On Tuesday, they will hold primary elections in Florida. And, as is the case every time that benighted state tries to hold an election, people are laying in vast stores of recrimination and paranoia in advance of the balloting. But, with exquisite timing, Nature itself has decided to cosplay Florida Man, and it's come up with an entirely new mechanism for making an election there a living hell. From the Fort Myers News-Press:

Water is what was on voters' minds this morning. Almost every voter polled said the area's water-quality woes—the blue-green algae choking inland waterways and the massive bloom of red tide in the Gulf of Mexico—concerned them. Cheryl Dehetre moved to south Fort Myers from Michigan 14 years ago. She said she's following the Commissioner of Agriculture race closely. "That person is going to have a big influence on everything that's happening," Dehetre said. "Isn't that why we come down here, why we all live here, to enjoy the water and all the things that are under threat right now?"

Florida is in the middle of an ecological emergency right now, as well as being in an actual declared state of emergency. Between massive algae blooms and the red tide, Florida's economy could take a body blow unlike anything short of a hurricane. From ABC News:

As Florida reckons with two algae phenomena, one being the blue-green nutrient-rich algae in Lake Okeechobee, and the other being the naturally occurring red tide in the Gulf Coast shores, experts say Florida has never seen anything like what’s being experienced this summer. With a number of policy and funding rollbacks from current elected officials running for office, they don’t know when it will get better. “The bloom may have naturally occurred, but naturally it might not have gotten as intense as it is now if didn’t have those nutrients from human sources that fueled the growth,” said Karl Havens, director of the Florida Sea Grant College Program and a professor at the University of Florida IFAS. Those harmful nutrients being nitrogen and phosphorus seeped in the soil and wetlands north of Lake Okeechobee from pollutants like under-treated sewage water, leakage from home septic systems, and fertilizers from generations past after the state restricted the agricultural industry from using them.

And people there are beginning to point green-slimed fingers at their elected officials—most notably, at Governor Rick Scott, who is running a strong race to unseat incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson, but now literally is having a load of dead fish dropped in his lap.

In one Southwest Florida county, workers and contractors cleaned more than 2.7 million pounds of dead fish and sea creatures just halfway through the month of August. Since June, hundreds of dead sea turtles, marine mammals and a whale shark had washed up on the shores of Lee County. “Those images are not leaving people’s heads, that’s not something that they’re going to forget,” said Daniel Andrews, a former Southwest Florida fishing guide and now the executive director of Captains for Clean Water. “It’s the most important issue to people down here right now."

Toxic algae in Lake Okeechobee. Joe Raedle Getty Images

According to a Politifact and Tampa Bay Times report, in 2011 Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s administration cut $700 million in water management funding, about 40 percent of the state’s water management district's budget. Since 2012, the state’s water management district budget increased by about $300 million, making the overall budget cuts closer to $400 million since 2011. Scott’s administration says water management districts create their own budgets. The budgets are ultimately approved by state leaders like the Florida Senate president, the Florida House speaker and each water management district’s leaders who are appointed by the governor.

You know that whole "devolving power" thing that smart Republicans always talk about. This right here is what it really is—a sophisticated strategy for passing the buck down the line until nothing gets done at all. And it comes with its prefabricated cheap-ass alibis as well, as Governor Bat Boy well knows.

Scott says this algae crisis is the federal government's fault. In an ad released by the Scott for Senate campaign in early August, Scott says it’s the federal government who controls the Herbert Hoover Dike around Lake Okeechobee and it was Nelson who “made a pledge thirty years ago to solve the problem, but Nelson is a talker, not a doer.”

Let the states do it and, when they screw up, we can blame the federal government anyway. These really are the fcking mole people.

And, not for nothing, but Florida has other problems, too. Like...super-snakes! From ABC News:

A small number of the invasive pythons were found to be a crossbreed between two separate species, the Burmese and Indian pythons, and what's more is that this hybrid snake has the potential to thrive in new environments, according to a new study conducted by scientists with the United States Geological Survey (USGS).



“We found that out of 400 Burmese pythons investigated, 13 had mitochondrial genetic signatures from the Indian python, a separate species,” Margaret Hunter, a research geneticist at USGS who led the study, told ABC News...As Burmese pythons mostly live in the wetlands and Indian pythons mostly live on higher ground, the researchers were faced with the possibility that these hybrid snakes could have the ability to live in various types of environments.

The people who release these animals into the wild should be fed to them as punishment.

Florida Man. Florida, man.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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