Mysickriver.com: how the health of taxpayers and visitors are Florida's lesser concern compared to the rights of big polluters who fund political campaigns ... by gimleteye

Lost in the tsunami of news coverage about Big Sugar's role in fouling Florida's iconic waterways is the real public health threat from toxic algae.

Here is an interview with a Martin County resident whose website is called: mysickriver.com
One might ask, why is a private individual (who asked for anonymity) -- unconnected to public health services in any way -- undertaking what the State of Florida ought to be doing: creating a database of illnesses caused by contact with Florida's diseased waterways? There is an answer to this question, but first, mysickriver.com The front page includes a statement of purpose:

"... to gather relevant data that will fuel further research into the health of our dying river systems. The information collected will be used to create a comprehensive report in regards to the human health concerns which are facing the areas surrounding Lake Okeechobee and the Saint Lucie River, Indian River Lagoon, and Caloosahatchee River systems. As the main objectives of this study are rooted in the purpose of scientific research and human wellness, we ask that participants be honest and forthcoming with their experiences."

When did you start mysickriver.com?

I started the website during what we call "The Lost Summer of 2013". It was late July.

What lead you to start mysickriver.com?

I grew up in Martin County. I have three kids and they are growing up in Martin County … that is part of what makes this so personal to me. I have such a deep love for Martin County. I went to elementary, middle school and high school here and I think this area is so, so very special. It bothers me so much what is happening to our water. My son LOVES to fish. He hates TV, hates computers and tablets, and he hates to be inside. His whole life is about the water. If he could have a fishing rod in his hand all day, he would be in heaven. Isn't this what we want? To have children who aren't stuck indoors, passively staring at television sets? It bothers me he is growing up in a community that loves the water but can't anymore. It bothers me that the very first question he asks in the morning -- because he knows -- "... where is it safe to go in the water? ... where is the water dirty? ... and even if the water is good, he knows we can't eat fish he catches." This is Florida, and it should be safe all the time. Even little things, … It just breaks my heart. When I was a child, over the summer we used to go to camp at the local environmental center. I couldn't wait to go there. We would learn about the manatees, about dolphin and fish in our rivers. Everyone looked forward to being in the third grade because that was when you could go seining in the river. We would put out a net and draw it in and catch sea horses, little turtles, all kinds of fish -- 20 species of fish -- it was just so glorious. But if you go out now, even when the water is safe, the children see one or two species of pinfish. Our waters have been killed off to the point where it is not the same as it was decadees ago and that is just really sad.

That is a very compelling story. Why won't you let me use your name?

I'm a very private person. I did this website because no one else had. We are just neighborhood people here, and we all know about Big Sugar.

You're afraid?

Yes.

Is today's algae bloom worse than 2013?

Yes. It is 100 times worse. 400 times worse, but what is happening now is making me more confident. I'm getting positive encouragement from friends and they are getting involved, too.

What kind of response did you have in 2013?

It was difficult to get the word out. The website only had about 35 reports of illnesses, but I heard about a lot more.

Was there a trigger?


Over July 4th weekend, a lot of friends came down with terrible stomach flu, vomiting and diarreah … once I started asking questions about what they had done, I discovered that most had gone to our local sand bar for the Fourth … I found out there were around 50 cases of people who had become violently ill who had gone to that sand bar. I called the Martin County Health Department. They said they were not required to post signs or alert people becuase they didn’t have public facilities, bathrooms or public access … after a lot of phone calls, they were able to test in other areas … so now the sand bar is posted. At the time, there were a few locations where the county had posted high bacteria warnings, but there was nothing posted for the sand bar or a lot of other parks even though the algae had shown up there.

Why didn't you call the state of Florida Department of Health?

It didn't occur to me. I called my local county. They are the people I know.

Did you feel the Martin County Health Department was responsive?

Yes and no. In 2013 they weren’t encouraging reports about illnesses. They would only take reports at that time if people had gone to doctor, and if the doctor had given a definitive diagnosis. Of course, that is hard for doctors to do. Sometimes the symptoms of bad water are the same as food poisoning or the flu. Anyhow I wanted to see, with the website, if down the road we could see clusters of similar symptoms and possibly dates and times. If we would get 10 reports in one specific area where we know algae is present, that is a smoking gun. I talked with an epidemiologist who said the information could be useful.

After 2013, "The Lost Summer", what happened to your website?

Once the discharges stopped, people tend to forget. My webmaster let the domain subscription lapse, and so I actually had to relaunch it last month.

So this summer is worse than 2013?

This year’s event is without a doubt, 100 percent worse. It is just absolutely devastating. I have close to 90 reports right now of people who have gotten severe respiratory illnesses, flu-like symptoms. Some people are getting skin lesions from contact from the water and infections that are very hard to treat. A few weeks ago someone I know, a good friend who lives just half a mile down the street from Central Marina dropped his fishing rod into the water … he didn’t even jump into the river for 30 seconds … then he came straight to my swimming pool and jumped in to wash off ... he didn't even have contact with the actual algae but that night he became violently ill and for the next three days he had awful diarrhea, fever chills and he missed work for the first time in 20 years. In twenty years he had never taken a day off from work for sickness. Not one day. Thirty seconds of exposure to the river.

What are your hopes for mysickriver.com ?

My hope is that more people discover the website. I know that people who are using the Caloosahatchee River and over in Lee County they are getting the same algae bloom from Lake Okeechobee. I also know that people around Lake Okeechobee are using lake water to drink. There are a lot of diseases associated with toxic algae, including neurological ones. The people who are drinking Lake Okeechobee water are at risk, and they should know. I'm hoping eventually to make the data from the website public so that it can be shared and that people know it is a trust worthy source. I am just trying to get information that can help Florida in general. I almost don’t trust anyone else when it comes to these issues, so it’s something I started myself … I know where this information is coming from. It is a very close and tight-knit community.

So what is the biggest lesson you have learned from this experience?

Well, I'm finding out that if you look at how the state regulates agricultural fertilizer -- nitrogen is the biggest pollutant and cause of the algae blooms -- that the basin regulations are all screwed up and Lake Okeechobee is basically just a sewer for polluters. The state is supposed to control impaired waters, but if you look closely it just seems that the state wants to create them. The state should be protecting people, right? My son should be able to put a fishing line in the water without asking me if it's safe or not. That isn't a way to live.

How can people contact you?

People can contact me anonymously through Facebook.

Thank you very much.

NOTE TO READERS: The reason the state does not maintain data bases and track water borne illnesses is no mystery.

Gov. Rick Scott, Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam, and Big Sugar shills like Lee County state representative Matt Caldwell have a thousand excuses. "It's the federal government's fault," they say who otherwise bang the table about "state's rights". The fact is that the State of Florida has sole responsibility for water quality rules and regulations.

Every attempt, over many, many years by environmental groups to proactively tighten pollution regulations has been opposed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, by Associated Industries of Florida, and by Big Ag -- especially Big Sugar. Florida's tourism-related industry groups have been no help at all, either, and Florida's mainstream media -- with a few exceptions -- as been mostly absent even though it takes no imagination whatsoever to predict these results.

Accumulating data of people who become ill from contact with Florida's waters would put pressure on the state to do something about polluters. That is exactly opposite of what big polluters who fund political campaigns want.

Like the bumper sticker says, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

In Florida, Republicans get cancer too … by gimleteye

Republican: Pinellas County Commissioner John Morroni Has Brain Cancer

In Florida, Republicans get cancer too, but even though 58 percent of voters approved a measure to allow medical marijuana -- particularly useful in alleviating pain and suffering for cancer treatments -- humane treatment will not be legally available in the Sunshine State.

3.3 million voters or 58% of Floridians approved the constitutional amendment on Tuesday. But Florida uniquely requires a 60 percent supermajority of voters to change the law by referendum. How did this happen?

In the early 2000's under Gov. Jeb Bush, the GOP legislature and its patrons, Big Sugar, the Florida Homebuilders, the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida, began demonizing a citizens ballot initiative rising to the forefront: Florida Hometown Democracy.

Activists had started collecting signatures for a ballot referendum that promised hope to alleviate the costs of rampant suburban sprawl. Although Florida Hometown Democracy took an additional election cycle to make the state wide ballot, special interests wanted to head off the civic activists at the pass.

Florida's lobbyist class representing deep-pocketed campaign contributors mounted a countermeasure. They did it with 58 percent of the vote in 2006 when 2.6 million voters approved putting brakes on ballot initiatives by requiring not a simple majority to pass a ballot item, but a supermajority: from fifty to sixty percent.

All Florida Hometown Democracy wanted to do was to provide citizens the opportunity to vote for or against changes to community and municipal master development plans, required by state law to protect quality of life and the environment. Wealthy GOP funders viewed this as an existential threat.

That's why on Tuesday, the will of 3.3 million voters … a higher percentage than voted to legalize marijuana for adults in Oregon -- failed in Florida. Ironically, both the medical marijuana amendment and the 2006 requirement of a supermajority passed by fifty eight percent of the popular vote in Florida. Only the marijuana amendment failed.

On Tuesday, another pro-people amendment -- to conserve Florida's vanishing wilderness -- garnered 75 percent of the popular vote in Florida mainly because the Florida Chamber of Commerce and special interests sat on the sidelines. Why?

A lot of this money -- more than $9 billion -- will find its way into the pockets of special interests and land speculators over the next decade. But if you or your loved ones are puking your guts out from cancer treatments, thanks to those same special interests, there will be no legal marijuana in Florida to alleviate the pain.

How many Florida voters understand how this happened? In Florida, understanding from history is the highest bar of all.

US Chamber of Commerce critique, snap! Kudos to Miami New Times for an excellent expose … by gimleteye

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce is the local affiliate of the US Chamber. It is not exactly the benign "politely evil empire" described quite wonderfully by New Times. Our archive has a number of entries on the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce for readers, if interested. Any modern history of Miami would have to acknowledge the Chamber's bumbling role, but to get a sense how we would write it, just read New Times:

The Politely Evil Empire
How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce became the greatest (bumbling) enemy of America.
By Pete Kotz
published: January 30, 2014

I. Meet America's business cheerleaders.
People tend to view chambers of commerce in the same colors as the Rotary Club or the Knights of Columbus: eager do-gooders lending a helpful hand in the name of economy and country. It's a largely accurate assessment — at least on the local level.

In Davenport, Iowa, it means hosting music festivals like River Roots Live, a "quality of life initiative" that brings 30,000 people downtown each year, says Jennifer Walker of the Quad Cities chamber.

In Largo, Florida, it means introducing the small and struggling to the guys with all the money. "They want to meet heads of the hospitals, heads of the banks, so they can generate business from one another," says Tom Morrissette, the president of that city's chamber.

In Pasadena, California, it means pushing a business agenda without the sectarian shrieking of Washington. "We can still go for a beer after work and talk about our kids," says chamber president Paul Little.

These are sainted duties. Local chambers chiefly represent small businesses, which collectively make for the nation's largest and most stable employer. After all, the florist and the restaurateur are more likely to sponsor a softball team than ship their jobs to Indonesia. Neither is prone to demanding public welfare under threat of bolting for Tennessee. The local chambers are their cheerleaders, providing mercantile expertise, all with a cheerful disposition built to illuminate the possible.

But that reputation is being smeared by their national umbrella group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — a nonprofit group that sounds innocuous but, since it began supporting extreme right-wing ideas and funding controversial candidates, has quietly become the baddest bully in Washington. And its behavior is causing dozens of smaller, dues-paying chambers — and some of America's most prominent companies — to flee its ranks.

II. Now meet their weird Uncle Ed, who's ruining the family name.

Think of the U.S. Chamber as your crazy Uncle Ed. He spent too much time listening to talk radio, developed a raging victim complex, and came to believe the country was being destroyed by sloth and moochery. So he formed a lobbying group to defend the one true antidote: free enterprise.

In Wall Street Journal, extraordinary admissions of failure by business leaders in its sole source practices with GOP ... by gimleteye

One of the first rules of business is: be very careful about single-sourcing suppliers.

While it is not a mystery why American business leaders did single-source their politics to the GOP -- low taxes, battling regulation -- , it is a mystery why few anticipated catastrophic failure. (The GOP hasn't blamed environmental regulations for its crisis yet, but it will.) American business leaders need to take a long hard look in the mirror, as they evaluate their return on investment with the GOP.

By single-sourcing, American business leaders allowed themselves to be persuaded that the echo chamber would deliver the results it wanted.

What successful business leader make decisions in an echo chamber? And yet that is exactly what the American business community/ Chamber of Commerce funded. How could anyone not see that the triumphalism of Grover Norquist or the thin invented-from-air rhetoric of Newt Gingrich or the patriarchal "my way or the highway" of Jeb Bush would eventually give rise to a minority -- energized by its grievances, supported by a near fanatical religious conviction -- within a minority that hijacked the party?

There is reason for tolerance, weighing all sides of arguments, and carefully balancing diverse views: it has worked for capitalism. And it has worked to build the world's most powerful economy from a nation of immigrants, many of whom are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

The absolutism of a radical fringe of the GOP -- and the failure of party leadership to recognize its dangers -- ought to send shivers through the US Chamber of Commerce board of directors. It is time for a thorough house cleaning. That's the sentiment, too, behind the extraordinary "Business Voices Frustration With GOP" in today's Wall Street Journal.

There ought to be soul searching, too, about advertising with Fox Broadcasting Network. Rupert Murdoch's profit model has limited value to American business.

On the point of "single sourcing suppliers", the implication is that the US business community ought to pay closer attention to the fact that there are many fiscal conservatives who are socially liberal and Democrats. Not "Blue Dog" Democrats, powered by history and prejudice. Not GOP "Lite".

The American business community needs to repair the damage it has done through a careful reconsideration of who and what deserves to be vilified or rehabilitated.

Wall Street Journal
POLITICS AND POLICY
Business Voices Frustration With GOP
By LAURA MECKLER CONNECT
Oct. 16, 2013 8:42 p.m. ET

The budget stalemate that had the U.S. flirting with default has left business and the Republican Party, longtime political allies, at a crossroads...

Autism Rates, Environmental Regulation, and the Religious Right ... by gimleteye

Who needs the mystery of communion when the bigger question is so obviously: how has the Religious Right in the United States missed the influence of unregulated chemicals on fetuses and instead made abortion its issue of our generation?

This week's news is the alarming rise in autism spectrum disorders in the United States. As an activist and environmentalist on the front line trenches in the 40 Year War against the Environment, I hoped for better.

I hoped: if you couldn't get people to pay attention to the backyard wonders of nature -- because some people just don't care, period -- and if all sensible logic and reason fails, then at least you could build a constituency for tighter environmental regulations when toxics in the atmosphere or in drinking water are demonstrated to profoundly affect pregnant women and children and reproduction in men.

But if the Great Destroyers don't have facts that support their case against regulation, they invent their own facts. Big Tobacco. Big Sugar. And they successfully demonized regulations, too.

The human body is so intricate and complex that the introduction of toxics in parts per million can make what is otherwise healthy go haywire. Environmental regulation of chemicals in the United States is based on risk assessments premised on "sacrifice" necessary in order to provide consumers with cheap, affordable amenities. But the risk assessments are always weighted to what industry wants, not what is best for public health.

The 40 Year War on the Environment -- by the GOP and weak-kneed Democrats, too -- includes cutting funding for science and enforcement whose net result is that today we live in a man-made chemical soup. We turned Creation into a randomized experiment. It is just plain hypocritical that elected leaders who pray on Sunday, do the business of the Great Destroyers the rest of the week unchallenged by the congregations.

This week, an economics report shows that the wealthiest recipients of corporate welfare in America -- Big Sugar in Florida, despite a constitutional requirement that the industry pay 100 percent of the costs of its pollution, pays less than 1/3, leaving taxpayers with the rest of the bill. So even if you don't love the Everglades or care that Big Sugar uses the Everglades as its dump, you might want legislators to fulfill their oaths under the Florida constitution: force industry to pay up and save yourself significant taxes.

But the Tea Party has missed this issue the same way the Religious Right missed the issue of environmental influences that severely threaten the fetus.

One reason might be mercury. Mercury in water that forms as a result of agricultural operations, including Big Sugar, has proliferated throughout Florida. Our state has hotspots of methylized mercury -- that can cause cognitive disfunction and other deformities in fetuses and development damage in children -- that are among the highest ever recorded. Who is bearing the costs? Taxpayers. Devout Christians. Jews. Muslims. People of all faiths, creeds, and persuasions.

I am not a neuroscientist, but I do have a nephew with Aspergers. My heart goes out to any parent with a child with autism or any of its spectrum disorders. I think to myself: if I were in that parent's shoes, how much would I be willing to pay to change the chemical imbalance or genetic tipping point to reverse the affliction? I am certain I would pay anything. Yet when it comes to precaution, we don't ask our business leaders or politicians for even an ounce of faith in regulation and enforcement of pollution laws compared to the embrace of belief in the miracle to come.

America's Most Miserable Cities: Miami is Number One! by gimleteye

As a chronicler of Miami's chronic deficits, I can't quibble with Forbes Magazine's new designation of Miami as America's most miserable city. The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce has more goo to wipe off its shoes in the sand. (The Chamber might want to look into putting goo removal dispensers next to the glass of water when the board meets.) And what about the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation whose leadership long professed to invest wisely in charitable causes to promote the city's cultural and social development.

Forbes looked at "10 factors for the 200 largest metro areas and divisions in the U.S. Some are serious, like violent crime, unemployment rates, foreclosures, taxes (income and property), home prices and political corruption." Ah, that. Forbes notes, "A whopping 364,000 properties in the Miami area have entered the foreclosure process since 2008, according to RealtyTrac. The number of foreclosure filings slowed in Miami and across the country last year, but the housing market is far from a comeback."

And still, the Miami Dade Expressway Authority (MDX) and its lobbyist-studded cast of directors is moving to put infrastructure in place for more crappy subdivisions to be built by the nomenklatura. By that metric, Miami Dade excels.

The horrendous deal-- approved by county commissioners like Joe Martinez-- for the Marlins Stadium is duly noted. And Joe Martinez believes he can be elected Miami Dade Mayor.

The only good piece of news for the day: the Florida legislature may not be able to summon the political will to approve full scale gambling for Miami. The measure pushed by one of Miami's challenged politicians, Erik Fresen who is also head of the county GOP, may not make it out of committee. On a day of bad news, that would be a ray of sunshine.

Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce: Put this in your pipe and smoke it! by gimleteye

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce -- that not so long ago didn't even have the business acumen to keep its bank account safe from its own employees-- endorsed big-time casinos downtown recently. What else would you expect from an organization whose mission disappeared long ago in the urban and suburban mess it substantially helped create.

This week data cruncher Sperling's Best Places rated America's Most Stressful Cities, 2012: of the top five, three are in Florida. Why? Because no fast-growing state in the nation allowed itself to be chopped into bits and pieces to favor developers and land speculators like Florida. We sold ourselves-- and keep selling ourselves-- to the lowest bidder. The result is a predictable mess: TRAFFIC, DEGRADED QUALITY OF LIFE, POOR SCHOOLS AND FAILING INFRASTRUCTURE. But gee: wasn't "growth" supposed to pay its own way? When civic activists and environmentalists complained at public zoning hearings or against building permits, that's what they were told for a hundred years: we need to expand our tax base as quickly as possible to provide the "great" services that government provides its taxpayers. If the muttering of the people grew too loud? Never mind: build sports stadiums and Performing Arsht Centers to please the people.

The game in Florida-- long supported by the Chamber-- has always been to artificially depress the costs of development. Water supply and water quality, for example, instead of being protected at its source was fobbed off to future generations to worry about. What the housing market crash proves is that all the speculators, sprawl developers and their bankers (US Century Bank, anyone?) were dead wrong. There are hundreds of thousands of families in Miami-Dade hurting right now and wondering who is to blame.

Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall ranks as the 3rd most stressful city in America. Thank you, Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce!

Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce Sinks To New Low ... by gimleteye

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce (that once failed to supervise its own book keepers who ran off with the bank account) simply cannot get it right. By whatever conception the "free market" best provides for the public good, the Chamber defies that logic. Now the Chamber shoots Miami in the foot by "endorsing" casinos despite considerable dissent among business leaders. Those who oppose casinos in Miami have facts on their side. It's a shame, but just another notch in the Chamber's super-wide, fat belt including, most recently, Chamber opposition to Florida Hometown Democracy. Casinos are a scavenger economic activity. There are enough scavengers to make a meal of Florida without introducing a new power base for corruption.

Kabuki Theater: Former Senator Bob Graham, on Everglades Restoration ... by gimleteye

"Everglades Restoration: Can this marriage be saved?" is the question asked by former US senator Bob Graham (Democrat), the living political icon most closely associated with government efforts to save the River of Grass.

In a Miami Herald editorial, Graham blames the Florida legislature for extremism in the 2011 session that eviscerated environmental protections and budgets. He might have added that the main funders of political campaigns: Associated Industries, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the builders, realtors, and speculators were rubbing their hands with glee at the time. ("If we knew it would be this easy to decapitate environmental regulations, we would have crashed the economy a long time ago.") Graham cites draconian cuts to science and administrative protections endorsed by Gov. Rick Scott (Republican). He sidesteps the fact that Scott funded his way to the governor's mansion without a jot of knowledge about Florida's environment or the deformed politics targeting protections put in place through broad bipartisan support in earlier generations of the legislature.

Indeed Graham's editorial is better viewed as Kabuki drama, although one has to be well versed in the form that has unfolded over decades to recognize the points. That is the key point about Kabuki, a thousand year old tradition of Japanese drama where every plot point and character is well known to the audiences. (continued...)

From the Ocala Star Banner: Solid Blow to Florida Chamber of Commerce ... by gimleteye

The following editorial from the Ocala Star Banner last weekend is a reminder that The Miami Herald really, really neglects points of view that are critical of the Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries. These two lobbying groups may be formed of many well-meaning and civic-minded individuals, but their leadership is misguided. Putting it mildly. Here's a thumbs up, for The Ocala Star-Banner. Herald, are you paying attention?

OTHER VOICES
Chamber's ‘Six Pillars' not what you think
By Bruce Seaman
Special to the Star-Banner
Published: Sunday, July 3, 2011

Much of the damaging legislation approved by the Florida Legislature is due to lobbying by the Florida Chamber of Commerce. The local "Awake the State" effort joins statewide partners in exposing the Florida Chamber as nothing more than the lobbying arm for Big Business interests with scant interest in local communities or businesses.

Awake the State began as a series of rallies on March 8, the start of the Florida Legislative session, and involved over 10,000 participants at over 30 locations statewide. The work to challenge the "anti-middle class, anti-local community" agenda continues among concerned residents of Marion County.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce claims to be a "grassroots organization" representing local chambers and their small-business members. An agenda in dogged pursuit of teacher merit pay, union gag rules and a public worker pension/payroll tax has nothing to do with helping "Main Street" businesses. It's pure political hack-work to give power and profits to its masters, big multi-state and multi-national corporations.

US Century Bank, Zero Leadership, Credibility, and Zero Rating ... by gimleteye

On the same day that Sergio Pino announced his resignation from the board of the bank he founded, US Century Bank had more bad news: the ratings agency, Fitch, withdrew its rating. In a public statement to South Florida Business Journal, Pino said his withdrawal had nothing to do with the severely deteriorating condition of the bank.

Pino, along with other bank directors, have been major Republican campaign contributors and lobbyists for suburban sprawl in Florida wetlands and farmland. They have strongly supported and pushed for the expansion of the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade to include lands purchased as speculative investments for future platted subdivisions and sprawl. The bank they founded has been the recipient of the largest infusion of federal taxpayer moneys, through TARP, among all Florida banks.

Also on March 15, Business Wire reported on the mounting troubles at US Century, "Although the company remains above minimum regulatory capital standards to be considered 'well-capitalized', Fitch believes that, given the bank's CRE and construction portfolios, the embedded losses will deplete capital further. In Fitch's opinion, USCB will likely need to raise additional capital. It is also extremely likely that the bank's regulator will place capital requirements on the bank through a regulatory agreement." Business Wire notes that the new Fitch rating, by definition, considers US Century Bank to have exceptionally high levels of credit risk.

Fitch noted, also, a lack of information provided by the company. Eyeonmiami has written extensively about the role of US Century Bank and its founders, including Sergio Pino, in fomenting the housing and construction bubble in Miami-Dade and, by extension of its political influence, in the state of Florida. For example, US Century investors and shareholders are prominent owners of land outside the Miami Dade Urban Development Boundary, bought in some cases at the height of the real estate bubble. Last week South Florida Business Journal reported that Pino’s 77 Acres LLC lost a $22.6 million foreclosure judgment over a site in Hialeah Gardens. BankUnited is suing Pino for $34 million on a Doral project, Century Grand. In 2009, Pino reportedly was seeking to create a visa program to allow temporary residency visas to foreigners if they invested in his project. Wachovia Bank, in Dec. 2009, hit Pino with a $65.5 million foreclosure lawsuit for Century Grand. In addition, Pino was battling recovery by Mercantil Commercialbank of a $4.4 million loan for an office building in Coral Gables.

Another bank rating agency, Bauer Financial based in Coral Gables, has noted that among the bank's problems-- leading to a recent rating of "zero"-- are the extraordinarily high level of loans to insiders, as expressed as a percentage of total loans; nearly ten times higher than similarly sized banks. It is possible that US Century's disclosure of the exact nature of those insider transactions would prove an embarrassing connection to politically connected individuals in Miami Dade County. Like the 2008 disclosure that US Senator Marco Rubio, with little worth at the time, in 2005 at the height of the real estate bubble obtained a $135,000 equity loan from US Century to the purchase of a $550,000 home in West Dade. Rubio failed to disclose it until three years later. So much slipped through the cracks.

In the last quarter of 2010, US Century Bank lost $44.7 million. In 2008, the bank received the top minority business award from the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce that was the victim of a $2 million theft by its financial auditors in 2004. Absent federal rescue, US Century would not have survived. Some banks are too big to fail, some banks should be allowed to sink of their own weight. In that category, would be Ocean Bank-- another favorite bank with sprawl developers-- that in July 2010 extended a $39.1 million loan to Pino for another condominium project in Coral Gables. The due date on that loan, according to South Florida Business Journal, is April 30. There is no similar expiration date on the enormous political pressure brought to bear on county governments and the state legislature by lobbyists using the economic crisis to eviscerate environmental regulations, hoping that a free pass to build more sprawl in wetlands and the Everglades will refloat their speculative investments. A yacht owned in whole or part by Pino sank two weeks ago in a Coral Gables canal.

Destroy Florida, an explosive new C-4 ... by gimleteye

C4 is a type of plastic explosive. It is also the IRS designation of certain political action committees that are now springing to life since the Bush Supreme Court gave "personhood" to corporations, unleashing an avalanche of special interest, corporate money against the public. "Destroy Florida" goes by another name, "Free Market Florida". It is the new political action committee launched by the same idiots who brought down Florida Hometown Democracy.

The Florida Independent reports, "Free Market Florida prepares to do battle with environmentalists". Their nominal target is the US EPA and the federal agencies intent to protect Florida's water from pollution unleashed by Big Sugar and unscrupulous county commissioners like Natacha Seijas, who allowed growth to run rampant as kudzu.

The real target is Florida Senator Bill Nelson. "The new group’s address is listed as 610 South Blvd., Tampa, the home of dozens of political committees that operate in Florida and nationwide. A letter on Free Market Florida’s home page from Florida Chamber of Commerce CEO Mark Wilson says the group will help the business community take on “aggressive anti-free market groups”.

Wilson and his buddies, like Florida jackass-in-chief Barney Bishop of Associated Industries, are trying to pressure Senator Nelson to stand up with them, in their effort to kill off the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Emboldened by last November's results, they are intent on destroying what is left of government's capacity to help people. Everything to them that does not have a dollar sign attached is a "job killer". But look at the job they did on Florida during the housing boom: flooding the state with rampant overdevelopment. They called it, then, "what the market wants" and it was a bad dream built on the foundations of fraud.

Well these fraudsters are back, at it. With the Supreme Court in their pockets, independent political committees outspent progressives 10-1 in November 2010. In 2012, you are not going to believe how much money they will throw at the destruction of the public interest. The cynics like those behind Free Market Florida might as well be using the real C4 explosives: they are blowing up this nation's future, wrapped in an American flag and ugly, unrecognizable versions of Christianity. Does Senator Bill Nelson have the guts to stand up to the destroyers, neatly coiffed, suited, and wing-tipped? We'll see, soon enough. (click, 'read more', for the Florida Independent article)

Free Market Florida prepares to do battle with environmentalists

By Travis Pillow | 03.01.11 | 2:08 pm
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A new group claiming that California-style regulation and litigation are crippling Florida’s economy has launched to “take the fight to” environmental groups and other “special interests.”
Officially announced today, Free Market Florida describes itself as “a project of Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy, Inc., a 501(c)(4) organization.”
A political committee, also called Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy, last year ran the campaign against Amendment 4 — aka “Hometown Democracy” — and disbanded in January. A 501(c)(4) is a nonprofit organization that is allowed to lobby and run campaign ads without disclosing its donors. The new group’s address is listed as 610 South Blvd., Tampa, the home of dozens of political committees that operate in Florida and nationwide.
A letter on Free Market Florida’s home page from Florida Chamber of Commerce CEO Mark Wilson says the group will help the business community take on “aggressive anti-free market groups”:

Those who oppose economic development and job creation will say or do anything and, until now, Florida’s business community has had to “gear up” for the multiple battles special interests wage. Now, with FreeMarketFlorida.org, the business community has a permanent effort, complimentary to that of the Florida Chamber and others, which will meet the opposition whenever and wherever they choose to engage. #
Now is the time to take the fight to them.

Apparently that involves fighting EPA water quality regulations — known as numeric nutrient criteria, which the agency created for Florida after a lawsuit brought by environmental groups — and challenging the Department of Community Affairs, which the group describes as “Soviet-style” central planners whose activities should be left to local governments. #
Gov. Rick Scott and committees in both houses of the state legislature are already working on plans to scale back the department’s functions.

My life as a communist ... by Bill McKibben

Good for Bill McKibben going after Glenn Beck and the Chamber of Commerce. This OPED is reprinted from The Washington Post.

My life as a communist
By Bill McKibben
Tuesday, March 1, 2011

My life as a communist actually began without me knowing it, on Friday evening, when Glenn Beck spent his program explaining about a "communistic" conspiracy that included 10 groups in America. One was 350.org, a global campaign to fight climate change that I helped found three years ago. He even put our logo up on his whiteboard - and next to it a hammer and sickle.

Since I don't actually watch Mr. Beck, I didn't know about it until e-mails began to arrive, informing me that indeed I was a communist. My first reaction was: I'm not a communist. I'm a Methodist.

But then I reconsidered. What exactly was I doing when those e-mails arrived? I was downloading an iPad app, At Bat 11, which lets me (for only $14.99) hear the broadcast of any baseball game anywhere in the country. Since I live in New England, I use it to track our beloved Boston squad, whose moniker I had never before deeply contemplated. Now - well, enough said.

And the next morning, on my first full day as a communist? I spent most of it outdoors, at the annual New England festival for young cross-country ski racers. More than 500 kids from across the region were competing, and I was standing on the toughest hill cheering. And here's the thing - at least with the first- and second-graders, I was cheering for everyone equally. Not only that, but did you know where this particular type of skiing was invented? Norway.

Some people laugh at Mr. Beck - earlier in the same week, for instance, he'd ventured the opinion that "Reformed Judaism" was pretty much the same as Islamic extremism. Not 100 percent correct, but the next day he apologized, and explained the research technique that that had led to the slight miss: "I had, was having a conversation with a few friends the night before - one of them, I trust on things like this, and I'm not even sure if I misunderstood him, or misheard him, or what." In my case, though, the evidence seemed fairly damning.

Especially because, earlier in the week, I'd written a widely circulated essay that attacked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which on its own Web site says that as "the voice of business, the Chamber's core purpose is to fight for free enterprise." And yet I scourged them - because they've spent the past few years opposing any action on climate change. Indeed, they submitted a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency arguing that it should avoid regulating carbon emissions because, in the event of global warming, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations."

To me that sounds absurd. Instead of the 16 companies that provided more than half the chamber's budget adapting their business models to a world of safe renewable energy, they wished all people everywhere and forever to change their physiologies. But now I see that my protests can be read as a gesture of support for human solidarity, with all that implies.

I should have known better than to go after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. After all, Mr. Beck just last year held a telethon on its behalf, encouraging listeners to send the chamber checks, and ponying up $10,000 of his own $32 million in earnings. "They are us," he'd explained - and indeed, an executive of the chamber called in to thank him.

The Chamber of Commerce spends more money than anyone else lobbying Congress. They dropped hundreds of thousands on the last state elections in Wisconsin, all of it for the side now standing up for union-busting, I mean human freedom. Opposing them - well, clearly I'm hammer-and-sickle all the way.

I turned 50 last fall - that's half a century not understanding who I really was. There's something liberating about finding out. After all, it was Marx who said that above 350 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we can't have a planet "similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted." No, wait, those were NASA scientists. The same people who faked the moon landing. This is a complicated world; I'm going back to the baseball game.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College and a co-founder of 350.org.

Will Senator Bill Nelson save Florida from greedy corporate polluters? by gimleteye

Senator Bill Nelson is in a bind over a frontal attack by the GOP Congress to kill the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is facing an electorate that is strongly pro-environment, but within a political atmosphere contaminated and poisoned by radical extremists from the GOP. Senator Nelson's dilemma is whether or not to confront the GOP effort to kill off the US EPA in Florida, by stopping the agency from doing what a federal court requires it to do: impose new standards-- already weakened-- to stop nutrient pollution of state waters.

You see, the problem with the EPA under President Obama is that scientific integrity is back in full view, after having been badly damaged during the terms of George W. Bush when industry insiders staffed key positions at the agency. Nutrients spew into Florida's waters by running into canals and waterways from cities and agricultural operations. Instead of paying for costs to clean up their own pollution, the polluters want all the gunk and puke to be the new reality for Florida. Instead of cleaning up their own mess, they want a free ride.

The way to get their free ride is to keep hammering away at facts until all that is left is demagoguery. What the GOP wants is "fact free science": and in Florida, that means letting big polluters continue to shift the costs of pollution onto the backs of taxpayers and wildlife. This radical extremism-- finding virtue in water quality that cannot sustain real estate values and tourism much less critters or drinking water-- is the cornerstone of an immoral legislature in Tallahassee.

I don't know how the Tea Party can stand it when these extremists wrap themselves in the American flag and the most arrogant, self-righteous forms of Christian faith. But these God-fearing Christians seem to be doing absolutely nothing that a moral God would ask of people or the union we form.

The problem is: no one is calling out the extremists. The radicals in control of the GOP could give a flying f@#k about killing off God's creation. They are using and abusing the economic and fiscal crisis as an excuse to trample common sense and the fundamental tenets of fairness. Instead of following Christ's teachings, we are burdened with so-called Christian patriarchs imposing the most radical policies in Florida history.

Senator Nelson self-identifies as a middle-of-the-road, moderate, in the mainstream of Florida politics. He may have been blind-sided how the radicals really want a dirty, polluted state in order to put more money in their private bank accounts. They do this, by shifting the costs of pollution onto taxpayers and a continually degraded environment. The U.S. EPA is already wavering under the blistering attack from the conservative, irrational wing of the Republican Party supported by campaign contributors unleashed from any limitations or restrictions thanks to Bush appointees on the US Supreme Court.

In this very dangerous moment, it is time for leaders to speak and to stand up. Senator Bill Nelson can do that, by rejecting the radical effort of the GOP to cut EPA funding and to specifically prohibit the agency from imposing water quality standards in Florida. Call Senator Nelson today: (202-224-5274), fax (202-228-2183) or web mail.

And to read more about the GOP's quest for "fact free science", click 'read more':


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/magazine/27FOB-WWLN-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&pagewanted=print
February 25, 2011
Fact-Free Science
By JUDITH WARNER
President Obama has made scientific innovation the cornerstone of his plans for “winning the future,” requesting in his recent budget proposal large financing increases for scientific research and education and, in particular, sustained attention to developing alternative energy sources and technologies. “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” he declared in his State of the Union address last month.

It would be easier to believe in this great moment of scientific reawakening, of course, if more than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators did not now say that the threat of global warming, as a man-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter “hoax,” as James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, once put it. These grim numbers, compiled by the Center for American Progress, describe a troubling new reality: the rise of the Tea Party and its anti-intellectual, anti-establishment, anti-elite worldview has brought both a mainstreaming and a radicalization of antiscientific thought.

The politicization of science isn’t particularly new; the Bush administration was famous for pressuring government agencies to bring their vision of reality in line with White House imperatives. In response to this, and with a renewed culture war over the very nature of scientific reality clearly brewing, the Obama administration tried to initiate a pre-emptive strike earlier this winter, issuing a set of “scientific integrity” guidelines aimed at keeping the work of government scientists free from ideological pollution. But since taking over the House of Representatives, the Republicans have packed science-related committees with lawmakers who refute such basic findings as the reality of global warming and the threats of climate change. Fred Upton, the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said outright that he does not believe that global warming is man-made. John Shimkus of Illinois, who also sits on the committee — as well as on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment — has said that the government doesn’t need to make a priority of regulating greenhouse-gas emissions, because as he put it late last year, “God said the earth would not be destroyed by a flood.”

Whoever emerges as the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 will very likely have to embrace climate-change denial. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee, all of whom once expressed some support for action on global warming, have notably distanced themselves from these views. Saying no to mainstream climate science, notes Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow and director of climate strategy for the Center for American Progress, is now a required practice for Republicans eager to play to an emboldened conservative base. “Opposing the belief that global warming is human-caused has become systematic, like opposition to abortion,” he says. “It’s seen as another way for government to control people’s lives. It’s become a cultural issue.”

That taking on the scientific establishment has become a favored activity of the right is quite a turnabout. After all, questioning accepted fact, revealing the myths and politics behind established certainties, is a tactic straight out of the left-wing playbook. In the 1960s and 1970s, the push back against scientific authority brought us the patients’ rights movement and was a key component of women’s rights activism. That questioning of authority veered in a more radical direction in the academy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when left-wing scholars doing “science studies” increasingly began taking on the very idea of scientific truth.

This was the era of the culture wars, the years when the conservative University of Chicago philosopher Allan Bloom warned in his book “The Closing of the American Mind” of the dangers of liberal know-nothing relativism. But somehow, in the passage from Bush I to Bush II and beyond, the politics changed. By the mid-1990s, even some progressives said that the assault on truth, particularly scientific truth, had gone too far, a point made most famously in 1996 by the progressive New York University physicist Alan Sokal, who managed to trick the left-wing academic journal Social Text into printing a tongue-in-cheek article, written in an overblown parody of dense academic jargon, that argued that physical reality, as we know it, may not exist.

Following the Sokal hoax, many on the academic left experienced some real embarrassment. But the genie was out of the bottle. And as the political zeitgeist shifted, attacking science became a sport of the radical right. “Some standard left arguments, combined with the left-populist distrust of ‘experts’ and ‘professionals’ and assorted high-and-mighty muckety-mucks who think they’re the boss of us, were fashioned by the right into a powerful device for delegitimating scientific research,” Michael Bérubé, a literature professor at Pennsylvania State University, said of this evolution recently in the journal Democracy. He quoted the disillusioned French theorist Bruno Latour, a pioneer of science studies who was horrified by the climate-change-denying machinations of the right: “Entire Ph.D. programs are still running to make sure that good American kids are learning the hard way that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth . . . while dangerous extremists are using the very same argument of social construction to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our lives.”

Some conservatives argue that the Republican war on science is bad politics and that catering to the “climate-denier sect” in the party is a dangerous strategy, as David Jenkins, a member of Republicans for Environmental Protection wrote recently on the FrumForum blog. Public opinion, after all, has not kept pace with Republican rhetoric on the topic of climate change. A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted in January found that 83 percent of Americans want Congress to pass legislation promoting alternative energy, and a recent poll by the Opinion Research Corporation found that almost two-thirds want the Environmental Protection Agency to be more aggressive.

For those who have staked out extreme positions, backtracking may not be easy: “It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it,” Bérubé notes. Maybe it’s time for some new identity politics.

Judith Warner is the author, most recently, of “We’ve Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication.”

The Florida Jackass: its head is the Chamber, its hind quarters, Union Bosses ... by gimeleteye

Ryan Houck, the baby-faced spokesman for polluters aiming to decapitate environmental protection in Florida, is spokesman for a slick campaign reminding like-minded jackasses that unions sided with business to defeat last November's ballot referendum, Florida Hometown Democracy. Never mind that a wee-wee percentage of Floridians believe that environmental and land use rules are too strict. Unions abandoned environmentalists once, Houck crows, and now it is time to abandon them again by throttling EPA's efforts to hold billionaire polluters accountable to nutrient standards in Florida waters. I say, give Houck and the Chamber jackasses feedbags filled with oats and methyl mercury.

As for Florida's union members, this would be a time of soul-searching about leadership and how poorly working class Floridians have been served. In Wisconsin, environmentalists are battling with unions to stave off the money influence of the billionaire polluters. But here in Florida, it is a long stretch to find union leaders who ever reached out to environmentalists. Houck and his billionaire buddies crow about the victory of business and labor in defeating environmentalists over Amendment 4; the state-wide ballot initiative that was hacked to death by the Chamber and its big money funders.

Never mind that last fall Houck campaigned against Florida Hometown Democracy, claiming not even environmental groups supported it. The point: anyone can re-write history when others are too timid, weak, or indifferent to speak out. The same way that union bosses played members for fools, by refusing to support Florida Hometown Democracy, they are doing again; Exhibit A, the recall election against Hialeah county commissioner Natacha Seijas.

Seijas has been a nightmare for Florida environmentalists for 18 years. During that entire time she cultivated the support of union bosses. Union members, on the other hand, never questioned who and what Seijas stands for: the painted darling of land speculators and the Growth Machine that drove the Florida economy into the ground. It's not just Miami-Dade environmentalists who suffered, through the continuing meddling of Seijas and her staff in regulatory issues and infrastructure in Miami Dade. Today, Seijas is already arguing for a lock and hold on years of planning -- mandated by the state-- to fix all the billions of stuff she allowed to be left behind during her overly long career. That's because under Governor Rick Scott and the interests who hire Houck, Florida is in a race to the bottom to eviscerate environmental protections. Seijas is confidant of unions' votes in the recall election slated for March 15. SEIU contributed at least $20,000 to defend her, already. (If I were a union member and voter in Hialeah, I'd steer as clear of Seijas as Libyan soldiers are, of Khaddafi.)

Union members should do the math: who is stuck in cars in endless traffic, wasting family time and spending nearly $4.00 a gallon to commute to jobs from distant suburbs? Union members live in those distant suburbs. Who is paying the price for land speculators who support Seijas, Houck et al in order to shift the costs of growth to ordinary taxpayers? Who voted for growth and rock mining to wreck the wellfield protection zone, imposing hundreds of millions of costs on ratepayers? Who was taken to the woodshed by a Republican governor-- Jeb!-- for refusing to protect Florida's drinking water aquifers? You think union members might care to know what Seijas and Houck represents? They might, if their leaders brought it to their attention.

Now the unions support Seijas and they are being thanked in advance for supporting the Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries jackasses who think it is great they won the race to the bottom and now are twisting arms of the Florida Congressional delegation to oppose the EPA and prevent accountability for Florida's polluted waterways. It is fascinating to listen to Houck talk about union members joining with business to destroy the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Really, what it is, is nauseating.

Former County Commissioner Katy Sorenson asks a good question ... by gimleteye

Former County Commissioner Katy Sorenson has established a new project at the University of Miami: The Good Government Initiative. Her inaugural event begins with a community conversation and a good question: "Civility in Government: Can it Happen in South Florida?" The premise is that civility is NOT happening in local government. That would be obvious.

What is not so obvious, but very much related, is how the decline of civility in government tracks the decline in values that protect democracy in the United States compared to other developed nations. For the world, Americans imagined themselves to be the Shining City on the Hill. But we are not, in fact. Not even close. As created by the International Monetary Fund, some of these metrics were published by the New York Times today. They contain dismal indicators of the health of our democracy.

Having spent 15 years on the receiving end of a lack of civility from fellow county commissioners, former Commissioner Sorenson is an expert. But having a feel-good, cheerleading session to awaken Miami! isn't going to shed light on the subject.

It would be better to start by considering the facts behind Sorenson's nemesis on the county commission, Natacha Seijas. Seijas, who has mastered the lack of civility to her own ends, is subject of a second recall effort by constituents. The special interests flooding to aid Seijas are contributors whose business lines direct intersect with county contracts or zoning issues.

The bottom line is that these special interests are all well-heeled and some are very wealthy. Their children go to private schools and colleges. They live in gated communities in Coral Gables or Pinecrest, far from Seijas' core constituents; poor or lower middle class residents and voters of Hialeah. In other words, the people who run government-- for their own interests-- are far removed from the metrics highlighted by the New York Times chart of indicators.

I doubt the absence of civility these business interests support in government and politics is matched by conduct in their home life, although that is just a guess. I believe that this phenomenon is due to shortened business horizons and opportunities that are largely the result of fouling our own nest in South Florida and elsewhere. Instead of investing for the public good, we have turned over the keys of government to short term, private profit.

This points to the fundamental crisis in America today: that the powerful interests that run the dominant politics, the GOP, don't care for and don't believe in the public good. In fact, they belittle it. I know, because I have been on the receiving end-- as an environmentalist in Florida-- for many, many years. There can't be civility in government until business leaders demand change. But the attitude of business leaders is, why should I care? If America is going down, shouldn't I take care of my own, first?

For Florida's land speculators, Christmas came early ... by gimleteye

If you are one of Florida's special interests, business may be down but the business environment is more favorable than it has ever been. That is saying a lot, for a state that lacks a state income tax and succeeded at keeping regulations so far at bay that you could take a multi-million acre wetland wilderness, The Everglades, and destroy it without rustling a polluter's feather.

In the area of land use planning at the edge of the Everglades (think, rock mines, Big Sugar, suburban sprawl), things are black as coal in Christmas stocking. The attack of the year landed earlier this week when a state appeals court ruled that for failing to prevail in a legal challenge to a local plan amendment, environmental groups must pay attorney fees of Martin County, the Florida Department of Community Affairs, and development interests.

Land speculators, like the ones who want to blow out Miami-Dade's Urban Development Boundary next to the Homestead Speedway-- the albatross that reeks of a taxpayer ripoff that no one was charged for -- are jumping with glee, pouring champagne over each other like they had won the World Series.

Environmentalists have been glum since the election of Rick Scott to be Florida's next governor. Scott, with no experience with government operations and no discernable feelings for the environment except those that can be captured from a private jet, appears willing to capitulate to ideologues and development interests in the Florida legislature who want to do away with the state's land use planning agency altogether. (Jeb! was the last Florida governor to toy with the idea of applying "free market" principles to environmental protection. It made great fodder for press releases and career-builders for top agency officials for when they needed high level jobs in the private sector, but did nothing to reverse the pollution of Florida waters.) They blame regulations from keeping Florida's economic engine from re-starting, as if the massive overhang in badly developed, overbuilt and now ghostly subdivisions will pop back once the hands of regulators are off the neck of poor, ill-thought of developers and lobbyists. (Good luck with getting DCA Secretary Tom Pelham to stick around another three months, Mr. Governor-Elect. I'm sure Pelham -- who spent the last four years defending his agency against repeated attacks-- feels it is his civic duty to stick around for the dour business of watching his agency being hacked into smaller pieces so Floridians "can get back to work".)

Now that poorly funded civic groups and environmental organizations may be held liable for attorneys fees for suing counties!, developers!, and the DCA! for violating state planning laws, you can bet that the market for challenges to land use plan changes will be deader than Chinese drywall. A dissenting judge on the 1st District Court of Appeal called the decision, "chilling". Chilling, as in, cryogenically frozen.

Yes, that sound you hear is champagne corks popping. For the lobbyists, land speculators, for the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries, and the entire wrecking crew that pushed the economy off the cliff, it has not only been a very, very good year. With the decision of the 1st District Court of Appeals, for them Christmas came early, too.

Appeals court sanctions environmental groups in land-use case.
No Comments
December 14, 2010


By: Bruce Ritchie
A state appeals court ruled on Tuesday that environmental groups must pay the attorneys fees of Martin County, the Florida Department of Community Affairs and development interests for appealing a land-use case.
Richard Grosso, an attorney for the groups 1000 Friends of Florida and the Martin County Conservation Alliance, says the ruling sets a chilling precedent for groups that seek to enforce state growth management laws.
Martin County in 2007 reduced from 20 acres to two acres the minimum lot size required in 191,000 acres of designated agricultural land in western Martin County. 1000 Friends of Florida and the Martin County Conservation Alliance filed a legal challenge, contending the land-use change failed to establish meaningful and predictable standards for protecting environmentally sensitive lands.
An administrative law judge determined that the change won't create urban sprawl or more development because homes would be clustered on smaller lots with open space set aside for agriculture, conservation or parks.
When the groups appealed, the 1st District Court of Appeal ruled that they lacked the legal standing because they were not affected since there was no increase in development. The majority of the three-judge panel then imposed sanctions and ordered the groups to pay legal fees incurred by the county, DCA and intervenors Martin Island Way LLC and Island Way, LC.
But in dissent, Judge William A. Van Nortwick Jr. said the case was "not close to providing a basis to impose sanctions." The erroneous standard used by the majority to impose sanctions "will create a precedent that will severely chill" those who seek appeals, Van Nortwick wrote.
Attorneys representing Martin County and the intervenors could not be reached for comment. Grosso, executive director of the Everglades Law Center in Fort Lauderdale, said his clients will consider their options, including appealing to the Florida Supreme Court or asking the 1st District Court of Appeal to rehear the case.
Grosso said his clients disagree with the administrative law judge's finding of fact that the groups will not be affected. And Grosso said that in response to their appeal, the majority judges with the 1st District Court of Appeal relied on the same facts established by the administrative law judge, creating a "Catch-22" that resulted in the sanctions.
"Enforcement of the growth management act will be a nullity" if the ruling stands. Grosso said. "No one will seek to enforce it any more out of fear of sanctions for attorney fees."
Originally published in the Florida Current - exclusively distributed via Lobbytools - Florida's Premiere Legislative and Media Monitoring Service.

Pepe 'Le Pew' Diaz's Award is Barf Meter Worthy. By Geniusofdespair

Miami Dade County Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz was honored by the Minority Chamber of Commerce as “Miami-Dade Commissioner of the Decade” at the organization’s Awards Banquet on Thursday, November 18.

Commissioner of the Decade? You can't see me but I am shaking my head in disbelief but what more could I expect from a Chamber of Commerce.

He is pictured with his date, or is he clutching his Chamber Award? Does it matter which it is?

Jackie Bueno Sousa wrote about Pepe Diaz today in the Miami Herald. Read it, not because Eye On Miami is mentioned in the column, she is actually on target.

Florida Chamber of Commerce: we can't afford to clean our pollution of your waters ... by gimleteye

Recently, the St. Pete Times wrote an editorial blasting the business interests that are obstructing the US EPA from enforcing against pollution of Florida's waters that makes The Miami Herald editorial page, a desert in comparison. The editorial, reprinted below, is along the lines that I wrote recently, "Florida is floating in a sea of pollution." This weekend, I saw this phenomenon first-hand; through an airplane window and then on a small boat out of Key West: the blighted, shallow water environment-- wrecked by algae blooms and pollution.

This photo shows is layers of polluted water converging and moving through the Keys. The photo was taken, roughly, between Islamorada and Marathon, on the Atlantic side. But the ugly water is everywhere.

Shot from a few thousand feet in the air, I matched this view a few hours later from a small boat from Key West into the Mud Keys and Snipe Point. It was a magical winter day-- almost without wind and warm, too. At dead low tide there should have been wading birds everywhere, spearing small crabs and shrimp in the exposed bottom. I only saw a few and I knew why. Like so much of the Everglades, the place was barren. That's because there is so little food left; its fragile web has been busted apart by polluted water. To an untrained eye, the water looked fine. But I've watched this stretch of our natural heritage since the 1970's. Everywhere the water had a dense green cast; the sea grass didn't resemble anything like the lush carpet that once blanketed these meadows. For the most part, the blades of seagrass were coated with slime, like a sick tongue. Click, 'read more'.


My friend, a life-time resident of the Keys and avid waterman, told me that bonefish populations had collapsed in the past year. He is a doctor. Several times a week for decades, he puts out of his dock on Sugarloaf Key and heads to the back country. He knows the channels and tides like lines in his palm. We've had this conversation before. My friend still harbors the expectation that hard science will tell him what is happening now; that the jury is still out, that the decline of marine life is a pause in an unfathomable cycle. This is not what I have observed. As young men we both fished the Keys in the 1970's; then, there were moments in the backcountry when life was firing on all eight cyclinders-- a riot of species in water so shallow you could measure its depth from your waist, down. Things began to change very quickly in the 1980's. You didn't have to be a marine scientist to read in the sudden blooms of toxic algae a threat to Florida.

Those who dismissed the threat, then, to Florida's natural heritage are the same who dismiss it now: wealthy sugar barons who farm and dump their pollution into the Everglades that feeds Florida Bay, big cities that continue to use canal systems as sewage drains to dump stormwater filled with chemicals and nutrients, and shills for the builders and land speculators whose business models depend on shifting infrastructure costs to taxpayers while they pocket profits. Today they are fighting tooth and nail in Congress, to strip out the authority of EPA -- surely the most bedraggled of federal agencies-- to regulate fertilizer and phosphorous pollution; a chief culprit in the toxic waters of Florida.

Then, Florida's business leaders didn't give a crap that our nearshore waters were falling apart. They would use hollow arguments: "Science is inconclusive," or, "This is just part of the natural cycle." Or, "What we need is a big hurricane to wash out the dirty water." Today, in the Keys and the rest of Florida they are out of excuses including the worst of all: "Business can self-regulate their pollution better than regulations."

Florida's business leaders don't see how our state's natural resources contribute to the bottom line and how that bottom line is racing us to all become trailer trash. The reason that regulations don't work is that the entire system-- from civil service requirements to measurement metrics-- is designed to fail. It is not that government can't work. It is that the business interests that control government, don't want it to. That's the point of the St. Pete Times editorial, in rebuttal to Gov. elect Scott and the panoply of Republican extremists who are harping on the US EPA for its plan to finally-- FINALLY-- require Florida to impose laws on the kinds of fertilizer and nutrient pollution that is killing our state.

My opinion is: shut down the polluters. Who can doubt the time is long overdue to put the cost in the products they sell? Well, for one, the doubters include the Idiocracy that sees nothing wrong with the Keys water quality turning into garbage. They hold the center stage. They grab public attention with catch phrases like , "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?" They don't have the slightest idea what they are talking about.

Take Sarah Palin, for example. Palin clearly loves the outdoors in Alaska. But nature in Alaska is not like anywhere else in the continental United States. There, human impacts are dwarfed by wilderness; or at least seem so. For the time being, Alaska is the last place where nature remains appears intact. It is no wonder that corporate polluters aka The Tea Party have grabbed onto Palin and her blissful ignorance that Alaska stands for everywhere. They did the same with other Alaska politicians who held environmental regulations hostage to "freedom", to stand for the whole nation and to hold the whole nation, hostage.

The economic crash has simply strengthened their hold. Now, the gang is in Tallahassee, promoting Jeb Bush ideologues back into the limelight; Jeb! whose amendments to the 1994 Everglades Forever Act, passed at the urging of Big Sugar in 2003, condemned the Everglades to more years of costly delay and federal litigation that still is not resolved while the waters of Florida degrade into layers of disgust.

The polluters want to keep polluting, and they are taking advantage of this mini-depression and economic crisis to solidify their agenda. They want taxpayers to foot the bill. They want voters to really believe that there is nothing we can do to stop progress that is the addition of all the features of modern life including pollution. We become dumber, sicker, and more and more used to a blighted, toxic landscape. (click 'read more' for the full St. Pete Times editorial)


St. Pete Times OPED: "Rick Scott, Pam Bondi and the rest of Florida's newly elected Republican leadership teamed up the other day for a shameful cause — dirtier streams, lakes and drinking water. The pair joined a host of incoming Republican officeholders to blast the new clean water rules announced this month by the Environmental Protection Agency. These leaders need to get their facts — and their priorities — straight. Polluted water endangers public health, threatens the golden geese of property values and tourism and destroys the very environment that attracts residents here. The state should welcome the new standards and work with polluters to clean up the public's waterways.

The new rules are hardly an example of an activist federal government overstepping its authority. The EPA told the states in 1998 to limit nutrient pollution in surface waters by 2004 or it would do the job for them. But 2004 came and went. Finally, in 2008, environmental groups sued the EPA, calling on the agency to intervene in Florida under the Clean Water Act. Last year, the agency settled the case under the stipulation that it adopt specific pollution standards for Florida waterways. The EPA unveiled those standards — for lakes, river and springs — this month. A separate proposal for coastal waters is due by November 2011.

Florida's political and business leaders decried the move as an unprecedented reach and a costly mandate that could stall Florida's recovery — totally ignoring that the EPA and state had dragged their feet for more than a decade while waterways deteriorated further. Industry groups said the measure could cost agriculture, municipal and industrial wastewater plants and pulp and paper manufacturers $12 billion a year. Barney Bishop, who heads Associated Industries, the powerful business lobby, blamed "radical left-wingers" for imposing regulations that the state might not even need.

Radical left-wingers? These rules were put into motion under the administration of President George W. Bush, after the EPA had worked for a decade with two Republican governors of Florida to write tighter pollution standards. And the standards are not near as draconian or as costly as industrial polluters have claimed. The EPA estimates the rules would affect only a fraction of farmers, plant operators and other polluters. Fewer than half of the wastewater plants and only about one-tenth of farming operations would fall under the plan, according to the EPA. The agency estimates the cleanup would cost between $135 million and $206 million annually. And that's before polluters could take advantage of a variance process that could take entire operations or watersheds off the hook from making any changes at all.

Business groups have done a good job camouflaging the issue as a jobs bill and confusing the point: The public's waterways should no longer be a cheap dumping ground for fertilizer, chemicals, livestock manure, stormwater runoff and septic tanks. Nutrient pollution causes harmful algae blooms, which can kill fish, cause infections, rashes and respiratory problems among swimmers and beach goers and cause huge financial losses in tourism and property values. The state acknowledged in 2008 that nutrient pollution tainted 1,000 miles of rivers, 350,000 acres of lakes and 900 square miles of estuaries in Florida.

The EPA's standards build on what is a Florida solution to a Florida problem. Federal officials have shown good faith by continuing to meet with state regulators and affected industries to ensure that the clean-water standards are reasonable and specific to the local hydrologic conditions. The EPA also stayed the rules for an additional 15 months to give the industry time to prepare. This was after the agency postponed the rules initially at the request of Florida's two U.S. senators, Republican George LeMieux and Democrat Bill Nelson. Florida's political and business leaders need to heed their own call for science, not politics, to drive this process. This is the water that Floridians drink."


[Last modified: Nov 19, 2010 06:47 PM]

"Yes!" is the right vote on Amendment 4 ... by gimleteye

EOM readers may feel a little dazed by the attention on this blog to Amendment 4, the ballot referendum brought by Florida Hometown Democracy. In readers' lifetimes, this will be the ONLY chance a measure critical of Florida's growth pattern will ever appear on a state-wide ballot. Let me say it again: this is IT. You will have one shot on November 2nd. That's all. The sheer grit and determination by a band of volunteers and citizen activists to push and pull this Constitutional amendment through the set of traps and obstacles and hazards set by the Chamber of Commerce and Florida legislature will never be equalled in our lifetime. I say this, after a lifetime of working the civic side of the ledger on protecting our quality of life and environment and public health. There is no back bench. No line-up of young people chomping at the bit to dig in and get their hands callused and dirty with civic engagement. I watched the older generation of community activists pass. I've tried to recruit, in Miami, the younger generation to the cause of activism. So at the risk of repetition: I'll say it again. Amendment 4 is it. It is the last time you will have a chance to vote on endless traffic congestion, overcrowded schools, and blighted communities as a result of bad land use planning by local officials. With only a few days left, why kick back now. One of the best editorial writers in the state, Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel, wrote a great piece in today's paper that deserves a special mention here. It supports our position in support of Amendment 4 on Nov. 2nd. Vote YES. Click 'read more'
What's that smell? Better power up the Malarkey Meter

Scott Maxwell
TAKING NAMES
11:34 PM EDT, October 26, 2010
Orlando Sentinel

"I've heard from so many readers bewitched, bothered and bewildered by nasty campaign accusations that I decided to dust off the Malarkey Meter and start putting these claims to the truth test.

Here's the problem: The fibs and fabrications are so numerous that I couldn't fit them all in one column. So we'll run a half-dozen through the meter today. We'll have many more Friday.

But we're going to start with an expanded section featuring what may be the most distortion-filled campaign I've seen in the past decade — the pro-development attacks on Amendment 4.

The chamber of commerce crowd has been distorting things about this one for more than three years — and just recently got caught telling one of the worst whoppers this campaign season.

They started back in 2007 when they tried to con residents into thinking the amendment would hand decisions about local growth to "special interests." (That's not true unless you're a special interest. The proposal simply lets citizens vote on developments and growth matters in their own communities.)

It continued last year when they claimed the amendment was designed to "stop growth." (Planning officials later confirmed that a city like Orlando, for instance, already has enough future growth approved to nearly double in size, regardless what happens with Amendment 4.)

But the pinnacle of prevarication for the anti-Amendment 4 folks appeared in this very newspaper 10 days ago. It was a full-page ad that claimed Amendment 4 "will force counties and cities across Florida to raise taxes and fees," citing the widely respected PolitiFact.com as its source for that claim.

Here's the problem: PolitiFact never said such a thing. In fact, it later labeled that very claim as a "Pants on Fire" lie. And it's a bad scene when your supposed sources are calling you a liar.

Listen. I'll be the first to acknowledge there are legitimate questions and concerns about Amendment 4. But the anti-4 forces have rarely even flirted with legitimacy in their attacks."