A discussion center for Democrats and their friends and neighbors in Miami-Dade County. Posts and comments may not reflect official thinking of the county Democratic Party. Democratic candidates are encouraged to apply for permission to post on this blog.
Thanks to the Miami Beach Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club we have some better understanding of how poor our representation in Congress is. My representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, now over 20 years in the US House, spoke to us last Tuesday and put out a ton of verbiage revealing how little she and her Republican colleagues understand of economics.
Her main theme was the deficit, and if you look at these clips you’ll see that she wants to freeze spending, and to do it now. She apparently hasn’t heard that the Great Depression of the 1930s was on the road to recovery in FDR’s first term until he was nagged to distraction by criticism of his spending, and so his administration put on the brakes and then came the double-dip of 1937, I believe. I’m not even looking it up -- it’s such common knowledge. But not among today’s Republicans. Their mantra is stop deficits now. NOW!
OK, we know that the family budget should be balanced. But that’s not really applicable to running the world’s biggest economy, and families, too, have to borrow for major expenditures. Ros-Lehtinen led off her speech with the stop-deficit talking point, and then in the Q-and-A she was given two chances to modify it, but instead she mischaracterized economic thought.
No, Congresswoman, no economists think that deficits are OK, as you say. They may say that deficits are necessary to help end a recession, but then you’re supposed to get to a balance of income and outgo.
Anyway, check out this clip. Note that she’s reading from a paper but still says clearly false things about the national debt and the size of President Obama’s budget proposal in relation to the national debt.
It has taken me forever to process this, and I apologize. New computer gear slowed me down, plus winter visitors from the frozen North.
Inspiration to finish came Saturday evening as C-Span replayed another Republican member of the US House, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the deputy whip of her party. She had done the Friday morning call-in program, and my, was she an eloquent spouter of the party line, leading with the deficit. I was struck by the way her message was identical to what Ros-Lehtinen had said on Tuesday in Miami Beach.
The Republicans all have been told what to say. This is the balky line we will hear until the Obama administration brings out the hammers of logic and a disciplined majority.
Blackburn was asked what should happen in the summit President Obama has called for Feb. 25, and I was stunned to hear her say that the Tennessee governor should be called in to explain how health care should be run. Yes -- she wants to go back to Year Zero and start from scratch.
I think this is going to be one heck of a year in the US Congress, and we should gear up to let even our Republican members of Congress know what we think of their no-knothing, er, know-nothing way of representation.
Blackburn said there would be town halls during this break for Presidents Day. We should find out where the Republicans are appearing and let them know their knowledge of economics gets an F.
Thanks, by the way, to Ros-Lehtinen for coming out and speaking to the general public in Miami Beach. There are more good clips of her talk that I’ll try to grind out. She has been in the US House since 1988, and my member of Congress since 2002, and this is the first appearance I know of outside her usual friendly circle.
The first question to her was about her husband Dexter Lehtinen and his legal work for the Miccosukee Indian tribe, which does a lot of business with the federal government, and whether that might be a conflict of interest.
“It’s about ethics,” the questioner, Mike Burke, cried when she didn’t know what he was asking about. Ethics? She didn’t know, just like her economics. I’ll try to get this clip up, too.
Final note: While the rest of you were glued to the screen watching the snow games, your blogger was editing his crude video and looking at C-Span. Such is devotion.
This was reported to Miami Beach public works department Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday the pipe burst and water was turned off, a big hole was dug and after a few hours the pipe was fixed and water was on again. The crew chief rejected my theory that our infrastructure was in poor shape. His verdict: "It's the cold weather."
This was in the 8600 block of Byron Avenue in Miami Beach. The crew had three other breaks to attend to, they said. Is that healthy infrastructure?
• One day it was OK for the top aide to Mayor Carlos Alvarez to do private work in Panama while on the county dime, next day those trips to Panama were off.
• Last week Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer Department sent top officials and consultants to Miami Beach to explain a $197 million tunnel under Government Cut, this week the project is off. Have we saved a lot more than a dime?
• What next?
Why so nervous? That’s the next question. Something about that recall petition against Alvarez?
And the question from Frank Del Vecchio, the prime watchdog of Miami Beach city government, was what’s with “the disappearing act with the $197 million port utility tunnel gambit.”
Those of you who know anything about this either were at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club meeting on Dec. 1 or you read it on this blog a week ago. This is still a scoop for me. The Miami Herald may have bigger fish to worry about than $197 million of taxpayers’ money, I guess.
The short summary of this project as of last week was that the Water and Sewer Department had to relocate a sewer line under Government Cut because the waterway must be dredged deeper to accommodate much bigger cargo ships in the Port of Miami. The existing 54-inch pipe was to be replaced by boring a big tunnel 80 feet down to carry a sewer line and other utility pipes from Miami Beach under Government Cut, under Fisher Island and to the county sewage treatment plant on Virginia Key.
Lotta work involved. Projected at $197 million. The 50-60 people at the Miami Beach breakfast meeting last week objected pretty unanimously against the likely plan to pay for it out of county-wide water and sewer bills, rather than for the Port of Miami – the beneficiary of bigger cargo ships – to pay for it out of its increased revenue, in the billions annually.
Miami Beach city officials started asking questions, based on citizen concerns cranked out from the committee of residents and experts mobilized by Del Vecchio and others. Noise, smell, cost, traffic, easements, environmental impact.
Wednesday morning I was surprised to have an email roll in from the Water and Sewer Department, addressed to the Miami Beach city manager’s office, with copies to lots of people on the residents’ committee, of which I’m a member. Along with the emailed reversal by County Hall came a long thread of emails between Miami Beach and the county Water and Sewer Department.
The new plan scuttles the big, bored tunnel and somehow will do the work from barges in Government Cut. That’s a busy place to have barges (plural) contending in the narrow waterway with cruise ships and cargo ships, not to speak of my 26-foot sailboat and other pleasure craft. And I wonder about the environmental impact. One of the pluses of the deep tunnel was that it wouldn’t disturb marine life at all, since it would be bored well below the bottom of Government Cut.
The email from Eduardo A. Vega, an assistant director in Water and Sewer, said it would still be a challenge to get the work done by August 2012.
“While this approach still represents a significant challenge in terms of the schedule, we feel that the overall risks of delay are significantly reduced with this less complex alternative,” Vega’s email said.
Frank Del Vecchio has a dim view of the moral atmosphere in our home county. Here’s what he said in an email to me:
This is evidence of the RICOH-type syndicate consisting of a sort of Adam Smith "invisible hand" where all the players know they will gain but don't actually have to sit in a smoke-filled room to cook up the scheme. Miami-Dade County is the equivalent of a smoke-filled room of politicos, government agency employees, consultants, contractors, lawyers, lobbyists all profiting off the public: taxes, bonding, government power.
That’s pretty tricky thinking, Frank. Miami-Dade is like a smoke-filled room. Well, now it’s our job to help clean it up.
Water and Sewer, by the way, still plans to keep the tunnel project on the drawing boards – just way off in the future when it may be needed.
This is a fine place to see art, as well as a place full of generosity, one of the higher virtues. Think of all the greed we’re subjected to in South Florida and call it Minus 100. For the Plus 100 of generosity, go to the de la Cruz art space in the Design District. Thank you, Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz. You used to show your art in your home on Key Biscayne, and now you built this three-story museum on 41st Street just off Miami Avenue to show it. The collection opened to the public during this year’s Art Basel-Miami Beach, as well as by appointment. That’s generous.
And some of the contemporary art is generous, too. In my crude video you can see people taking parts of the conceptual works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres – pieces of candy from one, sheets of fine printed paper from another.
Did you see the string of lights on the floor? The Miami Herald reported spectators stepped on them twice in the early going after the building had its general opening on Thursday, and now pleasant attendants stand nearby to warn people away from the lights. They are more art by the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres.
The Herald had a story warmly accepting this new art treasure building for Miami, and also helped me understand that Jim Hodges was the artist who created the wonderful flower curtain that was my star of the days of Art Basel.
For more background direct from Rosa de la Cruz, kindly turn to this link to a video by the New York Times in 2007.
Your blogger appears briefly in this next video of the Shepard Fairey exhibit. Fairey created the famous Hope poster image of Barack Obama and is a practitioner of public art and graffiti, of which there was a lot showing during Art Basel – deliberately promoted for the art fair. Fairey and my former employer, Associated Press, are still embroiled in a dispute over the Obama photo that was his inspiration, so I’m not gonna go there. But I did go to see the wall of Shepard Fairey poster art at 2700 NE 2nd Avenue.
I heard on the radio the feds raided some gallery exhibit and confiscated artworks because of a court judgment. But, hey, I wasn't there, though I see in the Miami Herald the marshals got some big-name artists. I managed to hit four widely separated independent events and made video snips of three of them. The fourth, the Sculpt Miami show in two open spaces on West 36th Street in Miami, needed more light to run my Flip camcorder, and I hope to be back there again to talk to Dimitri the sculptor/promoter about his display of huge works.
Meanwhile, here are clips from the NADA show in the Deauville Hotel on Collins Avenue at 67th Street. This was the first encroachment of Art Basel into North Beach, of which we locals are exceedingly proud. Look it up at this site.
I'll be adding more as soon as the lab finishes souping the film.
UPDATE: If you want to meet well-mannered pleasant young artists of the street variety, check out the show at Mamushka Gallery in Miami, 31 NW 36th Street, and quite a few other venues, too. I'm told there's a big show on 2nd Avenue Friday evening at 8 pm. Hope the weather permits.
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Yet more to come. Hey, lab! Get moving.
UPDATE II: Dashed to South Beach and hit the National Hotel just as Laurence Gartel was finishing his speech introducing his new work called Auto Motion. I swear he said it was the biggest thing happening at this Art Basel-Miami Beach -- the world's first computer-generated sculpture. Well, there it is in this video -- after some comprehensible art work in progress, thanks to Robert D. Harris of San Francisco and his easel and a painting in the throes of composition. Mr. Gartel's red plastic-looking work showed three, I think, automobiles in a pile with a ribbon all around. A knowledgeable organizer of the event said it had been composed on a computer-driven printer of some sort that put one thin layer upon another thin layer to build up the work of art over a long period of time.
When they calculate inflation, are tolls part of the basket? Why do I doubt it? Inflation stays low but the tolls are ever higher. Not long ago I drove the Venetian Causeway to Miami Beach and was stunned to see it was $1.50 for that short passage. Hey, I could drive miles north and cross the Broad Causeway for a dollar (was 50 cents couple years ago).
Some years ago they thought of removing a tollbooth on the 836 Dolphin Expressway where they were collecting 50 cents but instead kept the booth and raised the toll. Used to be that the Sunpass transponder, introduced about the time they didn’t eliminate that tollbooth, would beep at each toll, and the little window would indicate the toll paid. Now that’s gone. They don’t want you to know.
These days I-95, which we built with our tax dollars decades ago, is a partial tollway through the busy heart of Miami, and we can pay for it again. I-95’s new express lanes northbound have been tolled for some time, though drivers on intersecting I-195 and SR-112 continue to suffer delays due to construction on express lanes. Wouldn’t it be humane to wait until the end of construction delays to start charging tolls? Sorry, humane doesn’t pay the bills, buddy.
The ever-rising number of fabulously expensive message boards that jangle drivers’ nerves are warning of new delays as lane dividers are installed on southbound I-95 this week. Hurrah! They can start charging tolls there, too!
All this is by way of introduction to a complaint about how big business and the government will laugh behind their hands while we pay for a $200 million tunnel that will benefit ship traffic and the Port of Miami.
The ships are the end-users of this tunnel, as we drivers are the users of the tolled highways. But they aren’t being asked to pay for it. We are. And who’s this we? Everyone who turns on the faucet or flushes a toilet in Miami-Dade County. We will pay through our water and sewer bills.
This has been becoming clear through the past weeks as Miami Beach learned of a tunnel that’s going to be built at flank speed to carry sewage from Miami Beach to the Miami-Dade County sewage treatment plant on Virginia Key.
But – those with memories will declare – there’s already such a pipeline! Built around 1980. Punctured in 2000 by a contractor, resulting in stinky beaches for weeks. Yes, but it’s not deep enough. The shipping channel called Government Cut is going to be dredged to permit much larger freighters to reach the Port of Miami, and the new depth means the old pipeline must be pulled out and scrapped, and a new tunnel will be drilled at a depth of 80 feet – well below the bottom of the new channel – and carry water and other stuff as well as sewage.
Well, I hope they’ll put the sewage on the bottom of the tunnel.
The Miami Beach Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club, one of God’s gifts to the civic-minded, heard detail on the project and asked a lot of questions this week, with Frank Del Vecchio at his watchdog best and good help from city Commissioner Jerry Libbin and others. Describing the project was Norman Anderson, lead consultant with AECOM, which you can look up here. It’s a big engineering and construction company, one of the largest in the country. With Anderson were officials from the Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer Department.
One of the officials said the tunnel project – and who should pay for it – was like what might happen when a road has to be rebuilt and Water and Sewer is liable to pay for revamping its pipes under the road. OK, but this didn’t fly well with the crowd paying water bills already and living on measly fixed incomes.
Del Veccio said the existing pipeline still had decades of useful life, so financing should fall more on the Port of Miami, the beneficiary of bigger freighters, than on those paying water bills. He suggested the port contracts needed to be renegotiated and reminded the officials that the county commission’s credibility was low following the decision to build the Marlins Stadium.
Pressed by Commissioner Libbin, Anderson said the Port of Miami estimates that the county will reap $18 billion a year in economic benefit from bigger ships. The huge figure stunned the crowd, especially because he first said it would be $18 billion of increased revenue. For what? The port? Then he corrected it to overall economic benefit. But still it seemed that the port would have plenty of new money to pick up the cost of the tunnel project.
Count on this: This will become an issue before the County Commission. They are happy enough to let fees and tolls be increased on the average member of the public to pay for services. But a ship or a shipping company isn’t presently expecting to be asked to pay for a superhighway to the Port of Miami.
Well, I’m asking and I’m not the only one. If I can pay tolls to use a highway I paid for with taxes, then a company that the Supreme Court thinks is like a human being with freedom of speech can pay tolls and tunnel costs, too.
And why bigger ships? Because the Panama Canal is being expanded and huge ships that carry 13,000 cargo containers will be able to pass. Currently, the canal can handle ships carrying 5,000 containers. The expansion is to be finished in 2014. They probably are laying keels now for the huge ships. Government Cut can't be dredged until the sewer tunnel is down there at 80 feet doing its job. Better get started on the tunnel, eh?
End note: After Tuesday’s breakfast meeting I drove down to South Pointe to see the “triangle” of open land amid condo towers and townhouses, close to Government Cut. An access shaft will be sunk there to meet the tunnel 80 feet down. It’s at Jefferson Avenue and Commerce Street. I took these snips of video, and then along came a rangy old guy who looked local. I asked him if he knew what this circle-like arrangement of concrete slabs in the triangle was for.
“Oh, they were the base of the old water tower here. I helped take it down years ago. Forty-six years I’ve been here,” he said.
And wow, isn’t that a pretty blue Mustang parked there.
We weren't all there. One of the best of the Miami bloggers, South Florida Daily Blog, declared himself a family man with other obligations on Saturday afternoon, and was absent. Somehow his family obligations apparently included a tremendous amount of work putting up videos on Glenn Beck's crazy appearance in Central Florida. Well, that was up on Sunday. Anyway, otherwise it was a diverse, chatty, sometimes shy group that came together in a blogup that hadn't happened for a couple years.
Who was shy? One was Eye on Miami, who cherishes anonymity to keep doing a great job of investigating. Eye also was chatty. Nice to meet you, Eye. You won't see Eye, except for a name tag, in this exemplar of my usual crude videos:
Others in the video were the MiamiBeach411 couple, Gus and Michelle, Carlos Miller of fearless defense of the First Amendment, the very tall Michael Froomkin of discourse.net, Annette Peikert of SoulofMiami.org and lifeisartfest.org, our Twitter friend Maria de los Angeles of Sex and the Beach, and about 30 others whose cards I didn't get. If I get a list I'll certainly update with it.
UPDATE: Shame on me for leaving out Mustang Bobby, who's Bark Bark Woof Woof in the blogosphere, And we drive the same kinda car.
We’re in the middle of an election on Miami Beach right now -- runoff time over two seats on the city commission. In the first round, on general election day Nov. 3, Mayor Matti Bower was re-elected easily, as was Group 1 Commissioner Jerry Libbin. In runoffs are Group 2 candidates Jorge Exposito and Maria Mayer and Group 3 candidates Michael Gongora and Gabrielle Redfern. Runoff day will be Nov. 17. Those, like me, who registered for absentee ballots should get them in the mail soon.
Your blogger’s only preference is in Group 3, where I know Gabrielle Redfern from Democratic Party meetings, and both of us are on the county Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. She’s a smart and effective advocate for interests of the ordinary folk. This is a severely under-represented group that needs someone like Redfern, with her heart in the right place and wide-ranging experience in public affairs.
The point of this post, however, is more to ask why anyone wants this sort of work. I’m drawing on two fresh sources here, so I’m calling this a rounded look at city government on Miami Beach.
The sources, and their grim views of the Beach, are:
·Gerald Posner’s new book “Miami Babylon,” a chronicle starting in 1980 into crime, drugs, corruption and elections mostly on Miami Beach, though the mainland is a big, bad player too.
·Victor Diaz, now leaving office after a year as an appointed Miami Beach city commissioner for Group 3 until the current election decides a successor to Richard Steinberg, who was elected in 2008 to the state House of Representatives. Diaz spoke to the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club on Oct. 27 and implied that money was too big a factor in how city commissioners vote. TaDA! Is that the definition of corruption, or what?
I have only my sketchy notes of Diaz’s talk, and he didn’t name names, so he leaves more of an impression than an indictment. Leave that to Posner’s book.
Before going further, some Miami Beach numbers. Population about 90,000. Registered voters 46,178, of whom only 7,374 voted on Nov. 3. That’s a pitiful turnout of 16%. Still, 16% is important. It’s the share of health care in our national economy, and we know what a big deal that is. Candidates don’t have to send their expensive brochures to every registered voter – only to the ones who always vote.
Last time we had municipal elections, in 2007, the candidates together spent $130.55 per vote cast. A shocking big number, it comes from $1,301,763 reported spent by the candidates, and 9,871 voters.
Our nonpartisan municipal elections are always held in the odd-numbered years so no national or state issues draw out large crowds of voters. Why’s that?
Diaz complained that the commission indulges in “prepackaged” discussion, and he suspected that too many votes were cast at the behest of a lobbyist who had been the commissioner’s campaign consultant.
In the Q-A after Diaz’s talk, I asked about the role of money. He agreed with my drift that money was a big part of our problem and suggested we need a citizens’ PAC for good government and a grass-roots movement to transform city government.
One of the most pernicious impacts of political money came from the so-called electioneering campaign organizations that send objectionable accusations to voters, Diaz said. The organizations’ filings aren’t due until after the election, so interest vanishes by the time someone could dig out who was behind the vile charges. After last week’s voting, dismissed candidate Sherry Roberts sent out an email saying she couldn’t endorse either of the two who finished ahead of her in Group 2, Jorge Exposito and Maria Mayer, because of such mailers with dubious sourcing and allegations. I’m hereby nominating Sherry Roberts for a big role in that good-government PAC suggested by Diaz.
Diaz said candidates have to be pressed on who’s behind these groups, usually described as shadowy in the media.
Now to Posner’s book, “Miami Babylon, Crime, Wealth, and Power – a Dispatch from the Beach.” People packed into the furniture store behind Books and Books on Lincoln Road for the author’s talk and signing. In the crowd were a lot of Beach politicians including Mayor Matti Bower and ex-convict former Mayor Alex Daoud – my notes say Posner called him “charismatic but corrupt.” Daoud got a speaking role in the Q-and-A portion, declaring to Posner, “I don’t give a damn about the criticism. I’ll throw a party for you anytime.”
Some had promised to throw parties for Posner but backed out when they read the book. Posner didn’t seem to think the book was too tough, saying, “Nobody’s going to jail because of this book, and that’s all right.”
But, Posner said, Daoud’s book, “Sins of South Beach,” published in 2006 after he finished his jail time, should have resulted in more prosecutions, because Daoud fingered former Mayor Harold Rosen as having paid bribes to Daoud.
In Posner’s book he puts it this way: “The most surprising thing about Daoud’s disclosure is that it caused no fallout at all. Not a single television or radio news program mentioned it. The Miami Herald assigned a reporter and photographer to interview Daoud and then killed the story.”
The excuse could be that Daoud’s book gives off an aura of unreliability. He prints page after page of old conversations in direct quotes. I never was able to finish the book, though paging through it now I see I missed the hot spots where he gets graphic about the sexual aspect of corruption.
Here are links to two Miami Herald stories on Posner’s book, one before the author’s talk, and the other reporting on that talk. Note that neither one mentions Posner’s explicit criticism of the city’s flagship newspaper and its role in condoning some corrupt behavior. It must be said on behalf of the Herald that it does some important investigative work exposing corruption, though most of that involves Miami. And Posner used the Herald as source for a lot of his material.
Miami Beach, Posner speculated, may escape closer attention because its happenings are treated like “neighborhood” stories for the twice-weekly Neighbors section of the Herald. Strange, considering that much of the outside world thinks Miami Beach IS Miami.
One of the good guys of Posner’s book is Frank Del Vecchio, who retired to Miami Beach with wide experience in municipal affairs in Boston and Washington DC and then became the most prominent watchdog of Miami Beach government. Del Veccio finds it to be part of a badly flawed system in Miami-Dade County. Posner quotes him saying “public/private partnerships in Miami Dade are totally crooked. It is the most corrupt government, at almost every planning and implementation stage, I ever encountered.”
That’s a powerful criticism. And it’s in the air we breathe, apparently. “In Miami, there is no agency tradition, no fear of oversight by another body, and no judicial system that has real peer review standards,” Posner quotes Del Vecchio saying. “Instead, the dominant political constituency, Cuban, is bound by loyalty, not ethics. Even the corrupt politicians up north knew they had to deliver to the communities they served, or they would be out of office. Here, the political interests are not to serve the public good. It’s just all short-term thinking to help themselves. In Miami, the ingrained politicians have more control than the old ward bosses of the Northeast because here they control the banks and own the land. There are no checks and balances.”
One can only wish the best to any honest person who dares run against this environment.
And let’s not forget we’re part of Florida, where Ponzi schemers like Scott Rothstein are big political donors. Check out the Herald’s latest story on him, In which Gov. Charlie Crist is bold enough to joke that something is going to cost Rothstein “another $100,000.” Brazen is the word for it.
PS: For more on Posner's appearance at Books and Books, go to Youtube.com and search for Miami Babylon. Someone put up a three-part video on the event.
And familiar faces from VoteFest a cool year ago. Nice to see Dave and Dara!
Red Bull going down by the pickup load, people taking on fuel for the whole night.
That concert earlier at the Lincoln Theater was superb. The overall title was "New York State of Mind: Sounds of the Times." Especially powerful was "Gotham," a composition by Michael Gordon, and a film, mostly historical images of New York, by Bill Morrison. The combination was deeply moving without ever being obvious, and our vaunted "orchestral academy" was excellent.
The Haitian restaurant Tap Tap is a gem in South Beach, and a resource for Democratic campaigners -- not only during the Obama campaign but continuing. A good place to have a little meeting or bigger ones. And Friday night it was party time for the restaurant's 15th birthday, coinciding roughly with the big Haitian holidays of Brav Gede -- corresponding to All Souls Day and All Saints Day, if I got it right. If not, try me again anytime. Wow, was the music loud and good! For that we thank Manno Charlemagne and the band, and for the party thanks to Gary the boss.
This has been talked about for quite a while. First it was, then it wasn't. Now it is. At least, that's what it says on the banner of the Miami Beach city governnment Web site. Here's the skinny:
It's LIVE and FREE! Miami Beach WiFi Internet service is finally warming up. Last week, the city began a soft launch by neighborhood. There will still be a 90-day reliability period. Join us for the official "wire-cutting" on Friday, October 30 at 3:00 p.m. in front of Miami Beach City Hall, on the 17 Street side. There will be free giveaways.
My cell phone seemed to be showing a public WiFi net recently as I drove around Miami Beach. Not everywhere. Some places. This bears more investigation. I see the WiFi Web site is still under construction, at least in parts.
UPDATE: Behind the times again. The Herald had a story on this on Oct. 20. It asserts that Miami Beach is the first city in the country to have this amenity.
Vice President Joe Biden was at a fundraiser in Miami Beach Thursday evening, and here’s a pool press report from Tolu Olorunnipa of the Miami Herald
VPOTUS made his second stop on a South Florida fundraising tour at the house of longtime friend Michael Adler in Miami Beach Thursday night.
Speaking from about 6:18 to 6:36 to a crowd of about 150, VPOTUS touted his decades of experience on the political scene in an attempt to assure his supporters that, despite the wide array of challenges facing the Obama administration, he and Obama were prepared and ready to take action.
He spoke generally about most major issues, the economy, healthcare, foreign affairs focusing more on the economy than other topics (jobs, housing market, bailouts). He did not directly address the Afghanistan or Iraq wars.
We inherited a pretty deep hole, we found ourselves dug in pretty deep beyond what I think we even thought or what most people even thought, VPOTUS said. By the time we raised our hands on Jan. 20 to be sworn in, already that month we had lost 700,000 jobs. And before we literally got our computers hooked up, almost before the White House's West Wing was functioning, we lost another 640,000 jobs in February.
On housing, he noted that Florida, along with other states, has been hit particularly hard.
VPOTUS said: For 36 months in a row, housing prices plummeted, losing 30 percent of their value. You’re still reeling down here. You and Nevada and Arizona and California -- the places that were at the top of the bubble.
VPOTUS called the bailout of the banks the most unpopular decision he’s had to make. He said the bailouts were necessary to keep the economy from slipping into a depression.
VPOTUS noted that there was a lot of good news, but also a lot of bad news to consider after the Obama administration’s first 10 months in office. One piece of good news, he said, is that we are beginning to forget how bad things once were.
The truth is, the good news is, we're forgetting, he said. We’re a long way from out of the hole, but the GDP did grow 3.5 percent this quarter.
He added: We’ve got a hell of a long way to go, a hell of a long way to go, but we think the trajectory we set the country on is the right trajectory.
More on good news and bad news:
The good news is the bad news, he said. The good news is it’s beginning to work. The ten largest banks in the country are all but one very healthy. They’ve already paid back 70 billion, We’ve already made 11 billion on that and we’re going to get another 15 billion paid back. The bad news is they’ve got $900 billion in capital and they’re not lending anything. And so, it’s a long way to go.
He recognized Miami Mayor Manny Diaz by name repeatedly, calling him at one point, one of the best mayors in the country.
VPOTUS said he speaks on a weekly basis with mayors and governors, who ask Where’s the next stimulus. VPOTUS said he’s not sure there will be another stimulus.
I am absolutely confident that were going to come out of this. And when we come out of this we’re going to come out stronger than before, particularly, the middle class.
He spoke about his father losing his job, when he was a 4th grader in Scranton, Pa. VPOTUS said that GDP growth would not be satisfactory unless the middle class was faring well.
The way we look at this is We’re not going to be satisfied even if the GDP is growing at 6.6 percent, he said. if middle class folks, the same folks who got clobbered, through no fault of their own, aren’t able to look their kids in the eye by the time we leave office and say Honey, it’s going to be okay.
VPOTUS said we were at a defining moment in American history, calling it one of the most dangerous, but also one of the greatest opportunities to effect significant change for the future.
We’re at one of those inflection points in history, he said. A non-decision today is a fundamental decision. A non-decision on energy policy is a fundamental decision. A non-decision on dealing with American education is a decision.
About 150 attended the event. Ticket prices ranged from $1,000 to $10,000. It was Biden’s second stop in South Florida on Thursday. He spoke at a lunch event in Boca Raton as well.
In the crowd: Miami mayor Manny Diaz, Basketball star Isaiah Thomas, Miami-Dade Police Chief John Timoney.
Attendees dined on hors d’oeuvres and drank wine, water and soft drinks. Biden spoke outside in front of Michael Adler’s pool. Adler introduced Biden.
While on this topic: The Miami Beach magazine reports there will be a bike-renting service up and running by early 2010. Supposed to be "the largest in the country, with 900 bicycles total in the whole city."
At the Fountainebleau Miami Beach hotel, President Obama gave largely the same speech he gave in New York City last week at a DNC fundraiser. He ticked off his accomplishments: saving economy from brink of disaster, expanding insurance to poor children, ending ban on stem cell research, pledging to close Guantanamo. "I don't rattle. I'm not going to shrink back,'' he said to reassure supporters that his critics don't have him on his heels.
Obama spoke to a reception of about 150 people who had paid the minimum $500 ticket price and then to a room of about 300 bigger donors who were eating dinner across the hall. He began speaking at about 7:12 p.m. and wrapped up across the hall at 7:57 p.m. The fundraiser raised about $1.5 million for the DCCC and DSCC.
Some quotes: "I am absolutely confident we are going to get heath care done by the end of this year."
"We have to take the long view on this process,'' referring to all of the many goals of his administration.
"We are closer than we have ever been to passing healthcare reform,'' he said. But he added, "It's not going to get easier from here on in. It's going to get harder.''
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek said he met Obama on the tarmac in Miami, along with Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink (candidate for governor), state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach (candidate for attorney general), U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston and Miami Mayor Manny Diaz.
About 200 protesters gathered across the street from the hotel with a wide range of gripes, from healthcare to immigration to the president's golf game, which until Sunday had never included a woman. The crowd included Haitians calling for asylum, anti-abortion activists, gun rights advocates and
opponents of toppled Honduran president Manuel Zelaya.
I received this report by email thanks to my participation, as a blogger, in a White House regional media group. Almost every day I get news releases and invitations to listen in on conference calls where Obama administration officials brief reporters. In my previous life as an AP reporter I occasionally helped cover a visiting president and on a few rare occasions wrote a pool report like this for other reporters who were not able to observe the president in action.
From other sources and my own observation while headed west on the Julia Tuttle Causeway about 6 pm, I can report that traffic on 41st Street and the east-bound causeway was bad bad bad while the president was in the neighborhood. lt
For those not living on the Beach (and 99 percent of those who do and are unaware), you probably haven't heard of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club. Civic-minded people and those with nothing better to do assemble in David's Cafe on Meridian Avenue off Lincoln Road and there will be an interesting program on life and politics in the city of Miami Beach. Or a talk from a member of the County Commission. Or nothing much, sometimes, but there's a good breakfast, and hey, you're in South Beach and can do whatever you like.
I'm bringing this up because next Tuesday, Sept. 29, candidates for the city commission (which has six commissioners and a mayor) will start a round of forums leading up to the election in only a little over a month. Early voting starts on Oct. 26. Who's running? I'd post a link here but the club doesn't have a Web site, so it's a typing job for me. Later, try this link to the City Clerk. I say later because there's nothing there now.
Quoting the club's news release, which has an error in the election date (It's Tuesday Nov. 3, not Nov. 6.) so I hope this is correct, speaking next Tuesday will be the candidates for the Group III seat, Gabrielle Redfern, Michael Gongora and Alex Fernandez.
Stay tuned for news of who's appearing in coming weeks at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club.
UPDATE: The Miami Herald, in its Thursday edition, has more news about Miami Beach municipal elections, namely that one newcomer was disqualified from running because a check bounced. Not to worry -- he's planning to run for governor next year, anyway.
Dan Gelber is stepping back. Kevin Burns is not. Kendrick Meek is confident of the Democratic nomination to run against whomever the Republicans put up for the US Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez.
UPDATE: Just learning at midnight Monday about a new entry in the US Senate race: Corrine Brown, U.S. Rep. from Jacksonville (FL-3) says she's considering a race for this seat.
ALSO: The Gelber campaign used my video of Gelber (see below) in a message to people in the Gelber Facebook group. Cool to be linked. It's also on the Broward New Times blog, where you also can see a snip on Corrine Brown.
That’s a bunch of names, and even more will enter the picture. Aside from the jockeying personalities and ambitions, the thing that stands out is a drive by many Florida Democrats to avoid divisive primaries in the 2010 elections – midterms in the presidential cycle but the year to elect the governor and the three other state cabinet officers. No incumbents seek re-election for the first time in over 130 years. Democrats are ambitious to grab all four so-called statewide offices – they only hold one now – and elect a Democrat to the US Senate.
This would be a tremendous state coup for Democrats on the heels of taking Florida’s 27 electoral votes for Barack Obama last November. But it goes against the typical history of midterm losses by the president’s party, and may not be possible anyhow unless the national economy brightens and makes voters more happy with Democrats. The Republicans, after all, also are trying to avoid tough primaries, though Marco Rubio, the deeply conservative former State House speaker, shows no sign of leaving the Senate field to Gov. Charlie Crist, the empty suit.
What do I know about the Republicans, anyway?
Here’s the way this played out among Democrats in public Saturday at the day of training and campaigning that was part of the Florida Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Day in the luxe venue of the newly renovated Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach.
Dan Gelber, 48, my state senator (District 35), said he had walked a few hundred yards to the meeting from his Miami Beach home. Finding coffee at the GLBT Caucus room, he told this blogger he was likely to step back from the US Senate race and was talking to people about running for state attorney general. He’s a former federal prosecutor, one highlight in a busy resume of politics and public service, but his ambition in this direction runs up against another rising Democrat, state Sen. Dave Aronberg (FL-27), 38, who’s perhaps even more in need of a bigger job than Gelber. Gelber is early in his first state Senate term, while Aronberg is in his second and last. Term limits, Ta DA!
Some say Florida Democrats don’t have a deep bench of candidates. Gelber and Aronberg are evidence for the other view: that talent is abundant. Unfortunately, attorney general is a natural office for each of them.
Now I’ve mixed the race for state attorney general in with the US Senate. Let’s go back to the senatorial possibilities.
The hapless Mel Martinez announced last year, after being cashiered as head of the Republican Party, that he wouldn’t run for re-election to US Senate. The Democratic scramble started back in December when Gelber said he was thinking of the Senate. A month later Meek, 42, in his fourth term in the US House (FL-17), made the first official step into the race, and Gelber officially announced for US Senate soon thereafter. In February Kevin Burns, mayor of North Miami, launched his bid. This made the Democratic race an entirely Miami-Dade County affair, though the three are a diverse set, Meek being African-American, Gelber Jewish, and Burns gay, in a 26-year relationship and having an adopted, charming daughter. Hey, we’re Democrats. So what if it’s Florida and some parts of the state are still in the Deep South.I can’t help but think … Anyway. Get over it.
All three showed up at the Netroots Coalition training session Saturday morning and spoke briefly, setting wheels in motion. Here are video links to clips of their talks. Text summaries soon thereafter.
Key words from Gelber:
“Every time we get involved with divisive primaries, we lose.”
In recent election cycles, “there’s really only been one (Democratic) candidate who’s won, Alex Sink. Guess what – she didn’t have a primary. … I’m in this US Senate race. But I will likely be taking sort of a step back in this race….”
“I do think this cycle is going to be (about) how disciplined we are going to be as Democrats. Whether we can put together a group that delivers change, really changes the face of our state.”
Kevin Burns was the only enthusiastic proponent of primaries. “I love primaries,” he told the Netroots crowd, while cautioning that a primary should be “responsible.” He contrasted a good primary with the Republicans’ usual tactic of special interests anointing someone to be the nominee.
That doesn’t make Burns a front-runner, however. Meek seems to have that position. But it’s a long time before the primary in August next year.
Gelber and others talked about a 2010 slate – the US Senate, plus the state leadership offices of governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and commissioner of agriculture and consumer affairs. (The lieutenant governor is elected as a team with the governor.)
In the evening, at the banquet before over 1,000 people, Gelber made it more official, saying in his podium speech, “I’m going to step back from my US Senate bid and consider other seats in the (state) cabinet.”
This won the best ovation of the evening. There was prolonged applause and many rose to their feet.Neither Alex Sink, the gubernatorial nominee, nor keynoter Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia and head of the DNC, got prolonged applause. After Kendrick Meek spoke and didn’t acknowledge that Gelber had, in effect, withdrawn (What does “step back” mean, anyway?), Bob Graham, the wise old Florida Democrat, with vast experience as governor and prominent US senator, seemed to depart from his text to thank Gelber, and praised his “courageous, unifying and patriotic statement.”
Now came Alex Sink to the podium after Graham’s introduction. Unchallenged for the Democratic nomination for governor, she gave a speech rich in platitudes until she got to her growing up on a farm. The chatty audience finally hushed and seemed enthralled by her description of how she learned self-reliance and a “love of numbers” from helping her father with the farm accounts. She wrote the checks, and it seemed that soon she was head of the Bank of America in Florida, and now on the threshold of the governor’s office.
She’s facing Bill McCollum, whose distinguishing feature is having run for office a ton of times without seeming to become especially smart or effective. Now he’s the state attorney general, term-limited, so he’s up or out of office.
On Sunday morning Gelber sent an email to supporters announcing again that he’s “stepping back” from the US Senate race, and that he’d been talking with Bob Graham, Alex Sink and US Sen. Bill Nelson about a “slate of candidates” for 2010.
The text of his email:
As you may know I have decided to step back from my U.S. Senate bid. I wanted to let you know the reasons.
When Governor Crist announced he would be a candidate for US Senate, he created a domino effect that opened up every seat on the cabinet. At a time when our state is facing its greatest challenges, ironically, we have our greatest uncertainty and dislocation. But I believe this is also an opportunity – the chance to set a new course that avoids the mistakes of the past and tracks a better future for our families.
It makes little sense -- when we do face the prospect of real change in Florida -- for me to participate in a potentially divisive primary for U.S. Senate that will only serve to diminish our chances against a very formidable and well-known Republican nominee.
I also believe that we have a historic opportunity here in Florida to reshape the political landscape and more importantly, bring fundamental change to Tallahassee. I have had a number of conversations with Senators Graham and Nelson, and CFO Alex Sink, about how we can best unify our party and move forward with a slate of candidates that can communicate our vision for a better Florida, and I look forward to continuing these discussions. I would like to hear your thoughts as you have been a good supporter and friend, and I value your opinion. You can reach me at dan@dangelber.com.
Tim Kaine, in his keynote speech, promised to pay a lot of attention to Florida campaigns and said his DNC will “invest” in our 2010 Senate race. Kaine waxed philosophical in describing how hard it was to know when one’s political “moment” was in bloom and when it was past. “We’ll be measured by what we do in this moment ... You don’t know how long a moment will last … We’ve got to do as much as we can.”
A few more words on that slate for the state offices. Who might be in the other state cabinet slots? One delightful surprise was to learn that Annette Taddeo is considering a run to succeed Alex Sink as chief financial officer. Taddeo ran a strong campaign for US House District 18 (my district) but lost to the entrenched Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 2008. Taddeo is a successful businesswoman in her own right and would be a credible occupant of the CFO portfolio.
She, too, appeared at the Netroots session and spoke after Gelber, Aronberg and Burns had left.
“This was not my idea,” she said of the CFO draft, but went on, “I am considering it. I am talking to people ... it’s a very difficult decision. I just went through a very grueling campaign.”
She said she’d never run again without party backing, as she did in the ’08 congressional campaign. This was something I saw from medium close-up, and while it was tough on her, it made me and many others admire her grit as much as her intelligence, talent and charm.
Alex Sink @ Fundraiser in Little Havana (click on photo to get slide show)
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