24 February 2011

Rick Scott: A Major Embarassment to the State of Florida

By now you may have read reports on the Tampa Bay area news media outlets that high speed rail is gone, according to this Bay News 9 story.

What Rick Scott is doing is devastating, if not damaging as well as a major disgrace to the State of Florida and its residents. We have unemployment running at an all time high and we have people out of work that need work - and the paycheck that goes with it - to put food on the table. Besides, if and when the economy recovers we are going to have a state that is embroiled in major gridlock, especially our state's metropolitan areas such as Tampa/St. Petersburg, Ft. Lauderdale/Miami, Orlando and Jacksonville. Furthermore, Rick Scott's rejection of high speed rail, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, is a slap in the face not only to us Floridians but the federal government as well.

The construction of high speed rail would have brought jobs - 25,000 from what I understand - jobs that Floridians out of work need. Also, the construction of high speed rail would have been the jolt that sends our state's economy on the way to recovery. Rick Scott does not care about us Floridians not one bit.

Another benefit of high speed rail is it would have brought Tampa and Orlando closer. It would have opened up the job markets of Tampa and Orlando to job seekers on the Interstate 4 corridor. Speaking of Interstate 4, when the major improvements were built that transformed Interstate 4 from an overcrowded and dangerous four lane highway to the six lane interstate highway we know today, there is ample space in the median which was built with high speed rail in mind.

Realize for a moment that the State of Florida spent billions of dollars in transforming Interstate 4 from a dangerous highway to a safer highway with high speed rail in mind. Now Rick Scott - the crook and thief running the State of Florida from the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee - decided to go ahead and destroy it all.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, we Floridians need to do something to save our state from irreparable ruin. We need to get HJR 785 passed and an amendment placed onto the Constitution of the State of Florida so that we can get Rick Scott recalled from office.

If you think Rick Scott is damaging the State of Florida at every turn, here's another byproduct of Rick Scott: Turning public property into private property.

This recently happened at a Polk County School Board meeting where someone was protesting the start of their meetings with an invocation was arrested for disorderly conduct, according to this article on 10 News (WTSP-TV).

Here is the comment that I left on the article, as Ellenbeth Wachs - who was with John Kieffer at the school board meeting - was taking pictures and was declared a second class citizen by the Bartow Police Department on the orders of the Polk County School District by having a trespass warning issued:

Ellenbeth Wachs being given a trespass warning for taking pictures at a school board meeting? Just a great example of Rick Scott turning public property into private property by having government meetings held in private. However, I don't condone what John Kieffer did by disrupting the meeting in the first place.

Just goes on to show you that by the way things are going, Rick Scott is Florida's #1 Section 810.09 trespass warning king. And the Polk County School District will do anything to turn ordinary citizens into second class citizens by using trespass warnings against anyone for any reason.


And yes, Rick Scott will do anything to intimidate Floridians by the use of these trespass warnings as a tool of repression against the people. That way, government meetings such as school board meetings can be held in private in clear violation of the Sunshine Law which mandates that most government meetings such as school board meetings, city council meetings and county commission meetings be held in open session with very few exceptions. All Ellenbeth Wachs was doing at the Polk County School Board meeting was taking pictures - she did not do anything wrong from what I understand.

Moreover, we can't forget Rick Scott's mantra of no government interference in private business. The Orlando area theme parks such as Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Florida are the biggest purveyors of trespass warnings; with theme park security standing ready to turn ordinary law abiding people into second class citizens by inventing an incident to justify a trespass warning banning the person for life. Additonally, private business - especially the retail sector such as shopping malls (like International Plaza in Tampa and Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg) and retail stores (like Wal-Mart, Sweetbay Supermarket, Winn-Dixie and 7-Eleven) - will do anything to turn a law abiding customer into a second class citizen by inventing an incident and have a trespass warning issued banning the customer for life.

After all, there is no appeal to a trespass warning issued - it is permanent. Trespass warnings issued in Florida are convictions for trespassing without the benefit of due process and trial.

Again, we Floridians need to take back our state. We need to do something now before it's too late.

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