Former President Jimmy Carter isn’t in Cuba to negotiate for the release of jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross, though he is hoping that his visit will help to thaw U.S.-Cuban relations, he said Tuesday.
Carter told reporters as he toured a convent in Old Havana that he had “spoken to some officials about the case of Mr. Gross,” but indicated that his goal was not to bring the State Department contractor home. “I am not here to take him out of the country,” Carter said, according to Reuters’s translation of his answer, which he gave in Spanish.
“I hope we will be able to contribute to better relations between the two countries,” Carter said.
Gross, 61, was sentenced earlier this month to 15 years in jail for providing illegal Internet access to Cuban dissidents. Cuban President Raul Castro has accused Gross of spying, but the State Department has said that Gross was in Cuba to set up Internet access for Jewish groups in the island nation and not to do anything else.
Carter is set to meet later Tuesday with Castro and is expected to discuss Gross’s case. Before he leaves on Wednesday, Carter is set to meet with dissident bloggers, including Yoani Sanchez, who writes the influential Generacion Y blog.
The former president last visited Cuba in 2002, and is the only current or former president to do so since the 1959 revolution that brought communist ruler Fidel Castro into power.
Two civil rights leaders met Tuesday with Gov. Rick Scott and gave the new Republican chief executive a list of nearly two dozen priorities in areas ranging from education to health care to job creation to voting. Scott’s visitors were Adora Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and Dale Landry, the Tallahassee chapter president.
The NAACP’s priority list includes smaller class sizes, elimination of racial and ethnic health care disparities, automatic restoration of civil rights for ex-felons (a program recently abolished by Scott and the Cabinet), expanded early voting hours and abortion rights. The civil rights group opposes the recently-signed bill tying teacher pay to student performance, as well as shortening the period of time the unemployed can collect jobless benefits.
“It went pretty well, as well as could be expected,” Landry said. He said Scott made no commitments and the meeting lasted for about 30 minutes.
St.PetersburgTimes/ Bousquet/ 03/28/2011
Florida Latin Connection/ Arnoldo Varona, Editor
Florida: NAACP leaders deliver a priority list to Scott..
The Wall Street Journal this evening published an op/ed by Sen. Marco Rubio in which he calls the national debt a grave concern and outlines a series of reforms to bring it under control, including reforming Social Security.
“Our generation’s greatest challenge is an economy that isn’t growing, alongside a national debt that is. If we fail to confront this, our children will be the first Americans ever to inherit a country worse off than the one their parents were given,” the Florida Republican writes.
“I will vote to defeat an increase in the debt limit unless it is the last one we ever authorize and is accompanied by a plan for fundamental tax reform, an overhaul of our regulatory structure, a cut to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.” Read the piece here.
St.PetersburgTimes/ Leary/ 03/29/2011
Florida Latin Connection/ Arnoldo Varona, Editor
Rubio, in WSJ op/ed, says he’ll vote against raising debt limit..
Likely presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty landed a top Florida fundraiser, Ann Herberger of Miami, as a national finance consultant. A longtime Bush family fundraiser, Herberger worked for Mitt Romney in 2008In Florida she’ll be working along with fundraiser Gretchen Picotte in Orlando, a veteran of Rick Scott, Rudy Giuliani and Mel Martinez fundraising. .
“I love governors because they are the CEOs of the states, and the buck stops with them. I think Tim Pawlenty is the right guy at the right time,” Herberger said.
Even without Florida’s new anti-gerrymandering law, the Republican-controlled state legislature could have a tough time crafting a new map in which Palm Beach County continues to provide significant support for U.S. Reps. Allen West, R-Plantation, and Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta.
Under traditional redistricting politics, Republican lawmakers might try to bolster GOP rising star West in District 22 by giving his swing district some Republican precincts from Rooney’s District 16. But that would make Rooney’s seat less secure for the GOP, particularly if District 16 also loses Republican strongholds in Charlotte County to create a new seat there.
PostPolitics/Bennett/ 03/28/2011
Florida Latin Connection/ Arnoldo Varona, Editor
Florida: Preserving West, Rooney GOP seats in Palm Beach County could be tough in upcoming redistricting
Tweet“If Florida leaders refuse to carry out the new national health-care law, Uncle Sam is prepared to take charge on behalf of the state’s consumers.”
One year after President Barack Obama signed the health-care overhaul into law, federal officials are urging Florida and other reluctant states to shape it to meet their needs and to take advantage of millions of dollars of federal planning grants. Failure to participate, officials warned this week, means a loss of state control.
Florida and other states, for example, must show by 2013 they are set up to provide a health-insurance exchange, an online service for consumers to compare coverage plans and shop for affordable rates. If states are unwilling or unprepared, the law requires U.S. officials to step in and make a federal-run exchange available for residents at the start of 2014.
But Florida Gov. Rick Scott — backed by fellow Republicans in the Legislature who strongly oppose “ObamaCare” — has refused $2 million in federal planning money and ordered state agencies not to implement the law. In addition, Florida has challenged the law in federal court, in a lawsuit filed before Scott was elected in November.
The standoff reflects an ongoing political debate and a high-stakes gamble by Scott and other critics, who are counting on Congress to repeal the law or federal courts to rule it unconstitutional.
Howard Troxler: “These are harsh words for a Sunday morning, but the occasion screams out for them. I take them from the Bible; please forgive me.”
The Florida Legislature proved this past week, once and for all, that it is the utter Whore of Babylon.
It is now legal in our state to pay off the Legislature directly. Who says so? The Legislature.
This is not a joke.
This is not satire.
This is Florida — where the laws of our democracy are now openly, officially For Sale.
“On Thursday afternoon, with greedy lip-smacking speed, the Legislature voted to relegalize a bygone and corrupt institution, outlawed in this state for more than two decades, known as ‘leadership funds.’ These “leadership funds” are campaign slush funds operated legally and officially by the leaders of the Legislature themselves”.
Legislators. Sworn to the sacred duty of writing the laws of a free people. Taking legal, direct payoffs from those seeking favorable laws.
If you can swallow that, then your moral relativism knows no bounds.
TweetFred Grimm: “The power boys in Tallahassee had made it clear that they want state government run like a business. The next logical step: Run Florida courtrooms like factories.”
Powerful state Sen. J.D. Alexander (the Oliver Wendell Holmes of Lake Wales) floated his Judicial Workload Incentive Plan this week, a concept that seems novel only to someone unfamiliar with the piece-work pay offered by garment factories a century ago. Instead of dresses, judges earn extra by ripping through caseloads.
Judges, lawyers and prosecutors were incredulous. “They’ll turn us into hucksters,” a Broward County judge complained to me Friday, too wary, amid an anti-judiciary frenzy, to allow his name to be published.
Alexander shrugged off objections. “I’m very serious about it,” he told Steve Bousquet, of the Herald/St. Pete Times Tallahassee bureau. “What we’re trying to do is create some incentives for the courts that are fair and reasonable and save us a lot of money.”
Alexander, with plenty of political juice as chairman of Senate Budget Committee, intends to fold an incentive pay plan into the state budget that sweetens the salary of trial court judges by an extra $12,000 a year. But only if the judges meet performance goals. …
Alexander figures it would be cheaper to dangle wads of cash in the judges’ faces. Let old-fashioned greed get justice moving again.
With 12 grand in the balance, a judge might hear something quite persuasive in a trial lawyer’s objection to an irrelevant line of questioning. A motion for a continuance? Not so much.
A plea deal, in this coming era, will translate into a year’s worth of tuition at his kid’s private school. One can imagine courtroom specials: very short sentences for very quick and cost-effective pleas. “Today only! Come on down! First five cases get probation.”
The staid, sometimes-plodding march of justice process would give way to a frenzied rush. Something like that classic scene from the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy, with Lucy and Ethel (imagine them in black judicial robes) going berserk, mouths stuffed full of confections, working the assembly line of a candy factory.
St Pete Times editor of editorials Tim Nickens: ‘GIVE AN INCH…” • That was the sarcastic tweet last weekend by Brian Burgess, the communications director for Gov. Rick Scott. He complained about a Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau article describing how Scott’s selective release of information about large public pensions advances his political agenda. • Burgess’ point: The poor governor gets criticized for not being transparent, creates a website to provide more public information, and still gets criticized by whiny reporters. • My assessment of this snarky tweet: The Scott administration views Florida’s Sunshine Laws as a nuisance and the release of public records as a personal favor. It treats public records as private corporate documents and grudgingly distributes what it wants, when it wants — and to whom it wants. • Nearly three months into the job, Scott acts as though he is still the CEO of a private hospital company who has no legal obligation to be transparent. He says he supports open government, and he signed an executive order his first day re-establishing the Office of Open Government created by Gov. … Read more
St.PetersburgTimes/ Smith/ 03/27/2011
Florida Latin Connection/ Arnldo Varona, Editor
Rick Scott and the “dark cloud over Fla’s Sunshine laws”..
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Mar 30 2011
The Wall Street Journal this evening published an op/ed by Sen. Marco Rubio in which he calls the national debt a grave concern and outlines a series of reforms to bring it under control, including reforming Social Security.
Likely presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty landed a top Florida fundraiser, Ann Herberger of Miami, as a national finance consultant. A longtime Bush family fundraiser, Herberger worked for Mitt Romney in 2008In Florida she’ll be working along with fundraiser Gretchen Picotte in Orlando, a veteran of Rick Scott, Rudy Giuliani and Mel Martinez fundraising. .
Even without Florida’s new anti-gerrymandering law, the Republican-controlled state legislature could have a tough time crafting a new map in which Palm Beach County continues to provide significant support for U.S. Reps. Allen West, R-Plantation, and Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta. 
Howard Troxler: “These are harsh words for a Sunday morning, but the occasion screams out for them. I take them from the Bible; please forgive me.”
St Pete Times editor of editorials Tim Nickens: ‘GIVE AN INCH…” • That was the sarcastic tweet last weekend by Brian Burgess, the communications director for Gov. Rick Scott. He complained about a Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau article describing how Scott’s selective release of information about large public pensions advances his political agenda. • Burgess’ point: The poor governor gets criticized for not being transparent, creates a website to provide more public information, and still gets criticized by whiny reporters. • My assessment of this snarky tweet: The Scott administration views Florida’s Sunshine Laws as a nuisance and the release of public records as a personal favor. It treats public records as private corporate documents and grudgingly distributes what it wants, when it wants — and to whom it wants. • Nearly three months into the job, Scott acts as though he is still the CEO of a private hospital company who has no legal obligation to be transparent. He says he supports open government, and he signed an executive order his first day re-establishing the Office of Open Government created by Gov. …