Right now, Rick Scott and Bill Nelson are tied in the polls for a Senate seat. How this is possible after all of the horrible things Rick Scott has done to our state is beyond me. Rick Scott is somehow always involved in the worst things going on in our nation: allowing the NRA to pave the way for the largest gun massacres in our history, expanding Stand Your Ground, giving Trump political cover after his abhorrent defense of Nazis in Charlottesville, or his bizarre attacks on the FBI.
His involvement with the recent family separation tragedy is no exception.
In Homestead, Florida, a federal compound detaining around 1000 kids is managed by a Florida contractor called Comprehensive Health Services. They got the contract a few weeks before Trump’s inhumane policy took effect. Ten percent of the children there have been forcibly separated from their parents by immigration agents.
This was a facility that was shut down years ago, but re-opened in time for Trump’s child kidnapping policy. Why are they operating here in Florida? You can thank Rick Scott.
The facility was given $600,000 as a tax-incentive.
And it gets even worse:
But just as Scott was negotiating that tax break, Comprehensive Health was hashing out a deal with the feds to pay a $3.8 million settlement to the U.S. Department of Justice over a medical-fraud claim. After Comprehensive Health paid the fine in February 2017 (without admitting any wrongdoing), Florida gave the company the tax breaks anyway.
Of course, Rick Scott is never bothered by fraud. We are talking about the same man who once defrauded millions of elderly people with the largest Medicare fraud in history.
So taxpayer money was used to open an awful child cage center--- AFTER said center paid out a huge settlement for double-billing the government. This is not a good thing in any way.
Yet Scott had the audacity to brag about-about the place for…... creating “jobs”:
I look forward to seeing CHSi’s growth in Florida and we will continue to do all we can to cut taxes and reduce burdensome regulations so more businesses can succeed in our state.
Give Trump and Rick Scott credit: they did create about 100 jobs for Brevard county in positions that didn’t exist before: child cage wardens.
You might have seen this detention center in the news. This was the disgusting facility that Senator Bill Nelson and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz were denied entry into last week. They wanted to check on the welfare of the children in light of allegations of poor conditions and abuse.
They were both originally told they could enter—up until they arrived. They were then informed that they would need to wait two weeks. The conditions inside were apparently so appalling that time was needed to clean things up.
After several days, CBS News was finally granted limited access, as long as they stayed with their “minders”, didn’t go off on their own, and most importantly, did not talk to any of the children.
Rick Scott, of course, hasn’t visited the facility. He did put out a statement that essentially said Trump wasn’t to blame for Trump’s own policy on ripping children away from their parents.
It bothers me that Rick Scott brought one of Trump’s child detention centers right in my own backyard, where kids still are suffering and many have still had no contact with their parents. Meanwhile, Rick Scott—the man responsible for this awful facility--ignores them and campaigns. He is currently spending millions of dollars trying to whitewash his blatant bigotry against Florida’s Hispanic populations. He is running a ton of ads on Spanish-language channels saying what a friend he is and sadly, they are having an effect.
Don’t let him get away with any of it.