florida
That land was destined to become overpopulated and over developed and is now a drop in the bukcet to try and restore an ecosystem the government itself (COE) has helped destroy in the last 80 years.
This is something environmentalists and Floridians have been hoping (and voting) for for the past two decades. The sugar farms are dying and the corporations could well go for greed over public interest. $10,000 an acre? In Florida? That's a bargain.
To call it a swamp, is just ignorance.
Groovy. We're running a record deficit going into a recession, and we're worried about stuff like this? Hmmm. Americans losing jobs is a good thing? Hmmm. All to turn the land back into a swamp? Yeah, that's ignorance.
Screw the environmentalists.
And how many workers get SIX years notice that their job is being phased out?
Plus a two year severance package?
US Sugar, long before this deal came about, was already screwing over its pensioners, so if anything, they are getting a better deal this way than if they continued on pins and needles not knowing if they were about to be laid off or whether they were going to lose their invested 'profit sharing' stock plan credits.
From the NYT :
Now that many U.S. Sugar workers are reaching retirement age, though, the company has been cashing them out of the retirement plan at a much lower price than they could have received. Unknown to them, an outside investor was offering to buy the company — and their shares — for far more. Longtime employees say they have lost out on tens of thousands of dollars each and millions of dollars as a group, while insiders of the company came out ahead.
The money being used for the purchase has nothing to do with the US deficit - it is coming from sources within the State of Florida that are all ready set up to pay for Everglade projects - the purchase of the land and the decrease in things such as pollution and required infrastructure for development will actually save monies that would have been needed to address those issues. Ongoing costly plans for restoration of the Everglades aquifiers (something that the US government WOULD have been financially responsible for under a 50/50 deal) will also likely be massively reduced and maybe eliminated by the possibility of restoring the natural flow of the river. So this deal will actually SAVE the US money. And I won't even bother going into the fact of how the US subsidizes the sugar industry so the elimination of even a portion of US Sugar may help both the industry and the US in the long term.
The industrialist have long screwed Americans in regard to human health and animal life but apparently you think because it is an environmental issue it is worthless? Well, then look at it the way US Sugar is looking at it, a good choice for a foundering business. And it is not costing the U.S.a penny. And the state that IS paying for it, is populated by a majority of people who have long wanted this to happen.
A swamp? Not just a swamp, an ecosystem, they are not the same thing.
to think I thought, Yeah right, who would be so stupid to buy swamp land? Should have known!
Hey I hear the Detroit Windsor tunnel is for sale maybe we could all chip in a little bit
no seriously.....
