Carl Hiaasen: Florida voters won’t be fooled again — or will we?

[seafan]

One of our iconic Florida writers, Carl Hiaasen, in the Miami Herald on November 3, 2012, on the eleven deceptive constitutional amendments loading up the Florida ballot, put there by the GOP-controlled Legislature:

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The most deceptive is Amendment 8, which is fraudulenty captioned “Religious Freedom.” If passed, it would open the door to taxpayer funding of private religious schools and institutions, a dangerous mixing of church and state that has been prohibited here for 126 years. ..... Amendment 8 was concocted by Republican lawmakers who support a student-voucher system that would benefit private schools and church schools while bleeding critical funds from state education revenues.

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Jeb Bush has been pushing to destroy the legal separation of church and state for years. We haven't forgotten his role in crafting this deceitful amendment, and directing the GOP Legislature from the shadows to force it onto the ballot yet again in 2012.




Hiaasen:

Another terrible ballot measure is Amendment 6, an anti-abortion manifesto that would punch holes in the privacy clause in Florida’s Constitution. If anything deserves a legal shield of privacy, it’s a woman’s personal and often difficult choices about birth planning.

Christian conservatives in the Legislature are exasperated because their attempts to restrict abortions have stalled in the courts because of the privacy issue. Their solution is to rewrite the Constitution to exclude abortion-related matters from that protection.

By weakening privacy rights, Amendment 6 would set the stage for politicians to interfere in a broad range of medical and family decisions in which they should have no say, no influence, no presence whatsoever.

Who can forget their disgraceful theatrics during the Terri Schiavo case?

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We certainly haven't forgotten that whole sorry mess, which was entirely a Jeb Bush-led debacle.


The NY Times was disgusted with the entire disgraceful episode and said so at the time.

And Jeb Bush was so incensed, mind you, that he fired off a warlike editorial back at the Times, defending his egregious actions.


Problem was, there WAS no defense for this opportunistic, nakedly partisan political grandstanding, at the expense of a private citizen, her husband and family. Jeb never got over the public rejection by the NY Times, apparently.



Hiaasen:

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To demonstrate their contempt for taxes, lawmakers have also larded the ballot with several amendments that would amount to a mugging of city and county governments.

Among them is Amendment 3 ...... Amendment 4 is even worse than Amendment 3, a gift to wealthy owners of second homes in Florida. It would cut by half the cap on property-tax assessments for non-homesteaded properties, at a projected cost to city and county governments of between $600 million and $1 billion over the first three years.

This should bother you only if you care about your local police and fire protection, ambulance service, city parks. You know, the little stuff.

Also, Amendment 5, which would give legislators ultimate power over Florida's judiciary--- to require Senate confirmation of all Supreme Court Justices; allowing a simple majority vote in the legislature to change procedural rules for the courts; and to allow the House Speaker access to the confidential files of the Judicial Nominating Commission. Nothing like polluting the state court system by power-hungry Republicans. You see, after the past 14 years in power, the current GOP-dominated legislature is assuming they will maintain permanent power over Florida's government.


The people have the power to change that. Today. November 6, 2012.



Hiaasen:

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All these rotten amendments were written and captioned for the ballot in ways to appear harmless and even reformist, but they aren’t.

And they won’t pass unless 60 percent of Florida’s voters are fooled.

Will Florida be fooled again?

[Enthusiast]

1. I do love Carl Hiaasen.

He is the bestest!

Republicans? The worst.