This character took Florida corruption to a new level!
<<<On Monday, former state Republican Party chairman Jim Greer added his name to the long list of Sunshine State lowlifes when, after years of proclaiming his innocence, he pleaded guilty to five felonies including grand theft and money laundering.
Legal terminology doesn’t do justice to the crass creativity of the crimes. This is a man who catapulted from publisher of the Palm Bay Party Guide to Oviedo City Council member to chief of the swing state GOP. In three short years, he managed to oversee charges of more than $7 million on the party AmEx card, including nearly $500,000 for personal indulgences like spa treatments, flowers, flights, and fine dining. Greer gave new meaning to the term “party chairman”—and I’m not even counting allegations about golf carts full of hookers on a fundraising trip to the Bahamas.>>>
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<<< As the comic poet laureate of Florida, Carl Hiaasen, once told us: “The Sunshine State is a paradise of scandals teeming with drifters, deadbeats, and misfits drawn here by some dark primordial calling like demented trout. And you’d be surprised how many of them decide to run for public office.”>>>
Former Governor Charlie Crist (then a Republican, now a Democrat) was a big supporter of Greer and was scheduled to testify in the trial, but will now be spared that discomfort.
<<<Greer and Crist were once as cozy as two little lice on the body politic. Greer was Crist’s handpicked party chairman and the two seemed inseparable, with Greer acting as part wingman and part consigliere.
"Jim Greer was a choice made by Charlie Crist, and Florida Republicans paid the price," says Rick Wilson, longtime Florida GOP strategist. "Lavishly corrupt, Greer made venality his only ideology. Emerson said that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, and Crist proved that by selecting a guy who lived large on the backs of small donors, all while wrecking the best party organization in the country.">>>
More yet on this scumbag: http://articles.orlandosentine...-greer-criminal-case
