Getting awfully damned sick and tired of Pam Bondi.
Just hours before Ed Buss, former Department of Corrections Chief officer for the State of Florida was scheduled to appear Sept. 16 before an appeals court and give a deposition, Attorney General legally blocked him from doing so.
This is the news that greets us this morning: Bondi Scott-blocked his testimony.
Ed Buss was fired by Rick Scott: there it is. There was no "parting of the ways" or any of that happy horseshit they feed you.
He was hired out of Indiana Department of Corrections, then the director, to come in and take over here, because people from out of state are smarter. That must be it. Hell, Scott even entered a small bidding war with Michigan, remember? We just had to have him!
But some hires are so smart, they actually are smarter than the governor! And, perish the thought, they have a conscience and they can actually add and subtract.
What Buss discovered was troubling to the governor: that privatizing 30 prisons from Bradenton to Key West would actually cost the taxpayers $25 million in as yet unpaid severance in the form of sick leave, bonuses and so forth.
He kept trying to tell people this. That on balance, there were no savings to speak of! Effectively none!
You take the pending doom of Belle Glade, which is home to the Glades Correctional Institute, which would close down in the privatization plan. How do you quantify that misery?
GCI IS the town of Belle Glade, Palm Beach County. It is the economic spine of the community. It has been for 80 years.
But, in Ricky World, it is more important to take public properties, facilities and services and hand them directly over to his corporate pals, like Geo Group Inc., the top contender for Ricky's favor in the Friends of Rick (FORK) Gulag Inc. program.
Geo Group gave $25,000 to Rick's inaugural fund, so he could put on his huge shindig. Longtime friend and lobbyist for Scott, Bill Rubin, is also a lobbyist for Geo Group. One of Rick’s transition team’s budget advisors, Donna Arduin, was a former trustee for Geo Group’s property trust.
We simply must, must, must privatize prisons, don't you get it? This has to happen, even before we improve our infrastructure. I mean like, yesterday people, even if it doesn't save any money.
This is from a recent St. Pete Times article. Here's one of the reasons why this just has to happen: because it will please those Koch suckers, Dave and Charlie, who fund Reason Foundation:
"Some of the early momentum for prison privatization came from a policy brief by the Reason Foundation, a conservative think tank with the GEO Group among its many donors, and Florida TaxWatch, a business-backed policy group. The groups proposed a privately run continuum of care model for prisoners in two regions of the state."
Geo Group’s footprint in Tallahassee politics is large. In 2008, House Speaker Ray Sansom reportedly slipped a line item or two into a bill resulting in a shift in funding enabling Geo Group to build a private prison in Santa Rosa County, where Sansom is from, called Blackwater Correctional Institute. The modern facility is located but a few miles from the extant, Santa Rosa Correctional Institute, a fully functional prison in every way.
As late as Sept. 6, 2011, the FBI were still investigating the relationship between Ray Sansom, and Geo, even seizing a computer belonging to a Santa Rosa County Commissioner in their quest.
Six hundred million dollars has been shifted in the state budget just waiting for Geo and their lone competitor in the market space, Corrections Corp of America, to come in and play with. What's wrong with you people? It's time to usher in the age of Gulag, Inc.! Come on! Get on board or get left behind.
Who cares if privatizing prisons in Arizona has been shown to be more, not less expensive to the taxpayers; creating a world in which Corp. Jail cherry picks the healthy prisoners - we got us a fine young buck over here, all his teef and evuhthing - from "the traditional models" just so Gulag Inc. can stay within the letter of Arizona law? Who gives a shit, right?
Who needs for even one shred of information to come out at this time during a lawsuit filed on behalf of correctional workers because the destruction of the state's pension system in order to make this happen is unconstitutional in the state of Florida?
Enter Pam Bondi, Ricky's accomplatrix, to shut down this line of inquiry with an emergency order. Her law degree serving once again as Ricky's fig leaf. It's disgraceful.
Explain one way keeping Ed Buss from testifying protects the citizens of Florida from crime? You can't. Face it. It is as naked and shameless a move on the AG's part as you could have dreamed up in a seedy Florida crime novel.
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