Crazy Jim Greer Quote of the Day

Aren't we currently in a budget crisis? Greer doesn't seem to know about it:

"When it comes time to get out and speak around the state, it's important that we have the ability to travel there and that we accomplish as much as we can in any given day... You will see that the party is much more engaged in traveling the state..."

They've spent more than $1 million in private charter jet flights in the last year. Greer wants you to think that these expenses are necessary, but the Sarasota Herald Tribune found otherwise, discovering that they lodged "high-flying expenses from last year with tens of thousands of dollars in ritzy New York hotels, thousands of dollars in limousine services and thousands of dollars more in regular air service."

This is while they are seeking to cut healthcare for more than 40,000 low-income senior, disabled and seriously ill Floridians. And it flies in the face of the rhetoric the members of Greer's party regularly spout off...

Charlie Crist: "We're asking local governments to tighten their belts, too. We are tightening ours. We can do no less... I feel for our students and I feel for their families... They are paying higher insurance rates. They are paying higher property taxes. They are paying higher gas prices."

Durell Peaden on the healthcare cuts: "If we don't get to print money, we're going to have to do with what we've got."

Charlie Crist: "If a family with two young boys can tighten their belts to live within their means certainly our cities and counties can also."

Alan Hays: "We cannot ask our state and local governments to tighten their belts if we continue to support frivolous spending."

Mike Haridopolos: "Experience also proves that government in Florida does not have a revenue problem -- it has a spending problem."

Apparently, it's the Republicans who have a spending problem and have pretty serious problems with hypocrisy. I wonder if any of them will call in their votes to cut healthcare for poor people while riding in a limo or if Crist will sign the bill flying in his a chartered jet?

Haridopolos Hates Honesty, Ethics, UF, Students, Taxpayers

Mike Haridopolos paints himself as a person who hates waste and fights wasteful government spending. He's a liar.

A few years back, Haridopolos somehow "earned" himself a full-time salary at Brevard Community College to write a book he doesn't appear to have actually written. Over four years, he amassed $160k in salary for apparently doing nothing. $40k a year is a moderate salary at a school like that -- moderate if you are actually doing the job. When you aren't doing the job, it's government-funded waste.

Now Haridopolos has "earned" himself a full-time "lecturer" gig at the University of Florida. One he isn't qualified for and one he won't really have to do -- during the Spring semester he won't have to teach because of the session. During Summer semester, he won't have to teach. So for one semester a year, he'll teach a few classes and do no research and he'll get paid nearly $30k more than the professors there who are actually doing the job and have the credentials.

Haridopolos claimed he was working on a PhD at the University of Arkansas -- a PhD is usually one of the basic requirements to get a job like this -- but apparently that was a lie, too, since he hasn't been enrolled there since 2000.

At a time when Florida's colleges and universities are in financial crises and many are turning away students, t his kind of wasteful political spending should not just be unethical, it should illegal.

I wonder if he'd gotten this latest deal if he wasn't in line to be Senate president? Using your political position to enhance your own personal wealth at the expense of the taxpayers, while offering nothing in return is the height of unethical behavior. Haridopolos seems to have mastered it.