Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness once made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. This week, Luke denounces Rick Scott.
Voters next week will decide Florida's new governor. Rick Scott, the Republican, has announced plans to drug-test welfare recipients. But he should take a drug test first so we know he is not high. This man's platform is enough to convince us he's under the influence of narcotics.
We already know he wants to bring Arizona's unfair immigration law to Florida. Except he wants to protect people who look like him by excluding Canadians and Europeans. Now he wants to drug-test the poorest of the poor.
Scott should heed the words of Orlando-based Christian Services Center executive director Robert Stuart, who told a local television station last week that the gubernatorial candidate "doesn't understand the needs of our state." Stuart, whose job is to help people in need, doesn't believe drug testing makes sense.
"Drug testing is not 100 percent accurate," Stuart told 13 News reporter Kelli Cook. "And you're going to withhold the services from somebody? Doesn't seem right in our society."
Scott's idea should outrage whites just as much as minorities. For every black person in the ghetto on welfare, there is a white person in the trailer park getting government assistance. Every Florida voter should be up in arms. His running mate, Jennifer Carroll, a black state legislator, needs to jump off the Scott bandwagon too. At some point in her life, she must have known someone, whether a family member or a friend, who was on welfare.
These poor folks need help from the government, and Scott wants to stick a needle in them before they get their food stamps. His rationale is that he doesn't believe "people should just sit around and watch TV." That's a typical response from a right-wing nut job who has probably dabbled himself.
In clips of courtroom appearances when Scott was CEO of Columbia HCA, he looks like he's suffering from short-term memory loss and acting dumb, claiming he doesn't know what the definition of market, agreement, or a promise is. That's dopehead behavior.
Drug testing would only burden Florida taxpayers. The state legislature approved a pilot drug-testing program for 57,000 temporary cash-assistance recipients in 1998. Lawmakers concluded that paying $90 per drug test was too expensive, so the program was canceled.
But seeing as Scott became a multimillionaire running shady health-care companies, I am sure he has a hidden agenda too. After all, the feds caught one of his companies defrauding Medicaid before he ever thought of running for governor.
I'm sure he already has figured out which company will get the big, fat, lucrative state contract to do the drug testing.
Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1.
