Florida’s governor fails the unemployed and many others during coronavirus pandemic | Opinion
If the governor of Florida didn’t operate in the bubble of a political ivory tower covered in ideological vines, he might hear and see the angst and helplessness of Floridians losing their jobs.
Day after day, the losses mount as the coronavirus pandemic tanks the local, national, and global economies.
Without dogmatic blinders, Governor Ron DeSantis might act with some sense of urgency for a change — and fix the darn state website where people can apply for unemployment benefits.
With less political pandering, DeSantis might come quicker to realize that, after his too-long-delayed shutdown of all of Florida to stem the spread of coronavirus, his next responsibility is to ensure that the newly unemployed can at least apply for benefits.
You know, all those husbands, wives, fathers and mothers coming home sobbing at the loss of their next paycheck.
The jobless in Florida had surged to 227,000 people by the latter part of this week. That’s hundreds of thousands of families going without.
And the website continues to crash.
The people of Florida just can’t get through to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity’s Reemployment Assistance Program office. And it’s nothing new. This has been happening for years, but fixing it hasn’t been a priority for the current or past Republican administrations.
And you have to wonder: Is DeSantis really running Florida?
Seems more like Governor Donald Trump is in charge — all the way from the White House.
“At this point, I think even though there are places in Florida that have very low infection rates, it does make sense to make this move now,” DeSantis said, explaining his 30-day Florida shutdown. “I did consult with folks in the White House. I did speak with the president about it. He agreed with the approach of focusing on the hot spots but at the same time, you know, he understood this is another 30-day situation and you gotta do what makes the most sense.”
Y’all think?
God help us all.
Reduced unemployment benefits
Better yet, we better count only on ourselves because the GOP cast of characters in charge — most notably, in addition to DeSantis, U.S. Senator Rick Scott and Florida House Speaker José Oliva — are only interested in taking conservative political stands.
A billionaire who first bought the Florida governorship (2011-2019) and then his U.S. Senate seat, all won with slim margins, Scott argued on the Senate floor on behalf of reduced unemployment benefits in the bipartisan $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
He argued that the bill’s increased unemployment benefits will discourage people from working or trying to find a job.
This, from the guy who presided over the largest healthcare fraud in the nation’s history, and got away with not being held accountable by pleading the Fifth Amendment 75 times during federal court proceedings.
His excuse then was that he would have done something about it, if only “somebody told me something was wrong.”
Is the coronavirus pandemic not speaking loudly enough for him now?
Confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida surpassed 8,000 Thursday — and the death toll jumped to 128, with 27 new fatalities in a day’s turnaround of the numbers.
Add to the trauma, the now jobless, which for many is like another kind of death.
Meanwhile, Florida unemployment benefits — the fifth lowest in the country — are a meager maximum of $275 a week.
Oh, Floriduh, you sure know how to pick your politicians.
Stimulus check
You know how, after Trump signed the stimulus law, everyone was checking to see how their share was going to feed their families, what necessary bill the check could pay?
This is what Oliva, secure in his job and benefits, was worried about, how your $1,200 check would affect him and his children:
“Stimulus, bailouts explained: The government borrows/prints $20k in your name, you get $1.5k now and the rest goes to any number of entities and instruments,” he tweeted. “You and your children spend years paying it back.”
His other great preoccupation isn’t the jobless, but repealing “burdensome rules” for the medical industry that have been temporarily relaxed to deal with the novel coronavirus. Because our health isn’t his priority; it’s the business of medicine.
In their minds, compassion is for the weak — and liberal.
As for DeSantis, his way of showing compassion is exempting churches from the rule of no more than 10 people at a gathering, putting all the faithful who will follow him in jeopardy of contracting the disease.
And after making the difficult but necessary decision of prohibiting visits to assisted living facilities and nursing homes, he’s now foolishly considering — at the height of spread in Florida — letting in people who have tested negative.
He and his kind just don’t get the science that isolation is the only sure thing that will stop COVID-19.
He seems more at home doing what carried him through Congress and made him a household name in conservative Florida: Making “important announcements” on FoxNews, as his spokeswoman boasted on Twitter.
God help us.
Someday, along with coronavirus, this too shall pass.
Florida voters need to remember who was on their side — and who played the fool.
This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 2:50 PM.
