Miami Dade Residents First has raised $879,952 to get Carlos Gimenez reelected as Mayor. He has not even opened a Campaign Account with elections. There is something wrong when you have almost $1,000,000 and no campaign account. Between March 1 and March 31st he raised $208,000. I wonder what Manuel Grosskoph and Walter Fischer want - they are registered in Hallandale Beach. Alan Potamkin gave $10,000 and Patricia Bell of Coral Gables gave $10,000. Ed Easton gave $5,000 (owns land on wrong side of UDB). DiMare Farms gave $10,000. Ballard law firm in Tallahassee gave. Look for yourself: http://www.miamidade.gov/elections/political-committees.asp.
Also see My February 11th report. I did not report on February contributions of $171,750. Coastal Construction Group gave him $20,000 (Thomas P. Murphy) and Ed Easton is there again. Resorts World (Genting) gave $15,000 for Carlos Gimenez.
6 comments:
Are voters really so apathetic as to forget when it is time to vote, that our democracy is being crippled by special interest money? It's mystifying to me ...
This from the NY Times: "WASHINGTON — The leader of the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.
“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”
Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate.
Some commissioners are barely on speaking terms, cross-aisle negotiations are infrequent, and with no consensus on which rules to enforce, the caseload against violators has plummeted."
There is 18 months until the election.
To overcome the vast amount of money to be spent on advertising this man as a "great leader," mention him to your family, friends and neighbors. Get them familiar with our Mayor's track record.
Right now, time is on the voter's side.
However, closer to the election, there will be a mountain of fluff - patriotic symbols and our mean-spritied Mayor kissing babies.
Carlos Gimenez has been a huge disappointment. The number of full-time employees at Miami-Dade County is still too high and Gimenez continues to force the taxpayers to give excessively generous pay and benefit packages to his friends. Needlessly higher taxes are due to Gimenez.
Off topic: i just saw 3 separate instances of people spitting Well dressed people.
Please do not spit, it is a disgusting habit. If you must, vomit instead.
Don't pee or poop in public either. But if you write a big enough check then by all means.
On Wednesday, a 5-4 Supreme Court held in Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar that states may “prohibit judges and judicial candidates from personally soliciting funds for their campaigns.” It was a small but symbolically important victory for supporters of campaign finance laws, as it showed that there was actually some limit on the Roberts Court’s willingness to strike down laws limiting the influence of money in politics.
Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion for the Court in Williams-Yulee is certainly better for campaign finance regulation than a decision striking down this limit on judicial candidates — had the case gone the other way, judges could have been given the right to solicit money from the very lawyers who practice before them. Yet Roberts also describes judges as if they are special snowflakes who must behave in a neutral and unbiased way that would simply be inappropriate for legislators, governors and presidents:
States may regulate judicial elections differently than they regulate political elections, because the role of judges differs from the role of politicians. Politicians are expected to be appropriately responsive to the preferences of their supporters. Indeed, such “responsiveness is key to the very concept of self-governance through elected officials.” The same is not true of judges. In deciding cases, a judge is not to follow the preferences of his supporters, or provide any special consideration to his campaign donors. A judge instead must “observe the utmost fairness,” striving to be “perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to influence or controul [sic] him but God and his conscience.” As in White, therefore, our precedents applying the First Amendment to political elections have little bearing on the issues here.
Most Americans would undoubtedly agree that judges should not “follow the preferences” of their political supporters, as they would agree that judges should not “provide any special consideration to his campaign donors.” But the implication of the passage quoted above is that members of Congress, state lawmakers, governors and presidents should provide such consideration to their supporters and to their donors. The President of the United States is the president of the entire United States. A member of Congress represents their entire constituency. Yet Roberts appears to believe that they should “follow the preferences” of their supporters and give “special consideration” to the disproportionately wealthy individuals who fund their election.
This view of lawmakers obedient to a narrow segment of the nation is not new. To the contrary, it drove much of the Court’s widely maligned campaign finance decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizens United does not simply argue that “[f]avoritism and influence” are unavoidable in a representative democracy, it appears to suggest that they are a positive good. “It is well understood that a substantial and legitimate reason, if not the only reason, to cast a vote for, or to make a contribution to, one candidate over another is that the candidate will respond by producing those political outcomes the supporter favors,” Kennedy wrote in Citizens United. “Democracy,” he added “is premised on responsiveness.”
Post a Comment