Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Republican Party: Unfit to Lead

If yesterday demonstrated anything to me, it's that the Republican Party apparently consists of a mind-numbing multitude of incompetents and parasites.

Firstly, there was Florida. In yesterday's nomination primaries, Rick Scott defeated veteran congressman Bill McCollum to become the GOP's candidate for the Governor's Office.

This neatly proves that slightly more than 50% of Florida Republicans are morons.

Rick Scott, as I've written about here, is a corrupt fraud who purposefully fleeced the Federal Government for billions of taxpayer's dollars as head of hospital conglomerate Columbia/HCA (a crime for which he was ousted and forced to pay over $1.7 billion in fines.)

In four short months, he's spent more on the primary race than any candidate in Florida's history - neatly eroding his claim to be a 'fiscal conservative' by buying the nomination.

I consider him to be one of the most dishonest, dislikable and despicable public figures in America today - and the fact that he's now representing Florida Republicans at the ballot says an awful lot about the character of the members of that party.

Next on the Republican shit-list is New Jersey's own ginormous Governor, his corpulence Chris Christie.

Having already poured a billion dollars down the drain with tax cuts for the top 2% of earners, his administration just lost out on an additional $400 billion dollars of federal educational funds by failing to fill in the paperwork correctly.

Yep, you heard right. When asked for information comparing New Jersey's 2008 and 2009 budgets, Chris Christie's administration instead submitted information comparing this year's budget with 2011.

This is a totally unacceptable, intern-level mistake. Sadly, it cost New Jersey's cash-strapped schools their share of $3.4 billion in federal funds (and that's after having already had their budgets cut by $800 million in one of Christie's so-called austerity measures.)

Remember, Christie's administrative team costs double that of former Governor Corzine's - so what sort of monkeys are our tax dollars paying for?

Christie has already proven himself to be a complete hypocrite (his lavish tax cuts for the super-rich, in addition to his bloated administration, neatly disprove his claims to be 'fiscally conservative') but now he's successfully proven that his team are incompetent as well. The fact that this man is in office would be laughable, if it wasn't so tragic.

There are sure to be more examples in the near future - but I find the two above frustrating enough. As a right-leaning moderate, I might have even considered supporting the Republicans in the November elections - or, at least, I would have done if they hadn't given two perfect examples of why they're unfit to govern.

Right-wingers complain that the Liberals and Democrats 'think they're so damn smart.' Well, in comparison to Republicans, perhaps they are!

12 comments:

Susanne said...

Uh, thanks for the info. Kind of.

Roland Hulme said...

LOL! Sorry, Susanne! These two stories didn't half make me angry though. At least McCain won his primary - I like him a lot.

Susanne said...

I'm a Republican, but I don't like many in my own party. I find myself disliking politics more and more as I get older. I'm tired of all the corruption and fighting on both sides.

I like that you inform me of these things even if I feel you call me a moron occasionally. Hey, it's all good. It's not like I *have* to read over here. But I do learn quite a bit. And seeing Mini Militant (and you in a skirt!) at the fair is worth it!

:-D

Roland Hulme said...

In my defence, I only said Florida Republicans who voted for Scott were morons!

Susanne said...

*whew*

Tom said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tom said...

Rick Scott wasn't forced to pay a penny in fines, 13 years ago. He wasn't even interviewed in the case, according to PolitiFact Florida.

Meanwhile, the Democratic senatorial candidate from South Carolina is under felony indictment, right now. Yahoo

Since wealthy people are often the most mobile, a tax on them is often counter-productive. When wealthy people (like those who own the businesses that employ people) are already leave New Jersey, they pay $0 in state taxes - so maybe Christie decided to make them welcome, instead.

Honestly, maybe losing $400M in a competition is a mistake - but no worse than the dozens of mistakes the Obama administration has made.

Take cash-for-clunkers, which paid people $3 billion to destroy classic cars. According to University of Delaware economists, the costs outweighed the benefits by $2000 a car. That's $1.4 billion, and countless gingermobiles, wasted.

Roland Hulme said...

Bah, Tom, you evil genius. You know you'd win my sympathies with the gingermobile argument.

And Alvin Greene, the South Carolina guy - now THERE'S a blog post. So good point, good point.

But regarding Scott - while he was CEO, his company was convicted of 14 felonies (not him personally) and he was ousted as a result. He claimed not to have any knowledge of billions of dollar worth of medicare fraud, which arguably makes him either a liar or a CEO totally out of touch with his company (and in either event, does Florida want that sort of guy in the governor's chair?)

And Chris Christie is already blaming the federal grants thing on Obama - He said: “When the president comes back to New Jersey, he’s going to have to explain to the people of the state of New Jersey why he’s depriving them of $400 million that this application earned.”

He's such an arrogant mug!

Tom said...

I figured the gingermobile thing would get to you more than, say, housing would - but it's only one example of waste.

I don't think the company was actually convicted of anything - they settled, and only after Scott himself was removed from the board, since he didn't want to settle. It's not a good thing, of course - but hey, we live in a nation where both the man in charge of the treasury (Geithner) and the man formerly in charge of writing our taxes (Rangel) have committed tax fraud.

I think it's kind of interesting how a guy that (recently) has been making his name opposing Obamacare could come from nowhere to win the nomination. While it is just among Republicans, it shows how much some people oppose Obamacare.

Although the lost of a chance at the $400M is a bit of a misstep, Christie seems to be doing a good job overall. He's been getting his major initiatives passed, and managed to cut the budget in absolute dollars.

Plus, his press efforts have been great, with such lines (by his spokesman) as: "Let's get this straight. Assemblyman Greenwald is saying that the consequence of the governor's veto on July 23 of the Greenwald bill is a loss of jobs occurring in June and July? Hmm. Maybe Assemblyman Greenwald could explain how this could happen without stepping into a time warp in an alter universe, where logic, time and place are turned on their heads."

Tom said...

I'll also point out that Christie's statement on the matter starts with:

"First of all I’m ultimately responsible for everything that happens here, I’m the Governor, so I’m ultimately responsible."

http://www.state.nj.us/governor/news/news/552010/approved/20100825b.html

Anonymous said...

Ditto all that Tom said.

Everything, even the opinion, in your post could be true. Yet they are still more fit than the democrats.

It seemed like to be on Obama's staff you had to not pay your taxes. Rangle ring a bell?

I dare say, had the paperwork snafu happened in Ohio... Ohio would still get a check. You know why? Because they would have given the democratic governor a chance to fix things.

Andy said...

Pretty broad brush there, Roland.

I am not a Republican, but when it comes to incompetence/corruption, I think they would gladly take a heads-up challenge to post their aggregate record against Democrats.

It might be a close match-up on many counts. But, I'm pretty sure the Dems would wear the collar in all 9 innings.

The truth is that our governing bodies from the Feds, on down to the Department of Sanitation are filled with corrupt, and incompetent people, period. Republicans, Democrats, and the few Independents in office.