Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Another morning walking the dog ... by gimleteye
In other parts of the country, August is the dog day of summer. Or month. Walking my dog in the pre-morning dark, the humidity reminded me that in Miami the dog days of summer are October. A film of sweat covered me before I was halfway home. I was thinking about the 1960's as I tried not to slip on the sidewalk coated with a fine algae. The flu has been the lead story in the evening news for four days running, briefly set back to number two by the deaths of American troops in Afghanistan.
I was fourteen-- 1968-- when I came down with what was later called the Hong Kong flu. Even today I have vivid memory of being ill, throwing up and sweating, dozing in and out of delirium until the fever broke. Then it was over and done with. It was the same year I came of age, politically speaking; fervently hoping Eugene McCarthy would be elected president and end a terrible war against an enemy dug into their jungles with as much determination as Afghani warriors on steep, dusty terrain slippery with scree. We are told that the Afghani people want us to succeed, that they hate the Taliban. The same was said of the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong lead by cyphers-- mysterious Asians who we knew nothing about--, until the people could no longer stand the corruption of the South Vietnamese government we supported.
A big difference with the 1960’s was brought home to me in the most recent episode of “Mad Men”. The lead-- an advertising executive, Don Draper-- is called to Rome to look at one of Conrad Hilton’s star properties, the Rome Hilton. His wife, Betty, goes along for the ride. In the summer of 1968 I was lucky to visit Rome and stayed at the Hilton Hotel with my parents. It was the best hotel in Rome, quiet, refined and new compared to the commerce and chaos on bustling Via Veneto. The Hilton was a triumphant symbol of an effervescent, youthful American culture; a point I expressed later that night on the lawn overlooking Rome with a teenage girl from Missouri I had introduced myself to, at the Hilton swimming pool earlier in the day.
“Mad Men” captures that moment of arrival. When Betty Draper nudges her husband for leaving the bell boy a tip almost handsome as he is, she says, “He probably doesn’t make two dollars a week.” And there is the difference, notwithstanding I am forty years older. Simply put, we are fighting all our wars—for health care, for national security, for economic and environmental security—on a dollar that feels more and more like the old lira, then.
I watched on TV, liberal Bill Maher ask the question, the other night, of Nobel Prize winning, NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, a writer I normally agree with on all points. In frustration, Maher asked: “Where are we going to get the money to pay for all this shit?” Krugman assured him: we are still a very wealthy nation. We still can generate a lot of wealth. I’m not so sure. Not so sure at all.
The question of the day, economically speaking, is whether we are in a “V” or a “W” recovery from this nasty Great Recession or Little Depression. But to me, most of the conversation and chatter seems to revolve around economic signals that have nothing to do with the real economy that people experience every day. How do we pay for all this shit?
This is what I was thinking as I was finishing my morning walk in the dark with my Chesapeake Bay retriever. We do it with debt and with fraud. There is nothing wrong with debt, per se. But it depends on the ability to repay. It is hard to be complacent when so many conservative standards of honest accounting have been jimmy'd and fixed. In the 1960's, the US economy was still grounded in manufacturing; making things of value that generated wealth. Now it seems we are surrounded by scams. The only fool was the one who wasn't in on the scamming.
There is Dorrin Rolle, Miami-Dade county commissioner from one of the poorest districts in the nation, enriching himself at the expense of constituents relying on the charity he headed. Voters keep returning him to office. His campaign war chest filled with money from developers and real estate interests outside his district, who need his simple vote to obtain their supermajority. There is the county commission, funding a lawsuit against the State of Florida in defense of a new Lowe’s Department Store that would be built outside the Urban Development Boundary in West Dade. The liars and thieves of the public interest need the Lowe’s to fuel more suburban sprawl outside the UDB. For Lowe's continuing to push is a minor, petty cost of doing business even if the business model has been crushed by economic reality.
A county lawsuit against the state for rejecting Lowe's is a total waste of taxpayer dollars, but it does serve to reinforce the pecking order at County Hall. Voters are clueless, or, simply assume that when times are fat, the thieves are fatter. When times are bad, the thieves are hungrier than they are, fat. It is not what voters want. Yet voters keep returning the same unreformable majority of the county commission to office.
Just yesterday, Mayor Carlos Alvarez sent the county commissioners a request to abandon continued expense and support of an application for a zoning change that the state has rejected. Good for him. And FPL still wants to build $20 billion in nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, surrounded by ghost suburbs and the detritus of the building boom and the worst politics in a century. Who will pay for that?
I was fourteen-- 1968-- when I came down with what was later called the Hong Kong flu. Even today I have vivid memory of being ill, throwing up and sweating, dozing in and out of delirium until the fever broke. Then it was over and done with. It was the same year I came of age, politically speaking; fervently hoping Eugene McCarthy would be elected president and end a terrible war against an enemy dug into their jungles with as much determination as Afghani warriors on steep, dusty terrain slippery with scree. We are told that the Afghani people want us to succeed, that they hate the Taliban. The same was said of the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong lead by cyphers-- mysterious Asians who we knew nothing about--, until the people could no longer stand the corruption of the South Vietnamese government we supported.
A big difference with the 1960’s was brought home to me in the most recent episode of “Mad Men”. The lead-- an advertising executive, Don Draper-- is called to Rome to look at one of Conrad Hilton’s star properties, the Rome Hilton. His wife, Betty, goes along for the ride. In the summer of 1968 I was lucky to visit Rome and stayed at the Hilton Hotel with my parents. It was the best hotel in Rome, quiet, refined and new compared to the commerce and chaos on bustling Via Veneto. The Hilton was a triumphant symbol of an effervescent, youthful American culture; a point I expressed later that night on the lawn overlooking Rome with a teenage girl from Missouri I had introduced myself to, at the Hilton swimming pool earlier in the day.
“Mad Men” captures that moment of arrival. When Betty Draper nudges her husband for leaving the bell boy a tip almost handsome as he is, she says, “He probably doesn’t make two dollars a week.” And there is the difference, notwithstanding I am forty years older. Simply put, we are fighting all our wars—for health care, for national security, for economic and environmental security—on a dollar that feels more and more like the old lira, then.
I watched on TV, liberal Bill Maher ask the question, the other night, of Nobel Prize winning, NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, a writer I normally agree with on all points. In frustration, Maher asked: “Where are we going to get the money to pay for all this shit?” Krugman assured him: we are still a very wealthy nation. We still can generate a lot of wealth. I’m not so sure. Not so sure at all.
The question of the day, economically speaking, is whether we are in a “V” or a “W” recovery from this nasty Great Recession or Little Depression. But to me, most of the conversation and chatter seems to revolve around economic signals that have nothing to do with the real economy that people experience every day. How do we pay for all this shit?
This is what I was thinking as I was finishing my morning walk in the dark with my Chesapeake Bay retriever. We do it with debt and with fraud. There is nothing wrong with debt, per se. But it depends on the ability to repay. It is hard to be complacent when so many conservative standards of honest accounting have been jimmy'd and fixed. In the 1960's, the US economy was still grounded in manufacturing; making things of value that generated wealth. Now it seems we are surrounded by scams. The only fool was the one who wasn't in on the scamming.
There is Dorrin Rolle, Miami-Dade county commissioner from one of the poorest districts in the nation, enriching himself at the expense of constituents relying on the charity he headed. Voters keep returning him to office. His campaign war chest filled with money from developers and real estate interests outside his district, who need his simple vote to obtain their supermajority. There is the county commission, funding a lawsuit against the State of Florida in defense of a new Lowe’s Department Store that would be built outside the Urban Development Boundary in West Dade. The liars and thieves of the public interest need the Lowe’s to fuel more suburban sprawl outside the UDB. For Lowe's continuing to push is a minor, petty cost of doing business even if the business model has been crushed by economic reality.
A county lawsuit against the state for rejecting Lowe's is a total waste of taxpayer dollars, but it does serve to reinforce the pecking order at County Hall. Voters are clueless, or, simply assume that when times are fat, the thieves are fatter. When times are bad, the thieves are hungrier than they are, fat. It is not what voters want. Yet voters keep returning the same unreformable majority of the county commission to office.
Just yesterday, Mayor Carlos Alvarez sent the county commissioners a request to abandon continued expense and support of an application for a zoning change that the state has rejected. Good for him. And FPL still wants to build $20 billion in nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, surrounded by ghost suburbs and the detritus of the building boom and the worst politics in a century. Who will pay for that?
Foreclosures: You have to have heart - except judges hearing them. By Geniusofdespair
Here is an opinion from the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami where they chastised trial judge, Valerie Mano, for showing compassion to a couple losing their home to foreclosure. How do you feel about a judge who has the capacity to show some heart to people who are suffering?
Here is what Judge Mano said:
I was trying to make everybody happy.
....
We have so many foreclosures here and I give continuances on these sales. I just do.
....
Unless it is so abundantly clear to me that it is just an abuse of the process, I give extensions on these because I don't want anybody to lose their house. If there is any chance that he can do this deal, get the money and try to save this home, you know, people are having a hard time now. They are having a difficult time. Everybody knows it. Businesses are failing. People are losing money in the stock market. You know, unemployment is high. It's just everybody knows that we are in a bad time right now and I hate to see anybody lose their home.
Here is what I say:
Here is what the Appellate Judges said:
In this regard, we note the cautionary words of Justice Cardozo concerning the discretionary power of judges:
The judge, even when he is free, is still not wholly free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight-errant roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness. He is to draw his inspiration from consecrated principles. He is not to yield to spasmodic sentiment, to vague and unregulated benevolence. He is to exercise a discretion informed by tradition, methodized by analogy, disciplined by system, and subordinated to "the primordial necessity of order in the social life." Wide enough in all conscience is the field of discretion that remains.
B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 141 (1921).
Here is what Judge Mano said:
I was trying to make everybody happy.
....
We have so many foreclosures here and I give continuances on these sales. I just do.
....
Unless it is so abundantly clear to me that it is just an abuse of the process, I give extensions on these because I don't want anybody to lose their house. If there is any chance that he can do this deal, get the money and try to save this home, you know, people are having a hard time now. They are having a difficult time. Everybody knows it. Businesses are failing. People are losing money in the stock market. You know, unemployment is high. It's just everybody knows that we are in a bad time right now and I hate to see anybody lose their home.
Here is what I say:
Here is what the Appellate Judges said:
In this regard, we note the cautionary words of Justice Cardozo concerning the discretionary power of judges:
The judge, even when he is free, is still not wholly free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight-errant roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness. He is to draw his inspiration from consecrated principles. He is not to yield to spasmodic sentiment, to vague and unregulated benevolence. He is to exercise a discretion informed by tradition, methodized by analogy, disciplined by system, and subordinated to "the primordial necessity of order in the social life." Wide enough in all conscience is the field of discretion that remains.
B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 141 (1921).
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
JESCA: It's Back! By Geniusofdespair
County Commissioner Rolle's former cash cow JESCA is in the news again. I complained bitterly for a long time that a lot of questionable charities were getting our tax dollars from the County. My complaint was centered on that the Inspector General was suppose to be doing random audits on charities/non-profits on the discretionary giving list but was told by the IG Office that NO AUDITS HAD EVER BEEN DONE.Well, it appears the Inspector General FINALLY did an audit of Jesca and here are some of the results (also note: as JESCA went down the tubes, Rolle became one of the richest County Commissioner, worth over a $1,000,000):
Under Miami-Dade Commissioner Dorrin D. Rolle's watch, the James E. Scott Community Association raided employee retirement accounts and diverted charity funds to pay executive salaries and other operating costs, the county's Office of Inspector General found.
The questionable financial maneuvers -- orchestrated in 2006 and 2007 while Rolle was earning nearly $200,000 annually as the charity's chief executive officer -- are prohibited under typical agreements between JESCA and public agencies that fund its programs.
The commingling of funds, detailed in a report issued Friday by Miami-Dade Inspector General Christopher Mazzella, has also caught the attention of prosecutors. Ed Griffith, spokesman for Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, said his office is ``presently reviewing the matter.''
The report sheds new light on JESCA's collapse under the leadership of Rolle, who took over the agency in 1992. He was elected to his County Hall post six years later.
Net worth history of Dorrin Rolle: Dorrin Rolle 6/30/09 - $1,021,184, 6/30/08 - $1,113,254, 6/30/06 - $1,557,461, 6/30/05 - $1,072,851, 6/30/04 - $997,040. (In ‘06 he made $161,000 from Jesca, he made a whopping $190,000 from Jesca in ‘08.)
When are we going to learn? By Geniusofdespair
I am alarmed this week. The Herald reported that autism is found in a staggering 1 in 100 births way above the estimate of 1 in 150 they expected and they also reported on a suspected cancer cluster (brain tumors) in Palm Beach. There will be 192,370 new cases of breast cancer in 2009 according to the American Cancer Society. I reported yesterday that proximity to power lines is now suspected in cases of Alzheimer's and dementia. Alzheimer's is growing in numbers, every 70 seconds someone develops it according to the Alzheimer's Association that provided the graphic above. Florida is expecting between a 49% to 8l% increase in Alzheimer's between 2000 and 2025.
In a back page of the Miami Herald a few weeks ago they reported an AP story that said: one out of five male black bass in American River basins have egg cells growing inside their sexual organs, a sign of how widespread fish feminizing has become.
What is it going to take to get us to take action on reducing environmental factors? Each and every thing I mentioned has an environmental component and each is getting much worse.
My Quest to Become an Underwater Photographer. By Geniusofdespair
My underwater shots are pretty much in a league with my above ground shots...bad. Here are the only 4 that turned out, that is out of 27. On to a new hobby. These all were taken off Tahiti Beach in Biscayne Bay, at least the varied colors are nice and it is good to know fish still exist in Biscayne Bay: 
This last one is pretty bad so I didn't count it:
Monday, October 05, 2009
Paul Krugman: The Politics of Spite
Republicans, rooting against America. Here is the Krugman OPED from today's NY Times, in its entirety, or, click 'read more':
October 5, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Politics of Spite
By PAUL KRUGMAN
There was what President Obama likes to call a teachable moment last week, when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games.
“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.
So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.
But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.
To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences — in particular, in the debate over health care reform.
Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.
But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.
The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.
Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs.
But the Obama administration’s plan to expand coverage relies in part on savings from Medicare. And since the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama, it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.
How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?
The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.
Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.
The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.
The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.
It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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October 5, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Politics of Spite
By PAUL KRUGMAN
There was what President Obama likes to call a teachable moment last week, when the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago’s bid to be host of the 2016 Summer Games.
“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.
So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.
But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.
To be sure, while celebrating America’s rebuff by the Olympic Committee was puerile, it didn’t do any real harm. But the same principle of spite has determined Republican positions on more serious matters, with potentially serious consequences — in particular, in the debate over health care reform.
Now, it’s understandable that many Republicans oppose Democratic plans to extend insurance coverage — just as most Democrats opposed President Bush’s attempt to convert Social Security into a sort of giant 401(k). The two parties do, after all, have different philosophies about the appropriate role of government.
But the tactics of the two parties have been different. In 2005, when Democrats campaigned against Social Security privatization, their arguments were consistent with their underlying ideology: they argued that replacing guaranteed benefits with private accounts would expose retirees to too much risk.
The Republican campaign against health care reform, by contrast, has shown no such consistency. For the main G.O.P. line of attack is the claim — based mainly on lies about death panels and so on — that reform will undermine Medicare. And this line of attack is utterly at odds both with the party’s traditions and with what conservatives claim to believe.
Think about just how bizarre it is for Republicans to position themselves as the defenders of unrestricted Medicare spending. First of all, the modern G.O.P. considers itself the party of Ronald Reagan — and Reagan was a fierce opponent of Medicare’s creation, warning that it would destroy American freedom. (Honest.) In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich tried to force drastic cuts in Medicare financing. And in recent years, Republicans have repeatedly decried the growth in entitlement spending — growth that is largely driven by rising health care costs.
But the Obama administration’s plan to expand coverage relies in part on savings from Medicare. And since the G.O.P. opposes anything that might be good for Mr. Obama, it has become the passionate defender of ineffective medical procedures and overpayments to insurance companies.
How did one of our great political parties become so ruthless, so willing to embrace scorched-earth tactics even if so doing undermines the ability of any future administration to govern?
The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.
Anyone surprised by the venomous, over-the-top opposition to Mr. Obama must have forgotten the Clinton years. Remember when Rush Limbaugh suggested that Hillary Clinton was a party to murder? When Newt Gingrich shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those Medicare cuts? And let’s not even talk about the impeachment saga.
The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.
The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.
It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Privacy Policy Terms of Service Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map
Daily life in Miami: a parochial state? by gimleteye
This weekend Miami Herald editorial writer Ana Veciana-Suarez wrote about the paradox of living in Miami, and continuing to do so despite all the problems of a place that burned its quality of life by worshipping at the altar of development. Those are my words, not hers.
Here is what she said, "Yes, traffic is horrible, summer insufferable and the cost of living too high, but this is home. My children and grandchildren live here, as do my father and dozens of other relatives." The writer ponders, as I do, the results of a recent Gallup poll funded by the Knight Foundation that claims, "... despite its many warts, Miami had a bigger jump in community attachment over the past year than the other big cites surveyed. This despite a harsh recession, a battered real estate market and enough political shenanigans to fuel several new Carl Hiaasen novels."
The Foundation report, "Soul of the Community", says the increase in positive feelings about community "... was largest amongst African-Americans, those living in lower-income, urban areas." That is interesting, because it is also the demographic that is hardest hit by the worst economy since the Depression. To what does one attribute this reported phenomenon? The Knight Foundation study doesn't explain.
Another study by Children's Health Magazine, out of 100 urban areas rated for "the best and worst places to raise a family", ranks Miami at 99. We're better than Detroit. Its metrics aren't available ("We considered more than 30 factors that parents deem vitally important, including crime and safety, education, economics, housing, cultural attractions, and health. When we crunched the numbers, these were the cities that best complemented family life."), but having raised three children in Miami, I can tell you this is a very, very tough place. Despite our living here, I'm not sure my children are coming back. Jobs? Traffic congestion makes us virtual prisoners in our neighborhoods. If you don't have access to nearby parks, places to play, the beach; it is very expensive in terms of time to get from here to there. Miami's newest suburbs are desperately fragile and dismaying places, too. The poverty of landscape, imagination, and politics seems to cry out from every strip mall and thrown-together subdivision.
Veciana's editorial concludes, "When others talk about pulling up stakes, I wonder: Won't you miss stopping at a friend's to shoot the breeze on Saturday afternoon? Can you really forgo the easy jaunt across the highway to check up on a new grandbaby? I've never been a great adventurer, the kind to push into uncharted territory with only a new job and an open address book in hand. For some of us, the best discoveries wait just around the corner, where appreciation makes the old seem new again."
What does that mean? It is a serious question, and I don't ask it to be cynical or snarky. One of Miami's biggest problems is parochialism. Beneath all the glitz and glamor the spin doctors have created out of South Florida, Miami is virtually defined by its parochialism: love family and God and don't care so much what happens in the outside world, or outside your block, neighborhood or district. Maybe I'm misreading Veciana, but I have my own experience to speak. I'm sure our readers have other opinions, and I'd like to hear them.
Here is what she said, "Yes, traffic is horrible, summer insufferable and the cost of living too high, but this is home. My children and grandchildren live here, as do my father and dozens of other relatives." The writer ponders, as I do, the results of a recent Gallup poll funded by the Knight Foundation that claims, "... despite its many warts, Miami had a bigger jump in community attachment over the past year than the other big cites surveyed. This despite a harsh recession, a battered real estate market and enough political shenanigans to fuel several new Carl Hiaasen novels."
The Foundation report, "Soul of the Community", says the increase in positive feelings about community "... was largest amongst African-Americans, those living in lower-income, urban areas." That is interesting, because it is also the demographic that is hardest hit by the worst economy since the Depression. To what does one attribute this reported phenomenon? The Knight Foundation study doesn't explain.
Another study by Children's Health Magazine, out of 100 urban areas rated for "the best and worst places to raise a family", ranks Miami at 99. We're better than Detroit. Its metrics aren't available ("We considered more than 30 factors that parents deem vitally important, including crime and safety, education, economics, housing, cultural attractions, and health. When we crunched the numbers, these were the cities that best complemented family life."), but having raised three children in Miami, I can tell you this is a very, very tough place. Despite our living here, I'm not sure my children are coming back. Jobs? Traffic congestion makes us virtual prisoners in our neighborhoods. If you don't have access to nearby parks, places to play, the beach; it is very expensive in terms of time to get from here to there. Miami's newest suburbs are desperately fragile and dismaying places, too. The poverty of landscape, imagination, and politics seems to cry out from every strip mall and thrown-together subdivision.
Veciana's editorial concludes, "When others talk about pulling up stakes, I wonder: Won't you miss stopping at a friend's to shoot the breeze on Saturday afternoon? Can you really forgo the easy jaunt across the highway to check up on a new grandbaby? I've never been a great adventurer, the kind to push into uncharted territory with only a new job and an open address book in hand. For some of us, the best discoveries wait just around the corner, where appreciation makes the old seem new again."
What does that mean? It is a serious question, and I don't ask it to be cynical or snarky. One of Miami's biggest problems is parochialism. Beneath all the glitz and glamor the spin doctors have created out of South Florida, Miami is virtually defined by its parochialism: love family and God and don't care so much what happens in the outside world, or outside your block, neighborhood or district. Maybe I'm misreading Veciana, but I have my own experience to speak. I'm sure our readers have other opinions, and I'd like to hear them.
Power Lines: New Threat Surfaces in Peer Reviewed Study. By Geniusofdespair
Elevated childhood leukemia is not not the only danger from power lines' magnetic fields. A new peer-reviewed Swiss study shows elevation of Alzheimers and Senile Dementia among people living hear electric transmission lines similar to the ones that FPL is proposing in areas around South Miami, Palmetto Bay and also Doral. FPL has already placed these high tension line down 135 St., in a residential neighborhood in North Miami. The study looked at people living within about 160 feet of these lines. Also, the longer a person lives near the lines the worse it is. The study authors say: "Conclusions: The results of our study support the hypothesis that magnetic field exposure plays a role in the etiology of Alzheimer’s disease and senile dementia." The study did not address buried lines as there is only .8% on the grid in Switzerland. Study: (Published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) 
Excerpt from study:Research on the long-term effects of extremely low fre-
quency magnetic fields (ELF-MF) has focused on cancer since
Wertheimer and Leeper (1) published their results on child-
hood cancer and wiring configurations in 1979. In 2001, the
International Agency for Research on Cancer classified expo-
sure to residential magnetic fields above 0.4 lT as a ‘‘possible’’
cause of childhood leukemia (2). For noncancer endpoints, an
initial report by Sobel et al. (3) on occupational ELF-MF
exposure and Alzheimer’s disease suggested that the risk
could be substantial. Studies published subsequently have
produced inconsistent results, but a recent meta-analysis (4)
reported elevated risks in cohort, as well as case-control, stud-
ies. A recent review of the evidence for an association between
ELF-MF and Alzheimer’s disease by the World Health Orga-
nization (5) concluded that the available data were inadequate,
and the topic was identified as a key research priority.
To our knowledge, no study has so far examined whether
residential exposure from power lines is associated with an
elevated risk of neurodegenerative diseases. Even a small
association could be of high public health relevance, since
a considerable number of persons are exposed to these
fields. For example, 9.2% of the Swiss population live
within 600 m of a 220 or 380 kV power line. We used the
Swiss National Cohort, a longitudinal study of the Swiss
population (6), to investigate whether living in the vicinity
of power lines was associated with mortality from neuro-
degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, senile
dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple
sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease.
Marco Rubio on the Cheap. by Geniusofdespair
Marco was speaking in Venice Florida recently. The sign they used was badly recycled from Vern Buchanan's campaign. This was actually posted on line by Marco Rubio Sept. 12th, on a twitter page.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Florida's Newspaper Editorial Boards on Growth: Blinded by confusion ... by gimleteye
Last week I criticized The Miami Herald editorial board for its Everglades "progress" piece. Most offensive: that the board cast blame for pollution to Orlando, failing to mention pollution coming straight off Miami Dade farmland and suburbs. Something about casting the beam out of your own eye; and then shall you see clearly to cast out the mote out of your brother's eye.
In a separate post, we credited Orlando Sentinel editorial writer Mike Thomas for an editorial that argued, almost as hard as we do at Eyeonmiami, for support of Florida Hometown Democracy. Now the Sentinel editorial board has responded-- perhaps to an avalanche of criticism from the Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries-- with an opinion against Florida Hometown Democracy. In this case it is not casting the beam out of one's own eye, it is simply not lifting one's head up to see what the neighbor is doing.
Wrong RX for Growth Woes; there's a better way than Florida Hometown Democracy. proposed that the answer to Florida Hometown Democracy is-- eureka!--a supermajority vote of local government to change local growth plans. Well, fancy that.
The supermajority vote, requiring approval of 2/3rds and not a simple majority, to change comprehensive growth plans is already in place in Miami-Dade and doesn't work very well at all. Where there is a lot of developer and land speculator money, as there often is in changes to the Urban Development Boundary for instance, those final votes to achieve a supermajority always go the wrong way. Strange, isn't it? It is why we call the majority of the Miami Dade County Commission, "unreformable".
We have noted the influence of big campaign contributions to commission members from outside their single member districts: it is de facto payola for 'yes' votes, to get a supermajority, on comprehensive land use map changes. (Check out blog archive; corruption, Rolle, UDB.) You would think that inner city commissioners, especially, would be loathe to vote for changes that impose tax burdens on poor constituents for new suburban infrastructure costs, and, you would be wrong.
A year ago, the development lobby in Miami-Dade floated an idea that if community activists would drop opposition to development outside the UDB all the way to Krome Avenue; the western fringe, that it would tolerate a "unanimous" decision to move the UDB further. You see: they know that supermajorities are relatively easy to move with money, and, they own land purchased at highly speculative values (cf. Parkland, Krome Gold Partners). Enough. It's Sunday. Maybe by next Sunday, the Orlando Sentinel editorial board will research Miami-Dade's experience with political pollution and come up with a better idea to oppose Florida Hometown Democracy. Maybe The Miami Herald editorial board will reconsider its own omissions before casting blame in other directions on Everglades restoration. In both cases, the reasoning is just plain wrong.
orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edped-hometown-democracy-100309100409oct04,0,6285576.story
OrlandoSentinel.com
Wrong Rx for growth woes
The gist: There's a better way than Hometown Democracy (check Campaign Contributions)
October 4, 2009
We're as angry and exasperated as anyone when it comes to how readily officials throughout Florida trample local growth plans. The plans are supposed to reflect a community's vision of how — or even whether — it wishes to grow. But at the behest of developers, and frequently against residents' wishes, they're stomped on by city and county commissioners as many as 12,000 times a year.
No wonder Hometown Democracy, a grass roots movement cultivated by land-use attorneys Lesley Blackner and Ross Burnaman, got enough public support for a 2010 ballot to alter that landscape. It would require public votes on any changes to local growth plans.
If it passes, local officials couldn't grease corpulent developments past land-use restrictions that don't allow them. They couldn't plop 23,000 homes somewhere in Volusia and Brevard counties — the so-called Farmton Plan — when those counties' growth plans don't include them. They couldn't — unless voters say they could.
Something's needed to get officials to honor growth-management plans. And Hometown Democracy appears an earnest, provocative and intriguing way of making them do so.
But we can't support it. Hometown Democracy is far from the panacea it's cracked up to be. And it's not even the best balm on the market.
Yes, the burden to local officials of placing land-use changes on the ballot might impose some self-discipline. But still thousands would likely come to a public vote. And at a grievous cost.
One casualty would likely be the informed voter. Hometown Democracy's advocates say residents could end up voting on plan amendments just once or twice a year, when other elections are held.
But imagine. Even if the Hometown Democracy cudgel gets officials to put 4,000 instead of 12,000 amendments on the ballot, voters in some counties or cities could still have to weigh the merits of six, 12, 24 or more land-use amendments.Informed voters wouldn't just have to navigate the ballot's pedantic land-use language; they'd have to suffer months of electioneering by those wanting their vote. And because developers would almost always trump grass roots organizations in spending, they'd stand a good chance of winning anyway.
The cost to local governments of including the land-use amendments on ballots would soar into the millions. And it would pain Floridians who vote absentee. A ballot that now costs about 90 cents in postage could triple when weighted down by more amendments.
There's a better way.
While time remains before the 2010 election, state lawmakers should pass a law making it impossible for local commissions to alter their land-use plans without a super-majority vote. Far fewer proposals would clear that higher hurdle — four votes on a five-member commission, five votes on a seven-member council. That would keep decisions in the hands of those we elect to make decisions, while acknowledging that it ought to be more difficult to change a planning blueprint than to pass a resolution honoring Boy Scouts.
Do that, and lawmakers could eliminate the strongest justification for putting plan amendments in voters' hands.
Do nothing, as they've done so often, and lawmakers have only themselves to blame for what might happen when voters go to the polls.
Saturday's results
Our editorial: Panel should consider if the county needs to switch to a strong mayor.
Thumbs up: XX%
Thumbs down: XX%
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel
In a separate post, we credited Orlando Sentinel editorial writer Mike Thomas for an editorial that argued, almost as hard as we do at Eyeonmiami, for support of Florida Hometown Democracy. Now the Sentinel editorial board has responded-- perhaps to an avalanche of criticism from the Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries-- with an opinion against Florida Hometown Democracy. In this case it is not casting the beam out of one's own eye, it is simply not lifting one's head up to see what the neighbor is doing.
Wrong RX for Growth Woes; there's a better way than Florida Hometown Democracy. proposed that the answer to Florida Hometown Democracy is-- eureka!--a supermajority vote of local government to change local growth plans. Well, fancy that.
The supermajority vote, requiring approval of 2/3rds and not a simple majority, to change comprehensive growth plans is already in place in Miami-Dade and doesn't work very well at all. Where there is a lot of developer and land speculator money, as there often is in changes to the Urban Development Boundary for instance, those final votes to achieve a supermajority always go the wrong way. Strange, isn't it? It is why we call the majority of the Miami Dade County Commission, "unreformable".
We have noted the influence of big campaign contributions to commission members from outside their single member districts: it is de facto payola for 'yes' votes, to get a supermajority, on comprehensive land use map changes. (Check out blog archive; corruption, Rolle, UDB.) You would think that inner city commissioners, especially, would be loathe to vote for changes that impose tax burdens on poor constituents for new suburban infrastructure costs, and, you would be wrong.
A year ago, the development lobby in Miami-Dade floated an idea that if community activists would drop opposition to development outside the UDB all the way to Krome Avenue; the western fringe, that it would tolerate a "unanimous" decision to move the UDB further. You see: they know that supermajorities are relatively easy to move with money, and, they own land purchased at highly speculative values (cf. Parkland, Krome Gold Partners). Enough. It's Sunday. Maybe by next Sunday, the Orlando Sentinel editorial board will research Miami-Dade's experience with political pollution and come up with a better idea to oppose Florida Hometown Democracy. Maybe The Miami Herald editorial board will reconsider its own omissions before casting blame in other directions on Everglades restoration. In both cases, the reasoning is just plain wrong.
orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edped-hometown-democracy-100309100409oct04,0,6285576.story
OrlandoSentinel.com
Wrong Rx for growth woes
The gist: There's a better way than Hometown Democracy (check Campaign Contributions)
October 4, 2009
We're as angry and exasperated as anyone when it comes to how readily officials throughout Florida trample local growth plans. The plans are supposed to reflect a community's vision of how — or even whether — it wishes to grow. But at the behest of developers, and frequently against residents' wishes, they're stomped on by city and county commissioners as many as 12,000 times a year.
No wonder Hometown Democracy, a grass roots movement cultivated by land-use attorneys Lesley Blackner and Ross Burnaman, got enough public support for a 2010 ballot to alter that landscape. It would require public votes on any changes to local growth plans.
If it passes, local officials couldn't grease corpulent developments past land-use restrictions that don't allow them. They couldn't plop 23,000 homes somewhere in Volusia and Brevard counties — the so-called Farmton Plan — when those counties' growth plans don't include them. They couldn't — unless voters say they could.
Something's needed to get officials to honor growth-management plans. And Hometown Democracy appears an earnest, provocative and intriguing way of making them do so.
But we can't support it. Hometown Democracy is far from the panacea it's cracked up to be. And it's not even the best balm on the market.
Yes, the burden to local officials of placing land-use changes on the ballot might impose some self-discipline. But still thousands would likely come to a public vote. And at a grievous cost.
One casualty would likely be the informed voter. Hometown Democracy's advocates say residents could end up voting on plan amendments just once or twice a year, when other elections are held.
But imagine. Even if the Hometown Democracy cudgel gets officials to put 4,000 instead of 12,000 amendments on the ballot, voters in some counties or cities could still have to weigh the merits of six, 12, 24 or more land-use amendments.Informed voters wouldn't just have to navigate the ballot's pedantic land-use language; they'd have to suffer months of electioneering by those wanting their vote. And because developers would almost always trump grass roots organizations in spending, they'd stand a good chance of winning anyway.
The cost to local governments of including the land-use amendments on ballots would soar into the millions. And it would pain Floridians who vote absentee. A ballot that now costs about 90 cents in postage could triple when weighted down by more amendments.
There's a better way.
While time remains before the 2010 election, state lawmakers should pass a law making it impossible for local commissions to alter their land-use plans without a super-majority vote. Far fewer proposals would clear that higher hurdle — four votes on a five-member commission, five votes on a seven-member council. That would keep decisions in the hands of those we elect to make decisions, while acknowledging that it ought to be more difficult to change a planning blueprint than to pass a resolution honoring Boy Scouts.
Do that, and lawmakers could eliminate the strongest justification for putting plan amendments in voters' hands.
Do nothing, as they've done so often, and lawmakers have only themselves to blame for what might happen when voters go to the polls.
Saturday's results
Our editorial: Panel should consider if the county needs to switch to a strong mayor.
Thumbs up: XX%
Thumbs down: XX%
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel
So You Want to Be a Park Ranger? By Geniusofdespair
After seeing that National Park Documentary by Ken Burns, what kid wouldn't want to grow up to be a Park Ranger? Do you think any kids watched it? Well, there is an opening at Biscayne National Park. You get a neat uniform and a salary range of $49,225 - $63,993. Beware job seekers, they require a "Pre-Employment Background Investigation." Here are your duties:
The incumbent works with park and park partner staff and volunteers to plan, coordinate, and implement collaboratively developed special events. Assist park staff in planning and managing public use of park resources, including working with non-NPS entities such as volunteers, concessionaires, permit holders and commercial activities in the park to insure non-degradation of park resources while enhancing visitor understanding and enjoyment of these resources, specifically leading up to the 2010 BioBlitz event.
Develops and implements community outreach, partnership, and education programs and activities. Assists the park staff in developing and implementing a BioBlitz outreach plan and proactively represents the park to the print and broadcast media as a means of connecting the public nationwide to Biscayne and helping the public to understand National Park Service resources, mission, and regulations.
The incumbent works with park and park partner staff and volunteers to plan, coordinate, and implement collaboratively developed special events. Assist park staff in planning and managing public use of park resources, including working with non-NPS entities such as volunteers, concessionaires, permit holders and commercial activities in the park to insure non-degradation of park resources while enhancing visitor understanding and enjoyment of these resources, specifically leading up to the 2010 BioBlitz event.
Develops and implements community outreach, partnership, and education programs and activities. Assists the park staff in developing and implementing a BioBlitz outreach plan and proactively represents the park to the print and broadcast media as a means of connecting the public nationwide to Biscayne and helping the public to understand National Park Service resources, mission, and regulations.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Just being there: here Comes the EPA on the Urban Development Boundary ... by gimleteye
On October 15th, a long-postponed "workshop" involving planners and independent contractors lined up by the U.S. EPA will review policies related to the Urban Development Boundary. The EPA is coming in at the invitation of the Miami Dade County Commission. It will be an open public meeting; dismal as the case may be.
For the main part Miami-Dade's Urban Development Boundary policy-- crafted by skilled professional planners-- has endured assaults by the development community. Never more intensely than during the late, great building boom now crashed in cinders. Recall, for example, the dog-and-pony show powerpoint presentation trotted out to the Chamber of Commerce and other downtown business groups in 2005-- with Neisen Kasdin, Jeffrey Bercow, Andy Dolkart, and others-- showing graphs and statistics of "inevitable" population explosion in Miami-Dade and claims against county planners who sat quietly and spoke softly with no one in a position of authority to defend them, except at other times by County Commissioners Katy Sorenson, Carlos Gimenez, and Mayor Carlos Alvarez.
The Growth Machine just nodded its collective head in murmuring assent: all growth is good. All tax base increase is good. And, of course: without economic development you can't protect the environment.
I'm not certain of the origin of the idea to summon the EPA to review Miami-Dade's growth policies. If I were to guess, it seemed a good idea to developers-- frustrated by the conflict as applications to move the UDB helped to organize opposition against their own favored like Natacha Seijas and Pepe Diaz and Joe Martinez. Call in the EPA. Why not. The strange part of this desire to "seek" independent advice is that the county commission, in respect to applications to change the UDB, has routinely off-loaded decisions to state government, or shelved advice, whether from outside sources like the Urban Land Institute or advisory committees and exhaustive reports.
The builders and land speculators always get the last word. That is why Bob Traurig (a founding partner of the "environmental land use" law firm, Greenberg Traurig) used to show up at zoning hearings, sitting in one of the back rows. He rarely got up to speak. He didn't need to. The unreformable majority of county commissioners knew exactly who and what he represented, just being there.
In the last session of the legislature, Republicans passed SB 360 to "streamline" zoning and permitting new large scale development. What the Republican legislature wanted, and what Gov. Crist signed into law, was to put the burden of growth management decisions on local government. What a clusterfuck it turns out to be, there. Time and again, the county commission boots developer applications (that they favor) to Tallahassee for review. Passing the buck is so routine that groups like "Hold The Line" have become thoroughly inured to the pretense of "public hearings" required by law on big zoning issues. (In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a founding member and proposed the name, 'Hold The Line'.) To individual developers, the frustration of complying with burdensome and lengthy reviews, including the cost of consultants by the bucketful, the price is palpable. But to the cumulative result of this awful shell game is wetlands paved by tens of thousands of acres, "mitigation" banks serving fraudsters, wealth creation at the expense of the public, ghost town suburbs, and Growth Machine that burned its bearings.
In the Obama administration, federal agencies like the EPA are apparently protected from the worst forms of industry interference. That is the President's promise. No longer controlled by political hacks placed within sub-Cabinet level positions of authority, still EPA career employees must be suffering their own Post Traumatic Stress Disease.
For the most part, over the past twenty years, the EPA has deferred to Florida. That could change.
Now that the state has washed its hands of growth management, it will be interesting to watch a federal agency that has been whip-sawed by politics offer "advice" on growth policies at the local level that all boil down in the end to which lobbyists are sitting in the front row of commission chambers, arms locked with politicians higher up the food chain. (Who can forget Julio Robaina, Raul Martinez, Sergio Pino, and Armando Codina all sitting together at the county commission in the first row for the last move of the UDB in Hialeah, with the Graham Company representatives sitting meekly a few rows behind while the Cuban American developers did the heavy lifting?)
It has happened so many times, there really is no point reiterating the phenomenon except to say it is not so different from what happens to the turtles sticking up their heads when my Chesapeake Bay retriever jumps into the pond to chase a stick: they know exactly how to retract their necks and sink out of sight to live another day.
For the main part Miami-Dade's Urban Development Boundary policy-- crafted by skilled professional planners-- has endured assaults by the development community. Never more intensely than during the late, great building boom now crashed in cinders. Recall, for example, the dog-and-pony show powerpoint presentation trotted out to the Chamber of Commerce and other downtown business groups in 2005-- with Neisen Kasdin, Jeffrey Bercow, Andy Dolkart, and others-- showing graphs and statistics of "inevitable" population explosion in Miami-Dade and claims against county planners who sat quietly and spoke softly with no one in a position of authority to defend them, except at other times by County Commissioners Katy Sorenson, Carlos Gimenez, and Mayor Carlos Alvarez.
The Growth Machine just nodded its collective head in murmuring assent: all growth is good. All tax base increase is good. And, of course: without economic development you can't protect the environment.
I'm not certain of the origin of the idea to summon the EPA to review Miami-Dade's growth policies. If I were to guess, it seemed a good idea to developers-- frustrated by the conflict as applications to move the UDB helped to organize opposition against their own favored like Natacha Seijas and Pepe Diaz and Joe Martinez. Call in the EPA. Why not. The strange part of this desire to "seek" independent advice is that the county commission, in respect to applications to change the UDB, has routinely off-loaded decisions to state government, or shelved advice, whether from outside sources like the Urban Land Institute or advisory committees and exhaustive reports.
The builders and land speculators always get the last word. That is why Bob Traurig (a founding partner of the "environmental land use" law firm, Greenberg Traurig) used to show up at zoning hearings, sitting in one of the back rows. He rarely got up to speak. He didn't need to. The unreformable majority of county commissioners knew exactly who and what he represented, just being there.
In the last session of the legislature, Republicans passed SB 360 to "streamline" zoning and permitting new large scale development. What the Republican legislature wanted, and what Gov. Crist signed into law, was to put the burden of growth management decisions on local government. What a clusterfuck it turns out to be, there. Time and again, the county commission boots developer applications (that they favor) to Tallahassee for review. Passing the buck is so routine that groups like "Hold The Line" have become thoroughly inured to the pretense of "public hearings" required by law on big zoning issues. (In the interests of full disclosure, I'm a founding member and proposed the name, 'Hold The Line'.) To individual developers, the frustration of complying with burdensome and lengthy reviews, including the cost of consultants by the bucketful, the price is palpable. But to the cumulative result of this awful shell game is wetlands paved by tens of thousands of acres, "mitigation" banks serving fraudsters, wealth creation at the expense of the public, ghost town suburbs, and Growth Machine that burned its bearings.
In the Obama administration, federal agencies like the EPA are apparently protected from the worst forms of industry interference. That is the President's promise. No longer controlled by political hacks placed within sub-Cabinet level positions of authority, still EPA career employees must be suffering their own Post Traumatic Stress Disease.
For the most part, over the past twenty years, the EPA has deferred to Florida. That could change.
Now that the state has washed its hands of growth management, it will be interesting to watch a federal agency that has been whip-sawed by politics offer "advice" on growth policies at the local level that all boil down in the end to which lobbyists are sitting in the front row of commission chambers, arms locked with politicians higher up the food chain. (Who can forget Julio Robaina, Raul Martinez, Sergio Pino, and Armando Codina all sitting together at the county commission in the first row for the last move of the UDB in Hialeah, with the Graham Company representatives sitting meekly a few rows behind while the Cuban American developers did the heavy lifting?)
It has happened so many times, there really is no point reiterating the phenomenon except to say it is not so different from what happens to the turtles sticking up their heads when my Chesapeake Bay retriever jumps into the pond to chase a stick: they know exactly how to retract their necks and sink out of sight to live another day.
What Were These People Thinking? By Geniusofdespair
When these men and women signed this document in 1957, little did they know what they created. Can you guess what this is about, what these 16 people signed, without hitting read more? You can hit on image to enlarge it.
This is what the signers of our Charter THOUGHT they were creating, instead we got the UNRESPONSIVE to the people County Commission.
Our County Commission, the bloated monster, created April 15, 1957 by the Home Rule Charter. Ick.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Response from the Regalado Camp to My Challenge. By Geniusofdespair
This email was from a friend of mine that I know to be a Regalado supporter: I brought your question up with City Commissioner Tomas Regalado. His immediate answer on the continuing litigation on the Lowe's application:"Of course I'm opposed with continuing the fight. The Cabinet gave an opinion and its wrong what the County is doing. Both morally and otherwise."
We spoke about it a little bit more and talked about sprawl and our increasing water supply problems that we have here in South Florida. He was very interested in these issues.
I was promised a more formal response from my friend at a later date.... Maybe Tomas will call a county commissioner and tell him/her what he thinks. That would be a good thing to do. No word from Joe Sanchez yet.
Miami Herald editorial on Everglades: correction, please... by gimleteye
For the Herald editorial board it was a long piece, the entire left hand column of the paper yesterday ("Progress at last on Everglades. Our Opinion: Everglades clean-up looking more positive than ever.") The Herald begins by noting the positive influence of a former Miami-based federal bureaucrat, Rock Salt, appointed by the Obama administration as deputy assistant secretary of the Army "to oversee the Corps of Engineers".
Salt is the key government official who endorsed the original conception of Everglades restoration, including 333 aquifer storage and recovery wells that looked, even a decade ago, like the biggest fool's errand since Rube Goldberg. The missing common sense in the past decade, on the Everglades, fell to a large extent through holes in the pockets of the US Army Corps of Engineers. (Read "Paving Paradise" by St. Pete Times writers Craig Pitman and Matthew Wald for detail.) The Herald emphasizes that it has taken 20 years to get the lynchpin project of Everglades Restoration moving: that would be the elevation of Tamiami Trail and components of the Mod Waters Project, as it is known. During most of this time, 18 years the Herald notes, Mr. Salt was familiar with all the permitting processes that largely failed to protect the Everglades-- especially the buffer lands outside the boundaries of Everglades National Park. This was a time in which political meddling, especially at the local level, ran over the most simple measures to protect the Everglades: stopping rock mines and wetlands destruction that benefited suburban sprawl and all the pollution that runs off it.
The Herald alludes to this meddling by citing the massive pollution of Lake Okeechobee by farmers and communities to the north of the Lake, in Orange County mainly, and also Big Sugar. What the Herald fails to do is to note the performance of local county government in Miami-Dade whose zoning, permitting and pollution control issues significantly contribute to polluting the East Everglades and Biscayne National Park. Of course any criticism of local government leads directly to local land speculators, big downtown law firms with "environmental land use practices", and lobbyists for production homebuilders. Perhaps that is an editorial for later?
Here is what the Editorial Board writes: "More needs to be done, though, especially to reduce suburban runoff from the growing Orlando area. There is also the looming threat of even more development as citrus growers convert groves struck by disease into subdivisions. The district needs to work very closely with local governments on the lake's north side to better control growth to limit future pollution sources."
Not a word about the reckless growth of rock mining, of crappy housing subdivisions, or a hint of major developments planned by Miami Dade lobbyists well known to Mr. Salt: from Rodney Barreto, to Sergio Pino, and the various players who hoarded cash during the building boom and are just biding their time until the glue guns can be fired up for more sprawl in farmland, wetlands, and open space edging the Everglades.
This netherworld of political influence and corruption is the strong undercurrent pushing the cost of restoring the Everglades from its original price tag in 2000, $7.8 billion, to more than $22 billion today. I am all for being optimistic where optimism is due: the first shovel of dirt to elevate Tamiami Trail, even if the elevation is way to short, is progress. The Herald is right: the water is still too dirty. But it is so transparent that the Herald cast blame northward-- and even gave Sugar a little pat on the head-- but failed to take a good hard whack at the unreformable majority of the Miami-Dade County Commission, lead by Natacha Seijas, Joe Martinez, and Pepe Diaz, whose decisions to permit rock mines and suburban development outside the Urban Development Boundary have lead to more and more pollution and environmental failure.
The condition of the Everglades, it turns out, reflects both the miscalculation of risk in the economy that lead to our current crisis and the worst shortcomings of our democracy. It may not be optimistic to editorialize how the rule of law is constantly eroded by powerful lobbyists, speculators, and the revolving door between government regulators and the regulated, but this point of view-- if it had been forcefully argued by the mainstream media-- would have helped avoid the worst crisis since the Great Depression. These big gears connect up to the little gears -- the local players, the local county and city commissioners and their lobbyists. If local media casts blame elsewhere but won't hold our own examples up for public scrutiny and well deserved criticism, who will?
Salt is the key government official who endorsed the original conception of Everglades restoration, including 333 aquifer storage and recovery wells that looked, even a decade ago, like the biggest fool's errand since Rube Goldberg. The missing common sense in the past decade, on the Everglades, fell to a large extent through holes in the pockets of the US Army Corps of Engineers. (Read "Paving Paradise" by St. Pete Times writers Craig Pitman and Matthew Wald for detail.) The Herald emphasizes that it has taken 20 years to get the lynchpin project of Everglades Restoration moving: that would be the elevation of Tamiami Trail and components of the Mod Waters Project, as it is known. During most of this time, 18 years the Herald notes, Mr. Salt was familiar with all the permitting processes that largely failed to protect the Everglades-- especially the buffer lands outside the boundaries of Everglades National Park. This was a time in which political meddling, especially at the local level, ran over the most simple measures to protect the Everglades: stopping rock mines and wetlands destruction that benefited suburban sprawl and all the pollution that runs off it.
The Herald alludes to this meddling by citing the massive pollution of Lake Okeechobee by farmers and communities to the north of the Lake, in Orange County mainly, and also Big Sugar. What the Herald fails to do is to note the performance of local county government in Miami-Dade whose zoning, permitting and pollution control issues significantly contribute to polluting the East Everglades and Biscayne National Park. Of course any criticism of local government leads directly to local land speculators, big downtown law firms with "environmental land use practices", and lobbyists for production homebuilders. Perhaps that is an editorial for later?
Here is what the Editorial Board writes: "More needs to be done, though, especially to reduce suburban runoff from the growing Orlando area. There is also the looming threat of even more development as citrus growers convert groves struck by disease into subdivisions. The district needs to work very closely with local governments on the lake's north side to better control growth to limit future pollution sources."
Not a word about the reckless growth of rock mining, of crappy housing subdivisions, or a hint of major developments planned by Miami Dade lobbyists well known to Mr. Salt: from Rodney Barreto, to Sergio Pino, and the various players who hoarded cash during the building boom and are just biding their time until the glue guns can be fired up for more sprawl in farmland, wetlands, and open space edging the Everglades.
This netherworld of political influence and corruption is the strong undercurrent pushing the cost of restoring the Everglades from its original price tag in 2000, $7.8 billion, to more than $22 billion today. I am all for being optimistic where optimism is due: the first shovel of dirt to elevate Tamiami Trail, even if the elevation is way to short, is progress. The Herald is right: the water is still too dirty. But it is so transparent that the Herald cast blame northward-- and even gave Sugar a little pat on the head-- but failed to take a good hard whack at the unreformable majority of the Miami-Dade County Commission, lead by Natacha Seijas, Joe Martinez, and Pepe Diaz, whose decisions to permit rock mines and suburban development outside the Urban Development Boundary have lead to more and more pollution and environmental failure.
The condition of the Everglades, it turns out, reflects both the miscalculation of risk in the economy that lead to our current crisis and the worst shortcomings of our democracy. It may not be optimistic to editorialize how the rule of law is constantly eroded by powerful lobbyists, speculators, and the revolving door between government regulators and the regulated, but this point of view-- if it had been forcefully argued by the mainstream media-- would have helped avoid the worst crisis since the Great Depression. These big gears connect up to the little gears -- the local players, the local county and city commissioners and their lobbyists. If local media casts blame elsewhere but won't hold our own examples up for public scrutiny and well deserved criticism, who will?
Maurice Ferre vs. Kendrick Meek
Why does Maurice Ferre say he is considering a run for the Senate:"When you look at statistics whether it is about the cost of living, the average wage, unemployment, everything that impacts the quality of life, you see that Florida is ranked low in all of that, in education, in health, in federal benefits." "We are a donor state and we only receive 75 to 80 percent of what we contribute to the federal government... That is unacceptable."
I am glad that I might finally have a choice. I hate to cast a vote on the premise, "well at least he is not... (fill in the blank)." If not for SB360, I might have voted for Crist. He did the right thing yesterday, replacing the 2 Jeb appointed Public Service Commission members that were under a cloud for chummy relations with FPL.
Doing My Family Duty: Reporting on Lemurs. By Geniusofdespair
Hi G.O.D. Now, I try not to ask too much of you, but as we are related and you dissed my tasty tofu turkey so I am calling in a favor.
There is a mass extinction going on of the charismatic Lemurs with little hope of recovery. You may ask "What has caused this species to crash?" The answer is always the same. The GOVERNMENT.
The synergistic effects of habitat loss along with an unruly bushmeat crisis have these animals in a strangle hold. The loggers are illegally taking their home as well as their lives. Awarness is the first step to save these social primates. If you are buying furniture don't buy wood from Madagascar. For more information read this article by Meg Lowman highlighting the threats to lemurs' lives.
Roman Polanski, you are welcome in Miami. By Geniusofdespair
The sex offenders have had a waterfront view and the Bay lapping at their feet, for two years now. When they leave prison they are dropped off at their new home under the bridge. So come on down Roman, we have room at the only place it would be legal for you to live in Miami! Some of the 80 Miami sex offenders, forced to live under the bridge, were charged with having sex with their underage girlfriends. Not as bad as Polanski's crime of plying a child of 13 with liquor and drugs and then assaulting her. In today's Miami Herald: Lauren Book is the face behind some of the state's toughest sex-offender laws -- laws she says have had unintended consequences. Lauren Book, 24, now realizes that forcing predators to live in inhumane conditions will not protect children; in fact, she fears it may do the opposite.
That is what happens when you put a Lobbyist intent on vengeance in charge of a problem (her dad Ron Book). His law would not have helped his daughter -- the nanny wasn't a serial offender -- her crime was committed in his own house. But the law - requiring 2,500 foot distance from schools and parks -- that Ron Book pushed for did force about 80 sex offenders and predators to live under this bridge to meet the distance.
Michael Moore's Love Affair Flick. by Geniusofdespair
I saw Capitalism a Love Story, the latest Michael Moore documentary, at a special screening courtesy of Take Back the Land. There is a segment filmed in Miami with our own Max Rameau playing himself.If the Tea Party participants saw this movie they would absolutely love it, but they won't because Fox News will advise against it.
I did find it depressing, less humor than some of Moore's other films. The part about Timothy Geithner was frightening. I hope Obama fires him after he sees the movie.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
The Challenge to Tomas Regalado and Joe Sanchez: Take a Stand. By Geniusofdespair
Bruno Barreiro and Audrey Edmonson voted for the Lowe's store and can also vote to rescind the Lowe's amendment. See post below. Why don't the two of you weigh in on this issue to them? You have 3 county commissioners within your City, yet, there is never a peep from the City as the County does outrageous things with money that your constituents need. There are millions of dollars of unfunded, crumbling County infrastructure in your City. The more the County sprawls Westward, the less money is available for the inner City. What do you think guys? Tomas: You have been criticized for not having a vision: do you want to take a stand on the Lowe's battle which requires some regional vision? Do you think the County should use your City's tax dollars to fight for a hardware store that the Governor has rejected? I will print your responses, send them to: geniusofdespair@yahoo.com
As the Stomach Turns: Lowe's Crappy Big Box Store is Back. By Geniusofdespair
When the Florida Cabinet denied the Lowe's Store on the wrong side of the UDB line, we all thought it was over, in fact the Herald reported on July 29th, it was pretty much over for the county:"The county will now live with the decision, said Assistant County Attorney Dennis Kerbel".
Well, don't listen to Dennis. He was dead wrong. Just like a toe fungus, it is hard to get rid of the Lowe's issue.
Miami-Dade County filed an appeal with the 1st District Court of Appeal on the Lowe's decision. Miami-Dade is in a serious budget crunch yet they are about to invest County funds in an aggressive appeal of the Governor and Cabinets' decision to find Lowe's out of compliance? Who is the instigator because a loss by the County could result in the County losing additional funding for infrastructure. Chapter 163.3184(11)(a) Florida Statutes states:
If the Administration Commission, upon a hearing pursuant to subsection (9) or subsection (10), finds that the comprehensive plan or plan amendment is not in compliance with this act, the commission shall specify remedial actions which would bring the comprehensive plan or plan amendment into compliance. The commission may direct state agencies not to provide funds to increase the capacity of roads, bridges, or water and sewer systems within the boundaries of those local governmental entities which have comprehensive plans or plan elements that are determined not to be in compliance. The commission order may also specify that the local government shall not be eligible for grants administered under the following programs: (I snipped them out, you get the point!).
The County needs to rescind the Lowe's Amendment through a Commission action. This would end the appeal making it Moot. Spending on the case and the potential sanctions by the state in this critical time of budget constraints is not fiscally responsible for a another hardware store.
Who out there wants to call Vile Natacha and tell her to rescind the Lowe's Amendment? She has to work her magic on the rest of her unreformable majority. Any brave soul want to tape the conversation for me?
What things cost ... by gimleteye
The pressure of inflation-- inflation that the federal government does not count in its indexes -- is a significant driver in the abandonment of ethics and moral values that triggered the biggest economic crisis since the 1930's. Wage inequality and income disparities tell the tale of a whole strata of wage earners rushing over to the side of the ship to make as much money, as fast as they could.
Under normal conditions, a few people couldn't capsize the economy. What happened, though, was that the side of the ship was also weighted down with trillions in debt in far greater ratio to underlying equity than ever before. The abandonment of financial regulation-- or regulation of much of anything for that matter including the environment and public health-- combined with an historic series of interest rate cuts beginning in 2001, and steered consumers to use their most stable asset -- a house-- as financial leverage. What housing inflation accomplished for homeowners was to provide both a rationale and means to absorb the real cost of inflation; energy, education, healthcare to name a few. If you did borrow based on home ownership during the boom years and if you didn't, tough luck has now turned into tougher luck.
Home equity lines of credit, for instance, actively seeded consumption. Millions of homeowners are walking away from debt they cannot afford to repay. That's why this is not ordinary recession. No wonder that consumer confidence in the USA, the superpower that doesn't make much of anything anymore but aircraft and weapons for the world, is sapped.
During the housing boom, the richest class didn't make things: it learned to skim a few basis points off the biggest pot of debt. Super-sized business models delivered economies of scale that consolidated profits and socialized risk. (Take a drive down Miami's ghostly Brickell Avenue to see what it looks like.)
But 99 percent of Americans are not the kind of wizards who can persuade others that massive oversupply matches stable demand. Here is the kind of statistic I pay attention to. A two wage earner family I know (he is a city of Miami fireman, she is in a senior job in the tourism business) have a combined gross income of $250,000. They are not profligate spenders. Between mortgage payments -- home bought in Miami at the top of the market, "this bubble is not made of latex, but of stainless steel"-- and three children, they can't save a dime.
The huge number of Miami and county government employees who make more than $100K in a city where the average income is less than $40K also says a lot: that government statistics over time severely under-report the cumulative costs of inflation. Today if you are an ordinary worker, or, if you depend on "stable" investments in financial markets to do the same thing, you are stuck: either with a debased currency in dollars or force to chase higher interest rates by accepting principal risk.
No one ever entered government service saying they wanted to get rich. At least while employed there. Compared to ordinary workers in the private sector, government is the place to be. That is a very strange legacy of those who idolized the "free" market.
Under normal conditions, a few people couldn't capsize the economy. What happened, though, was that the side of the ship was also weighted down with trillions in debt in far greater ratio to underlying equity than ever before. The abandonment of financial regulation-- or regulation of much of anything for that matter including the environment and public health-- combined with an historic series of interest rate cuts beginning in 2001, and steered consumers to use their most stable asset -- a house-- as financial leverage. What housing inflation accomplished for homeowners was to provide both a rationale and means to absorb the real cost of inflation; energy, education, healthcare to name a few. If you did borrow based on home ownership during the boom years and if you didn't, tough luck has now turned into tougher luck.
Home equity lines of credit, for instance, actively seeded consumption. Millions of homeowners are walking away from debt they cannot afford to repay. That's why this is not ordinary recession. No wonder that consumer confidence in the USA, the superpower that doesn't make much of anything anymore but aircraft and weapons for the world, is sapped.
During the housing boom, the richest class didn't make things: it learned to skim a few basis points off the biggest pot of debt. Super-sized business models delivered economies of scale that consolidated profits and socialized risk. (Take a drive down Miami's ghostly Brickell Avenue to see what it looks like.)
But 99 percent of Americans are not the kind of wizards who can persuade others that massive oversupply matches stable demand. Here is the kind of statistic I pay attention to. A two wage earner family I know (he is a city of Miami fireman, she is in a senior job in the tourism business) have a combined gross income of $250,000. They are not profligate spenders. Between mortgage payments -- home bought in Miami at the top of the market, "this bubble is not made of latex, but of stainless steel"-- and three children, they can't save a dime.
The huge number of Miami and county government employees who make more than $100K in a city where the average income is less than $40K also says a lot: that government statistics over time severely under-report the cumulative costs of inflation. Today if you are an ordinary worker, or, if you depend on "stable" investments in financial markets to do the same thing, you are stuck: either with a debased currency in dollars or force to chase higher interest rates by accepting principal risk.
No one ever entered government service saying they wanted to get rich. At least while employed there. Compared to ordinary workers in the private sector, government is the place to be. That is a very strange legacy of those who idolized the "free" market.
Here is More on Amendment 4! By Geniusofdespair
This was too good not to share:
Blocking build-build-builders
COMMENTARY Orlando Sentinel - Mike Thomas
They're like two characters out of a Carl Hiaasen book, two eco-heroes embroiled in a sometimes nasty, sometimes comical, page-turning brawl with dastardly villains who pave Florida for profit. Lesley Blackner and Ross Burnaman grew frustrated fighting developers, literally house by house, in local zoning battles.
So they concocted Florida Hometown Democracy, a proposed amendment that asks people this simple question: Before turning the bulldozers loose on Bambi, wouldn't you like to vote on it?
If approved next year, Florida would become the only state in the nation requiring democratically elected urban sprawl. (hit read more)
This has sent the entire development industry and business lobby into fits of befuddled panic. All their lawyers and politicians haven't been able to shut the duo down. All their dirty tricks have failed.
And so these two unpretentious lawyers, labeled as "radicals" and "extremists," are gearing up for a campaign blessed by near-perfect timing.
Florida is on the edge of a depression with plunging home prices, rampant foreclosures and abandoned houses rotting in the heat and dragging down neighborhoods.
It raises an interesting question. Who is more extreme, the people responsible for this conflagration — and whose response to it is to build more-more-more — or the people who want to give voters the option of reining it in?
"I think the housing bust has exposed the reality of developer control for what it is," says Blackner. "They had everything they wanted for the last five to six years. They crashed the economy. They have no solution other than bring the bubble back. Hometown Democracy is the only genuine reform on the table that can change the politics of growth once and for all."
Is that radical?
Or is this radical? There are 300,000 empty houses in Florida. "For Lease" signs have replaced merchandise in storefront windows. Office vacancies are skyrocketing. The state's population is declining for the first time since World War II. Yet there are requests pending to build more than 600,000 more homes, along with millions more square feet of commercial space. There are plans to conjure up massive new cities from scratch in the middle of nowhere.
This is like treating Type 2 diabetes with Twinkies.
By their very actions, the most ardent foes of Hometown Democracy are making the strongest case for it.
Our development pandemic threatens the economy as much as the environment.
Home values in Orlando have plunged so fast they now rank below the state average.
The reason is that there are 10 homes in your neighborhood for sale and only four buyers. And the developers' response is to build five more, so now there will be 15 homes for sale and four buyers.
What do you think this is going to do to the value of your house? The deflating value you see now is going to linger for years and years, the time frame extended by every new development.
The problem is that we have been addicted to the cheap drug of growth for so long, nobody can think of an alternative.
When 20 people a day are moving into Florida, build 30 homes a day. When 20 people a day are moving out of Florida, build 30 homes a day.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida are complete frauds.
They spin yarns about economic diversity, about improving the quality of life, about investing in schools and universities to upgrade our work force.
Then come crunch time, it is back to build-build-build.
They make this sound perfectly rational, while painting supporters of Hometown Democracy as crazed extremists.
I read letters to the editor from $500-an-hour land-use attorneys, arguing in perfectly oiled and rational prose about the chaos that would ensue if they could not cut their backroom deals.
The mainstream environmental groups have so adapted to this reality that they keep Hometown Democracy at arm's length. They are willing to fight developers but only within the accepted rules of engagement, wrangling their deals to sacrifice this but save that before regulatory boards and legislative committees.
Burnaman regards stalwarts such as Audubon of Florida and 1000 Friends of Florida as sellouts, co-opted by corporate-board members and corporate contributions.
"What is an environmental group?" he asks. "I don't know that there are many environmental groups in Florida."
This is a guy who long ago has given up on compromise.
It's hard to blame him. We've had more than 30 years of environmental regulations and growth-management laws.
Look around and see how well that's working for us.
Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5779
Copyright © 2009, Orlando Sentinel
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