Mitch Perry Report for 2.20.15 — On Rudy, Rick and DWS

Happy Friday to y’all. So much to talk about in the news this morning …

The Tampa Bay Times’ flooded the zone in December with a series of disturbing stories about New Beginnings of Tampa, one of the city’s largest homeless charities, which for years has made money off its residents through its controversial “work therapy” program. The Hillsborough County Commission pressured U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor to call for a federal investigation after reading the reports. That investigation happened, and as the Times reports this morning (on Page 1), the feds say that no labor laws were broken.

Meanwhile, the Rick Scott administration undoubtedly hopes that people will become bored with “Baileygate” and move on to other matters as the regular legislative session gets set to begin in 10 days. It still has some problems, though, when the conservative editorial page of The Tampa Tribune demands that the governor call for an independent review. The paper says that, “The firing has raised fundamental questions about the public’s right to know how its government operates, and Scott must now address those questions directly or lose credibility on his promise to run a transparent administration.”

Well, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is in a bit of trouble this morning, and it’s nobody’s fault but hers. However, DWS did come out strongly Thursday in condemning Rudy Giuliani for his extremely harsh comments on Barack Obama, when she said, “If the Republican Party really wants to be taken seriously … really wants to avoid its problems of the past … now is the time for its leaders to stop this kind of nonsense. Enough.” But will any GOP leaders come out and criticize “America’s Mayor”? Maybe they all agree with him.

And now a word about this weekend’s Oscar Awards.

According to everything I read, a lot of Americans apparently haven’t seen most of the films nominated, American Sniper being the exception.

Whatever. As an inveterate moviegoer, I appreciate that the celebration of American films gets such a platform, but I’ll use my own platform in this space to make the case for those who I believe truly should be among the nominees Sunday night in Tinseltown.

As I wrote in a post in late December, my favorite movie of the year wasn’t Boyhood or Birdman (though they were ranked two and three, respectively), but Locke, starring Tom Hardy, which is a flat out masterpiece.

I should say Locke is all about a man — or not just any man, but Tom Hardy — driving a gray BMW for the course of the entire film. With no other actors seen (though many are heard).  That may not sound too appealing.

The film and Hardy did win some critics awards (Hardy took Best Actor from the L.A. Film Critics Association Award, the film made the National Board of Review’s Top films of the year), but got bupkus from Hollywood.

“You make one mistake,” his character exclaims at one juncture, “one little f—ing mistake, and the whole world comes crashing down on you.”

It’s a classic. The fact that Hardy isn’t up for an Oscar is outrageous, as is the fact that neither is David Oyelowo, who killed it playing MLK in last month’s Selma. I’d throw in Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawlers to boot, making the whole discussion of whether Bradley Cooper‘s Chris Kyle may steal it from Eddie Redmayne‘s Stephen Hawking or Michael Keaton playing Riggan Thomson just silly.

And I know that while Patricia Arquette is surefire winner for her performance in Boyhood (though how gross was it the Oscar voter who said that she’s getting it because she didn’t get any plastic surgery during the course of the 12 years the movie was shot), I thought that Jessica Chastain deserved a nod for A Most Violent Year, which was my second favorite film of the year now that I think about it, and was criminally underrated. It actually won Best Picture by the National Board of Review, and then more bupkus. It also played locally for about nine days last month.

In other news …

Spurred on by the libertarian Goldwater Institute, Jeff Brandes wants to make Florida the latest state to pass “Right-to-Try” legislation. It would allow the terminally ill to experiment with medications that haven’t been approved by the FDA.

Tampa transit activist and lawyer Brian Willis is contemplating a run for the Hillsborough County Commission.

Tampa won’t pass legislation requiring companies doing business with them to “ban the box.”

And GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz is the first out of the gate in the 2015 legislative session introducing a bill to regulate Uber and Lyft.