Showing posts with label Indianapolis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indianapolis. Show all posts

Monday, October 22, 2012

More on the Mary Ellen Klaas Syndrome and its negative effect on Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald readers: Fact-checking the Tallahassee bureau reporter, due to her sheer lack of curiosity and fairness about facts and context, is a full-time job; Her calling John Couriel a "sleeper" a month before FL Senate 35 race against Gwen Margolis is proof of how little attention she pays to what's going on, and her editors' sleepwalking ways



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More on the Mary Ellen Klaas Syndrome and its negative effect on Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald readers: Fact-checking the Tallahassee bureau reporter, due to her sheer lack of curiosity and fairness about facts and context, is a full-time job; Her calling John Couriel a "sleeper" a month before FL Senate 35 race against Gwen Margolis is proof of how little attention she pays to what's going on, and her editors' sleepwalking ways 

In a state that is, literally, drowning in them, Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee bureau reporter Mary Ellen Klaas is consistently one of the best (and therefore among the worst) examples of a print reporter who reveals so much more than they think about their own views and notions about public policy, simply by the patterns that emerge by the facts they choose NOT to include, by whom she chooses NOT to interview or quote, and by what she conveniently forgets to mention to readers or remind them of.

More often than should be the case in a state this large -the fourth largest in the country I remind you- and whose capital is so poorly misunderstood by the great majority of its own citizens, so many of whom have NEVER been to Tallahassee...
It's the closest thing we have in the Southeast United States to the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea.

Is there any state in the United States with a larger percentage of its full-time residents who have NEVER been to its state capital than Florida's?
Having grown-up in South Florida after being born in San Antonio and living for a few years in Memphis before my family moved here when I was seven, this odd-yet-true fact about the people who live in this state has always been my reality and one of the reasons I believe this state has always been so much less than what it ought to be.
Look at how it's laid out, like it's still 1845.

In the same way that all those years of my being at Indiana University in Bloomington showed me that Indianapolis was the most perfectly-centered state capital in the country, because it was almost impossible to ever find anyone who'd lived in the state for more than a year who not only hadn't been there, but who also knew where a lot of places were located, like good restaurants, good parks and good people-watching spots..
It's their particular reality like this dubious fact is ours and here's why I bring this up.

For those of you reading this far from South Florida who don't ever think about it, the Florida state capital is actually at roughly the same longitude as Cincinnati, Ohio and is actually farther west in the country than Detroit in the Midwest
I take it for granted but...

Well, getting back to Klaas, an example of the sort of thing I've written about in emails to friends, acquaintances and others "in the loop" in the past because her articles are so consistently and objectively ridiculous, both the first time you read them and in retrospect months or years later.

I would say that, conservatively, I have probably written about her in similar emails about 25 times in the past 5 years.
But I seldom mentioned them here.

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http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/content/senate-veteran-margolis-faces-fight-newcomer

ELECTION 2012
Margolis is outraised by surprise newcomer in Senate race  
A Republican newcomer is hoping his moderate message will unseat venerable state Sen. Gwen Margolis in a newly drawn Miami district.
BY MARY ELLEN KLAS, HERALD/TIMES TALLAHASSEE BUREAU
October 8, 2012

In what may be the sleeper legislative campaign of the season, Sen. Gwen Margolis, the veteran Democrat from Miami, is getting a run for her money — literally — from Miami Beach lawyer John Couriel in the newly drawn coastal district.
Margolis has loaned herself $160,000 to win re-election to Senate District 35, which stretches from Golden Beach to Homestead. But she is being out-raised and, thus far, outspent by Republican newcomer, John Couriel, a Miami Beach lawyer.
Couriel, 34, has collected $213,830 in campaign contributions to Margolis’ $174,093 and has won the endorsements of former Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. A Harvard-educated lawyer, Couriel quit his job as an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami to run for the seat and vows to out-campaign Margolis, 78, a former state Senate president who was first elected to the state House in 1974.
“I’m hustling. I’ve never done this before but I’m not going to be out-worked,’’ Couriel said Monday during a break from walking door-to-door in Pinecrest.
Couriel has the trappings of broad Republican support, from the endorsements of party icons Rubio and Bush to a political committee running attack ads against his opponent. But there is one notable absence: his race is not among the must-watch contests receiving cash infusions from the Senate Majority, the political committees controlled by incoming Senate leader Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.
At a meeting with reporters last week, Gaetz singled out the races that could produce upsets and Couriel v. Margolis wasn’t among them.
“Sen. Gaetz and I are friends,’’ Margolis said Monday, noting that the Niceville Republican lived for years in her Miami Shores district and supported her.
Couriel says he is undaunted that he’s not getting more attention from Senate leadership. “I am assuming I need to do this on my own,’’ he said.
He said he’s running because he believes voters want a change. “The purpose of public office is not to honor someone by electing them to office. We elect someone to work for us and I’m running because I think I could do a better job.”
The district trends Democratic, with nearly 60 percent voting for Obama in 2008 and Alex Sink in 2010. But Democrats do not comprise a majority of the district — 45 percent are registered Democrat, compared to 28 percent registered as no party affiliated and 27 percent registered Republican.
Couriel believes he can reach independents and crossover voters with his moderate Republican message. He ticks off the statistics in previous races to make his case.
"Rick Scott doesn’t do well here,’’ Couriel said, but Republican Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater barely lost the district in 2010 and Rubio beat Democrat Kendrick Meek in the U.S. Senate race. "That tells me that many Democrats are soft.’’
Margolis has been a fixture in Miami Dade politics for decades, and Couriel must not only introduce himself to voters but bring down Margolis’ image in the process, an expensive task in the long coastal district.
“To effectively run an aggressive campaign against Sen. Margolis is going to take a lot of money,’’ said Christian Ulvert, a Margolis advisor and Democratic consultant.
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Here's the real kicker, which I described last Wednesday in yet another email to the same people who received a link to the first article above.
I swear, I'm not making this up. 
On Tuesday the Miami Herald endorsed a candidate for the Florida state Senate, John Couriel -a Miami native, Harvard Law School grad and currently an Assistant U.S. Attorney for Miami- whose first name they never mention -or anything else about him in their endorsement as it appears online!
So what the hell kind of endorsement is that?
John Couriel in FL Senate District 35 http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/15/3051440/state-senate-districts.html
More evidence of the very low state the Herald has fallen to before our eyes.
In this article from last week, the first time the Herald mentioned John Couriel since he  announced he was running, their reporter, rather ironically considering their poor coverage of local news and politics, chose to start the article thusly: "In what may be the sleeper legislative campaign of the season..."
Actually, it seems more like the reporter, Mary Ellen Klaas, is the one who is playing Rip Van Winklesince she reported last week that four weeks before the election, a first-time candidate has out-raised and out-spent a forty-year career politician with very high name recognition, and who was formerly the President of the Florida State Senate and after that, a Miami-Dade Commissioner.
(Margolis is someone whom I met a lot while growing-up in NMB and being very involved in county Dem politics and campaigns, including at functions in North Miami circa mid-1970's that my mother attended when I was Junior High age.
She's the very same woman who, while I was living and working for 15 years in Washington, D.C., before it was finally built decades after it was needed, strongly considering making the William Lehman Causeway Bridge, that connects Aventura to Sunny Isles, a toll bridge, unless she got her way on something involving tax revenues!
Imagine traffic on glacial U.S.-1/Biscayne Blvd. now next to Aventura Mall if there was a toll road next door -actually worse than it is now if possible, which IS very hard to imagine, given how many times I've felt like I was going to run out of gas (and patience) while creeping along one block at a time in the afternoonYou remember, don't you Aventura, Sunny Isles and Hallandale Beach? Imagine if she had had her way!)
The new district is so enormous and obtuse that on the north it goes from west of the Florida Turnpike in Hollywood, down to an area in Miami-Dade County where I lived in the early 1980's when back from IU for the summer, many miles south of downtown Miami, back before they were calling it PinecrestPlus, that district as currently drawn also includes Key Biscayne!
See for yourself: http://maps.flsenate.gov/de1/map.html?plan=fl2002_sen&district=35

Key Biscayne?That's f-ing preposterous!!!Hollywood to Key Biscayne? Why?
Why do you think -so that Hispanics can vote for Hispanics, Blacks can vote for blacks and Jews can... and some reporter somewhere in the future can opine about why it's hard to find someone with voter wide appeal in South Florida who is not a demagogue.
In South Florida politics, outside of municipal races, you don't need to be smart, savvy, hard-working, conciliatory or even have good ideas that can make it possible for you to get positive things done, you simply need to be one of three favored ethnic demographics -that's it!
So given Couriel's not-insignificant accomplishment, why did Klaas and the newspapers NEVER write anything about him and his efforts all year, before last week?
http://www.miamiherald.com/search_results?aff=1100&q=%22Couriel%22

Like how he managed to accomplish all this?
Why the apathy and indifference?
That's the media landscape we live in in the year 2012 in South Florida.
It's forever the dog that doesn't bark!
Yeah, plus everyone's an expert after the fact!
Not a sheep dog or a watch dog but rather a lapdog! 

Friday, September 28, 2012

R.I.P. Chris Economaki, the "Voice of American Motorsports" -and so many great weekends of my youth; #chriseconomaki

cjs3872 video: 1973 Indianapolis 500, Part 4 (The Start). Updated November 13, 2011. http://youtu.be/CysanZ78eBo

R.I.P. Chris Economaki, the TV Voice of American Motorsports -and so many great weekends of my youth.

Yes, back in those pre-cable TV days of only a handful of TV channels, when the day my Sports Illustrated magazine arrived in my mailbox, usually a Friday, was one of the highlights of the week. (In fact, the first issue I ever received as part of my subscription, in 1971, when I was ten years-old,  was of driving legend and ABC Sports analyst Jackie Stewart on the cover.)

Between ABC Sports' always excellent coverage of racing, including Wide World of Sports,  and SI's excellent news analysis and penetrating photography of motor sports -back when they had Indy-style racing on the cover more frequently than they have the past 20 years- I always knew what was really going on and who really disliked whom, when feuds were real and not always so contrived or orchestrated for marketing purposes.

By the time the Memorial Day weekend finally rolled around and Race Day arrived, I knew who all the drivers were, what their recent history had been, and which drivers or teams desperately needed to win or do well to keep going because of lack of sponsorship money.


USA Today
Chris Economaki changed motor sports coverage
by Nate Ryan, USA TODAY Sports
September 28, 2012
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/nascar/story/2012/09/28/chris-economaki-changed-motor-sports-coverage/57851350/1


The multi-day 1973 Indy race featured in this video, eventually won by Gordon Johncock, back when ABC's coverage was Taped, Same-Day coverage, and NOT LIVE, which made the waiting all the worse, was one of the most deadly and tragic in Indy 500 history, with the death of two drivers, a pit crew member and several fans being seriously injured during a horrific crash. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Indianapolis_500



georgendy video: Uploaded February 16, 2008. http://youtu.be/X-IsOuo5be8

 
http://youtu.be/9yb9drI1XHk

Salt Walther's accident comes at 2:43, Swede Savage's deadly crash at 6:41 

Even now when watching thsi video, when the late-great Jim McKay goes thru the eleven rows of the starting drivers, I can almost recall what I was thinking, excited to see another race day come to Indy. When I think of those drivers now, this is exactly the way that I picture them.

And Chris Economaki as much if not more than anyone else, was the person most- responsible for filling my youthful head with all sorts of useful racing facts, telling historical anecdotes and amusing raceway trivia nuggets, to make me as fully prepared as possible to follow the race with some degree of understanding and intelligence -more than a thousand miles away in hot and humid North Miami Beach.
Little did I know then when listening to his informed words, that in just a few short years, Indiana would become a very important part of my life, as it remains to this day.


New York Times
Chris Economaki, Rumbling Voice of Auto Racing, Dies at 91
By Douglas Martin
Published: September 28, 2012
Chris Economaki, whose gravelly broadcast voice and prolific pen — specifically, his manual Royal typewriter — narrated the rise of auto racing from county-fair dirt tracks to a global multibillion-dollar business, died on Friday in a nursing home in Wyckoff, N.J. He was 91.
Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/sports/chris-economaki-rumbling-voice-of-auto-racing-dies-at-91.html

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Giving credit where credit is due: diabolical genius! Deadspin asks, "What Time Does The Super Bowl Start, He Wrote As A Headline To Game The Google Results"

NY Giants defensive players have to resort to faking injuries in order to keep St. Louis Rams no-huddle offense from steamrolling them. Sept. 20, 2011. http://youtu.be/eY26rgd4aps



It's not officially a Super Bowl until Alyssa Milano comes to Indy. 
NOW it's on!


Above, Alyssa wearing her signature Touch by Alyssa Milano New England Patriots Sweater Mix Jacket, the sort of thing you may've seen at the NFL Experience if you were in Indy while she was there schmoozing with fans and doing some promotional work for her popular line of NFL-themed women's clothing.
(I went to the one in D.C. held on the National Mall when the NFL started doing that to start off the season and held it in the NFL city hosting the first Monday Night Football game; if I remember correctly, they later had a mini-concert there by Journey, which I missed, since I rushed home to watch the game on TV.) 
But while I have chosen to show Alyssa wearing Patriots gear above because I'm picking them to beat the Giants by at least ten points tonight, as you can see from the photos of her at her always amusing posterous photo blog, which as I've mentioned here previously, I've subscribed to for a while now, she's actually pulling for the NY Football Giants. 
http://alyssamilano.posterous.com/date-night-in-indy


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Giving credit where credit is due: diabolical genius! 
Deadspin: "What Time Does The Super Bowl Start, He Wrote As A Headline To Game The Google Results"
The post was sinister and dumb and ruthless and brilliant, and a good indicator of why the HuffPo's traffic numbers are so insane.
http://deadspin.com/5881720/what-time-does-the-super-bowl-start-he-wrote-as-a-headline-to-game-the-google-results


http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/46/what-time-is-the-superbowl

Or, if you are not near any of the tens of millions of Americans TVs that have the game on,  watch it online at: http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/46/live/sunday



Beet TV video:  NFL, NBC Sports and Verizon Wireless Ready the First Mobile Super Bowl
By Andy Plesser
February 3, 2012
http://www.beet.tv/2012/02/superbowl.html  



Rasmussen Reports
Super Bowl Viewers Don’t Think Madonna’s Good Choice For Halftime Show
February 3, 2012 http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/sports/january_2012/super_bowl_viewers_don_t_think_madonna_s_good_choice_for_halftime_show

Yes, 57% of likely Super Bowl viewers say no to Madonna as halftime entertainment, and I'm with them. For about the 20th year in a row I won't watch the halftime, but instead mute the TV and listen to what they're saying on the radio broadcast, in case someone stumbles accidentally into telling the the truth.


By the way, the 57% opposed to Madonna is a higher percentage of American than have voted for any winning presidential candidate since November of 1984.
(President Reagan was re-elected with 58.8% of the vote to former Vice President Walter Mondale's 40.6%.)


Two months after that election was the last Super Bowl the Dolphins played in, a 38-16 loss to the 49ers.
To give you some perspective, no woman now or recently appearing in Playboy was alive when the Dolphins last played in the Super Bowl. 
Just saying... epic mediocrity spans decades.


Here's some more perspective on those 27 years:

1985: The last time the Dolphins made it to the Super Bowl.
Story: Jake Cline, Sun Sentinel, Photo gallery: Melina I. De Rose, Sun Sentinel

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/pictures/sfl-super-bowl-1985-lifestyle,0,1759537.photogallery

Below, an excellent historical analysis of Super Sunday from John Maxham, an advertising executive at Seattle's Cole & Weber United.
He "gets it."
Apart from being an effective and fun marketing gimmick, the use of Roman numerals in the Super Bowl may offer a deeper insight into our national psyche


mediabistro's AgencySpy blog
Op-Ed: ‘Svper Bowl Svnday’ – Our Invented Ancient Tradition
By Kiran Aditham on February 3, 2012 11:03 AM
http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/op-ed-svper-bowl-svnday-our-invented-ancient-tradition_b29030


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Two last things: If Tom Coughlan and Eli Manning were with the Seattle Seahawks, and had the same back story and stats, and were now in the Super Bowl, nobody-but-nobody would be talking the nonsense I've heard so much of this past week, on ESPN and elsewhere, about how IF they win against the Patriots, they're locks to get into Canton.
Who decided that?


It's because they're with the New York Giants. 
Period.


Again, I like the Patriots by at least ten points.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

After watching this, I'm convinced: singing & dancing flash mob across the U.S.A. during Super Bowl's halftime would be more fun than watching Madonna



Madcon - Glow - 2009 Eurovision Song Contest Flashmob Dance Finale (HD), Oslo, Norway. May 2009. http://youtu.be/32lpdFS7rPM

It starts a little slow, I'll grant you, but at 2:19, as the cameras leave the arena, then, serendipity...

After watching this, I'm convinced that a televised singing and dancing flash mob across the U.S.A., during the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show, would be MUCH MORE FUN to see than simply watching Madonna perform a medley of her well-known songs in Indy at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Or, perhaps more interesting than even that, would be to have it televised from the two cities which have teams playing, as people sing and dance wearing their -quite likely- Green Bay Packer cheeseheads and Baltimore Ravens purple jerseys and gear.

Me, I never watch the Super Bowl pre-game programming anymore, as there are far too many 'human interest' stories with female reporters trying to look empathetic as they interview some special-team player's sister's husband's barber with cancer, or the like.
I usually mute the TV during Super Bowl halftime anyway, and flip on the radio telecast to hear their analysis, so this would actually be more fun and amusing to watch and see how each city tries to top the other somehow.
And it would be easy to find a commercial sponsor, too!

Whatever happened to all the genuinely dangerous flash mobs, anyway?
Like the ones that terrorized Chicagoland and Philadelphia this spring and summer, which I wrote about here, along with some startling videos?
They seem to have stopped in their tracks once 'Occupy Wall Street' came on the scene.
Hmm-m...

Then again, maybe it's just a spring and summer phenomena...

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In case you forgot why the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest -above- was being held in the Oslo area in the first place, it was because Norway's Alexander Rybak had won the 2009 competition in Moscow with "Fairytale", and the next competition is always hosted by the winner's home country.



EUROVISION 2009 WINNER -NORWAY, ALEXANDER RYBAK, FAIRYTALE -HQ STEREO
http://youtu.be/uiH4BFTELME

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http://www.youtube.com/user/AlexanderRybakVideo/


http://www.alexanderrybak.com/

Sunday, January 24, 2010

South Beach Hoosier Time Machine: Revisiting Tim Padgett's "Revenge of the Hoosiers"


Given the chance that the world and our small
part of it in South Florida could be firmly and
fatally knocked-off its axis at the possibility of
the New York Jets actually making it to a
Super Bowl being played in South Florida
two weeks hence, and the Jets even using
the Dolphins training facility in Davie as
their practice facility if they beat the Colts
later this afternoon -to the apparent delight
of the smug, not-so-bright
marketing
geniuses dumb enough to be quoted by name
here,
in the perfectly predictable Herald
pre-Super Bowl
puff piece full of cliches

http://www.miamiherald.com/614/story/1442833.html?commentSort=TimeStampAscending&pageNum=1 -
I wanted to bring up a heretofore unmentioned
yet positive reason to root against the Jets:
civility
.

Not that another is really needed for the most
devout South Florida sports fans, who continually
despair of continually seeing a certain crowd
who loves to flaunt their so-called 'individuality'
by their wearing of a New York Yankees or
Mets caps, like lemmings.

This is always grating, but most galling when
observed among young kids or adults who
never actually lived there when anyone named
Seaver or Mattingly were playing.

Their much-older counterpart are equally
known to us, droning on incessantly about
stick ball really being... blah, blah, blah...

Sorry, I've already tuned you out.
This isn't 1947 and you aren't some skinny
Italian nine-year old kid in Brooklyn,
capisce?

You also aren't Pele wrapping string and tape
together in your poor neighborhood in Brazil
in the early '50's to make a ball because you
are so jaw-droppingly poor.

You're from the largest city in this country,
and yet you are continually crowing and
bragging about things that have nothing
at all to do with anything you or your family
ever did or said.

And need I remind you, you are
living here, too,
no?
End of diatribe, sort of.

Well, except to remind you that when the
Jets beat the Colts, Nixon still hadn't been
sworn in.

That reason to bear the Jets animus maximus
is the possible infusion into rude and antagonistic
South Florida of some well-needed Midwestern
friendliness, or if you will, some Hoosier
hospitality
.

The nice welcoming cool breeze to wash away
the unrelenting torpor of humid heat and
smugness that so often pervades this place.

Sort of like what we had regularly around the
holidays in the '70's and early '80's when the
Big 12 Conference Champ always played in
the Orange Bowl Game, and tons of
well-mannered alums from Nebraska,
Oklahoma and even Colorado were all over
Miami spending money and enjoying
themselves, sometimes even saying how
much they envied us living down here
with the weather and the water.

The very same ones that grew fed-up with
bad service, high prices and non-English
speaking personnel -esp. in hotel
parking garages
- and the ever-present
threat of crime near downtown Miami
and the OMNI when that was actually
something and not just an
embarrassing eyesore.

And they were chased away, too, based on
my conversations with those fans, here and
in other towns where I met them years later.
They felt unappreciated.

If the Colts win as I expect and hope, do you
really think you'll run into quite so many
people playing know-it-all smart aleck
over at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino
in Hollywood, over at The Clevelander
on South Beach or eating somewhere on
A1A in Hollywood, talking far too loudly
about real estate, and how they speculated
in South Florida real estate for years
-hello Radius and Duo!- but were
smart enough to get out in the nick of time,
as we would if the Jets are here?

Let me answer my own rhetorical question:
No, you won't.

Before you watch today's AFC Championship
Game between the Colts and Jets, be sure
to read this almost three-years old piece by
TIME's Miami Bureau Chief Tim Padgett,
a proud and brilliant grad of Wabash College
by way of Carmel, Indiana, and, as it happens,
one of the most prescient Latin America
political reporters in the country.

And I'm not just saying that because he's a
Hoosier.

In Tim's case, a Hoosier-by-birth, as
opposed to my sister and I, who were
Hoosiers-by-choice, as she followed me
from North Miami Beach HS to Bloomington
three years later, in 1982, even staying in
Briscoe Quad, the same dorm near
Assembly Hall
and Memorial Stadium
where I lived for my first two years there.

Why does that name Padgett sound so
familiar?

Yes, because in September, as you read here,
Tim wrote the definitive analysis piece on
South Florida in the 21st Century.

His piece was an Internet sensation nationally
precisely because it resonated with everyone
who knows anything about this area, whether
they live here or just visit.

See my original Sept. 6, 2009 post about his
article, which I titled,
Dear Florida, California, Michigan & Illinois:
It's over.
See ya in the rear view mirror!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/dear-florida-california-michigan.html

TIME
Florida Exodus: Rising Taxes Drive Out Residents

By TIM PADGETT/MIAMI

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

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.
See the rest of Behind Florida's Exodus: Rising Taxes, Political Ineptitude at
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919916,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular

A short amusing TIME piece by Tim on
his hometown of Carmel, north of Indy,
and their seeming love affair with roundabouts
or traffic circles, was here:


You Want a Revolution

By TIM PADGETT
September 4, 2008
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1838753,00.html

Carmel in the early '80's was sort of like...
well, for our purposes here, like Miami Lakes
in the late '70's when that was almost like
Dolphin City, with so many coaches and
players living there.

Except Indy had no NFL team then, as that
was Bears and Bengals territory, and we got
all their telecasts on CBS and NBC on the
Indy stations.

Carmel was very affluent, well-educated,
and had lots of smart kids, just like HML
back when they were also the dominant
South Florida high school in sports, even
having lights on their HS field, which meant
the baseball team could play at night when
more people could watch and that their
elite football team could practice in
something other than 94 degree sunshine.

(My senior year, the HML valedictorian
famously ripped the school's emphasis
on
competition and sports at their graduation
ceremony, which everyone heard about
as
there were both School Board members
and
Channel 4 TV cameras present.)

When I was at IU, Carmel meant Mark
Hermann
, the Purdue QB, who'd been
a HS star for the Greyhounds.
Carmel bad, Purdue bad!

A Purdue QB from Carmel?
Well, as it was explained to me, not unlike
what Richard Lewis would say about his
dating: two wrongs don't make a right!

IU
students from Carmel, like people who
went to Harvard, were always quick to let
you know it.
Didn't mean they were bad, just perhaps
a little too quick to pat themselves on their
back for something that had nothing to do
with them personally.

Hey, that's just like that class of former
New Yorkers in South Florida I was just
impugning a few minutes ago!

By the way, while I was at IU, the NCAA's
HQ was located in Kansas City, and didn't
move to Indy until a few years after I'd said
au revoir, http://www.ncaa.org/

If any of you are interested in the job,
nominations for people interested in becoming
the NCAA President must be received by
March 10th.

See: http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/ncaa/ncaa+news/ncaa+news+online/2010/association-wide/ncaa_president_description


Revenge of the Hoosiers By Tim Padgett
February 5, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1585951,00.html



"In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation." -South Beach Hoosier, 2007

C'est moi!