Democratic Party Super Delegate Steve Geller of FL on the not-too-bright Donkeys and their decision to move up the date of the 2008 Florida primary

Above, state Senator Steve Geller and Channel 4's Michael Williams outside of Hallandale Beach City Hall, May 7, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier

State Senator Steve Geller, the erstwhile Florida Senate Minority Leader and Democratic Super-Delegate, representing the Oasis project, spoke to WFOR-TV's Michael Williams
following the Commission's approval on second hearing of his client's project on the 1100 block of East Hallandale Beach Blvd.

Zoning and Land Development by Hallandale Oasis Limited LLLP, located at 1100 East Hallandale Beach Boulevard, concerning the following:
-Applying the Planned Development Overlay District
-Application for a Conditional Use Permit to construct 250 Residential Units
-Application to Construct a Mixed Use Development and Build a Residential/Retail Building
-Resolution Assigning 250 Residential Flexibility Units.

Geller's comments on the DNC aired later that afternoon, the same day that state Rep. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach, also a Super Delegate, finally threw in the towel of neutrality and formally endorsed Sen. Barack Obama.

Among the other nuggets of news that Geller revealed that afternoon were that the FL Dems had three law firms working on getting their vote counted, and that the last DNC plan for a FL recount was a (laughable) proposal for 150 caucus sites throughout the states, which I think(?) Geller said would represent only 6% of FL pop.

I originally posted the above photo during a 40-minute lunch break of last Wednesday morning's Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting.

Once I raced home, eager to post a few shots before getting back for the meeting, I found out once again just how incompetent I was with the new digital camera my sister Jennifer recently gave me, witness the wrong date on the photo, which I'd neglected to set correctly when I put in new batteries.

When I initially came out of the city hall chambers and threw on my sunglasses, I was going to dash home, but when I spotted Sen. Geller getting ready to be interviewed, my nose-for-news gene kicked in, and I thought I'd snap about 6-8 real quick shots shots, figuring that at least one or two would turn out pretty well and I'd post it while home for lunch.
The best laid plans of mice and men, gang aft a-gley....

(South Beach Hoosier trivia: One of my favorite all-time films is the original 1939 Lewis Milestone-directed Of Mice and Men, starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr., which I've only seen about thirty times. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031742/

The opening scenes just grab you from the word go, and you are immediately caught up in the crazy drama of George and Lennie running to catch a moving train and stay one step ahead of the law, with Aaron Copland's great music just sweeping you up in case you stumble.
The scene of the two of them them pulling the train coach door shut, only to reveal the original line of Robert Burns poetic genius, from whence the title comes, is sheer magic!
In my opinion, it's one of the best and most-stylized film scenes ever shot.

Not that I didn't really enjoy the 1992 version with John Malkovich, Gary Sinise and charter blog favorite, Sherilyn Fenn, too.
I absolutely adore Sherilyn Fenn, who STILL makes me dizzy when I watch Chiller specifically to see her in Twin Peaks repeats, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105046/)

As I watched the action, I could literally feel my lunch break ticking away, and because the friendly Channel 4 cameraman was right near me, I had to wait a bit until after he switched rolls before I could shoot this scene, since I didn't want get in his way or distract him.

Yet because it was SO sunny outside that afternoon, every time I got off the building breezeway, and tried a different angle, getting the three of them in the shot, the light and darkness contrast thru my viewfinder was blinding, so I just bided my time, and started taking mental notes.
Sadly as it turned out, this so-so effort was the mediocre best shot of the lot.

Among the things Geller revealed that I'd never heard or read elsewhere was that the FL Dems had three separate law firms working on their behalf to get their vote counted and/or have the 100% disqualification penalty lifted, and that the last DNC plan for a FL recount he'd seen was a (laughable) proposal for 150 sites throughout the state, which I think(?) Geller said would represent only about 6% of FL's population.

My comments on the hearing itself, where I spoke during the public participation segment on the topic of the City's employees longstanding and very unprofessional follow-up on matters previously discussed, will be posted here soon.
_________________________________________

www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbbeacon0509sbmay09,0,4098003.story
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Hallandale OKs more downtown development
By Thomas Monnay
May 8, 2008
Another large retail/office/condo complex is coming to the new downtown, less than a mile from the $1 billion Village at Gulfstream Park, now under construction.

The City Commission this week approved the site plan for Hallandale Oasis, at 1100 E. Hallandale Beach Blvd. Beacon Investment Properties LLC., of Hallandale Beach, will tear down the office building on the 5.28-acre site and replace it with a four-story retail and office building, a five-story parking garage and a 26-story, 250-unit condominium.

Ariel Bentata, a Beacon managing partner, said his company chose Hallandale Beach because "there's a lot of demographic expansion."

The property is zoned commercial, but city commissioners gave Beacon permission to build the condos because it's in a district that allows a blend of commercial and residential development, Commissioner Keith London said. Bentata said Beacon will build the project's commercial component first. He said he couldn't give a specific timetable for the condos because of the housing downturn.

"We don't have a crystal ball," Bentata said. "We don't know how long it's going to take the housing market to recover."

London said Beacon has four years after completing the project's commercial phase to build the condos, or it will have to start the permission process over again.

But London said, "We're not worried. They have a lot of money invested into this project."

The project site is just east of Hallandale Square, an $85 million development planned for the southeast corner of Hallandale Beach Boulevard and Federal Highway.

The area includes the Gulfstream Park Racing & Casino property, where Forest City Enterprises is building its Village at Gulfstream Park, with 70 stores, 1,500 condos, a 500-room hotel, a 2,500-seat theater and dining facilities.

London said the company will pay a one-time, $2.97 million fee for water, sewer and traffic improvements. The $2.97 million will also cover the developer's required contribution to the city's affordable housing trust fund.

Vice Mayor Bill Julian said the project will incorporate water conservation features. Its wide sidewalks should help make the area pedestrian-friendly, he said.

"It's quite an upgrade to the area," Julian said. "It's something that we don't have now on that side of the boulevard."

Thomas Monnay can be reached at tmonnay@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7924.__________________________________
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-flfgeller0501sbmay01,0,3905987.storySouth Florida Sun-Sentinel
Florida Sen. Steve Geller, D-Cooper City, leaving office after 20 years
By Linda Kleindienst
Tallahassee Bureau Chief
April 30, 2008

TALLAHASSEE
Steve Geller walked into the Legislature 20 years ago as a member of the "Broward Mafia," one of the Democrats from South Florida who controlled the state House and, in many ways, the future of Florida.

Now 49, he leaves the Capitol because of term limits and as a member of the minority party, outgunned in the Senate by Republicans who control 26 of 40 votes, but by most accounts at the peak of his power and performance.

The senator from Cooper City is one of the "Gang of Three" — along with Majority Leader Dan Webster and Budget Chairwoman Lisa Carlton, both Republicans — who decide which bills will make it to the Senate floor. It's a position of power that few Democrats enjoy in Tallahassee these days.

"It's kind of like you reach your pinnacle at 49 and it's all downhill from there," Geller said recently, as he sat in his cluttered Senate office, rows of certificates of appreciation covering his walls.

"What is that saying, better to be a 'has been' than a 'never was?'"

Among Geller's friends and sometime political allies are Webster, a social conservative from the opposite end of the political spectrum, and Republican Gov. Charlie Crist. Geller can even claim to be the first to have encouraged Crist to run for political office, when they were students together at Florida State University.

Colleagues and lobbyists call Geller talkative, egotistical, boisterous, over-confident, bright, softhearted and persistent."

He is so persistent in the things he believes in, but you can't get along up here without being persistent because people don't necessarily do what you want them to do," Webster said, adding that every day this spring Geller has pestered him with questions about boosting funding for Tri-Rail, South Florida's commuter rail line.

With his sometimes-rumpled allure, Geller is a wisecracking quotemeister with a gift for simplifying arcane subjects into easy-to-digest sound bites.

"It's a shame it's his last year," said Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, a former Senate president.

"He's matured in the process and he's become a whole lot more statesman and a lot less oracle."

Geller, a lawyer, also has become an acknowledged specialist on insurance and gambling.

Founder and president of the National Council of Legislators from Gaming States, he has promoted expanded gambling in Florida, especially to benefit Broward County's dog and horse tracks, and in turn they have helped finance his re-election campaigns.

He's the only legislator in decades who has managed to get often-warring pari-mutuels to talk to each other.

Geller, who has won election to five House terms and three Senate terms, is used to being in the heat of the political battle, and has proven a tough opponent.

In 1990, although hospitalized with pneumonia, he made it to a Broward Legislative Delegation meeting in a wheelchair, with an oxygen tube, to help Ben Graber defeat Peter Deutsch in a race for vice chairman. "Let that be a lesson; you don't cross Steve Geller," said Sen. Dave Aronberg, D- Greenacres.

In the past two years Geller has been in the thick of the Legislature's thorniest issues, negotiating legislation aimed at cutting government spending, helping to write a constitutional amendment to make it easier for Floridians to take their property tax breaks along if they move and influencing a property insurance package to rein in premiums.

But ask him for his top accomplishment and he'll recall 1988. Shortly after his election that year, Christy Schafale, a 17-year-old Cooper City High School senior, died on a ride at the Broward County Fair. Geller's first bill called for tougher fair ride inspections. It passed.

"No one will ever know the exact number of children saved by that law," said Senate President Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, as he presented Geller on Wednesday with a framed copy of that bill, the "Amusement Ride and Attraction Act."

"When somebody tells us, there oughta be a law, frequently, there's a law," Geller told a hushed chamber of his colleagues. "Being a legislator for 20 years means a lot to me. I think I helped a lot of people."

While he may be leaving the Capitol, Geller said he's not ready to quit politics. He promised his sons, Marc, 11, and Ben, 8, that he wouldn't run for any job that would keep him away from home for long.

So, next on his agenda: a race for the Broward County Commission in 2010.

"I'm not quite ready yet to be put out to pasture," he said.

Reader comments are at:
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/south-florida-sun-sentinel/TSOLK45GF18A7TDB8#comments

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Village Voice 
Runnin' Scared blog
How Howard Dean's Florida Ambiguity Helps Obama and Hurts Hillary
Posted by Wayne Barrett
May 2, 2008

My favorite excerpt:

...Dean clearly hopes that his evasions on this elemental question of fairness will be seen as a demonstration of his unwillingness to take sides between the warring camps within his own party. It is the opposite. In the absence of an unambiguous statement clarifying the limits of the DNC’s delegate ruling, he is siding with Obama, whose recent conflating press releases have argued that “without the rogue states”—Florida and Michigan—“Obama is still up by 500,000 votes.” Everyone involved understands that it is Obama who is benefiting from the media decision not to include Florida’s vote in the popular vote boxscore that runs across every American television screen, on virtually every news channel, everyday.

Of course, the endlessly repeated omission of this vote, and Dean’s abdication, is not just affecting the candidates. It’s doubling the pain for Florida Democrats—not only are they invisible in the delegate tabulations, which the courts have ruled is clearly within the powers of the national party, they are phantoms in the popular tally, a nullification unsupported by any legal authority...

Rest of post at:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2008/05/how_howard_dean.php

Back to the blog fray; race identity politics; Miami Herald Editorial Board

Well, I've taken some time away from the blogging at South Beach Hoosier and Hallandale Beach Blog to do some final editing on some other writing projects I've been involved with over the past few months, but I'm ready to jump back into the fray.

I've also spent some of that time working out the kinks and am finally at the point where I may yet have finally(!) mastered my new digital camera, a gift from my Memphis-born sister, Jennifer, up in Pembroke Pines, and no longer have to rely on my once-trusty Canon, or a disposable Kodak or Fuji.

I feel in Greenspan-speak, "exuberant optimism."
Finalmente, maître chez moi!

If you look around you, you should already be noticing some better quality photos on the two blogs, as I've replaced some photos taken with the Canon that have been on the sites for the first 15 months of their young and impressionable lives.

I now have roughly about a dozen and a half pretty well-written issue-oriented posts ready to hit the ground running tomorrow, and hope they make up for some of the time I've been away.

Not to get too far ahead of myself here, but I think some of you will be pretty surprised at some of the things I reveal in these posts, including about my own involvement in politics locally, statewide and nationally.

It's my hope that they'll serve to make a lot of the things I've already written in my blogs, seem more inherently logical and consistent.

For some folks in South Florida, especially in Hallandale Beach and environs, it will definitely feel like laser-guided cannon balls aimed squarely at their heads.
That's exactly my intent.

As Elvis Costello sang on his great album, "My Aim is True."

Whatever your plans are for the day, I strongly encourage you to tape a one-hour program Sunday at noon on C-SPAN 2's Book TV: Bruce Bartlett talks about his new book, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past.

It's really quite interesting and is moderated by Clarence Page of the Chicago Sun-Times. I first watched it last week and it's quite a lively hour

http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=562503144

In case you're not familiar with him, economist Bruce Bartlett is an anti-Bush 43 Republican.
How much does he dislike President Bush?

Well, his previous book, from 2006, was called "Impostor How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy"
'Nuff said.

Bartlett's first job in Washington was working for wacky West Texas Rep. Ron Paul, one of the most consistently un-popular members of Congress while I was in D.C. all those years, and whose staff was hardly less insufferable.

Think typical Harvard wonk attitudes, but from U-T or Texas A&M, instead.

They were sort of like the grand-kids of all the creepy conservative businessmen that '60's liberals always claimed were deeply involved in the JFK shooting as a result of the CIA, Cuba and Castro and...

(Both of my parents saw JFK and Jackie the day before Dallas, when they flew into Kelly AFB in San Antonio, and got shown around. At the time, my mother was the secretary for the Base Commander. Years later, we were living in Memphis when Dr. King was murdered.)

Years later, perhaps a little wiser, Barrett worked for a garrulous Republican some of you might've heard of, who's 180 degrees different than Paul's intensely grating personality:
former Buffalo Bill QB, 1988 G.O.P. Veep nominee and U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp.

For more on Barret, see his past writings at http://bartlett.blogs.nytimes.com/
and http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BruceBartlett/2007

On top of whatever you think you already know about the former Bush 41 HUD Secretary,
Kemp 'walked the walk and talked the talk,' famously threatening to strike the AFL All-Star game one year, along with other players, due to hotel segregation at the site of the game.

Like conservative icon Charlton Heston, Kemp was actually at the MLK "Dream" Speech in Washington.

http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=9391&SectionName=After%20Words&PlayMedia=No

About the Program
In “Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past”, author Bruce Bartlett argues that the Democratic Party had a racist past and he says there’s an unfair perception of America’s two national parties. In his book, he contends that Democratic Presidents and congressmen of the past supported racial segregation and the “Jim Crow” laws that dominated the Confederate states. Mr. Bartlett discussed his book with Clarence Page, syndicated columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

About the Author
Bruce Bartlett was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush. He has had a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the last ten years, and has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The National Review, and Fortune.

I mention this Barrett interview in light of the silly, pointless Marc Caputo story in the Miami Herald Saturday about the Florida Black Republicans and their attempt to point some fingers at FL Democrats, thru a magazine that, quite likely, has less readership than those godawful real estate mags you find in those plastic vending racks all over the area.

If I recall correctly, the City of North Miami recently tried to commandeer them, along with some of the Miami SunPost and NewTimes, too.

Of course, I realize silly, Saturday and Herald are still redundant on many scores, since it's the one day of the week where the mysterious Herald Editorial Board turns over half its space to one of their many pet causes, running all sorts of nonsense, Verbatim.

That hasn't changed since I lasted posted here!

________________________________________

http://www.miamiherald.com/516/story/528574.html
Miami Herald
Magazine attacks Democrats for racist past
By Marc Caputo
May. 10, 2008

For a sign of Florida Republicans' all-out effort to attract black voters, look no farther than the glossy full-colored The Black Republican magazine that launches broadsides like these:
The KKK was the ''terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.'' Democrats, in addition to waging ''war on God,'' are still mired in sex and financial scandals.

That's all tucked in the back of the Sarasota-based National Black Republican Association's 60-page mag, the first half of which touts Republican Gov. Charlie Crist's civil rights record and the Republican Party of Florida's minority outreach efforts that the association has helped coordinate.

The strident comments and images -- replete with a Ku Klux Klan rally snapshot that notes ''every person in this photo was a Democrat'' -- has outraged Democrats and caught the Republican Party of Florida flat-footed as well.

''Oh my gosh,'' party spokeswoman Erin Van Sickle said when told of the magazine's content, which she described as "inflammatory.''

Though the magazine lists the party as a financial sponsor, Van Sickle said the GOP ''had no editorial control'' and that party chairman Jim Greer "is disappointed in some of the content.''

Van Sickle is listed as a contributing writer, but she said that's because she helped supply the content and photographs concerning Greer, Crist and the party.

The black Republican association's chairwoman, Frances Rice, said her group operated independently of the party and is aggressive about its viewpoint because it wants to ''wake up'' black voters and "shed the light of truth on the racist past and failed socialism of the Democratic Party.''

But Democrats suspect Republicans knew more about the magazine's content than they're admitting. Democrats got wind of the publication, dated Fall 2007, at a black voter event Tuesday in Tallahassee where Republicans were passing out the magazine.

''Shame on Chairman Greer and the Republicans,'' said Jacksonville Democratic Sen. Tony Hill. "They should be about bringing people together, not demagoguery about the KKK. That's not going to win African Americans today, and Barack Obama is showing that.''

If Republicans could get 25 percent of the black vote nationwide, according to Rice's magazine, the party would win Congress and the White House. But to do that, Rice said, she wants black voters to know the Democrats' history of "slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.''

Rice said black voters tend to be religious and aren't as receptive to the secularism underpinning the Democratic Party -- hence the ''Democrats Wage War on God'' article.

She said the magazine features articles from top black thinkers and conservatives to hold black leaders accountable.

As for listing the ''Top 10 Democratic Sex Scandals,'' Rice said her publication sought to ''balance'' the news media's coverage of Republican woes.

Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski quickly rattled off the names of Republicans caught in sex scandals: "There's no Mark Foley, no Larry Craig, no David Vitter. Where's Bob Allen? He's the guy who said he was afraid of black guys and that's why he offered a police officer $20 to perform a sex act.''

One of the articles in the magazine says Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Rice contends she knew Martin Luther King Jr.'s family and ''there's no way they were Democrats'' in the 1960s, a time when racist southern Democrats were fire-hosing black protesters and trying to keep them out of public schools. Her association, established in 2005, aired political ads concerning King's political leanings in 2006 political radio ads in Florida, Maryland Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Democrats counter that King was nonpartisan. Hill and other Democrats say they don't dispute the central facts about the Democratic Party's role in pushing slavery, seceding from the Union and precipitating the Civil War.

And they acknowledged that those pictured in the old KKK snapshot were likely Democrats, but said that was many decades ago.

But Democrats say the magazine omits the fact that many Southern Democrats joined the GOP after the 1960s civil rights movement.

'You could change the caption to say, `All of these people are now Republicans,' because the Democratic Party no longer suited their racist Southern strategy,'' said Dan Gelber, a Democratic state legislator from Miami Beach.

________________________________

Dan Gelber is no Jack Gordon, that's for sure!

Instead of being a Profile in Courage and taking the necessary heat for his leadership role in the FL primary debacle, and so many other issues, he's an Alibi Ike for the Ages.

No wonder he likes Obama -now!

My memory is a bit hazy on this point, so I need some help to pin this down.

For decades, in an open mockery of fairness, the Dade County Commission didn't have member districts until towards the end of the 20th Century, when the Dept. of Justice said get with the program -or else.

The same sunny Miami where for far longer than most people think, the Orange Bowl Committee routinely had team functions at restricted clubs.

So what exactly was Dan Gelber doing to insure that African-Americans and Hispanics were given their fair chance at the ballot box in Dade County?

________________________________________

Since many of you no doubt haven't read my other blog before, to help explain where I stand on the Miami Herald, past, present and future, here's what I wrote in the second anchor of South Beach Hoosier when I started it last year, http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/

modestly calling it, Dave's Intentions for South Beach Hoosier

South Beach Hoosier will offer commentary on popular culture, public policy and national politics -largely from a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) p.o.v., with some policy differences-advertising & marketing news and innovations; the business side of Show Biz, especially the film industry; as well as insight on international trade, financial services and U.S. foreign policy, where from 1988-2003, I had a front-row seat for these and many other contentious and implacable issues on Capitol Hill, and their resultant fallout at DC-area think tanks and policy groups.

Fortunately for me, besides being blessed with a great memory for details, I also took copious contemporaneous notes of what I observed first-hand at Capitol Hill hearings -inc. important Congressional mark-ups- as well as at myriad events with policy makers, journalists and news makers at Brookings, SAIS, AEI, the Wilson Center, the Goethe Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the IMF and The World Bank -BEST wine!-the Economic Strategy Institute, et al.

Stories that, for whatever reason, NEVER saw the light of day in the pages of the New York Times, the WSJ or the Washington Post.

Which naturally had the entirely predictable ripple effect of insuring that these stories and issues NEVER made the airwaves of the TV networks, cablenets or, even NPR.

South Beach Hoosier will also examine the latest amusing or not-so-amusing scandals, cover-ups, controversies, contretemps and mis-adventures bedeviling South Florida, something I became used to while growing up in North Miami Beach in the late 1960's and the 70's.

Fortunately, because of my news-junkie DNA and myriad magazine subscriptions, and long-standing relationships with media types in Miami, I was able to keep up pretty well with the South Florida area while living in Bloomington, Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette and Washington, D.C./Arlington, VA.

Communities where sensible civic activism and high standards of journalism were the norm and not the exception.

Due to my own personal/business/political interests and experiences in those cities, as well as my good fortune to have a large number of well-informed and well-connected friends and former housemates while living there, many but not all of whom are or were reporters, columnists, editors, TV/film producers, along with a few who are now well-placed in Statehouses and legal circles across the country, I'll have a deep bench of facts, opinions, point-of-views and fact-checkers to work with.

That's the goal for South Beach Hoosier.

It's my hope that this'll help me offer up pinpoint criticism, whether of national and South Florida pols, media organizations and sports or show biz personalities, that have heretofore evaded public scrutiny, transparency or accountability -as well as well-aimed brickbats.

To examine the proverbial case of the latest dog that doesn't bark, or analyze why the latest case of media conventional wisdom has -again- been proven wrong, and why.

This is especially true of The Miami Herald, the morning newspaper I grew-up with and have suffered with since first leaving North Miami Beach for Bloomington in the fall of '79, as its most talented people jumped ship and the paper become evermore a shell of what it once was: an excellent newspaper with talented and respected reporters and editors telling compelling and intriguing stories of intrinsic value to its readers throughout polyglot and transient South Florida.

Television news-wise, when I'd return to South Florida from school or work in Bloomington, Evanston, and DC, whether for Christmas vacation, Baltimore Oriole spring training games or visits for weddings, I could still see that Miami had the kind of scrappy and innately curious reporters who make a tangible difference in a community.

The sorts of enterprising reporters that so many of my friends at Ernie Pyle at IU, and Medill at Northwestern were already well on their way to becoming. http://www.idsnews.com/ ,http://journalism.indiana.edu/news/erniepyle/ , http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/

Reporters who might have the talent and ability to convey to the waves of newcomers and visitors to the area, a nuanced sense of South Florida's decidedly mixed historical past, by writing with the proper amount of factual research, balanced perspective and sense of disbelief, to describe the events unfolding around them.

Then, ending the piece by dropping the hammer on whichever local corrupt/incompetent miscreant, pol or agency hack was the target of their ire, for attempting to perpetrate yet another in a long of of dubious acts against the people of South Florida.

Sadly for the people of South Florida, things have gotten so bad now that The Herald's numerous flaws are as much for what they don't publish, as much as for the self-evident mediocre quality of its writing and reporting, lack of thorough fact-checking, and inadequate search for conflicts of interest.

For all the talk of improving the paper by the new McClatchy management, it shows no tangible signs of changing for the better any time soon, a great disappointment to its readers.

It's common knowledge within the industry that The Herald's website is a joke compared to the efforts of many smaller circulation newspapers. www.miamiherald.com

Frankly, the website itself remains a constant source of embarrassment for Herald reporters and columnists, who are constantly besieged by readers and told yet another horror story about not being able to find recent Herald stories that should be on the paper's website but aren't.

The reporters can do little more than shrug their shoulders in response.

Even in the year 2008, The Herald still DOESN'T have a permanent Public Ombudsman to represent the interests of both its readers and basic fairness, like many newspapers with much smaller circulation numbers!

Meanwhile, with much more to fear and lose, The New York Times has an independent Public Editor, currently Clark Hoyt, who weekly takes the Times' policy, owners, editors, reporters and columnists to task publicly, even providing links back to the original story or column in question, unlike the once-in-a-while effort at the Herald. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html?8qa

Meanwhile The Herald's Sunday attempt at high-minded opinion-shaping and public policy, Issues & Ideas, is so embarrassing and muddled on so many different levels that it's all one can do to not laugh from crying, so feeble is its effort, so low is its aim, so puny the actual result.

Yet rather than seeking the creative input of bright and knowledgable new faces who familiar with the real problems of South Florida, The Herald still regularly farms-out the Guest Op-Ed space in the paper to people living outside of the area, more than any other newspaper in America I've ever read.

They continually run long excerpts in their editorial space from parochial interest groups whose political sentiments echo that of the the Herald's own Editorial Board.

Even worse, if possible, in many cases these particular guest editorial tangents have already appeared in other forums or publications!

And speaking of the Herald's Editorial Board, who's on that exactly, anyway?

It's a great mystery that nobody seems able to fully explain away, yet The New York Times, under the guidance of Andy Rosenthal, has an entire webpage specifically devoted to detailing the background and credentials of its Editorial Board. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html

Hmmm... call me old-fashioned, but South Beach Hoosier prefers transparency!

With more news coming out of South Florida than once ever seemed possible, and with the area's annual dance with hurricanes always fraught with danger, this area desperately needs an All-News radio station more than ever before, yet there's NO sign of one on the horizon to replicate the crucial role once served by CBS Radio affiliate, WINZ-AM 940.

Even worse, if possible, there's no LOCAL 24 hour cable news channel to replicate the important role played by a NewsChannel 8 in Washington, D.C., http://www.news8.net/ which gives a depth of coverage to D.C. and the VA/MD suburbs that people in South Florida can only dream about with envy: LIVE call-in TV programs with tough reporters who weekly or monthly grill the DC Mayor, Virginia and Maryland governors, as well as the VA and MD County Managers or Supervisors, the REAL powers in the area.

But then it's not like COMCAST is stepping up to the plate, either!

If there's one constant gripe in South Florida, regardless of your age, race, nationality or political persuasion, it's about the fundamental lack of PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY here among Florida's state, regional and local govt./agency officials.

South Beach Hoosier aims to be a small step towards regaining some of that needed accountability, whether it's thru simple public scrutiny, or requires a degree of investigation and follow-up public exposure of incompetency, cronyism or negligence -South Florida's usual "Perfect Storm."

In other words, a catalyst for positive change.

"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 basketball team before the title game against favored South Bend Central in Hoosiers, 1986. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091217/