It’s funny how crime and fraud is such a big part of the Florida economy and sad that this plays out not according to stories about the Thieves Guild being big in this city but according to stories about the business lobbies being big in this city.

Like, houses are immunized from bankruptcy and some civil judgements, no matter how ridiculous they are, and the state’s not the most enthusiastic about regulating or pursuing accountants and lawyers, or tracking down white-collar fraud, and there are the pain clinics, and Miami’s physical infrastructure was largely built for the purpose of laundering money.

Miami’s capital of the Caribbean, and so there’s all the offshore banking links of course. CIA territory too, with all the little expat governments-in-exile (and of course the big Cuban one). I’m sure there are real people like Bruce Willis in that one episode of Miami Vice, I’m sure there are real people like everyone in all those episodes of Miami Vice.

Well if your state isn’t dominated by the shadow economy I guess it’s going to be dominated by some kind of sunlight economy, extractive or manufacturing or transport or tourism, or by ethnic ethnish machines. Though since coming to Oregon I’m actually starting to get less cynical about the whole New Hampshire, Iowa “retail politics” pageantry that kicks off every election cycle. Maybe you really can have an honest republic if, pace Moynihan, you’re close enough to the Canadian border. (Not Michigan though, jfc)

I sure have been mentioning the CIA and doing google searches to get my ideas together a bunch lately and now I can’t help but wonder what I should be thinking about all the perfectly innocuous drivers of perfectly innocuous cars that have found some reason to pull over directly outside my kitchen window and be doing perfectly innocuous things when I look out lately.