VIDEO: How Rick Scott takes responsibility for his company’s fraud
by Michael C. Bender | August 5th, 2010The most widely reported exchange from the first debate Monday between Republican gubernatorial candidates Rick Scott and Bill McCollum was about $1.7 billion in fines Scott’s hospital chain paid after a Medicare fraud investigation. From our recap of the debate:
Scott said that while he took responsibility for Columbia/HCA’s actions, politicians typically don’t take responsibility for failures in government.
“Rick, let’s get serious,” McCollum shot back. “You say you took responsibility, but the only thing you took was $300 million. Your company stole that money from the senior citizens of this country.”
As McCollum and Scott prepare for what appears to be their final debate tonight, the video above uses footage from the campaign trail to explore how Scott handles Medicare fraud questions and exactly what he takes responsibility for.
Tags: Bill McCollum, Medicare, Rick Scott
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August 5th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Infinite pains taken to constantly repeat in detail any bad news about either Republican candidate. However no effort is made to even make mention of Crist’s self-serving flip-flop or his politicization of gubernatorial decisions since his leaving the Republican party. Nor are their any reports as to how the democrats are fractured between the black democratic candidate and the white liberal “independent” Crist which seems a much more interesting story. It almost seems that this writer and the Post know that they can attack any Republican because they are ipso facto evil but must hold their fire against any Democrat or pseudo-democrat because by definition they must be good. While I have given up my subscription to this paper, I contiue to read the free on-line version for it’s comedic value. I fully enjoy the Paper’s transparent attempts to foist political opinion off as “news”. This paper has never met a tax increase it couldn’t support or a union that wasn’t cast in a favorable light. While it attempts to appear thoughtful and insightful and fair it is, in reality, little more than a democrat house organ. It supported Wexler when he didn’t live in the district, it will support Klein notwithstanding his votes against the will of his constituents on health care, cap and trade and other issues. Since no one but the uber left takes the paper seriously it actually makes little difference. It is irrelevant for thinking residents.
August 5th, 2010 at 10:08 am
THE REASON MCcOLLUM HAS TO STAND IN ONE PLACE AND SCREAM SCOTT IS A CROOK IS BECAUSE AFTER 30 YEARS AT THE PUBLIC TROUGH HE HAS NOT ONE THING TO BRAG ABOUT! HERE IS HIS CONGESSIONAL RECORD.
HIS LOBBYING RECORD FROM 2001 TO 2006 IS WELL KNOWN! HIS DO NOTHING BUT SUPPORT FLORIDA’S POOLITICAL CORRUPTION SINCE 2007 TO PRESENT IS WELL DOCUMENTED! MCcOLLUM IS A PUPPET OF CRIST AND THE BUSH CORRUPTION OF FLORIDA
Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Bill McCollum:
When Role Representing
1981-1992 U.S. Representative Florida’s 5th
(was preceeded by Richard Kelly)
1993-2000 U.S. Representative Florida’s 8th
(was preceeded by Rep. Bill Young [R-FL10])
Sponsorship Analysis
McCollum is somewhere between a leader and a follower. McCollum sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor McCollum’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics.
To compute the leader-follower score for McCollum, we make a table that lists all other Members of Congress. Each row has the number bills sponsored by McCollum and cosponsored by the other Member of Congress divided by the number of bills sponsored by the other Member of Congress and cosponsored by McCollum.
This is a measure of who is following who. The higher the number, the more times others are cosponsoring McCollum’s bills without McCollum returning the favor. We then take the mean of (the logorithms of) these ratios. Thanks to Joe Barillari for the idea.
Voting Record
Bill McCollum missed 751 (7%) of 10,600 roll call votes between Jan 5, 1981 and Dec 15, 2000. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.
Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship
Bill McCollum has sponsored 206 bills between Jan 6, 1987. and Oct 26, 2000 of which 156 haven’t made it out of committee and 19 were successfully enacted. McCollum has co-sponsored 1,152 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by McCollum and companion bills identified by CRS that were themselves enacted, but not if they were incorporated into other bills, as that information is not readily available.)
August 5th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
This paper’s bias on attempting to effect the outcome of the primary, in the hopes that the weaker Republican candidates move on to challenge the Democrats in November is legendary. I thought these smears against Scott — with no comparable “investigative journalism” done on McCollum, was bad enough. The Post’s endorsement of David Brady (over Colonel West) for CD22 on August 24th, however, takes the cake. When you sit around your conference tables wondering why the number of subscriptions to your paper dwindles every year, remember this blog post.
August 5th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
First post: On todays Coordinated Hit piece between the St Pete Times and McCollum on Scott:
http://www.practicalstate.com/?p=1670
Cheers
August 5th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Go McCollum!!
August 6th, 2010 at 12:25 am
The Florida GOP Governor Debate of 05 August 2010: A Lesson in Journalistic and Political Malfeasance
http://www.practicalstate.com/?p=1682
Cheers
August 11th, 2010 at 6:33 am
Isn’t it about time to stop the mud slinging and promulgate your assets you would have as Govenor and what you will do to help the citizens and the State of Florida? All the negative ads only help candidate Sink…