Analysis: Follow the money when Trump comes to Lake O

Donald Trump addresses a rally at the Collier County Fairgrounds on Oct. 23, 2016 after flying over the Everglades from Palm Beach. (Photo: The author)

March 28, 2019 by David Silverberg

After underfunding Everglades restoration work in his proposed budget, President Donald Trump can be expected to distract from this shortfall by touting work on the Hoover Dike and the planned Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) reservoir when he is scheduled to visit Lake Okeechobee tomorrow, Friday, March 29.

Announcement of the visit was issued on Tuesday, March 26, by Judd Deere, deputy White House press secretary who tweeted: “@POTUS to visit Lake Okeechobee Friday to tout work on dike repair, EAA reservoir.”

Further details of the visit were not available as of this writing but it will coincide with Trump’s latest weekend vacation trip to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

According to a White House statement regarding the trip:

“The Herbert Hoover Dike project exemplifies the Trump Administration’s efforts to promote federal and state collaboration on infrastructure projects that benefit its surrounding communities, which is why it was prioritized in the president’s 2019 budget request.

“President Trump is visiting Florida on Friday because he understands that these investments are vital to minimizing potential impacts, including harmful algae blooms, and improving water quality during rainy seasons in the years ahead.”

In fact, far from prioritizing the Everglades projects, the trip comes after Florida Republican lawmakers banded together on March 14 to decry the administration’s underfunding them. The Hoover Dike repair and EAA projects are critical to cleaning water from Lake Okeechobee before it can flow out the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers. Polluted water last year led to blue-green algae blooms in the rivers and fed red tide in the Gulf, damaging Southwest Florida’s tourist season, marine life and overall environment.

In a statement criticizing the president’s proposed budget, Florida’s senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and representatives Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) and Brian Mast (R-18-Fla.) announced:

“For the third year in a row, the administration’s budget request underfunds critical projects in South Florida. It is incredibly short-sighted to continue to underfund a series of projects that are absolutely necessary to ensure the environmental sustainability and economic vitality important to the State of Florida and enjoys broad bipartisan support in Congress. Failing to meet the basic federal funding commitments to restore the Everglades is contrary to the administration’s goal of improving project partnerships and cost-sharing with states. Successive Florida Governors have remained committed to this goal, pushing state funding of this 50/50 federal-state partnership to historic highs. Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers envisioned a $200 million per year federal commitment when the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was first authorized nearly 20 years ago, and it is time for the administration to meet that commitment.”

Federal funding for Everglades restoration is also critical to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plans, which call for $2.5 billion in spending on water quality projects over the next four years. As noted in the statement, $200 million each year was long pledged for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP).

Analysis: The visit and the visuals

Why is Donald Trump suddenly so concerned about Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades that he’s making a trip to see them for himself?

Some answers suggest themselves:

As the White House statement declared, the purpose of the trip is to “tout” the president. He will praise himself for Everglades support that he has not offered in this or past budgets. This is part of his post-Robert Mueller victory lap.
With Florida a crucial—perhaps the most crucial—state in the 2020 election, it will be an effort by Trump to keep Florida in the Republican column by creating favorable publicity and exciting supporters.
It is an effort to mollify the Republican lawmakers who banded together to criticize the lack of Everglades/Okeechobee funding in the budget proposal.
It is an effort to support Gov. Ron DeSantis, who owes his entire success to Trump and is now trying to actually address Florida’s water and environmental problems. DeSantis’ efforts, however, are undercut by Trump’s budget proposal, his insistence on money for his border wall and the potential for his national emergency and funding reprogramming to actually take money away from repairs to the Hoover Dike and other critical US Army Corps of Engineers projects in southern Florida.
It is an effort by the president to establish some environmental credentials, since his every action since taking office has been inimical to Florida’s environmental health.

For their part, DeSantis, Rubio, Scott, Rooney and Mast will no doubt use the occasion to lobby the president to bump up funding for the Everglades-Hoover Dike projects, either with special supplemental funding proposals or through executive actions, since he’s already put his budget proposal before Congress. Put another way, they may try to convince him not to take Everglades funding away as he pulls together money to build his border wall. As part of this, they will also no doubt extravagantly flatter him and his efforts for Florida.

Very interesting in all this is the total absence of Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25-Fla.), whose district covers nearly all of the Everglades. Diaz-Balart did not sign on to the Rubio/Scott/Rooney/Mast statement and he has not made any statements regarding Everglades funding and the president’s budget. He will likely be present when the president tours the Hoover Dike and the Everglades but he has otherwise been a cipher on this issue.

In conventional politics, a presidential visit to Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades would be the occasion for the president to announce new funding for these vital projects. That may actually happen this time. All the groundwork should be have already been layed to have the president make a grand gesture of support and call for a bipartisan effort to ensure that this work gets done.

But this is not a conventional president. If he behaves as he has in the past, his visit will be a narcissistic exercise in self-praise, a vicious vilification of enemies real and perceived and digressions into irrelevant or peripheral topics.

This is not the first time Trump has seen the Everglades or spoken regarding the infrastructure surrounding it. On Oct. 23, 2016 he visited the Collier County Fairgrounds during his presidential election campaign.

“A Trump administration will also work alongside you to restore and protect the beautiful Florida Everglades,” he pledged in a disjointed speech. “Our plan will also help you upgrade water and waste water. And you know you have a huge problem with water, so that the Florida aquifer is pure and safe from pollution, we have to do that. We will also repair Herbert Hoover Dike in Lake Okeechobee, a lake [with which] I’m very familiar…”

He also provided some rambling observations of the area.

“I just flew over,” he said following his helicopter flight from Palm Beach. “I just flew over and let me tell you, when you fly over the Everglades and you look at those gators and you look at the water moccasins, go on, you say, ‘I better have a good helicopter!’ I told the pilot, ‘You sure we’re OK? Those are big! Because that’s a rough looking site down there!’ You don’t want to be down there and I’ve heard for a long time go around the Everglades it’ll take you longer but…” he said, trailing off and addressing other, unrelated topics.

(On a side note, it is very interesting—and alarming—to listen to Trump’s 2016 speech again. It’s full of slurred words, incomplete thoughts and unconnected statements. The whole speech can be heard on C-SPAN.)

Floridians should not be distracted by the breathless local media coverage, the hoopla, the rhetoric and the ceremony of a presidential visit. The ultimate test of Trump’s latest excursion—and the success of Rubio, Scott, Rooney and Mast—will be whether the Hoover Dike repairs and the federal portion of CERP are fully funded.

All else is commentary.

Liberty lives in light

© 2019 by David Slverberg

Rooney breaks with Trump again, joins Rubio, Scott and Mast in decrying Everglades underfunding in new budget

Florida Republican senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott denounce Trump’s new budget for its lack of Everglades restoration funding. (Photo: Orlando Sentinel)

March 14, 2019 by David Silverberg

In yet another break with President Donald Trump, Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) has joined Florida’s Republican senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and Rep. Brian Mast (R-18-Fla.) in criticizing anemic funding for Everglades restoration in the president’s proposed budget.

The full text of their joint statement (their capitalization):

Neither Rooney nor his office issued a separate statement regarding his position.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25-Fla.), whose district includes parts of Lee and Collier counties and a substantial portion of the Everglades, did not join the other lawmakers. A request for comment has been made to his office.

(This report will be updated as new developments warrant.)

Liberty lives in light

© 2019 by David Silverberg

Trump budget proposal takes aim at SWFL seniors, Social Security recipients

March 12, 2019 by David Silverberg

Southwest Floridians receiving Medicare benefits, Social Security payments and other social safety net assistance stand to suffer significant blows to their government-provided benefits under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, released yesterday, March 11.

The budget slashes $845 billion over 10 years from the Medicare program. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as of 2017 (the most recent date for which statistics are available), Lee County had 175,648 Part A and B Medicare recipients, while Collier County had 90,800.

Social Security would suffer $25 billion in cuts over 10 years as well. As of December 2017 (the most recent figures available) there were 12,863 Social Security recipients in Lee County and 4,169 recipients in Collier County, according to the Social Security Administration.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, would receive a $220 billion cut over 10 years and recipients would face mandatory work requirements. The program currently serves around 45 million people nationwide and 99,208 people in Lee County and 26,617 in Collier County, as of December 2018.

Environmental blows

The budget cuts all non-defense agencies by 9 percent and takes aim at environmental and science-driven agencies.

The Environmental Protection Agency would suffer a 31 percent cut, with the agency’s overall funding dropping to $6.1 billion, down from the $8 billion Congress enacted in 2017.

The Department of the Interior’s budget is cut by 14 percent. The Trump proposal, however, increases funding for Interior Department programs that “support safe and responsible development of energy on public lands and offshore waters”—which for Southwest Florida means potential oil exploration and exploitation off the Gulf coast and in federal lands like Everglades National Park.

When it comes to the Everglades, the budget requests a total of $118 million for Everglades restoration of which $74.3 million would be for projects under the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) and $44 million would be for non-CERP work, of which $43 million would come through the Department of the Interior.

Controversy and reaction

Nationally, the budget’s most controversial provision calls for $8.6 billion for a wall along the US southwestern border and boosts military spending 5 percent to $750 billion.

The budget proposal was met with a blast of condemnation from congressional Democrats, who denounced it as “irresponsible” and a “cynical vision for our country,” (Rep. John Yarmuth (D-3-Ky.) chairman of the House Budget Committee), “even more untethered from reality than his past two [budget requests],” (Rep. Nita Lowey (D-17-NY), chair of the House Appropriations Committee) and “breathtaking in its degree of cruelty,” (Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)).

Liberty lives in light

Rooney reaches 1-year mark in avoiding constituents, town halls

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) at a May 31, 2017 town hall in Bonita Springs. (Photo by author)

The Rooney roundup

365 days since Rep. Rooney has met constituents in an open, public forum

Feb. 22, 2019 by David Silverberg

Today, Feb. 22, marks one year since Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) has faced constituents in person in an open, public forum to hear their concerns and answer their questions.

It was on Feb. 22, 2018 that Rooney held his last two town hall meetings, one on Marco Island, the other in Fort Myers.

Since then he has refused to make any appearance where members of the public could attend to ask him questions about his policies and positions.

He also refused to debate his Democratic opponent, David Holden, during the run up to the midterm congressional election. The Collier County League of Women Voters invited both candidates to a debate, scheduled for Sept. 17. Rooney responded in a letter to the League that he had “no availability” on that date and “no future availability.”

He subsequently announced that he had no need to debate or make public appearances because “everyone knows my positions.”

In the year since his last town hall meetings Rooney has only spoken to small, invited groups in very controlled circumstances. On May 30, 2018 he spoke to an invitation-only audience at The Alamo gun range and store in Naples. That appearance was organized by the Florida Citizens Alliance, an advocacy organization critical of secular public education.

Rooney also joined President Donald Trump on stage at a rally in Hertz Arena in Estero on Halloween, Oct. 31, 2018, which was not an occasion for listening to constituent concerns. Trump praised Rooney for his “brutal” defense of the president and his policies. (In December 2017 Rooney called for a purge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to eliminate any anti-Trump elements in the leadership.)

Rooney was with then-Gov. Rick Scott (R) on his bus during his campaign for the US Senate when Scott turned and fled from red tide protesters in Venice and canceled a Naples campaign stop.

Rooney’s last town halls were contentious and combative. They were held only eight days after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. On Marco Island, when asked if he would support a semi-automatic weapons ban, Rooney replied: “How willing are we to throw the Constitution out the window?” The answer elicited angry shouts and catcalls.

In Fort Myers Rooney was confronted by six surviving students of the shooting. Though stating that “irresponsible people” shouldn’t have guns, his opposition to a ban or any other strong gun control measure led to jeers and angry shouts from the audience.

“Children are…dying at my school!” yelled Michael Weissman, who had graduated from the school the year before. “You are heartless!”

“I am for making sure that people who are dangerous don’t get guns in their hands,” Rooney said, to a chorus of boos. “I’m not voting to abdicate the Second Amendment.” Students from Naples and Palmetto Ridge high schools chanted: “Tell us Rooney how you dare, to put us all in the cross hairs” and “Close down the NRA; we don’t want it anyway.”

At the town hall meetings Rooney also refused to acknowledge constituent concerns about climate change. At a town hall on May 31, 2017 and then again at Marco Island on Feb. 22, 2018 he stated: “I think that there is very complex issues surrounding global warming. Sea levels have been rising since the ice age.”

Since his election in November 2016, all of Rooney’s town halls have been contentious as he has characterized the Affordable Care Act as “socialism,” deflected constituent concerns about Trump’s collusion with Russia and said the Environmental Protection Agency needed to be “reined in.”

Nonetheless, after a particularly intense meeting in Cape Coral on March 3, 2017, Rooney praised the importance of meeting constituents in town hall forums.

As he told the News-Press: “[Town hall meetings] are critically important because this is democracy at work. This is what our country is built on.”

Rooney acknowledges climate change for first time, breaks with Trump

For the first time since being elected to office, Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.), has publicly and officially acknowledged the reality of climate change.

The acknowledgment was buried at the bottom of a press release accompanying release of the The Southwest Florida Climate Metrics Survey by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida on Wednesday, Feb. 20.

“If there is any state whose people should be embracing the impacts of our changing climate, it’s Florida. We are the state most at risk for sea level rise than any,” Rooney stated in the release. “This survey proves climate change is an issue important to our voters and there is more we should do to protect ourselves from future impacts.” [Emphasis ours.]

This is the first time Rooney has used the term “climate change” in public and acknowledged its reality.

In the past Rooney has always dodged acknowledging climate change or using the term, stating, as he did in multiple town halls, that sea levels have been rising since the ice age.

If in fact Rooney is acknowledging the reality of climate change he is breaking with President Donald Trump who as recently as Jan. 20 mocked the idea of global warming, tweeting amidst the plunge in temperatures caused by the polar vortex: “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”

Commentary

If Rooney is truly acknowledging climate change and a concern for the environment, there are ways to display the outward sign of his inward grace:

He can publicly embrace America’s re-entry into the Paris Climate Agreement;
He can endorse the Green New Deal to hold back carbon emissions and;
He can hold an open, public town hall, explain his new position to his constituents and listen to their climatic concerns, which are amply documented in the Conservancy survey.

We shall see—but don’t hold your breath.

Liberty lives in light

Analysis: Conservancy climate change survey represents a sea change in SWFL attitudes, politics

Sunset Delnore Wiggins after TS Colin 2 6-6-16

Sunset on Delnore-Wiggins beach in Naples after Tropical Storm Colin, June 6, 2016. (Photo by author)

Feb. 21, 2019 by David Silverberg

A new public opinion survey released by Southwest Florida environmental groups may have finally broken the local political taboo against talking about climate change.

The Southwest Florida Climate Metrics Survey was released yesterday, Feb. 20, by the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, an environmental advocacy organization. It surveyed 800 adults over 18 years of age of which 401 were in the Fort Myers area, with proportions in Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties. The survey was conducted online from September 25 to October 2, 2018 and had a margin of error of 4.9 percent.

Its most outstanding finding was that people are aware of and believe there is climate change—something not previously apparent in Southwest Florida:

76 percent have noticed more severe weather and changing seasonal weather patterns over the last several years;
75 percent believe that climate change is happening;
71 percent are concerned about climate change;
59 percent believe that the effects of climate change have already begun to happen.

The turning point was Hurricane Irma in 2016. As Rob Moher, president and CEO of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida stated, “Hurricane Irma was a wake-up call for Southwest Florida.”

The survey confirms this, stating that the hurricane “has made most [Southwest Florida residents (SWFR)] more concerned about climate change, motivated them to prepare for climate impacts, and inspired them to do more to stop pollution. A vast majority of SWFR agree that all levels of government should do more to protect mangroves and wetlands. High majorities view extreme weather and rising sea levels as a threat to their community. Most SWFR say red tide and algae outbreaks are being made worse by climate change.”

In addition to simply confirming that Southwest Floridians are aware and concerned about climate change, the survey discovered public support for government action to deal with the effects of climate change in Southwest Florida:

93 percent agreed that local, state, and federal governments should do more to protect mangroves and wetlands;
67 percent say the government needs to protect all people from the impacts of extreme weather;
62 percent say if the U.S. took steps to prevent future climate change, it would improve our health;
54 percent say if the U.S. took steps… it would improve the economy;
53 percent say if the U.S. took steps… it would increase jobs.

There is much more to the survey that can be accessed on the Conservancy’s website.

Analysis: A sea change

The importance of this survey to Southwest Florida’s politics and culture cannot be overstated. It is a sea change—literally.

Even after Hurricane Irma, it was taboo to discuss climate change in public life in Southwest Florida. Gov. Rick Scott (R) banned the term “climate change” from official state usage. President Donald Trump, during his campaign and after his inauguration, dismissed it as a Chinese hoax—and he continues to dismiss it to this day.

The conventional wisdom in Southwest Florida was that the area’s deep conservatism and Republicanism made mention of climate change political poison. It was never mentioned in the news and even TV weather forecasters did not use the term or attribute extreme weather events to it for fear of offending viewers, as privately told to this author.

The expectation was that any mention of climate change would bring an immediate and intense backlash. Southwest Florida officials, appointed and elected, never mentioned it or attributed local climatic changes to it. Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) stated that “I think that there is very complex issues surrounding global warming. Sea levels have been rising since the ice age,” during a town hall meeting in February 2018.

Even Hurricane Irma did not break the stranglehold. Despite this extreme weather event, climate change was never referenced by local meteorologists to explain the storm’s formation or intensity. Subsequent wildfires, droughts and intensely hot summers brought no attribution or reference to climate change either. (To see this author’s Dec. 8, 2017 letter to the editor of the Naples Daily News acknowledging climate change, see “Climate change is here.”)

Last year the stranglehold began to break. The advent of red tide in the Gulf of Mexico and blue-green algae blooms in the Caloosahatchee River made clear that larger climatic forces were at work and people were suffering as a result. It was a crisis that no one could deny or cover up and it was clearly exacerbated by official government environmental neglect and indifference.

During the 2018 congressional election campaign, Democratic candidate David Holden made environmental protection the keystone of his campaign and raised the issue of climate change, by name, for the first time in a Southwest Florida political campaign. He campaigned to make Southwest Florida the most climate change-resilient place in the nation. However, Holden lost the general election 37 percent to 63 percent. (Full disclosure: This author served as his communications director.)

For all this ferment, there was no hard data on Southwest Florida attitudes on climate change and the subject continued to largely be taboo in public discourse.

The Conservancy survey now reveals that Southwest Floridians recognize the role of climate change, are ready to publicly acknowledge it and take appropriate action both personally and officially. What is more, the survey revealed this in a rigorous, scientific way, so it will be very difficult if not impossible for climate change deniers to dismiss or refute it.

Climate change is now in the public forum and the Southwest Florida public is ready to have a real discussion based on facts and science. In this regard the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and the affiliated organizations that funded the survey—the Community Foundation of Collier County and the Southwest Florida Community Foundation—have done a signal service.

It is like the world acknowledging Galileo’s confirmation that the earth revolves around the sun despite the dogma of the past. For the first time, Southwest Floridians can plan, prepare and discuss the issues of climate change in the light of facts and scientific reality without fear or foreboding.

Liberty lives in light

Understanding the Green New Deal and its impact on Southwest Florida

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addresses demonstrators sitting in at Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office on Nov. 13.

Feb. 19, 2019 by David Silverberg

In this article:

What constitutes the Green New Deal
Its origins and history
How it affects Southwest Florida
What happens next and why it’s important
What’s at stake

The Green New Deal now proposed in Congress stands to substantially benefit Southwest Florida—if the proposal can make it past the lies, hysteria and vilification being thrown at it by opponents.

What it is

The Green New Deal is a comprehensive program of environmental and social reform that aims to:

achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions;
establish millions of high-wage jobs and ensure economic security for all;
invest in infrastructure and industry;
secure clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthful food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all; and
promote justice and equality.

It intends to do this through a 10-year national mobilization effort that will:

build smart power grids (i.e., power grids that enable customers to reduce their power use during peak demand periods);
upgrade all existing buildings and construct new buildings to achieve maximum energy and water efficiency;
remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation and agricultural sectors;
clean up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites;
ensure businesspersons are free from unfair competition; and
provide higher education, high-quality health care, and affordable, safe, and adequate housing to all.

Origins

The idea of a Green New Deal and the term to describe it first appeared in 2007 in the writing of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He was describing an effort to end fossil fuel subsidies, tax carbon dioxide emissions, and create lasting incentives for wind and solar energy.

The idea and its title made it into official usage, becoming part of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign platform and serving as the title of a United Nations report on renewable energy. Its essence was embodied in legislation in the 2010 American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as cap-and-trade bill), which died that year in the US Senate.

Though the idea waxed and waned in popularity, it appeared in the campaigns of some Democrats running in last year’s midterm elections. Once Democrats won the House of Representatives, environmental activists decided to make a major push for its passage, with the goal of ending all carbon emissions in ten years. The leading Green New Deal organization was the Sunrise Movement of mainly young, grassroots activists.

On Nov. 13, those activists demonstrated in Washington, DC and about 150 sat in at the offices of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-12-Calif.), soon to be Speaker of the House, demanding the Deal’s immediate implementation.

Enter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-14-NY) has become the face of the Green New Deal. She’s an insurgent Democrat who defeated 10-term Democratic congressman Joe Crowley in her district’s 2018 primary and then won the general election.

Passionate, articulate, telegenic and at 29 the youngest member ever elected to Congress, Ocasio-Cortez was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and like him, calls herself a Democratic Socialist.

Ocasio-Cortez addressed the demonstrators at Pelosi’s office. She demanded creation of a Green New Deal select committee in the House. Pelosi didn’t support that demand, instead creating a new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, headed by Rep. Kathy Castor (D-14-Fla.), a longtime environmental activist representing the Tampa area.

Though thwarted in her initial aim, Ocasio-Cortez proceeded to pull all the ideas swirling around the Green New Deal and put them into coherent, legislative form. On Feb. 7 she introduced House Resolution (HR) 109, “Recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.” (The Senate version of the bill was introduced by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) as Senate Resolution 59.)

The introduction of HR 109 takes the Green New Deal from possibility to proposal. It now has specific provisions and actions and delineates a specific path to implementation.

The Green New Deal and Southwest Florida

HR 109 does not mention Florida by name and there are no provisions specific to the state or to its southwest region. Nonetheless, it has broad implications given Southwest Florida’s environmental sensitivity and past disasters.

The Everglades

Although the Everglades are never mentioned, Everglades restoration could receive a major boost from the Green New Deal program.

The bill calls for “mitigating and managing the long-term adverse health, economic, and other effects of pollution and climate change, including by providing funding for community-defined projects and strategies” and among these are “restoring and protecting threatened, endangered, and fragile ecosystems through locally appropriate and science-based projects that enhance biodiversity and support climate resiliency.”

This precisely describes current Everglades restoration projects including the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan and the “wetlaculture” concept put forward by Prof. Bill Mitsch of Florida Gulf Coast University. These ideas stand to get a major boost if the bill passes and the Florida congressional delegation aggressively pursues the resulting benefits.

Resilience

The bill calls for “building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies” and “reducing the risks posed by climate impacts.”

This could very directly benefit Southwest Florida in its efforts to fortify itself against hurricanes, wildfires and sea level rise. The region would be in line to receive extensive federal support for infrastructure and protection improvements. If Everglades restoration can be presented as a climate change mitigating initiative, Florida would have a significant claim on federal support. Federal funding might even benefit individual homeowners in the form of tax credits and incentives to strengthen their houses.

Renewable energy

The bill aims to meet 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including renewable energy and new capacity.

For Florida that means a big boost for solar power. The Sunshine State is already taking the initiative to increase solar capacity but passage of the Green New Deal would result in significant federal support for these efforts.

Agriculture

The bill calls for the federal government to work collaboratively with farmers and ranchers to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. Given Southwest Florida’s extensive agricultural sector, farmers could see grants and incentives to make their operations more energy efficient.

Beyond these very specific local benefits the bill’s support for the renewable energy industry, housing, health and employment would affect every American. And, of course, protecting the environment, keeping it livable and preventing catastrophic climate change affects all life on the planet.

Analysis: What happens next

Controversy and unanswered questions are swirling around the Green New Deal and the bill that embodies it.

The biggest of these is how it will be funded. Ocasio-Cortez has dodged the question, saying that the United States found a way to fund the original New Deal, World War II and the space program and will find a way to do it this time. It’s a blithe but unsatisfying answer—there were extensive debates about paying for those initiatives at the time.

The proposal’s scope and ambition is breathtaking. As written it would really mean a reordering of society and a complete re-fit of the nation’s built environment, energy and transportation. Its practicality within a ten-year time frame is questionable, to say the least. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has avoided endorsing it, as demonstrated by her refusal to appoint a select committee on that specific topic.

Predictably, the conservative and Republican reaction has varied from hysteria and paranoia to scorn and dismissal, starting with President Donald Trump.

“I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal. It would be great for the so-called ‘Carbon Footprint’ to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military – even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!” he tweeted on Feb. 9.

Locally, on Feb. 12, the Naples Daily News reprinted whole an essay from the Cato Institute, the arch-conservative, Koch brothers-funded think tank, as its editorial on the newspaper’s position. Titled, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal Is a Radical Front for Nationalizing Our Economy,” by the Cato Institute, the Naples Daily News gave it a partisan twist with the headline “Green New Deal is a front for the Democrats.”

From a purely legislative standpoint HR 109 has a long way to go. It started out strong, with 68 cosponsors, which means there’s hefty support for it in the House. However, it has been referred to 11 different committees and making its way through all those committees will take time. While any one committee could derail it, the numerous referrals also mean it will get broad consideration throughout the House. Still, it seems unlikely to reach the floor during the two-year span of the 116th Congress.

If events take their normal course, the proposal will be steadily whittled down and delayed during the legislative process. If it even makes it to a vote by the full House and passes, it is highly unlikely to pass in the Senate. If by some miracle it passed both houses and landed on the president’s desk, it seems extremely improbable—one never wants to use the word “impossible” but this is close—that Trump would sign it into law.

But despite its radical solutions, unanswered questions and the improbability of its enactment, the Green New Deal should not be dismissed.

The political importance of the Green New Deal

Protesters seen holding placards during the Sunrise Movement

Some of the demonstrators protesting in front of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office on Nov. 13.

The Green New Deal is important as an aspiration, a rallying cry and a set of principles that can inspire Democrats, progressives and environmentalists. It gives coherence to progressive principles and cements those principles in a foundation of environmentalism. It far outshines the weak and anemic proposals on any subject made to date by the current Democratic leadership.

Further, the Green New Deal is likely to stand as a goal and aspiration that may last for decades, rather like the abolition of slavery or pursuit of women’s suffrage. It is not merely a proposal, it is now a movement and movements have their own dynamics.

The Green New Deal could provide common principles to Democratic candidates and the party as it begins pulling together its platform for the 2020 presidential race.

Equal and opposite reaction

The Green New Deal also has to be understood as an equal and opposite reaction to Donald Trump’s brute anti-environmentalism.

The Paris Climate Agreement represents the moderate course in climate change response. It was a phased, consensus approach to combating climate change where everyone shared the pain of restraint but gained the benefit of a livable planet and pledged to take reasonable steps to pursue reasonable goals. It was painstakingly negotiated and at the time of its signing included all the nations of the world but two—Nicaragua (which felt it didn’t go far enough) and Syria (which was in the midst of a civil war).

Donald Trump didn’t just withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement and leave the US isolated and alone in the world. By his scorn and vitriol and sheer resistance to science and dismissal of environmentalism, he seems not to care about the fate of the planet or humanity—indeed, every day he proves that he truly does not care about anyone but himself. Given the powers invested in him, he truly could destroy the world.

This kind of attitude fuels the urgency of the Green New Deal’s advocates, especially the young ones. There’s a religious sense of imminent apocalypse, hence the Green New Deal’s short timelines and broad sweep.

Further fueling their urgency was the Fourth National Climate Assessment by the US Global Change Research Program, which warned of disastrous consequences if the causes of climate change weren’t addressed.

The battle to come

While the argument over the Green New Deal is intense now, it’s going to become exponentially more intense as the nation moves toward the 2020 presidential election. Already, Trump and his supporters are lumping the Green New Deal under a socialist label and starting to paint their campaign as a crusade against socialism.

On the other side, though, more extreme Green New Deal supporters see their cause as the only alternative to destruction of the planet.

Here in Southwest Florida the effects of climate change can be felt all around. Its presence should be undeniable, although the entire conservative, Republican establishment, following Trump’s line, continues to deny it—and will no doubt continue to deny it as the storms blow ashore and the water laps up to their chins.

The problem of climate change should be obvious to all. In the Green New Deal a solution has been proposed. Although imperfect it is now the only proposal on the table. Since Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, no other alternative has been offered.

Of course, there is always the option of doing nothing. In this case, that option could prove fatal.

Liberty lives in light

Emergency declaration sows confusion, concern over federal projects

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A view of Big Cypress Preserve in the Everglades. (Photo: Big Cypress Preserve)

Feb. 16, 2019 by David Silverberg

President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency yesterday, enabling him to take funds from military construction projects, has set off a scramble to find out which ones will be affected—and Florida is no exception.

Across the country, officials are trying to determine the impact of the declaration in their home states and districts. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) sent a letter to Patrick Shanahan, the acting secretary of Defense, asking for a list of the projects shortly after Trump declared the emergency. Lawsuits are being launched challenging the legality of the move.

In Florida, military and federal construction is overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), whose state headquarters is in Jacksonville.

Projects affecting Southwest Florida include Everglades restoration and repairs to the Hoover Dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee, according to USACE’s Jacksonville office.

USACE has already invested $2.4 billion in Everglades restoration projects. Plans are underway to create reservoirs to prevent polluted water from Lake Okeechobee being released into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers, a cause of last year’s blue-green algae blooms and a prime feeder of red tide in the Gulf of Mexico. In the federal fiscal year 2019 budget, $115 million was set aside for the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), part of $1.1 billion appropriated for CERP projects like the reservoirs and repairs to the Hoover Dike.

Some of that money is already committed. On Feb. 5, USACE awarded a $387 million contract to three contractors, the Bauer Foundation Corp. of Odessa, Fla., Bencor Global Inc. of Frisco, Texas, and Treviicos South, Inc. of Charlestown, Mass., for 28.6 miles of cutoff wall to prevent seepage from the dike.

According to a USACE statement in June, 2018, USACE was planning to spend $148 million in Florida and Puerto Rico on navigation, flood and coastal storm damage reduction and aquatic ecosystem restoration projects. Much of this consisted of harbor improvements in both Florida and Puerto Rico, including improvements to Sarasota’s Lido Key ($13,462,000), Miami Harbor ($1,897,000), Port Everglades ($771,000) and Tampa Harbor ($500,000).

In addition to these, an advanced munitions technology complex is being planned for Shalimar, Fla., in the USACE Mobile, Ala., district.

On Jan. 23, the 27 members of the Florida congressional delegation sent a letter to President Trump urging him to preserve Everglades and Florida funding.

The emergency declaration is being challenged in court and details of its scope and impact remain to be clarified.

Liberty lives in light

Rooney votes against compromise spending bill that averts government shutdown

The Rooney Roundup

359 days since Rep. Francis Rooney has appeared in an open, public forum

Feb. 15, 2019 by David Silverberg

Yesterday in the US House of Representatives, Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) voted against the compromise spending bill averting another government shutdown.

Despite Rooney’s opposition, the spending bill, House Joint Resolution (HJRes.) 31, passed last night by a vote of 300 to 128.

The spending bill, which had already passed the Senate, now goes to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature. Once signed, it will fund the full government for a year, preventing another shutdown. However, President Trump has announced that he will be declaring a national emergency and redirecting unobligated funds to his border wall —funding which may have been destined for Everglades restoration, Hoover Dike repairs and Hurricane Irma assistance in Southwest Florida.

Foreign affairs: US involvement in Yemen

Yesterday Rooney also voted against ending US engagement in hostilities in the war in Yemen.

Despite his opposition, the Yemen war resolution (HJRes. 37) passed by a vote of 248 to 177.

Rooney stated that resolution would set a bad precedent: “…it establishes a precedent that any disgruntled Member of Congress in the future can deploy to challenge United States security assistance to other countries, which is a vital part of our foreign policy and national security. Any challenge to the use of such assistance could endanger U.S. allies like Israel or our counter-terrorism partners.”

Saudi Arabia is currently at war with Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Rooney opposes sea level rise but doesn’t acknowledge climate change

In an environmental first for Rooney, on Friday, Feb. 8, he introduced House Resolution 112, “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that sea level rise and flooding are of urgent concern impacting Florida that require proactive measures for community planning and the State’s tourism-based economy to adapt.”

The resolution is not legislation and has no binding power or authority. It merely expresses an opinion and invites the House to concur.

The resolution acknowledges the threat of sea level rise to Florida military bases, the Kennedy Space Center, businesses and the Everglades. As a result of these effects it: “(1) acknowledges the significance of sea level rise and flooding throughout communities across the country and in Florida; and (2) affirms the need for greater adaptation funding and the incorporation of historical flooding and sea level rise projections into planning.”

In a statement accompanying the resolution Rooney stated: “Sea-level rise, storm surge and flooding currently threaten millions of homes across the state of Florida. I introduced this resolution to express my grave concern about the dangers associated with rising seas, and to stress the need to proactively prepare for future effects, such as increased risks of flooding from stronger hurricanes.

“Without preventive actions taken now, we risk the future livelihoods of our beautiful Florida communities. That’s why I’m calling for greater funding and the incorporation of sea-level rise projections to better plan for such events.”

The resolution has three other co-sponsors as of this writing. It was referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

Analysis

First, Rooney’s acknowledgment of sea level rise and his recognition that preparations must be made for it, is commendable.

However, missing from this resolution is any acknowledgment of the cause of sea level rise: climate change. Apparently, Rooney is not ready to go that far. In his last public appearance before constituents on Feb. 22, 2018 on Marco Island, Rooney dismissed climate change, stating: “We definitely need to learn all we can about why these sea levels are rising. I’m just not sure how much is man-made and how much is not. I think that there is very complex issues surrounding global warming. Sea levels have been rising since the ice age.”

To date, Rooney has not issued any statements expanding or altering this position.

Dealing with the effects of climate change while denying its cause is a common Republican tactic. It allows Republican politicians to stay in line with Trump’s climate change denial while recognizing that they nonetheless have to deal with its effects in their states and districts. (For a larger discussion of this strategy with a particular focus on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), see “Why conservatives keep gaslighting the nation about climate change,” from Vox.com.)

Given Rooney’s prior legislative record of failing to advance any standalone bills past the committee referral stage and the paucity of co-sponsors of this resolution, the resolution is unlikely to move forward in the House or have any larger impact.

Foreign affairs: Rooney opposes US troop withdrawal from Syria

In a rare dissent from President Donald Trump, on Feb. 1 Rooney authored an op-ed in The Hill newspaper, “Stay in Syria to Counter Iran,” opposing a sudden pullout of US troops from Syria.

“Regardless of the past decisions which drew the United States into the conflict in Syria, we should not abandon our role in the fight against the Islamic State. A withdrawal would give back all that we have achieved and would be an abandonment of our Kurdish allies. The void we would leave will create space for other power players with interests adverse to ours, like Russia and Iran, to gain ground in the Middle East,” Rooney wrote.

Trump’s precipitous decision to withdraw all US troops from Syria on Dec. 19 led to the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and passage on Feb. 5 of the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019 (Senate 1), a resolution against withdrawal. The House has not yet considered it.

Rooney has previously supported Kurdish independence, writing in Oct. 2017 that: “Given our own tradition and the recent history of Iraq and Kurdistan, we should at least consider the potential strategic advantages of Kurdish independence.”

Liberty lives in light

Trump nominee for Interior Dept. could roll back protections against SWFL oil exploitation

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David Bernhardt, nominee for Interior Secretary. (Photo: DoInt.)

Southwest Florida could feel a major impact if David Bernhardt, currently the number two official at the Department of the Interior, is confirmed as secretary, with the potential to roll back oil and gas regulations and restraints just when private landowners and the oil industry are mounting a new exploitation effort aimed at Florida.

Bernhardt was nominated to be secretary by President Donald Trump on Feb. 4.

The US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expected to hold hearings on Bernhardt’s nomination sometime soon. (As of this writing, a date had not been set. This report will be updated when it is announced.)

The 49-year-old Bernhardt is a former oil industry lobbyist whose policy positions were closely aligned with Ryan Zinke, his predecessor as secretary. In the past Bernhardt has lobbied on behalf of Delta Petroleum Corp., Noble Energy Inc. and California’s Westlands Water District, a government agency that has fought environmental regulation.

Zinke and Bernhardt’s shared policy positions included opening up federal lands to oil exploration and exploitation and removing environmental protections and regulations.

As Bernhardt put it in an interview earlier this year with E&E News, an energy and environmental publication, “I can’t think of an instance in the past year where I’ve done something where I would not be very confident that he and I were 100 percent on the same page on.”

During the government shutdown, Bernhardt was criticized for having unpaid Interior Department employees working on opening up US waters to oil and gas drilling and issuing permits for seismic drilling. Though initially deemed non-essential employees and therefore furloughed, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management brought back at least 40 employees to work on offshore oil and gas projects.

Bernhardt has also been criticized for making the department less transparent and making information more difficult to access, avoiding the congressional confirmation process for key subordinates and limiting the scope or weakening laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

In addition to his own inclinations, Bernhardt has cover from President Donald Trump himself, who, in his State of the Union speech, boasted of unleashing a revolution in oil and gas production and whose April 2017 executive order opening up federal lands to oil exploitation remains in force.

Even Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.), a pro-Trump Republican, has complained that the Interior Department has a “drill-baby-drill” approach to offshore oil exploitation, threatening the beaches of Southwest Florida.

“The military is our ally on this [a permanent oil drilling moratorium in the eastern Gulf of Mexico],” Rooney told an audience at an invitation-only meeting at The Alamo gun range and store in Naples on May 30, 2018. “The Department of the Interior is not. They want to ‘drill- baby-drill.’ They are Republicans, right?”

Bernhardt’s nomination on Feb. 4 unleashed a torrent of criticism and opposition. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, (D-2-Hawaii), called Bernhardt “a walking conflict of interest” in one tweet and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) called him “another scandal-plagued fox guarding the henhouse,” in another.

“Bernhardt might as well be an ideological clone of Ryan Zinke. The American public deserves a true steward who will protect our lands, our wildlife and our waters – not another industry shill who will continue to sell our precious natural resources to the highest bidders for exploitation,” stated Ana Unruh Cohen, managing director for government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental activism group. Her sentiment was echoed by other environmental organizations.

The Naples-based Conservancy of Southwest Florida has not yet taken a position on Bernhardt’s nomination.

The Bernhardt nomination comes just as activity is mounting among private landowners and oil companies to exploit potential oil reserves beneath the Everglades.

On Tuesday, Feb. 5, the Florida First District Court of Appeal ruled that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection had to issue a permit for an exploratory oil well to Kanter Real Estate LLC, a company that owns about 20,000 acres in the Everglades near the city of Miramar.

The Burnett Oil Company is already exploring areas in the Big Cypress Preserve. Tocala LLC, based in Mississippi, has received a permit to detonate explosives in 6,000 holes in an area just north of Big Cypress. Trend Exploration, based in North Fort Myers, has applied for a permit to explore in Caracara Prairie Preserve in Collier County.

(For a fuller account of oil activities in the Everglades and the region, see David Fleshler’s Feb. 3 article, More oil drilling proposed for southern Florida in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.)

Analyis: The rush is on but not necessarily the boom

While the regulatory climate and the presidential mood are promoting oil exploitation in marginal oil producing regions like Southwest Florida, the real determinant will be oil prices. The higher the prices and the demand, the greater the likelihood that the risk and expense of Southwest Florida oil exploration and drilling will be worthwhile.

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Crude oil prices over the past 70 years. (Source: Macrotrends.net)

The oil industry tends to be one of boom and bust and while the general trend of prices has been up, at the moment prices are relatively stable. Oil exploiters have to factor in the lead time of exploration and extraction as well as the potential profits as they decide to pursue oil in places like Southwest Florida.

Some politicians may think that they can have acceptable oil exploitation on land while not harming the shore. But pro-exploitation advocates should remember: Exploitation will be on both land and sea. If it’s worthwhile to drill on land, it will also be worthwhile to drill offshore and it’s very unlikely that oil companies will pursue one and not the other.

The danger of oil exploitation in Florida, of course, is pollution either of the water table on land or along the beaches on shore. Pollution of the aquifer will make life unlivable on land, while pollution on shore will destroy tourism and the Southwest Florida economy.

Either way, the Southwest Florida environment is under increasing threat. There is no reason to expect any support or sensitivity from the Trump administration.

Offshore oil rigs 11-2-17

Liberty lives in light

Where’s Rooney? Congressman absent from critical votes to end shutdown

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The Rooney Roundup

Today is day 35 of the Trump government shutdown

337 days since Rep. Francis Rooney has appeared in an open, public forum

Jan. 25, 2019 by David Silverberg

Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) has not voted on any measure in the US House of Representatives since Wednesday, Jan. 16. It is unclear at this time whether Rooney is avoiding voting or is absent from the House and if so, why.

A request has been sent to his office to clarify his absence. While no response has yet been received, this report will be updated if and when it arrives.

By being absent or avoiding voting, Rooney has missed voting on four measures that would have re-opened the government. He also missed voting on a measure, House Joint Resolution 30, disapproving of the administration’s plan to lift sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. That measure passed by a vote of 362 to 53.

Rooney’s only other public congressional activity since Jan. 16, was to send a letter to President Donald Trump, along with the other 26 members of the Florida congressional delegation, encouraging the president to support Everglades restoration and water quality infrastructure projects.

Trump’s insistence on $5.7 billion for a border wall, which Rooney supports, threatens to take money from Everglades restoration projects and other critical Southwest Florida needs as well as many other national priorities.