Carl Hiaasen of the Miami Herald sums up the recently re-elected (!!) Governor of Florida, Rick "Bat Boy" Scott (R-Teabag) and the dysfunctional thrashing around that passes for "governance."
Gov. Rick Scott removed his Harry Potter invisibility cloak and flew to Washington the other day.
There he begged for billions of federal dollars from a person he is suing, Sylvia Burwell, the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Burwell patiently listened to the governor and, predictably, sent him back to Florida with nothing.
Last summer the feds informed Scott that the government was phasing out a fund that reimburses local hospitals for taking care of low-income patients, basically replacing it with an expanded version of Medicaid.
At first Scott was in favor of the Medicaid move, even though it was a tangent of Obamacare. Then the governor changed his mind. [Ed.: Hiaasen is being too lenient; Scott lied.] Later, as an afterthought, he sued Burwell and the HHS.
The state Senate supports Medicaid expansion; the House doesn’t. Tallahassee has been paralyzed by the dispute.
In a snit, the House packed up and adjourned the session early, leaving Florida with no budget. Leaders in the Senate were furious.
Remember, these are all Republicans, ripping at each other like addled meerkats.
And where was the newly reelected Republican governor, leader of the party?
Gone is where he was — jetting to crucial functions such as the grand opening of a Wawa gas-and-convenience store in Fort Myers and the debut of a humongous Ferris wheel in Orlando.
It’s impossible to imagine any of the fully functioning governors in Florida’s past — Lawton Chiles, Bob Graham, Jeb Bush, to name a few — vanishing from Tallahassee during a Code Red meltdown of the Legislature.
But Scott isn’t a functioning governor. He is the emptiest of empty suits — no talent for leadership, no muscle for compromise, no sense whatsoever of the big picture.Scott is but one of several Republican governors whose tax cuts for the rich, anti-government, anti-Obama derangement has plunged their state into turmoil (=cough= Sam Brownback =cough= Scott Walker =cough= Piush "Bobby" Jindal = cough=). The voters in those states have only themselves to blame for putting these grifting cretins in charge to begin with, and then re-electing them after they demonstrated their incompetence. Sic transit gloria, America.
(Photo: Un-retouched photo of Rick "Bat Boy" Scott.)
