In the Florida Democratic Race for the US Senate it is Pot Vs Kettle

The following just popped up in my inbox:

fromJeff Greene For Florida press@jeffgreene.com

reply-topress@jeffgreene.com
toctscloset@gmail.com
dateSun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:49 PM
subjectKendrick Meek Should Return $5,500 Received From Rangel
mailed-bybounces.salsalabs.net
 
For Immediate Release: August 8, 2010

Contact: Luis Vizcaino - 561-281-9703

Or email: press@jeffgreene.com

KENDRICK MEEK SHOULD LISTEN TO PRESIDENT OBAMA'S OWN WORDS AND CALL ON CHARLIE RANGEL TO RESIGN, RETURN $5,500 RECEIVED FROM RANGEL

West Palm Beach, FL - Today, Jeff Greene called on Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) to step down immediately in light of the ethics violations findings. Greene also called on Rep Kendrick Meek to join him and President Obama in asking Rep Rangel to resign and for Meek to immediately return the $5,500 he received from Rep. Rangel.

"Kendrick Meek should join me, President Obama and other Democrats in calling for Charlie Rangel to resign in light of clear evidence he abused his position by raising money from businesses he was trying to help in Congress," Jeff Greene said Sunday. "The allegations against Rangel are eerily similar to evidence that Meek's friends and family were getting cars and cash from a developer he was trying to help secure $4 million in taxpayer money."

Greene's action today follows the recent comments by President Obama about Rangel: "These allegations are very troubling. I'm sure that what he wants is to be able to end his career with dignity, and my hope is that that happens."

Greene said Sunday: "Charlie Rangel asked Speaker Pelosi and the House ethics committee to investigate his alleged wrongdoing. Now Kendrick Meek should also ask for his colleagues to get to the bottom of the allegations against him. Kendrick Meek should follow President Obama's lead and tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it's time for Rangel to go. He should also return the $5,500 he's received from Rangel's campaign committee and leadership PAC."

Other Democrats have already returned or given to charity $650,000 in donations from Rangel. After a two-year investigation, the House Ethics Committee charged Rangel with 13 violations of House ethics rules. The charges involve blatantly corrupt use of his position as a veteran congressman to pry money from businesses he could help with legislation, as well as failures to disclose income and assets.

The St. Petersburg Times has called for an ethics investigation into Kendrick Meek for apparently using his position in Congress improperly through a potential "pay-to-play" relationship with developer Dennis Stackhouse, who has been charged with stealing more than $1 million designated for a biotech park he never built.

While Kendrick was trying to get $4 million of taxpayer money for Stackhouse, Stackhouse was giving Kendrick's mom $90,000, a new Cadillac, and free office space. Stackhouse also lent Kendrick Meek's chief of staff $13,000.

Every word that Greene says about Meek is true.  However, if there was ever a man who needs to remove the plank from his own eye before going after the speck in his opponent's, it is Jeff Greene.  If Kendrick Meek is the kettle, than surely Jeff Greene is the pot.
 
Greene, who become a billionaire by betting the American families would lose their homes, has some ethical lapses of his own.  Ever hear of The Oasis?  It is an apartment complex that billionaire Greene owns:
 

Greene's company bought Oasis the following year for $2.48 million, or about $13,000 a unit. That is less than two years' rent on a three-bedroom duplex.

Kern County records show Greene's company owes $106,384.75 in taxes on the Oasis units, with some bills dating back to 2006. Greene denies any taxes are due. He says he paid them in full.

Greene's brother, Gary, is in charge of the property, but his maintenance supervisor said there is not enough profit to fix the place up.

``The money coming in doesn't equal the money going out,'' said John Houston, who was fixing roofs on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Of 189 units at Oasis, 40 are vacant, boarded up. Some are burned out, others now squatters' party houses. Greene said he would love to rent the units but can't attract tenants.

Greene can't get people to move into a slum?  Fancy that.  Well, if you have never heard of The Oasis maybe you have heard of The Mirage:

RIDGECREST, Calif. — Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Greene says he had nothing to do with creating the sub-prime mortgage mess that made him fabulously wealthy.

He was simply a savvy investor who "could see that the housing market was imploding" and lucky enough to make more than $500 million by betting against it.

But he wasn't just a spectator to the housing collapse. Four years ago, Greene was party to precisely the kind of deal that decimated the market.

Greene insists he did nothing wrong. Yet the way he handled the deal left an opening for massive fraud and put him uncomfortably close to a man now under federal indictment.

The setting: this remote desert town at the edge of Death Valley. At a project called La Mirage, Greene converted 1950s-era military housing from apartments to 300 condos. In the summer of 2006, just as he was starting to make his bets against the sub-prime housing market, official records show that Greene's company unloaded the units, some for as much as $165,000. The buyers turned out to be people who never intended to own the properties or pay back the loans.

Local residents, who referred to the complex of single-story duplexes and triplexes as "Criminal Gardens," were stunned at the sale prices. Even in the midst of real estate hysteria, they seemed over the top.

Within 18 months, all of the La Mirage buyers defaulted on their loans and every condo was in foreclosure. Low-income tenants, still paying rent and unaware their apartments had been sold, found themselves on the street. Lenders recouped about $25,000 per unit when the properties went up for auction. Banks — and ultimately U.S. taxpayers who bailed out the banks — were left holding the bag on nearly $34 million of worthless paper.

Now James Delbert McConville, Greene's counterpart in the transaction, is in jail facing criminal charges of conspiracy and money laundering stemming in part from the La Mirage transaction. The assistant U.S. attorney says the FBI is still trying to put a dollar figure on McConville's alleged fraud, and is ramping up its investigation of the La Mirage deal.

Kendrick Meek isn't going to get a pass from me, but I'm not sure that Greene, a man who treats his employees like subhuman garbage and even tried to get out of paying a Workman's Comp claim, should be the one tossing around charges of ethics violations.

Jeff Greene: Self Made Putz

Jeff Greene is a self-made man.  Should be good enough for me, right?  Not hardly.  From the St. Pete Times:

...But behind the bio soundbites and chipper TV ads lies a man widely disparaged by current and former employees, former tenants and political consultants as a self-absorbed cheapskate. A lawsuit accuses him of being cruel and verbally abusive to his former chef. A deckhand shocked on Greene's Summerwind yacht had to fight eight months to get his medical bills paid after Greene denied knowing him....

..."If he plans on running his country like his yacht, we're all going to be sinking," said John Walenczyk, a Summerwind deckhand....

The buzz among Greene employees is that if the Asian or European markets have done poorly overnight, it's going to be a rough morning because Greene, a screamer, is up all hours monitoring his vast portfolio.

James Battles, Greene's former personal chef, sued him last year. The suit alleges Greene demanded round-the-clock attention and would berate and humiliate Battles when he sought reimbursement for food paid for out of his own pocket.

Battles said Greene fired him after he was hospitalized for exhaustion before one of Greene's parties. The settlement is confidential and Greene declined to discuss the case.

Former and current employees tell similar stories, though most fear talking publicly.

Adam Lambert worked as captain of Greene's 145-foot yacht, Summerwind, earlier this year.

"He has total disregard for anybody else,'' chuckled Lambert, who said he was Greene's 20th and 22nd Summerwind captain (No. 21 quit after a few hours with Greene).

"I don't think I ever once had an actual conversation with him. It was always, 'I should just get rid of you, what f------ good are you? You're just a f------ boat driver. You're the third-highest paid employee in my corporation and I should just get rid of you,' '' Lambert, 43, recalled by phone from a yacht in Croatia. "It didn't bother me. I just felt sorry for the man. He doesn't seem very happy."

Harlan Hoffman, 37, was in a Fort Lauderdale yachting apparel store in 2007 when he saw a help wanted ad for Summerwind.

"There were two people from Australia there who said, 'Oh, good luck with that one. . . . We're still waiting to get paid by Summerwind.' I should have listened," Hoffman said.

The deckhand was shocked while buffing Greene's yacht and wound up hospitalized.


A boat's owner is supposed to take care of on-the-job medical costs, but Hoffman said Greene — whom he never met — told the insurance company he had never heard of Hoffman and that he didn't work on Summerwind. It took eight months and legal action that included affidavits from other crew members vouching for Hoffman and trashing Greene to get his bills paid.

"This guy Jeff Greene threw tons of money into new diving gear, but the crew's basic equipment — food and supplies — he didn't want to spend any money on. Summerwind has a terrible reputation,'' Hoffman said. "Mr. Greene's yacht is known to be a party yacht. When it went to Cuba, everybody talked about the vomit caked all over the sides from all the partying going on."

Hoffman couldn't believe it a few weeks back he saw Greene's campaign ads on TV.

"He has this act on TV talking about what a good guy he is, and he's anything but. He treats his own employees like s---,'' he said. "If he can't even treat his employees good, I don't see how he's going to do good for the American people."

John Walenczyk, the Summerwind deckhand, was aboard that notorious trip to Cuba.

"He didn't want to put a dollar into anything, but expected miracles from the crew. He doesn't care about anybody but himself — a real peach,'' said Walenczyk.

Jeff Greene made his money by praying every day that someone would lose their home.  He treats his employees like indentured servants and if you can judge a man by the company he keeps, and I think you can, Greene likes to pal around with George Soros, Paris Hilton, Mike Tyson (who served as best man at Greene's wedding) and Heidi Fleiss.  Fleiss, hooker to the well heeled, lived with Greene after her little stint in prison.

Greene is a self made man with a self made reputation for being a first class jerk.  Thanks to another unprincipled jerk, Charlie Crist, Greene could be the next senator from Florida.  If that isn't reason enough for any remaining fence sitters to jump down and back Marco Rubio, I don't know what is. 

The LEAST Surprising Headline of the Day

The honor goes to Politico for Democrats flirt with backing Charlie Crist.  On the Democrat side of the ballot, the candidates stink.  Kendrick Meek is completely ho hum and he's been tied to a criminal fraud case.  Their other possibility, Jeff Greene, is just plain skeezy.  Yes, I know, for Democrats skeeziness is a feature, not a bug, but still. 

Ed Morrissey posits at Hot Air that the Dems throwing their lot in with Crist doesn't make sense.  Morrissey presents a thorough, logical and convincing argument against a Dem/Crist hookup.  Thing is, and trust me, I am holding my breath as I type this, Morrissey is wrong.

Crist has gone from being a Republican in name only to a Democrat in everything but name.  He has tossed every conservative principal he ever pretended to hold and replaced those principals with the Democratic party platform talking points.  Is he repugnant?  Sure, but when did that ever bother the Democrats?  (See:  Kennedy, Ted; Kennedy, Patrick; Frank, Barney-and so forth and so on ad nauseum) 

The assumption is that Crist and Rubio will split the Republican vote and hand the Senate seat to the Democratic challenger.  But Crist is actively ceding the Republican vote to Rubio, hoping to capture the Indy vote and split the Democrat vote with whomever while keeping the prize for himself. 

My guess is that Democrats would rather that Crist were their candidate.  Their problem is that they can not actively give Meek the heave ho.  It just wouldn't look good.  Greene strikes me as a novelty candidate, at best.  I hate to say it but Crist looks good for the Dems.

My Home, Sweet Home

Let’s see if I’ve got this right:


Self confessed pioneer “credit default swaps” and profiteer off mortgage foreclosures. Check.

Best man was a rapist, wife beater and cannibal.  Check

Lived with a famous hooker.  Check.

Well, at least Florida politics is never dull.