No, not our OMG A Black Conservative. Florida Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll (R) ‘the first African American elected statewide and first woman to serve as lieutenant governor, has resigned amid a gambling, racketeering, and conflict-of-interest scandal.’
Cute.
The thread title, I mean, not Carroll. I have no idea what Carroll looks like.
Seems like FL has had a run of these minor corruption scandals over the last few years. Didn’t some people connected to Crist end up in jail shortly after he lost the Senate race?
Well, I hope you liberals are happy now. The conservatives tried a black politician and it didn’t work out.
I’m closing this because it looks like it’s just a jab at another poster. I’ll re-open it if anyone convinces me there’s really an interesting discussion topic here.
I’m re-opening the thread with a new title.
Kind of makes the OP confusing.
Thanks, Marley23. Though the original title was too tempting to resist. 
(Note to Little Nemo: The Doper’s username was removed from the beginning of the title. 
)
It amuses me that the party that espouses the idea that the government should not give ‘free money’ to people, had a politician in a state known for conservative voting that falsified documents to get ‘free money’ from the government. Of course the usual justification is ‘Well, we don’t agree with government subsidies; but as long as they’re there we’d be foolish not to take advantage of them.’ This strikes me as something like someone who disagrees with Chik-Fil-A’s stance on homosexuality eating there anyway because they like the sandwiches.
To be sure, members of both parties do illegal things. It’s easy to point to Jesse Jackson, Jr. as a current example; but in this case the party is specifically against government subsidies and it really points out their hypocrisy.
I think in this case, it would be hard for anyone to make this justification.
They’d have to go with “'Well, we don’t agree with government subsidies; but as long as they’re there we’d be foolish not to falsify documents and commit fraud to get them.”
I don’t see the hypocrisy angle here. I’m pretty sure both parties are strongly against forging documents to steal money. Stealing money from a program your supposed to like isn’t any better or worse then stealing it from a program your party doesn’t approve of.
Out of curiosity, is this the highest level political scandal in the US that ended in the resignation of the person involved where the person was a woman? I guess that’s a sign of progress, sort of.
For those puzzled by the story, I’ll share the benefits of my research:
Carroll used to own a PR firm, and did work – while in public office – for a non-profit that runs “Internet cafés.” What’s wrong with that? Nothing, unless you live in Florida, where “Internet café” is apparently a code word for “illegal low-rent casino.”
Apparently, Carroll was a big booster of this industry, and proposed legislation to legalize the – oh, what? They’re called “gaming centers” now? Rewrite!
Oh sure, that’s what they say…
I know that. I figured that was the point of the thread. But changing the title means you’ve got the set-up but not the punchline.
Slight correction. It points out Jennifer Carroll’s hypocrisy. Unless Bill Clinton getting a blow job and lying about it pointed out how all Dems lie.
She ought to be handed the harshest sentence possible.
Any politician caught lying should be removed and, if applicable, tried and punished.
We get the politicians we deserve. If you look at a list of scandals there are just as many Ds are there are Rs on the list. We know that politicians lie and accept it as long as the pol in question spouts the party line. We defend them if they are on our side of the political spectrum and try to hang them if they are on the other side.
We are the problem. We accept this behavior as long as the person spouts the right words. We ignore perjury, shady deals, adultery and all kinds of other reprehensible behavior so long as the pol is on ‘our’ side.
Slee
I just think it’s impressive what an interesting career she’s had.
I disagree, at least as far as actual illegal behaviour goes. Jesse Jackson has lost his House seat and will go to jail. Carroll has been forced to resign, and is likely to be convicted as well. The US actually does pretty well when it comes to investigating and jailing politicians for breaking the law.
Unfortunately, that’s confirmation bias. It’s disregarding the fact that we would not know about those who were not investigated and caught. The only “search” being done is the one that confirms your hypothesis.
No, it just looks that way on Fox because they sometimes slip up and replace the (R) with a (D) . . .
No it isn’t. The post I was responding to said illegal activity was ignored by the public. Its possible there’s illegal activity we don’t know about, but not knowing about something isn’t ignoring it. While obviously not every case ends in a conviction, the FBI is pretty vigorous about pursuing politicians when there’s evidence of illegal activity.
Even beyond the FBI, there’s the adversarial press, apparatchiks for the other party and a general public that doesn’t like politicians very much. Far from being ignored, politicians more or less constantly have people gunning for them, even when the evidence isn’t particularly strong (see for example the FBI looking into claims Sen. Menendez visited prostitutes in Costa Rica even after it became pretty clear that a) the claims were fabricated and b) even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t have been illegal.)
They were connected to Crist in the sense that they were part of the Florida GOP. I don’t think Crist is directly tied to the scandal, but I could be wrong.