Republicans Rage as Florida Becomes a Nightmare for Trump

Republicans Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis.

For more than two decades, the Republican Party has followed what I call a reverse Robin Hood agenda: take from the poor, working class and middle class and give to the very wealthy and big business. It is one reason America has such a lousy social safety net which was pathetic under good economic conditions and which the Coivd-19 triggered recession - some might argue depression - is proving totally inadequate.  Florida - a must win state in the 202 presidential election - is a case in point as the degraded unemployment system (which was further weakened by then governor Rick Scott to save big business billions of dollars) is on the verge of collapse.  Thousands cannot successfully file claims and those who do will find that the benefits they receive are among the lowest in the nation. A piece in Politico looks at the ongoing disaster that with luck will haunt Republicans in November 2020 and beyond. Many Floridians are going to learn that GOP pandering to their prejudices and/or religious extremism does absolutely nothing for them in a severe economic downturn.  Here are article excerpts: 

The staggering unemployment exploding on President Donald Trump’s watch would worry any incumbent running for reelection, but troubles in Florida are injecting an added dose of fear into a jittery GOP.

Already anxious about Trump’s chances in the nation’s biggest swing state, Republicans now are dealing with thousands of unemployed workers unable to navigate the Florida system to apply for help. And the blowback is directed straight at Trump’s top allies in the state, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott.

Privately, Republicans admit that the $77.9 million system that is now failing Florida workers is doing exactly what Scott designed it to do — lower the state’s reported number of jobless claims after the great recession. . . . “It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”

Republican Party of Florida chairman Joe Gruters was more succinct: “$77 million? Someone should go to jail over that.”

With hundreds of thousands of Floridians out of work, the state’s overwhelmed system is making it nearly impossible for many people to even get in line for benefits.

The new online system was part of a series of changes designed to limit benefits. The ultimate goal — which it delivered on — was to lower unemployment taxes paid by Florida businesses. A 2011 analysis done by the Florida Legislature estimated that the changes pushed by Scott would save businesses more than $2.3 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Now, as thousands of people try to get help, the system crashes or denies them access. Nearly 400,000 people have managed to file claims in the last two and half weeks. It’s not known how many have tried and failed.

Most of those who do submit applications won’t qualify for aid, and the benefits that are paid out are among the most meager in the country — a maximum of $275 a week.

“Everyone we talk to in that office when we ask them what happened tells us, ‘the system was designed to fail,’” the adviser said. “That’s not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent, but it’s a problem now. And no system we have can handle 25,000 people a day.”

Rep. Charlie Crist, a Democrat who as a Republican governor led Florida through the last downturn, said the state’s current economic catastrophe could doom Trump in the state the president needs if he wants to win reelection.

“If unemployment continues to go up, and if so many people stay unemployed, it’s a nightmare for [Trump] the president in this state,” Crist said. “I should know. When I was governor and I was running for the Senate in the Great Recession — and there was nothing great about it — it was a nightmare.”

An adviser to Marco Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaign didn’t argue.

“We’ve got unemployed, pissed-off people. They can’t get benefits. And when they get them, it’s not going to be enough,” he said. “They’re there for the taking by the Democrats. We killed Charlie with the bad economy in 2010. Democrats are gonna repay the favor.”

Republicans in the Legislature share the blame, said Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Miami Democrat.

“Rick Scott is the most culpable human being when we look at who’s responsible for the failed system,” Rodriguez said. “But I don’t know of any Republican who resisted these efforts to make Florida the most Scrooge-like state in the nation.”

How Hurricane Michael May Impact the Midterm Elections

Hurricane Michael not only devastated a significant portion of the Florida panhandle, it also may have damaged current GOP governor Rick Scott's election chances in the U.S. Senate race.  The areas devastated are a part of the red, GOP voting area of the state and Scott could lose tens of thousands of potential votes on November 6, 2018, as a consequence. In Georgia, the rural areas most damaged, in contrast, include some of the poorest, highest minority voting part of that state and, combined with the GOP vote suppression campaign of the GOP gubernatorial candidate could harm the Democrat candidate.  If Scott - who has been terrible on environmental issues and somewhat of a climate change denier, should lose the election due to a climate change enhanced hurricane, there would certainly be some sweet irony at play.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

The speed with which Hurricane Michael swept through Florida’s panhandle and then through Georgia and the Carolinas last week made it hard to grasp how much damage it had inflicted. The death toll is 29 and still rising as bodies are discovered in the wreckage. Bay County, Florida, where Michael made landfall, has been devastated, with many residents displaced. Power is still out in eleven Florida counties, and cell phone service could take a long time to resume thanks to damaged fiber networks. Countless roads and streets have been torn up.

The impact on elections is hardly the fifth or sixth thing on survivors’ minds, but it cannot help but concern the politicians making decisions in the wake of the disaster, such as Florida Governor Rick Scott, who is in a tight Senate race with Bill Nelson, or Tallahassee Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, whose city lost power for a while and had to deal with tree-blocked roads and also many thousands of refugees from the Gulf Coast. Campaigning and polling (including the internal polls that operate as a campaign’s critical intel system) have stopped indefinitely in the Sunshine State. And there are other more concentrated political implications, as Politico notes:

The state’s Senate and gubernatorial races are virtually tied at the moment — and 8 of the 11 counties without power, an area affecting 135,000 customers, are Republican-performing counties…. [O]ne Republican familiar with the affected counties said the party is bracing for a net loss of 20,000 votes that Scott or Republican Ron DeSantis in the race for governor would otherwise receive.

Scott has the power to delay state elections if he finds that emergency conditions prevent a full and fair vote. He cannot, however, delay federal elections like the one in which he is currently engaged. A decision on that front needs to come quickly, since absentee voting by mail has already begun (Florida’s in-person early voting doesn’t begin until October 27). This is a state where 68 percent of ballots were cast before election day in 2016. Republicans might have an advantage in a delayed election in which lower-income voters are less likely to participate, but it would be quite a crap-shoot by Scott, particularly if it resulted in different federal and state election calendars.

In Georgia, the other state Michael hit with hurricane force, in-person early voting began this week. A complication there is that the supervisor of election infrastructure, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, is the Republican nominee for governor, and is renowned for his voter suppression habits involving the low-income and minority citizens most likely to be affected by a natural disaster.

In both these states top elected officials are having to balance the need to appear compassionate and even-handed with their own narrow political interests. Challengers like Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gillum and his Georgia counterpart Stacey Abrams can only watch carefully and hope their storm-afflicted supporters don’t take a second hit from the Republicans running the elections.

It goes without saying that I am hoping that Scott and Kemp both lose their races.

Florida Senate Race Highlights GOP Failure on Protecting the Environment

Photo of a red tide by John Moran. 

Nationally, the Republican Party's agenda is to create a new Gilded Age where the rich live the lives of old word aristocrats and the rest of us are peasants and serfs.  Environmentally, they want to eliminate environmental regulations that block corporate interests from polluting the air and the water. Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has rolled back Obama era regulations that would have lowered air and water pollution. Here in Virginia, for the last eight years Democrat governors have sought to mitigate the efforts of Republicans who in some cases have banned even the utterance of the words "climate change."  Red states under Republican control have not fared as well.  Florida under GOP governor Rick Scott is a case in point.  Scott has worked to roll back environmental protections and now Florida finds itself in a crisis separate and apart for the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.  Thankfully, as laid out in a long Politico Magazine piece, Scott's anti-environment efforts are coming back to haunt him as he runs for the U.S. Senate.  Here are article highlights: 

John Moran is a Florida nature photographer, but lately he sees himself as a Florida crime photographer. The crime, he likes to say, is the slime.

But one of Moran’s most popular images, a grinning man relaxing on a pink inner tube with his feet slathered in algae, is considerably less artsy. The man’s face is a crudely Photoshopped Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, with a speech bubble that reads: “Come on in. The water’s fine!” Scott is running for U.S. Senate, and Moran wants to make sure voters associate him with the nasty mess that is sickening puppies and beachgoers, forcing lifeguards to wear gas masks, and imperiling the coastal tourist economy that makes Florida go.

“Scott has been so terrible on these issues, he’s really promoted the cause of environmental awareness in Florida,” says Moran, whose more serious work on the devastation is on display at a “Summer of Slime” exhibit at Gainesville’s Florida Museum. “It takes a moment like this and a person like that to wake people up.”

The ecological meltdown of Florida’s waters — a toxic rainbow coalition of red tide, blue-green algae and a touch of brown algae — has been very bad news for Scott, or, as he’s been dubbed on social media, #RedTideRick. Before scenic beaches in snowbird meccas like Sanibel and Sarasota were inundated with dead manatees, dolphins and turtles, most polls had Scott ahead of Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, even as other Republican candidates struggled in more safely Republican states. The prediction model at FiveThirtyEight now gives Nelson a slight lead, a shift that seems to owe more to biological red tide than any political blue wave.

Scott would prefer to focus the race on Florida’s low unemployment rate, Nelson’s low profile in Washington, and his own leadership handling storms like Hurricane Michael. But the putrid slime befouling his state has been difficult to avoid — Hurricane Michael actually blew the red tide back into Tampa Bay, where it littered the area's beaches with dead mullet — and Scott has found it difficult to change the subject.

He recently cut short a statewide bus tour after eco-protesters chanting about Red Tide Rick chased him out of an event in heavily Republican Venice on Florida’s west coast. In August, he dodged a much larger crowd of disgruntled homeowners after taking a private boat tour of the algae-choked St. Lucie River in heavily Republican Stuart on the east coast.

[W]ater quality is a state responsibility, and while Scott has made occasional eco-friendly moves during his eight years in office, he has consistently weakened regulation and enforcement of the nutrients that fuel algae blooms. And even though warmer water can supercharge those blooms, as well as hurricanes like Michael that can spread those blooms, Scott has done nothing to deal with climate change. State employees in his administration were even cautioned not to say those two words. Florida’s politicians have a long and sordid history of promoting the exploitation rather than the conservation of the state’s unique natural resources. But it’s become a real political problem for Scott now that Florida’s waters, its economic golden goose, are in such a conspicuous state of crisis. National publications keep running bad-for-the-brand headlines like “Toxic Slime Is Ruining Florida’s Gulf Coast” (in Bloomberg BusinessWeek) and “A Toxic Tide Is Killing Florida Wildlife” (in the New York Times).

After red tide unexpectedly showed up Thursday in Miami, shutting down beaches and threatening a multibillion-dollar hospitality industry, local filmmaker Billy Corben tweeted a parody of the state tourism bureau’s Visit Florida ads, featuring footage of poisoned marine life interspersed with footage of Scott assuring the public Florida is open for business, over the pounding beat of Pitbull’s “Sexy Beaches.”

“Nothing ever stuck to Teflon Rick, but pardon the pun, the algae is sticking,” Corben says. “It’s such a rich irony that he’s going to be done in by Mother Nature.”

The problem for Scott is that his victories were 1-point squeakers during the Republican landslides of 2010 and 2014, while 2018 looks like a much more Democratic year. And even loyal Republicans don’t seem to enjoy slime in their backyards. People come to Florida to enjoy the outdoors, and the recurring water crises of recent years—in the Everglades, Florida Bay, Lake Okeechobee, the springs of north Florida, and the near-shore estuaries along the east and west coast—have inspired a new movement of digitally savvy activists determined to punish politicians who neglect the state’s natural jewels. Bullsugar.org, a local group formed a few years ago to counter the sugar industry’s influence on water decisions, now has 330,000 followers on Facebook, and it’s using its own influence to support Nelson.

“His [incumbent Senator Nelson] greatest asset,” says Bullsugar co-founder Chris Maroney, a retired internet entrepreneur, “is that he’s not Rick Scott.”

Since becoming in governor in 2011, Scott has pushed to evade even that limited scrutiny. One of his early moves was to petition the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to drop its push for specific numerical limits on nutrient pollution in Florida; he argued that the feds should leave nutrient control entirely to the state. At the same time, Scott was gutting the budgets and staffs of state environmental agencies and water management districts, shifting their focus from enforcement of pollution violations to reduction of regulatory burdens, and eliminating the state’s growth management agency entirely. He would later repeal a law requiring routine inspections of septic tanks to make sure they weren’t leaking untreated waste into state waters. In a recent debate, Nelson described the mess as a direct result of Scott “systematically disassembling the environmental agencies of this state … You put pollution in the water, it will grow the algae in the heat of summer.” His ads are just as blunt: “The water is murky, but the fact is clear: Rick Scott caused this problem.”

Kimberly Mitchell, executive director of the Everglades Trust, is also a Republican who served as a city commissioner in West Palm Beach. She thinks the toxic nightmare seeping around the state will hurt her party in November — and after two decades of using its control of Tallahassee to help agricultural interests and other polluters, she thinks that hurt will be well-deserved. “People see the death and destruction on their social media, and they realize they’ve got to do something,” she says. “They’re awake now, and I think a lot of Republicans don’t want that.”

In surveys, Americans rarely cite the environment as a top priority, even though most voters support strict environmental regulations. But nature is so intimately connected to Florida’s economy and culture that green issues can tilt elections here.

Now, nature is having another political moment in the Sunshine State. The activist Erin Brockovich was in Fort Myers last week to raise awareness about the crisis. Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee for governor, attracted an astonishing crowd of more than 1,200 to an environmental rally in Stuart over the weekend, promising to “put the word ‘protection’ back into the Department of Environmental Protection.” His opponent, Congressman Ron DeSantis, has been a reliable vote for the House Republican war on environmental regulation, but he’s running as a Teddy Roosevelt conservationist; his first general-election ad touted his determination to take on Big Sugar and save the Everglades. In some ways, though, the situation is simple. Scott has spent eight years portraying himself as the jobs-jobs-jobs governor, rolling back environmental rules and enforcement that job creators didn’t like, and now he’s having trouble convincing Floridians he’s also been a nature-nature-nature governor. Whether Mother Nature helps knock him off, or whether he manages to win despite the slime spreading on his watch, the race could send a national message about the environment’s power or lack thereof to take revenge on politicians who mistreat it.

The situation has also provided a timely reminder that in Florida, nature-nature-nature creates jobs. . . . And if they [algae blooms and red tides] become an annual phenomenon, they could scare away out-of-state visitors who spend more than $100 billion in Florida every year.

If you care about the quality of the air you breathe and the water you drink - or, in my own case, have in your backyard - there's really no choice but to vote Democrat.  To do otherwise is environmental suicide.

Natural Disasters Show the Failure of the GOP's Small Government Obsession

For years the Republican Party has blathered about small government purportedly to increase personal freedom. The reality, of course is that the real driver behind the obsession is the desire to give tax cuts to the super rich and large corporations.  Meanwhile, the nation's infrastructure has crumbled and funding for needed programs and agencies has been slashed.  Adding to the failed agenda is the GOP's de rigueur denial of climate change and rising sea levels.  With Florida currently getting hammered by Hurricane Irma, we may be about to see the consequences of Florida GOP Governor Rick Scott's refusal to do anything of consequences to address his state's dire problems with flooding and rising sea levels, thereby leaving cities and counties to their own devices in addressing the growing problem (Virginia suffers from a similar phenomenon as the GOP controlled House of Delegates engages in the same head in the sand approach to climate change and rising oceans).  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Scott's failures that may cost Floridians their lives or massive property losses.  Here are excerpts:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has been ubiquitous in recent days as Hurricane Irma bears down on the Sunshine State, warning of deadly winds and storm surges and imploring residents to heed evacuation orders.

“This is a catastrophic storm our state has never seen,” he cautioned at one of many news conferences.

By all accounts, Scott and other officials have aggressively tried to prepare the state and its residents for the destructive storm’s impact and immediate aftermath.

But for all of Scott’s vigor in readying Florida for Irma’s wrath, his administration has done little over the years to prepare for what scientists say are the inevitable effects of climate change that will wreak havoc in the years to come. With its far-reaching coastline and low elevation, Florida is one of the states at greatest risk from rising sea levels, extreme weather events — including more-powerful hurricanes — and other consequences of a warming planet.

Local officials, academics and even some political allies say Scott has scarcely acknowledged the problem and, along with the Republican-led legislature, has shown little interest in funding projects to help the state adapt and become more resilient in the face of storms such as Irma.

“The science has been brought on a silver platter to Governor Scott, and he’s chosen not to do anything,” said Kathy Baughman McLeod, a conservation expert who served on the Florida Energy and Climate Commission, which was effectively dismantled after Scott took office in 2011. “If there is climate action, it’s all coming from local and regional collaboration. There is no state leadership on climate change in Florida, period.”

“It’s important we don’t hide from reality,” said Harold Wanless, chairman of the University of Miami’s geological science department and an expert on sea-level rise. “We should be doing very serious planning, and it doesn’t help when you have a governor and a president who are dismissing” climate change.

But many communities simply don’t have the financial means to combat the effects of climate change, said Albert Slap, president and co-founder of Coastal Risk Consulting, a firm that provides flood-risk analysis.

“Smaller and medium-sized towns along the coast won’t have the money they need to build the necessary resilience,” Slap said. “The clock is ticking.”

Hastings and other scientists say Scott’s administration has done little to mitigate the destruction of storms like Irma, whose winds could drive rising waters inland, making a bad problem many times worse.

Unfortunately, the problem is not limited to Gov. Scott and Florida.  A piece in Politico looks at the crisis now facing underfunded and partially dismantled agencies as a result of the GOP's wrong headed agenda.    Here are are article excerpts:

More than a decade of budget cutting and a rash of government job vacancies are taxing Washington’s ability to cope with a one-two punch of epic storms.

The fiscal belt-tightening has coincided with an American migration to job-abundant coasts, where people are building bigger houses and taller condos while shunning flood insurance. Storms, fires and other disasters are hitting with more frequency and fury, forcing the federal government to cope with overlapping catastrophes.

“After years of austerity politics, it’s not clear that the government is adequately staffed or prepared to address the catastrophe on the Gulf Coast and whatever happens in Florida,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at McGladrey, a consultancy. “Priorities need to be set.” Even if the federal government opens its wallet, it’s not evident it has the long-term capacity for multiple mobilizations. On Friday, as President Donald Trump signed a bill approving more than $15 billion in storm aid, Hurricane Jose churned off the coast of Puerto Rico. In the West, wildfires blazed in Oregon, Washington, Montana and California.

[W]hile Congress can appropriate emergency aid, the federal government’s catch-as-catch-can approach to disasters and the austerity demanded by fiscal conservatives have given short shrift to preventative measures and emergency-response training.

In the long run, that increases costs to taxpayers and makes disaster recoveries dicier as key agencies such as FEMA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development deal with shrinking resources.

At FEMA, funding woes have left flood maps out of date and a precarious insurance program is running on fumes. Last week, the agency was down to its last few days’ worth of emergency funding. Treasury officials told lawmakers they wouldn’t be able to pay claims to Harvey victims without an immediate increase in the debt ceiling.

With the National Flood Insurance Program nearly $25 billion in debt, FEMA this year took the pricey step of paying the private market to backstop the fund: The agency bought a $150 million reinsurance policy to offset about $1 billion in risk at a time when government borrowing costs are near historic lows.

“There’s simply not enough bandwidth or resourcing that can handle the stress and strain of what we’re facing,” said Anita Chandra, a senior policy researcher at the nonpartisan RAND Corp. “Passing off to later was never smart, but it’s really not smart now.” Between 2012 and 2016, however, weather catastrophes occurred almost twice as often. This year, the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era proposals on climate change and flood resilience.

Here in Virginia we have elections in November.  It is critical that the Republican statewide ticket that would bring an even worse head in the sand approach to Richmond.  Vote for Ralph Northam for Governor, Mark Herring for Attorney General and Justin Fairfax for Lt. Governor.  Say "no!" to the GOP's failed agenda. 

Florida Republicans Ban Use of Term "Climate Change"

In yet another example of the embrace of ignorance by today's Republican Party, reports are coming out of Florida that under GOP Gov. Rick Scott and others, the terms "climate change" and "global warming" are not to be used or whispered.  Meanwhile, Florida faces some of the most extreme challenges of any state from rising sea levels and climate change.  It should be noted that under Republicans, similar efforts to ignore reality have occurred in Virginia and North Carolina.  God forbid that one except reality if it will upset the knuckle dragging Christofascists and Tea Party lunatics who now control the GOP base.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the idiocy.  Here are excerpts:

It is one of the profound ironies of climate change that a state besieged by its effects — where coastal islands face existential threats and daily floods render major thoroughfares difficult to navigate — is also populated by powerful politicians who express deep suspicion of the relevant science.

This is Florida, the state of Sen. Marco Rubio (R), who said last year he doesn’t “believe human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate.” This is Florida, the state of former governor and Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush, who in 2009 called himself a global warming “skeptic.” And this is Florida, the state of Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who has punted on the issue. “Well, I’m not a scientist,” he told the Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo last year when asked if he was becoming less skeptical of man-made climate change.

According to a Sunday report from the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, Scott’s aversion to discussions of man-made climate change have been brought to bear on a department charged with protecting a state that already exhibits many of the changes scientists predict will overtake other coastal regions. Officials with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), reported writer Tristram Korten, have been restricted from using the term “climate change” or “global warming” in official correspondence.

The report, published in the Miami Herald, was bolstered by the testimony of numerous former employees and e-mails from around the state. Kristina Trotta, who used to work in the DEP’s Miami office, said she was told during a 2014 meeting that she couldn’t employ terms like “climate change” and “global warming.” “We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact,”

In some southern parts of the state, like Miami Beach, sea rise is no longer something to debate, but something to deal with daily. The city, expected to spend $400 million to combat rising tides in the next five years, has already invested in a new drainage system officials hope will keep the streets dry for the next three decades.

But the fact the state’s highest elected office may have reservations about climate change has outraged some local academics. “You have to start real planning, and I’ve seen absolutely none of that from the current governor,” University of Miami geologist Harold Wanless told the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. “It’s beyond ludicrous to deny using the term climate change. It’s criminal at this point.”

Welcome to the fantasy world of today's GOP where we have Lindsey Graham who proudly admits to never having used e-mail in charge of a technology committee.   Only in today's GOP - and Christofascists circles - is ignorance worn as a badge of honor.

Eleventh Circuit Rejects Florida Request for Stay of Marriage Ban Ruling

11th Circuit Court of Appeals

In a desperate attempt to whore themselves out to the Christofascists Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Governor Rick Scott sought to have the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit stay the August ruling of U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle striking down Florida's ban on same-sex marriage.  Now, barring a stay by the U.S. Supreme Court, same sex marriages will begin on January 5, 2015.  The fact that the Eleventh Circuit refused to grant the stay does not bode well for marriage equality opponents since, if the Eleventh Circuit was likely to uphold Florida's marriage ban, it would have granted the requested stay.  Here are details from the Washington Blade:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to continue the hold on same-sex marriages in Florida following a lower court ruling against the state’s ban on gay nuptials, allowing same-sex couples to begin to wed in the state “at the end of the day” on Jan. 5.

In a three-page order, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals granted expedited review of a request from Florida officials to extend a stay as litigation proceeds against the state’s ban on gay nuptials, but determined the hold on Florida same-sex marriages should come to an end.

Because the Supreme Court in October refused to review decisions from three federal appeals court in favor of marriage equality, thereby dissolving the stays in those states, the hold on same-sex marriages in Florida was set to expire on Jan. 5.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican, had sought to extend the stay on gay nuptials in Florida up to Election Day and beyond, but the Eleventh Circuit order rebuffs her latest request to stop them from happening.

The state has another option: It could take up its stay request with the U.S Supreme Court. The request would be directed to U.S. Associate Justice Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles stay requests for the 11th Circuit. Thomas could decide the matter himself or refer it to the entire court.

Although the Supreme Court has recently denied stays on same-sex marriage in Idaho, South Carolina and Alaska, the lack of a federal appeals court ruling on Florida’s marriage law makes the high court’s actions on a stay more uncertain. 

If a stay request is directed to Thomas - in my view the dumbest and among the worse anti-gay bigots on the Supreme Court - beyond a temporary stay, the decision for a longer stay would depend on action by the full Court which has shown itself to be reluctant to gran stays where the out come at the lower appellate court against the petitioner seems obvious.  

The husband and I love Key West and it would certainly be nice on or next visit to be viewed as legally married under Florida law.

Miamai Hearld Endorses Charlie Crist fo Governor

If one wants a good summary of what is wrong with today's Republican Party and it's failed policies, Governor Rick Scott provides the laundry list ranging from everything to climate change denial - even as Miami sees more and more tidal flooding problems - to voter disenfranchisement and slashing education and social safety net spending.  Oh, and let's not forget opposition to Medicaid expansion which in Florida would aid some 1 million citizens.  Recognizing the toxicity of Scott's policies and brazen disregard for government transparency, the Miami Herald today endorsed former Republican, now Democrat Charlie Crist for Governor.  Here are excerpts from the editorial which could just as easily be applied to the policies favored by GOP Senate candidate Ed Gillespie here in Virginia:

Barely in office one month, Mr. Scott announced his first budget at a tea party rally in Eustis in February 2011. That was a clue that he failed to understand that he was governor of all the people. He has improved since then, but not much. 

He has ignored the state’s open-government tradition and transparency rules. His lawyers are suing Google in an effort to bottle up private e-mails that may have been used to conduct state business. He won’t talk about his out-of-state travels and he won’t release details of a secret hunting trip to the King Ranch in Texas indirectly paid for by U.S. Sugar. The governor has yet to realize that he is no longer the CEO of a private corporation — he is a public servant.

In his first year in office, Mr. Scott abolished the state’s growth-management agency, which speaks volumes about his devotion to environmental issues. He still won’t acknowledge the reality of global warming and the need to devise effective policies to combat it. Mr. Crist was endorsed by the Sierra Club for his own actions to protect the environment, including an effort to stop the building of new coal-fired plants.

▪ Mr. Scott is just fine with the dangerous Stand Your Ground law, and appointed a task force to examine the issue and give him the result he wanted — Nope, this law doesn’t need tweaking at all. Mr. Crist, however, realizes that it needs to be fixed before more people use it to commit homicide and walk away without punishment.

▪ Mr. Crist favors accepting $51 billion from the federal government to expand Medicaid to give some 1 million Floridians medical coverage. Mr. Scott was against it, then for it, but never lifted a finger to get the Republican-led Legislature to approve it.

▪ Mr. Scott slashed funding for K-12 public education in his first year in office by $1.3 billion. He’s restored some of those cuts, but per-pupil spending is still $200 less than under Mr. Crist in 2007.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article2958695.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article2958695.html#storylink=cpy

There are many other troubling issues in Mr. Scott’s record: He signed laws (since rejected by the courts) requiring drug testing for welfare recipients and some state employees. He rejected $2.4 billion in federal aid to build a high-speed train in Central Florida. And he signed laws designed to suppress the black vote.

Neither one of these candidates is perfect. Mr. Crist has had to defend his political migration from Republican to Democrat, his current support for same-sex marriage and his pro-choice stance against charges of political expedience. However, Mr. Scott stood firm against in-state tuition for young undocumented students before changing his mind this election year. The governor was four-square behind the Common Core curriculum, then wasn’t, claiming federal overreach — instead of the tea party’s tap on his shoulder.

Mr. Crist’s record on the issues, his record as a moderate — even as a Republican — and his undoubted devotion to the state of Florida give him a clear edge. For governor of Florida, the Miami Herald recommends CHARLIE CRIST.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article2958695.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article2958695.html#storylink=cpIn his first year in office, Mr. Scott abolished the state’s growth-management agency, which speaks volumes about his devotion to environmental issues. He still won’t acknowledge the reality of global warming and the need to devise effective policies to combat it. Mr. Crist was endorsed by the Sierra Club for his own actions to protect the environment, including an effort to stop the building of new coal-fired plants.▪ Mr. Scott is just fine with the dangerous Stand Your Ground law, and appointed a task force to examine the issue and give him the result he wanted — Nope, this law doesn’t need tweaking at all. Mr. Crist, however, realizes that it needs to be fixed before more people use it to commit homicide and walk away without punishment.
▪ Mr. Crist favors accepting $51 billion from the federal government to expand Medicaid to give some 1 million Floridians medical coverage. Mr. Scott was against it, then for it, but never lifted a finger to get the Republican-led Legislature to approve it.
▪ Mr. Scott slashed funding for K-12 public education in his first year in office by $1.3 billion. He’s restored some of those cuts, but per-pupil spending is still $200 less than under Mr. Crist in 2007.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article2958695.html#storylink=cpy

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Republicans Remain Clueless on Women's Issues

With new polls showing him trailing His Democrat challenger, Charlie Crist, Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott sought an ad that would attract women voters to his side.    What he got from the College Republicans is a clueless ad that is both insulting to women - especially the segment of the women vote that Scott desperately needs - and Exhibit No. 1 of the problem of the  GOP's gender gap in general.  Contrary to what chauvinistic GOP males believe, women do care about more than shopping.  I have two bright, intelligent daughters who are far more politically savvy than these dolts think they are.    Slate looks at the clumsy GOP effort to attract women that in reality ought to be driving them into the arms of Democrats.  Here are highlights:

Today in GOP Outreach to Women: You Broads Like Wedding Dresses, Right?  At this point, it's hard not to wonder if the people being hired to do outreach to women on behalf of Republican candidates aren't all a bunch of Democratic moles. The College Republican National Committee created this ad for Rick Scott, who is running for re-election as governor of Florida, and it appears to be written by men who learned everything they know about women from reading bridal magazines. It's modeled after TLC's popular show Say Yes to the Dress, except it's called "Say Yes to the Candidate" and the "dresses" in this case are Rick Scott and Charlie Crist. 

"The Rick Scott is perfect," says our blond and youthful heroine, Brittany, admiring herself in the mirror while wearing a wedding dress, which is a thing Republicans have heard women like to wear. Her friends ooh and aah. But mom, who is of course a harridan because she dared age past 35, has other ideas. "I like the Charlie Crist," she says, as we see Brittany—an undecided voter, by the way—in a frumpier dress. "It's expensive and a little outdated, but I know best." Ominous music.

It turns out Republicans made this ad in bulk. As Bloomberg View's Jonathan Bernstein notes, "not only does Brittney 'the undecided voter' think that 'The Rick Scott is perfect,' she feels the same way about 'The Rick Snyder,' 'The Tom Corbett' and three other dresses. The ads are identical, only the candidate names change."

The Tea Party Governor Backlash of 2014

While Republican continue to believe that 2014 will be a banner year for them - in the House because of horrifically gerrymandered districts that ensure GOP control - and the less than fortunate mix of Senate seats for Democrats up for re-election.  But, all may not be going as glowingly well as Fox News and right wing pundits like to imagine.  As in all elections, turnout will be critical and it remains possible that GOP excesses will galvanize the Democratic base to vote in stronger numbers than some expect.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at some potentially embattled Republicans who may be held accountable for Tea Party obstructionism and efforts to destroy the social safety net while disenfranchising minorities.  Here are excerpts:

[D]on’t believe the hype about 2014 being a Republican wave election. Something more complex is going on. Democrats are doing much better than they have a right to expect in the South, especially with family brand names like Landrieu and Pryor. Mitch McConnell even has an improbably tight race on his hands in Kentucky against Alison Lundergan Grimes.

More to the point, Democrat Kay Hagan looks strong in North Carolina, where the Tea Party wave of 2010 brought otherwise unified Republican control to this increasingly purple swing state. The state legislative excesses have been bad enough that GOP Governor Pat McCrory, the former mayor of Charlotte, found himself described as a “moderate among Wingnuts” by The Economist, which detailed his travails this way: “Unlike the pragmatic conservatives who have long dominated state politics, the Republicans now in charge are culture warriors…The governor found himself passing laws to ban sharia (Islamic law), restrict abortion and introduce strict voter-identification rules, which are being challenged by the federal government.”

Here’s where a slumbering national theme for 2014 starts to come into sharper relief. This year represents the first time local voters have been able to weigh in on the statewide elected officials who rode the Tea Party wave to victory in 2010. So while the Senate sucks up all the oxygen, the governors’ races might really reflect the mood of the electorate more accurately.

Seen through this lens, a pattern starts to emerge. Wisconsin’s Scott Waker is frequently talked up by RNC types as a leading 2016 contender, but he’s fighting for his political life at home, beset by a tsunami of scandals and running neck and neck with Mary Burke. Walker’s most-favored Midwestern governor status in D.C. is in trouble despite a misguided arrogance born of his surviving a recall attempt. His efforts to rein in the public sector unions have been successful, but his style and tone—and did I mention scandals—could make him an unexpected loser on Election Night.

In Kansas, Sam Brownback should be cruising to an easy reelection in one of the reddest states in the nation. But the theocon is trailing Democrat Paul Davis because of Brownback’s RINO-hunting purges, social conservative crusades, and what is becoming something of a Waterloo for the idea that all tax cuts pay for themselves.

Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott was a Tea Party-wave fluke to begin with. An unlikely messenger for less-government libertarianism, Scott made his fortune by founding the hospital conglomerate Columbia/HCA, which is now best known for the running up the largest Medicaid fraud in the nation’s history . . . . Scott has struggled to connect with voters in the Sunshine State despite pumping his own dollars into the effort. He’s facing former governor Charlie Crist, a slippery former Republican now apparently liberated by running as a Democrat and quick to call out GOP orthodoxy on climate change and other issues that matter in a diverse state flanked by the sea on three sides.

Pennsylvania is purple personified, and Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is collapsing in the Keystone State. . . . . Stick a fork in Corbett, he’s done.

Maine’s odd governor, Paul LePage, was also an accident of the Tea Party wave . . . . has met repeatedly with members of a sovereign citizens militia group the FBI considers a domestic terrorist organization. He ain’t exactly a Maine-style centrist Republican. And the only reason he has anything resembling a prayer in hell of winning reelection is that Cutler and Democrat Mike Michaud are splitting a clear majority of voters who are anti-LePage and want to kick his butt out of office.

Rounding out the geographically diverse list is former congressman and current Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, who sidestepped a congressional ethics inquiry by bailing out of the capital dome and still faces a far-closer-than-should-be-expected race from Jimmy Carter’s grandson, Jason.

So while the biggest story of the 2014 primaries was, by and large, the center-right Senate establishment beating back Tea Party radicals who would have gone down to defeat, à la Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, on the statewide level there are comeuppances coming that undercut overheated pundit claims that 2014 will be a Republican wave election.

Beneath the tough Senate hand dealt to Democrats, there is a lot of swing voter discontent with Tea Party governors who failed to steer toward the center once in office. This dynamic will have an impact on other races and should serve as a reminder to both parties that extremism is a vice in American politics.

Here in Virginia, the defeat of Ken Cuccinelli and his fellow extremists in a complete Democrat sweep supports the author's premise. 

Shockingly Sleazy GOP Governors

With the Bob and Maureen McDonnell criminal corruption trial underway, Virginia is learning first hand about sleazy governors - and a greed driven first lady.  But Virginia does not have a monopoly on sleazy Republicans.  Rick Scott, Chris Christie, Scott Walker are certainly in the running to give the McDonnell's a run for their money in the race for the title as "sleaziest governor."  But they aren't the only GOP sleaze bags out there.  A lengthy piece in Salon looks at the dubious group that some inside the Beltway depict as contenders in 2016.  The piece deserves a full read to fully understand the nastiness of these GOP governors.  One can only fear for the country if this is the best the country can offer.  Here are a few highlights:

There is nothing in U.S. politics more powerful than Beltway conventional wisdom. No mountain of facts can put the slightest dent in it. It’s the ocean in which all of Washington swims. Which is why Chris Christie still thinks he can be president—just resurrect his “tough-talking” “truth-telling” persona, and violà! It doesn’t matter how many lies he’s told, so long as the media buys—and sells—his “truth-telling” spin, reframing the facts as just what “critics say.” And if not Chris Christie, then some other GOP governor, because it’s 1999 all over again, and national disgust with Beltway Republicans can only mean one thing: Americans must be clamoring for a GOP governor to be “a uniter, not a divider.”

There’s just one problem with this narrative: The entire current crop of GOP governors is a passel of knaves, scoundrels, extremists and panderers, whose monumental collective failures aren’t even a blip on the D.C. media’s radar screen—though they should be. Because out in the states, their failures are killing people—literally by the thousands when it comes to denying Medicaid expansion (over 13,000 in eight Southern states this year)—and may even contribute to killing the GOP’s chances of a strong showing in Congressional elections come November. Take Georgia, for example. It’s still a safe red state that Romney won by almost 8 percent in 2012, but Democrat Michelle Nunn has a decent shot at winning the Senate seat her father held for decades this November—and that would greatly complicate GOP hopes of retaking the Senate. A fair number of Beltway folks are starting to notice this, but less noticed are the possible spillover effects between Georgia’s Senate and gubernatorial races, as scandal-plagued Nathan Deal is struggling to stay afloat against Democratic challenger Jason Carter, President Carter’s grandson.

What’s Nathan Deal done, exactly? Enough to warrant the No. 1 spot in “The Worst Governors in America,” a 2013 report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The report explains the list as follows:

His inclusion stems from: (1) using his gubernatorial campaign to benefit his daughter-in-law [she was paid $40,725.03, despite having have no previous campaign experience]; (2) using his office to benefit a business partner; (3) using his office to benefit a top donor; (4) arranging a taxpayer-funded job for a political foe; and (5) obstructing ethics investigations into his business dealings.

Indeed, CREW’s report includes 18 governors, of whom 16 are Republicans, 11 of them elected in 2010, one in 2009 and one in 2012, for a total of 13 from the Tea Party wave era. They are, if anything dramatically more corrupt as a group than the governors elected before them.

[I]t would not be surprising if Deal ended up like the #3 governor on CREW’s list, Robert McDonnell, once touted as a top prospect for being Mitt Romney’s running mate, now former governor of Virginia, standing trial on 14 counts of felony corruption, obstruction and making false statements in federal court. CREW’s list was divided into three tiers—six “ringmasters,” six “clowns” and six “sideshows.” Joining Deal and McDonnell in the top tier are two men who’ve been touted as possible presidential candidates—Texas Governor Rick Perry (despite his laughingstock performance in 2012: “Oh look! His new glasses make him look so policy-wonk serious! Like Jerry Lewis in “The Nutty Professor”!”) and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (If Christie stays dead, Walker wins re-election and nobody else with a pulse shows up)—as well as Maine Governor Paul LePage and Florida Governor Rick Scott.

GOP policy collapsed in ruin under George W. Bush, and the only way to defend it now is blame-shifting, denial and outright hallucination. Jindal—elected in 2007—is a perfect bridge figure, making the underlying continuity perfectly clear. “He also has refused the expansion of Medicaid, that’s something you obviously have in common with many conservative governors around the country, and the result of course is that more than 250,000 low-income adults don’t have access to health coverage,” Moller added—yet another aspect of how post-Bush ideology has crystallized around being anti-other, with “other” being a catch-all category in which “atheist,” “Muslim,” “fascist,” “socialist,” “RINO,” “Beyoncé voter” and more all merge together in one big towering cloud of Sharknado menace.

There are many more GOP governors I could write about. There’s Florida Governor Rick Scott, who I’ve alluded to in passing. There’s North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who worked for Duke Energy for 29 years, received massive financial support from Duke’s PAC and executives, and appointed regulators who reached a sweetheart settlement protecting Duke from citizen lawsuits over coal ash groundwater contamination, which was only withdrawn after a staggering February 2014 spill. There’s the pugnacious Paul LePage of Maine, and South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, a pale shadow of prominent endorser Sarah Palin, who’s never lived up to her national-level hype. LePage is #2 on CREW’s list, Haley, #10. But reading CREW’s summaries of each, one gets the distinct impression that the differences are more a matter of temperament and degree than of substance or kind.