FL-17: Candidates forum in Little Haiti

Marleine Bastien, Haitian community activist; Phillip Brutus, former state representative; Dr. Rudy Moise, physician, businessman; State Rep. Yolly Roberson, District 104; Roderick Vereen, attorney; Andre Williams, attorney, Miami Gardens city councilman.

Thanks to the Young Democrats for putting on a rousing candidates forum for the congressional race for District 17. Now held by Kendrick Meek, who's running for US Senate, this seat in the US House will most likely go to the Democratic candidate chosen in the Aug. 24 primary. With the exception of Vereen, all the candidates above are Democrats, and he told your blogger he's a Democrat, too, but he prefers to run against one person in the November general election rather than 10 in the primary. So he's a nominal independent at this point.

Also running but arriving later than this photo is Scott Galvin, a city commissioner in North Miami and former congressional staffer for Carrie Meek. And not present for various reasons were State Rep. James Bush III, District 109; State Sen. Frederica Wilson, District 33; and Shirley Gibson, mayor of Miami Gardens.

Our office moves from Doral to Miami Beach

The U-Haul is full. Moving on Friday morning to 801 Arthur Godfrey Drive in Miami Beach. Volunteers welcome to help unload and fill the new office. Call 305-477-4994 if need more details.

The photo shows Dave Patlak, interim operations director, and Daisy Black, our first vice chair. Also working were Kristin Wipior and Barbara Schwartz,stalwart volunteers. Your blogger ran the camera and a hand truck.

A little video from the Miami-Dade Democrats' holiday party

We called it Florida Blue and had some fun.



Looking forward to a powerful year of campaigning for the 2010 midterm election. We have a lot of good candidates and a new chairman, Richard Lydecker, who promises the party will be a valuable partner in getting Democrats elected.

Miami-Dade Water? I'm filtering it.

Is this the last straw I need to sign that recall petition for Miami-Dade Mayor Alvarez? It seems the water he's providing is not as good as it should be.

Read it in the Environmental Working Group's report, part of a national workup on how the whole country has many water supplies in dubious condition.

The NY Times today has a big writeup on this, focusing on how our laws are out of date, leaving us in a situation where the water we're getting may be legal, but it's unhealthy.

A tale of tolls and tunnels and water bills

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.

Health Care Forum on Monday June 1

This is a time probably like no other in our lives to have an impact on policy regarding health care. We know there will be something new coming out of the federal government in the coming months, and the question is, will it be any good?

As one who’s on Medicare now for three years, may I say that this is not government health care like our pioneer and buffalo-hunter ancestors would have despised if they had known what the future would bring to those lifeless European socialist countries. Medicare is just like what I had before, though the copays and premiums are higher now. I get the doctors and pills that I choose and need. I don’t try for more doctor appointments – already there are way too many – and I fact I try to cut back and consolidate: my cardiologist also is my primary care doctor, so one appointment kills two birds in one bush, I like to think.

This is medical care to treat my ailments and also checkups to make sure I’m not coming down with something new – what tens of millions of our fellow citizens (and many mere resident taxpayers) need to keep their chins up and shoulders to the grindstones.

Yes, this is single-payer, or sort of. We all pay premiums throughout our working life and into retirement, and the system should provide checkups at appropriate intervals as well as treatment when we’re sick. (Let’s not forget dental! There’s an area that needs better care.)

In the Miami Herald today there’s a story about a new health plan coming in Miami-Dade County, said to be a model of affordable health insurance, perhaps a model for the nation. Wow, it says a healthy 35-year-old man could get coverage for $100 a month. What a deal for the insurer. A healthy 35-year-old probably needs one checkup every five years, costing about $100. Meanwhile, he’s paid $6,000 in premiums, and when he gets old and sick his premiums probably will skyrocket like one of those balloon mortgages.

This may be a deal for some people who are desperate, but for a society struggling with extremely high costs for health care and drugs, it seems here that the public option and single-payer are superior for this nation.

Here’s a commercial for our forum on health care. Y’all do come. You can say what you want, hear from experts some telling detail about our situation in Miami-Dade, and plan action.




When: Monday June 1, 7 p.m.
Where: American Legion Hall, 6445 NE 7th Ave., Miami (on 64th Street just east of Biscayne Boulevard).

Footnote: Single-payer is a big fat misnomer in the present state of health care in this country. I pay a monthly premium to Medicare (and did for decades while working), I pay a monthly premium to Aetna for my supplemental insurance, yet there are still copays and annual minimums for office visits, and out-of-pocket costs for medications rise more steeply than anything else, though I have insurance for pills.

Single payer? More like quintuple payer.

The Republican way of talking has gone completely uncivilized. Y'all know how Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity go wild at the slightest provocation. They're paid entertainers but still will have to pay the price when they get to the Pearly Gates. But why should one of our local Reps go over the top while talking about a modest change in Cuba policy?



You get that? "Bowing down to dictators." It's like Chamberlain capitulating to Hitler. Is there any sense of proportion in their brains?

Thanks goodness we have a reasonable guy like Joe Garcia to represent Miami Democrats.

Wave of the future for failing news industry?

Try the free globalpost.com and see if you think it can be a model for a future for-profit news industry that doesn't require felling so many forests.

This on-line piece from the New York Times is food for thought here in Miami-Dade as we gird our minds for this Wednesday's discussion on a Miami without the Herald.

Without the Herald!? Before you run out and see if the yellow box that usually dispenses the Herald is missing from your neighborhood, be assured that we're not there yet. (Only on Saturdays, when there isn't really a paper now.) Other big cities are already there or heading that way, but surely we'll be excepted and immune. As we were to be excepted and immune from the collapse in real estate prices because our climate, our proximity to South American money, our good air, our beautiful ocean and bay and the Everglades would block the tsunami. Not to speak of the open arms of our clean politicians and developers, who would wave in the happy buyers in droves forever and ever Amen

What's happening Wednesday? At 11:30 a.m. the Downtown Bay Forum is chewing over the future of the newspaper in Miami. Call Annette Eisenberg at 305 757-3633 to reserve a place and have a nice lunch. And let's think big -- not just Miami, but Florida, too, needs to have a free and vibrant reporting industry. This blogging is fine, but there must be reporting if people are to have some idea of what's going on.

Skywriting for Obama on the National Mall

Cold and bright was the weather. Warm and celebratory was the mood. High over the National Mall were big circles skywritten before 11 a.m. Must be O’s for Obama! A cheer rose from the purposeful throng marching along 23rd Street to spill onto the Mall near the Lincoln Memorial. Greeters were wearing inauguration-volunteer watch caps. They high-fived everyone, saying Welcome to the National Mall.

What a day! And that was only getting there.

Your blogger can’t enter that area without paying respects to fallen comrades from the 199th Infantry Brigade, their names inscribed among over 50,000 on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, so I walked the short distance over there, too choked up to speak to two young men who stood aside and let me page through the thick book of names. Ah, here are Lt. Harold W. Winget and SP4 Larry E. Smith, dead now 42 years but still mourned as wasted lives. When will we ever learn about mixing in civil wars?

The map of Washington is overfull of war memorials, and soon we’ll be looking for space for Iraq and Afghanistan. These are reminders of why we need ever-better leaders, and why so much hope is invested in Barack Obama. Can we find ways to disarm and charm the foes? Can we stem our own swagger? It would be great if we can make health care available for all and turn the economy around, but the issues of war and peace are vastly more important. This is how nations rise and fall before the lens of history.

Growing crowds rimmed the frozen Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, centered on big television screens. At the east end, still over a mile from the Inaugural event at the Capitol, three screens drew me and tens of thousands of others, and we settled down together, strangers and friends from our full American diversity, facing toward the Capitol and the Washington Monument and staring mostly quietly at the unfolding spectacle. Early arrivers had climbed up on stone pedestals of the World War II Memorial. A few sat on the cold ground. Everyone else stood and, when the speeches started, cheered and applauded without boisterousness.

Readers of this blog have seen the speech and already have their own ideas. I won’t go into that much but, instead, try to depict some of the surrounding and subsequent atmosphere.

THE CROWD: George W. Bush got a little booing when his name was called, but a man near me, black like the majority of this DC crowd, shushed the booing and said, “Let’s give him a hand.” “Yes, a hand on the way out,” someone agreed.

“I love Michelle,” a woman cried. “Oh, I love her so much.”

We noted right away when the Chief Justice, too vain to write it down, flubbed the oath of office. “What a dope,” I yelled.

A young man wore a powder-blue cape with Obama and the campaign Hope logo on it. A woman carried a framed poster of “SuperObama” in red/blue tights, and she had a pair of shoes around her neck labeled Bush. There were a lot of fur coats worn by majestic DC women, and when they moved sometimes they were in strings of 6-10 people holding the ends of each others’ scarves to keep together. A man carried a tall flagstaff with US and Canadian flags on it.

A surprising number of bikes had been brought to the Mall. After the ceremonies, when I had trudged 2 miles to the north, I saw lots of bikers huffing up Connecticut Avenue beyond Dupont Circle. One young woman with a light road bike stopped there and opted for the 42 bus, complaining that her feet were frozen -- not that she didn’t have strength to go on.

Yes, it was cold, but in the crowd the packed closeness kept the wind away. The temperature may have been below freezing, but it didn’t bite so bad -- until I started home, and the wind cut freely past the edges of the thermal Underarmor that made the day bearable.

Obama’s rhetoric, though fine, somehow lacked the perfect phrase. “Remaking America?” “New era of Responsibility?” Yes, OK, but the words didn’t keep me warm against the building wind. No doubt I wished for too much. In fact, all I had really wished for was to be present at a momentous occasion. It was what had drawn me to Denver so that I could be personally present at Obama’s acceptance of the nomination. This was something I had worked for. And now the thing to do was to get to work -- much too long after election day, I fear. Our sclerotic system of government must be streamlined to get rid of these almost three month between election and inauguration.

A big helicopter flew over as the crowd moved away when the poem and benediction were finished. Someone guessed wrongly that it was now Obama in the chopper. No, this was the last we’ll see of George W. Bush. That was a good thought.

NEXT? The day before the Inauguration was instructive. I attended a two-hour seminar sponsored by Alliance for Justice (www.afj.net) on the coming mission for activists under the Obama administration.

Panelist Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn, stressed a need to create a “sense of shared experience” and not through the mass media but through organizing work. “Hope spreads through human contact,” he said. He saw an opportunity now “to create really big change in a short time.” Conversely, he warned that this could be a dangerous time when demagoguery could rise “and the right wing is very good at this.” He named Rudy Giuliani as one who might be adept at raising law and order as a rally cry for the right.

Van Jones, another panelist and founding president of Green for All (www.greenforall.org), was emotional as he described the role of Martin Luther King, whose birthday it was, in setting in motion processes that led to Obama’s election. Jones said he took his mission now from the example set by Nelson Mandela after he was freed from prison in South Africa. This is not a time to dial back, but rather “now is the time to intensify the struggle,” Jones said.

The other side will be ready for a fight. On my 1,100-mile drive back to South Florida I kept the radio scanning to find the right-wing message. There was Rush playing some comedian’s song ripping off Simon and Garfunkle’s “I am a Rock” to have the “president” sing “I am Barack, I am the messiah.” Glenn Beck remixed the words of the Inaugural address to have Obama saying crap like “Today I say to you that … America’s decline is inevitable.” Ridicule seems to be the weapon of choice, childish as it is. Some listeners called in to complain, sending Rush into a fit of temper at one point after a loyal-listener caller advised him to quit acting like a little boy. Dennis “the human laugh track” Miller suffered a caller to assert that Obama was going to put us all in drab housing projects like East Germany without any tut-tut of objection. The guy was a former trainer of Iraqi military, and Miller, as usual, congratulated him for keeping Miller’s freedom safe.

And I heard the religious right vow to keep fighting, this on a broadcast of the AFR, American Family Radio (www.afr.net), where morning talk guy Matt Friedeman can probably be found in the archives saying that he’s ready to keep fighting.

Well, of course we can’t expect any of these people to give up their highly paid jobs on the side of money and guns, but one wonders if they listen at all to the bipartisan tone coming out of Barack Obama and the call to pull together to deal with trouble facing all of us. It seems not, at this point. Rush said he was worried that Obama’s order for more openness and less secrecy might make it easier to release information that would lead to prosecutions for torture. Funny, he sounded as if he’s in favor of torture.

Anyway, note how the FOI Act order is excerpted on Wired’s updated report.

FLORIDA DEMOCRATS: Monday afternoon the Florida Democrats in the U.S. House had a jammed reception in a truly grand venue, the Members’ Room of the Library of Congress. Wow. Lovely paneling and tapestries. And the Democrats! I got there rather far into the 2-4 p.m. event and soon had seen my member of the County Commission, Sally Heyman; my member of the State House, newly elected Richard Steinberg; U.S. Reps Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) with her new relaxed hairstyle very nice and Ron Klein (FL-22); former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, who might be thinking of running for office again; state Committeeman Bret Berlin; Bob Goldstein of Democrats of South Dade club; Josh Berkowitz, campaigner and practicing lawyer in Miami Beach; Kenny Newman of soccer ref fame and also a member of the Dade DEC. No doubt many other prominent Dems were there, too, but my eyes could only take in so much.

OTHER FESTIVITIES: With great luck I contacted our Italian volunteer, Andrea Liberati, who was back briefly from Italy to observe the Inauguration and collect notes for the last chapter of his book on having helped Obama win the presidency. With his connection, I crashed a super reception sponsored by the Italian American Democratic Leadership Council. Great snacks and the red wine flowed like water. Two comedians kept the joint laughing, the first, whose name I never caught, said he was half Indian and half Japanese, “So I get my sushi at the 7-11.”

Later to the expensive-ticket party sponsored by DailyKos/Netroots Nation and others, where more good food and drink competed with loud music for attention. I had the pleasure of bumping into Tampa blogger Susan Smith and her husband Norwood, along with fun and interesting people from DC, California and all over. The shrinking mainstream media came up often in conversation, and I heard that the San Francisco Chronicle had not sent extra staff to cover the Inauguration, relying solely on the Washington bureau. Well, what else do we expect? Have they started to cover Washington from Bangalore?

P.S. In coming days I hope to solve some of the mystery of a new camera and be able to post more photos. Anyone able to deal with the Panasonic DMC-LX3 is encouraged to volunteer help.

Better biking on Rickenbacker to Key Biscayne

Inauguration event Saturday morning ... David Henderson, county bike coordinator, is on left.

Part One: Health Care forum report for Obama-Biden Transition Team

Community Health Care Discussion, Miami Florida
December 15, 2008

[Most of the dozen participants were members of the North Beach for Progress group, which came together during the Obama presidential campaign. The group is continuing on an ad hoc basis. Its first major action was to call a forum on health care and report its conclusions to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In three parts, this is the complete report.]

By Dava Michelson

Our meeting represented a diverse group of providers and consumers of health care; the professions represented were Medical Doctor, Ophthalmology, Acupuncture, Medical Qigong & Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy, Massage Therapy & Chiropractic. Among us were a retired journalist, computer specialist, lawyer, student, independent medical and health care practitioners and owner of complementary and integrative multi specialty clinic. Comments here represent everyone’s ideas, but not necessarily consensus; they also include those from people who were unable to attend the meeting but wrote in their ideas.

In discussing the problems with our current system and the changes we would like to see, certain themes emerged. We found ourselves coming back again and again to the question of: What is health care? What is the difference between promoting medicine as opposed to promoting health? What are our choices, and what are our responsibilities in regard to developing and maintaining our own health? How can the priorities of providing the service of caring for and responding to the needs of another human being be reconciled with the bottom line of the finance departments and stock holders? What is preventive medicine and the importance of expanding choice.

In outline form below is a synopsis of our concerns, observations, experiences and suggestions, followed by some of our personal stories.

COSTS
• Huge administrative costs and legal issues siphon off funds from health care
• As we tax cigarettes, tax certain foods that are now known to present health risks and use those revenues for health care
• Do not allow patents to be issued on naturally occurring substances, or products in common use for years, such as ayuvedic herbs.
• Apply UCR: usual, customary & reasonable pricing standard
• Insurance companies have created a system, not based on UCR, that forces practitioners to inflate charges… in one example, doctors having to charge $900 to get paid $72
• Control pharmaceutical advertisements and charges.
• Disallow price fixing by the drug & insurance companies. Disparity of pharmaceutical costs in the US vs. other countries. One participant paid $50 in Israel for a prescription that cost $300 here in Florida. Many people trying to go to other countries for their meds.
• Exaggerated costs of dental care need to be brought under control.
• One participant paid $12,000 in Colombia for medical procedures that would have cost $1,500,000 in the U.S. IF someone would agree to do it, but couldn’t get the surgery approved. She would have died if she had been limited to care in the U.S. (see Linda’s story below)
• Drs. and providers put in a position by insurance reimbursement policies to work to build up their billings rather than making decisions solely on what is best or necessary for the patient.
• Concerns with insurance greed in lobbying: good for insurance companies for medical costs to be high: more money, more lobbying power.
• A hugely excessive amount of time is required for providers to fight with insurance companies for payment. Even on pre-approved cases, it can take over a year to get paid, or be denied. One participant in private practice spent 3 days of her week working on insurance billing until having to hire someone to do this. Obviously her costs now must cover this extra time and salary.

CHOICE & EQUAL ACCESS
• We need Health Care Freedom of Choice, and for it to include alternative and complementary providers and modalities and other natural remedies.
• Independent research is necessary, rather than by pharmaceutical companies who have motive to skew research results and minimize or deny side effects.
• We are stating strong opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Provider Conscience Regulation, which allows providers to deny health services without disclosure based on personal moral beliefs. It simply must be repealed.
• People’s health care choices are severely limited by the lobbying of the AMA and pharmaceutical companies, which have prevented the availability and education of many forms of care.
• Make pharmaceutical televisions ads illegal (companies spend $10,000 per year per doctor, use of sorority girls to sell pharmaceuticals: put money towards doctor education

EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE & INTEGRATIVE CARE
• The emerging information technologies provide much promise and benefit, yet great care must be taken to make sure that we not become limited to information and research that makes it through only a certain filter of review. An outrageous example of this is my daughter’s pediatrician who was chastised and warned by those in charge of her group practice for prescribing alternative unproven medicine. Chamomile tea for mild stomach upset apparently is dangerous until it goes through scientific double blind studies, so the drugs that have a list of side effect disclosures are what must be prescribed. We MUST remain open minded knowing that tomorrow’s wisdom will prove things we are as of yet unaware. (See My mother’s 15 years of pain story below) Some wisdom has yet to pass scientific scrutiny; years of experience should not be reduced to “heresy”. There must be respect for empirical evidence.
• Many forms of complementary medicine, such as Homeopathy, Acupuncture and Chiropractic, are constitutional based medicines, treating issues in the context of the whole person; body mind & spirit. As such, treatments are individual; what works for one person’s headache will not be the right approach as for another. The efficacy of these protocols cannot therefore be evaluated through the current statistical model which requires the same treatment be repeatable.
• The training programs for MDs to be certified as acupuncturists are between 100 and 300 hours. While they may do some good with their training, it should not be considered equal or comparable to professionals who study 4 years in the current entry level Masters degree programs in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. One cannot understand or master an entire medical system in such a short time, the best they can do is use some of the tools of Oriental medicine in a western allopathic way.
• As such, it is imperative that as acupuncture and Oriental medicine is embraced and included in integrative practices, it’s design and regulation must not come from MDs, but from people FULLY trained in the field.

PROMOTING HEALTH
• While Western Medicine can be brilliant at fighting disease, promoting health requires a perspective shift from a disease model to health model.
• What helps people to want to be healthy? What can government do to create incentives for the public to be healthier?
• Start in the schools. As recycling was popularized by kids bringing the ideas and passion for it home from their learning and involvement at school.
• Promote physical fitness with mandatory PE classes in school.
• Expand our understanding and practice of PE (physical education) to include yoga, marshal arts, meditation, and self care)
• Create infrastructure that supports physical health such as: bicycle & walking paths. As we have a public library system, create public exercise facilities, and promote public transportation
• Promote healthy food choices and availability: teach kids better habits in school through nutrition classes, providing healthier food in cafeterias and removing junk food from vending machines. Investigate corporate influence in American Dietetics Association.
• Get McDonalds out of the hospital lobbies. Provide healthy food choices.
• Vegetable gardens in public schools and provide, promote victory gardens in cites and suburbs, plant fruit trees on public lands
• Promote air, water & food quality
• Create incentives at work for healthy life style choices: smoking cessation is an easy one to agree on, but things like food choices and exercise are so individual, trying to come up with a standard to reward people for is difficult but should be explored.
• Expand & support Second Harvest, and other food recovery programs. A blemished tomato, a broken chicken leg render these items unable to be sold and are routinely thrown away along with tons of perfectly good products whose expiration dates really do not render the products inedible at the stroke of midnight. This waste is unconscionable considering how many people are hungry and undernourished in this country.
• Funding of community health clinics that offer holistic and preventive as well as allopathic choices of care. These clinics should be as easily accessible as Starbucks!

[MORE: continued in following post.]

Bus? Train? Get if off your chest

Take a survey about public transport.

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1072270

This is about Miami-Dade County and its public transit present and future.

Gwen Margolis for appraiser

I'm filling out my absentee ballot for Gwen Margolis.

Questions? Here's her website: http://www.votegwenmargolis.com/

State Sen. Margolis is fully endorsed by the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

Want to early vote? There are four locations in the county. Click on the link for early voting times and locations.

New Executive Committee members to hold orientation meeting

The eager Democrats who will form the core of activists for the next four years meet tonight for orientation. It’s at the American Legion, 6:30-8:30 p.m, 6445 NW 7th Ave., Miami 33137. That's the official street address, and to get there drive on Biscayne Boulevard to 64th Street, and turn east until you reach the Legion.

They were elected (or were unopposed) in the Aug. 26 primary to membership in the Democratic Executive Committee, or DEC, the leadership body of the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party. The term is four years.

Now we have a big victory under our belts, and it’s time to expand into the more difficult local tasks. My #1 nomination is to tackle gerrymandering. Why does Florida have more Democrats than Republicans but still has a state legislature almost two-thirds Republican? Our electoral districts are crazily formed to favor the incumbents who drew the district lines. This must be curbed, and I won’t be surprised to see people handing out petitions to end gerrymandering.

UPDATE: Mark your calendars for Wednesday Dec. 3: the date of the first meeting of the newly elected Executive Committee. This is our election day, to choose officers and set the course for a more Democratic future. (DEC Chairman Bret Berlin announced this date in a newsletter sent on Nov. 23.)

Those running for office are encouraged to send platform/profile information to this blog and it will be published.

A candidates forum will be held on Tuesday Nov. 25 at the American Legion. 

You can check results in your home precinct at this link, though you’ll need WinZip to unlock the statistics after you download them from the Miami-Dade Election Department. I chose to download the Excel version (marked as Details XLS) after finding the text version to be incomprehensible.

My home Precinct (lucky) 13 in the far northern and eastern blocks of Miami Beach: 2,168 registered voters, of whom 1,448 voted, a turnout rate of 67 percent, which is just what the county as a whole showed.

How about the Obama-McCain breakdown: 893 for Obama, 548 for McCain.

Absentee? McCain got 148, Obama 140 (including me).

Early? Obama 495, McCain 268

Election Day? Obama 258, McCain 132.

Those who voted absentee or early were 1,051, or 73.4 percent of the voting population.

My figures for Election Day are off by a few. I discovered late in the game that one of the columns for Election Day was for the very small number of people who voted by the Ivotronic touch-screen method rather than the optical scan fill-in-bubbles method. And I hadn’t included them in my total, as my Excel skills are pretty low.

MORE: The results for Congressional District 18 for Precinct 13 may show how (though not why) Annette Taddeo lost to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, which I regret very much.

Totals: Taddeo 734, Ros-Lehtinen 617. It's a nice margin for the Democratic challenger but not nearly enough to offset the incumbent's totals in more-Republican precincts. Taddeo's total of 734 is well under Obama's 893.

Still, a tip o' the hat to Taddeo's visit to the voting site on Sunday, the last day of early voting, when she greeted hundreds of people waiting in line. They will remember her charm and intelligence for the next time.

Miami-Dade campaigners have big share in Obama victory

Big crowd still waiting to vote on Election Day, late morning, at Uleta Community Center in North Miami Beach.


Just talking arithmetic here.

Barack Obama won Florida’s 27 electoral votes by a margin of 198,888 votes. That’s with 4,062,977 votes against 3,864,089 for McCain.

Miami-Dade County gave Obama a margin of 139,733 votes, so I’m declaring that we campaigners in Miami-Dade had a lot to do with Obama’s victory in Florida and in the overall electoral college.

There much more arithmetic to ponder, but for now this is very satisfying.

Note: Dade votes were 491,195 for Obama against 351,462 for McCain. Numbers from Miami Herald. Too tired to do own research.

37% in Florida already voted

About a year ago I was groaning about the poor turnout in Miami-Dade County municipal elections. What a turnabout!

Already in Florida we've got 37 percent of registered voters in the bank, with 2.6 million voting early and 1.6 million absentee. That's out of 11.2 million registered in the entire state.

Checking statistics at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department website, your blogger sees that some 63,000 absentee ballots in the county had not been returned as of Saturday. This is worrisome. Where are those ballots, anyway? There were 207,667 sent out, and only 144,296 returned.

If yours is among those unreturned, I believe you can hand it in on Election Day at any polling place -- without waiting in line. Deadline: 7 p.m.

Waiting five minutes or so on the phone at 3-1-1, your blogger asked how many polling places there are in the county. Answer: 764 -- way more than the 20 early-voting sites that were so packed. There are more precincts, because some precincts vote together with one or two others at the same place.

For the record, turnout was 16.7 percent in the county municipal elections a year ago. It's so much better to see enthusiastic turnout now for president and congress, plus all the ballot initiatives. It's a real puzzle why we have to separate the local and national elections. This isn't the way it's done in many places.

Kudos to the iron people waiting forever to vote!

Annette Taddeo (in blue), Democratic challenger for U.S. House District 18, meets people in a long line waiting to vote at North Shore Branch Library in Miami Beach Sunday afternoon.


There was this headline on the Miami Herald's website, main page, saying "Early voting has closed." It was about 8 p.m. when I saw it. Then I called my friend Erika Brigham in the South Beach storefront of the Miami Beach Democratic Club. She asked around and was told that people were still voting at Miami Beach City Hall. Wow, that was three hours after the line closed.

The Herald was a little premature in the tense it chose for the verb in that Internet headline. Maybe the lines had closed, but voting was still at full throttle.

I hopped in my car and drove to the North Shore Branch Library, the other place where people can early-vote in Miami Beach, and the last people were soon to finish voting at about 8:45 p.m. Wow, these were people I saw getting on line just at 5 p.m. after I had spent most of the four-hour day there.

Then I called Michael Calderin, candidate for Florida House of Representatives in District 119, and he was still on line waiting to vote at the West Kendall Library on Hammocks Road and 102nd Avenue. He expected he might finish about 9:30 p.m. but couldn't be sure, as the line was snaking through rows of bookshelves. Wow, that would be 4 1/2 hours on line.

Will they be finished by midnight? It could be close. The longest wait time on Miamidade.gov was five hours at the Stephen P. Clark Government Center in downtown Miami. That was posted just before 5 p.m., so they most likely will be finishing around 10 p.m. Wow.

The early turnout is stunning. The crowds on Miami Beach were overwhelmingly pro-Obama, though some crazies came out from their caves with bizarre signs and shouts, so it's clear that Democrats won't get all the votes.

Michael Calderin said he'd seen tremendous lines at at least three early-vote sites on Sunday, and he thought almost half of the expected votes in his Florida House district had already been cast.

So I'm just saying, maybe Election Day won't be too crowded, if such a large number have voted already.

Link to check on wait times to vote

http://www.miamidade.gov/elections//wait-times.asp

Click on that Wednesday early afternoon and see, Great, wait times aren't so bad.

But why is it still taking four hours at the West Kendall Regional Library What's wrong at this spot?

(At first I read the wrong line and thought it was the West Dade Library with the problem. Sorry for the mistake and for pestering Michael Calderin, candidate for state representative in District 119, who was chatting with voters at that polling spot.)

Kudos to voters who endure these long waits!

Last chance for absentee ballot: today!

Tired of standing in line? Even with extended hours? Today, Wednesday Oct. 29, is the last day you can request to vote by mail for the Nov. 4 election.

And if you have already voted by mail, you can check the status of your ballot at this link on the Miami-Dade Elections website. I just checked mine, and am now satisfied that my ballot was received on Oct. 24 and that Barack Obama will be elected president. Those who are bathed in worry that their ballot has been stolen can receive at least some confirmation that the process works.

From today's Miami Herald (link below), this statistic:

Miami-Dade has mailed more than 174,000 absentee ballots and received 107,000 completed absentee ballots through Wednesday, according to the elections office website.

Wednesday is last day to request absentee ballot | MiamiHerald.com