Getting Fired For Doing Your Job Well: The Everglades Restoration Edition

Sheril has the details:

That's what Florida Governor Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled Legislature just did. Embarrassing for Florida and a travesty for the Everglades.

They've dismantled the South Florida Water Management District-the state agency charged with protecting the Everglades. As The Sierra Club explains, this wasn't belt tightening, but an attack on science and more specifically an attack on Everglades restoration. Among the 280 employees laid off was Dr. Christopher McVoy, lead author of the recently published 576-page book Landscapes and Hydrology of the Predrainage Everglades.

So the scientists are doing some good, truly bipartisan work (FL governor Jeb Bush and President Bush supported the Everglades restoration) that makes the country a little better, and their reward is...getting fired.

We are governed by sociopaths.

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Missing a closing tag for italics, I think.

Lays off people during a deep recession, check.

Dismantles a successful program, check.

Dismantles is because it doesn't fit their ideology, check.

Just mean in every sense. Double check.

Welcome to the current Republican party. We don't have a plan except to smash everything. Won't that be fun? (in the short term)

By albanaeon (not verified) on 25 Aug 2011 #permalink

I am baffled by GOP politicians who think that they will profit after smashing everything in sight. When the Empire lies in ruins and the hungry mobs roam the streets, they can play their fiddles in their gated communities. Maybe they'll have enough money left in the bank that they can buy wind turbines from China and recharge their car batteries.

I'm not saying the decision was a good one, but labeling every political decision that goes against an environmental cause "an attack on science" is kinda lame. And I'm sure it won't cause a single right-wing voter who thinks belt-tightening is more important than wetland restoration to rethink their view.