It's been a bad couple weeks for Miami as a result of the  scare, and it's been especially bad for the folks in the Wynwood community that was tagged as the epicenter of the attacks by the mosquitos carrying this virus.

For almost a week the local and national news media have been camped out in the Wynwood area issuing reports that sometimes made you think that maybe this might be the beginning of the end of the world.

The normally busy streets were empty, the business owners were lamenting the loss of customers and revenue, and interspersed with these reports were the repeated video clips of the airplanes flying overhead blanketing the area with a nasty insecticide called Naled.

Of course, this is Miami, which means that the politicians were focused on trying to cover their asses, and where real information was harder to discover than a virgin at a nightclub on South Beach.

The folks who make up the Wynwood Business District (BID) - the group that represents the interests of the Wynwood business community were rightfully upset over how this story was being covered by the news media, especially since so little factual information had been released by anyone on the state or county level about just where exactly had these nasty mosquitos been discovered that had prompted Wynwood being designated at ground zero for both the problem, and the solution, which was using airplanes to spray a nasty insecticide.

After much bitching and arm twisting the BID folks persuaded Mayor Tomas Regalado to show up on Saturday as the monthly Wynwood Art Walk was beginning, to show support for the business community by holding a press conference where he could voice his strong support and extoll the courage of the "Mom and Pop" business owners - ignoring the fact that were it not for a BILLIONAIRE, several MULTI-MILLIONAIRES, and a larger group of regular MILLIONAIRES, Wynwood would still be a deserted warehouse district.

I want to very clear that I am in no way minimizing the impact or the importance of supporting the business community of the workers impacted by the reduction of visitors to Wynwood.  Those issues are real and deserve the support of the Mayor, however, this is a multifaceted problem that has more than one constituency.

After the press conference the plan was for him to walk around, shake some hands, pose for the TV cameras talking to some people on the streets and make sure that all the TV stations got plenty of footage that could be used to show that things weren't really all that bad, and that the Mayor, a regular guy, along with his wife were unafraid to walk around Wynwood.  

The press conference followed the script, and the Mayor made sure to answer all the questions and give personal interviews to all the local stations, in English and in Spanish, before he ventured outside and discovered that there were a couple dozen angry citizens standing on the sidewalk in front of Wynwood Walls waiting for him.

Now, the Mayor is absolutely right in stating that the responsibility for the spraying is not his, but rather Carlos Gimenez's, the County Mayor, along with the health officials in Tallahassee.

Unfortunately, Carlos Gimenez, in the midst of a reelection campaign seems to be unwilling to venture forth into the community for any event that isn't tightly scripted and controlled for fear that Raquel Regalado will show up to demand that they have a debate, right then and there.

But here's the rub, yes, the Mayor of Miami doesn't have any legal control over the operation of the county airplane that is doing the spraying, but he has a BULLY PULPIT and a moral responsibility to look out for the "Little Peeple" that he so often refers to as the people he feels obligated to represent as the Mayor.

That obligation starts with informing himself on the facts, and not be embarrassed, as he was at 3:58 of the above video when he states that, "the only place that the spraying's being done in in Wynwood..." only to be challenged by a guy in the crowd, who rightly claimed that the spraying is occurring well beyond the borders of Wynwood.

Here is the county's map of the supposedly affected area, and the spraying area.

The spraying area covers downtown Miami all the way north to 52nd Street in Little Haiti, from Biscayne Bay to NW 22nd Avenue.  We are after all talking about spraying from an airplane, and even these are not real borders because the wind can blow this stuff any which way.

So right there it's evident that once again the Mayor is clueless about what is happening in his city, and then, given his responses to the shouted questions it's also evident that he's never asked anyone to provide him with factual information about this Naled insecticide, including any information on whether the claim that the spray is being dispersed at the wrong time to actually be effective.

Tomas Regalado coulda, shoulda been on top of this problem from day one, but he hasn't, and the willingness of the protesters to cut him some slack by thanking him for at least talking with them also reveals that one of the reasons that he's been able to get away with being such a poor, incompetent mayor is that the citizens have refused to demand better.

IF THESE MOSQUITOS WERE DISCOVERED TO HAVE BEEN SENT BY THE CASTRO BROTHERS TOMAS REGALADO WOULD HAVE DELARED WAR BY NOW

At the core of this city's problems is that in many ways Miami is actually two cities, and asthe Mayor of Miami, Tomas Regalado has always been far more willing to speak to, for and even pander to the Cuban and Latin community, than to worry about all of Miami's citizens.

Only months ago, when the news went out that as a result of the decision of the Obama administration's decision to renew diplomatic ties with Cuba, there would be a need for a Cuban Consulate to be established in Florida, Tomas Regalado did not waste a second before coming out forcefully to annouce that there would never be a consulate within the City of Miami.  It was one of those "over my dead body" proclamations.

Understand, that the decision of where a consulate would go is not a decision that a Mayor, or his city, or the County or even the state could make. The placement of a consulate is part of the preview of American foreign policy and the decision will be made by the federal government.

That didn't stop Regalado though, because the City of Miami has always behaved like a country with it's own foreign policy when it's come to Cuba and other Central and South American countries run by leftist dictators.  

So while the Mayor of Miami has no legal authority over the operation of the planes that are flying over Wynwood spraying Naled, he does have plenty of moral authority to stand up and speak out against the possibility that the "Little Peeople" in his city might be getting poisoned.  

Unfortunately, we're only talking about people's health.  The only way to stop the spraying is for someone to "discover" that the Castro brothers were the ones that suggested that Naled be used to spray against these mosquitos.

If someone can "prove" that, Tomas Regalado will get the Miami City Commission to issue an emergency declaration demanding that the airplane quit poisioning his "Little Peeople!"

It's Miami. Bitches!

HERE ARE PHOTOS FROM THE PROTEST