Category — Florida

Attorney General: Dan Gelber [D] v. Pam Bondi [R] – Dave Aronberg shouldn’t have tried the BP link to Dan – the race had been straight forward until that point and people were tired of what was going on in other races.

The local school board did not get its sales tax increase, and shouldn’t have tried it under current conditions. Having it on a primary ballot was the kiss of death because the people who would support it generally don’t vote in primaries. Only 29.2% of registered voters turned out, and the Dems tended to vote in the Senate primary and nothing else.

I got most of the local races right, and we dumped some of the detritus that often collects in local government.

It was noticeable that Bill McCollum did not endorse Rick Scott. Of course, Scott promised to run Florida like a business, reduce regulations and cut taxes because those things have never worked before, so they should be tried again… and again… and again.

The best news is that Greene lost has lost his bid to buy the Democratic nomination for the US Senate. We don’t have to put up with a flood of Jeff Greene ads until November.

This is good news for the hardest working guy in the Florida progressive blogtopia™, Kenneth Quinnell, who has been dealing with Kendrick Meek’s ‘Net effort. His first big campaign is a winner.

For what it’s worth, most people seem to agree that the game changer was when Meek got help from a very popular Democrat, the Big Dog. Bill Clinton can make people feel good, and he knows how to work a crowd.

Update: You can’t buy a Democratic nomination, but the GOP is not that picky. Rick Scott has been chosen by the RPOF to be their candidate for governor.

So, the governor’s race with be: Alex Sink [D], Rick Scott [R], and “Bud” Chiles [I].

The Senate race will be: Kendrick Meek [D], Marco Rubio [R], and Charlie Crist [I].

Update 2: Tea Party = loser in Florida. No tea partiers have won anything in the primaries.

Just a note to let you know that as a result of your campaign that fills my mail box with your brochures, calls me at least daily, and annoys the hell out of my Mother with your constant ads on television [congratulations, you have replaced the Scooter Store as the most hated advertiser], I am more likely to vote for a zombie “Tricky Dick” Nixon than you.

Should the Democrats of Florida be so delusional as to select you, and there is no alternate minor party candidate, I may be forced to vote for his “orangeness” or not vote at all.

I don’t imagine anyone has ever explained the concept of “wretched excess” to you.

According to the Pensacola News Journal the Republican candidate for the US Senate doesn’t see drilling off the Florida coast as a problem – Rubio: Offshore drilling could be good for state

Framing it as an issue of energy independence and national security, U.S. Senate hopeful Marco Rubio said Tuesday that offshore drilling isn’t a dead issue for Florida.

Rubio spoke to about 50 supporters at McGuire’s Irish Pub in Pensacola, touching on issues ranging from the BP oil spill and health care to religious freedom and immigration.

This is why there has to be an amendment to Florida’s constitution: the politicians just refuse to give up on ideas that will bring them a lot of money. It’s as if the lost tourist and fishing seasons never happened, and oil isn’t still coming ashore along the coast. You just can’t get through to them.

Oil is sold on the world market to the highest bidder because the US doesn’t control its supplies, multinational corporations do. How does that improve our energy independence or security?

The Florida primary election is August 24^th, but the early voting starts on Monday, August 9^th, and continues through the 21^st.

This link provides the locations and hours for Okaloosa County.

Remember, Florida has closed primaries, so you must be a registered member of that particular party to vote in the party’s primary.

With luck, both Scott and Greene will lose and the volume of political ads will go from a torrent to a trickle until October.

In another display of Republican concern for education the legislature has authorized a three-day tax holiday on back-to-school supplies and clothes.

Public school started on Thursday, August 5^th, and the “holiday” will be August 13 through 15^th.

If their children went to the public schools the Republicans would know that. If they had any concern at all for public schools the Republicans would know that.

The sales tax is 6%. It would have been nice if people could have saved the money in these times.

The Miami Herald is beginning to wonder. I wrote about these two guys Buying a Job and now the Herald is getting a bit more pointed.

Jim Morin, the paper’s political cartoonist, does it with a drawing, but Fred Grimm just says it: Two rich guys betting on our mass stupidity

Poor Jeff Greene. His candidacy suffers constant association with that other super-rich political dilettante come from nowhere.

Stories about monied neophytes out-spending and out-polling the pros in 2010 tend to lump the two together — Florida’s pecunious twins.

More than a few voters probably confuse Greene, the wildly wealthy Florida Democratic candidate from California, with Rick Scott, the wildly wealthy Florida Republican candidate from Texas.

But it’s the Texan, not the Californian, who was CEO of a hospital chain that paid $1.7 billion in civil and criminal fines in the biggest Medicare fraud case ever.

Greene (currently outpolling Kendrick Meek for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination) has not been affiliated with a known criminal enterprise — though he does suffer an affinity for B-list celebrities with criminal records. The former “Hollywood Madam,” Heidi Fleiss, once lived in Greene’s guest house. Ex-con Mike Tyson was best man in Greene’s 2007 wedding. Drug-addled movie star Lindsay Lohan, currently doing a stretch in a Los Angeles County lock-up, was photographed in alluring beachwear on the Summerwind, Greene’s 145-foot yacht, off St. Barth’s in January.

I have no idea how you get through to people that these guys are part of the problems of the absurd health care costs and the meltdown of the economy, not part of the solution. They have so much money to spend on TV ads that their opponents can’t possibly respond. We have the best elections that money can currently buy.

As you have apparently forgotten, you are running in the Democratic Party primary in the state of Florida.

You really shouldn’t be using debunked Republican talking points to attack another “Democrat”, it just isn’t done. I realize that the truth about the collapse of the economy makes you look bad, because you profited in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, but any number economists have shown that the Community Reinvestment Act and the actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not cause the problems. It was bogus bond ratings, the credit default swaps, and questionable mortgage approvals of private lenders that were at the heart of the bubble.

As someone who “flipped” real estate and was involved heavily in CDSs, you were definitely more of a contributor to the financial meltdown than a Florida Congresscritter.

About being from Florida – we have a cigar industry in Florida, and it has been here a very long time. Florida Congresscritters don’t vote to increase taxes on cigars, or citrus, or theme parks.

Oh, yes, during football season you don’t schedule events for Friday [high school], Saturday [college], or Sunday [pros]. You really should hire some Floridians who could explain these things to you. You could start by learning the names of all of the major teams that play in Florida, and the “enemy”.

You really should have run as a Republican. It is beginning to sound like you flipped a coin with Rick Scott and lost, so you had to run as a Democrat.

We have two members of the plutocracy attempting to buy elected positions in Florida.

Rick Scott is running against Bill McCollum for the Republican nomination for governor of Florida, and Jeff Greene is running against Kendrick Meek for the Democratic nomination for US Senator. Scott is a multi-millionaire while Greene is a billionaire. It is almost impossible to avoid the output from their self-financed campaigns.

Scott made his money the old-fashioned way, from Medicare and Medicaide as the CEO of HCA [formerly Hospital Corporation of America]. Despite record fines for his corporation’s billing practices, HCA made enough money to reward Scott with tens of millions of dollars in compensation.

While one of the secrets of HCA’s huge profits was cutting costs by eliminating jobs, Scott keeps saying he is going to cut taxes and the jobs will magically appear, i.e. another supply-side true-believer with nary a clue as to how the economy works. Of course he opposes the Federal government, not realizing that the stimulus is about to end and Florida is in dire financial straits, making tax cuts irrelevant as no one has any money for taxes anyway.

I know more about what Greene was up to because I was in California when he made his stake in the 1980s during the over-heated real estate market by flipping properties. He bought distressed properties, did some rehab, and re-sold them. He says that he has a proven record of job creation, but hiring day-labors to do some rehab work isn’t creating permanent jobs.

Greene left when the bubble deflated and made the big money with credit default swaps. One of the few big winners in the global financial melt-down thinks that he has the skills to create jobs, after destroying tens of thousands of jobs with his Wall Street gambling.

There’s no telling what the people of Florida will do, but these guys are part of the problem with our economy, not the solution.

At this point in time, the Democrat Alex Sink looks good for the position of governor, and Charlie Crist is running ahead in the Senate race. These guys are doing a lot of damage to their primary opponents, and that isn’t good for the chances of their supposed parties in November.

The Local Puppy Trainer is carrying a story that originated with the Pensacola News Journal: Panhandle legislators left off state oil spill response committees

TALLAHASSEE — Flatly rejecting Gov. Charlie Crist’s order to put an offshore drilling ban on the November ballot in Tuesday’s aborted special session, House Speaker Larry Cretul is forging ahead with his own response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.

But while tar balls are staining Northwest Florida beaches, none of the six legislative working groups Cretul assigned to the task is led by a Panhandle legislator.

Three of the lead lawmakers on the groups are from Southwest Florida, as is the chief coordinator they will answer to, Rep. Gary Aubuchon, a Republican from oil-free Cape Coral.

Three of the leads, including Aubuchon, serve on a committee that spent months laying the groundwork to lift Florida’s 20-year offshore drilling ban.

The working group membership is sprinkled with Northwest Florida legislators — including Republicans Clay Ford of Pensacola, Jimmy Patronis of Panama City and Marti Coley of Marianna and Democrat Leonard Bembry of Greenville — and the region’s voice will be heard, insists Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Fort Walton Beach.

First off, Greenville is East of Tallahassee in Madison County on the Georgia line which is a long ways from a beach. Marianna is in Jackson County on the Alabama line, and while it is at least in the Central Time Zone, again, a long way from a beach. That leaves two people who are actually concerned with the problem, and neither is in charge of anything.

Aubuchon thinks that listening “to more than 30 hours of testimony” justifies putting the cabal that was trying to open the coast to drilling in charge. Sorry, but the time equivalent of a two-credit-hour course, doesn’t even qualify those people as interested amateurs. The bulk of that testimony was telling the legislators about how wonderful it would be to have drilling rigs in Florida’s coastal waters, which has just been shown to be garbage – poisonous, sticky garbage strewn on our beaches.

The Republicans sold out the people of Florida to help the oil companies.

The Miami Herald documented the atrocity:

The Florida House abruptly adjourned a special legislative session after 49 minutes Tuesday, rejecting Gov. Charlie Crist’s proposal to let voters place a permanent ban on offshore drilling in the Florida Constitution.

The party-line vote to adjourn the session was 67-44, with Republicans supporting adjournment and Democrats in favor of continuing the debate.
…

[Florida House Speaker Larry] Cretul formed six “work groups” of House members to study various aspects of the spill response and to propose “meaningful legislative solutions, if possible,” by the end of August. The six work groups are all being led by junior Republican members, including three freshmen members. None of the six is from the Panhandle, the area experiencing the most severe economic hardships so far.

I hope everyone sees how important speaker “Cretin” thinks the Gulf Gusher is, and how much respect the Republican Party of Florida has for BP’s victims and the Panhandle.

If you vote for a Republican in Florida, you are voting for drilling in the coastal waters, All 67 of them in the Florida house voted to deny the people a voice on the issue.

The Miami Herald reports that the Florida Legislature session on oil-drilling ban in jeopardy.

The Republican leadership will tell you it is so they don’t give Charlie Crist a victory because he left the party. Garbage. The initial reports of the session being in trouble came from oil lobbyists, not politicians. The Republicans want to drill, and don’t want to admit it until after the election. They know that if they oppose a drilling ban amendment they will be killed at the ballot box, so they are going to fight it all the way. The leadership will probably block any attempt to bring it to a vote.

If they block it, anyone voting for a Republican is voting for drilling off Florida’s coast. It really is that simple.

The Pensacola News Journal has the unemployment figures for Florida and Escambia county, while the Local Puppy Trainer has them for Okaloosa and Santa Rosa counties.

While Florida dropped to 11.4%, Escambia rose to 10.9%, Santa Rosa rose to 9.8%, and Okaloosa rose to 7.6%.

“This is the time when we would have hit our peak employment right now. We should be way up,” said David Goetsch, vice president for community relations and workforce development at Northwest Florida State College. “It’s an indication of what the oil spill is doing, unfortunately. In fact, that might be the best indicator we’ve got for the financial impact of that oil spill.

These are figures for the “non-farm workforce” and don’t count the fishing industry, which was heavily impacted, at all. Because of Eglin AFB, and farming in the North County, the Okaloosa County unemployment rate is normally in the 2 to 3% range. That number is further distorted by the construction industry, which normally comes in from out-of-state and isn’t counted in Florida statistics as all. The same thing is happening with the contractors working for BP.

The Pensacola News Journal has a couple of Florida political stories that will really annoy Republicans: Gov. Crist calls special session for oil drilling ban this month

Rubio supporters in the House and Senate have blasted Crist for what they see as political grandstanding on the issue. They note that Florida law already prohibits offshore drilling in state waters and that a special session will cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars a day.

Crist denied that he is playing politics.

He noted that speaker-designate Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, and Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, nearly passed legislation repealing the offshore drilling ban in 2009, with the help of powerful and anonymous industry backers.

“Politics has nothing to do with this,” Crist said. “This has everything to do with doing what’s right for a place that I love. I love Florida and I know it’s already barred statutorily but I also know that just a year ago they tried to change that statute and drill holes three miles off the coast of Florida and that’s why it’s the will of the people that should be heard on this.”

Charlie, it wasn’t just a year ago, it was also this Spring, and they didn’t pull the bill to open the coast to drilling until after the Well from Hell blew up. They tried to sneak it in without debate because it was backed by the Republican leadership in the legislature.

This is good news: Judge: Lawmakers’ redistricting amendment can’t go on ballot.

A citizens’ group has two amendments, 5 & 6, on the November ballot that will change the way the state does redistricting. For some reason they believe that districts should be compact and all parts contiguous, rather that the current flights of fancy that have a tendency to come out of the legislature.

To avoid these restrictions the legislature passed amendment 7 for the ballot which was designed to negate everything in amendments 5 & 6. Alas, their intent was a bit too obvious for this judge to buy. They will appeal, but the forces of good won the first round.

My Congresscritter, Jefferson Beauregard “Oily” Miller of Chumuckla, really ticked off a lot of people in 2006, when he voted to lift the ban on off-shore drilling. If the Democratic Party of Florida had had any money, that would have been the end of his career.

He is nearly invisible in Congress and feels comfortable enough with voters in the first district of Florida to occasionally do something for the whacko base, like putting up a sign in his office proclaiming his friendship with South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson , the dillweed who yelled “You lie!” during a Presidential speech to a joint session of Congress.

The background is to give you an idea of how dangerous coastal Republicans think Joe Barton’s apology to BP was to their reelection chances, dangerous enough for “Oily” Miller to attack Barton:

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller called Thursday for fellow Republican Joe Barton of Texas to step down from his leadership position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee after Barton apologized to BP chief Tony Hayward.

“I am shocked by Congressman Joe Barton’s reprehensible comments,” Miller said in a statement. “Mr. Barton’s remarks are out of touch with this tragedy, and I feel his comments call into question his judgment and ability to serve in a leadership position on the Energy and Commerce Committee. He should step down as ranking member of the committee.”

Miller, a Chumuckla Republican, joined Obama adminstration officials and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio condemning the comments.

Miller isn’t interested in being hoisted upon his derrick or to become a “Gulf Gull” with tar and feathers.

Miller isn’t eligible for a Captain Louis Renault Award, despite the use of “shocked”, because Miller probably was shocked – by the local backlash, not Barton.