Who believed the Everglades sales pitch story? No, not the one where someone tries to sell you a bridge, but close.
It’s the Air Show in the Swamp pitch, where Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez was going to get all these international corporations and celebrities to come out for an fancy aviation convention at this tiny, single airstrip in the middle of our swamp surround by nothing but alligators and mosquitos and zero hotels, restaurants and bars for miles and miles and miles.
Environmentalists got all riled up for nothing because the sheer concept was so ludicrous that nobody should have taken it seriously.
Ladra never bought it. More likely, the 
story was cover for the mayor’s fancy trips to Paris, where he went on the taxpayer’s bill, purportedly to pitch the Everglades show idea in both 2013 and again last month.
Read related story: Miami-Dade mayor, lobbyist pals head to Paris Air Show
On Thursday, less than three weeks after he came back from the eight-day jaunt to Paris and Marseilles — a trip he took with his wife, five county employees and a couple of lobbyist pals who reportedly paid their own way — Gimenez told Fox News Latino that he’s nixed that lofty Everglades air show notion and will, instead, pitch the Homestead Air Force Reserve base as a location for such an event.
Um, didn’t the Pentagon nix the Homestead Air Force base as a location in 2013? What makes Gimenez think they’ll change their minds?
He really doesn’t. The air show was never a serious goal. It was always just cover for the international travel on county time and dime.
It was always a bridge for sale in the middle of the Everglades.
Ladra asked the mayor’s spokesman weeks ago — before the 21-member delegation left to gay Paris — to provide a list of any and all economic development items, trade shows, meetings or whatever that happened as a direct result of Gimenez’s trips to France in 2013. I’ve not gotten a response yet.
Not that it matters actually. Because the bottom line is that we don’t know if that elusive result that they have not yet produced from the Paris trips would have happened anyway.
And here’s why: You don’t need to go to Paris with a fancy brochure to pitch South Florida for anything. You can invite people who are dying to come here anyway to visit your facilities and see what you have to offer. That’s the smart way to do it.
But that doesn’t get you a free trip to Europe with your wife, does it?
Carlos Gimenez’s ‘Everglades Air Show’ was never serious added by Ladra on
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