It's been a busy few weeks, and I'm way behind here, but it's hard to keep up on Scott fails even on a good day, am I right? Even so, here's an abbreviated version:
It's been three years, and bless his absent heart, Rick Scott just can't face facts: Florida doesn't like him. They really, REALLY don't like him:
Since the day he was elected, polls have shown that more Floridians dislike him than like him. Not that he hasn't made efforts to win them over. He tried social media outreach, then gave it up. He tried dressing casual, then gave it up. He tried doing "Let's Get to Work Days" but seems to have abandoned those, too.
As Floridians know all too well, to win people over, it takes action rather than a few slogans and props like school children used as human shields in a photo-op as you sign away their chances at a good education to get the public in your corner. Scott knows that too, which is why he flees the interview when the same talking point repeated three times in a row fails to answer tough questions shouted in his general direction whenever he comes out of his lair.
I agree. He's just giving up at this point. The only people who are still with him these days are the big donors, because he's given them enough corporate welfare that they can afford to throw away money on him.
Leave it to Governor Tone Deaf to brag about Florida's award winning parks one day, and refuse to open those that have been shut down thanks to his party in Congress the next. Ask him why he refused, and I'm guessing he'd say he did it because it would help Florida families get back to work and help small businesses thrive, before Obamacare kills them all....or something.
Speaking of small businesses, and parks, who could have predicted that keeping the Everglades closed would choke the local economy?
Take it away, Mr. Hiaasen:
But here’s who else is getting screwed while the parks are shut down and the tourists stay away: Owners of all the nearby hotels, restaurants, campgrounds, bars, marinas, grocery stores, tackle shops and gas stations, and everybody employed by them.
Mechanics, maids, bartenders, waiters, cooks, checkout clerks — ordinary folks who’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve this. They don’t work for the government but they’ve effectively been downgraded to “non-essential.”
The sad story in the Keys is repeating itself in small towns such as Gardiner, Mont., the northern gateway to Yellowstone National Park, and Tusayan, Ariz., at the South Rim entrance to the Grand Canyon.
Also off limits (at least on paper) is Biscayne National Park, a prime swath of Biscayne Bay. Good luck enforcing that during the Columbus Day regatta.
Ironically, no place has been spanked harder by the parks shutdown than Washington, D.C., where the economy depends on millions of tourists coming to the national monuments and free museums, now closed to the public.
The pain being suffered by the capital’s idle taxi drivers and tour bus operators isn’t enough to move House Speaker John Boehner and his tea party posers, nor is the distant plight of South Florida’s fishing guides.
Interestingly, Boehner enjoys visiting the Keys, hanging out with his buds at the Cheeca Lodge in Islamorada.
Now is probably not a good time for Johnny Boy to come.
And much like Johnny Boy, Ricky Boy thinks you're stupid as he tries to pin his own ineptitude on President Obama, when Americans see this for what it is: Yet another opportunity to make austerity more permanent:
In response to the prolonged federal shutdown, Gov. Rick Scott’s chief of staff on Thursday ordered that no state funds will be used to offset any federal programs that run out of cash as a result of the federal inaction.
In a draft letter, directed to the governor’s agencies, chief of staff Adam Hollingsworth said that absent a federal resolution to the shutdown, “it is important that we ensure that state funds are not committed as a temporary backfill to federal programs as a matter of course.”
Hollingsworth did not address what might happen to the programs that will not meet payroll next week -- from school districts to vocational services for the blind -- if the shutdown continues, according to state records.
His two-page memo said that "no accounting measures (journal transfers) or budget actions (budget amendments) are taken to temporarily support unavailable federal funds through the use of state funds." Any attempt to do so would require approved of the governor's office, he said, in consultation with the Florida Legislature.
For his part, Scott would not answer reporters’ questions about what impact the shutdown is having on the state but directed blame for the gridlock in Washington to President Barack Obama.
“The buck always stops with the president,’’ Scott said in an interview with the Herald/Times.
