Obama’s Whistle Stop Train Ride to Washington. By Geniusofdespair

Finally, it has hit me: Today! The 8 years of the worst president in my lifetime is finally almost over.

I was at the health club on the treadmill watching the train go by on a muted TV. Obama raised his hand and waved from the back car. I am hardly patriotic but on seeing him, it was a profound moment for me. Watching him silently wave I was, as Mike Myers would say: Faklempt! Or, as you might understand better: Overwhelmed with joy.

Nortel: bankrupt ... by gimleteye

The news that the Canadian telecommunications manufacturer, Nortel, filed for bankruptcy protection thuds like another shoe dropping. The news is unrelentingly bad. As a letter writer to the New York Times put it this morning: what does it say about our current situation that the best news of the week was a plane crash?

Nortel had an august place in the dot.com boom as the 20th century wound down. At the top, Nortel's market cap accounted for one third the market value of stocks traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

For moments like this, I retrieved a January 2000 copy of the breathless bubble booster, "The Gilder Technology Report".

Gilder used the word "telecosm", an off-rhyme with orgasm, to describe the infinite potential available to anyone wise enough to dump hard earned money into speculation. "The computer age is over. That is the significance of the amazing Telecosmic run of the last year. Of the best stock market performers of 1999- an all time record year by everymeasure of wealth creation-- the Telecosm list led the parade. ... the date-adjusted Gilder Technology Report selection was up 268 percent, far ahead of any other major index."

"The Telecosm will make human communication universal, instantaneous, unlimited in capacity, and at the margins; free." On the bankrupcty news, Nortel, whose U.S. stock reached a split-adjusted high of almost $900, traded last week on the Toronto Stock Exchange down 69 percent to 12 cents.

Who would have thought that the dot.com bubble would have been replaced so quickly and efficiently, thanks to Federal Reserve interest rate policies and lax regulation by the Clinton and Bush White Houses, with a housing asset bubble? In 2005, on the editorial page of The Miami Herald, the former president of the Latin Builders Association Willy Bermello crowed-- without any hint of another viewpoint-- that values in real estate development were doubling every few years; "The bubble is not latex but stainless steel."

Too bad for all of us that bubbles were allowed to dominate our economic and political landscape without challenge. We are living with the consequences imposed by our own dumb passivity in the face of charlatans, hucksters, and Ponzi schemers dressed up in Chamber of Commerce values.

Today, the building industry is pleading with Congress for more bailouts, including a new allowance that would let builders write off losses against profits stretching back five years into the middle of the housing bubble. There were many, many people and civic activists who opposed the building industries, as they gobbled up farmland, wetlands, and induced fraud across the fast growing areas of the nation. It is an outrage that Congress would even consider rewarding industries and executives who blindly drove the US economy into the depths of the worst crisis since the Depression.

I want to know, where is my bailout? Or better; when am I and others going to be rewarded by Congress for fiscal prudence, careful planning to protect my family, and living within our means?

The Whole World is Aging. by Geniusofdespair

Why are there so many damn commercials on Pharmaceuticals? Well, maybe because our population is aging and they are the commercial targets for drugs (drugs with a host of side effects recited by actors, always ending with “death”). People between the ages of 65 and 74 spend 55.1% of their day watching TV.

According to the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging: In 2020 it is projected that there will be 54.6 million over the age of 65 in the US which would amount to 16.3% of the population.

In 2006 37.3 million US citizens were over 65. That is 12.4% of the US population. Japan tops the list for 2006: with 20.4% of their population over 65. Does that mean they are just living longer (healthier)? Is having the US near the bottom of the list making the younger generations happy? They have to pay for less of our Social Security. Too early to celebrate, however, in 2050 it is projected that the over 65 number will reach 20.9% in the US.

Italy, Germany and Greece are all at 19%, they trail Japan by one point. The countries with the lowest numbers of seniors: Moldova, Argentina, Cuba and Taiwan are at 10% of their population over 65. (The study did not go lower than 10%). One perk: The television commercials must be better in these countries.

Best Looking Office Holder in Broward County - 2009: Commissioner Keith London. By Geniusofdespair

Hallandale Beach Commissioner London was born and raised in Philadelphia. He cares about the Everglades -- not like some Miami Dade Commissioners who will remain nameless. He, along with our Katy Sorenson, attended many of the sessions conducted by actual Scientists at the Everglades Coalition Meeting held in Miami. Among many other things, he is a Rules Officer for the South Florida Youth Football League and a Multiple Sclerosis bicycle tour volunteer and participant. If you want to get on his Hallandale Beach mailing list try klondon@hallandalebeachfl.gov. Be warned, he will get you volunteering for something worthwhile! Keith, when informed of his win here at Eye On Miami said:

"I try not to take myself too seriously. I think we all need to laugh at ourselves once in a while. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to smile a big fat grin."

Our runner-up is the lovely Broward County Commissioner Kristin Jacobs, who will take the top spot in case Keith cannot live up to the Eye On Miami standard of not getting arrested while in office.

Lennar's "Peace-Of-Mind Job Loss Mortgage Payment Protection Plan" .... by gimleteye

"New mortgage protection plan available for buyers" reads the headline of Lennar's advertisement in today's Miami Herald Home Guide section. No matter how many times I read this sales pitch, I am still shaking my head in disbelief: "If I lose my job," the advertisement begins, postulating a Miami Herald reader who might buy a home but for the risks of the worst economy since the 1930's, "how will I make my mortgage payment?" Good, so far.

"Lennar is telling wary home buyers "don't worry" because they have taken much of the risk out of the equation with the launch of their "Peace-Of-Mind Job Loss Mortgage Payment Protection Plan".

Wow. Is that serious?

"This new program gives buyers peace of mind... one less thing to worry about when it comes to buying a new home," explains Carlos Gonzalez, president of Lennar's Southeast Florida division." Let's see if I get this right: Lennar is so desperate it is saying that its buyers don't need to worry about a job and a steady income to pay a mortgage?

"If job security is the only thing keeping someone from buying a home at this time, now there's nothing to worry about."

Nothing to worry about? !!#%@#% "This program will help ensure that their mortgage remains intact in the event of a layoff, with reasonable time to secure a new position." "Program enrollment is free."

This is the point where I raise my hand like the slow kid at the back of the school room. What, I would ask, is a reasonable period of time? What if the only job I can find is in another part of the country? The mortgage is going to be intact, I'm going to be out of a job but in a Lennar home in Florida City or Homestead where the tax base has dropped so fast it doesn't cover the cost of police protection. How is this going to improve my stress level or credit rating?

Not to worry, Lennar promises its "everything you want, everything you need philosophy" except a good shot of LSD, which is really what you would need to believe that the resolution to the foreclosure crisis is to believe that consumers can get something for nothing. This ad is literally the production homebuilder's version of "Jackass", the movie.

It is the way communism was sold to poor Russians in the 1920's that lead to Stalin in the 1930's.

The advertisement closes with a long legal disclaimer that I won't print in full. Let me just say this: whatever troubles Lennar executives are facing in their business, this ad has the aroma of pure panic. Shame on The Miami Herald for allowing this nonsense be published in its pages.

Bush's farewell speech ... by gimleteye

The New York Times printed its report of Bush's farewell speech on Page A19: Siberia. Here's another one from some enterprising, unknown soldier.

Afternoon cartoon

New county commission chairman re-orders committees and chairs ... by gimleteye

The post below, "Major Blow to the Hispanic Members of the County Commission's Unreformable Majority", is wishful thinking. As a co-blogger of Eyeonmiami, I share the enthusiasm for the headline. In fact, the composition of the overall commission doesn't change with Dennis Moss as chairman. The balance on committee assignments is carefully worked out to keep the boat from rocking.

The overall tenor of government performance-- if not the substance-- will be better than in the recent past. But remember: Moss joined Martinez, Diaz, and Seijas in shamelessly attacking citizen critics from the dais. It was Moss' idea to use taxpayer funds to put out the county's own newspaper "to get the truth out". Moss should never have joined the unreformable majority in turning the county commission into an inquisition against citizens who objected to the real estate and housing asset bubble that is now so busted, all the king's horses and all the king's men will not put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Whether this adds up to reform depends on less on Moss' leadership skill or his willingness to work with the mayor to improve the performance of the county manager, George Burgess, than the economic crisis. All those years that Burgess allowed Seijas to bully the staff of county agencies have been washed away by urgent realities. The only good news in the worst contraction since in the 1930's is this: the backlash against the excesses of the housing and construction boom will give energy to the US Department of Justice and public corruption units. Click on read more.

As a result, Dorrin Rolle as chair of the Airport and Seaport Committee will have a much tighter range of motion than his predecessors who used the airport and port as political piggy banks. Chairman Moss re-configured the Government Operations Committee; but it still retains oversight of very heavy public investment related to water and wastewater management. Carlos Gimenez is going to have his hands full reigning in the public subsidy "shovel ready" agenda and insider contracts, with the composition of that committee retaining Seijas, Diaz, and Martinez. On the other hand, Gimenez may be the front-runner for the next mayor of Miami-Dade County and so his work steering the unreformable majority on this committee is going to be difficult, to say the least. Katy Sorenson gets the environment, planning and quality of life portfolio plus finance and procurement management. But she also gets yapping CSX Joe Martinez as vice-chair. This committee does empower two of the African American commissioners (Audrey Edmonson and Barbara Jordan), but these more often than not have sided with the unreformable majority. It will be very interesting to see if they are willing to be more independent and decisive about the need for fiscal stimulus in their own districts as opposed to the hinterlands (cf. Urban Development Boundary and Parkland DRI). Barbara Jordan, who has been horrendous on edge development issues (ie. Florida City Commons/Lennar) is given charge of the committee on transit, infrastructure and roads; this could be the most important committee and the likely recipient of significant federal dollars for 'shovel ready' projects; many of which are already the point of opposition by community and civic activists who Moss has long ignored. So to conclude, it is wrong to declare that the unreformable majority has been dimmed or dented.

The most positive news is that the morale among county staff, and particularly in agencies charged with protecting the quality of life and environment in Miami-Dade, is going to quickly improve after a long and nasty Dark Ages where Natacha Seijas continually meddled and exerted pressure through her surrogates. The unreformable majority spent years beating up on Katy Sorenson; for at least the next two years Sorenson will have more influence as the sole reliable vote for the public interest than she has ever had in more than 15 years on the commission. Unless she takes a job in DC. The managers who were able to hide behind Seijas, either because they had to for professional survival or because they preferred playing politics more than their jobs, will have to adjust.

The building boom and housing asset bubble that commissioners helped to foment also propelled the hubris of Miami's builders and developers and speculators and big farmers to new heights. How things change. It takes a village to raise a child and a Depression to raze a village: that's the new reality.

Over the past decade, Chairman Dennis Moss supported those massive platted subdivisions and developments in his district that look like ghost towns today. If he hadn't been supportive, building goodwill with the Latin Builders Association and its key players, he never would have had his turn as commission chairman. As the economy winds down, his biggest challenge will be to revise his thinking about what happened out there. It will be easier to do that thinking, now that the builders are out of the game. But everyone knows that in two years, if the fiscal stimulus works, it will be time for more nail guns and glue guns and particle board in the suburbs. The only way the unreformable majority and its influence changes is at the ballot box, and as far as that goes, the county commission still looks like a fortress secured by a permanent incumbency with term limits only applying to the county mayor.

A Major Blow to the Hispanic Members of the County Commission's Unreformable Majority. By Geniusofdespair

County Commission Chair Moss reorganized the committees and assigned the membership. Look at the Chairs of the Committees. Payback time. Katy Sorenson is Chair over weasel Joe Martinez and Carlos Gimenez is over Vile Natacha Seijas. Egos are puddling. This is a major upheaval folks. Barreiro, Martinez, Seijas and Diaz are all without a Chairmanship. This is going to be a hard two years for them. Good! Rolle, Edmonson and Jordan are still powerful. Not so good. But Sorenson and Gimenez head the two most powerful Committees.

Hit "read more" to see the rest of the committee assignments (hit all the images to enlarge them).

(Also Check out this Channel 4 I Team report on county waste of your tax dollars)

Archeologists of the Housing Bust: Ghost towns for real ... by gimleteye

All those civic activists fighting suburban sprawl didn't have to wait long for instant suburbs to turn to goop on a bank's balance sheet, then to gorp on a distant investor's portfolio, then to a nightmare on not-so-Main Street. It happened in the blink of an eye, in real time, leaving the lobbyists and engineers for sprawl blinking in the naked daylight, as all their clients faded away, nursing their losses. I'm glad the local CBS affiliate produced the following story but have a question: where was CBS (and Fox, NBC, ABC, and CNN for that matter) when civic activists were running protests against unsustainable development in downtown Miami for the past decade and you wouldn't even send a TV crew and camera down to do the story? Too afraid of rubbing your automobile advertisers, the wrong way? Click more for the whole story.

Jan 14, 2009 10:38 am US/Eastern
Developer's Disaster Causes Modern Ghost Town
The Developer Places Blame On Regions Bank

Florida Keys Townhomes Only Has 10 Sold Homes
Developer's Office Shut The Door On CBS4 Investigative Producer
FLORIDA CITY (CBS4) ―

At the end of Florida's Turnpike, you'll see the advertisements for Florida Keys Townhomes. They showcase happy families living in bargain-priced homes. In reality, the development is a modern-day ghost town.

It's the size of 70-football fields. A brand new South Florida housing development that had more than 600 promised units. After the first ten were sold, the bank foreclosed on the company leaving only 70 units built and plenty of empty land. It didn't take long for the Florida City development to be transformed into a modern ghost town. The handful of homeowners felt abandoned by the U.S. Postal Service; who wouldn't deliver their mail, and two police agencies who couldn't find the unfinished development in their computer systems.

An American dream was turned into a nightmare when a bank took over the "Floridian Key" development before it was complete. Hundreds of houses were supposed to be built along Northeast Second Street, next to the Prime Outlets in Florida City. Only a small number of them were ever finished.

The community looks great from the outside. But on the inside, it's a pre-construction nightmare. Amid the billboards that showcase happy families living in bargain-priced townhomes, there are rows of empty townhouses that sit on blocks of paved roads that are devoured by weeds.

"It's a little frustrating and depressing to see it like this." When Jorge Pichardo and his girlfriend bought the home, they were excited about all the pre-construction plans. "A basketball court, pool, barbeque pits, playground," he ticked off.

"My wife is scared, and we just had a baby boy," said Gabriel Campos, another resident at the complex.

The couple moved in, only to find out in the most unexpected place that Regions Bank was foreclosing on the property. "When my wife went to City Hall to do the water, the clerk there said, 'Did you know that they're in foreclosure?' That's how we found out," Jorge said.

The developer is now long gone. Of the 614 promised units, only 70 were ever built. And only ten units were ever sold.

When CBS4 News tried to visit the developer's office on Tuesday we got the cold shoulder.

"I can give you the phone number," said one man to CBS4 I-Team Producer Gio Benitez, as he walked into the offices, but instead he just shut the door so we couldn't go inside. Someone else told us that the owners, Antonio and Armando Alonso, were in a meeting.

The CBS4 I-Team finally visited the Alonso's $2 million estate in Kendall and got a hold of Antonio Alonso through the call box outside.

"You should call Regions because they took over," said Antonio Alonso.

When asked what he would tell to the buyers who were left high and dry he said, "I say that we tried to do everything we could, but Regions wouldn't allow us to step into the project."

Those ten owners have a massive problem on their hands. Looking past the fact that nobody would buy or rent those homes, the fact of the matter is that to many, they don't exist at all. The U.S. Postal Service won't deliver mail that far. There are no street lights, and thieves have been ransacking houses for appliances.

"We called the Florida City Police; they couldn't find us in the system. They transferred us to Homestead Police. Homestead couldn't find us. We got transferred to Miami-Dade police. Miami-Dade finally said, 'You know what? This address and this zip code actually belongs to Florida City."

The Florida City police finally found them, more than two hours later. Now, residents are thankful to see officers patrolling the residents. "I'm really worried about the residents. My job is just to keep them safe, 'cuz they're out here by themselves. Like you say, there's no lights here; it's dark out here," said Florida City Officer James Butts. "So I make sure the officers are coming out here."

"It's pretty much unchartered territory," said Real Estate Attorney Michelle Gonzalez Torres. She believes residents might have a case against the developer, especially if he sold the properties and didn't disclose they were in foreclosure.

However, she says that they have a better chance of getting their lender to lower their payments.

"That particular lender is not gonna want to foreclose on these individual homeowners because they don't want to buy into a problem," said Torres.

"We're paying. We can pay," Jorge told CBS4 Reporter David Sutta. "The thing is that we didn't foreclose. The developers foreclosed." The Pichardo family, expecting a baby in just two weeks, and their neighbors are all stuck paying the price for a developer's disaster.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

'Shovel Ready' for what? ... by gimleteye

The Obama administration is hurrying its fiscal stimulus plan. I've lost count of the trillions the federal government has already spent to deflect the worst crisis since the Depression. At a recent Miami environmental conference, all the talk was of ‘buckets’ of federal money coming to South Florida. The question on everyone's lips: how many infrastructure projects are ‘shovel ready’?

“Shovel ready’ is a message frame calling to mind the garage shovel for snow removal or cleaning out street gutters or the backyard garden. Fair enough. But how does the federal government pour a trillion dollars into the economy without using a very large size funnel? And which, among agencies, is ready to administer and audit such massive doses of currency after a decade when the primary purpose of government was to dismantle regulatory authority; who exactly is left to determine which projects are shovel ready or not?

We know how to re-pave highways and interstates, or re-build bridges. We know how to build an asset bubble from houses and stocks. If we put enough billions together, we can even put tunnels under cities and build imaginary bridges of financial derivatives from suburbs in Atlanta to housing developments in Phoenix and Tampa and Minneapolis that all look so similar you might forget what city you are in should you ever get lost without directions home.

But if these investments—or the debt they represent—were real economic growth the US economy would not be stuck today on the coral reef, waiting to be looted by pirates. So let’s take a look how the fiscal stimulus is likely to proceed.

The broad devolution of federal authority has turned federal agencies into caretakers. Today, the only way to distribute massive amounts of federal stimulus money is through bucket lists developed by states, filtered through decisions of local power brokers at the municipal and county level.

Several months ago at a meeting of the Miami-Dade County Commission, I watched the results applied to a $62 million dollar grant from US Housing and Urban Development for the purpose of purchasing low-income apartment building foreclosures to benefit Miami’s swelling ranks of poor and disadvantaged. The hour-long debate from the dais wrapped the thirteen county commissioners, elected by single-member districts, into instant acrimony along ethnic and racial lines despite the fact that professional county planners and staff had clearly organized their presentation to provide objective data and information about need, availability, demographics and location.

In this respect, the $62 million HUD grant was a test-run of what happens when the federal government gives money away to local jurisdictions. We’ve already seen what the banks have done with the first installment of the TARP plan: they squirreled it away into their own books. Without audit and regulatory controls, the only way that the trillion dollar fiscal surplus will reach the states and into communities is through the same channels that proved so inept in protecting the public interest.

In fast growing states like Florida, ‘shovel ready’ depends on whether or not permitting for specific infrastructure projects is complete according to local and state laws. Here is one thread, one specific case, that easily traces back to spool from which it unwinds.

Kendall is an amorphous patchwork of platted subdivisions and home to more than 250,000 in west Miami-Dade County. Its traffic infrastructure is a nightmare. Most residents travel to jobs east then north to jobs downtown, joining a flood of hundreds of thousands of additional commuters in cars from earlier ring suburbs closer to Miami. Although Miami is less than fifteen miles away, the work commute by car is often more than two hours a day. This will sound familiar to tens of millions of Americans, trapped in suburbs and cars of their own.

During the building boom in Florida, land speculators and developers made a fortune in thousands of scattered low-density areas like Kendall; building and profiting from leap-frog developments in platted subdivisions to sprawl further toward the Everglades and into important watersheds, even as the state and federal government was trying, year after year, to cobble a plan together to revive the faded and dying River of Grass.

"You can't stop it," said Al Hoffman, the most influential developer in a state crowded with influential developers. "There's no power on earth that can stop it!" Hoffman, the energetic leader of WCI Communities Inc., knows a bit about power. He was co-chair of George W. Bush's presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee's finance chair. Now he's the top money man for Gov. Jeb Bush -- a former developer himself -- and heads an exclusive council of CEOs who advise the governor on policy. A scribbled note from the president hangs on his office wall: "You are the man!" So wrote the Washington Post in 2002. "The unstoppable force Hoffman was talking about is the runaway development marching from southwest Florida toward the Everglades. The Naples area was the second-fastest-growing in America in the 1990s. The Fort Myers-Cape Coral area is not far behind. And the gated golf course communities that have come to define this subtropical mecca are spreading east. "It's an inevitable tidal wave!" declared Hoffman, 68.” (‘Growing pains in Southwest Fla.’, Washington Post, June 25, 2002)

In Florida, former Gov. Jeb Bush put Al Hoffman at the head of the business Council of 100 in 2000. Hoffman’s enthusiasm was reinforced by the unspoken, certain awareness that massive infrastructure projects were in the pipeline to accommodate Florida's growth—from trans-state gas lines to feed new power plants, to new highways bi-secting undeveloped portions of the state, and plans for new airports to benefit large landowners like the St. Joe Company.

Suburban sprawl relies on gargantuan scale to deliver both profits and political orthodoxy. That scale needs to be continuously replenished by 'shovel ready' infrastructure. Although the housing asset bubble began to collapse in 2006, the big infrastructure pieces promoted by Hoffman and his council friends—highways, water, airports, ports, electric utilities—are all on decadal permitting timelines. Many of these projects were conceived in the full bloom of the housing asset bubble. According to the Washington Post, in 2001, Hoffman’s former company sold $1.1 billion worth of homes. Today, it no longer exists except as a shell of its former ebullient self. But the projects advocated, planned and put in motion by state agencies at the direction of the Florida legislature at the direction of the Council of 100 collectively, or individually in their own communities, are very much in the pipeline.

If they are not 'shovel ready' now, they will be among the first to be 'shovel ready' as soon as the federal money starts landing in the hands of local decision-makers. It goes without saying that in Florida, these projects were conceived by GOP contributors from the development and real estate industries. Here is a specific example.

West of Kendall, some of the most powerful Republican development interests in the state—who exerted their influence as lobbyists or campaign donors or behind the scenes—were pushing for new infrastructure along the western-most boundary of the county, a two lane road serving farmers called Krome Avenue. These political entrepeneurs made huge speculative investments adjacent to Krome Avenue and outside the Urban Development Boundary.

Data on these investments are publicly available through county tax rolls and real estate listings. One recent listing is for a 49 acre parcel for sale outside the Miami-Dade Urban Development Boundary at $1.7 million or $34,694 an acre. But during the building boom, high land acreage just inside the Urban Development Boundary, where local government was committed to providing infrastructure like roadways, sewerage, water, and schools, was selling for nearly $1,000,000 an acre. On the other side of the UDB, prices in anticipation of zoning changes had soared from only a few thousand an acre upwards to $100,000. The difference? A zoning decision to move the Urban Development Boundary.

South Florida's lobbyists-turned-developers purchased Krome Gold Ranches (Rodney Barreto, Agustin Herran, Armando Guerra) at the peak of the market in December 2005 for $44,608,600 for 466 acres, or, $95,726 an acre. Baretto is a top recruiter for Republican causes and candidates in Florida; former Gov. Bush appointed him to the Florida Wildlife Commission where he is now chairman. Baretto has been a primary force behind planning and efforts to widen Krome Avenue; a purpose that would serve requirements of Florida growth management law requiring that traffic infrastructure should be in place before major development.

Just east of this property are 125 acres owned by Neighborhood Planning Company (Armando Guerra, Agustin Herran, Ramon Rasco, Carlos Garcia and Sergio Pino), bought in July 2005 for $15,000,000, or, $120,000 an acre. Krome Investments, LLC (Sergio Pino and Armando Guerra), in the same area, bought 59 acres in December 2005 for $6,621,440 or $112,227 an acre. Pino was a Bush-Cheney "Ranger" for having raised at least $200,000 for the president's 2004 re-election campaign and, according to the St. Pete Times, "is a major donor to Gov. Bush's non-profit educational foundation."

This property is near Lennar Homes proposed 1000 acre development called Parkland. The bulk of Parkland property was purchased by Ed Easton--a close Bush associate--as trustee for Krome Gold Land Trust; approximately 614 acres were purchased in late 2004 for nearly $65,000,000 according to County Property Appraiser records. Easton, a close Bush family friend and major polical donor, and others, including Pino, appear to have paid over $100,000 per acre for this property as well.

Assuming that current market value per acre outside Miami’s Urban Development Boundary on Krome Avenue is $34,700, then these four investments cost about $132 million and now have a paper loss of more than $88 million. The only way these investors, or their banks, can begin inching back to their original investment value is by securing zoning and permitting changes. And what these GOP contributors need most of all is for transportation needs to be met by public investment.

In Miami-Dade, County Commissioner Joe Martinez has been doggedly pushing for the expansion of the CSX rail right-of-way despite the fact that citizens and residents are strongly against the measure because traffic infrastructure to get people from where they live to where they work is abysmal. Parkland is bordered by a rail line owned by the CSX Corporation. In the final months of his tenure as governor, Jeb Bush made a deal with CSX for its rights-of-way. Most of the public attention is to the CSX issues in the middle of the state, but CSX remains a subject of considerable sensitivity to the former governor.What the CSX project would do is make it easier for Parkland and other land speculators in the area to make the claim for traffic "concurrency" and meet the state planning mandate.



Citizens have fought in one public hearing after another, to prevent the use of the CSX right-of-way and Krome Avenue widening, both, as a justification for more 'shovel ready' sprawl. In a January 5th 2009 public announcement, the local transportation planning agency issued the following press statement: "The Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has initiated the CSX Rail Corridor Evaluation Study to further address issues arising during the Kendall Link Study (2007), which analyzed rapid transit options for the Kendall area. The CSX Rail Corridor Evaluation Study’s goal is to examine the feasibility of a broader set of transportation options along the existing CSX rail corridor from Miami International Airport to the South Dade and Kendall areas. In addition to this meeting, the MPO will also be conducting periodic public meetings throughout the study, which is scheduled to be completed in June 2009."

Barry White, a Miami resident and board member of Citizens Against Nonconcurrency Task Force, wrote a stinging rebuke to county commissioners: "How can they propose such a study except as part of a comprehensive plan for Kendall and the area? Wasn't that what the MPO was instructed to do? What is the impetus for such a narrow and specific study and effort? Who's ox is being fed? What about (mass transit) on SW 137 Ave? What about (mass transit) in the whole area? What about MDX's proposed extension of SR836 south around SW 162 Ave. No funds or energy should be expended on the CSX red herring until an overall plan is prepared. MPO already wasted almost $900,000 on studying this area."

The lesson of West Miami Dade is clear: when the Obama White House turns on the fiscal spigot, the flood of money will find a way to accrue, first, to relieve the financial pressure on private investors and land speculators whose claim on local authority is still secure and tight, notwithstanding dire economic circumstances. Widening Krome Avenue and the CSX right-of-way issues will be pushed deeper into the permitting pipeline controlled by political appointees whose job security depends on a political order that may be down on its luck but is very much intact; the revolving door between lobbyists, big engineering and planning firms, senior government agency staff and public officials.

The other side of the argument is that environmental regulations are adequate to the purpose of protecting the public interest. If this is true, why is staff morale at agencies like Miami Dade Environmental Resource Management or the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in the pits? Why is there no connection, whatsoever, between state transportation planning and environmental permitting agencies? Why, then, between 1999 and 2003 in Florida, did the US Army Corps of Engineers approve more than 12,000 wetlands permits and reject one. During the same period, 84,000 acres of wetlands vanished. ("They won't say no", St. Pete Times, May 22, 2005)

The unwritten, and mostly untold history of these agencies is how the housing asset bubble required the mission of these agencies to be thwarted and deformed to suit the needs of builders and developers. A Republican legislature and county commissions dominated by development interests literally threw gasoline on the fire of unsustainable development, permitting sprawl as fast as Wall Street could finance it, showering fees, commissions, and billions in compensation along the way; all based on persuading distant investors who didn't give a damn about the Everglades or anyone’s quality of life so long as their principal and interest was AAA rated and insured.

The reality is this: Florida politics for the past decade was organized around the principle that massive public investments (through bonding and debt creation to benefit dealers, brokers, and local operators)—like airports (St. Joe Company) or highways (Miami-Dade County) could be steered to employ public resources for private gain. The essential feature was to misprice risk, through fealty to a regulatory regime that served the zoning and permitting processes benefiting an insulated political and economic elite.

The shovel ready’ plans that the Obama White House will find at the local level were created through a planning and regulatory regime that served very different masters. Some of those masters are gone. They banked their profits. But there are others who want their game back, and they did not necessarily vote for Barack Obama. How ironic would it be if their best laid plans that had gone to waste through greed and hubris would be delivered by a Democrat in the White House? After all, who needs ficticious debt created by Phd mathematicians housed at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and Mother Merrill and Citigroup, when the doors to the public treasury are wide open?

Get the nail guns going: that is the political artifact of the housing boom.

Without audit standards or control even to control the TARP, it is clear that billions of dollars will be channeled exactly as they were before the asset bubble crash, mainly because the purpose of government these long years has not been to innovate the economy but to bulwark and to protect zoning councils responsible to development interests who fund political campaigns.

Here is what should happen: the strings attached to the trillion dollar fiscal stimulus should prevent investment in infrastructure that simply seeds a failed model of economic growth: suburban sprawl. What Miami Dade citizens have said for decades, and what public officials have neglected for as long, is simply this: take care of the needs of existing residents first. Protect the quality of life and enhance the livability of places where infrastructure deficits are enormous; especially related to mass transit serving urban areas of the nation.

President-elect Obama administration must understand that his best efforts to rescue the US economy from the deepest crisis since the Depression will be steered by the political artifacts left by the asset bubble related to housing. Why is this important? If recalcitrant operators, in states like Florida for instance, are able to steer the hundreds of billions filtering downward in ways that simply reinforce a static order-- like trying to put humpty dumpty back together again-- citizens and taxpayers are at high risk for the worst of possible outcomes.