Republican scandals grow larger. We must stretch out this campaign season

The front-page story in the Miami Herald -- Why below the fold? But anyway, an amazing story -- reads like a criminal indictment in every paragraph. That's assuming it's illegal to use political donations as a slush fund for party bigs.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/05/v-fullstory/1665855/scandal-stained-former-ally-contradicts.html?pageNum=2&mi_pluck_action=page_nav#Comments_Container

Congratulations, Beth Reinhard. What a story. Now let's see some followup. This will be the test.

We Democrats should try to postpone the November election, because the news can only become worse for Florida's Republicans, and the longer the wait for the vote, the worse they will look.

FL-25: Joe Garcia up against ton of lobbyist money in his unethical opponent

While we’ve been fretting about what Florida’s Teabag state legislature is up to, in fact the Republicans in Tallahassee have just been kicking sand in our eyes so we won’t see David Rivera raising a ton of unethical money to try to ripoff FL-25 from Joe Garcia.

Yep, the moneybags business of a congressional race ran heavily in Rivera’s favor in the first weeks of the session -- even though there’s a state law banning fund-raising while the legislature is in session.

Yep, they’ve got a self-serving legal opinion that says the law doesn’t apply to those running for a federal office -- like District 25 in the US House -- only to people running for state offices. And so David Rivera feels free to ignore finger-waving by former Gov. Jeb Bush, who in the past thought it was unseemly to be doing it.

Yep, that’s the same Jeb Bush who thought it was OK for himself to go to work for Lehman Brothers as a consultant after leaving the governorship and to help sell Florida crappy investments that are worth nothing now. Even with such low standards, Jeb thought it was unseemly for legislators to raise money during session.

So David Rivera’s ethical standards are even lower than that.

Joe Garcia, our former chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, ethically resigned from his high position in the US Department of Energy to run for Congress in District 25, now an open seat. Yep, the Diaz-Balart brothers are doing a double quit -- Lincoln D-B retiring from District 21, and Mario D-B escaping from District 25, where he would lose to Joe Garcia this time, and aiming for the safer-R District 21.

Joe Garcia looks to have a good shot now in his second race in District 25. As Joe put it the other night in a talk to the Democrats of South Dade Club, Mario D-B designed the district for himself when he was in the state legislature (now the teabag legislature). Then in the early 2000’s, District 25 had a big Republican advantage in registration, 42-30 percent. Now the two parties are even at 36 percent, with about 800 more registered Democrats than Republicans. No wonder Mario D-B quit.

No wonder David Rivera is desperate.

He is chair of the committee writing the budget. The unethical game he’s running is that lobbyists are piling money into his federal campaign even though he’s now term-limited as a state representative, and if he were to win and go to the US House, he’d have no vote anymore on state legislation. So this money is purely to influence legislation now before the Florida House, and that’s the spirit and intent of the law and House rules that ban it.

“'The spirit be damned,’ my opponent says,” Joe Garcia told the Democratic club. Still channeling Rivera, he went on, “’We need to raise a lot of money. We need to justify a $2 billion tax increase at the same time Florida had the worst economy in its history.’”

Garcia called Rivera “a very special kind of guy” and predicted: “I’m sure the special interests will pave his way.”

For our part, Democrats will be called on to join the Garcia campaign’s planned grassroots ground drive, and of course to donate as generously as possible, to see that Joe Garcia gets his message out.

“Folks like you will make the difference,” he said to a crowd with a lot of District 25 residents, including many experienced campaigners with a strong dedication to progressive policy.

In the Miami New Times -- Goodness, they even call Rivera a “banana Republican” in their headline -- an article says there were 80 lobbyists and committees backing legislation among Rivera’s donors in the first quarter. He raised a bit over $700,000 and more than half came from the influence-buyers. More detail in the Miami New Times.

This is how low their ethical standards are.

Possible opponent in FL-25 is ally of indicted Ray Sansom. What's new?

The Republican side of Congressional District 25 is shaping up on the slimy side of life.

Who’s running? One of the best allies of a disgraced big shot in the Florida Republican Party. The candidate is David Rivera, who sits in the Florida House of Representatives in a prominent role -- chair of the Budget Committee. You know, the people who do the bidding of the Republican Party to divide up the spoils of and otherwise mismanage one of the biggest states in the USA. Rivera was anointed chairman by Ray Sansom, former speaker of the House, now under criminal indictment.

To quote Eric Jotkoff, spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party, “It hasn’t even been a week since disgraced Speaker Ray Sansom resigned under criminal indictment and now his handpicked Budget Chair says he’s running for Congress. Is this an indication of how hard it is to find a Republican candidate in Florida not marked by scandal?”

Right on, Eric.

The Democratic spokesman points out a good question to fire at David Rivera: Tell us about whether you had a Republican Party credit card. And did you use it for personal expenses, like Marco Rubio?



Florida Republicans are in a fine mess, all by themselves. Trouble is, who’s going to call out a thorough investigation of them when the chief law official in the state is Attorney General Bill McCollum, likely the Republican candidate for governor? Where’s the Tea Party when you need them?

Read The Buzz for details on how bad the Republicans are.

We Democrats are waiting for Joe Garcia, former chair of our Miami-Dade County party and now serving in the Obama administration with the Department of Energy, to declare his candidacy.  District 25 is such an important part of Florida, as its two arms in Miami-Dade and Collier counties embrace the Everglades, which has few voters but such vital resources as water, beauty, wildlife and climate control.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Draft Joe Garcia for 2010! page on Facebook.

Joe ran a strong race in 2008 and now the district looks even more winnable as the seat is open (Thank you, Quitter Diaz-Balart brothers!) and the demographics have continued to shift toward the Democratic Party.

Here's a look at the race by CQ Politics.

More dirty money -- ripoff followed by coverup

This is an unsung scandal of our state government, and though the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times have done spadework to unearth details, the ripoff of the State Board of Administration is not known as widely as it should be.


The Herald is part of the problem. In this instance Alex Sink, the Florida chief financial officer and leading Democratic candidate for governor, is reduced to complaining in a letter to the editor – as if she’s only a reader of the state’s putative flagship newspaper. And in her letter the key details are buried in the 6th paragraph. There she names her likely Republican opponent for governor, Attorney General Bill McCollum, and Gov. Charlie Crist as the ones not taking appropriate action.

Let’s call it by its proper name – they are conspiring in a coverup. Coverup of what? “Lost billions for taxpayers.” Billions. With BBBB. And who did it? This blog repeatedly has named former Gov. Jeb Bush as a leading suspect, since he was a paid consultant for Lehman Brothers after leaving office in 2006, and Lehman investments are among the biggest reasons for the losses.

(This link is to a blog post last Tuesday on the St. Petersburg Times story – also published in the Herald – that occasioned Sink’s letter, and down in the 4th paragraph is a link to an earlier post on the SBA scandal.)

Lehman, you’ll please remember, is an ex-resident of Wall Street, now that the bubble there has burst.

And Crist, well, he was attorney general when some of the shenanigans in the State Board of Administration happened, and thus he would have been one of the three trustees overseeing that board, along with the governor (Bush) and the chief financial officer, then Tom Gallagher, a veteran Republican politician who lost to Crist for the 2006 gubernatorial nomination.

Plenty of reason for Crist and McCollum to want to keep this scandal quiet. Would Crist’s bid for the US Senate have any life left at all if this scandal got its due exposure? Would McCollum’s bid for governor need a wheelchair?

Jeb Bush never has stood still for a question on this now almost two-year-old scandal. Jeb, tell us – How much did Lehman pay you to “consult” on having Florida buy their crap investments? Why should Florida taxpayers not consider that a delayed bribe payment?

But back to 2010. This is a complicated story, yet it should be rising to the top of Alex Sink’s drumbeat of campaign talk in this election year. The voters are fed up with corruption and dirty money in politics, and when they go to vote in November they should know that Republicans were the ones ripping them off in Tallahassee. Time for a clean sweep.

With a grit of the teeth: I browsed over to the St. Pete Times to see whether Sink’s letter also was published there, since the investigative piece originated in the Times. No, but the Times had an editorial  worrying that Sink’s office might have favored one law firm over another because of political donations. That’s understandable. I have worried about the same question. My conclusion is that we must get money out of politics. Check out http://www.fairelectionsnow.org/ for a bill in Congress that would do it.

NY Times agrees with this blog on dirty money in politics

Check recent posts here for how Florida and the US Congress are subverted by corrupt money. The Times thinks the situation in NY state is so bad that the entire legislature needs to be voted out. Sounds like a real national problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/opinion/31thu1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

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Blogging at Miami-Dade-Dems.blogspot.com

Ponzi schemer II: Scott Rothstein and his run at Florida's treasure chest

Here we are, two days in a row with fresh stories on Ponzi billionaires using their money trying to corrupt government. See the previous post for Allen Stanford's successful infiltration of the US Congress, as investigated by the Miami Herald. On Tuesday it’s the St. Petersburg Times’ story on Scott Rothstein and his run at Alex Sink’s office and the huge treasure chest of the Florida State Board of Administration.


The story also was the main lead in the Miami Herald, thanks to the news exchange partnership of the two papers. We’ve got to say the old mainstream media aren’t dead yet. The two stories mark tremendous effort on the investigative side. They tell complicated stories, especially the St. Pete paper’s story on the State Board of Administration, which is little known but is so big ($136 billion) that if it loses a couple billion on bad investments it’s only a few percent.

And yes, this blog has been aware of the SBA for many months, thanks to Jeb Bush, the ex-governor who became a consultant for now-belly-up Lehman Brothers and helped grease the way for good Floridians’ money to disappear from SBA accounts.

Read about that at this link to one of the posts on this blog.

But back to the issue at hand. Alex Sink is the highest-ranking Democrat in state government as chief financial officer, and the likely candidate for governor against a cabinet colleague, Attorney General Bill McCollum. Scott Rothstein was a generous donor to Republicans and not for the Democrats until this year when he gave $200,000 to the Florida Democratic Party, fulfilling a pledge made at a fundraiser for Sink, the St. Pete Times reports. Her office then was recruiting law firms for legal work, and Rothstein’s firm tried hard to get it – in vain, as it turned out. But still, what’s a Ponzi schemer likely to want to do with a big state legal job? Rip it off big-time, I’d say, to make a big profit on that investment of $200,000.

Couple questions:

• Why does Florida have to pay “tens of millions” in fees for legal work?
• Why doesn’t the Attorney General supply legal workers for some big part of these jobs?
• Which firms got the work, and since three of them are reported as having donated to Sink, why aren’t we hearing more about their qualifications?

To Sink’s credit, she’s trying to raise the SBA as a campaign issue. Here’s the way the St. Pete Times puts it (this aspect doesn’t seem to be included in the print edition of the Miami Herald):

Sink has made reform of the SBA a campaign issue. She has suggested that the oversight board be expanded to include nonpoliticians, which Crist and McCollum have balked at. In a campaign e-mail, Sink recently said her reforms were being blocked by "career politicians who would rather protect their own political interests'' than the retirement checks of Floridians.

Should she and her two fellow politicians who oversee the SBA be barred from accepting campaign contributions from firms seeking business with the agency?

"I think the whole governance structure is not appropriate,'' she said. "It would suit me to have no elected official on the board.''

There’s another way to do it. As this blog said on Monday: Get money out of politics.

Miami Herald writes a big chapter on dirty money in politics: Allen Stanford

A few days ago I blogged a suggestion that progressives should take a new tack on national issues and go after campaign finance reform – get money out of politics.


So I hereby thank the investigative reporters at the Miami Herald for coming up with a whopper of an example of dirty money in politics. The lead story in the Sunday paper -- even though Florida’s sainted football coach, Urban Meyer, took up most of the front page by deciding to tend his health, and good for him, but, man, is that trivial – was about Allen Stanford and how he manipulated some members of Congress to protect his money-laundering/Ponzi-scheming empire.

Check it out. Even as Stanford was being charged he got a steamy email from US Rep. Pete Sessions: “I love you and believe in you.” So the Texas Republican is quoted as gushing to someone headed for jail for stealing a billion or more and giving a lot of it to our elected political leaders. Sessions was chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee, i.e. the recipient of a lot of Stanford’s largesse.

But the Democrats also are fat pigs in this picture, raking in $500,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2002. The Dems then had control of the Senate and Stanford needed to block a bill likely to bring his dubious brokerage under more scrutiny. No problem, Democrats apparently said. The bill went nowhere. That was reported as Stanford’s biggest single donation, and it went to my party.

This rant is bi- and non-partisan. Republicans and Democrats more or less equally lapped at the Stanford trough, as the Herald portrays it. In fact the article is a little faulty, I think, in not clearly putting party and state ID’s on the many members of Congress who took Stanford’s money. And let us not forget George W. Bush (R of Texas), whose 2001 inauguration raked in $100,000 to help celebrate, the Herald reports.

What really steams me in the Herald article is that in 1999 the State Department concluded that Stanford “helped create a money-laundering haven in Antigua.” Despite this big Con Man sign hanging around Stanford’s neck, our national leaders kept on taking his money, and, alas, quite a lot of his criminal activity took place in Florida.

Most wounding to this Democratic voter is that Florida Sen. Bill Nelson benefitted from a fundraiser at Stanford’s Miami office when he ran for re-election in 2006. So, Senator, in 1999 the State Department branded Stanford a money-launderer, and you took his money in 2006. Is anyone checking these obvious things?

Let us go back to the lesson of the day. We need to take money out of politics. This aspect of our political life attracts crooks and Ponzi artists. We little grass-roots donors are honest pips on a deck of marked cards. It is becoming more clear than ever that our political leaders are either crooks or deliberately oblivious to where a substantial portion of political money comes from.

This has got to change.

Note: This link goes to a sidebar with a bizarre story on how Stanford got a Democratic congressman to go to Venezuela and have Hugo Chavez sideline an opponent of Standord's fraudulent business. What next? A cake and a Bible?

The answer to post-health-care funk: Get money out of politics

It’s very concerning now. We progressive Democrats are demoralized by health-care passage in the Senate, while the Republican losers assert they’re happy campers and will go home to stir up more trouble than ever. This is exactly the reverse of the morale that ought to apply to these camps. There is, no doubt, some bravado and exaggeration on each side, but I think it’s generally a true portrait. Our side has to grow and change in a hurry, or we could slide down to a lower level for the next battle – the environment, which is even more important than health care. It’s the planet that’s at stake, not just a few million human beings and their crummy health.

For next steps I’m looking for tips from Organizing For America, from MoveOn, from Progressive Democrats of America; that is, from the Obama White House, from the grassroots liberal establishment, and from the PDA’s curious inside-outside mixture of being inside Congress (80-plus in the Progressive Caucus) and outside among people willing to demonstrate and occasionally be arrested.

As of this evening, OFA has sent out an email asking to thank the Senators who voted for the bill. MoveOn.org still has Joe Lieberman on its front page. PDAmerica.org is boasting that it was named by The Nation magazine as the most valuable political group of 2008. Yes, not a typo, of 2008.

So, let’s agree that they haven’t issued quick advice on how to think and act in order to salvage the historic presidency of Barack Obama. We are, nonetheless, thinking about this vital mission. Even if it is Christmas.

I do not think the progressive side will have to drag Barack Obama, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing. If he can be convinced that he will be re-elected, he’s for it. But what will be the right thing? The Hawaii vacation may have come at exactly the right time to refresh the president’s thinking and morale. This should be a time for bold action, not mealy-mouthed compromise. Open thinking and debate, not disgusting deals on Nebraska Medicaid.

A forthright approach would be to start a new tack altogether – get money out of politics. This is what has left us in a post-health-care funk. Let’s start thinking about fixing the root problem of our health care, the environment, our wars, our corruption. The people will thank us.

Miami Beach election time brings out blogger's doubts

We’re in the middle of an election on Miami Beach right now -- runoff time over two seats on the city commission.  In the first round, on general election day Nov. 3, Mayor Matti Bower was re-elected easily, as was Group 1 Commissioner Jerry Libbin. In runoffs are Group 2 candidates Jorge Exposito and Maria Mayer and Group 3 candidates Michael Gongora and Gabrielle Redfern. Runoff day will be Nov. 17.  Those, like me, who registered for absentee ballots should get them in the mail soon.

Your blogger’s only preference is in Group 3, where I know Gabrielle Redfern from Democratic Party meetings, and both of us are on the county Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. She’s a smart and effective advocate for interests of the ordinary folk. This is a severely under-represented group that needs someone like Redfern, with her heart in the right place and wide-ranging experience in public affairs.

The point of this post, however, is more to ask why anyone wants this sort of work. I’m drawing on two fresh sources here, so I’m calling this a rounded look at city government on Miami Beach.

The sources, and their grim views of the Beach, are:

·         Gerald Posner’s new book “Miami Babylon,” a chronicle starting in 1980 into crime, drugs, corruption and elections mostly on Miami Beach, though the mainland is a big, bad player too.

·         Victor Diaz, now leaving office after a year as an appointed Miami Beach city commissioner for Group 3 until the current election decides a successor to Richard Steinberg, who was elected in 2008 to the state House of Representatives. Diaz spoke to the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club on Oct. 27 and implied that money was too big a factor in how city commissioners vote. TaDA! Is that the definition of corruption, or what?

I have only my sketchy notes of Diaz’s talk, and he didn’t name names, so he leaves more of an impression than an indictment. Leave that to Posner’s book.

Before going further, some Miami Beach numbers. Population about 90,000. Registered voters 46,178, of whom only 7,374 voted on Nov. 3. That’s a pitiful turnout of 16%. Still, 16% is important. It’s the share of health care in our national economy, and we know what a big deal that is. Candidates don’t have to send their expensive brochures to every registered voter – only to the ones who always vote.

Last time we had municipal elections, in 2007, the candidates together spent $130.55 per vote cast. A shocking big number, it comes from $1,301,763 reported spent by the candidates, and 9,871 voters.

Our nonpartisan municipal elections are always held in the odd-numbered years so no national or state issues draw out large crowds of voters. Why’s that?

Diaz complained that the commission indulges in “prepackaged” discussion, and he suspected that too many votes were cast at the behest of a lobbyist who had been the commissioner’s campaign consultant.

In the Q-A after Diaz’s talk, I asked about the role of money. He agreed with my drift that money was a big part of our problem and suggested we need a citizens’ PAC for good government and a grass-roots movement to transform city government.

 One of the most pernicious impacts of political money came from the so-called electioneering campaign organizations that send objectionable accusations to voters, Diaz said. The organizations’ filings aren’t due until after the election, so interest vanishes by the time someone could dig out who was behind the vile charges. After last week’s voting, dismissed candidate Sherry Roberts sent out an email saying she couldn’t endorse either of the two who finished ahead of her in Group 2, Jorge Exposito and Maria Mayer, because of such mailers with dubious sourcing and allegations. I’m hereby nominating Sherry Roberts for a big role in that good-government PAC suggested by Diaz.

Diaz said candidates have to be pressed on who’s behind these groups, usually described as shadowy in the media.

Now to Posner’s book, “Miami Babylon,  Crime, Wealth, and Power – a Dispatch from the Beach.” People packed into the furniture store behind Books and Books on Lincoln Road for the author’s talk and signing. In the crowd were a lot of Beach politicians including Mayor Matti Bower and ex-convict former Mayor Alex Daoud – my notes say Posner called him “charismatic but corrupt.”  Daoud got a speaking role in the Q-and-A portion, declaring to Posner, “I don’t give a damn about the criticism. I’ll throw a party for you anytime.”

Some had promised to throw parties for Posner but backed out when they read the book. Posner didn’t seem to think the book was too tough, saying, “Nobody’s going to jail because of this book, and that’s all right.”

But, Posner said, Daoud’s book, “Sins of South Beach,” published in 2006 after he finished his jail time, should have resulted in more prosecutions, because Daoud fingered former Mayor Harold Rosen as having paid bribes to Daoud.

In Posner’s book he puts it this way: “The most surprising thing about Daoud’s disclosure is that it caused no fallout at all. Not a single television or radio news program mentioned it. The Miami Herald assigned a reporter and photographer to interview Daoud and then killed the story.”

The excuse could be that Daoud’s book gives off an aura of unreliability. He prints page after page of old conversations in direct quotes. I never was able to finish the book, though paging through it now I see I missed the hot spots where he gets graphic about the sexual aspect of corruption.

Here are links to two Miami Herald stories on Posner’s book, one before the author’s talk, and the other reporting on that talk.  Note that neither one mentions Posner’s explicit criticism of the city’s flagship newspaper and its role in condoning some corrupt behavior. It must be said on behalf of the Herald that it does some important investigative work exposing corruption, though most of that involves Miami. And Posner used the Herald as source for a lot of his material.

 Miami Beach, Posner speculated, may escape closer attention because its happenings are treated like “neighborhood” stories for the twice-weekly Neighbors section of the Herald. Strange, considering that much of the outside world thinks Miami Beach IS Miami.

One of the good guys of Posner’s book is Frank Del Vecchio, who retired to Miami Beach with wide experience in municipal affairs in Boston and Washington DC and then became the most prominent watchdog of Miami Beach government. Del  Veccio finds it to be part of a badly flawed system in Miami-Dade County. Posner quotes him saying “public/private partnerships in Miami Dade are totally crooked. It is the most corrupt government, at almost every planning and implementation stage, I ever encountered.”

That’s a powerful criticism. And it’s in the air we breathe, apparently. “In Miami, there is no agency tradition, no fear of oversight by another body, and no judicial system that has real peer review standards,” Posner quotes Del Vecchio saying. “Instead, the dominant political constituency, Cuban, is bound by loyalty, not ethics. Even the corrupt politicians up north knew they had to deliver to the communities they served, or they would be out of office. Here, the political interests are not to serve the public good. It’s just all short-term thinking to help themselves. In Miami, the ingrained politicians have more control than the old ward bosses of the Northeast because here they control the banks and own the land. There are no checks and balances.”

One can only wish the best to any honest person who dares run against this environment.

And let’s not forget we’re part of Florida, where Ponzi schemers like Scott Rothstein are big political donors.  Check out the Herald’s latest story on him, In which Gov. Charlie Crist is bold enough to joke that something is going to cost Rothstein “another $100,000.” Brazen is the word for it.

PS: For more on Posner's appearance at Books and Books, go to Youtube.com and search for Miami Babylon. Someone put up a three-part video on the event.

Here's my little video on it:

Crist wants grand jury to probe state corruption

I've been nagging about this for some time now, so I've got to say positive things about the governor. Darn, though, I never expected him to do the right thing.

Anyway, like the Democrats in the state legislature, there are many good ideas out there on how to stamp down on corruption. I don't think Charlie Crist helps by having a fundraiser in Arizona with a convicted (later pardoned) corrupt politician, but if a grand jury gets right to work it may lead to cleaner elections next year.

Here is a statement issued by the Democratic leader in the state House:

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida House Democratic Leader Franklin Sands (D-Weston) issued the following statement in response to Governor Charlie Crist’s call for a statewide grand jury on corruption by public officials.

“I am encouraged by Governor Crist’s expression of concern about the conduct of some public officials throughout Florida, and I endorse his call for a statewide grand jury to investigate criminal activities among those who serve in government.

“I urge the governor and my colleagues in the Legislature to move expeditiously and approve during the 2010 legislative session measures to prevent wrongdoing by public officials and restore the public’s confidence in their government.

“Various recommendations have already been proposed. One worthy idea has been offered by state Rep. Keith Fitzgerald (D-Sarasota) and state Sen. Dan Gelber (D-Miami Beach) to amend the state constitution to reform the Legislature’s appropriations process.

“The proposal these Democratic state lawmakers have offered would require all budget deliberations be done in public and with sufficient advance notice so that the people and the press can witness how the budget is written and what it includes. In addition, the amendment would require that the state’s spending plan is written in plain language to be understandable to the average citizen. It would also require three-fourths of the House or Senate to approve amendments filed in the last five days of a session, in an attempt to end the temptation for legislators to load legislation with favors for special interests and political donors.”

Do Republican Senate hopefuls think they're immune to suspicion?

Thanks to the Miami Herald's Naked Politics blog for pointing out how the two big Republicans running for US Senate don't mind tainted money. Gov. Charlie Crist is going to raise money with a convicted fraudster in Arizona (later pardoned) and Marco Rubio launched his campaign with a bash hosted by the Broward ophthalmologist at the center of a federal corruption indictment.

Business as usual. The word is brazen.

Corruption probe in Florida state government looks big

This has been growing for a couple days now. This Tallahassee story in the Miami Herald and, no doubt, the St. Pete Times too, seems to touch the governor's office and the state legislature.

Republican Gov. Charlie Crist may be in the clear. Former Democratic Gov. Bob Graham seems to be in the maybe clear category too.

It's a federal probe, and when we get a better handle on how big it is, we can ask why our state law enforcement officials, namely former Attorney General Charlie Crist and current Attorney General Bill McCollum (now running for governor in the 2010 election), didn't find out about what their close colleagues were doing.

Meanwhile, just run your cursor around the "Similar Stories" box in the Herald site, and you'll see a quick tutorial on the uses of lobbyist money in dubious fashion in our state capital. It's a nice feature -- a summary of the earlier story pops up without your having to click on it. Thanks, Miami Herald.

Republicans buy votes with hurricane aid

Our public corruption in Florida can be studied scientifically. Yes, out at Stanford University a doctoral student in political science named Jowie Chen has figured out how to look at post-hurricane aid and how it affects voters' behavior, and it was posted on DailyKos Wednesday.

This was a superb demonstration of why we have blogs and why the word science can be used together with political and it's not an oxymoron. Those who look at the 42-page paper (there's a pdf link on the DailyKos post) will be stunned by the complex equations the author developed to take into account wind speed from Hurricane Charley in 2004 and other variables. The report also has beautiful graphically enhanced maps of Florida showing the path of the storm and data reflecting 2.6 million applications for FEMA disaster assistance.

The conclusion was that Republican precincts got more aid. What else would we expect with Republicans in charge in Washington and Tallahassee?

The Kos post also is puzzled that four Florida newspapers won a Freedom of Information suit to obtain the aid applications but none of them has published an analysis. Any thoughts?

UPDATE: And let's not forget Fay. Here's news in Thursday's Miami Herald of Gov Crist's start on getting federal aid for this very wet storm. How about enlisting our Democrats in the state legislature and our CFO Alex Fink to watch over the disbursement?

Busted: Diaz-Balarts in politics of corruption

It’s out in the open, thanks to the Miami Herald. Bravo for the Herald’s “watchdog” report on Monday under Dan Christensen’s byline detailing how Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21) and Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25) parlayed their seats in the U.S. House into fat campaign donations . Read it at this link.

This sort of stuff is why Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia are running strongly against, respectively, Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart.

Joe Garcia’s campaign issued a statement saying:

“These are the politics of corruption that have plagued South Florida for far too long. People with disabilities shouldn’t have to wait for the Diaz-Balarts to receive $10,000 in campaign contributions in order to receive the medical care they deserve. Unfortunately, our veterans and troops didn’t enjoy the luxury of big corporate PAC’s and lobbyists pushing for them when Mario Diaz-Balart voted twice against the new GI Bill.”

Raul Martinez reacted powerfully Monday night in a speech to the Miami-Dade Democratic Party monthly meeting. He said that Lincoln Diaz-Balart had acted oddly a few days earlier when asked about corruption in Washington. “He knew there was a reporter looking into a bill he put up three days after he got a donation,” Martinez said.

This affair made me think of the Diaz-Balarts’ explanation for voting against the SCHIP bill expanding children’s health insurance coverage. They weren’t against children’s health, they said, they were just opposed to the way the bill was to be financed through increased taxes on tobacco products, which would hurt little cigar rollers in Florida. They failed to mention their fat campaign donations from Big Tobacco.

In that case campaign donations led to the Diaz-Balarts’ voting against a bill, while in this case of the Maryland prosthetics company, campaign donations led to proposing a bill.

A strong argument for getting money out of politics.

Don’t neglect to read the Herald’s sidebar story about the company in this case: under investigation for Medicare fraud in Brooklyn, NY, plus a “parallel inquiry” by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

One of the most corrupt: Tom Feeney, FL-24

This morning news came in the Miami Herald reporting that another of Jack Abramoff's political contacts was pleading guilty to corruption. Good, I thought. This is part of the untold rot that came into highest office with George W. Bush, and it's late but here's another one heading for the slammer. That the future jailbird has been an official in the U.S. Department of Justice is also in the category of untold rot.

Then came an email from the Florida Democratic Party reminding me of another example of rot, U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, FL-24. The party is taking out some online ads to remind people of his problem. Click here to look at the ad.

Look at it and think of Abramoff and all he's responsible for -- but not paying for. Like how many degrees of separation are between him and the gangland murder of Gus Boulis? That murder is still awaiting full treatment in the courts. It will take a brave judge and brave jury. Check out Wikipedia on Gus Boulis. This isn't mentioned in today's Herald story, which says Abramoff is doing time on "separate charges." Well, he's in prison for defrauding the late Gus Boulis, who just happened to get murdered seven years ago in Fort Lauderdale after complaining about the fraud. That's how many degrees of separation are between Abramoff and Boulis.

NY Times reveals Florida-Alaska smelly link

This story in Thursday's Times lays out our corrupt politics perfectly. And the corruption is so well camouflaged: the payoff went to a congressman from Alaska but the road to be built is in Florida. It seems that a lot of people are not going to stand for it anymore.

Read it and weep. The crowning touch is that this is the same congressman famous for the "bridge to nowhere." Or is the crowning touch the threat that You better build this road if you ever want any federal money again?

Update: Carl Hiassen picked up on this story for his column in the Sunday Miami Herald. His take. It's the perfect combination of politics, money and endangered wetlands for Hiassen; add an innocent stripper and here comes the next novel.