Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney and Rick Scott both have Medicare fraud in their background

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urine sampleFor Rick Scott, that means nearly 170,000 new potential customers for his … sorry, his wife’s … Solantic walk-in clinics.  Scott’s newest scheme, which will help him turn a profit from his $70 million investment in becoming a one-term Florida governor, would be genius if it weren’t so darned evil.

Not surprisingly, the program was brought to a quick halt. Back in October of 2011, a federal judge ruled that the Florida drug testing law was unconstitutional.

Further, in the few months that the program was up and running, it was shown that only 2% of welfare applicants tested positive for drugs. About 9% of the general population reports using drugs in the past month. So much for Governor Rick Scott’s theory that the poor use drugs more often than the rest of the populace.

As it turns out, the program is estimated to have cost Florida over $200,000. From any perspective, this policy can be regarded as a failure.

Last summer, Florida implemented a law requiring all welfare applicants to submit to a mandatory drug test before receiving any benefits (Applicants had to pay the $30 for the test themselves, only to be reimbursed later if they passed. For more information, see this NORML blog post.). Not surprisingly, the program was brought to a quick halt. Back in October of 2011, a federal judge ruled that the Florida drug testing law was unconstitutional.

Further, in the few months that the program was up and running, it was shown that only 2% of welfare applicants tested positive for drugs. About 9% of the general population reports using drugs in the past month. So much for Governor Rick Scott’s theory that the poor use drugs more often than the rest of the populace.

Florida has just under 168,000 state employees, including just over 105,000 in the executive branch. For Rick Scott, that means nearly 170,000 new potential customers for his … sorry, his wife’s … Solantic walk-in clinics.  Scott’s newest scheme, which will help him turn a profit from his $70 million investment in becoming a one-term Florida governor, would be genius if it weren’t so darned evil. Fresh off his plan to drug test welfare recipients in the state, compounding what for many people is an embarrassing experience, having to take public assistance, Scott now plans to visit the same humiliation on state workers. You know, the ones who haven’t had a raise in four years and who are about the have their unions shredded and their pensions hollowed out by the right wing legislature.

Will Scott’s order for drug testing cause pee party revolt?‘Even though Florida Gov Rick Scott ran a company that paid a record fine for committing Medicare fraud’  Irregardless, He wants to drug test honest citizens.

Tea isn’t the only liquid suitable for a revolt.

I mention this because Gov. Rick Scott turns out to have an unusual fascination for the collection of urine.

I guess we should have figured as much. Because between the time his hospital chain got caught looting Medicare and when he became Gov. Voldemort, Scott started Solantic, a company that specializes in workplace drug tests.

And it seems that Scott wasted little time as the state’s chief executive to issue one of his getting-to-be-familiar, pulled-from-down-under executive orders requiring the state’s approximately 105,000 state employees to submit to random drug testing on the job.

Scott made his announcement while congratulating the Florida Legislature for advancing would-be legislation requiring drug testing for people on public assistance, a draconian measure in its own right.

But the symbolism couldn’t be more obvious: Welfare recipients equal public employees.

Legal precedent may close lid on plan

It’s too bad that as a candidate, Scott hadn’t mentioned that his plans for job creation in Florida involved converting public-worker urine into corporate-sector growth. It would have made for a good campaign slogan: “Let’s Pee to Work.”

Scott’s double-barrelled humiliation of the poor and the public-sector employed will probably sit well with his tea party enablers, who only fetishize the parts of the constitution they like.

Showing a picture of the two men locked in a handshake, the ad urges viewers to “connect the dots.

“Scott ran a company that paid a record fine for committing Medicare fraud, then as governor Scott cut millions from health care,” a narrator says. “Romney was director of a company that stole millions from Medicare. Now Romney’s plan would end Medicare as we know it. 

Perry and Dewhurst actually want to go further than Florida. They want to test the unemployed, a slice of the population that tends to be more middle-class than welfare recipients. It’s important to note that in Texas you can’t collect unemployment if you were fired with cause, including because of drug use.

Gov. Rick Scott intends to take his fight for random drug tests of tens of thousands of state employees all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a lawyer for the Republican governor told a federal judge Thursday.

But Charles Trippe, who was previously Scott’s general counsel and is now in private practice, could not persuade U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro to delay further proceedings in the case while the state appeals. Ungaro said she did not want to become “a political tool” in the controversial issue — and she also said Scott has “probably about zero” chance of winning a Supreme Court case.

A federal appeals court has upheld a district judge’s October 2011 injunction suspending Florida’s law forcing welfare applicants to take drug tests to qualify for aid. The judges didn’t mince their words in rejecting the law:

“The evidence in this record does not suggest that the population of TANF recipients engages in illegal drug use or that they misappropriate government funds for drugs at the expense of their own and their children’s basic subsistence,” the three-judge panel wrote. “The State has presented no evidence that simply because an applicant for TANF benefits is having financial problems, he is also drug addicted or prone to fraudulent and neglectful behavior.”

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Alaska Per capita No 1 recipient of federal benefits; infrastructure projects, DOT and pork projects.

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Rectangular-Prism-Love

Alaska Per capita No 1 recipient of federal benefits;
infrastructure projects, DOT and pork projects.   And Yes, Blue States Pay More Taxes Than are returned ;

All seized drug money goes to child support and college fund for children…

Blue State, Red Face: Guess Who Benefits More From Your Taxes? Alaska, as a new state with vast needs, required ports and airports and highways and so on. But then you must account for the fact that Alaska’s share of federal spending has spiked sharply in the last 15 years, even as North Slope oil revenue has filled its coffers (oil revenue accounts for 88 percent of the state’s general fund). state’s economy and dependence on the federal government.)      

Now consider the bottom 10, i.e., the ones that give more to the federal government in taxes than they get in return. From 1 to 10, they are:

 New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Illinois, Delaware, California, New York, Colorado. 

they are all blue states (or the deepest of purple).

non-TAX payers-by-state.jpg.CROP.original-original

Adding to this fallacy are the assumptions surrounding Mitt Romney’s now infamous comments about the indolent “47 percent” of Americans who regard themselves as victims and therefore pay no taxes. As the American Conservative magazine (no less) pointed out recently, nine of those 10 states are in the red-as-ruby Old Confederacy.*

Anything strange about that list? Yes, they are all blue states (or the deepest of purple).

       

The Minimum Wage and the Laws of Economics 72 
The income decay among the lowest-paid workers does not reflect a decline in the value they add, and a moderate increase in the minimum wage would improve their lot without violating economic taboos, an economist writes.

The Minimum-Wage Cure for Illegal Immigration 47 
With very different priorities, conservatives and progressives alike are supporting a higher minimum wage, an economist writes.

1.    New Mexico
Indian reservations, military bases, federal
research labs, farm subsidies, retirement programs

2.   Mississippi
Farm subsidies, military spending, nutrition
and anti-poverty aid,      retirement programs.

3.        Alaska
Per capita No 1 recipient of federal benefits;
infrastructure projects, DOT and pork projects.

4.        Louisiana
Disaster relief, farm subsidies, anti-poverty
and nutrition aid, military spending.

5.        W. Virginia
Farm subsidies, anti-poverty and nutrition aid.

6.        N. Dakota
Farm subsidies, energy subsidies, retirement
and anti-poverty programs, Indian reservations.

7.        Alabama
Retirement programs, anti-poverty and nutrition aid,
federal space/military spending, farm subsidies.

8.        S. Dakota
Retirement programs, nutrition aid, farm subsidies,
military spending, Indian reservations.

9.        Virginia
Civil service pensions, military spending, veterans
benefits, retirement, anti-poverty aid.

10.     Kentucky
Retirement programs, nutritional
and anti-poverty aid,
farm subsidies.

tax-payments-per-state

tax-payments-per-state United States

Plus CORPORATE Prison industry welfare prison slave labor can cut costs and generate revenue has never been a secret. Private businesses nationwide are vying to exploit prisoner workers to reduce operating expenses and gain a competitive advantage, while government agencies are increasingly using prisoners for jobs that otherwise would go to public employees or contractors. Even farmers have turned to prison labor to harvest their crops.

All seized drug money goes to child support and college fund for children

ATLANTA – Alda Gentile was not arrested. She was not charged with a crime. Yet police in Georgia seized $11,530 in cash that Gentile said she had in a car for a house-hunting trip in Florida. Police confiscated the money after stopping the car, driven by her son, for speeding. They searched for drugs but found nothing.  Her case has become a rallying cry for libertarian, conservative and other groups seeking to change laws in Georgia that allow law enforcement to seize property and cash from people who have not been convicted of crimes, a process known as civil forfeiture.

At Oakhill Correctional Institution in rural Dane County, 17 inmates crank $1.15 million worth of office chairs a year out of a cramped basement factory, making anywhere between 20 cents and $1.50 per hour. The money is put toward release savings, victim restitution and court obligations such as child support. The inmates can spend what's left

At Oakhill Correctional Institution in rural Dane County, 17 inmates crank $1.15 million worth of office chairs a year out of a cramped basement factory, making anywhere between 20 cents and $1.50 per hour. The money is put toward release savings, victim restitution and court obligations such as child support. The inmates can spend what’s left.

Parent taken no child support from who is parent working and in prison

NEW-HOME-SALES--2014

NEW-HOME-SALES–2014

Parents taken away from Family to work without child support

Prisoners in Nevada make stretch limos and $500,000 Shelby Cobra sports cars.
They make computer cable in Washington state, shampoo bottles in Kansas, caps and gowns in South Carolina, and telemarketing calls in Nebraska.
In California, they take TWA reservations.

Prisoner parents are more likely to make payments toward their child support… at a job that pays minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 per hour. All of the prisons that are now being privatized would also lose profit.

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