TALLAHASSEE - Jeb Bush's father lost the presidency over a bad rap, the impression that he didn't know how ordinary people shopped. Marie Antoinette got a bad rap too, for which she lost more than a job.
But if there were a Marie Antoinette award for rulers who let themselves look out of touch when they should know better, Jeb Bush would already have a share of this year's prize locked down. You'd think he would have learned by his father's example.
Bush would share the prize with Senate President Jim King and other outwardly clueless legislators who are saying the same insensible thing about children and health insurance.
Their version of "Let them eat cake" is that people who could buy coverage for their children at work should no longer be eligible through the state's subsidized Kidcare program.
That's what comes from trusting public policy to rich men who never had to choose between food or rent or make a meal of stale bread and mustard.
Just because an employee is "eligible" to purchase dependent coverage at work does not mean that she can afford it.
Listen up, governor.
Listen up, legislators.
Nearly three out of 10 working Floridians earn less than $8 an hour. What if you had to live on $320 a week before deductions?
Now suppose that you had to take at least $50 a week out of that just to insure yourself, and another $125 - if you're really lucky - to cover the spouse and kids. Tell the public, please, how you would manage that.
For reasons beyond their control, the cost of health insurance for businesses with fewer than 50 workers has gotten so high that most employers who do offer it pay only the minimum, which is half the premium for the worker alone. Depending on the size of the business and on the ages and health of the people involved, the deduction for adding spouses and children can be $1,000 a month or more.
But if the employer has a plan, then the worker is technically eligible. Just as technically eligible as to join the yacht club, go to Paris for shopping sprees, contribute $2,000 to the politician of one's choice or school their kids at Choate.
While Bush is at it, he might as well shut down the parks. There are, after all, lots of tennis and country clubs for people to join.
Bush does know better, of course. He's simply figuring that you don't.
This is the same governor who's asking the Legislature to ax the intangibles tax, which is no longer paid by anyone but people with at least $500,000 in stocks and bonds. Is he trying to make Marie Antoinette look like Mother Theresa?
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Speaking of rulers who act like they don't give a damn, how about Justice Antonin Scalia? He won't step aside from the Supreme Court case involving his duck-hunting buddy, Dick Cheney, because the vice president is not involved personally, but only as a public official.
"That's all I'm going to say about it," Scalia concluded. "Quack, quack."
He thinks it's a joke?
The case has to do with prying open the records of the secret meetings of Cheney's energy task force. Given Cheney's personal interest in energy - he headed Halliburton, for whose interest some people suspect the Iraqi war was fought - the records involved in the case before the court could potentially embarrass Cheney all the way out of office. Or they might not. But nobody ever will know if the records are not opened. Does Scalia really believe that isn't hugely important to Cheney personally?
A conspiratorial theorist might even say it's bigger than Cheney. The plot begins in 1948, when Brown & Root, a Texas energy conglomerate, helped bankroll "Landslide" Lyndon Johnson's 87-vote victory in the Texas U.S. Senate primary. When it appeared that a federal judge would overturn the election on grounds that the future president had stolen it, Johnson got the Supreme Court to forbid any interference with how a state counted its votes. This will be recognized as exactly the opposite of what the Supreme Court did 52 years later in Bush vs. Gore, when it refused to let the Florida Supreme Court conduct a recount of its presidential vote. The one constant is Brown & Root, still lurking in the background within a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton.
This may be nothing more than coincidence. Indeed, I do not think it is anything more than that. But a high court that has already forfeited much of its credibility because of Bush vs. Gore will invite upon its heads every conspiracy theory that anyone could imagine if it tolerates the ultimate outrage of allowing one of its justices to participate in the most important litigation that could possibly involve his duck-hunting buddy.
There is, of course, the possibility that Scalia would rule against Cheney. It is just as possible that the sun will rise in the west.
