...YES!
(also, I'm real keen on the Bucs firing Schiano. That's another issue, and better followed on BucsNation.com...)
But here's the thing I want everyone to look at: a graphic map of Florida (via Miami Herald) highlighting all the places where companies with 100+ employees cut jobs from 2011 to now.
For all the bragging Scott's office and campaigners like to say about the jobs created during Scott's tenure, they'll of course never say word one about the jobs lost. The current total of jobs created related to Scott's efforts: roughly 45,000. Current total of jobs lost related to said efforts: roughly 49,000. That's a NEGATIVE value of 4,000 or more LOST JOBS.
He's not exactly creating jobs like he promised (700,000 jobs over 7 years). Like the voters should have ever trusted him on that... gggggrrrrrrr.
Making it worse has been the overvalued tax incentives, tax credits, and tax cuts Scott and Co. have doled out to corporations on the "promise" that these acts would create jobs. All it's done was incite national companies to shift jobs from one state to another (causing grief elsewhere), create temporary jobs that didn't last, and basically nothing more. A lot of that money's gone to waste, floating in the aether.
While the state's employment numbers have improved... it's been due to the overall national economic picture, with little to do with Scott's executive policies or the legislature's actual efforts.
So in terms of improving Florida's employment and economic numbers, Scott hasn't done much of anything. And thanks to his insistence on tax cuts and benefits to large corporations, it's not helping improve Florida's budgets and public coffers.
Of course, I should also note that Rick Scott and his cronies are back at voter suppression efforts AGAIN in another attempt to make it harder for voters to register and submit ballots. Such as issuing an "edict" to deny people to drop off absentee ballots at easy-to-visit locations:
The latest trouble erupted a week ago when Secretary of State Ken Detzner issued an edict, or a "directive" as he called it, that county elections supervisors should not "solicit return" of absentee ballots anywhere other than the supervisor's office. The law is clear, he said.
Yet some counties let voters hand in absentees at early-voting sites, and Pinellas' Deborah Clark has a network of remote dropoff sites, secure and staffed by her employees, where ballots are kept under seal until they are driven to her headquarters.
Evelyn Balogh, 83, a Tarpon Springs retiree who uses a wheelchair and does not drive, said Clark's system is why she is still voting. "I don't know what this man is thinking," she said of Detzner.
Our counties are not exactly compact and covered with elections offices: You may think Clearwater is a central locale easy to reach in our smallest geographic county (Pinellas), but Tarpon Springs is like freaking Siberia from there and I'm speaking from personal experience. Considering the high count of retirees who won't or can't drive in this state - not to mention the high count of poor people who can't drive, or the high count of people working long hours unable to get away to vote during the day - the county elections officials have to apply common sense and designate alternate locations to help out.
And indeed, the county supervisors for Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco have told Detzner (and Scott) that they will ignore the edict, noting they are in "full compliance with the law," meaning the actual statutes they have to follow and that the courts would go by if this matter ever goes that far. This is a big thing for Pinellas, where a special election for a now-vacant Congressional seat (with the passing of Rep. Bill Young) covering half that county is going to rely a lot on the voters able to use the absentee ballots and drop-offs to get the votes in.
And indeed, the county supervisors for Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco have told Detzner (and Scott) that they will ignore the edict, noting they are in "full compliance with the law," meaning the actual statutes they have to follow and that the courts would go by if this matter ever goes that far. This is a big thing for Pinellas, where a special election for a now-vacant Congressional seat (with the passing of Rep. Bill Young) covering half that county is going to rely a lot on the voters able to use the absentee ballots and drop-offs to get the votes in.
In the meantime, this becomes more important.
The damn Democrats, moderates, and sane Republicans still left in that nihilistic radical fringe who are opposed to the bleeping Medicare crook in the governor's office NEED TO GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT IN 2014!
Dear National Democratic committees: instead of constantly emailing us to send in $25 every week driving us crazy with your endless fundraising, can you start emailing us to remind the voters to GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT for state and local elections just as much as you did for the Presidential campaigns. Democratic turnout for midterms sucks to high heaven, and it's usually because the national-level organization (YOU) decide in some half-assed logic that the states should take care of their own... which they can't because they need a higher-ranking official to come in and knock skulls between the local factions.
The Republicans may have their problems - mostly because A) they are currently ideologically hidebound to a Utopian fantasy, and B) obsessed with thinking it's the "packaging" when in truth it's their policies that scare voters away - but when it comes to organizing at a national, state, and local level they coordinate their funding and support to a competently-good level. They are focused on both the big picture (of keeping the federal government broken) and the small picture (take over enough state governments to destroy the national social safety net, and take over enough school boards to
Democrats, if you want to get Rick "He's a Damn Crook" Scott out of office, organize. Register the voters. Stand up to the suppression attempts now and tomorrow. Put candidates up in ALL the districts at ALL the levels - Congressional, Governor, State Senate, State Lege, County offices, School Boards - that you can. To hell with the GOP's attempts to gerrymander: this state is more purple and Leans Blue than you realize, AND YOU GOTTA FIGHT FOR IT.
GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT. And GET RICK SCOTT OUT OF OFFICE.
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