Ya got Johnny Gaffney (who ripped off state Medicaid in 2002-03 for $132k,
but somehow got a do-over when he paid it all back) (and his brother Donald
is a former city councilman who did 2 yrs in federal pen for mail fraud). Ya
got Earl Johnson Jr. (who's under a permanent restraining order for
threatening to rough up his girlfriend, and she swears he roughed her up
quite a bit) (and his day job was on the board of directors of a battered
women's shelter, but he's on leave) (and he's still on probation after
having his law license suspended in 2001, and he's in trouble on the
probation). And ya got the Jacksonville police union endorsing Johnson
because of his "character." And ya almost had William Sweet, who dropped out
in October after being accused of stealing about $8.7k while working for the
city. And by the way, Gaffney's do-over looks really suspicious. His story
is that he submitted $132k worth of Medicaid bills while he was running a
home for the mentally-ill, and not only did he not have a state license for
the home but he swears he never knew he had to have one. And I guess the
state's attorney believed him because they dropped the charges. [Florida
Times-Union on Gaffney] [Florida Times-Union on Johnson]

And now, on to Another F-State City Commission

The commission in Hollywood voted 4-2 to accept a deal with former
commissioner Ken Gottlieb, who has conveniently put together quite a package
for himself. The city gets a dazzling "upscale homes plus affordable homes
plus stores" development in a blighted part of town. But four commissioners
believe the only way they could ever have achieved that, even in the rich
real-estate-speculative market they call Florida's Gold Coast, was to (a)
give Gottlieb the land for free (which originally cost the taxpayers $6.3m);
(b) give Gottlieb as much as 100 percent of the taxes emanating from the
increase in value of the property; and (c) assume that, because no one else
would bid on the project if they had to pay for the land, no one else would
bid on it after the city decided to give the land away. [South Florida
Sun-Sentinel]

Miami's Slasher Doctor Ordered to Pay $5 Million

De-licensed plastic surgeon Reinaldo Silvestre, who's in the Big House right
now on several medical-related convictions, lost a civil lawsuit in Miami
yesterday to a woman who got massively disfigured when he botched her
implant job, in that, midway through, he decided it was too dangerous to
insert the upgrades, mainly because he realized he had just accidentally
butchered the original breast. He's also famous for giving female implants
to a male bodybuilder who only wanted a couple more inches of pecs and on
top of that, made that particular surgery even more unpleasant by doing a
Raiford-like job with sedation. His defense in the civil case was that,
well, complications happen. [Miami Herald]

Follow-Ups

(1) Aw, man, you can't believe anything you read in the news these days.
Turns out a detail in WKMG-TV's news of Don Hendricks's robbery of the Bank
of America in Delray Beach [The F State, 12-19-2006] was wrong and that a
major fun fact was missing. He didn't go from motel to bank in the taxi; he
had put his bike in the taxi's trunk, and when the cabbie let him out, he
pedaled away on his bike. Plus, he had written four separate drafts of his
holdup note, which were found on him when he was arrested. [Palm Beach Post]

(2) The producer of the DVD quoting U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami
as welcoming the assassination of Castro (which she said must have been
electronically doctored because she'd never say anything like that) [The F
State, 12-11-2006] released the whole thing, and the Congresswoman is
probably out on the street right now looking for a better defense. [Miami
Herald]

(3) Either the incoming governor is much more serious about helping the
state's disadvantaged than the current governor ever was, or . . or . . or
when an aide asked Mr. Crist who he wanted to head up Dept. of Children and
Families, Crist thought the aide had asked what he wanted on his pancakes.
[Tampa Tribune]

Your Daily Loser

Marvin Ferrell, 21, of Lauderhill, said he's absolutely not going to no
jail, and if things go wrong, he'll get his wish. His probation officer had
just informed him that he had violated his four-day-old probation (on a
theft conviction), and that he'd have to be locked up. Ferrell leaped from
his chair and jumped out of the 4th-floor window of the probation office.
He's
in serious condition. [Miami Herald]

More Things To Worry About Today

The police dept. in the town of Lady Lake (pop. 11,800; median age 68) asked
the state for $43k so it can buy 29 M-16s, because the cops feel inadequate
in stand-off situations [WFTV (Orlando)] . . . . . Martin's a place in
Florida where they'll fluoridate the water over the county commission's dead
body (but the Stuart city commissioners may try to bring their
constituents into the modern world) [TCPalm.com].

This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2006.