As a raft of newly-elected governors take office across the country, the one I'm most excited about is Florida's Rick Scott, who's getting sworn in at this very moment. Scott rode the Tea Party wave past the Republican establishment pick, Bill McCollum, and went on to post a tight victory over Democratic nominee Alex Sink. Of course, prior to his electoral success, Scott was best known as a record-setting fraudster whose bilking of Medicare reached cartoon-villain proportions: under his stewardship Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and was forced to pay a $2 billion fraud settlement, the largest in the history of the United States.
Now, he'll be taking over for Charlie Crist, running a state best known for passels of shambling old people, swamps riven with non-native species of python, and the statewide inability to pass a law banning sex with animals, including, perhaps, the aforementioned pythons. And if there ever was a man conditioned to rule over what Matt Taibbi refers to as "Griftopia," it's Scott, whose overall shadiness is well-established in advance of his taking an oath of office.
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