In a post earlier this week, Dusty Melton wrote: "... Nothing more certainly proves the absolute vacuousness of the tree-hugging, bark-eating environmental community, in my estimation and to me personally, than the abject failure of its members to even attend -- much less participate in -- the regular diet of governmental hearings on the most visual, visible, demonstrable, insulting, overpower, domineering and provable-by-mere-photograph, white-collar, criminal, polluting violations of the countywide Sign Code of Miami-Dade County." Aw shucks.
It's a curious antipathy to "bark-eating environmental community". What is the loathing about? There are plenty of "abject failures", but I don't count fabric advertisements among them. If a lobbyist wants to advertise "abject failures" in MIami, start with the big one: the deformation of democracy at county hall, particularly during the last decade during the housing boom, when the purpose of government was altered from protecting the health, welfare and safety of citizens to stopping citizens and promoting the crush of development and zoning changes--enriching a legion of lobbyists--that transformed Miami-Dade. Now littered with foreclosures.
Melton writes, "These quality-of-life regulatory hearings have been very publicly noticed and conducted regularly, in a variety of government jurisdictions, in recent years. At most a mere two or three souls from the self-anointed green elite -- the so-called aesthetic watchdogs, the folks who love to rail against the evil lobbyist empire hereabouts but who never seem to get off of their lazy butts and try to influence the course of important outdoor advertising legislation -- show up, awake. The rest of the "vast" urban environment community seems, repeatedly, to remain in bed, asleep and content to snooze the day away. Just a passing observation. And an accurate, provable one."
What "self anointed green elite"? What is that all about? As far as I can tell, there is no elite except a handful of staff paid a fraction of what lobbyists earn. The environmental staffers try to build careers working for the Everglades-- as opposed to lobbyists and lawyers building their "environmental" practices. They have a number of fires: from one alarm to five alarm. The challenge for environmentalists never changes: how to best apply energy and resources when both are extraordinarily limited to achieve results.
It makes perfect sense that citizens, with limited time and funds, choose to fight a zoning issue in South Biscayne Bay wetlands or an incorporation in Redland instead of a squabble about a fabric billboard and monthly retainers stretched over a downtown building. Why denigrate the few citizens who do take the time and care to get to the heart of corrupt land use patterns and issues of jurisdiction? A commenter on the earlier post noted, that not a single lobbyist sided with citizens on the issue of Redlands incorporation; an issue with enormous ramifications compared to a fabric advertisement.
A Miami lobbyist stands up and rails against outdoor advertising; it's like a single tree falling in the forest when at the other end of the forest, a stretch of fires are burning for miles. Why rant against the small group of environmentalists in MIami for failing to mourn the single tree unless part of the reason included avoiding the urgency of the forest fire burning at the other end?
The objection against environmentalists for failing to organize around fabric billboards would have some weight if a lobbyist, any lobbyist, had stood up at one of the CDMP or DRI hearings at county hall or the city and spoken against the billions of dollars of prospective development on Krome Avenue in far west Dade. Or against Related Group at Mercy Hospital. Or the Homestead Air Force Base HABDI deal. Not a single one, did. Not, during the building boom. And not, during the worst crash since the Depression. And because that is the provable record, the lobbyist class deserves the broad brush it is tarred with.
I "get" the economics that drive fabric advertisers and monthly retainers when the ads go up for Pepsi, or a Condo, or an IPod on a building near a highway. I can find plenty to fault environmentalists who are manning the pails and pumps on the Everglades, but for their failure to spend short time, money and energy on fabric advertisements in downtown Miami? Nope.
15 comments:
Isn't the only reason that Melton rails against the billboard industry was because they screwed him over? I thought I read that somewhere. I was under the impression that his jihad against billboards had a personal motive that wasn't to help the community. Granted, his involvement did help the community and make the fight easier.
Maybe Jose Cancela can answer that question.
According to Melton: The Billboard company lied to him. They did not "screw him" as the anonymous reader above stated.
Eston Melton lobbied for Ad Systems in 2004. However you might look at the 2002 New Times:
(Melton) casts himself as an honest lobbyist in a town where that term strikes many as an oxymoron. For several months last year he had represented his client, Eller Media, and the other billboard companies as a fair industry. Eller Media (now Clear Channel) had hired Melton in April of last year to persuade commissioners that billboard executives were finally willing to begin discussing a plan for the removal of illegal billboards. And Melton had succeeded in gaining time for additional negotiations.
But tonight the lobbyist's message was quite the opposite. "On behalf of my client," he said, "I convinced this commission [in early May 2001] because I believed that the industry had realized the errors of its ways and was going to come to the table and negotiate in good faith.... Three months later for the first time in a twenty-year career I quit a client as a matter of conscience. Because I sat in their meetings and concluded in three short months that I had lied to this commission because my client had lied to me."
Back to the subject at hand, gimleteye's rather tortured defense of the environmental community's manifest indifference to gargantuan visual pollution and white-collar criminal behavior, even at Biscayne Bay's water's edge (try the east face of One Herald Plaza, though that mural is merely hideous and not necessarily illegal), let me merely say this: he or she is entitled to assert that all of the other pitched battles referenced are vastly more significant than the "easy" (as in, the crimes have been committed out in the open for all to see, writ very large) ones about which I wrote. Arguably Everglades issues or Redland issues or UDB issues are, economically and otherwise, measurably more important than a few outdoor advertising scofflaws.
However, there is an important principle here, and it's the old-fashioned notion that we are a nation of laws. When ANTI-environmentalists so brazenly violate the law, I believe it incumbent and important for PRO-environmentalists to make their voices heard. I've certainly made mine heard repeatedly. Why can't that interest group join in as well? Our environmental "community" has, I observe, failed miserably to include this issue in its broad agenda. It easily could, in occasional public forums where victory is palpable. Perplexing to me why more environmentalists seem not to care about visual pollution and all of the (remarkably fascinating) individuals creating it is the fact that gimleteye's roster of other fights (e.g. Everglades, Redland, UDB) are (a) to some extent, a clash of intellect about which reasonable people can reach differing opinions and (b) therefore far less certain and obvious about who's right and who's wrong. When it comes to the local outdoor advertising community (with only a few notable exceptions), it's a pantheon of intelligent, well-represented, fully-cognizant violators of local (and sometimes state) law who deserved to be punished. If only a community would rise and demand it.
If the environmental community wishes to remain asleep at the wheel when the "targets" of such behavior are "in play" at public, government meetings, I will never understand the logic. To try to explain away the environmental community's disengagement where the political victories are virtually certain, based on higher priorities in other geographies, is certainly an entitled position but one that smacks of real-world stupidity.
I laud the few souls who show up and speak out knowledgeably and regularly when outdoor advertising blight is in play. Too bad gimleteye and other tree-huggers have more important things to do.
Dusty Melton
P.S. ADSystems is one of the nation's premier manufacturers of programmable signs. Their installations are lawful, for example on roads leading into MIA, at the AT&T amphitheater in Bayfront Park, and at the Port of Miami.
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about why my book Sins of South Beach was written. There is a lesson to be learned from my story, a valuable lesson, not just about corruption but about police violence, murder, Mariel Refugees and the making of Miami Beach. If someone wants to attack my veracity, or me have the courage to print your name and not hide behind anonymous. If anyone would like to talk to me directly or has a problem with what I have written my cell number is 786-970-0061. I have it posted in the back of my book along with my e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you.
ALEX DAOUD
Author Sins of South Beach
3-Time Mayor of Miami Beach
Dusty - Why don't you leave it up to us "tree huggers" to decide what we think is worth spending our limited time and dollars on fighting for/against? Billboards may be a blight on the landscape, but they don't affect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the health of the bay and the Everglades. If you need help pushing your personal agenda, why don't you ask some of your fellow lobbyists who, I'm sure,have lots of time and money to spare and always have the public's welfare at heart? That will leave us enviros to work on those things that really matter.
Ah, once again the anonymous shot-takers. Not a problem: I receive as well as I deliver. Absolutely NOTHING in my recent postings has even ventured near "instructing" the tree-hugging, bark-eating community as to what is "must" or "should" do, in my feeble opinion. Mine has been merely to express astonishment that the so-called environmental "movement" 'round here has been notoriously out to lunch on what otherwise could have been major ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS and POLITICAL VICTORIES CLAIMED.
Plenty of my fellow lobbyists have helped me move my agenda, no thanks to you and your anonymous "community."
Thanks for conceding that illegal billboards and murals are a blight on the landscape. I thought you were into protecting the landscape, eh? Those illegal outdoor ads may not affect our air, water and health of Biscayne Bay and the Everglades, but here's the punchline you and gimleteye and geniousofdespair seem incapable of grasping: When YOU do not join ME in "going public" and showing up to speak truth to CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL ARENA, then you are giving the POLLUTERS a FREE PASS and, er, in my view are as guilty as them.
Democracy and protection of our environment demand many, strong voices. I am amazed, but NOT AT ALL SURPRISED, at the amount of energy devoted recently to defending the arrogance of so-called engaged environmentalists in choosing to "take a pass" altogether on joining the pro-environment fight MOST GUARANTEED TO ACHIEVE VICTORY.
Because a few of us have been doing that. That's the beauty, at the end, of my intellectual position. Those few of us fighting this fight keep winning, and we shall continue to do so. The fact that the "vast extent" of South Florida's enviros don't understand the intrinsic, larger value of climbing aboard to put an easy notch in each gunslinger belt, well, that's just remarkable and validating of my general view of the world.
Submitted with all due respect. I'm simply one voice in a continuing effort to promote Greater Miami's environmental cleanliness and lawfulness. Intriguing that so many enviros want to assail me for asking for support in that effort. Wow, if that does not speak volumes about priorities, strategies and misplaced priorities, perhaps nothing will.
I respect all of you, but I believe some of you are simply missing the boat and others among you are belligerent toward me because of who I am. I ain't gonna lose sleep over that.
In the end, all of the pushback ABSOLUTELY SPEAKS NOT THE FIRST MEANINGFUL word about what any commenter believes to be the abject violation of environmental pollution regulations and the total failure of county and municipal dunderheads to enforce the law.
So, we are left with one lonely and widely-by-you-loathed lobbyist to fight this particular environmental fight for you. But for the several genuine environmentalists who show up entirely on their own, who understand that this issue is a painfully visible one for millions of residents who ALL GET THE SIMPLE fact that these signs are POLLUTION and are ILLEGAL, I have nothing for disdain for your meager explanations why you are totally out to lunch. Again. And again.
Alex --you put your comment on the wrong post...this is the Dusty Melton post. I will post it again for you on the right post above this one...your post.
Calling a billboard an environmental issue is a stretch. Who cares about signs? Tune em out.
Bark eating community??? Tree huggers?
What condescending insults and you expect respect, you money...no cheap shot, I won't take it.
Dusty said:
geniousofdespair seem incapable of grasping...
I say: I don't grasp nothin'
Leave me out of this - not my post, I am busy with Alex Daoud ON MY POST...
Anonymous:
Perhaps rather than autonomously being on the defensive over being called a tree hugger, you might think about embracing it. There are much worse things to be called. You might even see it as a compliment to your strong commitment to saving the earth.
Sometimes you adults pick over the meakest of things.
If signs don't bother you then why are you putting up such fight?
The way I see it, it shouldn't matter so much how others choose to clean up the earth. What matters is that there is a strong motivation in our society to get it done.
You should be happy and supportive of Dusty's commitment to ridding our beautiful landscapes of giant advertisements for the new Wal-Mart. At least he's doing something.
Condemning him for his actions is almost like saying a donation of $1 to fight AIDS isn't as legitimate as a donation of $100. Every effort counts.
Grow up and get over it.
Always,
Elizabeth Melton - a serious tree hugger, ask my dad.
Maybe when Dusty shows up to the umpteenth meeting with the Corps of Engineers or a PAB hearing, or Community Council, or BCC hearing, written an op-ed on water quality, or gone to court to protect our water supply or anything else of environmental consequence, he will have some tree-cred.
Until then, I'm afraid you must tilt alone at your litter sticks.
How can you equate sign pollution with environmental pollution? Only in the twisted mind of a lobbyist is there a direct correlation.
Doctor:
What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
Gentlewoman:
It is an accustom'd action with her, to seem thus
washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.
Lady Macbeth:
Yet here's a spot.
Doctor:
Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, tosatisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Lady Macbeth:
Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then
'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, andafeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
Macbeth Act 5, scene 1, 26–40
Lady Macbeth, as has become her wont, sleepwalks through the royal castle. As her waiting-woman and her doctor listen in, she mutters fragments of an imaginary conversation that recalls the night she and her husband conspired to murder King Duncan [see A SORRY SIGHT]. The hour is two o'clock; she upbraids her husband for his bad conscience; she insists that there will be nothing to fear once they've grabbed the crown; she marvels at how much blood Duncan had to shed. As Lady Macbeth replays this scene for the eavesdroppers, she not only incriminates herself, but also reveals the pangs of conscience she had ridiculed in her husband.
"Out, damn'd spot" is a prime example of "Instant Bard," tailor-made for ironic jokes and marketing schemes. But the "spot" isn't a coffee stain, it's blood. One motif of Macbeth is how tough it is to wash, scrub, or soak out nasty bloodstains. Macbeth had said that even the ocean couldn't wash his hands clean of Duncan's blood; Lady Macbeth, who scorned him then, now finds the blood dyed into her conscience. The king and queen persist in imagining that physical actions can root out psychological demons, but the play is an exposition of how wrong they are.
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