Wingnut welfare for Marco Rubio

Well, it seems our old friend Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio found himself a nice, cushy gig after he's term-limited out of the legislature: working in one of the very state universities his asinine property tax cuts have decimated.

Rubio, of Miami, was offered a part-time job at Florida International University. He will co-teach a class on politics at FIU’s Metropolitan Center. His term as speaker in the Florida Legislature ends Nov. 4.

Rubio will also line up guest speakers and develop plans for local governments to build affordable housing.

Rubio’s salary will be $69,000, paid for by private donations. The announcement of Rubio’s new position comes one month after the school raised tuition by 15 percent, cut 23 degree programs and 200 jobs.

Yeah, they'd better use donations to pay his salary. It sounds like it's a position they created for him ... which really shouldn't surprise me. But $69,000 for a part-time gig co-teaching, getting speakers, and working with local governments?

Oh, that's right. He's a Republican, so it's okay. Never mind.

(h/t nash, via e-mail)

UPDATE (3:24 pm 7/25/08): I meant to mention that this situation sounds very much like the gig Sen. Mike Haridopolos (R-Indialantic) got to "teach" at UF. That one hits close to home, because Haridopolos previously landed a $150,000 "advance" from a Florida community college (where I once worked) to write a book that, to be kind, was not that great and which has never been published. Once again, though, IOKIYAR.

Republicans hate education

You know, it's so simple, it's a wonder I hadn't thought of it before. All the evidence is there: Jeb! Bush's systematic dismantling of public education in Florida, Drunky McStagger's apparent inability to remember anything he learned at Yale or Harvard except how to do a beer bong, the continuing efforts to replace science with fantasy in schools here in Florida and elsewhere ... in short, Republicans hate education.

Here in America's Wang™, the problem is even more pronounced. That's because we also have dumbass wingnuts in Miami who are as xenophobic and piss-your-pants a-skeered of Cuba as Rudy Giuliani is of brown people in general. Take for example state Rep. David Rivera (R-Miami) ... please.

Florida universities could again make academic field trips to Cuba if a federal judge agrees with a motion filed last month to partly overturn a state law banning school travel to "terrorist states."

A 2006 state law bans the use of taxpayer dollars and non-state money for travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, who sponsored the legislation said it is impossible to separate state dollars and federal or private money once it is in the university system and that there is little need for professors or students to go to countries such as Cuba.

"Anyone who understands the totalitarian nature of the Castro regime and its absolute control over information would conclude that research trips to Cuba are completely void of credibility," Rivera said.

Here comes a generalization, which I freely label as such: Republicans like Rivera hate education because they themselves lack intellectual curiosity. Just as they are afraid of change in a broad sense, they also actively resist learning new things, because knowledge of new facts and real situations will upset their comfort zone of ignorance, bigotry, and fear.

Excuse me, Rep. Rivera, but it's precisely because of the totalitarian government in Cuba that it is a desirable place to conduct research! Honestly, I want to smack people like this upside the head, because it's so blatantly obvious how they want to skew things. No researcher or academician worth his or her salt would seriously consider studying a country or a regime without actually visiting it ... which of course flies directly in the face of "conservative scholarship" (how's that for an oxymoron?), in which facts are twisted or ignored in an effort to support the ideology above all else. Whereas scientists establish a hypothesis and conduct research to prove or disprove it, wingnuts settle on a conclusion and then make sure any research or study leads to that conclusion ... even if the research has to be falsified.

Exhibit A is Iraq. We're embroiled in the quagmire over there largely because the rightards in charge failed to understand the fractious and volatile situation over there before we went in and stirred (or, more accurately, tipped over) the pot. Similarly, preventing firsthand academic investigation into Cuba's unique and potentially dangerous situation is a recipe for disaster. In this case, as with Iraq, what we don't know can hurt us.

The ACLU's lawsuit, which could see a final order within six weeks, was filed on behalf of professors from four schools including [Florida International University].

It may be most affected by the travel ban because of its Cuban Research Institute, which has a special federal license for travel in Cuba.

Uva de Aragon, the institute's associate director, last took a group of students to Cuba in 2004 with private money to study the country's history, art, music and architecture.

They met with a group of Cuban students who, de Aragon said, criticized capitalism and wanted only to talk about politics and how Cuba had no drug problems.

But what her students saw on the streets was very different.

"The reality of Cuba cannot be hidden," said de Aragon, who also had a student who met her grandmother for the first time during the trip and recorded the woman singing and telling stories. "No matter how many slides I could show them in a Power Point presentation, there was nothing like being there."

I'll bet Rep. Rivera would support surreptitious electronic surveillance, à la FISA, right? Yet he opposes actual study of a "terrorist state?" In most areas of the country, that's called "inconsistent." Here in south Florida, though, it's known as "pandering."

Just shut your eyes and clap harder, Republicans. Don't let the truth sway you from your ... convictions.

(Cross-posted at Florida Progressive Coalition Blog)