MIAMI WILDS: Stupid Theme Park... Guest Blog by "I Was Duped"

Rendering of Miami Wilds: So compatible with Valuable Subtropical Farms, Endangered Rock Pinelands and the Everglades...NOT

Get Ready for a Miami-Wilds Ride! Wasn't Orlando Enough for Florida??

Should I be surprised? No, but I am. The Board of County Commissioners has just taken the first step in funding Miami Wilds - the 21 Century Fox Theme Park that is about to invade Zoo Miami. Of course the allocation of bond money to relocate Coast Guard facilities was never heard by committee; it was put on as a last minute agenda item, and it passed. I am shocked, shocked! (Genius: this is Miami, I am never shocked).

A little background:

In 2006, voters approved an amendment to Article 7 (then Article 6). That amendment protects county and most cities' parks from an excess of commercial development. From the beginning, Article 7 exempted large regional parks that by their nature would benefit from some commercial facilities such as restaurants. Metro Zoo (now Zoo Miami) was one of the exemptions. Visitors to zoos expect to be able to get some food and beverages, to buy gifts and rent bikes. All of these are compatible with going to a zoo. The amendment approved in 2006, however, involved land around the zoo. Here it is:

REFERENDUM ALLOWING FURTHER DEVELOPMENT AT 

METROZOO PROPERTY

Provided that revenues will be used to expand Metrozoo facilities and educational and conservation programs, shall the County be allowed to contract to develop and operate an entertainment district, to include commercial uses and structures such as water park rides and attractions, related retail concessions, food and beverage establishments, a hotel, and a family entertainment center, on Metrozoo property on land that is not environmentally sensitive and is outside the animal attractions

The idea of additional facilities outside of the zoo proper did not seem like such a bad idea. A water park can be a real pleasure in the summer; a sit-down restaurant can be nice too, maybe a small hotel so people could make a weekend of it. It also looked like a way to provide more funding to the zoo. The Commission had previously approved plans for new development within the zoo - including the Aviary which had been destroyed by Hurricane Andrew; better, and some new, facilities for the animals; and much more landscaping. It was a very grand plan - and an expensive one. New facilities generate new costs and thus a need for additional revenue to support the zoo. That seemed reasonable.

Now, years later, after no water-park operators were interested, this apparently "good idea" has turned into a boondoggle. The County is getting prepared to give a long term lease for public land and a big chunk of bond money to 21th Century Fox to build a massive theme park! Check out the renderings.

Fantasy land!! Large rides, a grand hotel - and somewhere in there a water park. After all this is 21th Century Fox! Rupert Murdoch does not think small - he is marching forward with the entertainment section of his former news empire. In an email to Visitfla.com, a vacation planning site, Greg Lombardo, vice president of live and location based entertainment for 20th Century Fox Consumer Products, said: "With a strong international and domestic tourism market and a year-round climate, Miami is a great potential US location for a 20th Century Fox World theme park. We view this as a strong opportunity."

For them, a strong opportunity; for us, a train-wreck. I do not believe for a second that the plan will live up to the amendment's obligation to support educational and conservation programs. I do not believe for a minute that the plan will respect the provision that it not harm environmentally sensitive land. These are Pinelands and endangered species which, if not handled well, will be lost. I somehow just can't see a restaurant or hotel providing up-close (and very smoky) views of the pinelands when they undergo required controlled burns.

I have to admit that I did not oppose the referendum. In fact I argued for it. I feel very burned. There are still permits to be given and agreements to be passed, but this is the starting line. We need to be ready for a long and nasty race with this monster.

Also see article in Miami New Times 

(Genius: 75% of Florida voted to buy endangered land for saving, look what Miami Dade County is doing with its MOST ENDANGERED LAND - building a Walmart and creating this spectacle. Orlando is enough for me. We should have a bus from Moss's district to Orlando. I would gladly contribute to it if his constituents want theme park fun. This isn't a money-maker for the residents.) 

The Community Heavy Hitters Come Out to Support the Park Against the Soccer Interlopers. By Geniusofdespair

Couldn't find it online so here is the letter from the paper Miami Herald today.

It isn't just us, the rabble, world famous Architects and Planners (such as Liz Plater-Zyberk and Victor Dover) agree this soccer stadium on the waterfront is a super-colossally bad idea. Gimenez what the hell are you supporting? Are stadiums destined to be the downfall of all our Mayors? When these people of stature come out to play, you have a problem, a big problem Mr. mayor. Stay out of our park and leave our FEC slip alone. Now Becham Soccer Stadium on the waterfront is labeled a boondoggle....by me. And David, you might look at the deed, there is a restriction on gambling.

County Commissioner Juan Zapata the Voice of Reason on the NEWEST Sports Complex Boondoggle. By Geniusofdespair

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read the newspaper this morning. ANOTHER sports complex wants more money. And guess who their lobbyist is: Jorge Luis Lopez, BFF of Carlos Gimenez. Read the entire story in the Miami Herald. Juan Zapata said of the deal:

Commissioner Juan C. Zapata, whose district includes part of Kendall and western Miami-Dade, slammed the proposed agreement as too generous to the Heat. He cited one provision that would end the county’s ability to collect more revenue if the arena’s naming rights sell for more than $2 million a year once the current agreement with American Airlines ends in 2020.

“It’s a horrible deal,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous.”

I found it interesting that he was briefed by the Mayor's assistant and not the Mayor. Zapata apparently never sees the Mayor.

Gimenez is saying we have a $208 million budget gap but this year he is/was entertaining deals with Billionaire Mickey Arison (Heat), Billionaire Simon Fuller among others (Soccer Stadium) and Billionaire Steve Ross (Dolphins). He should lock his door for sports teams. There should be a sign on his door: No welfare for Billionaires. County Broke. Go elsewhere.

What the hell is wrong with this community? Who can even afford to go to these games? Broward Residents.

Here is the Heat deal proposed or agreed to (depending on who you speak to):

Taking into account the increased subsidies minus the rent the team would pay between now and 2040, the agreement would cost Miami-Dade an additional $121 million through 2040. That’s on top of the $6.4 million the county must pay yearly for the next 15 years under the terms of the 1996 agreement in which Arison financed construction of the $240 million arena. The yearly subsidy would increase to $12 million in 2031 — the first year of the extended lease — and hit $17 million nine years later.

After 14 years of profit sharing with the Heat we collected $300,000. Don't you think they cooked the books. Would you enter into another deal with cheaters? We are talking about funding billionaires when our County is strapped for basic services and Librarians are cast as devils for getting $60 to $70 thousand a year when they have Master's degrees.

Where are our priorities? Why isn't the Mayor talking to County Commissioners? What the hell is going on? $21 thousand a year from the Heat as profit sharing? I don't think so. How can the Mayor do a deal with a team that has been paying us that? It is the Heat bilking the County. I can make a better deal. We are Stadium rich and service poor in Miami Dade County. And I don't like these sports teams trying to blackmail the county with "we will take our team elsewhere". Well go or collect the money from your stupid fans.

Mayor Gimenez: Read this Audit Before you Pick those to go on your Mayoral Advisory Committee. By Geniusofdespair

County may have over-paid engineering company $3.5 Million Dollars on Black Point Project.

This is an audit conducted by the county auditor to Water and Sewer.

Look at page 4(summary results) also look at page 5 of the PDF below, that indicates that the Water and Sewer Department was frequently bi-passing the project control and tracking system(PCTS).

5 30 13 Audit Report - WASD - Hazen Sawyer PSA Review by geniusofdespair

Mr. Mayor are all the recommendations here in the AECOM and CH2MHill bids on the mega $1.6 billion dollar contract? I have to call this a boondoggle if we could have saved the taxpayers $3.5 Million Dollars. Before you pick the people on your Advisory Committee maybe you had better heed this recent audit.

Munisport/Biscayne Landing Boondoggle. By Geniusofdespair

BE AWARE: The mayor of North Miami Lucie Tondreau, works for the developer.

From Lawyer and Longtime Activist on this Issue Maureen Harwitz:

On September 4, 2013 without the knowledge or authorization of the North Miami City Council, Stephen Johnson, City manager, filed a petition with the Biscayne Landing developers, on behalf of the City of North Miami, to allow the violation of Chapter 24, Miami Dade County law, and allow 300,000 cubic yards of industrial Wastes to be dumped into the groundwater and fill the rock pits at Biscayne Landing.

The industrial wastes to be used are characterized by CERCLA/superfund sections 311 & 312 as a "hazardous substance" with delayed health effects.

Samples of the wastes, already being stockpiled at the property, reveal a witches brew of chemicals with exceedingly high levels of aluminum,as well as arsenic, and other contaminants that cause water pollution.

The deeper levels of flowing groundwater at the property move out into Biscayne Bay affecting aquatic organisms, fish and ultimately other wildlife.

Shockingly, Wilbur Mayorga, DERM Chief, argued on behalf of the request to allow a variance to the law that protects the groundwater from discharges causing pollution; and authorized the pollution and violation of the law.

In short, the Munisport dump has re-opened. Once, again as in 1975, with DERM'S approval.

And of all people, it looks like Former Mayor Joe Celestin might actually be a hero on this one. Years ago he got a mortgage from the developer Michael Swerdlow, maybe they are on the outs now. In the Miami Herald:

Jeb Bush and Joe Celestin - yes he is Black and a Republican.

“My job is to protect Chapter 24 as the city’s consultant,” Celestin said.

He said that if there had not been a groundwater-cleaning system in place at the site since June, the fill material would not have been accepted at all. But even with the system in place, the health risk is too high for the former North Miami mayor and certified landfill operator and builder.

“If you contaminate the water, you contaminate everything else. And I don’t want to do that, to expose the health and safety of the residents,” Celestin said.

He issued a stop-work order in March and no fill material has been brought to the site since, but there is still material at the site.

Celestin recommends that the material be removed, but he added later that the cost could be in the millions — $5 to $10 million. It includes not just removal of the material, but also its storage.

“The material must go to a fill that accepts contaminated material,” Celestin said after a presentation he made to the council on his and the county’s findings at the site.

Mayor Gimenez is Not Asleep At the Wheel. By Geniusofdespair

I wrote a post about the  Galata boondoggle earlier this week. At the same time I wrote to the Mayor's Office to see the status of Galata and its grants and whether they made another site visit since 2012 when they found half the facility not operational. They should have visited the site again, I hope they do soon. Apparently, after reading this letter, it looks like Galata is in some deep shit. I wonder if we will ever see any funds from them. LOL.  That was a joke. I think they will close up shop and start a new non-profit. Sounds like JESCA all over again to me.

I asked if the Mayor had taken any action since the audit. I just got this letter from the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget that went out today to Galata's CEO:

BOONDOGGLE: Oh Those Audits! We Should Have More. By Geniusofdespair

Whether it was poor planning and/or operational deficits, Galata’s facility purchase (In Homestead) was impacted by questionable financial practices. - Inspector General Audit

Everyone should know where their County tax dollars are going. Here is one place: Galata. This is an example of your hard earned tax dollars going, going, gone.

Chriselda and Joseph G. "Billy" Louis, President & CEO of Galata. Insert: Lynda Bell with Chriselda.

Miami New Times reported on this Non-Profit Galata Inc. and a January 8, 2013 Inspector General audit of that non-profit:

"Back in 2008, Galata Inc., a social service agency that assists minorities and low income residents in Homestead, was one of 37 local non-profit organizations that received a no-questions-asked Miami-Dade County grant. Galata got $500,000 from a $30 million pot that was part of the county's Building Better Communities general obligation bond program. The organization told Miami-Dade officials it would use the money to pay off most of a $531,000 mortgage on its 5,000-plus square foot recreational center at 916 North Flagler Ave. in Homestead."

"But five years later, an audit by the Miami-Dade Inspector General's Office is accusing Galata of misusing some of the funds. The review found that the social services agency used some its grant proceeds, which were generated through property tax revenue, to pay the IRS $77,307 for payroll taxes Galata did not remit to the federal government between 2005 through 2007. At the time, the non-profit organization had been hit with tax liens. The inspector general also hammered Galata for using the county grant as collateral to get into more debt."

From Building Better Communities Audit. Looks like a ponzi scheme of payments.

Letter from Galata, explaining away it's flubs.  Notice Giraud Title's name. Girard Title is defunct. Marie Girard was caught stealing escrow money and was arrested for grand theft. The last event filed for this Girard Corporation was April 27, 2009.

Note the Non-Profit was also caught in a lie:

They lied, but hey, we are still writing them checks. This lie could have made them ineligible for the grant in the first place, but no-one at the county performed a simple search of County Clerk Records. That 2 minute search could have easily uncovered the lie.

Money given to Galata, Inc. from the County the last 3 years  - Not counting the bond money. This is over a half of million bucks.  Is anyone auditing this money?

This IGO Audit went to Carlos Gimenez in January. I wonder what he has done since the audit? Has policy changed? has anyone done a site visit in 2013? According to the audit:

"On June 13, 2012, OIG staff conducted a site visit to the project’s location. OIG audit staff observed that, while services were being offered at this location, approximately 50% of the building was non-functional, since it was in the process of being renovated. The condition of the occupied portion was dusty, but the outside facade was clean."

Sometimes I think we would be better off handing needy people a couple of hundred a month instead of offering services that no one seems to  be watching over. Oh, Galata, Inc. also has another tax Lien.  There was one dated 11/14/2012 for $13,000.

This Galata post reminds me of a recent story I posted on a Miami Beach Clinic  that no one was properly monitoring, millions were embezzled, including county taxpayer funds -- but we are STILL writing plenty of county checks to that entity.

Florida City Mayor Otis Wallace with President, CEO of Galata, Joseph G. Louis.

Will all of you do me one favor: Stop voting for all these stupid bonds. We pay taxes for a reason. Why on earth would you add to your tax with a bond?

I want some free Miami Dade County land too!! By Geniusofdespair

I would like to build a museum too. Can I get almost $1 Million dollars worth of free land from Miami Dade County like the Nigerian-American Foundation? I would think not, because it depends on how good you are to your commissioner and I am afraid I am lacking on that front. Can the County afford to be giving away free land? Again, I think not. How about a match? I just think this is a very extravagant gift of our tax dollars, thanks to Barbara Jordan.We also lose about $4,000 a year in taxes (judging by neighboring properties) if it were sold rather than given away.

They have 5 years to build the museum. At least that is a good clause. It wasn't clear if it goes back to the county if it isn't built. You know there will be extensions if it isn't because that is government at work.

The Virginia Key Trust did not get the land from the City of Miami for their planned museum. The city owns the land, the Trust manages it and has to raise the money to build the African American history museum they have been planning for years. The city plan is a better plan all around. Think about it Barbara Jordan unless you are planning on tossing me a 1/2 acre.   If you do this deal for Nigerians, soon you will have to give free land to Croatians, Italians, Russians, etc. for museums. Where do you stop? Maybe at Seychelles?

Here is a really good idea. Why not give some land to Wings Over Miami Air Museum?  They could use it. They pay the county rent over at Kendall-Tamiami Airport. The Air Museum should at the very least have free rent if the County is so willing to offload our land.  We already have an existing museum over there in Kendall that is going broke from the high rent the County is charging. That is so not fair to help one Museum and bankrupt another.

2 parcels the county is planning on giving to the Nigerian American Foundation.

Miami-Dade County Boondoggle with Millions of Our Tax Dollars. By Geniusofdespair

“The big picture here is how the hell did this happen? How could somebody steal this money with minimal excuses? It’s almost ridiculous. It’s mind-boggling.” - Chris Mazzella, Miami-Dade County Inspector General

The Miami Herald reported that an ex-Miami Beach Clinic head was arrested for stealing almost $7 million dollars from a Miami Beach clinic funded with plenty of our tax dollars both County and Federal.

I looked up all the checks that were written directly from the County to this clinic, Miami Beach Community Health Center Inc., since 2008 (when the theft started). You can add it up if you like, I am too lazy. It was 6 pages of checks about 153 were written during this time period.

All the County checks written DIRECTLY to Miami Beach Community Health Center, Inc. since 2008. They also got money from other County entities.

The officers of Miami Beach Community Health Center Inc. are Myriam Notkin of Surfside, Jane D. Gross of Miami Beach, Melvin Deutsch of Miami Beach and Antonio Wong of Pembroke Pines.  RON BOOK is the lobbyist.

The Miami Herald said:

"The center receives about $4 million annually in federal funding. In 2011, the clinics received about $15 million from various county funds, including the Children’s Trust, AIDS support and Jackson Health System."

Who is to blame for this? The Miami Herald reported that Miami-Dade County Inspector General Chris Mazzella said:

He planned to brief the Miami-Dade County Commission as soon as possible because the center had “a total breakdown of fiscal accountability” and “very very lax oversight.”

He said he’ll be “putting the county on notice that there needs to be close oversight of this organization, which spends millions and millions in county funds.”

Mayor Gimenez, who signed all these checks? Some heads at the county should roll over this one. How can you steal almost $7 million dollars of mostly county funds and no one notices? Remember that the Children's Trust money is County money and so is Jackson.

Chris Mazzella you must do audits, audits and more audits to uncover county boondoggle.

New Cars/Vans Paid for With Miami Dade County Taxpayer Money Have Never Been Used. By Geniusofdespair

From a Channel 10 Report:

"Local 10 uncovered more than 100 vehicles, paid for by Miami-Dade taxpayers that have been sitting idle in the Earlington Heights Metrorail garage for years. In total, an estimated $965,000 worth of taxpayer bought vehicles" have never been used.

Sure doesn't make sense that they are laying off people. I guess this counts as a boondoggle. Gimenez's answer for the idle cars: "Years ago the county significantly reduced the size of its fleet and decided to keep current vehicles on the road longer. By that time, the idle vehicles had already been bought and delivered. Gimenez said the idle vehicles will eventually be added to the county's fleet, as needed."

Inspector General Chris Mazzella's Report on Landfill Money Spent (Wasted?). By Geniusofdespair

Swerdlow is not beating around the bush this time...he doesn't want to pay for the landfill cleanup this second time around. He sold his interest to Biscayne Landing the first time he got this development years ago and believe it or not North Miami is giving him a second chance. Stupid North Miami. Coincidentally, this article about the landfill was in today's paper.

Inspector General Chris Mazzella's report counts as uncovering a boondoggle in my book. I took this issue regarding the Landfill Funds to Former County Commissioner Jimmy Morales years ago, maybe 2003, that is how long I have been following the money.  

Quickly, to recap, I called Homestead City Manager and Morales about Landfill Closure funds (it is on your tax bill) going to North Miami. I told them the DEVELOPER had agreed at meetings to pay for the cleanup of the Munisport site (I went to meetings, it was part of the RFP) however North Miami was STILL trying to tap county funds for the developer. When Morales and Homestead City Manager complained to County Manager Burgess about the limited funds all going to North Miami, instead of stopping the grant money to North Miami, Burgess found other funds for the City of Miami and Homestead landfills which were in line for that money. Burgess did some convoluted dealing that you know cost us ALL more money in the end. The money to North Miami was a gift and here it is hitting us in the face. It is my opinion that Attorney for Biscayne Landing Clifford Schulman was virtually running the City of North Miami at the time.

Following is an excerpt (this link takes you to the full report on the 3 landfills) from the IG report on North Miami's former landfill Munisport (now known as Biscayne Landing):

At the time of the second amendment, North Miami had already contracted with a group of developers—the Swerdlow Group, Boca Developers, and Biscayne Landing, LLC—to develop the Munisport site. The development included commercial and residential end uses to the property that necessarily required that the landfill be closed and the groundwater remediated. While North Miami was the legal grantee of the $31 million in landfill closure funds, the developer group (its successors and assigns) was the de facto grantee of the County’s funds.

Disbursements from the escrow account are based on contractor draw requests. These requests are forwarded to PWWM’s bond engineer, who is responsible for approving such requests. The bond engineer uses a Schedule of Values (SOV) as a basis to review and approve project costs. The SOV shows work unit descriptions; work unit payment bases; work unit costs; estimated number of work units; total work unit costs; and total project cost. The SOV was agreed upon by PWWM, the bond engineer, North Miami, and the contractor’s engineer of record. Disbursements from the escrow account need an authorized signature from both the County and North Miami. Pursuant to the grant, escrow account disbursements should go to North Miami, who in turn should pay the contractor that is performing the work. However, because the contractor performing the work was not retained by the City, but instead by the developer group that held the development rights to the land, the grant funds were disbursed from the escrow account directly to the developer.

County Waived Competitive Bid for Politically Connected Innovida - Now in Bankruptcy. Guest Blog by Youbetcha'

A recent article in the Miami Herald noted that businessman Claudio Osorio filed for bankruptcy. Gimleteye also reported on his own adventure with the political mover and shaker.

However, there is a Miami-Dade County connection (as always) to this bankruptcy. Claudio and his company were recipients of a 6/3/2010 bid wavier which offered up the POINCIANA INDUSTRIAL CENTER project to them. Ironically, they were given the bid in spite of the fact that one of their partners in the bid had criminal actions pending. InnoVida was allowed to replace the partner, instead of the county tossing the bid process and rebidding the RFP.

The best aspect of the whole county legislative recommendation was staff’s observation:

“InnoVida’s proposal meets the requirement for creating jobs, provides for a viable business and real estate plan and is presented by a firm with good experience and financial ability.”

Need I mention that this legislative item was sponsored by Commissioner Rolle and was seconded by Commissioner Jordan. It passed by a vote of 9-0. (Commissioners Diaz, Sosa and Seijas and Chairman Moss were absent). Our new county manager, Alina Tejeda-Hudak, was the county staff person assigned to this item.

InnoVida was deemed a solid company with a viable business plan in June 2010 by the County, but by March 19, 2011, it is bankrupt and according to the Miami Herald, ”Their Chapter 11 filing in Miami’s federal bankruptcy court capped a series of lawsuits that accuse the Osorios of duping investors to put tens of millions of dollars into Claudio Osorio’s once-fledgling business venture, InnoVida, to pay for the couple’s lifestyle.”

How much money did the county taxpayers contribute to their lifestyle? Don’t you think we have a right to know?

County Commission Has That 'Let Them Eat Cake' Mentality.

The people were mad as hell because the County Commission raised their taxes. So what does the County Commission do to top that, they have a $200 million dollar bond issue. What are they nuts? The three running for Mayor - Joe Martinez, Carlos Gimenez and Rebeca Sosa voted against it. The rest of them, they have lost touch with reality and the people they serve. Thank you for your sanity Joe, Carlos and Rebeca.

Maybe this time Marty Margulies will fund a recall of the remaining commissioners over the bond issue. This is such a bad idea I am aghast that the County Commissioners could be this stupid. Maybe I should be beating up on me for always being surprised when something idiotic happens in County government. Shouldn't I be expecting it by now? The Miami Herald said:

"Commissioner Javier Souto, for instance, fought hard to include funding for an equestrian center at Tropical Park. His argument: The project at the regional park will help economic development and bring 'countywide benefits'."

You couldn't be more wrong Javier. We don't need your friggin' equestrian center. We would get countywide benefits if you would just stop wasting our money on "projects". I'm sorry, this vote just has to get my boondoggle rating because it is a boondoggle in the making.

$3.6 Million Dollar County Boondoggle. By Geniusofdespair

We now have 64 posts in our boondoggle file -- most have occurred under the watch of Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess. Once again we have proof that the County is just too big and bloated to manage. Our last boondoggle post was only a week ago on transit. To the County Commissioners' credit on the HUD money the Feds want back, they wouldn't release general funds to bail out management staff. According to Miami Herald reporter Martha Brannigan:

"In the latest sign of weak financial controls in Miami-Dade government, the county must pay back $3.6 million in federal grant funds received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after a federal audit found that county officials couldn't show the money was properly used."

Biscayne Landing Update. By Geniusofdespair

Biscayne Landing was an unregulated garbage dump and superfund site. It has never been cleaned up as far as I know. Formerly known as munisport the property remains North Miami's boondoggle. It has a failed high rise development, two twin towers, on it and has gone through plan after plan after plan. Here is the latest.

Biscayne Landing Update written by North Miami Councilman Scott Galvin:

The Biscayne Landing saga has continued over the holidays. As of this email January 13th, the scenario is quite fluid.

You might recall a heated meeting was held on December 15th when the North Miami Development Team sought Council approval for their retail project at the site. Dozens of residents spoke against the plans. The Council listened and set strict standards the developer must meet to be considered further.

We said that North Miami Development Team must show they have $16.5 million to pay the city up front, as well as $50,000 to cover legal fees. We also sent a default notice to the bank related to a $1 million past-due payment.

Since then, Carlisle Development Group, an affordable housing developer, has sent the City a check for $50,000 and a letter attesting that they have $16.5 million in the bank. Carlisle is apparently planning to be part of the NM Development Team.

It is my opinion, however, that the City should not consider the Carlisle documents as "transferable" to NM Development without a public discussion and vote by the Council. I've spoken to the City Manager and Matthew Greer of Carlisle to say that quite clearly. I will not support any agreements that are not clearly, publicly, and transparently approved by the Council.

If a deal isn't approved by January 24th, the note to the land is scheduled to be auctioned off by Credit Suisse.

Federal Audit Blasts Miami Dade County on Transit. By Geniusofdespair

I don't want to ignore a mention of the latest Miami Dade boondoggle. The Miami Herald detailed the findings of a Federal audit on Monday:

A federal audit made public late Monday sharply criticizes Miami-Dade Transit for shoddy financial management and weak internal controls -- including improper accounting for bus fare boxes and a failure to document how federal grant money has been spent.

The audit comes two months after the Federal Transit Administration took the extraordinary step of suspending grant payments totaling about $182 million to the county-run transit agency.

Boondoggle Report: Miami Dade Transit - Burgess You Lied! By Geniusofdespair

As much as I hate most of the County Commissioners, there is no excuse to lie to them...Ever.

Last week there were a couple of transit articles. Anyone see them, they weren't on the front page? They outlined how George Burgess lied about the freeze of Federal Grant funds coming to Miami Dade Transit.

In one article printed Dec. 6th (that I can't find online) it said:

Burgess sent a misleading memo to Commissioners on Thanksgiving eve telling them that media reports on the suspension were wrong "because the manual withdrawal process remained active." In response, El Nuevo Herald asked an FTA official, Brian Farber, if that information was accurate, he said no..."since these improprieties involve serious accounting deficiencies involving federal funds and fare box collections, the FTA will not be considering any such request until extensive corrective actions are taken."

Burgess issued an UPDATED memo to commissioners (me: without the lies) acknowledging that all fund request "Will not be processed at this time...(in other words found in the article) "After first minimizing the suspension, and then denying it, county officials said that indeed all FTA grant funds have been suspended until further notice."

December 8th the Miami Herald reported that fraud wasn't involved by the county:

"Miami-Dade's county manager assures commissioners that the transit agency's federal funding suspension resulted from mistakes." (HUH?? Like what the hell does that mean? Burgess you are assuring the Commission it is not fraud only MISTAKES?) "Burgess said he expects the internal investigation and ``corrective'' procedure to be wrapped up by early March. Llort said it was still unclear when the federal government would lift the suspension because she doesn't know when precisely the Federal Transit Administration will return to Miami-Dade to conduct a new audit." (March? It is going to take until March to clear this up??)

Finally, this you won't believe (straight out of the Miami Herald article):

"County officials disclosed that a Sept. 20 letter from the Federal Transit Administration advised Miami-Dade Transit that its withdrawals of federal fundings through the ECHO system were being restricted. Nevertheless, about two hours after the letter arrived, a transit official withdrew nearly $15 million from ECHO. Assistant County Manager Llort attributed the withdrawal to a 'miscommunication'within transit. However, Harpal Kapoor, the transit director, said after the meeting that he did order financial officials to stop making ECHO withdrawals, 'but they didn't listen.'"

They didn't listen? What the hell is going on over there? Mayor Alvarez, why didn't you fire Burgess over this? Off with their heads! This gets both my "believe it or not" and my "boondoggle" category.

Homestead Sucks With Bad Deals Aplenty. By Geniusofdespair

The city of Homestead had to spent $5.5 million as a result of the inept digging (30 feet too deep which caused salt water intrusion) done at a city owned lake by the Redland Co., but the agreement made yesterday means the company only has to repay $1 million, losing the cash strapped city millions. The bulk of the money the city spent was to replace the excess fill the company removed. These rock pits are a danger to our water supply.

The Miami Herald reported:

Homestead taxpayers will lose more than $4 million under a lawsuit settlement approved by the City Council on Friday with a local businessman who donated thousands of dollars to several council members' campaigns. AND:

Redland owner Charles ``Pinky'' Munz, his relatives and his companies donated about $2,500 to Mayor Steve Bateman's 2009 campaign kitty. They also gave more than $2,000 each to Vice Mayor Judy Waldman and Councilmen Elvis Maldonado, Jimmie Williams and Stephen Shelley, plus another $25,000 to Citizens for Reform for Miami-Dade County, a political action committee supporting the same candidates.

This is why we look at campaign contributions folks. The two candidates who didn't get the contributions voted against this bad deal. This is an example of a boondoggle Homestead and it gets my "sucks" rating.

See details of the Munz deal:

Saturday, July 17, 2010
Homestead Sucks With Bad Deals Aplenty. By Geniusofdespair

The city of Homestead had to spent $5.5 million as a result of the inept digging (30 feet too deep which caused salt water intrusion) done at a city owned lake by the Redland Co., but the agreement made yesterday means the company only has to repay $1 million, losing the cash strapped city millions. The bulk of the money the city spent was to replace the excess fill the company removed. These rock pits are a danger to our water supply.

The Miami Herald reported:

Homestead taxpayers will lose more than $4 million under a lawsuit settlement approved by the City Council on Friday with a local businessman who donated thousands of dollars to several council members' campaigns. AND:

Redland owner Charles ``Pinky'' Munz, his relatives and his companies donated about $2,500 to Mayor Steve Bateman's 2009 campaign kitty. They also gave more than $2,000 each to Vice Mayor Judy Waldman and Councilmen Elvis Maldonado, Jimmie Williams and Stephen Shelley, plus another $25,000 to Citizens for Reform for Miami-Dade County, a political action committee supporting the same candidates.

This is why we look at campaign contributions folks. The two candidates who didn't get the contributions voted against this bad deal. This is an example of a boondoggle Homestead and it gets my "sucks" rating.

Miami: building community one boondoggle at a time ... by gimleteye

Politicians love concrete. In each little bucket of cement there is a honeycomb to dip the tips of their proboscises in: engineering fees, legal contracts, building supplies, security guards. In today's Miami Herald, "As stadium rises, Little Havana neighborhood caught in waiting game", my favorite quote is from Miami Garden's mayor Shirley Gibson of Joe Robbie Stadium that failed to spur investment; "The stadium has not been a draw to businesses to come to this area."

If you had been around, the exact pledges by an earlier generation of politicians and lobbyists accompanied Joe Robbie stadium. At least in nature, when the honeybees dip and suck from flowers, they are part of a regenerative cycle. This mindless pouring of concrete to build monuments to entertainment does what, exactly, other than encumber our future? The Herald, a big supporter of the new stadium seems to suggest, with this article, that maybe it is time for some planning and financing for related economic activity in the area. Oh well, now that we are in the grips of what Paul Krugman calls "The Third Depression", that is not very likely.

The Herald also reports, "For now, Little Havana's vibrance has nothing to do with the stadium -- it's the monthly Viernes Culturales, or Cultural Fridays, on Southwest Eighth Street that keep stores and art galleries open late and revelers in bars and restaurants." So yes, it is culture and the arts that can energize a city. But Miami and its elected officials only understand progress measured in bricks and mortar. The banks of the Miami River should have been the heart of a new city, but the keys to the city were given away to real estate speculators like Jorge Perez and Greenberg Traurig clients. If you have the patience to connect the dots, read the following from the Sunday New York Times Magazine: "Imagining a Liberal Court".



June 21, 2010
Imagining a Liberal Court
By NOAH FELDMAN
I.THE CRISIS

After decades of stagnation, progressive constitutional thought is reaching a crisis point. Consider that the two great “liberal” justices who retired from the Supreme Court most recently — David Souter in the spring of 2009 and John Paul Stevens a year later — were conservatives. Not only were both appointed by Republican presidents, but both also subscribed loosely to the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” With a handful of exceptions, neither favored identifying new constitutional rights where none existed before. Their status as liberals came from the fact that, as the court on which they served tilted to the right, they held their ground as moderate Republicans, consistently voting to sustain the constitutional rights that were discovered by the Supreme Court before they were on it. To be sure, without their votes, the liberal constitutional legacy of the period stretching roughly from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 to Roe v. Wade in 1973 would have been reversed. But Souter and Stevens were not independent forces for progressive change in American life.

To a great extent, the crisis of liberal thought on the Supreme Court is a result of liberalism’s success. From the time that Franklin Roosevelt’s appointees came to form a majority on the Supreme Court until the appointees of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan came to predominate, liberal constitutional thinking had two major objectives — both of which it largely achieved. First, it sought to give bite to the 14th Amendment’s promise to extend to all persons the equal protection of laws. The Brown decision voiding racial segregation in schools as unconstitutional was the most famous piece of the court’s push for equality. The same ideal was also encompassed in holdings that demanded “one person, one vote” and — more controversially — that upheld affirmative action as consistent with the values of the Constitution.

Second, the liberal Supreme Court interpreted the constitutional promise of liberty as a guarantee of individual autonomy — the freedom to make important life decisions without government interference, especially in the realms of sex and reproduction. Roe v. Wade was the culmination of this movement toward personal liberty. The court took the rubric of a right to privacy that it found in what it called the “penumbras, formed by emanations” of various constitutional amendments and extended the right from marital contraception to abortion. Although the court has never embraced a right to die, it has in recent years, through Justice Anthony Kennedy, spoken of “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.”

Since Roe, the majority of the most-pitched battles in the Supreme Court have concerned whether the liberal visions of equality and liberty should be reined in. Much of the time, as with the court’s compromise rulings on affirmative action and partial-birth abortion, the result has been uneasy deadlock and indecisive squabbling. The most prominent exception is the issue of gay rights, which the court came late to embracing in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 and which — through the same-sex marriage question — remains in the court’s future. It is not too much to say that its resolution (one way or the other) will be the last act of the liberal constitutional revolution.

No new progressive constitutional vision, meanwhile, has emerged from within the court. The only two Democratic appointments in the 42 years between Thurgood Marshall in 1967 and Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, reflect this reality. Ginsburg’s distinguished career as a lawyer in the women’s rights movement before she went on the bench embodied the drive for equality; but as a justice, she has striven, mostly successfully, to preserve what she won as a Supreme Court advocate. Breyer’s own pre-judicial reputation was made as part of a bipartisan, technocratic movement for cautious deregulation; on the court, he has been centrist and pragmatic, voting to preserve the liberal legacy while also showing a willingness to compromise on a case-by-case basis. Neither Sotomayor nor the current nominee to the court, Elena Kagan, has articulated a new progressive constitutional vision, either.

Why does the absence of this vision constitute a crisis for liberals? The answer is that new and pressing constitutional issues and problems loom on the horizon — and they cannot be easily solved or resolved using the now-familiar frameworks of liberty and equality. These problems cluster around the current economic situation, which has revealed the extraordinary power of capital markets and business corporations in shaping the structure and actions of our government. The great economic and political challenges of our present decade — salvaging and fixing financial institutions, delivering health care, protecting the environment — have major constitutional dimensions. They require us to determine the limits of government power and the extent to which the state can impinge on collective and individual freedoms. Progressive constitutional thinkers, so skilled in arguing about social and civil rights, are out of practice in addressing such structural economic questions.

More alarming is the fact that, over the past couple of decades, evident gains from deregulation have made many lawyers — progressive and conservative alike — too complacent about deferring to the markets on which our economy depends. That markets work well in so many contexts has strengthened the traditional conservative argument about the constitutional duty to respect private economic transactions — even in the minds of many liberals. Civil libertarian commitments, meanwhile, have become increasingly absolutist, leading some liberals to favor extending basic rights to corporations, not just to individuals. The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, has long urged the Supreme Court to treat corporations just like individuals when it comes to political speech.

To address these challenges, progressive constitutional thought must discover (or rediscover) a core set of beliefs about the right relationship between government, the individual and the powerful corporate entities that operate under the umbrella of the market. Reregulation, embraced by the Obama administration to address a range of serious economic and environmental dangers, demands its own set of constitutional explorations and explanations. A truly progressive constitutional project needs to go beyond simply upholding regulations challenged in court. It demands that the Supreme Court and other bodies acknowledge the government’s responsibility to protect our democracy from the harmful side effects of all-powerful markets.

II. THE PAST AND FUTURE OF A LIBERAL COURT

To understand today’s jurisprudential crisis, it helps to recognize that liberal constitutional thought is not a single settled body of doctrine but rather a set of ideas that has evolved in response to political, social and economic challenges. Today, for instance, judicial activism is a constitutional approach mostly associated with liberals, while judicial restraint is a constitutional theory most often connected to conservatism. But liberal constitutional thought did not begin with the activist-judicial expansion of equality and liberty as its main goal. It started, rather, with a near-absolute commitment to judicial restraint.

The story begins in the years after the Civil War, as the United States industrialized. By the late 19th century, political progressives had identified a great threat to American democracy in the overwhelming capacity of business to dominate the lives of individuals and the functioning of government. Their answer was to regulate the new industries and labor markets, in the hope of cleaning up business practices, serving consumers and getting workers decent wages for reasonable hours of work. But an activist Supreme Court blocked the way. In a string of cases that, with ebbs and flows, lasted from 1905 into the 1930s, the court overturned progressive laws. Its philosophy was based on a libertarian reading of the Constitution, one that emphasized inalienable rights and treated property as being inseparable from liberty.

The case that gave its name to this constitutional era was Lochner v. New York (1905). Joseph Lochner, a baker in Utica, N.Y., employed a bakery worker formore than the 60 hours a week allowed by a progressive New York law. The Supreme Court vindicated Lochner by striking down the New York law as an unconstitutional violation of the liberty of contract — a right that it found in the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment. Progressive critics of the Supreme Court argued that it was overstepping its bounds, engaging in judicial activism by mandating an economic philosophy that served the interests of business. Dissenting from the Lochner decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote that “a Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state or of laissez-faire.”

With the election of F. D. R. in 1932, the progressive critique of the Supreme Court in the Lochner era merged with what was coming to be called “liberalism” — the rejection of socialism and corporatist fascism in favor of regulatedmarket capitalism. F. D. R. threatened to pack the court with justices who would stand aside, exercise judicial restraint and allow Congress and the president to enact laws reflecting the popular will. After a full four-year term in which no justice retired, F. D. R. got the chance to start appointing justices. Beginning in 1937, he appointed eight associate justices and elevated another to chief justice. In the main, these justices took the bench as staunch supporters of the liberal constitutional ideal of judicial restraint. “Activism” to them was a dirty word — a cover for justices’ imposing their own preferences without constitutional warrant.

Then a funny thing happened. Little by little, the liberal majority began to realize that it had the capacity to protect minority rights and to expand individual freedom. Its members maintained the liberal constitutional orthodoxy that the court should not impose a single economic vision in the name of the Constitution. But when it came to equality and individual liberty, most of the liberal justices slowly moved away from judicial restraint, actively protecting religious and racial minorities and defending civil liberties.

The liberal justices and their academic followers labored mightily to explain why activism in support of equality and individual liberty was consistent with the Constitution while activism in protecting the liberty of contract was not. Their efforts demanded creativity and generated much of modern constitutional thought. Justice Hugo Black, for example, came up with the theory of constitutional originalism to explain the difference: equality and individual liberty, he argued, were consonant with the text of the Constitution and the intention of its framers, but corporations should not be protected under the meaning of the word “person” in the 14th Amendment. (For Black, originalism was a liberal theory, not the conservative one it would become decades later in the hands of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.) Others, including Justice William O. Douglas, were less troubled by the abandonment of judicial restraint. For Douglas, trained as a legal realist to notice power more than principle, the court’s inevitably political character justified the choice to interpret the Constitution in terms of liberty. Justice William Brennan echoed this perspective. He would ask his new law clerks what was the most important rule of constitutional law, then answer by holding up five outstretched fingers to signify the number of votes needed to form a majority of the court.

Among scholars, too, the effort to reconcile the new liberal activism with the liberal tradition of judicial restraint bore fruit. The legal scholar John Hart Ely sought to solve the dilemma by arguing that the underlying purpose of the Constitution was to facilitate political participation; equality and individual liberty served this goal, he maintained, while propertyprotection did not. The lawyer-philosopher Ronald Dworkin offered a theory in which fidelity to constitutional tradition must be joined to moral judgment about the right results. His view, designed to explain how judges should think about the law generally, salved the consciences of liberals who believed that blocking economic regulation was morally mistaken while enhancing equality and individual liberty was morally desirable.

Today, constitutional progressives still say that the courts should defer to economic regulation by the government. But the ideal of judicial restraint has been undercut by the selective and opportunistic way in which liberals and conservatives alike have invoked it. And conservatives have once again mastered the art of depicting corporate interests in terms of individual liberties. What is needed, therefore, is an argument about why regulating markets is, from a constitutional perspective, desirable to enhance the constitutional values of self-government and individual liberty.

III. A RETURN TO PROGRESSIVISM

The liberal constitutional vision in the years before World War II was an inseparable part of the liberal ideal of the right relationship between the government and business, especially the financial markets. Liberals argued that the capitalist system could not survive its internal or external threats unless it was tempered and constrained by government regulation. The point of that regulation was not to subvert the market but to save it. One job of the Constitution, on this view, was to allow the government to protect its citizens and itself from the market’s tendency to dominate everything that came into its path. F. D. R.’s supporters did not see the court as the primary government institution for regulating the market, but they did say that the court must implement the regulatory objectives chosen by the president, Congress and the administrative agencies. In contrast, constitutional conservatives at the time argued that the job of the court was to act as a check on government in its efforts to regulate the markets — to protect private property against its erosion and to preserve capitalism against the threat of socialism.

The fundamental difference, then, between constitutional liberals and constitutional conservatives was on the question of whom they feared most. Liberals feared that, unregulated, business and markets might destroy both themselves and republican government. Conservatives shared the liberals’ fear about the fate of republican government, worrying that, unfettered, regulation might destroy private property, the market and capitalism itself. Both sides contended that the Constitution ought to be interpreted in the light of their substantive views about the dangers to a system of democratic capitalism that both sides equally embraced.

Today, we are moving toward a contemporary version of this debate between liberals and conservatives about what we need to fear most — an overreaching state or unconstrained market forces. The positions in this debate today are not identical to what they were three-quarters of a century ago, but there are important similarities. Progressives today view regulation as the necessary response to the market failures that led to the present economic crisis. Many conservatives fear that taking regulation too far will cripple the possibilities of economic recovery and long-term growth. These differences are not only shaping the leading political debates of our day, but framed in terms of constitutional rights like free speech and due process, will also determine the outcomes of important constitutional challenges to legislative and regulatory reforms. And progressive constitutional thought, in its current form, may not always be adequate to produce the desired progressive outcomes.

IV.FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The recent Supreme Court case that most vividly captures this division between liberals and conservatives has to do with the constitutional rights of corporations — and with their role in influencing the government. The case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, was the subject of President Obama’s in-person criticism of the Supreme Court during his State of the Union speech in January, when his comments elicited the response “That’s not true” from Justice Samuel Alito. The case has received more attention than any First Amendment case in two decades — and with good reason.

At the heart of the case was a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that prohibited corporations and unions from using general treasury funds to pay for a radio or television broadcast that refers to a candidate in the immediate run-up to an election. Citizens United was a nonprofit corporation that made an unflattering documentary about Hillary Clinton and sought to show it during the 2008 primary season. The Supreme Court, in a highly contentious 5-to-4 decision, held that the First Amendment barred the government from limiting independent corporate expenditures. The decision overruled a 1990 precedent to the contrary. According to a dissent written by Justice Stevens (and echoed by President Obama in his remarks), the opinion also overturned more than a century of precedent treating corporations and individuals differently for purposes of free speech.

On the level of partisan politics, it is easy to see why the decision might have divided Democrats from Republicans. In general, the Republican Party identifies itself as pro-business and thus would most likely benefit from a new constitutional rule that allows corporations to make independent expenditures during political campaigns. Democrats correspondingly might prefer limits on corporate campaign expenditure. Yet the principles involved went well beyond ordinary partisanship — to the core question of how government and business should interact.

Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, has proved to be a powerful advocate of individual liberty (including in cases establishing the right to private homosexual conduct and the rights of Guantánamo detainees). But he remains staunchly conservative in his understanding of the role of corporations as bulwarks againstgovernment. His central argument in the Citizens United case was that the right to speak freely cannot vary based on the identity of the speaker. An individual who speaks is maintaining his independence vis-à-vis the state; and so, by extension, is a corporation, because corporations are nothing more than collections of individuals organized to achieve some greater end. According to this view, civil society is made up not just of civic groups like the N.A.A.C.P. or the N.R.A., but also of for-profit corporations. To deny them the right to speak freely is to allow government to pick and choose which kinds of speech it wants to allow and hence to distort the free marketplace of ideas.

Kennedy has a point: corporate speech often shades into the realm of the expressive, whether the message is creative or political. Thus a progressive approach to corporate speech cannot simply try to demarcate different kinds of expression. The progressive argument must go deeper, to the institutional reality of the effects that corporate money can have on our entire democratic system, elections included. Supreme Court doctrine has historically tried to capture a version of this concern by asserting that the government has a legitimate interest in “anticorruption” — the idea being that money from corporations can produce the appearance of a quid pro quo from elected officials. The court has also sometimes spoken of an “antidistortion” value — the concern that corporations will have a disproportionate effect on elections by providing more money than individuals can. Justice Souter, quoted by Justice Stevens in his Citizens United dissent, referred to these interests collectively as demonstrating a concern for “democratic integrity” — a concern that may in some circumstances outweigh the constitutional value of unfettered speech.

But these polite, high-sounding terms do not go far enough. Couched in abstract language, they reflect the liberals’ discomfort with stating bluntly that money talks. A truly progressive jurisprudence would go further in its legal reasoning, acknowledging that the for-profit corporation, man’s most-advanced technology for making and concentrating wealth, creates unique risks for the structure of democratic government. It is true that corporate political speech is still speech, as Justice Kennedy and the A.C.L.U. alike have insisted. But that speech serves different ends than individual speech. Organized to use all lawful means to generate profit, corporations have the means and opportunity to try to capture the operation of government to serve this objective. Campaign-spending lets them do it directly. That is why Congress must be able to limit the effects of corporate speech during elections. It is a matter of defending democracy against the risk that business interests will come to dominate government decision-making — an interest that derives from the constitutional commitment to republican government.

V.DUE PROCESS

The renewed battle lines between constitutional progressives and conservatives are not restricted to the First Amendment: the constitutional debate about business regulation is also becoming increasingly salient. This term, for example, the Supreme Court took up the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to review accounting practices. Similar challenges will certainly be brought to the new financial regulations proposed by the Obama administration. The council of regulators that is supposed to identify risk and deal with emergencies will be challenged as unconstitutional, as will the design of the consumer-credit-protection entity that is expected to be housed somewhere in the Federal Reserve.

Wherever possible, conservatives claim that legislation aimed at regulating business actually infringes on the constitutional rights of individuals. Indeed, the very authority of the government to resolve the affairs of large financial corporations — the heart of the new financial-reform legislation — will very likely be challenged as a violation of the due-process rights of those firms and their shareholders. Thus will the aim to stymie structural change be framed in terms of individual freedom. It will be up to progressives to explain why this view is mistaken — and why limiting corporate rights is justified.

The grave difficulty that must be met by a new progressive constitutional approach can so far be sensed most readily not in court cases but in the government’s actions and justifications connected with the bailout of financial institutions. The now-canonical A.I.G. bailout serves as a useful example. In saving the insurance giant, the government (under the Bush administration) famously paid A.I.G. counterparties, including Goldman Sachs, 100 cents on the dollar for insurance contracts that they had taken out with the firm. Critics wondered loudly why the government didn’t renegotiate the debts and demand that the counterparties settle at a discount. Then, while in control of A.I.G. (this time under the Obama administration), the government’s managers allowed A.I.G. to pay out the bonuses it owed employees under their employment contracts — again inviting the criticism that a private acquirer would have renegotiated and paid out less, or nothing.

The public explanation for these decisions — given after the fact by Lawrence Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser — was that the rule of law required paying up. “We are a country of law,” Summers told George Stephanopoulos in a television interview. “There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts.” The government, Summers suggested, lacked the authority “under law” to do anything other than pay in full or force A.I.G. into bankruptcy. Summers’s argument implied that some legal source, perhaps the Constitution, barred the government from impairing the obligation of contracts.

But the law is not so definitive. The government could have set conditions on the loans it made to A.I.G., as the recently released Congressional Oversight Report on the A.I.G. bailout explains. And that is not all. Pressed with dire economic necessity, the government has historically had the authority to go further and actually abrogate contracts. When Roosevelt became president in March 1933, he immediately suspended all banking operations in the country for four days. Then, relying on emergency legislation that retroactively validated the banking holiday, he used an executive order to demand that privately held gold be turned in to the government (with the government determining its worth). Finally, after a joint resolution of Congress, Roosevelt ordered the repudiation of private and public contracts denominated in gold — contracts designed specifically to get around the danger of government repudiation. The Supreme Court grumbled but essentially upheld his decision. The markets responded positively.

A progressive constitutional vision would acknowledge what seems relatively obvious in the A.I.G. case: the danger is not that risk-taking financial actors will lose when contracts are repudiated, but that taxpayers will lose if they are not. There was no constitutional obligation on the government to make itself weaker than A.I.G. itself would have been under the circumstances. Even if the government did not have clear statutory authority to reorganize A.I.G. summarily and repudiate some of its obligations overnight, it could have relied on the precedent of the 1930s. Faced with an emergency situation that was arguably less pressing, Roosevelt simply ordered the steps necessary, sought Congressional validation and dared anyone injured to sue after the fact. At a minimum, the government could have threatened A.I.G.’s counterparties and executives with the possibility of such emergency measures. It is not as if President Obama had specific statutory authority on June 16 to compel BP to set aside $20 billion to cover the costs of the Gulf oil disaster — his demand was backed by the weight of his office and the direness of the emergency.

Why did the progressive economists and lawyers of 2008-9 not act as F. D. R. would have acted? Surely neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations intended consciously to act in the interests of bankers rather than those of the public. But under the logic of the bailout, the markets were in charge, and the overarching aim of the government was to propitiate them to avoid disaster. Even under these conditions, a progressive constitutional vision should focus on government’s duty to protect the public — not the bankers who needed to be bailed out in the first place. A bailout had to happen; but the way it was done did not have to be shaped by the strange goal of protecting the “rights” of the corporate actors whose shirts were being saved.

For constitutional conservatives, the most worrisome feature of the Troubled Asset Relief Program was the possibility that government funds would come with strings attached, leading to government control of financial institutions akin to the control the government now has over General Motors. They were concerned that government control in the private sector would compromise the independence of the business community, weakening its capacity to stand against government — a danger that exists in socialist systems. For constitutional progressives, the fear associated with the TARP funds should be almost exactly the opposite: that the bailout reflected and enhanced a system in which the government serves the markets, not the taxpayers. Under today’s economic conditions, the risk of corporations being subordinated to government interests seems faint indeed. The danger of the government’s operating to serve the interests of the corporations in which it has acquired a stake seems remarkably serious. Constitutional decisions made against this backdrop — whether by courts or by other government actors — should recognize that the government may take the steps necessary to achieve the best economic outcomes without being tender about the property rights of market actors who have taken on (and hedged) risk in the hope of high return.

VI.BEYOND RESTRAINT

It is unfortunate that constitutional law is now once again facing the severe challenge of dealing with the astonishing strengths and risks associated with our version of capitalism. We are all better off when economic crisis is averted and wealth increases. Constitutional law, for its part, is purer and more morally uplifting when it is focused on liberty and equality.

But these issues will not go away. The health care reform, President Obama’s biggest legislative accomplishment thus far, has already been challenged by 20 states as an unconstitutional infringement on individual liberties and states’ rights. We can expect constitutional challenges to any Congressional attempt to plug the holes left by the Citizens United decision. More broadly, the Tea Party movement finds its roots in deep skepticism about the legitimacy of government action — an impulse that will issue eventually in legal and constitutional battles.

The Constitution can fulfill its function only if it enables us to adjust to the most basic problems that the world throws at us. Our democracy — including free speech, elections, civic organizations and the rest of its assorted components — has never existed independent of our economy. Absent crisis, it is hard to muster the concentration or the will to make our constitutional system accept this reality and deal with it. So long as the markets continued to deliver the immense gains of recent decades, the chances of regulating the markets’ effect on the democratic system were slim indeed.

Now the moment has arrived for progressive constitutional thought to return to its origins — and to improve on them. Judicial restraint is once again needed. But it must be justified in terms of the underlying goal of preserving our democratic system against the threat of control by market actors. Corporate rights should not be confused with individual rights. Our success or failure will not be felt right away — but it will have consequences for generations to come.

Noah Feldman, a contributing writer, is a professor at Harvard Law School. His new book, “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of F.D.R.’s Great Supreme Court Justices,” will be published in the fall.

More Tax Dollars Flushed Down the Crapper. By Geniusofdespair

In my Top Ten County boondoggles published April 6th 2008, I mentioned: The County buying a people mover train from Sumitomo Corp. in Japan for MIA, that the county had no tracks for. Because of that the county had to pay the Japanese millions to keep the train "exercised" on tracks in Japan ($54,000 a month for 4 years).

Well here is an update from "Miami Today". Now the county doesn't know how to operate and maintain the people mover and the cars are out of warranty (after its 4 years joy ride in Japan) so the county just approved a $33.4 million contract to Crystal Mover Services (Sumitomo Corp.) to operate the damn train.

In April 2008 I reported that Sumitomo's original contract, when it was hired by American Airlines in 2002, was for $86,588,000. It was raised to $114 million in 2007 and was expected to cost an additional $25 million to $35 million. The Japanese must be laughing at us as they deposit wads of Miami Dade money in their bank.

Commissioner Joe Martinez actually was the voice of reason at the County asking: "We knew these trains were coming out of warranty...we could have trained people during that time, why wasn't there forethought and why didn't we train these people four years ago, three years ago, two years ago?" Good question, it would have saved $33.4 million of our tax dollars! Maybe if the County/American Airlines bought in the U.S. it would have cost more but we would have saved with operating costs.