The Political Whore

Credit: Arlen Redekop, Vancouver Province

1. Craig Pittman of the Times details how Tampa Bay Water was too inexperienced and rushed its massive public works projects, notably the cracked-and-expensive-to-repair CW Bill Young Reservoir. Public officials such as Ed Turanchik lauded its construction at the time, Pittman writes, but put an inexperienced 29-year-old in charge of managing the project and hired an engineering firm that had never built such a large reservoir.

2. Florida’s funniest newspaper columnist-turned-novelist Carl Hiaasen blasts Charlie Crist’s growing turn to political whoredom: “Unlike Sarah Palin, Charlie Crist has chosen not to quit his governorship early. Florida’s own one-term wonder is using his remaining time to ingratiate himself with as many deep-pocket interest groups as possible. The governor’s unseemly burst of groveling is directly connected to his upcoming run for the U.S. Senate. Sucking up to the National Rifle Association and the Christian right, Crist last week declared his opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whose confirmation is already a done deal.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Mrs. Former Fort Myers Beach Town Manager

This week’s HoCast marks a revamp of my format. While I will continue to do long-form interviews with political figures as podcasts, the PoHo brand will feature a fairly regular cast and a quick, funny format that looks at the top political and media issues, the Quotable soundbite and the Political Whore of the Week.

Joining me are Scott Farrell of The Farrell Files on 10 Connects and Creative Loafing Film & Television editor Joe Bardi.

Our topics this week:

1. The shameful Today Show coverage of the Obama health care newser

2. The firing of the town manager of Fort Myers Beach for marrying a porn actress (shown above)

3. The Barack Obama-as-Witch Doctor e-mail flap

4. ESPN’s multi-problems with censorship (the Ben Rothlisberger story)

5. Mary Mulhern uses tax dollars to go to Cuba

This week’s PoHo Award nominees are:

New York stripper Christy Yamanaka, who was involved in the Judge Thomas Stringer scandal. He pleaded guilty this week to one count of mortgage fraud in connection with a house the two bought in Hawaii.

And, via txt message from an anonymous politician, this nomination:
“The Jersey 44, that’s lookin’ like a real political gangbang! Even by Jersey’s standards.”

Listen to the HoCast after the jump to find out who won:

Read the rest of this entry »

My guest co-host for this week’s HoCast is Seth Nelson, a Tampa lawyer who is running for the Tampa City Council in 2011 (for Linda Saul-Sena’s citywide seat; she is term-limited).

He is a former law clerk on the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, so we look at how Sonia Sotomayor did in explaining her statement about policy being made at the appellate court level. Plus, we discuss Walter Cronkite’s death and how it shows what is wrong with today’s news media and ask ourselves whether Barack Obama’s health care reform effort is in trouble.

And between all those headlines, Seth talks about why he’s running for the Council and what his top priorities are.

DL or listen to the podcast after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »

From TBO.com:

Hillsborough County commissioners will discuss dropping conservative activist Ralph Hughes’ name from the county’s Moral Courage Award on Wednesday.

Commissioner Rose Ferlita put the controversial issue on the agenda for discussion weeks after the federal government said Hughes died owing $69 million in unpaid taxes.

Ferlita told the Tribune on Tuesday that Hughes’ son Shea has sent a letter to the commissioners asking that his father’s name be removed from the award.

UPDATE: County commissioners did just that. The vote this morning was unanimous.

Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio

The shocking assassination of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller on May 31 has brought back the volatile issue of abortion on to the national landscape.

Of course, it’s never gone away. But the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama to the Supreme Court — and her relatively scant record on abortion issues — has elicited analysis that, perhaps unlike every previous Supreme Court nomination over the past few decades, her nomination won’t be heavily focused by her thoughts on Roe v. Wade.

Pro-choice advocates were stunned when Gallup reported last month that for the first time since it began asking the question, a majority of Americans now call themselves pro-life vs. pro-choice (although a review of other similar polls taken over the past year continue to reflect a majority pro-choice America.)

If that wasn’t at least a soft blow to those reproductive rights advocates, Tiller’s death by the hands of 51-year-old Scott P. Roeder absolutely was.

And for a portion of the public, upon learning of Tiller’s death, thoughts immediately turned to Bill O’Reilly, who focused relentlessly on the controversial doctor’s status as one of just a handful of M.D.’s in the country who continued to perform late term abortions.

Some liberal commentators and bloggers immediately blamed the cable news analyst for inciting Roeder to commit murder.  O’Reilly, predictably, pushed back, and used the opening moments of his show last week to argue that his foils, NBC News and company, were just as responsible for the murder of U.S. soldier William Long in Arkansas by a Muslim convert.

For many in the abortion rights movement, Tiller’s death brought back the dark days of the 1990’s, when doctors David Gunn, Bernard Slepian and John Britton were killed for their work as abortion providers.

Sarasota resident Sherry Svekis received a late-term abortion from Tiller in 1985. Not being a regular Fox News viewer, she was unaware of the very public campaign O’Reilly had wrought against Tiller over the years until his death.

Read the rest of this entry »

Big Oil’s offshore drilling scheme appears to be making a comeback. A start-up political group is looking to gather petition signatures and put the idea on the ballot, bypassing the politically sensitive Legislature.

From the Fort Myers News-Press:

Claiming that offshore drilling is the answer to the nation’s addiction to foreign oil, conservative activists are gearing up a constitutional drive to lift Florida’s 20-year-old ban.
Advertisement

Sponsors of the drive, FloridaOil.org, are exploring a unique approach to getting around what has long been considered the third rail of Florida politics, one so charged that a last-minute attempt in the Legislature this spring quickly died when Senate President Jeff Atwater, a Republican from North Palm Beach, put his foot down.

“Atwater proved that we can’t rely on the Legislature,” said the group’s chief organizer, Dan Baldauf of Bradenton. “Legislators actually prefer that we do it this way, because it helps them keep their hands clean.”

This sounds like it is more about folks who want to procure some spending cash from the oil and gas companies than a legit movement with any legs. The story notes that the group has raised just $2,000 so far but expects a lot more once it attracts the attention of the oil-producing companies.

Although carefully worded polls will show support for offshore drilling, this is a big loser at the ballot box.

So far, so good…

Today is the first day of the 2009 hurricane season but a new poll has found that very few people on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are ready for a bad storm.

Mason-Dixon’s survey found, for instance, that two-thirds of the respondents didn’t have a hurricane survival kit at the ready. The shocking results?

Read the rest of this entry »

From our sister blog, News Bites, at the Chicago Reader, comes a good wrap-up of the story gripping that city and making onto the third or fourth story on the morning news shows: the smoking gun in the case of Senator Roland Burris and whether his appointment by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is tainted:

The Sun-Times and Tribune both ran partial transcripts Wednesday of a conversation between Roland Burris and Robert Blagojevich last November 13 about the Senate seat president-elect Obama was vacating and Burris longed to be appointed to.

But the transcript in the Tribune ends at roughly the point where the Sun-Times’s transcript begins. As a result, the Tribune version of the conversation supports the idea that Burris did nothing improper — an impression reinforced by the headline to the page-one story accompanying the transcript: “Burris talks cash, Senate on recording / Senator: Wiretap backs his denials of pay to play.”

The Tribune transcript has Burris making it clear to the brother of the then-governor: “I’m very much interested in, in trying to replace Obama,” and then fretting about appearances. Burris says, “I’m a high-profile person….I’m trying to figure out how in the hell, and since you called me I will be honest with you….And I’m trying to figure out how to deal with this and still be in the consideration for the appointment….And, and if I do that I guarantee you that, that will get out and people said, ‘Oh, Burris is doing a fundraiser,’ and, and then Rod and I both gonna catch hell….And if I do get appointed that means I bought it.”

With three Tampa Bay locations, BankUnited is not most ubiquitous of Tampa Bay thrifts, but today its customers have discovered that the failing bank was seized overnight.

The AP reports:

The federal seizure of struggling Florida thrift BankUnited FSB is expected to cost the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. $4.9 billion, representing the second-largest hit to the FDIC’s insurance fund since the financial crisis began felling banks last year.

The costliest was last year’s seizure of California lender IndyMac Bank, on which the bank insurance fund is estimated to have lost $10.7 billion.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, a Treasury Department agency, said Thursday that BankUnited FSB reported $1.2 billion in losses last year as defaults on loans piled up. The thrift “was critically undercapitalized and in an unsafe condition to conduct business,” the agency said in a statement.

Coral Gables, Fla.-based BankUnited FSB is the 34th federally insured institution to be closed this year, and the biggest.

The shockwaves from the government-labor takeover at Chrysler is reverberating in the Tampa Bay area, as seven dealerships are set to be closed as part of nearly 800 dealer closings across the nation.

The local dealerships are:

Read the rest of this entry »

From NBC Chicago:

Former Illinois police sergeant Drew Peterson is set to be arraigned for murder today in the drowning death of his third wife Kathleen Savio after Illinois State Police officers arrested him about mile from his home Thursday evening.

Savio’s body was found in a dry bathtub in their home in 2004. Her death was initially ruled an accident, but later classified as a homicide after a second autopsy was done. Last month, Savio’s family filed a civil suit against Peterson, claiming he caused her wrongful death.

“I guess I should have returned those library books,” a handcuffed Peterson told police as he was escorted out of his home, the Daily Herald reported.

They still haven’t found Peterson’s fourth wife, Stacy, who disappeared in October 2007. Best news out of this is that Peterson is being held on $20 million bond and won’t be appearing on The Today Show any time soon.

CNBC’s reputation-damaged investment show host Jim Cramer just told The Today Show that the “banking nightmare” is over as a result of the stress tests on banks being released today.

His point? That even though a few banks still need billions to shore up their balance sheets, they are making money and likely can raise those extra funds in the market – not from taxpayers.

Bloomberg reports that the market indeed likes the results of the financial stress tests:

Stocks rallied after the news, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index to its highest level in four months. The results are the culmination of weeks of investigations, led by the Federal Reserve, into the banks’ lending practices, funding strategies and securities and loan portfolios.

“The markets are telling us we’re in a recovery and the banks are beginning to heal,” William Isaac, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said in an interview today. The end of the stress tests after “three months of water torture” is providing investors some relief, he said.

The regulators put an emphasis in their reviews on tangible common equity, and will give firms needing bigger reserves six months to meet their requirements. Citigroup’s assessment reflects the New York-based bank’s previously announced plan to convert some of its preferred shares into common stock.

Swine, errrr, H1N1 flu worries will keep kids out of three public schools in Hillsborough County this week, after students reported symptoms that health officials believe are from the fast-spreading influenza.

From ABC Action News:

An 18-year-old male student at Freedom High School and an 11-year-old male student at Wilson Middle School are among the latest suspected cases of the H1N1 virus reported to the Florida Department on Health.

Both schools will be closed starting Monday, and will not reopen until next week. Liberty Middle School will also close, since it shares its cafeteria with Freedom High School, officials said.

Students are being asked to stay home and avoid public places like shopping malls or movie theaters.

None of the five Hillsborough victims of the flu have been hospitalized, and all are recovering.

For better or for worse (and there are some who say it bodes poorly for efforts to get rail transit here in Tampa Bay), but Orlando’s five-year effort for a light-rail system using CSX freight tracks appears finally dead.

A floor vote in the Senate yesterday that could have helped switch more votes to its side failed. From the pro-SunRail Orlando Sentinel:

SunRail proponents could try to bring up the measure again today – the last day of the regular session – but its chances of success are low because it would take 27 votes to do so.

“It’ll take some maneuvering to get it done. I think the forces of evil have won,” said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.

He was among the dozens of supporters who tried in vain to corral the 21 votes necessary for SunRail to prevail. But he lost two members of the Central Florida delegation: Sens. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, and Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach.

And despite the support of Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and numerous Central Florida business leaders, 15 Republicans voted against the measure.

And seriously, am I going to have to put the name of the low-priced Swedish furniture store in all caps forever?

I digressed. Jeff Houck over at The Stew has a great review of media day yesterday, including the Scan-food offerings. Just love the buffet line photo:

Most everyone was there to cover the furniture and home accessories. I decided to focus on the food.

Why? Because no one can ever get enough pickled herring.

And Ikea was only happy enough to help.

Go to The Stew to read the entire story. Du kommer vara glad att du gjorde.

From the Stooopid Idea Dep’t.:

Fly the backup of Air Force One, a 747, with its engines screaming, low over Lower Manhattan, F-16 trailing it, without telling New Yorkers it was all for a photo shoot and not another 9-11 attack.

The White House Military advisor has apologized.

Video after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a good review from the Tallahassee Democrat of just how the petroleum industry and its lobbyists sprung their 11th-hour surprise to end a 20-year ban on offshore oil drilling on the House of Representatives.

From the Democrat’s Florida Capital News website:

With a little less than an hour’s discussion, and a quick, mostly party-line vote, every conservationist’s worst nightmare was headed for the House floor. The House gave preliminary approval on Friday.

“This is like a Carl Hiaasen novel,” laments Janet Bowman, a lobbyist for the Nature Conservancy.

But unlike the colorful characters who scheme to sell out Florida’s natural wonders in Hiaasen’s works of fiction, the supporters are very real. Their ranks also include some respected names, including Martha Barnett, a former president of the American Bar Association.

Former House Speaker John Thrasher, a lobbyist who is also pushing the measure, smiles broadly and praises Cannon’s master stroke.

“He’s a rising star,” Thrasher said. “We needed to look at this, not just pull it out and have everyone just say no. It’s been amazing to see the pent-up energy for this.”

Even financial markets and instruments aren’t immune from the spreading human swine flu outbreak. Media reports link the flu fears to lower stock trading and depressed monetary values in some countries.

From Reuters:

Governments around the world moved on Monday to contain the spread of a possible swine flu outbreak, as a virus that has killed over 100 people in Mexico spread to the United States and elsewhere.

At 0835 GMT, Dow Jones futures were down 1.9 percent, S&P 500 futures fell 1.8 percent and Nasdaq futures traded 1.5 percent lower.

Europe’s benchmark FTSEurofirst 300 index. FTEU3 was down 1.1 percent, weighed down by a 4.3 percent slide for the DJ Stoxx travel & leisure index. SXTP, which includes airlines.

The U.S. declared a health emergency for swine flu as cases were reported in several states, all believed linked to an outbreak in Mexico that has killed more than 100. No swine flu cases have emerged in Florida.

While we await the result of the necropsy, there is a good story on the dead polo horses in Time this week. It talks about the “vitamin” supplement that is the leading culprit but also the horses’ owner:

But whatever the cause, the tragedy has thrust Lechuza’s obscure but powerful owner, multi-millionaire Venezuelan banker and polo fanatic Victor Vargas, into the spotlight he usually avoids. In fact, since the beginning of the week, Vargas has not been seen at the Palm Beach Polo Club in Wellington; newspaper reports in the Palm Beach Post and other South Florida media say he’s either holed up in the $70 million Palm Beach mansion he purchased last year – one of six homes he owns in Venezuela, the Caribbean, the U.S. and Europe – or has flown overseas in one of his luxury Gulfstream jets.

Vargas, 57, is a hemispheric jetsetter who has successfully navigated between the often contentious relationship of Venezuela and the United States, though hardly without controversy. As a young lawyer he married into one of Venezuela’s cogollo (élite) families and then, as one of the country’s smartest bankers, learned to swim in its prodigious and often corrupt oil industry. But while many of Venezuela’s business and financial titans have chafed under the left-wing revolution Hugo Chávez began a decade ago, Vargas and his Banco Occidental de Descuento (Venezuela’s fifth largest) have thrived.

The Time story asks: Is he a friend of Chavez and cut secret deals with him?

h/t to Kelly Cornelius

From the Palm Beach Post:

At least 14 horses died Sunday after collapsing before a polo match, and seven more appear to have died overnight as efforts to save them from a mystery malady.

Vets began to intervene within minutes of the first horse falling. They hooked up intravenous tubes to the sick horses and fought to help them breathe as the horses from the Lechuza Caracas team, officials said.

“Some died right away. Others lasted about 45 minutes,” said veterinarian Scott Swerdlin, a member of the Palm Beach Equine Clinic who was at the scene and said 14 horses died.

This morning CBS 12, reports that another horse died at the Wellington Equine Clinic overnight and six others died en route to medical facilities.

How in the world do the Tampa Bay Lightning expect to compete for another Stanley Cup without the uber-annoying ThunderBug mascot tromping up and down the steps of the Times Forum? We’ll have to see as the restructuring team trimmed payroll yesterday and laid off the man who played the bug mascot, Matt Hitchcock. It says the mascot will remain even as Hitchcock hits the highway, as TBO.com reports:

Lightning team spokesman Bill Wickett said ThunderBug will not be going away and the team intends to have somebody else fill the role next season.

More layoffs are expected in the next week.

On Monday, the team issued this statement:

“The Tampa Bay Lightning today announced a restructuring aimed at creating more efficiencies and eliminating redundancies by reducing the size of its workforce. When the current ownership purchased the team, it elected to take a full hockey season to observe and analyze the business before making major decisions regarding its long-term direction.”

Tampa Bay is going to get slammed by a line of heavy showers, possible hail and tornadoes throughout this morning. We need the rain but could live without lots of damaging side effects.

10 Connects has details on the tornado watch areas.

By David Warner, CL Editor and PoHo contributor

I’m an occasionally conflicted 24 fan. I’ve also been feeling a mix of outrage and doubt about the recent arrest of Youssef Megahed by U.S. immigration officials after he’d just been acquitted of criminal charges. So I tip my hat to Howard Troxler, whose column in today’s St. Pete Times tackles both Jack Bauer tactics and the confusions that surround the Megahed case. Read the rest of this entry »

March was the 15th straight month of job losses, with the U.S. economy losing another 663,000 jobs, the monthly government labor report says this morning.

It was about what economists had expected.

The New York Times reports:

“There is no letup,” said James O’Sullivan, senior United States economist at UBS. “The trend has been truly dismal.”

The figures offered a stark contrast to some recent glimmers of life elsewhere in the economy, which have buoyed stock markets and heartened hopes for a turnaround. The sharp and continuing increase in unemployment suggests that even if the downward spiral is beginning to level off, job losses are likely to keep piling up for the rest of this year and into 2010.

Although the Federal Reserve expects unemployment to crest near 8.8 percent, many economists say it will rise above 10 percent and will only begin to ebb after the broader economy is well on the way to recovery – a wrenching forecast for the 13.2 million people in the United States who are currently unemployed.

TBO.com reports:

This morning’s anthrax scare, which started at Florida Hospital Heartland Division when 48 envelopes were found on cars parked there, has spread to a total at least 30 locations, according to Highlands County Sheriff Susan Benton.

Samples have been taken to a lab in Tampa and it won’t be known whether the envelopes contain anthrax until at least early tonight, Benton said.

Deputies are talking to people in connection with the case, according to the sheriff’s office at an afternoon news conference. Deputies would not offer specifics about who the people are and what their role might be.

The future of rail transit, at least in Orlando and Central Florida, hangs in the balance in the Florida Senate, where the controversial deal to buy 60+ miles of track from CSX Transportation is stalled.

Now, the word out of Tallahassee is that the bill (and SunRail’s dreams of connecting Orlando to the East Coast of Florida and eventually Tampa Bay) may be dying if not dead.

From the Daytona Beach News-Journal:

Halfway through the annual legislative session, supporters say they don’t know whether they will have enough votes to get the controversial project passed.

As an indication of the problems, two Volusia-area senators say they likely will vote against the project, and another says she is undecided.

“I think that anybody that says they’ve got locked-down, guaranteed victory or defeat is premature,” said Sen. Lee Constantine, an Altamonte Springs Republican who is sponsoring a bill that would clear the way for the 61-mile system linking Volusia and three other counties.

From London today, where the leaders of the G20 developed nations are finding themselves in the midst of large, but so far peaceful, protests. The Independent UK reports:

Marches to the Bank of England, in the City of London, were designed to highlight a variety of causes. There were few signs of pinstriped suits as many City workers heeded advice to dress down.

Protesters became excitable outside the Bank of England and appeared to be tussling with police. Objects were thrown towards police photographers – including a policeman’s helmet. And officers were pelted with fruit as a red smoke cannister was let off. But by noon such incidents had been isolated and the Metropolitan Police said no arrests had been reported.

There were reports that City workers were taunting the protesters – waving £10 notes from office windows.

Demonstrators covered their faces with bandanas and handkerchiefs and waved signs such as “Balls to the Banks”, “Abolish Money” and “All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose.”

Important political advice from a former consultant: don’t ever, EVER, no matter how fucked up you are, allow yourself to be videotaped or photographed doing drugs.

Just ask Michael Phelps or now, possibly, VP Joe Biden’s daugher, Ashley. Somebody (some reports put it as a “friend”) is looking to score $250,000 for the video. The NY Daily News reports:

The tape, viewed by several news agencies, allegedly shows a man cutting up five lines of what appear to be cocaine.

Moments later, a woman – identified by the person selling the tape as Ashley Biden – jokes that the lines aren’t large enough, RadarOnline.com reported.

The unidentified man then hands over a rolled-up dollar bill, and the young woman with brown hair strolls to the table where the white powder was cut, pulls back her hair, reaches down and snorts a line, according to reports.

So what if Ashley was doing a bump or two?

The Orlando Sentinel’s political blog reports:

SunRail’s ardent backers plan to bring U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, to the state Capitol next week to step up the lobbying push for Central Florida’s $1.2 billion commuter rail project.

But the senator standing in the way of the bill at the moment said Thursday there was only a “50-50 chance, probably less” his committee would take up the bill next week.

In the time-compressed politics of the Florida Legislature, the two-week delay is a serious sign of trouble for the insurance legislation CSX Corp. and the Orlando region need to consummate the state’s purchase of the 61 miles of tracks for commuter trains.

One of the few places in Tampa Bay where you can legally drink on the beach is on the marvelous Sunset Beach part of Treasure Island. And Caddy’s is an institution on Sunset Beach, drawing hundreds and hundreds of hot bodies to its beachfront bar and sandy drinkathon.

But a few neighbors are not happy with Caddy’s and the crowd. A lack of parking and peeing in yards by drunk beachgoers was the reason. So, of course, some politician took up their cause and tried to ban alcohol on Sunset Beach.

But an outcry by other Sunset Beachers has scotched that plan. The St. Petersburg Times reports:

A proposal to ban alcoholic beverages on Sunset Beach in was withdrawn tonight in the face of overwhelming opposition from Sunset Beach residents.

Commissioner Alan Bildz, who represents Sunset Beach, asked that the proposal be withdrawn during an emergency meeting called to deal with the matter. More than 50 people spoke, most of them opposing the ban.

“Obviously this is not going to pass,” Bildz said, ” If anyone wants to ban alcohol they will have to do it with a petition and referendum.”

The latest round of bullshit going on at the taxpayer-supported Tampa Sports Authority, now fully the fiefdom of Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman, has pushed the buttons of Mayor Pam Iorio.

So now, she is pushing a button of her own. The “on the air” button.

The Tampa Tribune reports today that Iorio has directed her Government TV staff to begin televising the Sports Authority’s monthly meetings to inject a little sunshine into the stinkhole of back-rooom dealing going on at the RayJay Stadium landlord’s offices.

Earlier this month, two members of the board, including Norman, forced out longtime Executive Director Henry Saavedra with little public discussion about it. That had Iorio crying foul,the Tribune reported:

“Maybe if someone isn’t doing a good job it would become apparent to everyone,” she said. “We can see the level of debate and discourse, how everyone comports themselves.”

Oh, that wacky Nadya Suleman. On the day she brought home two of her litter of eight last week, she called 911, not to report that she couldn’t get her Chicken McNuggets, but to have Angels in Waiting attorney and pain-in-the-ass mediahawg Gloria Allred bounced from her house. Today comes the news she has fired Angels in Waiting, the nonprofit group of nurses that was helping the clearly crazy Octomom.

TMZ has audio of the 911 call here. Octomom calls 911 on Gloria Allred

And here’s Catherine Durkin Robinson’s recent piece for PoHo on the issues of multiple births and IVF.

The economics lesson for the now disgraced former president of Tampa’s nonprofit zoo, Lex Salisbury? There ain’t no such thing as a free bird.

That’s the bottom line after a new city of Tampa audit showed Salisbury made what the zoo now considers $200,000 in improper purchases or transferred animals to his private for-profit wildlife park without reimbursing the zoo.

The report’s findings include 11 birds he transferred to Safari Wild, five of which died there. He returned the other six. The St. Petersburg Times write about the story here.

Download the full audit in .pdf format.

BONUS LINKS: Here are Alex Pickett’s in-depth stories on how the zoo got itself into trouble.

The Sun-Sentinel has done a helluva job piecing together a tough story without any help from Florida’s “transparency” governor, Charlie Crist.

The upshot: The gov takes a lot of flights on private jets owned by some of the wealthiest and influential Florida corporate titans – or those who are angling to be. And his office doesn’t keep records on the flights.

From the story this weekend:

Crist regularly flies on the private jets of wealthy businessmen, the Sun Sentinel found, but the governor won’t disclose the details.

Over the past two years, Crist’s calendar shows about 100 occasions when he was scheduled to fly in or out of private air terminals to get to the capital, concerts, dinners, sporting events, political appearances and stays in St. Petersburg and South Florida.

Crist’s office would not reveal who paid for specific flights or answer questions about them, despite the governor’s vow of transparency when he took office. “Our constitution requires that our government be open and transparent,” Crist said in his January 2007 inaugural address. “And under my administration it will be like never before.”

It’s a must-read. The full story here.

John Stemberger, the Orlando lawyer who is generally behind every bad social movement in this state, is ready to move on from his victory against the threat of gay marriage. His next target? Straight marriage.

As Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel reports:

The latest from Stemberger and his Florida Family Policy Council calls for more government intrusion into our lives: higher marriage fees, state involvement in premarital counseling and possibly more obstacles for divorce.

Now, there are all kinds of problems with making it tougher for people to end their marriages – not the least of which is that it makes things even more dangerous for victims of domestic violence.

But as for starting a marriage, who exactly do these people think they are?

Stemberger’s plan would double the amount of time Floridians must spend in pre-marital counseling and quadruple the cost (to $100) if they don’t undergo the therapy.

Stemberger has already lined up plenty of sponsors for his bill. Of course.