What if Obamacare is wildly popular? ... by gimleteye

What I know about Obamacare is based both on news analyses and my own experience in our broken health care system. No wonder the public is frozen in place, as Oct. 1st approaches and the roll-out of new health care options for Americans.

The incessant criticism from the radical GOP right, wrapped in the American flag (homophobia, guns, war-mongering, deficit bell-ringing) has cast a pall of political soot over everything. Most voters can't distinguish, because of that soot, what is good and what is bad for them. What I know from my experience in the health care system, and those experiences of families and friends, is that so far as health care is concerned, we can't do worse. And if Obamacare does better, it will be the most positive development in the United States since the civil rights movement took hold.

So the thought occurs -- listening to the GOP threaten to shut down the US government right around the time Obamacare launches -- what if in the month of October the new health care reform is wildly popular?

I hope that citizens like me -- especially those that self-pay -- quickly seek out alternatives to current and existing health insurance company plans.

I, for one, want health care reform to work. If there are parts of Obamacare that need to be improved, then it will be incumbent on Congress and the White House to make changes.

In the meantime, a public embrace of Obamacare would be one quick way to send a message to GOP leaders obsessively shoveling coal into our Christmas stockings.

Endorsement of Rochenel Marc for Homestead District 4 by Guest Blogger Lois Jones

THE POWER OF SIX...PLUS ONE

Yesterday I discovered a prize. More specifically, I discovered a political prize, a candidate for political office who has not only the basic skills to be a competent elected official, but a candidate with the tools to deliver the product. That person is Rochenel Marc a candidate for office in Homestead’s District 4.

What intrigued me about this young man is that he is perhaps one of the only persons running for office anywhere in Miami-Dade County who is so well prepared for office. He is the only candidate I can find who have the important required skill to to govern, a Master degree in Public Administration. But it does not stop there.

He received his Master of Public Administration degree from Barry University in July 2012, but his formal education began long before that:

Robert Morgan Vocational Institute Tech. Diploma, August 1995; Miami Dade College Associate in Science Human Services December 2003; Barry University B.L.S. and Specialize in Social Welfare , December 2009; Barry University Master of Public Administration, July 2012.

Rochenel’s skills include a background of conducting research in environments that demand cultural sensitivity and flexibility. He has done qualitative and quantitative research and is advanced in analytical and writing skills. He is also fluent in English, Creole, French and some Spanish.

My first response after hearing and reading about this unique young man was “Where have you been all my life?” My political life that is. This man is a rarity and we cannot ignore him ...we cannot let him get away from us. Rather, we need to embrace him and put him in office to join our other five members of the Homestead City Council, Jim Burgess, Steve Shelley, Judy Waldman, Patricia Fairclough-McCormick and Nazy Sierra who is expected to win her seat over Bateman’s drinking buddy, Maldonado.

A business owner, his professional experience includes business owner of Nord-Quest Security & School Training where he instructs students in preparing to become professional security officers. He also trains in administrative, payroll, Inventory and the hiring process as well Office Management, and Customer Services.

Rochenel’s volunteer work is too numerous to mention here. Where else can we find this massive amount of education and leadership skills in anyone running for office? Yet, here he is, right here in Homestead and a candidate for one of the most disadvantaged districts in our city, District 4. Discovering this gem of a candidate is important folks.

District 4, is variously referred to as the “African American District.” This district has always been at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to resources. This is a district that finds its people with no hope of escaping the ravages of poverty, children who walk around in a daze because they know that for them there is no hope for a meaningful future.

Now here they are being given the prize of the best candidate running for office where their choice until now has only been between a candidate who, as a sitting Council Member abandoned the district as he left Homestead for his native Alabama. The other is a “pastor” whose background includes a strange business relationship with the man who has owned Homestead for years,Wayne Rosen, and "Snappers" restaurant -- but that is another story.
 

Why Does Naming Stuff in Miami Have to Take a Bizarre Turn? By Geniusofdespair

Arthur Teele Took His Life in the Miami Herald Lobby

Yesterday City of Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence Jones named a theater after former County Commissioner Arthur Teele.  I liked him a hell of a lot better than Stephen P. Clark and Clark has that big monolith County building named after him not a dinky little theater.  We even have buildings named after a housewife nobody knows -- Lynda Bell's mother. Thank you Lynda Bell for that one. I love having a building with $10 million dollars of public money invested in it, with your mom's name on it.

Both Teele and Clark died before they had any trial so I guess you can say "Who cares who we name buildings after as long as 'the named' were never in jail or that they were good to their daughter."

I liked Arthur Teele a lot. Rest in peace, but don't know that I would name anything after him...except an affordable housing complex in Cutler Bay.

Gov. Rick Scott barks up Barack Obama's tree ... by gimleteye

If there was ever a sorry sight, it is the one of Gov. Rick Scott trying to pin the blame for the Lake Okeechobee mess on President Obama.

This is a governor who spurned -- as a matter of political principle? -- the involvement of the federal government in health care and the quality of water affecting the lives of millions of Floridians. Damage to Florida's environment is way up. Accountability is way down.

Now, the pollution crisis on both Florida coasts is severely denting the wallets of property owners who are mostly Republican.

In 2010, Gov. Scott ran against the plan of Charlie Crist to purchase more than 100,000 acres of land owned by US Sugar Corp. Sure it was an expensive deal, but if the state had aggressively pursued both the purchase and removed the vise-like grip of the Fanjul billionaires on key parcels in the central Everglades Agricultural Area, then we would much closer to solving both problems: how to restore the Everglades and protect property owners who are being trashed in order to prevent sugar farms from flooding.

So who's to blame, according to Gov. Scott? President Obama.

A special place in hell for this lady ... by gimleteye

3.3 million viewers of this viral video. Let's hope she has been identified.

My Good Friend Manny Garcia Resigns as Managing Editor of El Nuevo Herald. By Geniusofdespair

You can work for Eye on Miami Manny. Only one snag, no pay.

Say it ain't so Manny! I have lost 99% of my friends at the Herald. Manny Garcia is a great guy and super newsman. He knew how to get the best out of his reporters and he made El Nuevo Herald a scoop rival to the Miami Herald. I really respect him and his advice. Manny I thank you for all your support and friendship. He is leaving to become Editor of the Naples Daily News.  Ohh, will he be happy in the "Elephants' Burial Ground",  home of Rick Scott?  Hope so.

Enrique Flor, Daniel Shoer Roth and Melissa Sanchez...you have lost a super mentor, but you can call me anytime - I will give you good advice: "Call Manny".

Mizell Stewart III of Scripps News with Garcia

Why are Republicans so afraid of people saving money? by Geniusofdespair

There is so much misinformation out there. Let me print some of my own.  Obama will pay your health insurance premium if you are a Democrat.

United Way in Florida: late to the dance ... by gimleteye

It takes a lot to rouse United Way on environmental issues. For example, on the Everglades and water quality issues, United Way and other South Florida foundations have been exceptionally quiet. That changed in Martin County recently. There, the local United Way is weighing in on the massive pollution of waterways that is damaging the economy.

In Miami-Dade, United Way acts as a collector and distributor of charitable donations, but it is disinterested in funding environmental causes or groups, except when donors specify a portion of their gifts.

For political interests in Miami-Dade, environmental protection issues are ignored unless they are packaged in a way to benefit campaign contributors. Why? Money that eventually trickles down to politicians and also to charitable groups often come from special interests and individuals whose wealth is connected to exploiting the environment, or, manipulating rules and regulations meant to protect the environment: home builders, rock miners, and sugar barons for example. Some of these will join the boards of round bellied green groups that don't push or shove.

For as many decades as the Knight Foundation and other charitable groups scampered from the funding forensics of environmental crimes, the polluters in South Florida ran circles of yellow tape around the crime scene so thick as to be virtually impenetrable. Then, they went in and altered the evidence.

Transparency is the enemy of polluters. United Way, for decades, has tip-toed around the manifold ways development and developers closed off options to mitigate the damage to the Everglades.

In Martin County, mobilized by the recent massive pollution of the St. Lucie River and estuaries and coasts and the resultant destruction of business and real estate values, United Way is lending a hand. It will take a similar disaster to rouse Miami-Dade United Way


TOXIC WATER: United Way to figure out how much local business has lost due to Lake O discharges
Surveys will go out in next few weeks (WPTV, 9/24/2013)


STUART, FL - As lawmakers Tuesday met in Tallahassee to talk about the Indian River Lagoon, local business owners continue to lament a lost summer...

Judge William Thomas Petition by Geniusofdespair

If you want to sign petition to help Judge William Thomas who was rejected by Marco Rubio, this is the link.

See my post yesterday.

Miami Taxi ... by gimleteye

I am a long way from the county commission meeting yesterday packed with cab drivers and lobbyists. I took a taxi cab to get here.

I've been a regular customer of Miami-Dade taxicabs ... mostly to and from Miami International ... for more than twenty years. Most of the cab drivers are friendly and courteous.

What fries me, though, is the sense of being taken for a ride by cab drivers on the way home from the airport. I always take the same route. The fare is always different.

You know you are in Miami when the air conditioning in the taxicab doesn't work. What are your experiences?

Mayor Cindy Lerner in France. By Geniusofdespair

Mayor of Pinecrest Cindy Lerner is in France for a week at the World Mayors Summit on Climate Change in Nantes France. She sent me this graphic with some good advice for us all.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. By Geniusofdespair

North East of Hawaii, the ocean currents form a giant whirl pool of debris from around the Pacific, the scientific name is called the North Pacific Gyre. It’s one of the largest ecosystems on Earth, comprising of millions of square kilometres. Today it’s better known as “The Great Garbage Patch,” an area the size of Queensland, Australia where there is approximately one million tons of plastic spread throughout the ocean. Drag a net in any area of this part of the ocean and you will pick up toxic, discarded plastic. Photographer Chris Jordan has documented this phenomenon.

Chris Jordan - I had been studying for quite a while the phenomenon called the Pacific garbage patch. I was looking for a way to visualize it, it was really surreal to land on Midway, seeing that my worst hopes of what I would find there are true. These are all albatross chicks, hatched out of their eggs and the very first meal they got was deadly to them. What happens is, when the eggs hatch one of the parents goes out and flies looking for food. They search over this vast area of the pacific and when they come back with is a belly full of toxic plastics, and they feed that to their babies. They die of starvation, malnutrition and chocking. Simply allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel about this, without jumping to the way to solve it. Because I think we really need to feel these things, even if the feelings are uncomfortable, because those are the feelings that will turn into the fuel and drive passionate action.

Friggin' Marco Rubio and His Homophobia. By Geniusofdespair

I know Judge William Thomas and he is an outstanding man, smart, funny and charming and openly gay. I am very sad at what happened to him at the hands of Marco Rubio who refused to blue slip him for the Federal Judiciary.

As Fred Grimm said in the Miami Herald, "Rubio Stomps on judges reputation" besides killing his nomination to the federal judiciary. Grimm said:

Ovalle, who knows everything about that courthouse, insisted that Thomas is regarded as one of the hardest-working, most competent judges in the Miami-Dade criminal court division.

But all this is to pretend that Rubio had some reason other than crass Tea Party politics for sabotaging Judge Thomas’ reputation and aborting the confirmation process.

Judge Thomas: I am so sorry. I know how proud you were to be considered for this post. You deserved it. He was rated well qualified by the Miami Dade County Bar Association.

As Bradford E. Brown, PhD said:

Judge Thomas was an outstanding Federal Public Defender. He also volunteered to help the Miami Dade NAACP on Legal Redress issues when I was President and did a superb job. He has received high praises for his work on the Bench.

 Also read South Florida Lawyers on this subject. Really good take.

Don't kid yourself, this is all about Judge Thomas being gay. I guess it was bad enough he was black, it left Rubio's head spinning. Both Senators from Florida had to approve this appointment. Rubio is such a tool.

How Churches are Extensions of Agriculture in South Florida: the Guillermo Maldonado empire grows ... by guest blogger

For decades, the Dade County Farm bureau found back door ways to open up urban uses outside the UDB. They did this for their large parcel owner/ board members, not the involuntary members of the "Farm Bureau" who have to become members to buy Farmer's insurance policies through them.

The insiders at the Dade County Farm Bureau did a lot of damage to the farming community by lobbying the county commission to permit an excessive amount of farmland to be deemed "ancillary" when it was not by any stretch of the imagination. The big land owners have always been connected to the lawyers and downtown lobbyists and bankers who extend mortgages, often based on the developable value of the land and not its use as agriculture. It is a witches' coven that transformed the beautiful South Florida landscape from trees and fields and farms into whatever made the most money, quickest.

South Dade couldn't wait to become Kendall: featureless and dominated by strip malls.

There is a new tidbit of a few words in a recent Land Use Element change in the EAR which basically say's Churches have more rights than Jesus! All of the sudden, appearing out of nowhere, religious facilities are written in a Land Use amendment as "Ancillary to Agriculture".

This is problematic for a whole bunch of reasons, including actual farming going on inside the Ag areas, outside the UDB. There are religious groups, well one really huge one, buying land outside the UDB. This will allow them to operate let's say on the low end, a 5,000 member or upward mega church in the middle of a Redland or near west of Krome Avenue abutting the Everglades north of there.

Take for example this group run by the Maldonado empire: 100's of acres of productive Agriculture, farming going on around it, out pops a massive religious building, the traffic and noise follow.

Outside the Urban Development Boundary is just that: there should be no urban uses. Period. No street lighting, a lot of roads are not paved, and it is a way of life people who live there love. Talk about taking away one group of property rights in plane sight to allow something that is not by any definition "ancillary".

Apostle Guillermo Maldonado

So which county commissioner put this in the proposed Land Use changes? Does his or her photo appear as a dedicated worshipper on Sundays during political season at Guillermo Maldonado's Ministerio Internacioal El Rey Jesus? It is absurd. Religious facilities are allowed by right in residential areas and other zoning. To say Religious Facilities are now "ancillary to agriculture" isn't appropriate. It is a smoke screen for building a constituency for moving the Urban Development Boundary. Jesus!

In addition to destroying the farming communities, Churches are tax exempt, so we get to pay for their damage as well since they, by law, don't have to do that either! If this change to the county land use plan is allowed, next will be the need to build roads, etc. in an area they are not supposed to be in the first place.

We have crumbling infrastructure all over Miami Dade County. We don't need new problems, which this will create a whole bunch of very expensive messes and probably litigation for years when the Ag interest (I mean those who actually farm) revolt against the land use give away currently taking place in plain view.

Environmental groups appeal to Gov. Rick Scott: purchase U.S. Sugar lands now! ... by gimleteye

Every acre taken out of sugar production in the Everglades Agricultural Area is a step closer to an even playing field in Florida politics. Gov. Scott, when he was elected to office in 2010, had an extremely limited awareness of sugar's impact on the Everglades and its influence in the state legislature. Now that the communities on Florida's coastal estuaries are up-in-arms about the vast pollution and destruction of quality of life and real estate values, it is clear that the only way to more surface water storage and cleansing marshes is to purchase significant additional acreage and to take by eminent domain what the sugar billionaires refuse to sell. Gov. Scott: help Florida now.

U.S. Sugar Land Purchase Letter_Governor Scott_September 2013_FINAL (2)_09 23 13

Comcast Complaint: online on-demand streaming of TV programs and commercial advertisement ... by gimleteye

I'm a Comcast subscriber for television programming and high speed internet who has been migrating toward viewing on demand, with online streaming.

Comcast recently made a change that is maddening, through its on demand app: inserting commercials that are mandatory viewing, with no escape or fast forward.

With pre-recorded HDR devices, you can fast forward through commercials. You used to be able to do the same, with online streaming but Comcast recently added a "feature" that makes it impossible.

I became a cable subscriber including premium channels that I paid more for, precisely because there was no commercial advertisement. So it is plain wrong, that Comcast is ADDING its own commercials back into television programming that had been commercial-free, without any escape feature.

Miss me? By Geniusofdespair

I am still following the news in Florida. Check out the Carlisle article about the County Commission rubber stamp:

What was not disclosed at County Hall was that Carlisle had to sell the four projects because it could not obtain private financing while it was being investigated by a federal grand jury in Miami, according to sources familiar with the agreement.

The county commission’s resolution — sponsored by Commissioner Audrey Edmonson, a favored recipient of Carlisle campaign donations — did not spell out how many millions Miami-Dade taxpayers had riding on the four projects. Nor did her resolution address the fact that Carlisle’s chief operating officer, Kenneth Naylor, and several other company employees were brought on by Atlantic|Pacific to oversee the projects.Indeed, the commission asked only superficial questions, without inquiring about the propriety or terms of the Carlisle deal.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/21/3641854/lax-miami-dade-oversight-of-carlisle.html#storylink=cpy

It was a unanimous vote.

Alex Sink: out of governor's race ... by gimleteye

In recent years, we've had a lot to say about political candidate Alex Sink (check our archives). Mostly, our reasoning went along the lines that north Florida Democratic candidates for governor are fundamentally out of touch with a more liberal, diverse base in Florida's populous southern counties like Miami-Dade. Please!

In 2010, Sink lost Florida all by herself. We wish her well, from the sidelines.

The challenge for Democrats -- and the next candidate for governor -- is to clearly articulate what separates the hopes of voters from the record of Gov. Rick Scott. For too long, Democrats have been running scared in Florida. It is largely due to the perception that "running to the center" means emulating the attractions -- especially to curry favor with sources of campaign money -- of the GOP.

It is risky to turn away from past practices, but really: what do Democrats have to lose in Florida? Just look at the redistricting battle continuing to be fought, to the death, by the GOP.

Barack Obama has shown, twice, that it is possible to defy conventional Democratic wisdom (and campaign "experts") in Florida. Are there any Democratic candidates for governor with the good sense to understand the opportunity?

Winning the governor's office begins with the dismal record of our current governor, Rick Scott ... and ends with convincing Florida voters that there are substantive reasons to change.