Miami Hurricanes scandal -Michael Putney interviews U-M Trustee Mike Abrams re his disappointment with Donna Shalala & UM's pathetic public response

Channel 10/WPLG-TV News: Trustee: Shalala's Response To UM Scandal Disappointing.

UM President Refuses To Speak To Reporters. August 19, 2011

Story and video at: http://www.local10.com/canes/28919960/detail.html

Local10's Senior Political Correspondent Micheal Putney interviews University of Miami Trustee Michael I. "Mike" Abrams about the national scandal that broke this past week Courtesy of Yahoo! Sports involving the university's football team, and the school's response to it, particularly, President Donna Shalala's.

I've always liked Shalala personally and since returning to South Florida from the Washington area in late 2003 -where she had been President Clinton's HHS Secretary- I have often found myself defending her efforts to improve things in Coral Gables, mainly by raising academic standards - and expectations- against other sports fans who seemed a little too quick to intentionally misunderstand her and paint her with too broad a brush.

Given the flood of information that has already appeared in so many different national media outlets about her longstanding love of athletics, how anyone can remain ignorant of all that, I don't know, yet even after all her time down here, I still hear her attacked by know-it-all dopes on local Miami sports radio stations as being part of the (genuine) anti-athletics adademe, which could NOT be further from the truth.

(As I've written in this space a few times previously, what I've personally long found most galling about the UM's varsity athletic program -and never ever see anything about in the South Florida news media- is how truly un-competitive the UM Women's sports teams are nationally and within the ACC, and in particular, the very strange choices the school has made about what teams to field.

The decision to have a Rowing team but NOT field either a Field Hockey or Lacrosse program -or both- when the ACC is by far the most-dominant conference for those two popular sports nationally -esp Maryland, North Carolina and UVA, where my niece goes- while elsewhere in the state, the Gators have become a clear top-caliber Women's Lacrosse program almost overnight -making it to NCAA Quarterfinals- by actually investing resources and actively recruiting many top-flight players from the Mid-Atlantic areas where the sports are huge is a very, very puzzling and hugely disappointing choice indeed.

I'm not saying this just because all three of my nieces play(played) both sports, but both sports are very popular among female high school students in a fertile recruiting area for the UM student body, so NOT having them puts the UM at a real dis-advantage, and frankly, in my opinion, makes it hard to take the UM's commitment seriously.)

Frankly, because of Shalala's demonstrated ability to think both clearly and long-range, skills sadly lacking in numbers in South Florida, I've long thought that if this were a more normal part of the country, she'd actually already be the Mayor of Miami-Dade County.

She'd make sure there was a LOT MORE accountability to the taxpayer with the public dime than the crowd in downtown Miami is used to.

She's friendly-but-firm, and demands a lot of herself, but also expects others to produce RESULTS, not excuses, and a steady diet of excuses is what South Florida residents have been hearing everyday from their local elected officials since I returned to this area.

I could very easily write pages and pages here on the blog about the latest scandal involving the University of Miami football team, based on the extensive things I have read and heard and know.

I could also write about the many side-stories that, curiously, are NOT appearing in print or TV but which really ought to be.

I'll soon be writing about one of those important journalism side-stories that EVERYONE in South Florida is currently ignoring, and when you hear it, trust me, you'll have to nod in agreement -everyone really is ignoring it.

Surprise! It involved the Miami Herald.

But for now, at a little past 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning, both tired and bored silly from watching the dreadfully tedious Dolphins-Panthers preseason game earlier tonight, I'm going to confine myself to one thing at a time.

In this case, Michael Putney's very interesting interview airing Friday night with University of Miami Trustee Mike Abrams, whom I first met in 1976.

Mike has become the very first person with any weight in South Florida thus far to publicly go on the record about their dis-satisfaction with the way this whole story has been dealt with from Day One the university's administrators.

I sort of botched my comments on Channel 10's website and approved them before I noticed some small mistakes. I'll have more on this scandal in the days ahead, but for now, here's what I meant to post there:

I know from longstanding personal experience what a straight-shooter Mike Abrams is, and how dedicated he is to the UM and how much he wants it to strive to be even better. This scandal must really pain him, both as both an alumnus and as a Trustee, and when he says that the school administrators need to be more forthright, from President Shalala on down, he is 100% right.

Since it's not mentioned here, for context's sake, I should mention that before he graduated, Mike was the UM Student Government president in 1969, and years later, became the Dade County Democratic Party Chair in the mid-1970's -when I met him and began working with him- as he played a crucially important role in helping underdog Jimmy Carter win the 1976 Florida primary -a win that helped make Carter a national candidate in the minds of voters and the national news media- which helped propel him to the Democratic nomination.
(I worked in all sorts of capacities for the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign.)

Later, Mike became one of the most-influential and respected members of the Florida Legislature while representing my hometown of North Miami Beach and surrounding NE Dade in the State House.
I'm also pretty sure that while I was living up in the Washington, D.C. area, Mike was tapped and invited into the UM's Iron Arrow Honor Society, the most prestigious honor for a UM student or alumnus.

So who's going to be the next person in South Florida -after Mike- to stand up publicly and demand that the UM be more publicly accountable to the larger South Florida community?
Those of us who care about this school and this community will be watching carefully

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Some information about me and my longtime interest in the U-M and the Hurricanes, copied from my other blog, South Beach Hoosier, http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/

which is soon to be renovated before the new college football season starts with a new face in charge at IU.

Not mentioned below is that my nephew Mario graduated from the UM in 2010.

SEBASTIAN THE IBIS, THE SPIRITED MASCOT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI HURRICANES

Before going to my first U-M game at the Orange Bowl in 1972, a friend's father often would bring me home an extra 'Canes game program. That's how I came to have the Alabama at U-M game program from Nov. 16, 1968, which was the first nationally-televised college football night game in color. (A 14-6 loss to the Crimson Tide.)

After that first ballgame against Tulane, as I often did for Dolphin games if my father wasn't going, I'd get dropped off at the Levitz parking lot near the 836 & I-95 Cloverleaf in NMB, and catch a Dade County Park & Ride bus, going straight to the Orange Bowl. Onboard, I'd get next to the window and listen to WIOD's pre-game show on my Radio Shack transistor radio.

A few times, I was just about the only person on-board besides the bus driver, which was alright by me. Once at the Orange Bowl, if I didn't already have a ticket, I'd buy a game program for myself and one or two for friends or teachers before heading to the ticket window, since you usually couldn't find a program vendor once inside.

I probaly had a friend or my father with me for just under 40% of the U-M games I ever went to, but you have to remember that the team, though blessed with several talented players, like Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens, was just so-so to average at best, and the games were usually played on Friday nights, so it wasn't exactly high on everyone's list of things to do.

Depending upon the opponent, if I was alone, I'd often have entire areas of the Orange Bowl to myself. (Wish I had photos of that now!)

For instance, I had a good portion of the East (open) End Zone to myself against Oklahoma in the mid-70's, when the Boomer Schooner and the Schooner Crew went out on the field after an Oklahoma TD, and the Schooner received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty from the refs, as would happen years later in an Orangle Bowl Classic game. (Against FSU?)

I was there for the wins and losses under Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer & Lou Saban, and the huge on-field fight in '73 when under eventual national champion Notre Dame (under Ara Parseghian), they called a time-out with less than a minute to go, and already up 37-0. Their rationale?

To score another TD and impress the AP football writers; final score 44-0. Well, they got their wish and beat Alabama 24-23 for the title at the Sugar Bowl. A year later, thanks to my Mom's boss, she and I saw Ara's last game as head coach of the Irish in the Orange Bowl Game from the East End Zone -in front of the Alabama cheerleaders!!!- in an exciting 13-11 Notre Dame win over Alabama and Bear Bryant, a rematch of the '73 national title game.

I was also present for the U-M's huge 20-15 win under Pete Elliott against Darrel Royal's Texas Longhorns, the week Sports Illustrated's College Football preview issue came out with Texas on the cover, below. I was also present for lots of wins against schools called College of the Pacific, UNLV and Cal-Poly San Luis Obsispo, which I'd then never heard of before.

THE ISSUE I TOOK WITH ME THE NIGHT OF U-M'S 20-15 UPSET OF #1 TEXAS AT THE ORANGE BOWL

College Football, Texas No. 1, Hook 'em Horns, September 10, 1973.

Living in North Miami Beach in the '70's, my Sports Illustrated usually showed up in my mailbox on the Thursday or Friday before the Monday cover date. And was read cover-to-cover by Sunday morning!

And for those of you who forgot or never read my previous references to it, on January 2nd, 1984, at the 50th Anniversary Orange Bowl game where the Hurricanes upset Nebraska 31-30 for their first national championship, I was out on the field celebrating within seconds, having watched the entire last quarter in the row directly behind the team's bench. Now THAT was a night to remember!

MIRACLE IN MIAMI

The Hurricanes Storm Past Nebraska, Halfback Keith Griffin, January 9, 1984

NOT Breaking News: Rep. Frederica Wilson still holds common sense, FL-17 constituents & taxpayers 'hostage': Spend, spend, spend and MORE TAXES!

WPLG-TV/Channel 10 video: This Week in South Florida, July 21, 2011, with host Michael Putney.

http://youtu.be/xY5R4Zo-FqY

Channel 10's version of this entire broadcast of TWISF, in High Quality, and 26 minutes and 36 seconds long, is at

http://www.local10.com/video/28721271/index.html

The interview with Rep. Frederica Wilson concludes at 13:04 mark.

Well, to use a phrase that nobody uses any longer, "Here's mud in your eye."

For those of you who have doubted what I've said in the past to you, whether in person somewhere in South Florida or the Washington, D.C. area, or what you've read here on the blog, about the weirdly, disconnected sense of reality lived by many though not all of South Florida's pols, almost all of whom live in gerrymandered districts that ensure their election come the general elections, Sunday morning brought forth the latest glaring example of disconnected unreality.

Did you see it, too?

Did your jaw hit the ground at the stale memorized talking points being recited like a not-so-bright Third Grader standing in front of the class?

Did you get a real sinking feeling when you heard so much prattle expressed with so little thought or insight behind it, and realized that the silly person mouthing such nonsense makes $174,000 a year?

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm

Yes, welcome to the second decade of South Florida politics in the 21st Century.

All of this came in the form of an alternately abysmal performance by freshman Rep. Frederica Wilson (FL-17) on Channel 10's "This Week in South Florida" with Senior Political Editor Michael Putney.

http://www.local10.com/

michaelputney/index.html

As most of you blog readers know by now, I respect him more than any other media personality in South Florida -even when we disagree- in large part, because he actually remembers many of the very same people, places and events of the past that I do, good and bad, that so many people, groups and institutions consciously prefer to forget.

(So many South Florida media types I've met either know very little about this area's political history and geography, or flat-out don't care, but that's another post for another time.)

The ostensible purpose of Wilson's appearance -from Washington- in the lead-off (longest) block of the popular public affairs program, was to discuss the federal debt limit crisis, the state of the economy, and to elicit her opinion on what specific steps should be undertaken.

As she has been a cipher since getting elected, I didn't expect much, but even my low expectations were too high.

Prior to this July 31st appearance with Michael Putney, NOT a single legitimate reporter in Florida had so much as asked Wilson even a reasonably hard question about this debt limit issue and asked her to explain herself on the issue.

Trust me, I've looked at searches for her on Google News day-after-day, and even emailed that to friends, who were shocked at how asleep the South Florida news media has been all these months.

Not me.

(I was even going to post all the citations & news articles here so you could see what lapdogs the South Florida press corps has been towards Wilson since she got elected. Minus the stories on Haiti, Edison & Central High Schools getting special treatment to stay open, or her hats, there wasn't much left, which made it easy for me to read all the articles. Just saying...)

In fact, I was going to post this blog post Sunday morning until I saw that she was going to be on the show. Then I decided to wait until Channel 10 put the link up to the entire broadcast so you could see it for yourself.

To me, Wilson has held common sense and taxpayers "hostage" for months without saying anything of merit, to use a word that she twice went out of her way to use to refer to Tea Party supporters, implying, like so many disconnected liberals, that their desire to actually have a more fundamentally sound financial structure for the country was dangerous.

(Unlike Wilson, some Americans inherently know that not every single federal program deserves to live in perpetuity, or to be equated with apple pie and the Bill of Rights. But try getting Wilson to name one to cut...)

As if, somehow, liberal families and their children were somehow immune to the very negative logical consequences of a template where the U.S. government borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends, as Sen. Marco Rubio has said any number of times lately.

It won't surprise you a whit that her prescription was the usual one of a person who reps a gerrymandered majority-minority CD in Congress: spend, spend, spend...

And tax the "rich" especially the evil oil companies, whom she says pay nothing in taxes in the same exact way that small children routinely say dumb things but nobody bothers to correct them because they are, after all, just small children.

They're entitled to their fantasy world for a while.

Small children, not congresswomen.

Despite her own past actions and words to burden small business owners with more regulation and higher fees, she demands that someone create jobs in her CD, which has the dubious distinction of having among the lowest investment rates and one of the highest murder rates in the entire congress.

After you hear Wilson, you'd almost have to ask yourself why if you were a business owner seeking to expand, why would someone invest in poorly-educated, blame-someone else FL-17?

Now there's a question.

Wilson seems unable to appreciate the changed environment that has taken over this country the past few years, nor to appreciate the difference between being in Tallahassee and Washington.

The reality is that her constituents without jobs are going to be expected to do a whole lot more for themselves in the future than they have in the past, and that includes the strong possibility that for many of them, that choice involves leaving the area, as happens in every other part of the country.

Uncle Sam is not going to be dropping pallets of money into NW Miami anytime soon.

That plane has been permanently grounded.

Time to adapt!

When Michael Putney brought this poll up, do I even have to tell you that Wilson is a fervent supporter of the minority opinion? The one that says that we just have to keep doing the same things that don't work? It's mind-boggling sometimes, almost as if she has been in a coma.

Watching her appearance on TWISF made me think of many things but none quite so strong as the sense that she's so very used to only being around people that completely agree with her, that she literally has no ability or intuition to appreciate that, for a change, she really needed to come across on the program as a serious and sober official.

Instead, because it's her shtick, and she can't help herself, she chose on the air wearing one of the dozens of ridiculous hats that she insists on wearing to distinguish herself, more fitting for a Delta Sigma Theta luncheon in the spring.

Yeah, like the weird guy with head-to-toe tats who insists on showing up at the public park every weekend with the snake around his neck, the old guy who insists on wearing a tiny Speedo swimsuit at the beach -and not being foreign!- or, the older woman who insists on showing up at the beach in a two-piece swimsuit that more closely resembles dental floss, Wilson can't figure out a way to stand out for what she knows about a given area of public policy, or being able to explain complicated issues in ways that people understsnd.

Nobody has ever said that about her.

It's sad for her, of course, but saddest of all for us, her constituents.

As I reflected on what took place in the program later on Sunday afternoon, in between watching the Marlins game and snapping some photos up in Hollywood for a future blog post here, Wilson's juvenile performance just really continued to irritate me, since it was about as anti-intellectual an exercise as I've seen outside of the occasional segment of MSNBC's Hardball I've come across while flipping thru the channels during a commercial of something else.

If you're not really that familiar with the show, esp. if you are reading this overseas, the Republican Elephants in the bottom LEFT are a tip-off to MSNBC's avowed liberal ideology. Fortunately, not that many people watch the show, as more people watch The Cartoon Channel than MSNBC when Hardball is on.

When she successfully repeated a few simple talking points she remembered -the ones about the number of times the debt was raised during Reagan and Bush 41's presidencies, 18 and 7 respectively- I could almost picture her staff applauding, out-of relief. Really.

So what exactly were the things that she or her predecessors, Carrie Meek and Kendrick Meek proposed that would cut the federal budget and put the country on a more sustainable basis?

She never said despite having thirteen minutes to mention it.

Thirteen minutes that revealed her for the disconnected public official she is, who thinks the old solutions of Big Government spending their way out of a problem still works.

They don't.

Not Breaking News!

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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http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/20/2276106/gimenez-withdraws-from-remaining.html

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:

http://www.thecrespogramreport.com/

Urban Beach Weekend -Today's 4 p.m. mtg. on Miami Beach may prove to be a High Noon for some hospitality industry sycophants -truth or more Kool-Aid?

Josh Wilson video: Miami Beach shooting -Memorial day Weekend 2011 [Official Video]

http://youtu.be/c5nkz8fzSxI

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Urban Beach Weekend Fallout: Today's 4 p.m. meeting on Miami Beach of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce's Board of Governors may well be a "High Noon" of sorts for certain sycophants of South Florida's insular and greedy hospitality industry, so often disconnected to reality and forever offering up a smile to out-of-town visitors while often treating them in a second-class fashion -when not ripping them off.

Not that anything will happen to anyone on the CoC Board, per se, rather now we may well see who in that group can see the situation for what it really is, and will say so publicly, and who still swallows the Kool-Aid and will try to obfuscate, conflate and dissemble behind that curtain.

And despite the fact that someone was killed, almost unmentioned in the subsequent discussion among South Florida residents?

The truly dreadful performance of the Miami Beach Police Dept., seeming to show no appreciation for the fact that their unprofessional behavior -by losing their cool- nearly killed innocent people.

Is it merely bad training or... and their amateurish/standoffish handling of the media's legitimate inquiries are only making it look worse.

Here's the thing: nobody-but-nobody who lives in South Florida and who pays attention is the least bit surprised at what happened last week on Miami Beach -a police-involved shooting.

Most residents of South Florida, especially those who have traveled anywhere and have a history of having attended large outdoor events/festivals elsewhere in the country or the world, will tell you that all the ingredients were there for an explosion.

And now that it's gone off, what will happen?

Question: which newspaper had not a single word about this incident in their Sunday edition?

Yes, the same day that Channel 10's Michael Putney had an excellent discussion of the issue on his This Week in South Florida telecast on Sunday morning, following ABC-TV's This Week telecast?

Answer: the Miami Herald.

(I was going to post the video of the TWISF segment on UBW aso you could see it for yourself, but Channel 10 STILL hasn't put it on the website yet, as their most recent one is from May 22nd. It's the year 2011 -what's the hold-up???)

Seems to me that this afternoon's meeting could turn out to be ONE hell of a meeting!

Channel 10/WPLG-TV newscast video with reporter Ross Palombo: Video Gives Up-Close View Of Officer-Involved Shooting.

Includes video of Miami Beach Policeman who grabbed bystander Narces Benoit's cellphone recording and smashed it; driver kept SIM card!

http://www.local10.com/video/28151859/index.html

Channel 10/WPLG-TV newscast video with reporter Roger Lohse:

Questions Linger Over Police-Involved Shooting

http://www.local10.com/video/28082524/index.html

And proving that some people never quite 'get' it:

http://www.browardbeat.com/fields-urban-week-gets-a-bad-rap/

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Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/06/2254048/man-behind-rally-to-end-urban.html

Man behind rally to end Urban Beach Week says efforts got him fired

By David Smiley

June 7, 2011

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When Peter Tapia took to Facebook to protest the rowdy parties that descend on South Beach every Memorial Day weekend and organized an anti-Urban Beach Week rally at city hall, his goal was to end the city’s annual but unofficial hip-hop street festival.

So far, the only thing Tapia’s activism has ended is his job.

Tapia, 23, says he was fired from his position as a Shore Club concierge Thursday after his bosses learned he was pushing to end Urban Beach Week, a rowdy and controversial hip-hop street party that was marred this year by two police-involved shootings in which an alleged gunman was killed and four bystanders were shot.

“I became unemployed because of all the attention I got,” Tapia said. “My employer decided it was a breach of contract.”

Tim Nardi, general manager of the Shore Club, said hotel policy would not allow him to discuss Tapia’s employment.

“I can’t confirm or deny his employee status,” Nardi said. “But any issue related to Peter did not have anything to do with this weekend.”

Nardi is also chairman of the Greater Miami and the Beaches Hotel Association.

Leading up to Memorial Day weekend, Nardi said Urban Beach Week is a historically positive event for Miami Beach’s hotels, which are typically packed with guests during the weekend. Nardi said Monday that he isn’t advocating for or against Urban Beach Week in the midst of controversy, but said the city’s hotels “welcome everybody to South Beach.”

Tapia said he had been previously warned by the Shore Club not to have involvement with the media and signed some kind of agreement. He also mentioned on Facebook that he was a Shore Club concierge, which he said his bosses didn’t appreciate.

“That’s something I shouldn’t have done,” he said.

Though Tapia was fired Thursday, he went ahead with a Friday rally that drew roughly 150 people. He said he will continue to push to end Urban Beach Week while looking for employment.

“Even though I lost my job I will still continue to fight for the community,” Tapia said. “I’m still active in this. We’re still organizing.”

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Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/02/2248248/it-takes-just-one-fool-to-ruin.html

It takes just one fool to ruin everybody else’s fun

By James H. Burnett III

June 2, 2011

There’s a civics lesson to be learned from the debacle that was the 10th annual Urban Beach Weekend in Miami Beach, and it’s a lesson we all learned in kindergarten – either when we were mush-headed 5-year-olds or when we read the book All I Ever Really Needed to Know I learned in Kindergarten.

And here is part one of that lesson: Even if nine out of 10 people exercise good sense, when number 10 makes a habit of acting, as my grandmother would say, “a fool,” he will ruin the other nine folks’ good time.

Eight people were shot at this year’s UBW along South Beach — one fatally — and three police officers were injured. Granted, fair questions remain as to whether some of the injured were actually innocent bystanders shot by cops who’d fired at a dangerous drunk driving suspect — and missed — like they were “shooting” a scene in a John Woo movie. But still.

During the gathering’s first year, 2001, a fatal shooting took place on South Beach. UBW has been tame some years. But in 2006, police snagged more than 70 firearms from partygoers, and in 2007 two men were killed in a drive-by shooting.

And no one with the ability to keep a straight face — and who isn’t a defense or civil rights attorney — would dare suggest that the occurrence of these crimes and weapons confiscations were likely to happen on South Beach when they happened, absent the coinciding UBW festivities.

I’ve never attended UBW — I’m too old, too far removed from college age, too easily bored by parties, and beginning to turn gray. But here’s how my good time was ruined by a similar gathering.

In the fall of 1989, when I was a young, svelte, even better-looking high school student in Virginia Beach, I held the unfortunate part-time job of women’s shoe salesman at the Leggett department store in a local mall, squeezing oversized, sweaty feet into new shoes that hadn’t done anything to deserve that punishment. I was working the night a riot broke out at the Labor Day weekend Greek Fest, a similar event to Urban Beach Weekend in that it brought together thousands of black college students (and thousands of local non-students who mingled with the visitors) for several days of nightclub and beach parties.

Residents of beachfront neighborhoods had been complaining to city officials for years that the rowdy spillover from Greek Fest was putting a serious crimp in their quality of life.

No one was seriously hurt, but stores and hotels along a 10-block stretch of Atlantic Avenue suffered so many broken windows it appeared they’d been visited by a hurricane. Police were overwhelmed. Looters had their way. Rifle-toting National Guard troops even responded.

When I left the mall close to midnight after staying late for inventory, the rioting hadn’t started, but the tensions were high. And before I’d made it three blocks on my drive home, I was pulled over by a police officer, who for the next 15 minutes questioned me nervously about where I was going and warning me that it had better not be to the beach. He let me go after I convinced him that my proximity to the mall, my suit, tie and name tag, and my lack of beachwear, were enough proof that I was going home.

The officer was out of line. But I’d never have encountered him if the fool (multiplied by several hundred) in my grandmother’s anecdote hadn’t turned a party sour. By way of the rioters, Greek Fest ruined my good time.

Frankly, I don’t care one way or another if Miami Beach decides to ban UBW and all related gatherings. But I hope the city follows Virginia Beach’s lead and makes the issue behavior and not race. If the majority of UBW attendees over the years had been white, their skin color would never sneak its way into the conversation. The conversation would be “Let’s keep these crazy folks off the beach…without chasing away the harmless people they mingled with.”

If UBW does come to an end, part two of that civics lesson is: You don’t have to do anything wrong to have your quality of life negatively affected. Spoilers are everywhere. And as the students and other mannerly attendees to UBW grow up and move on, hopefully they’ll remember this year and keep in mind that good times can be maintained if we can slap a scarlet letter on the spoilers and figure out how to impress upon them that they have two choices: straighten up and behave or be isolated out of the mainstream.

Marco Rubio is doing EXACTLY what he said he'd do last year -making a difference on policy in D.C. and NOT being an aloof, empty suit

ABC News video: Sen. Marco Rubio on ABC News' Nightline with correspondent Jonathan Karl, March 28, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqs0WAD7ZRE

Article: Exclusive Interview With Marco Rubio: GOP Rising Star Hints at VP Spot. Florida Republican Keeps a Low Profile as a Junior Senator, But Has Big Plans
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tea-party-favorite-florida-sen-marco-rubios-national/story?id=13249824
http://abcnews.go.com/nightline




ABC News video: Sen. Marco Rubio appears on GMA, Good Morning America, with host George Stephanopoulos, March 30, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAI4x-jI-_k




Local10.com video: Sen. Marco Rubio speaks with Channel 10's Michael Putney on his Sunday morning TV show, This Week in South Florida, about the federal budget gimmicks currently in place, i.e. continuing resolutions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iGaPvq16Zo




Sen. Marco Rubio video: In His Own Words: Week In Review, March 11, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOMt0fFBAA




NBC-6 Miami news video: Report on Sen. Marco Rubio's Miami office Open House.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMnMiP2QnB8

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Michael Putney: http://www.local10.com/station/269244/detail.html

This Week In South Florida March 27

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen speaks about Libya, new troubles between Israel and Palestine and the conviction of an aid worker in Cuba. Plus, what are the Miami-Dade County charter changes that will be on the May ballot?

Video at: http://www.local10.com/video/27347033/index.html

http://www.local10.com/index.html

http://www.sfltv.com/