Another week, another call by Progress Florida for an investigation or a petition or a protest.
Not that there's anything wrong with a show of civic indignation. Quite the opposite. I believe it's our duty as Americans to stand up and rail against ideas we believe are wrong for our society. It's one of the beautiful things about this great country of ours.
But I have a real problem with Progress Florida.
Or maybe the problem is with its primary audience, the mainstream media in this state.
In three years of existence, St. Petersburg-based Progress Florida, by its own description a lobbyist for liberal policy, has morphed into Florida's Boss Tweed, absent the criminal overtones but with all the power and bluster. Left-leaning PF calls the shots for an already left-leaning press, and all of a sudden a partisan point of view becomes a general directive.
Want some examples?
Progress Florida protested Florida State University for allowing the input of the right-leaning Koch Foundation in the hiring of two professors. An FSU probe released in July concluded -- guess what? -- no wrongdoing. Newspapers throughout the state were all over that one (but not so much the conclusion).
PF launched DirtyHari.org, a petition drive "devoted to holding Senate President Mike Haridopolos accountable to the people of Florida, not just the banks, utilities, oil companies, HMOs, big developers, and other corporate special interests who bankrolled his state Senate campaign and rise to leadership." Ostensibly, the idea was to get him to pay back the $152,000 he got for writing a book that didn't sell. But really it was to discredit his candidacy, which it did. Mainstreamers had a field day.
Then there was "Stop the corporate takeover of Medicaid." It urged citizens to write to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, demanding them "to deny Florida's waiver to privatize Medicaid. Health care should be about what's best for patients, not greedy HMOs." Not as sexy as some of PF's other protests, but it still wound up in blogs in virtually every newspaper site that has them.
Remember "Stop Rick Scott's Private Voucher Scheme"? This one got lots of attention from the press but not much traction. According to PF, "Governor Rick Scott is proposing a voucher plan to divert tax dollars from our already underfunded public school system into private schools. The Florida Legislature needs to hear from Floridians that such a scheme is unacceptable."
One of my PF favorites was the Awake the State rally. "Join us at an Awake Again May 10 rally close to you and hold those legislators who stood with Governor Scott accountable. ... People are awakening to the anti-middle class agenda being pursued in Tallahassee, and as a result, Governor Scotts approval ratings are at or near historic lows." Really? Is that what put Scott's numbers in the Dumpster -- his "anti-middle class agenda"?
Progress Florida, I'm afraid, lost all credibility with Nancy Smith the baseball fan when it promoted booing Scott as he threw out the first pitch during the Tampa Bay Rays' season opener. Is there nothing sacred? Doesn't Major League baseball have enough problems without this group bringing its political agenda onto the diamond?
Now the group has moved on. Apparently its latest target is Attorney General Pam Bondi.
What did Bondi do? I'm sure you've heard because PF is circulating a petition, calling for an investigation.
Bondi had the audacity to fire June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards, the employees Progress Florida calls "Florida's two leading attorneys investigating the epidemic of foreclosure fraud ravaging our communities."
Clarkson and Edwards -- leading attorneys, maybe. But Bondi's Economic Crimes Division legal staff up and down the state have their noses buried in foreclosure fraud. Does it dawn on anybody that it might be a bit of a stretch to accuse the attorney general -- as Progress Florida has -- of attempting "to slow or shut down investigations into illegal activities by banks ..."?
According to the PF press release, "Pam Bondi isn't supposed to work for Governor Scott, her campaign contributors or the banks."Clever release. By making that statement, they are accusing her of doing just that.
The St. Petersburg Times -- which, by the way, calls Progress Florida "a St. Petersburg advocacy group" -- quotes PF Executive Director Mark Ferrulo as saying, "We think the big banks and the financial industry have leveraged their enormous political power to have these attorneys removed."
An investigation, I understand, could cost upward of $100,000. Is that expenditure in the best interest of the people of Florida? Bondi herself might say, "Yes, it is" -- she has, after all, called the accusation "both unfounded and offensive" and if she wanted to prove her point, she might welcome the show of sunshine. But, frankly, I think she should considerthe facts in the case already explained:
The fired women's supervisor, Richard Lawson, head of the Economic Crimes Division, claims their foreclosure cases "were in shambles." And Carlos Muniz, Bondi's chielf of staff, said the two were "let go" because of poor job performance -- and that included analysis of legal issues, discussing cases with people they shouldn't, and overall professionalism.
All this reminds me of a recent report from the Huffington Post, revealing that the Obama administration has created and staffed a new position tucked inside its communications shop for helping coordinate rapid response to unfavorable stories and fostering and improving relations with the progressive online community. No big deal as far as I'm concerned. Politicians have always tried to control the flow of news and spin what they couldnt control. But usually the press is onto them quickly. They either ignore them or expose them. Progress Florida, on the other hand, gets a wink and a nod for their accusations -- but no such scrutiny. Has Progress Florida found a new position of its own tucked inside the Democratic communications shop ...?
Now glance over to the right for a moment.
Can you imagine the reaction of the mainstreamers if a conservative lobbying group employed the same Progress Florida, one-right-after-another, rile-'em-up, in-your-face tactics? I'd bet the farm on the result. The group would be a laughingstock -- derisive blog fodder from Tallahassee to Miami, from Ocala to St. Petersburg.
In Florida mediaworld, the left is right and the right is wrong.
This is an opinion column by Nancy Smith. Reach Nancy at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
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