Rick Scott's version of transparency

This morning's Miami Herald reports that FL Gov. Rick Scott, singular proof positive that we are secretly ruled by alien lizard people in disguise, has been cooking the books when it comes to making emails public.


In the article by Toluse Olorunnipa, we learn that " Gov. Rick Scott said he was championing transparency in May when he gave the public access to his emails by posting them online for anyone to see.  But what he failed to say at his May 3 news conference launching Project Sunburst was that the emails he made public were not the emails of his official state account. The emails the public read online were from a different account used almost exclusively by conservative supporters."

If this man is not summarily drubbed in his re-election bid in 2014, it will be my state's swan song.

If ever a governor needed impeachment, its Rick Scott

by MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2003, "HCA Inc. (formerly known as Columbia/HCA and HCA - The Healthcare Company) has agreed to pay the United States $631 million in civil penalties and damages arising from false claims the government alleged it submitted to Medicare and other federal health programs, the Justice Department announced today." The DOJ entitled its press release on the settlement, "The Largest Healthcare Fraud in US History."
The DOJ news release also records additional HCA civil and criminal fraud in billing the government illegally for services:

Previously, on December 14, 2000, HCA subsidiaries pled guilty to substantial criminal conduct and paid more than $840 million in criminal fines, civil restitution and penalties. Combined with today's separate administrative settlement with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), under which HCA will pay an additional $250 million to resolve overpayment claims arising from certain of its cost reporting practices, the government will have recovered $1.7 billion from HCA, by far the largest recovery ever reached by the government in a health care fraud investigation.

Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, founded what became HCA and resigned as the false claims to Medicare and other federal health programs started coming to light as a result of whistleblowers (who later received a portion of the HCA settlement).
Scott is now refusing to cooperate with the Affordable Care Act, particularly in relation to Medicaid. He regularly denounces government healthcare programs, even though his for-profit healthcare firm made nearly $2 billion in profit from these same federal government payers -- fraudulently.
The governor of the Sunshine State -- if criminal justice were fair and not subject to granting the wealthy impunity -- would very possibly be serving a prison term instead of being ensconced in the Florida's governor's mansion.

Therefore, it is tragically ironic that, according to The Political Carnival, "Florida sends TB patients to $35-a-night motel," and that Rick Scott's state government is "accused of [the] covering up of the worst TB outbreak in 20 years."

Read more here.

Zombie Politics

"It is difficult to imagine that anyone looking at a society in which an ultra-rich financial elite and mega-corporations have the power to control almost every aspect of politics -- from who gets elected to how laws are enacted -- could possibly mistake this social order and system of government for a democracy."
       -- Henry Giroux, "Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism" (2010)

Read the Truthout excerpt here.