The Hard Truth From Orlando

POLITICAL RANT

Florida's Governor Rick Scott -- where can I start? This guy is what Bugs Bunny would call a "maroon" -- and a dangerous one. He's the new Republican Tea Partiest -- he belongs to the party of "NO." No, we can't work on that. No, we can't do that. No, we don't need that. No, I'm not going to help, I'm just going to obstruct. No, we're not going into the future; we're going to embrace the past -- the 1950's past. No, we're not going to work together. No, I'm just protecting taxpayers, even if they don't want my protection and what I'm doing is more injurious than if I left things to hell alone -- although protecting taxpayers was apparently the farthest thing from Scott's mind when he was gouging the taxpayer-based Medicare system as CEO of a hospital corporation and even further from his mind when he became a venture capitalist funded by those ill-gotten gains with which he could then afford to buy the governor's office and get a whole state to plunder. Now, he purports to be the Florida taxpayer's Father-Knows-Best, orchestrating the state's finances based on his shady experience in every state he's worked.

Scott said repeatedly during his campaign that he had a plan to create 70,000 jobs. Then he got in office and said he wanted to have a conference on how to create 70,000 jobs. (Um, I thought he said he already had a plan.) Maybe he got confused (or we misunderstood) and he really meant that he had a plan to eliminate 70,000 jobs. In that case, he's making great progress on his campaign promise.

Governor Scott decided he didn't want the high-speed rail -- which has been voted on more than once by Florida residents, the majority of whom want it, both for the transportation alternative and the jobs. And he personally turned down the billions the Federal Government is willing to put in because he says he's afraid the taxpayers will have to somehow foot the bill somewhere down the line.

I guess he means like we currently have to foot the bill for the never-ending toll roads system that continues to turn an annual multi-million dollar corporate profit without improving traffic conditions in Central Florida . I guess he means like the ongoing loss of revenue because of the refusal of future employers to relocate to the area because the transportation and traffic along the I-4 Corridor is sufficient to discourage any business in this gasoline-powered urban nightmare.

But he says he wants to spend billions to improve Florida 's ports to encourage sea-traffic from the proposed Panama Canal widening. But any twit-head knows you have to have the infrastructure to move the freight from the ports to other locations and most international ports are attached to the national rail systems, which would have made the high-speed rail a plus for the Port of Tampa as a destination. But no, he wants to do the improvements in Miami , without rail improvements. I guess his Republican buddies down there need the money to make up for their losses in the mortgage melt-down his banking buddies engineered, so he'll help them re-dig the Port of Miami and then figure out how to move the freight from the ships after the price of gas breaks the back of the trucking industry and puts all blue-collar and middle-class workers in the welfare lines. His wealthy Republican buddies will profit from both in the Port improvement and their oil-company stocks at the same time.

Father-Knows-Best Scott has now turned down an offer from the manufacturers of the viciously abused fake heroin Oxycodone/Oxycontin to set up a monitoring system to curb the proliferation of Florida pill mills, a pharmaceutical scandal known throughout our nation. Governor Scott says that any monitoring system is an intrusion into citizens' privacy and it will somehow cost the taxpayers to create and monitor the system. Apparently, he thinks such a system will cost taxpayers more than the immediate epidemic of drug-related crime, incarceration, rehab and other taxpayer-based health programs the pill-addicts are hemorrhaging.

He seems to imply that system will be different somehow than the current legislated system we have in Florida to monitor the purchase of decongestants with a working active ingredient that meth-heads use to cook up methamphetamine; the formerly over-the-counter decongestants for which we now have to produce a photo ID to the pharmacist, register the amount, date, time and location of what we purchased and sign an affidavit that we will not make methamphetamine from our little purchase of head-cold pills. Does he mean a system like that to stop the Oxycodone/Oxycontin pill-mill epidemic is more intrusive and costly than monitoring decongestants?

I think Governor Scott and his buddies in the hospital business, with their heavy investment in pharmaceutical stocks, don't want that pain-pill cash cow slaughtered before they've gotten their pockets stuffed. Good God, Scott's got to make up that 63 million-plus he spent to buy the governorship somehow.

But Scott's says he's going to save the taxpayers money. He's going to break the back of one of the best government employee pension programs in the U.S. He's going to end tenure for teachers, gut the incomes of anyone stupid enough to work for this State or local government at less than comparable private wages, end the benefits (many of which are insurance industry-driven costs which corporations have NOT been regulated and continue to run rampant) packages for employees which are the main incentive for working 30 years for the State at minimal wages with no pay raises for years at a time. He wants 5 to 10% of employee wages to be funneled back into the retirement program -- which amounts a double paycut for every employee; the percentage the State isn't paying into retirement for the employee plus the percentage the employee has to cut out of their wages.

Scott wants you to believe he's a just fiscal conservative, here to man the helm when Florida 's economy is faltering after being bled out by the rampant Wall Street and Washington mortgage frauds and the never-ending wars in Afghanistan/Iraq.

But you know, Scott originally hails from Kansas , home of the Westboro we-hate-fags-let's-picket-military-funerals Church, home of the anti-abortion, anti-women's rights Personhood Movement, you-have-to-teach-Creationism-in-school Kansas . He's a fringe-riding hypocrite, out in search of the God-Almighty dollar. He's made his millions stealing from taxpayers and middle-class workers with the complicity of Wall Street and the health insurance corporations. He rode into power on a carpet of personal money and the endorsement of a Tea Party movement which has proven to be a fine example of what kind of rhetoric it takes to make crack-pot a viable political platform.

In the post Civil War era, he'd have been labeled a carpetbagger. But for now, he's a loose cannon, Tea Party darling, with no brakes and nothing in his head but dollar-signs for eyeballs. Don't blink, ya'll. These next few years will be interesting. I wonder how many of us Floridians will survive the financial wreckage when this rip-off artist is finished fleecing Florida and moves on to his next set of victims.


Florida Cracker