Chris Whittle and Florida are in business together now, and business is already good - for him.
Through one of its investment firms, Liberty Partners of New York, the state employee pension fund put up $174-million on Wednesday to buy out Whittle's sinking for-profit Edison Schools Inc. The company's stock traded for $36.75 a share two years ago, but Edison went private in a deal that paid investors only $1.76 a share. Whittle, on the other hand, did famously. Among his spoils, according to Fortune magazine, were: $4.2-million for his shares, remaining CEO with an increase in pay from $345,000 to more than $600,000, keeping 3.7 percent of the company with an option to sell it back for up to $17-million, more time to pay off $10.4-million in existing loans from Edison and $1.7-million more in loans.
Whittle's payday would be just another corporate outrage except for his benefactors. Liberty works for the state Board of Administration, which oversees the $92-billion pension fund. Because nearly half the pension members are teachers, that puts Florida in the unseemly position of using public teachers' retirement money to bail out a businessman who wants to profit at their expense. "Where the money goes".
THE "JEB!" BUSH LEGACY -Florida's tax system favors the rich. . . .
The Florida Constitution prohibits imposition of a state income tax. And that's unlikely to change anytime soon. Florida, then, relies heavily on sales taxes to finance government operations -- a far more regressive form of taxation that unduly penalizes the poor. Over the years, lawmakers have exacerbated that gap between rich and poor by exempting an ever-growing list of special-interest groups from levying the tax.
In a recent national study, in fact, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy ranked Florida second behind only Washington state as having the most regressive tax system in the nation. As the accompanying chart shows, the poor in Florida pay 4.8 times more taxes as a percentage of their earnings than do the wealthy. "Hurting the poor".
When lawmakers in August settled on a medical malpractice insurance plan they needed four angry sessions to complete, Gov. Jeb Bush was ebullient. "I think historians will look back and say, "Job well done,' " Bush said then. "I'm confident this will bring a reduction in insurance premiums."
As it turns out, "reduction" is a relative term. ".
GOOD POINT -A state that sells themed license plates pleading "Save the Manatee" even as it keeps paving and filling its wild spaces is hardly one to talk about endangered anything. "Jeb Bush Takes Slap at San Francisco, Backpedals".
SHOWCASING MIAMI -This week's hemispheric trade summit, which draws negotiators from 34 countries, could prove to be a pivotal moment in Miami's history, and there are many places where one can witness history being made.
That's because along with the negotiating sessions, there will be a heavy agenda of receptions, seminars, parties -- and protests.
Perhaps as important as the ministerial itself, this will be -- if things go right -- Miami's time to bask in an international spotlight as a sophisticated multicultural, multilingual urban center. "A crucial moment for the city of Miami".