Florida's children fighting our wars have the right to participate in democracy: isn't that the point of these wars-- to protect our democracy? The Treasure Coast Palm Kenric Ward writes: "Is the Florida Supreme Court anti-military? Does Florida's growth machine give a damn? A 4-3 ruling issued just before Christmas erected an impenetrable blockade for servicemen and women seeking to participate in their communities' electoral process. The court decision was a victory for Floridians for Smarter Growth, which is peddling a counter-initiative to subvert Florida Hometown Democracy." The Florida Chamber of Commerce has been waging a jihad against Florida Hometown Democracy, that would take changes to local comp plans-- like developer applications to move the Urban Development Boundary-- and subject them to popular vote. Ouch! Click on read more, for the full story of Florida's business machinery gone haywire. Strange story.
Kenric Ward: Florida court slaps democracy, troops
By Kenric Ward
Monday, January 5, 2009
Is the Florida Supreme Court anti-military? Does Florida's growth machine give a damn?
A 4-3 ruling issued just before Christmas erected an impenetrable blockade for servicemen and women seeking to participate in their communities' electoral process.
The court decision was a victory for Floridians for Smarter Growth, which is peddling a counter-initiative to subvert Florida Hometown Democracy. Mimicking FHD's populism, the Smarter Growth proposition purports to offer an alternate remedy to sprawl-weary Floridians.
It's actually a poison pill. The rival measure imposes a set of restrictive requirements that would effectively curb local growth referendums. Under the Smarter Growth rules, any citizens who want to challenge a local Comprehensive Plan change:
• Must personally visit the qualifying Supervisor of Elections Office or City Clerk's Office to sign a "Growth Management Initiative Petition."
• Must sign within a 60-day period.
These barriers may not be huge impediments to full-time residents, but they're a killer for active-duty military personnel serving away from home — as well as the disabled and homebound. And the rules are insidiously bureaucratic. Which, of course, is Smarter Growth's strategy. Prop up an appearance of grass-roots democracy, but embed the process with so many landmines that no referendums will ever occur.
The Supreme Court majority (including two recent appointments by Gov. Charlie Crist) averred it wasn't ruling on the merits of the Smarter Growth gambit. But by leaving its weasel-worded ballot language intact and giving it a shot at the 2010 statewide ballot, the justices aided and abetted the foes of Florida Hometown Democracy — the real statewide growth-management initiative.
While the Florida Chamber of Commerce and development-industry allies shop their counterfeit version, Hometown Democracy remains the best option for anyone who truly wants to check the abuses of local politicians and bolster citizens' rights. Indeed, FHD's opponents are so nervously controlling that they inserted a dubious clause, which says if both measures are passed by Florida voters, only their version would become law.
Justice Barbara Pariente, in one dissent, declared that the chamber's initiative "requires a series of onerous prerequisites before voter approval takes place."
Justice Fred Lewis, going further, branded the ballot language "a false promise" and "patently misleading."
Though Lewis didn't mention the slap at military personnel, he said the proposal "flies under false colors¥...¥rendering the purported 'right' (to redress via referenda) almost completely illusory."
"Under the amendment, individuals who seek a referendum may not set up a public kiosk at a local library, market or government building, as is the customary and traditional method of citizen involvement." (He also could have mentioned that no mail-in option is available either.)
Lewis added: "For there to be a referendum in Broward County on a growth-management plan, more than 103,000 registered voters (10 percent) would need to travel to the Broward County elections office during a period of two months to sign a petition. Even if the offices were open seven days a week, an average of at least 1,717 signatures would need to be obtained per day for the required number."
Lesley Blackner, president of Hometown Democracy, called the decision "a low point for the Florida Supreme Court. It's unprecedented and shows complete indifference to our troops."
Ryan Houck, spokesman for Floridians for Smarter Growth, continues to warn that Hometown Democracy would swamp the system with voter referendums on local Comprehensive Plan changes.
Houck bemoans "10,599 land-use changes each year for the past four years," yet that number graphically illustrates the promiscuous rate at which developers drive and manipulate the political process. Far from addressing that problem, the Smarter Growth scheme threatens to wipe out existing referendum guarantees in local government charters while muzzling growth critics.
As both measures take aim at the 2010 ballot, voters will have a stark choice. No matter how warm and fuzzy Smarter Growth's disingenuous ballot summary may sound, no matter how many millions of dollars of slick advertising the development industry buys, make no mistake: One proposition is about disenfranchising voters; the other empowers citizens, including those who fight to keep our country and our democracy safe.
ken.ward@scripps.com
DUELING PROPOSITIONS
Florida Supreme Court Justice Fred Lewis accused Floridians for Smarter Growth of "hiding the ball" with a vague ballot summary. Here is the Smarter Growth's 54-word version, followed by Lewis' proposed amplification (which, though still under the state-mandated 75-word limit, failed to win court approval):
APPROVED VERSION
Florida Growth Management Initiative Giving Citizens the Right to Decide Local Growth Management Plan Changes.
Allows Floridians to call for voter approval of changes to local growth management plans through a citizen petition. Voter approval of growth management plan changes will be required if 10 percent of the voters in the city or county sign a petition calling for such a referendum. Defines terms and establishes petition requirements.
REVISED (REJECTED) VERSION
Florida Growth Management Initiative Creating Limited Opportunity to Vote on Local Growth Management Plan Changes.
Allows Floridians a limited opportunity to vote on changes to local growth management plans through a citizen petition. Voter approval of growth management plan changes will be required if 10 percent of the voters in the city or county sign within 60 days at the local election office a petition calling for such a referendum. Defines terms and establishes petition requirements. Preempts all other land-use proposals.
HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY
Referenda Required for Adoption and Amendment of Local Government Comprehensive Land Use Plans.
Establishes that before a local government may adopt a new comprehensive land use plan, or amend a comprehensive land use plan, the proposed plan or amendment shall be subject to vote of the electors of the local government by referendum, following preparation by the local planning agency, consideration by the governing body and notice. Provides definitions.
NEXT UP...
On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court will hear an appeal of the state's petition revocation law, which permits signers to revoke their signatures. Agreeing with attorneys representing Hometown Democracy, the 1st District Court of Appeal ruled last year that the 2007 law was unconstitutional.
© 2009 Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Protesters confront FPL in Martin County ... by gimleteye
Florida Power and Light will be making nice with mainstream environmental groups in downtown Miami this week. The corporation is a sponsor of the annual Everglades Coalition meeting-- this year in downtown Miami. It is not likely many grass roots activists can afford the daily $100 price tag at the downtown Miami Hilton, plus parking. You could always take mass transit.
As the mainstream environmentalists meet at the Hilton downtown, in Martin County a group of Everglades Earth First! activists are camping out and seeking access to one of the oldest bald cypress swamps in Florida. The protesters are claiming that FPL's pumping to cool its nearby power plant is destroying the swamp. Most residents of Miami-Dade don't know that the local county commission allowed FPL's application for new nuclear reactors in South Dade to go forward despite the fact that FPL refused to include any data at all about where it was going to get its cooling water. The Martin County protesters are angered by a power plant this is only pumping a few million gallons per day for its cooling needs: FPL's nuclear facility will need more than 60 million gallons per day. Read the press statement and an article in the Palm Beach Post, below and our archive feature on Florida Power and Light for more commentary on its nuclear ambition in Homestead.
For Immediate Release
Media Alert: Activists Stand-Off with Law Enforcement at Barley Barber
Swamp
Media Contact: Panagioti Tsolkas 561- 308-9452 Taylor Sanderson
440-570-8631
January 6, 2009—Indiantown, Florida.
A group of local Everglades Earth First! activists are currently engaged in
a standoff with FPL, Martin County Sheriff, Homeland Security and the FBI
near Barley Barber Swamp, an old growth cypress swamp near the Florida Power
and Light Martin County Plant. The on-going vigil outside the Barley Barber
Swamp began the morning of January 5th after multiple requests by the group
to be permitted access to view the swamp. FPL is responsible to preserve
the area and has closed the swamp from public access since 2001.
After a thirty-person rally in front of the Martin County Power Plant, the
group attempted to hike into the swamp, but were stopped by law enforcement
who threatened arrests if activists entered the Barley Barber Swamp. The
standoff went through the night as activists maintain the public should be
able to see the impact FPL is having on some of the last remaining old
growth in the state. One of the trees, estimated at 1100 years old, is
likely the oldest tree in the southeast United States.
Earth First!er Taylor Sanderson stated that the group's demands include
"that FPL make a New Year's resolution to take accountability for damage
done to this beautiful swamp by the adjacent Martin County Power Plant,
currently the largest fossil-fuel plant in the United States. The
groundwater is literally being sucked from under the swamp, and the trees
are dying as a result." The group has worked with scientists monitoring
the hydrology of the affected area, and has concluded that the plant was
closed in 2001 not just for security reasons as FPL claims, but because the
power plant is obviously destroying an area that the company promised to
preserve. "We want this old growth forest that is home to the oldest bald
cypress tree in Florida to be preserved. FPL is killing the oldest cypress
trees in the state. Their actions must be monitored" Sanderson continued.
The group of activists anticipate several arrests in the coming days.
According to group member Russell McSpadden, "we are willing to accept
arrest if that is what it takes to preserve the Barley Barber swamp." Mr.
McSpadden added "we intend to fight FPL's destruction of South Florida's
wetlands through legal means and when necessary with our bodies, through
protest, civil disobedience, and the judicial system."
"We have a right to take matters into our own hands," McSpadden continued,
"We won't tolerate FPL's blatant destruction of Florida's natural resources,
including the desecration of Barley Barber swamp and the construction of the
West County Energy Center which will have an enormous environmental impact
on the Loxahatchee region of the Everglades. Elected officials and
environmental organizations throughout the state take contributions from FPL
and are turning a blind eye to the communities and wild lands they are
entrusted to protect. We won't tolerate apathy on the part of those who are
letting this go on."
Photos and video from the swamp are available upon request.
On-the-field interviews are available by phone or on site. Call for
directions and assistance to reach the vigil site.
We would like to extend an invitation for anyone to come out to the camp for
the most up-to-date reports, as the situation could change at any moment.
Unfortunately, the encampment is not accessible by car at this moment,
however, we can arrange bicycles for a crew to make the approx. four mile
trek. Please call 561.308.9452 and we can help make arrangements.
Protestors stage showdown with FPL over 450-acre swamp in Martin County
January 7th, 2009 by Post Staff
By JASON SCHULTZ
A showdown is brewing near Port Mayaca in Martin County as a group of environmental protesters are camping out for a second night tonight demanding access to a natural swamp on land owned by Florida Power and Light Co.
"If they don't open the swamp, we will cross the tracks and risk arrest," said Peter Shultz of Hobe Sound, a member of Everglades Earth First.
The Barley Barber Swamp is on property FPL uses for its power-generation plant west of Indiantown. Once open to the public for tours, the 450-acre swamp was closed after Sept. 11, 2001 for security concerns, FPL officials said.
The protesters are claiming the power plant is drying up the swamp.
"That swamp is conservation land and cannot be altered," Shultz said. "We want it opened up to the public."
Peter "Panagioti" Tsolkas, one of the key protesters, said several of them have camped out on an access road near FPL property close to the banks of Lake Okeechobee. They rotate people out every couple hours.
He said Martin County sheriff's deputies are preventing them from entering the swamp, which he said is public land, and threatening to arrest them for trespassing.
"We intend to go in because we have legal standing," said Tsolkas, who was arrested in 2004 for erecting a bamboo platform in the middle of Dixie Highway in downtown Lake Worth.
Other members of the group camping out tonight have also been arrested for a sit-in protest outside an FPL power plant under construction in western Palm Beach County last year.
Martin County sheriff's spokeswoman Rhonda Irons said deputies were monitoring the group and advised them they would be arrested for trespassing onto FPL's land, which totals 11,300 acres. She said so far there have been no arrests.
In an e-mailed statement, FPL spokeswoman Sarah Marmion said their property west of Indiantown is a unique ecosystem that "continues to thrive just as it has since FPL voluntarily preserved it more than 30 years ago."
The statement said the company anticipates reopening the swamp to the public in 2010, when a new solar energy plant being built on the property is expected to be completed.
Martin County also tries to work with FPL to open the swamp
Meanwhile a Martin County official who worked as a tour guide at the swamp as a youth said the county may be resurrecting its own efforts to get public access to the swamp.
Environmentally Sensitive Lands Administrator Chuck Barrowclough tried to talk FPL officials into re-opening the swamp for tours in 2006, but he said the talks did not go very far because the county did not have the money needed to pay for the swamp's upkeep and run tours. He said county commissioners last year made one of their key objectives the development of eco-tourism to diversify the county's economy.
Barrowclough said county officials are working on a new proposal to use county tourist money, derived from the county's hotel bed tax, to pay for a public access program that would allow activities like kayaking and bird watching tours on FP&L's property. Tax revenue and admissions fees would cover the costs, and the tourists would bring revenue to the community.
"It's one of our greatest natural resources," Barrowclough said of the swamp.
But Barrowclough said he did not agree with the protestors argument that the swamp was public property.
"I think there are much better ways to get access to a natural resource," he said.
Group member, Taylor Sanderson said she liked the idea of the swamp being open, but not if it meant the public would have to pay to tour it.
As the mainstream environmentalists meet at the Hilton downtown, in Martin County a group of Everglades Earth First! activists are camping out and seeking access to one of the oldest bald cypress swamps in Florida. The protesters are claiming that FPL's pumping to cool its nearby power plant is destroying the swamp. Most residents of Miami-Dade don't know that the local county commission allowed FPL's application for new nuclear reactors in South Dade to go forward despite the fact that FPL refused to include any data at all about where it was going to get its cooling water. The Martin County protesters are angered by a power plant this is only pumping a few million gallons per day for its cooling needs: FPL's nuclear facility will need more than 60 million gallons per day. Read the press statement and an article in the Palm Beach Post, below and our archive feature on Florida Power and Light for more commentary on its nuclear ambition in Homestead.
For Immediate Release
Media Alert: Activists Stand-Off with Law Enforcement at Barley Barber
Swamp
Media Contact: Panagioti Tsolkas 561- 308-9452 Taylor Sanderson
440-570-8631
January 6, 2009—Indiantown, Florida.
A group of local Everglades Earth First! activists are currently engaged in
a standoff with FPL, Martin County Sheriff, Homeland Security and the FBI
near Barley Barber Swamp, an old growth cypress swamp near the Florida Power
and Light Martin County Plant. The on-going vigil outside the Barley Barber
Swamp began the morning of January 5th after multiple requests by the group
to be permitted access to view the swamp. FPL is responsible to preserve
the area and has closed the swamp from public access since 2001.
After a thirty-person rally in front of the Martin County Power Plant, the
group attempted to hike into the swamp, but were stopped by law enforcement
who threatened arrests if activists entered the Barley Barber Swamp. The
standoff went through the night as activists maintain the public should be
able to see the impact FPL is having on some of the last remaining old
growth in the state. One of the trees, estimated at 1100 years old, is
likely the oldest tree in the southeast United States.
Earth First!er Taylor Sanderson stated that the group's demands include
"that FPL make a New Year's resolution to take accountability for damage
done to this beautiful swamp by the adjacent Martin County Power Plant,
currently the largest fossil-fuel plant in the United States. The
groundwater is literally being sucked from under the swamp, and the trees
are dying as a result." The group has worked with scientists monitoring
the hydrology of the affected area, and has concluded that the plant was
closed in 2001 not just for security reasons as FPL claims, but because the
power plant is obviously destroying an area that the company promised to
preserve. "We want this old growth forest that is home to the oldest bald
cypress tree in Florida to be preserved. FPL is killing the oldest cypress
trees in the state. Their actions must be monitored" Sanderson continued.
The group of activists anticipate several arrests in the coming days.
According to group member Russell McSpadden, "we are willing to accept
arrest if that is what it takes to preserve the Barley Barber swamp." Mr.
McSpadden added "we intend to fight FPL's destruction of South Florida's
wetlands through legal means and when necessary with our bodies, through
protest, civil disobedience, and the judicial system."
"We have a right to take matters into our own hands," McSpadden continued,
"We won't tolerate FPL's blatant destruction of Florida's natural resources,
including the desecration of Barley Barber swamp and the construction of the
West County Energy Center which will have an enormous environmental impact
on the Loxahatchee region of the Everglades. Elected officials and
environmental organizations throughout the state take contributions from FPL
and are turning a blind eye to the communities and wild lands they are
entrusted to protect. We won't tolerate apathy on the part of those who are
letting this go on."
Photos and video from the swamp are available upon request.
On-the-field interviews are available by phone or on site. Call for
directions and assistance to reach the vigil site.
We would like to extend an invitation for anyone to come out to the camp for
the most up-to-date reports, as the situation could change at any moment.
Unfortunately, the encampment is not accessible by car at this moment,
however, we can arrange bicycles for a crew to make the approx. four mile
trek. Please call 561.308.9452 and we can help make arrangements.
Protestors stage showdown with FPL over 450-acre swamp in Martin County
January 7th, 2009 by Post Staff
By JASON SCHULTZ
A showdown is brewing near Port Mayaca in Martin County as a group of environmental protesters are camping out for a second night tonight demanding access to a natural swamp on land owned by Florida Power and Light Co.
"If they don't open the swamp, we will cross the tracks and risk arrest," said Peter Shultz of Hobe Sound, a member of Everglades Earth First.
The Barley Barber Swamp is on property FPL uses for its power-generation plant west of Indiantown. Once open to the public for tours, the 450-acre swamp was closed after Sept. 11, 2001 for security concerns, FPL officials said.
The protesters are claiming the power plant is drying up the swamp.
"That swamp is conservation land and cannot be altered," Shultz said. "We want it opened up to the public."
Peter "Panagioti" Tsolkas, one of the key protesters, said several of them have camped out on an access road near FPL property close to the banks of Lake Okeechobee. They rotate people out every couple hours.
He said Martin County sheriff's deputies are preventing them from entering the swamp, which he said is public land, and threatening to arrest them for trespassing.
"We intend to go in because we have legal standing," said Tsolkas, who was arrested in 2004 for erecting a bamboo platform in the middle of Dixie Highway in downtown Lake Worth.
Other members of the group camping out tonight have also been arrested for a sit-in protest outside an FPL power plant under construction in western Palm Beach County last year.
Martin County sheriff's spokeswoman Rhonda Irons said deputies were monitoring the group and advised them they would be arrested for trespassing onto FPL's land, which totals 11,300 acres. She said so far there have been no arrests.
In an e-mailed statement, FPL spokeswoman Sarah Marmion said their property west of Indiantown is a unique ecosystem that "continues to thrive just as it has since FPL voluntarily preserved it more than 30 years ago."
The statement said the company anticipates reopening the swamp to the public in 2010, when a new solar energy plant being built on the property is expected to be completed.
Martin County also tries to work with FPL to open the swamp
Meanwhile a Martin County official who worked as a tour guide at the swamp as a youth said the county may be resurrecting its own efforts to get public access to the swamp.
Environmentally Sensitive Lands Administrator Chuck Barrowclough tried to talk FPL officials into re-opening the swamp for tours in 2006, but he said the talks did not go very far because the county did not have the money needed to pay for the swamp's upkeep and run tours. He said county commissioners last year made one of their key objectives the development of eco-tourism to diversify the county's economy.
Barrowclough said county officials are working on a new proposal to use county tourist money, derived from the county's hotel bed tax, to pay for a public access program that would allow activities like kayaking and bird watching tours on FP&L's property. Tax revenue and admissions fees would cover the costs, and the tourists would bring revenue to the community.
"It's one of our greatest natural resources," Barrowclough said of the swamp.
But Barrowclough said he did not agree with the protestors argument that the swamp was public property.
"I think there are much better ways to get access to a natural resource," he said.
Group member, Taylor Sanderson said she liked the idea of the swamp being open, but not if it meant the public would have to pay to tour it.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Jeb a No Go. By Geniusofdespair
Jeb Bush Just Announced He Will Not Run For Mel Martinez's Senate Seat.
Failure in the Chesapeake Bay? Any different with Everglades "restoration'? by gimleteye
"NO ONE INVOLVED in the 25-year effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay seems capable of uttering the word "failure." But after nearly $6 billion, two blown deadlines and the lack of a clear strategy, there is no other way to describe the dismal attempts to revive one of the world's largest estuaries." That's the lead of a Washington Post editorial a few days ago. "What needs to be done is clear. Farm runoff needs to be aggressively regulated." I'm not sure where I've heard that before... Click read more, for the full editorial.
WASHINGTON POST
Failure on the Chesapeake Bay
The cleanup effort will need political courage if it's ever to succeed.
Saturday, January 3, 2009; A12
NO ONE INVOLVED in the 25-year effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay seems capable of uttering the word "failure." But after nearly $6 billion, two blown deadlines and the lack of a clear strategy, there is no other way to describe the dismal attempts to revive one of the world's largest estuaries.
We long have clamored for more concerted efforts to bring the 64,000-square-mile watershed back to health. And as Post writer David A. Fahrenthold reportedlast week, over the years the custodians of the waterway's future seemed to be more concerned with highlighting potential progress than making the tough decisions to achieve progress. The consequences of not forthrightly acknowledging the obvious are revealed in the numbers. Since 1983, the crab harvest is down 60 percent and the oyster harvest is down 96 percent. Meanwhile, 17 percent of the watershed had lowered oxygen levels.
Three factors contribute to the sorry state of the Chesapeake Bay. Agricultural runoff from farms pumps nitrogen and phosphorus into the water, which feed the oxygen-depleting algae blooms and create dead zones. These life-sapping areas have killed oysters and have sent crabs scurrying to shallower waters for food and oxygen. Watermen are scooping up shellfish faster than nature can replenish them, making harvests less plentiful with each passing year. And the explosion of development along the watershed, including a 34 percent increase in area population since 1980, has increased the number of paved surfaces that produce warm and polluted runoff from parking lots, highways, and commercial and residential buildings into an already-crippled bay.
The first blown deadline for Chesapeake restoration was in 2000. The 2010 deadline was declared dead late last year by the custodians of the bay, who include public officials from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, New York, the District and the federal government. They now have their sights set on yet-to-be-determined short-term goals.
What needs to be done is clear. Farm runoff needs to be aggressively regulated. States must institute and enforce policies to meet the maximum daily load of wastewater allowed to be pumped into the bay's tributaries -- once the Environmental Protection Agency finally issues the regulations. Watermen will have to limit their catch of crabs and oysters until those populations boom again. States and municipalities throughout the watershed must mandate green-building techniques. The hard part is mustering the political will to turn those imperatives into reality.
WASHINGTON POST
Failure on the Chesapeake Bay
The cleanup effort will need political courage if it's ever to succeed.
Saturday, January 3, 2009; A12
NO ONE INVOLVED in the 25-year effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay seems capable of uttering the word "failure." But after nearly $6 billion, two blown deadlines and the lack of a clear strategy, there is no other way to describe the dismal attempts to revive one of the world's largest estuaries.
We long have clamored for more concerted efforts to bring the 64,000-square-mile watershed back to health. And as Post writer David A. Fahrenthold reportedlast week, over the years the custodians of the waterway's future seemed to be more concerned with highlighting potential progress than making the tough decisions to achieve progress. The consequences of not forthrightly acknowledging the obvious are revealed in the numbers. Since 1983, the crab harvest is down 60 percent and the oyster harvest is down 96 percent. Meanwhile, 17 percent of the watershed had lowered oxygen levels.
Three factors contribute to the sorry state of the Chesapeake Bay. Agricultural runoff from farms pumps nitrogen and phosphorus into the water, which feed the oxygen-depleting algae blooms and create dead zones. These life-sapping areas have killed oysters and have sent crabs scurrying to shallower waters for food and oxygen. Watermen are scooping up shellfish faster than nature can replenish them, making harvests less plentiful with each passing year. And the explosion of development along the watershed, including a 34 percent increase in area population since 1980, has increased the number of paved surfaces that produce warm and polluted runoff from parking lots, highways, and commercial and residential buildings into an already-crippled bay.
The first blown deadline for Chesapeake restoration was in 2000. The 2010 deadline was declared dead late last year by the custodians of the bay, who include public officials from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, New York, the District and the federal government. They now have their sights set on yet-to-be-determined short-term goals.
What needs to be done is clear. Farm runoff needs to be aggressively regulated. States must institute and enforce policies to meet the maximum daily load of wastewater allowed to be pumped into the bay's tributaries -- once the Environmental Protection Agency finally issues the regulations. Watermen will have to limit their catch of crabs and oysters until those populations boom again. States and municipalities throughout the watershed must mandate green-building techniques. The hard part is mustering the political will to turn those imperatives into reality.
If Jeb runs... who runs against Jeb? ... by gimleteye
Poppy Bush teed Jeb up for a US Senate run in advance of a future run for president. It made national news. I'm in the group that thinks this huff and puffing is meant to clear the Republican field for an unchallenged primary that will allow Jeb to hoard campaign dollars for a general election run for the open US Senate seat in 2010. The Democrats, on the other hand, have a handful of candidates including Miami's State Senator Dan Gelber and Congressman Kendrick Meek who have their own strengths. Gelber is smart and tough and a very good campaigner; he beats Jeb on fact. Meek is also charismatic, if less seasoned; he has a long history with Bush, including getting under Jeb's skin, that would make an entertaining campaign. But a primary clash among Democratic candidates would do for the Senate race what the governor's race in 2006 did for the Dems; Rod Smith knocked Jim Davis out of the general election, paving the way for Charlie Crist. I'm no fan of Jeb: good opposition research will show how his rigid ideology lead to the worst economic and social crisis in Florida's history. If the Democrats can focus a candidate on the general election, Jeb has formidable obstacles to being elected a US Senator from Florida. I would guess Jeb's chance of winning in that case at 30 percent. But if Democratic candidates tear each other up in a primary, his chances go up because in the end, campaign cash buys a lot of political cover. What do you think?
Transit, For the Memory Challenged: Read This Letter From A 2001 Grand Jury Member
I hope this letter in today's Herald jogs your memories Miami Dade County Commissioners, (Yes you too Katy Sorenson), get a NEW copy of the OLD grand jury report because we don't want you screwing with our transit sales tax money which was for new service and to use for matching federal funds not for operational needs:
Transit fixes ignored
Re Miami-Dade County Commission chair Dennis Moss' Jan. 3 letter A 'new day' for public transit in Miami-Dade: I sat on a grand jury in 2001 with 11 other jurors and three alternates. We studied Miami-Dade's transit system for six months. We heard testimony from several experts as to why our system was a mess. We studied the 1970s reports of the original urban plans.
What we ended up with in the transit system, and those plans, were clearly political. For instance, in the original plans Metrorail was to go to the airport and along the Interstate 95 corridor. That would have been so helpful for relieving today's gridlock. To help the immediate problems we had to come up with a plan to get matching federal tax dollars. We suggested the increase in sales tax. However, we clearly did not want the mistakes of the past to occur again and insisted on an oversight committee. Our report addressed immediate needs: an increase in bus and Metrorail routes.
It had been discouraging to read about the waste of our money because of another ''gravy train.'' The public is not getting what it deserves. I hope Moss' ''new day'' approach will be the answer. We should all remember this when Election Day returns.
BARBARA P. LIPCON, Miami
Transit fixes ignored
Re Miami-Dade County Commission chair Dennis Moss' Jan. 3 letter A 'new day' for public transit in Miami-Dade: I sat on a grand jury in 2001 with 11 other jurors and three alternates. We studied Miami-Dade's transit system for six months. We heard testimony from several experts as to why our system was a mess. We studied the 1970s reports of the original urban plans.
What we ended up with in the transit system, and those plans, were clearly political. For instance, in the original plans Metrorail was to go to the airport and along the Interstate 95 corridor. That would have been so helpful for relieving today's gridlock. To help the immediate problems we had to come up with a plan to get matching federal tax dollars. We suggested the increase in sales tax. However, we clearly did not want the mistakes of the past to occur again and insisted on an oversight committee. Our report addressed immediate needs: an increase in bus and Metrorail routes.
It had been discouraging to read about the waste of our money because of another ''gravy train.'' The public is not getting what it deserves. I hope Moss' ''new day'' approach will be the answer. We should all remember this when Election Day returns.
BARBARA P. LIPCON, Miami
Everglades Coalition Annual Conference generates controversy ... by gimleteye
Everglades advocates from the big non-profits are uncomfortable when grass roots activists emerge with a different focus, enthusiasm and energy. The grass roots have been all over FPL, one of the co-sponsors of this year's Everglades Coalition Meeting in downtown Miami, for FPL's nuclear ambition at Turkey Point and new energy plants in Palm Beach and Martin County. Some are claiming that the environmental groups also sponsoring the event are giving cover to FPL. Click on 'read more' to read a public letter to the chairs of the Everglades Coalition.
Dear Mark Perry, State Co-Chair and Sara Fain, National Co-Chair,
I was shocked and dismayed that neither the Everglades Coalition Conference
web site and press releases (below) nor the National Parks Conservation
Association (NPCA) web site and meeting agenda included any reference to the
catastrophic damage to the Everglades from the existing and proposed FPL
fossil fuel plants in Martin and Palm Beach Counties, respectively. In my
opinion, the water use alone from these largest-existing and
largest-proposed power plants in the US is sufficient to negate any bona
fide Everglades "restoration" efforts, even excluding the irreversible
damage that will occur if the so-called "restoration reservoirs" are
constructed.
Is this glaring omission the result of FPL's sponsorship of the Everglades
Coalition Conference? Honestly, I expected more from both Mark and the
NPCA.
At least NPCA appeared to refrain from posting the embarrassing agenda for
the Conference on its web site. In my opinion, the threat from these FPL
facilities to the Everglades -including Everglades National Park - far
exceeds the "Dark Horizons" threats from coal-fired facilities described by
NPCA, below.
"Dark Horizons: 10 National Parks Most Threatened by New Coal-Fired Power
Plants May 2008"
Where are the voices of the scientists in this conference? In addition to
the scientific documentation of impacts from fossil fuel facilities like the
FPL facilities referenced above, it's a well-established scientific fact
that the mined/bermed "reservoirs" will further deplete the aquifer system
on which survival of the Everglades depends.
As the Executive Director of Florida Oceanographic Society, Mark should be
leading the fight against the proposed FPL facility adjacent to the northern
boundary of the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, in the heart of the
Everglades. The acidic emissions and discharges from that proposed facility
alone will have devastating adverse impacts on the entire coastal ecosystem
in southeast Florida.
Likewise, the water use of that proposed FPL facility - estimated by Palm
Beach County as the equivalent of approximately 75,000 homes - will have
significant adverse impacts on both coastal areas and the remaining
Everglades.
If co-chairs from the Florida Oceanographic Society and National Parks
Conservation Association aren't addressing these fatal flaws in Everglades
"restoration" during the Everglades Coalition Conference, how can we ever
expect any of the important scientific aspects of Everglades restoration to
be addressed?
I certainly hope you will adjust the proposed conference agenda to address
the critical issues of impacts from those two FPL facilities and the
so-called "restoration reservoirs."
Sincerely,
Sydney Bacchus, Ph. D.
Hydroecologist
Dear Mark Perry, State Co-Chair and Sara Fain, National Co-Chair,
I was shocked and dismayed that neither the Everglades Coalition Conference
web site and press releases (below) nor the National Parks Conservation
Association (NPCA) web site and meeting agenda included any reference to the
catastrophic damage to the Everglades from the existing and proposed FPL
fossil fuel plants in Martin and Palm Beach Counties, respectively. In my
opinion, the water use alone from these largest-existing and
largest-proposed power plants in the US is sufficient to negate any bona
fide Everglades "restoration" efforts, even excluding the irreversible
damage that will occur if the so-called "restoration reservoirs" are
constructed.
Is this glaring omission the result of FPL's sponsorship of the Everglades
Coalition Conference? Honestly, I expected more from both Mark and the
NPCA.
At least NPCA appeared to refrain from posting the embarrassing agenda for
the Conference on its web site. In my opinion, the threat from these FPL
facilities to the Everglades -including Everglades National Park - far
exceeds the "Dark Horizons" threats from coal-fired facilities described by
NPCA, below.
"Dark Horizons: 10 National Parks Most Threatened by New Coal-Fired Power
Plants May 2008"
Where are the voices of the scientists in this conference? In addition to
the scientific documentation of impacts from fossil fuel facilities like the
FPL facilities referenced above, it's a well-established scientific fact
that the mined/bermed "reservoirs" will further deplete the aquifer system
on which survival of the Everglades depends.
As the Executive Director of Florida Oceanographic Society, Mark should be
leading the fight against the proposed FPL facility adjacent to the northern
boundary of the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, in the heart of the
Everglades. The acidic emissions and discharges from that proposed facility
alone will have devastating adverse impacts on the entire coastal ecosystem
in southeast Florida.
Likewise, the water use of that proposed FPL facility - estimated by Palm
Beach County as the equivalent of approximately 75,000 homes - will have
significant adverse impacts on both coastal areas and the remaining
Everglades.
If co-chairs from the Florida Oceanographic Society and National Parks
Conservation Association aren't addressing these fatal flaws in Everglades
"restoration" during the Everglades Coalition Conference, how can we ever
expect any of the important scientific aspects of Everglades restoration to
be addressed?
I certainly hope you will adjust the proposed conference agenda to address
the critical issues of impacts from those two FPL facilities and the
so-called "restoration reservoirs."
Sincerely,
Sydney Bacchus, Ph. D.
Hydroecologist
Monday, January 05, 2009
Miami Beach resident and Time Magazine Sr. Correspondent Mike Grunwald on Nuclear Energy
Come on, FPL: why won't you support new state policy to compensate Florida's electric utilities based on units of energy conserved? Grunwald concludes in the Time Magazine Dec 31, 2008: "The key will be reducing demand through energy efficiency and conservation. Most efficiency improvements have been priced at 1¢ to 3¢ per kilowatt-hour, while new nuclear energy is on track to cost 15¢ to 20¢ per kilowatt-hour. And no nuclear plant has ever been completed on budget." Click read more for the full article.
Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008
Nuclear's Comeback: Still No Energy Panacea
By Michael Grunwald
Nuclear power is on the verge of a remarkable comeback. It's been three decades since an American utility ordered a nuclear plant, but 35 new reactors are now in the planning stage. The byzantine regulatory process that helped paralyze the industry for a generation has been streamlined. There hasn't been a serious nuclear accident in the U.S. since the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. And no-nukes politics has become a distant memory. It was a sign of the times when John McCain ridiculed Barack Obama for opposing nuclear energy--and the allegation wasn't even true. "There's only a very small minority in Congress that still opposes nuclear power," says Alex Flint, the top lobbyist at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). "That's quite a change."
The most powerful change agents have been the surge in U.S. electricity demand--forecast to grow another 30% by 2030--and the threat of global warming. Atomic reactors produce no carbon emissions, so energy analysts, politicians and even some environmentalists have embraced them as a clean power source for a wired world, an alternative to fossil fuels that can generate electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. The specter of a carbon-pricing scheme to address climate change has transformed nuclear economics. Originally touted as "too cheap to meter," nuclear energy turned out to be extremely expensive, but advocates say it will look much cheaper once coal and gas plants have to pay for their emissions. And unlike clean coal and other speculative technologies, nuclear energy already provides 20% of our power. "We're sitting on a ham sandwich, starving to death," says Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson.
But some little-noticed rain has fallen on the nuclear parade. It turns out that new plants would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive. The first detailed cost estimate, filed by Florida Power & Light (FPL) for a large plant off the Keys, came in at a shocking $12 billion to $18 billion. Progress Energy announced a $17 billion plan for a similar Florida plant, tripling its estimate in just a year. "Completely mind-boggling," says Charlie Beck, who represents ratepayers for Florida's Office of Public Counsel. "A real wake-up call," says Dale Klein, President Bush's chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). "I'll admit, the costs are daunting," says Richard Myers, NEI's vice president for policy development.
The math gets ugly in a hurry. McCain called for 45 new plants by 2030; given the nuclear industry's history of 250% cost overruns, that could rise to well over $1 trillion. Ratepayers would take the main hit, but taxpayers could be on the hook for billions in loan guarantees, tax breaks, insurance benefits and direct subsidies--not to mention the problem of storing radioactive waste, if Congress can ever figure out where to put it. And those 45 new plants would barely replace the existing plants scheduled for decommissioning before 2030.
This sticker shock has unnerved Wall Street. A Warren Buffett--owned company has scrapped plans for an Idaho nuclear plant; banks and bond-rating agencies are skeptical as well. In fact, renewables attracted $71 billion globally in private capital during 2007 while nukes got zero. The reactors under construction around the world are all government-financed. "I have to keep explaining: France and China are not capitalist countries!" says Congressman Ed Markey, an antinuclear Massachusetts Democrat. "Nobody wants to put their own money into this so-called renaissance--just ours."
A nuclear renaissance still might make sense if it could save the planet. America's existing nuclear plants already prevent the release of nearly as much carbon as America's passenger cars actually release every year. But more plants simply can't reduce emissions quickly enough to address our climate crisis. We need serious cuts within a decade, and the first new plant won't come on line before 2016.
The nuclear renaissance, in truth, has yet to be born. No one has broken ground or made any irrevocable investment decisions. "There's been some excessive exuberance," the NRC's Klein says. Still, license applications are cascading into the commission. Bush's full-throated support for the industry has been echoed by Democrats as well as greener Republicans like Governors Charlie Crist of Florida and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. "Nuclear is expensive, no doubt about it," says former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman, now a paid spokeswoman for the industry. "But we can't keep saying no to everything."
The nuclear industry has learned from the mistakes it made in its first go-round, when timelines doubled, costs exploded, and half its orders for new reactors were canceled. It ran at a record 92% capacity last year, virtually trouble-free. The not-in-my-backyard fear that was a factor in shuttering so many plants has faded; one industry poll found that new reactors are supported by most Americans, including four-fifths of those who live near one. And regulators have worked with the industry to standardize reactor designs, which should enhance safety margins--Klein jokes that France has 104 varieties of cheese but only one standard reactor, while the U.S. has one cheese but 104 different reactors. The NRC is fast-tracking applications, combining construction and operating licenses into a single permit and taking other steps to, as Myers puts it, "strip the risk out of the regulatory process." Congress has even approved "risk insurance" to reimburse the industry for regulatory delays; that's in addition to the government-issued liability insurance it already enjoys. And the industry often has more clout at the state level; Florida has guaranteed utilities collect-as-you-go cost recovery for nuclear investments even if they never complete any reactors. "We have a very positive political and regulatory environment," says FPL president Armando Olivera, whose company spent $2.3 million on six Washington lobbying firms in 2007. "We wouldn't be comfortable building new reactors if we didn't."
The rest of the case for nukes relies on the unattractive alternatives. Coal is filthy. Natural gas isn't exactly clean, and its price is volatile. Solar and wind are intermittent. Crist, who has blocked several coal plants for environmental reasons, explains his support for nukes in three words: "We need juice!" Industry officials argue that if you disregard capital costs, nuclear plants are the cheapest source of power.
But you can't disregard capital costs--they're out of control. The world's only steelworks capable of forging containment vessels is in Japan, and it has a three-year waiting list. The specialized workforce required for manufacturing reactors has atrophied in the U.S., along with the industrial base. Steel, cement and other commodity prices have stabilized, but the credit crunch has jacked up the cost of borrowing. FPL's application concedes that new reactors present "unique risks and uncertainties," with every six-month delay adding as much as $500 million in interest costs. Meanwhile, radioactive waste languishes in temporary storage pools and casks at plants around the country. Energy maven Amory Lovins has calculated that, overall, new nuclear wattage would cost more than twice as much as coal or gas and nearly three times as much as wind--and that calculation was made before nuclear-construction costs exploded.
So how should we produce our juice? The answer may sound a bit unsatisfying: more wind, less coal but mostly the same electricity sources we're using, until something better comes along. The key will be reducing demand through energy efficiency and conservation. Most efficiency improvements have been priced at 1¢ to 3¢ per kilowatt-hour, while new nuclear energy is on track to cost 15¢ to 20¢ per kilowatt-hour. And no nuclear plant has ever been completed on budget.
Now that's an unsatisfying answer--especially since we'll be paying the bills.
Click to Print
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1869203,00.html
Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Privacy Policy|Add TIME Headlines to your Site|Contact Us|Customer Service
Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008
Nuclear's Comeback: Still No Energy Panacea
By Michael Grunwald
Nuclear power is on the verge of a remarkable comeback. It's been three decades since an American utility ordered a nuclear plant, but 35 new reactors are now in the planning stage. The byzantine regulatory process that helped paralyze the industry for a generation has been streamlined. There hasn't been a serious nuclear accident in the U.S. since the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. And no-nukes politics has become a distant memory. It was a sign of the times when John McCain ridiculed Barack Obama for opposing nuclear energy--and the allegation wasn't even true. "There's only a very small minority in Congress that still opposes nuclear power," says Alex Flint, the top lobbyist at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). "That's quite a change."
The most powerful change agents have been the surge in U.S. electricity demand--forecast to grow another 30% by 2030--and the threat of global warming. Atomic reactors produce no carbon emissions, so energy analysts, politicians and even some environmentalists have embraced them as a clean power source for a wired world, an alternative to fossil fuels that can generate electricity when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. The specter of a carbon-pricing scheme to address climate change has transformed nuclear economics. Originally touted as "too cheap to meter," nuclear energy turned out to be extremely expensive, but advocates say it will look much cheaper once coal and gas plants have to pay for their emissions. And unlike clean coal and other speculative technologies, nuclear energy already provides 20% of our power. "We're sitting on a ham sandwich, starving to death," says Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson.
But some little-noticed rain has fallen on the nuclear parade. It turns out that new plants would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive. The first detailed cost estimate, filed by Florida Power & Light (FPL) for a large plant off the Keys, came in at a shocking $12 billion to $18 billion. Progress Energy announced a $17 billion plan for a similar Florida plant, tripling its estimate in just a year. "Completely mind-boggling," says Charlie Beck, who represents ratepayers for Florida's Office of Public Counsel. "A real wake-up call," says Dale Klein, President Bush's chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). "I'll admit, the costs are daunting," says Richard Myers, NEI's vice president for policy development.
The math gets ugly in a hurry. McCain called for 45 new plants by 2030; given the nuclear industry's history of 250% cost overruns, that could rise to well over $1 trillion. Ratepayers would take the main hit, but taxpayers could be on the hook for billions in loan guarantees, tax breaks, insurance benefits and direct subsidies--not to mention the problem of storing radioactive waste, if Congress can ever figure out where to put it. And those 45 new plants would barely replace the existing plants scheduled for decommissioning before 2030.
This sticker shock has unnerved Wall Street. A Warren Buffett--owned company has scrapped plans for an Idaho nuclear plant; banks and bond-rating agencies are skeptical as well. In fact, renewables attracted $71 billion globally in private capital during 2007 while nukes got zero. The reactors under construction around the world are all government-financed. "I have to keep explaining: France and China are not capitalist countries!" says Congressman Ed Markey, an antinuclear Massachusetts Democrat. "Nobody wants to put their own money into this so-called renaissance--just ours."
A nuclear renaissance still might make sense if it could save the planet. America's existing nuclear plants already prevent the release of nearly as much carbon as America's passenger cars actually release every year. But more plants simply can't reduce emissions quickly enough to address our climate crisis. We need serious cuts within a decade, and the first new plant won't come on line before 2016.
The nuclear renaissance, in truth, has yet to be born. No one has broken ground or made any irrevocable investment decisions. "There's been some excessive exuberance," the NRC's Klein says. Still, license applications are cascading into the commission. Bush's full-throated support for the industry has been echoed by Democrats as well as greener Republicans like Governors Charlie Crist of Florida and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. "Nuclear is expensive, no doubt about it," says former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman, now a paid spokeswoman for the industry. "But we can't keep saying no to everything."
The nuclear industry has learned from the mistakes it made in its first go-round, when timelines doubled, costs exploded, and half its orders for new reactors were canceled. It ran at a record 92% capacity last year, virtually trouble-free. The not-in-my-backyard fear that was a factor in shuttering so many plants has faded; one industry poll found that new reactors are supported by most Americans, including four-fifths of those who live near one. And regulators have worked with the industry to standardize reactor designs, which should enhance safety margins--Klein jokes that France has 104 varieties of cheese but only one standard reactor, while the U.S. has one cheese but 104 different reactors. The NRC is fast-tracking applications, combining construction and operating licenses into a single permit and taking other steps to, as Myers puts it, "strip the risk out of the regulatory process." Congress has even approved "risk insurance" to reimburse the industry for regulatory delays; that's in addition to the government-issued liability insurance it already enjoys. And the industry often has more clout at the state level; Florida has guaranteed utilities collect-as-you-go cost recovery for nuclear investments even if they never complete any reactors. "We have a very positive political and regulatory environment," says FPL president Armando Olivera, whose company spent $2.3 million on six Washington lobbying firms in 2007. "We wouldn't be comfortable building new reactors if we didn't."
The rest of the case for nukes relies on the unattractive alternatives. Coal is filthy. Natural gas isn't exactly clean, and its price is volatile. Solar and wind are intermittent. Crist, who has blocked several coal plants for environmental reasons, explains his support for nukes in three words: "We need juice!" Industry officials argue that if you disregard capital costs, nuclear plants are the cheapest source of power.
But you can't disregard capital costs--they're out of control. The world's only steelworks capable of forging containment vessels is in Japan, and it has a three-year waiting list. The specialized workforce required for manufacturing reactors has atrophied in the U.S., along with the industrial base. Steel, cement and other commodity prices have stabilized, but the credit crunch has jacked up the cost of borrowing. FPL's application concedes that new reactors present "unique risks and uncertainties," with every six-month delay adding as much as $500 million in interest costs. Meanwhile, radioactive waste languishes in temporary storage pools and casks at plants around the country. Energy maven Amory Lovins has calculated that, overall, new nuclear wattage would cost more than twice as much as coal or gas and nearly three times as much as wind--and that calculation was made before nuclear-construction costs exploded.
So how should we produce our juice? The answer may sound a bit unsatisfying: more wind, less coal but mostly the same electricity sources we're using, until something better comes along. The key will be reducing demand through energy efficiency and conservation. Most efficiency improvements have been priced at 1¢ to 3¢ per kilowatt-hour, while new nuclear energy is on track to cost 15¢ to 20¢ per kilowatt-hour. And no nuclear plant has ever been completed on budget.
Now that's an unsatisfying answer--especially since we'll be paying the bills.
Click to Print
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1869203,00.html
Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Privacy Policy|Add TIME Headlines to your Site|Contact Us|Customer Service
Worst predictions of 2008 ... by gimleteye
Click "read more" for some of the worst predictions that were made about 2008. Savor them -- a crop like this doesn't come along every year.
1. "A very powerful and durable rally is in the works. But it may need another couple of days to lift off. Hold the fort and keep the faith!" -- Richard Band, editor, Profitable Investing Letter, Mar. 27, 2008
At the time of the prediction, the Dow Jones industrial average was at 12,300. By late December it was at 8,500.
2. AIG (NYSE:AIG - News) "could have huge gains in the second quarter." -- Bijan Moazami, analyst, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, May 9, 2008
AIG wound up losing $5 billion in that quarter and $25 billion in the next. It was taken over in September by the U.S. government, which will spend or lend $150 billion to keep it afloat.
3. "I think this is a case where Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE - News) and Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM - News) are fundamentally sound. They're not in danger of going under I think they are in good shape going forward." -- Barney Frank (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Committee chairman, July 14, 2008
Two months later, the government forced the mortgage giants into conservatorships and pledged to invest up to $100 billion in each.
4. "The market is in the process of correcting itself." -- President George W. Bush, in a Mar. 14, 2008 speech
For the rest of the year, the market kept correcting and correcting and correcting.
5. "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble." -- Jim Cramer, CNBC commentator, Mar. 11, 2008
Five days later, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM - News) took over Bear Stearns with government help, nearly wiping out shareholders.
6. "Existing-Home Sales to Trend Up in 2008" -- Headline of a National Association of Realtors press release, Dec. 9, 2007
On Dec. 23, 2008, the group said November sales were running at an annual rate of 4.5 million -- down 11% from a year earlier -- in the worst housing slump since the Depression.
7. "I think you'll see (oil prices at) $150 a barrel by the end of the year" -- T. Boone Pickens, June 20, 2008
Oil was then around $135 a barrel. By late December it was below $40.
8. "I expect there will be some failures. I don't anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system." -- Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, Feb. 28, 2008
In September, Washington Mutual became the largest financial institution in U.S. history to fail. Citigroup (NYSE:C - News) needed an even bigger rescue in November.
9. "In today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to violate rules." -- Bernard Madoff, money manager, Oct. 20, 2007
About a year later, Madoff -- who once headed the Nasdaq Stock Market -- told investigators he had cost his investors $50 billion in an alleged Ponzi scheme.
10. A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, the title of a book by conservative commentator Shelby Steele, published on Dec. 4, 2007.
Mr. Steele, meet President-elect Barack Obama.
1. "A very powerful and durable rally is in the works. But it may need another couple of days to lift off. Hold the fort and keep the faith!" -- Richard Band, editor, Profitable Investing Letter, Mar. 27, 2008
At the time of the prediction, the Dow Jones industrial average was at 12,300. By late December it was at 8,500.
2. AIG (NYSE:AIG - News) "could have huge gains in the second quarter." -- Bijan Moazami, analyst, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, May 9, 2008
AIG wound up losing $5 billion in that quarter and $25 billion in the next. It was taken over in September by the U.S. government, which will spend or lend $150 billion to keep it afloat.
3. "I think this is a case where Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE - News) and Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM - News) are fundamentally sound. They're not in danger of going under I think they are in good shape going forward." -- Barney Frank (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Committee chairman, July 14, 2008
Two months later, the government forced the mortgage giants into conservatorships and pledged to invest up to $100 billion in each.
4. "The market is in the process of correcting itself." -- President George W. Bush, in a Mar. 14, 2008 speech
For the rest of the year, the market kept correcting and correcting and correcting.
5. "No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble." -- Jim Cramer, CNBC commentator, Mar. 11, 2008
Five days later, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM - News) took over Bear Stearns with government help, nearly wiping out shareholders.
6. "Existing-Home Sales to Trend Up in 2008" -- Headline of a National Association of Realtors press release, Dec. 9, 2007
On Dec. 23, 2008, the group said November sales were running at an annual rate of 4.5 million -- down 11% from a year earlier -- in the worst housing slump since the Depression.
7. "I think you'll see (oil prices at) $150 a barrel by the end of the year" -- T. Boone Pickens, June 20, 2008
Oil was then around $135 a barrel. By late December it was below $40.
8. "I expect there will be some failures. I don't anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system." -- Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, Feb. 28, 2008
In September, Washington Mutual became the largest financial institution in U.S. history to fail. Citigroup (NYSE:C - News) needed an even bigger rescue in November.
9. "In today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to violate rules." -- Bernard Madoff, money manager, Oct. 20, 2007
About a year later, Madoff -- who once headed the Nasdaq Stock Market -- told investigators he had cost his investors $50 billion in an alleged Ponzi scheme.
10. A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, the title of a book by conservative commentator Shelby Steele, published on Dec. 4, 2007.
Mr. Steele, meet President-elect Barack Obama.
And Our Beauty Contest Winner Is: Oscar Braynon II. By Geniusofdespair
Miami Gardens resident, FL Rep. Oscar Braynon II, is our Best Looking Miami Dade Office Holder for 2009.He is pictured to the left with his wife Melissa Fung (she is no slouch in the beauty department either). There is also an Oscar Braynon, III. Oscar II has a B.S. degree from Florida State University in Political Science. I believe Oscar supports holding the Urban Development Boundary in Miami Dade County. You all believe that don't you?
He was an aide in Miami Dade County Commission District 1. Let's hope he didn't learn anything while there, always evil doings in the County. Our runner-up is:
There was a tie between the two Mayors, Carlos Alvarez and Manny Diaz. Congratulations to the three of you, but especially to Oscar Braynon, II - Eye on Miami's winner: The Best Looking Office Holder in Miami-Dade County 2009.Fresen, Roberson and Logan all tied for third.
Disclaimer: If our winner is indicted or does not live up to the high standards of the Eye on Miami blog, he will be replaced by the runner up, in this case with a tie, the highest office holder -- which would be Carlos Alvarez.
Green Century Equity Fund uses shareholder advocacy to pressure Lowe's on UDB ... by gimleteye
MIAMI -- The Green Century Equity Fund, an environmentally focused mutual fund, has been engaging Lowe’s Companies, Inc.*, a major home improvement retailer, over the company’s efforts to build a big-box store in critical wetlands territory bordering the Florida Everglades. (click read more for full press release)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact:
12/30/2008 Emily Stone, Green Century Capital Management
617-482-0800
Adam Rivera, Environment Florida
954-801-6909
Green Century Tells Lowe’s to Respect the Everglades
Mutual fund uses shareholder advocacy to pressure company on sprawl
MIAMI -- The Green Century Equity Fund, an environmentally focused mutual fund, has been engaging Lowe’s Companies, Inc.*, a major home improvement retailer, over the company’s efforts to build a big-box store in critical wetlands territory bordering the Florida Everglades.
Lowe’s has been attempting to build a store in Miami-Dade County that falls outside the Urban Development Boundary (UDB), a line drawn in the wetlands to protect the endangered Everglades from swiftly-encroaching sprawl. Development already extends up to the boundary itself in many areas of the County. The proposed Lowe’s store would straddle the boundary and include more than 10 acres of wetlands officially designated as off-limits to development.
Green Century is working to support concerns raised by the local community and in particular Environment Florida, an environmental NGO that has been activating its members to pressure Lowe’s not to build their store. “Lowe’s has been trying to build on these wetlands for years. The company’s proposal completely counters the efforts made by the Florida community to preserve the Everglades from harmful sprawl,” states Adam Rivera, Advocate for Environment Florida.
The Mayor of Miami-Dade County, along with sixteen local municipalities, the state Department of Community Affairs and over 100 local organizations, opposes the project. Beyond environmental concerns, there are significant financial implications for the local community. Should Lowe’s be granted the permit to develop beyond the UDB, the county will lose its state transportation funding.
The proposed store poses an environmental risk to the Everglades and financial risks to the company as well. Reports published over the past several years, authored by groups like the Christian Brothers Investment Service (CBIS) and Domini Social Investments LLC, delineate the various financial risks inherent in community opposition to big-box development.
“In the seven years that Lowe’s has spent attempting to build this store it has incurred numerous costs from litigation and other fees, and faces serious reputational risk on a broad scale,” states Emily Stone, Shareholder Advocate for Green Century. In April, TIME magazine ran a feature story highlighting the local controversy and potential environmental damage associated with Lowe’s efforts to build in this protected ecosystem. There have been several calls for statewide or national boycotts of the company.
Green Century has been working in coalition with CBIS to pressure Lowe’s on the issue. Green Century recently filed a shareholder resolution at the company asking for increased stakeholder engagement in the company’s store siting policies, particularly in relation to the proposed Everglades store, but also pushing the company to take a more sustainable approach as it plans stores in the future.
“Lowe’s needs to take a step back and recognize the serious risks its proposed store poses not only to the environment but to the company itself,” says Stone. “Green Century will continue to demand that Lowe’s fulfill its fiduciary responsibility and recognize that building this store as proposed is simply a lose-lose situation. We have investments to protect, as well as our environment.”
*As of September 30, 2008, Lowe’s Companies, Inc. comprised 0.66% of the Green Century Equity Fund. Portfolio composition will change due to ongoing management of the Funds. References to specific investments should not be construed as a recommendation of the securities by the Funds, their administrator, or their distributor.
***
Green Century Capital Management is an investment advisory firm focused on environmentally responsible investing. Founded by a partnership of non-profit environmental advocacy organizations in 1991, Green Century’s mission is to provide people who care about a clean, healthy planet the opportunity to use the clout of their investment dollars to encourage environmentally responsible corporate behavior. Green Century believes that shareholder advocacy is a critical component of responsible investing and actively advocates for greater corporate environmental accountability.
You should consider the Funds’ investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing. For a prospectus that contains this and other information about the Funds, call 1-800-93-GREEN, visit www.greencentury.com or email info@greencentury.com. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing.
Distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC 11/08
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Contact:
12/30/2008 Emily Stone, Green Century Capital Management
617-482-0800
Adam Rivera, Environment Florida
954-801-6909
Green Century Tells Lowe’s to Respect the Everglades
Mutual fund uses shareholder advocacy to pressure company on sprawl
MIAMI -- The Green Century Equity Fund, an environmentally focused mutual fund, has been engaging Lowe’s Companies, Inc.*, a major home improvement retailer, over the company’s efforts to build a big-box store in critical wetlands territory bordering the Florida Everglades.
Lowe’s has been attempting to build a store in Miami-Dade County that falls outside the Urban Development Boundary (UDB), a line drawn in the wetlands to protect the endangered Everglades from swiftly-encroaching sprawl. Development already extends up to the boundary itself in many areas of the County. The proposed Lowe’s store would straddle the boundary and include more than 10 acres of wetlands officially designated as off-limits to development.
Green Century is working to support concerns raised by the local community and in particular Environment Florida, an environmental NGO that has been activating its members to pressure Lowe’s not to build their store. “Lowe’s has been trying to build on these wetlands for years. The company’s proposal completely counters the efforts made by the Florida community to preserve the Everglades from harmful sprawl,” states Adam Rivera, Advocate for Environment Florida.
The Mayor of Miami-Dade County, along with sixteen local municipalities, the state Department of Community Affairs and over 100 local organizations, opposes the project. Beyond environmental concerns, there are significant financial implications for the local community. Should Lowe’s be granted the permit to develop beyond the UDB, the county will lose its state transportation funding.
The proposed store poses an environmental risk to the Everglades and financial risks to the company as well. Reports published over the past several years, authored by groups like the Christian Brothers Investment Service (CBIS) and Domini Social Investments LLC, delineate the various financial risks inherent in community opposition to big-box development.
“In the seven years that Lowe’s has spent attempting to build this store it has incurred numerous costs from litigation and other fees, and faces serious reputational risk on a broad scale,” states Emily Stone, Shareholder Advocate for Green Century. In April, TIME magazine ran a feature story highlighting the local controversy and potential environmental damage associated with Lowe’s efforts to build in this protected ecosystem. There have been several calls for statewide or national boycotts of the company.
Green Century has been working in coalition with CBIS to pressure Lowe’s on the issue. Green Century recently filed a shareholder resolution at the company asking for increased stakeholder engagement in the company’s store siting policies, particularly in relation to the proposed Everglades store, but also pushing the company to take a more sustainable approach as it plans stores in the future.
“Lowe’s needs to take a step back and recognize the serious risks its proposed store poses not only to the environment but to the company itself,” says Stone. “Green Century will continue to demand that Lowe’s fulfill its fiduciary responsibility and recognize that building this store as proposed is simply a lose-lose situation. We have investments to protect, as well as our environment.”
*As of September 30, 2008, Lowe’s Companies, Inc. comprised 0.66% of the Green Century Equity Fund. Portfolio composition will change due to ongoing management of the Funds. References to specific investments should not be construed as a recommendation of the securities by the Funds, their administrator, or their distributor.
***
Green Century Capital Management is an investment advisory firm focused on environmentally responsible investing. Founded by a partnership of non-profit environmental advocacy organizations in 1991, Green Century’s mission is to provide people who care about a clean, healthy planet the opportunity to use the clout of their investment dollars to encourage environmentally responsible corporate behavior. Green Century believes that shareholder advocacy is a critical component of responsible investing and actively advocates for greater corporate environmental accountability.
You should consider the Funds’ investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing. For a prospectus that contains this and other information about the Funds, call 1-800-93-GREEN, visit www.greencentury.com or email info@greencentury.com. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing.
Distributed by UMB Distribution Services, LLC 11/08
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Miami condo death spiral ... by gimleteye
Unpaid maintenance fees. Twenty years or so, ago, I lived in New York City. I was considering buying a condo, learning about fees, when the stock market crashed. 1987. I won't forget it, or condos, because I wondered immediately what happens if my fees rise above my ability to pay because other condo members can't afford to pay theirs? Oh, I was told, that will never happen. Well, we never bought the Manhattan condo.Crazy me. Soon after Black Monday, stock markets bounced back, eventually into a bull run that propelled New York City real estate into the ether. The new high end norm in Manhattan, until recently, $3000 per square foot. And, by the way, the Citigroup stock I bought in 1987 is worth today about what I paid for it. (Please click, 'read more'.)
Those chickens have come home to roost. Big time. Here is the story from the Sunday edition of the Miami Herald certain to raise the hackles of condo developers: "Mediators foresee gloom, doom in condo industry". One of the more troubling statements in the interview with the Florida Condominium Ombudsman: "it is up to the government to try to help us." I don't understand this point: if you didn't understand the risk, you shouldn't have made the investment. Why should government try to help "us"?
Maybe I'm missing something: if government rewards busted private investments then whatever is paid to investors who failed should be tripled as a reward to ordinary citizens who didn't. Or quadrupled. But maybe I'm just being crazy, again.
Here's an excerpt:
A: I know of several condominiums that are on the brink of people just walking out. They can't afford to maintain their units anymore. Their slice of the pie has become so big that they can't afford it. They are just packing up and leaving their largest investment because it doesn't pay for them to stay. You are going to be hearing about this very soon. This is going to be a real problem.
Q: So unit owners who've been in their condos for many years, who have equity in their condos and even may have paid off their mortgages, are still having to move because they can't afford maintenance fees?
A: Yes, and some condos can't take in even enough money to pay their water bills. They're shutting off the water. They're shutting off the electricity. They can't come up with the money because there are so many delinquencies. The few who are left can't come up with enough money to pay all the bills for everybody. It's sad.
Q: How do these problems affect sales in the buildings? I've heard it described as a ``death spiral.''
A: Sales are very poor because people don't have the money to buy, No. 1. And, they don't want to take over places with debt problems. Sales are very bad. Everything is very bad. Let's face it.
Posted on Sun, Jan. 04, 2009
Mediators foresee gloom, doom in condo industry
BY MONICA HATCHER
Working for the state's Office of the Condominium Ombudsman is dirty, sometimes even ''disgusting,'' work, say Bill and Susan Raphan, who supervise the Fort Lauderdale satellite office. The tempers, the misunderstandings, the complaining -- the slapping, the threats and, at least once, the brandishing of a firearm.
''You would not believe some of the things we see,'' said Susan Raphan, who with her husband began working, first as volunteers, for the office soon after the Florida Legislature created it in 2004.
Despite the job's tribulations, the Raphans said they know that more than 1.5 million condo owners in Florida depend on them as a resource for understanding the rights and responsibilities that come with condo living. And they find satisfaction in helping people. Of the 16,000 phone calls the office got last year, Bill Raphan said roughly 90 percent were from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties and handled by Fort Lauderdale's staff of seven.
Their primary duties include acting as mediator between boards and angry owners, holding classes and seminars about condo law, and monitoring elections. But as the South Florida real estate market enters another year of soaring foreclosures and sinking home values, the Raphans expect a host of new problems they do not have the power to remedy -- condo associations entering bankruptcy, buildings closing and unit owners walking away from their long-held investments because they can't afford to carry the cost of empty units.
The reason: unpaid maintenance fees.
''It's a major problem,'' Bill Raphan said.
The Miami Herald sat down with Bill Raphan to discuss the issues facing condo dwellers.
Q: What are the biggest issues facing condo owners right now?
A: The condominium market, the problems in foreclosures, obviously, liens and delinquencies are a big problem right now. That's the biggest problem at this point, and it's up to the government to try to help us. There's not a lot our office can do. This is a national problem that is happening everywhere, but we have so many condominiums here. It's just more acute in this area.
Q: What kind of complaints have you been fielding?
A: People are complaining about foreclosures and their maintenance fees. I always explain it to them this way: Your condominium has to run like a business, and the business has to collect enough income to run the business, in this case, the association or the condominium itself. In order to maintain the property, you have to take in X amount of money. [The total amount needed] is like a big pie, and each person has a slice of that pie that they have to pay. So, for every person in your condo [who] is not paying, it means the slice of your pie gets bigger. In other words, if you're paying $100 a month and some people aren't paying, you might have to pay $110 or $120. You might have to pay $200, and there are places with 50 percent or more delinquencies. That means if you are paying $100 a month, you're going to pay $200 to keep that place going. People can't afford that nowadays. People are losing their jobs.
Q: What are condos doing to deal with the problem of budget shortages?
A: Some condominiums have actually eliminated their maintenance people, and they are cleaning up and doing things themselves. They've eliminated their landscapers and are cutting lawns. They've cut down as best they can on things they buy. The situation is very difficult. The people who are getting assessed that extra money are angry. They want something done, but there is not a lot that can be done.
Q: What about accusations that lenders are stalling foreclosures to avoid paying maintenance and association fees? Is there any truth to that
A: [Lenders] are not going to say they are stalling, but what condo owners are complaining about is a Florida statute that gives lenders a cap that says they don't have to pay more than six months of assessments or 1 percent of the value of the unit [before they foreclose on it. Then they must pay full association fees like other unit owners.] That's one of the things [Florida legislators] may be looking to change this year.
Q: Do you think there is a solution to getting lenders to pony up their share of maintenance fees?
A: It has to be legislative on any level, maybe even up to the federal government, who knows? It's a major thing. This is something that needs to be looked at on even a national level.
Q: What are the consequences of association-fee problems going unaddressed?
A: I know of several condominiums that are on the brink of people just walking out. They can't afford to maintain their units anymore. Their slice of the pie has become so big that they can't afford it. They are just packing up and leaving their largest investment because it doesn't pay for them to stay. You are going to be hearing about this very soon. This is going to be a real problem.
Q: So unit owners who've been in their condos for many years, who have equity in their condos and even may have paid off their mortgages, are still having to move because they can't afford maintenance fees?
A: Yes, and some condos can't take in even enough money to pay their water bills. They're shutting off the water. They're shutting off the electricity. They can't come up with the money because there are so many delinquencies. The few who are left can't come up with enough money to pay all the bills for everybody. It's sad.
Q: How do these problems affect sales in the buildings? I've heard it described as a ``death spiral.''
A: Sales are very poor because people don't have the money to buy, No. 1. And, they don't want to take over places with debt problems. Sales are very bad. Everything is very bad. Let's face it.
© 2009 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
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The Worst Thing I Have Ever Seen Happen in Florida. By Geniusofdespair
Yes, this woman is shouting at Jews: "Go back to the oven!" and "You need a big oven!" during a pro Hamas March in Ft. Lauderdale on December 30th. People were carrying signs saying: "Nuke Israel." Pretty ugly. I saw the video on Babalu's Blog. 2 Recent Condo Sales in Miami Dade Signal a Need for a State Income Tax. By Geniusofdespair
There was a condo sale at 2901 S. Bayshore Drive in Coconut Grove. For $265,000. I looked up the record and the condo had been bought previously in 2004 for $213,000. Although not a killing, the seller did manage to squeeze out $52,000 in 4 years. This property is valued at $293,130 by the Property Appraiser and the property taxes were $6,635 prior to the sale.
On another property at 801 Brickell Key: (23rd floor 2/2), the sale price was $460,000. That seller paid $487,000 in 2004 (a year earlier '03, it sold for $451,000). That is $27,000 the seller lost in 4 years of ownership. The problem is, the Property Appraiser is showing this condo with a value of $538,400 for tax purposes. This has to be adjusted down significantly from the previous owner’s $12,000 in taxes.
Let’s hope both sellers didn’t do a lot of renovation on the units because then they would be big losers. Also I hope the County and the State are going to significantly tighten their belt. I don’t see how we can avoid a State income tax when all these downward property tax adjustments kick-in to the actual value of the properties, instead of the high value the Property Appraiser has guesstimated. The sale of these two properties took $106,430 off the taxable base.
From today's Miami Herald:
Florida legislators will start the new year in familiar fashion: by cutting aid to schools and other programs, borrowing money, skimming cash surpluses and hiking traffic and court fees to patch a $2.3 billion hole in a leaky state budget.
The special session that begins Monday will bring the third major round of cuts in 10 months and is the result of a prolonged nosedive in tax revenues caused by the recession-wracked real estate and credit markets.
Barred from deficit spending by the state Constitution and firmly opposed to new taxes, the state's Republican leaders are in a budgetary corner, forced to further constrict spending.
''Times are bad for Floridians,'' said Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami. ``We're going to have to make decisions here that no one will really like.''
On another property at 801 Brickell Key: (23rd floor 2/2), the sale price was $460,000. That seller paid $487,000 in 2004 (a year earlier '03, it sold for $451,000). That is $27,000 the seller lost in 4 years of ownership. The problem is, the Property Appraiser is showing this condo with a value of $538,400 for tax purposes. This has to be adjusted down significantly from the previous owner’s $12,000 in taxes.
Let’s hope both sellers didn’t do a lot of renovation on the units because then they would be big losers. Also I hope the County and the State are going to significantly tighten their belt. I don’t see how we can avoid a State income tax when all these downward property tax adjustments kick-in to the actual value of the properties, instead of the high value the Property Appraiser has guesstimated. The sale of these two properties took $106,430 off the taxable base.
From today's Miami Herald:
Florida legislators will start the new year in familiar fashion: by cutting aid to schools and other programs, borrowing money, skimming cash surpluses and hiking traffic and court fees to patch a $2.3 billion hole in a leaky state budget.
The special session that begins Monday will bring the third major round of cuts in 10 months and is the result of a prolonged nosedive in tax revenues caused by the recession-wracked real estate and credit markets.
Barred from deficit spending by the state Constitution and firmly opposed to new taxes, the state's Republican leaders are in a budgetary corner, forced to further constrict spending.
''Times are bad for Floridians,'' said Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami. ``We're going to have to make decisions here that no one will really like.''
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Why Does the Miami Herald Kiss the Ass of Florida Power and Light? By Geniusofdespair
Caught up in the hoopla of the exciting beauty contest being conducted on this blog, I almost missed an important story. And, it appears the Miami Herald columnist who wrote PSC: Expand ‘Clean Energy’ missed a big part of it too!
Now readers, you must all learn: The online version of an article is NOT the same as the paper version. I don’t know why. Anyway, the paper version was a longer article and, as usual the OTHER SIDE of this important issue is given inadequate coverage:
Most environmentalists have been adamantly opposed to expanding the definition to include nuclear power.
That’s it Mister Reporter? That is all you could muster in both the online and paper version of the article? Why are they opposed? What did they say? Which environmentalists? Are we talking about the "environmental" lawyers at Greenberg Trauig? "Environmentalists" is a pretty broad term.
We readers all know Florida Power and Light are trying desperately to expand the definition of CLEAN ENERGY and do away with the current words of RENEWABLE ENERGY so that nuclear and clean coal (oxymoron) can be somehow included in Crist’s statement. All of this word wrangling is because Governor Crist has set a goal, that 20% of all electrical power should come from “renewable energy.” So before your eyes that statement is going to change, it will be massaged by FP&L lobbyists/brass to include UNRENWABLE energy and the reporter is not quoting any environmentalists with their side of the story of why this betrayal of the public trust should not happen. The Herald did quote FPL spokesman Mayco Villafana to let him/her get their side very clear (without a rebuttal of course).
By the way, in another article I saw, pay attention all you high school graduates (yes high school): FPL provides paid training of 18 months, plus ongoing paid training to become a Nuclear Power Plant Operator. You can make about $60,000 to $85,000 a year. Have no fear, according to the article, reactor operators are projected to grow by 11% through 2016, providing 400 new jobs!
Thanks, in part, to Miami Herald's one sided reporting, I expect the growth will be true.
Let's see what the Palm Beach Post did with the story:
State's green-energy future down to one choice: Renewable or clean
By CHRISTINE STAPLETON - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer - December 22, 2008
Renewable energy regulations
What is a Renewable Portfolio Standard?
These are regulations that require Florida's power companies to
generate a set amount of retail energy from renewable energy sources
by a specific date.
What is renewable energy?
According to Florida law, it is a fuel from biomass, geothermal, solar
or wind energy and power from ocean tides and currents, hydroelectric
and agricultural products.
Why is Florida creating a Renewable Portfolio Standard now?
In 2007, Gov. Charlie Crist signed an executive order directing the
Public Service Commission to develop a Renewable Portfolio Standard by
2009. The standard will set a deadline for utilities to produce at
least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable resources, with
strong emphasis on solar and wind.
The future of green energy in Florida and the fate of your electric
bill rest in the state's choice between two words: renewable or clean.
Five months of public hearings ended this month, and Florida's utility
regulators now must decide whether the state should have "renewable"
energy rules or "clean" energy rules. The seemingly insignificant
choice of an adjective is actually a billion-dollar decision that will
put nuclear power in its place in Florida's energy future.
Because nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gases, Florida Power &
Light - the state's largest utility and operator of nuclear plants in
St. Lucie County and Turkey Point near Florida City - says nuclear is
green. The governor agrees. FPL has proposed changing the name and
eligible fuel sources allowed in the state's green energy rules from
"renewable" to "clean."
"To be clear, we have advocated the inclusion of new nuclear power as
part of a Clean Energy Portfolio Standard, and have not argued that
nuclear power is a renewable source of energy," FPL spokesman Mayco
Villafana wrote in an e-mail response to questions from The Palm Beach
Post.
The controversial rules, called a Renewable Portfolio Standard, will
require power companies to meet deadlines for generating a set amount
of energy from renewable or clean energy sources. Proposals range from
20 percent of retail sales from renewable by 2020, to 2030 or 2041.
Changing from renewable to clean would allow FPL to count energy from
its new nuclear power plants toward its obligation to generate green
energy. Today, 19 percent of the power FPL generates in Florida comes
from nuclear power. None comes from green sources, such as solar,
wind, biofuels or geothermal.
However, a commission created to advise the legislature and a
consultant for the regulators say Florida needs a Renewable Portfolio
Standard and that nuclear power is not renewable.
"We did not think, as a body, that nuclear was a true renewable in a
traditional sense, something that continually replenishes itself,"
said Tommy Boroughs, a lawyer and chair of the Florida Energy
Commission. In its 2007 report to the legislature, the commission
specifically excluded nuclear in its definition of renewable sources
of energy.
Why does it matter? Because if lawmakers decide that nuclear power is
not clean or renewable, FPL will have to purchase or build facilities
to generate green energy to comply with the looming edict. That would
mean higher electric bills.
"Excluding new nuclear power will require the addition of other clean
energy projects, such as wind and solar facilities, which will result
in higher bills for customers," Villafana wrote.
The Public Service Commission has until Feb. 1 to send its
recommendations to the legislature.
That will not end the debate. All players - environmentalists,
renewable power developers and utilities - vow to lobby lawmakers on
the nuclear issue.
"The fight really begins in the legislature," said Michael Dobson,
president and CEO of the Florida Renewable Energy Producers
Association. "FPL has relationships and our members have relationships
there. The legislature is going to be a donnybrook."
Incoming Senate President Jeff Atwater, a member of the Governor's
Action Team on Energy and Climate Change, declined to take a position
last week. Gov. Charlie Crist toured a nuclear power plant in France
last summer with FPL President Armando Olivera.
Crist turned down a hefty campaign contribution from FPL in 2006
because of the company's support for his opponent in the GOP primary.
But the governor relied heavily on FPL's financial support to pass a
property tax cut amendment this year.
Last week, he said he supports including nuclear in either a clean or
renewable energy plan.
"We have to defer to the scientists on that point," Crist said. "But
there are great indications about renewability."
At his first climate change conference in 2007, Crist ordered utility
regulators to set a standard for utilities to achieve 20 percent of
electricity sales from renewable fuels by 2020.
Twenty-six other states have created similar renewable energy regulations.
Only Ohio allows some nuclear power to be counted toward renewable energy goals.
For now, everyone is waiting until Dec. 29, when the PSC delivers its
final report to the commission.
"At the end of the day we all know, frankly, that the legislature
doesn't have to accept any of the recommendations," Dobson said. "It's
going to be very political."
Cespedes Pharmed: Some History to Miami's tangled ethics and pervasive corruption ... by gimleteye
In Miami, Florida Jorge and Carlos de Cespedes are going to prison for using their company Pharmed, once one of the largest Hispanic businesses in America, to bilk millions from the Kendall Regional Medical Center. The Miami Herald reports that more than 180 letters of support from community leaders, friends and relatives have sought to take the sting from the sentence. A hearing is scheduled Monday for "tax evasion and fraud". There is more to the story.
Back in 1998-- it was the year Jeb Bush became governor of Florida-- the Herald notes that Carlos de Cespedes was one of "25 community leaders who signed a public letter decrying corruption in South Florida." The connection between de Cespedes and Jeb Bush is not incidental. (Both de Cespedes were big Republican campaign donors.)
The Bush "laissez faire" doctrine is in tatters today; a direct result of the misplaced faith that business could do better than government in protecting free markets. The undergirding politics that formed the foundation for Florida's future were detailed by Bush in his second inaugural speech in January 2003: "“There will be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; as silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill." His audience did not mistaken his meaning: the role that government could not adequately fill was regulation.
In its outstanding 2008 eight month investigation, "Borrowers Betrayed", The Miami Herald revealed in painful detail the lack of regulatory supervision of mortgage brokers by the state of Florida in the housing boom that propelled Bush's governorship. Herald editors focused the series on poor homeowners exploited by greedy and criminal loan originators. The newspaper pointedly did not trace that corruption up the food chain to those responsible for supervision and law enforcement and, especially, the anti-regulatory glee that still prevails in the state legislature. Bush gave them their cue cards, printed by powerful campaign contributors like the de Cespedes brothers.
All were banking on a permanent Republican majority in Congress, the White House, and feeder states like Florida.
It is a critically important time-- perhaps more than at any time in modern American history. In the first months of the Obama administration, one trillion dollars of fiscal stimulus will pour from taxpayer obligations to the states. This tsunami will trigger tens of thousands of purchase orders, contracts, and political IOU's; redistributing the wealth of the nation to stave off another Depression.
There is a chance we will get this right and all will be well in a couple of years. But there is equally a chance we will get this wrong and that a whirlwind of corruption will use up all our ammunition.
The history of political malfeasance in places like Miami rarely rises to volumes of criminal prosecutions; but the bits and pieces should be scrutinized for what it says about the capacity of wealthy, well-heeled lawyers, lobbyists, and speculators to game the system by making the de facto standard of political behavior to reside within a centimeter of the edge of the law.
The point to consider: how misdirection by state leaders like Jeb Bush in furtherance of a failed political ideology and unfounded confidence in the paternalistic capacity of industry to self-regulate blurred the edge, made it larger and instead of bright lines-- lines like the Urban Development Boundary-- allowed corruption to flourish in cities like Miami; among campaign contributors and a powerful economic elite that are in many respects still intact and vibrant, if idling: holding out until the help arrives to bail them out before the banks put the hammer down on their capital calls.
"We believe there is much we can do as a community to clean up our act, said Hispanic business leaders including the de Cespedes in June 1998 who were expressing outrage over rampant corruption in Miami-Dade County. "We have had it!" begins their letter sent to business leaders by Mesa Rodonda, warranting the Herald report. "Once regarded as the crime capital of America, we are now perceived as its corruption capital." ("Hispanic business leaders call summit to fight corruption", Miami Herald, June 2, 1998)
A week later the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office announced: "Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle today announces the arrest of Antonio J. Reyes, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Thermoplastic & Signs, Inc., in connection with a joint investigation by the State Attorney's Office and the Miami-Dade Police Department Public Corruption Unit. ... (investigators) uncovered numerous circumstances wherein Reyes and his company submitted bills, under the County's paving contract, with Church & Tower, for roadway striping work that was never done. Reyes' company was hired as a sub-contractor under the County contract to do this work and submitted invoices for payment to the Contractor, and ultimately the County. These instances of over billing resulted in an overpayment by the County in excess of $1,000,000." (June 10, 1998)
Church and Tower was a division of the corporate interests of the family of the late Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban American National Foundation. One of the signers of the Mesa Rodunda letter was Mas Canosa's son, Jorge Mas Santos. Another signer was Sergio Pino, then listed as president of Century Plumbing.
Slightly more than a year later, The Miami Herald would amplify on Pino's business interests:
"Miami International Airport, rated among America's worst for passengers, is being used by Miami-Dade politicians as a billion-dollar piggy bank to enrich their friends and campaign contributors. They manipulate rules so favored firms get airport deals. ... Key findings: Virtually all major deals at MIA go to companies that give political contributions and employ lobbyists who are key fund-raisers and advisors for county politicians. ("The airport mess: Miami's tourism industry is threatened by politicians", Miami Herald, October 17, 1999)
The Herald continues, "If passengers aren't winning at MIA, who is? Often, it's a small group of political insiders who reap millions in airport spoils without ever showing up for work, investing significant cash or bringing industry experience to the table. Developer Sergio Pino is one of the main fund-raisers for Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and has contributed to at least 11 of the 13 commissioners. Last year, at Penelas' request, he hosted a $238,000 fund-raiser for Commissioner Miriam Alonso."
"In 1998, Miami-Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso penned an editorial bemoaning the plague of corruption scandals then afflicting the county, and lashing out at "the venality of certain corrupt officials." On Thursday, some eight years later, Alonso's own venality was finally laid bare: She pleaded guilty to 20 felonies for looting campaign accounts in 1998 and 1999 and trying to cover up the crimes. ("Alonso pleads guilty, says she is sorry", Miami Herald, Oct. 27, 2006)
In "Airport Mess", the Herald noted, "One of South Florida's biggest builders, Pino owns a waterfront home and a 54-foot yacht and has a net worth of at least $19 million. Yet in 1995, he was cut into the airport's duty-free shops as a "disadvantaged businessman'' to meet airport rules requiring minority partners. With his business interests now pulling in more than $32 million a year, Pino no longer qualifies as a minority entrepreneur, but he has kept his place in the duty-free deal: The county decided he could stay in under a grandfather clause. Pino readily acknowledges his political ties, but said his team won because it offered the best return. His inclusion as a disadvantaged businessman? ``I didn't make the rules,'' he said. ``I played by the law. . . . To me, it was a business opportunity.''
Back in 1998, Pino's key business colleagues were in the midst of a pitched battle to close on the no-bid 99 year lease they had secured for the former Homestead Air Force Base: Greenberg Traurig attorney Miguel De Grandy was the principal lawyer representing the deal at the county. Ramon Rasco, chairman of US Century bank that Pino founded in 2002, was a principal organizer of the HABDI fiasco. Caesar Alvarez, managing partner of Greenberg Traurig-- was a signatory of the Mesa Roduna letter. Today, Alvarez is also chairman of the charitable John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Another signatory of the Mesa Rodunda letter, US Century board member Jose Cancela, a lobbyist working for Pino and other US Century board members including Rodney Barreto, Armando Guerra and Augustin Herran, to monetize speculative investments purchased at the height of the housing bubble outside Miami-Dade's Urban Development Boundary.
In 1998, other cases of political corruption were brewing in Miami: former Miami City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez who did time in the Big House. There was also Al Gutman, who had been a powerful state senator, relected despite swirling controversies and allegations that did fully materialize until 1999 when he was indicted, along with his wife and 23 others, on charges of Medicaid fraud and conspiracy. Gutman pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy charges that he helped set up home health care companies that never did any legitimate business, got names of purported patients from voter lists, and received over $800,000 in Medicare payments. He resigned from the Florida Senate as part of the plea bargain and was sentenced in 2000 to five years in prison.
Pino, in 2006, turned up in a federal probe of Miami Dade County Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz. The investigation centered on a fishing trip that Diaz took to Cancun aboard Pino's private jet. Carlos de Cespedes was the other passenger on the trip. A few months after the trip, Diaz and the rest of the commission voted for a Pino development project called Grand Bay. The Herald political blog noted, "Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose ''Pepe'' Diaz received $20,000 in 2004 from what federal prosecutors describe as a shell company used to conceal fraudulent proceeds from a hospital kickback scheme -- a payment the commissioner says was a legitimate bonus. The company, Kaufman Medical Products, was cited in a document filed in federal court Tuesday about healthcare fraud charges against Carlos and Jorge de Céspedes, owners of the bankrupt Doral medical-supply firm Pharmed. Diaz listed on his 2004 public disclosure form that he had received $19,795 from Kaufman. Diaz said Wednesday the money was a bonus for work performed for the de Céspedes brothers' venture capital firm, Astri Group." ('Naked Politics', Miami Herald, July 24, 2008)
"In a separate matter, the Miami Daily Business Review reported last week that it had obtained corporate bank records showing that Pino's companies may have reimbursed $29.500 to 59 contributors to Governor Jeb Bush's 2002 re-election campaign. It is a violation of Florida election law for a person to make a donation in another person's name." ('Crist ally cuts ties amid grand jury investigation', St. Pete Times, July 27, 2006) Pino was a Bush-Cheney "Ranger" for having raised at least $200,000 for the president's 2004 re-election campaign and, according to the St. Pete Times, "is a major donor to Gov. Bush's non-profit educational foundation."
The historical context is important to understanding how Cespedes believed he could "hide" among business leaders shocked, about the climate of corruption in 1998.
"All we are looking to do is find a balance between residential needs and environmental needs," Commissioner Pepe Diaz told Time Magazine in reference to moving the Urban Development Boundary. ('Lowe's eyes the Everglades', Time Magazine, April 28, 2008) After all, if reasonable people can't agree on how to protect wetlands, why should anyone care about fleecing the nation's financial institutions and getting a Grade A report card for doing it?
Think about what happened in Florida the decade AFTER Cespedes put his name to the letter against corruption in Miami. Between 1999 and 2003 in Florida, the US Army Corps of Engineers approved more than 12,000 wetlands permits and rejected one. During the same period, 84,000 acres of wetlands vanished. ("They won't say no", St. Pete Times, May 22, 2005)
1998 was a key year in the building and housing asset bubble: the politics of laissez faire "libertarianism" in service of the free market were angling to meet up with the lowest interest rates in US history (at that time); the response to the crashing dot.com bubble and the 9/11 event.
The business leaders who put their name to a letter in 1998 against corruption were about to be propelled into the boom in housing and construction that turned many single digit millionaires into centi-millionaires. Pull the threads from platted subdivisions, to infrastructure like Miami International Airport or Miami road paving contracts and the fabric of the US economy unravels straight up to the executive suites of Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Indymac, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for example.
Few in public office cared while so much money was flowing outside and inside the edges of the law and into political campaigns. Balance? In key respects, this behavior was and is still reinforced by a permanent incumbency and a fading media. It is possible, then, that the fiscal stimulus plan being discussed by the incoming Obama administration will simply pave over -- again-- the horrendous ethics that materialize as obligations by American taxpayers to white collar bankers or thieves.
Not a single red cent should be appropriated by Congress for a fiscal stimulus until audit controls, checks, and balances are in place to flush fraud and systematic corruption from government, especially at the local level. New federal laws will be needed to put teeth to public corruption and keep democracy safe.
Back in 1998-- it was the year Jeb Bush became governor of Florida-- the Herald notes that Carlos de Cespedes was one of "25 community leaders who signed a public letter decrying corruption in South Florida." The connection between de Cespedes and Jeb Bush is not incidental. (Both de Cespedes were big Republican campaign donors.)
The Bush "laissez faire" doctrine is in tatters today; a direct result of the misplaced faith that business could do better than government in protecting free markets. The undergirding politics that formed the foundation for Florida's future were detailed by Bush in his second inaugural speech in January 2003: "“There will be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; as silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill." His audience did not mistaken his meaning: the role that government could not adequately fill was regulation.
In its outstanding 2008 eight month investigation, "Borrowers Betrayed", The Miami Herald revealed in painful detail the lack of regulatory supervision of mortgage brokers by the state of Florida in the housing boom that propelled Bush's governorship. Herald editors focused the series on poor homeowners exploited by greedy and criminal loan originators. The newspaper pointedly did not trace that corruption up the food chain to those responsible for supervision and law enforcement and, especially, the anti-regulatory glee that still prevails in the state legislature. Bush gave them their cue cards, printed by powerful campaign contributors like the de Cespedes brothers.
All were banking on a permanent Republican majority in Congress, the White House, and feeder states like Florida.
It is a critically important time-- perhaps more than at any time in modern American history. In the first months of the Obama administration, one trillion dollars of fiscal stimulus will pour from taxpayer obligations to the states. This tsunami will trigger tens of thousands of purchase orders, contracts, and political IOU's; redistributing the wealth of the nation to stave off another Depression.
There is a chance we will get this right and all will be well in a couple of years. But there is equally a chance we will get this wrong and that a whirlwind of corruption will use up all our ammunition.
The history of political malfeasance in places like Miami rarely rises to volumes of criminal prosecutions; but the bits and pieces should be scrutinized for what it says about the capacity of wealthy, well-heeled lawyers, lobbyists, and speculators to game the system by making the de facto standard of political behavior to reside within a centimeter of the edge of the law.
The point to consider: how misdirection by state leaders like Jeb Bush in furtherance of a failed political ideology and unfounded confidence in the paternalistic capacity of industry to self-regulate blurred the edge, made it larger and instead of bright lines-- lines like the Urban Development Boundary-- allowed corruption to flourish in cities like Miami; among campaign contributors and a powerful economic elite that are in many respects still intact and vibrant, if idling: holding out until the help arrives to bail them out before the banks put the hammer down on their capital calls.
"We believe there is much we can do as a community to clean up our act, said Hispanic business leaders including the de Cespedes in June 1998 who were expressing outrage over rampant corruption in Miami-Dade County. "We have had it!" begins their letter sent to business leaders by Mesa Rodonda, warranting the Herald report. "Once regarded as the crime capital of America, we are now perceived as its corruption capital." ("Hispanic business leaders call summit to fight corruption", Miami Herald, June 2, 1998)
A week later the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office announced: "Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle today announces the arrest of Antonio J. Reyes, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Thermoplastic & Signs, Inc., in connection with a joint investigation by the State Attorney's Office and the Miami-Dade Police Department Public Corruption Unit. ... (investigators) uncovered numerous circumstances wherein Reyes and his company submitted bills, under the County's paving contract, with Church & Tower, for roadway striping work that was never done. Reyes' company was hired as a sub-contractor under the County contract to do this work and submitted invoices for payment to the Contractor, and ultimately the County. These instances of over billing resulted in an overpayment by the County in excess of $1,000,000." (June 10, 1998)
Church and Tower was a division of the corporate interests of the family of the late Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban American National Foundation. One of the signers of the Mesa Rodunda letter was Mas Canosa's son, Jorge Mas Santos. Another signer was Sergio Pino, then listed as president of Century Plumbing.
Slightly more than a year later, The Miami Herald would amplify on Pino's business interests:
"Miami International Airport, rated among America's worst for passengers, is being used by Miami-Dade politicians as a billion-dollar piggy bank to enrich their friends and campaign contributors. They manipulate rules so favored firms get airport deals. ... Key findings: Virtually all major deals at MIA go to companies that give political contributions and employ lobbyists who are key fund-raisers and advisors for county politicians. ("The airport mess: Miami's tourism industry is threatened by politicians", Miami Herald, October 17, 1999)
The Herald continues, "If passengers aren't winning at MIA, who is? Often, it's a small group of political insiders who reap millions in airport spoils without ever showing up for work, investing significant cash or bringing industry experience to the table. Developer Sergio Pino is one of the main fund-raisers for Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and has contributed to at least 11 of the 13 commissioners. Last year, at Penelas' request, he hosted a $238,000 fund-raiser for Commissioner Miriam Alonso."
"In 1998, Miami-Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso penned an editorial bemoaning the plague of corruption scandals then afflicting the county, and lashing out at "the venality of certain corrupt officials." On Thursday, some eight years later, Alonso's own venality was finally laid bare: She pleaded guilty to 20 felonies for looting campaign accounts in 1998 and 1999 and trying to cover up the crimes. ("Alonso pleads guilty, says she is sorry", Miami Herald, Oct. 27, 2006)
In "Airport Mess", the Herald noted, "One of South Florida's biggest builders, Pino owns a waterfront home and a 54-foot yacht and has a net worth of at least $19 million. Yet in 1995, he was cut into the airport's duty-free shops as a "disadvantaged businessman'' to meet airport rules requiring minority partners. With his business interests now pulling in more than $32 million a year, Pino no longer qualifies as a minority entrepreneur, but he has kept his place in the duty-free deal: The county decided he could stay in under a grandfather clause. Pino readily acknowledges his political ties, but said his team won because it offered the best return. His inclusion as a disadvantaged businessman? ``I didn't make the rules,'' he said. ``I played by the law. . . . To me, it was a business opportunity.''
Back in 1998, Pino's key business colleagues were in the midst of a pitched battle to close on the no-bid 99 year lease they had secured for the former Homestead Air Force Base: Greenberg Traurig attorney Miguel De Grandy was the principal lawyer representing the deal at the county. Ramon Rasco, chairman of US Century bank that Pino founded in 2002, was a principal organizer of the HABDI fiasco. Caesar Alvarez, managing partner of Greenberg Traurig-- was a signatory of the Mesa Roduna letter. Today, Alvarez is also chairman of the charitable John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Another signatory of the Mesa Rodunda letter, US Century board member Jose Cancela, a lobbyist working for Pino and other US Century board members including Rodney Barreto, Armando Guerra and Augustin Herran, to monetize speculative investments purchased at the height of the housing bubble outside Miami-Dade's Urban Development Boundary.
In 1998, other cases of political corruption were brewing in Miami: former Miami City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez who did time in the Big House. There was also Al Gutman, who had been a powerful state senator, relected despite swirling controversies and allegations that did fully materialize until 1999 when he was indicted, along with his wife and 23 others, on charges of Medicaid fraud and conspiracy. Gutman pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy charges that he helped set up home health care companies that never did any legitimate business, got names of purported patients from voter lists, and received over $800,000 in Medicare payments. He resigned from the Florida Senate as part of the plea bargain and was sentenced in 2000 to five years in prison.
Pino, in 2006, turned up in a federal probe of Miami Dade County Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz. The investigation centered on a fishing trip that Diaz took to Cancun aboard Pino's private jet. Carlos de Cespedes was the other passenger on the trip. A few months after the trip, Diaz and the rest of the commission voted for a Pino development project called Grand Bay. The Herald political blog noted, "Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose ''Pepe'' Diaz received $20,000 in 2004 from what federal prosecutors describe as a shell company used to conceal fraudulent proceeds from a hospital kickback scheme -- a payment the commissioner says was a legitimate bonus. The company, Kaufman Medical Products, was cited in a document filed in federal court Tuesday about healthcare fraud charges against Carlos and Jorge de Céspedes, owners of the bankrupt Doral medical-supply firm Pharmed. Diaz listed on his 2004 public disclosure form that he had received $19,795 from Kaufman. Diaz said Wednesday the money was a bonus for work performed for the de Céspedes brothers' venture capital firm, Astri Group." ('Naked Politics', Miami Herald, July 24, 2008)
"In a separate matter, the Miami Daily Business Review reported last week that it had obtained corporate bank records showing that Pino's companies may have reimbursed $29.500 to 59 contributors to Governor Jeb Bush's 2002 re-election campaign. It is a violation of Florida election law for a person to make a donation in another person's name." ('Crist ally cuts ties amid grand jury investigation', St. Pete Times, July 27, 2006) Pino was a Bush-Cheney "Ranger" for having raised at least $200,000 for the president's 2004 re-election campaign and, according to the St. Pete Times, "is a major donor to Gov. Bush's non-profit educational foundation."
The historical context is important to understanding how Cespedes believed he could "hide" among business leaders shocked, about the climate of corruption in 1998.
"All we are looking to do is find a balance between residential needs and environmental needs," Commissioner Pepe Diaz told Time Magazine in reference to moving the Urban Development Boundary. ('Lowe's eyes the Everglades', Time Magazine, April 28, 2008) After all, if reasonable people can't agree on how to protect wetlands, why should anyone care about fleecing the nation's financial institutions and getting a Grade A report card for doing it?
Think about what happened in Florida the decade AFTER Cespedes put his name to the letter against corruption in Miami. Between 1999 and 2003 in Florida, the US Army Corps of Engineers approved more than 12,000 wetlands permits and rejected one. During the same period, 84,000 acres of wetlands vanished. ("They won't say no", St. Pete Times, May 22, 2005)
1998 was a key year in the building and housing asset bubble: the politics of laissez faire "libertarianism" in service of the free market were angling to meet up with the lowest interest rates in US history (at that time); the response to the crashing dot.com bubble and the 9/11 event.
The business leaders who put their name to a letter in 1998 against corruption were about to be propelled into the boom in housing and construction that turned many single digit millionaires into centi-millionaires. Pull the threads from platted subdivisions, to infrastructure like Miami International Airport or Miami road paving contracts and the fabric of the US economy unravels straight up to the executive suites of Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Indymac, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for example.
Few in public office cared while so much money was flowing outside and inside the edges of the law and into political campaigns. Balance? In key respects, this behavior was and is still reinforced by a permanent incumbency and a fading media. It is possible, then, that the fiscal stimulus plan being discussed by the incoming Obama administration will simply pave over -- again-- the horrendous ethics that materialize as obligations by American taxpayers to white collar bankers or thieves.
Not a single red cent should be appropriated by Congress for a fiscal stimulus until audit controls, checks, and balances are in place to flush fraud and systematic corruption from government, especially at the local level. New federal laws will be needed to put teeth to public corruption and keep democracy safe.
Reflecting on the New Year...and life! Guest Blogger Livelifebythesea
For no particular good reason I write about the year past and hopes of the future. 2008 was a year in which the sins of the past finally came home. Decades of economic pretense and neglect had culminated in the installation of perhaps our worst president ever, and certainly the worst since Hoover. It has brought on the beginning of a political and economic reckoning. 2009 may be an “Exciting Year” in the sense of the old Chinese curse of being in ‘Interesting Times’.We have however, reinvigorated the values that made this a great nation when we voted for our first African American president. We will need his vision and leadership to regain the economic, political, and moral high ground. We will need to have the American fortitude and courage to support, and follow good leadership, and to reject petty partisan attempts to abrogate power back to those that have brought us to this low state. (Hit read more)
Been reading a lot of history of late, TEAM OF RIVALS, and now JOHN ADAMS. What is striking is how little we as a people have changed. There have always been those that see only self-serving ends and who attribute those same petty goals to all others. As times are secure and the economy buoyant we become a self-indulgent people that ignore or loose interest in our social and political responsibilities. This leads to recurring violent readjustments.
In the past we have always risen to the challenge and forged new and better ways to see the world and ourselves. This generation will need the tenacity, strength, and sense of community that was so evident in both the leaders and heroic common men and women of our past.
For me it has also been a year of loss and re-evaluation. The unexpected loss of two good friend jarred me. Their deaths only days apart seemed to shift the ground under foot. We all know that time is fleeting, but seeing how ephemeral it makes all of our human connections, presses home how precious are our moments here.
Knowing how some of my friends and acquaintances struggle daily with physical complaints does not make my small trails of aging and degeneration of remembered strength and stamina any less cumbersome and threatening. It is not only the sure and certain approach of THE END that cast a lengthening shadow, but the question of how much longer the sweet escapes and fulfillments of life will endure. The time of life filled primarily with continuous rounds of medical tests and treatments punctuated with small bits of familial repose is thundering down the track of time.
I hope that I am one of the lucky ones that gets to have vigorous intellectual and physical years to the end, but know now, more than before, that none of us have any guarantees. If anything we can be sure of, it is at best a slow decline.
So ---- I am going to do what any smart person would. I am going to ‘run away’. When asked about his amazing longevity as a ball player Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” I don’t know how far I will run or if there is even a destination.
So the point is I have no true idea of what will actually transpire over the next 12 months, but am going to try very hard to make an escape, or at least start the process with the house for sale and boat getting refitted.
I hope this upbeat message finds all of you in good health and good spirits (I recommend vodka).
Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous 2009
Friday, January 02, 2009
CondoBlogs.Com Steals our Posts: They suck. By Geniusofdespair
CondoBlogs.com Sucks TOO! CondoBlogs.com Sucks TOO! CondoBlogs.com Sucks TOO!
Stanford scientist: biofuels = bad ... by gimleteye
An independent study carried out by Stanford University scientist, Mark Jacobsen, indicates that wind and concentrated solar energy are the most efficient forms of renewable energy, closely followed by geothermal energy and tidal power. The independent study ranked sources of energy according to their environmental impact. Jacobsen specifically highlighted his finding that biofuels not only generate similar amounts greenhouse gas and other pollution as fossil fuels and compromise food production but also draw investment away from clean sources of energy.
Read the full report
The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.
And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.
Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability. His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. The paper with his findings will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science and is available online here. Jacobson is also director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford.
"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," Jacobson said. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels." He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.
The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.
To place the various alternatives on an equal footing, Jacobson first made his comparisons among the energy sources by calculating the impacts as if each alternative alone were used to power all the vehicles in the United States, assuming only "new-technology" vehicles were being used. Such vehicles include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and "flex-fuel" vehicles that could run on a high blend of ethanol called E85.
Wind was by far the most promising, Jacobson said, owing to a better-than 99 percent reduction in carbon and air pollution emissions; the consumption of less than 3 square kilometers of land for the turbine footprints to run the entire U.S. vehicle fleet (given the fleet is composed of battery-electric vehicles); the saving of about 15,000 lives per year from premature air-pollution-related deaths from vehicle exhaust in the United States; and virtually no water consumption. By contrast, corn and cellulosic ethanol will continue to cause more than 15,000 air pollution-related deaths in the country per year, Jacobson asserted.
Because the wind turbines would require a modest amount of spacing between them to allow room for the blades to spin, wind farms would occupy about 0.5 percent of all U.S. land, but this amount is more than 30 times less than that required for growing corn or grasses for ethanol. Land between turbines on wind farms would be simultaneously available as farmland or pasture or could be left as open space.
Indeed, a battery-powered U.S. vehicle fleet could be charged by 73,000 to 144,000 5-megawatt wind turbines, fewer than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II and far easier to build. Additional turbines could provide electricity for other energy needs.
"There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession," Jacobson said. "Well, putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power."
Jacobson said that while some people are under the impression that wind and wave power are too variable to provide steady amounts of electricity, his research group has already shown in previous research that by properly coordinating the energy output from wind farms in different locations, the potential problem with variability can be overcome and a steady supply of baseline power delivered to users.
Jacobson's research is particularly timely in light of the growing push to develop biofuels, which he calculated to be the worst of the available alternatives. In their effort to obtain a federal bailout, the Big Three Detroit automakers are increasingly touting their efforts and programs in the biofuels realm, and federal research dollars have been supporting a growing number of biofuel-research efforts.
"That is exactly the wrong place to be spending our money. Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels," Jacobson said. "We should be spending to promote energy technologies that cause significant reductions in carbon emissions and air-pollution mortality, not technologies that have either marginal benefits or no benefits at all."
"Obviously, wind alone isn't the solution," Jacobson said. "It's got to be a package deal, with energy also being produced by other sources such as solar, tidal, wave and geothermal power."
During the recent presidential campaign, nuclear power and clean coal were often touted as energy solutions that should be pursued, but nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration were Jacobson's lowest-ranked choices after biofuels. "Coal with carbon sequestration emits 60- to 110-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy, and nuclear emits about 25-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy," Jacobson said. Although carbon-capture equipment reduces 85-90 percent of the carbon exhaust from a coal-fired power plant, it has no impact on the carbon resulting from the mining or transport of the coal or on the exhaust of other air pollutants. In fact, because carbon capture requires a roughly 25-percent increase in energy from the coal plant, about 25 percent more coal is needed, increasing mountaintop removal and increasing non-carbon air pollution from power plants, he said.
Nuclear power poses other risks. Jacobson said it is likely that if the United States were to move more heavily into nuclear power, then other nations would demand to be able to use that option.
"Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it's straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do," Jacobson said. "The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide." Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.
Finally, both coal and nuclear energy plants take much longer to plan, permit and construct than do most of the other new energy sources that Jacobson's study recommends. The result would be even more emissions from existing nuclear and coal power sources as people continue to use comparatively "dirty" electricity while waiting for the new energy sources to come online, Jacobson said.
Jacobson received no funding from any interest group, company or government agency.
Energy and vehicle options, from best to worst, according to Jacobson's calculations:
Best to worst electric power sources:
1. Wind power 2. concentrated solar power (CSP) 3. geothermal power 4. tidal power 5. solar photovoltaics (PV) 6. wave power 7. hydroelectric power 8. a tie between nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
Best to worst vehicle options:
1. Wind-BEVs (battery electric vehicles) 2. wind-HFCVs (hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) 3.CSP-BEVs 4. geothermal-BEVs 5. tidal-BEVs 6. solar PV-BEVs 7. Wave-BEVs 8.hydroelectric-BEVs 9. a tie between nuclear-BEVs and coal-CCS-BEVs 11. corn-E85 12.cellulosic-E85.
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were examined only when powered by wind energy, but they could be combined with other electric power sources. Although HFCVs require about three times more energy than do BEVs (BEVs are very efficient), HFCVs are still very clean and more efficient than pure gasoline, and wind-HFCVs still resulted in the second-highest overall ranking. HFCVs have an advantage in that they can be refueled faster than can BEVs (although BEV charging is getting faster). Thus, HFCVs may be useful for long trips (more than 250 miles) while BEVs more useful for trips less than 250 miles. An ideal combination may be a BEV-HFCV hybrid.
Read the full report
The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.
And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.
Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability. His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. The paper with his findings will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science and is available online here. Jacobson is also director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford.
"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," Jacobson said. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels." He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.
The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.
To place the various alternatives on an equal footing, Jacobson first made his comparisons among the energy sources by calculating the impacts as if each alternative alone were used to power all the vehicles in the United States, assuming only "new-technology" vehicles were being used. Such vehicles include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and "flex-fuel" vehicles that could run on a high blend of ethanol called E85.
Wind was by far the most promising, Jacobson said, owing to a better-than 99 percent reduction in carbon and air pollution emissions; the consumption of less than 3 square kilometers of land for the turbine footprints to run the entire U.S. vehicle fleet (given the fleet is composed of battery-electric vehicles); the saving of about 15,000 lives per year from premature air-pollution-related deaths from vehicle exhaust in the United States; and virtually no water consumption. By contrast, corn and cellulosic ethanol will continue to cause more than 15,000 air pollution-related deaths in the country per year, Jacobson asserted.
Because the wind turbines would require a modest amount of spacing between them to allow room for the blades to spin, wind farms would occupy about 0.5 percent of all U.S. land, but this amount is more than 30 times less than that required for growing corn or grasses for ethanol. Land between turbines on wind farms would be simultaneously available as farmland or pasture or could be left as open space.
Indeed, a battery-powered U.S. vehicle fleet could be charged by 73,000 to 144,000 5-megawatt wind turbines, fewer than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II and far easier to build. Additional turbines could provide electricity for other energy needs.
"There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession," Jacobson said. "Well, putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power."
Jacobson said that while some people are under the impression that wind and wave power are too variable to provide steady amounts of electricity, his research group has already shown in previous research that by properly coordinating the energy output from wind farms in different locations, the potential problem with variability can be overcome and a steady supply of baseline power delivered to users.
Jacobson's research is particularly timely in light of the growing push to develop biofuels, which he calculated to be the worst of the available alternatives. In their effort to obtain a federal bailout, the Big Three Detroit automakers are increasingly touting their efforts and programs in the biofuels realm, and federal research dollars have been supporting a growing number of biofuel-research efforts.
"That is exactly the wrong place to be spending our money. Biofuels are the most damaging choice we could make in our efforts to move away from using fossil fuels," Jacobson said. "We should be spending to promote energy technologies that cause significant reductions in carbon emissions and air-pollution mortality, not technologies that have either marginal benefits or no benefits at all."
"Obviously, wind alone isn't the solution," Jacobson said. "It's got to be a package deal, with energy also being produced by other sources such as solar, tidal, wave and geothermal power."
During the recent presidential campaign, nuclear power and clean coal were often touted as energy solutions that should be pursued, but nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration were Jacobson's lowest-ranked choices after biofuels. "Coal with carbon sequestration emits 60- to 110-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy, and nuclear emits about 25-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy," Jacobson said. Although carbon-capture equipment reduces 85-90 percent of the carbon exhaust from a coal-fired power plant, it has no impact on the carbon resulting from the mining or transport of the coal or on the exhaust of other air pollutants. In fact, because carbon capture requires a roughly 25-percent increase in energy from the coal plant, about 25 percent more coal is needed, increasing mountaintop removal and increasing non-carbon air pollution from power plants, he said.
Nuclear power poses other risks. Jacobson said it is likely that if the United States were to move more heavily into nuclear power, then other nations would demand to be able to use that option.
"Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it's straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do," Jacobson said. "The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide." Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.
Finally, both coal and nuclear energy plants take much longer to plan, permit and construct than do most of the other new energy sources that Jacobson's study recommends. The result would be even more emissions from existing nuclear and coal power sources as people continue to use comparatively "dirty" electricity while waiting for the new energy sources to come online, Jacobson said.
Jacobson received no funding from any interest group, company or government agency.
Energy and vehicle options, from best to worst, according to Jacobson's calculations:
Best to worst electric power sources:
1. Wind power 2. concentrated solar power (CSP) 3. geothermal power 4. tidal power 5. solar photovoltaics (PV) 6. wave power 7. hydroelectric power 8. a tie between nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).
Best to worst vehicle options:
1. Wind-BEVs (battery electric vehicles) 2. wind-HFCVs (hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) 3.CSP-BEVs 4. geothermal-BEVs 5. tidal-BEVs 6. solar PV-BEVs 7. Wave-BEVs 8.hydroelectric-BEVs 9. a tie between nuclear-BEVs and coal-CCS-BEVs 11. corn-E85 12.cellulosic-E85.
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were examined only when powered by wind energy, but they could be combined with other electric power sources. Although HFCVs require about three times more energy than do BEVs (BEVs are very efficient), HFCVs are still very clean and more efficient than pure gasoline, and wind-HFCVs still resulted in the second-highest overall ranking. HFCVs have an advantage in that they can be refueled faster than can BEVs (although BEV charging is getting faster). Thus, HFCVs may be useful for long trips (more than 250 miles) while BEVs more useful for trips less than 250 miles. An ideal combination may be a BEV-HFCV hybrid.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Redland, the Wades, and the armies of compassion: Part 5 ... by gimleteye
"It is a joy to be here with members of the armies of compassion. I'm really glad you're here and I appreciate your inspiration to our fellow citizens. I believe you are a constant reminder of the true source of our nation's strength, which is the good hearts and souls of the American people." President Bush discusses Volunteerism, Sept. 8, 2008
For those of you who have followed this series, it is lengthy. You may want to go back, and begin with the first and following parts, before jumping to forward.
For Part 1, click here.
For Part 2, click here.
For Part 3, click here.
For Part 4, click here.
To read the series' conclusion, click on read more. After revisions, early next week, I will re-print the entire piece.
What kinds of lessons can we draw from the example of the Wades? The observation of the Wades represent a starkly different point of view to the legions of economists who claim that no one saw the economic crisis coming. The Wades and their allies did. Though the political and economic structure made no room for their knowledge, still they acted in every way available to them; including elections.
The mainstream media and economists, both, continue to portray the national economic emergency as though it spontaneously generated. What their views fail to incorporate is how the entire gearing mechanism of economic growth depends on the false evaluation of risk to the economy and the environment; while bankers and insurers and developers thrived on unregulated derivative debt, activists like the Wade struggled with the consequences on the ground, pinned down in a seemingly endless succession of battles and skirmishes.
The Wades fought at places like the edges of the Everglades—it is inescapable conclusion that the mainstream media performed most poorly at places where the pressure of growth was most intense. Not once has The Miami Herald or other media in Miami, for instance, featured the volunteerism that has operated at the margins.
In important ways, keeping these stories separate—the struggle to value quality of life and environmental resources and the mispriced risk of financial securitization tied to development—is so institutionalized as to be de facto public policy. The destruction to the environment and quality of life that Floridians treasure could not have happened without a system of financing that compartmentalized and segregated cause and effect, truth from consequence, and socializing risk and privatizing benefits.
The network tying zoning decisions to farmland has limited knowledge, interest, or understanding of Wall Street finance. Why should they? Lobbyists, tax accountants, real estate analysts, transactional lawyers, brokers, tile suppliers, swimming pool installers: their success depends on focus and compartmentalization. Denial of larger consequences is embedded in maxims such as “it’s what the market wants”, or, “anyone should be allowed to do with their property, what they want, at any time.” In Florida’s Optimist Clubs and Chambers of Commerce, if the question were posed about development and its costs, the question might be asked this way: where is the profit and reward in seeing anything beyond the for-sale banners and the flags waving in the breeze, advertising housing subdivisions behind stucco walls fronting highways and turnpikes, and, beyond?
In one light, the results are discouraging: the Wades and the small intrepid band of Miami-Dade civic activists fight with sharply limited funding compared to corporate opposition. Even their allies—locally constituted environmental organizations—are often reluctant to engage in battles they believe cannot be won, or at too great a cost to their budgets, donors, or board members.
At Krome Avenue, the Wades and the environmental groups were able to make a deal with county planners and the state. That agreement was rejected by the county commission. The Agriculture Retention Study and South Dade Watershed Protection Plan were both fiercely opposed by development interests, land speculators and the political status quo, because they would, eventually, restrict the expansion of suburbs. The Wades’ effort to recall Natacha Seijas provoked a fury recalling the excesses of Castro , scarcely 100 miles away in Havana.
It is hard to tease out the meaning of so much hard work, personal sacrifice, and trouble. Yet, there is the undeniable patriotism implicit in the struggle of the Wades and their allies to make democracy work the way it was intended. But for the national financial crisis, brought on by an orgy of rotten finance tied to unsustainable development, stories like the Wades would still seem a kind of far-fetched enthusiasm driven to no realistic purpose. But the results on the ground are shockingly clear: Redland has been largely spared the kind of growth that consumed Homestead and Florida City; staggering under the weight of budget deficits and a real estate market that has turned many platted subdivisions into half-empty, desolate and dangerous places.
But in terms of actual results; the developers got exactly what they wanted in South Dade; a ruinous landscape of strip malls, bereft platted subdivisions, and now foreclosures and public safety hazards.
A decade ago, Wades’ nemesis banker Bill Losner often complained that Homestead needed “growth” because all it had was Section 8 housing. Today, after a wildfire of development he helped to set, the farmland is gone and the trail of misery and foreclosures leads straight to the Chamber of Commerce doorstep that listened to his point of view.
The way a pearl forms around an irritant, the Wades’ story forms a pearl in whose hard, polished surface one can view how our nation’s economic crisis and the willful intent to subvert and evade the purpose of environmental laws and regulations are twin images. The one could not exist without the other, reflected in that pearlescent orb.
Barack Obama, who began his public life as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, persuaded a majority of American voters that his calm and reasoned approach to governance, bringing people together across the spectrum of interests, is what America needs at this time of trouble.
But the Wades’ story belies easy imagery. The entire apparatus of government in Miami-Dade is oriented to enable production homebuilders, lobbyists, and land speculators to organize local government in Miami-Dade county for zoning in farmland. There is a flip side to diverting the purpose of government to sprawl: how the clamor of builders fostered an atmosphere of neglect within the inner city, where the Miami-Dade Housing Agency was looted by insiders as thoroughly as addicts stripping copper pipe from a crack house .
It is tempting to say that the circumstances in Miami are exceptional. They are not.
There are visible concentric rings that spread out from the impact of the Seijas recall instigated by the Wades and their allies as a last recourse against the deformation of democracy: for one, new state laws instigated by the Chamber of Commerce and supported by Governor Bush and then by Governor Crist to sharply limit the circulation of petitions and access to government by citizens.
Throughout the inflation of the housing asset bubble, moreover, special interests succeeded in compartmentalizing cause and effect, finance of mortgages from zoning of housing, rules governing finance from rules filling wetlands.
To bridge the divide, environmental and community groups sought out the mother’s milk of concession politics: private/public partnerships, joint cooperative efforts, independent studies, or blue ribbon panels trying to “resolve” conflicts between economic growth, private property rights, and the imperatives of environmental protection. Such “reasonable” approaches to consensus formed their own insidious exclusions for the Wades and their allies, dismissed so off-handedly by Karl Rove; “… guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . .and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. ''
The record of coordinated attacks on the Wades and their allies for trying to make democracy work is a cautionary tale for wider politics. It is deeply troubling that the de facto chair of a local county commission wielded so much influence with the State Attorney’s Office, the Clerk of the Court, and law enforcement agencies in comparison to citizens trying to petition their government.
In Miami-Dade, the county attorney’s office, itself, acted in ways that defer—not to the civic interest, the law necessarily, or to citizens—but first and foremost to the county commissioners it believes to be clients. What is the cumulative effect on the morale of government employees in agencies like planning and zoning, of singling out and suppressing civic participation?
These are neither trivial questions nor exceptions to the rule, to be easily brushed off. There is a consequence to institutionalized avoidance, of taking the easy way out in deferring to the politically powerful, that adds up to the conclusion in the mind of many people that our democratic institutions are designed to fail. This may be, then, the outermost concentric circle of the Wades’ story: we fail the promise of democracy because we, ourselves, do not pass the test: judge us not by what we say, but what we do.
What happened in Redland, then, is not the case of a few bad apples ruining the barrel, or, of a unique circumstance that stands apart from resolvable tensions when people of good will sit down to hash out solutions. Tens of millions of dollars were wasted in Miami-Dade County on perfectly good and acceptable studies that the Wades engaged in: no one could get a word in edge-wise when there was so much money to be made at the edge of the Everglades. Still is. Or, the hope is, will be once the economic crisis reverses.
The Republican orthodoxy, in particular, emanates through the expression of Grover Norquist, years ago, that government should be shrunk to the size that can fit in a bathtub. If you can’t cut the weed from outside, you can poison its roots: government designed to be dysfunctional is easy to get rid of. Under this premise, the theory took flight that the free market can do better. The Wades’ story tells otherwise: government is not given the chance to do better when its energies are focused on the suppression of civic participation and access of citizens to their democratic institutions.
The Urban Development Boundary, where conflict is concentrated by the arbitrage of property values inside and outside the line of allowable infrastructure and the demands of growth management laws, is exactly the place to view an appalling absence of ethics masquerading as virtuous capitalism and the hovering spirit of Ayn Rand.
Here the prevailing condition of democracy in a simple image that doesn’t need teasing from economic studies, accounts of asset bubbles in Holland in the 17th century, or of data that may have been incompletely provided and led to fatal mistakes by former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan and august members of Federal Reserve regional governing boards, their presidents, and staff.
The image will be familiar to every citizen who has tried to influence a zoning decision at the local level of government to protect a river, a stream, or the rural character of their community: a medieval drawbridge spanning a moat protecting the castle from outsiders.
The castle is government. Behind its walls are legislators. On the far side of the moat are civic activists, community organizers and volunteers. With their backs to the castle, a legion of lobbyists, big engineering firms, and special interests otherwise engaged in converting farmland to suburbia at scale.
The drawbridge is operated by a winch driven by a system of gears that allow small exertion to produce big work. The heavy drawbridge goes up to allow the free transit of commerce and industry that conforms to gigantism; ie. rock mining, electric utilities, water pipe infrastructure, wastewater disposal, highway construction, wetlands “mitigation”. It goes down to block dissenters, critics, and volunteers armed with common sense.
The central feature of this metaphor is the system of gears that hauls the drawbridge up and down; it is the same set of gear ratios—built to appropriate scale—for the White House, Congress, for state legislatures and local county commissions.
The cogs on the big wheel are the motives and hubris of Wall Street; making billions while losing trillions through synthetic, derivative debt spun from the thin air of business school and math departments, embraced by executive suites in America’s largest financial and industrial corporations. The big cogs mesh with cogs on the smaller wheels; from Congress to local zoning councils and the predetermined outcomes hashed out by lobbyists in backrooms at long lunches or dinners before pubic hearings.
Our representative volunteer, standing at the other side of the drawbridge, at the far side of the castle, would have no idea that mortgage backed securities provided energy for that platted subdivision they opposed, that collateral debt obligations prepared one thousand acres of farmland for profit better than any fertilizer, or that credit default swaps helped underwrite political campaigns of county commissioners who turned their backs on people or play the race card to defile volunteers as occurred in the Redland incorporation battle.
The big wheel turns by the energy and confidence in the free market to do better than government in protecting the interests of people. It keeps turning on the principle that private corporations can self-regulate and judge risk better than government—risk, for instance, to the quality of our air and water or equally to the probability of financial default.
This big gear connects down to the little gears at the level where builders and developers push platted subdivisions through zoning councils that conformed—not with what the market wants, as advertised with Hummers and SUVs in colorful full-page ads —but with what Wall Street could finance in bundles.
So far, the misdirection and abrogation of fiduciary responsibility is confined to news reports by economics writers, about players in executive suites who stand for the mighty fallen. But the more revealing story is replicated ten thousand times and in ten thousand places: the base level of government where development rules conflict with common sense and the interest of ordinary people in development at scale to neighborhoods.
The battles engaged by volunteers, the tens of millions of dollars of good studies shelved by elected officials, the use of police and the law to suppress civic activists, and the routine use of a raised drawbridge to keep citizens at bay; these instances all argue for a rigorous audit and control process for any funding that is released by the federal government to the states, and from the states to local municipal authority.
We have learned from TARP, the $700 billion program by Bush Treasury chief Hank Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, that there are no audit controls; no way to make sure that taxpayers investment in failing and failed banking institutions are used to ease the credit crisis. Paulson turned to the same Wall Street lieutenants and lawyers whose influence was rewarded handsomely for contriving exactly the playing field and its tilting that ground the public interest to dust, that the Wades and other civic activists represented. What is to stop a tsunami of public money from simply being diverted to the same purposes sought by the instigators of widening Krome Avenue, of converting more farmland to sprawl, and paying lip service to the rest?
In its first weeks, the Obama administration will be proposing another trillion dollar fiscal stimulus comprised of taxpayer obligations. To the question of how well and equitably this money is distributed to the states and counties and municipalities across the nation, the Wades’ story is a blinking red light: if you can’t protect the civic interest now or ensure ethical behavior by public officials, how can you imagine that billions of dollars fed into the local feeding troughs will not further alienate citizens from their government?
The danger for the Obama administration—in consideration of applying nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer obligations to reviving the economy—is that we will make the same mistakes, repeat the same errors, and give the thieves who used infrastructure like transportation budgets, water infrastructure, wastewater and toxics disposal the key to the house, again.
It is imperative to invest in civil service reform and stop the revolving door between government agencies and private corporations that result in the vast mispricing of risk to taxpayers and civic suppression to reward insiders. Over a decade, the demoralization of government agencies has had a ruinous effect on the competence of regulators at exactly a moment in history what we need most in government is professional competence insulated from political pressure.
Measures should include a rapid staffing of law enforcement, from the US Department of Justice to local state attorney’s, to deal with white collar crime and public corruption; a real form of domestic terrorism.
Corporations or their surrogates who receive taxpayer bailout funds should not only face prohibitions against excessive compensation to executives, they should also be prohibited from contributing to political campaigns.
So who should we turn to, then, for leadership? Mainstream environmental organizations have been uncertain allies in the last 20 years. The Service Employees International Union and AFL-CIO supported Seijas. They should examine their motives and rewards: what exactly has the suburban, over-crowded and unsustainable landscape of Florida and the rest of the nation done, to improve the lives of union members? At one UDB zoning hearing a few years ago, Seijas berated a top union official she discovered that union members were supporting the “Hold The Line” campaigners outside County Hall chambers.
Now that the model of suburban sprawl is broken beyond repair, the question arises; what to do next? How to put back to work the millions of Americans displaced and dislodged from security because of blank checks written for growth, against no asset base except what could be conjured from the thin air and ether of financial derivatives, earning billions while losing trillions.
This is the key point of the Wades’ experience as volunteers: that the current system of economic growth allocates no debate or diversity or, even, real standing in how policies shape our communities. That is the pattern of the recent past; a record of diversion, costly fragmentation, and intimidation that turned public agencies silent when they could have been supportive of the laws that activists wanted to uphold.
This leads to leadership that none of the key Obama appointments are able to provide: only the president himself can restore the tradition and honor and scope of the contribution of volunteers to the reconstruction of the American economy along lines that both create economic opportunities and also protect the environment. He will not be able to look to Clinton-era officials for help on this score: they provided none, then, and can’t be expected to provide now.
Where, then, are those “armies of compassion” Why spend one’s years, as the Wades have done, engaged in struggles and battles and conflict, where the outcome is not based on democracy—but of the laws of predetermined outcomes? Why waste one red cent when organizing to defend a civil society has so little currency in downtown law firms, at the Chamber of Commerce, or blue ribbon panels constituted to bestow awards on each other? Why spend one’s years marginalized by well-funded opposition who control the mainstream media through paid advertisements in the real estate section, or, by paying Spanish language radio hosts under the table?
There is another light—a more positive one—through which to view these serious questions: the committment of activists like the Wades seem a mystery, but they prove it is not a passive one. The example of the Wades and others is to show for future generations of leadership that there is, indeed, a path to follow. There is a value in the process, in the engagement and the fight for a better future, and an inspiration to younger generations here and in other places where we like to advertise that democracy has taken hold and root.
It takes a village to raise a child; it takes a Depression to raze a village. Today, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put Humpty back together again: If Congress had acted less on the glad-handing of big campaign donors like Roland Arnall, of Ameriquest Mortgage, or Al Hoffman , of WCI Communities, or corporate farmers from states like Florida and paid attention to volunteers who not only objected to the “fewer rules” but fought to get the rules that existed, enforced; we would have been better off.
The Wades fought for their village as have others before them in South Florida. In the end, they learned something else from their protracted battles to enforce regulations and laws designed to protect communities and the environment from sprawl; that the laws themselves had been subject to weakening, one legislative session at a time, and that the intent of laws governing growth in Florida was left to interpretation by state administrative law judges or state court judges, appointed by the governor.
It is a considerable challenge for the Obama team, to steer the ship of state in a new direction to a future that is sustainable, economically vibrant, protective of the climate and natural resources, and restorative of democracy, itself.
The good news is that it is exactly Obama’s experience as a community organizer, early in his career, that will be most relevant to his actions. It is time for a US president to encourage a broader view of those “armies of compassion”, including the Wades who exemplify what it means to be a citizen at a time when Americans are less confident than ever about what an individual can do. For that, they stand for one thousand points of light.
For those of you who have followed this series, it is lengthy. You may want to go back, and begin with the first and following parts, before jumping to forward.
For Part 1, click here.
For Part 2, click here.
For Part 3, click here.
For Part 4, click here.
To read the series' conclusion, click on read more. After revisions, early next week, I will re-print the entire piece.
What kinds of lessons can we draw from the example of the Wades? The observation of the Wades represent a starkly different point of view to the legions of economists who claim that no one saw the economic crisis coming. The Wades and their allies did. Though the political and economic structure made no room for their knowledge, still they acted in every way available to them; including elections.
The mainstream media and economists, both, continue to portray the national economic emergency as though it spontaneously generated. What their views fail to incorporate is how the entire gearing mechanism of economic growth depends on the false evaluation of risk to the economy and the environment; while bankers and insurers and developers thrived on unregulated derivative debt, activists like the Wade struggled with the consequences on the ground, pinned down in a seemingly endless succession of battles and skirmishes.
The Wades fought at places like the edges of the Everglades—it is inescapable conclusion that the mainstream media performed most poorly at places where the pressure of growth was most intense. Not once has The Miami Herald or other media in Miami, for instance, featured the volunteerism that has operated at the margins.
In important ways, keeping these stories separate—the struggle to value quality of life and environmental resources and the mispriced risk of financial securitization tied to development—is so institutionalized as to be de facto public policy. The destruction to the environment and quality of life that Floridians treasure could not have happened without a system of financing that compartmentalized and segregated cause and effect, truth from consequence, and socializing risk and privatizing benefits.
The network tying zoning decisions to farmland has limited knowledge, interest, or understanding of Wall Street finance. Why should they? Lobbyists, tax accountants, real estate analysts, transactional lawyers, brokers, tile suppliers, swimming pool installers: their success depends on focus and compartmentalization. Denial of larger consequences is embedded in maxims such as “it’s what the market wants”, or, “anyone should be allowed to do with their property, what they want, at any time.” In Florida’s Optimist Clubs and Chambers of Commerce, if the question were posed about development and its costs, the question might be asked this way: where is the profit and reward in seeing anything beyond the for-sale banners and the flags waving in the breeze, advertising housing subdivisions behind stucco walls fronting highways and turnpikes, and, beyond?
In one light, the results are discouraging: the Wades and the small intrepid band of Miami-Dade civic activists fight with sharply limited funding compared to corporate opposition. Even their allies—locally constituted environmental organizations—are often reluctant to engage in battles they believe cannot be won, or at too great a cost to their budgets, donors, or board members.
At Krome Avenue, the Wades and the environmental groups were able to make a deal with county planners and the state. That agreement was rejected by the county commission. The Agriculture Retention Study and South Dade Watershed Protection Plan were both fiercely opposed by development interests, land speculators and the political status quo, because they would, eventually, restrict the expansion of suburbs. The Wades’ effort to recall Natacha Seijas provoked a fury recalling the excesses of Castro , scarcely 100 miles away in Havana.
It is hard to tease out the meaning of so much hard work, personal sacrifice, and trouble. Yet, there is the undeniable patriotism implicit in the struggle of the Wades and their allies to make democracy work the way it was intended. But for the national financial crisis, brought on by an orgy of rotten finance tied to unsustainable development, stories like the Wades would still seem a kind of far-fetched enthusiasm driven to no realistic purpose. But the results on the ground are shockingly clear: Redland has been largely spared the kind of growth that consumed Homestead and Florida City; staggering under the weight of budget deficits and a real estate market that has turned many platted subdivisions into half-empty, desolate and dangerous places.
But in terms of actual results; the developers got exactly what they wanted in South Dade; a ruinous landscape of strip malls, bereft platted subdivisions, and now foreclosures and public safety hazards.
A decade ago, Wades’ nemesis banker Bill Losner often complained that Homestead needed “growth” because all it had was Section 8 housing. Today, after a wildfire of development he helped to set, the farmland is gone and the trail of misery and foreclosures leads straight to the Chamber of Commerce doorstep that listened to his point of view.
The way a pearl forms around an irritant, the Wades’ story forms a pearl in whose hard, polished surface one can view how our nation’s economic crisis and the willful intent to subvert and evade the purpose of environmental laws and regulations are twin images. The one could not exist without the other, reflected in that pearlescent orb.
Barack Obama, who began his public life as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, persuaded a majority of American voters that his calm and reasoned approach to governance, bringing people together across the spectrum of interests, is what America needs at this time of trouble.
But the Wades’ story belies easy imagery. The entire apparatus of government in Miami-Dade is oriented to enable production homebuilders, lobbyists, and land speculators to organize local government in Miami-Dade county for zoning in farmland. There is a flip side to diverting the purpose of government to sprawl: how the clamor of builders fostered an atmosphere of neglect within the inner city, where the Miami-Dade Housing Agency was looted by insiders as thoroughly as addicts stripping copper pipe from a crack house .
It is tempting to say that the circumstances in Miami are exceptional. They are not.
There are visible concentric rings that spread out from the impact of the Seijas recall instigated by the Wades and their allies as a last recourse against the deformation of democracy: for one, new state laws instigated by the Chamber of Commerce and supported by Governor Bush and then by Governor Crist to sharply limit the circulation of petitions and access to government by citizens.
Throughout the inflation of the housing asset bubble, moreover, special interests succeeded in compartmentalizing cause and effect, finance of mortgages from zoning of housing, rules governing finance from rules filling wetlands.
To bridge the divide, environmental and community groups sought out the mother’s milk of concession politics: private/public partnerships, joint cooperative efforts, independent studies, or blue ribbon panels trying to “resolve” conflicts between economic growth, private property rights, and the imperatives of environmental protection. Such “reasonable” approaches to consensus formed their own insidious exclusions for the Wades and their allies, dismissed so off-handedly by Karl Rove; “… guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . .and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. ''
The record of coordinated attacks on the Wades and their allies for trying to make democracy work is a cautionary tale for wider politics. It is deeply troubling that the de facto chair of a local county commission wielded so much influence with the State Attorney’s Office, the Clerk of the Court, and law enforcement agencies in comparison to citizens trying to petition their government.
In Miami-Dade, the county attorney’s office, itself, acted in ways that defer—not to the civic interest, the law necessarily, or to citizens—but first and foremost to the county commissioners it believes to be clients. What is the cumulative effect on the morale of government employees in agencies like planning and zoning, of singling out and suppressing civic participation?
These are neither trivial questions nor exceptions to the rule, to be easily brushed off. There is a consequence to institutionalized avoidance, of taking the easy way out in deferring to the politically powerful, that adds up to the conclusion in the mind of many people that our democratic institutions are designed to fail. This may be, then, the outermost concentric circle of the Wades’ story: we fail the promise of democracy because we, ourselves, do not pass the test: judge us not by what we say, but what we do.
What happened in Redland, then, is not the case of a few bad apples ruining the barrel, or, of a unique circumstance that stands apart from resolvable tensions when people of good will sit down to hash out solutions. Tens of millions of dollars were wasted in Miami-Dade County on perfectly good and acceptable studies that the Wades engaged in: no one could get a word in edge-wise when there was so much money to be made at the edge of the Everglades. Still is. Or, the hope is, will be once the economic crisis reverses.
The Republican orthodoxy, in particular, emanates through the expression of Grover Norquist, years ago, that government should be shrunk to the size that can fit in a bathtub. If you can’t cut the weed from outside, you can poison its roots: government designed to be dysfunctional is easy to get rid of. Under this premise, the theory took flight that the free market can do better. The Wades’ story tells otherwise: government is not given the chance to do better when its energies are focused on the suppression of civic participation and access of citizens to their democratic institutions.
The Urban Development Boundary, where conflict is concentrated by the arbitrage of property values inside and outside the line of allowable infrastructure and the demands of growth management laws, is exactly the place to view an appalling absence of ethics masquerading as virtuous capitalism and the hovering spirit of Ayn Rand.
Here the prevailing condition of democracy in a simple image that doesn’t need teasing from economic studies, accounts of asset bubbles in Holland in the 17th century, or of data that may have been incompletely provided and led to fatal mistakes by former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan and august members of Federal Reserve regional governing boards, their presidents, and staff.
The image will be familiar to every citizen who has tried to influence a zoning decision at the local level of government to protect a river, a stream, or the rural character of their community: a medieval drawbridge spanning a moat protecting the castle from outsiders.
The castle is government. Behind its walls are legislators. On the far side of the moat are civic activists, community organizers and volunteers. With their backs to the castle, a legion of lobbyists, big engineering firms, and special interests otherwise engaged in converting farmland to suburbia at scale.
The drawbridge is operated by a winch driven by a system of gears that allow small exertion to produce big work. The heavy drawbridge goes up to allow the free transit of commerce and industry that conforms to gigantism; ie. rock mining, electric utilities, water pipe infrastructure, wastewater disposal, highway construction, wetlands “mitigation”. It goes down to block dissenters, critics, and volunteers armed with common sense.
The central feature of this metaphor is the system of gears that hauls the drawbridge up and down; it is the same set of gear ratios—built to appropriate scale—for the White House, Congress, for state legislatures and local county commissions.
The cogs on the big wheel are the motives and hubris of Wall Street; making billions while losing trillions through synthetic, derivative debt spun from the thin air of business school and math departments, embraced by executive suites in America’s largest financial and industrial corporations. The big cogs mesh with cogs on the smaller wheels; from Congress to local zoning councils and the predetermined outcomes hashed out by lobbyists in backrooms at long lunches or dinners before pubic hearings.
Our representative volunteer, standing at the other side of the drawbridge, at the far side of the castle, would have no idea that mortgage backed securities provided energy for that platted subdivision they opposed, that collateral debt obligations prepared one thousand acres of farmland for profit better than any fertilizer, or that credit default swaps helped underwrite political campaigns of county commissioners who turned their backs on people or play the race card to defile volunteers as occurred in the Redland incorporation battle.
The big wheel turns by the energy and confidence in the free market to do better than government in protecting the interests of people. It keeps turning on the principle that private corporations can self-regulate and judge risk better than government—risk, for instance, to the quality of our air and water or equally to the probability of financial default.
This big gear connects down to the little gears at the level where builders and developers push platted subdivisions through zoning councils that conformed—not with what the market wants, as advertised with Hummers and SUVs in colorful full-page ads —but with what Wall Street could finance in bundles.
So far, the misdirection and abrogation of fiduciary responsibility is confined to news reports by economics writers, about players in executive suites who stand for the mighty fallen. But the more revealing story is replicated ten thousand times and in ten thousand places: the base level of government where development rules conflict with common sense and the interest of ordinary people in development at scale to neighborhoods.
The battles engaged by volunteers, the tens of millions of dollars of good studies shelved by elected officials, the use of police and the law to suppress civic activists, and the routine use of a raised drawbridge to keep citizens at bay; these instances all argue for a rigorous audit and control process for any funding that is released by the federal government to the states, and from the states to local municipal authority.
We have learned from TARP, the $700 billion program by Bush Treasury chief Hank Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, that there are no audit controls; no way to make sure that taxpayers investment in failing and failed banking institutions are used to ease the credit crisis. Paulson turned to the same Wall Street lieutenants and lawyers whose influence was rewarded handsomely for contriving exactly the playing field and its tilting that ground the public interest to dust, that the Wades and other civic activists represented. What is to stop a tsunami of public money from simply being diverted to the same purposes sought by the instigators of widening Krome Avenue, of converting more farmland to sprawl, and paying lip service to the rest?
In its first weeks, the Obama administration will be proposing another trillion dollar fiscal stimulus comprised of taxpayer obligations. To the question of how well and equitably this money is distributed to the states and counties and municipalities across the nation, the Wades’ story is a blinking red light: if you can’t protect the civic interest now or ensure ethical behavior by public officials, how can you imagine that billions of dollars fed into the local feeding troughs will not further alienate citizens from their government?
The danger for the Obama administration—in consideration of applying nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer obligations to reviving the economy—is that we will make the same mistakes, repeat the same errors, and give the thieves who used infrastructure like transportation budgets, water infrastructure, wastewater and toxics disposal the key to the house, again.
It is imperative to invest in civil service reform and stop the revolving door between government agencies and private corporations that result in the vast mispricing of risk to taxpayers and civic suppression to reward insiders. Over a decade, the demoralization of government agencies has had a ruinous effect on the competence of regulators at exactly a moment in history what we need most in government is professional competence insulated from political pressure.
Measures should include a rapid staffing of law enforcement, from the US Department of Justice to local state attorney’s, to deal with white collar crime and public corruption; a real form of domestic terrorism.
Corporations or their surrogates who receive taxpayer bailout funds should not only face prohibitions against excessive compensation to executives, they should also be prohibited from contributing to political campaigns.
So who should we turn to, then, for leadership? Mainstream environmental organizations have been uncertain allies in the last 20 years. The Service Employees International Union and AFL-CIO supported Seijas. They should examine their motives and rewards: what exactly has the suburban, over-crowded and unsustainable landscape of Florida and the rest of the nation done, to improve the lives of union members? At one UDB zoning hearing a few years ago, Seijas berated a top union official she discovered that union members were supporting the “Hold The Line” campaigners outside County Hall chambers.
Now that the model of suburban sprawl is broken beyond repair, the question arises; what to do next? How to put back to work the millions of Americans displaced and dislodged from security because of blank checks written for growth, against no asset base except what could be conjured from the thin air and ether of financial derivatives, earning billions while losing trillions.
This is the key point of the Wades’ experience as volunteers: that the current system of economic growth allocates no debate or diversity or, even, real standing in how policies shape our communities. That is the pattern of the recent past; a record of diversion, costly fragmentation, and intimidation that turned public agencies silent when they could have been supportive of the laws that activists wanted to uphold.
This leads to leadership that none of the key Obama appointments are able to provide: only the president himself can restore the tradition and honor and scope of the contribution of volunteers to the reconstruction of the American economy along lines that both create economic opportunities and also protect the environment. He will not be able to look to Clinton-era officials for help on this score: they provided none, then, and can’t be expected to provide now.
Where, then, are those “armies of compassion” Why spend one’s years, as the Wades have done, engaged in struggles and battles and conflict, where the outcome is not based on democracy—but of the laws of predetermined outcomes? Why waste one red cent when organizing to defend a civil society has so little currency in downtown law firms, at the Chamber of Commerce, or blue ribbon panels constituted to bestow awards on each other? Why spend one’s years marginalized by well-funded opposition who control the mainstream media through paid advertisements in the real estate section, or, by paying Spanish language radio hosts under the table?
There is another light—a more positive one—through which to view these serious questions: the committment of activists like the Wades seem a mystery, but they prove it is not a passive one. The example of the Wades and others is to show for future generations of leadership that there is, indeed, a path to follow. There is a value in the process, in the engagement and the fight for a better future, and an inspiration to younger generations here and in other places where we like to advertise that democracy has taken hold and root.
It takes a village to raise a child; it takes a Depression to raze a village. Today, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put Humpty back together again: If Congress had acted less on the glad-handing of big campaign donors like Roland Arnall, of Ameriquest Mortgage, or Al Hoffman , of WCI Communities, or corporate farmers from states like Florida and paid attention to volunteers who not only objected to the “fewer rules” but fought to get the rules that existed, enforced; we would have been better off.
The Wades fought for their village as have others before them in South Florida. In the end, they learned something else from their protracted battles to enforce regulations and laws designed to protect communities and the environment from sprawl; that the laws themselves had been subject to weakening, one legislative session at a time, and that the intent of laws governing growth in Florida was left to interpretation by state administrative law judges or state court judges, appointed by the governor.
It is a considerable challenge for the Obama team, to steer the ship of state in a new direction to a future that is sustainable, economically vibrant, protective of the climate and natural resources, and restorative of democracy, itself.
The good news is that it is exactly Obama’s experience as a community organizer, early in his career, that will be most relevant to his actions. It is time for a US president to encourage a broader view of those “armies of compassion”, including the Wades who exemplify what it means to be a citizen at a time when Americans are less confident than ever about what an individual can do. For that, they stand for one thousand points of light.
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