Corruption and politics make unfortunate bedfellows, and there are few better places for back room dealings than Florida, home to Rick Scott, one of this country’s most corrupt governors. Rick Scott wants to run a 474 mile natural gas pipeline from central Florida all the way to Alabama. While the pipeline seems like it could benefit the state of Florida, it also seems like it could benefit Scott even more, who owns a stake in the company chosen to build the pipeline. A watchdog group, named BrowardBulldog.org revealed earlier this week Scott has invested millions of dollars “in the securities of more than two-dozen entities that produce and/or transport natural gas” including in Spectra Energy, the company in charge of building the Sabal Trail Transmission Pipeline — as well as other companies with ties to Florida. His stake in Spectra, according to the financial records, was worth $53,000. When asked about the investment, Scott’s office says the governor didn’t know of the investment because it was part of a blind trust, which supposedly shields politicians from a conflict of interest because they are not supposed to know where the investments will go. But, there are several facts that suggest Scott knew otherwise. The first starts with the commission that approved the $3 billion pipeline. All five commissioners were appointed by Scott himself. The second is his long documented history of corruption. Starting with perhaps the most well known scandal, that involved a company he formed called Columbia/HCA. Scott, who was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer formed a company that rapidly acquired and consolidated various health care companies, turning it into one of the largest in the world. Forbes magazine noted Scott ruthlessly bought “hospitals by the bucketful and promised to squeeze blood from each one.” HCA/Columbia executives saw health care as any other commodity. “This industry’s not any different than an airline industry or a ball bearing industry,” said David T. Vandewater, Columbia’s chief operating officer. “You run at 40 percent of capacity or at 60 percent of capacity you’re not getting the maximum value out of your assets.” Under Scott’s leadership, Columbia/HCA pled guilty to a massive array of fraud charges — which resulted in a fraud settlement of $1.7 billion dollars, the largest in U.S history. Columbia/HCA systematically defrauded taxpayers, charging Medicare $15,000 for Tiffany pitchers and other luxury goods, “exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating,” and engineering a program where doctors were granted partnerships in hospitals as a kickback for referring patients. In 1997, “disaster struck in the form of an FBI raid.” In July of that year, “federal agents swarmed Columbia/HCA hospitals and offices in five states. Within weeks, three executives were indicted on charges of Medicare fraud, and the board had ousted Scott.” Scott left in disgrace, but not before walking away with “a $9.88 million severance package, along with 10 million shares of stock worth up to $300 million at the time.” Coming back to the the most recent decade, in 2010, the private prison industry gave nearly $1 million to political campaigns in Florida, according to the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in Politics. The majority of the cash went to Republicans, and the largest chunk, $822,000, came from the GEO Group, a Boca Raton-based prison company formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections. (GEO also contributed $25,000 to Scotts inauguration party.) The prison lobbys influence on the Republican-dominated Legislature was immediately evident. And true to Scott’s past history, a year later in 2011, Scott proposed a plan to transfer 1,500 inmates from state-run lockups to private ones. The plan was approved. Getting back to the oil pipeline, although Scott’s office claims he had no knowledge of the pipeline, Scott’s history is filled with enough corruption to reasonably suggest otherwise. And if any of his other practices are telling, the state of Florida may make money from the pipeline, but ultimately, someone will pay the price - most likely the environment.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:39:41 +0000
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