Weather forecast: 100% chance of stone-cold facts raining down on Bill Julian & Alexander Lewy for 10 days in a row

Above, October 10, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier of Alexander Lewy and Bill Julian campaign signs on Atlantic Shores Blvd., Hallandale Beach, FL.


Now the fun begins!

Tomorrow starts ten days in a row of stone-cold facts raining down hard on Hallandale Beach City Commission candidates Bill Julian and Alexander Lewy's heads.
And to be honest, I really don't think their umbrellas are going to be up to the task, either. Stone-cold facts are funny that way.

And trust me when I tell you, fun will be had by all.
Well, except by them -and their supporters- of course, who will now FINALLY have to deal with so many Hallandale Beach citizens, Broward County pols and interested parties -plus the South Florida news media, such as it is- knowing a whole lot more about Julian and Lewy than the two of them ever counted on anyone else knowing.

As it is, even if I weren't going to be doing anything -which was never going to happen- Lewy and Julian were going to be awfully busy the last ten days of the campaign, anyway, going around town and telling their preposterous lies and misrepresentations to Hallandale Beach citizens with a straight face, because telling the truth is so very unthinkable.

But starting tomorrow, Lewy and Julian will have the added burden of knowing that the very best-informed people in the entire city, the ones who are, in fact, most-interested in the HB City Commission election and who most want to see genuine and permanent accountability, transparency and fiscal sanity at Hallandale Beach City Hall, will know many of the very "inconvenient" and terribly unflattering facts about the two of them.

The stone-cold facts that Julian and Lewy have both tried their best to avoid talking about or disclosing, because the known facts are so mendacious, unethical or, as you'll find out, just plain creepy.
But that's how stone-cold facts are sometimes.

As we all know from experience, stone-cold facts are even better when you have photos and video to illustrate them, and can thus connect them to your particular points.
Believe me, I will be making full use of photos and video in the days leading up to the November 2nd election.

You can either trust me on that point or not, but you should know now that my biggest problem with these particular upcoming posts about Lewy and Julian is not one of what to include, but rather one of what to leave out because there is only so much time and space.

In their own ridiculous ways, Lewy and Julian have given me so much material over the past few years that I, quite literally, have a mountain of evidence to comb thru and select in order to give you particularly telling examples of their individual lack of judgment, honesty, fairness and common sense.
They are nothing, if not consistent.

The truth is, when you are very observant and patient and can see the connections-between-issues that others often can't -and keep a reliable camera with you wherever you go, to document what is happening around both you and the city- it's actually easy to build a molehill of evidence pretty quickly, given where we are and how badly-run the city is run.
But because we're dealing with Alexander Lewy and Bill Julian, I literally have a mountain of evidence.

Quick!
Someone go to their window and yell out, "AVALANCHE!"

As far as I'm concerned, Bill Julian and Alexander Lewy's biggest problem isn't merely that SO MANY smart, discerning and well-informed people in this city DON'T think they are in any way qualified and competent for the City Commission job they are running for, but rather that I have paid VERY, VERY close attention to what each one of them has said and done in public for so very long.
And have documented it.

I'm hip to their M.O's and see right through them, and when you know the stone-cold facts, too, you will see thru them like a laser.

Lewy and Julian's own words and actions are their worst enemy now, and over the next few days, everyone who wants to know what I have known about both of them for a very, very long time, WILL.

And lest I remind you, when it rains, it pours!

Another reason to vote against Charlie Crist: his pitching is clearly outside of the 'mainstream'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jirSqpYpvrE

After Charlie Crist loses the Senate election in 25 days to Marco Rubio and leaves office -and Tallahassee in the rear-view mirror for good- Crist will move up to one of his wife's homes in the New York City area, where he'll become yet another foolish Mets fan, and after listening to too much nonsensical sports radio, he will become a chronic serial caller to WFAN.
"Hello Charlie in Westchester County, you're on the air..."
Ha! Ha! Ha!

In this video, ABC News correspondent John Berman discusses presidential and celebrity ceremonial first pitches (and foul pitches), as well as his 'first pitch' at a PawSox game at McCoy Stadium in Pawtuckett, Rhode Island, as always, the AAA farm club of the Red Sox.
http://www.mefeedia.com/news/20617909

One of my substitute teachers at N.M.B. High School, Tony Torchia, was easily one of the most popular teachers at the school whenever he was there, especially with the male students, and it wasn't just because he was friendly and engaging and... the PawSox manager in 1975.

When the Red Sox played the Reds in the World Series that fall, naturally, he flew up to Boston to be at the Sox home games at Fenway Park.

Well, to give you an idea of what a great guy Mr. Torchia was, he brought back a World Series program for me, only one of my most-treasured sports collectibles EVER.
He was a classy guy!

'Safe at Home'
Alyssa Milano confesses her love for baseball in her book in an interview On The Record with Greta Van Sustern of FOX News. 2009.
http://video.foxnews.com/v/3933173/safe-at-home/

Re those mean-spirited, untrue rumors that Joy Cooper & her feckless crew are spreading around. What did you expect? Cooper's an egotistical scorpion

Given her self-evident track record, personality and fear of accountability, the truth and the facts are hardly her best friends!

Oft-told riddle in Hallandale Beach:
What are the first five words Joy Cooper says every morning?
"Mirror, mirror on the wall..."

A number of weeks ago I sent out an email to some concerned and well-informed folks throughout South Florida about the Hallandale Beach City Commission race on November 2nd.

I opined that with no second pro-reform candidate in the race, just pro-reform Comm. Keith London vs. Comm. William "Bill" Julian -the devil you know- and Alexander Lewy -the devil you don't know, but definitely don't like- this election might well be one where the only thing everyone I knew was in agreement on was the great disappointment that there wouldn't be a second voice for public accountability on the five-member panel.

Well, that, of course, plus the question about the degree of sheer lunacy of the inevitable rumors that Mayor Cooper and her grab-bag of cronies and supplicants would start spreading in the last few weeks before the election to try to publicly discredit Comm. London, so that she can get her groomed back-stabbing protege Lewy on the Commission to help do her bidding.

Well, for the record, it's officially already started, as I was somewhat late to discover this past weekend what sort of creepy BS the mayor and her pals have been peddling.

I'm not going to stoop to her subterranean level and repeat them here, but even for such a despicable woman, they are particularly twisted.

If you want to know what they are, drop me a line.

You know what isn't rumors, though?
Those waves of first-hand stories I have heard over the past year from so many Hallandale Beach residents I didn't already know.

People, who, quite literally, walked-up to me, looked around to see if anyone was looking, introduced themselves and told me a story about Joy Cooper & Co. that left me dumb-founded, appalled and a little shell-shocked at the sheer volume and specificity.

Based on what I've been told by folks who are not involved in anything having to do with HB City Hall, people who are by their own words "just minding their own business," Joy Cooper and her family and friends have really sown the seeds of their own destruction with their over-the-top bellicose words, sordid accusations and personal threats.
All of which are going to come out in time, one way or the other.

I particularly like the threats uttered by the Coopers made a few years ago at the offices of the South Florida Sun-Times, the mayor's current personal lapdog, which never fails to praise her every word and deed, no matter how ridiculous, self-serving or myopic.

The oft-told story is that she and her husband threatened the management financially -and otherwise- unless they pulled every single copy of the faux newspaper that had already been distributed and placed in vending machines and dropped-off at the usual spots- and never mentioned the subject again.

It seems that the FREE faux advertorial had actually deigned to print something that so upset her, that she wouldn't take no for an answer.
And this being Hallandale Beach, the Sun-Times folks, hip to who was calling the tunes, promptly capitulated, and did as they were told, including making certain moves not worth getting into here now, but equally absurd.
And that's why seldom is heard a discouraging word...

I will have much, much more coming soon on Julian, Lewy and his mentor, Cooper, along with some news and info on the Sun-Times you probably never knew before.

As someone joked to me the other day over breakfast: "Alex Lewy for 'Cooper Commission Puppet.'

But in ventriloquism, isn't the person who only pretends to speak actually called a "dummy," not a 'puppet'?
Semantics I know, but you get the basic point of the barb.

Everyone who has been paying attention to what has been going on in this city and hereabout knows exactly what Lewy's role would be if elected: roll-over, fetch, vote.

Fair warning: To the Hallandale Beach city employee with the City of Hallandale Beach vehicle seen driving around town with the Alexander Lewy campaign posters inside.
I haven't seen you myself, but several very reputable people I know and trust say they saw exactly what you did.
And they also know that there weren't Lewy campaign posters on that site a minute ago.

Until you drove-up.
Just saying...

If I see you do that, I'm taking your photo and one of the car and the posters and I'm posting it for all the world to see.
Not that the world outside of HB cares, of course, but you have been formally issued a caution.
Fair warning.

Good news: 2 Days left to change Hallandale Beach's future; Bad News: Washington & Jefferson still dead, Spock & Jean-Luc Picard not yet born

First, the Good News: there are 2 days left to change Hallandale Beach's future for the better; the Bad News: Washington & Jefferson are still dead, Spock & Jean-Luc Picard are not yet born.

Seek thou which was lost: full-fledged participatory democracy in Hallandale Beach, Florida.

Last weekend, in order to drum-up some interest and make the citizenry aware of the need for a second pro-reform City Commission candidate to apply before the deadline passes on Wednesday afternoon, I made copies of the Public Notice at the top that appeared in the Miami Herald -but NOT on the public notice board at Hallandale Beach City Hall last week. (Surprise!)

I posted them at a number of high-profile places around town, including at what passes for the HB version of the Algonquin Round Table, the Panera Bread restaurant at 1729 E. Hallandale Beach Blvd., in front of The Duo's twin condo towers that overlook the Diplomat Country Club to the north.

But even as you read this, I've known for a while that some pro-reform wheels were already in motion, below the radar.

It's my hope that these efforts will bear some fruit in the near future, since with two commission seats up on November 2nd, and with me and everyone I know in this city planning on voting for proven pro-reform Comm. Keith London, having to decide between the other two candidates already in the race, the Devil-we-know, William Julian, and the Devil-we-don't (well, I do but many of you don't YET) Alexander Lewy, that choice among lessers is no choice at all.

After everything we have witnessed over the past two years, the blatant misrepresentations, the chronic lies, the utter contempt for the state's Sunshine Laws and the numerous attempts to keep important PUBLIC information at City Hall away from the PUBLIC, this city desperately needs a second strong and unwavering voice on the Hallandale Beach City Commission that will fully represent the long-term best interests of the majority of its citizen taxpayers, and NOT just the usual longtime cronies with special interests, who have made out like bandits with the taxpayers dime.
Your dime.

A second strong voice on the city commission that will not only expect but demand increased public accountability, transparency and competency among the hundreds of city employees, many of whom have been isolated, unproductive, rude and unprofessional for years.

Which is to say, practically stealing money from you and your family, with the full expectation that you will pay their pension, to boot.
That has got to end right now.

How Jennifer Carroll proves the political history of Florida isn't quite what it used to be -and neither are the news media's memories, either

To the blog readers who were kind enough to email me and ask -perhaps tongue in cheek- if I noticed that "Correction" in the Miami Herald on Friday, I did.
Actually, I noticed the mistake in the original article on Thursday, below.

-----
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/02/1803901/scotts-likely-no-2-navy-vet.html

Miami Herald
Rick Scott's likely No. 2: Navy vet
A Republican victory in November in the governor's race could produce Florida's first black lieutenant governor. Jennifer Carroll is likely to be Rick Scott's running mate

By Steve Bousquet, Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

September 2, 2010

Rick Scott's running mate on the Republican ticket for governor is expected to be state Rep. Jennifer Carroll, a U.S. Navy veteran and mother of three who, if elected, would be Florida's first black lieutenant governor.

Scott will unveil his pick Thursday in a campaign fly-around beginning in Jacksonville, a major hub of Republican voters near Carroll's home in Fleming Island.

In choosing Carroll, Scott, himself a Navy veteran, would get a woman with a distinctive personal story who could neutralize the gender appeal of his Democratic opponent, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink:

• In a state where one in every seven voters is black -- and nearly all are Democrats -- Carroll is a black Republican.

• As a native of Trinidad, Carroll is an immigrant who could help soften Scott's hard-line image on an issue that cuts both ways in a state with a large immigrant population.

• She packs a celebrity punch: Her son, Nolan II, is a rookie cornerback and kick returner for the Miami Dolphins, drafted out of the University of Maryland.

"She's an immigrant and she worked her way up and she did everything through hard work. That's very similar to Rick's background. There's a lot of similarities between the two of them,'' said Jen Baker, Scott's campaign spokesman.

Carroll, 51, made Gov. Charlie Crist's short list of possible running mates in 2006, and she was among those listed as possible successors to Mel Martinez, who resigned his U.S. Senate seat last year.

Scott's camp is aggressive in challenging what it considers off-base speculation on political blogs. When blogs named Carroll as his pick Wednesday, the campaign raised no objection.

Lieutenant governors in Florida share one common trait: obscurity. The office did not exist before 1968 and it is unique in that no job description for it exists in state law.

Strategists agree that the selection of a running mate is largely a media fixation that matters little to rank-and-file voters, unless the choice backfires.

"The first rule of a lieutenant governor candidate is to not get in trouble,'' said GOP strategist and lobbyist J.M. ``Mac'' Stipanovich. "As a candidate for governor your choice of a lieutenant governor does little for you, but this one is intriguing.''

'A GREAT MESH'

Leslie Dougher, county GOP chairwoman in Carroll's home of Clay County, praised the choice as "far-reaching.''

"It would be a great mesh,'' Dougher said. "Mr. Scott is from South Florida and Jennifer is from North Florida.''

Sink's running mate is Rod Smith, 60, a former state senator and elected state attorney from Alachua County who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2006.

"I don't have time to speculate, really,'' Sink said in Miami Wednesday. ``I'm just waiting to see what his announcement is.''

BACKGROUND

Carroll moved to Florida in 1986. She and her husband, Nolan, have three children.

She became the first black Republican woman elected to the Legislature in a special election in 2003.

She retired after 20 years in the Navy, where she rose to the rank of lieutenant commander aviation maintenance officer.

She has a bachelor's degree from the University of New Mexico and a master's degree in business administration from St. Leo University in Pasco County.

Her official legislative biography notes that she is a life member of both the NAACP and the National Rifle Association.

Her record is not free of blemishes, however.

Six years ago, after news reports that she listed a degree from an online ``diploma mill,'' Kensington University in California, she dropped the reference from her official resume.

"This causes me great concern,'' Carroll told the Florida Times-Union in 2004. ``It's a lot of time, effort and money poured into a university I thought was a viable program.''

Last spring, Carroll filed a bill regulating certain electronic sweepstakes games. The Times-Union reported that Carroll confirmed that her public relations firm, 3 N. and J.C. Corp., represented Allied Veterans of the World Inc., a veterans' group that sought to legalize the slot-like machines.

Carroll quickly withdrew the bill (HB 1185) and said a staff member filed the legislation without her approval.

Carroll does not have a distinguished record as a lawmaker, but has compiled a solidly pro-business voting record and was unchallenged in a bid for a fourth term this fall.

At a campaign stop in Jacksonville on Tuesday, Scott told WOKV radio he had ``pretty much'' made up his mind but would not stoke speculation about his choice.

"This person's going to do a wonderful job,'' Scott said. ``Whoever it's going to be, you guys will all be proud of.''

Carroll would not be the first black woman to run for the state's No. 2 post.

In 1978, Claude Kirk, a former Republican governor seeking a comeback as a Democrat, chose Mary Singleton as his running mate, but the Kirk-Singleton ticket fared poorly.

Times/Herald staff writer John Frank and Miami Herald staff writer Beth Reinhard contributed to this report.

-----

The case of the missing adjective.

excerpted from:
Miami Herald
Corrections

September 3, 2010

In a story Thursday on Page 1B about Republican Rick Scott's selection of Jennifer Carroll as his running mate, it incorrectly noted that she was the first black female elected to the state Legislature.
Gwen Sawyer Cherry, a Democrat from Miami, was the first African American woman ever to serve in the Legislature. She was elected in 1970.

-----

Carroll is the first Black female Republican elected to the State House, which is why I highlighted Republican in red in the original since it wasn't there, but added online after the edition went to print.

Hmm-m-m... Gwen Cherry was also the first Black woman to practice law in Dade County, a not insignificant fact. See: http://www.gscbwla.org/cherry.htm

Obviously, I'm long past believing that all the employee cuts at the Herald are starting to have their logical negative results for their dwindling number of readers, in that they have lost people who actually know which facts are important and which are not, and can say something
when words in an article are flat-out wrong -or missing.

It will come as no surprise to most of you readers who come here often that in my opinion, the reporters in this community who don't know anything about the political history of this area or why things are the way they are, greatly out-number the ones who do.

This Thursday article is a preview of the future of South Florida media, something I notice nearly every time Miami TV reporters show up at Hollywood City Commission meetings and seem to know nothing -or next-to-nothing- about what is on the meeting agenda and what its implications might be.
So many are strangely incurious.

I don't expect them to be experts, but... well, let's just say that the amount of time some of them need to be talked to by the city's official spokesperson Raelin Story -who is always professional and accommodating- seems to be increasing, based on what I observe.
I'm sure she notices who does their homework and is prepared, and who doesn't and isn't.
I know I do.


Jennifer Carroll's web page at the Florida House of Representatives website:
http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/SEctions/Representatives/details.aspx?MemberId=4331&SessionId=42

Campaign website: http://www.scottcarrollforflorida.com/

For more on her talented son...

Miami Herald

DOLPHINS
CB Carroll embraces discipline

By David J. Neal

May 5, 2010

Here's how you know Dolphins rookie cornerback Nolan Carroll didn't grow up acting foolish, or at least didn't do so twice: he's the son of a former Navy lieutenant commander who retired after 20 years with some medals, including an "expert pistol medal."

And that was Mom, state Rep. Jennifer Carroll, the first female black Republican state representative. Dad, Nolan Carroll Sr., was an Air Force senior master sergeant.

"Ever since I came out of my mom, it was, 'yes, sir,' 'no, sir,' 'yes, ma'am,' be on time, do this, do that when I say so," said Carroll, a fifth-round draft pick. "Up to now, and I'm 23 years old, I still say, 'yes, sir,' 'no, sir.' They expect me to say it. There was very strict discipline in my house. They were also cool. They weren't always telling me what to do. They treated me like I was a grown man, as well.'

Now, Carroll is a grown man out of the Jacksonville area with an exemplary off-the-field makeup. If not for the broken leg that aborted Carroll's senior season at Maryland after two games, NFL coaches wouldn't have been in favor of drafting him, but rather adopting him.

"When you talk with the young man, he's just an impressive guy; he really is," Dolphins coach Tony Sparano said. "The first time I ever met him, I was really impressed with the way he came off. Never mind how he presented himself from a football standpoint, but he had all the other things that are important to us, too."

Such as a willingness to do exactly what he is told.

"The coaches are like my parents," Carroll said. "Same thing. I do what they tell me to do. I don't back talk."

And if he disagrees with a coaching decree?

"I look down and think, 'They know what's best for me, so I'm just going to listen to what they tell me to do,' " he said.

That's one reason Carroll tries to avoid even minor violations such as breaking curfew -- he figures rules were made for a reason. Also, he's used to being in situations where any bad behavior can reflect on others.

"If my friends wanted to go and do something and I thought it was bad, I wouldn't do it," he said. "I'd stay in the house just to make sure. I didn't want to give [his mother] a bad name.

"Same with this," he continued, looking past reporters to the Dolphins' logo facing the Davie practice fields. "I treat this like a family. I treat the Miami Dolphins like it's my mom, it's my family. I don't ever want to give them a bad name."

Now, if he can play nickel cornerback without embarrassing them on the field, he might have a job.

The Dolphins believe they have found their future outside cornerbacks in 2009 rookies Sean Smith and Vontae Davis. Will Allen, who turns 32 in August with nine seasons of mileage, will be back in that competition for starting spots this year after recovering from a season-ending knee injury. But for how long? Also, the Dolphins released last year's nickel cornerback, Nate Jones.

With three-wide receiver sets becoming the norm, it's a position defenses want settled.

"One of the things that I think I want to try to do with Nolan right away is to just get him in a position where he's going to be able to get himself settled down and play because he has missed so much time," Sparano said. "I think that we are going to kind of let him get his feet set at corner right now and then take a look at some of the players that we have in there and then worry about whether we get him inside."

Carroll, who ran a 4.42-second 40-yard dash at Maryland's pro day, played against slot receivers during his sophomore season in 2007. That was his first at cornerback after spending his freshman year as a wide receiver.

"[The Dolphins] like that I'm tough and aggressive," Carroll said "I need to work just getting used to the position some more. I've only been playing it a year and a half if you don't count my senior year that I missed."

Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!

Per Miami Herald Losing Chief Political Reporter Beth Reinhard To National Journal
Miami NewTimes By Tim Elfrink,
Thursday, September 2 2010 @ 1:39PM
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/09/herald_losing_chief_political.php

It's only my opinion, but from my own perspective and experience, the Miami Herald's Beth Reinhard can't leave South Florida soon enough.

I know that makes some of you laugh because you know I thought THAT was the case years ago, too. Know that I'd have been only too happy to drive her to the train station to split town if people down here actually took trains.
You're right -it's a long time coming.

But long-frustrated Miami Herald readers finally have a reason to cheer.

Reinhard's oh-so predictable and often deadly-dull Conventional Wisdom take on the passing political scene may've been fine for the Quad Cities in 1966, but among other fatal flaws, she seem handcuffed to the "Usual Suspects," forever quoting the same handful of people with motives she never bothered to reveal.

(And yes, I've been to the Quad Cities area in Iowa, too, spending a week there in Davenport, driving over from Chicago for business in 1987. One night, when I couldn't fall asleep in my hotel room, I went for a walk around midnight, eventually crossing the Rock Island Centennial Bridge (U.S.-67) over the Mississippi River from Davenport to Rock Island.

I was NOT expecting that the bridge sidewalk would be mesh-like metal, since that meant I couldn't look down, otherwise it would have caused me to get dizzy over the water.
It was a VERY weird sensation to walk across the bridge at that hour and just stand there in the middle for 15-20 minutes and think of all the history that has gone past you and below you.

I eventually ate at an IHOP or diner in Rock Island and got back to my hotel room in Davenport around 3:30 a.m. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Centennial_Bridge

I also visited the great minor league ballpark there on the River, then called John O'Donnell Stadium when Quad Cities was a Cubs affiliate. It's now called Modern Woodmen Park and home of the Cardinals' farm team, the River Bandits.
Look at the photos! The Marlins would be lucky to have a view like the one over first base.
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/team1/page.jsp?ymd=20080606&content_id=410802&vkey=team1_t565&fext=.jsp&sid=t565)

It's no wonder that seasoned political reporters and columnists from outside of Florida, including some I know, were always mystified when they came down here and got a chance to read more than one example of the Reinhard Method, or to hear her talk on TV or radio.

It's not like they expected a patrician David Broder clone or an intellectual David Frum-type would be the leading political reporter at the Herald, since this is Miami, after all, the anti-wonk capital, but they were in no way prepared to see that things were just -as bad- as I had described in phone calls or emails about how little respect or column inches Broward County rated.
They thought I'd always been exaggerating.
Nope.

Earlier this year, after one such reporter friend had visited South Florida and had absorbed some sun and digested some bon mots de Reinhard, and returned home, she emailed me that she's sure that Reinhard probably has some special talent that we're just not privy to.

I replied that could be true but that her writing speaks for itself -mediocre and uninspiring.

Try hard to think of a column or article of her's that questioned the South Florida version of CW, or tried to get to the heart of a matter thru an unconventional approach.
Or even the last time you cut one of her article/columns out of the paper?

You can't, and like 99% of all Herald readers, once you saw the headline of one of her stories, and even more so, of one of her columns, you knew exactly what to expect.

The whole thing was telegraphed because you know she has such a small bag of tricks in her arsenal.
Plus, she never ever surprises you.

Thus, Reinhard never ever veered from her connect-the-dots script, including her failed attempts to seem like a self-effacing Tina Fey at times when it wasn't called for and only served to distract.

Reinhard was too easily pacified and seduced by CW and too often seemed pleased with herself for peddling the mundane.
She was like a slightly less-mean-spirited Tracy Flick, but failed to see the truly compelling stories all around us down here because then she'd have had to leave her comfort zone.
She didn't want to.

That so many people wouldn't return her phone calls, as she recently wrote about Marco Rubio, whom I like and will vote for but who clearly is not without his flaws, may, in fact, not be a result of their not liking what she wrote and actually be something simpler: people feeling that far too often, Reinhard had burned them.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/13/1775520/reinhard-rich-political-novices.html

That she called with the article already written in her head, and wasn't open to actually listening to their side or perspective and perhaps re-questioning her original aim with a story.
Facts should matter at least once in a while, shouldn't they?

Seriously, why would you call someone back, much less a reporter, if they won't listen to what you say, and just want to steamroll you about some topic, regardless of what it is?
You doubtless do it all the time with friends and relatives -I know I do.
Why should others be any different?

Reinhard's worst sins in my book was her low-hanging fruit sense of journalism and consistent lack of curiosity, as she failed over-and-over to give readers the sort of insight into some pol or official's motives and outlook that would be helpful to readers in understanding them, and what was going on policy-wise in anti-wonk South Florida.

It was sometimes like she was the daughter of the Beacon Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the Knight Foundation, and only wanted to please already-powerful people.
She'd tut-tut them, perhaps, but always like a loving daughter reproaching her father for something he's wearing that embarrasses her.

I didn't need every article of her's to be like a fascinating Vanity Fair profile from the early-to-mid 1990's under Clinton, but one every few YEARS might've been nice!

(Or maybe I was just spoiled by 15 years of daily reading the WaPo's Style section from 1988-2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/print/style/)

Seriously, after all this time, do Herald readers now have any added insight from her into why Meek, Crist or Rubio are the way they are and do what they do?

No, which is why out-of-town/national reporters so consistently seem to get to the heart of a local matter, general sense of mood or pierce a local/state political personality's facade when they drop in, yet she's always... what exactly?

(Compare anything of hers to Tim Padgett's fabulous TIME article exactly one year ago on the State of Florida, Behind Florida's Exodus: Rising Taxes, Political Ineptitude

There are many things public officials probably shouldn't do during a severe recession, but no one seems to have told the leaders in Florida about them. One thing, for instance, would be giving a dozen top aides hefty raises while urging a rise in property taxes, as the mayor of Miami-Dade County recently did. Or jacking up already exorbitant hurricane-insurance premiums, as Florida's government-run property insurer just did. Or sending an army of highly paid lobbyists to push for a steep hike in electricity rates, as South Florida's public utility is doing.

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919916,00.html Though Hoosier-born Tim lives in Miami as Bureau Chief, it's the same principle.)

Rubio and Meek are both from South Florida, but despite all this proximity, Reinhard has added zero to the mix in our understanding of them or what they might do.

As I've written numerous on my blog about the media coverage of the FL-17 congressional race,
her writing about it was perhaps the best example of her lack of curiosity and imagination: dreadful writing of the sort that you'd expect from a mediocre Junior College newspaper you pick up out of boredom while waiting around for your pick-up order at a Kinko's.

The one congressional seat in South Florida that we knew last year would result in sending a 'new face' to Washington would seem like a great opportunity to re-examine some longstanding ideas about this area, and the CD that stretches from Liberty City to Hollywood, including where I live in Hallandale Beach, not far from Gulfstream Park Race Track.

Instead, there was hardly any reasonable coverage of it to speak of until a week before the election, and by then, it was written not by Reinhard but Patricia Mazzei, who's what, five years out of college?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/17/1778997/9-seek-rare-house-seat-replacing.html

Why is the least-experienced reporter writing about THE most important local congressional race in greater Miami?

That's why it's the Herald.

Does anyone recognize the three mugs pictured below on Hallandale Beach City Hall property under a tent on Election Day?

The question of the day is this:
Does anyone recognize the three mugs pictured below on Hallandale Beach City Hall property under a tent on Election Day?

Or, while I was exercising the Heisenberg Principle after exercising my right to vote, three members of the Hallandale Beach Rubber Stamp Crew were exercising their grandiose sense of entitlement.
And a sense of entitlement is something they have in spades.

Photo above of the Hallandale Beach City Hall monument sign from September 1, 2010 by South Beach Hoosier.

So, a little bit later than I planned, I'm finally posting those photos of three local politicos that I snapped last Tuesday on Hallandale Beach City Hall property -which is to say, public property, YOUR property, NOT THEIRS- on the east side of the access road from the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center, where voting was taking place on Primary day for local and state-wide races.

I apologize for the delay but it's in part because I needed to shoot some more establishing shots of the locale to give people not familiar with the layout of the municipal complex there a sense of perspective and context to better understand how truly over-the-top this embarrassing performance was, when looked at from the P.O.V. of city rules, common sense and decorum.

But then consider who was doing it, so the questions pretty much answers itself.

Above and below, campaign signs lining the entrance to the parking lot next to the HB Cultural Center -above, off of Old Dixie Highway, and below, S.E. 3rd Street. August 24, 2010 photos by South Beach Hoosier.


In the past week, I've seriously considered sending an email to HB City Attorney David Jove before, along with these photos, with cc's to the local news media.

In that prospective email I'd inform him that some friends and I may well be pitching a tent in the same exact spot on the real Election Day on November 2nd, strongly suggesting he not suddenly start getting overly concerned with appearances -and laws!- after he and the rest of the Hallandale Beach City Hall Crew were deaf, dumb and blind to -drum roll please- the antics of Mayor Cooper, Dotty Ross and William Julian last Tuesday.

Yes, three-fourths of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse masquerading as the Hallandale Beach Rubber Stamp Crew, missing only Comm. Anthony A. Sanders.


Above, walking west from the HB City Hall towards the HB Cultural Center. September 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.


Getting closer to the access road that separates the two buildings. On the right side of the opposite side on the white light pole are two of the police controlled surveillance cameras, pointed in each direction. September 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

Those cameras are STILL missing the Warning/Public Notice signs that should've been erected concurrently when the cameras were put up YEARS AGO. September 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

On a multi-acre complex that is approximately two city blocks by two city two blocks, there is only one state-required warning sign, and it is NOT near a public entrance to a city building nor is it at the entrance of the two public road entrances. Instead, it is near the U.S.-1 employee entrance to City Hall.

Other cities in this county and state seen to handle this sort of thing easily, without any problem at all. It's a measure of how poorly Hallandale Beach has been run for years and continues to be run, that the simple required signs are missing YEARS later.
You'd think that HB City Attorney David Jove would notice that after a couple of years, wouldn't you?
His role is strictly to be the wooden Indian in the room, or, if you prefer a different comparison, the quiet church mouse.


The view from the other side of the road from the HB Cultural Center looking towards HB City Hall. September 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

A better shot while standing on the sidewalk, right under the surveillance cameras, looking toward HB City Hall. September 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
So, hopefully having set the scene a bit better for you to understand what's what, let's return to the photos I shot last Tuesday on Primary day, and the scene I saw immediately after voting and leaving the building. Not even trying to hide their sense of entitlement, right on the public sidewalk.


Looking east towards the tent across the road from the HB Cultural Center, where it was erected directly over the public sidewalk.


Zooming in a little bit closer now and you can see Mayor Cooper seated to the left and Comm. Julian standing.


And now coming into view, the Lady in Red, Dotty Ross, seated to the right on the public sidewalk, a Kendrick Meek for U.S. Senate campaign sign in the giant planter.

----------------------
See also:
Slate
Egghead: Philosophical Ruminations
Uncertainty About the Uncertainty PrincipleCan't anybody get Heisenberg's big idea right?
By Jim Holt
Posted Wednesday, March 6, 2002, at 3:54 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2062844/

Miami Herald's leadership foolishly ignores 1990 advice of its own respected columnist by pretending important news only happens in Miami. Nope!

My comments after the column exactly 20 years old this weekend, by Bill Braucher, the Miami Herald's Miami Dolphins beat columnist from the glory days of the early 1970's, and after some years in Cincinnati at the Post, a Broward County general columnist and editor for the Herald from the early 1980's-1991.

Now THERE was a guy who knew what he was talking about!

-------

Miami Herald
GROWTH'S SURPRISES ARE ONLY NATURAL
August 26, 1990
By Bill Braucher

Broward County is full of surprises.

Malls spring up where cattle grazed yesterday. Neighbors vanish overnight.

Construction detours keep motorists guessing, particularly commuting prisoners of the moonscape that is Interstate 95. Crawling in makeshift lanes under cranes and bulldozers, traffic hostages seem resigned to I-95 jackhammers grinding for their lifetimes.

In 11 years under the same Davie roof, qualifying me for pioneer status compared to the surrounding transition, I have had six sets of immediate neighbors and four dogs. I wake up to find them going or coming.

Even in the bedroom communities of West Broward, where families dominate, restlessness is evident. County records reflect homeowner changes involving about 25 percent of the population.

Once blessed by nominal taxes compared to assessments in Dade County, which many fled, Broward's relative newcomers face realities of rapid growth and the attendant need for government services. But they keep coming.

New home buyers in the sprawling community of Weston, where Broward meets the Everglades, got a big surprise this year. Their district taxes soared 600 percent, from $50 to about $300 on the average.

Poverty is no factor in Weston, an Arvida project of six- figure homes amid imported palms and well- trimmed greenery. Even the 7-Elevens look expensive.

Still, targets of the assessments were not amused. The increase had nothing to do with county or school or maintenance taxes inevitably rising with the population growth.

Rather, the Weston hike illustrated the free rein developers continue to enjoy, including pocketbook domination of Broward politics.

Weston's roads, sewers and lush ambience were products of the Indian Trace Community Development District, one of 14 county drainage districts operating like medieval fiefdoms with rules of their own and accountability to no government entity.

To accommodate developers draining the Everglades for communities like Weston, Indian Trace floated bonds.

When the bonds came due this year, homeowners were handed the tabs. They could hardly be blamed for resenting the costs hidden in their closing arrangements.

But they had no say in the matter, because members of drainage districts vote for board members by acres. Thus, Arvida cast 7,017 votes at last November's election for the undeveloped land the company still owns. Irwin Richmond, schoolteacher and Weston homeowner, came in with one vote for his acre.

Defenders of the environment are more concerned, not only with wetlands drainage but also with an overall county pattern of development at any cost. Broward is losing its natural surroundings.

The core of outnumbered environmental defenders is composed mostly of longtime residents who envision their surroundings in the rural perspective they once enjoyed, rather than urban sprawl the county has become -- 28 cities, road congestion that is apparently unmanageable during the winter tourist season, and a population spreading across the county's 1,211 square miles toward a 2 million count by the start of the next century. The projection seemed impossible only a dozen years ago.

From 1960 to 1970, Broward experienced an 85.7 percent growth rate. In the decade ending in 1980, the rate was 64.2 percent. About a third of those numbers were retirees, predominantly New Yorkers settling in condominiums that rose from the Atlantic shores to the Everglades in a building frenzy encouraged by tax-coveting politicians.

With the rates of growth came crime, the bulk of it related to the crack cocaine scourge and an overwhelmed criminal justice system.

The county recorded 115 slayings and 6,202 aggravated assaults last year. The jails are not large enough to hold the candidates, notably after Sheriff Nick Navarro conducts the periodic drug sweeps that have gained him national recognition. Navarro enjoys political clout rare for his office, perhaps unknown for a lawman since the Sheriff of Nottingham pursued Robin Hood.

Navarro's power is so visible that the Florida Legislature this year enacted a law enabling him to erect massive tents for his prisoner surplus.

He has appeared with Geraldo, and even made Ted Koppel's Nightline during a bizarre episode in June in which his deputies arrested two members of the rap band 2 Live Crew for expounding on below-the-belt lyrics at a Hollywood nightclub.

The Crew's output was deemed obscene, in an interpretation of a vague state statute that the defendants plan to continue contesting in the courts, presumably as long as the group's notoriety keeps selling records.

Navarro's action was abetted by an unprecedented judicial ruling that the band's efforts were indeed obscene. Sales of its album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be, were banned in Broward. Record-shop violators faced arrests, to both the amusement and indignation of liberals.

While Navarro takes criticism, the sheriff knows that his well-publicized actions are popular with a large segment of a populace seeing his office as a force against a drug-related criminal element undermining traditional values and moral integrity. Navarro gets elected by landslides, which seem to be his bottom line.

No more conservative faction exists than in Fort Lauderdale, the county's largest and best-known city. Ironically, the city gained national repute by catering for years to a college spring-break crowd dedicated to reckless abandon and beer-drinking bouts on the spacious beachfront, featured in the forgettable film, Where the Boys Are.

It took city commissioners several years, but they succeeded in discouraging the collegians while making a pitch for tourist families seeking a more wholesome environment.

George Hanbury, the new city manager, plans to speed a long-delayed proposal to spend $150 million on beach redevelopment. The new face would include a cluster of hotels, townhouses, retail shops and restaurants on 33 acres where the boys once romped.

In line with upscale planning, a $7.4 million Riverwalk project nears completion in midtown, and the Downtown Development Authority keeps trying amid an anti-tax sentiment to get a $9 million bond referendum approved in the interests of further sophistication through high rises.

An opposite trend seems afoot in Hollywood, where Mayor Mara Giulianti's development ambitions were dashed in a startling upset that put the conservative Sal Oliveri in the mayor's office in March, backed by an old-Hollywood faction calling itself People Against Concrete.

The city's veterans prefer to keep the small-town ambience of Young Circle as is, interrupting U.S. 1 traffic flow and complete with a bandshell evoking visions of The Music Man among the homeless park drifters and empty storefronts aggravating the progressive element.

The same caution is evident in addressing the future of Hollywood's spectacular stretch of beaches, the largest expanse of undeveloped sand in South Florida, particularly South Beach. Its easy ambience and tacky shops have proved magnets for swimmers, strollers and Canadian winter visitors welcomed by the Maple Leaf in addition to the Stars and Stripes adorning motels and restaurants.

Farther south, Gulfstream Park in Hallandale functions in winters as a hub of tourist activity. The racetrack's success has relegated Hialeah Park, once the queen of America's tracks, to the verge of oblivion. Gulfstream's brisk business reflects both tourist destinations and the shift of a more prosperous permanent population north to Broward's greener pastures.

If the pastures are deceiving to some, with taxes rising and jobs scarcer and the state's Growth Management Act curbing development while causing home prices to rise, a stranger would not suspect it.

As steadily as the disenchanted move out, they are replaced and augmented with such consistency that the county's documented population of 1.2 million may well top 1.5 by the time 1990 census tabulations are completed.

-----

How many times have I written here about the common knowledge in the year 2010 that as the physical, economic and political environment around you changes, you either have to adapt to them to remain relevant and compelling to consumers who have more choices than ever, or you fall by the wayside and become an embarrassing anachronism? Too many to count, right, especially in regard to South Florida?

Question: Who has done a worse job of keeping up with all the changes in Broward County than the Miami Herald, with David Landsberg as publisher, and South Florida local TV news operations that enjoy technology that makes their jobs easier than ever, but who can't be reliably counted-upon to show-up when real news is taking place?

Consider the following and add it to the equation.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward Politics blog
Change in media is altering the political game
By Anthony Man
August 27, 2010 09:45 AM

The dramatic changes in the news media are having an effect on the way politics is practiced.

It’s a profound change, said Jack Furnari of Boca Raton, a conservative activist who’s active in the Republican Party, serves as a political consultant for some candidates, and is a sometime-opinion journalist himself in the blogosphere.

“This [election] cycle is going to change the way a lot of campaigns are run,” Furnari said.

Read the rest of the post at: http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2010/08/change_in_media_is_altering_th.html

-------


The Ellyn Bogdanoff-Carl Domino fight for the Florida State Senate 25 GOP nomination cited above is a very good example of a much-neglected media story, but so is local Miami TV stations almost completely ignoring the District 8 and District 9 Broward County Commission primary election campaigns.

I never once saw District 8's Barbara Sharief or District 9's Dale Holness on TV Tuesday night after they won.
In fact, I never saw Holness on TV before the election, either!

http://www.voteforbarbarasharief.com/Meet-Barbara-Sharief.aspx
http://www.daleholness.com/

I literally would not recognize his face or his voice if he walked up to me today.

So is that my fault or the South Florida news media's?

In any case, because of the demographics of this county, both candidates stand a great chance of being elected Broward County commissioners in nine weeks despite almost zero serious analysis or discussion of their professional qualifications or personal temperament, which is not exactly the way they taught civics in textbooks when I was growing up, to the extent it was taught at all.
But it is the current state of civics in South Florida.

Having been largely ignored by the South Florida news media and the Broward political flacks and operatives who roam around this county, especially the really condescending Queen Bees of these two groups, if they win, do you really imagine that there won't be consequences for those who were so over-the-top oblivious to what was going on right in front of them?
Yes, karma is a bitch that way, and revenge is a dish best served cold.

As was so ably articulated in one of the best episodes ever of Northern Exposure when Ed Chigliak was describing the ups-and-downs of success and the caste system in Hollywood:
"It's worse than dog eat dog. It's dog doesn't return other dog's phone calls."

There are a lot of you out there whose phone calls won't be returned in the future.
And you know who you are.