Boy, are his vampire wings tired.
Bat-human hybrid, Governor Rick Scott returned recently from leading a delegation of 80 to the International Paris Air Show to tout his state’s anti-union/pro-business-friendly environment and to show the world that Florida is no slouch when it comes to totally overestimating Tea Party policies.
A little context: Back when he was running for Governor, Rick Scott narrowly beat his Democratic opponent, primarily on the promise of creating 700,000 new jobs– on top of the 1 million jobs state economists estimated would be created regardless of policies, or who was in power. A jobs man! But Governor Rick Scott, after purging the state of nearly 25,000 public employees, has been falling well short of his goal for most of the time he’s been in office, so he decided to simply whitewash his campaign promise, going from a guarantee of creating 1.7 million jobs over a seven year period, to taking credit for jobs that would have been created anyway, and trashing his own goals like they never existed. This is like knocking down the goal post and doing an end zone dance at the other end of field.
So, in order to continue the facade of being a job creator in a state that received $577.8 million dollars in federal funding– more funding than any other state– Governor Scott packed up his corporate entourage and traveled to Paris, France, home of the Freedom Fries, to remind the world that Tea Party policies will hunt you down when you’re not flocking to their states to take advantage of an under-educated workforce and crumbling infrastructure.
Politifact actually gave Rick Scott a “Stalled” rating for lying about his policies, posting this chart of how far short he is falling:
With the new numbers out Friday showing the state of Florida’s unemployment rate ticking down below the national average to 7.1 percent, Governor Scott has been running around telling everyone who’ll listen that his policies are working, or, “It’s working!“
Never mind that with the overall economy in recovery-mode, this has increased Florida’s tourism(up 2.3 percent from the previous year)which has increased demand for service and hospitality work– notoriously low wage jobs. Leisure and hospitality jobs have increased 3.2 percent, signifying a broader recovery, rather than any policy Rick Scott has implemented. To the contrary, Governor Scott’s plans have called for funding for cronies like, Enterprise Florida, a $45 million dollar tax-payer funded pimp outfit for luring corporate Johns to Rick Scott’s Florida brothel. Governor Scott had originally sought $278 million for Enterprise Florida for this year, but had to settle for less in his efforts to barely break even on job creation in a state that is heavily subsidized by the federal government and a tourist hub.
I suppose under Tea Party logic, busting unions/firing public workers, eliminating the corporate tax rate, cutting education and denying climate change is the key to all of our job creating dreams, but since Rick Scott seems to be running around the world pimping out his state’s access to federal dollars and turning over rocks just to barely keep up with normal job growth, I think there may be some flaws in this model of governance.
So much for the great job migration to Florida. It’s getting really hard out here for a pimp.