No Red Wave But A Red Tide Catches Up With Florida Governor Rick Scott

Last month, in a post, Florida's Lovely Beaches-- Over-Run With Deadly Human Waste, we looked at a gigantic problem for Floridians that their politicians aren't adequately addressing. When I woke up yesterday, I was glad to see a headline from a Florida newspaper, Rick Scott campaign stop besieged by red tide protesters.

Zac Anderson wrote that "Protesters jammed the sidewalk and spilled into the street around Mojo’s Real Cuban, forcing Scott to enter the restaurant through the back door and leave the same way after just 10 minutes as members of the crowd shouted 'coward.'... With the noxious odor of red tide hanging in the air and a fresh wave of dead fish washing up on nearby Gulf beaches, a large crowd of people incensed about the devastating algae bloom that has plagued the region for months directed their anger at Gov. Rick Scott during a campaign event in Venice Monday." And does Scott ever deserve it!

The Republican governor is on the defensive about his environmental record as he tries to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. Protesters gathered Monday took aim at Scott for cutting funding for environmental agencies early in his first term, arguing Scott’s cost-cutting and deregulation have kept the state from implementing measures that could have helped minimize naturally occurring red tide blooms.

“The more I learn about red tide the more I can point to Rick Scott making it worse,” said Venice resident Rich Peabody, 71. “It’s not his fault, but he’s making it worse.”

Peabody stood by the back door to Mojo’s and shouted “coward” at Scott as he left the restaurant.

“He’s a coward; he wouldn’t face these people,” said the semi-retired Peabody, who moved to the area nine years ago. “Look at our beaches.”

...Scott’s critics say his policies have exacerbated the problem. Red tide blooms start offshore but can feed on nutrients found in nearshore waters. Leaky septic tanks, lawn fertilizer found in stormwater runoff and other factors can add to nutrient levels in nearshore waters.

Scott signed off on legislation that repealed a mandatory septic tank inspection program. The inspections were intended to identify failing septic tanks that are leaching pollutants.

The governor also cut $700 million from the state’s water management districts, which help implement a range of water quality programs. And Scott reduced staffing at the state Department of Environmental Protection and pushed to speed up and streamline environmental permitting, leading some to accuse the state of cutting corners in protecting the environment.

...The unusually strong red tide bloom that has lingered along a vast stretch of Southwest Florida coastline for nearly a year and a separate blue-green algae bloom that originated in Lake Okeechobee and is fouling estuaries on both coasts have mushroomed into major campaign issues in Florida’s midterm election.

Sarasota resident John Citara, 52, came out to protest Scott’s visit wearing a white hazmat suit and a gas mask.

Citara said he used to take his sons to the beach on a regular basis to go swimming, but now they go to document the environmental devastation.

“Once you wipe out the economy and the tourism, Florida’s dead,” Citara said. “If this doesn’t show us we need to do things differently and hold people accountable, what will?”

Nokomis resident Kim Hileman, 60, moved to the area from Pennsylvania in April “for quality of life.”

“Thinking I would escape the snow and enjoy the warm weather and beaches,” Hileman said.

But there have been very few nice beach days since Hileman moved south. So on Monday she led the crowd outside Mojo’s in a chant of: “Hey hey ho ho red tide Rick has got to go.” The “red tide Rick” moniker was featured on a range of other signs.

Jane Hunter helped organize the protest as a leader with the liberal-leaning Englewood Indivisible group.

“We need to make a statement back to our community and the Scott campaign that you can’t just totally befoul the Southwest coast of Florida and then run for Senate and vote against the environment,” Hunter said. “Nope. Not gonna happen. There needs to be some accountability.”

South Florida congressional candidate Tim Canova was the first person to warn me about the scope of the environmental catastrophe unfolding in Florida right now. And though Rick Scott deserves all the blame in the world, this problem is the result of corrupt politicians from both parties playing footsie with fat cat polluters. Tim's opponent, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is as culpable as Scott. Yesterday, Tim told me that "The Gulf coast of Florida is being devastated by Red Tide and the blue-green toxic algal, both fed by agricultural runoff from massive factory farms. This has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of sea turtles, manatees, dolphins, sea otters, and thousands of fish, pelicans, herons and other birds. Hundreds of people have fallen sick with respiratory illnesses. According to Toxic Puzzle, a documentary film narrated by Harrison Ford, scientists are now connecting these toxins with higher rates of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Unfortunately, this deepening crisis is brought to us by the pollution in our politics. Politicians in both parties are taking millions of dollars in campaign donations from Big Agribusinesses and Big Sugar, including my opponent Debbie Wasserman Schultz who repeatedly voted to appropriate billions of dollars in federal subsidies for these same polluters. My campaign takes no corporate money, perhaps one of the reasons we are now being throttled and shadow banned on social media, making it more and more difficult to raise money in small online donations. We are standing up to Big Sugar and other predatory corporate interests, and our grassroots campaign is growing on the ground where it matters most."

A Philosophy Of Governance That Pits Hard Core Conservatives Against Humanity

Coastal Florida-- but Mica, Stearns & Miller put their dangerous ideology ahead of the interests of their own endangered constituents

Brian Baird (D-WA) is retiring from Congress and will hopefully be replaced by a more progressive Democrat, state Sen. Craig Pridemore. I've had my disagreements with Baird-- plenty of them-- but he's one of the only members of Congress willing to be even remotely evenhanded towards the Palestinians, so I always have a grudging admiration for him when he acts badly on other matters. Yesterday an important but obscure bill of his passed, 251-103-- H.R. 3650, the Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act. There were 39 co-sponsors, spread out on both sides of the aisle.

Baird, a member of the Congressional Boating Caucus as well as the Coastal Caucus, is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Science and Technology Committee, and he also serves on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee and the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. It all seemed to come together yesterday when he managed to pass H.R. 3650, which is meant to establish a National Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Program, to develop and coordinate a comprehensive and integrated strategy to address harmful algal blooms and hypoxia, and to provide for the development and implementation of comprehensive regional action plans to reduce harmful algal blooms and hypoxia. "This bill," said Baird, "will reauthorize a program that has funded research to advance our understanding and our ability to detect, assess, predict and control these harmful algal bloom and hypoxia events. Since the last reauthorization there has been an increase in the number, frequency and type of algal blooms and hypoxic events, affecting more of our coastlines and inland waters."

According to WaterWorld:

Harmful algal blooms are a rapid overproduction of algal cells that produce toxins and occur in both salt and freshwater. People and animals are exposed to the toxins when they drink or swim in the contaminated water or consume seafood that has ingested these toxins. The toxins cannot be removed or neutralized through the traditional water treatment methods, like filtering, boiling, or chemical treatments.

In addition to releasing toxins, the blooms can block sunlight in water and use up the available oxygen in the water, causing a severe oxygen depletion. The oxygen depletion, called hypoxia, stresses or suffocates marine animals and plants. Environmental changes in water quality, temperature, and sunlight or an increase in nutrients in the water can cause blooms to increase dramatically.

Harmful algal blooms also have a negative financial impact on a region, if beaches are closed and fishing is suspended. Harmful algal blooms and hypoxia cost the U.S. seafood and tourism industries approximately $82 million annually, according to a conservative estimate from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The bill will give local communities the tools and best practices to understand and respond to harmful algal blooms and hypoxia. It will assist in regional, state, tribal, and local efforts to develop and implement appropriate marine and freshwater harmful algal bloom and hypoxia response plans, strategies, and tools. It will also provide resources for and assist in the training of local water and coastal resource managers in the methods and technologies for monitoring, controlling, mitigating, and responding to the effects of marine and freshwater harmful algal blooms and hypoxia events. The state and regional participation is completely voluntary. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined that the bill does not impose any cost on state, local, or tribal governments.

The bill has been endorsed by Environmental Defense Fund, Surfrider Foundation, Ocean Champions, and PURRE (People United to Restore our Rivers and Estuaries).

Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is carrying the same bill in the Senate, and it's already passed the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. So who's against it-- and why? Red Tide lovers?

Well, hard-core GOP obstructionists who oppose government action to make society a better place pretty much oppose everything, and 98 of them voted against the bill yesterday. Most of them represent landlocked districts, and most of them are just against any positive action-- you know, Michele Bachmann, Virginia Foxx, Patrick McHenry, Eric Cantor, David Dreier, Pete Sessions, Mean Jean Schmidt, all the creeps and imbeciles from Texas and Georgia, of course, Scott Garrett, Steve King and (shockingly, considering his Long Island district) Peter King.

And the five Democrats who voted "no"? See if you can detect a pattern. Jason Altmire, Dan Boren, Bobby Bright, Ann Kirkpatrick, Bill Owens-- five of the most spineless and habitually conservative Democrats, all from inland districts, all eager to go run to the Chamber of Commerce types and say, "See I'm really one of you." And they are.

It made me think of a speech then-candidate Bill Clinton gave at Georgetown University on October 23, 1991, the New Covenant speech. It was one that turned the tide in his favor and help make him president. Let me quote just a llittle so you can compare it with how the members of Congress who voted "no" yesterday define their role in politics:

The very fiber of our nation is breaking down: Families are coming apart, kids are dropping out of school, drugs and crime dominate our streets.

And our leaders here in Washington aren't doing much about it. The political system we have now rotates between being the butt of jokes and the object of absolute scorn.

Frustration produces calls for term limits from voters who don't even think they have the power to vote incumbents out, and resentment produces votes for David Duke, not just from racists, but from voters so desperate for change they will support the most anti-establishment message, even if it's delivered by an ex-Klansman who admits it was inspired by Adolf Hitler.

We've got to rebuild our political life before the demagogues and the racists, and those who pander to the worst in us, bring this country down.

People once looked at the president and the Congress to bring us together, to solve problems, to make progress. Now, in the face of massive challenges, our government stands discredited, our people are disillusioned. There's a hole in our politics where our sense of common purpose used to be.

The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interest over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family.

The 1980s ushered in a gilded age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.

S&L crooks stole billions of dollars in other people's money. Pentagon consultants and HUD contractors stole from the taxpayers.

Many big corporate executives raised their own salaries even when their companies were losing money and their workers were being put into the unemployment lines.

Middle-class families worked longer hours for less money and spent more on health care and housing, and education and taxes.

Poverty rose. Many inner-city streets were taken over by crime and drugs, welfare and despair. Family responsibility became an oxymoron for many deadbeat fathers who were more likely to make their car payments than to pay their child support.

And government, which should have been setting an example, was even worse. Congress raised its pay and guarded its perks while most Americans were working harder for less money.

Two Republican presidents elected on a promise of fiscal responsibility advanced budget proposals that more than tripled our national debt.

Congress went along with that, too. Taxes were lowered on the wealthiest people whose incomes were rising, and raised on middle class families as their incomes fell.

...To turn America around, we've got to have a new approach, founded on our most sacred principles as a nation, with a vision for the future. We need a new covenant, a solemn agreement between the people and their government to provide opportunity for everybody, inspire responsibility throughout our society and restore a sense of community to our great nation. A new covenant to take government back from the powerful interests and the bureaucracy and give it back to the ordinary people of our country.