Eye On Miami Saturday Editorial Page Oct. 17th: Highway Robbery... By Geniusofdespair

The Miami Herald has Lost Its Saturday Editorial Mojo

HIGHWAY ROBBERY

The Lexus lane on 95, going North at 7pm on Wednesday, was charging $10.50. As we drove it went down to $7.25.

Did anyone ever imagine that these lanes would be robbing the people blind? I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw $10.50. They treat the citizens well don't you think? Traffic is so bad that people are willing to pay  about $50 a week to get home from work? What do they pay to get to work? Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would come to this.

CAMPAIGNS

In Raquel Regalado's campaign for Mayor, contributions have dropped off. She raised $4,455 in September for a total take of $208,565. Meanwhile, Carlos Gimenez's Pac has amassed $103,055 in September in his PAC (called Stupid People for Gimenez) for a total of $1,599,632. Lobbyist Al Maloof gave $2,000. Manny Medina gave $10,000. Those horrible lobbyists in Tallahassee (Ballard Partners gave $5,000).

The Miami Beach and City of Miami elections are quickly approaching. I would not vote for Philip Levine based on that PAC he and Wolfson concocted to pervert the campaign laws of the city.

COUNTY's FAULTY CALCULATIONS ARE WASTING OUR MONEY
According to a report by NBC 6 this week:

"For the second time this year, Miami-Dade County was forced to adjust payments to a vendor after NBC 6 Investigators revealed county employees failed to properly calculate cost-of-living adjustments under public contracts.

While the companies are different, they are both headed by the same man: Ray Gonzalez, the head of several transportation companies that, with their associates, donate more money to county commissioners' campaigns and political committees than almost any other entity in the county."

PALMETTO BAY VICE MAYOR....hmmm

Mayor Eugene Flinn said:
"I was served this notice at Village Hall by Vice Mayor John Dubois' personal attorney just prior to the start of the State of the Village Address. I certainly will maintain anything in my possession, but I am at a loss to understand what information I could possibly offer John DuBois or his attorney. Can anyone assist me with understanding why the Palmetto Bay Vice Mayor wants to involve me in his personal litigation against Miami-Dade County? This appears to be his ongoing fight, not mine."

See letter about Jack Osterholt and Lee Hefty on Mayor Flinn's blog

DIVERSE GROUPS GATHERED AT THE GOVERNMENT CENTER OCTOBER 14TH TO SUPPORT CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION BY OFFICIALS

About 800 to 1,000 people gathered at Government Center with one goal, bring to the forefront Climate Change. It was a multi-city march. Here is my photo Gallery of the event:

Lowland Mayor Talks to Highland Mayor. Surfside Mayor Daniel Dietch speaks to South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard. 

Candidate for Florida Senate Andrew Korge takes Climate Change very seriously and believes the Legislature in Tallahassee should too.

The people in this taxi were handicapped but they still marched in the parade. No one left behind.

Don't know them, but they were there.

Former County Commissioner Katy Sorenson, Mayor of Pinecrest Cindy Lerner, Jim Murley - the Mayor's pick for Chief of Resiliency (stupid title) and Daniella Levine Cava, County Commissioner for District 8.

Fanm Haitian Women of Miami Stands up for Climate Change

County Commission Chair Jean Monestime posed with Suzanne Ferreira a concerned citizen from Southwest Miami.

I walked a bit with the parade.

State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez was tardy and so was Sonia his new bride.

Watch out! There are two competing solar petitions going around. Make sure you sign the right one. That means you have to read it.

FB Post by Steve Malagodi: Guest Blog

Here's a little snippet from an email that came in from a pissed-off friend.

"This is the second day the Climate March article is not in the print version of the Herald. We need calls to find out when it will be in and letters if it's not. Herald main: 305-376-2111. Follow prompts to newsroom."

What this person is angry about is that after an unprecedented coalition of over 50+ local community organizations from three counties come together and deliver 1000+ people to the streets of Miami at 5pm on a Wednesday afternoon to demand action and responsibility from local governments and industry (including media) on the crisis of climate change and sea level rise in South Florida, the #MiamiHerald throws up an inaccurate and superficial story on its web site and doesn't bother to put it in the print edition.

Go ahead and call the newsroom, but it's the editors and the editorial board that's the problem. That's always been the problem. I used to make a joke among my artist friends who would complain about the local arts coverage. The joke was "Listen, they cover the arts community better than they cover the Black community." Still true today.

Without competition, the Herald need only be concerned with managing the information affairs of its government and industry partners, and thus need only be concerned with content as a method of social management, not social change or benefit.

That's why they're irrelevant. That's why they're going broke.

MOD waters. By Geniusofdespair

The Scrooge of the Everglades: MOD waters. It sounds so innocent but it has been the source of fighting for years...and years. I have fallen asleep at many MOD waters meetings. Gimleteye has summarized this very complicated issue pretty good. Read his damn post below. Understand the Everglades restoration, don't just be a parrot.

Can Everglades Restoration Catch A Break? We are about to see ... by gimleteye

A state of Florida website laconically refers to the project known as "Mod Waters" this way: "The Modified Water Deliveries Project project is a federal ecological restoration project in south Florida designed to improve water delivery to Everglades National Park. The completion of Mod Waters is required before the implementation of portions of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Mod Waters is being implemented by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

Let's make this clear: everything you know about the plan to restore the Everglades --signed into law by Congress and the President in 2000 -- depends on fixing water flows into the eastern side of Everglades National Park, close to Miami-Dade county farming and development. That plan was a 1989 deal, put together after years of controversy, and it is just coming online now.

For decades environmentalists clamored for additional fresh water deliveries to the eastern side of Everglades National Park with an important caveat: the water has to be clean enough to meet the requirements of the Everglades ecosystem including Florida Bay waters.

The flow of those waters have been blocked by Tamiami Trail and large scale farming at the edge of the Everglades, creating all sorts of flood protection conflicts, and stupid development like the 8.5 Square Mile Area that sticks like a sore thumb into the middle of Everglades wetlands.

Mod Waters has three major components: 1) Tamiami Trail Modifications, to increase flow into Everglades National Park; 2) 8.5 Square Mile Area, to provide flood protection for developments in the area; and 3) Conveyance and Seepage Control, to reconnect freshwater flows and to control the loss of water from seepage eastward into the urban areas. Each of these components, including the construction and alteration of water management structures, turned out to be much more expensive that originally forecast. The pace of Mod Waters resembled a snail's crawl.

Miami-Dade County government, over the years, played a major role in delaying, obstructing and thwarting expedited efforts to restore water flow to Everglades National Park and also to Biscayne National Park too. Some Miami-Dade county commissioners either owned in name or through proxies in the 8.5 Square Mile Area, creating a unique class of special interests demanding 100 percent certainty that their property and illegal structures would not be flooded if the Everglades water supply was improved, or, very high buyout prices from the government.

The original cost of Mod Waters was $81.3 million in 1990. By 2007, the cost had soared to $398 million, including $200 million for acquisition of private properties.


Now, after this twenty five year wait, news arrives of a massive, toxic algae bloom forming in Florida Bay; exactly the catastrophic ecological damage that Mod Waters was intended to prevent.

The legion of nay-sayers, stirred up by Big Sugar's interests in keeping water management priorities for its own benefits, have been steadily laying the groundwork to fight whatever results emerge from Mod Waters. Through a local, faux Fox News surrogate, Sunshine State News, Big Sugar is already claiming that more water into Florida Bay will only cause more damage to the ecosystem, pointing away from the dismal results of its own role as Florida's shadow government in the mismanagement of water resources to serve its own profit motives.

Environmentalists have always said that restoration of the Everglades depends on the the right volumes of fresh waters back into the park at the right times of year and with the right water quality. The polluters and special interests have spent three decades trying to undermine the science and benefits of fresh water restoration, disrupting the missions and work of state and federal agencies in the process.

A former director of Friends of the Everglades once said, "Restoring the Everglades is a test. If we pass, we may get to keep the planet." Mod Waters is one of the first big tests in the Everglades. It should never have taken nearly thirty years to complete. So much time has been lost. So much energy.  Fundamentally, the words of Joe Podgor -- the Friends' executive director -- turned into one of the century's great cautionary warnings.

We are not reacting fast enough to the changes we observe and confirmed by science. The speed with which natural processes overwhelm our political ones today should give voters pause and reason to reflect on the true costs of non-representative democracy.


From: "Miller, Jennifer S SAJ"
Subject: *** Water operations field test begins in Everglades ***
Date: October 15, 2015 at 12:02:25 PM EDT

*** Water operations field test begins in Everglades ***

As progress continues to be made in restoring America's Everglades, an incremental water operations field test has been initiated to take a deeper look at what operational refinements are possible to provide additional ecological benefits to the Everglades ecosystem.

Climate Change Rally and March on Wednesday. By Geniusofdespair

Sorry guys I am going away, the rest of the photos will be on the Saturday Editorial Page.

Bill Gates on Climate Change Adaptation ... by gimleteye

For many years, my sensible Republican friends have talked about the necessity of a carbon tax. Part of the broken GOP hard drive -- how I refer to the damage to the Republican Party by radical extremists who control the party's fate -- is that Republican members of Congress will not touch the issue of carbon-based taxes because they are afraid of talking about increased taxes of any kind.

Why a tax? Because unlike a subsidy -- a tax would direct consumers and businesses into less costly alternatives or away from oil and gas dependent products. Those who oppose a carbon tax avoid the fact that there is no "free lunch" when it comes to energy consumption.

Republicans, in particular, ought to be sensitive to the foundational economic principle that holds external costs in products and services should be fully accounted for, in pricing. In terms of energy production and consumption, full cost accounting of energy should absorb the vast and quantifiable costs of imposing climate change on civilization.

By now it is abundantly clear that fossil fuel producers -- from the oil, coal and natural gas industries -- have substantially funded climate change denial in the United States. The message machinery, primarily through Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, has done massive damage to rational airing of carbon costs.

Today, GOP control of Congress imposes harsh orthodoxy against climate change adaptation strategies, including tax policies.

Their argument parallels gun control: any movement toward sensible restriction of automatic weapons is a wholesale invitation of the government to destroy constitutional rights.

Today the GOP is a political party in disarray; self contained and insulated within its own echo chamber.  Everywhere it is "darkness at noon".

Where there is hope, it is in voters who finally get it through their heads in 2016 that the broken GOP is self-fulfilling: they can and will take us all down with the climate change ship.

http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/410011/bill-gates-and-the-quest-for-sustainable-energy
Bill Gates and the Quest for Sustainable Energy
James Bennett, Atlantic Magazine
Oct 13, 2015

"We need an energy miracle," says Bill Gates in this interview with Atlantic editor in chief James Bennet. "That may make it seem too daunting to people, but miracles in science are happening all the time." So, what are the solutions to climate change? Gates has pledged to invest $2 billion in new alternative energy technologies. In this discussion with Bennet, he extolls the necessity of investment in vast and varied technologies to change such a massive infrastructure quickly. Read more about Gates's commitment to moving the world beyond fossil fuels in the November 2015 issue of The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/410029/the-company-determined-to-fix-nuclear-energy

In his offices overlooking Lake Washington, just east of Seattle, Bill Gates grabbed a legal pad recently and began covering it in his left-handed scrawl. He scribbled arrows by each margin of the pad, both pointing inward. The arrow near the left margin, he said, represented how governments worldwide could stimulate ingenuity to combat climate change by dramatically increasing spending on research and development. “The push is the R&D,” he said, before indicating the arrow on the right. “The pull is the carbon tax.” Between the arrows he sketched boxes to represent areas, such as deployment of new technology, where, he argued, private investors should foot the bill. He has pledged to commit $2 billion himself.

More, On The Damaged GOP Hard Drive ... by gimleteye

I rarely find myself in complete agreement with conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks, but his recent OPED on the incompetence of the GOP rings true: "These insurgents are incompetent at governing and unwilling to be governed. But they are not a spontaneous growth. It took a thousand small betrayals of conservatism to get to the dysfunction we see all around."

Sadly, Florida significantly helped generate those "thousands of small betrayals" although you will find very few of elected officials willing to come out and say so; leaders like Mel Martinez who quit politics in disgust but bit his tongue, why.

Florida is, by the way, highly represented by the small number of individuals who are substantial contributors to Republican candidates in this presidential cycle. I've called them the "Great Destroyers" in past OPEDs, facilitators of the housing boom and bust like Al Hoffman, Jr. who George W. Bush appointed to an ambassadorship after priming his company, WCI Communities, Inc., for a billion dollar bankruptcy.

Hoffman, one of Jeb Bush's main supporters during his terms as governor, was leader of the Council of 100 -- firmly dedicated to erasing regulatory impediments to building more sprawl in wetlands and more condos at the coast. The damage is part and parcel of the GOP effort to hobble government agencies whose mission is to protect the nation's air and water.

The point: Brooks' "incompetence chorus" is not just in Congress. It spreads out and filters down through the states as a determined effort to rewrite conservatism as a set of radical policies divorced from the past, insistent on homogeneity and brooking no diversity.

The Republican Party’s capacity for effective self-governance degraded slowly, over the course of a long chain of rhetorical excesses, mental corruptions and philosophical betrayals. Basically, the party abandoned traditional conservatism for right-wing radicalism. Republicans came to see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, and every revolution tends toward anarchy and ends up devouring its own.

Where Brooks' analysis falls short is assessing blame where it is due: the absolute conviction of large campaign contributors to Republican causes that denial of science, isolationism, and the paternalistic threads of "compassionate conservatism" can paper over the mistakes of guaranteeing corporations are more powerful than people.

While it is true that the business of America is business, the GOP has become unhinged from the values that matter to Americans. So every claim and assertion tends to ring hollow and empty of meaning, as Republican leaders sift through corrupted data files on their hard drive trying to find fragments -- something, anything -- that rings true.


The Republicans’ Incompetence Caucus
David Brooks, NY Times OPED
OCT. 13, 2015


The House Republican caucus is close to ungovernable these days. How did this situation come about?

Latest on Miami Sea Level Rise ... by gimleteye

Last week, Jim Murley was appointed to a new Miami-Dade position and a $190,000 salary by Mayor Carlos Gimenez. As described by the Miami Herald, Murley will be the county's Chief Resilience Officer, a new post created after citizens clamored at a recent budget hearing about the failure of Mayor Gimenez to take climate change issues seriously.

“The people’s voices were heard,” Gimenez spokesman Michael Hernández told the Miami Herald. He might have added the mayor also heard challengers promising to do a better job for people in the 2016 election cycle.

Mayor Gimenez noted Mr. Murley is a "veteran planner", a planner like Jack Osterholt, the deputy mayor who oversees the county’s climate-change and environmental functions.

Planners populate governmental task forces, commissions, and committees. They understand their roles to be assessing and analyzing information, but also to straddle the divide between stakeholders with competing interests; pro's and anti's, those for and those against any particular action being planned.

Anyone who has observed or participated in government commissions or committees understands how the end product of planning, studies and recommendations and planning documents, often diffuse, delay and soften the imperative to action. Moving roads, building new suburbs or extending old ones, the normal exchanges of planning -- one purpose against another -- is often designed to put people to sleep so what special interests want eventually gets done, one way or another.

Sea level rise is, as a middle school teacher of mine used to call a problem; "a horse of a different color".

Jim Murley is not going to be asked to "do" or to "act" or even to interpret the intent of Mayor Gimenez who may or may not be convinced there is anything for him to "do" about climate change. Why should the mayor, when there is the example of leaders like Florida Senator Marco Rubio whose response to pressure to act on global warming is to shrug; "we are not a planet".

In the context of climate change, the "we are not a planet" comment by Senator Rubio wraps up a couple of conservative ideas: 1) that the United States can act, but our actions will have no impact because India and China aren't keeping pace with necessary changes, 2) that the planet will do what it will, with or without us.

Mayor Gimenez' recent county budget proposal, pre- appointment of Jim Murley, more or less cozied up to Rubio's view, "Yeah we got lots of low-lying land, but what are we going to do about rising seas? If the seas go up, so what?"

It is not exactly a secret that big campaign contributors have the last word on policies implemented by government and how they are funded by taxpayers. For planners, whole careers are made from muddling through, otherwise called mastering "the art of the possible".

"While Mr. Murley’s credentials are impressive, it is his proven track record as a collaborative regional planner that makes him the perfect candidate for the job of CRO," Gimenez wrote in the memo. What a great success regional planning has been. (Not.) To our readers, it should go without saying that under Gov. Rick Scott, decades of purpose-driving state planning was thrown under the bus.

Maggie Fernandez, a Miami-Dade activist and president of Sustainable Miami told the Miami Herald that Gimenez’s pick was “disheartening” because of Murley’s planning background. "Is he the dynamic leader I was hoping for? I don’t think so,” she said. “I envisioned someone with fresh ideas."

In the scheme of politics, it doesn't matter if Citizen Maggie Fernandez is right, Mayor Carlos Gimenez has more right to be wrong. That's the privilege of high office in South Florida.

The problem for taxpayers is that planning processes end up acquiring a life and momentum of their own, and all participants become wholly vested in staking out positions that lead to no change or improvement or accountability for solving what they came together to plan in the first place.

If you've read this far, read what all the fuss about sea level rise, here:

Dr. Harold Wanless Sept. 2015

Florida Bay on the rocks ... by gimleteye

Sea Grass die-off Florida Bay

 My life as an environmentalist started in the late 1980's when I moved to Key West and straight into a devastating algae bloom in the northern part of the bay. I had the good fortune to fish these waters -- from Everglades City to the Marquesas -- in the 1970s with my late father. I knew what Florida Bay was -- one of the most splendid and diverse shallow water ecosystems on the planet -- and I was devastated both how they had been stripped bare by toxic algae and how public officials turned a blind eye to the upstream culprits.

In this context, and the intervening thirty years, I'm unsurprised by the dismal news that Florida Bay -- and the natural resources that remain -- are buckling under the threat of an even more toxic algae bloom. This time, even scavenger species like catfish that repopulated the upper bay may succumb.

There is nothing that can be done for Florida Bay until the campaign finance system is changed, to eliminate the vast gulf between what people want and what corporations require of politicians they sponsor.

What is happening in Florida Bay reflects the toxicity of Florida's shadow government: Big Sugar and the control of the South Florida water management system by growth-at-any-cost. It also reflects the indifference of public officials whose hands are out, continuously for campaign contributions from big sprawl developers and their supply chain.

What's most depressing in the Staletovich report: Mike Collins, former chairman of the South Florida Water Management District and Jeb Bush appointee, beating his chest how upstream phosphorous pollution standards and environmental groups are at the root of the problem in Florida Bay. Collins once used to represent Florida's flats fishing community.

Too bad for all of us, how these decades turned out. To blame environmentalists, as Mr. Collins appears to be doing, is the purest form of nonsense.

In late September, state biologists navigated through mats of dead seagrass in Florida Bay. About 13 square miles of seagrass meadows died over the summer with early signs of an algae bloom now appearing near Rankin Lake and Garfield Bight. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
BY JENNY STALETOVICH
jstaletovich@miamiherald.com
•
A slimy toxic algae bloom in Florida Bay that researchers thought was years in the future might be just around the corner.

South Florida Water Management District scientist Fred Sklar told district board members last week that levels of chlorophyll are starting to rise in shallow water where miles of seagrass meadows died over the summer. The last time so much grass died in 1987, it took five years for algae blooms to erupt that would devastate the bay for two decades.

BE THERE! October 14 at 5pm. By Geniusofdespair

This is the place to be October 14th. At Government Center at 5pm. a coalition of groups will gather to protest our lackluster response to Climate Change or to just make people aware of climate change (like Marco Rubio). Damn that is SUCH a bad time of day and they aren't serving food. Oh well, it sounds like it is worthwhile. Put it on your calendar and be sure to wear 4 inch heels - your best walking shoes are mandatory.

New York Times on the American Oligarchy: Why Not Larry Lessig? ... by gimleteye

The New York Times has a great visual representation of "The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election".

If all the money, though, sloshing through PAC and superPAC entities were accounted for, the graphics would be even more dramatic, but campaign finance loopholes allow for dark money to flow unimpeded by any examination under legal reporting requirements.

That's why I wrote a (small) check to the Larry Lessig For President Campaign. Take a few minutes to look at Mr. Lessig's website.

"A core corruption of our political system is the concentration of funders of political campaigns," he writes. "That concentration creates extraordinary inequality. The Citizen Equality Act would end that inequality, at a minimum by adopting a campaign funding proposal that is a hybrid between John Sarbanes’ Government by the People Act, and Represent.US’s “American Anti-Corruption Act.” That hybrid would give every voter a voucher to contribute to fund congressional and presidential campaigns; it would provide matching funds for small-dollar contributions to congressional and presidential campaigns. And it would add effective new limits to restrict the revolving door between government service and work as a lobbyist."

Lessig answers the observations by The New York Times' partial depiction of the American oligarchs, and he is right: every corruption in America today ties back to the distortions of campaign finance practices, tolerated by a system of mutual self-satisfaction by big donors and their proxies in public office.

Doug Hanks betrayed me so you get a Photo Op on Xavier Suarez's Gala Last Night. By Geniusofdespair

I don't know whether to apologize to Doug or not. He sent me a link to typepad (that is not a PAPER it is some other cloud-thing the Herald Offers: A Blog). So Doug did write (on a blog) and he did listen to the speech but it is not in the actual Miami Herald PAPER. So he gets a halfhearted apology. I can't go looking all over the internet for his reports and I certainly already read enough blogs.

I told Miami Herald reporter Doug Hanks I was going to just copy his article on last night's gala for County Commissioner Xavier Suarez. As far as I can tell, I have nothing to plagiarize. Doug was just milling about, he is hard to miss, I think he is 6' 10" or maybe 7 feet tall. So, because of Doug, you are going to get a lot of photos instead of an actual report.

Many at the event were waiting for the X man to announce that he was running for Mayor. Instead it was a campaign event where they fed you.  The acoustics were terrible but I am pretty sure he didn't announce anything. My hearing is pretty bad and I keep hearing x rated things in place of what people are really saying. It has turned into a much better listening experience.  You can say "he has a perennial event" and I hear "he had a penile implant." Much more fun and you get much better reporting, perhaps not accurate but who cares about accuracy.

I guess smarmy Political Operative Keith Donner does. He complained about my writing bragging he was a a REAL reporter. Keith I AM NOT A REAL REPORTER OR A WRITER and never claimed to be.  I was an art history major. Ask me about Giotto not grammar. I remember diagramming sentences as a kid. It was excruciating torture. I will end my sentences with prepositions all I want Keith. Stick to writing your lackluster puff pieces and vile attack ads.

Here is the photo op.

Don't expect me to know everyone's name...

County Commissioner Xavier Suarez - He was moving around so much I couldn't get a good photo.

I guess you can all guess who this is. Here is a hint, Daisy Baez is running against him.

Mayors Eugene Flinn (Palmetto Bay) and Peggy Bell (Cutler Bay)

Grace Solares - Candidate for City of Miami Commission. She is a long time citizen activist. I have known her for years and have worked with her organizing candidates debates.

Hialeah Julio (Robaina)

Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner and Annette Taddeo, Candidate for Carlos Curbelo's Congressional Seat in the 26th District. It is a newly drawn district ordered by the courts.

Union men -- John Rivera President of the PBA seated. Missed the other names. Damn. I have met them so many times too. My mind is like mush. I don't think the middle guy liked me much AT ALL. The guy on the left, he likes me.

X photoshopped

The Lovely Thelma Gibson - She never ages.

Meanwhile, while all this indecision goes on, Rudy Giuliani is fundraising for Carlos Gimenez. A bit much don't you think? How much money does this man need to beat Raquel Regalado? Next it will be Donald Trump holding a fundraiser.