Hallandale Beach Blog -A common-sense public policy overview offering a critical perspective on the current events, politics, government, public policy, sports scene and pop culture of Europe, the U.S. & South Florida, in particular, Broward & Miami-Dade County, and the cities of Hallandale Beach and Hollywood.
FOR SALE: Like-new KÖPPEN Men's Kälke Down Jacket, Navy Blue, Large. Superior warmth with amazing lightness at a bargain price of $75. Bought in January, worn 8 times. Similar down jackets, impossible to find in South Florida, go for MUCH MORE -this was originally $145- so why should you PAY MORE when the answer is right in front of you? Click photo for more details!
Sony Bloggie Touch Mobile HD Camera/Camcorder
FOR SALE: New, never-used Sony Bloggie Touch Mobile HD Camera/Camcorder for $95. MHS-TS10, Silver, 2 hours of HD MP4 video with 4GB of internal memory, 12.8MP still images. Still in box with all materials. Originally priced at $175-200 retail, being advertised today on Amazon.com for b/w $145-170, so why pay more for same model that's NEVER been used, always been inside its box and comes with everything? Click photo for more details.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Australian sports world rocked by scandal! "Project Aperio" details Aussie sports world's secret: widespread drug use by top athletes, organised crime's connections to athletes, possible match fixing and much more; Australian Football League and National Rugby League are cooperating with Australian Crime Commission, but fallout is expected to be heavy; @krishgm
Channel 4 News video: Australia's Justice Minister Jason Clare and Sports Minister Kate Lundy discuss shocking details of "Project Aperio,' the year-long findings of the Australian Crime Commission. Aired February 7, 2013. http://bcove.me/rsmlfpgg
Australian sports world rocked by scandal! "Project Aperio" details Aussie sports world's secret: widespread drug use by top athletes, organised crime's connections to athletes, possible match fixing and much more; Australian Football League and National Rugby League are cooperating with Australian Crime Commission, but fallout is expected to be heavy; @krishgm
SNTVonline YouTube Channel video: Aussie sport doping scandal revealed by Australian Crime Commission. Uploaded February 7, 2013.
Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and insight onto Florida and local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now. On this blog, locally, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger and laser-like attention on the coastal cities of Hallandale Beach and Hollywood.
If you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be stuck in stultifying traffic, paying higher-than-necessary taxes and continually musing about the chronic lack of accountability among not only elected govt. officials, but also of city, county and state employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, eager work-ethic mentality that local residents deserve and expect.
This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the "Perfect Storm" of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent. Sadly for its residents, HB is where even easily-solved, quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and ineffective supervisory management. It's a city with lots of potential because of its terrific location, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion, merely kicked -once again- further down the road.
I used to ask myself, not always rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show that through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?" Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable but skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time, and wanting questions answered in a honest and logical way that citizens have the right to expect.
Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change.
If there's one constant gripe in South Florida, regardless of your age, race, nationality or political persuasion, it's about the fundamental lack ofPUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITYhere among Florida's state, regional and local govt./agency officials.Hallandale Beach Blogaims to be a small step towards regaining some of that needed accountability, whether it's thru simple public scrutiny, or requires a degree of follow-up investigation and public exposure of incompetency, cronyism or simple negligence -South Florida's usual governing style.
"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen."-Preacher Purl encouraging the underdog Hickory High basketball team before the state title game against heavily-favored South Bend Central in 1986'sHoosiers
TIME magazine of November 23, 1981: Paradise Lost? South Florida . Click photo to see original article.
It's not like I wasn't sounding the alarm years ago... but LOTS of reporters here still ignore it
Headline: Sen. LeMieux decries 'culture of corruption' in S. Florida; Click on photo for my October 30, 2010 blog post titled, "Hallandale Beach's pro-reform citizens ask FL Sen. George LeMieux to do a good turn and help end the 'culture of corruption' here: Call Victor Tobin!"
"Why do they need that in the Broward County charter?"
_____________________________________________ "Laws and Constitutions go for nothing where the general sentiment is corrupt." -New York Times,September 22, 1851
"Why do they need that in the Broward County charter?"
-Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper at April 2, 2008 HB City Commission meeting, in discussing possible inclusion of Broward County Charter Review Commission's proposal for Ethics Commission to deal with Broward County Commission, on November 2008 ballot.
Six YEARS after the county's voters had overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the County charter requiring its adoption, the Broward County Commission had yet to live up to its legal responsibility. That's why!
Thanks to City of Miami Commissioner Frank Carollo, South Florida gets yet another well-earned black eye on the ethics tally board because he can't help himself and thinks he must get in the last word every single time. That is, when he isn't talking about the "conspiracy" to get him.
Not content to be just the home of low-wage employers, Florida also leads the nation in corrupt politicians: http://t.co/nqouYRG7AP
Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall Complex on S. Federal Highway/U.S.-1, where attention to details and appearances has never been their strong suit in the nine years I've lived here, since returning to South Florida after 15 years in the Washington, D.C. area. Thanks to the city's incompetent, myopic and poorly-managed DPW, the spotlights seen above in 2011 on the city's monument sign, at the corner of U.S.-1 & S.E. 5th St., have NOT worked since June of 2012. Which is to say that they have NOT worked since City Manager Renee C. Miller has been in place. The buck stops with her, of course, but as has been the case for YEARS, where the hell is the city's Dept. of Public Works (DPW)? I told the interim Dept. head about this and many other longstanding problems in-person, in early February, eight months ago, and nothing has been done about ANY of these things. But then attention to details and appearances really DO matter when you are a government, and the situation with the lights is but the tip of the iceberg. August 7, 2011 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
BROWARD INSPECTOR GENERAL FINAL REPORT RE: GROSS MISMANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC FUNDS BY THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH AND THE HALLANDALE BEACH COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY
"Hallandale finds allies amid aggressive response to county’s request for CRA documents." I'll have a lot more on this matter and our angry and vindictive Mayor Cooper soon.
Hallandale finds allies amid aggressive response to county’s request for CRA documents http://t.co/m1XbloJBnb
Broward Auditor looks at Hallandale Beach CRA with eye toward recovering misspent funds
By William Gjebre* BrowardBulldog.org
The Broward County Auditor’s Office has begun looking into whether Hallandale Beach should be required to repay some of the millions in tax dollars allegedly misspent due to “gross mismanagement” by city officials.
Broward Auditor looks at Hallandale Beach CRA with eye toward recovering misspent funds j.mp/11ysUve
Broward Inspector General: Hallandale leaders don’t know what they’re talking about, By William Gjebre* BrowardBulldog.org. The Broward Inspector General’s final report on the “gross mismanagement” of millions in tax dollars by Hallandale Beach is sharply critical of city leaders it says have shown a “basic misunderstanding” of what’s gone wrong.
Ordinary people can make a difference in fight against corruption in Broward County
The next time you hear someone in Broward County, like one of the usual "experts" or pundits or maybe a self-interested lobbyist like Joy Cooper's supercilious pal Judy Stern repeat the Conventional Wisdom that nobody really cares about ethical behavior, transparency and accountability in Broward cities, except a handful of people, just keep this in mind.
That total doesn't even include the number of people who saw it the day it was first posted, when it was the default post of the blog. That's a lot of people who now know a lot more facts about the truth regarding the corruption and incompetency that have been commonplace in Hallandale Beach all these years while Broward State's Attorney Mike Satz and his staff did NOTHING. Just saying...
The South Florida I Grew Up In
Excerpted from Joan Didion'sMiami, 1987,Simon & Schuster:
In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilo, the exile, meetings at private homes in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences. The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly. Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player. That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed booms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year's morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Havana a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogota and to Paris and Madrid. Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp...
"The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and marshes, interlocked and apparently neverending; the whole surrounded by interminable swamps... Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I,"John James Audobon wrote to the editor of The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science during the course of an 1831 foray in the territory then still called the Floridas. The place came first, and to touch down there is to begin to understand why at least six administrations now have found South Florida so fecund a colony. I never passed through security for a flight to Miami without experiencing a certain weightlessness, the heightened wariness of having left the developed world for a more fluid atmosphere, one in which the native distrust of extreme possibilities that tended to ground the temperate United States in an obeisance to democratic institutions seemed rooted, if at all, only shallowly. At the gate for such flights the preferred language was already Spanish. Delays were explained by weather in Panama. The very names of the scheduled destinations suggested a world in which many evangelical inclinations had historically been accommodated, many yearnings toward empire indulged...
In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accommodated...
Nice from a distance, not so nice once you're there and see the years of City Hall's neglect
"So this is where our tax dollars go to die? My friend and fellow civic activist Csaba Kulin, perhaps wondering when we're FINALLY going to get the clean and inviting public beach that Hallandale Beach residents believe we're entitled to but have never received under Mayor Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew.
North Miami Beach Senior High School, the Home of the Chargers
Before I was a Hoosier, I was an NMB Charger, Class of 1979
Sebastian the Ibis, the U-M mascot
Like longtime U-M fans everywhere, including me, Sebastian the Ibis, the U-M mascot, hasn't had very much to cheer about lately, given the general state of mediocrity and underwhelming performances coming from the Hurricanes. Isn't it about time for fans to finally see some tangible signs that the new AD is moving things in the right direction? Where are the signs? I'm NOT seeing them. The woeful U-M Women's program is largely composed of teams that are NOT even close to being competitive for NCAA titles like their ACC competition, and they don't even field Women's Lacrosse or Field Hockey teams. It's embarrassing! Click on Sebastian for retrospective photo gallery of The Orange Bowl
In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation
"In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation." -South Beach Hoosier, 2007.
Assembly Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. I was there in 1981 for NCAA Title #4 vs. North Carolina. Click on photo to go to the IU Basketball homepage.
IU All-American and U.S. Olympian Steve Alford on the cover of the 1987 Indiana University basketball media guide, months after IU won the NCAA basketball title.
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