Another Rough Week for Rick Scott

Self-Serving Rick Scott earned another bad week of press as reports on his shadowy financial practices, poor governing, and harmful health care agenda generated more negative headlines. Here’s what they’re saying:

New York Times: To Avoid Conflicts, Rick Scott Created a Trust Blind in Name Only

• Yet the blindness of Mr. Scott’s trust has been challenged in a state lawsuit filed by a Tallahassee lawyer. And the governor’s apparent conflicts of interest have been scrutinized throughout his tenure.
• Among the starkest examples are the Scotts’ investments in numerous companies and partnerships with ownership interests in each of Florida’s three primary natural gas pipelines, which are permitted and regulated by the state.
• But the governor’s disclosures show that he did not transfer all his assets to the blind trust, instead granting many to his wife. He also did not order that his assets be divested and the proceeds reinvested without his knowledge, which is the only way for a blind trust to truly circumvent conflicts of interest. There was no apparent economic detriment: The trust’s value nearly tripled to $215 million between 2011 and 2017.

National Journal: Scott’s Blind Trust Overlapped With His Wife’s Assets

• Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) finances [show] that his trust has been blind in name only. There have been numerous ways for him to have knowledge about his holdings: “Among other things, he transferred many assets to his wife and neither ‘blinded’ nor disclosed them. And their investments have included corporations, partnerships and funds that stood to benefit from his administration’s actions.”
• Scott “did not transfer all his assets to the blind trust, instead granting many to his wife. He also did not order that his assets be divested and the proceeds reinvested without his knowledge, which is the only way for a blind trust to truly circumvent conflicts of interest.” There is “significant redundancy between the assets in Mr. Scott’s blind trust and those held by Mrs. Scott, even seven years after the trust’s formation. The July Senate disclosure showed that 91 percent of the 89 equity investments in the blind trust—those arguably most susceptible to conflict—were held in Mrs. Scott’s trusts and accounts as well. There also was commonality in their holdings of dozens of state and municipal bonds.”

MSNBC: “To Avoid Conflicts, Rick Scott Created a Trust Blind in Name Only”

WFTX:Scott’s Finances Under Scrutiny

Tampa Bay Times:Did Mitch McConnell just cut Bill Nelson a huge break by foreshadowing Medicare cuts?

• Sen. Bill Nelson thinks the top Republican in the U.S. Senate revealed something so politically fraught to Floridians, he might as well have just donated to his reelection campaign.
• Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that cuts to entitlement programs — Washington-speak for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — are necessary due to rising federal deficits.
• “It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future,” the Kentucky Republican told Bloomberg News.
• Nelson doesn’t expect that will go over well in Florida, home to 1.9 million Medicare recipients and where nearly one-in-five residents retirement age or older.

Orlando Sentinel: Bill Nelson criticizes Rick Scott over health care

• U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson slammed Gov. Rick Scott and Republicans over health care at a campaign event in Orlando on Thursday, warning that Scott and the GOP could endanger the Affordable Care Act and its protections for pre-existing conditions.
• Nelson seized on remarks by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this week in which he said he would try again to repeal Obamacare if he had the votes in a new Congress.
• Nelson criticized Scott for his pledge to repeal Obamacare, an issue Nelson said he thought was over after the late U.S. Sen. John McCain was the deciding vote last year against repeal.
• “Rick Scott tried to stop us from passing it in the first place,” Nelson said. “Ever since, Rick Scott has been trying to repeal the law. The law brings to Florida almost 2 million people having health insurance that never had it. “
• Nelson added that the ACA would allow another 800,000 people to gain access to health care through Medicaid if Scott and the Republican legislature had allowed it, “but he has fought it and prevented it, not one year but for seven years.”

Take a look at the more than 500 bad news stories about Self-Serving Scott during his 180 days on the campaign.

 

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