How dirty is Miami real estate? A LOT DIRTIER than you think ... by gimleteye

It is time for reflection, after a long run as a Miami-Dade taxpayer. When I moved from the Keys to Miami in 1992, I embraced the challenge of calling attention to the importance of preserving open space and farmland as a buffer between the intensely developed areas of Florida’s most populous county and the fragile beauty of the Everglades. Previously, I spent nearly four years as an advocate for Monroe County marine resource issues and had become involved for the first time in my life in local county politics, part of a successful effort to run out of office a majority who had proudly called themselves, “The Concrete Coalition”.

In Miami-Dade I discovered two planning tools critical to protecting the downstream economy and environment in the Keys; 1) the Urban Development Boundary embraced by the county but under constant pressure by developers and the supply chain of special interests and 2) state law mandating comprehensive land use plans by every one of Florida’s counties.

“All growth is good” propelled Miami into the 20th century, but by the end of the century it was evident that a new model needed adjustments. These two planning tools were intended as a rationale framework to bring together competing interests. The problem, of course, is that the competition between civic values and private property owners is not fair. One of the ways failure manifests is through the unregulated influence of corporate law that encourages property owners and speculators to hide their identity through invisibility shields like limited liability corporations.

Every issue of concern to Miami Dade taxpayers — traffic congestion, overburdened schools, fire and police protection — manifests through county politics. And as we know, too well, county politics are extraordinarily influenced by deep pocketed donors who now, thanks to the Citizens United decision by the Bush Supreme Court, give unlimited amounts of money to support causes and candidates.

Today, there is attention on the decision by Mayor Gimenez and the majority of the county commission to support the extension of a major state highway, SR 836, into the southwest corner of Miami-Dade; exactly the geographic area that absorbed my interest after moving to Miami two and a half decades ago. It is as true today as it was then: it is impossible to know who one is negotiating with, when one’s opponent can shield his or her identity through a limited liability corporation, or, LLC.

Eye On Miami is virtually the only space in the media universe where this and related issues have been investigated.

We have mapped to the extent possible, with freely donated time and energy, the LLC’s behind the push that absorbs so much of the elected officials' attention. Sometimes the identities are well known — lobbyists, for instance, who are required to identify themselves. But those are just the tips of the icebergs.

A very small group of land speculators, who are extraordinarily wealthy through the growth of suburban sprawl, dominate the outcomes that put such huge costs on the backs of taxpayers. They’ve figured out the playbook to persuade voters that their cause is noble: ie. “jobs” and that opponents are “elitists”and worse.

If voters knew their names and could make the linkages, it would be a start to a level playing field. At least, then, there would be some “sunshine” to illuminate a path for voters. That’s why, in 2016, I was so excited to learn about an Obama Treasury Department initiative to require the disclosure of LLC ownership in property transactions, as a test case in a few areas of the nation. Miami-Dade was an obvious place to start. I wrote at the time, this was “the best story of 2016”. Attention was being paid.

The Herald's recent report, "How dirty is Miami real estate? Secret home deals dried up when feds started watching", is a book-end to the federal effort to find out who is behind the biggest land deals in South Florida. It turns out that as soon as the speculators found out the feds were watching, they stopped using LLC's..

LLC transactions declined by 95% during the study period. The breathtaking number answers the question, “How dirty is Miami real estate?” The answer: Very.

The land flippers and speculators who stand to benefit from Mayor Gimenez’ SR 836 jihad don’t want to be identified, but we know they exert profound influence.

The take-away is as true today as it was those long years ago: VOTE. If you care about Miami-Dade, your taxes, and your quality of life; vote for candidates who aren’t stuck on the suburban sprawl merry-go-round because they are tethered to campaign cash from special interests whose identities are shielded by corporate law.

Former Miami New Times, now Pulitzer Prize winner Jake Bernstein on the Paradise Papers ... by gimleteye

Jake Bernstein makes the excellent point: Miami real estate values are soaring beyond the reach of ordinary citizens and voters because they are parking lots for offshore cash.

To extend the thought: voters are hostage to a financial system that mostly operates in the darkness. Our politics tacitly support and endorse the entrapment of individual hopes and dreams because, the perpetrators claim, it's "first amendment rights" or other feeble excuses.

The Paradise Papers point to a fact that most people know to be true: the global financial system is rigged. What most people don't do; connect the dots back to state legislators and federal elected officials who not only tolerate but in some cases benefit directly from the secrecy.

Please be sure, if you have charitable donations to make, to support independent journalism like that which produced the Paradise Papers.


Opinion | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
New York Times
The Paradise Papers Hacking and the Consequences of Privacy
By JAKE BERNSTEIN NOV. 7, 2017

Last month, the international law firm Appleby announced it had been the victim of a hacking and that information on its clients was in the hands of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the news gathering organization that broke the story of the Panama Papers in April 2016.

On Sunday, material from that hacking became public. The Paradise Papers exposed the hidden financial dealings of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Queen Elizabeth and the athletic apparel company Nike, among many others. As revelations about tax-dodging airplane purchases and secret Russian ownership in tech companies came to light, Appleby declared that it takes its clients’ confidentiality seriously and billed itself as “not the subject of a leak but of a serious criminal act.”

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

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook

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

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

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

Facebook and Information Operations v1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Representative Frank Artiles: "Hey, Nigga!" ... by gimleteye

When Frank Artiles goes to the Senate floor today to apologize for calling colleagues, "niggas", don't expect his fellow legislators to raise his true offense in this session: two horrendous bills promoted by FPL, one of the state's top GOP campaign contributors. As chair of the committee proposing new energy-related legislation, Artiles is lead political organizer in the state legislature for FPL and other state monopolistic utilities.

In March, the Miami Herald reported two of Artiles' key bills in this session: "One bill, SB 1238, by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, would allow utilities to charge customers for exploratory natural gas fracking in other states, overturning a Florida Supreme Court ruling against FPL last year." FPL has flat out lied to consumers and to the PSC about its fracking adventures in Oklahoma. It's figured out a way to get ratepayers to fund a money-losing operation that does nothing for Floridians.

"Another bill, SB 1048, by Sen. Tom Lee, R-Thonotosassa, would revise state law after the Third District Court of Appeal ruling that found Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet — acting as the state siting board overseeing power plants — failed to consider the city of Miami’s development rules when it signed off on allowing FPL to string 88 miles of line atop towers 80 to 150 feet high. The legislation would unravel the court decision and revise existing law relating to rights of way corridors, allow new variances for local land use regulations, and give the Public Service Commission the exclusive authority to order utilities to bury utility lines, said Victoria Mendez, general counsel for the city of Miami, which filed the lawsuit."

FPL transmission lines will trigger the death of real estate values along one of Miami's most heavily utilized transportation corridors, US 1.

Like its closest corporate ally, Big Sugar, FPL both advances legislation that serves its own profit goal but also fills the purpose of "taking legislators out for a walk on leash". Think: training hunting dogs.

When legislation Artiles supports turns taxpayers and voters into second-class citizens, one instantly understands how he could call his colleagues, niggas.

Senator Joe Negron and the last, best chance for taxpayers and voters to escape the mismanagement of Florida's waters ... by gimleteye

The big controversy in the Florida legislature this session is Senate president Joe Negron's effort to fund the acquisition of 60,000 acres of land now in sugarcane production. Although a bill has not been publicly released, there is speculation whether his plan will be approved by the Florida legislature and Gov. Rick Scott.

It is a battle royale because the acquisition frames a central issue for one of the nation's most politically important states: who controls water? The paradox is that whatever the outcome,  Big Sugar comes out the winner. In the current status quo, Big Sugar calls the shots. It is spending a fortune to stop Senator Negron's initiative, including a continuous blizzard of PR tactics, but the moment Big Sugar can extract the MAXIMUM offer by the state for their lands, the golden spigot will shut off.

In the meantime, most media reports lose focus on the fact that this isn't a new battle. Efforts by environmentalists to re-arrange South Florida's water management infrastructure and equitably serve the needs of the economy and the environment have stretched out for so many decades that public attention has tended to wander, "I thought we saved the Everglades."

Despite billions spent, it is not true. Florida's political and economic status quo incentivize all the wrong policies instead of positive steps based on sound science. To prove this point, consider one of Big Sugar's principal allies: the state's largest electric utility, Florida Power and Light.

FPL is pushing hard for final permitting to build two new nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point facility in Homestead. In October 2016, according to Barry White of the Citizens Alliance for Safe Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved " ... a plan to inject toxic chemicals and liquid radiological waste (radwaste) from the reactors into the Boulder Zone at 3,000 feet into the Floridan Aquifer on the assumption that it is hermetically sealed and the waste water would stay there forever."

This "plan" resembles in its key aspects one of Big Sugar's central delaying tactics in the multi-decadal fight to maintain its prerogatives. Like FPL, Big Sugar also supports using underground aquifers that connect to the drinking water supply serving millions of Floridians and visitors in order to avoid fully accounting for the cost of its pollution.

In the case of Big Sugar, the pollutant is excess fertilizer including highly toxic chemicals added by industry to its waste stream. Its plan is to dump "excess" water into aquifer storage and recovery wells; an engineering strategy the late John Marshall, founder of the Arthur Marshall Foundation, called, "vertical parking lots".

Regarding FPL's planned aquifer destruction, CASE tried to offer the Nuclear Regulatory Commission evidence of connectivity and permeability between all levels and areas of the Floridan Aquifer and all other parts of the 4,000 square mile Biscayne Aquifer in South Florida. White writes, "Putting billions of gallons of toxic chemicals and radwaste with tritium, cesium and Strontium 90 into the deep aquifer presents irreversible pollution with potentially irreversible dire consequences."

The same happened to environmentalists complaining that the 2000 Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) called for the massive use of ASR wells; some three hundred were included in the original $7 billion CERP. At the time, the USGS, nation's foremost science agency charged with sorting out the public interest in underground aquifers, was not even consulted.

The following is from a 2015 USGS report:

Recent studies by the U.S. Geological Survey of seismic-reflection profiles acquired in onshore canals and offshore in Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic continental shelf have indicated the presence of tectonic faults (one strike-slip fault and multiple reverse faults) and karst collapse structures, and these studies substantiate the utility of this approach for locating feasible vertical-fluid flow pathways. The strike-slip fault and karst collapse structures span confining units of the Floridan aquifer system and could provide high permeability passageways for groundwater movement. If present at or near wastewater injection utilities, these features represent a plausible physical system for the upward migration of effluent injected into the Boulder Zone to overlying U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designated underground sources of drinking water in the upper part of the Floridan aquifer system. ("Seismic-Sequence Stratigraphy and Geologic Structure of the Floridan Aquifer System Near “Boulder Zone” Deep Wells in Miami-Dade County, Florida", USGS in cooperation with Miami-Dade Water and Sewer)

John Marshall, in the 2000's, served on the South Florida Water Management District's advisory board, called the Water Resources Advisory Committee. Marshall was a fierce and persistent advocate for additional land acquisition in the Everglades Agricultural Area during these years. Today, the WRAC is stuffed with Big Sugar mouthpieces, lobbyists, and friends of Gov. Rick Scott. The WRAC, as a result, is providing cover for the state water management district to oppose Senator Negron's acquisition plan. "Stay the course" including the reliance on underground aquifers through ASR wells.

In May 2015, the following was published in Journal of Geography and Geology (Vol.7, No. 2):

The available evidence, including comparisons of chloride concentrations for injected and “recovered” water, confirm that ASR has not fulfilled ASR proponents’ claims as a means of “storing” or “recovering” water injected into the aquifer, a “new water supply” and groundwater “recharge” alternative, or a potential solution to the eutrophication of Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. Consequently, ASR wells simply function as additional “disposal” and water supply wells, without providing any additional aquifer capacity to support those groundwater withdrawals. Claims that “performance” of ASR improves after multiple cycles, or long-term injections are based solely on the ability to force larger volumes of water into the aquifer at a given well location. This phenomenon is the result of severe erosion and/or dissolution of the aquifer matrix comprising the structural component of the aquifer and meets the USEPA’s definition of fracking. ("Fractures as Preferential Flowpaths for Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) Injections and Withdrawals: Implications for Environmentally Sensitive Near-Shore Waters, Wetlands of the Greater Everglades Basin and the Regional Karst Floridan Aquifer System", Sydney T. Bacchus et al)

The State of Florida approved the siting of FPL's new nuclear reactors, gliding past economic facts Gov. Scott didn't like and a dangerous reliance on underground aquifers that he did like. He is doing the same, with Big Sugar. Both rely on deliberately misreading or denying science and fact.

Big Sugar depends on subsidies embedded in the Farm Bill, and who knows what the incoming Trump administration will say about those. No one is asking Big Sugar to walk away from 60,000 acres without fair compensation. No one is asking local communities to surrender jobs, without planning and investment for future opportunities. What Senator Negron has proposed is to fix Florida's water future and a foundation built at a time by decision makers who bought into false promises and bad science. This is the last, best chance to reverse that unfortunate course.

The Annual Everglades Coalition Meeting: Answers At Hand While Political Will Wavers ... by gimleteye

January 4, 2017

Fly, Rod and Reel Magazine

REPLUMBING SOUTH FLORIDA

FLORIDA AND THE FEDS SOUGHT TO “IMPROVE” THE HYDROLOGY OF THE EVERGLADES BY BLASTING WATER STRAIGHT INTO LAKE OKEECHOBEE AND OUT BOTH SIDES.

Banana River, March 2016. Fish kills in the northern part of the Saint Lucie River and Indian River lagoons are caused by local septic, urban and lawn runoff. 

Story by Ted Williams
Photographs by Marjorie Shropshire

After heavy rains last winter the Army Corps of Engineers protected cattle ranchers, dairy farmers and sugarcane growers in Lake Okeechobee’s watershed by dumping their polluted water on distant residents of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The massive, nutrient-laden torrent was vented east down the Saint Lucie River toward Stuart and west through the Caloosahatchee River toward Fort Myers and Sanibel Island.

Atypical only in severity, the diversion added to the ongoing devastation of two sprawling estuaries vital to fish, shellfish, corals, birds and marine mammals. This time at least 161 cities suffered, many blighted by blooms of toxic cyanobacteria (misleadingly called “blue-green algae”) that kills aquatic life as it nears salt water. Victims include fish like tarpon that push through the floating poison to breathe air and ecosystem-supporting baitfish like toadfish, gobies, pilchards, pinfish, mullet, silversides and anchovies that can’t quickly vacate poisoned areas. What’s more, the regular slugs of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee have killed seagrass, free-ranging shellfish and oysters that filter out pollutants and provide food and habitat for fish. Recovery takes years.

The loss of seagrass has been catastrophic. That was the habitat that supported most life.

Cyanobacteria also creates fumes toxic to humans. Some residents, especially those with small children, had to evacuate their homes. By summer toxic levels near Stuart, located on Florida’s east coast, were 1,700 times the safe-exposure level. A state of emergency existed in Martin County. Swimming, fishing and paddling were banned.

The recreational-fishing industry in the affected area has been devastated. According to Captains for Clean Water, a nonprofit group started by fishing guides Dan Andrews and Chris Wittman, areas that had been paved with oyster bars and lush turtle grass are now biological deserts.

As the Annual Everglades Coalition Meeting Starts, A Message From Bullsugar.org ... by gimleteye

Polluted irrigation canal in Florida sugarcane field

Gimleteye (please follow my Twitter feed @gimleteyemiami): honestly, the most distasteful aspect of Big Sugar's disinformation campaign is that the outcome will make Big Sugar oligarchs even richer than they are today. One way or another Big Sugar always cuts the sweetest deal it can, and that's what all this manufactured doubt and yammering against land purchase in the EAA is all about. Thanks to taxpayer largesse and Congressional indifference/fear/greed through the Farm Bill, Big Sugar is already the most heavily subsidized agricultural "crop" in the US. Moreover, Big Sugar never pays its fair share of pollution, even though voters required it through an amendment to the Florida Constitution. The legislature failed to act on the law. What Senate President Joe Negron is trying to negotiate will make Big Sugar many hundreds of millions. Still, from an environmental point of view, whatever money is spent taking land out of sugarcane production and stopping suburban sprawl from filling in behind, is money well spent to preserve Florida's economic future, including the future of immediately impacted jobs and communities in the EAA.

The fake news industry kicked off the new year in style. A flurry of misinformation from US Sugar’s Judy Sanchez, Janet Taylor’s “Glades Lives Matter,” the Sunshine State News, the Okeechobee News and others introduced the following stories (in no particular order): Scientists are planning to flood Belle Glade and Clewiston Everglades restoration is a front to eradicate farming Toxic algae blooms don’t come from Lake Okeechobee Federal agencies are killing off endangered species Water can’t flow south into the Everglades in wet years Florida Bay doesn't need any more freshwater than it gets now Lake Okeechobee would be clean without pollution from the north Some of these would be funny if they weren’t part of a deliberate, well-funded campaign to clutter the news with distracting, contradictory noise that muddles messages about Everglades restoration, and especially Joe Negron’s plan to buy land in the EAA. They don’t need to fool anyone – just create enough irritating static to make people tune out. US Sugar singled out today’s Everglades Coalition Annual Conference, too, deriding the idea that one solution can help fix three estuaries. This isn’t just cheap criticism – the plan to fix Florida’s broken plumbing has a far better chance to succeed if it unites people and conservation groups from around the state. We’ll be at the conference, too, covering presentations, reports, and discussions. Look for summaries on our Facebook page and linked in next week’s newsletter. Stay Tuned: Calls to Lawmakers Needed In Tallahassee next Wednesday (January 11) at 10:00, a Florida senate subcommittee will hear presentations - for and against - on Sen. Negron's plan to create dynamic water storage in the EAA. The agenda is here. We'll summarize the bill when we see a draft, and we may need people to contact subcommittee members. If we do, Bullsugar.org will send out contact information and key points ASAP. Many thanks, Peter Bullsugar.org http://www.bullsugar.org/P.S. If you can, please click here to donate to Bullsugar.org today. We continue to rely solely on individual support - not corporations, foundations, or institutions. Anything you can contribute makes a real difference!

GOP House guts ethics panel just in time for Donald Trump ... by gimleteye

They didn't even wait for the Inauguration. Yesterday, Republicans took an axe to the House Ethics Panel and the order created after the last GOP ethics scandal involving former Greenberg Traurig lobbyist Jack Abramoff, after an earlier one involving Newt Gingrich, the first speaker of the House ever charged with an ethics violation.

"Drain the swamp" was one of Donald Trump's beefy talking points to red-state voters who vaulted him to the White House by a mere 100,000 votes in three key electoral states. Even those voters were duped, but buyer's remorse won't do any good now. "Drain the swamp" was a promise already turned into a lie.

We are all spectators at a Great Unravelling of American Exceptionalism until the plan reveals for Trump's first 100 days. In the meantime, consider the reaction to yesterday's news by Gary Kasparov, former world chess champion and now one of Vladmir Putin's bravest critics. On Twitter, Kasparov wrote of the GOP action: "First step, blind the watchers."

Larry Hawkins: A different obituary, a different journalism, a different civic outcome ... by gimleteye

Larry Hawkins, photo by Miami Herald

The hand-wringing over the election of the least qualified president in the history of the United States has revived calls for attention to civics in education.

The passing of the late Miami-Dade county commissioner Larry Hawkins provides an opportunity to reflect on damage done to our democracy as a consequence of political manipulation outside the boundaries of ethical conduct.

The Miami Herald obituary of Larry Hawkins was straight down the line; without color or commentary.

Hawkins, a Democrat, came along at a time in Miami-Dade politics as the balance of power shifted from an earlier generation, roughly defined as white, Caucasian (cf. Steve Clark), to a Cuban-American one.

The corruption of the county commission could be defined by free Bahamian casino chips or condos with obscure title ownership or cash in paper bags, but if so, they have to be retrieved from the dustbin of history as rumor; rumor one repeats at risk. However.

Having observed and participated in some of the external manifestations of Larry Hawkins' involvements -- the Homestead Air Force Base fiasco in the mid 1990's and the Homestead Raceway debacle -- I feel on safe ground to offer the following.

Donald Trump was elected to the White House because enough voters in key electoral states believed that a bull-in-the-china shop could destroy business as usual separating taxpayers from their government. How does government end up failing taxpayers so thoroughly that voters would literally risk blowing it up?

On the one hand, it is true that there is an extraordinarily low level of understanding of civics, how power works, the role of checks and balances in the three branches of government, and the ideals of democracy. On the other hand, there are thousands of examples how democracy is deformed every day, in every corner of America, related to the organizing principle of political conduct in America today: money.

After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Larry Hawkins saw a way to weld a popular outcry for redevelopment in the last rural section of Florida's most politically influential county with political service to Cuban American developers who, ever since the Bay of Pigs, voted Republican.

Why not give this military air base to private developers (without bidding) allied with the GOP to spur economic redevelopment? It started as a small plan; only a couple of hundred acres. The air base still needed to be transferred from federal ownership to the county, but once Hawkins and his Cuban-American cartel, called HABDI, saw how easily the small plan was approved by local government, they aimed to take thousands of acres. And not just the air base; if zoning codes could be flipped around, tens of thousands of acres of surrounding farmland could be easily converted to the economic engine of choice in Florida: suburban sprawl.

In 1993, Hawkins figured that the Homestead Air Force Base at the edge of Biscayne National Park could be used as a bargaining chip; a win-win scenario for everyone who had an interest in making boatloads of money out of the natural disaster and political profit to Democrats.

President Bill Clinton, flanked by Larry Hawkins, left, and Howard Glicken, Democratic fundraiser

The plan Hawkins set in motion was disastrous. It was disastrous because it was unethical, it involved the Miami-Dade county commission, its chairman Art Teele Jr. and then commissioner Alex Penelas in a game of power-brokering that eventually acquired the momentum of a force 4, political tornado: a slow-moving, all-encompassing waste of taxpayer dollars and political capital skirting the edges of the law, that eventually even enmeshed a president, Bill Clinton, and his hopeful successor, Vice President Al Gore. As a power play to benefit Democrats, to say that it seriously backfired would be the understatement of the 20th century.

Hawkins lost his district commission seat, under accusation of sexual misconduct, but he hung at the periphery as the air base drama unfolded. County commissioner Katy Sorenson, who battled for and won successive terms to District 8, became the visible leader of an effort to hold government accountable to its own laws.

The late Arthur Teele, former chairman of the Miami-Dade County Commission, a Republican, opposed the Hawkins / HABDI plan

Eventually and quietly, in 2002, the US Department of Defense brought the ignominious saga to an end. People moved on.

The Cuban American developers assembled from the board of directors of the Latin Builders Association, HABDI, might have lost a few million. Maybe not even that. Taxpayers, through the usurping of local government agencies, including the aviation department and the county attorney's office -- lost a lot. A real cost accounting was never performed or even demanded by the county commission, but likely involved tens of millions. In this case, the money obscures the end tragedy: a deformation of democracy.

The heart of this taxpayer and political disaster wasn't touched on, at all, by the Miami Herald obituary of Larry Hawkins, and that is too bad. History only counts, only matters, if it is told.

What Hawkins did in the case of the Homestead Air Force Base fiasco was to empower the notion that a key purpose of government is to be at war with itself.

It happens when corporations and private interests and agendas commandeer regulations and rules that are intended to protect the majority of people. In the case of the air base, those regulations and rules define what private developers can do to wetlands, to endangered species, to water quality, to traffic and infrastructure meant to protect peoples' quality of life.

The war by government against government has become a defining theme of our times, without any reasonable defense of the purpose of government to protect people. By empowering special interests to control the levers of government, voters are in fact collaborators in the subversion of democracy. It wasn't Larry Hawkins' fault, except that he saw political and economic opportunity and he pushed it hard.

By being at war with itself, government moves away from a purpose of service and honor to taxpayers to a tool of insiders and elites who dictate the weapons and terms of war with the public, with voters and taxpayers. That is not only happening in Florida today, it is a model that virtually defines the political logic of Florida governor Rick Scott and his designated successor, Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam.

These lessons can be taught in a civics class, but they can also be served by lessons of history -- drawn from many examples of a subtropical paradise lost, one deep cut at a time.

Michael E. Mann: "I'm a scientist who has gotten death threats" ... by gimleteye

There is not a single fiber of your being that should be OK with threatening scientists who are exposing climate change impacts.

Plans to interfere with federal budgets and science policies have been widely broadcast through Trump political appointees, through pro-fossil fuel lobbyists and GOP elected officials, and by President-elect Trump himself.

We are on the edge of something entirely different. The United States has ever experienced either a president like Donald Trump or a runaway climate. Call where we are, as a culture and economy: Terra Incognito. That's the phrase early cartographers used to identify geography that had not been explored or mapped.

#TerraIncognito.

What we have never seen, and what has not been mapped yet: climate change-based economic scarcity. Within all the intelligence briefings that Trump has skipped is evidence that climate-change based scarcity is behind war, famine, and the greatest migration of populations in history.

It is happening now in parts of Africa and the Mideast rapidly turned unlivable. To imagine that nature's fury can be contained, or that we in the mid-latitudes are immune to the afflictions already evident southern latitudes has already been disproved by rapid disintegration of polar ice sheets. A furious melting is underway yet unaccounted in normal tide levels. Winter is coming, in the phrase from Game of Thrones.

The Trump White House intends to lock down the privileges of the wealthy and to let the good times roll in a 21st century version of the Gilded Age. Science will rain on their party. Their plan is to capture science and shunt it away from gullible voters and taxpayers.

According to NASA, that 2015 and 2016 were the hottest years since measurements started in the 1880s. Here's a report from earlier this year by the federal agency whose climate change science mission the GOP Congress and Trump White House will curtail, absent push back from enough Republican Senators.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet's warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century.

In 2017, we will be hearing more from Michael Mann and fellow scientists with courage to speak against deformation of science policies and budgets by the Trump White House. Listen to what they have to say.

Opinions
I’m a scientist who has gotten death threats. I fear what may happen under Trump.
Washington Post
Donald Trump’s pick of Scott Pruitt for Environmental Protection Agency administrator is just one of many ominous signs.
By Michael E. Mann December 16

Michael E. Mann is a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. He co-authored, with Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles, “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.”

My Penn State colleagues looked with horror at the police tape across my office door.

I had been opening mail at my desk that afternoon in August 2010 when a dusting of white powder fell from the folds of a letter. I dropped the letter, held my breath and slipped out the door as swiftly as I could, shutting it behind me. First I went to the bathroom to scrub my hands. Then I called the police.

It turned out to be cornstarch, not anthrax. And it was just one in a long series of threats I’ve received since the late 1990s, when my research illustrated the unprecedented nature of global warming, producing an upward-trending temperature curve whose shape has been likened to a hockey stick.

"Are you now or have you ever been a ... scientist?" ... by gimleteye

"Are you now or have you ever been a communist?" was the signature question by the House Un-American Activities Committee, lead by the late Senator Joe McCarthy. HUAC both defined the Cold War for generations of Americans and also set the bar low for political witch hunts that needlessly destroyed reputations, careers, and lives.

Back when we lived in Key West, a hero -- now gone twenty five years -- had been called to testify, or, to rat out his friends and colleagues. In this aging brain, the Cold War rattles with many ghosts that have been revived by the election of Donald Trump who holds a ruthless president and former KGB agent, Vladmir Putin, in high esteem. That is not all.

The Trump transition is following a path established in Florida with respect to the imposition of predetermined conclusions on science. Here is the Florida version.

Growth management in Florida was crafted from a bipartisan consensus in the 1980's. Its original mission was based in consensus, forged equally by Republicans as Democrats, that balancing development with the environment was good business and good policy.

Its success beyond the first handshake depended on good will of successive generations of elected representatives. There was a problem: human nature.

The premise pitted the profit imperative against deliberative science. Florida governors, from Lawton Chiles onward, began to erode the mission of growth management -- ignoring science -- in favor of big campaign donors.

Those donors cared less about what had been lost in terms of quality of life and the environment than next quarter's profit.

Donald Trump is a businessman/politician -- much like Florida's Governor Rick Scott -- whose presumed genius ("I'm, like, smart.") conflated with a vision conferred by private jet at a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet.

Over time in Florida, growth management critics with a less exalted view -- they understood perfectly well whose pockets were being lined by zoning variances and building permits in defiance of science-based wetlands or coastal protections  --  formed a chorus in the state capitol.

"Government is inefficient and wasteful and can't do its job," went part of the chorus. Another part: "Environmental regulations kill jobs."

The part that voters and taxpayers missed: that Florida's growth management agency had been slowly and deliberately hollowed out from within, even as citizens and community activists hoped for the protections in state law.

Now Trump inherits federal agencies who have also been starved from within, by the same cast and characters and motivations as in Florida, but on the federal level.

Consider the US E.P.A.

The rampant politicization of science at the E.P.A. began in the George W. Bush White House. Global warming policies were strung out and eroded by Bush appointees to federal agencies from the Beltway. During this time, just like with the Florida Department of Community Affairs -- the growth management regulatory agency -- , Republicans formed a chorus: the agency needed to be stopped, scientists needed to be turned away from global warming missions.

Bush White House operatives lead by Karl Rove prevented scientists from speaking to the public and the press except under circumstances where they controlled the message. For scientists who depend on state research dollars, the effect was extraordinarily swift and chilling.

President Barack Obama did his level best, through executive authority, to reverse the damage to federal missions to protect the environment. Now, Donald  Trump.

This is context for the alarm when Trump's energy transition team headed down the same road as Florida Governor Rick Scott, prohibiting state employees from using the terms in public meetings, "global warming" and "climate change".

With its recent "questionaire" to federal agency scientists on climate change, the Trump White House -- and its appointment of the ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to Secretary of State -- is either heading to a public witch hunt, or, a more carefully obscured effort to weed out fact.

It is not what a majority of American voters wanted, and not even what a majority of Trump supporters endorsed, given his victory by a hair-breadth. But, who is measuring the weight of anything except those fingers tipping the scales of justice?


First Look
Trump team's 'intrusive' memo alarms federal climate scientists
Seeking the names of employees who attended climate change talks 'feels like the first draft of an eventual political enemies list,' said an employee with the Department of Energy.
By Rowena Lindsay, Staff DECEMBER 10, 2016
Christian Science Monitor


Donald Trump’s transition team has sent a list of 74 questions to the Energy Department (DOE), asking, among other things, for the identity of all employees and contractors involved in international climate meetings and domestic attempts to cut carbon emissions.

The questionnaire specifically asked for the names of all DOE employees who attended the United Nation’s annual climate talks for the past five years, employees who helped develop the President Obama’s social cost of carbon metrics, and which programs are essential to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.

Giga-Kristallnacht on Trump's global warming agenda ... by gimleteye

During the presidential campaign, the Koch Brothers offered tepid support to Donald Trump. Judging from their victory laps, the Kochs are celebrating the best ROI ever, in a lifetime repackaging massive profits from pollution as lavender bouquets for consumers and voters.

Philip Newell writes, "Fear and Loathing at Koch-Funded Trump 'Shadow Transition Team' Event": it's a doozie, right up there with the GOP silence about the split between Trump and the CIA, who conclude that Putin's Russia hacked the presidential election.

Here is what is happening with the GOP: Clinton/ Benghazi, yes! Trump/ Treason? Crickets.

Anyhow in a clear sign of what fucking horrible year it has been: climate scientists are taking to Twitter and social media to gather and hide their seed banks of data and information related to climate change and global warming before the Trump inauguration.

They better get to work fast, because the likelihood of "suspicious" fires in data centers and server farms is rising. Giga-Kristallnacht is on Trump's horizon.

Only a few days ago, Trump's transition sent out questionnaires to climate scientists in federal agencies along the lines of "have you now or ever been" involved with global warming policy. The message is chillingly clear: the Trump administration will weed out science in federally funded agencies related to climate change.

Think the science is "settled"? Certainly will be, when you make it disappear. (By the way, that is in effect what Governor Rick Scott has done in Florida and was, perhaps, how Scott answered the question in his recent meeting with Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan: "Rickie, how did you make Florida so great?" Answer: "I made Florida great by prohibiting state policy makers from using the terms "climate change" and "global warming.")

In his questionnaire targeting climate science, Trump instantly summoned the ghost of Roy Cohn -- his honest-to-God mentor. Cohn filed his teeth as a young aide to Senator Joe McCarthy's "House Un-American Committee" in the 1950's, and sixty years later, Trump appears poised to do him one better.

Next: Trump plans to shoot down NASA satellites gathering climate change data.

These aren't written down yet, but here are the GOP Ten Commandments of climate change. They are ready to be inscribed by the GOP Congress and blessed by President Trump:

1) Climate change is like the weather: there is nothing we can do about it.
2) Jobs before carbon limits.
3) Man is top predator. Other species, adapt or die.
4) If some part of climate change is man-made, whatever happens is God’s will.
5) We know what is best for you.
6) As the party of limited government, environmental regulations are self-defeating.
7) As the party of capitalism, climate-driven policies are wasteful unless in our donors’ interests.
8) If one size does not fit all, then protect existing subsidies before any additional subsidies are adopted.
9) Dissenters will be punished.
10) We will adapt economic behavior to climate change as it happens, not before.

Oh by the way, there is irony in the scum line of bad news: Senator Joe McCarthy whipped up hysteria against an imagined Soviet menace in the United States, while the hysteria whipped up by Roy Cohn's acolyte, Donald Trump, is a Trojan Horse with a Soviet menace inside.

Here is Philip Newell's report:

Nexus MediaFollow
Fear and Loathing at Koch-Funded Trump “Shadow Transition Team” Event
Science gives way to science fiction at an ominous meeting of fossil fuel elites
By Philip Newell


There was a climate denial event today, hosted by the Heritage Foundation, which has been described as Trump’s ‘shadow transition’ Team, and Texas Public Policy Foundation. The following is a first-person account of a day-long descent into madness.

There was a great diversity of speakers across the six sessions. There were speeches by men from Congress, men from think tanks, men from fossil fuel companies and lobby groups, men from science and a man of law addressing the gathering. Women were also allowed at the event, to give the introductory and dinner keynote addresses and allowed an occasional emceeing role.

Call out Big Sugar's disinformation campaign for what it is: anti-democratic, anti-environment, anti-people, and anti-taxpayer ... by gimleteye

Please watch an excellent video on the Lake Okeechobee crisis by the Weather Channel, which is really a crisis of Florida politics and water caused by Big Sugar's domination of water management infrastructure. Also, Maggie Hurchalla takes on the disinformation campaign being waged by Big Sugar.

In Miami-Dade County, what is at stake with Everglades restoration are not just birds and manatees: it's our water supply. Be informed. Watch, read, and speak out to your elected officials in the county commission and state legislature: Buy The Land Now and sign the Now Or Neverglades Declaration! Support groups like Bullsugar that are fighting Big Sugar's multi-million dollar disinformation campaign.

Toxic Lake: The Untold Story of Lake Okeechobee from Weather Films on Vimeo.

POINT OF VIEW
Negron on right track for Everglades restoration
Maggie Hurchalla, Palm Beach Post
Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016

Someone needs to point out that former Pahokee Mayor J.P. Sasser’s view of Everglades Restoration is a mythological beast.

As noted in his Nov. 29 Point of View piece, his plot goes like this:

Environmentalists don’t care about the Everglades. They hate the people that live south of Lake Okeechobee and want to destroy their livelihood. In the beginning, environmentalists opposed a storage reservoir south of the Lake even though we all know it was badly needed. Now environmentalists support a reservoir south of Lake O even though everyone knows it was never part of CERP (Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan) and is not needed. State Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, is working to get the state to buy land south of the lake for a reservoir because U.S. Sugar is a client of his law firm.

Here are the facts:

CERP, or Everglades restoration, has always required buying a large amount of land south of Lake O. Without that land for storage, treatment and conveyance, Everglades’ restoration won’t work, Miami’s water supply will more rapidly go salt, and Florida Bay and the coastal estuaries will be irrevocably destroyed.

The unfinished reservoir where millions were wasted was a part of the state Accer8 program. It was designed to give most of the stored water to sugar growers, and less water to the Everglades than CERP called for. It did not include water quality treatment. It was an expensive mistake in the wrong place.

The land acquired earlier with state and federal funds has been used to meet the state responsibility for water quality ordered by the federal court.

The purchase of 60,000 acres of land in the 470,000-acre Everglades Agricultural Area will not destroy agriculture south of the lake. It is the amount of land required by CERP. Because of sugar’s huge requirements for irrigation in the dry season and for treatment of stormwater runoff, it is the only way we can have peaceful coexistence between the environment and the sugar industry.

Negron’s proposal to buy 60,000 acres does not favor U.S. Sugar. It has equal impact on the two big sugar companies.

CERP is not about alligators out in the swamp. It is about the future of South Florida. The continued insistence of sugar company supporters that water doesn’t have to go south and can’t go south will have unbearable consequences for all of us.

Negron has taken a leadership role in trying to negotiate what is right, fair and will work. We all need to get behind him.

Fidel ... by gimleteye

I share the anguish of Cuban American friends who lost loved ones in the violence under Castro. For some, personal tragedies will be genetically imprinted and echo through generations. One could say, Castro's passing marks a time of healing.  Perhaps celebrations will help dissipate the pain he and his regime inflicted on families and friends. Perhaps. Miami has long projected an ethos -- hatred of Castro -- with mixed results. Castro projected his influence on Miami politics for generations and through Miami, the nation. His death will be not be a meaningful symbol unless we account for the architecture of personal and political catastrophe, here and across the Florida Straits. 

How Big Sugar dominates Florida: a case study ... by gimleteye

Crystal Mills Lucas, candidate for Florida state representative District 83

In Florida this election cycle, Big Sugar is playing hard in a state representative election, District 83 north of Palm Beach, that says everything about “rigged systems” and “political cronyism”. Surprised?

Crystal Mills Lucas, a first time Democratic candidate for the Florida state legislature, is running against Gayle Harrell, a Republican in Martin County — the formerly sleepy county that includes Stuart and Port St. Lucie. Lucas has been endorsed by the local newspaper, the Treasure Coast Palm.

The incoming president of the Florida Senate, Joe Negron, is from the area. His support of Harrell would be partisan and politically correct, but it is more than that. To see what a challenger like Lucas faces in a lock-down, rigged system; consider the following.

Lucas is a former school teacher and avid outdoors woman. With her husband and daughter, they grew to love the Atlantic coast beaches and the St. Lucie River devastated, in the winter of 2016, by highly polluted and toxic water spewing from Lake Okeechobee. For the first half of 2016, a river of toxic slime covered the shorefront of downstream communities like Lucas’, Harrell’s, and Negron’s. Homeowners and visitors were appalled by a thick, guacamole-like blanket of algae that was toxic to touch and to breathe.

The pollution tsunami also impacted Florida’s west coast, through the Caloosahatchee River. There, a similar dogfight is playing out between a challenger, John Scott, motivated to run by the terrible pollution and an incumbent Matt Cadlwell, whose campaign account is filled with polluter money.

The 2016 pollution was so bad, so awful, so damaging to local, small tourism-dependent businesses that a civic movement rose up — mainly on social media — in response. I wrote, at the time, about the emergence of groups like Bullsugar.org as "Florida’s Arab Spring".

That means, in terms that campaign consultants understand, the interest of potentially millions of urban voters was suddenly opposed to a few Big Sugar oligarchs and rural communities where jobs depend on sugarcane production.

The fortunes of the oligarchs depend on polluting practices that shift the majority of cleanup costs to taxpayers and push the practice and implementation of Florida's water management policies and infrastructure into the wilderness.

Then in the winter of 2016 -- a year ago -- the rains began to fall in dry season, forcing water managers to open the floodgates of hell. The South Florida Water Management District and US Army Corps of Engineers supervised the disposal of billions of gallons of toxic water into waterways and along coast real estate owned mostly by taxpayers who vote Republican. But not exclusively Republican.

Water pollution is an equal opportunity offender, and soon social media lit up, a phenomenon that Big Sugar attributed at first to its long-time adversaries: nonprofit environmental groups. Only this time, the opposition to Big Sugar was fueled by broad based, civic revulsion.

Against this backdrop, Crystal Mills Lucas decided to run for public office. She had a little money, a supportive family, great enthusiasm and a willingness to put her time and energy on the line for democracy.

She did so in a Florida county that is statistically insignificant in state-wide elections, but very important in terms of geography and Big Sugar. The western reaches of Martin County border hundreds of thousands of acres in sugarcane production. Big Sugar has a deep interest in converting its lands to suburbs, to inland shipping ports, and industrial uses like rock mines as soon as its economically feasible. Obtaining zoning variances and building approvals depends on local regulations and state laws.

Through privileges and subsidies implicit in the federal Farm Bill, a handful of farmers like the Fanjuls’ Florida Crystals empire and the descendents of Charles Stuart Mott through U.S. Sugar Corporation are extraordinarily wealthy. Big Sugar sprinkles political money like candy drops on legislators; a practice called by GOP taxpayer advocate Grover Norquist, “cronyism in its undiluted, inexcusable majesty”.

Big Sugar's tactics have evolved along with campaign finance law. In 2012 — the election cycle after Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court blew the doors off corporate restrictions on campaign contributions — Big Sugar decided to play hardball in local county elections. In the final weeks of the campaign, U.S. Sugar Corporation spent nearly $1 million in “dark” money to defeat Ray Judah, a long-time Lee County commissioner and Republican, who had been the most eloquent advocate for converting lands in sugarcane to water storage and treatment to stop his west Florida coast constituents from being bombed by pollution during wet, rainy years.

In the August 2016 primary election in Martin County, Big Sugar invested in political action committees to eliminate another challenger who supported land acquisition in the Evreglades Agricultural Area, the former mayor of Sewell's Point Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch.

Big Sugar is behind the scenes working to stop Crystal Mills Lucas’ challenge of Gayle Harrell for state representative. According to recent filings, Lucas has raised about $71,000 compared to Harrell’s $200,000.

The money is relatively small potatoes, except it is not. Political committees lined up behind Harrell are investing a multiple of what she has directly raised for her campaign. According to Lucas, every day at least one attack mailer against her is arriving in voters’ mailboxes. The mailers are supported by attack ads on local TV. They are all negative, and all are funded by anonymous political action committees with anodyne, misleading names.

One mailer charges Crystal Mills Lucas is a polluter herself; that her home septic system discharges into the ground. This ties to one of Big Sugar’s tactics: to shift blame for pollution of Florida’s estuaries and rivers to homeowners whose septic systems discharge into the aquifer.

This story is now gaining traction on the front page of the local newspaper, Gannet-owned Treasure Coast Palm: in fact Lucas’ sewer is on a city line.

Another mailer insinuates Lucas is a terrorist.

Harrell’s campaign report shows a $10,000 contribution from the Republican Party of Florida — a drop in the bucket — and another $1000 contribution from the Treasure Coast Alliance, a political action committee controlled by Senate president Negron. These small contributions from connected entities have a point: to plant the flag, in effect, on the durable partnership between the Florida GOP and Big Sugar.

There has been no similar flag-planting by the Democrats on Lucas’ campaign. The careful cultivation of Democrats by Big Sugar — spreading crumbs through Democratic consultants like Balsera Communications in Miami and African American communities — keep it that way.

Lucas, like many other Democratic candidates at the local level, are going it alone because the Florida Democratic Party is a David compared to the GOP Goliath, organized around big business and trade associations like the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida; groups that are, first and foremost, vehicles for GOP political campaigns. Here is a glimpse how it works.

According to her October campaign finance statement, more than 2/3rds of Gayle Harrell’s expenditures in this election cycle have gone to one political consultant, McLaughlin & Associates, based in Blauvelt, NY.

According to its website, "McLaughlin & Associates is a national survey research and strategic services company whose personnel have played a key role in assisting successful organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Latin America. We specialize in public opinion research, media planning and buying services, and strategic consulting services.” The website doesn’t say it is a GOP operation; the resumes of its key staffers do. Its media director Marianne Campbell lists among past clients Florida Sugar Farmers and Florida’s Working Families.

According to state election data, Florida’s Working Families is now inactive, but ten years ago the political action committee was a vehicle of Big Sugar during a pitched battle to stop citizen activists from passing a constitutional amendment called Florida Hometown Democracy.

Florida Hometown Democracy was a constitutional amendment whose language was approved by the Florida Supreme Court in June 2006. Its organizer was Leslie Blackner, a Palm Beach mother, attorney and activist who invested $1 million of her own family assets in the effort.

If enough signatures could be collected and verified, and if approved by 60% of Florida voters, the measure would have given citizens a strong voice in land use decisions in their communities. According to its website at the time, "Rising taxes, falling home values, gridlocked roads, dwindling water supplies and Florida’s disappearing beauty are just some of the devastating consequences of Florida politicians’ habit of rubberstamping speculative plan changes. Hometown Democracy Amendment 4 changes all that by giving voters veto power over these changes to your community’s master plan for growth."

To Big Sugar, the goal of the citizens’ initiative was a threat by proxy; as fiercely opposed in 2006, as Big Sugar is now fighting the emergence of first time candidate Crystal Mills Lucas in 2016.

In August 2006, Big Sugar deposited $3 million in the campaign account of Florida’s Working Families, and in the following months, the PAC paid McLaughlin and Associates -- the same firm being used by Gayle Harrell -- at least $1.4 million.

Big Sugar’s lobbyists and consultants promoted a faux, competitive constitutional amendment — just like Florida’s utilities are doing in this election cycle with Amendment 1. Big Sugar, just like Florida's utilities did this year, paid off signature collectors and confused voters. FHD supporters failed to gather enough signatures to quality for the 2008 ballot, causing a two year delay.

In October 2009, Florida’s Working Families received another $100,000 from US Sugar Corporation. In late October 2010, it paid $75,000 to Political, Ink., a Republican campaign/media firm based in Alexandria, VA whose principals have extensive resumes on behalf of top GOP legislators and funders like the Koch Brothers. http://politicalink.net/index.php/team

By 2010, an army of political action committees, including those representing Florida homebuilders and realtors were arrayed against Florida Hometown Democracy. Blackner estimated her opponents spent more than $15 million to defeat the measure. After the harsh loss — more than 70 percent of Florida voters in 2010 voted against the measure — she said: "Unfortunately, it is very difficult to have a rational discussion of a solution to Florida’s horrible growth management problem in 30-second television ads that cost millions of dollars to air. Voters were subjected to the full financial power of those special interests that are committed to maintaining a death grip on their ability to control the status quo of sprawl and overbuilding in our state."

Subsequent to the 2010 initiative, an election cycle that carried Rick Scott to the Governor’s Mansion, growth management — that had been under relentless pressure for a decade -- was decapitated. What is left of the agency that once attempted to govern growth in Florida now works out of a broom closet in the state capitol.

Big Sugar’s top shareholders judged the uprising in 2016, Florida’s Arab Spring, as the same threat as Florida Hometown Democracy; citizens meddling in its control of state and federal policies to protect the industry’s right to extract the last, red cent from sugarlands it owns; lands that could be used to protect the Everglades and Florida’s badly damaged estuaries and bays or for suburban sprawl.

That is where Crystal Mills Lucas lands: a neophyte inside a "rigged system" putting up campaign yard signs surrounded by Republican leadership engaged in a tribal rite: to spare no expense in maintaining control to the account of its benefactors, Big Sugar oligarchs.

It is not just that Senate president Negron, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida, and Big Sugar interests want to beat Lucas: they want to send a clear and unequivocal message to dissenters in their ranks and to Democratic challengers.

The message goes something like this: you might have rejected our guys, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, and you might win the presidential election, but we have Florida locked down. Raise your voices on Facebook and social media, but if you dare to tamper with our rigged system, we will use every tool in the toolbox to make sure you fail. We will restore the Everglades and maybe the rivers and lagoons, but it is not going to look anything like your version of restoration. It will look how we want it to look, surrounded by suburbs we control and flood control infrastructure we also control. And, If you want to leave the state, be our guests: we will guarantee you safe passage.

That’s the simple message behind an expensive campaign to defeat Crystal Mills Lucas by the Republican Party of Florida, its dark money pools and Big Sugar funders.

What does this say, however, about the post-election picture? This summer, Senate president Joe Negron signed the Now Or Neverglades Declaration calling for acquisition of lands now in sugarcane production using funds directed through another citizens’ initiative to protect the Everglades and other environmentally damaged areas of the state.

Just because he signed, doesn’t mean he will put his shoulder to the legislative wheel in 2017 with any expectation of success. Moreover, by signing the Declaration, Negron effectively removed Florida’s pollution crisis as an electoral issue in 2016.

Big Sugar proxies have already launched a campaign in north Florida districts, enlisting politicians to object to the use of state funding to increase the footprint of state land ownership in the Everglades Agricultural Area south of Lake Okeechobee. There are, in fact, no secrets in Florida. The exchange of secrets between legislators and Big Sugar takes place out of state.

It is simple. As Big Sugar says, through its army of legislators, consultants and industry associations, to millions of disenfranchised and angry voters — including Republicans in districts like the one where Crystal Mills Lucas is challenging Gayle Harrell — elections have consequences.

Secrecy of the State: The Foundation of Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida GOP ... by gimleteye

A sinkhole recently opened under a waste pit owned by one of the state's biggest polluters, a phosphate mining company called Mosaic. For weeks, the company and the state of Florida kept the secret: that hundreds of millions of gallons of slightly radioactive fresh water had emptied from a waste pond into the sinkhole to god-knows-where but likely straight into the aquifer used for the regional fresh water supply.

Gov. Rick Scott is trying to respond ...

Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch analyzes political action committee/ Big Sugar's influence in Martin County: how corporations are more powerful than people ... by gimleteye

Gimleteye: Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch, a popular Republican municipal official, was the favored candidate in the recent GOP primary election for Martin County Commission. She was also the pro-environmental candidate running on a platform of fixing the vast pollution caused by Big Sugar's domination of the water management infrastructure in Florida, connecting Lake Okeechobee to Florida's diseased waterways. For her views, she was punished by a coordinated political attack by Big Sugar.

Jacqui lost her primary election, thanks to the mysterious injection of a write-in candidate who was a high school student, and a political assault by Big Sugar, who supported the incumbent, Doug Smith, who has been a reliable mouthpiece for the Big Sugar/ pro growth agenda opposed by most Martin County taxpayers.

Smith nonetheless ran in advertisements and in mailers as "pro-environment" funded partially by Big Sugar through PACs. In the blog post, below, Jacqui outlines the ways that interlocking political action committees are pushing candidates while hiding the source of the money.

Martin County is small compared to Miami-Dade, but over the years it has managed to keep growth-at-any-cost at bay, thanks to the awareness of Martin County voters of the importance of protecting quality of life and the key factor of the local tourism-based economy: clean water.

That is in danger now, thanks to Big Sugar.

Understanding C-PAC, JTL vs the Political Machine-A Retrospective, SLR/IRL

Part #3, PACS

1. C-PAC

Today along the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon, I continue my series “JTL vs the Political Machine,” a retrospective for my county commission district 1 campaign loss. I find that hindsight is always 20/20, reviewing everything is helpful, and certainly understanding how things work will make me a better candidate in the future. As a teacher it is an oportunity for me to share the electoral process so others can learn too.

Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch analyzes political action committee/ Big Sugar's influence in Martin County: how corporations are more powerful than people ... by gimleteye

Gimleteye: Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch, a popular Republican municipal official, was the favored candidate in the recent GOP primary election for Martin County Commission. She was also the pro-environmental candidate running on a platform of fixing the vast pollution caused by Big Sugar's domination of the water management infrastructure in Florida, connecting Lake Okeechobee to Florida's diseased waterways. For her views, she was punished by a coordinated political attack by Big Sugar.

Jacqui lost her primary election, thanks to the mysterious injection of a write-in candidate who was a high school student, and a political assault by Big Sugar, who supported the incumbent, Doug Smith, who has been a reliable mouthpiece for the Big Sugar/ pro growth agenda opposed by most Martin County taxpayers.

Smith nonetheless ran in advertisements and in mailers as "pro-environment" funded partially by Big Sugar through PACs. In the blog post, below, Jacqui outlines the ways that interlocking political action committees are pushing candidates while hiding the source of the money.

Martin County is small compared to Miami-Dade, but over the years it has managed to keep growth-at-any-cost at bay, thanks to the awareness of Martin County voters of the importance of protecting quality of life and the key factor of the local tourism-based economy: clean water.

That is in danger now, thanks to Big Sugar.

Understanding C-PAC, JTL vs the Political Machine-A Retrospective, SLR/IRL

Part #3, PACS

1. C-PAC

Today along the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon, I continue my series “JTL vs the Political Machine,” a retrospective for my county commission district 1 campaign loss. I find that hindsight is always 20/20, reviewing everything is helpful, and certainly understanding how things work will make me a better candidate in the future. As a teacher it is an oportunity for me to share the electoral process so others can learn too.

John Scott For FL House District 79: Fort Myers Election Is A David v. Goliath Battle ... by gimleteye

State House District 79 is in Fort Myers. Florida voters are well served to understand a little of what makes Tallahassee tick. This is one race where the choices facing Florida are fully visible. It is a David versus Goliath battle, and I support John Scott, the underdog challenging Big Sugar's salesman in Tallahassee, incumbent state representative Matt Caldwell.

Scott was born and raised in Hialeah. He lives and works as an information technology professional in North Fort Myers and is a volunteer leader for Sierra Club. Although this is Scott's first venture into politics, he has chosen an extraordinarily important challenge against an incumbent who defines  a status quo that is wrecking Florida. On his campaign website, Scott writes:

"... The power and influence of certain special interests over our elected officials has silenced the voice of the people in Tallahassee. I'm running for Florida State House District 79 to be "The People's Voice"." The Caloosahatchee River and our coastal ocean waters are being ruined. Jobs, real estate values, fishing and our tourism industry are all at risk because of terrible environmental policies spearheaded by Matt Caldwell and signed into law by Governor Rick Scott. Florida's water and environment should not be partisan issues. I will fight with every ounce of my being to protect the water and natural beauty that makes Florida "paradise". The people of District 79, and all of Florida, deserve better. We all want fairness in our society. Our government should be powered by the people and add value to our lives without over-reaching. I respectfully ask for your vote so I can represent YOU in Tallahassee and NOT special interests who focus on their own agenda while destroying our way of life. Thank you for your support."

There are a thousand reasons that someone like John Scott should be elected to the state legislature, and only one reason he faces a steep uphill struggle. The Goliath is this race, incumbent state representative Matt Caldwell, is a stand-in for polluters threatened by the "Arab Spring" in Florida that galvanized voters on both Florida coasts after historic rainfall in the winter of 2016.

Caldwell lives in Lehigh Acres, the epicenter of Florida's housing boom and bust. The district he represents is bisected by one of our state's badly polluted rivers, the Caloosahatchee. The gunk that flows out of Lake Okeechobee makes its way through the Caloosahatchee and then up and down the gulf coast.

In a political sense, District 79 is like a clamp that holds state water management polices for Big Sugar. If Big Sugar can't hold District 79, there is no telling what could happen to its downstream interests. Predictably, campaign cash -- both in direct contributions and political action committees -- has flooded in to protect Caldwell. What looks on paper as a 10-1 advantage favoring the Goliath in FL House race for District 79 could easily be five or ten times that ratio once political committee dark money is factored in.

Matt Caldwell Contributions Query Results - Division of Elections - Florida Department of State

Matt Caldwell has raised, by last campaign finance report, $250,000 to Scott's $39,000, mostly small contributions from individuals.

  John Scott Contributions Query Results - Division of Elections - Florida Department of State

Caldwell's money list is a who's who of Florida's regulated industries. Contributors from his own district are scarce as hen's teeth. Moreover, it is nearly impossible to peel back Caldwell's PAC contributions that legally launder special interest money, with anodyne sounding names.

Caldwell is identified, principally, through a political action committee, the Florida Committee for Conservative Leadership. The PAC is filled with tens of thousands of dollars of contributions from industry trade groups, from Big Sugar and from other Big Ag interests.

FL Committee for Conservative Leadership PAC Campaign Contributions - Division of Elections - Florida Depar...

One of the Caldwell PAC's largest contributors is another PAC: Floridian's United For Our Children's Future. A quick review of that PAC shows more of the state's largest, regulated industries including Big Sugar. Florida Power and Light contributed $600,000.

John Scott believes that this election cycle voters are paying attention to Florida's water quality crisis. District 79 has been hard hit. Scott hopes Caldwell's financial arsenal -- stocked by corporations and special interests -- will backfire.

On his campaign website, John Scott counts the environment as his number 1 issue: "Our state is supposed to manage water for the benefit of all but water in South Florida is being managed mostly for the benefit of agriculture. ... Billions of gallons of polluted water from Lake Ockeechobee are being released into the Caloosahatchee River on the west coast and the St. Lucie river on the east coast. That highly nutrient loaded, polluted water is spreading through the Gulf, replacing the crystal clear water with a growing plume that looks like an oil spill in our coastal waters and is fouling estuaries around Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva islands. Tourists are staying away. Fishing guides are losing business. Grass beds critical to sea life are being ruined. ... Governor Rick Scott and Representative Matt Caldwell are on the wrong side of history and their policies are putting all Floridians at risk."

John Scott is endorsed by an Everglades hero, former Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah. In 2012, Judah -- then a county commissioner -- was upset as a result of a massive midnight attack by Big Sugar PAC money. Caldwell helped coordinate Judah's defeat. His offense? To advocate for purchase of lands south of Lake Okeechobee owned by Big Sugar, to relieve the pressure of pollution on the Caloosahatchee River; the disaster that turned into a catastrophe in 2016 and motived John Scott to run against Caldwell. In a 2014 Miami Herald editorial, Judah fired back against Caldwell,

The most deceptive and egregious action against taxpayers during the 2013 Florida legislative session was passage of HB 7065 and SB 768, which amended the 1994 Everglades Forever Act. 

Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres, sponsored HB 7065 under the guise of increasing the sugar industry’s funding commitment to Everglades restoration when, in fact, his proposed amendment was a smoke screen to ensure that the sugar industry would be able to limit or cap its long-term obligation to fund Everglades restoration. 

The 1994 Everglades Forever Act, which was ostensibly written to restore the Florida Everglades, capped the sugar industry’s clean-up costs at $320 million and obligated the public taxpayers for the remainder of the $16 billion restoration project. The so-called privilege tax of $25 per acre that the sugar industry pays to continue its discharge of pollution runoff to the Everglades, as well as to the Caloosahatchee and coastal estuaries, amounts to about $11 million per year. A truly insignificant sum in contrast to the billions required from the public to restore the Florida Everglades. 

The $25 per acre privilege tax was scheduled to be reduced to $10 per acre in 2017 but the Caldwell amendment extended the $25 per acre to 2026. To the casual observer it would appear that the legislative action would ensure that the sugar industry continued to help fund Everglades restoration. 

In actuality, the legislation provided the sugar industry the comfort level or certainty that its long term-funding commitment towards Everglades restoration would be significantly limited in scope. Instead of defending the sugar industry and suggesting that the taxpayers contribute an even greater amount to Everglades restoration, Rep. Caldwell should have supported an amendment to the Everglades Forever Act that increased the $25 privilege tax. 

This would have ensured that the sugar industry paid its fair share towards Everglades restoration as opposed to the sugar industry continuing to receive special treatment as the Florida Legislature’s favorite welfare recipient and shift the tax burden onto the backs of the public. 

Caldwell is quick to point out that the Everglades Foundation and Florida Audubon supported HB 7065, but the Sierra Club and The Conservancy of Southwest Florida took an opposing position that the legislation did not go far enough to level the funding formula between the sugar industry and the taxpayers for Everglades restoration.
In fact, the Everglades Foundation and Florida Audubon only struck a compromise to support HB 7065 because Caldwell was supporting an earlier version of an amendment that would have greatly weakened water quality standards and removed the 1993 Statement of Principles that had been a guide for restoration efforts over the last 20 years. With the objectionable provisions removed in the final draft amendment, the Everglades Foundation and Florida Audubon were in damage control mode and reluctantly accepted the continuation of an inequitable funding formula for Everglades restoration. 

To put the sugar industry’s $11 million annual contribution to Everglades restoration in perspective, Lee County taxpayers pay in excess of $30 million per year to the Okeechobee levy for work by the South Florida Water Management District in the Everglades Agricultural Area to provide drainage and irrigation of the sugar cane fields south of Lake Okeechobee. Lee County’s return on the investment is polluted water, fish kills and harmful algae blooms including red tide. 

Certainly, the more conservative and responsible approach would be to support public policy that protects the interest of struggling taxpayers and hold the sugar industry accountable for the destruction of precious public resources including the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers and coastal estuaries.

Voters ought to carefully consider how the incumbent Matt Caldwell, an avowed conservative, nevertheless violates "the more conservative and responsible approach".

No less a taxpayer advocate than GOP firebrand Grover Norquist calls Big Sugar and its prerogatives, "cronyism in its undiluted, inexcusable majesty". There will be no end to the political corruption until voters understand exactly who they are electing to Tallahassee and the state legislature. In District 79 this election cycle, voters do have a clear choice: John Scott.