By Raoul Lowery Contreras
Florida’s Charlie Crist left lots of political casualties in his wake in just one term as a Republican governor including the fantastic wonder of the natural world, the Everglades.Then Governor Crist mugged the Everglades by shutting down a widely supported fresh water restoration project Governor Jeb Bush started before Crist replaced Bush.
The shut down cost Florida taxpayers $300 million dollars; gave over 26,000 acres of land to a corporation that in turn gave $680,000 in campaign contributions to an establishment politician who supported the giant rip-off engineered by Charlie Crist.
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Everglades National Park with a million and a half acres is the third largest national park in the lower 48 states and dominates South Florida; over a million people visit the park yearly spending millions of dollars in South Florida and thousands of people work in the park and South Florida taking care of the park and/or its visitors.
The Everglades are home to hundreds of animal, fish, bird and plant/tree species, some endangered, some not; the Everglades are the finest and largest environmental habitat of its kind in the world. It is always in danger of not enough fresh water and/or too much brackish water and/or saltwater.
Developers constantly eye and devour more acres to build on, nibbling at the edges by cities needing room for more people. Saving the Everglades is a full time political and naturalist campaign.Governor Jeb Bush started projects to help the Everglades; Governor Charlie Crist (2007-2011) junked the projects that cost Florida taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, yes, cost Florida taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
As far as the Everglades are concerned, Charlie Crist, Republican governor, was a catastrophe. Cash from special interests flowed into his campaigns even as desperately needed fresh water was directed away by Crist moves from the Everglades into the sea, newly drained land handed over to corporations for lucrative farming resulting in campaign money flowed into Charlie’s campaign accounts.
Charlie canceled contracts negotiated by Governor Bush and between settlements and costs over $300 million dollars were wasted. Bloated special interests were pleased.
To add insult to environmental injury one special interest with Crist’s help walked away with $197 million taxpayer dollars and the right to farm for free almost 18,000 acres of prime land for up to 20 years and almost 9,000 acres of sugar-growing land for $150 an acre when similar land is sold for $12,000 an acre. Friends of Charlie Crist do well financially.Charlie Crist, Democrat candidate for Governor, now says his “heart is broken” that the incumbent governor isn’t more environmentally sensitive about the Everglades. So says the former Republican, former Independent and now Democrat running for governor.
One has to ask how can any environmentally sensitive Floridian, Democrat or Republican, support anyone with Crist’s Everglades record? If his “heart is broken” over the fact that the governor has restarted a restoration project in the Everglades that Crist dumped costing taxpayers $300 million, one wonders how an average Floridian can avoid banging his/her head on a wall.
Millions is a word we can use lavishly when discussing Charlie Crist’s race for Florida’s governorship. Millions of taxpayer dollars flushed down the financial toilet by Charlie Crist along with billions of gallons of fresh water not flowing into the Everglades because of Charlie’s support of special interests with lots of money for farming for free on precious state lands.
Millions upon millions of dollars in campaign contributions are flowing into Charlie’s campaign from trial lawyers who love lawyer Charlie; Ditto special interest money.
Like ravenous vultures, these campaign contributors of Charlie’s are circling Florida preparing to divvy up the millions of taxpayer dollars Crist will undoubtedly make sure are available so his contributors get fatten up their bank accounts with.Bloated contributors will get fatter under Charlie Crist; Florida taxpayers will pay the price, so will the millions of birds and animals of the Everglades if Crist lives up to his history.