From the Blogs

Daily Kos: FL-21, FL-25: McCain's shady bundler buddy gave $20,000 to Diaz-Balarts

US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen rejects Medicare fraud remedy

The Miami Herald is outdoing itself lately with investigations. As the staff shrinks, will the good work still have a chance to continue? The answer will have telling effect on our civic culture, and on the jail population. Fewer crooks will be incarcerated if the Herald isn’t able to keep on exposing fraud.

In fact, fraud seems to be a major industry in South Florida. Look at two of our most important economic sectors:

· Real estate. Mortgage fraud on all sides has been exposed in the Herald as a reason for the steep rise of home prices a few years ago and now the drop. This was accomplished by our neighbors the bankers, mortgage brokers, borrowers and lenders. Working together and individually to get rich like good Americans or just to be housed, they came close to wrecking the whole national economy. Rampant was the word the Herald used to characterize the level of mortgage fraud.

· Health care. Now the Herald has chronicled billions of dollars defrauded from Medicare – that’s from our pockets, fellow citizens – by our neighbors, the fraudsters. This was billions annually in South Florida, not the whole country. An incredible haul. Perhaps it explains the big houses and fancy yachts in our splendid part of the land.

And what is the remedy? Congress! At least in the case of Medicare fraud. So it says on the front page of Monday’s Herald. Headline: Fraud Remedy Denied.

Headlines often are written in the passive voice without full verb forms. Let’s do a little exercise here and put this in the active voice. Congress Denied Fraud Remedy.

As the Herald’s Jay Weaver reported exhaustively, the Medicare agency tried repeatedly for more money to combat fraud, and Congress always throttled the attempt. Weaver shows fine enterprise in interviewing two local members of Congress to delve into the reasons.

Interestingly, Republican Sen. Mel Martinez is on the good side (first-termer behavior?) of this issue, and is backing legislation to stop fraud. He says $1 invested in anti-fraud measures will yield $10 in fraud-reduction, the Herald reports.

Then Weaver turns to my congresswoman, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, FL-18, in the U.S. House since 1989, and she speaks out of both sides of her Republican mouth. Medicare needs help to fight fraud, but it’s risky for lawmakers to give money to an agency recognized for incompetence, she says:

“If you increase the money for oversight, then it looks like you’re fattening up the bureaucracy, even when it’s really for oversight and fighting fraud,” she said. “It’s a difficult choice.”

She then chose according to the ideology of small-government-is-best, and voted against it.

Perhaps it’s not ideology. Campaign donations could be another motivation. And thanks to research from the Florida Democratic Party, we have some detail on Ros-Lehtinen’s connection to Medicare fraud via past donations for her re-election.

From an FDP news release last week:

“In 1998, the largest home health care provider in South Florida was charged with bilking Medicare for more than $45 million in fake services. The company's founder had been a donor to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's campaign for re-election to Congress.

“Congress did have the opportunity to fight back against Medicare fraud before it reached crisis proportions, but Ros-Lehtinen voted against allowing Congress to pursue its Constitutionally-mandated oversight role. In 1995, she voted for the so-called Medicare Preservation Act (HR 2421, Roll Call 731, 1995). The Act that Ros-Lehtinen voted for "crippled the efforts of law enforcement agencies to control health-care fraud abuse in the Medicare program," according to the then-inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Even then, Ros-Lehtinen voted with the Republican Party line and against the best interest of the people of her district, a pattern that continues almost 15 years later.”

The FDP release reports that Ros-Lehtinen has banked $180,000 from Big Pharma and HMOs.

The charge:

“Ros-Lehtinen is either complicit or easily bamboozled, but any way you cut it she has no business representing South Florida in the United States Congress,” said Eric Jotkoff, FDP spokesman.

Amen.

Back to the remedy for Congress: Annette Taddeo is a brilliant businesswoman, passionate Democrat, unsullied by Big Pharma donations, and she’s running a strong challenge to Ros-Lehtinen. Now is the time to pop over to annette2008.com and give some honest money to her campaign.

And don’t forget Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez, who need your support to take out Mario (FL-25) and Lincoln (FL-21) Diaz-Balart (Lincoln declined to be interviewed for the Herald takeout), our two other rubber-stamps in Congress.

Re-elect? NO for 2 of 3 Republicans in South Florida

This is terrific news for those campaigning for a strongly Democratic House of Representatives. Fresh polling shows two of the three sitting Republicans in Miami-Dade County under the 50-percent threshold of incumbent viability.

So why am I disappointed? Darn, my incumbent Republican representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is not below the threshold. That’s FL-18, where Ros-Lehtinen has been in office since 1989. This is a call to renewed and more intense work on behalf of the excellent Annette Taddeo, the Democratic challenger in this district that covers the coast from Miami Beach to Key West and a chunk of mainland Miami.

Better news for Joe Garcia in FL-25 (the outer western suburbs of Miami and The Everglades) and even better for Raul Martinez in FL-21 (inner western suburbs of Miami). They are almost within the margin of error – barely behind the brothers Mario Diaz-Balart and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, respectively.

They all need your help. Click on these links and give something. South Florida can be another of these places around the country where the Bush rubber-stampers properly are punished by the voters.

www.annette2008.com

www.joegarcia08.com

www.raul2008.com

Polling by Bendixon & Associates shows the following numbers in response to the question of which candidate you would support if the election were held today:

District 18
Ros-Lehtinen 58 percent
Taddeo 31 percent
Undecided 11 percent

District 21
Lincoln Diaz-Balart 41 percent
Raul Martinez 37 percent
Undecided 22 percent

District 25
Mario Diaz-Balart 44 percent
Joe Garcia 39 percent
Undecided 17 percent

There are two comprehensive reports available for further provocation of your thoughts. The Miami Herald’s headline has the incumbents’ rivals “on their heels.” And CBS4 with Jim Defede is replete with advice that Garcia and Martinez concentrate on getting out the vote among undecided Anglos and African-Americans in their districts, because the Cuban voter has mostly already decided.

Iwant to raise the question of how Barack Obama’s just-arriving campaign may affect these congressional races. Remember, Florida was not on the main burner of presidential campaigning until the Democratic nomination was decided elsewhere – thanks to the too-early primary date imposed by the Republican-dominated state legislature. So while the Obama campaign got its feet on the ground everywhere else in the country, it was only a few valiant local volunteers who stoked the flame of Obama enthusiasm with parties to watch the primary results in other states and other minor-key events.

It has been different now for a couple of weeks. There is a state campaign office and local campaign offices, with 250 Obama Fellows arriving lately in South Florida alone. These mostly young volunteers have been at meetings of our Democratic clubs, as well as running voter-registration events and recruiting more volunteers. Last night at the Miami-Dade Democratic Party’s meeting of the Executive Committee, three of the Fellows spoke, and a prominent part of their message was a promise to work for Democratic victories all along the ticket – not just the president.

All this, I’m sure, will help our Democratic Congressional candidates. And it’s earlier than we’ve had such campaign energy in the past. Certainly not in the 2004 campaign season, when the John Kerry campaign was barely visible four months before election day. Now is the time to make up some of that narrowing gap and send all three of our Republican incumbents home from Congress.

Endorsements in the news: labor unions, Cuban-American leaders

Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo at a community candidates' forum Saturday -- empty chair for "no show" Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

(Belatedly cross-posting this from Miami-Dade Dems of July 1.)

Chapter I: Labor endorsement

In Tuesday’s Miami Herald it’s revealed that Lincoln Diaz-Balart was not – repeat NOT – endorsed by some of the labor unions that once endorsed him. Also it’s revealed that the Republican representing Florida’s 21^st District sorta fibbed in a news release claiming that he had been endorsed by those unions. Ooops. The Democratic challenger, Raul Martinez, asks for an apology.

And let’s be clear about the wider issue of labor endorsements. The three Democratic challengers for Congress – Raul Martinez, Joe Garcia (FL-25) and Annette Taddeo (FL-18) – are endorsed by the Florida AFL-CIO. Down with the Republican incumbents!

Way down in the Herald article is a reason why the unions reversed earlier backing of the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The three had committed to the Labor Free Choice Act, which makes it easier to form unions, and then they failed to support it in the House. This is what we call behavior of finks.

UPDATE: Click here to read the news release about the AFL-CIO endorsement of the three Democratic candidates.

Chapter II: Cuban American endorsement

Monday evening, a lively gathering at the cocktail hour at the waterfront villa of J.C. Mas and his wife Vivian de la Maza. It’s a fund-raiser for Joe Garcia, the last day of the reporting quarter, and this is a well-heeled and enthusiastic crowd for Garcia’s candidacy.

Host J.C. Mas, son of the late Jorge Mas Canosa, longtime head of the Cuban American National Foundation, introduces Joe Garcia (whom he’s known since college) by admitting that he has given to the Diaz-Balarts in the past but now he has to ask “whether I want them to represent me as a Cuban American.”

“Honestly, when you look at the fact that they only have one issue they can talk about, and they are not addressing this community or all the needs of this community, I think that is something that needs to change. I think they’ve had plenty of opportunities and plenty of time to make their impact, and their impact really is nonexistent.”

He went on to urge the crowd to support Joe Garcia – “a man of honor and of integrity and ultimately more talented to bring hope to our community and to assist us with the enormous needs in this diverse community.”

We’ll see if a few weeks how the campaigns of Joe Garcia, Raul Martinez and Annette Taddeo are faring in the fund-raising area for the second quarter. They out-raised the incumbents in the first quarter. Let’s hope that the fund-raising totals show continuing endorsement by both the well-off crowd and the smaller donors who turned out in droves early this year.

Chapter III: DCCC endorsement

And let’s not forget that the Democratic Party machinery is increasingly behind our challengers. Garcia and Martinez have been endorsed by the Red to Blue committee, an arm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Annette Taddeo has been elevated to status of a promising candidate on that ranking. She also attended the Monday evening event in Coral Gables, and appeared with Joe Garcia Saturday at a community candidates' panel, where I snapped the photo at the top of this report.

And lest you think that all the above is in the local news media, Chapter II is not. It's my little exclusive from having been at the fund-raiser (my check is in the mail, Joe).

Lincoln Soon to Be Unemployed

The latest poll from Bendixen & Associates, Lincoln only leads Raul Martinez 41-37% in their congressional race. 22% are undecided and the poll has a margin of error of +/- 5%. Those are horribly bad numbers for an incumbent. Lincoln will soon be unemployed.

Lincoln Hates Homeowners

Miami home foreclosures have more than doubled in the second quarter, due in part to Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart's inaction on the housing crisis. In Miami-Dade County, the number climbed from 1,282 to 2,677, according to the online real estate data company PropertyShark.com. (Bloomberg, 7/2/08)

"Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart failed South Florida's homeowners with their inaction on this critical issue, and we continue to see the consequences," Florida Democratic Party spokesman Alejandro Miyar said. "In South Florida, foreclosures have doubled - families are losing their homes and communities are declining because of Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart's opposition to solutions that would help Floridians."

Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart also both opposed creating a reserve fund for affordable housing, paid for through proposed reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (H.R. 312, #141, 3/13/08)

This is why these guys will soon be unemployed.

The Latest from the Blogs

Here's what are other blogs are saying about Lincoln.

FLA Politics (Progressive Florida) - FL-21, 24, & 25: Diaz-Balarts and Feeney added to ROMP

FLA Politics (Progressive Floirda) - FL-21: Lincoln Diaz-Balart Fakes Union Support

Pushing Rope - Fake Endorsements Better Than the Real Ones

Miami-Dade Dems - Endorsements in the news: labor unions, Cuban-American leaders