Sunday, January 12, 2014

So Who Is the WORST Florida House Member?

A recent expose I read on how truly awful House GOP member Bill Young was got me thinking... Who is the worst Florida member of the House?

This will be for Florida Congressmen only. I don't want to do this right now for the state delegation because the post would be waaaay too long. Soliciting male prostitutes, legalizing bribery, dwarf-tossing jobs bills, farm photographing felonies, million dollar fines for asking about guns will have to wait when I have time.

I only mentioned current House members-(sorry Foley. sorry West). Again, I don't have time to do an all time top five. Also, although I didn't intend this, all of them are teabaggers:

Trey Radel (R-FL19)

The media here failed to cover how truly awful this guy really is. Trey Radel was born wealthy and entitled. He never attempted to hide his reputation as a colossal partier. A failed actor and comedian, he made a living doing Hate Radio (a big industry here in Florida) and running Spanish porn sites.

He wanted to go to Congress so he did an extreme makeover as a "family values" Republican and won over the easily gullible tea party wing. For his primary, he bought domain names of his opponents to smear them. People who have met him tell me he sounds and acts like a typical frat boy.

He is right-wing to the core: anti-immigrant, anti-education, and anti-poor. In September, he cynically voted for Republican legislation that would allow states to make food stamp recipients pee in cups to prove they're not on drugs. The next month, police busted him on charges of cocaine possession. The Florida teabags still stand by him.

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL3)

Right out of the gate, he showed his bigotry. He announce he could support "birther" legislation and thought a tax on tanning beds included in the Affordable Care Act was racist against white people.

Last October he argued that defaulting would be good because it would bring stability to world markets. Soon afterwards, he stated furloughed workers should not receive back pay, but voted for it because he didn't know what "fuloughed" meant.

WaPo ran a feature on him for saying he is against Big Government but supporting the most wasteful cases. He is a strong advocate of sugar subsidies for the sugarcane industry here in Florida which are the definition of big waste the Teabags are supposedly against. This is how Yoho defended them in the WaPo:

“I ran on limited government, fiscal responsibility and free enterprise, but when you’ve got programs that have been in place and it’s the accepted norm, to just go in there and stop it would be detrimental to our sugar growers.”

Gus Bilirakis (R-FL9)

Typical rubberstamp teabagger who wasn't going to make this list because despite being the standard teabag awful he didn't stand out, except for defending Gitmo by saying conditions were better there than here.

The reason this guy is a special kind of scum to me was he was a member of the "Foley 5" and his response to the cover-up for his buddy Mark Foley's sexual advances toward a 16-year old boy was this: "We have no stance on that right now - we'll worry about that after we win." Scuzzball.

Steve Southerland (R-FL2)

Insensitive gasbag invoked the shooting of Gabby Giffords to make the case that his salary of $174,000 per year as a representative was “not enough".

Vern Buchanan (R-FL16)

Named Most Corrupt Congressman several years running.

Since 2010, 11 individuals and corporations tied to Rep. Buchanan have been fined for illegal conduit contributions to his campaign. He came under investigation by the House Ethics Committee because one of his former business partners said the congressman pressured him to sign a false affidavit to cover up his role in the scheme.

He has lied about his income on his financial disclosure forms, has been accused of tax evasion and fraud, and used campaign donations to take lavish trips.

Go here to vote on the poll. You can also leave a message in the comments.

1 comment :