Jeb Bush Invested Florida Pension Fund Money In Porn Purveyor

The Christofascists truly do not like Jeb Bush and it is beyond entertaining to watch them dredge up whatever dirty they can find to damage Bush - even as sane and rational people worry instead about Jebbie's use of his idiot brother, George W. Bush, as his top Middle East adviser.  Jebbie's knuckle dragging opponents are agog about the Bush Florida administration's investment if state pension funds in a film distributor, Movie Gallery, a small portion of whose inventory included  X-rated titles.  The International Business Times looks at the investment history while Jebbie was governor of Florida.  The irony, of course, is that evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt have the highest use of Internet porn and, back in the era of Jebbie's term as governor of Florida, these same folks were likely making high use of Movie Gallery's x-rated products.  Here are excerpts:

Conservatives in Florida were aghast: State documents said that Gov. Jeb Bush and other overseers of Florida's pension system had shifted retirees' money into a company called Movie Gallery, one of the largest film rental firms in America. Most of the titles were standard comedy and action fare, but a fraction were X-rated titles. 

In short, the state of Florida was investing taxpayer money in pornography. 

Bush recently released 280,000 emails from his two terms as governor, and buried in the trove are exchanges about the Movie Gallery investment that highlight the tension between Bush’s stance as a firm social conservative and his readiness to align himself with the Republican Party’s pro-businesses sensibilities -- even at the cost of right-wing ideals.

“Have you people lost your minds?” one outraged voter wrote in an email to Bush and the State Board of Administration (SBA), which made the investment. Another angry voter emailed that pornography was “enslaving men and women to its addiction.”

The Bush administration would not let political ideology shape pension decisions, the director explained, saying the state’s pension trustees were “required to act solely in the best interest of the [pension] beneficiaries.”

With right-wing heroes like Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum moving to enter the 2016 presidential race, Bush's backers are working to present the former Florida governor as a reliable conservative. They note that he publicly opposed same-sex marriage, funded crisis pregnancy centers and backed proposals to fund vouchers for private and religious schools.

In a mass email, AFA founder Donald Wildmon touted his group’s new website www.stopmoviegalleryporn.com, and urged the AFA’s 200,000 members to sign a petition and express their anger at Bush for moving $1.3 million of state money into the company.

“Movie Gallery shades hundreds of its stores with ‘back rooms,’ filled with thousands of videos and magazines exhibiting morbid depictions of sex,” Wildmon wrote. “By investing in Movie Gallery stock, the state of Florida is giving its stamp of approval on hard-core porn. Tell the Florida Board of Administration to get out of the porn business by divesting itself of Movie Gallery stock.”

 Also picking up on the story are The Drudge Report and The Hill.