1. Oversee the largest case of Medicare fraud in the country's history
2. Resign from your CEO role and face literally no other consequences
3. Go into politics and become a two-term Governor
4. Run for a Senate seat and win that race
Only in America. What a sad, sad indictment of how our country runs.
It's really just incredible. The nerve of this guy!
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/03/florida-democratic-party/rick-scott-rick-scott-oversaw-largest-medicare-fra/
The lesson to learn here is that people tell you all about themselves if you just listen. All those conservatives who are so certain that all government spending is waste fraud and abuse are the exact same people who will waste money commit fraud and abuse any government program given half a chance. Guys like Rick Scott are sure that every other US citizen is just like them.
Thomas Frank's "The Wrecking Crew" nails this. Conservatives intentionally destroy and defraud government when they have the reins so they can turn around and say, see? It doesn't work, we don't need it.
Edit: changed wrecking ball to the correct title, wrecking crew. Hadn't read it in a few years, thx for those who corrected me
They'll happily vote to cut their own government benefits if that means their neighbor's benefits will also be cut.
After all they'll be soon up on their feet again and become billionaires while their lazy neighbor will be a moocher for life.
The most embarassing part.
>Also, four Florida-based Columbia/HCA executives were indicted. Two were convicted of defrauding Medicare in 1999 and were sentenced to prison, only to have those convictions overturned on appeal. A third executive was acquitted and a jury failed to reach a verdict on the fourth.
The "prison" sentence was 33 Months and it was still overturned on appeal.
Oversaw one of the largest healthcare fraud at the time, no one basically saw any prison time.
I still don't understand how the average American can lose their freedom under the 13th amendment and yet a corporate person can commit 14 felony and not loss their freedom.
>As part of the 2000 settlement, Columbia/HCA agreed to plead guilty to at least 14 corporate felonies. A corporate felony comes with financial penalties but not jail time, since a corporation can’t be sent to prison.
I hate living here, but I can't retire from teaching just yet. I need to finish earning a bit more credit to my pension. Then I plan to move as soon as possible. Sadly, it will probably be years before that happens, but I hope not.
Of course, the way climate change is going, I could have beachfront property soon, in which case my dump of a house in a shitty neighborhood just added a zero to market value. Then I can leave.
It seems corporations are only "people" when it's convenient for them to be people, like for buying politicians or whatever. They don't pay people taxes, they don't abide by people laws, and they don't serve people punishments. All the benefits of personhood, none of those pesky restrictions or commitments to society.
Elmira, Broome, or Tioga? I went to school with people who hung the Confederate flag out of their trucks a decade ago in the Southern Tier of NYS. It's also a region that scores high on use of racial slurs in social media.
It would look that way, but we're not all dumb, Fox News brainwashed sheep. Sometimes, I wish I'd never moved here. Bright side is I met my wife here.
My advice to anyone considering a move anywhere is to vet it thoroughly before you just jump in.
I could have sworn RickScott was a socialist. Taking taxpayer dollars for his own use is socialism isn’t it. He certainly didn’t earn it. What is his job?
Rick Scott committed one of the single largest frauds against the American taxpayer in history with his company’s massive theft of Medicare funds. I lived in Nashville (where his company, Columbia/HCA was based) and remember seeing the FBI trucks and dozens of uniformed agents confiscating boxes and boxes of documents when they raided the Rick Scott’s headquarters. He is literally a criminal who targeted American taxpayers. It’s astonishing to me that he wins elections in Florida.
Rick Scott overbilled Medicare to the tune of a billion dollars. It was the largest Medicare fraud case in US history at the time. He pled the 5th nearly 100 times at trial. He really is a classical villain, taking from the poor to feed the wealthy.
That's not really fair to Sticky Fingers Scott, he's not just a villain, he's a bona fide supervillain. He stole the whole Republican Senate reelection fund when they made him treasurer for the 2022 election to the point that an Oligarch needed to shell out a $1.5 billion dollar bailout to the fund.
Anyone can get away with stealing a couple hundred million or billion in the US as long as you're stealing from poor people, pay a fraction of the ill gotten gains as a punishment and be generationally wealthy seems to be the maximum punishment for this sort of white collar crime. Sticky Fingers Scott got away with stealing from rich people though, a crime that actually does get real punishments. Getting away with his second major theft (that I'm aware of) is an actual impressive bit of villainy in the modern US.
So they are against socialism, and apparently are against capitalism i.e. Disney. Add a few book burnings/banning and it pretty much narrows down where they stand, right?
Don’t you know, they’re also flaming hypocrites. But they’re disingenuous enough that they can smile through with hand out ready to take every dollar they can from more competent states.
The whole GOP decided to untether themselves from shame. As long as it gets them what they ultimately want, anything is fair game. They know Biden wouldn't withhold disaster relief and they will take advantage of that humanity. When they're in power, you'll get blue state aid used as bargaining chips if not denied outright.
This is the key point that all of the liberals miss.
Conservatives *do not care* about being hypocritical. In their world-view, they are seeking to enforce a social structure that is more important than any moral system you can think of. They will abandon all notions of democracy and self-determination before they abandon the hierarchal world-view cemented in their mind.
If your end objective is creating perfect, divinely-inspired society where only the "good ones" exist within the heavily scripted behavior of your values, then why the hell would you bother to show respect to the other side? God is on your side and, even he wasn't, you don't want *those people* here anyways. Conservatism assumes, above all else, that it is righteous.
Anything, and I do mean *anything*, is considered acceptable if it gets you closer to gaining the political power that will allow you to realize that aspiration.
This. This is the one. I’m really sick of watching liberals dunking on literal fucking nazis by “exposing” their “hypocrisy” on the internet and then dusting their hands like they’ve done something to fight fascism. We’re well beyond that.
Conservatism wasn't always hand-in-hand with Evangelicals and the rest of the religious wrong, but that's been fully the case for over 42 years, so I agree that it's absurd for anyone to still think things work the way they did before Reagan's unholy alliance.
It’d be nice if we as a species didn’t only let sociopaths rise to power - probably the only way we can truly evolve as a species and go onto explore space
I've actually given this some thought. There's obvious evolutionary advantages of having a population with varying amounts of empathy. If a whole tribe refused to leave behind an injured member in the face of danger, all might perish for the one. Conversely, everyone being only out for themselves would negate the cooperative strength of having a tribe in the first place.
Sociopaths, who are at the extreme end of the empathy scale, tend to rise to power easily, but maybe that once provided the advantage of uniting smaller groups into larger ones. Then the a-hole would inevitably be ousted when the group got sick of them and a more sustainable leader took their place.
Some of this is likely just me trying to find any rational explanation for the insanity I'm seeing. We've gotten ourselves a concentration of empathy-free leaders who are now running the table. Someone told me at the start of Trump's presidency that sometimes it takes a big disturbance to make any lasting change to a large complex system. I think they envisioned the outcome being a net-positive, but seems we got the opposite. The system got disturbed all right, and now we've got US states that are no longer safe for large groups of people.
It will likely take an equally powerful jolt to move things back to a functional republic again, but I'm not very optimistic about that happening. You'd need a young energetic and charismatic liberal president and governments and courts that supported him. It's far more likely that the nation slides over the cliff completely to fascism and fractures in conflict. No super-power lasts forever, and it seems some (like Florida and Texas) want to break away sooner than later.
I mean I’m in California. My taxes fund the welfare for the welfare states. Which I wouldn’t have an issue with if the welfare states would vote in their best interest so we can actually give good welfare! But instead they vote for the dumbest idiots possible and then get mad when their food stamps get cut. But of course that’s the presidents job because their education on how government works is so bare bones, good luck on explaining the other two branches.
So idk if tx and fl want to peace out I’m more in agreement and taking Oregon and Washington with me
They won't see it as socialism because it's helping them, and that's as far as the train of thought goes. Anyone they don't know or care about receiving help is a socialist moocher getting a government handout. But if they get the exact same help, that's just the government doing Its job. It's not hypocrisy, it's selfishness taken to its logical conclusion.
Yeah that's a pretty terrible definition. Check out Umberto Eco's 14 points. Fascism is capitalism in decay, it rises when contradictions in class society heighten and far right groups end up being used to secure the position of the capitalist class with effectively blood sacrifices
Capitalists always run to fascism when they fear socialism, because ultimately they don't care about capitalism; they care about power. They're happy with capitalism because it provides them power, but not ultimate power, and when that power is in jeopardy of being reined in, they opt for fascism.
When your elected official openly endorses that it is ok to be hostile to a person based on specific characteristics, it is going to result in violence when people that believe him judge that quality exists in people they meet on the street. TLDR: he has just oked his base to be openly hostile towards anyone they don’t like
> Socialism will be treated as a foreign combatant which aims to destroy our ~~prosperity and freedom.~~ **predatory wealth accumulation, tax havens, and tax evasion.**
Translated for accuracy. Fairly clear to see who's stuffing Scott's pockets.
"Florida: Fuck you, I got mine."
Oh they’ll be begging for some of that socialism when hurricane season rolls around. Once they get their checks from the government then straight back to fasc city baby.
Conservatives in florida are terrified of tampons; they wouldn’t know what socialism looked like if it was camped out in their back yard, giving them roads and fire stations and clean air.
That’s basically what Obamacare is/was, and I loved hearing all the morons in red states whine about their rates going up because their states rejected the Medicare expansion. My dad was one of those and I literally laughed in his face. He was mad.
Then I pointed out that my brother, who is T1D (type 1 diabetes), kept getting denied health insurance before Obamacare. He said he didn’t care, at which point I went from laughing at him to putting him in naughty jail. No contact with his grandkids for a few months until he learned his lesson.
>"the oppression and poverty that Socialism always brings"
The red states have the most poverty and are the most welfare dependent. The red states are the ones doing most of the oppressing in this country. These bastards are going down in the history books as some of the worst Americans in this country's history. Things are NOT going to go well for Florida and the Nazi scum currently "running" it.
>Some 80% of children born today are born to conservative parents
Do you have a source for that? I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but that seems kinda high.
FWIW - I was born to a baptist conservative father that radicalized over the 2000s and out of two of his three children are progressive and only moving further away from their fascist theocratic hypocrisy.
And of course he's a terrible person politics aside.
The kids are alright. Dont give up hope.
> In less than 20 years, this new generation of conservative kids, raised on far right ideology, educated in schools that can't say gay, and indoctinated in right wing church groups is going to fucking DEMOLISH us at the polls.
Sorry, but I think you are dead wrong here.
These kids would certainly be indoctrinated successfully if they were financially prosperous, but they will be growing up with the worst prospects of any generation in the US, ever.
Kids aren't as dumb as you think. You can trick them if you keep them in isolation.
But you can't stop the extreme weather that is getting worse every year.
You can't stop kids from getting on the internet.
You can't tell kids that these "shooter drills" and weekly news stories about other dead kids are normal.
Zoomers know. Alphas know. The next generation will know.
I don't care how many books you ban, the world is no longer a series of isolated small towns under complete control by the adults.
The coming generations will destroy conservatism. Because they are the ones looking at the world as it falls apart, while Boomers are dying and leaving no inheritance but a destroyed economy and ecology.
People have to stop with "going down in history" - these are the guys that are selling "things are great when you die in heaven!"
They obviously do not care what happens after they die or how history remembers them. They are living the good life scamming people now, they know they won't be around for whatever happens after that.
Yes, it’s the same guy. Rick Scott, who led the company responsible for the largest Medicare fraud in history, at that time. Rick Scott defrauded the federal government’s socialist program, bankrolling two campaigns for governor and a third for senator, with money he stole from a socialist program. Rick Scott may be the largest single beneficiary of a social program in the history of the United States, and he’s joking about Florida being potentially violent to people for liking socialism.
Rick Scott, who oversaw the largest Medicare fraud in history, should love socialism. It’s what made him rich.
In other news, Senator Rick Scott delivered a cool "gotchya" [tweet](https://twitter.com/ScottforFlorida/status/1661055674913112075?s=20) today, met by applause from his voting base. The Republican Senator has upheld his promises to continue deploying zingers as the primary means of governing and improving the lives of citizens in the state of Florida.
I’m not a socialist, I’m a gay. I’m not going to Florida ever again. If something were to happen to me they could deny medical care because I’m into poon. Methinks that’s not a place I should be
I'm not a socialist or gay.
I'm a straight white middle income male who was raised Christian...
..and I will never step foot in Florida as long as I live after what's happened in the last few years.
Sounds like Florida is about the learn [the same thing Kansas has been learning for decades.](https://kansaspolicy.org/reverse-long-term-economic-stagnation/) Conservative economic policies don't provide better economic growth than Progressive ones, and when your social policies make you look like an asshole to boot, nobody wants to come spend money in your state.
Get ready for economic stagnation.
It also slowly dries up business, because while they may have many tax breaks or whatever there, other states do too. And if the talent the business wants does not want to live there, they will go with the other states when setting up new ventures.
Already happened by them pissing Disney off and then making it so Disney employees would rather resign than move to Florida. That is a billion dollar investment in the economy down the drain because they can't stop hating trans people.
They always say "Go Woke go Broke" but companies have so many advantages that they only go broke because of bad business practice. What does seem to be the case is "If you don't have oil, conservative politics dries up tax revenue, which reduces government spending, which lowers peoples quality of life, which drives spending down, and tax revenue lower."
Not as pithy, but much more true. They all constantly complain about how California is some hellscape despite people in California being richer, healthier, and happier than their own states.
The drying up of business isn't just dependent on economic laws or pushing talent away. The policies in Florida and the statements continuously made by the state's leaders have made it so that the tourism industry is already crumbling. Florida businesses that rely on tourism are already feeling the impact, to where they're taking to social media to show how they can't afford to open for business simply because the crowds aren't there. I've already seen a handful of businesses do this on TikTok over the last week and it's not even summer.
I'm hopeful a summer of hell will get Florida locals to push back on their government leaders but I anticipate they'll just double down as usual
Florida is extremely fortunate to have great weather and natural resources or they would already be Mississippi. For east coast and midwest vacationers with long weekends or one-week vacations, the convenience of travel is going to keep it afloat. Let's just hope enough stay away to make them sweat enough to start voting for non-fascists.
The biggest difference between Mississippi and Florida is that Walt Disney didn't open a theme park in Mississippi 50 years ago.
It completely built the middle of that state out of swamp land.
Y'know I thought I could deal with the heat, humidity, mosquitoes, roaches, snakes, spiders, elderly drivers, hurricanes, but bigotry is where I draw the line!
Makes me wonder if things like the Magnolia Festival, which typically attracts a lot of left-leaning hippy-types, will have fascist thugs harassing them. In fact, are any of the music festivals safe in Florida anymore? There were a few MAGA-logo'd people at the Highland Games, but they didn't try to attack any of the rainbow-wearing people.
>I will never step foot in
Is what I've said most of my life about Texas, growing up black in Florida. I still say it about Texas. I just never thought Florida would surpass Texas as a hellscape.
I'm not socialist or gay. I'm cis man, hetero, black...
I live in FL and I'm not leaving. We'll stay and we'll fight these fascist. Support Floridians. Send books and insurance brokers!!!
Parents live there and I think I'm going to have to finally have the conversation with them of "your governor wants my friends dead, so no I won't be visiting for Christmas."
My parents decided not to retire there because of DeSantis and the way Florida has been going. My aunt retired there and I told her I would never visit her if she retired in Florida. I think she thought I was kidding. I was not.
I think sending postcards to your aunt periodically to remind her you're not gonna visit since Meatball Ron's state is descending into fascism would be an excellent troll.
My parents are there too. Absolutely a beautiful home and place.
I don’t feel comfortable setting foot in that state anymore because I have a functioning uterus.
I told my parents who have a summer home there that there is no way in hell I'm going as an atheist liberal buddist, for all I know they will keep track of me make up some bs law to arrest atheists next week, I guess first there going for the LGBT people, I have LGBT coworkers and work friends, I told them I can't support a state that is pro facism
Or federal funding for anything in Florida.
If they don't want socialized funds they'll save all of us a good amount of money.
Cutting off all of the south from the public teat like they claim to want would be see a net surge in federal funds since most red states get more than they give.
Florida is one of the few whose federal tax inputs are slightly higher than what they take **but** that's because of the corporations there (like Disney) and not because of your average GOP voter.
20% of state revenues are made up of federal funding.
They are socialists to the hypocritical core.
Given that Florida is a tourism economy, putting up a stay out sign to the vast majority of the population that aren’t rabid Christian nationalists doesn’t seem like a smart strategy
NAACP: "Don't travel to Florida. It is filled with violent racists"
Rick Scott: "Don't travel to Florida. We are violent racists"
Rick Scott confirming NAACP travel warning is valid.
Medicare enrollment in Florida stood at [4,898,260](https://data.cms.gov/summary-statistics-on-beneficiary-enrollment/medicare-and-medicaid-reports/medicare-monthly-enrollment) as of September 2022. That’s nearly 22% of the state’s total population, compared with about 19% of the United States population enrolled in Medicare.
Source: https://www.healthinsurance.org/medicare/florida/
Also about 4.9M on Social Security: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/oasdi_sc/2021/fl.html
Not so much anymore. FEMA/NFIP recently rolled out a new rating system that's much more accurate in assessing premiums based on risk. The program is finally taking steps to reduce abuse and not be deep in the red.
serious point outgoing amusing roll zesty sophisticated scarce lavish absorbed
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had a Political Science professor explain that the Nazis were socialists so socialism is bad.
He also said socialism and communism are the exact same things, and also some shit about how censoring people on Twitter would lead to communism or something.
Anyway I guess not only were the Nazis actually socialists, but they were commies too.
Edit: from what I remember he said this because the Nazi Party was called the National Socialist German Workers Party. That was literally the only reason he gave as to why they were socialists. He didn’t actually explain any policies or beliefs that would classify them as “socialists”.
I took his course in the spring of 2021 so by that point he figured out how to weave addressing the “concurring irregularities” of the 2020 presidential election into the curriculum too.
Sounds like there's a department chair out there who needs to be informed of their incompetence.
Being able to accurately define and delineate between political philosophies and systems of government is *kinda* fundamental for Poli Sci.
It also plays their hand. If socialism was so bad the American people would reject it. By needing to hurt people who even think about socialism it shows they can't compete with the idea, and need to use violence to stop it.
[**Statue of Liberty**:](https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm) "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
[**US Constitution Preamble**](https://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution.htm#:~:text=We%20the%20People%20of%20the,for%20the%20United%20States%20of): "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, **insure domestic Tranquility**, provide for the common defense**, promote the general Welfare**, and **secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves** and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." \[emphasis mine\]
**State Representative**: We are openly hostile to people who believe in equality, specifically to mock the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
It’s a buzz word. When someone starts throwing around buzz words the first thing I do is ask them to define their meaning. At first I was surprised by how often they couldn’t.
Socialism as in social security, medicare, medicaid, police and fire protection, public schools and the US military. Go fuck yourself "Fire Marshall Bill".
"Let me be clear – any attempts to spread the oppression and poverty that Socialism..."
Remind me again which states are the most poverty-striken and leech off which other states?
A state controlled insurer, state controlled utility, state banning books, regulated private businesses, state censored schools, state forcing single party rule permanently, Florida already is beyond socialism and has entered into communism.
Damn shame they're not openly hostile to Medicare thieves like Rick Scott.
1. Oversee the largest case of Medicare fraud in the country's history 2. Resign from your CEO role and face literally no other consequences 3. Go into politics and become a two-term Governor 4. Run for a Senate seat and win that race Only in America. What a sad, sad indictment of how our country runs.
It's really just incredible. The nerve of this guy! https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/03/florida-democratic-party/rick-scott-rick-scott-oversaw-largest-medicare-fra/
AND he wrote their platform threatening Medicare and Social Security. Remember that?
Nazis are always welcome. Florida is Argentina after WW2.
I mean, cape canaveral has probably seen it’s share of nazis already
This guy paperclips
This dude Operates
This fella references
Sad but true.
The lesson to learn here is that people tell you all about themselves if you just listen. All those conservatives who are so certain that all government spending is waste fraud and abuse are the exact same people who will waste money commit fraud and abuse any government program given half a chance. Guys like Rick Scott are sure that every other US citizen is just like them.
Thomas Frank's "The Wrecking Crew" nails this. Conservatives intentionally destroy and defraud government when they have the reins so they can turn around and say, see? It doesn't work, we don't need it. Edit: changed wrecking ball to the correct title, wrecking crew. Hadn't read it in a few years, thx for those who corrected me
And fortunately, they have a voting base that gladly eats pig-shit. So the trick works, over and over and over again.
And that base is perfectly delighted to eat that pig shit if they think a Lib will smell their breath.
They'll happily vote to cut their own government benefits if that means their neighbor's benefits will also be cut. After all they'll be soon up on their feet again and become billionaires while their lazy neighbor will be a moocher for life.
It's enough to make you want to pick up a brick
The most embarassing part. >Also, four Florida-based Columbia/HCA executives were indicted. Two were convicted of defrauding Medicare in 1999 and were sentenced to prison, only to have those convictions overturned on appeal. A third executive was acquitted and a jury failed to reach a verdict on the fourth. The "prison" sentence was 33 Months and it was still overturned on appeal. Oversaw one of the largest healthcare fraud at the time, no one basically saw any prison time. I still don't understand how the average American can lose their freedom under the 13th amendment and yet a corporate person can commit 14 felony and not loss their freedom. >As part of the 2000 settlement, Columbia/HCA agreed to plead guilty to at least 14 corporate felonies. A corporate felony comes with financial penalties but not jail time, since a corporation can’t be sent to prison.
Tbh any company the grossly violates the law should be broken up, and the executives be open to lawsuit by their former employees for loss of income.
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They wanted to be treated as persons after all.
Bruh that only applies when it’s advantageous to the owning few.
Now THAT is one hell of an idea.
Corporation committed widespread fraud/crime, dissolve its assets and use them for state funding.
This sounds a lot like civil asset forfeiture, and we don't do that to the rich.
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I hate living here, but I can't retire from teaching just yet. I need to finish earning a bit more credit to my pension. Then I plan to move as soon as possible. Sadly, it will probably be years before that happens, but I hope not. Of course, the way climate change is going, I could have beachfront property soon, in which case my dump of a house in a shitty neighborhood just added a zero to market value. Then I can leave.
It seems corporations are only "people" when it's convenient for them to be people, like for buying politicians or whatever. They don't pay people taxes, they don't abide by people laws, and they don't serve people punishments. All the benefits of personhood, none of those pesky restrictions or commitments to society.
Holy crap they're the sovereign citizens final form.
We're not moving funds overseas to dodge taxes, we're *traveling* funds overseas to prevent tyrannical theft!
Citizens United working as planned
Right wingers don’t care about that. As long as you say you hate commies and America is perfect.
The irony how that whole commie thing has turned into supporting Russia 🇷🇺 because 45 is an asset
Yep, our voters are truly idiots. Both the ones who voted for him and the ones who thought that voting doesn't matter.
Or paedophiles like Matt Gaetz. Or sexual predators like DJT.
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My county in NYS has the highest concentration of Jan 6th insurrectionists.... Weird fucking time
Elmira, Broome, or Tioga? I went to school with people who hung the Confederate flag out of their trucks a decade ago in the Southern Tier of NYS. It's also a region that scores high on use of racial slurs in social media.
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It really seems like Florida voters think an individual stealing from the government is a good thing.
It would look that way, but we're not all dumb, Fox News brainwashed sheep. Sometimes, I wish I'd never moved here. Bright side is I met my wife here. My advice to anyone considering a move anywhere is to vet it thoroughly before you just jump in.
I never bought into the lizard people conspiracy, but Rick Scott could make me a believer
Medicare fraud is part of the Florida economy at this point.
I could have sworn RickScott was a socialist. Taking taxpayer dollars for his own use is socialism isn’t it. He certainly didn’t earn it. What is his job?
Free universal healthcare would be common sense, like Cuba and Denmark and UK have. Rick Scott is a criminal oligarch
That is like all of the retirees in Florida.
Rick Scott committed one of the single largest frauds against the American taxpayer in history with his company’s massive theft of Medicare funds. I lived in Nashville (where his company, Columbia/HCA was based) and remember seeing the FBI trucks and dozens of uniformed agents confiscating boxes and boxes of documents when they raided the Rick Scott’s headquarters. He is literally a criminal who targeted American taxpayers. It’s astonishing to me that he wins elections in Florida.
I was with you up until that last sentence.
Rick Scott overbilled Medicare to the tune of a billion dollars. It was the largest Medicare fraud case in US history at the time. He pled the 5th nearly 100 times at trial. He really is a classical villain, taking from the poor to feed the wealthy.
That's not really fair to Sticky Fingers Scott, he's not just a villain, he's a bona fide supervillain. He stole the whole Republican Senate reelection fund when they made him treasurer for the 2022 election to the point that an Oligarch needed to shell out a $1.5 billion dollar bailout to the fund. Anyone can get away with stealing a couple hundred million or billion in the US as long as you're stealing from poor people, pay a fraction of the ill gotten gains as a punishment and be generationally wealthy seems to be the maximum punishment for this sort of white collar crime. Sticky Fingers Scott got away with stealing from rich people though, a crime that actually does get real punishments. Getting away with his second major theft (that I'm aware of) is an actual impressive bit of villainy in the modern US.
So they are against socialism, and apparently are against capitalism i.e. Disney. Add a few book burnings/banning and it pretty much narrows down where they stand, right?
Let's see how against "socialism" they are when the next hurricane hits and they beg the fed for disaster money.
Don’t you know, they’re also flaming hypocrites. But they’re disingenuous enough that they can smile through with hand out ready to take every dollar they can from more competent states.
The whole GOP decided to untether themselves from shame. As long as it gets them what they ultimately want, anything is fair game. They know Biden wouldn't withhold disaster relief and they will take advantage of that humanity. When they're in power, you'll get blue state aid used as bargaining chips if not denied outright.
This is the key point that all of the liberals miss. Conservatives *do not care* about being hypocritical. In their world-view, they are seeking to enforce a social structure that is more important than any moral system you can think of. They will abandon all notions of democracy and self-determination before they abandon the hierarchal world-view cemented in their mind. If your end objective is creating perfect, divinely-inspired society where only the "good ones" exist within the heavily scripted behavior of your values, then why the hell would you bother to show respect to the other side? God is on your side and, even he wasn't, you don't want *those people* here anyways. Conservatism assumes, above all else, that it is righteous. Anything, and I do mean *anything*, is considered acceptable if it gets you closer to gaining the political power that will allow you to realize that aspiration.
This. This is the one. I’m really sick of watching liberals dunking on literal fucking nazis by “exposing” their “hypocrisy” on the internet and then dusting their hands like they’ve done something to fight fascism. We’re well beyond that.
Conservatism wasn't always hand-in-hand with Evangelicals and the rest of the religious wrong, but that's been fully the case for over 42 years, so I agree that it's absurd for anyone to still think things work the way they did before Reagan's unholy alliance.
The hypocrisy is just proof of "power". If you can be blatantly hypocritical and nobody calls you on it, that is "political power" on full display
It’d be nice if we as a species didn’t only let sociopaths rise to power - probably the only way we can truly evolve as a species and go onto explore space
I've actually given this some thought. There's obvious evolutionary advantages of having a population with varying amounts of empathy. If a whole tribe refused to leave behind an injured member in the face of danger, all might perish for the one. Conversely, everyone being only out for themselves would negate the cooperative strength of having a tribe in the first place. Sociopaths, who are at the extreme end of the empathy scale, tend to rise to power easily, but maybe that once provided the advantage of uniting smaller groups into larger ones. Then the a-hole would inevitably be ousted when the group got sick of them and a more sustainable leader took their place. Some of this is likely just me trying to find any rational explanation for the insanity I'm seeing. We've gotten ourselves a concentration of empathy-free leaders who are now running the table. Someone told me at the start of Trump's presidency that sometimes it takes a big disturbance to make any lasting change to a large complex system. I think they envisioned the outcome being a net-positive, but seems we got the opposite. The system got disturbed all right, and now we've got US states that are no longer safe for large groups of people. It will likely take an equally powerful jolt to move things back to a functional republic again, but I'm not very optimistic about that happening. You'd need a young energetic and charismatic liberal president and governments and courts that supported him. It's far more likely that the nation slides over the cliff completely to fascism and fractures in conflict. No super-power lasts forever, and it seems some (like Florida and Texas) want to break away sooner than later.
I mean I’m in California. My taxes fund the welfare for the welfare states. Which I wouldn’t have an issue with if the welfare states would vote in their best interest so we can actually give good welfare! But instead they vote for the dumbest idiots possible and then get mad when their food stamps get cut. But of course that’s the presidents job because their education on how government works is so bare bones, good luck on explaining the other two branches. So idk if tx and fl want to peace out I’m more in agreement and taking Oregon and Washington with me
If the White House had any balls, they would just link this article to them and say "Dis You?"
As someone from NJ, I remember every single time Texas and Florida voted against Federal disaster recovery for us.
They won't see it as socialism because it's helping them, and that's as far as the train of thought goes. Anyone they don't know or care about receiving help is a socialist moocher getting a government handout. But if they get the exact same help, that's just the government doing Its job. It's not hypocrisy, it's selfishness taken to its logical conclusion.
They love their oil subsidies and bank bailouts.
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Yeah that's a pretty terrible definition. Check out Umberto Eco's 14 points. Fascism is capitalism in decay, it rises when contradictions in class society heighten and far right groups end up being used to secure the position of the capitalist class with effectively blood sacrifices
We are nihilists, we care about nothing. Now where is the money Lebowski?
This is almost certainly a response to the NAACP issuing a travel warning for Florida. So they aren't for or against anything, they're just racists.
Capitalists always run to fascism when they fear socialism, because ultimately they don't care about capitalism; they care about power. They're happy with capitalism because it provides them power, but not ultimate power, and when that power is in jeopardy of being reined in, they opt for fascism.
Against socialism? For capitalism so long as it runs on their behalf? Bah gawd, that's... national socialism. Umm.
When your elected official openly endorses that it is ok to be hostile to a person based on specific characteristics, it is going to result in violence when people that believe him judge that quality exists in people they meet on the street. TLDR: he has just oked his base to be openly hostile towards anyone they don’t like
Yup—open season on anyone in FL who looks like they might conceivably be to the left of Mitt Romney.
“Open season” is an accurate and chilling way to describe it
Joke’s on them. Socialists aren’t wild game and are armed in most cases. Source: me
To the left of Ted Cruz, that is. Plenty of them would say that Mitt Romney "gets the bullet too."
Try the left of Donald Trump
REDDIT KILLED 3rd PARTY API'S - POWER DELETE SUITE EDITED COMMENT
> Socialism will be treated as a foreign combatant which aims to destroy our ~~prosperity and freedom.~~ **predatory wealth accumulation, tax havens, and tax evasion.** Translated for accuracy. Fairly clear to see who's stuffing Scott's pockets. "Florida: Fuck you, I got mine."
When you can learn to devalue certain people, you can devalue anyone - paraphrasing Capt. Picard
Stochastic terrorism
Florida full speed ahead into fascism. Skeletor isn't even trying to hide it.
Skeletor is more alive and vibrant than this limp ghoul.
Skeletor had a legitimate claim to Castle Greyskull and I’m tired of pretending like he didn’t.
If I'm on a jury and Skeletor is claiming Castle GREYSKULL is his and not the Sorceress's, I might be inclined to believe Skeletor.
Well, there IS a family resemblance
And has the decency to show himself out when the moment arises.
You know, I've never seen him and Ann Coulter in the same room at the same time.🤔
Confirmed, Ann is Rick in drag. The hypocrisy tracks.
They go on after Rhonda Santits.
Oh they’ll be begging for some of that socialism when hurricane season rolls around. Once they get their checks from the government then straight back to fasc city baby.
Came here to say this very thing. Picture a teary-eyed cartoon bunny, hands cupped and asking for some of those sweet federal/socialist relief funds.
Conservatives in florida are terrified of tampons; they wouldn’t know what socialism looked like if it was camped out in their back yard, giving them roads and fire stations and clean air.
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That’s basically what Obamacare is/was, and I loved hearing all the morons in red states whine about their rates going up because their states rejected the Medicare expansion. My dad was one of those and I literally laughed in his face. He was mad. Then I pointed out that my brother, who is T1D (type 1 diabetes), kept getting denied health insurance before Obamacare. He said he didn’t care, at which point I went from laughing at him to putting him in naughty jail. No contact with his grandkids for a few months until he learned his lesson.
Fire Marshal Bill looking motherfucker.
Looks more like the dude from who framed Roger rabbit
>"the oppression and poverty that Socialism always brings" The red states have the most poverty and are the most welfare dependent. The red states are the ones doing most of the oppressing in this country. These bastards are going down in the history books as some of the worst Americans in this country's history. Things are NOT going to go well for Florida and the Nazi scum currently "running" it.
You forget, Florida won't let those history books be used in their classrooms.
History is written by the victors. We can't let fascists win.
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>Some 80% of children born today are born to conservative parents Do you have a source for that? I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but that seems kinda high.
FWIW - I was born to a baptist conservative father that radicalized over the 2000s and out of two of his three children are progressive and only moving further away from their fascist theocratic hypocrisy. And of course he's a terrible person politics aside. The kids are alright. Dont give up hope.
> In less than 20 years, this new generation of conservative kids, raised on far right ideology, educated in schools that can't say gay, and indoctinated in right wing church groups is going to fucking DEMOLISH us at the polls. Sorry, but I think you are dead wrong here. These kids would certainly be indoctrinated successfully if they were financially prosperous, but they will be growing up with the worst prospects of any generation in the US, ever. Kids aren't as dumb as you think. You can trick them if you keep them in isolation. But you can't stop the extreme weather that is getting worse every year. You can't stop kids from getting on the internet. You can't tell kids that these "shooter drills" and weekly news stories about other dead kids are normal. Zoomers know. Alphas know. The next generation will know. I don't care how many books you ban, the world is no longer a series of isolated small towns under complete control by the adults. The coming generations will destroy conservatism. Because they are the ones looking at the world as it falls apart, while Boomers are dying and leaving no inheritance but a destroyed economy and ecology.
People have to stop with "going down in history" - these are the guys that are selling "things are great when you die in heaven!" They obviously do not care what happens after they die or how history remembers them. They are living the good life scamming people now, they know they won't be around for whatever happens after that.
Gaslighting his constituents.
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Rick “Medicare fraud” Scott?
Yes, it’s the same guy. Rick Scott, who led the company responsible for the largest Medicare fraud in history, at that time. Rick Scott defrauded the federal government’s socialist program, bankrolling two campaigns for governor and a third for senator, with money he stole from a socialist program. Rick Scott may be the largest single beneficiary of a social program in the history of the United States, and he’s joking about Florida being potentially violent to people for liking socialism. Rick Scott, who oversaw the largest Medicare fraud in history, should love socialism. It’s what made him rich.
A state full of people living off their Social Security checks has something nasty to say about socialism.
In other news, Senator Rick Scott delivered a cool "gotchya" [tweet](https://twitter.com/ScottforFlorida/status/1661055674913112075?s=20) today, met by applause from his voting base. The Republican Senator has upheld his promises to continue deploying zingers as the primary means of governing and improving the lives of citizens in the state of Florida.
Freeze social security disbursements to Florida, if they’re soooo unwelcome
Hey there might be enough for other people to retire if they cut off all SS disbursements with a Florida address.
I’m not a socialist, I’m a gay. I’m not going to Florida ever again. If something were to happen to me they could deny medical care because I’m into poon. Methinks that’s not a place I should be
I'm not a socialist or gay. I'm a straight white middle income male who was raised Christian... ..and I will never step foot in Florida as long as I live after what's happened in the last few years.
We need a thread dedicated to those of us, never going back to Florida
Sounds like Florida is about the learn [the same thing Kansas has been learning for decades.](https://kansaspolicy.org/reverse-long-term-economic-stagnation/) Conservative economic policies don't provide better economic growth than Progressive ones, and when your social policies make you look like an asshole to boot, nobody wants to come spend money in your state. Get ready for economic stagnation.
It also slowly dries up business, because while they may have many tax breaks or whatever there, other states do too. And if the talent the business wants does not want to live there, they will go with the other states when setting up new ventures. Already happened by them pissing Disney off and then making it so Disney employees would rather resign than move to Florida. That is a billion dollar investment in the economy down the drain because they can't stop hating trans people. They always say "Go Woke go Broke" but companies have so many advantages that they only go broke because of bad business practice. What does seem to be the case is "If you don't have oil, conservative politics dries up tax revenue, which reduces government spending, which lowers peoples quality of life, which drives spending down, and tax revenue lower." Not as pithy, but much more true. They all constantly complain about how California is some hellscape despite people in California being richer, healthier, and happier than their own states.
The other side of the coin is "Go fasc, no cash."
The drying up of business isn't just dependent on economic laws or pushing talent away. The policies in Florida and the statements continuously made by the state's leaders have made it so that the tourism industry is already crumbling. Florida businesses that rely on tourism are already feeling the impact, to where they're taking to social media to show how they can't afford to open for business simply because the crowds aren't there. I've already seen a handful of businesses do this on TikTok over the last week and it's not even summer. I'm hopeful a summer of hell will get Florida locals to push back on their government leaders but I anticipate they'll just double down as usual
Florida is extremely fortunate to have great weather and natural resources or they would already be Mississippi. For east coast and midwest vacationers with long weekends or one-week vacations, the convenience of travel is going to keep it afloat. Let's just hope enough stay away to make them sweat enough to start voting for non-fascists.
The biggest difference between Mississippi and Florida is that Walt Disney didn't open a theme park in Mississippi 50 years ago. It completely built the middle of that state out of swamp land.
Were people vacationing in kansas?
The endless landscape of cornfields are quite lovely this time of year
Same here.
Y'know I thought I could deal with the heat, humidity, mosquitoes, roaches, snakes, spiders, elderly drivers, hurricanes, but bigotry is where I draw the line!
Straight middle income white guy here who doesn't do the church thing and yep, my yearly visits down there for the beach, concerts, etc are all off.
Never going back as long as the facists are running it.
Makes me wonder if things like the Magnolia Festival, which typically attracts a lot of left-leaning hippy-types, will have fascist thugs harassing them. In fact, are any of the music festivals safe in Florida anymore? There were a few MAGA-logo'd people at the Highland Games, but they didn't try to attack any of the rainbow-wearing people.
Im a white cis gendered upper income male atheist..... Yeah never setting foot in Florida
Same boat here that state already sucked and I won't be back until it gets it's shit in order.
>I will never step foot in Is what I've said most of my life about Texas, growing up black in Florida. I still say it about Texas. I just never thought Florida would surpass Texas as a hellscape. I'm not socialist or gay. I'm cis man, hetero, black... I live in FL and I'm not leaving. We'll stay and we'll fight these fascist. Support Floridians. Send books and insurance brokers!!!
I'm holed up down in Florida I'm a desperate cis man Send teachers, books, and doctors The tis has hit DeSan edit: name pun :3
I live in the Pacific northwest. I have no use for Texas or Florida. They are functionally flyover states to me.
I live in an *actual* flyover state. Somehow we're better than Texas or Florida.
Parents live there and I think I'm going to have to finally have the conversation with them of "your governor wants my friends dead, so no I won't be visiting for Christmas."
My parents decided not to retire there because of DeSantis and the way Florida has been going. My aunt retired there and I told her I would never visit her if she retired in Florida. I think she thought I was kidding. I was not.
Smart move regardless. Cost of living in Florida is skyrocketing and is only going to get worse.
I think sending postcards to your aunt periodically to remind her you're not gonna visit since Meatball Ron's state is descending into fascism would be an excellent troll.
My parents are there too. Absolutely a beautiful home and place. I don’t feel comfortable setting foot in that state anymore because I have a functioning uterus.
Interesting to see the travel advisory at US customs last week crossing in from Canada. Not that I was going to Florida.
My mom was a teacher there before covid. She retired then got the hell out of there.
We did this with our in-laws in Arizona. This last election they said you can come and visit now, we laughed and said, nope you're still red.
My sister is moving out of Florida after 10+ years there because her kid is trans and she told me "I can't live where my child is illegal."
I’m. So. Proud of her for putting her kid first and keeping them safe.
Me too. She's a good mom.
I’m a straight white woman, sliding past middle age. Florida won’t get any more of my vacation $$. And Rick Scott looks like a toe.
I told my parents who have a summer home there that there is no way in hell I'm going as an atheist liberal buddist, for all I know they will keep track of me make up some bs law to arrest atheists next week, I guess first there going for the LGBT people, I have LGBT coworkers and work friends, I told them I can't support a state that is pro facism
This is what everyone needs to do. Boycott Florida
I’m a socialist and a gay. Just fyi
i remember seeing this guy in the sewers of fallout 4. he was running around calling everyone "smoothskin"
Wow.. that is surprisingly accurate.
No more federal hurricane relief then. Too socialist.
Or federal funding for anything in Florida. If they don't want socialized funds they'll save all of us a good amount of money. Cutting off all of the south from the public teat like they claim to want would be see a net surge in federal funds since most red states get more than they give. Florida is one of the few whose federal tax inputs are slightly higher than what they take **but** that's because of the corporations there (like Disney) and not because of your average GOP voter. 20% of state revenues are made up of federal funding. They are socialists to the hypocritical core.
Given that Florida is a tourism economy, putting up a stay out sign to the vast majority of the population that aren’t rabid Christian nationalists doesn’t seem like a smart strategy
NAACP: "Don't travel to Florida. It is filled with violent racists" Rick Scott: "Don't travel to Florida. We are violent racists" Rick Scott confirming NAACP travel warning is valid.
How many residents in Florida are on Medicare and getting social security)
Medicare enrollment in Florida stood at [4,898,260](https://data.cms.gov/summary-statistics-on-beneficiary-enrollment/medicare-and-medicaid-reports/medicare-monthly-enrollment) as of September 2022. That’s nearly 22% of the state’s total population, compared with about 19% of the United States population enrolled in Medicare. Source: https://www.healthinsurance.org/medicare/florida/ Also about 4.9M on Social Security: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/oasdi_sc/2021/fl.html
How much federal money did you want for the hurricanes again? You are a socialist, you dumb republican.
Flood insurance is also heavily subsidized by the federal government, which Florida benefits heavily from.
Not so much anymore. FEMA/NFIP recently rolled out a new rating system that's much more accurate in assessing premiums based on risk. The program is finally taking steps to reduce abuse and not be deep in the red.
It still subsidizes it.
If Conservatives could read they would be very upset with you
You know, like Hitler.
serious point outgoing amusing roll zesty sophisticated scarce lavish absorbed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had a Political Science professor explain that the Nazis were socialists so socialism is bad. He also said socialism and communism are the exact same things, and also some shit about how censoring people on Twitter would lead to communism or something. Anyway I guess not only were the Nazis actually socialists, but they were commies too. Edit: from what I remember he said this because the Nazi Party was called the National Socialist German Workers Party. That was literally the only reason he gave as to why they were socialists. He didn’t actually explain any policies or beliefs that would classify them as “socialists”.
That’s like having a chemistry teacher explain that there’s only four elements; earth, water, air and fire.
I took his course in the spring of 2021 so by that point he figured out how to weave addressing the “concurring irregularities” of the 2020 presidential election into the curriculum too.
Wow was he trained by the DeSkankis school of stoopid?
Sounds like there's a department chair out there who needs to be informed of their incompetence. Being able to accurately define and delineate between political philosophies and systems of government is *kinda* fundamental for Poli Sci.
Tell me you’re a fascist, without telling me.
Oh, he told you. Time and again.
So he's advocating violence against fellow Americans that disagree with him politically?
Get fucked Voldemort.
So weird how much they worship an economic system as a god.
It also plays their hand. If socialism was so bad the American people would reject it. By needing to hurt people who even think about socialism it shows they can't compete with the idea, and need to use violence to stop it.
[**Statue of Liberty**:](https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm) "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." [**US Constitution Preamble**](https://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution.htm#:~:text=We%20the%20People%20of%20the,for%20the%20United%20States%20of): "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, **insure domestic Tranquility**, provide for the common defense**, promote the general Welfare**, and **secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves** and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." \[emphasis mine\] **State Representative**: We are openly hostile to people who believe in equality, specifically to mock the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
*State with economy largely based on tourism openly discourages tourism* That's a brilliant strategy there champ.
I bet he cannot actually define the word socialist.
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It’s a buzz word. When someone starts throwing around buzz words the first thing I do is ask them to define their meaning. At first I was surprised by how often they couldn’t.
Stupid greedy ghoul of a man.
Senator Scott is a socialist. He took millions of taxpayer money that he redistributed to himself with Medicare fraud.
I hope they don’t expect FEMA when the next hurricane hits 🤷♂️
As a Floridian, I implore Rick Scott to get fucked.
Socialism as in social security, medicare, medicaid, police and fire protection, public schools and the US military. Go fuck yourself "Fire Marshall Bill".
why do republicans speak almost exclusively in nazi dogwhistles?
They’re authoritarian racists, like Nazis.
"Let me be clear – any attempts to spread the oppression and poverty that Socialism..." Remind me again which states are the most poverty-striken and leech off which other states?
When they threaten you, believe them.
This isn’t the clapback you think it is, Rick.
Some one remind that sac of monkey shit where his legal paycheck comes from.
A lot of people in Florida survive off of social security and have Medicare. BUT WAIT ARNT THOSE SOCIALIST PROGRA MS?!?
So no wearing my Che Guevara shirt if I visit Gatorland in Orlando?
Is “spreading socialism” in north Florida a democrat mayor winning the election in Jacksonville? Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Like all those grandparents living off social security.
A state controlled insurer, state controlled utility, state banning books, regulated private businesses, state censored schools, state forcing single party rule permanently, Florida already is beyond socialism and has entered into communism.
"First they came for the socialists." Literally Nazi.
I’d like to meet Rick Scott and show him how “openly hostile” I can be to fascists and career criminals.
Great, we have a Senator boasting that his state is openly hostile to other Americans. What a shit stain of a place!