"A" is for Awesome and ABBA as the new ABBA Museum in Stockholm officially opens this afternoon. Monday night's gala premiere brought Anni-Frid, Benny and Björn together, cheered on by a select group of invitees from across Swedish society and the music industry, who are, in the end, just fans of the band like everyone else, and very excited that this amazing museum is FINALLY a reality; #abba, #AbbaMuseum, #ThankYouForTheMusic, @stockholm, @sweden

Euronews YouTube Channel video: Euronews reporter Valerie Zabriskie speaks with lucky Abba fan club members selected to get a sneak preview of the new museum in Stockholm. Uploaded May 5, 2013. http://youtu.be/xbDW3FdtEgM

"A" is for Awesome and ABBA and the new ABBA Museum in Stockholm, which officially opens today at 1600 Stockholm time/10 a.m. Eastern U.S. Monday night's gala premiere brought Anni-Frid, Benny and Björn together, cheered on by a select group of invitees from across Swedish society and the music industry, who are, in the end, just fans of the band like everyone else, and very excited that this amazing museum is FINALLY a reality; #abba, #AbbaMuseum, #ThankYouForTheMusic, @stockholm, @sweden

I could mention who some of these VIPs are and why they're important and why they're there,

but that's not worth spending the time it would take today to do that, and besides, TMI as I'm sometimes reminded by friends here in Hallandale Beach and elsewhere around the globe.

Plus, I've had a very clear idea of how this particular blog post would look ever since I was there in January, so trying to explain to you all who Carola or Sarah Dawn Finer are and why they are in the video below iis, well, just a losing proposition today.

Aftonbladet TV video: Här invigs ABBA-museet -Jonas Bilberg levererade livebilder från galaöppningen. 
May 6, 2013. http://tv.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/noje/article11311.ab

Aftonbladet TV video: Här inviger kändiseliten ABBA-museet  
7 maj 2013 00:12
http://tv.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/noje/article11311.ab

It's enough to know that it's logical that they were there.
Just go with it.

BBC-TV video

Abba museum in Stockholm celebrates Swedish pop group

7 May 2013 Last updated at 04:22 ET 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22431181

BBC-TV video

As the Abba museum prepares to open its doors in Stockholm, the BBC's Russell Trott takes a look inside.

6 May 2013 Last updated at 21:54 ET

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22429172

Aftonbladet TV: Nu öppnar ABBA-museet, Björn Ulvaeus: - "Kan visa det för barnbarnen med stolthet" 6 maj 2013 15:31
http://tv.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/noje/musik/article11284.ab



SVT video: TV Abba-museet öppnades
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/article1203720.svt


NTDTV -ABBA Museum in Stockholm

Tickets for the much-discussed and anticipated museum that's full of innovative technology run about 195 SEK/ just under $30 U.S. for adults, and 50 SEK/$7.63 for children up to age 8, at today's current ratio of about 6.52 Krona to the dollar, more or less.

But fair warning, the museum in the beautiful Djurgården section of Stockholm WON'T take bills or coins, only electronic payments, because as the museum puts it loftily, "Vi har en dröm om ett kontantfritt samhälle, därför går det inte handla med mynt eller sedlar hos oss."
("We have a vision of a cashless society, therefore we don’t handle coins and bills." )

Yes, sorta like in the future as seen in Star Trek, but not quite, since there's a 5% discount with MasterCard.

Björn's explanation on why abba-museet doesn't take bills and coins, largely to prevent crime, has a great introduction that only a real genius like him could get away with saying in his Big Picture way

There was a time when bills and coins served their purpose. They replaced cumbersome barter and made trade between people and nations possible. But do they still serve this purpose? Do we really need cash? Or is it a fixed idea like with Scrooge McDuck? Have we lost the ability to see that coins and bills are mere symbols and that those symbols easily could be exchanged for others? Cards and smartphones today and who knows what in the future.

Read the rest of Björn's comments at http://www.abbathemuseum.com/cashless

Combining innovation, ideals, crime-fighting and Scrooge McDuck! 

Brilliant!!!

Dags för ABBA The Museum 
by Lars Epstein 
15:14, May 6, 2013
http://www.dn.se/blogg/epstein/2013/05/06/dags-for-abba-the-museum/

According to Lars Epstein's post yesterday, above, at his Stockholm-centric Epstein's STHLM blog at Dagens Nyheter, the museum is expecting about 217,000 visitors a year.

Yes, holograms...


ABBA Museum website:

In Swedish: http://www.abbathemuseum.com/

In English: http://www.abbathemuseum.com/en/

Here's the website of the ABBA Museum exhibit at Stockholm Arlanda Airport that I saw back in mid-January when I arrived for my nine-day trip in Stockholm, where I snapped some photos while waiting around for my luggage at the arrival carousel at Terminal 5, which was festooned with photos of... who else?
http://www.swedavia.se/arlanda/om-stockholm-arlanda-airport/om-flygplatsen/official-airport-of-abba-the-museum/

All original photos on this page by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. Right-click photos to enlarge them.

For someone like me who has been a huge ABBA fan for more than two-thirds of my life, the  biggest ABBA fan that most people I've known have ever met, as small as this exhibit at the airport was, in looking at it and reflecting back on everything, it was hard to get over the fact that for so long, like millions of other fans, we fervently hoped that there'd be a museum some day that would be shaped along the lines of,,, well, just what they seem to have actually done: music plus heart -musik plus hjärta.

Like those other fans of the band, over the past 20 years I've given up counting how many interviews I'd seen with the band members, especially Benny and Bjorn, discussing the idea
of it, but quite naturally, being somewhat unsure of how to answer such a question without seeming pretentious.
But it IS a weird question, isn't it, when you really think about it?
Should there be a museum that people pay to get into that's all about you and three other people you've known for most of your life?
How do you answer that?

TheSpringOf74 YouTube Channel video: ABBA - Dancing Queen - LIVE at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm, June 18, 1976, at the gala tribute to Sweden's King Carl XV1 Gustaf and future wife and Queen, Silvia Sommerlath, the night before their wedding. If I remember my ABBA history correctly, this was the first time the song had ever been performed in public in Sweden. http://youtu.be/33Yj5pbsXAs

Above, in my humble opinion, the single best version of this iconic song ever recorded on film.

Here are those January 10, 2013 photos I snapped at Arlanda before and after grabbing my luggage:
 

All original photos on this page by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Here's how they appear on the airport's official exhibit web page:
http://www.swedavia.se/arlanda/om-stockholm-arlanda-airport/om-flygplatsen/official-airport-of-abba-the-museum/

You can see more photos of this exhibit by going to Google Images using these words as your search terms: "Terminal 5, Arlanda, ABBA"

Here's the link to the ABBA Museum-related news videos that have run on TV4, most recent first, obviously, in Swedish, but many with lots of great video of the musem: http://www.tv4play.se/s%C3%B6k?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Abba

Obviously, there's a lot to see and watch!

More Transit Policy Woes in South Florida: With stealthy and self-sabotaging friends like All Aboard Florida and SFRTA/Tri-Rail, pro-transit advocates in South Florida don't need any more enemies; 'All Aboard Florida' fails to schedule a single public scoping meeting in Broward County this Spring despite Fort Lauderdale being a proposed station, while SFRTA chief refuses to answer a simple question -Will Hallandale Beach have a station under the proposed Coastal line plan?; Just because you're pro-transit doesn't mean you have to ignore displays of transit incompetency or mismanagement when you see it!

Tri-Rail Coastal Link, partner56239248 YouTube Channel: Tri-Rail Coastal Link, Uploaded April 28, 2013. http://youtu.be/fFZR6ljK3og

And as if I didn't have enough to say about South Florida transit issues and the way taxpayers and customers are often taken for granted or treated in either a patronizing or condecending fashion by transit agencies or transit groups, it seems that Tri-Rail is guilty of engaging in historical revisionism, too, as caught by eagle-eyed writer Sean McCaughan, above and below below to devastating effect. 
Congrats to him for seeing the situation for exactly what it is and not being duped as they intended.

http://miami.curbed.com/
Tri-Rail Coastal Link Video Rewrites Miami's History, Gives Richard Florida All The Credit
by Sean McCaughan
Thursday, May 2, 2013, 
http://miami.curbed.com/archives/2013/05/02/trirail-coastal-link-video-rewrites-miamis-history-gives-richard-florida-all-the-credit.php

Below is a copy of an email I wrote and sent last Tuesday about the continuing communication and outreach problems afflicting some transit agencies and transit-oriented groups in the State of Florida, far too many of whom, it has been my misfortune to see over the years, have an often over-inflated image of their own role and influence in the larger scheme of public affairs.
Some even seem to live in their own world, where they set their own rules.

That's a fantasy world, of course, but sometimes, well-intentioned outsiders, like reporters or bloggers, are reluctant to pop their balloon and ruin the illusion they've created of being important.
A world where they're rarely if ever held to account by the public at large, and more specifically, by local taxpayers or residents affected by various transit plans and schemes.

Me, I'm not afraid of popping other people's illusions, so this blog post today should be read for exactly what it is -me bursting some bubbles.

That fantasy public policy world I've just described is what many of us who are paying attention think of as the bad side of South Florida policy, where some self-interested types with connections or degrees or letters after their names, often think their access to the public teat is unlimited, and can never be turned off.
This allows them, or so they think, to act with varying degrees of patronizing indifference and condescension towards the public and customers.
(Think The Beacon Council and MDX, for instance!)

As it applies to the world of public transit and planning and design, they're under the mistaken impression that people who generally are pro-transit, especially those in favor of long-range trains or short-range commuter trains, like me, will just pretend they don't see displays of incompetency, stupidity and arrogance when it's right smack in front of them.

Well, not me.

The email was sent to Broward County Commissioners Sue Gunzburger, Barbara Sharief, Chip LaMarca, Tim Ryan, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler, with a cc to Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) Secretary Ananth Prasad in Tallahassee.

It was also sent as a bcc to well over a hundred interested parties located between here and U.S. DOT HQ in Washington, D.C., with multiple stops in Tallahassee, Orlando and Broward County, and, necessarily, included other South Florida mayors, city commissioners and city mangers, as well as to certain selected reporters, foundations, non-profits, transportation websites and bloggers.

Naturally, that list started with the great folks over at Transit Miami. http://www.transitmiami.com/

As much as I'd relish the opportunity to ask the folks at All Aboard Florida face-to-face at this afternoon's 4:30 p.m. meeting in Miami -with my video camera rolling- how they square intentionally ignoring Broward County 's residents  with an honest effort to engage in outreach to the South Florida public, there's zero chance I will be attending it, since going into downtown Miami late in the afternoon is truly a fool's errand.
More so if you are starting from Broward County, even if, like me, you're just north of Aventura.

Besides, did you see where the geniuses involved have scheduled the meeting?
1600 N.W. 3rd Avenue, as show below in Google Maps.

View Larger Map

What a great location for a transportation meeting!

Yes, in keeping with what apparently is the genius brains at work over at All Aboard Florida.

they've consciously chosen to NOT locate the meeting close to the FEC tracks they plan on using in the future,or, anywhere near where the most-likely customers of the service will be coming from, but rather in the Overtown/Culmer neighborhood of Miami.

Awesome!

For those of you who are reading this far from these shores, or, even those of you reading it closer-at-hand but not hip to that address, it's NOT exactly the safest place in Miami at the time when the meeting will be wrapping up at night.

Congrats for all the bad planning and bad outreach, folks!

Yes, hard as it is to believe, it appears that the folks behind this All Aboard Florida scheme seem not to have even considered the real possibility that prospective customers or taxpayers like you or me can support the overall goal, but NOT like or support going forward with it with the particular group of managers attached to it now, since they sure don't seem very smart or savvy in trying to get their OWN message out to people who would actually be supporters or customers in the future.
It's called knowing your universe.

(It's like the 'Florida Marlins' screwed-up marketing/outreach for so many years while they were playing at Dolphins Stadium near the Broward and Miami-Dade county line,  where, despite well over 60% of their season ticket holders living in Broward and Palm Beach counties because of the ease of the drive to the stadium via the next-door Florida Turnpike, the Marlins refused to show common sense and place a store or even small kiosks at nearby destination shopping malls like Aventura Mall or Pembroke Lakes Mall, where actual baseball fans and families go to shop.

No, instead, showing their customary arrogance and bad judgment, they had their one-and-only store located in Little Havana. Really.
Yes, the continuing myth of the Little Havana baseball fan dies hard.
But the reality was that those fans would listen to the games on the radio (in Spanish) and buy a Marlins ball cap every 5-6 years, but would only actually go to a game every few years. Look how well that worked! Thud. 

Good luck Marlins getting casual baseball fans who live in or north of Fort Lauderdale to head down to Little Havana with their kids on a Tuesday school night when the Padres and Rockies come to town!)

It's just like how beleaguered fans of the Dolphins or the Marlins can root for the players but NOT like or support their owners, and, frankly, rather hope that Stephen Ross and Jeffrey Loria meet their demise sooner rather than later, so that fans don't have to continue to be so conflicted with their emotions towards the teams.

Clearly if ignoring Broward residents on purpose is part of the All Aboard Florida playbook, it's NOT a Silver Linings Playbook, but rather one of a dog chasing its tail, over-and-over. A public policy story that some of us have seen played-out in South Florida for well over forty years already, with all the disastrous and logical results we see around us today as proof.

By the way, as of today, May 6th, 24 days since I sent that email to Joseph Giulietti, the head of SFRTA/Tri-Rail, about prospects for a Tri-Rail Coastal commuter station in Hallandale Beach, I still have NOT heard from him or his staff. 
Too late!
My patience with him and their indifference to taxpayers has officially expired.

-----

April 30, 2013

1:30 p.m.

Do any of you have any idea why there isn't a single scheduled All Aboard Florida scoping meeting being held in Broward County, esp. In FTL, the only currently-announced prospective station in the entire county?

Prior to starting this email to you today. I checked their website and went through their archives, http://www.allaboardflorida.com/ to see if there'd already been a public meeting in Broward somewhere that I somehow missed out on hearing about.

I don't know, maybe something that took place while I was in Sweden back in mid-January, and ignoring everything locally right before my trip?

No, nothing's already been held in Broward -and there's nothing scheduled

for Broward in the near-future, either.

   

If you know the answer to this question or have a good guess, please let me know...

I'll be sure to mention this lack of common sense to anyone I know whom I run into at the Broward MPO's Commitment 2040 meeting at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center on Thursday 

http://www.browardmpo.org/news/announcing-five-transportation-workshops-in-april-and-may

Somehow, I think they won't be surprised.

But then how could they be?

This screw-up with All Aboard Florida ignoring Broward County residents is just the latest in a series of completely inexplicable decisions involving transit in South Florida that make it hard for a longtime pro-transit advocate like myself to have much faith in either the "system" or the people who are supposed to be running and managing transit and transit-related issues in

South Florida, as well as public outreach.

They always find a way to let you down.

Over two weeks ago, for the second time, I contacted SFRTA/Tri-Rail to get them to say definitively, one way or the other, whether their current plans for utilizing the FEC tracks foresee a train station in Hallandale Beach or not, since their current plans on their website for a Coastal line state that Hallandale Beach will NOT have a station.

But we all know that there can always be closely-held but public information that they have which they have not yet chosen to place on their public website, which is why my email to them needed to be sent -to get the truth.

As you can see at the bottom of this email, I contacted SFRTA Executive Director Joseph Giulietti on April 12th to get his input, since he'd surely know better than anyone what was what.

And again, I'd already contacted them back in late January with this same basic questions, and never heard anything, which is how and why I specifically wrote to Mr. Giulietti earlier this month.

The response after 18 days: nothing from him, nothing from his staff -just lots and lots of NOTHING.

Like I said earlier, "They always find a way to let you down."

For now, just color me underwhelmed at the self-evident oversights that characterize South Florida transit, where, with the current cast of characters in place making policy decisions that affect lots of people and cities in this region, it's hard not to notice that taxpayers and customers almost always come in last.

DBS, Nine-year Hallandale Beach resident 

-----

This ad appeared in last Wednesday's Miami Herald.

http://findnsave.miamiherald.com/Local-Ads/a-398038/All-Aboard-Florida/27874859

Published in Miami Herald on Wednesday, April 24, 2013

re Prospective commuter train station in Hallandale Beach on FEC tracks; ULI's FEC Corridor mtg. on April 17th

April 12, 2013

Dear Mr. Giulietti:

I'm writing to you today on behalf of myself and a number of other very concerned

Hallandale Beach residents, business owners and SE Broward civic activists.

We are all greatly concerned that a tremendous opportunity is being lost due

to a lack of appropriate hard work, proper preparation and due diligence by

local Hallandale Beach elected officials, the current and past two City Managers,

as well as the HB Chamber of Commerce, whose reputation for myopia and

sloth continues to grow by the year.

So we are both concerned AND frustrated!

I'm a longtime public transit proponent, someone who personally used public

transit nearly every day when I lived in Chicago, Evanston and Wilmette in

the mid-1980's, and in the case of Wilmette, I lived on the very street, Linden,

that was the northern terminus of the El.

(Great in the mornings, with my choice of seats, not so great when

catching a train home after work in The Loop!) 

When I moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 1988, I used the Metro even

more than I had the El, and most of those 15 years I lived near the Ballston

Metro Station that was located one block away from the National Science

Foundation, a location they had chosen -just like me- specifically because

of its proximity to the Metro train system.

In total, roughly 18 years of consistently using a train just about every day

to get to and from work, to sporting events and culture and Reagan National

Airport, as well as to check-out places on weekends with friends that we'd

read or heard about, but never felt like driving to because of well-known parking

hassles.

I've personally seen up-close what works -and what doesn't- with

urban trains and why.

Since moving back to South Florida in 2003, I've consistently used my blog

and appearances at germane City, County, State, SFECC and planning

meetings to strongly encourage and advocate for the sorts of useful tools

for residents that I believe can create a positive business and Quality-of-Life

dynamic that's long been missing from South Florida.

Actually, one that has never existed here.

To my mind, the smartest and most-logical tool for positive change is the

creation of a well-managed commuter rail along the FEC tracks between

downtown Miami and West Palm Beach that's both efficient and easy to

access, but which also takes human behavior into account, esp. South

Florida's often frustrating counter-intuitive mindset.

That all said, what I'd specifically like to hear from you today is an answer

to a simple question that my friends and I can digest and think about in

advance of ULI's FEC Corridor meeting in FTL on April 17th, which I will

likely be attending with some friends and civic activists.

Based on all your knowledge of the situation, Mr. Giulietti, is it fair to say,

as I have publicly, that based on the current proposed plans made public

thus far, Hallandale Beach is NOT currently going to have even one train

station along the FEC route, regardless of who is operating it?

I ask because after years of attending SFECC meetings and closely following

all news articles and blog posts about the FEC, including the last two

South Florida Business Journal articles about you and the FEC Corridor

http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/print-edition/2012/08/03/rail-transit-planning-reaches-a.html

http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2012/02/06/fast-start-plan-for-commuter-trains.html

to say nothing of the current official Tri-Rail Coastal plan as it exists on

your website, where it has been for well over a year,

http://faststartplan.sfrta.fl.gov/docs/Project%20Overview/TriRail_FastStart_Brochure_Ltr.pdf

simply put, we need to know the truth.

The facts seem pretty clear to us -the plans do NOT currently show ANY

stops in Hallandale Beach.

Not one.

One of the reasons that we're very concerned about knowing the truth is

because in our opinion, esp. mine, Hallandale Beach City Hall's elected

officials and management have completely failed its residents and business

community by doing an absolutely abysmal job over the years of doing

their proper due diligence to make sure that they and this community

know exactly what's going on with this subject.

And, more importantly, are fully-prepared to do what is necessary

to use a properly-located train station here as an economic ripple

that becomes a wave of success.

In short, frankly, to just be the sort of normal place that I took for granted

while living in Evanston and in Arlington County, and have seen more

recently on a nine-day trip to Stockholm, where they combine fun and

functionality in often surprising and amusing ways that creates a real

dynamism & buzz.

And, a sense of place.

That's especially the case with small businesses currently located next

to and near the FEC, like the city's so-called Fashion Row, who have

seen the city's leaders and managers routinely get basic facts about the

FEC effort wrong, something I've witnessed too many times to mention

here, and which are always exasperating, no matter how many times

you've witnessed it.

When we've needed a modicum of logic and common sense, hard work

and attention to detail on this matter from HB City Hall, we've instead

gotten mis-statements, finger-pointing and spin.

Mr. Giulietti, at this point, we just want to know the truth.

Sincerely,

DBS

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

----------

Below, excerpts of recent emails I've sent to try to elicit more HB residents

and business owners attending Wednesday's meeting 

On Apr 2, 2013 1:43 PM, "DBS" wrote:

As you can see below, I saw another mention this morning of the FEC Corridor 

meeting on April 17th that I mentioned to some of you last night.

I also just noticed that Debbie Orshefsky is going to be the moderator.

I called ULI this morning, the host of the meeting, and was told that the meeting

room at the Sheraton Ft. Lauderdale Airport Hotel, which I've never been to

before, had a capacity of about 300, which is good, so it won't be in a cramped

"hospitality room" environment where you feel like your elbow is in someone

else's ribs even when you're sitting.

That is to say, exactly like my American Airlines flight from O'Hare to FLL

coming back from Stockholm in January, unlike the SAS part of the trip.

I'm also going to be posting ULI's info about the meeting on my blog on Thursday.

Dave

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Miami Urbanist
Date: Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 8:03 AM
Subject: Miami Urbanist Updates

Development Opportunities on the FEC Corridor: An Interactive Forum

Apr 01, 2013 11:19 am | Felipe Azenha

----

http://www.transitmiami.com/uncategorized/development-opportunities-on-the-fec-corridor-an-interactive-forum

Development Opportunities on the FEC Corridor: An Interactive Forum

by FELIPE AZENHA on APRIL 1, 2013 · LEAVE A COMMENT

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif. due to the lack of serious reporters here, but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident named Dargenson is running for NMB City Commission, and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif., but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident is running for NMB City Commission and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?

If you ask me, it's too bad for South Florida's continually-beleaguered citizenry that FL state House Reps Frank Artiles, Joe Gibbons and Perry Thurston and FL state Senator Maria Sachs have never been forced by the powers-that-be in Tallahassee to publicly explain themselves and their very curious living situations.
Under oath 
In public.

Unlike Council candidate Chin Ho Liao in San Gabriel, CA, who was actually elected but not seated.

Oh, the great questions we'd all have all loved to have peppered our local political miscreants under oath with!

Speaking of carpetbaggers, if you haven't already been reading what straight-talking blogger Stephanie Kienzle has been saying with real vigor and much-deserved anger the past few weeks about North Miami Beach's faux City Commission candidate, Yvenoline “Yves” Dargenson -a woman who lives in Miramar, i.e. Broward County!- please do yourself a big favor and do so today via her blog, http://www.votersopinion.com/

You won't regret it because Stephanie gives you a very clear look at the corruption and illegality that passes for "normal" in South Florida politics and government these days, where far too many candidates and elected officials can seemingly break clear-cut rules about their prescribed conduct and behavior with relative impunity.

And the existing legal institutions that are supposed to keep people within the clearly-defined parameters of the law, instead, seem content to just shrug their shoulders and to let THEM dictate what the rules are to the public, putting everything upside-down.

Dargenson is the Broward County resident who running for a City Commission seat in a Miami-Dade city, and to both Stephanie and myself, she's someone who has a lot to to answer for publicly after the M-D Supervisor of Elections ruled that she lives in the City of Miramar.

But but based on what I'm hearing and reading, a Miami-Dade judge, Darrin P. Gayles, did
what M-D circuit court judges have been doing a lot of ever since my family first moved to Miami in 1968 -making bad decisions for the community and letting guilty parties walk.
Or, in this case with Dargenson, run for office in a county she does NOT live in.
No, it seems to have very little to do with upholding the state's laws or with getting justice for NMB's voters, to say nothing of actually adhering to Florida's Constitution.

Even more than usual, Stephanie has lots of great nuggets in her recent blog posts about the longstanding culture of corruption in NMB and North Miami, and actually makes the case that it's actually threatening to grow exponentially in NMB as a result of all the unethical goings-on in next-door North Miami that local and state law enforcement have been ignoring.

Ignoring it, it seems to me, in part at least, because so many of the people engaging in this
unethical political behavior in Northeast Dade are Haitian-Americans, a rapidly-growing voter bloc now compared to Non-Hispanic Whites in Miami-Dade County, and a demographic that is courted by candidates in ways that were not imaginable even thirty years ago, just a few years after I graduated from NMB High School, followed three years later bv my sister.

Perhaps nobody exemplified this cultural change as much as North Miami's oft-charged but never-convicted-thus-far incumbent mayor, Andre Pierre, though there are others on both sides of the border who are nearly as brazen.

Seriously, did you really expect the political crooks and their cronies in NMB not to notice the fact that nobody was being prosecuted in North Miami for what they do, no matter how self-evident?

Out in San Gabriel, California, you have the cancers of ethnic identity politics and carpetbagging at work, but with a Chinese-American patina, and a town that wants to go old-style New England and make the person accused of wrong-doing convince them that they have not broken the spirit and letter of the law.

Meanwhile in North Miami and North Miami Beach you just have... oh, right -the same things, just with Haitian-Americanss, instead.

Plus, thinly-disguised Black racism and grievance politics as both the facts-on-the-ground and reader comments to this piece make clear.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/04/3380678/north-miamis-upcoming-city-elections.html

Los Angeles Times

San Gabriel council deems itself judge over election results

By Frank Shyong, Los Angeles Times

April 27, 2013, 8:45 p.m.

San Gabriel Councilman-elect Chin Ho Liao was the second highest vote-getter in the city's March elections, but his first time on the council dais last week was as a witness under cross-examination.

The City Council voted not to seat Liao after resident Fred Paine filed a complaint alleging that Liao's true residence is outside of the city's borders. Though Liao has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to contest the council's vote, the city has also created its own hearing process to determine Liao's residency.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0428-san-gabriel-20130428,0,4091862.story

I can't help but wonder if this is what the good residents of North Miami Beach can look forward to dealing with in the coming weeks if a sufficient number of Haitian-American voters there are prepared to simply cast common sense and the facts aside, and vote for a woman who doesn't even live in their city, simply because Dargenson is Haitian-American, too.

Well, it's not like local Miami TV stations have spent any real time covering what's been going on there, now is it?
No, today, two days before the May 7th election, CBS4, NBC6, 7News and Local10 are all guilty of NOT doing a single story on Yvenoline Dargenson.

Seriously, given what this woman is attempting to do by blowing a hole in even the most basic requirement for candidate eligibility, how can that be so?
How can every single English-language TV station news operation in Miami just ignore this?
That, my friends, is the low level to which South Florida journalism has sunk to -a complete lack of curiosity.

It's as if they're waiting for her to win before covering it, no?

For more on the very curious and perhaps even unethical living arrangements of FL House Reps Gibbons and Thurston and FL state Senator Sachs, please see an archive of Tom Lauder's recent pieces on residency requirements at Florida Media Trackers

http://florida.mediatrackers.org/author/toml/

It makes for interesting reading, and the fact that the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office has gotten involved so many times in these cases -esp. with Gibbbons, who clearly didn't comply with the law- only shows how egregious the lack of serious reporting on this subject has been in South Florida over the years.
These pols have positively dared reporters to say what is right in front of us.

I'm sorry to say it, but it also appears from the all the available evidence that some local African-American reporters, columnists and editors down here have been very easy on both Gibbons and Thurston for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism, but everything to do with either shared political ideology or friendship.
(Whatever happened to the proscribed arms-length relationship between reporters and subjects?)

I've commented on it here before, because otherwise, how do you reasonably explain the fact that the Sun-Sentinel's Douglas Lyons has scrupulously avoided mentioning this obvious residency issue for years, despite how often he has mentioned Thurston and Gibbons, quoted them and interviewed them?
What is his excuse, anyway?

Trust me, despite whatever it says on their resumes, Lyons and other reporters at the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald  don't think they have to answer to readers, and I know about him because I've given him plenty of opportunities over the past few years and all he's done is nothing but sit there like a bump on a log.
That's who he is, you shouldn't count on suddenly getting any candor from him that you can have any faith in.
Lyons considers his refusal to ask reasonable questions, esp. of them, a dead issue.

Just another reason that I hope the Sun-Sentinel is sold very soon and that there's a great house-cleaning/bloodletting there to make that newspaper something it hasn't been in years -relevant and worth reading.