According to the St. Petersburg Times, Rick Scott was asked Thursday about his thoughts on a potential government shutdown due to the debt ceiling negotiations in Washington.
To anyone who is paying attention, his response might be a little unsettling. Not too surprising considering the source, but unsettling nonetheless:
On a potential federal government shutdown, Scott said he didn't anticipate any halt in the flow of federal money to Florida. Generally speaking, he said, the federal government needs to live within its means and stop borrowing money.
I realize Scott doesn't read the papers, but seriously? He doesn't anticipate any halt in the flow of money to Florida?
We're faced with a catastrophic financial meltdown, and yes, say it with me Gov. Scott, a:
G-o-v-e-r-n-m-e-n-t S-h-u-t-d-o-w-n
But he doesn't see that as anything but a minor nuisance, and money will magically flow to the state of Florida as the rest of the country grinds to a halt? Perhaps he was speaking of his own personal fortune, that he personally won't have to worry if the debt ceiling isn't raised? Maybe just a hiccup for him, as if the local ATM were out of order?
It's staggering. Utterly clueless. It's no wonder his approval ratings are currently even worse than those of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
From there Scott breezed on and talked of his upcoming vacation plans, which will include a day trip to Aspen for another speaking engagement with the Republican Governors Association. The reporter asked if he was going back to Vail, perhaps hinting again about his recent trip there to hang out with the Koch Brothers.
Getting By With A Little Help From His Friends?
That brings to mind another upcoming event, and I have to wonder if he'll be attending this one as well. On August 1-6, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC as it's more commonly known, will be holding their annual meeting in New Orleans, and I really hope he'll be asked about that one a lot beforehand, since he tried to keep the Koch Summit trip a secret. I doubt he would want Floridians knowing about this one either, especially since ALEC has been in the news a lot, most recently in the past few days.
If you're not familiar with ALEC and what they do, well, you probably should be. They're a corporate funded group who work with conservative politicians and write laws and vote on them on your behalf, in secret. In fact, Gov. Scott and the Republican members of the Florida legislature have worked on and passed laws coincidentally similar to many of the ALEC "templates" that are sent out to states on a kind of "cut & paste" basis. ALEC is also heavily funded by, guess who? The Koch Brothers!
So if you find yourself scratching your head wondering how politicians like, say Gov. Scott, or Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos can seem so clueless, and yet crank out legislation at such a mind numbing pace as they did this past session, this may be why.
Lawmakers don't have to write the bills or come up with these ideas on their own. ALEC member corporations meet in secret and are all too happy to do the work for them. Lawmakers just do a little minor editing and voila! Laws that favor big businesses, but you? Not so much.
Cut, paste, repeat.
I'll be writing more about this later on, but for now you might want to have a look at what ALEC does. Recently documents on many of those templates were leaked by a whistleblower and are now posted on this website where you can search for them by subject like, say privatizing education, charter schools, union busting laws, and rigging elections just for starters. Sound familiar?
There's also a series by The Nation that explains in depth how ALEC works and some of the history behind the group, beginning with an article by former health insurance executive and whistleblower Wendall Potter explaining how ALEC worked behind the scenes to make sure that President Obama's health care reform didn't include a public option, and how they set up the laws to make it easier for states to maintain control over your health care. Again: Sound familiar?
So I certainly hope that reporters from the traditional media will start asking Rick Scott, and other local Republicans if they have any travel plans in August. I for one would just love to know. Unless, of course the government does actually shut down. Then someone will have to break it to Rick Scott that things like homeland security and air traffic controllers who help make it easier for people like him to travel on their private possibly unreported gift planes are a couple of the things that might get axed when the government coffers run dry.
But for Governor Clueless, those would be the least of his, and our problems.
