At the invitation of former County Commissioner Jess Santamaria, several dozen area residents attended a meeting at the original Wellington Mall on Friday, Aug. 21 to express their opinions about the rise of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.
While many have been surprised by the Trump phenomenon, Santamaria said that he was not, attributing it to a negative reaction by the public to the continued dysfunction of government and mistrust of elected officials.
It is a rebellion, he said, against the belief that most politicians are beholden to special interests.
“His message has been my message for more than 40 years,” Santamaria said. “It was the reason that I decided to run for county commission. The real root of all evil in our political system is campaign funding. The great majority of elected officials are not working for you or me. They are working for special interests. They’ve been bought. Even if they have not received money under the table, even through the money over the table in campaign funds, they have been bought. What has happened here in Palm Beach County is happening in Tallahassee, and it’s happening in Washington.”
He asked residents to share their opinions on the issue.
“I’d like to know what it is right here in our community,” he said. “I’d like to hear from my friends and neighbors, what their thoughts are for or against or indifferent.”
Featured speakers included Maureen Glasheen, former general counsel to the Secretary of State of New York, who spoke about dishonesty in government, pointing out that both Trump and Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders believe that’s the key issue.
“I agree with them,” Glasheen said. “I see right here in ‘Corruption County’ that our representatives are ignoring the will of the voters and refusing to act in the best interest of the people who employ them and pay their salaries. They routinely roll over for special interests to fund their future campaigns and the businesses and activities of their family. This is not just immoral, it’s illegal.”
She used the unpleasant nickname Palm Beach County has been tagged with since the convictions on various corruption charges of several county and municipal officials over the past decade.
Glasheen said that there are powerful legal remedies in the courts and at the ballot box that haven’t been used to the fullest extent.
As former general counsel, Glasheen has litigated and taught about the laws that govern agents, including public officers who ignored their duties, lost their jobs, forfeited their compensation and had to pay restitution to the people they injured.
“I think we could take those lessons and teach disloyal public servants of this county a thing or two,” she said, explaining that “agents of the people” is a centuries-old concept that includes elected officials.
“We, the people, have been employing agents of the people without knowing the rules, and we’ve been hurt, but I’m here to teach you the rules,” she said, explaining that the people are at the top of the hierarchy of power, not the bottom.
“Florida’s constitution says the power is inherent in the people,” Glasheen said. “It’s time that we use the courts and we use the ballot box and we retrain our agents, or we get rid of them.”
The second speaker, Wall Street veteran Pamela Martens, said that the public pays the price of political corruption through economic perversion.
“As someone who spent 21 years on Wall Street, I can tell you that the country is reeling from these economic perversions,” Martens said. “What I did on Wall Street was to manage the life savings not of tycoons, but everyday Americans. I watched the nexus of corruption between Wall Street and Washington undermine the very fabric of America from coast to coast. This brand of corruption is known as regulatory capture.”
She said what Glasheen had described as happening with county commissioners was similar with national regulatory agencies.
“Whether it’s the Securities & Exchange Commission or the U.S. Justice Department, it is still regulatory capture,” Martens said, explaining that the motives vary, but that the corruption has become systemic.
She said that many young Wall Street lawyers have agreed to go easy prosecuting influential people on Wall Street in exchange for high-paying jobs. “This has happened on multiple occasions,” Martens said. “I could spend the rest of the evening giving you examples.”
Giving one example, she noted that the SEC shut down an early investigation of notorious Palm Beach scammer Bernie Madoff and shredded the documents pointing to accountants funneling him money, a decade before he finally admitted to his Ponzi scheme.
“This resulted in a serious economic perversion, as Madoff’s scheme continued for another decade when it did not have to, and hundreds of people lost all of their life savings,” Martens said. “Members of Congress have also become captured regulators. Just as Maureen described, they no longer fulfill any fiduciary duty to the people who elected them.”
Both Democrats and Republicans rely on large Wall Street firms to finance their political campaigns, which is one of the factors that led to only minimal reforms after the 2008 crash.
“Instead of restoring the 70-year-old investor protection legislation known as Glass-Steagall, they did Wall Street’s bidding and passed the watered-down Dodd-Frank financial legislation,” she said. “My husband, Russ Martens, and I have written for the past nine years about how the lack of guts in Congress to restore Glass-Steagall has set our nation up for another eventual financial crash.”
Martens compared what is happening in Palm Beach County’s Agricultural Reserve to what is happening on a national scale, explaining that she and Glasheen have been following the ag reserve proceedings closely.
“They are not following the law in terms of the density that is not permitted in the agricultural reserve,” she said. “This is a microcosm of everything that is wrong in the country. If we can’t fix it here, we’re not going to fix the country.”
Martens said that she and Glasheen have explained to the Palm Beach County Commission that the county’s master plan points out that the ag reserve soil is unique in its ability to support high-quality produce crops.”
“That was written into the master plan by researchers who understand that the highest-yielding crops can only grow in that soil, not in the muck soils of Belle Glade,” she said. “We’ve also explained in excruciating detail how GL Homes is not complying with the law, not the master plan, nor the comprehensive plan, nor the Unified Land Development Code.”
Wellington resident Morley Alperstein said the next election will be critical to turn the country back in the right direction.
“It took 250 years to build America,” Alperstein said, explaining that he had believed in the principle that the country has taught people to stay in school, vote for the right person and they would be rewarded.
“Now, I can’t believe I live in the same country,” Alperstein said. “The next election is the most important we have ever faced. It will be hard. Leaders have put us in so much debt that we may never recover. We need to bring candidates who will get us back on our feet.”
Ibis resident Sal Faso encouraged each of the attendees to persuade 10 of their friends to vote in the next election, pointing out that Americans are throwing away their right to vote by not participating.
Royal Palm Beach resident Laurel Bennett also encouraged better voter turnout.
“If each one of you brought someone to vote on Election Day, it would make a difference,” Bennett said.
ABOVE: Maureen Glasheen, former general counsel to the Secretary of State of New York, speaks at last Friday’s meeting.
The Political System is entirely broken. Politicians have become paid Lobbyists for their financial supporters and special interest groups. The worst of it all is that the country is being run by “Millionaire Lawyers” who do not represent the people. Trump was correct when he referred to lawyers as Cabbage Heads.
Do not elect lawyers unless you want to see the further decline of our great country. Look at the messed up country and economy led by Lawyers. Lawyers put us in this box. VOTE NO TO LAWYERS!!!