Is the Picture that Rosy in Florida if you are Black or Hispanic?
- Details
- Category: Blogs
- Published: Wednesday, 12 March 2014 04:00
- Written by Roger Caldwell
by Roger Caldwell
Last week Governor Scott gave his fourth State of the State Address and I thought that he could walk on water, after he spoke. From his perspective, he is doing a great job, and Floridians are fortunate that he spent $70 million of his own money to be governor. If we listen to him long enough, we will start believing that he cares about public education, senior citizens, poor and middle class Floridians, and healthcare.
"And if we continue to cut back taxes on small businesses-by cutting the tax on business leases and rolling back the business tax to now exempt 4 out of 5 Florida businesses paying it. If we do all this, we can make Florida not just the land of 700,000 new jobs. We will make Florida the land of opportunity," says Governor Scott.
As Scott continued to give his speech, I expected him to show us that he could also walk through
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fire. But everyone in the state knows that Scott's administration has been rocked with corruption starting with his Lieutenant Governor, his Chief of Staff, and the Education Chancellor.
Recently there are accusations that Enterprise Florida has been wasting thousands of dollars on parties, dinners, and business lunches and no one in the administration is accountable. Scott continues to sell his re-election campaign as the state's shrinking middle class and poor are hit with higher electric utility bills, property insurance premiums and flood insurance rates.
Our Governor also seems to forget in 2012, when the state was embarrassed because it took 3 days to finish counting ballots. Also on the news, voters in the state were shown waiting 6 hours to vote, because our governor cut back the hours and days for early voting. Instead of our governor making it easier for Floridians to vote, he makes it harder by suppressing the vote.
In a Tampa Bay Times Editorial they said, "On public school funding, Scott boasted that he proposes record spending for 2014-15. Actually, Florida spends less per student now than when the governor took office. Even with his proposed increase next year, per student spending would be $177 less than what the state spent in 2007-08 before the economic recession."
There is no way that Floridians can trust our governor who owned a company, which was fined $1.6 billion for cheating. Our governor is not cutting taxes to help save money for Floridians, but make it easier for large companies to increase their bottom lines and pay their stockholders more profit. Florida is losing millions each month because Scott refuses to expand Medicare and help over 1 million residents who are uninsured.
From the very beginning, our governor had an agenda and Blacks and Latinos know that the Florida justice system is opening more jails, to keep them locked up longer. When we look at what happened in the trials of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, Blacks understand that the Florida justice system is not operating in their best interest. All the minorities know that Scott does not support immigration, and the only opportunity we have is to vote him out of office with all Floridians.
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