Florida's Ungeschehenmachen

--Florida's gubernatorial contenders: 
Charlie Crist and incumbent Rick Scott 

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It's the only thing that there's just too little of 
--What the World Needs Now is Love, 
Jackie DeShannon

 Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around 
--Money (Cabaret)

 Dumb all over,
Black 'n white
People, we is not wrapped tight 
--Dumb All Over, Frank Zappa
____________________

Subtitle: Two peas in a pod.

Sunday's New York Times magazine ran an in-depth feature on Florida's current gubernatorial race (How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Parties.)

The lede graphic depicts the contenders as disembodied puppet heads on a stick, lacking the flesh-and-blood of an impassioned real candidate. In reality, they are marionettes whose strings are pulled by a netherworld of monied political interests which inhabit a universe unto themselves.

The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling gutted the McCain-Feingold limits which had been imposed upon political campaign spending. So The People are now exposed to incessant 30-second sound-byte media lies, often created by a PAC with a benign-sounding name, a name often totally contradicting its actual agenda. This is how elections are determined by today's continually-wired electorate.


Read it for a sad insight into the election process, 2014-style.

(An excerpt):

At the cramped conference table, Baldick rattled off more news, both good and bad. A series of recent polls found that both candidates were extremely unlikable. (“Crist and Scott Could Make History by Being So Unpopular in Florida” was the headline of one recent report at FiveThirtyEight.com.) Baldick said this could actually be a positive development. “Both of them are not liked,” he explained, but “if you think people are going to show up because they hate, not love — I do — there’s more people who hate Scott.”

Steyer leaned back in contemplation.

“You think that’s what gets people to vote?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, hate, fear —”

Like, Totally

--Rick Scott at Naples homeless shelter
on Thanksgiving thinking,
"What are those things in her hair?"

You're a rotter, Mr. Grinch
You're the king of sinful sots
Your heart's a dead tomato
splotched with moldy purple spots
You're a three-decker sauerkraut
and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce!
--The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (1966)

"It is required of every man,"
the ghost returned,
"that the spirit within him should
walk abroad among his fellow-men"
--A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

"Me and my old school pals
had some mighty high times down here
And what happened to you
poor black folks, well it just ain't fair"
He took a look around, gave a little pep talk,
said "I'm with you" then he took a little walk
--How Can a Poor Man Stand
Such Times and Live?,
Blind Alfred Reed
__________________

If there's one thing Lisa cannot countenance, that is hypocrisy (OK, and lies, and willful ignorance, and cruelty . . .).

Florida's Governor "Pink Slip Rick" Scott is so utterly unctuous, so venomous to those most vulnerable in his state that it defies description. Posing for a photo op at a Naples shelter providing Thanksgiving meals, Scott said he "cared completely" about programs for the homeless, but his care is in the form of de-funding them so, presumably, they (the homeless) will go away (maybe to Missouri -- isn't that where they sent a lot of the Katrina refugees?)

Says Scott, “We've got to make this a place people can do well.” Apparently, there is no room in that plan for rehabilitation or giving someone one-down a leg up.

One Jacksonville homeless shelter official noted that Scott “zeroed out all homeless funding” — $7 million worth — in his budget proposal. That funding supported programs dedicated to homelessness prevention, housing initiatives, and programs that “re-house” people once they’re on the street. “Not only that, he took out the line items so it can never be funded again,” said the official.

To show how much he cares about the homeless, Scott went further by vetoing $12 million in funding that state legislature had passed to support homeless veterans. There are an estimated 17,000 homeless veterans in Florida — the second highest in the nation. Overall, a record 17.2 million Americans went hungry last year (Rick Scott says "I Care Completely" About Homelessness).

Earlier this year, Scott meanly proposed to eradicate Homeless Awareness Day and eliminate the $7 million funding for the Office of the Homeless which worked with housing coalitions around the state to innovate solutions for the state's estimated 58,000 homeless.

Meanwhile, 16.1% of Floridians suffer "food insufficiency", a nice way of saying they go to bed hungry, and there has been a surge in the numbers of children eligible for free school lunches. Florida was one of 11 states that had over a 25% increase in program participation over the last four years.

The NYT's reports, "Millions of American schoolchildren are receiving free or low-cost meals for the first time as their parents, many once solidly middle class, have lost jobs or homes during the economic crisis, qualifying their families for the decades-old safety-net program" (Lines Grow Long for Free School Meals, Thanks to Economy). It is a federal program, but I'm sure Mr. Scott, caring so completely in his own special way, would ax it if he could, in the name of making this a place "where people can do well."

The thing Scott misses is, the state needs to create a middle class to patronize the businesses he has so unspectacularly not drawn to the state. It should be in his state's interest to support those in need of the social safety net lest they go under completely.

To those staunch Objectivists: Your gated communities will not keep you safe from the abject desperation of your fellows.

[h/t to reader Deryle for the Thanksgiving piece.]

Don't Know Much

If you don't eat yer meat,
you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding
if you don't eat yer meat?
--Another Brick in the Wall,
Pink Floyd

Don't know much about geography
Don't know much trigonometry
Don't know much about algebra
Don't know what a slide rule is for
--Wonderful World, Sam Cooke
______________________

The president of Arizona State University, Michael M. Crow, blasted Florida Governor Rick "Pink Slip" Scott today in Slate for lacking vision when he insisted our schools graduate more students in the STEM (science, engineering, technology and math) disciplines (America Needs Broadly Educated Citizens, Even Anthropologists). At least, I think that's what he was saying.

While applauding Mr. Crow's efforts, we feel he is the hapless victim of academese, as witnessed in the below statements:

"It is essential that we develop in our students the ability to understand the complexity and interrelatedness of our cultural, economic, natural, political, social, and technological systems. The point here is that we need all of the skill sets from anthropology to zoology as well as transdisciplinary perspectives to reinvigorate programs in civil engineering. Inspired engineering, in other words, could come as a consequence of familiarity with the development of counterpoint in Baroque music or cell biology. Or even the construction methods of indigenous tribes."

"[C]onstruction methods of indigenous tribes"? Well, don't that just beat all? Not only politically-correct, but abstruse enough that one does not know whether to cry or champion the suggestion. A "counterpoint in Baroque music or cell biology"? Yer, good luck with that.

Problem with academics -- and their think-tank brethren in politics -- is they concern themselves with sounding erudite within their discipline. Out here, we don't know what the heck they are talking about. That student with the indigenous tribe construction + Baroque music achievement . . . um, where is his job? I fear we will have to outsource him to Vanuatu.

We shall leave you with a final dose of the reason you got sick and tired of college:

"Every student should have an understanding of complexity and sustainability and decision-making matched with a general awareness of entrepreneurship and business. From this breadth of experience, students gain the perspective and focus necessary to succeed in any academic field and subsequent career trajectory. Given the multiple dimensions and global interconnectedness of many professional sectors, the trend toward choosing two or even three majors is entirely appropriate. Needless to say, the challenge is to design universities that have the capacity to produce such individuals who are also ready to work within the contexts of initially narrower assignments."

The "Multiple dimensions and global interconnectedness of many professional sectors"? Two -- or even THREE majors? Not too many students have the wherewithal, financially or otherwise, for such a pleasant dalliance in the halls of academia. What they need is a J-O-B. Thanks, Mr. Crow, but personally, we would need some Bennies to stay awake during your esteemed presentation.

Thanks for giving it the old college try, though. Boo yah.

Gas Money

--Recycling, Michael Kountouris

I'm going where the sun keeps shining
Thru' the pouring rain
Going where the weather suits my clothes
--Everybody's Talkin', Harry Nilsson

A man willing to work,
and unable to find work,
is perhaps the saddest sight
that fortune's inequality exhibits
under this sun
--Thomas Carlyle

Strong wind destroy our home
Many dead, tonight it could be you
Strong wind, strong wind
Many dead, tonight it could be you
--Homeless, Paul Simon

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night
--Big Rock Candy Mountain,
Harry McClintock
_____________________

Recently, Florida Governor Rick "Pink Slip" Scott misguidedly called for an increase in the number of engineering and math students in the state as a solution to the unemployment problems the state is suffering. Sorry, but graduating students who will face dwindling job prospects is not the solution.

While Ranger was sitting in Publix enjoying a yogurt the other day, he was approached by a homeless man with a zero-sum scheme: If Ranger would allow the man to purchase his groceries on the man's Food Stamp card, Ranger would then pay the man back in greenbacks. He explained that he needed money for gas because his car was on empty, a car which also serves as his living quarters.

The man recently was released from a 50-day jail sentence for holding a sign on the road and violating the city's easement policy [local Ordinance 12-62] -- aimed at reducing panhandlers and protesters -- since he could not pay the bail nor afford the $385 fine. (He never said what was on the sign, and Ranger never asked; this is Publix's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.)

Now, Ranger associates with the hoi polloi which mill about the only lake in downtown Tallahassee (which was actually a rainwater drain off pond, but that's another story), and so knows this man with the hustle. He is an unemployed engineer with a graduate degree from the Florida System -- of this, there is little doubt. His unemployment recently ran out, and he has taken on various piecework projects over the term of his unemployment, often traveling out of town to do so, but he cannot seem to extricate himself from the rabbit hole he has fallen down. His is not an atypical story.

Here is where Ranger gets all Bolshie: What is it in the universe Republican that eludes his comprehension? Here is a skilled, adult male engineer, Mr. Scott -- where does he fit into your Floridian utopia?

The sadness is, neither party will or can solve this man's or this nation's problems. So, how does a nation live in a car? A person can do so, but what is the national equivalent? The good news is, the man is driving a Ford vehicle and is still buying BP petrol.

As General Petraeus asked, tell me how this story ends.

Prison Planet Florida

Saved you the room you used to
stay in every Sunday
The one that is warmed by sunshine every day
And we'll get to know each other for a second time
And then you can tell me 'bout your prison stay
--Care of Cell 44, The Zombies

Clang clang, go the jail guitar doors
Bang bang, go the boots on the floor
Cry cry, for your lonely mother's son
--Jail Guitar Doors, the Clash

Johnny's in America
no tax at the wheel
Nobody needs anyone
They don't even just pretend
--I'm Afraid of Americans,
David Bowie
___________________

There is a controversy brewing in the Sunshine State around the constitutionality of privatizing the prison system. The Florida Supreme Court has ruled against the idea, but our profit-minded Governor "Pink Slip" Rick Scott is seeking too circumvent the ruling in the name of saving taxpayer's money, the holy grail of politicos everywhere.

However, if saving taxpayer's money were truly the concern, reducing the growth of the prison/security state should be the focus. Prisons should not be the premier growth industry of a state, yet it is. It is estimated that between one in 36 to 100 Americans are currently in jail. That is a lot of potential manpower being warehoused on the state's dime.

Getting "tough on crime" via incarceration may sound good, but when most inmates are non-violent drug offenders, it makes little sense. The majority will just get back on the carousel upon release anyway, and the only achievement will have been to have made room for a new crop of users/criminals to practice their craft in their place.

If we wanted to save money and be a just and equable society, forget the profit margins and look at reducing the human cost of our lock-up leadership philosophy. By extension, it could be said that Rick Scott and his cohort have always profited by keeping the legions in thrall, for what is today's health "care" system (which Rick ran before attaining his governorship) if not a warehousing of sick people into chutes and holding pens to be prescribed drugs or surgery?

There are currently too many people in prison to no benefit to the state or to themselves.

Where Have all the Solons Gone?

Pink Slip Rick + Gerard Robinson

The impact of war is self-evident,
since economically it is exactly the same as
if the nation were to drop a part
of its capital into the ocean
--Karl Marx

Those who can, do,
Those who can't, teach,
Those who can't teach, coach,
Those who can't coach, administer
____________________

One problem with government is that mediocrity is rewarded and lesser-qualified individuals rise to the top by virtue of lock-step conformity and partisanship.

When the state of U.S. public education is languishing and Florida languishes at the penultimate ranking of states in terms of quality of education, our vaunted governor Pink Slip Rick appoints Gerard Robinson as Florida's new Education Commissioner.

Mr. Robinson's qualifications to this weighty position are bugger all: He holds a MEd from Harvard and taught 5th grade for one year. Nil, zippo, aught qualifies Robinson to be commissioner of Florida's education, aside from the fact that, as Vice President Biden once said of President Obama, he is a tall, black man "who is articulate, bright and clean." Oh, and he's a "change agent" (New Education Leader is Reform-minded).

Education is a field that undergoes reform before we even know the facts, but as a simple Army dictum goes, we shouldn't mistake movement for progress. What constitutes reform? We would trust an educator with a Bachelor's + 30 years experience before trusting a callow 1st-year middle school teacher appointed by a venal carpetbagger.

Private school vouchers plus charter schools are getting backing from Scott, a businessman favored by those against anything which smacks of socialism. Of course, those same people are happy to have police, fireman and public transportation when they need it. Public education is being gutted, and nothing better is being fronted for the average student.

Political reliability is not an educational qualification. We should stop playing Lotto with our kid's education.

Gone by the Wayside

One day we're gonna wake up
And the ghetto's all around
All over my friend
Have you ever seen a man break down?
--Feel No Pain, Sade

~~I'm afraid it's no use.
The boat won't come until Monday.
~~No boat will ever come.
We're here forever.
--And Then there Were None,
Agatha Christie
________________

Many niceties of our civil society are going by the wayside due to fiscal insolvency. In the past two weeks, National Parks and Public Broadcasting have taken the ax.

It takes passion, devotion and insight to build something great and good, and momentum to keep it going. Once gone, that good thing is unlikely to return, and certainly not in its former guise. That is why we shouldn't give the heave-ho to civilizing institutions in the name of pragmatic privitization. When things become private rather than shared matters, the money usually follows the drift line of vested interests vs. the general welfare.

In The Sunshine State (not), Governor Rick Scott has vetoed Florida’s nearly $4.8 million appropriation for public broadcasting. The last-minute budget had already trimmed a third from the PBS budget; now, there is nothing. The station I grew up on -- WMFE -- is going dark.

Public broadcasting began in 1970, forged from private educational stations. One of its primary functions has been to provide educational programming for young people, and generations learned the basics of grammar, reasoning and citizenship on that network. It was a "free" counterpart to the hustle of the commercial networks, producing thoughtful programming and financed by private contributions and matching state funds. Its day is drawing nigh.

Now, state parks across the nation are being forced to close; 70 of 278 in California alone. For those that remain, the bargain with the devil is to allow drilling, raise entrance fees, eliminate provisions and/or cut employees in favor of hoped for volunteers. Timothy Egan calls it "the death of American life by a thousand cuts," and that about sums it up.

Compassionate conservatism under George W. Bush hacked away at the AmeriCorps program, Bill Clinton's initiative to unify a stateside version of the Peace Corps, another worthy initiative which could have helped fill in the gaps. Though John McCain made a gesture to support national service, that program was eviscerated years ago.

There's always money for the dirty, pretty things, the things that elicit a rise, or more lately, a shrug from people falling into lassitude. But the generous and decent things that speak of a nation's drive to uplift itself, those things are being frozen in amber.

As with Ozymandias, there will remain a plaque somewhere to note the spot.

You Play, You Pay

When you win a war
you preside over a funeral.
Pay your respects to the dead
--Tao Te Ching, Verse 31

The way you stole my heart,
you know you could have been a cool crook.
And, baby, you're so smart,
you know you could have been a schoolbook
--The Way You Do the Things You Do,
The Temptations
___________________

We always talk about THEM and how they run the government, but the question is: Why do we allow them to run the government the way they do?

For example: Most states have lotteries, which is a polite way of saying they have co-opted the functions of organized crime. Even in the God-fearin' Bible belt, they still like their gambling (often under the aegis of helping schoolchildren, you see.) God gave us free will, after all, and you're saved or not, so bring on the Lotto.

The Florida State lottery is gambling in its purest form -- state-sponsored racketeering sold as a positive, something that would benefit scholastic programs. Nobody seems to mind that the dumbest and poorest among us are the source of the increased revenue that benefited the smartest and best-educated. We pretend that bilking billions from Lotto players is different from taxation, but with the Lotto the players get zilch, whereas with increased taxation they might get something beneficial.

The lottery is a hidden tax levied upon the poorest and most desperate in our system. However, even that inequity is irrelevant as gambling was accepted as a legitimate state function for raising revenue and keeping taxes down. But the real rub of this supposedly painless generator of supplemental revenue for the general education of Floridians was seen after new Governor Rick Scott (aka Pink Slip Rick) blew into Tallahassee.

Now the funds for schools and scholarships have been cut, the monies diverted to more dire state needs (Students Rally Against Bright Futures Cuts). NO surprise as this Republican governor is opposed to all tax increases. Miraculously, Scott has actually cut corporate taxes concomitant with falling revenue at the Florida mafia (which we call the Lottery Commission.) And a mere 65 students turn out for the rally, on their own campus!

Absolutely predictable: Revenue falls across the board, the governor grabs Lotto cash for the state -- cutting earmarked education funding -- all the while denying the need for increased tax revenue. It doesn't take a genius to see we have been hornswaggled. The lottery exists on bipartisan support, so both parties bear responsibility for this con game preying upon our poorest souls.

This sure seems like a perfect example of President Reagan's Voodoo Economics.

Pears for Petunia

Just remember, if you're not one up
on the other fellow, then he's one up on you
--School for Scoundrels (1960)

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, ya can't please everyone,
so ya got to please yourself
--Garden Party, Ricky Nelson

If you want to know the taste of a pear,
you must change the pear by eating it yourself.
If you want to know the theory and methods
of revolution, you must take part in revolution.
All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience
--Mao Zedong

Florida: The Rules are Different Here
--Defunct Tourist Board slogan
_______________________

The Sunshine State has long been the favored land of grifters. These carpetbaggers speak the tongue of the Northern retirees, and can fleece the defrosted, deracinated rubes with ease.

If your aspirations are small, a pickup truck, 5-gallon bucket, some tar paper and book of receipts for promised driveway or roof repairs never made, and gas to hoof it back to Michigan by the end of spring will suffice. But for those with bigger dreams, the large population of retirees is also ripe for health care fraud, and the permutations seem endless.

Lisa knows two cases personally. The smaller involved a group home in Ft. Lauderdale for developmentally-challenged adults, funded by Medicare and "run" (a term very loosely used) by a known drug dealer; the larger, a multi-hospital scam of substance abuse programs run by a friend's father for many years before being busted. Now, our own Governor Rick Scott proves in a uniquely Florida Horatio Alger-esque way that every malefactor may one day grow up to be head criminal.

Ezra Klein described Scott last week as "one of the most entertainingly shameless figures in American political life." Not only did Scott manage to resign before the $2 Billion judgment against his Columbia/HCA Healthcare, he is managing a "second act":

"Before running for office, he turned his $62 million stake in Solantic, the urgent-care clinic chain he founded after resigning from Columbia/HCA Healthcare, over to a trust in his wife’s name. Solantic doesn’t take traditional Medicaid, but it does work with the private HMOs that, under a 2005 pilot program, were allowed to contract with Medicaid. And Scott is now pushing a bill that would expand that program across the state making those HMOs — the ones Solantic works with — the norm for Medicaid.

"Asked about the apparent conflict of interest, Scott said, “If you look at everything that I want to accomplish in health care in Florida is basically what I’ve believed all my life. I believe in the principle that if you have more competition it will drive down the prices.” And I believe him. But he could have sold his stake in Solantic when he got into government. Since he didn’t, the fact remains that Scott is pushing a policy his family stands to profit from immensely . Which is, for Scott, real progress. In the 1990s, he made his money off single-payer health-care programs by cheating them. Today, he’s making his money off single-payer health-care programs by running them. No matter how you look at it, it’s a step up" (Rick Scott's Extremely Profitable Policy Proposal).

Is it coincidence that Solantic is an anagram for stoical? We see the new governor as intransigent in his view that Florida is the land of opportunity for those clever enough to exploit it. No qualms about privately profiting off his decisions as a public servant; stoicism is a great trait to possess in order to pull off the big swiz.

How could people elect a governor on the platform of reducing taxes when our state government is running a severe deficit? From whence will the needed funds arrive?

Governor Scott was elected on the basis of his contrived 12-Step-ish campaign ads explaining how he'd learned a lesson from his previous run-in, with mama by his side. Yeah -- like in every school for scoundrels, his criminality taught him how to do it better next time. Southerners do love them a good come-to-Jesus story, though.

Our fellow citizens voted for a known criminal, so good luck to them.