Our View

+ Congratulations on PIC’s 25th
The marketplace always fills a vacuum. And in 1985 on Longboat Key, that’s what a group of Longboat Key residents did when they organized the Longboat Key Public Interest Committee, familiarly known as PIC.

Congratulations to PIC, and especially to its founders and perpetuators. PIC celebrated its 25th anniversary this week, a testament to the determination of its leaders and members to stay relevant and perform a useful service on Longboat Key.

To an extent, PIC’s founders organized because of this newspaper. They believed the Longboat Observer, under the direction of its founders, Ralph and Claire Hunter, was biased toward and under the influence of developers. After all, back in those days much of the advertising in the Longboat Observer came from developers erecting new condominiums along the Gulf. And there was a perception that this newspaper stood for unabated growth — a vision that compelled PIC’s organizers to come together.

They feared development would turn Longboat Key into U.S. 41, making it a commercial nightmare that would ruin the character of their laid-back resort island.

So PIC took on multiple tasks. It published “The Voice of Longboat Key,” a newsletter that it said would present “the facts” from Town Hall by quoting town documents. This was a double dig at the Longboat Observer, which, of course, was also the voice of Longboat Key at the time and reported facts as well.
Indeed, the relationship between the Longboat Observer and PIC was rather frosty, sometimes nasty, for the first two decades of PIC’s existence. Both publications spiced their copy with sarcastic jabs at each other. And in the mid-1990s, a few PIC members tried to organize a boycott of Longboat Observer advertisers.

These days, however, much to the surprise of early PIC members, PIC, the Longboat Key, Lido Key and St. Armands Key Chamber of Commerce and the Longboat Observer all collaborate on community events and share many similar points of view. Once completely opposed to more commercial activity on the Key and a staunch opponent of the chamber, PIC’s leaders were among those who recognized three years ago those positions were wrong for the time. PIC now embraces efforts to revitalize commercial activity.

One of PIC’s most significant and longstanding contributions has been that of a fiscal watchdog over Town Hall, a role that continues to this day. The organization has always stood for fiscal responsibility.

More recently, PIC has become the Key’s leading group facilitating public discussion on important issues on the Key. Over the past six months, for instance, it hosted sessions on the town’s pensions, beach renourishment and cell towers.

While PIC’s relationships with the Key’s business interests may have been strained for most of its existence, we are pleased to see how both sides have evolved. In the end, we all want what PIC wants — a great community. Let’s continue to work to that end.

+ Poll ratings: Who cares
Gov. Rick Scott is falling in polls measuring voter approval.

It’s completely predictable and, in many ways, it shows he is offering substantive leadership, not a wet-finger to pick up the winds of re-election.

While the poll are reported with breathless glee in the media, Scott is doing at the state level what U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is doing at the national level: Making tough choices necessary for our future, not their own re-election.

Frankly, it is refreshing and gives us hope for the futures of our country and state. We love what Scott says: He’s not in Tallahassee to win a popularity contest.

The question for the state of Florida beyond the caterwauling of special interest groups is whether Florida can be reformed and restructured so that it is streamlined enough to meet what it should be doing, while not being a burden on the economy and on future Floridians. We need Scott and the Legislature to create a state where businesses can thrive. You can’t separate businesses from jobs, and jobs are necessary for
quality of life. Scott gets this.

That has meant tackling entrenched state interests from unions to schools to bureaucrats to environmentalists to lawmakers. It has meant dealing with a hostile media. And when you do those things, your popularity drops.

The media love that. But those who understand that the size and scope of our government are cratering Americans’ standard of living shouldn’t pay attention to the popularity contests.

Scott will be fine. The bigger question is whether the wimpy Legislature has the courage to enact at least some of Scott’s agenda.

Indeed, here we are halfway through the session, and one of Scott’s signature initiatives — repealing Florida’s corporate income tax — hasn’t moved an inch in the House or Senate (follow SB 1236 and HB 503).

In the end, the drama in Washington is similar. Early readings on the historic budget compromises are that it’s not really cutting $38 billion in actual spending. As usual, Washington is engaged in phantom counting.

Perhaps we should feel happy that it’s better than everything else that has occurred in Congress in the previous two years.

Yet, in this next round of addressing the nation’s debt limit, the question is: Will political leaders be responsible and make the tough decisions now or procrastinate again?

We’re not optimistic — for reasons that Llewellyn Rockwell, chairman and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, pointed out in his April 9 column on the budget (see above box). Nonetheless, perhaps times are dire enough that the American people, and the people of Florida, will reward courageous leadership. How refreshing that would be.

+ House Bill 883
It looks like lawmakers have modified the bill (HB 883) that would have overturned Longboat Key’s 30-year-old, 30-day rental ordinance.

Town Attorney David Persson said it best (paraphrasing): He doesn’t understand why lawmakers think it’s a good idea to propose legislation that mettles in local affairs.

Indeed, this is a major incurable disease in Tallahassee, otherwise known as Mettle In Others’ Affairs Reflex Syndrome — MIOAR Syndrome.

When you read the legislative staff analysis of what HB 883 is intended to do, you have to scratch your head and say, “Huh”? What public good does this serve? To wit, here is the staff analysis:

“As to vacation rentals, the bill reclassifies resort condominiums and resort dwellings as ‘vacation rentals,’ a newly defined class combining the two previous classes. Revises the membership of the advisory council for the division. Preempting new local regulations of vacation rentals based solely on classification, use or occupancy.”

How this improves the lives of Floridians is difficult to discern.

Which reminds us once again of the guidelines that a longtime legislator used to judge the merits of any piece of legislation. It’s simple:

If it increases individual freedom, she voted for it. If it took away freedom — i.e. added new regulations — she voted against it.

HB 883 should be killed.

+ Bogus budget cuts
The following excerpts are from an April 9 column on the federal budget by Llewellyn Rockwell, founder and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Ala.

Watching the public debate on the budget, we are reminded of two boys on the floor playing with toys. One has a bear and the other has a dinosaur.

They are forever threatening the other kid with taking the toy away. One warns he will take away the dinosaur (military spending) and the other says he will grab the bear (domestic spending).

They pull and tug and eventually settle the dispute so long as each gets to keep his favorite.

Oh, and one other thing: Both toys belong to other children.

That’s the public debate, which should strike anyone as preposterous on its face. If the goal in this crisis is to balance the budget without raising taxes, everything has to be cut regardless of political ideology.

But of course, that’s not what political parties do. The goal of a political party is to shovel the largess in the direction of its constituent supporters while punishing the loyalists of the other party, which is attempting to do the same.

The tit-for-tat is always resolved the same way: more for both sides, from third parties.

In other words, this is all political play, which is obvious from the numbers and the norms.

In the first place, no one is talking about actual cuts, not even the supposedly radical Republicans. These are cuts in projected spending, meaning that everyone is dealing with symbolic changes in a future that is just as symbolic.

Even on paper, the only way to consider these cuts is to compare them with the GDP and the national debt — both of which are slated to rise. Forgetting those two metrics, and looking at the actual numbers, there are no cuts at all and only increases …

There is nothing specific here beyond a numbers-laden pipe dream. No programs are abolished, no benefits are slashed or even trimmed, and although the propagandists claim to attack the culture of spending in Washington, there is not one word about taking on the money-printing machine that made the $14 trillion national debt possible in the first place.

… The only reason this nonsense is sustainable is due to the promise of the Federal Reserve to back all this spending with money creation. The Fed is what makes the whole racket too big too fail. This is why budget battles end up being insignificant to the future of government spending patterns. If the Republicans wanted to seriously take on the fiscal mess, they would begin with reining in the Federal Reserve. Apart from such reforms, budget battles end up being theatre.

The time to start paying close attention is when Democrats take on entitlement programs, Republicans propose serious cuts in military spending, and both parties agree on fundamental monetary reform. Until that time, these battles have all the significance of the battle between the two children. Both sides need to return their toys to their proper owners.