State of Corruption

Corruption in state government is not new nor is it the monopoly of a single state or party. New Jersey, Illinois, and Texas are notorious for corruption, but it is a phenomenon that takes place in all fifty states.

In Florida, which is the state on which I focus this article, had plenty of corruption during the decades when the Sunshine State was under virtual one-party Democratic rule.  Yet, during the more recent era of nearly absolute Republican rule, corruption has reached a whole new level.

Exhibit # 1 is splashed all over the front page of Sunday’s Miami Herald. The article shows the extent to which the Florida’s sugar industry, arguably the main culprit in the devastation of the Everglades, has an extremely cozy relationship with Governor Rick Scott and numerous GOP members of the legislature.

It turns out that Big Sugar for some time has been paying for all-expense hunting junkets to the King Ranch in Texas for numerous Republicans politicians, from the governor on down. Talk about having a Sugar Daddy. These politicians, not coincidentally, are the very ones who have the power to decide on such tradeoffs as sugar industry profits versus Everglades restoration.

Mind you, this is an industry which operates on terms contradictory to the free market ideology of the Republican Party. Its healthy profits are not the result of superior agricultural practices or technological innovation. Sugar is produced more efficiently in Brazil and many other countries around the world. Rather, the U.S. government limits the amount of sugar imported from various countries into the United States through a quota system. Total imports are always set well below U.S. demand. That means the price of sugar in the United States is always higher than the world market price.

The losers are U.S. consumers, who must pay more for sugar and mostly poor sugar-exporting countries. The winner is Big Sugar, which funds not only hunting excursions for Florida politicians but also political campaigns for no less a Democrat than Bill Clinton.

Returning to my home state and our governor, who virtually bought his position with over $70 billion of his own money derived from heading a health care company itself mired in corruption, we have Exhibit 2. Again The Miami Herald, whose coverage and opinion articles on the Middle East, Latin America as whole, and Cuba in particular are highly slanted, once again does a creditable job in exposing malfeasance among local and state politicians.  The damning facts are laid out plainly in a recent edition:

“Upon his election in 2010, Gov. Rick Scott’s transition team included a Florida Power & Light executive who pitched his company’s plan to build a major natural gas pipeline in North Florida to fuel a new generation of gas-fired power plants in places like Port Everglades.

“’The proposed project will need state regulatory and governmental agencies to understand and support this project,” said the proposal submitted by FPL vice president Sam Forrest.

“Scott understood. In May and June 2013, he signed into law two bills designed to speed up permitting for what came to be known as the Sabal Trail Transmission — a controversial, 474-mile natural gas pipeline that’s to run from Alabama and Georgia to a hub in Central Florida, south of Orlando.

“Five months later, the Florida Public Service Commission, whose five members were appointed by Scott, unanimously approved construction of Sabal Trail as the state’s third major natural gas pipeline. More approvals are needed from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which the governor oversees.

“What wasn’t publicly known in 2013, however, was that the governor owned a stake in Spectra Energy, the Houston company chosen by Florida Power & Light that July to build and operate the $3 billion pipeline. Sabal Trail Transmission LLC is a joint venture of Spectra Energy and FPL’s parent, NextEra Energy.

“BrowardBulldog.org’s review of financial records made public last month by Scott show that as of Dec. 31, his portfolio included several million dollars invested in the securities of more than two dozen entities that produce and/or transport natural gas — including some, like Spectra, with substantial Florida operations.

“His stake in Spectra Energy was reported as being worth $53,000 that day.

“Florida’s ethics laws generally prohibit public officials like the governor from owning stock in businesses subject to their regulation, or that do business with state agencies. A similar prohibition exists on owning shares in companies that would ‘“create a continuing or frequently recurring conflict’” between an official’s private interests and the ‘“full and faithful discharge’” of his public duties.”

Neither Florida nor the Republican Party are the sole source of corruption in the U.S. political system. The system is corrupt through and through. But the GOP is easily the leader in the corruption race, for two simple reasons. One is that the Democrats depend politically on such constituencies as labor, minorities, environmentalists and liberals, so they can’t afford to always take radical pro-business positions. Republicans, on the other hand, don’t get the votes of any of those people and are ideologically and economically enmeshed almost exclusively with business, which both participates in and benefits from corruption. The second reason is that Republicans have wielded more power than Democrats in recent decades, at the national level and in Florida.

Business is interested in results, not partisanship. The Republicans are in a better ideological and political position to deliver.