I propose abandoning the longtime Miami moniker; "The Banana Republic". We can do better. It is not just that the news is filled with bad facts floating to shore from the storm surge of the Great Recession. We just do nonsense so well, in the Age of Stupid. Why shouldn't we? Want a circuit court date: wait two and a half years! Miami is the political epicenter of the housing boom and bust. What we held precious three years ago in the shine of spotlights, opening parties for condos filled with models, rappers, and celebrities, we now offer as glimmering bait to vulture investors. Not content with building a Performing Arts Center for $500 million that requires the patience of Job to get to, we want to invest more hundreds of millions in museums with no transportation infrastructure to move people there. We gave away the public store to a professional baseball team for a new stadium too, now rising faster than the whelps of complaint from taxpayers. Still, more billionaires are testing the water for another $250 million in public money for "Land Shark" Stadium to keep the Super Bowl. That's just the buildings.
Disgraced ex-city commissioner Michelle Spence Jones was re-elected yesterday with the certainty of Natacha Seijas, the discredited county commissioner who survived a recall effort funded by all the developers, like Sergio Pino, who were at the heart of the massive expansion of suburban sprawl now fallen like a badly cooked souffle. Seijas, we just learned, is receiving "a prestigious award from the Polish Institute because of her many contributions towards promoting Polish business and the music of Frederyk Chopin."
Chopin!??? Is that what she plays in between her snide remarks and snickering and scolding of the public that dares criticize her defense of rock miners polluting our drinking water aquifer, or, developers moving the Urban Development Boundary, or her faux attempts to be in favor of conservation now that killing off manatees is no longer de jour?
So there you have it: the first Nonsensistan Medal for Meretricious (go look it up yourselves) Service goes to Natacha Seijas, county commissioner from Hialeah, bastion of democracy. And to our distinguished visitors to Miami-Dade (Poland is Miami-Dade County's "74th trading partner" according to a recent Seijas press release: whatever that means!), including King Kigeli V of Rwanda, welcome!
8 comments:
Spence-Jones never even bothered to show up at any candidate forums or debates. Why bother? She knew she had a lock on the absentee ballots? The actual election was a non-event.
Always the absentee ballots deciding the election!
Good word...had to look it up.
They calculate that billionaire Micheal Bloomberg spent about $183 per vote to win his third term in office as mayor of New York City. The cost per vote was so high partly because so few people turned out to vote.
Voter turnout in Miami yesterday was beyond abysmal. It was in the single digits. So we have a recycled Michelle Spense-Jones for Charlie Crist to mud wrestle with for awhile.
Hawaii can't even find enough money in the state's budget to hold an election to replace a retiring US Representative.
The whole concept of the US as a representative democracy is breaking down. We are all captives in the corporate-state now. That's not the people's fault nor are they stupid if they have come to the conclusion that voting is an exercise in futility. It seems a perfectly rational and reasonable position to me. As an Obama voter I'm wondering every day why I bothered. George might as well still be in the White House.
The point that is being made though from NYC to Miami in these elections is that government is now a game played far away from the real world that the American people live in. That real world is about to come crashing down on this game though.
OMG! A very good word, indeed!
It is terrible that the money of the few people who actually control our Country ( Money they have because the people they put in office make sure they are paid back in spades of public money) buy people who arraange to have absentee ballets vote their way. We should only count those votes made by real people who take the trouble to go to the polls themselves. Of course not those who are paid $5 to get on a bus and then are bussed to the polls in a bunch of ignorant0 voters who are told how to vote and in some cases have the man get in the booth with them and do the actual voting. The article was right on and I was happy to see it.
Spence-Jones reportedly got 1,000 absentee ballots in her favor. Since Rev Richard Dunn only got 650 votes overall then Spence-Jones won last week or whenever her campaign people went over the 650 mark in absentee ballots...
Sort of makes elections meaningless doesn't it?
The Republic of Nonsensistan! I like it. Not too easy though for the common folk to pronounce.
Reminds me of the new Fed-Ex commercial where the 5th grader tells the boss about the new country of ButtHeadistan.
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