A Tale of Three States: Kansas, California, and Florida

Robert Reich recently pointed out that if you listen to rightwing groups like the Tax Foundation, you would think California is a horrible place for business. These groups rank it in the top 10 worst due to "high cost" and "burdensome environmental regulations". However, these same groups rank Sam Brownback's Kansas as one of the best.

Here's the problem with that:

Kansas is collapsing. In four short years, since the tea party takeover, Kansas has had three credit downgrades along with a billion-dollar budget deficit. They are struggling to fund basic services and their education system is hanging on by a thread, with cutbacks making it almost dead last in teacher quality, pay, student spending and pupil-teacher ratio. It's so bad that REPUBLICAN state Sen. Wint Winter Jr. said Brownback's tax cuts have been a "train wreck".

Yet while the Sunflower state is falling apart, the Eureka State is CRUSHING it.

By any metric you use, California has become the best state in the union for investors. A great Democratic governor (Jerry Brown) and a Democratic-led legislature turned California around in four short years from a 27 billion dollar deficit disaster into a surplus and, according to Bloomberg, an absolute mecca for corporations! California companies in the S&P 500 have delivered returns of 134 percent! (No other state comes close.) These same companies outperformed the S&P 500 by a margin of 23%; and CA tech company sales account for 52% of all the tech sales in America.

So how can California have some of the highest business taxes and regulations in America, and yet be the most successful? The answer is simple. California invested in itself!

By cutting education, infrastructure development, and other vital social services, Kansas squandered the billions of dollars into paying for very wealthy people's tax cuts on the zombie alter of the failed cult known as "trickle-down economics". California, on the other hand, asked that its corporations contribute fairly and used the tax money to invest heavily in infrastructure, higher education, and research and development. Companies flocked to California and scored big. Also, as Reich points out, the environmental regulations not only didn't hurt the economy, they EXPANDED it. Companies were driven to fuel innovation in the fast-growing field of renewable energy. Furthermore, California didn't demonize immigrants, they welcomed them and gave undocumented immigrants driver's licenses.

California is once again leading the way.

Rick Scott, of course, is aggressively trying to follow the disastrous Brownback model. He's very lucky that our state has a lot of natural resources, great climate, and tourist attractions that help sustain us during disaster (like a hurricane or the current tea party legislature). However, he has done his damnest to hurt us.

Scott pledged over $266,000,000.00 in tax breaks and incentives for the promise of 45,258 jobs, a large portion of which went to minimum wage jobs with annual salaries that don't even break the poverty line.

Public transportation is a complete joke in this state, and our roads are infamously clogged (unless you want to pay thousands in the extremely corrupted tolling agencies). Rick Scott cut over a billion in education spending and has led the attack on higher education. Scientists are held in very low regard by our state government. Our health care needs are huge, but thanks to Scott and the GOP refusing all subsidies for Medicaid, a a Florida citizen with kids needs to make UNDER $3200 A YEAR to qualify. Our pollution laws have been gutted, and our state is the most vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Who the hell wants that? The people with skills you need for your company will go where they will be appreciated. Companies want to go somewhere that at least invests in basic infrastructure: a place where corporate employees can access public transportation and send their kids to receive reasonable k-12 education. Companies want access to a highly skilled labor force, not one where the citizens earn bottom-barrel wages (because that's the overwhelming majority of jobs we have available here). They want a state where they can partner with top schools: Florida's universities our not known for their academic standards as much as they are for their football teams.

Also, since we now have legalized homicide with Stand Your Ground, anyone can claim they had a "reasonable fear" and shoot you in the face even if you are unarmed and minding your own business. OF COURSE you don't want to live here. I DON'T want to live here either. And unless you are starting a company that just wants to exploit cheap labor, you aren't going to move here either no matter how low our tax rate is. It is the same reason I don't choose to live in a dilapidated condo on Orange Blossom Trail. It would save me a lot of money and I wouldn't have to deal with homeowner's association rules and fees, but there is something to be said about quality of life.

I am told by my brainwashed conservative friends that California is terrible, but I don't see boarded up storefronts in San Francisco. I see everyone with a living wage and healthcare. I see carefree and happy, which are two words that are never used to describe Kansas--and since 2010, Florida.

FL Teabag Lawmaker: Photographing farm will be a 1st degree felony!

From the MY STUPID STATE series:

You read the title of this post right. I am not exaggerating in the least. Just more wingnuttery from my state legislature. This time from new freshman teabagger Sen. Jim Norman.

Jim Norman of FL District 12 is one of those newbies pushed by teabaggers in the last election. Like many of his kind, he has a history of ethics problems. But in a state where a criminal can be elected governor, a state senator with a mountain of ethics complaints and an FBI probe gets a chairmanship.

And like the other new FL teabag (FLeabag?) legislators, like Jason "Fine Doctors $5 Million for Asking Mental Patients Anything about Guns" Brodeur, Jim Norman is making a name for himself.

Sen. Norman introduced SB 1246 last Friday, which would make it a 1st degree felony to photgraph any part of a farm (even from public property) without written permission of the farm owner first.

Lest you think I am prone to hyperbole, read the text of the bill yourself.

WHY is he doing this? Is he insane? No, the voters here are... but that's another post.

The intent of this stupid bill is to prevent someone from an animal rights group to pretend to be a farm worker and secretly film torturing or abusing of farm animals on private property. Now, this is already illegal here, mind you. The infiltration, that is: not the farm animal abuse. Animal rights here are looked down upon almost as much as worker rights. (When voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2002 to stop the practice of putting pregnant pigs in ultra-confining cages, the legislature went ballistic--long story short, the requirements for citizen intiatives now demand a super-majority.)

Yet, somehow, these videos are still getting made. Logically, the next step is to arrest someone with a wide angle lens who happens to snap a picture that includes an open pasture.

Seriously.

Last January, I took a picture of a church near Geneva. There is a cow behind a fence in the background. If this bill becomes law, I can look forward to being charged with a first degree felony on par with murderers and bank robbers.


Oh, here is one I found of a nearby farm with some horses I thought were adorable:


GUESS it will be jail for me!

I wonder if someone forgot to tell these FLeabaggers that the Constitution they profess to love includes a first amendment as well.

Rick Scott's 7 Biggest LIES on RAIL (Before Killing It)

Welcome to Post V of My Stupid State:


By now you know that our Voldemort-looking and acting guber killed the rail project.

I predicted that he would on the Jan. 12 post of my blog. Not because I am clairvoyent, but because I know him. It didn't matter that the federal government was willing to pay nearly all the cost nor that private companies were willing to cover any additional costs.

It was Obama's idea. And for this crook, that was enough.

Rick Scott couldn't just out and out say NO, although he wanted to. He had to go through the motions and say he was giving it "serious" consideration, although the ones who were paying attention knew all along that he was looking for excuses to kill it without having it look blatantly ideological and partisan.

So he started to do what he does best. What all crooks do. LIE.

You don't need to look far to see how well he does it. There is no shortage of material. Heck, you can see it in the clip I have of him in the introduction of this diary, where he won't even acknowledge his own damn signature on incriminating documents.

You can see just last week in my last post, where the SOB vowed not to cut education... and then proposed to gut it almost completely to the tune of $3 billion.

So Rick Scott kept making arguments, some of them recycled in his hastily organized "press conference", (where he never takes questions). All Lies. Let's review:


LIE #1: Governor Voldemort claimed that cost overruns would put Floridians on the hook to fork over $3 billion in matching funds.


UN-F&^King-BELIEVABLE. The federal government has already put aside $2.4 billion in stimulus funds for Florida's portion of the national project. Worst case scenario would be $280 million, and the consortiums of companies set to bid on the line had indicated a willingness to put up their own money in return for a contract! In all, eight consortiums made up of international companies representing 11 countries had lined up to bid on the train that would have run from Orlando International Airport to downtown Tampa, with stops at the Orange County Convention Center, Walt Disney World and Lakeland.

Here's the other thing, the company chosen to build the train would have been contractually bound to cover any cost overruns in construction, as well as any operating deficits for up to 20 years! Companies had said they were willing to accept those terms!



LIE #2: Few would use it, and low ridership would have required state subsidies.

This one really pissed me off. Rick Scott compared the high-speed rail to Amtrak in certain cities. OF COURSE no one rides Amtrak! They don't own the damn railroads! In the most bass-ackward outdated arrangement, Amtrak has to work around the more profitable freight-carrying trains, and this means simple trips can take days and costs tons of money. Anyone with any knowledge would know this and to use that comparison to a dedicated HIGH SPEED RAIL LINE is blatantly misleading. But again, Scott is trying to make excuses.. not look at facts. (When he slammed the Amtrak ridership from Washington to Boston, PolitiFact Florida noted that an 7.15 million people rode regional rail lines in the Northeast last year.)


By the way, the bid documents mentioned in the debunk of LIE#1? They were being written to obligate the bid companies to cover operating losses due to low ridership. (Which again, they indicated they would agree to).



LIE #3: If the project was shut down, the state would have to return the $2.4 billion to Washington.


A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Transportation called him out on this lie. This issue is one that could have been negotiated... if Scott had ever even bothered to raise it with federal officials. Of course, if you've already made up your mind...

LIE #4: His phony concern about government spending and the deficit.


Hey Gov. Skeletor (and you stupid teabaggers who put him there): Rejecting these federal funds for transportation and infrastructure will NOT reduce the deficit one penny! The funds have already been allocated!! They are just going somewhere else....like wine country.

As far as waste goes, did I mention that we already spent $66 million on this project?


LIE #5: It's better to invest in our ports and expand our highways instead of rail.

First off... Ports? How the F*&K is that going to solve our congestion problem?! For when I travel from Orlando to Tampa taking a fucking canoe from the Atlantic to the Gulf? And you can bet that if Obama HAD offered to upgrade our ports with stimulus funds, this teabagger wouldn't have had any of it.

The highway argument has been used REPEATEDLY by anti-rail advocates, including the guber. In just about every op-ed by these jokers (most with ties to the auto or oil industry), they argued that we should expand I-4 instead.

Okay, here's the problem geniuses. Orlando to Tampa is 84 miles driven. According to figures by Rethuglican Congressman Mica: 73 miles of I-4 will cost $2.9 BILLION dollars (in 2000 dollars). So the entire amount we would receive wouldn't even cover it, and WE ARE GETTING NOTHING AT ALL from the feds to build an extra lane! That's kinda like someone offering to buy either your family or someone else's family a 4-bedroom house and willing to cover almost all the cost, but you turn it down because you want your own family to pay for a used mobile home that costs more. Savvy business man my ass.

PS... don't look for any investment in any transportation project anytime soon. The Florida Dept. of Transportation is rudderless because it is one of Scottie's botched appointments.

LIE #6: He would wait until the FDOT updated ridership and revenue projections -- scheduled for completion within two weeks.

No dice. He couldn't be bothered to wait for the report he said he was waiting on.

Tricky Ricky is basing all of these "facts" on information provided by a Glenn Beckian, Libertarian think tank--the "Reason Foundation", which is known for being anti-rail. (Several commenters pointed out that a certain Koch brother sits on the Board of Trustees.) He also received advice and information from the ever-so-slightly right-wing Heritage Foundation. (I get my own "facts" from Fox News, thank you very much.)

So to recap, he dismissed the entire project with NO ridership study, NO contruction bids, and not even consultation with the FL Senate or House! Yes they are wingnut, but they are none too pleased.

Sen. Thad Altman, R-Vier: "There's no rational reason at all not to allow that to happen -- unless you're afraid of what you might here. We might hear that this thing will work."

LIE #7: "Let's Get to Work!" He will create 700,000 jobs in 7 years.

Oooooooookay. In the short time he's been guber (one month), he is proposing to cut hundreds of state jobs, including teachers and those who serve the neediest among us. With today's announcment, you can add an estimated 48,000 jobs to the pot. These were desperately needed in a state where unemployment is a whopping 12% (and 20% in the construction industry).

Maybe dumbass meant to say LOSE 700,000 jobs in 4 years.

Barely ONE month in office, and already he is the most unpopular governor in our history. And this unilateral dismissal was so shocking, without even consulting his supposed GOP "allies" in the wingnut legislature, that he is being attacked by both the left AND the right on his sudden action. Not that it will make a difference.

And the saga continues.... One month down, 47 to go...

UPDATE: At least we have ONE legislator who is fighting for Florida jobs. It's the lone statewide Democrat: Senator Bill Nelson. He is working with several lawmakers, including the mayors of Tampa and Orlando, to see if he can do an end run around the governor. STOP and think about this for a second. A US Senator is doing the governor's job--working with local leaders to try to bring jobs and economic development to Florida--because our OWN governor is trying to take it away.

FL Teabag Governor Proposes Killing Education, Doubling His Office!

From the My Stupid State series:

When running for guber, Rick Scott repeatedly said on the campaing trail that he would NOT cut school spending.

He vowed over and over again that there would be no cuts, that he would keep the budget the same.

But our Lex Luther looking and acting governor lied. That's a big word to use, but its true.

If you live here in Central Florida, you know columnist Scott Maxwell. For the first time in his writing career, he said that he is forced to call someone a flat out LIAR. No surprise it would be Rick Scott.

I guess if you take the fifth 75 times, you get pretty good at it.

That bastard is proposing the deepest cuts in our state's history...and the overwhelming brunt of it is EDUCATION. THREE BILLION in education cut across the board: general revenue, state revenue, and per pupil funding.

BUT these cuts are really, really needed, says the GOP. Times are tough, and we all have to tighten our belts. (Unless you are the superrich, who received a desperately needed massive tax break on Yachts.)

Education bears the worst of it, but struggling agencies across the board are proposed to be cut: mostly those that cater to the most vulnerable. He also proposed cutting our already underfunded prisons, and practically abolishing the one toothless agency we have that regulates growth.

But you gotta look out for number one. There was ONE increase in ONE government agency that the governor is seeking to grow — the executive office of the governor. The budget would more than double and add almost 100 employees to his already bloated staff.

Yeah.. nice teabagger. Because if there is one thing our state can agree on, its that we need less education and more government spending for YOUR office.

Cripes! Our state is already in really BAD shape for education, and ranks next to the bottom on per pupil funding. But I guess that's the reason the conservatives want to keep it that way.

What better way to ensure we elect these losers than to keep our people stupid?

Teabaggers Get Their Wish. Madman Shoots Congresswoman.

After a year of teabagger candidates like Sharon Angle calling for "2nd amendment remedies", or another calling for armed revolution, or yet another politician/Fox News darling calling for violent overthrow, or Rep. King... you know what, just google this. There are too many instances for me to link.

Violent imagery such as painting a rifle scope bull's eye to "take down" Congresspeople you don't like (which Sarah took down all of the sudden) or calling for violent overthrow to a legion of nonthinking right-wing fanatics IS sort of like giving gas and a match to an arsonist and then saying you had nothing to do with it.

The Congresswoman's very own father said she was targeted by the teabaggers, and her office was vandalized by these nuts, and she and her family suffered from violent threats for quite some time.

I am happy she is still alive and hope this will make some in the GOP wakeup to the fanatics in their ranks. Maybe, just maybe, they might tone down the hate speech.

Maybe I expect too much.

Question for the Teabaggers...

Who was the last president to balance the budget?

And who was the last president to inherit a budget surplus and quickly turn us to deficits?

Final question...where the hell where you during the Bush administration?

It was that question that poured angry venom in my inbox from Teabaggers. I asked one if he thought Glenn Beck was a thoughtful intellectual...I got this reply...

By 2020 100% of axes collected will go to pay for Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and interest on the debt. How is Bush responsible for that? The problem is you have to go back decades and study history to find out why we are where we are. am no fan og George Bush and left the Republican party while he was president. Out long term unfunded liabilities are 130 trillion dollars and do you know the entire wealth of our country? 50 trillion! Make sense? Look at the entitlements that the government has taken over and every one of them is a case study in mismanagement and certain bankruptcy. And you want to give them the best health care system in the world! 52% of all medical discoveries come from where - the US. You are clamping down the free market and killing the system that improves the lives of everyone in the world. You have no problem with 2500 pages? No problem that it was voted on 24 hours after completed? No problem that it was not written by Congress? No problem that the CBO says it cannot even calculate the new govt jobs and offices created? No problem that Omama said the negotiations would be on span and it turned inot back room deals, lies and corruption. No problem that America did not want this? No problem that Nancy Pelosi said we have to pass the bill to see what is in it? No problem that the CBO already has corrected the cost projections? Every view your party hold is idiotic and bent on bringing down this country. I don't know how you do not see it, but you may not have much of a country left. An yes Glenn Beck is a brilliant man. You may want to try watching him instead of swallowing the lies you are being fed by a machine that has no answer for him. Take the red pill Neo!

·

Wow... so much insanity, so little time..

I replied:

I do listen to Beck, Do you?

Here is Goldline charlaton Glenn Beck WHINING about how awful our Health Care system is, calling it a "nightmare" just a few months before he decided there was money to be made as leader of the teabagger lemmings:


Thing is, friend, you could not have a MORE inefficient system of healthcare. Our government spends more per person than any other nation, yet we are the only industrialized nation that doesn't cover all of its citiZens. Thanks to Obama, we have a national health care policy that finally regulates the insurance industry and guarantees coverage without recision.

BY the way, the health care bill CUTS our deficit according to the CBO.

What I want to know is, where were you when the GOP rammed the Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage in 2003? Here's Forbes--that cost over $1 TRILLION dollars and was added completely to the deficit!! Unlike Obama, the GOP did not require it to be deficit neutral.

And not to confuse ideology with FACTS, but according to a USA Today analysis, tax bills last year were at their lowest levels since 1950!!!

George Bush's massive tax cuts for the wealthy are the single largest chunk of our structural budget deficit. If we let them expire for those making more than a quarter million, the budget deficit would instantly shrink by about 30%, or more than $300 billion dollars. But you guys oppose that...just as you oppose any regulation of Wall Street. Just like you oppose anything that could hurt the insurance company's obscene profits. For God's sakes, your right-leaning WSJ ADMITTED that the Democrats plan cuts taxes for the Middle Class...look at their chart.


You are being used, my friend. Take a good look at this picture before you respond:





Take the blue bill.

I have yet to get a response...

Teabaggers Rush in to Defend BP

I was reading through the comments in my last post and couldn't resist. A teabagger agrees that the big bad Obama is shaking down poor helpless BP by getting them to pay for their mess. Teabaggers are quite content letting the poor saps on the Gulf fight for decades in Court like the Exxon Valdez victims. What really got me going was his claim about restitution funds being unConstitutional (despite it being done in previous administrations, including the last one). I would like to address this joker myself.

Mr. Teabagger...Nobody but NOBODY thinks your klan are defenders of the Constitution except other teabaggers. If you were really "defenders", there would have been a peep out of you when the Bush administration spied on literally millions of people without warrants.

From 2006:

The Bush administration doesn't deny it has been spying on Americans - they brag about it. They're listening to our phone calls, reading our emails, and looking at our bank transactions. They're gathering databases about our medical records, what we charge on our credit cards, and where we travel.

When Democrats point out that this is illegal without a court order, Rove simply floods the airwaves with Republicans who say, "We're doing it to protect you!"

I got into an argument in late 2006 with local radio gadfly Bud Hedinger, a Beck wannabe wingnut who now fancies himself a teabagger, who told me that I shouldn't care if someone listens in on my phonecall "to Aunt Tilly". The teabaggers haven't actually read the Constitution, so let me tell them: Due Process, Free Speech, and Protections from Unlawful Search and Seizure are all in there.

Now these some people, who thought these actual violations were all okay under Bush, are outraged over Obama...a Constiutional law scholar who actually respects the document. But hey, Bush was a GOPer, not a scary, competent Black Man.


By the way, if you teabaggers were really sincere, you would be fighting for Wall Street reform.

Wall Street is the only place in America where SOCIALISM exists. When they make bad decisions, they got a massive bailout from Bush paid for by working class stiffs.

If you recall, the Tea Parties were originally formed to protest the bailouts.

So, no doubt you will take this opportunity of course to launch your own protest of the socialist TARP money, the easy credit, the lack of regulation, the wild risk taking and the excessive bonuses paid with taxpayer money?

Righhht... You aren't going to do anything.

Honestly, I feel sorry for you. You are a dupe. You think you are fiercely independent when in fact you are part of the most easily manipulated movement in history. All that anger toward the power establishment and what happened? YOU WERE USED by that same establishment to fight against health care reform and to try to protect the health insurance companies.

Sucker.

Now, when it's time to fight the financial companies, where are the teabaggers??

Nowhere to be found. Why? Because FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity didn't organize any bus rides to Wall Street. They didn't manufacture the outrage they did in protecting the health care companies. They used the Tea Party protestors for their own purposes and then left them on the side of the road, only to be picked up again when they are needed in November.


You are never, ever going to protest Wall Street because you guys are ignorant dupes being led by the nose by your corporate overlords.

And now you are fighting tooth and nail for BP because Rush and other of your handlers told you to.

Your handlers protect, deregulate, and allow corporations to move jobs out of the country and avoid taxes. It’s not surprising to see teabaggers following orders and rushing in to defend BP and absolve them of all liability. It is difficult to sit and watch oil pollute beaches and cook animals alive while ‘sorry’ Republicans defend BP, but Boehner and your hero, Joe Barton, have received millions from Big Oil, so you do as your told.

Wake up. Your whole movement is a sad joke being played on its own members.

Excellent Question! Where ARE the teabagger protests for Wall Street Reform?

Excellent Question that was asked today.

Soo where are the signs of GOP leader Mitch McConnell with a Hitler mustache trying to thwart an END to taxpayer bailouts??

Where are the signs demanding the GOP fights to end the OUTRAGEOUS multi-million dollar bonuses to incompetent and corrupt executives using TAXPAYER monies???

Nowhere. Because the teabaggers are nothing but usable shills who have no corporate backing, and no free bus rides to help fight save the profits of a big industry. They will fall by the wayside and sit on their hands while BIG GOVERNMENT continues to give taxpayer subsidies to these failures. If there is any example of socialism in this country, it's Wall Street!

If they succeed, they keep their monies. If they fail, WE bail them out snd subsidize their lifestyle that they have grown acccustomed to. That, my friends, is the worst kind of socialism. (Whereas if we fail, it's capitalism so don't ask for a handout buddy!!)

Where are all you costumed freaks with your misspelled agitated signs??

thought so...

Counter on Facebook: Americans Against Teabags

I can't stand the hypocricy.

Where were the Tea Party Conservatives when george W. completely erased the budget surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton?

He first went on a drunken spending spree in healthcare (Medicare Part D), which was funded ENTIRELY by deficit spending and cost over a trillion dollars. Of course, the new healthcare working its way through is deficit neutral, AND costs less.

Then there is the giant welfare state W. had in Iraq. We left money in giant pallets that disappeared. We spent hundreds of billions building roads, bridges, schools, etc. But now that Obama wants to spend a fraction of that amount to build our OWN crumbling infrastructure, the teabags are screaming socialism. Nice.

The tax giveaways to Big Oil, Bill Polluters, and the super wealthy? All fine and dandy in GOP land. Helping people save thier jobs, homes, and retirement? That calls for massive protests in DC baby. (And the Metro better be up and running for that protest--not that we support public transportation).

PS--the bailouts you teabaggers hate? Started by W. And he demanded NO transparency as to what was to be done with the money. Thankfully, by then even the cowards in Congress had enough rolling over and put in a very little oversight--(sadly, that was as much standing up as we saw during the dark years).

I invite you to join the group. I think it's good to let people know there is an opposition to something that is really so stupid and silly.

Americans Against Teabags