Hide Your Wallet
It’s time again for the annual performance of the world’s least humorous comedy troop, the Florida legislature: State lawmakers begin budget-balancing act.
Their 60-day performance begins on Tuesday and they are supposed to create a budget after eliminating all of the reasonable sources of revenue. As the GOP holds 65% of the seats in both the House and Senate, this disaster is all theirs.
Understand that they have raided all of the funds and set-asides available to cover the disaster of last year’s budget, so they will be required to actually make really nasty decisions this term. Being dependent on sales tax revenue during the GOPression is not exactly the best position a state can be in.
The basic problems are: the value of homes is in the toilet; tourists can’t afford to visit; the state stopped growing; and consumers are not spending. The investment income on the various state funds is now negative, so they are going to require more funding at some point and are not available for raiding.
This is going to be painful to watch.
6 comments
How much of the mud will spew off the stuck truck of the Lege onto the Governor? Just curious. Some of that same morons who tried pushing Mittens Romney for Preznit are now rustling around looking for a sane Republican to run in 2012, and seized upon some of the sane stuff Crist said lately and said “Hey, that guy would make a great Preznit!” I don’t see it, myself, but I suppose it depends how much this disaster will make him look bad. Well, that and the whole trophy-wife-cause-I-ain’t-gay problem, but that didn’t stop Rev. Ted Haggard from being beloved by the base (until caught with meth and a male prostitute, anyhow).
Charlie has managed to stay above the fray through a number of nasty incidents and has avoided taking sides in some nasty internecine conflicts. I don’t see any of the problems directly affecting him, as this mess is something the legislative leadership has brought on itself by cutting off all of its revenue sources and refusing to fix the problems that have been evident for years.
Charlie has no ties to the legislature, as he came in via the DA, Attorney General route, so, unless he goes wild with vetoes, he is just administering “the will of the people”.
Charlie is a better actor than Bobby, and, so far, has had better writers.
Maybe we should be hoping for a gay prostitute and a meth problem, then :-(.
I think he got himself in trouble today – he’s looking a ways to raise revenue and is talking about charging corporations for some of what they steal from the state, as well as eliminating some of their tax exemptions. That won’t go over well with the Party’s overlords.
Yeah, that’s the problem. If you talk sense, you can’t get the Republican Party Presidential nomination because you offend both the business base (which wants to believe it can have all the advantages of government without paying for it) and the batshit crazy base (which is, well, batshit crazy). You can only get the Republican Party nomination if you talk batshit crazy. Yet if you talk batshit crazy, you can’t win the general election. This is gonna be a *long* eight years for the Republican Party…
They will have to clean up their act or accept a position as a minority, regional party until they reemerge under a new name. I would not suggest the “Bull Moose Party”, as it would show favoritism, but “American Conservatives” might fly.
It will be a branding exercise, by they certainly don’t intend to fundamentally change their ways.
One of the things that set Charlie off was when he found out that Nestle, Coke, and Pepsi are paying about $150/year to pump all of the Florida water they want into plastic bottles to sell to people. When you have looming water rationing in some areas, people get a little restless about that sort of thing. Brown lawns and 1.6 gallon toilets really drive some people over the edge.