Welcome to your Friday open thread. It’s a spring day in Delaware so I’m taking a vacation day today. It looks a little overcast but I’m enjoying the warm weather! What are you doing with your taste of spring?
Florida’s teabagger governor rejected more than $2B for “Obamarail” because, shut up that’s why. He and the teabaggers are probably the only people happy about it. Florida’s legislature is trying to go around Governor Scott (including many Republicans).
From Washington to Tallahassee, Florida lawmakers scrambled Thursday to save $2.4 billion in federal money for high-speed rail that Gov. Rick Scott rejected.
In Washington, members of Florida’s Congressional delegation met with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who gave them one week to cobble together a complicated deal that would give the money to a private entity such as Amtrak or a regional planning organization.
“The cart’s in a ditch right now and we’ve got to figure out a way if we can all pull it out together,” said U.S. Rep. John Mica, an Orlando area Republican who is chairman of the powerful House transportation committee.
In Tallahassee, a veto-proof majority of the Florida Senate rebuked Scott in a letter that urged the federal government to give the state the money Scott has refused.
“Politics should have no place in the future of Florida’s transportation, as evidenced by this letter of bipartisan support,” said the letter, signed by 26 members of the Republican-controlled Florida Senate.
That’s what you get when you elect a governor who’s already been convicted of Medicare fraud. I feel sorry for all those Floridians who didn’t vote for Scott.
Global warming denying has jumped the shark in Montana. Now we’re not supposed to deny it, we’re supposed to celebrate it (while denying that humans cause it):
State Rep. Joe Read (R-MT), a farmer and emergency firefighter who unseated a Democratic incumbent in 2010, introduced HB 549 “to ensure economic development in Montana”:
The legislature finds that to ensure economic development in Montana and the appropriate management of Montana’s natural resources it is necessary to adopt a public policy regarding global warming.
(2) The legislature finds:
(a) global warming is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana;
(b) reasonable amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere have no verifiable impacts on the environment; and
(c) global warming is a natural occurrence and human activity has not accelerated it.
So, is this guy some kind of scientist? Of course not. He talked to Think Progress and admitted that he hasn’t even read the literature on the subject. His reasoning is the following:
If you follow the money, the science has been pushed toward where the money is coming from. The money is coming from the federal government. I believe global science is an ideal, not a true science.
Scientists get paid, so they are suspect, unlike all those professional global warming deniers who do it from altruistic reasons. :eyeroll: