar hired actors from Fort Lauderdale to counter protest, organized through dirty tricks huckster, Roger Stone.

In July Florida PEER wrote: "During the seven years under Governor Rick Scott, environmental enforcement has hit a modern nadir, with 2017 registering some of the most anemic results on record, according to a new analysis released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The upshot is that not only is Florida’s environment bearing a greater pollution load, but also its Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is losing revenue as well as its capacity to monitor--let alone deter--eco-offenses. Apart from the 2017 results in isolation, the Scott record shows a deep, across-the-board nosedive in Number of Cases in virtually every enforcement category. As seen by these tables, new cases opened, penalties collected, and other enforcement measures are all down more than three-quarters since Scott took office."

This is exactly the outcome that Scott's transition team outlined in 2010: eliminate "excessive regulation" and especially regulations protecting the environment. Red Tide Rick has done a better job representing toxic algae than people.

And he wants your vote.

Under Scott's watch, pets are dying awful deaths from exposure to toxins, residents and visitors are getting sick, and Florida's iconic beaches are turning into no-go zones for tourists; preventable nightmares if Rick Scott, Adam Putnam, and Matt Caldwell -- the GOP candidate for agriculture commissioner -- had done their jobs. They didn't, because they were too busy being ideologues on behalf of polluters. Of the Toxic Trio -- Putnam, Caldwell, and Scott -- one is gone, two remain and they must be voted down.

There are going to be fewer and fewer weddings in Naples -- Scott's hometown -- because of all the gagging, coughing, and watery eyes from wedding guests sickened by air borne effects of toxic algae. Some of the aerosol algae carried aloft has been linked to serious, irreversible brain disease in humans.

There's a lot we don't know about Florida's water catastrophe.

What we do know: Rick Scott does not deserve your vote for US Senate. Not now, not ever.


Sierra Club Blasts Rick Scott's Red Tide Plan
For Immediate Release: September 20, 2018

More Studies Won't Cure State's Catastrophic Red Tide and Green Slime

St. Petersburg, FL – Sierra Club Florida responded to Florida Governor Rick Scott's letter today to the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission asking it to create a Center for Red Tide Research.

Statement of Frank Jackalone, Sierra Club Florida Chapter Director

“Rick Scott's call for the creation of a Center for Red Tide Research is nothing more than a self-serving publicity stunt. He is desperately diverting attention from his failure over his two terms as Governor to address the pollution problems which have fueled massive toxic red tide and green slime all across the State.

"We're horrified that Scott is offering a half-baked, ineffective plan to Florida's ongoing water crisis at the end of his stint as Governor. Where has he been for the last eight years as devastating toxic algae blooms have repeatedly devastated the state's coastal waters, inland lakes, rivers and springs?

"While 'Red Tide Rick' fiddled, Florida's waters burned with toxic algae. As a result, our coastal communities are plagued by the smell of millions of dead fish on their beaches and a devastated tourism industry.

"Scott's proposal for more research won't cure red tide and green slime. The only way to reduce the occurrence, size and severity of harmful algae blooms is to stop the pollution that is feeding it at its source. We need prevention, not more studies.

"Rick Scott is the person most responsible for Florida's growing, catastrophic toxic algae problem. Over his two terms as Governor, Scott has put state enforcement of pollution laws in reverse by eliminating mandatory inspections of septic tanks and slashing enforcement of clean water regulations. His plan for reducing dirty water releases to Florida's Gulf and Atlantic coasts has been to spend billions of dollars over the next decade to store more polluted water in Lake Okeechobee and to build a 23 foot high reservoir in the Everglades over the next 10 years and fill it with more dirty water. His new plan today asking the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the next Governor to do more research should make every Floridian mad as hell."

Florida Gov. Rick Scott's Recklessness Is Putting Your Health, Your Property, And Your Jobs At Risk. Don't Give Him Your Vote ... by gimleteye

The viral video shows angry Floridians shouting at "Red Tide Rick" as he scurries out the back door of a restaurant into his armored SUV, hoping to deny an unscripted media moment when his rapidly declining popularity is revealed.

For eight years as governor, Scott was obsessed with preventing such unscripted moments. Every photo op with Scott seemed airbrushed as a Clairol commercial.

At the same time, Scott helped erode protections for Florida's waters, cutting hundreds of millions from agencies and stifling law enforcement against polluters. With Florida's waters filling with toxins that can lead to severe neurological disease -- as in Alzheimer's -- , Rick Scott can't hide.

Scott can't hide the fact that he caused state environmental protection to dissolve at the same time his lawyers argued in federal court that the state can do whatever it wants, even if it means condemning natural resources like the Everglades to a long and tortured death.

The pro-Tea Party, anti-regulatory agendas were cynically organized to mesh with the needs of his big campaign contributors -- from the state's agricultural polluters, like Big Sugar, to the political action committees where big business mingled millions in contributions to funnel to its mostly Republican stars.

Florida environmentalists have been crying for the “precautionary principle” — first, do no harm — for decades. No one in political office listened, not Democrats or Republicans, because that's not how polluters make money. Wherever in state law the precautionary principle pops up, the polluters do their best to lop its head off.

The toxic waters in Palm Beach and Martin Counties, and Lee and Collier, are killing pets and threatening people. In the Scott early years, public health officials downplayed or ignored the threats because it cost money and angered polluters when public attention was shifted to the sorry state of Florida waters. Kind of like the clusters of rare pediatric cancer the Scott administration has ignored.

Telling these stories around a dinner table recently, a friend told me about a wedding he attended last year in Naples where the entire party had to move to the hotel indoors. Outside by the water and the sunset, people began coughing and wheezing because of the air drifting over the fouled waters.

There are going to be a lot fewer weddings in Naples because of Rick Scott.

There is evidence that breathing around some of Florida's toxic waters can expose people to brain disease. With warming temperatures, (note Scott’s ultimatum to state agencies to eliminate “global warming” from state communications), and no changes to the way Florida manages growth and industrial agriculture, this year's red tides could turn from chronic to permanent in certain waters.

And Rick Scott wants your vote to be next US Senator from Florida? Read this scathing OPED from the Palm Beach Post:


Editorial: Scott must answer for environmental malpractice
OPINION By The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board
Posted: 7:28 a.m. Sunday, September 16, 2018


With a horrific red tide killing marine life and tourism on Florida’s southwest coast, and with toxic green algae bringing misery to the Treasure Coast and Fort Myers area on a now-annual basis, it’s understandable that Gov. Rick Scott would want to run away from his environmental record.
Voters shouldn’t let him.

From the moment the health-care multimillionaire swept into office on 2010’s Tea Party anti-tax, anti-regulation wave, he began slashing the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), cutting budgets, skilled staff and inspections.

The SFWMD, which had a $1.4 billion budget in 2007, is now an $814 millionagency. Scott’s administration cut $700 million out of all the state’s water management districts after his first year and crippled their ability to levy taxes. His justification — giving average property owners tax relief — is a sick joke; the state’s 15 biggest industries, like Florida Power & Light and the Walt Disney Co., got to pocket a combined $1.2 million annually, but homeowners save less than $3 per $100,000.

What got slashed? The state’s network for water monitoring shrank from 350 monitoring sites to 115, according to Florida International University’s Southeast Environmental Research Center. Enforcement of anti-pollution regulations slowed to a crawl. The DEP pursued almost 1,600 enforcement cases in 2010, but a mere 220 in 2017, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

In 2012, Scott repealed a law requiring septic-tank inspections. Now, only 1 percent of Florida’s 2.6 million septic tanks get inspected, and scientists say that pollution from leaking septic tanks adds fuel to toxic algae blooms.

The result: nitrogen and phosphorus loads are on the rise in Lake Okeechobee. Combined with agricultural run-off, this is the root of the toxic blue-green algae — and almost certainly a contributor to the unusual endurance of the red tide, the worst of which is occurring near Fort Myers at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River, one of the exit points of Lake O’s waters.

Yet Scott is trying to fool voters into thinking that Sen. Bill Nelson, the Democrat whom Scott is trying to unseat on Nov. 6, is to blame for the algae blooms. A Scott ad released Friday contends Nelson has done “nothing” for “Lake O.” It’s supposedly Nelson’s fault that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hasn’t limited water discharges or fixed the Herbert Hoover Dike.

This is nonsensical double-talk. The dike’s condition and the rate of discharges have nothing to do with the pollutants in the water in Lake Okeechobee. Letting all that phosphorus and nitrogen into the water to begin with — that’s the problem. And that’s on Scott.

The same Scott, by the way, who didn’t buy an available 153,200 acres of U.S. Sugar land, which would have given that water someplace else to go. Backing off that deal, in 2015, was a blow to Everglades restoration.

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The list goes on. In 2011, Scott abolished the Department of Community Affairs, which protected the state from bad development and gave the environment a vote in land-use decisions. He slashed funding for land conservation under the Forever Florida program, and later joined enthusiastically in the Florida Legislature’s nickel-and-diming of Amendment 1, the wildly popular ballot measure that is supposed to be generating hundreds of millions of dollars each year for environmental protection.

Most egregiously, the governor of the state most endangered by sea-level rise allegedly barred the very mention of climate change (although the climate denier denies that, too).

In sum, Scott “has regularly put the wishes of corporate polluters above the needs of Florida’s environment and families,” states Kevin Curtis, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Coalition Action Fund.

“He’s sided with a fringe group of climate change deniers, defunded popular and bipartisan conservation programs, and undermined the enforcement of air, water and climate protections.”

This governor should not escape judgment for these past eight years. And any Floridian who cares about the environment — or simply gags from the stench of the algae blooms — should demand answers for such a putrid environmental record.

Any Floridian who cares about the environment — or simply gags from the stench of the algae blooms — should remember who has been in charge.

Mike Huckabee On the beach ... by gimleteye

Trump apologist Mike Huckabee owns a beachfront home in the Florida Panhandle. This is the region of Florida where radio channels are filled 24/7 with the holy carriers of Jesus Christ. Now it is a place Republicans can't go to the beach, because the Republicans they elected passed a law stopping them from the beaches where Huckabee, Rick Scott, and Trump live.

The Florida Phoenix published a fascinating report of Walton County citizens swarming the county commission to protest Gov. Rick Scott's law restricting the rights of citizens to access public beaches.

Locals raised on the state's iconic, pristine beaches have had their rights to access stripped.

"Citizens rising up against the Florida Legislature, Gov. Rick Scott, and private property zealots" dings Trump apologist and part-time Florida resident, Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is a frequent Fox commentator who wears the veneer of the ministry on his sleeve while he takes aims at Trump enemies, who these days are popping up in every direction including from the right.

"The troublesome state beach access law at issue was pushed by some Gulf-front property owners, including, as it turns out, a famous one: former Arkansas governor, past presidential candidate and Fox News darling Mike Huckabee. Huckabee has a house on the beach in Walton County, and he doesn’t want the riff-raff in front of his place, playing Frisbee, letting their dogs run around, and hanging beach towels on his sand fence, he explained in an email he sent to a Republican South Florida state senator who helped push the bill, Kathleen Passidomo. Huckabee explains he’s just spent 18 hours flying back from Qatar (I’d like to know quite a bit more about that), but monitored the legislative committee meeting on the Internet and wants to thank her for the beach access bill. About that bill – which became law July 1. You may remember the viral video this summer which showed a couple of Walton County sheriff’s deputies trying to show a beachgoer where he was allowed to sit on the beach. They literally had to draw a line in the sand. The beachgoer was local attorney Daniel Uhlfelder, who set up chairs in front of a condo complex, and someone called the Walton Sheriff’s Department. Deputies told Uhlfelder and his friend they were trespassing. Uhlfelder and one of the deputies walked towards the Gulf and drew a line. The “public” area they identify is in the wet sand along the wave break line – pretty much in the Gulf."

So there you have it. The region of the state that votes Republican won't allow citizen on beaches like they used to, because the Republican deal makers they elected passed a law keeping them out.

How long will Republicans in Florida keep voting against their own interests? We will see if anything changes in November.