Michael Bloomberg pays fines for 32K Florida felons so they can vote

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has helped pay the outstanding fines and fees of 32,000 convicted felons in Florida so they could regain their right to vote ahead of the November election, according to a report. The billionaire and former presidential candidate raised over $16 million for, and donated $5 million to, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, according to Axios. Bloomberg’s push would benefit ex-cons as part of a 2018 state constitutional amendment allowing felons who have served their time to regain their right to vote. Before they can regain that right, however, they need to pay any fines, fees or restitution.

In a statement to the news outlet, a representative for Bloomberg said, “The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy and no American should be denied that right. Working together with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, we are determined to end disenfranchisement and the discrimination that has always driven it.” On Monday, the FRRC shared a New York Times op-ed titled, “This Is How Bloomberg Can Help Biden Win Florida.” The piece praised his decision to spend $100 million in the Sunshine State to boost Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden as he fights a neck-and-neck race against President Trump. However, it also urged Bloomberg to spend some of his money paying those fines and fees. “An even more politically effective, and charitable, use of those dollars might be to help pay off the debts of Floridians who have financial obligations related to a felony conviction — as LeBron James and the group behind More Than a Vote did this summer. “Because of an 11th Circuit appeals court ruling on Sept. 11, an estimated 774,000 Floridians who have already served their time in jail or prison are not eligible to vote in the 2020 election until they pay the fines and fees associated with their sentences,” read the op-ed, authored by computer scientist Dr. Robert Montoye.

It is not clear if the billionaire former mayor saw the piece, which was published just one day before he announced he would be doing just what it suggested. When announcing his $100 million push for the former vice president earlier this month, Bloomberg adviser Kevin Sheekey argued that the move was beneficial to other swing states as well. “Voting starts on Sept. 24 in Florida so the need to inject real capital in that state quickly is an urgent need. Mike believes that by investing in Florida it will allow campaign resources and other Democratic resources to be used in other states, in particular the state of Pennsylvania,” Sheekey, who served as campaign manager during Bloomberg’s 2020 run, said in a statement at the time. Neither representatives for Bloomberg nor the FRRC immediately responded to The Post’s request for comment.

https://nypost.com/2020/09/22/bloomberg-pays-fines-for-32k-florida-felons-so-they-can-vote/

>>10752220

Gaetz calls for election bribery probe of Bloomberg over pledge to pay Florida felons' fines

'I believe there may be a criminal investigation already underway,' Gaetz tells Sean Hannity

House Judiciary Committee member Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told "Hannity" Tuesday that he has spoken with Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody about potentially launching a bribery investigation into former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. ''"I believe there may be a criminal investigation already underway of the Bloomberg-connected activities in Florida," Gaetz told host Sean Hannity. '''Bloomberg, who briefly joined the race for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year, has reportedly raised more than $16 million for the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition'.

Under the Florida state constitution, convicted felons can regain their voting rights after having served their time. However, a law enacted by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis states that felons must pay all fines, restitution, and other legal financial obligations before their sentences could be considered fully served. "[Under Florida law] it’s a third-degree felony for someone to either directly or indirectly provide something of value to impact whether or not someone votes," Gaetz explained. "So the question is whether or not paying off someone’s fines and legal obligations counts as something of value, and it clearly does. "If Michael Bloomberg was offering to pay off people's credit card debt," Gaetz added, "you would obviously see the value in that. "[W]hen you improve someone’s net worth by eliminating their financial liabilities, that’s something of value," he went on. "Normally, it would be very difficult to prove that that was directly linked to impacting whether or not someone was going to vote. But they literally wrote their own admission."

A Bloomberg memo first reported by the Washington Post read: “We know to win Florida we will need to persuade, motivate and add new votes to the Biden column. This means we need to explore all avenues for finding the needed votes when so many votes are already determined.” “The data shows that in Florida, Black voters are a unique universe unlike any other voting bloc, where the Democratic support rate tends to be 90%-95%," the memo continued. "The law is clear this is something of value," Gaetz reiterated, "and I am encouraged after my conversation with the attorney general. I hope we have good law enforcement all over the country looking for the cheating and the tricks that these Democrats are going to try in this election."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/matt-gaetz-election-bribery-probe-bloomberg-florida

>>10752263

Thinking, that we might hear a narrative shift..in that the monies will no longer fund the felons. Typical, never thinking a situation clear through to the end.

>>10752305

Was thinking about that, remember when he said he would spend his entire fortune to beat POTUS… apparently he lied!

>>10752326

Kek..his words, solutions, speeches are all poison to "them", due to the fact they lose all their money trains. Those trains are derailing quickly..

>>10752297

Wondering what plan they have hatched up this time..moar riots..or an event..guess we'll have to wait and see.

>>10752307

Culture of Resistance: Speech by Dorjee Tseten at the NYC Tibetan Community Losar (Tibetan New Year) celebration Transcript

Feb 9, 2019: Watch here Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Dorjee Tseten, Member of Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile and SFT’s Executive Director, speak at the NYC Tibetan Community Losar (Tibetan New Year) gathering, organized by Tibetan Community New York and New Jersey.

https://studentsforafreetibet.org/culture-of-resistance-speech-by-dorjee-tseten-at-the-nyc-tibetan-community-losar-tibetan-new-year-celebration/

>>10752342

Baker this goes with the Gaetz post

>>10752220 Michael Bloomberg pays fines for 32K Florida felons so they can vote

>>10752214

Antarctic Program’s icebreaker makes rare appearance in S.F. at Pier 17

An icebreaker with the power to crunch through frozen seas and navigate polar storms has docked in the port of San Francisco on its way to Antarctica. The research vessel, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, is the flagship icebreaker in the U.S. Antarctic Program’s fleet. It is docked outside the Exploratorium at Pier 17 until Thursday afternoon, when it will depart for Chile to refuel before the journey south. The Palmer’s brief stop in San Francisco to pick up a team of 31 scientists may be the first and last time an icebreaker vessel of its stature passes through the city’s port. Researchers typically board in Chile or New Zealand, but had to use a domestic port due to restrictions on international travel. The team of scientists, who have been quarantining in San Francisco, will journey to the bottom of the Earth to study the molecular biodiversity in the Southern Ocean, said Dr. Karla Heidelberg, program director in the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation, which operates the ship.

Strict quarantine measures are in place to ensure that the crew and scientists do not carry COVID-19 to the three U.S. research bases in Antarctica, which have so far remained virus-free. The team will study ocean-dwelling invertebrates that populate the waters encircling Antarctica. The Southern Ocean, or Antarctic Ocean as it is also known, has the world’s strongest ocean current, whose centrifugal force forms a biological barrier that prevents it from mixing with other ocean waters. The 300-foot icebreaker, equipped with advanced scientific tools, will travel to different regions of the Southern Ocean to answer the question, “Are the organisms in isolated pockets or is it a well-mixed soup around the continent?” Heidelberg said. The answer will help researchers better understand the origin and evolution of invertebrates that have adapted to survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth. But in order to do that, the scientists themselves will have to brave the continent’s finger-numbing, teeth-chattering cold. Antarctica is heading into summertime, along with the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, but temperatures still regularly drop well below zero. Despite the deep-freeze temperatures, there are consolations to life at sea. The Palmer has a sauna, a gym and a lounge equipped with a television and more than 150 movies on VHS. The icebreaker’s limited internet is reserved for research purposes and quick email blasts only.

But those small comforts of home pale in comparison to the sight of Antarctica’s star-filled nighttime skies, unadulterated by light pollution, or the lifelong friendships that bond many crew members and scientists, Heidelberg said. “People who go to sea together remain friends for a very long time,” she said. The 28-year old icebreaker, named for the American sailor who is credited with first seeing Antarctica, anchored in San Francisco on Sunday. The ship’s arrival was “intense,” owing to the logistical challenge of getting a federal research vessel into port on time with the proper paperwork, said port manager Christopher Mourgos. Visitors to Pier 17 may notice a barge parked alongside the icebreaker. That’s a sewage barge, transporting wastewater from the ship to a disposal site in Alameda. The barge makes daily trips to empty the ship’s 5,000-gallon sewage tank, Mourgos said. Once the icebreaker departs, those on board will not set foot on unfrozen land again until the ship returns to the U.S. in mid-December.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Antarctic-Program-s-flagship-icebreaker-makes-15588829.php#photo-20000219

State audit: UC Berkeley admitted at least 55 underqualified students based on connections and donations

A year after a college scandal rattled the nation’s confidence in the fairness of admissions, California’s independent auditor has found that UC Berkeley — which largely escaped damage in the federal probe — improperly admitted dozens of underqualified, often wealthy students based on insider connections over six years. The auditor’s review, released Tuesday, also raises questions about the legitimacy of hundreds of other admissions at Berkeley and three other UC campuses. The scathing audit offered examples of UC admissions officials giving preference to less qualified students on the basis of a donation by their family, or to family of staff members of the university. Many were improperly admitted as athletes. It criticized the office of former UC president Janet Napolitano as well as UC Berkeley administrators for allowing problems with admissions to persist even after the well-publicized “Varsity Blues” scandal erupted last year. “Shhhh. You have to keep it a secret, but good news is coming [the applicant’s] way,” a former UC Berkeley admissions director wrote to a former associate dean of students who had asked that an applicant who received the evaluators’ worst rating be reconsidered. That case was among 64 improper admissions confirmed across four UC campuses between 2013 and 2018, including 22 applicants admitted as athletes who weren’t athletes, the audit found. In one case, an unidentified UC regent sent an “inappropriate letter of support” directly to the UC Berkeley chancellor on behalf of a student with only a 26% chance of winning a spot off the wait list, despite a policy prohibiting such efforts to influence. The applicant was admitted.

All but nine cases were at UC Berkeley. Thirteen of the cases there were athletes. All were admitted between 2016 and 2018 based on their connections, even though they were less qualified than students who were rejected. The audit found that 17 applicants were accepted specifically because of connections to donors or potential donors, and were referred by employees in UC Berkeley’s fundraising office. Admissions staff regularly conferred with the fundraising office about who should be admitted from a highly competitive wait list, the audit found. “In some cases, the campus appeared to admit the applicants in exchange for donations to the athletic department,” the report said, noting that after a UC Berkeley coach helped admit an applicant who had played just one year of a high school sport — and not very well — the applicant’s family donated “several thousand dollars to the team.” Coaches soon removed the student, who never competed. “We are committed to getting to the bottom of this,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ announced in a letter posted on the campus website that called the findings “highly disturbing allegations of improper conduct in our undergraduate admissions work.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/education/article/Admissions-audit-finds-UC-improperly-admitted-15587005.php#photo-12790764