Rick Scott, who somehow went to the governor's office instead of jail, has a 27 percent approval rating in Florida. That makes him the least popular governor in the United States, at least according to the pollsters. Even less popular than John Kasich, Scott Walker and Paul LePage. Wow.
(Above is some very raw footage of the latest Rick Scott protest, at least the latest on youtube.)
The right-wing Sunshine State News conducted the poll with the brutal numbers. Given the paper's bias, things might be even worse for Scott.
Just moments ago, the Capital News Service reported Scott has failed to report his use of a private jet as a gift.
Since taking office in January, Governor Rick Scott has been using a private jet to travel. The plane is owned by a corporation controlled by Scott, and, as Mike Vasilinda tells us, the Governor has apparently made a “rookie” mistake in failing to report the plane use as a gift.Yeah, right. He's done lots more. The Miami New Times neatly sums up Scott's dirtiest deeds in a paragraph:
He slashed funding for public schools, disabled people, and the unemployed; gave health-care companies control of Medicaid; and privatized nearly all of the prisons in the southern part of the state. Meanwhile, he enacted some of the most restrictive voting laws Florida has seen since the 2000 election debacle.And here are more deets about Scott's pay-to-play prison privatization:
Last year, the private prison industry gave nearly $1 million to political campaigns in Florida, according to the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in Politics. The majority of the cash went to Republicans, and the largest chunk, $822,000, came from the GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based prison company formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections. (GEO also contributed $25,000 to Scott's inauguration party.) The prison lobby's influence on the Republican-dominated Legislature was immediately evident.
In early February, Scott proposed a plan to transfer 1,500 inmates from state-run lockups to private ones. The next month, lawmakers in the state Senate slipped language into their massive budget bill that privatized nearly all of the state prisons in 18 counties, including Broward and Palm Beach. The budget passed in May, opening the door for the GEO Group and other companies to begin bidding for contracts.
Proponents said the prison contracts will go only to bidders who reduce costs by 7 percent, saving the state about $27 million a year. But a legislative analyst who testified before the state Senate in February admitted it was tough to figure out the cost savings, because private and public prisons often operate differently. "They're never apples to apples," analyst Byron Brown said.Here's another reason Floridians are mad: Demos reports the Sunshine State's middle class is collapsing, with falling earnings, a lack of good jobs, declining access to benefits, higher costs to raise a family, diminished prospects for young people and increasing difficulty getting a college degree.
Way to go, Rick.
