Rick Scott's Stimulus Hypocrisy

Rick Scott has constantly attacked the stimulus and has attempted to make bizarre connections between Alex Sink and federal programs she was not involved with.

“Obama liberal Alex Sink is sending her union allies to attack me for opposing the failed stimulus program, but it just shows voters what is at stake in this election,” said Scott on Monday. “Our country has lost 3.29 million jobs since President Obama flushed away a trillion dollars - and Alex Sink said she supports President Obama's policies to fix our economy. The Democrats promised that after spending all that money, the unemployment rate wouldn’t reach over 8 percent; it is now 11.6 percent in Florida and 9.6 percent nationally. Sink and her liberal allies have saddled our children and grandchildren with debt and created no jobs. I have a plan to cut taxes and regulations to turn Florida around and create 700,000 private sector jobs in this state.”

Scott told Real Clear Politics the stimulus "does not work."

SCOTT: Absolutely not. I think stimulus money is an absolute mistake. There's no free money in those stimulus dollars. We're going to have to pay those dollars back whether we pay it back, our children pay it back, our grandchildren pay it back. Stimulus does not work.

So it should come as no suprise a company Scott is a shareholder in excepted stimulus money.

Scott owns 3.44 million shares of XFONE stock. XFONE received $63 million in loans and grants.

This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that an XFONE subsidiary called Pride Network Inc. in Louisiana had been awarded another $36.1 million in loans and grants to build a fiber-optic network in three parishes there. The funding is coming from a $518-million piece of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – the stimulus bill.

The department press release notes that "the project will benefit approximately 25,000 residents, 3,000 businesses and about 200 community facilities. The company estimates the project will create 1,300 jobs."

I am not even surprised by Scott's hypocrisy. I would be shock if Scott actually stood for something on principle. Does a man who had to use his fifth amendment rights 75 times during a deposition have principles to stand behind?