Please sir, may I have some more?

By Capt. Fogg

Pecunia non olet said Vaspasian, or so they say. Money doesn't stink, or so you'd think when looking at the way Florida governor Rick Scott laps it up like a cat with spilt milk. Showing up Monday at a  Boca Raton, Florida home of GEO Group CEO George Zoley for his $10,000 a plate fundraiser ( another $3K if you want to come to the reception) would suggest that Scott can't smell dirty money, as Zoley's company is in the business of running private prisons -- some say the worst in the country -- that squeeze the life and health out of prisoners as well as exposing the guards to unnecessary danger.



Of course it may be that Scott smells it all too well and, like a culture, is attracted to the smell of graft and corruption and human suffering. You'll recall his involvement with the largest Medicare fraud ever exposed. You may not recall that Zoley gave Mr. Scott $20,000 to add to the $800,000 of taxpayer money to pimp up the governor's mansion. Yes, it was a drop in the bucket compared to the great flood of lobbyist money soaked up by the Governor, but Scott is not one to forget his obligations to contributors.



No money doesn't care who owns it and it doesn't stink even though the people and deeds connected to it may reek. The dollars saved by understaffing prisons and serving substandard, sometimes maggot infested food to prisoners adult and juvenile affirm his credentials with his party and particularly because so many of the inmates rotting and starving and being beaten in GEO prisons are immigrants. Last year a group of protesters chained themselves to the doors of the GEO Group corporate headquarters in Palm Beach in protest over GEO's "pivotal role in promoting discriminatory laws that target people of color, 
immigrants, youth, transgender individuals, and the poor." There have been hunger strikes. There have been investigations looking into accusations that inmates were being served rotten food and suffering from food poisoning at the Broward County, Florida facility. There were also allegations of sexual assault among detainees and reports of several suicide attempts says the Broward/Palm Beach NewTimes blog. Did I mention that Scott is a Republican?



But we can't accuse old snake eyes of total blindness to appearances. After all Zoley was a second choice after it became known that the original host, real estate mogul James Batmasian, was convicted of tax evasion in 2008. Batmasian, who spent eight months in federal prison and completed a two-year supervised release program, also had his legal license suspended in Florida. That stinks, even if his money doesn't. It stinks almost as much as his rather dishonest and scurrilous accusations made against his likely opponent, Charley Crist, but to his supporters it doesn't matter any more than facts do. Rick Scott saved us money by abusing prisoners and a penny saved is a penny you can spend on yourself. And besides, prisoners can't vote.
(Cross posted at (Human Voices)

Grimm fraudster: Indicting one of the GOP's leading bullies

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You probably remember Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY -- Staten Island, to be precise) as the guy who threatened violence (murder, perhaps) against a reporter earlier this year. While the media insisted on giving him a platform as a national security "expert" (he was on CNN talking about MH370, fitting in nicely with that network's, and specifically host Don Lemon's, atrocious coverage of that story), he's basically just a violent thug, a goon even by Republican standards. And now he's facing justice:

The FBI arrested New York Congressman Michael Grimm -- a former FBI agent -- on fraud and perjury charges today and then ripped into him for dishonoring the FBI code.

Grimm, a Republican from New York City's borough of Staten Island, surrendered to the FBI this morning. After taking him into custody FBI Assistant Director George Venizelos issued a scathing assessment of Grimm.

"As a former FBI agent, Representative Grimm should understand the motto: fidelity, bravery, and integrity. Yet he broke our credo at nearly every turn. In this twenty-count indictment, Representative Grimm lived by a new motto: fraud, perjury, and obstruction," Venizelos said...

Grimm, 44, a former Marine as well as an ex-FBI agent, was indicted on charges of fraud, perjury and obstruction.

To say the least, he's an embarrassment to the FBI, the Marines, Congress, and his constituents. Hopefully he gets what he deserves.

Keepin' it white

By Capt. Fogg

In general, I support the laws allowing most licensed and qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons in most places. Here in Florida, someone who has a permit does nonetheless not have the legal right to carry weapons in many areas, like courthouses, police stations, schools, stadiums, and, of course, bars. A national political convention, however, where emotions run high, where the attitudes resemble the local stop-and-sock tavern, and where people whom other people would like to harm are present, would seem to be another proper exception. 

I'm afraid it's not so in Florida, where during the upcoming RNC in Tampa, squirt guns, pieces of chain, ropes, and other items which might be used to harm or at least get people wet are strictly illegal, Republican Governor Rick Scott seems likely to refuse the City Council's request to keep guns out of the convention. You can bring your Beretta, but leave the Super Soaker at home.

There are other reasons, of course, to wonder how Scott gets away with avoiding the other common nickname for Richard. No, I'm not talking about his rejection of federal funds, because, as he says, hiring people kills jobs, and I'm not talking about the dozen or so felonies his company committed in a billion dollar orgy of Medicare fraud. I'm not even referring to his recent attempt to "purge" the Florida voter rolls of likely Democrats. This time "Rick" deserves a nice cold blast from one of those banned squirt guns for neglecting to tell nearly 18,000 Floridians that their voting rights have been restored and that they can now register. I'm sure he has forgotten how a few hundred votes can put a president whom the majority of voters did not vote for into office. Otherwise, he would be ashamed, right?  

Or maybe he is out of the loop once again. Maybe he just didn't know, the way he didn't know about the 1 billion, 700 million dollar Columbia/HCA Medicare fraud -- in charge but not guilty by virtue of some ineffable virtue and of course well deserving of his severance package of 10 million dollars, 300 million in stock, and a million a year "consulting" fee.

I wonder what he'll make for his part in defrauding America this time, his help in making the White House white again.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)

Bad polling: Daily Kos, Research 2000, and media credibility

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard already, it seems that Research 2000, the polling firm that has conducted a "State of the Nation" poll for Daily Kos, was, to be blunt, full of shit, according to some statisticians who looked into its work. As Markos Moulitsas himself put it, explaining what happened:

We contracted with Research 2000 to conduct polling and to provide us with the results of their surveys. Based on the report of the statisticians, it's clear that we did not get what we paid for. We were defrauded by Research 2000, and while we don't know if some or all of the data was fabricated or manipulated beyond recognition, we know we can't trust it. Meanwhile, Research 2000 has refused to offer any explanation.

While the investigation didn't look at all of Research 2000 polling conducted for us, fact is I no longer have any confidence in any of it, and neither should anyone else. I ask that all poll tracking sites remove any Research 2000 polls commissioned by us from their databases. I hereby renounce any post we've written based exclusively on Research 2000 polling.

Not good. But, much to his credit, Markos isn't trying to hide anything -- see the post linked/quoted above as well as this one, which looks at what the statisticians uncovered in significant detail -- and, once he learned of the problem, he immediately took action.

My concern is that this whole episode will discredit not just Daily Kos, and not just liberal blogs generally, but any independent/alternative media outlet. The media establishment, particularly in the political world, is already deeply suspicious of, threatened by, and antagonistic towards, non-establishment outlets. In some cases, such suspicion is justified. Certainly not all bloggers, for example, are credible sources of information or thoughtful purveyors of opinion. But the "mainstream" media have their own problems with credibility and thoughtfulness, of course, and, to me, it is essential that the media landscape includes not just establishment outlets (many with a corporate agenda) but alternative voices from across the spectrum. And those alternative voices can be just as essential to political discourse as, say, MSNBC or The Washington Post. And they can be, and must be, just as credible, too.

In this case, Daily Kos may be blamed for publishing fraudulent poll results. The message would be that such alternative voices simply cannot be trusted. Even if they are not blinded by ideology, they are just amateurish. As Markos notes, though, "Research 2000 had a good reputation in political circles," and its clients included a number of "mainstream" media outlets, including network TV affiliates and major newspapers. Josh Marshall, calling the story a "bombshell," concurs: "R2K didn't start out as Kos's pollster. They've been around for some time and had developed a pretty solid reputation."

Which is to say, it wasn't necessarily Kos's fault, and the fraud didn't necessarily happen because Daily Kos, or Markos himself, wanted the results to fit any sort of left-wing agenda. Again, Markos is taking action, with a lawsuit to be filed, and that speaks to the seriousness with which this problem is being addressed. I assume that some on the right (but thankfully not thoughtful conservatives like Ed Morrissey), and perhaps also in the media establishment, will try to turn this against Kos, taking predictable shots, as well as against liberal blogs and independent/alternative media generally, but it seems to me that Markos is being admirably responsible, and responsive, in making sure that his site, an essential destination in the blogosphere (and not just for those on the left), is as credible as possible.