Jeb Lund posted:

You might have missed it, but Florida has solved climate change. Our state, with 1,300 miles of coastline and a mean elevation of 100 feet, did not, however, limit greenhouse emissions. Instead, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), under Republican governor Rick Scott, forbade employees from using terms like “climate change,” “global warming” or “sea-level rise”. They’re all gone now. You’re welcome, by the way.

It’s pointless to call linguistic distortions of reality like this Orwellian: people tune you out when you use that word and, besides, Big Brother at least had wit. These are just the foot-stamping insistent lies of intellectual toddlers on the grift. It is “nuh-uh” as public policy. This is an elected official saying, “I put a bag over your head, so that means now I’m invisible” and then going out looting. Expect to see it soon wherever you live.

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting broke the news on Sunday, stating that the prohibition on the terms “climate change,” “global warming” and “sea-level rise” went into effect after Scott’s inauguration. Former DEP counsel Christopher Byrd and five other former employees stated that the policy was unwritten and “distributed verbally”. Even when working on projects with people outside their department, employees had to scrub reports of any mention of the terms and, when necessary, replace them with euphemisms. For instance, “Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding’” – like your high-rise atop the San Andreas fault features an “increased likelihood of intermittent wobbliness”.

The unwritten nature of the rule was perfect for Scott, who issued a non-denial denial when pressed by reporters in Tallahassee. When it comes to the tough questions, Scott’s happy to plead ignorance or claim he wasn’t there at the time. The same guy who abused his Fifth Amendment privilege a whopping 75 times before his company was assessed $1.7b in fines for Medicare and Medicaid fraud knows the value of not having to defend a policy that “doesn’t exist” (just as much as climate change “doesn’t exist”).

Making the science invisible is a much better plan than the current Republican strategy of foregoing all policy decisions by pretending to be too stupid to understand science. Scott already tried the “I’m not a scientist!” excuse anyway, and for his troubles had to entertain a clutch of scientists in Tallahassee trying to explain climate change to him. He gave them a 30-minute limit, spent nearly half of it on chit-chat, stonefaced through the remainder and then bolted.

Claiming that you’re not a scientist trips you up when you do other science-based things with the same tools. For instance: Scott’s environmental policies read like a textbook version of regulatory capture, slashing budgets while staffing agencies with developers and their lawyers. Environmental regulation enforcement dropped by two-thirds while DEP staffers were given bonuses for accelerating permitting for development. Meanwhile, Scott capped environmental penalties for Big Sugar and fought the federal government on clean-water standards. Homeboy made scientific decisions like he was slogging through the ‘Glades in hip-waders, dipping litmus paper in graduated cylinders, testing for phosphate runoff and not finding nearly enough.

The contradiction between not being educated enough to understand science, but being smarmy enough to deregulate in the face of it, only emphasize how political his decisions are, because “I’m not a scientist” only works on voters if they think you are categorically an idiot.

Unfortunately, Scott has a history of being a political animal who repeatedly seeks to disappear the problematic. For example, revelations of his “climate change”-as-a-word denialism came just weeks after Scott possibly illegally met with cabinet members over the dismissal of the nearly-universally praised Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey. Bailey charged that Scott’s office demanded his resignation after Bailey refused to: falsely tie a Clerk of Court to an ongoing criminal investigation; expedite a criminal investigation of a Scott appointee; allow FDLE vehicles to be used for Scott’s 2014 campaign events; and help write Scott’s law-enforcement platform for the campaign. When asked to rebut Bailey’s charges, Scott replied, “The facts are the facts and I’ve given you the facts.” Every word of that statement that’s not an article or a conjunction is meaningless. At least he’s consistent.

Leaving aside Scott’s propensity for burner phones, private emails and blind trusts, his administration’s record for attempting to “disappear” problems impacts non-Floridians more than they realize. Scott’s budget-balancing, for instance, sought to reduce costs by subjecting welfare applicants and government employees to mandatory drug tests. This gambit tanked when Florida spent nearly $400,000 in legal fees failing to defend the law and only nabbed 2.6% of welfare applicants in a state with a population-wide drug use rate of 8%. Still, the state had to reimburse the 97.4% of applicants who passed – at a rate of $30 per test – which, rounding up, worked out to a projected whopping $100,000 total in annual savings on welfare payouts. Whether the mandatory tests benefitted any of Scott’s friends in his former health care business, or any health care businesses in which he is currently invested (through those blind trusts!) or directly benefited the Solantic Corporation, which he previously owned and temporarily transferred into a revocable trust in his wife’s name, is anyone’s guess. What is certain is that Republicans in 12 other states think that mandatory drug tests for welfare applicants are a great idea.

That’s the problem with Weird Florida jokes: like the old Molly Ivins line about George W Bush and Texas, if it failed here, why not try it on the rest of the nation? “I’m not a scientist!” is a grifter idiot’s special plea that works even better when the government’s policies recognize nothing at all like science. North Carolina, Louisiana and Tennessee have all, to a certain extent, tried to solve climate change by either officially obfuscating it or penalizing the act of not ignoring it. In a modern Republican Party increasingly not only impervious to fact but outright hostile toward it, that’s an idea that travels well. And if refusing to use the words “climate change” is enough to politically erase a global phenomenon guaranteed to drown Florida’s most populous city, then who knows who or what else won’t exist next?

HenryKrinkle posted:

tpaine posted:

where do you stand on the issue goat

i am strongly in favor of the fact that even after a court told them they couldn't actually drug test welfare applicants they bulled on ahead with a meaningless test the misinterpreted results of which will be quoted to own them forever as a result of their petty obstinate cracker republicanness

This gambit tanked when Florida spent nearly $400,000 in legal fees failing to defend the law and only nabbed 2.6% of welfare applicants in a state with a population-wide drug use rate of 8%. Still, the state had to reimburse the 97.4% of applicants who passed – at a rate of $30 per test – which, rounding up, worked out to a projected whopping $100,000 total in annual savings on welfare payouts.

in an effective drug testing regime the expected savings isn't from failed tests but avoided tests. and, like, possibly, expected savings associated with reduced drug use and increased work. if people are scared they will fail the test they don't apply for welfare.

anyway the only thing i have against boniface is that he has the name jebediah, and instead of making everyone call him jebediah, he allows them to call him jeb. it's like being called ezekiel and telling people to call you kyle... such a waste.

stegosaurus posted:

what's hardcore sax up to these days

he left the world of jokesters behind. now he does computer stuff for work.

discipline posted:

I met him in ramallah

catchphrase

guidoanselmi posted:

tpaine start your words & letters career tia

Start it by

posting uyour book