Events showcase Miami’s growth as tech center

One by one, representatives from six startup companies walked onto the wooden stage and presented their products or services to a full house of about 200 investors, mentors, and other supporters Thursday at Incubate Miami’s DemoDay in the loft-like Grand Central in downtown Miami. With a large screen behind them projecting their graphs and charts, they set out to persuade the funders in the room to part with some of their green and support the tech community.

Just 24 hours later, from an elaborate “dojo stage,” a drummer warmed up the crowd of several hundred before a “Council of Elders” entered the ring to share wisdom as the all-day free event opened. Called TekFight, part education, part inspiration, and part entertainment, the tournament-style program challenged entrepreneurs to earn points to “belt up” throughout the day to meet with the “masters” of the tech community.

The two events, which kicked off Innovate MIA week, couldn’t be more different. But in their own ways, like a one-two punch, they exuded the spirit and energy growing in the startup community.

One of the goals of the TekFight event was to introduce young entrepreneurs and students to the tech community, because not everyone has found it yet and it’s hard to know where to start, said Saif Ishoof, the executive director of City Year Miami who co-founded TekFight as a personal project. And throughout the event, he and co-founder Jose Antonio Hernandez-Solaun, as well as Binsen J. Gonzalez and Jeff Goudie, wanted to find creative, engaging ways to offer participants access to some of the community’s most successful leaders.

That would include Alberto Dosal, chairman of CompuQuip Technologies; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud; Jorge Plasencia, chairman and CEO of Republica; Jaret Davis, co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig; and more than two dozen other business and community leaders who shared their war stories and offered advice. Throughout the day, the event was live-streamed on the Web, a TekFight app created by local entrepreneur and UM student Tyler McIntyre kept everyone involved in the tournament and tweets were flying — with #TekFight trending No. 1 in the Miami area for parts of the day. “Next time Art Basel will know not to try to compete with TekFight,” Ishoof quipped.

‘Miami is a hotbed’

After a pair of Chinese dragons danced through the audience, Andre J. Gudger, director for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, entered the ring. “I’ve never experienced an event like this,” Gudger remarked. “Miami is a hotbed for technology but nobody knew it.”

Gudger shared humorous stories and practical advice on ways to get technology ideas heard at the highest levels of the federal government. “Every federal agency has a director over small business — find out who they are,” he said. He has had plenty of experience in the private sector: Gudger, who wrote his first computer program on his neighbor’s computer at the age of 12, took one of his former companies from one to 1,300 employees.

There were several rounds that pitted an entrepreneur against an investor, such as Richard Grundy, of the tech startup Flomio, vs. Jonathan Kislak, of Antares Capital, who asked Grundy, “why should I give you money?”

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More STEM degrees may not equal more jobs

Science, technology, engineering and math — the fields collectively known as STEM — are all the rage these days. Florida state leaders are so eager for more STEM students that they may even create discounted college tuition for students who pursue those fields.

In an economy that is still struggling to regain its footing, boosting STEM is seen by many as a path to jobs.

Except ... what if it isn’t?

As STEM has become an education buzzword in recent years, a steady stream of research has emerged that challenges the notion of STEM as an economic elixir. In some STEM careers, the employment picture is downright lousy.

“Record Unemployment Among Chemists in 2011,” screamed the March headline in Science magazine’s Careers Blog. A headline from June: “What We Need is More Jobs for Scientists.”

Unemployment in STEM fields is still well below the general population (and slightly below college graduates in general). That “record” unemployment for chemists, for example, was 4.6 percent, compared to overall U.S. unemployment at that time of 8.8 percent.

Nevertheless, the glut of workers in some STEM areas (resulting in flat wages, and STEM grads forced to take jobs in non-STEM fields) directly contradicts the widely held view that the United States — and Florida — suffer from a critical shortage of qualified STEM graduates. The truth, many experts say, is more complicated.

“In a general sense, science and innovation do create jobs and drive growth,” said Elizabeth Popp Berman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Albany whose book Creating the Market University examines the history of university research and its economic impact. “As a nation, having lots of scientists and people inventing stuff is good for us.”

But that doesn’t mean all STEM graduates have a guaranteed job, Berman stressed. The STEM employment picture, Berman said, is “very mixed” and largely dependent upon a student’s particular major. Petroleum engineering majors are doing very well these days; biologists and chemists are not.

Some studies, meanwhile, have challenged the notion of an overall STEM worker shortage — instead finding that the United States is producing vastly more STEM graduates than there are STEM jobs awaiting them. As science organizations and corporations continue to sound the STEM shortage alarm, critics charge that these groups are motivated by self-interest — tech companies, for example, have claimed a shortage of trained workers even as they laid off thousands of U.S. employees, and moved those jobs to low-wage developing countries.

“It’s a way for them to sort of excuse why they’re shifting so much work offshore,” said Rochester Institute of Technology professor Ron Hira, who has testified before Congress on the need to tighten the legal loopholes that allow such maneuvers.

Deciphering what economic benefits STEM offers — and what it doesn’t — has become more important as Gov. Rick Scott continues to strongly advocate investing more state resources promoting STEM-related degrees. At the same time, Scott has sometimes mocked liberal arts majors as impractical.

Speaking to a Tallahassee business group last year, Scott asked: “Do you want to use your tax dollars to educate more people who can’t get jobs in anthropology? I don’t.”

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Twitter to Start War on Instagram In Time for Christmas

Holidays seem to be Instagram‘s bread and butter, so it makes sense that Twitter would fire their first shot in the war on Instagram when the app is at its most vulnerable. 

RELATED: Why You Can’t See Instagram Photos on Twitter Anymore

If we learned anything from Thanksgiving, it’s that people love to Instagram their holidays. Turkeys, stuffing, table settings: you Amaro’d it all. It was the service’s best day ever. There were 10 million pictures Instagrammed on Thanksgiving. So it’s not a logistical stretch to imagine the holiday season – Hanukkah starts tonight! —  will be big business for Instagram, too. Christmas day will probably be especially big since it combines dinner, like Thanksgiving, and presents. (Also: check your Instagram feed right now and you’re sure to see at least 3 Christmas trees.)

RELATED: Meet the Parade of Greedy Crybabies Who Didn’t Get iPhones for Christmas

And so comes a report from AllThingsD’s Mike Isaac saying Twitter will launch its own photo filters on time for Christmas, likely to try and capitalize on that rush of OMG I got a cool thing! photo-sharing. Instagram stopped their photos from being shown on Twitter, because they want people on their site. The move makes enough sense, because Instagram is owned by Facebook and not Twitter, but it still sucks for the rest of us. The two companies are now in a budding rivalry over photo-sharing, so this is it, it’s war, we guess. 

RELATED: How to Get Over the Twitter-Instagram War on Photos

If you’re having trouble watching these two former friends fight, please read The Atlantic Wire’s Rebecca Greenfield’s guide to getting over it. The holidays is no place for rivalries. Didn’t Jingle All The Way teach you people anything? 

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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How They Pulled Off 'The Impossible'

The true story of the devastating 2004 tsunami that consumed the coast of Phuket, Thailand -- and how one family survived it -- is reenacted by Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor in The Impossible. Watch the video to go behind the scenes...

Video: Tsunami Survivor Petra Nemcova Reacts to Latest Disaster in Japan

In theaters December 21, The Impossible finds Naomi as Maria and Ewan as her husband Henry, who are enjoying their winter vacation in Thailand with their three sons. On the day after Christmas, their relaxing holiday in paradise becomes an exercise in terror and survival when their beachside hotel is pummeled by an extraordinary, unexpected tsunami.

Video: Watch the Trailer for 'The Impossible'

The Impossible tracks just what happens when this close family and tens of thousands of strangers must come together to grapple with the mayhem and aftermath of one of the worst natural catastrophes of our time.

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A Job-Killing Coalition

That didn’t take long: Just hours after news broke of the state Senate’s wacky new bipartisan governing plan, New Yorkers got a whiff of one of its top priorities: killing 22,000 jobs.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Klein — who is to run the Senate jointly with Republican Sen. Dean Skelos — doesn’t admit that that’s his goal, of course.

But Klein did say that the new arrangement means the Senate is now certain to hike New York’s minimum wage. And that’s just as certain to kill the jobs.

Or so says a report released almost the same time, published by the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business advocacy group.

On Wednesday, we wondered if the Senate’s odd new power-sharing setup could even work. Now, it seems, New Yorkers might have reason to hope it doesn’t.

Democrats have been seeking a 17% hike in the minimum wage, to $8.50 from $7.25, for a while. Skelos and his fellow Republicans, who’ve controlled the Senate for the past two years, have blocked it.

But as Klein notes, under joint leadership, a hike is now likely. Gov. Cuomo, who’s pushed for the increase, even says he’ll judge the Senate’s performance based, in part, on whether it ups the rate.

Yet on Tuesday, the NFIB painted a sobering picture of what such a hike would do: Besides killing 22,000 jobs, some $2.5 billion in economic output would vaporize.

“Raising the minimum wage,” said Mike Durant, the NFIB’s New York director, “will affect the smallest businesses that can least afford higher labor costs, and they’ll respond by finding ways to reduce or limit the number of jobs they create.”

Depending on inflation, the group says, costs for entry-level workers would soar by as much as 66% by 2022 — “more than many small businesses can handle.”

Some 70% of the lost jobs would come from small businesses, the very engine of job creation.

Why would lawmakers want to kill jobs?

They claim they’re trying to help low-paid workers. But destroying job opportunities doesn’t sound to us like it would do them much good at all.

(Then again, it might please unions, whose members already have jobs, and which traditionally view minimum-wage hikes as a means of bumping up wages across the board.)

Meanwhile, passage of a job-killing wage hike might be a sign of things to come under the new Senate arrangement.

Hmm.

Chaos, paralysis and dysfunction in Albany are starting to look better and better every day.

Have an opinion on this Post editorial? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Events showcase Miami’s growth as tech center

One by one, representatives from six startup companies walked onto the wooden stage and presented their products or services to a full house of about 200 investors, mentors, and other supporters Thursday at Incubate Miami’s DemoDay in the loft-like Grand Central in downtown Miami. With a large screen behind them projecting their graphs and charts, they set out to persuade the funders in the room to part with some of their green and support the tech community.

Just 24 hours later, from an elaborate “dojo stage,” a drummer warmed up the crowd of several hundred before a “Council of Elders” entered the ring to share wisdom as the all-day free event opened. Called TekFight, part education, part inspiration, and part entertainment, the tournament-style program challenged entrepreneurs to earn points to “belt up” throughout the day to meet with the “masters” of the tech community.

The two events, which kicked off Innovate MIA week, couldn’t be more different. But in their own ways, like a one-two punch, they exuded the spirit and energy growing in the startup community.

One of the goals of the TekFight event was to introduce young entrepreneurs and students to the tech community, because not everyone has found it yet and it’s hard to know where to start, said Saif Ishoof, the executive director of City Year Miami who co-founded TekFight as a personal project. And throughout the event, he and co-founder Jose Antonio Hernandez-Solaun, as well as Binsen J. Gonzalez and Jeff Goudie, wanted to find creative, engaging ways to offer participants access to some of the community’s most successful leaders.

That would include Alberto Dosal, chairman of CompuQuip Technologies; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud; Jorge Plasencia, chairman and CEO of Republica; Jaret Davis, co-managing shareholder of Greenberg Traurig; and more than two dozen other business and community leaders who shared their war stories and offered advice. Throughout the day, the event was live-streamed on the Web, a TekFight app created by local entrepreneur and UM student Tyler McIntyre kept everyone involved in the tournament and tweets were flying — with #TekFight trending No. 1 in the Miami area for parts of the day. “Next time Art Basel will know not to try to compete with TekFight,” Ishoof quipped.

‘Miami is a hotbed’

After a pair of Chinese dragons danced through the audience, Andre J. Gudger, director for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Small Business Programs, entered the ring. “I’ve never experienced an event like this,” Gudger remarked. “Miami is a hotbed for technology but nobody knew it.”

Gudger shared humorous stories and practical advice on ways to get technology ideas heard at the highest levels of the federal government. “Every federal agency has a director over small business — find out who they are,” he said. He has had plenty of experience in the private sector: Gudger, who wrote his first computer program on his neighbor’s computer at the age of 12, took one of his former companies from one to 1,300 employees.

There were several rounds that pitted an entrepreneur against an investor, such as Richard Grundy, of the tech startup Flomio, vs. Jonathan Kislak, of Antares Capital, who asked Grundy, “why should I give you money?”

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Charlie Crist signs papers to become a Democrat

It was just a matter of time. Charlie Crist is becoming a Democrat.

Crist — Florida’s former Republican governor who relished the tough-on-crime nickname "Chain Gang Charlie" and used to describe himself variously as a "Ronald Reagan Republican" and a "Jeb Bush Republican" — on Friday evening signed papers changing his party from independent to Democrat.

He did so during a Christmas reception at the White House, where President Obama greeted the news with a fist bump for the man who had a higher profile campaigning for Obama’s reelection this year than any Florida Democrat.

The widely expected move positions Crist, 56, for another highly anticipated next step: announcing his candidacy for governor, taking on Republican incumbent Gov. Rick Scott and an untold number of Democrats who would challenge him for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

"I’ve had friends for years tell me, ’You know Charlie, you’re a Democrat and you don’t know it,’" Crist, a career-long populist, recounted Friday night from Washington, D.C.

Crist has been registered with no party affiliation since the Spring of 2010, when his Republican candidacy for U.S. Senate was fizzling against Republican upstart Marco Rubio. Since losing that race, he has been steadily inching toward the Democratic party, first when his wife Carole switched her affiliation to Democrat and later when he threw himself into Obama’s re-election campaign, earning a prominent speaking slot during the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

Critics from both parties sniff that Crist is merely looking for an avenue back into public office and is willing to throw out his principles to achieve the goal.

"Charlie Crist has the ability to meld into any character — from "Chain Gang Charlie" to sympathetic "Man of the People" — there is seemingly no role that he can’t play," said one recent release from the Florida GOP, which has been blasting Crist regularly in anticipation of him running for governor as a Democrat.

Crist has been consistently opposed to taxes and gun control laws, but in many respects his record is appealing to Democratic activists and donors alike.

He has been a strong supporter of higher pay for teachers. He works for a leading trial lawyer. He was a leading advocate for civil rights as governor and attorney general. And though he describes himself as "pro-life," his voting record in the legislature was mostly in favor of abortion rights. He has long been more of a populist than a pro-big business Republican.

"What changed is the leadership of the Republican party," Crist said in a phone interview Friday night. "As I said at the convention, I didn’t leave the Republican party, it left me. Whether the issue was immigration, or education, or your name it — the environment. I feel at home now."

Charlie and Carole Crist had a tour of the White House Thursday and ran into Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president. He mentioned that he was thinking of signing papers to become a Democrat the next night at a White House reception.

"She said, ’You’re always welcome in my party. I think it’s a great idea,’" recounted Crist.

The Obama administration has long had a strong relationship with Crist, who was one of the few high-profile Republicans to enthusiastically endorse the $700-billion stimulus package that he said helped keep Florida teachers and emergency workers employed and could have funded a high speed rail initiative in Florida had Gov. Scott not rejected the money.

Crist is no shoe-in to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Other prospective candidates include former Chief Financial Officer and 2010 gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, state Sen. Nan Rich of Weston, and former Miami-Dade Commissioner Jimmy Morales.

"Crist was an absolute warrior for President Obama and as a result, many of the party activists I talk to are willing to welcome him with open arms, and there is no question he is an extremely viable candidate for Governor, though I don’t think that beating Alex Sink in a primary is any kind of sure thing," said Democratic strategist Steve Schale, who worked on Sink’s campaign as well as both Obama Florida campaigns.

Sink, like Crist, has not committed to running for governor again, but in a Political Connections interview airing Sunday on Bay News 9 said Crist’s potential candidacy would have little or no effect on her thinking.

"I don’t go anywhere without strangers walking up to me on the street and asking me, and sometimes begging me and sometimes crying about their desire to see me run again," Sink said in the interview airing Sunday at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. "If I run I’m in it to win, no matter who the other comers are."

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Exclusive: Google to replace M&A chief

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc is replacing the head of its in-house mergers and acquisitions group, David Lawee, with one of its top lawyers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Don Harrison, a high-ranking lawyer at Google, will replace Lawee as head of the Internet search company‘s corporate development group, which oversees mergers and acquisitions, said the source, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Google is also planning to create a new late-stage investment group that Lawee will oversee, the source said.

Google declined to comment. Lawee and Harrison could not immediately be reached for comment.

One of the Internet industry’s most prolific acquirers, Google has struck more than 160 deals to acquire companies and assets since 2010, according to regulatory filings. Many of Google’s most popular products, including its online maps and Android mobile software, were created by companies or are based on technology that Google acquired.

Harrison, Google’s deputy general counsel, will head up the M&A group at a time when the company is still in the process of integrating its largest acquisition, the $ 12.5 billion purchase of smartphone maker Motorola Mobility, which closed in May.

And he takes over at a time when the Internet search giant faces heightened regulatory scrutiny, with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission conducting antitrust investigations into Google’s business practices. Several recent Google acquisitions have undergone months of regulatory review before receiving approval.

As deputy general counsel, Harrison has been deeply involved in the company’s regulatory issues and many of its acquisitions. He joined Google more than five years ago and has completed more than 70 deals at the company, according to biographical information on the Google Ventures website.

Harrison is an adviser to Google Ventures, the company’s nearly four-year old venture division which provides funding for start-up companies.

While most of Google’s acquisitions are small and mid-sized deals that do not meet the threshold for disclosure of financial terms, Google has a massive war chest of $ 45.7 billion in cash and marketable securities to fund acquisitions.

Lawee, who took over the M&A group in 2008, has had hits and misses during his tenure. Google shut down social media company Slide one year after acquiring it for $ 179 million, for example.

The planned late-stage investment group has not been finalized, the source said. The fund might operate separately from Google Ventures, according to the source.

“Think of it as a private equity fund inside of Google,” the source said.

The company recently said it would increase the cash it allocates to Google Ventures to $ 300 million a year, up from $ 200 million, potentially helping it invest in later-stage financing rounds.

Google finished Friday’s regular trading session down 1 percent, or $ 6.92, at $ 684.21.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Carol Bishopric and Jim Loney)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Edward Furlong's Probation Gets Revoked

After his October arrest, actor Edward Furlong has had his probation revoked in court, ET has learned.

RELATED: Edward Furlong Arrested for Alleged Domestic Abuse

Furlong was taken into custody on October 30 and charged with felony domestic violence after allegedly grabbing his girlfriend's arm at Los Angeles International Airport.

According to court documents, Furlong will be free from jail pending his next hearing, set for January 11, 2013.

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Obama asks for $60 billion in Sandy aid

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama asked Congress Friday for $60.4 billion in federal aid for New York, New Jersey and other states hit by Superstorm Sandy in late October. It's a disaster whose cost is rivaled only by the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the 2005 Hurricane that devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Obama's request adds a huge new to-do item to a congressional agenda already packed with controversy on how to resolve the nation's budget woes and avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

"Our Nation has an obligation to assist those who suffered losses and who lack adequate resources to rebuild their lives," Jeffrey D. Zients, deputy director of the budget office, wrote congressional leaders in a letter accompanying the formal request. "At the same time, we are committed to ensuring Federal resources are used responsibly and that the recovery effort is a shared undertaking."

The measure blends aid for homeowners, businesses, and state and local government walloped by Sandy and comes with just a few weeks to go before Congress adjourns. Whether it passes this month or gets delayed in whole or part until next year is unclear. Most of the money — $47.4 billion — is for immediate help for victims and other recovery and rebuilding efforts. There's another $13 billion for mitigation efforts to protect against future storms.

The massive request comes after protracted discussions into late Friday afternoon with lawmakers and officials from impacted areas. Officials from the affected states had requested significantly more money, but they generally praised the request and urged Congress to enact it as quickly as possible.

"This is a powerful first step," said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at a news conference in New York City. He said the Obama administration is open to more funding if needed in the future. "We're going to be OK, if we get this funding. This is going to be a significant asset for this state."

Cuomo, a Democrat, and New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie came to Washington this week to press for as large a disaster aid package as possible. Friday's request was at the top end of what had been expected and came after Obama allies like Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had criticized the White House following reports it had settled on a $50 billion figure.

Christie — who endured some criticism from Republicans for praising Obama at the tail end of the campaign — joined Cuomo in praising the administration.

"We thank President Obama for his steadfast commitment of support and look forward to continuing our partnership in the recovery effort," the two governors said in a joint statement.

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New equity options exchange owned by Miami company starts trading on Friday

MIAX Options Exchange, a new fully electronic, equity options trading exchange, said it will begin trading on Friday.

MIAX Options Exchange is based in Princeton, N.J., but its parent company is Miami International Holdings. While MIAX’s executive offices, technology development center and national operations center are based in Princeton, additional executive offices, and a multi-purpose training, meeting and conference center will be located in Miami, the company said.

MIAX Options Exchange’s trading platform has been developed in-house and designed for the functional and performance demands of derivatives trading, the company said.

INA PAIVA CORDLE

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Driver of fatal MIA bus crash that killed two offers his “deepest sympathy.”

The driver behind the wheel of a bus that rammed into an overpass at Miami International Airport — killing two passengers and leaving many more injured — expressed his sympathies Thursday to those affected, while a group of survivors began speaking with a lawyer.

On Thursday, a relative sent out a short statement in Spanish from driver Ramon Ferreiro. In it, Ferreiro extended his “deepest sympathy” to the families of those killed in “the terrible accident.”

“I know there are no words of comfort for what happened, but my family and I are praying for all those affected and their loved ones,” he wrote in Spanish. “I’m emotionally and physically very shocked by what happened, and for this reason I ask you to respect my family’s privacy during this difficult time.”

The crash happened a few minutes before 7:30 a.m. Saturday. The bus carried members of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation on their way to the annual general assembly meeting in West Palm Beach.

Ferreiro, 47, took a wrong turn on Le Jeune Road. He sped past multiple signs warning of the low clearance at the airport’s arrival concourse, smashing the 11-foot-tall bus into an overpass.

Two people sitting in the front were killed; the remaining 30 passengers went to hospitals for examinations and treatment.

As of Thursday, four people from the crash remained at Jackson Memorial Hospital, spokeswoman Lidia Amoretti said. Of the group, three were in good condition and one was in critical.

Another eight people admitted after the crash already had been discharged.

And some of the survivors have begun speaking with West Palm Beach lawyer Patrick Cousins.

Cousins, who also is Jehovah’s Witness, said that members of his religion tend to shy away from legal battles, and that’s why he hopes to settle the matter with the bus service’s insurance company out of court.

The goal, he said, would be to get compensation for costs such as their hospital bills.

“We are not the type of people to create problems or issues,” Cousins said. “But this is not something we really created. We just want to make sure everybody gets their compensation.”

Saturday’s accident appears to be the first blemish on the record of both the driver and the bus company, Miami Bus Service Corp., which is owned by Mayling and Alberto Hernandez.

Ferreiro has a valid commercial driver’s license with the proper endorsement to carry passengers, according to records from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

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For his next crisis

Saving the planet isn’t easy — or cheap — especially in California. The state’s anti-global-warming cap-and-trade program is the latest gimmick to leave it with yet another big hole to fill in its budget.

The Golden State’s new carbon-trading program is the world’s second largest, after the European Union’s. The stated goal is to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and another 80 percent by 2050.

But California held its very first “carbon credit” auction last month — and it was a big disappointment.

Under cap-and-trade, regulators set a limit on how much carbon dioxide a business or utility may release into the atmosphere. (Yes, the government now considers CO2, the same gas you and I release every time we exhale, a pollutant it can regulate.)

AP

Brown: California gov falls billion or so short on revenue anticipated from “carbon credit” sales.

Businesses buy credits from the state, which allows them to “pollute.” Those who don’t exceed their licensed limit on CO2 emissions may sell surplus credits to other businesses that do.

On Nov. 17, California’s Air Resources Board announced the first auction’s results: the full allotment of 23.1 million credits had sold out.

Environmentalists and bureaucrats hailed it as a big success. But the accountants at the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office killed the buzz quickly.

Turns out, state budgeteers had assumed the fisc would balloon with $1 billion in new cap-and-trade revenue in the program’s first year alone. Half of the money would go toward various state initiatives to cut greenhouse gases, and the rest would help balance the state’s perpetually off-kilter budget.

Lawmakers had such high hopes for that cash. So high, in fact, that the money’s already spent.

Now we learn California will likely take in just $191 million, the legislative analyst says. The state already faced a deficit in June, but the disappointing carbon-credit sales mean it will be much larger — $1.9 billion and counting.

That’s tough news, just a month after voters passed a $6 billion tax hike to help fill last year’s $16 billion deficit.

How could regulators and budget forecasters be so far off? The evidence suggests that was the intention.

California’s budget hasn’t really balanced in at least a decade. Year in, year out, state leaders rely on a complex series of accounting gimmicks and far-fetched assumptions to reach “balance.” For example, the state Department of Finance said Facebook’s stock offering would generate a cool $1.5 billion; it was off by at least $625 million.

Supply and demand also helps explain the disparity. The opening bid for California’s carbon credits was $10 per metric ton of CO2. The final bid: just $10.09 per metric ton. Nine cents higher.

Even though the credits sold out, the demand just wasn’t as great as regulators hoped. Right now, businesses — especially manufacturers — aren’t interested in paying a premium for the privilege of “polluting” when they aren’t planning to grow or are looking to abandon California entirely, thanks to the state’s foul business climate.

Comcast just closed its call centers in California, laying off 1,000 workers; Campbell’s Soup this summer announced it would shut down a plant outside of Sacramento, shedding 700 jobs.

But Golden State politics played an even bigger role in the cap-and-trade bust. Despite a sluggish economic recovery and persistently high unemployment, California’s political class holds fast to the idea that the state’s future is green and that a top-down cap-and-trade scheme is the key to it all.

Earlier this year, Gov. Jerry Brown claimed cap-and-trade would pay for his beloved $68 billion bullet train, which is behind schedule and about $60 billion short of funds.

“We do have other sources of money” for high-speed rail, the governor assured an interviewer in January. “For example, cap-and-trade . . . will be a source of funding going forward for the high-speed rail.” Oops.

Nor was that the only goof. As the legislative analyst pointed out, building a high-speed rail system would put a lot of carbon in the air, from all those diesel-burning bulldozers and trucks.

California’s green fantasy appears to have met cold reality. Perhaps, instead of putting faith in policy gimmicks, Brown and his fellow Democrats can try fiscal discipline sometime.

Southern Californian Ben Boychuk is an associate editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and a contributor to PublicSectorInc.org.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Innovate MIA puts spotlight on startup community

If you think the next week is all about art, you may be surprised to learn there are also six entrepreneurship events vying for your time.

And that is all by design.

In much the way that Art Basel helped put Miami’s arts community on the international map, organizers of the first Innovate MIA hope their weeklong grouping of events will shine a light on the city’s growing tech startup community and its position as the gateway to Latin America.

Many of the events — ending with Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference — are after Art Basel. That’s also why the third annual AVCC was moved to Dec. 13-14 from its previous mid-November dates.

“Our message is come for Art Basel, and stay for AVCC,” said Juan Pablo Cappello, a lawyer, entrepreneur and investor who is on the steering committee of the venture capital conference and several other Innovate MIA events. And all week, there will be plenty of opportunities for Miami’s entrepreneurs, creatives and investors to mingle with their counterparts from all over the Americas and beyond.

In addition to the AVCC, there’s Incubate Miami’s DemoDay, where its class of startups present their companies, the martial arts-inspired TekFight and HackDay, which dangles a $50,000 cash prize. Endeavor, the global nonprofit that promotes high-impact entrepreneurship in emerging economies, is bringing its two-day International Selection Panel to Miami, and Wayra, an international accelerator, is holding a one-day event to showcase its promising startups from Latin America and Spain. It’s all part of Innovate MIA week: “I don’t think anything like it has ever been organized here in South Florida,” Cappello said.

The AVCC will be the big draw, with about 300 people expected to attend the two-day event at the JW Marriott Brickell. The conference, themed “Data, Design & Dollars,” will feature thought leaders from all over the world, particularly Latin America, and presentations by 29 selected companies. This year, the format has been overhauled and energized, with lots of short talks and more time for question-and-answer sessions and networking, said Jerry Haar, associate dean of FIU’s College of Business, director of the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center and AVCC co-chair.

The AVCC’s 36 speakers include Martin Varsavsky, Argentine tech entrepreneur, investor and founder of Viatel, Ya.com, Jazztel and FON; Hernan J. Kazah, co-founder and managing partner at Kaszek Ventures and co-founder of Mercadolibre; and Jason L. Baptiste, CEO and co-founder of Onswipe. There’s also Michael Jackson, former COO of Skype and now a venture capitalist; Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of Miami-based CareCloud; and Bedy Yang of 500 Startups.

Chosen from more than 100 applicants, the 29 presenting companies hailing from all over the Americas will be giving either two-minute or five-minute pitches, fielding questions from a panel of judges and competing for prize packages valued at about $50,000. Eight of the startups are from South Florida: itMD, Kairos, Trapezoid Digital Security, Esenem, LiveNinja, OnTrade, Rokk3r Labs and Zavee.

The presenting companies have “proven innovation, proven management teams and the ability to scale well and be a pan-regional player,” said Faquiry Diaz Cala, president of Tres Mares Group and co-chair of AVCC. “The word is out this is a great place to come and pitch to great investors in addition to potentially being one of the prize winners.”

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To win in 2014, Florida Democrats must build on momentum

Democrats just concluded their most successful Florida election cycle in more than three decades, not just delivering the state to President Barack Obama and re-electing Sen. Bill Nelson, but also picking up state House, state Senate, and Congressional seats.

But don’t get cocky, Florida Democrats. In many respects, 2014 is more important for the vitality of the party than 2012.

As you prepare to elect a new state party chairman there’s every reason to worry heading into the new election cycle, even against vulnerable Republican Gov. Rick Scott.

You won’t have the massive Obama grassroots machine registering and turning out tens of thousands of new voters. Or a lavishly funded TV campaign like Obama’s. And if past is prologue, Florida Republicans will have far stronger turnout than Democrats.

“Democrats have a long history of not coming out to vote in the non-presidential election years. We’ve seen that four times in a row,” Alex Sink, the 2010 Democratic nominee for governor and potential 2014 candidate, said in a Political Connections interview on Bay News 9.

“The big question I believe for Democrats in the next election is how much of that energy and enthusiasm that we had during this presidential election can carry on to the 2014 races,” Sink said. “I think it’s probably going to be unfortunately very difficult.”

On Jan. 26 in Orlando, Democratic Party leaders will elect a new leader to succeed former state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua, who took the helm of the state party after a GOP wave left Democrats holding just one of Florida’s six statewide offices, Nelson’s Senate seat.

Against that change of leadership, there is no more important question facing the party than whether it can take advantage of demographic changes in Florida and come even close to following the model set by the Obama campaign.

“We’re at the threshold of a new Florida, and we’ve got to seize that opportunity,” said Alan Clendenin, an air-traffic controller and union organizer in Tampa running for party chairman against Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, a Miami-Dade County businesswoman and former candidate for Congress and County Commission.

“Demographics are on our side, the issues are on our side, the wind is at our back, and we just can’t screw it up,” said Clendenin, 53, whose extensive “Rebrand, Rebuild, Recruit” plan for the state party includes decentralizing to create at least five “regional hubs,” more emphasis on low-dollar fundraising, and a “bottom-up” structure for grassroots organizing.

A key to Obama winning Florida’s 29 electoral votes was his strong performance among African-Americans, Hispanics, and voters under 30 — overwhelmingly Democratic groups that tend to show up in much lower numbers during off-year elections.

“The question is how do we take what is the Obama coalition and translate that to a Democratic coalition that outlasts Obama,” said outgoing party chairman Smith.

Consider that in 2008 the Florida electorate was 42 percent Democratic and 39 percent Republican. Two years later, when Scott narrowly beat Sink, it was 45 percent Republican and 39 percent Democratic.

In non-presidential years, the Florida electorate is invariably older, whiter, and much more Republican.

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In brewing rivalry, Instagram trims ties to Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

The move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, reflecting Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal Web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users.

“They’re both competing for slices of the same pie, the pie being users’ attention,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst with research firm Gartner.

If Facebook decides to offer advertising on Instagram, it’s important that the users visit Instagram’s own website, said Valdes. “If the eyeballs are elsewhere, you have less to work with in terms of monetization,” he said.

Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, was an early investor in Instagram and had hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he highlighted Instagram’s inter-connectivity with other social networks.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Neon Trees Kicks Off Stageside Live Concert Series

Alternative rock back Neon Trees is kicking off CBS' new concert series, Stageside Live, streaming now!

RELATED: New Music Tuesday!

Neon Trees hit the scene in 2010 with their first major release, Habits, featuring the double platinum lead single, Animal. From there the band made it to No. 6 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart with the release of their second album, Picture Show, in 2012, and it looks to be a promising New Year for the Utah natives, as they're set to join Maroon 5 on their North American arena tour, launching on February 13.

Tonight's performance comes to you live from The Moody Theater in Austin, Texas. Click here to stay up-to-date on who will next appear on the concert series.

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Bet the Ranch on healthy living

If you’re familiar with the Canyon Ranch brand — with its flagship Tucson, Ariz.-based health and wellness resort, where those with the cash get away and get fit — entering Miami Beach’s Canyon Ranch is kind of what you’d expect, if a little more Miami. Ponytailed mothers and daughters lounge in Lululemon. Couples in their twilight years and track pants sip smoothies. Men of a certain age in gym shorts and earbuds stretch out their quads.

If you’ve never heard of Canyon Ranch, as my husband had not before we arrived for a recent weekend stay, you might be in for something of a surprise. The woman who checked us in said, in faux astonishment, staring at the beverage clutched in my husband’s hand, “You can’t drink Diet Coke at Canyon Ranch!” (His response was to chug it. Sufficiently shamed, subsequent Diet Cokes were consumed furtively and off property.)

TWO-BEDROOM TOWNHOUSE WITH DEN, $3.2 MILLION: This oceanfront, two-story, 3,105-square-foot, fully furnished residence is designed by Saccaro USA, the Miami outpost of the Brazilian furniture and interior-design firm. It includes 3 1/2 bathrooms, a kitchen with a cooking island, Sub-Zero and Miele appliances and Italian cabinets, two balconies and selections from Saccaro USA owner Katia Silva, including hand-stitched Brazilian rugs, driftwood tables, textured wallpaper and pieces from designers including Roque Frizzo and Tina Azevedo. Agent: Michael Sadov, Pordes Residential, 786-245-8379

The confusion on his face deepened as she handed us a schedule of exercise classes, a gym bag and a water bottle. As we settled in, even I was impressed by the level of commitment the guests and the resort maintain.

At Canyon Ranch, fries are made from sliced artichoke hearts (mmmm) and bagels from hemp (meh). Everyone works out and, in between, spends hours in monkish brown robes and rubber slippers moving between saunas and “igloos,” rain showers and foot baths.

This is where you go to relax on heated chaises and spend a fortune on spa treatments. (My 50-minute prenatal massage cost $150.) A detox retreat.

Or in Miami, where there are 430 separate condo residences along with the 150 sold-out hotel-condo units, possibly a lifestyle.

Just four years ago, Miami’s Canyon Ranch was another sad example of a big idea gone bust. WSG Development had finished the complex, which included the renovation of the old Carillon hotel flanked by the construction of two brand-new residential towers. A large portion of the condos had sold pre-construction for prices exceeding $1,000 per square foot. Then the economy collapsed. The developer defaulted on loans. Lehman Brothers, the lender, reclaimed the project. And most of the buyers walked away.

It’s taken two brokerages, a 25 to 30 percent price slash and a lot of time for the project to turn around. But turn around it has.

“We started off in the $600s to $700s a square foot,” says Mark Pordes, CEO of Pordes Residential, which Lehman hired to sell the remainder of the building in 2010. “We slowly started to graduate the price as we saw traction in 2011.”

Of the more than 300 units his firm was tasked with selling, Pordes only has three townhouses and “nine or 10” developer units that have yet to come to market. The townhouses are priced upwards of $800 per square foot.

“We came in, we really outreached to the market, we sourced our network, we really had a streamlined marketing plan,” says Pordes, whose firm has something of a reputation for coming in and saving stalled projects. It sold the rest of One Bal Harbour and Terra Beachside, other struggling Miami condo developments. But there are fewer struggling buildings to save in Miami these days.

“We’re looking into some deals in northern Florida, condos on the beach in the Panhandle area. We’re looking at some things in Las Vegas, and we’re looking at some new pre-construction opportunities, because there aren’t a lot of standing inventory opportunities left in Miami and in Aventura and Sunny Isles,” Pordes says. “We’re getting calls and we’re busy.”

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The business behind the artist: Miami’s art gallery scene still evolving

This week, thousands of art collectors, museum trustees, artists, journalists and hipsters from around the globe will arrive for the phenomenon known as Art Basel Miami Beach. The centerpiece of the week: works shown at the convention center by more than 260 of the world’s top galleries.

Only two of those are from Miami.

While Art Basel has helped transform the city’s reputation from beach-and-party scene to arts destination in the years since its 2002 Miami Beach debut, the region’s gallery identity is still coming into its own.

“Certainly Miami as an art town registers mightily because of the foundations, the collectors who have done an extraordinary job,” said Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America. “I think there’s a definite international awareness there. But the gallery scene probably has a bit of a ways to go. That doesn’t mean it’s not really fascinating and interesting.”

The gallery business, especially where newer artists are concerned, is a game of risk, faith and passion. Once a gallery takes on an artist who shows promise, they become an evangelist on their behalf, showing their work in-house and at fairs, presenting it to museums and curators and potential collectors and bearing the cost of that promotion.

For contemporary artists, most galleries take work on consignment, meaning they get a cut of as much as 50 percent when works sell. While local art galleries have been growing in number and popularity in the last several years — just try to find parking during the monthly art walk in Miami’s hot Wynwood neighborhood — even some of the area’s top art dealers say that while business overall is good, they struggle in the local marketplace.

“Our problem is that we have to do lots of art fairs in order to connect with the market that we need to connect with to sell the work that we have,” said Fredric Snitzer, a Miami-Dade gallery owner for 35 years. “The better the work is, the harder it is to sell in Miami. And that ain’t good.”

A handful of serious collectors call Miami home and store their own collections in Miami, including the Braman, Rubell, Margulies and de la Cruz families. But outside a relatively small local group, many gallerists say, their clients come from other parts of the country and world.

And some gallerists point out the troubling reality that even the powerhouse Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin could not stay open in Miami for more than a few years.

“The fact that big galleries have not been able to sustain their business models in South Florida tells you we’re obviously not at this high established point,” said gallery owner David Castillo. “It’s not like we’ve arrived, let’s sit back and watch Hauser & Wirth open down the street.”

Still, Miami’s gallery business has come a long way since the early 1970s, when a few dealers on Bay Harbor Island’s Kane Concourse were selling high-end pieces but the local scene was hardly embraced.

Virginia Miller, who owns ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, first opened in 1974 to showcase Florida artists, though her focus soon added an international scope. She and other longtime observers credit several factors for Miami’s transformation, including the community’s diversity, the establishment of important museums, the Art Miami fair that started 23 years ago, the presence of major collections and, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach.

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State high court denies appeals by former Sweetwater cop slated for execution

The Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday denied appeals by former Sweetwater cop and mass killer Manuel Pardo, who is slated to be executed next week.

Prosecutors said Pardo, 56, and cohort Rolando Garcia committed nine murders during the 1980s, ripping off drug dealers and people who could implicate them in the crimes. At a 1988 trial, he admitted the murders, saying he was ridding the streets of the “scum of the earth.”

At trial, lawyers for Pardo — a former highway patrolman, Boy Scout leader and decorated Navy veteran — argued he was insane at the time of the crimes.

After Gov. Rick Scott signed his death warrant in October, Pardo’s lawyers asked Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake to stay the execution, saying Pardo had not been given all the public records associated with his case and that back in the 1980s he was incompetent to stand trial.

Pardo’s lawyers also said state’s method of lethal injection was “cruel and unusual” punishment. Blake denied the appeals.

On Tuesday, the Florida Supreme Court upheld Blake’s decision, saying Pardo’s claims about lethal injection were based on “pure speculation and conjecture.”

Pardo is slated to be executed Dec. 11 at the Florida State Prison in Starke.

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Toshiba’s 10-inch Excite 10 SE tablet sells for $349.99, comes with Jelly Bean

While every other company is busy chasing the 7-inch tablet market, Toshiba (TOSBF) is keeping its eye on people interested in 10-inch tablets. Its new Excite 10 SE Android tablet is fairly similar to its Excite 10 LE, sporting a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 resolution display, NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 16GB of internal storage, 3-megapixel rear camera, HD front camera, microSD card slot and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It doesn’t have the iPad’s eye-popping Retina display or the Samsung (005930) Nexus 10′s crisp 2,560 x 1,600 resolution with 300 pixels per inch, but it’s more than adequate for most basic tablet tasks. And at $ 349.99, it’s not a bad deal for a 10-inch tablet. The Excite 10 SE goes on sale December 6th and will be available from ToshibaDirect.com and select retail stores. Toshiba’s press release follows below.

Toshiba expands excite family of tablets with new 10-inch model

New Excite 10 SE Tablet Powered by Android 4.1 Starting at $ 349.99 MSRP

IRVINE, Calif. — Dec. 4, 2012 — Toshiba’s Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the availability of the Excite™ 10 SE tablet, a multimedia-rich tablet with a 10.1-inch touchscreen, powered by Android™ 4.1, Jelly Bean. The Excite 10 SE offers an affordable option for people looking for a powerful and versatile tablet for the home, starting at only $ 349.99 MSRP[i].

“Our Excite family of tablets continues to grow with options to suit a wide range of consumer needs, from portability and gaming to versatility and power,” said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. “We designed the Excite 10 SE to be a full featured tablet that offers a pure Android, Jelly Bean experience, while maintaining an attractive price point.”

The Excite 10 SE features Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, which improves on the simplicity and usability of Android 4.0. Moving between customizable home screens and switching between apps is effortless, while the Chrome™ browser and new Google Now intelligent personal assistant and Voice Search apps makes surfing the web fast and fluid.

Slim and light at only 0.4 inches thick and weighing 22.6 ounces[ii], the Excite 10 SE is encased with a textured Fusion Lattice finish, making it comfortable to hold and easy to carry. The tablet offers a vibrant 10.1-inch diagonal AutoBrite™ HD touchscreen display[iii] plus the NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 Super 4-PLUS-1™ quad-core processor[iv] that delivers smooth web browsing and outstanding performance for games, HD movies and more.

Stereo speakers with SRS® Premium Voice Pro create an optimized audio experience for music, video and games, while providing greater clarity for video chatting via the tablet’s HD front-facing camera. The Excite 10 SE also includes a 3 megapixel rear-facing camera with auto-focus and digital zoom for capturing HD video and photos. Featuring a wide range of connectivity, the tablet includes 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth® 3.0, as well as Micro SD and Micro USB ports for expandability. The tablet also charges conveniently via the Micro USB port.

Availability

The Excite 10 SE will be available starting at $ 349.99 MSRP for the 16GB model at select retailers and direct from Toshiba at ToshibaDirect.com on December 6, 2012.

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Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The President’s fading red lines

Benny Avni

Red lines aren’t what they used to be.

President Obama warned beleaguered President Bashar al-Assad on Monday against using Syria’s chemical weapons. Problem is, Assad’s apparently already violated an earlier Obama ultimatum.

Meanwhile, China threatened last week to prevent some vessels from traveling in one of the world’s busiest commercial shipping lanes — a move that risks crossing another oft-stated American red line.

Start with Syria. Obama, who’s reluctant to get involved in the civil war there, nevertheless said in August that if Assad’s chemical arms are “moving around or being utilized” — well, that “would be a red line for us.”

Fast forward to Monday: “The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable,” Obama said.

Why the shift from “move” arms to “use” them? Well, Assad apparently already moved them. According to numerous credible reports, this week someone started to move the weapons around and prep them for use.

Obama, who’s mulling naming a new national-security team, clearly needs time before deciding how to handle the danger.

And a major danger it is: Syria may well have the world’s largest stash of chemical weapons. As the central government crumbles, major weapons of mass destruction could end up in the hands of al Qaeda, Hezbollah or other unsavory actors.

In other words, the August red line was drawn correctly. Now someone (Turkey? America? NATO? Israel?) must obliterate or at least secure Syria’s chems — or the whole region goes boom.

Now to the Pacific, where Washington has long declined to take sides as major players there clash over rights to fish or ocean-drill for oil or natural gas. Friend or foe, America’s stance on these escalating territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas was simple: Solve it. Use diplomacy or international mediation. Don’t expect us to take sides.

Those talking points contained one exception: Our navy, the world’s largest, will guarantee freedom of navigation in the region. If shipping lanes aren’t open for all — well, that’s a red line for America.

But China Daily and other Beijing media reported last Thursday that as of Jan. 1, police in China’s southern province of Hainan will be allowed to board and seize control of foreign ships that “illegally enter” Chinese waters.

Chinese waters?

On Beijing’s maps, Hainan province included several islands that are also claimed by Vietnam. Meanwhile, at least five countries are clashing with China over sovereignty in other flashpoints across the South China Sea. And China, Japan and Taiwan similarly lock horns in the East China Sea.

Obama has long promised to turn his attention to the Pacific, now facing a host of transitions. The economic balance of power is shifting Beijing’s way; Japan faces a national election on Dec. 16 — and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is consolidating power with his family’s usual missile-firing antics.

In Beijing, meanwhile, Xi Jinping, who just assumed power as Communist Party chairman, is intent on translating his nation’s rising economic clout into military dominance. China just introduced its first aircraft carrier (and last week even tested launching a plane from it), and is upgrading its garrisons across the South China Sea.

Yes, Beijing’s current military doctrine is (asEdward Chenof Taiwan’s Institute of America sums it up), “We’re not firing the first shot but we won’t let the second shot take place.” Yet the new policy in Hainan inches ever closer to violating that policy by initiating hostilities.

That is, of course, if Obama sticks with our stated “red line,” a cornerstone of US policy in the Pacific for decades. And Pacific Asia is the region Obama says we now must cultivate (albeit with fewer aircraft carriers, which he compares to outdated “horses and bayonets.”)

Regardless of Obama’s “pivot,” America’s leadershipremains indispensible in both the Pacific and the Mideast.

So as 2013 nears, China and its neighbors wonder about America’s commitment to freedom of navigation; Syria and its neighbors wonder if chemical weapons will finally force America to intervene — and the mother of all red lines, on Iran’s nukes, is yet to be drawn.

Friend and foe alike wonder which of all these declared and undeclared ultimatums will force Obama to finally act in his second term — and which of America’s red lines will fade to gray.

Twitter: @bennyavni

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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The business behind the artist: Miami’s art gallery scene still evolving

This week, thousands of art collectors, museum trustees, artists, journalists and hipsters from around the globe will arrive for the phenomenon known as Art Basel Miami Beach. The centerpiece of the week: works shown at the convention center by more than 260 of the world’s top galleries.

Only two of those are from Miami.

While Art Basel has helped transform the city’s reputation from beach-and-party scene to arts destination in the years since its 2002 Miami Beach debut, the region’s gallery identity is still coming into its own.

“Certainly Miami as an art town registers mightily because of the foundations, the collectors who have done an extraordinary job,” said Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America. “I think there’s a definite international awareness there. But the gallery scene probably has a bit of a ways to go. That doesn’t mean it’s not really fascinating and interesting.”

The gallery business, especially where newer artists are concerned, is a game of risk, faith and passion. Once a gallery takes on an artist who shows promise, they become an evangelist on their behalf, showing their work in-house and at fairs, presenting it to museums and curators and potential collectors and bearing the cost of that promotion.

For contemporary artists, most galleries take work on consignment, meaning they get a cut of as much as 50 percent when works sell. While local art galleries have been growing in number and popularity in the last several years — just try to find parking during the monthly art walk in Miami’s hot Wynwood neighborhood — even some of the area’s top art dealers say that while business overall is good, they struggle in the local marketplace.

“Our problem is that we have to do lots of art fairs in order to connect with the market that we need to connect with to sell the work that we have,” said Fredric Snitzer, a Miami-Dade gallery owner for 35 years. “The better the work is, the harder it is to sell in Miami. And that ain’t good.”

A handful of serious collectors call Miami home and store their own collections in Miami, including the Braman, Rubell, Margulies and de la Cruz families. But outside a relatively small local group, many gallerists say, their clients come from other parts of the country and world.

And some gallerists point out the troubling reality that even the powerhouse Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin could not stay open in Miami for more than a few years.

“The fact that big galleries have not been able to sustain their business models in South Florida tells you we’re obviously not at this high established point,” said gallery owner David Castillo. “It’s not like we’ve arrived, let’s sit back and watch Hauser & Wirth open down the street.”

Still, Miami’s gallery business has come a long way since the early 1970s, when a few dealers on Bay Harbor Island’s Kane Concourse were selling high-end pieces but the local scene was hardly embraced.

Virginia Miller, who owns ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, first opened in 1974 to showcase Florida artists, though her focus soon added an international scope. She and other longtime observers credit several factors for Miami’s transformation, including the community’s diversity, the establishment of important museums, the Art Miami fair that started 23 years ago, the presence of major collections and, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach.

Read More..

Son of slain Miami Gardens car wash owner: ‘He put his own life before someone else’

When Dameion Peart got the phone call from his uncle, he didn’t believe it. He drove to his father’s Miami Gardens car wash to see for himself. He hoped the news wouldn’t be too bad, or maybe the shooting happened someplace else.

He pulled up, saw flashing lights and police tape, and knew it was true.

His father, Errold Peart, had been trying to protect a customer Sunday afternoon from armed robbers at the car wash he ran at Northwest 191st Street and First Place.

The robbers turned their gun on Peart, killing him.

“He put his own life before someone else,” his son said.

Now, Peart’s family began the unexpected task of planning a memorial. He was five days away from his 60th birthday.

He won’t get to see his daughter, Mishka Peart, 23, graduate from the University of Miami’s medical school.

“It’s just sad,” Dameion Peart said. “It was unnecessary.”

When the community heard of the shooting, they started dropping by the scene. They were the ones who lived nearby, longtime customers and friends, each with their own tale of how his father had helped them through the years.

They talked about the times Peart, 59, didn’t charge for carwashes to people short on money. They told Dameion Peart, 32, how his father would give money to people who needed help paying for water and electricity, never asking for the money back.

They shared stories about people who couldn’t get jobs because they had convictions — until Peart gave them work.

One of the younger employees told him it was Errold Peart who convinced her to go back to school.

“He was a very good, kindhearted person and a good father at the same time,” Dameion Peart said. “The community where his business is located, he really helped them out here.”

Errold Peart hailed from Jamaica, where he played cricket and worked at one point at a school for problem children, his son said. He eventually came to the United States, where he continued to play cricket for the USA national team.

Peart represented the USA in five matches at the 1990 International Cricket Council Trophy in the Netherlands, where the batsman was the team’s leading scorer, ESPN reported. The USA made it through the first round that year before losing in the second, according to ESPN.

At first, Peart worked with an airline, his son said, but later decided to open his own business.

He started the car wash more than a decade ago, his son said. He chose the location because it was near a busy stretch of U.S. 441 and near Florida’s Turnpike, the Palmetto Expressway and Interstate 95.

“It was like a landmark,” Dameion Peart said. “Everyone knew him.”

But Peart worried about safety.

“He didn’t like guns. But every year, around this time, for the past three years he got held up at gunpoint and people tried to rob him,” Dameion Peart said. “The last time they even followed him home.”

So Errold Peart got a concealed weapons permit.

On Sunday afternoon, he noticed a pair of young men trying to rob a customer. Errold Peart went out to try and stop it, his son said, only to be shot himself.

The men ran away, leaving behind the customer and a bleeding Peart.

Miami Gardens Police still were looking for the suspects on Monday.

Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

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‘The Daily’ doomed by dull content and isolation

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It was too expensive. It lacked editorial focus. And for a digital publication, it was strangely cut off from the Internet. That’s the obituary being written in real time through posts, tweets and online chats about The Daily, the first-of-its-kind iPad newspaper that is being shut down this month.

Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp. said Monday that The Daily will publish its final issue on Dec. 15, less than two years after its January 2011 launch. The app has already been removed from Apple’s iTunes, where it once received lukewarm ratings.

The Daily had roughly 100,000 subscribers who paid either 99 cents a week or $ 40 a year for its daily download of journalism tailored for touch screens. But that wasn’t enough to sustain some 100 employees and millions of dollars in losses since its launch. At the time of its debut, News Corp. said The Daily’s operating costs would amount to about half a million dollars a week, or around $ 26 million a year.

When News Corp. launched The Daily, it was touted as a bold experiment in new media. The company hired top-name journalists from other publications, such as the New York Post’s former Page Six editor, Richard Johnson, and said it poured $ 30 million into the newspaper’s launch. Now, the company is acknowledging that The Daily no longer has a place at News Corp., which is being split in two to separate its publishing enterprises from its TV and movie businesses.

Murdoch said in a statement that News Corp. “could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term.” Some employees are being hired in other parts of the company.

Critics say The Daily’s day-to-day mix of news, opinion and info-graphics wasn’t that different from content available for free on the Internet. And despite a high-profile launch that drew lots of media attention, the publication failed to build a distinctive brand. There was no ad campaign touting its coverage and stories weren’t accessible to non-subscribers, so it didn’t benefit from buzz that comes from social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Trevor Butterworth, who wrote a weekly column for The Daily called “The Information Society,” says the disconnect between the app and the broader Internet curtailed its reach. He was laid off in July when the publication shrank from 170 workers to about 120. As part of the purge, The Daily cut its dedicated opinion section and dropped sports coverage in favor of using a feed from its News Corp. sister outfit, Fox Sports.

“Stories weren’t widely shared or widely known,” says Butterworth. “It felt like I was writing into the void.”

When it launched, The Daily was meant to take advantage of the explosion of tablet computer sales, and the notion that people generally read on them in the morning or evening, like a magazine.

But each issue came in a giant file — sometimes 1 gigabyte large — and took 10 or 15 minutes to download over a broadband connection, which is unheard of for news apps, says Matt Haughey, the founder of MetaFilter.com, one of the first community blogs on the Internet.

Because the stories weren’t linkable, The Daily didn’t benefit from new Internet traffic that would have come from content aggregators like Flipboard and Tumblr.

“They ignored the obvious, which was the Web,” Haughey says. Although many people are foregoing buying a laptop for the lightweight convenience of a tablet, the day hasn’t arrived yet when all online access will come through apps rather than the Web. “Maybe in five or 10 years, the Web will be less important,” he says. “For now it seems like they were missing out.”

It may also have been a problem that News Corp. launched The Daily from scratch into an environment where readers tend to gravitate toward trusted sources and established brands. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, 84 percent of mobile device users said a news app’s brand was a major factor in deciding whether to download it.

One of the intangible challenges The Daily had was standing out in a sea of online journalism, both paid and free. Some national newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, have carved out a niche with informed coverage of sometimes complex topics and have gained paying digital subscribers by limiting the number of free articles they offer online.

Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today and about 80 other newspapers, has succeeded in raising circulation revenue at local papers by putting up so-called online “pay walls,” taking advantage of the fact that there are few alternative sources of coverage for certain communities.

Without a unique coverage niche or a local monopoly, The Daily was caught between two worlds.

By being digital-only, the publication didn’t have a defined coverage area. It was “in competition with everybody and everything,” says Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. Yet it failed to carve out its own niche in that larger universe, he says.

“Its lack of editorial focus played a role,” Benton notes. “It was sort of a pleasant, middle-brow, slightly tabloidy mix of news and features. And there’s lots of that available for free online. I would imagine if ‘The Daily’ were starting again now, they would invest more in establishing their brand identity early on.”

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Kristen Chenoweth Dating a Former Bachelor Star Jake Pavelka

Kristin Chenoweth has a surprising new beau!

Video: Jake Pavelka Dishes on his Chippendales Gig

The singer/actress, 44, confirmed to People Magazine that she is indeed dating a somewhat infamous alum of the Bachelor franchise, Jake Pavelka.

"We have been spending a little time together," confessed Chenoweth of her budding courtship with Pavelka, 34.

Related: Kristin Chenoweth Talks On-Set Injury

People reports the couple has been dating since meeting at an event in October.

Chenoweth adds she has a new-found gusto for life, following her devastating head injury on the set of The Good Wife in July.

"I've realized life is short," she said. "I want to do things that make me happy."

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Spreading the wealth — and choking US growth

The Issue: The battle in Washington over taxes and spending, and their impending economic impact.

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It’s interesting that many people continue to think that President Obama wants a settlement to avoid the fiscal cliff. He doesn’t (“Growth Is All That Matters,” Editorial, Dec. 1).

He wants to go over it and then use the resulting complaints to reduce taxes on those making less than $250,000 and restore social spending cuts. Then, presto, he becomes the tax-cutter-in-chief and defender of the poor and middle class.

Obama couldn’t care less about economic growth. He cares about wealth redistribution and equality of outcome.

Republicans need to take this to heart and deal with him accordingly. Sean McDowell

Atlanta

Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy.

He speaks out of one side of his mouth of millionaires and billionaires. Out of the other side, he cites families making $250,000 as rich. Something is very wrong with this picture.

Melanie Coronetz

Manhattan

Republicans should make a pledge to see if liberalism works. It could bring great benefits to the country for years to come.

If four years of taxation on job creators and spending on unions bring this country to its knees, as it most certainly will, it will be worth it to gain a clear answer on liberal policies once and for all.

Let Obama and the liberals have their way, so they’ll own the results of their policies.

Steve Gidumal

Orlando, Fla.

Republicans should agree to raise income taxes on individuals making $1 million and couples making $1.5 million — the real rich — combined with an agreement by the Obama administration to use zero-based budgeting for 2014 and the rest of the term.

Zero-based budgeting would provide a true cost of government that could establish a baseline for how much entitlements would need to be adjusted.

At the same time, Republicans should explain on television why raising taxes during an economic downturn is a bad idea because it reduces consumer demand and that America’s debt problem comes from overspending, not low tax rates.

Max Rugemer

Oakton, Va.

The “party of no,” “obstructionist” Republicans should handle the current budget deal the Democrats put forth exactly the same way they did with Obama’s health-care deal — zero involvement — if they want to galvanize the base and make big gains in the 2014 midterms.

Alan Alberts

Thornton

Surely, the fiscal cliff is meaningless to Obama and the Democrats. They extended the Bush tax cuts, rather than making them permanent, and then went on a $6 trillion borrowing, spending and regulation spree with impunity.

They intend to raise taxes beyond merely letting the tax cuts expire on Jan. 1, which, coupled with the coming costs of ObamaCare, will decimate businesses, jobs and the middle class.

America has already been deceived, betrayed and pushed off the fiscal cliff. A hard landing and a deeper recession are dead ahead.Daniel Jeffs

Apple Valley, Calif.

I suggest a referendum on whether tax rates should be raised for those with high levels of income and that eligibility to vote on this referendum be restricted to those who actually paid income tax the preceding year.Don Murray

Manhattan

Now that Obama has laid out his opening bid for negotiations, here’s an idea for House Speaker John Boehner: On the revenue side, he can call for the elimination of state and local income-tax deduction.

That’s about $50 billion per year and hits the blue states the hardest. It should be no problem, since they voted for higher taxes anyway.

On spending cuts, how about $6 trillion over 10 years? Start with cutting Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Education, and the balance can go to entitlements. Based on the balance of Obama’s bid, this is equally balanced.

Brian Daniel

Manhattan

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The business behind the artist: Miami’s art gallery scene still evolving

This week, thousands of art collectors, museum trustees, artists, journalists and hipsters from around the globe will arrive for the phenomenon known as Art Basel Miami Beach. The centerpiece of the week: works shown at the convention center by more than 260 of the world’s top galleries.

Only two of those are from Miami.

While Art Basel has helped transform the city’s reputation from beach-and-party scene to arts destination in the years since its 2002 Miami Beach debut, the region’s gallery identity is still coming into its own.

“Certainly Miami as an art town registers mightily because of the foundations, the collectors who have done an extraordinary job,” said Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Dealers Association of America. “I think there’s a definite international awareness there. But the gallery scene probably has a bit of a ways to go. That doesn’t mean it’s not really fascinating and interesting.”

The gallery business, especially where newer artists are concerned, is a game of risk, faith and passion. Once a gallery takes on an artist who shows promise, they become an evangelist on their behalf, showing their work in-house and at fairs, presenting it to museums and curators and potential collectors and bearing the cost of that promotion.

For contemporary artists, most galleries take work on consignment, meaning they get a cut of as much as 50 percent when works sell. While local art galleries have been growing in number and popularity in the last several years — just try to find parking during the monthly art walk in Miami’s hot Wynwood neighborhood — even some of the area’s top art dealers say that while business overall is good, they struggle in the local marketplace.

“Our problem is that we have to do lots of art fairs in order to connect with the market that we need to connect with to sell the work that we have,” said Fredric Snitzer, a Miami-Dade gallery owner for 35 years. “The better the work is, the harder it is to sell in Miami. And that ain’t good.”

A handful of serious collectors call Miami home and store their own collections in Miami, including the Braman, Rubell, Margulies and de la Cruz families. But outside a relatively small local group, many gallerists say, their clients come from other parts of the country and world.

And some gallerists point out the troubling reality that even the powerhouse Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin could not stay open in Miami for more than a few years.

“The fact that big galleries have not been able to sustain their business models in South Florida tells you we’re obviously not at this high established point,” said gallery owner David Castillo. “It’s not like we’ve arrived, let’s sit back and watch Hauser & Wirth open down the street.”

Still, Miami’s gallery business has come a long way since the early 1970s, when a few dealers on Bay Harbor Island’s Kane Concourse were selling high-end pieces but the local scene was hardly embraced.

Virginia Miller, who owns ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, first opened in 1974 to showcase Florida artists, though her focus soon added an international scope. She and other longtime observers credit several factors for Miami’s transformation, including the community’s diversity, the establishment of important museums, the Art Miami fair that started 23 years ago, the presence of major collections and, of course, Art Basel Miami Beach.

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Miami-Dade proposes spending $1.5 billion over 15 years to cure sewer system woes

Six months into negotiations with federal regulators over Miami-Dade’s aging sewer system, the county has come up with a $1.5 billion, 15-year plan to rebuild pipes, pumps and sewage treatment plants that in some cases are almost 100 years old.

County leaders devised the proposal in an attempt to fend off a federal lawsuit, and potentially millions of dollars in fines, for not abiding by the federal Clean Water Act. The county also has proposed replacing or repairing a good portion of the 7,500 miles of sewer lines that regularly rupture and spill millions of gallons of raw waste into local waterways and Biscayne Bay.

Before any work is to begin, the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency — which put the county on notice in May — must accept the county’s terms. The plan, referred to as a consent decree, also must be endorsed by a majority of county commissioners. That could come as soon as late January or early February.

One of the largest repair jobs would be a $555 million reconstruction of the controversial wastewater treatment plant on Virginia Key. Entire concrete structures would be rebuilt, and pump stations and electrical systems would be replaced. The plan calls for spending another $394 million on similar fixes to two other wastewater treatment facilities, in Goulds and North Miami.

Another $408 million would be spent replacing and rehabbing the county’s 1,035 pump stations, and miles of transmission lines that run to and from the plants.

The plan has already garnered some criticism.

The Biscayne Bay Waterkeepers, clean-water activists who filed to join the federal action against the county, say spending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild on Virginia Key is a waste, because the spit of land is likely to be under water within 50 years.

The group points to a recent study by the journal Science that showed the polar ice caps in Greenland are melting at three times the rate originally believed. They also say a climate change compact Miami-Dade agreed to with three other counties — which accepted a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study that shows sea levels will rise 3 feet by 2060 — shows the Virginia Key plant could be in peril.

“Doubling down on Virginia Key the way they’re doing it is just stupid,” said environmental attorney Albert J. Slap, representing the Waterkeepers. “There’s not a dime in it for armoring the plant, or raising it. It’s on a barrier island.”

Doug Yoder, deputy director of the county’s water and sewer department, didn’t dispute the Army Corps findings, and said the county could abandon the Virginia Key plant for a new plant on the western edge of the county if federal regulators make such a demand.

“We certainly don’t want to spend a lot of money fixing up a facility we’ll soon abandon,” he said.

Most of the costs for the overall plan will be covered through county revenue bonds, Yoder said, meaning a future increase in water rates and debt service bills. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has been warning for months that rate hikes are in the offing.

To meet demands from the feds, the county also must abandon by 2027 an outflow system it now uses that dumps up to 120 million gallons of sewage each day miles offshore. The county has until July 2013 to come up with an alternate disposal method.

A project cited in the new plan that had not been publicly addressed previously is the installation of 7,660 linear feet of sewer mains in an industrial area just below State Road 112 and between Northwest 27th and 37th avenues, which now depends on septic tanks. The job of hooking up local businesses there to county sewers would cost a little over $2 million.

Federal regulators began talks with Miami-Dade in May after a series of massive raw sewage spills released more than 47 million gallons of untreated human waste throughout the county. DOJ and the EPA, along with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, sketched out the 78-page consent decree.

Four times between October and December 2011, the sewage treatment plant on Virginia Key alone ruptured, spilling more than 19 million gallons.

The county also has agreed to pay a $978,000 fine for past spills within 30 days of the plan being accepted, with about half the money going to the DOJ and the other half to the state.

DOJ spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined to comment Friday.

In October, the county denied 12 permit applications in the Coconut Grove area by businesses that wanted to install sinks, toilets or showers. The county said it was imposing a moratorium on new sewage outflow from a Coconut Grove-serving pump station.

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