Pillage of Paradise Postponed

Escambia County commissioners last night agreed to "wait two months before considering a change to the county's hotel ordinance that would allow a longer length of stay in hotel/condo rooms." Pensacola News Journal's Jamie Page has the details.

That might be just enough time for the Santa Rosa Island Authority to expeditiously launch the "thorough study" of the implications of violating the county Land Use Plan that the News Journal has called for. Unintended consequences are so much more likely when you haven't looked at any consequences.

Land use and zoning regulations have guided Pensacola Beach house, hotel, and condo development for decades. They shouldn't be impulsively eviscerated by three county politicians on the word of one self-interested developer who claims it would "create a financing mechanism to build better quality hotels... ."

Everybody knows "better quality" hotels is not what this is about. Undermining the legally-mandated residential and density caps on Pensacola Beach is what's really going on.

Directions to Navarre Beach

How do you get to Navarre Beach from Pensacola Beach?

You can't get there from here:

The federal beach road that once serviced more than 800,000 vehicles a year could partially reopen next year, nearly four years after Hurricane Ivan severed it.

But the repairs would not re-establish the long-awaited link between the two beach communities.

Work could start this fall and be complete before next summer.

And, when all of that's done, you still won't be able to get there from here, or vice versa.

Shorter Wolfowitz Profile

UPDATED BELOW

John Cassidy has written a profile of neocon Paul ("they will greet us as liberators") Wolfowitz, now appearing in the current issue of The New Yorker. Two years ago, Wolfowitz made his escape from the Iraq debacle he was instrumental in creating when Bush nominated him to fill the hugely important and powerful position as president of the World Bank.

If you're in a rush, here's a summary of Cassidy's 12,000 word profile:

• Paul Wolfowitz is a lousy administrator, as even his friends admit. He can "barely run his own office" much less a large organization with 13,000 employees like, say, the World Bank.
  
• But Wolfowitz is a "thinker," his Bush administration friends say admiringly. He has lots of deep ideas like, "Democracy good; corruption bad."
• Wolfowitz is disgusted by all those foreign government leaders who engage in nepotism and greedy grabbing for personal wealth. That's why he made sure his mistress, Shaha Ali Riza, was given a promotion and "two pay raises, bringing her salary to a hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars — more than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes."
  
• Want to know the punch line? Her $193,000 salary is paid by the U. S. State Department (Hello, American taxpayers) even though she works for Wolfowitz at the World Bank. Directly under him.
  
• Personally, Paul Wolfowitz is a really sensitive guy who feels for poor people. That's why it makes him momentarily sad every time he abruptly snatches money away from them whenever their governments refuse to support the Bush administration's military expansionist demands.
• Wolfowitz also is disgusted by political cronyism in third world countries. That's why he brought into top World Bank positions Republican buddies from the Bush administration like Suzanne Rich Folsom (a staff attorney for the National Republican Party) and "two American political operatives who were closely associated with the war in Iraq." (Among World Bank employees, one of them is known as "the dragon lady" and the other as "keeper of the comb" that Wolfowitz licks.)

All in all, as Carolyn O'Hara concludes as well, Wolfowitz remains just as much a hypocrite as any in the Bush administration. He's using his World Bank post not to better the world but to feather his own love nest and further the imperialist policies of George W. Bush.

It's time someone brought these people to account.

UPDATE

The Government Accountability Project has more:

Paul Wolfowitz, in the middle of a scandal that GAP documents ignited, sent out a statement to Bank staff over email. There are several problems with the statement, as detailed in GAP's response.

Those problems are summarized in a response posed in the past 12 hours:

Mr. Wolfowitz’ ... message is ultimately misleading on two counts. First, he states that his role in structuring Riza’s assignment to the U.S. State Department was based on “the advice of the Board’s Ethics Committee to work out an agreement that balanced the interests of the institution and the rights of the staff member…” Riza’s position at State is not in question, however. The salary increase she received when she moved there, along with a subsequent raise, are the issue. Wolfowitz makes no mention of this, yet these decisions were his. For the record, Riza currently makes $193,590 net of taxes.

The Board did not recommend that Wolfowitz award a salary increase of such dimensions to Riza, and this is why the Board is looking into the issue.

Secondly, while Mr. Wolfowitz indicated to the Board his intention “to cooperate fully in their review of the details of the case,” he also states that he will not give the Board the documents necessary to verify the facts, citing his obligation to maintain Shaha Riza’s confidentiality. But Ms. Riza’s salary has already been published in the Washington Post. Confidential communications received by GAP now show that Mr. Wolfowitz and his senior advisers are actively pursuing the sources of these leaks.
* * *
World Bank employees need protections, especially when reporting misconduct such as cronyism and favoritism at the upper levels of Bank management. A good place to start would be the African Development Bank’s recently approved whistleblower protections.

Phony Balancing Act

Speaking as we were earlier about entertaining stories in yesterday's Pensacola News Journal, we were tickled to see how the newspaper's once-upon-a-time culture reporter Troy Moon reached into the very bottom of the barrel to find someone to 'balance' consensus views about global warming while ostensibly announcing a few upcoming public events for locals who are concerned about the environment.

It was a hilariously clumsy job. What's next for the newspaper's community calendar? A word or two in favor of high stakes poker while announcing the next Women's Contract Bridge Club gathering?

In one corner, with help from the Associated Press, Troy arrayed 2,500 climate scientists from around the world; U. of West Florida geomorphology professor Chris Houser; long-time Gulf Coast environmental expert Enid Sisskin; former vice president Al Gore whose book and associated documentary respectable scientists have described as "prescient;" and Larry Chamblin, the current president of Sustainable West Florida.

In the other corner he identified three global warming recusants, all of dubious reliability.

First, there's someone Troy identifies as "David Madison, 42." That's all we know about him. Roommate? Street musician? Hobo? Perhaps another one of those bar fly friends who live in fear of GITMO detainees being moved to Pensacola? Who knows? Troy isn't saying.

Second, there is the aged, retired, and lately severely embarrassed hurricane savant, Dr. William Gray. As our neighboring blogger Why Now? points out, Dr. Gray's hurricane forecasts the past few years have been "laughably" wide of the mark:

He built an excellent model based on the information he had, and made his name on that model. The problem is that the model doesn’t seem to work anymore. The assumptions on which the model is based are now untrustworthy.
* * *
[After wide 2005 misses] In 2006 the forecast was wrong in the opposite direction, with no significant storms.

Dr. Gray’s model is not working, and is not likely to work unless changes are made to reflect the changes in the global climate, changes that are visible in lost sea ice and melting glaciers.

Troy's third 'source' is Pensacola radio talk-show host Luke McCoy. A radio talk show host, for heaven's sake!

To be sure, as Chris Mooney wrote some time ago in the Columbia Journalism Review, "journalists face a number of pressures that can prevent them from accurately depicting competing scientific claims in terms of their credibility within the scientific community as a whole." But is there no bottom too low for the News Journal to scrape while seeking phony "balance" instead of accuracy in reporting?

A talk show host? Why not the local butcher or some convenience store clerk, for that matter?

As it happens, we know a little about Luke McCoy. His formal education is scant, as even he admits ("Graduated from the school of hard knocks"). He's lived on Pensacola Beach for some years, although you couldn't really call him a familiar face on the island; as far as we could tell from down the street, he mostly holes up inside and grouses at the neighbors. It's a guess, but we wouldn't be surprised to learn that the last brush Luke had with anything like scientific data was when he tried to explain his grade school absentee record to the school principal.

There was a real news story in all of this, and to his credit Troy wrote this part straight:

[Local] groups will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Pensacola Junior College to discuss the threat of global warming, including potential harm to the Pensacola area and its beaches. Two rallies to bring attention to the topic are scheduled for April 14 and for Earth Day on April 21.

A sidebar to Troy's article gives the details:

• Global Warming, Local Action conference, 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 10, at Hagler Auditorium on the Pensacola Junior College campus
• Step It Up Rally, Noon Saturday, April 14, Pensacola Beach pavilion
• Earth Day Celebration, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. , Saturday, April 21, Bayvuiew Community Center, Bayou Texar

As for the rest of this front page article, it's essentially a pointless attempt to gin up something that looks like local controversy and then apply "journalistic balance" to pit the world scientific community against one anonymous guy on the street, a retired irrelevancy, and a crabby misanthrope who's spent the last 35 years of his life in dead-end radio jobs.

We appreciate hard-working, underpaid journalists like Troy Moon. We really do. That's why we prefer to think he was just putting one over on some dim-witted copy editor.

Pensacola Beach Horror Story

Sunday's Pensacola News Journal is an entertaining read if you like horror stories. The main feature is Jamie Page's "One Beach, Two Visions" which recounts the ongoing, titanic struggle that poses this dramatic question:

Which ugly creature with an outsized footprint will get to ruin Pensacola Beach first? Will it be high rise condo-hotels or high rise hotel-condos?

This monster fight became inevitable years ago when Portofino's politically-connected progenitor, the late Allen Levin, was permitted to tie up all the remaining residential units on Pensacola Beach which were allowable under Escambia County's Master Land Use Plan. Predictably, as Portofino nears completion other developers have begun angling for new ways to evade the residential cap and Levin's successor wants to keep the residential unit monopoly.

One side's current strategy is to redefine the English language (and county law) by calling a residential unit a "hotel room." We reported on the first skirmish in this definitional war soon after Hurricane Ivan. Then, when almost no one was paying attention, a handful of hotel developers and real estate brokers tried to horn in on Portofino's action by urging the Santa Rosa Island Authority to redefine maximum size and occupancy rules for island "hotel" rooms.

PNJ reporter Jamie Page does a creditable job of presenting some of the history and arguments for and against each of the contending monsters (although he neglects to interview any of the principals from former county administrator Barry Evans' administration who saw this coming a decade ago and enacted the rules that are now at risk.)

Sad to say, the Pensacola News Journal's editorial page more or less wimps out:

Who is right?

Frankly, it is hard to say. Big money is clashing, and what's really at stake -- other than dollars -- can be hard to determine for those not involved in the high-stakes finance involved.

It's hard to believe this is the same crusading newspaper that once upon a time saved Santa Rosa Island from a similar class of money-grubbers, as former editor Earle Bowden has documented. Still, at least the paper backs a palatable temporary solution:

County Commissioner Grover Robinson, whose district includes Pensacola Beach, says the matter needs more study -- and public debate -- and should be forwarded to the Santa Rosa Island Authority for a thorough review.

We agree.

The emphasis here should be on the word "thorough." A lot of misinformation is being repeated by those who argue for changing the county's "hotel" rules -- misinformation about hotel and condo financing, zoning rules of other communities, taxation, developer expenses, public use preferences, infrastructure implications, and environmental impact. The Island Authority is in a good position to uncover the truth, but only if county commissioners allow their SRIA appointees sufficient independence to make an honest and objective factual assessment.

Fredo's Florida Problem

Has anyone noticed that Florida is suffering directly from the spreading Alberto Gonzales scandal?

Top rats have been diving off the sinking ship of the Attorney General's office for three weeks. First, there was the resignation of Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Next, director of the U.S. Attorneys Executive Office, Michael Battle, quit. Late Friday afternoon, Monica Goodling resigned with a three-sentence exception to her Fifth Amendment plea to remain silent.

Just as bad, subordinates down the line are voluntarily demoting themselves to get out of harm's way. It's getting harder and harder for anyone with self-respect to work in the once-prestigious position of U.S. Attorney under Gonzales' mis-leadership.

Apparently, that includes Florida lawyers. Yesterday, McClatchy News Service picked up this tidbit:

The lawyer also said he'd spoken with two assistant U.S. attorneys who'd been approached to fill vacant U.S. attorney positions in Arizona, California, Florida and New Mexico. He said they declined to be considered because "The turmoil is just not worth it."

The vacancy mentioned is in the Middle District of Florida, headquartered in Tampa. There, Paul Perez resigned as U.S. Attorney late last month to take a job with Fidelity National Financial. No permanent replacement has been named. Instead, deputy USA James Klindt will serve as "acting U.S. Attorney".

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) questions whether the resignation is connected to Gonzales' politicalization of the Justice Department. A protest letter Perez signed a few months ago was dismissed by the disgraced McNulty on the grounds "it didn't sound like it was from members of the same team."

With 19 consecutive years in the U.S. Attorney's office, Kindt looks to be a lifer. So, it seems unlikely he qualified for the "acting" position solely by being a "loyal Bushie."

But that's one of the problems posed by when you have a disreputable liar like Alberto Gonzales serving as U.S. Attorney General: no one can ever be sure the moral infection hasn't spread.

Him or Your Lying Eyes?

Just who is the crazy one here? Dick Cheney or the rest of the western world?

Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein's Iraq on Thursday as the Defense Department released a report citing more evidence that the prewar government did not cooperate with the terrorist group.
* * *
However, a declassified Pentagon report released Thursday said that interrogations of the deposed Iraqi leader and two of his former aides as well as seized Iraqi documents confirmed that the terrorist organization and the Saddam governmentwere not working together before the invasion.

The Sept. 11 Commission's 2004 report also found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network during that period.

Sophists 1, Science 0

In the Global Warming league, three autocratic governmental regimes -- Saudi Arabia, China, and the Bush administration's version of the United States -- fought five days and four nights and then a fifth night into the wee hours of today against "hundreds of international environmental experts" in a "marathon" session over the final wording (and graphics) of the "4th Assessment Report" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Time Magazine reports that what they were fighting over wasn't even the full 1,500 report. It was "over the 21-page draft meant to be a policy guide for governments." Explains the AP for Canadian readers:

An international global warming conference approved a report on climate change Friday, chairman Rajendra Pachauri said, after a contentious marathon session that saw angry exchanges between diplomats and scientists who drafted the report.

"We have an approved accord. It has been a complex exercise," Pachauri told reporters after an all-night meeting of the International Panel on Climate Change.

Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises. However, some scientists vowed never to take part in the process again.

"The authors lost," said one scientist. "A lot of authors are not going to engage in the IPCC process anymore. I have had it with them," he said on condition of anonymity because the proceedings were supposed to remain confidential. An Associated Press reporter, however, witnessed part of the final meeting.

More details are reported in the Boston Globe:

The climax of five days of negotiations was reached when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.

There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years. "For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models," Martin Perry, who conducted the grueling negotiations, told reporters.

The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised the many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.

The irony is that the report by 2,500 assembled scientists was supposed to be, as Bloomberg News Service puts it, the "first comprehensive overview of scientific evidence since 2001 ... aimed at informing policymakers of the known and predicted impacts of climate change, and of ways to adapt to global warming."

Instead, the sophists got their way. Those same "policymakers" from the U.S. , China, and Saudi Arabia refused to accept the scientific report as written. The result was, as Time Magazine puts it, an "unprecedented showdown between scientists and diplomats over authors' concerns that governments were watering down their warnings."

We can't yet give you a link to the final report but the watered-down "Summary for Policymakers" is now available -- minus the parts your government doesn't want you to see. Still, among many other dire consequences the scientists of the world foresee, you can read that in the United States --

Coastal communities and habitats will be increasingly stressed by climate change impacts interacting with development and pollution. Population growth and the rising value of infrastructure in coastal areas increase vulnerability to climate variability and future climate change, with losses projected to increase if the intensity of tropical storms increases. Current adaptation is uneven and readiness for increased exposure is low.

Richard Black of the BBC has some details on the contentious parts which were edited out:

The draft for this meeting started off by stating with "very high confidence" that natural systems on land and sea are being affected by regional climate changes, which was badly received by Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China.

Deadlock continued until the early hours of the final day's negotiations, with Dr Rosenzweig presenting a note of protest to the chair on behalf of senior scientists, saying that their evidence-based conclusions were being ignored.

At one point she left the room, and the whole process could have unravelled. In the end it was diplomatic leadership by the US, favoured bogeyman of activists, that found a compromise which everyone could live with.

"The final document states that observational evidence on every continent and most oceans shows that natural systems are being affected by regional changes, particularly temperature increases," she said.

"And I'm very happy with that."

It will take a little time for the rest of the details to leak out which our own government (with help from our good democratic allies in Saudi Arabia and China) managed to suppress. In the meantime, let's contemplate this question:

Do you suppose those same U.S. "policymakers" who compelled the world science community to change their report would similarly order their own doctors to change the diagnosis, prognosis and remedy if their personal health was on the line?

Economics Lesson

Via Kevin Drum's Washington Memo, check out the above bar graph by the Economic Policy Institute. It offers a fascinating visual summary of 4th quarter economic data showing growth in the U.S. economy versus the averages in the half-century since World War II.

This is what the notorious Bush tax cuts have brought us:

[T]he current recovery substantially lags the historical average in GDP growth, employment growth, investment in equipment and software, and, with the deflating housing market, even in residential investment.

But corporate profits are nearly three times higher than the historic average. What's that mean?

As a policy lesson, the large tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which have had ample time to affect the economy by now, have failed to deliver economic performance that even matches up to the past average.

GITMO Boogeyman Story A Lie

Last week's flurry of fear that Democrats were planning to move dangerous Guantanamo detainees to such places as the Naval Air Station brig in Pensacola turns out to have been a complete fabrication concocted by Northwest Florida's own Jeff Miller (R-Ineffectual) and his Republican colleagues on the House Armed Services Committee.

According to the Army Times --

A list of 17 domestic military bases at which suspected terrorists might be housed if a U.S. military prison in Cuba closes, which was released Friday by a senior House Republican, is not based on any recommendations from Democrats.

The actual list came not from Democrats, some of whom have in fact talked about closing the U.S. Navy prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but from a Defense Department report that mentioned excess prison capacity at some stateside installations as part of the 2005 base closure and realignment process, said Loren Dealy, the House Armed Services Committee press secretary.

The prison list was mentioned in a bipartisan staff memo prepared for an armed services committee hearing about the Guantanamo prison, Dealy said.

The entire nonsense, it seems, started with a March 29 press release from California Republican congressman Duncan Hunter who is former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The release claimed --

"Congressional Democrats listed the following American communities as potential relocation points for terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.”

Pensacola's own embarrassment, congressman Jeff Miller, copied that press statement verbatim and sent it out, too, as if it were his own. Everyone got sucked in.

As we observed at the time, the local news report was based essentially on a wire service story. All it took was to fool one Associated Press reporter and then sit back and watch lazy local newspapers act like megaphones. The PNJ predictably complied by yanking Troy Moon off the culture beat to round up a few fear-filled quotes from what looks suspiciously like a handful of startled bar flies and then fashioned big, scary headlines for the top of the front page.

The ever-diminishing number of Bush supporters may prefer to delude themselves into thinking that Jeff Miller and his colleagues were just playing a harmless, early April Fool's joke on constituents. But the pattern is too obvious to ignore. As Glenn Greenwald laments today in his Salon column, apropos of Rep. Mike Pence's (R-Ind.) claim that Baghdad's market is just "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime":

It is actually difficult to fathom what historians are... going to be able to say when they compile the statements and representations of our country's political leaders over the past four years. It all reads like some caricatured cartoon of a country ruled by compulsive liars and two-bit cons -- like some college freshman's attempt to write a science fiction account of a country ruled by leaders who continuously manipulate the citizenry with the most unabashed, simplistic and transparent lies on the gravest of matters. And no matter how many times it is exposed, they just continue to remain in power, openly engaging in exactly the same behavior without any consequences.

Now that we know Miller put one over on the Pensacola News Journal there is only one remaining question. Does the local paper have self-respect enough to call him out on it -- or will it sink to its knees and ask for more of the same?

John McCain's New Fund Raiser

David Corn, one of Washington's longest-lasting and truly independent political reporters, digs deeper than your average Beltway journalist. Yesterday, he came up with a shocker about Fred Malek, John McCain's latest choice to be co-chairman of his campaign finance drive.

Corn, quoting an older Slate article says: "It's one of the more gothic stories about Nixon related in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's The Final Days."

Woodward's own newspaper, the Washington Post, oddly enough has nothing to say about it. Asks Corn --

Is McCain, who once upon a time campaigned as a good-government candidate, truly inspired by Malek's days as a Nixon lieutenant, when Malek tallied Jews, rigged government contracts, and improperly influenced law enforcement and regulatory decisions?

Answers Corn:

If McCain has to turn to Malek for help in fundraising, his campaign surely is in difficult straits.

The Question

The Pensacola News Journal today carries a long editorial reviewing the current status of things in Iraq, and finds not much to cheer about. "[W]hile U.S. troops carry the brunt of the fight against what is principally a Sunni insurgency, behind the scenes Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- Iraq's most influential religious leader -- might be winning the political fight."

Here's how a Sunni leader put it to The New York Times: "In my opinion, the country is now one led by the clerics, and the new political process in Iraq is made to allow those clerics and religious parties to govern Iraq."

Worse, he compared it to the theocracy imposed on Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Sistani, reports say, has quietly and systematically frustrated U.S. efforts to create a broad-based, secular federal government. He has been a driving force behind an increasingly theocratic Iraq, both inside and outside government.

And how would The Decider react to this tragic product of his Iraq war-making? Though framed as a question, the PNJ leaves little doubt about the answer:

If an Islamic theocracy is what thousands of U.S. dead, tens of thousands wounded and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of American taxpayers' dollars accomplishes in the end -- is President Bush going to tell us it is success?

No one who has been paying attention can trust anything the Bush administration says anymore.

Colorado Gurus Up '07 Hurricane Forecast

Colorado State University tropical storm gurus Phillip J. Klotzbach and Dr. William Gray have increased the number of predicted hurricanes, named storms, and storm days for the coming 2007 tropical storm season. In their traditional April forecast they write --

We estimate that 2007 will have about 9 hurricanes (average is 5.9), 17 named storms (average is 9.6), 85 named storm days (average is 49.1), 40 hurricane days (average is 24.5), 5 intense (Category 3-4-5) hurricanes (average is 2.3) and 11 intense hurricane days (average is 5.0). The probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall is estimated to be about 140 percent of the long-period average.

That represents a substantial number of additional hurricanes when compared with their earlier December predictions.

Forecast Parameter and 1950-2000 Climatology (in parentheses)	Issue Date 8 December '06	Issue Date 3 April '07
Named Storms (NS) (9.6)	14	17
Named Storm Days (NSD) (49.1)	70	85
Hurricanes (H) (5.9)	7	9
Hurricane Days (HD) (24.5)	35	40
Intense Hurricanes (IH) (2.3)	3	5
Intense Hurricane Days (IHD) (5.0)	8	11
Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) (96.2)	130	170
Net Tropical Cyclone Activity (NTC) (100%)	140	185

The culprit behind the increased hurricane chances appears to be mostly El Niño, who has once again disappeared -- as he did in 2004-05.

We have increased our forecast from our early December prediction due largely to the rapid dissipation of El Niño which has occurred over the past couple of months. Currently, neutral ENSO conditions are observed. We expect either neutral or weak-to-moderate La Niña conditions to be present during the upcoming hurricane season. Tropical and North Atlantic sea surface temperatures remain well above their long-period averages.
* * *
The weak to moderate El Niño event that rapidly developed during August to October 2006 has now dissipated.

The boys from Bighorn country continue to stubbornly insist they see no evidence that global warming has "increased hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe’s seven tropical cyclone basins, except for the Atlantic over the past twelve years." But they do acknowledge "global surface temperatures have increased over the last century and over the last 30 years." From the viewpoint of Colorado Springs, it's not the warming, it's the salinity.

In fact, they say, "Between 1966 and 2003, US major hurricane landfall numbers were below the long-term average." In other words, their view is that a "normal" hurricane season is considerably more violent than anything experienced in the memory of a majority of living Floridians.

For Whom Bell Tolls: Portofino Taxes

Judge Frank Bell ruled that Escambia County is legally authorized to impose ad valorem taxes on Portofino condo unit owners, according to Michael Stewart's abbreviated article in today's Pensacola News Journal. The unpublished opinion was filed last week but just came to public attention today.

That has to be devastating news for the five-tower high-rise complex. At last count, more than 120 units were listed for sale. Many more were rumored to be "pocket listings" -- not listed anywhere but readily available for purchase if you knew your way around the local real estate swamp. Now that real estate taxes have to be taken into consideration, the market will be just that much smaller and slower.

Explains Stewart:

Because beach leaseholders do not own the land on which their homes and businesses are built, they pay lease fees and have argued beach taxes are not legal. Leases are for a minimum of 99 years, with many leases providing an option for a second 99 years.

Earlier, a similar ruling rendered Pensacola Beach businesses subject to property taxation on their commercial rental land leases.

Among the lawsuits yet to be decided by the courts is a homeowner residents' suit. Many have considered that one to be the strongest case of all because of the explicit written, oral, and even state statutory promises that beach leaseholds and improvements would be tax-free, promises which Escambia County consistently made over the decades in an effort to develop the island.

The Portofino development wasn't leased until 1999, by which time the county had stopped making tax-free promises. The strong record of historic tax-free promises didn't affect Navarre Beach, either, where serious development didn't get underway until the mid-1980's. In any event Santa Rosa County never engaged in the same "tax free" public marketing strategies.

Even so, some residents are pessimistic. Florida courts don't have a good record for requiring Escambia County to keep its governmental word. That pessimism may explain why one person even sold evidence of Escambia County's "tax-free promise" pamphlets on Ebay a while ago.

The winning bidder paid $20.50 for the evidence. That may be the most anyone ever makes out of the otherwise worthless promises of Escambia County -- except, of course, for the lawyers and real estate brokers.

Someone knew what he was doing when he borrowed the Creek Indian word for "money exchange" to name Escambia County.

Dept. of Amplification

Must-Have Pensacola Beach Book: William L. Post's "Deceit Beach"

John McCain and The Pretenders

After John McCain's armed-to-the-teeth tour of a Baghdad market and his listless repetition of ridiculous talking points , you knew this would happen:

The crack of shots fired by unseen snipers echoed on Monday through Baghdad's wholesale Shorja market, a day after U.S. Senator John McCain held up his visit there as one sign of improving security in Baghdad.

McCain's Potemkin village tour will be the end of his campaign. Count on it.

And while you're counting, be sure to remember the rest of the congressional delegation: Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), and Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ). They're all "pretenders," says Jaafar Moussa Thamir, a 42-year-old seller of electrical appliances at the Shorja market:

"They were just making fun of us and paid this visit just for their own interests," he said. "Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them? This country and its society have been destroyed because of them and I hope that they realized that during this visit.
* * *
"We are being killed by the dozens everyday because of them. What were they trying to tell us? They are just pretenders."