A funny thing happened on the way to the feds cracking down on Miami-Dade Transit for accounting irregularities deemed so insignificant that the county manager simply swept them under the rug. You're going to be hearing this mantra again all the time, now that Weepy Boehner is in charge of the House of Representatives: we need to get the federal government out of peoples' lives. Waaaaa!
In Florida, this argument in favor of states' rights, that the Federal Government has too much control, always had the aroma of meat rotting in the sun. But it continues to be so flavorful for the same politicians whose anti-regulatory zealotry pushed the economy off a cliff. Do you think that the Florida could have become the foreclosure capital of the nation without lax regulatory oversight of every aspect of financial leverage, from mortgage brokers to banks and the dealers of financial derivatives?
Pushing federal authority away, sweeping it under the carpet, provides job security for ideologues and damn if the ideologues aren't back in full throated force: states' rights!
So here is the example of Miami-Dade Transit, where-- surprise!-- lax accounting is the smoke concealing the fire of outright theft not far behind. Only $182 million in federal funding was recently suspended by those awful feds, and Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess just shrugged his shoulders and lied to county commissioners. Why not?
The unreformable majority of the county commission are so skilled in crying for local control! that implications of theft, stealing from cash boxes on transit cars, and bad accounting are just water off the duck's back. This has been going on for so long, that it is possible to walk into County Hall if you haven't been there and feel that the atmosphere is different. The air quality has changed, altogether it's own world with its own rules enforced by men in dark suits.
Here is how the GOP game plan worked under Karl Rove and George W. Bush: if you can't shrink government fast enough, you divert federal officials with investigations and other amusing walks around the park while, from the inside, you hobble federal agencies with political appointees whose job is to put the brakes on regulatory authority. You then argue for states' rights but in the states, you de-fund agencies charged with regulatory oversight and enforcement. Then, when no one is looking, you just steal all the copper pipes, the wiring, take out all the appliances and punch holes in the dry wall.
That's Florida, folks, and you won't be able to take mass transit. The GOP is providing buses to get Floridians back to work!
5 comments:
where are the Miami HerLd Investigative reporters when we need them? We love Eye on Miami for highlighting these issues, but we desperately need an old fashioned " Andreas Viglucci or Scott Hiasson level investigation " right about now!!!
"where are the Miami HerLd Investigative reporters when we need them? ..."
They are looking for jobs because we don't pay for our news anymore.
Both these points are true. Local news is in a free fall, and the results are predictable. We are occasional journalists-- not paid and professional by virtue of the paycheck-- here at EOM. We spend our own time and energy, and from time to time we do uncover facts and stories that belong on the front page. For certain, our editorial views belong on the editorial page. But at the same time that the Herald is not paying its journalists, it struggles to find a tone with its remaining subscribers on the editorial page.
Maybe its time to transfer over Miami-Dade Transit to MDX.
Sorry, but I don't see the "state's rights" angle from the Transit scandal. The Feds give the County money for transit purposes, and require some audited books on how its all spent. When the County shows it has mismanaged the money, the Feds rightly suspend more federal dollars. This is how its supposed to work, and not even the County says to the Feds, "give us money with no strings, cuz thats state's rights!"
As far as lax oversight and enforcement of government regulations, well, the problems with the housing bubble were many: loose monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, the failure of bond analysts to see the cancerous subprime loans bundled in the new mortgage securities, the assumption of a bailout of Freddie and Fannie by the holders of these instruments (too big to fail), and of course the NINJA loans themselves (no income, no job or assets) made by banks to subprime borrowers to comply with, um, federal regulations under the Community Reinvestment Act.
More government is not always the solution, sometimes it is the problem.
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