The Semiotics of Dress: Angela Corey for Governor? Maybe…

Angela Corey, as painted by George Zimmerman

October 1 was arguably the most important day in Angela Corey’s political career, and future historians of the state may see it as a watershed moment, for reasons we cannot really grasp at present. Angela Corey took the podium following the announcement of Michael Dunn’s guilty verdict in the first-degree murder of Jordan Davis, a conviction she failed to obtain earlier this year.

First Coast News cut their coverage of the presser just as the Q&A session had begun, while WJXT sustained their feed. She looked almost like a different person, in that moment, which makes sense. Any professional of any type can appreciate the feeling that comes after the successful resolution of a long-term, intensive high-stakes project, and can easily recognize that look on another’s face when they are in that moment. All the more so for Angela Corey, who hasn’t had a lot of those moments as our State Attorney. She took power amidst the proverbial firestorm of controversy, much of which was not her fault, and has steadily stoked those flames into a conflagration that many assumed would’ve consumed her fully by now. Without reaching for the obvious Phoenix reference, let’s just say that it appears the exact opposite has been the case. And the question now becomes: What next?

In her green blazer, her turquoise-and black scarf, gold earrings and a phat gold chain with a cross at the end, the city’s lead prosecutor could’ve passed for Iggy Azalea’s mom—and that is a good thing, in terms of politics. No velvet ropes at any bougie nightspot from South Beach to the South Bronx would impede her progress in an outfit like that, no more than the glass-ceilings have so far.

If clothes make the man, then even more so for women, and the message of Angela Corey’s clothes was simple: Even after botching the Zimmerman case and failing once to nail Michael Dunn for the murder of Jordan Davis, and with many observers predicting another public humiliation for her office, Corey dressed like someone who was absolutely certain of victory. And certainty is something we see very little in Florida politics.

If Michael Dunn is Corey’s first major trophy, one expects to see more. Whether she has found vindication in the public eye, or simply earned temporary respite from criticism that will never really go away, depends on what she wants to do. Any plans she has for her own future remain publicly unstated; if anyone knows, they’re not letting on. But Corey’s performance today raised an interesting possibility, one that many Floridians would surely find horrifying: Angela Corey could be governor someday.

Florida has never had a female governor, and Florida Republicans have never nominated a woman to hold that position. Democrats, of course, failed to get Alex Sink over in 2010, which has in all likelihood cooled the party on any effort to make history again, for the near future. Indeed, poor Nan Rich got steamrolled by the famously former Republican Charlie Crist, who refused to even debate her. Andrew Cuomo did the same against Zephyr Teachout in New York, and in both cases their state parties essentially went along with that. Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, at no point did Nan Rich ever have any chance whatsoever to be the Democratic nominee, that was plainly obvious six months before the election even happened.

Nan Rich was humiliated, and even if that wasn’t directly attributable to gender bias, it damn sure looks that way. One rarely heard Republicans ask if Florida was ready for a female governor, in part because they knew the momentum for gender equality in state politics belongs to them—a delicious irony that will pay off huge over the next decade or two. Whomever Florida’s first female governor is, she will almost certainly be a Republican—and it might very well be Angela Corey.

Getting the Dunn verdict gives her immediate credibility in the African-American community, which recognizes that Dunn was already set to die in prison on the other charges, but that Corey personally put her own career at risk to “do the right thing” for Jordan Davis’ parents and give them a rare symbolic victory in this bloody year for black youth. It doesn’t negate the damage done by the Marissa Alexander case, but the ball is really in Governor Scott’s court on that. If Corey didn’t get a few photos with Davis’ family and the crowds of black women cheering the verdict outside the courthouse, that would represent a huge missed opportunity.

The Alexander case illustrates that, ironically, Corey’s biggest political weakness right now remains her support among women, in particular the longstanding perception that she soft on issues related to violence against women and children. Given that this particular problem is only going to escalate in the years ahead, she would do well to get out in front on the issue and establish a record of action that can hyped when the time is right. (Her views on DCF, in particular, would be useful.)

Corey’s traditional law-and-order bonafides should be sufficient to keep her competitive in any GOP primary, especially if she continues to rack up high-profile convictions, so there will be plenty of room for her to appeal to elements of a progressive base whose own interests will be more or less ignored for the rest of this decade. The abysmal turnout for this year’s primary merely formalizes the widespread apathy and disgust that the majority of Florida voters already have with the leadership (such as it is) of both parties—a power vacuum ripe for filling. But, again, by whom?

Putting gender issues aside, the reality is that Northeast Florida has not held the top position in state government since Haydon Burns retired in January 1967. Several of Jacksonville’s subsequent mayors were at least discussed, Democrats and Republicans alike, but none were ever nominated. The election of Alvin Brown raised some hope of breaking that drought in this decade, and making even more history in the process, but he’s so far failed to build what could have been a very formidable statewide organization. Between Occupy and the HRO, he had the opportunity to establish himself as the logical successor to whomever wins in 2014, but instead he’s been occupied by defending his spot against opposition he should have simply neutralized from the get-go.

If Brown wins reelection and governs as the forward-leaning centrist his core supporters expect him to be, the governorship is entirely within his grasp. The I-4 corridor has had its run, and South Florida’s traditional dominance in the post-Consolidation era is weaker now that it’s ever been; it would be flat-out stupid for the north not to exploit that vulnerability while it exists. But if he stumbles, or just has no interest, it is imperative that Northeast Florida have someone ready to roll when the time is right. Regardless of who it is, Florida’s next decade should begin with Duval firmly in control. Time, as it does, will clarify these things, but right now Corey’s looking golden. And if the idea of Angela Corey being governor of Florida frightens you, good. You should be afraid—especially if you’re her opponent!

Governor Scott: Pardon Marissa Alexander

When a judge recently denied Marissa Alexander’s request for a Stand Your Ground hearing, for the second time, the die was cast for her retrial. Odds are decent that she may be sent back to jail, even under terms of a plea deal. While the sentence may not be as severe, those who believe she had no business being locked up to begin with, and whose efforts forced the state’s hand once already, are unlikely to take any satisfaction in that. And so the cycle of acrimony will rotate further.

As it stands, the only person capable of breaking this cycle also happens to be the person who would benefit most from doing so. Ms. Alexander’s mistakes have presented Governor Scott with an opportunity to demonstrate real leadership, and also to show off a compassionate side that not enough people get to see in politics. With one stroke of his pen—well, several strokes—Governor Scott can end this controversy for good by pardoning Marissa Alexander.

Scott’s critics would likely denounce it as an election-year stunt, and he should let them do so, because a pardon could well prove decisive in the governor’s race. It is surprising that Charlie Crist has not made this into more of an issue, and Scott should take the initiative to take that option away from him entirely. With Alexander on his side, Scott could potentially take an unprecedented share of the African-American vote from his Democratic challenger. At the same time, it offers some hope of maybe mitigating what are likely to be substantial losses among female voters. If Scott loses in November, it will be largely due to Crist’s support among women, and there is nothing he can do about that—but if he pardoned the state’s most well-known victim of domestic violence, that would be a good start.

Some would argue that such action interferes with the rule of law, but others would argue that it actually reinforces the rule of law. Bear in mind, Ms. Alexander already spent time behind bars on a conviction that was overturned; the governor is entirely within his rights to say the lady has been through enough, and there is nothing to be gained from spending more money prosecuting her. There can be no serious question of the governor’s commitment to law-and-order, and even those who would object to a pardon on those grounds are NOT going to vote for Charlie Crist.

There is a practical side to all this, as well: pardoning Ms. Alexander would eliminate a major distraction, and it would clear out a cloud that would otherwise hang over his second term. If she is imprisoned again, her supporters may believe that the whole game was rigged against her from the start—and that is a case that already carries weight in national media. Ending this case would remove a big source of negative publicity for all of Florida, while generating large amounts of positive hype for himself, and even die-hard opponents would be happy that it’s over.

Rick Scott is arguably the most controversial governor in America, but in this election year he has shown himself repeatedly to be capable of acting counterintuitively in the public interest, and willing to wager political capital to do the right thing. To pardon Marissa Alexander would be the most dramatic example of that yet. Not only would it be the kind of bold, decisive action that voters respond favorably to, it has the added benefit of humanity. He and he alone can decide whether Ms. Alexander will get to watch her children grow up; morally, and politically, does he really have any choice?

Money Jungle: Demolition Men

Election 2010: Is this Where Florida Ends?

Folio is published every Tuesday, but it’s unclear how many of you actually read it that day. If the office has ever done any research into the subject, I have no idea; it’s possible, since they’re pretty good at understanding their audience (other than the whole “Steven Humphrey is worth more than Money Jungle” calculation, which really does nothing to dispel the stereotype of Floridians as being terrible at math). Certainly, many readers are not able to pick one up on Tuesday; some hold off until the weekend.

I only mention this because this Tuesday, August 24, is the day for primaries in the statewide elections that will ultimately be settled on November 2. No need to preview the race, since most of you will have already voted by now. Obviously, this is the most important cycle for local elections in many, many years, and the results are all but guaranteed to be catastrophic for Northeast Florida, and the state in general. We are about to take major steps backwards in terms of the competence of our elected officials, and in the overall desirability of life in Florida.

While the election of Barack Obama was awesome for the country, it seems now clear that his administration kinda sucks, and that our hopes of dramatic positive changes were naïve pipe-dreams, invested in someone who basically represents the interests of the most corrupt and dangerous elements of Wall Street and Washington. Chicago Flash and his loyal team of Clinton-betrayers have been such a disaster that an unspeakable outside possibility has now been raised: that the likely loss of his congressional majority may be followed by the loss of his job in two years.

The problem, in my opinion, is that many Americans, who sometimes coalesce under the Tea Party banner, still believe that it’s possible to kill our way out of this. If we can just start another war, the theory goes, or cut even deeper into services for children, old people and the poor, the old America will come right back, like the shining silver that emerges after a good polishing. By this analogy, the polish is spewing from the mouth of Glenn Beck, and being rubbed in by Sarah Palin on the campaign trail.

The right loves their “free market”—the idea that, if corporations are given godlike authority its workers and consumers, altruism and civic responsibility will trump the profit motive. Well, ask a Gulf fisherman about that, if you can find one. Having had the central theme of their ideology repudiated by those very markets, the right has found itself a new baby: Austerity. The Republicans of 2010 are running on one promise: to lower taxes for the rich, which is fair enough, but also to put the screws to the underclass like nothing this country has ever seen. Deregulated banks have pissed away the life’s savings of millions, and the only thing that appears to have been manifested by health care “reform” is the Manchurian Candidacy of Rick Scott.

It’s really depressing to think about—a truly hopeless situation. If Jeff Greene beats Kendrick Meek, thereby making Charlie Crist the hold-your-nose choice for US Senate, and Rick Scott beats Bill McCollum for the right to stomp Alex Sink for Governor, you can basically close the door on Florida for the next decade. Being a political junkie myself, I’ve been looking at the 2010 elections across the board, and unfortunately I can report that Florida is leading the nation in collective myopia, willful self-destruction and craven capitulation to the wave of Trojan Horse candidates that is flooding this country like a busted sewer line. But at least you can grow plants with sewage; the only things these guys can grow are gravestones.

Here in Jacksonville, which has already paid a terrible price for not taking this state over when we had the chance, the elections that follow in 2011 will basically mark the end of 30 years of our leaders making good faith efforts (however blatantly shady) to build up this city. It saddens me to think of all those dead (and dying) political giants that once walked among us, putting personal interest aside to do what’s right—or, at least, what they thought was right—for the people, and to know that in 20 years all of their names will have been effectively erased from history, as history itself is eclipsed by the exigencies of present-time or, as Obama puts it, “the fierce urgency of now”.

Today’s Florida kids will have to endure the kind of hardships that most of us have only read about on the “Internets” (Ted Stevens, RIP), and they will probably never know that none of it had to happen. But, like any generation facing existential crises, they will need scapegoats, and that dishonor belongs to those of us casting ballots in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Our terrible decision-making will have “forced” them into whatever fake choices they decide are necessary. I’d hate to be their parents!

sdh666@hotmail.com; August 16, 2010

“Gusher In the Gulf”: BMac vs BP, Part 2

Americans’ understanding of the Deepwater Horizon debacle has evolved quite a bit over the last month since the rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. What was originally written off as an insignificant trickle of negligible volume (and not even publicly announced until two days after it began) is now widely recognized as a catastrophe of near-boundless scope. Even the best efforts of BP to cover-up the reality of what has occurred, among the other corporations with a piece of this action–like Transocean, Hyundai, Halliburton, Nalco, Goldman Sachs and others–have failed to obscure what should now be obvious: Massive environmental destruction is upon us, and this is happening because of the corruption of these companies and the elected officials they’ve bribed into submission.

Even President Obama, who is legally empowered to immediately sweep in and take control of a disaster of this scale, has been looking extremely weak on the issue, as Congress scrambles to obscure their own complicity in allowing BP officials to believe they could flout  the conditions of their lease with impunity. It appears, so far, that they were right, but that has been widely documented elsewhere.

Florida’s Attorney General, Bill McCollum, was just one of the public officials to be embarrassed by BP in the early days of the debacle. When McCollum endorsed BP’s efforts at a) cleaning up the spill, and b) fairly compensating Floridians who stand to lose billions, he did so based on a conference call with AGs from Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi and cursory tour of the site. He was probably unaware, at the time, that BP was actively covering their own asses as he spoke; they made him look like he’d been paid off, which surely rankled.

McCollum has long been known as one of those pols who is always looking to move up. Barely an electoral cycle goes by without McCollum standing for some spot or other; he forfeited a very successful 20-year career in the House of Representatives to run, unsuccessfully, for the Senate seat won by Bill Nelson in 2000; four years later, he failed to win the seat won by Mel Martinez. As AG, he succeeded the much-maligned yet remarkably resilient Charlie Crist, who’s spent all year running for the Senate and has shown almost no tangible leadership during what should be a career-defining moment. Crist is certainly no Bobby Jindal–but Jindal, being an eyewitness to the post-Katrina fallout that tanked a number of political careers in his state, knows better than be project weakness (or, worse, distraction) in a crisis.

Of course, like his boss McCollum is also trying to do one job while running for another–Governor, again, this time against Florida CFO Alex Sink. His early, stupid endorsement of BP could have ended those aspirations, if our whole political system weren’t already greasy from BP’s largess. He has since reversed himself, in the grand Florida tradition, taking a position more like his original one: Don’t Trust BP!

To that end, he sent a letter to CEO Jack Lynch, dated May 20. He’s basically putting it out there now that the Gulf will still be full of oil as the summer hurrican season begins on June 1. Such a combination of potential factors has no known precedent, and it’s highly proactive of McCollum to put BP on the spot in advance about their massive potential liability. It’s worth noting, though, that at this writing BP has still not formally signed anything eliminating the existing cap on liability; that no one has yet forced them is, at best, suspicious.

Charlie Crist and the Great Triangulation of 2010

The old cliché that people get the leaders they deserve is usually true—in America, anyway—and rarely as much so as in the curious case of Charlie Crist. Just three months ago, it seemed likely that he would be shuffled off to the private sector, a high-profile casualty of an economic meltdown he helped set in motion. Whether Rubio beat him in the Senate primary or not, logic almost dictated that Kendrick Meek would beat the GOP nominee with a brutal decisiveness worthy of Randy Orton.

That would have been both fair, and fitting. But instead, the embattled Governor of Florida stands at the mid-way point of the most audacious act of political triangulation since Obama’s “Black Caesar” act in 2008. Like Obama, Crist has challenged his party’s establishment and all conventional wisdom, hoping to assert himself amidst utter chaos on all levels of the electoral system. He’s like a surfer, riding waves of boiling-hot water, on a surfboard made of ice—but oh, such balance!

The text of Crist’s announcement, in St. Petersburg on April 29, was amazingly not leaked beforehand, although the essence of speculation proved correct. He is running as an Independent, turning the Senate race into a three-way dance that could be the most entertaining spectacle of what should be a hilarious year.

Crist’s speech was scheduled for 6pm, then pushed back half an hour; the headliner didn’t start talking until 5:51. Insert your own joke here. He might as well start wearing robes with sequins and feathers, and calling himself the New Nature Boy. Some might say he’s been doing that for a long time, more power to him. He’s already got the hair and the rep; all he needs is better enforcers.

Crist’s theme—“Straight To November”—will surely elicit witty responses from the blogosphere, which has been flogging rumors of Crist’s sexual complexity ever since he was a candidate for Governor in 2006. It’s anyone’s guess to as which elements of this broken system will choose to play that card first, or why, but it seems a certainty at this point. The politics of personal destruction, typified by the ongoing campaigns against Sarah Palin, fills a vacuum created by an absence of real debate, just as it did in the late ‘90s, in the years just before 9/11 briefly realigned America’s focus on policy concerns. Crist may be lucky to have hit the national stage just as Americans are getting tired of the Beltway’s parlor tricks.

Whenever the media is openly talking about a politician’s sex life, people should take it as a clue that something else is going on. In this case, Florida is in serious trouble. Both Meek and Rubio erred severely in not linking Crist inextricably to the recession in Florida, even though it would have happened anyway. Rubio is too beholden to the fake conservatives holding down the right to ever question the wisdom of tax cuts, and Meek might be understandably reluctant to point out that, by inducing an economic crisis here, which quickly went national, Crist helped Obama get elected.

The property tax cuts that Crist forced through, to benefit downstate development interests that anchored his 2006 campaign, cut into the operating budgets of most cities in Florida. The I-4 corridor that has dominated Florida politics for three decades draws enough revenue from other sources that their budget issues were neither as dramatic nor traumatic; there was some cushion for the impact of the tax cuts. Things were worse up north, but ultimately bad everywhere: Almost every municipality has had to deal with budget issues during Crist’s term. Services have been slashed, workers fired, taxes and fees raised; longstanding political alliances were torn apart faster than, well, anything that gets between Justin Bieber and his fans. For the smallest counties, the results have been catastrophic—whole departments closed, lifestyles permanently altered.

And it’s only just begun. The budget-wrangling will continue for years to come; rebuilding the state’s revenue base is a generational matter. As for pensions, we’ve been having the relevant discussions in Jacksonville for some years now—John Peyton knows the subject back-and-forth—but the entire country is facing multi-billion-dollar shortfalls that cannot be rectified during a recession that has proven persistent, to say the least. While I question Crist’s decision to go to Washington, for many reasons, here’s one argument in its favor: He won’t be in Tallahassee when the hammer drops.

Crist has shown a real gift for political calculations—witness the way he used his veto of merit pay for teachers to burnish his centrist cred ahead of the party switch. The bill was devised as a fairly-transparent union-busting move, one which undermined the efficacy of merit pay a supplement to fair, competitive compensation for teachers. As Governor, and nominal leader of his state party, he could have pulled just enough strings to keep such weak, ill-conceived and unpopular legislation from ever passing at all, if he felt that strongly about it. He could have intimated to key pols in Tallahassee that he would veto the bill if it did pass, and encourage them to put their energy into any of a number of things that he would happily sign into law.

Instead, he allowed the bill to develop, along with several weeks of accompanying public discord, including protests by thousands of students, teachers and parents up and down the state, who took the time to lobby Crist in a direction he was already leaning. He wasted their time, so he could score political points by sweeping in with his veto pen, like he didn’t initiate the budget crisis that has led to so many teachers having to worry about their jobs. Crist correctly calculated that his move would be seen as an act of heroism, rather than cold, cynical manipulation of women and children.

There is a glut of bland, boring blubber-butts in Florida politics, a bunch of lightweights that are barely shadows of the folks who held their spots a decade ago. Charlie Crist is one of them, of course, but he has found a way to be slightly better than his peers, and that’s pretty much all you can ask of Florida. As for Meek, his chances were low-balled from the get-go by a Democratic Party that began projecting its vulnerabilities before the Obamas had finished one load of White House Laundry.

As Crist and Rubio dove headlong into a caterwauling catfight that leaves the impression that the smoldering hatred for one another is rooted somewhere beyond policy beefs, the odds should have solidified in Meek’s favor. But they haven’t, which left room for Crist to move. Instead of being pressed between Rubio’s hotshot push and Meek’s liberal legacy, Crist made the election about him and not the issues. It became a game of personalities, which is unfair because his opponents have none.

Instead of taking 2008 as a real mandate for change, and then consolidating control of state and local governments, they’re working a rope with no dope. And that is just not how power works. Clearly, Democrats in Washington are reluctant to challenge their friends across the aisle, even if the feeling is not reciprocated or is, in fact, exploited to install a brand new batch of sorry-ass Republicans, already greasy with gluttony, graft and malicious intent. It’s all a replay of 1994. How Obama (and, critically, Rahm Emanuel) have played right into it is a complete mystery to the entire world, and probably themselves. Instead of Crist kissing up to Obama, maybe Obama should be kissing up to Charlie Crist!

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 29, 2010

Money Jungle extra: “Battle of the Mediocrities”

[Melissa Ross, host of the stellar “First Coast Connect” show on WJCT-89.9 FM, issued a standing invite to deliver some pithy guest commentaries on the issues of the day. I’ve not taken her up on that offer yet, being perhaps too-careful to find just the right topics. I’d like to be entertaining, but without courting any extra controversy, as I have concluded that the status-quo (for better or mostly for worse) is basically acceptable to the majority of the population in my city, and it’s simply self-defeating to attempt any further challenges to that dynamic. Below is a revised-and-extended version of the commentary I’d planned to deliver about the Ahmed/Yarborough dust-up; it would have aired today. However, it doesn’t make much sense to criticize city government, so close to budget-time; after all, we all know that such budgets are used primarily as political tools. So, instead, I post it here, where only that narrow fraction of fresh thinkers would ever think to look. Self-censorship, done right!]

On Tuesday, the City Council votes whether to accept the nomination of Parvez Ahmed for a spot on the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, a nomination being challenged by councilman Clay Yarborough. Like many of you, my first thought was “Who Cares?” Here in Florida, we’ve developed a special gift for meaningless political scandal, and this is a case in point.

Instead of talking about how Jaguar management stomped on the hearts of their fans by not only throwing away Tim Tebow, but leaving him to be drafted by a conference rival, we’re stuck watching a schoolyard spat between cultural stereotypes. And it’s not like our council isn’t bush enough, between threatening to fire loyal civil servants and ducking corruption charges related to widespread misappropriations of public funds. This JHRC gig is the kind of no-work job mobsters get.

Is Ahmad qualified for the position? Absolutely. After all, he holds a degree from Harvard; Bush and Obama have shown us how useful they can be. A cynic might use the bin Laden scholarship fund endowed at Harvard Law to make a blanket condemnation of its entire student body, and do real damage to many people’s careers. That is how these politics work; guilt-by-association works like a double-edged sword, yielded by a lunatic.

The savage violence—the cold-blooded, indiscriminate brutality—associated with Radical Islam represents a threat to all of humanity. Hundreds of Jews, thousands of Christians and millions of Muslims are dead now, and those numbers are growing by the minute. Extremists have been empowered, as moderates are cowed into silence. The only winners are demons and demagogues, many of whom live right here in America.

Organized religion has earned the widespread skepticism and overt hostility that seems its destiny in this century. The Vatican has only recently begun to face the real, dollars-and-cents consequences of their ritualized system of child-rape, which goes back farther than the living memory of any priest. Of course, many saints and martyrs of the faith were killed by the church itself—an irony lost on our current Pope, who couldn’t even be bothered to burn the pictures of himself in a Nazi uniform. (Maybe he should have married Sandra Bullock!)

Anytime one finds oneself ceding the moral high ground to Madonna, a serious inventory is in order, but the Catholics have had this process forced on them by their enemies. The Baptists are moving in the same direction, but faster. The so-called “evangelical right” has shown remarkable clumsiness in its many failed attempts to engage Islam on its own terms. It’s not just that their arguments were ill-conceived and poorly argued; in many cases Christians have worked aggressively against their own interests.

The most notorious example may be in 2002, when Dr. Jerry Vines, the then-leader of the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville (which has been a leading force in the city for most of its century-plus in business), disastrously dissed the Prophet Muhammad as a “demon-possessed pedophile with nine wives, the last of whom was 12 years old”. Coming just months after the most brutal terror attack to ever occur in the western world, Vines knew exactly what dark forces he was invoking with such loose talk. Ultimately, the entire city was endangered by Vines’ loose lips, much as the “South Park” crew deliberately risked their lives, and the lives of their families and colleagues, just to pop a rating for their nasty little show. Why the reckless provocations?

A few months earlier, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, members of the editorial board of the once-great National Review magazine openly floated the idea of bombing Mecca, as part of a larger-scale nuclear assault on the major cities of the Islamic world. NR has since scrubbed the references from its website, and would have you believe their own  idea was first proffered by Tom Tancredo, years later. Good job, losers!

Unfortunately, when the finally time came for a serious reckoning of the issues lingering between Islam and Christianity, all the best talent from both sides was already dead. We should be so lucky to boil these conflicts down to debates between Billy Graham and Ayatollah Khomeini, or even Fulton Sheen and Freddie Mercury. If the dais included Christ, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha, there might be no disputes at all. We might be having these discussions on the moon, or Mars, or maybe at the center of the Earth. Instead, we’ve got Parvez Ahmed and Clay Yarborough at City Hall. Kitty Kelley was right: The blood really does get thinner as you go down the line!

Yarborough is holding down Council District 1, for now, but he has done himself no favors. No one’s filed to challenge him yet, but that will change. No Muslim is going to seek elected office in Northeast Florida, but Yarborough’s done a great job reminding liberal voters that Barack Obama’s election has little or no effect on their own political fortunes. That the White House is clearly unsure whether to back Kendrick Meek, who helped Obama win Florida, or Charlie Crist, whose tax cuts helped tank Florida’s economy, making Obama’s victory possible, speaks against the best hopes of local progressives. But Clay Yarborough is no Charlie Crist.

It’s one thing to make needless hay of Ahmad’s past and present associations, but it’s another to go too far in making inferences. Surely in the struggle waged by Muslim groups to control the PR damage wrought by 9/11, etc., a few bad apples may have gotten into the bunch. The question at hand is: Has Parvez Ahmad ever knowingly dealt with people he knew were either directly or indirectly engaged in terrorism?

Short of some smoking guns (literally), there’s no way to know for sure, but to job the guy out of such an cozy gig on what is currently hearsay and speculation creates a precedent that will undermine the political relevance of the Muslim community in this country. It’s would be like banning anyone who ever attended a Black Panther rally, or the inevitable crackdown on the inevitable shady right-wing domestic terror provocation. Or saying Klansmen can’t serve in the Senate. If you start running such people out of politics, we’ll have nothing left but Dennis Kucinich.

Here’s a bold idea: Dissolve the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, and then dissolve the City Council. If you took all the taxpayer dollars being wasted on these groups, piled it all up and set it on fire, you could at least make ‘smores!

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 22, 2010

Money Jungle: “Starship Pain”

President Obama’s visit to Cape Canaveral is conveniently set for Tax Day, April 15, and it occurs in a context of general discomfort for all involved. The ostensible purpose is to stop a slow trickle of support flowing away from Obama in a crucial battleground state, which is itself living a political nightmare. The White House won’t admit it, but Florida bears directly on the future of the Obama Agenda, whatever that is.

Obama’s doing damage control after unveiling a package of brutal cuts to NASA and affiliated contractors. Floridians have every reason for concern. With Discovery in orbit right now, there are only three flights remaining in the shuttle schedule. After that, it may be decades before Americans return to space under their own power. With foreign programs also vulnerable to economic or political shifts, and still years behind what we’re set to scrap, mankind has seemingly awakened from a dream that obsessed our ancestors from the days of DaVinci, Icarus and Elijah. And once again, the inspirational legacy of JFK gets pissed away.

Like so many of the catastrophic maneuvers to occur under Obama’s watch, the collapse of America’s space program is hardly his fault. The cuts being pushed right now were all but inevitable before he was even elected, a result of long-term budgetary trends and the slow-motion disintegration of the country’s overall mechanical capacity. Neither factor was controllable by 2009. The reality is that our commitment to space exploration, in the terms defined by JFK in 1961, effectively died alongside the heroes we lost aboard the Challenger when it blew up in the sky over Florida in 1986.

And let’s be clear, here: The Challenger crew died because of neglect and hubris on the bureaucratic level—defects enshrined, by default, as official policy for the quarter-century that followed. The tragedy that followed, 17 years later, was a logical, inevitable extension of that policy. No serious efforts were ever made to replenish the Shuttle Fleet or modernize the design to reflect changing strategic priorities. The next generation(s) of manned spaceflight will be organized around private industry, with foreign governments (Russia, China, India) performing functions typically associated with NASA. Good luck with that. Obama, at least, has positioned himself as unwilling to put more lives at risk on behalf of goals abandoned before he got there.

From agriculture and industrial production to engineering and information technology, our educational system has become incrementally worse, and production of the most vital goods for life has fallen apace. As in so many other cases, so exhaustively documented here and elsewhere, the recession is being used as an excuse to accelerate trends that began while the economy was still at or near its fake, fraudulent peak. Mass-firing as a profit-padding technique has been in effect since the ‘80s: the family farms, the mom-and-pop stores, factory towns all over the country.

I just happened to be polishing this column in the minutes just before the shuttle Discovery took off April 5, and a recurring theme in the coverage was that there won’t be much more of this stuff—not for Americans, anyway. And that’s a shame. This is another sign of Florida’s changing fortunes under Obama. He’s made no enthusiastic display for Kendrick Meek’s Senate bid, and the White House has done nothing to defend the House seats at risk in November. The timing of the NASA cuts implies ambivalence, at best, to the fates of many Obama loyalists; at worst, it suggests frightful ignorance of the reality on the ground. Where have we heard that before?

This is the worst year for incumbents in living memory, but the GOP has done a much better job of training candidates. Besides yielding the open seats and not defending their incumbents, Beltway Dems show no inclination to seriously challenge the other side. President Obama is increasingly defined by his enemies, and he does not control his message. Meek should be positioned to inherit all the scorched-earth of this ridiculously shady Crist-Rubio primary debacle, but instead he’s looking lucky to keep the margin in single digits against either of them. That means real disaster for Florida: a stuffed-shirt GOP sandbagger doing the bidding of whomever has the photos of them together.

All the plans were made years ago, and most of the science has been in place. But corporate greed, political incompetence and collective myopia leaves the US trading on glories from 40 years ago, as the world snickers. Spaceflight is just a recent example. Funding issues aside, the courage and intelligence of our astronauts far outpaces that of our elected leaders, to the point where it now presents an obvious danger to their lives. The biggest question, frankly, is will America even be able to safely cease manned spaceflight without a third major disaster? 

sdh666@hotmail.com; April 5, 2010

Money Jungle: “Mass. Casualties”

The week of Barack Obama’s first anniversary as President was marked by serious hits to his administration, encapsulated by their dramatic rise of Scott Brown to become the next Senator from Massachusetts. There has been no shortage of debate and analysis of that race and its implications for the White House; predictably, there is not much of real use to be found amid most existing reports. The restrictively dualistic nature of the “left vs. right” standard of political thinking, which is so rigorously enforced by the gatekeepers of establishment media and the major parties themselves, has again failed miserably to truly understand why it happened, and what it really means.

But we shouldn’t be too surprised, since those same trusted sources also failed to get a proper handle on the Obama himself, and as such have done an even worse job covering the backlash than they did mapping the trajectory of his ascent. This is too bad, since it appears the administration remains joined at the hip to those interests who helped him forge a fantastical façade that has now developed sizable cracks. Expectations were raised very high, but it now appears clear that neither Obama, now the Republicans, the media or the American People ourselves had any clue just how deeply the systemic rot ran into the heart of the globalized economy. Amazingly, many still don’t.

The GOP was too quick to claim credit for Brown’s defeating the hapless Martha Coakley; that’s like whoever bombed the levees in New Orleans angling for a piece of the Saints’ Super Bowl split. Those losers helped force through the policies that created such widespread anger among the population, then piggybacked existing activist groups to serve their typically nefarious needs.

If Obama’s supporters had been half as classy and gracious as the man himself, he might still be in a position to force through his agenda. In fact, Obama should personally shoot the person responsible for the proliferation of the disastrously counterproductive “teabagger” meme; that phrase has become this President’s “Axis of Evil”, as surely as Goldman Sachs became his PNAC. The Tea Party demonstrations that happened in 2009 began as disparate, disorganized malcontents from a GOP that had been in free-fall since Katrina. By blithely dismissing legitimate concerns in snarky, insulting tones, Obama’s acolytes set him up as the strawman for the same mock-populist demagogues who once advocates the very policies whose results get them so mad.

Ultimately, the “teabaggers” were just the first of those millions to lose their jobs in this recession. As those numbers grew, it provided a ready-made base for action. Like the Sarah Palin phenomenon, as just a different expression of the same sentiments that helped sweep Obama into office. There was a window in which Obama could have used them every bit as effectively as the Republicans did, but his submission to Wall Street (which is a key factor in assessing the failed stimulus and the debacle that was this round of health care “reform”) made it impossible to win them over.

To this day, these cadres have neither credible leadership nor even full comprehension of their own origins, and with some two dozen former Republican congressmen contemplating running for their old seats again, who knows what may happen? The situation in Florida, where Charlie Crist is presiding over a meltdown of his state GOP, illustrates how volatile things are. Until the party embraces the economic vision of Ron Paul, they cannot fully access those masses. But neither can Democrats, and that is the issue: the majority of voters hate them both now.

The Tea Party movement represents the intersection of political concepts being generated from across the spectrum. To reduce them to their most vocal extremes is a dangerous simplification. “Independents” and “moderates” of the two parties have been radicalized by what they have come to view as an increasingly hopeless situation, and they are coalescing around a wide variety of specific concepts. The conduits of such information (from Glenn Beck to Rachel Maddow) have reaped the benefits.

A year ago, it seemed entirely possible that the Democratic Party could control all three branches of government for eight years, while steadily uprooting Republican power bases in major states like Texas and Florida. Now, the party Bush left for dead is stirring, and Obama has one-term potential. To avoid this fate, Obama should reassert his policy footing while finding ways to subtly remind the people what they already know: There may be no one else who can do his job, especially after last year.

 sdh666@hotmail.com

January 26, 2010

Money Jungle: Pew Sez “P.U.!” to Florida

The latest in a lengthening line of reports raising serious questions about the long-term economic stability of the United States was issued recently, and the questions it raises has no clear or easy answers. But still, those questions must be asked.

“Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril” was put together by the Pew Center on the States, a division of the Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the nation’s leading sources of foundation money. As such, it represents the cream of established thought, organized by people with significant access to the dominant centers of financial, cultural and political power, on all levels of government and industry. The center has offices on E Street in Washington, as well as on Market Street in Philadelphia, a city that in itself offers vast anecdotal data related to the current breakdown of civil society.

“Many economists are optimistic that America’s Great Recession may be turning the corner,” writes the center’s Managing Director, Susan Urahn. “States, however, are not celebrating.” Urahn led a team of 14 in preparing the report, which was then vetted by 15 colleagues before it was issued in mid-November. Its purpose is to elaborate on the well-known issues related to California by showing how that state is hardly alone on the fast track to financial emergency. This has been widely documented already—the formalized collapse began years ago—but our leaders have been reluctant, at best, to really speak directly to the problem, for fear of making it worse.

Working with data available though July 31, the Pew report evaluates states based on six criteria: 1) foreclosure rate; 2) change in unemployment rate; 3) change in revenue; 4) size of state budget gaps, relative to its General Revenue; 5) the letter grade assigned by its own Government Performance Project (GPP); and 6) “legal obstacles to balanced budgets”, namely whether the states require a supermajority to change budget policy. By their standard, California is in far worse shape than anyone there cares to admit, but it is hardly alone. Among the nine other states listed—including Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin—Florida is actually in better shape, despite being one of the first states affected by the crisis.

“The Great Recession has not just stalled Florida’s growth—it has reversed it,” says the report. “In 2005, Florida ranked second among the states in economic growth. In 2008, it ranked 48^th.” This precipitous drop was spurred by Governor Crist’s decision to throw our cities into instant deficit with tax cuts to benefit his political base, cuts that came just before the bottom fell out of the construction and real estate markets. Florida was in recession long before it formally spread nationwide.

Like America in general, Florida’s business model required perpetual growth for sustainability. With so much to offer new residents, and a record of steady growth for decades on end, it’s not surprising that we would take our extreme good luck for granted. Much as California (which had major financial issues in the 1990s) continued to reinvest in failed policies long after they should have known better, and as the country doubled-down on disaster in every realm, our state proceeded as if there was no possibility of conditions ever changing, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

The past year was the first in living memory without the explosive growth we had become accustomed to. “Not too long ago,” according to the report, “Florida was adding as many as 445,000 residents a year; between April 2008 and April 2009, its population actually shrank by 58,000. … [T]here were at least 275,000 homes for sale or rent in Florida that nobody wanted, and the state has the second-highest foreclosure rate [2.72%] in the country.” Judging by the words and actions of our political “leaders”, the shock of the “revelation” has not worn off, and reality has still not set in. Heading into the genre-defining election cycle of 2010-2011, no one is even pretending to have any solutions, besides more painful cuts to essential services.

“States’ fiscal situations are widely expected to worsen even when the national economy starts to recover.” Bad news, given that the national economy is not going to recover at all. Such “optimism” is merely a smokescreen to draw more Americans into Wall Street’s “sucker’s rally”, a desperate attempt to prop up our failed system. Obama botched his only chance to get things in line, and now he, like most of the mayors and governors of this country, is powerless to do anything but watch the numbers and spin the brutal facts into more palatable truths. By stacking his economic team with people who bear direct responsibility for collapsing the economy, he has permanently undermined his own credibility as a reformer and change agent.

sdh666@hotmail.com; November 23, 2009

“Don’t Count On It”: an Interview with Magic 8-Ball

From our earliest days, humans have sought means of prognostication, in hopes of getting an inside line on events of the future and, by extension, a greater mastery of the world around us. From psychics and soothsayers to oracles, witch doctors and sophisticated computer programs, mankind’s quest for the edge on fate has never ceased, with mixed results all around. In recent years, there have been two true constants: “Money Jungle” and the Magic 8-Ball. Combining the two, in one space, is guaranteed to be a major event—and now, at last, it has happened!

With so many serious (and not-so-serious) issues facing the country right now, the people have been hard-pressed for good answers and reliable information. Independent media has ably filled the void, despite extreme pressure from its corporatized competition to toe the establishment line, regardless of the typically disastrous consequences of doing so. Quite often, it seems like major decisions are being made almost at random; as such, the Magic 8-Ball has never been more relevant. It was invented in 1946, and millions have been sold by the Mattel Company, a testament to the great faith with which it is held by Americans.

This reporter sat down with the official Magic 8-Ball recently for the first installment of what is probably the most extensive and hard-hitting interview it has ever been subjected to. It was presented with some of the most serious questions of our time, as well as some questions about sports and pop culture to lighten the mood. In accordance with ground rules set in advance, all questions were phrased in such a way that Magic 8-Ball answered with variations on “yes” and “no”.

Magic 8-Ball (not to be confused with the apocryphal rapper of the same name) offered up incomplete or ambiguous answers here and there, forcing follow-ups; it was particularly evasive regarding the fate of TV pitchman Vince Offer, who’s been out of the public eye since getting arrested for fighting with a prostitute in late 2008.Generally, though, it was clear, direct and forthcoming in ways few public figures would be, even in the hyper-confessional culture of our times. Magic 8-Ball tends to reflect conventional wisdom on many topics, but its answers were downright shocking in regard to others.

SDH: Let’s begin with a test question, to establish the basic veracity of your views: Am I the finest free-agent acquisition in American media today?

Magic 8-Ball: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Good—let’s proceed. Will President Obama accede to Gen. McChrystal’s recommendation of sending 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Will Osama bin Laden ever be killed or captured?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Was the Ft. Hood shooter acting alone?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Has al-Qaeda infiltrated any aspect of the US military?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Was the collapse of the American economy in any way the result of someone’s deliberate action? That is, was the collapse a desired result?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Have we already passed through the worst of the recession?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Is now the right time to get into real estate?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Again: Has al-Qaeda infiltrated any aspect of the US military?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill JFK by himself?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Was he assisted, in any way, knowingly or unknowingly, by any member of the US government or the Mafia?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Was 9/11 an inside job?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will Communism in Cuba die with the Castro brothers?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Will marijuana ever be decriminalized on a national level in the US?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will the US government ever formally declare an end to the War on Terror?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Can the H1N1 virus be contained?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will universal health care pass this year?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Will any other members of the Bush family ever be elected President?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will Sarah Palin ever be elected President?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Will Charlie Crist be elected to the Senate in 2010?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will the new Duval County Courthouse be finished and open for business within five years of today?

M8B: My sources say no.

SDH: Will marijuana ever be decriminalized on a national level in the US?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: And now, sports. Will the Jaguars stay in Jacksonville?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will Tim Tebow become an NFL superstar?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Will Tebow play for the Jacksonville Jaguars?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Again: Will the Jaguars stay in Jacksonville?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Really, is anyone better than Kanyon?

M8B: Reply hazy, try again.

SDH: Again: Is anyone better than Kanyon?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will William Regal ever win a world title?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will Brock Lesnar be beaten in 2010?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: And will Regal win that world title?

M8B: My sources say no.

SDH: Is Michael Jackson really dead?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Was Michael Jackson murdered?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will the guy from the Shamwow and Slap Chop commercials do any further work?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Is Lady Gaga a hermaphrodite?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Is it possible that she’s crazy enough to willfully spread the rumor that she’s a hermaphrodite just for the publicity?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Again: Will Vince Offer work again?

M8B: Ask again later.

SDH: Will Amy Winehouse ever record an album as good as her last one?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Will Winehouse die of old age?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Are the “Twilight” stars involved?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Will Kanye West and Taylor Swift ever work together?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Will Vince Offer work again?

M8B: Reply hazy, try again.

SDH: Is there a God?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Is the AntiChrist alive and somewhere on the Earth right now?

M8B: Yes.

SDH: Is it Obama?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Are you sure?

M8B: Don’t count on it.

SDH: Is there a contradiction between your answer to the first question and the second?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: So I ask again, is Obama the antichrist?

M8B: Very doubtful.

SDH: Did the Republican Party pay you to say “yes” the first time?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Wrapping up: Do you know the way to San Jose?

M8B: Signs point to yes.

SDH: Last time: Will Vince Offer work again?

M8B: It is decidedly so.

SDH: Is the “Magic 8 Ball” concept a bunch of bullshit?

M8B: Very doubtful.

sdh666@hotmail.com; November 13, 2009

 

 

Money Jungle reject: Scapegoating?

[This column was written a week before the tragic kidnapping and murder of seven year-old Somer Thompson, which occurred on the same day that Misty Croslin was robbed in the parking lot of an apartment building. In the latter case, the media chose to focus on the likelihood that Croslin and friends were attempting to buy drugs when the robbery occurred; typically, the logic holds that anyone using illegal drugs is fair game for any harm that may come to them.

The points raised in the column–which was rejected as being “preachy” and “overwrought”–ring far harsher, in light of subsequent events. A week before Somer Thompson was killed, someone tried to abduct another young girl within a few yards of where Thompson was last seen. Local media was too busy flogging the “Balloon Boy” debacle out of Colorado (which occupied two whole days of media coverage, and continues to linger even after being eclipsed by other, more relevant matters) to report on what had happened in their own city. As such, the people of Thompson’s Orange Park community were denied fair warning of what had occurred, and given no opportunity for enhanced scrutiny. It was later revealed that there are at least 150 registered sexual offenders within a three-mile radius of where the little girl disappeared; not one has been sought for comment on the situation.

Recently, a woman was raped in broad daylight on the streets of Riverside, the neighborhood where I’ve lived since the late Clinton years. The community was not informed about the crime until nearly a week later, by which point there had been at least two other rapes in the area. Typically, the assailants were given ample time to flee; the victim is probably living in fear that the attackers (who also robbed her) may return to silence a potential witness. As always, the response of men in the area was, sadly, sorely lacking.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve been living through variations on the same nightmare, on an almost weekly basis, in the three years-plus that have passed since I lost a close friend under somewhat similar conditions. Hundreds of women and children–the epitome of defenseless “soft targets” have been killed around the United States since, and these crimes have occurred in stark disproportion in the state of Florida, enough that it can now be considered the nation’s capital for predatory misogynist violence. Having already established itself as the “murder capital” of the country (at least, before the steadily deteriorating situation in Chicago altered perceptions), Northeast Florida now faces severe challenges to its plans for long-term growth. That, combined with the economic recession and the self-destructive response of our “leaders”, threatens to undo decades of reasonably careful civic planning.

National media has at least been honest enough to call it for what it is: an “epidemic” of predatory violence directed against women and girls, an epidemic exacerbated by the slack, pathetic, exploitative methods of commercial media and the inadequate response of a law-enforcement community stretched to the breaking-point by a civilian political “leadership” that has compromised their effectiveness with constant busy work, of which the treasonous Drug War is just one example. I was especially appalled by the sight of Governor (and would-be Senator) Charlie Crist, who just happened to be visiting the scene when Thompson’s body was discovered. While expressing the usual sympathies, he was careful to point out that (reported) crime is down 8% this year, as if that is some consolation to a grieving family. His remarks were directed to the cameras, an unseemly political maneuver that outraged many casual observers, who’d spent two days searching for the girl before Crist arrived to stump.

Having written extensively on this subject, and having taken the rhetoric of retaliation farther than anyone, anywhere, I take all of this shit very personally, and the fact that 2009 is the all-time peak year for gun sales in this state and country suggests that more and more people feel exactly as I do. All that said, your “Money Jungle” reject. Sorry I could not have been more helpful. Somer Thompson, RIP.]

It may not be exactly true that Florida is the nation’s epicenter of pedophilia and other sex-related crimes, but stereotypes exist for a reason. The Sunshine State is prolific in prostitution and human trafficking. It’s a major supplier of talent to the porn industry, which is at least legal. Georgia’s harsh treatment of sex offenders causes many to move south, into a state that’s much easier to blend into.

An ever-growing population means more schools, more kids, more prey for the super-predators that all the world has come to fear—but less oversight, fewer social and moral standards. The best thing Charlie Crist ever did was turn the heat up a little bit, a practice that has continued under Bill McCollum; Crist can own that issue in 2010, if he’s not too busy denying the vicious rumors being pushed by his political rivals. Funny how people who rightly inveigh against anti-gay discrimination are so eager to engage in the politics of personal destruction when it suits their agenda, huh?

We have all followed the tragic story of Haleigh Cummings, the little girl whose mysterious disappearance has tugged at our heartstrings and tickled our gag reflexes for over six months now. Seemingly every detail of the case has played out luridly across our TV screens, with national networks piggybacking their affiliates’ intrusive coverage for all it’s worth—which isn’t much, really. Rarely does the media play any productive role in cases like this. The media doesn’t find lost kids or doesn’t bring down criminals, but they have considerable gifts for prejudicing juries and muddying up the facts in such a way as to greatly reduce the likelihoods of happy outcomes.

But it’s not about happy outcomes, is it? No. It’s about money. The individual reporters may have some compassion for victims and their families, but the institutions themselves couldn’t care less, and their coverage of the Cummings family demonstrates that. Institutions are void of human attributes; they can’t feel anymore than a flag can bleed or statues of holy figures can cry for all the pain they see. At some point, long ago, the coverage stopped being about finding the child and became about destroying what remained of the lives she left behind, and it’s sick.

The case is similar, somewhat, to the death of little Caylee Anthony. Another child disappearance, this one with the worst possible outcome. Again, the media turned on the mother pretty quick; their prejudices were partially borne out by evidence, not that anyone was aware of that evidence at the time. America hates women; misogyny is more of a factor in modern society than racism, in part because blacks already internalized the self-destructive dogma invented and propagated by the white majority. Casey Anthony made two big mistakes: she had a child, and then she lost her.

At no point has it occurred to anyone that one or both of these young people are probably going to end up dead as a result of the extensive mind-fucking they’ve received from people two and three times their age, who have built them up as potential child-killers based on a smattering of real evidence. They would surely have prepared relevant graphics maudlin theme music to mark the occasion, if they had. This is not surprising; our culture is committed to stealing the innocence of all youth, ASAP.

So far, based solely on the public record, one can make a stronger case that Frank Sinatra had JFK killed because he blamed the Kennedys for the death of Marilyn Monroe than that Haleigh Cummings’ guardians were responsible for her disappearance. If there’s more to it, the government will suss that out. But the subtle insinuations of talking heads raise the question: what do they know that we don’t? Nothing, except that the people of Florida have very short attention spans; as such, the only way to keep them motivated on any subject is to douse them liberally with scandal.

Of course, all this would be somewhat acceptable if it helped to bring any of these children home safely. Unfortunately, this dynamic only helps the super-predators; in most of the major cases in recent years, the perps were registered offenders living near the kid, sometimes in the same neighborhood. The fact that we can’t stop/won’t stop such people should be a factor in the thinking of anyone wishing to raise a family in Florida. Those few precious hours, when lives hang in the balance, are typically wasted making sure the families aren’t somehow involved. By the time clearer heads have prevailed, it’s too late to save lives. Every predator knows this, and acts accordingly.

 

sdh666@hotmail.com

October 13, 2009

Drug Hysteria continues!

A recent report in the occasionally useful New York Times spotlights the harsh contradictions related to the execution of drug policy in this country, with the halogens focused squarely on the Sunshine State. According to autopsy results released this week by the state’s medical examiners, marijuana played no role in any of the deaths documented by state authorities last year. On the other hand, prescription drugs, which have been certified as contributing to the deaths of people like Heath Ledger, Anna Nicole Smith and Chris Benoit, are being abused at a rate roughly double that of ten years ago.

Quoting (in bold print) from the NYT story: “The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328. […] Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0). […] The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.”

It goes on to state that “Florida scrutinizes drug-related deaths more closely than do other states, and so there is little basis for comparison with them.” This is good news for anyone supporting this ridiculous state of affairs; imagine having such data compiled from all 50 states to confirm what is suggested by the study out of Florida. A cynic might wonder aloud if the MEs will be allowed to continue such research this year. It seems like the kind of things that could be eliminated through budget cuts.

Poor Charlie Crist, in his misguided zeal for a national name, has quickly undone whatever good will he had among the regular people of his state. He has gone against his citizens by reversing himself in favor of off-shore oil drilling, which will only increase the environmental instability in the super-heated waters off our east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, for the benefit of multinational gasoline firms who will ensure that most of the profits flow like liquid away from taxpayers of the state. 

Any casual observer understands that the prohibitions against marijuana only ensure that the profits to be obtained from this most beneficial crop are concentrated in the black market, where there are no taxes and no accountability. The current policy has the effect of simplifying the nature of the various substances and their effects, and leaves authorities increasingly powerless to counter the international criminal syndicates that are taking up more and more of the drug business in the US.

The insipidly named “Operation D-Day” (column reprinted below) shut down over 100 alleged grow-houses across Florida, netting 130+ arrests and upwards of $40 million worth of the dreaded herb. The bust was timed to coincide with the passage of a draconian escalation of penalties for pot-growers, which Governor Crist signed into law this week. One struggles to see how the state benefits from adding to an already overextended criminal justice system, while simultaneously subtracting from the rolls of tax-paying citizens and property owners.

Florida had just under 100,000 prisoners in 2007, up 2.3% from 2006 and 4.5% from 2000; expect to see a recorded increase of about 3% when this year’s numbers come out, next year. Of course, this counts only those held in state or federal custody, and not the thousands more being held in local jails, juvenile facilities or mental-health centers related to charges. Perhaps if the government hadn’t allowed such wholesale rapacity as was seen in the bad-faith manipulation of interest rates in recent years, and not tied down so many people with bullshit possession convictions that undermined their ability to earn legal livings, maybe some of those owners and renters wouldn’t be need extra income that badly. But that’s just speculation.

America’s Most Blunted

 

In these rapidly changing economic times, even drug dealers are feeling the pinch—literally, in some cases. Take, for example, the ridiculous Operation D-Day, months in the making, where state and local law-enforcement executed simultaneous busts in 48 counties across Florida. They shut down about 100 suspected marijuana grow houses, made 135 arrests and seized at least $41 million worth of that sticky green.

 

It says something about the state of leadership in Florida that they would dare to cheapen the legacy of the Allied invasion of France—a truly necessary undertaking that cost thousands of American lives but probably helped save millions from certain doom at the hands of the Third Reich—by attaching the name “D-Day” to their latest assault on individual liberty. If there are any WWII veterans still alive to read this column, one can only apologize, on behalf of our government, for pissing all over their sacrifice.

 

The operation was timed to maximize publicity for the “’Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act,” which was already being hyped through a series of alarmist stories that ran on local Florida stations that week, including the resolutely straight-edge First Coast News. The same willing dupes who claim that buying drugs supports terrorism are the ones who have made sure that America’s dope market is controlled by foreigners. 

 

The fallacious and foolhardy nature of the Drug War is borne out by the simple fact that if the current laws were to be applied retroactively, at least one President—George Washington, a pioneering pot grower—would be sent to prison for the rest of his life. Imagine DEA trying to run up on Mount Vernon! Given that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and many of the founders’ personal papers were printed on hemp paper, and that our first flags and some uniforms of the Continental Army were crafted from hemp cloth, a case could be made that today’s laws against the cultivation of hemp amount to a repudiation of America itself.

 

The silliness of it all becomes most apparent as we traverse the national political landscape of 2008, where at least one presidential contender—Barack Obama—is on record with a history of drug use that would have automatically disqualified either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, had rumors to that effect been proven. The governors of two of our biggest and most profitable states, California and New York, are controlled by men (Schwartzenegger and David Paterson, respectively) who openly admitted to having smoked pot. History now leans in the direction that the sainted JFK smoked, too. Now, if the point of the Drug War is make sure that no one like Bush, Clinton or Kennedy is ever able to become president again, that would make sense, but it would not explain Obama, whose past is apparently out-of-bounds since he obliges the Drug War too.

 

Honestly, now: if the Drug War is legit, then why has Snoop Dogg never taken a possession rap? A cynic would argue that, since his work has consists of leading young black men down a road that leads directly to prison or death, he is performing a service to the government, and thus roams free. But as for the rest of you, don’t expect mercy from government unless you’re a child molester or a terrorist. The authorities know the limits of their power, and are careful not to press anyone who might press back. Parents, take heart: if you put a bag of marijuana in your kids’ backpack before school, the cops will follow him around all day, and he might actually live long enough to graduate!

 

It can never be said often enough that the political leaders of today are so far beneath their predecessors in every single possible category—from intelligence to physical strength, to say nothing of intangibles like wisdom and experience—that their only option for retaining their spots is to aggressively destroy any possibility of dissent. And that is why the criminal penalties against marijuana have been progressively jacked up while the rest on the world has moved in the other direction.

 

There is not much sense in making a decriminalization argument based on civil libertarian or humanitarian grounds. No case can be made on William Buckley-esque conservative grounds, since the folks who bullied us into Iraq have done to conservatism what Pope Benedict and the perverts who serve under him have done to Catholicism. In the old days, one could at least quote the founders, but as America cedes its place in the global hierarchy, the founders’ appeal has begun to wane, as well. Besides, the political leadership of today (especially in Florida) appears to derive more inspiration from Tom of Finland than Thomas Jefferson. I’d call them traitors, if I could afford a lawyer.           

 

sdh666@hotmail.com

May 5, 2008