Millions Showed Up at the Global Warming March/Rally in Miami, (Donald Trump's estimate). By Geniusofdespair

You know I have to get your attention. I didn't exactly go to the march for Global Warming, I had to go to a very important meeting. Philip Stoddard and Cindy Lerner sent me the photos below

...But These People Were There - I think this means "United for more fritos, Latinos for the Planet." Oh, I made a mistake fuertes means powerful not fritos. Together we are powerful -- I think.

Very annoying to have this guy facing the wrong way on the Sable Trail Pipeline as people march for the Planet.

The group was multicultural. That is nice to see -- that everyone is in agreement.

Jose Marti Park

South Miami Mayor Phil Stoddard, Gina McCarthy (EPA Secretary before Pruitt) and Caroline Lewis of Cleo

Caroline Lewis, Gina again and Cindy Lerner

Facebook and allegations Donald Trump was elected President by a hostile, foreign power... by gimleteye

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook

The GOP Congress is thwarting the most explosive political revelations since Watergate and potentially since the founding of the republic.

Investigations by the same Congressional committees that dragged Hillary Clinton through decades of fake right-wing news will not probe the allegations that Russia, a hostile foreign power, hacked the 2016 presidential election.

This week, Facebook released an unprecedented report acknowledging its data was (and is) being misused as political campaign activity. Its report is an extraordinary mea culpa and an invitation for Congress to investigate how new technologies, through social media, are circumventing federal campaign law.

Facebook and Information Operations v1

The Facebook report dovetails with important civic journalism by a former British MP, Louise Mensch.

Patribotics, a blog written by Mensch, is the source of the most important revelations about the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Her most recent post is must read: "Sources: Boris Epshteyn Paid Russian Hackers For Both Team Trump and FSB".

Mensch's allegations are supported by information from the intelligence community. To qualify for federal prosecution, these disclosures require hard evidence. That hard evidence could be requested as part of a federal grand jury investigation and a courageous FBI willing to make the case.

The US Senate should hold a special hearing on Facebook and dive into the use of Facebook for coordinated political activities during the 2016 presidential election.

This is not a witch hunt. That's what the right-wing message machine did to Hillary Clinton over a period of decades, culminating with the campaign against her private email server.

According to Mensch, not only does the evidence exist of collusion leading to the election of Donald Trump, it is being shared between foreign intelligence agencies including the UK's.

Notwithstanding the bitter partisan divide, both political parties should agree that it is, in fact, a constitutional crisis if seeds were planted by Russia, a hostile foreign power, to influence the outcome of a presidential election.

Honest Republicans in Congress -- those must stand up now -- know the difference between a witch hunt and a rescue of our democracy.

Someone, soon, needs to kick the failing Congressional investigations of the 2016 presidential election into hyperdrive. With its report Facebook seems to be saying; there is ample reason to do so and that the corporation is prepared to cooperate.

An Anonymous Reader is Very Pessimistic About Climate Change. By Geniusofdespair

Go to the Climate March today at Jose Marti Park (see 2 posts yesterday). I found this comment most interesting on our posts yesterday, He or She is assuming that climate change is a done deal and that planning for it is our best option, don't entirely disagree -- Could it happen as a big bang as this reader suggests?

In the USA people often don't think about the prospects of lost cities, or even civilizations. We almost lost New Orleans, but that is about it.

With Global Climate Change we are about to lose many, many more and most likely too quickly for anyone to do anything about it. How will we deal with that? If our elites refuse or even won't plan for it then how do we as citizens and activists devise a plan if the top of Greenland slides off, or the winter disappears and the Gulf Stream stops, cold.

What do we do for the generations left?

How do we convey to them our medical knowledge? Our scientific findings? How do we convince them that its not that everybody was wrong only a few in power that refused to listen and the rest of us are planning for this with YOU (future generations) in mind? Was everybody on board with cutting down the last tree on Easter Island? Why do we think that they were all so stupid when it was just one dictator in power and HIS special interests that surrounded him.

That is the best gift that activists can do at this point. Perhaps the clock, if its not melted down because someone needed to repair their broken scooter or make another gun to protect their tribe is the best option. 

We can do this now, while the power is still on, while we have time to plan.

Remember this video, very real now, I think Trump will get us into a nuclear war:

Logistics to the Climate March Parking Options FOR TOMORROW. By Geniusofdespair

SEE GIMLETEYE'S POST ABOUT THE RALLY/MARCH BELOW....

THIS IS THE HOW, HIS IS THE WHY!

PEOPLES CLIMATE MARCH TOMORROW!!

The city is providing two large parking lots exclusively for us that day and there are also many more parking lots near there. We can/will also provide transportation for any folks that need to get to the march if they park at the lyric theater. Please see the attached image for the route as well as the parking spots all along it. We look forward to marching.

I suppose you could also take mass transit to the Government Center and do a little walking. You can also park there at the municipal parking garage just West of the Government Center (cheaper if you get the library to stamp your ticket).

Don't let the stupid location scare you. GO GO GO. You are a road warrior. 1 PM.

One Great Reason To #climatemarch This Saturday ... Join the #resistance ... by gimleteye

Fingers crossed that @RealDonaldTrump will pay attention to millions of marchers and protesters of his climate change denial agenda, this Saturday. The Miami March is scheduled for 1PM at Jose Marti Park.

Nothing seems to penetrate Trump's fixed mind. As he retreats further and further into the walled-off White House, surrounded by plutocrats and swamp animals, it is going to take more and more Americans protesting to make an impression. That's why it is important for millions, not hundreds of thousands, to make the point tomorrow: climate change is real, the red lights are flashing now, and the Trump White House needs to act to protect our futures. (See, "How A Warming Climate Drives Human Migration", NY Times)

That's one great reason to march tomorrow. There are others:

NY Magazine writes: "Back before America was great again, energy companies would lobby the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent robust action on climate change. But in Donald Trump’s America, the head of the EPA is, more or less, the managing director of Big Energy’s public-sector branch — and, thus, the EPA lobbies the coal industry to oppose global climate-change agreements: "A coal mining industry group’s board of directors voted on Tuesday to press President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement — just one day after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt met with the group’s leadership and urged them to push the issue, two sources told Politico. Pruitt personally attended a meeting of the National Mining Association’s executive committee on Monday to lay out his concerns with the Paris accord, and called for the group to publicly support pulling out, according to one source.

Here is another:

"Sean Becketti, the chief economist at Freddie Mac, warned in a report last year of a housing crisis for coastal areas more severe than the Great Recession, one that could spread through banks, insurers and other industries. And, unlike the recession, there’s no hope of a bounce back in property values." ("The Nightmare Scenario for Florida’s Coastal Homeowners", Bloomberg)

We're not making any of this up. Not FAKE news. Everything we take for granted in our daily lives will be upended by climate change, and the longer we delay implementing a clear vision and policies to pragmatically steer civilization away from catastrophe, the more painful the impacts will be. Make no mistake: those in control of the Trump White House are locking down THEIR privileges and priorities, not YOURS.

For further reading in The Nation: "The Policy Weapon Climate Activists Need". Tomorrow's march is a means to an end: putting voters back in control of democracy. On that front, too, we have a long, long road ahead.

State Aquatic Preserve Pollution from...the STATE? By Geniusofdespair

Sunny day, no rain for awhile yet this pipe in Coconut Grove filled with polluted water continuously pours into Biscayne Bay a State designated and protected Aquatic Preserve. Rain or shine, water runs into the Bay.



What entity is responsible? The City says, not our water. The County says not ours either. Apparently the State might be responsible. The County is investigating the pipe...for a quite a bit of time now. Still the water flows at an alarming rate 24/7 from...?? into our State Aquatic Preserve from, it is believed, the STATE OF FLORIDA - Florida Department of Transportation.

How long has this been going on? That sucker has been there a very long time, most of the time its discharge hidden by the higher tide. You can also watch on YouTube.

Put Fresen In Jail ... by gimleteye

The Miami Herald reports the incredible story of Erik Fresen, the Miami state legislator who failed to pay any income taxes while taking a paycheck from his in-laws' private charter school business and doing the heavy lifting for special interests like expanded casino gambling in Florida. What kind of arrogance fueled this behavior is a question better answered by Miami voters who supported Fresen. Eye On Miami hopes the judge throws the full book at him.

"For eight years, Erik Fresen served in the Florida House of Representatives, leaving office last November because of term limits. During all eight of those years, Fresen never filed a federal income tax return. Fresen, a Miami Republican, pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to failing to file a tax return for 2011, a year in which he received $270,136 in income he didn’t report to Uncle Sam."

Read, here, Eye On Miami's blog history on Fresen. Can't say, we didn't try!

Miami Climate Change March, 1 PM Saturday @ Jose Marti Park ... by gimleteye

This is important. Around the nation, this Saturday, marchers will take to the streets to express their support for policies to address climate change now.

We just have to be better organized than climate change deniers, including the state legislators and the Republicans who control levers of power in Washington and Tallahassee.



Here's how important Saturday's marches are: the earth just passed a carbon dioxide threshold that has no precedent in human history. Climate change is gathering force as the Trump administration and GOP Congress puts sound climate change policy in reverse. We are the lucky ones, in the developed first world, but already in the most desperate parts of the world, climate change is wrecking millions of lives.

The stakes for the young today, for our children and grandchildren, couldn't be higher. They will face the brutal impacts of climate change, head on.

So help. Marching on Saturday is not an end. It is a means to organize for better politics to cope with what lies ahead.

From the Robert Scribbler blog:

This past week, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels passed a new ominous milestone.

Clocking in at 410.7 parts per million at the Mauna Loa Observatory, this key heat trapping gas hit a range not seen on Earth for many millions of years.

(The world crossed the 410 part per million milestone in the daily measure this week. Image source: The Keeling Curve.)

These levels now correspond with the Miocene Climate Epoch when seas were 120 to 190 feet higher than today and when global temperatures ranged from 3 to 5 degrees Celsius hotter than preindustrial averages.

Here is a message from the organizers of the Peoples Climate Change March:

The routes are set. The buses are filling up. The banners are painted.

In less than 100 hours, hundreds of thousands of people will descend on Washington, D.C. to march for climate, jobs and justice. And all across the country, from Fairbanks to Fort Lauderdale and Miami, people will gather to rally and march, fighting to save our communities and the planet.

Here are the details for the Peoples Climate March:

What: Miami People's Climate March
Where: Jose Marti Park
When: Start: April 29, 2017 - 1:00 PM
End: April 29, 2017 - 4:00 PM

Don’t miss this moment — and don't let your friends miss it, either.

It’s important to make sure you have a plan for how you’re planning on getting yourself to the event - are you going to take public transit, bike, drive or walk to the event? But it’s even more important to bring your friends and family to the event with you.

With a little help from our friends, we can make April 29 truly historic.

Use the links below to share the People’s Climate March with your friends, neighbors and family, and invite them to join you!

The Peoples Climate March is going to be a massive show of power 100 days into this destructive administration. Together, we can help turn the tide - but only if we show up.

See you in the streets!

The People’s Climate March Team

Florida voters to Legislators: NO, you can't do that! Legislators to Florida voters: pound dirt! ... by gimleteye

Florida legislators owe a debt of gratitude to the least capable president in U.S. history. Trump has proven; when nothing means anything, alternate facts rule and anything can be accomplished. Consider the Trump plan to reduce corporate income taxes to 15%. Meaningless.

Trump exploited the federal tax code, and for years voters support of Congress -- the ultimate arbiter of tax rates -- allowed Trump to effectively pay no taxes at all when his many businesses failed in the 1990's and early 2000's. Sure, Democrats bear a fair share of blame for a tax code as filled with holes as a piece of Swiss cheese.

This session of the legislature is turning into the ultimate pinata for special interests.

Take, for one example, Florida's largest regulated utility: Florida Power and Light. State Republicans race to praise FPL as a "good corporate citizen". Take a closer look.

FPL has a state-mandated, guaranteed rate of return of 10%. Who wouldn't want a business with a guaranteed return of ten percent? You thought the guarantee was an honest return in exchange for reliable, cheap electricity? Think again.

Florida legislators bend over routinely, as they are doing in this session of the state legislature, to give FPL even more, a lot more than ten percent. Without getting into detail: FPL lobbyists have "persuaded" the legislature to work around two court decisions against its interests. The first, a new bill approving a guaranteed rate of return for fracking in Oklahoma, putting Florida ratepayers on the line to pay for its risk. The second, also to evade another decision that ratepayers and citizens mistakenly believed had been settled by Florida courts: the right to go around local home rule and install massive high-intensity power poles down the length of Miammi's US Route 1, in one of the most heavily trafficked areas of Florida's most populous county.

But there is more: FPL, through its parent company NextEra Energy, pays NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX at all. The corporation received, instead, over a 7 year period a credit equal to the cost of replacing the failed cooling canals at its Turkey Point nuclear units. A solution that FPL refuses to undertake because "it is too costly".

Put another way: FPL executives and top shareholders -- through the state legislature and lax environmental enforcement the legislature implicitly OK's -- are both being funded by ratepayers and also being REFUNDED by taxpayers hundreds of millions for defying taxpayers, for defying the courts, for spending tens of millions to defy the will of voters, for destroying drinking water aquifers, and "taking" by subversive eminent domain the natural resources of one of the nation's most threatened national parks.

NextEra Energy (FPL's corporate "parent") had corporate profits of $21.5 billion from 2008 to 2015. The company paid no federal income taxes on this amount but instead received a net credit of $313 million due to government subsidies. … The analysis of NextEra Energy’s corporate profits and taxes was done by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a center-left nonprofit. It was published in a March 2017 report, “The 35 Percent Corporate Tax Myth; Corporate Tax Avoidance by Fortune 500 Companies, 2008 to 2015.”

So Donald Trump can yammer all he wants about what a great and terrific tax plan to reduce corporate taxes and stimulate jobs!, but actually corporations like NextEra and other regulated entities are paying zero percent and getting money back from taxpayers in order to lay down the tracks for future profits (cf. Big Sugar and a new bill allowing it to harvest rainfall, make taxpayers engineer it clean enough to sell back to the public).

Their schemes are so great! and so successful that state legislators feel no doubt, no uncertainty, no hesitation to lie, to cheat the public, and yet wear pins on the lapels professing their love of God and Constitution.

FPL, along with its other regulated utilities, are top campaign contributors in Tallahassee, particularly to those incumbents with aspirations to advance: Gov. Rick Scott, to the Senate seat held by Bill Nelson, and Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam, who aims to replace Scott as Governor. It is money-ball, full time in Florida's distant capitol.

Congratulations, Florida voters: we did this to ourselves.

The Latest on the Coconut Grove Playhouse, two Very Strong Women hire a Lawyer. By Geniusofdespair

The players in the Playhouse Preservation fight:

Katrina Morris

Barbara Lange - only photo I could find from the Coconut Grove Grapevine.

The county wants to demolish the Court House downtown, now they want to demolish the Playhouse in Coconut Grove -- Demolition Derby in Miami Dade County.

Two of my long time friends, Barbara Lange and Katrina Morris have hired attorney Lowell Kuvin to fight their case for preservation based on historic inferior interior. Better to have the playhouse than a parking lot (County loves parking lots). See the article in the Miami Herald today.
 

I have seen Barbara Lange fight with a room full of Rock Miners. I went with her and was sort of in shock and a little scared. She is pretty tough.  Arthur Teele was a good friend of hers. Every time I see her she forgets who I am -- even though I have known her since 1995 and I have been to her home, drove with her for a few hours and have been at an endless amount of meetings with her.  I swear I even worked for her for a time. A very brief time. Just not on her radar.

Katrina, on the other hand, I went to her wedding and I have know her almost the same amount of time. She remembers me well.  She is a relocated California girl.

Both women know how to battle. Watch out.

New York Times Editorial on Florida Citizens Getting the Shaft on Solar, Environment, Land and Conservation, Voting, and More! By Geniusofdespair

HOW ON EARTH CAN I GET YOU TO READ THIS? PLEASE DO IT. This is what happens when your State legislature is over-loaded with one party:

THE TEXT: