Fleece me, Please!

Ever since its founding in 2000, the Town of Southwest Ranches has been the source of free money for every sort of grifter that has ever passed through south Florida.  Who can forget the Canadians who made it a Family Affair?  Where else can you run the Town, have your wife oversee the finances and have your daughter control access to public records all for $750K per year?!  Possibly only Bell California has a better life for the grifter on the taxpayer's dime. Who could forget the double teaming of the SWR taxpayer by the Wasserman Rubin pair through their "you write grant - I'll vote for it - you get the commission" scheme?  Pure Southwest Ranches.  Pure graft.

The Town of Southwest Ranches being Fleeced Again
(Attention Mr. Breitkreuz, a sheep is part of a rural lifestyle, not a prison)

In a rare instance of fiscal prudence, the Council forced the new Town Administrator, Ken Fields, to resign for giving $40K in raises to support staff at the Town Hall after Ken bent the process to avoid an independent financial review of the proposed raises.  Unfortunately, the Council's worrying about $40K is akin to concerning yourself with a hangnail *on* the severed arm... What kind of reckless spending has been going on to try and bring a mega prison run by the notorious CCA do you suppose has been going on?   Where is the Council's fiscal prudence here?  What about Mayor Nelson?  He's signs every single check the Town writes... to Becker Poliakoff, for example.  $40K is just the tip of the iceberg, Captain Smith.

Did you know that the Town pays for its very own lobbyist who just purely coincidentally happens to work for the condo attorney firm, Becker Poliakoff?  And that the Town Attorney's name is Keith Poliakoff?   And the first Town Attorney and a Town Founder was Gary Poliakoff?  Hey, it's a Family Affair. Doesn't every 7500 person town dedicated to preserving their rural lifestyle have their condo attorney firm running it and supplying lobbyists?  Legal documents recorded with the Clerk of the House show the Town spent approximately $20,000 for lobbying for the CCA prison in 2011.

The lobbying was conducted by the Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart's former Chief of Staff, Omar Franco, who now has a position with the firm Becker & Poliakoff.  He worked very hard to get Congresswoman and Democratic National Committe Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to endorse an enormous federally funded bit of corporate cronism in the form of a DHS/ICE prison.  It is well known that CCA and other private prison firms spend MILLIONS of dollars a year in lobbying grifters politicians for the chance to get these lucrative contracts with the federal government.  If CCA is willing to spend the lobbying coin, WHY did the Town's taxpayers have to pay a DIME on lobbying for this prison?  There is something you might want to ask your representative on the Town Council and see what they have to say about it.

Spending on lobbying is something we're pretty sure they didn't agree to when the council approved the 2005 agreement with CCA and subsequent delegation requests to increase the bed space...  Maybe Prison Inc's lobbying money was well spent ON OUR Town Council, perhaps?  Or maybe the de facto Town Manager's law firm stood to profit handsomely over the contracting and litigation related to the proposed prison.  Maybe?  We are told to always follow the money.  Much of the money leads to Becker & Poliakoff.  Just file a public records request for their invoices to the Town.

By the way, this increase in bed space was touted in emails as giving a greater per diem to the Town by  CCA Attorney Sam Poole showing all their loyalties lie with greater profits instead of with the people the Council was elected to serve.  But, selling out to predatory corporations is really nothing new for Sam Poole and his law firm, Berger Singerman.

An increase in bed space does offer a greater per diem to the Town, but who would benefit mostly from this increase in bed space?  96 to 98% would go to CCA.  Some great deal, hmmm?  What about our hemorrhaging federal budget? It's ALL ultimately funded with your federal tax dollars.  The Feds are bleeding money faster than they can print or borrow it.  What does this show for our economic recovery?  Surely investing more federal tax dollars into the private prison complex is not going to have some magical effect on paying down the deficit nor will the few hundred dollars offer much of a relief in unemployment rates...    Prisons are overhead and not a productive use of capital. 

The money trail for the CCA prison lobbying doesn't stop there.  The Town attorney, Keith Poliakoff has racked up an enormous register of legal fees because of this prison.  Who is paying this bill?  The Town Taxpayers!  Last year, the Mayor approved over $900,000 dollars in attorney expenses!!  Bills, that we are still sifting through.   Below is a comparison of  the two municipalities involved with this prison, Pembroke Pines and SWR,  based on their budgeted numbers.  It is further broken down as a "cost per person" which is commonly used in comparing legal fees amongst municipalities.

                                             Population    Budgeted Atty's Fees      Cost per Person
                      SWR                 7,500                      $335K                          $47.00
                         PP                  154,000                  $855K                            $5.55
** Population was taken from US Census numbers for 2010, Atty Fees were taken from 2011 Budget for both municipalities.

Election day is coming... You have a voice in your vote.  Let it be heard! The time for a change in leadership is now!

Don't just change the leadership in your own municipality but at all levels that were involved in this prison scheme that didn't benefit taxpayers nor the residents living in Southwest Ranches or Pembroke Pines.

The players consist of Senator Bill Nelson (D), Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D), Allen West (R), Marco Rubio (R) (Former B&P Atty with connections to the Blackwater prison scandal) all knew about these plans and all of them ignored their constituents.

Another thing that bothers us is that if the letter of support for the Town's proposal was just a "cursory letter of support" (as Debbie Wasserman Schultz put it in a previous Jimmy Cefalo interview) and if Senator Bill Nelson is a Senator for the entire STATE of Florida, then why wouldn't he have noticed that one of the three sites that had submitted for the project was shutting a prison down and should have rightly gotten this project to fill this gap in their budget.  If we must fund a federal detention center, which it is believed that we don't really need one, then why not put it where people would be losing their jobs?  I guess that would make too much sense for the feds to understand.  Or maybe it adheres to the most basic calculus of all... Follow the money.

In the end, it's just gut churning.  Throw all the bums out from the Nelsons to Wasserman Schultz to Keith Poliakoff.  Kick them all to the curb as Heidi would say.