Carl Hiaasen The Miami Herald

August 17, 2009

Carl Hiaasen
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: How much did you say it was going to cost? Why your column of July 5, 2009 needs some upgrades.

Mr. Hiaasen,

The delay in responding was caused by my futile quest to find the missing 7 or maybe 8 states that the Lord Barack the Beneficent, and blessed be his name, told the country about some time ago. They were like the horizon; always there and always not there. I thought I almost had them in sight but then I remembered that the solution to the hated Bush deficits was to quadruple them. Actually I had come upon some lotus eaters. Their chant was deafening.

“In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul.”

And everything old is new again.

There is a cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man’s fist. Where is Cindy Sheehan and her hecate-like outbursts on Afghanistan? Why are toe tagged GIs coming home from Kandahar different from those who came home from Tikrit?

Is that a whiff of Jimmy Carter I smell?

But enough of that.

You say that the baseball stadium soon to be built in Miami for the Marlins will cost $634,000,000. From your lips to God’s ears that it could be so! If $634,000,000 got you upset I can only imagine what the real cost will do to you.

I must confess that I have voted against every bond issue, regardless of the purpose, since 1990. This includes New Jersey and Florida. One year I managed to do it in 2 states.

The reason is simple.

The lender is obligated by Federal law to tell you how much the loan will cost you. No bond issue ever has. Thus, the no lever is pulled.




Florida will borrow $634,000,000 from some fat cat insurance companies, from some predatory banks, and from some pension plans – both public and private. Maybe if Secretary of State Clinton who, after years of comparing the Chinese to Cataline when she was in the Senate, couldn’t wait to get her ample ass over to Beijing to give those old Gomers a diplomatic lap dance to get them to continue buying our Treasury obligations, can get the Yellow Peril Bank to buy some of the issue.

I really should cut her some slack.

She’s sitting in darkest Africa, “feeling fat” as her really good friend Tina Brown said, dressed like Mrs. Barney, when some snot nose kid asks her about her husband. And for this she shaved her legs?

Anyway, when the bonds are paid off the total tab will be $1, 585,000,000.

Maybe the stadium can be used in off season for Midnight Basketball.

A few more turns at the plate like B. O. has been having and the geezers will be lining up to be interviewed by the notorious Death Panels.



Kevin Smith