A Hard Hitting Review of The New Performing Arts Center by geniusofdespair

I have now gone to both venues of the Carnival Center for the performing arts: the Ziff Ballet Opera House and the Knight Concert Hall and I am ready to do my review.

The Knight concert hall is a little sterile. The massive windows looked cloudy from the outside. The wine/drink service is very, very slow.

The building across the street, the Ziff, is less sterile, it has festive curtains and there is that now famous tripping problem when going into the rows. I was with an 18 year old and she tripped so it is not just the old people. The Ziff also has excruciatingly slow wine/drink service. You get your drink just as the annoying buzzer/bell starts, reminding you to go to your seat. The bathroom seemed nicer at the Ziff although I can't really remember, it was in December and bathrooms become a blur.

I saw Irvin Mayfield tonight (Friday) and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. I enjoyed the show especially the song the group performed that Mayfield wrote for his dad and others who died after Hurricane Katrina. The Music sounded good — not too loud or low. Was the quality of the acoustics good at either place?

I haven’t a clue. If I don’t have to stuff cotton in my ears I usually am satisfied. I sat in front of the speakers at too many Joe Jackson concerts when I was young. What did you say??? I can’t hear you.

The audience is equally rude at both venues, arriving late and leaving early. What is with these audiences?

The ever lovely Commissioner Sally Heyman was there and her neighbor on the commission, Audrey Edmonson but they didn’t appear to be dating. They just were both there.

Speaking of the County Commissioners, have you seen the Miami New Times Article "Pimp My Taxpayer Supported Ride," by Francisco Alvarado? He has been writing some very funny articles lately. It is nice to know we are paying for luxury cars.

Anna-Nicole and html Code By genius of despair

We all have to face our greatest fears. I faced my thousand pound gorilla yesterday. It was html, the computer code that created this blog.

Gimleteye and I were trying to give you the ability to skip over most of what we write with a “Read More” button. Self-defeating aren't we? Or do we just know your attention span. I decided to take the easy way out.


I contacted my computer savvy brother, a computer engineer in New York who writes code for a living. His response was:
I am embarrassed to say I don’t know html.
So much for family.

I decided to hunker down and do it. I read the blogspot directions. The directions said, when you see “such and such” paste this after it: and there was a lot of code to paste. Well, what they wanted me to look for wasn’t there. So I went to the group pages on blogspot and noticed that no one else seemed able to do this either. I tried following what they described as "easy to follow directions" and they didn’t work either. Everything went wrong when I tested out my code additions. I spent all day on this. My computer teacher always said: "If it doesn't work on a computer, don't do it again, it will not work a second time." Good advice, but in life I do it over so often, it comes naturally to expect different results from my friend the computer when I do the same thing once again. I was in this loop...

Then God came to the rescue, in the form of fellow blogger Gimleteye. As you can see it is now working. You can now skip over my blogs more easily.

Gimleteye might not have figured out how to attract your attention with a racy picture of Anna-Nicole for a column about Anna-Nicole. But, I used her picture to get you to read about my angst with computer code, and if you read up to here: It worked.

I liked Anna-Nicole. She was like Jane Mansfield. I am using pinup pictures now to keep you attentive.

I often wonder: Why do all these people do their "thing" in Florida? The unstable astronaut lady, Anna-Nicole, the anthrax at the National Enquirer headquarters in Boca, some of the 9/11 terrorists lived here, and we even have our own, the Liberty City terrorists. Wacky, wacky Florida. You have to love this place.

Anna Nicole Smith: RIP

The mainstream media is awash with stories of the untimely death of a model whose sole claim to fame was her claim to fame.

Less easily understood is why the mainstream media persists in taking up valuable news “real estate” with photos by photographers of photographers taking pictures of news conferences after her death.

Our culture is obsessed with fame, that much is true. But there is something more to the reaction of the mainstream media than simply following our obsession: a literal aversion to reporting the kind of news that would reveal the mirage behind the obsession.


Today, the New York Times business section sheds a little light on the nature of the mirage: the $26 trillion credit derivatives market. Local newspapers have studiously avoided the subject.

The credit derivatives market is an unregulated financial market that separates debt from its underlying asset. Much of the real estate boom that touched Miami has been enabled through the parallel creation of debt instruments traded between large institutional investors, banks, and insurance companies.

To call the credit derivatives market a Ponzi scheme is not farfetched. The Times article briefly mentions how hedge funds have turned into the “borrower of last resort” for credit derivatives.

Hedge funds, of course, are scarcely required to report to the SEC and represent the ultimate “illiquid” investment for gullible investors who may, at some point, need the cash.

It should comfort no one that the market in question is “twice the size of the United States economy—the fastest growing financial market there is”.

The mainstream media is lagging so far behind this story, we can scarcely see or hear it. When Warrren Buffett, America’s most famous investor—(who prudently built a fortune on buying underappreciated assets) first called credit derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction" the media scarcely blinked.

Instead, the mainstream media is reporting verbatim from bankers that cracks in the foundation of the US economy are contained to damage in subprime mortgage markets. There is gathering evidence of severe, and much more severe, consequences that lead back to credit derivatives and the real estate industry.

Never has so little reality stood for so much appearance--in the media or elsewhere--, not even in the first decade of the 20th century when binder boys stood on Miami street corners, platted but unbuilt, trading land titles for twice in the afternoon what they sold for, in the morning.

There is no end to the questions we would like the mainstream media to address, but in the coming days we expect to learn instead everything it is possible to know—true or not—about Anna Nicole Smith.

Nibbling away at democracy by gimleteye

In today’s Miami Herald County Commissioner Katy Sorenson urges the public to become actively engaged and involved in democratic institutions like the County Commission.

But public confidence in county government has eroded over such a long period of time, we can scarcely imagine what it would like.

We have three points with respect to public participation at meetings of the County Commission.



Firstly, it is immensely difficult for most people to get to County Hall during working hours. Citizens aren't paid by their employers to attend county commission meetings, unless their employer’s zoning proposals are the issue, in which case they are all paid. Then, there is the traffic and the cost of parking, and, the frustration.

When the majority senses public opposition, the tried and true response is to amend the meeting agenda. Often the item to be heard is deferred to another day and another time. That happened repeatedly to hearings by the county commission leading up to the vote on the Urban Development Boundary issues last year, unreported by the mainstream media. (Affordable housing activists had a better idea: they decided to camp out at the County Commission until their issue was heard.)

The reason this happens, of course, lead us to our second point: every important decision on the county commission is preordained according to a process calibrated to minimize the involvement of the public and maximize the effectiveness of campaign contributions.

It costs $300,000-$500,000 to run a county commission campaign. Whose advice are county commissioners listening to, when they are paid only $6000 a year are fawned over by advisors/lobbyists earning $6000 a day for their clients?

Which brings us to our third point: the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission.

The cause of ethics in county government would achieve more and faster, if the Ethics Commission were disbanded and events involving public corruption allowed to proceed at their normal pace—which would involve more indictments and prosecutions of elected officials—than the current spectacle of county commissioners repeatedly behaving unethically, reported, investigated, and blessed because the enabling scope of the Ethics Commission is toothless as a new born child.

Special interests count on poor public participation in our democracy. You’d have more luck turning Tony Soprano into an officer of the law than changing the quid pro quo's between county commissioners and lobbyists who raise campaign cash.

It is all public record, even if the mainstream media hasn't paid close enough or nearly enough attention.

Sure, Commissioner Seijas and her majority will fill a pothole for you or put up a stop sign on your street corner or buy you breakfast in exchange for your vote.

But when public processes occur that lobbyists and their clients don’t want—for instance, the South Dade Watershed Study that is meant to lay out a new future for growth in the county, protecting Biscayne Bay and the watershed needs for the southern half of the county— special interests participate and then kill the results at the end. That is what they are trying to do, now.

Commissioner Sorenson’s key point is “inviting more people in”. But Commissioner Sorenson knows as well as anyone that when this commission invites more people in, there is no balance beyond the weight of laws, rules and regulations that local legislatures also view as fair game.

WYSIWYG.

Beach Closures because of Contaminated Water. by geniusofdespair

Swimming water at Crandon Park on Key Biscayne tested poor for Enterococcus (105 or greater Enterococcus sp per 100 ml of marine water) and Fecal Coliform (400 or greater Fecal Coliform organisms per 100 ml of marine water) in a test 2/5/07. In a resampling on 2/6/07 the Enterocococcus was good but the Fecal Coliform remained poor so an advisory was issued.

North Shore Ocean Terrace tested poor for Fecal Coliform 2/5/07 and 2/6/07. A health advisory was issued on 2/6/07.

These warnings indicate that contact with the water at this site may pose increased risk of infectious disease, particularly for susceptible individuals.

For your information, the levels the Dept. of Health considers GOOD are:
0-35 Enterococcus sp per 100 ml of marine water and
0-199 Fecal Coliform organisms per 100 ml of marine water.

According to the DOH website, Virginia Key Beach had moderate Fecal Coliform and is not closed to swimming. Either the Herald is wrong or the website -- don't know which. I am warning you, don't google Enterococcus. You don't want to know.

Wealth and Poverty in Miami Part 2 by geniusofdespair

To elaborate on a quote from Gimleteye’s post today:
Gimleteye quoted Elizabeth Aranda: “Those who have been elected to invest in the common good and to help level the playing field for marginalized groups have, instead, pursued their own interests by catering to those who are guided by the maximization of profit.”

I went to a visioning session on what should become of Virginia Key in the City of Miami last night. Mostly middle class in attendance.

There was a Hispanic man there with his teenage daughters who really seemed to care what happened to the Key. (I mention he was Hispanic because a rude reader assumed he was black because I mentioned Virginia Key. Many people care about Virginia Key from many different backgrounds. Don't "assume" rude person. This is a story about economics not color or ethnic background). Back to the story.

The man said, I pay the $1.25 toll and then they want to me to pay $5 to get into parks (Bill Baggs park I assumed, he didn’t know names of parks only admission prices). He said “I shouldn’t have to pay to go to a park.” He was upset that they were charging $3 for City Residents to go to the oceanfront park on Virginia Key. The reality hit me: This man really needed not to spend that money. He could not afford it. Spending $5 to recreate was a choice he made based on budget.

While the Related Group is proposing building condo’s to sell for up to 10 million dollars, a half of a mile from the Rickenbacker Causeway, there is a man thinking twice about paying the $1.25 toll.

Who can level a playing field with such divergent participants? Certainly not the politicians. So how do they get elected making both sides happy? They don't bother leveling the playing field, instead they make a show of very concrete, visible gestures.

I often thought, how can a politician buy a vote with a free lunch for a voter (which they often do). I now see why we have such bad people in office -- a free lunch is very important when you are getting nothing. Paella or Chicken and Rice is something you can see, taste and enjoy. A platform of good planning, standing firm on zoning or promises of tiered development ring empty to the voting masses. Good food is so much better and so real. A pothole fixed is a triumph. You can see it.

Unfortunately good government is more subtle. Too subtle for most Miami Dade voters who are content getting the new traffic light on their corner, the free lunch or the pothole filled in. That is all most County Commissioners can deliver.

During the Superbowl, the Miami Herald mostly stuck to script. In the letters to the editor section, Gihan Perera of the Miami Workers Center wrote about a Miami different from the distracting spectacle.

The paper noted protests, but omitted mention of those seeking to elevate public awareness of Global Warming, standing outside Joe Robbie Stadium on Saturday because no permit would allow Sunday to be marred by mere climate change.

Today, Columnist Ana Menendez tees off on the Superbowl hype that made life miserable for ordinary residents, like epic traffic jams that stuck thousands on the causeways to Miami Beach. Sure was fun while it lasted.

Now, the Herald can get back to the rest of us. Corporate jets have safely spread their contrails into the distance. We watched them taxiing at Opalacka Airport and stacked liked by fancy toys at MIA. (And we wondered why there is not a climate change tax on jet travel, proportionate to the amount of pollution generated per profligate passenger.)

There was an outstanding editorial on Umoja Village, “Poor and homeless in Miami” by Elizabeth Aranda in today’s paper. “Miami may not have maquiladors, but the expansion of luxury hotels and condos results in similar mechanisms of displacement.” Miami’s perfume is cheap as the perfume sold in flea markets throughout the global South.

But, for our money the best story in the Miami Herald was the lead story on political corruption in Key West, an island so densely packed with wealth and merchandising and allure that it ressembles a Petri dish filled with spectacular bacteria.

It is the story of one city dominated by one special interest: Ed Swift of the Conch Tour Train fortune who imposed his profit motive as a monopoly involving the domination and control of local government—from the police department to the city attorney’s office to the influence of the US Magistrate—all to further the interests of mass market tourism that delivered passengers to his particular wallet.

After a decade of litigation—brought by a competitor who had the temerity to use the court of law to press his legal rights—the City of Key West is on the hook for millions in damages and Ed Swift is also wriggling like a hooked eel to keep his monopoly and influence on local government.

There are several aspects of this story that reflect equally on Miami and other Florida regions and cities where local character has been mercilessly bulldozed into a flat plain of homogeneous, bland character.

The aspect that strikes us sharply is how the legal system does work in the end to protect the public interest as it was meant. The problem is that the damage inflicted in the meantime—while laws and public policies adjust to new realities—can’t be rewound.

In her opinion piece, Elizabeth Aranda is half-right: “Those who have been elected to invest in the common good and to help level the playing field for marginalized groups have, instead, pursued their own interests by catering to those who are guided by the maximization of profit.”

The other half is this: the powerful know that the system can be gamed. To maximize profit, laws and regulations can be modified, clipped, turned from a bowl cut to a bouffant and by the time the courts say you can do this, or can’t do that, what we were fighting over has been lost, never to return.

And that’s why so much of what we value as “democracy” disappears like a magic trick.

Put your name on it: the conversion of neighborhoods to freeway overpasses, wetlands into “safe” rock mines, affordable housing into parking lots, comprehensive land use planning into board games for wealthy land speculators, farmland into tract housing, failed condominiums turned into hedge fund assets, quiet two lane roads into four lane gridlock.

These mechanics are the real story of what happened in Key West. Soon, the 3rd District Court definitively rules against the City, but the charm of Key West has long been chased into algae coated waters, milked into the pockets of city commissioners, city attorneys, the high and mighty, and all through the funnel of one special interest—a f---ing Conch Tour Train.

It’s an obscenity. Yes it is.

Grove Bay Residence/Mercy Hospital Update by Genius of Despair

Commissioner Carlos Gimenez's Resolution File No. 070290, asking the county attorney to look into the impacts to Vizcaya by the 3 proposed Grove Bay Residence towers at Mercy Hospital site, has been tabled until Thursday. Don't know the details.

Grove Bay Residence at Mercy Hospital by Genius of Despair

In a new twist on the Condos at Mercy, County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez has requested by Resolution File No. 070290, that the County Attorney shall consult with appropriate County staff to ascertain the impact, in terms including, but not limited to, size, scale, height, density, traffic and viewshed, that this proposed development of 3 staggered residential towers - the highest of which consists of 37 stories - will have on the County's Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.

The County Attorney is directed to determine the County's legal position with regard to the development or any aspects that may impact Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.

The plot thickens...

According to the website Miami Condo Lifestyle these condo's will be quite affordable: Price Range: $2,500,000 - $10,000,000. A reader alluded to my wealth: sign me up for 2. Unfortunately, I am much closer to Umoja village than Grove Bay. I don’t know anyone personally that could afford these.

Commissioner Natacha Seijas trying to redeem herself. By geniusofdespair

Using FEEL GOOD legislation Natacha Seijas is trying to redeem herself and pander to her base. She sponsored this legislation 1/30/07 and it was adopted 2/6/07:

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED BY THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY that the month of May is hereby declared Month of Commemoration of Cuba and the Cuban American Experience in Miami-Dade County, and the County Manager is hereby authorized and directed to effectuate the intent of this resolution through all appropriate means.

Hmm. Wonder what that could mean?

RIP: Miami Art Central

We are saddened to hear that Miami Art Central (MAC) on Red Road in South Miami is shuttering its doors. Barring a reversal by its wealthy benefactor, in a few months MAC will be gone.

In December, the Miami Herald reported on the impending alliance between MAC’s visual arts programming and the Miami Art Museum (and its ‘new’ planned bayfront home). We are doubtful.

MAC pushed into an empty space in Miami.

Art Basel whips into Miami and out of town like a dream you forget as soon as it is over: MAC provided endurance, bringing cutting edge visual artists to Miami from all over the world, even if most Miamians never grasped what they meant.

Ellen Fontanals-Cisneros poured millions into MAC without, apparently, taking into account the geography of Miami’s cultural landscape.

The few organizations that do cultivate connections, the Miami Light Project for instance, succeed in spite of Miami not because of it. In the visual arts, pioneers like the Snitzer Gallery stand out, precariously.

Proximity of the location to the University of Miami may have given MAC’s benefactor the idea that audiences would gather from the edges of Miami’s leading private university. But Miami does not cultivate its audiences for art: it builds coloseums.

MAC was the right project in the wrong place, proving that the urban landscape of Miami is as atomized as its culture.

It was right, because in its aspiration, MAC provided elegant resistance to the hit-and-run culture featured, for example, in the Sunday Style section of the New York Times: Romero Britto, “In Miami, Art Without Angst”, whose work “seems as ubiquitous in South Florida as pastel hotels and $15 mojitos”. We get it.

For the most part, our homegrown grand-poobahs celebrate Britto with the same gusto as building all-star monuments to culture, like the Performing Arts Center.

MAC occupies the former offices of an engineering company—Wolfberg Alvarez—that often perched in the midst of Miami-Dade County infrastructure projects that destroyed everything in the path of the real estate deal.

We are left with a city that seems never to be able to sink cultural connections deeper than the roots tethering our swaying banyan trees to the sandy earth.

It is because of Developers like Pedro Adrian that I support term limits. by Geniusofdespair

I like to see who contributes near the end of a campaign.

When Rolle was running for reelection, at the end of his campaign, he received many donations from addresses 4000 Ponce De Leon and 2450 SW 137th Avenue. Pedro Adrian’s companies use both those addresses.

Rolle got 7 $500 donations from 4000 Ponce de Leon and 3 $500 donations from 2450 SW 137 Avenue. That is $5,000.

Sally Heyman, at the end of her campaign, got $2,000 from the 4000 Ponce de Leon address and $3,000 from the 2450 SW 137 Avenue Address. Again: $5,000.

The legal limit for donations is $500. However, if you are a person with 50 or 100 corporations, you could legally given 50 or 100 $500 donations. Yes you could give $50,000 or more to one Commission campaign.

This is why we need term limits for the county commission. If developers insist on skirting the system, taking advantage of self-serving legislation like this, we have to do something. There was a law prohibiting Corporations from giving in the County. The current Commission UNDID that law in 2006.

When Pedro Arian goes to Commissioner Rolle’s office or Sally Heyman’s office, I suspect they will roll out the red carpet for him. A developer once bragged to me: "The commissioners come see me. I don't go see them." I believe him.

Adrian, through his various companies, helps to keep Commissioners in office. And, Pedro Adrian is not the only one. I could do the same things with many, many other developers. His name just came up easily. The system is broken and the change in campaign, election law in 2006 made it worse.

P.S. Souto got the same $5,000 for his campaign: $2,000 from Ponce de Leon and $3,000 from 2450 SW 137 Avenue.

Ethics Commission is Hog-Tied. by geniusofdespair

The Ethics Dept. of Miami-Dade county might as well be disbanded as far as I am concerned. They just waste our money.

According to a report by Dan Ricker on the Ethics Commission, in the Watchdog Report:

06-54:  The Commission on Ethics dismissed the complaint against Citizens to Protect People’s Choice for lack of legal sufficiency, as the Ethics Commission has no jurisdiction over campaign treasurer’s reports.

06-55:  The Commission on Ethics dismissed the complaint against Terry Murphy, an aide to County Commissioner Natacha Seijas, for lack of legal sufficiency, as the Ethics Commission lacked jurisdiction to consider the claims contained in the complaint.
 
06-57:  The Commission on Ethics found the complaint against County Commission Natacha Seijas was legally sufficient but was dismissed for lack of probable cause.  The complaint alleged that Commissioner Seijas had a voting conflict when the Board of County Commissioners selected a date to hold her recall election due to the fact she participated in and voted on this matter.

I think the way the law is written, they are so limited, we are spinning wheels in this Department. We are paying a lot of salaries for what? "To have no jurisdiction," that is what.

News of the week in Miami by gimleteye

(Group portrait of kitchen staff at the Royal Palm Hotel in Miami, 1941, courtesy of the Florida State Library Archive)

Monday: Nominal chair of the Miami-Dade County Commission, Bruno Barreiro, skirts the rule barring any commissioner from leading the same committee for more than two consecutive terms. Bruno gives the Government Operations and Environment Committee to the woman who made him: de facto chair or the ruling majority, Natacha Seijas. The old and new committees both cover functions key to real estate developers: zoning, land use, water and sewer, solid waste, environmental resources, buildings and code compliance. The new version also oversees elections.

Tuesday

Ice Capades: After spending over $1 million to keep $90,000 worth of ice refrigerated beyond hurricane season, the State of Florida decides to let the 9 million pounds melt.

Wednesday

YMCA: Your Cash Money Assocation. The alternative weekly Miami New Times reports de facto chair of the County Commission, Natacha Seijas, is paid a full-time salary for a no-show job at the YMCA, an organization she votes to award funding.

Mirabilis dictu, the same big production home builders who paid to protect Seijas’ from recall in their political Bethlehem—Hialeah-are also huge contributors to the YMCA.

Charity does begin at home: we hope some of the laundered Christian money gets to the kids.

Thursday

Miami's blue chip crowd supports gutter politics. The fraudulent political action committee supporting the County Commission against the strong mayor proposal finally reports to the Miami-Dade Division of Elections.

The PAC’s ugly mailers that fanned the flames of racial discord with outright lies were funded by wealthy production home builders, unions, lobbyists hiding behind shell corporations, and the Miami law firm Greenberg Traurig, once umbrella for Jack Abramoff and still managed by Cesar Alvarez, who is also board chair of the Knight Foundation.

Friday

Pravda, to the Bush White House: on the day that the latest news of global climate change shocks the world, the communications arm of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) offers $10,000 and expenses to anyone who can disprove it.

Saturday

New York Times today reports in the final quarter of 2006, “final sales to domestic purchasers” rose at an annual rate of only 2.5 percent, before adjusting for inflation, “less than a third of the growth rate early last year” and “the slowest rate of growth since early 2002, when the economy was emerging from the 2001 recession.”

That’s not what the mainstream media reported on the day President Bush appeared on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The market cheered Bush and the press note that the economy grew at an annual 3.5 percent rate in the last quarter of 2006.

Now that we know the latest quarter was the first time since 1991 that home building declined in three consecutive quarters, we can’t wait to see what happens in the fourth quarter.

Sunday morning

Superbowl morning in Miami! Big Coal is shaking off hangovers at the Ritz on Key Biscayne. The planet is warming. Big Everything Else is lined up wing tip-to-wing tip at every airfield within driving distance of Joe’s Stone Crab.

Aviation tankers are lined stem to stern to fuel private jets for the passage homeward bound. An army of caterers will soon be putting on board platters of finger food, safely wrapped in Saran until wheels up. Mission accomplished.