How Florida Republicans Became Losers

[mia]

Massive toxic algae blooming around the southern half of the Florida peninsula, coating public health, tourism, business and real estate on both Florida coasts with dangerous scum, is the real consequence to taxpayers and voters of losing their bet on Republican leadership: Gov. Scott, Senate President Joe Negron, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam, state representative Matt Caldwell, US Senator Marco Rubio, and all the insiders and cronies they corralled to serve on boards like the water management districts and Public Service Commission. This isn’t hyperbole. A real bet was made by voters. A real bet was lost....

Scott appointed members of the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District with no experience or compassion for the environment. The Scott way distilled to a simple formula: cede regulatory control to special interests who had the most to earn by limiting the impact of regulation on their profit models....

Prisons, public education, health care, and public safety: from one perspective, what Republican leaders have done is to unleash corporate freedom to create a model GOP state. From another perspective, Florida’s Republican leadership is leading a race to the bottom, challenging Alabama and Mississippi as the most corrupt and polluted state in the nation....

Today’s ecological collapse in the St. Lucie River, connected estuaries, in the Caloosahatchee River, along both Florida coasts and stretching down through the Everglades to Florida Bay is a neon sign flashing in front of taxpayers and voters. When Gov. Rick Scott, Marco Rubio and Adam Putnam killed the US Sugar deal, they ignored the history and science of Lake Okeechobee, the massive fresh-water lake in the middle of Florida. Scott had already eliminated the science capacity of the state water district. By allowing political science to trump fact and the imperative for government intervention, Florida’s GOP created political conditions for deadly cyanobacteria to destroy the treasures of South Florida, including public health and personal real estate....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-farago/how-florida-republicans-b_b_10715792.html

Watch Scott blame the Federal Government.

[DonCoquixote]

1. I truly wish the Florida GOP were losers

But like Trump, it seems they can f**k up in ways that are jaw dropping, yet know the churches will pack the polls and make them win. Of course, it does not help that most Florida democrats are like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, aka, Democrats that work just as hard to screw over the left as the GOP does.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Environmental Inaction Has Consequences

I think slower-thinking Floridians are finding out that not only are environmental consequences are happening, but that these consequences affect their state's economy. A tourist-driven economy like Florida can't afford stinking, smelly beaches, at least not if it expects visitors to come by and spend. Charter boats don't go out of the game fish are dead.

Florida's been lucky so far; it's thus far been spared the flesh-eating bacteria that's made some Texas coastal areas dangerous. Of course that might be only a matter of time.

[TeamPooka]

3. Florida, Kansas, these policies aren't working. we have to save the country from the GOP, literally