Dear Florida, California, Michigan & Illinois: It's over. See ya in the rear view mirror!

On Thursday, about an hour after it first appeared

online, I sent the great analysis piece by TIME's

Tim Padgett on the longstanding problems in

Florida, and our part of the Sunshine State in

particular, to about three-dozen media friends

and family members all around the country.

To an extent that surprised even me, the ones

who had responded by Saturday night by email

or phone all said the same thing, more or less:

"Weren't you always saying the same sort

of thing when you were up here in D.C.?"

I had, actually, to the consternation of many,

who said that things down here really couldn't
be that bad.
And for a moment, it was like I was back in
Bloomington, trying to describe what South
Florida was like to kids who'd grown-up with
a drinking age standard of 21, not the 18 I'd
had.
Where do you begin...

But then when you explain how long it took

to get rental aluminum luggage carts at MIA...

or explain how during the entirety of the '70's,

the City of Miami refused to have big name

rock concerts at the Orange Bowl, which is

why Fleetwood Mac or Bob Seeger had to

perform at the much-smaller Miami Baseball

Stadium...

Tim, TIME's Miami Bureau chief, had a link

to CBS-4's videos of the recent budget woes

and meetings in Broward and Miami-Dade to

help paint the story that tells the tale of woe

and incompetency with dollops of real estate

speculation.

He's a terrific writer with ridiculously prescient

insight into Latin America, as I've mentioned

here previously, plus, he's a native Hoosier,

from Carmel, and a Wabash grad.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,992330,00.html

Another Midwesterner in South Florida trying

to make sense of it and explain it to others!
Like IU grads Shannon Hori and Jawan Strader

of CBS-4, and Rob Schmitt of Local10.

Tim's all-too-prescient analysis of the mess we

call Florida 2009, was rocking and rolling all over

the Internet soon afterwards, as pundits and reporters

of all stripes and political sympathies were linking

to it and using it as a jumping-off point for their own

perspective on matters closer to home or to prove
a point.

For instance, Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics,

one of my favorites, used Tim's piece to talk about

the grim economic situation in Michigan and Illinois

and noted how they are handling things there -poorly.

Not a lot of can-do spirit, but a lot of tax-hungry pols
eager to ignore reality and reward their pals and the
government bureaucracy.

I touched on this situation in Michigan and New York
on March 3rd and April 24th with these posts:

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/expect-more-new-yorkers-in-broward-as.html

Expect more New Yorkers in Broward,
as NY Post reveals: GOV PLOTS SECRET
TAX HIKE ON RICH

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/many-fleeing-michigan-en-masse-have.html
Many Fleeing Michigan En Masse Have Maps of Florida
-HB Wants Dibs on the Smart & Skilled Ones!

Turns out that more than half of all Michigan college
students leave the state after graduating.
Wonder what it is in Florida?
--------------
TIME
Florida Exodus: Rising Taxes Drive Out Residents

By TIM PADGETT/MIAMI

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

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.

See the rest of the story at:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919916,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular

Tim's great concluding sentence:

But if Miami and Florida officials can't get their acts together, they can probably expect even lower head counts in the years to come.

Exactly.
It's called voting with your feet, something that the
Broward County Commission and the Broward
County School Board are learning the hard way,
due to the economy and their own longstanding
inability to deliver a satisfactory performance for
the amount of tax dollars they consume.

Each has more than a few members who seem
more interested in financial and political advancement,
and rewarding their financial backers with govt.
contracts, than actually doing the job for which
they were elected to: supervision over the
grab-bag School system that is often going in two
different directions -and none of them are Forward.

Their sense of entitlement is breathtaking as is their
inability to see what's right in front of them.

If you have only heard about Tim's essay second-hand,

but not read it for yourself, I should also mention

that in the online version of the story on TIME's

website, they have a photo with the following

spot-on caption:

A mover prepares household items belonging
to a customer leaving Aventura, Fla., for
San Diego.

That struck me as funny given that as recently

as three weeks ago, the LA Times had a truly

inspired essay by Candice Reed that presaged

this sentimet, about the Golden State having

long its luster for many.

That's just the latest version of that same story,

which gets repeated at least once every ten years,

and which why so many former Californians now

live in Nevada, esp. Las Vegas, or moved to

Oregon, only to be soon inundated by more
people just like themselves.

It's not too dis-similar to why so many former

Floridians now live in North Carolina.

-----------

9/3/09 Real Clear Politics Blog

What Michigan Can Learn From Florida

By Tom Bevan

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/09/03/what-michigan-can-learn-from-florida/

---------

9/3/09 Real Clear Politics Blog

Read Hynes' Lips: New Taxes

By Tom Bevan
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/09/03/read-hynes-lips-new-taxes/

He concludes with this crackling barb about

Dan Hynes' recent comments and his desire

to run against the incumbent governor in the

primary:

Given the crappy economy, the public's generally sour mood and its specific disgust with the state's endemic corruption and the left over fumes of the Blagojevich administration, building your candidacy as a Democrat around the issue of raising taxes doesn't strike me as the smartest campaign strategy.

------------------

Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-reed16-2009aug16,0,5811934.story

Opinion
Dear California, I'm dumping you
I thought it would last forever, but you've changed and I want out.
By Candice Reed
August 16, 2009

Dear California,

I've been thinking about this for a very long time, and I've come to the conclusion that we should go our separate ways. I thought I loved you and it would last forever, but I was so very wrong.

I know that our relationship has lasted 50 years and that we should fight to stay together, but you've changed so much that, frankly, I don't know who you are anymore!

When we first met I was young and rather naive, and I loved you unconditionally. I spent years running with abandon across your sandy beaches in the bright sunshine, playing in your beautiful parks and attending your top-rated schools, which were a national model for the other states. For 18 years or so, I can honestly say that I was truly in love with you, but then came your first major transgression: Proposition 13.

Oh sure, you tried to tell me that property taxes were bad for our relationship, but I knew you were lying. Low taxes, you said, would bring us closer together. You wanted to have your cake and eat it too. You said we could build schools and roads and parks without that tax money, but even back then I knew you were in denial.

I didn't leave because I thought you'd get over it and we'd still have a future. But, to be totally honest, I stayed with you mostly for your weather. No other state has your perfect little sunsets (don't get me started on that sexy Pacific Ocean), your 364.5 days of sunshine each year and your mild climate even in winter. I know you occasionally turned on me with your random earthquake tantrums, and you tried to chase me away with flames more than a few times, but I forgave you. I always forgave you, which I suppose says something about me. I was weak when it came to you, California. But now you're hurting everyone we know, and I can't stand by and watch.

You've totally lost perspective, and I'm sinking into depression! We can't pay our bills, and the phone is ringing off the hook with creditors calling from all over the world. Children across the state are losing healthcare, more than 766,300 Californians lost their jobs in the last year, and we're at the top of the foreclosure charts. You need to change, and you refuse to admit it. For the first time in our relationship, I'm embarrassed to say that we are together.

There's no doubt that I still have feelings for you, but since I lost my job in the newspaper industry and my house is being sold under duress, I want out. I'm leaving you, California, and you might as well know the truth; there's another state and I'm falling for it hard.

Never mind where it is, let's just say that it's above you and leave it at that. What I will tell you is that I can afford to live there without stressing every day that my expensive electricity will be shut off, or that my water, which I can use only sparingly, will dry up.

Oh, and my new state still has jobs in the newspaper business, which I will admit makes my heart go pitter-pat, and I find myself daydreaming about healthcare benefits again. I know my new state isn't perfect. Oh sure, the weather isn't as nice as yours, and it's got its own budget shortfall, but it's coping, and I can dress in layers. Nothing is perfect.

So that's it, California, it's over. You've cost me too much. I'm starting over, but I can see happy times ahead. Like we once had.

Please don't call my mother to try and find out where I live. You could be a great state again, but I can't wait for you to turn it all around. Good luck!

Hasta la vista,
Candice

Candice Reed starts her new job in Chelan, Wash., in September. She is the co-author of "Thank You for Firing Me! How to Ride the Wave of Success After You Lose Your Job," which will be published in February.

re Charlie Brooker: Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it

Blimey, Brooker's got it again! http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/charliebrooker

South Beach Hoosier's take? Brit Cousins See Future Thru Internet-search Glasses.

The Charlie Brooker column below from today's Guardian is an insightful and somewhat depressing look into what it takes to make it to the top of The Hit Parade.
And is 100% right.

After reading the article, tell me if that doesn't sound exactly like what the news writers at Miami's Channel 4 are already doing for most of Shannon Hori's copy on the 6 and 11 p.m. CBS-4 telecasts?

Shannon Hori's clearly attractive and sweet and seems to have a personality very similar to many of my female friends at IU, especially in the Telecom. Dept., even though they always wanted to be "serious reporters," but that doesn't mean she's my idea of a local anchor.

She might actually be a very good reporter, though I have my doubts, but the sheer amount of verbal nonsense she has to utter in order to hook dopey South Florida women TV viewers -the ones who won't be attending any of these public policy events I mention here- is really hard to over-estimate. http://cbs4.com/bios/bio.cbs4.shannon.9.374024.html

I can't recall the last time I lived somewhere and was almost in fear of watching someone on the air simply because of the dreadful cringe-worthy news copy they were forced to read.
(If she writes her own, that answers that question.)

Actually, I suppose the joke is on me -and some of you as well- since Hori's clearly very popular in this new gig of hers, which is the most confounding aspect of this whole fandango.
(Still, as I'll illustrate in a moment with an anecdote, popularity and a high Q Score isn't the same thing as quality.)

Some nights, it's almost like Hori's trapped in a TV studio experiencing the lingering effects of
Stockholm Syndrome, or, alternatively, undergoing an initiation of some sort, and has to grin-and-bear it until someone off stage yells, rather authoritatively, "That's enough, she's in!"

Almost like an updated version of the reporter character that Jane Fonda's reporter character in China Syndrome, Kimberly Wells, had to play when she was away from Jack Lemon's nuclear plant and back at the TV station, doing 'human interest' segments on cats in trees and the firemen who save them, or whatever it was.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/

(The real-life D.C. version of this is bubbly Holly Morris of WTTG's Fox-5 News, a constant source of humor by WJFK-FM radio geniuses Don & Mike when I listened to them everyday when living and working up there.
They'd mock Holly's willingness to go anywhere and do anything early in the A.M. to get that human interest story about cats with their own blogs and Nuns who square dance, etc.
Or as Wikipedia put it: Holly gained fame beyond the Washington DC area when her high energy antics were featured regularly on the nationally syndicated radio show The Don and Mike Show. In addition to highlighting Holly's latest adventure, the show features a weekly "wheel of Holly" segment where tapes of Holly's past features are played at random. )

See http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/InsideFox/Detail?contentId=5768&version=12&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=5.3.1 )
and Holly's on-air hijinks Fox 5 hit http://www.washtimes.com/news/2004/jun/08/20040608-094835-1990r/

THE PURGATORY Of COMMITMENT blog accurately described Hori in 2005, when she was at KTVT, the CBS affiliate in Dallas, in Waking Up To Shannon Hori http://thebachelorblog.simjournal.com/artview.aspx?bid=2202 , "doing one of those exasperating "Adopt a Family for Christmas and bought them some junk" stories."

Hori's video archive of wacky stuff at KTVT is here: http://cbs11tv.com/Search/Default.aspx?SearchString=Shannon%20Hori&TabId=0
For Hori as Radio City Rockette wannabe, see http://cbs11tv.com/video/?id=14540@ktvt.dayport.com
If I didn't know better, I'd swear she just did that story here.
That's how eerily familiar these human interest bits are.

Since Hori's been here in South Florida, I don't think there's been a newscast of hers that I've caught where she hasn't uttered the following words at least once or twice:
1. Britney
2. infant.
3, diet
4. Sex and The City
5. breasts
6. South Beach
7. Nikki Beach
8. Angelina
9. J-Lo
10. rapper
11. liposuction
12. lifestyle

I only wish that I'd actually kept a log of her words like I considered doing months ago, when, for some reason, it just slapped me in the face one particular night because of how obvious it seemed. ---------------------------------------
This is nothing but amateur analysis I admit, but it never occurred to me until just now, but Hori sort of reminds me of some of the attractive personality-plus girls I often saw at IU cheerleader tryouts.
They were girls whom I knew well-enough to know as classmates of mine, but not enough to be considered friends.
Lots of Delta Gammas or ZTAs, girls who seem to have genes that make them preternaturally
bubbly and fun to be with. http://www.indiana.edu/~deltag/

Once some of them actually caught on to my own deep involvement in the spring cheerleader tryout process, because of Student Athletic Board, where up in the second-floor gym of the HPER we
cranked Prince from our speakers hour after hour while the girls tried their best to pick up the routines.
Afterwards, they suddenly seemed much more interested/motivated to talk to me after class or when they'd run into me on campus. http://www.indiana.edu/~sab/

Most were all pretty good to excellent dancers, but that simply wasn't good enough at a Big Ten school like ours, even if it was good enough to make the excellent Red Steppers dance group.
It was simply apples and oranges.

See http://iuhoosiers.cstv.com/sports/c-spirit/ind-c-spirit-body.html and
http://www.nba.com/heat/dance/profile0203_trista.html for proof that at IU, generally speaking, your athletic, gymnastic types are much more likely to try to become cheerleaders, while your talented and vivacious dancers, like Trista Rehn, an IU Alpha Chi from Indy, try to become Red Steppers.
Everybody wins!

I had the advantage of knowing that no amount of personal charisma or ridiculous good looks could compensate for the fact that many of them were insufficiently athletic enough or mentally tough enough to make the grade as an IU cheerleader, since every year while I was there, we almost always had 1-2 members get named All-American.

But if you're not part of the process and/or know the people involved in making the decisions, on the outside looking in as it were, the reasons why someone makes it aren't always quite so obvious.
And one thing's for sure, it's hard to be the one to tell someone why their particular dream/goal isn't meant to be realized.

That was a position I found myself in one day when two classmate applicants actually cried after one of our classes together, the first time I'd seen them after they'd been cut, after they'd made it past the first few rounds. (I already knew they'd been cut.)
They were pretty normal at first, but within a minute, they were barely keeping their tears in check, asking me why I thought they hadn't been selected.

I'm a pretty friendly person who's straightforward, but I didn't relish the idea of telling them they simply weren't good enough, so I said that it was probably a good thing that we weren't already friends, because they might not like what I had to tell them, even though it was the truth.
They said they wanted to know what I thought and I proceeded to tell them my opinion.

But first I reminded them that they needed to remember that the selection process was nothing personal, and that the folks doing the judging take it very seriously for some very good reasons, not least of all being that IU has a very strong reputation in cheer leading, and every year, we have a tremendous number of very talented girls trying out for a small number of slots.
I also mentioned that they needed to keep in mind that many girls who get cut at IU -just as would also be true at UK- would likely make many other large school's teams, it's just that the competition here is so fierce. http://kentuckycheerleading.org/

I then sort of opened their eyes to the fact that while their individual self-evident charisma, personality and good looks, while obviously tremendous pluses socially, esp at a school like IU that really takes sociability and friendliness seriously -and likely being one of the things that made them so popular within their circle of friends- the judges had the primary obligation to look at all the factors that go into making a good cohesive squad.

Those particular positive qualities of theirs notwithstanding, they couldn't compensate for "the essentials" they individually lacked as prospective IU cheerleaders, which were different with each girl, and which I gave my thoughts about.

(I've seen this same theme with some of the local Miami TV stations and their "Making of the Heat/Dolphin cheerleader" type stories on Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the Fall.
There's always a few women who are told for the first time in their life that they're not good enough at something.
All the ambition in the world can't compensate for a skill you lack if you can't acquire it and master it before the final cuts.)

Besides the obvious physical demands and grind of practicing and conditioning all the time, the two qualities that my friends on the cheer squad had often told me were most under-estimated by applicants were:
a.) the sheer time commitment throughout the year, which melds into every single aspect of your life, and sometimes seems to be taking it over, plus,
b.) constantly maintaining the confidence that the rest of the squad and that your partner in particular has to have in you.

Enough confidence to ride you when you're dogging it and not giving it your all, even when you're tired or your mind is on something else, and then help you snap out of it, since safety can never be compromised.

But then I was pretty fortunate to have some friends who were not only talented enough to be named co-captains of the squad, but also get named All-American, so I'm sort of biased towards their particular p.o.v. on the matter.

If you've ever caught the WE cable series Cheerleader U., focusing on the UCF squad in Orlando, it's much the same there, though UCF and IU are worlds apart when it comes to both tradition and playing high-stakes ballgames on national TV, for obvious reasons.
http://www.wetv.com/cheerleaders/index.html

Personally, I think of Shannon Hori as one of those women who has always sort of glided thru life based on her personality or wit and then gets quite surprised that their personality and/or looks doesn't necessarily win the battle, in her case, for viewers' hearts, for others, votes for office.
Hori certainly hasn't won me over.

------------------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/charliebrooker.pressandpublishing

The Guardian

Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it
Charlie Brooker
July 21, 2008

Miley Cyrus, Angelina, Israel vs Palestine, iPhone, 9/11 conspiracy, Facebook, MySpace, and Britney Spears nude. And not forgetting Second Life, Paris Hilton, YouTube, Lindsay Lohan, World of Warcraft, The Dark Knight, Radiohead and Barack Obama. Oh, and great big naked tits. In 3D.

Let me explain. Last week, I wrote a piece on 9/11 conspiracy theories which virtually broke the Guardian website as thousands of "truthers" (painfully earnest online types who sincerely believe 9/11 was an inside job) poured through the walls to unfurl their two pence worth. Some outlined alternative "theories". Some mistakenly equated dismissing the conspiracy theories with endorsing the Bush administration. Some simply wailed, occasionally in CAPITALS. Others, correctly, identified me as a paid-off establishment shill acting under instructions from the CIA.

Now to sit here and painstakingly rebut everything the truthers said would take three months and several hundred pages, and would be a massive waste of the world's time, because ultimately I'm right and they're wrong - well-meaning, but wrong. What's more, I've woken up with an alarming fever and am sweating like a miner as I type these words. On the cusp of hallucinating. Consequently my brain isn't working properly; it feels like it's been marinaded in petrol, then wrapped in a warm towel. So I'm hardly at my sharpest. Actually, sod it: you win, truthers. I give up. You're 100% correct. Inside job, clearly.
Whatever. Now pass the paracetamol.

Anyway, because it contained the words "9/11 conspiracy", the article generated loads of traffic for the Guardian site, which in turn means loads of advertising revenue. And in this day and age, what with the credit crunch and the death of print journalism and everything, the use of attention-grabbing keywords is becoming standard practice. "Search engine optimisation", it's known as, and it's the journalistic equivalent of a classified ad that starts with the word "SEX!" in large lettering, and "Now that we've got your attention . . ." printed below it in smaller type.

For instance, according to the latest Private Eye, journalists writing articles for the Telegraph website are being actively encouraged to include oft-searched-for phrases in their copy. So an article about shoe sales among young women would open: "Young women - such as Britney Spears - are buying more shoes than ever."

On the one hand, you could argue this is nothing new; after all, for years newspapers have routinely jazzed up dull print articles with photographs of attractive female stars (you know the sort of thing: a giant snap of Keira Knightley doing her Atonement wet-T-shirt routine to illustrate a report about the state of Britain's fountain manufacturers). But at least in those instances the actual text of the article itself survived unscathed. There's something uniquely demented about slotting specific words and phrases into a piece simply to con people into reading it. Why bother writing a news article at all? Why not just scan in a few naked photos and have done with it?

And if you do persevere with search-engine-optimised news reports, where do you draw the line? Next time a bomb goes off, are we going to read "Terror outrage: BRITNEY, ANGELINA and OBAMA all unaffected as hundreds die in SEXY agony"?

And wait, it gets worse. These phrases don't just get lobbed in willy-nilly. No. A lot of care and attention goes into their placement. Apparently the average reader quickly scans each page in an "F-pattern": reading along the top first, then glancing halfway along the line below, before skimming their eye downward along the left-hand side. If there's nothing of interest within that golden "F" zone, he or she will quickly clear off elsewhere.

Which means your modern journalist is expected not only to shoehorn all manner of hot phraseology into their copy, but to try and position it all in precisely the right place. That's an alarming quantity of unnecessary shit to hold in your head while trying to write a piece about the unions. Sorry, SEXUAL unions. Mainly, though, it's just plain undignified: turning the journalist into the equivalent of a reality TV wannabe who turns up to the auditions in a gaudy fluorescent thong in a desperate bid to be noticed.

And for the consumer, it's just one more layer of distracting crud - the bane of the 21st century. Distracting crud comes in countless forms - from the onscreen clutter of 24-hour news stations to the winking, blinking ads on every other web page. These days, each separate square inch of everything is simultaneously vying for your attention, and the overall effect is to leave you feeling bewildered, distanced, feverish and slightly insane. Or maybe that's just me, today.

Actually, it's definitely just me. Like I say, I'm ill, my brain's not working. Which is why opening this piece with a slew of hot search terms probably wasn't a brilliant wheeze.
Perhaps if I close with a selection of the LEAST searched-for terms ever, I can redress the balance. Worth a shot. Um . . .
JOHN SELWYN GUMMER . . . PATRICK KIELTY NUDE . . . UNDERWHELMING KNITTING PATTERNS . . . FULLY CLOTHED BABES.
Yup. That should do it.

· This week Charlie somehow managed to get this column finished: "Despite mistyping every other word and having to break off every five minutes to lie on his bed clutching his brow, whimpering. He will almost certainly have died by the time you read it."
_____________________
Comments at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/charliebrooker.pressandpublishing?commentpage=1