FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan

Sunday, April 15, 2018

You only thought you knew how evil and corrupt former Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper was. You have no idea. But you will soon! Don't worry, the Broward State Attorney's Office now has all the documents and info they need, thanks to the Broward Inspector General. Uh-oh!

You only thought you knew how evil and corrupt former Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper was. You have no idea. But you will soon! 
Don't worry, the Broward State Attorney's Office now has all the documents and info they need, thanks to the Broward Inspector General. Uh-oh!


Coming soon: How former Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper OBSTRUCTED public records requests for YEARS, violated Florida Sunshine Laws, even while head of the Florida League of Cities and deeply involved with the National League of Cities, as she was always quick to brag about at Hallandale Beach City Commission and CRA meetings, even when it was NOT germane to anything being discussed.

Of course, all that time, Hallandale Beach taxpayers were forced to pay for Cooper to attend their meetings all over the country as she tried to pass herself off as something other than what she was: respected.
But she was corrupt with a capital “C.”
As I had been saying and writing year-after-year even while the local news media largely refused to look into any of the dozens of matters that would have been reported upon if they happened in other parts of the country.

But don’t worry, the Broward States Attorney now has all the documents and information they need, thanks to the Broward Inspector General.
But David, isn’t the Broward SAO the same LEO office that knew for OVER 5 years, via recordings, that Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper had already committed numerous felonies and misdemeanors, blatantly, yet still refused to have her arrested and charged?

Which means that the last five years of Joy Cooper in office were completely unnecessary and could have been prevented, since Florida Gov. Rick Scott would have removed Cooper from office then if SAO simply acted responsibly and with the public's best interests at heart? Oh sure, there's always that! 🙄🤨😠🤫🤔
The case involved hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars 💰💰 and was a subject that I blogged abt frequently at : The Future Foundation, a so-called non-profit that was run by Mayor Cooper and city employees with offices at city hall, but which had a very adversarial attitude towards thepublic knowing what they were doing.
Or even letting electdd officials know what they were doing, and why.

When I gave details of what was going on to the Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the four English-language TV stations in Miami, the  news media was NOT interested! Surprise!








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Wednesday, April 4, 2018

50 years ago tonight in #Memphis. What I saw. The night I won't ever forget..."Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." - Martin Luther King, #MLK



Regular readers of this blog will recall that I've written before that though I was born in San Antonio, I was a seven-year old First Grader growing-up in Memphis when Dr. King was assassinated there.
On the night of April 4, 1968, my family and I went out to our neighborhood McDonald's and when we returned to our apt., I walked into the living room and turned on our black-and-white TV, and within no time, everything in the world changed... see my Instagram post about it below.



CBS News: CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite announces the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis.
ABC News video: ABC News correspondent Tom Jarriel reports LIVE from Memphis, with Bob Young and Peter Jennings reporting from New York.

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." - Martin Luther King, Sept. 1962. #MLK I was a young kid living in #Memphis with my family that April night in 1968 when we returned home from a trip to #McDonalds and like so many nights before, I raced to the TV set in the living room to beat my two younger sisters to be the one who turned on the TV. As my parents walked in and settled down on the family couch, to see what was on TV, literally, within one minute, came the Breaking News that Dr. King had been shot elsewhere in the city. And the news only got worse as the night went on as news soon confirmed that Dr. King had died as a result of the assassination attempt, and soon there was widespread looting and violence in Memphis, the very things he had adamantly opposed. Eventually came the news that the city was under curfew, and sometime before midnight, because my family lived in a new-ish apt. complex that was on the same road as the nearby Armory, my parents and I and many of our neighbors watched in silence from the sidewalk/curb as tanks driven by members of the mobilized National Guard drove towards downtown Memphis, because the city's powers-that-be had decided that this would show the people who was boss. As my mother tells the story, one of my neighbors remarked on the irony of U.S. Army tanks being used to try to stop violence by Americans who were upset about the murder of a great man who had won the #NobelPeacePrize. It was the first time I remember ever hearing this strange word: #irony.
A post shared by Hallandale Beach Blog (@hbbtruth) on


"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." - Martin Luther King, Sept. 1962. #MLK

I was a young kid living in #Memphis with my family that April night in 1968 when we returned home from a trip to #McDonaldsand like so many nights before, I raced to the TV set in the living room to beat my two younger sisters to be the one who turned on the TV.

As my parents walked in and settled down on the family couch, to see what was on TV, literally, within one minute, came the Breaking News that Dr. King had been shot elsewhere in the city.
And the news only got worse as the night went on as news soon confirmed that Dr. King had died as a result of the assassination attempt, and soon there was widespread looting and violence in Memphis, the very things he had adamantly opposed.

Eventually came the news that the city was under curfew, and sometime before midnight, because my family lived in a new-ish apt. complex that was on the same road as the nearby Armory, my parents and I and many of our neighbors watched in silence from the sidewalk/curb as tanks driven by members of the mobilized National Guard drove towards downtown Memphis, because the city's powers-that-be had decided that this would show the people who was boss.

As my mother tells the story, one of my neighbors remarked on the irony of U.S. Army tanks being used to try to stop violence by Americans who were upset about the murder of a great man who had won the #NobelPeacePrize.

It was the first time I remember ever hearing this strange word: #irony.

We moved to South Florida three months later, my family having had its fill of Memphis, arriving at MIA on a very warm July day via Delta Airlines the day after Larry Csonka signed his first contract with the Dolphins, which was front page news in the Miami Herald, as I could tell when we walked past the old-fashioned-vending machines at the airport.


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Tuesday, March 13, 2018

It's this simple in Hallandale Beach: Good vs. Evil. Who you gonna vote for? Might I suggest a vote for Good in the form of Mike Butler, a proven, well-informed civic activist who sweats the details like few people I know? Give Hallandale Beach a chance to finally be rid of the unethical and dysfunctional stench that was Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew during their reign of ruin

It's this simple in Hallandale Beach: Good vs. Evil. Who you gonna vote for? 
Might I suggest a vote for Good in the form of Mike Butler, a proven well-informed civic activist who sweats the details like few people I know?
Give Hallandale Beach a chance to finally be rid of the unethical and dysfunctional stench that was Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew during their reign of ruin

Above, Mike Butler, the face of Good Government in Hallandale Beach -if you vote him into office. Many of you know that back when Michael and I were spending a LOT more time together working on issues and civic engagement, him via Change Hallandale, in the original fight against the incompatible Diplomat LAC plan -that was eventually rejected by the Broward County Commission- I used to tell Mike that I wished he'd run for mayor.

 Misanthropic, unethicical imbecile Bill Julian yet again plays his familiar role of The Nice Guy Con Man, making promises he can't possibly keep, in part because he is lying to himself about his own public record. Don't fall for the ruse! 

 Bill Julian is a proven bad guy with a grossly misplaced sense of entitlement, and a serial abuser for years of one of society's most basic rules: for YEARS Julian viewed illegally parking in Handicapped Parking and Access spaces as just a perk of his job.







The sign of a con man trying to sell failed past and who wants to personally hold on to power and perks -and pretend that he's relevant. But he isn't. Bill Julian is an imbecile slacker with a giant sense of entitlement and once, while voting to raise his own salary when it wasn't on the public agenda, referred to himself and other HB City Commissioners as being largely akin to large Fortune 500 business exceutives. Really! I couldn't make that up!!!  





Below, the issue that Bill Julian keeps hoping the South Florida news media would ignore -and they do. But I didn't.


Above, the May 16, 2008 photo taken by me, South Beach Hoosier, at the city's then-configuration at North Beach park parking lot, showing then-HB CIty Commissioner Bill Julian's city badge while his car was parked in the one-and-only Handicapped parking space, next to a then-existing restaurant. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

 Quoting myself from 2016:
I've been very busy over the weekend getting my thoughts together for this particular blog post, and the reason is clear. More than just about any other story I've written about here at Hallandale Beach Blog since I started it in 2007, especially one that's dealt specifically with what was taking place in this part of South Florida, in southeast Broward County, the level of public discussion, rancor and outright revulsion about the egregious stupidity and unethical behavior of Hallandale Beach's very own Simpleton, City Commissioner William "Bill" Julian, has reached a point of "no return."

A point of no return that was never reached by Julian's MANY unethical and foolish words and actions in office of the past ten years, however stupid, sordid and self-serving as they usually were, all of which have been chronicled here with great specificity on the blog, often with self-evident photos to hammer home the facts that Julian, his apologists and Mayor Joy Cooper didn't want to face and deal with in an upfront manner.

Even longtime apologists for this bumbling idiot of a small-town pol, a man who even his small circle of friends have long acknowledged, lacks even the most basic short-term AND long-term vision for this growing ocean-side community that nearly everyone here believes ought to be -and managed- SO MUCH BETTER than it has been and is now, have reached their personal breaking point: a line in the sand!

That's something that I know about for a fact because so many friends and acquaintances of mine, as well as more than a few people who by no definition of the word could ever be described as "friendly" towards me in the past -ever- have decided to contact me over the past few days to express their own personal sense of betrayal, anger and befuddlement.

This includes people who have long tolerated Bill Julian's longtime record of foolishness, critically poor and faulty judgment on issues and votes, and his MANY YEARS of being of clearly being largely unprepared to participate effectively and competently at public city meetings in a way that would even come close to what Hallandale Beach's residents and Small Business owners expect, especially for someone who has been in office for so long.
They have all told me -and you today via me on this blog- that they have had "ENOUGH!"
Enough is enough - "Julian needs to go!"

Below are some self-evident facts and well-chosen thoughts of mine about Bill Julian's latest ethics and legal scandal that has ensnared the city.
Longtime residents and businesses in this area have long known that Julian is no stranger to either foolish words or boneheaded actions, which, individually and collectively, have made helped make this ocean-side city a longtime running joke among well-informed and politically-active South Florida residents and members of the local news media.

Bill Julian is no stranger to unethical actions that have cast large doubts on his core competency, ability to process basic information, or use and demonstrate critical judgment.
In short, his basic fitness for office.
The least we should be able to expect from a public official.

The local press corps has told me as much, which explains why so often stories of more than some public interest that happen here that would in ordinary times be covered on local Miami TV newscasts if they happened in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Palmetto Bay or Pembroke Pines, but are ignored because they occur here. 
For their part, the reporters take the point of view that things happen in Hallandale Beach -and are not covered adequately- because "that's just Hallandale Beach being Hallandale Beach."
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that sentiment or one similar to it said to me in person or via email or phone call, I'd have quite a tidy sum to invest.

 Read the rest of this post at:
August 29, 2016 #SoFL #ethics - Proving that the past is prologue, yet again, here comes ethically-challenged Commissioner Bill Julian to once again personally make Hallandale Beach a laughingstock. But this time, a NATIONAL laughingstock. Surprise! It involves votes on real estate development and favors in return. Here's the latest on the matter, along with a stark reminder of Bill Julian's previous unethical actions
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2016/08/sofl-ethics-proving-that-past-is.html

 October 27, 2012 Why would you even consider voting for such a despicable person as Bill Julian for the Hallandale Beach City Commission? Besides Julian's creepy habit while an elected official of illegally parking in Handicapped Parking spaces for YEARS, when you add his truly terrible judgment and penchant for saying and doing the wrong thing, why would you even consider giving him a voice in deciding this city's future?; @SandersHB
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-would-you-even-consider-voting-for.html

 October 29, 2010 So very creepy! Why does Hallandale Beach Vice Mayor Bill Julian hate the physically disabled so much? His despicable track record tells the tale!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/so-very-creepy-why-does-hallandale.html

October 31, 2010 Stone-cold fact: Bill Julian, serial scofflaw, for years has parked in handicapped/access parking spaces so he can hang out at a beach bar for hours
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/stone-cold-fact-bill-julian-serial.html

Above and below, photos from last month's candidates forum at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center and moderated by the Sun-Sentinel's myopic Opinion Page editor Rosemary O'Hara, not one of my favorite persons by any stretch of the imagination.
It was SO embarrassing to anyone with even a passing familiarity to the facts and history of this city the past 15 years that I actually chose not to write about what was said and by whom because it could someday coome back to haunt the... guilty.

Joy Cooper's Rubber Stamp anti-reform and transparency forces who dominated Hallandale Beach for well over a decade -Joy Cooper along with her rotating minions Dotty Ross, Bill Julian, Alex Lewy and Anthony Sanders- have long regarded the institution that resulted from Broward County voters's disgust with Broward's well-known pay-to-play political culture, the Office of the Broward Inspector General, as something to be ignored or treated like an unnecessary anachronism. 
Strict honesty and fidelity to the spirit as well as the letter of the law was regarded as ridiculous. There wasn't enough wiggle room for them to cut their deals.

Thru their words and actions they made clear that they saw rigid adherence to the new ethics rules as problematic because it made it difficult for them to plausibly argue that it lacked “nuance.”
And now, if Hallandale beach voters choose to reject Bill Julian for a third time and make Mike Butler a City Commissioner, they can throw dirt on the political careers of these people who have done so much harm to the city and its future.
Just do it! 




Dave 
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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Longtime #HallandaleBeach civic activists and past supporters of Mayor #KeithLondon and Comm. #MicheleLazarow are DISMAYED and EMBARRASSED at what is taking place at City Hall now, with personal/political expediency trumping common sense and rational public discourse

Today's blog post serves as a logical follow-up to my last one regarding the long overdue arrest of longtime Hallandale Beach Mayor and despot Joy Cooper by the FBI on three felony counts and one misdemeanor count.

#schadenfreude - Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper's long-overdue public comeuppance and takedown for her despotic, authoritarian and corrupt reign at HB City Hall finally comes via an arrest by the FBI. Cooper's arrest suddenly awakens the long-slumbering South Florida news media to the high level of corruption and incompetency taking place there that I told you about at the time. So where were they? #ethics

I regret that this post of mine today will necessarily be about one-fifth as long as I'd like for it to be, but I have had much less time over the weekend to work on it than expected because of another big writing project of mine that's considerably more important to me and my future long-term happiness than the latest jaw-dropping antics and escapades in Hallandale Beach, so this is what will have to suffice for now until a few more days pass and I can connect all the dots for you here on the blog.

 Before I get into it, I remind you that a a candidate's debate is scheduled to take place tonight at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center from 6:30 until 9 PM, featuring the five candidates running to fill the term of disgraced former HB City Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders, whose resignation was NOT his idea, after the Broward Inspector General raised public questions about his fitness for office after they reported nothing but holes in his accounts of where $800,000 of HB CRA went -and why.
I will be at the debate so if you have not seen me in a while or have thought I did in fact move out to Las Vegas afterall in early October, please come over and say hello and see for yourself that it's really me, not a clone.

 Excerpt from Hallandale Beach's Monday afternoon press release:

You are cordially invited to attend a Candidates Forum on February 27, 2018 from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center located at 410 SE 3rd Street, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009.
This forum will feature the qualified candidates for the March 13, 2018 Special Election to fill the unexpired term for Commission Seat 1. South Florida Sun-Sentinel editorial page editor Rosemary O’Hara will serve as the moderator for this event.
All interested parties who plan to attend this event are encouraged to offer their questions on 3X5 cards the day of the event and/or email Ms. O’Hara in advance at rohara@sun-sentinel.com as she will be the sole judge of any and all questions asked.

A livestream of this event can be found of the City’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CityOfHallandaleBeach

 As for the latest news that I can mention quickly here, with much more facts and concerns and video to come in a few days, many longtime Hallandale Beach civic activists, friends of mine and past supporters of new Hallandale Beach Mayor Keith London and Comm. Michele Lazarow are DISMAYED and EMBARRASSED about what has been taking place at HB City Hall these days with them in the majority, where personal and political expediency seem to keep trumping common sense and rational public idiscourse regarding many different issues, large and small, including eliminating one of the city's few common sense procedures.





The selection two weeks ago of Rich Dally as a Hallandale Beach City Commissioner, that is, a complete unknown with no tangible public track record of being a well-informed voice in the community for increased #reform #accountability and #transparency at HB City Hall, at a HB City Commission meeting where the sole issue on the written public agenda was the expected selection of then-Vice Mayor Keith London to become interim mayor until November's election because of Joy Cooper being removed from office by Governor Rick Scott, NOT a vote on filling London's seat, caused most of the people I know and respect in the city to recoil at the very idea of the current majority channeling the very worst instincts of the since departed Cooper, whose thin skin and huge ego were constantly on display for the past 15 years, no matter the issue under discussion.

What the public saw after Keith London was voted in as interim mayor on a 2-1 vote was a government action that was NOT on the public agenda, should NOT have taken place then without the proper public notice being given, and what in almost every respect, resembled the sort of thing that Joy Cooper loved doing.
That is to say, doing something not because it was the right thing to do for the community at large, or even some part of it, but rather because she thought she and what I have long called her "Rubber Stamp Crew" thought they could get away with it.
It was that simple.
For years!

Then as now, it was exactly what it looked like, and yet I would hazard to say that few people who know Keith London even a fraction as well as I do, would have expected such a cynical, self-destructive and negative thing to be his first official act as Mayor.
And yet it was.

He squndered his opportunity to look like he was up to the challenge of running things instead of being the opposition, and seemed to act petty and argumentative just for the sake of being that way, with no apologies for how things appeared to the public.

 Keith London voted for Dally to sit on the five-member HB City Commission until November, someone whose name he could not even pronounce correctly, and seemed to know very, very little about, yet took Comm. Michele Lazarow's nomination and endorsement of Dally as enough proof of his qualifications despite London having publicly nominated my very good friend and confidante, Csaba Kulin, for the post. Why?

 Why did Keith London's replacement on the City Commission have to be named within ten minutes of London's elevation to the mayor's seat when the seat of disgraced Comm. Sanders has stood empty since last August, six long months ago?
He couldn't say and nether could anyone else on the dais.
Not that they tried.

Nor did they explain why they would vote on the three nominated candidates -Dally, Kulin and another friend of mine, Hallandale Beach businessman Rob Raymond- alphabetically instead of polling the three members and requiring them to name whom they were for on the first ballot.
Instead, because D comes before K and R, Dally was selected 2-1 and there was no vote on Kulin and Raymond.
#bizarre

 The fact that Dally did such a very poor job of explaining who he was or why anyone in the city should have any confidence in him or even why HE deserved to be selected -after he was selected!- only made things worse and more laughably embarrassing for the city in general and him personally, since at no point did Dally actually state what his legitimate qualifications or expertise was.

 What we were to learn over a few minutes was that he and his girlfriend have twins, that he is a loyal Democratic functionary, serving as head of the Broward Young Democrats.His actual job was never mentioned.
In short, he appears to be nothing but Alex Lewy 2.0, someone who aims to be a career politician with nothing to personally recommend him, as the many dozens of people who have called me in disgust or written me in the days since the absurd decision was made have all complained about in angry tones.
The whole thing could have been avoided if common sense were in abundance, but in HB, common sense is a rare mineral.

It would have been very easy for Keith London, Michele Lazarow and Annabelle Taub to show some common sense at the meeting and announce that the City Commission would take nominations for the former London Commission seat at the next scheduled Commission meeting, which would allow enough time for the public to weigh-in and for people to talk with their family and friends about whether they should place themselves in harm's way or not in nominating themselves.

These continuing series of bad decisions and remarkably poor judgment at HB City Hall are VERY troubling signs for all concerned.☹️

 Troubling precisely because this bum's rush tactic to get Dally on the dais is the same one employed years ago at a City Commission meeting I was present at where Mayor Cooper personally selected and insisted upon unethical Anthony A. Sanders being installed as a Commissioner at a City Commission meeting where the issue was NOT on the public agenda.
That Cooper did not allow the public to ever speak on the matter, as I wrote on the blog at the time, was a germane fact which the South Florida news media failed to ever mention in their accounts.

Hallandale Beach already has an agreed-upon process for selecting a City Commissioner in the event of a vacancy, and it's the one used as recently as 2014, and, the same one used that resulted in Keith London becoming a City Commissioner in 2007. 

 But if you can believe it, having avoided using it one week, it was promptly tossed-out by London, Lazarow and Dally last week at their meeting despite its great popularity with civic activists like me and many of the people I know precisely because it requires candidates to explain their interest, their qualifications and be subject to questions from the public and the Commissioners.
None of those things took place two weeks ago with Rich Dally.
Why?

That's a very good question.
You already know the names of the three people whom you should ask about it: London, Lazarow and Taub.

I don't personally know anyone in Hallandale Beach besides Comm. Lazarow who plans on voting for Dally in November when he runs for a full term. Nobody.
Everyone who has contacted me since Dally's selection has told me that under no circumstances will he be getting their vote.
Just saying...

I honestly don't think Rich Dally has any idea of what is in store for him in the coming months. 
(Or even, perhaps, on this blog.)
It won't be pretty.
An engaged citizenry and news media are unlikely to take Rich Dally's word for anything.
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