Catching Up With Some Crazy Stuff That Happened Over The Weekend-- Maine And Florida

Yes, Florida's worse... but at least it isn't snowing

I don't watch Fox; don't even know where it is on the TV. But Steve Benen is among several people whose work I follow who does know exactly where characters like O'Reilly and Hannity and Beck are lurking. So this is secondhand: Beck is uncomfortable with The Donald's extremism. Clearly, Trump is competing with Michele Bachmann for a slot as the silliest and most unhinged Republican candidate for president. (I think it's a plot to make people like Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee look plausible and sane.) But, as Benen pointed out, Beck eased over to one of Fox's so-called "news" shows Friday to call Trump an unserious and provocative "show boat" and say he has "made me a little uncomfortable lately," like in embracing even more nutty conspiracy theories than Beck does himself! Beck to O'Reilly:

"[T]here's something reasonable to, you know, a reasonable conversation. If you don't believe that he has the birth certificate, you can say, 'I don't believe he has a birth certificate.'

But then he goes into 'I do not believe he has a birth certificate.' Then he releases one that's worse than Obama's. And then he comes back, and he says on your program, 'He might be a Muslim, too.' I'm like, come on!"

OK, and as long as we're on the topic of crackpots, the elders of the Maine Republican Party called the unhinged governor the state's teabaggers saddled them with last November and asked him to take off the clown outfit and start behaving like a governor. He's been making John Kasich, Rick Snyder and Scott Walker look like statesmen. LePage admitted he needs to start "zipping my mouth up and not offending them."

While one day’s contrition doesn’t make up for months of insults and provocations, it is a welcome sign that the governor understands-- and dare we say, regrets-- that his behavior has caused problems. We hope he is trying to set a new tone not simply for political expediency but because he realizes that insulting people, issuing threats and justifying bad decisions on the basis of notes from “secret admirers” is not the way to lead a state.

...At the same time that the governor was pledging to stop offending people, a small group of Republican senators was circulating a letter admonishing the governor for the “tone and spirit” of some of his remarks and calling for more civil discourse in Augusta, and a Democratic representative introduced legislation to allow citizen-initiated recalls of a governor, legislators and constitutional officers.

This morning 8 Republican state senators signed an OpEd rebuking LePage's clownish, divisive behavior: "[W]e feel compelled to express our discomfort and dismay with the tone and spirit of some of the remarks he has made. Were these isolated incidents, we would bite our collective tongues, because we are all human and make mistakes. But, unfortunately, they are not isolated but frequent. Therefore, we feel we must speak out." It's pretty funny and, like career Republicans around the country, the can see which way the wind is blowing-- and it isn't towards the unhinged extremism to the LePages, Snyders, Kacichs, Walkers, Scotts, Brewers... But in case anyone hasn't put two + two together, this is the response to the Op-Ed from Maine Democratic Party Chairman Ben Grant:

"Governor LePage has been in office for only three months and he has already crossed two lines in Maine politics that successful leaders do not cross: he has governed as an extremist and he has embarrassed the State. I am pleased to see that some Republicans now understand the damage that Governor LePage has done to Maine's reputation with his offensive statements and nonsense issues.  
 
"However, even if Governor LePage reins in his rhetoric, his agenda still remains. This editorial is a good first step in forming a true common sense consensus in Augusta, but it will be meaningless if the GOP 8 vote in lockstep with Governor LePage's extreme agenda at the end of the day. 61% of Maine people voted against extreme government, and they need leaders from both sides of the aisle in the Legislature to stand up for mainstream answers to the challenges facing the state."

If everyone in Maine is laughing at their governor, people in Florida are sweating. Rick Scott is probably the most dangerous and destructive governor elected anywhere in the last century. It's been widely reported that Scott's support in Florida has almost completely evaporated and that if the last election were held today, he would have his head handed to him by Alex Sink.

If an election do-over for Florida Governor were held today, Republican Governor Rick Scott would suffer a landslide loss.

According to new figures from Public Policy Polling, Republican Governor Rick Scott would "overwhelmingly lose" to Democrat Alex Sink by a 56-37% margin.

In a release, PPP said when Scott prepared to take over as governor last December, "only about a third of voters liked him, and 43% disliked him. But instead of building good will in the last few months, Scott has continued to turn more voters off. Now roughly the same amount approve of his job performance (32%), but his disapproval rating is 55%."

PPP said its data makes Scott the least popular currently serving governor.

The least popular-- less than Walker, Kasich, Snyder, LePage, Brewer, Deal... any of these sociopaths who swept into office on a tsunami of Koch-fueled anti-social hysteria. Unlike LePage, though, Scott isn't apologizing to anyone. He and his equally nihilistic legislative majorities are pushing forward with the most backward and debilitating programs of any state, programs they will get through that will make the lives of millions of ordinary Floridians, many of whom didn't bother to vote last November, much worse.

In the next 30 days, Florida lawmakers are poised to make it easier for insurance companies to raise rates, make it more difficult for women to receive an abortion and hand over control of prisons to private companies.

These are just a few of the proposals the Republican-led Legislature is pushing in the final weeks of their 60-day session. Others include dramatically changing the way the state handles Medicaid, state pensions, courts, growth and the environment.

The proposals are detailed, sweeping, and encompass many conservative issues that legislators have resisted enacting in the past. And they are moving forward for one reason: They have the votes. With a veto-proof majority, a hard-right conservative governor, and a determination to seize the moment in a non-election year, legislative leaders have packed the agenda-- and Democrats are powerless to stop them.

“You’ve got a very conservative governor, president, and speaker, so they’ve gone down some roads that people have kind of been afraid to go down before,’’ said Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton.

The governor has already signed major legislation to change the way teachers are paid and to reduce compensation for the unemployed, and the Legislature has overridden seven vetoes of former Gov. Charlie Crist.

Next up are dozens of bills that remove government oversight, dismantle regulations, and shift state jobs to the private sector. Also on the docket are plans to ask voters to amend the state constitution to remove the ban on providing tax dollars to religious organizations, to make it easier for the Legislature to overturn rules imposed by the state Supreme Court, to ban public funding of abortions and to prohibit any laws requiring a person to buy health insurance.

...Bennett admits it makes him uneasy.

“I get nervous when we have one party control everything and you don’t have to negotiate, you don’t have to go to the middle,” he said.

A small number of Republican moderates have joined the Democrats to point out that the no-new-taxes pledge is shrouded by the Legislature’s plans to require public employees to pay a portion of their retirement costs, increase property insurance rates, raise utility rates for renewable energy, and increase college tuition.

“Any time you vote for something that’s going to hurt the pocketbooks of every homeowner in the state of Florida, every small businessman or woman in the state of Florida, that’s a tax,’’ said Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos said that when workers contribute to their own pension, it “is not a tax increase.” He defends the utility, tuition and insurance increases as a necessary evil.

“This is what leadership is about,’’ he said last week. “The alternative is what you’re seeing in Washington, D.C., they don’t cut anything.”

Others warn that by using the budget as a backdrop and the federal government as a foil for their broad policy shifts, the Legislature may be going too far.

“It’s probably the strongest anti-federalism we’ve had since Jim Crow days or a vote to secede,’’ said Sen. Thad Altman, R-Viera. He said he considers himself a fiscal conservative but is frightened by the “anti-federalism sentiment” of the governor and legislative leaders who have rejected billions of federal dollars for health care, transportation and infrastructure. “That’s misdirected. I think it’s going to be a huge mistake.”

In another part of yesterday's Miami Herald Carl Hiaasen gets to the bottom of how this happened: money-- and the rich making class war against the rest of us.

I once referred to a past Legislature as a festival of whores, which in retrospect was a vile insult to the world’s oldest profession.

Today’s lackluster assemblage in Tallahassee is possibly the worst in modern times, and cannot fairly be compared to anything except a rodeo of phonies and pimps. It’s impossible to remember a governor and lawmakers who were more virulently anti-consumer, and more slavishly submissive to big business.

The list of who’s getting screwed in the state budget battle is long and sadly familiar: the schools, college students, foster children, the poor, the elderly, the sick and the jobless. The happiest faces, of course. belong to lobbyists for corporations, insurance companies and utilities, who are getting almost everything they want.

It’s astounding that so many voters were suckered into thinking that this new generation of Republicans was going to fight for the common man instead of the fats cats and their special interests.

What a joke. The so-called leadership was plainly bought and paid for by the time their shoes hit the steps of the Capitol.

It isn't a topic politics in any other state depends on but if Republicans make it impossible for homeowners to insure their residences against hurricanes-- as the Senate is in the process of doing-- the backlash against Republicans statewide will be much bigger than the boos, banners and catcalls their deranged governor suffered at the Rays game Saturday. I don't always see eye-to-eye with Florida's senior statesman-emeritus but Bob Graham's OpEd in yesterday's St. Petersburg Times sure captured the state of play in Florida's political environment.

As the Legislature enters its second half, there has emerged a disturbing pattern of ignoring many of Florida's core values. Over the last half-century these values have given Florida government-- whether in Republican or Democratic hands-- a stability and predictability that is now threatened.

What are some of those at-risk values?

Florida is a treasure which we have the privilege of enjoying with the responsibility to preserve and enhance that treasure for future generations.

...All of the tax cuts, particularly the total repeal of the tax on stocks and bonds, primarily benefited the upper 5 percent of Floridians, thus contributing to the enormous disparity in wealth in the United States: The top 5 percent of Americans claim 63.5 percent of the nation's wealth, while the lowest 80 percent get only 12.8 percent. In more recent years, Florida politicians have regressively shifted the cost of state services from the richest Floridians to those working hardest just to make ends meet. If the Legislature remains committed to adequacy, resilience and fairness as the foundation of our tax system, serious reconsideration should be given to these tax cuts and the harm they have done.