Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Here's Your Duly Elected Governor, Florida Voters, Caught Lying and Acting Like a Crook January 2015 Edition

This has been building up the past few weeks.  There were questions back when it happened, but since this last weekend the questions about why Rick Scott forced a well-respected state-level law officer - FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey - to resign got louder, and the accusations - how it was over unethical and potentially illegal misconduct in Scott's administration - got serious.

It's gotten to the point where even Scott's Cabinet - fellow elected officials from the same hard-core Tea Partier faction of the state GOP - are backing off from their rubber-stamping of Scott's move and acting like they're not involved in any of this.  Via Daniel Ruth:
A week after Gov. Rick Scott misled, undermined and duped the independently elected Cabinet into going along with his baseless firing of long-serving Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey, (Chief Financial Officer) Atwater finally woke up and perhaps said to himself, "Hey, wait a minute here. This whole thing smells sorta fishy."
Do you think?
Perhaps Atwater had an inkling he had been played for a chump by Scott when Bailey bluntly denied he had resigned from his post and that the governor was a big honking liar for suggesting otherwise.

When your own people are backing away from a bad story, it's time to break out the lawyers.  Via another article at the Tampa Bay Times:

(Attorney General Pam) Bondi on Wednesday became the last of the three elected Republican Cabinet members to distance herself from the ouster last month of Gerald Bailey as commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Bailey alleges that Scott and his aides meddled in law-enforcement business and used strong-arm tactics to pressure him to resign.
Taking indirect aim at Scott on his preference for secrecy over transparency, Bondi said she and the public have a right to know the truth, and that she would insist that the Bailey matter be discussed "thoroughly and in the sunshine" at the next Cabinet meeting Feb. 5.

This is Bondi coming out against Scott on this matter.  The same Bondi who is neck deep in the beach sand at vacation spots paid for by lobbyists just happening to get her to sell out the state to their whims.  The hypocrisy of this would be laughable if it weren't so horrifying.

Scott's move to fire Bailey was such a shock to the Tallahassee power circles - the Commissioner had served without a problem under other Republican governors and was liked and respected - that questions were unavoidable.  What made it worse for Scott was his own damn mouth: having spent more than four years - dear God, it's been that long already - making false claims and refusals to answer direct questions, when pressed on an issue he couldn't avoid he simply lied about it.  Problem was, the person he lied on - Bailey - was someone the media respected, so that when Bailey charged back accusing Scott of flat-out lying, the papers and politicos believed Bailey over Scott.

And this is more than Scott being a liar.  The reason(s) why Scott pushed Bailey to resign - trying to get state cops to help with the re-election campaign, abusing state transportation, making up a criminal investigation against an Orange County Clerk of Court - point to a political office that tried to force a state agency to "submit" to Scott's political agenda.  Those reasons deserve greater scrutiny as possible criminal acts.

Unless someone in the proper authority can push for a legit independent investigation - the GOP-controlled legislature will be loathed to go that far against their own, and it's a question of who can approach the federal Justice Department to start a probe - this scandal won't go very far.  All it will do is highlight once again how much of a fraud Rick "No Ethics" Scott has been and will continue to be.

This is who you voted for, Floridians.  Both the partisan Republicans who held their noses to vote for this stinkpatty of a lifeform, and for the cowardly Democrats who refused to show up to vote last November in a chance to vote him out.  This is what we're getting, Florida.  Four more years of bullying and lies.


1 comment:

phyllis said...

you keep blaming the NON VOTERS when what you should be looking for is where are those votes--probably boxed up in some closet and were MISPLACED and not counted that sounds a lot closer to the truth of the matter-Floridians aren't that foolish--we've seen his 1st 4 years-we sure as hell didn't want him again-this is just another CHAD GAME