Showing posts with label Kendrick Meek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kendrick Meek. Show all posts

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Days before Miami-Dade's mayoral election, nobody cares who Kendrick Meek supports, and the Herald's Patricia Mazzei ignores Robaina's snub of NE Dade

Miami-Dade County mayoral candidate Carlos Gimenez talking about the taxpayer-built Florida Marlins stadium in Little Havana, Miami International Airport and the Port of Miami
http://youtu.be/2pSc09_FupM
Days before Miami-Dade's mayoral election, nobody cares who Kendrick Meek supports and the Herald's Patricia Mazzei ignores Julio Robaina's snub of N.E. Miami-Dade, especially the affluent, well-informed and habitual voters in Aventura.

Five days before the Miami-Dade mayoral election that nobody but Norman Braman could've predicted a year ago, nobody-but-nobody cares who former Miami congressman and 2010 Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek supports in this important election, including the Miami Herald that endorsed him last year.

Meek has literally fallen off a cliff not only politically but in terms of being taken seriously, which as dutiful readers of this blog will recall, was always a problem of his that I have been writing and noting here in thsi space, since I'm as sure as sure can be that he STILL hasn't read the Obamacare legislation he voted for in the U.S. House.

Meek's inherent lack of gravitas is why so many Democrats, locally and nationally, felt completely comfortable abandoning him in droves last year for the false candidacy of Charlie Crist, a pig in a poke.
And it's also why so many of us consciously voted against Alex Sink last year, too.

Seriously, try to think of a well-known elected official in one of the country's largest states who has gone from being a U.S. Senate nominee to a nobody in less time. than Meek.
They haven't mentioned him in a serious article since...

And yet somehow, last year, the Mainstream Media, the beloved MSM, especially the Miami Herald, wanted us to honestly believe that Meek was a serious and viable candidate for the august U.S. Senate.
And seven months later, he's a complete non-factor in his base.
Just saying....


And speaking of being in the dark, why in the world is the poorly-edited Miami Herald, or more particularly, their biased reportorial loose cannon, Patricia Mazzei, whom I have rightly criticized here so often, showing her bad news judgment yet again on an important subject.
Of missing both the tree AND the forest.

I recently mentioned -exclusively here on the blog- how I'd discovered from Comm. Sally Heyman's office that former Hialeah mayor Julio Robaina wanted to have no part of any of THREE debates or forums to be held in northeast Miami-Dade County.
And those were just the ones they knew about Robaina ducking.
Perhaps there were more.

And yet, THOSE facts got repeated where exactly, besides among people who come to the blog and whom I emailed the news?

Yet now, all of a sudden, because former M-D commissioner Carlos Gimenez -whom I support- has consciously chosen NOT to debate Robaina at previously agreed-upon sites while he retains a lead over Robaina, the news that he won't be speaking before a largely Latin audience is now being treated as important news.
Really?

So why the obvious disparity in news coverage, David Landberg?

Is it that longstanding problem of the Herald's geographic editorial bias that I've alluded to many times before in this space, in describing how certain parts of South Florida get an excessive amount of news coverage from the Herald relative to what actually happens there, while other areas, say, Broward County, get a sliver of what they deserve, especially seeing as how it's 45% of the local market, and yet far too frequently gets zero coverage on weekends.

(The Herald's repeated ignoring of Broward-related news is a matter that will be the subject of a future blog post here with ample evidence to prove my point.
And then some!)

Especially when everyone knows that SO MANY -the majority?- of the debates and forums that have taken place have been held in venues and parts of the county where the audience was overwhelmingly Hispanic.
Yet not a peep from the Herald about the election debate redlining.

Hundreds of thousands of people who live in NE Miami-Dade never even got a chance to speak about their issues to the two candidates, issues that had nothing to do with residents of Westchester or Sweetwater or Doral or Hialeah or... yes, the Latin Builders Association.

The REAL STORY is not that one of the two mayoral candidates in an important election would consciously choose to limit his chances of screwing-up in the latter days of the campaign by eschewing debates, since that was entirely predictable and has happened too many times to count by any reasonable measure, the REAL STORY is that one candidate, Robaina, claimed he wanted to be mayor of the entire county and yet when he had the chance, had no interest in ever appearing in a large part of it and listening to the legitimate concerns of its residents.
There's your REAL STORY!

You know, in other parts of the country where I have lived, and probably many of you as well, THAT sort of deliberate action by a candidate to IGNORE an entire swath of the area would definitely count as news, and would've been written about and broadcast on local newscasts for days as it was happening, and hard-edged questions would've been asked of the party choosing
to duck an entire part of the voting area.

Yet here in South Florida, the Miami Herald and the rest of the local print and TV press corps have completely ignored it.
Like they have so many hundreds of stories and trends in the past.

Which is part of the reason I decided to start this blog in the first place, right?
To correct that oversight among people who have great resources at their fingertips and yet who STILL can't see what is right in front of them.


Thank goodness for Michael Putney, whom, if he didn't exist, we'd have to make-up out of whole cloth, since he remains the public policy/social conscience of the community, since on this past Sunday's This Week in South Florida with Michael Putney on Channel 10/WPLG-TV, featured a heated discussion of the issues between Carlos Gimenez and Julio Robaina.

TWISF can be seen here in its entirety:
http://www.local10.com/video/28297806/index.html

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Miami Herald
Gimenez withdraws from remaining mayoral debates
By Patricia Mazzei
Published June 20, 2011 20:36:59 EDT

Saying he wants to spend the last week of the campaign meeting voters, Miami-Dade mayoral hopeful Carlos Gimenez has pulled out of debates scheduled this week against rival Julio Robaina.

Political debate season is apparently over for Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Carlos Gimenez.
After the former county commissioner was a no-show at a face-off Monday, his campaign canceled Gimenez’s appearances in a series of events scheduled this week against opponent Julio Robaina.

The surprise move came after Gimenez pulled ahead of Robaina in the race for the June 28 runoff election, according to a poll conducted last week for The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald by Bendixen & Amandi International.

As front runner, Gimenez appears to be adopting the political mindset that more debates may not help him — and may perhaps only give him more chances to make a costly mistake days before the election. While candidates often engage in posturing before agreeing to debates, it is unusual for them to cancel once they have agreed to take part.

Gimenez said the new strategy is intended to put him directly before voters.

“I’ve done 26 debates. Julio Robaina has missed more than half of them,” Gimenez said. “I may do one or two more. But the people are voting, you know. We need to get out on the street.”

The change of plans gave Robaina an opportunity to pounce on Monday, charging Gimenez with being afraid to face voters. “It’s shameful and disrespectful that we would not both be here today,” Robaina told several dozen county employees assembled at downtown Miami’s main library Monday afternoon as part of a debate arranged by the Hispanic Association of Public Administrators.

For dramatic effect, Robaina pulled out a red empty chair to represent Gimenez, who had backed out of the event a few hours earlier — shortly before Robaina unveiled a six-page county economic development plan.

Gimenez’s campaign also canceled a Wednesday debate organized by Miami Dade College and Miami’s Downtown Development Authority, and a Tuesday forum hosted by the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Miami-Dade County Architects and Engineering Society.

“We are very upset,” said Carlos Gil, president of the Cuban-American civil engineers. Gil said his organization found out about the change of plans only after it called Gimenez to confirm details about whether the candidate would also be joining the groups for lunch.

“It was a total disrespect to the entire engineering community,” said Gil, adding that the organizations paid several thousand dollars to put the forum together. The forum, expected to draw about a hundred people, will still take place, he added, but only with Robaina.

The Wednesday debate has been scrapped completely, said Kelly Penton, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Development Authority.

“The DDA, as the lead agency for advocacy for the downtown area, thought it would be important to put together an event where the last two candidates would talk about what their plans are for the future of downtown,” she said.

One scheduled Spanish-language face-off, on América TeVe, may also move forward with only Robaina. The fate of another planned debate in Spanish, hosted by radio station WQBA-AM (1140) and the Latin Builders Association, is unclear.

Robaina spokeswoman Ana Carbonell said Gimenez’s absence from events will demonstrate “a profound lack of leadership.”

“If Mr. Gimenez is not willing to be accountable to the voters now as a candidate, how will be he accountable as mayor, and endure the multiple pressures that come with the job?” she said. “Gimenez has been claiming to be transparent, now he shows that means invisible.”

Gimenez’s campaign argued the opposite, justifying the about-face on the debates as a strategic effort to get Gimenez to early-voting sites to shake hands.

“We can’t afford to take our foot off the gas,” spokesman Tomas Martinelli said. “And if it means missing some debates, then so be it. I think people throughout this whole campaign have seen the differences between both candidates and are ready to make up their minds.”

Gimenez spent much of Monday visiting the Coral Gables Library early-voting site and calling donors in a final push before the campaign’s fundraising deadline. He noted that he appeared with Robaina in three televised debates over the weekend.

“I can’t continue to do this pace,” Gimenez said, adding that some early voters are still undecided and he could try to persuade Robaina voters to change their minds. “I can probably change some over.”

Gimenez still plans to attend a taping later this week for WFOR-CBS 4’s Saturday morning show News & Views with Eliot Rodriguez, but that appearance is not currently on Robaina’s schedule.

“We’re going to continue to work on our campaign,” Gimenez said.
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Once upon a time... last year.

The Miami Herald recommends
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

At one time, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, 43, seemed to have the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate sewed up. That changed suddenly with the emergence of candidate Jeff Greene, 55, turning this race into a real contest dominated by the political slugfest between an eight-year congressional incumbent and a populist outsider with unlimited funds to promote his candidacy.
That's a plus for voters. Democracy works best when they have choices. A third notable candidate is former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre, 75, whose vast experience in government outshines both Rep. Meek and Mr. Greene, who has never held public office. Mr. Ferre is a serious candidate, but his under-funded campaign has failed to catch fire with voters.
The irony in the increasingly bitter race between Rep. Meek and Mr. Greene is that they generally share the same views on major policy issues. Both emphatically support the Obama administration's healthcare reform, and both believe Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire to bring in more revenue and balance the budget. They both support the trade embargo against Cuba.
The campaign has thus far been dominated by personal attacks. Mr. Greene made a fortune by betting against the housing bubble, which has made him vulnerable to accusations that he profited from the misery of others. That seems unfair. He was able to take advantage of the foolishness on Wall Street. Where's the shame in that?
The charge that he is a carpetbagger has more substance, and his boast of being a proven job creator in the private sector is, as a Miami Herald headline declared on July 15, ``hard to determine.''
Mr. Greene's candidacy cannot be discarded, but there is little to indicate he had any interest in politics up to now. That raises questions about his commitment to public service.
Mr. Meek's involvement with indicted developer Dennis Stackhouse, amply covered in this newspaper, is troubling, but generally a lapse in an otherwise honorable record of public service.
He has been a diligent representative, using his position on the Ways and Means Committee to fund community projects. He has also been a leading voice for Haitian Americans and was one of the first elected U.S. officials to set foot in Haiti following this year's devastating earthquake.
One significant difference between Rep. Meek and Mr. Greene involves their approach to ``earmarks,'' special-purpose appropriations for local districts. Mr. Meek boasts of a long list of appropriations -- including $600,000 for the Overtown Youth Center and $500,000 for a cancer screening program. Mr. Greene, on the other hand, recently pledged to end earmarks ``once and for all.''
Our choice in this race is for Mr. Meek, largely on the basis of his experience as a former state police trooper, state legislator and member of Congress.
In the race for the U.S. Senate, Democratic primary, The Miami Herald recommends KENDRICK MEEK.

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See also:

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Like cat-nip for Palin-haters: Washington Post & New York Times ask for readers' help in analyzing Palin emails as Alaska governor, but here in Hallandale Beach, Mayor Joy Cooper's email about city issues are off-limits to residents, taxpayers and small business owners




A version of this blog post below was sent out as an email on Thursday to the Usual Trusted Sources in the Sunshine State and from Coast-to-Coast.

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Up in the Northeast corridor, the Washington Post and the New York Times among other MSM -along with ProPublica- are sounding the dinner bell for Sarah Palin-haters by asking their readers for help in analyzing Palin's emails as governor of Alaska, a place that 99.99% of them have never been, which you'd think would naturally make a difference in analyzing information and giving others some proper context.

(One of my maternal uncles, now living back in Texas, was a teacher in Nome in the '70's.)

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New York Times
Caucus blog
Help Us Investigate the Sarah Palin E-Mail Records
By Derek WillisJune 9, 2011, 1:36 PM-



On Friday, the State of Alaska will release more than 24,000 of Sarah Palin’s e-mails covering much of her tenure as governor of Alaska. Times reporters will be in Juneau, the state capital, to begin the process of reviewing the e-mails, which we will be posting on nytimes.com starting on Friday afternoon E.D.T.


-----
Washington Post
Fast Fix blog
Posted at 10:56 AM ET, 06/09/2011
Help analyze the Palin e-mails
By Ryan Kellett

Over 24,000 e-mail messages to and from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska's governor will be released Friday. That's a lot of e-mail for us to review so we're looking for some help from Fix readers to analyze, contextualize, and research those e-mails right alongside Post reporters over the days following the release.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/help-analyze-the-palin-emails/2011/06/08/AGZAaHNH_blog.html

Archive of Sarah Palin emails: http://documents.latimes.com/sarah-palin-emails/


On the chance that you haven't been following things this weekend, above, the Palin email fishing expedition has largely backfired and The Politico is even saying so publicly.


Meanwhile, closer to home, in case you forgot, thanks to Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) head Nicki Grossman's sister, Broward Circuit Judge Patti Henning, Hallandale Beach residents STILL can't see the govt.-related emails to and from Mayor Joy Cooper's AOL email account that she has intentionally used for YEARS to shield them from public view, despite the fact that it was known years ago that all government-related emails are supposed to go thru the city's email system.
Link

As South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo accurately noted two years ago, when he was the only journalist in all of South Florida asking reasonable questions about what on the face of it seemed like an open-and-shut case involving the clear provisions of the Florida Constitution and the Sunshine Laws, HB taxpayers even got the privilege of paying for the mayor's mendacious lawsuit, to boot, which makes a mockery of the spirit and letter of the law.

That Oct. 29, 2009 story titled, Why are taxpayers footing Mayor Joy Cooper's lawsuit bill?, included these two gems of clarity:

If the Feb. 17 e-mail sent from Mayor Joy Cooper's personal America Online account was private and not subject to the state's public records law, as Cooper and the city maintain, then why did the city hire an outside law firm at $185 an hour to initiate a lawsuit?
If you accept the premise that her e-mail, which had the subject line "Mayor Cooper's Update," was not connected with city business, shouldn't Cooper have hired her own Link
attorney to go to court to clarify the issue?
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2009/10/mayo_why_are_taxpayers_footing.html


Mayor Cooper
didn't (and still doesn't) care about appearances, which is why, then-as-now, she does what she does and dares someone to stop her, which has been her standard M.O. the entire seven-plus years I've lived here, all of which has been with her as mayor.

My friend Michael Butler, creator of the fact and financial-based website Change Hallandale, http://www.changehallandale.com/, stood-up to challenge her efforts and all he got for his concern for the larger community was hassled -and a legal bill that HE had to pay for.

Here's a partial list of who foolishly ignored what Michael did to hold public officials accountable and force them to do the right thing:
The Miami Herald, Channel 4 News, Channel 6 News, Channel 7 News and Channel 10 News, The Daily Business Review, et al... You know, the thing they always say everyone needs to do?
(Cooper's now doing the same thing with the Golden Isles overlay proposal that will clearly violate homeowners rights as spelled out in their deeds. She just doesn't care. She wants everyone to do what SHE wants. Period.)

Now that she is the elected head of the Florida League of Cities, if you want me to believe that all the email she receives from her out-of-town colleagues or special interest groups in Tallahassee urging her to pass resolutions of support for one thing or another at HB City Hall, supporting League (or parochial pet projects) as a template for others to emulate, is the official one that ends @hallandalebeachfl.gov, you are going to have a very, very difficult time convincing me, because I'm sure she's still using that AOL account for such purposes so we will never know.
Why would Joy Cooper change her spots NOW?


My favorite response about this biased effort regarding Sarah Palin came from someone who wanted to know why the MSM didn't ask their readers to do this for the minutiae of Obamacare when it would've mattered, since it was clear that many congressmen were going to vote for it without ever reading it, which I'm sure includes Kendrick Meek, whom nobody misses and who has largely disappeared from the scene.
I'll bet he still hasn't read it.

Not that South Florida's lapdog news media ever asked him, on-camera.
That's the sort of journalism usually practiced in South Florida now -
strangely incurious and content to let questions go unasked.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

MSM mess that disserves voters -Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic on "How to Fix Our Flawed Election Coverage"; Phil Bronstein muses on WH PR flacks





Obama protest at DNC fundraiser http://bcove.me/mq3c122l
Related story in San Francisco Chronicle is at bottom.

Friday afternoon, while pondering the Miami Dolphins' NFL draft strategy -is there one?- I sent the link to this prescient Conor Friedersdorf story below around to my circle of Usual Suspects, and got a pretty favorable response, though some reporter friends who work in The Beltway actually thought it was, if anything, a little "too gentle" in their criticism of the American Mainstream Media.

They are constantly dumbfounded at the sheer number of people around them who 'play' journalist, but who are actually not emotionally or ethically grounded enough, or even talented enough, to be one.


If anything, they find many of their colleagues consistently unprofessional and nothing but either Washington press secretary wannabes or political consultant in-waiting.

Yes, everyone wants to be like David Axelrod -but not actually him.
Reporter first, then campaign consultant.

And however much they may talk and vent to me from time-to-time, they genuinely believe that the American public has no earthly idea how much many more conscientious reporters and columnists with more old-fashioned ideas about the ethos and the lines you don't cross, genuinely loathe many popular media stars, esp. those with a connection to TV.



The Atlantic

How to Fix Our Flawed Election Coverage
By Conor Friedersdorf
April 29, 2011, 12:52 PM ET

In presidential contests, the press regularly elevates candidates for all the wrong reasons

My colleague James Fallows is understandably dismayed by the American media's coverage of Donald Trump, the entrepreneur, reality TV star and occasional bankrupt who may or may not run for president. "Perhaps the media types who have been paying attention to Trump and his braying will stop to think about what they've actually been doing," he writes. "Conceivably there will be a moment of recoil about the unworthy, irrational indignity of this stage of national life. But I'm not holding my breath."

It is bizarre that an opportunistic publicity hound is shaping the national discourse. But is a "moment of recoil" among journalists the needed remedy? For the most part, Trump's enablers are either utterly shameless, or else they're already disgusted by the pathologies of their profession but feel powerless to change them...

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/how-to-fix-our-flawed-election-coverage/238039/

Also on Friday, I saw San Francisco Chronicle Executive Vice President Phil Bronstein's always interesting Bronstein at Large blog on the recent dust-up involving the Chronicle's Carla Marinucci and other Hearst folks running afoul of what White House preferences (ground-rules) were for reporting stories that had nothing to do with the reason President Obama was there.

Chron headline: San Francisco Chronicle: Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia


Later:
Update: Chronicle responds after Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia, then claims they didn't

It's quite insightful, too, and shows how childish so many of the professional, taxpayer-paid PR handlers for elected officials, even The White House, can be when it comes to wanting to short-circuit enterprising reporters or putting the kibosh on alternative narratives of a story, things the American public wants but usually don't hear about until much later in a book.

Better that we know about such ham-handed efforts when they happen, then later!

I really wish we had about four dozen Phil Bronstein disciples or clones manning South Florida's myriad media machines so that citizens, readers and viewers could be MUCH better served than they are by the current crew that constantly sleeps, sleepwalks and doesn't show-up, and is risk-averse to boot.
IF only...

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Conor Friedersdorf is not just 100% correct, he is even more spot-on than he thinks, in that his sound criticism of the Mainstream Media's predictable reach for the low-hanging fruit and 'herd' mentality coverage of the presidential primaries could, in far too many instances, also be applied to local newspaper and TV station's coverage of open congressional seats.
I have a perfect example of it.



The above-the-fold headline of the Miami Herald on Wednesday the 27th was, and I quote, "GOP in search of a rock star" and the article was written by Adam Smith, a very good reporter at the St. Pete Times, someone whose articles and blog posts I've read since returning to the Sunshine State.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/26/2186913/in-florida-and-nationally-republicans.html

Still... t
hat might well be a fine story in a newspaper's Sunday Op-Ed section in about 5-6 months, but really, in late April of 2011?
Not so much.

It actually seems to me that the news media in Florida, all-too-conscious of how important the state of Florida will be next year in the presidential campaign for both parties -especially with the Republican National Convention scheduled to be in the Tampa/St. Pete area starting August 27th, 2012- actually covet someone to play leader-of-the-pack so they can all know whom they're supposed to analyze to a fair-thee-well, killing with kindness in laudatory pieces for weeks or months before someone decides to get the knives out, rather than have to go out and do intel recon by themselves, and possibly saying something that goes against the MSM's extant CW.

Especially at a time when even in a large state like Florida -particularly for a large state like Florida, the fourth-largest state in the country- few of the potential candidates have actually visited the state for formal organized purposes.


Part of that is not just due to lack of time and money or opportunity, but also the sane realization by the candidate and his top staff that with the media in its current myopic state, any small slip-up of a completely inconsequential nature, is likely to be given extraordinary coverage for the simple fact that the media not only personally prefers to write about the horse-race, NOT the issues, but that in the absence of real tangible news, silly news will more than do.

That it becomes voter's first impression of the candidate is not the concern of the reporter, but should it?


Do you really think more than a handful of people in South Florida can really talk with any objective knowledge about what Tim Pawlenty did or did not do while governor of Minnesota?

http://www.timpawlenty.com/

Guess what, none of that handful are reporters, columnists or editors, but what they can do is re-write and finesse prior stories on Pawlenty to make it seem that they know what they're talking about; t
hey already have
Given that dynamic and reality, why would any reasonable candidate considering the presidency subject himself to needless scrutiny when you don't have to?


Why should you change your long-term plan merely to assuage certain media markets, even in a key state like Florida, when any small slip-up will be over-played and toyed with like a cat and a ball of yarn?


As to the same bad, superficial press coverage template being used on open congressional seats. living in one, I'm more than able to describe what we dealt with and how that also highlights the Miami Herald's downward spiral in quality and sense of purpose, a much-discussed topic on this blog since it was created four years ago, in part because of that very problem.

Last year, to the surprise of nobody, FL-17's Kendrick Meek ran for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate to replace the retired Mel Martinez, whose seat was filled by George LeMieux in the interim.


Since voters and political observers knew well since the summer of 2009 that South Florida's FL-17 would have a brand new face for the first time since the current geographical configuration existed, a great opportunity presented itself to South Florida's much-maligned news media -to show local readers and viewers what's really required to win a Congressional seat in a multi-ethnic area (that stretches across two counties) with very different sort of voters, starting first with who runs for a seat for which you are NOT the candidate for whom it was carved-up for -Carrie Meek- or the heir.


To do the sort of solid fact-filled congressional election stories that CQ (Congressional Quarterly) and National Journal have been doing forever and that you sometimes see reflected in a few serious quality newspapers, where smart reporters and resourceful editors take you deep inside the campaign and give you some tangible insight into the candidates and their way of thinking things through.

In the end, of course, at least for me, the most important thing you vote about -their judgment.


But instead of seizing the opportunity, voters in FL-17 were given nothing but day-old leftovers.
Not turkey leftovers the day after Thanksgiving, which can still be tasty, but more like the mashed potatoes and green peas five days later when the container they were in in the fridge has come off and everything had dried out and become less palatable.

The first "story" in the Herald on FL-17, by Beth Reinhard, circa pre-Christmas 2009, consisted of five sentences, one of which was a list of candidates names.
Talk about underwhelming, and it never got any better!


Nope, all the energy at the newspaper -never very great to begin with the past few years!- seemed to be focused almost entirely on the U.S. Senate race, not that there was much that was very original or compelling from Dec. 2009-July 2010 from the Miami side of the Times/Herald combine with the St. Pete Times.
Just lots of low-hanging fruit, much of it repeating what was first reported elsewhere.


It wasn't until mid-August, two weeks before the actual primary election between about 8-10 Democratic candidates, that what would normally be considered a genuine election campaign story on FL-17 ever actually appeared in the Miami Herald, and that one, naturally, made some obvious mistakes in describing what the exact boundaries of the CD were.

Yes, even though THAT should be the one thing the reporter -frequent HBB
bête noire Patricia Mazzei- gets right. (Not that a correction was ever made!)

One legitimate news story in eight long months about an open congressional seat that nobody knew in advance who would win?
Really?
Yes!

That's the paradox of the American news media we have now.
Far too many print and TV reporters/editors/producers shrink from opportunities to do something original or bold, preferring the easy to write/produce stories about dubious polls and calling political consultants whose faces we recognize on TV before they say word one.

To me, political consultants as the go-to interview, is among the most troubling trends of the past fifteen years in journalism.
It's the lazy reporter's crutch.
They're asked what they think, instead of reporters proactively arranging to meet with large number of well-informed voters TO LISTEN.

Unfortunately, South Florida in the year 2011 is grossly over-represented by reporters, editors and producers who favor political campaign consultants as voices of reality to the very citizen voters themselves.


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http://www.nationaljournal.com/

Phil Bronstein's Bronstein at Large
blog at the San Francisco Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/bronstein/index

Monday, March 7, 2011

Departing FL-17 Rep. Kendrick Meek gave his congressional staff an EXTRA $252,978 in salaries last quarter compared to previous pay periods

On his way out the door, departing FL-17 Rep. Kendrick Meek gave his congressional staff an EXTRA $252,978 in salaries last quarter compared to previous pay periods.
Ninety-six members of Congress did this, but on this one issue -this issue!- Meek finally chose to be a leader!

According to LegiStorm, http://www.legistorm.com/, Rep. Kendrick Meek was one of the two largest-spending departing Members dispensing bonuses to staffers.

Does that include his former staffer
Alexander Lewy, now a Hallandale Beach City Commissioner, but for part of that time period, a political candidate and Meek's
Deputy Director of Special Operations?
Could be, why don't you ask him?

Like any of this really surprises me -or you!

At LegiStorm's blog, they headline the story this way:

Exodus in the House lets staff bonuses flow

http://www.legistorm.com/blog/exodus-in-the-house-lets-staff-bonuses-flow.html


Salaries for time period: 10/01/10 - 12/31/10:
http://www.legistorm.com/member/371/Rep_Kendrick_Meek_FL/73.html


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Wall Street Journal
POLITICS

March 7, 2011

Big Payday for Some Hill Staffers

By Louise Radnofsky


Departing members of the House of Representatives awarded millions of dollars in extra pay to aides as they closed down their offices, according to lawmakers' spending records.


The 96 lawmakers paid their employees $6.7 million, or 31%, more in the fourth quarter of 2010 than they did, on average, in the first three quarters of the year.

That's about twice as much as the 16% increase awarded by lawmakers who returned to the 112th Congress, according to LegiStorm, an organization that tracks congressional salaries.

Read the rest of the post at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703362804576184903976465110.html

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http://www.legistorm.com/

http://www.legistorm.com/blog/exodus-in-the-house-lets-staff-bonuses-flow.html

Monday, November 1, 2010

Hallandale Beach Blog endorses Beth Reinhard & Charlie Crist's departure - asks they get escort to airport so they don't miss their flights out of FL



I've been sitting on this for months just waiting for Election Day to get here.

Below is an excerpt of an email that I wrote back on January 23rd, 2010 and sent out to a few dozen people following the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Massachusetts Senate seat held for 47 years by Ted Kennedy.

(And when was the last time you saw the media talk about him? It's like he died. Or, alternatively, booked a flight on Oceanic Flight 815.)

Most of you know who come here regularly know where I stand on the subject of Dan Gelber, as well as his his pack of supporters, which includes some of the most anti-democratic and unethical pols in Broward County.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Dan+Gelber%22

He's far too ambitious for his own good and doesn't have a record of being honest with voters.


He will lose the FL AG race to Pam Bondi, whom I will be voting for, as I think she'll set many media hearts aflutter as she tries to improve on Bill McCollum's decent track record and fight Obamacare.

Pam Bondi - "About Me"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5LbUFAJn6o

Organized Crime at It's Worst



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vds3WkKOrAw

Obviously, this was written before we all got the good news that Beth Reinhard would be leaving the Herald and heading to Washington and The National Journal.

My worst fear is that her column will be replaced by -dare I say it- Patricia Mazzei.
I will be devoting an entire post on Mazzei soon that zeroes in on some particularly irksome articles of her's that all shared the same weakness, regardless of subject matter.

Once you notice it, trust me, it's hard to ignore when you see her articles.

You'll find yourself actively looking for it.


Sort of like the way that once I knew that Campbell Brown had a certain facial tic when she was on-air, reporting the news, it was hard not to watch her and just wait for it.

-----

Just a note to let you know that per some of my hints of late, I already had a ton of things I'd already written that were going to be posted on my blog tomorrow. Subjects include: ...the Dan Gelber vs. Dave Aronberg race for AG, and Scott Brown's remarkable triumph, plus a couple of anti-Beth Reinhard pieces, exposing her infamous shallowness when it reached new jaw-dropping lows lately.
(Seriously, five sentences about the race to replace Meek?)

But then I read this article below this morning, after which I'm apoplectic, and now, I may have to re-schedule some things just to keep my head from exploding. How does the chief political reporter for the largest paper in the state NOT mention in a story ostensibly about insiders vs. outsiders, that Gelber's father was/is a longtime judge, someone who knew everyone who was ANYONE in Miami-Dade even BEFORE he was a judge?

I even knew who his father was when I was a kid in the 1970's -it's beyond incredulous!
http://www.miamidade.gov/ethics/members.asp

Of course, rather than do like Gelber did, and work for his dad, the judge, one summer... or, as the Boston Globe put it
:
At the end of his junior year at Tufts University, Scott P. Brown did not take a typical summer job like many of his classmates. Instead, he spent two months in Army basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., after joining the Massachusetts National Guard.
I've now read ALL the Boston Globe stories on Brown for the past few weeks and am even more impressed with him than before.

I will be sharing some of what I learned about him in some of those posts, though they may be after Sunday now just because I'm so tired of writing.
By the way, here from Thursday is the best thing written on Scott Brown thus far, featuring some great investigatory sleuthing by the New York Times to connect-the-dots:

G.O.P. Used Energy and Stealth to Win Seat
January 20, 2010


This article is by Adam Nagourney, Jeff Zeleny, Kate Zernike and Michael Cooper.


BOSTON — The e-mail message from a Massachusetts supporter to one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement arrived in early December. The state was holding a special election to fill the seat held by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, it said, and conditions were ripe for a conservative ambush: an Election Day in the dead of winter with the turnout certain to be low.

“To be honest, we kind of looked at it and said, this is a long shot,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the director of state campaigns for FreedomWorks, which has become an umbrella for Tea Party groups. But the group was impressed by the determination of organizers in this decidedly Democratic state and was intrigued by the notion that this could be a way to effectively derail federal health care legislation.


Read the rest of the article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/us/politics/21reconstruct.html


This is the single best-written article I've read on any subject the entire year.


In the hard copy of this, they even have a chart showing the number of events Brown and Martha Coakley attended the past few weeks, and as you may already know by now, he outworked her 3:1.
Truth be told, some of those Globe stories appear brilliant in retrospect.


-------
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/beth-reinhard/story/1440999.html

Florida's top candidates for U.S. Senate hardly political outsiders

By Beth Reinhard

January 23, 2010

Out of the cascade of commentary about Tuesday's upset by a Republican in Democrat-rich Massachusetts came this gem from state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach, who used to shoot hoops with the U.S. senator-elect in college:

"To the legions of Republicans in Florida who are claiming the 'I'm Scott Brown mantle,' let me say this: 'I know Scott Brown, Scott Brown was a friend of mine . . . you're no Scott Brown.' ''

The riff on the famous slap at Republican Dan Quayle after he compared himself to Jack Kennedy during the 1988 vice presidential debate was spot on. The leading candidates for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat -- Gov. Charlie Crist, Marco Rubio and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek -- are all career politicians who commit sins of omission when they distance themselves from the establishment.

QUITE A LEAP

The governor is the biggest insider of them all. Crist compared Brown's avowed commitment to "the people's seat'' in Massachusetts to his own claim to be the "people's governor'' of Florida. It's quite a leap for the sitting governor of the nation's fourth largest state, a vice presidential shortlister, and the once-presumed Republican nominee to claim kinship with a truck-driving state senator who faced a double-digit deficit in the polls. (Do they even let pickups onto Fisher Island, where Crist's wife owns a $3.2 million manse?)

Crist's scorn for "the radical Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda'' when he congratulated Brown also rang hollow since the economic stimulus package he supported sits at the very top of that agenda. Crist pointed out that he had spoken to Brown after his victory, as if sound waves made them soul mates.

While Rubio is certainly the underdog in the GOP race, the former speaker of the Florida House and a six-figures-earning lawyer is no political outsider either. In the last 11 years, Rubio was out of public office for only the last one -- a part of his resume he frequently skips over in his stump speech. Can he honestly lay the blame for the recession at the feet of Crist and President Barack Obama and claim to have had nothing to do with it?

Rubio has to stretch pretty far to the left to put his arm around Brown, who backs abortion rights and the state health insurance program in Massachusetts. Rubio touted his participation Friday in the "Virtual March for Life'' on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Earlier this week, he backed Attorney General Bill McCollum's claim that the pending healthcare legislation is unconstitutional because it requires people to buy insurance. Like in Massachusetts.

PART OF THE MAJORITY

As for Meek, he does have one thing in common with Brown: Political analysts expect him to lose the general election. But while Brown was competing against the Kennedy dynasty in Massachusetts, Meek practically inherited his seat in Congress from his mother, Carrie Meek. She staved off potential rivals by waiting until the last minute to rule out another term.

That part of his bio didn't come up when campaign manager Abe Dyk said: "Having worked as a skycap for tips, as a Florida State trooper and having led the Coalition to Reduce Class Size, Kendrick Meek is the candidate best positioned to deliver that change as a U.S. senator.''

Ahem. Meek is part of the Democratic majority who sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. He has roots in Liberty City but has long roamed the halls of Washington and Tallahassee. The closest he ever got to a nude Cosmo centerfold like Brown? A mention in a celebrity blog called "Young Black & Fabulous.''

Beth Reinhard is the political writer for The Miami Herald.

-----

http://www.pambondi.com/home/

Monday, 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



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjqZDGQGu4I

-----

If passed, legislative districts would have to be contiguous and compact wherever possible, following pre-existing city and county boundaries.

This very simple TV ad is a nice rebuke to the pro-incumbent nonsense that has animated many of the newspaper articles and columns I've read the past few months, where reporters and columnists seem to foolishly imagine that they can explain the situation better with words, rather than a simple map -they can't.

They will NEVER be able to beat an accurate map for conveying the sheer preposterous nature of the way legislative districts are currently drawn by insiders.


But for some unfathomable reason, perhaps the epidemic of terrible news editing raging across
the state's newspapers -with particular damage in South Florida- the simple act of displaying accurate representations of the districts is almost always missing from these stories and columns, even links to such on their newspaper websites and political blogs, despite how easy it is to show.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/2010/06/corrine-brown-and-mr-gerry-mandering.html

That's why I have taken it upon myself to actually provide links to these maps when I have chosen to comment on various news sites on this subject so that others can see them for themselves, absent the newspaper doing this basic thing.


A simple map of the districts is like cold water being tossed into the faces of folks like Rep, Corrine Brown, the erratic woman whose equally erratic and bizarre northeast Florida nine-county congressional district stretches from Jacksonville to north of Orlando, often only about the length of a few blocks for quite a distance.

Why was that done?

Simple -to keep her in Congress.


As I've written here many times before
, it's the very same reason that FL-17, where I live and currently have Kendrick Meek as a rep in Washington for a few more days, was drawn up the way it was.
The CD snakes its way from Liberty City in Miami then goes northwest to Opa-Locka and then jumps across the Broward County line, including the part of Hallandale Beach that's west of
U.S.-1.


Or, counter-intuitively, why the other part of Hallandale Beach, which includes the towering condos on the beach along State Road A1A, which are actually FARTHER AWAY from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's FL-20 congressional base of support out in Pembroke Pines
than I am, STILL end up being represented by her instead of Meek.


The current FL-17 was drawn specifically to ensure that there were enough African-American voters in a Miami-based district so that Carrie
Meek could win a Congressional seat -and stay in office indefinitely.
And in a tragic case of unintended consequences, give it to her son Kendrick as an inheritance
.

This sort of chicanery and mutuality of interests among Democrats also ensured that liberal Jewish Democratic voters in SE Broward would largely be able to vote for someone else,
Someone NOT named Meek.


http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL&district=17, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL&district=20

How gerrymandering sustains political dynasties
http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1999:how-gerrymandering-sustains-political-dynasties&catid=34:our-pulse-florida&Itemid=53

Logically, FL-17 should include only Miami-Dade voters and should've always had a MUCH higher representation of Hispanic voters than it has, since they are the majority of citizens and voters in Miami-Dade County.
And yet it didn't, did it?

Perhaps once these common sense Amendments are passed, local and congressional legislative districts will FINALLY and accurately reflect the common sense realities of the mutuality of interests of citizens in compact districts, not merely be odd-shaped stains on a map to allow incumbents to get enough supporters to stay in office indefinitely.


This will surely be the last time that FL-17 looks the way it does now.

Adios and good riddance!


For more on
combative Rep. Corrine Brown
, please see:

Corrine Brown: Because This Senate Race Needs Some Crazy
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2009/06/corrine_brown_because_this_sen.php


Local radio host, Rep. Corrine Brown have an on-air shouting match

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/403455/david-hunt/2010-06-10/girl-fight-or-we-saw-gerrymandering-hit-soft-spot



Opponent disputes Corrine Brown's district.
Documentary says boundaries formed by gerrymandering.
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-06-01/story/opponent-disputes-browns-district-gerrymandered

Scott Fortune - A Horribly Gerrymandered Congressional District



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2l4WUZ_lcE


Scott Fortune - Gerrymandering in Mt. Dora, Fla.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpxdmU7s54

See Scott Fortune's other eye-opening videos on gerrymandering in Florida at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ScottFortune4U

Here's another mention of Brown from an excerpt of a recent email I received from the FairDistrictsFlorida.org folks, since I'm on their mailing list by choice.

--------Forwarded Message----------
From: Kelly Penton, Kelly.Penton@fairdistrictsflorida.org
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:45:45 -0400 (EDT)
To: Jackie Lee, Jackie.Lee@fairdistrictsflorida.org
Subject: Say NO to self-interested politicians!


Have you seen FairDistricts’ television ad? Have you read that every major Florida newspaper is supporting Amendments 5 & 6? Have you heard about the latest polls that show we are on track to finally put an end to unfair redistricting?

Well, our opponents must have. The politicians, clinging to the luxury of picking their own voters, are burning up the airwaves trying to confuse voters and convince them that Amendments 5 & 6 are not in Floridians’ best interest.

State Senator Mike Haridopolos has been pumping defamatory op-eds into Florida papers, Congresswoman
Corrine Brown has been all over YouTube spreading her message of opposition, and Congressman Diaz-Balart even showed up at our press conference trying to negate our message.

It’s not a coincidence that those who object to Amendments 5 & 6 are the very politicians who will face greater competition in their elections when 5 & 6 are in the Florida Constitution. When Amendments 5 & 6 pass, voters in Florida will regain the power to hold legislators accountable. Right now, redistricting guarantees victory for incumbents – No wonder politicians object!

I have learned to never underestimate the power of self-interested politicians.


Thanks,
Kelly Penton

Communications Director
FairDistrictsFlorida.org
VOTE YES on AMENDMENTS 5 & 6


--------

http://www.fairdistrictsflorida.org/home.php

A Clean Sweep for Amendments 5 & 6!


FairDistrictsFlorida Press Release
Friday Oct 22, 2010

Every Major Florida Newspaper Endorses the FairDistricts Amendments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2010

Contact: Kelly Penton, 786-258-2649
Kelly@FairDistrictsFlorida.org

Miami, FL— Today, the Florida Times-Union recommended that “voters should support the reasonable Amendments 5 and 6,” making it a clean sweep of endorsements from major newspapers across the state. A total of 22 newspapers have urged Floridians to vote YES on FairDistricts Amendments 5 and 6.


“This could very well be the one issue this election season with unanimous support from all major newspapers across the state,” said FairDistrictsFlorida.org Campaign Chair Ellen Freidin. “Each newspaper agrees-- politicians have been using redistricting as a way to protect their own seats, making backroom deals and handpicking the voters that will most likely support them to be in their districts. Amendments 5 and 6 will stop this selfish practice, once and for all.”


The FairDistricts Amendments have even received national attention, with an editorial today in USA Today supporting efforts in Florida, California and Oklahoma, and stating “All these plans would benefit voters and the public interest.”

Since September, endorsements have been rolling in one-by-one from:
Bradenton Herald
Bradenton Times
Florida Today
Ft. Myers News-Press
Gainesville Sun
Highlands Today
Naples Daily News
Northwest Florida Daily News
Ocala Star Banner
Orlando Sentinel
Palm Beach Post
Panama City News Herald
Pensacola News Journal
Sarasota Herald Tribune

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
St. Petersburg Times
Suwannee Democrat
Tallahassee Democrat
Tampa Tribune
The Florida Times-Union

TCPalm

The Miami Herald


They all say that by voting yes on Amendments 5 and 6, Floridians will create rules for politicians when they redraw district lines, to make sure they protect voters’ best interests, not their own. With voter approval, the amendments will: prohibit politicians from drawing districts to benefit themselves or their parties, while requiring them to make districts compact, contiguous, and follow city/county lines, where feasible. In addition, the amendments will inscribe into the State Constitution strong protections for minority voting rights, for the first time ever.


To read each endorsement, or for more information on Amendments 5 and 6, please visit www.fairdistrictsflorida.org


-----

See veteran CBS News reporter Bill Plante interviews director
Jeff Reichert, the writer and director of Gerrymandering at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RtKwhd60Q8
Sorry, that's not available for me to show here, but you can click the link above to go to CBSNewsOnline and view it.

But I do have the trailer for Reichert's documentary.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kurAB5ridko


See also:

http://www.opencongress.org

http://www.govtrack.us/


http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd


http://www.sarasotaspeaks.com/node/71394

http://www.youtube.com/user/ScottFortune4U

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/may/31/florida-redistricting-attracts-amendments-lawsuits/news-breaking/