Dance of the Reptiles Read online

  A break is long overdue. It’s not a crisis but rather an opportunity. At long last, state and community leaders might be forced to intelligently confront the economic blowback from decades of inept planning and greed-fueled runaway growth.

  With each passing day, Florida is becoming a less desirable place to live. For the first time in modern memory, moving companies report that they’re transporting more families out of the Sunshine State than into it.

  The disenchantment is widespread and deep-seated, judging by a new Mason-Dixon survey that was released by Leadership Florida, a group founded by the state Chamber of Commerce.

  Of more than 1,100 residents interviewed by telephone in November, 43 percent said their quality of life has declined over the last five years. That’s an eye-popping number, up 7 percent from 2006.

  More evidence that lots of people see their Florida dream dissolving: Of those surveyed, only 24 percent said they think things will get better during the next five years. Thirty-seven percent believe the state will become a worse place to live during that time.

  The increasingly glum outlook of many Floridians isn’t just a reaction to off-the-chart property taxes and insurance rates, as politicians want us to believe.

  More and more folks are figuring out what serious urban planners have known for a long time: Run-amok growth doesn’t pay for itself. Taxpayers always get stuck with the bill for sprawl and also with the hometown ills it brings. By an overwhelming margin of nearly three to one, Floridians polled in the Leadership Florida survey oppose higher population densities in their neighborhoods—a view that resonates fairly evenly among registered Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

  A majority of residents—52 percent—believe local governments are “not effectively managing growth” in their communities. The figure is unchanged from 2006, and the Mason-Dixon pollsters describe the sentiment as “strong and and consistent among all groups and across the state.”

  Respondents were divided evenly when asked whether new people moving into Florida was good or bad. The question is rarely even whispered among politicians, many of whom live in fear of antagonizing the developers, bankers, and road builders who bankroll election campaigns.

  The beleaguered sense among many Floridians—that they’re not only being overtaxed but overrun—will not soon go away. Politicians who resist calls for strict land-use reforms and continue to shill for special interests risk being dumped from office by those whom they’ve ignored. It’s happened already in scores of municipalities where voters got fed up watching their green spaces malled and paved while the waterfronts went condo.

  The social equation isn’t complicated. The more people you cram into a place, even a place as vast and geographically diverse as Florida, the more stressful life becomes for everybody. It also becomes more expensive. Ask anyone in New York or California what happened to their taxes as the populations of those states swelled.

  A bipartisan group that advocates semi-sane growth policies, 1000 Friends of Florida, last year predicted that the state’s population would double to 36 million by 2060, and that 7 million acres of agricultural land and wilderness would be converted to concrete and asphalt.

  That was before the real-estate market tanked and the subprime mortgage racket imploded, but there’s no denying that even an overcrowded Florida continues to hold some mythical allure, whether you live in Dubuque or Port-au-Prince.

  Despite their rising disillusionment, about 62 percent of those interviewed for the Leadership Florida poll said they’d still recommend the state as a place for friends or relatives to live.

  For strangers? Maybe not. Because growth is an exalted industry unto itself, rather than the natural result of a broadening economic base, lawmakers have always focused on attracting hordes of new residents at all costs. The first casualty of such a fast-buck mentality is the quality of life.

  One out of five Floridians surveyed in November say they are “seriously considering” moving elsewhere.

  This is what’s known as a message. And for those who’ve sold out Florida’s future to enrich their campaign coffers, it breaks down like this:

  Enough.

  March 15, 2009

  Strange Doings Down on the Farm

  Sometimes it’s not easy to admit that you live in Florida.

  Last week, our state Senate boldly took the first step toward making it illegal for a person to have intimate relations with an animal.

  Although such a law might thin the dating pool in certain counties, it should ultimately serve to protect household pets and domestic livestock, which evidently are at far greater risk than most of us had imagined.

  The cry for justice first arose from the small Panhandle community of Mossy Head, where in 2006 a 48-year-old man was suspected of abducting a neighbor family’s pet goat and accidentally strangling it with its collar during a sex act.

  I wish I were making this up, but the story is true. The poor goat’s name was Meg.

  After outraged citizens demanded that the suspect be arrested and locked up, local authorities were alarmed to discover that Florida was one of only 16 states that had no laws against bestiality. While our moldy statute books still prohibit “unnatural and lascivious acts” between consenting adults, there’s apparently nothing you cannot do with a four-legged partner.

  More unwanted publicity came to Mossy Head when a local entrepreneur began selling T-shirts that said BAAAA MEANS NO! Residents demanded that the suspected goat rapist be charged at least with animal cruelty, but DNA samples collected from the crime scene proved inconclusive.

  Shortly after the fatal encounter with Meg, the same man was arrested while trying to sneak off with another goat. This time he was sentenced to 364 days for theft.

  Enter Sen. Nan Rich, a Sunrise Democrat and longtime advocate for animal rights. Soon after the bizarre abductions in Mossy Head, she set out to write a law imposing tough criminal penalties on those who seek out animal companionship with carnal intent.

  Although the bill died in the 2008 legislative session, this year it has a better chance of passing. A Senate agricultural committee has approved a version that would make bestiality a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

  However, the discussion among lawmakers of this rather delicate topic already has provided a few uncomfortable moments. As Rich’s bill was being amended to make sure that some common animal-husbandry practices were exempt, Sen. Larcenia Bullard of Miami spoke up in puzzlement. “People are taking these animals as their husbands? What’s husbandry?” she inquired.

  The committee chairman, Sen. Charlie Dean of Citrus County, patiently explained that animal husbandry was a term used for the rearing and care of domestic animals.

  Still, Bullard appeared confused. “So that maybe was the reason the lady was so upset about that monkey?” she asked, an apparent reference to the recent incident in which a pet chimpanzee was shot by Connecticut police after it went berserk and mauled a visitor.

  Bullard has taken some ribbing about her loopy comments, but in fairness, she represents a big-city district in which neither goats nor chimps often make an appearance. (Miami does have a scattered population of chickens, which the proposed law would presumably protect from human sexual advances.)

  Given the many urgent matters confronting the Legislature, it’s easy to make light of the bestiality deliberations; lots of Internet correspondents have been chiding lawmakers for wasting time on such a silly subject. Yet Rich asserts it’s anything but silly, citing “a tremendous correlation between sexually deviant behavior and crimes against children and crimes against animals.”

  I’m not familiar with those statistics, but it’s safe to assume that anyone with a burning sexual passion for farm critters has insurmountable psychological problems and would not be a welcome presence in most neighborhoods.

  As fervently as we might hope otherwise, the goat-sex attack in Mossy Head wasn’t an isolated incident. Rich s
ays other disturbing acts against animals have been reported throughout the state, including the molestation of a horse in the Keys and of a Seeing Eye dog in Tallahassee.

  The latter case involved a 29-year-old blind man who four years ago was charged with “breach of the peace” after admitting to police that he had sex on numerous occasions with a yellow Labrador named Lucky, his guide dog.

  You needn’t be an animal lover to be left aghast by such accounts. Sure, we all knew Florida was crawling with sickos—but boinking a Seeing Eye dog?

  Okay, Sen. Rich, you win. We definitely need a law.

  And a drink.

  October 22, 2011

  A “Lead Cocktail” or Old Sparky Not a Laughing Matter

  Every time Florida starts to fade from the national spotlight, somebody like Brad Drake comes along and gets everybody laughing at us again.

  Drake is the state representative who is sponsoring a bill to give Death Row inmates the choice between the electric chair or a firing squad—“a lead cocktail,” in Drake’s words.

  Not even Clint Eastwood could say the phrase “lead cocktail” with a straight face, but Drake claims to be serious. He says he’s frustrated by the questions about whether lethal injection, Florida’s current method of execution, is actually painless.

  “I say let’s end the debate,” Drake said in a prepared statement. “We still have Old Sparky. And if that doesn’t suit the criminal, then we will provide them a .45-caliber lead cocktail instead.”

  Drake is a Republican and a proud Baptist from the Panhandle community of Eucheeanna. At the tender age of 36, he has already been named one of the World’s Worst Humans by TV commentator Keith Olbermann.

  For supporters of the death penalty, the first problem with Drake’s proposed legislation is that it will generate so many court challenges as to effectively halt all executions in Florida. The second problem with the idea is his lack of originality.

  If you want grisly executions, come up with something fresh. Drake’s Web page says he’s a NASCAR fan, so why not make use of the speedway at Daytona? Strap the doomed inmate to the track and let Jeff Gordon run him over for a hundred laps.

  Florida’s electric chair was retired because the chair malfunctioned, causing some ghastly moments in the death chamber. Firing squads lost favor in this country for the same reason—they were messy and not always instantaneous. Inefficiency of an execution method has been viewed by some courts as “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is barred by the U.S. Constitution.

  Says Drake: “Don’t tell me I have to be sympathetic and humane to people who do something so heinous that a judge orders them to be executed.”

  You can see why death-penalty opponents are secretly elated to have this guy spouting off. All that’s missing is flecks of spittle on his lips.

  Back in 1983, when Drake was in elementary school, I watched a man named Robert Austin Sullivan put to death in Florida’s electric chair. Old Sparky worked fine that day, but it was a Gothic ceremony that unsettled witnesses and journalists. Some saw smoke rise from one of Sullivan’s legs. I didn’t, probably because I was watching his hooded face.

  Sullivan had been convicted in the brutal robbery-murder of a Howard Johnson’s manager in Miami. If the victim had been a member of my family, I would have been in the front row of the death chamber to watch Sullivan die.

  Capital punishment doesn’t deter anybody else from committing murder, but that was never the point. I would have no problem with the death penalty if it were administered consistently, regardless of race, and if the guilt of the condemned were a certainty.

  Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 115 condemned inmates have been exonerated in this country since 1973. Seventeen were freed when DNA evidence proved their innocence (after they’d served a combined 209 years in prison). One man, Frank Lee Smith, died on Florida’s Death Row after serving 14 years for a rape and murder he didn’t commit. DNA testing cleared his name too late.

  Numerous studies show that blacks are more likely than whites to receive a death sentence for similar crimes. Two of the most famously wronged Death Row inmates were Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee, who were ultimately pardoned after the late Herald reporter Gene Miller punched holes in the double-murder case against them in the Panhandle.

  A commonly heard complaint is that it takes too long to have somebody executed, often more than a decade. The appeals process is slow and grueling for victims’ families, but it has saved persons who are indisputably innocent from the death chamber. A good Christian like Drake ought to be grateful for that.

  Taxpayers already spend a fortune on legal battles before an inmate is actually executed. Getting the hated serial killer Ted Bundy from his cell to Old Sparky cost the state an estimated $5 million. It would have been much cheaper to lock him up and throw away the key.

  Given past miscues, the odds of conducting a flawless firing squad in Florida would appear to be shaky, unless the shooters were allowed to stand five feet from their target. There surely would be no shortage of volunteers and no shortage of lawsuits.

  Drake says he got his idea for the “lead cocktail” from lunchtime chatter at a neighborhood Waffle House. Perhaps he should have gone to the IHOP.

  June 2, 2012

  Nude Face-Eating Cannibal? Must Be Miami

  All of us who live in Florida struggle to explain this bizarre place to distant friends and family.

  The task got somewhat easier after the 2000 presidential election, which showcased the state’s unique style of dysfunction to a vast international audience. Since then, people who live elsewhere seem not so easily mortified by anything that happens here.

  Take the dreadful case of the naked cannibal.

  I’d be willing to bet that in no other city but Miami would the following quote appear matter-of-factly in a crime story: “Rudy was not a face-eating zombie monster.”

  Those words come from a high school friend of Rudy Eugene, who chewed the flesh off a homeless man’s face on Memorial Day weekend. Eugene first removed his own clothes and then tore off the trousers of his victim, 65-year-old Ronald Poppo.

  The gruesome biting attack, reported by passersby, took about 18 minutes. It didn’t end until Eugene was shot dead by a policeman and physically separated from the gravely injured Poppo.

  All this occurred on a Saturday morning on a ramp of the MacArthur Causeway, practically within fast-break distance of the American Airlines Arena, where the Miami Heat plays.

  Naturally, the gory assault was captured on video by security cameras mounted on buildings. And naturally, it’s all over the Internet.

  For a nontabloid headline writer, the perverse facts of the crime make it almost impossible not to sensationalize. The case is grotesque even by the extreme standards of South Florida.

  In my many years of working for the Herald, I can’t honestly recall anything quite so demented occurring in broad daylight at such a public location.

  Numerous heinous crimes have a nude perpetrator or a nude victim and occasionally both. At least one murder case I remember involved a grim bit of cannibalism. But the combination of nudity and cannibalism along a busy highway should be, well, shocking.

  Which isn’t a word often heard when journalists who cover Miami get together and tell stories. People down here do things that are sick, warped, disgusting, twisted—but rarely shocking. Not anymore.

  However, a zombie-like face-eating attack would be major news in any city. And had it happened in Des Moines or Spokane, the worldwide reaction would have been one of plain revulsion.

  The initial response to the MacArthur Causeway bloodbath was the same kind of horror, but then—after the dateline was noted—almost a sigh of relief: Oh, this was in Miami? Well, that explains it.

  Even some New Yorkers I know, who read daily about strange and violent events in their own zip code, expressed the view that South Florida would have been their first guess as the locat
ion for a nude face-eating incident. Is it the vibe of this place that promotes such a bounty of derangement, or do the deranged simply move here for the vibe?

  The subject frequently comes up in interviews. It’s a legitimate question—how to account for the unrelenting weirdness?

  Reporters looking at the life of Rudy Eugene have found a pot-smoking, Bible-reading guy with money problems and a relatively minor rap sheet. So far there is no indication that the 31-year-old man was fixated on zombie lore, werewolves, vampires, or Hannibal Lecter.

  The most likely explanation for Eugene’s vicious behavior was a dose of bad drugs. A police officer speculated it was LSD, which in the old days wasn’t famous for causing spontaneous cannibalism. Maybe there’s a new version on the streets. Another widely suggested culprit is “bath salts,” synthetic crystals sold in some convenience stores that can cause hallucinations and violent outbursts.

  Still another possibility is that Eugene wasn’t high on anything. Perhaps he suffered a severe mental breakdown before confronting Poppo, who’d lived on the streets for four decades and had his own problems with the law.

  The autopsy’s toxicology report will provide some answers, but it won’t get South Florida off the hook.

  Whatever factors compelled Eugene to strip naked and gnaw on another man’s face, the hideous crime truly could have occurred anyplace where there’s bad dope and mental illness—which is to say, anyplace.

  It didn’t, though.

  And as the story (complete with video) continues to rocket through the blogs, posts, and tweets, the lack of disbelief resonates.

  Of course it’s Miami. Where else?

  SURROUNDED ON THREE SIDES

  April 15, 2001

  Bush: Big Business’s Top Shill

  Seldom does a president turn out to be just as bad as predicted, but George W. Bush is rapidly making prophets of his shrillest enemies.

  During the election campaign, Democrats warned that a new Bush administration would be friendly toward polluters and hostile toward the environment.