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In the Eye of the Swing-State Storm
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Wall Street's Meltdown: How America Caught Speculative Fever
Sam Pizzigati
Democracy and Elections:
Voter Rolls Grow As States Help Poor People Register
Scott Novakowski
DrugReporter:
Marijuana Is Real Medicine
Paul Krassner
Election 2008:
Obama vs. McCain: Who Won? Short Takes on the Debate
Environment:
How Local Governments Are Standing in the Way of Clean Energy
Kyle Rabin
ForeignPolicy:
Iran, Israel and American Disinformation
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
Health and Wellness:
Will the Economic Meltdown Undermine Interest in Health Care Reform?
Niko Karvounis
Hurricane Katrina:
From the Bayou to Baghdad: Mission Not Accomplished
Amy Goodman
Immigration:
Arab "Registry" Upheld; Policy About Immigration, Not Counter-Terrorism
Edward Alden
Media and Technology:
The Growth of Talking Points Memo: A Case Study in Independent Media
Joshua Micah Marshall
Movie Mix:
The "Battle in Seattle" and Beyond
Stuart Townsend
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Our Next President Will Transform the Supreme Court
Ellen Goodman
Rights and Liberties:
Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out "Crowd Control"
Naomi Wolf
Sex and Relationships:
New Poll: Parents Overwhelmingly Support Age-Appropriate Sex Ed
Scott Swenson
War on Iraq:
Revealed: "Secret" Executions Being Carried Out in Saddam's Old Intelligence Headquarters
Robert Fisk
Water:
New Information Shows How Climate Change Will Affect Water
With its 27 electoral votes – more than any of the other swing states – Florida could once again prove to be the big campaign prize. In early October, some pundits were predicting that Bush had the state sewn up – he was leading Kerry among Floridians by 7 percentage points according to the Quinnipiac poll and 4 points according to the Mason-Dixon poll. But now the two are just about neck and neck according to those same polls, while others, such as the new Reuters/Zogby poll, are showing Kerry holding a small lead.
With the race so close and the stakes so high, both the Kerry and Bush camps have been revving up their political horsepower with big expenditures and celebrity appearances in the Sunshine State.
Take the press event at a wildlife refuge near Boynton Beach on Oct. 14, when Gov. Jeb Bush announced a $1.5 billion "Acceler8" plan intended to jumpstart the long-stalled restoration of the Florida Everglades. The project will be funded with borrowed money from his brother George W. – who, God knows, doesn't have a cent to spare. Nevertheless, officials from Dubya's administration were front and center at the media event, doling out the big bucks and lapping up the photo ops.
"This man [Jeb Bush] has had six years to do something on the Everglades. His brother has had four. They have done nothing. And all the sudden he's deciding to announce it two weeks before the election in one of the most decisive swing states?" Carol Browner, head of the U.S. EPA under Clinton, balked in a chat. "I mean, come on. It was clearly an election-season gimmick."
Furthermore, said Browner, they've kept the public out of the planning process entirely, and have fast-tracked the project to such an extent that it could bypass certain environmental reviews. "I definitely have my doubts about how this project is going to play out," she said.
Browner, meanwhile, was down in Tampa Bay last week stumping for Kerry with celebrity greenie Leonardo DiCaprio, who was roasting Bush's environmental record and winning Dems the teenybopper vote. "I believe, without a doubt, this is the most important election of all of our lifetimes," he told a largely female crowd at the University of Central Florida. "Over the past four years, George Bush has made the wrong choices, disastrous choices, when it comes to the environment."
Browner insists the throngs weren't there just to stargaze. "When we'd ask the rooms of 400 to 500 kids how many people are registered, all the hands go up," she said. "These are kids who are registering for the first time to vote and they're very, very responsive to the environmental message."
Days earlier, Ted Danson had been campaigning in crowds of perhaps more mature Floridian women, along with actress Melissa Fitzgerald of The West Wing (who, it seems, likes to work on Democratic messaging even when she isn't playing the assistant to White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg). Danson warned that 15,000 Florida newborns a year are exposed to dangerous mercury levels in their mothers' blood and breast milk, and he condemned Bush for failing to curb mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. The Florida Department of Health in September put out a new mercury advisory, with expanded warnings about consumption of fish from the state's waterways.
Amanda Griscom Little writes the Muckraker column for Grist Magazine.
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