On November 7, 2006, there was an electoral disaster in Sarasota County, Florida. Almost 18,000 people, about one in seven of the people who voted electronically, left the polls without recording a vote in the congressional race, the hottest race on the ballot. Most observers agree that few of these voters deliberately skipped voting in that race. Instead, they were either misled into not seeing that race or the voting machines somehow failed to record their votes. There is consensus on one point, however. Although Republican Vern Buchanan was certified the winner by only 369 out of more than 238,000 votes and is now representing the 13th Congressional District of Florida (CD13) in the U.S. House of Representatives, if the “missing” votes had been recorded, Democrat Christine Jennings would almost certainly have been elected (Stewart, 2006).
There was a nearly 27-month supply of existing single-family homes on the Fort Myers market last month compared to a three-month supply at the height of the local boom in housing in August 2005, according to Denny Grimes, a top real estate agent in Fort Myers.
At the same time, more than 40 percent of single-family homes were listed at prices below $250,000 versus just 18 percent at the market peak.
"There's a lot of blood in the water and there's a lot more to come," Grimes said.
Fort Myers "is by far the worst housing market that we're in," J. Larry Sorsby, executive vice president and chief financial officer of home builder Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., told Reuters.
a task force working with the Drug Enforcement Administration has raided 25 grow houses in Lee County so far this year.
Greenland contains about 9 percent of all ice on Earth—also enough water to raise sea level by 5 meters. Should either West Antarctica or Greenland surrender its ice sheet to the ocean, much of the southern half of Florida would be under water.
the most recent scientific projections show that unchecked global warming will be a disaster for the US, inflicting enormous damage to our costal areas, burying much of Louisiana, Florida and other parts of the US under water. . .
Romm brings quite a bit of expertise and gravitas to his arguments. Arguably in the know about government policy practices Romm lays out both a convincing scenario about global climate modification...and a set of coherent policy solutions to prevent the worst of the problem. Unfortunately, I agree that while a solution is "doable" it won't get done. Goodbye Florida, goodbye Louisiana!
What people have done when they come to this state, I think, they came with their own dreams, their own agenda and have done their own thing, and so there isn't a powerful set of symbols that pull people together," Foster said. "Searching for the soul of Florida"
we're all real-estate speculators. . ..
For the moment, what we are stuck with is a system that relies on astuteness and judgment on the part of all making speculative decisions. In the current case of the housing and mortgage industries, such reliance has proved to be, literally and figuratively, a bad bet. seattlepi.com
A month has passed since Washington introduced licensing exams for some aspiring new mortgage brokers, and more than half of those taking one of the key tests have flunked. Puget Sound Business Journal
The Financial Times pinpoints the center of the worldwide housing bubble, and finds, mirabile dictu, it can be pinpointed in Sarasota:
'Canary in the cage' tells of housing woesMr. Callan goes on to make clear that Sarasota is by no means atypical of the 16-year threshing turbine known as Florida real estate:By Eoin Callan in Sarasota County, Florida
Published: August 10 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 10 2007 03:00
The seizure that gripped European financial markets yesterday can be partly traced to an unlikely place. Like the proverbial butterfly that flaps its wings and sets off a tidal wave on the other side of the world, Sarasota, Florida is at the centre of the US housing bust that sent shockwaves through global markets.
The Sarasota district has experienced the biggest drop in house prices in the country, with foreclosures spiking after a drop of almost 15 per cent in the year to March.Florida is the "canary in the cage", according to Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs.
The precedent has alarmed Wall Street economists tracking the worst US housing slump in 16 years, as price falls in Sarasota have spread across the state and threaten to drag Florida into recession.
The Financial Times was wrong to single out Sarasota as the epicenter of the global financial crisis . . . said Jack McCabe, a Deerfield Beach-based real estate analyst.before acknowledging that it's a minor blemish in a bang-on portrait of a market:
"Naples, Fort Myers, the Cape Coral market has experienced the largest price drop in the U.S.,"
"Florida is where the boom started and ended, and where the bust started," McCabe said. "Previous boom-and-bust cycles have started in California. This time, Florida is the state that experienced the height of speculative activity that drove the boom."After some lipflapping from experts, the FT finds the standard Florida apologist for shite business sighting the mandatory lining of silver:
There were obviously other areas of the country that also experienced high levels of speculation -- Southern California, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Washington, D.C. -- but Florida was undoubtedly the epicenter, McCabe maintains.
But Joe Hembree, president of the Sarasota Realtors Association, says the local market will recover as flippers cut their losses. "There are great bargains to be had throughout the community as asking prices have dropped," he says.
Kerry Kirschner, executive director of the Argus Foundation, agreed.
"I think this is positive for Sarasota," Kirschner said. "This will impress on people that they ought to look in Sarasota if they want waterfront property."
How not to do it:
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune carries lots of video news clips these days, but it's all just like TV news, because that's what is is: pickups from the associated (Comcast cable) SSN6 news channel. Most of their video clips are anchor-read items, very short, with 10-second pre-roll ads and post-roll ads that are often longer than the news items themselves.
Experienced H-T site users soon learn to close their video pages as soon as the actual stories are over to avoid the overly long post-roll ads, so they probably don't do much good for the businesses that pay for them. Worse, they are repeated endlessly; the same old ads run over and over instead of fresh ones constantly being plugged into the rotation.
It's almost as if someone in an executive capacity at the Herald-Tribune took a course in how to deliver TV-style news as badly as possible, then came home and put everything he or she learned into practice on the paper's website.
- Online Journalism Review, Robin Miller, Editor in Chief for OSTG, owner of Slashdot, NewsForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, SourceForge.net, and the ecommerce site ThinkGeek.A long while back, the Brad Blog noticed what most media apparently did not - the final audit of the bogus 2006 election in Sarasota made no sense whatsoever.
That was the election wherein:
An extraordinarily high undervote rate, some 18,000 votes (nearly 15%), was registered by the touch-screen voting machines --- only in Sarasota County --- in the hotly contested election to fill the seat of departing former FL SoS Rep. Katherine Harris (R). The final certified result of last November's election favored Buchanan by just 369 votes. The election is also being contested in the U.S. Congress under the Federal Contested Elections Act.So what did election officials conclude?
The one page official statement issued by Browning --- a former state election official and admitted "ardent supporter of touch screen voting systems" (see video here) --- misleadingly states that "the audit team concluded that there is no evidence that suggests the official results are in error."Public integrity, thy name is Florida.
In fact, the "independent" study commissioned by the state from Florida State University (FSU) seems to indicate otherwise in the panel's report today [PDF]: "There is no dispute that this undervote is abnormal and unexpected and that it cannot be explained solely by intentional undervoting," the report reads.
On Monday the pages of the New York Times got smaller, and today one of its major regional news organizations laid off more editorial staff. Only a month after offering a cheapskate buyout of employees 50 and older (and chickenshittedly fessing up), the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is once again announcing that it's "trimming" staff.
Although the article says the number reporters laid off is "unspecified," the bloodletting was in fact quite specific, according to sources within the newsroom. The-about-to-be-trimmed staff was hastily summoned to suspenseful, must-attend meetings in each of the paper's newsrooms, and those being laid off were given their walking papers in front of the entire assemblages.
There's an as yet unconfirmed report that in some bureaus, the assemblies were, Last Judgment-like, divided into two groups. One group was then informed it was saved, the other advised of its damnation.
The Sarasota paper may be the flagship of regional Times rags, but this manner of treating its employees bespeaks a thuggish, mandarin culture that demeans the profession.
The paper is also bagging its tedious "Florida West" section (but rescuing its most tedious features: food, wine, health and fitness,) and closing certain of its bureaus to the public. Ironically, the paper that once feared to attach its name to its online site (it called it Newscoast.com for over a year) now claims it will create "interactive web sites" -- that give citizens the right to post vanity pictures -- to placate residents in the areas where many of the cuts were made.
"Because our customers increasingly interact with us by phone or e-mail, the North Port and Englewood offices will be closed to the public," [Sarasota Herald-Tribune Publisher Diane McFarlin] said. "Customers who prefer to visit us in person can do so at our Venice and Port Charlotte locations."Virtual readership indeed. Perhaps if the paper actually covered events, realities, hard news with something resembling integrity, it would have fewer revenue concerns.
Trinity Broadcasting Network
, a California-based Christian empire with 12,500 worldwide TV and cable affiliates, took over Holy Land and its estimated $8 million (€5.8 million) mortgage. International Herald TribuneThey're said to be praying more too.
Floridians and tourists are playing the lottery in record numbers, according to the Florida Lottery's most recent fiscal report.
During fiscal 2007, the Lottery recorded more than $4 billion in sales, resulting in more than $1.26 billion contributed to Florida's education system, the fifth consecutive year of more than $1 billion contributed, a release says.
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
When it comes to GOP twig Ann Coulter and her Palm Beach voting snafu, the fat lady has yet to sing.
While most expected the conservative pundit to be off the hook for good when the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office punted a voting fraud probe in April, the Florida Elections Commission now is investigating.
Coulter, a constitutional lawyer, voted in the wrong precinct in a Palm Beach town election in February 2006 after registering at an address that wasn't hers.
The Coulter voting saga is now known as FEC Case No. 07-211.
SARASOTA -- A downtown Sarasota firm is at the center of an investment scheme that state and federal investigators say bilked at least 380 mostly elderly Southwest Florida investors out of at least $35 million.
Secured Capital Investments, which did some of its business out of a small Main Street office as Capital 1st Financial, has been shut down by a 12th Judicial Circuit Court judge and placed in receivership.
Investigators with the Florida Office of Financial Regulation say the business advertised high-interest, FDIC-backed certificates of deposit, then persuaded many customers to sink thousands of dollars into high-risk, unsecured debt obligations and unregistered securities. SH_T
Tallahassee (FL) - Following an alarming report about the security of California's electronic voting machines, a new study shows Florida's systems still need some work too.
Yesterday, reports shined light on California's voting machines and a bevy of mechanical and electronic design flaws that could compromise election results.
The Florida study, performed by Florida State University's information technology lab, showed that there was potential for memory card fraud. An external memory card, which is the only method of keeping track of the votes, is easily accessible and could be swapped out with one that gives an artificial vote count boost to a losing candidate.
Though the report about Florida's voting machines don't show as many potential areas for tampering as California's report does, it's still a concern for the Secretary of State Kurt Browning. The Associated Press reports Browning has asked the manufacturer of the machines, Diebold, to fix these problems before next year's presidential primary election.
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