David Beckham rep: Soccer stadium without parking a ‘good bet to make’ ... by gimleteye

A sports stadium without parking in Overtown? Really, David Beckham reps? Someone please explain how this makes any sense at all.

Foreign buyers grabbed huge percentage of South Florida home sales

The international influence on South Florida’s residential market was gigantic as foreign buyers accounted for 36 percent of the dollar value of home sales, according to a survey by the Miami Association of Realtors. The survey, which covered Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties for the 12 months ended August 2015, found $6.1 billion in home sales to foreign buyers. Miami-Dade led the way with 78.9 percent of that total, followed by Broward at 18 percent, Palm Beach at 2.7 percent…

January hurricane in Atlantic ... not global warming, my Republican friends say ... "stuff happens" Jeb! says ... by gimleteye

January 2016 hurricane in Atlantic ... nothing out of order, here

Gov. Rick Scott and Donald Trump: The Artful Dodgers ... by gimleteye

In the great novel by Charles Dickens, "Oliver Twist", Jack Dawkins is a pickpocket, an "artful dodger" for his skill and cunning leading a pack of child criminals.

It is an easy metaphor for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, and the like-minded governor of Florida Rick Scott. When the most incurious governor in modern Florida history opined favorably in USA Today about Trump's bid to become the 2016 GOP presidential nominee, he left out the artful dodger part. In "Donald Trump has America's pulse", Scott emphasized how Republican voters are looking for an "outsider".

Scott, was, himself an "outsider" when he ran for the chief executive slot in Florida, like Jack Dawkins at the edge of a crowd in Piccadilly Circus.

Like Trump, Scott's fortune was largely based on skirting the edges of the law. Scott escaped accountability for fraud by the company he founded, Hospital Corporation of America, by a whisker. His hand-picked successors ended up shouldering the personal and financial costs including the largest civil fine ever levied against a US corporation.

Donald Trump has also been an artful dodger; using bankruptcy law many times and slight-of-hand moves with subcontractors to advance his profits.

Charles Dickens (and Mark Twain) would have a field day with today's Republican presidential primary. Most dodgers who aspire to elected office don't have a spare hundred million to throw at a governor's race, the way Rick Scott did. Donald Trump has the money and the will, but will GOP voters will prove as gullible as Florida's? All will be revealed in due course.

Hispanicize conference signs major media sponsors

Hispanicize, a conference that honors Latino trailblazers and newsmakers, announced Thursday it signed NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, Comcast, MSNBC and NBC News as presenting media partners for its seventh annual conference in Miami. “The scope and scale of this partnership is unprecedented in our history and underscores why Hispanicize is more poised than ever to be the place where major newsmakers will gather, and where significant decisions and announcements impacting U.S. Latinos will…

Key Biscayne mansion sold for $47M

A waterfront mansion on Key Biscayne sold for $47 million to match the highest price for a single-family home in Miami-Dade County. Located on a horseshoe-shaped peninsula at 775 Mashta Drive, the house was originally developed in 1917 and called the Mashta House. Back then, there was no bridge to Key Biscayne and the exclusive guests arrived by yacht. It was formerly the estate of W.J. Matheson, one of the founders of Key Biscayne. Now the mansion rises five stories at its highest point and totals…

ASR Disaster: why is this not being reported by The Miami Herald? ... by gimleteye

Aquifer Storage and Recovery wells are a discredited technology that nonetheless is being pursued with zeal by the most clueless governor in Florida history: Rick Scott.

Moneys from Amendment 1 -- the constitutional amendment passed by over 78 percent of Florida voters in 2014 -- are now being targeted as critics anticipated for development of wells that will serve primarily to enrich campaign contributors and the supply chain related to water infrastructure in Florida.

I've been a critic of ASR since it first surfaced as the key component of Everglades "restoration" in the late 1990's. John Rehill, for Bradenton Times, does an excellent job recapping the malodorous facts behind the rejuvenation of a very, very bad idea.

The Bradenton Times
ASR Wells are Full of Empty Promises
John Rehill•Sunday, Dec 27, 2015


Billions of environmental dollars are on their way to be flushed down into the ground with the dry-cleaning fluid, surface-water, wastewater and reverse-osmosis brine. Officials will tell us that there, deep beneath our feet, the people have an investment which will grow in the form of a water reservoir, hedging the cost for future water shortages. But it's more about funneling funds than culling water; more about bracing for skyrocketing water fees than a cost-saving solution.

The plan reads like a novel set in a parallel universe, half fiction, half figment, unprincipled and corrupt; it's a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) scheme that's based on a hoax.

Read more »