Hialeah Julio: hating on the Herald ... by gimleteye

Miami Dade mayoral candidate Julio Robaina decided that he would not interview with the Herald editorial board because, he claims, the horrible journalism that identified his role in questionable business dealings related to real estate and private loans compromised the ability of the editorial board to discern who would be the best mayor of the state's most populous county. It is a conspiracy, Hialeah Julio, says.

What it is, is a political calculation that he doesn't need to explain his policies and ideas to voters whose primary language is English and who read the Herald. Because Eyeonmiami supports Carlos Gimenez to be the next Miami Dade mayor, it is going to be hard to brand this conclusion as anti-Hispanic. (Gimenez, like Robaina, is Cuban American.) It is simply the truth that hating on the Herald has a long history in Miami.

Robaina joins a trend that is disturbing, and one embraced by our barely legal governor Rick Scott who ignored the state's newspaper editorial boards on the way to the Governor's Mansion last fall. Robaina's calculation is based on the assumption that voters ignore the Herald; that since people don't read anyway, it can't harm to vote for someone who is the most telegenic, the most capable of manipulating 20 second spots on television, or who has figured out how to win based on appealing to demographic segments who are Southern Baptist, or charismatic Christians, or Jewish, or belong to unions. It is also based on Robaina's calculation that the Herald can't help him at any rate with white, non-Hispanic voters, or, that the endorsement could hurt his opponent more than help him.

Rick Scott bought his way to the Governor's Mansion and proved the point. Hialeah Julio, who has already amassed a significant monetary advantage over his competitors, is counting on the power of money to trump the public disinterest in a fatally weakened political system: democracy.

This failure has many fathers and if it were to be measured in years, the child would be nearly forty years old, dating back to Watergate (with its own Miami connections) and unwillingness of Congress to put an end to abusive campaign finance practices that badly deformed democracy in the intervening decades.

We know what needs to be done: first, make television political ad time freely available to any qualified candidate as a condition of broadcasters' licenses. A hundred inane candidates delivering bad sound bites would quickly reduce the influence of TV ads in political campaigns. The second, public campaign financing. The third, to strongly criminalize unethical campaign practices. Put the miscreants in jail for five years who get away with provable lies.

There won't be change until Congress leads the way, and there will be no change in Congress because special interests who fund political campaigns have locked up the possibility of change and thrown away the key. The net result is that the United States economy is in a race to the bottom like a block of cement tied to a chain and thrown over the side of the ship of state. Business interests are too absorbed in tomorrow's profits to worry on our behalf what happens next week, next month, or next year. It is time for a Constitutional Convention; that's where the nation's progressives should be putting their money. 

In the meantime, Hialeah Julio and speculator investors will do the predictable: paint failures as success and park in the VIP slots at the Marlins Stadium until sea levels rise and the whole Ponzi scheme, nuclear power plants and all, sink beneath the implacable sea.