Dear Canadians: Don't mind Rick Scott. Floridians are the socialists

Dear Canadian snowbirds:

I hope you’re enjoying your summer up North. We’re looking forward to seeing you next season when you make your yearly migration to Florida.

As a full public-service newspaper columnist here, I want to apologize to those of you who may be offended by the recent bid for attention by one of our elected officials.

This is campaign season here, what might best be described as the Stupid Olympics. New record lows are being set on nearly a daily basis.

So, if you’ve seen our U.S. Sen. Rick Scott make his marble-mouthed way through a viral 35-second video that warns certain people not to step foot in Florida, please accept our apologies.

“If you’re a socialist, communist, somebody who believes in big government, I would think twice, think twice, if you’re thinking about taking a vacation or moving to Florida,” Scott said. “We’re the free state of Florida. We don’t actually believe in socialism.”

You may have noticed that Scott’s reference to “socialism” extends beyond the textbook description of a country in which property and the means of production are centrally controlled by the government. Scott’s also counting a socialist as “somebody who believes in big government.”

I think he means you, Canadians, with your universal, single-payer health care system, your well-funded, sustainable Canada Pension Plan Fund, and your lavish big-government funding of higher education, which allows university students to pay only about 25 percent of their college costs.

Even your federal minimum wage, which is $16.65 an hour, is more than double the $7.25 federal minimum wage in the U.S. — a clear demonstration in your country’s willingness to allow big government to intrude into the world of free enterprise.

More: DeSantis' own immigrant story in conflict with his opposition to "birthright citizenship"

More: Florida's E-verify law creating hole in agriculture, construction, hospitality jobs

More: Trump document case: Unlocking the secrets of Mar-a-Lago bathroom doors

You clearly exhibit too much faith in the benefits of big government programs to improve the lives of people to be welcomed in Scott’s imagination of Florida.

Please don’t be offended.

First of all, getting schooled on government social programs by Rick Scott is like taking a banking seminar from John Dillinger.

Scott’s area of expertise in government social programs is in looting them. He pleaded the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination 75 times rather than explain his role in the wholesale fraud against Medicare perpetrated by his hospital chain. It was the biggest health-care fraud case in the country at the time, one that resulted in a $1.7 billion fine.

So, Scott’s a comically inappropriate messenger in the self-appointed role of government watchdog. He’s also way off base.

In his travel advisory, Scott goes on to claim that socialists aren’t welcome in Florida because “we like freedom, liberty, capitalism and things like that.”

But we really like socialism here in Florida. You’re not alone on that, Canadians.

For example, we here in Florida count on the rest of America to socialize the costs we may experience during hurricane season. We rely on FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — to take tax dollars collected in other states that don’t experience hurricanes to pay to rebuild our under-insured beach houses in Florida if a storm hits.

Last year, it was Hurricane Ian. FEMA paid Floridians more than $2 billion through 23 Disaster Recovery Centers set up across the state, including in Palm Beach County.

Thank you, taxpayers of Iowa, Kentucky and Idaho.

Floridians in 26 counties received individual payments through the federal program, including paying for hotel rooms for Floridians while their damaged homes were being repaired.

FEMA also retroactively renewed the flood insurance that some Floridians had allowed to lapse in order to cover storm damage from Ian, while the U.S. Small Business Administration paid $562 million in low-cost disaster loans to Florida homeowners in the wake of the storm.

Socialism was running amok in Florida after Hurricane Ian, which would have been a better time for Scott to issue his travel advisory and to say that big government needs to stay out of Florida while we use our love of free enterprise to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

But instead, he issued a statement saying that he would work hard to make sure Floridians got every dollar they could from the federal safety-net programs.

“As we work to get communities back on their feet, I won’t stop fighting to make sure that the federal government keeps showing up,” Scott said.

And socialism is also thriving in Florida on a state level.

It turns out that many of the counties in Florida that are the most vocal anti-socialists are also the biggest recipients of taxpayer handouts from the rest of the state.

The 67 counties in Florida all raise money through property taxes to fund their basic government services, which include police, fire, trash collection, libraries and schools. But 29 Florida counties don’t collect enough taxes from their own residents to pay for government services they need and want.

Florida calls them “fiscally constrained counties,” and requires taxpayers in other Florida counties to subsidize the services received by those living in the poorer counties.

Pure socialism. This is very similar to what you Canadians did in your Constitution Act of 1982, when you established equalization payments to provide “reasonably comparable” services among the wealthier and poorer provinces in Canada.

So, don’t mind Rick Scott. He’s just an embarrassing chucklehead.

Carry on. We’ll see you next season.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Dear Canadians: Disregard Rick Scott's socialist warning for Florida