Rick Scott Is a Major Scandal But Barely a Blip On The National Radar

It's been months, and it's barely been covered by anything resembling the national media, but recently Salon.com posted an article on the ongoing scandals of Rick "No Ethics" Scott here in Florida (an article which quickly slid under the radar with all the more current craziness dominating the news).

Comparing Scott's woes to the fall of another governor, Oregon's John Kitzhaber, writer David Dayen tries to point out why criminal Scott won't be leaving office the way Kitzhaber did:

In any normal political environment, the charges would lead to calls for resignation or impeachment proceedings. But Scott appears insulated by the very expectation of his corruption. In idealistic Oregon, Democrats controlled every level of government, and forced out a member of their own party. In Florida, the governor is supposed to be a scoundrel...

Dayen covers three of the ongoing scandals pursuing Scott: the more public disaster that has been Bailey-Gate, the questionable firing of a well-liked FDLE department chief over what seems to be Bailey's refusal to play Scott's partisanship games; a lawsuit over a disputed land use proposal to expand the governor's mansion that led to the revelation that Scott has been - and might still be using - illegal private emails in violation of Florida's Sunshine laws; and another lawsuit from political opponent George Sheldon over Scott's differing financial disclosures to both the federal Securities Exchange Commission and the state's ethics board.

Scott's refusal to play by the rules of ethics - both over the secret emails and over his financial chicanery - ought to be major strikes against him:

This is critical because public officials in Florida are subject to the release of emails from their official accounts, like those former Gov. Jeb Bush released last week. The use of private email accounts to conduct state business violates the law, especially if they aren’t turned over when asked for. Andrews got a judge to allow him to amend his complaint to say that the governor knowingly violated public records requests, an impeachable offense in Florida. The administration continues to fight to get the suit tossed...

It'd be nice to think that under normal circumstances Scott would be facing impeachment over his misconduct.  He's earned that much from his scornful performance.  Other governors - Blagojevich, remember him? McDonnell.  Now Kitzhaber - have gotten charged, impeached, driven from office for similar unethical conduct.  But this isn't a normal circumstance here in Florida.

Here in Florida the f-cking game is rigged.  Regarding Sheldon's ethics case, for example:

Sheldon believes that Scott has maneuvered money through a network of trust accounts to hide it from public scrutiny. Scott has refused to deliver information on the trusts, calling the lawsuit a “frivolous partisan attack” and claiming that the discrepancies with the SEC documents have to do with Scott’s wife Ann’s money. Scott’s lawyers want to move the case out of court and into the state ethics commission, currently chaired by a Republican appointed by the governor.

Yup. Scott wants his case reviewed by a political ally.  Oh, of course, don't be too surprised when the ally turns a blind eye or dismisses the charges or even gives Rick "What Part of Medicare Fraud Did You Voters Ignore" Scott a gold medal for being "a sweet little angel". (insert choking noise here)

We're not going to see the state government do anything about Rick Scott's ethical failures because the agencies that are best positioned to do something about it - the state legislature in particular - are in no rush to rock the boat or turn against one of their own partisan hacks.

We're talking about a state legislature that is so firmly entrenched with Republicans in power that the state House and Senate plan ahead who their legislative leaders - House Speaker, Senate President - will be (due to a term-limit law at the state level, there's a cap on how long a legislator serves as Speaker).

The only other method to confront Scott over these scandals is the court system... and Scott has enough money and lawyers on payroll to game the courts long enough to avoid answering for his sins well until he leaves office in 2018.

It'd be nice to think the federal government could step in, force a more serious and more public investigation - in particular, Scott's questionable filings with the SEC should be sending up the right red flags - that could embarrass the state Republicans to abandon Scott.  But that doesn't seem like it's going to happen.  And outside of this one Salon article, it doesn't look like the national media is willing to pay attention long enough for the state party to feel any shame or pressure to change their tune.

We're pretty much at the point where Rick "HE'S A CROOK VOTERS, WHAT THE HELL" Scott can knock over a string of liquor stores between Orlando and Miami and still never answer for anything.

Thanks a lot, Republican voters who VOTED FOR AN UNETHICAL MEDICARE FRAUD.  Thanks a lot, Democratic voters who REFUSED TO SHOW UP TO VOTE FOR CRIST BECAUSE HE WASN'T PURE ENOUGH FOR YA.  /headdesk

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Here's Your Duly Elected Governor, Florida Voters, Caught Lying and Acting Like a Crook January 2015 Edition

This has been building up the past few weeks.  There were questions back when it happened, but since this last weekend the questions about why Rick Scott forced a well-respected state-level law officer - FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey - to resign got louder, and the accusations - how it was over unethical and potentially illegal misconduct in Scott's administration - got serious.

It's gotten to the point where even Scott's Cabinet - fellow elected officials from the same hard-core Tea Partier faction of the state GOP - are backing off from their rubber-stamping of Scott's move and acting like they're not involved in any of this.  Via Daniel Ruth:

A week after Gov. Rick Scott misled, undermined and duped the independently elected Cabinet into going along with his baseless firing of long-serving Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey, (Chief Financial Officer) Atwater finally woke up and perhaps said to himself, "Hey, wait a minute here. This whole thing smells sorta fishy."

Do you think?

Perhaps Atwater had an inkling he had been played for a chump by Scott when Bailey bluntly denied he had resigned from his post and that the governor was a big honking liar for suggesting otherwise.

When your own people are backing away from a bad story, it's time to break out the lawyers.  Via another article at the Tampa Bay Times:

(Attorney General Pam) Bondi on Wednesday became the last of the three elected Republican Cabinet members to distance herself from the ouster last month of Gerald Bailey as commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Bailey alleges that Scott and his aides meddled in law-enforcement business and used strong-arm tactics to pressure him to resign.

Taking indirect aim at Scott on his preference for secrecy over transparency, Bondi said she and the public have a right to know the truth, and that she would insist that the Bailey matter be discussed "thoroughly and in the sunshine" at the next Cabinet meeting Feb. 5.

This is Bondi coming out against Scott on this matter.  The same Bondi who is neck deep in the beach sand at vacation spots paid for by lobbyists just happening to get her to sell out the state to their whims.  The hypocrisy of this would be laughable if it weren't so horrifying.

Scott's move to fire Bailey was such a shock to the Tallahassee power circles - the Commissioner had served without a problem under other Republican governors and was liked and respected - that questions were unavoidable.  What made it worse for Scott was his own damn mouth: having spent more than four years - dear God, it's been that long already - making false claims and refusals to answer direct questions, when pressed on an issue he couldn't avoid he simply lied about it.  Problem was, the person he lied on - Bailey - was someone the media respected, so that when Bailey charged back accusing Scott of flat-out lying, the papers and politicos believed Bailey over Scott.

And this is more than Scott being a liar.  The reason(s) why Scott pushed Bailey to resign - trying to get state cops to help with the re-election campaign, abusing state transportation, making up a criminal investigation against an Orange County Clerk of Court - point to a political office that tried to force a state agency to "submit" to Scott's political agenda.  Those reasons deserve greater scrutiny as possible criminal acts.

Unless someone in the proper authority can push for a legit independent investigation - the GOP-controlled legislature will be loathed to go that far against their own, and it's a question of who can approach the federal Justice Department to start a probe - this scandal won't go very far.  All it will do is highlight once again how much of a fraud Rick "No Ethics" Scott has been and will continue to be.

This is who you voted for, Floridians.  Both the partisan Republicans who held their noses to vote for this stinkpatty of a lifeform, and for the cowardly Democrats who refused to show up to vote last November in a chance to vote him out.  This is what we're getting, Florida.  Four more years of bullying and lies.

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Brief Thoughts On Cuba, Again

I'd written about Cuba before (back in 2008), noting how the 50-plus years of sanctions and embargoes had proven to be a colossal waste of time and resources:

...The big reason why there won't be any change is because of us, the United States. Our stance on Cuba has not changed in 49 years (then), and at some points have even worsened, simply because of ideology and stubbornness. While we have legitimate grievances against Castro's communist (and post-Soviet authortarian) regime, we've never attempted genuine diplomacy and dialog. Instead we've forced embargoes, sanctions, denials, covert ops, basically every hardliner stance we could think of. We'd also tried invasion once. We'd also tried exploding cigars and Nair assaults on Castro's beard (I'm not kidding!).

The problem is that all our efforts are wasted: other countries do not observe the sanctions and embargoes, so Cuba stays afloat (barely) financially. Castro and his buddies, meanwhile, use our bullying ways to act defiant and manly, and they get to look good while they do it. And what's worse, we know it's working for them, and not for us.

But we can't change, can we? Even with all the expert advise, all the obvious clues, we can't change our behavior towards Cuba because no one in D.C. wants to upset 200,000 plus Cuban exiles sitting in South Florida... even though a growing number of them think the sanctions and embargoes need to go...

This month, President Obama changed the rules: he's making open gestures to the Cuban government to work towards ending this half-century of hostility (via Jeffrey Goldberg):

...Critics of the Obama administration, and critics of the Castro regime, will say that today's decision to normalize relations between the two countries represents a victory for one-party rule. I think they are wrong; there is a very good chance that the U.S. comes out the winner in this new arrangement, and not only because Alan Gross is now home.

It is difficult for a Castro to agree to normalized relations with the United States; anti-Americanism is a pillar of the regime. But looking around Cuba earlier this year, it was apparent that there was an opening for the Obama administration to change direction and actually influence the course of events inside Cuba.

President Obama—and Benjamin Rhodes, the National Security Council aide who led the negotiations with Cuba—saw an opportunity to open up Cuba to American influence, and they took it. They will be criticized mercilessly—they already are—for giving too much ground to the Cuban regime. But Obama and his team knew something that many previous administrations before them also knew: U.S. policy toward Cuba was self-defeating. Five decades of an embargo, five decades of hostility, had not dislodged the Castro brothers, and had not brought even a suggestion of democracy to the island...

At first, my immediate response was to think - and claim elsewhere - that 50 years of sanctions had not worked.  But... kinda... in a way it did.  While the embargo and open hostility made the United States into an international bully picking on our neighbor state, and while it made Cuba under the Castro brothers into an intransigent one-party dictatorship with a horrible record of human rights violations, it also made Cuba into a very weak, economically unstable regime.

Goldberg's own article opens with him showing his kids around the backroads of Cuba, where poverty was constant and nearly everything rusted out and worn down.  Where most other Caribbean and Central/South American nations have at least kept up with economic growth and the Internet thanks to various trading deals with the U.S. as a major partner, Cuba's been stuck - literally - in 1959.

The only things keeping the Castro regime in power - after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 - were its ardent anti-American stance, and an alliance with Venezuela that kept it supplied with oil to keep up with energy needs.  And now with Venezuela facing dire bankruptcy problems of its own, Cuba is running out of trading partners - other nations don't respect the embargoes too much, but those sanctions have crimped how much they can do with Cuba - to keep it afloat.  In this regard - economics - the sanctions did have an effect.

Where the sanctions failed was forcing the Castros and their leadership partners into any kind of political reforms.  As long as the sanctions were in place and as long as the anti-Castro forces poised along the Florida coastline stoked with anger towards them, Fidel and his brother Raul were in no rush to do anything like open elections.

The current push for openness between Cuba and the United States is noticeably limited and still requiring a lot of negotiation.  This is where diplomacy - actual dialog, not gunboat - comes into play.  If the United States deals from a position of respect - not strength, which was how those sanctions have been viewed all these decades - with the Cuban leadership, they can craft a decent economic and cultural deal that can directly impact the nation towards a path of media and social openness in ways to affect the political.

Goldberg's follow-up article covers why diplomacy with Cuba compares a lot to the U.S. dealing with other one-party (formerly Communist) nations like China and Vietnam, with one notable exception where U.S. intervention might help:

There will be many ways to test whether the Obama administration, and those who support its decision to reestablish ties with Cuba after a half-century hiatus (including yours truly), are correct in arguing that broad exposure to America, to its people and to its businesses, will translate into greater openness and freedom for ordinary Cubans. One of the most important ways to measure this will be to watch levels of Internet connectivity—open, affordable, unfiltered connectivity. Many Cubans I've met have quite literally never been on the Internet. In two years, if rates of exposure to the Internet remain the same, then the great Obama experiment could be judged, provisionally, a failure.

Critics of Obama's overture to Cuba argue that close U.S. ties with Vietnam and China are proof that exposure to America does not translate into political freedom—it translates into greater access to Coca-Cola products, but not to the spread of American ideals of free speech and pluralism. These critics have a point, of course (though critics of these critics also have a point: If the U.S. can have normal diplomatic and commercial ties with China, a terrible violator of human rights, why should it not have normal diplomatic and commercial ties with Cuba, a country ruled by a government that is less malignant than China's?)...

Cuba, of course, is not China, and it is not Vietnam: China is large enough to create its own weather, and Vietnam is 8,000 miles away. The U.S. will have influence in Havana—a 45-minute flight from Miami—in profound and useful ways...

What Goldberg is getting at is how the United States' influence on Cuba will be overwhelming, not just economically but culturally. It's the closest Caribbean nation to us where tourism will become a major industry practically overnight (since all the others already have it): considering the curiosity factor alone, the first year of open travel would be huge.  Take the tourism numbers (and dollars) of places like Jamaica and Bahamas (two of the biggest destinations for Americans), and add them together to consider how many will travel to Cuba as a bucket-list thing to do.  Cuba's not part of the cruise line stopovers: once a deal's in place, every line will bid like mad for friendly ports (and a lot of construction at those ports for hotels, restaurants, amusement parks, shopping venues.  Infrastructure such as roads, water and sewage, communication networks will see a huge business boom).

And more than just the massive influx of tourism dollars, it will be the exposure to Americans and Cubans, person-to-person in ways we don't do enough with China and Vietnam (literally half the world away).  I'd like to think enough decent Americans visiting over there will meet enough decent Cubans to where Cubans will see American attitudes - and, let's be blunt, our bluntness - as our way of being open and honest with ourselves and with others.

And that's just the tourism bit.  One of the big benefits of ending the hostility will be the chance of families - the Cuban exile community - divided by decades of political bullheadedness having a chance to go home in peace, or at least visit regularly and rebuild lost legacies.

Again, a lot of this is going to have to involve delicate dealings with a lot of egos on both sides to soothe: the pro-Castro regime is not going to like any demands from the anti-Castro exiles and vice versa.  The sticking point will be settling reparations or restorations of properties/businesses from the 1960s.  The anti-Castro groups will most likely insist on criminal charges for human rights violations as well (as anyone fighting over the U.S. torture regime and our failure to indict any of those criminals will attest, it's a messy argument).

Thing is, let's face facts: the Cold War is over.  We won.  Yay capitalism.  Our ongoing hostility towards Cuba was really going nowhere in terms of our international standing.  Out of sheer spite - out of America's paternalistic political world-view of North America as our personal playground - we've been perpetuating an economic lockdown of a nation that could prove a solid trading ally and a force for regional good instead of evil.

It's been eleven Presidnets - Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Lesser, Obama - since those sanctions were placed.  Ever since Bush the Elder's tenure, when the Soviet Union fell and Cuba lost its protector, we should have been making this effort to normalize relations and use peace to end the Castro regimes.

At least Obama is making the effort now.  While the Republicans and the Far Right (among them the exile hard-liners) will scream bloody murder about this, nearly every other player involved - our allies, local nations, a majority of Americans a lot of whom weren't even alive when the Cold War ended - will see this as a good thing.

via Huffington Post

And with luck, Disney will be smart enough to keep the 1950s Art Deco retro look when they turn all of Havana into an Epcot Center.

(caveat: I am writing this from Florida.  Any Floridian will tell you: Do Not F-CK with Disney.  They're like Hyman Roth, only with better PR.  If they wanna turn all of Havana into an Epcot, nothing's gonna stop them)

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A Winter Grayer Than Before

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
 "For hate is strong,
 And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
- "Christmas Bells," Longfellow

Thing about Christmastime, of December and the coming of winter.  It's a season of falling into the Gray Mood.  They call it the Winter Blues but it's really all Gray: the sky is gray, the ground is dead, the people are dour and burdened while the pressure builds to be festive and light-ful.

This year feels grayer than before.

Part of it is due to witnessing yet another disastrous midterm election.  Getting stuck in a state full of partisan morans voting that damn MEDICARE FRAUD back into the governor's office.  Banging my head against the desktop as voter turnout dropped to its lowest level since World War II.

Part of it is watching any semblance of justice in my own nation - land of the free and home of the brave - get flushed down a toilet as violent cops get let off for shooting unarmed teens and using illegal choke holds on guys whose only crime was not submitting to another round of public humiliation.

Part of it is realizing that the current political and economic landscape is about to get darker and nastier.  There's been buzz about a shutdown over Obama's attempts to reform immigration policy via his executive order powers.  There's concerns of a shutdown if there's a fight over a budget proposal that's top-heavy with corporate tax cuts and public sector spending cuts.

There's the growing realization that no matter the injustice of it, the insanity of it, the criminality of it... the Republicans will not rule even if they have the political power, they will ruin all.  They will twist the laws of the states they control to make it harder to vote, harder to complain, harder to stop them commit acts of graft and corruption.  Why listen to the critics or even the experts when there's no accountability for the sins they commit?

It's gray outside right now.  It's going to get darker, and I worry we won't see the sunshine any time soon.

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The Angry Moderate Blues

I know it's a fault of myself when I sit here and look at the world and think "what the hell is everyone else thinking when they can't see what I'm seeing?"  I know people will have their own life experiences informing them of what choices to take.  I know people will have their own opinions.

Still.  WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, VOTERS?!

So here I am, fuming at an electorate that damages itself by voting for partisan Far Right hacks, suffering yet another bout of Angry Moderate Blues.

Yeah, Moderates can get angry... We certainly feel the blues.

--

I get the occasional troll on this blog - rare, considering the few comments I ever get - and I got a couple of them during my post of the Sample Ballot for the Florida midterms:

Wow - you are exactly what is wrong with America today. An ideologue that appears to have no clue about what made America great - diversity. Clearly you hate the Republicans more than you love America. Too bad. As an independent thinker, I prefer to vote based on substance not on ideology. Unfortunately neither party has many options when it comes to people of integrity, which is what many of us really want.

Getting called an ideologue is a new insult, but getting accused of not knowing about diversity is a twist. Considering I've posted my support for gay marriage, the free and open practice of all religions, my horror at seeing Blacks and Hispanics and Women getting treated like shit by the authorities and the overlords... Best I can say is that the guy posting that never read the whole of my blog, and thus didn't realize I am all about the diversity. Also, that I *do* love America: he must have missed the posts I add of the 4th of July, the celebration of Gettysburg and Woodstock, the occasional cultural milestone of Americana.  He's the one without a clue (psst, bro: next time READ THE BLOG BEFORE YOU INSULT THE BLOGGER)...

The next one was pretty straightforward:

I'm voting Republican straight ticket you useless liberal.

That's been the standard insult I get from the trolls.  You don't see most of them posting because I do have an administrative setting to filter all Comments.  Not for pure censorship, mind: It's because for a few years I was getting hit with Chinese Spam.  I'm not kidding.  The Chinese were spamming me, and I was like dudes I can't read Mandarin I can't tell what it is you want me to buy, stop it.  Anyway, I have the filter so I see a couple of Comments once in awhile in my Inbox and check them out.  Most of them are Anonymous, which tells me all I need to know about how cowardly they are, and they're pretty much calling me a libtard/librul/marxist/socialist of some kind.  I don't post those because 1) they don't contribute to the debate and 2) Anonymous posters are cowards.  I posted those two above because at least they put a name to the insult.

It's not that I'm bothered by the insults: Hell, I survived Tarpon Springs Middle School.  I've heard worse.  What bothers me is how wrong they get it by insulting me by something I'm not: Liberal.

For one thing, it's not an insult.  It's no more insulting than calling someone Conservative (if you try to insult me as a Conservative I'm going to look at you funny and give you the same retort).  The second thing, I've always considered myself a Moderate:

...Moderates support competency. We support things THAT WORK. If it doesn't work (example: THE WHOLE BUSH ADMINISTRATION) we don't support it. So there... Moderates recognize not so much the NEED for bipartisanship (or compromise) for the SAKE of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship and compromise between opposing factions are welcome when the end result will be something THAT WORKS...

If I look and act like I'm a Liberal, I'm really not. I'm looking and acting like someone who hates the Republican Party, by extension the whole of Conservative, Far Right ideology that has consumed that entire party.

And I hate the Republican Party because I used to be a member:

Actually I'm former Republican and I prefer to consider myself a moderate. I'm one of those dreaded RINOs you and yours drove out of the party. My hatred for the GOP is more despair at how broken and dogmatic it has become.

Calling me a liberal just shows how out of tune and extremist you've become, 'cause everything in opposition to you can only be a "socialist" or a "marxist" or a "liberal". All complexity of issues boiled down to just the hate.

Well, now you know why my ranting here on the blog is so one-sided against Republicans: because I came from there, it's all you had to teach me and I learned it from you. The only difference is I hope my hate for you will protect the rest of the nation and the world from your ruin.

When I first registered to vote I was a Republican.  I came from a Republican household - I've mentioned that more than once, especially about how old-school my dad is about Nixon - and so grew up in an environs of respecting such conservative principles as skepticism, desire for limited government, acceptance of liberal capitalism, and an overall avoidance to any aggressive radical change.

But by 1992 I noticed the party getting meaner and darker.  Not just a response to the rise of Bill Clinton as a political entity but just to nearly every issue.  Social conservatism went from being about compassion and charity and more about ostracism and pushing Christianity as a political force rather than a social foundation.  Economic conservatism went from respect for regulatory protections of the Eisenhower era to mass deregulation and unbridled laissez-faire.  Political conservatism went from diversity of opinions to adherence to dogma.  All of it wrapped into one big package of Fear-Mongering against the Other.

The key moment was Pat Buchanan's speech to the 1992 Convention.  Railing about a "culture war" and that "Clinton and Clinton" - fueling the Far Right fear that Hillary was going to be a Co-President of feminist intent - were going to destroy "God's America," Buchanan created a political identity of Republicans being hard-Right ideologues.

That moment - and the end of Bush the Elder's one-term tenure - began the purity purge against RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) as the extremists began targeting Moderate Republicans to push out and replace with more extreme, more Far Right candidates.

There were efforts to try and stave off the Club for Greed types that backed the purge, such as Main Street Republicans, but by today those moderate groups within the GOP are minorities - 46 Representatives out of 220-plus House Republicans, just 3 Senators out of 52 - within the ranks.  The purity purge by now has pretty much claimed full control of the Republican Party.

I did what I could to stay Moderate within the ranks meself.  I wasn't happy with the party's growing enthusiasms for the death penalty, massive deregulation in spite of historical evidence that deregulation was reckless, a pursuit not for small government but NO government, voter suppression efforts (yes even in the mid-1990s they were pulling that shit), and an eagerness by the leadership to pursue fiscal corruption that would make the Gilded Age look reformist by comparison.  While the Democrats weren't angels either, I loathed what the Republicans were revealing themselves to be.  I wasn't thrilled either by how the Republicans were crafting some fantasy-world dogma revolving around idol worship of Reagan and demonization of non-believers.

By about 2000, when Bush the Lesser became the candidate of choice (and despite his "compassionate conservative" platform he was the candidate of the purist ideologues) I pretty much gave up.  The disaster of the 2000 election results - and watching Republicans riot and get away with it in the Dade County elections office - sealed the deal.  I switched my party affiliation to No Party (I briefly flirted with being a Modern Whig back in 2009, maybe 2010, but that went nowhere).

The thing about becoming NPA (No Party Affiliate).  I still can't bring myself to make a full switch to becoming a Democrat.  It's not that I don't fully support Democrats - I have to, because they're the only actual alternative to the Republicans - it's that having been burned by one party I'm not keen on getting suckered into another.

What you see here on the blog when I rail about Republicans - when I cry all "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN" - this is an act of an Apostate.  Word for the day, kids: Apostasy is the renunciation or denial of a religious (and nowadays political) group that the denier once joined.  It's at the point where anything the Republicans are for - a horrifying Far Right conservatism that is more radical and destructive than actual anarchy - is something I would strongly argue against because I dread the party's true intent (usually having to do with ripping off taxpayers and blaming others for the impending disasters).

I'm at heart still a Moderate.  I don't want Small Government (or the No Government of the Tea Partier mindset), nor do I want Big Government: I want Effective government, one responsive enough to ensure people's rights and safety, yet streamlined without bureaucratic knots.  I want fair taxation (if that means bumping up the rates on the billionaires 2-3 percent and the economic models prove its effectiveness, so be it) based on the burden, not the rate.  I want deficit reduction but not at the expense of massive spending cuts that would harm families and children.  I want government to stimulate the private sector into genuine job growth and wage increases while ensuring that the market doesn't overreact to the costs of such moves.  I believe in Jesus but I don't want to shove Christ into our public schools, nor do I want Creationism - a foolish attempt to make the Bible literal fact rather than spiritual truth - overwhelming our sciences.  I don't buy the War on Christmas because there's still 300 million people in America who are not being forced at swordpoint to celebrate Saturnalia.  I know we need a strong military but I hate the wasteful spending (we bought a fleet of airplanes for billions and pretty much turned those planes into cheap scrap metal!).  I respect our need to forge strong alliances with foreign nations, but we don't need to bomb everybody into submission.

If that stuff makes me "liberal" then you've got a problem with your dictionary, 'cause I'm still Moderate.

I'm just an Angry Moderate.  Which isn't a contradiction in terms.

Note: Rude Pundit pretty much explains why the 2014 midterms went the way it did.  Part of it tribal BS, part of it ignorance.  All of it self-destructive.

We are as a nation voting not for the right reasons.

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Midterms 2014: One Thing Left. VOTE

We're gonna get hit between now and Tuesday Nov. 4th with a ton of negative ads and BS from the pundit echo chambers.

Power through it.

We're gonna get told to vote Republican because "Obamacare Ebola Benghazi Marxism" threatens our God-given right to have the social safety nets cut away while billionaires get their tax breaks as the oil companies pollute our drinking water and the coal companies pollute our air.

Stay focused.

We're still getting sold the lie that Charlie Crist killed jobs in Florida while Rick Scott SAVED US ALL, ignoring how a Republican-fueled deregulatory sh-tstorm crashed the entire global economy - something outside of Crist's control - while Scott's promise to generate 700,000+ jobs couldn't even happen with the economic recovery - well, it COULD have if Scott kept the federal-funded high-speed rail program as well as agreeing to a Medicaid funding program that would have boosted our healthcare jobs - progressing on its own.

Why is anyone even believing a word out of that Medicare Fraud who wouldn't even recognize his own signature during the HCA deposition?

There is one thing left to do here in Florida.  This Tuesday November 4 2014 WE VOTE.

Vote FOR Crist.  Vote FOR Sheldon for Attorney General.  Vote FOR Amendments 1 and 2.  Vote FOR Greenlight Pinellas (alternate rail transit).  Vote FOR every Democrat on the ballot to get the crooked Republicans out of office at the state and congressional levels.  Hell, vote for the Green candidates if there are no Dems to vote, Hell vote for the Libertarian candidates just to kick the goddamn GOP incumbents out.

And for the rest of the nation, to all America... why the F-CK are any of you voting for any of those GOP Senate candidates?!  The modern Republican Party is willfully obstructionist, racist, classist ("kill the poor" has pretty much become the party motto), incompetent, beholden to the uber-rich rip-off artists, and just plain old dangerous.

America: For the LOVE OF GOD Vote Democrat where you can.  If there's no Democrat choice on the ballot and there's a Republican and a Libertarian (or a Green) sitting there, vote the Libertarian (or Green) just to mess with the GOP incumbent.  This current status of having the Republicans controlling the House has got to end.  Having these Republicans ruin their states has got to end.

The midterm votes are just as important as the Presidential election cycles.  I wish to God more voters realize this.  AND THAT THEY VOTE THIS TUESDAY.

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Calling Out to the Florida Groups That Get Amendments On Ballot: I Got Ideas.

Okay, so I wanna get three amendments on the ballot for 2016 here in Florida.

• First, if we can get an amendment that requires any Florida election for local, state, and federal offices to remain open for balloting until at least 55 to 60 percent of registered voters can submit their ballots.  Voter turnout sucks otherwise.
• Second, if we can get an amendment that puts a None Of The Above option on each local and state elected office, and require that if the NOTA gets the most votes that a special run-off for that office be held with brand new candidates (and that NOTA remains on the ballot even for the do-overs just in case the parties decide to try to nominate someone worse).
• Third, if we can get an amendment that guarantees every legal resident of Florida has a right to vote unimpeded by these -ssholes running around screaming 'voter fraud' when there's no f-cking voter fraud.  Okay, so the wording on this one needs to get cleaned up a bit...

It's doable under the Initiative Petition system.  The state allows an outside group - an established non-profit that can hold petition drives - to gather a certain number of signatures across the state (has to be state-wide, not all from one area) within a set time period (deadlines are a b-tch) for submission and approval by the state's State dept. (with approval/oversight by the courts to ensure the wording is easy-to-read and fits within legal parameters).

Thing is, I'm looking for the groups who are most capable and active in getting these initiative petitions going.  I think I find them on the websites but when I try to contact or send email, there's no reply back.

I tried FIVOrg but haven't heard back... if they emailed me I hope it didn't get filtered to the Spam folder, lemme go check...  And for that "None of the Above" option there was a Floridians for Political Choice group from more than a decade ago, but that's CLOSED probably defunct...

I might not be looking in the right places.

So if any of these petition groups are surfing the Intertubes and they come across this blog entry, can I just say DUDES AND DUDETTES CALL ME I GOTZ IDEAS.

If not, I'm gonna need to see if any of the kids I knew from high school that became lawyers can help out set up a PAC...

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In the Onset of the Election Doldrums... STAY FOCUSED, FLORIDA

Welcome to the moment in the election cycle when it's the tail-end of the years-long marathon and the fatigue and anger are just blending into a mindless fugue state.

All the yelling and shouting about how bad Rick "No Ethics" Scott has been, and how tone-deaf and sadistic and corrupt the Republicans have been just blurs into a repeating loop of outrage where the outrage doesn't feel potent anymore.

This is the point where you gotta push past all that, to stay awake and refresh yourself with the understanding that this election is not over yet, that there's still the big day itself - Tuesday Nov. 4th - where voter turnout is still a key, still a necessity, still a priority for the Democrats and the No-Party-Affiliates to turn out and vote out the crooks like Scott.

If Scott wins, there's the fact he's going to use the next four years to f-ck the state of Florida even further.  THIS MUST NOT PASS, FLORIDA.  For the love of God, we've had 4 years of him killing jobs-worthy programs like the high speed rail, we've had 4 years of him ruining our employment benefits and social safety nets, we've had 4 years of him undercutting our schools and hospitals and child care services, we've had 4 years of him hiding his business dealings among his cronies with secret emails and refusals to answer questions, we've had 4 years of him avoiding our state's needs for Medicaid funding for our elderly and our families...  And Scott is still in this?

To hell with partisan bias, that mindset of voting for one party because you dare not think outside the lies and distortions of the party's reinforcement echo chamber.  LOOK AT THE STATE, people, LOOK AT THE DAMAGE DONE.  We're still one of the worst states for job growth and employment opportunities, we're still one of the worst states in getting our kids educated, we're still a state burdened with high utility costs and homeowner insurance rates, we're still coping with mass foreclosures and banks dragging in honest homeowners with bad paperwork...  Scott and the Republicans won't lift a damn finger about any of that, the Attorney General Bondi won't do a damn thing about any of that, and there's still enough Floridians willing and eager to vote for those frauds?

This is WHY Floridians need to turn out for these last few days of Early Voting (Saturday Nov. 1st is the last Early day).  This is WHY so many of us need to turn out on Tuesday Nov. 4th and vote for Charlie Crist for Governor and George Sheldon for Attorney General.  This is WHY Floridians need to Vote NO on Amendment 3 (regardless of who wins, that court-packing amendment is a disaster).  It'd be nice to have Floridians vote YES on Amendment 1 (to fund our environment cleanups) and YES on Amendment 2 (Medicial Marijuana is a necessity for treating the ill, and it brings us closer to a more just legal system).  Still and all, this is WHY Floridians need to vote for fairness, for a responsive government, for an end to the cycle of Republican obstruction and corruption.

And even if Crist and Sheldon win, there's still a lot of work after the election, because this never ends...

If Crist wins, there's still the fact he's up against a Republican-controlled Florida legislature: because rampant gerrymandering and Democratic cravenness pretty much left 65 percent of the state seats unchallenged.  That has to change for 2016: EVERY SEAT ought to be challenged, every illegal district redrawn to make the seats honestly representative of the residents of this state.

There's work to be done to get referendum amendments offered up in 2016.  We need an amendment to the state constitution protecting our residents' rights to vote (no more of this goddamn 'voter fraud' lie the Republicans keep shilling).  We need an amendment to the state constitution requiring a vote-count percentage of the majority of registered voters before an election can close (to ensure genuine voter turnout of an actual majority: this 24-to-39 percent turnout is KILLING US).  We need an amendment to the state constitution requiring competitive general elections or at least a None Of the Above option on the ballot when neither choice is acceptable.

The marathon goes ever on.  I know it seems tiring, but the other side won't rest and the greedheads and con artists running the show from their SuperPAC shadows threaten everything we should hold dear - our families, our children's futures, our jobs, our health - in our lives.

One more plea: GET THE VOTE OUT.  And for the Love of GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

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