The Bidens at Surfside pic.twitter.com/Rs16gK4PFN
— Steve Holland (@steveholland1) July 1, 2021
President Biden spent last few hours with the families of Surfside residents. After giving brief remarks, he went from table-to-table to speak individually with the relatives — as did Dr. Biden. Biden stayed until everyone had a chance to speak w/him, per WH official.
— Nancy Cook (@nancook) July 1, 2021
“We’re letting the nation know we can cooperate. When it’s really important … This is life and death.”
— President Biden sitting next to Gov. Ron DeSantis in Surfside, Florida pic.twitter.com/RncG34Uxya
— The Recount (@therecount) July 1, 2021
Biden tells emergency workers in Florida a joke about three political parties in Delaware: Democrats, Republicans and firefighters.
“I just wanted to come down and say thanks,” he said. “What you’re doing now is hard as hell.” pic.twitter.com/jc5vcmzriZ
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 1, 2021
Rescue operation at the Surfside condo collapse were halted early this morning because of worries about the stability of the structure, officials tell reporters. https://t.co/KLsRc38doi
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 1, 2021
"I don't think there is, at this point, any definitive judgement as to why it collapsed," Biden says when @nancook asked what he learned about why the Surfside condo building crumbled a week ago.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 1, 2021
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to Biden in Surfside, FL:
“You recognized the severity of this tragedy from day one, and you’ve been very supportive.” pic.twitter.com/NCGHtREhYV
— The Recount (@therecount) July 1, 2021
once again, basic decency is MAGA kryptonite
— kilgore trout, dna harvester (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 1, 2021
Biden, in Florida, says he thinks the federal government may have the power to pick up 100% of the cost for the county and state's expenses on the Surfside condo collapse rescue operation. pic.twitter.com/L8CrRt2y47
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) July 1, 2021
I don’t know how much credence to put in this interview, because it so closely conforms to my worst fears. But I think it’s worth reading:
“Condos and the development of condos and the mortgage brokers that help get the financing, the insurers that insure, the realtors who sell, the investors who buy and flip—if Florida has one main driver of industry, this is it. That is what we do.” https://t.co/JgEy91R6AR
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) June 30, 2021
Hoppie
Really hard part of the job, among so many hard parts.
Baud
This will only encourage other buildings to collapse.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Moral hazard!
debbie
How long until TFG calls DeSantis a RINO for having complimented Joe?
Catherine D.
Between 6 and 12 inches of movement?? Ja, you betcha suspend recovery operations.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
I hope you’re feeling better.
Gvg
Oh for Pete’s sake, the real estate market here is only partially condo’s and few are high rise percent wise. Condo’s aren’t really popular because everyone knows they are HOA’s on steroids. Miami is more urban dense than most of the state so they have many, especially beachfront. The state is mostly houses not condo’s.
Martin
This wasn’t the cause, but it speaks to why Florida will turn into the land of stranded assets:
If climate change comes to my single family house, it’s on me how to address that. And if it consumes my house, that’s my responsibility and my loss. But if you’re a 4th floor condo owner, you are in many ways reliant on the 3rd floor and 5th floor owners for your security. And if your building needs millions in repairs and some condo owners are on fixed incomes, or took a loss in the market, or blew all of their savings on a hip replacement? You can only force them to pay in to a certain degree.
So you’re trapped. Collectively you might have the money to do the repairs, but you can’t distribute those costs evenly. So you find yourself in a cycle where you do nothing until the building falls down and now everyone has lost everything. Now, the insurance companies might have a role to play here, but if this is the canary in the coal mine – the first of many structural failures due to lack of enforcement by regulators or rising water tables, etc. they won’t be there to help for long.
And how willing is New Jersey going to be to bail out the folks that fled the state for Florida and then neither paid into the tax base or into the maintenance of their own building?
debbie
They need to inspect every damn building. Honest, ethical developer seems oxymoronic to me.
Omnes Omnibus
@O. Felix Culpa: What Belgian soccer players have to do with it?
Mary G
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Thanks! I’m home from the hospital and an emergency appendectomy (is there any other kind?). Yesterday I was still on the good drugs, so felt fine. Today is a little more uncomfortable, but not terrible. It’s hard convincing the little dog that he can’t prance on my stomach when I’m lying down. :)
lollipopguild
You mean President Biden did not toss paper towels at people? ( I am kidding!) If Deathsantis runs against tfg for the 2024 nomination trump will treat him with the same love and kisses that he gave both Clinton and Obama. The nomination is trump’s “precious”.
Martin
@Gvg: Florida has more condos than any other state – even CA. Condos are about 5% of all residences in the US. Nearly 20% in Florida. ¼ of all condos in the United States are in Florida.
Omnes Omnibus
@O. Felix Culpa: Oh wow! Best wishes for a quick recovery.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
Glad to hear you’re home with your dog.
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus: Tres drôle. :)
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Deadbeat buildings!
craigie
Money quote from the Slate story:
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus: @Baud:
Thanks! I’m glad to be home again. The little dog seems happy about it too. Dogs are uncritical like that.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Wasn’t greeting Obama after Sandy the kiss of death for Chris Christie?
WaterGirl
@Mary G: I do not mean this to be flip in any way, but I thought that Trump and Barr had already murdered everyone who was on death row.
Mary G
@O. Felix Culpa: I had to build an elaborate fort with a side table and pillows when I had my hip replaced. The cat was not happy to lose her resting place and acted out in various ways.
Ken
Interesting, my Google Translate plugin just offered to translate that from Chamber of Commerce to English. Wonder what will happen…
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Congrats on the unintentional jet-black humor.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
It was. Looks like DeSantis was thinking that same thing in that tweeted photograph above.
featheredsprite
@Mary G: Very good! Very, very good!
Adam L Silverman
@Gvg: It’s going to be a huge problem. Think about where we’re talking about. Sure, we’ve got a lot of suburbs and exurbs and semi-rural and rural areas that are all single family homes, but we have a lot of places like this building in Surfside. You’ve got a lot of the incorporated little municipalities up and down Miami beach that have these types of building ranging in height from three to five stories up to the size of the Champlain. You’ve got the same thing in Miami proper in places like Brickel. You’ve got the same thing northeast in Broward and Palm Beach counties along the coast. All the way up to Jacksonville Beach. On the west coast you’ve got at least a dozen of these on Bayshore in Tampa interspersed with the old captain’s mansions. You’ve got at least a half dozen still on Davis Islands and probably that many on Harbor Island. For non Tampa residents the former are man made islands in the bay connected to Tampa proper by a bridge that were built and then developed in the 1960s. Harbor Island is another one of these that was done in the 80s, but is not connected to the three connected by bridges Davis Islands. You’ve got dozens of these up and down the barrier islands that run from the southwest tip of St. Pete up through Clearwater.
And let’s be honest, most of the Home Owner’s Associations down here are similar in form, structure, and function to the condo associations. When you get a HOA board that decides that it isn’t going to spend money and wants to cut corners so they can cut fees, it is not only more costly in the long run, it can take several years to fix the entire mess. Ask me how I know…
mrmoshpotato
@Ken: Haha, nice.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
TIL the modern Republican Party is based on HOAs.
Ken
@WaterGirl: That’s what I understood also, and with the (non-unanimous) blessing of the Supreme Court. I’m kind of hoping someone will drop a phrase along the lines of “as the Holy Father and other religious leaders have stated, capital punishment is immoral…”
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Serious question: Do you think hotel construction is any better?
Gin & Tonic
@O. Felix Culpa: Actually, there are non-emergency appendectomies – my dear wife had one. The surgeon was going to be in the neighborhood, and asked if she wanted it taken out while he was there.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
You mean he didn’t toss rolls of paper towels to grieving or have his “wife” show up wearing a billboard stating her indifference.
BOTH SIDES!
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Ken:
That Jimmy Breslin/Mike Royko plug in is aces.
NotMax
Open thread?
Adam L Silverman
@craigie: Yep, and to answer AL’s question from the bottom of the post, I think that’s why that interview in Slate is legit. By the time the building they’re doing search and rescue on was built back in the late 1980s/early 1990s it had passed through several different developers. Every major building project, residential or commercial, in Miami, in Tampa, in Ft. Lauderdale, in Palm Beach, in Daytona, in Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach, in Orlando, in Pinellas County (St. Pete and Clearwater and 8 or 9 other smaller municipalities), and other places in Florida are started, the developer declares bankruptcy, cuts his losses, sells the project to another developer to protect the initial investment and whatever profits have been made, and then the process repeats. Sometime three times. Sometimes five or six times. Sometimes even more. The attempt to build a Trump Tower in Tampa on the Bayshore overlooking where the Hillsborough River meets the bay was exactly like this. When Trump and his partners couldn’t make it work, their local developer took that project into bankruptcy, sold everything to another developer, and it started over. That thing went through three or four iterations before the thing was finally built. And it was never built under Trump branding. Some of the people that made an initial deposit for a condo/apartment in the building kept their money in and after many repeated delays got the condo/apartment they wanted. Many pulled out and lost a lot of money. But this is how development is done in Florida. And remember, the developers are incentivized to operate this way because of specific tax breaks just for them and for specific portions of the bankruptcy code just for them.
Adam L Silverman
@O. Felix Culpa: Glad you’re doing better. Don’t scare us like that again!!!
Gvg
@craigie: Bull. Florida gets some money from developers selling the dream to out of staters, but that migration slowed a lot starting….about 20 years ago. A majority live here and we’re either born or have been here for decades. We have jobs families and all the rest and everyone wants to buy a nicer house than they have, until they get older and downsize. Most of the real estate market here is just like the rest of the country, it’s just there is a very advertised extra layer of selling to the gullible. Beachfront condo’s now that is full of scams yes. But suburban neighborhoods with working and professional families who want good schools and a bearable commute are just like everywhere else and not full of the Florida dream nonsense. Well people do like orange trees for Florida lifestyle, but there is no problem with that. Go down to Home Depot and get one.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Appendectomy trucks > taco trucks.
zhena gogolia
@Mary G:
Good.
NotMax
FYI (WaPo link).
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: @Gin & Tonic: This is a different thing. Biden just politically neutralized him just by being Biden. Look at DeSantis’s body language and his facial expressions both when Biden is telling everyone he’s going to try to make sure the Federal government picks up all the costs, that he’ll ensure they get everything they need in terms of help and support, that this is evidence we can put political differences aside and pull together as Americans, and when DeSantis thanks him and states Biden has been extremely responsive.
DeSantis is not sure how to respond to any of this because it can’t be responded to with the political persona he’s adopted over the past several years to appeal to Trump’s supporters.
And if DeSantis does decide to run against Biden in 2024 and he goes after him as out of it, out of touch, and not doing anything for the average American he knows, you can see it on his face that he knows, that these clips will be repurposed as attack ads to knock him back.
Mike in NC
It was on a visit to Saint Augustine a few years ago that we learned the story of Henry Flagler, a wealthy industrialist and developer who fell in love with Florida in the 1880s and began to build hotels and railroads there. He even built a railroad that ran from Miami to Key West. It opened in 1912 but was destroyed by a massive hurricane in 1935.
After visiting Key West last month I read “Last Train to Paradise”, which details how the railroad was constructed. On the back cover there were several endorsements, including one by a certain Donald Trump. As if he’s read any books since high school.
O. Felix Culpa
@Gin & Tonic: Ya learn something new
everydayonce in a while.trollhattan
Meanwhile, California will be having our fucking recall election September 14 to decide whether Newsom can continue doing his damn job. If not, some lucky dart target from what will be scores of candidates will take over. For a year and a couple months.
Fucking Republicans, can’t win an election so they pull this garbage.
Per estimates from all California counties, we will spend $276 million for the pleasure of finding out whether we keep the governor we have or get a brand new governor. Yay us.
Make it illegal to pay for gathering signatures and this goes away, along with most of our propositions and initiatives.
O. Felix Culpa
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks! I can promise not to have appendicitis again!
Ken
@Adam L Silverman: It’s still a few days away, but the forecast for tropical storm Elsa has it heading toward Florida, so DeSantis may have some more photo ops with Biden in his future.
Soprano2
@NotMax: I’m here to tell you, that Steve Edwards “Shut up” is like me saying “go fuck yourself”. That’s the strongest language I’ve seen him use. He’s totally frustrated with the idiots here. He’s been the voice of reason and sanity through the whole Covid crisis. I think he’s why we had the health measures we did. He’s a true hero.
trollhattan
@NotMax:
We have an “area man” in jail on charges from 1/6 who is being denied bail because the judge considers him too dangerous and a flight risk.
“Very fine people.”
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Did no one explain poker faces to them? //
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Basically, about four years ago my HOA decided it was going to go full on Paul Ryan and Freedom Caucus. They made huge promises about what they could achieve while cutting everyone’s fees, screamed down everyone who called them out while they were running for their positions on the board. And then they ran everything into the ground very quickly. The woman, who we think was cheating on her husband with two of the guys she was aligned with on the board, moved out of the neighborhood after reality set in and people got pissed and moved to restructure the board, one of the other guys did too. One of them still lives in the neighborhood, but he avoids everyone else and no one really talks to him anymore. No one on that old board is on the current board or the past two boards. Everything was financially fixed, fortunately nothing majorly bad happened. But several of us saw the scam a mile away, warned everyone else there was no free lunch, and were ignored.
debbie
@Ken:
?????
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Unfortunately, this has already been litigated, and they can’t restrict paid petition circulators. I agree it would be great if we could, but that ship has already circumnavigated the globe.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: No. Same with high rise business towers down here. All of it works the same way. Same with strip malls, regular malls, professional centers. All of it is done the same way down here.
SectionH
@trollhattan: “Make it illegal to pay for gathering signatures and this goes away, along with most of our propositions and initiatives.”
THIS! 40 million times or more. Yeah I know…
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Actually, I’ve seen the evidentiary photo of Robertson’s pipe bomb and he had written “Bobby Trap”. Frankly, the most disturbing portion the account of what Robertson has been up to is that he either can’t spell booby or that he wants to blow up someone named Bobby.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Yeah, but you can only go to the appendectomy truck once. So I still prefer taco trucks.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: Believe me, I am paying attention. Because we’re too many days out to know with any certainty where it’s going once it goes past Cuba, right now it is forecast to come my way.
Spanky
@NotMax:
And Wile E. Coyote suddenly springs to mind.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Mew-S-A
Mewis sisters puts USA on the board
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: DeStupid is as DeStupid does.
trollhattan
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Merde, forgot that was on. Mew-Mew connection? Awesome.
ETA dang, it’s pouring.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Sure. HOAs* are, at their core, about privatizing government. They provide many of the same kinds of services a municipal government would, even private security in the place of police in the fancier neighborhoods. Of course the people who pay for those things through their HOA dues don’t want to pay again through taxes, so they vote against any kind of tax that would help anyone outside their HOA. Once the city government is incapable of providing basic services, people are forced to have HOAs just to get decent services. It’s a vicious cycle.
*At least neighborhood HOAs. Something like a HOA is essential if you want an apartment-style condominium like the Champlain Towers South that necessarily has a large shared property.
Hoppie
@Roger Moore: We could initiate such a change though. Perhaps by paying petition gatherers? (I would gladly help collect for free though, but beyond my organizing capacity now.)
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@trollhattan: NBC Nightly News segment on the Mewis sisters being the feel-good hit of the summer (video)
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Do they call them Mewtwo?
Roger Moore
@Hoppie:
Unfortunately, the rule about paid petition circulators was a USSC ruling (Meyer vs. Grant), so it’s not something that can easily be changed.
trollhattan
Hah, Dahlkemper takes a shot. Never lose the dream, even keepers score from time to time.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@O. Felix Culpa: That’s an unexpected adventure. Hope you’re feeling better soon.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
With the current court we can pass a law that LIBERALS CANNOT pay to collect signatures and they’d uphold it.
Baby steps. Camel’s nose. Slope that has a slippery condition. Etc.
O. Felix Culpa
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, it was an unexpected adventure for sure. Although it turned out well, I think I prefer the vicarious kind. :)
@Mary G: Heh! I have resorted to pillow protectors too.
Mary G
It’s called Tamed Teal. Sometimes it looks pure green, sometimes pure blue, most times in the middle. Housemate and I are happy.
trollhattan
Hey East Hartford, Connecticut, can you send us a few of those rainclouds?
Thx
VOR
@Gin & Tonic: same thing happened to my wife. She had an big operation in that area so the surgeon just took her appendix too.
Martin
@debbie: Logically it should be. The upside with condo construction is that the developer sells the asset and doesn’t have to deal with the fully predictable consequences of a condo board not doing maintenance.
Hotels, like a lot of other industries (McDonalds, Target, etc.) are at their core real-estate enterprises. Owning the asset is as much of the business as renting out the room, so there’s really no point in cutting corners.
Mary G
Martin
@Roger Moore: Don’t get many pokemon jokes around here. Well done.
Hoppie
@trollhattan: We defeated valero. We lost to uber. The game is on and not over.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@O. Felix Culpa: ouchI hope you fell better soon but please take it easy. Glad you are doing ok.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mary G: The Hedge-Fund Hillybilly has been trying to scrub his anti-trump past, but the Internet never forgets
trollhattan
NATO member says, “Hi ladies, you are treasured here.”
Ken
@Gin & Tonic: @VOR: Come to think of it, I was born with a hernia, and according to my parents when the doctors fixed that they also took out my appendix.
trollhattan
@Ken:
“That appendix was a freeloader. Good riddance!”
–The Libertarian Bible, Rand 3:4
trollhattan
Tobin Time®
Oh damn, that was quick!
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
My Wife also had a non-emergency appendectomy during another procedure– turned out it was a really good thing, her appendix was in a very unusual place, nearly up behind her liver.
So if she had appendicitis, it would have been difficult to diagnose, and could well have led to serious problems.
This was a very long time ago… in the 1970s.
debbie
@Martin:
Thanks.
J R in WV
My parents spent several winters in various Florida neighborhoods after they retired, trying to learn enough to make an educated choice. One was in a high-rise on Siesta Key in Sarasota, one winter in a similar high-rise condo in Key West, both of which we visited while they were there. One winter in Naples, which we didn’t visit.
Finally they bought two units in a low-rise spread out condo in Osprey, down near Venice, south of Sarasota. Soon after dad learned that he wasn’t allowed to own a motorcycle, which he never really wanted until the HOA told him he couldn’t have one!
They also had a big assessment to rebuild the siding, as gtropical insects had eaten most of the siding… the one for the roof! Dad was pissed, but it was beautiful, plantings, etc. They were right beside the pool, which dad loved, and had enough room for all their relatives to visit, which we did, most winters.
They were just a little way inland from the Intracoastal Waterway, with a drawbridge over to Casey Key, another tropical wonderland covered with amazing plants and houses in their own private jungles. There was a seafood joint beside the drawbridge, where you could get oysters 2 for a buck, and a beer for $0.75 — was paradise in some ways.
Ringling Bros circus was still wintering in Venice at the time. The gym we joined one winter, there were a ton of circus folks there to work out to stay in shape for their acts. Many had bullet wounds and very little English, escapees from Central Europe back when there was still an Iron Curtain.
They sold out in the early 1990s. Mom couldn’t travel any more. But I learned not to invest in an area with an active HOA. The developed ranch we’re on in AZ has verbiage about an HOA in the deeds, but all the owners are anarchists, totally unwilling to tolerate an HOA, and willing to use neighborhood pressure to force anyone talking about starting an HOA to shut up about it. There is nothing for an HOA to maintain out there, anyway.
LiminalOwl
@O. Felix Culpa: Best wishes for a quick* and full recovery!
The Pale Scot
@Adam L Silverman:
Ah.. Florida
Which why I’ve been mostly celibate, and my two age similar cousins who moved here said WTF, everybody is out of their fourth marriage. Most RC Irish don’t give a fuck anymore. But God man/woman think!
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Gin & Tonic: exactly. another italian rino.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@NotMax: how much money has steven edwards donated to haw-haw hawley’s national-conservative presidency-in-waiting?
seems like stevie e needs to shut the fuck up too.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@trollhattan: the democrat party can claim the first nonwhite president & woman vice president, but the gqp gets the nation’s first trans chief executive.
cry more, libs!
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Adam L Silverman: THAT’S MY PURSE. I DON’T KNOW YOU.
LiminalOwl
@craigie: Do you know the early Marx Brothers fim The Cocoanuts?
”You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause.”
NotMax
@LiminalOwl
For the record, that one is from A Night at the Opera.
Cocoanuts has the shpiel about real estate in Florida. “You can even get stucco. Oh, how you can get stuck-o.”
lowtechcyclist
@craigie:
Cocoanut Manor, no snow, no ice!-Marx Brothers, 1925
@Adam L Silverman:
Seems totally nuts to me that the maintenance of a high-rise is left in the hands of what is basically an HOA.
I’m on the board of my HOA, but it’s a neighborhood of single-family homes. We have some common areas that the HOA is the owner of, but other than the land itself, all we own is a softball backstop and a couple of soccer goals. It’s the sort of situation that, whatever one’s opinion might be of HOAs, an HOA can handle that level of responsibility. It’s hard to see how that works for a high-rise.