One More Reason to Be Happy? You're Not in KANSAS!

I don't mean to make light of other people who are in greater misery (and are apparently even stupider) than we are in Florida. But if you're ever feeling down, you can always have a look at the state where the Tea Party program is being executed to its fullest -- and that's in Kansas, under Governor (and former United States Senator) Sam Brownback.

When Rick Scott was simultaneously cutting taxes and budgets early in his first term, the hue and cry became so great that he turned generous on us and restored many of the worst cuts. I happen to believe that is in part because he is a man without principles. Sam Brownback, in contrast, seems to have some degree of principle in him, and despite hue and cry in his own state when the damages piled up, he stuck to his guns.

The result? You can see it reported in papers from the area. Kansas is going into a deep revenue hole, and as a result will have to severely cut government services at some point in the near future -- including vital projects related to infrastructure, and education. Like Florida, Kansas has a balanced budget requirement, so there's no way for them to get around it. Brownback has said he refuses to consider reversing past tax cuts, or cancelling future tax cuts that are part of his plan, even though his utopian vision of businesses flocking to Kansas with more jobs has yet to come to pass. 

In fact, Kansas is a very, very good example of how tax breaks for businesses don't lead to jobs, even moreso here than in Florida. Wichita, Kansas is  the home of the industrialist Koch brothers, who have enough cash to wipe their rear ends with $10,000 bills every day. They also have more than enough money to start new businesses in Kansas that could employ every single unemployed Kansan for years to come, even if they never turned a profit. But as our blog host has remarked more than once, there's no reason for a business to hire anyone unless they need to. They sure won't hire someone just so they can give them a job and pay for, you know, unimportant stuff like food and shelter.

One more thing about Kansas to make you feel better about Florida. Opposition to Brownback in Kansas was even greater than opposition to Scott in Florida. In fact, opposition to Brownback was downright bi-partisan. So how did Kansas voters respond to this rare display of unity? Why, they re-elected Brownback of course -- and by an even larger margin (50% to 46.1%) than Floridians re-elected Scott.

Now don't you feel a WHOLE lot better?

10 Reasons for Florida Dems to Smile Post Midterm Election

This "wave" election was more like low-tide: the lowest voter turnout in our history. We do this dance every two years. However, you don't have to wait until 2016 to smile....

1. Even in a red wave election, our issues won everywhere, even here

Amendment 1 was a slap in the face of GOP legislators who keep destroying our land. It requires that a percentage of real estate taxes go to buying land to protect our water and environment, instead of the GOP's slush funds.

Despite the loss of Amendment 2, which would have allowed doctors to prescribe medical cannabis, (although they can still prescribe OPIUM--which makes no damn sense), it received 58% of the vote! A few years ago that would have been a victory, but the GOP pushed for an amendment a few years ago to require 60% passage. (Ironically, that was the only amendment that year not to make the 60% threshold). Even in a red anger election, Amendment 2 was only two points shy of passage! They will hopefully try again in 2016 with the blue wave. Don't worry--it's coming.

Amendment 3, which was a power grab by Rick Scott, lost handily.

Meanwhile, across the nation minimum wage laws won everywhere, including the four red states of Arkansas, Alaska, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Paid sick leave was granted (everywhere but in Orange County). Voters in Colorado and North Dakota rejected the "personhood" amendment, which has now lost in every single state they tried. The biggest loser of the night? THE NRA! Gun control measures won everywhere, including Washington State where people are now required to undergo criminal background checks before buying guns online. (How radical.) And Oregon and DC legalized marijuana. (We just said at least for people suffering and dying). Which reminds me....

2. Florida Democrats can push much of their agenda through FL Constitutional amendments

The majority of the state wants a clean environment, teacher protection, sensible gun laws, worker's rights, and a higher minimum wage. All of these CAN be on the ballot in 2016.

Maybe, JUST MAYBE, the Florida Dems will finally figure out that they can get a lot of what they want through these amendments since most Floridians support them. We have a real shot at this, compared to zero chance of trying to reason with the GOP gerrymandered nutcases in the legislature. Yes, there are some GOP PACs and interest groups that might fight, but they typically bankroll candidates and don't spend money on amendments. Case in point, in 2010 Floridians received a lot of protection from extreme gerrymandering in 2010 because of two amendments that passed. The GOP claimed they only passed because everyone was pouring money into the state races. Also, Amendment 1 passed this year because no one wanted to spend big bucks this year saying they hated the environment.

3. Rick Scott and arrogant GOP will overreach, insult, and destroy. That will build the anger in 2016 as it did in 2012.

This happens every damn year after the midterms. These awful teabag guvs do their worst work during that time period. As usual, people who stayed home in the midterms will then come out in droves to support the Dems. In 2011, that is when Scott was at his peak of horror: voter suppression, HS rail kill, the emergency cuts for the disabled kids, cuts for rape centers and Veterans, massive education cuts, the scheme to turn all of our parks into golf courses, his veto of driver's licenses for immigrants along with his hateful harassment measures, etc. etc.

He is now no longer restrained by anything because this was his last election. He has no more reason to pander to the Latino and other minority groups after his extreme makeover this year. He can be his true bigoted self. Speaking of which...

4. This will tick your GOP buddies off: Rick Scott only won by backpedaling hard this year pretending to be more liberal

After cutting education by 1.3 billion in 2011, he gave a lot of it back after suddenly realizing that wasn't a great move for an upcoming election. He suddenly reversed position on every anti-Latino measure he favored: he undid his vetoes of 2011 along with dropping any support of any AZ-type bill. He let a young girl suffering from a horrible seizures get some relief from cannabis oil. He rolled back some of the more extreme voter suppression efforts after the 2012 disaster here. Also, for the first time in 15 years, this year went by with no new gun bill.

Those of us who paid attention knew exactly what Scott was up to. But it says something that both he and Charlie both thought the key to winning was moving to the Left.

Florida will no doubt be a battleground in 2016, and the GOP will PUSH HARD for him to keep this up, or at least remain less teabag crazy. Scott, however, has absolutely no incentive to do so. He made a lot of promises that will contrast to how he will inevitably act by 2016, thus helping ensure a blue state for Hillary.

5. I will have plenty to write about

Seriously, I wondered how I would do it with a sensible governor.

6. Rick Scott legally can't be our governor after 2018

No matter what, in 2018 Rick Scott will disappear. Believe it or not, the state and national GOP will actually be relieved. Despite years they put in cultivating a political process in this state that leans heavily towards the GOP candidate, and despite the 75% turnout of angry non-minorities in midterms, they had to spend MILLIONS and MILLIONS and MILLIONS to prop up Scott because he was that bad. The GOP, along with the Kochs and special interests, would much rather have spent that money elsewhere. However, turning a dog from a 10+ deficit is no cheap task. If they put up somebody who was even remotely sensible, they could have spent a lot less.

The bad news is that Pam Bondi might be our governor after Rick Scott leaves. If the FL Dems wiseup as I mentioned above, and we start early, and maybe for ONCE not put a GOP-lite candidate as our only selection--we might pull this off next time.

7. Good night for Congressional Dems: Balance kept with one surprising pickup

Well done, Gwen. Gwen Graham ran in the conservative panhandle and STILL beat incumbent Steve Southerland. She made up for the one loss in a conservative district in South Florida. Also, Patrick Murphy, who defeated Allen West just two years ago, kicked butt again. And then there's Alan Grayson, who really should be our nominee in 2018. Speaking of which...

8. Alan Grayson showed how it's done.

He didn't back off and decide the key to winning was run scared and bash Obama. No, he touted the Obama successes--cheap gas, low unemployment, record dow, and the fact that Floridians have healthcare despite GOP obstruction.

Alan Grayson really should be our nominee in 2018. He fires up the base, says what everyone is thinking, hits hard, and uses GOP tactics against them. Also, he damn sure can't be labeled an "extremist" --since that is who is running Florida right now.

FL Dems... maybe put up somebody who isn't GOP lite? Alex and Charlie didn't cut it. Alan would eviscerate Bondi in both ads and debates. I really think he would pull it off but even if he didn't, everyone if Florida would know her shenanigans.

9. Florida activists might finally channel their anger where it belongs

Gerrymandering and dark money helped the GOP, but the neither can be blamed on the state elections. Yes, voting was made harder, but people had ample opportunity to vote.

Although the GOP has an overwhelming money and power structure advantage, one of the biggest reasons we failed was our apathetic and pathetic state party. I go into more detail about this in my last post. Most candidates can't count on any kind of support from their own party. Myself and other activists had to put together our OWN event to raise funds for local Congressional candidates: they wouldn't even loan us freaking chairs! I called a dozen local chapters and none of them ever got back with me on coordinating something. My own local party had NO GOTV effort. People here complained they couldn't even get stupid signs for their lawn. What the hell is the point?

The fringe activists took over many of the local GOP parties in 2010, and others just set up their own tea party organizations. Dem activists who are both hungry and NOT stupid need to start taking control. Waiting for the FL Dems to clean up their act is a guaranteed strategy for losing every time.

10, The city of Tallahassee, where the corrupt legislators "work", just passed the first anti-corruption bill in the United States

Tallahassee residents showed the FL GOP what's what with this groundbreaking stuff that even the Koch machine was unable to defeat. The momentum for this great success should be carried on in a Constitutional Amendment for the entire state in 2016. I would LOVE the presidential candidate (likely Scott Walker) to explain why he opposes this. The momentum for intelligent but obvious no-brainers like this law is on our side, and we should take advantage now.

bonus...

OH, and one more thing....If all else fails, maybe South Florida will finally be serious about succession. No less extreme than having Rick Scott for another four years.

I want to blame the GOP, but the problem was within

The GOP had a lot of advantages this election. Voter intensity, gerrymandering, voter suppression efforts, Koch money, and being able to control all the levers of power in the state government. Yet they are not the reason we lost.

Candidate after candidate told me they received little if any support from the local or state Dem party. There was hardly any GOTV. There was some phonebanking, but mostly from the Crist campaign. I could find no volunteer efforts for canvassing. There was no listening to the activists about crafting any kind of message. We should have hit the FL GOP hard on their policies against Latinos, the environment, the disabled, the Veterans, and middle class families, but there was none of that. I don't even know what their message was--I truly think they didn't have one.

I recall when a young activist took over the Seminole County Democrats in the 2000s--we knocked on doors, registered voters, and then organized a fleet to drive people on election day. She made a difference and was one of the grassroots leaders that made victory possible in 2006 and 2008. This year I didn't see any opportunities like that. The GOP and the Koch group, FL AFP, swarmed neighborhoods like mine. According to the my local party's website, the only volunteer opportunities were helping the community--a noble goal but kinda misses the boat in an election year. There were no canvassing efforts, and a lady even contacted me, mistakenly thinking I was a Seminole County Dem official, and demanded to know where her lawn sign was before telling me not to bother.

I worked with an activist this year to hold our OWN event/fundraiser for Dem candidates across the state. No help from any local party, and the FL Dems even refused to announce it on their website. Eight candidates showed from across the state and some online. Crist had promised he would stop by but one of his very young "schedulers" called right before the speeches to say he couldn't come. He regretted it when he found out the turnout was great and we had more Veterans, voters, and candidates than the place he went to. WE also found out his running mate was right next door doing a failed campaign stop at the "Villages". Seriously--who the hell were you trying to talk to there?

The leader of the national party, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, from my own state, is frankly the worst leader we've ever had. Dean fired up supporters and had a successful 50 state strategy, with the revelation that we can't win national elections with fucking the coastal states and Illinois. With Debbie WS, we went right back to that mindset. She supported the "run from Obama" strategy, outright refused to go after the Veteran vote, and didn't offer help to her own party candidates. She even attacked medical marijuana, which had a 90% approval at the beginning of the year. I expect to fight--but not my own party.

Activists have to take control of the county parties. Change has to come from within. If that doesn't work, we need to organize for ourselves. Otherwise, a state with 500,000 more Democrats will forever be an entirely controlled GOP state.

Could the GOP Save Us From Rick Scott?

As the gloom of four more years of Rick Scott settles over the state, I once again contemplated what horrors may be ahead. Many think that Scott, with no re-election restraints hanging over him, will return to his Tea Party roots and once again become the kind of terror that slashed funds for disabled children and rape crisis centers.

I certainly think we need to be prepared for that possibility, and I respect the views of those who think this will be the case. It isn't at all far-fetched. But I proposed earlier in a comment here that maybe Scott would instead turn his focus towards enriching himself as much as he could (such as by encouraging fracking in the Everglades) rather than cutting budget items. That's because I believe that Scott is truly a man of no principles, save his own personal gain: It seems to me the best way to explain why he abandoned his Tea Party promises like the Arizona-style immigration law, and verbally approved of other things that his Tea Party base found offensive, like Medicaid expansion. It is also why he calls himself pro-life even after making money off abortions at HCA.

After some thought, I'd like to propose a reason why this seems a more likely approach, and one we can hope will be true (although in the same sense we might hope to be hit with a fiddle instead of with a grand piano). Oddly enough, the nationwide GOP may be our best (albeit unwitting) ally in keeping Scott leashed. And no, it's not because they care about us -- it's because they care about their own skins.

The GOP knows it needs Florida to win the Presidency in 2016. This is not in question. They need Texas AND Florida to balance the electoral weight of New York and California. Otherwise, they may as well not even field a candidate.

Scott called in several GOP Presidential hopefuls to aid his campaign: Perry, Christie, Jindal, Bush, Rubio. Walker probably would have been here too, if he had not been running himself in Wisconsin. In 2012, even a year or so after the worst of Scott's atrocities, Scott was so toxic that the GOP breathed a sigh of relief when a hurricance gave Scott the perfect excuse for not speaking at the GOP convention in Tampa. But now, they have staked their fate for the 2016 race on Scott by standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

What does this mean? Speaking figuratively, we can imagine a scene on Scott's campaign bus where Christie is taking Scott by the scruff of the neck and saying, "Don't screw this up for us." (Again, you didn't think they were here because they cared about the people of Florida, did you?) If Scott returns to the highest grade of toxicity, the same he had in his first years, the GOP Presidential aspirations will wither away gruesomely, like chaff under fire. As it is, in 2012, they couldn't take Florida while Scott's toxicity was slowly waning and the atrocities like budget cuts to disabled children were still fresh in our memories. The GOP, with their "wave" of 2014 wins, is under the miscroscope to perform, and needs to have the next two years with Florida's citizens thinking happy thoughts about Scott. Cutting funds to disabled children won't accomplish that.

But do these GOP hopefuls have anything to hold over Scott if he does not behave, you may ask? Yes, I think so. Scott may or may not have political ambitions beyond being governor, but if he does have any, they will be quashed if he does not do exactly what the national GOP wants, or if he embarrasses them. But even if he has no such ambitions, the GOP could still make things hard on his private holdings in various states. And of course, even if they can't hold anything over Scott, they could still take sanctions over whoever wants to be Scott's successor. Make no mistake -- when he rubbed shoulders with the GOP hopefuls, Scott stuck his head in a velvet vise that could as easily give him a massage as snap his neck in two.

Speaking as an Independent voter, I'd recommend that Democrats keep in mind, and keep at the fore, how Christie, Jindal, Perry, Rubio and Bush repeated Scott's campaign lies. Those lies could be used to discredit each of them on a nationwide scale, if any of them manages to capture the GOP nomination. (That also assumes Perry stays out of jail.) But for the present, I'm suggesting that Florida's position in the national election scene may stave off the worst of Scott's possible actions. It may even make him relatively tame, but perhaps that is hoping too much.

We can only hope this is a ray of light in an otherwise gloomy forecast for Florida's future.

Publix: Where Suffering Is A Pleasure

The Jenkins family, who own Publix, spent hundreds of thousands against Amendment 2, which would give life-saving treatment to suffering and dying patients.

Publix is one of the main grocery chains around here. They are known for being more expensive and crappy customer service. I stopped shopping there last year when 4 clerks ignored me. Maybe spend more money on making your damn stores better?

Why the hell would a grocery chain based in FL do something this incredibly stupid? Answer: I have NO idea why. Some speculate it is because it would crimp their alcohol and tobacco sales. Others think it is related to their pharmacies losing business.

Either way, I can't ever support those who advocate for continued suffering and incarceration for their diseases.

Firesale

Still can hate on Scott....

http://www.zazzle.com/seminolestore

When Will We Ever Get Rid of This Flag

In a state that has more Democrats than anything else, we have a criminal teabag governor, a supermajority House, and a complete GOP cabinet sweep. The Kochs and the NRA have complete control. Very poor wages, no benefits, voter suppression, and more cuts to education, Veterans, disabled children, and the environment. The top percent and special interests, as always, will fare well. The rest of us will continue to suffer.

I promised to confront the voter apathy here, especially at the midterms, but the ignorance is strong in our people. This is a constant uphill battle.

We are so behind in our economy (low wage hell), our health, our transportation, our education, and quality of life compared to progressive states. But that is life under the regime.

Don't Get Complacent - Go for the Landslide!

A new poll out today shows Crist ahead by a good margin. That's good news. The bad news is the same poll had Sink up by 5 with 2 weeks left in the 2010 race. The point is: Don't let the good news lead you to stay home because you think this is wrapped up for Crist. Even if the poll is 100% accurate reflecting the larger picture, we need to send a message to the FL GOP that Tea Party lunacy will NOT be tolerated, and that FL voters are not for sale.

Message to Rick Scott and the Koch Brothers: 10 Reasons FL Hispanics Are Not This Stupid

Early Voting TODAY in Florida!! Go NOW before polls close today!

From the article Americans for Prosperity Builds Political Machine

Andres Malave walks the street of a west Miami neighborhood. He started the day huddled with about a dozen volunteers in a Cuban restaurant here, offering them a last-minute pep talk before they went out to meet with voters....These volunteer ground troops make up the backbone of Americans for Prosperity, the flagship organization of the political network overseen by industrialist billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch.

... Malave, the group’s Hispanic outreach chief in Florida, spent more than three hours knocking on doors in the scorching sun on a recent Tuesday. He kept asking the questions and punching in the answers on his iPad so leaders at headquarters could figure out which messages were working.

Koch billionaires. These are the rat bastards behind Arizona's "papers please" law and the media demonization of small children fleeing violence in Central America in an effort to stop immigration reform. They're building a massive database to target specific groups of people with specific messages. What is disgusting is that they will have people going to poor, white neighborhoods to find people who will be targeted with the ultra-racist "scary brown people are coming for your jobs" narrative. Simultaneously, they have these "Hispanic Outreach" programs that target Hispanic neighborhoods telling them that "Obamacare is coming for your jobs".

For the FL gubernatorial election, Hispanics are being told that Rick Scott is a friend to brown people everywhere... he just can't show it. That's the message being given:

"He's not flashy, he's quiet about it," said an aide to a Hispanic House member, "but when you're around Rick Scott enough you know he's pro-Hispanic all the way. He listens to us and he gets a lot of his ideas from us."

Translated: I secretly like you but I just can't let anyone know that I do. Maybe that's why I screw you over all the time, but we're cool, right??

The FL GOP continually spits on our Latino community and then thinks they will forget a few weeks before the election when they pander. No amount of money is going to change the feeling about rightwing conservatives. You need to look no further than Rick Scott. Last year I wrote a very short list about his issues with Hispanics. I have added to it, along with evidence of what the FL GOP is really all about. This is our last chance to get the message out before Election Day.

1. Rick Scott has a history of discrimination

Rick Scott's Solantic, the medical chain he founded from his Medicaid fraud scandal, was not a friendly place for people who weren't "mainstream" (Rick Scott's words). The Regional Medical Director complained he was not allowed to hire well-qualified applicants who had the slightest Hispanic accent. His claim is verified by multiple employees.



And if you need a clearer picture....

2. Rick Scott insults Hispanic fundraiser, then defended bigots on his staff!.

Like Solantic, Scott has "mainstream" people make up his core staff--and there is a well-known intolerant culture. One exception to his core staff makeup was Miguel ("Mike") Hernandez, Scott's finance co-chair. Mike was his largest single donor and his best fundraiser. Naturally, he was treated to a racist incident involving two high-level white, male staffers who thought it hilarious to mimick a Mexican accent on the way to Chipotle. (His staff is as socially inept as Rick Scott.) Mike fired off an angry email about the incident and was brushed off. He then abruptly quit.

Rick Scott's campaign wasted no time in apologizing stabbing Mike in the back. His campaign director called him "bizarre" and a "renegade donor" (what??). He also called his complaint "immaterial foolishness". Scott's campaign manager just called him a liar.

Rick Scott then DEFENDED the two immature bigoted young men, simultaneously insulting his Hispanic "friend" and allowing his culture of intolerance within his campaign to continue unabated. You would think his largest single donor AND most successful fundraiser would carry some weight---but he was brown and his staffers were white, sooooo.....

3. The RNC's Florida Hispanic Director and GOP FL lawmker switch to Democrat over the FL GOP's "culture of intolerance" and hate

RNC State Director Of Florida Outreach, Pablo Pantoja, switched to the Democratic Party last year saying:

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them

He was joined this year by a prominent Republican activist and former GOP legislator, Ana Rivas Logan, who also had enough and switched.

4. GOP leaders call Puerto Rico a "basketcase" and its people "foreigners"

This year, the GOP chair for Orange County, one of Florida's largest counties which includes Orlando, described Puerto Rico as a "semi-socialist government where the highest aspiration is a nice secure government job." The fact that we have a large Puerto Rican population didn't phase him, because he went on to say the whole island was "a terrible basket case." None of that is true. Puerto Rico is not remotely socialist, and their government jobs are comparable to the US as a whole. But whatever.

Now-former GOP Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite didn't call them leaches, but did say they were "foreigners". Not only did she insult them, she had the unmitigated gall to have her staff insist to journalists that she stood by her statement even after repeatedly being told that statement was factually incorrect. Facts mean little to republicans. The fact that they can be so insulting to one out of five Floridians shows how little regard they have for their fellow American citizens who might look a little darker.

5. Despite near unanimous support in legislature, Rick Scott vetoed driver's license bill just to be a racist dick!

Even in our wacky, teabag conservative legislature, the state senate passed a bill that would have allowed children of undocumented aliens to obtain temporary Florida driver's licenses 36-0. The even teabaggier House passed it 115-2. It was a slam dunk. Yet Scott vetoed it.

He didn't gave a reason. It passed with such a margin that it would be overridden, but Scott vetoed it anyway just as an FU to brown people.

Years later, in the Telemundo debate with Charlie Crist, he was directly asked why. He said some nonsense that it wouldn't have made a difference because applicants who get work permits can get driver's licenses at the same time. This is not always the case. Sometimes the paperwork is weeks or months delayed, and the law would have allowed Dreamers to get their temporary driver's license until the permit came in. Again, Scott was just being an ass.

Said State Sen. Soto: “Simply unconscionable, it’s a[n] .... anti-Hispanic move."

6. Rick Scott tried to purge THOUSANDS of Hispanic voters

Such is the case in Florida. Of the 180,000 potential noncitizens identified for purging in 2012, less than 0.02% were actually ineligible. Nearly 60 percent of those included in the initial list were Hispanic – meanwhile, Hispanic voters make up only 13 percent of Florida’s electorate.

Only about 60 were legitimate out of Scott's initial 182,000 purges. Keep in mind millions of Floridians voted.

And Sick Rott had promised to try again in 2014. He was even going to do the same bastard move of purging 55 days before the election like in 2012, but luckily, an appeals court shut him down.

7. Study showed that Florida Hispanics wait in the longest lines to vote

Scott signed a sweeping voter suppression act during his first full year as governor. Many polling places throughout South Florida were eliminated, along with early-voting days. A study by the Advancement Project found that out of all the ethnic groups, it was Hispanic voters who waited the longest. In Miami-Dade, the average time was 73 minutes. There were reports of people waiting up to EIGHT freaking hours to vote.

Other highlights from the study showed that Hispanic voters were more likely to have to use a provisional ballot and almost twice as likely to have those ballots rejected.

8. Rick Scott supported AZ-style anti-brown bill... That EXEMPTED white people!!

GOP chairman of the House Judiciary committee, William Snyder, proposed a law that would allow police to harass people "suspected" of being here illegally yet specifically exempted Canadians and Western Europeans to ensure only the appropriate "brown-people" minority would be targeted. (This was the closest to saying "leave Whitey alone" and get away with it). He even admitted it wasn't about "rule of law" or "jobs" but was worried about what was happening to our country.

This law was too bigoted for even for the Florida legislature, but Rick Scott not only supported it, he embraced it and promised to sign it if it made it to his desk!

9. Rick Scott even insults when pandering

Rick Scott insulted a Latina reporter by trying to strong arm her into only discussing his love of brown people and NO OTHER QUESTIONS. She took to the airwaves to say how wrong that was. And then there was that insulting ad that was pulled for trying a little too hard. (Ironically, the one featuring a Miami business owner who turned out to be a convicted human smuggler was not pulled.)

10. Rick Scott worked with PamBo to spend tax money on fighting Latino resident citizens from getting in-state tuition!

Scott says “I completely oppose” the Texas program, which Gov. Perry defends, of granting in-state tuition rates to illegal alien college students.

That was from a newsmax article in 2011. He says he never said that now that he is desperately trying to pander to Latinos.

Our tax dollars went to defend what the judge correctly described as a "blatantly unconstitutional" policy to deny American citizens the right to in-state tuition unless their parents could prove legal residency. The US District Court judge even lectured the state for trying to take their rights away. But that didn't stop Rick Scott or Pam Bondi. It wasn't their money.

Scott reversed himself this year and is now saying he was for it all the time. Because we are all idiots.

Well, maybe we are. We did vote him in and the race is a lot closer than it should be. Scott is right--we do have short memories. Nothing I'm saying here should be news to anyone, but it always is.

Take action. Actúe Ahora.

These are just a few examples of how Hispanics specifically have been hurt the past four years. Rick Scott has hurt everyone of us who is well-connected or extremely wealthy by taking money from the disabled, our Veterans, our environment, the uninsured, and our working families to pay for schemes that allow he and his cronies to get very, very wealthy. All Floridians, whatever our heritage, deserve a hell of a lot better than this. Please vote today....

Florida 2014 Elections Endorsements from the Seminole Democrat

Go and bookmark this page on your mobile phone. Then go vote. NOW!

In Florida, early voting started Monday, October 20. The best place to find your early voting locations and/or the polling place on Nov. 4 is your LOCAL County's Supervisor of Elections website (click here). The best way would be to put all the information in one location but our Secretary of State under Rick Scott isn't much into helping you vote. (You can see what his focus is on the main elections website with voting fraud getting the bold treatment. After all, we've had 0 incidents of in-person voter fraud.)

The state races I give. For local races I can only do Seminole County. If somebody clues me in to an important local race or candidate, (see "contact us" button at top or use comments below), of course I'll research and include that. Special thanks to Howard Mass.

Remember, this is a progressive state blog that is in no way affiliated with the Seminole Co. Democratic Party. I even disagree with both of their Congressional choices (especially FL-7).

For races that are particularly important to me, I explain my rationale in the link with their name:

Governor/LT. Governor: CHARLIE CRIST (D)

U.S. Congress: In every district that has a Democrat, VOTE DEMOCRAT with three exceptions:

U.S. Congress District 7: Al Krulick (NPA) (not Republican John Mica or Democrat Wes Neuman)

U.S. Congress District 5: Glo Smith (R) (not Democrat Corrine Brown)

U.S. Congress District 53: Dean Kearns (NPA) (not Republican John Tobias or Democrat Santa Isabel Wright)

U.S. State Legislature and State Senate: VOTE the DEMOCRAT in every election. If there is no Democrat, vote NPA or third party (even Libertarian).

Attorney General: George Sheldon (D) (NOT PamBo)

Commissioner of Agriculture: Thad Hamilton (D)

Chief Financial Officer: Will Rankin (D)

Florida Constitutional Amendments:
Amendment 1: Conservation: Yes
Amendment 2: Medical Marijuana: Yes
Amendment 3: Lame Duck Governor Picks Judges: HELLS NO!

Court of Appeals Judges (Designated by YES or NO):
A word on District Court of Appeals Judges

FOR SEMINOLE COUNTY:

• House District 29: Mike Clelland (D)
• House District 30: Karen Castor Dentel (D)
• House District 28: Franklin Perez (LPF) (not Republican Jason Brodeur)
• Senate District 10: Walter Osborne (NPA)
• School Board District 1: Rich Sloane
• Circuit Judge Group 13: George Paulk
• Circuit Judge Group 19: Mitch Krause
• Circuit Judge Group 23: Nancy Maloney