The Republican Race For Governor, Rick Scott, and Donald Trump ... by gimleteye

The online blog -- Florida Politics -- has coyly tracked Big Sugar's talking points in the past. Peter Schorsch, publisher and founder of Florida Politics, wrote yesterday from an insiders' perspective of a weekend meeting in Orlando, "At confab, Adam Putnam supporters asked to raise more money, game out Trump involvement." We offer the following comments as "outsiders".

"... If the election for Florida governor was to be decided by the candidates taking a pop-quiz about the Sunshine State’s history, people, and geography, it’s very likely Putnam would not only win, he might just ace the test...

Unfortunately for Putnam, whichever candidate can give the best directions through Florida’s agriculture belt is not how the Republican nominee for Governor will be decided. Instead, it will be fought in the dens of of Florida television viewers who seemingly must make a choice between the candidate they see on all the commercials on Fox News (Putnam) and the candidate they actually see on Fox News (Ron DeSantis)."

So far, so good. Putnam, the favored choice of Florida polluters and industry associations, has raised a fearsome amount of corporate campaign cash, with direct contributions heavily spike by dark money pools. DeSantis, a Congressman from North Florida, has emerged as one of Trump's fiercest defenders in the House and, for that -- at least so far as we know -- earned Trump's early endorsement. So Putnam buys the commercials on Fox. And Fox pundits fluff DeSantis for the networks' intractable and unpersuadable viewers.

It is verboten within Putnam’s circle of influence to describe the Polk County Republican’s gubernatorial campaign as the 2.0 version of Jeb Bush’s failed bid for The White House. This circle is the rear guard of Florida’s establishment, which has been forced to kowtow for the last seven-and-a-half years to Rick Scott and saw its hopes of invading Washington D.C. flummoxed by Donald Trump‘s filleting of not just Bush, but Florida’s other favorite son, Marco Rubio.

Here, Schorch's analysis skews off-track. The forces behind Putnam are not the "rear-guard of Florida's establishment". They are the front line and are not only well-known as such, they advertise their political muscle with swinging cudgels whenever and wherever it suits their interests. Since Citizens United, their actions have been mainly served by superPAC's and other dark money channels. But that's not "rear-guard". That's what the GOP calls "mainstream".

The notion, moreover, that these major forces in Florida have been "forced to kowtow for the last seven-and-a-half years to Rick Scott" and Trump's "filleting of not just Bush ... but Marco Rubio" is plain wrong. In fact, Rick Scott has done an expert job of recruiting Florida's Republican establishment to his side, accommodating their interests even more neatly than either Bush, when he was governor, or Rubio, when he was a state legislator.

So why paint the picture of special interests as "flummoxed"? Here is a good guess: it plays right into Scott's campaign to defeat Bill Nelson for US Senate.

Schorch's: "In 2018, the establishment — scarred by a decade of political water-treading, but flush with a booming influence economy — is determined not to let another interloper defy its well-laid plans" is plain ridiculous. Political water-treading? Polluters and industry associations and well-funded political action committees have NEVER been as anchored and secure as they are today in Florida.

There has never been a question that Adam Putnam was carefully cultivated to be the Republican candidate for governor. It's happening the same way for Representative Matt Caldwell, who is now running for Putnam's job as Agriculture Secretary. Caldwell, an accountant in Lee County, lives in an area heavily afflicted by pollution from Big Sugar. Seven years ago, he was assigned by Big Sugar to "take down" a local county commissioner, Ray Judah, who had been the lone Republican voice in Florida politics to call for Big Sugar to shoulder the costs of cleaning up Florida's badly damaged rivers and estuaries. US Sugar Corporation funneled nearly $1 million into the campaign against Judah, and after its victory, Caldwell was promoted to do heavier lifting for Big Sugar in the state legislature. He was a primary driver behind efforts to turn the 2017 Everglades Reservoir Plan into Big Sugar's Trojan Horse. Now, he has been lined up for political advancement.

The same happened with Putnam. As a Congressman, Putnam vehemently opposed the effort by the US EPA to impose limits on nitrogen and phosphorous standards in Florida to protect the state's badly damaged fresh water resources. He opposed the Crist plan to buy US Sugar lands -- as did Gov. Scott -- a deal that could have helped to mitigate the agony of the planned massive reservoir, to cost taxpayers at least $2 billion. As a cabinet member, Putnam supported outrageous lease extensions of public lands to Big Sugar; another measure that solidified Big Sugar's chokehold on Floridians. So, yes: "The plan for Adam Putnam to eventually occupy the Governor’s Mansion began long before Trump and long before Scott. In fact, it was before Putnam was elected Agriculture Commissioner that a small group of key advisers began to meet in Boca Grande to plot out the then-Congressman’s path to the Governor’s Office."

From Schorch's report, it is clear that Putnam supporters want this story line to reach the White House.

Among those in attendance were Former House Speakers Dean Cannon, Steve Crisafulli and Will Weatherford, former Senate President Mike Haridopolos, Disney lobbyist Adam Babington, Miami real estate developer Rodney Barretto, Ballard Partners’ Brad Burleson, U.S. Sugar executive Robert Coker, The Rubin Group’s Chris Finkbeiner, Florida Chamber board member Sonya Deen Hartley, Smith Bryan & Myers’ Jeff Hartley, Anheuser-Busch exec Jose Gonzalez, Publix’s Clayton and Beverly Hollis, Greenberg Traurig lobbyist Fred Karlinsky, insurance lobbyist Robert Hawken, Justice Reform Institute president William Large, lobbyist and former state Rep. Seth McKeel, Comcast government affairs VP Brian Musselwhite, Mosaic government affairs VP Eileen Stuart, and AT&T Florida president Joe York.

Schorsch continues to expound on the storyline:

If there was one defining takeaway several of the Putnam supporters wanted to share it is that they are surprised by DeSantis’ less-than-spectacular fundraising efforts.

“It doesn’t look like the cavalry is coming,” said one lobbyist supporting Putnam.

In April, DeSantis political committee raised less than $500,000. What the Ponte Vedra Republican raised in hard dollars during April won’t be known until later this week. Whatever it is, he will have not kept pace with Putnam, whose Florida Grown political committee had another $2 million month in April. Overall, Putnam has raised $28.88 million between his campaign and committee.

Although Schorsch gives a DeSantis spokesperson the benefit of comment, it is clear that the purpose of the article is to attract to the audience of one: Donald Trump.

"... if he (Putnam) is to win — and fulfill the ambitions of his dedicated supporters — it would appear that Putnam’s best bet is not to raise more money or expound on the history of Florida, but to make sure the only place Donald Trump visits in Florida is his home at Mar-a-Lago."

That's probably a message that Gov. Rick Scott is also carrying to conversations with President Trump. As a US Senator, Rick Scott can be of more help to Trump than Ron DeSantis. And the Republican campaign fat cats will be more inclined to support Trump in 2020 than if he upends the carefully laid plans of Florida polluters.

Will Florida Go The Way Of California, or, Of Texas ... by gimleteye

Florida's water management crisis is destroying the state's valuable fisheries. This photo, from the crushing toxic outfalls during the historic floods of 2015/2016 winter

A friend proposed the other day regarding the future of Florida: that we could "Calfornify or Texafy". What he meant was beyond the obvious comparison of blue versus red state.

His point was related to water and power.

In Texas, water is a private resource. If you are a property owner in Texas, you own rights to the minerals and to the water under your feet. That has never been the case in Florida, or, in California.

The idea that water is a public utility and a public right in Florida is changing. Fast. That is thanks to Big Sugar, Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP cabinet including Ag. Secretary Adam Putnam.

Provisions embedded in 2017 Everglades law contained a strange, extraneous provision pointing Florida in the direction of water privatization using public taxes to suss out the engineering obstacles to converting rainfall into money for wealthy sugar growers. At the time, some environmentalists cried "foul" and urged legislators to understand that the new law -- providing a massive $1 billion reservoir south of sugarcane fields -- was a Trojan Horse. Others, predominantly organized around the Everglades Foundation, said "this is the best we are ever going to get".

Coupled with a recent lawsuit and bizarre settlement by the Scott administration with a Martin County property owner and Miami investor, George Lindemann Jr., the signs are clear: Florida is on the way to becoming Texas. In the not-so-distant-future, Big Sugar billionaires could make more money selling rainfall from their land than growing sugarcane.

It's not an improbable proposition at all.

Since the Jeb Bush years, the Florida/Texas connection has been fortified. A Florida-based executive of the secretive King Ranch -- the largest property owner in Texas -- served on the board of the South Florida Water Management District.

The Tampa Bay Times reported in 2013 on King Ranch private jets ferrying Republican state lawmakers to the Texas ranch retreat.

A month after Gov. Rick Scott took a secret hunting trip to the King Ranch in Texas last year, he faced a big decision. A seat had come open on the board that oversees Florida's efforts on the multibillion-dollar project to repair damage to the Everglades caused by agriculture. To fill that position, Scott picked a corporate executive named Mitchel A. "Mitch" Hutchcraft.

Hutchcraft's major qualification for a seat on the board of South Florida Water Management District: He is the vice president in charge of the King Ranch's Florida agricultural acreage. "That's astounding," said David Guest of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, which has repeatedly sued the agency over its protection of Lake Okeechobee and other water-related issues. Scott's announcement of Hutchcraft's appointment in March 2013 made no mention of what the governor's staff called a fundraising trip the month before. Scott's trip wasn't listed anywhere on his official calendar, nor is there any mention of King Ranch donations from that period in his campaign finance reports.

None of the participants would comment for the record. Adam Putnam, when asked, slammed a door in a reporter's face.

California has always been defined by control of water. Cf. "Chinatown" for the 1930's story. In recent decades, drought has exacerbated conflicts between the states' urban and big agricultural users. Florida water managers frequently crop up in California water policy, bringing a wealth of experience in trying to balance competing interests.

But there are other crucial differences. California is one of the world's most diverse economies. While Texas is also diverse, political power has always concentrated around the fossil fuel supply chain. It is a top-down power structure that reliably delivers pre-selected Republicans to control the legislative, executive and judicial branches.

That fits neatly into Rick Scott's vision for consolidating political power in Florida; now focused on his unannounced campaign to replace Bill Nelson in the US Senate. Control of water, and the money that flows from water, has been a focus of political organizing by Florida Republicans since Jeb Bush's first win in 1998. It wasn't long before his environmental chief, David Struhs, personally shuffled Enron executives around Tallahassee, pumping a scheme to privatize Florida's water supply called "Liquid Gold".

It's taken 20 years to flesh out that vision, but it is now taking corporeal form in Florida. President Trump is far too scattered, far too incoherent, and far too distractible to care much about what happens to Florida's water supply so long as his golf courses get water when they need it and drain water when it floods. No different from the Big Sugar billionaires who hold the Everglades and Florida's estuaries hostage, today.

If Republicans get their way with our state, our water future is headed towards Texas. Not California.

Jeb Bush and the Trump wrecking crew rely on the same sleights of hand: Sad! ... by gimleteye

In important ways, the phenomenon of a democracy-destroying Donald Trump has its roots in a Republican agenda that grew out of Jeb Bush/ Karl Rove initiatives in the late 1990's; among them, public education.

The point of the Bush initiatives was a) undermine funding for public education while b) using testing mandates like FCAT to drive teaching down. Instead of reforming and improving public education, the goal was to open the way for private, charter-based schools that advanced a collateral benefit: conservative, Christian theology.

In other areas of public life, Bush also "innovated" ways to turn public infrastructure -- water management is one -- into opportunities for profit; financial and political. The Republican establishment was so sure of that success, it invested nearly $150 million in Jeb's failed presidential primary. Trump seized the moment to characterize Jeb as "weak", but through his nominations to the Trump cabinet, he now reveals as more Bush, than Bush himself.

Today, two decades after Jeb Bush began tinkering with public education, the Trump administration has designated as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a billionaire who has no experience teaching in public schools and never put a child of her own in a public school. She has given millions to conservative political causes and candidates.

Jeb Bush called Trump "the chaos candidate" and warned, during the presidential primary, that Trump would be a "chaos president". Bush, however, has been strongly supportive of DeVos who, it is expected, will be the same kind of the "bull-in-a-china-shop" to public education as Trump is, to the executive federal branch of government.

The wrecking crew is firmly in charge. The Trump years, if they last, will be chaotic. They will be democracy-crushing. And that, finally, will be the legacy of Jeb Bush and Florida voters.


Blame Jeb's 'belly flop' for teacher shortage | Opinion
Jac Wilder VerSteeg
ORLANDO SENTINEL, Feb 14 2017

Here's a recent headline from the Sun Sentinel: "Florida lawmakers seek ways to attract, keep teachers."

Florida lawmakers just can't seem to figure out why the state is losing so many teachers. Florida lawmakers sure are slow on the uptake.

Florida doesn't pay its teachers enough, it's true. But here's the bigger deal: Florida doesn't treat its public school teachers with respect. Florida does not treat its teachers like professionals.

GOP Upheaval, Climate Change, and Fair Districts Have Big Sugar Scrambling ... by gimleteye

First came the historic rainfalls in January across much of South Florida filling Lake Okeechobee to dangerously high levels. Four to five times the average fell, loading the polluted lake and requiring water managers to dump billions of gallons a day of toxic water into rivers flowing to both Florida coasts. The extreme weather was a sign of climate change, and it arrived at an inopportune time for the Florida Republican party.

The nascent civic movement called Bullsugar had been quietly building when the historic rains propelled it forward with the public. Its message: buy Big Sugar lands south of the lake to solve the problem of excess toxics wrecking rivers, estuaries, the Everglades and Floridians' quality of life.

Bullsugar and allies on Florida's Gulf coast seemingly rose from nowhere, like a Florida Arab Spring, organizing through the one driver of public opinion Big Sugar cannot control through advertising budgets: social media.

During February and March, leading up to the Florida GOP presidential primary, social media brimmed with video clips and photos of massive fish kills and scenes of devastating pollution, energizing a fury in Republican strongholds that doesn't show up in public opinion polls because GOP strategists don't poll for that, convinced environmental concerns are not Republican issues.

Also, Big Sugar, its allies in state government and the GOP believed the opposition to be defined by traditional environmental groups: Florida Audubon, the Everglades Foundation, and Sierra Club. They didn't realize how every day, billions of gallons of toxic water were piling up behind a dam of public outrage.

A strong case can be made that the presidential hopes of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, both favored sons of Big Sugar, were washed away by January's historic rainfall, the subsequent pollution devastating primarily Republican districts, and a rising awareness centered on social media sites like Bullsugar.org and SWFL Clean Water Movement.

None of the GOP high paid consultants and lobbyists in the Republican echo chamber heard what was coming.

Big Sugar drives state water policy at the expense of taxpayers. Its influence in Tallahassee is not just legendary, it is atmospheric. Thanks to subsidies in the Farm Bill, perpetually renewed by Congress, sugar farmers extract hundreds of millions in profit a year. A fraction of that money is used to fertilize liberally through the political fields at the county and state levels so that industry-favorable terms are always available.

That is one reason that special interests like Big Sugar fought so long and hard against Fair Districts; a legal battle waged for years that began winding up as historic rains began filling Lake Okeechobee in dry season. Republicans were forced by fact and law to capitulate in state court to a state redistricting map basically drawn by its opponents, the Florida League of Women Voters. The GOP spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, and untold contributions by special interests to the state party, to maintain the status quo.

Although Fair Districts prevailed in time for the 2016 election cycle, the consequence to Big Sugar would not have been immediate. Democrats had only a small chance to win a majority in the state senate or to take the Senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio in the upcoming election cycle.

Donald Trump changed all that.

Big Sugar abhors uncertainty. Its privileges through the Farm Bill and control of the Florida state legislature and Congress have never been seriously challenged. Trump came perilously close to landing a blow when he held up to the national mirror the loss of jobs from a midwest candy manufacturer. Even Grover Norquist had railed against Big Sugar's corporate welfare, but Trump hadn't been briefed and he didn't land the punch. Trump didn't understand how the GOP's Florida priorities kept Big Sugar's protectionism in place and forced midwest jobs to Mexico and Canada. For USA Today, James Bovard wrote at the time, "... sugar policy is one of Uncle Sam’s most successful job destroyers. The Commerce Department estimated a decade ago that "for each one sugar growing and harvesting job saved through high U.S. sugar prices, nearly three confectionery manufacturing jobs are lost." Since 1997, sugar policy has zapped more than 120,000 jobs in food manufacturing, according to a study by Agralytica, an economic consulting firm. More than 10 jobs have been lost in manufacturing for every remaining sugar grower in the United States."

While Trump was railing against jobs making cookies lost to low-cost labor nations, the audience for Bullsugar was sprouting in Florida. Its videos and posts were being viewed by hundreds of thousands. Bullsugar substantially contributed to Rubio's failure in March to carry Florida in the March primary. Rubio didn't just lose. He was defeated so badly by Trump, his political future is in doubt. At the time, Rubio refused to even consider how much his unqualified support for Big Sugar cost him.

“What's frustrating for those of us who support Marco Rubio is that he has always tried to work outside the box, he’s never been an establishment guy,” said Nick Iarossi, a Tallahassee lobbyist and Rubio fundraiser to International Business Times. “There’s a frustration that Marco’s message has not resonated as well this time." There was frustration because Marco Rubio wasn't paying attention: Bullsugar.

Big Sugar was convinced it had winners in the Republican presidential primary; not one, but two sons of Florida. Jeb Bush had proven his colors as governor, pushing a bill into law sought by Big Sugar in 2003 that was subsequently overturned by a federal court, resulting in a billion dollar charge to taxpayers. (Defying credulity, in 2014 Gov. Rick Scott proclaimed it his victory.) Rubio's entire political rise was due to his availability as an opponent in the 2010 Senate race against Charlie Crist, who had infuriated the powerful Fanjul billionaires when he struct a deal with U.S. Sugar Corporation to buy 187,000 acres of its lands.

Only a year ago, one of two Florida-based politicians had a better than even chance to deliver a GOP candidate for president who was in Big Sugar's pocket. Both flamed out, thanks to Donald Trump. For special interests like Big Sugar, who have so carefully cultivated the playing field in American politics, the outcome was shocking, and it got even worse.

Trump is not only a wild card, GOP insiders are deeply worried that his upcoming campaign for the November election could seriously damage the election chances to maintain majority control in the US Senate and legislatures in states like Florida. For Big Sugar, that would be a catastrophic outcome.

For all these reasons -- Donald Trump, climate change and Fair Districts -- Big Sugar has launched an unprecedented media campaign against Bullsugar and the demands that the state and federal government do the unprecedented: take land out of sugar production and use it to the benefit of taxpayers who have been choking on the inequities of state water policies.

In Republican strongholds like Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie County's -- where the ravages of pollution on real estate values and quality of life continue to take a very serious toll -- Big Sugar is spreading its messages in daily full page newspaper ads and nightly advertisements on television news. It is even reaching to the Florida Keys, where local officials are facing a public furious with the decimation of water quality and algae blooms.

Big Sugar has also launched personal attacks against its opponents through surrogates it has cultivated to appear as though unconnected to its cash flows. It is a predictable response based on Big Sugar's primary driver: to make as much money as circumstances will provide until conditions change.

At some point in time Big Sugar will decide that the moment of its maximum political leverage has arrived and, with it, the opportunity to extract the maximum value for its vast acreage that hold the key to solving the state's water woes. That moment could be just around the bend, but it won't come without Big Sugar testing the durability of its aging and predictable strategies to keep Florida in its grip.

The Imperative for Campaign Finance Reform: How Fox News Unwittingly Destroyed the Republican Party ... by gimleteye

Cody Cain has written an excellent piece (below) for Salon. I agree with his assessment: Fox News is destroying the Republican Party. One point of clarification: while the GOP is in the process of destroying its advantage in the presidential election, there is no similar threat in the states where the GOP has commanding majorities in both state legislative branches and executive branches. Think, Florida.

Party strategists are perfectly aware that a gridlocked Washington plays to its advantages in the states. The loss of the White House would be embarrassing but not tragic. What would be tragic to the GOP would be to lose the U.S. Senate. That is what worries GOP leaders about a Donald Trump candidacy. A widespread rout could deliver the Senate to Democrats.

At some point -- who knows when? -- the Big Money donors who fund Fox News and the GOP, really one in the same, are going to have to ask the question: if money cannot reliably deliver outcomes, why not join liberals and change campaign finance laws?

This week the Miami Herald reported, astonishingly, that Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio ran through $235 MILLION in soft, dark and hard political money on their way to nothing. And that's just what we know about.  Still, $235 million is a lot of money by any measure. Donors know all that money filters primarily into the pockets of an army of Republican consultants, operatives, lawyers, and election engineers, putting strategists on the same side of the ledger as Fox.

Some GOP strategists who oppose campaign finance reform will argue that Donald Trump is just an aberration. This too shall come to pass. An equally strong argument can be made that the polarization of the American electorate facilitated by the profit motive as described by Cain, below, is a precursor of even further political divisions. My view is that the profound economic dislocations about to come, because of climate change, could institutionalize political divisions. Not just in the United States, but around the world.

The point is that responsible Republicans -- there are some! -- should reassess their opposition to campaign finance reform. Our future may depend on it.


Spreading hate has backfired on right-wing media: How Fox News unwittingly destroyed the Republican Party

For years, Fox News has profited from its vicious, divisive rhetoric — and now a steep price is being paid by Cody Cain, Salon, April 8 2016

Spreading hate has backfired on right-wing media: How Fox News unwittingly destroyed the Republican Party      Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity (Credit: Fox News)

The Republican Party is in a pickle.

The Party itself despises its own two leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This is a remarkable oddity just in itself. But there is good reason for it. Both of these candidates are so extreme and disastrous that they will almost certainly never be able to win a national election for the Republican Party.

But much worse, if and when one of these candidates does become the Republican Party’s nominee, the GOP could very well be torn asunder into factions. This could devastate the party for years or even decades to come.

The Republicans, however, have no one to blame but themselves. This is a crisis of their own creation. And it didn’t just happen overnight.

For Big Sugar, a very bad GOP primary outcome in Florida ... by gimleteye

All the money growing sugarcane, all the political money spread like fertilizer across the electoral landscape, all the public relations and message machinery, all aims to one result: predictability.

To achieve maximum profitability Big Sugar needs to control outcomes: — first in elections, then in the legislature, Congress, and the White House, then in environmental agencies controlled by politics — and finally, predictable rainfall on 450,000 acres of the Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee.

Remarkably, Big Sugar had two native sons who failed to advance through the GOP presidential primary. Jeb Bush was the putative insider's choice. He had earned Big Sugar’s confidence while governor, but according to a source, Jeb made an early decision to stand arm's length from Big Sugar. With his campaign finally on fumes, Jeb uttered the unmentionable: that he would not support the continued sugar subsidy in the Farm Bill. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, was unequivocally supportive of the corporate welfare benefiting his top contributors. Big Sugar -- through Fanjul corporate interests -- went "all in" with Marquito. Last night, when Donald Trump smashed Rubio in the state's GOP primary, Big Sugar found itself in an extraordinary position; both of the GOP presidential candidates it supported failed to carry Florida.

There is more bad news for Big Sugar. For the first time civic opposition on the west coast of Florida and east coast — afflicted by pollution spewing from Lake Okeechobee — linked through social media. Rubio's primary defeat can be attributed, in part, to an uprising against the GOP establishment and, particularly, against Big Sugar. Although Big Sugar constantly meddles in state and local county politics, a loss is a loss. For one of its own -- Marco Rubio -- to flame out so spectacularly at the top of the political pyramid introduces uncertainty to an industry that has never faltered in pressing its influence through local county business groups, “respected” trade associations like the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida.

In this primary season, not even rainfall cooperated. Five times rain averages fell in Lake Okeechobee watersheds during January. Republican voters in Florida were outraged that only Big Sugar in the Everglades Agricultural Area remained untouched by heavy flooding and polluted runoff scouring the two main estuaries used to dump excess water: the Caloosahatchee, spreading foul water down the southwest and heavily Republican coast of Florida and to the east, through the St. Lucie, also coating Republican voters in toxic water.

Groups like Bullsugar.org, have been reaching across the middle of the state, generating hundreds of thousands of viewers and voters, if not drowning out Big Sugar's influence then at least pressing the case that they would no longer tolerate the state of Florida using individual property and natural resources as sacrifice zones. In recent days, Big Sugar launched a multi-pronged counterattack.

First, water managers agreed to lessen damaging outflows from Lake Okeechobee. Big Sugar and its allies in state environmental agencies are betting against the resumption of record rainfall, expecting people will go back to being 'sheeple'. That is how it always worked for Big Sugar in the past.

Second, Big Sugar unleashed a barrage of publicity reinforcing a theme it has pressed through local councils and state government: that it is not the culprit for Lake O pollution: taxpayers with bad septic systems are. Dairy farms north of Lake Okeechobee are. Big Sugar, at the same time, trumpets how they are just hard-working farmers discouraged by misinformed environmental extremists.

In the Naples Daily News, "U.S. Sugar's Judy Sanchez said the Sierra Club held a public roundtable discussion last week where it falsely blamed her company for pollution in Lake Okeechobee. "We were flabbergasted when we saw they were making claims that any farmers were pumping water into Lake Okeechobee," Sanchez said. "We don't have the ability to pump water into the lake. Only the government has that ability.”

It sounds like a reasonable point except that in anon-going Clean Water Act litigation, a federal judge already decided against US Sugar and the sugar industry for the very practices it claims to have no part in. Moreover, focusing on the practice of emptying flooded sugar fields into Lake Okeechobee (ie. "back pumping") is a grand form of misdirection. What citizens want is what science and experts state is necessary to solve the Lake Okeechobee pollution once and for all: the public acquisition of Big Sugar lands adequate to the purpose of cleansing marshes. In other words, put people -- not billionaire recipients of corporate welfare like the Fanjuls (Flo Sun and Florida Crystals) and the Mott family (US Sugar Corporation), first.

Big Sugar attacks the inaccuracy of its critics in comparison to data it claims to show what a great job the industry has done of cleaning up its pollution. Politicians it supports — like Gov. Rick Scott and Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam, Senate President Joe Negron and Representative Matt Caldwell — all toe Big Sugar's line. Newspapers and TV news reports pick up the industry's talking points, neatly wrapped in bows and gift baskets. For example, US Sugar Corporation is now pushing out press statements and presented its “facts” in carefully orchestrated public meetings: it does not “backpump” its filthy runoff into Lake Okeechobee. What it doesn't say: the corporation remains an active defendant and intervenor in federal court Clean Water Act litigation.

In other words, the same obstructionism the industry has always shown remains at the core of its strategy: marginalize critics, shift costs to taxpayers, and extract maximum profit. Big Sugar still dominates the Florida legislature and local county commissions. Big Sugar's gets what it wants, when it wants, but yesterday's primary result showed a crack in the armor.

2016 may go down as the year predictability vanished for an industry that counts on controlling all political outcomes in Florida. Still, there is plenty of money to spend and no shortage of outstretched hands.

Florida is NOT Marco Rubio country ... by gimleteye

"The long unraveling of the Jeb Bush's presidential campaign" in the Miami Herald doesn't poll Bush's campaign contributors who shelled out $5000 per vote in New Hampshire or more than $150 million in the PAC supporting him. Down the drain.

Usually the national leadership of a damaged political brand would be engaged in exorcising its demons. Republicans are anointing them. The Miami Herald concludes its tepid report, giving GOP Congressman Carlos Curbelo the last word, "It just wasn't Jeb's year." Please. The mass of anger from the Republican base is as if to say, "we Republican voters are not buying what you (the GOP) are selling".

Now, Marco Rubio. Eye On Miami has written lots on Rubio. Interested readers can use the search feature on the blog to look back.

In 1999, I saw Rubio at Versailles at a long table of young Republican state legislators. Gaston Cantens, now chief lobbyist for the Fanjul cartel (Big Sugar), organized the luncheon. I remember my impression: telegenic, cookie-cutter good looks, bright-eyed and ambitious. They all looked like Alex Penelas, the Democratic mayor of Miami-Dade County who I was battling on the Homestead Air Force Base. Penelas was determined to hand-over the air base -- with a 99 year no-bid lease -- a corporate entity reconstituted from the board of the Latin Builders Association.

The reason I recall the luncheon clearly: it would not be long before I was engaged in another fierce battle: by Jeb Bush on behalf of Big Sugar to lower pollution standards in the Everglades. In 2003 Big Sugar would enlist Cantens and Rubio to marshall legislative support for a new law that violated what Jeb Bush had promised to protect in 2001: Everglades restoration. (That resulted in fifteen years of federal litigation won by the small grass roots group I represent, Friends of the Everglades, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians.)

In the early 2000's, Big Sugar identified Marco Rubio as someone the cartel could trust.

For Rubio and many of his supporters, the purpose of government is not to protect the health and welfare of taxpayers, it is to find work-arounds for lawyers. When Marco left the state legislature, he went to work as a lawyer/lobbyist predictably in land use zoning and lobbying for Jackson Hospital. From there, he was tapped to run for the US Senate against Charlie Crist, a candidate who had infuriated the Fanjul cartel by offering that the state should buy 187,000 acres of US Sugar Corporation land in the Everglades Agricultural Area.

Today, Republican taxpayers and property owners on both Florida coasts have been energized to activism because of rampant pollution spewing from Lake Okeechobee; a disaster that can be tied directly to terrible legislative decisions on behalf of Big Sugar and supported by Marco Rubio in his rise to power.

I was among those who wrongly believed -- like many of Jeb Bush's core supporters -- that Marco lacked gravitas, standing, and the capacity to leap ahead of Bush in the pecking order carefully arranged by GOP monied interests and standard bearers. Now that he has, the nation will soon discover,  Florida is NOT Marco Rubio country.

First to greet Marco Rubio from the stage where he announced his presidential nomination bid in downtown Miami: one of the heads of the Big Sugar cartel,  Pepe Fanjul

Jeb!, walks off the GOP stage with sand in his shoes ... by gimleteye

There is only one thing I want to say to Jeb Bush strategists: you did it, to yourselves.

To the rest of us, some amplification. Here is what is remarkable about the now-shuttered Jeb Bush campaign. The absence of critical analysis of Jeb's record as governor of Florida; a record he held up as exemplary and the reason for GOP voters to follow him.

Jeb's governance was marked by a style the media embraced as "a man on the move constantly". "Wonkish" turned up all the time. A man who held his staff accountable to the same standards of incessant work and responsiveness to citizens who reached him late at night by email. Jeb's attention to detail is mischaracterized as a family asset; one that American voters could trust. To counter this, Donald Trump put his own brand on Jeb's hide: "low energy". Sometimes, though, bumper stickers are right. Low energy stuck.

Shortly after he announced his bid for the Republican nomination, a few media reports did appear -- mostly featuring Dan Gelber, former House minority leader -- who emphasized (as we did in our blog commentaries) his narrow-minded, my-way-or-the-highway style of governance.

Jeb was the radical in the family. He was the one making up for lost time after his 1994 shocking defeat at the hand of the ole' coon hound, Lawton Chiles. As a consequence, Jeb missed his turn to run for president in 2000 -- grabbed by George W. When he won his first elected office in 1998 and moved into the Governor's Mansion, he went into the deep end of the pool with the nation's most conservative and right-wing foundations with his an action plan for Florida that would turn the state into a radical experiment for framing the law and policies by conservative values.

It was called "compassionate conservatism", holding the Terry Schiavo case as example number one. With Karl Rove sitting on his shoulder, it was anything but compassionate. As an environmental leader in Florida during Jeb's tenure, I can offer this observation: if you were on the other side of Jeb, the face you saw was the same mean and vindictive one offered to Michael Schiavo.

“I’m proud of the campaign that we’ve run to unify our country,” Jeb said, as he wrapped up his campaign in a flag that signified everything but meant nothing.

Jeb was not a unifier. He could not be a unifier. A Politico report, "Inside Jeb Bush's $150 Million Failure", analyzing the fault lines, paid particular attention to the roles of Sally Bradshaw and top campaign staff who not only isolated Jeb from bad news as it began to percolate through the primary campaign season, but also continued to give Jeb! only the news that he really wanted to hear: how to stick to the playbook. In other words, he ran his campaign exactly as he ran the state of Florida. It didn't work for the campaign as it didn't work for Florida.

Critics inside the inner circle during the Tallahassee years? Nowhere to be found. Dissent was intolerable. Facts altered to fit predetermined outcomes. Loyalty, first and foremost, a criteria for access. The enormous campaign war chest that Jeb! secured in the early phase of the campaign did nothing more than to reinforce a campaign built on a foundation of sand.

"Low energy" is unlikely to follow Jeb! back to Coral Gables. Here, he will continue to profit from corporate consultancies and investments -- the "better thing to do", as he quipped early in his campaign. Jeb will never understand how the politics he embraced also created the exact conditions for the GOP to be taken over by extremists. With feet in the sand, he could never keep up with the field he literally helped create.

Florida's March 15th Republican Presidential Preference Election: My Pick Will Be Donald Trump. By Geniusofdespair

I could have given you thousands of reasons for my choice but here it is in a nutshell.

As a registered Republican I am ready willing and able to vote for potentially the next President of the United States. I am going to do so, without watching one commercial on TV. Why? I hate them. Now the question is who should I vote for? I have to remember that a Republican could actually win the election so I have to vote for who would be the least damaging to the republic.

Ted Cruz: He is so unlikable that his college roommate and fellow Senators hate him. Take that in. Anyone Ted Cruz has had dealings with in his political life, despise the man. He isn't a legal citizen, he is Canadian after all. He appeared with Pastor Kevin Swanson advocating the extermination of gay people. It has been reported that Ted Cruz's dad is an anti gay crusader. Ted Cruz also is endorsed by Gay Hating, God Sent Nazi Preacher Mike Bickle. This preacher is director of the International House of Pancakes Prayer. He endorsed Cruz in January. Enough about Cruz. Not voting for him. He is the worst of the candidates. Ted Cruz gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Marco Rubio: After that 4 strike debate performance it is a miracle Marquito (as we know him in Miami) or Marco Roboto as he is now called, is still in the race. But, the real reason for not voting for Rubio is his lifelong ties to the sleaziest politician in Florida: David Rivera. They owned a house and lived together in Tallahassee. To be a fly on that wall would have been bliss. I also don't like all the religious stuff inserted in the campaign. God and politics don't mix and he has them in a blender. He hasn't been around to represent Florida (on the "least damaging front", his missing so many Senate votes is a good thing). While in the state legislature and campaigning for Senator, he lived off campaign contributions and the Republican Party credit card. Never would vote for him. Rubio has taken money from the worst of the Robber Barons of this Century. He is the weakest candidate, a puppet.

Jeb Bush: He was a terrible, dictatorial governor. Mean, vindictive, and entitled. (If you read anything from Politico this season -- Jeb thinks Politico is "trash" -- read this week's doozie, "How Marco Slew His Mentor". Priceless.) Two words about Jeb: Terri Schiavo. She was in a vegetative state for 15 years and Jeb fought her husband from pulling the plug. Schiavo's husband said:

"It is simply disgusting that Jeb Bush and his super Pac would exploit my wife’s tragedy for his crude political gain..."

I am with Michael Schiavo, scratch Jeb off the list. That is even more vile than interfering with a woman's right to an abortion. Jeb also is funded by the Robber Barons just like Marco.

Donald Trump: As awful as he is, I think he is the best Republican candidate and he is who I will vote for in the primary. His number one advantage is that he is a self-funded Robber Baron. He hasn't taken any tainted money from Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers. Besides, if I had a sword to give Donald Trump, I'd give him one just like Jeb Bush gave to Marco Rubio. Why? Because Donald Trump has done what no Democrat has done in modern history: he has pulled all the fakery, lousy logic, and pretending from the Republican Party establishment. Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and Roger Ailes belong in the dustbin of history, and Donald Trump is putting them there. I'm with the uprising: sweep out the old, bring in the new. Donald Trump can't do worse than this corrupt Grand Ole Party. And besides, how much are you looking forward to watching Donald Trump pivot to win the general election after the primaries are done. For November, after slaying Cruz, Rubio, and Jeb; Donald Trump coming our way on the greatest, best bent knee the world has ever seen!

So, in the Republican Presidential Preference Election on March 15th I will choose DONALD TRUMP.

 If you Dems could vote in the Republican primary who would you choose?

Two coasts, one problem: In Florida, GOP leaders think you are idiots ... by gimleteye

In Florida, there are two coasts — the Gulf and Atlantic — and one problem: elected officials (Republicans first and foremost, because they control of the executive branch and legislature) think voters are stupid. Why do GOP officials think you are stupid? Simple. They think they can hide the biggest pollution threat afflicting Florida, the massively polluted Lake Okeechobee, by shoving it into the Everglades.

Bullsugar.org from David Preston on Vimeo.

Historic rainfalls in January floated to the surface how mismanagement of water resources in Florida serves the profits of Big Sugar billionaires like Florida Crystal's Banjul family or the Mott's of US Sugar. Surrounded by phalanxes of lobbyists and the most highly paid attorneys in Florida, they are holding us hostage to the immeasurable costs of toxics in our water. They -- they, through hirelings in the state legislature like state representative from Collier County Matt Caldwell -- dictate terms of water quality and water outcomes for the rest of us.

Simply, Florida's fresh water resources are channeled through highly engineered system that first uses Lake Okeechobee (I call it, the diseased heart of Florida) as a vast septic tank for agricultural runoff and then, instead of risking it overflowing, dumps extremely toxic, flood water right onto the doorsteps of millions of property owners, residents and taxpayers on both coasts.

Two coasts, one problem. And possibly a solution.

The use of social media to by-pass traditional, economic models of news dissemination to highlight the trashing of Florida by (mainly) Republican officials -- incoming Senator president Joe Negron, aspiring governor-to-be Adam Putnam, and current governor and aspiring US senator Rick Scott -- is up-ending the state’s worst kept secret: how Big Sugar billionaires pull the strings and screw the rest of us.

Call it a social media revolution like the one that started in Tahir Square. The newspapers are running to catch up.

That is why the latest GOP scheme — to use the Everglades as a place to hide billions of gallons per day of toxic filth — isn’t going to work.

Bullsugar.org and allies on both coasts are insisting: buy adequate lands from the Everglades Agricultural Area to store and treat Big Sugar’s mess. The GOP leaders won't do it, because that’s not how Big Sugar can make the most money from you and from me.

They make the most money by keeping things the way they have always been: using the Everglades Agricultural Area as we would an ATM — for frequent withdrawals subsidized by the taxpayer in the form of agricultural subsidies that turn sugar into gold. Great deal if you are one of the insiders; none of whom would risk dipping their toes and contracting a staph resistant infection we could get because they get to dump their filth in our water.

For all these reasons, it is critical for Floridians to understand that how the current Republican plan to divert water away from the estuaries and rivers and hide it in the Everglades is cynical beyond belief. To clean up Big Sugar’s past pollution, taxpayers are ALREADY spending tens of billions of dollars.

The bright fact is: taxpayers will have to spend billions of dollars more before Big Sugar billionaires like the Fanjuls and the Mott Family Trust— allies of the Koch Brothers — release their death grip on Florida.

Two coasts: one problem. They think you are too dumb to understand the facts. With March presidential primaries around the corner, those facts are highly damaging to two of the GOP candidates held aloft while we struggle downstream from their gates of hell spewing Lake Okeechobee filth: Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.

2016 GOP Presidential primary prophecies: how do they measure up? ... by gimleteye

How well did my crystal ball work on the GOP race when I peered into the orb a year ago?

Mea culpa. I predicted Marco Rubio would whip Jeb! to the nomination, helping him through a crowded pack. ... I did better on a few other points.

I asked: "Why aren't journalists scouring the Rubio record for signs of either political accomplishment or capability?" Chris Christie took care of that.

"Marco Rubio responds to the questions about global warming by saying he is "not a scientist"," I wrote.

What Marco did say in New Hampshire to Miami resident Maribel Balbin, is that we will "mitigate" our way around sea level rise. Marco is not much of a reader. A few days ago, the UK Guardian reported: "Sea-level rise could last twice as long as human history." Mitigate-that, Marquito.

"In the jockeying for position among GOP candidates, there is no Herman Cain or Rick Santorum or Donald Trump yet," I wrote. Then I made the prediction, "Marco Rubio will help manage the GOP roller derby train so, at the right moment in the train, Jeb Bush will be pulled through the primary. For that he will be rewarded." Well ... I misjudged Rubio's character.

I am sorry, but not more sorry than Jeb for once believing in Marco Rubio.

In its entirety, here is what I wrote on April 14, 2015:

Republican voters can see climate change, too: only GOP candidates for president can't ... by gimleteye

The blogs are far ahead of the mainstream media on noting the gaping holes in the head of GOP candidates for president on climate change. See, Marco Rubio's pathetic comments to Maribel Balbin (posted below), who traveled to New Hampshire to deliver a climate change message. Rubio not only failed his homework but fails basic logic when it comes to the severe threat to national security that climate change represents.

Porter Goss, a former CIA director and former Congressman from Florida's west coast, put it very clearly to meeting of business leaders. Speaking about the gush of polluted water from Big Sugar pouring from the coasts, six years ago Goss called the damage to the environment, "our 9/11".

That is not what Rubio said. He confided to Balbin, the answer is "MITIGATION". Rubio said that flooding conditions in West Dade -- he said so to Balbin -- were worse 20 years ago and that "mitigation" in the form of flood control made his little corner of the world better; ergo, a little mitigation should go a long way to solving climate change since that has been his experience. (This is why Marco Rubio, "I'm no scientist", is unqualified to be president.)

Here is a photo taken yesterday, in coastal Maine, a harbinger of sea level rise. These lobster traps are on a dock, at high tide. There was no wind or storm or moon tide to explain why the tide is cresting over the top of the dock. How are you going to mitigate against THAT, Senator Rubio or Jeb Bush?

As Huffington Post notes, Republican voters in New Hampshire clapped when climate change issues were raised in public forums. It's almost never mentioned in the debates. It is about time that television news reporters and newspaper editors begin to understand: climate change is not some bottom of the list issue that needs to percolate up before it gets their full and undivided attention.

Climate Change Keeps Coming Up At GOP Campaign Stops -- And People Are Clapping
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-climate-change_us_56b8fdd8e4b08069c7a85a83
It's almost never mentioned during the debates.
02/08/2016 Amanda Terkel
Senior Political Reporter, The Huffington Post

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- When Dan Kipnis stood up and asked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) about his plan to address climate change, he thought he might face some angry audience members who didn't like his question. He was shocked to instead find people clapping for him.

On Eminent Domain, Trump is right, Bush and Rubio are wrong: just follow the political money in Florida to know why ... by gimleteye

In the final GOP debate before the NH primary, Jeb Bush attacked Donald Trump for his support of eminent domain, which allows governments to seize private lands for projects for the public good. A day later, Marco Rubio repeated Bush's complaint.

Interesting, because as attention turns past New Hampshire, Trump could use eminent domain against Bush and Rubio in Florida.

Right now, coastal residents -- in mostly Republican areas of the state -- are up in arms, furious that the value of coastal real estate worth billions is being trashed because Big Sugar has blocked the buyout by the state of lands adequate to the purpose of storing and cleansing its pollution.

It is the state's worst kept secret: Big Sugar counts on elected officials to continue shifting most of the cleanup costs away from its profit margin and to taxpayers and property owners on both Florida coasts.

Historic rainfalls -- as much as five times the average -- in the region have caused the state's liquid heart, Lake Okeechobee, to rise so fast and so high that the state and US Army Corps of Engineers have had to resort to the formula that benefits Big Sugar first and foremost by releasing hundreds of billions of heavily polluted water into Florida's estuaries and rivers as an escape valve.

There is a solution, and it is exactly what Trump supports in principle: eminent domain to provide desperately needed surface water storage and trap this excessive rainfall.

Solving the impasse both north and south of Lake Okeechobee could have been resolved decades ago through eminent domain. US Sugar in 2008 actually entered into a deal to sell its lands, but its competitor -- the billionaire Fanjuls -- hold key pieces of property and have been steadfast in their refusal to sell. In fact, the Fanjuls threw their complete support to Marco Rubio in his single victory to win a US Senate seat in 2010 because his opponent, Charlie Crist, had the temerity of starting the state down the road of buying sugar lands for flood control and cleansing marsh purposes.

Eminent domain is a frequent target of criticism from conservative and anti-government groups. Both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio toed Big Sugar's line: don't use eminent domain under any circumstance to solve "environmental" problems like the Everglades. Of course it is not just the Everglades that need help: there is the Miccosukee Tribe and property owners along the St. Lucie, the Indian River, the Caloosahatchee and any business owner whose livelihood depends on tourism.

Archival photo of water release from the Lake.

Eminent domain is controversial in Florida, thanks to the influence of major landowners like Big Sugar, dairy farmers, and land speculators. Florida’s Constitution recognizes a landowner should not be put in a worse position after a condemnation than before. Full compensation, as the Constitution requires, includes attorneys fees.

So, no crocodile tears are due if elected officials decided to use eminent domain in the Everglades Agricultural Area.

Bush said in the debate, "What Donald Trump did was use eminent domain to try to take the property of an elderly woman on the strip in Atlantic City. That is not public purpose. That is downright wrong."

Here is what is downright wrong: that Jeb Bush as governor of Florida was too afraid of Big Sugar to do anything to alleviate the conditions that have rematerialized this winter in Lake Okeechobee watersheds and the disastrous disposal of hundreds of billions of gallons of polluted farm runoff into the St. Lucie River, Indian River and Caloosahatchee. Marco Rubio, when asked, points to his experience in the Florida legislature defending property rights. Neither will admit that their refusal to entertain the necessity of fixing the pollution crisis in Florida through eminent domain has cost taxpayers and the environment billions of dollars already.

Trump said that eminent domain was “a good thing” and was necessary to building roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. “Certainly, it’s a necessity for our country." He was right. He added that the GOP supporters of Keystone Pipeline understand perfectly well that the pipeline they support could never be built without eminent domain.

As the GOP campaign focus turns to Florida, Trump should emphasize to voters the value of eminent domain and especially how both Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio will not bite the sugary hand that feeds their ambition.

James Bleyer: Florida Pension Fund Raid Benefits Bush Allies. The Jorge Perez Money Machine ... by gimleteye

Civic journalist Jim Bleyer uncovers a terrific story, involving legal money laundering that allowed GOP candidate Jeb Bush, polling in the low single digits, to outraise every other Republican candidate. So far, the Bush war chest tops $155 million, nearly twice that of his nearest Republican rival.

One of the billionaires greasing the Bush single digit campaign: Miami developer and Democrat, Jorge Perez.

Bleyer links two important real estate deals in Tampa, Florida. One involves a prominent conservative newspaper whose property was purchased at a highly inflated price by Perez, after another transaction in which the state of Florida paid a highly inflated price for a low occupancy rate Tampa project. For Miami readers, it is redolent of the Perez real estate flip that ultimately linked to the naming of Miami's signature contemporary art museum for Perez.

That transaction first involved a real estate flip of property that Perez and partners had purchased adjacent to the Miami Herald, re-consolidated soon thereafter by a Malaysian Chinese gambling billionaire, accruing first to the the benefit of shareholders and top executives of the Herald and McClatchy, whose personal profit soared when insiders purchased the Herald land at a gargantuan price, and then off-loaded again to another prominent insider in Miami.

The money trails involving Perez transactions in Miami and in Tampa are circumstantial, and the only visible connections are through public records of property transaction. In its simplest form, the Bleyer report shows how overpriced transactions wash profits -- albeit in an indirect flow -- from very wealthy individuals in property development industries to political favorites.

We have speculated here, at Eye On Miami, that Perez made a big and early bet that Bush would be the Republican nominee, despite the fact he supported the Clintons in the past. We also speculated that what Perez wants is an inside-track to redevelopment rights in Cuba once the embargo is lifted. It makes sense that Perez would cross the political boundary to support Bush.

Notwithstanding public comments that Perez gave to Jeb! because he respects the work Bush did as governor, he (Perez) knows perfectly well the rules of the Bush rain-making machinery, involving infrastructure, land, and opportunity: financial rewards align with those who have been loyalists.

What is also interesting in the Bleyer report: confirmation how the Rick Scott administration -- initially at odds with Jeb Bush -- folded into the Bush line

A lot has changed, though, to the best laid plans of the Republican hierarchy since 2014, the time frame of the deals Bleyer covers. For one, Rick Scott has made strong overtures to the insurgent Trump campaign. Second, all those big funders who betted so strongly on Jeb Bush have hedged their bets with other candidates.

Perez, who contributed to Democrats in the past, looks to have made a bad bet on Bush. In 2010, Bloomberg found someone to praise Jorge Perez rescue from the financial dead: "“Banks have great respect for him and banks need him,” said Donald Trump, the New York celebrity developer who licensed his name to Perez for the Trump Hollywood. “They’ll make a deal with Jorge whereas they wouldn’t make a deal with other people."

Florida Pension Fund Raid Benefits Bush Allies
1/28/2016
from the blog, Floridiocy

Florida's public pension fund bailed out two prominent Miami developers linked to former governor and presidential hopeful Jeb Bush when it overpaid by tens of millions of dollars for an occupancy-challenged downtown Tampa apartment complex in February, 2014.

The $76.5 million purchase of the Pierhouse at Channelside was approved by the State Board of Administration and its trustees: Gov. Rick Scott, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

While 2015 Was Hottest Year on Record, GOP Sociopaths Still Reject Fact ... by gimleteye

2015 was the hottest year on record according to the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization. It says global temperatures were up 0.76 degrees Celsius above the long-term average. That confirms similar findings by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A year ago, the GOP controlled US Senate rejected global warming as a man-made phenomenon, guaranteeing that no legislation would move through Congress that addressed the root cause of what British economist Nicolas Stern called, "the great market failure in the history of mankind."

Last year, Republican senators went a step further, proposing to restrain NASA scientists from studying and speaking about climate change at all. Leading the charge, Texas senator Ted Cruz, head of hte science and space subcommittee. In "Republicans want scientists to stop studying the earth":

Leading climate change denier U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has had enough of NASA studying our planet: he wants NASA to devote its attention only to space and inspiring children… somehow, without studying our own planet. He even went as far as saying that earth sciences are not “hard sciences”, which should be NASA’s main aim... He maintains that the problem with climate change is there’s no data to support it and that “there has never been a day in the history of the world in which the climate is not changing... The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened."

Only last week, the World Economic Forum at Davos released a white paper citing the greatest threat to economic growth in 2016 to be climate change; the first time this assessment ever received top status.

Underlying the significant fissures in global stock markets: climate chaos and its effects on international stability.

A sociopath is a person with a personality disorder manifesting in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. By that definition, climate change deniers and refusers are sociopaths.

Yesterday a group of South Florida mayors issued a public letter imploring the two candidates for the Republican nomination from Florida, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, to make clear their commitment to address climate change.

On this blog, we repeatedly wrote about Marco Rubio's refusal to meet with climate change scientists. Jeb Bush recently said that (sic) "global warming is not an issue that keeps him up at night".

The United States can no longer afford politicians who exhibit such antisocial behavior and lack of conscience when it comes to prioritizing climate change and its deep threat to economic and social stability.

Florida politicians reversing course on environmental protection at full speed ... by gimleteye

Gov. Rick Scott opens 2016 legislative session.

Call it cold rage; the way environmental protection has been mislabeled, rebranded, and repackaged by the GOP legislature without any unified opposition by Florida Democrats.

Environmentalists could see it was coming during the Jeb Bush era, when Jeb re-branded the Florida Department of Environmental Protection: "more protection, less process". What Jeb brought was a succession of efforts to suppress the rule of law and regulation, especially governing water quality, water resources, to advance Florida's signature industrial wealth creator: rampant sprawl.

Charlie Crist, who succeeded Jeb, was indifferent to the case for managing Florida's growth and agriculture in order to protect natural resources. Rick Scott, who succeeded him, has been a disaster of the highest order.

This year's travesty -- the water policy bill -- effectively destroys the expectation that the state will regulate and enforce against polluters. It represents, instead, capitulation to the idea that polluters will self-regulate and if they screw up, so be it.

One is tempted to call Scott, "clueless", except that Scott's wealth in the private sector was based on his skill trolling for profit at the margins of health care laws and reimbursement regulations. In other words, when it comes to spying opportunities to make money from exploiting environmental rules and regulations, Scott instantly understood both the constituency -- Big Sugar and Big Development -- and the way to solidify his political authority.

This is how Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida legislator set out on their own course, ignoring critics while pandering to special interests. Harder to understand: why the Florida Democratic members of the legislature have been so derelict in their responsibilities to offer resistance, as if to say of Tallahassee: "all ye who enter here, abandon all hope."

The water policy bill making its way after near unanimous approval in the House is exactly as Carl Hiassen described in the Miami Herald: "a major win for polluters and the politicians they own."

So why did every Florida Democrat in the House -- with the notable exception of two representatives, including Jose Javier Rodriguez of Miami-Dade -- approved this catastrophic measure?

In part, because in its badly weakened state, Florida's environmental movement was incapable of mounting a unified opposition to the measure. In the last session of the legislature, Floridians were outraged that the GOP failed to enact the authorization of Amendment 1 for land acquisition as the constitutional amendment -- passed by more than 68 percent of voters in 2014 -- required.

Some environmental groups -- notably Audubon of Florida and the Everglades Foundation -- supported the water policy bill because it offers $200 million to the failing Everglades. But we saw the same mechanism of divide and conquer at work in the early 2000's, when dangling hard cash in front of environmental groups for the Everglades was just a sneaky way to mask even more damage to the public interest.

One long-time observer commented on an Everglades list serve, relative to the absence of public outrage: "The gap grows between the Everglades as an environmental cause and the Everglades as an environmental business." In other words, after decades of broken promises, environmentalists in Florida -- and Democrats, too -- have been shuffled into chutes like compliant cattle. "If you want your elected office, just move along."

Ours could have been the generation that built on bipartisan consensus to protect Florida's environment, but we watched quietly while the GOP and the fear-mongerers put that consensus in reverse, full throttle.


Carl Hiaasen: Polluters win again in the state Legislature

Proposed law would let polluters police themselves.
Tax dollars will be used to subsidize clean-ups.
Rules about violations, enforcement vague and undefined.

BY CARL HIAASEN

Touted as an environmental breakthrough, the water policy bill passed last week by the Florida Legislature is actually a major win for polluters and the politicians they own.

Enforcement of clean-water rules is basically being replaced by the honor system. Big Agriculture couldn’t be happier.

The Donald Trump Blizzard of 2016, Rubio, Bush and Climate Change ... by gimleteye

Marco Rubio is joking about climate change. Jeb Bush says it's not on the list of things that keep him awake at night. They say climate change is "a distant threat". Both candidates,  raising hundreds of millions from corporate America, presumably have the needs of business foremost in mind.

A recent report by the UK Guardian casts that presumption in doubt. The World Economic Forum, about to meet in Davos Switzerland, puts climate change in first place among threats to the world economy in 2016. The first time that happened. Apparently, Rubio and Bush haven't gotten the news in their daily clippings file.

The GOP candidates for president are too busy chasing Donald Trump for whom climate change is a problem to solve like walling off Mexico. Climate change is like that wall Mexico will pay for when he is elected president because that's what tough negotiators do.

More accurately, they are chasing the supporters of Donald Trump. As David Frum recently discussed in his provocative essay for The Atlantic, "The Great Republican Revolt", those supporters are primarily angry, white males without a college education who have trended to vote Republican even though the historical record is clear: Republican priorities -- favoring large corporations and corporate power -- have put the lower middle class in the greatest jeopardy since the Great Depression.

The US economy may be doing OK, Frum writes, but those male Republican voters are decidedly not. They want their country back. They want their status back. That's what Donald Trump is promising with a Tweet-based campaign for the hearts and minds of the greatest country on earth whose national and state politics are in deep, deep denial how climate change could quickly unravel safety and security of all Americans.

Donald Trump has overtaken the Republican Party's plan to insert another anodyne candidate like George W. Bush into the White House. Trump is channeling the Tea Party revolt of 2008, that was itself effectively usurped by mainstream Koch-backed American Crossroads and other conservative political accounts. This year the revolt of angry, white males is like a river overflowing its banks. Trump supporters will not be placated by the GOP's corporate boosterism, in part because they do see the impacts of climate change all around them. They see, but they don't see.

After all, the deepest of the Red States are most affected by severe weather. This is not, as Ted Cruz imagines, the effect of being "beaten into submission by the progressive left". Climate chaos is the deepest threat to the stability that Donald Trump supporters crave, and it is the one being pushed hardest and furthest away. If the World Economic Forum is right -- and this is where the world's largest corporations go for intelligence -- climate change impacts are at the doorstep in 2016.

The Washington Post reported this morning on mass die-offs of species, being observed around the world: "Mass Mortality Events (MMEs) are “rarely placed in a broader context,” the study’s authors reported. But they seem to be happening at an increased rate for birds, marine invertebrates and fish since the 1940s — even when researchers took into account that such events are more likely to be reported now than they were 75 years ago. These die-offs matter not just because of the inherent value of the creatures involved, the authors said, but because whole ecosystems may depend on that species to survive. MMEs, they wrote, “can reshape the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of life on Earth."

This is clearly not news that Donald Trump supporters care to hear; and so, the Trump blizzard of 2016.

Sentient Republicans should carefully weigh the benefits of control of Congress and the White House, not to mention state legislatures and executive offices, against the threat of mass extinction. Because there is no evidence of that happening, judged by the quality of the GOP presidential primary debates, the rest of American voters -- that includes Democrats -- are going to have to get out to vote in 2016.

Corporate America is not in denial about climate change. It is just furiously at work locking down prerogatives before being overtaken by the exceedingly long winter of climate change.

(For the UK Guardian article, click "read more")

Jeb Bush Fail: The Everglades ... by gimleteye

I wrote the following for a Sierra Club Florida publication in May, 2003 as Jeb Bush was blowing up the federal state partnership to restore the Everglades. It happened a dozen years ago, when Jeb Bush was governor.

Jeb's political character flaw is a deep one; forcing science, fact and policy to fit predetermined outcomes. At the time, he said, "I don't need the permission of environmentalists to save the Everglades", but what he did in 2003 set back Everglades restoration for a decade at least.

Jeb was doing the bidding of Big Sugar, as disclosed in the recent New Yorker investigative report by Dexter Filkins. The New Yorker cites the outraged response of the federal judge who at the time had the longest and most in depth experience with Everglades related lawsuits: Judge William Hoveler. His remarks are printed entirely, below.

It is ironic that Big Sugar -- such a reliable supporter of Jeb in the past -- seems to be squarely in Marco Rubio's corner during this GOP presidential primary. But first, my commentary at the time for Sierra Club:

"A massive campaign by citizens to urge the governor to use his veto pen may or may not succeed by the time this article is published. 

Florida’s Everglades are a national treasure, ruined by the best intentions of public policy and the worst of human impulses; greed. 

What we treasure in the Everglades is the grand and the simple at once; the majestic panoramas framed by the sure knowledge that what we can see exists through the force of simple gravity; the slightest and most imperceptible variations of elevation that allow trillions of gallons of fresh water to flow seasonally, each year, in a slow arc from the waters of Lake Okeechobee through the tree islands and sawgrass prairies, through the uplands, rivers, and sloughs, into Florida Bay. 

The grand and simple of the Everglades is a natural poetry we follow with our senses and can lead us to experience an exalted sense of life. Simple gravity and clean, fresh water—nurturing the periphyton mats that comprise the bottom layer of the food chain—finds its polar opposite in political forces, driven by money and wealth, that have twisted restoration of the Everglades into a tangle of conflicting policies, regulations, and jurisdictions. 

It is not for want of trying. For decades, conservationists have advocated public policies to modify land use practices, including the proliferation of unsustainable agriculture and development in wetlands, and restore the simple force of gravity to the Everglades.
The Micosukee Tribe, an independent nation living in the Everglades, have passionately and eloquently advocated for water quality, investing considerable resources and expertise in fighting the worst impulses of government to protect polluters and campaign contributors.

The arrogance of Jeb Bush and the influence of Big Sugar ... By gimleteye

Finally, an investigative report that penetrates the hard but brittle shell of Jeb Bush. Read Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker on Jeb and his failed Everglades experiments. For all Jeb did for Big Sugar, it is ironic the Fanjuls have thrown all their weight behind Marco Rubio, Jeb's former legislative whip on all things pro-sugar.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/swamped-the-political-scene-dexter-filkins
New Yorker

Picture of the Week: JEB. By Geniusofdespair

Jeb, not sure what was on your mind when you posed like this for the camera in NH. What's in our mind is that you should get out of the race. What this photo says, it's not worth it.