Instruments of Power: Gov. Rick Scott aims to make Big Sugar even wealthier, even more influential so he can be the next US Senator from Florida ... by gimleteye

The guacamole thick pollution out of Lake Okeechobee was meant to be addressed by  Gov. Rick Scott and the Florid legislature, but what is emerging from the SFWMD is just as revolting

It is not exactly news: Democracy with the big "D" requires active, educated citizens.

Nor is it any surprise that our current slide to authoritarian rule is accompanied by voter suppression, political misdirection, and the willingness of elected officials to make corporations more powerful than people.

We are in other words where we are because citizens are not voting and they are not willing to travel outside their safe spaces (ie. Fox News, Breitbart, et al.)

Today, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is aiming a Senate campaign to replace incumbent, Democrat Bill Nelson.

Scott is laser-focused on supplying what his key campaign contributors need; doing an even better job than Trump of dressing up policy changes in favor of polluters (like Big Sugar) while making those changes seem palatable to voters.

We've shown how the Rick Scott system works in the case of last year's big ticket legislative item: a vast new storage reservoir south of Big Sugar's 800 square miles of sugarcane.

The legislation -- proposed by Senate President Joe Negron whose district has been repetitively puked on by discharged from Lake Okeechobee -- seemed to address the needs of downstream property owners, taxpayers, and businesses but left details for later.

That "later" is now.

Yesterday, the South Florida Water Management District -- whose governing board dances to Rick Scott's orders -- showed its hand: punting on science-based outcomes because those outcomes threaten Scott's biggest campaign contributors.

The reason? When fact does not match up with the profits of the sugar industry, science becomes the enemy.

It is a vile way to run the state of Florida, but Gov. Scott is sitting pretty. He has a distracted friend in the White House, conservative jurists in the federal courts, a Republican Congress. And he is counting on voters to give him a free pass in 2018 to the US Senate.

The following article is a long read so fair warning, but readers will be rewarded by a clear picture of how the collusion of uber-wealthy polluters like Big Sugar and politicians work. In this case, it's the fossil fuel industry. Click here, for "Instrument of Power: How Fossil Fuel Donors Shaped the Anti-Climate Agenda of a Powerful Congressional Subcommittee."

Recall, voters, that Gov. Rick Scott is the one who forbid his staff from even using the words "climate change" although representing a state that has the most to lose from rising sea levels. Pass the news along to friends, family, and co-workers.

It is time to take our state and our nation back. Unless voters are educated and motivated to get to the polls, rescue will only be a dream.

Why Would Christians in Alabama Choose a Sexual Predator of Tweens over a Democrat? By Geniusofdespair

Donald Trump Endorses Roy Moore - Yesterday's tweet:

Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!

It is hard to believe that all these "Christians" would vote for Roy Moore. When you listen to them in videos they are of the belief anyone, even a sexual predator of young girls, is better than a Democrat.

Why?

Democrats at one time were for unions, the middle class, fair wages, etc. That was their main agenda. Other stuff fell to the back. Democrats have allowed the Republicans to paint that "other stuff" as the focus of Democrats. Republicans even have made health care sound dirty and guns sound good.

Now the Democrats have as their "liberal platform" (what Roy Moore calls it) very scary stuff to rural White America: Gay Rights, Immigration, Abortion. And, worst of all, Democrats voted for a Black President born in Kenya.

White Americans in rural areas are not as educated as their counterparts in urban areas. They want to go back to the 1950's and they believe that is where Donald Trump will bring them. They are just not ready for what Democrats keep shoving down their throats. They would rather rich people and Corporations get tax cuts than side with a Democrat that represents their own interest.

Rural people believe -- and voted for -- a dangerous huckster from New York (also a sexual predator) that lies to them constantly (and they know it) because he tells them he will stop the thing they hate the most: Those reproducing Hispanics invading their all white areas, their slice of heaven. God has a place for these "Christian" people, and it ain't pretty. No matter what they do they can't stop the tide of the Hispanic population. No matter how much they embrace hateful people and ideas, it will backfire and doom their grandchildren and generations of their family to come. All this hatred by Christians is frightening.

Just listen to these people in Alabama...it will make you cringe, they are just so over-the- top stupid:



Democrats, unfortunately you have to vote in tremendous numbers and you must give money to candidates. There is no other way out of this mess. It will only get worse. Florida can make the difference. We have to get Rubio out at all cost and make sure Senator Bill Nelson is reelected.

Maybe the BEST reason to vote STRAIGHT DEMOCRAT ticket in 2018 ... by gimleteye

As California golfers put through, a summer wildfire rages behind them: an apt metaphor for the state of America

The stock market is up, but make no mistake: money is agnostic when corporate profits have such a clear path into shareholder wallets. If you are not a shareholder, tough luck. For Americans living paycheck to paycheck -- and that's a fair percentage of the electorate -- the smoke and mirrors of the Trump disaster have been nullifying. Tell that to the workers at the Carrier plant in Ohio, where newly elected Donald Trump made a grand splash claiming he was "saving thousands of jobs". The jobs are gone and disaffection with Trump is rampant.

Agnosticism hits a dead end in this place: where the United States is assaulted by a hostile foreign power. That happened in 2016 with Russian interference in the outcome of the election, driving the vote of less than 100,000 in three states to deliver an electoral college victory to Trump.

The spectacle of the Republican Party turning a blind eye to daily breaches of every normative value of presidential behavior is nauseating, but there is more.

The Intercept reported yesterday that that the White House has hosted discussions of creating a network of private spies to counterbalance what Trump perceives as a CIA and intelligence community disloyal to him. The network is the brainchild of the founder of the private army behemoth, Blackwater, that was set into motion in Iraq and elsewhere (with billions of revenue) by Dick Cheney and George Bush.

As the Twitter-verse notes several times a second, you can't make this stuff up. Over the weekend, Trump tweeted a series of lies focused around his manifest hatred of the FBI. Attacking the guardians of democracy and laws -- and now suggesting these assaults should be institutionalized through politicization of US intelligence services -- is a leap towards an authoritarian state. The GOP is silent.

So there it is: the end of the beginning.

Hope rests in one place: in a relatively narrow band of the electorate that was persuaded by fact or by fiction to reject Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in 2016. These include African Americans who stayed home and did not vote, and mostly educated White Americans who voted for Trump despite telling pollsters they didn't. (Fox viewers and followers of the radical right fringe are silo'd in their bunkers.)

Let Alabama be Alabama next week -- fingers crossed for Senate candidate Doug Jones -- but next year, 2018, will be make or break for the United States of America. No one can sit on the sidelines and call themselves a citizen.

TRUMP WHITE HOUSE WEIGHING PLANS FOR PRIVATE SPIES TO COUNTER “DEEP STATE” ENEMIES
Matthew Cole, Jeremy Scahill
December 4 2017, 10:24 p.m.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Trump’s presidency.

The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.

The Frost "Science" Museum ... by gimleteye

The Frost "Science" Museum is a still beautiful confusion. I took my one year old granddaughter recently, and it was much better than I expected. She had a great time among well-designed and wonderfully conceived, living exhibits of the natural world and subtropical biodiversity.

As an adult, I have a few observations.

1) Location. "Museum Park" never made sense. NEVER. Sorry I can't get over it. As usual, Miami and Miami-Dade government officials made sure that the access and physical conformation of the art and science museum would not make either visual or locational sense. The art museum is one of the most beautiful structures in Florida. It is covered up by the science museum. Oh well, the water is done and gone under that bridge.

2) Funding. Taxpayers are significantly on the hook for both museums, which were "sold" to voters on the premise that they would be self supporting by local contributors. The Frost "Science" Museum board of directors really dropped the ball. To be a world-class facility, as the museum was meant to be, significant additional funding is needed. Already, only months after opening, the wear and tear is visible. The Frosts deserve Miami's thanks for investing tens of millions, but clearly there is a problem in the board if the museum can't exist without major taxpayer support. The danger is that the Frost "Science" Museum becomes another mediocre and very expensive piece of government-supported infrastructure.

3) "Science". The greatest paradox of our time is billionaires who don't believe in climate change. (Norman Braman?) Not only are the signs all around us, but Miami is literally at ground zero among the major cities in the world for sea level rise. Yet Philip Frost doesn't believe the indisputable science of man-made climate change. This is disqualifying: if you don't believe in climate change, you can't be a "science" museum. Moreover, by dereliction, you become a second or third rate entity.

My one year old granddaughter is most certainly not going to understand what this avoidance means, but when she is my age six decades down the road she absolutely will. She and all our grandchildren and great grandchildren and further generations will say: what the fuck were those people thinking? because, in that future, people inside the bathysphere will be staring at sea life outside.

Let's not lose sight: there is hope. The board of directors can get its act together and find the funding necessary to make the museum into the world-class facility it was designed to be. Phil Frost can change his mind about climate change. He can steer the museum to channeling the world-wide interest in global warming because otherwise, it will always be an orphan.

In the meantime lots of Miami-Dade schoolchildren are visiting the museum; a very good thing. Go and learn about the incredible beauty and diversity of the natural world that sustains us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coalition for Sugar Reform / American Enterprise Institute HTML-Aei Report Final by Alan Farago on Scribd

3 Reasons We Wish The Republican Party Would Shrivel Up And Die ... by gimleteye

1) The tax bill racing through Congress is a gift to the wealthiest Americans, a massive blow to the middle class, and adds at least $1.5 trillion to the deficit. In other words, the bill supported by a Republican Congress goes against the grain of everything that same Republican Congress promised to Republican voters. Yet Donald Trump is out there touting the bill without any clue what is really inside it and without waiting for Congressional budget analysts to present formal findings of fact.

2) Threat of nuclear war with North Korea is growing, and Donald Trump's "deal making" with Russia and China -- the rogue nation's constant supporters -- is going nowhere.

3) Donald Trump believes -- he really does -- that the Mueller investigation of the Trump White House including obstruction of justice and links to foreign interference in the 2016 election by Russia will be over by the end of December. He's not only dreaming, his fantasy world trigger a constitutional crisis the likes of which this nation has never seen. The Republican leadership could bring this disgraceful presidency to a close, quickly, to spare the nation the pain. It won't. There is enough in the public record to impeach Trump now. For a timeline by Bill Moyers & Co., click here.

The only hope: that American voters freely and independently come to the conclusion to eject Republicans from office, wherever they are nested. Only a massive rebellion at the ballot box by American voters in every state will avert an authoritarian future and breakdown of democracy.

There Has Never Been a Better Time to Become a Democrat. Guest Blog by Ross Hancock

There’s never been a better time to be a Democrat. I’m writing this in response to the Tuesday post by Geniusofdespair, “Does the United States Need a Third Party?”

I respect the sentiment of the argument. The spirit of independence in our community is vibrant and admirable. If I started listing appalling things about the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates and officials, I would probably leave out the one that you hate the most—and that’s not my point, anyway. In the five years since I first became a Democratic candidate in Florida, I have witnessed awful things, and maybe you have, too. Maybe if all of us got together we could fill volumes. Maybe we could get together and call ourselves an institute.

Right now, with the state party in tatters, and a tawdry circus of juggling vacant seats and positions, there is a wonderful power vacuum. The party that brought you a former Republican governor running unsuccessfully at the top of its ticket has been unhinged for years now. Just sweep up the pieces. Harassed women employees of the party are probably on deck right now to, rightfully, sue the pants off the whole state operation.

The most popular choice of party affiliation for new voters in Florida is “NPA”: no party affiliation. In a typical legislative district, there are about a third each of Democrats, Republicans, and NPAs. I hear from people all the time who get worked up and leave the major parties in protest.

Guess what? The major parties don’t really care if you leave. And even if the Democrats cared, there’s no one minding the store, anyway.

What NPAs should do is swarm the Democratic Party. Independent-minded people like Geniusofdespair should not only become Dems and bring fresh air to the primaries, they should run as Democrats. And Genius is doing just that! Even while bemoaning the two-party system, Nancy “Geniusofdespair” Lee has filed to run as a Democrat against an incumbent Democrat who is a living example of why many people hate being associated with the party.

That’s exactly what we should be doing. Running as independents within the Democratic Party process. Bringing fresh faces and talents into the primaries. You don’t need anyone’s permission to run. The party can’t stop you.

Also, give up that pointless protest of being an NPA and locking yourself out of the primary elections. No one notices that you are boycotting the party, and you end up with terrible choices in the general elections.

The state of Florida recently launched a new website that makes it easy to change from NPA to Democrat in just a minute or two. It’s at http://registertovoteflorida.gov I have a project going in State House District 114 (where I am running as an “Independent Democrat” to replace Daisy Baez) to switch about 1,100 NPA voters to Democratic affiliation, just by asking. When this grassroots project is complete in a few months, the district will be officially changed from majority Republican to majority Democratic.

Because, despite everything, there are great things about being a Democrat. There are active caucuses on special issues like the environment, immigration, justice, etc. There are really fun local Democratic clubs. There are Resistance and Women’s March groups and so much more. If I started listing all the great things about being a Democrat, I would probably leave out the one that you’d love the most—and that’s not my point, anyway.

Together, and independently, we can change the system. The power is up for grabs, and it can be returned to the people. There truly never has been a better time to become a Democrat.


Ross Hancock
ross@VoteRossHancock.com

REGISTER, CHANGE PARTY DESIGNATION OR UPDATE YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION

Does the United States Need a Third Party? By Geniusofdespair

From Scorevoting.net

I was intrigued to read Raquel Regalado's column today in the Miami Herald. She dropped out of the U.S. Congressional race for District 27 having been (It appears from what she was saying between the lines) raked over the coals for being "A Moderate":

As the granddaughter of political prisoner who spent two decades in prison and the daughter of a Peter Pan who was sent to this country as a child seeking freedom and who dedicated more than two decades to public service, the current political climate and the level of disrespect and disregard for the values that our nation is founded on is disheartening — on both sides of the aisle.

And:

So I announce that I am withdrawing as a candidate for Congressional District 27 because: I refuse to compromise my values and beliefs; I refuse to accept disrespect, intolerance, and vulgarity as our new norm; and I refuse to be part of this two-party pantomime. I am and will remain a moderate voice.

I spoke with former Conservative Radio Commentator Charlie Sykes at the book fair. He wrote "How the Right Lost Its Mind". I said we need a third party and he agreed.

We don't all fit in to the two parties anymore. The nets both cast are not broad enough to encompass us all because the platforms of each party have items we just don't believe in. On both sides we are voting for a candidate we really don't like just because of the party affiliation.

As a Democrat, this year, I can say I am not on board with a lot and I can't think of any candidate that inspires me. I like Elizabeth Warren sometimes but I think she can be too shrill and combative. She would never win over the moderate voters and the Republican's would never allow her to govern. A third party would end the gridlock in Congress.

This was written in 2016 (updated March 17, 2017):

We have to begin making changes in our system that will enable this nation to govern itself once again.

So what’s the first step?

Well, we certainly can’t look to either major party for the reforms we need. They are too vested in the way things are right now, a system which preserves their power, protects entrenched incumbents, and allows the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans to continue to exert unfair influence over candidates and elections. There’s no way they’ll champion new rules that will weaken their duopoly.

If real systemic change is going to happen, it’ll have to come from an independent third party, one committed to giving government back to the people.

Americans are ready for it. They know the system is broken. That’s why sixty percent now say a new political party is necessary to break the logjam in governance. And those who call themselves “independents” today represent the largest “party” of all, 43 percent, compared to those who identify themselves as Democrats (30 percent) and Republicans (26 percent).

It won’t be easy and it will take time. The two-party system is deeply rooted. But we can make a difference if we begin now, pursuing reforms on a state-by-state, grassroots level. That will gradually clear the way for more nonpartisan candidates to get nominated and elected, and allow them, once in office, to put the best interests of the nation first and work with their colleagues to get things done.

Ultra-Conservative Columnist George Will calls the current Republican Party "The Party of the Grotesque." He has left the party.

This isn't a new idea for me. I wrote about it January 23rd:

The Lunatic, Donald Trump's Tweet This Morning. By Geniusofdespair

We all know there is something very wrong in the White House, and it isn't the plumbing.

This is the most moronic tweet I have seen yet by him. This sounds like something a 12 or 13 boy would write to his friends.

The comments on this tweet were pretty good:

Monday morning reading ... by gimleteye

Globe and Mail, OPED: "Gutting net neutrality is a death knell for the resistance"
HIGHLY RECOMMEND READERS TO CALL SEN. MARCO RUBIO'S OFFICE AND ASK HIM TO STOP THIS MENACE!

From the moment he launched his campaign in June, 2015, Donald Trump's every tweet, threat and conspiracy theory has been logged and scrutinized, championed by his propagandists and critiqued by his protesters, and transformed into memes and viral tracts.

We Americans may be a captive audience to our reality-TV star who thinks he's an authoritarian, but we are a chatty audience, and our loquaciousness has been our salvation. For nearly a year, we have exercised First Amendment rights like we were working a defibrillator on democracy's damaged heart. We debunked lies, catalogued crimes, demanded justice and created a vast, informal movement dedicated to the pursuit of truth over alternative facts.

But that may be about to end. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission announced it was planning a sweeping rollback of net neutrality, allowing corporations to decide what content is available online while pricing most citizens out of equal access to information.

In 2015 Pope Francis released "Laudato Si", his encyclical on global warming. It is a touchstone or should be, for Christian evangelicals who are also climate change deniers.

Amy Siskind: Week 53: Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.

NY DAILY NEWS, President Trump's earliest appearance in Panama Papers revealed

NY Times OPED, "We can't trust Facebook to regulate itself"

Daily Beast, "Make Nepotism Great Again, 20 Families got jobs in Trump administration"

Moyers and Co., "Additions to Our Trump-Russia Timelines: Keep up with the latest entries on our timelines tracking Trump and his inner circle's involvement with Russia." BY STEVEN HARPER | NOVEMBER 21, 2017

THE FULL PICTURE OF COLLUSION:'How Russia Helped Trump Win The White House' from Fresh Air.

The Roy Moore Problem for Women and Children. By Geniusofdespair

I believe them.

Sex abuse can feel shameful. What did I do in this instance? (this is my third ME TOO post.)

When I was young, I went to the movies with my older brother and he sat on my right. A man sat next to me on the left. His hand was soon on my thigh. I thought 'what should I do.'

Children are intimidated by many adults. The authoritarian power is unfortunate for the young with poor judgement.

It never occurred to me to tell or nudge my brother. I just sat very still. I made believe I was a stone. I didn't move a muscle. I thought, if I am not there - it is not happening. I never looked at the man. I just sat as still as I could.

I was ashamed of myself for his hand. What else happened? I don't know. It is shame that keeps us quiet for decades.

I don't remember anything except the decision I had to make, why didn't I just get my brother's attention. Why?
 ---------
My younger sister was in her young teens (she is pictured in my post yesterday). Her dentist was abusing her. She finally told my parents. What did they do? Call the Police? No, they just stopped her from going to that dentist.  That is sexual abuse for you. Push it under the rug and it is out of sight....but it is NEVER out of mind. My sister won't talk about it.

----------

In my other post I choose to keep the identity of the Lawyer secret. I said if he ran for something I would call him. I just could not bare going through the trauma unless it was for the good of the community. I think these women who were abused as girls are heroes to come forward. Donald Trump should be ashamed for doubting them. He says it was 40 years ago.  I say: "So what?". To those who have been abused, each instance feels like yesterday, scorched in our soul forever.