Above, the old-style Miami Dolphins helmet decal that I grew-up with, when it was the most unifying symbol in all of South Florida. The Dolphins kick-off the exhibition season at home tonight against Tampa Bay.I found this St. Pete Times story below quite interesting given what transpired at Tuesday's very contentious Broward County Commission meeting, when one of the few moments of levity came when Comm. Lois Wexler's made some comments about 26 Dolphin-Bucs tickets sent to her by the team to distribute, during the otherwise heated ethics debate.
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2010/08/ticketgate.html Later in the day, there was some news about interim Comm. Al C. Jones rescinding his ticket offer.
How could Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White really think a Bucs skybox ticket had no "value" if there was not a price on it?
Wow!
Years ago when I still worked in Washington, D.C., when the MCI Center -now Verizon Center- finally opened downtown, in a perfect location, right next to Chinatown, and with the arrival of the one-and-only MJ, Michael Jordan, because he knew that Washington lobbyists would actually find going to Wizards games more fun now that they didn't have to schlep out to suburban PG County, Maryland, Wizard's owner Abe Polin reportedly -definitely!- had some very nice lower-level seat tickets which had a higher financial value, intentionally marked with a lower one so that lobbyists could legally give them to Members of Congress, influential staffers and other D.C. insiders and poohbahs without fear of running afoul of lobbying and ethics rules.
Mr. Polin believed that having more elected officials and lawyer/lobbyists at games would give going to a Wizards home game more cachet -albeit, NOT as much as going to Redskin games at RFK in the late '80's when Jack Kent Cooke was still alive.
Or so the Wizards and the Washington Post surely thought at the time.
Which perhaps says more about what D.C. and the woebegone Wizards though 'cachet' was about than anything else!
See also: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
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St. Petersburg Times
Kevin White belatedly reports free Bucs skybox tickets
By Bill Varian, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, August 14, 2010
TAMPA — Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White has belatedly reported as a gift a luxury suite ticket he received last year from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
White said he received an invite from the Buccaneers to attend their Sept. 27 game against the New York Giants. He said the tickets, for him and his wife, had no face value printed on them, so he thought nothing of it.
Read the rest of the article at:http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/kevin-white-belatedly-reports-free-bucs-skybox-tickets/1115204
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Tim Smith's Fort Lauderdale blog Posted by Tim Smith at 8/10/10 4:27 P.M. Commissioner Indian Giver !
Todays' Broward County Commission meeting was one for the record books.
Commissioners crying, yelling, stomping their feet over the proposed Ethics Proposal.
They even had to call a time out and send everyone to their corners for a cooling off period!
But while Rome was burning, and Commissioner's ethics was the topic, District 9 County Commissioner Al C. Jones was busy passing out goodies to the neighborhood Presidents in his District by e-mail!
Read the rest of the post at:
http://blog.timsmith.com/2010/08/10/commissioner-indian-giver-.aspx
