I am glad to see Gov. Rick Scott has aspirations to serve the government in a more useful capacity than his present office has allowed.

I hope he was made to keep his bullet in his pocket. Barney Fife looked better in his uniform and was only a bully when Andy was not around. Gov. Scott disregards everyone who is not wealthy.

Wow.. that's sad.. I guess Florida must be serious broke if State Park Rangers "also" serve fast-food.

I hate "dress-up" photo ops. Did he "earn" that Park Ranger badge ??

He's disgusting.....

This is cutting edge news, I saw a report of a wealthy oil mogul going to North Africa and taking out sweet oil from their land. Meanwhile on the BBC great britain there is a report that they have dicoverred fresh oil in Namibia. how oportune for the wealthy oil miner that all the 800.000 billions of sweet water is there for his new mining operations. Wonder what will happen to the Namibians who were the first people on the planet as far as history can tell?

sorry that waa fresh water pure glacier like clean and drinkable WATER, SORRY FOR NOT ADDING THAT.

So - I followed the link to the Huffington Post article about Romney's tax return.

He received $172,397 in shares of Sensata Technologies .... as part of a Bain payout; he listed no cost for it on his tax return.

OK -- he was paid in shares because of ... something or other. That's fine. I would have to work for many years to make that much but ... whatever.

Romney had received the Sensata stock as part of a Bain payout; he listed no cost for it on his tax return. By transferring that stock to his nonprofit Tyler Charitable Foundation, he avoided roughly $25,000 in capital gains taxes he would have owed. He also shaved an additional $50,000 off his tax bill by deducting the charitable contribution from his income.

So -- he saved $75,000 in taxes - that is 44% of the $172 thousand. That seems high. Why would it have been 44%? whatever.

Romney's Tyler Charitable Foundation has assets of roughly $10 million, of which it is only required to spend 5 percent per year to maintain its tax-preferred status.

So -- he has a non-profit where he can put assets like stocks (and cash? don't know). The stocks sit there doing their stock-ish stuff - gaining in value if the company makes a profit.

[As a stockholder, he]...stands to profit from any lower labor costs that result from offshoring.

Well - unless he has additional Sensata Technologies stock - not directly. But the stock assets he put in the non-profit would increase.

---------------------------

Basically, I didn't learn a whole lot, except that when (OK - if) I win the gazillion dollar lottery, I need to hire me one of "them thar" tax accountants.

If you have some $$ you want to donate to charity, why do you stash it into an account and just dole it out a little at a time? Unless you want to maintain control of the assets and ... do something else with them later...??

Conclusion:

Anyone who owns stock in Sensata Technologies is set to have their stocks increase in value, because the workers at the Illinois plant lose their jobs.

That can probably be said for anyone who owns any kind of stock (like me - in my IRAs). That's what off-shoring does - lowers labor costs and increases company profits that benefit the share holders.

Nothing illegal. But it really sucks!!!!!

i really hope he decides to stay a park ranger so we can have a real gov.that actualey wants to help florida and its people .instead of killing jobs .start creating some for the people that are out of work and have been for some time.we need that someone to fight for us and not stand in the way of people voting.imagine that .it would be nice.

In re Mitt: Hate to say it, but Mitt may be telling the retroactively undeniable truth(!) If he releases several years of tax returns, opposition researchers will be all over them, even if they're in compliance with existing tax laws. E.g. He transfers Sensata stock to his own charitable nonprofit, Tyler Charitable, and avoids $75,000 in taxes in one fell swoop. In the same year, he transfers $1.3 Mill in Domino stock to Tyler, saving $600.000 in taxes. That's $675,000 of tax savings in two transactions, when the medianU.S. income is around $50,000 a year. By giving various amounts of money to his own Tyler Charitable, he gets tax deductions when he needs them most, while making sure that Tyler makes donations that will serve the interest of Mitt, or the Romney family.

The 2008 uncharacteristically large donation of $1.8 Mil to the Mormon Church, to fund their campaign against same-sex marriage in California, won't cost him any votes that he otherwise would have had. It does, however, shed light on his anti-big government philosophy. History has shown us that, when the Roman Empire collapsed, other less centralized, but wealthy and powerful groups, (the church, wealthy nobles) filled the power vacuum and brought us feudalism. Feudalism did not enhance individual liberty. There are many wealthy and powerful individuals and institutions in the U.S. today. Left unattended, they can run the country the way the church and feudal lords ran Europe in the Medieval era. In 2008, a Utah based institution poured vast sums into California to buy a political outcome that comported with its theology. Billionaires funnel vast sums of Dark Money (Rachel's term) into candidate's coffers to skew elections. The NRA openly keeps tabs on politicians who don't vote according to its dictates. A weakened federal government is 21st century feudalism, and won't enhance individual liberty any more than medieval feudalism did. It just transfers power to powerful groups that are not obligated to promote the general welfare, or any welfare other than their own. If they're successful, we'll be subject to their dictates and whims without the protection of the rule of law.

I agree with your summation re:romney. I just can't understand why so many of our peers (the un rich) are so taken with him. What are they hearing, what do they see, are they so blind and deaf? Or is it perhaps, they simply don't want to see and hear and ask, really ask the question? I know I'm supposed to love my neighbor, but it's a stretch to even like this guy. Go Obama!

Does the Maddow Staff have the resources and time to find out how many State public employees have lost their jobs in Republican States as opposed to Democratic States? Would those numbers make a notable difference in the unemployment rate?

Wouldn’t the loss of those jobs, also, make it harder for ‘other’ unemployed people to fill the jobs the former public employees may have filled?

I see a caption contest in our future.

Here's mine:

I keep telling him - we're park rangers not Ponch and Jon from CHips!

Is that John Malkovich on the left in the picture with Rick Scott?

I wonder if the gunman who shot up the Batman opening in Colorado and killed 14 people did it because he thought the movie was a plot against Mitt Romney? Did he listen to too much Rush Limbaugh explaining how the left wing purposely named the villain in the movie Bane as a plot to destroy Mitt and get some bug up his you know what? Of course Bane has been a villain for more than 13 years, long before Mitt Romney even thought of running for President of the United States. But leave it to Rush to be an idiot and tell lies.

How depressing to think that you can't even take your kids to the movies these days without having some gun wacko start spraying bullets upon everybody. This will continue to happen unless a politician with some spine begins to try and amend some of these crazy gun laws where everybody is allowed to walk around with an arsenal. We've come to a point of losing our entire reasoning.

Oh, by all means, let's continue to allow private citizens to obtain and use assault rifles. What could go wrong?

RS saying to himself "Huh, so that's what a squirrel looks like".