Lately, Rick Scott has been going around saying that Floridians know how to spend their money better than the government does. Well, he's doing his part to prove that's true.
He recently went on a business poaching tour to Philadelphia. While he was there, he spent $40,000 of taxpayer and private funds. Among his expenses were workouts at the Four Seasons. In return for the "investment" he scored the promise of some convenience stores next year.
This past week, he went on a similar trip to California in an effort to get businesses there to move to Florida.
In response, he got a lecture in the form of a newspaper column. They weren't buying what he was selling them.
And why would they? After all, part of the problem with relocating businesses to Florida is that those businesses have families and workers who would have to live here while enduring the consequences of Scott's policies.
Since Rick Scott began his assault on Florida in 2010, he's appealed to businesses by cutting their taxes at the expense of the rest of us, and at the expense of pretty basic things those taxes would have paid for, like roads. We could have had high-speed rail, which would have helped our traffic problems (and created sorely needed jobs), but he scuttled that project and sent our tax money to other states, like California, because President Obama was the one pushing it.
He's worked to destroy the environment in part by letting corporations and the sugar industry run wild with development and polluting.
He's cut education and made sure there are plenty of sick and uninsured people in the population, many of whom work in the tourism and service industry, because he refuses to push for Medicaid expansion, again, because it's part of Obamacare, which according to him and the GOP, is evil. So that tax money is also going to other states that have expanded Medicaid.
Then of course there's climate change, with some of the consequences being sea rise in south Florida, a place where people already have to navigate flood waters just when it rains. Scott's climate denial has famously made him and the state a laughingstock since government employees aren't even allowed to say "climate change," lest they be suspended and sent for a mental health evaluation.
For these reasons and more, one could suggest Scott look into some counseling for his inability to comprehend reality.
Case in point, his California poaching sales pitch. California is a state where they not only don't send people to the psychiatrist for grasping the reality of climate change, but they're actually working to improve things like sustainability and the environment, while also addressing economic and equality issues. California also likes Obamacare, and they expanded Medicaid, because they, like many other states, including some with GOP governors and lawmakers, recognize the advantages of having a healthy population.
These are all pretty common sense issues to grasp, but when you have a governor who denies reality to the detriment of his constituents and the state he "governs," trying to sell this to other states and businessmen is going to be tough. It's also a hard sell when people like Scott have an entirely different system of math than others do.
So when Scott made his sales pitch to California, one California newspaper published this response:
Scott is treating cost as the only priority for companies. If that were the case, we’d all be living in Mississippi.
Ouch.
Among their other points:
California has individual ports that have invested more than all 15 Florida ports combined in recent years. This investment has positioned California as a global leader. Of the top 50 ports in the world, four are in the U.S. and two are in California. Florida is unranked....
...People go into business to make money. So why does California have 54 Fortune 500 headquarters and Florida have just 15? Those Fortune 500 companies in California are 300 percent more profitable than Florida’s, according to Fortune...
....Innovation is powered by knowledge, and our higher-education system is the best in the world. The University of California system is the backbone of innovation in America. Nine of the top 50 U.S. universities are in California; Florida has only two...
..A Florida pitch as “the low-cost provider” from Scott will be a difficult sell to California’s sophisticated business market. Florida is one of 13 states lacking a renewable energy policy.
And press reports say that Scott’s office has pressured his professional staff and members of his cabinet not to use the term “climate change.”
As the nation’s leader in renewable energy standards and initiatives, we encourage Scott to recognize the NASA scientists in Florida and 97 percent of the world’s scientists who acknowledge that climate change is real and needs to be addressed.
We don't know if any of the businessmen Scott spoke with said any of this to his face, but if they did, I wonder if he suggested they seek professional help?
