Dennis Baxley has been once again elected to the Florida Legislature. He served in the House previously, where he perpetrated a variety of pernicious and dastardly legislation.
Baxley is from Ocala, which, while a nice place to live, is representative of the worst of redneck, right-wing, christianist politics. At one time, he headed up the Florida division of the theocratic Christian Coalition which has as its goal the overthrow of our current governments (local, state and national) and their replacement by christianist governments, based upon a fundamentalistic christianist interpretation of that hoary old collection of nonsense, the christianist Bible.
At various times, Baxley has fought the teaching of evolution in our public schools; he has fought for the right to carry weapons on to the property of one's job site; he has argued in favor of vouchers which would provide religious kooks taxpayer money to send their kids to parochial schools to be taught goofy religious delusions and mythologies, including Creationism; he has promoted the notion that a fetus is a person; he has claimed that Christians teaching on college campuses are being persecuted; he implied that perhaps President Obama's "Muslim" upbringing (which is a myth in itself) may lead Obama to go easy on Islamic radicals; he has further implied that Obama's former association with the infamous Rev. Wright casts suspicion on Obama's claim to be a Christian; and the list goes on and on. Baxley stands on the far right fringe of American politics: he is a theocrat; he is dangerous to our democratic system and to the ongoing viability of our Constitution.
Now, along with most every other Repugnican in the Florida legislature, Baxley is focusing on issues which have no relevance to a secular democracy and are of little concern to most of our citizens. For example, because he is a right-wingnut christianist, Baxley thinks abortion is wrong. That's fine and that's his right. He shouldn't have one, then!
But because he is a right-wingnut christianist with a direct pipeline to his god, Baxley has concluded that he has the right to impose his religious views on every woman in the state of Florida! So, he is sponsoring an amendment to the Florida Constitution which would make it impossible for any woman to obtain any money from the state for an abortion, no matter what the reason.
What's really crazy about this is that it will cost over $90,000 to do the necessary footwork in Florida's 67 counties to get this amendment on the ballot in November. But in the last three-year fiscal period, the state of Florida spent about $3,000 on Medicaid abortions. Now this is the same guy who cries about deficits and how we must not raise taxes on the poor corporations, blah, blah, blah...but he's willing to toss about $100 thousand dollars of your money and mine to foist his particular religious viewpoint on the rest of us!
Baxley, probably because he's a man of some substantial financial means being part-owner of a funeral home is not concerned about jobs, housing and the homeless, the environment, saving the Everglades, global warming, health care, etc. or other issues that impact regular folks like you and me. Unfortunately, that is also true of most every other Repugnican in the Florida Legislature!
Baxley has said that this amendment, which is really about banning all abortions in the state and a means to get a foot in the door to reverse Roe v. Wade, is the most important thing he's ever done.
It's sick! When are the people of Florida going to stop electing these ass-hats to be legislators?
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