Jeb, Visionary? Lakeland Folks Might Disagree

Who would have ever guessed Southeastern University in Lakeland offers a major in grifting?

How else to explain the school's con job to get people to burp up $300 to spend "An Evening With Jeb Bush," which has to be a bit like finding one's self passing the night with a bucket of warm spit - and paying for the privilege.

If you didn't know any better, you'd think the former governor's upcoming appearance on campus Friday night was being sponsored by the Robert Vesco Chair within the Hustler Department of Advanced Stings.

Bush's $300 scam is part of the school's 2008 National Leadership Forum, where a bunch of big shots weigh in on "an innovative and creative approach to teaching the servant leadership concept not only in the academic community, but in the business and church communities as well."

Leadership!

No doubt the Il Duce of the Apalachee Parkway's appearance at Southeastern will be of keen interest to the local peasants, especially since it was Bush who, behind closed doors, sold the city down the river for 491 million pieces of silver.

There's some leadership for you. In Venezuela, perhaps.

It was during the Bush Junta that the governor secretly negotiated to buy 61 miles of CSX Transportation tracks in the greater Orlando area, which in turn will permit the rail company to shift a huge chunk of its freight business to a massive Polk County hub.

No public hearings were held, no interest in asking the citizens of Lakeland how they felt about having their city carved up like one of Hannibal Lecter's victims. That wasn't very Christian.

And all this was pulled off by a governor who swore an oath to honor the provisions of the state's open record/open meeting Sunshine Laws.

Somehow the backroom arrogance of power associated with the CSX deal was emblematic of Bush's disdain for public accountability during the eight years of his regime.

Fighting Lemmings

Now the weak link in the Bush dynasty is coming to Lakeland to lap up another speaking fee at the expense of the gullible, leading the rubes.

Here's the ultimate hypocrisy of Bush's performance at the home of the Fighting Lemmings.

The Boss Hogg of Kennebunkport's schedule is handled by the Washington Speaker's Bureau, which does not publicly list Bush's fee for blowing smoke up the bloomers of unsuspecting audiences.

Bush's sister Doro is handled by the same company with fees from $15,000 to $25,000 to give speeches about the wonders of being born a Bush, so you have to figure her brother commands even more moola for, what, being taller?

On the company Web site is all the obligatory fiddle-faddle about Bush being a visionary as it extols the ex-governor's commitment to "encourage transparency" and this complete hooey: "enfranchise the disenfranchised."

What do you think the odds are that if some of those disenfranchised Lakeland serfs, who Bush treated like lawn jockeys, were to show up at Southeastern on Friday to ask about getting a little enfranchisement, the ex-governor would be willing to be transparent enough to meet with them?

That would require a miracle even beyond the Good Lord's pay grade.