When the Florida Department of Community Affairs was demolished by Governor RICHARD SCOTT and his rabid wrecking crew in 2011, citizens were told local officials were supposed to decide local land use.
You've got to hand it to an outspoken “conservative” Bradenton Beach businessman, Aladdin Wand Electric owner MICHAEL S. BENNETT. Although BENNETT does not live or work in St. Johns County, BENNETT effectively got to decide in 2012 that a 607 acre tract of St. Johns County gets developed as a “rural enclave,” building homes there in Switzerland, overruling our laws and our local elected officials in St. Johns County. .
Who is this guy? Why did MICHAEL S. BENNETT get to trump our laws and our elected officials? You see, MICHAEL S. BENNETT was then a State Senator, and made the motion to except developer three minutes before the deadline on the last day of the legislative session, ramming his unconstitutional, stick-it-to St. Johns County “special law” through the legislature. He did so at the behest of wealthy developer JOSEPH ANDERSONS and his lobbyist, JAMES EATON. See today's Record article
MICHAEL S. BENNETT is an archetypical bully. The Bradenton Times reported in 2012:
As a Florida Senator, Bennett was involved in several controversial issues, including [pushing for SB 360] the legislative effort to dissolve the state's Department of Community Affairs and efforts to defeat Amendment 4 (Hometown Democracy Act). More recently, he was at the center of Florida's controversial new voting laws. During the 2011 session, Bennett was famously quoted while defending the law, criticized as designed to suppress the votes of minorities, saying, "I don't have a problem making it harder (to vote). I want the people in the state of Florida to want to vote as badly as that person in Africa who is willing to walk 200 miles for that opportunity he’s never had before in his life. This should not be easy.”
Footnote: In 2012, MICHAEL S. BENNETT was elected Manatee County Supervisor of Elections!
In 2011, the NY Times reported that
State Senator MICHAEL BENNETT (and State Representative Peter S. Nehr
of Tarpon Springs) owned interests in putative “internet cafes.”
Now, "internet cafes" are facing criminal charges -- they are fronts for illegal gambling, federal and state law enforcement officials credibly allege, with affidavits an evidence to prove it. Political contributions from ALLIED VETERANS OF THE WORLD, INC. AND AFFILIATES are targets of ongoing criminal investigations. Seminole County Sheriff Donald Enslinger says that this is “the second wave” of a nationwide multi-agency investigation of Florida gambling, using the ruse of charities operating putative “internet cafes.”
This week's bust of ALLIED VETERANS involved 49 internet cafes making $300 million for “charity,” while giving less than 2% to “charity” and enriching its now-arrested leaders, including alleged “mastermind” lawyer KELLY MATHIS, a former Jacksonville Bar President, one of 61 people charged with hundreds of crimes (including the President and Vice President of the Jacksonville Fraternal Order of Police). The charges were initiated by the Seminole County Sheriff and a local-state-federal cooperative effort (first erroneously stated March 13th to be a mainly federal effort).
Let's learn from these two massive scandals. They are a synecdoche, a part that stands for the whole -- a billion dollar strip mall casino industry and the re-writing of Florida law to inflict one developer's 607 acres of sprawl on Switzerland.
Inspired by our Founding Father's vision of limited government, let's re-write our State Constitution. Think of devilish MICHAEL S. BENETT, who said voting "should not be easy.” Well, neither should whoring. You an use others terms. How about, "doing it the Tallahassee way?"
We need to know more about what other-directed, ethically-impaired energumen like MICHAEL S. BENNETT do with their time on our dime, doing in our rights "the Tallahassee way," with its Jim Crow Law presumption that corruption always prevails, and that law enforcement will cower to power.
Not this week. Ask the Seminole County Sheriff and his staff, who deserve great appreciation.
We must work tirelessly, as citizens, in the spirit of Federalist Papers No. 10, regulating "factions" (Big Money) and making corruption detection and citizen participation easier, and protecting the right to vote.
Read Florida Constitution, Article II, Section 8 (Ethics) and let's see how we can improve it. Look around.
Talk to people. Then think positively: how do we re-write our State Constitution to right the wrongs wrought by corruption, lucre and malice in Tallahassee.
Let's start with the public's right to be heard, which the St. Johns River Water Management District wrongfully denied my late friend Stetson Kennedy (and which Florida courts have not cured under the existing Constitution's Article I, Section 24).
Think of a State Constitutional Convention (under Article XI, Sec. 4) as being our second chance – a second chance for “We, the People” to get it right – for openers, to overrule SJRWMD's sleazy silencing of Stetson Kennedy, and many other substantive evils. (Proposed legislation on the subject may pass, but is more loophole than law).
We can watchdog government. Yes, we can!
We can increase transparency and public participation. We can work to eliminate governmental waste, fraud, abuse, sneakiness, secrecy, perfidy and venality. We can assure better checks and balances, from City Halls to the State House.
MICHAEL S. BENNETT's 2012 sneak attack on St. Johns County's sovereignty was so typical of Tallahassee's corrupt, porcine “Pork Chop Gang” satraps – they exemplify “Gotcha Government.”
It will take more than arresting a few more crooks and cronies this time. Things are getting out of hand.
Studies suggest that Florida may be the most corrupt State in the Nation. The FBI has even taken out ads in some Florida daily newspapers asking for tips on official corruption.
Ultimately, “We, the People” of Florida must solve Florida's problems – Big Money is running our government.
We are running out of time, for as the late U.S. Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy said, “If we do not, on a national scale, attack organized criminals with weapons and techniques as sophisticated as their own, they will destroy us.”
“We, the People” have the right to call for a Florida State Constitutional Convention at any time. Let's do so. Let's win this one for the people. Then let's promote healing, using a State Constitutional Convention to help cure the ills of a corrupt system, saving our democracy for future generations. It's up to us.
Let the Constitutional Convention open government, so that legislators know "The Eyes of Florida Are Upon You." To borrow the infamous words of Manatee County Supervisor of Elections, former State Senator MICHAEL S. BENNETT (below), it is corruption that “should not be easy.”
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