Elected reprehensibles want hunting and fishing economy

Congratulations to the Florida Legislature, which in the session that ended last week made a valiant effort to turn the clock back many, many decades to a far more peaceful time.

That was a time before 60 million people a year flocked to a single Florida tourist complex, before filmmakers descended on us spending their millions and publicizing the lure of Florida around the globe, before outsiders – many of them speaking other languages – set up major enterprises and hired hundreds of thousands of us, before Floridians exported our goods and services around the globe, before good-paying jobs virtually wiped out unemployment.

Yes, it was a more peaceful time, a time when our education levels and standard of living were well below average but we were happy without all those outside annoyances just fishing and hunting on the plantation – at least, that’s what many legislators seem to think.

How else can you explain legislative actions that seem intended to upset our economy in such a targeted way? If this were a real war instead of a cultural war we’d label it sabotage. Instead, it’s just a volley of gunshots aimed directly at our own feet.

Let’s look at just a portion of what the legislature accomplished to weaken our economic growth.

First and globally derided, it joined the governor in training its guns on a poor little mouse in Orlando named Mickey.

OK, so Mickey isn’t poor and his Disney handlers have big weapons of their own, but the idea of pitting the full force of the state against the world’s largest tourist magnet – an organization that turned an agrarian backwater into Florida’s best-known attribute (and I include South Beach in that) – is doing more than firing gunshots at its feet, it’s firing cannons.

Is supporting the governor’s run for president more important than an entire state’s economic wellbeing?

But Disneyphobia is far from the only legislative economic sin this year. The legislature also succeeded in saving on spending in our fattest budget ever by wiping out the state’s business development organization, Enterprise Florida.

Last week both the House and Senate agreed to erase the agency tasked with bringing new employers and their jobs into Florida. A vital part of that agency, based in Coral Gables, works to help Florida’s smaller and mid-sized businesses export their goods and services around the globe, strengthening and growing those companies and building more jobs.

The legislation folds 20 of Enterprise Florida’s jobs and some of its programs into a new Department of Commerce directly under the governor’s thumb. The rest of what Enterprise Florida does will just die off – along with the jobs it creates and the commerce it grows.

One thing certain: whatever bits of Enterprise Florida live on in a new form, they won’t be helping Disney, or any business that doesn’t think the way the governor does – that is, forget any company that considers what its actions mean to society and tries to do the right thing by being inclusive.

Oddly, Enterprise Florida, which is dying, handled the governor’s multi-nation trip abroad this month that theoretically was aimed at building Florida’s economy.

So, having attacked both the state’s tourism giant and its business and trade builder, what else?

Well, the legislature finally brought down the curtain for good on the state’s Office of Film and Entertainment. The legislature has been trying to do that for a decade, just as it has been attacking Enterprise Florida. But this year it took them both out.

The legislature has always hated tax incentives that brought filmmakers here instead of to other states that have their own incentives. It wiped out those incentives in 2017, but still state employees worked to get more films made here to showcase Florida while adding to local employment, hotel room sales, restaurant meals and local vendor hiring during filming.

Many legislators have never seen any sense in spending taxes to aid businesses that far more than repay those funds while increasing the incomes of tens of thousands of Floridians. These sturdy individuals in the legislature believe whatever jobs and income we get flow in naturally, with absolutely no sales needed to make it all happen. After all, we are mighty Florida, a global magnet.

Well, Coca-Cola is a brand that’s well known too – maybe even better than Florida – yet they advertise and sell the hell out of their product to stay on top and maximize revenues. In Florida, we don’t need to worry about selling, everyone will just flock here and do business naturally – or so the legislature thinks.

But in 2017, when the state killed film incentives, it cost us the majority of our film industry. Now, the legislature seems hell-bent on losing the rest of it – and a good slice of our import-export revenues to boot via Enterprise Florida.

So, what do our elected reprehensibles plan to fill the gaps they’re creating in our economy?

They do seem to have a plan: in the just-concluded session they voted to put on the ballot a constitutional amendment providing a right for all Floridians to hunt and fish forever. That, said Sen. Jason Brodeur of Sanford, is “a way of life.”

Actually, Sen. Brodeur, about 20 million of our residents seem to like the way of life we have today. Why destroy it?