With Trump proving every day how unfit he is for office, and GOP leaders like Ryan and McConnell competing with Lyme disease on who is more popular, conservatives are desperate to promote anyone in their ranks who isn't a total loser. There are no right-wing “heroes," so most of their posts consist of bashing Obama and Hillary—which even they realize now is pretty pathetic. When Obama was running things, I had plenty of successes to boast about: I didn’t need to keep harping on George W.’s dental records.
The GOP is realizing that they are being seen, correctly, as the party of incompetence, racism, misogyny, and fear. Also, despite controlling all branches of government, they are also the party of failure: Democrats passed a slew of legislation when we were fully in charge—but just try to name one legislative success the GOP has managed.
So, how bad has it gotten? For heroes, they are looking at Pam Bondi and Rick Scott.
This was a real Facebook post from one of my right-wing friends on social media:
Florida AG sounds very tough on price gouging ... love to see that. She sounds fiercely protective of her people.
Yes … Pam Bondi. Someone so vile that she is considered by members of the Florida and American Bar to be the worst in the nation. I responded to her:
Yeah, she’s great. She fired several assistant AGs because they were "too aggressive" with foreclosure fraud, she took a bribe from Trump's PAC and dropped Florida's investigation with his fake university, and infamously moved an execution date because it conflicted with a fundraiser. Oh...and she literally stole someone's dog.
Thanks for playing. Then she turned to my favorite person in Florida.
Well, your governor is certainly coming across as a great, caring person as well. Thoughts on that? Just curious.
I thought—wait, do some people really think that?
Sure enough, read some of the comments on Rick Scott’s post:
Gov. Scott was and is an exemplary example of what good governing looks like. Kudos to Scott and the good people of Florida.
Praise God we had Rick Scott as our leader. Did an excellent job leading our state! He got my vote
Now is not the time to criticize or get political, people. All Floridians have a stake in this event. Rally together or keep quiet.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO … K …
I did a whole series on just how awful Rick Scott has been to the people of Florida.
The ass hat who calls himself our governor literally hurt disabled children for no reason but to hurt them. Does no one remember the only time he called for emergency cuts to the budget was to take funds away from disabled children? This is the same governor who dumped them in adult nursing homes.
He is directly responsible for the death of this woman. Also, you might remember that whole thing when he stole money from seniors. He is a monster in every sense of the word.
Does that sound like someone who is “great” and “caring”?
Yet since I guess everyone decided to collectively forgive him because he went on TV to tell idiots who should know better to prepare for a Cat 5 hurricane, then I’ll only talk about Rick Scott in regards to disaster preparedness.
Here are three primary reasons Rick Scott has made things demonstrably worse for Irma and every other hurricane coming down the pike:
1. Not only does he ignore climate change risks and refuses any preparation, you are punished for even mentioning it.
Miami, on its own initiative, has undertaken a roughly half-billion quest to raise roads and build storm water pumps. St. Petersburg hired a climate specialist to convince state officials and planners to work on combating the clearly visible impacts. However, most communities in Florida can't afford to make these preparations.
A Florida coastal planning specialist said trying to adapt to our changing climate without state support is "like trying to have a team without a coach." With Trump in office, he said it's pretty much now damn near impossible.
However, Rick Scott has gone waaaaaaaaaaay beyond denying climate change, and well beyond refusing to prepare.
You are not even allowed to utter the words.
Right after Rick Scott’s election, the Office of General Counsel instructed all state agencies, via conference call, that they could not use the following words in any official communication:
- Climate change
- Global warming
- Sustainability
- Sea level rise
There were severe penalties if you did. Bart Bibler found out the hard way. He brought up climate change on a conference call with managers, and was ordered to take medical leave and required a psychiatrist’s note to come back to work!
This gag rule has led to some appalling behavior.
Watch our Emergency Chief twist himself in knots trying to avoid the offending terms by a panel of Democratic Senators:
I told my friend that if she worked for the state, she would lose her job or be punished if she mentioned “climate change". It's ridiculous, and has made us a laughing stock.
How the hell can you solve a problem if you are forbidden from even mentioning it?
2. Scott eliminated the state’s ombudsman position to fight nursing home abuse
You might have heard about Rick Scott giving out a useless “cell phone number” to nursing homes in a disaster area. It was as phony as he is, with one desperate nursing home calling it repeatedly, pleading to restore power before deaths occurred, only to be given a voice recording. No action was taken and several died in the heat. Now, several wingnuts have tried to point that it’s all really that nursing home’s fault—that they were just horrible and they let thir residents die.
Let’s say that's true—that this was a horrible nursing home who didn't care about their residents. Even if that were true, it would still be completely be Rick Scott's fault—WHY? Because Scott is the one who personally fired the ombudsman for Florida’s nursing home because he was "too strict"! The position existed throughout Jeb!'s and Crist's term, yet after several bad nursing homes lobbied Scott, he canned the position. Either way, these deaths are on Rick Scott's hands.
3. He is directly responsible for our record-high utility company bills
Utility companies in this situation are either the heroes or the villains depending on who you talk to (a lot of it has to do with the fact of who has power and who doesn’t). I have power, but I also know that I'm going to pay for it. The massive convoys and round-the-clock service is not being done out of charity—we will be billed for it. The utility companies have already started the gouging.
The fact is that utility companies, thanks to Rick Scoot, have been allowed to run roughshod over this state ever since he took office. The Florida Public Service Commission has only one job—to ensure the utility monopolies don’t gouge us too much. Scott selects the appointees. The utility companies poured in donations so anti-consumer lapdogs would serve on the commission, and it’s paid off BIGLY. FPL was allowed to raise rates by $800 million, and efficiency regulations have been gutted. Quite a bargain for the $550,000 they donated with our money to Rick Scott’s campaign:
The rat bastard even allowed Duke Energy to charge us billions for a plant that will never get built. Again, a 500K donation went a long way:
Thanks to FPL's lobbying efforts, we in the Sunshine State are FORBIDDEN from powering our homes with solar panels—(only the grid). Even worse, if the power goes out, we are required to shut down our solar panel systems. As the videos say—Rick Scott gives the utility monopolies everything they ask for.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m only focusing on Rick Scott making us demonstrably worse for hurricanes. I am not even touching his disregard for the environment, nor his attacks on our voting rights, judiciary, consumer protections, children, etc. Suffice it to say he is a monster.
If conservatives want to try to make him their hero, be my guest. After throwing away any remaining self-respect by promoting Donald Trump, I guess they don't have much farther to fall.