Today’s Recall Election: A Warning to the Future

Oh yes: you probably do not know this, unless you read all of the papers. (And if you do read all the papers, that means you got to enjoy “Recall election could trigger change,” a real doozy from the Herald, though they also have this brisk and informative thing for those unfamiliar. Trigger change! It sure could. Or could not. Anyway!) Today the mayor of Miami and also a Miami-Dade county commissioner are up for a recall vote, which is notably the work of one man. One billionaire, no less: Norman Braman. Now… the squeaky thing here is: he’s right! There should be an ability to recall these people. And also there should be crazy things like “term limits” and fewer people ransacking the county, which is Braman’s agenda. And then there is absolutely no discussion of who comes next: there’s a monster-sized vacuum for a monster to pop up in. Given the scope of the pro-privatization, “anti-tax,” right-wing-funded political candidate training going on in the country, the rash of recalls we’ll likely see over the next year have the same problem. The post-recall elections are wide-open to anyone with the funding to run. And you know who’s got the money.