Showing posts with label Hallandale Beach Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hallandale Beach Blog. Show all posts

Saturday, October 19, 2013

My first day on Twitter this week -@hbbtruth- was sometimes frustrating, but not without some unexpected surprises of a royal nature; @hbbtruth, #hbbtruth, @swedense, @KarlXVI, #sweden

A few hours in, no tweets, but that's clearly changed since then.

 Last weekend marked exactly ten years since I moved back to South Florida from the Washington, D.C. area, after being up there for 15 years, and after far too much procrastination on my part and years of getting so many Invitation emails to join, incuding from some unlikely sources, my alter ego of Hallandale Beach Blog and I are now officially on Twitter @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth 


Like almost everyone else doing so, I now see more clearly than ever before, how much I was really dis-advantaging myself by not getting aboard the Twitter train, despite being a person who has been reading certain reporters/bloggers I like who were Early Adopters since they started seven years ago.
And someone who has rather consistently poured cold water on people knocking the platform, since it's not for everyone. 

 That time has given me the advantage of forming certain strong ideas on how I do and do NOT want to handle things at my feed, and that will be -I think- a somewhat different role than I employ on this blog.

 Most of you reading this, even you more regular readers of the blog, have no idea how many emails and notes I write and send during a typical week, and I mean ones that I really put some time and effort into.
Even the people receiving them have no idea, I suspect.

 Now, though, by posting them to the blog and then tweeting them, I'll have the ability to share my discoveries, surprises or outrages with a much-larger audience whom I already know are more inclined to share that information with like-minded people they know, too.

 Frankly, that was always part of my great frustration with sending out my Hallandale Beach, Broward County or South Florida-centric emails, and why not being part of Twitter ate away at me, when in saw so many people use it in ways that seemed inadequate to me.
I knew there was a finite number of people who would ever be in a position to see and react to the information, whether factual, informed speculation or soon-to-be prescient prognostications. 

 That frustration also came from knowing in advance that only so many people would be better-informed or have more context on a subject of interest.
Or have specific examples of why something being said on local TV or print was actually NOT true at all because the reporter was NOT including all the relevant facts, context or history.
And when that was an important story, and I saw how poorly something important was being reported, which is everyday in the South Florida of 2013, it just made me seethe inside.
Lots of seething over the past ten years!

I know that I'm not alone in South Florida in having those feelings, but since I've always been a blogger who didn't go in for 3-4 sentence blog posts, I always had to make a determination of whether it was worth the time to publicly criticize a reporter or columnist or public official, knowing that there was only so many people who'd see that on the blog in a timely fashion.

Which is why easily 85% of the best material I've written the past ten years was in emails that got sent out to a fair number of people, including media types and govt. officials, but never saw the light of day on the blog because it was time sensitive.

The same things that no doubt frustrates many of you reading this, and you might use texting to get that out of your system. 
But I'm most assuredly NOT a texter.

 So, all that being the backstory, I knew in advance that I didn't want to use my own name for this twitter account and needed to substitute something for Hallandale Beach, since it' is at once both too long and too frequently misspelled by people not living here.

 In the end, after considering a few names I'd kept in cold storage for a few years, and wanting something easy to remember, I went with what I try my best to deliver on a consistent basis here on the blog that I find so lacking in the south Florida area in all sorts of place: truth! 
Irony!
I thought you'd appreciate that

This weekend when you've got a few minutes free to yourself, depending upon which country you are reading this email in, I'd like for you to spend a second to either Follow
or Följ me, or at least bookmark my Twitter feed URL on your desktop and mobile, to check back during the day and see what I've discovered or am ruminating on in between enthusiastic and discursive blog posts and emails.

Sort of like your own (free) Early Warning System in 140 character spaces.

I intend to make up for lost time and make very good use of this tool and amplify the volume and spotlight on a whole host of issues, subjects and people that I believe have been, alternately, either largely neglected, covered far too intensely in the national, state or local news media, or more commonly, being covered without enough respect for attention to facts and context, to say nothing of a lack of adequate historical perspective.

Unless something dramatic happens in the next few days, I will be using the next few days trying to get more comfortable doing this and tweeting some recent blog posts of mine, to help them get a little more attention that I think they deserve and advance some needed dialogue, but  once I'm more comfortable doing this, and am NOT so overly concerned about making a mistake, I expect that I'll be doing mostly new content for people to know, share and comment upon if they so choose.

-----

Naturally, after I wrote the above in an email and sent it out, I had problems with Twitter.

 Perhaps because more vetting at a higher level of authority was necessary to let me into this exclusive group of people, but i had all sorts of problems my first 24 hours on Twitter.

For the better part of a morning and afternoon, I was largely frozen in a sort of Twitter 
version of Dante's Gates of Hell, in-between not being able to log-off or log-on, and being afraid to turn the computer off because I was concerned that maybe there were some steps I'd accidently missed somehow.

Everywhere I went to try to resolve it on the Twitter website were ominous warnings that I was in an area that I was Not Authorized.
It was like being at Reagan National Airport trying to find someone to man the counter to file a missing luggage incident report.
As I'd know!

Obviously, I hope the Twitter situation is resolved for good.

I signed up for TweetDeck for organizing purposes but if anyone has recently had any bad experiences with them and/or can recommend something better for someone like me, who anticipates following about 225 fairly-heavy Twitter users -largely the same folks I've been reading and following all along for years based on a list I created when I started the blog's first blogroll and it got too large- I'd appreciate hearing about it.

It wasn't a complete waste of time, though, since during those five-six hours, I was able to discover something interesting on the Twitter list of Followers of Sweden.se, the terrific Swedish government website whose awesome photos and Svenska factoids I've used for many years on my blog and emails to great effect, like this one below.

(Above, in a word, for me, Heavenly! Djurgården is the island located a bit east of the Gamla Stan (Old Town) area of Stockholm and the downtown Stockholm business district, where the iconic Grona Lund amusement park is located as well as the Vasa Museum and this year's new entry, the ABBA Museum that I wrote about here on the blog on May 7th, it's opening day:

A" is for Awesome and ABBA as the new ABBA Museum in Stockholm officially opens this afternoon. Monday night's gala premiere brought Anni-Frid, Benny and Björn together, cheered on by a select group of invitees from across Swedish society and the music industry, who are, in the end, just fans of the band like everyone else, and very excited that this amazing museum is FINALLY a reality; #abba, #AbbaMuseum, #ThankYouForTheMusic, @stockholm, @sweden

Djurgården is also home to the amazing Skansen open-air museum where 'Allsång på Skansen' is televised LIVE every Tuesday night during the summer on SVT, and, of course, the source of many of the music videos I've shared on the blog and individually with some of you, including most recently, the very-talented Miriam Bryant.)

Well, it turns out that on that list of Followers, at least then yours truly was located 
directly below....Carl XVI Gustaf.
The king.


Cool!  
From the Twitter Gates of Hell, Hallandale Beach campus, to the Royal Palace in 
Stockholm in just over 5 hours.
I love happy endings!

And now i'm following the king on Twitter, too. :)
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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Hottest July and August ever -at the blog! Thanks to the blog's readers from Broward County, South Florida and around the world, July and August 2013 have been THE busiest July and August ever at Hallandale Beach Blog, with readers interested in reading more about the absence of ethics in Hallandale Beach and Broward County, and about a very popular DJ and blogger from Sweden, who has since moved to South Florida, Anna Hibbs; Thanks! (Tack så mycket!)





Hottest July and August ever -at the blog! Thanks to the blog's readers from Broward County, South Florida and around the world, July and August 2013 have been THE busiest July and August ever at Hallandale Beach Blog, with readers interested in reading more about the absence of ethics in Hallandale Beach and Broward County, and about a very popular DJ and blogger from Sweden, who has since moved to South Florida, Anna Hibbs; Thanks! (Tack så mycket!) 

July netted  39,587 individual page views, an average of 1277 page views a day, which was better than I expected given the time of year and the lack of big news here, per se. 
August 2013 was the second-busiest month ever in the history of the blog, trailing only last December, and had a total of 39,587 individual page views -more than doubling last year's record total for the month- for a daily average of 1,277 or 53.20 separate page views per hour.
In fact, six days of the dog days of August received over 2,000 separate views with August 14 netting 3,202 and August 21st getting 3,133.

(And even now in September, with many residents of Hallandale Beach I know not returning to town for another week-to-ten days, I'm posting better numbers than ever for a non-holiday month, with well over 2,000 views 70% of the time and with 3 days over 2,500 so far thru the first 12 days of the month.)

 Of the older, non-current posts, the two most-popular posts the past two monhs continue to be one from mid-October of last year, three weeks before the city election, on the subject of ethics and integrity or rather the lack of both plus competency at Hallandale Beach City Hall, 
Ethics? Not for us! Follow-up to my post re Hallandale Beach's unethical "business as usual" attitude, with "special rules for special people" if they are named Joy Cooper, Bill Julian and Anthony A. Sanders; What ethics? What rules? @MayorCooper, @SandersHB
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/ethics-not-for-us-follow-up-to-my-post.html
with my second most-popular post being a very short one from August 2011 regarding popular Swedish DJ and blogger Anna Hibbs, who made the big move from the comfortable and exciting world she knew and loved in Stockholm to Miami Beach a few months back.

Popular Swedish DJ and blogger Anna Hibbs visiting Miami for a while, so mind your manners and be friendly, por favor

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/popular-swedish-dj-and-blogger-anna.html

 As of 3 p.m. Saturday, the first one on ethics has garnered 51,361 views while the one on Anna Hibbs has received 4,294.

 Anna wrote what I consider her best and most-personal work yet while in Sweden over the summer while visiting friends and family, doing lots of serious reflecting and reminiscing on manners great and small, past and future, knowing that everyday she was one day closer to her new life in South Florida.

 For both good and bad, she'd no longer be able to just get together at the drop-of-a-hat with family and friends, or make definite plans in the future to hang-out at favorite spots around the country with friends and former business colleagues when opportunities presented themselves.
And she had to move all her stuff, which always leaves you reminiscing and thinking about the choices you have made, good and bad.
Anna's honesty makes that worthwhile reading.


Me using some technology back in January, Latitude, checking to see who was who, who was free, and where in the world were they in Greater Stockholm when I contacted them after checking-in to the 4trappor B&B in Södermalm, using one of the dozens of maps I had to plot logistics for a get-together, The important parameters after either being on a United and SAS plane or in an airport in Fort Lauderdale, Newark, Oslo and Stockholm for over 24 hours?: Coldest beer, best pizza, best atmosphere to talk.
Ever since President Obama went to Stockholm last week, I've been planning on posting something new here about moxie-filled Anna in the near-future, something that I think will give you some real insight into both Sweden and her own unique personality that I find pleasing and endearing.
In part, perhaps, because in more ways than likely makes sense, it mirrors my own thoughts in some important respects, which perhaps helps explains why I feel so at home there.

The top referring sites for the blog were the blog's own two URLs, followed by the Google Search Parties in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Germany, Sweden and France.
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Friday, July 19, 2013

Where's Marco Rubio? Like me -but unlike the sleepwalking South Florida news media- blogger extraordinaire Mickey Kaus has not only noticed that Team Rubio has gone silent on immigration and wants to talk about everything BUT that, he's focusing like a laser on it. That's not by accident. 67% of GOP voters who oppose a "path to legal status" say they could not vote 4 someone who disagreed on that issue!; @kausmickey, #RubiosFolly






As I told you all last month in my multiple blog posts about Marco Rubio's lack of tweets about immigration -but about the Miami Heat- and the Miami Herald's self-evident and heavy-handed censorship for well over two weeks of all references, in-print and in their blogs, re Ryan Lizza's excellent New Yorker piece on the Schumer-Rubio bill, the Gang of Eight and Marco Rubio and his staff re the pro-amnesty bill that emerged.
And censorship of any articulate, fact-filled negative comments about the bill. 
Nope, nothing about Florida's agribusiness industry hungering for more low-cost labor and how much they were spending to make it happen.

Los Angeles-based blogger Mickey Kaus, long one of my favorites since I was living and working in the D.C. area and he was at Slate, and now writing at The Daily Caller website, is one of the many people I shared this bits of news with around the country.
Some didn't know about it, some had heard but hadn't seen any actual evidence.
Then I dropped some fact-filled evidence on them via email.

 Over the past few weeks, as only Mickey Kaus can so consistently, with insightful reporting and good humor, well-timed sarcasm and a knack for saying today what others will be saying tomorrow, via his very popular Twitter feed and blog, he has reminded us all again that, surprise, "Team Rubio really has gone silent on immigration"













































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Thursday, January 3, 2013

2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day

Above, looking south on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway, in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall. At the bottom of the FDOT sign you'll notice the grafitti that I mentioned two years ago at a HB City Commission meeting, where I noted with disgust how most of U.S.-1, one of the three main roads in and out of the city, had grafitti on nearly every sign and pole -and had for years- due to the city and FDOT doing such a piss-poor job of keeping it under control, thus creating a bad first-impression for visitors. Typically, then-City Mgr. Mark A. Antonio's response to my recitation with specificity was that he'd never noticed any of that before. This from the same person who had worked in that same building since it'd opened over ten years years prior. I then retorted that one didn't need to go far to see it, only walk out the door of the commission chambers we were all in and walk to the sidewalk in front of City Hall. There was no missing it, since it's all been there for years, along with the gang tags on other signs and light poles. As of today, it's all STILL there, as responsible parties continue ignoring the problem, the perfect metaphor for the city's myopia, something I said to conclude my remarks that night. April 17, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day
Matt Drudge's 17-year old news and information website, the invaluable 24/7 tool in a sea of increasingly incurious, biased and not-so-bright American news media, set a new record in 2012, besting his 2011 total by over a BILLION pageviews. 
Or to be specific, 1,007,231,416. 
http://www.drudgereport.com/

 Meanwhile, farther north in South Florida from the Drudge HQ, but much closer to home for your purposes, 2012 was another record-breaking year at the Hallandale Beach Blog, with a total of 343,830 pageviews.

December 2012 was another record-breaker, not only setting a record for THE busiest month EVER in the now six years of the blog, with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or a daily average of 2,029 views, but with a new daily record set the Sunday before last, two days before Christmas, December 23, 2012 with a total of 5,324. 

 It was the third record-breaking month in a row!
Yes, thanks to readers from South Florida and around the world who let their fingers do the walking, December 2012 was, indeed, awesome!

Just to give you an idea of how things have looked this year -and the last two weeks- here's some numbers to crunch and wrap your head around:

 January 2012             Pageviews: 26,636
February 2012           Pageviews: 22,584
March 2012                Pageviews: 19,167
April 2012                   Pageviews: 20,626
May 2012                    Pageviews: 23,979
June 2012                   Pageviews: 21,971
July 2012                     Pageviews: 23,036
August 2012               Pageviews: 22,312
September 2012        Pageviews: 23,290
October 2012             Pageviews: 35,433
November 2012         Pageviews: 41,898
December 2012 Pageviews: 62,898

 Total: 343,830

Individual daily pageviews at HBB for the second half of the month:

 Dec 14, 2012 Pageviews:  1,226, 
Dec 15, 2012 Pageviews:  4,455, 
Dec 16, 2012 Pageviews:  4,651, 
Dec 17, 2012 Pageviews:  1,834, 
Dec 18, 2012 Pageviews:  2,906, 
Dec 19, 2012 Pageviews:  4,156,
Dec 20, 2012 Pageviews:  2,289
Dec 21, 2012 Pageviews:  2,476
Dec 22, 2012 Pageviews:  4,519
Dec 23, 2012 Pageviews:  5,324
Dec 24, 2012 Pageviews:  2,229
Dec 25, 2012 Pageviews:  1,464
Dec 26, 2012 Pageviews:  1,230
Dec 27, 2012 Pageviews:  1,054
Dec 28, 2012 Pageviews:  1,155
Dec 29, 2012 Pageviews:  1,059
Dec 30, 2012  Pageviews: 1,214
Dec 31, 2012  Pageviews:  970
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Monday, December 3, 2012

Continued unethical behavior, corruption and incompetency in Hallandale Beach and South Florida, and the South Florida news media's willful ignoring of it, plus the 2012 election, propelled Hallandale Beach Blog to set a new record for eyeballs the second month in a row. A daily average of 1396.6 page views a day!

Above, as previously seen on the blog, the campaign yard signs for Bill Julian, Anthony A. Sanders and Joy Cooper that for months stood illegally on church/non-profit property on N.W. First Avenue & N.W. 3rd Street, in Hallandale Beach, FL. This despite the fact that in the United States, federal law is that partisan campaign signs are NOT to be placed on religious property, since the IRS can and does remove the non-profit status of proven violators, like the Church of Christ of Hallandale Beach above. But who cares about rules, laws and penalties when there's an election to be won? Certainly not these three. October 9, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

 Continued unethical behavior, corruption and incompetency in Hallandale Beach and South Florida, and the South Florida news media's willful ignoring of it, plus the 2012 election, propelled Hallandale Beach Blog to set a new record for eyeballs the second month in a row

 Thanks to readers from South Florida and around the world, November 2012 was THE busiest month EVER in the five years of Hallandale Beach Blog, with a total of 41,898 individual page views -an increase over the previous record in October 2012 by 6,552- for an average of 1,396.6 page views a day. 
Thanks!
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Monday, November 5, 2012

Unethical Bill Julian -Looking for another reason NOT to vote for mendacious Hallandale Beach City Commission candidate Julian? Well, he's a devout plagiarist and revisionist historian. Julian continues misrepresenting not only his own record while in office for 9 years, but our city's current reality. The night before Election Day, Julian continues illegally using photos he stole from this blog to promote his candidacy -for an office that he's shown he's clearly unfit for

Above, screenshot of Bill Julian's myth-filled campaign website, featuring three photos of mine that he stole directly from this blog, circled in orange, as it appeared when I first discovered the theft on June 19th. Fourteen weeks later, less than 3 days before Election Day, they're still there, hiding in plain sight. http://billjulian.org/ Julian is not just a repeat offender, but lousy at engaging in a cover-up of his own dishonest behavior.
Less than three full days before Election Day, mendacious Hallandale Beach candidate Bill Julian continues misrepresenting both reality and himself. Dishonest Julian continues illegally using photos from this blog to promote his candidacy for an office that he's repeatedly shown he's NOT "fit" for
FYI: I started this blog post on Saturday but decided to postpone it until tonight to wait for a response to an email I sent on Saturday. As you might guess, it involves Bill Julian's lack of ethical behavior, something you'd know about if you've ever dealt with Bill Julian and his posse. 

 When Julian uses the word "Honest" in his campaign materials, he means honest in a way that's very different from the way that most people have come to generally understand the word.

 Julian means that he honestly believes what he's saying, regardless of whether or not anyone else does.

 Honestly, how many different times can somebody show you, themselves, that they are NOT a person of integrity? 
Not a person to be taken seriously?

 On his website, Julian actually has the nerve to try to copyright material that is NOT his to copyright, since appearing on that site is the following: "© Copyright 2012 BillJulian.org All Rights" Reserved Worldwide."

 As if that were not enough for this busy plagiarist, Julian is also illegally using my photo of the Hallandale Beach Water Tower on promotional fliers that he has been placing inside small businesses around Hallandale Beach, where the owners know nothing of his true record and penchant for lying, exaggerating or violating the law.

 For an example of this, swing by the restaurant known as Zona, on the northeast corner of northbound First Avenue and NE. 3rd Street. It's right on the window.
Yes, the place that used to sell tacos and where everyone always catches the red light near the FEC Railroad tracks.

 Below are some of the first emails in a series that have been exchanged the past few days following my phone call on Saturday alerting the owner of the company that hosts Julian's website to Julian using photos of mine for months that he is not legally authorized to use and has not paid for.

 Despite the fact that I clearly state near the top of the blog that among other places, my photos are NOT to be used for campaign purposes.
Julian didn't care and stole them anyway.
That's who he is.

 The weird part in this whole situation is that the owner of this company, Mike, is defending Julian even while acknowledging that he will NOT ask Julian how he came to have these particular photos, which most of you will recognize on sight since they've been here for so many years. I have a strong feeling that Mike may come to regret that approach of his.

 I will have more on this in the coming days, but here are the first few chapters, and all of this aggravation because Bill Julian can't and won't follow the law.

 The first email here is from late this afternoon today, going backwards towards Saturday, with me being the referenced DBS. I've eliminated the email addresses here for obvious reasons
------------
Dear Mike:

Despite the fact that someone who has been a public official as long as Bill Julian
should know better, once again, when given the chance, Julian operates NOT within
the scope of the law but on the other side of it.
Did you even ask him how he claims to have the right to use them?
I'm guessing that you did not.

If you ask him, he will NOT be able to answer even the simplest question
about my photos on his campaign website without acknowledging that, in fact,
he stole them without permission and without paying for them.

The Internet is not a Chinese restaurant menu for people the likes of Julian to illegally
pick and choose things they want without permission and without paying.

I sent you a detailed email which specifically had the links to the first time those 
photos -my photos- ever appeared on the Internet, and Google Images also 
proves it since they have the photos there and whose blog is shown as being
the ones that are associated with the photos back in 2008 and 2009, long before
you had ever heard of Bill Julian.

How would that be possible if they were Julian's copyright and his name never 
appears on Google Images associated with them?
They wouldn't. Period

If the photos are still up on Friday morning, and NOT deleted from anything and 
everything that you as the owner and Bill Julian as the client are in control of, I'll 
only be too happy to contact the appropriate legal authorities for redress, and
that includes the Florida Commission on Ethics, which under law, is empowered
to fine candidates in violation, regardless of whether or not they win.

I'm trying my best to save you from being embarrassed by your association with
perpetual scofflaw Julian, but if you keep making excuses for him, and don't use
logic or reason to do what is right, I'm afraid that you,. too, will have a problem that
you can't possibly win on.
Bill Julian, like so many things he did while he was a public official, persists in
acting like he has a justified sense of entitlement, and can do whatever he wants.
No, he can't.

DBS


On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 3:40 PM, Mike wrote:

David,
I talked Bill and to my attorney today and will gladly comply with your request once you provide to me proof of your copyright ownership for the graphics in question i.e. .. copyright registration, transfer of copyright ownership documentation or documentation from the US Copyright Office.

 Regards,
Mike
Mike-Owner


 -------Original Message-------
From: DBS
Date: 11/3/2012 3:04:41 PM
To: mike
Cc: DBS

 Subject: re Bill Julian's serial use of my copyrighted photos on his campaign website without my permission, using your resources

 Dear Michael:

Per our phone conversation earlier this afternoon about Bill Julian's serial use of my copyrighted photographs on his campaign website without my permission.
Something that I'm sure that he never mentioned to you when setting up his website with you
Obviously, I want those photos of mine removed from his website ASAP.

The first time that I wrote about it was on June 20th, the day after I first discovered he was
illegally using them.

This particular post has the three photos of mine he uses and the specific dates that I first shot
them and how I used them on my blog for years: July 3, 2009: March 3, 2009; and May 8, 2008.

Stop thief, stop! So guess whose campaign website contains 3 of my original blog photos -all taken without permission or paying for them? Bill Julian. Yes, just like Hallandale Beach City Manager Mark Antonio's serial copyright theft of many of my original photos. Antonio will soon learn that stealing just doesn't pay!

Here's some interesting information that I've shared over the past two years that has nothing
to do  with Julian's illegal use of my photos on his website(s), but which I'm sure Julian probably
never  mentioned to you -info that lots more Hallandale Beach residents and TV/print reporters
and columnists know about than he knows:








I'd appreciate your quick attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

DBS, Hallandale Beach, FL

-----
Late Monday addition to the blog post.
Almost forgot to mention it earlier but...

The city's rules regarding campiagn signage are very clear and given to each candidate by the City Clerk.
During Early Voting, campaign signs around the city's Cultural Center may NOT be left overnight.
They must be picked up following voting each and every night.

Early Voting was over Saturday night and yet as of late Monday afternoon there is one Hallandale Beach candidate who has chosen NOT to follow the rules -Bill Julian.
There's no other city candidate in violation of this rule around the City Hall Municipal Complex, just Bill Julian. (No, not even Mayor Cooper and Comm. Sanders.)

His very large campaign sign has been in place on city property near the cannons around the circle between City Hall and the Cultural Center and was still there as of Monday at 3:30 p.m., 45 hours after Early Voting concluded.
Please explain to me why he has been allowed to violate the city's own rules and the sign was not confiscated by Code Compliance and moved by the city? Hmm-m...
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Friday, November 2, 2012

Let the critics chew over that! The best -EVER! October 2012 is THE best month ever at Hallandale Beach Blog with 35,346 individual pageviews - a daily average of 1,140 views; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy


October 3, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

My most-read blog post for the month is one from October 15th that really hit the spot for lots of very frustrated residents and small business-owners -news media members- in Hallandale Beach and environs, titled, "Ethics? Not for us! Follow-up to my post re Hallandale Beach's unethical "business as usual" attitude, with "special rules for special people" if they are named Joy Cooper, Bill Julian and Anthony A. Sanders; What ethics? What rules? @MayorCooper, @SandersHB"
That post is now one of the sixth most-read posts in the history of this blog and now stands at 
2024 individual pageviews... and counting.

It looked at not only the record of very bad judgment of Joy Cooper, Bill Julian and Anthony A. Sanders when it comes to ethics and how they've comported themselves in office and out, but their current campaigns, where they have kept the city's Code Compliance Dept. busy removing their illegally erected signs, including all the ones they and their supporters have put on city property/facilities far from the city's one-and-only Early Voting site.

The record is clear that regardless of the particular circumstances, over-and-over again, these three will say and do whatever they want, not what the state, county and city's own rules and laws prevent, and frankly, they don't much care what the Broward Inspector General or the Broward State's Attorney and their staffs think.
Yes, the former is calling the latter's bluff -and the latter is snoozing.

(To say nothing of their lack of positive achievements the WHOLE CITY can actually take pride in. A city budget that's nearly doubled in size in 6-8 years? No thanks!!!)

If you care about such things, the four most-popular browsers coming to the blog for October and their percentage: Chrome (32%), Internet Explorer (29%), Firefox (23%), Opera (7%)

I started keeping track of monthly statistics in summer of 2008, so I have no reliable numbers for the first year of the blog.
As much as I can recite sports stats or team rosters or political results or songs from 30 and 40 years ago, it never occurred to me at the time to keep track of the blog's stats that first year, though, in retrospect, I wish I had.

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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Where's the tangible proof you're succeeding in eliminating corruption at Hallandale Beach City Hall, Mr. Scott? My email to Broward Inspector General John. W. Scott and his staff: "Hallandale Beach is still a mess and STILL corrupt. The rules & laws that are largely followed elsewhere are NOT followed here, no matter how self-evident"; Are we on our own as far as prosecuting public corruption goes? It sure seems that way

October 24, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
Below is my email of last Thursday to Broward Inspector General John W. Scott.

 It's an email that I have been thinking seriously about writing and sending for weeks, after talking to friends and other very-concerned residents of Hallandale Beach who are very frustrated that they do NOT see any evidence of his investigation on HB City Hall having any effect on the words and behavior coming out of City Hall.
Nobody-but-nobody has been punished, indicted or prosecuted in the year that the Broward IG's office has been up-and-running.

If you are wondering why I felt compelled to send it to him, perhaps this quick reminder will jog your memory a bit.
I didn't include it in the letter because he already knows all of it from previous letters.

 Here are just some of the things that I know for a stone-cold fact:
a.) After having witnessed all the rampant corruption and entrenched anti-democratic, anti-taxpayer practices that I have at Hallandale Beach City Hall over the past nine years under Mayor Joy Cooper, she shows absolutely no signs of changing her spots; 

 b.) After being physically prevented by City of Hallandale Beach employees from attending a PUBLIC meeting at City Hall regarding bidding on a city project -at the direction of former City Manager Mark A. Antonio and his staff, who were upstairs at the meeting, a meeting with no citizens present, that was mysteriously postponed as soon as I got close to the room with the help of Commissioner Keith London 15-20 minutes later, which led to the meeting ending abruptly and Antonio storming-off towards his office and yelling at Comm. London, and, perhaps, me. No explanation given for why the meeting ended just as soon as I got ready to come into the room; 

 c.) After being threatened with arrest for photographing and videotaping a PUBLIC meeting of the city's Planning & Zoning Advisory Board at the city's Cultural Center -while Mike Good was City Manager- from 50-75 feet away from the proceedings, and one of only two citizens present in the near-completely empty room, a PUBLIC meeting that was ALREADY being broadcast LIVE at the time, and two Dept. heads present (Richard Cannone and Christy Dominguez) just sat in their chairs and said and did NOTHING to stop the illegal threats against me and the state's Sunshine Laws by two members of the Advisory Board; 

 d.) After witnessing dozens of times over several years an elected city official (William "Bill" Julian) continually breaking their oath of office to uphold and obey the laws and Constitution of the State of Florida, by directly using their position of office to accrue a benefit for which he was not otherwise legally entitled to -illegally parking his vehicle in the officially-designated Handicapped Parking and Handicapped Access Parking spaces at the city's North Beach when there was only ONE of each present on the the city's surface parking lot, while Julian ate and drank with his friends for hours.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/stone-cold-fact-bill-julian-serial.html

 Over the many years that Bill Julian consciously chose to break both the spirit and letter of the law, to say nothing of breaking his oath as an elected official to uphold it, hundreds of HB employees saw his behavior and conduct, including lots of Hallandale Beach Police officers. But what happened? 
Nothing.

 There are so many more examples, but then I've already written about them here, too, haven't I?

 I won't be contacting Mr. Scott again because I've already seen dogs chase their tail before, and I do not plan on replicating that behavior myself.
As for myopic and sleepwalking Broward State's Attorney Mike Satz and his staff... more on them soon, I promise.

------
October 25, 2012

Dear Mr. Scott:

 Just wanted to let you know that despite whatever it is that you and your staff of agents are doing, it's NOT working.
Things in Hallandale Beach are still as crooked and corrupt as ever.

 Elected officials and their pals here still fully expect to get away with breaking the law -city, state, federal- and having nothing meaningful happen to them.
Now there's the real measure of the Broward State Attorney's office.

 To cite but one obvious example I have previously shared with you, 
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-city-of-hallandale-beachs-rules-are.html in the rest of the United States, it's illegal for political campaign signs urging someone's election or defeat to appear on non-profit or religious/church property for reasons that are fairly obvious to any intelligent person.
It can lead to IRS investigations and that can even lead to changes in the offending party's institutional non-profit status.
But not in Hallandale Beach.

Here, people who have actually sworn an oath to uphold the law, and who know what's right and wrong, consciously do what they like, the wrong thing, because they dare anyone to catch them or do anything about it if they are caught.
They are forever playing the percentages, Mr. Scott, because they don't believe that you and your agents can do anything to stop them from doing whatever they like, laws or no laws.
See those photos from October 3rd on my link above?

 I went by there yesterday afternoon at 3:53 p.m. -below- absolutely nothing had changed. 
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
And dozens and dozens of city Code Compliance vehicles go past this location every week.

I hate to be the one to tell you, but since nobody else will, Mr. Scott, everyone I know here who is well-informed wonders what you and your staff are actually doing, because we certainly AREN'T seeing any positive results or any change of ethical culture at City Hall with you and your agents on the scene -somewhere- nor are we seeing any actual arrests or indictments after all the suspicious and egregious things that have happened here over the years.

 I really hoped for the best for your Office, otherwise I'd have never gone to all those early morning Broward Ethics Comm. meetings in downtown Ft. Lauderdale more than two years ago, where I was often THE only citizen present in the audience, but I have to tell you, honestly, the high grade that you gave yourself and your office in the Sun-Sentinel recently, seems inflated from where the put-upon citizen taxpayers of Hallandale Beach sit.
Nothing has changed here.

Perhaps A.G. Bondi's office needs to think outside-the-box to deal with the pervasive corruption problems here, and hold court at the city's Cultural Center for a week, say, after the November 6th election, and let citizens who know something come by and tell soon-to-be-shocked state investigators what they know in private, because quite frankly, it does NOT seem like your office is doing everything that it can and should be doing.

I really hoped for the best, I really did, but I'm seeing something much less than satisfactory right now, Mr. Scott, and simply put, this town can NOT wait for you or Mr. Satz's sleepwalking crew at SAO to finally wake-up and see what's right in front of US.

People talk to me just about everyday -serious, hard-working people- about moving away from Hallandale Beach because they are so dismayed and disgusted with how pervasively corrupt and incompetently-run City Hall is, with all of the many things that happen on the sly, the down low and with a wink of an eye.
And they are moving out, too.

To cite but one recent example I shared with you on Tuesday, known friends of elected officials trying to use city property for campaigning purposes, even though it's already illegal under city ordinances.
They create the ruse of "voter education" taking place at a city facility as a pretext for their elected official friends to then come by later to campaign there.

In that case, it was originally supposed to be Comm. Anthony A. Sanders and former Comm. Bill Julian who were supposed to swing by Foster Park Wednesday night, two candidates, who, along with Mayor Joy Cooper, had their campaign yard signs illegally and prominently erected on city property for many WEEKS -in multiple locations- until I publicly complained about it 
As you already know.

In case after case, these three individuals know the rules and laws, Mr. Scott - and they consciously choose to break them week-after-week.

 Unfortunately, the HB Police Dept. is hardly in a position to be an oasis of ethics or sanity from this corrupt culture, given that this city, under Mayor Cooper, actually pushed to have a street named for a recent former Police Chief, Thomas Magill.
A Police Chief who illegally used enormous city resources and funds in his efforts to try to frame and prosecute two completely innocent people.
Both of whom happened to be HB Police officers.

That Police Chief, Thomas Magill, was never punished by the city or Mr. Satz's Broward State Attorney's Office. 
Really.

 Magill acted like nothing happened, even as the city's taxpayers had to pay hundreds of thousand of dollars to settle lawsuit claims and attorney's fees because of Magill's egregious (criminal) conduct, after two separate Broward juries unanimously ruled against him.

Both juries came to a unanimous decision in under 15 minutes, Mr. Scott.
What does that tell you?
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
 Above, from yesterday afternoon: one of the many un-manned HBPD patrol cars that are used as scarecrows around town, as if criminals don't already know they're un-manned from their recon. In this particular case, this un-manned Police car is near an un-manned Security Guard gate.
Twice blessed!


Not surprisingly, despite the large amount of tax dollars and city resources involved, Mayor Cooper and the City Commission have never publicly admitted what really happened while they were in charge in an oversight capacity, or disclosed the total amount of taxpayer dollars used to support Magill's defense and paid out to two innocent people because of his truly abominable conduct.
Conduct for which he was never punished.

That's where I live, Mr. Scott.
Welcome to my world.

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