Mitch Perry
I received a text message Wednesday night saying that the Tampa Bay Sierra Club had embraced Hillsborough County Commission Chairwoman Sandy Murman‘s late-hour plan to fund transportation projects, which sounds like a larger-size version of what the club sought this past summer. You remember, it asked the county to began raising mobility fees and the gas tax, saying it would be a good start to raising money for the county’s myriad transportation needs.
I’ve not had that confirmed, but whether Murman’s plan – which would include everything under the sun possible in terms of revenue streams save an actual sales tax – will fly with her colleagues at the BOCC/Policy Leadership Group, we’ll learn more about later Thursday (Many of those funding options are included in the latest Go Hillsborough product that will be discussed). At least she believes she gets Tea Party activists and others (now including Americans for Prosperity) out of her hair.
Meanwhile, some big news via the pre-publication of John Meacham‘s new biography on former President 41, “George H.W. Bush, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.”
In the book, Bush Sr. says that Dick Cheney built “his own empire” and added too much “hard-line” influence within George W. Bush‘s White House in pushing for the use of force around the world.
If you’ll recall in the summer and fall of 2002 when it was obvious that the Bush administration was girding for war in Iraq, people who felt it would be a disaster were crying out for H.W. to speak out against it. As you’ll recall, 41’s approach to war in Iraq in 1990-91 was sort of the ideal way to do it: spend months building up a coalition, getting U.N. buy-in, and going in with a precise objective.
When Brent Scowcroft published his Aug. 15, 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Don’t Attack Saddam,“ it was considered a direct intervention from father to son about what to do – or not do – in Iraq.
But of course, Bush Sr. wasn’t president. Give him credit for not blaming Cheney, but his son, for allowing Cheney to run rampant in his first term.
“He had his own empire there and marched to his own drummer,” Mr. Bush said of Cheney. “It just showed me that you cannot do it that way. The president should not have that worry.”
We understand why he didn’t speak out then, but if he was thinking big picture it would have not only helped out his son (and the country in retrospect), but his other son, who among the other pieces of baggage he’s carrying around in his struggling campaign for presidency is the legacy of his brother’s war on Iraq.
In other news …
Marco Rubio had to face the music Wednesday when it came to questions about his use of a Republican Party of Florida AMEX card in the late aughts while speaker of the Florida House.
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A national Quinnipiac poll shows that not only is Jeb Bush buried in fifth place nationally in the GOP presidential race, but that Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio all beat Hillary Clinton straight up, for whatever that’s worth.
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Hillsborough County Republican E.J. Otero lashed out at county commissioners Wednesday for their recent support of bringing a Cuban consulate to Tampa.
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Although most members of the Tampa City Council were more gung-ho about creating a citizens review board than Mayor Bob Buckhorn was, the council appears to be the laggard in getting its group of members chosen in time for the nascent agency’s first public meeting.
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Hillsborough Commissioners voted to amend a previous ordinance on public records requests as they are being besieged by requests and (at times) failing to respond at all to such inquiries.
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U.S. Rep. David Jolly wants answers from VA head Robert McDonald, after a sixth Pinellas County military veteran was recently reported dead and had stopped receiving benefits, when he was very much alive.
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Ken Welch is the latest Democrat to support Charlie Crist in his bid to become a congressman for the first time.
