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Highlands Today

Gold Coast crime is rampant for residents

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By Raleigh Whiteman | Highlands Today

Published: August 20, 2009

My brother's home in a very upscale and gated development in Miramar, about 15 miles north of Miami, was recently burglarized and ransacked. They took anything of value that could be crammed into black plastic bags so as to appear they were gardeners. The police say they are likely an organized gang and had seen him loading up for a trip. They were probably in the house two to three hours looking for jewelry and money.

He and his family are ready to leave the area and who can blame him.

Getting out of there
It's a fact that since around 2002, those Americans who live on the Gold Coast have been vacating the area in mass, mostly because of the high crime rate. Gold Coast Floridians began moving here with their pockets full of money and buying homes at what they consider to be bargain prices in comparison to Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

Realtors and builders began to realize these folks would be willing to pay higher prices for homes and took advantage of the opportunity, forcing the homes to explode with inflation. This has caused many to now have upside down loans, owing more than the house is worth. This caused the home construction industry to come to a virtual standstill until the recent lifting of the impact fees.

Foolish spending continues
For more than a year now the economy has been in a recession/depression and the government has been making efforts to regain the public's confidence that it is OK to spend money. The latest stimulus is the Cash for Clunkers designed to help the auto dealers to sell their over-stocked cars. It appears to have worked — at least for the time being. I predict that soon the sales will again flounder and many who bought new cars will begin to realize they cannot afford them and the money lenders will have to start repossession procedures.

One smart cookie
Obama is smart. He has caused us to refocus our attention away from the economy. For the past few weeks many are attacking his efforts to make corrections in their health benefits so that the uninsured will have some sort of insurance. Many who pay for their insurance plans are vehemently opposed with what is proposed in the more than 1,200-page bill.

Today I heard Obama promising the Veterans of Foreign Wars that he has formed a committee that will restructure the Veterans Administration and VA hospitals to assure that all veterans returning with service-connected injuries receive their earned care much more quickly and effectively.

This should become his major objective and see that it is accomplished immediately.

Billing errors
A lawyer died and arrived at the pearly gates. To his dismay, there were thousands of people ahead of him in line to see St. Peter. To his surprise, St. Peter left his desk at the gate and came down the long line to where the lawyer was, and greeted him warmly.

Then St. Peter and one of his assistants took the lawyer by the hands and guided him up to the front of the line, and into a comfortable chair by his desk.

The lawyer said, "I don't mind all this attention, but what makes me so special?"

St. Peter replied, "Well, I've added up all the hours for which you billed your clients, and by my calculation you must be about 196 years old!"

Raleigh Whiteman, of Lake Placid, is a contributing writer to Highlands Today. You can reach him on the Internet at rwwhiteman@comcast.net

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