I was floating around the web checking out resources for a collaborative project for Florida Kossacks that I will be saying more about in the New Year when I came across this. You really need to visit the site and play the video. It shows the young, dynamic new speaker of the Florida House, Marco Rubio, along with other legislative leaders speaking about citizen involvement and government accountability. It all looks wonderful and what you would want from progressive politicians. But they’re all Republicans! Aaarrggghhh!
What can we do? Join the discussion below.
The site has actually been up for a while, and the citizen participation activity known as 100 Innovative Ideas For Florida’s Future has already been completed. You can even download the 100 ideas they came up with. But the ideas themselves aren’t what’s important here.
Clearly the site and project are a long term effort by Rubio to cement his political future in Florida. One of the list of news stories on the site quotes a Wall Street Journal piece of November 30, 2006 by Brendan Miniter with the title Beyond Bush: A Rising Star in Florida. It ends the piece with
Mr. Rubio, the son of hardworking Cuban exiles (his father was a bulldozer operator and his mother a waitress), seems destined to find a larger stage in the coming years. One of his top priorities is to move up the Florida primary to right after New Hampshire's to increase Florida's prominence in the presidential sweepstakes.
If you watch the video you’ll have to admit it all looks pretty good and I would encourage Democratic legislators in other states to steal the idea. But here in Florida, how do we Democrats crawl out of our cave of irrelevance? Both the new governor and two-thirds of the legislature are Republican.
One way is to vigorously take the Republicans up on their strong endorsement of government accountability. I don’t have any illusions about setting up a Legislative Committees Project for Florida like the Congressional Committees Project that greenreflex and others have so successfully done.
But, the Florida legislature is only in session for a few months each spring. Anyone who wants to get involved is certainly welcome. As we get our Florida Kossacks project going we’ll also be taking a crack at keeping them honest, but I’m sure there’s more than enough stuff to keep an eye on for anyone who wants join in.
An innovation of Jeb Bush’s, MyFlorida.com, has all of the links you’ll need to get started. Good hunting!