Month: October 2013
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6817 SEEN/
Obama bundlers nominated for diplomatic posts; Boca’s Mark Gilbert for ambassador to New Zealand
By Michael Beckel
Center for Public Integrity
President Barack Obama has named two more of his top campaign fundraisers for plumb diplomatic posts, nominating Boca Raton’s Mark Gilbert to be U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Rob Barber to the same position in Iceland. -
Cooper City shrinks official minutes: “Details you really don’t want the public to know about”
By William Hladky
BrowardBulldog.org
Cooper City commissioners had an angry, embarrassing public exchange last year, but you won’t find any mention of it in the city’s official minutes of that meeting. -
Governor’s office clams up about Kisslan resignation, breakdown in appointment process
By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
Gov. Rick Scott’s office says it vetted Sunrise City Attorney Kimberly Kisslan before her recent appointment to the governing board of Broward Health, yet failed to uncover damaging information that led to her abrupt resignation last Friday amid an inquiry. -
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5421 SEEN/
State pro-business organizations in Florida, elsewhere are publicly funded, privately controlled
By Nicholas Kusnetz
Center for Public Integrity
The Arizona Commerce Authority is housed in an office in downtown Phoenix. The authority, which oversees state corporate tax incentives and grants worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is not quite a public agency. It’s led by a board of directors run by the governor and Jerry Colangelo, who, after four decades as an Arizona sports and real estate mogul, is a local icon. -
Ex-U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch lives half-a-world away as millions flow to his Ben Gamla schools
By William Gjebre
BrowardBulldog.org
Peter Deutsch, the driving force behind South Florida’s controversial Ben Gamla charter schools, is a six-term former Democratic congressman with a unique status: he lives more than 6,000 miles away in Israel as an expatriate. Even so, Deutsch’s Ben Gamla schools have racked up hefty public funding: more than $10 million for nearly 1,800 students last school year alone. -
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6330 SEEN/
Legal battles blaze in Broward, elsewhere six decades after “safe” cigarette filter
By Myron Levin
FairWarning
It’s hard to think of anything more reckless than adding a deadly carcinogen to a product that already causes cancer—and then bragging about the health benefits. That’s what Lorillard Tobacco did 60 years ago when it introduced Kent cigarettes, whose patented “Micronite” filter contained a particularly virulent form of asbestos.
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