The head of the host committee is Norman Braman. What the hell is he thinking supporting Renier Diaz de la Portilla? I suppose he is not thinking. He did support Marco Rubio so he doesn't make much sense. Everyone, please stop treating Braman as a God. He is pretty flawed...like a lot of us.
I got in this habit of keeping my IPhone near my bed. Not anymore thanks to Ticketmaster. They send me emails at 4 am, 6 am, etc. In other words, they wake me up. I get these emails a few times a week. I don't need that many emails either. Even with sound off, the phone lights up.
I tried to cancel the email account. All the options don't work. The "Email Us" link doesn't work. I got caught up in loops. The customer service phone number brings you to ticket sales. As a last resort, I tried to change the email address on the account. I still get emails to my phone even though they acknowledged the email was changed.
They should have an "Unsubscribe" link on their emails. Because they don't, Ticketmaster sucks. And, I will say it once more so Goole will be sure to pick it up: Ticketmaster sucks until they get my IPhone number off their list and stop annoying me. A word of warning, do not buy tickets from Ticketmaster on your cell phone unless you want this to happen to you.
I was in an artists' cooperative with a bunch of former Hippie types in Manhattan. It was about 25 of us in a factory loft. We held meetings once a month and added a rule here and a rule there, until we had too many rules and everyone was miserable. That is what I think is going on in Tallahassee. With nothing better to do, they are concocting stupid legislation in their pea brains, goaded on by manipulative lobbyists...and we are all miserable.
Today Senator Ellyn Bogdanoff has put an amendment on HB 4003 prohibiting Local Governments from requiring super majority votes to pass CDMP amendments. We have always won battles to save the Urban Development Boundary because of super majority votes.
Call Miami-Dade Senators - Braynon (850) 487-5116, Bullard (850) 487-5127, Flores (850) 487-5130, Garcia (850) 487-5106, Margolis (850) 487-5121, Rich (850) 487-5103 - Tell them NO on the Bogdanoff amendment.
Apple enticed me to download a new operating system with promises of I Cloud's wonders and now half my applications don't work. Do you know how expensive that can be? Well let me tell you: Pretty expensive, one program costs $600 -- on sale! It is also VERY annoying to spend all day fretting over computer issues.
To amuse myself I downloaded a trial Photoshop program. I wanted to play around with it so I used my lobbyist trading cards and applied filters to all the faces. I think they turned out quite well. I like Erik Fresen the best. Susan Fried somehow, actually looks better. If you want to see the unadulterated faces this is the link. But why would you? These are so much better.
This is just after the Mayor has proposed a 3/4 instead of a 2/3's majority. Say goodbye to the UDB if this passes. This is the same woman pushing the gambling. She is truly evil.
According to The Denver Post, Everglades Foundation president Kirk Fordham will soon be leaving to head one of the nation's top gay-advocacy group, the Gill Action Fund based in Colorado. Fordham joined the Foundation in January 2008. He brought a depth of public policy experience, political skills, and acumen lacking in the fractious community of environmentalists representing national, state, and local interests.
The Everglades Foundation, founded by Paul Tudor Jones, George and Mary Barley, is the principal funder, convener and umbrella organization for complex tasks that will lead to Everglades restoration. A Republican with deep credentials, Fordham proved to have the understanding, temperament and skills to keep the Everglades in focus during a period of extraordinary political turmoil. (click 'read more', for the Denver Post story.)
Term limited Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera (don't vote for him for Property Appraiser) filed an amendment that "limits the time for legal challenges to 30 days and sets other limitations that would make it harder - because of time restrictions- to challenge environmental permits. And it applies statewide. "
He wants to thwart the groups trying to stop the Biscayne Bay dredging. In his little mind he was addressing one issue but he created instead a monster that will haunt us forever because big thinking is not a forte of anyone leading the legislature. Read the guest blog below and watch the video to find out more.
The legal challenge filed by the Tropical Audubon Society, Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper and Captain Dan Kipnis to the Port of Miami Deep Dredge issue is asking all kinds of interesting questions that citizens really should have the right to know, like:
What kind of irreparable damage will result from two years of blasting the bay bottom and offshore coral reefs?
How will critical wildlife areas, endangered species and the Bay’s pristine water quality be protected?
How can Miami Dade County replace an aging, defective sewage pipe at the bottom of the bay while simultaneously blasting the bay bottom without risking a catastrophic sewage spill that will close down beaches and fisheries?
Can the government justify the expenditure of billions in public funds in related port expansion projects when there is no guarantee the super post-Panamax ships (the largest freighters in the world) will even dock here?
Apparently, some people in the community would rather not know.
Late last week, Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera filed a bill amendment to try to “speed up” the pending administrative challenge to the Port of the Miami Deep Dredge project. The measure has already passed the House and will soon be taken up by the Senate. The amendment limits the time for legal challenges to 30 days and sets other limitations that would make it harder - because of time restrictions- to challenge environmental permits. And it applies statewide.
Since it’s a priority of Governor Scott to dredge, expand and otherwise industrialize Florida ports, I guess this bill would come in handy when permits are issued to Deep Dredge the St. Johns River or blast coral reefs off Port Everglades or in Key West
It’s another in a series of measures passed by the Florida legislature in the last year to make it more difficult for citizens to protect Florida’s natural resources.
As a taxpayer and someone who’s crazy for Biscayne Bay, I want to know that this beautiful and bountiful bay is protected and preserved. Given the irreparable damage the Port of Miami Deep Dredge project will cause, shouldn’t we make sure it’s justified, it’s done properly and the so-called “mitigation” is more than sufficient to make up for the extraordinary losses to marine habitats.
I’m glad there are courageous and concerned citizens and organizations in the community and the state, willing to stand up for Florida’s natural resources. But they need our help.
If you care about Biscayne Bay and our beaches, please support the organizations leading this legal battle: Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper and Tropical Audubon Society with your donations and volunteer efforts.
I read this yesterday and thought how can they expand with no money...
...and today my question was answered: By eliminating jobs.
That is almost 2,000 jobs they have cut from Jackson Health Systems since 2010. Aren't we supposed to be getting people jobs? Call that good for nothing Governor Scott and tell him about all the people that won't GET TO WORK. Mr. Mayor, tell Mr. Migoya we can't leave people without jobs and expand at the same time. And, firing people with benefits to replace them with part-time personnel is NOT okay. This sucks, I am boycotting Jackson. Maybe Millie Herrera can do something (see post today).
My friend, Millie Herrera got a great job working for the Secretary of Labor! Secretary Hilda L. Solis announced the appointment of Millie Herrera as her regional representative in Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Herrera has advocated for the rights of women, children, workers and immigrants for more than 15 years. She is a 2004 fellow of the National Hispana Leadership Institute program held at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. I have been friends with Millie for about 5 years and she has always been helpful on many, many issues. For instance, she is a staunch supporter of holding the Urban Development Boundary.
For those of you who don't know, the Department of Labor fosters and promotes the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners and retirees of the United States by improving their working conditions, advancing their opportunities for profitable employment, protecting their retirement and health care benefits, helping employers find workers, strengthening free collective bargaining, and tracking changes in employment, prices and other national economic measurements. In carrying out this mission, the department administers a variety of federal labor laws including those that guarantee workers’ rights to safe and healthful working conditions; a minimum hourly wage and overtime pay; freedom from employment discrimination; Unemployment Insurance; and other income support.
In March County Commissioner Xavier Suarez has a resolution that will be heard in Committee to hold the Urban Development Boundary (UDB). His resolution calls for a 3 year moratorium on line moves. There is one application trying to move the line right now: Ferro. Suarez is leaning towards approving the Ferro application.
And he called on commissioners to make it more difficult to move the urban development boundary that limits westward sprawl. Instead of requiring a two-thirds majority — nine of 13 commissioners — to sign off on any measure that would move the line, the mayor pushed for a recommendation from the county’s 2008 Charter Review Task Force to require a three-fourths majority, or 10 commissioners.
“Once and for all, this ensures that future commissions and future mayors have the strictest standards for making any changes to the line...”
Mayor Gimenez gave his State of the County speech yesterday. I should have gone to get all my lobbyist trading cards signed. I was busy looking into the preacher man (see yesterday's post).
Excuse my cynicism. There was plenty of evidence during the Clinton terms-- when Carol Browner was the nation's top environmental spokesperson-- for the need for tougher laws to protect the environment. Clinton's famous triangulation toward the center, led by now-Republican Dick Morris his then political advisor, was the precursor disaster. This is along the same line as my criticism of former DEP staffer Pam McVety, who had a powerful position with Florida's environmental agency. Now she rails against the Florida legislature on the evisceration of environmental protection laws, but when she had the chance to be a strong regulator-- serving a Democratic administration-- she was not. Browner was silent, when she had the chance to be heard. History on these points is very, very clear. (Click, 'read more', for the Browner article that appeared in the Gainseville Sun.)
Guillermo Maldonado does a very good sermon, he goes from English to Spanish every few sentences and his translator goes back and forth with him (11:00 on the counter). It is sort of mind numbing. Wikipedia said the church he founded, Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesus, seats 7,000 and it gets 15,000 to 20,000 people per week making it the largest Hispanic church in the U.S. The assessed value of his church is $17,064,886.
Guillermo is married to prophet Ana G.
The Apostle and the Prophet (rear) in West Miami
The Church: Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesus
The Hood: The parking lot looks pretty full.
Miami Dade County Commissioner Lynda Bell and the Apostle Guillermo Maldonado
(Isn't that Palmetto Bay's Councilman Patrick Fiore behind Lynda Bell?)
It is not clear whether Guillermo the Apostle was once known as Yoyo.
God spoke to Pastor Maldonado instructing him to build a church in Miami; this was a new challenge for him and his family. As this was taking place, God was also preparing Pastor Ana to become a powerful woman of prayer—a general of intercession. He did this as she presented her husband and their son, Bryan, for the work of the ministry, which was about to be birthed in the spirit, and their second son, Ronald, who was about to be born. Both, the ministry and Ronald were born at the same time. Bryan and Ronald have grown in the midst of spiritual warfare and the countless sacrifices required to build a ministry of this magnitude; both have been prepared to pay the price to serve God since birth.
Lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez gets the finger from Lobbyist Ron Book.
Yes, I do admit some Lobbyists do good things tucked away in their repertoire of self-serving deeds. Some of those lobbyist are Dusty Melton (billboards, Boy Scouts), Ron Book (some of the stuff for the homeless and sex abuse victims), and now Jorge Luis Lopez.
Adding the requirement to share capital funds with charter schools will place many school districts such as Miami Dade’s in a precarious financial position.
In fact, it is estimated that the Senate bill would result in an estimated loss of $198 million to Miami-Dade over four years and force the general fund to cover the shortfall in the capital plan.
Charter schools already receive $55 million in capital-tax funding, as opposed to school districts, which receive none. While the establishment of charter schools provides an alternative to Florida families, it is imperative that the state allot public funds to them responsibly and not to the detriment of the public school system.
Jorge, I will give you Erik Fresen's address go beat him up. Or better, find someone to run against him. If you do either, I will never write anything bad about you: I promise.
With that other slug Renier Diaz de la Portilla (Miami Dade school board member and charter school cheerleader) running for State Rep., public schools will be facing a two pronged effort to be gutted. Strike while the iron is hot - get two viable candidates if you are sincere in helping our public schools!
Just a note of caution, I wouldn't beat up Renier, if I were you Jorge, as his two brothers are hot heads, and we all remember feisty little Renier's battle with the Lacasas at that radio station. Fresen is a safe bet, only Rubio and Rivera would come to help in and they both appear to have a pretty short reach.
A real, true editorial appeared this weekend in the Sarasota Herald Tribune. The Miami Herald, in its English edition, is too absorbed with advertisers to summon tongue-in-cheek on its editorial page unless its phoned in from some other part of the state. Not Miami. And certainly, not in the direction of Sierra Club. For the Herald to acknowledge Sierra Club, as the Tribune did, the Club would have to go through several rounds of pressure washing turning it the color of Fairchild Tropical Garden. There is just too much money to be made and prestige courting the despoilers and industrial agriculture growers.
But the editorial in Sarasota has a point: why not give Sierra Club the job of protecting the lands outside the Urban Development Boundary? Why not put environmentalists in charge of environmental regulatory agencies and their missions in Miami and Miami-Dade? (Clue: your elected representatives approved whittling down those agencies and their missions until all that you can see are little yellow patches where they used to grow from the ground.) You have to admit: local control is what the GOP wanted. The Democrats shrugged.
There is more than a little history to support Sierra Club. The Club waged a winning battle against illegal permits issued by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the Lake Belt, where powerful, rich rock miners tied up the issue for years. The stinging decision from federal judge William Hoeveler is one of the most powerful in U.S. jurisprudence. Meanwhile, Dade county commissioners who voted for the rock miners no matter what they came to the Chamber for, got off scott-free with voters. It is still happening, and even more, now that DERM has knee-capped by Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
Still, no matter your shade of partisan, how much taxpayer money has been lost chasing the development schemes (extension of SR 826, anyone?) big campaign contributors from the Growth Machine? Wake up, people: pay Sierra Club to protect Miami-Dade! (PS. While you are at it, give a few bucks to Friends of the Everglades.)
Eric Ernst: Save taxes, pay Sierra Club to protect Florida
Published: Saturday, February 25, 2012 at 2:00 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, February 24, 2012 at 5:33 p.m.
Florida legislators didn't want private companies running state prisons, but why not hire the Sierra Club to take over some of the environmental regulatory work handled by state bureaucracies such as the Department of Environmental Regulation?
The idea is not as crazy as it sounds. Sierra Club Florida, People for Protecting Peace River (3PR) and Manasota-88 just negotiated additional protections for the Peace River watershed from Mosaic, the phosphate giant.
Mosaic had a permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to mine 7,000 acres at its South Fort Meade property.
The environmental groups sued in federal court, claiming the corps hadn't done its job to protect natural resources.
After about 18 months of legal activity, Mosaic has agreed to turn over some 4,400 acres of wetlands and riverfront property for a state park. The company also will set aside hundreds of acres as buffers and conservation easements.
The concessions come in addition to safeguards already included as part of the permit.
The aim is to protect the river, Horse Creek and the Charlotte Harbor estuary from the effects of mining. The Corps and the Florida DEP espouse to similar goals, but often seem overly solicitous to the businesses they regulate.
We pay taxes for those agencies, but maybe we could save a little by contracting with private concerns, those with their hearts in it, to handle some of the permitting.
Just a thought, given the popularity of public-private partnerships.
The Get it Done PAC (a.k.a. County Commissioner Joe Martinez's PAC) made a donation of $500 to Katherine Rundle's campaign. So Rundle is taking money from Genting? Of the $57,750 raised there is $10,000 of Genting money in this PAC. According to the Miami Herald:
Martinez has ties to an existing committee, Get It Done, which in the last three months of last year raised $57,750. The committee is registered to Pedro Diaz, the son of Martinez’s former district coordinator.
While I was in India, a friend reminded me of the conversations between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell in 1985 and 1986 at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch and later at the Museum of Natural History in New York. In the face of so much disquiet in the world, including the most bizarre GOP presidential primary in modern history, it is well worth returning to the forms of wisdom expressed through those historic and important conversations. Here is an excerpt:
CAMPBELL: ... people ask me, "Do you have optimism about the world?" And I say, "Yes, it's great just the way it is. And you are not going to fix it up. Nobody has ever made it any better. It is never going to be any better. This is it, so take it or leave it. You are not going to correct or improve it."
MOYERS: Doesn't that lead to a rather passive attitude in the face of evil?
CAMPBELL: You yourself are participating in the evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation.
MOYERS: What about this idea of good and evil in mythology, of life as a conflict between the forces of darkness and the forces of light?
CAMPBELL: That is a Zoroastrian idea, which has come over into Judaism and Christianity. In other traditions, good and evil are relative to the position in which you are standing. What is good for one is evil for the other. And you play your part, not withdrawing from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but seeing that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder: a mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
"All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and so it is. It wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved, which is sorrow -- loss, loss, loss. You've got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent this way; for this is surely the way God intended it.
MOYERS: Do you really believe that?
CAMPBELL: It is joyful just as it is. I don't believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." And the way to awake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all.
MOYERS: But if you accepted that as an ultimate conclusion, you wouldn't try to form any laws or fight any battles or --
CAMPBELL: I didn't say that.
MOYERS: Isn't that the logical conclusion to draw from accepting everything as it is?
CAMPBELL: That is not the necessary conclusion to draw. You could say, "I will participate in this life, I will join the army, I will go to war," and so forth.
MOYERS: "I will do the best I can."
CAMPBELL: "I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera -- except that it hurts."
I wrote about Joshua (aka Josue) Larose before on September 17th. I have to say he has me pretty annoyed with his PAC's on the Miami Dade County Elections site. Besides his 34 political parties (see September 17th post) he has 50 PAC's in Miami Dade County. Somehow Larose has been making quarterly reports for all 50 of them for 4 quarters now. They are all still open but none of them has any money in the reports. He said in his filing papers that he has accounts at Bank of America. I saw two branches mentioned at 701 Brickell and 1414 Alton Road. So he has at least 2 accounts for all these PAC's. Can you have an account with "0" in it for over a year? If there is not "0" in it, then the amount in it has to be on at least one of the PAC's wouldn't you think? Do you need a separate account for each PAC? Someone should be checking up when a person starts 50 PAC with no money in any of them. I don't like it because it litters the PAC page with useless nonsense. Some would say he is making a mockery of Political Action Committee's (like that matters).
You might be happy to note Larose is no longer running for Miami Dade County Mayor.
