When is FL-17's Rep. Frederica Wilson actually signing-on as a sponsor of President Obama's doomed jobs bill to at least be consistent in her bad choices?
Today makes two weeks since his speech.
She was the CBC sponsor of that meeting in Miami, depicted above in Mitt Romney's ad, so why won't you ask her that simple question?
Ten days after President Obama's speech -"pass this bill now"- no South Florida Democrat in U.S. House has sponsored his American Jobs Act -Wilson, DWS, Hastings, Deutsch, Castor...
In fact, not a single Democratic House member from Florida has done that.
Though I'm against it, you'd think the fact that some of South Florida's biggest big-mouths are playing coy thus far might be something that someone at the Miami Herald or South Florida Sun-Sentinel might've noticed, or maybe someone at one of the local TV stations.
FL-17'sFrederica Wilson, who, unfortunately, is my rep in Washington, says she supports it,
But while Rep. Wilson and her local pro-Big Government pals in Congress were doing whatever they were doing -NFL Fantasy Drafts?- since nobody else was using it, Texas Republican Louis Gohmert decided to fill the vacuum and is using use the title American Jobs Act of 2011 for his own bill, HR 2911.
But then this lack of enterprise journalism is hardly surprising, given where we live.
Weeks after the fact, NONE of those same news entities have yet seen fit to mention publicly that Wilson's trip to Israel a month ago came courtesy of AIPAC.
Something I told you here back on August 11th in my post titled , "Next year in Jerusalem" is right now for FL-17 Rep. Frederica Wilson, courtesy of AIPAC. But that's bad news for Americans, esp. her constituents,
Since I know that nobody else will mention it to you, the biggest journalism scandal involving Rep. Andre Carson's ridiculous comments about Tea Party supporters at a Congressional Black Caucus Job Fair/Town Hall meeting last week in Miami, is that there was not a single representative of a South Florida news organization that was there who reported on it the day it happened.
Or the next day.
Or the day after that.
Or...
And neither did any other reporter or columnist or editor who wasn't actually there, but heard about it later.
Until Wednesday, nine days later, it was like it NEVER happened.
The Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Channel 4 (WFOR-TV) - a CBS O&O, Channel 6 (WTVJ-TV) -an NBC O&O, Channel 7 (WSVN-TV) -Fox affiliate, and Channel 10 (WPLG-TV) -ABC affiliate (Post-Newsweek) ALL ignored it or never knew about it.
Which is worse?
As I write this:
Channel 4 still has ZERO.
Channel 6 still has ZERO.
Channel 7 posted an AP story out of Indy at 10:45 p.m. Thursday
The Sun-Sentinel's first mention of the controversy was in a Broward Politics blog post Wednesday morning that focused on Rep.Allen West, who represents part of Broward.
It's not for nothing that I have joked here in the past that if Fidel Castro dies overnight, esp. a Friday night/Saturday morning, the Miami Herald will be completely scooped and be the last media organization in South Florida to report it.
Like they were on the Japanese tsunmai...
And the 2010 Polish air disaster in Belarus...
And the Moscow Metro bombings...
And...
Rather incredibly, nobody down here among South Florida's largely sleep-walking professional press corps seems the least bit chagrined that they got totally scooped on what has turned out to be a a national news story, nor do they seem to be the least bit interested in asking any questions of Rep. Frederica Wilson, whose FL-17 CD this all happened in, and who hosted the events last week that have echoed across the country this week, no thanks to the local press corps.
Apparently, there's no extant videotape or audio of Wilson's demeanor or comments during or after Carson's heateduncivil rhetoric.
Pity!
But then again, consider the lack of an appropriate follow-up story about Wilson's recent trip to Israel -along with dozens of her colleagues- that was paid for by AIPAC, as I mentioned here on the blog recently when it happened, a congressional gravy train which was first reported by the Washington Post, whom I cited.
Yet not a single South Florida-based news organization, of the less-than-a handfu who even mentioned the trip, felt the need to mention that salient fact, in their mentions of the trip tells you plenty about how dreadful serious news coverage in South Florida in the year 2011 is.
"Next year in Jerusalem" is right now for FL-17 Rep. Frederica Wilson, courtesy of AIPAC. But that's bad news for Americans, esp. her constituents.
The very constituents that she ought to be meeting with in-person right now during the summer recess. In places like ocean-side Hallandale Beach, for instance.
A city in the FL-17 CD that she never had a public event at before last August's primary.
Some of you out there in the South Florida part of the blogosphere may've seen this telling little bombshell in the Sun-Sentinel'sBroward Politics blog earlier in the week:
Only THE most obvious and important question one could ask.
Somehow, and for whatever reason, THAT answer didn't seem important enough for Anthony Man to include in the small post, that over 72 hours later, still has not drawn a single reader comment.
Assuming he didn't first find out about it from a press release from her office, which is entirely likely given how rarely Rep. Wilson's name ever appears in the Broward Politics blog, this is par for the course here in South Florida as far as the press digging for information goes, and Man in particular.
Actually, her own press release about the trip neglects to mention AIPAC also:
Somehow I have a strong feeling that the source of the trip's funding would've come up in the blog post if it had something to do with an oil company PAC for instance, or one representing almost any other corporate interest.
(For the record, I disregard almost everything Anthony Man writes, in large part because over the years I've found so much of what he has written or said on public policy TV shows to be factually incorrect, lacking crucial context, completely unpersuasive, or, as if that wasn't enough, when it comes to the dreaded Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, he's seemed like her trained pet poodle.
Her Boswell.
What Man has written about this FL-20 House member -who has never run in a non-gerrymandered CD and never faced a competitive opponent in a general election, a most-charmed situation!- seems so over-the-top that it was embarrassing to read.
Not unlike Alex Leary's recent story in the St. Pete Times that I commented on recently.)
I first learned about the departure of nearly one-fifth of the U.S. Congress for Israel in The Washington Post on Tuesday and wondered how in the world that could possibly be a good idea for either American public policy, esp. foreign policy, or, their own constituents suffering the slings and arrows of Obama's economic malaise.
Does Rep. Wilson really think going to Israel for the first time is more important than meeting with her constituents?
"Asked and answered, your honor."
Washington Post
House members travel to Israel, courtesy of AIPAC lobby, not taxpayers
By Al Kamen
Published: August 9, 2011
A record 81 House members, about a fifth of the chamber, are spending a week in Israel this month, courtesy of a foundation set up by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby.
I hadn't had time to read the Broward Politics blog on Monday due to being so busy, but even if I had, which article tells you more?
The Post didn't neglect to discover the source of the funding, they put it right there in the headline so nobody could miss it.
As I have here, too.
The next day, my daily Morning Brief email from Foreign Policy magazine arrived and one of the posts there made all the points I made in my head and planned on sharing here -better than me.
Foreign Policy
How the World Is Really Run blog
The congress is in session, it turns out … in Israel
Posted By David Rothkopf
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - 11:44 AM
This week's reports that 20 percent of the U.S. Congress will be visiting Israel this month are stunning. Eighty-one members of Congress -- two thirds of them Republicans, 47 of them freshmen -- apparently think it is more important to be visiting Israel than it is to be at home dealing with the worst economic crisis in modern memory. America's economy is in flames and these guys are taking lobbyist-funded trips to what, watch Israelis take to the streets to protest the high-cost of living in that country?
I acknowledge that it sounds petty but I'd love for someone with a TV camera rolling to ask Rep. Wilson what she thinks of the success or failure so far of Operation New Dawn.
No, it's true, I don't think very highly of Rep. Wilson, and I don't think this cipher in Congress that represents the people in my part of Hallandale Beach would know what that operation is, that is, without prompting.
But it hardly matters.
Frederica Wilson will fight tooth-and-nail over the next year to make sure that she can keep this cushy, no heavy-lifting (or thinking) job of hers that pays $174k a year, and will do anything she can to make sure that the FL-17 congressional district remains nice and gerrymandered so that she NEVER has to run against a competitive candidate in a general election and can stay in office as long as SHE wants.
More soon on what's happening with congressional redistricting and whom I'd love to see run against Wilson next year in a new, more logically-drawn CD that more accurately represents the interests of this area of south Broward and northeast Miami-Dade counties.
And while I'm at it, let me just state that it sure would be nice if a single legitimate reporter or columnist in South Florida reported on what group former City of Miami City Manager Tony Crapp, Jr. is working for now in the redistricting battle on behalf of his new bosses at
What follows below are selected excerpts of an email I sent on Tuesday to someone who's deeply involved in the 2012 redistricting issue in Florida that's already well underway.
Perhaps it will give some of you on the sidelines some insight into what is -and isn't- happening right now, which, in my opinion, is not nearly enough.
As most of you who read this blog even fairly know, I was and am a very strong supporter of FairDistricts and voted FOR Amendments 5 and 6. http://fairdistrictsnow.org
Following that I have included here some helpful information I received late on Friday afternoon from Benjamin M. Fairbrother of the Florida House of Representatives Redistricting Comm. regardingthe upcoming meetings.
To get you into the spirit of things, I'm reprising here two great videos by former congressional candidate Scott Fortune that I previously have used in the last two lengthy posts I had about redistricting, the first video of which is up at the top.
In 2010, Fortune ran in the Democratic primary against mendacious, mean-spirited and gerrymandered to a fair-thee-well Rep. Corrine Brown, one of the two current Florida congresspersons suing to keep things status quo in this state -FUBAR- so that they and their ilk can continue to avoid genuine accountability in congressional elections that are actually competitive, and with them, real discussion about issues, not repetition of talking points.
That much-discussed gerrymandered CD, FL-3, stretches from the Jacksonville area to north of Orlando, as you can see here.
The odd size and irregular shapes of many Florida congressional districts -CDs- is a subject I wrote often (and frustrated) about last year, esp. FL-17, where I live, two miles east of the Atlantic Ocean in Broward County, repped by someone -Frederica Wilson- in a CD that has as its political center an area in another county, northwest of downtown Miami, that shares few of the everyday concerns that people in Hallandale Beach and Hollywood have.
a.) October 25, 2010 New TV ad from FairDistrictsFlorida.org; FL-17 and Corrine Brown's FL-3 are embarrassing embodiment of what unchecked gerrymandering gets you
b.) June 14, 2011 Florida's 2012 redistricting meetings in South Florida are only two months away, so where are the competing maps? Or the pre-event info meetings?
My excerpt starts with what was the second or third paragraph, after some general pleasantries:
Having grown-up down here before leaving for college at Indiana, I know full well how brutal August is for people living down here, A/C or no A/C, both in terms of the actual weather, latent concerns about hurricanes, plus, juggling vacations, kids camps, or even weddings or company outings or conventions.
Some people, maybe even most people, just want to do nothing in August except stay cool, keep their hurricane supplies handy and watch sports or catch a movie.
(I should know.)
I get that, really I do, still, I'm mystified that even in apathetic South Florida, where people with civic-minded natures are few-and-far-between, so many groups down here who, in my opinion ought to be filling-in the vacuum and showing some strong public interest in mobilizing their supporters or members in attending and actively participating in the upcoming meetings or something along the lines of what I'm suggesting in terms of an education outreach -so they can be exposed to various map scenarios- are NOT rising to the fore.
At least not to the point of actually announcing public plans for something tangible, and we're now just over two weeks away from those meetings.
If people don't know a week in advance, what's the point, since the percentage who can then attend is clearly much less than it could be?
Since I have a Google Alert for "redistricting," I see everything on redistricting, not just here in FL, but across the country for various govt. entities.
When you see what other communities are doing and how everyone down here is just snoozing...
Today's Sun-Sentinel finally had something decent, mentioning what the Broward League of Women Voters are doing on Saturday in Davie
That said, to be honest, I'm less than crazy that Davie is the site for Broward's one and only official redistricting meeting.
That is not at all centrally-located or even convenient to get to.
It's hard not to get the impression because of the reasons you and many others have so ably articulated in the past -foremost, lack of maps at the meetings- that many State Senators involved in the process are no doubt chuckling to themselves that they've created a scenario that is the ultimate win-win for them -the pretense of transparency with none of the messy details having to come up at the meetings.
And everything gets settled in Tallahassee.
------
From: MyDistrictBuilder Date: Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 4:50 PM Subject: Email Update - Florida House Redistricting - August 5, 2011 To: MyDistrictBuilder
Florida House of Representatives – House Redistricting Committee
Redistricting Update – August 5, 2011
Location Change for the August 29 Tampa Redistricting Meeting
Due to expected attendance, the location for the August 29th Florida redistricting meeting in Tampa has changed to: Jefferson High School Auditorium, 4401 Cypress Street, Tampa, Florida 33607. Jefferson High School has plenty of free parking, close proximity to a bus stop, and more seating than the original downtown location. We think it will be much more convenient for the public. Persons who pre-registered (RSVP) to attend/speak at the Tampa meeting will be receiving and email or letter that confirms the change of address.
Public Submissions of Redistricting Maps and Suggestions
Viawww.floridaredistricting.org, you can access our Plan Explorer site to view, comment on and share redistricting suggestions submitted by Florida residents. The site highlights proposed maps for Florida’s State House, State Senate and congressional districts. Of the 23 maps submitted by Florida residents thus far, 20 were created with the Florida House’s MyDistrictBuilderTM application. For your convenience, all 23 submissions received thus far are listed below, along with links to written suggestions that were submitted to the House.
·Plan 0023 – Partial plan for Congress, affecting Orange, Osceola and Polk counties
·Plan 0022 – Partial plan for Congress, affecting Lake, Marion and Sumter counties
·Plan 0021 – Partial plan for Congress, affecting Lake, Marion and Sumter counties
Along with the feedback from the Legislature’s 26 public input meetings throughout Florida, these maps and written suggestions will constitute the starting point for redistricting when legislators return to Tallahassee in the fall of 2011 for committee meetings.
Upcoming Meetings
The complete Florida redistricting public meeting calendar (attached) can be found by visiting: http://www.floridaredistricting.org/. The remainder of public input meeting calendar includes meetings at the following locations:
·Stuart – August 15
·Boca Raton – August 16
·Davie – August 16
·Miami – August 17
·South Miami – August 17
·Key West – August 18
·Tampa – August 29
·Largo – August 30
·Sarasota – August 30
·Naples – August 31
·Lehigh Acres – August 31
·Clewiston – September 1
As always, if you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to contact us.
The interview with Rep. Frederica Wilson concludes at 13:04 mark.
Well, to use a phrase that nobody uses any longer, "Here's mud in your eye."
For those of you who have doubted what I've said in the past to you, whether in person somewhere in South Florida or the Washington, D.C. area, or what you've read here on the blog, about the weirdly, disconnected sense of reality lived by many though not all of South Florida's pols, almost all of whom live in gerrymandered districts that ensure their election come the general elections, Sunday morning brought forth the latest glaring example of disconnected unreality.
Did you see it, too?
Did your jaw hit the ground at the stale memorized talking points being recited like a not-so-bright Third Grader standing in front of the class?
Did you get a real sinking feeling when you heard so much prattle expressed with so little thought or insight behind it, and realized that the silly person mouthing such nonsense makes $174,000 a year?
Yes, welcome to the second decade of South Florida politics in the 21st Century.
All of this came in the form of an alternately abysmal performance by freshman Rep. Frederica Wilson (FL-17) on Channel 10's "This Week in South Florida" with Senior Political Editor Michael Putney.
As most of you blog readers know by now, I respect him more than any other media personality in South Florida -even when we disagree- in large part, because he actually remembers many of the very same people, places and events of the past that I do, good and bad, that so many people, groups and institutions consciously prefer to forget.
(So many South Florida media types I've met either know very little about this area's political history and geography, or flat-out don't care, but that's another post for another time.)
The ostensible purpose of Wilson's appearance -from Washington- in the lead-off (longest) block of the popular public affairs program, was to discuss the federal debt limit crisis, the state of the economy, and to elicit her opinion on what specific steps should be undertaken.
As she has been a cipher since getting elected, I didn't expect much, but even my low expectations were too high.
Prior to this July 31st appearance with Michael Putney, NOT a single legitimate reporter in Florida had so much as asked Wilson even a reasonably hard question about this debt limit issue and asked her to explain herself on the issue.
Trust me, I've looked at searches for her on Google News day-after-day, and even emailed that to friends, who were shocked at how asleep the South Florida news media has been all these months.
Not me.
(I was even going to post all the citations & news articles here so you could see what lapdogs the South Florida press corps has been towards Wilson since she got elected. Minus the stories on Haiti, Edison & Central High Schools getting special treatment to stay open, or her hats, there wasn't much left, which made it easy for me to read all the articles. Just saying...)
In fact, I was going to post this blog post Sunday morning until I saw that she was going to be on the show. Then I decided to wait until Channel 10 put the link up to theentire broadcast so you could see it for yourself.
To me, Wilson has held common sense and taxpayers "hostage" for months without saying anything of merit, to use a word that she twice went out of her way to use to refer to Tea Party supporters, implying, like so many disconnected liberals, that their desire to actually have a more fundamentally sound financial structure for the country was dangerous.
(Unlike Wilson, some Americans inherently know that not every single federal program deserves to live in perpetuity, or to be equated with apple pie and the Bill of Rights. But try getting Wilson to name one to cut...)
As if, somehow, liberal families and their children were somehow immune to the very negative logical consequences of a template where the U.S. government borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends, as Sen. Marco Rubio has said any number of times lately.
It won't surprise you a whit that her prescription was the usual one of a person who reps a gerrymandered majority-minority CD in Congress: spend, spend, spend...
And tax the "rich" especially the evil oil companies, whom she says pay nothing in taxes in the same exact way that small children routinely say dumb things but nobody bothers to correct them because they are, after all, just small children.
They're entitled to their fantasy world for a while.
Small children, not congresswomen.
Despite her own past actions and words to burden small business owners with more regulation and higher fees, she demands that someone create jobs in her CD, which has the dubious distinction of having among the lowest investment rates and one of the highest murder rates in the entire congress.
After you hear Wilson, you'd almost have to ask yourself why if you were a business owner seeking to expand, why would someone invest in poorly-educated, blame-someone else FL-17?
Now there's a question.
Wilson seems unable to appreciate the changed environment that has taken over this country the past few years, nor to appreciate the difference between being in Tallahassee and Washington.
The reality is that her constituents without jobs are going to be expected to do a whole lot more for themselves in the future than they have in the past, and that includes the strong possibility that for many of them, that choice involves leaving the area, as happens in every other part of the country.
Uncle Sam is not going to be dropping pallets of money into NW Miami anytime soon.
That plane has been permanently grounded.
Time to adapt!
When Michael Putney brought this poll up, do I even have to tell you that Wilson is a fervent supporter of the minority opinion? The one that says that we just have to keep doing the same things that don't work? It's mind-boggling sometimes, almost as if she has been in a coma.
Watching her appearance on TWISF made me think of many things but none quite so strong as the sense that she's so very used to only being around people that completely agree with her, that she literally has no ability or intuition to appreciate that, for a change, she really needed to come across on the program as a serious and sober official.
Instead, because it's her shtick, and she can't help herself, she chose on the air wearing one of the dozens of ridiculous hats that she insists on wearing to distinguish herself, more fitting for a Delta Sigma Theta luncheon in the spring.
Yeah, like the weird guy with head-to-toe tats who insists on showing up at the public park every weekend with the snake around his neck, the old guy who insists on wearing a tiny Speedo swimsuit at the beach -and not being foreign!- or, the older woman who insists on showing up at the beach in a two-piece swimsuit that more closely resembles dental floss, Wilson can't figure out a way to stand out for what she knows about a given area of public policy, or being able to explain complicated issues in ways that people understsnd.
Nobody has ever said that about her.
It's sad for her, of course, but saddest of all for us,her constituents.
As I reflected on what took place in the program later on Sunday afternoon, in between watching the Marlins game and snapping some photos up in Hollywood for a future blog post here, Wilson'sjuvenile performance just really continued to irritate me, since it was about as anti-intellectual an exercise as I've seen outside of the occasional segment of MSNBC'sHardball I've come across while flipping thru the channels during a commercial of something else.
If you're not really that familiar with the show, esp. if you are reading this overseas, the Republican Elephants in the bottom LEFT are a tip-off to MSNBC's avowed liberal ideology. Fortunately, not that many people watch the show, as more people watch The Cartoon Channel than MSNBC when Hardballis on.
When she successfully repeated a few simple talking points she remembered -the ones about the number of times the debt was raised during Reagan and Bush 41's presidencies, 18 and 7 respectively- I could almost picture her staff applauding, out-of relief. Really.
So what exactly were the things that she or her predecessors, Carrie Meek and Kendrick Meek proposed that would cut the federal budget and put the country on a more sustainable basis?
She never said despite having thirteen minutes to mention it.
Thirteen minutes that revealed her for the disconnected public official she is, who thinks the old solutions of Big Government spending their way out of a problem still works.
So, did you see the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes stories on what Reps. Alcee Hastings (FL-23) and Frederica Wilson (FL-17) are up to with congressional redistricting, with those State Senate meetings in Broward and Miami-Dade just a few weeks away?
Or, who they're using as consultants? (Is it Tony Crapp, Jr., the recent fomer City of Miami city manager?)
Or the articles on the same subject in the Miami Herald or South Florida Sun-Sentinel?
Actually, there hasn't been one.
Back on June 4th, in a post titled, Still waiting for South Florida news media to mention that Frederica Wilson was only FL Rep. to vote YES to increase debt limit?
I reminded some of you all over again what sort of short shrift anyone in DC not named DebbieWasserman-Schultz gets in terms of media coverage in South Florida, even though most of hers is almost entirely too flattering -almost sycophantic- as many prior posts of mine over the years have pointed out.
So today, with that same federal debt limit still in the news and nobody down here other than yours truly even publicly mentioning FredericaWilson's seeming disconnection to the country and her district and her very dubious achievement, could you tell me the number of times this year that she's been written about in the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes regarding her job in DC?
The answer is that the Miami-based congresswoman -who, unfortunately, represents me here in my part of Hallandale Beach - has been mentioned in that regard in the South Florida alternative news weekly ZERO times.
Number of times this year that Rep. Allen West (FL-22 ), who represents north Broward and south Palm Beach counties has been mentioned in the Miami NewTimes?
Those of you who think that the BrowardPalmBeach or Miami NewTimesare going to do anything of substance to fill-in the gigantic information gap caused by the self-evident retreat on local news coverage of the rapidly-declining Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, need to wake-up from your sleepwalking before you hurt yourself -or others.
Your false hope and naivete is going to costs you someday when you least expect it.
And have you seen some of the online pieces in the Broward NewTimes the past few months?
To call them paltry is to overstate the number of character spaces.
Really.
Oh, and you recall my blog post of last year in which I noted for the record that despite the generally poor-to-below average job done by the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel reporters, columnists and editors, they at least have their media email addresses in their pieces or on the company website, so they can be contacted diirectly -but don't count on replies, per Herald ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos- but the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes management team doesn't.
They still don't.
And just as an aside, why are South Florida's overwhelmingly White and Cuban-American press corps so deathly afraid to ask Black elected officials, local, state and national, hard questions about budgets and govt. funding?
It's very, very patronizing.
Instead, almost every article about Wilson after she was elected was about her f-ing hats.
And since then, nothing about any of her votes to continue funding unsuccesful programs and policies.
As I've stated previously, I hope under the new redistricting plan drawn up under the Florida legislature, she can represent just Miami-Dade voters, so get familiar with her, Aventura!
