Showing posts with label WPLG-TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WPLG-TV. Show all posts

Monday, October 3, 2011

Hipper-than-thou: Fickle South Florida news media ignores pretentious, creepy and condescending “hipsters by the Bay” i.e. #OccupyMiami; LOL!

Hipper-than-thou: Fickle South Florida news media ignores pretentious, creepy and condescending "hipsters by the Bay" i.e. #OccupyMiami; LOL!
The 'revolution' will NOT be televised.
No, and neither will these clowns' exercise in political masturbation.

Too many laughable and self-serving videos posted on YouTube to choose just one to make a real example out of up at the top today, so take a look here and try your luck; most recent first.

No matter how many times you watch these videos, it's really hard to believe how truly smug, condescending and disconnected these people behind Occupy Miami are, or their level of
misanthropism.

Well, you don't have to be a PR expert to know that these characters first major cataclysmic mistake was thinking that local Miami TV news stations that are now based in the suburbs -
Channel 4 in Doral, Channel 6 in Miramar and Channel 10 in Pembroke Park, less then four miles from me- are going to cover a story in downtown Miami on a Saturday.

Especially one involving so few people about an issue 99.9% of their viewers will yawn at!
That is NOT must-see TV!

If these hipper-than-thou members of the coming socialist vanguard were actually either smart or savvy, they'd have been clever enough to set-up a contrasting photo op that the TV stations couldn't possibly ignore - socialist hipsters march on South Beach and do their thing in front of the The Clevelander!
Or over on that spot on South Beeach where the really successful models hang-out when they can because they are largely left alone to relax. (Sorry, I can't publicly reveal here where that is.)

You know, so these social misfits can confront the very people they say are the enemy?
You may know them better as your friends and family and neighbors.

Instead, these socialist lemmings stood and sat on their ass on hot asphalt, brick or tile.
Real geniuses.
Congrats!

But then even while they spout their anti-corporate nonsense, they use technology that does NOT grow on trees.
You know, like an APPLE... or AT&T, Sprint, Best Buy, Microsoft...
They don't exactly communicate with each other thru smoke signals now do they?

Nope, some multi-national corporations they like!
To use their work-product that is, but their employees, no doubt they are considered "corporate stooges" by this crew.

The point that can't be refuted though is this one and it's one that the anti-corporate crowd doesn't want to acknowledge: Occupy Miami actually attracted many LESS people than dozens and dozens of Boys Optimist/PAL football games in South Florida Saturday played by Elementary School and Junior High kids, including one that I saw for myself for a few minutes on Saturday afternoon on a drive to North Miami Beach for an errand.
That lack of a stampede of people or an avalanche of support is NOT exactly a ringing endorsement for the Occupy Miami positions.

But then if their message really resonated with a majority of Americans, the folks behind Occupy Miami would likely change their mind and be against it in principle -that's the hipster's creed- since everyone knows you can't be part of the political vanguard when everyone agrees.
You have to be part of the true believers.
LOL!

Below, an inside view of the supremely smug too-much-time-on-their-hands Americans who are at war with the rest of America.
It's not just bad analysis, it's ass-backwards liberal agit-prop analysis about the state of the South Florida's professional agitator crowd, many of whom in the 1980's, wanted Europe to disarm.
If that had happened, do you really think the Berlin Wall would've fallen?
In a word, NO.

But then I actually know people who lived in Eastern Europe when they couldn't speak freely
or live free and make their own choices.
They appreciate the difference and loathe these types even more then me.

The venom-filled characters behind this effort are NOT lovable losers like the Cubs and their fans, they're know-it-all losers who never learn from history, in particular, that people don't want to constantly be lectured to about how to live their lives.
But these folks can't help themselves.

Criticizing others and telling them how immoral or unethical or XYZ their "empty lives' are is all they know how to do.
It's what animates them, sad as that is to realize.

It's like they saw Dr. Zhivago and missed one of the main points of the film completely.
The socialist bureaucrats aren't the heroes!
Dr. Zhivago - The Private Life is Dead http://youtu.be/E6raF7kcJJs

So, after reading these two stories, I guess this means that they WON'T be going to any public housing sites in Miami or Ft. Lauderdale and asking -via a megaphone- when some of these long-established "families" are going to get it together and finally move out after 30-40 years of living on the public's dole?
The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on that, for what was intended to be temporary help,
with what to show as a positive, exactly?

They won't be marching around the American Airlines Arena and demanding to know when billionaire Miami Heat owner Mickey Arison , one of the richest men in America, when is he FINALLY going to honor his word with Miami-Dade County taxpayers for the construction of the arena?
No, I guess they're not.

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Boston Phoenix
The Phlog
What #OccupyMiami learned from #OccupyBoston learned from #OccupyWallStreet
By Chris Faraone
Published Oct 02 2011, 11:46 AM

Up until a decade ago, I'm guessing that reporters got to see one major movement in their lifetime. Maybe two or three if they were R.W. Apple, or some other red-nosed journo stalwart with longevity. But in my mere half score of covering pols and pimps, contractors and detractors, whores and wars, I've already witnessed a number of full-blown culture spats, each with a cast of characters worthy of their own trading cards. From the Tea Party to Al Qaeda to the hackers who gangbanged Scientology, I've had front row seats to see the status quo get pounded more times than I remember.

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Miami NewTimes
"Occupy Miami" Camp-Out Will Begin Oct. 15, 700 Arrested In New York
By Michael Miller
October 3 2011 at 9:00 AM

A protester in New York. But will they turn out in force in Miami?
They came. They saw. They arranged to convene at a later date.

Ar-Miami-geddon didn't happen, but more than a hundred "Occupy Miami" protesters did meet on Saturday in Bayfront Park downtown. They agreed to gather again this Saturday to plan a camp-out beginning on October 15.
Read the rest of the post at:
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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Days before school starts, Broward County has a rudderless & clueless education system on auto-pilot, and the mice just jumped ship...


RedBroward's video: Amateur tape of Channel 10's newscast with investigative reporter Bob Norman. August 2011.


Days before school starts, Broward County has a rudderless & clueless education system on auto-pilot, and the mice just jumped ship. It's time to re-think the idea that they are in any way Social Media/Tech. savvy... or competent.

Broward County School Board
K.C. Wright Administration Building,
600 SE 3rd Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

-----

Broward Schools, "We are Broward County Public Schools, the 6th Largest District in the Nation"
@browardschools,

On June 20th they tweeted, "Follow BCPS This Summer on Twitter and Facebook"

Following this Tweet they generated 3 more Tweets, the last one of which was on June 30th.
There was NOTHING in July or August.
Nothing about the resignations of School Board members Dave Thomas or Jennifer Gottlieb.
Really.

So, the very same well-paid people at Broward Schools who weren't smart enough to figure out a way to use the resources they already had at BECON TV to televise the INTEGRITY meetings on their own station -the resources and equipment that Broward taxpayers had already paid for!- a subject of several fact-filled blog posts here last year, and a station that appears on both cable and satellite, have now shown themselves to be completely incapable of competently using the Social Media they claim to be hip to in order to share the fact that suddenly, they were a Board of 7, not 9.

Monday, when you went to the Broward School Board's website and looked at their Press Release homepage, http://www.browardschools.com/press/, you would see for yourself that they STILL have nothing about the Thomas and Gottlieb resignations posted, days later.
Even though it's less than a week 'till school starts.

When you go to the school system's website, check the left corner links under News/Links and click "Ethics Panels."
Guess what you are directed to?

Instead of the county's homepage for INTEGRITY or whatever they're calling their feeble Ethics efforts these days, which would be the logical guess, you are instead sent to a fake education website full of ads. http://www.browardschoolsintegrity.org/
Surprise!!!

And not to sound heavy-handed or anything but there's a Twitter page for a kids show on BECON called Teen News.
Their last Tweet was September 2nd, almost a year ago.

Apparently someone named Jeb Brunt is in charge, but is it really too much to ask if this group or their Twitter feed
is really necessary in the year 2011, if they're so poorly organized that almost an entire year has gone by...
I think that's your clue that they are un-necessary.
It's time to eliminate extraneous and superfluous!

But then the School Board members themselves are hardly role models for Social Media as now-former At-Large School Board Jennifer Gottlieb so ably demonstrates.
She has authored a grand total of two Tweets in 29 months and her last one was in April 2009, 28 months ago.


I'm curious why her 147 Followers still, apparently, follow her if she can't figure out something to say in 28 months.
isn't that kind of a sign that it's not really working out?

While she only has 6 Followers compared to Gottlieb's 147, At-Large School Board member member Robin Bartleman
http://twitter.com/#!/rbartleman at least writes more often...
Well, actually I don't know if she does or not since...

@rbartleman's Tweets are protected.



You'll excuse me for wondering just what the point is for an elected official like Bartleman to have a Twitter page, using her real name and her official School Board photo in a Social Media site, as well as a link to her School Board bio, but "protect" her Tweets on a site designed to share information.
It's like they're gold bars in her 'panic room' at home, and only her 6 pals, her BFFs, can see them /read them.
Seems sorta weird and about what you'd expect from a twenty-year old Rush Comm. Chair at a college sorority, but not what you expect in an elected public official.
(I dated a few of the former while at IU and was even friends with the President of PanHel, and they would've absolutely killed to have something like Twitter.
Instead, they had old-fashioned face-to-face meetings.)

If you want to have a Twitter page that you can share private information with your select circle of pals and don't want to send emails instead like most people, please DON'T use that official photo and don't link to the School Board website.

On a related matter, curious about why I never saw or heard anything in newspaper articles, blogs or on local TV newscasts about what the person who is supposed to be representing the pro-active voice of involved school parents thinks about what has been going on, I checked the website and Twitter page of the Broward County Council of PTAs, too.
BCCPTA is the parent 501(c)(3) non-profit for roughly 170-plus PTA groups throughout Broward County.

I found out that the president of that well-meaning group is named Linda Nestor and never having heard of her, I did a search to see what I could find out about her and what she and they have been saying of late about what's been going on this summer, with one scandal and embarrassing revelation after another dropping straight from the skies here, including the ones below.

Well, not surprisingly, being where we are, it's a deadly case of Pete and Repeat, if you're familiar with that conundrum.

BCCPTA
@BCCPTA Broward County, Florida,
Their last tweet was on June 25th, six long weeks ago.

Hmm-m... has anything happened here with the School system since then?
I'd say yes, but she says no.
That's not a good sign.

Seriously, does anyone over at the K.C. Wright Bldg. or the supposed parent organizations know how to stay pro-active and focused like a laser beam, or in general, know what the hell they're doing?

It doesn't really seem that way to me or to the many people I know and respect who pay MUCH closer attention to the Broward County Schools.
In fact, the preponderance of the evidence to date suggests that a lot more resignations and firings are desperately needed here, because Broward County taxpayers are definitely NOT getting a dollar's worth of value for a dollar given to the Broward County Schools.

Just saying...

-----
It's Official: School Board Member Jennifer Gottlieb Resigns
By Bob Norman
POSTED: Friday, August 12, 2011
UPDATED: 9:41 pm EDT August 12, 2011


-----
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
The contract for the $5.2 million construction project expired 13 days after it was signed in 2008, but work has continued amid questions about whether the facility is even needed.
By Cara Fitzpatrick, SUN SENTINEL
August 15, 2011

For three years, the Broward School District has allowed work to proceed on a $5.2 million office building in Pembroke Pines, despite a deepening budget crisis that prompted at least one board member to question whether it was still needed.

Now the district has racked up $2 million in construction costs but has only an unfinished project, an expired contract and a potential legal and financial nightmare to show for it.

"We are stuck in a mess that should never have happened," said Nora Rupert, who unsuccessfully tried to persuade fellow board members in June to consider shelving the project.

In the two months since then, Royal Concrete Concepts, of West Palm Beach, performed about $514,000 in work on the project, or about a quarter of the total. The company has declined comment.

The project, which is near Stirling Road and SW 202 Avenue, has been planned for more than a decade, and the School Board approved a building contract for it in April 2008. District officials said the new offices would save about $608,000 a year by decreasing the time maintenance employees spent driving every day from other district offices to job sites.

But earlier this month, district auditors discovered the contract for the project expired just 13 days after it was approved. Despite that, about eight months later, district staff gave the company the green light to start working, issuing a "notice to proceed."

District officials said they aren't sure why the expired contract wasn't noticed before now but said they haven't yet paid most of the $2 million.

Without a valid contract, J. Paul Carland II, the district's general counsel, said Thursday the district could risk a lawsuit from Royal Concrete if it called off the project altogether. He said it was also difficult to keep building without a legal agreement to spell out the price, deadlines and responsibilities of the district and the company.

"We just have to scramble," Carland said.

Further complicating matters is how the project was financed, district officials say. The district used federal stimulus bonds, which can't be used for salaries or school maintenance projects. To switch to another project, the district likely would have to come up with another $2 million, said Omar Shim, the district's capital budget director.

Board member Ann Murray called the project a "total mess" that had been propelled by "gentlemen's agreements" rather than with valid contracts and other documents. District staff should have known there wasn't an up-to-date contract, she said.

"It's your job to sort this out," she told Interim Superintendent Donnie Carter at last Tuesday's meeting.

Carter, who declined an interview with the Sun Sentinel, put a temporary stop to work at the site last week. Tom Lindner, the district's construction chief, said the project has gone through at least four project managers.

District officials gave Royal Concrete the go-ahead in May to pour the foundation, level the property and start erecting pre-fabricated buildings for the maintenance offices, Lindner told board members Tuesday. He said the project proceeded slowly because the district first wanted to finish school construction.

District officials also wanted to be closer to finishing a neighboring project, a controversial $18 million bus depot with office space, a bus wash and fueling station. When that was first planned, district officials said the bus depot would cost about $4.5 million.

The district has used the site, at times, to store old buses. Lindner said the final building on the site is about 93 percent complete.

The price for the maintenance offices also has fluctuated. It was originally approved as a $4.8 million project. Lindner said he's not sure why the cost changed but said the district still plans to use both facilities.

Board member Patricia Good said at this point it's difficult to know what to do.

"Do you stop the project? Do you continue with the project? With what's been raised, I don't know," she said.
Reader comments at:
http://discussions.sun-sentinel.com/20/soflanews/fl-broward-school-maintenance-buildin20110814/10
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Jennifer Gottlieb resignation is proof that EVERYTHING surprises Ann Murray: the sunrise, her own shadow, gravity...


Looks like I may finally have some incentive to dig-up and post that video I shot of Jennifer Gottlieb and Ann Murray up in Hollywood Beach one night back in January, making one lame excuse after another, for the excesses at Beachside Montessori Village -and the school system- before many of the cliquish Montessori moms, who, you should know, think they are either the bee's knees or the cat's pajamas!

They are neither, just the sort of sycophants who swallowed their self-serving prattle and have been funding these two despite their dubious character and judgment..
The meeting that only Channel 7 News of the 4 English-speaking Miami TV News operations bothered to cover as mentioned here at the time, with then-7 News reporter Reed Cowan asking Ann Murray some tough questions.

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Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/12/2356823/broward-school-board-member-jennifer.html

Second Broward School Board Member steps down
School Board member Jennifer Gottlieb becomes the second person to resign from the nine-member board and the resignations come at a time when school is about to start in the troubled district.
BY LAURA FIGUEROA
August 13, 2011

Jennifer Gottlieb makes two.

Just before the Aug. 22 start of the school year, Gottlieb, a veteran member of the Broward School Board, notified Chairman Ben Williams that she is stepping down.

Gottlieb’s departure comes a day after freshman school board member Dave Thomas announced that he was leaving the board to focus on his wife’s health issues.

While she did not give a specific reason for her resignation, a formal letter of resignation would be forthcoming, Williams said in a phone interview.

“I was surprised that she was resigning, but we didn’t go into detail, “ Williams said.

Calls to Gottlieb’s cell and home phone numbers were not returned Friday.

Though rumors of Gottlieb’s eventual resignation had been swirling around, especially after Thomas’s announcement, many political insiders, education activists and those who serve on the board with her, say Gottlieb’s abrupt departure came as a surprise, especially since she just won another term on the board in a tight August 2010 race.

“That really floored me,” said school board member Ann Murray, when learning of Gottlieb’s resignation. “She’s done a great job. I’ve supported and admired her, and if this is based on what’s in the best interest of her family then I support her.”

Gottlieb, whose district covers much of Hollywood, has come under sharp criticism in the past year. While never naming her directly, a state grand jury report released in February blasted her for pushing for the construction of the Beachside Montessori School Village in Hollywood.

The $25 million K-8 center had been championed by Gottlieb, who said it was a way to replicate the successes of a similar charter school in Fort Lauderdale.

But, the grand jury report dubbed the Hollywood project as the “beachside boondoggle” and blasted it as “a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the Board and District.”

“Beachside cost the taxpayers over $25 million, including over $6 million in land acquisition, displaced dozens of residents, razed almost all of a local community park, and built in an area and a time where there was an abundance of empty elementary and middle school seats,” notes the grand jury report.

Gottlieb, a mother of two, who is married to Broward Court Judge Ken Gottlieb, got her start in education as a teacher at Dania Elementary School in Dania Beach. She also worked for the Broward Teachers Union as a government relations manager.

The union threw their support by Gottlieb when she ran for the board in September 2006, and she was able to defeat incumbent Darla L. Carter, who had served on the board for 10 years.

BTU President Pat Santeramo, said he was surprised by Gottlieb’s resignation, but also noted over the years the union’s relationship with their one-time ally grew distant. He cited Gottlieb’s support of former Superintendent Jim Notter’s calls for impasse during contract negotiations as a major reason for the rift.

Notter has resigned his superintendent post and the board is currently searching for someone to lead the country’s sixth largest district.

“As a former employee, she contributed a lot to building up the government relations between the two sides,” Santeramo said. “It’s unfortunate that over the past couple of years she lost her connection to her background in the classrooms.”

The two vacancies leave room for Republican Gov. Rick Scott to make board appointments in line with his conservative policies. Though the seats are non-partisan, Democrats have largely had a stronghold over the board.

“I have no doubt the governor is going to identify professional individuals who can continue the functions of a board member,” Williams said.

The board has many issues to deal with while awaiting Scott’s appointments, including the search for a school’s chief and the appropriate response to the critical grand jury report. Scott’s appointments are likely to take several weeks.

The board also is dealing with the fallout from charges of corruption against former board member Beverly Gallagher and Stephanie Kraft.

Gallagher was arrested in 2009 and is serving a three-year sentence in federal prison. Kraft who left last year, is under a corruption investigation by the Broward State Attorney's office.

Board member Robin Bartleman, who, like Gottlieb, fills a countywide at-large-seat on the dais, said the board could not let the resignations distract from the business at hand.

“There’s still seven of us,” Bartleman said. “We have to continue working on the budget, implementing new legislation, and making sure the doors open on the first day of school.”

Herald Staff Writer Patricia Mazzei contributed to this report
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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Despite budget woes, Broward schools continued to pay huge overtime
By Cara Fitzpatrick, Sun Sentinel
7:39 p.m. EDT, August 6, 2011

Even as it grappled with a $171 million shortfall, the Broward School District continued to pay some school employees more than three times the usual rate for driving an activities bus, cleaning or working in an after-school program.

Although district auditors recommended ending the practice about two years ago, Broward paid some employees with second jobs overtime at the hourly rate of their primary positions. That meant some staffers earned up to $48 an hour as bus drivers— jobs that typically pay $11.58 to $21.73 an hour. Others earned up to $38 an hour as custodians, a job that starts at $11.23 an hour.

Related

Watchdog reports: Are schools misspending taxpayer money?



But making a change is "not just a simple measure," said Gracie Diaz, associate superintendent of human resources. Most school employees with second jobs are entitled by federal labor law to the same rate as their primary position if the work duties are similar.

Only about 6 percent, or about 417 employees, could be paid the lower rate, she said.

Still, that would have saved about $200,000 a year, or about five new teachers' salaries, according to district officials.

Another suggestion by district auditors to eliminate a pay supplement for bus drivers would have saved about $1.5 million a year. But it has been ignored because it would require re-negotiating union contracts.

The latest audit of overtime pay was released on Aug. 2, the same day the School Board approved a tentative $2.9 billion budget that calls for increased class sizes, a reduction in the arts and the loss of about 2,400 jobs, many of them teachers on annual contracts.

"It shouldn't be two years to implement things from an audit," said board member Nora Rupert, who along with Laurie Rich Levinson voted against the budget. Jennifer Gottlieb was absent.

In the first three months of this year alone, Broward paid about $1.3 million in overtime to 6,946 school employees working second jobs in the district, auditors found.

And, while total overtime — about $3.7 million — went down during that period, overtime paid to employees with second jobs actually increased 33 percent, or about $310,000, according to auditors.

District auditors recommended in 2009 that overtime costs could be cut by hiring outside workers for some jobs, switching employees with second jobs to a lower hourly overtime rate and cutting the supplement for bus drivers.

Diaz said the overtime rates will be cut, but former Superintendent Jim Notter wanted to wait until the start of the new fiscal year, July 1, to lessen the effect on employees. The district also had to change its policies and payroll systems, which took time, she said.

The district hired about 907 outside workers last year, she said, but because of training issues it's not always as effective as using an existing employee. Those workers also are the first to be let go so laid-off district employees can have their jobs, she said.

Other auditor suggestions haven't been used.

Patrick Reilly, the district's chief auditor, said bus drivers were among the district's highest overtime earners, despite having lower base salaries than many other employee groups.

Drivers who have routes longer than six and a half hours are entitled by contract to an extra 30 minutes a day in pay to clean the buses and do paperwork, he said. But those duties already are included in their job descriptions and cutting the extra pay could save about $1.5 million a year.

Senior drivers are entitled by contract to first choice of routes with overtime, inflating the costs.

The transportation department is more than $50 million in the red, according to the district, and officials say they're looking into some cost-saving measures there.

Board member Ann Murray, who used to work in transportation, told Reilly to stop "badgering" departments where problems have already been identified. "It's easier to blame then fix sometimes," she said Tuesday.

But Rich Levinson said Friday the district can't wait for years to make changes.

"At all cost we need to protect our schools," she said.

Reader comments at:

Soon I'll be sharing some informed and uninformed thoughts on whom Gov. Rick Scott should consider appointing as interim members to the Broward County School Board.
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Monday, August 8, 2011

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: If defendant cages at trials are good enough for Mubarak, they're good enough for Dinnen, Gottlieb & Murray!


In Broward County, when the corrupt and unethical members of the Broward School Board gang finally get their overdue date with justice, the taxpayers will be screaming for blood in Fort Lauderdale on a street where the County Courthouse is but a block from the Broward County Schools HQ.
Now that's convenient!
Or, as they say on TV, great "optics."

I wonder if the three of them will go "Shabby Chic" in their furnishing in their defendant cages?
With their grand sense of entitlement, you know they'd try to charge the taxpayers for the furniture in their cage.
That's the despicable caliber of people we're talking about.

Unless they want to use some furniture from their second homes, but I suspect by then, that may already be held as prosecution's "evidence," if you know what I mean.



RedBroward video: At the August 2nd, 2011 Broward County School Board meeting, member Maureen Dinnen speaks and makes clear that she doesn't like public scrutiny by the local news media -and Channel 10's Bob Norman in particular- regarding the number of her relatives currently working for the Broward School system, or, as school-connected contractors. August 2, 2011. http://youtu.be/xt153Yf5Wmw

Me, I love the scrutiny!
The more intense, the better!

WPLG-TV/Channel 10 News
Bob Norman's Blog
A Response To Maureen Dinnen
By Bob Norman
POSTED: Friday, August 5, 2011
UPDATED: 10:17 am EDT August 6, 2011

-----
The predicate to the above:

UPDATED: Maureen Dinnen Breaks Silence On Local 10 Report
By Bob Norman
POSTED: Tuesday, August 2, 2011,
UPDATED: 5:05 pm EDT August 2, 2011, http://www.local10.com/bobnorman/28742464/detail.html

If defendant cages at court trials are good enough for Hosni Mubarak, they're good enough for Broward School Board's Crew of Dinnen, Gottlieb & Murray!

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Despite budget woes, Broward schools continued to pay huge overtime
By Cara Fitzpatrick, Sun Sentinel
7:39 p.m. EDT, August 6, 2011

Even as it grappled with a $171 million shortfall, the Broward School District continued to pay some school employees more than three times the usual rate for driving an activities bus, cleaning or working in an after-school program.

Although district auditors recommended ending the practice about two years ago, Broward paid some employees with second jobs overtime at the hourly rate of their primary positions. That meant some staffers earned up to $48 an hour as bus drivers— jobs that typically pay $11.58 to $21.73 an hour. Others earned up to $38 an hour as custodians, a job that starts at $11.23 an hour.

But making a change is "not just a simple measure," said Gracie Diaz, associate superintendent of human resources. Most school employees with second jobs are entitled by federal labor law to the same rate as their primary position if the work duties are similar.

Only about 6 percent, or about 417 employees, could be paid the lower rate, she said.

Still, that would have saved about $200,000 a year, or about five new teachers' salaries, according to district officials.

Another suggestion by district auditors to eliminate a pay supplement for bus drivers would have saved about $1.5 million a year. But it has been ignored because it would require re-negotiating union contracts.

The latest audit of overtime pay was released on Aug. 2, the same day the School Board approved a tentative $2.9 billion budget that calls for increased class sizes, a reduction in the arts and the loss of about 2,400 jobs, many of them teachers on annual contracts.

"It shouldn't be two years to implement things from an audit," said board member Nora Rupert, who along with Laurie Rich Levinson voted against the budget. Jennifer Gottlieb was absent.

In the first three months of this year alone, Broward paid about $1.3 million in overtime to 6,946 school employees working second jobs in the district, auditors found.

And, while total overtime — about $3.7 million — went down during that period, overtime paid to employees with second jobs actually increased 33 percent, or about $310,000, according to auditors.

District auditors recommended in 2009 that overtime costs could be cut by hiring outside workers for some jobs, switching employees with second jobs to a lower hourly overtime rate and cutting the supplement for bus drivers.

Diaz said the overtime rates will be cut, but former Superintendent Jim Notter wanted to wait until the start of the new fiscal year, July 1, to lessen the effect on employees. The district also had to change its policies and payroll systems, which took time, she said.

The district hired about 907 outside workers last year, she said, but because of training issues it's not always as effective as using an existing employee. Those workers also are the first to be let go so laid-off district employees can have their jobs, she said.

Other auditor suggestions haven't been used.

Patrick Reilly, the district's chief auditor, said bus drivers were among the district's highest overtime earners, despite having lower base salaries than many other employee groups.

Drivers who have routes longer than six and a half hours are entitled by contract to an extra 30 minutes a day in pay to clean the buses and do paperwork, he said. But those duties already are included in their job descriptions and cutting the extra pay could save about $1.5 million a year.

Senior drivers are entitled by contract to first choice of routes with overtime, inflating the costs.

The transportation department is more than $50 million in the red, according to the district, and officials say they're looking into some cost-saving measures there.

Board member Ann Murray, who used to work in transportation, told Reilly to stop "badgering" departments where problems have already been identified. "It's easier to blame then fix sometimes," she said Tuesday.

But Rich Levinson said Friday the district can't wait for years to make changes.

"At all cost we need to protect our schools," she said.
Two days earlier, in the Sun-Sentinel's Schools blog, Cara Fitzpatrick connected-the-dots in jaw-dropping fashion on how poorly served Broward taxpayers are by the elected School Board and its administrator minions.

I was tempted to post about this on Thursday after seeing it on my Blogger Dashboard Reading List just minutes after it went online, but I wanted to wait to see if there ended up being more to this story by the weekend.
Nope.

Still, it's as much of a public dissection of live people as you usually ever see in local South Florida journalism and it was as much-appreciated as it was long overdue!
Name names!!!

South Florida Schools blog
Leaving a message in the Broward School District
By Cara Fitzpatrick August 4, 2011 03:09 PM


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/world/middleeast/05egypt.html
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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

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.

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?

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.
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!

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Monday, August 1, 2011

On eve of Tuesday's budget meeting at 6 pm, Broward School Board is still hiding crucial facts from students, parents & taxpayers


According to Local10's Bob Norman, with school scheduled to start up again on August 22nd, with at least 10 Broward County schools having been hit within the past month by thieves seeking to remove copper wiring that protects those schools from lightning strikes, and even while the robberies make the schools vulnerable to lightning damage, the Broward County School Board is once again acting true to form.
In this case, trying to keep the name of schools that now lack this protection from students, parents and taxpayers alike.
On Monday, Norman and his cameraman were chased off school property by Broward School officials while speaking to a contractor sent to fix the problem at one school.

Copper Thieves Targeting School Lightning Protectors, Thieves Have Targeted 10 Broward County Schools
by Bob Norman
POSTED: Monday, August 1, 2011,
UPDATED: 7:51 pm EDT August 1, 2011,


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It's true: Though the beleaguered Broward School Board will be hosting an FY 2011-12 budget hearing on Tuesday night, only one South Florida media outlet has had a story about their budget problems in the past few days.
Just saying...




South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward Schools to consider budget calling for far fewer teachers, slightly lower tax rate
By Cara Fitzpatrick, Sun Sentinel, 6:18 p.m. EDT, August 1, 2011

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See also:

Loophole Makes Nepotism Legal At Our School Boards
By Bob Norman
POSTED: Saturday, July 30, 2011,
UPDATED: 11:58 am EDT July 31, 2011

School Board Member's Relatives Get School Board Business
By Bob Norman
POSTED: Thursday, July 28, 2011
UPDATED: 9:22 am EDT July 31, 2011
Story and video at:
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Thursday, June 23, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Miami Herald recommends
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

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

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