Conexión Miami / ‘We don’t believe’

We have politicians in Florida – read Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio – who claim not to be scientists so have a hard time believing in climate change and the rise of the seas… Progreso Weekly would recommend they visit Miami Beach when the tide rises. How to explain the photos above taken this past week… Photos, by the way, we picked up from the Eye on Miami website.

Renting in Florida

What a way to lead! Florida dominates a list of places to rent your home. This according to a report by CBS News. According to rankings from TripAdvisor, Marathon, in the Florida Keys, is the No. 1 city to rent out a home, with one-bedroom homes renting for an average of $2,344 per week. A four-bedroom house averages $3,668 per week in rent. Ouch! Sounds like soon only one percenters will be able to visit the Keys. Key Largo jumps in the No. 2 spot. One-bedroom homes rent for an average $1,985 per week, with two-bedroom and three-bedroom homes renting for $2,321 and $3,103 a week respectively.

Non-euphoric marijuana on its way

Medical marijuana – the non-euphoric strain – should soon be available in Florida, news agencies from around the state are reporting. Medical marijuana was originally expected to be available by the beginning of 2015. But it took the state Department of Health longer than expected to create rules for growing and distributing the drug. Legal challenges also slowed the process. Parents of epileptic children, who could be helped by the drug, began petitioning the Legislature to legalize certain strains of low-THC cannabis in early 2014. Next year Floridians will also vote on a law that would legalize marijuana, and not necessarily the non-euphoric kind, for medicinal purposes. In 2012, 59% of Floridians voted in favor of legalizing the weed. Florida law requires a 60% vote in favor in order to amend its constitution.

Guns don’t kill people

Mass shooting in the U.S. have become so common-place that the deadly rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, this week goes unnoticed. Oh! some will exclaim. It’s just another shooting… And politicians like presidential hopeful Marco Rubio does not blame the guns. Here’s what he had to say to radio host Mike Gallagher: “These gun laws just aren’t effective at preventing this. Gun crime is committed by criminals, criminals ignore the law. That’s why they’re criminals. If you pass a law that makes it harder for people to have weapons for defense, the only people that are not going to have them are the people that follow the law. Law-abiding people are going to follow the law. Criminals, by definition, ignore the law. They will still have their weapons.”

Florida darlings being embarrassed

The Florida boys still trail Trump in the republican sweepstakes for president – in their own state. A recent Florida Atlantic University poll has Trump leading the pack with 32 percent of the Republican vote in the Sunshine State. The good news, for Marco Rubio anyway, is that he has jumped over Jeb Bush with 19 percent. Jeb garnered 11 percent. There are other polls who have it with Trump at 21, Bush at 17, and Rubio at 11. Any way you turn this, it’s embarrassing for the Florida boys.

What’s a ‘winter and summer’ blend?

The good news in Florida is that gasoline prices have dropped below $2 a gallon in some areas of the state. According to the fuel-tracking Web site, GasBuddy.com, prices for a gallon of regular unleaded in Florida are down more than $1.17 from year ago when gas was topping $3.32 a gallon. Gregg Laskoski, a senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy, said prices should drop even more between now and the end of the year. He explained that gas producers are switching to the cheaper “winter blend” vs. the pricier “summer blend.” It’s also because fall and winter just aren’t heavy driving periods, Laskoski said. The price drop could be anywhere between 40-60 cents between now and December, he said.

Eat fish on the Miami River

A collection of two-to-three story restaurants and a fish market are coming to a stretch of the Miami River fronting a currently-under-construction self storage and restaurant building called the East Coast Building, reported the website Curbed. The new assemblage will be called the Riverside Wharf and is located on a substantial stretch of land between the I-95 overpass and the SW 1st Street bridge. They are planning 5 restaurants for a total of roughly 40,000 square feet, including a raw bar. At the end of the collection of structures will be a fish market. And there will be space for boats to dock.

$60 million for a penthouse condo

The brand new Faena House penthouse has officially sold for $60 million, making it the biggest sale ever for a single family home in Miami-Dade County. The condo is locate on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. According to the Wall Street Journal: “The developer customized the layout for the buyer… and the apartment now has eight bedrooms, over 12,500 square feet of interior space and nearly 10,000 square feet of exterior space. On the top floor, there is a 70-foot-long rooftop pool with views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Miami skyline.”

Rubio settles his debts

According to Politico, “After years of bad press about his poor money management, Marco Rubio this summer quietly cleaned up his personal finances. He refinanced the mortgage on his West Miami home and paid off a high-interest home-equity line of credit that had saddled him with negative headlines.” Running in a field of largely wealthy competitors, Rubio is making an asset of having the same kind of debt as average Americans have. Rubio owes his newfound stability to the book deal that earned him $800,000 in 2012. The best-seller, An American Son: A Memoir, came out during the 2012 presidential race. Rubio used the book money to settle more than $100,000 in student-loan debt, put at least $100,000 in a money-market account, buy an $80,000 fishing boat for the family and give nearly $65,000 to charity over two years.