Showing posts with label Perry Thurston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Perry Thurston. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Is Kristin Jacobs poised to become 'the last straw' and the cynical face for voters of the ever-expanding Broward candidate residency scandal? Yet MORE residency problems in Broward County per Media Tracker Florida: Jacobs wants to run for FL House 96 while living in House 93, even while convincing evidence suggests that at least 5 current members of the Broward Legislative Delegation may be knowingly breaking state law, practically daring Broward State's Attorney Mike Satz & Co. to actually do something; Videos by Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norman show he's NOT afraid to go after South Florida's unethical pols and ask the hard questions



Is Kristin Jacobs poised to become 'the last straw' and the cynical face for voters of the ever-expanding Broward candidate residency scandal? Yet MORE residency problems in Broward County per Media Tracker Florida: Jacobs wants to run for FL House 96 while living in House 93, even while convincing evidence suggests that at least 5 current members of the Broward Legislative Delegation may be knowingly breaking state law, practically daring Broward State's Attorney Mike Satz & Co. to actually do something; Videos by Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norman show he's NOT afraid to go after South Florida's unethical pols and ask the hard questions 
Could Kristen Jacobs really be dumb enough to think that she can get away with it, too?
Yes.


Media Tracker Florida
Florida House Candidate Kristin Jacobs Tries to Hide Residency Problems
By Tom Lauder 
July 1, 2013
House of Representatives District 96 candidate Kristin Jacobs asked state election officials to hide her address from the public in the wake of new evidence that suggests she lives outside District 96.
In an affidavit filed with the State of Florida, Jacobs asked state elections officials to redact her home address. The Florida elections website shows Jacobs’ paperwork for the District 96 seat, but her address is blacked out. Jacobs filed for the District 96 seat, but numerous public records show Jacobs actually lives in District 93, which is represented by George Moraitis (R-Fort Lauderdale).
Read the rest of the post at:

Anyone want to guess how many Broward state legislators actually LIVE full-time in the district they were elected to? Anyone?

 It's another one of Broward State's Attorney Mike Satz's lasting legacies to all of us as Broward citizens that he and his crew are unwilling to make an example out of someone breaking the law he is sworn to enforce and prosecute lawbreakers.

Maybe if Sazt & Company had actually gone hammer-and-tong after one of these legislative miscreants a few years ago who thought they could pull the rug over voters' eyes and knowingly violate the Florida Constitution -and told Broward County Commissioners that he'd 'no longer accept their wink-wink residency, too- and abandoned their See No Evil/Hear No Evil/Speak No Evil mindset, the problem wouldn't have mushroomed to the extent that it clearly has while he has been in charge and done NOTHING.

 Yes, Black & White carpetbaggers everywhere you look in Broward!

Unethical politicians hiding in plain-sight are Bob Norman's favorite kind of people to bring the hammer down on: Joe Gibbons, Perry Thurston, Jared Moskowitz, Hazelle Rogers, Maria Sachs...

 Local10 News video: 
 Broward Commissioner's residency claims don't hold up, 
North Miami mayor sued over city's residency rule
Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com
Published On: Jun 25 2013 03:07:21 PM EDT   Updated On: Jun 25 2013 11:00:00 PM EDT, 
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player, 
Related article at: http://www.local10.com/news/more-elected-officials-living-outside-districts/-/1717324/20709398/-/pok1gcz/-/index.html


Local10 News video: 
Florida Democratic leader caught living outside district
Author: Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com

Published On: Jun 12 2013 03:34:55 PM EDT   Updated On: Jun 12 2013 11:00:00 PM EDT

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

 Related article: http://www.local10.com/news/investigation-finds-elected-officials-with-houses-outside-their-districts/-/1717324/20516720/-/bwp40jz/-/index.html

Local10 News video: 
Senator caught on video staying outside district, Maria Sachs has home in Boca Raton, claims to reside in Lauderdale condo
Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com
Published On: Jun 26 2013 04:45:07 PM EDT   Updated On: Jun 26 2013 11:00:00 PM EDT
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
Related article at http://www.local10.com/news/south-floridabased-state-senators-residency-debated/-/1717324/20726464/-/r2lhe4z/-/index.html








And as if there weren't already serious ethical issues involving her, Florida state Senator Maria Sachs sets a now LOW in unethical behavior among South Florida pols.
 Democrat Sachs, who defeated Ellyn Bogdanoff in 2012 and who was endorsed by the Miami Herald, is so lazy & unethical that she even failed to disclose her legislative salary on her required disclosure forms three years in a row.

Palm Beach Post

Editorial: Sachs case shows why ethics laws remain too lax.

Posted: 4:33 p.m. Sunday, June 16, 2013
BY ANDREW MARRA - PALM BEACH POST STAFF WRITER

For three years, state Sen. Maria Sachs, D-Delray Beach, skirted state law by failing to publicly disclose all of her financial assets on mandatory state disclosure forms. When questions were raised before her election last year, she brushed them off as “negative campaigning” and said she had not even bothered to go back and look at the reports.

The Florida Commission on Ethics was not so dismissive. Last week, it announced that it had found probable cause that Sen. Sachs had violated Florida’s disclosure rules for elected officials by not properly reporting her net worth or her ownership of a Tallahassee condo. According to the commission, she failed even to disclose her legislative salary.

These transgressions occurred from 2008 to 2010, and by 2011 Sen. Sachs had begun including the omitted information in her new financial reports. After the ethics commission began an investigation, Sen. Sachs also filed amended forms for the years in question. As a result, the ethics commission said it will not seek to impose fines or take further action.

The senator has said the omissions were unintentional. Accidental or not, she is hardly the first elected official to fail to properly disclose her finances as required by law. Indeed, last week the ethics commission faulted four other current and former legislators for similar failings.

Questions about Sen. Sachs’ financial disclosures were raised last October by Sid Dinerstein, then the chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. His complaint to the ethics commission was baldly political, but Sen. Sachs was wrong to dismiss it out of hand. The requirement that candidates and elected officials disclose their assets reveals to voters any agendas that otherwise would be hidden, and is so fundamental a concept that it is included in the state’s constitution.

The Legislature passed a sweeping ethics reform package this year. But the bill actually makes it easier for officials to correct flawed financial disclosure reports without penalties, and it failed to give the ethics commission the much-needed ability to initiate its own investigations, even into disclosure reports that are obviously flawed. Until that authority is granted, one of the few ways for it to investigate omissions like Sen. Sachs’ will be politically motivated complaints.

Andrew Marra for The Post Editorial Board

-----
After her victory, 
"State Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith sent out a statement congratulating Sachs on her campaign and called her a "rising star" in the state Democratic Party."


 The news directors at CBS4, NBC-6 and 7News and the editors at the Miami Herald need to wake-up from their summer coma and admit that they've been completely asleep on this scandal from the very beginning, and need to acknowledge that there are LOTS of people all over South Florida who HAVE noticed this failure.
And also noticed their complete failure to make a serious effort to catch-up.
Why?

 Why so much resistance to doing hard news?
Of pushing back against elected officials and putting them in their place?
Why are you in your job if you don't want to cover and investigate what people are genuinely interested in that is also important to society?

 And don't think we forgot about you down in Miami-Dade, Frank Artiles, and the way blogger Elaine de Valle caught you a few years ago still living at the home you said you would move out of if you got elected.
My April 21, 20111 blog post on this subject was titled, Elaine de Valle's Political Cortadito blog channels Sherlock Holmes and catches the crook red-handed: FL Rep. Frank Artiles. Blogger 1, Lying Pol 0
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/elaine-de-valles-political-cortadito.html

 Speaking of how many of Broward's legislators live elsewhere, why is it that the website of the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators is managed by a company located in Spain? http://fcbsl.org/  http://www.arsys.es/
When you go to a list of members, on my computer Google Translate pops-up and asks you if you want to translate Spanish. http://www.fcbsl.com/#!/members 
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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Unexpected good news for supporters of Beam Furr's candidacy -look at all the "Usual Suspects" of Broward endorsing feckless, ineffectual, business-as-usual Joe Gibbons for County Commission. Gibbons, the pol who STILL can't answer basic questions about his real job, where he lives and why his life is SO VERY complicated, with a straight face. His job, his wife and his kids are ALL located elsewhere, so are the only things keeping him in Broward his own ego and ambition? How did such a mediocre pol get such lofty ideas about himself? Now THERE'S a question!; same as for Alexander Lewy now that you mention it

A week before some of us concerned citizens in Hallandale Beach were seeking to appeal to the Broward County Commission's good judgment, and direct them to have County Auditor Evan Lukic's office perform a thorough top-to-bottom audit of the Hallandale Beach CRA so we can all see just where the tens of millions of CRA dollars really went over the past few years, since it's clear there are too many missing documents, unanswered questions and outright lies and disinformation from current and former elected officials and administrators, we were once again reminded of how very poor that judgment of their's so often is.

 Broward Bulldog
Broward Auditor looks at Hallandale Beach CRA with eye toward recovering misspent funds
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
May 13, 2013 AT 6:08 AM
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/05/broward-auditor-looks-at-hallandale-beach-cra-with-eye-toward-recovering-misspent-funds/

 My post on this of last week:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/mark-your-calendar-for-june-4th-latest.html

That friendly reminder comes courtesy of Tuesday's Broward Politics blog and a piece by Brittany Wallman detailing that four members of the current Broward Commission are foolishly supporting undistinguished no-account Joe Gibbons over Beam Furr in the 2014 race to replace incumbent and term-limited District 6 member Sue Gunzburger, who, months ago  endorsed moderate, Good Government-type Furr, the former Hollywood City Commissioner whose district  was just north of HB and Pembroke Road and west of U.S.-1, and which is currently held by Peter Hernandez.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward Politics blog
County Commission wants Gibbons elected
By Brittany Wallman
1:38 p.m. EDT, May 28, 2013
Read the post at 
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/broward-politics-blog/sfl-county-commission-wants-gibbons-elected-20130528,0,3207643.story

In my own personal estimation, Beam Furr is someone whose quality character, serious work ethic and problem-solving personality is much more-attuned to the genuine concerns of southeast Broward's most-concerned residents than the disingenuous and unproductive Gibbons, who spends so much time away from the area, and whose actual "residency" as such is more implied and assumed than ever proven to a reasonable degree that would satisfy people who know the true facts.

But then given how very reluctant the local South Florida news media and local law enforcement officials have been to take a public stand against Joe Gibbons and similarly situated elected officials in South Florida, and FOR the letter and spirit of the actual laws of the state -with the exception Bob Norman of Channel 10 and his wife Brittany Wallman of the Sun-Sentinel- versus the wink-and-a-nod approach long taken towards ethics and rules by the leaders and foot soldiers of Broward  Democratic Party chief Mitch Caeser's team, it's no wonder that so few Broward residents know the true facts about Gibbons, despite how many years he has been engaging in this strange tale of his and I've been writing about it.

 BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes
House Pro Tem Investigated for Homestead Fraud
By Bob Norman
November 15 2010 at 10:15 AM
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/11/joe_gibbons_investigated_homestead_fraud.php

 County Commission candidate's ties to Broward questioned
Gibbons' wife, young kids live elsewhere
By Brittany Wallman, Sun Sentinel
April 12, 2013
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-04-12/news/fl-joe-gibbons-homestead-20130406_1_joe-gibbons-homestead-exemption-d-hallandale-beach

 State attorney probed Gibbons' campaign funds 
By Brittany Wallman
11:14 a.m. EDT, April 15, 2013, 
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-04-15/news/sfl-state-attorney-probed-gibbons-campaign-spending-20130415_1_joe-gibbons-sloppy-bookkeeping-memo

 To add to the list of media and law enforcement's failed opportunities you could also add the general weakness and the dog-chasing-its-tail fecklessness of Broward County Republicans, and their inability or unwillingness to go after all the low-hanging fruit.
Their failure to mount a smart and fact-based civic offensive against Gibbons and others in the Broward Dem Party's leadership with gaping holes in their claims to meeting state residency requirements.

 A real professional media campaign  that tears off the thin facade Gibbons and others have used as a shield for years, with facts that can not be disproved or labeled mere allegations.
Some things are either true or they're not, and when you know that people are engaging in a public charade, you don't do the public any favors by tolerating people in your midst who are breaking the spirit and letter of the rules and laws, no matter how much it might embarrass the guilty parties. 

 In case you doubt me on this...
Los Angeles Times
Indiana secretary of state convicted of voter fraud
February 4, 2012  1:17 pm

 As If I haven't already mentioned this subject a hundred times before here in this space -or is it more than a hundred?- when it comes to Gibbons and his ever-changing narrative, alibis, excuses and rationales that are contrary to how 99.9% of the people in this county live their life.

 Joe Gibbons is NOT a professional athlete, an airline pilot, an FBI agent or a Navy SEAL, all people who spend lots of time away from their homes and their families, yet for some unexplained reason, nobody in South Florida's enormous press corps has ever simply walked-up to Gibbons with a microphone and asks him how come he can't either get a job in South Florida, instead of with a law firm in Tallahassee, or, doesn't simply resign and actually get a job where his wife and children live.
Imagine that! 

 Really, as if I needed even more reasons to be supportive of Beam Furr's candidacy!

 Today's piece by Wallman contains a list of Broward's "Ususal Suspects" -below- who are sponsors of an upcoming Joe Gibbons fundraiser, and it's not just that it's composed of 4 of members of the current County Commission, but also includes some of Gibbons' quite unremarkable and under-performing friends from the legislature representing Broward.

 People who are without any tangible accomplishment other than showing a real knack for whining and complaining instead of generating genuine good ideas for citizens and businesses that are actually popular with Florida taxpayers and their colleagues in Tallahassee which will improve the area's Quality of Life.
It's not just salaries that have been stagnant in South Florida the past 25 years, it's the Quality-of-Life.

 Of course, the fact that these pols really DON'T see how their public endorsement of oleaginous  Gibbons is a BIG PLUS for Furr among people who want real public accountability instead of more of the usual politics-as-usual that causes Broward to remain so mediocre in so many ways, is pretty funny to me and many of my friends.

 Frankly, we only wish this exact same crew of characters would have a fundraiser for Gibbons every month until the August 2014 primary, because then it'd give voters and the news media plenty of opportunities over the next 14 months to ask them just what it is, exactly, that Gibbons is so adept or masterful at that would make him a good County Commissioner?

 I ask because nobody-but-nobody sings his praises as a hard worker or public speaker or behind-the-scenes font of knowledge who makes logical arguments that sway opponents.
Not even other Broward Democrats who know him would say that with a straight face, so, what explains this great fascination to publicly endorse such an under-performing person before he's said even one thing publicly about what he thinks he could do at the Commission that others couldn't?
Now THERE'S a real good question the news media ought to be asking him and his pals!

The names on that list made public by the Sun-Sentinel's Wallman are precisely why I wrote here weeks ago -and told some of you in-person weeks before that- that my intuition was that state Senator Jeremy Ring of northern Broward County, a Democrat who's very respected by Republicans in Tallahassee, would likely play much more of a role in getting that long-overdue audit of the corrupt, incompetent HB CRA that we are owed -and which HB Mayor Joy Cooper has been so adamant about NOT allowing- than most people thought.

 That Cooper opposes a thorough audit of the HB CRA is quite understandable when you know that the facts that come out of it will inevitably reflect very negatively on her and her personal neglect and culpability while she has been mayor for the past ten years and was supposed to be looking-out for residents, not taking advantage of them.

 As well the facts would, given that Cooper was driving the CRA for so long to do the very things it did, however unsavory it appeared to Good Government types like me or my friends in SE Broward.
She didn't care about that, she cared about getting what she wanted and what helped her politically. Period.

 That the Gibbons fundraiser is -surprise- NOT being held within his own state House District -nothing for you HB, West Park, Pembroke Park and Miramar! is par for the course.
Yes, just like his last state House race had its mailing address outside of the district.

 Here are the names again for the record: Broward School Board District 2 member Patricia Good; Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis and Commissioner Iris Siple; Broward County Commissioners Dale Holness, Martin Kiar, Stacy Ritter and Lois Wexler; state Reps Jim Waldman and Perry Thurston. 

What is it about NOT representing this area except in the legislature that animates this strange character named Gibbons, since it's clearly NOT about making the community better?

 But then I could say the same thing about the person whom fundraiser sponsor and Comm. Marty Kiar most resembles politically around HB, City Comm. Alexander Lewy, aka Lewy the Liar, who is running to replace Gibbons in state House 100 next year.

 (Of course, quite a lot of pro-reform people I know in HB say 'good riddance' however you can rid this town of Lewy and the strange tenets of Lewyism, like the urge to always create a bigger government job corps, but me, well, I think of the genuine harm he could do up in Tallahassee while exerting no real power, while simultaneously getting an even more swelled head and high opinion of himself, despite having never really done any heavy lifting of any kind, since I really don't like to reward that sort of thing. Me, I'm looking quite forward to voting against Lewy next year.)

Seeing Kiar's name on this list of back-slappers is absolutely no surprise, since he shares a lot of the worst aspects and elements of the mentality and ideology of Lewy -which is to say that he's 99.9% ego & ambition, .01% sincerity.
Like Lewy, he's not just shallow like the shallow end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, he's shallow like a store-bought pool that has no depth of any kind.

 All these many months later and the public has still never been told by the South Florida news media how Kiar explains how it came to be that the Broward County Commission districts were redrawn in such a way that the only precinct in Kiar's hometown of Davie that made it into District 1, Comm. Ilene Lieberman's old district, was, yes, Kiar's.
What a small world!!!

 The small convenient world of Broward politics-as-usual where people with power have favors done for them behind-the-scenes by other people with power, and the public is never the wiser -and the press corps just keeps snoozing the afternoon away.

 I mentioned this fact twice last year on the blog and have referenced it a few times in emails, all while the two local newspapers and TV stations made almost no effort to find out the answer.

May 2, 2012
When, if ever, is the sleepwalking South Florida news media going to demand that Broward County Comm. candidate Marty Kiar publicly answer questions about how his one precinct in Davie was the one placed in District 1? The silence on this matter is positively deafening, but the questions WON'T go away

May 9, 2012
The curious case of Broward County Comm. candidate Marty Kiar's Tweets, which, for me, are more revealing for what they DON'T say
Oh, and since you would not have read this elsewhere, Gibbons-supporter Kiar missed that first 911 County Commission meeting last month that everyone in the news media said was so damn urgent.
Never mentioned was why Kiar was missing on what was expected to be a close vote and naturally, South Florida's news media cooperated by never bothering to ask him.
Guess it wasn't so urgent after all.

Noticeable by his absence on this party list is Broward Comm. Tim Ryan, which is a good thing from my perspective, since he's someone I've long admired since returning to South Florida from the Washington, D.C. where I lived and worked for 15 years.
Ryan is such a scrupulously ethical and big idea guy, and someone who actually got meaningful ethics legislation passed while he was in the state legislature, unlike Joe Gibbons, Steve Geller and Eleanor Sobel, all of whom have been under-performers for Hallandale Beach residents in so many different areas that I can't even let myself get sidetracked by mentioning them all here.

 There's still lots of interesting things yet to emerge publicly about Joe Gibbons, and I know some of them myself.
Reasonable questions and facts that will cause people with open minds to question his credibility and basic honesty, especially not just his odd "arrangement" with his wife and children who don't live with him, but what he actually did/does for HER former business and the true level of his involvement with it.
There's much more there than you have heard or read thus far, if you just know where to look.
I do.

 In the end, the main reason for the beleaguered residents of Hallandale Beach to be against Gibbons is the simplest one: he's NEVER been a very good or even reliable representative for this community's best long-term interests.

 While it's never been reported publicly in the two newspapers or on TV, anyone who has been paying even the slightest amount of attention to what goes on in this community -or been reading this blog- knows that Joe Gibbons has NEVER been helpful to the residents of this city who want genuine reform, meaningful transparency and public accountability at HB City Hall.

 Joe Gibbons has been totally AWOL for years, whether it was the case of the unpopular and incompatible Diplomat LAC project championed by Mayor Cooper that was eventually defeated by the County Commission, the longstanding HB CRA corruption, or even the red-light cameras and how they came to be introduced into this community by Mayor Cooper as a revenue-generator, not a tool for public safety, and placed on streets that were not where they were most-needed.

 Joe Gibbons has had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing and he has always done nothing.
Why would you think he'd be any different in representing you as a Broward County Commissioner?

 We DON'T want a do-nothing County Commissioner who just goes along with whatever the dominant political establishment wants, like so many pols in South Florida.
No thanks! 

Gibbons showing-up on Election Day at the HB Cultural Center doesn't make up for all that, esp. if you saw the crowd of misfits that he hung with while there. 
Not surprisingly, it was the very defenders and architects of the mess at the CRA, the people who always have their hand out for CRA and taxpayer money, not the people in this community who want the WHOLE TRUTH and nothing but the truth.
Again, as if I needed more reasons to be supportive of Beam Furr.

Depending upon my schedule in June, I might even swing by the Gibbons fundraising event in Fort Lauderdale in a few weeks and park myself outside the restaurant and take photos of all the local pols and bundlers going inside to tell this useless elected official how great he is, and place it here on my blog for all to see.
You're more than welcome to join me!

 -----
Given how much I wrote about this recently here on the blog, I suppose I should remind you readers that All Aboard Florida is having their after-the-fact scoping meeting Wednesday afternoon in Fort Lauderdale.

 But because there will be no presentation of any kind, just handouts and perhaps a video running somewhere on a screen, plus, no doubt, some attractive female PR types to chat everyone up, to me, it looks to have all the hallmarks of walking into a room where everyone there wants there you to either sign-up for a new cell phone provider or a new credit card -an immediate U-Turn for me.

 Which is to say that I won't be going due to the lack of real information and feedback, and instead, will be going to Hollywood City Hall for their important joint CRA/City Comm. mtg,
on Margaritaville at 5 p.m.
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Sunday, May 5, 2013

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif. due to the lack of serious reporters here, but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident named Dargenson is running for NMB City Commission, and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif., but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident is running for NMB City Commission and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?
If you ask me, it's too bad for South Florida's continually-beleaguered citizenry that FL state House Reps Frank Artiles, Joe Gibbons and Perry Thurston and FL state Senator Maria Sachs have never been forced by the powers-that-be in Tallahassee to publicly explain themselves and their very curious living situations.
Under oath 
In public.

 Unlike Council candidate Chin Ho Liao in San Gabriel, CA, who was actually elected but not seated.
Oh, the great questions we'd all have all loved to have peppered our local political miscreants under oath with!

 Speaking of carpetbaggers, if you haven't already been reading what straight-talking blogger Stephanie Kienzle has been saying with real vigor and much-deserved anger the past few weeks about North Miami Beach's faux City Commission candidate, Yvenoline “Yves” Dargenson -a woman who lives in Miramar, i.e. Broward County!- please do yourself a big favor and do so today via her blog, http://www.votersopinion.com/

 You won't regret it because Stephanie gives you a very clear look at the corruption and illegality that passes for "normal" in South Florida politics and government these days, where far too many candidates and elected officials can seemingly break clear-cut rules about their prescribed conduct and behavior with relative impunity.

 And the existing legal institutions that are supposed to keep people within the clearly-defined parameters of the law, instead, seem content to just shrug their shoulders and to let THEM dictate what the rules are to the public, putting everything upside-down.

 Dargenson is the Broward County resident who running for a City Commission seat in a Miami-Dade city, and to both Stephanie and myself, she's someone who has a lot to to answer for publicly after the M-D Supervisor of Elections ruled that she lives in the City of Miramar.

 But but based on what I'm hearing and reading, a Miami-Dade judge, Darrin P. Gayles, did
what M-D circuit court judges have been doing a lot of ever since my family first moved to Miami in 1968 -making bad decisions for the community and letting guilty parties walk.
Or, in this case with Dargenson, run for office in a county she does NOT live in.
No, it seems to have very little to do with upholding the state's laws or with getting justice for NMB's voters, to say nothing of actually adhering to Florida's Constitution.

 Even more than usual, Stephanie has lots of great nuggets in her recent blog posts about the longstanding culture of corruption in NMB and North Miami, and actually makes the case that it's actually threatening to grow exponentially in NMB as a result of all the unethical goings-on in next-door North Miami that local and state law enforcement have been ignoring.

 Ignoring it, it seems to me, in part at least, because so many of the people engaging in this
unethical political behavior in Northeast Dade are Haitian-Americans, a rapidly-growing voter bloc now compared to Non-Hispanic Whites in Miami-Dade County, and a demographic that is courted by candidates in ways that were not imaginable even thirty years ago, just a few years after I graduated from NMB High School, followed three years later bv my sister.

 Perhaps nobody exemplified this cultural change as much as North Miami's oft-charged but never-convicted-thus-far incumbent mayor, Andre Pierre, though there are others on both sides of the border who are nearly as brazen.

 Seriously, did you really expect the political crooks and their cronies in NMB not to notice the fact that nobody was being prosecuted in North Miami for what they do, no matter how self-evident?

 Out in San Gabriel, California, you have the cancers of ethnic identity politics and carpetbagging at work, but with a Chinese-American patina, and a town that wants to go old-style New England and make the person accused of wrong-doing convince them that they have not broken the spirit and letter of the law.

 Meanwhile in North Miami and North Miami Beach you just have... oh, right -the same things, just with Haitian-Americanss, instead.
Plus, thinly-disguised Black racism and grievance politics as both the facts-on-the-ground and reader comments to this piece make clear.

Los Angeles Times
San Gabriel council deems itself judge over election results
By Frank Shyong, Los Angeles Times
April 27, 2013, 8:45 p.m.
San Gabriel Councilman-elect Chin Ho Liao was the second highest vote-getter in the city's March elections, but his first time on the council dais last week was as a witness under cross-examination.
The City Council voted not to seat Liao after resident Fred Paine filed a complaint alleging that Liao's true residence is outside of the city's borders. Though Liao has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to contest the council's vote, the city has also created its own hearing process to determine Liao's residency.
Read the rest of the article at:

I can't help but wonder if this is what the good residents of North Miami Beach can look forward to dealing with in the coming weeks if a sufficient number of Haitian-American voters there are prepared to simply cast common sense and the facts aside, and vote for a woman who doesn't even live in their city, simply because Dargenson is Haitian-American, too.

 Well, it's not like local Miami TV stations have spent any real time covering what's been going on there, now is it?
No, today, two days before the May 7th election, CBS4, NBC6, 7News and Local10 are all guilty of NOT doing a single story on Yvenoline Dargenson.

 Seriously, given what this woman is attempting to do by blowing a hole in even the most basic requirement for candidate eligibility, how can that be so?
How can every single English-language TV station news operation in Miami just ignore this?
That, my friends, is the low level to which South Florida journalism has sunk to -a complete lack of curiosity.

 It's as if they're waiting for her to win before covering it, no?

 For more on the very curious and perhaps even unethical living arrangements of FL House Reps Gibbons and Thurston and FL state Senator Sachs, please see an archive of Tom Lauder's recent pieces on residency requirements at Florida Media Trackers
http://florida.mediatrackers.org/author/toml/

 It makes for interesting reading, and the fact that the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office has gotten involved so many times in these cases -esp. with Gibbbons, who clearly didn't comply with the law- only shows how egregious the lack of serious reporting on this subject has been in South Florida over the years.
These pols have positively dared reporters to say what is right in front of us.

 I'm sorry to say it, but it also appears from the all the available evidence that some local African-American reporters, columnists and editors down here have been very easy on both Gibbons and Thurston for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism, but everything to do with either shared political ideology or friendship.
(Whatever happened to the proscribed arms-length relationship between reporters and subjects?)

I've commented on it here before, because otherwise, how do you reasonably explain the fact that the Sun-Sentinel's Douglas Lyons has scrupulously avoided mentioning this obvious residency issue for years, despite how often he has mentioned Thurston and Gibbons, quoted them and interviewed them?
What is his excuse, anyway?

 Trust me, despite whatever it says on their resumes, Lyons and other reporters at the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald  don't think they have to answer to readers, and I know about him because I've given him plenty of opportunities over the past few years and all he's done is nothing but sit there like a bump on a log.
That's who he is, you shouldn't count on suddenly getting any candor from him that you can have any faith in.
Lyons considers his refusal to ask reasonable questions, esp. of them, a dead issue.

 Just another reason that I hope the Sun-Sentinel is sold very soon and that there's a great house-cleaning/bloodletting there to make that newspaper something it hasn't been in years -relevant and worth reading.
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Thursday, March 4, 2010

Perennial defender of the unethical and the slipshod: Joe Gibbons. Call him a serial apologist and be done with it!

My pithy comments about my embarrassing
State Representative, Joe Gibbons, follow the article.

St. Petersburg Times
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/psc-ethics-reforms-sail-through-senate-bog-down-in-house/1077245#
Ethics bill for PSC stalls in House By Mary Ellen Klas and Steve Bousquet,
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE — A bill aimed at tightening the ethics rules at the Public Service Commission flew through the Florida Senate Wednesday and then became snagged by a House committee, which raised red flags about some parts of the measure.

With no debate, the Senate passed the bill aimed at ending improper communications between commissioners or senior staff members and the utilities the agency regulates.

The vote was 39-1 with Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, the lone no vote.

Senate President Jeff Atwater applauded the measure's sponsor, Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, for championing the issue. The Senate made the issue a top priority by approving the bill on the second day of session.

The bill would ban private conversations between commissioners or their staff aides and anyone with a pending rate case. Last year, PSC staff members and commissioners communicated through text and BlackBerry messages with Florida Power & Light representatives as they were awaiting PSC rulings on several issues. A PSC lobbyist also attended a Kentucky Derby party last May hosted by a Florida Power & Light executive.

Fasano called the episodes "egregious violations of the public trust."

The measure doesn't prohibit all communication between commissioners and staffers with utility officials. Instead, it requires that any conversations that take place must be written down and posted within 72 hours.

The bill also requires commissioners to apply the same ethical standards as judges when ruling on a rate case, and it would ban senior staffers and commissioners from leaving the agency and going to work for a utility company within four years.

Minutes after the Senate vote, the House Energy and Utilities Policy Committee debated but did not vote on the companion bill by Rep. John Legg, R-New Port Richey, as well as two other PSC-related bills.

Several House Democrats led the opposition to the four-year employment ban in Legg's bill. The ban would not affect current PSC members or staffers but would apply only to anyone hired after July 1.

"We're going to run people out of the industry or run people out of state," said Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach. "By making it four years, we make the industry less attractive."

Legg argued that when commissioners or key staff members cross over and work for utilities they once regulated, it smacks of "consumer exploitation."

Another PSC-related bill by Rep. Tom Anderson, R-Dunedin, would ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment to make commission seats elected positions rather than appointed. State law now requires a nominating council to recommend candidates to the governor, who selects from that list to choose appointees to the five-member commission.

The measure would also ban candidates from accepting campaign contributions from regulated utilities. Florida had an elected PSC until the 1970s.

Also Wednesday, the rate case was back in the news as the First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee overruled the PSC's order to force FPL and Progress Energy of St. Petersburg to disclose employee salary and benefits packages as part of their rate case requests. FPL's rate case ended with the company getting $75 million of the $1.3 billion it requested. Progress got none of its $500 million increase.


See also, Sansom wants Rep. Joe Gibbons off panel, from
The Buzz politics blog of Feb. 15, 2010
http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2010/02/sansom-wants-rep-joe-gibbons-off-panel.html

Way to bring attention to yourself, Gibbons!
Another sad and pathetic example of the Hallandale Beach ethical taint,
writ large, as yet another Akerman Senterfitt consultant shows his
version of thinking 'big picture' -creating jobs for pals, cronies and
prospective clients.

For me, this recalls so many exasperating Hallandale Beach City
Commission meetings I've attended in the past where, rather than
do what was right, Gibbons continually tried everyone's patience
and credulity by trying to simultaneously appear both publicly
above-the-fray, yet also a savvy insider and wheeler-dealer,
the latter role of which he was eminently laughable in.

(Not unlike present-day HB Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders'
recent attempts to appear savvy and demanding with the Westin
Diplomat Resort & Spa over their preposterous LAC proposal
rubber-stamped and wink-winked by the HB City Commission.)
In Gibbons' particular case, his two-faced strategy was never more
obvious or absurd than in his long-winded attempts at HB City
Commission meetings to gain concessions or some small handfuls
of sugar from Magna Entertainment's Gulfstream Park
Race Track & Casino.

Instead, all Gibbons accomplished was looking like a two-faced
pol who argues not over matters of principle, but rather over price
-Where's something for me and mine?

Honestly, why do ethical issues continue to be such a serial problem
for my State Representative, Joe Gibbons?

Per my blog post here on Saturday, February 27th,
Missing voices in Broward County's ethics debate are ignored
by South Florida news media. It's our old media friend:
Mr. Lack of Curiosity!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/missing-voices-in-broward-countys.html
discussing last month's very important Broward Legislative Delegation
meeting at the downtown Fort Lauderdale campus of FAU/BCC
on Las Olas to discuss State Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff's common sense
ethics proposal for an IG for Broward County, Gibbons, just like
State Sen. Chris Smith and State Rep. Perry Thurston III,
were no Profiles in Courage, though Gibbons at least voted for it
in the end, unlike the other two, though doing himself no favors with
his comments or attitude.

Plus, Gibbons has always been perceived as an apologist for
Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper and city manager
Mike Good serial incompetence and has consistently looked
the other way when unethical and anti-democratic things
happened either right in front of him, or in his district,
as continues to this very day.

Seriously, when was the last time Gibbons publicly spoke-out
against what everyone paying serious attention knows has been
taking place at Hallandale Beach City Hall for years?

The answer is that Joe Gibbons NEVER has.
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/sections/representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=4400&SessionId=64

Whether coming or going, as a Hallandale Beach City Commissioner
or State Representative, Joe Gibbons has never ever been a
Profile in Courage.

He is imminently replaceable in the State Legislature, even if he doesn't
quite have the good sense to realize it.
Fine -all the better.

If a candidate with integrity and smarts ran directly at Joe Gibbons
and his dismal track record, I'd vote for them in a heart-beat and
so would most of the well-informed people I know and respect in
Southeast Broward County.
Just saying...
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