Gov. Rick Scott orders immediate cuts to programs for disabled

Caregiver Debbie Pascascio, center, brings lunch to Ashley Taylor, left, and Alan McIntosh, who has cerebral palsy, at home on Thursday, March 31, 2011. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel / March 30, 2011)

By Kate Santich, Orlando Sentinel

8:33 p.m. EDT, March 31, 2011

Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered deep cuts Thursday to programs that serve tens of thousands of residents with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and other developmental disabilities.
Though a range of state services face cuts from this year's Legislature, the governor invoked his emergency powers to order the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities to immediately roll back payments to group homes and social workers by 15 percent — an amount providers say could put them out of business and threaten their clients' safety.
"lt's not like, 'Gee, does this mean I have to skip a vacation this year?'" said Amy Van Bergen, executive director of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Florida. "Potentially, these cuts have life and death implications for these people."
An estimated 30,000 Floridians with severe developmental disabilities receive services that help them live outside of nursing homes — typically with family or in small group homes. Aides help them eat, bathe, take medication and otherwise care for themselves.
But the governor said the Agency for Persons with Disabilities' ongoing budget deficit — currently at $170 million — had reached a critical point and needed to be addressed immediately.

FL: Stop the Forced-Rape Bill!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

My Stupid State Series

Rape is defined as "unlawful penetration through either physical force or duress".

Our teabagging legislature is on the verge of forcing a woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy to submit to a completely unnecessary medical procedure that also happens to be the most instrusive: a vaginal ultrasound.

This is not for any medical reason. None at all: they admit it is all ideological. It is about pressuring a woman to not exercise her legal right by being violated and psychologically traumitized.

The bill will be repeat of the one that failed last year. The process will go like this:

1. The woman will be probed against her will

2. She will then be lectured by the doctor

3. She will then have to PAY FOR IT

Florida Governor Rick Scott Upsets Republican Lawmakers - TIME

By Tim Padgett Monday, Feb. 28, 2011

ENLARGE PHOTO+

Florida Governor Rick Scott announces his new budget during a Tea Party event in Eustis, Fla., on Feb. 7, 2011 Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP

Florida Governor Rick Scott gives off a wide-eyed glow of certainty about everything he does. The Tea Party Republican has worn it from the moment he took office on Jan. 4, and since then he's rankled even conservatives in his own party with his imperious style. In his first eight weeks, he's put forth a budget proposal that slashes education spending — an area in which low-wage, low-tech Florida can't really afford to scrimp — by 15%; put the kibosh on a high-speed-rail project, funded with federal and private dollars, that could have created up to 30,000 jobs; campaigned to repeal a prescription-drug-monitoring law in a state where seven people die each day from an overdose; and pressed to kill two amendments that Floridians passed last November to curb the reckless gerrymandering of their legislative districts. (See souvenirs from a Tea Party rally.)

Rick Scott Wants to Cut Everglades Restoration Funding by 66 Percent, But Most Floridians Disagree

By Kyle Munzenrieder

Sure, it's just a big swamp, but a fervor to protect the Everglades flows through the souls of most Floridians. It's our big swamp, dammit, and most of us understand its ecological importance. Apparently, though, our Illinois-born governor, Rick Scott, doesn't share such a passion. His controversial budget proposal includes a measure to slash spending for Everglades restoration from an already scant $50 million a year to a mere $17 million. A new poll shows 55 percent of Floridians oppose the cuts.

Kirk Fordham, CEO of the Everglades Foundation, acknowledges Tallahassee's financial problems but points out that money dedicated to Everglades restoration has already taken a serious hit in recent years. Republican Gov. Jeb Bush dedicated $200 million to Everglades restoration during his term.

"We've already taken a significant hit -- from 200 million, to 100 million, down to 50, and now, potentially, down to 17 million annually," he told the Capitol News Service. "We believe that everyone needs to share the pain, but again, the Everglades restoration has already taken a disproportionate hit."

A new poll commissioned by the Everglades Foundation and conducted by the Tarrance Group, a Republican-aligned polling firm, finds that 65 percent of Floridians surveyed said Everglades restoration was an "extremely or very important issue." Fifty-five percent opposed Scott's proposed cuts.

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Florida's Loss: Rick Scott's High-Speed Rail Shoot-Down

By Bob Norman, Sun., Mar. 13 2011 @ 10:03AM

The New York Times reports this weekend on Gov. Rick Scott's rejection of the bullet train. Here are highlights of the article:

Buh-bye

---------------------------------- The nation's first true high-speed railroad was supposed to leave the station in 2015, a sleek Tomorrowland-worthy train that would have whisked riders between Orlando and Tampa at speeds of up to 168 miles an hour.
The federal government had agreed to pay $2.4 billion of its estimated $2.6 billion in construction costs, railroad companies were vying to build and operate it, and state transportation planners had even dummied up proposed timetables: Train 7092 would depart Tampa at 8:10 a.m. and arrive in Orlando at 9:04 a.m.
The fast train was sought, and won, by Florida's former Republican governor, Charlie Crist. But it was killed last month by his successor, Rick Scott, who joined several other Republican governors in spurning federally financed train projects over fears that
their states could be on the hook for future costs. The final nail in its coffin came last week when a Florida court ruled that the new governor could not be forced to accept the federal money and start building it.
The demise of the Florida line is different, though. It will delay the country's first bullet train ride by years, if not longer, and deprive the Obama administration of what it had hoped would be a showpiece that would sell the rest of the nation on high-speed rail.
The administration said Friday that it would give Florida's $2.4 billion to rail projects elsewhere and invited other states to apply for the money. ...
Then things began to fall apart. As the 2010 midterm elections heated up, Republicans began running against the federal largess states have traditionally sought.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, killed a long-planned commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River. Scott Walker, the new Republican governor of Wisconsin, killed a new conventional passenger train line that was to be built between Milwaukee and Madison, and paid for with $810 million in federal stimulus money. The new governor of Ohio, John R. Kasich, killed a $400 million federally financed line that would have linked Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. When President Obama called for expanding the nation's rail program in this year's State of the Union address, Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page to denounce it as "a bullet train to bankruptcy."
With Florida's new governor, Mr. Scott, expressing reservations about the plan, the Obama administration moved quickly to award $342 million of the forfeited money from the Midwest to Florida. That brought the federal commitment to Florida to roughly $2.4 billion, almost enough to cover the projected $2.6 billion cost.
But the backlash was strong in Florida. In his race for the United States Senate last year, Mr. Crist found his success at winning stimulus money for Florida turned into a liability. Conservatives, and a newly powerful Tea Party movement, saw the federal spending as a problem, not as a solution to the state's high unemployment rate. Mr. Crist ended up leaving the Republican Party and running, unsuccessfully, as an independent.
Last month, Mr. Scott decided to scuttle the project after reading a report by the Reason Foundation that questioned its ridership estimates. The foundation is a prominent libertarian policy research organization that employs several respected transportation analysts, but it gets some of its funding from donors with ties to the oil industry, including foundations related to Koch Industries, which owns oil refineries.
"The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers, and I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits," Mr. Scott said.
But a state-sponsored ridership study, which was released this week, concluded that the proposed line would actually have been a money-maker from the start.
Obama administration officials are still pushing ahead with their goal of winning a $53 billion commitment to railroads over the next six years, and say that other states are clamoring for the money rejected by Florida.
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Click here for full article.

Stephen King: Rick Scott Could Star In My Next Horror Novel

The Huffington Post  Nick Wing  First Posted: 03/ 9/11 05:05 PM Updated: 03/ 9/11 05:05 PM

Acclaimed novelist Stephen King may have just found a new muse for his next horror book -- Florida Governor Rick Scott.

King, who owns a house on the Sunshine State's Casey Key, popped up at a Florida rally against the governor's budget proposals Tuesday and joked to the crowd that his "next horror novel could star Rick Scott."
During his speech, King pushed for the government to stand up for unions and veterans. King also took particular issue with Gov. Scott's continued refusal to accept federal funds to develop a high-speed rail system in the state.
High-speed rail is "probably a bad deal - considering how low the price of gas is," King said, sarcastically.
Mediaite notes that he also talked about increasing taxes for the rich, including himself:

“Now, you might say, ‘What are you doing up there? Aren’t you rich?’ The answer is, ‘Thank God, yes.’ … And you know what? As a rich person, I pay 28% taxes. What I want to ask you is, why don’t I pay 50%? Why is everybody in my bracket not paying 50%? The Republicans will say, from John Boehner to Mitch McConnell to Rick Scott, that we can’t do that because, if we tax guys like me, there won’t be any jobs. It’s bull! It’s total bull!”

As The Hill points out:

The event was one of several "Awake the State" rallies conducted during the evening across Florida ahead of Scott's first State of the State address to lawmakers in Tallahassee.

Republican Governor Rick Scott joins War on Teachers

by Barbara Morrill for Daily Kos

At what point did Republicans declare war on teachers?
Florida Governor Rick Scott is the latest to decide that the best way to deal with budget issues it to go after those living-in-the-lap-of-luxury-parasites, public school teachers.
From today's Palm Beach Post:

Is a $2,335-a-year pay cut for the average teacher worth a $44.72 property tax savings for the average Florida homeowner with a homestead exemption? That's a key question behind the math that Gov. Rick Scott's administration is banking on for his pared-back school spending plan as the legislature gears up to begin its annual session Tuesday.

And here's an easy answer to that question: no.
Seriously, what is the rationale behind the GOP's thinking on this assault against educators? Is it a general disdain for gosh darn book larnin'? Did the movers behind these efforts do so poorly in school that they are are acting on a long-simmering resentment against teachers? Or is it an insidious attack on a profession that is made up largely of women?
Inquiring minds want to know. And it seems that if the GOP has its way, there won't be any of those left in 20 years.

Originally posted to Daily Kos on Mon Mar 07, 2011 at 05:45 PM EST