Here's the rest of the shocking – shocking! – case of "racial profiling" alleged by Whiny Juany Lynum, commissioner Daisy Lynum's maturity-challenged 30-something son:
In a Feb. 19 letter to Orlando Police Chief Val Demmings, Whiny lays out his case. At 10:25 p.m. that night, we was east bound on Columbia Street passing Bethune Drive when officer Hollinker, a "young white male," had the temerity to notice him. Whiny made a left on South Goldwyn from Coumbia, then a right on Orange Center Boulevard. "I turned into the first land admittedly turned into the left land within the distance cited by the officer," he writes.
Hollinker pulled up behind him and stopped him for traveling 35 mph in a 25 mph zone. "He asked me if my license were good and said that if it were good he would immediately let me go. He did." (Yes, that is a direct quote. Even though Whiny is a lawyer, he also seems a little grammar challenged.) "In the process, he told me to slow down because there were children around."
Whiny claims he was not speeding, there were no kids present and he was only pulled over because he is black. "The officer presumes he will get away with racial profiling tactics because he let the innocent citizen go," whines Whiny.
He filed a complaint with OPD. They told him to go pound sand. "As an officer of the court, I'm sure you know a fact based finding of racial profiling requires more than a feeling or suspicion," wrote OPD Internal Affairs Manager Dwain Rivers.
No doubt we'll be hearing more regarding this outrageous abuse of police power. How dare anyone pull over Lil' Juany!
Just got a call from a quasi-reliable source – OK, it was Billman on a day-off bender – who says HE got a call from a pretty reliable source who said that Whiny Juany Lynum is at it again with his police brutality crap.
Recall that Whiny Juany, Crazy Daisy Lynum's 30-something kid, got pulled over in Parramore, at 1 a.m., in 2006 for having a light out on his car. The cop that pulled him over asked to see some ID, which scared Whiny Juany so much that he called mommy, who happens to be a city commissioner. Mommy called the chief of police, and her own policy bodyguard, and expressed her concerns about "racial profiling" at OPD. Not to say that doesn't happen, but the timing is odd, dont' you agree?
Upshot of the whole thing is that Crazy Daisy wanted the police chief, Michael McCoy at the time, fired. Didn't happen, but so what.
Anyway, our source says Whiny Juany got pulled over again earlier this year, and got pissed when the cop agreed to NOT write a ticket if Whiny would show him his license, or something. He apparently fired off a complaint about police misconduct to the mayor's office about the whole affair, which we will publish in full as soon as we get our hands on it. Stay tuned.
So hey, have you noticed that after eight years of alternately yelling "Tax Cuts!" and sticking their heads in the sand, Republicans have suddenly awakened to the Very Big Problem™ of the federal budget deficit. This happened, coincidentally, about noon on Jan. 20. And of course, as the GOP's talking heads and various pseudo-fascists and bumbling idiots have since informed us, this is all Barack Obama's fault.
Some of it is, indeed. But as David Leonhardt demonstrates in today's Times, most of is in not. In fact, the lion's share of the federal deficit is linked to two things: the economic downturn, and the fiscal policies on one George W. Bush. Here's the nut:
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.An interesting anecdote in a looooooooooooooong New Times story about how a guy named Joel Steinger essentially bought off the Florida Legislature:
With less than a month to go before Election Day in 2002, Buddy Dyer was trailing Charlie Crist in the race for Florida attorney general. Dyer, who was then a state senator and is now mayor of Orlando, needed campaign cash to become the state's top lawman. So he went to a well-known criminal for help.
Joel Steinger was a convicted felon and had been hit with fines for breaking securities laws. He was the subject of numerous civil lawsuits during his life of running scams. And at the time, the office Dyer was running for, the Attorney General's Office, was investigating Steinger for his role in Mutual Benefits Corp., the billion-dollar fraud that authorities now say is one of the largest Ponzi schemes in Florida history.
Dyer ignored all of this. He needed money. And Steinger, swimming in illicit cash taken from duped investors, didn't disappoint.
Steinger pulled out all the stops for Dyer, culminating in an October 23, 2002, fundraising soiree at the exclusive Tower Club in Fort Lauderdale. Steinger's wife organized the affair, which included some impressive guests. On the host committee was Miami attorney John M. Hogan, a former Florida statewide prosecutor. State Sen. Steve Geller, the Senate minority leader at the time, was on the list, as was state Senate candidate Dave Aronberg, a former assistant attorney general. Famed defense lawyer Roy Black was also named on invitations, along with lawyer Norman Kent, once a leader in the Fort Lauderdale gay community. In attendance was Broward County land baron Ron Bergeron, who strode about in his trademark Western wear schmoozing with the politicians and lawyers. The guest of honor scheduled to attend the event: former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.
When the fundraiser was over, Dyer accompanied Steinger, Kent, and others to the Coliseum, a gay nightclub in Fort Lauderdale known for its elaborate drag-queen shows. Steinger had deep ties to the gay community; his Ponzi scheme depended on it. Dyer seemed uncomfortable as he addressed the crowd in his Southern drawl; he told someone there that it was the first time he'd ever been in a gay club.
In all, Steinger raised about $20,000 for Dyer, but that was just the chump change. Steinger poured at least $1 million into the political process during the 2002 election, including more than $600,000 going to the state Democratic Party itself. The party spread that so-called soft money around to all its candidates, including Dyer (who received more than $100,000). In all, law enforcement sources estimate that Steinger put $3 million into politics from 2000 through 2004.
In return for his electoral generosity, the con man was looking for cover. He needed the state Legislature to pass laws to get regulators off his back and, for obvious reasons, the AG's office in his corner.
Dyer, though, lost to Crist. But Steinger covered his bases there too, hiring Hollywood ophthalmologist Alan Mendelsohn, a renowned Republican fundraiser who would later serve on Crist's gubernatorial transition team. Mendelsohn's job was to gain sway for Steinger with Crist and the GOP, say sources.
…
And the daunting truth is that Steinger's strategy was effective. If
the story of Joel Steinger tells us anything, it is that the Florida Legislature
is for sale to the highest bidder — even if it comes in the form of a
convicted felon and known swindler.
Hey, been off the blog lately. Busy with the print thing. BUT! Exciting news from Wall Street Plaza, which is an absolutely terrible place to try to take in the Magic games because it is absolutely overrun with douchebags, shitty drink specials and bars you cannot access within a reasonable amount of time (trust me, I tried): They had a poetry contest to support the Magic, or whatever, and they have a winner. Yay!
Our winner comes from someone named Angie Davis:
Remember Bill Dillon? He's the guy who finally, after years of prosecutorial foot-dragging, was released last year after from state prison after 27 years of being incarcerated for a murder he didn't commit (thank you, DNA testing).
Because it's not nearly enough to rob a man of three decades of his life based on, well, just an absolute joke of a prosecution - a prosecution witness
legally blind in one eye, a girlfriend who was sleeping with the lead
investigator in the case and changed her story multiple times, a lousy
lawyer who was later disbarred, and a tracking dog and handler later
determined to be frauds - the state has now decided that he doesn't deserve one dime of the $1.35 million in compensation the state owes him, because when he was 19 years old Dillon had a nonviolent drug conviction.
Let that sink in for a second.
See, Florida's compensation bill has what's called a "clean hands" clause: If you've been convicted of a crime before being convicted of the crime you didn't commit, well, too bad so sad. In other words, the state can botch a prosecution, throw your ass behind bars, and after you're finally able to prove your innocence, they get to stiff you because you smoked pot in high school or whatever.
That's perfectly reasonable.
Dillon now has two choices: He can either trying to find a sponsor in the next legislative session to push a special claims bill (paging Scott Randolph), or he can try to get money outside of the state's compensation system. If those options fail, he can go starve. After all, I can't imagine it's easy to land a job after three decades in the can.
It's not like the state gives a rat's ass. This is fucking pathetic.
OK, they're PETA naked chicks, so it's like propaganda naked which is way less hot than real naked, and they're not really naked at all – flesh colored panties, baby – but what do you want from downtown at lunch time? Oh, don't eat meat. It's murder. Or something.
David Patraeus. You know, patron saint of the Republican military intelligencia. The guy John McCain and the rest of the GOP practically slobbered on throughout the campaign. This guy says torture doesn't work, and closing Gitmo helps the US's broader war on terrorists.
"I think, on balance, that those moves help [us]," said the chief of U.S. Central Command. "In fact, I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention. And as a division commander in Iraq in the early days, we put out guidance very early on to make sure that our soldiers, in fact, knew that we needed to stay within those guidelines.
"With respect to Guantanamo," Petraeus added, "I think that the closure in a responsible manner, obviously one that is certainly being worked out now by the Department of Justice -- I talked to the Attorney General the other day [and] they have a very intensive effort ongoing to determine, indeed, what to do with the detainees who are left, how to deal with them in a legal way, and if continued incarceration is necessary -- again, how to take that forward. But doing that in a responsible manner, I think, sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."There's been something of a debate raging in our comments section over the Bush administration's use of torture and the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center. And indeed, for some reason I can't comprehend - aside from typical political cowardice - there's been a lot of pushback to Obama's idea to move these detainees into supermax facilities inside the US.
I came across an interesting perspective from a guy in the Netherlands, who says basically, that Americans need to man up a little.
Let's take those war criminals (of which dozens have been tried and sentenced) from the Balkan conflict as an example. Here is a group that still has lots of support (Serbs primarily) all across Europe. They are in cells in the Hague which is driving distance from their homeland. Not like some poor Afghan farmer totally divorced from his people, these people have strong support living with a few hours drive!! Almost nothing could stop them from attacking and trying to release there leaders (and heros), or at least taking revenge on the country they are incarcerated in. The REAL danger to this court pails to anything the perceived Gitmo people could possibly do.
Just look at the history of the Balkan conflict, its horrible
genocide and the people who did the killing, and then grab a map to
see where the two countries lie, you will get the picture. Then do the
same for the Afghan conflict ... Kinda makes you giggle.
As profiled in the Sentinel today, this young atheist collects money from Christians who believe that the end is nigh, with a promise to deliver their message to left behind family members post-Rapture. And yes, people are giving him money. And no, they don't get it.
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