You Have Got To Be Kidding!

Pollsters here in Florida have released new figures that show Chief Executive Orifice Scott (R - damnyankee carpetbagger) climbing in popularity. This begs the question, who the hell did the pollsters ask? They sure didn't ask me.

Did they ask any Floridians who fall in the categories below?

Unemployment:

• 10.0 percent in November, above national rate of 8.6 percent, sixth-highest rate in the nation. 926,000 unemployed; 41,000 fewer in the labor force than a year earlier, due to discouraged workers.

Poverty:

• 16.5 percent, or 3,047,343 Floridians, lived below the federal poverty level in 2010 ($17,374 for a family of three). 1,356,324 lived at 50 percent of the poverty level or less. Among children under 18, 23.5 percent lived in poverty.
• Only fifteen states plus D.C. had higher overall rates of poverty.
• Florida’s child poverty rate is 16th.

Income Inequality:

• Florida ranked as the fifth-worst state in 2010 on the GINI Index, a measure of income inequality used by economists to measure the gap between those making most of the income and those making the least.

No Health Insurance:

• 21.3 percent, third-highest in the U.S.
• 12.7 percent of children under 18 have no insurance coverage, fourth-highest.

Food Stamps:

• 3,311,095 food stamp clients in December.
• 3,187,157 in September 2010 was the third-highest total in the nation.

Medicaid:

• 2,652,651 clients in December.

Distressed Homeowners:

• Florida had the second-highest number of foreclosure filings among the states in 2010 and in October 2011.
• Highest of all the states in noncurrent mortgages.

Fairness of Tax System:

• Second-worst in the nation.

State Tax Revenue:

• Florida ranked 42nd in state tax revenue per capita and 46th in state tax revenue as a percentage of the state’s total income in 2010 (as measured by the Federation of Tax Administrators).
• Tax Foundation ranked Florida 44th in state tax collections per capita, 2009, and 50th in state tax revenue per capita (using a different methodology).

State Employees:

• Lowest number of state employees per 10,000 population.
• Lowest payroll costs per resident.

Unemployment Insurance:

• Despite having the third-largest number of unemployed workers of any state, Florida paid out the seventh-highest total of benefits paid in the year ending in the third quarter of 2011. 
•  59.3 percent of those who received UI benefits exhausted their benefits in that 12 months, third-highest rate in the nation. 
•  The average weekly payment was $229.90, 48th in the nation. 
•  The average weekly payment replaced 28.8 percent of the state’s average weekly wage, 43rd in the nation. 
•  Of the unemployed, only 18 percent received regular unemployment insurance, 51st in the nation.

Education Expenditures:

• Over the last five years (Fiscal Years 2007-08 and 2011-12), total annual funding for public education declined by $4.4 billion, or 18.4 percent. General revenue funding by the state fell by $3.0 billion, or 20 percent.
• In the last year (between 2010-11 and 2011-12), total public education funding was cut by $2.7 billion, or 11.9 percent. General revenue funding declined by $609 million, or 4.9 percent.
• Even in 2007-08, before five years of cuts, Florida ranked at the bottom of the state in expenditures for education:
• 50th in per capita state government expenditures for all education
• 50th in state government expenditures for all education per $1,000 of personal income
• 47th in per capita state and local government expenditures for all education
• 47th in state and local government expenditures for all education per $1,000 of personal income
• 50th in per capita state and local expenditures for higher education

Homeless: 

• 55,000 Floridians were homeless in 2009.
• One-third of the homeless without any shelter in the U.S. were in Florida.

Again I ask, who are these pollsters polling? Maybe just the "I've got mine, so F**K you" inmates of The Villages of the Demented Republicans in central Florida?

One poll suggested that by ditching his dark business suits in favor of khakis and casual button-down shirts that Scott's image has improved. Well, you can't prove that by me. He still looks like a prick with ears that is intent on destroying the poor and middle class in favor of the rich - just like the rest of the GOP.