Rick Scott: Worthy Of Impeachment?

Mike & Friends Blog

Dan Rackley

Dan Rackley is a US Naval veteran living in Philadelphia and a contributor to "Will They Ever Trust Us Again?"

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September 15th, 2011 1:58 PM

Rick Scott: Worthy Of Impeachment?

Sometimes, politicians will do all they can to engage in the winning of hearts and minds. They’ll shake hands, they will kiss babies. The more desperate ones will probably mow your lawn. Now and again, they will engage in various forms of double talk. However, the trick to successful double talk if you want to make sure your constituents do not realize you’re full of beans is to spread it out. Don’t say you like apples, then be caught eating an orange the next day. That’s the key to it, wait a few months before you eat the orange. If somehow they get convinced you like oranges, make sure start eating apples every time you have a camera thrust in front of you. That way the less informed believe everything that comes out of your mouth.

Which brings me to the Governor of Florida, Rick Scott. He’s only been in office less than a year, and already has managed to execute quite a bit of sketchy maneuvers. Most of them involve some form of financial cut that would benefit people. Like the federal stimulus money that he said that he didn’t want to accept. Then accepted. Then he can’t come up with an explanation as to why he agreed to take the money. Oh and by the way, this is the same Rick Scott that is part owner of a telecommunications company that accepted stimulus money. So, if it was good enough for your private interests; why was it not good for the people of Florida? But then again he reversed himself, so he comes out smelling like a rose. So I guess with all of this free money coming in they weren’t going to be cutting anything from the budget in relation to assistance programs. Right?

Wrong. Even with all of the extra stimulus money that he didn’t really want but in the end took it anyway; he’s made cuts. When he signed the Florida budget last May, there were over half a billion dollars in vetoes and cuts. One of which was a cut of twelve million dollars to the National Veterans Homeless Support Group. Then before the ink was ever dry on the budget penned a Memorial Day message. Yep, you guessed it; praising veterans and their sacrifices. After cutting millions of dollars from a program for veterans that have it the hardest, he had the gall to thank veterans for their sacrifice. Double talk of the highest order. I wonder how many homeless veterans realize that Rick Scott was trying to pat them on the back at the same time he was cutting their throats. I know that if you’re not homeless or a veteran this probably doesn’t affect you a bit. But think of it this way, if he will cut money off from people that need it the most; what are you going to do when he cuts something that you care about? And by the way, Governor Scott is a veteran of the United States Navy. I wonder if he thought about the possibility of ever being in the position of the people he just cut funding from.

And in a political landscape that the topic of how well an elected official can create jobs is a measure of reliability, he’s suffering terribly. Another one of those excellent moves in the winning of hearts and minds had him firing 4,500 state employees. Not exactly the greatest way to get the citizens of Florida to believe that you are invested in their well being. If you’ll cut state employees, at the very least you’ll try to do something to make sure private sector employees have jobs, right? Here’s where Rick Scott fouled up once again.

Mass transit is a great benefit to many people. From an individual standpoint, it can serve as a great alternative to air travel. In many cases, it’s much less expensive to take a train somewhere, or even a car in some instances. The State of Florida would have benefited on many levels from the building of a high speed rail system. People would have been able to get where they needed to go quicker. The creation of jobs would have been well into five figures. But guess what, he cut the funding for that too. Creation of jobs should be the highest priority for any politician right now in the current American economy, and he axed funding for something that would have given ten thousand people jobs to create. That’s just the folks that would have been laying the tracks and manning the trains. If you want to use the good ol’ trickledown effect in this scenario, it’s not just potential rail workers that get a potential job ripped out of their hands. Think of all the infrastructure a train station needs. The guy that sells you the newspaper. The folks that clean the bathrooms. The people that make your sandwich and pour your coffee.

Sure, you can argue that it doesn’t matter in the context of actually building a railroad. But if the railroad got built, you’d need those people. Since the railroad isn’t there, the need isn’t there. More people that get a potential job taken away from them. If Governor Scott was interested in the slightest in creating even one job, he’d approve a thirty thousand dollar cut to his salary. At least the state would be able to hire one person. If it starts with the person at the top, and he’s going to cut things; then he should start at the top with his cuts. And if he’s independently wealthy from outside interests, should he be taking state money to begin with to govern Florida. Giving state money to a millionaire borders on misappropriation of funds. If a guy that didn’t need the money didn’t accept the money, think of how many jobs could be created on a governor’s salary alone.

Seems as if the only person in Florida that believes Rick Scott is a good governor is Rick Scott. Hundreds have signed petitions calling for his impeachment. The mayor of Tampa is calling for it publicly. Scott last spring threw out the first pitch at a Florida Marlins game and got resoundingly booed. Look, this may just be a surface scan, if baseball fans would choose to boo you over the Florida Marlins; you may not be doing your job as good as you thought.

I guess the lesson from all of this would be simple. Even though something may not be in the dead center of your radar, don’t be afraid to look at what’s going on in other parts of the country. You might have a Rick Scott in your state. The second you see your elected officials doing something you don’t approve of, shout it from a rooftop if you have to. We aren’t accountable to them, they are accountable to us.