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.

Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes.

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

Rick Scott: Florida's Drug Fraud Enabler?

— By Suzy Khimm

| Tue Mar. 8, 2011 7:49 AM PST

In 1997, Rick Scott was implicated in the biggest Medicare fraud case in US history, stepping down as CEO of Columbia/HCA after the hospital giant was fined $1.7 billion and found guilty of swindling the government. As Florida's new governor, Scott is now trying to kill off an anti-fraud database that would track the fraudulent distribution of addictive prescription drugs in Florida, over the protestations of law enforcement officials, Republican state lawmakers, and federal drug policy officials.
Without consulting state lawmakers, Scott snuck a repeal of the database in his budget this year, despite the fact that it will cost Florida no money. (It's funded by federal money and private donations.) The governor claims the database—which allows doctors to search patient drug purchases for potential abuses—would amount to an invasion of privacy, as the New York Times notes in a story about state Republicans who are at war with Scott. Lawmakers from both parties and patient advocates who fought for the creation of the database are flabbergasted: some view the resource as a critical tool in combating black-market drug traffic, the proliferation of pain clinics, and the abuse of prescription drugs.
Florida is at the center of national epidemic of prescription drug abuse. Prescription drugs are estimated to kill seven people a day in the state, and the number of overdose deaths from oxycodone alone doubled to 1,185 between 2006 and 2009. As a result, Scott has received a hailstorm of criticism from all sides, as the St. Peterberg Times reports:

"This is a step in the wrong direction," said Capt. Robert Alfonso, head of the narcotics division of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. "We were looking forward to using it…"
"It makes no logical or rational sense," said Paul Sloan, a Venice-based pain clinic owner and president of the Florida Society of Pain Management Providers. "It's absolutely absurd. This is the most important weapon in the fight against prescription drug abuse…"
Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, who has been a champion of efforts to fight prescription drug abuse and sponsored the drug monitoring legislation, rapped the governor for sliding his proposal into his mass of budget recommendations.
"I'm extremely, extremely disappointed with the governor and his administration for sneaking this into a...bill," Fasano said.

Scott is also taking aim at Florida's Office of Drug Control, which is charged with raising private money for the database. His repeal effort has even caught the attention of the Obama administration, whose "Drug Czar" Gil Kerlikowske is currently trying to meet with Scott to persuade him not kill off the database.
Scott has made it clear that he doesn't plan to stop with the anti-fraud database. As the New York Times adds, he's also making a big push to privatize Medicaid as well—supposedly to save the state money—while trying to give corporations and property owners $1.7 billion in tax breaks.

FOUL

Our dumb state's dumb governor

Illustration by Shan Stumpf

By Billy Manes

Published: March 3, 2011

When Florida Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg, somewhat quietly scratched out a personal-as-political manifesto on Feb. 16 - filing not one but two bills that would allow for the recall of elected state officials by the public; one by petition, the other by statute - it was not simply in the name of streamlining political procedure in the Sunshine State. Rather, it was a political call to arms for a state left dumbfounded by its own electoral process.
On Nov. 2, by a margin of 1 percent (or roughly 62,000 votes), Florida elected Richard Lynn Scott to its highest office - despite all of the warning signs, in spite of logic. Within a week of his inauguration, Gov. Rick Scott had intentionally flicked the first domino in what would become an inescapable racket of attacks on social services, state employees and the common good. At his first press conference on Jan. 7, Scott stuttered and sweated through a litany of executive orders: a freeze on regulations, an examination of existing rules, a new Floridian order flecked with anti-immigration sentiments. The press took its position behind the newly installed velvet rope, while Scott disingenuously touted the sacrifices he'd be making - he'd be selling the state's two airplanes, for instance (which was fine by him because he had his own personal aircraft). His ineptitude may have been palpable, but the consequences of his gubernatorial reign had yet to be fully realized.
It was on Feb. 16, the same day the recall chatter was consummated in legislative boilerplate, that Scott lurched for the jugular. In an act of ill-informed antipathy, the governor refused to accept $2.4 billion in federal money the state was depending on to fuel its high-speed rail initiative and create sorely needed jobs that could have put 23,000 people to work immediately. It was a gesture that baffled even Republicans, and it indicated a political flippancy that showed that Scott wasn't just a joke - he was a danger to the tentative health of a state already suffering from a bad case of 12 percent unemployment and an outdated infrastructure. Moreover, Scott's predecessor, Charlie Crist, championed the project just last year, leaving some Republicans in Florida's legislature to question whether Scott even has the authority to act on his whim. On March 1, Sens. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, and Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, filed suit against Scott in state Supreme Court over the rail fiasco. What a mess.
Like others in his class of newbie conservative leaders - Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin - Rick Scott is more ideological than he is gubernatorial, gold leaf for big business interests, but a slap on the face to mere humans. Early in his tenure, he's already a bumbling wagon of horrible mistakes; there's an almost inconceivable list of reasons he's the worst man for his job below - then there are many more lurking around the corner as he prepares to hood-ornament his inaugural legislative session, which begins March 8. Recent indications are that the veto-proof Republican majority might be willing to play ball with Scott despite initial hesitations, meaning even as an ogre with limited political power, Scott will likely set the tone for a session of surface belt-tightening and hidden back scratching.
We are fucked.

Read More: http://orlandoweekly.com/news/foul-1.1112978

“Has Florida finally elected a certifiable whack job as governor?”

By Carl Hiaasen

Last week, as drug agents secretly prepared to raid more than a dozen South Florida pill mills, Gov. Rick Scott reaffirmed his staunch opposition to a statewide computer database that would track prescriptions of Vicodin, Percocet and other dangerous narcotics.
Said Scott: “I don’t support the database. I believe it’s an invasion of privacy.”
His statement raises numerous questions, none of them comforting.

Has Florida finally elected a certifiable whack job as governor?
Is Scott himself overmedicating?
Undermedicating?
Why would any sane or sober public official go out of his way — very publicly — to protect pill pushers and crooked doctors?
Thirty-eight states use databases to keep track of oxycodone and other painkillers that are now the most widely abused (and lethal) drugs in the country.
Florida is the largest state without such a database, and the undisputed epicenter of the sleazy illegal pill trade.
In the first six months of 2010, doctors in Florida prescribed nine times more oxycodone than was sold in the entire United States during that same period. Pain mills here have prospered wildly and proliferated – in Broward County alone there are 130.
Two years ago, the Republican-controlled Legislature approved a painkiller database, which would be privately funded. Law enforcement officers say it’s an absolutely essential tool for attacking storefront clinics and the drug dealers who flock to Florida from throughout the eastern United States.
The database should have been up and running by now, but bid disputes with private contractors have delayed implementation. Authorities were hoping to have the computerized system in place this spring, but then Scott took office and announced his intention to kill it, along with the state anti-drug office that conceived it.
No one can fathom why. Conitnue reading Carl Hiassen here.