Can't wail to read Gipper's obfuscated right wing rag response to how it's all the liberal left's fault that Red Tide is killing our fish and our tourism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/18/red-tide-rick-has-got-go-protesters-run-florida-governor-out-campaign-rally/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.62ad32896655
Dave, we all know it's because of Trump and his stand on climate change. And if no one gets the message some liberal bitch will claim that years ago while Trump was raping her he told her to use red Tide to wash herself.
The red tide on the west coast and the blue-green algae on the easy coast are naturally occurring. What makes it a crisis is the addition to the mix of chemicals, fertilizers and human and animal waste. The water flows south from Kissimmee to Lake O. Along the way it pick up all the additives from farms, golf courses and septic fields. It reaches Lake O and just mixes together and sits there like the world largest sewage treatment plant. Add the rainy season and the heat and you have the perfect culture for creating these ecological disasters. Lake O used to drain due south in The Everglades but Big Sugar bought the land and cut that route off. When the water level of the Lake exceeds a certain level they drain it west and east through Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers and canal systems. It then spread the toxic mix from coast to coast. On my side ( east ) it has killed the oyster beds, the sea grass, the Queen conch and many fish and birds. The water related business industry has been pretty much destroyed as well and now domestic pets are dying and people by large numbers near the water are getting sick with respiratory distress. The water in the St Lucie River is coffee brown as is the ocean from Jensen Beach south to Jupiter. Public swimming has been closed for at least two months. On the west coast the red tide stretches from Naples north to Panama Beach. Massive fish kills have covered many beaches including porpoises , manatees and mahi. This started in June and there is no end in sight. On the east coast congressman Brian Mast has gotten a spending bill through the House for emergency measures but it sits in the Senate without a vote while they fight over a 35 year old allegation of a guy getting fresh at a high school party.
Rick Scott ( AKA Red Tide Rick ) after a couple of years in office took 700 million dollars out of the state's water management budget which since has been reduced to a 400 million dolllar reduction. That's the GOP way.... cut and **** with environmental protection and water management in order to satisfy the hard right base who believe any government expenditure is wasteful or useless and that all big money corporations are to be trusted with our environment. Well.... this is the kind of **** you wind up with when you go that route. Just cancelled an outing for tomorrow with a bunch of friends going out to Anclote Key because of red tide reports and the nearby beaches are a virtual ghost town with good hard working people losing big time tourist dollars from their business. But yeah.... let's all just trust Red Tide Rick and big business to spend the dollars necessary to keep this naturally occurring phenomenon in check and manageable. And if he had 4 more years which I'm sure he will never see at this point in his wretched tenure as US president Trump would do the same kind of disfavor to the country and probably already has in cutting the teeth and operating budget out of the nation's EPA.
OK,. In your head this is the sole responsibility of Rick Scott and "big business" in spite of all the evidence and science to the contrary. So, given that you have a handle on this situation, can you spell out exactly what you would do to solve these problems once and for all if you had unlimited funds to work with?
George as you say it occurs naturally but Big Sugar in the Everglades has made it extreme by robbing nature of the ability to make corrections. Pulling 700 million dolllars out of the water management budget surely adds to a lack of planning and management of the problem.....and the proper ability to respond to the disaster.... wouldn't you think? I dunno maybe if you get more cash flow into your business you just piss it away.... don't make improvements in your operations and resolve problems.... Hell maybe you do those things with magic and incantations..... money doesn't really matter to you..... :shock:
We are not talking about my business. I just gave you a blank check. What would you do to alleviate these problems?
OK here's my obfuscated right wing rag on your OP. Despite the steadfast belief that every problem can be solved if enough money it thrown away on it, that is just not so. Let's start with a biggie. For the past half century we saw the Left's War on Poverty piss away 22 TRILLION dollars on programs that did nothing to eradicate poverty but did succeed in destroying the fabric of black families in America. In 1965 25% of black children were born into one parent households. Today that number is over 70%. https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/the-war-poverty-after-50-years We've had a War on drugs for decades. We've spent billions and yet today, addiction is perhaps more of a scourge on our society that it ever was. We've seen the same misguided belief applied to education. A perfect example occurred in Kansas City where a liberal Federal Judge decided that he was going to usurp the legislative branch there and order taxes on property raised by 150% and a 1.5% surtax added to the income tax. Despite two billions dollars spent, despite KC becoming the national leader in spending per student, educational achievement by minorities did not improve at all. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/americas-most-costly-educational-failure As a sidebar we have a Democratic candidate for governor who says he'll improve our state's educational system by paying teachers more money. Naturally he's getting big financial support from teacher's unions but how will this improve education? Well if he said by paying higher wages we can get rid of those inept educators we have and get better ones he'd get no support from current teachers. So, he must be saying that if we pay these bad teachers more money they'll magically become better teachers. It ain't gonna happen. So Dave just because money was cut from some state agencies doesn't mean that there was any impact on the Red Tide problem. Of course if one believes that all problems can be solved by throwing money at them than you'll believe that Scott is complicit in the Red Tide just as Trump is complicit in hurricanes. Delusion.
:idea: :arrow: The purpose of those richly funded programs was not to solve problems. The purpose was to use tax money to buy votes for the Democratic Party.
I'm not a water management expert on Florida by any means but common sense says if you take 700 million from it's budget that sends a message that it's teeth have been dulled and more bad things are available to get away with. This blind trust that the consevative right has adopted over the last thirty years that if you leave bloodthirsty money hoarders alone to do their dirty deeds then everyone will benefit including the environment is a ludicrous.... absurd and dangerous philosophy.
The solution to the problem is a long term one. The problem has been developing over decades, long before Rick Scott. His priorities may have been off...I will grant you that...but Bill Nelson hasn't done much for the problem either and a lot of the problem lies with the feds (in the form of the Army Engineers)...but then again, what are they supposed to do? They have the water and they have to get rid of it. The decision to dike up the lake and sugar farm the land south of it was made decades ago. There are plans drawn up to release more water to the south. There are plans drawn up to reduce the land that is farmed to the south. Money was voted for this purpose by the voters and the legislature essentially stole that money for other purposes. I believe that Gov. Scott (without all of Dave's usual hyperbole) did not fight that and he could have. They have to get back to those plans...they have to work with the folks in agriculture to come up with ways to decrease the agricultural run-off, just as we need to do that in Ohio. They need to look at golf course and residential fertilizing and run off. They need to look at reclaiming or treating storm sewer runoff. We are all to blame in some ways...we happily play golf on the fertilized courses...we water and fertilize our lawns. We eat the harvested citrus and vegetables and meat and we want the prices to be low. What does not help is Dems blaming Reps and vice-versa and state blaming feds and vice-versa. Hopefully the wake-up call has been served. As a conservative, I am not in favor of government regulation...but I am a fan of clean water and I think the bell has rung.
Great post Stu.... I agree. There are many many more golf courses and housing developments down in the Everglades now than 40 or 50 years ago and I'm sure Big farm business has managed to get more land also to farm and fertilize. The next governor of Florida needs not to get on a pulpit and declare for his constituents that he is a spendthrift.... no agency is going forward without cuts... cut this.. cut that ( teachers included ).... and welcome to any big business that wants to further screw up the state's ecosystem.
As you all know I'm one of the farming culprits but absolutely agree that changes need to happen. To calm Dave down just a tad it's so easy to label everything BIG FARMING but in actuality there are only a handful of large corporate farms, most are families that are incorporated but have 4-5 employees. Not your scary media driven examples that portray an uncaring industry but parents and the kids running their expensive investments. I don't have the link at the moment but the Ft.Myers News Press did a nice expose on the whole red tide, algae epidemic and found that from water sampling only 30% of the water running out the West Coast and East Coast originated from Lake Okeechobee. The other 70% of the water indicated it was from the Orlando area and carried down the Kissimmee River.. And If I had to make a bold guess it's hard to vilify Mickey Mouse and the growing area surrounding it..
I dunno...it's complex. I know a lot of the Orlando area drains out through the St. John's River (a beautiful river, BTW)...and it looks to me like the Kissimmee River starts way south of Orlando...and at any rate the Kissimmee drains into Lake O...so the water of Lake O flowing out the wrong way still comes into play...no matter where it all came from. I read somewhere that all the washed in nutrients settled into the bottom sludge of Lake O, and it was all stirred up by Hurricane Irma last year thus increasing the pollutants escaping out to the east and west.
Lots of theories and ideas.... but it's pretty clear it's a horrible move to cut instead of investing captital and human resources in a massive effort to clean this crap up. Florida's economy IS tourism. You want to see our personal taxes go up just wait and see what happens when the tourists stay away in droves because of what they hear about our toxic beaches. And that's not hyperbole because it is what is happening right now on the SW coast from Pinellas county on down. To arbitrarily declare that environmental control and investment is not important to Florida as Scott did.... and to the United States as Trump has done... is asking for a poisoned China like lifestyle.
Provincial as always Dave. Coal is the economy for W. Va., and large parts of Ky. and Pa. but that didn't stop Obama from destroying their economy in the name of the environment. Regulations up the ass crippled or destroyed many economies in the name of environmentalism. Oh but when it's Florida Dave boy is outraged. Farms in Cal. have been burned out for lack of water by environmentalists. Pipelines to develop our energy production were wrongfully denied. No surprise that the same guy who whined about the collapse of the economy a decade ago now whines about the environment when the economy is booming. Always has to rant about the Republican president. Never fails.
Good Lord Dave does it all have to be a political jab...? Not just you but the entire non-ending cycle of blaming each other gets old rather fast. Heck let’s just start the civil war we keep pushing for and get it over, so many are ready to push it to the edge. Or we can acknowledge the issue and use the political malice we feel for one another to forge the idea that we are stronger together in spite of our differences. I’ve farmed for many years gents and realize changes are coming for all of us wether it’s a golf course, farm field or residential dwelling. I’ve been answering questions pertaining to water quality for months from both the University of Florida and it’s Agriculture departments and the Department of Florida Agriculture. This is the precursor to imminent restrictions concerning what rolls out or leaches from our property. As you mentioned Dave Florida is all about tourism as it’s the destination point of many. And we all have the responsibility who live here to do our part, even if we bitch about it’s inconvenience to our daily lives.. Side note: Recently traveled through Maine and into Canada for an extended vacation. As it was such a new experience to me (taking a vacation and visiting a new area) I asked a lot of questions to those from the area and everyone down to the barber and waitress bringing our meal traveled to Florida at least once a year. And I mean everyone from Prince Edward Island to in the woods in Maine. I was humbled at how we are a key destination point for so many people.
So true Ralph. I lived at Clearwater Beach for two months when I moved down 9 years ago and met people from all over the world then. A few days in Miami and you really get the feel for how international that city is and of course there's the tourist mecca of Orlando. So many people have jobs here in Florida tied to tourism and when tourism takes a hit here so do those jobs. I would think THE number one priority of those in state government here in Florida would be to protect the great resources the state offers to help bring those tourists in. Quite an oversight and misguided policy over the past 8 years from Tallahassee.