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Lunch Menu: Unappetizing Art Of Politics

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 12, 2008

DADE CITY - Politics is many things, including the art of compromise, the creator of peculiar bedfellows and, as famously observed by Ronald Reagan, "the second oldest profession," one that "bears a very close resemblance to the first."

All of these and more were vividly displayed Wednesday within the sacred halls of Calvary Assembly of God Church. Over meaty Cuban sandwiches, chips, iced tea and topless New York cheesecake, nearly 200 members of the chambers of commerce from Zephyrhills and Dade City were, for 90 minutes, beguiled by the breadth - if not depth - and often contradictory accomplishments of the 2008 state legislative session as presented by Sen. Victor Crist and Rep. Will Weatherford. Republicans, for the record.

Here's pretty much what you need to know: Your property taxes aren't going down, but they aren't going up, either; when it comes to insuring your premises, you're still pretty much doomed; and, by the way, if the Inevitable Big One hits this year, Gov. Charlie Crist will be passing the hat to pay off Citizens' catastrophic deficit.

Growth squeezes us on our roads, in our hospitals, in our schools, on our waterways and in our parks, but there is no appetite in Tallahassee to do what might be necessary, which could include shouldering the true cost of our choices. Instead, we would like Great Plains residents to assume some of our risk for succumbing to the lure of beachfront living.

No Help At The Pump

Furthermore, you can just plain forget about getting help at the gas pump from the Legislature - not when it comes to signaling Florida's willingness to go along with exploiting the estimated 9 billion barrels of oil and upward of 10 t-t-t-t-trillion cubic feet of natural gas just over the horizon in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

On this, Crist has the aggressive lead; Weatherford is simply dubiously informed. Although perfectly willing to recover some domestic energy sources - the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge leaps to mind - the senator recoils from poking holes in the Gulf floor.

"There's a real green side to me," Crist declares. Well, he always was trendy.

Forty-year-old memories of what the oil-extraction industry wrought on the beaches of his home state of Louisiana energize Crist's objection to prospecting. But this is like applying the horrifying lessons of what happened on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 to the vanquishing of dictators today. Technology advances, and now weaponized airborne drones command theaters of battle that once required battalions; similarly, deep-water drilling platforms boast anti-spill advances that resist tropical calamities.

Monster hurricanes Ivan, in 2004, and Katrina, in 2005, which both reached Category 5 strength, ripped through the western Gulf oil patch, destroying 109 (of 4,000) oil rigs. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says only one of the wrecked rigs was built after 1988 federal laws toughening building standards, and the subsequent oil slick washing onto Gulf shores ... never happened.

Alas, the term-limited Crist, who will not face District 12 voters again, is dug in, thumping the radical environmentalist mantra of alternative energy sources and conservation over tapping, now and aggressively, the best and only readily available solution to (a) America's economic crisis that would (b) instantly - because of its measurable influence on future world inventory - reduce transfers of Yankee dollars to Yankee-hating regimes.

Listening To The Noisy

That said, Crist remains preternaturally predisposed to block a state-of-the-art bioreactor landfill on east Pasco's frontier that could endlessly generate and capture sufficient combustible gas to keep the lights on (and central air cooling) in all of Pasco east of Curley Road. His concern: the sanctity of pristine waters a mile or more east of the would-be site.

Here Crist's objection rises above this otherwise compelling statistic - number of bioreactor landfills operating in Florida: four; number of leaks: zero.

But the landfill is unpopular with a noisy cohort of Crist constituents. And Gulf-drilling opponents monopolize, for now, the megaphone. And the unfettered marketplace is swell until it says you can't afford to live near the beach. And, as noted above, politics is often more about satisfying customers than it is about standing in the breach.

On an uplifting note, at least the cheesecake was uncompromising.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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