Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and his allies in the state legislature are pursuing a plan to privatize dozens of prisons in South Florida. Republicans claim that private prisons are more efficient and that the move would save the state millions of dollars. The privatization bill is facing some trouble in the state senate, including opposition from key Republicans.
Scott claims that the purpose of the privatization push is to shave 7 percent off the state budget, which perpetually comes up short since Republicans refuse to raise revenue and continue to drive the state's economy into the ground.
[State Sen. Steve] Oelrich, a long-time member of the Florida Retirement System, said he was taken aback when Scott suggested the reason the state had to save the money on its prisons was because he believes the "retirement system is broke."
"The governor's words were that we are 'lying to state employees,' '' Oelrich said. "That troubles me. I don't think that's necessarily correct."
Oelrich questioned why Scott would use that as a rationale for defending prison privatization, which is projected to save between $16 million to $30 million a year. The state's retirement fund is more than 80 percent funded, he said, a level he believes is considered high compared to other states. Bringing it up to 100 percent funding is not something advocated by actuaries, Oelrich said, and would cost billions.
"He says we're between $25 and $60 billion in unfunded liability because we've assumed a 7.5 percent accrual rate and it's only making 5 percent,'' he said. "I'm very concerned that if in fact the retirement system is broke and we can't fulfill our obligations, then the State of Florida ought to let people know that and make the decisions they ought to make."
Activist group Florida Watch Action, which has made a name for itself in Florida by targeting Republican Governor Rick Scott as 'Pink Slip Rick', targeted Mitt Romney at an Orlando event, presenting him with a symbolic pink slip for the jobs he eliminated during his time with Bain Capital. FWA Executive Director Susannah Randolph attempted to give Romney the pink slip and explained why, but he ignored her and moved on to other attendees. Florida Watch Action has also launched a Pink Slip Mitt website, associating Romney with Florida's deeply unpopular governor, as both have a strong record of killing jobs.
The text of the pink slip flyer:
Under Romney's leadership, Bain Capital became one of the nation's top leveraged-buyout firms.... But like other leveraged-buyout firms, Romney and his team also maximized returns by firing workers, seeking government subsidies, and flipping companies quickly for large profits. Sometimes Bain investors gained even when companies slid into bankruptcy....Romney himself became wealth at Bain. He is now worth between $190 million and $250 million.
The Pink Slip Mitt website offers visitors opportunities to fund the campaign, sign up for updates, sound off with their thoughts about Romney, get a free Pink Slip Mitt bumper sticker, print off flyers so they can attempt to give Romney their own pink slips and keep up with the campaign on social media.
If you missed this segment on 60 Minutes last night, I highly recommend it. It will remind you of John Steinbeck or Upton Sinclair's depiction of poverty and economic need, except this is really happening in this country right this minute.
Children living in cars with their parents after their parents have lost everything -- employment, their homes, their possessions -- everything. Rick Scott should be ashamed, since both of the families featured live in Florida. He should be ashamed not only because of the cuts and hacks to jobs and Florida's economy, but because at least one of these families was afraid to go and get help from the state government for fear of having their children taken away.
Poverty is not neglect; it is not a failure of the parents. There is no justification for breaking up families because they've fallen on hard times. But we live in a time where there is nothing for them. Nothing.
While conservatives paint these people as ne'er-do-wells who want to sponge off the government resources, the truth is something else again. I recently spoke to an acquaintance who has been unemployed for two years. He is in the construction business. When we spoke in October, he was putting his things in storage because he expected to be evicted after not being able to pay his rent. He couldn't pay his rent because his bank account had been garnished by the state for income taxes he didn't owe -- he didn't make enough to file a tax return (not realizing he was eligible for refunds if he had).
The bank had foreclosed on his house but didn't change the title on the loan, and the second trust deed holder was making payments to save their investment. They reported the interest paid on the loan to the state and the state assumed he had at least enough income to pay the house payments even though he had been foreclosed on in 2008. He filed his tax returns to correct the state issues, but not in time to get the lien lifted to pay his November rent. I haven't heard the end to this story, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear that he's living in his car too.
These are people just like the neighbors down the street, or the people you run into at the grocery store. Yet here is what our conservative overlords want us to think of them.
Rand Paul: We shouldn't borrow from China for unemployment benefit extensions to pay people not to work.
David Vitter: Gut the food stamp program. This sentiment has been echoed by Senator Sessions and many Republicans in the House.
Republican Presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich: Deny single mothers any benefits at all. Make them work and if they can't find a job or can't work, well, too bad. Let them starve. From his white paper on how to dismantle the social safety net:
No automatic benefits would be handed out any longer for bearing a child out of wedlock. If the mother has a child without a husband, then the mother must go to work to support the child.
Each one of these statements reflects the attitude of conservatives toward those who are suffering in our society. It's fairly simple: If you are impoverished, you are at the mercy of those who control the pursestrings. Newt, for example, advocates repeal of the capital gains tax, Dodd-Frank, the Affordable Care Act, and privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Nothing says compassion like handing the whole cake to the Wall Streeters so they can gamble it away yet again, right?
This 60 Minutes report highlights the depth of systemic failure in this country. There is no excuse for a country with the wealth this one has to tolerate seeing families live out of their cars as their final option. There is no excuse for flying the middle finger in the face of people who have fallen on hard times. There is no excuse for anyone to fear losing their children because they cannot find a job and are having difficulty providing. These people are human beings, deserving of dignity and opportunity, which they will not find in the austere hallways of corporate and conservative overlords.
Maybe this silly story appeals to me because I have one kid in college and another one contemplating a liberal arts major when she enters college next year. Or maybe it's just because Rick Scott strikes me as someone who views liberal arts as something alien and useless. Whatever it is, his recent statements about how kids who go to college shouldn't choose a liberal arts degree just prove he's pretty alien and useless to me.
In an interview with the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Scott outlined what he plans to do to Florida state universities:
Scott said Monday that he hopes to shift more funding to science, technology, engineering and math departments, the so-called “STEM” disciplines. The big losers: Programs like psychology and anthropology and potentially schools like New College in Sarasota that emphasize a liberal arts curriculum.
Then he repeated that refrain Tuesday, while speaking to a business group in Tallahassee, but with some embellishment.
“I got accused of not liking anthropologists the other day,” Scott said. “But just think about it, how many more jobs do think there are for anthropologists in the state?
“Do you want to use your tax dollars to educate more people who can’t get jobs in anthropology? I don’t. I want to make sure that we spend our dollars where people can get jobs when they get out.”
Turning to a veteran Tallahassee reporter, Scott also questioned the value of a degree in journalism.
“There’s a lot of jobs in journalism?” Scott rhetorically asked the reporter. “No, it’s tough.”
Ok. Anthropologists are out. Check. Journalism is out. Check. What's in? Well, according to Scott, more science and technology degrees, because not enough students choose those majors. And to that end, he would push funding away from liberal arts and into those areas.
Here's how Florida's prisons were nearly privatized without anyone knowing about it. In a rather arrogant and high-handed move, Republican lawmakers tucked a secret provision into the budget right at the end of the frenzied 2011 legislative session requiring private companies to take over 29 prisons by January 1st. Of course, it was all intended to union-bust and replace nearly 3800 union employees with minimum-wage private company replacements.
Turner and Johnson said Sen. JD Alexander, a Lake Wales Republican and budget chairman, placed the privatization language in the budget after the prisons portion had cleared earlier committees that would have opposed the move.
Assistant Attorney General Jon Glogau argued that legislators have wide authority to tell departments how to use appropriated funds. He said the Legislature didn't have to pass a stand-alone statute to privatize prisons because the state has had a law for 20 years allowing the DOC to outsource some prison operations.
How many, and where those prisons will be, is up to the Legislature, Glogau said. He said every budget item embodies some form of policy choice and that House and Senate appropriations committees and subcommittees held many public hearings on all phases of the budget, including the final product.
"Slippery-slope arguments are hyperbole, at best," Glogau said. He said agencies have executive authority to organize, operate and staff their offices most efficiently.
"Privatization of prisons is a unilateral right of the employer," said Glogau. "I don't want to make light of the fact that people are losing their jobs but, under the facts and the case law, it is the unilateral right of the public employer to do this."
That sneaky Senator. After the prison portions cleared committees who might have noticed, much less have agreed to it, he slipped it in there. Despite all the false bravado, there seems to be at least a small concern that it might not be one hundred percent on the level, since the good Governor Scott pressured former Florida Corrections overseer Ed Buss not to testify or give a deposition before the case was heard. Fortunately the unions were paying attention, and took it to court. Last Friday, Judge Jackie Fulford ruled the scheme unconstitutional.
Billionaire Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) will be launching a new media stunt tomorrow where he will take turns doing several jobs that average Floridians do. He's calling it “Let’s Get to Work Days” in an extension of his campaign theme of "Let's Get to Work." Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., Scott will work an entire two-and-a-half hour shift at Nicola’s Donuts and Bakery.
The appearance is little more than an attempt by Scott to shore up his image as an "everyman" governor who is connected to the people, despite the fact that his popularity ratings hover under 30% and, as Florida Watch Action estimates, his policies have eliminated more than 330k jobs in the state. Florida's unemployment rate remains well above the national average at 10.6% and the 85k jobs created this year have done nothing to improve the state's unemployment rate, which is fourth in the nation.
While Scott puts in a few hours at a donut store tomorrow, many of Florida's working poor are forced to work multiple low-paying jobs and can't afford to work a two-hour shift for the sake of public relations. Scott's stunt will also do nothing to actually create jobs in the state. His actions are particularly insulting in light of his actions to eliminate state workers, cut unemployment benefits, drug test welfare recipients and gut the state budget.
As tempting as it is to answer the title question with the words "Rick Scott", it goes back farther than Scott and paints a picture of what this country would look like if Republicans were able to win back the Presidency in 2012. Three stories today highlight Florida's decline.
Education
Florida's school voucher program was a Jeb Bush special, passed in 2006. Five years later, the Miami New Times is taking a close look at some of the "results". The goal of the voucher program was to give more "school choice" to parents of disabled children, but it appears to be a program that isn't regulated, has few standards, and lines the pockets of corrupt businessmen.
While the state played the role of the blind sugar daddy, here is what went on at South Florida Prep, according to parents, students, teachers, and public records: Two hundred students were crammed into ever-changing school locations, including a dingy strip-mall space above a liquor store and down the hall from an Asian massage parlor. Eventually, fire marshals and sheriffs condemned the "campus" as unfit for habitation, pushing the student body into transience in church foyers and public parks.
[...]
Meanwhile, Brown openly used a form of corporal punishment that has been banned in Miami-Dade and Broward schools for three decades. Four former students and the music teacher Norris recall that the principal frequently paddled students for misbehaving. In a complaint filed with the DOE in April 2009, one parent rushed to the school to stop Brown from taking a paddle to her son's behind.
"He said that maybe if we niggas would beat our kids in the first place, he wouldn't have to," the mother wrote of Brown. "He then proceeded to tell me that he is not governed by Florida school laws."
The school received over 2 million dollars between June 2006 and November 2010 that could have been spent on public schools, with no oversight. Read the entire article. It's worth the time.
This is privatization at work. Take public funds, turn them over to for-profit entities for the purpose of accomplishing a public purpose. The problem, of course, is that profit-making and the public good do not always make harmonious partners.
So Michelle Rhee hired Hari Sevugan away from the DNC to join her right-wing-in-liberal-clothing organization known as StudentsFirst. Presumably, Hari will rehabilitate the StudentsFirst image which has become irrevocably tainted with the stench of right-wing public school destruction. Hmmm.
Michelle Rhee claims to be all about teacher performance, but she's really much, much more than that. She advocated for school vouchers in Indiana in concert with Governor Mitch Daniels. Oh, and I can't forget her little dance with Bill Frist in Tennessee, where public school teachers are also in danger of losing their bargaining rights, thanks to her advocacy. And lest we forget, there's always the Washington, DC cheating suspicions, and her special award from Betsy DeVos, where she once again appeared in lockstep with Governor Scott Walker.
About those vouchers. Let's see how many kinds of evil they truly are. Here is Florida's voucher programin all its glory in all of its potential glory*. For the low, low price of $399 and 8 days' work, a diploma.
Only three months removed from Governor Rick Scott's (R) inauguration, a majority of Florida voters now say the state is headed in the wrong direction and that, if they could do it all over again, they wouldn't have elected Scott in the first place, according to a new Suffolk University poll.
In the poll, 54% of voters said the state was headed in the wrong direction, compared to 30% who said it was going the right way. Further, just under half (49%) of all voters said they disapproved of Scott's job performance, versus only 28% who said they approved. Scott's approval rating is so bad that the poll found him losing a hypothetical do-over election to Democrat Alex Sink by a ten-point margin, 41% to 31%.
It's too bad that when voters got angry they turned to phonies like Rick Scott. The Democrats didn't help themselves at the time, but after Republicans destroyed our economy, electing alleged criminals is not the answer either.
Florida voters disapprove 57 - 29 percent of the job Gov. Rick Scott is doing, the worst score of any governor in the states surveyed by Quinnipiac University and down from a 48 - 35 percent disapproval in an April 6 survey, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
The state's new budget is unfair to people like them, voters tell the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll 54 - 29 percent. Gov. Scott and the State Legislature are equally responsible for the budget, 68 percent of voters say. The legislature's job approval rating is nearly identical to that of the governor, as voters disapprove 56 - 27 percent, compared to 47 - 35 percent disapproval in April. Despite the new property insurance law signed by the governor, voters say securing insurance is getting harder and more expensive.
"Voters have turned even more negative on Gov. Rick Scott since the last Quinnipiac University survey," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "It probably doesn't make him feel any better that the State Legislature is sharing the basement suite in the eyes of the electorate. The good news for the governor is that he has three and a half years to turn public opinion around. "
Even Scott's support among Republicans is relatively weak, with 51 percent of GOP voters approving and 37 percent disapproving of his job performance. Disapproval is 72 - 13 percent among Democrats and 57 - 28 percent among independent voters. Both sexes are down on Scott: Men disapprove 53 - 35 percent and women disapprove 60 - 24 percent.
Republican voters' support is also on the steep decline for Scott. I think what we are seeing is that even hard-line Republicans are understanding the consequences of their last action by voting for Scott, and when they begin feeling the effects of his budgetary cuts and unfair policies, they realize their mistake and express regret over the choice.
Rick Scott is an ideologue of the highest order who has been linked to criminal actions, and I doubt he will change his modus operandi much in the next three years, but if he doesn't, he won't remain in his current job. We can only hope that the damage isn't irreparable by the time they kick him out. When the economy is in the tank it's a natural reaction for voters to kick out whoever is in charge no matter what party they represent. We are seeing that play out in Europe. The problem with many lefties overseas is that they grabbed on to the "austerity" chimera, and people across the world are revolting against it.
Only three months removed from Governor Rick Scott's (R) inauguration, a majority of Florida voters now say the state is headed in the wrong direction and that, if they could do it all over again, they wouldn't have elected Scott in the first place, according to a new Suffolk University poll.
In the poll, 54% of voters said the state was headed in the wrong direction, compared to 30% who said it was going the right way. Further, just under half (49%) of all voters said they disapproved of Scott's job performance, versus only 28% who said they approved.
Scott's approval rating is so bad that the poll found him losing a hypothetical do-over election to Democrat Alex Sink by a ten-point margin, 41% to 31%.
Previous polls have also found Scott's job approval deep underwater, including a Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month that pegged his approval to disapproval split at 35% to 48%. A March PPP poll showed Scott with an even worse 32%-55% split, and found him losing a do-over election -- by a 20-point margin.
It's too bad that when voters got angry they turned to phony's like Rick Scott. The Democrats didn't help themselves at the time, but after Republicans destroyed our economy, electing alleged criminals is not the answer either.
