Friday, August 8, 2008

Drug companies can, and will, gouge you now

Drug companies can, and will, gouge you now... and later... a lesson learned from the oil companies, who are gouging us for all they can get. Now is the time because with a new administration there may be some regulation and oversight.

updated 5:34 p.m. ET, Fri., Aug. 8, 2008
WASHINGTON - Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly hiking the prices of specialty medications by 100 percent or more — sometimes much more — attracting scrutiny from lawmakers who have pledged to lower health care costs.

Drug prices have historically outpaced those of other consumer goods, with the average price of medicines most-often prescribed to seniors rising 7.4 percent last year, according to the advocacy group AARP.

But several hundred medications have seen prices jump much, much higher — and their numbers appear to be growing.

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Prices on 64 drugs are expected to more than double this year, up from just 22 in 2004, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota.

Many of the drugs are used to treat rare ailments, such as Ovation Pharmaceuticals' Cosmegen, which is prescribed exclusively to children with rare kidney cancer. The company raised the drugs' price more than 3,400 percent in 2006 to $593.75 from just $16.79.

A company spokeswoman explained that Cosmegen and other Ovation drugs are used by just a few hundred patients each year. After acquiring the products from Merck in 2002, she said Ovation could not afford to keep them on the market without raising prices.

"These are not the big cancers that are going to yield huge profits," said Ovation spokeswoman Sally Benjamin Young. "If this drug were to go away, what's left for these children?"

She pointed out that drugs like Cosmegen, which are no longer patent-protected, are still much cheaper than newer cancer therapies like Genentech Inc.'s Avastin, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a year's supply.

Rare diseases targeted
"Our products are relatively inexpensive and save lives," Young said.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America said Friday medicines to treat rare diseases are subject to price increases because they are often more costly and risky to develop.

"These types of increases are rare exceptions and not the norm," the group said in a statement.

But other drugs with rising price tags are used to treat more high-profile ailments, such as Abbott Laboratories' HIV drug Norvir. The company raised that drug's price by 400 percent to over $1,200.

Abbott earlier this month agreed to pay between $10 million and $27.5 million to charities to settle charges that it raised Norvir's price to illegally stifle competition and boost sales of its own alternative, Kaletra.

The payout depends on how the company fares before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will be asked to settle several antitrust questions raised in the case.

According to company spokesman Scott Stoffel, Abbott's scientists "discovered new uses for this drug and we repriced it to capture its true value."

The University of Minnesota researchers said the fact that many medications are seldom prescribed makes it easier for drug companies to unexpectedly hike prices.

"When you get past the top 500 drugs or so, most employers and payers just don't have time to monitor this information, and that creates an opportunity for extraordinary price increases," said Professor Stephen Schondelmeyer, a researcher at the university's PRIME Institute.


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Most Americans want overhaul of health care


Last week the group's research prompted Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate rising drug prices. Schumer chairs Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

The new scrutiny of drug costs comes as spending on medications begins to rise again, after declining for six years when many medications began competing with cheaper, generic versions. Spending on drugs grew 8.5 percent in 2006, the most recent year that data is available, when the government began paying for seniors' prescriptions under the Medicare drug benefit.

While drug costs still make up only a small portion of overall health care spending, both presumptive presidential nominees have highlighted the issue on the campaign trail. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., would allow Americans to import cheaper medications from foreign countries, among other proposals.

Too little scrutiny
And McCain has specifically said pharmaceutical companies should reveal more information on drug costs to consumers and health care payers. The industry has long argued that those numbers are proprietary.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota said requiring price disclosure would encourage competition among specialty drugs, and help bring prices down.

"Most of those conditions necessary for an effective economic market aren't present in pharmaceuticals," Schondelmeyer said. "Markets don't work well when there's no information available."

Iacocca for President!

Iacocca for President! Lets start small; how about City Hall? Serious golfers play 18holes. There is NO doubt that the people need to be involved MUCH more than they are in our government! They would SAVE a LOT of money in taxes if they were, at the very least. I can think of 600k right off the top of my head, that could have been saved if the people had put competent people in charge and kept an eye on them. People complain about paying the highest water bills in all S Fla and high taxes but vote the same guys back into office. The people talk the talk BUT dont walk the walk to make things better for Miami Springs. What about that lawsuit to question the new gym financing without a vote of the people? Where do I sign up? Action talks, BS walks.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Central Park Condos

At risk of being labeled a naysayer, I have some concerns about the feasibility of some of these ideas. Has the liability issues with the skateboarders been resolved? moving the taennis courts to the CC makes no sense because 1) 90% of the tennis players want to stay where they are 2) the neighbors around the tennis courts do not want a skateboard park, due to concerns about noise, parking, and lights 3) we cant afford 500k+ to move the tennis courts anyway, and 4) it sounds like there are several other skateboard parks in S Fla for the kids to use. At first moving them seemed to make sense but, after further review, I have changed my mind. Where would we put the courts that would insure the players safety? Its right next to the driving range. What about traffic congestion? Parking? Lighting? Security? the several hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost overruns to build them, and the ancillary structures? WE CANNOT afford to do this at this time. Are there ANY 9 hole course that can survive? We have spent a LOT of time and money to cultivate this course and nurture it. It is close to breaking even and improving every year. No real golfers are going to come here for 9 holes. How long would it be before this Central Park theme would include condos and highrises?

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

disappearing act

SOMEBODY is getting rich with the taxpayers dollars. Where all that money is going has yet to be determined but ONE thing is sure- the taxpayers are getting a hosing on a regular basis form ALL the projects he is responsible for. The average homeowner can build new for $125 per square foot. We regularly pay $400-600 a square foot. HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars more than it costs! WHERE is THAT money going? Some of the contractors have denied its going into THEIR pockets, so WHERE is it going, if not into his pockets? These are mine and your hard-earned tax dollars disappearing! He must be a magician because after he makes the money disappear, the responsibility for losing it disappears too! It was the ghosts, I guess. One fiasco after another: the Country Club, the costly bathrooms that are WAY overbudget and deadline, the nonexistent water, sewer, and electric hookups, the incredibly expensive bathroom elevations, pool mismanagement, dozens of revenue errors on the MS webpage,etc. Those are just the most recent City disasters. How many excuses are we going to make for this guy? He doesnt seem to have any learning curve in place, as he doesnt seem to be getting any better. If anything, its worse. Maybe hes just in over his head, in which case he should have the grace to acknowledge his limitations and just resign. We cant afford any more disasters.

consultant?

The City Manager has access to Skip Reed, a general Contractor. Why doesnt he consult with him on all these construction projects? Skip knows what things cost to build in Dade County. Obviously the City Manager has no clue. Or maybe it is that he has no concern, as long as the bucks stop at his desk on payday, and he wont be held accountable for wasting our taxes anyway. Its not like its HIS money thats being wasted!

Obamas energy plan

Prepared Remarks of Obama’s Energy SpeechBelow are the prepared remarks and please click this link for the New Energy for America Fact Sheet http://www.NewEnergyforAmerica.com

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama—as prepared for delivery
New Energy for America
Michigan State University
Monday, August 4th, 2008
Lansing, Michigan

We meet at a moment when this country is facing a set of challenges greater than any we’ve seen in generations. Right now, our brave men and women in uniform are fighting two different wars while terrorists plot their next attack. Our changing climate is placing our planet in peril. Our economy is in turmoil and our families are struggling with rising costs and falling incomes; with lost jobs and lost homes and lost faith in the American Dream. And for too long, our leaders in Washington have been unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

That is why this election could be the most important of our lifetime. When it comes to our economy, our security, and the very future of our planet, the choices we make in November and over the next few years will shape the next decade, if not the century. And central to all of these major challenges is the question of what we will do about our addiction to foreign oil.

Without a doubt, this addiction is one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced – from the gas prices that are wiping out your paychecks and straining businesses to the jobs that are disappearing from this state; from the instability and terror bred in the Middle East to the rising oceans and record drought and spreading famine that could engulf our planet.

It’s also a threat that goes to the very heart of who we are as a nation, and who we will be. Will we be the generation that leaves our children a planet in decline, or a world that is clean, and safe, and thriving? Will we allow ourselves to be held hostage to the whims of tyrants and dictators who control the world’s oil wells? Or will we control our own energy and our own destiny? Will America watch as the clean energy jobs and industries of the future flourish in countries like Spain, Japan, or Germany? Or will we create them here, in the greatest country on Earth, with the most talented, productive workers in the world?

As Americans, we know the answers to these questions. We know that we cannot sustain a future powered by a fuel that is rapidly disappearing. Not when we purchase $700 million worth of oil every single day from some the world’s most unstable and hostile nations – Middle Eastern regimes that will control nearly all of the world’s oil by 2030. Not when the rapid growth of countries like China and India mean that we’re consuming more of this dwindling resource faster than we ever imagined. We know that we can’t sustain this kind of future.

But we also know that we’ve been talking about this issue for decades. We’ve heard promises about energy independence from every single President since Richard Nixon. We’ve heard talk about curbing the use of fossil fuels in State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973.

Back then, we imported about a third of our oil. Now, we import more than half. Back then, global warming was the theory of a few scientists. Now, it is a fact that is melting our glaciers and setting off dangerous weather patterns as we speak. Then, the technology and innovation to create new sources of clean, affordable, renewable energy was a generation away. Today, you can find it in the research labs of this university and in the design centers of this state’s legendary auto industry. It’s in the chemistry labs that are laying the building blocks for cheaper, more efficient solar panels, and it’s in the re-born factories that are churning out more wind turbines every day all across this country.

Despite all this, here we are, in another election, still talking about our oil addiction; still more dependent than ever. Why?

You won’t hear me say this too often, but I couldn’t agree more with the explanation that Senator McCain offered a few weeks ago. He said, “Our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been thirty years in the making, and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long-term about the future of the country.”

What Senator McCain neglected to mention was that during those thirty years, he was in Washington for twenty-six of them. And in all that time, he did little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. He voted against increased fuel efficiency standards and opposed legislation that included tax credits for more efficient cars. He voted against renewable sources of energy. Against clean biofuels. Against solar power. Against wind power. Against an energy bill that – while far from perfect – represented the largest investment in renewable sources of energy in the history of this country. So when Senator McCain talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, it’s important to remember that he’s been a part of that failure. Now, after years of inaction, and in the face of public frustration over rising gas prices, the only energy proposal he’s really promoting is more offshore drilling – a position he recently adopted that has become the centerpiece of his plan, and one that will not make a real dent in current gas prices or meet the long-term challenge of energy independence.

George Bush’s own Energy Department has said that if we opened up new areas to drilling today, we wouldn’t see a single drop of oil for seven years. Seven years. And Senator McCain knows that, which is why he admitted that his plan would only provide “psychological” relief to consumers. He also knows that if we opened up and drilled on every single square inch of our land and our shores, we would still find only three percent of the world’s oil reserves. Three percent for a country that uses 25% of the world’s oil. Even Texas oilman Boone Pickens, who’s calling for major new investments in alternative energy, has said, “this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of.”

Now, increased domestic oil exploration certainly has its place as we make our economy more fuel-efficient and transition to other, renewable, American-made sources of energy. But it is not the solution. It is a political answer of the sort Washington has given us for three decades.

There are genuine ways in which we can provide some short-term relief from high gas prices – relief to the mother who’s cutting down on groceries because of gas prices, or the man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job and can’t even afford to drive around and look for a new one. I believe we should immediately give every working family in America a $1,000 energy rebate, and we should pay for it with part of the record profits that the oil companies are making right now.

I also believe that in the short-term, as we transition to renewable energy, we can and should increase our domestic production of oil and natural gas. But we should start by telling the oil companies to drill on the 68 million acres they currently have access to but haven’t touched. And if they don’t, we should require them to give up their leases to someone who will. We should invest in the technology that can help us recover more from existing oil fields, and speed up the process of recovering oil and gas resources in shale formations in Montana and North Dakota; Texas and Arkansas and in parts of the West and Central Gulf of Mexico. We should sell 70 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less expensive crude, which in the past has lowered gas prices within two weeks. Over the next five years, we should also lease more of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska for oil and gas production. And we should also tap more of our substantial natural gas reserves and work with the Canadian government to finally build the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline, delivering clean natural gas and creating good jobs in the process.

But the truth is, none of these steps will come close to seriously reducing our energy dependence in the long-term. We simply cannot pretend, as Senator McCain does, that we can drill our way out of this problem. We need a much bolder and much bigger set of solutions. We have to make a serious, nationwide commitment to developing new sources of energy and we have to do it right away.

Last week, Washington finally made some progress on this. A group of Democrat and Republican Senators sat down and came up with a compromise on energy that includes many of the proposals I’ve worked on as a Senator and many of the steps I’ve been calling for on this campaign. It’s a plan that would invest in renewable fuels and batteries for fuel-efficient cars, help automakers re-tool, and make a real investment in renewable sources of energy.

Like all compromises, this one has its drawbacks. It includes a limited amount of new offshore drilling, and while I still don’t believe that’s a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution, I am willing to consider it if it’s necessary to actually pass a comprehensive plan. I am not interested in making the perfect the enemy of the good – particularly since there is so much good in this compromise that would actually reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

And yet, while the compromise is a good first step and a good faith effort, I believe that we must go even further, and here’s why – breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face. It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy. This transformation will be costly, and given the fiscal disaster we will inherit from the last Administration, it will likely require us to defer some other priorities.

It is also a transformation that will require more than just a few government programs. Energy independence will require an all-hands-on-deck effort from America – effort from our scientists and entrepreneurs; from businesses and from every American citizen. Factories will have to re-tool and re-design. Businesses will need to find ways to emit less carbon dioxide. All of us will need to buy more of the fuel-efficient cars built by this state, and find new ways to improve efficiency and save energy in our own homes and businesses.

This will not be easy. And it will not happen overnight. And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they are either fooling themselves or trying to fool you.

But I know we can do this. We can do this because we are Americans. We do the improbable. We beat great odds. We rally together to meet whatever challenge stands in our way. That’s what we’ve always done – and it’s what we must do now. For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.

Creating a new energy economy isn’t just a challenge to meet, it’s an opportunity to seize – an opportunity that will create new businesses, new industries, and millions of new jobs. Jobs that pay well. Jobs that can’t be outsourced. Good, union jobs. For a state that has lost so many and struggled so much in recent years, this is an opportunity to rebuild and revive your economy. As your wonderful Governor has said, “Any time you pick up a newspaper and see the terms ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming,’ just think: ‘jobs for Michigan.’” You are seeing the potential already. Already, there are 50,000 jobs in your clean energy sector and 300 companies. But now is the time to accelerate that growth, both here and across the nation.

If I am President, I will immediately direct the full resources of the federal government and the full energy of the private sector to a single, overarching goal – in ten years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela. To do this, we will invest $150 billion over the next ten years and leverage billions more in private capital to build a new energy economy that harnesses American energy and creates five million new American jobs.

There are three major steps I will take to achieve this goal – steps that will yield real results by the end of my first term in office.

First, we will help states like Michigan build the fuel-efficient cars we need, and we will get one million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years.

I know how much the auto industry and the auto workers of this state have struggled over the last decade or so. But I also know where I want the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow to be built – not in Japan, not in China, but right here in the United States of America. Right here in the state of Michigan.

We can do this. When I arrived in Washington, I reached across the aisle to come up with a plan to raise the mileage standards in our cars for the first time in thirty years – a plan that won support from Democrats and Republicans who had never supported raising fuel standards before. I also led the bipartisan effort to invest in the technology necessary to build plug-in hybrid cars.

As President, I will accelerate those efforts to meet our urgent need. With technology we have on the shelf today, we will raise our fuel mileage standards four percent every year. We’ll invest more in the research and development of those plug-in hybrids, specifically focusing on the battery technology. We’ll leverage private sector funding to bring these cars directly to American consumers, and we’ll give consumers a $7,000 tax credit to buy these vehicles. But most importantly, I’ll provide $4 billion in loans and tax credits to American auto plants and manufacturers so that they can re-tool their factories and build these cars. That’s how we’ll not only protect our auto industry and our auto workers, but help them thrive in a 21st century economy.

What’s more, these efforts will lead to an explosion of innovation here in Michigan. At the turn of the 20th century, there were literally hundreds of car companies offering a wide choice of steam vehicles and gas engines. I believe we are entering a similar era of expanding consumer choices, from higher mileage cars, to new electric entrants like GM’s Volt, to flex fuel cars and trucks powered by biofuels and driven by Michigan innovation.

The second step I’ll take is to require that 10% of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term – more than double what we have now. To meet these goals, we will invest more in the clean technology research and development that’s occurring in labs and research facilities all across the country and right here at MSU, where you’re working with farm owners to develop this state’s wind potential and developing nanotechnology that will make solar cells cheaper.

I’ll also extend the Production Tax Credit for five years to encourage the production of renewable energy like wind power, solar power, and geothermal energy. It was because of this credit that wind power grew 45% last year, the largest growth in history. Experts have said that Michigan has the second best potential for wind generation and production in the entire country. And as the world’s largest producer of the material that makes solar panels work, this tax credit would also help states like Michigan grow solar industries that are already creating hundreds of new jobs.

We’ll also invest federal resources, including tax incentives and government contracts, into developing next generation biofuels. By 2022, I will make it a goal to have 6 billion gallons of our fuel come from sustainable, affordable biofuels and we’ll make sure that we have the infrastructure to deliver that fuel in place. Here in Michigan, you’re actually a step ahead of the game with your first-ever commercial cellulosic ethanol plant, which will lead the way by turning wood into clean-burning fuel. It’s estimated that each new advanced biofuels plant can add up to 120 jobs, expand a local town’s tax base by $70 million per year, and boost local household income by $6.7 million annually.

In addition, we’ll find safer ways to use nuclear power and store nuclear waste. And we’ll invest in the technology that will allow us to use more coal, America’s most abundant energy source, with the goal of creating five “first-of-a-kind” coal-fired demonstration plants with carbon capture and sequestration.

Of course, too often, the problem is that all of this new energy technology never makes it out of the lab and onto the market because there’s too much risk and too much cost involved in starting commercial-scale clean energy businesses. So we will remove some of this cost and this risk by directing billions in loans and capital to entrepreneurs who are willing to create clean energy businesses and clean energy jobs right here in America.

As we develop new sources of energy and electricity, we will also need to modernize our national utility grid so that it’s accommodating to new sources of power, more efficient, and more reliable. That’s an investment that will also create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and one that I will make as President.

Finally, the third step I will take is to call on businesses, government, and the American people to meet the goal of reducing our demand for electricity 15% by the end of the next decade. This is by far the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to reduce our energy consumption – and it will save us $130 billion on our energy bills.

Since DuPont implemented an energy efficiency program in 1990, the company has significantly reduced its pollution and cut its energy bills by $3 billion. The state of California has implemented such a successful efficiency strategy that while electricity consumption grew 60% in this country over the last three decades, it didn’t grow at all in California.

There is no reason America can’t do the same thing. We will set a goal of making our new buildings 50% more efficient over the next four years. And we’ll follow the lead of California and change the way utilities make money so that their profits aren’t tied to how much energy we use, but how much energy we save.

In just ten years, these steps will produce enough renewable energy to replace all the oil we import from the Middle East. Along with the cap-and-trade program I’ve proposed, we will reduce our dangerous carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and slow the warming of our planet. And we will create five million new jobs in the process.

If these sound like far-off goals, just think about what we can do in the next few years. One million plug-in hybrid cars on the road. Doubling our energy from clean, renewable sources like wind power or solar power and 2 billion gallons of affordable biofuels. New buildings that 50% more energy efficient.

So there is a real choice in this election – a choice about what kind of future we want for this country and this planet.

Senator McCain would not take the steps or achieve the goals that I outlined today. His plan invests very little in renewable sources of energy and he’s opposed helping the auto industry re-tool. Like George Bush and Dick Cheney before him, he sees more drilling as the answer to all of our energy problems, and like them, he’s found a receptive audience in the very same oil companies that have blocked our progress for so long. In fact, he raised more than one million dollars from big oil just last month, most of which came after he announced his plan for offshore drilling in a room full of cheering oil executives. His initial reaction to the bipartisan energy compromise was to reject it because it took away tax breaks for oil companies. And even though he doesn’t want to spend much on renewable energy, he’s actually proposed giving $4 billion more in tax breaks to the biggest oil companies in America – including $1.2 billion to Exxon-Mobil.

This is a corporation that just recorded the largest profit in the history of the United States. . This is the company that, last quarter, made $1,500 every second. That’s more than $300,000 in the time it takes you to fill up a tank with gas that’s costing you more than $4-a-gallon. And Senator McCain not only wants them to keep every dime of that money, he wants to give them more.

So make no mistake – the oil companies have placed their bet on Senator McCain, and if he wins, they will continue to cash in while our families and our economy suffer and our future is put in jeopardy.

Well that’s not the future I see for America. I will not pretend the goals I laid out today aren’t ambitious. They are. I will not pretend we can achieve them without cost, or without sacrifice, or without the contribution of almost every American citizen.

But I will say that these goals are possible. And I will say that achieving them is absolutely necessary if we want to keep America safe and prosperous in the 21st century.

I want you all to think for a minute about the next four years, and even the next ten years. We can continue down the path we’ve been traveling. We can keep making small, piece-meal investments in renewable energy and keep sending billions of our hard-earned dollars to oil company executives and Middle Eastern dictators. We can watch helplessly as the price of gas rises and falls because of some foreign crisis we have no control over, and uncover every single barrel of oil buried beneath this country only to realize that we don’t have enough for a few years, let alone a century. We can watch other countries create the industries and the jobs that will fuel our future, and leave our children a planet that grows more dangerous and unlivable by the day.

Or we can choose another future. We can decide that we will face the realities of the 21st century by building a 21st century economy. In just a few years, we can watch cars that run on a plug-in battery come off the same assembly lines that once produced the first Ford and the first Chrysler. We can see shuttered factories open their doors to manufacturers that sell wind turbines and solar panels that will power our homes and our businesses. We can watch as millions of new jobs with good pay and good benefits are created for American workers, and we can take pride as the technologies, and discoveries, and industries of the future flourish in the United States of America. We can lead the world, secure our nation, and meet our moral obligations to future generations.

This is the choice that we face in the months ahead. This is the challenge we must meet. This is the opportunity we must seize – and this may be our last chance to seize it.

And if it seems too difficult or improbable, I ask you to think about the struggles and the challenges that past generations have overcome. Think about how World War II forced us to transform a peacetime economy still climbing out of Depression into an Arsenal of Democracy that could wage war across three continents. And when President Roosevelt’s advisors informed him that his goals for wartime production were impossible to meet, he waved them off and said “believe me, the production people can do it if they really try.” And they did.

Think about when the scientists and engineers told John F. Kennedy that they had no idea how to put a man on the moon, he told them they would find a way. And we found one. Remember how we trained a generation for a new, industrial economy by building a nationwide system of public high schools; how we laid down railroad tracks and highways across an entire continent; how we pushed the boundaries of science and technology to unlock the very building blocks of human life.

I ask you to draw hope from the improbable progress this nation has made and look to the future with confidence that we too can meet the great test of our time. I ask you to join me, in November and in the years to come, to ensure that we will not only control our own energy, but once again control our own destiny, and forge a new and better future for the country that we love. Thank you.

Your thoughts ?

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

desperately seeking sense

Visited the Stafford bathroom today and again found NO water fountains, no mop sink, no flooring, nor any wheelchair accessability; also no means of refrigeration or lighting. DID see the incredibly expensive sewer hookup, piles of rocks supporting the slab that had been washed away, and the VERY attractive barricades. How much are we being charged for the fill and the barricades? Are the barricades permanent? September will be TWO years and still no sign of when we will be able to actually USE them. Scary thought- these are the same guys who are supposed to build a 32,000 foot new gym for us. This is 1116 square feet, TWO years behind schedule, costs over $400 a square foot, SO FAR, and shows NO signs of being finished anytime soon. If you arent scared yet, maybe you should be. The buck stops at Borgemanns desk. How does he explain this, yet another disaster on HIS watch? under HIS supposed direct supervision? (I use the term supervision loosely, for obvious reasons, as there IS no apparent oversight of ANY significance). OVER two years for bathrooms? costs so far an easy triple of the usual and customary costs.. is THIS the best he has to offer? Incredible. Ridiculous. Incompetency personified. Ineptitude on the hoof. Absurd. There HAS to ba another answer for these repeated, costly, and continuous disasters- NOBODY can be THAT stupid all the time! Must be kickbacks, or bid rigging, or something, because no other explanation makes sense. If somebody has an rational explanation for these continuous construction catastrophies I would like to hear it.

unemployment at 4 yr high

WASHINGTON - The nation’s unemployment rate climbed to a four-year high of 5.7 percent in July as employers cut 51,000 jobs, dashing the hopes of an influx of young people looking for summer work.

Payroll cuts weren’t as deep as the 72,000 predicted by economists, however. And, job losses for both May and June were smaller than previously reported.

July’s reductions marked the seventh straight month where employers eliminated jobs. The economy has lost a total of 463,00 jobs so far this year.

22,000 vets have called the suicide hotline

22,000 veterans have called suicide hot line
Phone line was launched last July after complaints VA wasn't doing enough
Mental health videos
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updated 5:05 a.m. ET, Mon., July. 28, 2008
WASHINGTON - More than 22,000 veterans have sought help from a special suicide hot line in its first year, and 1,221 suicides have been averted, the government says.

According to a recent RAND Corp. study, roughly one in five soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan displays symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, putting them at a higher risk for suicide. Researchers at Portland State University found that male veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide than men who are not veterans.

This month, a former Army medic, Joseph Dwyer, who was shown in a Military Times photograph running through a battle zone carrying an Iraqi boy, died of an accidental overdose after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder for almost five years.

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Janet Kemp, national suicide prevention coordinator for the Veterans Affairs Department, said the hot line is in place to help prevent deaths such as Dwyer's. "We just want them to know there's other options and people do care about them, and we can help them make a difference in their lives," she said in an interview.

The VA teamed up with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to launch the hot line last July after years of criticism that the VA wasn't doing enough to help wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In April, two veterans groups sued the VA, citing long delays for processing applications and other problems in treatment for veterans at risk for suicide. The department has spent $2.9 million on the hot line thus far.

The hot line receives up to 250 calls per day — double the average number calling when it began. Kemp said callers are divided evenly between veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars. Richard McKeon, public health adviser for SAMHSA, said 10 to 20 of the 1,575 calls received each week have to be rerouted to high-volume backup call centers throughout the country.

18 veterans commit suicide each day
The VA estimates that every year 6,500 veterans take their own lives. The mental health director for the VA, Ira Katz, said in an e-mail last December that of the 18 veterans who commit suicide each day, four to five of them are under VA care, and 12,000 veterans under VA care are attempting suicide each year.

This month, the hot line began an advertising campaign in Washington area subway stations and buses featuring the slogan, "It takes the courage and strength of a warrior to ask for help."

The veterans hot line, which is linked to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, received 55,000 callers in its first year, including both veterans and people who are concerned about them, according to figures being released Monday. One-third of the 40 specially trained counselors are veterans themselves.

"We try to get them (callers) to talk about their situation and what they remember and see if they can identify exactly what their issues are. I think there's a comfort in knowing that they can get some help from people who do understand what combat stress is like," Kemp said.

From the call center, counselors instantly can check a veteran's medical records and then connect the caller to local VA suicide prevention coordinators for follow-up, monitoring and care at local VA medical centers. Kemp said that since the hot line started, 106 veterans have been steered to free medical care from the VA.


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Kemp said the hot line was put in place specifically for those veterans who don't get enough help until it's too late. "They have indicated to us that they are in extreme danger, either they have guns in their hand or they're standing on a bridge, or they've already swallowed pills," she said. Kemp said 1,221 veterans who were in such situations were rescued during the hot line's first year.

The VA is preparing for the eventual return of a large number of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. This could put added stress on the mental health screening program for returning veterans, which could lead to a rise in undiagnosed mental health issues. The VA recently got enough money to double its suicide prevention staff and is planning to hire 212 more people soon.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 800-273-TALK (8255); veterans should press "1" after being connected.

We have asked our young people to do a dirty job in Iraq and they have done their part. Now it is time for us to take care of them when they return. To NOT keep our end of the bargain would be criminal.

Monday, August 4, 2008

the buck stops......?

The Country Club enclosure was 520 square feet, times 125 a square foot yields 65k. Throw in 35k for renovations, tables, and chairs to make it an even 100k. We PAID over 416k- where did that 316k go? The bathrooms are 1116 square feet, times 125 per square foot yields 140k, and includes a VERY nice 25 % profit for the Contractor. We have paid 414k SO FAR, and TWO years later they still arent usable. Where did THAT 315k go? If we had that 600k+ that disappeared we wouldnt be in the financial position we are! IF the pool was operated in a business-like fashion and everyone was charged to use it we wouldnt be losing 300k per year. IF the Finance Dept knew how much revenues we actually took in we wouldnt find dozens of errors on the official MS website. Its just unacceptable and intolerable. Where DOES the buck stop?

incompetence or corruption? or both?

SHOULD cost overuns occur with the new gym project??????? OF COURSE they will. Cost overruns and change orders are built into the process, just like they were with the Country Club project AND the bathrooms. MANY costly change orders will be necessary because city officials have only given the contractors a sketch of what they would eventually like. They will design it as they go, and multiple change orders will occur due to that poor planning on the part of city officials. Dozens of errors will be made due to lack of planning and require change orders to fix them, leading to HUGE cost overruns, just like before. The most recent glaring errors from a lack of planning are the TWO-YEAR bathroom project- no water, electrical, or sewer hookups for BATHROOMS? $400 a square foot, so far? Paid 33k for a one-day, 5k in costs, project-sewer hookups are 8 bucks a linear foot, plus materials. Paid $38,500 for an elevation of both bathrooms that can comfortably be done for 6k, again in one day. Change orders, lack of planning leading to errors, and cost overruns are GUARANTEED in any project the City Manager is involved with. The facts speak for themselves. Repeated and continuous incompetence and ineptitude, at the very least. At worst....

Dotson for Mayor

The City of MS is projected to have 1.5 million more in bills next year than revenues to pay them. Council just pushed thru a 3.5 million plan for more debt and, apparently, are considering another 3.5 million in other capital projects that may be nice , but are NOT necessities- How do they plan to pay for the debts they have already incurred? Of course, it will be on the backs of the residents in higher taxes and fees. Thank God for Dotson, otherwise we would have only the three blithering idiots to listen to. He is an oasis of common sense in a sea of Council chaos, incompetence, and/or criminality. The jury is still out on Youngs, as he DOES have occasional helpful insights and bouts of common sense. The others havent been accused of anything close to good sense or fiscal responsibility for YEARS... several MILLION dollars in debt ago... Do you suppose they are running their OWN businesses into the ground too? of course not- thats THEIR money.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Is your broker a felon? Part 1

Ex-convicts active in mortgage fraud
During Florida's housing boom, state regulators allowed thousands of mortgage professionals with criminal records into the industry -- costing consumers millions.
BY JACK DOLAN, ROB BARRY and MATTHEW HAGGMAN
jdolan@MiamiHerald.com

When Scott Almeida walked out of federal prison and into the mortgage business, he took a gamble. He admitted on his license application that he had been convicted of cocaine trafficking.

Florida regulators -- responsible for protecting borrowers from predatory brokers -- could have rejected him on the spot.

Instead, they asked for a character reference: He gave them a note from his mom. They said he needed a reputable supervisor for his practice: He chose a guy he met in the prison visitor room.

They asked for a copy of the court file but never demanded the police report, which shows that he had been caught with a small arsenal of assault rifles and ammunition, in addition to the cocaine.

Their background investigation complete, regulators circled ''approved'' at the bottom of the screening checklist, collected a $215 license fee and looked the other way.

Over the next three years, in a crime spree that stretched from Tampa to Miami, Almeida arranged nearly $3 million in fraudulent loans and fleeced 30 people -- many of them elderly and disabled.

Twice, the Florida Office of Financial Regulation -- which polices the mortgage industry -- failed to act on warnings that Almeida was stealing from clients, allowing his scam to thrive until police threw him into jail.

The Almeida case highlights one in a series of breakdowns in the state's enforcement system created to protect borrowers. Since 2000, regulators failed to weed out people with criminal histories, monitor scam operations and discipline crooked brokers, a Miami Herald investigation found.

State regulators allowed thousands of ex-convicts to enter a profession that gave them access to the most sensitive and personal financial information: credit cards, bank accounts and Social Security numbers.

Those criminals went on to commit nearly $85 million in mortgage fraud, the newspaper found. They stole their customers' identities. They stole their money. They even stole their homes.

''I was disgusted, I had to cry, because it was the first time in my life I'd been scammed,'' said Mary Taylor, 62, one of Almeida's victims.

Beyond the licensing, regulators routinely overlooked or ignored complaints, allowing rogue brokers to flourish amid one of the biggest housing booms in state history.

As the median home price reached an all-time record in Florida, and the Miami skyline erupted with gleaming new residential towers, fortune seekers rushed into the mortgage business in unprecedented numbers.

But Florida regulators, who introduced the nation's first licensing requirement for mortgage brokers in 1959, failed to keep pace.

During an eight-month investigation, The Miami Herald analyzed computer records for more than 222,844 Florida mortgage professionals, examined thousands of records from the Office of Financial Regulation, reviewed hundreds of court files and interviewed dozens of regulators, brokers and victims.

The newspaper found:

• From 2000 to 2007, regulators allowed at least 10,529 people with criminal records to work in the mortgage profession. Of those, 4,065 cleared background checks after committing crimes that state law specifically requires regulators to screen, including fraud, bank robbery, racketeering and extortion.

• More than half the people who wrote mortgages in Florida during that period were not subject to any criminal background check. Despite repeated pleas from industry leaders to screen them, Florida regulators have refused.

• Confronted with a growing epidemic of mortgage fraud -- Florida now has the highest rate in the nation -- the number of license revocations declined over the last five years, leaving borrowers at the mercy of predatory brokers.

• During the peak of the housing boom, the Office of Financial Regulation ignored a state law enacted in 2006 that compelled it to perform nationwide criminal background checks on applicants. That failure allowed people convicted in other states -- and in federal court -- to peddle loans in Florida without any scrutiny.

• Regulators allowed at least 20 brokers to keep their licenses even after committing the one crime that seemed sure to get them banned from the industry: mortgage fraud.

''I knew we had a problem. I had no idea how bad,'' U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said when told of The Miami Herald's findings.

Martinez is co-sponsor of an amendment to a sweeping federal housing bill that would ban anyone convicted of a felony from selling mortgages for seven years.

While much attention on the national mortgage crisis has focused on questionable Wall Street practices, the damage done by criminal brokers began on a far more basic and intimate level.

In brokerages at nondescript offices in strip malls across the state, the frauds ran the gamut, from simple schemes to boost reported incomes and assets, to elaborate enterprises with straw buyers and bogus appraisals.

Sometimes banks were the targets of the fraud; other times, borrowers.

Don Saxon, commissioner of the Office of Financial Regulation, said he didn't know why his staff issued licenses to bank robbers and racketeers, but would look into the cases cited by The Miami Herald.

''You're asking me to get into the heads of the people who made those choices,'' Saxon said. He added: ''Certainly we are not proud of the fact that these people have gone on to do bad things.''

OFR officials who do the screening said there is no single standard they use to decide who gets a license: The criminal background check is just one of many factors.

''We look at all the facets around, you know, whatever file, and we predicate on the fact that everybody deserves another chance,'' said Terry Straub, director of the OFR's Division of Finance, which regulates the mortgage industry in Florida.

Miami-Dade schoolteacher Candace Young said she expects more vigilance from regulators.

She ran up a $100,000 legal bill while fighting to get her house back after broker Michael Fletcher -- who has a conviction for grand theft -- allegedly slipped the deed into a stack of documents he got her to sign. Young said she thought she was simply refinancing.

She got the house back. A civil-court judge nullified the deed transfer because the notary whose signature is on the documents admitted she was not present for the deal.

Fletcher could not be reached for comment for this report.

''I think it's horrible,'' Young said. ''Why would you let someone convicted of grand theft just go and raid the public? What does it take to lose a license?''

THE BOOM YEARS
When Almeida made the jump from cocaine trafficker to mortgage broker in 2002, he joined a wave that would nearly triple the number of brokers in Florida by the summer of 2007.

They were the first, and only, contact most buyers had with the banking industry.

Their role was simple: to persuade banks to lend their customers the money they would need to buy into the booming real-estate market.

To make their case, they gathered the most intimate details about their customers' financial lives.

The mortgages they peddled -- including many that required no money down and minuscule payments for the first few years -- lured previously unqualified buyers into the market and sent home prices to all-time highs.

Through it all, state regulators were the only line of defense, empowered to keep criminals out of the mortgage industry and revoke licenses to protect consumers from fraud.

But the OFR almost never rejected applicants based on their criminal records. The Miami Herald analyzed the same criminal database that the OFR uses and discovered 4,065 new applicants between 2000 and 2007 who had been found guilty of crimes that the law specifically requires regulators to screen.

Those include crimes involving fraud, dishonest dealing and ''moral turpitude''. Any conviction counts, as does any case where the applicant pleaded no contest, or where the court withheld adjudication.

As a group, they were guilty of 2,821 financial crimes, including 922 larcenies, 752 frauds, 327 burglaries, 161 forgeries and 67 robberies.

There were at least 1,588 crimes that the law describes as ''moral turpitude,'' including 835 assaults and batteries, 253 illegal drug sales, 84 sex crimes and 15 homicides.

During the same period, regulators rejected only 29 applicants based on their criminal record.

The OFR's mission statement declares that it is dedicated to safeguarding the public from fraud.

State lawyer William Gene Cole described that responsibility in a 1999 order refusing to license a Miami man guilty of grand theft because it would ''place him in a position of trust over other people's money, in a transaction that is often the most important investment a person will ever make -- buying a house.''

But as the industry boomed, and new applications piled up on regulators over the last eight years, they veered away from applying that standard, licensing 186 people guilty of the same theft statute, The Miami Herald found.

Among them: Anthony Hollis of Orlando, who got a license to own a mortgage brokerage in 2003, despite convictions for car theft and passing bad checks.

He didn't even make it through the 24-hour mortgage-broker training class without breaking the law, court records show. He persuaded a classmate who worked for Sprint PCS to sell him cellphone customers' Social Security numbers.

Hollis used his training to pull his victims' credit histories without their knowledge, court records show. He opened credit-card accounts in their names and stole more than $200,000 -- much of that blown in Las Vegas -- before his conviction for racketeering in 2004.

The Miami Herald reviewed the complete application files for 100 mortgage professionals -- violent offenders and those with the most serious financial crimes, like bank robbery and racketeering -- to see how the OFR handled high-priority cases.

The list includes brokers arrested and convicted in Florida, those who had been imprisoned in other states, and those convicted in federal courts.

Most had been found guilty before they applied for their license. The rest were found guilty after getting into the industry.

Of 64 with criminal histories when they applied, 36 disclosed their records. In those cases, regulators started the vetting process by demanding character references.

They accepted one from an Almeida business associate, Joel K. Hill, who has since been arrested, and acquitted, on charges of grand theft and exploiting the elderly. They accepted another from Almeida's mother, who noted that her son struggled with the exam after his training course: ''It took Scott three times but he passed and he didn't give up,'' she wrote.

Regulators also routinely asked offenders for a written explanation of their crime and subsequent rehabilitation.

''I had to write a letter. It took three seconds. It wasn't a battle,'' Almeida told The Miami Herald. With that, the OFR issued his license.

When South Beach real-estate speculator Richard Crowder applied in January 2003, he explained that his prior burglary case was ''my only altercation with the law and something I will be forever ashamed of.''

The same month he wrote those words, court records show, Crowder embarked on one of the most ambitious mortgage-fraud schemes in recent Florida history, netting $37 million in fraudulent loans by systematically lying on mortgage applications, fabricating supporting documents and arranging bogus appraisals.

Crowder spent the money on luxury condos in gleaming new towers, which have become the very symbol of Miami's real-estate bubble.

His empire included 14 waterfront units -- with access to a rooftop pool and 24-hour concierge -- at the Continuum in South Beach, one of the most expensive addresses in the southeastern United States.

After Crowder pleaded guilty in January, he told The Miami Herald that he hoped for a light sentence so he could devote himself to teaching ''credit literacy seminars'' in area high schools. In April, U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez sentenced him to nine years in prison.

EVADING THE TRUTH
Dozens of applicants simply lied to get their licenses, The Miami Herald found.

Twenty-six with criminal records checked ''no'' to the question on whether they had ever been convicted of a crime involving fraud, dishonest dealing or moral turpitude. The OFR's background check -- which until recently searched only Florida police and court records -- uncovered convictions for eight of them.

But even when regulators caught applicants lying, they still granted licenses, despite a provision in state law that says any ''material misstatement of fact'' is, by itself, grounds for a denial.

In 2003, Kissimmee broker Donald Lewis Smith checked ''no'' to the crime question on his application. In fact, he had been sentenced to 17 years in prison for strangling his wife and dumping her body into Tampa Bay, court records show.

When their background check revealed that Smith had lied, it was too late to reject him.

Under state law, after regulators receive an application, they have 30 days to request more information, said OFR Bureau Chief Pam Epting. In Smith's case, they didn't get the results of the background check until the 30th day -- they missed their chance to ask him about the murder conviction.

''The agency ended up having to issue the license, and the reason for that is our own mistake,'' OFR lawyer Peter Fisher said.

So instead, they asked whether Smith would be willing to go on probation. He said no, records show.

The OFR gave him a license, no strings attached. Smith could not be reached for comment.

In other cases, applicants omitted their most serious offenses from the follow-up paperwork or shaded the facts in their own favor.

Almeida told regulators he had been convicted of ''possession with intent to distribute.'' They asked for certified copies of all court records pertaining to the case, but their file doesn't include a copy of the police report.

It shows that when police raided his Tampa apartment in 1998, they found the tools of a large-scale trafficker: two kilograms of cocaine, two semiautomatic assault rifles, a stolen Glock pistol, Ecstasy, steroids, syringes, sophisticated scales, and a mold for pressing cocaine into one-kilogram packages.

Regulators did not demand a copy of the report, a standard part of any criminal file. Instead, they asked Almeida to sign a probation agreement -- a promise not to own a brokerage or break any mortgage-industry law for five years.

PROBATION DEALS
Of the 4,065 mortgage brokers and lenders with criminal records who got licenses between 2000 and 2007, 269 applicants signed similar probation agreements, The Miami Herald found. Among them were 40 people convicted for assault or battery, 39 for grand theft, 23 for burglary and one for kidnapping.

But the state's probation does not require monitoring -- no mandatory reports, no visits from regulators.

''We do not have the personnel to go out and review their files,'' said Fisher, the OFR lawyer.

The system even allows convicts to choose their own probation supervisors.

In 2003, Almeida chose his boss, Frank Giffone, whom he had met in federal prison. Almeida was an inmate; Giffone was visiting a mutual friend, Almeida told The Miami Herald.

Shortly after going into business together, the pair sent salesmen to search out elderly, often disabled people living in ramshackle houses in poor neighborhoods of Hillsborough, Polk and Lee counties.

They promised home-equity loans for badly needed renovations.

State regulators received two written warnings in 2004 that Almeida was lying on the loan applications and stealing money. One was from the daughter of a 76-year-old victim, the other from investigators at the Hillsborough County Consumer Protection Agency.

But despite the fact that Almeida was on probation, and had promised not to break the law, regulators took no action against his license.

Almeida later pleaded guilty to stealing from both borrowers. Giffone pleaded guilty to racketeering.

After the warnings, Almeida went on to scam 12 more victims in deals involving $1.1 million in fraudulent loans, including several routed through a brokerage in Homestead, records show.

As the number of applicants rushing into the business peaked in the last three years, criminals with even longer and more troubling rap sheets got licensed, The Miami Herald found.

State regulators allowed Eric Goldstein into the industry early last year despite no-contest pleas to two counts of racketeering, conspiracy to traffic cocaine, and possession of a machine gun with the serial number filed off.

In his explanation of the 1997 racketeering charge, Goldstein told regulators he had been been running ''an adult entertainment establishment'' -- police called it an illegal escort service -- when an undercover cop offered to process credit-card payments for him.

Under the law, any of his convictions would have justified immediate denial of his license application. But the OFR ''has to ensure that we are considering the possibility of rehabilitation,'' said lawyer Peter Fisher.

In Goldstein's case, the agency noted that he got probation for the racketeering offense, and hadn't served jail time since the cocaine-trafficking and weapons charges in the early '90s, Fisher said.

Two months after the OFR granted his license, Goldstein was arrested again, for extorting money from a partner in a proposed real-estate deal. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of making harassing phone calls. ''In retrospect, I agree, our decision does look questionable,'' Fisher said.

Nevertheless, Goldstein still has an active license. He told The Miami Herald that he's not practicing, however, ''because of all the problems in the industry.''

FBI SCREENING
Sometimes state officials themselves broke the law.

In 2006, the year license applications and home-sale prices peaked, the Florida Legislature changed the law to close a significant gap.

The new provision required state officials to send would-be brokers' fingerprints to the FBI to screen for convictions in other states and in federal court, where serious financial crimes and drug-trafficking cases are often prosecuted.

But state officials didn't follow the law. Last February, more than a year after the statute was changed, Greg Oaks, chief of the OFR's Bureau of Regulatory Review, told The Miami Herald that running the FBI checks using the old-fashioned hard-copy fingerprint cards took too long.

''It's conceivable a person might have an FBI record and we wouldn't see it,'' Oaks said. The agency began to run FBI checks in March of this year, officials said.

Here's what the OFR missed:

• Miami broker Jack Lux checked ''no'' to the criminal-history question. In fact, he had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and was sentenced to two years in federal prison, court records show. The OFR granted his license in February 2007.

• Nilsa Albaron, who had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank robbery, got her license in 2007, too. She checked ''yes'' to the criminal-history question, but wrote in her letter of explanation that prosecutors had dropped the charges.

Not true. Miami-Dade prosecutors dropped one charge, but transferred the bank-robbery case to federal court.

Albaron said she doesn't know how OFR administrators missed her federal judgment. ''Ask them,'' she said before walking away from two Miami Herald reporters.

Felons as loan originators

Thousands with criminal records work unlicensed as loan originators
BY MATTHEW HAGGMAN, ROB BARRY and JACK DOLAN
mhaggman@MiamiHerald.com

Gary Kafka, former body builder with a long rap sheet and violent past, wrote millions of dollars in mortgages in South Florida without ever applying for a state license.

Fresh out of prison after serving time for bank fraud, he never went through a criminal background check before selling loans. He never took a competency exam.

He never had to.

More than half the mortgage professionals registered in Florida -- 120,563 -- entered the industry this decade without being licensed by the state, The Miami Herald found.

Known as loan originators, they perform the same job as mortgage brokers but aren't bound by the same rules.

Time and again, industry leaders asked Florida regulators to bring this group under their watch by imposing mandatory licensing. But regulators refused to press for any changes, claiming that lawmakers would never approve.

The state's refusal proved costly during the biggest housing boom in Florida history: Thousands of loan originators entered the industry with criminal histories, state records show.

While The Miami Herald found breakdowns in the state's licensing system for mortgage brokers, the lack of controls over originators created even more problems for an industry steeped in the highest fraud rate in the nation.

The special group was created by state lawmakers 17 years ago to make it easier for lenders to hire people as the industry was growing.

But in the past eight years, more people with criminal records jumped into the business as loan originators than as any other category of mortgage professionals.

'IT'S EMBARRASSING'
''It's more than disappointing, it's embarrassing,'' said Joseph Falk, a Miami mortgage broker and former president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, who tried to get regulators to license loan originators in 2002.

''It was pretty easy for someone to enter the industry because there were no standards. If there's no one policing, anyone who wanted to join the industry could do so.''

Pamela Simmons turned to a loan originator with a criminal past in 2005 to refinance her three-bedroom house in Pompano Beach, but ended up losing it.

''This was everything to me,'' said the single mother, tears in her eyes as she stood in front of the house. ''It's the only home I ever owned.''

A review of thousands of pages of court documents, state industry reports, internal e-mails and police reports shows that from 2000 to 2007:

• 5,306 people with criminal histories became loan originators -- a rate of nearly two a day. Worse, those include 2,201 who had committed financial crimes, such as fraud, money laundering and grand theft.

• Even large lenders hired loan originators with criminal backgrounds. The Miami Herald found that in at least 30 companies with 50 or more employees, more than one in five originators had a criminal record.

• Nearly two dozen people stripped of their licenses as mortgage brokers were able to sidestep regulators by becoming loan originators. Nine others who were denied licenses because of prior crimes or regulatory violations were able to do the same.

''It's a huge hole,'' said Ronald Brenner, a former Florida mortgage regulator who once led the agency's Miami office. ''You could get the worst thief in the world, a fraudster to the nth degree, and when he gets out of jail he can come work at your mortgage operation, and if he doesn't have a broker's license, all the better.''

Kafka, 48, joined America's Best Lending in Boynton Beach in 2004 after living in a halfway house.

While his federal probation officer said in court records that Kakfa should not be working in the mortgage industry, he went on to join two other firms without disclosing his past.

Two years after he began to peddle mortgages, he was convicted of cheating lenders of $2.7 million in loans at America's Best Lending by inflating incomes, boosting assets and misrepresenting other finances.

''You never would have guessed it,'' said Philip Sencer, who hired Kafka at a Wellington firm in 2006. ''He was the type of guy you'd invite to your home for a barbeque.''

BURDEN ON LENDERS
State regulators say they don't license loan originators, but they regulate those who hire them: mortgage lenders. The 1991 law allowing originators made it clear: The burden is on the lenders to ensure that everyone follows the law.

If a lender refuses to act on complaints against a loan originator, the state can discipline the lender, said Terry Straub, recently appointed director of the Office of Financial Regulation's Division of Finance.

''We hold them accountable,'' he said. But The Miami Herald found that in at least nine major cases when originators were arrested for mortgage fraud, no action was taken against their lenders.

While Florida requires lenders to report the names of their loan originators every quarter, the newspaper found that hundreds of companies don't follow the law. In the first half of 2005 -- during the peak of the boom -- 355 didn't file required reports, according to the state's own records.

Falk, the former president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, said the lack of reporting in the state system allows too many gaps.

The lack of tracking leads to even more problems: Without any central registration and with no requirements for entry, loan originators with criminal histories can move from firm to firm without divulging their past.

There is no state law requiring lenders to check their background.

If they had, they would have found that Kafka spent nearly three years in federal prison for loan fraud in 1999 and illegally keeping an arsenal of guns and ammunition while a resident of Ocean Ridge, near Boynton Beach.

Sencer, who hired Kafka at Financial Security in Wellington, said he learned of Kafka's police record only after federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents showed up at his office in 2005. Sencer said that when he met with prosecutors, 'they told me, ''You got duped.' ''

Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Karadbil, who prosecuted Kafka, said the former loan originator was able to conceal his past while peddling loans, partly because he didn't have to submit to criminal background checks.

''There has to be some way to know in this industry whether you're dealing with a convicted felon,'' Karadbil said. ''At least borrowers or employers should know that.''

Even before his latest conviction, Kafka had a criminal record dating to 1977, including 15 arrests and four felony convictions, court records show. The charges include grand theft, burglary and possession of contraband in prison.

He is now back in prison -- serving 57 months -- for the most recent mortgage scheme.

A NEW CALLING
Harry Rolle was a convicted felon who had declared personal bankruptcy three times before he became a loan originator in 2001 for International Lenders of South Florida in Oakland Park.

Within months, he found his first victim: Elsa Erarte, a single mother who worked at Walgreens in Miami. Rolle pocketed a $16,000 down payment she had given him while he was supposed to help her find a home, saying it was nonrefundable.

She sued Rolle in Miami-Dade Circuit Court and got her money back in a judgment in 2004. ''It was all the money she had,'' recalled her attorney, Joel Friedman. ''She had spent years saving it.''

But the court case didn't stop Rolle.

The 53-year-old loan salesman went on to cheat four more borrowers through a variety of means: pocketing their down payments, skimming from their loans, and selling their homes without their approval, court records state.

''The guy was a consummate con artist,'' said Joseph Wilson, an investigator for the Office of Financial Regulation, who referred the case to police. ''He had the ability to gain people's confidence by saying what people wanted to hear.''

In 2005, the Miami-Dade County state attorney's office finally prosecuted Rolle as a habitual offender on fraud charges -- for ripping off Erarte and others. A judge gave him a year in jail.

Under state law, there is nothing to stop loan originators convicted of ripping off borrowers from returning to the industry.

Because they aren't licensed, there are no records of discipline or past crimes involving money or moral turpitude -- and no files for public inspection.

Bernard Williams, who pleaded guilty to stealing $6,000 from two elderly women -- the bills ripped from the seams of their clothes -- said he found the easiest route to sell home loans by becoming a loan originator in 2001.

''I didn't have a problem getting in,'' he told The Miami Herald.

Williams, 54, said he decided to sell loans because the market was booming and he knew that ''there was money to be made.'' Over the next five years, he worked for three separate lenders.

But while he was writing loans for dozens of working-class families, he and several co-conspirators were accused by Florida's attorney general of fleecing 80 people of nearly $2 million, according to a civil fraud suit filed in Broward County Circuit Court in January.

The suit says Williams, who has not been criminally charged, joined others in a scheme to siphon money from loans designed to save people from losing their homes. Like Pamela Simmons, several claim that Williams put their homes up for sale without their permission. He and others then pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in profits in each case by charging inflated fees, the suit alleges.

''I worked hard -- three jobs -- to get that house,'' said Simmons, 40, who has five children.

Williams insists he did nothing wrong, saying the suit will be resolved in his favor. ''This is all a headache,'' said Williams, who continues to work as a loan originator in North Miami-Dade.

He refused to talk about his guilty plea in 1994 for stealing from two elderly women, drawing a 30-day sentence and five years of probation.

`FEEDING FRENZY'
As the housing boom exploded in 2001, so did the number of people rushing into the mortgage industry, with loan originators leading the way. But as their numbers rose each year -- 66 a day in 2005 -- so did the number of former criminals.

With home sales rising more than 20 percent a year in parts of Florida, mortgage companies were hiring loan originators at an unprecedented rate, state records show.

''Back then, it was such a feeding frenzy,'' said David Velazquez, 37, a former loan originator in Broward who served time in prison for drug trafficking. 'People were saying, `We need loan originators. We'll train you.' It was so busy. They were pulling in anyone they could.''

In all, more than 5,300 people with criminal histories rushed into Florida's mortgage industry as loan originators since 2000. Even for people who had five or more convictions, there were no impediments to getting in.

According to state Department of Corrections data and county court records:

• Brian Lendin served six prison terms totaling a dozen years between 1983 and 2000 for crimes including grand theft, manslaughter and aggravated battery.

• Rosendo Perez was convicted of mortgage fraud, grand theft and forgery between 1990 and 2000.

• Ronald D. Collins was convicted 37 times between 1983 and 2000 on charges including grand theft, forgery and writing worthless checks.

REJECTION OVERCOME
The Miami Herald also found 31 instances of people with stripped or denied mortgage-broker licenses who managed to get work as loan originators. Others were turned down over incomplete applications.

Florida denied Antonio Ramos a broker's license in 2004 after he failed to submit his arrest record and other documents on his prior crimes. On his state application, he admitted a grand-theft conviction, explaining he was young at the time: ''Please accept me, because I am honest and want to be a success in the future.''

Ramos became a loan originator.

Over the next three years, prosecutors say, he and several co-conspirators embarked on a massive fraud spree targeting luxury homes in Broward County. They inflated home values in Southwest Ranches and used straw buyers to rip off lenders for $8.3 million.

Ramos is serving 60 days of home detention and four years of probation.

The Miami Herald also found that 22 brokers stripped of their state licenses returned as loan originators. Among them: four charged with felonies while working as mortgage brokers, two who dipped into their clients' accounts, and three who were charging excessive fees.

Chris Francis said he knew that he had to become a loan originator to get into the business in 2002. The reason: He had spent nearly a year in federal prison for a $4 million mortgage fraud in Maryland.

''I did my homework, and this was my way in,'' said Francis, who works for a lender in Lee County. He's now in charge of compliance for his firm. ''Who better than me to make sure everything is done right?'' he said.

Pitts

By LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@miamiherald.com

`What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?''

I have gone forward and back for awhile now trying to figure out where today's rant should begin, but I find that I cannot get past that question. It was posed by Monica Goodling, an aide to then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to job seekers at the Department of

Justice.

``What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?''

Is it me, or doesn't she sound less like a job interviewer than like an adolescent girl splayed out on her bed, giggling with her girlfriend about some hottie actor they both adore? I mean, what, exactly, was an applicant expected to say?

``I adore his strong chin?''

``That crinkly smile really turns me on?''

'I can't resist the manly twinkle in his eyes when he mispronounces `nuclear?' ''

Presumably, Goodling is somewhere doodling the president's name and hers inside valentine hearts while she awaits her fate. You see, she faces possible professional sanctions for violations of both civil service law and the DOJ's own policy. As detailed last week in a Justice Department report, she and other aides systematically schemed to fill nonpolitical positions with Bush loyalists.

It wasn't just that she asked a question that would have been more at home on the cover of Tiger Beat. It was that she passed over a respected prosecutor with almost 20 years of experience for an important counterterrorism job because his wife was active in Democratic politics, hiring instead a Republican with three years' experience. And that she denied one applicant on the suspicion -- the suspicion, mind you -- that she was a lesbian. And that she jettisoned yet another because he was a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. And that she ran Internet searches to determine applicants' political views. And that one of her interview questions was: ``Why are you a Republican?''

It goes on. And on. Goodling's priority was not experience, talent, or competence. Rather, she was looking for, as she put it in a note, applicants who were suitably conservative on ``god, guns + gays.''

Yes, every president is entitled to fill political positions with loyalists. But these were not, I repeat, political positions. Rather they were, or were supposed to have been, career, nonpartisan jobs: immigration judges, assistant U.S. attorneys, trial attorneys.

The problem is, in this administration, there's no such thing as a nonpartisan job. For them, the campaign never ends. Just last month another report found applicants for DOJ internships and honors programs being turned away for political reasons. Then there's Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which recounts how people interviewing to work in the Green Zone in Iraq were asked their opinion of Roe v. Wade, among other conservative litmus tests.

What does abortion politics have to do with turning on the electricity in Baghdad? Hey, you got me.

This administration prizes ideological purity above ability. As a result, it has driven the presidency off a cliff, the country following close behind. These are not people who came to government to govern. No, these are true believers who came to government to institutionalize true belief, to make it permanent as a stain.

There is something Stepford, something robotic and chilling, in the glassy-eyed, ends-justifies-the-means faith of these young Bush aides in their own righteousness. Forget credibility. Forget competence. Just give us your answer, please: ``What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?''

It is a telling question. Apparently, these people have forgotten or never even knew: It wasn't George W. Bush they were supposed to serve.

deficit spending and audits

MS is projected to have a 280k deficit for this fiscal year and OVER a 1.5 MILLION dollar deficit for next year, or more. We are in the red, and that includes just the interest-only portion of the new gym loan. The following year there will be principle payments to add to the deficit. Is there ANY business that would consider going FURTHER into debt a solution to not having enough money to pay your bills? That can only happen in MS by raising our taxes and fees to pay for their incredible lack of common fiscal sense and/or vision. Its like we are an bottomless ATM that simply dispaenses more money when they have wasted all we originally gave them in taxes. 300k losses at the pool, $400 a square foot and over 200k for each bathroom, 600 a square foot for CC enclosure, no anticipated bathroom hookups, gross overpayment for bathroom elevations and sewer hookup- when does it end? It would be funny except its OUR tax money being continuously wasted by their stumbling, bumbling, and fumbling. Official City documents with DOZENS of errors on it? if we cant trust their numbers how can we trust those responsible for presenting those numbers? A comprehensive and in-depth AUDIT by a reputable firm is the ONLY way to restore any sense of confidence in this administration. NOW.

mismanagement

Education does not GUARANTEE success any more than experience does, of course. It DOES provide a theoretical foundation from which to build and increase the liklihood of success. Smart managers ask those in the field for answers to fill in their gaps in their experience. Why hasnt the City Manager consulted with Skip Reed, who is a licensed contractor, on these construction projects? He knows that the usual and customary new construction costs in Dade County are $125 a square foot. Why doesnt the City Manager? Assistance in determining those appropriate costs are a phone call away. No calls on the CC project? the bathrooms? Why not? Ineptitude has lost the number? Why would he allow us to be charged $400 a square foot? $600 a square foot? To have that resource available and not use it is criminal/incredulous.

Other "managers" hide, disguise, misrepresent, and delay information that might embarass them with its ineptitude and outrageoous costs. It seems we have one of the OTHERS.