Culture of Corruption in South Florida

[Gato Moteado]

Hey DUers.....I just posted this in GD but it definitely needs to be seen here as well. It's an important story with an appeal for help at the end. Florida DUers, especially, take note...but this kind of stuff is happening everywhere, so we all need to make a stand and stamp this stuff out when we see it. Mods, if this is in the wrong forum, please let me know.

As some of you might know, I used to live in South Florida before I moved to Austin and then Costa Rica. I still have friends in South Dade County and in the last 5 or 10 years, my old community and other communities around Florida and other states have been duped into incorporating by a right wing corporate cabal that instantly takes control of the local government and uses their power to stay in power indefinitely and steal as much as they can from the community, stepping on people that try to fight back. I alerted an old friend of mine who is a veteran campaigner for the dems and for green causes. He's down there now working like mad to try to overthrow these thugs in this one community. The following is a note he wrote that he would like to get out to people here at DU and elsewhere and it will hopefully morph into a press release shortly....elections are in two weeks and they're making headway but they're running out of time:

A Report from the Field in South Florida

My name is John McNally, and I am a long time environmental activist and campaign professional who was about to join a statewide race in Texas when friends called, urging me to join them in a small scale insurgent campaign near Miami.

While news organizations and the chattering classes have focused on the big names and marquee races in this tumultuous election cycle, many of us sense there are forces at play with potentially huge significance in various overlooked corners of the land. This lack of scrutiny almost guarantees that powerful interests can reorder the world to suit themselves – the public, our institutions, and the environment be damned.

That is especially true in a state like Florida, where the culture of corruption is so widely and deeply established. So I drove down to south Dade County, where I found an incredible story and a key race, in the town of Cutler Bay. I learned there is more at stake in this small town’s campaign for mayor than I could possibly have imagined.

Cutler Bay, once known as Cutler Ridge before a disastrous incorporation coup occurred in 2005, is a prime example of how the combined powers of big money, shadowy entrenched interests and shameless office holders are stealing our neighborhoods, our freedoms and our very way of life. This once friendly, laid back, blue collar community has been captured by a cabal of secretive corporate operatives and their henchmen. The spear carriers of Cutler Bay’s masters come in the in the guise of pathetic, hungry-for-favors, small time politicians; a squad of ‘just following orders’ style cops, and a crew of code enforcement thugs who have been known to make up infractions on the spur of the moment.

The known abuses of power and examples of outrageous civic management are far too extensive to detail here, and even more remains obscure because of the way Cutler Bay’s corporate comintern runs there fiefdom. Public business is routinely conducted behind closed doors, and-no bid contracts are routinely awarded to cronies – or even worse – to subsidiaries of the master corporation that ultimately pulls the strings.

Those masters have fired a judge who was poised to rule against the town, and have proven to be about as trustworthy as Jeb Bush, Hamid Karzai or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in conducting honest elections. That pattern started with the two elections that resulted in the town’s incorporation.

Because of the lack of media coverage, almost nobody but a handful of insiders who benefit from this system has ever heard of the behemoth that really runs this town – or as local activists have discovered, the nearby incorporated villages of Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay as well. That beast is the Corradino Group, a constellation of companies that has morphed from a Kentucky based civil engineering firm in the 1970s, into a worldwide conglomerate with extensive interests in Florida today.

If it wasn’t so fascistic you could almost admire how beautifully effective The Corradino Group’s model has become. They have figured out how to take over a town, control all the action, and make money at every turn. While they sub contract some vital services out to Dade County, much of it is funneled to their own engineering fronts or to their own government services firm, called CAPgovernment. They have also mastered the ability to project a wholly misleading aura. If you didn’t know better, you might actually think they are really going green. Be assured, they are not.

The town’s manager, Steve Alexander, makes $200,000 a year, plus perks, to serves as Corradino’s commissar. Local activists have obtained copies of police reports from a nearby jurisdiction showing that Alexander was recently stopped by police who wanted to arrest him for flashing a badge and trying to stop another motorist in a ‘road rage incident’, but his own cops showed up and got him turned loose. He runs the town with an iron hand, and recruits pliant pols who are all too eager to go along.

Two incumbents of this system, vice mayor Ed MacDougall, and council member Tim Meerbot are currently vying to replace the outgoing mayor. It is fair to say that each in his own way is part of the problem. Both think that plans to install red light cameras and use the revenues to hire a drug sniffing dog team for use anywhere in town without warrants or probable cause is a great idea, and have said so publicly. In the four and a half years they have each served since incorporation, they can point to no meaningful accomplishments whatsoever.

Into this mix comes local activist Kevin Woitke (pronounced Workee), who owns his own small landscaping business, and has a degree in economics from the University of Florida. Woitke hoped that someone better known or better connected would challenge the incumbents, after having run for council once before. But when no one else came forward, he decided he had to go for it. He and his friends hope that it is not too late to stop the Corradino machine, or at least call attention to its gigantic reach, it’s penchant for secrecy, and it’s systematic abuses.

When campaign finance reports came out last week, they showed Woitke trailing badly in the money race. But most of the incumbents’ money is being blown on campaign mailings that almost nobody is paying attention to. Meanwhile his small but dedicated group of friends and volunteers has been going old school – knocking on doors in every part of this town of 40,000. They have been conducting visibility events and have gotten all of their signs up. Voter enthusiasm is rising.

The question is, with less than two weeks till Election Day, is this enough? While there is no polling available, door to door canvassing reveals that MacDougall and Meerbot each have greater name recognition, but little committed support. Three way races can be tricky. Relatively few votes taken from a leader by a surging underdog can alter the entire contest. If no candidate gets 50% plus one of the vote, there will be a run off by the two top contenders on November 16.

Any DU activists in South Dade who can help canvass these last two weekends please contact us. Call John at [phone], or Kevin at [phone]. If you don’t live close enough to join us in person, please consider a donation for more signs and flyers. The maximum allowed by law is $500. For more information, or to join a forum discussion, please log onto http://www.kevin4cb.com .

[Freddie Stubbs]

1. How do you "fire a judge" in Florida?

[Gato Moteado]

2. these guys had written into the town charter.......

that they could appoint magistrates to take on local cases. when any of these magistrates refuses to rule in their favor they claim that the charter doesn't prohibit them from firing these guys and replacing them with someone that will.

i'll try to get a more detailed explanation up here for you to see as soon as i can.