Today's Stories

November 21 / 23, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Honeymoon is Looking a Bit Wan

November 20, 2008

P. Sainath
The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park

Brian McKenna
How Dow Chemical Defies Homeland Security and Risks Another 9/11

Paul Craig Roberts
What Uncle Sam Has to Say to His Creditors

Andy Worthington
How Guanántamo Can be Closed

Peter Lee
India Doubles Down in Afghanistan ... Maybe

Dr. Eyad al-Serraj
At the Erez Crossing

Sen. Russ Feingold
The Bush Pardons

Lance Selfa
Who Made the New Deal?

Ray McGovern
Keeping Gates

Benjamin G. Davis
Ending Torture; Prosecuting the Torturers

Tracy McLellan
Obama's Crony Democracy: the Return of Tom Daschle

Website of the Day
Finally, a Victory for Palestinians

November 19, 2008

M. Shahid Alam
Obama and the Politics of Race and Religion in America

Mario A. Murillo
Holder, Chiquita and Colombian Death Squads

Martine Boulard
Escaping the Dollar's Shadow

Robin D. G. Kelley
Will Obama be the First "Freedom" Democrat?

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Obama and the Iron Cage

Jonathan Cook
Who Will Stop the Settlers?

Steve Conn
Spare Change or No Change at All

George Wuerthner
The NYT and the Beetles of Mass Destruction

Michael Winship
This Just in From Middle Earth

Stephen Martin
The Other Side of the Pleasure-Dome

Website of the Day
An Important Holiday Message From Kristen Johnston

November 18, 2008

Chellis Glendinning
Cheering for Morgan Stanley

George C. Wilson
Perils of Pakistan: Will It Prove to be Obama's Cambodia?

Franklin Lamb
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon: Hezbollah or the UN?

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Irresponsibility of Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

Roger Burbach
Orchestrating a Civic Coup in Bolivia: How Bush Tried to Bring Down Morales

John Ross
Drilling vs. Direct Democracy in Mexico

Wajahat Ali
Is Obama the Muslim World's Superman?

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
What Really Happened in Washington? The G20 and the Inconsistent Script

Marc Gardner
When Mooning is a Sex Crime

Eric Walberg
Courting the Bear: a New Era for Russian/Western Relations?

Wendy Williams
The Bottled Water Con

Website of the Day
Where's Zappa When We Need Him?

November 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Bankers Shake Down Congress and the G-20

Paul Craig Roberts
When It's a Clear Day and You Can't See GM

Mike Whitney
Busted in Washington

Steve Conn
Where is Nader Country 2008? Mapping the Nader Votes

Andy Worthington
Closing Guantánamo: Advice for Obama

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Blockade of Gaza: "They Are All Hamas"

Rannie Amiri
Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama

David Macaray
Bailing Out the Automakers

David Michael Green
Twelve Victories

Charles Modiano
Sports Illustrated and Sexism: Tokenism or a New Day?

Website of the Day
The South Sea Bubble

November 14 / 16, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Heading for the First Hundred Days

Jeffrey St. Clair
How Bill Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl: a Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama

Mike Whitney
Paulson the Bungler

Sasan Fayazmanesh
RIP: the Experts, 1929-2008

Moshe Adler
Keynes: China's Greatest Export?

Anthony DiMaggio
Transcending Race?

Jean Bricmont
Cats, Dogs and Creationism

Sheldon Rampton
The Eisenstadt Hoax: a Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"

Douglas Valentine
Let the Trials Begin!

Joseph Nevins /
Timothy Dunn
Barricading the Border

Tom Barry
Rahm Emanuel's Political Pragmatism on Immigration

Ron Jacobs
Che Guevara Meets Trashman: the Genius of Spain Rodriguez

Larry Portis
The State of the Israeli State

Mary Lynn Cramer Obama's Brain Trust: Seems Like Old Times

Sherry Wolf
The Myth of the Black/Gay Divide

Peter Cervantes-Gautschi
Secretary of Greed: How Larry Summers Championed Wall Street by Impoverishing the Mexican People

Jacob Hornberger
The Conservative Malaise: Hey, Brother, Can You Spare Some Habeas Corpus?

Lance Selfa
The Center-Right Nation Con

Benjamin Dangl
Vermont Against General Dynamics

Seth Sandronsky
Lifelines in Hard Times

Russell Mokhiber
Time to Give the Friends of Big Coal the Boot

Allan Stellar
Nuke a Gay Whale for the Navy

Kelly Overton
Get Thee to a Shelter: the Obamas and the Million-Mutt March

Martha Rosenberg
Why Mink are Cheering the Economic Crisis

Richard Rhames
Palling Around with Ray the Plumber

David Yearsley
How I Played Hooky from "High School Musical 3"

Lorenzo Wolff
Zach is Back: Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Ford and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Eyes Have It

November 13, 2008

Pam Martens
The Two Trillion DollarBlack Hole

Vijay Prashad
Guilt by Participation: Sonal Shah's Membership Has Expired

Patrick Cockburn
Who is Paying for the Iraqi National Intelligence Service?

Jonathan Cook
The Withering Palestinian Economy

Ralph Nader
Obama and the Rogue Regime

Bill Quigley
McCain Owes America an Apology

Lee Sustar
Bailing Out the Big Three

Omar Barghouti
Boycotting Israeli Settlement Products

Steve Conn
More Alaska Fun

Howard Lisnoff
The Last Bastion of Hate

Jeff Cohen
What Indy Media Heroes Can Teach Us

Website of the Day
Who are the Obamagelicals?

November 12, 2008

Johanna Berrigan
Scattered Families: the Iraq Refugee Crisis

Steve Conn
The Big Mystery Election in Alaska

Patrick Bond
Against Volcker

Bokar Ture /
Dedrick Muhammad
Remembering a Black Radical in a Barack Obama America

Alan Farago
The Hispanic Vote in South Florida: Not Dyed Blue Yet

Dave Lindorff
Rescuing Joe Lieberman

Karl Grossman
Break Up Big Oil: Tyranny in the Tank

David Macaray
An Obama Litmus Test: Will Labor Have a Seat at the Table?

George Wuerthner
Act Now to Save America's Public Forests

Susie Day
Heavy Weather

Website of the Day
Does the Planet Have a Future? an Interview with Derrick Jensen

November 11, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Vote Against Your Own Interests

Allan J. Lichtman
What Obama Can Learn From FDR

Eric Toussaint
Financing the Bailout: a Holy Union for a Deuce of a Swindle

Ron Jacobs
Moving Beyond Hope: a Leftist Looks at the Near Future

Peter Montague
Green Coal?

Corporate Crime Reporter
BP's Big Spill on the North Slope

Laura Carlsen
Latin America Sends Obama a Piece of Its Mind

Col. Dan Smith
A New Unifying Paradigm?

Morton Skorodin
The Machine Grinds On

David Michael Green
My Michelle Moment

Charles R. Larson
Ask Your Doctor for a Free Sample

Website of the Day
Will Old Faithful Be Sucked Dry?

November 10, 2008

David Roediger
Obama's Victory and the Future of Race in the United States

Paul Craig Roberts
Conned Again?

Peter Lee
Obama's Man in Afghanistan

Corey D. B. Walker
And We Are Not Saved

Jeff Halper
A Bone in America's Throat

Bill Hatch
Look on the Bright Side, Dammit!

Andy Worthington
Guilty By Torture

Bill Quigley
Anger and Hope: Haitian Families Furious Over School Collapse

Peter Morici
Paulson's Folly

Anthony Olszewski
The Advent of a New Black Politician

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill

Cpt. Paul Watson
Farley Mowat's Last Book? Maybe Not

Website of the Day
Boondocks, Another Banned Episode

November 7 / 9, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to the Chief of Staff

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Politics of Fire

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Indian: the Many Faces of Sonal Shah

Tariq Ali
Great Expectations

Jean Bricmont
Our Obama Problem

John V. Whitbeck
Obama, Emanuel and Israel

Saul Landau
Politics Among the Ruins: Obama Faces an Economic Disaster

Peter Morici
Gone, Baby, Gone: Another 240,000 Jobs Lost

Lawrence Velvel
Obama and Afghanistan: the Return of Clintonia?

Karyn Strickler
Don't Govern From the Middle

Nativo V. Lopez
Banking on Obama with Open Eyes: Latinos and Obama

Christopher Fons
A Generational Moment: From Jackson to Obama

Alan Farago
Sarah Palin's Limited Engagement

David Yearsley
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Christopher Brauchli
Pardoning Industry: Bush's Latest Executive Orders

Samah Sabawi
Gaza's New Cemetery

Dave Lindorff
Getting the Change We've Earned

Deepak Tripathi
A Revolution to Remember

Beth Sherouse
In the Wake of Lost Initiatives: the Gay Glass is Half Empty

Patrick Irelan
La Belle Dame Sans Regrets: Back to Alaska

Stephen Martin
Barack and the Temple

Richard Rhames
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

J. Murray
White Cherokee Mythology

Lorenzo Wolff
Anthems for the Average Kid

Kim Nicolini
Exile and Displacement on Bunker Hill: Art Meets Realism in "The Exiles"

Poets' Basement
Farrelly, Fleming and Browne

Website of the Day
Take Who Takes You (For the New Big O)

November 6, 2008

Frank J. Menetrez
Now What?

John Chuckman
The Big Leap: From Hope to Change

P. Sainath
A Magic Moment (But Still Behind the Global Curve)

Joshua Frank
A Look Under the Hood of an Obama Administration

Edna Canetti
Come, Obama, Change My Life: a Plea from Israel

John Ross
Brad Will is Still Dead

Norman Solomon
Sorry Joe: a Mandate for Spreading the Wealth

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Morning After: Pakistan and Its New Bedfellow

Robert Weissman
Mordor Brightens: Obama's Challenge--and Our Own

Harvey Wasserman
A Blow to Nuclear Power in Chicago

Website of the Day
Pot Wins Big

November 5, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Why McCain Lost

Chuck Spinney
How Obama Won

Ishmael Reed
Morning in Obamerica: the Promised Land?

Chris Floyd
A Prism for the New Paradigm: "What If Bush Did It?"

Binoy Kampmark
Obama's Victory: a Nation Divided

Michael Donnelly
The Rebooting of America, 2008

David Macaray
Who Should be Secretary of Labor?

Peter Morici
Obama's First Moves on the Economy

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
What Real Change Should Bring

William Willers
Will We be Forced to Sell Off the Public Lands?

Website of the Day
The Killing Fields of South Africa

November 4, 2008

Kathleen Christison
McCain, Obama and Khalidi

James Ridgeway
A New World?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Cleaning Out the Pentagon Pig Sty

Mike Whitney
Obama's Little Red Book

Conn Hallinan
A New Foreign Policy

Holly M. Barker
The Inequities of Climate Change and the Small Island Experience

Ashley Smith
Where is the Occupation of Iraq Heading?

Andy Worthington
Guilty Verdict Fails to Justify Gitmo Trials

Martha Rosenberg
AIG: Too Big to Play Fair

Stephen Martin
Breakdown of the Globalisation Agenda

Doug Lummis
Full Moon Over Okinawa

Carlos Fierro
An Anarchist View of Elections

Website of the Day
La Pequeña as Sarah Palin

November 3, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Friends Like These

John Kennedy O'Hara
Voter Lockdown: Prosecuting Voters

Peter Montague
Is Nuclear Power Green?

Steve Conn
Nader and the Youth Vote

Andrew Gebhardt
How Much Do the Differences Between Obama, McCain and Bush Really Matter?

Ron Jacobs
Bombing Syria: Borders are for Sissies

Ralph Nader
Between Hope and Reality: an Open Letter to Senator Obama

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Cleaning Up After Bush

Uri Avnery
Obama and the Order of the Optimists

Dave Lindorff
Studs and Me

Fred Gardner
Adieu, Rimonabant

DC Larson
You Are How You Vote

David Michael Green
McCain Finally Gets Tough

Val Strange
Hopeless Hoi Polloi or Step in the Right Direction?

Tuli Kupferberg /
Jeffrey Lewis
Wailing Wall Street:
Bring Spare Money!

Website of the Day
Pranking Palin (the Uncut Version)

October 31 , 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Change You Can See

Jeffrey St. Clair
Killing Leroy Jackson: the Indian Wars Have Never Ended

Douglas Valentine
Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy: McCain's 14th Amendment Problem

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Great Bailout Fraud: Misrepresenting the Financial Crisis

Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski
Is the Global Economy a Mistake? an Interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Alan Maass
What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Spreading the Wealth?

William P. O’Connor
Reflections of an Average Joe

Patrick Irelan
Johnny's Tantrums: McCain the "Gook Hater"

Brian Cloughley
Out of Control: Memo From Islamabad

Mats Svensson
The Last Dance in Ramallah

Binoy Kampmark
Into Syria We Went

Steve Conn
The Future of Ted and Sarah

Alan Farago
The Division of Florida: the Politics of Growth

Morton Skorodin
The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration

Robert Bryce
Not McCain

Wajahat Ali
Dear John McCain, Please Stop...

David Yearsley
Palin's Flute, Obama's Voice

Dennis Loo
What to Do with Bush and Cheney?

Pam Martens
Why 2008 Feels Like 1932

Stephen Martin
Defense Strategies in Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Nothing for Something: the Doomed Rustic's Lament

Ramzy Baroud
A Third Palestinian Intifada

Missy Beattie
I'm Sick of Their Voices

Howard Lisnoff
Burning Reason: More From the Religious Right

Richard Neville
Pickled Heads: First the Revelation, Then the Revolution

Saul Landau /
Farrah Hassan
Bush Ultra Lite: Oliver Stone's Oedipal Problem

Kim Nicolini
Max Payne: Vigilante Violence as Sex Story

Lorenzo Wolff
Dance to the Music--or Else!

Poets' Basement
Four Poems from the Japanese Trans. by Rexroth

Website of the Weekend
Art Against Empire

October 30, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
McCain's Women Problems

Vijay Prashad
Smearing Rashid Khalidi

Paul Craig Roberts
World Tires of Rule by Dollar

Glen Ford
Turning the Tide of Ethnic Cleansing in America's Cities

Stanley Heller
Wall Street Bonus Madness

William Loren Katz
"Kill Him!:" a Political Chronicle

Joshua Frank
Memo to Progressives for Obama: What Happens After the Election?

James McEnteer
The Year of Unreliable Witnesses

Felice Pace
The Big Change: Can "Civic Unreasonableness" Save the Earth?

Jonathan Cook
The Executions at Kafr Qassem

Reza Fiyouzat
Boycott the Elections!

Website of the Day
An Open Letter to Whole Foods

October 29, 2008

Arno J. Mayer
The US Empire will Survive Bush

Eric Toussaint
How the Food and Financial Crises are Interconnected

Matt Gonzalez
What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?

Steven Conn
Obama and the Camp Followers

Jonathan Cook
Israel Bars Visit to a Father's Grave

Patrick Bond
Strauss-Kahn Strikes Again!

Ramzi Kysia
A Freedom Rider in Gaza City

Douglas Valentine
A Glimpse Inside the Head of Joe the Plumber

Stephen Martin
What America is Owed

Margaret Dooley-Sammuli
Alternatives to Incarceration

Amee Chew
Support Obama, Vote McKinney?

Website of the Day
N-Word Chant Doesn't Phase Palin

October 28, 2008

James G. Abourezk
How to Bail Out the Taxpayers

Andy Worthington
The Empty Chair at Guantánamo

Gary Leupp
The Specter of the Sixties: Palin v. Ayers

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of the American Road

Mike Whitney
Meet the World's New Currency

Gregory V. Button
What the Next President Must Do to Save FEMA

Ralph Nader
Share the Sacrifices, Share the Benefits

P. Sainath
Haunted by Socialism

Martha Rosenberg
Melting Pot in Hell

Charles R. Larson
Palin/Wurzelbacher 2012!

Website of the Day
Why You Can't See Across the Grand Canyon

October 27, 2008

Michael Hudson
Scenes From the Global Class War

Barbara Rose Johnston
The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?

John Dinges
Palling Around with Dictators: McCain and Pinochet

Mike Whitney
Chickenhawks and the Horrors of War

Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power

Alan Farago
Origins of the Fall

David Michael Green
Remind Me Again: Who Won the Cold War?

Andy Worthington
The Collapse of Omar Khadr's Guantánamo Trial

George Wuerthner
Is Ranching Sustainable? The Story of Bob the Rancher

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Obamanations of Barack

Website of the Day
Heartland of Darkness

October 24 / 26, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Waiting for the Curtain to Rise

Ishmael Reed
Boogiemen: How Lee Atwater Perfected the G.O.P.'s Appeal to Racism

Mike Whitney
Down for the Count

Don Santina
How Maria Fell: Death in the Central Valley

Scott Boehm
Manufacturing Sympathy: Palin, Special Needs and Identity Politics

Saul Landau
Faith-Based Surge: Whining About Winning in Iraq

Ron Jacobs
Iraq and the Arrogance of Washington

Binoy Kampmark
Afghanistan the Un-Winnable

Linn Washington Jr.
The Great Vote Fraud Hoax

Nicole Colson
Mocking Our Rights: McCain's Disdain for Women's Health

Bernard Chazelle
The Humorology of Power

Brian Jones
Campaign by Codeword

Christopher Brauchli
Down the Drain with McCain's Vetters

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Rejects Neoliberalism

Val Strange
The Fraternity of John McCain: Scenes from North Carolina

Joe Mowrey
Name That Candidate: He Supports Petraeus, the Death Penalty, the Bailout, Nuclear Power, the Occupation...

Steve Early
SEIU Learns the Meaning of "No"

David Macaray
Patriotism and the Labor Movement

Allison Kilkenny
You Have the Right to Airport Harassment

Richard Rhames
Open Season

Jim Bell
Nuclear Power's Big Con

Kris De Welde
Domestic Violence and Financial Stress

Barry Clemson
John Wayne Syndrome

Adam Engel
Last Exit to Disneyland

Mark Scaramella
The World's Weirdest Pipe Organ?

Tuli Kupferberg
Nobody for President: the Original Version (Annotated)

Lorenzo Wolff
A Frustrated, Broken-Hearted Joy from Kidnapkin

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Swartzfager and Payne

Website of the Weekend
Patrick Cockburn Dismantles the Surge

October 23, 2008

Allan J. Lichtman
What Voter Fraud?

Todd Chretien
Why I'm Not Voting for Obama

John Ross
No Child Left Behind, Mexican-Style

Peter Morici
Strategies to End the Crisis

Mats Svensson
Short Film Clips at a Checkpoint

Marlene Martin
Don't Let Them Execute an Innocent Man

Robert Jensen /
Pat Youngblood
Looking Beyond the Election and Beyond Elections

Margaret Kimberley
Rightwing Obama Love

Deepak Tripathi
Post-Bush Scenarios

David Morris
Why Joe the Plumber is a Socialist (And You Are, Too)

Website of the Day
Voting While Black in North Carolina

October 22, 2008

Brian Cloughley
Kid Killers are Barbarians

Heather Gray
Raising Hell in the South: the Legacy of J. L. Chestnut, Jr.

Jeff Birkenstein
McCain's Disdain for Spain

Ralph Nader
The Song Remains the Same: Convergence and Avoidance in the Presidential Election

DC Larson
The Growing of a Heartland Nader Raider

David Swanson
Colin Powell, Not Qualified for Government Service

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth

Larry Everest
9/11 and the Imperial Adventure in Afghanistan

Robert Fantina
Anything to Win

Martha Rosenberg
The Financier's Playbook

Stephen Martin
Giving It Up to the Combine

Website of the Day
Brokers with Hands on Their Faces

October 21, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Wealth's Apostles

Paul Craig Roberts
How Inflation Works: Why I Can't Buy an Old Ferrari

Corey D. B. Walker
Empire and White Supremacy

Steve Breyman
How to "Win" in Afghanistan

Eric Toussaint
The Economic Crisis and Latin America: Time to Delink

Wajahat Ali
Boo Radley Comes Out to Play: the Emerging Muslim-American Electorate

Robert Weitzel
Wasting a Vote for Lincoln's Radical Ideal (Or Why I'm Voting for Nader)

Brendan Cooney
Palinoscopy: an Exploration of Why Liberals are So Obsessed with Sarah Palin

Dave Lindorff
Cuba's Oil Reserves: a Game-Changer?

Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing
When You're a Black Candidate There's No Such Thing as a Safe Lead

Patrick B. Barr
Socialist, Socialist, SOCIALIST!

Omar Barghouti
The Boycott and Palestinian Groups: Countering the Critics

Website of the Day
How to Dismantle a US War Plane (and Get Away With It)

October 20, 2008

Michael Hudson
The ABCs of Paulson's Bailout

Anthony DiMaggio
The Scandal That Never Was: ACORN, Rightwing Media and Election "Fraud"

Tariq Ali
Zardari Bans My Books

Uri Avnery
Is Akko Burning?

Bill Quigley
Hammered by the Swedes

Ben Rosenfeld
The Politics of St. Joe, Martyr to a Lie

David Michael Green
Payback's a Bitch: McCain on the Ash Heap

William S. Lind
The Afghanistan Advantage

Chris Genovali
Drill, Baby, Drill (Wink, Wink)

Stephen Martin
The Last Man in America

Howard Lisnoff
Bad News for War Resisters

David Yearsley
Organ Meat

Website of the Day
Our Brother is Sick: the Steve Ferguson Cancer Fund

October 17 / 19, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Blow Ups and Bombers

Jeffrey St. Clair
Inside Hanford: a Trip to America's Most Toxic Place

Pam Martens
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout

Paul Craig Roberts
Government of Thieves

Mike Whtney
No More Investment Banks

Michael D. Yates
Bowling Alley Blues: Racism Dies Hard in Johnstown, PA

Suzanne Smith
The Energy-War Connection: McCain Said It, Why Don't We?

Carl Boggs
Prosecuting Bush

Ralph Nader
Closing the Courthouse Doors

Fidel Castro
The Global Crash

Dave Marsh
The Great Levi Stubbs

Saul Landau
Denial, the Election Musical Comedy

Jo Guldi
The Floods of Heaven

Kevin Zeese
Now the Cost of War Really Matters

Larry Everest
Afghanistan, Not a Good War Gone Bad

Steve Early
Stop, in the Name of Joe!

David Macaray
Hey, Joe

Ben Terrall
When Ike Hit Haiti

Missy Beattie
Palin and God's Children

Don Monkerud
American Exceptionalism

Helen Redmond
Health Care Now's Big Con

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Delta Vision: Canals and Dams to Bail Out Big Ag

Wajahat Ali
Bush Gets Stoned

Farzana Versey
The White Tiger's Stripes and Gripes

Vladimir Frolov
Medvedev to Obama: We Come Not to Bury America, But to Buy It

Kim Nicolini
Frozen River: At Last, a Great Movie That's Neither Hip Nor Cool

Poets Basement
Gibbons, Corsale, Davis and Fleming

Website of the Day
The Real Sarah Palin?

Weekend Edition
November 21 / 23, 2008

Why Florida Can't Let Go of Sprawl

The Suburbs March On

By ALAN FARAGO

Some people are burying their cash in backyards. The wealthiest developers in Miami are burying their cash in a plan to build a small city in 2014 at the far western frontier of Miami-Dade County edging toward the Everglades called Parkland.

Into the headwind of the biggest crash in housing values since the Depression, the owners of Parkland are winding their way through Florida's planning approval process. To understand how poorly the public interest is served by Florida's growth rules, you need patience and a willingness to follow the worst forms of development through its initial stages to conclusion.

Today, Parkland is 1,000 acres of farmland outside the Urban Development Boundary, purchased by a group of politically influential developers at sky high prices during the late stage of the housing market bubble. Today they are seeking a zoning change to move the urban growth curb obstructing their development. If they get their way, a small city of 18,000 residents will grow when the market revives. And revive it will, as it was, if they have anything to see about the billions of dollars unleashed to build infrastructure and help crippled economies. After who know best if not local authority?

Of the Parkland supporters scrounged up to appear at County Hall yesterday, one spoke exactly to why bad development encroaching to Everglades "restoration" must be stopped: the young woman who may or may not have lived in the area testified, "There is nothing out there." In other words, there was nothing there before the new suburbs. Now that we are there, with our two cars, satellite dishes and Mediterranean roof tiles, give us something more than row crops for neighbors. Not vegetables, or tropical fruit, or avocado groves; give me parks and schools for my children, and movie theaters to escape for all of us.

Today, only a few miles from Parkland is some of the most egregious examples of suburban sprawl in the nation. People stuck in cars,in unremitting traffic, living in flood plains underserved by infrastructure, with mounting fees and taxes, tend to think that the maladies of modern life are the inevitable costs of progress; they are not. They are the function of deliberate decisions socializing the cost and risk of bad planning in order to maximize the profits of developers and the entire supply chain of the real estate industry; from the lowest rung of local zoning to the highest ether of Wall Street where laying off risk provides an opportunity for wealth generation through the securitization of debt, including projects like Parkland and dozens of others.

Parkland was the big show in the main ring of yesterday's Planning Advisory Board (PAB) meeting in downtown Miami. The board is comprised of political appointees, representing the thirteen single member districts in Miami-Dade County. They are appointed by the county commission, and in their demeanor and performance represent the composition of the unreformable majority of the county commission; whose incumbency and insularity is as guaranteed as AAA rated debt by Moodys so long as the campaign finance system is dominated by interests who profit from zoning decisions in farmland; interests, in other words, like Parkland.

The PAB is only one step on the way to approval, but an important one leading to a vote by the full county commission in a few weeks.

By the time the Parkland proposal was heard, it was nearly one in the afternoon; most of the assembled crowd at County Hall had been in their russet movie-style seats since early morning. In one section, African Americans suporting the project who had little to gain or to show for the day but a few dollars and a dinner for coming. In another section, Hispanic advocates who similarly earned more than goodwill for their presence. Few had a clue what they were bearing witness to, nor apparently did the mainstream media in attendance.

Their presence was for the public record; for the former, in the eventual case of lawsuits against the plan, and for the latter--the media--, another chance to miss reporting the origins of the housing debacle.

Scattered throughout, a handful of civic minded and conservationists convinced--with good reason--that putting 18,000 more residents in the position to demand more flood control is another nail in the Everglades coffin, whose nails already weigh in aggregate more than the coffin itself. None, however, mentioned that 2014 is within one mortgage cycle of sea level rise predicted for South Florida.

The public hearing unfolded as an entirely pro forma routine, a charade of well-rehearsed places. Why should such a predetermined outcome take hours to complete, when judging from the result, the votes of the board members could have been as easily submitted scribbled on post-it-notes right away?

Parkland is only a few miles from Everglades National Park, the centerpiece of the largest environmental restoration effort in history. Already, $8 billion has been spent on various pieces that may or may not connect up to anything that looks like a tangible result, depending mostly on whether big industrial-scale projects like Parkland or a massive "inland port" planned for western Palm Beach County take root in the landscape before anything resembling restoration takes place.

A day earlier, at a meeting in Tavernier at the head of the Florida Keys a meeting of Everglades agency staffers allowed a reporter to write, "The first eight years of a two-decade schedule to restore the Everglades and Florida Bay have produced few tangible changes, experts acknowledged Tuesday." Not that any of the Parkland developer have much to boast of, of their own industry's tangible results in the past eight years.

If the record of the last eight years is bad for the Everglades, it is actually worse for production home builders like those assembled under the corporate partnership of Parkland. The entire business model for sprawl has disappeared, vanished in the flames of a financial crisis. What the last eight years and previous decades in places like Parkland disclose are the drainage canals supported by Congress and farms and land speculators and property rights activists and new homeowners, oblivious to the lost record of natural history, taxpayers logging countless, unquestioned hours stuck in traffic, left with infrastructure deficits following the march of tarmac, of strip malls, office parks, and gated communities westward. The few and the lucky banked a lot of money on the back of such results in Florida, Arizona, in California and Colorado; the fast growing regions now at the epicenter of crashing housing markets.

Lacking any other idea how to reclaim their investment, Parkland's owners are pushing forward on a wing and a prayer that what doesn't work in 2008 will rise Pheonix-like in 2014.

The PAB meeting took hours to complete, with approval assured by the developers' lobbyists who watched the proceedings on live video feed; Ramon Rasco, former organizer of the Homestead Air Force Base fiasco and chairman of US Century Bank, Sergio Pino, Ed Easton, both Bush loyalists, and Rodney Barreto, Governor Charlie Crist's appointed chair of the Florida Wildlife Commission. All, members of good standing in the Latin Builders Association, the South Florida Builders Association, the National Association of Homebuilders, the Chamber of Commerce, and appealing charities.

Parkland is being called a "green" development. But it is "green" the way that a chameleon is green in the grass. It is green by folding its nature to camoflague its real interests. At this point in nation's narrative, being green is a good way to play into the mainstream without attracting attention to the fact that the very developers who used politics to inflate the toxic housing bubble in Florida need another tactic to pump the air back into ether.

County planning staff-- all good and solid professionals -- advised the Planning Advisory Board to deny the project. But the minds of the appointees had been made up long before the meeting began, never mind what the professionals had to say in objection. When the public hearing was closed it was clear that the appointees minds had been closed long before it even began.

After all, even if the 18,000 future residents never materialize, or materialize only in small numbers, someone will need to do their accounting work, the real estate deeds and titles, someone will need to lay the water pipe, and if it's not me--the thinking goes-- then there are always other government agencies whose approval is more necessary than mine.

It didn't used to be this way, in Florida's growth planning regime. In the late 1990's, the developer driven Florida legislature approved the following damaging change to Florida law: allowing major projects like Parkland, called "developments of regional impacts" or DRI's to proceed at the same time and on the same permitting path as changes to the local jurisdiction's master plan. The way it had been was to require the details of the DRI to be disclosed to the public first, through a series of public hearings and planning thresholds. Only after the details had been thoroughly disclosed was the developer, then, allowed to apply for a change to the local zoning and master plan map.

Now, the development industry is "allowed" to police itself through the permitting process; assuring in the early stages like the planning advisory board meeting that all the details will be ironed out through consultations and in collaboration with dozens of government agencies-- though it is known full well that once the political process of development approval is set in motion by affirmative votes, all the rest is muscle.

The planning board member representing the district in question, Jay Sosna, offered a motion to "deny and not transmit", that would have had the effect of shutting down Parkland. Sosna tried to alert his colleagues on the dais to the burden of congested roadways in the area, the plight of commuters who spend up to three hours a day in cars commuting twenty miles to work downtown and back at night, but his words dropped like a stone in a well.

The motion to deny and not transmit failed on a count of 7-3. A second motion, by Al Maloof, to "approve and transmit" was quickly approved by the same margin. It was over.

The matter is headed to a public hearing on December 18th at the full county commission. The outcome is likely to be approval or the developers would not be marching forward. The only drama left is whether the Parkland will emerge with a margin of victory to override a mayoral veto, by Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez.

It is dispiriting to see how these predetermined outcomes rule the day, even in the teeth of the worst housing market crash since the Depression.

The only frisson during the entire session occurredmafter the public hearing had closed, when a representative of the planning department stepped forward to offer an analysis of the alarming rate of foreclosures in the county. It was a point that several of opponents had emphasized from the speaker's podium, to refute the need for more housing, hence no need to permit another city closer to the Everglades. Tens of thousands of foreclosures dot Miami's urban landscape, within the Urban Development Boundary; why build more until all the available housing is absorbed by the marketplace?

The developer's main argument--faulty statistics by county planners in assessing available housing stock to the year 2018 --is wrecked by the volume of foreclosures and abandoned homes in Miami Dade. This moment of reality intruding was more than the Parkland lobbyists could bear.

You had to be in the front row to witness what happened, when county staff introduced a matter off the meticulously planned script for the proceeding, planned by a dozen highly paid lobbyists, lawyers, engineers and planners. It was as though an Indian had stepped off the Reservation. Suddenly, the lobbyists began squirming. Jeffrey Bercow, the developer's lead lawyer/lobbyist, standing watch at the podium began stiffening in several directions at once, attracting the attention of his allies on the dais. The chair of the Planning Advisory Board, compliant to a fault, quickly shut down the offending voice, cutting him off less than a minute into his explanation, in mid sentence.

In the end, not even a Depression could obstruct the approval of more suburbs edging to the Everglades.

The end game for Parkland may be predicted by events unfolding in an administrative law court room, with respect to two 2005 applications to move the Urban Development Boundary; the county commission approved, the mayor vetoed, the commission over-rode, the state of Florida rejected, and in a few weeks those applications are headed to court and possibly, later, to the 3rd District Court of Appeals where they would be heard by a panel of judges appointed by the governor.

Here is the bottom line: the Miami-Dade County Commission is being used as a cudgel to beat up on the office of the governor, lead today by the amiable Charlie Crist, and the state planning agency. Notwithstanding Crist's eternally sunny disposition, the enmity is the smoldering remnant of Jeb Bush's two terms as governor, largely supported by Miami-Dade's developers like the owners of Parkland.

But times changed. The lead corporate partner of Parkland is Lennar Homes, a shrunken production home builder leading the charge to Congress, grousing for subsidies and bailouts. Lennar and its private partners are determined to party on like it was 2005, with taxpayers help. It used to be called the free market.

There is no better argument for Florida Hometown Democracy--a citizen's petition initiative to amend the Florida constitution giving voters a choice and vote on projects like Parkland-- than spending a few hours listening and watching the Kabuki Theater that passes for growth management in Florida. But the owners of Parkland hear the drumbeat, and if they have their way--and if bankruptcy doesn't come first--Parkland will be on the books and grandfathered before voters have a chance.

Alan Farago, who writes on the environment and politics from Coral Gables, Florida, and can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com

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