Tag: Florida

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Health Care Politics Rick Scott

Republican Governor Rick Scott Gets Government Healthcare

This is a perfect case of  “Do what I say, not as I do!”, and it furthers exemplifies the hypocrisy of today’s Republican party and the utter joke they have become.

Case in point? Florida’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott: Scott and the rest of the Republicans, both in Congress and in state government, are on a rampage, trying to deny healthcare to regular everyday middle class Americans. Their dirty little secret is, they are happily enrolled in the very same government health care program they want you to give up.

Gov. Rick Scott, a critic of the federal health care overhaul, is paying less than $400 a year for health insurance for himself and his wife.

While Scott is accepting no salary for his job as governor, the multimillionaire and former hospital chain executive chose to enroll in the taxpayer-subsidized health insurance plan offered by the state of Florida.

Scott is among nearly 32,000 people in state government who pay relatively low health insurance premiums. It’s a perk that is available to high-ranking state officials, including those in top management at all state agencies. Nearly all 160 state legislators are also enrolled in the program that costs just $8.34 a month for individual coverage and $30 a month for family coverage.

Brian Burgess, a spokesman for Scott, confirmed the governor and his wife are enrolled in the state health insurance plan, but refused to discuss why Scott signed up. He called the governor’s health care coverage a private matter.

Apparently, government insurance is good for them, but not for you!

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Debbie Wasserman Shultz – West “Cracked Under Pressure.”

Members of Congress often disagree, but the rules of the  house floor require that a level of civility and respect be adhered to. And as was reported yesterday, Allen West broke, stomped and totally dismantled those rules with his letter to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, calling her “vile” and saying that she’s not a lady.

Today, Mrs. Schultz responded, proving that she apparently was the adult in the room. When asked how she felt about what West had to say, Schultz replied that his comments did not faze her, and that Mr. West is under a lot of pressure, saying;

“It’s not really surprising that he would crack under pressure.”

It is left to be seen whether the Republican controlled House of Representatives and Speaker John Boehner will reprimand Allen West for his outrageous behavior.

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Politics Rick Scott United States

Granny Dumping Now Legal In Florida

Republican governor Rick Scott signed a new Medicaid Reform Law in Florida that contains a provision making “granny dumping” legal, according to Florida elder law attorney Ellen Morris.  “Granny dumping” is the term used to force seniors out of nursing homes.

This policy could result in a practice known as “granny dumping,” and force Florida seniors out of nursing homes, elder law advocates told members of the Agency for Health Care Administration at a hearing Tuesday night in West Palm Beach, FL, according to The Palm Beach Post.

The law aims to move three million Medicaid recipients into a managed care program after July 1, 2012, and transition thousands of nursing home residents back into home or community settings. Individuals who are developmentally disabled, or those in the juvenile justice and mental health institutions are exempt from the privatization program, while nursing home residents are not.

Wherever there’s a Republican governor, the people of that state will be under attack.

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Politics Republican Rick Scott United States washington Wisconsin

Republican Governor Rick Scott The Worst In The Nation… Why?

A recent Quinnipiac poll just determined that Republican governor Rick Scott of Florida is the worst governor in the nation with a 29% approval rating. Besides the fact that Scott is a Republican, what other factors would explain this unbelievable fallout with Floridians? Well, maybe his recent budget cut of $615 million dollars to programs that directly affects the residents of his state is a good place to look.

Anxious over their increasing unpopularity, Republicans lawmakers across the country are banning media from chronicling the blowback at public events. Florida’s now deeply disliked Gov. Rick Scott (R) adopted a similar tactic yesterday at a “campaign-style” budget signing ceremony at a town square in The Villages retirement community in Central Florida. Before putting his pen to the $69.7 billion state budget, Scott took an ax to $615 million of what he called “shortsighted, frivolous, wasteful spending.” Scott conveniently failed, however, to mention exactly what some of those “frivolous” programs were, including ones that provide help for the most vulnerable in society:

In his speech Thursday, Scott omitted many of the serious-sounding programs he cut: homeless veterans, meals for poor seniors, a council for deafness, a children’s hospital, cancer research, public radio, whooping-cough vaccines for poor mothers, or aid for the paralyzed.

Rick Scott’s dumb decision-making for the people of Florida does not only stop at his draconian budget slashing, but it also extends to areas where his state was slated to receive funds from the Federal government. The Republican rejected $2.3 billion from the Federal government, effectively cancelling a planned high-speed railroad installation – a move that will affect job creation and income for his state for decades to come.

The rejected funds were then sent to other states including $15 million to Washington State, prompting John Laird of The Columbian to officially deemed Rick Scott Washington’s new BFF. John wrote;

Fellow Washingtonians, hoist your glasses high and let’s toast our state’s newest BFF: Rick Scott.

Because the Florida governor bullheadedly rejected $2.3 billion in federal funding for rail improvements, Washington state is $15 million richer in our own drive for better railroads.

Previous BFFs had been Ohio and Wisconsin, where federal funding also had been turned away, only to be sent to other states. As a result, since February our state’s rail-improvement pot has grown from $590 million to $781 million, all because a few governors were willing to cut off their states’ noses to spite the feds’ face.

The Huffington Post also reported that Scott ran a campaign based on “jobs creation.” No surprise here, because in an atmosphere where many Americans are out of work and finding work is a top priority, many Republican politicians seized on job creations in the 2010 mid-term elections, promising America that if elected, they would deliver the jobs. Well, according to the Huffington Post report, Rick Scott has other priorities to worry about and jobs is not one of them.

In the legislative session that ended Saturday, lawmakers passed no job creation bills for Scott to sign. But they did pass five bills restricting abortion rights and a state budget that cuts nearly 4,500 public sector jobs.

Florida Republicans filed a total of 18 bills to restrict abortion rights during the session — the third most in the country, according to the ACLU, and twice the number of anti-choice laws introduced last year in the state, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

These are just some of the reasons this first-term Republican governor is receiving a 29% rating and is considered the worst governor in America. Considering some of the other items on his résumé, I would argue that a 29% approval rating is at least 28% too high.

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Medicare Politics Republican Rick Scott Ronald Reagan United States

Republican Robin Hoods – Taking From The Poor To Support The Rich

Republicans have long wished for the time when the poor and suffering would move out-of-the-way, and allow the millionaires, billionaires and Corporations to prosper. In their view, poor and middle class Americans are trying to take away all the programs the government has established to benefit the rich. Republicans call these “entitlement programs,” and the sooner they’re able to push and squeeze others off these programs, the sooner the rich can benefit.

No place is this more evident than in Florida, where a new Teaparty candidate,  representing the Republican party,  held a townhall meeting to address his supporters. Mr. Allan West, the House representative for Southeast Florida told the crowd that he would love to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and federal income tax, while retaining tax cuts for billionaires. West also wants to stop the  extension of unemployment benefits to the middle class and refers to the government  providing these benefits to middle class Americans as, “rewarding bad behavior.”

In reference to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, West thinks that leaving these services in tact will deplete our GDP by 2030 or 2040. His plans would be for the eventual dismantling of these  services that again for the most part assist the poor people and middle class. Spokeswoman for DCCC Jennifer Crider said;

“Everyone agrees we need to cut spending, but Representative Allen West is making the wrong choice by forcing seniors to shoulder the burden and while not asking Big Oil companies making record profits to sacrifice even the smallest amount.”

Social Security is a program that mostly pays for itself. Over the last few years, however, the program has began to show signs that it will eventually fall short of its goals of comfortably providing for its beneficiaries, mainly because more people are entering into retirement and also because the labor force is reduced due to the economic downturn. Republicans, who have been trying to dismantle the program for decades, are now using the economy and the federal deficit as reasons to bring social security to its knees. Some Democrats, like Senate Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, are determined to fight these efforts of the Republicans. In a recent interview, Mr. Reid said;

“I have said clearly and as many times as I can, leave Social Security alone. Social Security does not add a single penny, not a dime, a nickel, a dollar to the budget problems we have. Never has and for the next 30 years it won’t do that.

“So what I’ve said, if you want to look at something to take care of the out years, let’s do it at the right time. It is not in a crisis at this stage. Leave Social Security alone. We have a lot of other places we can look that are in crisis. Social Security is not. I repeat, for the next approximately 30 years people will draw 100% of their benefits.”

Mr. West’s thinking is common amongst Republican party members. Many Republican governors nationwide have begun breaking down the middle class in order to support their rich donors. Recent examples in Wisconsin, Detroit, and Florida are just some of the states where Republican governors are creating laws geared towards removing any form of assistance from the middle class worker, and transferring that assistance to the rich. Rick Scott of Florida recently proposed a bill that will cut school subsidies in his state by $1.3 billion, while at the same time, giving a tax cut of $1.6 billion to millionaires.

It is a transfer of wealth like we haven’t seen in quite a long time, and it started over 30 years ago when Ronald Regan introduced the idea of trickle down economics. The concept embraces the belief that giving to the rich will in turn allow them to provide jobs to the middle class, thus trickling down the wealth. But this idea failed in the Reagan years, causing the president to raise taxes in an effort to fight off a downward turn in the 1980 economy. And although it failed then, trickle down economics was embraced by conservatives over the past 30 years, and contributed heavily to the most recent recession that started in 2007/2008 under the Bush administration. According to reports from The Atlantic;

When Clinton left office in 2000, the Census counted almost 31.6 million Americans living in poverty. When Bush left office in 2008, the number of poor Americans had jumped to 39.8 million (the largest number in absolute terms since 1960.) Under Bush, the number of people in poverty increased by over 8.2 million, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the economic collapse of 2008.

Unfortunately, here we are in 2011, and the trickle-down trend has continued. Republicans are now taking away from schools, education, cutting back on planned parenthood and public radio, in an effort to finance the bank accounts of the rich. Will the American people wake up from their slumber before it’s too late? Will we ever realize that the last 30+ years of trickle down economics did nothing for the middle class, and everything for th über rich? If we continue to go down this path we’ve been on for the past 30 years, why should we expect a different outcome?

America can once again be what the founding fathers intended it to be. The preamble to the constitution says it best;

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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