While following the Koch line against minimum wage increases, Marco Rubio helped the Senate Republicans filibuster those increases today. Sen. Bill Nelson voted "yes," to raise them.
Rubio consistently votes against his constituents' best interests, and follows up with excuses that make no sense to anyone, except perhaps Rubio, who is hardly the brightest star in the universe despite the GOP attempts to portray him as theirs.
"I’ve proposed a change to something which in English is called the 'wage enhancement', which instead of the earned income tax credit which exists today, additional money is given monthly to these low-income workers, instead of once a year through their taxes, monthly through what they’re charging at their jobs.
In Rubio's "English" this may translate to "wage enhancement" but to the rest of us it translates to "enhanced bull***t."
But wait, he was hardly finished. Here's his reasoning on why paying workers a wage they can actually live on is bad for them:
The Price Of Spite: Weatherford Took $15 Million For Himself, Ignored $0 To Save Her Life
As this year's legislative session draws to a close, the second in a row that ignores Medicaid expansion, lawmakers are patting themselves on the backs while they celebrate a $1.2 billion budget surplus. You know what that means. It's like Christmas in April for money-grubbing lawmakers and their hometown pet projects.
Floridians in coverage gap to ask legislators: “Do I have to be a tourist to get health care?”
Health care advocates to call attention to Medical Tourism bill moving but not health care expansion:
On Wednesday, April 30, Floridians who have fallen into the health care “coverage gap” will be joined by advocates to urge legislators to expand access to health care in the final week of the legislative session. They will call attention to the legislature’s support for a Medical Tourism bill, which seeks to get more patients visiting local health care providers, even though the patients being targeted will be out-of-state “medical tourists” rather than the 1.1 million uninsured Floridians already in need of care right here at home.
“We need access to health care, quality jobs and economic stability here in Florida. Expanding access to health care for more than a million Floridians in need would do all three,” said Leah Barber-Heinz, CEO of Florida CHAIN. “If lawmakers want to make medical services available to tourists from out-of-state, they should also make basic health care coverage available to Floridians who need it here at home.”
Who: Health care advocates who are part of the Health Care for Florida Now coalition as well as Floridians caught in the “coverage gap”:
Denise Wade, 46, of Clermont is a breast cancer survivor and widow who now lives with her parents. She had to liquidate all of her assets to get care for her late husband. Denise is uninsured and has been diagnosed with several ailments.
Reed Mahoney, 55, of Havana has physical condition that severely limits his ability to work. Reed does not qualify for current Medicaid coverage and is unable to afford other insurance.
David Sanford, 50, of Clermont suffers intense pain from an accident. The limits of his physical condition prevent him from doing some jobs but he keeps looking for work and a way to get back on his feet. He is uninsured and is unable to get the care he needs.
Victoria Stout, 57, is employed in the service industry and has been uninsured for a number of years because her jobs didn't offer insurance and she now feels "marginally employed" because of the intense physical demands of her service job.
What: Media availability – opportunity to speak with “coverage gap” consumers and health care advocates.
When: April 30, 2014, 10:30-11:30AM.
Where: 4th floor rotunda, State Capitol
Why: To highlight the legislature’s simultaneous refusal to accept funds for health care expansion and support for the Medical Tourism bill.
Florida CHAIN is a statewide consumer health advocacy organization dedicated to improving the health of all Floridians by promoting access to affordable, quality health care.
Whatever happened to that self-proclaimed "fiscal conservative" and Tea Party "political outsider" who ran for governor in 2010?
Rick Scott is blowing through millions in campaign dollars like a millionaire who has money to burn would, because he does. Granted, we don't know the extent of his personal fortune, and thanks to that blind trust, much of it is shielded from public view. So are the ways he may stand to profit, should he get another four years in office. A casual observer would surmise this could mean a great deal.
That would explain his desperation, and why he keeps spending at a rapid rate, and attempting to raise even more. For all the money he's spent so far, and that's after nearly a year of "campaigning," it hasn't helped his poll numbers much. He's been at rock bottom for his years in office, and that certainly hasn't changed, for good reason. He's a disaster. Floridians don't like him. He's also bad at trying to buy their votes. So far all he's given the average Floridian is throwing them a bone that will save them pocket change on auto tags, and only those who renew them during a certain time frame.
No, most of that money is going into smoke and mirrors to fool the public, and as we've already seen, it's backfiring. Anyone paying attention to what Scott and the Republicans in the legislature are doing know that most of the money in the state is going to private businesses through tax cuts, government contracts, shredded regulations, and numerous other things that add up to huge profits for those who cough up big Scott donations, at Floridians' expense.
To add taxpayer insult to profitable injury, Scott is even campaigning on the taxpayer's dime. In Florida that's just business as usual, and no one in power seems interested in doing anything about it.
Zip.
Think about it: Rick Scott is using taxpayer dollars to run against the very people he's hurting. If that sounds familiar, it should. Scott's done this before, mostly through lawsuits Floridians foot the bill for. Lawsuits that materialized because Scott was attempting to take people's rights away. Drug testing for welfare recipients, drug testing for state employees, voter suppression, and health care, just to name a few. And Scott isn't alone. Pam Bondi has done the same thing fighting against the Affordable Care Act and fighting to take away access to contraception. Lucky for us, most of their efforts have failed.
While Scott's busy blowing through all those piles of campaign cash, so far they haven't helped him in the minds of the voters, and it shows.
Take this observation from Charlie Crist campaign consultant Kevin Cate:
By our accounting and published reports, by the end of session, Rick Scott will have hemorrhaged about $20 million to artificially boost his horrible poll numbers. And that may be low balling it because this doesn't include spending by opaque 501c4 groups, such as Americans for Prosperity and Progressive Choice, groups that share the goal of re-electing Rick Scott.
And that spending is only since Charlie Crist, the People’s Governor, announced in November.
Let’s put that in perspective.
At this time last cycle, Rick Scott had spent less than $4 million against Bill McCollum and Alex Sink. As we all know now, that was on his way to spending $95 million in 2010, a far friendlier climate for a tea party candidate than 2014.
To match his extravagant spending from 2010, Rick Scott needs to raise way, way more than the $100 million his campaign has boasted about. In fact, to match what Scott spent from May through Election Day in 2010, he’d have to spend another $91 million on top of the $20 million he’s already thrown away. And that money won't go nearly as far, since he has a much bigger campaign bureaucracy to fund.
Remember, this is a man who has been alone on TV promoting lies and deceptions.
He has also spent carelessly online. The only frugal aspect of his campaign is the illegal part where he uses taxpayer resources to prep him for campaign speeches and stage campaign commercial shoots.
By comparison, Charlie Crist has yet to spend anything on TV commercials, and has a much leaner campaign operation. In fact, some top advisers are simply volunteers, a testament to the fact that the Crist campaign is in this to take back Florida for the people, not themselves.
When we begin to communicate on paid media, we will continue to communicate for the remainder of the cycle, and Rick Scott’s mountain of money will have been wasted.
Remember, this was the $25 million he intended to bully his competition out of the race. He said as much.
Now that’s basically gone. And it didn’t work.
This is, of course, hardly news to Scott, who's busy scratching around for his next boatload of cash, and big donors are lining up to hand it over hoping for big returns. One only needs to follow the money to get an idea of where future legislation will go, and in whose favor, again, at the expense of Floridians.
The Republican Governor's Association just handed over another $2.5 million, his largest contribution this election cycle so far, and here's where that money came from:
So where did the RGA get its money? New federal tax records show that developers, utilities and pharmaceutical companies were among those who wrote five- and six-figure donations to the association around the time it made its eye-popping donation to Scott.
-- Zuffa LLC, the parent company of Ultimate Fighting Championship, which gave $100,000 to the RGA on Jan. 10. Zuffa is currently lobbying the Florida Legislature this spring to rewrite boxing and mixed-martial art regulations and to exempt some of its fight records from the state’s public-records law. If they pass, Scott will have to decide whether to sign or veto them.
-- Deloitte Services LLP, which gave $50,000 on Jan. 16. Deloitte’s consulting division was the vendor blamed for the disastrous rollout of Florida’s new unemployment-benefits website – and the vendor that just won another, $31.6 million state contract, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
-- Florida Power & Light, which gave $150,000 on Jan. 17. (Parent company Nextera Energy Inc. gave another $350,000 to the RGA on Feb. 4.) The Juno Beach-based utility is involved in myriad issues in Florida politics, including trying to beat back attempts to repeal a controversial nuclear-power fee it is allowed to charge customers.
-- Comprehensive Health Management, a subsidiary of WellCare Health Plans Inc., the Tampa-based managed-care company, which gave $55,000 on Jan. 17 and another $195,000 on Jan. 24. Scott’s administration recommended a WellCare subsidiary for a Medicaid contract just last fall.
A host of other businesses and individuals gave money to the RGA shortly before it donated to Scott, from drug-maker Pfizer ($250,000 on Jan. 10) to Station Casinos ($100,000 on Jan. 10) to Delta Air Lines($25,000 on Jan. 10). The association raised more than $22 million in all during the January-through-March quarter, according to its filings with the Internal Revenue Service.
It's not hard to connect the dots to get a glimpse at Floridians' future should those donations influence Scott and legislators who stand to rake in their own cash if they do what the business interests want. If there's anyone in Florida who believes all that money won't influence them in any way, I would gladly print out this blog post and eat it upon meeting them.
But wait. There's more. That $2.5 million isn't nearly enough for Scott and the RPOF. They want more, and Chris Christie, the chairman of the RGA, better known these days as the "Time for some traffic problems in New Jersey" man, is about to lend them a hand to get it. The king of political endorsement revenge is appearing in Largo tomorrow with Scott to brag up his elimination of the manufacturing sales tax, followed by yet another fundraiser in Lakeland.
Birds of a feather plot against constituents together?
How much more money will Scott burn through in his ongoing effort to stay as CEO of Florida, Inc.? Does he own a mint somewhere too? Because he's going to need one at the rate he's going.
Time for some traffic problems in Florida on the way back to the governor's office in November.
Rick Scott's latest attempt at campaign grandstanding (at taxpayer's expense?) failed miserably today when he held a "rountable" with some seniors in Boca Raton. He used the meeting to try and scare seniors over Medicare Advantage cuts for campaign publicity, but it blew up in his face:
Gov. Rick Scott assembled about 20 seniors here this morning for a roundtable discussion on Medicare Advantage cuts under the federal health care law — an issue Scott and Republicans have used to criticize Obamacare.
But the group that met with Scott at the Volen Center had few complaints and said they hadn’t experienced many changes since the Affordable Care Act took effect.
That's because those Medicare Advantage cuts aren't happening. But Rick Scott knows that. The cuts are a familiar Republican scare tactic used to try and attack the President's Affordable Care Act, which is also working well, much to the chagrin of the GOP, who have all but given up their attempts to repeal it. The cuts simply aren't happening. In fact, the only place those Medicare Advantage cuts exist are in the Republican's Ryan budget, and if they were to get their way, the ax would indeed fall. But under the ACA? Not happening.
In fact, one of those seniors told Scott that Medicare Advantage is saving her money by making her drugs more affordable. Apparently she didn't get the memo the Florida GOP and Scott worked so hard to craft. Facts are fickle things.
Not that Scott didn't get any complaints. He did get one:
One woman praised Medicare Advantage for making drugs affordable, but did say she’s had trouble finding an orthopedic surgeon to do a knee procedure.
One complaint. One.
But naturally, Scott had a script to stick to, and so he did:
Scott mentioned her concerns later to reporters.
“As I travel the state, what I hear from people is they’re having a harder time getting physicians. One lady here talked about the number of orthopedic surgeons that are now, she can’t get an orthopedic surgeon to help her,” Scott said.
In all his travels across the state, he found one woman who had difficulty locating an orthopedic surgeon.Who knows why that is, but it's probably due to any number of other issues, and not the fault of any changes due to ACA. After all, orthopedic surgeons aren't exactly hard to find in Florida. As a former hospital chain owner and operator, Scott also knows this.
But Ruthlyn B. Rubin urged Scott and seniors to take a broader view.
“We’re all just sitting here taking it for granted that because we have Medicare we don’t want to lose one part of it. That’s wrong to me. I think we have to spread it around. This is the United States of America, it’s not the United States of Senior Citizens,” Rubin said.
Yes. That would be Medicare for all. Or, a public option. As the polls show over and over again, people don't just like the ACA, they want it to do more. Not less, as Scott wanted to portray.
One of the things that does scare seniors, and not just in Florida: Losing their Medicare. And the same Republicans who wanted to kill the ACA also want to kill Medicare. That's next on their agenda. (Social Security too, for that matter.) Had they gotten their way and won the 2012 election, they would have progressed further toward that end.
Scott and the GOP would love nothing more than to kill the ACA and put insurance companies back in charge, and to privatize Medicare, which would drive up costs for seniors, and drive up profits for those making their fortunes on the backs of patients in the health care industry. Like Rick Scott. And the GOP-Ryan budget is the only scenario where chipping away at the ACA, privatizing Medicare, Social Security, and those Medicare Advantage cuts would take place.
Yet Republicans like Scott are trying to scare seniors into thinking Obamacare is bad because they have a vested interest in seeing it fail. And it didn't fail.
The seniors at Scott's meeting showed they know what the rest of the country is finding out: The ACA is good, and it's working as planned where roadblocks don't prevent implementation. In this case, it's working even in spite of the roadblocks that Scott and the GOP have set up. The only place they've succeeded in killing it is by blocking Medicaid expansion, which is also killing Floridians every day.
What seniors and the rest of us should fear is Rick Scott and the Republicans, and that fear is sinking in deeper every day, not just for us, but for Scott.
The little charade in his latest exercise at political theater just blew up in his face for all the world to see.
Florida Republicans are not only throwing billions of your taxpayer dollars away by not expanding Medicaid for the second year in a row, but they're throwing away even more by trying to pass legislation that would ban something that doesn't exist, nor poses any threat, for the third year in a row:
Sharia law.
Sen. Alan Hays (R-Paranoia) is once again looking over his shoulder for imaginary individuals who want to impose foreign law or.....something.
A controversial measure dubbed an “anti-Sharia bill” advanced out of the Florida Senate on a 24-14 vote Monday.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, touted SB 286 as “an American bill.”
It would restrict judges from considering foreign law in matters of divorce, alimony, child support and custody.
Under the language of the bill, an order of a foreign court would not be enforceable if it “offends the public policy of the state.”
“There is no record of Sharia law being implemented in the courts of Florida or any other state,” Sen. Eleanor Sobel, a Hollywood Democrat said, in opposition.
Ah, but records and reality aside, any offense to Hays' imagination must be dealt with, regardless of all the other important issues the legislature should be dealing with, like Medicaid expansion, water pollution and other things that pose a real threat to Floridians.
Nope. Republicans would rather waste time and money running out the clock on imaginary threats and this guy's salary.
But the NRA and Marion Hammer do. So that means their Republican puppets in the Florida House just passed a bill allowing guns in Florida's schools, putting us one step closer to another, more dangerous Sandy Hook, even bigger profits for gun manufacturers and more pocket liners for legislators.
That's just how much students and teachers are valued by the Florida GOP: Very little, if at all.
One would ban an abortion if a doctor were able to determine that the fetus is "viable," while the other would make an exception if the mother's life were in danger, but only after two separate physicians determine that her life is in danger, so there's the chance that she could die while seeking "proof."
The Florida Department of Children and Families already has a terrible record, 478 child deaths in the last six years, and that record has gotten worse under Rick Scott. Another one died this past week in south Florida. With a record like that, you would think the governor would want to do something to fix that, even if for no other reason as a cynical move in a reelection year. But that would not be Rick Scott, who apparently could care less about those who have died, nor about how many more children will die in the future. Because while the Senate was working towards an overhaul of the state's child welfare laws, Scott proposed a laundry list of seven different ways to weaken the law.
Yes, to weaken it. Because who needs trained social workers and oversight? That, after all, would cost money:
Sponsored by Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, the 135-page amendment so late in the process was significant enough to prompt Sen. Andy Gardiner to call for a time out to give members time to absorb what the proposal would do. The Senate took up the bill again and Diaz de la Portilla withdrew the proposal.
The "strike-all" amendment would make several signficant changes aimed at tamping down some of the provisions and oversight over the department, according to a document obtained by the Herald/Times. The summary of the amendment says many of the reforms would cost too much money. The proposed amendment would do the following:
* Eliminate the requirement that members of DCF's Rapid Response Teams travel to the site of a child's death in order to conduct a case review. The idea is to save money.
* Give the response teams more time to conduct the review and eliminates an outside review committee intended to provide oversight to DCF's work. The department says this is "redundant."
* Eliminates the requirement that the Death Review Committee provide training. The department considers this an onerous requirement since the committee is made of volunteers.
* Eliminates a loan forgiveness program intended to encourage people with social work and other social services degrees to work as child protective investigators. The department and governor consider this "expensive and will require additional staff and infrastructure within the department."
* Deletes a requirement the Community Based Care organizations post their executive salaries on the web site.
* Changes the liability limits on CBCs by requiring them to obtain less insurance in the event they get sued for malpractice, . The measure reduces the caps on liability to their 1999 levels by resetting them form $1 million per person, $3 million per incident for economic damages, $200,000 for non-economic damages and removes the cost of living adjustment that allows damage caps to rise according to the consumper price level industry. The current bill sets the damage caps at $2 million per claim; automobile liability cap at $200,0000 per claim and the non-economic damages cap at $400,000 per claim.
* Eliminates the Institute on Child Welfare at FSU because it "will drain resources from child welfare services."
But poor Rick Scott lost his chance to make DCF even worse. After the amendment was withdrawn, SB 1666 passed.
He'll probably find a way to make up for it somehow. He's got plenty of time to do more damage to the state before November, unfortunately.
Yes, I know it's still early, but voters have had a lot of time to consider their options when picking the next governor of Florida.
With each new poll comes more evidence that another four years of Rick Scott are about as welcome to voters as losing a low-wage job and getting sick while having a root canal on the same day you have to submit a urine sample in order to get some benefits, while others aren't even available due to a three-month state website crash, meaning you'll be homeless when the rent comes due, you're in the gap for Medicaid qualification, and you have no dental insurance for that root canal.
In other words, voters are still saying "We'll take Charlie."
Even after the Florida GOP have been campaigning, and Tweeting their dishonest little hearts out with juvenile spirited memes and everything for over a year now, it's still bad. So far, even with Rick Scott's huge campaign stash, it can't match the numbers of Floridians that loathe him. Now, not even a poll from Rasmussen can help him.
