Word: floridas
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June 24 may have been the day we stopped flunking that test. Governor Charlie Crist announced a stunning deal for Florida to buy the U.S. Sugar Corp., including 187,000 acres of farmland in the northern Everglades that will be used for restoration. Activists who have battled Florida's powerful sugar industry for decades were giddy. Engineers who have struggled to revive the Everglades without disrupting Big Sugar were flabbergasted. "I'm flabbergasted, too," Crist told TIME. He called the $1.75 billion deal as "monumental" as the creation of Yellowstone, and he may be right...
...effort has stumbled and stalled. What Crist's deal can do is change the political ecosystem. Sugar fields pollute the Everglades, dump water on it when it's flooded and suck water out of it when it's dry; Big Sugar, opponents say, has used its political dominance in Florida to block efforts to restore the flow of the River of Grass. By essentially bribing U.S. Sugar out of business, Crist not only frees up its land but also eliminates an implacable obstacle to restoration...
...Department of Justice unveiled Operation Malicious Mortgage last week, a nationwide bust that produced more than 400 arrests over the past three months for fraudulent home-loan schemes. In South Florida alone, more than 100 people have been arrested since last September, including 19 just last week. In a study released in March by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, Florida ranked first in the country in 2006 and 2007 for the amount of loans that were misrepresented...
...knew the parameters of this thing. I think he is prepared to assume responsibility for what he did at some point in time." Acosta has filed a not-guilty plea and cannot do appraiser work while the charges are outstanding. Housing experts are certain more schemes will unravel in Florida and beyond. As the mortgage institute's report states, "The unsettled state of the mortgage market as a whole does not bode well for avoiding fraud in the coming year...
...units involved in the case are part of a 67-townhome development that was already an example of the South Florida property boom gone bust - a stagnant pool waiting for fraud to fester. The Residences at Rookery Park was initially marketed in 2004 as three- and four-bedroom townhomes for under $250,000 in west Fort Lauderdale, within earshot of a busy executive airport, on a busy corridor and miles from the beach. As the market boomed, the townhomes' starting prices soared to $349,000. A former broker said the units sold quickly, but then closings languished and buyers sought...