Dear JT,
Thank you for taking the time to write out a well researched post. I agree with many of your points about the shenanigans of government in covering up debt. I also agree that is a completely bipartisan endeavor.
Here are a few points on which you and I see differently. Keep in mind please JT that I don't intend to personalize anything we disagree on. You are a great guy. As Americans and fellow Floridians we can disagree and still be be friendly, civil and courteous.
Let me begin with a quote from Wikipedia:
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Republican_Party
"The Florida Senate was dominated by Democrats until 1992,when a majority of Republicans was elected. The Florida House of Representatives turned Republican after the 1996 election. Since then the number of Democrats in both chambers have (sic) continued to drop. The Florida legislature became the first legislature in any of the states of the former confederacy to come under complete Republican control when the Republicans gained control of the House and Senate in the 1996 election. However in the 2006 election Democrats actually gained seats in the State House, the first instance of this occurring since the early 1980's."
The last Democratic governor of Florida was Lawton Chiles. He served from January 8, 1991- December 12, 1998. He died of a heart attack while in office. His lieutenant served out the remaining 3 weeks of his term.
So the Republicans have had complete control of the Florida house and Senate since 1992. Florida has had only Republican governors since 1999. It has one of the biggest Republican majorities in the country. So you talk about the current state of affairs in our home state from a partisan viewpoint. It was hardly those tax and spend liberals who got us to where we are.
So whose mess is Rick Scott (Our latest Republican governor with a 29% approval rating) supposed to be cleaning up after? Is he cleaning up Lawton Chiles' mess from 1998? Is he cleaning up Jeb Bush's mess from 1999-2007? (Yes.
That Jeb Bush, GWB's brother.) Or is he cleaning up after Charlie Crist who served from 2007-2011?
Was Rick Scott handed a mess by the pinko, commie, tax and spend liberal Jeb Bush? Was it the 4 years of Crist? Was it any of the consecutive Republican governors of the last 12 years? Or was it the Republican dominated Florida House and Senate of the last 19 years?
There's a reason why Gov. Scott has a 29% approval rating. The guy is a crook. He got wealthy by founding creating big health care companies. Then it came out while he was CEO of one of them (Columbia/HCA) that they were willfully and deliberately defrauding Medicare and Medicaid. The government decided that the corruption and Medicare/Medicaid fraud within the company was so egregious that they slapped Columbia/HCA with one of the biggest fines in history.
The Fed fined Rick Scott's company a whopping......$1.7 BILLION!!
He claimed he had no knowledge of that culture of overbilling and charging for services not performed. Just like the crooks at Enron, he said that all illegality was done by underlings. So of course he had no idea what was really going on in his own company to increase revenues. Then he managed to walk away without criminal charges.
Then he used $70 million of his own stolen money to self finance the campaign for governor. Yes. That's right. In order to win the election here by a squeaker he spent $70 million of his own money. Here in Florida right now we have the best government money can buy.
Obviously I get peeved whenever I hear Rick Scott demagoguing about his concerns about Medicare and Medicaid. Yeah, he's really concerned about them alright. I'm sure he has everyone's best interest at heart.
The LAST thing I want to see is Rick Scott of all people "fixing" Medicare. Oh Joy!
My overall point being of course that Florida government mirrors the national governemt in many ways. More on that later.