On Rick Scott's Facebook page, one of the most tragic cheers I've seen is when one of his followers describes him as a "decent man."
Decent? Talk about having your head stuck in a dark place!
In reality, Scott as a
person is strikingly devoid of good character traits. He is unethical in his
private life and in his business dealings, and now in in his governing of Florida. Yes, I do mean the thing with the Medicare fraud and pleading the Fifth 70+ times; but there's so much more to Scott's bad character that it boggles the mind. Scott lies with the ease of a practiced felon -- even on national television. All politicians lie, of course, but Scott has the art perfected.
Not surprisingly, many of Scott's lies are now talking points for his campaign -- particularly the lie that he cut taxes 40 times, and turned a budget "deficit" into a "surplus". He repeats each of these lies at least once a week on his Facebook page.
It's no surprise that Scott's bad character was perhaps the longest subject area on my list.
****
56) Rick Scott was responsible for
the largest historic case of Medicare fraud in history.
The details
on this should neither be understated nor overplayed. Scott was not personally
convicted of a crime, but was certainly responsible for events as CEO.
Some have
pointed out that the Medicare fraud was something a lot of other hospitals at
the time were accused of, and that the coding process behind medical procedures
for Medicare is difficult. This is true, but this does not answer for things
like false diagnosis codes, claiming marketing and advertising costs, and
billing for things that were not medically necessary. Whether Scott knew of
this fraud, as some whistleblowers have claimed, or not, he was still
responsible.
57) Rick Scott misused his Fifth
Amendment Rights when questioned about HCA’s Medicare fraud.
Here also,
the details should not neither understated, nor overplayed. Scott as an
American citizen had every right to appeal to the Fifth Amendment privilege
against self-incrimination under questioning, even as many times as he did
(75). However, it is clear that there would have been nothing to incriminate
Scott in answering questions like whether or not he was employed by HCA. Scott himself later said he used the Fifth
Amendment because opposing attorneys were on a “fishing expedition” – in what
was a civil, not a criminal case, and
one in which Scott was not being charged. Scott had every right to plead the
Fifth, but he did not use it for what it was intended.
More
damning, however, is Scott’s profession not to know many things that, as head
of HCA, things he ought to know, including simple definitions of industry
terms. This indicates, again, either utter incompetence or utter evasiveness.
58) Rick Scott’s clinic company,
Solantic, was passed on to his wife in a way that violates the spirit of
conflict of interest principles.
Scott had to
divest himself of interest in the company because of potential conflicts of
interest with state policies and regulations. But this simply isn’t sufficient
distance to avoid conflict of interest. As usual, when called on to explain
himself, Scott dodged answering. He also attempted a questionable compromise by
saying Solantic just wouldn’t do business with Florida. Finally he moved to
sell the company.
59) Rick Scott has had a questionable
association with convicted felon Ken Jenne.
60) Rick Scott has profited from a
company that makes money off of illegal immigration.
This is in
spite of the fact that early in his term, he advocated for a strict
Arizona-style immigration law.
61) Rick Scott professes Christian
faith, but follows a corrupt pastor.
Many
Christians voted for Rick Scott because he professed to be a Christian. Scott
was a founding member of Naples Community Church, which was started when Scott
followed his pastor, Kirt Anderson, from First Presbyterian in Naples. Andersen
had left because of a feud with church leaders.
It is not
hard to see why. Andersen’s church is fiscally irresponsible, and is a mirror
image of Scott’s own preferences. The church bought a home for itself in a
building worth 2.5 million dollars. In contrast, to celebrate the opening of
that 2.5 million dollar building, the church gave a comparative pittance of
$50,000 to Habitat for Humanity, and a mere $37,000 for an impoverished church
in Immokalee.
62) Rick Scott barely made the
residency requirement to run for Governor.
Scott barely
made the required 7 year residency requirement. Can a person who is a relative
tourist here actually have a real understanding of the issues in this state?
No. It took a lot of gall for Scott to think he understood this state well
enough to be its governor.
63) Rick Scott has falsely blamed his
predecessor for increasing the state’s debt, and misrepresented his accomplishments
in reducing it.
Scott touts having reduced the state’s debt by 2 billion dollars. But it
obscures the fact that Florida's debt has gone from 28.2 billion to 26.2
billion under Scott. The claim is sometimes stated as though to leave the
impression that Scott has reduced the debt by 2 billion, and made it totally
disappear. (His re-election website does make this clear at one point, to be
fair.)
As part of this claim, he has also noted that the debt was raised 5.2
billion by Crist. But there is much more to this issue. The state debt was even
numerically lower under Crist, in the earlier parts of Crist's term, than it is
under Scott right now. (That may not account for inflation, though.) Further,
the real "credit" for most of the difference comes from a normal and
necessary funding cycle.
64) Rick Scott has lied about
Florida’s credit rating in order to claim success for his administration.
Scott
falsely claimed that Florida’s credit rating has gone up since his term in
office began. In reality it has been “AAA” – the highest rating available –
since Jeb Bush’s administration in 2005. Scott confused a different issue, the
“outlook” for Florida, with the credit rating. This may not seem significant,
but as a businessman, Scott surely knows the difference, and so this lie is
particularly damning.
65) Rick Scott misled Florida about
the cost of high speed rail to taxpayers.
Regardless
of your final opinion on the usefulness of high speed rail, all should agree
that an honest estimate of costs and benefits is a key to making a decision
about it. Scott nullified an honest investigative process by falsely claiming
high speed rail had a $1 billion price tag. Scott relied on a flawed study and
misrepresented the facts, which include that the state would have had to cover
no more than $280 million. His attorney also misled the Florida Supreme Court
about how much money had been spent on the rail system at the time.
66) Rick Scott lied about not cutting
the education budget.
In 2011,
turning away from his campaign promises, Scott produced a budget that cut the
education budget. Asked about this, he manufactured another lie redefining his
promise.
67) Rick Scott has misled the public
about his connections with gambling interests.
Although
taking a public stance against gambling, Scott has accepted large donations
from gambling interests.
68) Rick Scott claimed that he had “nothing
to do with” a voting limitation bill that he signed himself.
69) Rick Scott lied about the cost of
the Medicaid expansion in Florida.
Again,
regardless of how you stand on this issue, all should agree that an open and
honest presentation is needed for an informed decision. Scott did not provide
that.
70) Rick Scott misrepresented himself
as turning a budget deficit into a surplus.
In reality,
since the state’s budget is required to be balanced, there is no “deficit” or
“surplus.”
71) Rick Scott has lied about the
difficulty of US regulations.
Scott called
United States regulations “the most difficult in the world” but in reality,
they are among the least restrictive. Scott’s response is noteworthy in that in
dodges the issue, by citing difficulties and ignoring the comparative aspect
which was critical to Scott’s statement.
72) Rick Scott called for movement on
ethics reform, then did nothing about it.
73) Rick Scott misled voters about
his role in improving the FCAT test.
Scott posed
himself as a pioneer in improvements, when in reality he was continuing
something started in the previous administration.
74) Rick Scott lied – on national
television – about incentives offered to one company to move here.
Asked
directly if Deutsche Bank was offered any incentives to come to Florida, Scott
said no. In reality, they were offered as much as $2 million in incentives.
75) Rick Scott has falsely tied
record state tax revenues to his “pro-growth” policies.
In reality,
the collections reflect a nationwide trend in which collections are up. Scott
also failed to account for inflation when claiming a “record”.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/sep/06/rick-scott/rick-scott-says-next-years-record-tax-collections-/
153) Rick Scott has an extended
record of dodging critical questions from the media.
This article
lists multiple incidents: Scott has avoided answering questions about how well his
staff checked out former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, who was forced to resign
last year over ties to a questionable veterans' charity; whether Florida Power
& Light should be allowed to raise rates on consumers; whether it was right
for Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask that he delay an execution because it
conflicted with her campaign fundraiser; whether the state should sell flood
insurance to homeowners; and whether he agreed with Republicans in Congress who
were willing to risk a federal government shutdown last fall to end funding of
Obamacare.
In Clearwater in November, Scott attended a
groundbreaking for a storage company's expansion. When WFLA's Mark Douglas
asked Scott how a registered sex offender got a state license as a massage
therapist, Scott replied by saying how "exciting" it is that
Florida's crime rate keeps dropping.
But Ferre wanted a yes-or-no answer on whether
Scott favors the Common Core standards for students, and his reply deftly
avoided one: "My goal is, have high standards. Measure everything. Reward
success."
Ferre wanted to know what Scott thinks of
Charlie Crist as a 2014 gubernatorial opponent, and he answered by saying how
much he wants his three grandchildren to get jobs.
After the U.S. Supreme Court's same-sex
marriage rulings last June, Capitol reporters asked Scott how he would feel
about a petition drive in Florida that would legalize the practice.
"Oh, gosh," Scott replied. "I'm
focused on making sure everybody in our state can get a job."
Is
this leadership?
158) Rick Scott has lied about how
long it takes to get an environmental permit in Florida.
Trying to
brag about how he has cut regulations, Scott claimed that he has cut permit
times to two days. His own staffer disagreed and said the wait remains at 30 or
more days. He was confusing a certain type of permit with a certain license.
159) Rick Scott has misled voters
regarding education spending in 2014.
Scott has
touted this year’s education budget as the largest ever. In this, Scott failed
to account for inflation, and more importantly, for per-student spending. In
neither case is this the largest budget.
160) Rick Scott has misled voters
regarding the tax savings from a hurricane supplies tax holiday.
Scott used
2007 numbers to make his estimate. As a businessman, he certainly knows better
than to use numbers that old to make estimates. The tax holiday itself is an
obvious pander to voters in an election year; inflating the numbers makes it
even worse, especially when Scott had available to him more recent estimates
made by economists.
http://www.thefloridacurrent.com/article.cfm?id=36350327
170) Rick Scott travels via his own
private plane on state business in order to evade accountability.
Scott claims
this is for security reasons, but if that is true, then he is evidently far
more paranoid than most state governors, who don’t see a need to do this. He is
also more paranoid than Florida’s past governors, and even himself, since he
formerly did not do this. It is also belief by the fact that he hides so much
of his schedule.
177) Rick Scott has lied about the
impact of Medicare cuts on senior citizens.
178) Rick Scott misled voters, in the
State of the State speech (2014), about Florida’s lowering crime rate.
Scott cited
this year as having a record low crime rate, but the reality is that Florida’s
crime rate has been steadily going lower since the early 1990s. Scott can take
no credit for this, which is no doubt in part due to policing, but also because
Florida’s population has (thankfully) been growing faster than criminals can
keep up.
179) Rick Scott evaded explaining why
Crist should be blamed for the 2008 recession’s effects in Florida.
In the State
of the State speech, Scott said:
Some say
these statistics were all because of a global recession. They say it doesn’t
matter who was running our state – that anyone would have been just a victim of
the times.
I disagree.
As Americans, our freedom and our optimism
make us anything but victims – even in the worst circumstances and the toughest
times.
Our leaders especially – and every person in
our state – are not simply bystanders in the arena of life where the hard
battles are fought and history is made.
He goes on like this for a
while, but the one thing he doesn’t do it explain what, exactly, Crist (or any
state governor) was supposed to do about a worldwide recession. Optimism won’t
pay your mortgage. Scott goes on about fighting battles and not being a victim,
but he never gets around to explaining what, exactly, ought to have been done –
because he can’t. The reality is that if he had been governor in 2008, he would
have been standing around with his jaw dropping the same as so many other
politicians.
180) Rick Scott relied on a
questionable report to claim that Florida’s teachers were second most effective
in the nation.
181) Rick Scott misled voters when
claiming Florida’s 4th graders ranked second in the world in
reading.
Actually,
they ranked second in a study which sampled fourth graders from around the
world. This was not a ranking of all students worldwide, but of selected groups
from select locations.
182) Rick Scott overstated the range
and impact of his “$10,000 degree” program.
Scott
incorrectly says that it is available is “all” Florida community colleges. It
is only in 23 as of this date. He also fails to add necessary caveats, such as
accessory expenses of going to college (books, lodging, etc.)
183) Rick Scott lied about the causes
of the recession in Florida, in his State of the State speech.
He blamed
“taxing and borrowing” for the recession in Florida, but the real cause was the
real estate crisis, plus the nationwide recession.
184) Rick Scott misled voters by
claiming he cut taxes 24 times.
Some of the
cuts were temporary. Some are not cuts, but credits. Others are tax holidays,
which he counted more than once if they happened every year, even though they
are the same cut. Finally, he is also counted tax incentives and breaks that
only apply to a handful of businesses. In fact most of the “cuts” have been for
businesses.
185) Rick Scott lied about “record
funding” for environmental concerns in his State of the State address.
This one
requires a lot of caveats, but the sum of the matter is, Scott portrayed record
funding on one sub-issue (springs restoration) as though it were funding for
all environmental concerns.
http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/mar/06/rick-scott/rick-scott-touts-record-funding-environmental-prot/
187) Rick Scott lied about the impact
of Obamacare on businesses with under 20 people.
You may or
may not like Obamacare, but again, correct information is required to make a
decision. Scott falsely claimed that a small business with 20 or less employees
could go out of business because of the ACA. But businesses with under 50
employees aren’t even required to provide coverage.
190) Rick Scott has a personal friend
managing his alleged “blind” trust fund.
191) Rick Scott deceptively bragged
about Florida’s voluntary pre-K program.
While he
correctly asserted that Florida’s access to VPK is the best in the nation, he
ignored the low per-pupil spending and the resulting poor quality of Florida’s
programs.
