Florida: State of unreason
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com
While there are a lot of state governments currently vying for the honor, a good case can be made that Florida is the frontrunner in the race for the title of the state most rapidly becoming a fountainhead of reactionary politics.
And that is really saying something. Not only because New Jersey has a governor who revels in bashing teachers and turning down massive federal funding to build a much-needed rail line to New York City or because Wisconsin has a governor and a legislature who just succeeded in not only effectively cutting the income of public sector workers (except for police and firefighters) but in the bargain also managed to strip them of the right to collective bargaining. Granted, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has done much to establish his right-wing credentials, so much so that he is considered as a possible contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, a slot that is likely to be decided by Tea Party adherents and other rabidly conservative members of the Republican Party.
In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Parker is so close to the billionaire Koch brothers, infamous for funding a panoply of rightists causes and front organizations — and whose money was instrumental in helping Parker win a close election — that a reporter for the online publication The Daily Beast posing as David Koch was able to engage the governor in a cozy phone strategy session about how to best pulverize the public sector unions and fool the Democrats into coming back to the state under false pretenses in order to obtain the quorum necessary for passage of the GOP’s union-busting legislation. The conversation, caught on tape, included the following exchange: Koch impostor: “[Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I will fly you out to Cali and show you a really good time.” Gov. Parker: “All right, that would be outstanding.”
Yet Florida is number one because, after eight years of Jeb Bush as governor — followed by Charlie Crist’s anodyne but inconsequential term — it was hard to see how the state could move further to the right. After all, the younger Bush, a more committed and coherent right-wing, hyper-pro-business, soak-the-rich with tax cuts ideologue than even his brother George, was so hostile toward government that in one of his inaugural speeches he dreamt of the day that all the buildings housing government agencies in Tallahassee would stand empty.
He didn’t empty those buildings but overall he was true to his word. During his two terms, Jeb’s budgets were miserly when the item involved a program that helped the poor, the disabled, and the vulnerable in general. Yet when it came to tax expenditures — specifically giveaways to the rich — he was magnanimous. Florida, a “right to work state,” read right to exploit without any organized worker opposition, has no state income tax and one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the nation. The one progressive item in the Florida tax code was the “intangibles tax,” essentially a modest tax on some forms of property that was paid almost exclusively by the very wealthy. For years, Gov. Bush endeavored mightily to whittle down the intangible tax rate. Then, on July 27, 2006, he achieved a final victory for his class — the Bush family has been rich and influential for several generations — when he signed House Bill 209, eliminating the intangibles tax altogether.
On the issue of education, Jeb Bush didn’t just go against teachers’ unions; he had bigger ambitions. He tried to undermine public education — already battered by dint of the state’s narrow tax base — by pushing education vouchers and other alternatives to public education, such as charter schools.
One public functionary Bush did not dislike: the executioner. Much as his brother had done as Texas governor, Jeb worked hard to keep the machinery of government-sponsored killing functioning at a good clip, even as botched executions provided grotesque spectacles that persuaded more than a few judges to conclude that the state’s method of execution amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. Rather than questioning the legal and moral issue of capital punishment, the state took the decision in stride and changed the method from electrocution to lethal injection.
For good measure, Bush also was consistent in his sympathy and support for the most right-wing elements in Miami’s Cuban exile community. This included people who straddled the line between political activity and terrorism.
Now, how can Gov. Rick Scott, his Republican-controlled Cabinet, and the GOP-dominated state House and Senate top that?
Where to start? Consider just a few of the presents this bunch of heartless folks have in store for the good citizens of the state of Florida. Begin with the fact that the governor has proposed a budget that includes cuts to education so draconian that Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has said they amount to the dismantling of public education in the state.
The governor’s logic: Florida needs to eliminate its large projected budget deficit. However, it’s not the same logic he applies when he is pushing cutting corporate taxes.
Guess what Republicans in the Florida legislature have in store for the nearly 3 million poor, disabled, or elderly Floridians who depend on Medicaid for their health care? According to The Miami Herald: “All indications are the Republican-led Legislature will turn over to HMO-style plans most of the 2.9 million people….” Never mind that the HMO/managed care model long ago proved to be a colossal failure. Ignore the fact that the actual Medicaid patients in five Florida counties who have been receiving care under this model as part of a five-year pilot program absolutely hate it. They realize that “managed care plans cut costs by denying or delaying care, and divert the money for profits.”
Among the horror stories detailed in the Herald: Kendra Garcia of Miramar who considers the pilot program horrible because the system bounced “her three disabled children from HMO to HMO without notice, leaving them without insurance for weeks”; an HIV-positive woman who for more than a month could not get medicine to protect her unborn baby from the virus because they [the patient and her obstetrician] could not find an HIV doctor who would see her (Medicaid pays doctors so little, many physicians, particularly specialists, refuse to treat Medicaid patients); a woman who was switched from one plan to another causing a lapse in coverage during medical problems that led to a miscarriage; and a disabled psychiatric patient whose Broward HMO refused to provide her the drugs that keep her stable.
In sum, the pilot program initiated by former Governor Jeb Bush in 2006 in order to save money has amounted to a criminal medical experiment, of which there are far too many sad examples to describe in this country and abroad. Now the Republicans in the state legislature want to generalize a version of this odious experiment to the whole population of Medicaid patients, which is expected to swell to 4.5 million by 2014 as a result of the recession and the Obama health care reform. To add irony to injury, as the Herald found, after five years of playing with people’s lives, “no one can say whether the experiment saves money.” In effect, there are no reliable studies that show a cost savings to the state. Yet, according to the Herald, “state reports in the past year showed that patients in managed care were much less likely to get medical care for high blood pressure, diabetes, lung problems and strokes than patients seeing individual Medicaid doctors.” Yet it is almost certain that the state legislature will pass and the governor will sign this perverted legislation that is being passed off as “Medicaid reform.” If a reduced cost cannot be documented but reduced care can, who is getting the extra money? Would you believe health care executives in the mould of Rick Scott?
As an additional gift to Floridians, Governor Scott is planning to dismantle the Department of Community Affairs (DCA), the agency that implements the 1985 growth management law promulgated to curtail the state’s out of control and environmentally disastrous suburban sprawl. The move is motivated by an extremist pure free market ideology run amok. The governor thinks the agency is “a red-tape job-killer standing in the way of economic recovery.” Some observers say the governor’s push reflects “a rejection of anything that may stand in the way of Florida’s growth machine. In fact, despite DCA and the growth management law, development in Florida has far outgrown population increase and consumer demand, resulting in hundreds of thousands of vacant homes and apartments. Dismantling DCA won’t create any jobs because no one is going to build when there is such a gigantic glut in the housing market. Rather, it will destroy the jobs of those who now are gainfully employed in the agency.
On the subject of jobs, a new study projected that a rapid-rail line between Orlando and Tampa would make money, contrary to the governor’s claim that it would cost taxpayers. The $2.4 billion federal dollars that the governor rejected would have created 24,000 new jobs in a state with an unemployment rate above the high national average.
When it comes to mean-spiritedness, there are two items that qualify in spades. One proposal would reduce the real income of state employees as much as 8 percent — including a vast number of social workers and clerical employees who receive very low salaries — while another would increase the retirement age.
Under the category of cynical and mean-spirited is the decision of the GOP-dominated state clemency board to make it much more difficult for released felons, including nonviolent offenders, to regain their civil and voting rights. Under the previous rules, tens of thousands of nonviolent offenders could regain their civil rights without a cumbersome application and review process. It just so happens that Blacks are a disproportionate number of persons convicted of felonies. Blacks also overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates. Disenfranchising blacks, a practice that dates to the time of segregation, holds down the African American vote, to the benefit of Republican politicians.
In another cynical move, the Herald reports that “a plan to overhaul the Supreme Court is gaining momentum in the House. The proposed restructuring would allow Gov. Scott to make three appointments to the state’s highest court.
Finally, the heads of Miami’s Jackson Health System — the only public hospital in the state’s largest metropolitan area and the institution of last resort for the poor and uninsured — announced last week that painful and imminent cuts are inevitable, largely as a result of state cuts in Medicaid payments that would result in a loss of $250 million in funding.
When you connect the dots this way, it’s anything but a pretty picture. Just when you thought, after George W. and Jeb Bush, that no more punishment could be inflicted on the downtrodden in our society and in our state, along come Rick Scott and his merry band of Cabinet officers to prove you wrong. I am fresh out of ideas on how to combat the right-wing juggernaut the Republicans are building in the state, with total control of the executive and legislative branches and possibly control of the judiciary — if they can get away with it. Yes, this too shall pass, but until then we are in for a very rough ride indeed.
