Originally Posted - July 8, 2006

return home

Does the Florida Attorney General's office investigate fraud on the consumers of the state?

If so, their primary focus should be Charlie Crist.

His advertising for his gubernatorial campaign is an affront to the people of Florida and is pure fiction and hyperbole.

On his website he claims that he has been a champion for ensuring that government meets its primary obligation: to protect life and domestic tranquility.

Charlie Crist flip flops on the issues like the palm trees sway, whichever way the wind is blowing.

He claims that he has adopted a tough stance towards domestic violence, touts Anti-Murder legislation spawned from the murders of Carlie Brucia, Jessica Lunsford and Sarah Lunde.

Crist's so called anti-murder bill is the central theme of his gubernatorial campaign.

Where was he when Terri Schiavo was murdered? How come he's continuing to duck the issue?

Several weeks ago, he announced that his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has launched a new initiative that focuses on health care fraud in South Florida. Is he engaged in selective prosecution again?

Charlie Crist also claims to be pro-life.

You'd never know it. He stood idly by and allowed the court system and guardian murder an innocent handicapped woman based totally on self-serving and unsubstantiated hearsay which appears to have been fabricated to try and meet the standard as established in the guardianship case of In re Guardianship of Browning of clear and convincing evidence. The only thing that was clear and convincing in the Schiavo case is that Michael Schiavo and George Felos created stories that could only be substantiated by Terri Schiavo.

Although he's Florida's Attorney General, constitutionally charged with protecting the civil rights and liberties of the state's citizens, Crist did virtually nothing to protect the civil rights of one of the state's most vulnerable citizens----Terri Schindler-Schiavo. In fact, at the height of the controversy, Charlie Crist ran and hid and refused to become involved.

In the institutional structure of the state, the attorney general is the chief lawyer of the state, in charge of law enforcement and of supervising all the areas in which there could be improvement in the action of justice. Crist is the elected officer who, has, under his organization, the responsibility to further the fight against domestic violence, gender and child violence and in particular, civil rights.

"One victim is one victim too many", Crist has been quoted as saying.

Terri Schiavo was a victim.

Crist is ultimately the individual that shut down any investigation into the Schiavo case, oversaw a total obstruction of justice and acted in counterpart with all the police agencies and the state attorney's office to protect Michael Schiavo and the accessories to the murder of Terri Schiavo.

If he can't do the job of attorney general fairly, uniformly and responsibly, why would Florida voters ever want him to be Governor? He covered up wrongdoing in the Schiavo case, Medicaid fraud, alleged domestic violence, abuse and exploitation of the vulnerable. He stood idly by while she was sentenced to death by dehydration.

This begs the question---what else has he covered up?

State Rep. Joe Negron of Stuart is seeking the position of Attorney General as are three other Republicans including former Pinellas County Sheriff Everett Rice, a long-time friend of death judge George W. Greer. Rice, along with Crist and fellow Republican state attorney Bernie McCabe did everything possible to block any investigation into the Schiavo case. The three of them are Florida's version of the Bermuda Triangle. Don't forget, Crist hails from Pinellas County where the Schiavo case is centered.

Negron is the only candidate who has the courage to say that he would perform the duties of the office and has publicly stated that the killing of Terri Schiavo was wrong. While Rice and the others said that Gov. Bush and Congress were wrong to try and save the life of the vulnerable woman who couldn't speak for herself and left no plausible advanced directive, Negron said that if he had been attorney general, he would have intervened to try and stop the withdrawal of her feeding tube. Negron said that it was wrong "for a judge to say you can't put water on the lips of the citizen of Florida".

How unfortunate that Joe Negron wasn't the Attorney General in 2005. He should be the next attorney general because he's clearly demonstrated he's not afraid to take the moral and legal position even in the face of criticism.

Crist, who's supposed to insure that a person's civil rights aren't violated, stood by and let Terri's due process rights be violated as well as her Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. She was been denied her due process rights, equal protection under the laws. She had a right to live and expressed her desire to live by clinging to life through two prior attempts to take her life and valiantly clung to life for 13 days as Michael Schiavo hovered waiting for her to die. But instead of him profiting and becoming the heir of her trust, the barristers of death are the ones who profited from Terri and even when Schiavo himself wanted to let Terri live, George Felos said no. It wasn't Terri's wish, it was the wish of George Felos.

Charlie Crist is the person in state government constitutionally and statutorily charged to protect the rights of Terri Schiavo.

He failed Terri Schiavo.

That's not being pro-life.

That's lying to the public, tell them what they think they want to hear, pandering to them for their vote and once he has it, he'll go off about his political ways. He has deeply angered the pro-lifers by abandoning Terri Schiavo and is now attempting to schmooze them for their vote.

He picks and chooses what causes he wants to advance, whatever he feels is most politically expedient while ignoring other equally deserving but politically controversial situations.

Charlie Crist plays politics in his role as attorney general. Politics has no place as chief law enforcement officer of the state. He's afraid to stand up to challenge, and deservedly prosecute some of his Republican cronies, more concerned for his political future than he is of doing his job. Take a look at Charlie Crist's record at www.theanticrist.com. Crist has said that Gov. Jeb Bush, who he wants to follow in office, wanted to take the lead in the Schiavo case and that the Attorney General's office has supported those efforts.

How?

By lying to the public and refusing to investigate allegations of abuse and civil rights violations?

In 1998, in his failed attempt to be U.S. senator, Crist said he was pro-choice.

But now that he wants to be Governor, Crist has changed his tune and says he's pro-life.

Crist seems to flip-flop a lot on critical issues.

"You try to encourage a culture that respects life but understand that some decisions are up to God and family", Crist says.

And that would include the decision of Mary and Robert Schindler Sr. that their daughter wanted to live, that they should be the ones caring for her, that it was her right to live. Charlie Crist played God and that's unforgivable.

The decision should have been made by her family and loved ones, not the mercenary estranged husband and his Hollywood-eyed attorney and merchant of death, Felos who aided and abetted in the judicial homicide orochestrated by non-partisan Republican good ole boy George Greer.

Charlie Crist seems to talk out of both sides of his mouth. Floridians need a person of good moral character and integrity to lead their state as governor. That individual is not Charlie Crist.

He abandoned Terri Schiavo, he hasn't done his job and in fact, he has been caught red-handed in actually impeding justice in the case and lying to the public.

He blatantly told the public in a televised statement that there had been no complaints of abuse made to the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) a week after a DCF file in the matter was acknowledged in the Schiavo case. He lied.

Crist said there were no complaints to his office about the alleged abuse, exploitation and neglect of Terri Schiavo when there is an envelope containing information about alleged abuse in the Schiavo case which was personally handed to him and which was later returned to the complainant without action---but with Charlie Crist's fingerprints. He cannot honestly say that he was not personally made aware of the alleged abuse, neglect and exploitation of Terri Schiavo. And yet he did nothing.

Is this being pro-life?

Do you want a proven liar to be your state's next Governor?

In one of his newsletters to the public as attorney general, Crist said that "one of the greatest features of our system of democracy is the role government can play in protecting private citizens. Florida's government has a number of safeguards built into it, many of them designed to protect consumers for exploitation".

Those safeguards weren't employed to protect Terri.

Crist didn't protect one of the state's most vulnerable adults from exploitation nor did take any steps to protect her civil rights. He remained mum instead of doing his job because he was more concerned about his political image than he was in doing the job he was elected to do and no doubt, that same mindset would follow into the Capitol if voters let him snow them again with that silver-tongued charisma.

Maybe it's because Charlie Crist simply doesn't know the law and isn't capable of holding the office of attorney general. After all, it took him three tries to pass the Florida Bar exam and he seems to have a problem with ethics too, coming under scrutiny of the Florida Elections Commission for allegedly using his office of education commissioner to campaign for the position of attorney general.

The investigation of alleged Medicaid fraud is also within the scope of his AG duties, policing what has become Florida's $12 billion per year Medicaid program.

Despite receiving $250,000 in an insurance settlement unaccounted for and then another $300,000 for "loss of consortium", money which constitutes martial assets and then using the $750,000 earmarked by a jury to provide rehabilitative services to Terri Schiavo to instead pay for lawyers to help him end her life, Michael Schiavo asked Judge George Greer to have Medicaid pay Terri's medical bills. And Greer agreed. Greer should have been investigated for aiding and abetting Medicaid fraud too along with the Hospice of Florida Suncoast. Terri Schiavo was placed in a hospice by Michael Schiavo and his lawyer, Felos who was chairman of the board of the hospice at the time. In order to be placed in a hospice legally and for Medicaid to foot the bill, there must be a diagnosis of terminal illness by two doctors and the maximum stay is six months. She was in the hospice for five years. Mary Labyak, CEO of Hospice of Florida Suncoast recently said that she was referred to the hospice like anyone else. Terri Schiavo wasn't treated like everyone else, she was discriminated against and the man constitutionally mandated to protect her rights didn't do it because it was too controversial and too political.

Crist refused to get involved in the Schiavo case, saying the matter was in the courts. In October, 2003, when a federal judge asked Crist to address the question of the constitutionality of Terri's Law, passed by the Florida Legislature to save the life of Terri, Crist said the law was constitutional but said he wouldn't get further involved.

He then stood by and let Gov. Jeb Bush be politically vilified by Michael Schiavo supporters and the Democrats for enacting Terri's Law, ruled unconstitutional. But Crist had said it was constitutional. Has that been forgotten? As said previously, Crist's leans whatever way the wind blows.

Crist denied in a televised report that the DCF ever received any complaints concerning Terri Schiavo, an outright false statement demonstrated by the fact the week before, Greer had waved a file in the courtroom indicating it was a report by the DCF in the Schiavo case which had been sealed.

The North Country Gazette also learned from a reliable source that there is proof that Crist engaged in an attempted cover up of the abuse of Terri Schiavo. The informant, whose name is being withheld by the newspaper due to fear of possible retribution, said he personally handed to Crist last summer a packet of information regarding alleged abuse of Terri.

Thereafter, the material was returned to the informant by Crist's office in double envelopes. The informant says that someone in the Attorney General's Tampa office wrote the AG's return address on the outside envelope. He says that while he opened the outside envelope, he did not open the inner one.

Although Crist has claimed that he received no complaints or information concerning the alleged abuse and neglect of Terri Schiavo, that claim can be proven false as the informant says Crist's fingerprints can be found on the documents returned to him.

Charlie Crist's commercials will gag the conscientious voter and his website is a candidate for mega violations of the Truth in Advertising Act.
http://www.charliecrist.com/

Here's some statements from his campaign site:

"Charlie Crist proposed and then put into action model legislation that allows the Office of the Attorney General to pursue spammers for sending misleading and often offensive emails". Did the AG's office prosecute Charlie for obtaining people's email addresses and then sending them unsolicited emails touting his candidacy, asking for campaign donations and refusing to remove them from the list when asked? Just more double standards.

"He instituted on his first day in office the Fraud Hotline for Florida's citizens". They should use it to report Charlie Crist.

He claims that he advocates policies that strengthen Florida families. Baloney, he was too busy protecting himself and his "image" to help the Schindler family protect their daughter. He says he "fought for a handicapped man who was denied the right to participate in a youth fair". Why didn't he fight for the handicapped woman who was denied food and water?"

He says he "fought for and obtained passage of new Civil Rights legislation to ensure that all Floridians are treated fairly. There was nothing fair about the way he allowed Terri Schiavo to be treated while he was masquerading as the state's chief lawyer.

"He helped draft and worked hard for the passage of "The Freedom to Workship Safely Act". He wasn't concerned about Terri Schiavo's Freedom to Worship or the violations of her freedom of religion.

Charlie Crist is no more than a silver tongued devil. 7-08-06

© 2006 North Country Gazette