Meet Hurricane Irma and Governor Scott

But first: billionaire Mark Cuban offers this investment advice on CNBC.  Bless his heart.

Okay.  Are you ready?

Occupy Florida tells it this way in a two-minute video.  Executive summary: Florida’s Governor is a truly bad guy.

Rolling Stone tells it this way:

. . . Politically, Scott is Trump without the bluster and the golf clubs. On climate change, Scott refuses to acknowledge its existence. During his 2014 campaign, whenever the subject came up, he would shrug and say, “I am not a scientist” – as if that absolved him of any responsibility for thinking about the risk posed to millions of people in the state he proposed to run.

As governor, Scott has done everything he can to do nothing. He made sure the state of Florida contributed zero dollars to Miami Beach’s $400 million plan to improve storm drainage. He took more than $1 million from Big Utilities, who tried to stop rooftop solar power in Florida, which could help reduce carbon pollution. He effectively dismantled the Florida Energy and Climate Commission, which had been assembled . . . to help Florida officials think strategically about climate adaptation. . . .

. . . In 2014, after months of lobbying, a group of scientists scored a meeting with Scott, hoping to convince him that climate change was real and Florida was in the crosshairs. “He just sat there and stared at us with lizard eyes,” one of the scientists at the meeting told me. “I don’t think he heard a word we said.”

On the other hand, maybe he did. The following year, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that Scott’s administration had commanded state employees not to use the terms “global warming” or “climate change” in any state business.  . . . Scott supported Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. He also signed legislation, pushed by real-estate developers, to weaken Florida’s building codes, even though the legislation was opposed by Florida’s emergency management director, as well as Craig Fugate, the former head of FEMA under President Obama, who argued that by loosening the building codes in a hurricane-prone state like Florida, lawmakers “are putting your state and your citizens at risk.”

Even if Al Gore had been governor of Florida, Irma would have wreaked havoc in the state. But Scott’s negligence was so extreme it was almost as if he were inviting a catastrophe. . . .

With Christmas and Chanukah around the corner, consider an Echo Show ($229) — or two of them, to save $100 on the second.  (Or the soon-to-be-released smaller, $129 Echo Spot.)  I love that it shows me the lyrics in big fat type as I listen (for years I thought Lady Gaga was singing “cherry pie, cherry pie” when in fact it was “can’t read my, can’t read my” . . . which made more sense once I realized that the next two words were “poker face”).  And it suggested I watch Mr. Robot on its perfectly adequate little screen — I’m hooked.  And it can do more or less anything else.  (“Alexa, how much is $138 euros in dollars?”  “Alexa, when is Chanukah?”  “Alexa, who is Mark Cuban?”)