This 'grass roots' organization, one of the many created by Charles and David Koch to further their political aims in controlling 'our' legislatures and 'leaders', visited my house today.
They must have knocked. My shift didn't start until three. The TV wasn't on and my three cats surely would have scrambled at an unexpected visitor but if they did I never heard a thing. Without meeting any the of spooks from AFP, they did leave a slicky designed door knocker ad for a not so slick Florida Governor.
The group was out today canvassing for Rick Scott. People paying attention to the Florida's Governors race all well aware of the big moneyed organizations from the right that have decided to fight for 'the little man' in the game, Rick Scott. A lot of money has been pouring into the state the last few months, many of it from dark moneyed groups.
So, what was it that was so important that AFP felt the need to leave their literature at my house? Despite the car parked out front with three clearly Democratic partisan bumper stickers in the window?
They wanted to preach the glorious gospel for all the great things Rick Scott has done in Florida during his tenure. A tenure I lived through mind you, so despite the clearly partisan aura my damned car was giving off in my driveway, I'm well aware that this slickly produced ad was nothing but propaganda.
Rick Scott Created 540,000 new jobs
Dropped Unemployment from 10% to 6.4%
Turned 3.6 billion deficit into a 1.2 surplus
Cut taxes over 20 times
This is what
TampaBay.com had to say about that.
Jobs specifically touted and 'created' because of Scott (year ending 2013) and not because of economic recovery: 14% of the 45,258 he touted, 46 job incentive deals that have collapsed or were never created.
6.4% rate of unemployment is because of private sector job growth and not the job initiatives Rick Scott brought to the state. Two examples of these initiatives included Scott's $19 million dollar tax break to bring Hertz headquarters to Florida. They brought 700 of their New Jersey employees with them who make on an average of $102,000. Then there was also $280,000 in tax incentives given to DTW Marketing, which may add 40 jobs to the community in 2014.
Here are a few deals that just fell flat short after tax incentives were given to them, Colt's Manufacturing (empty building, promised 63 jobs and were given $550,000 in tax breaks), Global Voting Solutions ($698,000 in tax breaks, zero jobs, GVS is stalled) and Evolution ($100,000 tax incentives, 40 jobs promised, 0 jobs created).
These are just a few of the jobs Rick Scott 'brought' to Florida, the tax breaks of the above and many more not named, are all on the dime of the Florida tax payer with no benefit to him or her.
How did Rick Scott create that supposed Budget surplus? He's cut funding to programs like Farm Share, which has had bipartisan support for years, but not in Rick Scott's slash and bash government, where the needy are the first to feel the brunt of pain. This is in a state where we have thousands of homeless children and home and food insecure children, whose families need every little bit of extra food they can acquire.
The environment is also one of Rick Scott's avowed enemies, he's dramatically cut funding to the Department of Environmental Protection and has opened up to the Everglades to fracking. The Florida Democratic Party has some great stats on the above.
Education? 'Is our children learning?', to paraphrase an idiotic politician we'd like to forget, well in Florida they are trying but Rick Scott's cuts to education are killing our public schools. He cut k-12 education by $1.3 billion in his first year alone. Not to mention the $300 million he cut to public universities.
Now he's bragging about giving teachers a 'raise', this is after getting rid of Crist's original veto of the GOP legislature to tie raises to merit review, effectively blackening the eye of teachers and teachers unions and decreasing their overall take home pay (Florida teachers are severely underpaid as compared to the national average).
This budget surplus sure looks great doesn't it? It always comes at the cost of the states citizens and never business or the wealthy. And that deficit? Florida's Constitution does not allow deficits, so that's flubbing the language not just a little but a lot as in being untruthful. If the state looks as if it might not be able to cover it budget pitfalls, they must find a way to allocate the money (sometimes pitfalls do occur naturally, due to inflation for example. The 2007-2008 recession did hurt the economy but the stimulus money given to the state by the Federal Government and President Obama helped out mightily for two years, a stimulus that was accepted when Rick Scott was not Governor. It's also one he campaigned against as if the money were tainted). In the past our State Government has usually found ways to do this with out painfully hurting its citizens. Those days have long passed is these last four years.
I'll give him his just dues on cutting taxes over 20 times. I'd hate to fathom the real number when you total in all those fruitless tax incentives paid for by Floridians to company's who never set up shop. Or when they did they re-located their employees from out of state or at best hired such a miniscule amount from the Florida workforce to be comical if it the joke wasn't on Floridians.
Private sector job growth has little to do with Rick Scott, whether its in the increasing minimum wage in our hourly employment sector (a voter initiated drive that's over a decade old and is tied to inflation) or the well paying tech industry, these company's were in Florida when Rick Scott was pleading the fifth 57 times.
With Americans For Prosperity pimping for Scott, advertising exactly whose bread he'll be buttering in the future. We already knew who Rick Scott was beholden to before this upcoming election, mostly a vanity license plate job to add to his personal miliions and his need for prestige, his 'wife's' medical holdings and his buddies in Florida Big Sugar.
What I would have liked to say to the Koch Funded AFP, if I had chance today, what I would say indeed!
At any rate, early voting has begun here in Central Florida for the primary, so let's kick Rick to the curb and don't forget about those Congressional districts, the Fair Districting Act is still in limbo, and we have to vote in larger numbers then Republicans just to get a foot in the door.
About early voting? The Democratic candidate for Governor Charlie Crist has vowed to reinstitute our 2008 early voting regulations back into place on day one.
Please take a few moments to pursue The Florida Democratic Party website, they have a lot to say about Rick Scott and the state's Republicans.