Scott to Eliminate funding for the Public housing he used to live American Dream

[JeffreyS]

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/401820/mark-woods/2011-03-27/rick-scott-public-housing-governor%E2%80%99s-mansion-then-%E2%80%A6

Rick Scott: Public housing, governor’s mansion, then … nothing?
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Submitted by Mark Woods on March 27, 2011 - 5:39am Mark Woods' Blog

Gov. Rick Scott has proposed eliminating homeless funding from the state budget.
Not just reducing it from $7 million to zero. Getting rid of the line item, making sure the state doesn’t fund it in the future.
With this in mind, homeless advocates from all over the state headed to Tallahassee last week. For the Sulzbacher Center, state funding only represents a small piece of its budget. But Cindy Funkhouser, Sulzbacher chief program officer, says that money â€" mostly devoted to preventive programs â€" is important for the state’s homeless. Or to be more accurate, the state’s nearly homeless.
“By eliminating those dollars, you’re throwing that many more people into the streets,” she said. “And it’s so much harder to stabilize a family after they become homeless. It’s so short-sighted.”
It appears our state legislators agree. They plan to continue some funding. The governor, however, has not shown any signs of changing his view. Which is that we need to cut spending, lower the corporate tax rate and get to work. That will keep people from becoming homeless.
It’s certainly true that jobs are the best antidote to homelessness.
But here’s what makes this interesting: Scott lived in government-subsidized, low-income housing.
When he and his four siblings were growing up, when their father didn’t have a job and their mother was doing odd jobs, the government helped keep a roof over their heads.
It’s not like it took extensive investigative reporting to unearth this fact.
It is something that Scott repeated on the campaign trail, over and over. He didn’t use the words “government-subsidized.” But in an effort to illustrate that he wasn’t just a former hospital executive who got a $300 million golden parachute, bought a $9 million house in Florida and decided to run for governor, he often talked about his childhood. Particularly the part in Urbana, Ill.
“I have lived the American dream,” he said at campaign stops, in debates and interviews. “I grew up in public housing.”
Scott even had his mother, Esther, film a television ad talking about it.
“You’ve heard a lot about Rick Scott,” she said. “But I’m going to tell you a few things you don’t know. Rick was raised in public housing ...”
It turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration to say Scott “grew up” in public housing. When the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reviewed public records, it showed that his family spent about three years in public housing, beginning when Scott was 3 or 4.
But he did indeed live there while his family tried to get back on more stable financial footing. On the campaign trail, Scott frequently recalled how his father, a truck driver, often was laid off by Thanksgiving. One year, he said, his parents didn’t have enough money to buy Christmas gifts.
“I never had a holiday that my parents had it easy,” he said.
Lakeside Terrace was torn down about five years ago. But when Scott lived there in the mid-1950s, it was relatively new. It opened in 1952, right next to a lake and a park, a row of 21 townhouses each with four two-story units.
At the time, public housing was facing much opposition. The National Association of Home Builders had sent members pre-packaged ads for their local newspapers that said, “Can you afford to pay somebody else’s rent?”
Scott’s family ultimately ended up in Kansas City, Mo., where they lived in a three-bedroom, two-bath house. But when times were tough, the government helped pay the rent. And when he grew up and times were good, checks from government health-care programs such Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare helped make Scott rich.
So now he is living in the grandest of public housing, the Governor’s Mansion.
The night of his inauguration, one of his big fundraisers, Brian Ballard, gave a speech at the Friends of the Inaugural Candlelight Dinner and talked about Scott’s journey from public housing in Illinois.
“He couldn’t remember the house he lived in, because each door was the same, each house was the same,” Ballard said.
Some of the Florida’s homeless and nearly homeless â€" and there are 100 families on the Sulzbacher’s waiting list alone â€" might point out each roof also was the same.
How much should the state spend on homeless programs? In tough times like now? In the better times we all hope lie ahead?
I don’t know. I just know it’s interesting to hear the governor say his answer is nothing. Now and forever.

Quite a fellow.

[Ocklawaha]

I hate to write something like this for fear someone will think I'm living in a "compound"... BUT I really fear that this guy is way too radical, way too fast for his own good.  Wiping out schools, homeless/housing projects, parks and every other social thing in the budget is pissing off a massive amount of people. So far so good, but when you start pissing off people that have had a tough life, made bad decisions, been down and out and feel they have nothing to lose... well their reaction could be CATASTROPHIC. 

William Justus Goebel (January 4, 1856 â€" February 3, 1900) was an American politician who served as the 34th Governor of Kentucky for a few days in 1900 after having been mortally wounded by an assassin the day before he was sworn in. Goebel remains the only state governor in the United States to be assassinated while in office.

A skilled politician, Goebel was well able to broker deals with fellow lawmakers, and equally able and willing to break the deals if a better deal came along. His tendency to use the state's political machinery to advance his personal agenda earned him the nicknames "Boss Bill", "the Kenton King", "Kenton Czar", "King William I", and "William the Conqueror".

Goebel's abrasive personality made him many political enemies, but his championing of populist causes, like railroad regulation...  In the politically chaotic climate that resulted, Goebel was assassinated. The identity of his assassin remains a mystery.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Goebel

Huey Pierce Long, Jr. (August 30, 1893 â€" September 10, 1935), nicknamed The Kingfish, served as the 40th Governor of Louisiana from 1928â€"1932 and as a U.S. Senator from 1932 to 1935.

Long created the Share Our Wealth program in 1934 with the motto "Every Man a King", proposing new wealth redistribution measures in the form of a net asset tax on corporations and individuals to curb the poverty and hopelessness endemic nationwide during the Great Depression. To stimulate the economy, Long advocated federal spending on public works, schools and colleges, and old age pensions. He was an ardent critic of the Federal Reserve System's policies. Charismatic and immensely popular for his programs and willingness to take forceful action, Long was accused by his opponents of dictatorial tendencies for his near-total control of the state government.

However, Long was assassinated in 1935.

John Bowden Connally, Jr. (February 27, 1917 â€" June 15, 1993), was an influential American politician, serving as the 39th Governor of Texas, Secretary of the Navy under President John F. Kennedy... While he was Governor in 1963, Connally was a passenger in the car in which President Kennedy was assassinated. Connally was seriously wounded during the incident.

George Corley Wallace, Jr. (August 25, 1919 â€" September 13, 1998) was the 45th Governor of Alabama.  A 1972 assassination attempt left him paralyzed; he used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Wallace was shot five times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland, on May 15, 1972, at a time when he was receiving high ratings in the opinion polls. Bremer was seen at a Wallace rally in Wheaton, Maryland, earlier that day and two days earlier at a rally in Dearborn, Michigan. As one of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal column, Wallace was left paralyzed from the waist down. Three others were wounded in the shooting and also survived. Bremer's diary, An Assassin's Diary, published after his arrest shows the assassination attempt was motivated by a desire for fame, not by politics, and that President Nixon had been an earlier target.

I know as much as he is disliked in many circles, Governor Scott worries the shit out of me. Something like one of these historical attempts is all we need to set Florida the rest of the way back to the stone age.

OCKLAWAHA

[Garden guy]

When are you people going to learn that republicans have nothing to do with anything public...this man is going to sell this state to the closest friend and fuck us all....i call for a recall of our public "servant"...where do i sign?

[uptowngirl]

Then on the flip side, Blodgett just got a new fancy stucco sign and landscaping....I can think of better expenditures of those funds, like maybe bringing back the childrens library at Brentwood??

[duvaldude08]

Wow this just keeps getting better and better. This state is screwed for four years (hopefully)

[copperfiend]

WWJD

[JMac]

Aren't public housing and homeless funding two different things?  Seems to me that Mr. Woods is making a stretch to equate public housing projects with homeless shelters.

[buckethead]

Aren't public housing and homeless funding two different things?  Seems to me that Mr. Woods is making a stretch to equate public housing projects with homeless shelters.

Fair enough, but it isn't a very long stretch from public housing to homelessness in reality.

I would say it's fairly hypocritical on the part of our esteemed Governor.

Public assistance was okay for his family, but not for mine.

Almost Orwellian.

[uptowngirl]

I am certainly not cheering for public housing to be removed from the budget as there is a definite need. But social programs were originally put in place to get people back on their feet, not to be a longterm solution. The real answer is education and jobs, and in some cases people will have to be forced to do for themselves by limiting the term of assistance. BUT we need to have the system and options in place to get people going down the right path, and not having this initial saftey net is an issue.

[buckethead]

I am certainly not cheering for public housing to be removed from the budget as there is a definite need. But social programs were originally put in place to get people back on their feet, not to be a longterm solution. The real answer is education and jobs, and in some cases people will have to be forced to do for themselves by limiting the term of assistance. BUT we need to have the system and options in place to get people going down the right path, and not having this initial saftey net is an issue.

7 million within a State of Florida budget is miniscule.

We spend quite a bit more than that just cycling the homeless and vagrants through our jails.

I'd be willing to bet just here in Jax.

[uptowngirl]

I am certainly not cheering for public housing to be removed from the budget as there is a definite need. But social programs were originally put in place to get people back on their feet, not to be a longterm solution. The real answer is education and jobs, and in some cases people will have to be forced to do for themselves by limiting the term of assistance. BUT we need to have the system and options in place to get people going down the right path, and not having this initial saftey net is an issue.

7 million within a State of Florida budget is miniscule.

We spend quite a bit more than that just cycling the homeless and vagrants through our jails.

I'd be willing to bet just here in Jax.

I do not disagree, I would like to see less longterm public housing and more education and job assistance so people can stand on their own two feet. This serves multiple purposes- pride in self, reduction in costs to the tax payers, and a legacy to future generations to expect more. If he wants to cut public housing, how does he plan on accomplishing the real long term goal?

[Dog Walker]

I am certainly not cheering for public housing to be removed from the budget as there is a definite need. But social programs were originally put in place to get people back on their feet, not to be a longterm solution. The real answer is education and jobs, and in some cases people will have to be forced to do for themselves by limiting the term of assistance. BUT we need to have the system and options in place to get people going down the right path, and not having this initial saftey net is an issue.

There are times when some people are going to find it impossible to "get back on their feet."  Good muscle and weak brain in a era of mechanization and technology, physical handicap, or being a 55 year old buggy whip weaver when Henry Ford comes along.  Too old to retrain and start over, to young to retire.

We are always going to need a social safety net and there will always be people who will take advantage of it to lazily bump along on the bottom of life.

I guess we could do what they do in India.  The rich and middle class provide food, shelter and an occasional tip to destitute families in return for groveling personal service.  I've seen it.  It's ugly.

[JeffreyS]

I bet you complaints 20 to 1 that the weakest in our society are getting some benefit compared to large multinationals or wealthy taking advantage of the system.  If you ask people on some rant about it they will concede that they do not want the big guy to get away with anything either but for the most part does not seem to inspire the kind of vitriol that a poor man getting a tiny something will.

[mtraininjax]

Quite a fellow.

WOW, such great ideas to complain rather than dig in and look for areas to cut and save. Its the old analogy, cut anything as long as it does not affect me, or not in my backyard. The guy has to cut 4 billion for this year.

What do you cut, what do you keep? How about some ideas here instead of the same old whining?

[BridgeTroll]

Ah yes, cutting.

Well that makes sense.  And its driven the country to municipal bankruptcies from east coast to west coast.

Ah yes... well then dont cut.  Perhaps we should raise taxes?