"I don't believe that any felon should have an automatic restoration of rights," said Bondi, a former Tampa prosecutor elected in November. "I believe you should have to ask, and there should be an appropriate waiting period."
Bondi's proposal, set to be formally discussed at a March 9 Cabinet meeting, would reverse a major change that took place in April 2007 at the urging of former Gov. Charlie Crist, who said the civil rights restoration process in Florida was too cumbersome and cruel to many ex-offenders.
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Bondi outlined her proposal abruptly at the end of the first meeting of a revamped Board of Clemency, at which officials showed a general reluctance to grant pardons or civil rights restorations, even in cases in which the Parole Commission staff recommended they be granted.
In more than a dozen cases, Scott said: "I deny the application." He said later: "The decisions today were very difficult to make."
Poor baby. Being governor is sooo hard.
According to one commenter to the St. Pete post, what Bondi suggests hurls the state back to a policy that dates back to just after the Civil War.
More than 100,000 Florida applicants await review of clemency applications.
Bondi's recommendation appears to be what those in the private sector would call an immediate reducer of the workload. It's backward, narrow and unfair and would likely be overturned in federal court.
(Here's an idea. Wouldn't it be just as timely to automatically restore civil rights as allowable by law? (Read more about who can make application here).
All this prehistoric nonsense from a woman who tied up the court system in attempt to hang on to a dog that was rightfully owned by a couple of Louisiana kids.
Wait long enough and what goes around, will eventually come around.
As reported in an exclusive by The Daily Pulp, the FBI is focused on lobbyist Ron Book.
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In Broward and Tallahassee politics, influence peddling comes in countless forms. Here's one currently under investigation by the federal government:
A powerful lobbyist, seeking to curry favor with a state senator and benefit a major client, helps to secure the senator's boyfriend a job at the development firm the lobbyist represents. The boyfriend also happens to be a Housing Authority honcho who goes on to oversee two new multimillion-dollar publicly financed projects with the very developer who hired him.
This is one scenario that sources say the FBI is currently investigating as part of a major probe that involves recently convicted GOP fundraiser and lobbyist Alan Mendelsohn, who had deep ties to numerous politicians, including former Gov. Charlie Crist, former Senate President Ken Pruitt, embattled Congressman David Rivera, and state Sen. Eleanor Sobel. The same federal investigation also involves several figures from the massive Mutual Benefits Corp. Ponzi scheme, including MBC fraudster Joel Steinger, who is awaiting trial on federal charges himself.
Here are the players in the scenario:
The lobbyist: Ron Book, who represents a host of governments, including Broward County, and private clients, including the Miami Dolphins, as perhaps the most powerful lobbyist in Florida.
The senator: Muriel "Mandy" Dawson, a controversial Democratic legislator who was term-limited from office in 2008. She has longstanding close ties to Book and was implicated in federal court records with having received $87,000 in secret payments from Mendelsohn through her former Senate aide, Veronica Blakely.
The boyfriend: Scott Strawbridge, director of development and facilities at the Fort Lauderdale Housing Authority. Strawbridge began dating Dawson in 2006, and they have since broken up.
The firm: Miami-based Carlisle Development Group, which built the $16 million Housing Authority project at Dixie Court and is slated to demolish and redevelop Dr. Kennedy Homes, the historic public housing development on the south side of Broward Boulevard. That project calls for another $21 million in federal funds. Heading Carlisle is Lloyd Boggio, the former principal of the Cornerstone Group, another major player in the government-subsidized affordable housing industry.
Check out the Book denial over at Bob Norman's blog here.
This Frog is not surprised by the above intermingle. As many who frequent this blog well know, Ron Book utilized his lobbyist ties as the steamroll to legislate residency restrictions for those persons designated as sex offenders by the state of Florida, going as far to use his position of Chairman of the Miami Dade Homeless Trust to segregate persons so classified to live beneath the span of the Julia Tuttle Causeway--a scenario which by any other demographic, let's say restricting the mentally ill to live as legal ordinance would indicate--would have prove a huge conflict of interest by anyone actually paying attention.
Book changed his tune once on Julia Tuttle once the story went international. (Stroll through the Smashed Frogarchives to read more about the man under the federal investigation microscope here).
As an aside, The Miami Herald ran a story Friday, 2/11, tying Book to what would appear to ordinary mortals as yet another obvious conflict--his hiring by a developer to lobby the city he already contracts as a lobbyist.
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A letter from City Attorney Lynn Whitfield to Book notes that his lobbyist agreement with the city “specifically states that you avoid any representation or relation which would create a conflict of interest.”
Book did not return calls for comment. Whitfield’s letter says Book’s relationship with Biscayne Landing developers “constitutes a direct conflict of interest” and “can be considered a breach of your contract with the City.”
Foley — who launched a talk radio show last year and recently flirted with entering the nonpartisan mayor’s race in West Palm Beach — is slowly regaining acceptance among Republicans.
Foley was on the host committee last year for a fund-raiser for Republican Sharon Merchant’s failed state Senate bid. He spoke to a Palm Beach County Young Republicans meeting last week andintroduced new U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, at the grand opening of West’s district office in West Palm Beach Tuesday.
Foley’s speech to the YRs was his first public appearance at a Republican event since his resignation.
Foley had considered a run for mayor of Palm Beach, but felt the time wasn't right. "My mother is still alive. My family, my sisters, my partner, they'd all lived the drama," Foley said. "I'm not certain that they need to be put through the wringer on my behalf or for my political ambitions again."
Back in 2007, then Representative Mark Foley (R) was spirited off into rehab and his House computers cleared upon the discovery of sexually charged e-mails to male congressional pages. The Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus Co-Chair was never charged with the very laws he helped to create, which have ensnared countless individuals and destroyed not only their lives, but their families as well.
