What Happens With Two New Seats?

Since I have harped non-stop on how important redistricting is going to be this year, I can't ignore the revelation Florida will pick up two new Congressional seats based on the census numbers.

The big focus has been on how this affects the Presidential election, but as far as Florida is concerned, we were the biggest swing state before and we're the biggest swing state now. The big change is we are now effectively the same size as New York in the electoral college with 29 votes.

I actually think the impact on our Congressional delegation has gotten short shrift. The fact that Florida will have as many House members as New York is hugely important. And when the Legislature convenes to debate redistricting, it will be the all-consuming news story.

What to watch for? Who wants to go to Congress. In 2002, then state Sen. Pro Tempore Ginny Brown-Waite wanted to go to Congress, so the Legislature redrew Karen Thurman's district to force a turnover. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris also wanted a trip to D.C., so an open seat was redrawn around her home base so that she was guaranteed a ticket.

Perhaps most germaine to this conversation, though, is that state House Speaker Tom Feeney and state Sen. Mario Diaz-Balart had two brand new seats drawn for them in districts where no Democrat could beat them.

A decade later, I suppose it is quite ironic none of these lawmakers still hold those seats. But only Feeney lost re-election, and that only lasted one cycle. When the new Congress convenes and Sandy Adams gets sworn in, each of these tinkered seats will have a Republican representative.

Now Fair Districts or not, I do not personally think there is any way to stop the two new seats being drawn by the Legislature from becoming Republican seats. But I do hope the new amendment prevents tinkering with any of our seats. We have so few seats at this point, the GOP may really have to go out of its way to find a pickup. But our Democratic lawmakers do need to be vigilant on this.

I think the think to watch in the next year is who expresses interest in Washington. I have mentioned before that while state Senate President Mike Haridopolos wants to run for Senate, he may decide it is easier to create a custom seat. Lots of term-limited lawmakers are likely dreaming of Washington at this point in their careers.

The other thing to watch, of course, is the half dozen freshman GOP lawmakers who will have to run for re-election. How important will it be to lawmakers to keep these seats? I suspect in a less Republican-friendly environment that several, notably Dan Webster, Dennis Ross and David Rivera, would not have been elected.

How badly does the Legislature want to protect these new lawmakers? I suspect with Webster, quite a bit. They don't want this seat slipping from their hands again, and it is a seat that Obama won as it drawn right now. I don't know where Ross and Rivera fall on their priority list, but I believe Rivera has the potential to be the biggest embarrassment for the Republican caucus in Washington because his financial disclosure issues.

Anyhow, I believe we need to write the two new seats off, but it will be vitally important we make sure no shenanigans go on beyond that.

WikiLeaks Offers Info on Cuba

All the WikiLeaks attention so far has been on Afghanistan, but apparently there is some serious information about Cuba in the dump as well. The Miami Herald, relying heavily on Spain's El Pais, reports that Raul Castro apparently wanted to open secret talks in 2009, but that the administration seems more interested in waiting the Castro regime out and dealing with the next generation of Cubans.

Sadly, this likely means the administration is satisfied with the status quo regardless of any actions Raul Castro is willing to take, but it also shows an envisioned future of open relations with Cuba.

But the most important part of the glimpse at the cables is understanding the realistic philosophies regarding Cuban relations. As I have noted before, the political posturing around Cuba has always been far to catered for extremists within a politically-active population of Castro-haters in South Florida.

The cables seem to show the biggest motivation for limiting communication channels between the White House and the Castros is that the ruling family is becoming increasingly irrelevant within Cuba. That is valuable information, apparently based on ground assessments and revelations that the younger blogger class on the island is increasing filled with dissent. While I personally wish the State department would more earnestly begin good faith talks about ending the embargo, there does seem to be interest in changing the status quo. That seemed to be upheld by further reporting beyond the WikiLeaks dump.

From the Herald:
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State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday that U.S. and Cuban diplomats are in touch routinely, but ``a broader, higher-level dialogue . . . will only be feasible once we see real change in Cuba. . . . We have not seen anything approaching fundamental change.''

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/17/1977391/cuba-sought-secret-channel-to.html#ixzz18OM96txz
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Crowley, by the end of his statement, falls back onto the stick-in-the-mud rhetoric that every White House since Kennedy has chosen to adopt, but his words are not inconsistent with cables which suggest that "real change" may be on its way within the population of regular Cubans rather than the ruling class.

The documents seem to indicate an irritation on the part of the administration that rulers in Cuba only want to open U.S. talks so that U.S. aid can start coming to the island. This is the first time such a frank assessment has come to public light, and while it seems a bit petty, it also offers a genuine justification for the diplomatic recalcitrance that the administration has held onto.

The cables also indicate that the message mostly likely to spur change within Cuba is not a promise of improvements on the human rights front, the main focus of Cuban dissidents in the U.S., but on the opportunities for personal prosperity which come with open travel and communication with the outside world. Turns out they aren't that different from normal Americans, and are most easily wooed with a chance to get rich quick.

I would like to see what Marco Rubio, Mario Diaz-Balart, David Rivera and Bill Nelson have to say about these cables. I hope this leads to something constructive. It may lead to more brutish political statements intended to appease our own older generation Cuban critics. But I hope the revelations made public in these cables encourages a more honest conversation on how to move forward with Cuba.

Florida's Health Care Challenge

I wrote about the ongoing litigation nationwide a few days ago, but there is a much better write-up specific to Bill McCollum's wrong-headed challenge of ObamaCare up at the Florida Progressive Coalition.

The post does a great job of showing the special issues which are unique to McCollum's suit and which threaten the health coverage of millions in Florida.

Written by dantilson:

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What he’s referring to is the fact that roughly half of the 32 million uninsured Americans to be covered by the new law will be covered by the federal-state Medicaid program, through very moderate expansion in its eligibility requirements. Regarding poverty issues in Florida, note that 2.7-million citizens, or roughly 1 in 7 people, are living under the poverty level. Florida has had the largest increase in that statistic of any state in the country since 2007. Ron Pollack, Executive Director of the national advocacy organization, Families USA, had a few other interesting facts to share with reporters in today’s conference call:

• To qualify for Medicaid coverage currently in FL, a 3-person family (which must include at least one dependant child) cannot have a combined annual income of more than $9,700.
• An individual with no dependant children cannot currently qualify for FL Medicaid coverage, regardless of income.
• For years 2014, 2015, and 2016, the federal government will pick up 100% of the cost of every one of the state’s newly eligible Medicaid recipients who quallify as a result of the new rules. In following years, Florida will never have to pick up more than a dime out of every dollar in those costs, and there will be a gradual rise to that cap.

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There is much more if you follow the link, which you should.

Vouchers, the Republican's Public Option

As people in the last year tried to label the public option as a socialist plot, it struck me that the system the plan was most comparable too was not British health care, Canadian health care or Nazi health care, but Jeb Bush's plan for educational vouchers. Now that Rick Scott is planning to double-down on the education policy, I think it might be worth asking why the GOP is fine with using tax dollars for private education, but considers doing the same to fund health care for sick people is some type of Bolshevik plot.

First, a short primer on Bush vouchers. The A-plus plan never went all-in on vouchers, but said that children at consistently underperforming schools should be eligible to take government vouchers and attend private schools. As the link above notes, this ran into some church-state issues, though frankly, I think there were much bigger problems with the plan.

Now, the public option. As imagined by Obama and company, the government would require everyone to get insurance, the same way all children are mandated to go to school. If there was no insurance available through work or other reasonable means, then a citizen could enroll in a public insurance program. There was never anything imagined in the legislation about health providers working for the government, as they do in the UK, so the money for health care would be directed to private doctors and other providers.

(I realize these are very simplified explanations of both A-plus vouchers and the public option. Please don't throw minutia at me. I am talking about the basic political philosophies here.)

Now, does anyone see the similarities? For those who are underserved by the current status quo, the government will step in and empower a citizen with the funding to go seek a private alternative to solve their problems. The biggest difference I see is that Bush's education plan actually sought to take money away from schools to pay for vouchers, and nobody important in Washington has to backbone to push a system which takes anything away from private insurance companies.

I can tell you reasons why I think the public option is a reasonable policy in lieu of universal healthcare (guaranteeing all citizens have coverage without letting the insurance giants screw us over) and reasons why I don't think much of vouchers (the inequity of using tax dollars to send some children to private school where other children pay and the problems with not holding private schools to the same standards even though they begin receiving public funds).

But at a time when the right is calling insurance mandates "unconstitutional" and the public option "socialism," I wonder why requiring all children to go to school is not viewed as some kind of tyranny, and why setting up a program that diverts tax money into the hands of private sector education providers isn't viewed as some sort of bailout.

According to Mother Jones, Rick Scott is upping the ante and suggesting vouchers be available to a broader range of people. Call is universal education care.

The publication says he plans to give $5,500 vouchers for people to use for public, private, charter or virtual outlets, and even if parents can afford to send their kids to private school anyway, they can just use that money to buy a new printer at their house. I guess this is how Republicans deal with inequity issues.

There are so many reasons I see why this is bad policy from a liberal progressive perspective. But given the absolute derangement about the public option, I don't understand how the modern conservative can stand for this type of "reform" in education without being lambasted as some hind of Soviet operative breaking into their ranks. I mean, why not just have the government pay people for going to school? Why not force teachers at private institutions to get their checks signed by the state?

But I guess this is the socialist public option that Republicans can get behind.

In Defense of Sink

I find it curious that Chuck Todd would focus so much on Florida this year, but take serious exception to his naming Alex Sink the worst candidate of the 2010 election cycle.

Certainly, Sink made some missteps, most notably in trying to force Bud Chiles out of the primary. That contest could have raised her profile and aired all dirty laundry early rather than fighting off attacks from Rick Scott in October.

But in general, I think Sink ran an outstanding campaign. Her biggest problem was a GOP tide that seemed to sweep the nation, something which led to Democratic losses in every statewide contest and in every Congressional race which was at all competitive. Why should Sink take all the heat for that loss?

Todd's explanation, via the Palm Beach Post:
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"You lost to a guy who defrauded Medicare, in Florida! Okay? More people on Medicare in Florida than maybe any other state."
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But Todd's criticisms seem aimed exclusively at Scott's weaknesses as a candidate, not in the way in which Sink ran her campaign, or in her own qualifications for governor. Why wasn't Bill McCollum also included on the list today, then? He, after all, couldn't even convince party regulars to get him through the Republican primary against Scott.

The reason Rick Scott won is because of money. Plain and simple. Those senior voters Todd seems to allude to, many of whom retired her with amazing pensions and who have no need for Medicare, are more affected by television advertising. They don't sift through the blogs all day. They don't spend all their time personally researching candidate's backgrounds. They allow the war to be waged during commercial breaks during golf tourneys and soap operas.

Sink certainly devoted an enormous amount of advertising to exposing that record. I think few voters were left unaware come November that Rick Scott has pled the fifth 75 times.

The race was up and down all cycle. In early October, Scott was riding momentum from a primary win pretty strong. But in the following weeks, Sink pulled ahead. It wasn't until the GOP machine, focused on retaking the House of representatives, started to get into gear that a wave took the nation, and the state.

That seemed to swallow campaigns which otherwise had the upper-hand. Ron Klein was leading in most polls until the last few weeks. Joe Garcia once held a strong edge over David Rivera. Yet they both got trounced on Election Day.

Remember, Alex Sink's loss was the closest of any contested race in Florida that held any national significance. She fought off the impending GOP wave better than any other politician in Florida. It just wasn't enough. She was no Harry Reid, but she didn't run a poor campaign either.

Bring Back the Public Option

A judge in Virginia has ruled ObamaCare, or rather the insurance mandate, unconstitutional.

Now, I'm no constitutional law expert, so I will leave the fine print to other bloggers on the left and right. But from what I gather, the biggest problem with the provision, according to this Bush-appointed federal judge, is that the mandate serves as a punishment for failing to buy health insurance.

To me, the solution seems pretty clear: Bring back the public option. It was really a travesty when the Obama administration was willing to negotiate that out, and a telling sign of what the GOP's real agenda was that eliminating a provision guaranteeing access to health care for poor people while doing so little to knock the mandate out.

But having a government-provided alternative to private insurance would, it seems to me, remove the punitive nature of a mandate for inactivity.

Even better idea? Universal health care available to all citizens, not just veterans and seniors.

Anyhow, I guess this ruling will fuel Pam Bondi's efforts to continue Bill McCollum's wrong-headed Florida lawsuit. But none of this matters until the Supremes rule, and even then, these provisions don't go into effect until 2014. That gives the right some extra time to argue why, proponents of personal responsibility that they are, people shouldn't have to have health insurance at all, and that people can already take their kids to the emergency room.

Alex Sink and Progress on Sexism

Something struck me the other day as I was contemplating the governor's race this year. So many reasons have been brought up to suggest exactly why we lost, but the absence of one reason shows me there is at least one culture war we won. I have heard nobody, not one person, suggest the reason Alex Sink lost is that she was a woman.

Is sexism dead? I think it's a little too soon for that conclusion. But consider that just two years ago, it was totally acceptable to attack Hillary Clinton on totally sexist grounds.

Rick Scott called Sink a debate cheater, an SBA screw-up, and an Obama clone. But not once can I recall him using gender-derogatory language, and I can't find it on Google either.

This seems to me a pretty big accomplishment after such a sexism-tinged election just two-and-a-half years ago. And sure, our candidate kind of had a guy's name, but this was a very high-profile race, and one that was a real squeaker.

So the fact it was not considered fair game to attack her based on gender, and as far as I can tell no one in the Scott camp even considered doing it, I think some pretty good stuff was accomplished this year.