Greg Pound on the Patch Podium: Spending

Each week, we're asking each of the Pinellas County sheriff candidates a question that's important to you, the voter, so you can be informed come ballot time.

This week, we asked:

If budget were not an issue, how would you improve the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office?

answers:

"Many people believe that the problems in the Sheriff’s Office can be solved with adequate funding. If budget were not an issue, the problems would solve themselves. I see the major problem in the Sheriff’s Office not in funding, but in corruption through lack of character. You read it in the paper daily, and I know it by experience. The Sheriff should be the one leading by example in not compromising with corruption. The people we like to be around are people that will stand alone for right. George Washington said, 'The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.... It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.'

"The oath that all civil servants take in Florida is, 'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, protect and defend the Constitution and Government of the United States and of the State of Florida; that I am duly qualified to hold office under the Constitution of the state; and that I will well and faithfully perform the duties of the office on which I am now about to enter. So help me God.'

"The three other candidates, all from the Sheriff’s Office, as lawyers are already violating their oaths and they know it. Lawyers who are members of the Florida Bar are legally barred from running for public office in the executive and legislative branches. In 1949, the Florida Bar was 'unified' with, and became a part of the Supreme Court. That made every state bar member/lawyer a person 'belonging to the judiciary branch of government.' The language of the Florida Constitution’s separation-of-powers clause, Article II, Section 3, states: 'NO person belonging to one branch shall exercise any power appertaining to either of the other two branches.'

" 'In questions of power,' Thomas Jefferson warned, 'let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.' I have confronted them in our debates, and as such, I was threatened to be taken to court if I do not shut up. They are breaking the supreme law of the land, the constitution.

"James Madison stated in Federalist #10 that his principal goal in the Constitution was: to create a government that had sufficient power to govern, but insufficient power to oppress.  To do so, he neutralized what he defined as: 'a same-hands group, or faction.' I will fight for you to stop the oppression. Psalms 94 asks, 'Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of lawlessness?' Stand up with me, Greg Pound for Sheriff, write-in Candidate."