The GOP yard needs to be bulldozed and re-sodded ... by gimleteye

The GOP has stopped, blocked and inhibited at every turn any effort to use state or federal regulation to protect water quality in Florida. Elected Republicans use specious arguments like "federal overreach" and when it is time to loosen state laws, they do things like exchange hard numerical standards for "narrative" ones.

Well it turns out those narrative standards are utterly failing at protecting public health and the environment. Public health, as in severe and permanent neurological diseases.

In DC, the GOP is determined to gut the federal protections of the Clean Water Act.

To get really sick -- perhaps not today but down the road -- you don't have to TOUCH cyanobacteria. All you have to do is BREATHE.

So don't "hold your breath" and vote for Republicans this November. Principled conservatives need to keep saying it like George Will and Bill Kristol have: VOTE DEM.

The GOP yard needs to be bulldozed and re-sodded. Only voters can do that.

https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/local/indian-river-lagoon/health/2018/07/18/blue-green-algae-101-what-your-ought-know/792429002/

Toxic blue-green algae is really cyanobacteria, plus other facts about blooms, microcystin

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Tyler Treadway  |  Treasure Coast Newspapers Updated 17 hours ago

Video: Blue-green algae through the years

The problem dates back to 1923. DACIA JOHNSON/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS

Wochit

Algae blooms from different sources are popping up throughout the Treasure Coast.

The green slime is polluting the St. Lucie River in Martin and St. Lucie counties and Blue Cypress Lake in Indian River County.

Here are some things you should, but may not, know about it:

It's not really algae

Blue-green algae is actually cyanobacteria, naturally occurring microscopic bacteria that, like plants, use photosynthesis to produce food from nutrients and sunlight.

A combination of things can cause normal levels of blue-green algae to explode into a full-tilt bloom: high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and septic tank leakage; long, hot days; and low salinity. 

The normally salty St. Lucie River estuary is susceptible to algae blooms only when there are high freshwater inflows from canals and Lake Okeechobee discharges.

Blooms can harm an ecosystem like the St. Lucie River by killing the tiny organisms at the bottom of the food chain, oysters and sea grass. And when the bloom dies, bacteria eating the dead cells suck all the oxygen out of the water, which can cause fish kills.

Toxic threat

A species called Microcystis aeruginosa has been the primary blue-green algae in St. Lucie River blooms. It produces several toxins, including one called microcystin.

Microcystin can cause nausea and vomiting if ingested and rash or hay fever symptoms if touched or inhaled. Drinking water with the toxins can cause long-term liver disease.

Breathing in fumes from blooms with microcystin can cause respiratory problems, particularly in people with asthma or pulmonary disease.

More: American Council on Science & Health: Why algae's 3 toxins are so dangerous

An Ohio State University study found people living in areas with significant blue-green algae blooms containing microcystin are more likely to die from nonalcoholic liver disease than those in areas without the blooms. The study did not conclude blooms cause liver disease, especially not in particular individuals.

More: Ohio State University study links toxic algae blooms, fatal liver disease 

A growing number of scientists think another toxin in the algae, known as BMAA, can trigger diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.

More: Health risks of all blue-green algae toxins unknown, marine biologist says

Concentrations of toxins in blue-green algae are measured in parts per billion. The World Health Organization considers water with up to 1 part per billion safe to drink and more than 10 parts per billion to pose a health threat from recreational contact.

More: Health effects of blue-green algae need study, hospital CEO says

Other algae

Another blue-green algae found in the Indian River Lagoon, lyngbya often looks like masses of brown seaweed floating on the water, especially in the summer.

Lyngbya (LING-bee-yah) can be toxic to fish, plants and other marine creatures and cause a skin irritation known as “swimmer’s itch" in humans.

It grows rapidly in water with high levels of fertilizer and septic runoff, so blooms are a sign of an unhealthy lagoon.

Brown tide

Aureoumbra lagunensis, a true algae (not cyanobacteria) known as "brown tide," is more common in the northern and middle Indian River Lagoon as far south as Sebastian.

The aftermath of a brown tide bloom in mid-March 2016 in the Banana River, an arm of the Indian River Lagoon that stretches from Kennedy Space Center to just north of Melbourne in Brevard County, killed millions of fish.

More: Brevard County fish kill sparked by brown tide

Scientists suspect the bloom absorbed all the nutrients in the river, then died. Bacteria eating the dead cells sucked all the oxygen out of the water, and the fish suffocated.

Originally Published 12:29 p.m. EDT July 18, 2018

Updated 17 hours ago

Voters, first things first: here is why pollution should be at the top of your list ... by gimleteye

Things are getting real, and real fast, in terms of the impacts of pollution on citizens. It's your life. It's your family. It's your world.

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant and largely responsible for global warming. The sunny day flooding that is occurring in low-lying coastal areas will not stop, and it won't stop catastrophic losses to home and business values, until elected leaders start coming to terms with that pollution. If your votes are not for candidates who can honestly say they give a damn about climate change, you are damned.



There are other slow-motion fuses on pollution and toxics that have a direct impact on your life. Your family. Your world.

An oncologist in Brevard County, Dr. Julie Greenwalt, is trying to piece together a toxic puzzle that the government won't. She got cancer, with no history of the disease in her family. She began noticing that lots of her grade and high school classmates, who had all gone to schools near Patrick Air Force Base, also had contracted cancer at a youthful age.

Down here in Miami, there is a lot of money and attention and care placed by the community on cancer in our lives. There are corporate races and drives to raise money for hospitals. There are t-shirts and bracelets. But how many voters understand that cancer is a political event too and not just a matter of bad luck, or genetics?

Cancer is a political event because money needs to be spent, science needs to be gathered, and information needs to be disclosed to help people make informed decisions about toxics in their lives. Even toxics used by government in service of public health and safety.

How could this clearer?

"I just feel grateful to be alive, and I know that God has a plan for my life," Dr. Greenwalt said to a Brevard news outlet. "(Perhaps) this is part of it -- to try and help figure this out."

Voters shouldn't need cancer to raise awareness about government officials, cover-ups on toxics or climate change denialism. Voters shouldn't need algae in a favorite swimming place that is linked to Alzheimer's.

Voters should elect representatives who do more than platitudes or demagogue about how creating "jobs" is more important than protecting your health, your families, and the world we share. First things, first.

Laudato Si and all that ... by gimleteye

Next week, Pope Francis will meet with world environmental leaders in the Vatican, to discuss advancing the agenda of protecting the planet from climate change impacts. The Pope issued his encyclical, "Laudato Si: On Care For Our Common Home", in 2015. A small, powerful constituency -- primarily in the United States and tied to fossil fuel extraction industries -- pushed back, but Pope Francis is determined. The evidence on the ground of climate change is everywhere, notwithstanding the hostility of American conservatives and media machinery like the Murdoch Fox News empire. The Pope is paying attention to sea level rise; from the world's poorest regions, like Bangladesh, to developed nations like the United States and cities like Miami, which -- in addition to being the lowest lying region in a politically influential state -- is also one with the greatest income disparity.

Pope Francis may have read about the recent Republican gubernatorial debate in Florida, a slugfest in which the two top contenders -- Adam Putnam and Ron DeSantis -- focused on how they are respectively more like Trump than their adversary. Trump defines the environment and threats to it as unauthorized access to a golf course he owns. Putnam, as Florida Secretary of Agriculture, has been thoroughly compromised by Big Sugar -- represented by two billionaire families, the Fanjuls and the descendants of Charles Stuart Mott. DeSantis, a Congressman whose campaign Trump endorsed, is a fierce defender of the anti-environmental regulatory jihad.

Then, there is Republican Rick Scott. Florida's term limited governor is challenging Democrat Bill Nelson for US Senate; a race considered critical to Democrats' hope to regain majority control of the Senate. As governor, Scott twiddled his fingers while serial outbreaks of toxic algae spewed from the state's largest fresh water body; outbreaks attributable to a warming climate and the sugar industry -- his big campaign supporters -- and its dominance of water management infrastructure in the state. Some of that algae is being linked through air-borne convection to serious brain disease, like Alzheimer's.

The thread tying together the Republican agenda in Florida and elsewhere is a willingness to dismantle environmental regulations that "drag" on business profits. Scott, for example, drove the final nail of the coffin in the state's growth planning agency. His willingness to abandon environmental enforcement, like wetlands destruction, has unleashed another wave of growth, sprawl, and highways into the Everglades. On another front, Gov. Scott has withheld information on cancer clusters including rare pediatric ones. This dismal course is mirrored by President Trump (eliminating protections for whales and sea turtles) and the empowerment of a radical anti-environmental agenda that masks severe risks to the public. Just one example:

Fearing a “public relations nightmare,” the White House and top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency worked together earlier this year to suppress a federal health study that revealed new evidence about hazardous levels of toxic chemicals in U.S. drinking water.

The study, set to be released by the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS)’s Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), found that a certain class of chemicals can pose a serious risk to human health at much lower levels than previously thought.

These chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, thyroid diseases, pregnancy complications, and other serious health problems, are present at dangerously high levels in water supplies near chemical plants, military bases, and other sites in multiple states, the study revealed.

Jeb Bush, who did his part as Florida governor to wreck decades of bipartisan consensus on the environment, dismissed Pope Francis' Laudato Si; saying that, in effect, the pope should stick to psalms while good business people took care of the economy. An observer of the Church wrote: "What strikes the Pope as self-evident is that the nature we have attempted to dominate, for the past several centuries, has now turned on us, like Frankenstein’s monster. As he put it in a recent press conference, "God always forgives; human beings sometimes forgive; but when nature is mistreated, she never forgives."

Although these thoughts have yet to register with Florida voters -- who seem to perversely detach their vote for Republicans from the terrible outcomes that Republican officials happily support -- the ones most severely impacted, like in Martin County where Lake Okeechobee is spewing toxic algae onto personal property and treasured waterways, are mobilized. A little further up the Florida Atlantic coast, another group is mobilized too. These are a group of young women who have contracted cancer. They shared neighborhoods, homes and schools near Patrick Air Force Base.

Dr. Julie Greenwalt is a cancer survivor and an oncologist with MD Anderson. She is organizing her community of friends and trying to piece together a toxic puzzle that the government, won't. ""I just feel grateful to be alive, and I know that God has a plan for my life," Greenwalt said. "(Perhaps) this is part of it -- to try and help figure this out."

Maybe God's plan also includes waking up voters, by putting in front of us such insensitive, manipulative and power-hungry politicians who wrap themselves in the velvet robes of religiosity. They should be banished from our legislatures, but only voters have that choice and, so far -- at least as Florida is concerned -- , they have exercised it very poorly.

Low voter turnout is unacceptable ... by gimleteye

Sometimes you just want to grab voters by their shirts and shake them: get to the fucking polls! Do your job as citizens!

In Florida's most populous county, the most important news of the day/month/year is not that a Democrat, a woman, a non-Hispanic won election to the county commission, defeating a Republican Hispanic woman who represented the lobbyist class and the development supply chain.

The news that should make EVERY citizen recoil in horror: in Miami-Dade County, an unknown number of immigrant children are being held in detention centers after being ripped from their parents by the Trump administration.

If you are not DISGUSTED, you are not American.

If you are not motivated to get off your ass and VOTE, well then: pathetic you.

Let's be clear: 15 percent of eligible voters participated in yesterday's county commission election in District 5. That means 85 percent did not. Disgraceful.

I look at it another way.

85 percent of district voters failed to connect their responsibility to vote and the tragic consequences of a Republican president, Donald Trump, and a GOP Congress that supports incarcerating children under the supervision of private corporations and hourly employees minting millions from this "service". "NBC News’ Julia Ainsley reports: "The cost of holding migrant children who have been separated from their parents in newly created 'tent cities' is $775 per person per night, according to an official at the Department of Health and Human Services — far higher than the cost of keeping children with their parents in detention centers or holding them in more permanent buildings."

What Trump and the GOP Congress are doing and supporting is un-American. If you failed to vote, that makes you complicit. Complicit, as in a crime. Complicit, as in I stood by and watched the world's great democracy sink beneath the tide of history.

By failing to vote, you are a stain on our history, our traditions, and our democracy.

So thank you, voters who did elect Eileen Higgins; the best candidate for District 5 in Florida's most populous county.

But for the non-voters here and throughout the nation, the next time there is an election, pin this fact to your choice to vote or not: one political party in the United States of America stands for ripping immigrant children from their parents because a "chaos" president thinks building a wall at our southern border will solve our immigration problems.

Now watch and listen to the consequences:

Read this paragraph and let it sink in. By Geniusofdespair

...The problem facing America runs much deeper than Trump’s personal awfulness. One of our two major parties appears to be hopelessly, irredeemably corrupt. And unless that party not only loses this year’s election but begins losing on a regular basis, America as we know it is finished. - Paul Krugman (read the entire column)

Has that sunk in? Do I have to put a big black box around it? My heart is beating rapidly. What he said has taken me to a place I never wanted to go. Why? Because I believe it is true.

Who is Paul Krugman you might ask. Here is his bio in the New York Times:

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as an Op-Ed columnist. He is distinguished professor in the Graduate Center Economics Ph.D. program and distinguished scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York. In addition, he is professor emeritus of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

In 2008, Mr. Krugman was the sole recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade theory.

Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1977. He has taught at Yale, M.I.T. and Stanford. At M.I.T. he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.

Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 27 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal. Mr. Krugman’s current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.

FL Congressman Brian Mast Ventures Where Few Have Gone Before ... by gimleteye

Algae laden drainage canal from Big Sugar lands

To hear Florida Congressman (GOP) Brian Mast lead from the front on the rampant pollution once again coating his district with deadly toxics is refreshing.  Congressman Mast has had enough. Last week he wrote to the US Army Corps of Engineers, urging a halt to all discharges "until the water quality is deemed safe ..."

Here is a brief background. GOP Gov. Rick Scott and the US Army Corps of Engineers are again permitting filthy, algae laden water to puke from Lake Okeechobee onto Florida's badly damaged estuaries and on the shores of property owners and businesses in Martin County on the east coast and Lee County on the west coast.

Yes, we've seen this movie before. It happened in 2013. It happened again in the bizarrely wet winter of 2015/2016. It's pathetic, where the third act involves taxpayers paying $3 billion for an Everglades man-made reservoir that is highly likely to fail at delivering clean water as promised. (Even the Army Corps has stated, as much.)

It will be a decade or longer before this act plays out. Meanwhile it's another season of algae spewing from Lake Okeechobee with toxins that can cause long-term brain damage to people.

The cause of the algae: water management practices that are designed with a primary purpose: keep Big Sugar profits flowing. Of course that is not what the public hears from astro-turf groups in the Everglades Agricultural Area, funded by Big Sugar, or from state propaganda outlets including the sugared-up Sunshine State News.

Mast's statement is interesting for another reason: in the United States, toxics regulation is designed to protect polluters not people. PEOPLE must prove that toxics are damaging to human health (remember, cancer and Big Tobacco?).

Big Sugar was NEVER required to prove its phosphorous pollution was safe for the Everglades.  It took PEOPLE and two decades of federal Clean Water Act litigation to hold government accountable. That's the same Clean Water Act that Trump and his EPA want to dismantle now.

While it may seem common sense -- that government agencies must prove safety of toxics to people -- what Mast wrote is heresy to polluters. In stating the obvious, that government shouldn't be promoting water management district policies that give people Alzheimer's or Parkinson's diseases, he's pushing against very powerful special interests whose wealth depends on turning other peoples' property and health into sacrifice zones. (Their biggest political assets: Rick Scott who is running for US senate, Adam Putnam who is running for governor, and Matt Caldwell who is running for Agriculture Commissioner.)

Mast's colleagues in the Florida Congressional delegation ought to join in holding government responsible for safety, first. When it comes to toxics, it is about time.

Maybe the BEST reason to vote STRAIGHT DEMOCRAT ticket in 2018 ... by gimleteye

As California golfers put through, a summer wildfire rages behind them: an apt metaphor for the state of America

The stock market is up, but make no mistake: money is agnostic when corporate profits have such a clear path into shareholder wallets. If you are not a shareholder, tough luck. For Americans living paycheck to paycheck -- and that's a fair percentage of the electorate -- the smoke and mirrors of the Trump disaster have been nullifying. Tell that to the workers at the Carrier plant in Ohio, where newly elected Donald Trump made a grand splash claiming he was "saving thousands of jobs". The jobs are gone and disaffection with Trump is rampant.

Agnosticism hits a dead end in this place: where the United States is assaulted by a hostile foreign power. That happened in 2016 with Russian interference in the outcome of the election, driving the vote of less than 100,000 in three states to deliver an electoral college victory to Trump.

The spectacle of the Republican Party turning a blind eye to daily breaches of every normative value of presidential behavior is nauseating, but there is more.

The Intercept reported yesterday that that the White House has hosted discussions of creating a network of private spies to counterbalance what Trump perceives as a CIA and intelligence community disloyal to him. The network is the brainchild of the founder of the private army behemoth, Blackwater, that was set into motion in Iraq and elsewhere (with billions of revenue) by Dick Cheney and George Bush.

As the Twitter-verse notes several times a second, you can't make this stuff up. Over the weekend, Trump tweeted a series of lies focused around his manifest hatred of the FBI. Attacking the guardians of democracy and laws -- and now suggesting these assaults should be institutionalized through politicization of US intelligence services -- is a leap towards an authoritarian state. The GOP is silent.

So there it is: the end of the beginning.

Hope rests in one place: in a relatively narrow band of the electorate that was persuaded by fact or by fiction to reject Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in 2016. These include African Americans who stayed home and did not vote, and mostly educated White Americans who voted for Trump despite telling pollsters they didn't. (Fox viewers and followers of the radical right fringe are silo'd in their bunkers.)

Let Alabama be Alabama next week -- fingers crossed for Senate candidate Doug Jones -- but next year, 2018, will be make or break for the United States of America. No one can sit on the sidelines and call themselves a citizen.

TRUMP WHITE HOUSE WEIGHING PLANS FOR PRIVATE SPIES TO COUNTER “DEEP STATE” ENEMIES
Matthew Cole, Jeremy Scahill
December 4 2017, 10:24 p.m.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Trump’s presidency.

The creation of such a program raises the possibility that the effort would be used to create an intelligence apparatus to justify the Trump administration’s political agenda.

Republicans Just Love Donald Trump. By Geniusofdespair

I often think: Would Mom have liked Donald Trump? And the answer is yes. My mother never finished high school. She was a sweet woman but racist. She didn't even like Italians that came from areas further South than where her relatives came from. Although an immigrant's child she wasn't much on anyone except if they were of Italian descent. I could just imagine her watching Fox News. She wouldn't have liked Obama, but she would have liked Trump. Did I mention she read the National Enquirer. My father, on the other hand, was very intelligent but a cruel and vindictive person, much like Donald Trump. He was a Democrat who gave me money to go march on Washington to protest the Vietnam war. He wouldn't have liked Donald Trump one bit even though his erratic behavior was just like Trump's.

Gallup Polling:

FAKE NEWS ALERT: GOP donors over moon with Trump ... by gimleteye

Today, the narrative pushed by GOP operatives is that top Republican donors are frustrated with Congressional leadership and withholding donations because the Republican Congress is face-planting and can't get anything done.

It's a fake narrative. FAKE NEWS.

In fact, the GOP donor class is over the moon with Trump. It can say one thing and do another with ease, as a result of Citizens United, the US Supreme Court decision that turned the campaign finance in the US into a corporate piñata.

"The establishment wing of the Republican Party is reportedly being hit by a surging revolt from their donors — from whom the establishment gets its financial lifeblood — amid the failure of GOP leadership to get its agenda through Congress. According to Politico, mega-donor Thomas Wachtell urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to “just do something” at a recent L.A. dinner. McConnell reportedly responded by noting that passing legislation takes time, but such a plea was not greeted favorably by attendees."

Breitbart quoting Politico: neat. What is the evidence that the GOP donor class is over the moon with Trump?

Consider: Trump's Department of Interior Chief Ryan Zinke (yes, the one taking private jet trips at taxpayers' expense) hired as deputy assistant secretary, Todd Willens, who during the W. administration managed under cover of darkness to have Everglades National Park removed from the list of endangered world heritage sites.

An Interior Department official who removed the Everglades from the United Nations’ endangered-sites list during the Bush administration is back.

The Interior Department announced last week that Todd Willens, a longtime Washington-based lobbyist and congressional staffer, will take an assistant deputy secretary job under Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

In 2007, Willens urged the United Nations World Heritage Committee to remove Everglades National Park from the list of endangered natural and cultural sites over the objections of the committee’s scientific advisory group.(Official who nixed Everglades from UN endangered-site list gets Trump job), July 11, 2017 Miami Herald

By all accounts, long-serving DOI staffers are profoundly demoralized; music to polluters' ears. Zinke is one of the nation's top environmental officials charged by Trump to reverse policies acknowledging the reality of and responding to threats from climate change.

Then, there is EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who has turned the federal regulatory agency into a sophisticated workshop for regulatory dismantling.

Who would benefit from a decision like Willen's, Zinke and Pruitt: Big Sugar in Florida, that's who. What we know from Big Sugar's donation program is that oligarchs control Florida's GOP establishment by nesting third party political action committees like Russia dolls. By the time these committees fill with millions of dollars, aimed to support GOP candidates from Marco Rubio to Rick Scott and others -- from favored state legislators to county commissioners -- the trail leading back to the donors has either disappeared or been smudged beyond recognition.

Big Sugar oligarch Pepe Fanjul embraces FL Senator Marco Rubio following the kickoff of Rubio's GOP presidential nomination campaign. Trump derided Rubio and FL GOP voters agreed. Rubio carried scarcely a quarter of the primary vote in 2016.

Zinke this morning is in South Florida where protesters will greet his arrival. The battle to protect the Everglades continues on another front: fracking. Both the oil industry and Big Sugar share the aim to de-legitimize the protections afforded national parks and to put public lands to more "useful" purposes like generating corporate profits from polluting activities.

That's why the disinformation campaign can work: have one group of puppeteers say that GOP donors are withholding money, scaring the bejesus out of any Republican who might moderate the party's relationship with Trump -- the most chaotic president in US history -- and his anti-environmental objectives while plowing massive dollars into deep and dark political action committees to guarantee that so long as Trump is president, the sun is shining.

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse put it succinctly:

Dark money destroyed the integrity of our public debate. Secret front groups pollute the political discourse. Each year our planet sets new heat records, but Republicans refuse to acknowledge reality and continue to give billions in handouts to the fossil fuel industry. It’s a national disgrace.

Honestly, could Republican oligarchs from the polluter class have it any better than right now?

Donald Trump is Gloating...and why not? By Geniusofdespair

Trump's two GLOATING tweets today after the two election wins for Republicans yesterday:

Democrats would do much better as a party if they got together with Republicans on Healthcare,Tax Cuts,Security. Obstruction doesn't work!

Well, the Special Elections are over and those that want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN are 5 and O! All the Fake News, all the money spent = 0

Are we the clueless party like Donald Trump thinks? There is in fighting going on in the Florida Party. Idiots. Egos are what it is about. You shouldn't have egos, you are NOT the imperial party you are the ones hanging onto the lifeboat. You locals can't even win in your own State: Both houses and the Governor are all Republicans.

Democrats need a Presidential candidate to start campaigning, anything to get the people's mind off all the dysfunction.

Trump was in Miami last week. Where was a massive demonstration? Why wasn't anything planned by anyone? I have my pink hat ready....to do what? WHERE WAS THE DEMONSTRATION??? Thousands should have come out.

Democrats can't win even with millions of dollars. I am so sick of this party.

"It's my party and I will cry if I want to: You should cry too."

Body Slammed Reporter. By Geniusofdespair

No more bullies in office please. Republican Greg Gianforte  running for congress in Montana body slams reporter. Woof. Rich guys think they own the world.

We need another French Revolution to get out of the Plutocracy voters have chosen. By Geniusofdespair

Earth to Trump: We only have ONE White House.

Somehow the middle class in this country think the rich, who have been bleeding them dry and dwindling our middle class numbers, are the answer to our prayers. They will save the economy and everything else. Rick Scott, what an example of a rich guy ruining our State. Even the Florida Democrats believe this rich guy savior routine, installing TerraNova (opererating over a billion dollars in Commercial Real Estate) Chief as their Florida party chair.

What's left of the middle class and angry white guys and gals are banking on Billionaire Donald Trump the ultimate flim flam man to save their sorry asses --- from what?? What has Donald Trump actually been installed to do? What do they think he can accomplish? All he has done over the years is get rich off the backs of others -- ripping off scores of people and he has used the system to increase his wealth (bankruptcies and tax breaks). What have rich guys done except fuck up our country (e.g. Koch Brothers with the T Party)?

And so far, what has Donald Trump done -- installed a bunch of really rich people to do his bidding. Marco Rubio, not even rich, is a zombie like politician who religiously follows the rich guy ethics hoping to be one some day. He actually voted to lift the pre-existing condition requirement for health care, hurting millions of plain folks like us. Does anyone see what is happening? Many of you have actually placed us in a plutocracy because of racism and your hatred/fright of immigrants.

Our country is royally fucked. Do you really expect all these rich people to generate jobs or anything? Betsy DeVos, Trump's nominee for Education Secretary admitted her family gave about 200 million to the Republican party. If she cared about education, why didn't she give to that?

The people Trump appointed will be cutting jobs and health regulations for their own profit margin. Those jobs you have been promised, don't exist. You aren't trained for the ones that do. Anyway there aren't enough of those kinds of jobs to go around. You can pick tomatoes angry white guy and try to better the health of your asthma/cancer suffering child, sick from polluted air and water,  because you won't be able to get health insurance. Or, will everyone become Uber drivers and retire with nothing. There might be jobs with "0" benefits.

You guys and gals that voted for Trump are as dumb as my socks that get lost in the dryer, never to be seen again.

The Rich are so in touch with your lives...

Two Events Yesterday to talk about Trump: ONE A DISASTER. By Geniusofdespair

Yesterday afternoon I went to the meeting at the Barnacle in Coconut Grove to learn strategies to deal with the Trump presidency. No one was actually running it. There were people pushing issues, like voting for felons, jobs (unions), rights for people at Krome. WHAT? Who was in charge here? I had no clue. The activity was all focused on water bottles (we were never offered) and waiting for someone to park. The Dumbocrats never have their shit together.

WHAT DOES ANY OF THAT HAVE TO DO WITH TRUMP?

I gave it an hour and then left.

There was another meeting at St. Stephens in Coconut Grove in the evening. I heard that meeting was focused and well-attended. I should have gone but I was so despondent over the Barnacle Meeting I couldn't do it again.

I am thinking of changing parties...AGAIN.

Here are some I have been thinking about: The United States Marijuana Party, The Modern Whig Party created by veterans, United States Pirate Party (they want to roll back corporate personhood). I like the emblem of the Marijuana Party. But I like the techie leanings of the Pirate Party and love the name. I am sorry, the Democrats and Republicans --- all losers. Maybe I will have to resort to the Green Party. I just don't know what to do.

GOP House guts ethics panel just in time for Donald Trump ... by gimleteye

They didn't even wait for the Inauguration. Yesterday, Republicans took an axe to the House Ethics Panel and the order created after the last GOP ethics scandal involving former Greenberg Traurig lobbyist Jack Abramoff, after an earlier one involving Newt Gingrich, the first speaker of the House ever charged with an ethics violation.

"Drain the swamp" was one of Donald Trump's beefy talking points to red-state voters who vaulted him to the White House by a mere 100,000 votes in three key electoral states. Even those voters were duped, but buyer's remorse won't do any good now. "Drain the swamp" was a promise already turned into a lie.

We are all spectators at a Great Unravelling of American Exceptionalism until the plan reveals for Trump's first 100 days. In the meantime, consider the reaction to yesterday's news by Gary Kasparov, former world chess champion and now one of Vladmir Putin's bravest critics. On Twitter, Kasparov wrote of the GOP action: "First step, blind the watchers."

Traffic, traffic, traffic ... by gimleteye

An interesting Letter to the Editor in the Herald this morning on traffic related to the MEGA MALL planned in Northwest Dade made me do a U-turn on my morning rounds. It's worth a brief look at our archive on traffic. We sure spend enough time there.

Judging from the hard right turn of state and national politics, we are all about to spend ALOT more time in traffic, especially those who live in the western, southern, and less developed sections of the county.

Once upon a time, citizens had a platform to protest unreasonable development. It was called the Growth Management Act. I'm not even sure that voters are aware that Republicans in the state legislature, under Gov. Rick Scott, put Growth Management -- and hopes of citizens to protect their quality of life -- in a broom closet in the state capitol.

That happened. Fact, not fake.


Cautionary tale warns of mega mall traffic

The mega mall that is being considered by the Miami-Dade County Commission ignores residents’ quality of life. This fact is overshadowed by the dollar signs the county envisions.

I live off of Ives Dairy Road in North Dade. We are the pathway to Aventura Mall. From 7-10 a.m. and 1:45-8 p.m. or later, there is complete gridlock. You might think, “Big deal.” Well, it is when 4,000 cars enter our neighborhood to avoid Ives Dairy Road every day. Lucky for us that WAZE re-directs motorists that way.

These unwanted visitors speed through our streets, regardless of stop signs, pass other motorists on two-lane roads — even around curves — just to get to I-95 five seconds earlier. And we are not allowed to keep them out because these are public streets. Our desire for speed bumps or humps has been rejected several times because they would slow down emergency vehicles. Aventura Mall is in the midst of a major expansion. Yet, there is no plan to address the increased volume of traffic. When questioned, we are told there is no way to ease traffic.

The neighbors to be affected by the proposed mega mall will, for sure, have their quality of life severely compromised. Their concerns should supersede monetary greed.

As our neighborhood has learned, once the go-ahead is given, all promises by the builder are null and void. No one from the county ever checks up on promises made, and the residents suffer.

Regardless of how terrific a major attraction, hotel and a mall could be, they do not belong in a residential neighborhood. Comparison to Disney World does not work here. Disney was built in an uninhabited area.

I totally sympathize with our western neighbors. No one is listening to them because none of those who will benefit from this monstrosity live in their neighborhood.

TRUDY LECHNER, MIAMI

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article121884408.html#storylink=cpy

U.S. In 2016 Points Civilization In The Wrong Direction ... by gimleteye

The next president of the United States has embraced the values of an oligarch and a killer: Vladmir Putin. Russia's support for the murderous regime in Syria should have been a disqualifying fact for Republican voters. Instead, Republicans are now comfortable with a Russian dictator who brutally suppresses dissent, including murder of journalists. Trump, himself, has turned into a critic of free speech: a supporter of 1st Amendment violations before even taking office.

Then there is climate change. Read, this by Alex Steffan: "Trump, Putin and Pipelines to Nowhere". Steffan clearly states why there are no climate change deniers, only a few oligarchs running petro-states. Now including Trump and his Cabinet.

Paul Krugman concludes in the NY Times this morning:

Now what? If we’re going to have any hope of redemption, people will have to stop letting themselves be used the way they were in 2016. And the first step is to admit the awful reality of what just happened.

That means not trying to change the subject to campaign strategy, which is a legitimate topic but has no bearing on the question of electoral subversion. It means not making excuses for news coverage that empowered that subversion.

And it means not acting as if this was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy beyond the bare legal requirements. It might be more comfortable to pretend that things are O.K., that American democracy isn’t on the edge. But that would be taking useful idiocy to the next level.

I've taken to Twitter @gimleteyemiami to quickly communicate some of the best reads I'm finding. Follow me there. Also, start using this hashtag: #terraincognito That is the term used by cartographers in the age of discovery, before the planet was mapped. It means, in Latin, unknown land. 

It is an accurate description of where the United States is today: we are beyond the map of known boundaries with an American president aligned with a brutal petrostate led by a former top KGB agent who, I imagine, is having the best Christmas of his whole life.

In Moscow they are toasting, "Make Америки Great Again". 

Climate Chaos, the GOP and President-elect Donald J. Trump ... by gimleteye

PEOTUS Donald J. Trump says, climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese. Tell that to the people of Tennessee who just lost property and the lives of friends and families to freak November fire or the people of red state Georgia devastated by freak November tornadoes.

The following graph from "Peak of Tornado Season Shifting Earlier in Tornado Alley" is based on historical data and shows the improbability of this week's devastating tornado outbreak in Georgia.

Climate Central Sept. 24, 2014

The tornadoes did little to mitigate the severe drought afflicting the red-state Southeast, including Tennessee where massive fire fires just destroyed thousands of acres, destroying homes and property. From the United States Drought Monitor before the deadly fires:

As reported by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), hundreds (at least 212) new fires have started in the Southeast, with 30 of them classified as large wildfires (100 acres or more), and burn bans were widespread across the region. Streams were at record and near-record low levels. Severe agricultural impacts (stock ponds drying up, winter feed being used to keep cattle alive since fall started) were widespread across the South and Southeast. Significant expansion of D0-D4 occurred across the southeastern States. In the Lower Mississippi Valley, D1-D3 expanded across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and D0-D2 expanded in Missouri. In Alabama, ponds were drying up in and around Lowndes County, and cattlemen were hauling water and using winter hay to feed cattle since late summer. As of November 22, Oneonta, Alabama, in the northeast part of the state, has gone 94 consecutive days without measurable precipitation. In Mississippi, the USDA has received reports of ponds drying up and cattle producers having to feed hay, in some cases already using up their entire hay supply for the winter months. Rye grass that was planted in the beginning of October has yet to emerge. As described by the Georgia State Climatologist, agricultural impacts due to dry soils in Turner/Tift/Irwin/Worth/Ben Hill/Wicox/Dodge county areas have been just detrimental for peanut and cattle farmers. In Decatur County, dryland winter forage is not being attempted at this time. If there is no irrigation, the small grains have emerged and died. In Coffee County, unless irrigated, small grains for grazing are naught. In Coweta County, hay is becoming harder to find and even irrigated areas are now suffering due to low water levels in ponds and creeks. The USDA has received reports of wells going bad and stock ponds drying up in Holmes County, Florida. According to November 20 USDA reports, 100% of the topsoil moisture and 98% of the subsoil moisture in Alabama was rated short or very short (dry or very dry).

In public, GOP leaders are climate change deniers. In private, they understand climate change perfectly well. The difference between what they say and what they know is that disclosure, reaction and policy changes to reverse climate change impacts don't serve the GOP's political or economic purposes.

Since his election Donald J. Trump has flip-flopped on core positions of his campaign. Climate change denial was one of the red state, raw meat issues candidate Trump flogged mercilessly. Since his victory he has conceded “there is some connectivity” between human activity and climate change.

But speaking to Fox News, his chief of staff Reince Priebus -- who went to law school in Miami, one of the US cities with the most to lose from sea level rise -- dialed back what Trump now says: “As far as this issue on climate change – the only thing he was saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he'll have an open mind about it but he has his default position, which most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he'll have an open mind and listen to people."

To be clear: the GOP's Ten Commandments of climate change are:

1) Climate change is like the weather: there is nothing we can do about it.
2) We are top predator. Other species will adapt or die.
3) If some part of climate change is man-made, whatever happens is God's will.
4) We know what is best for you. More golf courses, less public lands.
5) As the party of limited government, environmental regulations are self-defeating.
6) As the party of capitalism, we oppose climate-driven policies unless in our donors' interests.
7) If one size does not fit all, this size fits perfectly well: existing energy subsidies will be protected before any additional subsidies are adopted.
8) Dissenters will be isolated from decision-making on climate change.
9) If there is a dispute on climate change, the leadership will side with jobs.
10) We will adapt economic behavior to climate change as it happens, not before.

What President-elect Trump and red state GOP leaders ought to do is take a short course on logarithmic change because the massive accumulation of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere is now forcing climate change impacts in chaotic, non-linear ways. The evidence is piling up around us. The wheels are off the climate change wagon.

To dissenters, the implication of climate change denialism is clear: if the GOP Ten Commandments prove wrong, the resulting social and economic chaos will require military intervention on civilian populations. This isn't alarmism. It follows directly from the threat assessment of climate change by the U.S. Department of Defense.

There is more. "Climate change is set to cause a refugee crisis of “unimaginable scale”, according to senior military figures, who warn that global warming is the greatest security threat of the 21st century and that mass migration will become the “new normal”. ("Climate change will stir 'unimaginable' refugee crisis, says military", Dec 1, 2016, UK Guardian)

Right now, Creation needs more than prayers.

Florida Voters Have Another Chance To Show Nation: We are aware, we are woken, and we are not going to take it anymore ... by gimleteye

The GOP has had the run of Florida for decades, notwithstanding victories by President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Yet in the March GOP presidential primary, Republicans roundly rejected the status quo.

Donald Trump won; the "burn-the-house-down" answer for Florida GOP primary voters in Florida.

In this shambolic election, Hillary Clinton made an excellent case to be president of the United States. Moreover, Florida voters could show that Republicans incumbents lost their mandate in both Congress and state legislatures.

In Florida, the GOP held people hostage through opposition to popular votes like Fair Districts. (Vote NO on Amendment 1: it blocks the sun.)

The party that says government should not be in the business of choosing winners and losers is exactly in business to protect winners and damage the chance for losers to gain advantage.

The Republican vision for America claims to protect individual liberties but in Florida as elsewhere it has proven a friend to the concentration of wealth and power at the top. The more pure the orthodoxy, the more benefits will trickle down to the common man and woman.

Bullsugar.

Through its own actions, the Republican Party has lost its mandate to govern except among the percentage riled or anesthetized by reality television and Fox News.

There will be plenty of time to level criticism against the Democrats, but not now. Donald Trump deserves to be defeated by 10 points in the popular vote. He should bring down GOP control of the Senate and state legislatures as well.

Those Americans interested in the exercise of democracy, of fairness and of equity for all citizens -- irrespective of ethnicity, race, or creed -- should reject Donald Trump and incumbent Republicans.

Floridians not only have a choice in the outcome, two weeks from now, we can show what it means to say, enough is enough.

How The GOP Practices Psychological Warfare On Its Own Voters: Florida's James Madison Institute ... by gimleteye

How Florida's Amendment 1 Blocks The Sun

On its website, the James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based conservative foundation, calls itself "a beacon" and “Florida’s free-market think tank”. Now that one of its senior staffers has been caught on tape fronting for a constitutional amendment that inhibits solar power unless it is funneled through Florida's large electric utilities, the James Madison Institute reveals what’s wrong with today’s GOP.

Here is the James Madison Institute's mission:

"Although we work through complicated policy issues, our approach is simple. Focus on policy, not politics – and keep our principles of limited government, personal responsibility and economic freedom front and center. Throughout the years, we’ve remained tried and true -- a constant conscience of Florida’s leaders and a champion for hardworking Floridians who have made this state what it is today. While you pursue your dreams, we work to protect them.”

Protect your dreams? The James Madison Institute has now scrubbed its website and Twitter account of any mention of the fake solar amendment like Lady McBeth compulsively washing her hands after turning her husband into a murderer.

Leaked audio offers new evidence how the James Madison Institute shilled for Florida utilities, misrepresenting the utility-funded Amendment 1 ballot initiative: not only is the constitutional amendment anti-solar, James Madison Institute boasted about its strategy.

Audio obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and the Energy and Policy Institute captures James Madison Institute's Vice President Sal Nuzzo explaining how JMI and other Amendment 1 backers successfully misled the public into believing it was pro-solar.

Speaking to other State Policy Network member organizations, Nuzzo, JMI's vice president of policy and director of the center said:

The point I would make, maybe the takeaway, is as you guys look at policy in your state or constitutional ballot initiatives in your state, remember this: solar polls very well. To the degree that we can use a little bit of political jiu-jitsu and take what they’re kind of pinning us on and use it to our benefit either in policy, in legislation or in constitutional referendums if that’s the direction you want to take, use the language of promoting solar, and kind of, kind of put in these protections for consumers that choose not to install rooftop."

So who exactly are the liars at the James Madison Institute, because Vice President Nuzzo was only saying what his board members knew to be true. The board of JMI is loaded with Florida utility executives.

Start with Board Chair, Allan G. Bense. 

Bense was Republican Speaker of the House from 2004 through 2006. He is now on the board of Gulf Power Company that has been eye-ball deep in James Madison Institute for many years. Bense is also chairman of the board of the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber of Commerce does not represent the interests of small businesses in Florida. It is a political heavyweight that directs enormous campaign contributions through a Russian doll network of political action committees that serve to cement the privileges of large scale enterprises in Florida. The lessons in Florida's recent political history are clear: when you see the Florida Chamber of Commerce advocating for a constitutional amendment, run for the hills. Conversely, when the Florida Chamber stands in opposition, it is because the proposed constitutional proposal bends towards the interests of voters.

The Florida Chamber is conjoined with Associated Industries of Florida, also run by GOP insiders. Both for example are regular recipients of six figure largesse by special interests like Big Sugar -- whose profits through corporate welfare have been tagged by tax advocate Grover Norquist as "cronyism in its undiluted, inexcusable majesty".

Bense is a trustee of FSU he is a board member of Foundation for Florida’s Future, the Jeb Bush think tank supporting his cratered presidential bid, and serves on the boards of both the Florida Council of 100 and Enterprise Florida, Inc. The Florida Council of 100 and Enterprise Florida are organized to advance the privileges of Florida's GOP elite.

Florida is one of five states that do not allow a property owner to have a third-party installer put solar panels on their roof and sell the power back to them.

If it sounds like the James Madison Institute is against free-markets when they level the playing field and for free-markets when they can be tipped in favor of Big Business, you would be close to understanding how the GOP practices psychological warfare against its own voters.

Amendment 1 is not just a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” to deceive Florida voters. It is embraced by the Florida think tank that advocates limited, free-market policies while cynically supporting centralized, picking-winners-and-losers by insiders.

These are the same forms of misdirection and deception that enraged Florida Republican voters who vaulted Donald Trump above two native sons favored by the political insiders at James Madison to be the next GOP presidential nominee: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.

Against this backdrop, it is easy for voters who are paying attention to see that the JMI claim of support for the free market and limited self-government are as fake in Florida as Amendment 1. Republican voters, in particular, ought to be outraged against a rigged system that turns bedrock conservative values into a catch-basin for special interests.

The Miami Herald reported: "According to federal tax documents, JMI has received more than $120,000 from the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation, and Stan Connally, the CEO of Gulf Power, sits on JMI’s board of directors. Gulf Power and its affiliates have contributed more than $2.3 million to the utility-backed amendment, which also has received funding from Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy, Tampa Electric Co., and non-profit groups primarily funded by Exxon and the Koch brothers.”

In November, voters will have a chance to deny Florida's utilities the lock and key to a solar future precisely because if the amendment passes by 60% of the popular vote, it is their lock and key.

If the GOP hopes to regain the trust of Florida voters, it will need to reform policies and practices including think tanks supporting a rigid status quo and pretending to be what they are not.

That "beacon of liberty" on the James Madison Institute website is really a false light set by reef wreckers to lure ships to be smashed, the easier for pirates to plunder and loot.

Allen G. Bense should resign from the James Madison Institute. However, he is doing what big business wants: concentrate power to deform the values, ideals and essential principles of conservative, limited government.

Republican voters have a lot to be dismayed about this election cycle, and the dismay only starts with Amendment 1.


Read more, here:

http://www.energyandpolicy.org/press-release-utility-funded-pac-caught-attempting-political-jiu-jitsu/
Sourcewatch: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/James_Madison_Institute
Bridge Project: http://bridgeproject.com/research/koch-impacts-florida/the-james-madison-institute-has-very-deep-ties-to-the-koch-network/
New Yorker investigation into State Policy Network: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-ikea-the-new-model-for-the-conservative-movement
Sourcewatch: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/State_Policy_Network

Donald Trump's defender: Newt Gingrich, great pretender ... by gimleteye

Newt Gingrich is the political opportunist of our era; a discredited, former speaker of the House of Representatives who used his access to Donald Trump, the most clueless candidate for president in US history, to claw his way into the spotlight he craves like a moth to flame.

Young voters may not remember Gingrich. He became infamous by energizing the Christian conservative base while divorcing his then wife’s as she lay on her deathbed. Unforgettable, but memories are short.

To Republicans of a certain age, Gingrich was the silver-haired professor who blistered President Bill Clinton, accusing him of adultery while he was committing it himself. More to the point of governance, Gingrich steered Congress through his "Contract with America", promising to deliver the benefits of trickle-down economics. It is the consequence of those ideas in the mid 1990's -- for instance, that cutting taxes for the wealthiest and for corporations is the best way to grow jobs -- that has Trump voters up in arms.

Trump voters don't seem to understand that their candidate's top defender is the guy who advocated policies they are against. That's just how screwed up the Donald Trump campaign is.

To be sure, Newt Gingrich is well-spoken. He chooses words after carefully researching their impact. He can speak beyond sound bites in fully formed paragraphs. Don't mistake that talent for wisdom. In fact, after his fall from grace, Newt Gingrich developed a collegial relationship with Hillary Clinton. That's right: the same Hillary Clinton he inveighs against today. Newt Gingrich loves himself the most. That puts him on par with Donald Trump, who doesn't want anyone else at his level. Period.

One cannot believe a word that Newt Gingrich says, beyond his own ambitions to have a fourth act in his personal drama. Someone should explain to Newt: there are second and third acts, but no fourth acts.