The Grimm Truth

Beach Rights Versus Property Rights

   Richard Mason of Miami has his own theories, and a slightly unexpected perspective,  about the beach restoration questions under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court:

  Those that live on the seashore are the real free loaders of society.  They have their insurance premium supported by the people that live inland.

  The property insurance industry operates a front lobbying operation under an environmental name to promote shore restoration. Moving the shore line out, reduces water damage to the shoreline dwellers.   Walton County passed an anti-nudity ordnance to get rid of the naturists that used traditional beach locations before the buildings were built.
   Naturists should file lawsuits opposing beach renourishment with taxpayer money in counties that ban the use of beach areas to naturists. Denying Equal Access is un-Constitutional.
   We do support the county against land take-over by shoreline property owners.  With almost 900 miles of Florida shoreline, there should be more designated areas than the 1/4 mile at Haulover Beach Park next the city of Sunny Isles Beach.
  There should be designated naturist beach areas in several state parks.  This would increase park beach attendance 80% or more and park revenues accordingly.

Red Lights And Traffic Circles

Reader Mike Arias wrote me a few months ago to join me in support of red light cameras at busy intersection. He has not waivered, writing:

Because of their mere presence, I truly believe they will assist to reduce the number of collisions, fatalities and injuries, which are unfortunately currently occurring at these locations throughout the Country. This type of reckless violation is costing society billions of dollars on an annual basis not to mention to pain and emotional suffering and hardship for those surviving family members or for those that were injured. Anyway, since there are apparently some (reckless) drivers that are still currently claiming that, the use of cameras is an invasion of their privacy I would like to propose another worthwhile use for the cameras. Anytime, that a driver runs a red light, the camera would send a wireless signal to their vehicle to momentarily shock the rear end of the driver and / or a telescopic object would come out of the celling of the vehicle from the sun visor area and momentarily jolt the driver between the eyes to hopefully restore the irregular wave length in their brains back to a normal rhythm of common sense. Please note no citation would be issued so that, these same individuals cannot say that, the cameras are simply being installed to generate revenue for the local city governments.

                On another note of concern reference public safety for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists. Throughout numerous municipalities calming devices referred to as "Traffic Circles" are being installed at taxpayers’ expense to hopefully reduce the speed of the vehicles traveling thru the residential areas and I believe that, although this may be the objective or goal of these circles they are also undoubtedly creating other potential hazards for motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists.

First, if you observe the flow of traffic at any of these traffic circles the majority of the drivers are simply not slowing down as required as they enter the circle, on the contrary they either maintain current speed and or often even speed up in order to simply beat the other vehicle already in the circle creating the potential for an increase in the number of collisions, and injuries etc. occurring at these locations.

                Secondly, with the increase in travel speed of the vehicles this, then makes it even more dangerous for the pedestrians and bicyclists to go across the walkways at these traffic circles.

Third, In some locations the travel circles are so narrow in width that, the service vehicles such as: the emergency vehicles, the sanitation vehicles, the moving / delivery vehicles, landscaper vehicles which usually tow a trailer cannot maneuver thru these areas without either climbing on the curbs and or damaging the landscaping or grass adjacent area on the easements of the roadway which then creates a maintenance issue for the local government that installed it.

                Fourth, the majority of these traffic circles do not currently have any lights on them and a night in some of the neighborhoods that do not have any streetlights it is nearly impossible to see the change, which occurs with the traffic routing until it, is too late for the driver to react.

                I believe that in order to make these traffic circles functional and safe they need to be designed to handle the largest type of a vehicle licensed for the roadway as a worst-case scenario.  Three hundred feet  before the pedestrians cross walk ( at a 100 ft. intervals ) rumble grooves need to be installed on pavement with them increasing in intensity as the vehicle is approaching the crosswalk to literally force the drivers to slow down before they enter the circle. This will accomplish the following goals : This will assist in reducing the number of collisions and injuries currently occurring at these locations and this will also make it safer for the pedestrians and the bicyclists ( many of which are children from within the local neighborhoods) to go across the streets at these locations

                The words either Yield or Stop ahead need to be spray painted onto the roadway 300 ft. before the crosswalks ( at 100 ft. intervals) to provide an additional warning for the drivers to see and read as they are approaching these traffic circles and hopefully react accordingly.

                Flashing warning lights ( solar powered)  also need to be installed 300 ft. before the entrances of these traffic circles ( at 100 ft. intervals) such as those in use on the yield and stop signs currently in use in Collier, and Sarasota County and other locations which are very distinguishable and visible for the motorists to observe.

                In order to enhance public safety I believe that, the drivers need to be educated and trained since these circles have sprouted all over with no public safety messages being provided to the drivers by the Municipality or other governmental agency which installed them.

                In addition, thru the use of safety technology already in existence although not currently being utilized in numerous applications where it is desperately needed and or as desired in numerous locations which would be in the best interest of the safety of the drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists can easily be improved.

                I also believe, that the cost expenditures currently being incurred by the municipalities and other government agencies to design and install these traffic circles could be utilized to provide a higher yield of return at a lesser cost to enhance the safety of motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists than with the use of these traffic circles which have numerous issues of concern. Let us not attempt to resolve one problem and create numerous other ones in the process, which will not benefit anyone. I do believe that, if a there is high ratio of collisions occurring at an intersection, which is located in a residential area a traffic circle may perhaps be a viable option of consideration but not with the current design deficiencies cited herein which hopefully will be addressed and resolved thru your editorial forum.

Animal Farm, Circa 2009

      John Bomar, a sailor with a literary bent, noticed an Associated Press story out of one of his old ports, a place long subjected to a government of the Orwellian kind. The AP reported:

      Cuban purchases of U.S. food will fall by at least a third this year as the island slashes imports to stabilize an ever-weak economy further hammered by the global economic crisis, a top trade official said Monday.

      Igor Montero, head of the state import company Alimport, calculated that the communist government would spend less than $590 million on American food in 2009 once banking, shipping and other transaction costs are included. That's down at least 32 percent from last year's $870 million.

      Montero blamed the economic crisis, but also took a swipe at Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo, even though it exempts food, arguing that America should begin buying Cuban products and allowing its citizens to visit the island as tourists. ``If we aren't given more possibility to generate revenue through Cuban exports to the United States, or an exchange of visitors, it's going to be very difficult to continue to reach the levels of trade we've grown accustomed to,'' Montero said.

 

      Bomar recognized  George Orwell’s Animal Farm, reprised in the lovely island he last visited in 1996 on a Danish schooner. He wrote:

      Life on the Animal Farm Island had become even tougher for all the animals, except the pigs in charge, who had grown even fatter.

      When their gaunt ribs began to protrude embarrassingly, those who pulled the heavy loads tried not to notice, prodded on by the pigs who continued to mouth meaningless slogans.

      Sadly, in part because of the threat and "blockade" of the Giant Neighbor to the North, the animals were powerless to raise their voices in protest. You see, with the farm seemingly under siege, it gave even more power and control to the "controller" pigs. And they ruthlessly took advantage of the perceived "looming assault," trying to scare the others while they dragged one away for daring to raise his voice against them. For the clever porkers knew one thing for sure, the poor animals would rather die than submit once again to the outside interference and meddling of the Northern strangers, now that they had gained their independence.

      So now, in the evening, when the ponderous pigs sat down to their lobster and steak dinners, cool in their air conditioned dining halls, they gave a secret prayer of thanks for the enabling policies of their neighbor to the North. Then they dug in.

Why Birthers, Too, Should Always Wear Their Motorcycle Helmets

      As long as I’m agitating crazies, I might as well deliver the bad news to the birthers, the wild-eyed bunch seek to oust the President because they claim he is a foreign-born fake citizen. They’ve claimed, based on evidence that no legitimate news organization has found convincing, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. This despite his Hawaiian birth certificate and the coinciding announcements in the local newspapers. (Obama apparently conspired to take over the White House at a very, very early age.)

      The birthers, despite their ferocious anti-Obama tenacity, have failed in most courts to establish standing. It’s not enough to be simply irritated by great events. The Supreme Court has indicated that one must show actual, personal damage to gain a foothold in court.

      A judge in southern California said last week, however, said that, well, maybe there was a convincing argument for standing. But U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said it didn’t much matter.  Even if the birthers could prove their very tenuous case, Judge Carter said that under the restraints required by the separation of powers mandate in the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge was not about to “overthrow a sitting president.”

      Carter wrote:

       

        In order for Plaintiffs’ alleged injury to be fully addressed, Plaintiffs would have the Court intervene, upheave the results of a national election, declare the President illegitimate, shut down the functioning of the government of the United States, and leave this country defenseless.

      Plaintiffs make it clear from their briefing that they believe that any order issued by a president who does not satisfy the natural-born citizen clause is unconstitutional. Therefore, in order to cure Plaintiffs’ perceived injury, the Court would need to wade deep into the waters of the President’s official duties – in fact, it would have to declare that the President could no longer perform any official duties. The separation of powers concerns implicated by this request are grave.

      The founders of the Constitution created impeachment to allow an orderly process of transition and succession during which the country can continue to function. Plaintiffs’ request, asking this Court to sweep away the votes of over sixty-nine million Americans with the stroke of a pen and order a new election during which the country would be in a state of turmoil, ignores the Constitution’s processes and separation of powers that were developed by the founders.

 

      Next time they ride into court with the reckless and outlandish notion of overthrowing an elected president, birthers should their don protective headgear.

Another Reason To Wear Motorcycle Helmets

      Biker blogger Bruce Arnold, purveyor of the peculiar logic that motorcycle helmets are more of a danger than riding bare headed (crazy but not so crazy that it kept the Florida legislature from tossing the state’s mandatory helmet law), has inadvertently proven quite that brains need protecting.

      Arnold, of the Bikers Forum, has veered out of the mainstream to ride with the 9-11 “truthers,” who cling to the world’s biggest conspiracy theory. Maybe, it was one too many spills without a helmet.

      Arnold writes:     

      I now have reason to believe that "9/11" may have been an inside job. I have a good idea as to what might have happened, and recognize that our government's official story defies both physics and logic. I also have a good idea as to who might have been behind the attacks, and what their motives might have been for staging them. What I do NOT have with any certainty, however, is the ACTUAL TRUTH about what happened to our nation on 11 September 2001.

 

      Looking for a responsible adult to support the truther movement, Arnold brings in the former attorney general of New Jersey and a member of the 9-11 commission.   

    

      The 9/11 Commission Report has been exposed as almost entirely untrue by John Farmer, the Dean of Rutgers School of Law--Newark who served as Senior Counsel to the Commission. In short, THEY LIED. As that is now public knowledge, it is time for Americans to ask some tough questions, and for once in our history, insist on the real answers. Specifically, I hereby call on all who read this to contact their United States Senators and Representatives and DEMAND a new, impartial and independent investigation to uncover for once and for all the Truth about 9/11.

 

      Unhappily for Arnold, what Farmer actually maintains is that the upper reaches of the government and military were caught utterly unprepared by the attacks. That our federal government reaction was one of incompetence. And tried to hide the incompetence.

      In an Oct. 16 interview with Newsweek, Farmer, now dean of Rutgers Law School, definitely did not endorse the truther’s explanation for 9-11. Asked about the conspiracy theories, Farmer said: 

      Well, it's just simply not true. I understand some of the impetus for these conspiracy theories because when the government hasn't told the truth about something, and that comes to light, then people's imaginations are sort of free to run wild.     

      Farmer explained the 9-11 reaction:

      What happened on 9/11 was simply a trailing consequence of all the malfunctions of government that had occurred in the prior 10 years. In virtually every department, there was a growing awareness of the threat of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden through the '90s. What people who were engaged with the outside threat encountered was incredible inertia at the bureaucratic level that really prevented the government from effectively reconfiguring itself against the threat. 

      Farmer added:

      The fundamental ineffectiveness of the government. And when I saw the same kind of pattern emerge in response to Katrina, it really brought it home for me. Katrina was not a surprise. Yet you still had a very similar dynamic play out with Katrina, where you had the top levels of government talking to themselves and estranged from people on the ground reacting to it.

 

      The lesson here. Wear your helmet. Keep your brain from being scrambled.

Blood Money Translates Into Big Money

The strange entanglement of a non-profit blood bank into the high stakes influence game exposed by the FBI investigation into the Broward School Board seems less mysterious after examining the 909 Form the IRS required by the IRS that was filed by Community Blood Centers of South Florida. 

The blood bank makes $90 million a year selling blood. And its executives are well compensated.

Call it up at:

 http://207.153.189.83/EINS/237376740/237376740_2007_0525DAB3.PDF   

Big Money And ESPN Warps High School Sports

      Wondering about the larger implications of ESPN’s incursion into high school sports – the St. Thomas Aquinas prep school in Fort Lauderdale will be making its second appearance on national television Friday -- Sociologist and social critic D. Stanley Eitzen of Colorado State sent me an e-mail with far more information than I could fold into a column. Eitzen has written extensively on the sociology of modern sports. His books include Fair and Foul: Beyond the Myths And Paradoxes of Sport, Sport In Contemporary Socity and a collaboration with George H. Sage, Sociology Of North American Sport.

      Eitzen wrote:

      There are at least 5 indicators that high school sport is moving in the
wrong direction (i.e., away from its place in education)  and toward the
big-time college model.

1.  Some schools are resembling sports programs in big-time universities by selling naming rights to stadiums and arenas, hiring coaches for salaries
far exceeding those of teachers, selling personal seat licenses, spending huge amounts on their football and basketball programs (both male, by the way), and spending in an "arms race" on facilities.

2.  The existence of fraudulent "prep schools" that exist basically to inflate transcripts of those who are marginal students but excellent athletes.

3.  The combined effect of increased exposure and commercialization. Instead of competing against lleague rivals, there is, as you note, competition nationally.  Some schools participate in national basketball tournaments in Hawaii, Florida, Las Vegas, and elsewhere far from home.  For example, Oak Hill Academy in 2006 traveled 13,600 miles for basketball games. These events are sponsored by corporations.  Media attention (USA Today, SportsChannel, Fox Sports Net, and ESPN) is national in scope.  Nike, Reebok, and Adidas pay some of the top coaches for helping steer their athletes to colleges that are "Nike schools" or "Reebok" schools.

4.  Top athletes are given very special treatment in attention, grades, recruiting, being "redshirted," etc.

5.  The intense recruitment by colleges of these elite high school athletes (e.g., being offered a college scholarship while an 8th grader), has detrimental effects.  It inflates egos, and gets in the way of their education.  It also tends tto make them cynical about education because of the sometimes sleazy aspects of recruiting.  Most significant, these athletes are on the market. As such, they ultimately will be purchased by a university athletic department and they will be treated as commodities.

Ex-Mayor Calls Expenditure Of Public Funds On Lobbyists "Borderline Immoral"

      My column on South Florida’s inexplicable penchant for shoveling public money into the pockets of lobbyists struck a chord with former Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez.  Mayor Suarez writes:

     

      You are 100% right in your column of today. In my eight year tenure, the best lobbyists we had were our elected officials. (We even used Paula Hawkins - god bless her.)

      In DC, Miami maintained a presence at minimal cost through an affiliation with the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The conference prepared excellent testimony for me when I appeared before Congressional committees and also provided logistical support for my visits to the Hill.

      As for dealing the executive branch, the office of mayor in Miami had so much inherent clout and so many local figures were so well placed in Washington (Lula Rodriguez, Janet Reno, etc. later followed by my own Jeff Watson) that a lobbyist was simply a facilitator. When our lobbyists failed even in that task, during one of my Tallahassee visits, I refused to vote to renew the lobbying contract. But knowing I would be outvoted by the commission, I cut the contract in half -- from $150,000 a year to $75,000.

      And the only reason I even needed logistical support was that at a $5,000 annual salary,  I did not have the time to learn who the key legislators were.

      To give you an idea of Miami's inherent clout, I was called by both HUD secretaries on the very day they were appointed: Jack Kemp and Henry Cisneros. (They were both friends and both probably wanted to be president, but the fact remains that they were a phone call away - something no lobbyist could claim.)

      It is borderline immoral to pay a private party government funds to convince a government official to do what they were elected to do in the first place.

The New York Times Looks At The Marlins Stadium Deal. And It Looks Like Folly

      Here in the heat of the argument, where old feuds and clashing personalities have obscured the  debate over the Marlins’ baseball stadium deal, the assessment of an objective outsider can be illuminating.

      Monday’s New York Times looks at Miami’s stadium deal. And sums it up this way:

      Miami and Miami-Dade County have agreed to cover three-quarters of the projected $645 million cost to build the Marlins a home with a retractable roof and four huge parking garages. In return, the city and the county will receive no new revenue from the park, and the team can keep all the money from the 50 luxury suites, concessions and advertising, as well as from naming rights, which alone could generate more than $100 million.

      Times writer Ken Belson wrote:

      Such generous terms were not uncommon during good times, before city and county officials faced yawning budget gaps, potential layoffs and cuts in social services. Yet they forged ahead, anyway, largely dismissing voter opposition and the lessons learned elsewhere that new stadiums sometimes fail to deliver the economic punch promised in forecasts and that the public financing for them can handcuff future generations.

The deal was a fresh reminder that even during a recession, sports hold sway over communities regardless of the potential costs.

      The Times story, comparing Miami’s coming expenditures with other contemporary stadium deals, does not conclude that we’ve gotten much of a bargain. The story’s at 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/sports/baseball/21marlins.html?_r=1&ref=sports

The Red Light Camera Debate Endures

Dick Sinnott of Fort Pierce opposes red light cameras. But not for reasons harbored by those who worry about the cameras as an Orwellian government intrusion. (For the record, I don’t agree with Sinnott’s claim that a preponderance of traffic safety studies found no advantage to red light cameras.  My research found quite the opposite, but here’s his letter, unfettered by my views, and without what I consider convincing evidence in support of cameras.  Sinnott writes:

      I read your piece in this morning's Scripps St. Lucie Tribune.  I agree with you that these systems are not so much a question of privacy or constitutional rights.  Though I have heard many people take that position, I don't see it so much.

      That said, I oppose the systems for the simple reason that they are a scam.  They represent an unfair tax for which the person being taxed receives nothing in return.  They offer a specious argument regarding safety that is not persuasive in the least, considering the studies that have been done on these things.

      In case you didn't know, it seems that Australia was actually the first to employ these systems in 1984.  By 1995 the government had studied the results and discovered that while there may indeed be a reduction in right-angle crashes, there is an increase in rear-end collisions as drivers react with panic stops.

      Studies in Canada, Virginia, Washington DC, Charlotte NC and most recently last year at the USF in Tampa all reach the same basic conclusion.  The safety improvement is illusory, and the chances of a net loss of safety are quite good.

      In May a national poll found 69 percent of Americans felt thus and so?  That's hardly compelling.  In 2003 the vast majority of Americans felt that Iraq was in possession of WMD and a threat to the national security.  Back in the 1400's the majority of the populace thought that the world was flat.  Americans are easily misled.