Showing posts with label race identity politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race identity politics. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Part 2 of 2 - re Hallandale Beach's groundbreaking tonight at B.F. James Park and the lingering controversy re the swimming pool situation in this small city. How a death at a city pool in 1991 -and race identity politics- continues to roil this city's political and financial decisions. How poor choices made today out of anger or opportunism by Cooper, Sanders & Lewy may sharply limit the options of a majority of city residents for years into the future

Part 2 of 2 - re Hallandale Beach's groundbreaking tonight at B.F. James Park and the lingering controversy re the swimming pool situation in this small city. How a death at a city pool in 1991 -and race identity politics- continues to roil this city's political and financial decisions. How poor choices made today out of anger or opportunism by Cooper, Sanders & Lewy may sharply limit the options of a majority of city residents for years into the future 
I've heard from a few different people regarding what I wrote yesterday about tonight's groundbreaking tonight at B.F. James Park, and how the cost of that park doubling up to $5 Million, as a result of what's being done with a swimming pool there, may well mean that there's now NOT enough money to fix South Beach Park, which is actually the busiest park in the city and the busiest part of the city beach.

Some of the readers who wrote thought I might be unaware of what happened here years ago, and how many of those negative attitudes I described in my email and subsequent blog post here might explain some things we are seeing now, so felt obliged to tell me what they remembered.

Long story short: Five-year old boy drowns at City of Hallandale swimming pool in 1995 that was later known as Peter Bluesten Park....Big lawsuit against the city...
This drowning comes four years after City of Hallandale closed and then covered-up a swimming pool at Dixie Park in Northwest Hallandale, outraging residents.

It's all largely in the 1995 Miami Herald article I have copied and pasted at the bottom of today's email/blog post so you know the facts as publicly stated.

Though I wasn't living in HB then, being up in Arlington County, VA -45-minute walk from Key Bridge and Georgetown- I have read lots of the newspaper articles about what really happened at that city pool and have met and heard people from NW and elsewhere complain about how indignant and angry they were that the HB City's Commission of the time's
ham-handed response.
This followed by four years the city closing and then covering-up of a pool in NW HB, rather than resolve the larger questions that existed at the time.
Like fixing and rehabbing the pool complex and not neglecting it so much in the future. 

(Though to be fair, there STILL seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and "mis-remembering" of the basic facts of the case, and some of that is responsible for the lingering and unsupported conjecture about what "really happened." 
In our community, just as is true with lots of others in this country, some people much prefer to have their own "facts" they choose to believe, and ignore facts they deem inconvenient.)

The NW community felt like they'd been taken advantage of and punished for the simplest of all reasons -they had been! 

I also know from first-hand experience that that incident was brought up A LOT when Comm. Sanders was running for office the first time in the weeks before the Nov. 2008 election, after he had been appointed in that sham procedure that summer that Arturo O'Neill, sitting next to me in the Commission Chambers, predicted moments before it happened.

The one where Mayor Cooper intentionally ignored the city's established rules and procedures for filling a vacancy that had been used the year before -with Keith London after Joe Gibbons was elected to the Florida Houseand refused to let the public speak at the meeting.

That's a meeting that someone at Mike Satz's office should have been able to use as a stepping stone towards a big promotion if anyone there had been paying even the slightest attention, given ALL the illegality and fraud that intentionally and knowingly took place that night.

Sanders and his supporters specifically argued that if Sanders or another African- American from NW was not there on the dais, there would always be the possibility that the city's powers-that-be at HB City Hall, who in the past as well as today, continue to show a disturbing patronizing and  condescending anti-democratic, anti-resident attitude, would do the same
thing again.

That's a hard thing to argue against when you know it's 100% true, which is a psychological burden that anyone who wants better and smarter pro-reform people on the HB City Commission as a whole, like me and so many others of you in this city honestly DO, have to deal with, even though we had nothing to do with why that psychological burden is actually there from 18 years ago..

The problem, of course, is that the very person who is there from NW is so completely unsatisfactory and underwhelming, so consistently NOT up to the task of the very job he ran for and won -twice.

That's why I specifically mention online in my blog on how consistently and rather maddeningly unprepared Comm. Sanders is for meetings, his very poor communication skills with constituents -ignoring them for years by refusing to return phone calls and emails, and then, per the very controversial Diplomat LAC proposal, refused to come to the affected neighborhood in NE HB! 
Something I've mentioned many times on this blog when it happened.

In the days before that Diplomat LAC issue came before them, people from other parts of Broward County who served on Broward's Planning Council -like HB Comm. Michele Lazarow does now- actually drove to HB to see for themselves the area in question and see how it might be negatively affected by all the many condo towers the size of The Duo, esp. traffic, because THEY were so conscientious and keen to know all the facts and as much context as possible re such an important public policy decision.
A decision that they well understood would permanently change the face of this city, with its ONE east-west road thru the city.

Meanwhile, a member of the HB City Commission continually refused to meet with HB residents in their own NE neighborhood -Comm. Sanders.

Yes, Comm. Sanders, who runs for elective office only to ignore the majority of the city's residents -constituents!- from the start! 
Most people would do the exact opposite once they got elected to keep them motivated and in the fold, but his choice is to ignore them

I've really hit hard on Comm. Sanders lack of a work ethic when it comes to the most basic aspects of his job, regardless of where he lives: ensuring proper oversight and public accountability of the city's operations by the elected city commission.

Oversight, the one thing Sanders is supposed to do is the very thing he consistently is least interested in, because he's unwilling to do the work required, preferring instead to swallow whole everything he is told by the City Manager's staff, which comes with an agenda that is NOT positive for either HB residents, taxpayers or small business owners.

Comm. Sanders is, by any reasonable standards, woefully unprepared and even worse as his votes earlier this month re the HB CRA showed, unwilling to change, adapt or evolve.
Unwilling to do the right thing when the golden opportunity is just sitting there, waiting for him to put-up or shut-up after all these years, per the AG's Opinion or getting the FL JLAC to do an audit of the HB CRA.

Instead, Sanders did what he has always done -protect the mayor's flank and given in to the very city employees who are responsible for so very much of the longstanding problems in this city, problems that are NEVER properly and permanently fixed, solved or eliminated.

And so here we are... again, spending more money than is either logical or prudent, all because of what happened in the past in this small city.
Which will limit our community's choices in the future. 

-----
Miami Herald
ANGER BOILS TO THE SURFACE IN WAKE OF BOY'S DROWNING
By Greg Brown,
 Herald Staff Writer
August 13, 1995
Just five weeks on the job, Pastor Nathan Robinson finds his flock in turmoil -- engulfed in anger, grief and confusion.

Everywhere he goes, harried faces plead: What happened to 5-year-old James Lee Johnson, who drowned July 24 in Hallandale's City Park pool? 

Robinson will lead a candlelight vigil at 8 p.m. Wednesday at the pool. Another group led by Hallandale activists plans a community meeting at 5 p.m. today at St. Ann's Episcopal Church, 701 NW First Ave., Hallandale. 

The telephone rings perpetually at St. Luke Primitive Baptist Church in Carver Ranches. Some callers allege racism against James, who was black. While the camp counselors in charge of James were black, the lifeguards on duty were white. Others call to grieve or learn new information. 

"I have to address this church in the morning. I have to address the family almost every night. I have to address people when I walk down the street in Carver Ranches," Robinson said. 

"I have to give them answers. They ask questions. It's a position God has put me into." 

Anger is a natural reaction to such a meaningless death. James, under the eyes of four adults, drowned unnoticed in four feet of water at the pool at 202 SE Fifth St. in Hallandale. According to police documents, two minutes of inattention left James floating face down. 

James' death the next afternoon, July 25, at Miami Children's Hospital has been ruled an accidental drowning. He was buried July 29.

Some in Hallandale see the death as proof that the city's elected officials, all of whom are white, care little about what happens to the city's mostly black northwest section. 

Neighbors of the Johnsons in West Hollywood are numb with shock. They want answers. Now. 

"I'm both angered and appalled at the whole situation," said Lynnessa Wooten, 34, who lives near the Johnsons outside Carver Ranches. 

Wooten says racial issues divert attention from Hallandale's responsibility -- to explain how the boy died. 

"I think it started the instant they found that child at the bottom of that pool," she said. "I think at that instant somebody started covering the city of Hallandale's rear end." 

The commissioners say they are upset by the death, too, but can't speak in detail about the accident. They say they haven't been officially briefed. With a lawsuit likely to be filed against the city, they say, public comment would be improper. 

Karen Woodfin, 28, of Hallandale, is white. Her daughter, Amber Le-Master, 6, was in the swimming group with James on the day he died. 

A stranger to James' mother, Yvoncia, Woodfin attended the boy's wake July 28. She called Pastor Robinson to talk about the loss. 

She, too, says race is beside the point. 

"My daughter was in that camp from the first day. It could easily have been her," said Woodfin. "A drowning, a death, being hit by a car. It can happen to anyone. It doesn't hit that close to home until it happens to you." 

But civic activist Angie Glass, 58, has no qualms about raising the question of race. For her, James' death is the result of city negligence toward the northwest neighborhood. 

Before the civil rights movement, Hallandale's blacks were segregated in northwest Hallandale. Starting in the mid-1950s, Glass said, the neighborhood's dirt roads turned to gravel and were eventually paved. Road signs were installed. 

She prefers those days of a segregated community that blacks could call their own. Northwest "was an excellent community," she said. "We had our ma-and-pa grocery stores. We had our theater. We had a pool." 

The few amenities in the neighborhood have now deteriorated. The city has made no credible moves to rebuild them, Glass said. 

In 1991, the pool at Dixie Park, in the heart of northwest Hallandale, closed, deemed a hazard beyond repair. Today, a muddy crater stands in its place. 

"Everything we got in the '50s they've taken back," Glass said. 

For residents like Cathy Williams, 39, the disparities are crystal clear. 

"It's always considered another town," said Williams. "You look at the landscaping in the southwest section. You look at the pool in the southwest section. They refurbish the paddleball courts every other year. It's a big difference, and it's not a secret. It's lying right there." 

City commissioners adamantly deny that they've shortchanged the northwest. Between 1988 and 1994, the city obtained more than $3.6 million in federal grants to improve the neighborhood. 

Hallandale's city government faces more than criticism from some of its residents. It may face a lawsuit. 

James' family says it plans to sue. Under state law, a city must be warned six months before a lawsuit can be filed. A letter from a Miami law firm representing the family was received by the city this week, but City Attorney Dick Kane says it doesn't constitute a proper notice of intent to sue. 

Hallandale has been sued before for accidental drowning. In 1994, the city and county settled a suit filed by the parents of Willie Roberts, an 8-year-old boy who drowned at a county park under the supervision of a city camp program. 

And in May of this year, the city paid $170,000 to the family of Ramon Turnquest, a 7-year-old boy killed crossing under the care of a city-paid crossing guard. The driver of the car was considered primarily at fault in the Turnquest case. 

City negligence is not necessarily the cause of these accidents, Kane said. 

"The greatest swimmers in the world drown. The most careful people have accidents," Kane said. "My point is, you shouldn't attribute liability to the city because of an accident." 

Commissioner Dotty Ross campaigned in the northwest section before taking her seat in March. 

A volunteer water safety teacher at City Park in the early 1960s, Ross is flabbergasted to hear that people are complaining about the city's handling of James' death. Amid a dozen pink phone message slips on her desk, she said, not one is about the drowning. 

"When you're in public office, the telephone calls I get are not accolades. People call to complain about things." 

She takes the anger to heart. It's a tragedy, Ross said, and the city's image is important when emotions are involved. Hallandale is not taking the death lightly, nor the feelings of blacks who feel slighted. 

"If that's their perception, it's just as real."

Sunday, July 21, 2013

What happened to all that Hope and Change? The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin hammers the point home with precision re our condescending president: "President Obama’s sad view of America"; To quote Shakespeare, "Alas, 'tis true."

What happened to all that Hope and Change? The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin hammers the point home with precision re our condescending president: "President Obama’s sad view of America"; To quote Shakespeare, "Alas, 'tis true." 

Rubin's closing packs a wallop: 
The president at the very end argued that "those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions." Too bad he doesn’t follow his own advice.
But then after four-plus years, wouldn't the real surprise be that Obama did DO that?

The Washington Post
Right Turn blog
President Obama’s sad view of America
By Jennifer Rubin
Published: July 19, 2013 at 5:26 pm
President Obama’s extensive remarks in the White House Briefing Room this afternoon were as surprising as they were gratuitous. He had already made one statement asking citizens to respect the George Zimmerman verdict. Today he did so again but offered no specific policy recommendation with regard to race (although he used it as a forum to assail “stand-your-ground” legislation that ultimately was not at issue in the case).
In fact, Obama undid some of the closure he provided in his earlier written statement by intoning: “If a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.” So the jury was biased? The trial unfair? I can’t fathom why the president of the United States would stoke that sort of second-guessing.
Read the rest of the post at

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Can anyone save egotistical Lauderhill mayor and amateur mind-reader Richard J. Kaplan from himself? The chronic Internet crank continues showing his true colors and ignorance at BrowardBeat, and other readers have finally had enough of his twaddle, too

Can anyone save egotistical Lauderhill mayor and amateur mind-reader Richard J. Kaplan from himself? The chronic Internet crank continues showing his true colors and ignorance at BrowardBeat, and other readers have finally had enough of his twaddle, too. Or will an intervention be necessary?
I was going to send in the comment below about an hour after seeing Lauderhill Mayor Richard J. Kaplan's initial smarmy comments to attorney and frequent contributor Sam Fields ill-informed essay, but I decided to just wait. 

BrowardBeat
Mitt Romney’s Lost Lesson On Tolerance  
By Sam Fields
May 13

Good thing I did, because just like Hallandale Beach's own chronic Internet crank -whose name and multiple Internet identities I will try my best to avoid mentioning here to give him even more attention- Mr. Ego, Kaplan, couldn't help himself; he HAD to write yet again.
And again!
And yet again!


Yes, he's comment #1 -and #11 and #15 and #17.
http://www.browardbeat.com/mitt-romneys-lost-lesson-on-tolerance/#comment-698876

Here's what I know and what has already been independently confirmed -and mentioned here previously on Friday- though you would never know it by what was written in the  BrowardBeat post or by Mayor Kaplan's initial comment: the family of the individual at the center of the hair-cutting controversy, John Lauber, says that The Washington Post completely mis-characterized him and got major facts about him wrong.

His sister further says that she didn't know anything about the story, and as if more was needed, the so-called "witness" in the original WaPo, Stu White contradicted WaPo's reporting in an interview with ABC News and has since admitted that he was NEVER physically present at any such incident and did NOT know about the story UNTIL it was told to him by the WaPo
This year!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/sister-of-alleged-romney-target-has-no-knowledge-of-any-bullying-incident/

Yet White was initially used by the newspaper to authenticate a story he was neither present for or aware of. 
A perfect snapshot of the American Mainstream Media in 2012.

Given his own inconsistency, lack of personal knowledge on the matter in question and what we all now know is his giant sense of arrogance in making claims about Gov. Romney's honesty or lack thereof, from a thousand miles away, Mayor Kaplan should cool it and accept that considering how frequently he finds the need to post at Buddy Nevins' BrowardBeat blog in ways that strike so many well-informed people as the very definition of utterly self-serving, we DON'T put any stock into what he says. 
If he said it was raining, we'd check the window to see for ourselves.

As a prominent member of Broward County's status quo I've-got-mine society, where taxpayers are always at the bottom rung, he in particular is hardly in a position of lecturing or hectoring others about matters of morality or scruples. 

(Seriously, he's been on the Broward MPO for about twenty years? No wonder transportation issues in this county are discussed at a Junior High level and taxpayers who pay attention are so f-ed with geniuses like Kaplan making policy -garbage in, garbage out, with taxpayers left holding the bag for bad ideas.

In the near future I'll have a scathing post here on the blog for you all to chew over re the clique of geniuses over at the Broward MPO that details not only how truly ineffective they are in getting their "message" out, if that's what they're calling it these days, but how completely ignored they are by anyone who pays attention, whether concerned Broward taxpayers, bloggers or the sleepwalking South Florida news media. I thought that so-called "independence" the MPO was given was actually supposed to make things better. It's NOT! 
Especially for taxpayers in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.)

A little more hubris and a lot less self-serving comments would do real wonders for Mayor Kaplan, but I doubt it'll take with him.

He sounds remarkably like many of the well-educated and smug upper- middle class Adams Morgan liberals I met in D.C. twenty years ago, who thought that they were down with the struggle because they voted Democratic, and had a Guatamalan gardener, a Honduran housekeeper and ate at a Salvadoran restaurant.
Yes, they were like their very own Model United Nations, and were so full of their own goodness.

But in 1991, when there was a riot there shortly after a Black female Metro cop arrested a drunk Hispanic man in a public park, and the liberals saw that their political sensibilities didn't prevent their neighborhood from being damaged or looted, some at least had the common sense to take off their blinders, stopped being so cowed by their friends PC ways and tried to stop being so oblivious to their own past condescending attitudes towards others.
Which is to say, people who had different opinions than them.

Me, I bet that Mayor Kaplan can't go two entire months without writing something on Buddy Nevins' popular blog.
And I will let you know how long he goes, too.
-----
Updated on May 16th at 3:54 to add Kaplan's fourth comment, #17

Friday, May 4, 2012

So desperately wanting to belong: Is Elizabeth Warren's desire to finally find a sense of belonging what animated her use of race identity (politics) prior to the Massachusetts Senate race? It may very well be much more personal than you think once you know her back story


WSJ Opinion: Questions Over Elizabeth Warren's Claims of Native American Heritage Linger. May 3, 2012.  http://youtu.be/MN1lvOq2opA

So desperately wanting to belong: Is Elizabeth Warren's desire to finally find a sense of belonging what animated her use of race identity (politics) prior to the current Massachusetts Senate race? It may very well be much more personal than you think once you know her back story


Please see also:

Boston Herald
Elizabeth Warren: I just wanted to find others like me
By Hillary Chabot and Chris Cassidy
Thursday, May 3, 2012

Boston Globe video: Scott Brown reacts to Elizabeth Warren's Native American status. April 30, 2012. http://youtu.be/2Kpu7yBpnUE

Massachusetts: Brown-Warren Senate Race Statistically Tied  
By Joshua Miller 
Posted at 10:56 a.m. on April 1

Boston Globe video: The Back Story: Dina Rudick speaks with Globe reporter Noah Bierman about his profile on Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren
FYI: per the mention in the video above, film and TV star James Garner was also from Oklahoma like Warren, and had even attended the same elementary school years prior.

The first in a series of profiles Noah Bierman is doing on Warren is here:
Once you read this, regardless of what you think about her politics, a lot of things will make a lot more sense in trying to figure her out.

Boston Globe
A girl who soared, but longed to belong.
Elizabeth Warren grew up amid the infinite expanse of Oklahoma, the finite expectations of her place and time, and financial pain at home. The lessons of those years still drive her.
By Noah Bierman, Globe Staff
February 12, 2012
Article at 
Video: An Oklahoma childhoodhttp://bcove.me/d5ojwpi2

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Chicago Trib readers screw w/Trib execs: "The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies"


WBBM-TV, Chicago video

WBBM-TV, Chicago video: Walter Jacobson: Time to be upfront about mob violence
Story at

Upset Chicago Tribune readers are continuing to screw with Trib execs over the paper's fact-free reporting on the rash of mob attacks that have struck the Chicagoland area, prompting the execs to have to shut down their own comment forums.
That these forums, like their blogs, are among the best in the country, and light-years ahead of anything in South Florida goes without saying.

See Chicagoist on "mobs", including this headline, Did Gang Bangers Force Cops to Close North Avenue Beach?, at

This sort of politically correct writing has provoked the counter-force you could expect and that criticism of the Tribune policies and execs has led to the following embarrassing disclaimer being placed at the bottom of news articles:
"The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies. Details of those policies are described below."
Yes, on account of the Trib's self-serving, heavy-handed, condescending and parochial, not-to-mention Politically Correct polices, readers all over Chicagoland are saying f-em and 'shut 'em down!'

Chicago Tribune
3 teens held in downtown attack
By Jeremy Gorner and Dawn Rhodes
Tribune reporters
8:20 a.m. CDT, June 8, 2011

Two teens have told police they were attacked by a group of at least five youths downtown Tuesday evening just west of North Michigan Avenue.
A witness described the incident as similar to last weekend’s downtown attacks when 20 youths were arrested, including five who allegedly robbed and beat several people inStreeterville and on the Magnificent Mile.

Read the rest of the story at:

(Reminder for late arrivals to the blog -I lived in Chicago, Evanston and Wilmette in the mid-80's, including the Bears Super Bowl season.)

Later in the day, under the headline Rahm on the spot over youth mobs this appeared:
The most disturbing feature of the mob crimes is that they seem largely recreational. As early as February, police were warning merchants and residents in the Water Tower neighborhood about "flash mob offenders" — groups of teens who arrived via mass transit to stage shoplifting raids sometimes organized on social media networks. One unruly crowd took over the dining room of a McDonald's in April, forcing it to remain closed for hours after police broke things up.

That led to this eye-roller of a headline on Friday:
Teens feel they're being watched downtown
Most youths don't want to cause trouble, many students say in wake of mob attacks

Well at least the Trib didn't call them "youths" in the story.

Sure, because when you're a news reporter, when something happens, rather than trying to get some answers as to why someone or some group is or was engaged in a particular behavior, you interview a group of people that are NOT doing that, and tell how they feel victimized.
OH, PLEASE!

They still won't interview anyone who was actually involved in any of this because that would involve some work and enterprise, so instead they interview the United Colors of Benneton kids who attend the school for wannabe social activists.
How precious.

Oh, sorry, I mean the Urban Outfitter Crew.

This was all the perfect predicate for the following piece by the Editor of the newspaper which ran in Saturday's Trib.
It tells you almost everything you need to know about the state of American journalism in the year 2011.

Or, put another way, I could've headlined this post "When the PC Police run a newspaper: Chicago Tribune editor writes "When race is relevant in news coverage" Still waiting for Miami Herald's own take on illegal aliens? Good luck!"

Chicago Tribune
When race is relevant in news coverage
By Gerould W. Kern
4:52 p.m. CDT, June 10, 2011

This week the Chicago Tribune published several news stories and related columns about assaults by groups of youths in the Streeterville area of downtown Chicago. More coverage appears Sunday.

A number of readers have asked why we have not included racial descriptions of the assailants and the victims in these incidents.
Read the rest of the editorial at:


See also: Chicago Incapable of Combatting Flash Mobs

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Back to the blog fray; race identity politics; Miami Herald Editorial Board

Well, I've taken some time away from the blogging at South Beach Hoosier and Hallandale Beach Blog to do some final editing on some other writing projects I've been involved with over the past few months, but I'm ready to jump back into the fray.

I've also spent some of that time working out the kinks and am finally at the point where I may yet have finally(!) mastered my new digital camera, a gift from my Memphis-born sister, Jennifer, up in Pembroke Pines, and no longer have to rely on my once-trusty Canon, or a disposable Kodak or Fuji.

I feel in Greenspan-speak, "exuberant optimism."
Finalmente, maître chez moi!

If you look around you, you should already be noticing some better quality photos on the two blogs, as I've replaced some photos taken with the Canon that have been on the sites for the first 15 months of their young and impressionable lives.

I now have roughly about a dozen and a half pretty well-written issue-oriented posts ready to hit the ground running tomorrow, and hope they make up for some of the time I've been away.

Not to get too far ahead of myself here, but I think some of you will be pretty surprised at some of the things I reveal in these posts, including about my own involvement in politics locally, statewide and nationally.


It's my hope that they'll serve to make a lot of the things I've already written in my blogs, seem more inherently logical and consistent.

For some folks in South Florida, especially in Hallandale Beach and environs, it will definitely feel like laser-guided cannon balls aimed squarely at their heads.
That's exactly my intent.

As Elvis Costello sang on his great album, "My Aim is True."

Whatever your plans are for the day, I strongly encourage you to tape a one-hour program Sunday at noon on C-SPAN 2's Book TV:
Bruce Bartlett talks about his new book, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past.

It's really quite interesting and is moderated by Clarence Page of the Chicago Sun-Times. I first watched it last week and it's quite a lively hour

http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=562503144

In case you're not familiar with him, economist Bruce Bartlett is an anti-Bush 43 Republican.
How much does he dislike President Bush?

Well, his previous book, from 2006, was called "Impostor How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy"
'Nuff said.

Bartlett's first job in Washington was working for wacky West Texas Rep. Ron Paul, one of the most consistently un-popular members of Congress while I was in D.C. all those years, and whose staff was hardly less insufferable.

Think typical Harvard wonk attitudes, but from U-T or Texas A&M, instead.

They were sort of like the grand-kids of all the creepy conservative businessmen that '60's liberals always claimed were deeply involved in the JFK shooting as a result of the CIA, Cuba and Castro and...

(Both of my parents saw JFK and Jackie the day before Dallas, when they flew into Kelly AFB in San Antonio, and got shown around. At the time, my mother was the secretary for the Base Commander. Years later, we were living in Memphis when Dr. King was murdered.)

Years later, perhaps a little wiser, Barrett worked for a garrulous Republican some of you might've heard of, who's 180 degrees different than Paul's intensely grating personality:
former Buffalo Bill QB, 1988 G.O.P. Veep nominee and U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp.

For more on Barret, see his past writings at
http://bartlett.blogs.nytimes.com/
and http://www.townhall.com/columnists/BruceBartlett/2007

On top of whatever you think you already know about the former Bush 41 HUD Secretary,
Kemp 'walked the walk and talked the talk,' famously threatening to strike the AFL All-Star game one year, along with other players, due to hotel segregation at the site of the game.

Like conservative icon Charlton Heston, Kemp was actually at the MLK "Dream" Speech in Washington.




About the Program
In “Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past”, author Bruce Bartlett argues that the Democratic Party had a racist past and he says there’s an unfair perception of America’s two national parties. In his book, he contends that Democratic Presidents and congressmen of the past supported racial segregation and the “Jim Crow” laws that dominated the Confederate states. Mr. Bartlett discussed his book with Clarence Page, syndicated columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

About the Author
Bruce Bartlett was a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush. He has had a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the last ten years, and has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The National Review, and Fortune.



I mention this Barrett interview in light of the silly, pointless Marc Caputo story in the Miami Herald Saturday about the Florida Black Republicans and their attempt to point some fingers at FL Democrats, thru a magazine that, quite likely, has less readership than those godawful real estate mags you find in those plastic vending racks all over the area.

If I recall correctly, the City of North Miami recently tried to commandeer them, along with some of the Miami SunPost and NewTimes, too.

Of course, I realize silly, Saturday and Herald are still redundant on many scores, since it's the one day of the week where the mysterious Herald Editorial Board turns over half its space to one of their many pet causes, running all sorts of nonsense, Verbatim.

That hasn't changed since I lasted posted here!
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http://www.miamiherald.com/516/story/528574.html
Miami Herald
Magazine attacks Democrats for racist past
By Marc Caputo
May. 10, 2008

For a sign of Florida Republicans' all-out effort to attract black voters, look no farther than the glossy full-colored The Black Republican magazine that launches broadsides like these:
The KKK was the ''terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.'' Democrats, in addition to waging ''war on God,'' are still mired in sex and financial scandals.

That's all tucked in the back of the Sarasota-based National Black Republican Association's 60-page mag, the first half of which touts Republican Gov. Charlie Crist's civil rights record and the Republican Party of Florida's minority outreach efforts that the association has helped coordinate.

The strident comments and images -- replete with a Ku Klux Klan rally snapshot that notes ''every person in this photo was a Democrat'' -- has outraged Democrats and caught the Republican Party of Florida flat-footed as well.

''Oh my gosh,'' party spokeswoman Erin Van Sickle said when told of the magazine's content, which she described as "inflammatory.''

Though the magazine lists the party as a financial sponsor, Van Sickle said the GOP ''had no editorial control'' and that party chairman Jim Greer "is disappointed in some of the content.''

Van Sickle is listed as a contributing writer, but she said that's because she helped supply the content and photographs concerning Greer, Crist and the party.

The black Republican association's chairwoman, Frances Rice, said her group operated independently of the party and is aggressive about its viewpoint because it wants to ''wake up'' black voters and "shed the light of truth on the racist past and failed socialism of the Democratic Party.''

But Democrats suspect Republicans knew more about the magazine's content than they're admitting. Democrats got wind of the publication, dated Fall 2007, at a black voter event Tuesday in Tallahassee where Republicans were passing out the magazine.

''Shame on Chairman Greer and the Republicans,'' said Jacksonville Democratic Sen. Tony Hill. "They should be about bringing people together, not demagoguery about the KKK. That's not going to win African Americans today, and Barack Obama is showing that.''

If Republicans could get 25 percent of the black vote nationwide, according to Rice's magazine, the party would win Congress and the White House. But to do that, Rice said, she wants black voters to know the Democrats' history of "slavery, secession, segregation and socialism.''

Rice said black voters tend to be religious and aren't as receptive to the secularism underpinning the Democratic Party -- hence the ''Democrats Wage War on God'' article.

She said the magazine features articles from top black thinkers and conservatives to hold black leaders accountable.

As for listing the ''Top 10 Democratic Sex Scandals,'' Rice said her publication sought to ''balance'' the news media's coverage of Republican woes.

Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski quickly rattled off the names of Republicans caught in sex scandals: "There's no Mark Foley, no Larry Craig, no David Vitter. Where's Bob Allen? He's the guy who said he was afraid of black guys and that's why he offered a police officer $20 to perform a sex act.''

One of the articles in the magazine says Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Rice contends she knew Martin Luther King Jr.'s family and ''there's no way they were Democrats'' in the 1960s, a time when racist southern Democrats were fire-hosing black protesters and trying to keep them out of public schools. Her association, established in 2005, aired political ads concerning King's political leanings in 2006 political radio ads in Florida, Maryland Ohio, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Democrats counter that King was nonpartisan. Hill and other Democrats say they don't dispute the central facts about the Democratic Party's role in pushing slavery, seceding from the Union and precipitating the Civil War.

And they acknowledged that those pictured in the old KKK snapshot were likely Democrats, but said that was many decades ago.

But Democrats say the magazine omits the fact that many Southern Democrats joined the GOP after the 1960s civil rights movement.

'You could change the caption to say, `All of these people are now Republicans,' because the Democratic Party no longer suited their racist Southern strategy,'' said Dan Gelber, a Democratic state legislator from Miami Beach.
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Dan Gelber is no Jack Gordon, that's for sure!

Instead of being a Profile in Courage and taking the necessary heat for his leadership role in the FL primary debacle, and so many other issues, he's an Alibi Ike for the Ages.
No wonder he likes Obama -now!

My memory is a bit hazy on this point, so I need some help to pin this down.

For decades, in an open mockery of fairness, the Dade County Commission didn't have member districts until towards the end of the 20th Century, when the Dept. of Justice said get with the program -or else.

The same sunny Miami where for far longer than most people think, the Orange Bowl Committee routinely had team functions at restricted clubs.

So what exactly was Dan Gelber doing to insure that African-Americans and Hispanics were given their fair chance at the ballot box in Dade County?
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Since many of you no doubt haven't read my other blog before, to help explain where I stand on the Miami Herald, past, present and future, here's what I wrote in the second anchor of South Beach Hoosier when I started it last year, http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/
modestly calling it, Dave's Intentions for South Beach Hoosier

South Beach Hoosier will offer commentary on popular culture, public policy and national politics -largely from a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) p.o.v., with some policy differences-advertising & marketing news and innovations; the business side of Show Biz, especially the film industry; as well as insight on international trade, financial services and U.S. foreign policy, where from 1988-2003, I had a front-row seat for these and many other contentious and implacable issues on Capitol Hill, and their resultant fallout at DC-area think tanks and policy groups.

Fortunately for me, besides being blessed with a great memory for details, I also took copious contemporaneous notes of what I observed first-hand at Capitol Hill hearings -inc. important Congressional mark-ups- as well as at myriad events with policy makers, journalists and news makers at Brookings, SAIS, AEI, the Wilson Center, the Goethe Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the IMF and The World Bank -BEST wine!-the Economic Strategy Institute, et al.

Stories that, for whatever reason, NEVER saw the light of day in the pages of the New York Times, the WSJ or the Washington Post.

Which naturally had the entirely predictable ripple effect of insuring that these stories and issues NEVER made the airwaves of the TV networks, cablenets or, even NPR.

South Beach Hoosier will also examine the latest amusing or not-so-amusing scandals, cover-ups, controversies, contretemps and mis-adventures bedeviling South Florida, something I became used to while growing up in North Miami Beach in the late 1960's and the 70's.

Fortunately, because of my news-junkie DNA and myriad magazine subscriptions, and long-standing relationships with media types in Miami, I was able to keep up pretty well with the South Florida area while living in Bloomington, Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette and Washington, D.C./Arlington, VA.

Communities where sensible civic activism and high standards of journalism were the norm and not the exception.

Due to my own personal/business/political interests and experiences in those cities, as well as my good fortune to have a large number of well-informed and well-connected friends and former housemates while living there, many but not all of whom are or were reporters, columnists, editors, TV/film producers, along with a few who are now well-placed in Statehouses and legal circles across the country, I'll have a deep bench of facts, opinions, point-of-views and fact-checkers to work with.

That's the goal for South Beach Hoosier.

It's my hope that this'll help me offer up pinpoint criticism, whether of national and South Florida pols, media organizations and sports or show biz personalities, that have heretofore evaded public scrutiny, transparency or accountability -as well as well-aimed brickbats.

To examine the proverbial case of the latest dog that doesn't bark, or analyze why the latest case of media conventional wisdom has -again- been proven wrong, and why.

This is especially true of The Miami Herald, the morning newspaper I grew-up with and have suffered with since first leaving North Miami Beach for Bloomington in the fall of '79, as its most talented people jumped ship and the paper become evermore a shell of what it once was: an excellent newspaper with talented and respected reporters and editors telling compelling and intriguing stories of intrinsic value to its readers throughout polyglot and transient South Florida.

Television news-wise, when I'd return to South Florida from school or work in Bloomington, Evanston, and DC, whether for Christmas vacation, Baltimore Oriole spring training games or visits for weddings, I could still see that Miami had the kind of scrappy and innately curious reporters who make a tangible difference in a community.

The sorts of enterprising reporters that so many of my friends at Ernie Pyle at IU, and Medill at Northwestern were already well on their way to becoming. http://www.idsnews.com/ ,http://journalism.indiana.edu/news/erniepyle/ , http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/

Reporters who might have the talent and ability to convey to the waves of newcomers and visitors to the area, a nuanced sense of South Florida's decidedly mixed historical past, by writing with the proper amount of factual research, balanced perspective and sense of disbelief, to describe the events unfolding around them.

Then, ending the piece by dropping the hammer on whichever local corrupt/incompetent miscreant, pol or agency hack was the target of their ire, for attempting to perpetrate yet another in a long of of dubious acts against the people of South Florida.

Sadly for the people of South Florida, things have gotten so bad now that The Herald's numerous flaws are as much for what they don't publish, as much as for the self-evident mediocre quality of its writing and reporting, lack of thorough fact-checking, and inadequate search for conflicts of interest.

For all the talk of improving the paper by the new McClatchy management, it shows no tangible signs of changing for the better any time soon, a great disappointment to its readers.

It's common knowledge within the industry that The Herald's website is a joke compared to the efforts of many smaller circulation newspapers. www.miamiherald.com

Frankly, the website itself remains a constant source of embarrassment for Herald reporters and columnists, who are constantly besieged by readers and told yet another horror story about not being able to find recent Herald stories that should be on the paper's website but aren't.

The reporters can do little more than shrug their shoulders in response.

Even in the year 2008, The Herald still DOESN'T have a permanent Public Ombudsman to represent the interests of both its readers and basic fairness, like many newspapers with much smaller circulation numbers!

Meanwhile, with much more to fear and lose, The New York Times has an independent Public Editor, currently Clark Hoyt, who weekly takes the Times' policy, owners, editors, reporters and columnists to task publicly, even providing links back to the original story or column in question, unlike the once-in-a-while effort at the Herald. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/thepubliceditor/index.html?8qa

Meanwhile The Herald's Sunday attempt at high-minded opinion-shaping and public policy, Issues & Ideas, is so embarrassing and muddled on so many different levels that it's all one can do to not laugh from crying, so feeble is its effort, so low is its aim, so puny the actual result.

Yet rather than seeking the creative input of bright and knowledgable new faces who familiar with the real problems of South Florida, The Herald still regularly farms-out the Guest Op-Ed space in the paper to people living outside of the area, more than any other newspaper in America I've ever read.

They continually run long excerpts in their editorial space from parochial interest groups whose political sentiments echo that of the the Herald's own Editorial Board.

Even worse, if possible, in many cases these particular guest editorial tangents have already appeared in other forums or publications!

And speaking of the Herald's Editorial Board, who's on that exactly, anyway?

It's a great mystery that nobody seems able to fully explain away, yet The New York Times, under the guidance of Andy Rosenthal, has an entire webpage specifically devoted to detailing the background and credentials of its Editorial Board. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html

Hmmm... call me old-fashioned, but South Beach Hoosier prefers transparency!

With more news coming out of South Florida than once ever seemed possible, and with the area's annual dance with hurricanes always fraught with danger, this area desperately needs an All-News radio station more than ever before, yet there's NO sign of one on the horizon to replicate the crucial role once served by CBS Radio affiliate, WINZ-AM 940.

Even worse, if possible, there's no LOCAL 24 hour cable news channel to replicate the important role played by a NewsChannel 8 in Washington, D.C., http://www.news8.net/ which gives a depth of coverage to D.C. and the VA/MD suburbs that people in South Florida can only dream about with envy: LIVE call-in TV programs with tough reporters who weekly or monthly grill the DC Mayor, Virginia and Maryland governors, as well as the VA and MD County Managers or Supervisors, the REAL powers in the area.

But then it's not like COMCAST is stepping up to the plate, either!

If there's one constant gripe in South Florida, regardless of your age, race, nationality or political persuasion, it's about the fundamental lack of PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY here among Florida's state, regional and local govt./agency officials.

South Beach Hoosier aims to be a small step towards regaining some of that needed accountability, whether it's thru simple public scrutiny, or requires a degree of investigation and follow-up public exposure of incompetency, cronyism or negligence -South Florida's usual "Perfect Storm."
In other words, a catalyst for positive change.

"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen."-Preacher Purl encouraging the underdog Hickory basketball team before the title game against favored South Bend Central in Hoosiers, 1986. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091217/