John McCain and the company he keeps... by gimleteye

Yesterday, the US EPA—the nation’s top environmental agency-- decided that regulating the movement of polluted water from one water body to another: from a river or stream, by pump, to canal or to Florida's Everglades is not a federal responsibility.

“In a decision with national implications that appears to defy a 2006 ruling by a Miami federal court judge, the EPA announced it would not require federal permits for “transfers” of water from one body to another for water-supply, flood-control, irrigation and other common purposes—no matter how dirty that water might be.” (Miami Herald, “EPA refuses to limit dirty-water transfers”, June 10, 2008)

The State of Florida, through its water management district in South Florida, approved. Why would that be?

The answer is simple: top business leaders in Florida long ago decided to fuel future growth of cities and suburbs by moving water from so-called surplus areas to areas that overdeveloped, tapping out cheaply available fresh water supplies.

Moving water through costly energy and engineering-intensive industrial water supply and polishing infrastructure is a political gold mine, with spigots all along the way. This spigot effect of growth depends on avoiding the costs of pollution; the same is also true of Wall Street.

Congress and the White House allowed the proliferation of toxic debt to move from one body—like a pool of mortgages containing lots of liar loans—to another body—like derivatives and insurance measured in the trillions, putting ratings agencies in the same role as EPA: on the side of polluters as a matter of political expediency and reward.

There is nothing, then, coincidental in the emergence of Florida’s Al Hoffman as a top fundraiser for McCain’s presidential campaign or of former Senator Phil Gramm, as top economic advisor. (For more on Hoffman, read our archive feature: "housing crash")

Hoffman was a major Florida developer: his company, WCI Communities Inc., a high flyer in the run up to the housing bust. Like other multi-millionaires minted from development, Hoffman salted away enough from platted subdivisions and condo mishaps, cratering now in someone else's balance sheet, to skate through the aftermath. In 2003, Hoffman crowed to The Washington Post that suburban sprawl was "an unstoppable force." Last year, his former company could scarcely find a buyer.

In 1998 and 2002, Hoffman was finance chair for Jeb Bush campaigns as governor. He was also finance co-chair of the 2000 George W. Bush campaign. In 2001 Governor Jeb Bush appointed Hoffman to be chairman of the state’s business planning organization, The Council of 100. Hoffman lead the Council to the outcome that Governor Jeb Bush had decided long before: to promote state policies enabling the transfer of water supply from one area of the state to another.

Of the EPA decision yesterday, an environmental attorney told The Miami Herald: “Instead of stepping in to tighten clean-water protections and clean up the pollution the EPA has now chosen to legalize it. It is shameful.”.

So, too, is it shameful that the Federal Reserve opened its window to private banking and financial institutions, mainly operated by Republican loyalists, is essence allowing them to flush their tens and hundreds of billions in losses into the public realm. The Bush White House calls the direct loans to private banks a necessary step for the stability of the nation's financial system. The free flow of toxic debt, with scarcely any regulation at all, occurred under Republican policies and triggered the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. Banks are now scurrying to foreign governments—some hostile to democracy—for infusions of capital to shore up their balance sheets.

One of the key players behind the Wall Street greed leading up to the crisis of the US economy is another McCain advisor, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. While Senator and chairman of the powerful US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Gramm presided over and later lobbied for relaxation of supervision and regulatory oversight of the nation’s financial engineers, including hedge funds and the magical confections of debt and insurance arrangements on toxic debt that rained billions in fees and commissions on their originators. Between 1992 and 2000, he received over $1 million in campaign contributions from Wall Street.

Gramm, today, is a vice-chairman of UBS, the European bank hardest hit with untold billions in losses from investments in the US mortgage and derivatives markets. According to Bloomberg, UBS shareholders have lost nearly half their value this year. (“UBS Falls After Saying More Mortgage Losses Possible”, May 28, 2008, Bloomberg)

EPA’s rubber stamping of pollution, allowing unsustainable growth policies in important states like Florida to move forward, is to the environment as the willful federal abrogation of supervision of exotic debt instruments is to the world economy. Allowing polluted water to move from one water body to another, without limits or interference by laws, is no different from what is occurring in the vast, trillion dollar credit markets under unparalleled pressure.

That the Republican Party, the presumptive party of fiscal conservatism, presided over the deterioration of meaning and contracts and law is astounding. So when Senator John McCain claims that his presidency will be different—that he is "a fiscal conservative"—he invites incredulity.

In the 1980’s, Senator McCain nearly ruined his political career by rushing to defend Charles Keating, a big campaign contributor and then a powerful banker wrapped up in fraud and racketeering charges during the Savings and Loan debacle. With Hoffman and Gramm at his side today--McCain can hardly claim he learned from experience. We are certainly poorer for it.

Die, Manatees, die! by gimleteye

The St. Pete Times has a great story on the gummed up, unreformable majority of the Miami-Dade County Commission. Come on, Mayor Alvarez: you have to shake things up at County Hall!


Miami-Dade may ease manatee protection plan

By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer

Published Monday, June 9, 2008 11:11 PM

Miami-Dade County's plan for protecting manatees is regarded as one of the best in the state, an example for other Florida counties to follow.

But now county commissioners want to rewrite the 13-year-old plan to accommodate a growing demand for more boat docks. Among the people picked to rewrite it: a man fined $150,000 for illegally building docks in manatee habitat.

And the push for a change comes from county commissioners frequently regarded as unfriendly to environment regulations in general and manatees in particular.

"I am not a lover of manatees," Miami-Dade Commissioner Natacha Seijas announced four years ago.

Manatee protection plans spell out where new marinas and boat slips can be built to avoid harming manatee habitat and show which waterways have speed limits to make boaters slow down.

Last year state officials were on the verge of taking manatees off the endangered list. Miami-Dade County commissioners decided the time was right to rewrite their plan "in view of changes in the status of the manatee and ... increasing demand for boating access," according to a letter from one county official.

Gov. Charlie Crist intervened in December to halt the change in the manatee's status, and on Wednesday the state wildlife commission will discuss fixing the flaws in how it lists imperiled species.

Yet Miami-Dade is going ahead with spending about $700,000 to replace a plan that state officials say is "already successfully addressing risks to manatees." Save the Manatee Club executive director Pat Rose fears other counties will follow, which he called "a prescription for disaster."

To oversee the rewrite, the commissioners appointed a 14-member committee which includes Dick Bunnell, a dock builder.

Three years ago, a federal judge fined Bunnell $150,000 for building docks in manatee habitat without getting permits from the Corps of Engineers. He was also sentenced to 1,500 hours of community service and five years of probation. While Bunnell was building the illegal docks — from 2001 to 2004 — county officials warned him that he would need federal permits, but he did it anyway, according to the corps.

To Bunnell, the big problem with the county's current manatee protection plan is that it limits where docks can be built.

"There's way too much restriction and resistance to docks and boat ramps and boat slips, and that's a segment of our economy that's so strong in South Florida," he said. "I don't believe docks kill manatees. What hurts manatees is boaters that are not obeying the law."

However, restrictions on docks in manatee habitat are "a required component of the plan," said Carol Knox of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The commissioner who selected Bunnell to the committee, Natacha Seijas, has made it clear she is no fan of manatees. Her views led a television commentator to dub her "the Cruella DeVil of Biscayne Bay," a reference to the villain in One Hundred and One Dalmatians.

At a discussion about coastal management issues four years ago, she complained about manatees swimming in the canal behind her house, because "as dumb as they always are they keep floating back and forth." She said she wanted county employees "to come and pick them up."

"I want to know how big that herd is, because if that herd is way too big it is time to find something else to do with it," she added.

Three years ago, during a discussion about manatees in Biscayne Bay, Seijas said, "I don't see why we need to be creating an environment so they can continue."

None of her colleagues on the commission has been as blunt. However, Commission Chairman Bruno Barreiro, during the meeting where Seijas made her comments on the manatees behind her house, said, "There is a huge shortage of (boat) slips" and "slip prices are sky-high." Barreiro recently complained about state growth management officials who he said were "very anti any development."

Barreiro, who sponsored the commission's move to rewrite its manatee protection plan, did not return a call seeking comment.

Manatee protection plans have long stirred controversy.

In 1989, then-Gov. Bob Martinez and the Cabinet told 13 coastal counties to prepare manatee protection plans: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, Indian River, St. Lucie, Brevard, Volusia, Duval, Collier, Lee, Sarasota and Citrus. They were supposed to finish by 1993. A decade after the Cabinet decree, though, only four had complied.

One was Miami-Dade, and its plan did exactly what all the plans were supposed to do, Rose said. Like state officials, Rose contends there is no need to change what works.

The review committee has held one public hearing so far. A majority of the audience of about 50 said the county should not change its plan, said committee member Lynda Green, who agrees.

"I think the commissioners want to reopen this because they want more development, they want more docks, and everything they want will be less protection for the manatee," she said. At her suggestion, the committee recently visited injured manatees at the Miami Seaquarium because "how much data do you need when you see a manatee whose tail has just come off in your hands?"

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report, which contains information from the Miami Herald.


>>time line

Miami manatee

1893: First law banning killing of manatees passed by Legislature. Bill sponsored by one of Miami's founding fathers, real estate mogul Frederick Morse.

1942: First published account of a manatee with propeller scars, spotted in the Miami River by Daniel Beard, soon to be first superintendent of Everglades National Park.

1949: While watching manatees swimming in the Miami River, biologist Joseph C. Moore discovers he can tell them apart by their prop scar patterns. System is still in use today.

1972: Jacques Cousteau documentary airs on ABC showing rescue of injured Miami manatee and its release into the Crystal River, sparking widespread popular interest in manatees.

1995: Miami-Dade County becomes one of first counties to draw up a manatee protection plan. Other counties take nearly a decade to follow suit.

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Outsourcing: Et Tu, Miami Herald? Posted by Geniusofdespair

Often readers contact us off line with their beefs and frustrations. Here is one of those emails:

The Miami Herald seems to have joined the thousands of American companies taking jobs away from Americans. If you call The Miami Herald's customer service number (305) 350-2000 you are asked to call the new toll-free number: 1-800-843-4372. The only problem is, you won't be speaking with anyone in in the U.S.A. My call was routed to Malaysia.

There is another number you can call to get someone in Miami (305) 350-2111, but they can't help with customer service. They can, of course, take your complaint. Maybe if enough people call to complain, The 'Herald will reconsider. How many jobs were lost here to overseas workers?

Outsourcing generates less money for us and hurts our local economy, but it does something worse: It sends a message that we don’t value all our citizens. The Herald has wiped away a large swath of entry level jobs for a large segment of our population. The fact that so many American companies are outsourcing their call centers is disturbing, especially to the many qualified workers who have either lost their call center jobs or new people in the job market who seek these jobs that now don’t exist. Another disturbed bunch is the consumer, who constantly has to call overseas for banking, credit card inquiries, purchasing, mailing, and now the local newspaper! In fact, companies have tried to deal with complaints by giving call center workers overseas American names, but Americans are not stupid. We are hurt. Miami Herald you hurt the community with this one. Maybe your pocketbook is better off, but we have unemployment here. You could have helped us here in Miami Dade County. You can complain about readership: What about goodwill?

What can we do Eyeonmiami? Reader in Hialeah

Aging Fast: What's going to slow you down? By Geniusofdespair

If you are selfishly looking for a charity to give to for a tax write-off, why not hedge your bets? The chart above tells you the most likely conditions to take the luster off of living as you age. Why not donate to the one you think most likely to hit you? More research now might spare you in the future. If in doubt, do Arthritis. By age 85 it is likely to limit almost 30% of us. (hit on image to enlarge it)

Javier Souto, saddle up that pony: you're taking us for a ride! by gimleteye

We took note, not too long ago, of County Commission Javier Souto's $250,000 extravaganza at Tropical Park to promote "agriculture and farming." Truth is, we were skeptical because old Javi is mainly for development. Development of any kind, but especially where it involves late night decisions on the dais where he can do his next favorite thing to riding horses, rambling on and on about Cuba and dark hidden forces all around us. Now we learn that the final cost for the extravaganza was closer to $450,000. I hope Javi got his money's worth! (Oops, make that OUR money.)

Type the rest of the post here

The Inspector General's "Random Audits" of Non Profits: There are none!! by Geniusofdespair

The County gives plenty of money (millions) to non profits each year from our hard earned tax dollars.

Non profits seeking Discretionary Reserve and Office funds from a County Commissioner must provide: A Federal Tax ID and a W9 form. That is it, and the name, address etc. I said to myself: "What, they have to be kidding." Then on the second page of the form I saw that it says that the non profits that the county gives money to, are subject to random audits by the Inspector General's Office. I said to myself. "Well that is good." Considering that there are over 800 non profits on the Discretionary Fund list, I was glad to see there is a check in place to make sure the non-profits are legit.

I wanted to see if there were any questionable charities on the list. I called the IG office and spoke to the Deputy Inspector General, Alan Solowitz. I said I wanted to do a public records request of all the audits that the IG office has done on non profits that the County has contributed money to (I didn't make it specific only to discretionary).

He said: "We have never done an audit of a non profit."

It is time for me to get on the county gravy train. I have a Federal Tax ID Number so all I have to do is think up a charitable sounding name, pay $150 to incorporate it and scurry over to County Hall with a sob story and talk about my "large membership" (which translates into votes at election time in a commissioner's eyes) and try to get some of that commissioner's $350,000 money pot.

Sidewalks! by gimleteye

Miami and other municipalities reminds me how much life the city has surrendered by giving up sidewalks because elected officials defer to land use lobbyists and attorneys over "property rights", building to the edge of commercial streets.
Merchants on Lincoln Road on Miami Beach and Miracle Mile, in the Gables, have all benefited from wider sidewalks that create their own form of community. One depressing failure: the inability of city officials to create a vibrant walkway along the Miami River, especially at the mouth of the river. What a tragic mistake.

Then, there is the failed Sunset Place in South Miami, replacing the Failed Bakery Center. Shops at Sunset Place tries to create a homey feeling inside but erects its walls like a barrier to the outside. On the Red Road side of Sunset Place, there is an extent of covered sidewalk, as if a passing nod to the outward appearance of providing for street life. But the sidewalk, still, is too narrow and the sidewalk "design element" doesn't work. Since it doesn't work, the architects blocked out retail fronting the street.

On the other hand, there is limited sidewalk life on the Sunset Drive side of this edge of South Miami. There are a few small restaurants Sunset who can eek out a few tables. Then there's the "experimental" side street, SW 59th, where the sidewalks were widened; it works! Duh.

Anyhow, the reason I'm writing about sidewalks is that The New York Times Magazine features an interview with Enrique Penlosa, the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia who is eloquent on the subject.

Penlosa says of the failed American development model; "There are many suburbs where there are no sidewalks, which is a very bad sign of a lack of respect for human dignity.. " Here, here! What do you say to that, LBA? And, "If democracy is to prevail, public good must prevail over private interests." County Commissioner Javier Souto, what do you say to that?!

Here is the entire interview:
>
June 8, 2008
QUESTIONS FOR ENRIQUE PEÑALOSA
Man With a Plan

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Q: As a former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who won wide praise for making the city a model of enlightened planning, you have lately been hired by officials intent on building world-class cities, especially in Asia and the developing world. What is the first thing you tell them?

In developing-world cities, the majority of people don’t have cars, so I will say, when you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy. A sidewalk is a symbol of equality.

I wouldn’t think that sidewalks are a top priority in developing countries. The last priority. Because the priority is to make highways and roads. We are designing cities for cars, cars, cars, cars, cars. Not for people. Cars are a very recent invention. The 20th century was a horrible detour in the evolution of the human habitat. We were building much more for cars’ mobility than children’s happiness.

Even in countries where most people can’t afford to own cars?

The upper-income people in developing countries never walk. They see the city as a threatening space, and they can go for months without walking one block.

Isn’t that true here in the United States as well?

Not in Manhattan, but there are many suburbs where there are no sidewalks, which is a very bad sign of a lack of respect for human dignity. People don’t even question it. It’s the same as it was in pre-revolutionary France. People thought society was normal, just as today people think it is normal that the Long Island Sound waterfront should be private.

Are you comparing people with homes overlooking the Long Island Sound to corrupt French aristocrats?

If democracy is to prevail, public good must prevail over private interests. The question is: would the majority of people be happier with a public waterfront on the Long Island Sound or not? All children should have access to waterfronts without being members of a country club.

Do most of the six billion people in the world live in cities or in the country?

At this very instant, a little bit more in the country. We are in the process of becoming more urban. In the developing world, more than half the cities, especially in Asia and Africa, are yet to be created.

What are the best-designed cities in the world? The best-designed cities are in northern Europe, like the Dutch and Danish cities.

As mayor of Bogotá, you reclaimed the sidewalks for pedestrians by banning sidewalk parking, your most famous achievement.

The most famous and the most controversial. But we started by building bicycle paths, and now 5 percent of the population, more than 350,000 people, go to work by bicycle.

Why do you think you lost your most recent bid for mayor last year?

I had some huge fights when I was mayor. I was almost impeached for getting the cars off the sidewalk.

Do you own a car? Yes, an S.U.V. with armor.

You mean it’s bulletproof? Yes. We had some problems.

People shot at you? No, they never shot at me, but you never know. Any politician in Colombia is at risk.

Where were you educated?

I went to Duke. I actually majored in economics and history.

You were probably the only socialist at Duke.

I eventually realized, of course, that socialism was a failure as an economic system. Yet equality is not dead. Socialism is dead, but equality as a goal is not dead.

Do you see yourself as a city planner or a politician?

At heart what I really am is a Colombian politician, but a bad one because I lose elections.

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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Politics crush the Everglades... by gimleteye

In Sunday's Miami Herald, Ana Menendez writes a column about last week's visit by Senator John McCain to the Everglades. It is one of her best and has a pin-point hallucinatory feel entirely appropriate to the context. The press crew waited in the broiling heat for McCain and assembled dignitaries to speed by on an airboat labeled "Patriot". He passed by, gamely waving, and then was off.

"The adventure that began on a manmade spoil island near Miami Beach ended at an ecosystem that may be preserved one day for all posterity as a corporate-sponsored exhibit at Miami Children's Museum." I couldn't have said it better.

The Democrats sent out former Senator Bob Graham to deliver the talking points against eight years of unfulfilled Everglades promise in a mostly Republican Congress. Graham focused on the shortcomings of the omnibus Water Resources Development Act, that periodically sweeps up necessary environmental restoration projects like the Everglades in a torrent of pork barrel politics.

The best idea to emerge from the McCain visit was that the federal commitment to the Everglades needs its own stand alone bill. OK. But how will that happen with pressure from the Great Lakes, from Chesapeake Bay, from the California Delta region, from Narragansett Bay, to the Mississippi, and New York Harbor? All these are polluted ecosystems. In fact it's hard to name a single coastal estuary that our democratic institutions haven't trashed: not exactly a ringing testament to the democracy and freedom we intend to plant in other parts of the world.

The career of Florida's most distinguished Democrat, Bob Graham, has been defined by the Everglades. Still, with family wealth from dairy and sugar farming and development in former Everglades wetlands, the compromises that then Senator Graham advocated to "restore" the Everglades have not yielded much. Sure, Floridians wanted to drain part of the swamp so we could live here without worrying about getting wet in periodic, even devastating floods: but we didn't mean to kill off the whole thing--the estuaries where we fished, the Everglades that fed a fabulous panoramic landscape from bays to rivers and streams.

We wanted to save the Everglades, but politicians oversold the likely results of their labor and allowed campaign contributors to underbid the price for their support. Another way of saying, killing off the Everglades didn't take much money and there is no telling how much money it will take to restore the River of Grass, or, what's left of it.

Even when Senator Graham was founding the state program to save the Everglades, champions like Marjory Stoneman Douglas believed more, much more needed to be done. She was right to worry: what the Everglades teaches us is that the environment cannot withstand the predations of politics, or, of laws designed to leave so much wiggle room that every corporate interest from rock mining to sugar farming can say that they are really green at heart.

"We drifted slowly along. The senator's boat vanished only to mysteriously reappear behind us. And, before we could make sense of anything, the tour at Everglades Safari Park was over. McCain spoke briefly to the gathered press. 'The disappearance of the Everglades could have consequences that are enormous...' And then he was off to the airport." That Menendez paragraph is among the best I've read of first hand observation of Everglades politics.

Two terms of George Bush did very little for the Everglades. As Menendez observes, a miserable week in Iraq would pay for the federal government's promised share of the restoration. But George left the Everglades to Jeb, and Jeb spent money for sure, but it was a greenwashing job from the start, astroturfing the Everglades by guaranteeing that the cities and agriculture and rock miners would get their infrastructure needs. He wouldn't so much as look in the direction of dissenters.

Where were the Everglades advocates in the Republican Congress? The truth is: they were no where, not when their allegiances were so clearly defined by the interests that promoted and pimped the housing boom now in cinders.

Senator Mel Martinez, former HUD Secretary, was all about suburban sprawl-- just like the US House Representatives Mario Diaz Balart and Illeana Ros Lehtinen.

One of the really bad political events damaging the Everglades was splitting the Congressional district in 2002 that included the Florida Keys and the Greater Everglades. It had been one district, and one ably represented by then Broward Congressman Peter Deutsch, a Democrat. The 2002 Congressional redistricting was lead by Mario Diaz Balart, then a senior member of the Florida House of Representatives.

He and his colleagues and supporters, from the building industry--no surprise there--, carved a new district to include most of the Everglades for him. By splitting the district from the Florida Keys, did Diaz Balart care that Florida Bay--at the southern section of the Everglades ecosystem--had turned into a dirty, befouled sump for Everglades pollution? Of course not.

The mystery is Congresswoman Ileana Ros Lehtinen who has been ineffective in protecting her constituents in the Keys from the disaster of Florida Bay. It is a mystery because her husband, Dexter Lehtinen--the former US Attorney who brought much of the Everglades federal litigation and is now supported by Miccosoukee gambling money--is the impatient, imperious pitbull of the Everglades in federal court.

The litigation goes on and on and on. Big Sugar succeeded in its effort to remove Judge William Hoeveler from the federal court case. Government agencies have consistently lined up in Everglades related litigation on the side of polluters. Politics continue to crush the Everglades: from Big Sugar's political contributions to the development lobby's continued pressure. Once upon a time, the initial federal plan to restore the Everglades included a cost component for "public education". That disappeared in a heart-beat. To the extent that there is Everglades education these days, it is often scrubbed clean of criticism of politics that still are the only forum in which the public treasury can be tapped.

What you have now is spin: reams and reams of it from the US Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District. The public believes that the Everglades are being saved, because it has been said so many times.

Then director of Friends of the Everglades, Joe Podgor, famously uttered: "The Everglades is a test, if we pass we get to keep the planet." We're not passing the first test, by a long shot. When educator James Gustave Speth recently wrote of the threat of global warming, "It is time for civic unreasonableness", he might well have referred to Everglades restoration.

But none of that civic unreasonableness called for by Speth, a former chair of the White House Council of Environmental Quality, was on display during Senator McCain's visit to the Everglades as Florida and the nation head into a long, hot summer.

Miami-Dade Boondoggle No. 1.49 Million: Transit. By Geniusofdespair

(I made up that 1.49 Million, but it feels right.) Some of you actually voted for the 1/2 percent sales tax for transit (not me, I knew better). Well, now you can see what happened to the money, it is detailed in Part 1 of a 3 Part investigative report: Taken for a Ride: Promise of transit tax derailed. Larry Lebowitz reports:

County leaders promised 17 million miles of new bus service. They never got close.

Promising "New Money for New Projects,'' the 2002 campaign, led by former county Mayor Alex Penelas, vowed to bring Miami-Dade Transit into the 21st century if voters approved a long-sought sales tax.

But five years and more than $800 million later, the county has spent more than half the new money on routine Transit operations and maintenance while adding 1,000 jobs to the payroll.

I did not vote for it when I found out that all the cities were getting a cut. They were able to spend it on median beautification, etc. According to Lebowitz, this is how it ended up:

Transit can essentially bill 24 of every 100 paper clips, 24 of every 100 new polo shirts, even 24 of every 100 cockroaches exterminated, to the sales-tax fund.

Miami Herald: Boffo job on Part 1!

Starting Now: An Advice Column. By Geniusofdespair

I have decided to start an advice column. Since I have experienced so many hard knocks, maybe I can save you the trouble.

Don't spill water on your computer keyboard.

Losing any key will render a keyboard useless. I know this because I have had to buy 4 keyboards because of liquid intrusion. I now keep an extra one in the house. I spilled a few drops this morning and the space bar stopped working. I did a save once by immediately turning the keyboard upside down to let it drain. I wasn't so smart this morning, I thought it was only a few drops.

Biscayne Times Interview's North Miami Mayor. By Geniusofdespair

Mayor Kevin Burns defended the financially strapped Biscayne Landing Development (Munisport) as the cure all for what ails North Miami. He said switching gears from condo's to retail would fix it. Biscayne Times reported that Burns said:

“It’s not going to be a mall. It’s going to be living streets within the community, more along the lines of a Las Olas or Main Street in Miami Lakes.”

I don't have a beef with Kevin, but hey, Mayor Burns watch what you say. Have you been to Miami Lakes Main Street lately? I have been there frequently over the years. Little by little I watched it die. It is now overrun with empty stores. It has one decent anchor: Victoria's Secret. Most of the other stores are closed at night or the windows have brown paper on them. The street is popular with teens but that is about it. The Miami Lakes Main Street appears to be a failure...for now.

I think banks are throwing good money after bad with this retail conversion at Biscayne Landing. I say, sit on it and let the dust settle. You need a reality check with this one! Retail is not an easy business. The other Riverfront Development in Ft. Launderdale that Boca Developers owns, was also Main Street-Like. It died. Look at the Bakery Center in South Miami. Retail could kill the goose.

P.S. Have the developers cleaned this former superfund site yet?
P.S.S. What is with the money for MOCA from Boca Developers? The company is in deep financial straits and you think they can really come up with 8 million for the museum expansion? If they have an extra pot of money laying around let them use it to clean the site of contaminants.