Update on the VERY interesting thread on NextDoor re "A Bright Future For Hollywood PAC" that supports Josh Levy against my friend, Catherine "Cat" Uden

Tuesday October 21st, 2024

3:00 p.m.

Below, an update on the VERY interesting thread on NextDoor re "A Bright Future For Hollywood PAC" that supports Josh Levy's re-election against my friend, Catherine "Cat" Uden. 

But first...

Join #CatUden’s Canvassing Crew on Saturday Oct. 26th for a fun night @ Hollyweird Festival, Dwtn #HollywoodFL! 

Costume theme is... cats! 

Meet @ 7:30 PM, Anniversary Park, N. 20th Ave. & Hollywood Blvd., then we'll walk the festival @ 8 PM. 

Bring a reusable bottle of water!

Just to be clear, I was NOT involved in any way in putting this very interesting thread at bottom of post -on the VERY frustrating Next Door app!- by Hollywood resident Steve Schneider together.

Actually, I don't think I've ever met him or spoken to him, though I could be wrong, of course.

I did have a slightly similar thought a few weeks ago about doing a deep-dive via my blog regarding who was behind the campaign PAC that Josh Levy & Co. have created for his mayoral campaign.

And any future campaigns as well, since Beam Furr's County Commission seat becomes vacant in November 2026.

Frankly, I think one of the most-unasked public questions of the past 18 months is IF Josh Levy won for a third and final time, would he run for Beam's seat in 2 years? There seems to have been no discussion of it at the so-called candidate forum from a few weeks ago.

While some of you may've indeed thought about this already, or, perhaps even wandered up to him at some point after a Civic Association meeting he was at and asked him this important question directly, thus far, IF you have, you haven't shared that info -and his answer- with me. So far!

Just saying...

Also, I'd actually planned on posting something next week along the lines of a database on all the campaign contributions in Hollywood from 2012, 2016, 2020 and this year, with totals by campaign, contributor and industry.

As many of you already know, the latter is very often a fudge, since for years, as an example, the state's #1 lobbyist, Ron Book, who repped Hallandale Beach for years even as he had other clients whose interests were contrary to HB's, had his daughter Lauren also make political contributions around the state once she turned 18.

That was done using his Aventura office as her "home," since Aventura was usually listed on the filed docs I pored through years ago, not one in Broward, despite nearly all the local TV and print reporters insisting that the Books lived in Broward.

I'd originally checked them thinking that I wanted to have the information stored up so that at some point, IF those docs might... disappear -you know, by accident!- the way that "inconvenient" govt. docs often do, I'd be fine and have the information to be able to use going forward.

I don't care how much you love politics, using a child as a separate political campaign contribution conduit was always an ethical stretch.

Even if you end up hiring her to work at your lobbying shop, and she follows her father into the lobbying trade, and thus gets a leg-up for her later runs for political office.

Yes, years and years of her father and her saying and doing things that lead to LOTS of the state's savviest, well-connected and deep-pocketed people and organizations owing her favors, even as she is having them giving her non-profit LOTS of taxpayer money, including a very nice salary for a non-profit named after herself. 

In case you forgot about that situation, well-described here at a once-favorite website of mine, the Florida Bulldog, which has become so biased the past few years...

New Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book has conflict of interest as Republicans quietly shower taxpayer millions on her charity  
https://www.floridabulldog.org/2021/05/new-senate-democratic-leader-lauren-book-conflict-of-interest/

But things being the way they are here in South Florida, the local news media has largely ignored the issue of Lauren Book's precocious political contributions for years, and treated that particular parenting behavior of her father's -to get more $ to his faves- as NORMAL, which is why you now can't find any stories online with complete information about Lauren Books' political contributions since she turned 18 years old, just 22 years ago.

Dave

David Bruce Smith

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Instagram: @hbbtruth https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DavidSmith0215

https://nextdoor.com/p/TNf9zJsxW__5?post=364584837&utm_source=email&is=tpe&section=cta&mar=true&ct=ndx5V-iK-lpf0FYVVr6q4P_Bx01tlamAxgAN0PjydlRpmsd4mNFsRG-lqRagRHin&ec=OWKiQRDj9vEHAYwTV6YMARldwuFdgGkeefhwfGYAE0s%3D&mobile_deeplink_data=eyJhY3Rpb24iOiAidmlld19wb3N0IiwgInBvc3QiOiAzNjQ1ODQ4Mzd9&link_source_user_id=30408374

Oops!... She did IT again! #LaurenBook plays #SoFL news media + #HollywoodFL for chumps -yet again! Folks, she's NOT on your side. EVER! She's on HER side. Period! But she's perfectly happy for you to think she's noble as she helps herself to your tax dollars AGAIN!

Oops!... She did IT again! #LaurenBook plays #SoFL news media + #HollywoodFL for chumps -yet again! 

Folks, she's NOT on your side. EVER! 

She's on HER side. Period! 

But she's perfectly happy for you to think she's noble as she helps herself to your tax dollars AGAIN!

Per the Florida Bulldog story below about Hollywood taking it on the chin yet again, since I've written so accurately about her so many times in the past as she has sought to make the political the personal and the personal the political, on Monday I'll be posting a fact-filled blog post on Florida state Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book's latest antics in Tallahassee involving taxpayer dollars going where SHE wants them to go, and the larger societal issue of the optics of her long standing ethics problems, and the abject refusal of #SoFL news media -and larger society- to ever hold her to account publicly.

In many cases, for the very same reasons that so many of you already know and have 

shared with me over the years that SO vex and frustrate you and me alike.

It's like she has a hall pass that never expires.

It's a sad reality: Nobody with any kind of power in South Florida will publicly tell her NO!

Tell her that nobody is fooled by what she's doing and the way she continually justifies 

her public behavior on the public dime.

Which, of course, is, perhaps, the most galling aspect of her whole persona and shtick, no?

1/ #LaurenBook plays #SoFL media + #HollywoodFL for chumps -yet again! Folks, she's NOT on your side. EVER! She's on HER side. Period! But she's perfectly happy for U to think she's noble as she helps herself to yr tax dollars AGAIN! https://floridabulldog.org/2021/05/new-senate-democratic-leader-lauren-book-conflict-of-interest/… #ethics #transparency

New Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book has conflict of interest as Republicans quietly shower taxpayer millions on her charity  

https://www.floridabulldog.org/2021/05/new-senate-democratic-leader-lauren-book-conflict-of-interest/

2/ My blog post on her is coming Monday! MT

@Florida_Bulldog

: Why did new #FL state Senate Minority Ldr. #LaurenBook strip much needed $ fm more-diverse #HollywoodFL to give it to less-diverse #DavieFL? It's represented by her lobbyist father, #RonBook! #ethics #transparency

Dave 

Hallandale Beach/Hollywood Blog: http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/ 

Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hbbtruth/ 

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/david-bruce-smith-b945b376/

Travel Massive: https://travelmassive.com/dbsmith

Recent news about South Florida super-lobbyist Ron Book you may not have heard about yet

Late Tuesday night while checking the Dashboard function of my Blogger.com blog, a place where all the other blogs I follow have their most recent posts sequenced for me to read in chronological order, I spotted a particularly interesting one about South Florda super-lobbyist Ron Book -father of Broward School Board candidate Lauren Book-Lim- over at Eye on Miami.

Titled Who is Ron Book Lobbying for in 2010? By geniusofdespair, it raised many questions that have often come up about in any discussion about him, a man that a lot of people swear by and many others swear about.
(You can find my previous posts on Ron Book by doing a search for him on the blog.)

Though I was pretty tired, I manged to stay awake long enough to share a thought or two that you might find of interest.
Or maybe not.
In any case, if you care to see what sort of anecdotal insight I added to one of Florida's most popular blogs, as well as a current list of whom he represents, here it is:
http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/2010/05/who-is-ron-book-lobbying-for-in-2010-by.html

I hope to see many of you in person on Wednesday at 3 p.m. and later at 7:30 p.m. at Hallandale Beach City Hall re agenda item #12-C:, the motion to terminate City Manager Mike Good.
http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/files/2010-05-19/Agenda%20Outline%20for%202010-05-19.htm
It should prove to be quite an interesting day, filled with lots of fireworks and histrionics, and perhaps, dare I say it, maybe even some long-overdue public accountability.

Below are my words of wisdom, such as they are.

----------

Dear Genius:
A correction to your list.

A few weeks ago, Ron Book's contract was NOT renewed by the City of Hallandale Beach -during the Florida Legislature's annual session no less!

That it was done in a very unprofessional way is par for the course in this very poorly-managed ocean-side city, but to do so during the Legislature's session only proves how truly myopic HB City Hall is.

I was already planning on writing about this subject later this week, but since you have sort of pre-empted me a bit, I will give you a few details.

Book's firm was hired by the city to replace former city lobbyist Larry Smith, the former South Broward congressman, a man I came to loathe after watching him in action up close for years while I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and was spending LOTS of quality time on Capitol Hill.

(I was even there in the Rayburn Building on a fateful day during the reign of Bush 41, where during a long and torturous Foreign Affairs mark-up, Larry Smith voted against the State Dept.'s plan to sell certain missiles to Kuwait, because State and the Pentagon were afraid that Iraq would invade.
Well, we all know how that ended up, but what you and most South Floridians don't know -because nobody in South Florida's news media ever reported it- was that Larry Smith said that he was against the plan it because he knew the missiles would be used against -wait for it- Israel. Really.
So Smith and a couple of other super pro-Israel members of the Foreign Affairs Comm. -back when Dante Fascell was Chairman- voted it down.

FYI: The photo of Fascell at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Fascell is the very painting that hangs in the House Foreign Affairs Comm. Chambers.

I used to think about Larry Smith's foolish vote every time I heard about an American casualty during the First Gulf War, which since I lived in Arlington County, meant that I knew lots of people affected by that war.)

A few months ago, Book's firm was planning on sending some pertinent docs down to the city, but when they called, the person on the other end of the phone at HB City Hall said something along the lines of, "Uhh... don't you guys already know?"

Book's firm found out after the fact that WEEKS earlier, the city had decided they were history. Why?
That's a very good question.
Perhaps someone in South Florida's professional news media might some day think to ask Mayor Joy Cooper that question, especially now that they know.

I'll have more details on my blog soon, including the name of the person who had to tell Ron Book that he and his firm had been canned during THE most important time of the year in Tallahassee, but had never even been given the courtesy of a personal phone call to get the news.

That's just a snapshot of everyday life in Hallandale Beach under the Joy Cooper and Mike Good regime.

Know anyone who'd make a good City Manager?
I ask because well be looking for one very, very soon.

A week ago today... the road not taken with the Miami Herald and some 411 about Beth Reinhard to consider

Below is an excerpted version of an email that I sent
last Tuesday.

to		"Abad, Eva - Miami"
cc		"Landsberg, David" "Gyllenhaal, Anders"

I believe this explains why I won't be attending tonight.

By the way, about the below: the un-named condescending
Herald reporter referenced is Beth Reinhard, and since
I originally wrote this, yet another story has run in the
Herald on Lauren Book without ever mentioning that
she's going to be a Broward School Board candidate.
Par for the course.

--------------
(This was originally sent to Rick of the South Florida
Daily Blog with bcc's to... well, people from coast-to-coast.
Never heard back from him, though.
C'est la vie.)

Friday March 26th, 2010
4:00 p.m.

Dear Rick:
Have been meaning to contact you about something since
this past Monday, and when I saw you broach the subject
Thursday in your discussion on your blog regarding the
Miami Herald soliciting material from local area bloggers,
I knew that I needed to write and share what I knew with
you and others in the area before I put it off any longer.

Herald Uses Local Blogger For Content
http://southfloridadailyblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/herald-uses-local-blogger-for-content.html
...Now the real reason I'm writing.

Did you receive one of these invites from the Herald?
Just so you know, I never actually contacted them about
this, either.

More from me about this after the story on the Gothamist
purchase.

from Vanaver, Elissa - Miami to "Abad, Eva - Miami" date Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 1:39 PM subject Community News Network

Thank you for contacting us about The Miami Herald's new Community News Network. Now that we're launched, we invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 6, to learn more about how you can post your news, photos and videos on our new community channels.

Date: Tuesday, April 6

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: The Miami Herald

1 Herald Plaza

Conference Room A

Please RSVP to Eva Abad

Elissa Vanaver

VP of Human Resources

Assistant to the Publisher

-------
Paid Content
By Rafat Ali March 22, 2010

Exclusive
Local Blog Network Gothamist Being Bought by Cablevision’s Rainbow Media

Gothamist, the local city blog network that is best known for its New York City edition, is being acquired by Cablevision-owned Rainbow Media, paidContent has learned. The price is between $5 million to $6 million, though we understand a good portion of that is a performance-based earnout.

Read the rest of the post at: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-local-blog-network-gothamist-being-bought-by-cablevisions-rainbow-media/

See also: http://outside.in/studies

Early last Friday night, I got an out-of-the-blue phone call
from someone at the Herald asking me if I'd received an
invitation to some event they were throwing having to do
with the launch of their "News Network."

After finally realizing that the phone call was legit, I laughed
and said that on the face of it, I thought that I was unlikely
to contribute material, photos or videos, given how often I
criticize the newspaper, whether due to its intellectually-shallow
editorials, poor editing and overall story selection, their Sunday
Op-Ed section being the worst of any paper in the country of its
size, plus, the all-too-obvious biases and limitations of certain of
its political reporters, whose complete and utter predictability
and conventional wisdom would've been embarrassing in 1989,
much less, the year 2010.

Where oh where are all the positive necessary changes
they should've made last year?

They have far too many genuinely unappealing blogs yet STILL
don't have an Education blog in the year 2010?
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/blogs/

They still have no Broward-oriented columnist that local
Broward County residents could read 2-3 times a week about
issues they're interested in, instead of having so many Cuba/
Sweetwater/ Calle Ocho-centric columns falling down upon us
everyday, as if Broward was terra incognita.

I'm a Blue Dog Democrat who'd like to see a smart and savvy
in-house Conservative columnist at the Herald opining on things
hereabouts, since this area is a target-rich environment of clearly
tired ideas and political and social personalities on life support
that need to be skewered and held-up to long overdue scrutiny,
but which never are.

So where-oh-where is that Conservative voice at the Herald
who'd strongly challenge the prevailing orthodoxy there at the
paper and in the community?
Sadly, it is yet another one of the things to come there that
never actually quite arrives.

The Herald's current notions of diversity, all too often,
consists of people of many creeds and colors all speaking
in unison, which is not really a voice so much as it is a chorus.

I'm really tired of seeing them run Miami news on the Broward
homepage of the website -like that perennial, flooding on
Miami Beach!-the sorts of stories which are already on their
website at the top anyway.

Those are the ones I've recorded with a lot of screen-shots over
the past year or so, but which I've never run and posted about
because it's so damn depressing, especially after the fact.

While it's nice that they are FINALLY running 6-8 more pieces
a day on their Naked Politics blog compared to their former
pitiful output, the fact remains that they have no video component
to that blog in the way of a YouTube page, like the Sun-Sentinel's
Broward Politics blog, http://www.youtube.com/BrowardPolitics
and too many items are run in Naked Politics that ought to be
running elsewhere, but the Herald has no other place to put them.

The perfect recent example of this is their post last week on cute-
but-completely-inexperienced Lauren Book-Lim, super-lobbyist
Ron Book's daughter, that in a normal newspaper, ought to have
been on the Education blog, since it's pretty clear she's running
for an open Broward School Board seat, which could necessarily
preclude her father from lobbying there

http://www.browardbeat.com/waiting-for-the-800-pound-gorilla/

http://www.browardbeat.com/index.php?s=%22Lauren+Book%22

which would make that a big story among those of us who care
about public policy in Broward.

See also http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2010/03/a-survivors-walk.html and http://www.facebook.com/people/Lauren-Book-Lim/10617635

But since they don't have an Education blog...

In any case, the Herald's Patricia Mazzei NEVER even
mentions her possible School Board candidacy in the most
recent post.
It's so damn maddening!

Thank God for the St. Pete Times political reporters that they
now run, otherwise...

As it happens, the Herald went ahead without ever telling me
and listed my blog on their South Florida blogs page when it was
first introduced last year.
http://yourblogs.miamiherald.com/

I only discovered I was on their Communities page when
someone I know in Miami mentioned that they'd seen it linked
there.
And that was a few weeks after they'd been running it.

That struck me as a very odd way of doing business
or creating relationships.

As to that invite above that I received on Monday, I'm going to assume
that if they are calling me and asking me to listen to their marketing pitch,
that given how many more people read your blog, you must've already
received something like this quite some time ago.

I'm not inclined to participate when the sad reality is that I'm much more
likely to get a quicker and more professional response to an email of mine
from Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal than I do from 99.9%
of their reporters, columnists or editors, esp. their largely invisible Broward
editors.

Gyllenhaal has actually written me a few times in the past 18 months
after I had bcc'd him about some troubling things I'd seen in the paper,
and I genuinely believe that he wants the newspaper and its product to
be much better, as do a handful of reporters there that I genuinely trust
and wish would be given more latitude in what they write about, so that
everyone benefits.

I'm just not that convinced that a majority of the people down at the
Herald necessarily want meaningful positive change readers are
clamoring for, including me.

Even after everything that's gone on there with the layoffs, there's an
awful lot of contrived and mediocre notions afloat there about what the
paper ought to be that to my mind, and many of the reporters there,
are gumming-up the works.

I hear somewhat regularly from reporters there about actions that
show more people than you think are still very resistant to some positive,
meaningful change that would benefit everyone.

Let me share a recent Herald anecdote that involves me:
Two weeks ago, a well-known Herald reporter called a local Broward
politician I know about something that I'd written about with 100%
certainty, and asked the pol what they thought of what I'd written.

What the reporter on the phone didn't know was that I was actually
in the room at the time standing next to this person when her phone
call came thru, and heard the entire conversation on speakerphone,
including the condescending reference to a short pithy email of mine
as "crazy mail" and me as "that blogger guy in Hallandale."

Like she couldn't bear to actually say my name or the
name of my blog, even though I had the story and the
Herald didn't.

To me, that attitude of hers explains a lot about why the Herald
is in the very sad shape it's in, despite having some very talented
people who could make it much better.

I guess I hardly need mention, do I, that this particular reporter
was NOT someone I'd even originally sent that particular email to,
since I have such a low regard for her, but someone else at the
newspaper whom I did send it to, clearly forwarded it to her since
it was so obvious that there was a story there on a silver platter
about govt. cronyism and no-bid contracts and HB Mayor Joy
Cooper

It was yet another local Broward govt. news story this particular
reporter knew nothing about, but typically, she never thought
to actually contact me about it, she called others who didn't know
anything about it until I told them via email and my subsequent
blog posting.

Well, that was more than ten days ago and the story has never
seen the light of day in the Herald or any of its myriad blogs.
Nowhere but my humble blog.
It's really dumbfounding.

Patricia Andrews, the Herald's former Broward bureau chief
was someone who had covered Hollywood and Hallandale Beach
back when I was living-up in the Washington, D.C. area, so I quite
naturally thought that she'd be especially receptive to hearing
about some very troubling things going on in the area that I and
many others were eyewitnesses to.
She was not.
She NEVER responded to a single email of mine,

She also never responded to occasional emails from about a dozen
or so other concerned HB residents, asking why she and the paper
were ignoring all the self-evident corruption and non-compliance
with the state's Sunshine Laws at HB City Hall.

Even now, the Herald has never written about the mayor suing
HB civic activist and blogger Michael Butler, a trusted friend of
mine, or even more troubling, the current HB Police Chief having
tried to frame and prosecute two innocent people -cops, no less-
in order to ingratiate himself with HB City Manager Mike Good
and Mayor Joy Cooper -and that TWO separate Broward
County juries ruled against him and the city by returning
verdicts against the city in less than 15 minutes.

Verdicts that resulted in HB taxpayers paying hundreds
of thousands of dollars in damages.

Yet the status and future of this corrupt Police Chief has NEVER
been discussed in a HB City Commission meeting, for obvious reasons,
even though in most parts of the country, that conduct would've
resulted in an immediate firing -and him being in prison now.

Another stellar example of Broward SAO Mike Satz doing
nothing!

None of what I've just mentioned has ever appeared in the Herald,
yet now they want my assistance?
I don't think that's going to happen.

For the record, the Herald has sent exactly one reporter to a HB City
Commission since June of 2008.

Before I forget, go to this animated video on paidcontent.org's site
titled Stop the Presses: How to Save Newspapers by Ted Rall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7qd8v8v2qk

Adios!

Dave

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Abad, Eva - Miami
Date: Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 2:17 PM
Subject: REMINDER: Community News meeting AT THE MIAMI HERALD
To:

If you haven't RSVP's please contact me as soon as you can.

Thanks!!!

Eva Abad
HR/Community Affairs Specialist

Executive Assistant

The Miami Herald

-----Original Message-----

From: Abad, Eva - Miami
On Behalf Of Vanaver, Elissa - Miami

Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 1:39 PM

To: Abad, Eva - Miami

Subject: Community News Network

Thank you for contacting us about The Miami Herald's new Community News Network. Now that we're launched, we invite you to join us on Tuesday, April 6, to learn more about how you can post your news, photos and videos on our new community channels.

Date: Tuesday, April 6

Time: 7 p.m.

Location: The Miami Herald

1 Herald Plaza

Conference Room A

Please RSVP to Eva Abad

Elissa Vanaver

VP of Human Resources

Assistant to the Publisher