The race for Florida governor got a little more crowded.
Rick Scott, former executive director of the multi-million dollar for-profit chain of health care facilities, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), announced his intention run yesterday. He joins two other Republican candidates seeking their party’s nomination, Bill McCollum, Florida’s Attorney General and State Senator Paula Dockery.
Scott, who says he is not a politician, bills himself as a “conservative outsider”.
“I am a Florida businessman which lived the American dream,” Scott says in a just released video. (See Video Below)
Scott may not want to promote his businessman credentials too much, given the amount of trouble this has gotten him into, reports Raw Story.
After serving for about ten years as CEO of HCA, Scott pleaded guilty in 2003 to a series of criminal charges worth $1.7 billion in fines, notes Raw Story. The U.S. Justice Department called it the “largest health care fraud case in U.S. history“.
But McCollum is not without his own troubles either. Questions have been being raised concerning how much he knew about former Florida GOP party chair Jim Greer’s financial dealings, a scandal which is still unfolding and is formally being investigated by the Feds and FDLE.
Then that leaves CFO Alex Sink, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who has demonstrated an “unexpectedly weak effort”, says Ben Smith of Politico.
What will become of Florida?
Video of Rick Scott- running for Florida Governor
Unfortunately, “living the American dream” has come to represent the implication that the person claiming it is likely to be of “questionable character” and inclined to foster attitudes that allow them to “take (unscrupulous, if not provable in a court of law) advantage” of a predatory slant on the dynamic of competition and capitalism rather than practicing an adherance to ethically upright and forthright patterns of conduct in their quest for wealth and achievements. Unless this proposition (which I admit is subject to being misguided by my observations and experiences) is in error, then the whole of society is in great peril of passing just as have great societies of people in history (to our bewilderment).