Our Observation

People love their heroes and villains. Watch a Harry Potter movie and early into the first act, you’ll already know whom to root for and against, even if the characters dare not speak the bad guy’s name.

Politics frequently becomes theater of its own, with politicians casting themselves —advertently or inadvertently — in their roles. Regardless of their true intentions, nobody ever wants to play Voldemort — at least not in the public spotlight.

Strangely, Gov. Rick Scott doesn’t seem to mind as he pursues ever-unpopular decisions in his inaugural term’s first act. Education cuts, job cuts, a derailed public transportation system, random employee drug tests possibly performed by a company his wife owns a controlling share in — they’ve all drawn attacks that would make an evil wizard blush.

Type a few words into Google, and it’s not hard to stumble upon a popular Internet meme visibly comparing Scott to Potter’s shadowy nemesis.

His most recent scene-stealing moment: Putting a gag on a statewide volunteer group that makes sure the elderly and chronically ill aren’t abused in nursing homes.

Coming on the heels of the outright elimination of high-speed rail and massive cuts to education, Scott’s most recent decisions to oust the head of the state’s Long-term Care Ombudsman Program and to stop nursing home watchdogs from talking to the media seems to be an even more blatant undermining of Florida’s quality of life.

Decisions to starve already-skeletonian school board funding and to refuse billions in high-speed rail grants to avoid paying the final 10 percent of the project do carry some redeeming short-term financial incentives. But silencing watchdogs who protect the elderly has no such politically convenient excuse.

It’s not about balancing the budget. It’s not about cutting wasteful spending. It’s about control. Rick Scott wants it, and he wants it out of the hands of the people directly responsible for ensuring the welfare of our parents amd grandparents needing long-term health care.

This isn’t the first time Scott has been curiously close to glaring abuses of government and the health care system. That Scott has spent much of his career in health care (he co-founded Solantic, a for-profit urgent care clinic chain that his wife owns a controlling share of) reeks of a conflict of interest every time he makes a decision related to health care.

Long before he ran for governor, he was forced to resign as CEO of Columbia/HCA while the company was being pursued for 14 felonies including Medicare fraud. His company ended up paying the federal government nearly $2 billion in restitution and interest. He escaped that debacle without being charged with anything, earning a nine-figure payday in the process.

That Scott is now attacking regulators of the nursing home industry and trying to censor what they say to the media smacks of business as usual.

But how many decisions of questionable propriety will Scott make before he crosses his own line? Judging by the growing backlash against his policies, that appears to be much farther than many Floridians would deem reasonable.

Until he shows that even he recognizes there's a lower boundary to political expediency, Scott seems eager to keep playing Voldemort.