Florida Webfail Makes Obamacare Site Look Good

We wish we had written the first paragraph ourselves:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s reelection campaign theme may be “It’s Working,” but the state’s expensive new unemployment claims web site is definitely not.

Since it went live October 15, the new site Connect has been unable to recognize some claimants’ personal information, according to complaints lodged on the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity Facebook page.

And many of those unable to file new claims say their payments were already delayed this month after the site went offline for a week while the new $63-million site launched.

“It means groceries in my cabinet, it means maybe paying my water bill on Monday,” one claimant told WOKV News.

There is no official count of how many of Florida’s nearly 240,000 unemployment recipients may have been affected by Connect’s glitches.

Yet frustrated claimants reportedly lined up at local unemployment centers, where staff could only direct them to the state’s 1-800 help line, which in turn was either busy or hung up on them.

Governor Rick Scott’s Florida sure has a handle on their priorities! Looks like they got a real bargain for that $63 million – or not…

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.